Rue End Street

by Sue Reid Sexton

  There was a plump chicken in each one, with most of their feathers removed.

  ‘W... well...’

  ‘I plucked them myself.’

  This didn’t surprise me.

  ‘F... f...’ This was ridiculous. Willie was the least scary posh person I’d ever met. I took a deep breath so I could join in with her fun. ‘Fantastic!’ I said, louder than seemed polite.

  ‘I’m tremendously pleased with myself,’ she said.

  ‘Look,’ I said, still too loud. ‘That one still has feathers.’

  Her smile fell.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’ I was being far too loud but it was the only way I could get any words out.

  ‘Oh dear, is it very bad?’ she said.

  ‘It’s very good!’ I shouted.

  Then she banged the tin lids together after all, making my head buzz painfully.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing my alarm.

  I decided being quiet might be the better option.

  While I sorted out the chickens, she left the room saying she had an idea. When she came back I was chasing a feather that had floated upwards on the heat from the stove as I was throwing in a handful to burn.

  ‘Oh, how lovely. What a game!’ she said, and together we chased after it until she, being the taller, captured it and dropped it into the fire. ‘What on earth happened to your hands?’ she said, turning them over in her own.

  ‘I’ve been working very hard all day,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell her about the café or the toilets. She might have made me clean hers.

  ‘Very admirable,’ she said. ‘I thought so. Why don’t you get that paper over there and put all the feathers into it. The place is a pigsty... . And I’ll finish the pudding. Apple crumble. Yumble! You hungry?’

  I nodded enthusiastically. She brought me a cup of tea and a piece toasted on the range and made me sit for five minutes before doing anything else. While I was eating I noticed the front page of one of the papers: POULTICE ITALY’S TOE. I knew a bit about poultices, having taken a few knocks in my time, but also because of my mum’s leg which often gets sore and swollen and needs one. But the paper’s story was boring stuff about invasions and things, so I had a look inside. I had just found the Wee Macs, my favourite cartoon, when Willie came back. She gave me a broom and got me to sweep up the feathers.

  This was not easy and they seemed to spread themselves out all the more. Some made their way down the corridor, even as far as the hall, as if they were trying to escape. While I was there I heard men’s voices and a layer of cigar smoke slithered through a half-open door, following the feathers on their way to the front door.

  ‘Pst, Lenny,’ said Willie from the kitchen. ‘Come back here. Look what I’ve got for you.’

  I took my fistful of feathers back to her. She held up a dress for me to see. It was very sombre, dark grey, in a beautiful fine material with a fancy lace collar.

  ‘I know it’s a bit dull,’ she said. ‘Your frock is so much prettier but it’s not... it’s not very...’

  ‘It’s f... filthy,’ I said, which made her laugh.

  ‘Yes, it is rather. This is an old one of mine. I never liked it much. Much too serious, don’t you think? But, you can’t help in the dining room in that thing, lovely though it is. And we could keep this here for you and it would always be clean when you needed it.’

  ‘Um... alright.’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  There were six people for dinner including Willie. One of the others was Barmy Barney, who was her dad. There was a man in little short trousers called plus fours that only went below his knee. He had thick green socks and a checked shirt that didn’t match and hardly any hair. His face was red and he laughed all evening when he wasn’t talking. The other man hardly said a word, in fact I can’t even remember what he looked like, and then there was a young couple who didn’t say much either and squeezed hands under the table. I saw them do it. He was in a uniform, RAF I think, and she was so pretty with red lipstick and high heels with sequins on the toes and beautiful sweet perfume that filled the whole room, that I thought I’d faint just being close to her. The perfume wasn’t Willie, definitely not. Willie smelled of turpentine and cooking.

  There was a feather in the pretty girl’s crumble which I didn’t notice until I’d put it down in front of her. Willie noticed it at exactly the same moment and made a squinting face at me then opened her eyes wide. We both glanced round at the other puddings and I saw another feather in the plus-four man’s cream. Luckily everyone else was talking too much to notice.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ said Willie, interrupting them.

  ‘What noise?’ they said.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘There it is again. It’s coming from up there.’ She pointed at a corner of the ceiling.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ they said.

  ‘There... and again,’ she said. ‘Surely you can hear that. You must all be stone deaf.’ She stood up and put her head to one side and started towards the door as if she was in a trance. The rest of them were so daft they all got up and followed her.

  ‘It’s coming from upstairs, I think,’ she said.

  ‘But what’s it like? What are we listening for?’

  ‘It’s there, listen... no, it’s gone again. It’s like a hoot, or a whistle.’

  ‘Well, which is it? A hoot or a whistle? It can’t be both.’

  ‘It’s a kind of whistling hoot. Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said short-trousered man. ‘I think I can. There. You see?’

  It’s amazing how stupid people can be.

  As soon as the last person was through the door I whisked the feathers from their plates and checked all the others. Only Willie’s was feather-free. Then I went into the hall where they were all standing with their heads cocked to one side listening up the stairs and took a deep breath.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Your c... crumble will be going c... cold.’ But if they heard me, which I doubt, they ignored me, as was only right. It was none of my business. There was a tiny vase on a shelf in the corridor back to the kitchen, so I put the feathers in that, as if it was a bunch of tiny violets, for Willie to find later and laugh at.

  ‘Do you know I think we’ve scared it off, whatever it was,’ I heard her say. ‘I can’t hear it any more. Let’s go back in and get our crumble.’

  They stood a little longer in silence listening for an indescribable sound that wasn’t there and I tiptoed back to start the washing up. Then Willie came through and told me that there was a plate of dinner in the oven for me. And what a plate! Chicken and gravy and carrots and cabbage and, best of all, roast potatoes. I tried hard to go slow but there was no way. The plate was empty in five minutes flat. Then I started cleaning up the mess we had made trying to do the crumble.

  I had so much fun that night I completely forgot about the tearoom lady or going back to Clydebank or my mum or George or even my sore hands, even though I was fetching and carrying all night long. I forgot I had to get up early and go back to Mr Tulloch’s farm and do the milking. I even forgot about Mr Tait, and when I suddenly remembered him on my way home I felt a pang of guilt that stopped me in my tracks. But then I realised he’d have been happy for me to be with nice people and having fun and he’d have been proud of me for making it all happen.

  What a long day it had been. I rubbed Mr Tulloch’s penny in my pocket and the thruppence Willie had given me, turning them over and over, and listened to the little ‘tink’ noise they made when they fell against each other.

  But I hadn’t forgotten my dad because everything seemed to be about Italy. While I was serving steaming hot dinners on fancy plates with blue Chinese houses and birds on them, the dinner guests had been talking about Italians and camps and the difference between Italians who were prisoners-of-war and other ones who were internees and had been arrested and whether they were all fascists or not. Prisoners of war were soldiers and pilots, like the man in the uniform
, only he wasn’t Italian, and internees were Italians who were living in Britain. They were all in camps. There was some confusion about these camps and where they were and what should be done now about Italy. Now was different. And then I heard the news my mum must have heard but wouldn’t tell me. Italy had stopped being Germany’s friend and had decided to be our friend instead. This was how Willie explained it to me when I asked her, casually, when we were serving up the crumble. This was probably why I wasn’t paying proper attention and all those feathers got into everyone’s dinner.

  I asked her why Italians who lived here would be in camps and she said they might be secret friends of Hitler’s so, just in case, they had all been put in camps.

  ‘In tents?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe. I don’t think so. It just means lots of people together, but don’t worry, they can’t get out. They put barbed wire fences round them. Most of them were sent to Canada anyway. You don’t need to worry about them.’

  I had this dizzy feeling of everything fitting into place, like finding all the lost pieces of a jigsaw. Things suddenly made sense, but I hoped my dad hadn’t gone to Canada. That would be too terrible.

  When I went to clear the pudding bowls away, they were still talking about the Italians.

  ‘Do you think the internees will be brought back?’ said the pilot.

  ‘I doubt it. Not yet,’ said the plus-fours man. ‘They might release some of the ones in camps here, those they’re sure aren’t Nazi sympathisers. Some of them are contributing enormously to the war effort in forestry and farming and suchlike. They’re a valuable asset when all’s said and done and we need all hands on deck.’

  ‘I agree,’ said the thin man. ‘It’s time they came back and made us some of that delicious ice cream of theirs to go with this fabulous crumble.’

  I decided it was time to pay George a visit.

  Chapter 14

  Everyone was asleep by the time I’d found my way back home. I wound up Mr Tait’s clock, turned on the alarm and crept with enormous gratitude into bed alongside my warm little family.

  My mum, exhausted from working all week, only grunted when I came in. Then suddenly she woke up.

  ‘Lenny?’ she said. ‘Oh, thank goodness. I was worried.’ She gave me the biggest hug.

  I was just about to say ‘You were worried?’ in a sarcastic voice, when I realised I wasn’t worried any more, only tired. Then we both fell sleep as easily as falling off a log.

  It seemed like only five minutes before the alarm shrilled through the wall again and I had to haul myself out of bed and leave those three warm bodies behind.

  I stumbled back down the road in the same green dress with the yellow flowers; there wasn’t time or light to find my everyday one. At the Tulloch’s door I pulled on a pair of boots, filled the grain bucket and did the mangers. Then I filled another bucket with soapy water and waited in the dark for Mr and Mrs Tulloch to appear. Mrs Tulloch wasn’t there long and said she was just too tired and went back to bed.

  Again I managed Forget-me-not, again Mr Tulloch had to strip her for me, but I managed Tulip too, by which time he was through in the dairy whistling and cleaning up. Again he said, ‘Come back at four,’ but remembered this time to give me a warm cup of milk, just delivered, to be drunk there and then, and another telling off for not eating breakfast. I promised to bring his other cup back to him later on and wandered sleepily back down the lane to the main road and past Jimmy Robertson’s bus.

  Jimmy Robertson was standing at the window. He looked surprised to see me and had sticky-up hair. He cocked his head by way of a question, so I gave him a grin and two thumbs-ups, but he waved for me to come in. A terrible stink hung in the air, old cabbages, I reckoned, or he’d spilt a pint of milk and hadn’t cleaned it up. I stopped on the bottom step.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘There’s an old man up your way who needs his paper. Can you take it?’

  ‘Just the one?’ I said.

  ‘The others’ll come down for theirs,’ he said, ‘and they’ll buy their bread when they’re here.’ He handed me a fresh crispy roll. ‘Tulloch says you don’t eat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and I was so hungry I forgot all my manners and sunk my teeth into it straight away.

  Jimmy Robertson laughed. ‘Did you find a job yet?’

  I nodded as I munched.

  ‘Knew you would,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He rolled a paper, tucked it under my arm for me and gave me directions to the old man’s hut. ‘Tell him he can pay me later. On you go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again, and hopped back down from the smelly bus.

  The roll was gone in a flash. Warmth spread from my tummy outwards and I began to dawdle. It wasn’t as cold as usual and the trees were pretty, just taking on their autumn colours. I took out the paper and unrolled it to look at the front page.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  This is what it said: ALLIED TROOPS PUSH NORTH FROM SOLERNO TO CUT OFF LEG.

  Cut off leg? My heart pumped hard in my chest and an old familiar sick feeling gripped my stomach.

  You see, I never saw my mum’s foot after it had been smashed under a building. I only saw the leg after they’d, you know, taken off the foot. In fact by that time it had mostly healed and didn’t even need gentian violet any more. It was round and smooth, apart from a giant scar, as you’d expect. I think I would probably have fainted completely on the spot if I’d had to look, although the nurse who came to clean it and do the bandages did try to make me. I had various methods for avoiding thinking too hard about how the foot came off and tried one there on the hillside. It was simple: I put my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes and kept very still. It didn’t work, of course, it had never worked, and I was too old by then to believe it ever would.

  So I leant against a fencepost and started reading.

  The news was good. It was not about an actual real live human leg being cut off and even the leg in question was, strictly speaking, so far only a foot. It was the foot at the bottom of Italy, and by pushing north the Allied Troops were hoping for a more serious amputation. I’d never heard of Solerno but there it was on the map next to Rome. This is what the story was really about: our troops were pushing north through Italy. Our troops were chasing Hitler away back north out of Italy and back to Germany where he belonged. Because Italy was our friend again. And my dad was an Italian. So if my dad was an Italian, why was he fighting in the British Army? I can assure you he was because I saw him in his uniform when he came home on leave. (This always struck me as odd, that ‘leave’ meant coming back home instead of leaving.)

  ‘What have you got there then?’ It was Dougie, bad George’s wee brother, a nosey wee parker if ever there was one.

  ‘Papers,’ I said, folding it back under my arm. ‘Where’s George?’ I always liked to know where George was so I could be somewhere else.

  That’s when he told me about George and my penny. I put it in my pocket with the others and they tinkled together like a man’s pocket.

  Mavis and Rosie were further up the hill shouting ‘Be clean!’ and ‘Eight!’ and other numbers and daft things and then they started up a tree clinging on like two little monkeys.

  ‘Are you going back to Clydebank then?’ said Dougie. ‘To live, I mean. I knew you would. I said so to George.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ I said, hurrying away from him.

  ‘So you are!’

  ‘Mind your own business. No, we’re not.’

  ‘George says you are.’

  ‘Get lost!’ I said.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  And he went.

  Back at the hut I decided I had to ask my mum some of the questions that were buzzing round my head like a cloud of bees. She had washed our clothes and hung them across the veranda outside the window.

  ‘Mum?’

  There was no answer.

  The fire was going but the windows were open.

  ‘
Mum?’

  Something bumped in the bedroom.

  ‘Why are you in bed?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  She rolled over and gazed at me as if I was a picture on the wall.

  ‘Are you not well?’ I said, feeling a twist in my stomach. ‘Shall I go and get the doctor? I’ve got fivepence to pay him.’

  ‘Not well?’ she said. ‘No, I did the washing. I just meant to lie down for a couple of minutes.’

  I knelt on the floor beside her.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I waited a minute, trying to figure out what to say. ‘Mum... I just wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Come and have a cuddle,’ she said, as if I was four.

  So, even though I was twelve, I got onto the bed beside her and cuddled in.

  ‘Mum?’ I whispered, knowing she was already fast asleep again. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you, and to ask.’

  I waited for the first snore and decided I could probably ask her later, even though it was warm and snug in there and sleep seemed like a very good thing. But I was supposed to be delivering a newspaper, so I sat up and slid as carefully as I could off the bed.

  The rain had started again. I put the newspaper inside my coat and went in search of the old man. It seemed the old man was hiding, but after several tries I finally found him in a hut just above George’s.

  George was down below by the road with an axe above his head that went ‘thwock!’ as it landed on a stump of wood. It scared me so much I changed my mind about asking him questions about my dad.

  I chapped on the old man’s door. The sun was back out so I couldn’t see into the dark inside. The old man peered out at me, hanging onto the door jamb. His mouth spread into a grin and I saw he had no teeth, not a single one.

  ‘Thank you so very much,’ he said slowly, seeing the paper. ‘I know you. You’re Lenny. Mr Tait’s girl. He was a lucky man indeed to have you, a lovely girl, so kind, so kind. Thank you!’

  ‘Th... thank you, sir,’ I said, and wondered why I addressed him as ‘sir’. A lump pushed into my throat.

  ‘You’re very, very welcome,’ he said. ‘And tell that Jimmy Robertson to get himself a proper shop. Or a proper hut. One or the other. Sleeping with the groceries. Tut.’