He was surprised to find that Jean agreed with him. He had gone to her house with a message from his mother and stayed for a cup of coffee with her. It was just after the partnership had been suggested and Jean said she was pleased to be able to talk to Tom alone.
‘Are you sure you like the idea, Tom?’ she asked. ‘I know your mum says she makes her own decisions but I’d like to be sure you agree.’
‘Of course I do,’ Tom said. ‘One hundred per cent. Mum needs you.’
‘And what about Bob?’ Jean asked. ‘He might have expected to be offered it. I mean, he’s family and with all he’s done on the extension and everything.’
‘Oh no. Bob’s interest is in his own job. He’s only fussing about the extension because Meldrum’s are building it. He’s got nothing to do with the cafe – although he keeps putting his oar in,’ Tom said resentfully.
He expected Jean to protest but she said, ‘Yes, I know he does. I don’t know where he gets the idea that he knows better than your mum. The way she’s built it up from scratch, the chances she’s taken and he comes when everything’s going smoothly and tries to tell her what to do.’
She was flushed with indignation and Tom leaned towards her.
‘I’m glad someone else can see it,’ he said. ‘He’s pushed this extension and I’m sure Mum didn’t really want it. She was quite happy with the cafe the way it was when she could do all the cooking herself, well, with a bit of help.’
‘But she was completely in charge and she could keep everything to her own standards,’ Jean said. ‘I think she went along with the extension idea because of the flat for Bob and Meg.’
‘And now Bob’s decided they’ll stay with us. Don’t get me wrong, Jean. I like Bob, he’s a good fellow, but he just takes Mum for granted. Doesn’t ask what she wants, just tells her what he’s decided.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jean said. ‘I know he was grateful to her for nursing Meg, and so was she, poor soul, but he never seemed to realise what a sacrifice she was making to do it. Cutting herself off from the cafe that had been her whole life, for what could have been months. It turned out to be weeks, but that doesn’t alter what I mean.’
‘Mum didn’t mind, I know,’ Tom said. ‘She was glad to do it. To keep Meg at home. But it was Bob’s attitude. As though it was the obvious solution. As though the cafe was a hobby that she could just lay aside like knitting. He wouldn’t have dreamt of taking time off work, yet she has far more responsibilities at work than he has.’
‘The trouble is she makes it all look so easy,’ Jean said. ‘She never says anything about how she’s affected so I suppose we all take advantage of her in some way. But I wish she wouldn’t take Bob’s advice when it’s so often wrong.’
‘Only on trivial things,’ Tom said. ‘Anything she really cares about no one could tell her what to do.’
‘It’s this idea that men know best even if they’re as thick as a plank,’ Jean said. ‘And women like your mum and myself, Tom, we think we’re independent but we’ve been indoctrinated. At the back of our minds we think they are right.’
‘Not you, Jean,’ Tom said. ‘And not Mum, I think, although where we lived when I was a kid the men were always the big boss. They’d batter any woman who defied them so the women went along with it. We’ve lived in our own little world in the cafe but perhaps those years did affect Mum. Not that my dad was like that.’
‘Not only in your neighbourhood,’ Jean said. ‘We lived in a nice district. Dad had a small business but he thought the world revolved round him. Monarch of all he surveyed. He treated my mother like a slave and she let him. Do you know, Tom, he never poured a cup of tea for himself in his life.’
‘Then how did you grow up so independent?’ Tom said laughing but Jean looked serious.
‘Because of what I saw,’ she said. ‘My mother used to kneel at his feet unlacing his boots and taking them off and putting his slippers on his feet. I offered to do it to save her, although I hated him, but he wouldn’t allow it. I think he liked to see her kneeling before him. More than once he kicked out at her because she was slow or the slippers weren’t warm enough. It wasn’t the only time he hit or kicked her either.’
‘Is he still alive?’ Tom asked
‘No, thank God. He died of apoplexy carrying on at a workman. I bet the man had a good laugh. My mother died just before I was married.’ She stood up and put coal on the fire. ‘I’m sorry, Tom, you didn’t expect to get your ears pounded like that,’ she said.
‘I enjoyed hearing it. You know how nosy I am,’ Tom said.
‘Is that what you call it? I know you’re interested in everything and everybody,’ Jean said. ‘I suppose you’ll use that in a story.’
‘Bits of it maybe,’ Tom said with a grin. ‘I didn’t mean to go on about Bob. He’s all right really.’
‘Neither did I. It’s just that I care about your mum,’ Jean said.
Tom said nothing to his mother about the conversation but he asked her about Jean’s husband.
‘I think he was a good man,’ Nellie said. ‘She seems to have been happily married although I never knew him. It was sad her being widowed so young.’
‘Has she never thought of remarrying?’ Tom asked. ‘She’s a smart woman, isn’t she?’
‘I think a few have wanted her to,’ Nellie said. ‘Stan Norris, who supplied the chairs, I know he asked her out, and a traveller who used to come, he was very keen and I thought she might have been tempted but it was when Winnie and Cathy left home. She said she’d never bring a stepfather in to her boys.’
They were alone and Tom said softly, ‘Would you, Mum? If Dad had been killed?’
She shook her head.
‘But you think Jean should?’ he persisted.
‘Maybe, but I’m not sure I’m a widow,’ she said. ‘Anyway I’m what they call a one-man woman.’ She moved away and began to tidy magazines. ‘Do you want all these?’ she asked.
Conversation closed, Tom thought wryly, and said no more.
Although Tom was well liked in the office and was a member of the office football team he made no close friends. So much of his free time was spent on writing that he had little to spare for a social life.
The colleagues he went with to lunch often tried to persuade him to join them playing billiards or dancing but he always refused and he never showed any interest in the girls in the office.
‘You love words more than women,’ one man said in exasperation but Tom only laughed and agreed. When I’ve finished my book, he promised himself, but he still confided in no one about the novel.
Bob usually brought David and Jean’s boys to watch Tom’s team playing football and when the football season finished Tom often took the three boys swimming on Saturday afternoons or he and Bob played cricket or football with them in the park.
Tom and Bob both worked until one o’clock on Saturdays so Saturday afternoons were precious.
‘I know the lads are made up to be with you,’ Bob said one day. ‘But haven’t you got no mates you want to go out with, Tom?’
‘No, this suits me,’ Tom said. He forbore to say that an afternoon with his friends would mean going on to a pub and probably arriving home after midnight and no writing.
He put his book aside for one friend that he made in the spring of 1939. Winnie’s brother Vinny came home on three weeks’ leave and stayed in the flat with his sisters. He was a regular soldier and had served on the North-west Frontier and in Palestine and there was instant rapport between him and Tom. They spent much of his leave together.
Sometimes they went to a cinema or a theatre with Winnie and Cathy or went to a pub, but what they both enjoyed most was sitting in the flat with a few bottles of beer to lubricate their dry throats as they talked, often far into the night.
‘They’re perfectly matched,’ Winnie told Nellie, ‘Vinny likes talking and Tom likes listening.’
‘I think Tom’s mad,’ Nellie said, ‘staying up so late. I know Vi
nny’s on leave but he’s got to go to work the next morning and so have you and Cathy. Do they disturb you?’
‘Nothing disturbs me and Cathy once we get our heads down,’ Winnie said. ‘Tom says he’s used to being up late writing anyhow.’
‘I never thought anyone could get him away from that,’ Nellie declared.
Winnie smiled. ‘You should have seen Tom the other night. He was sitting there saying “The Khyber Pass” over and over again. Rolling it round his tongue like something nice to eat.’
It was as well that Nellie was unaware that Tom stayed up long after returning from the flat, filling notebooks with details of Vinny’s tales.
The three weeks of Vinny’s leave soon passed but before he left he came to see Nellie, bearing a large box of chocolates.
‘I want to thank you for what you’ve done for my sisters, Mrs Meadows,’ he said. ‘Winnie told me what happened. You saved them from that fellow and you’ve been good to them ever since.’
‘I got the best of the bargain,’ Nellie said. ‘They’ve helped me a lot. We all pull together here and they more than pull their weight. And they’re so quiet. We call them the little mice.’
‘I went to see that fellow,’ the boy said gruffly. ‘He wasn’t worth soiling me hands on.’
‘Water under the bridge now, lad,’ Nellie said. ‘The girls are happy. That’s the main thing. I’m very fond of them.’
The summer of 1939 was beautiful, with sunny days and balmy nights, and everyone tried to enjoy it to the full. Most people felt that they had been reprieved from the threat of war but as autumn approached it was gradually accepted that war was inevitable.
All the talk in the cafe was of preparations for war, of the warehouses being emptied and of cargoes no sooner landed than they were whisked away.
‘There’s some won’t go short. Them with money,’ one man said, but another said, ‘Stow it, Jimmy. Change the record. Everybody’ll get it this time with aeroplanes dropping bombs like in Spain.’
‘We’ll be all right here,’ several men told Nellie. ‘The planes won’t be able to get over the Pennines and if they come by sea they’ll get shot down before they get here.’
Nellie hoped that they were right but her first concern was for Tom. At his age he would be called up to serve in one of the three services and she was relieved when he told her that he intended to enlist in the army. She thought it was unnatural for anyone to fly in the air and she often thought of Sam as a boy of fifteen spending days in an open boat when his ship was torpedoed.
Tom was influenced by Vinny’s tales of army life but he found most of his colleagues in the office were applying for either the Royal Air Force or the Royal Navy. A fellow member of the football team, who was as tall as Tom, went with him to Renshaw Hall to enlist, as he also wanted to join the army.
They had thought vaguely of the Cheshire Regiment or the King’s Liverpool but because of their height they were recruited into the Grenadier Guards. The other men at the office told them horror stories of the Guards’ training but Harry and Tom laughed at them.
‘Anyone who thinks he’ll have it soft in any of the services will have his eye wiped,’ Harry declared.
‘Anyhow we’re both fit. We can take it,’ Tom said.
Tom had at last finished his novel a few weeks earlier and sent it to be professionally typed. He could hardly bear to part with the crisp immaculate pages when they were returned but he parcelled them up and sent them off to a London publisher.
Within weeks his call-up papers arrived. Nellie wept and recalled stories of the Western Front, and of Johnny Nolan’s sufferings, but Tom comforted her by saying that this was a totally different war.
‘They’ll have learnt by the mistakes they made last time,’ he said optimistically. ‘No gas and everything’s mechanised now. No horses pulling gun carriages through mud.’
‘It’s not the horses I’m thinking about,’ Nellie said tartly but she was proud of her son when she saw him in uniform on his first leave. Tom was dismayed to find a parcel waiting for him containing his manuscript.
‘In these uncertain times and with the prospect of paper rationing,’ the publisher wrote, ‘we feel unable to accept a first novel.’ He added a few encouraging words and Tom parcelled up the novel and sent it off to another publisher.
‘He might be more willing to take a chance,’ he said to his mother. ‘I’m not waiting around for better times. The war might last a long time.’
‘But everyone thinks it’ll be over soon,’ Nellie said in dismay.
‘They’re probably right but I’ll get it off again anyway,’ he said hastily.
Tom looked well and told Nellie that he was enjoying army life. After years of feeling that he was the man of the house and responsible for his mother, and then of spending nearly all his free time writing, he enjoyed being without responsibility.
Everything was decided for him now. The way he spent his days, his meals, his sleeping arrangements and even to a certain extent his companions, and there was no privacy for writing. His interest in people was still as strong though and he enjoyed mixing with men from many different backgrounds and mentally storing away their conversation.
He and Harry had travelled down to the Guards’ depot at Caterham together and had been put in the same squad. For the first few weeks they were so exhausted by the training that they were just content to drop on their beds every evening. Their muscles soon hardened and when they had passed the first inspection by the company commander and they were allowed out they were ready to enjoy themselves.
Drinking, visits to the cinema, light-heartedly dating girls, they enjoyed it all, and as they became more fit even enjoyed the drilling.
By the end of three months, when they had been inspected first by the adjutant and then by the commandant and had passed, they were swaggering past the new recruits as though they had spent a lifetime in the army.
Tom had always received more letters than anyone else in the squad but shortly after they moved on to the training battalion he received letters from nearly all his correspondents on the same day. He looked through the pile, recognising the various handwriting.
His mother, Jean, Bob, David, Winnie and one posted on from Vinny. He opened his mother’s letter first.
She told him that Bob had asked Jean to marry him and they were going to be married in September.
I’m very glad for them. Jean was only young when she lost her husband and so was Bob when he lost Meg. I think they were both lonely. The three lads get on well together. The stuff could be moved out of the rooms over the extension but it wouldn’t be big enough for them really and neither would Jean’s house. Bob thinks they should make a fresh start anyway, so they’ve got a nice house in Lucinda Street.
Tom dropped the letter on his knee. Bob and Jean! Well, it was on the cards, I suppose, he thought. He left his mother’s letter and opened Jean’s.
She wrote that he might be surprised to hear that she and Bob were to marry.
I know I said that I would never inflict a stepfather on my boys but Bob has been like a father to them for years, just as you have been like an elder brother, Tom, and I’m very grateful. The boys are very fond of Bob and you know how I love David. With Les ten and Doug eight, David at nine fits in perfectly and they are all good pals.
PS I’ll make sure that Bob appreciates your mum!
Tom read the letters from Bob and Winnie and they all said much the same thing, that the three boys were already like one family. Winnie said that Nellie would miss David and Bob and Lucinda Street was farther away than Jean’s present house but not too far. ‘Don’t worry about your mum, Bob,’ Winnie wrote. ‘Cathy and I will see she’s not lonely.’
At least somebody’s thinking about Mum, Bob thought. He picked up his mother’s letter again and reread it, feeling a lump in his throat. Oh, Mum, he thought. Happy for the three boys, happy for Jean and Bob because they were lonely. Not a word about how it would affect her, of
her own loneliness, yet now with me away and David and Bob gone she will be more lonely than ever before. If only Dad would come back! Yet as the years passed it seemed more and more unlikely.
Tom loved his mother with a fierce protective love and longed for her happiness but close to her as he was he understood how she suffered.
Other people might think that she had put the past behind her and made a success of her life but he knew the truth. He knew how often she wept in the night for his father and saw the sadness in her eyes even when she smiled.
He remembered once while he was still at school he said bitterly to his mother, ‘Dad didn’t love us or he wouldn’t have gone away.’
‘He loved you, Tommy. You were the core of his heart,’ his mother had said softly. ‘It was me he left.’
He remembered that he had protested that she was wrong. His dad had loved her but she shook her head.
‘He was sorry for me, lad,’ she said with a sigh, ‘I loved him though and I never knew it till now.’
Now he sat on his bed, the letter in his hand, oblivious to everything around him. My poor little mum, he thought, what a life she’s had. A phrase came into his mind. ‘A life of heroic endurance’ – that’s what hers had been. Quiet and uncomplaining she had worked hard from morning till night, willingly shouldering any burden, providing for old Janey, nursing Meg and caring for David and Bob like a mother.
The sacrifices she’s made for me too, Tom thought. When I was little and times were hard it was bread and margarine for her and an egg for me. Then the awful daily jobs she stuck at so that I could have the best of food and clothes, money for the slipper baths or toothpaste or writing paper and books. Anything that Miss Helsby suggested for me. Uncomprehending but willing, praising me yet never claiming any credit for herself.
Tom felt ashamed that he had not tried harder to trace his father when he grew old enough and wondered whether it was still possible. He recalled the gossip when his father left but he was sure that his father must have been tricked in some way.
A Wise Child Page 43