Life's Fare

by Greg Yevko

  In the May of that year, Marlene gave birth to a beautiful little girl; however, she did sleep in an orange-box for a couple of weeks whilst they were waiting for the mix-up on delivery dates to be sorted out, for the cot that Marlene had ordered without mentioning it to her husband.

  Life with a new baby was incredibly hard.

  Stanley wasn’t sure whether it was a blessing or a curse having his mother-in-law living so close by, and indeed depending on the circumstances prevailing at any one particular time, both were in fact applicable.

  In spite of his protestations, the orange-box had been replaced by a new, simply designed basic cot, but clearly fitting the cot into the narrowly defined space that HA 9432 provided was proving to be more than difficult.

  “Stanley, Stanley!” Mrs Marley clearly had some exciting information to impart as she rushed up to him, hardly giving him time to dismount his push bike after an eight-hour day shift and 40-minute cycle home. She carefully transferred the crying infant from her left hip to right hip, making sure that the Woodbine that was balanced using nothing more than her two front teeth and upper lip remained a safe distance from her daughter’s flailing arms.

  “There is a beaten-up old cottage up the lane that a friend of mine has told me about that the owner wants to get rid of for, wait for it, £70! It’s called World’s End Cottage.”

  Marlene was incredibly worked up, and Stanley could tell from the wild expression in her eyes that this was not something that he could readily dissuade her from.

  “£70?” he queried, disbelievingly. “Are you sure it’s not called Arse End Cottage?”

  She ignored his put-down.

  “Well of course it needs some work doing to it for that money,” Marlene conceded, “But that will be nothing for a man of your skills and determination; and also, it means that we will get our own proper bedroom back to ourselves since Nollie will be in her own room, which will mean more time and privacy for each other…” She deliberately let her sentence tail off with an air of hanging expectation as far as Stanley was concerned. She knew she had won him over.

  He looked at his wife, then looked at his still crying daughter, though rather than wailing there was a more subdued snuffling sound coming in between the gulps of breath. “I’ll go into Carr and Fob’s tomorrow first thing,” he said, then took his daughter from Marlene in one arm and put the other around his wife’s waist. All three of them went into the bus, quickly followed by him rushing back out again to retrieve his bike which he had left lying against the low fence by the gate. “Can’t afford to leave anything lying around too long in this neighbourhood,” he said to himself, “Thieving bastards would have the shirt off your back whilst you were asleep if they could.”

  It was a few days after his visit to Carr and Fob’s that he received the neatly typed letter from their office:

  “From Carr and Fob’s, Auctioneers, Valuers, Surveyors, Land and Estate Agents

  Dear Sir

  Re – World’s End Cottage

  We have now been in touch with our Building Society regarding the proposed mortgage of £70, and regret having to inform you that whilst they appreciate your inquiry, they are not disposed to make such small loans particularly on country properties which are not approached from the roadside.

  In the circumstances we suggest…”

  Stanley scanned the rest of the letter, suggesting he approach the vendor directly to see about part-payment or some other deals that he might be able to strike.

  “Marlene, can you talk to that friend of yours,” he called out as Mrs Marley was hanging the washing out on the line that ran diagonally from HA 9432’s windscreen to a post Stanley had put in the furthest corner of their small plot.

  “Those bastards at Carr and Fob’s have turned us down,” he added with a mixture of disbelief and building annoyance at those whom he had met working there. He considered them to all be somewhat up themselves anyway, a phrase that had become one of his favourites to describe those he met who had a very disparaging attitude towards those struggling at the bottom of the ladder.

  She rushed into the bus, almost dropping the washing basket as she half tripped up the high step at the entrance.

  “No!” she cried, “They can’t do that, can they?” The tears had already started to well up in her eyes as she desperately tried to fight them back.

  Stanley knew how much this meant to his wife, and he placed a reassuring arm around Marlene’s waist and gave a brief squeeze.

  “Don’t worry,” he smiled, trying to sound a lot more confident than he actually felt. “Marion knows how to get around someone in the most persuasive of ways.” Marion was Marlene’s friend who had let them know about World’s End Cottage in the first place, and she was on what could only be described as very good terms with the vendor of the cottage. Not only that, but Marion had a vested interest in trying to establish something even more meaningful with the sixty-four-year-old widower selling the property, so Stanley was confident that, if anybody could help smooth this sale over, Marion was the one.

  He was proved correct. After Marion had popped round to negotiate some new terms for the cottage, Stanley was able to apply for (and get approved) a mortgage of £50 via a kindly Mr Belgin from the Herefordshire Legal Aid Society, so the deal was back on. Marion had been able to persuade the vendor in a moment of passion to accept £60 for the cottage, and Stanley had been able to persuade his old friend from London, Rye, to loan him the extra ten pounds with a payback promise of £1 per month for the next eleven months.

  By the time the day of the move came around, all of the Marley’s possessions were contained in a mixture of various sized boxes and a couple of suitcases – the volume of their belongings had been considerably swelled to accommodate the new addition to the family, and Stanley had never ceased to be amazed by the inverse proportionality of the amount of things that were needed compared to the size of the infant that needed it.

  Marlene’s brother Jeff had offered to help them move their things with the van he was able to borrow from the yard he worked at, and he had turned up in his usual mordant mood.

  “Bloody traffic’s a nightmare,” he had greeted them with, and Marlene had raised an exasperated eye-brow towards Stanley behind Jeff’s back as he hoisted another box into the van.

  “Never mind, Jeff, think of that nice Black and Tan that I’ll get you once we’re all done,” encouraged Stanley.

  “And don’t forget the two bob for the petrol,” Jeff had responded, breaking wind as he heaved yet another box into the van. Stanley just shook his head despairingly.

  Aside from moving into their first real house, two other momentous events happened that year; Mrs Marley fell pregnant again, and Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Mountbatten-Windsor was officially crowned as, “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”

  Whilst the pregnancy definitely had more of a direct influence on the Marleys’ lives, it was the indirect influence of the televised Coronation that first introduced Stanley and Marlene to the wonderful world of hire purchase, or as they referred to it, buying on the ‘Never-Never.’

  “A television?!” Marlene had repeated the word back to Stanley almost as if she had difficulty in understanding it.

  “What do you mean, ‘… get a television’?” she had asked him in a questioning tone veiled with just a hint of menace.

  “Marlene, you know we’ve always wanted one; we don’t go out hardly and there is only a limited amount of fun that you can get from continually listening to the Home Service and The Light Programme.”

  “But I thought you liked Family Favourites, and you certainly sing along to the Billy Cotton Band Show when you remember the words, and those plays with Jimmy Edwards…”

  “Marlene…,” Stanley’s frustrations were evident in the way he spoke. “You’ve got to think bigger. Think of
the future. You mark my words, soon everyone will be having televisions in their homes, and people will come around and watch big events together, maybe sharing their bottles of Mackeson or Davenports. Like this coronation for example, that will be on the television, and maybe in the future they might show more Royal Weddings.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure that Royal Weddings would be particularly popular with people,” scoffed Mrs Marley. “Who on earth would sit for hours watching a Royal Wedding?”

  “You’d be surprised,” countered Stanley, “there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes.”

  “But you know we can’t afford anything like that,” she protested.

  “Aha,” shot back Stanley, who had prepared for this avenue of debate. “That’s where hire-purchase comes in.”

  “You what?” queried Marlene.

  “Hire-purchase,” repeated Stanley. “It’s a brilliant concept of getting things you need when you need them by paying a small fraction of the total cost upfront, rather than having to save a fortune in advance before you can afford it, by which time it’s too late, either the thing has gone or the need has changed.”

  “Well if you no longer have a need for it by the time you can afford it, then that proves that you didn’t really need it in the first place,” argued Mrs Marley.

  “Not so,” retorted Stanley. “It just means that you’ve gone through all that period of time not having it, which was a continual pain and inconvenience for you, only to find that now you need something else as well as or instead of that thing, and you may have to start saving all over again, continuing the never-ending cycle of always wanting, never getting.” He sat back, feeling pleased with his well-practised argument.

  “But how come shops will give you the thing if you’re only paying a small fraction of the price for it?” asked Mrs Marley, still unsure of this scheme which sounded a little too good to be true.

  “Well,” continued Stanley “the beauty is that you only pay a small amount, but you continue to make payments over an agreed period of time. Sure, by the time you’ve come to end of the agreed period you have paid a bit more than you would have done if you’d had the money already in the bank, but as long as the weekly payments are within our budget, it’s a great way for people like us to get some nice things which we would struggle to get otherwise.” Stanley knew from the look on Marlene’s face that the thought of having not just nice things, but also some of the more basic things that they struggled to afford via this sort of buy now, pay later type scheme was certainly gaining appeal with her.

  “Well maybe we could make some enquiries – but only just to get some more info,” she added the second part of the sentence quickly onto her first statement to make sure that Stanley didn’t think this was all a done deal; Marlene always knew the best way to play her hand with her husband. On this occasion, Stanley had a card of his own up his sleeve.

  “Here, just have a look at this,” and he whipped out what at first glance looked like some sort of comic book to Marlene. Stanley had spent three pence on the Coronation Special edition of the Radio Times, covering Sunday May 31st to Saturday June 6th. He turned to the middle pages.

  “Look Marlene,” he said, mustering up as much excitement as he could generate. “This is just the procession route, and it will be all on television, live, as it actually happens. It will almost be like we were there; we’ll see all our old London haunts where we first met. They’ll be starting at Buck Palace, then down the Embankment to the Abbey. After the ceremony back round to Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus. It’ll be brilliant; might even catch Rye in the crowds!”

  Mrs Marley traced the route with her finger along the centre spread special and her eyes moistened a little as she thought back to their heady early days after those disastrous early meetings in the tea room. She then noticed the programme running order.

  “My God!” she exclaimed! “It really is on all day! Look, as soon as the tuning signal finishes at 10:15 in the morning, live coverage goes through to five twenty in the evening, then it’s a Tattoo, then the highlights of the service and more tributes, then fireworks on the Thames till close down around eleven thirty. People must really be into the Royals these days. I can’t imagine it’ll be anything like this in years to come.”

  The following pay-day, Stanley proudly went into the local Curry’s electrical store and purchased a brand-new television set with a rather bulbous looking 17-inch screen with a down payment of 17/6.

  Mrs Marley’s second pregnancy went very well, and in February of 1954, a new, healthy baby was introduced to the world in the Hereford General Hospital. “Is it a boy, is it a boy?!” gasped Marlene through the tears of exertion and pain she had shed before the cord was cut and the crying infant was whisked away to be cleaned up and checked out before being handed over to the mother.

  “Congratulations Mrs Marley,” said the smiling mid-wife, “you have a beautiful young daughter to add to your family.”

  Marlene’s reaction was a confused mixture of love, happiness, and a slight tinge of disappointment. However, as soon as Stanley saw the new baby, his grin once again lit up the room. “Look at the way she’s wriggling all over the place,” he said to Marlene. “She’s gorgeous. Let’s call her Alvita.”

  Mrs Marley was confused. “Alvita?” she questioned.

  “It’s an old Caribbean name,” confessed Stanley, “I’ll tell you later.”

  Stanley had insisted on the name of their first born, Nollie, as that was a Caribbean term meaning flowering tree, which Marlene had thought to be absolutely delightful. She loved the idea of keeping the Caribbean link, and she equally loved the name that Stanley had just proposed. She was later to find out from him that Alvita actually meant Lively One, which described the writhing baby perfectly. Marlene went a little quiet for a moment.

  “I thought you wanted a boy,” she eventually mumbled to Stanley.

  “I just wanted a healthy baby,” smiled Stanley. “Girl, boy, no worries. Besides, there’s always time for more in the future…”

  Golland 3.3 Tunesday, bit after a bit later on

  “Do you really think this is getting anywhere?” asked Bondje, looking down a little wearily onto the ever-changing scenes below.

  Perun gave something akin to a sigh. “I must agree with you, tavarisch,” he admitted reluctantly, “This is about as exciting as one of The Creator’s moralistic monologues on how we should be good, and how we should help each other, and how great it would be if we were always kind to each other and yada-yada-yada.”

  “What?” Bondje was clearly confused. He looked again at his swirling adversary. “What is yada-yada-yada supposed to mean? Is that even in the Godlish language?”

  “It is a very useful phrase I made up,” said Perun in a rather self-satisfied way. “Pretty good, don’t you think?”

  “Pretty dumb if you ask me,” scoffed Bondje. “It says nothing at all, but it does it three times.”

  “That is the point, tavarisch. I can use it to convey the fact that someone is saying something that is of not much importance or interest, but just seems to go on and on and on…”

  This would have been a perfect moment for Bondje to shake his head if he would have had one. “It will never catch on,” he muttered under his breath.

  “So, I think we need to shake things up a little bit more,” said Perun after some thought. “For a start, let’s throw yet another helpless two-leg into the mix. These little groups that the two-legs make seem to get more fractious when they have more than two little helpless ones that they have to look after; when the Creator put just two hands on these creatures to match the two legs, She hadn’t thought through too clearly how awkward it would be when a third helpless one came along. Then after that, what we can do is something on a bit bigger scale; maybe get something going that effects more of them across a larger area. Have you noticed how they move about a lot when they hear certain changes in sounds – I think I’ve hea
rd them call it music. They especially like to do the moving things in twos, bit like the jerky movement thing really. Before today is finished, we will see how they cope with something a little different to what they’ve been used to.”

  Bondje didn’t really know what Perun had in mind, but he knew that with Perun’s sense of devilment, he was sure that it would be something which would certainly shake things up a bit.

  Umhlabathi 3.4 1959

  With two under-fours in the family, the Marleys were finding it quite tough. After two years in World’s End Cottage, they had decided that it was time to move on since the cottage wasn’t really in the best position for either Marlene or Stanley to easily get to work. Mrs Marley’s mother had proved invaluable, as Grandma had been able to look after the two young girls whilst Marlene got a couple of days a week in at the cinema to make sure she stayed on their books. This also had the benefit of bringing in that extra bit of cash of course. Another problem with the cottage was that it only had a small toilet which was in an equally small shed just outside the surprisingly small back door. And, to add to their difficulties, Mrs Marley was pregnant again.

  For the past four months, Stanley had been “doing the place up” primarily with the idea of selling it to make some money to enable them to move to something more suitable. Stanley had proven to be a dab hand with Wiggin’s sticky tape which he was able to collect as often and in as much quantity as was needed, whenever he wanted. This marvellous material not only held together broken tool handles, cracked fence posts, damaged furniture and basically anything that it was wound around. It also did an excellent job in covering the screwed-up newspaper that Stanley had used as “filler” behind several large holes in the lathe and plaster walls which were definitely becoming in need of complete replacement, but as Stanley pointed out, would look fine once filled in, covered over and repainted, possibly with a picture hanging over the repair just to be sure.

  With overtime being available on a regular basis, Stanley had been able to put by an extra little amount each week over and above the housekeeping that was ceremoniously handed over every week in the usual ritual, Mrs Marley carefully counting out the pound notes aloud alongside Stanley as he unfolded them carefully from the small brown envelope that he picked up from the pay-out window each Thursday.