Читать книгу Keep the Home Fires Burning - Anne Bennett - Страница 10

As November loomed, Marion’s Separation Allowance was eventually worked out, and though the back pay was an added bonus, she knew that the normal weekly allowance would buy little but food for them all, and it didn’t even pay the rent. Buying coal, which became more necessary as the days grew colder, was a constant headache, not to mention footwear for them all.

The evacuated children began filtering back home and, to Marion’s grateful relief and that of many more mothers, the schools reopened. Marion didn’t bother sending Sarah, who would have been leaving at Christmas anyway. Mrs Jenkins at the corner shop was looking for a girl to train up, and though the wages were only eight shillings, Sarah was anxious to take it, knowing even the small amount that she would be able to tip up would be welcomed.

First, though, despite the fact that she would be wearing an overall in the shop, Marion felt Sarah had to have at least a couple of dresses that fitted her because she had developed a bust as she passed her fourteenth birthday and some of her dresses now strained to fasten and were decidedly skimpy. Richard’s boots, too, needed cobbling again as they were leaking. He had to travel to work each day on the tram and Marion knew it would help none of them if he was to take sick because of his inadequate clothing.

She went to the Rag Market in the Bull Ring for the things she needed for the children, but even paying Rag Market prices left a sizeable hole in the backdated allowance, and she had nothing left for the twins or Tony, not if she were to pay the rent, though the younger children had all been complaining that their feet hurt.

The children’s shoes were so tight that when they got to school they removed them, like many others. When the man came round from the Christmas Tree Fund, when they had been back at school only a few days, he gave them a docket for new boots and socks to collect from Sheepcote Road Clinic. Marion was mortified by shame when the children came home from school and told her this. She tried to be grateful but she only felt degraded that she wasn’t able to provide for her own children, and this feeling intensified when she was also given a jersey and trousers for Tony, and skirts and jerseys for the two girls.

This is what it is to be poor, she thought that night as she lay in bed. She remembered with remorse how she had looked down on Polly for years. Now she was in the same boat herself and she knew the children needed the things too much for her to refuse them.

Neither Marion nor her sister envied Sarah working for Mrs Jenkins, who was known as a mean and nasty old woman. Her character was apparent in her thin lips, though her face was plump. There were plenty of lines of discontent on it, and the powder she obviously applied in the morning lay in the folds of her skin by afternoon. Her hair was piled untidily on her head, but her glittering eyes were as cold as ice and so was her thin nasal voice.

‘Wouldn’t give you as much as the skin off a rice pudding,’ Polly said one Saturday afternoon when Sarah arrived home after she had been working at the corner shop a fortnight. But Sarah knew one of the reasons Polly said that was because Mrs Jenkins wouldn’t allow people to put things on the slate and pay at the end of the week. She had made it plain to Sarah when she arrived.

‘Now I don’t want you to stand any nonsense,’ she’d said, looming closer so that Sarah’s face was inches from her and she smelled the stale smell of her and saw rotting teeth in her mouth. ‘If they don’t have the money then they don’t get the goods. Point out the notice to them if they object.’ There was the notice, stuck on the wall behind the till: ‘Don’t ask for credit for refusal often offends.’

When Sarah told her aunt this, she snorted in contempt. ‘Stingy old bugger,’ she said. ‘And your mom tells me that although Mrs Jenkins pays you only eight shillings she don’t throw a few groceries in as well to make it up, like.’

Sarah laughed. ‘Oh, Aunt Polly, you must be joking,’ she said. ‘I’m not even allowed to take home the odd cracked egg or stale buns at the end of the day.’

‘I can’t understand the woman at all,’ Polly said, shaking her head. ‘Do you serve in the shop all day?’

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘My first job when I go in is to bag things up in the storeroom upstairs and send them down the chute to the shop.’

‘Like sugar and that?’

Sarah nodded. ‘And flour, tea and mixed fruit, raisins and that, and anything else Mrs Jenkins wants me to weigh up. She says there’s rationing coming in January so things might be different then, and it might not be so easy to have things under the counter for favoured customers.’

‘I’d say not,’ Marion said. ‘Course, it all depends what’s being rationed.’

‘So do you like the job?’ Polly persisted. ‘Because I heard the last girl left in a tear.’

‘Well, I won’t,’ Sarah said. ‘We need the money too much.’

Neither Polly or Marion argued with that because they knew Sarah was right.

Sarah didn’t moan much, but she did find Mrs Jenkins hard going, and her grating, complaining voice really got on Sarah’s nerves. And Aunt Polly was right: Mrs Jenkins was incredibly mean. She’d give her a cup of weak tea mid-morning, usually when she had finished the bagging up, and another mid-afternoon, but she had to drink these on the shop floor because as soon as she was in the shop Mrs Jenkins made herself scarce. She even seemed to begrudge her the half an hour she gave her to eat the sandwiches Marion put up for her, and there was no cup of tea made then so Sarah usually washed them down with water. However, a job was a job and she thought this would do until something better turned up.

The only cheering thing was that the Government had relaxed the blackout restrictions a little because so many people had been injured or even killed in accidents on the road. Shielded lights on cars were now allowed, and so were shaded torches. It was immensely comforting to have that small pencil of light to guide a person’s way in that dense inky blackness. That was, of course, if batteries could be obtained, for they disappeared from shops quicker than the speed of light.

But then none of this mattered because Bill was coming home on leave. Marion could hardly wait to see him. In a way it was a bittersweet pleasure, because she knew that it was without doubt embarkation leave, and that when he returned he would more than likely be sent overseas to join in the war already claiming many, many lives.

When he arrived that cold, foggy Saturday he was shocked by the state of his family. He noted how thin and pasty-looking the children were, but when he drew Marion into his arms and he could feel her bones, he was shocked to the core.

Marion had a stew ready, made with cow’s heel and vegetables, and because it was Bill’s first night home they were all allowed bread to mop up the gravy, a luxury Marion couldn’t usually allow.

Tony finished his helping, sat back in his chair and said with a sigh of contentment, ‘Crikey, I’d forgotten what it was like to feel really full.’

Tony’s words made Bill feel even worse, and that night in bed beside his wife he said, ‘God, Marion, I am so sorry. I had no idea that you were suffering this way.’

Marion couldn’t reassure Bill and tell him that everything was all right, and yet she felt that she couldn’t berate him either. She wasn’t stupid and she knew that when Bill left her he would be exposed to God alone knew what danger, and she couldn’t let him do that with any angry words that she had thrown at him ringing in his ears. And so she said, ‘We will likely manage well enough if the war doesn’t go on too long.’

‘I hope it doesn’t,’ Bill said. ‘I imagine we’ll be over in France soon and then we’ll know what’s what, and soon have Jerry on the run.’

Marion gave a sudden shiver at Bill’s word and he put his arms around her and held her tight, glad that the bolster had been removed from the bed. Not that he would ever go further than a cuddle, however much he might want to. The doctor had warned him about the danger of another pregnancy after the twins had struggled to be born, and he loved his wife too much to put her at risk. He wasn’t some sex-crazed beast, but to cuddle together was nice and comforting for both of them.

Bill wore his uniform to Mass the next morning as it was the only clothes he had left, but he soon saw that he wasn’t the only one. He found that people respected the uniform and his hand was wrung many times, including by Father McIntyre.

Back home, he ate the thin porridge with everyone else and though he could have eaten three times that amount and still been peckish, he wouldn’t let Marion offer him anything else. After it, to take their mind off how hungry they still were, he suggested taking Tony and the twins down to the canal.

‘Don’t be too long,’ Marion told Bill. ‘I want dinner fairly early because my parents are coming afterwards to see you and they won’t want to go home in the dark.’ She saw his eyes widen and said, ‘They’re not coming for a meal. It takes every penny I have to feed my own. Those fancy Sunday teas are a thing of the past, as I said in my letters to you.’

Bill had no desire to see Clara, but he nodded. ‘We’ll be back in plenty of time.’

The children thoroughly enjoyed having their father back. Tony in particular had really missed him, and in his company he forgot his growling stomach, and the cold of the day, which caused wispy white trails to escape from their mouths when they spoke.

They all knew they were having liver for dinner because Aunt Polly had brought it round the previous day. She’d said the butcher had some going cheap and so she’d bought extra for them.

‘What we eat is sort of hit and miss,’ Marion had told Bill when he’d asked how they were managing. ‘You go to the Bull Ring on Saturday night and buy what is cheap because they are trying to get rid of it. But now Polly has brought liver that’s what we’ll eat.’

‘But I thought Tony and the twins, Magda in particular, hate liver.’

‘Huh,’ said Marion grimly. ‘It’s amazing what you can develop a taste for if the alternative is starving. None of the children can afford to be fussy these days.’

And they weren’t. Bill saw that every plate was soon cleaned.

They had barely washed up before Clara and Eddie Murray were at the door. Eddie was quick to shake Bill’s hand, say he was glad to see him and remarked on how well he was looking. Clara, however, barely returned his greeting before launching into him.

‘Your selfishness in enlisting has reduced your family to penury. They scarcely have enough to live on. You must have noticed how skinny they all are.’

Bill didn’t need it pointing out to him, but Marion was well aware of how he was feeling and she was annoyed with her mother.

‘This really isn’t the time to go into this, Mammy,’ she said. ‘Bill can do nothing now to ease the situation and he just has a couple of days at home. The time for any recriminations at all is well past.’

‘Well said,’ Eddie told his daughter approvingly, and to Bill he said, ‘Shall we leave them to chat and I’ll treat you to a pint? Then you can tell me all about life in the army.’

Bill was glad to get away from the malicious eyes of his mother-in-law. The children wished they could go too, but they had to stay and talk to their grandmother, though most of her conversation was criticising and finding fault with what they said and did.

In the convivial pub, where Bill was greeted by many, Eddie waited until their pints were in front of them before saying, ‘Tell me how life is treating you?’

Bill told him all about the training camp and what he had to do, and Eddie listened with interest.

‘And I suppose the training is over now and this is embarkation leave?’ Eddie asked finally.

‘I imagine so,’ Bill said, ‘though they tell us nothing definite. To be honest it’s the family I worry about. What Clara said today, well, she was right, because I was shocked at the state of them when I came home. Marion made this stew for us all and afterwards young Tony said he had forgotten what it was like to feel full. And you know why that was? It was because, in honour of my coming home, Marion had allowed them bread to mop up the gravy. Usually she can’t afford to do that.’

‘Things have been hard for her,’ Eddie said. ‘Hard for all the wives of servicemen, especially if they’re mothers too, like the vast majority are.’

‘I feel so helpless,’ Bill said. ‘That’s what’s so hard.’

‘Seems to me all that you can do is get over there and finish this war just as soon as you can so life can get back to normal again,’ Eddie said.

Bill smiled wryly. ‘I’ll do my best. As for the family, I saved my cigarette money and had thought to take them to the music hall or cinema for a treat, but I know now a few good feeds is what they really want. Tomorrow early I’m going to the shop to buy extra sugar and full-cream milk for their porridge, and I’ll treat them to a fish-and-chip dinner tomorrow evening. Anything I have got left over I’ll give Marion before I leave.’

‘I would say that they’ll be grateful for that,’ Eddie said.

And they were pleased with the extra sugar and milk on their porridge before they left for school and work the next day.

Bill was shocked to see the younger children dressed in clothes and boots provided by the Christmas Tree Fund, this stamped on them so that they couldn’t be pawned, and he felt shame steal all over him.

Marion saw his face and guessed his feelings. When the children had gone, she said, ‘I felt the same way at the time, and wished that I could have refused them. But how could I have done that? You should see the state of some of their other things, and their warm clothes from last winter won’t go near them now.’

‘I just wish I could make things easier for you,’ Bill said.

‘There is no way you can,’ Marion replied.

Bill nodded miserably. ‘There is one thing I can do to put a smile on their faces.’

‘What?’

‘I intend to buy fish and chips for us all this evening.’

Marion felt her mouth watering at the thought. ‘Oh, Bill, you couldn’t buy anything that would please them more. They’ll think they have died and gone to heaven, so they will. You just wait and see when you tell them that tonight.’

And Bill did see. The children were almost speechless with pleasure. And later he watched them devouring the meal with such relish it brought tears to his eyes.

A couple of days after Bill had left, Polly said to her sister, ‘Look, Marion, if you won’t take any money off me then at least let Tony and the twins come to our house dinner time for a bite to eat. You and all, if you want.’

Marion hesitated and Polly said, ‘Go on, Marion. Don’t be so stiff-necked.’

Marion knew Polly could afford to give the children something wholesome. Then bread and scrape for tea, and thin porridge for breakfast would matter less. On the other hand rationing was coming in soon and everyone would get only so much. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to take yours,’ she said.

‘We don’t know what’s going to be rationed yet,’ Polly pointed out. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. But now Pat, the boys and Mary Ellen eat their dinners in their works’ canteens and so I’ll save on any rations they would eat.’

‘All right,’ Marion said. ‘Thank you, Polly. We’ll see how it goes. But you just see to the children. I’ll get something for myself.’

Polly knew she probably wouldn’t. She ate not nearly enough, in her sister’s opinion, but at least Polly could ensure that the children were well fed once a day.

The children were delighted when Marion told them they would be having dinner at their Auntie Polly’s. They all loved her crowded and untidy house. Aunt Polly wasn’t one to be always on about people washing their hands either, and as there were barely enough chairs to sit down at the table, which was mostly cluttered anyway, they usually stood around with food in their hands, which the Whittaker children thought wonderful.

‘The only downside to all this,’ Marion said to Sarah one evening when the younger ones were in bed, ‘is that Tony sees even more of Jack.’

‘Jack isn’t that bad,’ Sarah protested.

Marion shook her head. ‘I’m worried about Tony and the power Jack seems to have over him. I’m very much afraid our Tony needs a father’s hand to stop him going to the bad altogether.’

In a way she was right, because Tony missed his father so much it was like an ache inside him. Richard, sitting in Bill’s chair when he came in from work and rustling the paper he often bought on the way home, as his father had, just annoyed Tony more and he tended to gravitate more to his uncle Pat and envied Jack that his father came home each night.

In fact, he envied Jack for many things, not least because he could think up such exciting things to do. When Tony was with him and up to some mischief or other, he didn’t miss his father half as much.

At some point, most boys tried to hitch a ride on a horse-drawn dray, and Jack and Tony had done so many times. The journeys never lasted long because the driver was either aware they were there or a passer-by would alert him. ‘Oi, put yer whip be’ind,’ they would shout, and any clinging boy would drop swiftly from the cart before the driver’s curling whip could bite into his skin.

However, when Jack suggested doing the same to a clattering swaying tram Tony thought it the most exciting thing he had ever done. Neither the conductor nor the driver noticed them, but they were thrown off into the road when the tram took a corner at speed and they narrowly missed being crushed to death by a delivery van, whose driver swerved just in time to avoid them.

Marion was told this by the policeman who delivered the shamefaced and tearful Tony home, but his contriteness was wasted on her when the policeman told her that the delivery driver might never be the same again. After hauling her son inside, she paddled his bottom with a hairbrush and wished she could administer the same punishment to her nephew.

All the other children were shocked at what Tony had done and both Richard and Sarah told him so.

‘Haven’t you got a brain in that bonehead of yours?’ Sarah railed at him. ‘Didn’t you think for one minute what a stupid idea it was?’

Tony was silent. He was feeling incredibly miserable. His bottom felt as if it was on fire and his stomach yawned emptily, for he had been sent to bed without anything to eat. It hadn’t seemed stupid when Jack suggested it. It had seemed daring, and that’s what he tried to tell his sister. Sarah looked at his brick-red face and his eyes still so full of tears that his voice was broken and husky but she felt no sympathy for him.

‘Well, that one daring act might have cost you your life,’ she cried, and added witheringly, ‘Oh, you must be very proud of yourself.’

‘I ain’t,’ Tony sniffed. ‘I never said I was proud of it. I just thought it would be a bit of fun.’

‘Fun!’ Sarah repeated as if she couldn’t believe she had heard right. ‘Well, do you realise that you have probably cost that van driver his job? He more than likely has a wife and children dependent on him and, according to what the policeman told Mom, he might never be able to drive again. So you think on that, Tony Whittaker.’

Tony did think about it, though he couldn’t help wondering what Jack felt about it all now. He knew that his family would probably not be half as harsh with him. Uncle Pat might even laugh at his antics. He often did. That was always a great puzzle to Tony.

The thin porridge the next morning didn’t even go part way to assuaging his appetite but he did feel ashamed when he noticed lines of strain on his mother’s face that he had never seen before.

‘I have enough to worry about as it is, with your dad away and us barely having enough to live on,’ Marion said to him as she cleared away his bowl. ‘You can at least try to be good and listen more to me and less to Jack Reilly.’

‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ Tony said sincerely. ‘It was just a lark but I won’t do it again.’

‘See you don’t then,’ Marion said grimly. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘I know. I really am sorry.’

‘All right then,’ Marian said, mollified a little. ‘We’ll say no more about it.’

Jack and Tony gave trams a wide berth after that little episode. It had given them quite a scare, not that either of them ever admitted that.

Marion opened the door the following Saturday morning to see the priest, Father McIntyre, on the doorstep. She was a little flustered because she hadn’t been expecting him, but she smiled and said, ‘This is a surprise, Father. Come away in and I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘No, Marion,’ the priest said stiffly. ‘This isn’t a social call.’

‘Oh?’ Marion felt her stomach sink as she looked at the priest’s disgruntled face and suddenly she knew that her younger son had something to do with Father McIntyre’s ill humour. Jack and Tony, like most Catholic boys of their age, had been trained to serve at Mass, and they should both have been serving at early Mass that morning. ‘Did the boys not turn up, Father?’ Marion asked anxiously.

‘Oh, they were there, all right,’ the priest said. ‘And afterwards showed total disrespect for the Church and the sacrament they had just taken part in.’

‘What did they do, Father?’ Marion asked fearfully.

‘They each had a water pistol and I caught them filling them up from the holy water font.’

‘Oh, Father!’ cried Marion, shocked. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your place to be sorry,’ the priest said. ‘It’s up to your son to be sorry and mend his ways. Jack Reilly admitted that both pistols were his and that he had given one to Tony.’

‘Somehow Tony seems to lose all sense of right and wrong when he’s with that boy,’ Marion said. ‘I will deal with him, Father never fear. Where is he?’

‘Knowing that your husband is away, I have taken them both to Pat Reilly’s house to let him deal with the pair of them.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ Marion said. ‘I will be away now to fetch Tony home.’

And she did fetch him and berated him every step of the way. That night she wrote to tell Bill all about his recalcitrant son.

Not surprisingly, Pat didn’t take it at all seriously. Do you know, he even asked the boys if they had chosen holy water because it improved their aim …

Bill smiled when he read that because he could well imagine Pat saying it, and knew he himself would have taken the same line and viewed it for what it was, a boyhood prank. He also knew that Marion would never see it like that. She was really upset over it.

How is Jack to grow up with any sort of moral fibre with a father like that one as an example? And whatever mischief he is at, Tony is right behind him. I cannot seem to keep any sort of check on him and never know what he might be up to next.

A week after the last upset with Tony, Marion pawned the silver locket Bill had bought her the year after they were married and the delicate chiming carriage clock that had been Lady Amelia’s present to her when she’d left service to marry Bill. It had pride of place on the mantelpiece in the parlour for it was easily the most beautiful thing the family owned. Marion shed bitter tears when she was alone for she hated having to part with such treasured items.

Sarah missed the clock almost straight away, but she said nothing because she could see from her mother’s sad face and woebegone eyes that she was heart sore that she’d had to take it to the pawnbroker. When her grandparents had been coming to tea every Sunday, one of the jobs that Sarah did on a Saturday was to dust the parlour. She used to dust that clock with very great care indeed, always afraid that she might drop it or damage it in some other way. Now she thought the mantelpiece looked terribly bare without it.

And so it did, but Marion needed the money. She was a week behind with the rent again, badly needed coal, and she would liked to have her leaky boots resoled. Also she wanted to pick up a trinket for the children for Christmas, which was only two weeks away. She knew that it would be a poor one for the family this year, with no presents and nothing in the way of festive food either. She made a bit of an effort, though, and brought the little Christmas tree down from the loft, and hung around the garlands the children had made over the years.

Sarah knew the twins still firmly believed in Santa Claus, though she wasn’t sure about Tony, and she thought she had better warn them about the lack of presents. ‘Santa won’t be visiting us this year,’ she told them one evening.

They all looked at her in amazement. Tony wasn’t sure that he believed in Santa any more. Jack said it was eyewash and it was just your parents filled your stockings and that, but though he usually accepted everything Jack said as gospel truth, Tony had held on to the belief that this time he was wrong and that his bulging stockings of the past had been filled by a genial man in a red suit and sporting a long white beard.

At Sarah’s words he saw at once that that wasn’t so. Jack had been right all along and that the hunting knife that he had coveted for so long would not be in his possession by Boxing Day, this year anyway.

‘Why ever not?’ asked Magda.

‘It’s because of the war,’ Sarah said.

Magda and Missie looked at one another. They knew all about the war, but that surely had nothing to do with Santa. ‘What about the war?’

‘Well, if he set off with a sleigh full of toys the Germans could capture him,’ Sarah said.

The twins’ mouths dropped agape at that terribly shocking news. They knew how horrid the Germans were because the adults were always talking about it and what they got up to, and the girls often saw the headlines of newspapers on their way to school. So Santa in German hands didn’t bear thinking about. What if they hurt him, killed him, even? Magda thought she wouldn’t put it past them. They were as bad as it was possible to be.

So when Sarah said, ‘He thought this year he is safer staying where he is at the North Pole,’ the twins nodded solemnly. They were disappointed, but keeping Santa safe was paramount in their minds.