by Annie Murray
‘What d’yer want?’ Iris said, her voice slurred and over-loud with drink.
‘I’ve come to see Molly. They said she was poorly.’
Iris waved the white cup she was holding, in a convivial way. ‘You can go up – go on, bab. Up the stairs – at the top!’
Em had to steel herself to scuttle across the room, feeling the old man leering at her. He had whiskers the colour of gun-metal, a big nose and deep-engraved features which reminded her of a Mr Punch which had once frightened her in a pavement puppet show. She wasn’t frightened of Joe Fox, Molly’s father, but it was peculiar the way he just sat staring and she was relieved to get to the winding staircase. She climbed, trying not to breathe in the smells of the house. The stairs to the attic were like a corkscrew, with very little light. She had to feel her way up, and sliding her hand up the wall she felt the throb from the factory next door. As she reached the top the pungent stench of urine which pervaded the house grew stronger.
‘Molly?’ she whispered into the dark room. There came a moaning sound in reply. As Em’s eyes got more used to the dark she detected a faint square of light in front of her from where the sound had come, and as she groped her way past the iron bedstead which took up a lot of the space, she realized Molly was lying behind a curtain which divided the room, blocking what little light was seeping through the threadbare window curtains from the grey day outside. Stepping round the dividing curtain, Em saw Molly’s fair hair in the gloomy light, as her head moved restlessly from side to side.
‘Molly, it’s me – Em.’
Molly groaned and managed to open her eyes. Close to her, Em could feel that she was burning up with heat and that she was very unwell. Her big eyes looked up at Em in bewilderment.
‘I don’t want them to come,’ she muttered, still moving her head back and forth. ‘Don’t let them come, please don’t. Let me stay by myself . . .’
Em jiggled her hand on Molly’s shoulder. ‘It’s me – Em! Molly, you’re having a dream.’
Molly seemed to surface then, and Em was touched to see her try to smile.
‘You came to see me.’ Her hand appeared from under the blanket, as if reaching for something.
‘Bert said you was feeling bad.’
‘Bert?’ She sounded surprised. ‘I need a drink, Em. Get me some water, will yer?’
Em braved the downstairs again. Iris was obviously past caring whether her daughter was burning up with a fever upstairs. When Em asked for a cup, Iris lurched to her feet and slopped over to the side to fetch a chipped white teacup. ‘Tap’s in the yard.’
Molly gulped down the water as if she hadn’t drunk for days, and seemed to revive a bit.
‘Who sleeps in the other bed?’ Em asked.
‘My grandad, and Bert,’ Molly said.
Em took this in. There was one other bedroom where Mr and Mrs Fox must sleep.
‘Where does Tom sleep, then?’ she said. Tom, who was now sixteen, was out at work.
‘With Mom.’ Molly lay down again, shivering now and pulling the blanket over her. ‘Dad stops downstairs all the time.’
‘Oh,’ Em said, her heart sinking even further at the strangeness of the household. ‘Does your mom look after you?’
Molly stared at her. ‘What d’yer mean?’
‘Well, when you’re poorly?’ Cynthia had always been so kind when any of them were ill. She came up with drinks and fussed around them. ‘I think I should have been a nurse,’ she joked sometimes. ‘Seems to be the only thing I’m good at!’
But Molly barely seemed to understand what being looked after could mean.
‘You going to school tomorrow?’ Em asked.
‘Dunno. Depends if she makes me.’
There was a silence. Em thought about the house. She was longing to get away from it, it was so cold up here and cheerless.
‘You ain’t got much furniture, have yer?’
‘No. Anyway, they took the rest away. The piano and that.’
‘Who did?’ Em frowned.
‘Those men – from the Parish.’
Everyone was talking about the cruel Means Test which the government had brought in. Even the most meagre amount of assistance depended on houses being inspected, and anything that could be sold had to be disposed of before help would be given.
‘It was our dad’s piano. Mom said he used to play it lovely before the war did for ’im.’ Molly tried to raise herself up on one elbow but sank down giddily. ‘I don’t half feel bad.’
‘You’ll be better soon, I expect.’ She laid her hand on Molly’s head for a moment, the way Cynthia did when they were poorly in bed.
Molly’s lids were closing and she soon drifted back to sleep. Em crept downstairs and the others barely seemed to notice as she slunk out of the house. She would have liked to take Molly up some more water but she didn’t dare go back and forth through that room too much. Once out in the street she took in a big breath, as if set free.
The same evening, after they’d finished tea and Em was washing up in a bowl of water on the table, there was a tap at the door.
‘Come in!’ Bob shouted from the back room, expecting it to be Dot. The door opened and there was a pause, before a soft, feminine voice said, ‘Is anybody there?’
Bob Brown leapt to his feet as if he’d been shocked. Em saw him throw his waistcoat on and frantically smooth back his hair. ‘Just a minute!’ he called.
Em knew it was Mrs Dawson; she could tell by the voice and the way her father came to life. There was a conflab in the front room.
‘Who’s that?’ Joyce said loudly and Em shushed her so they could hear what was being said.
‘. . . So sorry . . . Got myself into difficulties . . . Wouldn’t dream of disturbing you but I don’t know where to turn . . .’
They heard him assuring her that it was no trouble at all, yes of course he’d see what he could do. Without a word to the children he left the house with Flossie Dawson.
Em got Sid and Joyce to bed and he was still not back. She sat with Princess Lucy on her lap for company, and with a pencil and paper she tried to do some of the sums they were doing at school. Her attention soon drifted, however, and she drew pictures of pretty ladies with fine, curling hair. The drawings never turned out quite how she wanted, the beauty of the ladies seeming to get lost between the lead pencil and the old scrap of paper, but she liked to see them in her mind’s eye and try to capture them in a drawing. Then she tried to draw a picture of her mother but found she couldn’t remember what she looked like. She dug the pencil angrily into the paper and dragged it across, spoiling all the other sketches.
She didn’t hear Bob come back from his errand at Flossie Dawson’s house. She was already in bed, tired out from another day of drudgery.
Twenty-Five
Another week went by and Em did the very best she could, working herself to exhaustion in the house and trying to keep going to school. Every day, her spirits sank lower and Bob was too wrapped up in his own preoccupations to notice. From the night that Mrs Dawson had called round, he was out more and more. He gave no explanation, and when he came home he was not reeling from drink as he had been before. He seemed to expect Em to take over doing everything, running the house and looking after the others. Dot helped out as much as she could. She did not know, then, quite how things were, but she was soon to find out.
On Sunday night the three of them were left alone again. Bob had eaten his tea and gone straight out. Sunday night had always been bath night, ready for the week, and Em decided she must stick to it. Besides, she felt like a nice warm dip in the tub by the fire. She didn’t want to go next door and ask Dot for help again. She would show she could do it!
‘C’mon,’ she ordered Sid. ‘Give us a hand getting the bath in.’
The two of them managed to hoik the tin bath down off its rusty nail in the yard and bring it in beside the range where Em had started pans and kettles of water heating to fill it. She waited until they were nearly boiling,
as she had seen Mom do. She had filled the pans very full and it took all her strength to lift the big kettle down off the hob and tip it into the bath.
‘Now don’t touch that – it’s too hot for you!’ she barked at Joycie, who came and looked into it, squeaking with excitement as the clouds of steam billowed up to fill the chilly room. She and Sid were already undressed and shivering, wrapped in the old blankets from their bed.
It was when she came to tip in the first big saucepan-ful that things went badly wrong. Where it was standing on the heat was too high for her skinny arms to control it properly. Em eased it down, one hand on the handle and the other in a cloth holding the side. Her muscles were shaking with the effort it took to control the pan’s weight, and she tipped it, some of the scalding water going over her hand and splashing her legs. Screaming at Sid to get out of the way, she rushed it to the bath, but only some of the water went in. The rest slopped onto the floor and Sid’s feet.
He shrieked in agony, running to try and get away from the hot water, which followed him across the room. Joyce, who was further away, leapt onto a chair before it could reach her.
Em, her scalded left hand stinging horribly, ran to her brother whose yells of agony filled the room.
‘My feet – oo-o-w, you’ve burned my feet!’ he cried.
Em dragged him into the scullery and tipped a half bucket of cold water, which had been there to cool the bath, over his pink, scalded feet. She ran her smarting hand under the tap, tears of pain and desperation rising in her eyes. Sid was crying pitifully, stepping from one foot to the other, not knowing where to put himself. She wet an old rag and sat him in the back room, wrapping it round his feet. Joyce, stark naked because she had dropped the blanket when she jumped onto the chair, was crying as well, in fear at what had happened.
Em looked round the room, pools of water all over the floor, the bath still steaming, and her injured brother and frightened little sister both sobbing their hearts out, and something broke in her. Something had to be done: she couldn’t stand any more.
Quietly, with a deadly calm, she went into the scullery and refilled the bucket of cold water. A couple of buckets later, the bath was cooled sufficiently.
‘Come on, Joycie,’ she said, taking her sister’s hand. ‘You can have yer bath. It’s all right now – it ain’t too hot for you.’
Joyce followed her like a lamb and climbed in the tub, settling her pink, chubby body into the soothing water, and she soon stopped crying.
‘I don’t want a bath,’ Sid snivelled. He wasn’t putting his feet anywhere near any water after that.
‘I’ll just give yer a little wash outside the bath,’ Em said. She rinsed the cool cloth for his feet again, and with another rag went to wash her brother’s face. She went into the scullery to look for the bar of Lifebuoy that was usually there. Then she remembered: Bob had used the final wafer-thin remnant of it earlier on in the week, the last of it melting away into the water as he cleaned himself up after work. No one had thought to buy any more. Em searched the scullery and found a little knob of green washing soap and took it into Joyce. It was hard and gritty, like a stone.
‘What’re yer washing me with that for?’ Joyce whined. ‘It’s not nice, that.’
‘It’s all there is,’ Em said wearily, trying to work up any sort of lather with the rotten old green soap. It wasn’t much in itself, but the absence of soap made her spirits sink to rock bottom. They’d never run out of soap when Mom was there. Mom, who used to be their mother, here, caring for them. She had to swallow hard to stop the tears coming again.
By the time she had got Joyce ready for bed and had a quick bath herself, Sid was still grizzling, saying his feet hurt, and when she peeled back the damp rag, his pink skin had come up in blisters. Em’s stomach clenched at the sight of it.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said tearfully. If only Dad would come home – where was he? She felt so hopeless and foolish that she’d made such a mess of everything. ‘I’ll have to go and ask Mrs Wiggins.’
After putting her clothes back on, she ran next door to Dot’s house.
‘What’s up, bab? Anything wrong? I thought I heard a bit of noise earlier, only I was up with Nance. She ain’t feeling too well again. And Terry was making enough racket himself.’
In the state she was in, Em did not notice Dot’s own tear-stained eyes. Dot bore her burdens with great bravery but sometimes her own loneliness overtook her, and she was missing Cynthia no end.
‘It’s Sid.’ Em had a job not crying again herself. ‘I dropped some water on his feet and they’re all blisters . . .’
‘You scalded him? Oh, my word . . .’ Dot was round to the house immediately.
Squatting down, she took one look at Sid’s feet and said, ‘You poor little feller . . . Oh, Em, why didn’t you ask me to help, bab? Why’s yer dad not here?’
Em shrugged helplessly, nursing her own smarting hand.
‘What’s up? Have you burnt your hand an’ all?’
‘No – it’s all right,’ Em said bravely. Dot turned her attention back to Sid.
‘That’s a nasty burn, that is. You got an egg?’
Em shook her head. There wasn’t much in the larder at all.
‘How about a bit of flour? Here – I’ll find it.’ Dot sprinkled some flour over Sid’s feet and the light tickling of it seemed to soothe him momentarily. Dot sat down and took the little boy on her lap and he leaned into her gratefully. His face screwed up with pain every few moments, but he seemed soothed as much by Dot’s kindly, maternal presence in the house as by anything she was putting on his feet.
‘That’s going to be sore for a bit, bab,’ she said. ‘But it will get better. Now – shall I put you into bed?’
‘Want to stay here,’ Sid said, snuggling up to her.
Dot laughed, but her eyes filled again, full of pity and sadness. She stroked Sid’s dark head.
‘We all miss your mother, don’t we? Poor little mites. But I can’t sit here all evening, Sid. Come on, up the wooden hill – and you, Joycie. You wait here a tick, Em.’
She carried Sid and Joyce followed, both happy to be put to bed by a mom even if it wasn’t their own. When Dot came back down, her face was sober, though kindly. She sat down for a moment, looking solemnly at Em.
‘So – where’s yer father?’
Em shrugged, shaking her head.
‘Down the boozer?’
‘I dunno. Don’t think so.’
‘Well, where? Is he out a lot of an evening?’
Em nodded. She felt a bit bad, as though she was sneaking on him, but it was the truth.
‘I see,’ Dot said grimly. She stood up. ‘Well, this’s got to stop. I can’t do anything tonight, bab. You’d best go up to bed. Don’t worry about Sid. You’re doing your best, love. He’ll be all right.’
Em went up and got in beside Joyce. Her hand was stinging, but it was not scalded as badly as Sid’s feet. He, for once, was in his own bed and both of them were already almost asleep, though Sid was still snuffling. Em lay looking up into the darkness. She hadn’t wanted to say anything tonight. But she knew what she had to do in the morning.
Twenty-Six
The fog had a yellowish tinge the next morning, the sun struggling to break through when Em knocked at Dot’s front door.
‘Who is it? Come in!’
The door was open a crack anyway and Em pushed her way in and went through the almost empty front room, to find Dot sitting at the table. It was still strewn with breakfast things, bowls with a layer of gluey porridge residue, the teapot and crocks. There was no sign of Joyce and Nancy: they must have been out the back. Dot looked sad, Em thought.
‘What is it, bab?’ She spoke kindly but Em could hear the strain in her voice.
Em had meant to come straight out with it, to ask politely and with no fuss, but to her dismay her own emotion welled up and the tears came. She had woken with a sore throat and thumping head and her tears came more easil
y than usual. ‘I want to see my mom.’ She swallowed, looking up at Dot with welling eyes. ‘Please, Mrs Wiggins, will yer take me, on the bus?’
Dot looked taken aback, and to Em’s surprise she began to laugh.
‘What – you mean me go with yer to Kings Heath – this morning?’
Em shrunk inside with disappointment. She had pinned all her hopes on being able to go and see her mom! If she could just set eyes on her she knew she’d feel stronger. But of course Dot wouldn’t just drop everything and go to Kings Heath on a busy wash day! How could she have been so stupid?
Dot was still laughing and shaking her head. ‘I’ve heard it all now. Well, bab – all right, why not? The cowing washing can wait, that it can. The whole bloody house can wait so far as I’m concerned. I miss your mother rotten, I do. I’ve not wanted to poke my nose in where it’s not wanted, but it’s high time I went to see how she is.’
‘You mean you will?’ Em gasped. ‘I can pay my fare . . . I’ll fetch it.’
Before Dot could argue she ran back next door, to the old jug where Cynthia had put her odd bits of change, and Em had continued to do the same when she remembered. There were a few odd coppers in there. Em twisted them into the corner of an old paper bag and put her coat on.
When she went back to Dot’s, she met her coming back across the street from taking Joyce and Nancy to a Mrs Hill, who had two small children herself. Em was relieved to see that Dot was looking more cheerful.
‘I’ll just stoke the fire and then we’ll be off,’ she said. Em showed her the twist of money and Dot smiled. ‘We’ll be all right, then.’
They took the trolleybus into Birmingham and as they rode along, the sun started to shine.
‘Well, that’s a good omen,’ Dot said. Em found it strange sitting beside her, the coarse weave of her dark green coat brushing against her arm, and looking up to see Dot’s thin face and greying hair instead of Mom’s thick brown curls. Dot caught her looking and turned and winked at her. ‘You all right, bab? You look a bit flushed.’
