He was tempted – but only momentarily. ‘No, no,’ he said, smoothing his bottle-brush moustache neatly back into obedience. ‘Duty to the customer, you know.’
So they all had to stick it out until the empty end. And the last ten minutes took twenty-four hours. But eventually the shelves were tidy, the floor swept, the door shut, locked and given a last little shove to make sure, and she was free to dart across the road and into her lover’s arms, back where she belonged.
‘Come on,’ she said, dancing with impatience. ‘Where we got to go to?’
‘Registry Office,’ he told her, as the wind pushed them in the right direction. ‘I’ve put in for my leave. Seven days with an extra forty-eight tacked on. Piece a’ cake. I told you didn’t I?’
It impressed them both that registering their intention to marry was such a simple business and took so little time – fifteen minutes from start to finish. And even though they were warned that they required their parents’ written consent before the date could be fixed and notice posted, neither of them could foresee any difficulty with that and Steve promised that they’d be back on Friday. They emerged into the bright air of that April evening feeling that the deed was as good as done.
‘I’ll go straight round to Ma soon as you’ve caught your bus,’ Barbara promised. Which, twenty kissing minutes later, she did.
Her mother was standing by the fire, frying sausages for the boys’ tea. The room was in its usual chaotic state but there was no sign of her father and both her little brothers were out in the yard, playing marbles. It was an ideal time. ‘’Lo Ma,’ she said and unbuttoned her coat against the heat of the fire before she sat at the table.
Maudie paused to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Her bare forearms were mottled from being too close to the fire. ‘’Lo Bar’bra,’ she said mildly. ‘What’s brought you?’
‘Got a form for you to sign,’ Barbara said happily and handed it across.
Maudie took it vaguely and in her left hand while she continued to prod the sausages with her long toasting-fork. The smell of frying meat rose succulently into the usual mixture of smells that clogged the room: salt-encrusted clothes, dust, sweat, salty nets, dead fish. ‘Thass always forms,’ she complained, her voice still mild. ‘I hates forms. What they want this time?’
‘Thass for me to get married,’ Barbara explained, happiness welling into her chest at the mere sound of the words. ‘You don’t have to fill it in or nothin’, you just have to sign – to give consent.’
Maudie narrowed her eyes, partly against the heat of the fire and partly against her own incomprehension. ‘What you on about gal? You hain’t getting married.’
‘Yes I am,’ Barbara said, her face glowing. ‘We’ve just fixed it.’
‘Oh come on, gal,’ Maudie said. ‘Don’t talk squit. You’re too young. Both of you. I thought your Vic had more sense than that. What’s got into his fool head?’
It was a horrid moment. Like running into a brick wall. She’d been so happy she’d forgotten all about Victor Castlemain. I’ve done this wrong, she thought, her heart sinking. I should have told her about Steve first. And she rushed to put things right. ‘It hain’t Vic, Ma.’
Her mother’s face changed at once, suspicion corrugating her forehead, annoyance reducing her lips to a pursed crescent. ‘What d’you mean, it hain’t Vic?’
Keep going! Tell her quickly! ‘He’s a soldier. One of the Desert Rats. The ones what are going to the Second Front. His name’s Steve Wilkins. He’s the nicest man I ever met. An’ so handsome you’d never believe.’
Maudie wasn’t impressed. ‘Do Becky know all this?’ she asked. ‘She met him, hev she?’
‘No,’ Barbara said. ‘’Course not. I wanted to tell you first. I mean, you’re my ma.’
But it was too late to josh her mother back to good humour. Maudie’s suspicion had already hardened into denial. She was remembering Vic Castlemain’s warning, her fury fed by the twin facts that he’d known more than she did and that she’d been fool enough to ignore him. He got no right to know so much, she thought. An’ she’s got no right to get engaged. Not without tellin’ her family.
She tossed the form onto the table, snorted and returned to her cooking. ‘You’ve gone off your head, gal,’ she said, spearing a sausage as though it had done her some injury. ‘Blust if you hain’t. Married at your age! I never heard the like. Git you off ’ome to your Aunty Becky an’ don’t talk squit.’
This is the scholarship all over again, Barbara thought. Only this time I’m going to make her agree. She hunched her shoulders and set her jaw against the struggle to come. ‘That ain’t squit,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Thass the truth. We’re gonna get married. He’s asked me. I’ve said yes.’
Maudie lifted the frying pan from the coals, straightened her back and looked her daughter in the eye. ‘More fool you,’ she said. ‘Well now you’ll have to say no. You hain’t marryin’ him. Nor no one else neither. You’re too young.’
‘I’m seventeen,’ Barbara said hotly. ‘I been at work three years.’
‘Thass what I mean. You’re too young. You don’t know what you’re lettin’ yerself in for. Well I do gal. An’ let me tell you, thass a mug’s game, gettin’ married. Bloody slave labour thass all that is, believe you me. Non-stop work, day in day out, kids forever under your feet, scrimpin’ and savin’ an’ makin’ ends meet all the time, an’ your ol’ man comin’ home with a thick head, nine times outta ten, hollerin’ an’ roarin’. Bloody slave labour. You don’t know the half of it. You wanna keep out of orl that sort a’ squit long as you can.’
Barbara looked round at the squalor of the room. The breakfast things were still congealing on the stained oilcloth, the dresser was heaped with rubbish, newspapers, knitting, empty packets of fags, bits of rope, chipped cups full of buttons and bent cigarette cards, there were crumbs and cigarette ends and broken toys all over the floor and, in the usual corner, the usual heap of crumpled boots and darned socks, stiff with dried sweat and sea water. ‘That’ll be different for us,’ she said.
‘Don’t you believe it, gal,’ her mother said, taking a fork to a saucepan full of boiled potatoes and mashing them vigorously. ‘Thass like it for everyone. Stay you single till you marry our Victor, thass my advice.’
‘I don’t want to stay single,’ Barbara said, trying to keep her patience. The determination in her mother’s stocky figure was rousing a dreadful and familiar anger. Why does she have to oppose everything all the time? This is the most decisive moment of my life. Why can’t she try and understand for once? ‘An’ I don’t want to marry Victor. I want to marry Steve.’
‘Well you can’t. ’Cos I hain’t signin’.’
‘Ma! Please! You don’t know what this means to me!’
Such a direct appeal made Maudie relent a little. But only a little. ‘Wait a coupla years,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll see.’
‘We hain’t got a coupla years,’ Barbara told her. Irritation was altering the tone of her voice but she couldn’t help it. ‘He’s going to France. Don’t you understand? He’s goin’ to France an’ he might not come back. He might be one of the ones what get killed. We onny got a couple a’ weeks. We got to get married now.’
‘He ain’t got you into trouble, hev he?’ Maudie said, looking more suspicious than ever.
‘No he hev not,’ Barbara said hotly. That was too close for comfort and embarrassed her terribly. He couldn’t have, could he? Not the first time. Joan said you were safe the first time …
‘Well thass orl right then.’
‘No. Thass not “orl right”. We want to get married. How many more times I got to tell you? He’s goin’ to France an’ we want to get married before he goes. He’s asked me. I’ve said yes. All you got to do is sign. It won’t cost you a penny. We’ll pay for it.’
‘Well I haint signin’. An’ there’s an end on it. An’ don’t think your father will neither. Thass out the question.’
‘Look,’ Barbar
a said. ‘We shall get married in the end. Once I’m twenty-one you can’t stop me. So why not now?’
‘’Cos you’d regret it.’
‘I wouldn’t. I love him.’
That didn’t impress Maudie at all. She sloshed milk into the mashed potatoes. ‘You’ll get over it,’ she said.
Her thoughtless complacency made Barbara rage. ‘How can you say such a thing? I shall love him for ever, till my dyin’ day. Don’t you understand?’
‘Better than you do gal. As you’ll find out.’
There’s no getting through to her, Barbara thought. She was shaking with fury and frustration but she hung on to her control for a last despairing attack.
‘All right then,’ she said, enunciating the words so savagely that she could feel her tongue hard against the back of her teeth. ‘I’ll leave home and go to London an’ get a job there an’ you won’t never see me again. You can’t stop me doin’ that.’
The threat caught Maudie by the throat. She wouldn’t, would she? Not all that way with a war goin’ on. ‘Don’t talk so stoopid,’ she said. ‘Go to London! They’re bombin’ people in London. Or don’t you read the papers? They been bombin’ ’em since January.’
Barbara was too wild to hear what she was saying. ‘I don’t care!’
‘Don’t care was made to care,’ her mother warned, beating the potatoes, to ease her anger. ‘Don’t care was hung. Don’t care was put in a pot an’ boiled till he was done. Be a different story when they’re bombin’ you, gal.’
But her daughter had snatched the form from the table and was out of the house, striding through the yard, pushing her little brothers aside, hot tears stinging her eyes.
Her youngest brother, Jimmy, who was ten and didn’t take kindly to being flung to the ground, picked himself up and ran into the house to see what was going on. ‘Whass up Ma?’
Maudie was dishing up, and apart from a rather red face, she seemed to be her placid self. If she’d learnt nothing else in the back-breaking years of her marriage, she’d learnt not to take anything too seriously. Most quarrels blew over, sooner or later. Best thing was to let them roll off, water off a duck’s back like. Barbara had upset her, silly little mawther, but it was over an’ done with now. Just so long as she don’t go marryin’ some stupid soldier.
‘Your sister’s hollerin’, thass all,’ she said, pushing the dirty breakfast things to one side to make room for the dinner plates. ‘Hassen you up an’ git our Wilfred. I got your tea orl ready for you. You can have it soon as Norman gets back.’
Norman was on his way home at that moment, striding through the yards, whistling in his tuneless way, with his cap on the back of his head and three cheerful pints under his belt. He was very surprised to see his sister running towards him with tears streaming down her face, especially as she didn’t seem to see him. He stood in her path and opened his arms wide to catch her and hold her. ‘What’s up, kid?’
She fell against his chest, crying into the rough wool of his gansey. ‘Oh Norman! She won’t let me get married. Thass the scholarship all over again …’
‘Easy on!’ he said, patting her shoulders. ‘Git your breath. You don’t want world an’ his wife to hear you.’ And he led her away from the gawping eyes in the yards, out onto the quayside where half a dozen dinghies lay moored and empty, waiting for the fishing fleet to return, and there were only gulls to hear them. ‘Now then, tell me orl about it.’
If there was one thing he knew about this volatile sister of his, it was that she wasn’t the sort to fall in love lightly, but it took a long time to make sense of her story because she was in such a temper and crying so wildly that everything she said was hot and muddled and half finished.
‘Thass the scholarship all over again,’ she wept. ‘I knew it the minute she started. She won’t let me live my own life. She never has an’ she never will an’ I love him so much. I can’t tell you how much. He’s the nicest man I ever met.’
‘Yes,’ he remembered. ‘He looked a nice feller.’
‘He is. He is.’
‘Thass all a bit quick though, you got to admit.’
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘Thass it. We hain’t got any time at all. He’ll be gone to France in a week or two. Oh Norman, what am I gonna do?’
He took off his cap, gave his shock of hair a thorough scratching, and put it back on again. It was quiet out there on the quayside, with the tide slapping the wall and the gulls wheeling and mewing above their heads. ‘You still got the form, hev you?’
She handed it to him, flicking the tears from her eyes, and waited while he read it in his methodical way. ‘Thass hopeless, ain’t it? If she won’t sign, I can’t marry him. I shall run away. I told her so.’
‘Hang about,’ he said, still ploughing through the text.
So she hung about.
‘Well now,’ he said when he’d finally made sense of it. ‘I’ll tell you what. I think there’s more than one way to kill a cat. Thass what I think. Fact, I can see another right here on this ol’ piece a paper.’ He spread the form on his navy-blue knees and prodded it with a blunt forefinger. ‘Parent or guardian so that say,’ he pointed out. ‘See for yourself. Parent or guardian. Well then, if Ma can’t bring herself to do it, Aunt Becky can. You been livin’ in her house long enough. Seven years come September. If that don’t make her a sort of guardian, I don’t know what do. To say nothin’ of her bein’ Pa’s second cousin once removed.’
Surprise dried Barbara’s tears. Surprise and hope. ‘Yes, she could, couldn’t she? D’you think she would?’
‘No harm tryin’. Might not be legal though.’
‘I don’t care. Just as long as I can get married. It’s only a piece of paper.’ She’d recovered enough to grin at him. ‘’Sides, you have to cut corners. There’s a war on.’
‘I don’t s’pose you could get married here neither,’ he warned. ‘Case they was to make a scene.’
That wasn’t a problem. ‘We can marry in London. He’s goin’ there Wednesday to tell his parents. He can fix it for us. I’ll write an’ tell him.’
‘Better get ol’ Becky to sign up first,’ he laughed at her. Wasn’t this typical of this sister of his? Floods of tears one minute, all smiles the next.
‘D’you think she will?’ she asked as they set off, arm in arm, for Rag’s Yard. ‘Oh she will, won’t she?’
‘Leave her to me,’ he advised, ‘an’ I’ll see what I can do.’
Aunt Becky was sitting by the fire, with a sheet of newspaper on her lap, carefully peeling potatoes for their evening meal and gathering the peelings into the paper ready for the pig-bin. But she put down her knife and got up at once when Norman walked through the door.
‘’Lo Norman,’ she said. ‘Thass a nice surprise. What’s brought you round?’
He came straight to the point. ‘I got a favour to ask you.’
She gave him one of her long shrewd looks, her face fox-sharp. ‘Oh yes?’
So he told her, speaking slowly and reasonably, and she listened and nodded. And when he’d finished and Barbara had agreed that everything he said was true, she stood by the table for a long time and pondered.
‘Well I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I thought you was going to marry Victor.’
‘That was boy an’ gal stuff,’ Barbara told her.
‘You told him, hev you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Poor boy. He’ll be ever so upset.’
‘He’ll git over it!’ Norman said, answering before Barbara could say something she’d regret. ‘Worse things happen at sea. So what about this ol’ form?’
Becky frowned. ‘Maudie won’t like it.’
‘She’ll come round to it,’ he said, with perfect confidence. ‘She ain’t axactly ’pposed to it. She’d uv come round to it gradual. You know that, now don’t you? In her own time sort uv thing. You know how she is. Onny they ain’t got the time to wait for her to do it. Thass the long an’ the short uv it.’
/> ‘When’s he going?’ Becky asked.
‘Matter uv weeks,’ he told her. ‘No more. We’re all goin’, one way or the other with that ol’ Second Front a-comin’. I shall be off mesself tomorrow.’
‘Again?’ she mourned. ‘I thought you was home for weeks.’
‘Weeks is up,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘So there you are. You gonna send a poor sailor off to sea happy an’ content or hain’t you? Orl you got to do is sign this ol’ form. What d’you think?’
She sighed, gave him another one of her looks, frowned, sighed again. But she picked up the form. ‘I s’pose so,’ she said. ‘Seein’ thass for you. I wouldn’t uv done it for no one else mind. I hain’t at all sure thass right.’
He threw his arms round her and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. ‘’Course thass right, you dear ol’ thing. Hain’t I jest told you?’
As a pen was found and the form was signed and shaken dry, the clock on the mantelpiece tinged half past six. Barbara looked up at it, surprised that so much had happened in such a short time. ‘Thanks Aunt Becky!’ she said. ‘You’re a brick.’
‘I’m a fool to mesself,’ Becky said. ‘I onny hope I don’t live to regret it.’
‘I’d better be off,’ Norman said. ‘Or the ol’ lady’ll be after me for bein’ late.’
‘I’ll walk you out the yard,’ Barbara said. Which she did so that she could hang on to his arm and kiss him goodbye and tell him he was the best brother in the world.
‘Write that ol’ letter,’ he reminded her.
‘Don’t you worry,’ she said, earnestly. ‘That’ll be the first thing I do.’
The letter was dropped into Steve’s hand just before he went on duty the next morning. He answered it there and then, telling her not to worry and to leave everything to him. Then he left the hut, still digesting the news. He couldn’t believe any mother could be so cruel as to refuse consent, let alone Barbara’s. Just as well her aunt obliged. And just as well his old darlings were sensible.
His sensible mother was hard at work in the butcher’s shop when he came breezing in on Wednesday morning. He thought she looked rather tired, but she cheered up at once when she saw him and giggled and protested when he lifted her off her feet to kiss her. Which delighted her customers. ‘This your boy then, Mrs Wilkins?’
Avalanche of Daisies Page 7
