On Mother Brown's Doorstep

by Mary Jane Staples

  Just the hint of a smile showed on her face.

  ‘Thanks ever so much, honest,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Will, and it happened then. It came suddenly, the tightness in his chest, the sensation of constriction and the shortness of breath. He’d be coughing and wheezing in a few moments, an embarrassment to everyone. ‘Got to go now. Good luck, Annie, you too, Nellie and Charlie.’

  They all stared at him as he walked straight out.

  ‘Crikey, ’e’s gone,’ said Nellie.

  ‘Nellie, run down and make sure he knows I’m grateful really,’ said Annie, ‘tell ’im thank you again.’

  Nellie dashed out, ran down the stairs and caught Will at the front door. He’d picked up his peaked cap from the kitchen.

  ‘Annie said she’s ever so grateful really, an’ wants to thank you ever so much,’ said Nellie.

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Will, wheezing now.

  ‘Oh, ’ave yer got a cold?’ asked Nellie.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Will huskily, and left, pulling the door to behind him. Nellie went back upstairs.

  ‘’E’s got a sort of cold,’ she said.

  ‘’E didn’t look as if ’e had,’ said Charlie. ‘Blimey, what an ’eroic bloke, gettin’ you in a pushcart, Annie.’

  ‘If you mention that once more, Charlie, your life won’t be worth livin’, d’you hear?’ said Annie.

  ‘Yes, an’ what did you do to Pam Nicholls?’ asked Nellie.

  ‘Well, I did ’ave a go at tryin’ to push ’er foot into ’er mouth—’

  ‘You what?’ yelled Annie.

  ‘But ’er mum come in then an’ give me a thick ear,’ said Charlie, rubbing his left one. ‘That Pam, she told ’er mum to give me another one. Just wait till I get ’er alone, I’ll push both ’er feet into ’er mouth.’

  ‘Nellie, get the chopper and hit your brother with it,’ said Annie.

  ‘Yes, in a minute, Annie,’ said Nellie. ‘I wonder if Will’s comin’ back sometime?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Annie. ‘What would ’e want to come back for?’

  ‘Well, ’e might want to see if your knee’s all right,’ said Nellie.

  ‘More like ’e’d want to give Annie another ride in a pushcart,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Oh, you wait, you ’eathen,’ breathed Annie, ‘as soon as me knee’s better I’m goin’ to hit you with the chopper meself, and don’t think I won’t. Didn’t I tell you not to mention pushcarts again?’

  ‘I only said what Will might do if ’e comes round again,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know why you and Nellie call him Will,’ said Annie.

  ‘It’s ’is name,’ said Nellie.

  ‘You shouldn’t be familiar when you’ve only just met ’im,’ said Annie. ‘Look, both of you go down and make sure the supper’s cookin’ properly. Don’t let anything burn, and mind how you handle the saucepans, Nellie.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nellie, and down she went with Charlie. Nellie descended quietly. Charlie’s descent created a minor earthquake. Annie lay looking at the ceiling. She thought about being wheeled home in that pushcart. Her at her age, and him as good as laughing all over his face.

  I might as well die and not have any supper.

  No, I won’t, I’ll have some supper and die later.

  * * *

  Outside, Will leaned against the railings. He tried to let his body relax, he tried to keep still, but he wheezed like an old man with bronchitis, and a periodical cough racked his chest. He supposed he’d brought it on himself by carrying Annie upstairs. But just doing that had brought on the attack? He could see what was going to happen if his condition didn’t improve. He’d be invalided out of the Army at the ripe old age of twenty.

  The attack began to ease a little after ten minutes. He watched the street kids. He heard the faint sounds of Walworth traffic. Trams, omnibuses, horse-drawn vehicles. Not like Indian traffic. Bullocks provided horse-power out there. But not cows. Cows were sacred. If one sat down in a crowded city street, it could cause prolonged congestion. Well, if it wouldn’t move, no-one tried to make it, so it stayed there.

  As to the heat, it sapped a bloke’s energy unless you ate lots of curry. He couldn’t count the number of times he and other East Surrey men had longed for the April showers of home, and for things like the smell of eggs and bacon, the taste of fish and chips, the savoury flavour of hot faggots and pease pudding, and the creaminess of a rice pudding with a golden-brown skin just out of the oven.

  Come to that, even street kids could be missed. Look at these, he thought, ruddy monkeys, the lot of them. Walworth kids never changed. This bunch were no different from those of his own generation. All generations scrapped, argued, broke windows, kicked tin cans and got their ears clipped by their dads. But they all grew up cheerfully and optimistically, with exceptions. That counted, cheerfulness and optimism.

  It took over fifteen minutes before his breathing became normal, and a few more minutes before he decided to go on his way.

  * * *

  ‘What’s that about our Annie?’ asked Mr Harold Ford, a railway ganger of five feet ten and rugged all over. Just home from his work, his jacket was off. He always took it off the moment he entered the kitchen. His waistcoat was an old leather one, his shirt of thick striped flannel, and his trousers were of hard-wearing corduroy. There was a scarf around his neck and a belt around his trousers. He had a little round bald patch to his black hair that had inspired Cassie into asking him if he was going to be a monk later on. He said he liked the thought but didn’t think he’d ever be holy enough.

  ‘Yes, our Annie’s upstairs, Dad,’ said Nellie, and told him how her sister had bumped her knee and been brought home by a nice soldier. In a pushcart.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the Gaffer. Everyone called him that on account of his ruggedness. It made him look like a man who was in charge. ‘Did you say a pushcart, Nellie?’

  ‘Well, the soldier said it was the best way to bring ’er.’

  ‘Oh, me old Adam, a pushcart?’ said the Gaffer, trying to hide a grin. ‘Where’d the soldier come from?’

  ‘’E didn’t say,’ said Nellie, ’except ’e did tell me ’is fam’ly live in Caulfield Place and ’e’s ’ome on leave.’

  ‘I think ’e comes from Windsor Castle,’ said Cassie, ‘I think ’e guards the King and Queen there.’

  ‘Who said?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Well, it’s only what I think,’ said Cassie, ‘and only the way’e looks.’

  ‘Now ’ow can anyone look like Windsor Castle?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘You kids work it out,’ said the Gaffer, whose ruggedness actually hid a heart made of marshmallow, ‘while I go up an’see Annie.’

  Up he went. He found Annie’s knee was just a bit stiff and bruised. Be all right in a day or so, he said. Annie wasn’t too concerned with that, apart from thinking she might have to hop to work tomorrow. She still had indignity on her mind. So she regaled her dad with an account of the purgatory she’d suffered being wheeled home in a boy’s pushcart with thousands of people all having a look at her.

  ‘Thousands?’ said the Gaffer.

  ‘Yes, and all grinnin’,’ said Annie, ‘and me with me knees nearly up to me chin.’

  ‘Gawd save the starvin’ poor,’ said the Gaffer in a strangled voice, and suddenly wasn’t there any more.

  ‘Dad, where’ve you gone?’ yelled Annie. She heard him out on the landing. He sounded as if he was choking to death. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it, you’re out there laughin’! Call yourself me dad? You ought to be ashamed, laughin’ like that, and don’t think I can’t ’ear you, because I can. What about the indignity I suffered, me a young lady near to eighteen.’

  The Gaffer reappeared, his face red. He was coughing now. From her bed, Annie eyed him in outrage. He cleared his throat, rubbed his mouth, and made an attempt to come to terms with her feelings.

  ‘Did yer say with yer knees up to yer chin,
Annie?’ he asked.

  ‘You heard,’ said Annie. ‘Me, your eldest daughter.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t ’aving me best gel upset like that,’ he said. ‘I’ll learn the bloke, Annie, soldier or not. I’ll find out where ’e lives in Caulfield Place. It ain’t far, I’ll get ’im, and when I do I’ll break ’is legs.’

  ‘You’ll what?’ gasped Annie, sitting up.

  ‘Break ’is legs, both of ’em.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Annie, I’ll give ’im what ’e’s asked for, dumpin’ you in a pushcart with yer knees up to yer chin, I’ll make ’im wish ’e’d never been born.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ gasped Annie, ‘I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘All right, Annie, just one leg.’

  ‘Dad, you can’t! It ain’t Christian.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Gaffer.

  ‘Nor gentlemanly,’ said Annie.

  ‘Well, I’ll grant yer that, Annie, breakin’ legs ain’t too gentlemanly.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Annie.

  ‘Besides what?’ asked her dad.

  ‘Ain’t it funny really, when you think about it?’

  Charlie, Nellie and Cassie came running up the stairs to see what all the noise was about. Their dad was roaring with laughter, and Annie was giggling like a girl who’d forgotten she was a young lady of dignity.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE EVENING HAD become cold and frosty, but Mrs Brown’s kitchen was warm and cosy, the range fire glowing, and a supper of hot shepherd’s pie was on the table, the potato crust patterned with crisp brown ridges. The house was old, going well back into the Victorian era, but its foundations and walls were solid and enduring. All members of the Brown family were present, and like the Adams family who had preceded them as tenants, they were never short of something to say. They were at it now, in response to what Will had said about a young lady who’d hurt her knee.

  ‘Come again, Will?’ said Mr Brown, a wiry old survivor of the trenches.

  ‘Yes, say it again, Will,’ said Susie.

  ‘Yes, you’d best, love,’ advised Mrs Brown, ‘it sounded a bit funny.’

  ‘It wasn’t to her,’ said Will. ‘I decided I’d better not carry her, me in my condition, so I sat her in the pushcart and wheeled her home.’

  ‘Crikey, you didn’t, Will, did yer?’ said Sally.

  ‘How old was she?’ asked Susie.

  ‘She let me know several times she was seventeen and that I was mucking up her dignity,’ said Will, ‘but I had to get her home somehow.’

  Susie laughed, and her engagement ring, a diamond solitaire, winked in the gaslight.

  ‘Some palaver,’ grinned Mr Brown.

  ‘Wish I’d seen it,’ said Freddy, ‘only I went to Ernie Flint’s to see if I could ’ave a loan of ’is bike, not ’aving one of me own.’

  Nobody took any notice of that. Will’s way of getting a seventeen-year-old girl home was grabbing all the attention.

  ‘I don’t know I’d like bein’ wheeled ’ome in a pushcart, and I’m only fourteen,’ said Sally.

  ‘Oh, but it must’ve been a nice ride for her with her knee hurtin’,’ said Mrs Brown proudly. She found it easy to be proud of almost anything her sons and daughters did, short of knocking a policeman’s helmet off. She was against anything showing disrespect for the law.

  ‘But the young lady didn’t think it was nice, Will?’ said Susie, twenty-one, and generally regarded as a corker, even by small boys still vague about why girls were different. And the vicar wouldn’t tell them, except to say the ways of the Lord were wondrous.

  ‘Yes, come on, what did she say?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Quite a lot,’ said Will. Susie, sitting next to him, gave him a look. If Sally and Freddy were close, so were Susie and Will. She saw his little grin and how brown he was. The Army had done something for Will, made a man of him at twenty, and a good-looking one, with an air of self-confidence. An NCO’s air of self-confidence. Susie could easily imagine a girl of seventeen dying of embarrassment at having him wheel her home in a boy’s pushcart.

  ‘What’s a lot?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, most of it meant how much better off she’d have been if she’d never met me,’ said Will.

  ‘What a funny girl,’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘’Ere, listen, I met a funny one meself when I was on me way to Ernie Flint’s,’ said Freddy. ‘Mind, I could’ve cycled there if I’d ’ad me own bike—’

  ‘What’s the young lady’s name, Will?’ asked Mr Brown.

  ‘Talk to yerself,’ muttered Freddy.

  ‘Eat your supper up, love,’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘Come on, Will, what’s ’er name?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Annie Ford,’ said Will.

  ‘’Ere, listen, I met a girl name of Ford,’ said Freddy, ‘it was the funny one, it was when I was on me way to—’

  ‘Where’s she live?’ asked Sally.

  ‘I dunno where she lives,’ said Freddy, ‘but I betcher she’s got ’er own bike. If I ’ad me own—’

  ‘I’m talkin’ to Will, you blessed boy,’ said Sally.

  ‘Yes, where’s the young lady live, Will?’ asked Mrs Brown, beginning to think there might have been love at first sight if the young lady happened to have been pretty.

  ‘Blackwood Street,’ said Will. ‘She’s got a dad, two sisters and a hooligan brother.’

  ‘So ’ave I,’ said Sally, ‘he’s sittin’ next to me. Is the young lady’s brother purgat’ry to ’er?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Will. ‘I was simply told about him by her sister Nellie. Anyway, they’ve all got each other but no mum. She died some years ago.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘I don’t know any Fords at our school,’ said Sally.

  ‘Sammy knows a Mr Ben Ford, a big fat man,’ said Susie, and smiled reminiscently, knowing that Sammy’s elder brother Boots had twice sorted out Fatty’s troublesome bully boys.

  Freddy, noting Susie’s smile, thought this was a good time to try again.

  ‘’Ere, Susie, I like Sammy,’ he said, ‘I don’t wonder you’re romantic about ’im, seein’ ’e’s goin’ to marry yer. ’As he got a bike? I ain’t got one meself—’

  ‘I wonder if Annie Ford and her fam’ly could be relations of Mr Ben Ford?’ mused Susie. ‘I hope not. Well, you’ll have to take her some flowers, Will.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Will, and eyed Susie in suspicion. She smiled sweetly. Stone my brainbox, he thought, the way the female mind works. They were all the same, sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins and anyone else with a bosom. ‘Watch what you’re savin’, sis.’

  Sally caught Susie’s eye. Sally winked. Susie smiled again.

  ‘But you should, Will,’ she said, ‘shouldn’t he, Dad?’

  ‘What?’ Mr Brown exercised a cautious note on behalf of his eldest son. He knew about female minds himself. Well, you had to know a bit when you were married or you could wake up one morning and find your Sunday watch and chain had been pawned behind your back.

  ‘Dad, just think,’ said Susie, ‘that poor young lady of seventeen bein’ pushed home by Will in that home-made cart. Think of her feelings. I’d have died ten times over myself. Will’s got to make it up to her.’

  ‘Yes, course you ’ave, Will,’ said Sally.

  ‘Listen,’ said Will, ‘if I show up on her doorstep again, she’ll chuck a brick at me. My face can’t afford to stop a brick, it’s the only one I’ve got.’

  ‘Mrs Parks down in Charleston Street chucked a brick at Mr Parks once,’ said Sally. ‘It knocked all ’is teeth out, and ’e can only eat porridge now, and rice puddin’.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone ’ere could buy me a bike, could they?’ suggested Freddy.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’,’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘Bless yer, mum,’ said Freddy, ‘I—’

  ‘Not you, love,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘I was meanin’ our Will. I think it might be n
ice if he did take the young lady some flowers now she’s an invalid and don’t have no mum. I expect she’d like some flowers.’

  ‘Talk to yerself,’ muttered Freddy again, ‘that’s it, talk to yerself.’

  ‘What’s up with Freddy?’ asked Mrs Brown. ‘’E keeps talkin’ to ’is supper.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ said Freddy, ‘I ain’t ’ardly ’ere.’

  ‘Daffodils are nice,’ said Susie, ‘they’re in the market now.’

  ‘Yes, daffs ’ave just come out,’ said Sally.

  ‘I’ve got a special likin’ for daffs,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘they were the first flowers your dad give me. Mind, he wasn’t your dad then, of course, we’d only just met. Flowers always come first, Sally.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Sally.

  ‘Us,’ said Susie.

  ‘Oh, a weddin’ first, love,’ said Mrs Brown placidly. ‘Flowers, then an engagement, then a weddin’, and then blessings.’

  ‘What, us? We’re blessings?’ said Sally. ‘Crikey, d’you mean Freddy as well? I don’t call ’im a blessin’.’

  ‘I ain’t been blessed with no bike, I know that,’ muttered Freddy.

  ‘Daffodils, they’ll do, Will,’ said Susie.

  ‘I’m not listening,’ said Will, accepting seconds of shepherd’s pie from his mum.

  ‘I’ll get them for yer, Will,’ said Sally, ‘on me way ’ome from school tomorrow. They’re only sixpence a dozen down the market.’

  ‘I’ve gone all deaf,’ said Will.

  ‘Sixpence and a penny for goin’,’ said Sally, ‘I don’t mind doin’ a nice errand like that.’

  ‘If I ’ad a penny for ev’ry errand I’ve done,’ said Freddy, ‘I bet I’d be able to buy me own bike.’

  ‘Why am I bein’ pushed?’ asked Will.

  ‘Because it’s the nice thing to do, lovey,’ said Susie, ‘and you don’t have to stay long enough for her to throw a brick at you. Is she pretty?’

  ‘I’m barmy,’ said Will, ‘so’s any bloke daft enough to mention a girl to a family full of females.’