‘What are families for? Have you thought what you’ll do when your mam comes home?’
‘I mean to look after her.’
‘Course you do love, and your welcome to stop on here, both of you. You know that, being family like.’
Jess felt tears block her throat for although Cora didn’t sound over-enthusiastic she knew the offer was genuine, and a generous gesture since the two women didn’t get on.
‘Maybe we won’t need to bother you. Uncle Bernie might be able to find us a place of our own to live.’ Jess felt rather anxious about what was going to happen when her mother was released. Nothing had been said about that. No plans made.
‘He always did put himself out for your mam.’ There was a wealth of meaning in her tone now, which Jess thought best not to remark upon. ‘Right then. Off you go chuck, and remember, be proud of yourself, or nobody else will be.’
Then she kissed Jess’s cheek and gave her a little shove, as if denying she could be so soft. ‘And don’t forget them sausages.’
Lizzie came home at the end of March, by which time Jess had already started work in Simmons’s cake shop to help with the Easter rush. She soon learned the names of all the cakes and different types of bread, found little difficulty in adding up and giving change, and the other girls she worked with seemed friendly enough. She liked serving in the shop, enjoyed chatting to the customers who came in and out all day long; loved the long mahogany and glass counter which was so clean and shiny and beautiful. The cakes displayed on the glass stands in the window looked and smelled so wonderful she could hardly resist them.
‘Go on, have one if you want one,’ Leah would say. ‘You’ll soon grow tired of them when you’ve had a few.’
Jess was shocked by the suggestion. She would never have dreamed of taking anything without asking. That would be tantamount to stealing, although the smell of the meat and potato pies and pasties, and in particular the heady aroma of a newly baked loaf hot from the oven were so tantalising they made her juices run.
Only on a Friday did the shop girls treat themselves to a cake each, at trade price of course, to celebrate the end of another week. Jess looked forward to it and would debate with herself the choice that she would make for days beforehand. Would it be a custard slice, an Eccles cake or a slice of battenburg, which they called church windows? Or even a cream horn, though perhaps it should more rightly be called a mock cream horn, rationing being what it was. Whatever the choice, the cake was a special treat and always delicious.
The best part of working in the shop was that she got to see her friend every day. Leah worked in the tea rooms full time now, despite complaining bitterly that she really wanted to be an actress or a newspaper reporter. She longed for a job that had some excitement and zest to it and didn’t involve being under her parents’ gaze all day long.
‘It’s so boring! Half the time the tea room is empty because there aren’t any customers, or else we don’t have the ingredients to make enough scones and cakes. How Robert can stand working in that hot bakery day and night, juggling recipes to make something out of nothing, I really can’t imagine. And I have to stand about in a frilly apron and silly cap looking like a proper Charlie, being polite to fat old ladies who shouldn’t be eating cake anyway.
‘And would you believe, despite having finally escaped school and my horrible teachers, Mother still makes me do my piano practice every night, just as if I were still a child. I wouldn’t mind so much if she allowed me to play anything interesting, but it’s always scales and boring exercise pieces. It’s so unfair. Oh, why doesn’t something good ever happen to me - to us? Why must our lives be ruined by Mr Hitler.’
Her friend’s vehemence always set Jess off into fits of giggles. She certainly didn’t take her complaints at all seriously. It was perfectly plain that Leah’s parents adored her, and everyone knew that Ambrose Gartside was absolutely potty about her. So what did she have to worry about?
‘You could always marry Ambrose, if you want to escape your parents’ clutches,’ Jess suggested as they sat relishing their Friday treat together. This week Jess had chosen a cream horn and Leah a Cornish split.
‘What? I’d rather die! He’s so dreary, and always looks half asleep with those droopy eyelids of his, droopy everything in fact, there’s so much blubber on him.’
Jess chuckled. ‘You’re exaggerating, he’s just well built, that’s all.’
‘I know. Like a tank, but who wants to make love to a tank? I shudder to think what he’d be like in bed. I bet he couldn’t raise the energy to fire his guns,’ and both girls burst into a fit of helpless giggles, Jess getting a blob of mock cream on her nose as a result. To hear Leah talk in such a ribald fashion always set her off because her friend had known absolutely nothing about sex until Jess had explained it all to her. Muriel Simmons had made vague mention about a wife doing her duty, given her daughter a sanitary towel and belt, and left it at that.
‘Where did you learn all this stuff?’ Leah had asked, listening goggle-eyes to the sordid details of procreation.
‘Don’t ask, I get a running commentary every breakfast, and sound effects every night but take it from me, men are all out for what they can get. Romance doesn’t come into it.’
‘How heartless and cold you sound. I don’t believe you for a minute. Men are gorgeous, and I mean to fall hopelessly in love with someone dark and handsome, and have lots of beautiful children. Don’t you? Wouldn’t that be the most romantic, exciting thing in the world?’
‘Not unless he could give me what I most need.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Jess licked the cream from her horn while she reflected upon this for a moment and then realised that she didn’t need to think at all. What she wanted most of all was to play her music. She’d started lessons with Sergeant Ted and absolutely loved it. He called her a natural. She wasn’t, of course, since Jess practised for hours at home. Cora never minded, but her uncle was another matter. He never stopped complaining.
‘Will you stop that racket,’ he’d shout. Or: ‘Put that cat out. It sounds like it’s being strangled and I can’t stand the din.’
It was too much to hope for a normal, happy family life but Jess longed to be free of Uncle Bernie and the Delaneys, to have a home of her own, freedom for herself and safety for her mother. What she needed most of all was someone to help her achieve that. ‘Maybe I should marry Ambrose. His parents are well off and it would at least get me away from Cumberland Street and Uncle Bernie.’
‘Don’t even consider it. Bernie might be a rat, but Ambrose is just a – a mouse. A big fat mouse, but a mouse nonetheless. And who’d care to be squeaked to death? So boring!’
Chapter Nine
The joy of starting work was muted slightly for Jess by her worry over Lizzie. Her mother seemed so listless and frail, so unlike her usual self. Jess couldn’t even persuade her to get up in a morning. She’d lie in bed half the day, and then spend the rest of it flopped in a chair, getting on Cora’s nerves simply by being there. Jess could tell by the way her aunt compressed her lips and sniffed disapprovingly whenever Lizzie didn’t appear for breakfast, or slopped about all day not lifting a finger to help that if something didn’t change soon, her patience would explode.
She’d make excuses for her, explain how Lizzie was finding it difficult adapting to life outside, or that she couldn’t get a job now that she had a record.
Cora would simply mumble something to the effect that Lizzie never did like work at the best of times. But even worse than the sullen silence which was the normal state of affairs between the two women, as the weeks slipped by there developed a cut-throat battle for attention from the man of the house.
If Lizzie ever did stir from her chair it would be to make Bernie a cup of tea, to fetch his slippers and fuss over him, fold his evening paper or butter his bread just how he liked it; all the tasks which were normally Cora’s province. She would offer to make him toad-in-the-
hole, tune in his favourite programme on the wireless. Bernie wasn’t interested in the news, or the state of the war, but he did enjoy ‘Stinker’ Murdoch in ‘Band Wagon’ and ‘Big-hearted’ Arthur. And Lizzie always insisted on waiting up for him to come home at night, no matter how late it was, which annoyed Cora more than anything else.
‘I never wait up for him, so why should she?’
‘She means well,’ Jess would say, stuck for a better answer.
‘Like hecky thump she does. She means to get her feet under my table, preferably when I’m no longer sitting at it.’
One night as Lizzie settled herself in the battered old fireside chair to wait for Bernie, Cora pulled up a stool opposite, folded her ham-sized arms and made it clear she didn’t intend to budge. ‘You can go to bed, I’ll see to him.’
Lizzie looked confused by this show of stubbornness on Cora’s part, being somewhat out of character. Wasn’t her sister-in-law supposed to be meek and mild, a victim who’d been bullied and should be grateful for any consideration at all? Not be sitting there with her hair in curlers and her tatty old dressing gown on, with an ‘I’m-not-shifting’ expression on her round red face.
‘I would’ve thought you had enough on your plate during the day with all them kids of yours to see to, without having the energy to stop up late. I’ll look after him for you, Cora. Don’t you fret.’
‘He’s my husband. I’ll look after him. I’ll be the one to do whatever he needs doing. You get off up them apples and pears to your bed. Happen you’ll be needing to conserve your own strength for when you start looking for work.’
This was a prospect which had never entered Lizzie’s head. Thankful to at last be out of prison and safely ensconced in Bernie’s house, she had not the least intention of doing anything so reckless. ‘Bernie’ll look after me,’ she said, pulling her lipstick from her pocket where she kept it nice and handy so as she could always look her best for him. Using the spotted mirror over the mantelpiece she carefully applied another layer to her already thickly coated lips. ‘He’s said as much a dozen times. He likes having me around.’
‘He does heck-as-like. He’s only making use of you, as he does everybody that crosses his path. More fool you for doing his bidding. Would you jump in the canal if he told you to? He thinks you’re a flaming nuisance, a thorn in his side. A dummel-head. ’
‘That’s not true!’ Lizzie had gone quite white, turning in spitting fury upon Cora and lashing out with nails like scarlet talons. The stool went flying but Cora, light on her feet despite her bulk, neatly ducked and evaded the blow. Wrapping her arms about Lizzie’s waist, grappled her to the dusty, clippy rug in a style of which any rugby player would have been proud. As Lizzie screamed and kicked and attempted to rip the curlers out of her sister-in-law’s hair, Cora, with the benefit of size, pinned her easily to the floor. With five sausage-like fingers circling Lizzie’s scrawny neck, she was sorely tempted to put an end to her opponent there and then.
‘I could wring your flaming neck like the old boiler hen you are.’
‘If you hurt me Bernie will part your hair with a meat cleaver. You’re nowt a pound, you. It’s me he thinks the world of, not you! That’s why you’re jealous. You know I can pinch him from under your nose any time I like.’
Lizzie might have been safer putting a match to an incendiary bomb.
Enraged by this threat to her position as wife and helpmeet, Cora picked Lizzie up as easily as if she were indeed a scrawny chicken and might well have wrung the life out of her, or tarred and feathered her, had not Sam and Seb chosen that precise moment to come downstairs to see what all the pandemonium was about.
Seeing her beloved children standing there in their pyjamas crying for their mam, brought a rush of tears to her eyes and a shaft of common sense into her brain. She gave Lizzie one final shake and reluctantly dropped her back in the chair. ‘Flaming tart, see what you’ve made me do. Shown myself up before me childer. Gerroff to bed afore I finish t’job proper. Make yourself scarce.’
Wisely, Lizzie did just that. A tactical withdrawal she called it. Necessary survival tactics in order to return and fight another day.
‘He’s a right lummock, your dad,’ Cora told her two precious darlings as she gathered them into her brawny arms. One who, despite being the champion of her youth, had proved to be less attentive as a husband than she’d hoped. She never knew a moment’s peace with him, always wondering what trouble the next day might bring, jumping at every knock on the door, fearing the polis would come at any moment and cart him off to the clink. But he was her property, hers and nobody else’s. He certainly didn’t belong to her sister-in-law.
‘Can’t we have our old place back?’ Jess begged her uncle. When Lizzie had related this episode to her, in full graphic detail, she’d realised that the matter was far more serious than she’d realised. Not that she made any mention of the scrap to her uncle. That wouldn’t do at all, not for any of them, least of all Cora, who really had all her sympathy. But something had to be done, and quickly. They couldn’t go on living together in this tiny little house, not if blue murder was to be avoided. ‘A room somewhere? We don’t fit in here any more. We need our own place.’
Bernie looked sceptical. ‘Oh aye, and who would pay for it? You couldn’t, not with what you’re earning.’
‘I’m doing better now I’ve got a new job, and I’ll work hard. I’ll manage to pay the rent, I promise. Besides, Aunt Cora has enough to do looking after her own family.’
Fond as Jess was of her aunt, nobody could ever accuse Cora of being the best housekeeper in the world. She’d sit with her feet propped up on a stool reading the paper, or have a crack with her friends for hours at a time and quite happily ignore a sink full of dirty dishes and a table still littered with the remains of breakfast. She wouldn’t stir a muscle to sweep or mop the filthy kitchen floor, or think to peel a potato until the very last minute before her brood started to arrive home. And then she would bully sullen Sandra into doing various chores the minute the poor girl walked through the door.
Jess did most of the washing and ironing, which she was quite certain wouldn’t get done otherwise. Even so, Cora didn’t change the beds nearly often enough to suit her, and never thought to make one.
‘What’s the point when you’ll be getting back into them in a few hours?’ she’d say, and laugh at what she called Jess’s pickiness.
So Jess persisted with her plea. ‘If Mam had her own kitchen, she’d pay more attention to what’s going on around her. She’d maybe want to get up of a morning to make breakfast, light the fire and stuff. Better than sitting about all day with nothing to do except get under my aunt’s feet.’
‘Cora’s never said owt to me,’ Bernie grumbled and Jess didn’t dare answer that his wife was too afraid to object to anything, as were his three sons, for fear of unleashing that nasty temper of his.
‘I’m sure it would be good for Mam. It’d liven her up no end to have her own place.’
‘I can find her something useful to do if she’s bored,’ Bernie snapped. ‘Everyone has to pull their weight round here. I’ll have a word with her, make her pull herself together.’ Fearful that she might have made things worse for her mother, Jess wished she’d kept her trap shut and not said anything at all.
Jess took to eating her meagre breakfast in peace and quiet on the bakery doorstep until Mr Simmons came down to open up. He never seemed surprised to see her sitting there, even when it was cold and raining, believing her to be diligent and keen.
‘Morning Jess,’ he would say.
‘Morning, Mr Simmons.’
‘You’ll sweep and mop the shop and tea room through for me?’
‘Glad to, Mr Simmons.’ And he’d nod and go off to the bakery to see if his son had the morning loaves ready.
Jess would happily do these tasks because it was warm in the tea room, situated as it was next to the bakery, and blissfully silent until the other girls arrived. There were no rais
ed voices, no petty squabbles over sugar or cornflakes, no spilt milk, no Cora and Lizzie going at it hammer and tongs. There was no simmering threat that fire and brimstone might explode at any moment in the shape of her uncle coming roaring down the stairs demanding to know what all the row was about, whacking Tommy or Bert across the backs of their heads simply to make his presence felt. He never touched Harry these days, strangely enough. But then Harry himself was not averse to flinging a punch at poor Bert if he’d helped himself to one too many of the sausages that he’d twisted the butcher’s arm to supply. Jess found it a huge relief to get away from all of that.
Apart from the bakery, her other main avenue of escape was the Salvation Army. Ever since the night they were bombed, she’d helped out regularly in the mobile canteen. Jess thoroughly enjoyed helping and felt she was paying something back for the regular lessons she was having with Sergeant Ted. He’d taught her the rudiments of playing the trumpet: how she must keep her lips fairly slack to produce the low notes, and could make them lower still by pressing down the valves that opened the extra lengths of tubing. Tightening her lips pushed the air in the tube onwards before it had too much time to vibrate, which made for a higher note. Thus she learned to regulate the sounds, oh and didn’t she just love playing that trumpet. She never missed a lesson.
She’d also started playing in the Bugle Band, and six months on had been given a uniform to wear which made Harry and Bert laugh like drains.
‘You’re a Junior Soldier now, eh? Have you been saved then?’ Harry teased.
‘I think she looks proper fetching in that bonnet,’ Bert sniggered.
Young Tommy answered for her. ‘Leave the poor lass alone, you big bullies. She’s doing a good job. More than some I might mention. We should all try to do our bit.’
‘Says who?’
‘What’ve you lot ever done for the war? Go on, impress us with your patriotic fervour.’
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