by Ann Turnbull
“My boyfriend’s twenty-two.”
Doreen was astonished, both at his age and at the thought that Rhoda might be old enough to have a boyfriend at all. “That’s old,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen. My birthday’s in February. I’m an Aquarius.”
Doreen wanted to know more about the boyfriend, but she couldn’t think what questions to ask.
“I’ll be twelve in November,” she said.
“What day?”
“The tenth.”
“You’re Scorpio, then.”
Doreen had scarcely heard of the star signs, but she knew there was a horoscope page in Mum’s magazine. She’d look up Scorpio, she decided.
Rhoda continued. “Sister Ursula says astrology is wickedness and leads to eternal damnation, but me mam always reads our horoscopes.”
She took out a Bible and a rosary and put them on the chair beside her bed. On the dressing-table she placed a picture of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. The picture had bits of gold in it that glinted as it caught the light: gold haloes and sun’s rays and an angel with gold tips to its wings.
They heard footsteps on the stairs, and Mum came in.
“Miss Wingfield’s gone now. Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” said Rhoda. “I like it here.”
“There’s a screen,” said Mum, “if you prefer…”
“A screen?”
Mum pulled it out from behind the dressing-table. The screen was old, battered, covered in dark brown peeling paper. Over the years the children had pasted pictures on it: film stars, fashions, Christmas cards with robins and holly, and paper motifs from crackers.
Doreen loved its shabby familiarity. And she wanted it up; she wanted to make a space of her own where Rhoda couldn’t come. But already Mum was pushing it back, saying, “You won’t need it, will you? You’ll want to talk.” And Rhoda agreed.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Mum. She went out.
Doreen followed, closing the door behind her. “Mum…”
Mum stopped on the stairs. “Don’t whisper. It’s rude.”
“But I don’t like her.”
“That’s silly. She seems quite all right. Nice and polite. Clean.”
“She’s…” Doreen struggled to express what she felt. She thought of the boyfriend. “She’s older than me.”
“I thought you’d like that. You’re used to having older sisters.”
But Rhoda wasn’t a bit like her sisters, Doreen thought. They were grown-up; they babied her, gave way to her. Doreen could control her sisters.
“Go and make friends,” said Mum. “You’ll soon get on.”
She turned away.
Reluctantly Doreen went back into the room.
Rhoda had finished unpacking. She had no coat, just a couple of summer frocks and a cardigan. But there was a dressing-gown: long, silky and patterned with roses. And her shoes were black patent with a narrow strap over the instep. Doreen always wore plimsolls. She made up her mind to try on those shoes when Rhoda wasn’t around.
She noticed the other things Rhoda had put on her side of the dressing-table: a pot of face cream, a brush and comb, and a black-and-white photograph in a frame. The photograph showed a woman’s face glancing back over one shoulder and smiling with glossy lips. She had light hair that billowed in curls.
“Who’s that?”
“My mother.”
“Your mother?” Doreen had assumed it was a film star.
Rhoda handed her the photograph. Doreen could see that she was proud of it. There was writing across one corner. Doreen read it aloud: “‘Anne-Marie’. Is that her name? It’s lovely.”
“It’s her stage name: not ‘Anne-Marie Kelly’ – just ‘Anne-Marie’. Her real name’s Mary Ann; she hates it.”
“Is she a film star?”
“She’s a singer and dancer. And she does some acting. She’s quite well-known. I’m going to be a singer, too.”
“So am I,” said Doreen. “Or I might be an actress.” An exciting possibility occurred to her: “Will your mother come and see you?”
“Oh, she’s sure to. But she’s doing the summer season at the Hippodrome, so she won’t have a lot of time.”
“What’s your house like in Liverpool?” Doreen asked. She imagined a grand place, like the mine owners’ houses at Woodend.
But Rhoda said, “Oh – nothing. Just a room. Mam puts her things around: photos, and posters, and mirrors. But we’re always moving.”
Doreen was envious. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
Rhoda looked out of the window. “Is that a mine?”
“Yes. That’s Springhill pit head. Mum and Lennie both work there.”
“Your mam too?”
Rhoda sounded astonished, and Doreen was glad to have the advantage for once. “Not digging coal,” she said scornfully. “Mum works on the screens – sorting.”
Rhoda changed the subject. “Have you got any shops? Big shops? Or arcades? Or cinemas?”
“There’s a cinema,” said Doreen. “We could go to Saturday morning pictures if you like. It gets crowded, though. All the vaccies –” She stopped, embarrassed. “Lots of little kids. They’re fidgety, like.”
“Our cinema was bombed,” said Rhoda. “The seats gone, the walls, everything. There’s just the arch and the stage left.”
Doreen wished there had been a bomb on Culverton – just one, a small one. She sought for something that would equal a bomb site. “We could go to Old Works tomorrow,” she said. “It’s all ruins there, old buildings, a tunnel.”
“A tunnel!”
“It’s dangerous,” said Doreen. “Don’t tell Mum. She doesn’t like me playing there.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Doreen?” came Rhoda’s voice. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something hard in this bed.”
“It’s a spring.”
“Gets you between the ribs,” said Rhoda.
Doreen felt a mean satisfaction. At least she’d kept the best bed.
It was morning. She’d been lying awake for some time, listening to Rhoda’s breathing. Rhoda sounded different to Mary, or Phyl, or Lennie. They all had their own, familiar sounds. But then Rhoda was different. She did strange things. Last night, wrapped in the silky dressing-gown, she had washed out her knickers and socks in the kitchen sink and hung them over the fireguard to dry. Then she had dabbed her face with cold cream, coiled her hair into pin curls secured with hair grips, and knelt at the side of her bed and murmured prayers.
Doreen had felt that she would like to say prayers, too, but she didn’t know any words; and her hair was too short for pin curls.
Rhoda got out of bed.
She was wearing a white cotton nightdress with ribbon straps over the shoulders. Doreen thought it romantic; her own nightdress was flowered winceyette, grey with age.
Rhoda noticed her looking and said, “Do you like my nightie? I made it out of an old sheet. Dead easy. Bernadette showed me – me mam’s dressmaker.”
Doreen climbed on a chair and undid the pegs of the blackout screen and lifted it down. She pulled the curtains and pushed the window wider open, letting in mild summer air.
Outside, the day looked fine already, with blue sky and little high, white puffs of cloud: the sort of day when she might have met up with Barbara and gone out on what they called Parachute Patrol, roaming the woods and fields and occasionally glancing up at the sky in case a German parachute was descending. Lennie said it was daft. “There won’t be a German invasion now. They’re too busy invading Russia.”
“We’re doing a concert in aid of the Russian allies,” Doreen told Rhoda. “Me and some friends: Barbara and June. And Rosie Lloyd from next door, she comes too, but she’s not my friend, she just hangs around.”
Rhoda looked interested. “Where are you doing it?”
“Well…in Barbara’s dad’s shed at the moment.” Doreen felt emb
arrassed. “It’s a big shed. With a window. Room for people to sit around and watch. Just mums and dads, like.” She could see that Rhoda had already dismissed it as kids’ stuff, but she persisted. “You could join if you like. We need more people. We’re having a rehearsal on Monday.”
She hoped the word “rehearsal” might make the project sound more impressive.
“OK,” said Rhoda. “I don’t mind.”
She took a box of mascara out of her dressing-table drawer and leaned forward to the mirror, brushing the stuff onto her eyelashes. Rhoda’s eyelashes were white. Doreen watched them darken and thicken.
Mum would have a fit if I did that, she thought – even if I was thirteen.
“You have to make the best of yourself,” said Rhoda. “Me mam says. You’re lucky to have dark eyelashes.”
Doreen had never thought about her eyelashes before. She looked at herself in the mirror: brown curly hair cut short, pale skin, grey eyes with the desired dark lashes.
“Sister Ursula says painting your face is vanity,” said Rhoda. “She says your soul is what’s important, not your outward appearance. I know she’s right, really, but she hasn’t got white eyelashes.”
Doreen got dressed, pulling on her baggy navy-blue knickers under cover of her nightdress.
“I’ve got to tidy up,” she said. “But after that we could go to the pictures if you like. Or we could go to Old Works.”
“What’s on at the pictures?”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It’s good. I’ve seen it before.”
Doreen loved cartoons. But Rhoda pulled a face. “Old Works, then,” she said.
Tidying up was quick with Rhoda’s help. Rhoda seemed to be expert at washing up, laying fires and making beds. She even swept the carpet and dusted.
“Mum will be pleased,” said Doreen. Mum worked mornings only on Saturdays; she’d be home at midday.
“I do all that sort of thing at home,” Rhoda said. “Me mam never thinks about tidying up. It’s not that she’s lazy,” she added quickly, “only her mind’s on other things. She’s very talented.”
Doreen was relieved to find Old Works deserted. The gangs of little boys who often infested it were not there.
“This tunnel’s supposed to come out at Springhill,” she said, “but I don’t believe it. It’s a dead-end, Lennie reckons.”
The entrance to the tunnel was wide, but the roof soon sloped downwards, and Rhoda showed no interest in exploring it.
“It pongs,” she said.
“I think the boys use it…you know.”
“Ugh!”
They pulled faces and giggled.
“What else is there?” asked Rhoda.
There were broken walls, remains of buildings, piles of brick rubble, all overgrown with trees and ivy. Doreen had read in a book about lost cities in the Amazon jungle; Old Works was like that, she thought.
Rhoda balanced along a stretch of wall; on one side was an eight-foot drop. “This is a great place,” she said.
Doreen was gratified, and relieved; she’d been afraid Rhoda might be too grown-up for Old Works. “Come and see my favourite bit,” she said, “down here.”
Some steps led down into a small square room with a grating over the window. Half the roof had crumbled away and you could look up and see tree roots and ivy overhead.
“It’s like a bomb site, isn’t it?” she said proudly.
“Greener,” said Rhoda. “Older.”
“Lennie reckons it was a storeroom. We call it the Dungeon.”
“There’s some stuff here,” said Rhoda. “In this corner.”
In the dim light they caught the gleam of metal: jagged pieces of sheared-off aluminium, small round bullets, dented where they had hit the ground.
Rhoda picked up the bullets. “Shrapnel,” she said. “The kids on Merseyside have tons of it.”
“Hey! Leave that alone! It’s ours!”
The voice came from above. A boy stood on the crumbling roof, shouting down at them: Billy Dean. More small boys appeared behind him.
“Who wants it, any road?” Doreen retorted. “Old rubbish.”
Billy was clinging to a sapling. He let go and leapt into the Dungeon, bringing down a shower of earth and loose brick. He landed with a thud beside Doreen. Three other boys followed him.
“That’s not rubbish,” said Billy. “See that bit there? That’s off a Heinkel. It’s got blood on it.”
“It hasn’t!”
“It has! See that stain?”
Rhoda spoke up. “That’s fire did that, not blood.”
“It’s blood!” Billy’s voice was shrill.
“Blood would wash off.”
He glared at her. “Know everything, don’t you, Scouser?” He turned to Doreen. “Who is she, any road?”
“She’s my evacuee,” said Doreen. “She knows more about shrapnel than you do.”
A profusion of boys’ voices broke out, high-pitched, indignant. “My evacuee brought a whole propeller—” “My cousin gets all this stuff…” “I’ve got sixteen bullets—” “That’s from a Messerschmidt—”
Billy Dean pulled something out of his pocket. “See that? It’s a grenade.”
Rhoda grabbed Doreen’s arm and pushed her towards the steps. “You shouldn’t mess with grenades,” she said. “It could be live.”
The boys crowed. “Scaredy-cats!”
Rhoda looked down at them. “You could get blown up.”
Billy came to the point. “This is our den. And our stuff.”
“Anyone can come here,” Doreen insisted.
“Except girls and Scousers,” said Billy. “So that’s you two out.”
Doreen and Rhoda were already moving towards the steps, but Doreen was determined to have the last word. “Smelly old dump, full of rubbish.”
“Yes. Full of you. You’re rubbish. Scousers are rubbish!”
Howls of laughter.
The girls retreated. “Kids!” said Rhoda contemptuously.
They went off together, a warm feeling of unity between them.
“Let’s go down the High Street,” said Doreen. “We can get our sweets.”
She chose aniseed balls and Rhoda had pear drops and they shared them, half each. Doreen introduced Rhoda to Mrs Jennings. “This is Rhoda; she’s my evacuee.” She met other people she knew in the street and introduced Rhoda again. She began to feel pleased about Rhoda; she was a lot better than some of her friends’ evacuees. The Palmers had those awful boys from Dudley, and Ida Jones had a girl who kept telling tales about her.
They walked home through the churchyard. Rhoda talked about her boyfriend, who was called Michael, and was a soldier, serving abroad. “We’re in love,” she said. “When I’m sixteen we’re going to get married.”
Doreen felt friendlier towards Rhoda now. She said, “My dad’s buried here. Do you want to see his grave?”
Dad’s headstone looked stark, although it was over a year since he had died. There were rose petals blowing around it. Doreen remembered seeing rose petals at the funeral. She had watched one fall onto the lid of the coffin and saw it crushed as the earth descended. Later there had been yellow leaves, then snow, then dandelions springing up all around. And now rose petals again.
“The flowers are dead,” said Rhoda.
Last week Mum had filled a jamjar with marigolds and big white daisies; they were drooping now.
“We’ll do them tomorrow,” said Doreen. “We always come here on Sunday morning.”
The inscription read:
THOMAS WILLIAM DYER
1888–1940
Rest in peace
And beneath it Mum had asked for the names of two children to be added: “George, 1923–1925” and “Joan, 1920, aged three months”.
Doreen thought about those children. If they had lived they would be grown up now. In the army, or the air force, perhaps getting killed like Bobby Lee.
“Those are my mum’s babies that died, and over here is U
ncle Charley, and over there Uncle Arthur, and Grandad and Nan Dyer…”
“You’ve got a big family,” said Rhoda. There was envy in her voice.
“Haven’t you got any brothers or sisters?”
“No. There’s only Mam and me.”
“Is your Dad dead?”
“No.”
“In the army, is he?” But even as she asked, Doreen sensed that Rhoda didn’t want to talk about her father.
Rhoda turned and began to walk towards the church. “He’s away,” she said, over her shoulder, “but he’ll come back. After the war he’ll come back and marry me mam and we’ll be a proper family.”
When they got home Lennie was coming in through the back garden gate, wheeling his bicycle; he only worked mornings on Saturdays.
Doreen ran up to him. “Lennie, we’ve been to Old Works! It was great. Rhoda likes it there, don’t you, Rhoda?”
But Rhoda, with Lennie’s gaze on her, shrugged, and said dismissively, “It’s OK – for little kids.”
Her words cast a shadow over the bright morning, spoiling it.
Doreen felt betrayed. Rhoda had liked it there; she was just showing off. Not that she’d got anything to show off about, seeing as her mum and dad weren’t even married.
CHAPTER FOUR
On Sunday morning Rhoda went to mass, leaving the family in the kitchen, clearing breakfast.
“And how are you two getting on with Rhoda?” Mum asked.
“All right,” said Doreen. And it was true. She and Rhoda had got on better than she’d expected, except for Rhoda’s remark about Old Works; that still hurt. “Mum, she wears pink knickers!”
“Doreen! Not in front of Lennie!”
“Well…I wish I could. And, Mum, she goes to a convent school and her teachers are nuns.”
“She likes the pigeons,” said Lennie.
“Has she been to the loft?”
“Yes. Last night. I told her all their names and the places they fly to. She liked them.”
Doreen felt a twinge of jealousy. She didn’t know Lennie had been making friends with Rhoda.
“Rhoda’s mum’s a famous singer,” she said.
“I saw the photo,” said Mum.
“She might come and see Rhoda soon.”
“Well,” said Mum, “if she does come I hope she’ll bring Rhoda some clothes. All she’s got is those two summer frocks, and it’ll be autumn soon. She’ll be needing something warmer. Perhaps I should mention it when I write.”
