by Annie Murray
Three weeks ago Ray had been sacked from the Kynoch Works in Witton, after his weekend drinking bouts had spread into the week. He had not been in the forces during the war, but on munitions at Kynoch’s. There had been plenty of work for him to earn the means to pour as much down his throat as he wanted and still just make the rent. And he had been younger then, before – as he saw it – life and the womenfolk had taken their toll.
Until Kynoch’s kicked him out, Ray had never been handed his cards in his life before. It was a shock. For now, he was trying to pull himself together. Ray, just turned forty years old, had been a man of gleamingly handsome looks, now largely scuppered by drink. His coal-black hair was thinner, his cheeks, dark with thrusting stubble, were now flaccid, the chin less well defined, his belly like an overhanging cliff. But he could still scrub up when vanity or lusts of the flesh required it, slick his hair back, brush down his one decent jacket and flash his money around as if it was in bottomless supply.
Unemployment meant the rent man knocking and no money for the boozer. After their moonlight flit he had got himself taken on for a heavy job at Docker’s, the paint factory, hauling sacks of fossil gum from trucks and hefting them over the side of the steaming vats, emptying in the contents for melting into varnish. He came home worn out and oil-smeared and coughing – but with a wage packet. This, bar the rent, he felt entitled to spend entirely on himself. Their mother had to wrestle money for food out of him.
‘I dunno why they had to go and change everything,’ Irene moaned to Rita from time to time. Rita was about to turn fourteen, but the school leaving age had been raised to fifteen. ‘Wasting yower time in that cowing place when you could be earning yower keep.’
‘Why don’t you go out to work, Mom?’ Shirley once asked.
Irene rounded on her, furious. ‘I ain’t going out to be a dray-horse – that’s yer father’s job.’
Asking Mom questions was always risky. Her childhood in Netherton, in the Black Country, was a blank mystery to them. But an innocent query like, ‘Why ain’t we got a Nanna and a Granddad?’ would be met with a crash of Mom’s fleshy hand round the head and, ‘Shut yer cake’ole and stop mithering me!’ She specialized in getting you in the ear and leaving your head ringing.
Now, in the steam-filled room, the walls running with damp, Rita waited for her mother to take her side over her dig at Evie, but she didn’t even turn round. ‘Shurrit, Reet,’ was all she said, moodily. ‘Get these spuds done.’
Evie saw Rita scowl and look daggers at her.
‘Why do I have to do it?’ she whined. ‘Why can’t Shirl? Or Evie? Make her do it!’ She turned towards Evie who was sitting on the splintery bottom step of the stairs, keeping out of the way. She looked down at the floor, the lino so thin you could see every floorboard through it.
‘Dain’t yow ’ear me? I said shurrit!’ Irene bawled. ‘Now gerrover ’ere!’
Rita got up with an exaggerated flounce of her bony body. Her cotton dress, pale pink and made for a full-grown woman, hung on her, puckered into folds round the waist by the belt. Barefoot, she winced as she trod on something on the floor. Evie thought she looked like one of the scrawny starlings that flapped in the road.
She kept her head down, trying to avoid notice. Even though she looked miles away most of the time, Evie’s whole being was constantly on alert for trouble, as if the hairs on her neck were permanently standing up. It was second nature to her to such an extent that she didn’t notice it. Rita would want revenge. Rita had a long memory for even the slightest of grudges. Luckily she was also as lazy as a sozzled cat. If she kept out of Rita’s way this week, Evie calculated, then school would start and they’d all be away from each other and it would soon get so that Rita couldn’t be bothered . . .
‘’Er went out without telling,’ Shirley added, making a face at Evie across the room. She was sprawled voluptuously along the settle, twitching one leg up and down being her most obvious activity. Baiting Evie was her way of sucking up to Rita.
‘I said shurrit! Stop yer mithering!’ Their mother turned, brandishing a metal spoon. ‘And where’s that cowing father of yours?’
Irene had bleached her hair that afternoon, tied it with rags and curlers. It was set in waves round her fleshy face and under her apron she was wearing an electric blue silky dress, fresh from Rag Alley in town. She had big eyes, enormous curves, full lips, coated at this moment in scarlet lipstick. She was fearsome, loud, childish and intimidating. You never knew which way her temper would go and usually, if she was in a rage with Ray, it was the rest of them who copped it. Ray would be coming home soon and this was her way of trying to keep her wayward husband at her side. It was Friday night, there was food in the house – not yet paid for but the money was coming – Ray was in work and it was time to celebrate this new start with her man.
But the factory bulls had boomed out long ago, signalling the end of a shift, and there was still no sign of him, nor of the famous wage packet he had promised to bring straight home.
She kept going to the door to look out, wiping her hands on her pinner. Evie could feel, by the second, Mom’s mood growing more explosive. All of them could. The three girls scarcely dared move. Rita shoved Shirley up and sank down on the settle beside her. The sisters exchanged looks. They even met eyes with Evie, across the room on the stairs, their feuds forgotten – for the moment.
Sooner or later, Mom would blow. They knew it was coming. The room was thick with tension like the ominous rumbles of a thunderstorm.
Three
It was not until a sultry darkness had fallen that they heard the unsteady approach of boots and a voice singing, in a slurred tone of seduction, ‘How I love the kisses of Dolores . . .’
Evie’s stomach clenched with dread. Her sisters sat side by side now, looking scared. Dad sang this song often when he was tanked up, a song guaranteed to be a red rag to their bull mother.
None of them had had a bite to eat. Evie’s stomach was growling with hunger, but now that was forgotten. Mom was like dough swelling in a bowl. She kept pacing the room. Hearing his voice, she strode to the door just as their father appeared at it. She stepped back as he lurched towards her and he had to prop himself against the door frame.
‘Where the cowing ’ell ’ve yow been, yow bastard?’ she yelled at the top of her voice, not caring who heard these affectionate overtures.
The girls sat very still. Evie hugged her knees as Mom launched into a diatribe about how he said he’d be home and where was the money and how was she supposed to feed them all without a brass farthing in the house, all at a volume that must have regaled the whole street.
‘Oh shurrit, yer cowing . . .’ Ray stumbled into the room, searching his befuddled brain for a telling insult but drawing a blank and resorting to, ‘cow . . .’ He sank onto a chair and belched extravagantly.
Evie watched. This was the moment that would decide things. Mom was drawing breath to begin on him again. If Dad turned on the charm and said something to make things better, there might be tears and sulks but it would settle down. But if he said . . . Or if Mom said . . .
‘Where’ve yow been, Ray?’ Irene bawled again, hands on hips, legs positioned wide apart, feet spilling out of her badly fitting white shoes with pointed toes and high heels that made her ankles rock. Her voice had risen high now, and she was poised between rage and tears. ‘I know where yow’ve been all this time and I ay gunna put up with it! Yow’ve bin with her – with that bitch on heat and her brat!’
Her. The woman who had birthed their father a son just before Evie was born. Nance, the woman who haunted all their lives with her boy called Raymond after his father. Who Dad swore he never saw and Mom never ever believed him, even though Nance was over in Aston. And if he wasn’t with Nance, then it was some other floozy . . .
‘Oh, just shut yer cake’ole, yer stupid cow,’ Ray mumbled. ‘Where’s my cowing tea then, eh? What’s a man got to do to get some grub round ’ere?’
The
y all wanted their tea but the girls knew better than to say so. All of them tried to remain invisible.
‘Oh, so yow want yower tea now, do yer?’ Irene bent towards him. ‘Come swanning in after yer’ve been God knows where, like a dog leaving his piss on every lamp post . . .’
And then he said it. Evie could see Dad was going to do it by the look on his face. By the way he stared up at his wife, bleary but brazen, the way he curled his lips back. Evie gripped her knees with her hands as the words spilled.
‘No point in poking a barren cow like you, is there?’
With a roar, Irene ran to get the poker but her husband, with surprising agility, leapt out of his chair and grabbed hold of her.
‘Don’t you hit me, yer mardy bitch! It’s only the truth, ain’t it? Yer as dry as an ash heap!’
‘I’ll hit yow if I cowing want to!’ She was writhing in his grasp, teetering on the thin heels. She paused and kicked them off, bending to pick one up and lash out at him with the heel. ‘Yer a bastard, Ray Sutton. A—’ He grabbed her arm and, with his other fist, managed to land a punch against her shoulder. Irene let out a pig-shriek of pain.
There was suddenly no space in the room and they were only getting warmed up. Evie saw Rita and Shirley sidle off the settle, round the side of the room and away from their brawling parents, and head for the stairs. The three of them crept up to the room they shared – Rita and Shirley slept in the bed, Evie on an old mattress on the floor. In the almost darkness, the yells and curses ramping up downstairs, Evie sank down onto the lumpy old thing. A pungent whiff of wee reached her nostrils. She sometimes wet the bed still.
‘I’m that hungry I could eat a dead horse,’ Shirley moaned.
‘Well, you ain’t getting any so you might as well shurrit,’ Rita snapped. She flung herself down on the bed with a clatter of bedsprings. ‘We ain’t even got a candle.’ A second later she jumped up again and came at Evie, slapping her hard across the face. ‘This is all your cowing fault, you little worm. Why did she ever have to have you, eh? Mom can’t even have any more babies now, thanks to you. Why couldn’t you’ve been a boy?’
Evie curled up on the mattress, a hand held to her burning cheek. She stuck her fingers in her mouth. They’d be all the tea she was getting tonight. It was no good saying anything. She didn’t even remember the time when Mom had to go to hospital and have some operation which meant she couldn’t have babies anymore and now she’d never have a boy like the one Nance had given Dad. She would not even have known about all this if their father had not kept throwing it in their mother’s face.
‘Go and live with the bitch then!’ they had heard Mom shriek at him for years and years. ‘If ’er’s so cowing marvellous, go on, bugger off!’ But he never did and Nance had evidently found another bloke years ago but it didn’t stop Mom thinking Dad was always off visiting her and, if not her, someone else. ‘Nance’ seemed to have come to mean any other ‘floozy’ Dad might be playing about with, whether real or only in her mind.
Downstairs things were getting going. They had not had one of these big fights since they had been in this new house.
‘I knew it was too good to last,’ Rita moaned. ‘And we’ve got chairs and cups . . .’
As if in answer, a terrible smashing sound came from downstairs, along with a bull-like yell from their father, and Mom screeching as if he was scalping her.
Evie sucked her fingers and thought about Whisky the dog, about cuddling up to her with her warm, soft fur and, despite it all, she managed to fall asleep.
Someone was shoving her roughly awake.
‘Gerrup! Reet, Shirl, Evie . . . come on, shift!’
They all groaned, sleepy and bewildered. Evie could sense, rather than see, her mother’s bulky form standing over them. The house had gone quiet.
‘Get moving, all of you. I ain’t stopping ’ere a minute longer with that . . .’ A string of vile appellations fell from her mouth. ‘Get yer shoes on. We’re going to Vi’s.’
‘Oh Mom,’ Rita groaned. ‘That’s miles . . .’
‘Shurrit,’ Irene snapped. ‘Get moving. Yer father’s on the floor. There ain’t gunna be anything ’ere for ’im when he wakes up and it’ll cowing well serve ’im right.’
Even to Evie, Mom sounded – as she often did – like a petulant little girl.
‘But Mom . . .’ Rita attempted. ‘We’ll only have to come back . . .’
Evie heard a swift movement followed by another slap.
‘Do as I ******g well tell yer. Gorrit?’
Evie had not even taken her pumps off. She got to her feet, feeling muzzy, but her heart was hammering with the shock of being woken so suddenly and she felt a bit sick.
‘Get yerselves downstairs now,’ Mom was saying. ‘And don’t wake ’im up.’
Certainly none of them wanted to do that. They crept down to find their father flat out along the settle, one leg sprawled on the ground, head back, snoring like a pig.
‘Look at that,’ Mum said in disgust.
Under the weak light of the bulb they could see her dishevelled state. The carefully curled hair now hung in clumps and her face was puffy and covered in red marks and cuts. Her eyes seemed sunken into their sockets. She had replaced the white high-heeled shoes with her everyday old brown flats, wide as barges. She looked in every way smaller.
They crept silently out into the night streets. While they lived in Aston, Mom had dragged them over to Auntie Vi’s a number of times, only before it had been in the middle of a fight, with Dad raging and Mom frightened of him. This time was different. Evie could see that she wanted him to think they had left him. Evie, young as she was, also knew this was never going to happen. All her life, her mom and dad had threatened to leave in turns, as if ‘I’m leaving yer! I’m gunna go and live with her!’ and ‘We won’t be ’ere when you get home!’ were the choruses of a song that was sung so often the words had gone stale.
Vi, their father’s sister-in-law, lived in Lozells. It had felt a long way from Aston, and from Ladywood it was even further. The three girls set out behind their mother, silent, resigned, still half asleep. It was quiet, the pubs long turned out. The day’s heat had faded but luckily it was not cold and the night air smelt of hot buildings and factory smoke and stuff rotting in the heat. Evie walked just behind Rita and Shirley. Their mother plodded ahead of them. Evie had no idea how long it would take to get there, or where they were. She didn’t think about any of it. Her legs were tired. She heard the desolate whistle of a locomotive in the distance. A rat scuttled along the gutter and vanished into a drain and her arms came up in goose pimples of revulsion.
Everything felt like a dream, lit by the dim street lights. Mom moved at a steady pace ahead of them. After a time, when they had walked on and on in the malodorous air, never seeming to get anywhere, Evie could hear her mother crying.
She woke on the floor in Vi’s downstairs room, a scratchy rug laid over her. Even before she opened her eyes she knew she was at Vi’s because everything stank of cigarettes. Mom and Dad smoked, but not with the same dedication as Vi. Opening her eyes, she saw, by the thin bar of light coming through the curtains, that Rita and Shirley lay asleep to her left. She looked across at the picture of a hillside covered in purple heather which she always saw when she woke up at Vi’s house. Auntie Vi was Scottish and she met Uncle Horace, Dad’s elder brother, when she came down in the war to work in munitions.
She could hear voices from the back kitchen, Mom complaining to Vi. Sometimes she tried complaining to Horace, but that was no good. Horace always grunted and said, ‘Oh, take no notice.’
Evie got up to go to the brick privy in the yard at the back. When she pushed open the door of the back room, her mother was right there facing her and shot her a look of loathing.
‘Are you all right, hen?’ Auntie Vi said, in a quick break from inhaling smoke. She was a big, eagle-like woman with hunched shoulders, a mop of greying hair down her back and yellow-tinged skin. The first finger
of her right hand was mustard coloured. She was wearing a pale green dressing gown. Vi was kind to them, though she was always saying to Mom, ‘There’s no anything more I can do, Irene, you know that. If he was my own brother, it might be different . . .’
Evie knew no answer was required. As she headed to the back door Evie heard Vi say, ‘You can’t just keep blaming that poor wean for the way he is, Irene. It’s no right. What’s done’s done and you need to try and keep your temper.’
Evie did her business out in the cool morning. Sitting in the cobwebby privy she could just hear the little noises made by Horace’s pigeons in their coop. She always thought Horace looked a bit like a pigeon himself, with his beady, startled-looking eyes and slight stoop. He didn’t look at all like her father. And he always smelt of boiled onions and smoke.
She went back in and lay down beside the others again, glad they were asleep, glad, for a while, to be in Vi’s house which, though a tiny terrace, was still bigger than theirs, and felt safer. And Rita and Shirley pretended to be nice to her when they were there.
She closed her eyes. They would all have to walk home again, as usual. And nothing would be any different. But for now, the grey blanket felt cosy and smelt of cigarettes and refuge.
Four
‘Oh, it’s you again is it?’ Mrs Waring said the next morning, finding Evie waiting by her front step. ‘I tell yer, Con, I think this one’s set to move in with us.’
Evie looked up at Mrs Waring, who was standing at her front door in her pinner, addressing these words over her shoulder to someone behind. Mrs Waring’s narrow feet in brown lace-up shoes were planted side by side on the step, to which she applied elbow grease and red cardinal polish every morning. Not like theirs at number twenty-nine, which looked as if it had been a stranger to soap and a brush for a very long time. A smell of liver and gravy emanated from inside the house, as well as something sweet. Saliva rose in Evie’s mouth.
