The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  Gary and Evie met, throughout the autumn, at first in the shelter and then elsewhere. She had been into Gary’s a few times. Even the thought of it filled her with dread. When she walked into the two-up, two-down house the first time, she could see that it had once been a place where someone had taken trouble. Cathleen Knight – who else could have done it? – had decorated the mantle with a drape of deep blue velvet and there were ornaments and brasses on it, now thick with dust. There was some furniture: a sideboard and a meat safe, a table and one remaining chair, an upright, rickety wheel-back thing on which Mr Knight seemed to spend most of his life sagging, smoking and swiping at his sons if they came within his orbit.

  The overpowering smell in the house was of urine. Evie was used to this, but not to the extent of it in the Knights’ place, which stank as if every floorboard was soaked in it. Once Gary took her up to where he slept, on the floor with his brothers in a mess of rags. There was a bucket full of wee – and worse. Evie turned her eyes away and tried not to breathe. The smell up there, in this bedwetting household, was so overpowering, it burnt the nostrils.

  The boys, who ranged in age from David, now going on seventeen, down to George, were a sad, unkempt and neglected band and the inside of the house a realm of dirt and chaos. The table, whenever she saw it, showed signs of some scratched meal or other – globules of set porridge, crumbs and smears of lard and dirty plates. Their clothes were whatever came to hand, and they seldom saw water let alone soap.

  ‘I don’t know how those boys haven’t been taken off him,’ Evie had heard Mrs Waring say, tutting each time she set eyes on any of them, in their ragged mix of clothing. Neighbours handed old clothes on to them, when they could. The women sometimes took round offerings of food to supplement the bags of chips and loaves of bread and lard Mr Knight fed them on otherwise.

  Therefore, cold though it was, Evie did not want to go to the Knights’ house – nor her own.

  ‘Shall us go to the shelter?’ Gary asked.

  Evie thought of the freezing gloom of the shelter. All through the late summer and autumn they had met there and sat talking and giggling, hearing the clucks of the hens. She had discovered Gary was obsessed with toffee, which any spare copper went on, hammered off a block in the sweetshop. He was an infectious giggler, tickled by the least thing. They had taken great care every time they went – going round the long way, down an entry further along the road and doubling back along the lane so that the other kids wouldn’t follow.

  Evie shook her head. It was too cold to go there today. But she had no other ideas.

  Gary had started at the big school in the autumn. They had never been to school together. Evie didn’t mind school, though she had not made a best friend. The other children seemed to veer away from her. One girl told her she smelt. She spent a lot of time wandering about dreamily at the edge of the playground on her own. Nowadays, she pretended Gary was with her and talked to him in her head. Since the first day she and Gary had met in the shelter they had kept coming back. It was their place. They never talked about anything much, not about home. And there wasn’t much to do. But they told jokes and laughed and messed about, out of everyone else’s way. Then Gary started bringing Carl sometimes.

  Other days, they hung around the Warings’ door hoping to see Whisky. Sometimes the Warings had one of their married daughters there and they wouldn’t want other children around. But if he was in the right mood on a Saturday, Mr Waring helped them make toys. He had given them two cocoa tins and a twist of string to make a walkie-talkie. And after some persuasion, Mrs Waring had said that as the old pram was no longer needed they could have the wheels. The Warings had an electric fire now, so she didn’t have to go and get the coal in it anymore and her eldest daughter had a newer pram. So Mr Waring had helped them build a ‘moke’, or go-kart. It was a good one too and he had watched them play on it, sitting on his doorstep with one leg crossed over the other, smoking and making sure none of the other kids snatched it off them. Gary and Evie had had the time of their lives on it, giving Carl turns as well, and their brothers Frankie and George who begged turns. Now Mr Waring had tucked it away in his brew house in the garden, for the winter. So that was a no-go.

  Through the last crunching of his sweet, Gary said, ‘We could build a fire.’ He rattled something in his pockets. ‘I got matches.’

  ‘What with?’ Evie said.

  Gary’s eye wandered. ‘We’ll find summat.’

  They exchanged looks. Evie shrugged. ‘Come on, Carly,’ she said. ‘You come with us.’

  Carl looked up at her in his trusting way. ‘All right,’ he said slowly. As they set off, he slipped his freezing little hand into hers.

  The three of them slid away from the others, checking that no one was following before they slipped into the entry. It felt no warmer in the shelter than outside. They could see the ghostly swirl of their breath in the air.

  Gary peered round in the shadows, in the hope that there would be some bits to make a fire out of, but there was nothing.

  ‘Told yer,’ Evie said.

  ‘Never mind, we can light the matches. That’ll keep us warm,’ Gary said.

  They all squeezed into the corner. When Gary lit a match, Evie saw his face and Carl’s lit up for a few seconds. Both of them had their bare knees drawn up close. Carl’s eyes held little flames and looked solemn. Gary’s specs reflected the light and his grin showed his wonky teeth.

  ‘Ow!’ He dropped the matchstick as the flame reached his fingers and it went dark again. Carl laughed and Gary started giggling as well. Evie could just make out their faces and she began to laugh too. It never took much to set them off.

  ‘One day,’ Gary said suddenly, ‘I’m gunna go and live at the seaside. You ever been?’

  ‘No,’ Evie said. ‘’Ve you?’

  ‘Nah. S’nice there, though. I seen pictures. Nicer’n here. I’ll light a big bonfire on the beach!’

  Evie sat with her shoulders pressed against Gary and Carl’s. Gary kept striking matches. They tried to believe it was warming the deathly chill of the shelter. Evie stayed in this moment, not thinking about it being Saturday, which meant Dad would come home drunk and Mom’d be furious and . . . She kept her mind on now and giggled when Gary lit another match and let the light burn to his fingertips before he dropped it to the ground between his legs. Now was all that mattered.

  Eight

  Late that Friday night, Mom was beside herself with rage. The girls had already crept up to bed when their father’s footsteps were heard along the street. They knew what to expect. But this time he was not singing.

  Evie lay on her lumpy mattress in the icy dark, waiting. She had chilblains and her toes felt like hot, itchy sausages.

  ‘Here we go,’ she heard Rita say, trying to sound full of bravado, but betraying the fact that she was scared. The lack of singing was unnerving. He was quiet as the grave except for the weaving footsteps out in the frosty street.

  ‘Where the hell’ve yow been?’ Mom erupted at him the minute he approached the threshold.

  An aggressive reply was all they heard, but they could not make out the words.

  Evie stiffened, waiting for the shouting, the sounds of their few remaining crocks breaking against walls, his long-congealed dinner flung against the stove, the yelling and screaming.

  But there was a brief lull, words being exchanged, then a howl of rage from Mom.

  ‘You what? Who is she? You . . .’ A string of insults followed, then a roar from him, a thud, a yell of pain.

  ‘I ain’t staying ’ere with yow, you bastard!’

  Mom’s feet came thudding up the stairs. Someone outside at the front was shouting for them to ‘Shurrit, for Christ’s sake!’ but this was drowned out by Mom erupting into the bedroom.

  ‘Gerrup, all of yer. We’re going to Vi’s.’ She was slapping them awake.

  ‘Oh Mom,’ Rita moaned. ‘It’s perishing out there. Why do we ’ave to?’

  ‘Do as y
er cowing well told!’ Evie felt a kick land in her ribs and she moaned. ‘Gerrup you, yer little rat. I cor stay ’ere with ’im any longer.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Irene, now what?’

  Auntie Vi’s voice came at them out of the dimly lit house. The smell of cigarettes wreathed out to them. Vi’s hair was hanging loose over some pale garment.

  ‘Just let us in, will yer, Vi?’ Mom begged her. ‘I’m starving out ’ere.’

  They had walked like people with damaged limbs, slipping and waving their arms, trying not to come a purler in the road. The icy, smoky air stung their nostrils as the darkness, only broken by an occasional dim street light, folded its cold arms around them. There was hardly anyone about. It had felt to Evie, in the shadowy streets, as if they were the only people in the world.

  Vi stood back in silence. Evie could imagine her face, the lips pulled tight, the frown. She was fed up with this. But they would soon be wrapped up on Vi’s floor, in this house which always felt warmer than their own. And in the morning, maybe Uncle Horace would give them a halfpenny, or some sweets . . .

  She stumbled in and onto the floor, her feet numb, almost asleep even before she lay down. Rita and Shirley bedded down to one side of her. Voices continued around her.

  ‘Irene, it cannae be helped. We cannae just stick around here so that you can ship up when you feel like it. My mother’s sick – we’re moving back up there. It’s all sorted out. You’re gunna have tae get a grip – go out and get a job yourself if you can’t rely on your feller to keep you and your weans . . . Ray’s a drunken, womanizing sod and he’s no going tae change . . .’

  The last thing Evie remembered was the press of the button on the cushion against her cheek.

  By midday the next day, after they got home, Mom and Dad were all lovey-dovey again. Especially as Dad had been moaning about his work and Mom found another way to get round him.

  ‘I’ll go out and get a job, Ray,’ Mom said, voice honey-sweet in her hungover husband’s ear. She knelt on the hard floor beside his chair, stroking his chest. ‘’Ow about that? Then yow won’t ’ave to earn all the money. We can pull together, can’t us?’

  Evie heard her father grunt something back, which ended in ‘good wench’.

  Mom would do anything so long as she had his attention, even if it meant her going back to work, which she had previously put on airs about. She’d even sent Evie to buy a few rashers of bacon and a big fresh loaf for dinner – on the strap, as usual. Everyone was tired and subdued. Rita and Shirley didn’t have the energy to be nasty, Dad was hungover and Mom, for once, was happily in his good books, standing at the stove as the rashers spat and sizzled, booming out ‘No Other Love’ at the top of her voice. She loved Perry Como.

  Just before dinner, there came a knock on the door. Dad was snoozing by the fire, the girls’ mouths were watering in expectation and the Sutton household looked almost like a place at one with itself.

  Evie stood behind her mother as she loomed in the doorway. ‘Yeah. What d’yow want?’

  Through the gaps, Evie made out a faded-looking woman in a macintosh and black beret, with round specs like Gary’s. The weather had warmed a little and a gentle drizzle was falling.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, standing with her feet neatly together. Evie saw brown lace-up shoes. ‘Something smells nice, I must say!’

  Mom was not impressed by this overture. She folded her arms across her huge bosom. This was never a good sign.

  ‘You have children, dear, do you not?’ the lady asked tentatively, as if wondering whether Mom might have forgotten whether she did or not.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mom sounded suspicious now. ‘What about ’em?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ the lady assured her. ‘I’m from the local church. I’m just going round the neighbourhood to invite local children to our Sunday school. I wondered if any of your children would like to come along? It gives them something to do – a bit of fun and activity with others. And some Sunday peace for you.’

  ‘’Ow much does it cost?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no charge, dear. And there are activities for a wide range of age groups. It’s nice for them – something to do, in the warm.’

  Evie waited for the explosion that must come. Mom had no time for church – that was another thing she was rude about to Mrs Charles, that she was a devout churchgoer. All church people were stiff-minded hypocrites according to her. But to Evie’s amazement, her mother uncrossed her arms. The words ‘no charge’ acted like a charm.

  ‘You mean,’ she said with an unctuous politeness foreign to her children’s ears, ‘you mean my girls can come for Sunday afternoon?’

  She was already calling out behind her before the lady could reply. ‘Reet, Shirl, Evie! You’ll go with this lady, won’t yer? Tomorrow – to the church?’

  Evie crept to the door and peered out past her. The lady was very thin, her mac belted tightly round her.

  ‘Hello,’ the lady said, catching sight of her. She gave an enchanted smile. ‘What a lovely little girl you have.’

  ‘Oh ar,’ Mom said, not really listening.

  ‘Can my friend come?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Oi,’ Mom interrupted. ‘Don’t go being cheeky to the lady.’

  ‘Of course she can,’ the lady said. ‘What friend? Where does she live, dear?’

  ‘Over there.’ Evie nodded towards the Knights’ house. ‘His name’s Gary.’

  ‘Yes, you just tell him. Now, you need to come at two o’clock sharp.’ She told her to come to St John’s Church and the name of the road it was on. ‘I’m Mrs Bracebridge, dear. I hope to see you there tomorrow. Two o’clock – don’t forget!’

  With a smile at Evie, which made her tired-looking face seem younger and light up almost into prettiness, she set off along the street towards Gary’s house.

  ‘There, d’you ’ear that, Ray?’ Mom went across and nudged her husband awake. ‘There’s a lady come, taking the kids off of us for the afternoon tomorrow.’ She leaned over him, a purring, seductive note in her voice now. ‘So we’ll have the house all to ourselves – ’ow about that then?’

  Nine

  Autumn 1954

  Evie dawdled along the road from the new big school in Osler Street, in the warm September afternoon. It was her birthday today, the day she turned eleven, and she was excited, but she had hung about after school to make sure Mom would be home from work when she got there.

  Upstairs under her mattress was a present: a bar of rose-scented soap she had bought when Dad was in one of his well-oiled moods, handing out joeys and sixpences like, Mom said, ‘Lord Muck’. Mom didn’t mind so much, now she had a job herself, making ‘keckles’ as she called them, at Bulpitt’s. And Evie had saved up her bits of change and bought the soap. Today she was going to give it to Mom and surely then she would be pleased and be nice to her?

  ‘’Ello, Mrs Waring!’ she called, passing the house. Mrs Waring was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, as if taking the air. Whisky was lying out in the shade on the pavement and Evie stopped to lean down and stroke her.

  ‘’Ello, Whisky girl. You’re lovely, you are.’ The old dog gave a lazy grunt in acknowledgement.

  ‘All right, are yer, bab?’ Mrs Waring asked kindly.

  ‘It’s my birthday today,’ Evie said, straightening up.

  ‘Is it?’ Mrs Waring said. ‘Well, many happy returns. Here, I’m sure I’ve got summat in here you’d like.’ She beckoned. Evie waited and Mrs Waring emerged a few seconds later with a slice of cake. ‘It’s nothing much, bit of Madeira, but here you are.’

  ‘Ta, Mrs Waring, that’s ever so kind of you!’ Evie said. She smiled and Mrs Waring looked fondly at her.

  ‘That’s all right, bab. You get it down yer before one of the others has it off you.’

  The cake soon disappeared between Mrs Waring’s house and her own. The front door of number twenty-nine was ajar and Evie pushed it open and took in the scene inside. To her surpris
e, Mom, Rita and Shirley were all sitting at the table. Evie’s mind raced. Rita was about to start a new job but had not been at work today. And of course Shirley had beaten her home. Were they waiting to say happy birthday? She saw the silver and red of Kit-Kat wrappers on the table. Kit-Kats! A treat for her, for her birthday?

  As soon as she walked in, they all grabbed the red and silver wrappers, screwing them up in their hands and looking at each other, laughing a bit, as if they all had a secret. They didn’t say anything to Evie so she went on upstairs. Maybe they’d give her one when she came down with Mom’s present. She fished about under the mattress and pulled out the little cake of soap she had bought, wrapped in a brown paper bag.

  ‘Here, Mom.’ She presented it downstairs, feeling her sisters’ scornful eyes on her. Would this be the key, the thing she was forever looking for that would unlock her mother’s heart into love for her? And were they hiding a Kit-Kat for her as a surprise? Surely in a moment someone would bring one out and say, ‘Here, this one’s for you, Evie’?

  Her mother looked at her and then at her sisters, as if they were all sharing a joke which Evie didn’t know about. As it was still warm, Mom was in one of her summer frocks, her bare arms big and pink.

  ‘What’s this then?’ Mom’s tone was mocking and curious at once. She could never resist a present.

  ‘I bought it for you,’ Evie said. She heard Shirley give a snigger.

  Her mother’s hand explored inside the bag and brought out the pink soap. She sniffed it and looked pleased. Then she tightened her lips. Evie could feel something in the air, something between them all that she was not part of.

  ‘Nice. What’s all this in aid of then?’

  ‘It’s . . .’ Evie began, growing more uncertain. Wasn’t it a nice thing for her to have done? Wasn’t Mom pleased? ‘It’s my birthday. So I bought you a present . . .’