Changing Patterns

by Judith Barrow

  George stayed in his room until it was dark. He didn’t care what his mother said. He’d leave when he was ready.

  Now, sidling along the wall of the alleyway behind Henshaw Street, he was in half a mind to chuck a brick through Ted Booth’s kitchen window on his way to Arthur Brown’s house.

  ‘If it wasn’t for that stupid cow, Mary Howarth, I’d be in bed with a few pints under my belt by now.’ George said in answer to the questioning angle of Arthur’s head as he let him in. He looked around in distaste. There were dirty dishes piled high in the sink. A cat sat on the draining board licking its arse.

  Arthur, obviously noticing George’s face, swiped the cat off with the back of his hand. ‘Get down, you bugger.’ He gathered a pile of old newspapers off a chair, its arms black and shiny with grease. ‘Sit here?’ he said, fumbling in his jacket pocket and producing a crumpled packet of Woodbines.

  ‘I’m okay here, thanks.’ George picked up Arthur’s jacket off the seat of the hard wooden chair by the door and slung it on the back. He sat down, dropping his rucksack to the floor. God what a stinking mess. How the hell can the bloke live like this? Could he stay here? He could catch anything in this fleapit.

  ‘I don’t understand why the Howarth girl’s back ’ere anyway.’ Arthur pleated a piece of newspaper and lit it from the small pile of smouldering coals in the grate before holding it to the end of his cigarette. ‘I’ve a lot to blame on that one. Buggering off with the mother. If she’d not taken ’er off to bloody Wales we would ’ave been wed, Winnie and me.’ He sucked furiously on the cigarette in between talking. ‘Didn’t find out where they’d gone for bloody ages. They made a right fool of me. Sodding laughing stock in the pub I were. Then I ’eard she’d died – my Winnie. If she’d cocked her toes up ’ere, if we’d been wed, I’d be sitting pretty in that house of ’ers instead of this dump.’

  George noted Arthur hadn’t offered him a fag. Watching the man, he carefully felt inside one of the pockets of Arthur’s jacket and slid out a pound note between two fingers and crumpled it in his palm.

  ‘Last I ’eard, ’er Nazi boyfriend ’ad come back to look for ’er,’ Arthur said, letting go of the cinderised paper with a yelp. He examined the skin on his thumb. ‘’Eard some bugger told him where they’d gone, ’er and ’er bloody mother. I wouldn’t ’ave told the bastard. I wouldn’t have ’elped ’im – no bloody way. Bloody Kraut.’

  George couldn’t prevent the smirk.

  ‘Don’t you start bloody laughing at me.’ Arthur squinted at him. ‘What you grinning at, you silly sod?’ He scowled. ‘Sometimes I think you’re bloody mad.’

  ‘Aye, happen you’re right,’ George said softly, ‘happen you’re right.’

  Arthur shook his head. He sat down on a small wooden stool by the fireplace and tipped his head back against the wall to blow smoke rings before saying, ‘Thought I was on my feet there with the mother, you know, mate, ’till that one interfered.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘So? What ’as she done to you, then?’

  ‘Nowt for you to worry about.’ George said, ‘Just wondering if I can kip here a few days?’

  ‘Ere!’ Arthur sat up, a startled look on his face. ‘Why?’

  ‘Had a bust-up with the old lady.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Summat and nowt.’ George’s foot drummed impatiently on the floor.

  ‘She’s a fine looking woman, your ma.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you can keep your mitts off her, she’s not interested.’ George wanted to thump the old bugger but, keeping in mind he needed a favour, he let it go. ‘Well? Will you put us up or not?’

  ‘I would if I could.’ Arthur’s voice took on a whining tone.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’ George was confused. He’d believed the sad old sod would leap at the chance of a bit of company. Looking around at the shithole, he would have thought Arthur Brown would offer to pay him to stay here. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Just the one.’ Arthur’s hand shook as he lit one cigarette from the tab end of the first. ‘Howarth’s sisters live four doors down. If you’ve ’ad trouble with the eldest, that means ’e’ll be on the war path.’ He stood up and moved towards the back door. ‘Sorry, that Patrick Howarth’s a nasty piece and I’m too bloody old for a fight.’

  ‘Some soddin’ mate you are.’ George shouldered him as he left. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

  He’d barely stepped outside when the door crashed behind him. At least he had the pound note. He shoved it into his trouser pocket. Do for a rainy day.

  And there might be a lot of those. He frowned. There was no one else in Ashford he could ask tonight. In fact there was no one else in this sodding town he could ask at all. He’d have to sleep in his van. The van – a thought struck him. He’d have to get shot of it, and quick. No home, no van, no work. Danny Arkwright would be mad. He was supposed to be getting rid of that last batch of fags, taking it to Manchester. He thought quickly. He could still do that and get shot of the van at the same time.

  What a fucking mess. Bastards, all bastards, the lot of them.

  He slung his bag onto his back and, still walking, scooped up a broken half brick out of the weeds at the side of the alleyway. When he stood outside Ted Booth’s he bounced the brick in the palm of his hand and peered over the gate. Swinging one arm back he lobbed it at the kitchen window.

  For a moment there was silence, then the glass smashed, a woman screamed, a man shouted, an angry yell and the back door to number twenty-seven was flung open.

  George didn’t wait. As soon as the brick left his hand he started running and didn’t stop until he’d crossed Shaw Street and down a passageway to Scott Street. For a few split seconds he savoured the glee. Then, scowling, he looked around. The damp streets were deserted; he was the only bugger out on this miserable night.

  Chapter 57

  ‘I don’t understand, Mary. Why can’t you come home for Christmas?’

  ‘It’s just not possible, Gwyneth. Ellen still isn’t well and there are other things I need to see to here.’ Mary watched Ted angrily sweep the last of the glass onto the shovel. She knew he was furious with himself that he hadn’t moved fast enough to catch whoever had thrown the brick. Ellen was only relieved the children were safely tucked up in bed. The window was covered with cardboard. Replacing the glass was an expense they could do without.

  A thought suddenly struck her. I couldn’t afford the train fare to Wales if I wanted to go. She’d been secretly worrying about money for weeks. With no job, no chance of getting a job with a baby on the way, because she was convinced she was pregnant, she didn’t know what she was going to do.

  ‘Peter misses you as well, cariad.’ There was a distressing break in Gwyneth’s voice that made Mary close her eyes against the tears. ‘Mary?’

  ‘I’m here, love. What has he said?’ Had he dared to tell Gwyneth what he’d done? Had he told her that she wasn’t going back to Wales, that they’d finished?

  ‘Nothing, cariad, that’s just it, he won’t talk. I know you’ve had a quarrel of some sort, isn’t it. I can tell. But I don’t understand.’ There was silence between them. The line crackled and hummed. When Gwyneth spoke again her voice was tentative. ‘What about the wedding, cariad? I thought it was all sorted but then the minister told me on Sunday that Peter had said it wasn’t happening until next spring? That you’d set a date when you came back?’

  How dare he? A flash of anger almost made her say, I’m not coming back, but she couldn’t do that to Gwyneth, not yet anyway. She waited.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about that to me.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, Gwyneth, it was all such a rush to get here and then so much has been happening. I should have kept in touch more.’ Mary leant her head against the wall. The back door was open and Ted was in the yard. She could hear him shovelling the glass into the dustbin.

  When Mary looked up, Ellen was watching her from the kitchen with
a worried look on her face. ‘Are you okay?’ her sister mouthed at her.

  Mary nodded, smiled reassuringly. But she wasn’t. By rights she should now be in a frenzy getting ready for the wedding, her days full of excitement and anticipation, instead of this gaping emptiness. If she could just get through the next few days, get past the twenty-third, she’d be all right. Who are you kidding? she thought. That day would be doubly hard, the day she should have married and Tom’s birthday. She wondered when that stab of grief, that he wasn’t here anymore, would lessen. She forced a smile into her voice. ‘Your lovely outfit will keep,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not bothered about that, cariad, I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t be. Please, Gwyneth.’

  ‘When I asked him if he was coming to you for Christmas, he said he had too much work to do in the village.’

  Mary fielded the hidden question in her neighbour’s voice. ‘Will you be all right, Gwyneth? What will you do at Christmas?’

  ‘O, iawn, I’ll be fine. Ivy Morris at the fish shop is on her own. She’s asked me to go to her for the day.’

  ‘Good.’ There was a clamour of voices in the kitchen. Mary looked down the hall again. Linda had brought William downstairs. Now she was walking backwards holding onto him and leading him across the room. He was chuckling which was making her laugh as well.

  ‘Listen, Gwyneth, I need to go and help with the children’s breakfast. I’ll ring soon, I promise. Just look after yourself, eh?’

  ‘Shall I ask Peter to telephone you?’ Gwyneth spoke quickly. ‘He’s always welcome to use my telephone.’

  ‘No, it’s all right, love,’ Mary butted in, ‘he telephones from Alun and Alwyn’s place sometimes.’ She forced a smile into her voice. ‘I’m sorry, Gwyneth, I really must go. Like I’ve said, don’t you worry, everything will be okay.’

  It wouldn’t. Mary slowly put the receiver down. She placed both palms on her stomach, feeling a slight roundness where before she’d been flat. The cold apprehension that tightened her skin made her feel sick. She was pregnant. And there was no father on the scene.

  Chapter 58

  Christmas Day

  ‘Here we are.’ Jacqueline was excited and relieved to be at Henshaw Street. When she’d woken, there’d been an odd light in her room. Peeping through the curtains, she saw it was snowing and she worried that they wouldn’t be able to get to Linda’s. She really, really wanted to be with her cousin because, even though Mum and her had moved back with Dad this week, they were still being funny with one another sometimes. And she didn’t like Mum sleeping in her room with her because she snored. Dad was sleeping on his own. She always thought mums and dads slept together because they had the biggest bed.

  Even opening her presents hadn’t been fun. They were so quiet watching her, instead of laughing and teasing like they used to.

  In the end she’d left some gifts unwrapped and sat on the bottom step of the stairs for the best part of an hour in her balaclava, coat and wellington boots, waiting to go, unsure if Mum would agree to going, even though Uncle Ted and Auntie Mary had asked them last week. So she was happy when they finally closed the front door and left, carefully walking along the spade-sized path that Dad had made through the snow.

  Kicking off her wellingtons and throwing her balaclava and coat in the direction of the clothes stand in the hall, she ran into the kitchen to find Linda.

  ‘What did you get?’ she said, kneeling and hugging her cousin who was on the rug in front of the fire.

  ‘A new doll from Father Christmas, this spinning top from Mummy and Daddy and a toy piano from Auntie Mary. Look.’ Linda held up the small, pink, wooden instrument. ‘It plays too.’

  ‘I know. Auntie Mary bought one for me as well.’ Jacqueline lifted the lid and poked at the keys.

  ‘And she bought William a tambourine.’ Linda picked it up and shook it in the little boy’s direction. Sitting in his high-chair he leaned over and she handed it to him. Laughing, he banged it on the tray.

  ‘Father Christmas got me a Kaleidoscope and a kit of some moulds and Plaster of Paris. I’ll be able to make all the seven dwarfs and Snow White.’ Jacqueline pressed down quickly a few times on the handle of the spinning top and it spun off the rug. She scuttled after it. ‘And a Rupert Annual.’

  ‘We can swop. I got a Noddy Annual.’

  Jean and Patrick crowded in at the door, looking awkward. They were still wearing their coats.

  ‘We nearly didn’t get here did we, Mum?’ Jacqueline said. ‘And look, Linda’s got her parrot jumper on that Auntie Mary knitted, like me. Oh and William. See? All the colours all mixed up like mine?’

  She gazed up at the Christmas decorations. Mum had only let her fasten some balloons to the ceiling in her bedroom but here they were all over the house; crinkled paper rolls pinned with drawing pins near the light bulb in the centre of the room were twisted round and round, blue then yellow, red then green, and fastened to all the corners. And the lametta draped over each line looked like a sparkling curtain; the short heavy strands of silvery lead balanced precariously, falling off when anyone touched them. Perhaps she and Linda could smuggle some upstairs later, to put over the metal rail on Linda’s bed.

  ‘Parrot wool,’ Jean corrected, with a tight smile. ‘We certainly had a job on the streets,’ she agreed.

  Jacqueline laughed. ‘Dad threw snowballs and Mum threw one back.’ Of course the fun stopped after they’d called for Granny Winterbottom. Mum had said she had to come too. Dad almost had to carry her over the snow. He’d pulled some really funny faces behind her back though. ‘We had to jump over all these lines of snow that the milkman made with his float. We followed it all along Manchester Road and up your street.’

  ‘Working on Christmas Day, poor sod,’ Patrick said.

  Jean frowned at him. ‘Some of the tracks were none too straight, either,’ she said, ‘I think he’d already had a tipple or two at some of the houses.’

  ‘Well good for him.’ Ted laughed, picking up William and the highchair together and carrying them down the hall to the parlour.

  Patrick looked towards the window. ‘You find out who chucked the brick?’ he asked Ted as he passed him.

  ‘No, they’d gone by the time I got to the alley,’ Ted said, his voice tight with renewed anger.

  ‘Probably some drunk. I could ask around?’

  ‘No point. Didn’t take long to put new glass in.’

  ‘Bloody cheek, though.’

  Jean glared again at Patrick.

  ‘Yeah, well, done now,’ Ted said, coming back into the kitchen and glancing at the window, at the same time calling: ‘Back in a minute, son,’ to William who, objecting to being left on his own, was wailing.

  The thought occurred to Mary that it could have been George Shuttleworth but she kept quiet.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ Jean asked Mary, taking off her coat and glancing over at Ellen who was sitting in the armchair reading the Radio Times.

  Ellen saw her; she flapped the magazine. ‘Want to read the King’s Christmas message … got his picture in as well?’

  ‘No, thanks. Mary?’

  ‘No, it’s all ready. I’ve set up the table in the parlour and Ted’s carried everything in except the chicken.’ Mary was flushed, her forehead and nose shining from the heat in the kitchen and scullery and she’d spent most of the morning heaving against the smell of the roasting chicken and boiling sprouts.

  And it wasn’t just being pregnant or worrying all the time about money that was churning her stomach. Every day she waited for the knock on the door, hoping Nelly had second thoughts and had spoken to the police. Afraid she’d warned her son.

  ‘Bird okay, then?’ Patrick said, as Ted passed them it on a large serving dish. ‘Got a good deal from the butchers for that and the sausages.’

  ‘First time for everything.’ Jean pressed her lips together. He was only trying to get in their good books. It hadn’t done him any harm putting his han
d in his pocket for once.

  ‘Come on then, don’t let it get cold.’ Ellen ushered the girls out of the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a minute. I just need to make some more gravy,’ Mary said.

  When everyone left she closed the door to the hall and went to the back door for a breath of fresh air. Ted had cleared a path through the snow to the lavvy and thrown some bits of bacon rind down for the birds. Now a cluster of sparrows scattered and lined up on the wall, squabbling. Above them the sky was clear blue and, when she looked higher, she saw the full moon, still visible from the night before, a pale, tissue-paper thinness.

  Mary automatically covered her stomach with her hands as though to protect the tiny life inside. Fear for the future mixed with a bleak sadness. And guilt. She shouldn’t have told Nelly about Linda without asking Ellen. What she’d say if, or when, she found out, Mary didn’t want to think about.

  She stretched her neck from side to side to try to release the tension. Closing the back door she pulled her pinny over her head. Looking in the mirror she tidied her hair. She couldn’t be bothered with lipstick and face powder.

  At the parlour door she listened to the chatter and laughter, the clinking of cutlery and dishes. She took in a long breath, fixed a smile on her face and went in.

  The last thing she felt like doing was pretending to enjoy a family day.

  ‘Good scram that, our kid.’ Patrick tipped his chair back on two legs. ‘If I say so myself. Can’t beat a good bird.’

  Jean sighed with impatience.

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it,’ Mary said, starting to pile the plates together.

  ‘Ask your dad to play his harmonica.’ Jacqueline gave Linda a nudge. ‘Go on, ask him,’ she urged.

  ‘Okay.’ Linda went to sit on Ted’s knees. Arms around his neck she burrowed her face into his shoulder and whispered to him.

  He nodded and went through to the kitchen, returning seconds later holding the harmonica and waving a trail of Izal toilet paper and two combs.

  Sitting on the sofa, the two girls next to him, he helped them to wrap the Izal around the combs. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘The Grand Old Duke of York.’ The girls put their lips to their makeshift instruments and hummed. The comb and paper made a rasping sound.