by Liz Jensen
Underneath the spreading chestnut tree,
I loved her and she loved me.
Now you ought to see our family
’Neath the spreading chestnut tree . . .
I ain’t much of a singer, but the singing and the stroking Ed’s old thingummy, it calms me down, it does, I could do it all day.
She said I love you,
And there ain’t no ifs or buts.
He said I love you,
And the crowd all shouted –
And then right on cue, Ed wakes up and yells the last bit with me:
CHESTNUTS!
—Chestnuts, Gloria!
He sighs, cos he’s died and gone to heaven of course, with a woman attending to his whatsit, bless him. But nothing much happens to be honest which is a bit of a disappointment, and he don’t smell of roses neither. He leans back in his wheelchair, eyes shut.
—Oh Gloria, he says. —I knew you liked me.
Well, it’s nothing to do with like, is it. But we could use some baby oil, I’m thinking.
—Oh Gloria. Glorious Gloria, heh heh, he goes, then starts humming. Underneath the spreading chestnut tree . . .
—There was this famous hypnotist, I’m telling him, he used to do a show in the Little Theatre off Whiteladies Road, me and Ron went to see him. He was the cat’s pyjamas, he was, he was in ENSA, he travelled all over the country doing shows for the troops and up in London, but he came from Bristol. Ever so young but he knew his stuff, he made this woman lie on a chair, balance a bowl of oranges on her belly, I saw it with my own eyes, I’ve got a picture of her somewhere from the local paper. Then other times I heard he’d get the whole audience lifting their hands up when a tune played. Marje went once and he made everyone feel you were freezing cold in the middle of summer. Wonder what happened to him.
—Well, if he was still alive I could use his services, says Ed, and he pats my hand that’s rubbing away at his whatsit to make sure I’ve got his gist.
—I don’t think he stretched to that, I go, and all of a sudden my heart isn’t in it any more and I slow down on his thing. —Shall we ask Mrs M for a cup of tea instead? I’m that parched.
I used to like what I could do to men, I used to like that double-glazed look that came in their eyes when I was giving them the pleasure, and how grateful they were after and how I’d sometimes get an extra half-crown from the generous ones like Mr Loomis. Look at me now doing it for free.
—What’s that? says Ed.
—For free! I yell in his ear that’s not deaf. —I’m doing it for free!
When I wake up I turn on the telly, which is another of them makeover programmes, there’s this woman wants everything green because she’s always been interested in plants and biology and the jungle in particular though she’s never actually been there, it’s her passion, she says, it’s the theme of her life.
—Out with the old, in with the new, says the designer. He has one of those squishy bottoms that looks like a girl’s.
—That’s what you need, Gloria, says Mrs Manyon, after being ill.
—Leather trousers?
—No, a bit of a makeover. Want me to get the hairdresser to come in so you can be all spruced up for your visit?
—What visit, I go, and then I remember about that bloody woman coming back like a bad penny. I can’t shake her off, you’d have thought with her money she had better things to do, she could go to John Lewis with her chequebook and come away with a whole set of Wedgwood.
—You should have one of them signs like in pubs, no dogs no Irish, I tell Mrs Manyon, because Farraday’s an Irish name, I reckon, unlike Zedorro. Anyway I’m too old for a makeover.
—Well, let’s just give you a nice wash then. Bit of perfume, powder your nose.
Ed’s looking at me.
—You was probably a good-looking woman once, he says. —I’d have fancied you. I’d have shown you a good time. Still might.
—You should be so lucky.
But it ain’t strictly the truth. You’ll make do with any old bit of groping at my age, it’s not like you think, you still need to feel certain things in that department if you get my meaning. I might ask him if he wants to go all the way. If he can make a carrot of himself again, he could stick it in my whatsit. See if he keels over.
I used to be a swell kid.
* * *
It’s three weeks after Bobby’s gone away again after his jaundice, and Ron’s just been transferred to Manston, so me and Marje we’re a couple of wallflowers again, and bickering a bit, because of not getting sexually seen to. At the factory Marje got into big trouble with Mr Simpson for lying about her ladies’ bits and not having no doctor’s note, so it is a bad time. It’s a Wednesday, and I’ve finished my shift and I’m looking out for Marje at the factory gate to have a quick hello when she comes in. But she don’t turn up.
I wait and wait.
Maybe I’ve missed her, I think, maybe she came early – so I go back in. The others’ve got in overalls and started, but her overalls and her turban they’re still hanging on the hook.
And that’s when I think: oh shit, oh buggering broomsticks.
I’ve got this sixth sense, always have, so I don’t even bother telling Mr Simpson, I just hurtle out of there like a bat out of hell and run all the way home.
And sure enough something has gone wrong. Something has turned horrible. You can hear her screaming from halfway down the street. The upstairs window’s open but the front door’s shut and there’s a little huddle of neighbours on the step including Moira from number 15 blubbing her eyes out and panicking.
—She won’t let us in, she gabbles.
So I fish out my key and barge in and there she is up in Mum and Dad’s room, crouched on the floor clutching the parachute, that’s now halfway to being a dress, flaps of paper and pins all over it. She’s holding it to her belly and snotting all over it.
She don’t need to say nothing. I put my arm round the poor ninny and she shakes me off and wails. But after a while she lets me hold her close and we sit there rocking and rocking.
I was right, she shouldn’t’ve started making that dress. Bad luck, wasn’t it?
That night Bobby’s family get drunk as skunks and there’s this big wake round at Redland, but with no body to cry over, and me and Marje shriek and snivel along with the rest of them, and get shocking plastered, and Bobby’s mum says she will never laugh again as long as she lives, she lost her bestest boy, and Marje says she lost the only man in the whole world she will ever love, and we all look at the photo album of Bobby what shows his life from when he was a chubby toddler eating sand on the beach to a boy in short trousers with a prize conker and then a dark pirate man with black eyes and a hot smile, the one that swept Marje off her feet and then got ditched but came back for more, and now is scattered in pieces over Munich.
Next morning I’m there when a letter comes from him, like a warning, or a bad joke. Bobby was fond of pranks and you can’t help wondering. Good thing it’s me sees the postman, he gives me the letter and I put two and two together and stuff it straight in the pocket of my pinny. But too late for my eagle-eyed sis, hangover or no hangover.
—What’s that? she goes, face all bleary, she looks a sight, her hair all over the place. Three out of ten is all you’d give her today and her poise has upped and died.
—Nothing. A letter from Ron, from Manston. Might be temporary, might not, and he can’t tell me no more cos you’ve got to Be Like Dad, Keep Mum.
—Ron doesn’t write letters, says Marje. —He ain’t the type.
—He is now.
—Show me.
Her eyes is red and all puffy from the crying. Her nose too, and she must’ve bitten her lower lip because it’s all swollen up. It still looks like Mum’s mouth but a joke of it, like someone’s taken the mickey.
—It won’t help, I say.
—Show it me.
I cover up the pocket of my pinny but she lunges out and grabs my han
d – scratches me – and she’s fished it out and seen right away it’s from Bobby.
—He’s not dead, see!
She’s screaming with excitement, jumping up and down.
—They got it wrong, he’s written me a letter, look! See the postmark? This was sent from Portsmouth on . . .
She stops, all puzzled and confused.
—I’ll have to check the other postmark, she says. —The one on the captain’s letter.
And she smiles this huge smile.
—See, it was just one of them mistakes, she says, ripping open the letter. —He’s writing to tell me he’s alive, and it was a mistake. The captain made a mistake.
She holds it out so we can both read, but my eyes is too blurry after a minute.
Dear darling Marje,
Tonight we are going on another mission, so I just wanted to write to you before I go to thank you for being the sweetest, most adorable, most beautiful, sexy girl there ever was . . .
But she can’t read no more, can she.
THE BIG SMOKE
I have this dream but when I wake up, it’s still going on. The Jill woman, she’s sat by my chair talking to a slutty girl who is chewing gum and painting her toenails red.
—This is my dad and my mum in the hospital where Dad worked, she says. She must be showing her a photo, I could see it too if I wasn’t pretending to be asleep. I bet they are a posh nice-looking couple, wearing tweed. Typical war people, honest folk doing their bit for England, in this case working in a hospital.
—I wasn’t born at that stage, she tells the girl. —All the pictures after that, all the ones with me in, they don’t look nearly so happy. Maybe that’s why I always felt something was missing.
She don’t half feel sorry for herself, that one. Get on with your blinking life, missis, I feel like yelling at her. There’s people would kill for the kind of money you’ve got, just look at them clothes, just look at the luck you must’ve had.
—Always wanted a brother or a sister but – well, they couldn’t, or they wouldn’t. He’d bring his patients home sometimes, the successful ones. The others just stayed in the hospital, I suppose, or went home to their families, if their families could cope. There was one called Ned, he was young but he had white hair. Dad had helped him in the war, he’d had amnesia and then when Dad had helped him get his memory back, he couldn’t cope and he went crazy. Dad treated him for years, he was part of our family. Sometimes he’d get these attacks, and Dad would have to calm him down. They’d go into the study together and maybe Dad gave him a shot or something, and then you’d hear him talking, calming him down, saying soothing things. It always worked. I think my father was probably a genius.
Funny the dreams you have.
I’m waving like billy-o in the April sunshine, waving till my arm near drops off and the train shunts out of Temple Meads and drags Marje away further and further till it’s just a black dot. Oh me oh my, I’ll miss her like mad, I will, even miss her wretched grief which has lasted two weeks now, and no letting up. She’s left munitions to drive ambulances and she’s needed in London, so I’m to take in a family that’s arriving any time now, like it or lump it, raids or no raids, hard cheese and tough titty. Going back down Whiteladies Road there’s tears running down my cheeks, for Bobby, for Marje, and for me, because Ron’s still at Manston, and I might never see him again neither, them pilots gets shot down the whole bloody time, men like Bobby and Ron are dropping like flies, just random-like, one day he is alive and seeing to Marje’s ladies’ bits and the next he don’t exist no more, all because of a war that no one asked for. Which is why something inside me is singing a sad bitsy little song with no real tune that goes, Nothing’ll be the same, nothing and never.
And you know things are bad when even the goodbye present your sis gave you, a pair of utility stockings that cost three and six, can’t cheer you up.
They’re waiting on the doorstep for me, a bunch of brats and a fat woman name of Mrs O’Malley with a face like thunder. Irish they are, bombed out from the slums.
—They told me two bedrooms, she says. —This is just a little terrace house. I’ll be back to the billeting officer right away, I will. This won’t do us, d’you see how many littlies I got here?
Four or five, I reckon, mooching shoulders and dirty faces all of them.
—It’s my house, I go. —And please yourself, I didn’t want no lodgers anyway.
That is the start of our own little war, between her and me, I am Churchill and she is Hitler.
I don’t despise bog-trotters but don’t get me wrong I don’t like them either, you’re supposed to be big-hearted and maybe I’m not but can you blame me being miserable, Marje off to learn ambulance-driving, saying she’s got to do more for her country as if risking your arm like Iris every day isn’t doing something, I should coco. Very first morning and Mrs O Malley’s out collecting my hens’ eggs without so much as a by your leave, you’d have thought all those months kipping in shelters they might be above stealing, but oh no. This bunch of bog-trotters by the way is just one teeny fraction of the O’Malley Family. A couple of men are in a convalescent place and two other lads are off ‘after getting themselves kilt’, and for all I know there is squillions of cousins just queuing up to join them in my house.
You can bet we’re getting sick of this ruddy war by now. And it don’t get no better neither, because the billeting officer says, You get what you’re given, ladies. Don’t you know there’s a war on?
So life goes on, the big war outside and the little war at home, all about territory and invasion by foreigners, in between my twelve-hour shifts. Then one day a small thing happens that gets big later. I’m still in munitions but on Saturdays when we knock off early I’ve got this sideline boiling up soap, children from everywhere, the same gang that collects your jam jars, they bring me the old bits of soap and I make new cakes of it in little dishes. I’ve been at the grocer’s delivering my cakes of soap and I’m on the way home with my fresh loaf, and I see this man walking out of the bank, looks ever so familiar. His moustache has gone and his hair’s a shade lighter and he’s dressed in normal civvie clothes and not his black and scarlet cape, so it takes me a moment to clock who it is. And when I do, I get such a queer feeling I can hardly credit it.
I am winded, I am, seeing him like that after last being in his company as a human rod of iron. And this thing comes over me, says, Get yourself a better look, Gloria, make sure it’s really him, so I cross the street.
Why not follow. It’s curiosity, I suppose, about the moustache being gone and the hair being different, and him looking so ordinary, like a bank clerk – not even foreign-looking any more, and being here in Bristol and not touring with ENSA wowing the troops like I heard he was doing. He goes down Percy Street and then turns left into Adelaide Road, then right into Leavesden Avenue and into a house. Number 47. You can see him through the window of his living-room. A nice ordinary living-room, with pictures on the walls and a woman who stands up from where she’s been sitting sewing, and goes over and kisses him. I can only see the back of her head but I know straightaway who she is. She’s the Slut Fairy.
And d’you know what? I feel this jealousy something terrible cos I’m seeing my future and realising it ain’t like theirs, it ain’t as happy. A life like they’ve got, the Great Zedorro and the Slut Fairy, a nice life at number 47 Leavesden Avenue –
There’s this little voice saying, A life like that, it’s not going to be for you, Gloria, is it? Is it, my girl?
Hank’s off on the rigs again, but the new girlfriend, the older-woman one, she’s very persistent about getting into my good books. I’m beginning to think she’s trying to sell me something, God or a policy or something about family trees that we was always getting through the door when I lived with Hank and Hank’s Wife.
The little girl’s still behind the curtain but whenever this woman Jill’s there she goes all shy, won’t come out, won’t even twitch. So maybe it is God o
r a church thing.
—But I don’t have a family tree, I tell her, we’re not even big enough to be a shrub. My cousin Joe’s son got himself killed in the Falklands, and don’t get me talking about Marje. We’re a family of orphans. Just me and Hank. Anyway we’re from Bristol. Well, London in fact, Cheapside, cos Dad was in meat. Then we moved to Bristol and he worked the buses.
—Bristol? Her face lights up like she’s been there and likes it.
She’s holding my hand but I’m not sure it appeals to me much. You can tell she’s rich cos her rings ain’t fakes. She is a lady.
—Are you a Jehovah’s Witness, I go. —I mean like an undercover one?
She looks across at Mrs M then, and Mrs M makes a face.
—So why did you move from Bristol?
—Fresh start, I suppose, after the baby was born. Anyway I was always a Londoner. In Bristol they used to call me and Marje the Cockneys.
She pretends there’s a wrinkle in her skirt that needs smoothing.
—A fresh start?
—Bit of a makeover, you know, out with the old, in with the new, leather trousers and all that. I can’t remember that far back, to be honest. Hank’s Wife says I’ve got that Mad Cow thing. He’s better off with you, believe me.
—It’s not like that, she says. —Hank and I are – friends.
—You’re more than friends, I go. I sort of snap it, I don’t know why, and she looks at me all funny.
—Well, you tell me, she says slowly. —You never replied to my letter. Maybe now –
What letter? I’m thinking.
—Go on, says dead Doris.
—I can’t. Sorry.
—Why not? She’s gripping my hand now, and you’d think she was going to cry but it’s anger in fact and I wonder if I’m heading for a slap. Chilly voice. —Hank says there’s nothing major wrong with your memory, the doctor says it too. He says the short-term’s affected by a spot of dementia after your stroke but the long-term is fairly intact. That’s what he told me.
