by Susan Lewis
Nevertheless, I’m worrying myself sick about her in case I have got it wrong. Is it really so important for her to be the first in our family to go to university, and to have a profession, which would be really saying something when you consider how many relatives there are on Eddress’s side. It fairly makes my heart sing to think of my girl in a barrister’s robes, or a surgeon’s coat. It’s what Eddress dearly wanted, to see her excel, and I have to hand it to Eddress, she saw long before the rest of us that all sorts of opportunities were about to start opening up for girls. What she probably didn’t see coming was the shady underside to all these tempting new prospects, and I have to admit they make me very uneasy indeed. Miniskirts and flower power are bad enough, but birth-control pills, burning brassieres and communal living is going way too far, especially when girls our Susan’s age, who are so impressionable, are lapping it all up. It scares me half to death to think of her being taken advantage of by men, or drugged out of her mind, and I’m afraid to say that’s the way plenty of girls seem to be going today.
This is reminder enough for me that, like it or not, she’s in the best place. Being as headstrong as she is, I shudder to think of the trouble she might get into if she was at the local comprehensive with no mother to rule the roost after school. She needs the kind of supervision she’s getting at Red Maids. They know what’s best for her, and despite all her protests and unhappiness, they’re far better placed to turn her into a fine young lady with decent morals and a healthy social conscience than I’ll ever be.
For some reason this second term of her being away is proving even harder for me and Gary than the last. We rattle around in the house like two lonely peas in a cold old pod, with nothing seeming quite right about the place. Of course, we have a bit of fun now and again, lots of wrestling matches and bedtime stories, but I can see how much he misses our Susan, and his mother, I’m sure, though he never mentions her. I sometimes wonder how much he remembers her, but I don’t ask. It’s best not to remind him when it’ll probably only upset him, so we carry on learning to get on without her.
‘Dad, these potatoes are crunchy,’ Gary complains.
I look down at his plate, and though I force my best hearty laugh I feel like groaning at how useless I still am at cooking. ‘It’s the new trend,’ I tell him. ‘We’re going to have crunchy beans for tea, crunchy porridge for breakfast in the morning, and Crunchie chocolate when we go over to Grampy’s this afternoon.’
His eyes light up. ‘Crunchies are my favourite,’ he tells me with great earnestness. ‘And Milky Bars, because I’m the Milky Bar Kid!’ He draws his hands like guns to shoot me, so I shoot him back.
‘You’re dead first,’ he shouts.
I feign dead by clasping my chest and slumping over my own dismal dinner. Then scooping up our plates I put the crunchy potatoes back on to boil, and the sprouts and roast beef in the oven to keep warm. I’ll have to get our Nance to show me how to do roasters, or I’ll never get him to eat a proper dinner that doesn’t include beans.
‘Dad?’ Gary says later as we’re driving along in our new Ford Anglia.
‘Yes?’
‘If I score three goals in my next six matches, please can I have tuppence a goal to make sixpence?’
Curious, and proud that he worked out the sums, I say, ‘Yes, I expect so. What do you want sixpence for?’
‘To buy a new diver to go and look for the one that drowned.’
I’m a little perplexed until I remember the diver he used to play with in the bath that I must have thrown out by mistake. (I told him it had sunk.) ‘But drowned means he’s not with us any more,’ I explain.
‘I know, but just in case he’s trapped under a submarine, I think we should send another diver down, don’t you?’
How can I argue with that? ‘Well,’ I say, giving it a try, ‘if there was a submarine in the bath we’d probably see it, so why don’t you save up to get the bow and arrow you saw in Smart’s last week?’
At that, excitement bounces him round in his seat to face me. ‘Yes, and then I’ll be Robin Hood, and you can be the Sheriff of Nottingham who’s wicked and a robber, and everyone will be on my side because I’m good,’ and apparently happy with that he turns his dear little freckled face to the window, where, if you were on the outside, you’d only be able to see the top of his crew cut and his eyes peeking over the bottom of the frame.
He soon starts chattering on again about football and school and Animal Magic one of his favourite programmes, until we reach our dad’s. He and Beat, my stepmother, used to live behind Woolworth’s up Kingswood, but a few years ago they moved into a semi-detached council house on Coronation Road, just behind the Tennis Court pub. We come here on Saturdays now, instead of Sunday afternoons, apart from when our Susan’s at home when we try to squeeze in a visit with her.
Beat’s already at the door waiting for us when we get out of the car. ‘I saw you pulling up,’ she says, opening her arms to give me a hug. ‘How are you, my old love?’
‘Very well,’ I tell her, giving her a hug back. She’s the only person I know who hugs me before the kids, but I’m not going to condemn her for that when she doesn’t have any children of her own, so it probably doesn’t come naturally to her to put them first. I think she’s fond of me because I’m the only member of our dad’s family who comes to see him now that our Bob’s gone. Nance and Doreen have never given her a chance – they didn’t want anyone replacing our mam, and that was that. They didn’t even go to our dad’s wedding. Our Bob and I did, and our Susan was bridesmaid. Eddress would have come too if she hadn’t been in hospital on the day. We’ve got a lovely photograph of the event, taken outside Kingswood registry office, that shows all us men with our hands inside the top front lapel of our suit jackets, in a kind of salute, and our Susan standing in front of us all in a white frilly dress and carrying a great big white handbag over her arm that could have belonged to the Queen.
I watch Beat ruffle Gary’s hair and hand him a bag of liquorice allsorts as we go down the hall, which is the first thing she always does when kids turn up. I suppose it’s to keep them occupied while she has a chat with the grownups, a treat she doesn’t often enjoy because they have so few visitors.
‘Where’s our dad?’ I ask as she puts on the kettle.
I think I already know the answer, and the way she suddenly seems flustered confirms I’m right. The old man’s still in bed, probably out cold after too much booze up the Legion last night.
‘How is he?’ I ask.
‘Oh, you know, the same,’ she replies. Her soft, fleshy face is crumpled with wrinkles, and her kind blue eyes show a level of honest bewilderment that always warms me to her.
‘How are you?’ I say. ‘Are you managing to get out much?’
‘Oh yes, I can make it down to the shops on my own and one of the neighbours is very good. He brings the heavy stuff up the hill in his car. We’ve got a telly now,’ she adds, ‘but I haven’t managed to get it working yet.’
Knowing she’s hoping I’ll have a look, but is too timid to ask, I say, ‘Oh, I’m sure we can sort that out. Where is it? In the front room?’ I don’t have a clue how the darned things work, but knowing Beat and our dad they haven’t even grasped yet that it has to be plugged in.
‘Can we go and watch it?’ Gary asks.
‘When it’s ready,’ I tell him. ‘And don’t eat all those sweets now, or they’ll rot your teeth.’
‘One fell out the other day,’ he tells Beat, ‘and the fairies left a threepenny bit under my pillow.’
‘Well there’s nice,’ she smiles. ‘I expect we’ll be able to find you another threepenny bit to go with it.’
Gary’s eyes light up. ‘I’ll have sixpence then, Dad, so I’ll be able to get a new diver.’
‘I thought we’d decided on a bow and arrow,’ I remind him.
‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that.’ He nods happily and goes back to fishing in the bag of allsorts.
‘Do you w
ant me to go and see if I can get our dad up?’ I offer, turning back to Beat.
She looks unsure, and I know it’s because she’s afraid of the ugly Welsh temper on him that usually boils up when he’s hung-over. I often feel sorry for her that she ever married him, because he can be a dreadful bully when he wants to be, and she’s such a dear old soul who’d never say boo to a goose. This is her first marriage, and she must still be wondering what hit her, especially when she grew up in quite a big house from what I can gather, where money was plentiful enough for them to have fine clothes, the best food and even a cleaner. I suppose it’s why she’s so bad at housework herself, she’s never had to do it, and one look around the kitchen is enough to tell me that she probably hasn’t washed up for a week.
Reaching for a couple of mugs I turn on the geyser to give them a rinse in some nice hot water, then look round for a tea towel to dry them. Seeing a greasy-looking rag on the back of a chair, I decide to let them stand while we wait for the kettle to boil.
‘Oh, that sounds like him now,’ she says, as the floorboards overhead start to creak. ‘He’ll be glad to see you. He always is.’
I want to ask if he ever gets rough with her, but that would be prying and I know that even if he does she’ll never admit it to me. There’s a bruise on her forearm though, and I wonder if it’s from where he might have grabbed hold of her. ‘Did you go up the Legion with him last night?’ I ask.
‘Yes, but I got a lift home with Bill and Ivy Olds, so I was back about nine. It was gone midnight by the time your dad came in. I think he must have walked down the hill, because his clothes were soaked through when he came up to bed, and he was cold to the bone.’
And blind drunk, I didn’t add.
Hearing him on the stairs I go along the hall to watch him come down, ready to catch him in case he falls.
‘Eddie, my boy,’ he says when he sees me, ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
He sounds crusty and tired, but not particularly out of sorts. He’s a short man, probably not more than five feet tall, with a cheery round face, a mop of white hair and a yellowish-brown stain under his nose from all the snuff he takes.
‘Hello Dad,’ I say. ‘Button up your flies, there’s a good chap. We don’t want to see next week’s washing,’ or last week’s, I think unkindly, and I feel so bad for it that I quickly ask God’s forgiveness.
‘Susan and Gary with you, are they?’ he asks, staggering into me as he reaches the bottom stair.
‘Just Gary,’ I say, drawing back at the whiff of stale booze. ‘Susan’s at school, remember?’
‘Of course I bloody remember. Do you think I’m stupid, boyo? Where’s my lad? Ah here he is. Look how he’s grown. You’re going to be taller than your old dad one of these days, and twice as bright.’
‘I got a star this week for my sums,’ Gary tells him.
‘Good boy. Keep it up and you’ll be rich. Beattie got the kettle on, has she?’
‘It’s boiled,’ she calls out. ‘I’ll bring the tea in the front room. Eddie’s going to have a look at the telly.’
‘Bloody thing,’ he grumbles. ‘I don’t know what we want to bother with it for. The wireless is good enough for me, but she has to go spending her money.’
‘Try and be a bit kinder to her, Dad,’ I say quietly. ‘She’s a good woman and you’re lucky to have her to look after you.’
‘It’s me what does the looking after,’ he retorts gruffly. ‘Can’t do a bloody thing about the house, stupid bitch, not like your old mam. Kept everything as shiny as a brass button, she did.’
‘Beattie has other qualities,’ I murmur, ‘and our mam would be the first to say so. Now sit down there in your chair, and remember to say thank you when she brings in your tea.’
He makes some growling noises under his breath and collapses into his old armchair that’s got a lot more sag than spring these days. Beattie keeps offering to buy him a new one, but he won’t hear of it. ‘It belonged to your grandmother,’ he tells me. ‘She let me have it when we moved up from Wales. It’s the only thing I got left to remind me of the old place.’
It wasn’t true, because half the furniture in the room had come with us when we’d shipped up to Bristol back in ’37. To think that old chair is older than I am, and has had to put up with all his farting and scratching and heaven only knows what all these years, it’s a wonder it hasn’t chucked itself out and gone off to the rubbish dump on its own by now.
‘Here we are,’ Beattie says, coming in with a tray. She’s found an old doily from somewhere, and a bowl for the sugar, but the milk’s in a pint bottle and there’s something encrusted on the teaspoon. She seems not to see, or hear, things drop to the floor as she clears a space on the table. ‘One sugar, isn’t it, Ed?’
‘That’ll be lovely,’ I say, going over to the telly that’s been shoved into a corner between a plant that probably died before Churchill, and a standard lamp that’s lost half its fringe. Checking behind I see that they have thought to plug it in, but there’s no sign of an aerial.
‘Do we need one?’ Beattie asks, bemused.
‘Course we do,’ our dad grunts.
‘Let’s give it a go with a wire coat hanger for the time being,’ I say. ‘I’ve heard that sometimes works.’
‘I’ll go and fetch one,’ Beattie replies, passing our dad his tea.
I wait for the thank you and when it doesn’t come I turn to glare at him.
‘What’s the bloody matter with you?’ he demands belligerently.
‘I’m wondering what’s happened to your manners,’ I remind him.
‘Manners is for nancy boys,’ he snorts, ‘like poems and books.’
‘Oh, I think it’s lovely the way your Eddie reads so much, and writes,’ Beattie coos.
‘Who’s asking you?’ he says rudely. ‘Get me a biscuit, and I expect our Gary’ll want one too, won’t you, my boy?’
‘Yes, please,’ Gary chirps. ‘Grampy, will you say electricity?’
Our dad chuckles and puts a shaky hand on Gary’s head. ‘It’s called elec-trickery,’ he tells him.
Gary laughs with delight. ‘Because it is like a trick, isn’t it Dad?’ he says. ‘You can’t see it, or hear it, but it makes things work.’
A few minutes later, with a coat hanger plugged into the telly, I turn the set on and Beattie cries excitedly, ‘Oh look, you’ve got it going already.’
There’s no picture, just a lot of hissing and white dots. As I turn the knob I can hear some distant voices, and a few images appear like ghosts in a fog, then vanish again. ‘We’ll definitely have to fix up a proper aerial,’ I tell her.
‘Have your tea,’ she insists. ‘There’s some orange squash for Gary if you want some, my love.’
‘Go and get it then,’ our dad tells her, ‘and don’t forget the biscuits while you’re out there.’
When she’s gone I have to bite back what I really want to say because of Gary, but that doesn’t stop me telling my own father that he’s rude, selfish, ungrateful and a boor.
‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ he growls at me. ‘If you don’t like the way I am go and see your bloody sisters.’
‘Don’t swear in front of your grandson,’ I retort, or I won’t come again.’
‘Good bloody riddance,’ he mutters, and takes a mouthful of tea.
‘Here we are,’ Beattie sighs, coming back with a packet of chocolate fingers and a glass of squash. ‘Sit here at the table, my old love, and help yourself to as many as you want. I’ll just take a few for Grampy.’
‘No more than two,’ I warn Gary, knowing how fast he’s able to wolf down an entire packet of most things given half a chance.
‘So how are Flo and the girls?’ Beattie asks, after giving our dad his biscuits and settling herself on a settee that was probably her mother’s, it’s so elegant, in spite of the worn upholstery and scratched wooden arms.
‘They seem to be doing all right,’ I reply, sipping my tea.
&n
bsp; ‘So they bloody well should be,’ our dad snarls, ‘living over there in my house.’
‘It’s not yours,’ I remind him. ‘It was our Bob’s …’
‘I was living in it first, with your mother.’
‘That was a long time ago, and you know you wouldn’t see your own grandchildren out on the street, so stop making a fuss.’
‘Course I wouldn’t see his girls out on the street. I’m just saying, that’s all. They’ve got theirselves a nice house to live in, which is more than you’ve got, boyo, because yours belongs to the council.’
Deciding it’s best to ignore him, I turn to Beattie and ask about her family, who she rarely sees now, and I have to think it’s because of our dad.
‘Tell us about Susan,’ she says. ‘How’s she getting on? Oh, we had a letter from her the other day. It’s here, somewhere. She’s got lovely writing for a girl her age, that’s what we said, wasn’t it, Ted?’
‘She’s not very happy,’ our dad grunts. ‘She wants us to make you let her come home.’
‘Oh dear, she’s not still sending letters like that, is she?’ I sigh. ‘I was hoping they might have stopped by now.’
‘It’s not natural having her shut away up there with all those toffee-nose buggers what think they’m better than they are. She’s a good working-class girl, that’s what she is, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
