No Friend of Mine

by Ann Turnbull

  “Can I ring the bell?”

  “Yes. Ring it now.”

  Doreen reached up and pressed the bell. The bus slowed to a halt.

  “Lang’s Tile Works,” the conductor called. He winked at Mum. “They’re in good voice.”

  Even from inside the bus you could hear the shouting and see banners and placards jigging about.

  Mum said proudly, “My daughter’s on the picket line.”

  They clambered down the steps with their packages.

  The shouting became more distinct as they walked along the road. It was lunch time, and some part-timers who wouldn’t join the strike were going in.

  “Scab!” “Blackleg!” the pickets yelled, and the offenders had to push their way through the crowd, using their bicycles as protection.

  The pickets set up a chant: “No cuts for Christmas! No cuts for Christmas!”

  The chanting became a cheer as Mum, Lennie and Doreen arrived.

  Mary came forward. Her lips were blue, but Lennie could feel the excitement radiating from her; she loved a fight.

  “You’re cold, Mary.” Mum made an accusation of it.

  “I’m all right. What have you brought?”

  “Apple pies,” said Doreen. “Aunty Elsie made them.”

  “And soup and bread,” said Mum.

  “Two flasks! I’ll call the girls.”

  Mary’s workmates from the press shop propped their banners against the fence and crowded round – Alice, Kath, Edna, Big Joan and Little Joan. “Soup! Oh, you’re wonderful, Mrs Dyer!”

  “Just practice,” said Mum, pouring soup into mugs. “I seem to have spent my life taking soup to picket lines.”

  Several families had come with food, making a party atmosphere around the works entrance. Braziers full of red-hot coals were burning, and some men were frying sausages. But the weather was cold – raw and windy, with flurries of sleet. Caps were pulled low over faces, headscarves tied tight. The pickets stamped their feet to keep warm, and Mary complained, “My jaw’s that stiff, I can’t shout.”

  “You weren’t doing too bad just now,” said Mum. “It’s not solid, then, the strike?”

  “They’re trickling back. It’s the cold; and Christmas coming…”

  Doreen nudged Lennie. Jimmy Morris was offering them sausages. Lennie took one. It was charred on the outside, but when he bit into it the inside was pink. It burned his mouth but he didn’t care.

  “Want a tater?” Jimmy was pulling baked potatoes out of the fire.

  They nodded, their mouths full of sausage.

  “Here. Give one to your mum, too.”

  The food kept them warm for a while. But later, walking home uphill, with the sleet stinging his face, Lennie began to feel martyred, especially when the bus went by, hissing on the wet road.

  “We can’t afford it both ways,” Mum had said.

  Lennie could feel the wet seeping in through the soles of his shoes.

  “My shoes leak,” he said.

  “There’s a jumble sale at Trinity Hall next week,” said Mum. “We’ll have to see what we can find. Doreen needs shoes, too. And a longer frock.”

  “And you need gloves,” said Lennie.

  Mum’s gloves were in holes. She always knitted them for the family but hadn’t got around to her own yet.

  “I know. I’ve got chilblains already.”

  Doreen jumped up and down to get her mother’s attention. “I need a fairy dress.”

  “Aunty Elsie will make that,” promised Mum. “She’ll enjoy doing it.”

  “And a wand,” sang Doreen. “And wings.”

  She flapped her arms and ran along the path ahead of them.

  “Fly away! And stay there!” Lennie shouted. He said to Mum, “I’m fed up with her being a fairy.”

  Mum laughed. “I’d have flown away if she hadn’t got that part. And what about you, Lennie? Doreen says you’re a footman or something?”

  “Second footman,” said Lennie.

  It was the sort of part he’d known he would get. Non-speaking. Nothing to do, really, except walk around behind the prince, feeling stupid. Even before Miss Quimby made the announcements, Lennie could have guessed who would get which parts. Ken Forton was the prince; pretty Sylvia Lee was Cinderella; Margaret Palmer was the fairy godmother; Bert Haines and Reggie Dean were the horse.

  Back end of the horse – that was the sort of part Lennie would have liked. Unseen but powerful. Well. He was stuck with second footman and Miss Quimby’s nagging: “Come on, Lennie, look lively.” “Head up, Lennie. Try not to look so vacant.”

  “Rehearsals on Monday,” he told Mum gloomily.

  And gloomily, on Monday, he went to school.

  At first it was as bad as he had expected. Sitting about, watching, while other people forgot their lines and missed their cues; having to sing in the choruses; being chivvied by Miss Quimby. Then they started on the scene where the prince visited Cinderella’s house with the lost slipper; and Lennie, attending the prince, and trying to keep his head up as instructed, tripped over a fold of curtain, lurched across the stage, and collided with an ugly sister. A ripple of delight ran through the watching children. “Lennie!” exclaimed Miss Quimby, exasperated.

  Lennie was embarrassed; but he saw, in that moment, the possibilities of his role. When they replayed the scene he did an impression of a clumsy yokel, bumping into the prince, and standing about deliberately looking vacant. “Lennie?” Miss Quimby began, but the audience rocked with laughter, and she let it go.

  The next rehearsal was on Thursday. By then Lennie had decided that the second footman’s problems were due to drink. He staggered about in imitation of Freddie Lloyd leaving the Red Lion on a Saturday night. The audience loved it. Miss Quimby permitted a smile to cross her face. She said, “Just a hint, Lennie. Don’t overdo it.” On the following Monday he staggered less dramatically but added a discreet hiccup.

  After rehearsals started, things began to change for Lennie. The gang bothered him less; other children acknowledged him in the street; he still wasn’t any good at football and got caught in “tag”, but it didn’t seem to matter so much. One day, as they filed silently into school after the break, Martin Reid nudged him and said, “Hic!”

  Lennie wrote to Ralph about the pantomime. Ralph wrote back, but not often, and his letters were always short. Then, at the beginning of December, he told Lennie, “Term ends next week. I’ll be home on Friday the tenth. See you on the Saturday? Usual place.”

  The tenth. A whole week before Lennie’s school. That could mean trouble. Lennie knew he would never get to meet Ralph after school without someone finding out, and then those new fragile links with his classmates could be broken.

  He didn’t want to break them. And yet he had to see Ralph. Ralph was his friend.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Hello.”

  “Hi.”

  Lennie tried to sound cool, like someone in an American film.

  Ralph was crouching by the fire he had lit in the ruined cottage. He stood up.

  “Quite a blaze.”

  He held out his hands over the fire.

  The two boys regarded each other awkwardly. Lennie was aware all over again, after so many weeks without seeing him, of how different Ralph was. It wasn’t just the clothes. There was a healthy bloom about him that you never saw in Culverton boys. Lennie knew Ralph must be looking at him and thinking about the differences – the thin darned jersey, the dustiness.

  The dust got everywhere in Culverton: black dust from the mines, white dust from the tile and china works, ash from the foundries. The women said their washing came in dirtier than it went out. Lennie thought of the dust that had settled on his dad’s lungs over the years until it formed a hard, unshifting layer.

  “My dad’s dying of the dust,” he said.

  Ralph looked startled. “Dying? Your father?”

  “I don’t mean he’s dying this minute.” Lennie hadn’t meant to talk about the dust,
hadn’t consciously thought until this moment that the dust would eventually kill his father, but it pleased him to have got a reaction. “I mean it’s the dust that will kill him, slowly. Like our Uncle Charley. He died of the dust. In the end they just can’t breathe. My dad’s trying to get compensation from your dad. Didn’t you know?”

  Ralph stared. “I know who he is now – your father. The Union secretary?”

  Lennie nodded.

  “Damned smart alec, my father calls him. Always stirring. A troublemaker. You never told me it was him.”

  Lennie’s fists clenched.

  “You never told me your dad was George Wilding!”

  “You knew!”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re stupid, then. Everyone knows us.”

  Lennie mocked: “Everyone knows us. Think you’re so important, don’t you?”

  “My father is important. He keeps this town employed. Wilding, Denton, Lang – there would be nothing here without the three of them, my father says.”

  Lennie withdrew a step. How could he ever have liked Ralph? He was one of Them, the bosses. You could hear it in his voice.

  Ralph said, uncertainly, “Why are we arguing? It doesn’t stop us being friends, does it, what our fathers think of each other?”

  Lennie caught a hint of anxiety in his voice, and realized that he, Lennie, had the upper hand for once; it was a new feeling and he enjoyed it.

  “Us working folk have to stick together,” he said. It sounded unreal, like something said at a political meeting.

  Ralph stared at the fire for a moment. Then he looked up and grinned. “No,” he said, “us two have to stick together. Against fathers. And families.”

  Lennie caught the change of mood. “Against sisters.”

  “Definitely against sisters. Against school.”

  Against bullies, thought Lennie, but didn’t say it.

  “Against masters,” said Ralph. He began laughing. “Against school dinners. Against cabbage. Against… against…”

  “Against smelly socks,” said Lennie. They staggered together, laughing uncontrollably.

  “Come over to Old Works?” suggested Lennie. You haven’t been there, have you?”

  “What is it?”

  “Old broken walls. Shafts and that.” They ran, talking in gasps. Their breath hung on the cold air.

  “I liked your letters,” said Ralph.

  “You didn’t say much in yours.”

  “Couldn’t. The Censor.”

  “The what?”

  “The Deputy Head. All our letters are read before they post them.”

  Lennie stared. “Can’t you post your own?”

  “Difficult. Chaps do manage it, of course. Especially the older ones.”

  “But why…?”

  “Tale bearing. Mutiny in the ranks. Can’t have that. We can’t have Mummy finding out that the food is terrible or that little Johnny’s crying himself to sleep every night.”

  “And do you – they?”

  “Oh, it’s not too bad. But it can be hard at first.”

  “I wouldn’t like it.” Lennie couldn’t bear to think of spending weeks, months, away from home; he’d miss his family, even Doreen.

  “No danger of my father taking me away, of course,” said Ralph. “Whether I was happy or not.” He laughed. “Some chaps deliberately write long letters for the benefit of the Censor – pages and pages, utterly, totally, catastrophically boring.”

  They had Old Works to themselves. Lennie had calculated that they would; there was a craze for football at the moment, and those who weren’t at Saturday morning pictures would be kicking a ball around in the field behind the Rose and Crown.

  They climbed on the broken walls and walked a little way into a tunnel that Lennie said was supposed to come out at Springhill.

  “Have you been through?”

  “No. It gets low, and narrow.”

  “We could go through. Let’s try.”

  But the tunnel twisted, and as the roof came down lower and lower, forcing them to crouch, they retreated and went back to clambering over the walls and exploring the ruined buildings.

  “We could race back to the cottage,” said Lennie. He was getting cold. He’d sneaked out without his coat.

  But the fire at the cottage had gone out, and it took a long time to relight it. At last Lennie held his cold hands over the flames.

  “You’ll get chilblains, doing that.”

  “You should see my mum’s hands. She’s got awful chilblains. She needs some new gloves. Her old pair’s all holey, like.”

  “Does she only have one pair?”

  Lennie was astonished. “Yes!”

  “My mother’s got pairs and pairs of gloves,” said Ralph. He shivered. “It is cold. Do you want to come to our house?”

  Lennie thought of the warm carpeted rooms, the books and games. But he shook his head. “Your parents won’t like it.”

  “They’re out.”

  “Mrs Martin, then.”

  “Mrs Martin is an employee. It’s none of her business.”

  “I feel funny there,” said Lennie.

  And he knew he would feel funny if Ralph came to his house, even though in a way he wanted him to.

  They shared Ralph’s lunch – soup in a vacuum flask, and sandwiches.

  “I can’t come tomorrow morning,” Ralph said. “There’s church; and then we’re out visiting.”

  “And I’m at Aunty Elsie’s in the afternoon.”

  “Monday, then.”

  “Not till late. Some of us are still at school. You’re lucky.”

  “I’m not. My father will probably take me to the works again – I don’t know which days. But I’ll come when I can, after school’s out.”

  “I’ll bring your book – the King Arthur.”

  “And I’ll bring a torch.”

  “We could be ghosts in the dark!”

  “Yes. Splendid.”

  It was Wednesday before they met up again. On Monday Lennie had a rehearsal after school and on Tuesday he went to the cottage but Ralph wasn’t there. It was cold. The wind cut through his clothes, even through the coat that Mum had insisted he wear. The fire wouldn’t light and the autumn leaves had turned to mush. By half past four it was pitch dark. He went home.

  But on Wednesday Ralph was waiting for him. He had brought his torch. They took turns to hide in the woods, playing Dicky-shine-a-light and ghosts. Then they started the fire with paper Ralph had brought, and lit a cigarette from it. The December dusk closed in on them as they sat puffing and talking. The fire devoured the paper, and went out, leaving a pile of blackened fragments.

  “It’s too damp for fires now,” said Lennie.

  When the flames were leaping it had felt cosy, safe from the crowding trees, but now the cold crept back.

  Lennie jumped up and flapped his arms.

  “There’s a fair going up in the Canal Field,” he said. “We seen them putting up the rides and that. Friday it starts.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I might. If I can get round Mum or Phyl to give me some money. Will you go?”

  “I’d like to. I’d have to try and sneak out.”

  “Wouldn’t they let you go?”

  “I doubt whether my father would think it was suitable.”

  “Oh. See you tomorrow, anyway?”

  “Yes. Oh! I nearly forgot.” Ralph felt in his coat pocket and handed Lennie something soft and pliable.

  “What is it? Shine the torch.”

  Lennie found he was holding a pair of leather gloves.

  “They’re for your mother. You said her gloves were in holes.”

  “But where did you get these?”

  “My mother. She’s got plenty of gloves. Those are old ones.”

  “They don’t look old.” Lennie put one on. The inside was lined with silky fur. “I can’t give her these.”

  “Why not?” Ralph’s voice, in the darkness, was disappoin
ted. “Won’t she like them?”

  “Yes, but – well, they’re so – I mean, she usually has knitted ones, like. She makes them, or Aunty Elsie does. And – well, they’re your mother’s.”

  “She said you could have them. You might as well. Say you bought them – a Christmas present.”

  “She’d know I couldn’t buy anything like this.”

  “They’re just old gloves,” said Ralph crossly. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I am,” said Lennie, contrite. “Thank you.”

  “See you tomorrow, then? Same place, same time?”

  “Yes,” said Lennie, wishing they could meet somewhere warmer, indoors.

  Well, Friday was the first day of the fair. That would be warmer, more cheerful. Perhaps Ralph would come. And as he thought that, Lennie realized that he wasn’t sure he wanted him to. Everyone – all the boys from school – would be there.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lennie didn’t give the gloves to Mum. He felt sure, somehow, that she wouldn’t want them. All day on Thursday he carried them around in his pockets until Dad said, “What’s that you’ve got, Lennie, a couple of ferrets?” and then he hid them behind the settee with his treasures.

  On Friday night he went to the fair.

  Mum gave him some money. “There’s sixpence each, and a penny between you for sweets.”

  “Do I have to take Doreen?”

  “Do you want to go or not?”

  Lennie resolved to think of Doreen as six and a half extra pennies in his pocket.

  Doreen came downstairs wearing new socks, bright white.

  “What are you wearing those for?” Mum demanded.

  The socks had been a present from Aunty Elsie for Doreen’s birthday; they were so wondrously white and new that until now Mum had permitted Doreen to wear them only when they went to Elsie’s for tea.

  Doreen stuck out her lower lip.

  “You’re not wearing those at the fair,” Mum insisted. “Go and get your fawn ones.”

  “Don’t like them!” Doreen’s chin trembled.

  “You won’t like those if they get covered in mud. Get your old ones. Now!”

  Doreen flounced across the room and stomped upstairs.