As The Sun Goes Down

by Jay Howard

Jackie’s Bike

  I realised from an early age what the differences are between being one of a large brood and being an only child.

  Jackie says to me, “You’re the lucky ones. You’ve always got someone to play with or go out with. I get awful lonely and Mam keeps me home all the time ’cos she’s scared of what might happen if I’m out by myself.”

  I told her it was ’cos she hasn’t got the brains she was born with, well that’s what me Da says any road. I says to her, “I wouldn’t mind a bit of peace and quiet. I’m sick of all the fights and taking care of the young ’uns, and another set of nappies every year.”

  She doesn’t have to eat as fast as she can to be first to get to the seconds. And I know she doesn’t have to help out with the chores. Her Mam can cope by herself, with there only being the three of them.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I do love my family, all of them, even little Jason, never mind there’s always a bogey hanging from his nose - why won’t he blow his nose like I tell him to? And Mam and Da are the best in the world. Mam’s so big and strong she can lift a sack of coal in each hand and lug them indoors, no sweat. Da’s real small, but wiry. In the war his mates called him the The Little Corporal, like that Hitler bloke. I asked him didn’t he mind, and he just said he was a Corporal and he is little, so what’s to get annoyed about? He’s nothing like Hitler, though, he’s smashing, my Da is. He always has a big grin when he sees us and swoops us up in the air, swinging us round till we shout, “Enough!”

  Yes, we always have a laugh with Da. And I have to giggle when Mam and Da go out: from behind they look like Laurel and Hardy. But by, they do look smart when they go to the Social on special nights, like the Coronation. I feel right proud of them.

  Where was I? Oh, yes. Most of all, though, Jackie doesn’t have to wait her turn for the toy pot. If she wants something she just looks pleadingly at her Da with those big blue eyes of hers, and all that long blonde hair that stays properly curled all day, and whatever she asks for, her Da rushes out to get it for his ‘little princess’.

  It’s not like that for us. Every Friday we have the ritual of the pay packet. Da gets home at the end of the week, tired but still keen to get out to his allotment. He wipes his mouth after his supper and that’s the signal for Mam to sit down with him, a cup of tea each, and cluster the pots on the table between them. Da then does this big ceremony, handing over his pay packet to Mam with a pretend trumpet fanfare and a sly wink to us, which makes us giggle. She carefully checks it, always the full amount minus the one pint Da allows himself with his mates on the way home from work, and we watch. It’s awesome, seeing so much money all at once. Imagine what I’ll be able to buy when I get a job and have that much every week!

  The pots are opened then to receive their weekly addition. There’s the rent pot, the electric pot, the gas pot, the food pot. There’s the bright red clothes pot and its paler cousin, the shoes pot. But the pot of most interest to us, which unfortunately always receives the smallest share, is the emerald green toy pot. I love that colour! It’s the exact richness of the moss in the woods that’s so soft against my cheek when I’m resting on a hot summer day, with just the rustling leaves and birdsong instead of the noise and busyness of home.

  Now, the toy pot isn’t for birthdays and Christmas. Once Mam’s pots have swallowed their weekly share the rest of the money is handed back to Da. He takes it to their bedroom where he has his own pots, pots we’re not supposed to know about. He keeps the birthdays pot and the Christmas pot, the holiday pot and the one he keeps best hidden of all, the pot for gifts for Mam. The toy pot downstairs is for ‘extras’ for us children. We have to take turns for that money. We ask for crayons and paper, or canes and tissue paper to make a kite, or plasticine, or a new ball, and then have to wait, jealously guarding the sequence of its emptying. My brothers will nip in, quick as wink, and take my turn if I don’t watch out.

  It was my turn next for the toy pot when Jackie got her bike, the first on the street that was brand new and a girl’s bike to boot, no crossbar getting in the way, so your dress can hang down properly, not get hitched up showing your knickers to the boys if you’re not careful. I changed my request from Ivanhoe to a bike - well, you won’t get if you don’t ask - but I wasn’t surprised when Mam just laughed.

  Jackie called over the fence for my older sister, Sarah, to go and have a look, and Mam insisted she let me tag along. I think Mam just wanted me out from under her feet while she was baking. I love a lick of the mixing bowl after the cake has gone in the oven, and Mam says my eyes make her feel guilty if she doesn’t leave an extra bit for me.

  Jackie wouldn’t let me touch her wonderful bike in case I left dirty fingerprints on it. Everyone knows if there’s a way of getting dirty I’ve already found it. Miss Jackson won’t let me take my turn as ink monitor at school now, not since I ‘accidentally’ missed the ink well and splashed it all over Stephen, and his new exercise book. I got it splashed all over my dress too but that was a small price to pay to get back at the monster who pulls my hair and calls me names. How I long for short hair and the right to fight like the boys do. I’d give him what for, and no mistake, but I don’t want detention.

  Jackie’s bike is pink, which is yuk, but looks very big and powerful. It has three gears and shiny wheel spokes, which glinted the sun back at me when I saw it. I could imagine the wheels whirling round, faster and faster, spinning the sunlight back at plodding pedestrians as I flashed past them on my way to adventure. Jackie showed Sarah how well she could ride it up and down the street, and even let Sarah have a go, squealing in terror until she learned to control it. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about – you pedalled to go forwards and had brakes to stop. What could be so hard about that?

  “It’s so difficult to get your balance at first!” Sarah said, and giggled, all girly.

  Well, it would be if you’re not in the habit of playing the games Jack and I play when Mam isn’t checking to see I’m not behaving like a tomboy again. Proper games, boys’ games, need physical daring, strength and balance. I just had to have a go and show them how to really ride a bike.

  How though? They weren’t going to give me a chance so I’d have to just grab one. I was determined, so I started the watching and waiting game. I was very lucky actually. It felt like forever at the time but it was really less than a fortnight before Jackie was getting bored with her bike. It was always the way with Jackie. Mam said that it was because she got things too easily so she didn’t appreciate what she had.

  Jackie had proudly paraded her bike around and made sure everyone on the street had admired it, but now she was back to sitting on the kerb with Sarah, playing with their dolls that they claimed were actors in the plays they made up. And while they did that the bike was left unnoticed on the pavement behind them. It was another hot, drowsy afternoon and most people were sticking to shady spots, so there was no one close enough to stop me. I carefully, oh so quietly, lifted the bike upright and straddled it, and settled my hands round the rubber handlebar grips. Carefully I got the pedal in the right position, as I’d seen Jackie do it, weight on it, lift into the saddle and off! It was a jarring bump from the pavement down the kerb to the road (Jackie always started with it on the road, of course) but somehow I kept it upright. I was cycling!

  I ignored the shouts behind me to stop. Not for me the careful turning at the corner to come back down our street. There was a whole wide world out there I could get to before teatime with the speed of a bike beneath me! The wind of my own passing blew my hair streaming behind me. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. It was glorious! The pedals turned faster and faster without any real effort at all, especially when I figured out how to change gear. My legs were tireless and would take me to the ends of the earth. I was flying! The familiar streets had passed in a flash and I was in virgin territory. I was an explorer, as brave as Livingstone!

  But reality hit, quite literally. You see, I didn’t know about Lea Hill. I do now.
Lea Hill is steep – very steep. And at the bottom of this steep hill is a crossroads which is very busy when the factories empty and all the workers head for home. There seemed a solid mass of buses, cars and bikes and I was heading straight for them! What was it Jackie had said about the brakes? Was it front first and then back, or back first and then front? Oh, God! Help me – I can’t remember!

  I slammed them both on with eyes shut tight.

  -0-

  I woke in hospital to find a heavy plaster cast on my right arm and Mam looking very worried beside my bed.

  “Jane! Thank God you’ve woken!”

  Mum scooped me into a huge cuddle, tears streaming down her face.

  “Why are we here, Mam?”

  Whoops – shouldn’t have said that perhaps.

  “Why? You ask me why? When, oh when, will you learn? We’ve been worried sick about you! You could have been killed! Concussion, broken arm, and you ask me why?”

  That was it – the sobs started in earnest.

  “I’m OK, Mam, honest. It doesn’t hurt…” I had a stinking headache but I wasn’t about to admit to that.

  Mam insisted on taking me straight home to look after me. A pity, really, as it looked like it could have been quite good fun in the hospital. It was nice, though, to be the centre of attention back home. Everyone called to see how I was and to hear my story. Mam made up a bed for me on the settee so that she could keep an eye on me. The doctor had carefully instructed her on what to look out for as a possible complication of a concussion, whatever that was.

  I felt right bad when Jackie came round, half carrying her bike with its squashed up front wheel from when I crashed through the hedge. She stopped and looked at me through the living room window and I thought she was going to cry. I went out to the back yard and Da was on one knee checking it out while Jackie held it upright. They both looked at me and Da looked so disappointed with me I thought I was going to cry. I bit inside my bottom lip, hard, to stop myself.

  “I’m so sorry, Jackie,” I says. “I never meant to damage it.” And she looks at me, all angry like.

  “There’s many things happen in life that we don’t intend,” says Da. “Some things we can’t avoid, and some things we should have made sure didn’t happen in the first place. This shouldn’t have happened, should it, Jane?”

  I couldn’t look him in the eye so I looked at my feet. “No, Da.”

  “This time I can put it right for you. There’ll be times when I won’t be there to sort it out for you, so think on,” he says. “Think before you act in future.”

  Mam saved me that time. “Get back in here!” she shouts at me from the scullery. “I won’t have you passing out and cracking your head on those cobbles. Stay on that settee like you were told until you’re told different.” Suited me as I didn’t know what else to say to Jackie to make it right and stop Da looking at me like that.

  Jackie forgave me when Da told her he could fix the wheel, and she came in each day with games to play with me while I was kept on the settee. Loads of people came to see me and they’d gasp and be amazed when I told my story. Two days it was before the doc called and said I was well enough to use my own bed again. Before that happened, though, I’d overheard something very exciting!

  Mam and Da thought I was sound asleep, but it was very difficult to do more than doze on that settee, especially when you wanted to scratch the bit of your arm you couldn’t reach because of the plaster cast. I made do with scratching off a scab on my knee instead.

  “You realise we’re going to have to get her a bike,” Mam said to Da.

  “It’s ages yet to her birthday or Christmas and we don’t normally go that far from the toy pot.” I could hear in Da’s voice he was very dubious. “We don’t want the children to get the wrong idea, do we, love? She did wrong and shouldn’t be rewarded for it.”

  “I know, I know. But I also know that if she doesn’t have her own bike Jane’s going to go out and ‘borrow’ any bike she can find. You heard her describing to the others the feeling of freedom, of ‘flying’ on a bike. She’s hooked and wants more of that feeling. We can’t stop her. We’ll get abject apologies afterwards but you know what she’s like, it won’t stop her doing it anyway. All we can do is try to ensure that she’s on a bike that’s small enough for her to control.”

  “Aye, love, happen you’re right. I’ll ask around the lads and see what I can find. But she’s going to have to do more than apologise to Jackie. It’s taken me a lot of time to repair the front wheel of that bike.”

  “I suppose we could make her go round every week to clean Bill’s car and Jackie’s bike. She’s a practical-minded lass and a practical punishment will get through to her best.”

  The ritual of the pay packet had a special significance for me then. Each week I listened carefully when it came to the toy pot. The passing of six weeks was marked by the removal of the plaster cast but still nothing happened. Then, at last, the loose change clanged onto the bare bottom of the pot. That meant only one thing – it had been emptied for a purchase! It was so difficult to sleep that night but extra toys were never given until Saturday morning. In fact, they were liable to not appear at all if we didn’t behave ourselves.

  Saturday dawned chilly but bright, the scent of autumn in the air. Under Mam’s watchful eye I had to eat my breakfast even though my stomach churned. I forced the last spoonful of cereal down my protesting throat and returned the spoon to the bowl.

  “Now, Mam?”

  “Yes, love. Out you go!”

  Da was stood there in the yard waiting for me, holding the bike – my bike. It was quite perfect. Oh, I know it wasn’t a new one or anything like as flash as Jackie’s bike. But hers was pink. Dad had painted mine a glossy, glorious emerald green.

  “Thank you, Da!” I managed to whisper. I was so glad that the one thing that was never rationed or on a rota in our house was love.

  ~~~