Keep the Home Fires Burning (31 page)

Magda suddenly sat up straighter and said, ‘Sniff.’

Missie looked up from her book. ‘Sniff what?’

‘The air.’

Missie obediently sniffed.

‘Well, what can you smell?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve got to be able to smell summat.’

‘Well, nothing unusual, I mean. Just the meat cooking and that.’

‘That’s what I mean!’ Magda cried. ‘It’s like the smells on Sundays before the war, the gorgeous smell of the roasting meat mixed with the sweet smells from the kitchen where Mom was making all the
fancies and cakes and that when the grandparents always came to tea, remember?’

‘I remember all right,’ Missie said. ‘I suppose it is like it used to be. It don’t half make you hungry smelling it cooking, though.’

Tony came through from his bedroom at that point and he too sniffed the air appreciatively. ‘Cor, summat smells good,’ he said. ‘When will it be ready?’

Magda shrugged. ‘How should we know?’

Tony began to prowl around restlessly and Magda frowned. ‘Give over, Tony.’

‘Give over what?’

‘Walking up and down like that. You’re putting me off my book.’

Before Tony could answer this Missie said, ‘Why don’t you go back to your model, or have you already finished it?’

Tony shook his head. ‘We’ve got to a bit where Richard says we have to let the glue dry. Should be fine after dinner, and he won’t let me play my whistle, and anyroad, I’m starving.’

‘You’re always starving,’ Magda said disparagingly.

Before Tony could think of a reply to this, Marion put her head round the kitchen door and when she shouted, ‘I could do with a hand now. Who would like to lay the table?’ Magda and Missie threw down their books and were in the kitchen in seconds.

The dinner was magnificent. Marion hadn’t been
able to get any sort of fowl, but she had been able to buy a rabbit from a butcher down the Bull Ring so that’s what was laid in their roasting tin, surrounded by masses of roast potatoes. There was also a large pan of creamed carrots, another of cabbage, and one more pan of boiled potatoes. All the vegetables had been grown on the allotment, and the whole family tucked in with relish.

Marion looked at her children all grouped around the table, chatting together and laughing and joking with Peggy and Violet, so much part of the family now, and felt a thrill of pride. She suddenly wished, God forgive her, that her mother wasn’t coming to tea that day for she knew she would do her best to ruin everything and she definitely didn’t want the harmony of the day broken. She realised she had spoken so sharply to Magda before Mass because the child had put into words what she herself was feeling and that made her feel guilty.

Just as if she could read her mother’s mind Magda said, ‘We won’t have to sit on the horsehair sofa when Grandma and Granddad come, will we, because they can’t eat in the parlour any more ‘cos it’s Richard and Tony’s bedroom?’

‘No,’ Marion said, ‘you won’t have to sit anywhere except up at the table like everyone else.’

‘Oh, good!’

It was said so fervently that it made Marion smile. ‘Did you dislike the horsehair sofa so much?’ she asked.

Magda nodded vehemently. ‘I hated just sitting there,’ she said. ‘but the worst part was that the horsehair used to come through the stuff it was covered with and stick in our bottoms and our legs.’

Marion looked from Magda to Missie, who was nodding.

‘It’s true, Mom,’ she said. ‘They felt like thousands of needles pricking you.’

‘Surely not?’

‘They’re right, Mom,’ Sarah said. ‘I suffered it too.’

‘But why didn’t any of you say?’

‘You probably wouldn’t have believed us,’ Magda said. ‘I mean, I’ve never seen an adult sitting on that sofa. ‘Cos it was prickly I used to wag my legs about and that used to make Grandma really wild with me.’

‘Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t more observant,’ Marion said. ‘But rest assured there will be no more sitting on any horsehair sofa ever again. Now if everyone has finished their dinner do you all want pudding? It’s apricot upside-down?’

She was almost deafened by the response. But after the meal was over and everyone replete, Marion was made to sit down with a cup of tea while the girls cleared away the remains of the dinner and washed everything up.

Marion was grateful but she was watching the clock anxiously, knowing that peace would soon be at an end, especially after Peggy and Violet left
for their friend’s house. She crept upstairs and peered out of the bay window in her bedroom and her heart sank when she saw the uncompromising strides of her mother as she turned into the road, arm in arm with her father. As she got nearer Marion could see that she was wearing the same expression as she’d on at Mass, and she went down the stairs dejectedly.

‘But that’s just what I am saying,’ Clara whined. ‘Because you agreed to house those girls over Christmas you were unable to accommodate me or your father. Your own flesh and blood. It’s just not right.’

Marion suppressed a sigh. ‘Mammy, I have explained how it was. The girls have only today off.’

‘She has told us all this before, Clara,’ Eddie said.

‘Families should come first.’

‘Come on, Mammy, let’s not argue,’ Marion said in a conciliatory manner. ‘It’s Christmas Day, after all, and soon we’ll have a lovely tea with honey cakes and apple tart. I followed a recipe for a one-egg wonder cake too because I was light on eggs. Course, there so many of us I doubled up the quantities so ours is a two-egg wonder cake. I hope it’s not too heavy.’

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ Eddie said loyally. ‘You’re a grand cook and always have been.’

‘Yeah, but with rations the way they are, I am
often paddling in uncharted waters,’ Marion said. ‘But before we start on the tea let me give you your presents.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ Clara snapped. ‘I have no time for fripperies.’

Keeping her temper with difficulty, Marion replied, ‘Then it’s a good thing I didn’t buy you fripperies, but a nice soft woollen shawl to put around your shoulders on cold nights.’

It was a beautiful shawl in different shades of blue, which a woman Polly knew had knitted specially. It would be hard not to like it, but though Clara accepted it, and even allowed Marion to drape it around her shoulders, she uttered no word of thanks.

But when Marion presented her father with a new pipe she had gone into the town to buy from a proper tobacconist, he said, ‘It’s wonderful, pet,’ turning it round in his hands. ‘I’ve never had such a fine pipe.’

‘Oh, Daddy …’

‘You shouldn’t spend so much on an old man like me. I know what pipes like this cost. The children—‘

‘The children had plenty and were pleased with everything they got,’ Marion said. ‘They know the score as well as the rest of us.’

‘Well, I have some sweets for them all in my coat pocket,’ Eddie said.

‘You didn’t tell me that you were bringing sweets,’ Clara snapped.

‘I didn’t need to,’ Eddie said. ‘It was my own money I saved. I couldn’t visit my grandchildren on Christmas Day empty-handed.’

‘Thank you, Daddy,’ Marion said before her mother could speak again. ‘The children generally get little enough sweets. They’ll be very grateful. Shall we go through for tea now? I’ll get Sarah to give me a hand.’

‘Where is she?’ Clara demanded. ‘In fact, where are any of the children?’

Marion knew the children had found pressing things to do elsewhere in the house as soon as they had seen their grandparents approaching, but she said vaguely, ‘Oh, they’re around somewhere.’

‘They should be here, to greet guests,’ Clara said.

They might if you showed the slightest pleasure in seeing them.
For a moment Marion thought she had spoken the words aloud, but her mother’s expression hadn’t changed, and when she said, ‘Your children, Marion, have appalling manners,’ she had the desire to laugh at her mother and her hypocrisy. She restrained herself, but with difficulty, and needing to put some space between them, left in search of Sarah. Marion dreaded the meal, knowing that it would be a catalogue of complaints, and she knew she would be counting the hours until they would leave.

The girls that worked with Peggy and Violet advised them to go to Madame Amie’s Dancing Academy in Chain Walk, which was just the other side of Birchfield Road at the very end of Albert Road. ‘She does the waltzes and quick steps, and that,’ one of their workmates said. ‘But they teaches you fun things as well like the swing, kangaroo hop and the jitterbug.’

‘And what on earth are those, when they’re at home?’ Marion asked that evening when they told her this.

‘They’ve come from America,’ Violet said. ‘This girl was telling us the jitterbug is banned in some dance halls, and that some places seem almost afraid of it.’

‘I am not sure that I like the sound of this jitterbug,’ Marion said with a wry smile. ‘Maybe I should come with you as a chaperone.’

‘Mom! Sarah cried. ‘Mary Ellen and Siobhan want to go too, and Aunt Polly don’t mind.’ She
made a face and then went on, ‘Orla played it up to come too, but Aunt Polly said no. I mean, she ain’t fourteen yet.’

Marion hid her smile at her daughter’s indignation, speaking as she was from the lofty age of fifteen herself, with Mary Ellen and Siobhan seventeen and fifteen, but she made no mention of that. What she did say was, ‘I was joking, Sarah. The time is past when I would be afraid of a dance. It’s probably just a bit too lively for a lot of us old ones. I think you get little enough enjoyment in your lives at the moment and you’re only young the once.’

And so every Wednesday evening, just before seven, the girls would be seen scurrying up Albert Road to their dancing class. Often at the weekend they would practise what they’d learned that week. They even got Richard up a time or two to partner one of them and didn’t seem to care a jot about his two left feet.

This was the part that Richard liked best because he was very attracted to Violet, and had been almost as soon as she had come to live with them. He knew she thought of him as a young boy, but as he grew older his feelings for her grew stronger and he inveigled his way to sit by her as often as possible and was always asking her opinion on things. In fact, one of the reasons he had been so upset about not having a uniform for the Home Guard straight away was his need to impress Violet. One of his workmates, far more skilled
than Richard about the opposite sex and matters of the heart, had assured him that women went a bundle for any man in uniform.

However, he had a uniform now and he had to admit that it had made little difference. Not that Violet was unkind or anything; it was more that she was disinterested. In fact, Violet was well aware of Richard’s preoccupation with her and his lovesick eyes following her everywhere, and so was Peggy, and they had laughed about it, though gently.

‘The point is,’ Violet said to Peggy one day, ‘he is sweet and I do like him, but not in the way he wants me to like him.’

‘I think it could become quite awkward, anyway,’ Peggy said. ‘What if you did become emotionally entangled and then had a fallout or something. It could make living with the family really difficult.’

‘I know, but as I said, I don’t feel that way about him anyway.’

‘I think it’s best not to get involved anyway till the war is over,’ Peggy said. ‘Look at those pilots we met and were quite keen on. Both of them died in the Battle of Britain.’

‘Yeah, and we might never have known if one of their friends hadn’t seen us waiting for them outside the Globe and told us,’ Violet said. ‘Bloody shame it was as well. They were really nice, and so young.’

‘All the pilots were young,’ Peggy said. ‘Good job we didn’t get really attached. I’m not letting
myself get tangled up with anyone again till this blessed war comes to an end.’

‘I think I’ll tell Richard that,’ Violet said. ‘It will let him down gently.’

So when Richard plucked up the courage to ask Violet if she wanted to go to the pictures, she said, ‘I’d love to Richard. We all would.’

That wasn’t at all what Richard had in mind. ‘I meant you and me on our own,’ he said. ‘Or do you think I’m too young?’

‘It isn’t that, Richard,’ Violet said. ‘It’s nothing to do with you at all. I do like you very much, but I just don’t want to get serious with anyone at the moment. I have seen the heartache some of the girls at work have suffered. Anyway, your mother might not like us to go out together as we live in the same house and everything.’ Then she caught sight of Richard’s crestfallen face and added, ‘I’m sorry.’

Richard was bitterly disappointed, but he knew that Violet’s reasons for refusing him had been valid ones and so when she said, ‘We can still go to the pictures, though.
Rebecca
is showing at the Globe. It’s Alfred Hitchcock so we girls might need a big strapping man with us in case we get scared,’ even he had to smile.

‘You lot don’t scare easy,’ he said. ‘But I might as well, I suppose.’

The film was good and they all enjoyed it, though it was not the date Richard had envisaged. Often at weekends Mary Ellen and Siobhan would
come down to practise dancing, and they would all get Richard up to partner them, so he sometimes got to hold Violet tight in his arms. There was always a lot of fun and laughter at these sessions and Marion found the dancing quite entertaining to watch, though she marvelled at the energy they all had. The jitterbug in particular was very invigorating and fun, and she could quite see why the young girls would enjoy it so much.

There were air raids over the next few months but they were light and weeks apart, and none came near Aston. Marion became more hopeful that the raids were petering out, especially as the days passed and the grey low clouds and the icy blasts of winter were being replaced by clearer skies and spring sunshine. Everyone was looking forward to Easter and, after that, Tony’s eleventh birthday, and so when the sirens rang out again on Wednesday 9 April, in Holy Week, everyone thought it would be another short, sharp skirmish.

It was half-past nine, but the children hadn’t been in bed long because it was the Easter holidays, and Marion was tempted not to rouse them. The last few raids had been so slight and sporadic there had been little point in going to the cellar.