Keep the Home Fires Burning (7 page)

When Bill learned that in the army he would be earning fourteen shillings a week of which one shilling and eleven pence would be deducted for his keep he was not unduly alarmed. In wartime he assumed he would have little to spend his money on, but he was interested in how much his family would be allocated while he was away fighting for King and Country.

‘That will depend on how many children you have,’ the official told him.

‘I have five,’ Bill said.

‘Are any of those children working?’

‘The eldest one.’

‘There will be no allowance for that one then,’ the official said. ‘For the others a penny for each of them will be taken from your wages every week.’

‘A penny?’

‘Yes, and the Government will add tuppence for each child in addition to that, which brings it to another shilling a week.’

It was a pittance. A shilling a week to feed and clothe four growing children. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach Bill asked, ‘And my wife, – what allowance has she?’

‘She has what is called a Separation Allowance, which amounts to one shilling and one penny a
day, and there will also be another sixpence taken from your wages for her.’

Bill did the calculations. Marion would have the princely sum of nine shillings and a penny for all of them to live on.

‘Is that all?’ Bill cried. ‘She won’t be able to live on that. Almighty Christ, the rent alone is twelve shillings a week.’

‘Everyone has the same, Mr Whittaker,’ the official said coldly. ‘We cannot make a special case for your wife.’

‘No, but–’

‘Mr Whittaker, those are the rates and that is that,’ the official told him firmly. ‘I have a lot of people to see besides yourself and however long you argue, your family’s entitlement will remain the same.’

Bill had no alternative but to leave. Outside in the corridor he found Pat waiting for him.

‘God,’ Pat said ironically, ‘at least they give the wife and kids plenty to live on. Keep them in the lap of luxury, that.’

Bill shook his head. ‘I don’t know how I am going to face Marion and tell her this. She’ll never manage on it. Richard can’t give her any more than he does because his wage as a junior apprentice is only nine and eleven pence. Sarah is fourteen next month and will be leaving school then, but even if she is able to get a job it won’t pay very well. Christ, Pat, I’ve been bringing home three pounds ten shillings every week, more with overtime, which I did most weeks.’

His heart sank as he remembered how Marion would often say with pride that she had never visited a pawn shop, never had reason to, not like her sister, Polly, who never seemed to be out of the place. As he and Pat turned for home again he gave a heavy sigh.

‘That’s the sigh of a weary man,’ Pat smiled.

‘A guilty one, perhaps,’ Bill said. ‘How do they expect a woman to buy food, coal and pay the rent on the pittance they allow them? And that’s taking no account of clothes and boots growing children need.’

‘I know,’ Pat said. ‘It’s a bugger, all right. Polly won’t be so bad, see, because the boys get good enough money at Ansell’s. And even in a war, people will still want beer, won’t they? More rather than less, I would have said, and Mary Ellen has been working in Woolworths for over a year now and she tips up her share too.’

Bill saw that, for the first time, the Reillys would be better off than the Whittakers. Their rent, too, was less than half what the Whittakers paid. ‘And don’t forget the Christmas Tree Fund will help you with clothes and boots for the kids,’ Pat went on.

Bill shook his head dumbly. Marion had often said she would die of shame if she couldn’t provide for their own children and had to rely on handouts from the
Evening Mail
Christmas Tree Fund.

Pat saw the look on Bill’s face. ‘And don’t look like that,’ he snapped. ‘Better take them and be grateful than let the kids suffer. Pride and fine
principals are all very well when you have plenty of money coming in.’

Bill felt ashamed, for he knew that Pat was only trying to be helpful. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s just that neither Marion nor me envisaged going cap in hand to anyone.’

‘Well, we ain’t never been at war before, have we, and so we have to do the best we can.’

‘I know,’ said Bill, ‘but I don’t think there are words written that will ease any of this for Marion.’

Pat watched his brother-in-law trudge away from him, his head lowered and his shoulders hunched, and he didn’t envy him a bit. He and Polly had had a lot of knocks in their journey through life and he knew that she would view this as yet another challenge to overcome. After all, he reasoned, they wouldn’t be the only wives and mothers in the same situation.

Marion was in the scullery where she was rinsing out the boiler that she had used for the Monday wash. She looked up when she heard Bill and was slightly alarmed by the wretched look on his face. For a split second she thought that the army had refused him. That news would delight her, but she knew that it would devastate him and so she said, ‘Did everything go all right?’

Bill nodded. ‘I am to report on Wednesday for my medical and, provided I pass that, I will be in.’

Marion knew he would pass. Bill had always been a fit man.

‘Where are the children?’ he asked. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Sarah and Siobhan have taken the lot of them down the park,’ Marion said. ‘Talk away if you must, but I will have to get on …’

‘Marion, please.’ Bill placed his hands over Marion’s, which were reddened and still damp. ‘I need us both to sit down and talk.’

She looked into his troubled eyes and realised that she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But that wouldn’t help, she knew, and so she followed him into the living room, where they sat on the two easy chairs in front of the range.

Knowing that there was no way of softening the blow, Bill said immediately, ‘When I decided to enlist, I knew that a soldier’s wages wouldn’t be near as much as I was earning, but I didn’t believe it would be so little.’

‘How little?’ Marion said in a steely voice, and as Bill told her he saw her large eyes widen in horrified surprise.

She wondered why she wasn’t shouting and screaming and throwing things about the room because it was what she really wanted to do. She also wanted to lash out at the husband she thought she knew and say it wasn’t to be borne that he could leave them almost destitute. But she did none of these things, because overriding her white-hot anger was the panicky thought that once he left there was a real risk of the family starving, or, at the very least, being put
out of their house if she couldn’t raise the rent money.

‘So, I will have the princely sum of nine shillings and a penny to live on while you are away hunting down Germans?’ she spat.

‘I didn’t know,’ Bill said. ‘I had no idea that the wages or Separation Allowance would be so low. I would have thought that they would value our contribution to the army higher than that.’

‘Well, they don’t,’ Marion hissed. ‘And it might have been better for us all if you had made sure of the facts before you signed the forms.’

‘I know that,’ Bill said miserably. ‘I will send you what I can.’

‘Out of fourteen shillings a week?’ Marion said disparagingly. ‘With one shilling and eleven pence already taken out of your wages, and the money for the children and me as well? We might get short shrift if we relied on money from you to put food on the table.’

‘I know,’ Bill said. ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then, if you’re sorry,’ Marion said bitterly. ‘That will make a lot of bloody difference.’

The very fact that she had used an expletive at all, showed Bill the level of her distress. He tried to put his arms around her but she fought him off, for she heard the children coming in.

The following day Bill walked to the foundry with Richard to tell his gaffer what had transpired and
to collect his wages, for they operated a week-inhand system, and also draw out any holiday money due to him. But he also wanted to snatch a private word with his son.

‘You’ll be the man of the house when I’m gone.’

‘I know, Dad,’ Richard said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘It’s up to you to look after your mother,’ Bill went on. ‘Sarah will help you. She’s a good girl that way. And for God’s sake keep a weather eye on young Tony. There’s no real harm in him, but I know he’d go to hell and back to get into Jack’s good books.’

Richard knew that only too well. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘But I’m at work all day.’

‘I know. And if he was at school all day I wouldn’t worry so much, but your mother says most of the teachers have gone with the evacuated children, so there will be no school until they have sorted something else for those left behind. And,’ Bill added with a wry smile, ‘idleness and therefore boredom can lead to all sorts of mischief.’

Richard nodded. ‘I know. And like I told you before, I’ll do my level best to help out.’

Bill felt much relieved because he knew that Richard could be trusted. They parted at the gates and Bill went to the wages office to get what was due to him, which amounted to nearly ten pounds. Which he gave straight to Marion.

‘Go easy with this,’ he warned her. ‘I don’t know how long it will take them to sort out your allowance. Once I’ve had the medical, providing that is
all clear and everything, I’m not to report until Friday, and they might not put things in motion until it is sort of official.’

‘And what if they do take weeks to sort it out?’

‘They’d hardly do that,’ Bill said. ‘They’ll know you’ve all got to live. God knows, they are giving you little enough as it is.’

Marion gave a sigh. ‘Remember, I have tasted extreme poverty before and, I’d rather cut off my right arm than let my children suffer as I did throughout my childhood.’

Bill didn’t want that either, but he was utterly helpless to ease the predicament that he had put them in by enlisting. Pat didn’t seem to feel the gut-wrenching guilt Bill did, and Bill wished he could view life the same way, but he was made in a different mould entirely from Pat.

As Marion expected, Bill was passed as A1, fit to serve overseas. He was issued with a uniform and a kitbag, and had to report to Thorpe Street Barracks at seven o’clock on Friday morning.

She was surprised when he said that Pat had failed the medical. ‘Why?’ Marion said. ‘He looks all right to me.’

Bill shrugged. ‘I didn’t get to see him after,’ he said. ‘Folk that did said he was gutted.’

‘I wish it was you,’ Marion said.

‘God, don’t say that,’ Bill cried. ‘The man could have anything wrong with him.’

‘Huh, not Pat Reilly. The man is too pickled from alcohol for germs to live long on him. And
now he’s somehow managed to wriggle out of the army. Well, I’m away to our Polly’s to find what that lying hypochondriac told them on the Medical Board so that they sent him home.’

The whole family got up to see Bill off that Friday. When he descended the stairs, dressed in his uniform, his wife and children assembled below thought they had never seen him look so smart. But, as Magda said to Missie later, ‘It didn’t look like our dad, though, did it?’

‘No, dain’t smell like him, either.’

‘Yeah, it was like kissing a stranger,’ Magda said.

For all that, they both cried bitterly when they did kiss Bill goodbye, though he kept assuring them that he’d be home again in a few weeks’ time.

Eventually they were calmer and when Magda said, ‘Are you calling for Uncle Pat?’ they were all surprised when he told them that their uncle had failed the medical.

‘Why?’ Tony asked. ‘Jack never said owt.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to say,’ Bill said. ‘Maybe he didn’t know himself.’

‘But why did he fail, anyroad?’ Magda asked.

‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,’ Marion said.

Magda thought that just about headed a long list of annoying things mothers said. How were you to get to know anything if you didn’t ask questions? She didn’t bother asking again, though, because her mother could get right angry
sometimes when she did that sort of thing. And that day she had two spots of colour on her cheeks, and her eyes looked very bright, which were two bad signs.

It was still very early, so when they had had their breakfast of bread and dripping and had a cat lick of a wash, they went out into the yard.

‘I can’t understand why our mom won’t say what’s wrong with Uncle Pat,’ Magda said.

‘Cos she’s a grown-up, that’s why,’ Tony said darkly. ‘And that’s what they do.’

Magda knew that, but Sarah was a different kettle of fish. She was almost fourteen and not yet a real adult, so she collared her in the bedroom later and said, ‘Why didn’t Uncle Pat get into the army, Sarah?’

‘Because he has flat feet.’

Missie and Tony were still in the yard, and when Magda went out and told them what Sarah had said they both looked at her in astonishment.

‘Don’t be daft!’ Tony said,

‘I’m not,’ Magda said indignantly. ‘That’s what Sarah said.’

‘It couldn’t be just that, though.’

Magda shrugged. ‘Well, that’s all she said.’ Then suddenly she sat down on the back step, where she unlaced her shoes and peeled off her socks.

‘What you doing?’ Missie cried.

‘Looking at my feet.’ Magda wriggled her toes. ‘All feet are sort of flat, aren’t they? I mean, you don’t get round feet or square or owt.’

‘Maybe Uncle Pat’s feet are dead flat all over,’
Missie said. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t see that through his boots.’

‘They ain’t,’ Tony put in. ‘I’ve seen Uncle Pat’s feet a few times and they looked the same as everyone else’s feet to me.’

‘Don’t stop him walking, does it?’ Magda said.

‘Shouldn’t stop him marching then, should it?’ Tony said. ‘Don’t think his feet can have much to do with it. Our Sarah must have picked it up wrong.’

The two girls nodded solemnly. It was easily done to get the wrong end of the stick, especially when you shouldn’t have overheard in the first place, as Magda knew to her cost.

‘You’d better put your things back on,’ Missie said, ‘before Mom catches sight of you.’

Magda pulled her socks on and pushed her feet into her shoes, but the laces defeated her and she had to leave them dangling. Fortunately, it was Sarah who came to bring the children inside and she only grumbled good-naturedly at Magda as she fastened up the shoes.