Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (7 page)

Not that I often gave him cause to be cross with me, I loved and admired him too much. I was always Dad's girl. It may sound silly to say so, but it's the truth. I used to spend all my time with him when he was at home.

‘Bloddy kid, always somewheres around,' grumbled Mr Crackjaw in his thick foreign voice when I followed Dad into the rubbishy next-door garden to take some carrots Mum had promised Mrs Crackjaw.

‘Just ignore him,' said Dad afterwards. ‘You're my girl and you can come with me whenever you want.'

Dad was a wonderful person to be with. He never went to the White Horse but spent his evenings and weekends pottering about usefully at home, telling me what he was doing and showing me how it was done. He made a swing for me and a hutch for the rabbit and a kitchen cupboard for Mum, and a toboggan for me and hutches for all the baby rabbits and a kitchen cupboard for Gran Thacker because she grumbled that he didn't look after her. That wasn't true, he was always doing things for her, but she liked to keep him on the run.

Dad was a good cook too. He was once a cook in the Merchant Navy. ‘He's got real pastry hands,' said Mum grudgingly. Her own hands are broad and red and heavy, and her pastry's so tough Dad could use it to mend the roof. She's never liked cooking, and she was only too glad to let us get on with the week's baking on Sunday mornings, but you could tell from the way she grumbled that it made her feel redundant. She always reckoned that Dad was extravagant with fats when he was cooking, and complained that we didn't do the washing-up properly afterwards. Well, I did sometimes skimp over the washing-up, but it's difficult not to when you have to heat every drop of water first. A kettleful of hot water goes nowhere.

Dad wasn't just a handy carpenter and a good cook. He used to make up stories to tell me every evening, giving each character a different voice and making me laugh so much that Mum would finally snap at him to give over or she'd never get me to bed. I used to sit on his knee and watch his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he spoke, and admire his long pale eyelashes and his green eyes and orange hair.

There was even a time when I was convinced that I'd grow up to look like him because I loved him so much. Just my luck to take after Mum's side of the family instead, straight dark hair and brown eyes and round cheeks, a plain healthy everyday country girl, and still dressed like one even at seventeen. We were allowed to wear our own clothes in the sixth form, but I stuck to my uniform skirt and blouse and cardigan. Actually I hadn't got much else to wear except my best skirt and my jeans and one or other of Mum's shapeless hand-knitted jumpers. It wasn't that I didn't like clothes. I desperately wanted a pair of knee-length fashion boots, and a red cowl-neck sweater, and a long list of other things. But I knew that until I could leave school and earn some money of my own I'd just have to go on wanting.

Dad was thrilled when I passed the eleven-plus and went to Breckham Market girls'grammar school. Mum was pleased too, but with reservations; she was afraid that grammar school might put ideas into my head. They bought my uniform and games equipment and a satchel and a second-hand bike, and I rode down to the village every morning and left the bike at the shop while I went to Breckham Market on the bus.

I thought I would probably like the new school, once I made some friends and stopped losing my way in the long corridors. The best thing of all was not having Andy Crackjaw there. But Mum was right, it certainly put ideas into my head. Before, I'd never stopped to think whether we were rich or poor. Well, obviously we were poorer than the Vernons up at the farm, but people like that are so different that you don't make comparisons. Most of us in the village lived in more or less the same way, but at the grammar school nearly all the others were town girls, and I soon realized that they were living in a different century.

Of course I envied them. And I hadn't the sense to realize that it wasn't a good idea to go home and say, ‘Why haven't we got a bathroom?' and ‘Why can't we have a car?'

Mum was furious. ‘I knew how it would be, spend good money and deny ourselves to send her to grammar school, and she turns out a snob. If this is what education does for her she can leave as soon as she's old enough and work for her living, same as we had to.'

But Dad knew it was no use shouting at me. That evening he sat down and took out his biro, borrowed a sheet from my rough notebook, and gave me a lesson in home economics. On one side of the paper he wrote down his weekly bring-home pay, and on the other side he wrote down our expenses. Half of them I'd never heard or thought of: rent and rates and coal and electricity and shoe repairs and television licence, not to mention food, and my school clothes and dinner money. He told me to have a go at balancing our budget myself. I just couldn't do it, there wasn't enough money to go round.

‘That's your answer, then,' said Dad. ‘We couldn't manage as it is if your mother didn't grow our veg and keep the hens and rabbits, and go out to work as well. We can't afford anything else.'

When Mum found out what he was doing she let rip even more. I must have been about twelve at the time and from the way she carried on you'd have thought he'd been telling me the facts of life.

‘You've no business to let her know what you earn, Vincent Thacker! It's not right, at her age.'

‘She's a sensible girl,' said Dad. ‘If I hadn't told her she'd think she was hard done by. Now she'll know better.'

Naturally I had a few bright ideas, such as why didn't Dad get a better-paid job? Mum exploded again, I'd never seen her so mad with the pair of us. Dad sighed, but patiently.

‘Think about it, our Janet. What well-paid job could I get round here?'

I thought hard about what other children's fathers did for a living, but the fact is that there's not much choice of jobs in the village. Some do farm work, like Mr Crackjaw, but Dad said their wages were no better than his. Some men drive lorries, but Dad couldn't drive. As long as we stayed in the village, it looked as though he would be stuck with his job at the shop.

‘Couldn't Gran Thacker pay you more?'

Mum snorted. ‘That'll be the day.'

‘Mother pays me the regulation wage. And this is her house, she lets us have it cheap because it isn't modernized. We're lucky to pay so little rent.'

‘Well, couldn't we move to Breckham Market? You could get a good job there.'

‘Not without any qualifications, I couldn't. Besides, if we lived in town we'd have to pay so much rent that we'd be worse off than we are here.'

I'd almost run out of helpful suggestions. There didn't seem to be any way round the problem, not while they were keeping me at school. But at that stage I was still finding the grammar school bewildering: I hadn't got used to changing for PE and doing my homework on time, and I dreaded maths lessons. ‘I'll leave school when I'm fifteen,' I said willingly. ‘Once I'm earning we'll be all right for money.'

‘Oo-oh – sometimes you talk real daft,' Mum snapped, and she started banging plates about to demonstrate her aggravation.

‘What's wrong with that?' I asked Dad.

‘What good will it do?' he said. ‘Use your sense, Janet. If you leave at fifteen with no qualifications you'll be stuck here, same as we are. Education is your way out. You're one of the lucky ones, you've got the chance of a lifetime. You must stay at school as long as you can, pass all your exams, go on to college. If you better yourself, you'll be able to get a really good job. People with college degrees can get a thousand a year as soon as they start earning.'

Mum stopped slapping the crockery. ‘Never!' she said, thunderstruck.

‘It's right, I've seen adverts in the paper.'

‘Well there must be a catch in it,' Mum declared. ‘Who'd pay a fortune like that to beginners?'

I was awed into doing some mental arithmetic. A thousand a year … that was twenty pounds a week! Nearly twice Dad's wage, for a start. If my staying at school would make us rich like that I was all for it.

‘In that case,' I said generously, ‘I don't mind putting up with things a bit longer. If
you
don't mind, that is,' I added, but it was too late. I'd seen their faces as they glanced at each other and for the first time I realized that they weren't just my Dad and Mum, they were two separate people and they weren't very happy either.

‘Oh,
we
don't mind. We're used to putting up with things,' Mum said, and her voice was as raw as a nettle. ‘We haven't had much choice in
our
lives.' Dad didn't say anything, but he looked shrunken and bleak although the room was warm. I felt suffocatingly embarrassed.

‘Can I have scrambled egg for breakfast in the morning, Mum?'

‘No, you can't,' she snapped, ‘you'll have a boiled egg as usual and like it.' And things seemed back to normal, but it must have been then that I started to grow up.

There isn't any regular work for women in or near the village. We're fourteen miles from Breckham Market, and the earliest bus, the one I took to school, is too late for the factories. So Mum's work has always been outdoors, casual field work, on and off according to the season.

She used to take me with her on the back of her bike when I was still too young for school. I can remember helping her pick strawberries and currants in summer, and getting told off for eating too many, and in autumn I used to huddle under a hedge while she lifted potatoes in wind and rain. Mum always grumbled that her back would break in the fields and at the end of every job she swore she'd never go again, but apart from needing the money she enjoyed the company of the other women. Despite her grumbles she always looked forward to the start of each season, setting off in her outsize jeans and sweater, wellies and a woolly hat, with a bag containing her plastic mac, sandwiches and thermos hanging from the handlebars of her old bike.

But not long after I started at the grammar school, a rumour went round the village that a turkey-processing business was going to be set up on the old airfield a couple of miles away. Mum was really excited, thinking that she'd be able to get a regular job at last.

There was an American Air Force base there when I was small. A left-over from the war, Dad said. I often saw the airmen driving jeeps through the village when I was on my way to or from school. At playtime, the older girls would giggle and encourage us little ones to shout through the railings, ‘Got any gum, chum?' and the men would throw sweets or money to us, and Miss Griggs would rush out and tell us off for letting down England.

Then the Americans went, and the airfield returned to agriculture. So much of it was covered in concrete, though, that the farmer went in for pigs rather than barley. Then he tried turkeys, and a year or two later we heard that he'd sold the old airfield to a big turkey-processor from out Saintsbury way. And that was when the excitement started, because Mum's youngest sister Brenda lives not far from Saintsbury and likes to let us know what wonderful jobs she and her husband have both got at the turkey factory there.

‘It'll be marvellous to have their new factory built practically on our doorstep!' said Mum. ‘Won't it be marvellous if I can get a job there, Vince?' She hardly ever asked Dad's opinion about anything, in fact they didn't talk to each other much at all, which I suppose was one reason why they didn't quarrel.

‘You don't like working indoors,' said Dad.

‘But eight pounds a week if you do the full day shift, our Brenda says! It'd make all the difference. And they send a bus round the nearby villages to pick up, free. And free overalls an'all. It's a wonderful chance.'

‘Well, I wouldn't fancy it meself,' said Dad, pulling a squeamish face. He was always very fastidious, forever washing his hands and scrubbing his fingernails on account of handling food in the shop. It's always Mum who has to do the killing and preparing when we eat any of our livestock. ‘Standing on a production line gutting turkeys all day … no thanks! But there, you must suit yourself.'

‘I shall do,' said Mum triumphantly. ‘Oh, it'll be marvellous … And you'll be glad enough, Vince Thacker, when I bring home eight pound a week, regular!'

‘I shouldn't count on it if I were you,' said Dad. ‘Not until the place is built and the jobs are advertised.'

‘Oh, you streak of misery!' said Mum. ‘Just keep your ears open in the shop and let me know as soon as they start building.'

She went on being excited for weeks after that, singing to herself as she worked about the house and in the garden. I was excited too, thinking what we could buy with all that extra money we'd soon have. Even Dad looked a bit more hopeful than usual. But then, one evening in late spring, he came biking home from work with a very long face.

‘'Fraid I've got some disappointing news for you, Bet,' he said as he came into the kitchen where Mum was frying bacon for his tea. ‘They've started work on the old airfield – but it's not going to be a processing plant after all. What they're building is just rearing sheds. They're going to rear all their turkeys here, and take them to Saintsbury for processing. There'll be a few jobs for men, but nothing for women at all.'

Mum's round red face sagged like a deflated balloon. She thumped down on the kitchen chair, still holding her cooking fork, and burst into tears. I'd never seen her cry before, and I didn't know what to do. Dad didn't seem to know either, but he gave her shoulder an awkward pat.

‘Don't take on so, Bet,' he said, and I'd never heard him speak to her so tenderly. ‘It's not worth crying over a mucky job like that.'

‘But the money,' wailed Mum. ‘I'd got that all planned out and we could have lived real well.'