A Crimson Dawn (53 page)

‘You've got no sense of fashion.' Patience would waft a hand at them with a jangle of bracelets, trying not to smile. ‘And no taste.'

Patience frequently told her children how she had acquired ‘taste' while working as a cashier in a children's clothing department in Newcastle by observing the style of the well-to-do women who shopped there.

‘When I worked at Lawson's …' or ‘Before your father swept me off my stockinged feet. . .' were household phrases that preceded words of wisdom about fashion or commerce. Clara and Jimmy only half listened to their mother's dreamy words but their father would pull at his greying moustache and nod with vigour.

‘Never a truer word, bonny lass. You've the brains and the beauty,' he would declare, catching her round the waist and squeezing her to him.

Clara's mother thought no one matched up to her strict aesthetics, least of all their customers and neighbours in Byfell-on-Tyne. That was why their millinery and fancy goods shop was stuffed with the gaudiest of trinkets: green and gold sugar bowls, rose-covered china pots for the dressing table, figurines dressed in blue and purple, ribbons of red and yellow, turquoise hatpins and orange frosted-glass tumblers and jugs.

Clara had learned from her mother how to flatter their clients, ask about their families, discuss changes in fashions and encourage them to buy the bright treasures of Magee's to adorn the mantelpieces and dressers of their modest terraced houses.

From below, the third sneeze came, gentler, followed by a long sigh. Clara padded over to the dressing table and poured chilly water into the china washbowl. Although they had a proper bathroom of which her parents were immensely proud (Prudence had had to compromise on black tiles), Clara liked to throw back the curtains, splash her face and hands in cold water and gaze at the sun coming up over the rooftops and cranes of the shipyards, the River Tyne briefly polished with golden light.

But the day was grey and drizzly with hardly enough light to dress by, despite its being August. Clara felt a pang of disappointment. The day after tomorrow was the bank holiday and for once her parents were going to shut the shop, for they were invited to the wedding of a local boxer. Clara had hoped to go to Whitley Bay with her best friend Reenie Lewis, and even though they had been landed with taking Jimmy along they planned a great day out at the beach.

Clara glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked older than her fourteen years, even when her slanted dark blue eyes were puffy with sleep, her long hair tangled. She pulled her fingers through it. ‘Like dark honey,' Patience often murmured when she brushed her daughter's hair at night. Her mother loved to brush Clara's hair and still insisted on doing a hundred strokes before bedtime, even though her daughter had left school.

‘My mouth's too big,' Clara complained to her reflection, wishing she had a neat button mouth like Reenie's. Reenie also had a new permanent wave in her soft blonde hair, which made her look like a young starlet. But then Reenie was a year older and her family ran a barber's-cum-hairdresser's in the next street and her mother, Marta, had done it.

Once a week, Patience deigned to have her hair washed and dried by Marta Lewis, and every two months she had it bleached. Yet, despite this intimate relationship, Clara's mother could not hide her dislike of the other woman.

‘You would think after all these years here,' she often complained, ‘Mrs Leizmann would've lost her Kraut accent. She doesn't even seem to try.'

Patience still insisted on referring to the Lewises as the Leizmanns, even though Oscar and Marta had changed their name after the Great War when anti-German sentiment was still riding high.

‘Call them Lewis, my bonny,' Clara's father would chide good-naturedly. ‘We must be neighbourly.'

‘Well I knew them before the war and names stick,' Patience would sniff. ‘Strange lot, if you ask me. Communist posters in the windows and gingham checks.' She shuddered. ‘Too much
red
!'

When Clara jumped to the defence of her best friend, Patience reluctantly conceded, ‘Maybe Reenie's not so bad. But then she's been mixing with the likes of us — good manners rub off. Not like those wild lads.'

Wild lads. Clara caught herself smiling. Reenie's noisy brother Benny was three years older but with half the sense of his sister. He had his mother's dark looks, was too impatient to be a good barber and idolised their eldest brother, Frank.

Frank; a man at twenty-one with a flop of fair hair that fell across his forehead when he played his violin. Clara always wanted to reach up and push aside the wayward strands so she could see the intensity of his blue eyes. When he was making music raw passion showed in his handsome face and Clara had a terrible crush on him. On Monday, Frank would be playing at the Cafe Cairo on the promenade and maybe she and Reenie would get to dance. In the mirror, Clara saw her fair skin darken in a blush. She ducked quickly and plunged her face in cold water as if she could numb her thoughts of Frank Lewis. Besides in his eyes, she was just his little sister Reenie's chatterbox friend.

Clara forced herself to think of the day ahead. She would be needed to open up the shop and keep an eye on Jimmy while her parents went to the warehouse to buy stock. Usually, they did this on a Monday, but with the bank holiday the warehouse would be shut. Climbing the steep back stairs to the long attic room, she went to wake her brother. He shared it with a neglected stack of boxes and crates full of ornaments and caps that Harry had once rashly acquired without consultation with his wife. They were cheap, he had enthused. They were for tinkers, she had laughed, pecking him on the cheek and consigning them to the loft. Jimmy was curled up like a hibernating mouse, taking up only a fraction of his bed. At twelve, her brother was still small and skinny and looked much younger. She teased him when he insisted he was going to be a boxer like their dad had been in the Navy. Jimmy liked nothing better than being taken down to Craven's boxing hall, a converted warehouse by the river, to watch the men training.

Clara called him awake, but when he did not stir she rummaged around in an open box, pulled out a huge grey flat cap and pulled it down over her eyes.

‘Roll up, roll up,' she bellowed, ‘come and see the champion feather-featherweight of the world - Mr James Magee! Matched with Charlie Chaplin.' She dived into another box and pulled out a bowler hat, quickly replacing the cap. She waddled across the room impersonating the silent movie star, pulled back the bed covers and started to tickle.

‘Gerroff!' squealed Jimmy.

‘And Chaplin lands the first tickle with a long left,' Clara laughed. ‘Magee's putting up no resistance …'

Jimmy rolled out of reach and swung a foot at his sister.

Clara caught it and tickled the sole. He giggled and shouted, 'Stop it!'

‘Magee desperately tries to kick out, but is disqualified. Chaplin wins again,' Clara declared, letting go the foot and holding up her arm in victory. Jimmy reared up and punched wildly, knocking the bowler hat off her head.

‘No he doesn't,' he cried, aiming another fist at her stomach.

‘Ouch!' Clara stepped back, clutching her midriff. ‘That hurt.'

Jimmy gave her a guilty look from under dark eyebrows, a miniature version of their father's. ‘Divn't start what you cannot finish,' he muttered.

Abruptly, Clara laughed. ‘Is that what Vincent Craven tells you? Sounds like something he'd say.'

Jimmy could not help a smirk. ‘Maybe.'

Clara sat down and gave him an affectionate hug. ‘You'll be a boxer yet. Make Mr Craven lots of money, I bet.'

Jimmy's look was eager. ‘He doesn't do it for the money, he does it for the fight, for the glory. Says there's nowt better than seeing two men in their prime matched one against the other, giving it all they've got, till the best man wins.'

Clara felt a small twist of unease. ‘Can't see the attraction myself. I'd rather see you being a promoter or a matchmaker like Craven than scrapping in the ring.'

Jimmy shrugged her off impatiently. ‘You can't be one of them till you've proved yoursel' a canny boxer first. And I'm ganin' to be the best. Cannot wait to leave school.'

‘Don't let Mam hear you,' Clara snorted.

‘She's let you leave at fourteen,' Jimmy pointed out.

‘Aye, but they've always wanted me to help in the shop. Mam has grander ideas for you than being Mr Craven's punchbag.'

Jimmy pushed her away. ‘Nick off, I want to get dressed.'

Clara descended the stairs to see her mother coming out of the bathroom draped in a silk kimono, her hair in pins. Patience yawned a good morning and disappeared into the spacious bedroom she shared with Harry, with its corner bay window overlooking both Tenter Terrace and the High Street.

Down further, Clara found her father in the shop polishing the counters and singing ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World', out of tune.

‘What do you want for yer breakfast, my bonny?' he beamed, stopping in mid-song. ‘Porridge or scrambled eggs?'

‘Both.' Clara grinned and gave him a kiss on the cheek, knowing this was the right answer. Her father was an early riser and always cooked breakfast, taking a tray of tea and toast up to Patience in bed. On Saturdays and Sundays he always cooked eggs or bacon as well as the daily porridge, washed down with tea so strong it made the tongue tingle.

Together, in the back kitchen, they assembled the tray for Patience, Clara stirring the porridge while her father talked animatedly about the fight at Craven's the following week.

‘Samson - that pitman from Bedlington - he's been matched with Danny Watts.'

‘Thought Watts was getting wed on Monday?' Clara queried.

‘Aye, but he's not fightin' till Saturday,' Harry replied.

‘Not much of a honeymoon,' Clara said.

‘Seamen don't get well paid, pet, and weddings cost money. His missus will understand.'

Clara was sceptical. ‘I'm going to have a grand wedding and a long honeymoon - touring round the country in a Riley.'

Harry laughed. ‘Well, you'll either have to marry a rich lad, or I'll have to win a lot more at the betting.'

‘Rich lad.' Clara was adamant. She did not like her father betting, however small the wager. He never won on horses or dogs, only sometimes on boxers. But he claimed it was his only vice apart from the snuff and one day, he declared, he would surprise them all with a bonanza win and buy Patience a department store in Newcastle.

Harry disappeared with the tray for his wife as Jimmy came in. Clara served them breakfast and then argued with Jimmy as to who should collect their mother's tray in a bid to escape the washing-up.

‘It's my turn,' Jimmy shouted. They both loved to linger in the warm bedroom with the coal fire, sprawled on the beige cashmere bedspread chatting to their mother or watching her reflection in the dressing-table mirror as she applied creams and make-up from delicate glass and silver pots.

Clara relented quickly. She did not want a moody Jimmy for the morning and it occurred to her that her mother might question her too closely about her bank holiday trip. She had mentioned nothing about Benny's coming along with Reenie, or their hope of dancing at the Cafe Cairo on the promenade.

An hour later, Clara opened the shop as Patience appeared in a cream rayon suit with pearl buttons, opaque stockings, buckled shoes and a neat cloche hat. A waft of spicy musk followed her and Clara felt a sudden lump in her throat to see the adoration on her father's face.

‘Isn't your mam a picture?' He grinned. ‘Keeps the suppliers on their toes when they see they're dealing with quality.'

Patience pulled on her gloves with a brisk laugh. ‘And extends our credit terms.' She kissed her children. ‘We won't be long. Mrs Shaw's coming in for a corset fitting at eleven, but I'll be back for that.'

Jimmy followed them out into the street and watched them climb into the van. It was old and belched black smoke, but they were proud to have it. One day, Harry was always promising, they would drive around Byfell in a saloon car like Vinnie Craven. Patience, always the pragmatic one, assured him the van was what was needed to run a successful retail business.

The morning passed quickly with a steady stream of customers coming in to buy needles and ribbon, children's caps and socks, and to browse the new ornaments and giftware. Clara had Jimmy up the ladder to fetch down a box of buttons for Mrs Laidlaw, who was knitting a baby coat for her newest grandchild.

‘These yellow butterfly ones are just in,' Clara assured her. ‘No one else round here will be wearing them yet. And I can match them up with some ribbon. That pattern needs some ribbon sewn in — make it that little bit different, don't you think?'

Mrs Laidlaw agreed. Clara knew that if you did not advise her what to do, she would be in the shop half an hour dithering over small purchases and would leave empty-handed. The woman had six children and fifteen grandchildren and was constantly unravelling old jumpers to knit new ones for the youngest. The Laidlaws were a hardened brood who readily used their fists, but Patience said even thugs needed socks and underwear. Patience knew all their names and ages, but Clara found she had to write them down in the back of her diary or else she forgot.

‘Is the christening soon?' Clara asked. ‘Cos I've got just the thing.' Before Mrs Laidlaw could answer, Clara was round the counter and leaning into the shop window, picking out a baby spoon set made of horn. ‘Aren't they beautiful -?'

As she straightened, Clara came face to face with a man staring in at her from the pavement. The sales patter dried in her throat. He gazed with eyes that sagged behind cracked spectacles, his long face gaunt. But he was staring, not at the goods in the display, but straight at her, as if he had been waiting for her to come to the window. She felt a jolt of alarm and turned abruptly away.