A Hopscotch Summer

A
NNIE
M
URRAY
was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first ‘Birmingham’ novel,
Birmingham Rose,
hit
The Times
bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written twelve other successful novels, including the bestselling
Chocolate Girls
, and, most recently, the sequel,
The Bells of Bournville Green.
Annie Murray has four children and lives in Reading.

A
LSO BY
A
NNIE
M
URRAY

Birmingham Rose

Birmingham Friends

Birmingham Blitz

Orphan of Angel Street

Poppy Day

The Narrowboat Girl

Chocolate Girls

Water Gypsies

Miss Purdy’s Class

Family of Women

Where Earth Meets Sky

The Bells of Bournville Green

For Ruth Mary
with love and gratitude
RIP

1931

‘That’s it, Joycie!’ Em was jumping up and down, clapping her hands with excitement. ‘You can do it!’

Her four-year-old sister Joyce was hopping along the wonky grid chalked on the pavement, the tip of her tongue sticking out and her eyes fixed on her feet in her eagerness to get it right. A pale blue ribbon bounced up and down in her hair as she hopped, avoiding the third square with the stone in it, and landed in square two, then square one, and finally, beaming like a cheeky angel, fell into Em’s waiting arms.

‘I done it, Em! I can do it!’

Em laughed in delight at the sight of her little sister’s face. It was quite similar to her own, though Joyce’s face was pudgier, like a puppy’s, and without Em’s sprinkling of freckles across the nose. But they both had the same bobbed brown hair and fringe, regularly chopped by their mother, Cynthia. ‘I never said I was born to be a hairdresser,’ she’d say, snipping the scissors across.

‘You done it, Joycie. Told you I’d teach you, didn’t I?’

It was August, and the sound of playing children could be heard all along the street, their voices and laughter echoing against the tired, sooty bricks of terraced houses. A gaggle of kids squatted over pocketfuls of marbles, there were lads swinging from ropes on the lamp posts and three of them were prodding the metal rim of a cycle wheel, cajoling it along the road in a sinuous course. And all across the pavements was smudged evidence of the latest craze: chalked hopscotch grids where boys and girls, but mostly girls, went skip-hopping up and down in the broiling afternoon sun.

‘My turn again!’ Joyce was shouting ecstatically, when a commanding cry cut through all the chatter and hubbub of the street.

‘Em! Emma Brown. Get in ’ere quick, bab – your mom needs yer!’

‘Mrs Wiggins is calling,’ Joyce said, unnecessarily, because when Mom’s best pal, Dot Wiggins, opened her mouth to shout, the whole street could always hear her. And they could see Dot’s dark-haired, rangy figure waving her arms at them from their front door.

‘Gotta go!’ Em called to her friends. ‘C’mon, Joycie.’

They dashed along past other women in the street who were settled on their front steps or on broken-backed chairs, gossiping and peeling spuds or shelling peas into their aprons, escaping the heat of all the cooking ranges blasting away indoors.

‘She ’aving it?’ one of them yelled down to Dot Wiggins.

‘Looks like it!’

‘Rather ’er than me!’ A ripple of sympathetic laughter ran along the street.

Em ran into number eighteen Kenilworth Street, still clutching Joyce’s hand. It was dark inside after the bright outdoors, but already Em could hear her mother’s gasps of pain. Cynthia was leaning over the table.

‘That’s it, Cynth – keep going, you’re all right,’ Dot encouraged her confidently. Dot had three kids of her own and was a widow. She was strong and stringy, a workhorse of a woman because she’d had to be.

‘Oh, Lord God!’ Cynthia Brown cried as the worst of it passed. ‘Go and get Mrs Hibbert from number thirty-six, Em. Hurry up!’

‘I’ll stay with yer mom and get things ready,’ Dot said. ‘Go on, bab – do as your mother says!’

‘Are you having the babby?’ Em asked, excited but scared as well.

‘
Yes
– go
on
!’

Em dashed out, Joyce hurrying along behind. She could tell Mom was in a bad state because she didn’t say ‘Where’s Sid?’ or ‘I don’t want to see you playing with that Molly Fox – she’s common.’ Mom hadn’t seen that Molly Fox had been hanging around them as usual, always trying to join in. And she was the one who had some chalk so they’d had to let her play. Otherwise they’d have had to scrape out a grid with any old stone, or an old bit of slate off a roof. Molly had most likely nicked the chalk from somewhere, Em thought. The whole family were known to be light-fingered. Mom also didn’t know that Em’s six-year-old brother Sid was at this moment kicking a pig’s-bladder football with Molly’s brother Bert, who was nine. If she’d known she’d have been after him. Bert was a truly nasty piece of work.

Mrs Hibbert lived in a little cottage next to the timber yard, a noisy place because of all the sawing and banging. But the sweet smell of sawdust which floated along that part of the street helped cover up the stench of drains, the manure in the horse road and miskins full of maggoty refuse festering in the summer heat.

There was a straggling pot of parched lobelia outside the door of Mrs Hibbert’s. In too much of a panic to be shy, Em flung herself at the door knocker, then she and Joyce retreated. Mom always said it was rude to stand too close to the door when someone was opening it.

In a moment the rounded figure and kindly face of Mrs Hibbert appeared. She was a woman in her mid-forties, very plump and rosy-cheeked, her mousy hair escaping from its bun in curling strands.

‘Please, Mrs Hibbert – our mom said to come,’ Em gasped.

Mrs Hibbert took one look at Em and Joycie with their pudding-basin haircuts and grubby gingham frocks and gave a broad smile.

‘So it’s you two, is it? And your mother’s come on with the pains, has she, bab? Lucky you came now, I was about to go out. But I’m ready.’ She picked up her bag and they all hurried along. ‘Goodness, I remember bringing all of you into the world. How old are you now, Emma?’

‘Eight,’ Em panted, thinking how calm Mrs Hibbert was.

‘Eight already. Well, fancy that.’

Cynthia Brown clutched at the edges of the stained oilcloth on the table, bracing herself as another racking pain tore through her abdomen. She always tried to be respectable, but she couldn’t help crying out as each contraction reached its climax, burned through her, then receded again, and she heard Dot’s reassuring voice telling her it was going to be all right as she filled the kettle, tidied and set things ready for the midwife.

Dot, nine years older than Cynthia, had lost her beloved Charlie in 1916, and had been left struggling to bring up her twin boys and then little Nancy. Cynthia could remember the times when Dot was up before dawn to go out cleaning, taking on work in factories, carding buttons or hooks and eyes at home as well as taking in washing, often doing several jobs at once to make ends meet. Now her boys, David and Terry, were old enough to work so things were so much easier. But Dot had always had more energy than anyone else Cynthia knew. In an already poor district, where the Depression was biting hard, so many others around them were barely keeping their heads above water. Of course, Cynthia and Bob had given Dot help over the years, plenty of it. They’d always been in each other’s pockets. And it was such a comfort to have Dot there now. She was like a sister and friend in one. There wasn’t anyone else except her real sister, Olive, two years younger, and they’d never been close. Olive was far too hard-faced and tied up with her own life, even though she didn’t have any children of her own.

‘Dear God, I feel weary!’ Cynthia said, sinking down onto a chair between one pain and another.

‘Well, you overdid it this morning – didn’t I warn yer?’ Dot reproached, turning to look at her friend.

Cynthia nodded, cupping her chin wearily in her hands. ‘I couldn’t seem to help it!’

All morning she’d been hot and scratchy, frantic to get everything done before the baby arrived: clean cupboards and stove the upstairs. The house still stank of disinfectant and of the sulphur she’d burned to chase out the bugs. She’d worked like a Trojan, setting everything right, like a bird building a nest.

Come dinner time, she gave the kids their piece of bread and margarine and a wafer of cheese each before they scurried off into the sunshine again. Then she’d come over all funny and the pains had started. She should have rested, she knew. Bob was forever telling her to rest. She didn’t want to go the way of her own mother, did she, her heart giving out on her at thirty-one? Cynthia had been only five then. Sometimes she broke her heart over it, the way her mother had never lived to see her grandchildren – or even much of her children for that matter. Nothing had been right after that, not for years. Until she met Bob, and life began again, and love.

It was so hot. Sweat collected between her breasts and under her arms. Flies were buzzing dreamily round the sticky fly paper hanging in the middle of the room as if they were too lazy to decide to land on it.

‘I didn’t feel this done in when I started with the other three,’ she murmured. ‘God, I hope I’ll have the strength to push it out!’

‘Oh, nature’ll take her course like she always does,’ Dot said.

‘Bob wants another boy – start a football team . . .’

‘Well, he’ll have to take what comes,’ Dot said with a chuckle, leaning over her to wipe the table.

Cynthia grasped her wrist suddenly. ‘I’m so frightened, Dot.’

‘Eh – what’s up, bab?’ Dot said, startled. She gave Cynthia’s hand a squeeze. ‘You’ll be all right – you’ve done it all before! You’ll just be a couple more teeth short, that’s all!’ Dot gave a grin which revealed several gaps at the side of her mouth.

But Cynthia was deadly serious. ‘What if there’s summat wrong with the babby?’ She struggled to put into words the fears that had flapped in her head all morning like ugly black birds. ‘What if . . .’

But the next wave of pain start to swell in her.

What if she gave birth to a monster, like that lad down the park who walked like an ape and couldn’t speak, who was fifteen and still in napkins? Or what if Bob was taken bad? If they couldn’t feed the children? That Mrs Brand in Rupert Street gassed herself after her husband left her . . .

Then she let out a cry of pain so sharp that she didn’t hear the midwife knocking on the door.

‘Oh dear, it’s like that, is it!’ Mrs Hibbert said cheerfully as she entered the room to find Cynthia braced and panting over the table. ‘It’s all right, dear. Soon be over now. I’ll look after you. Oh and look at you,’ she said to Dot. ‘You’ve already got the water on the boil! Bless you, Mrs Wiggins – we can always count on you!’

As the pain receded, Cynthia smiled weakly, her brown eyes softening with relief at the sight of Nancy Hibbert.

‘Thank God you’re here . . .’

‘Oh, I’m here. Always turn up like a bad penny, me!’

Then Cynthia caught sight of Em and Joyce watching timidly from the door.

‘There’s a halfpenny or two.’ She pointed to a jug on the mantel. ‘You go and get some sweets. Oh – and my ticket’s in there. Go to Mrs Larkin.’

Em ran to the old cracked jug which, as well as the pawn ticket, held some coppers, a few old nails and a couple of feathers. She pocketed the pawn ticket and the coins before Cynthia could change her mind. ‘Ta, Mom. I’ll get the bundle and I’ll get a gobstopper for Sid an’ all.’

She and Joyce fled the dark house, glad to be back out in the sun and away from the disturbing events going on in there. She could just about remember when Joyce was born, but a baby arriving was a new experience for Joyce.

‘Why’s Mom looking all queer?’ she asked as they hurried along the street to the sweet shop.

‘The babby’ll be born soon,’ Em told her, importantly. ‘After we’ve ate our sweets. Come on, let’s be birds!’

They held out their arms and began their flight along the street, swooping from side to side like the pigeons that flapped lazily between rooftops. Had they been real birds they might have looked down on themselves, two slight girls in cotton frocks running along the grimy street of a poor quarter of town, amid a densely packed ward of other such streets where houses and works and foundries shouldered up against the railway goods yard to the north. Looming over the wider neighbourhood were the fat gasometers of the Windsor Street gas and coking works. To Em and Joyce these were ‘Dad’s works’, from where he arrived home after a day shovelling coal off the canal boats to feed the roaring, sulphurous maw of the furnaces. In the distance rose the majestic towers of the ‘Princes’ power station, known as such because the Prince of Wales had come to open it in 1923, since when it had created a permanent haze above their heads unless the wind blew hard enough to chase away the clouds. If they scanned far enough they might have picked out the spire of St Martin’s Church, just a few miles away in the heart of Birmingham, and, winding through the district like a tarnished silver strip, they would have seen segments of canal. This dark artery sidled under bridges and into factory loops, appearing along the sides of the goods yard and works turning out anything from buttons and machine tools to pistols and parts for bicycles. As little girls instead of birds, they could see only the street, the familiar pavement world of school and shops and neighbours, and the nooks which were the favoured backdrop to their games, the narrow entries, coal cellars and back yards.

They fluttered along to Mrs Larkin’s to retrieve the week’s little bundle of clothes. Her cramped shop was in the front room of her house, and stank of moth balls and the frowsty old clothes which were folded on shelves at the back. Cynthia, like most of the women in a district where wages were low or non-existent, pawned every week to make ends meet: Bob’s Sunday jacket and anything else they could spare. Bob’s pay from the gas works was far from enough to feed a growing family. Mrs Larkin, a thin, hard-faced crone with loose-fitting false teeth, surrendered the bundle to them with her usual resentful muttering, her teeth clacking like castanets.