Birmingham Blitz (15 page)

‘Lipstick?’ I’d had in mind some new knickers from off a stall in the Bull Ring. ‘You can’t wear that!’

‘Who says?’

‘You’ll look like a tart. What’ll your mom say?’

‘She won’t see. I’ll put it on when I’m out. Jack can kiss it off again.’

‘Yeeurgh! Thought you said you got babbies if you kissed.’

‘Hasn’t happened so far,’ Teresa said smugly. ‘Anyhow – I’ve decided you were probably right about what really happens. Now I’ve got a bit more – experience.’ She went ever so red in the face all of a sudden.

‘What experience?’

‘Never you mind.’ Her cheeks aflame.

‘You
haven’t
, have you?’

She was shaking her head like anything. ‘Course not. It’s just—’ She put her mouth by my ear. ‘Once when we were having a kiss and cuddle he pulled me close and I could feel it there against me. As if it was waiting.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Nothing! What d’you take me for?’ We both got the giggles a bit then. We turned up past St Martin’s Church.

‘When are you going to let me meet wonder boy then?’ I practically had to shout over the din in the Bull Ring.

‘Oh – sometime,’ she said, casual like. ‘Don’t want him running off with you, do I? You and your big soulful eyes.’

I was still recovering from this remark as we made our way through the bustling and pushing and shoving in Spiceal Street. There was a tight bunch of people round a bloke stood on a box who was throwing socks into the crowd.

‘Here y’go – three pair a shilling. I’m practically giving ’em away. Don’t for God’s sake wear ’em and then bring ’em back, will yer?’ Lots of laughter and repartee from the crowd. There was the usual collection of people hanging round the statue of Nelson and someone playing a trumpet, a melancholy sound, and all the stalls of fruit and veg and cheap clothes and crocks and some people getting a bit scratchy with the crowds round them. There were some uniforms mingling in with the rest, on their way up and down to the station, and kids crying and stallholders yelling and smoke from cigarettes curling into your face on the freezing air. The sky was so dark and heavy that some of the stalls already had naphtha flares burning on them.

We went to Woolworth’s, catching whiffs of fish from the market next door. Teresa bought herself a sixpenny lipstick called ‘Lady Scarlet’ and put some on straight away.

‘It does make you look like a tart.’

‘Ta very much.’ She preened in front of a little round mirror in the shop. ‘I just want to grow up. I’m fed up of being treated like a kid.’

I sighed and she looked round. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘I wish I was a kid still. A little tiny babby who doesn’t know about anything.’

Teresa saw my downcast face. ‘D’you want to do your bit of shopping?’

‘Nah. Shan’t bother.’ Couldn’t face the idea of buying camiknickers now somehow.

‘Let’s go to the Mikado then – have ourselves a cake?’

On the way round there we passed one of the emergency water tanks ready for all the fires this war was supposed to set off. Some clever dick had stuck signs on saying ‘no bathing no fishing’.

The Mikado was a lovely café and was packed as usual. It was a big place with an upstairs, did lunches and teas, and the windows full of cakes invited you in. You walked into a warm, fuggy atmosphere of steam and the sweet smell of all sorts of cakes, people with bulging cheeks wiping cream from their lips with rough little paper napkins, and cups and saucers chinking.

Teresa and I took our trays upstairs after we’d passed through the agony of choosing a cake. This was just before things were rationed and we’d come to appreciate it even more later. What to have? Chelsea buns you could unroll into a long, currant-spotted strip, flaky Eccles cakes dark inside, chocolate éclairs squirting cream at every bite? I settled for a cream doughnut and Teresa had a custard slice which erupted with yellow gooiness every time she stuck the dainty little fork into it.

We hung our coats on a proper coatstand and took a table by the window, looking out over the Saturday bustle of Birmingham’s Martineau Street. Everywhere people were milling about with bags of shopping.

Teresa and I grew drunk on the sweetness of the cakes and got the giggles. I tried to forget everything at home and we sat and laughed and reminisced. Teresa was her old jolly pre-Jack self, and I looked at her dancing eyes and lipsticky mouth which had faded in the onslaught of custard and thought, she really is my best pal and that’ll never change. And I was in a quite good mood until suddenly Teresa said, ‘Seen Walt?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t help sounding sulky. ‘Why would I have done? You’re the one whose brother’s pally with him, not me.’ I slammed my fork down too hard on the tea-plate and a lady stared at me.

‘Come on, Genie. You know you like Walt. You’re your own worst enemy, you are. You’re not going to like this but I’m going to say it—’

‘He’s walking out with another girl. I know, ta.’

‘How?’

‘Seen ’em.’ I kept my eyes fixed on my plate.

‘Oh Genie.’ Teresa was all sympathetic in a superior ‘I’m so lucky to have gorgeous Jack but poor old you’ sort of way which got right under my skin. She leaned forward. ‘She’s not reliable that one. I’ve heard things about her.’

‘So what, anyhow,’ I said savagely.

‘He does like you, you know he does.’ Teresa was grinding on at me. ‘If you didn’t do everything you could to put him off. Why can’t you be nice to him instead of eating him alive every time he speaks to you?’

‘I don’t like him now anyway. He’s a pig.’

‘How come then?’

I wasn’t going to tell her about him making a fool of me. Twice.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Lisa.’

‘Bully for her.’

‘Well you asked.’

I didn’t want to know any more. Didn’t want to think about it any more either. The afternoon was spoilt.

‘Fancy going to C&A?’ Teresa said when she’d drained her teacup.

I shook my head, staring at the endless movement of people outside. As my eyes focused on the faces, I noticed one shambling along who was nearly a head taller than everyone else, gangly, head aflame with red curly hair.

‘Isn’t that . . .’ I said, before I had time to think.

‘Who?’ Teresa craned her neck, following the direction where I’d been looking. I saw her eyes widen. ‘It is,’ she said. I could hear the hurt in her voice. ‘It’s Jack.’ Her cheeks went red, clashing with the fading lipstick. ‘He told me he had to work this afternoon. Was doing an extra shift. That’s why I came . . .’

‘With me?’ I finished for her, pushing back my chair. ‘Well thanks a lot, Teresa. It’s always nice to feel second best to some carrot-top who doesn’t give a monkey’s about you in any case.’

She was peering round the window-frame, following him as he disappeared. ‘Was he with anyone? Did you see?’

‘No, I didn’t as a matter of fact. But it proves one thing. You can trust your beloved Jack about as far as you can spit.’

‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ Teresa said, lower lip trembling. ‘Course it is. He wouldn’t lie to me. Not Jack.’

But I couldn’t help a guilty feeling of triumph at the sight of Teresa’s crumpling face.

Next time I saw her of course, Jack had wormed his way out of it. Fibs? Him? Downright porky-pies? No – it had slipped his mind, he wasn’t working after all, and being a model son he had to run some urgent errands for his mom.

His devoted, starry-eyed girl told me this in all seriousness, face ashine. ‘I knew it’d all be all right! He’s explained everything.’

‘Teresa,’ I said, ‘if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

The thing I hadn’t told Teresa was that I did have an admirer in Jimmy the Joiner.

I paid him a bit more attention. Smiled sometimes. After all, I wanted someone to want me. In fact I pretty desperately wanted someone to want me. Number one on the list would have been my own mother. But I wasn’t going to show it or go begging for it from anyone. I managed, me. I could cope. Didn’t need anyone. That’s what I wanted to say to everyone. Scared the life out of me, all that wobbliness every time I saw Walt. And the terrible stabbing jealousy when I saw him with Lisa or whatever the hell her name was. I didn’t dare think what would happen if I gave in to feelings like that. But Jimmy was different. Apart from the fact he wasn’t unpleasant as such, I had nothing in the way of actual attraction towards him at all. Except for being a bit flattered. It gave me a warm, stroked sensation that anyone was taking an interest.

Since I didn’t feel anything except a helping of curiosity, I wasn’t worried enough to be nasty to him. In fact I started to get a thrill saying ‘Hello Jimmy’ when I came into work and seeing I had the power to make a red flush spread over his pale, underfed-looking face.

‘Rationing starts today,’ Mom said, though I could hardly have missed the fact since Gloria had been on and on about it. The week’s ration was to be: bacon, 4 oz.; butter, 4 oz.; sugar, 12 oz. We were already registered with all the right people. Thank heavens we were with another butcher and not Harris’s, I thought with a shudder. Didn’t need my nose rubbed in it.

‘We’ll have to make sure we don’t have that Molly over every five minutes, living off our ration,’ Mom said. She was ironing at the table. Now there was an unusual sight. I should’ve had a photographer in. ‘She seems to be coming over here a lot.’

She didn’t know the half of it. Molly was over just about every evening when Mom was out at the telephone exchange. She seemed to have got out of Gladys’s clutches, and instead of being dragged into premature old age had decided to
live
. The dabs of rouge got thicker. She brought boiled sweets. She had a cousin worked over at Cadbury’s and got her cheap chocolate so she brought that along as well and saved all the best bits for Len, even some with nuts in. Once Len was home from work he and Molly parked themselves in front of Gloria for the evening, enormous in their chairs, sucking and champing away on barley sugars and Dairy Milk with serene smiles on their faces. They never said much to each other. Barely a word in fact. Whatever was on, they listened.
The Nine O’Clock News
, they tuned into Haw-Haw, concerts, records,
ITMA
. They cheered the house up no end, chuckling away when anyone laughed on the wireless, Molly’s titties heaving up and down. I thought how their dimensions suited each other.

And Gloria had just given us a new treat: the Forces Programme which was put on for the lads in France, but we could tune into it at home as well. I wondered if Dad’d hear it and felt cheered by the thought that he might. It was like a link with him. Gloria’s music was the one thing that could lift my spirits on these chill, dreary days. All those bandleaders, their music like shiny sparkling trails through the house, making you want to sing, to move your body – Geraldo, Joe Loss, Ray Noble, Glenn Miller. I was in love with them all, though I had no idea whether any of them looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And my Anne Shelton, and the Mills Brothers with those sweet, melancholy voices. I wanted to be tucked into bed by ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ and dance till I was drunk on happiness to ‘In the Mood’. They did what they did for me, for Len, for Molly, and for countless other people. They made life worth living.

It started snowing. I say snowing. It was snow such as I’d never seen in my life before. Heaps and swathes and layers and banks of it clogging up the town and blown across the parks. The old’uns were all saying, ‘Can’t remember snow like this since . . .’ – though each of them seemed to recall a different date. Gloria said it was turning into the worst winter for forty-five years. Everything was muffled and the sky seemed to sink lower as if it was creaking under the weight of it all. Buses, already crawling along in the handicap of the blackout, were now going so slowly they were almost going backwards. Everyone was even friendlier than usual and Mom had to buy herself a new pair of boots to get to and from work.

‘Feels safer somehow, doesn’t it?’ Mom said, when the snow had been falling for some time. ‘As if they couldn’t get at us with all this wrapped round.’ She stood staring out of the back window.

‘It’s so cold though.’ I was crouched by the fire, turning this way and that to try and feel the warmth on every bit of me. ‘I was frozen in bed last night. Where’s that crocheted blanket of Nan’s gone?’

Mom picked up her bag and started fiddling inside it. ‘What blanket?’

‘You know. The yellow one.’

Mom shrugged and made a show of checking through her coins. ‘It’s so flaming dark on the bus you can’t see what change they’re giving you . . . Maybe Len’s got it.’

Since Len had already gone I couldn’t ask him, but there was no sign of it on his bed.

‘That strip of baize we had in the front room’s gone too,’ I told her.

Mom frowned. ‘D’you think that Molly’s light-fingered?’

‘No, I don’t.’ The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. It was hard to imagine Molly being light-anythinged. ‘I s’pose it’ll turn up.’

One night Len and Molly started kissing. After some sign between the two of them which I must have missed, Len knelt down on the floor in front of her. Molly spread her legs apart to let him come near and they locked their lips together. And that was that. For ages. I was ever so embarrassed. Seeing people kissing like that’s enough to make you jump out of a window even from the top floor, and they didn’t care whether I was there or not. They didn’t even notice.