Faded Dreams (22 page)

   Eventually the fire and Joe’s rage burned themselves out and the house was still. Ellen sobbed quietly, the stench catching the back of her throat with every breath, her brand-new uniform, crisp and smart until moments ago, now hanging limp on its dusty coat-hanger and streaked with damp black soot.

   Florrie contemplated the scene; furniture shrouded in soot half an inch thick, fair-haired children now grey-haired and black-faced in filthy clothes, Ellen’s new uniform, bought “on tick” with a Clothing Club cheque that would take months to pay off, in ruins.

   Joe washed his hands and face at the kitchen sink, changed his shirt and collar and went off for his Sunday afternoon drinking session; it didn’t occur to him that he’d brought about the mayhem, it was always someone or something else to blame.

   And yet for all his faults, he considered his beautiful children to be his greatest achievement. He loved them dearly, was immensely proud of them, and basked in the reflected glory of their successes. 

   ‘Ellie, me youngest lass, passed her Scholarship, y’know. She’s going to The Technical High School learning to be a secretary in an office,’ he would brag. ‘An’ Betty, me eldest, used to be on the stage on tour. She’s met all the music-hall singers an’ comedians. Now our Billy, it’s hard to tell yet how our Billy’ll turn out, he’s still only a babby, but he’s not daft…we can see
that.
’

   That afternoon he came home suitably refreshed and agreeable after a few pints as if nothing had happened. Florrie had washed the uniform, dried it on the clothes-line, and was ironing it to its former glory on the kitchen table. The following morning Ellen went off to her large town-centre school as smart and clean as the next student but the warm anticipation  had been replaced by that familiar dizziness and a feeling that she had been crushed by a steamroller.

   A month later  her father experienced that very same feeling and his lorry-driving career was brought to an abrupt halt.

*

   It was on the dockside at Liverpool when Joe was a bystander in an area where he shouldn’t have been bystanding, that a lorry reversed into him, crushing him against a trailer, fracturing five of his ribs and cracking his sternum. It meant the sudden loss of his earnings but as luck would have it, Betty had left school that summer and started work next to her mother as an apprentice weaver. Her wage wasn’t much but it would help until his compensation came through.

   He had his own plans for the £200, which was a small fortune in 1946 and more than enough to fulfil his dreams of being his own boss. He rented a second-hand shop complete with stock on Penny Street. At long last he was a “Businessman” and well on his way to fame and fortune. Florrie had always told him that he had the gift of the gab and she was right. He could talk anyone into buying anything and on his very first day as shop-keeper he sold a pair of down-at-heel shoes to a man whose
own
shoes looked twice as new.

   The following week he sold an outsized moth-eaten fur coat to an undersized pompous woman. Clutching the surplus material hanging down her back, he led her to the tall, cloudy mirror.

   ‘By gum love, it could’ve been made for you... it fits you like a glove,’ he admired her reflection, pulling the coat even tighter around her scrawny frame. ‘I don’t know if I can let you have it though,’ he wiped the smile off her face the minute she showed some interest, ‘you see, the wife's the boss…but just wait here a minute... I'll have a word with her.’

   He guided the woman away from the tell-tale mirror before releasing his fist-full of fur to run like a pair of ferrets down her back, and retreated to the empty back room.

   ‘Come on now Missus,’ he addressed an imaginary wife, ‘I know the other lady who came in earlier said she’d come back for it and offered you more for it, but I think you should let
this
lady have it. She
does
look well in it…knows how to carry it off…a proper picture she is.’

   By the time he’d finished persuading his invisible spouse, the woman was so anxious to have the coat that she gave him two shillings more than the asking price.

   Although Joe might have been a good salesman with an eye for a bargain he lacked the necessary financial common sense to complement his talents. No sooner had a “transaction” taken place than he was across the road in the taproom of The Waterloo drinking the profit. The note pinned to his door “Gone To Lunch. Back in 5 minutes” guaranteed a queue, but when the 5 minutes became 30 the queue disappeared and never returned.

   Within a year Joe was broke and wearily admitted defeat. For her part, Florrie wearily admitted she’d never seen a penny  since her husband entered the business world.

TWENTY-THREE

   The only good thing to be salvaged from the shop, as far as Joe could see, was a second-hand enamel bath that he’d been unable to sell on, not even to the well-heeled man in a pair of down-at-heel shoes or to the thin lady in the fat
fur coat.

   The bath was just what his family needed; he’d build a proper bathroom that would give his adolescent daughters a bit of privacy, but he’d have to make sure Old Man Spicer, the landlord, never found out.

   He built a partition across a third of the back bedroom and sat the freshly painted white bath in the corner of the tiny new room. A brass tap was connected to the water supply from the kitchen and fixed to the wall in his usual rather clumsy fashion, a second-hand gas boiler to heat the water was positioned in the remaining space and linked  by a rubber pipe to the gas supply in the kitchen, the boiling water would be ladled into the bath with a large enamel jug and empty through a short waste-pipe that he had fed through the wall.

   It was Joe’s pride and joy. It might not be perfect, but it was a damned sight better than having a bath in front of the kitchen fire. Florrie and his girls had a proper bathroom with its own door though he had to laugh when they grumbled that the white paint which the hot water had softened stuck to their bare arses. On the other hand, when they pulled the plug and the dirty water cascaded into the backyard, they marvelled at his ingenuity.

   ‘There’ll never be another Joe,’ he boasted, ‘I’ll bet there won’t be many folk like us round here with their own bathrooms. I think I’ll advertise in The Telegraph –
Joe’s Bathrooms
Built To Order
.  A bit of extra money would be handy to be going on with till I can start lorry-driving again.’

   Unfortunately, their taste of luxury was short-lived. Six months later, Mr Spicer wrote to say that he was selling the property and would be bringing the new owner to inspect the house. There was nothing else for it, the bathroom had to go.

   In the middle of the night, and out of sight of the neighbours, the whole family dismantled the bath and boiler, dragged them downstairs and buried them in the garden. By the next morning the various holes in the
bathroom
walls had been hastily plastered over and a mirror hung over the more obvious one.

   By the time Mr Spicer and the new landlord arrived the back bedroom looked as if it had never been anything else but a back bedroom. And with a bit of luck the back garden with its sinister mound of freshly dug earth would never give up its secret. The following week Joe abandoned his dream of bathroom-building for the masses and went back to lorry driving.

*

   By the time he was six years old Billy liked nothing better during his school holidays than to travel with his father. It gave him the closeness and recognition he yearned for, but best of all his father could turn an ordinary day into a wonderful adventure. Just like that day at Liverpool when they gazed in awe at the big ships from across the world while waiting to load up the lorry. 

   ‘Billy,’ his father nudged him, ‘this looks like a Russian ship, how’d you like to go on board and have a look round?’ He hardly noticed Billy’s nervous nod. ‘Follow me then, and stick close. Keep your eyes down and don’t start being nosey and scenning round at folk and keep your gob shut as well or we’ll both finish up in the cop-shop.’

   They climbed the gangplank and explored the ship for an hour then with identities still unchallenged returned nonchalantly to shore. With the same confident air they strolled unquestioned through a vast warehouse where the smell of peanuts set Joe’s mouth watering. There were peanuts half-buried in dust everywhere, on the floor, on the ledges, on the stairs, or scattered over sacks of cattle-feed. He scooped handfuls of the dusty, discarded nuts from a nearby windowsill and transferred them to his son’s cupped hands.

   ‘Here, fill up your pockets , Billy, these’ll keep us going till we get home.’

   ‘What are they, dad?’ Billy had no knowledge of peanuts or any other kind of nuts. There had been a war on for all of his short life, and three years further on things hadn’t got  much better.

    ‘Get some in your mouth and try ‘em. Don’t eat too many though, or they’ll give you ‘pendicitus.’

   The taste was something to savour, never mind that they had been lying around in the muck with only the rats for company for God only knew how long. The lorry rumbled home with Joe singing at the top of his voice, at the same time banging out the rhythm with his fist on the door of the cab. Billy drifted off into a contented sleep wishing he could have this much fun with his dad every day of his life.

1949

     ‘Have you seen
this
in tonight’s Telegraph?’ Florrie sounded shocked, ‘it’s to do with Terry.’

    Joe snatched the newspaper from her shaking hands. The front-page headline ran, “Blackburn’s Favourite Ballad Singer Found Dead”. The words danced before his eyes then blurred, he blinked hard trying to make sense of them.

  
An off-duty policeman walking his dog in The Yellow Hills, a local beauty spot,  had discovered Terry Johnson’s body swinging from a tree. The police had recently questioned him, the report went on, along with another unnamed gentleman in Blackpool and he was expected to face a charge of committing an act of indecency. The mystery was his connection with Blackburn  and why he chose to end his life here.

   A letter for Joe arrived the following day. Terry wrote that he could not face the prospect of prison, he was coming to Blackburn to see the only person in the world he had really cared about and by the time Joe read the letter he would have taken the only way out.

   The letter dropped to the floor. Florrie picked it up, quickly read it then putting it aside joined him on the couch.   ‘But he hasn’t even been here…he said he were comin’ to see me but he didn’t come,’ his voice was heavy with despair. ‘Why the hell didn't he Florrie? If he’d have come here, I’d have talked him out of doing away with himself.’ He held his head in his hands, bawling like a two-year-old.

   ‘Hush Joe, for God’s sake. It’s not your fault.’ Florrie could do no more than rock him back and forth in her arms. ‘There’s nothing you could have done to stop him…he always were a bit strange, were Terry … I’ve told you that many a time. Now stop your yelling and find something else to do while I take the kids down town out of the way.’

   Billy knew something was up and didn’t fancy going back home till his dad felt better. Young as he was, he latched on to any change of mood in the family. It was often his fault that his dad shouted but this time it seemed to be Terry’s. He fretted and whinged and dragged on Betty’s coat-sleeve until she heaved him on to her back.

   ‘If you don’t shuddup, you moaning little bugger, you’re gonna get your bum slapped hard,’ Florrie threatened. ‘ Put him down Betty, he shouldn’t need carrying at
his
age.’

She flicked on the kitchen light and stopped dead in her tracks. There sat Joe, slumped over the table with a piece of paper clutched in his right hand. Betty unfurled his fingers and then the note, with its spidery scrawl so unlike his usual neat handwriting, and read aloud:

       Dear Florrie,

       I can’t go on. I’ve gone to join my mam and dad. Look after the kids for me.

           Your Loving Joe.

   The familiar nausea swept over Ellen, sweat prickling the back of her neck just before her knees buckled. The next thing she heard was a mishmash of distant voices, slowly becoming clearer. Blinking rapidly she could just about make out the hazy figure of her father kneeling over her, patting her face sharply and then rubbing the life back into her twisted, paralysed fingers. Her mother was shouting and swearing a jumble of words that gradually began to make sense.

   ‘Are you mad or
what,
you barmy bugger? What do you think you’re playing at
now
, giving us all a shock like that?’

   ‘Now Florrie, calm down,’ Joe muttered, gently stroking Ellen’s bloodless cheeks. ‘Shut your gob a minute, will ya? Just look what you’re doing to this poor kid with all your bawling and shouting.’

   ‘What
I’m
doing to her? What
I’m
doing to her? I’m sick to the back teeth of you and your bloody antics, if it’s not
one
thing it’s another. I wish I were miles away from the lot of you.’

   Betty gave her father one of her withering looks, grabbed Billy by the hand and went upstairs.