Faded Dreams (5 page)

   ‘Ill? Ill? You’re not ill enough…sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted. This is
my
house and
my
family.
My
wife and kids have bugger-all to do with you…see to your
own
house not
mine
. Piss off, an’ if I see ya here again I’ll chuck ya right through that bloody window.’

   With the jug of milk soaring from his hand and narrowly missing her left shoulder, and his parting shot of, ‘Arseholes! Arseholes!’ ringing in her ears, Mabel fled, knowing full well that the following weekend she’d be back once more with her nose and her mouth in her daughter’s marriage.

   Joe hadn’t done yet. A jar of strawberry jam hit the wall then slid to the floor mingling its broken glass with the slimy fruit.

   Sobbing uncontrollably Ellen clutched her sister’s hand.  Betty poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth to catch a tear rolling down her grimy cheek and lapped up the salty liquid hoping her father wouldn’t notice. Granny Sefton was always causing bother and she was glad to see the back of her but if she started crying now she’d be of no help to her mother and Ellie. She swallowed hard and composed herself, running the back of her hand across her dripping nose.

   ‘Let’s play out Ellie.’ She hoped a change of subject might make everybody stop shouting but Ellen, frozen with fear, refused to move.  

   All at once the house was filled with the smell of Joe’s dried-up dinner over a burnt dried-up pan.  Opening the back door and swearing loudly for the benefit of any neighbours within half a mile, he sent pan, plate, and dinner spinning to the far end of the yard, deliberately leaving the door wide open so that the respectable Sagars next door had no choice but to listen to his obscenities.  

   Florrie tried to make herself heard above the din. ‘Hey, that’s enough of that sort of language in front of the kids. Get some soap and water and wash your mouth out, you drunken bugger.’

   ‘Bollocks! Piss off!’ came his reply.

   Past experience told her he would calm down only when he lost his audience. She helped the girls into their coats and reached for her own.

   ‘Aye go on, bugger off to your  mam’s. You're both alike… you both piss in one pot,’ he sneered as they ran from the house.

   Florrie wandered the streets with her children as she had done so many times before, but this time there was the added anxiety of the looming war. She hadn’t been affected  by The Great War which began when she was 5 years old. Two uncles she hardly knew were killed on the Somme, but her father had spent the war stationed near London.

   This time round she was scared stiff. What if something happened to the kids…or Joe?  When would the bombing start? Tonight?  Perhaps now, this very minute while she was away from the house.  Her step quickened as she urged her tired youngsters back through the deserted rain-sodden streets… back home… back to Joe.

   Things would have to be different at home from now on. Was it any wonder that foreign countries carried on like this and went to war?  Jesus Christ, her and Joe had their own little war every weekend with the poor kids caught up in the crossfire. Yes, things would definitely have to change.

   Meanwhile, a stone-cold-sober Joe had cleaned up the mess - the spilt milk, the mixture of jam and broken glass, the plates, the burnt pan,  and put another shovel of coal on the fire. He laid the blame for this latest trouble at his nosey mother-in-law’s door…him and Florrie would be all right if it wasn’t for her interfering mam… it was
her
fault his family were walking the streets in the pouring rain at this time of night, nosey old bugger.

   Or…some of it could be
his
fault…him and that temper of his. Christ, it frightened
him
to death at times, never mind what it did to Florrie
.
And as for them two little buggers that were stood there watching it all…what did
they
think about their dad? He had a good idea what Betty thought, she were a defiant little sod at times but she must hate him for having everybody upset like that. Wait, was that the front door opening? Thank God they’d come back.

    He welcomed them sheepishly, fussing over them in his usual way, draping their coats on the overhead clothes-rack to dry, warming his hands by the fire then rubbing life back into Ellen’s tiny fingers, pulling up their chairs close to the fire. And finally, handing each of them a steaming pot of tea and a slice of hot buttered toast. In this small corner of a fearful world, peace had been declared.

*

   The day after the Pomfret's rehearsal of World War Two,
Ben and Edie Sagar closed their front door and stepped out into the crisp morning air.

   ‘Morning Joe,’ said Ben in passing.

   Joe stopped sweeping his front path and leaned the brush against the wall.‘How do, Ben, just off to church, are you? This war looks like it’ll be a bad job…looks like there’s no stopping it now…what do
you
say Ben?’

   ‘Aye, it's just a matter of time, Joe’

   Joe was only marginally embarrassed during this interlude, he remembered losing his temper last night but few of the details.

   Hurrying towards town with her own girls skipping happily ahead, Edie voiced her concerns.

   ‘He’ll kill them all one of these days Ben.  Shouldn’t we be telling the police or the child cruelty people?’

   ‘Nothing to do with us, love,’ Ben was more preoccupied with the significance of events about to unfold, ‘better mind our own business.’

   His wife knew better than to pursue the matter but couldn’t get the Pomfrets out of her mind. Florrie was a nice woman, 5 or 6 years older than her, and to be fair Joe was pleasant enough when he exchanged words with her over the back-garden hedge. Betty and Ellen were lovely kids, well mannered, well scrubbed and well fed, although their clothes were obviously second or third-hand. But it was their pale anxious faces, their sobbing whenever there was a lull in the sound of breaking pots or in their father’s outpouring of every known profanity, that troubled her.

   Unable to hide his disgust, Ben would turn up the wireless to drown out the cursing. She wondered what some of the words meant but  guessed they must be bad if they caused so much distress next door.  Occasionally, her Ben used the word “ruddy” but that was all, and never in front of their children. Generally he was a kind, tolerant man and all in all, theirs was a happy though uneventful, marriage.

   On the other hand The Pomfrets seemed to have a highly emotional and varied marriage. Their home, always noisy one way or another, meant her and Ben had little chance of a bit of peace and quiet, but when she heard them laughing fit to burst at Joe’s comical antics she guessed that in-between the terrible outbursts there must be the good times for them.

   The main thing was that there was always plenty of music. If it wasn’t the wireless or gramophone blaring, it was Joe on the piano, mouth-organ or accordion playing all the Music Hall songs while the rest of them sang along. Sometimes, from behind her kitchen curtain, she watched him marching up and down the garden banging an invisible big drum on his belly or swinging his laughing daughters in the air as he stomped and twirled and sang. Those were the times when she fleetingly envied Florrie her unconventional, handsome husband.

   The Cathedral was filled to bursting by the time Ben and Edie arrived. The service followed its usual pattern until it came to the sermon when the Provost carrying a portable wireless made his way to the front of the middle aisle.  Only the thud of his footsteps on the flagged floor and the sporadic bronchitic coughing of an old man to his left broke the silence. Ben felt Edie’s trembling body against his own and took her shaking hands in his, rubbing them gently to calm her. The congregation braced itself and prepared for the worst.

CHAPTER SIX 

   Women - and men too - wept silently as they listened to Neville Chamberlain’s momentous message coming from that insignificant-looking wireless. The country, The Prime Minister was saying, was now at war with Germany.

   The Bishop quietly explained that he was abandoning his prepared sermon, as he doubted anyone would listen. Instead he paid tribute to everyone who had fought so long and hard for peace and led prayers for Great Britain’s leaders and for the King and Royal Family. Finally, he encouraged his flock to stay cheerful, have faith in the real things like family and kindly neighbours and keep the belief that war would pass. There was no hysteria. Ben and Edie, like everyone else, quietly walked outside and made their way home.

   Unlike their neighbours, Joe and Florrie attended church only on special occasions, and this hadn’t seemed like one of them. Holding hands across the kitchen table, they listened to the broadcast in shocked silence.

   Thankfully, Joe was in a “protected industry” and would not be called up for military service, so that was one less worry. Courage should have been in his blood if his father’s exploits were anything to go by  - only last week the brave old soldier, now 64, had presented himself at the recruitment office ready to fight in his
third
war, but this time there were just too many years to knock off his age. But although Joe was proud of his old fella, he had no inclination to follow in his footsteps.

   He looked at Florrie. ‘Well that’s it then cock, there’s a war on'. By saying it out aloud he’d confirmed it once and for all.

   A quick glance at the clock told him that the pub would be open for business by the time he’d walked to the corner.  He was badly in need of a pint of Thwaites and it was about time he found out what Oliver and Fred thought of all this war business.

*

   With no faith in any Government-designed air-raid-shelter, Joe was soon busy building his own little refuge in the cupboard under the stairs.

   After reinforcing the ceiling with steel girders he gave the room a colour-wash of sky-blue distemper (the only means available at that time of  “beautifying” a home). A small second-hand bed went snugly between the two longest walls, and an old dining chair restored to new life with the green paint left over after painting his chicken cote, occupied the remaining floor-space. The higgledy-piggledy-connected electric light bulb was shielded with a red lampshade, and a family photograph was nailed to the wall. Joe invited the neighbours round to admire and envy his new custom-built shelter that could easily double as a guest room.

   There were plenty of false alarms but it was almost a year, August 30
th
1940 to be precise, before the first German bomb dropped on Blackburn. There was more to come the following night, and with the first whine of the air-raid siren Joe and Florrie moved their sleeping children from their bedroom to the sanctuary beneath the stairs.

   Joe flung the front door  wide open, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness, his ears straining to identify the drone of the aeroplane as, “friend or foe”. A shaft of light escaped the parlour, piercing the blackness and stretching its beam to the opposite side of the street.

   ‘It doesn’t sound like one of
ours
, Florrie,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘I think it’s one of
theirs
… it’s to be hopes that bugger from last night hasn’t come back to have another go at us.’

   The A.R.P man lurking in a doorway to the left of the spotlight shone his torch in his direction. ‘Get that bloody light out.’

   Joe was lucky to escape a fine for his carelessness. He swiftly closed the door behind him and joined the man across the street. ‘Sorry about
that,
pal. Jerry doesn’t sound so far away tonight, does he?’

   Ten minutes later the sound of an explosion sent him scurrying to join his family under the stairs to wait anxiously for the siren to sound the “All Clear”.

   The next day the raid was the talk of the neighbourhood. Although there had been no casualties from the
first
air raid there were at least a couple of deaths this time, according to the stories milling around there.  And Joe, with his inexplicable fascination for the macabre was more than willing to add his own two-pennyworth to them.

*

   Whenever there was a drama of any kind Joe liked to be in the thick of it. He would visit gravely ill people he barely knew to offer sympathy or practical help. He would attend the funerals of total strangers, weeping alongside legitimate mourners at the graveside before wangling himself an invitation to the boiled-ham-tea that followed.

   And then there was his morbid interest in crime and punishment. He was drawn to the local Magistrates Court to gape at the petty criminals, or more compellingly to the nearest Assizes where the more serious crimes, like murder, were tried.

   Spellbound, he would watch the judge carefully arrange his “black cap”, (in reality a simple square of black cloth,) atop his silver wig before uttering his final words to the prisoner, “…
taken…to a place…and hanged by the neck until dead… and may God have mercy on your soul
”. The enormity of  a spectacle that would be unsavoury to most people satisfied Joe’s childlike curiosity and gave him a chance to grieve along with the families of all concerned.