Family of Women (2 page)

‘Can I stop at home an’ all?’ Rosina asked.

‘Don’t talk
stupid
,’ Charlie sneered at her.

Rosy stuck her tongue out at him when Mom wasn’t looking and Charlie gave her one of his stodgy looks. He was like an old man as well, Violet thought.

Clarence wiped his chin on the back of his hand. ‘Whatever you think’s best, Bess.’ That was what he alway said in the end.

So at thirteen, Marigold stopped going to school and stayed at home and learned about looking after babies. She never said if she cared either way. In any case, Violet never heard anyone ask her.

‘Cat’s got the measles, the measles, the measles . . .’ Rosina was skipping ahead, dark plaits switching up and down.

Cat’s got the measles, the measles got the cat! Oi – ’ She swivelled round, landing on both feet. ‘Vi – d’you think Mom’d give us a tanner to go up the Picture House?’

‘You’ll be lucky!’

Violet stared at her in amazement. Trust Rosy! She’d never dare ask Mom for money, straight out.

‘You ask – bet she won’t.’

It was the end of the summer term and school was out. Eight weeks of freedom stretching ahead, and the day was hot as they trotted along in the blue shadow of the houses with the heady feeling of being set free from school routine into the wide, shapeless time of the holidays. Long days ahead to play out at hopscotch and tip-cat and hide-and-seek!

Violet was excited, because you couldn’t not be excited at the end of term with all of them pouring out of the school gates on to the street, everyone running, shouting, cheering and tearing off home or to the park. But there was also a sad feeling because she liked her teacher Miss Green, who was about to leave the school. Miss Green was plump and comforting, with curly brown hair, and she knew Miss Green liked her and had taken notice of her the way no one else had ever done, so she’d done her very best for her.

‘You’re my star pupil in arithmetic,’ Miss Green had said a few days ago, smiling through her spectacles. ‘You’re working very well, Violet.’

These were words of very high praise from a teacher. Miss Green was very striterays1ct but she was fair-minded, and any words of praise coming Violet’s way were rare indeed. She carried them inside her as if they were fragile birds’ eggs. Clutched in her hand was the envelope containing her school report. Had Miss Green written something nice in there as well? If only she could get it out and read it, but she didn’t dare – what would Mom say? She bubbled inside in anticipation.

Rosina adored the pictures. She’d sit through anything, laughing at Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy until she was nearly sick, riding in her seat through Westerns until people behind snapped at her to sit still, and most of all enjoying the ones with the actresses, with their big soulful eyes full of emotion and their lovely clothes like none they’d ever seen in real life. Rosina laughed, cried, trembled with them. She lived every second of it. She especially loved Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford.

They ran up the entry. Mrs Cameron was mangling clothes in the yard. The door was open as usual and they ran straight in. Charlie had beaten them home and was filling his face with a crust of bread and lard. Bessie stood, perspiring in the heat and rocking the latest orphaned infant in her arms, and the room was full of his wailing.

‘Mom, Mom – can we go to the flicks?’ Rosina demanded.

‘I’ve got my report, Mom!’ Violet thrust the envelope towards her mother. She knew it was the wrong thing to do but she couldn’t help herself.

‘Can’t you see this babby’s running me ragged!’ Bessie roared. ‘Can’t you see, you stupid wench. What’s that flaming thing?’ She looked at the brown envelope as if it was dirt. ‘I don’t want that – stick it on the mantel.’

Heart sinking, Violet did as she was told. Stupid – yes, to think Mom might want to know. Rosina carelessly put her report up there as well, then persisted with what she wanted.

‘Mom, Mom –
can
we? It’ll get us out from under your feet.’ Rosina never gave up. If she couldn’t get her way one way round she could think of half a dozen other avenues to try.

‘You’d wear out rock, the way you keep on,’ Bessie said crossly over the baby’s screams. But she dug under her apron pocket, just near where she kept the leather cat o’ nine tails which could switch stingingly across hands or legs. Instead she brought out a shilling. ‘Go on then, all of you – clear off. I don’t know what Clarence’ll say though.’

Bessie always said this, even though Clarence never said anything of much note and she was firmly in charge and always had been.

‘Come on, Vi!’ Rosina cried.

Charlie and Marigold came as well and they sat in their threepenny seats through something all about the Alps, and then a Buster Keaton picture called
The Navigator
. Violet laughed along with Rosina and the others, but all the time in the back of her mind there was that envelope on the mantelpiece where things were written about her and she wanted to know what. Could she, Violet Wiles, be good at something – anything? Had Miss Green seen something in her that no one else had?

That evening Bessie was snapping at them all, trying to feed the wretched baby and get the tea cooked. She stood by the stove in her huge flowery apron and the house stank of boiling fish. She’d obviously forgotten completely about the reports. Violet went over to the mantel and stared at them, hoping her mom would notice.

‘Get to the table,’ Bessie ordered.

‘There’s our reports – from school,’ Violet said, perched on her rickety stool. ‘You gunna read them?’

Bessie’s face darkened. She gave a big, impatient sigh.

‘Best get it over with, then.’

Violet scrambled eagerly to get them, heart thudding as her mother tore open Charlie’s and looked at it. Bessie ran her eyes swiftly down the rows of brief comments from his teachers.

‘Ah well, son.’ She looked across at him. ‘Not long now and you’ll be out of there.’

Charlie and Marigold would be fourteen in October and then he’d be out to work. For Bessie it couldn’t come soon enough. She had a shuddering dislike of schools and everything about them.

She picked up Violet’s report and ripped it open so carelessly that she tore the paper inside. Violet sat, not eating, forgetting to breathe. What did it say?

Bessie eyed it in the same offhand manner as before, then moved on to Rosina’s. Soon she dropped all the papers on the floor by her chair.

‘Well, that’s that. Get on with your tea. It’ll be cold else.’

Violet shrank inside. She didn’t want to eat smelly boiled fish. She felt sick and crushed. Course, Mom never took any notice of anything to do with school. She just thought this time she might have done well and Mom might say something. Her eyes filled with tears.

‘What’s up with you?’ Charlie said.

‘Nothing,’ she whispered, and tried to swallow down the fish.

When they’d finished eating, Bessie got up and brewed a pot of tea. She plonked the bottle of sterilized milk on the table.

Violet still couldn’t contain herself. She could sneak a look at the reports herself, of course, but if there was something special from Miss Green in there, she wanted to hear it, like an announcement. Wanted the others to hear it.

‘Uncle Clarence – ’ she whispered. ‘Will you read my report?’

Clarence was sitting back, comfortable after his tea, and struggling to light his pipe.

‘All right – pass ’em over,’ he said indifferently. Clarence wasn’t interested in anything that didn’t centre on himself. Apart from two years in France in the Great War, he’d been looked after by Bessie all his life, and that suited him very well.

Violet’s was on top. Clarence red tViollaryes fad, in his toneless voice, the remarks about her reading and sewing. They were ordinary enough. Violet’s pulse quickened. Now he was coming to Miss Green.

‘“Violet is very strong in arithmetic and geometry,” ’ he read. Violet sat drinking in every word. ‘ “It would be a waste if she did not go on to greater things.” ’

The sweet honey words had not had a chance to seep into her when her mother gave a great mocking guffaw.

‘Who the hell wrote that load of flannel?’ She continued to laugh, shaking her head, her belly quivering. ‘What “greater things” is she on about, d’you think? Tea at Buckingham Palace? God, they live in another world, these people. What bloody good does she think
geometry
– ’ she put on a mock-teacher voice, ‘is going to be when there’s a babby in her belly and no food in the pantry, eh?’

She sat shaking her head. Violet didn’t hear any more of her report. She tried to hold on to Miss Green’s words.
Very strong! Greater things!
But every last spark of her brief glow of pride was snuffed out
by her mother’s scorn.

Two years later the gates of school closed behind Violet for the last time.

Miss Green had long left, with her words of encouragement. Violet tried to forget her excitement over that one school report. That little opening, those thin threads of light from a dream world not her own, was long in the past now. When she received her character from school, for arithmetic it just said, ‘Good.’ So, good enough, but nothing special. And now it was time to start looking for work, on a rainy April morning, two days after her fourteenth birthday.

‘Marigold – look after the babbies.’

Bessie was putting her hat and coat on. Violet stared at her, a terrible realization beginning to dawn.

‘Where’re you going, Mom?’ she asked, dreading the answer.

‘You needn’t think I’m letting
you
loose looking for a job by yourself,’ Bessie said, doing up her buttons. ‘You’ll say yes to anything for slave wages – or you’ll end up in service, skivvying for a pittance. I’m not having that. Come on – set your hat straight, wench. No good going out like a bag of muck tied up in the middle.’

There was no point in arguing. They stepped out into the Aston drizzle. Bessie cut a forbidding, matriarchal figure, striding out of the yard in her black winter coat which only just fastened round her. She always wore her hair, raven black like Marigold’s, in two plaits coiled round her head, and over these she pulled a black hat with a narrow brim which curved upwards.

‘Morning, Mrs Wiles!’

‘Awright Mrs Wiles – off up the shops?’

‘No – I’m going to find our Violet a job.’

These greetings were repeated several times, all with deference, a few with cringing timidity. Bessie, as the gaffer of the yard, was often consulted about quarrels which broke out with so many people living cheek by jowl under the stresses of poverty; she held the ‘didlum’ money, the savings people put in week after week to save for Christmas or to have some money put aside for an emergency, like paying the doctor. She was respected, for her dominant toughness as much as her immense capacity for taking things on.

Walking beside her, Violet felt any vigour of her own draining away. Her mother had this effect on her. Bessie’s energy seemed to flatten her, like a steamroller. Bessie lived in constant terror of the poverty of her childhood and fought it even when there was no need. She never went out without a chunk of bread pushed into her pocket.

‘You never know when lightning’s going to strike,’ she always said.

Violet trailed along after her. Her coat sleeves were too short and one of the blue buttons was missing. Although she had tied her hair back and tried to look neat and tidy, she felt scruffy and awkward and childish. All she wanted was a decent little job she could just slip into, with a few friendly faces around her. If only Mom could let her go out and do it for herself!

They walked a way along Summer Lane. It was a notorious area, famous for its poverty and gangs of violent lads. Violet looked round. She was never out at night to see what went on. Everything looked normal enough now. She could just hear sawing from one of the mills round the back. The streets were busy with people, women with small children out on their way to the shops, drays from the brewery and the Co-op, one of the horses lifting its tail to deposit dollops of manure along the street. It had barely finished when a tiny lad, no more than four years old, was in the road scooping it into a pail. Its sale to anyone who wanted fertilizer brought in handy extra pennies. Another cart passed loaded with blocks of salt, its driver yelling his way along the street.

‘Right.’ Bessie paused suddenly, and from the house they were standing beside a cloud of dust and dirt was flicked all over them by a broom. ‘ ’Ere!’ she shouted, brushing down her coat. ‘Watch where you’re throwing yer muck and mess!’

‘Well how was I to know you was standing out there?’ came a voice from inside. ‘I’m not a bleedin’ mind-reader you know. Why don’t yer just bugger off and stand somewhere else if you’ve nowt to do?’

Bessie stalked away huffily. She was out of her own little orbit and people weren’t showing her the same respect.

‘Down here.’ Bessie led her along several streets, all tightly packed with yards of houses leading off entries and front houses with their doors flung open to let some air in and, squeezed between them all, factories and workshops. At the end of one street they came to a bigger works. ‘Steel Castings’, it said across the front.

Without a word to Violet, Bessie went to the door and knocked. After a wait, a swarthy man with a moustache came to the door. Violet felt herself shrink inside. She didn’t like the look of theheiuo;msqu hors place or the man’s grim expression.

‘What d’you want?’ he demanded.

‘I want a position for my daughter. You got any vacancies?’

Violet was very embarrassed by the aggressive tone in her mother’s voice, and she had an almost physical sensation of the man running his eyes over her from top to toe. To her great relief he said, ‘Skinny little mare like that ain’t no good to us.’ And shut the door.

‘Huh,’ Bessie said. ‘Well, bugger him.’

Oh Lor’, Violet thought, full of dread, what if she ends up shooting her mouth off? Bessie had a terrible temper on her when she got going.
Mind I don’t lose my temper
, was one of her warnings.