Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (33 page)

‘Hush now, little man,' doting Sarah would say, smiling at Ralph who, until pulled up short by a warning glace from Eva, was advancing on the sweets with grubby hands. Sarah's sister, Hannah, was itching to clobber him but, as she could not hit her sister's lad, made up for it by clouting her own. Typically, this sisterly exchange of indulgence and abuse was Dick's signal to retreat to the wood.

Some neighbours also needed side-stepping. ‘Oh no,' Dick would groan, at the approach of Mrs Cartwright, lapdog tucked firmly under her arm. ‘There's “just a minute” coming.' She never stayed for less than half an hour, and was still full of praise for Our Pearl. Or there was Mrs Jenkinson, another great talker. ‘Our cat's got a long tail,' Dick would mutter, as she embarked on her umpteenth story.

Ten strides from the boundary fence, four trees from the path – Cora decided to bury some treasure in her grandad's wood: a string of beads, a diamanté brooch and a toy watch. Precious jewels, were it not that the beads were a washed-out shade of blue, the diamantés clashed with their bakelite setting and the watch strap was not quite as elasticated as it once was. Not the perfect treasure
trove, then, but – who was to know? Betsy provided a casket (an old tin with a broken hinge and slanting lid). Cora dug a hole.
X
marked the spot on the map she folded into four and slipped into her pocket, in case she needed to retrieve her treasure later. The map lived with the lucky horses' teeth Cora discovered in the wood and carried everywhere – until Annie found them.

The wood was an ideal spot for playing by herself but, on most weekends, Cora played with the Mill kids. Games belonged to Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. (Sundays did not usually figure as a day for communal play – though not because everyone else was at church.) The short terraces had their share of matriarchs and families whose kids you wouldn't cross – if you were planning to knock on a neighbour's door and run away, you wouldn't try that prank on the Lowthers – but, for the most part, everyone muddled along pretty well. The Mill kids looked after my mum. They asked Betsy if they could take her on their walks to the Meadows and beyond, and reminded Cora when they should head back: ‘Your grandma will be worrying.' Though abrasive in speech and manner, these rough and tumble kids were kind. They weren't spiteful like some of the children my mum knew at school, nor did they put on airs – not that many had much worth boasting about – or speak against her grandparents or aunt, although it would have been the easiest thing for someone to repeat a story or disparaging remark about Betsy, Dick or Eva. As far as the Mill kids were concerned, my mum was Cora Nash: she belonged to the corner shop.

The lamp post in front of the shop served as starting point, winning post, marker, the lot, and was good for monkeying up, if you were feeling athletic. The rope suspended from the tree near the entrance to the swampy field by the canal could be clambered
up at any time; rounders and other ball games were likewise played in all weathers. Any season was good for skipping too, although skipping required a huge rope, with often ten or more children waiting their turn, and up to half a dozen leaping beneath it. The thickness of the rope, the strength required to turn it (and the burn if it caught you), made this a game for older children. Occasionally, young adults joined in, sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds lifting their heavy boots or factory clogs clear of the rope, free of their adult selves for a moment.

Most games belonged to daylight, but ‘leakey' was only ever played at dusk, the encroaching darkness adding an extra dimension to the search. Cold night air wrapped itself round bare legs, chilblained hands and chapped lips; it was hard to be sure whether your shivers were due to the cold or delicious fear. Apart from the ‘looker' leaning against the street lamp, shielding his eyes and counting into the silence (Betsy could hear the countdown inside the shop) and the light from the shop itself, there was no other lighting close by. All other players dissolved into darkness. My mum and the other young girls hid with someone older (and were always caught quickly for this reason), but even the youngest boys hid alone. Backyards, doorways, privies, beside chicken coops and rabbit hutches, inside coal houses or the enclosed porch of the pub; behind canalside trees, and as far up as the stone cottages – all these were valid hiding places: anywhere you felt brave enough to crouch and could make yourself invisible. Excited whispers faded into silence. Then the shout: Coming, Ready or Not.

My mum saw how some children lived. One family at the Mill could not afford mats or lino: there was nothing to distinguish their kitchen floor from the cinder path beyond their back door.
She saw, too, the casual slaps and cuffs and clips around the ear some kids endured; the ‘I'll knock your block off,' and much worse. (The discovery that children could be beaten was a revelation to Cora: the first time she understood this was aged six, watching Steerforth thrash David Copperfield in the film.) And so, when Annie sometimes told her, ‘You were born under a lucky star,' she knew what her mam meant. She had no idea that Annie was thinking of something else altogether.

Despite the supposed drawbacks of the close community at Wheeldon Mill, the living in one another's pockets and everybody knowing everyone else's secrets – or perhaps for this reason – not one child (or irritable adult) confronted my mum with the fact of her adoption. It was the children on a slightly higher social rung, the mind-your-own-business (though don't think we don't know what that is) council-house dwellers of Racecourse Road. Not Annie's closest neighbour whom she took into her confidence when the family moved in and who never breathed a word to my mum. Someone else told.

‘Your mam's not your real mam,' or words to that effect, Molly Stapleton flung at Cora one afternoon, a small projectile designed to wound, though Molly could have no idea how powerful her weapon was. They were playing in a neighbour's yard, my mum somewhat reluctantly. Molly was visiting her grandma who lived nearby and was aware that, though the adults thought it nice if all the children played together when she came to stay, Cora and the other local kids were less sure. Molly knew that she was merely tolerated (or worse: some of the others shouted ‘Clear off' whenever she popped her head above the fence). She was younger than them too, and so enjoyed having this big stick to wave. It stopped my mum as surely as a real stick.

‘Yes, she is.'

‘She's not. My nan says.'

That extra stab of confirmation put my mum on guard. Puzzled and disbelieving, but wary now, she took the story home. ‘What nonsense,' Annie reassured her. ‘Of course you're my little girl.' But she was cross. She'd go straight round and speak to Mrs Stapleton about Molly's hurtful fib. She was in her coat before she reached the end of the sentence, and back home again almost as fast. Not another word on the subject was said by Annie or Molly. One sharp pinch and that was that. Until the next time.

It was a bigger girl, this time, in the year above my mum at school. Hers was a playground jibe, pitched out of nowhere. ‘Oh, do you know you don't belong to your mam?'

Her question seemed quite casual, an afterthought almost, by the by – yet it must have been sucked on and savoured beforehand and judged for the right moment to lob. Once again, Annie put on her coat and went visiting. Then, silence. Like the last time. The whole thing was put down to schoolgirl spitefulness.

My mum had no reason to doubt this. Yet, there were times when she felt herself to be different from Annie and Betsy, situations in which their reactions were not necessarily the same as hers. She was too young to pinpoint exactly what these were, and perhaps it was merely a generational thing – but, for whatever reason, Cora sometimes felt different, despite the fact that everything around her – their love, affection and the attention she received – confirmed how much they loved her and that she was theirs. Why would she not be? Just as Annie and Eva were sisters, and her grandma's sisters visited, and Dick's nephews too. There was evidence of family all around her. As yet, Cora had no idea how complicated those connections were.

J
ACK
H
ARDY'S SCRAPYARD WAS A WELL-KNOWN GRAVEYARD
for clapped-out cars, decrepit vans and broken gaskets. Any local vehicle that ‘won't pap nor nowt' ended up here. The yard included an old railway carriage which Jack's father and younger brother had helped to convert into an office of sorts. The father said nothing and the brother not a lot. This taciturn pair remained in the office; amiable young Jack greeted all comers.

Like father, like daughter, my mum loved cars when she was young. Low-slung getaway vehicles with their engines ticking over on darkened streets – step on the gas and quick about it – or sleek purring limousines that steered Hollywood vamps to new horizons just before the credits rolled. For games like these, Jack Hardy's scrapyard was perfect. Cora asked Jack if she and two of her neighbours, Grace and Tommy Blake, could play with his cars. And, amazingly, he said yes. No other children were allowed near the yard – ‘Clear off, you little buggers,' Jack shouted, if they so much as ventured near the gate. I suspect Jack knew and liked Willie.

Somewhere among the old carburettors, greasy axles and great hulks of rusting tin, there was usually a car that had not quite succumbed to dereliction, and still boasted seats and a steering wheel, even if it lacked one or two niceties like an engine or doors. The occasional cracked veneer dashboard was a considerable plus. The yard mostly fielded broken commercial vehicles, private cars still being treated with kid gloves. Relatively few of those landed here, but – oh, the ones that did. They had chrome knobs to twiddle and play with, starters to pull out or push; heavy pedals to depress, if you could reach them, and enormous steering wheels to get you where you wanted to go. For a child reared on the cinema
– and Willie's love of cars – afternoons at Jack Hardy's were bliss.

After a few fantasy miles and adventures, Jack gave Cora and Tommy some car seats of their own. Hers did service in the back garden: pushed up against the gate on the days when she and Grace had had enough of Tommy; or else providing seating for a card school. The kids at Wheeldon Mill taught my mum how to play pontoon; she passed on the favour to her neighbours. Cardboard coins stood in for currency; she wrote their monetary value on each one. The car seats also served as a useful buffer if the fastest girl on wheels achieved too high a speed roller-skating across the concrete strip by the back door.

My mum was about eight years old when Willie hurried into the house looking excited and extremely pleased with himself. He had borrowed a car, he told her and Annie, with a walnut dash and soft red seats that still smelled of leather. Its bodywork was absolutely gleaming. Could he take Cora for a drive?

Annie was peeling potatoes at the sink when Willie opened the back door and she barely considered his request before she squashed it. I can hear her knife scraping potatoes and feel the power behind that ordinary kitchen task and her refusal: knife, water, potato skin. I'm reminded of that game – scissors, paper, stone. Annie's domesticity trumped Willie's fanciful notion.

It was a school afternoon and she was preparing Cora's tea, but I wonder how long Annie paused before answering. Was she angry at being excluded from the invitation, nervous of his driving, or just plain infuriated by Willie? He left the house and did not return until the next day. It was not the only night Willie spent with the Kiplings.

*

On the days when he was feeling well, Willie walked up to Billy Kipling's garage mid-morning and spent several hours watching him at work and chatting on the forecourt. Usually, he wore baggy trousers held up with braces and an open-necked shirt; a flat cap had replaced his trilby. The natty dresser was gone but there was still an insouciance about Willie, even if, now, the figure he cut was more dustbowl than dandy.

Walking back from the garage one afternoon, Willie was chuffed to see a car draw up ahead and his doctor stop to offer him a lift. Riding home in Dr Sutcliffe's car, accepting one of his cigarettes and matching the man puff for puff, Willie could almost forget his predicament. He was still the kind of person his doctor was happy to ride with. No job, no prospects (no caged birds anymore), but he was still himself. Still Willie.