Miss Purdy's Class (15 page)

‘Lucy. It was good of you.’

‘Not really. I went with Miss Drysdale and there was really no choice. Those poor children had been struggling on for I hate to think how long, trying to look after her. It was consumption. And the house . . . honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Her indignation grew as she spoke. ‘The place is practically falling down with damp and neglect and there was no fire, no food. I don’t know how she survived for as long as she did. She was expecting a child as well. It’s awful – just
terrible
.’

She had not noticed the passion in her voice until she saw it register in Daniel’s eyes and she blushed, feeling as if she had somehow given herself away.

Just then, though, Miss Monk stepped out through the gate and, seeing Gwen standing there with Daniel, gave her a poisonous, disapproving look as she passed.

‘Looks as if you’re in trouble with her!’ Daniel said. ‘Goodness, that was a killing look.’

‘Yes,’ Gwen stared after her. ‘She’s not the sweetest of women. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve that though.’

Daniel laughed then, deep and wholeheartedly, and she found herself laughing with him.

‘Ah, here comes Lucy!’ He leaned slightly to see through the gate and almost overbalanced.

‘Careful!’ Gwen reached out and caught his hand, helping him to keep his balance. As he pulled against her she felt his immense strength.

‘Thanks!’ Daniel laughed at himself. ‘I’ll get this blasted thing off in a week or two.’

‘Daniel!’ Lucy hurried to him as fast as she could. She looked pleased to see them out there talking together.

‘Hello, Lucy.’ Gwen smiled at her. ‘You’ve done some good work today.’

There was a pause while no one was sure whether to move away. Then, to her surprise, Daniel said, ‘If you’re not in a rush, would you like to come back with us – have a cup of tea?’

Everything else left her mind then. She was surprised to hear an almost bashful note in his voice, and she found that there was nothing she wanted more at that moment than to go with Daniel Fernandez and spend time in his company.

Joey sat in the very corner of the hearth.

Mrs Simmons’s house was full of people. Four of her seven children were home from school, and on and off all day there had been a stream of people in and out, all keen to learn from the horse’s mouth about Dora Phillips’s death and who those women were who had been in the house for the night. The room was full of steam as the kettle boiled again and again. Mrs Simmons lorded it over the proceedings, dispensing titbits of information. Joey and Lena, the subjects under discussion, were gradually being dismissed as minor characters in a story in which Mrs Simmons had somehow become the main part.

Lena was upstairs on one of the beds. She had grown more and more unwell and her fever was running high. This morning, when she had got up to go out to the toilet she fainted, collapsing on the floor.

‘We’ll make her a cup of Bovril,’ Mrs Simmonds had said. ‘That’ll help her along.’

Lena had sipped a few mouthfuls of the dark broth, then been sick over the bed. After that, she lapsed into delirium. Mrs Simmons was far too fat to keep going up and downstairs so Lena was left alone.

Joey sat on the hard floor near the fire, skinny knees pulled up close to his chest. He stared at the flames as the people swirled round him, talking about his mother and all that had happened. He tried not to listen. He couldn’t feel anything. Although he was quite warm, he was cold and numb inside, as if someone had filled him up with ice. He barely knew where he was, was unaware of time passing. He spent the day sitting in a dream. At dinner time Mrs Simmons had given him a plate of mashed potato awash with thin gravy and he must have eaten it, although he could not remember anything until he handed the plate back empty.

Sounds roused him: the tearing noise of paper – Mrs Simmons’s kids were playing at something – then another knock at the door. More voices.

‘I’ve told them.’ It was a man’s voice. ‘I’ve just been to Barnardo’s and the other place – they said they were full. Too many already. Barnardo’s said they couldn’t be sure they’d all be kept together. But there’ll be someone round in the morning, sharp.’

Barnardo’s.
The word reached Joey, hammered into his stunned mind. The people who took Polly and Kenny were coming for him and Lena! The ice in him melted to be replaced by a tight sensation, as if he was going to explode. He strained his ears, listening to every word.

‘It’s for the best,’ Mrs Simmons said. She coughed convulsively, her whole body quivering. Joey thought he would burst, waiting for her to recover, to hear what she had to say next. ‘Still – what else can I do? Sooner the better – get it over with. They’ll be best off in a home. Poor little buggers.’

Thirteen

There were two women in the shop when they reached 15 Alma Street and they stood back to let Gwen and Daniel through with Lucy. Theresa Fernandez was behind the counter. Gwen saw she was wearing a navy blue blouse buttoned to her throat and her dark hair was taken back more tightly than last time they met. The overall effect was to make her look neater and younger.

‘Afternoon, Miss Purdy,’ she said, sounding a little startled. Her eyes were anxious. ‘Everything all right with Lucy?’

Gwen could feel the two ladies’ eyes examining her coat, hair, shoes.

‘Oh yes, she’s perfectly all right,’ Daniel said, nodding at the customers. ‘I just asked Miss Purdy back for a cup of tea.’

‘Hello.’ Gwen smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Oh, no!’ Theresa lifted the hatch in the counter to let them through. ‘It was just, seeing you, I thought the worst for a minute.’

As they went out, she heard one of the women in the shop say, ‘Pretty little thing, ent she? She really a teacher? She don’t look old enough!’

Daniel led her into the blue back room, then seemed at a loss.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ he said awkwardly, nodding towards the table. Resting on it was a block of salt, obviously newly delivered. The end where it had been cut was a gleaming white. The chairs were all tucked neatly under the table. Gwen pulled one out and sat down. She felt nervous too.

Next to the salt was a newspaper. The
Daily Worker
, Gwen read. She felt Daniel watching her as she looked at it. She was acutely conscious again of being in a household utterly foreign to her: people who were Catholic, spoke differently, read newspapers she had never heard of before. The thought was both unsettling and exciting.

In the sudden silence she became aware of Lucy making faces at her brother and looking meaningfully at the stove. When he still didn’t get the message, she hissed, ‘Daniel, aren’t you going to make Miss Purdy some tea?’

‘Oh yes – sorry!’ Daniel looked enquiringly at Gwen.

‘Tea would be very nice,’ Gwen said, smiling at their awkwardness. But she too felt flustered and self-conscious.

‘Right then.’ Daniel hobbled over to the stove and stared at it as if he’d never seen it before. He leaned down to turn on the gas.

‘Is there any water in the kettle?’ Lucy prompted.

‘Ah well – no, probably not . . .’ He turned suddenly, gave a disarming grin and went to lean his crutch against the wall.

‘Let me do it.’ Gwen got up and swiftly took the kettle to the stone sink in the scullery in a fraction of the time it would have taken either Daniel or Lucy with their bad legs. It was a big kettle and she had to lift it with both hands once it was full.

‘There – you must need a big one like this with a family this size,’ she said, putting it down over the lit flame. Lucy was smiling, appearing thrilled at having her beloved teacher making tea in her house.

There was a clamour at the door and Rosa came in, followed by Vincent and Dominic.

‘I’m hungry!’ Dominic cried. He was eleven or so, Gwen calculated – older than Rosa and younger than Vincent, who was soon to leave school, and a handsome, dark-eyed boy with an intense expression, more like Daniel than any of the others.

‘You’re forever hungry, Dom,’ Daniel said, cutting slices from a loaf for them all. ‘I think you’ve got a worm inside you.’

‘Sister Bridget took my dinner away when I’d hardly started it – she said I had bad manners,’ Dominic said resentfully.

‘Why – what were you doing?’ Daniel teased.

Gwen watched his face.
He’s lovely
, she found herself thinking. For a moment she remembered her dream and a blush flooded across her cheeks. She hoped none of the children had noticed.

‘He put his knife in his mouth,’ Rosa sounded disparaging. She seemed old for her eleven years. ‘You’re stupid, Dom – you know Sister Bridget’s mad on manners and all that sort of thing.’

‘Just mad, more like,’ Dominic said sulkily.

‘Now, now,’ Daniel said. ‘We have a teacher here, remember.’

‘It’s all right.’ Gwen laughed and stood up to slip off her coat.

‘Take the salt, Dom, will you?’ Daniel nodded towards the scullery and Dominic came and lifted the block off the table.

The Fernandez children each wolfed down a slice of bread and margarine, all talking at once, then the room went quiet as they disappeared out through the shop again, Rosa taking charge of Lucy.

‘She’s very beautiful,’ Gwen said, watching the older girl lead her sister out of the front door.

‘Rosa? Yes, I s’pose she is,’ Daniel said. Clearly he’d never thought about it before. ‘She’s a good girl. Helps our ma a lot.’

‘It sounds as if you all do.’ She had been struck by how close the family were.

Daniel nodded, limping to the table with the brown teapot. For a moment his expression was serious. ‘Needs must.’

He sat opposite her, the tea brewing between them. There was an oilcloth on the table today, and Daniel had brought over three thick white cups. She looked shyly across at him.

‘So – do you have a job? Yourself, I mean, apart from the shop?’

Daniel nodded, jiggling the handle of the teapot. ‘Off and on. What I can get. I do a bit of house painting, repairs and that. Can’t do any of that with this though –’ He looked down ruefully at his leg with the plaster cast on it. ‘And I’m not always here, see.’

Gwen was confused. ‘How can you keep a job if you keep moving about?’

‘I work when I can. But my real work is with the movement and the party.’

She could hear the passion in his voice, but she had no idea what he was talking about and just stared at him, feeling foolish.

‘The NUWM – National Unemployed Workers’ Movement,’ Daniel explained. He leaned forward, elbows on the table. His tone was patient but she could sense his disbelief at her ignorance. ‘The valleys are full of unemployed men who’ve been locked out of the mines or forced out by scab labour. They’re expected to let their families starve while the bosses rake in the profits. The princes of capitalism have all the power to decide the fate of the working man. They can cast him aside when he can’t or won’t produce the profits they want to wring out of him by the sweat of his labour. And even when he’s unemployed they beat him down with the means test, take away the last of his dignity and make him live like a beggar, a pauper on the parish. The movement is getting unemployed men together as a body to say – enough!’

All this came pouring out fluently. The intensity of his words thrilled through her. He spoke without looking away from her, eyes ablaze under the thick black curls. In those moments, Gwen knew for certain that she was with someone quite unlike anyone she had ever met before.

‘Only when we’re together can we be strong, can we stand up to them. We will not be the slaves of capitalist dictators!’

Daniel seemed about to thump his fist on the table, but instead he poured the tea. He got up to take a cup to his mother in the shop and was talking on the way back before he had even sat down.

‘Look what happened at Mardy – 1931, when the means test was biting into mining families who’d had no work in months or years. That’s what they do, see?’ He sat down, leaning forward to impress the words on her, knowing she came from another world, did not understand. She could feel the force of his need to
make
her understand, and she wanted to know, but already she was floundering. Where was Mardy?

‘They steal their jobs, then steal their homes. The movement stood with a household where they’d come to take away the furniture before they’d pay them a penny to feed their bellies. Well, they got them for unlawful assembly, didn’t they? Called them “conspirators – little Moscow”. When they went to the assizes in Cardiff, twenty-nine of them were sent to prison – seven years’ hard labour for the lot of them.’ Daniel sat back, his lip curling. ‘Police courts – that’s what they are, lock, stock and barrel. No one else’s word counts.’

He took a gulp of tea and there was silence for a moment. Gwen could just hear the distant sounds of children playing out at the front.

She didn’t know what to say, where to begin. There had been marches in protest against the means test, that she remembered. Grainy newspaper pictures of groups with banners. But the test had been something far away, had not come near to touching her. Had it touched any of her pupils in Worcester? She didn’t know, hadn’t thought. One or two, perhaps. She felt ashamed that she didn’t know. Everything Daniel was saying seemed so new, so different from the life she had known.

‘And the party? You said you worked for the party?’

Daniel reached to take something out of his back pocket.

‘My party card,’ he said, showing it to her proudly, before replacing it. ‘Communist Party of Great Britain.’ His voice contained a swell of pride. He was watching for her reaction, but she didn’t understand what sort of reaction he expected. Russia, she thought. The Soviet Union. Revolution. Lenin. What else should she know about Communists? She just thought of them as foreign and even more distant from her life than the means test. And she’d never been interested in politics. Edwin talked about it sometimes – about Hitler and Mussolini, how they had to be stopped. But it never felt real and Edwin did tend to go on a bit. Usually she just waited until he’d finished. Her parents never said who they voted for, but she knew they voted Conservative. She wasn’t sure how she knew: it seemed to be taken for granted in the circles they moved in.