Polly's War (7 page)

The warehouse had already been taken the landlord informed her, but softened her disappointment by mentioning another he’d heard going vacant, over towards Knotts Mill. Polly decided to take a look while she had the time. After all, Big Flo was being well taken care of. She’d left Benny in charge, giving Lily Gantry who usually sat with the old woman while Polly was working, a morning off.

The future, Polly steadfastly decided, was bright.

Benny didn’t quite share his mother’s belief that family responsibilities were good for him. Fond as he was of his grandmother, Big Flo was an old woman. She’d had her life and he was young and eager to be out and about to savour his freedom. What sort of a homecoming was this, to sit in the back yard with a seventy-nine year old who was only tuppence to the shilling.

He’d been shocked when he first saw her. Once a big woman, with arms on her like an all-in wrestler, she now seemed shrunken and wizened. When Benny took her the meal his mother had left keeping warm between two plates over a pan of boiling water he found her, as usual, staring into space in the shadowy depths of the Anderson Shelter, a strangely blank expression upon her face. The place had that sweet-sour smell of decay, of mustiness and the old tippler closet against which it leaned. It made him want to puke. On a table beside the old woman’s chair, lay a large book covered in newspaper clippings.
 

‘He was my son tha knows,’ Big Flo reminded him, with a hint of her old sternness.

‘Aye, course he was.’ He stared at the face of his own father, Matthew Pride, who’d been killed in the riots back in the thirties, protesting over the means test. Ancient history so far as Benny was concerned. He remembered grieving for him though as a young boy, and hating having to live with his uncle Josh, who’d taken over their lives completely. In the end, so far as he could remember, Josh too had turned a bit queer in the head, but Benny had no wish to live his life gazing backwards over his shoulder. Look to the future, that was the way.

‘Did you know my lad then?’ The wrinkled face broke into a childish grin, false teeth clicking with pleasure, as if this were a new discovery. Benny stifled the desire to say how would he not know his own father, but instead set the tray quietly before her.

‘See, Mam’s made you some nice lentil broth. Eat up,’ he urged in jollying tones. ‘Put some flesh on them old bones, eh? You should come inside, Gran, where it’s warm.’ The damp was getting to him already. Why didn’t his mother pull the shelter down.

‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ Big Flo’s voice boomed out, as forceful as ever. ‘Thee’s nobbut a lad. Fourteen next week, Joshua Pride, so don’t get high-handed wi’ me. Yer not too big fer me to clock you one.’

Oh lord, Benny thought. Now she thinks I’m my own uncle. ‘All right, don’t get upset. Eat your dinner before it goes cold.’

Big Flo showed no sign of touching the food and after a long silence in which Benny struggled to think what to say that wouldn’t make matters worse, he came suddenly to a decision. ‘How about a walk? That’ll put some colour in your cheeks. Fresh air, that’s what you need.’ He couldn’t bear to stay another minute stuck in this Anderson Shelter. He’d go as daft as her.

He went upstairs and brought the old woman’s coat and hat, changed her felt slippers for a pair of sturdy shoes, tucked a scarf about her neck. ‘Exercise is good for you, Gran. Do us both good, eh? How about a tram ride? You like going on the tram, eh?’ He’d go down to the city council offices, ask about jobs, or shop premises to rent, then he could do a bit of buying and selling on his own account. He had his demob money burning a hole in his pocket. There must be something good he could do with his future besides steaming and cleaning old carpets. Some way he could be independent.

Big Flo was remarkably easy to steer, if a bit wobbly, rather like an old car that kept stalling. Only once did she enquire where they were going and Benny told her the truth, that he was seeking employment. Unfortunately this set her off on the tale of the hungry thirties again and all the way in the tram she scolded him about his false pride over Polly working when he wasn’t.

‘I’m Benny, not Matthew,’ he tried, but she wasn’t listening so he gave up, humouring her as best he could.

He parked her on a bench, just outside the rating office, instructing her sternly to sit tight while he went inside. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ he told her as he disappeared through the door.

He only needed a small shop, just to get him started. In truth that would be all he could afford, though once he’d a bit more saved up, he’d go for something bigger. What he was going to sell in the shop he wasn’t too clear. Clothing maybe. Or better still, furniture. Whatever he could get his hands on. There’d be a good future in retailing once the utility rules were lifted. One shop, two shops, who knows where it might lead?

He marched smartly along the dimly lit corridor, boots ringing on the tiled floor. There were several men already waiting at the office to which he was directed, and a young woman tucked behind a newspaper. Benny ignored them all, stood at the small square window and pressed the bell. He could see the head of a man bent over a book into which he was writing in crabbed lettering. The clerk did not even glance up at the sound of the bell.

Benny pressed it again.

A woman in a tweed skirt and grey cardigan glanced briefly in his direction before returning to clacking the keys of an ancient typewriter. Benny wasn’t used to being kept waiting, particularly by civvies. He drummed his fingers on the window ledge but neither paid him the slightest attention. A curl of anger started deep in his belly. He’d risked his life for idiots like this, pen pushers who’d hardly taken their backsides off their easy chairs.

With one sharp knuckle he rapped on the window again. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said in stentorian tones. No response, save from the woman who, without pause in her typing, half glanced at the clerk, then quickly away again. Benny decided that either the man was stone deaf or pig ignorant. ‘I haven’t all day to stand here.’

From behind him came a stifled snort of laughter. He rounded upon the perpetrator, and stopped dead.

Bright blue eyes danced with merriment above the open newspaper, in the kind of classical face that might be plain or beautiful, perhaps depending on her mood, or on those who looked upon it. She was certainly arresting. A fresh, almost schoolgirl grin with a straight nose and a neat chin. The kind of face you could get to enjoy looking at. One that showed good breeding and class. The kind of girl Benny Pride didn’t usually get anywhere near.

‘I’ve been here two hours,’ she said, twisting her mouth into a moue of disbelief. Relaxed again, it became once more a wide, laughing mouth, one he experienced a strong desire to taste. ‘And it’s not the first time. I’ve been here more times than I care to recall. It’s always the same. He deals with you eventually. In his own good time. You just have to be patient.’

Benny was slowly gathering his wits. ‘Two hours my foot. Nobody makes a monkey out of me.’

The girl giggled and ran her fingers through ridiculously short, honey gold hair. Benny preferred long curls that fell enticingly over a girl’s face, and red heads rather than blondes, more the Rita Hayworth type but it suited her all the same, no doubt about that.
 

‘I shouldn’t think anyone would try,’ she said and Benny puffed out his chest, aware he’d developed a good physique while in the army, and that this girl seemed to appreciate the fact.

He rapped on the window again, harder this time, meaning to impress. ‘Hey up. I’d like a word, if you don’t mind.’ He’d no intention of being ignored while those bewitching cornflower blue eyes were fixed upon him.

The clerk lifted his head and adjusted his spectacles to briefly consider Benny. ‘Wait in line. You’ll be attended to in due course.’

In one fluid movement, Benny pushed up the small window, stuck his hand through the gap and grasping the man by the only bit of collar he could reach, hauled him to his feet. ‘Stand up when you speak to me,’ he bawled, in a voice the men in his platoon would have recognised. ‘Straighten that tie, jump to it, and
get your bleedin’ hair cut.
’

The clerk’s jaw hung with shock as his dazed eyes took in the size of Benny, yet found himself quite unable to free himself from the clenched fist that held him in an iron grip. ‘I b-b-beg your pardon?’

‘No bloody pen-pusher tells me to wait in line. Is that understood? I’ve done all the waiting I’m doing. Six years of it. Now the sodding war is over and I haven’t helped win it to wait about for fools like you to walk all over me.’

‘Bravo,’ cheered the girl softly from behind him, followed by a smattering of applause from the rest of his audience.

Benny’s hand tightened on the collar, pulling the alarmed face closer to the window. His voice now was low, but uncompromising. ‘You’ll deal with this young lady first.
She
has been waiting fer
two hours
! You’ll call her ma’am, and you’ll be polite. Then you’ll deal with me.’ Benny ignored the fact that there was a queue of men waiting before him. That was there problem. ‘And you’ll call me
Sir
. Have you got all of that? Is that simple enough for your small clerk’s brain to understand?’

The clerk wagged his head, not without difficulty.

‘Good. Get on with it then.’

‘Right away.’

‘
Sir.
’

‘Right away, sir.’

And to do the man justice, he did. In a surprisingly short time he had dealt with the girl behind the newspaper and produced a list of empty shops, albeit a short one, for Benny to investigate.

Out on the pavement, Belinda thanked Benny for his help, though she had been less successful in her search for accommodation. The list the clerk had given her was for rooms only, and the rent would soon eat away at her savings. ‘Not that I’ve found a job yet,’ she complained. ‘Five years hard labour for my beloved country and what do I get at the end of it?’

‘Two hours in a rating office and the satisfaction of seeing authority crawl,’ Benny replied, making her laugh again, a ripe gurgling sound that he instantly warmed to.

‘I did enjoy that, I must say.’

She was perfectly delightful. As well as being stunningly attractive, her voice was soft and well-modulated, surely indicating that she came from a better part of the city than himself. Happen up near Heaton Park, or them new houses off Cheetham Hill he decided. He wanted to know everything about her. Most of all if he could see her again. ‘What were you then? A wren?’

She shook her head. ‘ATS. Corporal.’

Benny saluted, giving her a cheeky grin and a wink. ‘Sergeant. Border Regiment. We must have quite a lot in common then.’ He was struggling to soften his Lancashire accent. It wouldn’t do to put her off.

Clear blue eyes regarded him with undisguised interest. ‘Maybe we do.’

A stillness fell upon them and both seemed momentarily lost for words, but as she half turned to go Benny felt a desperate urge for her not to walk out of his life as easily as she had walked into it. ‘How about a cuppa? Or a bite of dinner. I’m fair starving.’ He could have kicked himself. A girl like this would call it lunch, not dinner. He felt suddenly unsure of himself, the cockiness that he’d displayed in the rating office now rapidly evaporating. He even wished he wasn’t still in uniform, instead wearing a smart suit, maybe a double-breasted pinstripe, to show her he meant business.

Belinda was remembering how breakfast at Cherry Crescent had been even more fraught than usual that morning, so much so that she’d left without eating a thing. But then tension since the notorious dinner party while she searched for work and alternative accommodation had mounted daily. Her father objected to everything she did, even to the clothes she chose to wear. Trousers, in his opinion, were unfeminine and gave the wrong impression, whatever that might be. He was furious that she’d declined to go shopping with her mother, or agreed to have her hair curled. Even the fact that she refused to go to bed when her parents did, only served to spark off a row every supper time. If, as a result, Belinda barely stayed in the house long enough to sleep, let alone eat, was it any wonder?

She grinned up at Benny. ‘Me too. Haven’t eaten a thing all day. I wouldn’t mind a bit of dinner myself.’

In no time at all the pair of them were laughing together over home-made pie and chips in a small cafe off Deansgate, swapping jokes and war stories, funny ones only permitted. Belinda recalled diving into the toilets on Victoria Station, attracted by the faint blue light over the door when a doodlebug had been about to drop.

‘Trouble was, it was the gents. Fortunately it wasn’t in use at the time,’ and they both fell about laughing. People turned and smiled, entranced by the lovely girl who sounded so happy with her young man.

Then they moved on to dreams and ambitions, what they might do now that hostilities were over. She told him of the difficulties she was encountering at home, how her father was attempting to organise her life, her mother wanting to turn her into something she wasn’t. ‘And my brother Ron is no help at all. If Pops says jump, he jumps.’

‘Nobody makes me jump if I don’t want to,’ Benny bragged. Eager to impress he told her how he meant to have his own business. ‘I’d start out modest to begin with, just to test the market,’ he explained, as if finance were not a serious consideration. He became so carried away by the intentness of her cornflower blue gaze that when she enquired what he might sell in his shop and from where he would find his supplies, he found himself claiming skills he didn’t possess. ‘I’ve always been good at making things. This utility stuff won’t last. Folk will want summat better, so if I can’t find the right stuff, I’ll make it meself.’