The Yorkshire Pudding Club (27 page)

‘Ready again?’

‘As I’ll ever be!’ George tapped the letter in his pocket and came over all
déjà vu
.

‘Right, this morning it is then,’ said Janey decisively, trying not to nag but failing. ‘I mean, how flaming difficult can it be to hand a letter over, love?’

‘I’m not just going to slam it in someone’s hand, Janey. I’ve worked there a long time, I owe them more than that.’

George operated one of the most financially important machines in the factory–a big, reliable German piece of equipment that pressed out tiny plastic cogs. It was also the most boring job in the whole place and he was the only bloke who had ever stuck it for longer than a month without being dragged off in a shirt with sleeves that tied behind the back towards a waiting white van. Day in, day out, George patiently worked on it though, and no one was envious that he actually got paid a bit more on his hourly rate because it was such a brain-dead job. He knew he would be hard to replace.

Janey shook her head impatiently at him. Yes, he
was sure-footed and always got there in the end, but he was so
flaming slow
! She just wished sometimes a freak stick of dynamite would lodge itself up his backside and detonate. At this rate, he’d still be working his notice when her legs were up in stirrups and she was bearing down to push.

That was the fourth morning on the trot George had set off with his letter in his pocket but no one had the time to let him book even two minutes in with the Personnel bloke. The management were buzzing around like mad bees looking all serious and intense; it was like working in a very stressed hive. If he had been a pushy sort like Chris Fretwell, he could have insisted on seeing someone and made lots of noise until they took notice, but George reckoned he would get to speak to someone in the end, when they had time to listen to him without forcing the issue and getting people’s backs up.

He clocked on, then made his way down the factory floor past the big tool shop and the massive machine that made coat-hangers for Marks & Spencer, past the ones that churned out cat-litter trays and right to the far end to his own, anything but cosy, corner. He had just sat down at this machine, noting how much the lazy swine on the night shift hadn’t managed to do, when he noticed his foreman taking Chris Fretwell off his machine and leading him away. Then a little later on he came for Fred Hines, then Johnny Skelly. None of them came back, either. It was like being in an Agatha Christie. Then the foreman came for him.

‘George, mate, Gary Hedley’d like to see you in his
office,’ and he gave him a strange soft clap on his back, that felt almost like an apology.

At last, he thought, and stuck his machine on idle.

He was just outside the Personnel office, getting his resignation out, when he suddenly realized that he had not yet had the chance to tell anyone that he wanted to see Gary Hedley–which either meant that Gary Hedley was Mystic Meg in disguise or that summat else was up. George wisely stuck the letter back in his pocket, for now, and knocked.

‘Come in!’

Then he was in, being told to have a seat.

‘George, mate, I’ll come straight to the point with no beating about the bush,’ said Gary Hedley, Personnel Manager of Clayton’s Plastic Injection Mouldings. ‘We’re having to make everyone redundant. You’re one of the two longest-serving blokes here and it galls me to say we’ve to close the factory with immediate effect. A Japanese firm have bought it lock, stock and barrel and they’re gutting the place.’

George paled with automatic panic, and then he remembered he’d been jacking his job in anyway.

‘I’m sorry, Georgy lad. Obviously, you’ll get the best references but this Japanese lot–they like to pick their own workforce, although someone like you they’ll set on again in a snap, so I wouldn’t worry too much. You’ll get a redundancy pay of…’ he referred to his sheet ‘…fifteen thousand seven hundred and forty-nine pounds, twenty-eight pee. I’m sorry it couldn’t be more. It’s not a lot, considering how long you’ve been here.’

‘Tw…twenty-eight pee?’ was all George could say
because he was in shock. He could handle the fact that he could get twenty-eight pee, the other bit wasn’t sinking in yet.

‘It’s how these things work out, mate. It includes your holiday money and your loyalty bonus as well. I hate doing this, George. I’ve got forty of these to do this morning and then come back for the late shift tonight. You’ve to get your coat and go home. Once I’ve told you, you can’t touch your machines, in case anyone tries to vandalize them out of pique. Not that I for one minute think you would, lad, let me just say that. I have to work to a set procedure here. New management directives and all that. Very specific they are.’

‘Tw…twenty-eight pee?’

‘Do you want a coffee, mate?’ said Gary Hedley. He hadn’t ever seen anyone shake that much. Not even in that documentary about Parkinson’s.

‘No, I’m all right,’ said George.

‘Get it in the bank, lad,’ said Gary Hedley, handing him over the cheque, ‘and good luck. I’ll put a good word in for you with the Japs when they’ve refurbished. When they move, they move quick, I’ll say that for them.’ He shook George’s limp, shocked hand firmly.

‘What will you do?’ asked George.

‘Eh?’

‘You–about a job? What will happen to you?’

‘Redundancy is a great leveller,’ said Gary Hedley, who’d had a brand new Jag delivered last month without knowing all this was round the corner. ‘I’ll be sticking around for a bit to tie up ends and officially hand over to the Japanese lot, and then if they don’t set me on
or I haven’t found another job, I’ll be meeting a few of you in the dole queue. Car’ll have to go, of course.’ He looked wistfully outside at his parking space.

George took the cheque and slipped it into his pocket with the undelivered letter of resignation.

‘Well, good luck yourself, Mr Hedley,’ said George.

‘Thanks, George, I’ll need it at my age,’ said Gary Hedley–too young for retirement, too old to set up his stock against the younger market whizzkids with their fancy business degrees. He appreciated George’s consideration; he doubted anyone else would think to wish him luck. Gary Hedley expected to hear nothing but more sentiments ending in ‘off’ over the next sixteen hours.

By the time George had got outside, it had just about sunk in that he’d got forty-nine pounds as well. The other lads were waiting by the gate in a conspiratorial cluster.

‘We’re going down the pub, George, are you coming?’

‘Nay, it’s only half ten!’

‘So? I think we deserve one after this, don’t you?’

That was typical of Chris Fretwell. His lass wouldn’t see much of his redundancy, not unless she worked in the Engineers as a barmaid anyway.

‘What else are you going to do?’

‘Go home,’ said George.

‘Japs won’t be set up for another three months at least,’ said Fred Hines.

‘I’m not going for a job with them,’ said George.

‘Oh aye, what are you going to do then?’ asked Chris Fretwell, wondering if George had inside info
about any other jobs. He didn’t fancy working for the Japs either. His more relaxed working methods might clash with their military efficiency, and he was already on the look-out for a softer option.

‘Stay at home, look after the house and my bairn when it arrives,’ said George.

‘Eh?’

‘You heard.’

Chris Fretwell’s face split into a slow grin. ‘Oy, lads, Georgy Hobson’s turning poofter!’ he said. Then, turning back to George: ‘You batting for the other side now, mate?’

He soon shut his mouth though when big George Hobson took a step forward, gathered up a fistful of his jumper and lifted him up with it. That way, at least, he was able to speak to the little squirt at eye-level.

‘I’ll be looking after my kid, and being at home just like I’ve always wanted to,’ said George, not raising his voice, not snarling or spitting but hammering the point home all the same. ‘And then when my wife comes in from her well-worked-for big executive job in Leeds, I’ll be sitting down wi’ her to a nice tea and a good bottle of wine in a house that’s well on its way to being bought and paid for. If that makes me a poof then so sodding be it.
Mate
.’

With that, George Hobson let Chris Fretwell fall to the floor in a crumpled heap of testosterone and, without looking back, he went home.

He cooked fillet steak and mushrooms, sweetcorn and big fat chips, and had a bottle of Moët in the mop
bucket filled with ice on the floor when Janey walked through the front door at six that evening.

‘Did you do it then?’ she said, her eyes rounding at the table set-up, thinking, This is either a celebration or a big apology.

‘Didn’t have a chance,’ he said.

‘Oh George, flaming hell…’ Apology then.

’Hang on, hang on, missus. Want to know
why
I didn’t have a chance?’

Janey thought it wiser not to open her mouth and nodded her head instead.

‘Okay, I’ll tell you then, because they only made me redundant. They made me BLOODY REDUNDANT!’ and he handed over the cheque to his wife.

She looked at it. Twenty-eight pee, she thought. Then she looked at him. Then they started bouncing around the kitchen.

If he’d handed that letter in at the beginning of the week he’d have got nothing! she thought, and came over all faint at the near miss of it. He popped open the champagne and poured her out a glass and she drank it because she didn’t think the baby would mind her having one or two, not after this shocker.

How’s he got that twenty-eight pee? her shocked brain fixed on, but the champagne bubbles raced up to that thought and knocked it out to make way for another: never again to berate her husband for being the big slow thing that he was. They weren’t exactly the Speedy Gonzaleses of life, but–between them–they were doing okay, thank you very much.

Elizabeth picked up Helen from her mum and dad’s large old house. It was a lovely place and she had always liked going there when they were kids. The house always seemed to be filled with new baking smells when their housekeeper Mother Hubbard was there. Dr Luxmore would potter around in the garden or emerge from his study to distribute toffees from his pocket, and Mrs Luxmore would make them posh tea in china cups and proper saucers that Elizabeth was always terrified of breaking. It was the sort of house she would have loved to bring a bairn up in–lots of rooms and a beautiful garden with a little brook running past the bottom of it.

The Old Rectory had a truly serene feeling to it and was much nicer than Helen’s marital home, the impressive bungalow that was currently sporting a For Sale sign on the black iron gates. Brian was asleep in the garden hammock that was strung between two apple trees, one paw dangling over the side, and he was most definitely snoring. He had landed well and truly on his feet here.

Helen manoeuvred herself into Elizabeth’s car. She
felt three tons heavier than last week, not counting the extra half a ton that had landed on her chest, which she thought was fantastic.

‘Hels, do you think you love your baby yet?’ asked Elizabeth, dropping it casually into the conversation as they approached their destination.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Helen, immediately stroking her stomach in confirmation of it. The baby was asleep, she felt; the more active she was, the quieter her daughter was and vice versa.

‘How do you know you do?’

‘I just do,’ said Helen. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘Nothing, just making conversation,’ said Elizabeth, before parking up in time for their second Parentcraft class.

The midwife smiled them all into the room, although it got a bit strained when she saw Carol coming in.
Pain Relief
was written on the whiteboard. Mandy wished she could get some relief from that gobby pain.

‘Breathing,’ started Mandy, when everyone was settled.

‘Helps a bit,’ Carol sniffed.

Mandy ignored her and went on to demonstrate how one breathes through a contraction.

‘How do you know when it’s a contraction?’ asked someone.

‘O-o-o-o-h, you’ll know!’ said Carol, with a knowing, scary laugh.

‘I’ve been getting these tightenings,’ said Janey. ‘My stomach goes rock hard.’

A few women nodded and leaned forward to hear the answer to that one, Elizabeth included.

‘Any pain?’ Mandy asked.

‘No.’

‘Braxton Hicks,’ said Carol and the midwife together.

‘You have them all the way through your pregnancy, but only really feel them at the end. They are perfectly natural, but not “contraction” contractions that spell the start of your labour,’ said Mandy, feeling she needed to add a little extra explanation.

After demonstrating the various shallow-and deep-breathing techniques for the different stages of labour, and letting them all have a practice, Mandy took out some TENS machines.

‘Anyone know what TENS stands for?’ She smiled smugly when Carol looked dense for once. ‘Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation,’ said Mandy, holding one up like a hostess on
Sale of the Century
. ‘Anyone know what it does?’

‘Bugger all,’ grumbled Carol.

‘It blocks pain with an electric current,’ said Mandy, through gritted teeth. ‘Developed from research by Dr Norman Shealy…’ She launched into a history that no one was particularly interested in.

‘Might have known it would be a bloke,’ said Carol, leaning into Elizabeth and doing a bad job of a whisper. ‘Only a man would think of taking a woman’s pain at being split in half away by electrocuting her in the back.’

Mandy ignored the sniggerings Carol’s over-loud observation had inspired by completing her background knowledge, then she sent them off in pairs
and showed everyone how to fasten the pads onto their partner’s back. There were a couple more husbands this time, one very loud one with
Marc
on his name badge (with a ‘c’, Elizabeth noticed). She would bet her life savings he wasn’t born with a ‘c’. He listened very intently to everything Mandy said with much expression of facial muscles.

Helen fastened the pads onto Elizabeth’s back and switched the machine on; apparently it felt weird, prickly, like a cross between pins and needles and a light electric shock. There was a dial on the small control box that Helen turned slowly up to max, but Elizabeth didn’t like the sensation at all; it annoyed her too much and she ended her turn prematurely. Helen didn’t mind it though, and thought it might be quite useful at the start of the contractions. She decided she would go into Boots and hire one, as Mandy said they could.

‘Entonox!’ said Mandy next. ‘Otherwise known as gas and air. You inhale it just before your contraction peaks to help you crest it.’

‘I slapped it on my gob and didn’t take it off for six hours with my second,’ said Carol, with her alternative experience. ‘Can make you very sick though, so it’s not for everyone.’

‘No, maybe not,’ said Mandy tightly, ‘but these methods of pain-relief cause no harmful effects on your baby, unlike pethidine and epidurals.’

She sounded like a spitting snake trying to get rid of a horrible-flavoured toffee when she said those two names.

‘
We’re
going to try for a natural birth,’ said Marc,
squeezing his wife Pam’s hand. ‘
We’ve
been to see the water bath at the hospital. Pam’s very keen on that, aren’t you, dear?’

‘
We
?’ scoffed Carol, nudging up her bosom, Les Dawson-style. ‘We’ll see!’

‘Now we come to pethidine,’ said Mandy, scrunching up her nose as if she was about to tell them all something very distasteful. ‘Let me just warn you that there is scientific evidence to link pethidine administered at birth with drug addiction in late teenage life.’

Carol shook her head in barely cloaked despair. She remembered being in labour the first time, terrified to take anything that might endanger the life of her baby, thanks to the indoctrination of a midwife like this at her classes, even though she felt she had eaten a tiger and was being ripped apart as he fought his way out. After struggling on for four hours and being told she was only about half a centimetre dilated and still had a long hard slog ahead of her, she was persuaded to have a half shot of pethidine by a concerned midwife, who had been absolutely fuming about the advice her fellow nurse had been giving out.

The drug worked like a dream. At last, Carol found her feet resting on a plateau that gave her the ability and considerable breathing space to cope with what was going on. She felt the relaxation filter down to her unborn and she knew they were
both
less stressed than either had been ten minutes ago. Now the baby was twenty-three, and despite doing English at Manchester University, showed no propensity to getting high on
anything stronger than Bacardi Breezers. Carol mentally rolled up her sleeves and prepared to commence battle.

‘You can have a half shot of peth to start off with,’ Carol said. ‘It made my friend very spaced-out and sick, but I was just dandy on it. Just nipped the edge off the pain a treat during my first birth. My daughter was in perfect health when she was born, no troubles, and the only thing she’s addicted to is Robbie Williams.’ She smiled victoriously at Mandy.

‘Not for us, I don’t think,’ said Marc, who was obviously in Mandy’s team and probably got thrown in the nettles at school for being a suck-up. Pam nodded in support when he prompted her with an elbow. Elizabeth thought she might need a triple shot of pethidine in a minute just to put up with him until the end of the Parentcraft session.

Mandy was dreading even mentioning epidurals and hoped to skirt over them very quickly.

‘Best thing ever!’ said Carol, wrecking her plan. ‘Takes the pain away totally. I was sitting watching Jerry Springer with the monitor on, picking up contractions that registered on the Richter scale with my fourth and I never felt a thing, even if it is a bit weird feeling like Chris Tate.’

‘There is the danger of permanent spinal injury with an epidural,’ said Clever Marc.

‘You won’t give a sod if it causes your head to fall off if you need one,’ said Carol, who had enough practical experience behind her not to be cowed by Textbook Kid.

‘Yes, but when it wears off you won’t have built
up any resistance to the labour pain and it will hit you like a sledgehammer,’ said Mandy, going very red.

‘When it wears off, they top you up!’ Carol came back at her. ‘I don’t get this. Why are you trying to frighten everyone?’

‘I am not! I’m trying to give you the best advice I can for the safe delivery of your babies!’ said Mandy indignantly, crossing over quickly to her model of a pelvis and a lifesize baby doll, and demonstrating a birth with them. The women who hadn’t fainted by the time she got to episiotomies, made a mental note to have any drug, legal or illegal, during labour and to buy a possessive Alsatian for afterwards to stop a man coming anywhere near them ever again.

As they walked out of the lesson, Elizabeth fell behind the others, hoping to grab a word with Carol. The chance came when Carol dropped her bag and Elizabeth picked it up for her.

‘Ta, love,’ Carol said. ‘First baby?’

‘Yes, it’s my first, I’m a late starter,’ said Elizabeth.

‘I tell you, it’s a lot easier having them when you’re younger. I’m forty-six on my due date and I’m chuffing knackered. Thought this one was menopause symptoms!’

‘Got long to go?’

‘Three weeks, but you mark my words I won’t last that long,’ she said, huffing and puffing as they walked out. ‘Don’t let Stalin there frighten you either,’ she said, thumbing back at Mandy the midwife who was gathering all her stuff together.

‘I am a bit scared,’ admitted Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know what to expect.’

‘No one does until they have one, kiddo,’ said Carol with a kind laugh. ‘You can read all the textbooks you want but nothing prepares you for that first bairn coming out. You’ll learn as you go on.’

‘Can I ask you–why do you come to the classes if you’re so experienced?’

Carol gave Elizabeth’s cheek a gentle nip and shake. ‘I like meeting new mums. Especially the sort like you, that remind me of when I was first pregnant. I wish I’d been in a class then with a rough old bird who could have put me in touch with a few of the realities, I can tell you. Plus it’s nice to see who I’ll probably end up at playgroup and nursery and school chatting with. There’s some strong friendships formed at the school gates, my love.’

‘Carol, can…’

‘I’ll have to whizz, flower. I’ll see you next week, if I make it that far. I’ve got a son to get off to Scout Camp and I’m late.’ She gave Elizabeth a sisterly squeeze on the arm and did a wobbly run towards a hairy man and a little boy in a peaked cap sitting in a very cherished old blue Ford Capri with a black vinyl roof.

Janey was waiting for her to catch up along the road as Helen and George walked on in front. Janey was desperate to talk some more about George’s surprise redundancy. They were going to buy some Premium Bonds for the baby with some of the money, she said, seeing as the bank interest rates were so bad at the moment for savings.

‘Do you think you love your baby yet?’ Elizabeth asked her.

‘Course I do! I think I loved it the first time I saw it on the screen at the scan,’ said Janey.

‘How did you know?’

‘What do you mean, how did I know? I just did, like I did when I first realized I loved George. You know when you love something, don’t you?’

When she got home, Elizabeth went up to her bedroom where all the lovely baby stuff was: the Moses basket, all made up ready at the side of her bed, the teddy bears and rattles that had taken over the top of her shelves, the basket of tiny socks and all the snow-white Babygros she had washed and ironed and put in the drawers. It all felt so unreal; she couldn’t imagine that soon there would be a baby using them. Her baby.

‘Please let me love it, God,’ she prayed, kneeling at the side of the bed like a child with her eyes tight shut and her hands clamped together. Because she wasn’t sure if she knew how.