Authors: Anne Bennett
‘D’you think should go round the hospitals?’ she asked.
‘No,’ May said. ‘Bad news travels faster than good. If anything had happened to him, then you would have heard, I’m sure. Did he see Doris last night?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Meg said. ‘May, he sees Doris every flipping night.’
‘Then I would wait until this evening,’ May advised. If he doesn’t come in from work, then there’s time enough to raise the alarm.’
‘You … you can’t think that he stayed with Doris all night?’
‘I think it is the most likely explanation,’ May said sagely.
Meg was relieved but also irritated when her father came home from work that evening at about the usual time and on his own for a change. He seemed totally unabashed about the fact that he had stayed out all night, and offered no explanation, though Meg felt really annoyed with him for the worry he had put her through.
When their meal was over, however, Charlie told his two younger daughters to see to the dishes as he had something to say to Meg. He suggested taking a walk. She gave a brief nod because the evening was a fine, warm one, and it would give her the chance to tell her father how inconsiderate he had been.
They hadn’t left the house far behind when Meg demanded, ‘Where did you get to last night, Daddy? I was so worried I barely slept, and when I crept down and your bed hadn’t been slept in, I didn’t know what to think. I nearly did a tour of the hospitals.’
‘I don’t know why the fuss,’ Charlie said. ‘I am a grown man.’
‘I know that, but you ought to have let me know.’
‘No, Meg,’ Charlie insisted, ‘you have to realise that I am not answerable to you, not any more. In actual fact, that is one of the things I wanted to tell you.’
‘You’re marrying Doris,’ Meg said. ‘That’s not really news.’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘But you should know I’m seeing the priest this evening about calling the bans and getting married as soon as possible.’
‘But, Dad—’
Charlie lifted his hand to still the protest he knew Meg was about to make. ‘I know that you’re going to say it’s for the children’s sake that you advised me to take it slowly, but the war looming over us has forced my hand.’
‘Why has it?’
‘Because the chances are I will be called up.’
Meg stopped dead still on the road. Such a possibility had never occurred to her. ‘Called up?’ she said incredulously. ‘You?’
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not totally decrepit.’
‘No,’ Meg said, resuming the walk. ‘But it’s the young men they’ve been calling up so far, isn’t it, and we’re not even really at war yet.’
‘We will be, and soon,’ Charlie said grimly. ‘And that initial call-up is just for starters. When we declare war on Germany – and it is “when” and not “if” – they will need every man jack of us. And if I was in the Forces, would the Welfare people let you live all by yourself with the kids and no adult?’
‘I’ve proved myself so far,’ Meg said hotly.
‘But I was here.’
Meg fell silent. She knew her father had a point. Everyone was terrified of the Welfare people getting their tabs on their children and she knew they could easily because she was only sixteen. ‘So if you marry Doris …’
‘Then the kids are safe.’
‘Safe from the Welfare, maybe,’ Meg said. ‘But, Dad, I am worried because she really doesn’t seem to like them much.’
‘Rubbish!’ Charlie said. ‘She’s just not used to them like you are. Doris will be fine once she has a bit more practice being around a family.’
‘I just wonder what Mom would have thought,’ Meg said, almost to herself.
‘Meg, your mother is dead,’ Charlie said. ‘I have to think about what is best for our family, and what I think is best for us is for me to marry Doris so that the kids have a stepmother if I am called up to war. And now,’ he said, ‘I must be off, because after we have seen Father Hugh, Doris wants us to go dancing to celebrate our engagement.’
Meg felt very despondent after her father had left her and very close to tears. She made her way home and got Ruth ready for bed in an almost mechanical way, and then sat the others down and told them the general gist of the conversation she had had with her father.
‘I know it’s difficult, but Dad is trying to do the best thing by us, and by Doris, and we’ll just have to accept his decision. It’ll be fine,’ she told the children brightly, even though she had deep-seated reservations herself.
Once she and Terry were alone, Terry burst out bitterly, ‘I don’t know, Meg. He used to be a great dad when Mom was alive but since then … well, he just seems so easily led.’
‘Terry!’
‘Well, he is,’ Terry said, unrepentant. ‘He’s bloody useless, frankly.’
Meg sat in silence, waiting to hear what else Terry wanted to say.
‘Anyway, that has finally decided me,’ Terry told her. ‘You know my mate at school, Neil Drummond, has an uncle that owns a shop on Bristol Street – where I already do the paper round?’
Meg nodded.
‘Well, just the other day, he asked Neil if he had a friend looking for a full-time job. Neil said what about me, and his uncle was great about it because he knows me already. I’d have to give a hand in the shop and cycle round with the grocery orders, but he said the people who have their groceries delivered are more or less the same ones who have papers delivered, so I already know the route. He said if I want the job I can have it.’
‘You haven’t left school yet!’
‘I’ve only got a few weeks and they sometimes let you leave early if you have a job to go to. Neil’s uncle is going to see about it. No good asking Dad ’cos he’s a dead loss when it comes to anything we want to do.’
Miserably, Meg had to own that that was how it seemed. ‘And this is what you want to do?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’ll have to work all day Saturday,’ Meg reminded him. ‘No kick-about on Saturday morning or going to the Villa in the afternoon.’
‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘But I still want to do it. Neil’s been helping out for a bit on Saturdays already and he loves it. When he starts full time, though, he’s going to live with his uncle and aunt, because the papers are delivered really early. Anyway, the shop is going to be his one day because his uncle and aunt never had any children.’
Meg nodded. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Claire always said she felt cheated because she was the eldest, but it was always earmarked for Neil, ’cos he’s the eldest boy.’
‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘But it isn’t his fault and there’s not a lot he can do about it. Anyway, Neil said I could stay as well because there’s a three-bedroom flat above it. I said no to that at first because I thought I should stay here and help you out, like, but if now our dad is marrying Doris, then I’m off as soon as I can.’
Meg had never expected that, and she felt her heart sink as she realised how much she would miss Terry.
‘And in the meantime I’m stuck here with that woman,’ Meg said bleakly, upset and a little hurt by Terry’s decision.
‘Oh, cheer up, sis,’ Terry said. ‘I can’t live with her and I know she don’t want me here either. She doesn’t want none of us, if the truth be told, and if I were you I’d look to your own future. ’Cos I tell you what, no one else will.’
When Charlie was told Terry’s news the next day he was astounded that all this had been decided without even consulting him, never mind asking his permission.
‘You didn’t ask our permission to marry Doris,’ Terry said to him bluntly.
‘I don’t need your permission, boy,’ Charlie barked out. ‘I am your father, though that seems to have escaped your notice.’
‘No it hasn’t,’ Terry said. ‘And all right, you don’t need our permission officially, but it would have been nice to ask if we minded. Anyway, it’s all arranged now. You might not be pleased, but I’m sure Doris will be – it’ll be one less of us for her to worry about, so there’s no point in making a fuss about it.’
In fact Charlie found that Terry was right, because when he expressed concern at Terry living away from home at such a young age and with people he didn’t know that well, Doris told him not to fuss. ‘It was the boy’s own decision and he’s living with a mate from school, you said. What can happen him? And for heaven’s sake, he is only around the corner.’
A week after Terry moved, Doris told Meg that she wanted her to find a job of work and somewhere else to live after the wedding. Meg wasn’t that surprised because Doris’s attitude to her after Terry left had been such that she almost expected the ultimatum. She was seriously worried about leaving her brothers and sisters to Doris’s indifferent, almost neglectful care, and anyway she didn’t know of anywhere that she would earn enough to afford to live on her own.
‘War-related work pays better than anything, I do know that,’ Joy said. ‘Munitions and that.’
‘My mother was totally against me going into a factory,’ Meg said.
‘Your mother didn’t know there was going to be a war,’ Joy pointed out. ‘That changes all the boundaries, though I must admit,’ she added, ‘I don’t fancy factory work.’
‘But you have a job and place to stay,’ Meg said. ‘Yours is nothing like my position.’
‘Yeah, but if war comes, I want to do my bit to help,’ Joy said. ‘And anyway, with all the men gone, the girls and women will have to take over doing their jobs, as well as make things for the war.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Meg said. ‘Dad said it was like that in the last war and that it was odd seeing lady conductresses on the trams, or sometimes even driving them, as well as delivery carts and petrol vans, and they were in all the factories or in machine shops sewing uniforms. He told me that some of the girls in the munitions sometimes had their skin go yellow and their hair used to get a reddish tinge to it because of the chemicals they worked with. He said everyone knew the girls who worked in the munitions and they used to call them the canary girls.’
‘Ugh, I shouldn’t like that,’ Joy said. ‘Why would anyone want to work there?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t want, but more necessity, because they got really good wages,’ Meg said. ‘Mom said they deserved every penny because sometimes there were explosions and girls were killed and injured. Actually, I wouldn’t mind moving out of that place anyway to get away from the clutches of Richard Flatterly.’
‘Is he still being a nuisance?’
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘Right pain in the neck he is, and thinks he’s God’s gift. Ever since he learned that I had turned sixteen, he has been hinting that I could have the rent reduced or pay none at all if I was “nice” to him.’
‘Good God, nothing like being blatant about it.’
‘And you should have seen what he did just this morning.’
‘What?’
‘Well, I knew it was him at the door,’ Meg explained. ‘But when I opened it, he pushed so hard and so suddenly and the next minute he was over the threshold, kicked the door shut with his foot and had me crushed up against the wall and I could feel every bit of him. You know what I mean?’
‘Only too well,’ Joy said, shuddering. ‘What a creep. Did you scream out or anything?’
‘I tried, but he clapped his great, greasy hand over my mouth. I was nervous because there was only me and Ruth in, so I struggled and kicked out as much as I could.’
‘What did Ruth do?’
‘Oh, that’s the best bit,’ Meg said. ‘Flatterly frightened her at first and she just watched and snivelled a bit and then – as if she realised what I was doing – she ran and punched out at him with her little fists. ’Course, it made no difference, and she must have realised that, and so she bit him, didn’t you?’ she said to the little girl beside her, swinging her legs as she tucked into a bun.
‘You bit him?’ Joy said, staring at her.
‘It was on his bum, wasn’t it?’ Meg reminded her, ‘’cos he was a bad man, wasn’t he?’
Ruth nodded slowly. ‘Bad man,’ she repeated.
‘’Course,’ Meg continued to Joy, ‘it was probably the last thing he expected. Ruth bit him hard enough to make him cry out and loosen his hold on me. I lost no time then in pushing him off me so he knocked his head against the wall. Then I opened the door and told him to get out. I shouted it you know so that everyone could hear. He couldn’t do anything then, see, in front of the neighbours.’
‘I bet he wasn’t that happy with you, Ruth,’ Joy said, but Ruth just smiled as Meg lowered her voice and said, ‘He would have hit her. She was stood beside me at the door and I caught hold of his hand and said if he laid a hand on her it would the last thing he ever did in his life. I did say too that if he touched me in that way ever again I will tell my father, but he knows I shan’t, for, as he said, the streets are not that comfortable just now. I mean, what could Daddy do? Someone like Flatterly would say it was all my fault, that I came on to him. Doris would probably believe that as well. I was shaking afterwards I was so scared. I’ll have to be prepared for him the next time he comes round.’
‘Well, you did right to bite him,’ Joy declared, smiling at the little girl. ‘Bloody right.’
‘Loody right,’ Ruth repeated.
Meg glared at Joy and she said, ‘Sorry, I forgot, but isn’t it terrible that people like him get away with things all the time?’
‘Yeah, it is,’ Meg said. ‘And I think that’s what will tip us into war in the end, stopping Hitler getting away with things.’
‘Oh, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, Meg,’ Joy said.
There was a spate of marriages in the following weeks, for most people now thought war was inevitable, and Charlie and Doris couldn’t get a date on which to be married as quickly as they wanted.
As Meg thought about her father being called up, she remembered the men who would stand with trays around their necks on the steps to the Market Hall in the Bull Ring, selling bootlaces, matches, razor blades and the like. One was blind and led about by friends, and another was missing an arm; one had no legs at all and was pushed about in a homemade trolley, and there were a couple who shook badly. Dad had told her they were like flotsam from the last war: men who had served their usefulness now thrown on to the scrapheap. Sometimes he would complain that they had enough razor blades and bootlaces to stock a shoe shop because Maeve had always found it hard to pass the men without pulling out her purse. ‘We owe these men such a lot,’ she’d tell the children. ‘It grieves me to see them reduced to this.’