Authors: Eileen Haworth
The more his audience showed their appreciation, the more he kept up his exaggerated performance, strutting up and down, daintily patting his turban into place with dirty fingernails before collapsing next to Florrie on the couch.
‘Aw come on Florrie,’ he laughed, ‘give your nosey-arsed mam a big kiss.’ He smudged his mouth repeatedly against her cheek until it was bright pink with Tangee.
‘Dad, dad, make your teeth waltz round your gob again, like Granny Sefton's,’ his daughters begged, and he duly obliged.
In the busy marketplace Florrie had twigged why her girls were giggling and was in danger of laughing too. She quickly changed the subject. ‘Let’s go in the Market Hall and you can swap your comics.’
She parked Billy’s pram outside with a dozen other babies and joined the crowd at the bookstall, trawling through the pile of well-read magazines and exchanging some for her own tatty specimens, while the children swapped their old Enid Blyton’s “Sunny Stories” and comics for somebody else’s old books and comics. Granny Sefton told them to leave their pennies in their pockets and paid for the whole transaction out of her own purse.
Unperturbed by the sounds and smells from the nearby Fish Market and the noisy kiss Granny planted on him before taking her leave, Billy slept on. His sisters cringed when Granny kissed them and their mother long and hard in full view of half of Blackburn but at
least
she’d been generous enough to pay for their comics. She was a loving granny if only she would stop arguing with their dad and upsetting everybody.
*
When Joe’s own mother gave up her struggle with cancer six months after the death of his father it was more than he could bear. He parked his bike on the curve of the stone bridge and stared down at the canal. He thought about his parents and his sisters… his wife and his children…the bloody war...and Frank Neild, and came to the conclusion that life wasn’t worth living.
Oblivious to the two young men fishing from the tow-path below, he swung his legs over the low wall of the bridge and dropped into the murky abyss.
It was only when he began to sink that an innate instinct for survival took over and he found himself struggling with arms and legs thrashing to stay afloat. He was just about to go under for the third time when a pair of strong arms grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him up the grassy canal bank to safety.
Later that day Joe faced an angry sergeant at the police station.
‘You know that
suicide
is a criminal offence, don’t you? Well, not only
that
, but so is
attempted
suicide.’
‘Suicide?’ Joe said in disbelief, ‘Suicide? What d’ya think a fella like me with a wife and three kids at home would want with suicide, Sergeant?’
‘Now then, don’t try telling me it was an accident, there were two witnesses that saw you jump and it’s a good thing they were there to pull you out.’
‘Aye, it might have looked to them two lads like I’d jumped,’ Joe did his best to sound plausible, ‘but I’d had a pint or two, I was just acting the goat, that’s all, showing off a bit in front of ‘em, climbed on the bridge an’ fell in.’
‘Oh aye? Well then lad, next time you feel like having a little swim, get yourself off to Blackpool. Now get off home to that family of yours and have a bit more sense in future afore you get yourself locked up.’
Back home Florrie was waiting with her own set of questions. ‘Well? What did the Bobby say?’
‘Silly bugger thought I’d tried to do away with myself… thought I’d chucked myself in the cut.’
‘And you
didn’t?
’ Florrie was sarcastic rather than sympathetic.
‘Don’t talk so bloody empty Florrie, your as bad as that barmy bobby down at yon police station.’
‘What the hell were you doing on the canal bridge at the other end of Blackburn in the
first
place? And where’s your bike gone?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, it were only an old ‘un, don’t make a song and dance about it. I’ve had enough lectures for one day so shut your gob or I’m buggering off.’
‘Bugger off then,’ Florrie had accepted his melodramatic behaviour for all these years but it didn’t stop her from losing patience with him, ‘they should have let you drown, best bloody end to you.’
‘Arseholes,’ he muttered, withdrawing to the backyard where he could rely on his livestock not to aggravate him.
The damp stale smell filling the kitchen took Betty’s breath away. Her father’s jacket and trousers with steam rising from them were hanging over the back of a chair inches from the fire.
‘Phew!’ She wrinkled her nose, cupped it with her hand and pinched her nostrils, ‘what’s happened now?’
‘He’s come home wet-through, he’s been in the canal, that’s what’s happened,’ Florrie acted as if that was the most natural thing in the world for Betty's father to have been doing.
‘Did somebody shove him in?’ Betty’s eyes were dancing at the picture forming in her imagination.
‘Did they buggery, he shoved himself in, the barmy sod. And thank God he had sense to leave his best shoes on the bridge before he jumped, they’re not even paid for yet.’
On hearing this and the laughter it provoked, Joe returned to the kitchen. He could change his mood faster than he could change his socks and was already starting to see the funny side of it all.
‘Aye well, I were thinking I wouldn’t be needing me best shoes where
I
were going. I were relying on Old Nick to fit me up with some
asbestos
ones, so as I wouldn’t burn me feet down yonder!’
Next-door, Edie and Ben had watched and listened as the day’s drama unfolded.
First of all Joe wailing and crying out in anguish, ‘Mam, I want me Mam back,’ before cycling off down the street at top speed…his reappearance some time later, soaked to the skin and accompanied by a policeman… his jacket and trousers dripping on the clothesline… the sight of him off down the street, this time dressed up in his Sunday-best…the short, sharp argument with Florrie when he came home for a second time… the talk of suicide coming through the wall…and finally, and most baffling of all, Florrie and young Betty and even Joe himself, laughing fit to burst.
Ben remarked it was like living next door to the loony asylum and after a day like today Edie had to agree.
*
With both parents gone and Joe now the head of the family it fell to him a month later to walk his youngest sister down the aisle on her wedding day. The idea of playing such a prominent role in front of family and friends was enough to move his thoughts away from suicide, for the time being anyway.
Florrie wished she’d had a bit more notice of this wedding. After all, Nellie was knocking on for 30 and after an eleven-year engagement everybody had started to think this wedding would
never
come off. With wedding presents out of the question and not even expected, Florrie put some of her precious clothing coupons towards a new pair of shoes for the bride, and a length of white satin for her wedding dress. Clothing coupons had been reduced from sixty-six a year to forty-eight, so it meant her and the kids would have to do without new clothes, but at least their last six coupons would get Joe a new shirt. ‘Florrie,' Edie called over the backyard fence, ‘the girls have been telling me they are going to their auntie’s wedding,’
‘Yes, it’s Joe’s sister, Nellie, that’s getting married.'‘Well, I’ve had a nice bit of cloth put by since before the war and if it’s all right with you I’d like to run them something up on the machine. That’s if you haven’t already bought them something.’ Florrie’s face lit up, she couldn’t find enough words to express her gratitude. Just for a change her daughters would be as beautifully turned-out as Edie’s. They would be wearing new clothes instead of the usual make-do-and-mend or stuff she’d swapped at the church hall for other kid’s clothes. She sent them round straightaway to be measured.
Nellie’s big day dawned and Joe wore the suit he'd worn at his own wedding fourteen years earlier, with his brand-new white shirt. Florrie wore a second-hand dusky pink blouse under Hettie’s navy-blue, two-piece; Edie’s grey trilby with its tiny veil worn tilted stylishly over one eye completed her outfit.
Little Billy was swamped by a hand-me-down blue satin suit that Granny Sefton shortened but left on the big side, 'for him to get his wear out of it, for chance another wedding came
up in the next year or two.'
Betty and Ellen were the smartest of all. Pale-green Austrian-style dirndl skirts over pink and white puffed-sleeves blouses, and black patent leather shoes bought on tick with a Clothing Club Cheque. Edie watched them leave for church, their flaxen curls glinting in the sun and felt a surge of pride.
A Pomfret wedding was not complete without a barney and Nellie’s was no exception. After a basic but traditional boiled-ham tea at the Emporium Café the celebrations continued across the road at The Crown Hotel where some guests got progressively drunk.
It wasn’t long before Joe found himself accused of flirting with the bridegroom’s sister when, on his way back from the lavatory he had given her a quick kiss when he thought nobody was looking. Unfortunately, her husband
was
looking, and in no time at all the two men were exchanging blows and rolling on the floor. The fight soon became one of several and by the time the police arrived a tearful Nellie in her satin blood-splattered wedding gown was struggling to restore order,
Six guests, including Joe, spent the rest of the night cooling off in the cells and Nellie, completely humiliated, didn’t speak to her fiery brother for the next six months.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That same year, 1943, American troops arrived in Blackburn adding a bit of film star glamour to the local scene. It didn’t take long for Betty and Ellen to learn the phrase, “Any gum, chum?”
The Wrigley’s Chewing Gum that Americans brought with them was a single piece of grey gum in a slim oblong packet, more like their mother’s Cephos Powders and nothing like the small, white-coated tablets of spearmint in packets of five that they’d enjoyed before the war.
If the children of Blackburn were fascinated by the US troops, their mothers and older sisters were even more so. Florrie Pomfret’s lament, in moments of desperation was, “
I’m sick to bloody death of you lot. I’ll bugger off one of these days and get myself a Yank!”
Star-struck Betty wished she would do just that. Wouldn’t it be grand if a Yank whisked them and their mum off to a mansion in Hollywood and left their dad in Blackburn? With a bit of luck her and Ellie would be film stars like Shirley Temple or Judy Garland.
But there were darker times when Florrie was less tempted to “get herself a Yank” and more tempted to do away with herself, times when she didn’t know what ailed her, and hopelessness and sadness overwhelmed her.
Joe’s feelings for Billy, see-sawing between love and hatred, only added to her depression. Like the day when she’d stood at the kitchen sink watching Billy follow his father up and down the yard, helping him feed the chickens and dig the garden, looking up for praise and reassurance then squealing and laughing as Joe swung him into the air and twirled him round. Perhaps she’d been daft to worry about the two of them, perhaps everything was turning out just as she’d hoped. In a moment of optimism her black mood lifted and her face softened into a smile.
Joe set him down on the narrow path and she watched as Billy dizzily staggered around on unsteady, chubby legs before plunging into the barely flourishing vegetable patch. With one swipe his father sent him flying across the yard. Florrie raced from the kitchen to find her path blocked by her husband.
‘Clumsy little bastard, he should mind where he’s putting his bloody feet,’ he said harshly.
‘Get out of my road, you cruel bugger.’ Florrie used all her strength to push him aside and ran to where Billy lay spread-eagled. ‘Look at him…frightened to bloody death he is, and he’s only a baby.’
‘Aye, that’s right, his mam’s babby. I hardly touched him, it’s not my fault if he can’t stand up straight,’ he sneered. ‘The little soft-arse… he’s just like them other two… all three of ‘em are bloody marred-arses and if
I
dare to chastise any of ‘em or lift a finger to ‘em
I’m
in the wrong… I’m not like a
real
dad, I’m like a pissing lodger in this house.’
‘Well piss off then,’ she screamed after him as he stormed into the kitchen slamming the door in her face.
The more his feelings for Billy alternated between affection and hostility the deeper Florrie sank into a state of melancholy. It seemed to her that the future held no hope, what with the world upside down and her own family at sixes and sevens.
She became more and more detached, carrying out routine functions at work and at home like a machine - a machine that was incapable of recognising the everyday
basic
emotional needs of her family let alone
variations
such as birthdays or holidays.