So now, standing in the kitchen with her mother’s warm hands clasping her own, she decided that her best, her only course was to speak privately to Uncle Max. She would tell him that she was not a child but a young woman, and did not relish his trying to caress her. She would also buy a small bolt for her bedroom door, and if her mother demanded to be told the reason for this action she would say that now she was getting older she needed a bit more privacy. Having made her decision, Debbie smiled brightly at her mother and withdrew her hands. ‘I’m glad you’re not going to marry him, Mam, and it truly isn’t jealousy; it’s just that I don’t like him, though I’ve tried to hide how I feel,’ she said. ‘As for tonight, I suppose I could come to the concert, only Gwen, meself and the kids are going into the country tomorrow to pick plums, leaving early in the morning, so I don’t want to be out late tonight.’
‘We won’t be late, honest, queen,’ her mother said coaxingly. ‘Only after what Mrs Shipham said, I’d rather you came along. Max is the dearest feller and when I told him there was talk he just laughed and said “Women’s gossip”, but just for a while I’d prefer to stick to family outings. You’ll do it for me, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Debbie said gloomily. ‘Do you want to come plum picking with us, then? Only otherwise, I dare say Uncle Max will want to take you out tomorrow as well.’
Jess looked triumphant. ‘No thanks, queen, my Saturday is already planned,’ she assured her daughter. ‘Apparently, Max has met an old friend, and he asked me if it would be all right to invite him to supper when they both come back from the football match. The Saturday girls will have to manage in the shop, because it will take me all morning to do my messages; then I’ll have the afternoon to get the house into shape, and after that there’ll be three of us here, not two, so you can stay out as long as you like.’
‘Oh, that’s marvellous,’ Debbie said, very relieved. ‘I’ve often wondered why he doesn’t bring friends home. I wonder what this one’s like?’
‘If he’s a friend of your uncle’s, I’m sure he’ll be delightful,’ Jess said earnestly. ‘Apparently, they were great pals in the old days and met up quite by chance, probably in a pub or the snooker hall, or somewhere like that. Now, what time do you think you’ll be home tomorrow? Your uncle has managed to get hold of a very nice piece of pork which I’m going to roast; I wouldn’t like you to miss out on that.’
‘Nor me,’ Debbie said fervently. ‘I expect the younger kids will get tired by about four, so I’ll make sure we’re home by six. Then I can help you prepare the meal and we can use the fruit we’ve picked to make a plum pie to follow the pork.’
At this point, the back door burst open and Max surged into the room, an enormous beam almost splitting his face in two. ‘Hello, ’ello, ’ello, ain’t I a lucky feller to find me two favourite women eagerly awaiting me return from work?’ he bellowed. ‘Lookin’ forward to the concert, are we? And I dare say there’ll be a nice little box of chocolates to eat during the interval.’ He leered at Debbie. ‘Give your mam a thrill and say you’ll come with us,’ he said. ‘There’s been a deal of foolish talk . . .’
‘Yes, Debbie’s coming with us,’ Jess said hastily, as though secretly afraid that her daughter might change her mind. ‘I’m afraid there’s only blind scouse for supper tonight but I got some marrow bones from Short’s, so the gravy will be really good.’
‘Everything you cook is really good, sweetheart,’ Max bawled, taking off his navy blazer and hanging it on the back of the kitchen door. ‘I telled me pal Herbert that he were invited back for a meal after the footie tomorrow, and he’s delighted to accept. He’s gorran old aunt what lives out Great Sutton way and he says next time she gives him a rabbit he’ll skin it and joint it and bring it round so’s you can make a rabbit pie.’ He turned to Debbie. ‘What do you think of that, eh? He’s a generous feller, my friend Herbert.’
Debbie mumbled something and left the room, running up the stairs at top speed. She had had a brilliant thought. Until she bought a bolt for her door, she would wedge her bedroom chair under the handle. Uncle Max would have some explaining to do if the chair crumbled to matchwood beneath his violent onslaught.
On Saturday morning Debbie woke when somebody started rattling and banging on her bedroom door. Irritated, and still half asleep, she shouted: ‘Oh, come in, do!’ before sitting up and seeing the chair still wedged under the door handle.
Guiltily, she jumped out of bed and ran across the room, pulling the chair hastily away from the door and opening it. Her mother came into the room carrying an enamel jug of hot water and put it down on the washstand. ‘I dunno what was the matter with your door, but I couldn’t seem to get the handle to work,’ she said, rather crossly. ‘And there was I, bringing up your hot water to save you having to come down for it since I thought you wanted to get a move on this morning.’
‘Thanks, Mam,’ Debbie said humbly. She picked up the jug of hot water and began to pour it into the round china bowl. ‘What’s the time? Me and Gwen and the kids, meant to catch an early tram down to the Pier Head and go across on the ferry . . . is it awful late? I don’t mind missing me breakfast if it is, because I dare say you’ll want to get off to work.’
Jess tutted. ‘You’ve got a head like a sieve, queen! I told you yesterday that I’m not going in this morning. As for the time, it’s not too late, barely seven o’clock. Now don’t you forget you promised to be home by six.’
Debbie was so relieved that her mother had not enquired more closely into the reason for her door’s jamming that she shot through her usual routine of washing and dressing and hurried downstairs. When she got to the kitchen, her breakfast porridge was already on the table, along with a neat pile of sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, half a dozen boiled eggs and a wedge of her mother’s famous carrot cake. Delighted, Debbie flung her arms round Jess’s neck and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re the best mother in the world, Mam,’ she said fervently, sliding into her seat and beginning to demolish her porridge. ‘Look, I’ll be back as soon as I can to give you a hand, honest I will, and I’ll bring back a grosh of plums and anything else we can buy cheap from the farms.’
Debbie was as good as her word. After a glorious day in the countryside, the young people made their way back home again with their canvas bags full of plums, carrots and onions, their faces and arms flushed from the sun and their stomachs comfortably full, for they had augmented their picnic with great golden gooseberries from some old bushes which the farmer’s wife told them they might strip of the remainder of their fruit. They had paddled in the river, helped one farmer to load four squealing pigs into a small trailer, burrowed into a haystack when no one was looking and swung from the ropes tied high in a beech tree. Jess was delighted with the fruit and vegetables Debbie presented her with, and advised her daughter to hurry up to her room so that she might wash and change before their guest arrived. Debbie was only too happy to do as she was told for she had seen herself in the kitchen mirror, with hayseeds in her hair and a dust-smeared face, and did not want to make a bad impression, even though she could not imagine anyone nice being pally with Uncle Max. She was still upstairs, struggling into a clean gingham dress, when she heard sounds of arrival, and then Uncle Max’s great voice going on and on, occasionally interspersed with murmurs from her mother. By the time she reached the head of the stairs, she had decided that Herbert was either a very quiet man indeed, or a very noisy one whose voice was identical to that of Uncle Max. She entered the kitchen with some trepidation, then stopped short in the doorway, her eyes widening with a mixture of astonishment and horror. There was Uncle Max, sprawled in his usual chair, and opposite him, horror of horrors, sat Mr Bottomley. He was grinning from ear to ear but Debbie, quick to pick up an atmosphere, realised that he was not as comfortable as he was trying to appear and Uncle Max, though recounting at the top of his voice an event that had occurred at the match, kept darting puzzled looks, first at Jess and then at his friend Herbert.
Debbie could not help feeling a thrill of triumph. She had thought that any friend of Uncle Max’s was bound to be horrid and now she had been proved right. Debbie knew full well that Jess had not only disliked Mr Bottomley, she had been a little bit afraid of him. Now, surely, she would have to admit that Uncle Max was not perfect – anything but perfect, in fact. Debbie hoped, fervently, that once a tiny seed of doubt had sprouted in her mother’s mind it would lead to other doubts. Perhaps it might even make Jess realise that, as she had been wrong about Max’s friend, so she might also be wrong about Max.
Uncle Max looked up as she entered the room; he also looked relieved, no doubt thinking that her arrival would dissipate the tension he had picked up between his cousin and his friend. However, Debbie did not mean to miss such an opportunity. ‘Hello, Mr Bottomley; so we meet again,’ she said coolly. ‘I never thought to see you sitting at our table, but there’s no . . .’
She had been going to say ‘no accounting for taste’, but her mother cut across the sentence before she could complete it. ‘Mr Bottomley is your uncle’s friend, and our guest,’ Jess said firmly. She turned to Max. ‘You never gave me a chance to explain that Mr Bottomley and I had met before. It was some time ago, when I lost my job at the hospital and decided to take in paying guests. I wanted ladies but Mr Bottomley was desperate, having been given notice by his landlady. He came round and looked at the room – it’s the one you’re in now, Max – but we decided we wouldn’t suit. And now I think we should bury the past and have our meal.’
The table was already laid, and Jess took the warmed plates out of the bottom oven, then brought forth the sizzling pork joint whilst Debbie began to dish up vegetables. Max usually sat at ease until his food was put before him, but now he took his place at the head of the table and began to carve the pork and pass it round, saying heartily as he did so: ‘Well, well, well, ain’t it a small world? I’m telling you, Herbert, this is a pretty good billet, but I’m sure you’ll be welcome here as me mate, even if my cousin felt more at ease with lady lodgers.’ He gave his friend a very obvious wink. ‘Reckon you didn’t know I were a lady, did you, old pal? But Jess and meself is old bezzies as well as cousins so I guess I were more acceptable than some strange feller wantin’ to find lodgings.’
Mr Bottomley muttered something and Jess turned to him politely. ‘Well, Mr Bottomley, and where are you lodging now? I trust you found somewhere satisfactory.’
‘I were in Great Nelson Street with a Mrs Halton,’ Mr Bottomley said. ‘Only her daughter was living in London and she’s been bombed out so she’s coming back to live at home, which means I’ve gorrer move on.’ He looked hopefully at Max. ‘So me old pal ’ere said as there were a spare room in his lodgings – a’course, I didn’t know it were your place, missus – and his landlady might let me take it.’
Debbie glanced at her mother, horrified at the mere suggestion. To be sure, Mr Bottomley had not shouted at all since he had entered the house, but that was because Uncle Max had done all the shouting for him. She was sure that as soon as he got his feet under the table he would out-boom even Uncle Max, and the thought of having to live with two such overpowering people made Debbie go cold. But Jess was speaking and Debbie, with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth, paused to listen.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly manage another lodger, not even a woman,’ Jess was saying firmly. ‘You see, I am now in full-time employment as manager of a busy chemist’s shop, and Debbie here works in a factory out on Long Lane, assembling wireless parts. So you see, we simply don’t have enough spare time to cope with lodgers.’ She looked across at Max and smiled, and Debbie was alarmed at the depth of affection in her mother’s eyes. ‘Max is different, of course, being family.’
‘But suppose I say I’ll take on board any extra work,’ Max said eagerly. ‘I’m a dab hand at burnin’ porridge and boiling eggs till they’s like stones. Honest to God, Jess, old Herbert here won’t be no trouble and I’m sure a bit of extra money wouldn’t come amiss.’
‘It’s not as if I were suggestin’ a permanent thing,’ Herbert Bottomley pointed out righteously. ‘It ’ud only be until I found somewhere else . . . somewhere I’d be made welcome,’ he added, with unconcealed bitterness. This time Jess did not even bother to reply, and Debbie thought her mother must remember, all too clearly, how difficult it had been to dislodge Mr Bottomley on their previous encounter. Instead, Jess looked round the table, eyebrows rising. ‘Would anyone like some more vegetables or gravy? I’m saving the rest of the pork, which we’ll have cold tomorrow, but if someone doesn’t eat the potatoes they’ll go to waste.’
‘Oh no they won’t, the hens will enjoy them . . . and the cauliflower too,’ Debbie said cheerfully, since her mother’s remark appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. Mr Bottomley looked sulky and Max was beginning to scowl. Debbie turned to him. ‘Go on, Uncle Max, you’re always saying how you love roast potatoes; well, now’s your chance to prove it.’
Max leaned across and helped himself to three of the six potatoes in the tureen, then added a good quantity of cauliflower which he splashed liberally with gravy. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he plunged the spoon into the dish again and put the last three potatoes and the rest of the cauliflower on to his friend’s plate. ‘You might as well have yourself a good meal, Herbie, ’cos me cousin’s a prime cook even if she ain’t as hospitable as I’d hoped,’ he said gruffly. Then he turned to Jess. ‘What’s for pudden, queen?’
Debbie had half expected Uncle Max to return to the attack but the days passed and no more mention was made of Mr Bottomley. Debbie, however, kept her eyes open and was not pleased to discover that Mr Bottomley was lodging with an old widow in Crocus Street. She was sure Mrs O’Brien would soon get tired of him and invent some excuse to get him to move on, but for the moment at least the old lady seemed quite happy with her lodger, and because the two friends now lived so close Uncle Max did not pester Jess to take the other man in. But very soon, in fact, Debbie noticed despairingly, Mr Bottomley was spending as much time in Wykeham Street as he did in his own lodgings. He came round as soon as he finished his evening meal, often complaining that Mrs O’Brien was a poor cook and did not manage to fill him up at mealtimes. When Max had provided Jess with unrationed food, she felt it incumbent upon her to offer Mr Bottomley a slice of cake or a piece of pie, but at other times she simply pretended not to hear.