Secrets My Mother Kept (19 page)

Mum hesitated for a few minutes and then smiled at my teacher.

‘Kath’s not afraid of a little hard work.’

I gulped; this sounded serious.

26

The Halloween Party

Being in the O-level class was a culture shock to me. The girls I was with were focused on their work and the teachers expected homework to be completed on time, and to a high standard. I was halfway between being exhilarating and terrified but I managed to cope. My confidence levels had increased considerably since I was that timid little girl in primary school. By the time I left school I had managed to obtain a clutch of O-levels and was keen to get to work and earn some money.

I needed clothes to go out in and although the discos would usually let girls in for free, we still felt obliged to buy a drink once inside. We usually only ever had to buy that first drink because after that there would be some young man who would be only too happy to supply our drinks in the hope of a goodnight kiss on the way home. I had discovered boys!

Mum always encouraged us to have dates. I think she was disappointed and felt a little bit guilty that Pat and Josie had never married, and was keen for the rest of us to find husbands. There had been a period of time when Mum had insisted that I accompany Marion to a series of dances and clubs because now that Marge was ‘courting’ she didn’t have anyone to go with. I had hated it. There was a seven-year age difference between us and the kind of places that we went were beyond my maturity levels. Since Marion had met Geoff and started going steady, I was left to my own devices and the world was full of opportunities. Both Margaret and I had grown into attractive teenagers. Margaret had always been a pretty child but I felt as though I was the ugly duckling turned into a swan as we got more and more attention from the local boys. We both felt so grown up when that Christmas Mum bought us a record each.

Mine was ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies and Margaret’s was ‘Tracy’ by the Cuff Links and we played them incessantly. I can still remember all the words to both over forty years later.

Halloween was still a fairly low-key celebration, but was starting to gain favour as fashion and trends moved across from America. Margaret loved all things witchy.

‘Shall we ask Mum if we can have a Halloween party?’ she suggested.

I gave this some thought. ‘Do you think she’ll let us?’ I was sceptical. We had never even had birthday parties when we were younger. In fact the only party in our house that I could remember was when Josie was twenty-one. Mum had invited all our aunties and uncles over, apart from those in Birmingham. We never saw much of Uncle John’s family, and they were rarely mentioned in our house by Mum, although Aunty would sometimes say, ‘It’s a shame the Birmingham lot can’t come,’ and Mum would turn away without meeting Aunty’s eyes.

Michael had made a cake for Josie with ‘21’ written on it and as my birthday fell two days before Josie’s, Mum told me the party was for me as well. Of course even though I was only nine I knew that this wasn’t really true but I went along with it anyway. The overriding memory of that day was not the disappointment that Josie was the only one who got any presents, or that the cake only had her name on it, but the utter embarrassment of having Julie, my godmother, calling upstairs for me.

‘Kathleen,’ she called. ‘Come on down so we can say Happy Birthday.’

I could see her standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up to where I was crouched behind the banisters. I think she thought I was upset because I was feeling left out, but the truth was that I couldn’t find any clean clothes to wear.

‘I’ll come down in a minute,’ I replied, panicking at the thought. Eventually I managed to find a heavy tartan kilt that someone must have donated to us. As it was the middle of a warm August it wasn’t particularly comfortable, and I still remember that awful hot scratchy feeling of the rough wool on my bare legs.

So when Margaret made her suggestion about Halloween I was unconvinced.

‘We can ask if you like,’ I said and she nodded enthusiastically.

‘You ask,’ she said. ‘You’re the oldest.’ I was just seventeen and we both worked in London in offices. Jobs were plentiful at that time, especially if you could speak nicely, were attractive, and could read and write well. We fulfilled all of these criteria, so had been in work since we left school – Margaret as soon as she was fifteen and me at sixteen. Just like our siblings before us, most of our wages went to Mum, who still had her tally men, or ‘callers’ as Aunty called them, who continued to bleed our family dry.

‘All right, I’ll ask, but if she says no I’m not asking again.’

To our complete shock and surprise Mum agreed at once.

‘Oh yes, that’s a good idea,’ she said, her blue eyes twinkling, ‘we can decorate the kitchen with witches and make some party food.’ On the rare occasions when Mum had hosted family parties in the past, all of the furniture from the kitchen, including the television and settee, had been piled into the front room that Pat used as her bedroom, so that was what was arranged. We rolled up the rug in case people spilt drinks, and cleared a space in the middle of the room for dancing. There was also a table of party food, and all this in a room measuring about 14ft by 12ft!

‘The boys can bring the drinks,’ Mum said, ‘otherwise it will cost too much.’ We knew this wouldn’t be a problem. I had met a boy called Patrick who was four years older than me, and he was bringing his friends. It was customary for boys to bring drinks to parties. It would usually be huge 7-pint cans of beer called ‘Party Sevens’ that had to be opened with a can opener and would often spray their contents all over the room and anyone standing close by. Occasionally they would bring a bottle of spirit or two, and there would sometimes be a few bottles of Babycham for the girls.

Margaret and I went over to the phone box to contact our friends, who all had phones in their homes by this time, and so it was arranged.

We bought black sugar paper from the shop across the road and cut out witchy shapes and stuck them on the walls with Sellotape. Mum helped us push the pineapple cubes and cheese onto the cocktail sticks.

‘Look, we can stick them in the grapefruit to make hedgehogs,’ she suggested, really getting into the spirit of things now. Josie made vol-au-vents filled with cheese spread and fish paste, and we made some cheese sandwiches.

Aunty went around sniffing loudly. ‘All this fuss,’ she mumbled. ‘Tell your Mother I’m going over to Aunty Mags’s.’

I breathed a sigh of relief as she headed out the door. I always felt on edge when Aunty was around; she was still volatile, even in her sixties.

It was on that evening that Margaret met her future husband Tony.

The party was a huge success. We played records really loudly, and Mum came and knocked on the door to tell us to turn it down a bit.

‘Oh don’t worry about it,’ Tony said, ‘we can just make out we’ve done it.’ He was always very confident and jokey.

Mum came back a few minutes later and knocked again. Tony pulled her into the room. ‘Now then, let’s have a dance.’

Across the other side of the room, I braced for an explosion.

‘Oh you cheeky monkey!’ Mum said, but to my utter amazement she was laughing as she did so.

By the time the party ended Tony had won her over, and Mum was on his side, encouraging Margaret to go out with him the following night.

Although she was only fifteen, Tony was obsessed by her. He was tall and dark and a real ‘Jack the Lad’ from Plaistow, East London, and most exciting of all he drove a Mini Cooper! He took her out almost every night, although Mum always insisted that we were home by 10.30 in the week and 11 p.m. at the weekend. Wednesday night we had to spend at home and tell our boyfriends that we were ‘washing our hair’. They were the rules and woe betide us if we dared to break them, so Margaret never did. I, on the other hand, was a rebel. Perhaps it was Anne’s influence, or just because I was the older sister, but I was always pushing the boundaries. Not long after Halloween I wanted to go to an ‘all-night party’ in London with Patrick. These were very trendy and most of my friends had been to one or more. It was considered a very grown-up thing to do.

Mum was adamant.

‘No, definitely not,’ she said, arms folded, when I asked her.

‘But it’s a Saturday night, and I don’t have work in the morning,’ I wheedled. ‘Patrick will bring me home in the car, and I can lay in on Sunday.’

But there was no budging her. Mum had made up her mind.

‘What if Margaret and Tony come?’ I tried, thinking this might give me a chance.

Mum didn’t answer for a few minutes. She went out into the scullery and put the kettle on. When she came back into the kitchen she made a suggestion. ‘If Patrick and Tony dig up the front garden for Aunty and weed outside the front door, then you can go,’ she announced. I couldn’t believe my luck and went over to phone Patrick straight away. Of course he and Tony kept their side of the bargain and so did Mum, but it set a precedent. From then on our lives were all about bargaining. She used us as a kind of currency to get things done by the boys, which was rather inconvenient at times, but at least it meant that we got to do the things we wanted most of the time.

Marion and Marge were outraged.

‘How come you’re allowed to go out till past twelve? We had to be in at half nine at your age,’ they complained, even though they were both married by this time. I just shrugged my shoulders and smirked.

Things didn’t always work out so smoothly though. The one thing Mum didn’t ever budge on was having one night in a week for supposed ‘hair washing’.

‘But I wash my hair every night!’ I argued. I thought it was a stupid rule, more about Mum holding onto her control over us than anything else.

‘I don’t care what you do,’ Mum shouted back. ‘You’re staying in tonight, and that’s that!’ and she stomped upstairs with a pile of dry washing. Normally I would have given in, but tonight Patrick wanted to take me out with his friend Jim and his girlfriend Sheena, who was one of my friends from school.

I phoned Patrick.

‘I can’t come tonight.’

‘Why not?’ he asked, with an edge to his voice. He was getting more and more fed up with having to placate Mum all the time just to be allowed to take me out.

‘You know what she’s like; she’ll go mad if I don’t stay in.’

He went quiet at the other end of the phone.

‘Look, Jim and Sheena have taken a night off from their bar job to come to that new disco tonight. It will look really bad if we don’t go.’

I loved dancing and in the 70s it was big business; every pub seemed to have a discotheque. They were all flashing lights, loud music and hormones.

I made a decision. ‘Okay, I’ll come. I don’t know how, but just pick me up at eight. I’ll be ready.’

Patrick was from an Irish Catholic family who also lived in Dagenham, although on another part of the Becontree estate. He was four years older than me and an apprentice printer. We had been going out for almost a year now. He was twenty-one and was quite tall, stocky and broad, with blue eyes and floppy brown hair. He was very ambitious, a real hard worker, and looking forward to completing his training. ‘That’s when I’ll start earning really big money,’ he would say, ‘and I can buy you things like Tony buys Margaret.’ The truth was, I didn’t care at all about that, but Mum did.

‘Have you seen that lovely gate bracelet that Tony bought Margaret?’ she asked. ‘Its 18-carat gold, you know.’

I knew all right, just like I knew about the ring, pendant, charm bracelet, watch and numerous other gifts that Tony could afford to shower on her.

‘Tony’s already finished his apprenticeship, Mum,’ I would point out.

Still, Patrick felt it, and would say, ‘One day, you’ll see; one day soon I’ll give you everything you ever wanted.’

Poor Patrick, he couldn’t have got it more wrong.

After I’d rowed with Mum, Margaret would always ask: ‘Why do you do it? Why don’t you just get home on time / stay in one night a week / not wear your skirts so short? I don’t get it.’ Well, I didn’t really know why either; I just felt that I was old enough to make up my own mind. I was almost eighteen so, as far as I was concerned, I could do what I liked.

That Wednesday I snuck upstairs to put on my make-up and get changed, while everyone was eating their dinner in front of the telly as usual. I put on my new white silky trouser suit. Margaret and I had a favourite shop near Barking Station that sold trendy clothes quite cheaply, and we also shopped in Petticoat Lane Market, so managed to stay fashionable on a very tight budget. I thought I was magnificent! I watched out of the bedroom window, and saw Patrick’s little blue Ford Anglia pull up outside at 8 p.m. sharp. Flying downstairs, I burst out of the front door and shouted behind me, ‘Bye Mum,’ and I was gone. I knew I would have to pay but would worry about that later.

As I jumped in the car Patrick turned and said, ‘Wow, you look gorgeous.’ I was very slim now and I had lightened my long hair from mousey brown to a coppery blonde. Being attractive to boys was as intoxicating as having friends. In fact it made me feel even more powerful, and I loved to feel boys gazing after me when I walked into the room, even though I was still very innocent.

‘What are you doing?’ he laughed, as I wriggled out of my trousers. I pulled on my long white platform boots so that I could wear the tunic as an extremely short mini dress. I knew Mum would have gone ballistic if she had caught me!