As she opened her eyes, Cissie smiled contentedly: it was wonderfully warm and cosy in the big feather bed, and the sun coming through the yellow curtains was flooding the room with bright, joyful colour.
She stretched slowly and, turning lazily on to her side, she reached out for Davy.
Davy…
She rolled back on to the pillow.
When would it finally sink in that her Davy was dead? When would she ever really believe that he was no longer with her; that he wouldn’t ever again appear in the bedroom doorway with a cup of tea and a saucy wink, just as he used to? How could she have wiped it from her mind, yet again, that he was gone?
It was only last night that she was lying there, staring up at the ceiling, promising herself – and Davy, because she prayed that he could hear her wherever he was, and that he was watching over her – that she would do everything she could to look after Matty and Joyce and, God help her, Lil. No matter what, she swore she would do it. Now, just a few short hours later, her mind was playing its cruel tricks on her all over again.
Cissie raked her fingers roughly through her hair, threw off the bedcovers and willed herself to get up and get going. She glanced at the clock on the bedside cabinet – a pretty little walnut pot cupboard that Davy had brought home for her as one of his surprises.
She couldn’t believe it. It was half past nine. She felt just like a slut. She really would have to get herself back into some sort of routine. The trouble was, she was having so much trouble getting to sleep at night, and then, when she finally dropped off, she would wake up every hour or so, either to see to the kids or just to lie there thinking, that she was exhausted by the morning and it was really hard for her to get up. But, hard or not, it wouldn’t do when Matty started school in September. She had just over three months until then, so she’d have to do something to sort herself out. She really would. Everything was down to her now. Everything.
Sighing loudly to herself, Cissie pulled her dressing-gown around her shoulders and went downstairs to the kitchen, without so much as a glimpse at herself in the dressing-table mirrors.
‘Matty?’ Cissie was shocked to find her son, dressed in his little striped winceyette pyjamas, balancing on one of the bentwood kitchen chairs, just about to open the corner cupboard.
Wobbling, with the effort of looking over his shoulder at his mum, Matty had to grab hold of the cupboard door to steady himself, but he wasn’t quite quick enough. The chair toppled over and Matty went crashing on to the hard, lino-covered floor, his head missing the stone butler sink by inches.
‘Matty!’ Cissie yelled.
As she rushed over to him, with her legs catching in the flapping hem of her dressing-gown, she almost finished up on the ground beside him.
Struggling to sit up, Matty clutched his leg. ‘I’m all right,’ he insisted, warily examining his grazed knee. ‘I didn’t wanna wake you up until I’d made the breakfast for us all.’ He bowed his little fair head in shame at his failure. ‘I was gonna help you cos you’ve been sad.’
‘Aw, darling!’ Cissie clasped him to her.
‘Joyce’s still asleep,’ he said into her shoulder, ‘but I think she’s wet the bed again.’
Cissie let go of her son and straightened up. ‘We’ll leave her for the minute, eh? I’ll see to her later on, make her nice and dry. But first,’ she said hauling Matty to his feet, ‘I’m gonna make us both something nice to eat.’ She bent forward and whispered conspiratorially, ‘Just for us two, eh? Cos if that chair falling over didn’t wake her up, it looks like Nanna’s out for the count and all.’
She picked up the chair and set it by the table for Matty to sit on.
‘No, I don’t think Nanna’s asleep,’ he said matter-of- factly, as he clambered up to the table. ‘She came in just now. She was looking for her medicine, but she said the bottle was empty. So she went back to bed.’
Cissie smiled encouragingly at Matty then went over to the cupboard, thinking as she did so that she’d like to break Lil’s empty ‘medicine’ bottle right over her head for her. ‘She’s probably not feeling very well, Matt. So we’ll leave her in bed a bit longer and all.’
‘Mum.’
‘Yes, love?’
Matty picked distractedly at the shiny oilcloth that covered the kitchen table. ‘Is Nanna Lil gonna die like Daddy?’
Cissie felt the lump rise in her throat. She grasped the cupboard handle as though it could rescue her from her pain. It was bad enough having to go through all this herself, but seeing the way it was affecting Matty was almost more than she could bear.
She turned and looked at her son, doing her best to smile. ‘Remember what I told yer, Matt? About how sometimes people—’
‘Die,’ he interrupted her, his voice small and scared.
‘Matty…’ Cissie went over to him. She knelt down on the hard floor and hugged him to her. She had to find a way to make it all right for him and Joyce again. She had to.
‘Someone’s knocking.’
‘Is there?’ Cissie leant back on her heels and listened. ‘Aw yeah, they’re knocking all right. Just listen to ’em bashing on that knocker.’ She stood up and wagged her finger at him with a smile. ‘Now, no more trying to do no breakfasts while I’m seeing who it is. All right?’
He nodded.
Cissie dragged her dressing-gown tighter round her and went to see who was so impatient for an answer.
As she opened the door, she immediately wished she hadn’t. ‘Aw, Mr Brownlow,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s you.’
‘Morning, Mrs Flowers.’ Mr Brownlow raised his bowler hat and treated her to the horrible spectacle of his famously leering grin. ‘You seem surprised to see me.’
‘I wasn’t expecting yer,’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t realise it was so late, did I?’
‘It’s late all right,’ Cissie heard Ethel call from next door – she was out on her step nosing, as usual. ‘Too bleed’n late to still be in yer night things, if you ask me.’
Mr Brownlow waggled his bushy eyebrows at Cissie and flashed her a suggestive smirk. ‘I thought that meself.’
‘Disgraceful,’ pronounced Ethel. ‘In my day, we’d have been up and dressed hours ago. Our washing would’ve been in soak, our pots scoured, and our steps would have been scrubbed clean and all.’
Cissie would have loved to have given Ethel Bennett a piece of her mind, but she knew how the old cow could twist and turn anything anybody said and make them look bad for having even opened their mouth, and she definitely didn’t need that at the moment. And especially not in front of Brownlow, because she was about to put a proposition to him – one that she badly needed him to agree to.
‘Look, Mr Brownlow,’ Cissie said quietly, ‘I’ve got something private like to say to yer. Could yer step inside for a minute, d’yer think?’
The landlord looked delighted at the prospect.
As she pulled the door to, Cissie caught a glimpse of Ethel Bennett clasping her pudgy cheek between the sausagey fingers of one hand, and scratching her head between her ever-present curlers with the other. Cissie didn’t have to be a genius to know that her nosy old trout of a next-door neighbour was in a real quandary: should she heave her fat carcass along to the end of the turning, so she could report events to Myrtle Payne at number nine? Or, should she stagger across the street to number eight and tell her daughter, Lena Dunn, that she had just seen a man – Mr Brownlow the landlord of all people! – being invited, bold as brass, into the young widow Flowers’ house?
Whichever of them Ethel decided to tell, Cissie knew that both were equally capable of exaggerating the truth, spreading lies, and causing mischief. So, in the end, it was all the same to her.
‘Now, Mrs Flowers,’ said Brownlow, leaning towards her, his clipped grey moustache bristling like a shaving brush. ‘What’s all this about then, you inviting me in like this?’ The passageway of number seven was dark and narrow, as in all the other houses in the street, and Cissie had to press herself flat against the wall to create even a little bit of space between herself and her ogling landlord.
‘It’s like this, Mr Brownlow,’ she began, increasingly and unpleasantly aware that all she was wearing were her night things and that his hot breath was burning her cheek. ‘I’m gonna have to ask yer for a little bit of a favour.’ She tried a smile; she could feel it, tight on her lips.
‘And what sort of favour would that be then?’
‘I’d appreciate yer keeping your voice down, Mr Brownlow.’ She inclined her head towards the closed front parlour door. ‘Me mother-in-law’s having a lie in. She’s feeling a bit poorly.’
‘What, the ale gone off down the Sabberton, has it? Give her gippy guts?’
Cissie’s smile set even more rigidly; her jaws ached with the effort of keeping it there. ‘She’s been very down since… since Davy… you know.’
‘She must miss him.’ Brownlow’s voice had become a menacing, rasping whisper. ‘And so must you,’ he added, making the words sound disgusting.
Clasping her dressing-gown to her throat, Cissie nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. Course I do. And it’s not been easy to manage without him these past weeks. That’s why I need a favour.’
She turned her head away from him, took a deep gulp of air and then blurted out: ‘I’m gonna need a bit more time to get the rent, Mr Brownlow.’
Brownlow’s piggy eyes blinked waterily behind the thick lenses of his round tortoiseshell specs. He coughed, spluttering all over her, before running his sharp pink tongue around his lips. ‘Why worry yourself about the rent, Mrs Flowers? I mean, we could come to some sort of an…’ He paused, and then, laying revolting emphasis on each syllable, he continued, ‘…an arrangement.’
As the full significance of what the landlord was suggesting dawned on Cissie, she immediately sprang into incensed action. ‘Yes, Lil,’ she shouted at the closed front-room door, replying to her mother-in-law’s non-existent question, ‘it is Mr Brownlow. Ain’t it nice of him? He just popped in to pass on his wife’s condolences to us.’ Cissie jabbed her finger at his chest. ‘You will remember to thank Mrs Brownlow for me, won’t you?’ she asked between clenched teeth. ‘Cos we all know how funny she can turn when she gets upset, don’t we?’
The landlord’s eyes goggled with suppressed rage, his mouth opening and closing like a dying cod’s on a fishmonger’s slab.
‘Now,’ Cissie reached across him to open the street door again, trying not to flinch as her bare wrist brushed against the shiny brown material of his well-worn suit, ‘if you don’t mind, Mr Brownlow, I’ll be getting me kids their breakfasts. And I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do, and all.’
Cissie flung the door back on its hinges to find Ethel, Myrtle and Lena – Ethel having obviously gone for the full set – all waiting eagerly by her street doorstep for developments.
‘Thanks for calling by with your wife’s kind thoughts, Mr Brownlow,’ Cissie emphasised loudly.
With her chin stuck defiantly in the air, Cissie treated her three trouble-raking neighbours to a stare that challenged them to say a single word out of place. ‘And we right appreciate yer being so understanding about waiting until next week for the rent and all.’
As Brownlow stepped past her to make his escape into the street, Cissie caught hold of his sleeve and hissed into his ear, ‘You’ll get your money, Brownlow, don’t you worry yourself about that. But that’s all yer’ll be getting, you dirty old bugger.’
With that, Cissie gave him a discreet yet determined shove, ejecting him out of the house with such force that, if he hadn’t swerved so neatly, he would have landed right in Ethel Bennett’s arms. And there were some women, although not that many, at which even Mr Brownlow drew the line.
‘I’ll say good-morning to yer then, Mr Brownlow.’ Cissie smiled, wide-eyed, at her audience. ‘And keep yer hand on your money satchel, won’t yer. There’s some funny people round here. Bloody funny.’ With that she slammed the door firmly behind him.
Leaning against the passage wall, Cissie caught up her hair between her hands and pulled it back off her face. She could feel her usually pale skin flaming scarlet with anger and shame. What had she been thinking of, inviting that pig into her home? She must have been off her head. She had to pull herself together, get on and make Matty’s breakfast, act as though everything was normal. Something had to stay normal in the poor little devil’s life.
But she should have known from the way her luck was running lately, that it wasn’t going to be as easy as that.
Back in the kitchen Matty was sitting at the table, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘I know yer told me not to do nothing, Mum,’ he gasped between sobs, ‘but you was such a long time, and I was hungry. So I…’ He bowed his head. ‘So I went and looked in the cupboard.’
Slowly, he lifted his chin, his face was puffy from weeping. ‘There ain’t nothing in there, Mum. We’re gonna starve, ain’t we? And then we’ll all be dead like Dad, won’t we?’
Cissie took Matty’s face gently in her hands and kissed the top of his head. ‘It’s all right, darling. I’ll sort it out. Just a couple more minutes, I promise, and yer’ll have a lovely big breakfast, with all yer favourite things. All piled up on yer plate.’ She kissed him again and then walked over to the kitchen door. ‘I’m just gonna have a word with Nanna.’
‘Lil!’ Cissie shouted, striding along the passage. ‘I wanna word with you!’
Cissie ran upstairs to get dressed, feeling murderous. How could Lil do that? Even if she had had too much to drink last night, fancy not thinking to leave something, anything, in the cupboard for the kids. She was so bloody selfish.
As she stepped into the front bedroom, the first thing she saw – the first thing she always saw – was the wooden-framed photograph of her, Davy and Matty. They’d had it taken at Southend when they’d gone there for a day trip on a paddle steamer along the Thames. Matty hadn’t even been Joyce’s age then, not much more than a baby really, but he already had the look of Davy about him with his fair hair and his cheeky grin.
She looked at the happy image of herself smiling out from the picture, and compared it with what she saw looking back at her from the dressing-table mirrors.
Davy had always been so proud of her, the way she looked and the way she dressed. He’d loved being seen with her on his arm as they walked along the street together with the kids, all done up in their Sunday best. He’d brought home the swagger coat she had on in the photo as a surprise – he’d got it off some feller he knew in the market. Typical Davy. She was so pleased with it, she’d worn it all that day, even though it was really hot and sunny. She hadn’t even taken it off when, after they’d gorged themselves on skate and chips and cups of steaming, dark brown tea, they had gone down to the beach for a paddle.
She pressed the picture to her lips. She had been so lucky, so happy; but had she taken it all for granted? The thought that maybe she hadn’t shown Davy how much she loved and appreciated him, while he was still with her, tormented her. She could only pray that she had.
She dipped her head and looked in the dressing-table mirrors. Dark smudges spread like faint mauve bruises across the pale skin under her tear-reddened eyes, and her hair hung lank and unwashed around her face. What would Davy think of her now? She couldn’t let herself go around in this state for much longer.
She snatched up her hairbrush and ran it harshly through her hair. After she’d got herself over to the corner shop and made something for the children’s breakfast, she would wash her hair and make herself look decent.
She pulled her nightie over her head and dropped it on the ground at her feet, then dragged on some underwear and the navy cotton dress she’d left on the dressing-table stool the night before. Looking around for a pair of stockings, she could find only one, and that was snagged from where it had been draped over an open drawer of the tallboy.
The room was in a real mess. It didn’t take much working out to realise that it was going to take more than getting dressed and a hair wash to sort things out. She felt like weeping. It was all so difficult, there was so much to do, so much to remember.
Davy, she was beginning to realise, had done a lot more than just bring home the housekeeping every Friday night. He had kept her world together, had given her a reason to laugh, a reason to make sure she looked nice, a reason to live.
She dropped down on to the unmade bed. Was it really only six weeks since her life had been turned upside down?
‘Cissie! You still upstairs?’ Lil’s foghorn of a voice shattered its way into Cissie’s thoughts.
‘Yes, Lil,’ she answered, closing her eyes with exhaustion at just the idea of dealing with her mother-in-law.
‘Ain’t yer been over that sodding shop yet? I’m bleed’n starving down here.’
Wearily, Cissie rose to her feet. She wanted to shout back that if Lil hadn’t stuffed her greedy self last night there would have been at least some eggs and toast for them all. But it was too much effort to even think about starting a row that, on previous form, Cissie knew Lil could continue for hours, or even days, on end if the fancy took her.
Cissie trudged downstairs as though she were wading through a river of treacle. She stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at Lil sitting at the table with Matty. Lil was staring moodily at the teapot.
‘Not even a few lousy grouts to make meself a cuppa,’ she moaned without even raising her eyes to meet Cissie’s.
Matty looked from his mum to his nanna, and back again. ‘I ain’t that hungry no more,’ he said quietly.
Biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from breaking down into tears, Cissie smiled weakly at her sad-eyed child. Slipping a floral crossover apron over her dress, she went over to the hearth and took down the old silver-coloured tea caddy from the overmantel.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got in the rainy day pot, eh Matt?’ Cissie said as cheerfully as she could manage.
She lifted the lid and looked inside. A single half-crown? Surely she wasn’t seeing straight? She was positive there’d been at least twenty-five shillings the last time she’d looked.
Cissie thought for a moment. Yes, she was right, only yesterday she’d thought about getting it ready to give to Brownlow when he called this morning. But she’d thought better of it. Davy had always said it was only to be used in a real emergency, an emergency such as not having any food to put on the table for the kids. She could see herself back then, laughing at Davy for even suggesting that such a ridiculous thing might ever happen.
‘Lil,’ Cissie began.
‘What?’
‘You ain’t borrowed no money or anything out of here, have yer?’
‘That money was my Davy’s,’ Lil snapped shirtily. ‘He wouldn’t have begrudged his old mum a few coppers.’
‘But there’s twenty-two and six missing.’ Seeing the frightened look clouding Matty’s face, Cissie lowered her voice. ‘What have you done with it?’
‘I don’t have to answer to you.’ Lil shoved back her chair and stomped out of the back door into the yard. She snatched open the wooden lavatory door and shut herself in the little outdoor cubicle. ‘I’ll be in here for a while,’ she hollered. ‘I’ll be ready for me breakfast when I come out.’
‘What we gonna do if we ain’t got no money, Mum? Yer can’t get things without money, can yer?’
Cissie ruffled his hair. ‘We’ve got money, daft,’ she said light-heartedly. ‘Now you wash them hands o’ your’n, then go upstairs and wake up yer little sister for me, while I nip over Clarke’s and get all the bits and pieces for a great big fry-up.’
As Cissie opened her street door she saw Ethel, Myrtle and Lena still in a gossiping huddle by her step.
‘Nice not to have no jobs to do,’ Cissie said, avoiding their eyes as she pulled the street door shut behind her.
‘I see mourning don’t mean nothing nowadays,’ Myrtle sneered as she eyed Cissie’s floral apron.
Cissie didn’t bother to answer, she just strode purposefully across the street.
She was intending to go straight to Sammy Clarke’s corner shop to see how far the half-crown would stretch, but as she passed number four, Gladys’s house that stood next door to Clarke’s, Cissie stopped. She took her purse from the pocket of her apron and opened it. Two and six. Some chance of feeding the four of them even a decent bit of breakfast, dinner and tea today, let alone affording anything for tomorrow.
Gladys’s street door was, as usual, wide open. From where she was standing, Cissie could hear the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen. It was the younger Mills children and their dad, Ernie. It sounded so happy, so normal in there, that Cissie didn’t think twice.
‘All right, Ern,’ she called in greeting as she walked down the narrow passageway. She poked her head round the kitchen door. ‘It’s only me.’
Ernie was sitting in a carver chair by the stove, supposedly reading the paper, but, in reality, acting as a monkey climb for his three youngest who weren’t yet school-age.
‘Hello, Cis,’ he said with his usual friendly grin. ‘Come on in, girl.’ He lifted the kids on to the floor with one sweep of his big, labourer’s arms. ‘I was just minding these little monsters.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘While Gladys is out, like.’
Cissie smiled, knowing Ernie was embarrassed to be at home while his wife was out working. ‘Right handful at that age, ain’t they?’
‘Yeah.’ Ernie nodded self-consciously. ‘Here,’ he said standing up, ‘I’m forgetting me manners. Let me stick the kettle on the hob and I’ll make us a cuppa. Yer’ve got the time, ain’t yer?’
‘That’s something I’ve got too much of lately, Ern.’
Cissie sat at the table and watched as Ernie moved around the cramped little room, filling the kettle, getting the cups off the shelf over the sink, and warming the pot. He did it so naturally; Davy, as far as Cissie was aware, hadn’t even known where she kept the milk.
But then Davy had always been the breadwinner.
Cissie rubbed her hands over her face.
‘You all right, girl?’ Ernie asked putting the pot down on the table in front of her, and then slipping the worn, knitted cosy on top.
‘Yeah, I’m all right. I was just, you know, thinking about things.’ Cissie dropped her chin to hide the tears that were threatening to flow again.
Gently, Ernie patted her shoulder with his dinner-plate- sized hand. ‘I know it ain’t easy, love.’
‘Oi!’ a woman’s voice demanded cheerfully from the kitchen doorway. ‘You leave my old man alone, if yer don’t mind, Cissie Flowers.’
Cissie looked up. ‘Glad,’ she sniffed miserably. ‘Aw, Glad, I just dunno what to do.’
Gladys held her arms out to her friend. ‘Come here,’ she said, signalling with a jerk of her head for Ernie to make himself and the kids scarce. ‘Come and tell me all about it.’
‘No thanks, Glad,’ Cissie said, putting down her empty cup. ‘I won’t have no more. Lil’ll be wondering where I’ve got to with their breakfasts.’ She sighed distractedly. ‘And I don’t need her going on at me. I can’t help it, just the sound of her voice gets on me nerves.’
‘Lil’d get on a bloody saint’s nerves, Cis. So yer don’t wanna go blaming yerself, and getting yerself all worked up over that.’
‘But it ain’t only that.’ Cissie hesitated. She had never been in the position of having no money, not since the day she married Davy. And she hated it.
‘So what is it? Yer can tell me, Cis, yer know that. And it won’t go no further than these four walls, I promise yer.’
‘I know, Glad. It’s just, well, to tell yer the truth, I’m skint.’
‘You?’ Gladys asked incredulously. ‘But I thought yer said yer was all right for money. When I asked yer about selling the truck—’
‘I was lying.’
Cissie turned her empty cup slowly round and round in her hands. ‘See, Davy did leave a bit of money, well, more than a bit really, just laying there in the dresser drawer it was. But during these past weeks, I’ve just sort of spent it.’
‘What, all of it?’
Cissie nodded wretchedly. ‘Every brass farthing of it. I’ve never had to worry about where the next few quid was coming from before, see. So I didn’t sort of realise how quick it goes.’
‘It’s all right for some,’ said Gladys more wistfully than unkindly.
‘And anyway, I always thought there was the emergency money to fall back on.’ Cissie leant back and reached into her apron pocket for her purse. She opened it and tipped the single half-crown spinning on to the table.
Both women watched the coin turn round until it stopped and fell flat on its side.
‘Me emergency money,’ said Cissie flatly.
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s it. Everything there is.’ Cissie shrugged, angry and ashamed at herself for being such a fool. ‘Lil’s poured the rest down her gullet in the Sabberton.’
Gladys reached out and took Cissie’s hand. ‘I’m sorry yer in this state, darling.’
‘Me and all.’ Cissie stared down at the single silver coin. ‘Glad,’ she said quietly, ‘will you help me?’
Gladys squeezed her hand. ‘Course I will, daft.’
Cissie looked up at her friend, her big blue eyes full of hope and tears. ‘How much can yer lend me?’
Gladys let go of Cissie’s hand. ‘No, love, sorry. I don’t mean I can help yer with money. Yer know Ernie ain’t worked for months on end now, and I’ve got him, Nipper and the five kids all to feed and clothe out of the miserable few bob I bring in each week.’
Cissie lowered her eyes again. ‘Aw,’ she said, her voice now so quiet, it was barely audible. ‘So how can you help me then?’
‘I could put a word in for yer up the City. Like I said before, even in times like these, there’s always work for cleaners. It might not be much to start with, just a few hours, say from four till eight of a morning, but once they see you’re a willing grafter, the word soon gets round and you can pick up a good few extra hours a day.’
Gladys topped up her cup, giving Cissie a chance to speak, but Cissie said nothing.
‘So, what d’yer reckon?’ Gladys prompted her.
‘Look, Glad,’ said Cissie eventually, picking up the half- crown and putting it back in her purse. ‘I don’t wanna sound ungrateful or nothing, but I don’t think I’m that desperate yet.’
‘Thanks very much!’
‘Look, Glad, I didn’t mean—’
‘No, I know. It is a poxy, rotten job, but, like they say, beggars can’t be choosers, can they?’
Cissie stood up and slipped her purse into her pocket. ‘I’d better be getting on. Lil and the kids, you know.’
‘Don’t forget, Cis, if you change your mind about the cleaning…’
‘I won’t, but thanks for the tea.’
‘Any time.’
As Cissie walked the few steps from Gladys’s door to the shop, she wished with all her heart that she hadn’t set foot in her friend’s kitchen. How could she have been so stupid as to think that Gladys would have had money to lend her? It made her feel that she’d been as selfish as Lil at her very worst.
And now Gladys knew she was broke. It was all so humiliating.
Clutching the purse in her pocket, and without even a glance at the piles of goods on offer on the pavement outside the shop, Cissie pushed open the door of Clarke’s General Store. The half-crown would have to do.
The bell tinkled its familiar welcome and Sammy Clarke, the young, fresh-faced owner, who had run the shop single-handed since the death of his parents, smiled warmly at her from behind the counter.
‘Morning, Cissie,’ Sammy greeted her, his pink cheeks shining.
Ignoring Lena, who had just followed her into the shop and was now standing between her and a drum of chicken food, arms folded, watching her every move, Cissie returned Sammy’s smile. ‘Morning, Sam.’
‘Let her go first,’ Lena cut in.
Momentarily surprised by such uncharacteristic generosity from Ethel’s daughter who, although she was barely out of her thirties, looked almost as old and sour as her mother, Cissie turned to thank her. But when she saw the predatory look in Lena’s eyes, Cissie didn’t bother. Lena had obviously pounced on the opportunity for picking up a bit of gossip. With a woman like Lena Dunn, even the contents of a neighbour’s shopping bag could give her ammunition for spite. Someone could as easily be condemned for profligacy if they dared spend more than Lena approved of, or of meanness if they didn’t. Lena had them either way.
But today Lena was actually interested in something far more intriguing than the items on Cissie’s grocery list. She, like everyone else in the neighbourhood, knew that Sammy Clarke fancied the young widow Flowers something rotten, and had done so ever since they were both kids playing Knock Down Ginger and High Jimmy Knacker up and down St Paul’s Road where they had both gone to school.
Everyone knew he fancied her that is, except Cissie herself, but then she had only ever had eyes for Davy. Still, the idea that boring, chubby, pink-faced Sammy could ever compete with Davy Flowers had given a lot of them a good laugh. But now Cissie was by herself, who knew what developments might occur. Yes, it was definitely worth Lena hanging around to see what unfolded.
Cissie stepped back from the counter. ‘You’re all right,’ she said lightly. ‘You go first.’
‘I insist,’ Lena barked rather than said, and hauled her basket further up her arm to indicate that that was an end of the matter.
Cissie tried again. ‘But—’
‘Look, me boys are both at school. Reg is at work. I ain’t got nothing to rush home for. Not like you with them poor little kiddies o’ your’n.’
Having decided that she had fired her winning shot, Lena sat herself down on the chair by the counter, tucked her hands inside her apron front in the way the older women like her mother did, and prepared herself to take mental note of the proceedings.
Sammy raised his eyebrows in incomprehension, baffled by the apparent brainstorm that had transformed Lena into this caring, considerate neighbour. He might have served women in the shop every day of the week except Sundays for all his adult life, but, being single, the opposite sex and their doings were as much a mystery to Sammy Clarke as what went on in Timbuktu – wherever that might be.
‘Now,’ he said, smiling until his pink cheeks shone, ‘what can I get for yer, Cis?’
Having never had to consider the price of her shopping before, Cissie hadn’t worked out what she could afford, so she looked about her and thought for a moment. From the chalked signs on the little blackboards stuck into the sacks and piles of goods, she soon realised that she couldn’t afford very much at all. And she had promised Matty a fry-up of all his favourite things.
‘Sam,’ she said quietly, beckoning him closer.
Sam leant across the counter towards her. ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s like this,’ she breathed, her neck and face burning. ‘I’m a bit short at the minute, see. But there’s quite a few bits I need and…’
Cissie might have thought that she and Sammy were speaking in whispered confidence, but, as he filled her basket and insisted that she pay him whenever she was ready, Lena’s acute meddler’s hearing picked up every single, gossip-worthy word. She could hardly suppress her glee at such a tasty titbit.
By the time Cissie had finished cooking, it was nearly half past twelve, a bit late for breakfast, but she didn’t care; she was just relieved to be able to put the half-crown back in the tea caddy on the overmantel, and to fill her cupboard with the food Sammy had let her have on the slate.
Lil wasn’t so impressed by her daughter-in-law’s efforts to provide for them.
‘This it?’ she demanded. With a sneer of disbelieving contempt, Lil glared at the fried eggs, streaky bacon and buttered toast that Cissie had put in front of her.
Matty, his toast soldier inches from his mouth, stopped eating and looked up at his mum. ‘I like it,’ he said.
Joyce banged her hands on the tray of her high chair in happy agreement, and opened wide for Cissie to spoon in another mouthful of runny yolk.
‘You should be feeding yourself, young lady,’ Cissie teased her daughter, deliberately ignoring Lil’s complaints. ‘And you get on with your food, Matt, there’s a good boy for Mummy.’
Lil didn’t take kindly to being ignored, especially not by her clueless daughter-in-law. ‘When my Davy was alive, we had decent grub on this table. Grub that could line your stomach and build you up. Not this muck.’
She shoved the untouched plate away in disgust. ‘What have we got for our dinner then? More o’ these bacon scraps and some rotten veg? And how about our teas? What do we get then? Dry bread and water?’
‘Have you finished?’
‘If yer mean have I finished with that shit,’ Lil said, curling her lip at the slowly congealing breakfast, ‘then yes I have. But, if yer mean have I finished with you, then you ain’t so lucky, my girl, cos I ain’t finished with you by a long chalk.’
Very calmly, Cissie smiled reassuringly at her children, then she stood up, walked around the table to where Lil was sitting and, bending down so that only Lil could hear her, Cissie began speaking.
‘You might not reckon yer finished with me, you vicious old bag, but you wanna watch yourself, Lil. Cos I might just be finished with you. And you wouldn’t wanna lose yer meal ticket, now would yer? Even if it is only – what did you call it? Shit?’
Cissie straightened up and, smiling happily for the benefit of the kids, she reached across to the overmantel and took down the tea caddy.
‘Here, Lil, here’s half a crown. The Sabberton’ll be open by now.’ She thrust the coin into her astonished mother-in-law’s hand and hissed under her breath, ‘And if you’ve got any brain at all in that thick head o’ your’n, you’ll keep well out of my sight until I figure out how I’m gonna get us out of this mess.’
Matty sat in watchful silence as Lil, the money clasped tightly in her hand, stomped out of the kitchen and, by the sound of the street door slamming, left the house. Only then did he speak.
‘Mum,’ he began slowly.
‘Yes, love?’ Cissie replied, the relief at Lil’s absence obvious in her voice.
‘You know it’s me birthday soon?’
‘Course I do,’ she said, ruffling his hair.
‘Well, now we’re poor, does it mean I can’t have that football yer promised me? Cos I told the Godwin kids they could play with me when I got it. And they’ll think I’m a right little liar.’
Cissie managed to reach her bedroom before she started crying.
She threw herself on to the bed and sobbed into the pillows. She couldn’t let Matty down. There was nothing else for it. Keeping the truck was a luxury; she would have to sell it, whether it had been Davy’s pride and joy or not.
She rolled on to her back and stared up at the ceiling. It made sense to sell it, she told herself. And it wouldn’t be a problem, there had to be plenty of flower sellers or market traders who’d be only too pleased to pay a fair price for an almost brand-new vehicle.
She’d be able to pay Sammy back what she owed him, wipe her slate clean, and still have enough to live off while she worked out what to do next. She was stupid not to do it yesterday, when she’d first thought of it. The market would be closed over the weekend, but she would drive the truck to the flower market first thing on Monday morning.
She smiled sadly at the memory of Davy panicking every time she crashed the gear lever because she’d forgotten about the double declutching. He’d always wince in pain as the cogs and wheels groaned and squealed in mechanical protest.
Cissie suddenly pushed herself up on her elbows.
The flower market…
She blew her nose noisily and brushed her greasy hair away from her face.
Slowly, a much broader smile appeared on her lips. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She would run the flower stall. She would take over where Davy had left off. It was such an obvious solution.
A kaleidoscope of ideas danced in her mind.
Admittedly, she hadn’t been near the stall for years, not since their courting days, in fact. And even then she and Gladys had only paraded up and down the street, passing back and forth past the old factory building near Aldgate station where Davy had his regular pitch, so that Cissie could flutter her eyelashes to try to catch his attention – and it had worked, she thought to herself with something almost like a laugh of pleasure.
She could do it. She could run the stall. She wasn’t stupid, what she didn’t know she could learn. Anyway, there couldn’t be that much involved in it. Much as Cissie loved Davy, she’d be the first to admit that he was no genius, even he always acknowledged that she was the clever one in the family, yet he’d always made more than a good living for them all, even during times that everyone else seemed to agree were the worst they could remember.
She’d have to make arrangements for the children, of course, but she was sure that Gladys and Ernie would help her out. Anyway, Matty would be starting school before long, and if the worse came to the worst – and it would be the worst as far as Cissie was concerned – she would blackmail Lil into getting off her lazy arse to keep an eye on them while she went out to earn their living.
For the first time in weeks, Cissie felt genuinely hopeful. Davy would have been proud to see her back to her old self.
She jumped off the bed and raced downstairs to the kitchen to wash her hair. She was young, strong and single-minded, and the mother of two kids she would die to protect. And if Matty wanted a football for his birthday, then he would bloody well have one.
And, if it made him happy, she’d even let him take it along the street to play with the dookie Godwin kids from number one.