Kathleen, October 1934
Kathleen hadn’t sung a note since Billy died last year. Nanny Day did her best to gee her up into a song, tapping her feet around the scullery at Cornwall Road in an enforced show of jollity, humming all the old music hall songs she could think of.
‘The Cake Walk’ was one of Nanny’s favourites, and Old Uncle Dennis got up and joined in as she waved her dishcloth and sang, ‘I know a nice walk, just like the cake walk, come along my honey . . .’ Uncle Dennis rolled up his trouser legs, thrust his jacket back over his shoulders and swaggered forwards, making Kathleen laugh, but still she wouldn’t join in, even when his exertions made him cough and splutter.
‘Ooh, cough up, chicken,’ said Nanny Day, slapping him on the back. ‘Why won’t you join in no more, Kathleen? You sing like a little bird.’
‘Don’t fancy it,’ she said, folding her arms and sitting down on Nanny’s favourite rocking chair.
‘Oi!’ said Nanny. ‘Sling yer hook! That’s my seat.’ Even that was done in a jokey way, just to try to make Kathleen laugh, because Nanny didn’t really mind one bit if Kathleen sat there while she went about her chores and she never usually spoke in that gorblimey way, like one of the costermongers from down the road.
Kathleen wanted to speak up, to say something about why she wouldn’t sing any more, but the words got stuck in her throat. How could she tell them that it was all her fault, Billy dying like that? Sometimes she dreamed about him, lying there in his pram, not wanting to get out and walk. In her dreams, she did things differently; she felt his forehead and rushed straight to get the doctor, who gave him some medicine from a big brown bottle and it made him all better. Except, when she woke with the thin light of the day coming through the curtains, Billy was dead and cold in his grave and she hadn’t done enough to save him.
Nobody blamed her, least of all Mary, who asked her to come over and sit with her sometimes, as she pulled the fur from rabbit skins in the scullery. But Kathleen felt, deep down, that Mary would be very angry if she knew the truth. Kathleen had noticed that Mary’s belly was getting bigger and she wondered if she had a secret to tell. Maybe that was why she was happier recently. Even that made Kathleen feel bad, because if another baby came along, Billy would just be forgotten about.
Kathleen had thought about trying to buy some flowers and taking those up to the cemetery, to lay them on his grave, but she didn’t have any money to do that. So she had made an extra special effort to say prayers for Billy in church, where she said her catechism with real fervour, hoping that Jesus was listening. She’d noticed that her big sister Peggy wasn’t so bothered about the church any more. She’d caught her just mouthing the words on more than one occasion. Kathleen thought this was probably what happened when girls left school and went out to work. Her head was probably full of numbers and figures and the like.
Peggy had been extra kind to Kathleen of late. In fact, she was planning to take her to the cinema later, which was a real treat. They were going to go to the Trocadero down at the Elephant. She’d heard all about the Troc, with its carpets so soft you sank into them and its huge Wurlitzer organ, but she couldn’t wait to see it for herself. Peggy and George Harwood had a regular thing going, where they’d go half price on a weekday evening, and see a show every couple of weeks. Kathleen couldn’t resist teasing Peg about that because she wouldn’t admit how much she liked George, who’d left school now and was training to be a mechanic at the bus depot. Dad had murmured his approval: ‘Good job for a young lad.’ He also didn’t mind Peggy going out with George to the cinema, given that George always brought his annoying little brother Harry along with him, so there was no question of any funny business. Kathleen didn’t much care for Harry, who was in the year below her at school. She made a mental note to kick him in the shins if he got on her nerves.
Later that afternoon there was a bit of a traffic jam down at the Elephant, as a tram had derailed and a policeman wearing white gloves had to direct all the cars and carts around it. Peggy waited while Kathleen pulled her socks up for the umpteenth time – it was her most annoying habit, according to her older sister – before she took her hand and walked her across the bustling junction to the Trocadero. George was already waiting outside, his hair neatly brushed and parted. He was wearing long trousers with turn-ups, just like his dad. Kathleen was struck by quite how grown-up he looked – and how handsome. She gave him a shy little wave. His brother, Harry, appeared by his side and stuck his tongue out at Kathleen. She’d pay him back for that later. Boys really were just horrid little worms.
Going into the cinema was an experience in itself. Kathleen really did almost sink into the carpets, they were so thick, and there were mirrors everywhere. Harry pulled funny faces at himself but Kathleen was trying to behave as if she came here every week, to keep up appearances, so she didn’t copy him. Once they had bought their tickets, they were shown to the stalls by an usherette wearing a neat little uniform with a pill-box hat at a jaunty angle, a black jacket with red piping over her blouse, a tight-fitting skirt and smart heels and lipstick. Once inside, Kathleen gazed at the vast balcony behind her, the curved ceiling with chandeliers and gold eagles everywhere. The last time she had seen anything this fancy was in the Italian church. The drapes were chocolate coloured and the ceiling was painted in a soft rose. The whole place was mouth-watering, good enough to eat.
Kathleen quite forgot to dislike Harry in the excitement of it all and started to chat to him about school until the lights went down and an usherette told her to shush. She obeyed immediately. There was no way she wanted to get chucked out. This was heaven. The main picture was called The Prince of Arcadia but first they had to sit through a newsreel. Kathleen thought this was about as exciting as watching paint dry but Peggy and George sat with looks of rapt attention etched on their faces. It was mostly to do with Germany. There were soldiers marching everywhere and piles of books on fire.
‘Nazis,’ whispered George to Kathleen. ‘That funny little fella with the moustache is Hitler, their leader. My dad says he looks like Charlie Chaplin but without the laughs.’ The usherette shone a light over at George and motioned for him to button his lip.
When the newsreel finished, the curtains came down over the screen and a huge white Wurlitzer organ rose up from just in front of the stage. Kathleen watched as the organist’s hands flew up and down the keyboard, the sound filling the whole cinema. He swayed a bit in his seat as he played and when he got to a loud bit, his whole body seemed to quake. When it was finished, he turned and gave an appreciative wave to the audience, who clapped loudly. Kathleen imagined herself playing that organ. Maybe she could, one day, if she practised really hard at school but she’d have to fit it in around her acting job as well. As the Wurlitzer sank beneath the stage, the usherette made another appearance at the foot of the stairs, with a tray around her neck and little cartons of popcorn in it.
George made a great show of pulling some coins out of his pocket to pay for two cartons – one for him and Peggy and one for his brother and Kathleen. Kathleen didn’t really want to get too close to Harry while they were eating it. He was known as Nitty for a reason.
The main film had lots of singing in it, which Kathleen liked, and the story was about a prince from a country called Ruritania, who was supposed to marry a wealthy actress but fell in love with someone else instead, even though she was quite poor. While Kathleen agonized over whether he was going to make the right choice, Peggy and George seemed to be more interested in whispering and giggling together. What’s more, Kathleen noticed that when the lights went up at the end of the film, George was holding Peggy’s hand.
‘Shall we stop off for sarsaparilla on the way home?’ asked George, casually putting his arm around Peggy’s shoulder. Kathleen smirked as she realized that Peggy hadn’t brushed it away. Her sister used to tower over George but now he had caught up with her. They did make a nice couple, if only Peggy would admit to it.
They wandered down the Cut in a little gang, past an accordion player with a sign saying ‘No Home, No Dole’ around his neck. A couple of down-and-outs were sitting on upturned crates selling little bags of tobacco for roll-ups. Everyone knew they had picked it out of the fag butts on street corners but it was all they could do to scrape a living.
‘What did you think of the film, George?’ said Peggy.
‘It was all right, I s’pose,’ he said. ‘Bit mushy romantic for me. More the sort of thing that you and Kathleen would enjoy, I bet.’
Peggy nudged him in the ribs and Kathleen rolled her eyes at him. She preferred to tag along with Peggy and George, at the risk of feeling like a gooseberry, because Harry was really such a grubby little oik. He was kicking an empty bottle along in the gutter in front of them, making a bit of a nuisance of himself, as boys do.
They passed a second-hand clothes stall. Women were sifting through old dresses and skirts, holding them up and checking whether it was worth spending their hard-earned cash to remodel them into something more fashionable. Many a summer frock in their house had started life on someone else’s back, but their mother always told them, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ Besides, there was nothing wrong with it; once the material had been washed, scrubbed and ironed, it was as good as new.
The man at the sarsaparilla stall was selling it hot, by the pint, mixed with blackcurrant. Kathleen slurped the hot black liquid and felt it warming her from the inside, listening to the sound of the accordion. Harry started tapping his feet.
‘Why don’t you give us a turn, Kathleen?’ said Peggy. Kathleen shook her head. There was so much music, she felt sad not to be joining in like she used to but, as part of her private mourning for little Billy, it had now become a mark of respect to refrain.
When they got back to Howley Terrace there was a big commotion at the top end of the street where there was a patch of waste-ground much loved by the kids for larking about, but which also served as an unofficial boxing ring when scores needed to be settled with fists. The parents didn’t like the kids going anywhere near it but of course, if there was a fight on, everyone got to hear about it. The local bookies would meander over from the pub and start taking bets – pennies, really, especially if it was kids. Peggy usually couldn’t be persuaded to go down there at all but because George wanted to see, she went along reluctantly. Kathleen and Harry had already pushed their way to the front of the crowd. To the girls’ horror there they saw their little brother, Frankie, in the middle, pummelling a huge kid to the ground, while Eva collected pennies for it.
‘Frankie! No!’ shouted Peggy, but he ignored her and kept punching the other boy in the face until his nose bled. When a big bloke from the wastepaper factory separated them, Frankie had such a fat lip that he couldn’t go home but he was still smiling because he had won the fight.
‘You’d better get yourself round to Nanny Day’s,’ said Kathleen, lending him her handkerchief, which he promptly covered in blood from the cut on his lip. ‘If Dad sees you, you’ll be for it.’ Despite meting out beatings to them, their father wouldn’t tolerate them being involved in street fights. Eva went off with him, counting their winnings.
As Kathleen, Peggy, George and Harry made their way back down the street, there was another dispute, this time between Mrs Avens and a burly-looking bloke who appeared to be carrying her precious sideboard off to a waiting horse and cart, while she clung on to it for dear life.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Give me more time. I’ll get the money.’
‘You’ve had your chance, missus,’ he said, brushing her hands off the furniture, as if he were swatting a fly.
Kathleen turned to her big sister. ‘That man is stealing Mrs Avens’s family heirloom! We can’t let him.’
Peggy held her back. ‘No, Kath, don’t,’ she said. ‘I think she must have had it on the never-never.’
Presiding over the whole scene, with a little smile playing on her lips, was Mrs Davies from number 16. So, all the endless stories about Mrs Avens’s mother working her fingers to the bone to get that sideboard had been a pack of lies. Mrs Avens had got it on tick from a shop down the Elephant and had fallen into arrears with her repayments, especially now that her son had been laid off again.
Mrs Avens sat down, bereft, on her doorstep and began to cry, at which point several of the other women gave chase to the fella with the horse and cart, shaking their fists at him. It was too late. He was already clip-clopping his way down Belvedere Road and back to the shop, where the sideboard would be sold on, no doubt, to another customer – one who could keep up the repayments.
After the fuss had died down, George escorted Peggy home, while the others tagged along.
‘Poor Mrs Avens,’ said Peggy.
‘The thing is, when you have moneylenders and people having to buy things on the never-never because their wages are so low, that is what you will get,’ said George, thrusting his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s all wrong. The poorest end up the worst off. Something has got to change.’
They wandered along in silence for a bit. Peggy didn’t have the answers to that and Kathleen certainly didn’t. It was up to the powers-that-be to sort out those kind of things, not kids from Lambeth.
‘I’ve joined a new book club,’ he said. ‘It’s only two shillings and sixpence a month and I get a new choice for six months on that.’
Kathleen yawned. Peggy’s eyes went wide.
‘What kinds of books are you getting, then?’
‘Just had one on the miners’ lockouts,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another by Wal Hannington due next month. Do you want to read it after me?’
‘Love to,’ said Peggy.
‘They’re having a meeting soon with speakers up in town at the assembly rooms,’ he went on. ‘Fancy coming along?’
‘Ooh, you lovebirds make me sick,’ Kathleen butted in. ‘Come on, Peg, it’s time for tea.’ And she grabbed her sister by the arm and yanked her through the doorway before she could answer.
There were no familiar smells of cooking when they came through the door and Mum was nowhere to be seen. Only their father was there, hunched at the kitchen table with a face like thunder, chewing on a crust of bread.
‘Kathleen, go on down to the Feathers and get your mother,’ he said, barely looking up at them. ‘She’s been in there far too long, and Peggy, you go and get my shirts from Nanny Day; she hasn’t brought them round either.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Bloody women,’ he mumbled to himself.
Kathleen and Peggy exchanged glances before leaving. Mum wasn’t like those factory girls who went out for a drink after work. In fact, she’d barely set foot in a pub that they knew of. She’d been working as a cleaner in the Union Jack Club when she met Dad before the Great War and she’d been mopping and scrubbing ever since.
The noise of the pub hit Kathleen first. You could hear the carousing and the sound of someone playing the piano from the end of the street. They were having a right old knees-up. She went up on tiptoes and peered through the frosted glass. A crowd was gathered around the piano, beer was swilling overhead in raised pint glasses and, to her amazement, she saw Mum smiling and laughing, swaying along in the sing-song with the rest of them. Her old school friend Flo from down in the Borough was by her side. Mum’s face was flushed and her eyes sparkled. With a creeping sense of seeing something she wasn’t supposed to, Kathleen realized that a tall man with a ready smile had his arm around her waist as they sang and he was gazing down at her in a way that Kathleen had never seen her father do. It was only for a split second because the pianist hammered out a new tune and they broke apart. Some of the women started lifting the hem of their skirts as the kicked their way across the pub and back, drinks flying everywhere: ‘My old man said, follow the van, and don’t dilly-dally on the waaay!’
Kathleen knew that tune well. It was one of her Nanny Day’s favourites. She hummed along to the next verse. ‘Off went the van with me home packed in it . . .’
A voice came from over her shoulder.
‘Who are you spying on, then?’ It was Joe, Mary’s husband, from her street.
‘No one,’ she said, brushing the hair from her face. ‘I just need to tell my mum she’s wanted indoors.’
‘All right then,’ he said. Kathleen watched through the window as he pushed his way through the throng and leaned down to whisper in her mother’s ear. She glanced over towards the door, a look of panic sweeping across her face. In an instant, she was outside, smoothing her skirt in the evening air.
‘Everything all right?’ she said, straightening her blouse.
‘Dad was waiting, waiting for his tea,’ said Kathleen, shuffling her feet. She didn’t want to be the one who had to tell her mother that he was in a bad mood.
‘That’s all right, chicken,’ said Mum overly brightly. ‘Let’s go home!’ She was still humming ‘My Old Man’ as they walked along together.
The house lay silent when they got in; Peggy and the others were already upstairs. Kathleen started to creak her way up to bed but as soon as the door to the scullery had shut, she crept back down to listen at the closed door.
‘Thought you weren’t coming home,’ Dad said quietly.
‘Of course I was, just had a bit of fun with Flo, that’s all.’
‘So much fun you forgot to make my tea and I’ve been out since six this morning,’ came the reply.
‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ she said. ‘You know it was only for Flo’s birthday.’
‘And who else’s birthday will it be next week and the one after?’
‘You’re a fine one to talk!’
‘What did you say to me?’
‘You heard me,’ she said, clattering some plates into the sink.
There was silence and then the sound of a slap and a little cry before her mother shouted, ‘Don’t hit me no more! I’m warning you!’ A plate crashed to the floor and shattered.
‘Threatening me, are you?’ Her father’s voice had such menace in it, it turned Kathleen’s stomach.
‘I’ll scratch your eyes out!’
With her heart in her mouth, Kathleen silently held the door ajar and watched as her parents tussled with each other for a moment before Dad pulled his arm free and swung a blow at Mum’s cheek. As it made contact, Mum squealed before collapsing at his feet.
He raised his fists again. Mum was begging him now, ‘Please, James, don’t.’
Her father spun around. ‘Who’s there?’ But Kathleen had already scarpered up the stairs, two at a time, praying that he wouldn’t follow her. She took refuge in the bedroom with Eva and Peggy, who were pretending to be asleep.
Kathleen put her fingers in her ears and started to sing quietly to herself, ‘I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied, lost me way and don’t know where to roam, you can’t trust a special like the old time copper when you can’t find your way home . . .’ as the awful cries of her mother’s suffering filled the house.