There were times when Baby Furnivall found herself wondering whether it was really a good thing to be so spoilt. She knew how spoilt she was, of course. How could she be off knowing when she always got the best of everything? First in the bathtub before the kitchen fire of a Sunday evening, best cut off the joint every Sunday lunch-time, a new frock when Joan and Peggy both had theirs turned, ha’pennies for sweets, going to the pictures every school holiday with Mum and Mrs Roderick. Although to be honest that was difficult sometimes because Mrs Roderick was so sticky. Not that she could ever get Joan and Peggy to understand that. They thought it was unfair, because Mum had never taken them when they were at school. And Mum made matters worse by some of the things she said.
Take that first time, when they’d gone to see Al Jolson in The Singing Fool. Peggy had just started work as a housemaid at Miss Jones’ over on Blackheath, and she’d come home with her hands all cracked and bleeding from the soda she had to use for cleaning, just at the very moment when she and Mum had their hats and coats on ready to go out. So it wasn’t really the best of times. But Mum couldn’t see that.
‘We’re just off,’ she’d said. ‘Your supper’s dished up. It’s on the stove.’
‘Off where?’ Peggy asked, rubbing her hands.
‘To the pictures. It’s the first talking picture. Al Jolson.’
‘Is she going?’ Peggy said, glaring at her sister.
The glare had put Mum’s back up. ‘And why not?’ she said. ‘We can afford it now.’
‘Now that I’m working,’ Peggy said bitterly. ‘Oh don’t say it. Now that I’m working.’
‘If you’re going to be unpleasant we shall go all the quicker,’ Mum said. ‘It’s not nice to be jealous of your sister. You should try and control it. We all have to work, you know.’
Peggy walked across to Baby and held out her chapped hands right in front of her eyes. ‘Take a look,’ she ordered. ‘That’s what work does. That’s what’ll happen to your hands when the time comes. Take a good look.’
It was really upsetting. She didn’t have to do that. There was no call to be so nasty. Fortunately Mum soon put a stop to it.
‘Come along, Baby,’ she said, heading for the door. ‘We can’t stop here listening to spiteful nonsense. Put your hat on.’
So they went off to the pictures which was ever so good and soon made her forget about Peggy’s unkindness.
And Peggy was left to eat her supper in the empty kitchen with only the cat for company. Serve her right.
But there were other things too. When Mum first bought her a bed of her own she’d been ever so pleased. But she soon discovered that there was a snag to it. Once she was out of the way, Peggy and Joan lay awake at night whispering together in that great bed of theirs, and when she asked them what they were talking about, they told her she was too young and ordered her to go back to sleep, which was horrid of them because it made her feel ever so left out.
She often felt left out, if the truth were told. It was hard for her to make friends. Marie O’Donavan played with her now and then and at school she drifted from group to group, but she was always on the edge of things and never accepted by anyone, and although she took pains to be bright and cheerful and to look as pretty as she could, because she knew how important it was for a girl to look pretty, she never found herself a best friend. Joan went off to the pictures with all sorts of friends, servants like her and nannies that she met in the park, and Peggy had Megan from the Tower, and Lily next door and even Pearl now that they were all out at work, but she had no one. Even the cat didn’t like her. It never sat on her lap, at least never of its own accord, and yet it jumped up to make a fuss of Peggy every time she sat down. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes she felt so sorry for herself she sat down and cried.
But at other times she wondered whether being spoilt wasn’t half the problem. Last year, when they were all making special New Year resolutions because 1 January was going to be 1930 and the start of a new decade, she’d decided to make a special effort not to ask for favours. And she’d done it. For a jolly long time. Nearly three months. Well, two and a half anyway. But it didn’t make any difference because Mum offered her treats anyway and she couldn’t refuse without looking ungrateful and running the risk of upsetting Mum or bringing on her nerves. And the new decade was just the same as the old one had been. Worse if anything. People were still being laid off work and there was never enough money. Even the banks were in trouble. There been a slump or something over in America and after that shops went bust and closed down nearly every week. Even nice ones like Cleavers where they sold hats. And now it was the second spring of the thirties, the early leavers were already off to work and she was faced with a dilemma.
In July she would have to start work too, and she was dreading it. She really couldn’t bear to go into service like Joan and Peggy. They always looked tired, positively grey sometimes, and their hands were awful, red and swollen and scored with cracks and lines, awful. She’d known that without having them pushed right under her eyes. What she wanted was a nice clean job in a shop, like Amy Jennings, where she could look pretty and she wouldn’t have to work until her back ached. But that wouldn’t be easy. If she got herself a shop job Joan and Peggy might get cross. And they’d certainly say she was spoilt, because that’s what it would look like. It was all very difficult.
In the end, of course, she did what she’d always known she would do. She begged her mother for special treatment, choosing her moment carefully when Flossie had just got home from the pictures and Joan and Peggy were still at work.
‘Mum,’ she said, as they were setting the table for supper. ‘Must I go into service?’
‘Where else would you go?’ Mum said, laying out knives and forks.
Encouraged by the question Baby began to wheedle, remembering to drop her head and pout prettily and lisp a little because that always worked with Mum. ‘Please don’t send me into service,’ she said, squeezing out a few tears. ‘I couldn’t bear it. I really couldn’t. I shall die if you send me into service.’
‘My dear child!’ Flossie said, caught up by her daughter’s emotion. ‘What is it? Tell your old Mum. Don’t keep it to yourself.’
So Baby spilled out all her hopes and fears, with considerable artifice and no restraint, stressing how frightened she was of working in a strange house on her own, and confessing that she thought she might be going to have nerves, ‘just like you Mum’, and finally describing the sort of job she really wanted, in rose-tinted detail.
To her relief, when Mum had listened and sympathized and wiped away her tears, she agreed to do something about it.
‘Don’t you worry, darling,’ she said. ‘I won’t send you into service if you don’t want to go. I couldn’t do that to my darling, now could I?’
The poor child really wasn’t strong enough to be a servant, as she told Mrs Roderick when they went marketing together the next morning. A position as a shop assistant would be altogether better. Mrs Roderick agreed with her, saying it was very suitable and offering to keep her ears open for possibilities. And after two weeks a possibility was found. Baby could be taken on as a shop assistant and trainee telephone operator with Dodds, the ladies’ outfitter. She would only get a nominal wage of five shillings a week for the first four weeks while she was training but Flossie said they could manage that, with Joan and Peggy working. And Baby was only too happy to agree to it.
The only difficulty that remained was how to tell Joan and Peggy about it.
‘Perhaps it would be better not to say anything ‘til you start,’ Flossie said. ‘Just in case they get a bit shirty.’
‘Oh dear,’ Baby said, assuming her pathetic face. ‘D’you think they will?’
‘Probably,’ Flossie said. ‘Nasty jealous natures the pair of them. Never mind. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?’
Baby could see the sense in keeping quiet but that didn’t stop her wanting to brag about it, especially when the others were nasty to her, or the weather was rotten. Like it was on that chilly May morning as she made her solitary way home from school. She was cold and lonely and she knew she’d feel ever so much better if she could do a bit of swanking.
Mrs Geary was looking out of the upstairs window. Actually standing up and leaning on the sill with her head sticking right out of the window.
‘You seen your Ma?’ she called.
‘No,’ Baby answered. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know what she’ll say,’ Mrs Geary chortled. ‘Wait till you see.’
‘See what?’ Baby asked. But Mrs Geary had put her head back inside the window.
Intrigued by the thought that something was up, Baby quickened her pace. The front door was ajar so Mum had probably popped down to the corner shop, but Peggy was already home and it sounded as though she’d brought Megan back with her, which she often did when it was their half-day. Baby could hear them both giggling in the kitchen.
‘’Lo Peggy,’ she called. But the words froze on her lips when she entered the kitchen for Peggy and Megan were standing in front of the mirror admiring their reflections, and they’d both had their hair bobbed. It made them look entirely different, plumper somehow and more womanly, which was only natural considering they were both seventeen. But Baby had never thought of them as young women before that moment. It quite took her breath away.
‘What d’you think?’ Megan asked, turning to face her. ‘I done hers and she done mine. Ain’t it stunning?’
Stunning was the word. They not only looked grown-up but very fashionable, with their short hair bushed out on either side of their faces and curly fringes covering their foreheads. It even made their old dresses look modern too. Or had they altered them? Now that Megan worked for a tailor she made all sorts of alterations to her clothes.
‘We treated ourselves to new hats an’ all,’ Peggy said. ‘What d’you think a’ that?’ And she picked a blue hat from the table and lowered it onto her head. Unlike her old cloche that covered all her hair and hid most of her face, this one had a brim that was turned back to reveal her face and her forehead and her pretty new fringe. Baby thought it was lovely and immediately wanted one herself.
‘Will you cut my hair too, our Peggy?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Peggy said, flatly. ‘You’re too young. Wait till you’ve left school and you’re out at work.’ It had annoyed her that Mum was allowing Baby to stay on until July. Let the horrid little thing wait. It would serve her right for being a spoilt brat.
‘Oh come on, our Peggy,’ Baby began to wheedle. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘What wouldn’t hurt who?’ Mum said, coming into the kitchen behind her. ‘Good gracious, Peggy! What have you done to your hair?’
‘D’you like it?’ Peggy said, and there was just a hint of a challenge in the question.
‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to,’ Mum said diplomatically. It wouldn’t have done to say anything too critical with Megan standing there listening. And most of the girls were cutting their hair these days, so it was only to be expected. But really! ‘Don’t go getting silly that’s all.’
‘Can I have mine cut too?’ Baby asked.
‘No you can’t,’ Flossie said firmly, venting her ill temper on the next possible target. ‘You’re too young. Why isn’t this table laid?’
Right, Baby thought, noticing the triumphant glances that passed between Peggy and Megan as she threw the cloth across the table. If that’s the way you’re going to go on, I shall tell you about my job, and then you’ll be sorry.
‘When I leave school… ’ she began.
But Mum interrupted her with a really dreadful scowl. ‘Where’s Joan?’ she said.
‘Gone up the park,’ Peggy said. ‘She’s not coming back for dinner. She told us breakfast-time, don’t you remember?’
‘Again?’ Mum said, carrying her shopping bag into the scullery. ‘That’s the third time this month. If she goes on at this rate I shall begin to think she’s left home. Well I hope she has the sense to get herself something to eat that’s all. All this gadding about won’t do her any good. It might be spring but it’s jolly cold still. Come and help me dish up this pie, Peggy. Are you staying, Megan? It’s only hash but you’re welcome to it. You can have Joan’s share since she’s took herself off.’
‘When I leave school… ’ Baby tried again.
‘We don’t want to hear that,’ Mum said firmly. ‘Come and eat your dinner.’ And she gave Baby another scowl, directing it at her for several seconds and with a force that showed she wasn’t going to allow any argument.
Oh! Baby thought, she’s going to get shirty. It’s not fair. She ought to let me tell, with them having their hair cut and buying themselves hats and everything. But the scowl had to be obeyed. At least that left Joan as the principal source of irritation. Mum’ll be ever so shirty with her when she comes home.
Her mother would have been more than shirty if she’d known exactly where her eldest daughter was at that moment. And furious if she could have seen who was accompanying her.
At twenty-one Joan had grown into a competent young woman with a mind and a will of her own, although she was very careful to keep both of them hidden from everybody except Peggy. Short rations at work and at home had kept her very skinny but being slim suited her, making her sandy hair look thicker and her brown eyes seem enormous in her long pale face. In fact, although she wasn’t aware of it, she was much the best looking of the Furnivall girls.
She still worked for Miss Margeryson and her awful brother, but in the five years since they’d first hired her, they had aged considerably, and that was a great help to her. Now they were both very short-sighted and Miss Margeryson was more than a little deaf, although she never admitted it to anyone and especially not to her servant. But it meant that she no longer saw dust on every surface and she couldn’t eavesdrop on any of Joan’s conversations with the tradesmen at the kitchen door. Consequently the housework didn’t need to be anywhere near so thorough, and now and then it was possible for Joan to order a little extra milk, or a lamb chop, or a currant bun or two for her own consumption. All of which made life marginally easier. And there was better to come.
Just before Christmas the baker’s roundsman was taken ill with bronchitis and for two days the van arrived at the door driven by the master baker who was quick and cross and not given to conversation. But on the third day a different knock heralded the arrival of a new roundsman, and this one was young and brash and had the rough good looks of a ploughboy or a miner or a sailor. He was short and stocky with broad shoulders, solid limbs and short-fingered hands, and his face was broad too, with high cheek bones and small dark eyes, and shaggy, uncombed hair tumbling over his forehead. There was something arresting about him, something bold and self-satisfied, a dark dangerous masculinity, cocky and with a hint of ruthlessness, as if he knew he would get whatever he wanted if he made a play for it. He made Joan think of the black tom-cat that came howling for Tabby.
‘Good morning to you, pretty lady,’ he said, giving her the eye in the most impudent way. ‘What can I do fer you this morning?’
‘Cottage loaf,’ she said, and as he was making her feel daring, ‘and a ha’penny bun.’
‘Fer you or the old gel?’ he asked, saucing her.
She answered in kind, grinning at him, ‘None a’ your business.’
‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I got an iced bun here. Ought ter be a penny be rights. You can have it fer ha’penny, fer being a pretty lady.’
‘You’ll get the sack you go on like that,’ she said, accepting the bun and the compliment.
‘Wouldn’t do it fer anyone though would I, darlin’?’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’d do,’ she said. And there was more truth in the words than she’d intended. The dangerous quality about this young man was really most attractive.
‘See yer tomorrow,’ he promised, swinging his basket over his arm. And he was gone, leaving the strong smell of his new-baked bread behind him.
All through that day Joan found herself remembering him. The encounter had bucked her up. There was no denying it. To be saluted as a pretty lady was good for her self-esteem, even if he said it to all his customers and didn’t really mean it.
The next day she tidied her hair and checked her appearance in the mirror before his arrival. Soon she was looking forward to his visit as the best part of her otherwise wearying day.
He was always so cheerful, even in March when the weather was miserably cold and they had four days of incessant snowfall. On the second day of it he looked so cold that she invited him into the kitchen and made him a cup of tea to thaw him out. She’d just settled Miss Margeryson in front of the fire in the parlour with a rug over her legs and a book for company, so she knew they wouldn’t be discovered. And besides, she couldn’t bear to see his nose so red. It quite spoilt his looks.
He was excellent company, poking fun at all the people in the street, imitating the la-di-da way they spoke and mocking the impoverished state of their kitchens.
‘Load of old bats they are!’ he said, holding the cup between his mittened hands. ‘Stingy! My eye you wouldn’t say so! Ain’t got two ha’pennies fer a penny and they give ’emselves airs you’d think they was royalty. “I’ll have two loaves my man.” “Mind where you’re putting your feet.” An’ then you gets round the back an’ they ain’t got enough grub in the kitchen to feed a sparrer. Empty jars everywhere. Makes yer sick.’
He stayed for nearly a quarter of an hour and the memory of his company spiced the rest of the day and quite made up for the chill of the house.
By the time the bad weather was over and the first warm air of spring was urging Miss Margeryson to mutter about spring cleaning, they had got into the habit of taking tea together at least once a week. But now that the old lady was on the prowl again it was a little more difficult.
‘Tell yer what,’ he said, one particularly pleasant morning when his usual invitation wasn’t forthcoming. ‘Why don’t you an’ me go to the pictures.’
It was a decision, not a question, but she dithered. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for a start I don’t know your name.’
‘Sid. Sid Owen. Neighbour a’ yours if you did but know it.’
‘Are you?’
‘Thames Street,’ he said, pushing his cap to the back of his head, dark eyes flashing, daring her. ‘Right then. Meet you at the park gates half past one.’
‘When?’ she said weakly.
‘Well Wednesday a’ course. Your half-day.’
So she agreed. And ever since then they’d gone to the pictures every Wednesday afternoon. They’d taken the first steps towards the process known locally as ‘walking out’, but they kept it a secret for the time being because neither of them were at all sure how their relations would take it, she because of her shameful past, he because he was only twenty.
On that afternoon in May they were walking in Greenwich Park and he had just stolen his first kiss, grinning at her in triumph as they drew apart.
‘Now you’re my gel,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, hoping he’d kiss her again, because although it had been a rather rough kiss and he’d taken her by surprise, it had excited her.
‘Don’t tell no one,’ he said, pulling her towards him again. ‘Not yet. Keep it a secret.’
‘Yes,’ she said, agreeing at once because there was another kiss coming.
The Furnivall household fizzed with secrets that spring and summer, like a box of fireworks newly lit.
Even sensible Peggy had a secret. She shared it with Megan because Megan was her best friend and Megan had a similar secret but, like Joan and Sid, neither of them said anything about it at home. It was too personal and private and Peggy had an occasional suspicion that it was just a little bit silly. But it had happened, it was a fact, and one that took all their attention in the most pleasurable way, filling their minds with delicious dreams and sustaining them with anticipation through the long hours of their working day. Peggy and Megan had both fallen in love.
It had happened on the afternoon they’d cut their hair, almost as if their new appearance had propelled them into new experiences. After they’d eaten Flossie’s hash, they walked down to the market together to get a few ‘bits and pieces’ for Mrs Geary, strolling arm in arm and chattering to one another all the way. Although it was still cold for May the sun had broken through the cloud and seemed to be shining straight down onto their heads. Megan remarked upon it.
‘Quite right,’ Peggy said gaily, ‘So it is.’ And she began to sing ‘The sun has got his hat on’, dancing along the pavement in tune to the words.
They were still giggling and singing as they walked into the market.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ the egg man said.
‘Yes,’ Peggy said, grinning at him. And there standing right behind him was the most handsome boy she’d ever seen, tall and fair with lovely blue eyes and the faintest fluff of fair moustache on his top lip. She was instantly and very decidedly smitten as she told Megan afterwards.
‘He made me go weak at the knees,’ she confessed happily. ‘Just like they do in the novels.’
‘Gosh!’ Megan said. ‘Do you think you’re in love?’
‘I don’t know,’ Peggy admitted. ‘Do you think he’ll be there Saturday?’
He was, and even more handsome than she remembered him. This time he smiled at her, which was hardly surprising as she’d been standing by the egg stall for nearly twenty minutes hoping he’d notice her and wondering where Megan had got to. He didn’t say anything, but that didn’t matter, a smile was enough. In fact a smile would be enough to live on for the rest of the week because he really was the most handsome boy. Oh where was Megan? She couldn’t wait to tell her.
She found her friend by the china stall, gazing into the middle distance with an enraptured expression on her face. ‘Isn’t he just it?’ she said when Peggy arrived beside her.
‘Who?’
‘That boy on the till.’
He looked very ordinary to Peggy, but Megan was in love too. ‘He’s got such lovely broad shoulders,’ she said. ‘And heavenly eyes.’
That night at the ding-dong while the others were singing their raucous songs the two girls compared notes. Their feelings were remarkably similar and wonderfully strong. ‘We must be in love,’ Megan decided. ‘Ain’t it grand.’
Peggy wasn’t really sure that grand was the right word to describe her new emotions but they were certainly absorbing. She and Megan spent all their time and energy either preparing for their visit to the market or reliving every moment of it afterwards. The visits themselves were short, sweet and soon over. But by dint of careful detective work they discovered what their two young men were called, Peggy’s beloved being Tom and Megan’s Harry, and they lurked outside the market at closing time in case either of them came out alone and there was a chance to get talking. The chance was never given. Neither of the young men paid much attention to them, but that was part of their charm, and allowed the two girls to weave the most delicious fantasies about the sort of marvellous daring things that might happen if only they would. The more distant they were, the more they loved them.
The summer days passed in a swoon of dreams. They didn’t even notice the flies and the smell of drains.
Until the end of the school term and Baby’s first day at her new job. Then the storm broke.
‘You’re getting dolled up, aintcher?’ Joan said when Baby was putting on her uniform in the bedroom that morning.
Baby looked shifty and went on dressing herself. Now that the moment had come when her marvellous secret was finally going to be revealed, she was too anxious to want to show off about it.
‘Tosh sort a’ rig for a servant,’ Joan persisted. The anger on her face was growing plainer and more menacing by the second.
Silence.
‘Where are you going to work?’ Peggy said, growing suspicious.
Silence.
‘Come on, Baby,’ Peggy said. ‘Tell us.’ There’d been altogether too much mystery about this job. Neither Mum nor Baby had ever said anything about it and now she could see how suspicious that was. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Dodds,’ Baby admitted, and she could feel her heart sink with the word. Mum had been right to keep quiet about it. There was going to be a row.
‘The outfitters?’
‘Yes,’ Baby said, adding truculently, ‘Well, why not? We don’t all have to be servants you know.’ If they were going to be nasty she’d fight back.
‘I’ll tell you why not,’ Joan said fiercely. ‘Because it ain’t fair, that’s why not. Me an’ Peggy work bloody hard for a living, an’ you ought to work bloody hard too. Dodds!’
‘What’s all that row?’ Mum called from downstairs. ‘Breakfast is on the table. Look sharp or you’ll all be late.’
‘She’s going to work in a shop,’ Joan said, furious with accusation.
‘Yes,’ Flossie said. ‘She is. She’s got to work somewhere. Eat your bacon while it’s hot.’
‘D’you think that’s fair?’
‘Now don’t start,’ Flossie warned, ‘unless you want to bring on my nerves. What’s done is done. There’s no point talking about it.’ And she busied them and bustled them and refused to let any of them talk again until they were leaving the house.
So the protest was shelved. For the time being. And Baby went off to work looking smug. But that wasn’t the end of it. How could it be when it was so unfair? That night when Baby went to bed still full of herself and how well she’d done on her first day, neither of her sisters would talk to her. Even when she grew deliberately tearful and complained that they were being hateful and she’d tell Mum, they still ignored her.
‘People who behave like greedy little pigs,’ Joan said pointedly, ‘must expect to be cut.’
On the second night Baby cried so much when they ignored her that Peggy felt quite sorry for her. But she agreed with Joan that something had to be done and as Mum wouldn’t allow either of them to talk about it, even though they both tried every morning and evening, punishing Baby with silence was the only thing they could think of to show their disapproval.
That next evening, when Mum had spent the whole of supper-time telling them that they should let bygones be bygones and wailing that they were giving her the most terrible nerves, ‘keeping on about it’, Peggy decided to walk down to the library with Jim Boxall. It was something she often did now that the weather was fine and she’d developed a taste for romantic novels, and on this particular evening it gave her a break from the brooding bad temper in the house. On the way back, almost on impulse, she told him about Baby’s favoured treatment and asked him what he thought about it. He was always so sensible and if he said it was unfair she would know they weren’t making a fuss about nothing.
His reply was practical. ‘If you don’t want to go on being a housemaid,’ he said, ‘why don’t you get a job in a shop too? They don’t pay well but there’s plenty of work about.’ Which was more than could be said for jobs in the engineering trade. There were rumours that his own firm was going bust, but he didn’t tell her that, because he hadn’t told anyone. It was a private worry. The sort of thing men kept to themselves.
She looked up at his reassuring face, at the familiar scar on his chin and the broken nose that always reminded her how brave he was, at his blue eyes looking at her so seriously, and she was warmed by his good sense.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course. That’s what we ought to do. That would solve it, wouldn’t it.’ And a jolly sight better than all this rowing.
But Joan was too enmeshed in anger to agree. ‘We ought to have it out,’ she said. ‘Why should they get away with it? If we just go quietly off and get ourselves new jobs they’ll think it doesn’t matter any more. They’ll have won. And I’m damned if I’m having that.’
She was so cross that Peggy gave up trying to persuade her. I’ll wait a day or two and try again, she thought. It’ll start to blow over in a little while.
But of course it didn’t. At the end of the week when all three of them arrived home with their pay packets, the second secret was out and then there was no restraining Joan’s fury.
She turned on Flossie ablaze with anger, hurling Baby’s pay packet across the table. ‘Five shillings!’ she yelled. ‘You let this spoilt brat of yours work for five shillings! What were you thinking of?’
‘It’s only for four weeks,’ Flossie said huffily.
And Baby said, ‘I’m being trained,’ spitting the information into her mother’s words and her sister’s fury.
‘Trained!’ Joan said scornfully. ‘I’ll give you trained, see if I don’t. All these years we’ve worked and slaved,’ she said to Flossie, ‘and we’ve never said a word about all the money you’ve took from us. Neither of us. Have we, Peggy? And now, just when things ought to be getting easier, you send that God-awful brat into a shop to work for nothing, and we’ve got to slog our guts out to keep her while she trains. Slog our guts out so that she can ponce about as a telephonist. It’s bloody unfair.’
‘Language!’ Flossie reproved. ‘You watch your mouth, my girl. You’re not too old for me to wash it out with soap and water.’
Joan ignored such a pitiful diversion. ‘She got this job on our backs,’ she said. ‘Mine and Peggy’s. That’s the truth and you know it.’
‘Peggy,’ Flossie said, appealing for help. ‘Tell her to stop. Tell her it’s not true.’
‘It is true,’ Peggy said. ‘There’s no point lying. You’ve been very unfair. Both of you. I wonder you can’t see it.’
‘She’s too delicate for housework,’ Flossie said, trying to justify herself.
‘And we’re not?’ Joan yelled. ‘We’re not? Oh I can see it all now. You’ve never cared for us, either of us. It’s always been Baby. Your precious Baby. Spoiled bloody Baby. I’d like to scratch her rotten eyes out.’
‘Don’t you touch me,’ Baby shrieked leaping away from Joan’s outstretched fingers. ‘Mum! Stop her! She’ll do me a mischief.’
Peggy was running between them, aching to placate them, to stop this awful row before it got any worse, but she couldn’t find the words to persuade them and anyway they were making such a row they weren’t listening to her.
‘Baby,’ she begged. ‘Hush! Joan, don’t. Please don’t. They’ll hear us next door. Mum, look let’s … ’
‘You don’t care for me!’ Flossie shrieked. ‘You know what a state my nerves are in. You’re making me ill the lot of you.’
‘Serve you right!’ Joan shouted. ‘You’ve had this coming to you for years.’
‘Oh!’ Flossie wailed. ‘How can you say such things? Can’t you see what you’re doing to me, you hateful girl?’
‘No,’ Joan said coldly. ‘I can see what she’s doing to us. And it’s bloody unfair.’
Flossie took two strides across the kitchen and slapped Joan hard across the face. The crack of the blow echoed like a gunshot. ‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘Shut up! Shut up! I’ve had enough!’
‘Don’t you dare hit me!’ Joan roared. And she dealt her mother a return blow that sent her reeling back against the dresser.
There was a split second of total silence while they all looked at one another in horror. Then Flossie opened her mouth and began to scream. She screamed without stopping and without restraint, on and on and on, in a dreadful hysterical abandonment, her face distorted and her mouth as wide as a cave. Peggy could see her uvula throbbing as she screamed.
‘Mum! Please!’ she begged. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’
‘Yes Mum, please,’ Baby said, shocked white by such a display. ‘Don’t keep on.’
They were wasting their breath. Flossie couldn’t stop. She was screaming as she breathed, lost in a echoing limbo of pent-up fury and guilt and self-pity. She couldn’t even see them.
None of them heard Mrs Geary hobbling down the stairs but they weren’t surprised when she walked into the kitchen.
‘Hysterical,’ she said, speaking calmly as though finding a screaming woman in her kitchen was an everyday event. ‘Make her lie down. She won’t scream so easy lying down.’
But it took all three girls a very long time to coax their mother to her bed in the front parlour, and she went on screaming even when she was flat on her back.
‘You’ll have ter get Dr Thomas,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Nip round the corner, Baby. Quick as you can.’
Baby was shaking with fright but she did as she was told. She’d never meant this to happen. Never. All she’d wanted was a good job and not to be a servant. Oh dear, oh dear!