‘… and this is Teddy and Joe. They’re twins, as I’m sure you’ve guessed …’
Joe and Teddy had just come in from playing outside and were standing next to the warm range. They were both starving and had just been called in for their tea by their ma, who, on seeing them without their little sister in tow, had demanded to know exactly where she was. Before they’d had time to answer, Polly had come trundling in with a little girl Joe knew lived further down the street. Polly was forever turning up with some stray cat she’d found scrounging around the bins, or some flea-infested pigeon with a broken wing, and Agnes would sigh, take whatever Polly had cradled in her little arms, then disappear out into the back yard before coming back in and telling her daughter that either the lost moggie had been reunited with its owner, or the bird had miraculously managed to fly away.
Of course, they all believed her. Why wouldn’t they? She was their ma and she knew everything.
This time, though, was the first time Polly had turned up with an actual person. And this time, their mother didn’t take the little stray girl Polly had brought home straight back out into their yard – but instead she had bent down and asked her name.
‘Isabelle, but I like being called Bel,’ the little girl told them.
When Joe looked at the scruffy little girl called Bel, he could see that she’d been crying, as she had tear-stains streaked down her face. Joe continued to stare at this girl standing forlornly in the middle of their kitchen as his mother repeated the same words she always used when introducing her two boys to someone new.
‘Don’t be fooled, though. They may look the same, but they are like chalk and cheese.’
Joe did not mind his ma’s words; if anything he liked the fact that his mother told people he and Teddy were very different, because they were. They had both been born at more or less the same time, but they were complete opposites in personality, if not in looks. Although there’d only been a few minutes between their entries into the world, Joe, who had come out second, had always felt that Teddy was the older brother, and those few precious moments had also seemed to make him just that bit taller and broader than his younger brother.
When Agnes had insisted Bel should stay for some tea, she had not objected.
Joe had sat at the kitchen table, captivated by the girl with her matted, dirty blonde hair, as she had shovelled his mum’s rabbit and black pudding stew down as if it was going to be snatched back off her. His mother had seen him staring at their hungry guest across the table and given him a look which had made him concentrate on his own plate.
Later on that evening, Agnes had gone to take Bel home, but the pair of them had returned ten minutes later. Teddy had asked their mother the question that both he and Polly were thinking but did not like to ask – why had Bel come back? They rarely had anyone to stay over. There wasn’t really the room, and the only children they had ever had stay the night was their next-door neighbour’s children, and that had only been on a few occasions when there had been what their mother had called a ‘family emergency’.
Agnes had not answered Teddy’s question about why Bel had come back that night, but instead simply told them that, ‘Bel’s going to stay with us.’ She’d then told Polly that she would have to ‘top and tail’ it with their little overnight guest, which had pleased Polly no end.
That night had been etched into all their memories as it had caused great excitement – blankets had had to be retrieved from the cupboard under the stairs, and Agnes had made them all little cups of hot chocolate, something they were only ever treated to on very special occasions; but, best of all, they had all got to stay up way past their normal bedtime.
After that evening they all got used to having Bel around. She quickly morphed from unknown stray into part of the Elliot household. She was an extra playmate for them all and it was clear Polly adored Bel and saw her as the little sister she’d always been on at her mum to have.
Very occasionally, Bel’s mum, who they learnt was called Pearl, would turn up at the house. They all remembered her name as she often told them the same story about how she was named after a precious jewel that was found within the shell of a strange kind of sea creature called an oyster. Each time Pearl explained it to them, she did so as if it was the first time. And each time she did, Joe could smell something sickly sweet mixed with the smell of tobacco smoke on her breath; it was a smell he had never noticed on his own mother’s breath.
Whenever Pearl turned up at the house, usually late on an evening, she’d bang on the front door, demanding to know where her daughter was, and Joe and Teddy would scramble out of their bed and stand peeking round their bedroom door and down the hallway where they could see their mother, arms akimbo, and the outline of Pearl, surrounded by a fog of cigarette smoke. Agnes rarely said anything to Pearl, but instead would just call out to Bel that her ma was here for her.
Once, though, Pearl turned up really late, banging on the door with her fists and demanding in a loud, slurring voice to know where ‘Isabelle’ was. Joe and Teddy had sat up in their bed and listened wide-eyed as Pearl had shouted at Agnes, ‘What’s wrong? You not got enough bairns of yer own without trying to steal my daughter.’
Joe rarely saw or heard his mother in a temper, but that night he could tell she was struggling to keep the anger out of her voice as she’d hissed back, ‘I’m telling you now, Pearl, you can stand screaming and shouting all night out here, but your daughter is not going anywhere until you’ve sobered up.’
Pearl had spat a few words that Joe hadn’t heard before, but she hadn’t stuck around for much longer. A few minutes later they’d heard her singing, or rather caterwauling, and laughing aloud to herself as she made her way back to her own home at the other end of the street.
One time a big burly woman from the welfare turned up at their house with Bel by her side, asking Agnes if she knew where ‘this little un’s ma is’. Bel had been found sitting on the steps of the General Post Office in town, unsure how to get back home.
It was the first time Joe had ever heard his mum tell an outright lie.
‘Oh, Pearl’s had to dash off. Her old ma’s just taken bad. I said I’d look after Bel until she got back. I wondered where she’d got to …’ That was the first, but certainly not the last time the welfare turned up on their doorstep; nor was it the last time he heard his mum tell great big porkies.
None of them ever said anything, but they all knew if she hadn’t, Bel would be carted off to the dreaded workhouse, where the orphans and children of delinquents usually ended up.
As long as Bel was under Agnes’s wing, she was safe.
Sometimes Bel would have stretches staying at her own home, but it was never long before she was back at their house – and when she was, the first thing Agnes would do would be to give her a good wash and brush her thick, wavy blonde hair. She’d always check for nits, and Joe would often watch fascinated as his mother would sit patiently combing Bel’s hair with a strange bit of metal which had lots of teeth in it. Bel’s face would always scrunch up as if she was in pain, but she would never cry out or ask Agnes to stop.
If ever he or Teddy got nits, Agnes would rummage around in the bottom drawer in the bathroom and pull out a cut-throat razor and a pot of what looked like hard white soap which frothed up when she added a little water. She would then give them what she called a ‘number one’, which Joe complained left him feeling as if he’d just been scalped like one of the Red Indians in the Wild West. Bel had chuckled at Joe’s comparison and, even though he hadn’t meant it to be funny, he loved the fact he’d made her laugh.
After that Joe took great pleasure in making Bel giggle, and would forever be playing the clown, which they all loved, not just Bel. He would have them in what Agnes called ‘kinks’ with his Charlie Chaplin walk and impressions of their neighbours, or his teachers at school. But even though Joe brought laughter into Bel’s life and the pair of them would giggle and chat and have endless fun, it was Teddy whom Bel adored.
When they were younger, Teddy would often complain and tell Bel to go away, because, in his words, she was like his ‘shadow’, but Joe had always thought that it would be nice to have Bel so close all the time. As they got older, he noticed that Teddy did not complain as much about his unwanted shadow; and by the time they were in their teens and started to take notice of girls, Teddy didn’t seem to mind at all.
When Bel and Teddy started to make it known that they had eyes for each other, Joe had forced himself to start taking girls out on dates, but none became serious.
Shortly after Bel became Teddy’s wife, though, Joe began stepping out with a young shop assistant called Maria, who used to dress the mannequins for the large glass-fronted window displays at Binns, the town’s main department store. Agnes and Polly had joked about hearing the sound of wedding bells for the second time in their home, but Joe had ended it with Maria shortly before he’d joined up. He had said he did not want her waiting for him until he got back from the war – if he got back at all.
This, however, was far from the truth.
The real reason for him breaking up with Maria was very different to the one he gave – but it was one he could never ever admit to.