right,’ Sarah said, winding her hair into one plait with a speed that the twins always envied. She secured her hair with a band and padded across the room, saying as she did so, ‘But budge over then. I need to get into bed first.’
The twins moved across to make room for their sister and she turned off the light and got into bed between them. With the three of them all tucked in together and the darkness settling around them, Sarah said, ‘Mom said Grandma Murray had ten children altogether and one by one most of them died.’
‘What of?’
‘Some from diphtheria, Mom said, and others from TB.’
‘And was they all babies?’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Mom said they were mostly children, only there was a baby who died in her cot when she was only little and they never found out why. Anyroad, in the end, there was only four left, Mom, Aunt Polly and the two eldest, Michael and Owen. Then Owen and Michael decided to try their luck in America, only Michael didn’t make it and when Owen wrote and told them of his death Grandma Murray pledged that she would wear black until the day she died. Mom always said that his death had affected her most, for he had been her first-born and the seventh child of hers to die, and then his body had been tipped into the Atlantic so she didn’t even have a grave to visit.’ Sarah let the twins reflect on this for a moment or two and then she said, ‘Now you’ve got to admit that that’s really sad.’
‘It is,’ Missie agreed slowly and then added, ‘And with anyone else I would feel very sorry for them, but Grandma’s hard to feel sorry for, and she can be so nasty at times.’
‘Mom always says that we have to make allowances,’ Sarah said. ‘Point is, though, I don’t see how shouting and going on like she does can help anyone cope better.’
‘Nor me,’ Magda said. ‘And I still don’t like her much.’
Missie shivered. ‘Nor me, and she scares me as well.’
‘She don’t scare me,’ Magda declared stoutly. ‘I won’t let her scare me.’ But she said it as though she were trying to convince herself.
‘Well, whatever you think about her, let’s stop talking about her now and go to sleep,’ Sarah advised. ‘Or Mom will be up to see what we are gassing about, and I’m bushed and don’t want to talk any more.’
Neither did Magda, who was suddenly feeling very sleepy, and beside her she heard Missie give a yawn and the three girls snuggled down together and were soon all fast asleep.
Afterwards, Marion thought it was from that weekend that the mood of the country changed subtly, as most people realised that the war no one really wanted was moving closer. Bill told her of the shadow factories springing up alongside legitimate ones, making military equipment and vehicles. In Birmingham the gun trade was booming. These sorts of things weren’t reported but, as Bill said, you can’t stop people talking, and word got around.
‘Personally I find it reassuring,’ he said. ‘If we do eventually go to war, then I’d like to know that the Government has been making plans for it.’
Only a week or so later Marion’s sister, Polly, popped round to announce that her two elder boys, Chris and Colm, had got jobs in Ansell’s Brewery on nearby Lichfield Road, taking the place of two boys just a little older, who had been conscripted. Polly’s sons were sixteen and fifteen, and had not had jobs since leaving school. Marion was glad that the lads were working at last and hoped that would make life easier for her sister.
Polly was married to Pat Reilly, who was a wastrel. If he had got work of any kind and looked after her sister properly, Marion might have forgiven him for taking her down when she was only sixteen, but he hadn’t done that. Polly’s house was little more than a stone’s throw from Marion’s, yet it was part of a warren of teeming back-to-back houses and as different from where Marion lived as it was possible to be.
When Polly had married Pat they had had nowhere to live but with Pat’s riotous family, but a little after Chris’s birth, a scant three months after the hasty marriage, they had acquired the house. Marion thought it little more than a slum. Entries ran down at intervals from the street to a squalid back yard, onto which Polly’s house and five others opened directly. The yard, usually crisscrossed with washing lines, housed the brew house where all the women did their washing, the tap outside it however, which froze every winter, had been the family’s only source of water until it had been piped into the houses just a few years before. Even now, Polly shared with two other families a miskin, where the ash was deposited, a dustbin, and a lavatory, which was situated at the bottom of the yard.
The house itself consisted of a scullery, which was little more than a cubbyhole at the top of the cellar steps, a small living room, a bedroom and an attic. Attached to Polly’s house was one just the same, which opened onto the street. There was a smell about the whole place: the smell of human beings packed tightly together, the stink of poverty and deprivation mingled with the vinegary tang from HP Sauce halfway up Tower Hill just behind them, and the yeasty malty odour from Ansell’s Brewery on the Lichfield Road, and you heard the constant thud of the hefty hammers from the nearby drop forge.
Marion blamed Pat for not working harder to get a job so that he could lift the family into something better. She thought Polly was far too easy on him and that she should tell him straight to steer clear of the pubs until he found employment. Polly, however, claimed he did try to get work but all the jobs he could get were casual or temporary, and that a man had to have a drink now and then.
So now Marion said to her sister, ‘No chance of Pat getting set on there, then?’
‘He did ask,’ Polly said, ‘but it was young fellows they were after. Anyroad, I don’t think it would do Pat any good to be working at a brewery. He might be tempted to taste the wares.’
‘He’d not reign there very long if he did that.’
‘He did ask the lads if they ever got any free samples.’
Marion wasn’t surprised at that. ‘He would.’
‘Anyroad,’ Polly said with a grin, ‘while they don’t actually give free samples, each worker gets a docket for two pints of beer a night. Colm and Chris won’t yet, of course, because neither of them is eighteen. Chris said when he is, he will give his dad his allowance, but I said he might be in the army when he’s eighteen so Pat may have to do without his beer.’
‘Yes,’ Marion said. ‘Worrying times, these, to have boys the age they are. I tried to get our Richard interested in the joining the Territorials. They’re looking for recruits and they might have taken him next year when he’s sixteen. Thought it might keep him out of the regular army for a bit, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said until he is old enough to enlist he’ll do his bit in the brass foundry.’
‘My lads are the same,’ Polly said. ‘They said that Ansell’s will do till they are eighteen and then they both want to join the Royal Warwickshires. The brass foundry is probably making summat for this bloody war everyone is certain sure is coming our way, anyroad. Pat says a lot of firms are doing that now.’
‘It is. Richard said they’re getting new machines in soon, and new dies fitted to the old ones, and all
