been lolling in front of the fire, engrossed in comics. Marvinder got up immediately, and pulled down her coat from the door, and Kathleen went over to her little niece, to coax her into staying. Jaspal rudely ignored Maeve and went on reading.
‘Well, come on then,’ Maeve was impatient. ‘Get your coat on, Jaspal. We’ll miss the bus. Good grief, we only go once a fortnight and, after all, it is to see your own father.’ She almost spat out the word ‘father’ like a bitter pill.
‘Can I go see Dadda!’ wailed Beryl.
‘Yeah, take Beryl. I don’t want to go,’ Jaspal muttered.
‘Come on, bhai,’ urged Marvinder, and she chucked his coat at him.
He reacted angrily. ‘Look what you’ve done, you stupid idiot!’ he yelled, dragging his comic out from under the coat. ‘That’s my comic. You’ve gone and wrecked my comic!’
Marvinder looked pained. Jaspal never used to talk rudely to her. ‘It doesn’t looked wrecked to me,’ she retorted. ‘Here!’ She reached out to straighten it, but he whipped it away.
‘Leave off. It’s mine.’
‘I know it’s yours, silly! I was just going to smooth it out.’
Maeve ran over impatiently and snatched at the comic. ‘For God’s sake, Jaspal, will you stop messing around and come. We’re going to miss the bus, I tell you.’
There was a ripping sound.
Jaspal gave a bellow of fury. ‘Look what you’ve done! You’ve torn it . . . you . . .’ He looked as if he would fly at her, but Marvinder grabbed his arm.
‘Jaspal, no!’ She begged, ‘Just put on your coat and come.’ She picked up his grey worsted coat and firmly held it out for him.
Jaspal snorted angrily and broke into a stream of Punjabi, which he knew infuriated Maeve. ‘Why should I do what that woman wants? She’s not my mother. She’s nothing but a thief and a harlot, stealing away our father. Now she thinks she can lord it over us. Well, she can’t. I don’t have to do anything she says.’
‘Oi, oi! You being rude again, you little devil?’ It was Mrs O’Grady appearing at the door. Her plump face was red with effort. She was panting heavily with having hauled two vast bundles of other people’s laundry up the long flight of stairs. ‘You needn’t think I don’t know what you’re saying, just because you speak in your gibberish.’ She dropped the washing and strode over to Jaspal with her hand raised. ‘You get your coat on immediately or you’ll get a clip round the ear.’ She hovered over him, threateningly. ‘And if I hear you’ve given Maeve any of your lip while out, Mr O’Grady will get his belt to you.’
That was no mean threat. One leg or no, Mr O’Grady was a powerful distributor of punishments, and even his strapping sons, Michael and Patrick, had to watch themselves when their father got mad.
Jaspal sullenly thrust his arms into the sleeves of the coat which Marvinder still held out for him, though when she tried to do up his buttons he pushed her away.
‘I’ll do it,’ he growled. ‘I’m not a baby.’
‘Huh, I’m not so sure about that,’ snapped Mrs O’Grady, lowering her hand. ‘Now get off with you,’ and she herded them to the landing, checking their hats and scarves and gloves and warning them about the chill out there.
If those who make up a family are like the spokes of a wheel, then Mrs O’Grady was both the hub and the outer rim. She held them all together; she fed them, nurtured them, washed and cooked for them and bullied them. She put up with her husband, with his drinking and temper and his fury at losing a leg in the war; she hustled her two boys, Patrick and Michael, making sure they got off to work every day – then taking half their wages at the end of the week, to store in the teapot which stood on the mantelpiece; and when Maeve had got pregnant by Govind – even though the man was a heathen and as brown as the River Thames, she insisted that the couple move into the household, taking the top-floor flat, which meant that the younger sister, Kathy, had to move down and sleep in the hall under the stairs.
In due course, when Beryl was born, it was Mrs O’Grady who coped, for Maeve was a reluctant mother, distraught at finding her freedom curtailed; and only a woman as mighty an Amazon as Mrs O’Grady could have endured the shock of finding out that Govind already had a wife and family back in India; only a woman with shoulders as broad as a continent could then take on his two refugee children, Jaspal and Marvinder, when they turned up out of the blue to find their father – a father who had got mixed up in black-marketeering and who was then sent to prison. She may have raged and grumbled and lashed out with her tongue, but she never complained. But kneeling in the darkness of the confessional, she had whispered to Father Macnally that she had prayed to the sweet Virgin not to send her any more children to look after – and especially, please – no more heathens.
‘Mum!’ Beryl wailed pathetically. She broke away from Kathleen’s arms and reached out for Maeve. ‘I want to see Dadda. Take me too!’
Mrs O’Grady snatched up her grandchild and held her firmly, ‘You stay with your Gran and your Aunty Kathleen, there’s a duck. You can go next time.’
‘We’ll see you later, Beryl,’ Maeve cooed at her child, trying to soften her voice and her face, before following Jaspal and Marvinder downstairs and out of the front door.
A sharp spring wind blew up Wandsworth High Road. It blew the scattered bus tickets into red, blue and yellow spirals and whirled them along the pavements. It made you hold on to your hat and clutch at your coat. It was the sort of wind which found its way into every crevice between neck and scarf, or wrist and glove. Even through the buttonholes. They bent their heads before it as they walked to the bus stop; and turned their backs on it, as they waited and waited for the red double-decker to come.
They were grateful to the wind. At least it gave them an excuse not to talk. Instead, they buried their reddened chins into their scarves and collars and gazed wistfully down the road, as if their very concentration could will the bus to come quicker.
And when it came, roaring to a stop in response to their outstretched hands, they always went clattering up the metal spiral steps onto the top deck. Maeve liked to smoke.
Jaspal and Marvinder would rush for the seats up at the very front above the driver’s head. They enjoyed the clear open view, and the feeling of being on top of the world. They could lean right forward and press their brows up against the glass.
But for all that, it was a gloomy journey which none of them relished. If only they could have got off at the river and spent the day in Battersea Park, or if, instead of changing buses at Hammersmith, they could have walked down to Shepherd’s Bush market and milled around the hustle and bustle of the stalls. Instead, they had to watch it all slide by and listen to the monotonous warnings of the conductor. ‘Hold very tight, please,’ as he tugged on the lower-deck bell string. ‘Ting, ting!’ It was one ting to stop and two tings to go.
At last they reached Ducane Road. The vast open playing fields of Latymer School seemed to gather up the winds and hurl them into their faces.
That final walk always seemed the longest. Maeve walked a little head, as if embarrassed by them, looking fixedly in front, never addressing any remarks to them, as if afraid people might think they were her children.
Two groups of people walked the same pavement,
