flung her arms round him, and then suddenly broke away blushing.
‘What’s that?’ said his father, looking up.
‘I got the job.’
‘Regular, is it?’
‘Occasional.’
His father gave a snort.
‘It’s a start,’ said his mother.
‘And if I do well she might spread the word to her friends.’
‘Gardener!’ he scoffed. ‘What kind of job is that?’
‘Mum,’ began Elsie, ‘couldn’t I listen to the first bit of it?’
‘No.’
‘What if I met him at the Odeon?’ pleaded Joan.
‘What’s wrong with him meeting you here?’
‘It’d scare him off. He’d think it was serious.’
‘It is.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Elsie, clear the table!’
‘Hello,’ said Auntie Win into her newspaper. ‘There’s another bigamist in here.’ She tutted and shook her head. ‘I dunno.’
Because they had only six chairs, it was Harry’s turn to sit on Dad’s bed at supper, but he accidentally spilt some gravy on it in the middle of his exciting rendition of the previous night’s episode of Dick Barton, Special Agent, which made his father almost hit the ceiling, since it was the one place in the house he could call his own. He was only to have slept in it temporarily but it had stretched to six months because Auntie Win didn’t feel she should share a room with her nieces. Ralph volunteered to change places, but his father said he didn’t want no slackers sitting on his bed. Elsie said Harry could share her chair and so they spent the rest of the meal giggling as one or other kept pitching to the side. After the meal, his Uncle Ted, a large portly man in his fifties, from two streets away, called for his dad. He had persuaded him to go greyhound racing with him. His father wasn’t interested in greyhound racing, but he told Ralph that he thought it was better for both of them if one of them wasn’t at home.
Sometimes Ralph wondered if there was something he had done when he was little to cause so much hostility between him and his father, because try as he might, he rarely got a smile out of him.
While Elsie and his mother washed the dishes in the scullery, Joan arranged to go to the cinema with a friend of hers. And still Ralph didn’t mention going back to the theatre. He watched his mother spread out a blanket and sheet at the end of the table and iron a dress for Joan whilst Auntie Win read aloud an announcement of carpet sales from the newspaper and then began the third chapter of her Margery Allingham detective novel. It constantly surprised him that two sisters should be so unalike. Both in their thirties with five years between them, his aunt, who was the younger, appeared five years older. A head taller than his mother, she was robust, with a face which seemed to gather into a point, and fiery blue eyes whereas his mother was slight with wavy chestnut hair and soft dark eyes. Constantly on the move, she rarely sat down.
As he gazed at her methodically ironing, he felt a deep fondness for her. But her illiteracy still embarrassed him. No one suggested she should learn to read. How she managed to shop for food amazed him. Even the letters she wrote to him, when he was in Cornwall, were dictated to his aunt or Joan or Elsie while his mother was busy with something else, so she said. Elsie read to her. Even Joan read to her. Yet she seemed to show no shame. Auntie Win read her thrillers, Elsie her children’s books and Joan her women’s magazines or film magazines.
He waited till Joan had gone out and Elsie was in bed. Harry had been allowed to stay up for the thriller and had promised to tell Elsie every detail the next day. It was while his mother began ironing shirts for Sunday best, that he broached the subject of the set strike. ‘Mum,’ he began, ‘I won’t need that shirt in the morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Remember? The set strike. It’s all night.’
His aunt stopped reading. ‘What’s this, Ellen?’
‘Another job he’s hopin’ to get. Ralphie, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Your father will take the belt to you. You know what he thinks of the theatre.’
‘He’s out. He doesn’t have to know.’
His mother glanced at Harry who was listening with rapt attention to the wireless. ‘He’s going to notice you’re not here in the morning.’
‘He won’t. After a night out with his brother, he’ll sleep through all of us having breakfast,’ Win commented.
‘Ralphie,’ said his mother quietly, ‘the rector would be very upset if he thought you was missing church.’
‘I can go to Evensong. I prefer it anyway. It’s simpler than the morning service.’
‘Ellen, the more he’s out of the way, the better,’ said his aunt.
‘Thanks, Auntie Win,’ said Ralph sardonically. ‘I’ll go without a night’s sleep and get up with everyone. And go to bed early tomorrow. After church.’
‘I don’t like keeping secrets from yer dad, Ralph.’
‘Mum, please,’ begged Ralph, ‘I’ve got to find some way of getting my foot in the door.’
‘Why?’ said his aunt. ‘You don’t want to spend too much time there, you know,’ she added significantly.
‘Not you, too,’ said Ralph wearily.
‘Don’t talk to your aunt like that.’
‘I’m sorry, but where’s the harm?’
‘I don’t like it, Ralph.’
‘I might not even get the work and it’s only on Saturdays.’
‘What do you think, Win?’
‘Work’s work when all is said and done, I s’pose. And he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.’
Ralph caught his mother’s eye. ‘So can I go?’
His mother gave a sigh. ‘I don’t want you out in the dark with no lights.’
‘I’ve checked my dynamo.’
‘I’ll leave the front door open so you don’t disturb him. But don’t forget to lock it afterwards.’
‘Mum,’ protested Harry, ‘I can’t hear.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Ralph.
Half an hour before curtain down, Ralph stood awkwardly outside the stage door not knowing quite when to make his presence felt. He walked back down the road towards the High Street and stood in front of the brightly lit foyer. At the first glimpse of the Saturday nighters flooding
