Queenie sat at the opposite side of the table and watched him suspiciously. ‘’Ow come you speak with such a posh accent?’ she said suddenly.
‘I went to a grammar school.’
‘Did they teach you to talk proper there, then?’
‘No. But I suppose I picked it up by osmosis.’
‘’Ow d’ya mean?’
‘From the teachers and some of the other boys. It was that or Cornish.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was in Cornwall.’
‘’Asn’t done you much good,’ she commented, ‘all that education.’
Ralph shrugged. He spooned the last mouthful of soup into his mouth. ‘That was splendid.’
A flicker of a smile spread across her face, and then it was gone.
‘If that’s your way of trying to get a second helping, you’re wasting your time,’ she said sulkily. ‘There’s rationing, you know,’ and she whisked the bowl away from him.
‘How are my clothes doing?’ he said after an awkward silence.
‘Oh don’t worry, they’ll be dry. You won’t be going home in the master’s clothing.’
A mug of tea was slammed on to the table. Ralph bit into the bread.
After lunch he returned to the shed. The cobwebs were gone, the shelves were swept clean and the tools were either on the shelves or leaning neatly against the wall. The motor mower was brushed down, with bits of it he had discovered lying beside it. He now sat on the floor and stared at it. Years of Latin grammar and algebra had not equipped him for this. Hours later when he heard the bell ringing again, he blinked. He had been so absorbed in fiddling with the machine that he had merely squinted when the light had begun to fade.
He stuck his head outside. It was still raining. He ran across the grass in his oilskins again. He found his clothes lying folded on one of the dust sheets in the garden room. Hastily he pulled off the navy jersey.
When he was dressed he carried the armful of borrowed clothes to the kitchen. Queenie was peeling potatoes. She glanced up at him.
‘Put them there,’ she said indicating the table. ‘Your boots are by the door. So’s the mac.’
On the hook behind the door was a beige trenchcoat, the kind every detective wore in a thriller.
‘On loan,’ she said imperiously. ‘To be returned.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me. I just work ’ere.’
‘Do I say goodbye to Mrs Egerton-Smythe?’
‘I dunno. No one tells me anything.’
He laced up his boots and attempted to hide the tremor of excitement he felt at doing up the raincoat.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he said at the door.
‘Prompt’, said Queenie.
He hovered outside the stage door. He wanted to be seen in the raincoat. He hoped his hobnailed boots didn’t spoil the effect too much. He removed his cap, held it behind his back and stepped in. Wilfred was sitting in his cubby-hole reading a newspaper. He looked up and frowned. ‘I just came to thank you,’ said Ralph hurriedly.
The man’s face unfolded. ‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognise you. ’Ow’d it go?’
‘It went well. I didn’t get a job, but I hope to be allowed to attend the strike this Saturday.’
‘Good,’ he said, and he returned to his newspaper.
Ralph gazed awkwardly at him. ‘Well, cheerio, then.’
Wilfred looked up again. He gave a wave. ‘Cheerio, lad.’
Ralph cycled home disappointed. He had wanted the man to leap up and down and say, ‘Well done, lad! You’ll go far. Mark my words.’
It was pitch black when he wheeled his bike into the street. A tiny slip of light was shining across the pavement from Elsie and Joan’s room. He ran round to the yard and leaned his bike by the wall. His father’s bike was not there. Relieved he ran to the back door, flung it open and ran straight into a damp sheet.
Of course, it was Monday. The room was still slightly warm from the copper’s being stoked all day. He wiped his feet and opened the scullery door to the kitchen. Elsie was sitting at the end of the table, head down, scribbling at tremendous speed as if her life depended on it. Harry sat near her with a dogeared comic. His mother emerged from under the cascades of washing which were hanging from a wooden clothes rack from the ceiling. Months ago he had been embarrassed at the sight of male and female underwear swinging amongst sheets and shirts and petticoats. Now he took it all in his stride.
‘Ralphie!’ she began, and then gaped at his trench coat.
At that moment, the door behind him swung open and Auntie Win entered. The two women gazed at him stupified. Ralph grinned.
‘It’s on loan,’ he said. ‘Till it stops raining.’
‘What do you look like?’ said his aunt.
‘Inspector Gideon of the Yard,’ said Harry in awe.
‘It’s soaked,’ said his mother, feeling it. ‘You’d better hang it up.’
She lowered the wooden clothes rack. Ralph hung the raincoat over the end and watched his mother haul it up. ‘Where’s Joan?’ said his aunt.
‘In her room,’ said his mother, ‘changing. You’d better get out of your togs too,’ she said looking at his aunt’s sodden coat. ‘So how did it go, Ralphie? I kept wondering what you were doing in all this rain.’
‘Getting to know the garden shed.’
There was a sound of a whirring bicycle in the yard. Suddenly Elsie gathered up her books and Harry grabbed her satchel. In seconds they had gone. A waft of cold air billowed in.
‘Shall I disappear too?’ he asked.
‘You’d best face the music sooner than later,’ she sighed.
His Auntie Win draped her coat in front of the range and rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan as if to do battle. His mother, noticing this defiant gesture, turned away hurriedly to look at the supper.
Harry returned and sat on his father’s bed, bouncing up and down.
The scullery door opened and his father slumped in, visibly smaller. Ralph gazed helplessly at him. Harry shot off the bed and stepped towards him grinning. ‘Well, Dad?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Did you ask? Did you ask about me?’
His dad
