The Narrowboat Girl (3 page)

‘Our mom’s up the h-hospital.’ Sal sat down, still crying, at the table. ‘This copper come and said our dad’d been hit by a c-car and ’e couldn’t come home and Mom had to go with him. M-Mom told me to come over and get Maryann and stay ’ere with Tony and Billy till ’er gets ’ome.’

‘Did the copper say ’ow yer dad is?’ Cathleen stood over her. She couldn’t stand Flo Nelson, always looking down her nose as if from a great height, but she was fond of the Nelson children, and she couldn’t just leave the kids in a state like this.

Sal shook her head. Maryann started crying then. They’d taken her dad away and she’d never been inside a hospital and didn’t know what it was like, only they looked big, frightening places, and he was hurt and she just wanted him home and everything to be back to normal. Her tears started Tony and Billy off crying too, and Horace looked at them all and began bawling as well.

The evening passed like a terrible, blurred dream. They tried to eat the mash and mushy cabbage Mrs Black cooked for them, but Maryann felt as if her throat had closed up and she could hardly swallow. The older ones went out into the yard after tea, but all Maryann wanted to do was play with Tiger and hold him tight.

Nancy tried to get her involved in a game, but Maryann just shook her head. Her dad, was all she could think of. She ached for him to come home, to pick up Tiger in his big hands and say, ‘How’s our little moggy then?’ But the evening dragged on and still he didn’t come, and neither did their mother. Everything felt strange and horrible.

It was after eleven when Flo Nelson finally walked in. Cathleen had got Tony and Billy to bed. Tony had cried and screamed and Maryann went up and sat with him, stroking his head until his eyes closed, his distraught little face relaxing finally into sleep. Sal and Maryann had been adamant that they would not go up until their mom came back. They sat silently at the table, Nancy with them, draped wearily over its surface, too tired to do anything and too worried to sleep. The younger Black boys had dozed off on the floor and Horace was fast asleep on his mother’s lap with his thumb in his mouth. His nose was bunged up and his breathing was the loudest sound in the room.

Despite the fact that Cathleen Black barely ever set foot in her house normally, Flo Nelson showed no surprise at them all being there. As she came in through the door, Maryann knew immediately that everything was different. Her mother’s eyes wore the glazed, exhausted look they had had in the days after she had given birth to Billy, only then she had been cheerful, had carried him proudly about. Now her pained, defeated body looked as if she had been punched so hard she would never stand straight again. She closed the door and turned, seeming unable to raise her head and look at them all.

‘How is ’e?’ Cathleen said, softly. She struggled to her feet, still holding her sleeping son.

Flo Nelson shook her head. She couldn’t speak. After a moment she put her hands over her face.

‘’E’s not . . .?’ Cathleen was deeply shocked. She hadn’t thought it would be the very worst. Not this. ‘Flo, ’e’s not . . .?’

Flo nodded, hands still over her face. Slowly she pulled them away, staring at the table, not looking directly at anyone. ‘Ten o’clock. ’E never came round – never knew what happened. ’E was in Icknield Port Road – it was a motor car knocked ’im down – his head . . .’ She put a hand to her own head. At last she looked directly at her neighbour, eyes wide with shock and bewilderment.

‘He was on the Somme, Cathleen. He came all through the Somme.’

Maryann and Sal lay clinging to one another in the cold darkness.

‘We’ll never see ’im again,’ Sal sobbed.

The word ‘never’ stabbed through Maryann like a sharp sword. Never. Ever. No – it couldn’t be true. Wasn’t real. Tomorrow he would come back, she’d wait for him outside the pub, take Tiger for him to stroke with his long, rough fingers. Sundays they’d go down the cut or go over to Edgbaston reservoir with a fishing line and a jam jar. She’d hear him slowly, wearily climb the stairs to say goodnight, the same rhythm of his tread night after night . . . Never. Never again. She pressed her face against Sal and felt sobs jerk out from the very depths of her body. Everything felt frightening, and cold and utterly lonely.

Three

During the time between Harry’s death and the funeral, his children stayed away from school. Flo couldn’t cope with any of it and the girls had to take over their brothers completely. Sal minded Billy, while Maryann looked after Tony, helping him get dressed, trying to keep him occupied and out of Flo’s way. For two days their mom scarcely moved from her bed, lying there with her pale hair matted round her head, face swollen with crying, and it was Nanny Firkin who came to take charge. She was not one for kisses or cuddles but she kept them fed and her busy presence in her rustling black dress was a great source of comfort. As she had all through the war, Flo leaned on her mother for help. Nanny Firkin came and cooked for them and stayed with the children while Flo hauled herself out of bed to go to the undertaker’s on Monument Road, to make arrangements.

‘Where’s my dad?’ Tony kept asking. He was five, and he didn’t understand death. His dark-eyed little face was so solemn, so hurt, that Maryann could hardly stand looking at him.

‘’E’s not coming ’ome again, Tony,’ she said, gently at first.

‘Why? Where’s our dad gone?’

‘’E’s – ’e’s had an accident, Tony, and ’e ain’t coming back.’ She sat him on her lap, cuddling him, stroking his soft, squashy legs.

Night-time was the hardest, when he didn’t come back from work. They couldn’t hear his voice through the floorboards from downstairs, his loud yawn as he came up to see them. The house felt so quiet and empty. Their mom’s sobbing was the only thing they heard, sometimes with Nanny Firkin’s voice trying to comfort her.

‘What ’m I going to do?’ she kept saying over and over again. Every time she said it Maryann froze inside. Her mom was afraid they’d all starve! ‘Four children and no ’usband! ’Ow’re we going to get by? It were bad enough in the war, but then you ’ad to put your own troubles aside when they were over there fighting. But now there’s four instead of two, and there’ll be no end to it all . . .’

‘You’ll ’ave yer widow’s pension,’ Nanny Firkin said.

‘But that’s next to nowt! ’Ow’m I going to keep ’em fed and clothed?’ She was tearful again. ‘Life’s cruel – so cruel. After all these years, these bloody ’ard, struggling years, Harry gets ’imself a decent job and then this ’as to go and ’appen!’ She sank into a chair by the table and broke down. ‘We’ll not ’ave a stick of furniture – I’ll ’ave to sell it all. Oh, I can’t go through all that again – I want a bit of rest and comfort in my life, not scratching and scraping for every farthing till the end of my days!’

Nanny Firkin pursed her lips. It grieved her more than she could ever express that Harry had been killed. She’d loved the man like a son and her own heart was leaden with it and even more at the sight of her grandchildren’s faces, especially little Maryann, so like him in looks and his favourite. The child was heartbroken, clinging to that kitten. They should have had a better life, Harry and Flo. Married at eighteen, then Sally had come along. Harry had an apprenticeship then and they looked set for a fair passage. He was going to work his way up to being a skilled worker, then emigrate with his family. There’d been big advertisements before the war, asking for people to go to Australia. That was Harry’s dream, to start a fine new life away from the stink of Birmingham factories and the shabby, vermin-ridden houses of old Ladywood.

‘I’ve got the energy of two men,’ he used to say. ‘You’ll see, Mother Firkin. This family’s going up in the world, up and out of ’ere and right the other side of the world. Flo and me’ll live like kings – and we’ll see to it you do as well. You can come and join us when we’re all set up.’

And then the war came, and instead they faced the shadow of a man whom the fighting had spat out and sent home to them: used, then discarded, abandoned to eke out a future on ruined health and confidence, on shattered nerves. Whatever rays had broken through from that bright, possible future had faded and gone out and now all was darkness for Flo.

But Nanny Firkin had never been one to get carried away by dreams. You could dream, oh yes, dreams were what kept you going, kept you living one day after another. But stepping right into them and thinking life would pull itself round just to suit you – that was something else. Moonshine, that was. She watched her daughter’s grief, day after day, and she saw things very clearly as they were.

‘Well, Flo,’ she said in her cracked little voice. ‘You know I’ll give yer all the help I can. It’s no hardship to me spending time with my grandchildren – when I’m allowed,’ she added rather tartly. Flo looked up at her, her tear-stained face desperate. ‘But as for you, you’re gunna have to get yerself a job, one that pays enough to keep this family together. I can’t do that for yer, Flo, I’m past all that. If I ’ad anything to give yer, yer could ’ave the teeth out of my head, but I ain’t even got them now. You’d best get yerself into a factory on the best wages yer can find.’

In Loving Memory of

Harold Nelson

Who entered into rest 16th Nov 1926

Aged 33 years

Interred at Lodge Hill Cemetery

Funeral furnished by N. Griffin & Son, Monument Road

Harry’s funeral was held at St Mark’s Church, next to St Mark’s School, where Maryann and the others attended. Maryann sat next to Tony in the immense gloom of the church while grand words from the Book of Common Prayer whirled round her head. Her dad’s coffin was draped with a Union Jack, the reward of respect given to a serviceman of the war.

At the cemetery they stood round in watery sunshine and a cold wind. Flo was distraught. She seemed to have no comfort to give to her family. She stood across the grave from them, being consoled by her younger brother Danny and his wife Margie. It was Nanny Firkin who stayed close to the children, arms stretched out, trying to spread her tiny frame behind them like a fan. Tony clung to Maryann. As they lowered the coffin into the grave, Tony turned and buried his face against her.

The undertaker, Norman Griffin, was a tall, respectable-looking, middle-aged gentleman, his broad shoulders encased in a smart black coat with a white wool muffler at the neck, black gloves and shoes gleaming with polish and elbow grease. She could see, from under his bowler hat, that his hair was a faded ginger, and his complexion also had the faded freckliness of the redheaded. His manner was tactful and deferential. When they had driven back to the house from Lodge Hill and Mr Griffin had dispatched the carriages, he lingered in the street with them for so long that eventually Flo felt obliged to say, ‘Can we offer yer a cup of tea or summat for your trouble, Mr Griffin?’

‘Well, I must say,’ Mr Griffin said, rubbing his hands together, giving a practised, moderate, undertaker’s smile, ‘it’s a right cold day – I won’t stop for long, of course, but I’d be very grateful, I truly would.’

Flustered moments followed of building the fire and Nanny Firkin fetching water for the kettle while Mr Griffin sat by the hearth, looking round the room and lighting up a cigarette. Maryann watched him. He had sat himself, without a by your leave, in the chair that had been Harry’s when he came home from work. Maryann gritted her teeth. She didn’t like the smell of Mr Griffin’s cigarette smoke (her dad had never taken to smoking), and even more she didn’t like him parking his backside in her dad’s chair, however much of a gentleman he was. Besides which, it was the most comfortable seat, so Nanny Firkin was left perched on a hard chair by the table.

Flo laid out their handful of best cups and saucers and poured the tea after the eternity it seemed to take to get ready, while none of them had anything to say. She spooned condensed milk into the cups, her fingers trembling.

‘I’m afraid it’s a bit on the weak side,’ she apologized miserably, as if the tea was representative of their desolate state. ‘Get Mr Griffin some sugar, Maryann,’ she ordered, adding in a hissed whisper, ‘and don’t bring it in the packet.’

Maryann tipped the large grains of sugar on to a saucer, found a spoon and dutifully offered it to Norman Griffin, coughing as his blue smoke wafted up into her nostrils.

‘Ah—’ Mr Griffin turned to her and she felt herself turn red under his close examination. ‘Thank you . . . er, my dear.’ Close up to him, as well as the smoke, Maryann could smell sweat and some other funny chemical smell. Without meaning to she wrinkled her nose. Now he had taken his hat off she could see his hair was thinning on top and was smoothed back with soap or Brylcreem. He sat very straight, with an almost military bearing. As well as his smell, Maryann disliked his affected way of talking as if he was really posh, and the way he had ousted Tiger from by the fire with a rough shove of his shiny shoes, their soles muddy from the cemetery.

But they had to be polite and thankful to Mr Griffin. He had handled Harry’s funeral at a discount: the hearse pulled by gleaming black horses, the wreath, the cards announcing the death. In the circumstances, Flo Nelson had genuine cause for gratitude.

‘We couldn’t ’ve managed it – not proper like – without yer being so kind,’ she was saying, from a wooden chair opposite him, a tremor in her hands as she held her cup and saucer.

The children sat round, dumb with misery; Maryann squeezed on to a stool next to Tony, each of them with one leg on, one off. Sal was sitting holding Billy, asleep in the dim gaslight. Cathleen Black had looked after him for the day and he’d worn himself out playing with Horace. Mr Griffin seemed to take for ever to drink his cup of tea. Maryann could see the strain in her mother’s face, her need to be left alone, not to have to be polite, to weep.

‘Of course, I understand your feelings at this inauspicious time,’ Mr Griffin was saying, clinking his half empty cup down on the saucer. His fingers were pale and stubby, the backs of his hands freckly and still red from the cold. ‘My own dear wife passed away not two year ago.’

‘Oh,’ Flo Nelson said, with an effort. ‘I’m sorry to ’ear that, Mr Griffin. I didn’t know.’