Secrets My Mother Kept (13 page)

‘Put your blazer on then,’ she said. Now the blazer had been a big issue. Blazers were expensive. You could buy them more cheaply from a local shop but they didn’t have the school badge on the pocket. However Lucilla’s did stock the badges separately and you could buy these and sow them on to the cheaper blazer. Josie had done this for me, but although she had sewn very neat tidy stitches, it was still obvious that it wasn’t the ‘proper’ badge. I donned my blazer, which had also been bought far too big for me so that it would last the whole time I was at the school. I looked ridiculous, but luckily I wasn’t alone. I watched the 62 bus stop across the road from our house start to fill with girls of all shapes and sizes, mostly dressed in uniforms comically big for them – obviously, like mine, bought to last!

17

Little Anne

My first term at secondary school was almost worse than primary. I felt big and lumpy and ugly. My clothes felt uncomfortable and I didn’t make many friends. I was put in 1B, which was the middle band, where I think the school placed all the children that they weren’t quite sure what to do with. I was considered too bright to be in the C class but my non-attendance at primary meant they wouldn’t chance putting me in the A class. So there I was in 1B with a strange assortment of other girls, none of whom I seemed to gel with. It wasn’t long before I stopped going to school again. Mum would try to persuade me to go, but her heart wasn’t really in it and I think she had too many other things on her mind. Consequently it wasn’t long before I was demoted to 1C. Then something happened that changed everything.

I had been friends at primary school with my neighbours Jane and Hannah but they were in the year above me. They were already established at the school, but were kind to me and let me join with them and their friends at lunchtime when we were cast out into the playground to amble around for about an hour before being let back into class. One day in the spring term of my first year I was heading over to join Jane and Hannah’s posse. One of the second-years stepped forward and said, ‘I think you’re in the same class as my sister Anne.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, her name is Anne McMahon.’

The girl’s name was Miriam, and she took me over to where her sister Anne was standing surrounded by a group of other girls. Miriam pushed our way through the others and there I stood in front of a very small, neat and tidy girl with very blue eyes, a scattering of freckles across her nose and a perm that made her hair frizzy. I recognised her at once, as she was the most popular girl in our year.

‘Anne, this girl is in your tutor group, her name is Kathleen Coates.’ Anne looked at me for a few seconds and then must have decided that I was okay. For some completely obscure reason that I have never been able to fathom, Anne liked me.

‘Do you want to play rounders at lunchtime?’ she asked. I quickly agreed. I played rounders, cricket and all manner of other ball games with my sisters in our back garden, so was quite good at them. When the bell went for lunchtime, she came over to my desk.

‘Are you sandwiches or school dinners?’

‘Sandwiches,’ I replied wondering if this was the right answer.

It was.

‘Do you want to come with us to eat them then?’ she asked and as I nodded my head, she ushered me out of the classroom and down the stairs towards the back entrance of the school. There were a couple of girls who followed us, and a few more who were patiently waiting at the doorway. One girl, Joan, was very tall and thin; she smiled at me. We all left the building together and walked onto the grassy area where we were allowed to have our lunch. There was nowhere to sit except on the low walls that surrounded the building, which tended to fill up very quickly, so there were lots of groups of girls just sitting on the damp grass to eat. Although it was early spring, it was still quite cold and not very pleasant to be eating outside, but we weren’t allowed to stay in for lunch except in the winter. Anne led us round the side of the building to where there were some dilapidated greenhouses. These were full of an assortment of old terracotta plant pots of various sizes, half-opened bags of compost and a few neglected gardening tools. Anne looked around us and slid the door of one of the greenhouses open, and we all piled in behind her. It was snug and warm, even if it did smell of old rotting vegetables and stale earth. Once we were inside we found something, anything, to sit on. I managed to perch on a broken piece of wooden staging and sat watching what the others were going to do. They started delving into their bags and bringing out an assortment of lunch boxes, packets and parcels. Anne and Joan both took flasks out of their bags and untwisted the lids. Joan had tea in hers, but Anne had a rich flavoursome-smelling soup. My mouth watered. Then Anne pulled out two chicken legs, which were a delicacy and quite expensive. She also had an iced bun, a bag of crisps and a Topic chocolate bar with peanuts in it. I had cheese-spread sandwiches and most of the others had something similar. Joan got out a huge bottle of lemonade, took a large swig and then proceeded to hand it round to everyone else to have a drink. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of this but felt obliged to take a drop. After we had eaten we went on to the playground at the back and chose rounders teams. My heart sunk at the thought. I was always the last to get chosen, but not this time. There were two teams, one led by Anne and one led by Joan.

Anne chose first of course.

‘I’ll have Kathleen,’ she announced to my complete and utter amazement. I had never been chosen first for a team in my whole life; it was exhilarating, and I determined to play my heart out. When the two teams had been picked, Anne called the players around her. ‘Right, I’ll go backstop, you go on first base Kathleen, Teresa you bowl. The rest of you spread out, Jane on fourth, Maria on third and Sally right at the back cos you’re a good thrower.’

Off we went. Backstop was a scary position to play, because you often got hit by either the bat or the ball, both of which could leave you with a nasty bump. But Anne was brave; she was never afraid of anything. My job on first base was to be ever alert to the batter and the backstop. If the batter missed the ball, the backstop would throw it as hard, as straight and as fast as possible to first base so that the batter would be out. What a responsibility!

We played. I managed to ‘stump out’ player after player from the opposing team, and each time I did so everyone cheered. By the time it was our turn to bat, they only had two rounders. We started to bat. Anne was a good batter, as were some of the others. When it was my turn to come forward I walked up in trepidation. Would I let everyone down? The hard round ball came hurtling towards me and I wanted to jump out of the way, but instead I held my nerve and hit with all my might. My team were shouting, ‘Slog it! Slog it!’ and I did. I ran like the blazes round the bases, getting a rounder to cheers from my team.

We won that game, and for the next few months lunchtimes followed that pattern every day, until the weather warmed up and we chose to sit on the grass in the sunshine instead and talk about stuff.

Anne had chosen me as her friend. She chose me. Me, out of all of the other girls that wanted to be her special friend, who followed her around and hero-worshipped her. It was me that she always looked for first thing in the morning when we got to school, me that she invited to her house to play, me that she told her secrets to. More strangely than all of that, it was my house that she always wanted to come to, my mum that she grew to love as a second mother, and my family that she chose to spend the holidays with. Anne really did change my life. She made me realise that I was worth something, and that I didn’t need to always be afraid, especially if she was there with me. After that first game of rounders it was obvious that we were going to be friends for life.

Anne was always up to mischief. We began to build a gang of followers of which Anne was the leader and I was the undisputed deputy! The power was heady indeed. For the first time in my life other girls watched to see what I would do so they could copy me. They listened to what I had to say and took notice of me, and did what I wanted them to. This was a new experience for me, but not for Anne. She was the youngest in a family of six children. She was very small and petite for her age, and in fact had been in hospital for growth problems. Anne was spoilt by both her brothers and her sisters, and in particular by her dad, an amiable old Irishman who had such a broad accent I could never understand him. When he came home from work he would call out to her, ‘Nan, Nan, cunya make ya da acuppata, darlinnow sweetart Nan?’ and he was the one adult she would always look truly pleased to see.

I remember the day he passed his driving test.

‘Dad’s going to drive us to swimming,’ Anne announced proudly. It was raining hard, and Barking pool was outdoors, but that wasn’t going to stop us. We piled into his old Ford Anglia, swerving all over the road as he put his arm out through the window to wipe the rain off the windscreen because the wipers were broken. Anne’s mum was very different. She would always make a big fuss of me when I called round insisting that I had a cup of tea and a piece of cake, but there was just something not quite comfortable about being in their house. It was a beautiful home with lovely things in it, which had been bought with the compensation money Anne’s dad had received after an industrial accident. Before that they had lived in a council house on the some estate as us.

One day Anne said, ‘Can you come around to my house straight from school today?’

‘Okay, but why?’

‘Wait and see,’ she said running up the stairs two at a time with me trailing behind her. I knew Mum wouldn’t be worried if I was late home as long as I was back before six, as she knew that I would sometimes go to the park with my new friends.

When Anne and I arrived at her house after school, we went up to the bedroom she shared with Miriam and there on the side was a record player.

‘I’ve got some of my dad’s old Irish records out,’ she said pulling a huge 78 from its paper sleeve. ‘It’ll help us learn the words.’

‘Why do we need to learn the words?’

‘So we can sing to the old people, of course,’ she answered incredulously, as though I should have been able to read her mind.

So that’s what we did. I would love to be able to count the number of hours we spent listening to those old Irish rebel songs but it must have added up to whole days. We would often go swimming in Barking outdoor pool straight after school and then go back to Anne’s where we would sit and sing along to those records, time and time again. We did learn the words and had great fun singing, even developing a strong Irish accent as we went along, but I never really thought we would actually go and sing to an audience of people.

Anne and I would usually meet at Becontree Station to walk to school together. We caught the 62 bus from opposite directions and both got off at Becontree. We would sometimes meet other girls and would all walk together to school. On this particular morning I got off the bus as usual and saw Anne waiting for me. She had a big grin on her face.

‘Kathleen,’ she started as I got off the bus, ‘my sister has sorted out for us to sing on Friday night.’

‘What!’ I said, incredulous. ‘You must be joking?’

‘No, I’m not. We’re singing at the Irish social club in Barking.’ Anne smiled at me, and although I was terrified inside I knew that I would go and I knew that I would sing, because Anne wanted me to.

I had arranged to go round to Anne’s house straight from school to get ready. My sister Josie had found an old green velvet corduroy dress at home that had a white lace collar and luckily it almost fitted me. When I took it out of my bag, Anne was delighted.

‘You look like a real Irish girl in that,’ she claimed, so off we went. We must have looked like a strange pair – me in my oversized green dress, looking clumsy and plain, and Anne, petite and pretty in her green Irish kilt and white jumper. We sang our hearts out that night! We sang ‘Sean South of Garryowen’, ‘The Bold Fenian Men’, ‘Black Velvet Band’, ‘Spinning Wheel’ but best loved of all was the song Anne sang as a solo, ‘Danny Boy’. She held the notes so pure and true. By the time we finished there were few dry eyes in the hall and we withdrew to an intoxicating burst of applause.

18

Making a Stand

Although I was so much happier at school, things were tough for other members of the family. Isobel, my brother Michael’s wife, was struggling to look after her baby Vicky, who was nearly eighteen months old, and now she was pregnant again. She couldn’t read or write even in her own language and couldn’t speak more than a few words of English. My brother Michael had become fluent in Spanish during the time he was in Gibraltar and so that was the language in which they communicated. Isobel was becoming more and more isolated and looking back she was probably also depressed. She came from a tiny rural village near to Malaga called San Roco, and had left behind her large close-knit family. Everything she knew and understood made no sense in her cold, bleak, adopted country. Michael worked long hours as he was now in the catering corps and was training hard to become a chef. They had a telephone but it was expensive to ring Spain, so she wasn’t able to talk to anyone at home very often. The other servicemen’s wives tried to be friendly but the language barrier hampered their friendships and so Isobel became more and more lonely. Mum came to the rescue.

‘Mary, I want you to go and stay with Isobel until the baby’s born,’ she ordered. Mary was quite happy to do this; I suppose it was a kind of escape.