Secrets My Mother Kept (16 page)

Mum looked disappointed, but nodded in agreement. I think something did go wrong because that car never did arrive.

Marge and Ron’s engagement party was great fun. We had sausages on sticks, pineapple and cheese on sticks, little vol-au-vents filled with cream cheese, sandwiches and cakes. There was also lots of lemonade and cherryade and the grown-ups had beer and whisky. Aunty got a bit tipsy on the bottle of brandy Michael had brought her and danced with a plate on her head while Mum looked on disapprovingly. On Monday, after it was all over and the girls had gone back to work, Margaret and I crept up to the big bedroom that the twins shared with Aunty and quietly pulled open the cupboard door. There were the dresses! We slipped into them, me in the blue one and Margaret in the white, and then proceeded to bounce on the bed, giggling and laughing until we almost cried with the naughtiness of it.

I was twelve now and my friendship with Anne meant that school continued to be fun.

During our second year at school the headmistress, Sister Joan, told us there was going to be a school trip to Switzerland. It sounded wonderful. The trip would be by rail across Europe and because it would take so long there would be little ‘couchettes’ to sleep in on board the train. The final destination would by Lake Lugano, which was on the Swiss Italian border.

Anne was excited. ‘I think we should go,’ she said matter-of-factly as we left assembly. My heart sank. I knew the chances of me being able to go were about zero as the cost would be prohibitive. Several of the girls that we went around with were keen and so the talk from then on was of nothing else. The last date for putting your name down for a place was fast approaching.

Anne was continually on at me. ‘Kathleen, will you go and get your name down or all the places will be gone,’ she nagged, annoyed that I kept making excuses. The problem was not the ‘putting my name down’ – it was the £5 deposit that was the issue.

The only member of my family to ever go on a school trip was my sister Josie. She had been sponsored by her school to go to Luxembourg. They had paid all of the cost and even allocated her a small amount of spending money. Josie was always a very good scholar and I think that the school had recognised that she would not be able to take up the opportunity because of financial hardship so had awarded her the trip as a ‘prize’. She had absolutely loved every moment of it, and it had sparked a love of travel in her that would last her whole life.

I got home one day after school feeling really fed up. We had been given the deadline of the next day to put our deposit down. Why was it that I couldn’t go with my friends? It didn’t seem fair. I was resigned to the fact that lack of money meant that I couldn’t go horse riding with Anne and Jane on a Saturday, or ice skating, or even to the pictures in the holidays, but I could live with that. This was so much more, something really special that was so out of reach that I had to make myself stop thinking about it. They would all be talking about going all the time, and then when they came back they would be talking about what they had seen and done, and I would be left out of all of it. Different again, just like before, just like in primary school. When Pat and Josie got in from work I thrust the piece of paper with the information about the school trip in front of them. I hadn’t bothered to mention it before because I knew it was hopeless.

Josie picked it up. ‘What’s this then?’ she asked scanning the sheet of paper.

‘The school trip in May,’ I replied almost sullenly. ‘The deposit has got to be paid tomorrow.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’ Josie exclaimed.

I shrugged and looked away. I guessed what was coming next. £5 was too much money, and where would they find the rest of the £22 to pay for the trip?

But Josie looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Do you want to go?’

I nodded, amazed that she would even need to ask that question.

Then she looked at Pat. ‘What do you think?’

Pat shrugged her shoulders.

Then Josie astonished me by saying, ‘I’ll ring the school from work tomorrow and ask if we can send the deposit next Monday after we get paid. I’m sure it will be fine.’

My mouth dropped open. Could it be true? Was this all it took? Did I just have to ask?’

Mum called out from the scullery. ‘Ask your Aunt if she wants one or two chops on her dinner.’

‘Tell yer mother I’ll just ’ave one.’

And then we sat down around the kitchen and ate our dinner, while the whole time I was imagining sleeping on a train that was rushing through snow-topped mountains in a magical country called Switzerland.

22

The Trip to London

Goodness knows what level of hardship poor Pat and Josie had to endure to save the money for my trip, but save it they did. Every week I would take in a little bit more until just a week before we were due to go Josie gave me the final payment. I was ecstatic! Over the past few months Anne and I and the other girls had spent all of our time talking about the trip and I was beside myself with excitement. There were, however, a few blights on my happiness. One of these was the ‘what to pack?’ issue. Anne had no restrictions financially, so was keen to dictate what we would need.

‘We’ll have to have a soap bag with a flannel and soap, toothbrush and toothpaste and a nail file,’ she announced. There were general nods of agreement, but inside I was beginning to panic. I was pretty sure I could get soap and a flannel but we had never had a toothbrush or toothpaste, although Aunty did soak her false teeth in Steradent. I was pretty sure that this wasn’t what Anne meant. As for a nail file, I didn’t even know what that was for! This was just the beginning, and just as I would manage to solve one problem, Anne would issue a decree regarding some other essential item that would need to be packed. My head spun. I couldn’t ask Pat or Josie for help, as I knew that they were desperately saving any spare pennies to pay for my trip, and Mary was now married. Marge and Marion gave almost all of their wages to Mum and just had enough left over for their fare, and I would never have dared in a million years to ask Aunty for anything, so that just left Mum.

‘Mum, I need some long white socks for the school trip,’ I asked one day, ‘and we can take a home dress to wear in the evenings.’ Mum looked over at me while she was ironing on the kitchen table. When we were younger the iron had to be plugged into the light fitting as we didn’t have wall sockets, and before that Granny and Mum had an old flat iron. It would have to be heated on the cooking range and then used before it cooled as there was no electricity in the house at that time. This was still out in the garden where Margaret and I had spent many happy hours playing at being grown-ups and ‘doing the ironing’.

Now though, we were ‘modern’. Not only had electric lighting replaced the old gas mantles which had sputtered and spattered their brightness across the room, filling it with a distinct smell, but we also now had a couple of sockets in the skirting board to plug things like the iron and the television into.

Mum paused from her ironing as though she were thinking things through and then said almost to herself, ‘Mmm, you’ll need some bits and pieces won’t you,’ and then carried on ironing. But the seed was sown.

The next day Mum said I wasn’t to go to school. I wasn’t too bothered, as I knew that Anne was going to a hospital appointment and wouldn’t be there anyway. Margaret was off school with a ‘cold’ so she would be coming out with us. We walked over to the bus stop and caught the 62 to Chadwell Heath station. We got the train to Liverpool Street station which was usually about a half-hour journey, although because we got a slow train that stopped at all of the little stations it took more like an hour. I read the station names inside my head as we stopped, Goodmayes, Seven Kings, Ilford, Manor Park, Stratford, Maryland; on and on we went, seemingly forever. We arrived finally at Liverpool Street, where we got off and walked out into the East End of London. I hadn’t been to London very often, although when Pat or Josie had a little spare money they would occasionally take the whole family out, buying each of us a ‘Red Rover’ bus pass. This pass allowed you to travel anywhere for about 4 shillings each all day, as long as it was ‘off peak’. These were brilliant days when we would travel all over London, sometimes with a destination in mind such as Hampton Court or Kew Gardens, which only cost a penny to get in, or sometimes we’d just jump on a bus and stay on until it reached its final destination and then get off and come back again!

Today though we were in an unfamiliar part of London. We walked around the back of the station towards a large building that looked a bit like a warehouse. When we pushed through the grubby exterior doors into the building it took on a miraculous transformation. It was a massive area that was immaculately clean, the floor shone with polish and there were bright lights illuminating the whole space. All along the walls stood racks of bright new clothes. Hundreds and hundreds of dresses, coats, suits, skirts, knitwear, all presented beautifully. I felt a surge of greed well up inside me. I wanted it all. I wanted to be able to wear lovely things that had never belonged to anyone else, and to look clean and smart and maybe even a little bit pretty. Margaret and I stayed close to Mum. As we walked in I felt eyes upon us, and realised that people were watching. That same old feeling of not being good enough, of Mum being older and fatter than other mums, of having grubby and old clothes, of being different, overwhelmed me and took away the excitement of the clothes, so that I just wished we could go home. Mum had different ideas though. She walked in confidently, approached one of the saleswomen and said, ‘I’m one of Mr Blanchflower’s customers,’ and then proceeded to show the woman a piece of paper and a folded card. The look on the woman’s face changed at once, and she nodded and directed Mum to a chair.

‘What are you looking for today, madam?’ the woman asked, with a smile on her lips but not in her eyes.

Mum answered in her ‘special’ voice: ‘I want a dress each for these two and some shoes for Kathleen.’ The lady then asked us to accompany her to the other side of the huge space where there were children’s clothes and then left Mum and us alone to look.

I picked out a blue check dress with a white collar and a navy blue shiny ribbon tied in a bow both at the neck and at the sleeves. Margaret chose a plain black velvet dress that would have looked good on someone of thirty, but on a child of ten looked strangely sombre. Then I saw a jacket, it was white with blue trimmings.

‘Oh look,’ I said, picking it up and fingering it.

‘Do you want that as well?’ asked Mum.

I nodded enthusiastically. The jacket was duly put with the dresses. Then Mum selected a red skirt with a pretty purple pattern on it.

‘What about this?’ asked Mum, holding it up to me. Again I nodded, not daring to believe my luck. Mum became almost frenzied. There was a spark of excitement in her eyes, and she had a look about her that we had seen before. The saleswoman finally came back to join us and, seeing the pile of clothes that Mum had collected, went a little pale.

‘Do you want to try
all
of these?’ she asked, eyeing the assortment of dresses, skirts, jacket, underclothes, shoes and nightdresses. Mum nodded and I was ushered into a corner where the clothes were tried on me. In my eyes they all looked absolutely gorgeous! Margaret wouldn’t try her two dresses on as she was too shy, so Mum held them against her and pronounced that they would be fine. The lady began to add up the prices. ‘Am I really getting all these things?’ I thought incredulously. Then the saleswoman said something too quietly to Mum and they exchanged a few more words that I couldn’t hear.

Then the lady said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll telephone Mr Blanchflower and see what he says.’ Mum nodded in agreement and the woman went over to the corner of the space where there was a kind of glass partition with a man sitting behind, head bent, writing with his nose almost on the paper. The saleswoman spoke to him briefly and then he picked up the phone.

It seemed like ages before the lady made her way back across the room smiling. ‘Yes that’s all fine, Mrs Stevens,’ she said using our other special name. I was so happy – we had the best mum in the whole world! The things were then duly parcelled up and Mum had to fill in lots of forms, but luckily didn’t have to pay any money. I was puzzled when we left for the station without the clothes.

‘Why can’t we bring them home with us?’ I asked.

‘Mr Blanchflower has to bring them because they’re too heavy to carry on the train,’ answered Mum, starting to get that other faraway look again. I would have been more than happy to have struggled to carry the precious cargo, but I knew there was no point arguing with Mum when she was like this, and anyway, she always made all the rules in our house.

23

A Foreign Adventure

Mr Blanchflower delivered the clothes the following week and he smiled as Mum signed a special piece of paper.

‘17/6 Mrs Stevens, starting from next week.’

Mum nodded and smiled back, but after he had gone she told us not to tell Pat or Josie. We never questioned why. We were used to secrets; they were an intrinsic part of our lives. Mum squirrelled the parcels away at the back of the huge wardrobe in the bedroom that she and I shared, until the time came round for me to pack. The clothes suddenly appeared in a large bag that Mum told me to give to Josie. She was packing for me; she was always best at that sort of thing, and had come home from work a bit early to get it done. She lifted the bag that I gave her and my new clothes and the various other items spilled out. I saw the horrified look on her face.