Birmingham Blitz (10 page)

‘Can I help you, madam?’ He half caught sight of me, then looked up properly, his freckly face spreading into a grin. The grin was laced with mischief that at first I was too blind to see. ‘’Allo, Genie! What’re you doing here?’

‘Come for a pound of sausage, what d’you think?’ I said, my cheeks pinking up, to my extreme annoyance. ‘This is a butcher’s if I’m not mistaken.’

I didn’t know exactly why I was like that whenever I saw Walt, but I couldn’t help myself. I lay in bed thinking about him, daydreamed about him for a proportion of my time that I would rather die than admit, but I simply couldn’t let him know I liked him. I wasn’t going to set myself up for being kicked in the teeth. What I was too stupid to realize was that he could see it as clear as day.

‘I was only asking,’ he said, pretending to be hurt. ‘Sausage? There’s a few left.’ As he was weighing them out he said, ‘Seen Teresa?’

‘No I ’aven’t. Not in a week. Don’t get time for anything, do I, what with Mom working, Len working . . .’

Walt flung the sausages into the scale with a flourish, eyes fixed on the needle, which swayed back and forth. ‘Just over,’ he said. ‘Seeing as I know you. How’s the new job then?’

I gave him a sideways look. ‘If you’re looking for a new exciting life, don’t go to Commercial Loose Leaf.’

Walt grinned again. ‘Don’t go on. You’re making me jealous.’

As I handed over the money he closed his fingers over mine and held them. I managed to look into his eyes. ‘You’d be nearer Jamaica Row there, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

It was true. We were a stone’s throw from the meat market where I could easily have chosen to shop if I’d wanted. Feeling his warm hand on mine I blushed like mad and realized that was exactly what Walt had been aiming for.

I yanked my hand away. ‘I’m allowed to shop where I want, aren’t I? I’ve come up here to see my nan. If that’s all right with you.’

I flounced out of the shop. Half way along the road I stopped, cursing. I’d taken off without the sausages. I stood there for almost a minute trying to decide what to do. I had to go back. I was going to look a right idiot whatever I did. Summoning what dignity I could, I pushed the shop door open. Walt stood there with my bag of sausages held out in one hand, with the kind of teasing smile on his face that made me want to curl up somewhere dark and never come out. I couldn’t look him in the eyes. I grabbed the sausages, said ‘Ta’ in a sarky voice, and took off to the door as fast as I could.

‘Genie.’ His voice was soft suddenly, sweet, with a kind of longing in it.

I turned back, my pulse speeding up, and for one split second my silly little heart told me Walt’d been hiding his feelings. I was special to him . . . As I looked round at him he must have seen it, my need and hope spraying out like sparks across the room.

And he was grinning, a mean, triumphant smile which made me shrink and buckle up inside. ‘You still haven’t got your change.’

I snatched the tuppence from him, dropped the sausages, had to fumble to pick them up and finally slammed out of the shop, cheeks ablaze.

‘Bye bye beautiful,’ he shouted, his mocking laughter following me along the pavement.

‘You bastard, Walt Eccles,’ I fumed, storming along the street. I was in too much of a state even to go and see my nan.

Life was peaceful in its way without Mom around. Len’d roll up his sleeves and get a fire going in the grate after work while I got the tea and we’d listen to Henry Hall or some other show. Then
The Nine O’Clock News
, after that old ‘Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling’ Lord Haw-Haw. He gave me the creeps at first, just the sound of his voice, but then we all just used to listen for the daft things he came out with. Then there’d be music and I’d do mending or tidying or hand washing – whatever else was needed – until Mom came in like the conquering hero and we’d have a cuppa with bread and butter. Then bed. That was our day, every day.

One night while Len and I sat waiting we heard the front door open and Mom’s voice, high and animated in a way I’d almost never heard it before.

‘Goodnight then – and thanks ever so much!’

The door slammed shut. She was in the hall taking her coat off and humming to herself. I went to look and she turned round and smiled at me. Which was all pretty unusual. She was unknotting a woollen scarf from round her neck.

‘Brr, s’getting cold out nights now. Awright?’ she said. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Who was that at the door?’

‘Oh . . .’ She kept her tone casual, hanging the scarf on the hook behind the door. ‘He’s a copper – seen me home a couple of times off the bus after I said I was scared in the blackout. He’s very helpful.’

‘That’s nice.’ I stood watching her, her lit up expression. I’d seen my own face in the mirror not long before, pale, with dark grooves under my eyes from exhaustion like an old woman. I felt wrung out and lonely, and I wanted her to look after me and be my mom.

‘Got the kettle on? Hallo, Lenny love.’ He nodded amiably at her. I went and lit the gas. Mom stood by the hearth, back to the fire. She rubbed her hands, started telling us about the ‘girls’ at work, jokes, things that’d happened. I sank into a chair. ‘Aren’t you making tea?’ she asked eventually.

‘I’m tired out. Can’t you make it?’

Her eyes narrowed. She looked spiteful. ‘You’re tired? Huh. I get in from work in the middle of the night and you tell me you’re the one who’s tired.’

I was near to tears with weariness. After all, who was running this house with no help or thanks from anyone? Sometimes I wish she’d just go, then there’d be just me and Len. Things were all right until she came home. But I wasn’t going to show how miserable I felt in front of her.

She sank down by the fire in a martyred fashion and twiddled bits of her hair round her fingers as I got up to make the tea.

‘Mrs Spini does the house and the shop,’ I said. ‘Always has.’

‘I’ve got quite enough on my plate with your father and Eric away,’ she snapped. ‘Vera Spini.’ She put all her energy into that sneer. ‘Hair out of a bottle.’ The way she said it dyeing your hair might have been crime of the century.

Then she turned plaintive again. ‘It takes getting used to going back to work again and working shifts. I think I deserve all the help I can get.’

Strikes me it’s about time someone told Teresa the facts of life, I thought to myself. And who else is going to take the trouble but me?

Teresa was one of those girls who could give men the wrong idea. Too friendly, too vivacious, too downright appealing, but with barely the first idea of what it was all about, for all her talk of mortal sins. Of course most of us girls were innocent as morning dew until we strayed into marriage or trouble, but what with the trollops coming and going I’d long started asking questions, and Lil made it her business to get a few things straight with me when I left school.

‘Your mother’ll never be able to bring herself to do it,’ she said. ‘God knows, she spends enough time with her head stuck in a pile of sand as it is. But you ought to know, Genie. The factory’s no place for an innocent kid like you. Specially with your pretty face.’

We were in Nan’s house. Lil had chased the kids out to play.

‘You’re ’aving me on!’ I said when she explained. ‘Not with his willy!’ My mouth hung open for minutes after.

Lil’s cheeks went rose pink all of a sudden. ‘I know it don’t look much of a thing as a rule, but when they come on to you and get the least bit excited, it . . .’ She gave me a vivid demonstration with her index finger. ‘That’s how they put the babbies inside.’

I sat there goggling at her. Her brown eyes smiled mischievously. I had so many questions I couldn’t think what to ask first. ‘But doesn’t it feel –
funny
– them doing that?’

‘Feels a bit funny at first of course. But you get used to it. Can be ever so nice . . .’ Her face took on a dreamy look. I got the definite feeling this was something she liked talking about. ‘Best feeling on earth at times, that’s if you love ’im. But Genie . . .’ She leaned forward solemnly and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘What I’m saying is, you don’t want to do it with any old dog who comes along. Keep yourself nice for someone special. And make sure ’e’s going to marry you before your knickers get below your knees.’

‘Lil!’

‘I’m giving you good advice, Genie, believe me. It’s not nice to be a tart, and anyhow, you don’t know quite where else they’ve been dipping it if they’re that way inclined.’

Things were beginning to make a bit of sense, quite apart from the trollops. Len, for a start. That enigmatic smile that used to come over Big Patsy’s face when Lil sat on his lap. And Lil was right. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine Mom coming out with any of this information. For a second I thought of Walt and blushed to the roots of my hair.

Since, according to Lil, men were only after One Thing, I thought it was time Teresa knew. Which she didn’t, I was sure. Her Mom and Dad treated her as a child and she was still safe in the bosom of home – or so they thought. Course they didn’t know she was walking out late some Sunday afternoons now with Mr Sheet Metal, supports-the-Villa Jack, using me as her alibi. Lil had given me such a vivid account of the male sex drive that I thought Teresa was in immediate danger of losing her virtue in Highgate Park.

I went to the Spinis’ in the middle of Sunday afternoon when I guessed the marathon meal would be over. In any case, with only half of them there the heart had gone out of it. Only Vera and Teresa were in and Vera was sat at the table touching up the roots of her hair from the bottle of peroxide which Mom had been right about.

‘Micky’s pumping water out of air raid shelters,’ Vera said, squinting at the little oblong mirror. Her dark eyebrows looked startling set against the bleached-out hair. ‘That’s all they seem to have to do in the Fire Brigade. S’pose I shouldn’t be complaining though, should I?’

Teresa had on her red dress from Mass and she’d dolled up her hair with a matching red bow. ‘We were just going out, weren’t we?’ she said, looking meaningfully at me.

‘S’pose so.’ I didn’t take too kindly to being treated as a decoy in place of some bloke.

‘What’re you doing here?’ she hissed at me as soon as we were in the street. ‘You know I’m meeting Jack.’

‘All right, all right, I’m not going to forget, am I, the way you keep on?’ Jack this, Jack that. The minute he’d come along he’d become far more important than I was. I didn’t seem to be important to anyone nowadays.

We cut past the closely packed lines of houses and factories along Stanhope Street.

‘Don’t walk so fast.’

‘I’ll be late. I told him half past three.’

‘But I’ve got summat to tell you.’

I suddenly felt like the guardian of Teresa’s virginity, my imagination running riot about what she and Jack were getting up to.

‘Hang on a tick.’ She pulled me into an entry. ‘Hold these for me a minute.’ I found I was holding a handful of pins.

‘What the hell are these for?’

Skilfully Teresa made a thick tuck in the red skirt, pinning it up round her bit by bit and shortening the drop of the church-length dress by a good six inches.

‘You can’t go around like that!’ I laughed at her. ‘You’ll get them sticking in you!’

‘Wanna bet?’ She did her coat up round her with a grin, hiding the clumsy lump of material. ‘There. That’s better. Come on.’ She pulled me along the road again. ‘What you got to tell me?’

Once I’d blurted it out Teresa stood stock still on the pavement and just stared at me, brown eyes popping. I thought for a horrible moment she was going to come out with something like, ‘Oh Genie, how could you think I didn’t know? Jack’s already had his evil way with me and I’m expecting twins . . .’

Instead of which she erupted into her huge laugh, bending backwards, then leaning forward doubled up. I ended up in stitches too just watching her. People were staring.

‘Oh no!’ she cried when she could speak. ‘No, that can’t be right, Genie. Where in hell did you get that from? That’s the most horrible idea I’ve ever come across!’ And she was off again, tittering away. ‘You don’t half come up with some barmy notions, you do.’

‘But it’s true!’ I insisted. ‘How else d’you think . . .?’

She moved closer, aware of ears flapping along the street. ‘A man kisses you a special way and then the Holy Spirit gives you a babby. That’s what really happens. Come on,’ she said, stepping out again. ‘He’ll be waiting. You keep out of sight, eh?’

‘Charming.’ I was stung by jealousy again. ‘Don’t believe me then. I just hope you don’t live to regret it.’

‘All he’s ever tried to do is hold my hand,’ she said smugly, disappearing round the corner. ‘Which is more than anyone does for you.’

‘I’ve got more bloody sense, that’s why!’ I felt like tearing her eyes out, the stupid cow.

Her voice floated round to me, mocking. ‘
Ciao
, Genie.’

I peeped round the corner. Standing by the gate to the park, waiting for her, was one of the tallest, gangliest blokes I’d ever seen. His hair was curly and a bright carroty red as if his head was on fire. I couldn’t spot the Adam’s apple, but it would’ve been hard to miss the great big daffy grin on his face as Teresa walked up to him. She’d forgotten all about me, that was for sure.