Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (26 page)

Doughty Edna was a sturdy woman and a loving mother with a big lap, like Annie's. Cora often found her cuddling Georgie, who, even at the age of six, refused to be parted from his titty bottle of cold tea, but sat on their back step with his comforter. Katie's eldest brothers worked down the pit; her middle brother, Punka – a name acquired when he was small and always up to his eyes in dirt (and mischief) – was still at school.

Edna's brother was called Charles to his face, but was known as Charlie, and would probably have been described as a ‘mucky toff'. Though his weekday garb consisted of work trousers, shirt and braces, weekend evenings transformed him. When Charles went out – and only ever into Chesterfield town centre, he did not frequent the Great Central Hotel – he put on a new personality, together with his Saturday togs. This would-be dandy dressed with enormous care in a dark suit, black overcoat with an astrakhan strip, and a starched shirt and butterfly collar. His charcoal-grey gloves buttoned at the wrist; he wore spats and a grey homburg; his sharp moustache harked back to his Edwardian youth. On Saturday evenings, Charles could be seen striding down Station Road, swinging a black cane before him. Though his sister spoke in a Derbyshire brogue, his accent was slightly clipped. He wanted to make something of himself.

Whatever his weekend life and the dreams he was waiting on, Charles paid for them during the week. Reduced once more to shirtsleeves and braces, he lived on two ounces of polony, a cheap meat paste bought from my great-grandma's shop and spread as thinly as possible on to slices of bread. By the fourth or fifth day, it would be greening.

No matter what hour my mum called for Katie, or invited Georgie to come and make mud pies, the light in their house seemed dingy. Late afternoon visits were especially gloomy. I suspect that, short of the sixpence needed for the meter, Edna held on for as long as she possibly could. By contrast, whenever the living room behind the cake shop was plunged into darkness, Annie found her purse straightaway. ‘Where was Moses when the lights went out?' was her immediate bright refrain for the moment it took to find the coin.

Equally fascinating for Cora were visits to her Uncle Jim. The 1930s were good for Jim Thompson, as for many others in work. His vans still drove along Whittington Moor, advertising Thompson's ‘Gold Medal' Bakery (‘Hygienic', with its Edwardian overtones, having fallen by the wayside). The business was flourishing, as was Jim's political career. By now, he was an Independent councillor, extremely active in local politics.

Had Willie stayed well, he would have continued working for Jim. (Provided the brothers remained on good terms. They did fall out on occasion, though neither remembered why; it was not connected with the mix-up over the bakery. ‘I wouldn't cross the road to speak to him,' Willie insisted, though the argument was mended soon enough.) Jim and Bernard were still regular visitors to the cake-shop house, together with their wives, Edith and Ida, wafting Yardley's Lavender and Parma Violets into the back room, and pulling gifts for Cora from within their big fur coats.

Return visits to Uncle Jim and Auntie Edith were like stepping into a different world. A maid in a white cap, black dress and frilly apron opened the stained-glass door and showed them into the hallway. (Had Jessie Mee greeted Mrs Sedgwick's guests, I wonder?)

Hallways themselves were unknown to Cora: in all the other houses she knew, you stepped straight into the living room, having come to the back door, not the front. There were numerous rooms off the hallway, but Annie and Cora were shown into a panelled one which, on the occasions they visited, seemed to be scented with roses. This large sunny room must have witnessed some genteel parties, with ladies swishing past one another in taffeta silk. During my mum's visits, it offered afternoon tea, scones, jam tarts and sponge cake (from Uncle Jim's bakery, where else?), and sugar cubes you grasped with silver tongs. Cora loved this grander world and had no feeling of being a poor relation; Annie loved to visit too, but though Annie was fond of Jim and admired him, the contrast between his life and Willie's was looking increasingly stark. No one was more conscious of that than Willie.

Without money, it was impossible to maintain self-respect. There was Jim with his business, his seventeenth-century house, his maid and chauffeur-driven car; even his baby brother Bernard had a maid as well as a car. What could you do without money?

The cigarette case Annie bought him went first, then the cufflinks with their little ruby specks. Gold was an easy currency. Not that Willie was paid over-much. He did not slink past a pawnbroker's window, too ashamed to show he'd been there. Willie sold his jewellery outright and had real money to show for it. If he tapped his trouser pocket, the coins answered with a satisfying clink. He celebrated with a sunshine beer.

Next, it was his tiepin with the garnet in the centre. Eventually, he sold Annie's jewellery too. (If only he had pawned that – at least she'd have had the chance to redeem it.) Things disappeared so discreetly my grandma didn't notice straightaway. She did not think to look for her little lapel brooch until she wanted something
to pin on her jacket. She didn't make a habit of checking her jewellery box: a rather handsome box, a deep plum velvet, in a silver filigree case. That went too, in the end. One day, there was a space on the dressing table where the box once stood. As Willie's disappointment and ill-health raced to outdo one another, his magpie ways accelerated. Years later, you might mention a particular style of jewellery and my grandma would say, ‘Mmm. I had one of those. But it went.'

Betsy would not normally venture an opinion on the subject but, if asked, she said Willie was a fool to himself. Annie's friend Ethel was more forthright: ‘Willie Thompson was never any bloody good.' She was still putting up her fists to defend Annie. On the other hand, Eva liked Willie and thought her sister too tough on him, which says something about Eva's generous nature as well as my grandparents' relationship. There was a thread of steel within Annie, but by pocketing her jewellery, Willie also pocketed her love and trust.

She had made her bed and would have to lie in it. You heard that phrase all the time, a blunt verdict belonging to the days when the stigma of divorce bound couples together and forced them to muddle through. Whatever their feelings, Annie and Willie were both mild-mannered; they did not shout at one another and rarely exchanged harsh words, and Willie's stories could still amuse her. He still had his blue eyes and corn-coloured hair, but the man who stood before her was a poor imitation of the one Annie loved. Living with Willie now involved learning to live with disillusion.

For the first few years of her life, my mum was photographed on her birthday. Not one of Willie's casual snaps, but a proper studio portrait: Cora in a fur-lined hat, with posy; Cora with enormous
upright teddy bear and cake; Cora with brown-bear-on-wheels and cake. Willie baked the first two, but was too ill to bake the cake for her third birthday. To add insult to injury, young Billy Thompson made it instead. (‘Look at that. Why ever put a row of piping there?')

After my mum's fourth birthday, the annual portraits stopped: money was tight and there'd be school photographs soon enough. The final birthday picture shows Cora sitting on the arm of her mam's chair (a studio chair, a prop). It's a beautiful photograph, though Annie is a middle-aged matron by now, nothing like the blithe young woman who married Willie. Knowing what I do, this picture shows me something more than a loving portrait of a mother and daughter. It is also a reflection of how things stood between Annie and Willie by the end of that year.

I
N
1934, A
NNIE
, W
ILLIE AND
C
ORA MOVED TO A COUNCIL
house on Racecourse Road. Chesterfield's racecourse was no more, its last race having run ten years earlier. Built on part of the original circuit, Racecourse Road was one of two surviving markers of a once distinguished sporting past. Long disestablished by the turf authorities, Race Days had eventually descended into farce, with bookies almost as numerous as race-goers and some races supposedly delayed until their runners could be unhitched from coal carts. The associated pleasure fair or Feast was still going strong, however, and attracting substantial crowds. Part of the land was now a permanent recreation ground which, it was hoped, would prove more useful to the town than the jaded racecourse. Other hopes expressed were tongue-in-cheek. ‘Now the races are done with,' one official remarked, ‘the morals of the people of Chesterfield will so improve that we shall be able to do without policemen or parsons.'

You could follow the curve of the original circuit up to and beyond my mum's front door and picture yourself six furlongs
beyond the starting flag, with the Grandstand and finishing post up ahead. And, like many of the races run here in the past, the move to Racecourse Road had a lot riding on it. This was Annie and Willie's first independent home; their home, not Jim's, their name on the council rent book. The road also returned the family to its own starting point, where my great-grandfather was brought to the town.

Annie and Willie were not the first to occupy their semi, but the house was almost new and had a lavatory which, although outside, was enclosed within a porch and so was practically as good as an indoor one. Even more desirable was the bathroom, with hot and cold running water and a fixed bath, an unknown luxury until now. Annie bought herself a long-handled sponge with which to soap her back and another to dab herself with powder. Reclining in the water for the very first time, she felt like Theda Bara in the films.

My grandma sewed new curtains for the windows and, on his good days, Willie worked on an aviary that spanned the bottom of the garden, abutting the back wall. He was a competent joiner, one of the few things for which he thanked his father, who'd had Willie handing him tools as a small boy. Fellow members of the Caged Bird Society came to cast an eye over his handiwork and agreed they could not fault it: Willie had done a fine job. Next, he built a gate and solid fencing to separate their house from the next pair: a man needed his own back gate.

When he was feeling well and optimistic, Willie still whistled or sang his favourite songs: ‘After the Ball', ‘The Big Sunflower', ‘Roses in Picardy', the same sentimental numbers as before. He sang as he slapped paint on the kitchen walls and as he dug new flower beds for the garden (front and back) and planted the pinks
and night-scented stocks Annie liked, and when Willie had finished these jobs, he decorated his tin hat with a ring of forget-me-nots and slung it on the back of the coalhouse door.