Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (32 page)

Cora came into the living room one afternoon to find Annie swaddling the silver cake stand in pieces of cloth from the rag bag. She wrapped the silver sweet basket in its own cotton strips and laid these treasures side by side in the bottom of Cora's old pram. Next, the silver-and-cranberry-glass cones were tucked into a blanket and patted down. The sideboard was denuded of silver. ‘I'm taking these to Mam's,' Annie said, with that look of hers that resisted questions.

The sideboard was buffed with a duster and a glass vase moved into prime position in the centre, but it was a while before the vase ceased to look like the impostor it was. Annie's silver was the first thing that struck you when you opened the living-room door, but Willie said nothing when he came in.

The constant grinding sensation in Willie's gut was best chased away with a beer or subdued with a pint of milk, but not that flyblown stuff that gathered dust unless Annie was in the house when it was delivered. Willie preferred bottled milk with a top that sealed which, though more expensive than milk ladled from a can, was at least not warmed in the porch half the day.

Fresh, bottled milk was only sold by one shop at the far end of Whittington Moor, so Willie's preference involved a long walk which, on bad days, was beyond him. One afternoon, he asked Cora to collect the milk instead and promised her sixpence in payment. Sixpence was a great deal of money for a child. This was typical of Willie: always generous, whether or not he could afford to be. (Friends of Cora's occasionally stopped Willie in the street: ‘Give me a ha'penny, Mr Thompson.') A ha'penny was the usual
tip an errand could command; if a child received a penny they were extremely grateful. Sixpence meant untold riches. But it was a hot afternoon and a long trail up to the top of Whittington Moor and back again, and Cora and neighbour Grace Blake were in the middle of a game and Jimmy Davis said he'd go instead. Jimmy had never had sixpence of his own. And, of course, Jimmy told Willie how very pleased he was, and, for the first time ever, Willie was extremely quiet with Cora.

Another emergency ambulance came to the door and there were the same dark-green disinfected corridors to wander down and get lost in, but this time it was worse because the severity of Willie's situation was hardening into irrefutable facts. After his ulcer burst the second time, Willie was warned he would not come through a third. ‘But perhaps there won't be a third time,' the doctor said, suddenly becoming interested in his shoes.

A friend from the Caged Bird Society came to remove Willie's budgerigars and canaries. With bad days gaining on good ones, looking after them had become too much for him.

‘Are you alright, then, lad? ‘Well, let's be doing it.' Willie led him to the bottom of the garden. Before transferring the birds to their travelling cages, he took each one on to his forefinger, making his finger into a perch and tenderly stroking their tiny head. Willie spoke quietly to each bird, as if to ensure they knew how sorry he was to lose them. When, at last, he straightened up, Willie was holding the key to an empty aviary.

L
IKE EVERY YOUNG SOPHISTICATE, MY MUM HAD A HANDBAG
which fastened with a satisfying click. And her very own driving licence, albeit in her father's name. Despite never owning a car, Willie kept his licence up to date and passed the expired one to Cora. Ever the cock-eyed optimist was Willie. Nestling at the bottom of her bag was the toy handgun essential to any gangster, and cigarettes, fine cylinders of white paper, lovingly rolled and glued by Eva, and topped off with filter tips made from strips of the sticking plaster sold in the corner shop. Cora was particularly proud of these – no wonder – and kept them in a pink celluloid case; a pearlised hand with impossibly slender fingers formed its delicate clasp.

‘Have one of mine.'

‘Sure. Don't mind if I do.' Sometimes she was quite the Hollywood young lady.

Not surprisingly, for someone who first glimpsed the screen as a babe in arms, my mum was schooled in the cinema. By the time she was seven or eight, the Lyceum vied with Woolworth's as her
place of worship and George Formby was losing out to more exotic fare. Deanna Durbin was a favourite; Cora saw all her films, but liked
Three Smart Girls
the best, especially the ending, when, thanks to the sisters' scheming, their warring parents are reunited. Cora, Grace Blake and Ada Porter adopted their roles and gave themselves new names – Babs, Betty, Billy – Cora naming herself ‘Billy' after her Dad. There were mysterious alphabets and codes to unravel, whose magic letters
x (v_ *
remain secret to this day; and Wild West adventures to create. If Cora wasn't a cowboy like Jesse James when she grew up, she'd be fast-talking, sassy and clever. In a few years' time, she'd want to be a newspaper reporter
like Rosalind Russell in
His Girl Friday
, or a smart office-worker like Mopsy in the comic-strip cartoon. For now, she practised touch-typing on her own typewriter (rows of buttons stitched on to a cardboard box), and invented adventures for the film stars who occupied her doll's house.

My mum's doll's house, a fourth-birthday gift, though loved for several years thereafter, was bought from shopkeeper Mr Nield when his daughter Madge outgrew it. Built in the early '20s, this double-fronted house, with its sloping roof papered in imitation slate, and cotton-reel chimney stacks, was a symbol of suburbia, with four main rooms, an inviting hallway, a bathroom on the top landing, and two attics at the back.

Its only drawback (as with so many houses of the period) was the size and position of its kitchen, which had to be tucked behind the stairs. A kitchen had not figured in the thoughts of its designer, Mr Nield. (What 1920s' draper's daughter aspired to invent kitchen stories?) And so (as I discovered when the doll's house came to me), you had to overlook the tight squeeze for the kitchen cupboards, stove and sink. Other than that, it was perfect.

Despite its exterior decor and domestic drawbacks, this was no miniature Acacia Avenue, but a far more glamorous abode: home to Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, Jeanette MacDonald, Shirley Temple and Nelson Eddy. And, as its daily routine was moulded on stories gleaned from 1930s Hollywood, a Black Mammy stood behind the kitchen stove.

The doll's house sleeping arrangements would have satisfied even the strictest arbiters of the Hays Code, that period legislation designed to keep sex out of the cinema. The women slept in one room, the men shared the other; Shirley Temple had a cot on the landing. At night, Alice Faye and Jeanette MacDonald smeared
their faces with Vanishing Cream and ate chocolate fudge in bed, draped in the slinkiest of robes (remnants purloined from Annie's rag bag and tacked into cylinders, with slits snipped out for armholes). Empty pill boxes from the corner shop made perfect hat boxes (Beechams' pale pink drums were ideal); no film star travelled without one. While ‘the girls' made plans, Tyrone Power and Nelson Eddy exchanged wisecracks in the next room.

For all Cora's fantasies of glamour, there were no sweeping chrome staircases or cocktail shakers: the stairs were carpeted in corduroy and fashioned with a banister made from a knitting needle; its knob made a satisfying newel post. The stars drank pretend-tea and their furniture came not from California, but a Sheffield toy shop. But there was a grand piano in the lounge where Jeanette MacDonald trilled up and down the scales and Alice Faye crooned in husky tones.

Thompson's Bakery was still producing ‘Grade A' bread and, in keeping with the times, proclaiming the healthy goodness of its products. Annie's
Woman's Weekly
contained advertisements featuring photographs of ordinary little girls: ‘Yes she's cute, but she's not Shirley Temple…' Cue Monica Poynting of Glasgow, transformed by a mass of Shirley Temple curls, courtesy of a 3d bottle of Amami shampoo. ‘Are you like any of the stars? If so, please send us your photograph.' Amami paid successful candidates two guineas.

If Amami wanted photographs, why not Jim? What better endorsement than a healthy-looking child, and one of the family? For several nights, after she had collected Provident, cooked and cleared away tea, Annie set about making a miniature baker's outfit – white cotton trousers, tunic, baker's pinny, and a small baker's
cap, everything down to the very last detail. The costume required considerable effort (and the demise of a linen sheet), but Annie wanted everything to be perfect. As soon as the outfit was ready, she and Cora gathered their props – a couple of Thompson's free-standing advertisements and the all-important Grade A loaf – and decamped to Arthur's Studio.

Cora was photographed against a plain dark backdrop, the darkest Arthur could provide, all the better to highlight her crisp white suit. Smiling, she pointed at her Uncle Jim's bread in its colourful waxy paper and the advertisement propped against the table: ‘Grade “A” Bread. All OUR bread is impregnated with the Ultra-Violet rays of Health. Thompson's Sunshine Bread Sold Here.' The perfect thirties sales pitch: charming, healthy kiddy, healthy bread. The whole thing was irresistible. Yet, Jim resisted. My grandma's foray into advertising was over before it began.

*

‘
If a tiny stick is floating about in your tea you may expect a visitor
' – so said Eva's copy of
Household Management
, a compendium of quaint old beliefs, fortune-telling and palm reading, along with essential recipes (boil cauliflower and all greens for twenty minutes), instructions on engaging servants, and on buying or building a house. Tiny sticks must have been constantly afloat in Eva's tea – there was no let-up in the weekend mix of visitors.

Kitty and Margaret; George – with a bunch of flowers for Betsy and a wish that he could present one to her eldest daughter; Ethel, still giving as good as she got, and Auntie Liza still regaling the family with tales of Staveley folk, and scenes witnessed and overheard while she sipped her glass of beer in the Foresters. No one told Liza women did not drink alone; I suspect few people challenged Liza about anything. ‘Our Liza's a cock bird,' Betsy frequently remarked of her favourite sister, a strong endorsement coming from her.

Cousin Charlie's wife still visited, and was as gentle as ever with her tentative smile but, these days, sweet Edie came alone. After nearly twenty years of bronchitic gasping, her precious Charlie had gasped his last. With Europe limbering up for a Second World War, the poor man finally died from the first one.

Liza's daughter, Emily, and her husband, Sidney, came via motorbike and sidecar. Uncle Sidney was a whizz with electrics and, on one occasion, strapped a wireless cabinet into the space normally occupied by Emily, and rigged up the set for Dick and Betsy. From then on, the wireless became a prominent feature: Saturday evenings were ‘In Town Tonight'.

Betsy's nephew Johnny provided a difference spectacle again. A hefty miner, with permanent black patches on his face, the
typical marks of his calling, Johnny's vast chest strained against Betsy's damask tablecloth. His large fingers looked incongruous holding a slice of Eva's sponge cake, and even more so cradling a china tea cup. A special constable in his spare time, Johnny delighted in telling the assembled company how he and his fellow specials knocked seven bells out of the worst offenders the minute they had them cornered in the cells.

And, Sunday or not, there were the neighbours and weekend visitors to the shop. Every month or so, the Prentice sisters called with their young boys, rounding off a visit to relatives higher up the hill with a bag of boiled sweets for their return journey. The sisters were a curious combination: Sarah placid and well-made (as Betsy described her), Hannah as sharply spoken as she was angular. Sarah adored her young son, Ralph, who drove everyone else to distraction. ‘Oh, Eva, there's the Prentice lad,' Betsy would say, if she spotted their arrival through the sweet window. Little Ralph Prentice had fingers into everything and would not stop talking. ‘Mrs Nash, Mrs Nash, what's this for, Mrs Nash? What does it do?' (‘It's a thing-a-purpose, Ralph. Now, put it down.') ‘What's that on the wall?' On and on with constant questions, and all expressed with a clack-clack in his throat, thanks to the poor boy's infected tonsils. Betsy explained to Ralph that he needed to be quiet to let the adults talk. ‘But Mrs Nash, I only wanted to know…' and off he went again, like a wind-up toy.