Long Lankin (19 page)

I wasn’t quite sure what it was all about, but I laughed anyway because you couldn’t help laughing when Cissie did.

There were always young hopefuls knocking on the door for Cissie, but in the end, she fell for a chap from over Hoxton way called Roy Poupart. He was no great looker, but he laughed almost as much as she did. Dad said they were like a pair of hyenas. You could hear them through the wall.

Roy and his mates played in a band called Mervyn and the Wildfires, and when he and Cissie got married, they set it all up in our street. They put the wires for the guitars and the microphones through Auntie Ivy’s window and plugged them into the light fittings. The bloke who was playing bass, Larry, had to stand right next to the wall for the whole afternoon; otherwise his wire wouldn’t reach. Every now and then he’d call for me to get him a sausage roll and a bottle of Watneys.

After Roy and Cissie got back from the church, people came from all over the place to join in the dancing and have a drink and a piece of cake, but Mrs. Peake at number 6 told Auntie Ivy that the whole street was going to blow up with all the extra electrics — that’s if the noise didn’t shred her nerves first. Then Mrs. Woollett came out and said that her mother — that’s Mrs. Bracegirdle — was dying, so if they was going to play loud music, it’d better be hymns; then Auntie Ivy said shut up, your bloody mother’s been dying for the last three years, and I’m blowed if we’re going to have “Abide with Me” all bloody afternoon just on the off chance. Then Mrs. Woollett shouted at Auntie Ivy that she could blimmin’ well say what she liked about her mother, but she still had all her own teeth, which was more than Auntie Ivy’d got.

After that Roy got the band to play “Great Balls of Fire,” and you could hear Mrs. Bracegirdle shrieking her head off from her bed in the Woolletts’ front room, but they just turned up the loudspeakers.

Cissie spent her whole wedding day in fits of laughter, even when Roy spilled his beer down the nice white dress that her dad hadn’t finished paying for on the “never never.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lan, who ran a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Dragon on the Commercial Road, came with their two little boys, Number One Son and Number Two Son, and a huge bowl of rice mixed up with fried egg, and even a box of chopsticks for us to eat it with, but I couldn’t work them out so I had to go indoors for a spoon. Mimi was all by herself in the house, napping in her cot, even with all the noise outside. I shouted for Mum but couldn’t find her anywhere.

Dad and Uncle Dick Bedelius got drunk and sang some rude army songs, and Auntie Ivy swore at Uncle Dick in front of all the neighbours, but he couldn’t have cared less. Then I think she must have had a bit too much of the Babycham herself because she started another slanging match with Mrs. Peake, saying she was quick to have a go about the music but didn’t mind stuffing her gob with the food.

I could hear people singing and laughing and shouting and fighting all night long, and in the morning, the street was a dreadful mess. For ages afterwards, people would talk about what a lovely day it was when Cissie Bedelius got married. It was the best day of my life, or it would have been if it hadn’t meant Cissie wasn’t going to be there anymore.

After the wedding, Cissie and Roy went to live with his mum and dad in Hoxton. They were going to have the spare bedroom because, luckily for Cissie and Roy, his mum’s Hungarian lodger had died.

A few months later, Mum was upstairs in the bedroom asleep and Dad was out. The pans were still dirty in the sink, and I couldn’t find anything in the cupboard for Mimi’s dinner. There wasn’t even a shilling in the blue jug to go and buy some bread, so I popped with Mimi to Auntie Ivy’s for something to eat. She squashed us round the table with her family and cooked us all egg and chips. Just as we were finishing, a dreadful wailing noise came through the wall from our house next door. It sounded like
“It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault,”
over and over again. The Bedeliuses went quiet and looked at each other, then at Mimi and me.

Auntie Ivy shot up, went out the back way, then returned five minutes later and said the old pushchair was in their yard for Uncle Dick to sort out for Cissie now she was expecting, and would I like to take Mimi for a walk in it. I said it would be lovely, so she got a cushion and put it on the seat because some of the stuffing was sticking out.

The pushchair made such a racket, you could hear us coming a mile away. We squeaked over the Commercial Road and I took Mimi to see the big boats and barges coming into the docks from all over everywhere in the world. There was a huge ship unloading bananas. I hadn’t had a banana for ages.

One of the dockers winked at me and pinched two off a bunch and gave them to us. They were green and rock hard. I knew the docker’s name was Albert because his mate saw him talking to me and said, “Is that your best girl, Albert?”

Albert said if we hung around, we might see a taranchelar, which was a big hairy spider that they sometimes found hiding in the banana bunches, and that a mate of his called Old Jacko got bitten by one on his nose and he’d died of the poison. Albert said spider poison was a special sort called vemon, but I didn’t know if it was a joke or not, so we left just in case one jumped out and stuck its teeth in us.

Just as we turned into our street, one of the wheels dropped off the pushchair, so we were really lucky to have got down the docks and back again. By that time, Dad was at Auntie Ivy’s, but he looked tired and wouldn’t tell me a joke when I asked. He took us round to some friends of his, Auntie Kath and Uncle Norman.

Auntie Kath was pretty and plump, and on hot days wore a blue sunsuit with white polka dots that showed quite a lot of her bosoms. We stayed with them for a few weeks, but I didn’t like it. Auntie Kath smacked us sometimes. It wasn’t like staying at Nan’s, but Nan had gone back to Scotland and couldn’t mind us anymore. Auntie Kath had made Mimi eat dumplings, and she was sick all over her plate. I thought that was why they didn’t want to have us again and we had to come all the way out here to Auntie Ida’s.

I couldn’t sleep, so I threw back the covers and put my feet down on the cool floorboards. Then I opened the door and went out on the landing. The soft light from the lamp in the hall below, and the comforting blue cigarette smoke drew me to the top of the stairs.

I could just hear Dad and Auntie Ida talking quietly in the sitting room. The door was half-open, but their voices were so low there seemed to be something deliberately hushed in the way they were speaking. When I had left the bedroom, I had half thought that I would just go down and see Dad, but now I was curious to hear what he and Auntie Ida were discussing so secretly together.

I already knew every creak on that vast staircase and crept downstairs, avoiding them all. Then I moved as noiselessly as a shadow and settled down on the little old milking stool that stood on its three short legs in the hall beside the sitting-room door. I breathed light shallow breaths so that Dad and Auntie Ida wouldn’t hear me.

“Kath and Norman weren’t too keen after last time. . . .” Dad was saying.

When Mum came home that time, she couldn’t remember some things. She forgot it was Mimi’s birthday.

“I’m pretty sure I know why you couldn’t ask Kath and Norman, Harry,” said Auntie Ida. “Susan used to write to me now and then, you know. She’s no fool. She knew what was going on with Kath.”

“It was all in Sue’s imagination,” said Dad quickly. “It must be all part of this — this condition.”

“Come off it, Harry. I’m not as ignorant as you think,” snapped Auntie Ida. “I’ve always known what you’re like. It’s got nothing to do with how Susan is. Anyway, doesn’t it occur to you that it’s much more likely to be a result of — because of — you know — with Anne?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. She doesn’t talk about it, Ida. Ever.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

They went quiet for a while. I heard liquid being poured into a glass, then Dad striking a match and the smell of a fresh cigarette.

“What if she’s kept in for weeks?” he said at last. “Or . . . what if she never gets better?”

Auntie Ida spoke again. “I don’t want them here, Harry.”

“There was nowhere else, Ida — you know that,” said Dad. “I don’t know how long Susan’s going to be in this time. It’s worse than it’s ever been before. I don’t know if it’s because Mimi is that age, and of course Cora is the older sister like she was —”

“All the more reason they shouldn’t be here, Harry. I’ve no idea how safe it is. I’m tired of listening and watching. I don’t know whether it’s all in the past now, or whether there’s still something . . . I don’t know. . . .”

“I didn’t know there was anything wrong with Susan,” said Dad. “All the blokes were after her — she was such a corker. We had a real lark at the beginning. You know what it was like just after the war — bloody miserable, freezing bloody weather, nothing to eat, country in flamin’ ruins — but we was all right, Sue and me. It was only when she started spinning this daft yarn about Annie, and really believed it, Ida, that I thought,
Uh
-
oh, what’s going on here, then?
I told her to shut up about it — it was just a load of old rubbish and she was to stop going on. I’d had it up to here, Ida. It was enough to try the patience of a bloody saint, I’m telling you.”

“No wonder she doesn’t talk about it.”

There was a moment of silence, then Auntie Ida sighed deeply.

“I can’t watch them twenty-four hours a day, Harry. It’s beyond me. Thank God Cora’s happy to cart Mimi around with her — I’ll give her that much at least: she’s very patient with her. They’ve made friends with some local boys. It’s fine when they play up in the village — I can almost relax when I know that’s where they are — but children can’t resist that church. I’ve tried to stop them going there, but I think they’ve seen something. I’m not sure. You know what children are like.” She paused. “We’ve come to blows, Harry. I’ve had to teach Cora a lesson.”

“I noticed the bruises,” said Dad uncomfortably, shifting in his chair. “I hope you haven’t been too hard on her, Ida — what with Susan and everything, she must be feeling bad at the moment. Anyway, for Pete’s sake, it’s just an old superstition — ruddy crazy, if you ask me.”

“I’m not asking you!” Auntie cried. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, so don’t pretend you do! It’s dangerous, and that’s the end of it! You can’t lock them up all day, can you? You can’t expect them to stay in the house all the time, and when the weather’s hot —”

“Well, this was a bloody stupid place for Agnes to send Susan and Anne then, wasn’t it?” Dad cried back at her. “It was hardly safe round here in the war with Hitler just over the water — bloody Battle of Britain up in the bloody air — without all this other ruddy rubbish. What the hell was their ma thinking of, sending them here? They’d have been better off at home in London, even with the Blitz. We got through it all right, me and Ma.”

“Well, I’m not sure. Agnes had to work in the factory at Woolwich — you know that. Then — then you know about all her trouble — you know . . . having babies. It was either sending the girls here, to family, or off somewhere hundreds of miles away to strangers. Agnes wouldn’t have done that.”

“Well, she bloody well should have done, then there’d never have been this whole bloody mess. I’d have had a bloody easier life, I’ll tell you that. Agnes was too ruddy old to be having another baby at her time of life after Anne was lost. It bloody killed her, didn’t it, and that good-for-nothing crooked husband of hers, One-Eyed Jack Swift, going off and leaving Susan on her own. It was good of my old ma to take Sue in; otherwise she’d have had nobody.”

I was too tired. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I knew Agnes was Auntie Ida’s sister, Mum’s mother, who died having a baby in an air raid, and One-Eyed Jack Swift was her husband. But who was Anne? I’d never heard of her before.

“Well, it’s always easy to see things with hindsight,” Auntie said. “At least, thank God, you’ve come to take Cora and Mimi home. It’ll be such a weight off my shoulders. Anyway, Cora’s too curious, poking and prying around the house. She’s really been getting on my nerves. I can’t have it, Harry.”

There was a long, heavy silence.

“Ida . . .” Dad said quietly. I felt that he wasn’t looking at her while he spoke, that he couldn’t look at her. “There’s nowhere else, Ida. I’ve got to work. I’ve got this deal on. I’ve got to pay the rent. Ma lives in Scotland now. How can I have them? I don’t know the first thing about looking after kids, specially girls. They’d be wandering the streets all day. If the Council knew, they’d take them away and put them in a home. What am I supposed to do with them. . . . ? And then there’s these people. . . . you know, if they cottoned on there weren’t nobody watching my kids . . . I don’t know. . . .”

I could feel the wooden floor under my numb feet. It was hard and cold. Suddenly everything in the world was hard and cold.

“Why did you bloody well come, if you weren’t going to take them home?” Auntie Ida cried. “What about that neighbour of yours — Susan wrote to me about her once — kind woman, unusual name — beginning with
B,
I think. Why can’t she take them in?”

“
B?
Oh, Bedelius — Ivy,” said Dad. “To tell the truth, Ivy’s not too good herself. Then there’s four others still at home, apart from Dick, of course. How can she do it? I ask you, Ida.”

“I don’t want them here, Harry. Anything could happen!”

“Ida, don’t be tough on me,” said Dad, sounding wrung out. “I wanted to see them. . . . I wanted them to see their dad. . . .”

I couldn’t be bothered to hear any more. I didn’t understand any of it, except that Auntie Ida didn’t want us and, worst of all, neither did Dad. Mimi and I were nothing but a nuisance.

I crept back upstairs.