The Cobbler's Kids (4 page)

She didn’t know what had happened to all the other furniture that they’d had in Wallasey and her mam refused to talk about it. She knew her mam wasn’t happy, though. Sometimes she could see she’d been crying, but she didn’t think it was just because she didn’t like her surroundings.

So much had happened since he’d come home from the war. Losing both her grandparents as well as her brother Charlie in the influenza epidemic had been terrible. She’d loved them all so much and she knew her mother still hadn’t stopped grieving.

When Benny had been born she hoped he would fill the gap in their lives, a kind of replacement for Charlie, but he didn’t. Benny wasn’t anything like him. Charlie had been a strapping fourteen-year-old and he’d taken after their dad with dark, curly hair and bright blue eyes. He’d just started an apprenticeship at Cammell Laird’s and cycled across the Penny Bridge to Birkenhead each day as proud as punch to be a wage earner at last.

Vera was sure that there was some deeper reason for her mother’s unhappiness and that it was something to do with her dad. She’d only been four years old when he’d gone off to war, but her memories of him before then were quite different to what he was like now. In those days he’d been so friendly, he’d always been ready to play with her and her brothers and, as far back as she could remember, her dad had always made a tremendous fuss of her.

Whenever they went for a walk, the moment she complained that her legs were tired, he’d pick her up and sit her on his shoulders and then pretend to be a horse.

Sometimes they used to chase Charlie and Edmund. Once, when they’d been on the shore at New Brighton, he’d carried her right into the Mersey until the water was almost up to his knees.

Now, he never even seemed to smile. He picked on Edmund, hitting him across the top of his head with the knuckles of his clenched fist if he didn’t jump to it when he asked him to do something.

He seemed to have no time for the baby, either. Benny cried a lot, but that was because he was always hungry. Mam never said anything to Vera, but she often heard her mam and dad arguing about money because her mam claimed he kept her short and yet Vera felt sure that there had never been any problems like that in the past.

When her dad had been away in the army there had always been a hot meal waiting for them when they came home from school. Every morning their lunch boxes had been packed ready for them and inside would be a jam butty, a piece of home-made cake and an apple. Nowadays they were lucky if there was anything at all in them. Most days both she and Eddy relied on Rita to share her lunch with them.

Vera tried her best to help her mother by running errands and looking after Benny as soon as she came home from school. At weekends she always took Benny out in his pram. Sometimes Rita came with her and they took him to see the flowers in St John’s Gardens.

Edmund was usually expected to help in the shop, sorting out the studs and nails into their right boxes, or putting the leather soles into pairs. It was something he hated doing. With the new leather being so shiny on both sides it was difficult to tell which side up was the correct one and so he could never work out which was the sole for a right shoe and which one was for a left.

Their dad insisted that it was because Edmund was stupid and, after thumping him across the skull with his rolled up fist, he would fling the whole box of soles onto the floor and make him pick them all up and start again.

Whenever this happened, Vera would sneak into the shop while her dad was busy talking to a customer, or working on the polishing machine with his back towards her, and scrabble up a pile of soles and take them through into the living room and sort them out for Edmund.

It was risky because they both knew that if he ever spotted what was going on, Edmund would get another crack across the skull.

Neither of them ever breathed a word about this to Rita. Only their mam knew what went on. She did her best to protect Eddy, but she also knew that if she was seen to be making too much fuss of him he would be punished again.

He was hit so often across the top of his head that it was a mass of raised bumps. Sometimes he complained that it sounded as if there were ‘bells ringing inside his ears’.

‘You should tell the school nurse next time she comes to examine us,’ Vera told him.

Eddy shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t be interested.’

‘She might be. She makes you raise your shirt and lower your trousers so that she can look at your back to make sure you’re not being beaten, doesn’t she?’

‘I know, but I couldn’t tell her about my head, Mam would be too upset if I let on,’ he declared stoutly.

‘She’d understand.’

Eddy shook his head. ‘Dad might turn on her if I said anything about it. He’s so bad-tempered these days you don’t know where you are with him. He only picks on me because I’m so small,’

Eddy grumbled. ‘I can’t help it if Charlie was six inches taller than me when he was my age.’

‘You still might grow,’ Vera told him hopefully.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Eddy muttered gloomily.

‘Well, don’t worry. Rita Farthing likes you the way you are. She thinks you’re absolutely perfect,’ she teased.

Eddy Quinn struggled to balance the loaded delivery bike as he wheeled it along Scotland Road. It was the first time he had ever taken it out and he was wishing that the boss at Steven’s Hardware Store didn’t expect him to do so many deliveries at once. There was so much packed into the big wire basket on the front that it made the bike top-heavy, and he could hardly see over the top of it. It was far too dangerous for him to ride.

He waited for a break in the traffic so that he could wheel the bike across the intersection with Juvenal Street. He had three deliveries to do in Aldersley Street and one in Nicholas Street. That would hopefully lighten his load so that he’d be able to ride the rest of the way.

If he was lucky he’d manage to get to Ellenborough Street and meet up with Rita Farthing before she got tired of waiting for him and went indoors.

It was the thought of seeing Rita that made him want to try and get as many of his deliveries completed as he possibly could before they met. The less that remained to be done then, the more time he could spend talking to Rita.

She often had an apple, or a snack of some kind, for him and he wondered which it would be tonight. Her mam was a smashing cook and her currant scones were the best he’d ever tasted. Rita’s grandfather also gave her a bag of broken biscuits each week, which she usually shared with Vee and him. Vee normally took hers back home for little Benny, but he was always so hungry that he ate whatever Rita gave him right there on the spot.

As he struggled with his heavy load Eddy wondered why his parents had had another baby. They were so hard up these days that another mouth to feed meant that the rest of them had to go short.

He wondered what Charlie would have thought about the change in their way of life if he was still alive. He’d never had to get a part-time job while he was at school. In those days their mam had never seemed to be worried about money, not even when their dad had gone into the army.

Of course, Gran and Granddad Simmonds had been alive then and they’d always been popping round with treats of one kind or another. At least once a week they would invite them all to their house in Trinity Road for a meal.

Granny Simmonds had loved cooking, just like Rita’s mam seemed to. His own mam never seemed to dish up anything better than scouse these days, probably because she was always short of housekeeping money, he thought morosely.

She’d looked so pleased when he’d told her that he’d got a part-time job as a delivery boy and would be getting two shillings and sixpence each week. She’d told him he could keep the sixpence for himself, but his dad hadn’t agreed with that.

‘You don’t smoke or drink so what do you want that much money for?’ he scoffed. ‘You’ll only spend it on sweets and they’ll rot your teeth.’

‘I want the sixpence so that I can go to the pictures,’ he explained. Instead of agreeing that he could have it, his dad had thumped him across the top of his head for answering back. He’d hit him so hard that he’d had a headache for two days afterwards.

He didn’t know what his dad would have said if he’d told him that he wanted to take Rita to the pictures, as a way of saying thanks for all the scoff she gave him.

He should have expected his dad to say he couldn’t keep the sixpence from his wages; he’d never let him keep any of the tips he was given for delivering boots and shoes. In the end he’d worked out a devious plan: whenever a customer gave him a penny, he told no one and hid it behind a loose brick in the back jigger wall before he went indoors.

When his father intercepted him, which he did without fail, he was able to hand over the money he’d been told to collect and say quite truthfully that that was all he had.

Eddy was pleased that he’d got this job as a delivery boy and he intended to work hard and keep it to prove to his dad that other people didn’t think he was thick.

He was always telling him, ‘You’re too bloody short and weedy to ever amount to anything. You’ll never be a man because you’re such a wet little sod. A spell in the army is what you need, but they’d never take you because you’re such a little squirt.’

He used to get upset about this. His dad’s caustic remarks would bring tears to his eyes. Nowadays, however, he just moved away as quickly as he could before his old man reached out and battered him across the head.

‘I’ll thump your bloody skull,’ seemed to be the only thing he ever managed to say to him these days, Eddy mused.

Charlie had never been treated like that, he didn’t live to see how much the war changed their father. When Charlie was alive, their dad had been a wonderful sort of fellow. He’d always been ready to kick a ball about or play some game or the other with them. Vee was his favourite, then, but he and Charlie didn’t mind. Their dad had always explained to them that you had to make a fuss of girls, so they’d accepted it.

Vee had been such a pretty little girl, with her bright blue eyes and thick black hair that framed her elfin face. She generally wore dainty dresses, trimmed with ribbons and lace, and a matching ribbon in her hair. She never seemed to get grubby like they did, or run and jump and climb onto walls when they went for a walk. Instead she walked along holding their dad’s hand. The moment she said she was tired, he’d pick her up and sit her on his shoulders.

The war had changed all that. Their dad had gone away a happy smiling man who’d loved them all, and he’d come back a miserable old grump who was mean and hard, and had no time at all for any of his family, not even Vee.

It could have been the shock of Charlie dying as well as Gran and Granddad Simmonds. Their mother had been so upset she’d cried for days and said that life would never be the same again. She’d been right about that, though their dad had come out of it all right in the end, he reflected.

He’d taken charge, because Mam had been so upset, and handled all the settling up that had to be done. Out of all the chaos he’d ended up with a business of his own. It was a pity he couldn’t have managed to provide them with a decent home to go with it. Their mam was used to a nice place with pretty things about her.

Mam was also used to having enough money to live on without having to scrimp all the time. Now they seemed to live hand-to-mouth with every penny having to do the work of two. There never seemed to be enough food to go round or enough coal to keep the place warm. He was fed up with patched clothes and seeing his mam trying to make do and mend everything. Even little Benny was dressed in things she made for him out of their old clothes.

The only one who didn’t seem to mind the change in their affairs was his dad, but then he wasn’t going short like the rest of them. Mam always made sure that he had a good plateful, and she even bought chops and bacon and stuff like that especially for him. Even when all they had was scouse he’d look round as soon as she’d dished it out to see if there was any meat on his or Vee’s plate; if there was, he’d spear it with his fork and put it on his own plate.

‘You two aren’t working so you don’t need feeding up,’ he’d state.

Mam would look angry, but she’d signal with her eyes to say nothing. Nowadays, she usually kept back a piece of meat for each of them hidden away where he wouldn’t find it. If there was any bread left at the end of the day, she’d make it up into butties and put them in their lunch boxes for the next day.

Mam didn’t look happy any more, he reflected. Dad spoke to her as if she was a skivvy. He dictated orders as if he was still a corporal in the army and he wasn’t above shouting ‘jump to it’, or ‘get a move on then woman, I haven’t got all day like you’, if she didn’t do what he asked right away.

He hoped his dad wouldn’t start on Benny when he was older. Poor little sod, he’ll probably turn out to be even smaller for his age than I am since he’s always hungry, he thought gloomily.

When he’d mentioned this to Rita she’d given him one of her wonderful smiles and squeezed his arm.

‘Well, I like you the size you are,’ she told him. ‘You’re taller than me and that’s all that matters.’

Eddy grinned to himself at the memory. ‘Make sure you don’t grow any more then and spoil things,’ he’d told her.

He liked Rita a lot. For a girl she had so much sense, which was probably why she and Vera were such good friends. He liked the fact that she didn’t show off, or put on any airs and graces, even though her family was better off than his.

More often than not she was the one who provided the tickets when they went to the pictures. She’d always say that her granddad had got them for free, or her mam had been given them and didn’t want to see the film.

The thing he liked about her most was that she didn’t try to chat him up at school. He’d already warned Vera not to speak to him unless she absolutely had to. He didn’t want the other boys teasing him because, whatever Rita might say about his size, he knew he was the smallest boy in his class and he didn’t want to attract attention to himself. He’d seen what could happen when the rest of the class picked on a boy.