The Second-last Woman in England (41 page)

‘Go and play outside, please, children. Your Dad and I have things to discuss,’ and she had shut the kitchen door.

No one ever shut the kitchen door. It was always open. She and Gladys had stared at each other in silent confusion.

‘Tell the others,’ Jean had instructed Gladys. ‘Tell them Mum and Dad have something to discuss. Tell them to play outside until it is time to go to Chapel,’ and Gladys had nodded wide-eyed and gone upstairs to tell them. For that was what you did, you became Mum and Dad when Mum and Dad weren’t there; as the eldest it was expected.

Between them they had shepherded Nerys and Edward and Bertie into the street with the minimum of fuss and set them to a game of ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’

‘Are you not playing, Jean?’ said Gladys, watching her elder sister closely, taking her cue from her.

Jean had shaken her head. ‘I’ll keep watch,’ she had replied. And she had returned to the house and stood outside the kitchen, waiting till it was time to go to Chapel.

But they hadn’t gone to Chapel. Half an hour had passed, and at last Mum had emerged from the kitchen, a worried frown on her face, and she had paused when she saw her eldest daughter.

‘We’re not attending Chapel, Jean. Go and tell the children and get them out of their best clothes. I don’t want them spoiling them playing in the street.’

It was a February morning, 1945. The wind, Jean remembered, had been bitingly cold, and, with no coal to burn, the house had been almost as cold as the street outside. And the children out in the wind and in their Sunday clothes. She remembered being worried about their clothes—if they spoiled their best clothes they would be attending Chapel in their week-day clothes, all patched up and hand-me-downs, and Mum would never have allowed that. The clothes were Jean’s responsibility; if they were ruined she would be to blame. She would fetch the children in.

But Mum had said, we’re not attending Chapel.

Jean had stared at her in astonishment. Not attending Chapel? They always went to Chapel. Even when Dad had done his back in, even when Mum had been bad with a fever. Always,
always
they went.

‘But why? Are you not well, Mum? Is it Dad? Do you want me to take the children to Chapel on my own?’ Jean had asked anxiously, a sense of something ominous creeping over her.

‘No, love, we’re quite well, your Dad and me, but something has happened. At your Dad’s work—though with God’s help, it will be all right.’ Mum had paused and frowned. ‘And I’ll not have you going off to Chapel on your own, it’s too far. Now, be a good girl and bring the children in out of the cold. They’ll catch their death.’

She had stared in silence, noticing suddenly that Mum was distracted, her hair falling out of her hair net, her fingers twitching restlessly by her sides then reaching up to push her hair out of her face. But saying nothing. Instead Mum had turned and gone back into the kitchen.

Jean had stood and waited. For what, she wasn’t sure.

Eventually she had gone outside and brought in the children, hurrying them and ignoring their questions.

‘Are we not goin’ to Chapel, then, Jean?’ said Gladys.

‘But it’s my turn! It’s my turn, Mr Wolf!’ cried Bertie, half excited, half annoyed.

‘You never wait for your turn,’ said Edward. ‘And anyway, Mr Wolf would easily ’ave caught you, just you see if he wouldn’t!’

‘But why are we to go inside and take off our Sunday best, Jean?’ said Nerys, standing determinedly in the doorway.

‘Just you do what our Mum tells you, Nerys Corbett,’ said Jean firmly, counting the last child in through the front door and closing it shut behind them, and behind the cold February morning.

‘But what
is
it, Jean?’

‘If you know, you ’ave to tell us!’

‘I don’t know nothin’!’

‘She
does
know! Gladys, she does—and she won’t tell!’

‘Shut up, Nerys, I was with Jean when Mum come out the kitchen and Mum didn’t say nothin’!’

‘Gladys! Nerys!
Stop
it!’

‘I want to go outside and play!’

‘Well, you can’t, it’s Sunday.’

‘But we went out before and Mum said we could!’

‘
Ow!
Edward pulled my ’air!’

‘But
why
aren’t we goin’ to Chapel? Why aren’t we?’

‘It’s ’cause you’re an ’orrid little boy, Bertie, and God don’t want you in His ’ouse no more!’

‘That’s not true! That’s not true!’

‘Oh, put a
sock
in it, Bertie—’

‘
SHUT UP!
All of you! Don’t you
understand
? Somethin’
bad
’as ’appened! Somethin’ very bad!’

Jean had left them, then, Gladys and Nerys and Edward and Bertie, and those had been her final words to them.

She had gone back downstairs, angry and fearful. She would let Mum know that the children were all inside, that was what she would do. She had done her duty.

The kitchen door had been open. She had seen Dad still sitting at the kitchen table. Dad, who was normally so active, so big, always moving, talking, laughing. Now he was sitting silently, unmoving. He had looked small. When he saw her, he had looked up, given her a look—sad, anxious? No, it had been more than that, a look that she had not been able to understand.

‘Dad?’

But Dad had frowned and looked away.

‘Come inside, child,’ Mum had said. ‘And close the door for a moment, there’s a good girl.’

Jean had come in and sat down at the table and a great fear had gripped her like a giant pair of hands tightly squeezing her stomach. She was about to be told what had happened, because she was the eldest. For a moment she had longed to be upstairs playing and squabbling with the other children.

‘What is it?’ she had said, and it had been important to sound normal. Calm. Grown up.

‘Well, love. There’s been a silly mix up at the dock—’

‘Not a silly mix up,’ Dad had interrupted gruffly. ‘I took somethin’. Let’s not beat around the bush, Gloria. I took somethin’ what wasn’t mine to take. Thou shalt not steal, says the Lord, and I stole. And I knew it was stealin’ and I stole anyway. I have failed you all and there’s no two ways about it. I have let you all down, and the Government, and myself. And the Lord.’

Jean had listened silently, wide-eyed, appalled.

‘What your Dad’s saying is that—’

‘What I’m
saying
, girl, is that I got caught and I got the sack. There—I’m not proud of it, it’s a shameful thing to admit to, but there you are.’

Jean had put her hand to her mouth while the kitchen, the world, spun uncontrollably around her. She had looked from one to the other to see what it meant, to read in their faces how this would affect them.

‘It’s unjust!’ Mum had burst out suddenly, ‘Your Dad took an orange, Jean, for you children. A single, solitary orange from the warehouse—it’s downright unjust, Owen. After all the years you’ve put in at that place, all the extra shifts, all through the Blitz—’

‘I broke the law,’ Dad had said quietly, his head down. ‘Just once, it’s true, but I got caught. And I was meant to be watching the place.

I was there to keep the looters out. I let them all down. And last night the supervisor from the Ministry was there, otherwise no one would have noticed—except the Lord.’ He had bowed his head.

‘Will you … go to prison?’ Jean had said, the word dry as sandpaper on her tongue.

‘Oh, Owen!’ Mum had whispered, her voice breaking. ‘But you have a family to support! Owen, did you not tell him? What will we live on now? You’ve worked the docks eighteen years!’

Dad had frowned. ‘I’ll not be going to prison, child. The supervisor dismissed me, but said he’d not call the police. We ought to be grateful, Gloria.’

But he had glowered at the table in a way that she hadn’t seen since Father Bellamy had brought a Catholic to preach at Chapel one Sunday.

‘
Grateful
? I’ll not be grateful to anyone who dismisses a man for stealing food to feed his family!’ Mum had said, pounding the table in sudden fury. ‘What do they know, these men in their fine suits sitting in their offices in Whitehall? What do they know of our lives here? They tell
us
to make sacrifices—every day they tell us—but what sacrifices do
they
make? Living in their big houses with their servants! What do they know about what
we
have to put up with?’

Jean had sat frozen to her seat, her stomach twisting in sickening knots. She had never seen Mum angry, never. And Dad so silent, so small. It was frightening.

‘I’ve a good mind to go round there—’

‘
Enough!
’ Dad had said, thumping the table, and Jean had cowered. ‘That is enough, Gloria. What’s done is done. There’s nothin’ more to be said about it.’

And amazingly Mum had defied him.

‘
No
. You are wrong, Owen Corbett. You have to fight for your rights in this world, the Good Lord knows I am right. Go back to this supervisor and talk to him. Explain it to him—’

‘I said
ENOUGH
!’

This time there was silence.

Upstairs a loud thump followed by a howl of pain made them all look up.

‘Jean. You must be a good child,’ Mum had said then, barely above a whisper, her face pale. ‘We’ve told you what happened and there’ll be changes now, you can be sure of that. Go upstairs and settle the children while we decide what’s to be done.’

So Jean had left the kitchen, but instead of joining her brothers and sisters she had gone outside. Out into the space and solitude of the cold February morning. Dad had stolen! It had been inconceivable! It had been too much to take in. It had been a sin against God. And yet—and yet, if you were starving? If your family was starving?

It was wrong because others were starving too. Dad had said he wouldn’t go to prison … But would he go to Hell? Dad was a good man! He was a
good
man!

She had walked quickly away from the house, southward towards the river, going instinctively towards the Chapel because it was a Sunday morning and that was where you went on Sunday morning.

We should go to Chapel, she had thought, pausing on a street corner. They’ll notice we’re not there, of course they will! And they’ll want to know why we’re not there. They’ll find out, someone will talk. And then what? Everyone would know. Pride was a sin. Forgiveness was heavenly. But Dad had stolen from the warehouse, from Government property—from the war effort. They would all know.

It had been so very cold out and she had been wearing only her thin cardigan. Shivering, she had turned away from the street that led down to the Chapel, not knowing which direction to take. The street had been empty. It had still been early, only churchgoers out at that time, and late shift-workers returning home bleary-eyed, clutching empty sandwich boxes. A bird had burst suddenly into raucous song. A dog had barked somewhere in the distance.

The rocket had appeared overhead with no warning. No air-raid siren sounded, people had no time to run onto the street, or to run from the street into a shelter. It had screamed overhead with a whistle, coming from the southeast, from the coast, all the way from Holland. She froze in her tracks, the blood running cold through her veins as it reached her, then passed her, and she sagged with relief. Not here then, not her, not this time.

But then it had stopped. A second, two seconds later and Jean had seen it falling from the sky a little way to the north. And everything had stopped: sound, the wind, time itself.

And a lifetime had passed and then the world had erupted.

She had run. Run back the way she had come, along the deserted streets, tripping over a bottle, the kerb, her thin cardigan flapping, her shoes barely touching the pavement as she flew home.

But there had been no home. There had just been a hole where that section of the street had been. A hole and smoke and flames and rubble. And oddly, at her feet, a shard of white bone china with the King’s head and the words
‘LONG MAY HE REIGN’
in fancy writing.

They should have been at Chapel. If only they had gone to Chapel. If only.

‘You have to fight for your rights in this world, the Good Lord knows I am right,’ Mum had said. ‘Go back to the supervisor and talk to him. Explain it to him—’