At My Mother's Knee (13 page)

*

Aunty Chrissie was a
clippie
on the buses. She liked to look, as
she put it, immaculate. She never appeared in public without
perfectly coiffed hair, a full face of slap and her clothing nothing
less than perfection. There was no running to the shop or
the betting office in slippers and rollers for Aunty Chris – forget
that for a game of soldiers. She didn't greet her public until
she was properly painted and shod. Just like my father, she
liked to create the impression that she 'had a few bob' and
would step out in style in her set of Birkenhead market pearls
and camel coat. She loved 'putting on the dog', as she called it.

Her dark navy conductress's uniform could easily have been
mistaken for the work of a bespoke tailor. She'd taken it home
and altered it herself, nipping it in at the waist and shortening
the sleeves of the jacket so that her shirt cuffs showed. Each
night she'd press it neatly with a warm iron and a damp tea
towel so that the fabric didn't shine, taking her fag out of her
mouth for a moment to spit on the iron before leaning on it to
create a razor's edge seam down the front of the trousers. She
wore a clean white shirt every day and tied her Birkenhead
Corporation Transport tie in a smart Windsor knot. She suited
this masculine attire; it made her look sexy and she knew it.
Slung over each shoulder and across her chest, two leather
straps carried her money bag and ticket machine. I thought she
looked like a gunslinger as she stood at Woodside terminus
pulling on her leather gloves, ticket machine casually dangling
on her hip as she chatted to her driver, Bill Casey. They leaned
against the wheel of a stationary 79 sharing a quick lastminute
fag while they waited for the signal from the inspector
to pull out for the long haul to Prenton and beyond.

I'd show her off to my mates as we caught the bus from
Woodside on our way home from school. They were in awe of
her. They'd been well primed before actually meeting her in the
flesh, and warned that while on the one hand she might tell us
all to bugger off, on the other, and depending on her mood, she just might give us a roll of unused bus tickets and a couple of
pennies. Aunty Chris could be capricious. They soon learned
that politeness and plenty of flattery usually got results.

'Doesn't your aunty look like
I Love Lucy
?' they'd say
within her earshot, but casually so as not to seem as if they
were 'crawling'. Actually, when she had her curly hair dyed red
she did resemble
Lucille Ball
a little. I, and most of the men
who travelled on her bus, preferred her when she was a blonde.

'Some feller on the bus today said I looked like Marlene
Dietrich,' she'd say when she came home from another long
shift, proudly pulling her 'Marlene Dietrich' face in the mirror,
a spot of gurning that involved sucking her cheeks in, closing
her eyes slowly till she could barely see, and letting her fag
hang from the corner of her mouth. 'They all say it,' she'd add
confidently through barely moving lips in case she should drop
the fag or disturb the death's head mask she was creating in the
mirror and thereby spoil the illusion.

The family good-naturedly humoured her, but standing
under the stairs on the 79 bus in her tailored uniform with her
beautiful cheekbones and sly smile, draped lazily against the
partition, one hand on the bell, the other in her trouser pocket,
she unwittingly conjured up an image that certainly was
evocative of Marlene. Her bus was known as Marlene's Bus by
the regulars of the 79 route, or, if she was going through her
'fiery red' stage, Lucy's Bus. Either way she didn't mind and
secretly, although she was loath to admit it, she enjoyed the
attention.

Aunty Chris didn't like men or strong drink. If offered the
latter she would distort her face into a grimace of disapproval.
'Certainly not,' she'd snap, and turning the offender to stone
with a withering glare would add with a shudder, 'I never
touch the stuff. Get it out o' me bloody sight, and you with it,
bloody reprobate.' She hated drunks, and would bang and
crash about the house to show her displeasure if Uncle Harold and the cousins came home from the pub slightly intoxicated,
or 'reeking the house out with ale' as she put it.

She hadn't always been so disapproving, not by a long shot.
In her day Aunty Chris could have drunk Uncle Harold and the
entire merchant navy under the table and still got up at six in
the morning and worked a fourteen-hour shift. She was known
on the streets of Birkenhead in her teen years as a bit of a wild
one. She had after all been in a home for delinquent girls and
was so bad that even the nuns with their fearsome reputation
had not been able to control her. Aunty Chris said the nuns
who ran that home made the female guards at Ravensbrück
look 'soft'. Mind you, she said that about any woman in
authority. The blonde woman who worked behind the counter
at the Birkenhead General Post Office was known as Irma
Grese because she once told Aunty Chris off for filling out a
form incorrectly. She never went to that woman's counter if she
could avoid it after that.

'Don't go in that queue,' she'd say, raising her voice ever so
slightly so it was audible to the staff behind the counter, in
particular her nemesis, 'you'll only get spoken to like you were
a bloody fool.' And then, 'It's just as well she's behind glass,'
she'd add conversationally to whoever was listening. 'She puts
me in mind of a trout.'

Men who appeared pushy were known as 'Little Hitlers'.
There were a couple of Little Hitlers working as inspectors on the
buses. There was even a Himmler on the 60 route. Aunty Chris
didn't like being told what to do by people she didn't think much
of, and she made her feelings known and didn't care who heard
her. Many a passenger who overstepped the mark was silenced
with a withering look and the quick wrist action that followed as
she turned the handle warningly on her ticket machine.

'She's got a mouth like a bee's arse, that woman,' one
passenger who had been on the receiving end of a stinging
retort was heard to remark.

*

I've frequently been asked over the years who Lily Savage was
based on and I've always answered that it was no one in particular
and she was just a figment of my imagination. The
truth, I realize now, is that Lily owes a lot to the women I
encountered in my childhood. Characteristics and attitudes
were observed and absorbed, Aunty Chris's in particular, and
they provided the roots and compost for the Lily that would
germinate and grow later on.

Sometimes when I was pounding on the slap or teasing the
fringe of the wig I would catch a glimpse of Aunty Chris in
myself in the dressing-room mirror. I would notice myself
adopting one of her mannerisms as I went through the ritual of
getting Lily on. Years of being around Aunty Chris as she got
ready for work meant that I unconsciously absorbed her
actions as she slapped up. A fag hanging dangerously out of
the corner of my mouth as I sprayed a gallon of hair lacquer
over the coiffure, one eye closed against the rising spiral of
smoke – here she was, coming back to haunt me in the mirror
of a pub dressing room.

'How're you doing, Aunty Chris? Nice to see you again.'

Aunty Chrissie had a complicated beauty routine that she
went through unfailingly every morning at the kitchen table.

Before she applied the warpaint she'd have what she called a
'good wash'. Since Lowther Street had no bathroom she'd
carry a washing-up bowl of warm water up to the privacy of
her bedroom and spend a leisurely half-hour 'bathing'. 'I don't
wish to be disturbed while I'm having a wash,' she'd announce
primly as she made her way up the stairs carrying her bowl,
wearing an enormous pale pink housecoat from Brentford
Nylons and a head full of rollers. They all had these housecoats,
in a variety of lurid colours. Full length, quilted and
made of nylon, they were lined with something that made them
stick out. My mum and my aunties would glide round the kitchen looking like Daleks when they had them on. If Aunty
Chris was running late she made do with 'a quick swill' that
involved little more than a brief wipe-over with a flannel at the
kitchen sink, but she never short-changed herself when it came
to the maquillage. She could put it on in five minutes if
necessary, but preferred to take her time. Having to rush her
beauty routine always put her in a foul mood.

She never used soap on her face and would only splash the
tiniest amount of water on to it, preferring to use a dollop of
cold cream from the enormous pot of Nivea that sat on her
bedside cabinet to clean that sacred area. She'd ladle it on,
massaging it in until it had all but vanished apart from a slimy
sheen across the skin. She'd throw her head back and slap her
throat and jawline vigorously to 'tighten up the skin'. After
sitting for a while to recover from this bout of self-abuse she
would then remove what was left of the sheen, very gently,
with a tissue, and spray a fine mist of rosewater and witch
hazel from a plastic bottle all over her face. While she waited
for this concoction to dry she'd take a sip of tea, light up a fag
and use the momentary lapse in proceedings to peruse the
racing pages of the
Daily Mirror
, blowing smoke rings out of
the corner of her mouth as she studied the form with the critical
eye of an old pro.

Satisfied that she had dragged the last available gasp out of
her Embassy and found a couple of horses that looked
promising, she would resume the ritual. A tiny dab of Ponds to
moisturize, followed by a light application of Max Factor's Hi
Fi foundation from a grubby-looking tube, which transformed
her death-white complexion to a rosy hue worthy of any principal
boy in the Empire panto. She sealed this with a light
pressing of face powder using a decrepit powder puff, pulverized
into a flat grey pad from constant use over the years. This
she'd wipe over the compressed crème powder in an ancient
compact that had no lid and pat across her face, pausing to enquire of Aunty Anne, scrubbing shirt collars on the draining
board like a woman possessed, if there was 'any tea going in
that pot. I'm parched here.'

'If you want tea then get off your arse and make it yourself.'

'I can't.'

'Why not?'

'I'm getting ready for work.'

'Oh . . .' and then, after a while, 'I'll put the kettle on in a
minute.'

It could have been the back room of a geisha house. The
importance of observing the ceremony, the skill and concentration
required to paint the naked face into a flawless
mask, was recognized and respected in Lowther Street as in
any Japanese tea house. As the maid washed the clothes and
made the tea the geisha painted her lovely face. Horses would
be discussed as they waited for the kettle to boil. Aunty Chris
favoured
Lester Piggott
. She was devoted to him and would
back any horse that he was riding. Aunty Anne could always
be persuaded to bet on a horse if it had a name that she
thought might be lucky.

'There's a horse running in the one ten,
Chrissie
, called Half
a Mo,' she would say, raising her glasses so she could get her
face closer to the page of the paper and focus on the small
print.

'What's the odds?'

'Fifty to one.'

'It's a bloody nag,' Aunty Chris would exclaim as she
examined her paint job approvingly in the small mirror
with the plastic frame that was propped up, as always, against
the wicker hair tidy. The tools of her trade. 'Don't waste your
money, woman.'

Ignoring her, Aunty Anne continued to stare myopically at
the newspaper. 'You see, I've saved half a custard slice for our
Mo,' she said reasonably, tapping her top set of dentures with her biro, 'and this Half a Mo might be a lucky omen . . . a sign
. . . half a custard slice for Mo . . . Half a Mo . . . don't you
think?' She put her glasses on and picked up her purse from the
table. 'I'm going to put half a crown on it.'

'I hope there isn't a horse called Bloody Halfwit running,'
Chrissie drawled, pencilling in two butterfly antennae for eyebrows.
'She'll be destitute come teatime if there is.' She started
to laugh, making little grunting sounds and sending short
bursts of smoke shooting out of each nostril.

'You're going to kill yourself if you don't pack those things
up,' Aunty Anne said disapprovingly. Apart from the odd one
at Christmas for a treat, like my mother she'd never smoked.
'And I'm still backing that horse, regardless to what you think.'

Adopting a suitably martyred air, she went in search of
something to write her bet out on. Aunty Chris couldn't resist
the odd smart oneliner and Aunty Anne accepted her role as
stooge to her sister's Top Banana – up to a point, because at the
end of the day it was Annie who wore the trousers.

'You've been titivating yourself for the best part of an hour
now,' she said. 'Get your skates on or you'll be late for work.'

'Christ tonight,' Chrissie exclaimed, rooting in her make-up
bag, 'look at the bleedin' time.' She produced a small bottle of
black eyeliner and expertly painted it round her eyes, swiped a
bit of blue eyeshadow across the lids and then dabbed a dot of
black powder into her sockets and blended it into the blue with
the tip of her little finger. Time for another fag. She lit it and
sat back in her chair, examining her reflection in the mirror as
if she was scrutinizing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for
cracks. Dipping into her make-up bag again she opened a little
black box containing block mascara and spat on it with gusto,
mixing it into an inky puddle with the tiny brush provided,
which was remarkably similar to the one that was supposed to
be used for brushing fluff off the needle of the Dansette.

I opened this box once, to see what this magical black stuff that transformed pale, stubby eyelashes into a sweeping set
worthy of Bambi actually looked like, but hurriedly closed it,
appalled at the peculiar stench, which was due, no doubt, to
the accumulation of years of nicotine-laced spit.