Bye Bye Love (23 page)

‘Pack it in, Scarlett! Look what you done to me!’

Scarlett made a threatening movement with the shovel.

‘Get your stuff and get out before I make it worse.’

He shuffled over to the television, which was still happily telling them about a washing powder that washed whiter, grabbed his repair bag and made for the door. Scarlett realised she was enjoying this. A feeling of power surged through her.

‘This is the last time I do anything for you,’ Brian said resentfully.

Scarlett couldn’t believe what a coward he was. He could easily overpower her if he tried.

‘You shouldn’t try and take advantage,’ she told him. She exchanged the shovel for the poker and advanced on him, ready to strike again. ‘Out! Out of my house!’

‘Bitch!’ Brian spat, and made off down the front path.

Scarlett slammed the door on him and leaned against it. Her heart was racing and her chest was heaving. She felt more alive than she had done for weeks. She laughed out loud.

‘Got you, Brian Hopkins!’ she shouted.

The incident had given her a surge of energy. She turned off
Emergency Ward 10
on the TV, found her old favourite, Radio Luxembourg, on the radio and sang along with the music as she gave the floors the best polish they’d had since well before Simon was born.

By the time Simon needed his next feed, she was pleasantly exhausted. She flopped on the saggy sofa and watched him as he chomped away, his little face fierce with concentration.

‘It’s no good, this not having any money,’ she told him. ‘It means people think they can push you around. And I tell you something, that blooming Brian’s really made me think. I’m not going to be taken advantage of like that any more, and I’m not going round asking for favours. I’ve got to earn some money somehow, and I’ve got to do it with you and your sister around.’

Her attention wandered to the television, which was now trying to persuade her to buy a new vacuum cleaner.

‘That’ll be the day,’ she said to Simon. ‘Just imagine, a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine and the fridge back! I’d hardly have to do any housework at all. It’d be like one of those American places you see on the films.’

It was an impossible dream. She took Simon off the breast and laid him over her shoulder to wind him.

‘Perhaps we’ll settle for the fridge back,’ she said as she rubbed his back. ‘I really miss that. But first we’ve just got to get enough to live on, and have more than just beans or eggs for dinner. I tell you what we’ll do, we’ll go and look at the ads in the newsagent’s window tomorrow morning.’

Simon gave a big windy burp. Scarlett laughed.

‘There’s a clever boy! So that’s decided, then.’

When he was fed and changed, she laid him down in the drawer she was using as a crib, then bent over the cot and kissed Joanne on the forehead. The little girl was deeply asleep, her arms spread on the pillow. Scarlett was overwhelmed with a wave of love. They were so sweet and so helpless. They depended completely on her.

‘Things will get better, my darlings,’ she promised them. ‘We won’t be poor for ever.’

The next morning saw her on the street corner, studying the postcards on the newsagent’s board. Amongst the things for sale and rooms to let and kittens wanting a good home, there were only four jobs going—one for a hairdresser’s apprentice, one for home work addressing envelopes and two for cleaners.

‘Better go for the cleaning,’ Scarlett told the babies. ‘Let’s hope they’ll let me bring you along as well.’

She made a note of the addresses and set off. The first woman took one look at the pram and refused to even consider employing Scarlett.

‘I’ve got a nice home. I don’t want sticky fingers all over it,’ she said.

The woman at the second address was more accommodating.

‘That’s all right, just as long as you can get the work done,’ she said. ‘Shall we try it for a week and see if we suit?’

Scarlett was all too ready to agree. It was arranged that she should work for three hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Scarlett wheeled the pram back home feeling elated. She had started to take control of her life again.

T
HE
cleaning money made a real difference. If it hadn’t been for Victor, Scarlett might have been able to manage. But her plan to control how he spent his wages failed. Neighbours started waylaying her in the street and knocking at the door.

‘I don’t like to bother you, dear, but your dad borrowed five shillings from me three weeks ago and he still hasn’t paid it back.’

‘Look, this ain’t good enough. You help someone out and then they welsh on you.’

‘I asked him for that half-crown back I lent him, and he said you take all his money off of him and I ought to ask you.’

Scarlett apologised to all of them, told them never to let Victor have any money, however sad a sob story he told them, and paid out her precious earnings. On the third Friday since she had been doing the cleaning job she found that, instead of being able to buy some mince and make the cottage pie she had been looking forward to, she had just enough in her purse for a few vegetables and yet another tin of baked beans.

‘I’m turning into a blooming baked bean,’ she told Joanne.

The little girl just grinned at her and went on banging saucepans with the wooden spoon.

‘And you need some toys. You’ve only got your rattles and stuff. You need some bricks or one of those push-along dog things. I can’t even afford to go to a jumble sale now. And God knows how many more times these shoes’ll take being repaired, even if I can afford to have them done, that is.’

She tried to tackle Victor.

‘Dad, you’ve got to stop borrowing money off the neighbours. That Mrs Thompson is ever so sweet; she finds it hard to say no. It isn’t fair, she can’t afford to sub you. She’s only got her OAP.’

‘What else can I do?’ Victor asked. ‘I flog myself to death working six days a week, and you go and take all my money off of me.’

In the end, Scarlett had to give in and give him more of his wages each day. It was better than having to pay back other people.

There was worse to follow when she went to work the following Monday.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go,’ her employer said.

‘What?’ Scarlett said.

‘It’s the babies. I really can’t be having them here with you every time.’

‘But you said you didn’t mind!’

‘I know, but now I’ve found a woman who’ll do the same work as you and her children are at school. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

‘That is so unfair!’ Scarlett objected. ‘I need the money. I work just as hard as someone without children.’

But the woman was immovable.

Furious, Scarlett trekked down to the newsagent’s again. There were no suitable jobs at all amongst the postcards. She walked all the way back up to the London Road to the newsagent’s there and found three requests for cleaners. When she went to see them, one turned out to have found someone already. The others wouldn’t let her bring the babies with her. By now it had started raining and Scarlett’s left shoe was letting in water. Simon was dry enough under the hood, but Joanne, sitting at the bottom of the pram, had only Scarlett’s old school mac round her and was grizzling as the rainwater made her face wet and cold.

‘We’ll go home and get dry,’ Scarlett told her.

She was in unknown territory now, in the grid of streets between the sea front and the main road. She crossed over the railway line and found herself walking along a parade of small shops with a pub at the corner. The shops just made her depressed, because she knew she couldn’t afford to spend anything if she wanted to put money in the gas and electricity meters. She glanced at the pub as she passed. The Horse and Groom. It was nicer, she decided, than most of the town pubs she knew of. Not as nice as the Red Lion, of course, but then no pub would ever compare to the Red Lion. A notice in one of the windows caught her eye.
Cleaner wanted.
Mornings. Good wages
.

‘Might as well try it,’ she said to Joanne.

She looked at her watch. Just before opening time, so someone would be there and the children would be let in. Perfect timing. She banged on the door. A white-haired woman with merry eyes and a sweet smile opened it. Scarlett explained that she had come about the job.

‘Oh—good. Come in, dear. You’re soaked! Yes, bring the pram as well. What sweet babies. How old are they?’

Scarlett told her. ‘And before we get any further, I’d better tell you that I’ve got to bring them with me to work.’

‘Oh, that’s all right dear,’ the woman said, gently pinching Joanne’s cheek and smiling at her. ‘I love kiddies. It’ll cheer the place up a bit. Look, why don’t you come through to the back and I’ll put the kettle on.’

Before Scarlett knew what was happening, she was sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and eating chocolate biscuits while Joanne guzzled a plastic beaker full of orange squash and got chocolate round her mouth.

‘This is lovely, Mrs—er?’ Scarlett said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a chocolate biscuit.

‘Cartwright, dear. But call me Nell—everyone does.’

‘Nell, then. It’s so nice in here. Friendly and cosy.’

‘Thank you, dear. We like it. Bert and me, we’ve had this pub for forty years. We was youngsters when we took it on. Not much older than you. Ooh, they was hard days then. No one had any money. Not like now. People seem to do nothing but spend these days.’

‘Mmm,’ Scarlett said. She didn’t do a great deal of spending.

Nell got a cloth and wiped Joanne’s chocolatey hands and face.

‘Ooh, isn’t she just gorgeous! I could eat her up. My daughter lives up north, so I hardly ever see my grandchildren. Three of ’em, I’ve got—a girl of five and boys of eight and ten—but I ain’t seen them for nearly a year,’ Nell said.

‘Nan-nan,’ Joanne said, responding to Nell’s twinkle.

‘Oh, bless her! She called me Nan! What a little poppet! And doesn’t she look like you, a proper little picture. And what about the little one? Does he look like his daddy?’

Nell was irresistible. Scarlett found herself explaining all about Ricky and her predicament, while Nell shook her head and made sympathetic noises. Before she was finished, a bald man in his sixties put his head round the door.

‘’Ello,’ ello, ’ello! And who have we got here?’

It was Nell’s husband, Bert, come to open up the bar.

‘This is Scarlett, love, and her little ones. She’s our new cleaner.’

‘Oh—do you mean I’ve got the job?’ Scarlett asked. They hadn’t discussed that at all.

‘Well, yes, dear. If you want it, that is. Not everyone wants to work in a pub when they can get a place in a nice house. Would you be able to do Sundays?’

Right at that moment, Scarlett would have agreed to anything. Being at the Horse and Groom was like coming home.

It was the start of a new era. Each morning Scarlett got up early and gave the flat a tidy round, fed and changed Simon, then got Joanne up, washed and dressed. After that she made breakfast, took her father a cup of tea and then bundled the babies into the pram and set off for the Horse and Groom. The smell of ashtrays and spilled beer that greeted her as she went in the door was not repellent, as it might have been to many people—it was the smell of her childhood, rich and reassuring. It was hard work cleaning the two bars and the toilets, but she enjoyed it. It was satisfying to see the gleam on all the surfaces when she had finished, the dark patina of the woodwork, the bright glow of the brass-topped tables and the glitter of the mirrors. She set all the chairs and stools straight, put the beer mats out neatly and made sure the colours of the bar towels went together well.

All through the winter she got out on time each morning and was at the pub by half past nine, pushing the pram through rain and frost and snow, working even when she had a streaming cold or when one or other of the babies was teething and breaking in to her sleep. She didn’t want to let Nell and Bert down. They were like the grandparents she had never had. At Christmas, they gave her a turkey and the babies extravagant toys. Scarlett burst into tears and kissed them. It was the best Christmas she had had since her mother died.

Late in February, Bert strolled in to talk to her as she polished the beer pumps.

‘You done bar work when your folks had their place, didn’t you?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. I can pull a good pint, I can,’ Scarlett told him.

‘I thought as much. And you can add up?’

He reeled off a round of drinks. Scarlett looked at the prices around the bar and added them up in her head.

‘Eleven and eight pence.’

‘Right! Well done. I thought you was quick on the draw. You see, old Ivy what does evenings, she’s leaving at the end of the month. Going to live with her son in London. And what we wondered was, would you like to take on two or three evenings bar work as well as the cleaning? Truth to tell, we need someone young and pretty behind the bar. Someone to bring the customers in, like, and you’d be ideal.’

Three evenings’ work! Scarlett’s brain whirred, calculating what she could do with the extra money. She could buy new shoes for Joanne instead of having to go to jumble sales. She might even be able to replace the fridge.

Then she faced the practical difficulties.

‘I’d have to find someone to babysit,’ she said.

‘Well, you do that and let us know, all right?’

It was more difficult than she’d thought possible. None of the neighbours wanted to take it on, not on a regular basis. Scarlett didn’t want a series of youngsters coming in, not if they didn’t know much about looking after babies. And then there was her father. One of the days Bert wanted her to work was Victor’s day off. She couldn’t trust him not to fall asleep and not hear if one of the children woke up, but neither could she ask someone else into the house to mind them if her father was going to be lying around the place drunk. But she did very much want that job. After going over and over all the possibilities for hours, she came to a very hard conclusion—she was going to have to ask Ricky’s parents.

George and Betty Harrington were not exactly welcoming when she turned up on their doorstep on Saturday afternoon.

‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’ George asked, looking her up and down.

Scarlett stared back at him. She had her line of approach worked out.

‘I want to talk to you. Can I come in?’

‘Who is it, George?’ Betty appeared behind him in the narrow hallway. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘I’ve brought the children, I thought you might like to see them.’

Of course, it worked. They couldn’t possibly turn their grandchildren away. Scarlett parked the pram on the front path, heaved Joanne down, then lifted out Simon. She gave Joanne a little push on her back.

‘Go and say hello to Nana and Grandad.’

Joanne was proud to show off her new word. She toddled up to her grandparents. ‘Eh-yo!’ she said, smiling broadly. The Harringtons’ grim expressions melted. Soon they were sitting in the frigid front room drinking tea and eating biscuits—sensible tea fingers, not messy chocolate digestives like Nell’s. Scarlett handed Simon to Betty and prayed he wouldn’t make a fuss. He didn’t always like new faces. Simon looked unsure. For one heartstopping moment, Scarlett thought he was going to screw up his face and scream, but Betty chucked him under the chin and he broke into a smile, displaying his two little teeth.

‘Oh, hasn’t he grown! He looks just like Ricky, doesn’t he, George?’

Scarlett didn’t think he looked a bit like his father, but held her tongue. She waited while Mrs Harrington cooed over the children. Then the questions started. Had she got them into a proper routine? Was she making them both sit on the potty? Was she teaching Joanne to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’? Did she take them for a proper airing each day? As she needed to get her mother-in-law on her side, Scarlett answered yes to everything. To distract them, she asked the Harringtons if they had heard from Ricky. The grim faces returned.

‘Not a word,’ Mr Harrington admitted.

‘It’s breaking my heart.’ Mrs Harrington sighed.

‘Poor Simon’s never seen his father, and Joanne’s forgotten she ever had one,’ Scarlett said to rub it in.

‘It’s a crying shame,’ Mr Harrington stated.

‘I’m doing my best to give them all they need, but it’s hard,’ Scarlett told them. She explained about the cleaning job and the offer of bar work. ‘I can’t take it up unless I can get the children looked after those evenings. It’d make all the difference.’

She paused, letting the words sink in. George and Betty looked at each other.

‘So you want to be a barmaid? That’s not what I’d call a respectable line of work. Not exactly what I’d want for my grandchildren’s mother,’ Betty said.

Just in time, Scarlett stopped herself from saying that having a rock and roll singer for a father hadn’t done them much good.

‘It’s all I’m qualified for. And it’s a very respectable pub,’ she said.

To her surprise, Mr Harrington agreed. ‘I’ve heard it’s a quiet sort of place.’

‘I want so much to support them myself and not live on the dole,’ Scarlett added. ‘Anything’s better than that, surely?’

Mrs Harrington was still looking prune-faced. ‘I’d like to help,’ she said, ‘but I really don’t think I could be at your flat when your father was there.’

Scarlett’s heart sank. She had always known that this was the weak spot.

‘I’m not sure I want my wife away from home three evenings a week,’ Mr Harrington said.

‘You could both come,’ Scarlett suggested. ‘I’ve got a TV still.’

‘George likes his own chair and his own fireside. He isn’t really comfortable anywhere else,’ Mrs Harrington explained.

It was stalemate.

‘I really need that job, and there’s no one else I can trust with the children,’ Scarlett said.

‘Well—’ Mrs Harrington’s fingers trailed longingly over Simon’s chubby legs, lingered on each one of his tiny toes. Then her expression cleared. ‘They could come here,’ she suggested. ‘We could get a couple of cots and they could sleep in the back bedroom. You could come and collect them in the morning.’

Scarlett hated the idea. ‘I couldn’t possibly put you to all that trouble,’ she said.