Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (15 page)

‘This one,' he said, and poked his finger in the cream. I dropped him and he set up a howl so I pushed his creamy finger into his mouth.

‘My turn,' yelled Darren. He stood on his toes to peer at the cakes but he wasn't quite tall enough. I held him under the armpits and hauled him up. ‘Get on with it, then,' I puffed.

‘This … no, this … no, this …'

I plonked him on his feet. ‘I haven't got any cream,' he shouted indignantly.

I raised my voice. ‘Six cakes, please, Mr Timpson. Any of them. With the one he touched, of course.'

Darren thumped Lyndon, and their wails filled the shop. ‘Hope you didn't leave your kettle on, gal,' called Mrs Jermy to Mrs Yaxford.

Mr Timpson scowled at the boys and added up my bill on a paper bag. ‘That'll be eleven and a penny,' he said. I delved in Mum's purse, scraped up eleven and threepence, and paid it thankfully.

‘Let me have a lolly,' sobbed Lyndon.

‘I can't buy you one,' I hissed.

‘You promised us.'

‘I know, but I forgot my own money.'

‘You'll have to shut them up somehow,' said Mrs Yaxford. ‘Get them some penny gum,' she advised.

Mr Timpson silently offered me two twists of bubble gum, and I handed back the change he had given me. ‘There,' I said brightly, distributing them to the boys, ‘now let's go home to tea.'

‘We'd rather have sweets,' said Darren.

‘That or nothing, and if you don't shut up I'll take it away.'

We got home at last, the boys trailing and wailing. Brenda came out to the kitchen to take off their anoraks.

‘What ever are you chewing?' she asked Darren.

By the way of an answer, he blew a large pink bubble. Brenda was furious. ‘That filthy stuff, you know I won't let you have it!'

‘We didn't ask for it,' he said indignantly. ‘It wasn't our fault. We wanted sweets.
She
made us have it.'

Mum was even more furious. ‘Why ever did you buy them that rubbish, our Janet?'

‘Because it seemed a good idea at the time,' I snarled, and stalked out to get a jug of water from the pump.

The football match was still on, and when I went into the living-room to put the kettle on the fire all five of the Lummises were watching it, filling the room. We had to keep stepping over their feet as we got the tea ready. Dad and I moved the table to a different position so that we could all squeeze round it, and Mum opened the stairs door to go up and fetch her linen tablecloth. There was an immediate slither and a hump as two pairs of slippers, a pepper and a salt pot, a plastic tablecloth, some newspapers and a shower of crumbs fell into the room.

‘Well, I never,' said Mum, ‘how did that lot get there?'

Dad fetched down a chair from each bedroom, and somehow wedged them all round the table. It was only when he'd irretrievably blocked the sideboard that Mum hissed at me, ‘Get the best cups out.'

The best and only tea set, a wedding present unused from one Christmas to the next, lived in the sideboard.

‘I can't get at them with the chairs there,' I hissed back.

‘You'll have to, else we shan't have enough to go round.'

Fortunately the sideboard had sliding doors, and by crawling under the table I could reach between the chair legs for the china. As I surfaced with the first pile I could see out of the corner of my eye that Darren was aiming a kick at my behind, but I mouthed, ‘You dare!' at him and he stuck out his tongue instead. I was about to put the assembled cups on the table when Mum gave a meaningful cough, and I took the hint and carried them out to the kitchen to wipe the dust off first.

Dad was buttering a huge plateful of bread. Mum got busy with the can-opener and the kitchen was suddenly filled with the Sunday afternoon smell of sliced peaches in syrup. ‘Dust the small jug for the cream, Janet,' she said, opening a tin of evaporated milk. Posh Mrs Hanbury had once made a terrible fuss in the shop when she'd asked for cream and Dad had offered her a tin of evap, but if you want fresh cream in the country you have to keep your own cow.

Lyndon appeared in the doorway. ‘I'm thirsty,' he whined.

Mum called to Brenda to ask what the boys drank, and Brenda said that any kind of orange or lemon squash would do. Mum apologized that we didn't have any. ‘How about a nice drink of milk?' she said.

‘Milk!' said Darren scornfully. ‘We're not kids.'

‘All right,' I said patiently, ‘I won't bring you any. Do you want some milk, Lyndon?'

Seeing that there wasn't much alternative, he nodded. I gave him some in a cup but he only blew bubbles in it, and when I threatened to take it away he cried indignantly through an innocent milky moustache, so I let him alone and made the tea. Dad switched on the light and drew the curtains, and we all climbed over the furniture to our places and jammed ourselves in elbow to elbow. Samantha took a fancy to Mum and sat on her knee, opening her mouth like a bird to be fed with bread and butter and boiled egg.

‘I don't know what to give Darren to drink, I'm sure,' worried Mum. Trust her to revive an awkward subject; he didn't seem bothered except on principle.

‘There were bottles and bottles of drink in the shop,' he mourned.

‘You should have asked Janet to buy you some, my lovey.'

‘I just knew she wouldn't. She wouldn't even buy us any sweets.'

‘I thought she was going to hit us,' said Lyndon huskily.

Everybody looked at me accusingly except the little girl, who made cheerful noises to her egg. ‘A-goo, a-goo,' said Mum, and I passed round the plate of bread and butter and started to serve out the peaches.

We settled down at last, with Brenda telling Mum how wonderful it was to have plenty of work at the turkey factory, and to have a telephone and a car. ‘Ray drives me to Saintsbury on Saturday mornings when he's not working, and first off I take the washing to the launderette.'

‘I thought you'd got a washing-machine?' said Mum.

‘So I have, but the launderette's better for towels and bed-linen, everything comes out lovely and dry. None of that old-fashioned nuisance of drying your sheets on a clothes-horse in front of the fire.'

‘Did'oo want a bit more eggy then?' said Mum to Samantha. ‘Well, there's a good little girl.'

‘And then we go to the supermarket,' Brenda went on, ‘and do the week's shopping. Hundreds of bargains, you save no end. And we can park just round the back. No trouble at all, with a car.'

‘Eaten it all up? Well, there
is
a good girl,' Mum said. ‘Sorry, Bren, what did you say? I wasn't listening.'

The men didn't say a word to each other. I tried to get them started by enquiring about the football match they'd been watching, but Dad said it wasn't bad and Ray said it was bloody terrible, and that was the end of that conversation. I stacked up the empty fruit dishes, climbed out over the back of Lyndon's chair, took away the dishes and refilled the teapot while I was at it.

‘Janet's quiet,' said Brenda to Mum when I came back.

I offered her another cup of tea. She refused, but her husband passed his empty cup.

‘Janet's going to college, Ray.'

‘Oh ar. Going to join the layabouts, then?'

Dad defended me. ‘Janet works very hard.'

‘And she's a big help in the house,' said Mum.

‘I should think so,' said Brenda. ‘After all, you're feeding and clothing her for nothing. I don't know how you manage it.'

‘Well, she'll have a county grant when she goes to college, and they pay her fares and books and dinner money while she's at school,' said Mum. ‘And she's sensible, she doesn't bother us for fancy clothes and make-up and things.'

Brenda's lipsticked mouth was thin with disapproval. ‘Funny way of going on at her age.'

‘What about your cream cakes?' I said to the boys, offering them the plate.

‘I'm not having that one,' said Lyndon disdainfully. ‘It's got a finger-hole in it.'

Darren shifted a mouthful of bread and jam to one cheek. ‘Well, you needn't think I'm going to have it, you dirty little sod.'

Ray reached across the table and smacked the side of Darren's head. He bawled, and Lyndon howled in sympathy.

‘You bad boy, using such language,' cried Brenda. ‘I don't know where he gets it from,' she assured Mum.

‘Too much bleedin'telly,' growled Ray. ‘Shut up, the pair of you, or I'll give you something to yell about.'

The boys subsided into snuffles, which didn't stop them from eating their way through the fancy cakes. Dad made a heroic attempt to talk to Ray about football.

‘D'you follow Yarchester?' he asked.

Ray laughed derisively. ‘Yarchester! I wouldn't be paid to watch 'em, prancing round the ball like a lot of bloody nancy-boys –'

‘Ray!'

‘Well!'

‘No offence,' said Brenda, placating us as though it was unusual for Ray to swear. She went back to her previous subject: me. ‘So what's Janet going to be when she leaves college, Bet?'

‘Well,' said Mum cautiously, ‘I don't know as she's going to
be
anything.'

‘'Cept a BA,' said Dad proudly.

They were all looking at me again. Samantha wriggled off Mum's knee and held out her arms to me. I'm not much interested in small children but she was a sweet little thing, a miniature girl, with a blue ribbon in her hair and tiers of matching nylon frills on the broad seat of her plastic pants. I picked her up and chatted to her, trying to ignore what was being said about me.

‘What job's she going to do, though?'

Mum and Dad looked at me uncertainly and I tried to defend myself. ‘There are all sorts of jobs,' I said. ‘Well … journalism. Publishing …'

‘Ah, but you're not actually going to train for anything, are you?' said Brenda. ‘Now that's what I don't hold with. I say nothing against going to college if you're going to train for a teacher, but going when you don't rightly know what you're going for is daft, if you ask me.'

Ray choked indignantly on a fish-paste sandwich. ‘It's not daft,' he cried, ‘it's bloody criminal. Who pays for students, I'd like to know? Us working men, that's who. What I pay in tax is terrible, and all to keep that long-haired lot in idleness! Marvellous, i'n it, when you can rely on other people to pay for your grown-up kids to do nothing!'

Dad was a fuming red under his ginger hair, obviously longing to say something but not knowing what. I hugged the little girl, wretchedly conscious that Ray had a point, and having no more idea than Dad how to answer it. Then I remembered a game that Dad used to play with me when I was little, and I tried it on Samantha. I opened her small paw, wondering at the completeness of it, fingernails and all, and traced round it with my forefinger.

‘Round and round the gar-den, like a ted-dy bear …'

‘But what I mean is,' went on Brenda, raising her voice above mine, ‘you've been keeping yourselves poor for her. If she was out earning, you could live a lot more comfortable than this. And she'll think no more of you for it, you mark my words!'

‘… one step –' I tickled Samantha's creased wrist. ‘Two steps –' I tickled the inside of her elbow …

‘And what good will it all come to? She'll be married before you know where you are –' Brenda looked me up and down ‘– and if she don't get married she'll leave home, so either way you'll get nothing out of her. You're just wasting your money.'

‘… tickle her under there!' I scrabbled Samantha's woolly cardigan in the approximate region of her armpit and she wriggled with pleasure. ‘'Gen,' she said, ‘'gen.'

Dad was so furious that he went white. His voice rose almost to a squeak. ‘I work to earn my money and I shall do as I like with it! Janet deserves the chance to better herself, and I'm going to support her all the way.'

Ray shrugged, draining his teacup and lighting a cigarette. ‘Well, you suit yourself, but I reckon you're a bloody fool. It's not even as if she's –'

A pointed shoe stabbed me on the side of the foot, just where the hockey ball had hit me, and I yelped with the sudden pain.

‘I'm ever so sorry, Janet,' said Brenda. ‘Me foot slipped.'

Dad stood up, breathing quickly. ‘If you've
quite
finished,' he said, ‘excuse
me
.'

He and Ray looked at each other, and you couldn't tell who despised the other most. Ray got up slowly and moved his chair out of the way, and Dad flounced out and slammed the back door behind him. Samantha slid off my knee, the boys began playing bears with her under the table, and Ray said it was time they got on their way and he'd go out and turn the car round.

‘You must all come and see us as soon as you can, Bet,' said Brenda, fiddling about with her compact and lipstick. ‘You know we'd be pleased to have you. Only let us know in advance, else we might be out in the car.'

I carried Samantha out to the lav, with the boys following. The path was illuminated by an outside light over the kitchen door, and I could see Dad leaning moodily against the rabbit hutches. ‘They're just going,' I whispered to him while I waited for the boys, but he didn't answer.

‘Well,' Mum was saying when I got back to the house, ‘it's been lovely to see you all. A real nice surprise.' She wrapped a dozen new-laid eggs in individual nests of newspaper and put them in an old carboard box. Brenda protested, but not too much. ‘They're lovely, Bet, I do miss a nice fresh egg. And we enjoyed our teas, I hope we didn't put you about too much.'

I carried Samantha out to the car, flourishing a torch to light the way for the boys. Ray wound down the driver's window. ‘Sorry, Janet,' he mumbled. ‘Didn't mean to be personal. All the best, eh?'