Rising Summer (2 page)

These days there were very few street urchins or ragamuffins. Nobody was very rich but most families were a little better off than in pre-war years. The war had created full employment and kids went about in fairly decent clothes and without a hungry look. Actually, there was a bit of a dearth of kids. Thousands of them had been evacuated. There were a few in the village of Sheldham, the Suffolk village a mile from Battery Headquarters. So far, they’d only managed to burn down one barn. Accidentally, of course.

I let myself in, and went through to the kitchen.

‘Here we are, old girl,’ I called, putting my small travelling valise down on a chair. The valise was one that had fallen off the back of an army lorry.

‘Who’s that, as if I don’t know,’ said Aunt May, coming in from the scullery. ‘Well, bless us, look at you. Lanky lamp-posts and all.’ She smiled. She was a nice-looking woman of forty-one, invariably bright and unflappable. She had a good figure, brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a pretty patterned apron with pockets and there was always a hankie in each pocket, as if she still needed to be ready to wipe my
nose.
My nose, when I was a kid, went runny if I had a cold.

‘How’s things, old darling?’ I asked.

‘All the better for seeing you,’ she said and gave me a kiss and a cuddle. She was given to handing out kisses and cuddles. I asked her once if the milkman ever got any, he being a sad-looking bloke who seemed in need of some. Aunt May said what a question, you saucy devil, what would the neighbours say if they saw me kissing and cuddling the milkman on my own doorstep? When I said she could treat the bloke on someone else’s doorstep or behind the parlour curtain, Aunt May fell about laughing. She was given to laughing as much as to kisses and cuddles. I’d never known her to have moody moments, although all through my school years there’d been times when she’d been strict and corrective. She didn’t mind boisterousness or natural larkiness, but she did care about the right kind of behaviour. She said the right kind of behaviour mattered, never mind whether you were poor or rich. There were Walworth people who sang outside the pubs on Saturday nights and did the knees-up until bobbies on the beat arrived and told them to go home. And mostly they went home. That was the right kind of behaviour to Aunt May. It was civilized, she said, to go home when told to.

She was a bit superior for Walworth on the whole, but never acted as if she regarded herself so. When both her parents had gone she simply decided to get out of the flat she’d lived in all her life. She wanted elbow room, she said, she wanted a house with an affordable rent. She’d been here six years, she knew everybody in
the
immediate vicinity and got on so well with them that anyone would have thought she was Walworth born and bred. She liked the fact that cockneys were a resilient lot and probably the most cheerful people in England. Right from the start she’d sallied forth into the heart of things, with a smile and a hullo for everybody. She was charitable towards all, even towards Alf Cook who, when the worse for drink, chased his kids up and down Browning Street, roaring at them and brandishing his leather belt. But since Aunt May’s tolerance couldn’t last for ever and since she could be very forthright, she’d stopped him once, when we were on our way to the Walworth Road. She’d planted herself in front of him and he’d had to stop. He’d have trampled her to death otherwise, being a burly council navvy.

‘Gidoudavit, yer dozy female!’ he bawled.

‘Now, Mr Cook, behave yourself,’ said Aunt May. ‘All this shouting and hollering on a nice Saturday afternoon won’t do the neighbourhood much good, nor you, either. I knew a man like you in New Cross once—’

‘Oh, yer did, did yer?’ said Alf. ‘Well, sod off back to ’im.’

‘Really, Mr Cook, shame on you,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d listen, I’m trying to tell you that this man, just like you, went about bawling and bellowing whenever he was one over the eight. And what happened to him, yes, what? He went and fractured his larynx.’

‘Well, bleedin’ ’ard luck!’ bawled Alf, red in the face. ‘’E shouldn’t ’ave ’ad a larinch! I ain’t got one.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Aunt May, ‘we all have, it’s where our voices come from. This man fractured his
with
too much hollering and he can’t even talk now, let alone holler.’

‘Gawd blimey O’Reilly, what do I care?’ roared Alf. ‘You goin’ to stop standin’ in me way or ain’t yer?’ He brandished his belt threateningly, but I didn’t think Aunt May was going to need any protection, I was sure she could handle him.

She said, ‘Mr Cook, your trousers are coming down.’

‘Eh?’

‘Your trousers are coming down,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘so you’d better stop waving that belt about and put it on. Just look at your trousers. Whatever would Mrs Cook say if she came to know they’d come down in front of everyone in Browning Street? You don’t want to be a disgrace to your own wife, do you?’

Alf Cook, in his shirt sleeves, looked down at his navvy’s corduroys. They were sagging dangerously. ‘Oh, dearie me, fancy that, beg yer pardon, I’m sure,’ he said in growling sarcasm and he hiked his trousers up.

‘That’s better,’ said Aunt May, who obviously thought some straightforward talk was desirable. ‘According to your wife, you’re a nice reasonable man when you’re not one over the eight. It’s not a bit reasonable to go roaring about after your children and walloping the little loves, is it?’

‘Little loves? Gawd give me strength,’ bellowed Alf. ‘D’yer know what the young perishers went an’ done while I was at work this mornin’? Pinched me Sunday watch an’ chain an’ bleedin’ pawned it for pocket money.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Aunt May wryly. Then, brightening up, she said, ‘Never mind, Mr Cook, it could have been worse, they could have dropped it down a drain. What a blessing they only pawned it.’

‘Bloody ’ell—’

‘Now, Mr Cook, not in front of young Tim, if you don’t mind,’ said Aunt May.

‘Young Tim?’ bawled Alf. ‘That there young Tim’s a bleedin’ rip. Didn’t ’e stand on me Billy’s foot last week, didn’t ’e near tread Billy’s foot to bleedin’ death? I asks yer, didn’t ’e?’

‘Did you do that, Tim?’ asked Aunt May.

‘Best thing at the time, Aunt May,’ I said, ‘he was trying to turn Lily Burns upside-down.’

‘Oh, poor little Lily,’ said Aunt May, ‘I just hope that’ll be a lesson to Billy. And you, Mr Cook.’

‘You done, May Hardy, ’ave yer?’ said Alf.

‘Yes, that’s all, Mr Cook,’ said Aunt May.

Muttering, Alf went back home, looking as if he’d lost a painful argument.

Aunt May wasn’t very pleased when the country had gone to war against Hitler in 1939. On the other hand, if there was one person who could really get her goat it was Germany’s raving Führer. Late in 1940, with a slightly sad look, she saw me off to a Royal Artillery training camp.

It was a relief to her that so far I hadn’t been blown up. The battery had had a busy time during the night-bombing raids in 1941, but nothing fell on us. We were in Essex then, close enough to London to see its sky
lurid
with the glare of flames and to worry about what was happening to families. Walworth caught it, along with other inner London boroughs and Aunt May spent lots of nights in public air raid shelters, where she was no doubt a cheerful help to the nervous.

I was very fond of Aunt May and it was nice to be home with her again.

‘I hoped you’d be in time for lunch,’ she said, ‘I’m going to do liver, with fried tomatoes and mashed potatoes. The butcher let me have the liver when I said you were coming home.’

‘There’s a good old girl,’ I said, and handed out a cuddle myself.

‘I’ll give you old,’ she said and went out to the gas cooker in the scullery to start the lunch. I followed, with two packets.

‘Here you are,’ I said, ‘bacon for our breakfast and kippers for our tea this evening. And I’ve got a dozen eggs in my valise.’

‘Bacon?’ said Aunt May, looking happy.

‘A dozen rashers at least.’

‘Where did you get all that many?’ she asked, putting the liver on.

‘Back of a lorry?’

‘Now, Tim, you know I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘They’re perks, Aunt May.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Aunt May understood about perks. She thought all servicemen were entitled to perks. ‘And the eggs are from your village friends?’

‘Yes, the Beavers. I’ve told you about them.’

‘My, they’ve done well for a family not used to life
in
the country,’ said Aunt May. ‘And did you say kippers as well?’

‘Look.’ I unwrapped the kippers. They were fat, golden-brown and shiny. I put them on a plate in the larder.

‘Kippers,’ said Aunt May, ‘well, you’re doing me proud, Tim.’

‘Mind you, I had to hit Charlie Chipper a couple of times before he coughed up from under his stall. And I told him that as a reward, you’d meet him up the park on Sunday in your best hat and frillies.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ said Aunt May. ‘Here, just a moment, what d’you mean, my best hat and frillies? You saucy devil. I’ll have a little more respect from you, if you don’t mind.’ She took a look at potatoes that were on the boil. She was smiling.

‘We’ll have an early kipper tea before we go out,’ I said.

‘Go out?’ Aunt May turned the potatoes out in a colander over the sink, then put them back in the saucepan to mash them. ‘Go out, Tim?’

‘Yes, time I treated you. Let’s go to the first evening performance of the Crazy Gang show.’ Seeing as it was wartime and London was full of people looking for a dose of escapism, the Crazy Gang were giving two performances every evening.

‘You don’t want to take me,’ said Aunt May, giving the potatoes a drubbing and watching the frying liver.

‘Why don’t I? You’re pretty—’

‘Don’t go mad,’ said Aunt May, laughing. I took over the mashing of potatoes and she pushed the
liver
pieces about and turned them.

‘Then there’s all the cuddles and apple pie I’ve had from you,’ I said. ‘You’re overdue for a treat.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Aunt May, ‘but why don’t you take some nice girl? There’s Meg Fowler just round the corner in Turquand Street and just home on leave herself from the Waafs. She looks really nice in her uniform and I’m sure she’s got a soft spot for you.’

‘Some soft spot. She knocked me flying only two weeks after we moved here. Fourteen she was at the time and she knocked me flying. What’s she going to get up to now she’s twenty and wears a uniform?’

Aunt May said, ‘I’d like to know what you were getting up to yourself at the time.’

‘I was shouting for help. Well, all right, Aunt May, tell you what, I’ll walk round and see her this afternoon. If she’s fixed up for this evening, that’s it. I’ll take you instead. We can get there early and find a place in the upper-circle queue.’

‘All right,’ smiled Aunt May. ‘If it happens, I’ll put my best hat on.’

We had lunch in the kitchen. The kitchen was like Aunt May herself, bright and cheerful. It looked out on to the yard. The window threw welcome light over the wallpaper, patterned with plump red roses and over the linoleum floor, except during the foggy days of winter. But then the glowing coals of the range fire offered consoling heat to chilled limbs.

I often wondered why Aunt May seemed such a contented woman. She only had me and I couldn’t count myself as all that special. It was certain I wasn’t going
to
set the world alight as an insurance clerk and heap diamonds and furs on her. She might have had a lot more than she did have. She’d been engaged after the First World War, but lost her soldier fiancé when he was killed in Russia. She’d spoken about him sometimes in her open way and I felt she’d loved him very much. She said he was a man who cared about people, which made him the best kind of man.

‘Well, you’re the best kind of woman, Aunt May,’ I said at the time.

‘Not so bad yourself, are you?’ she said.

‘First-class mutual admiration society, that’s what we are,’ I said.

‘Well, we get along, Tim love, don’t we?’ she said.

‘
WELL, LOOK WHO’S
here,’ said Aircraftswoman Meg Fowler when she saw me on her doorstep.

‘Mind my braces,’ I said.

‘Mind your what?’

‘They’re the King’s military braces, so are my trousers.’

‘Same old Tim, same old chat,’ said Meg, fair hair rolled, Waaf shirt improperly buttoned.

‘It’s come undone,’ I said.

‘I’ll buy it,’ said Meg, ‘what has?’

‘That button.’

Meg looked down at herself. ‘Crikey, how did that ’appen?’ she asked.

‘Social manoeuvres, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Make a change from military manoeuvres. Do yerself up before your mum spots it.’

Meg did the button up. ‘Still a comic, aren’t yer?’ she said.

‘Wish I was, I might make a bit of money with the Crazy Gang. Listen, old darling, fancy going up to see their show this evening? Early performance?’

‘Oh, yer stinker,’ said Meg, ‘why didn’t yer ask before now? I bet you left it too late on purpose, you’ve spent years bein’ a disappointment to me. I’ve promised
to
let Bob Micklewright take me to the flicks.’

‘Dear Jesus,’ I said, ‘is he still alive?’ We were in her mum’s parlour now.

‘Well, he’s still walkin’ and talkin’,’ said Meg.

‘He was doing all that years ago, Meg. What is he, seventy now?’

‘I’ll bleedin’ hit you,’ said Meg.

‘You would too.’

‘You bet I would. What d’you mean by it, comin’ round to ask me out at this short notice and catchin’ me already fixed up with Bob Micklewright? And what d’you mean, seventy, you daft cuckoo? He’s just a bit mature, that’s all and ’ave you seen what the war’s left in Walworth these days? Not a decent upstandin’ bloke in sight. I’m surprised you didn’t get jumped on by all the local tarts on your way round here, you’re a sight for sore eyes, you are.’

‘You’re growing up pretty good yerself, Meg, I like the look of your shirt.’

‘Watch it,’ said Meg. ‘Still, tell me more, give me legs a mention.’

‘Nice you’ve got two,’ I said. ‘Well, pity you’re fixed up this evening. Never mind, can’t be helped. Enjoy yourself.’