Rock a Bye Baby (2 page)

‘My dad’s great too. I can’t fault him.’

‘That’s because he’s never home. You’d find a difference then,’ Rita pointed out.

Marcie felt her face turning hot. ‘Well, he can’t help having to work in London. That’s where the money is. He does a lot of work up there. That’s how come he’s able to send me nice things.’ Using just one finger, she swung the transistor radio on its pink leather carrying strap. ‘I mean, wouldn’t send me presents like this if he was anything else, would he?’

Rita gave a quick nod that could be interpreted as acquiescence. If that was what Marcie believed, it was fine by her. But Sheerness was a small place. The Isle of Sheppey itself was a small place. Word got round, and the word Rita had heard was that her best mate’s old man was in Wandsworth, London – the prison. But she wouldn’t voice what she’d heard was the truth and upset her best pal. Best friends don’t do that. Not unless they fell out, then she’d probably tell all and sundry. If they didn’t know already.

Back in the booth and halfway through the afternoon, Rita spread out her newspaper-wrapped chips and swiftly ate the lot.

‘All gone,’ she said, licking her lips and wiping her greasy fingers down her generous thighs.

The chips were wrapped in two sheets from an upmarket daily. Rita threw the crumpled up top piece into the bin. Marcie began reading the sheet that was left.

‘Shame Nancy Tucker didn’t read this,’ said Marcie.

Rita glanced over her shoulder. ‘What’s that then?’

Marcie pointed at the headline. ‘Government Votes on Abortion’. Rita not being much for reading anything, Marcie contracted the subject matter for her benefit.

‘They’d already voted but were asked to think again. If it passes it’ll mean if you get knocked up and don’t want to marry the bloke, you can get rid of it legally.’

‘That’s handy,’ said Rita blithely.

Marcie frowned. ‘That depends.’

Rita shrugged. ‘On what?’

Sometimes Rita was great fun to be with. At other times her shallow attitude to serious matters made Marcie wonder whether they should be friends at all.

‘It’s a baby, Rita. A human being. It can’t be that easy.’

‘Well, I would if I had to. And so would you.’

The sheet of newspaper was suddenly taken off by a breeze and sent tumbling and fluttering along the beach.

A young couple with four small children came to the booth to buy penny shrimps made from sickly pink rock. Four excited faces turned upwards to choose their wares and hand over their pennies.

‘Looks as though you’ve got your hands full,’ Marcie said to their parents, who looked to be still in their twenties. It was obvious from their appearance that they didn’t have much money.

Mum and Dad smiled. Mum shook her head. ‘At times it’s hard to make ends meet, but there, I wouldn’t be without them. Not for all the world.’

Marcie pushed open the front door of the small terraced cottage she shared with the rest of her family. The Brooks family consisted of Gran, her stepmother Barbara, called Babs, half-brothers Archie and Arnold, and baby half-sister Annie. Dad didn’t really count because he was seldom there, ‘working’ in London for a stretch at a time.

The door bounced back against the mass of coats hanging from hooks in the tiny hallway. The smell of her grandmother’s version of shepherd’s pie wafted out from the kitchen. Gran’s shepherd’s pie was a little spicier than the English version thanks to the addition of tomato sauce and chopped herbs that she grew in a pot outside the kitchen door.

Her gran’s voice sounded from the kitchen. ‘That you, Marcie?’

Of course it bloody well was. Who else was it likely to be? But she answered yes anyway, and certainly didn’t swear. Most people minded their language in front of Gran. They wouldn’t dare otherwise.

‘Get our Archie from out the back yard, would you, love?’ Babs’s voice, throaty with smoking, wheedled
with just the right hint of menace. Marcie gritted her teeth.

Her dad had taken up with Barbara – Babs – only a few months after her mother had gone off. Babs had presented him with three kids – Archie was the eldest, nine years old and a right chip off the old block; Arnold was a year younger.

There was a larger gap between the birth of the boys and that of baby Annie. Tony Brooks had been away for quite a while and had been absent again between Annie’s conception and her birth. He’d only seen her once since she was born when Babs had gone on a prison visit.

Marcie went out into the kitchen. An old black range squatted like a fat spider in the fireplace. Two armchairs were placed either side of the fireplace and a dark-green dresser ran the length of one wall. The middle of the room was occupied by a scrubbed pine table and six mismatched chairs.

Gran was smothered in richly smelling steam rising from cabbage, carrots and the giant dish of pie she’d just fetched out of the oven. She looked over her shoulder.

‘Wash your hands, Marcie. Your supper’s nearly ready.’

Babs was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine –
True Romance.
She had bleached blonde hair lacquered into a French pleat
at the back of her head. Two kiss curls, stiff with hair lacquer, appeared glued to her cheeks. Her fringe was a series of equally stiff curls hanging like dead caterpillars on her forehead. She seldom offered to help her mother-in-law with getting any meal ready.

‘Pass me a drop of water would you, love? I got a bit of a frog in me throat.’ Babs had sneaky ways of getting her own way.

Lazy cow!

Marcie was intentionally slow, turning on the tap and pouring herself a cup of water before she did anything. Babs would hate the fact that she didn’t jump to it. She could feel her stepmother’s eyes boring into the back of her head. Babs liked to boss her around. She never even tried to mother her but had treated her as little more than a skivvy since she’d moved in years before. ‘She’s a right cow,’ Marcie had said to Rita. ‘She’s not my real mother, so why should I do as she says?’

‘Did you hear what I said, our Marcie?’

At the sound of her stepmother’s voice, Marcie’s fingers tightened around the cup.

‘What did your last servant die of?’ she muttered, loud enough to be overheard.

Babs looked up from her reading. Her hard look – thick eye make-up, clotted pores above thick pink lips – hardened further. She pointed a threatening finger. ‘Less of your bleeding cheek, young lady!’

‘Barbara! I do not tolerate swearing in my house.’

Rosa Brooks had black button eyes that glittered when they fixed on you. Babs wilted under her mother-in-law’s gaze.

‘Sorry, Mum, but I’ve been at work all day, I have, and I am her stepmother. I do have a right to tell her what to do until she’s of an age. Isn’t that right, Mum?’

Despite her appearance, Babs was no fool. There was an art to buttering up and Babs was skilled at it. Her problem was that using bad language came naturally. She’d been brought up that way.

Eyes glowing with triumph she turned back to Marcie. ‘Now get yer ass out in that yard and tell our Archie his tea’s ready!’

Rosa Brooks rolled her eyes. Marcie’s mother had had some class. Babs was common.

Marcie’s gaze dropped to Babs’s finger.

‘Crikey, Babs. Your finger’s gone all yellow. Disgusting!’

Caught off balance, Babs looked at her fingers. All the red nail polish in the world wouldn’t deflect attention from the yellow staining following years of smoking.

The freckled face of Arnold, the youngest of her half-brothers, appeared from under the table. Remains of dried jam encrusted his face and his mouse-brown hair was dirty and dishevelled. His smile revealed a broken front tooth. Arnold was always scrapping. ‘It’s
in the blood. Your grandfather was the same,’ Rosa Brooks had declared.

Unfortunately for young Arnold it was not a milk tooth – he would always have a toothy smile and that mischievous look. He was also bright and curious, always asking questions.

‘Mr Ellis’s digging a hole. Why’s he doin’ that, Marcie?’

Marcie couldn’t help smiling and was about to tell him the reason, but Babs interrupted.

‘Because he’s bleeding stupid. That’s why! Like that stupid nephew of his – daft buggers the lot of ’em.’

‘You shouldn’t say that,’ Marcie snapped. ‘Garth Davies can’t help it!’ She turned to her grandmother for support. ‘He can’t help it, can he, Gran. It was God’s will, wasn’t it?’

Her grandmother, Rosa Brooks, was small but mighty; if she said something was God’s will then that was it.

The fierce glower returned. She pointed a warning finger.

‘Barbara, you will not say such things. What God has made is good. And you will not use that language in my house. I have told you this before. I will not have it!’

‘She riles me,’ said Babs, her thick lips pursed into a sulk. Her eyes fell back to the lurid pictures and over-large print of her magazine.

Marcie’s surge of triumph was short lived.

‘Marcie. Get your brother.’ Her grandmother’s tone was ripe with authority. Her keen eyes, dark as black beads, missed nothing. Her look said it all.
I’ll have no disobedience in this house.

They were frequently reminded that they lived under her roof. Rosa Brooks made it clear to them all that this was her house bought with her money. Anyone who didn’t respect her and her ways could get out. The choice was theirs. But she’d keep the children. She frequently reminded them of that particular fact. ‘My blood is my blood, and I have the money.’

No one knew for sure whether she really did have money in the bank or even stuffed under her mattress. But they took it that she did. Gran wouldn’t have no prying into her business just as she would have no arguing. The one thing they did know was that the house, a small terraced cottage dating from Nelson’s time and within sight of the sea in Blue Town, was hers. She’d bought it with the sum of money she’d brought as a dowry to her marriage. Her husband, Cyril, Marcie’s grandfather, had been a sailor in the Royal Navy in the 1920s. He’d met Rosa in Malta, the headquarters of the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet and hinted to her that he had estates in Kent where hops were produced for the finest brewery in London. It was an outright lie, of course.
All he’d had was a room in a downmarket hotel around the corner from where they lived now. He hadn’t even owned an aspidistra in a pot, let alone fields of Kentish hops.

Clinging on to her inheritance, Rosa had had no intention of living in a hotel room for the rest of her days. She had used her money to purchase the little cottage from the landlord. He’d been reluctant to sell at first as the whole terrace had once belonged to his wife’s family, but for some reason he’d changed his mind. Nobody quite knew why except that it had something to do with a favour being done by Rosa Brooks.

It was pleasant to be out of the house, away from the smell of home cooking and the liberal stink of nicotine.

The sun bathed the back yard in a rosy glow that made the dusty vegetation look greener, the powdery earth darker. Even the tough marsh grass that hadn’t quite been obliterated from its place along the fence looked as though someone had painted it with copper and brass.

A slight hum came from the direction of the cranes and derricks that serviced the docks. So did the smell of metal, marshland and burning oil. It only happened when the wind was blowing in a certain direction. Sometimes all Marcie could smell was the sea. She liked that. ‘That’s how your grandfather
smelled,’ her grandmother had told her when she’d mentioned it. ‘Black tobacco, strong rum and the North Sea.’

‘Archie?’

Archie was peeing into the chicken run. The chickens looked curious, not sure whether to keep away from the perfect arc of urine or investigate the wormlike spout from which it was streaming.

‘They’ll think it’s a worm and peck it off,’ Marcie shouted and couldn’t help laughing.

The lean-to lavatory was just outside the back door. She asked him why he hadn’t used it.

‘Cos Gran’s put Chlorus down it. Can’t stand the smell of that.’

Marcie sympathised. Gran was a stickler for having things clean and germ free, but was a bit heavy handed on the bleach, and a demon with the scrubbing brush.

Rosa Brooks had standards. The net curtains hanging at the shiny windows were the whitest in the terrace. Her door knocker gleamed and flashed like gold in the sunlight, her path was the best swept and although she admitted to not being a skilled gardener, the tiny square that she called the front garden was tidy.

Except for the pot of growing herbs, the back garden was a different matter, a place of dusty vegetables growing in rows. The chicken run occupied the far end close against the fence and the back lane.

Grandma had kept chickens – mostly cockerels destined for Christmas dinner – for years. The chicks arrived in spring and were slaughtered two weeks before Christmas. Grandma did the slaughtering.

There were also two rabbits in a cage. These belonged to the boys.

‘I’ve got a load of dandelions for Twinkle and Bobby,’ Archie said.

He picked up the bundle he’d gathered from down by the railway line. Marcie gave him a hand.

‘Here. Let me.’

As they pushed dandelion leaves through the wire mesh of the rabbits’ cage, Marcie spotted Mr Ellis from two doors down. He was mopping his very red and sweaty face with a large handkerchief.

‘Alright, Mr Ellis?’ Marcie shouted by way of greeting.

He shouted back, his loud voice easily carrying over the other gardens.

‘Yes, love. Thanks for asking. It’s a bit warm for digging, but it has to be done. Sneaky devils, them Russians. You never knows when they’re going to invade us, you know. So I’m one that’s going to be ready for them.’

Marcie nodded and said, ‘I see.’ In fact she didn’t see at all. She knew the Russians were frightening, but didn’t really understand what this Cold War business was all about. More general things were
important to her, things closer to home – like sneaking off to the café tonight, saving up for a new pair of shoes or listening to
Pick of the Pops
at Sunday teatime.