The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2) (6 page)

‘She’s a good girl.’  Mum lays a hand on my back as I stand pressed against Aunt Min’s bosom.  I twitch my body free of Mum’s hand.  I don’t want her to touch me; not at the moment; not for a long time.

Chapter Seven

Sunday mornings are special.  On Sundays, Dad condescends to walk to the newsagent instead of sending Mum to get his
News of the World
.  Mum spends Sunday mornings in the kitchen baking an apple pie, a Victoria sponge and Yorkshire puddings.  The smell of our Sunday roast wafts through our flat.

 On Sundays I cut out articles from
The Girl
and stick them in my scrapbook.  Sometimes I tinkle tunes on the piano, because now I have piano lessons instead of my dancing ones with Miss Kilip.  Mum says that when I’m older, playing the piano will be a lot more practical than ballet dancing.

The bells from St. Mary’s in the High Street ring out, while upstairs in the Addingtons’ flat, the sound of pots and pans combine with gurgling water pipes and muffled voices.

Today, while Dad potters in the lean-to and Mum makes the apple pie, I sit at the table in the front room, drawing.  Mrs Colby says I have a flair for art.  Mum says that anything that keeps me from under her feet has to be a good thing.  She allows me to do my drawing in our front room. The only other times it’s unlocked is for me to do my piano practice and at Christmas.

The front room is my favourite room.  The roses on the wallpaper are still fresh, not like the daisies in the kitchen, which are grey with smoke.  In the corner is Mum’s glass cabinet which holds her cut glass vase and six wine glasses.  When the sun shines on them, they glint rainbows of light.  Two chrome figurines of women wearing nineteen-twenties dresses and looking as if they’re about to dance the Charleston, balance either side of the mantelpiece.  And, there, wedged between two doily-covered occasional tables is the very best thing about the front room; the piano.

I gaze out at the Sunday peacefulness of Blountmere Street and begin to sketch Fred and Lori’s wedding. 

Yesterday I’d persuaded Mum to take me to the Register Office to watch them get married.  It hadn’t taken much persuading, really.  I reckon Mum was itching to see the wedding, but didn’t want to appear as if she was being nosey. Telling them I was anxious to go was a good excuse. 

I must say it was a pretty posh do with them all arriving in a taxi.  Miss Lorimore was in this mauvey outfit with a matching hat that made her look like someone from The Royal Family, and Mr Stannard really could have been The Admiral of the Fleet, as Dad calls him when he’s running everyone in the street down while he’s shaving.

But when I saw Angela’s dress and silver shoes and silver headdress, something twisted inside me as if a piece of barbed wire had been inserted.  I’ll probably never get to be a bridesmaid and carry a basket of flowers, and I want to be one, I really, really want to be close enough to be part of someone’s wedding.  Just the same I smiled and said how lovely she looked and how I liked her shoes.  I kept smiling even when she told me Miss Lorimore had actually bought them for her from Pratts, which is one of the poshest shops I know.  

The twisting feeling was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw Tony get out of the taxi in his grey wedding suit with long trousers.  He had a carnation in his button hole, and his hair was slicked down with Brylcreem. 

“You look like a man,” I stammered, moving closer.  I wanted to kiss him, but, of course, I couldn’t. 

Mum was actually a witness at the wedding. and afterwards, we threw confetti over Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore.  Angela and I poked some down Tony’s shirt front.  He wrinkled his nose, but laughed just the same.  I wished I could kiss him because I’d let him down lately.  I love him like Bill must have loved Mum. But I won’t lose him like Bill did Mum.  Tony and I will be together forever.  I won’t let him down again.

I look at what I’ve just drawn.  When I’ve finished, I’ll give it to Tony to make up for everything and to prove I’m not jealous of Angela being a bridesmaid.  Mum says envy’s a deadly sin.  She prides herself she isn’t envious of anyone.  No daughter of hers is going to demonstrate such a flaw either, she tells me.  Anyway, what or who could we be jealous of, she says?  It’s others who should be jealous of us.  Even if Angela Addingtons’ a bully who didn’t deserve to be a bridesmaid, it doesn’t mean I’m envious.  As for the Addingtons and Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore becoming the family I so want to be part of, I’m not jealous, and that’s that.

I’m sketching the skirt on Angela’s dress when I hear a pounding on the Addingtons’ stairs, followed by the door being slammed so hard, the wooden horse on top of our piano topples over.

I watch as Tony races down the path.  He tears across the road without looking and jumps a jagged wall on to the bombsite.  Even with our window closed, I can hear him shouting swear words.  He disappears into the dugout behind the fireplace where I know he often hides.  He told me about it one afternoon when we were on the back step reading our comics and doing our confiding. 

I expect he’s had another argument with Angela.  Those two never stop quarrelling.  I’d love it if I had a brother or a sister.  I’d never disagree with them.  That’s not quite true.  If I had a sister like Angela, I might.

 It must be at least twenty minutes, and Tony’ still in his hiding place.  I don’t think I’ve missed him.  I’ve hardly moved my eyes away from the bombsite.  I hate it when Tony’s upset.  Sometimes I think when he hurts, I hurt even more.

I never go across to the bombsite with Tony.  I don’t want him to be teased by the other kids for being my friend.  I sense that today, though, he needs me.

I tip-toe from the room and to the front door.  Then I slip the catch and close the door quietly behind me.  I don’t want Mum to ask me where I’m going and tell me I need to change my shoes and put something warmer on.  Worse, she might offer to come with me.  This way, she won’t even know I’ve gone.

I can hear Tony’s sobs before I reach him.  I stumble over the rubble to the fireplace and behind it to the hole Tony is crouched in.  He hasn’t heard me coming and for a moment I stand there not knowing whether I should leave him or say something.  I do neither, and slip down the hole and sit next to him.  He hardly seems to know I’m there.  I still don’t say anything, and he can’t, because his sobbing is causing him to gasp for breath.  I can’t bear to see him like this, and I slip my arm around his shoulders. 

‘What is it?’  I whisper.  ‘What’s happened?’

‘They’re going.  Leaving us.’  At last he manages to talk, but his whole body is trembling, and I can hardly hear him.

‘Who?’

‘Fred and Lori.’  Tony cuffs his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his jersey.  ‘They’re going to live in New Zealand.’  He takes another shuddering breath.  ‘To live with his son, his rotten son.  Can’t he see we’re his family, not that Ronald.’  Tony’s voice is getting louder.  ‘Us!  It’s us, they should be staying for.  We were all going to be a family together.  He’s no better than our Old Man.  He’s done the dirty on us like our Old Man did.’

I can’t imagine life without Mr Stannard and especially not having Miss Lorimore as our neighbour.  She’s always been there.  But worse, much worse, I won’t be able to
watch
them all become a family so that I can pretend I’m part of it.  I won’t be able to substitute Mr Stannard for Dad when he’s shouting and swearing in the mornings.  I won’t be able to tag along with them when they go on an outing.  I begin to cry.  ‘What will we do?’  I murmur.

For the next four weeks Tony and I still sit on the back step reading our comics, but we never mention Fred and Lori going.  Tony brings Brian, the hamster Fred bought him, and we stroke him and play little games.  And I show Tony my matchboxes full of coloured glass I’ve collected from the bombsite. 

‘They’re like jewels,’ he says.

‘If they were, we’d be able to go anywhere in the world we wanted,’ I reply.  Now there’s not much time before Fred and Lori leave it looks as if they won’t be able to take Tony and Angela to the seaside. 

‘If they were jewels, we could go to Bognor,’ Tony says.

‘We’ll have to save up, then we can go.’

‘What’ll I save up with – shirt buttons?’

‘In a year or so you’ll be able to do a paper round.  Then you’ll have some money,’ I say.  ‘Anyway, Aunt Min’s started giving me sixpence a week pocket money.  If I save it all, it shouldn’t be long before we’ve got enough.’  I have no idea how I’ll shake Mum off from wanting to come with us.  There’s no way she’d let us go on our own.  But I want to see the same look on Tony’s face as when he told me about being the best man at Fred and Lori’s wedding.  I’m afraid it’s gone forever.  Everything about him is flat.  Deep down I know that nothing, other than Fred and Lori deciding to stay in Blountmere Street, will lift him.  Even then, perhaps neither of us will altogether be able to trust them again.

Mum and I peep from behind our net curtains in the front room, as the taxi draws up outside to take Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore to Tilbury Docks to board the ship for New Zealand.  Mum and I called to say goodbye to them yesterday, but Dad didn’t bother.  “We wish you every happiness,” Mum said, but I didn’t say anything.  I didn’t wish them happiness.  They’d taken our hopes away, Tony’s and mine.  I wished them snakes and spiders, boils and diarrhoea.  I wished them a horrible son.  I wished them unhappiness.  That’s what I wished them.

Mr Stannard, Miss Lorimore and the Addingtons are already standing in a knot on the pavement.  Miss Lorimore is dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, and I can see that Angela is crying.  It shocks me.  Angela never cries, at least never outside.  Mrs Addington looks as if she’s been carved from plaster.  Her legs are thicker than ever with bandages. 

Tony steps back a little from the group.  I can see him stiffen when Miss Lorimore kisses him.  He doesn’t hold out his hand when Fred goes to shake hands with him.  Then, just as Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore are about to step into the taxi, Fred turns to Tony and hugs him.  Tony isn’t stiff anymore and sags against him. 

The Addingtons each wave a sad, droopy wave.  Then as the taxi glides away down Blountmere Street, they hurry back inside.

I don’t see Tony until the next day on our way to school.  We nod at each other in the usual way, so that no-one will link him with me, but I know he’s as sad inside as I felt when I thought Mum was dying.  I’ve got Mum back, but Fred and Lori are gone for good.  Already the Addingtons have got a new lodger. a colourless stick of a woman, and Mum says someone’s moving into Miss Lorimore’s place at the end of the week.  It’s almost as if Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore never existed.  Apart from our memories, the photos Tony and Angela have of them on their wedding day are the only real reminders that they actually lived in Blountmere Street with us all.

Tony comes down to our place most evenings after school now.   Outside it’s cold and fog with dense black spots in it hangs over Blountmere Street.  Our place is warm.  It doesn’t have a draught anywhere since Dad jammed newspaper around the windows and in every crack, and Mum made material sausages to stop the fog sneaking under our doors.

‘I won’t be able to stay long.’  Tony licks the crumbs left from one of Mum’s date slices from his lips.  ‘Angela gets the pip if I don’t help her.’  Tony lowers his voice.  ‘Mum’s not well, see.  It’s her legs.  They’re playing her up bad and they stink something rotten.’  Tony holds the end of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

‘I’m sorry,’ I reply.  I’m sorry about Mrs Addington being sick, and about Tony’s tangled hair, his dirty school clothes and the way his bones have begun to stick out.

Mum hands Tony three more date slices wrapped in greaseproof paper.   ‘Here, take these with you,’ she says.  ‘I don’t expect you ever have cakes.’  I glare at Mum. Why does she have to say things like that?  Why doesn’t she just hand them to him and say something like, “These are for your Mum and Angela”?  But that’s Mum - always having to prove we have more than everyone else.  Tony doesn’t seem to mind, though, and stuffs the package in his pocket. 

‘Thank goodness for school dinners,’ Mum says when Tony’s gone.  ‘They’re the only square meals those kids upstairs get.  Things have certainly taken a downward turn since Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore left.  And, of course, Dolly Addingtons’ never been one to cope well.’

There she goes again!  Without saying as much, she’s comparing Mrs Addington with herself and, of course, Mrs Addington hasn’t scored anywhere near so high as Mum.

That evening I leave half my chop, a small mound of mashed potatoes and some carrot.  It’s all I can manage without Mum becoming suspicious.  As it is, she says, ‘Feeling peaky?  It’s not like you to leave your food.’

‘I’m full,’ I tell her, patting my stomach.

‘If you’re going to leave your dinner, you’ll have to forego a cake when you come in from school,’ Mum grumbles.

I take my plate to the sink.  Instead of scraping the food left into the bowl we use for Jack Moody’s pig bin scraps, when Mum’s dishing up rice pudding for afters, I tip what I’ve left into a tin.  I tighten the lid, sidle out of the kitchen and hide the tin under my bed.  Tomorrow morning I’ll wait for Tony to come out of his front door on his way to school and give it to him.

Whenever I can, and when I think something won’t be missed, I take it and hide it under my bed to give to Tony.  He always looks pleased when I give the things to him, and he takes the paper bag, and shuts his door quickly before anyone can see us.  It’s our secret.  I know he doesn’t tell Angela or his mother where the food comes from.  It makes me feel like I did when I forged the note to Mrs Colby saying Tony was ill and couldn’t go to school. 

‘I could have sworn I had a tin of peas,’ Mum says, moving packets, boxes and other tins around the cupboard. 

I busy myself setting the table.

‘I don’t know where my mind is lately.  I’ve never found that tin of peaches I was sure I had.’

‘It’s the weather,’ I say.  ‘Mrs Colby says that when it gets colder, your memory sort of ices up.’

‘Well, I’ve never heard of that before, but she’s a teacher after all, so I suppose she knows.’

I’ll have to ease up on the tins and take some of Mums preserves.  She’s got so many, she probably won’t miss them.