Nobbut a Lad Page 4

  And yet, somehow, Auntie Alice seemed to accept her position in the family pecking order, probably because she never saw herself as we saw her. In her own eyes, she was an independent woman who just happened to live with her mother. I don’t think we ever gave her credit for the fact that she had a mind of her own, probably because she rarely brought it into play. Certainly not in our eyes. She was always an also-ran, an appendage to Grandma, and on Boxing Day she was treated like a maid, forever being exhorted to get up from the table and bring in more hot water, or more cake, or a slab of rock-hard butter from the cold, damp larder next to the scullery.

  Once enough of the food had been eaten to satisfy Grandma’s sense of hospitality, and as much of the full-strength tea as possible had been drunk, the washing-up would be done, the table folded away, and the chairs rearranged in a circle for the Christmas games that would complete the evening’s entertainment – I Packed My Trunk and I Spy were as adventurous as it got.

  There was no escape until the Christmas cake and cheese had done its rounds – cake of unsurpassed density and Cheddar cheese so strong it made your eyes water – but, with any luck, by the time it got to half past eight Mum and Dad would be able to excuse themselves on account of their children’s tiredness, and after a prickly kiss from Grandma and a damp one from Auntie Alice, we’d wend our weary way home with profound relief. It was all over for another year, and sharing our kipper fillets with Grandma did seem, on the whole, to be less of an ordeal than sharing her Boxing Day tea.

  Dad’s brother, Uncle Jim, worked at Moisley’s shoe shop on the Grove, and his wife, Auntie Jenny, was always held up as a paragon of virtue by Grandma Titchmarsh. This, in itself, might have been borne by my mother, had Auntie Jenny not committed the cardinal sin of being born a Geordie. Mum couldn’t stand Geordies. ‘They think they know everything,’ she’d mutter. Grandma herself, being from Beverley – further north than Ilkley – probably felt a greater affinity with Jenny than with Mum, and she wasn’t backward at coming forward about Jenny’s latest exploits: ‘Our Jenny’s got a new coat. A lovely camel one. Got it in Brown Muffs. Bought mind. Not homemade.’

  Me Mam

  ‘Me mam’ was always the most beautiful woman in the world. The yardstick by which other women’s beauty was measured. Not Hollywood film stars – they were different, unreal – but when it came to local women, I accepted that my mother was the best-looking of them all. A bit like the Queen. Mum and the Queen seemed to have everything – grace, poise and nice clothes – and they were both always right. The Queen was always right because she was the Queen, and my mum was always right because she said so. It never occurred to me that occasionally there might be a different point of view.

  It seemed, back then, that between them my mum and dad could do everything. Dad was good with his hands – a plumber by trade, he was skilled at home improvements – and Mum made everything that she and her children wore, apart from our St Michael knickers and socks, and the Clark’s shoes.

  First there were little check shirts and grey flannel shorts. Not for me the embarrassing kind worn by some boys at school. The sort you had to grow into. The sort that were too long and came down to your knees. The sort that were of really rough flannel and seemed to develop unsavoury-looking yellow patches in unfortunate places. No, mine always finished a respectable three inches above the knee and fitted around the waist, thanks to a lump of elastic that, somehow, Mum had managed to conceal within the material.

  Most Saturdays would involve a trip to the Remnant Shop in Leeds Road for some kind of fabric, unwound from its flattened roll with a satisfying thud on the smooth counter with its inbuilt brass ruler. Huge black-handled scissors would be used to nick the edge of the fabric, which would then be rent across by the lady behind the counter, and folded up and slipped into a brown paper bag.

  With the material stowed in her shopping basket, Mum would take my hand and walk me from Leeds Road up to Railway Road and the tiny haberdasher’s shop next door to the Essoldo Cinema. In part of its grandiose white-tiled frontage, with the pink neon ‘Essoldo’ motif shining out towards the moors, was Kell’s, where Miss MacEvoy dispensed buttons and bias binding, knicker elastic and press studs – everything for the home dressmaker.

  Miss Mac was a round little lady with a bob of white hair. She wore Perspex-framed glasses and was always eating.

  ‘Hello, Miss Mac, we’re looking for some buttons to go with this,’ and Mum would pull out the edge of the fabric to be met with a sharp intake of breath from Miss Mac. Always.

  ‘Ooh, that’s tricky. I’m not sure I’ve anything …’ she’d say as she screwed up her eyes and scrutinised the glazed cotton, the poplin or the floral print.

  The wall behind her, on the other side of the counter, was covered from floor to ceiling with brown wooden drawers of varying sizes. Some had glazed fronts that showed off their contents; others bore labels: ‘Brass buttons, various’, ‘Hooks and eyes’, ‘Zips 6 in’, ‘Zips 12 in’ and ‘Bodkins, pins and needles’.

  It was hard to believe that somewhere in this Aladdin’s cave, Miss Mac did not have something that would suit. And she did. Always.

  ‘I might just have …’ Her words would trail away as she got out the small wooden stepladder, opened it out and then climbed to the top row of drawers, where she teetered precariously, opening this one and that, occasionally with a disappointed grunt, until with a cry of triumph, ‘Aha! There you are. I thought so,’ she’d make her way down, to my mother’s relief, without coming a cropper.

  The buttons would be dropped into a small brown paper bag, and change given from a large wooden drawer that opened with a bright ‘ping’, and we’d leave Miss Mac to go on eating whatever it was that we had interrupted.

  Wool came from the Co-op drapery store on the corner of Leeds Road and Little Lane. Here, Mr Hay presided – a tall, quiet, bald man who sold wool by the skein. We had to make it into balls ourselves – me with my hands held out wide, and Mum winding away until I felt that my arms would fall off. ‘Only three more to go, Sparrow, then you can go out.’

  The hand-knitted jumpers were V-necked to start with, in safe colours – fawn or light grey. Then she knitted me a royal-blue one. A few years later the knitting needles were laid aside and she bought a machine that was capable of creating the most elaborate Fair Isle patterns; not the sort of thing in which you could melt into the background – at that time infinitely preferable to being noticed.

  There was a camel coat, double-breasted with wide lapels and collar and a belt; the buttons were round and leathery. It was worn for best on Sundays, with a peaked cap and woollen mittens, when we walked down by the river, or up on the moors.

  In spare moments she’d knock up a scarf or a balaclava helmet – the latter essential in winter after someone threw a snowball at me and caused an abscess on my neck. At least, that’s what Mum put it down to. ‘I’m not having you getting another abscess. If there’s going to be any snowball throwing, you wear your balaclava.’ I hated it.

  Then there would be the thin white cotton tape (bought from Miss Mac) that was sewn on to my mittens and led up through the arms of my coat. Other kids were allowed to lose their mittens – you could see them stuck individually on the tops of iron railings on snowy days – but not me.

  Mum would write her own version of Cash’s name tapes with black indelible ink on little strips of the white cotton tape, to be sewn into the back of any garment that might be confused with somebody else’s at school. Not that they ever were. Mum’s clothing was in a class of its own and never contained any labels other than her own.

  But her pièces de résistance were her dresses. My father was a part-time fireman as well as being a plumber, and once a year the firemen would have a dance in the room above the fire station, or there might be a dance in the King’s Hall that they’d go to for a treat. A new dress would have to be made especially for the occasion.

  There was a peachy-pink brocade number with a full skirt;
a large brown-and-white floral-print dress with a hemline that was narrower than usual with a big bow at the front of the skirt – we called it her ‘tulip’ dress; and eventually a gold lamé two-piece suit that was simply the last word in glamour. I peered over the back of the settee open-mouthed as Dad led her out through the front door, glittering under the light of the street lamp.

  Sometimes she’d pack one of her special dresses for our annual holiday, and she and Dad would waltz round the Tower Ballroom at Blackpool like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They moved as one. Mum always seemed to know just where Dad was going to step next; it was a mystery I could not fathom. He never seemed to say anything to her that might give her a clue as to his next move, and yet she knew instinctively when to step backwards or forwards.

  I noticed her hand on his shoulder. It did not grip it, like the hands of most women on the floor; instead, she only lightly touched him with the back of her hand, her palm facing outwards. It seemed supremely elegant.

  The contrast presented by my father’s appearance in his suit, compared with his working clothes of dark-blue bib-and-brace overalls, boots and flat cap, could not have been greater. Here he was, with his shiny Vaselined hair (he said he preferred it to Brylcreem as it didn’t smell so sickly) gliding round the polished wooden floor, doing those showy quicksteps with a calm, imperturbable expression on his face. Occasionally they would make eye contact and smile knowingly at each other, all the while seemingly oblivious to the other couples around them. Their minds seemed to be somewhere else, and then when the music stopped, Dad would take Mum’s hand and lead her back to the seats round the ballroom with hardly a change of expression. ‘Cup of tea, Beff?’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  Back at home, the dress would be hung in the wardrobe once more, and Mum would spend her days in a skirt and cardigan. She never wore trousers until I was eleven. She’d been a bit restless all day, having come back from the shops with a brown paper parcel that she took straight up to her bedroom. Then she came down and made a cup of tea, but she couldn’t settle.

  Eventually she got up quite quickly, went to her bedroom and closed the door. I was worried. What could it be? Was she not feeling well? Was something wrong between her and Dad? I went up to my room, but as I got to the top of the stairs, the door of her bedroom opened to reveal her standing there in a pair of neatly tailored trousers. They were of fawn cotton, and finished about six inches above her ankle – the sort of flattering cut that was fashionable in the fifties.

  ‘Wow!’ I could not stop myself. She looked sensational.

  That was all it took. She closed the bedroom door smartly and disappeared. Ten minutes later she came back downstairs in the skirt and cardigan. It would be another few weeks before she would try the trousers on again, and after that they became her daily uniform.

  My mother always had a dislike of hospitals, and whenever anyone was admitted, she would do her level best to avoid visiting them. It was not that she was inconsiderate, neither was it simply the fact that she was impatient with ill health. Her experiences in hospital had always been unhappy ones, which is strange considering that throughout her life there was only one way you could get my mother to do something she didn’t want to do, and that was to get the doctor to suggest it to her.

  Doctors and Nurses

  To watch Dr Senior jump out of his little red MG sports car was one of the high spots of my mother’s life. ‘He was very dashing,’ she’d say, wistfully, with a look that could have given Celia Johnson a run for her money in Brief Encounter. By the time I came along, Dr Senior had an MG saloon and a bit of a stoop, but he retained the deep voice, the Oxford accent, the pipe clamped between his teeth and my mother’s admiration.

  The reason that we played doctors and nurses on the old bed frames down in the junk yard by the saleroom probably had something to do with the high regard in which Mum held doctors. Come to think of it, it wasn’t just doctors. It was most men.

  Mum was always happier in their company than in the company of women. She did have a ‘hen night’ once a week with three friends she had known since the early days of her marriage – they’d meet at each other’s houses to chat and knit and have a bit of supper – but on the whole women irritated her and she did not seek out their company. ‘Why would I want to join the WI? All they do is argue over the teapot.’

  It was not that she was unhappy in her marriage – she doted on my father – but she loved to flirt, and to have men make a fuss of her, even later in life with some of my college mates who were half her age. It made her feel good. Made her feel like a woman. And, to be perfectly honest, I think she regarded other women as competition.

  I’m quite sure that Dr Senior was unaware of the effect he had on her, or that she was more impressed with members of the medical profession than of any other. Among the working classes ‘Doctor’s’ word was regarded as law. He was never called ‘the doctor’. The definite article was dropped as if to emphasise his authority. He was ‘Doctor’. Like ‘God’.

  Doctors were from another walk of life altogether. A better class of person. We knew of no one whose son or daughter had become a doctor; the position was unattainable except by birth, as far as Mum was concerned.

  She also had great admiration for Dr Senior’s personal hygiene. ‘He always has such clean hands, for a smoker.’

  I don’t think the remark was directed at my dad – then a ten-a-day Senior Service man. It was more of a quiet reflection. But I can remember, myself, the smell of Dr Senior, and in spite of the fact that he smoked a pipe, he always smelled of tweed and a sort of classy disinfectant. His hands and stethoscope were deathly cold, and he had a posh accent.

  Grandma and Auntie Alice would compare notes about the different treatments that doctors within the same practice had prescribed. There was Dr Ferris, Dr Armstrong, Dr Senior and Dr Gott, as well as the kindly female Dr Hillis, who wore her grey hair pinned up behind and always looked highly intelligent. My mother’s feeling towards her, being a well-spoken woman in a man’s profession, was bordering on awe.

  If Auntie Alice had a particular problem, then Grandma would say, ‘Well, you want to get yourself along to Dr Ferris and get him to give you some of those tablets he gave Florence Grange. They sorted her out.’

  It mattered not whether Auntie Alice’s complaint was the same as that of her friend Florence Grange; Grandma was convinced that Auntie Alice never asked for the right tablets or ointment. Why else would she always be ill?

  My mother was equally impatient of illness, and as a child, the only way I could be guaranteed to be allowed to stay at home was if I had actually been physically sick. Even then it was probably the prospect of embarrassment at me throwing up in the classroom that made her keep me at home, rather than the belief that it would help me get better more quickly.

  As with all children, there were days when I did not want to go in. Days when I just felt a bit ropey, or days when I was being picked on and couldn’t face the thought of another day of mickey-taking; another day of gritting my teeth and getting on with it. I don’t suppose I was any more feeble than anybody else; just too sensitive for my own good.

  But ‘feeling a bit poorly’ was not enough, so on days when I really wanted a result, I would go to the bathroom, close the door, and make retching noises, hopefully loud enough for my mother to hear. Then I’d come out and do my best to look pale.

  I did once consider tipping the contents of a tin of vegetable soup into the washbasin, but in the end I thought that might be going a bit far, and if Mum had found the empty tin, she might have put two and two together. It was not worth the risk. Generally, if I said I had been sick, she would believe me, and by the middle of the afternoon I would have improved and she would satisfy herself that she had done the right thing.

  Sometimes there were health scares. In the early 1960s the prospect of a smallpox outbreak seemed a real possibility, and so all parents and children were summoned to the outpatients of the Co
ronation Hospital to be vaccinated. The queue stretched for half a mile down the road. Nobody seemed to mind, and families stood chatting at the side of the road, shuffling forward obediently and with good grace as the queue shortened, until eventually they were ushered into the curtained cubicles and attacked with the hypodermic by one of the local GPs. Drs Senior, Armstrong, Ferris, Gott and Hillis had turned out in force to man the needles. There was great community spirit about the whole thing.

  The abscess that my mother claimed I got as a result of a snowball hitting my neck led to a short stay in hospital. I don’t remember much, other than seeing screens being pulled around me while the wound was being dressed and slivers of soggy skin being removed with forceps and placed in an enamel kidney-shaped dish. But I remember breaking my leg, not least because it coincided with the death of my mother’s parents.

  I feel guilty now for loving my mother’s parents more than I loved my dad’s mum. Grandma Titch was a tough old bird – she had to be, with a husband dying relatively young and a sickly daughter often confined to the back bedroom – but she was good-hearted, and mellowed a lot in old age. In her eighties the tough and prickly-lipped busybody transformed into a benign old lady with a ready smile. She’d say, as she ran her fingers through my hair every time I returned home and went to see her, ‘Do you know, I’m sure you’re getting darker.’ You had to warm to her.

  But Grandma and Grandad Hardisty were every child’s idea of what grandparents should be. They looked like them, sounded like them and acted like them, and my feelings towards them, at the age of six or seven, were little short of adoration.

  Grandma and Grandad Hardisty