Nobbut a Lad Read online

I wasn’t aware that we’d had any family discussion about the possibility of an increase in numbers, but then I was only four and a half when Kath arrived, so it might have been mentioned in conversation and I’d not really taken it in. I must have noticed Mum getting bigger – she was very slight.

  Several things happened at the birth: I was packed off to Auntie Bee’s in Otley for a fortnight, my mum went to her mother’s to get help looking after the baby, and my dad went into hospital with pneumonia. Mum would have told him off for attention-seeking – she was never a very patient nurse.

  I didn’t enjoy my time with Auntie Bee and Uncle Herbert – he was grumpy, and she was impatient. It’s funny; in later life she was one of the sweetest-natured, gentlest women I’ve ever met (and Uncle Herbert was still grumpy).

  Their sons, David and Arnold, were slightly older than Kath and me, and kept on a fairly tight rein (though they did have baked beans with their tea, which Mum thought very slack). It’s a wonder she let me stay there.

  Eventually I was allowed back home – the first few days at Ash Grove, staying with Grandma Hardisty, where my first sight of breasts as my mother fed my sister gave rise to the question ‘Is that what them things are for?’

  Soon we all moved back to Nelson Road and my dad went back to work for a quiet life.

  Despite the age difference, Kath and I got on very well and I fulfilled the usual role of protective brother, in spite of the fact that my mother reckoned my sister had me wrapped round her little finger.

  Kath decided I was really quite useful and declined to speak for the first two and a half years of her life – allowing me to do all the talking for her. Only when we took a holiday with Dad’s best man in Southampton for a few days did she start to speak for herself – I was too busy looking at the ships to pay much attention. The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were both in port during the same week. We saw them from the Isle of Wight ferry. It rained on the Isle of Wight. Mum would never hear a good word for it after that.

  It was not long before I realised that boys and girls had a totally different outlook on life. Having got to the age of four and a half as a relatively self-sufficient soul, it began to dawn on me that you couldn’t ignore sisters, even for a few minutes. They had to be involved. This was all very well when Kath was prepared to muck in with games of cowboys and Indians, but when I was expected to show an interest in her dolls, I drew the line.

  We did have common ground when it came to pets. We both had rabbits. Sisters, they were – she had Wilmer and I had Lulu. We cared for them well, fed them on bran and oats, and they had a five-star hutch courtesy of my dad. They died within a couple of months, while the Dinsdales’ rabbit next door – Patchy, ignored from dawn till dusk and from one end of the week to the other – lasted several years. There was no justice in this as far as my sister and I could see, and after that Kath lost heart. I fared a little better with Snowy, the imaginatively named New Zealand white, but even he perished within the year. Only with goldfish did we excel. We got bored with them and as a result Stripey and Peter lived into their twenties, swimming around in a tank of pea soup.

  Not all the brothers and sisters in the street got on with one another, but Kath and I rubbed along pretty well most of the time. She was happy to come and play doctors and nurses on the old bed frames down in the saleroom yard, and we’d be taken almost everywhere together – to Auntie Bee’s in Otley, where we were allowed to watch Popeye on ITV while Mum bridled at the tea table, and to the church social once a year at the Winter Gardens in Ilkley, where Mum and Kath always had new homemade dresses. They were invariably of the same fabric, but different styles. Kath had no shop-bought clothes (apart from underwear and socks) until she went to grammar school.

  Not that all our entertainments were so elaborate. We’d still enjoy watching the gasman emptying the meter at the bottom of the cellar steps – ours was grey, for sixpences and shillings; Cookie’s, next door, was red for pennies. The meter man wrapped the coins in rolls of paper before putting them into a big Gladstone bag and lumbering off down the street.

  We’d have baths together when we were young – it was very unfair: I always got the tap end. And Mum only bought Gibbs Dentifrice toothpaste – a pink or blue block in a tin – which was cheaper than the tubes of SR we were always nagging her to buy. We had to rub our brush on the block until it went frothy.

  There would be bedtime stories together – ‘Toby Twirl and Eli Phant and Peter Penguin, too, went out to gather blackberries which in abundance grew’ and Beatrix Potter and Noddy. Mum was a good reader, with meaningful expression in her voice, even if all her characters did sound the same. Then she’d send me off up to my bedroom in the attic and come a few minutes later to kiss me goodnight and go out leaving the door slightly ajar. The final greeting was always the same: ‘Night-night, God bless, peepy-times, see you in the morning …’ Her footsteps would fade away down the stairs and the vision of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World would gradually disappear into the gloom in the corner by the window.

  Every piece of new domestic equipment seemed to be a landmark. When we got a fridge – a little three-foot-square one that could only take two pints of milk, some margarine and cheese – she would always forget to take the marge out before spreading it on the bread, so she warmed it up on top of the cream Bakelite radio. One day it melted and the radio blew up.

  These memories come like little shafts of light – sparkling briefly and then receding into the gloom. But I do remember the special days in the year – the high days and holidays like Bonfire Night, when part of the vegetable patch would be cleared for a fire, and we’d make a guy out of Dad’s old work overalls and jacket. The neighbours would all come up the back to look, and you’d have to see who they were by the light of the bonfire. There would be baked potatoes in their jackets, pushed into the embers as the fire died, and slabs of parkin and beakers of cocoa to keep you warm. Sparklers and golden rain, we were allowed to hold while their vivid showers of sparks shot up into the air, and a Catherine wheel would be nailed to the door of the midden. It never went round properly, and Dad – the only one with fingers tough enough for the job – would be sent to set it spinning again. He never winced, but then his hands were like leather.

  Jumping crackers would be let off to make us leap into the air as they crackled and snapped around our feet, and bangers would be tossed into the crowd of onlookers by naughty boys, who were admonished by the mums for being ‘daft’.

  ‘Don’t do that – you’ll have somebody’s eye out.’ It was always the same threat, and to our continued disappointment, it never once happened.

  Our rockets were pathetic – one quick ‘whoosh’ and they were gone – but what did we expect for sixpence? There were no showers of stars, but if you watched, you could see the small red glow of the spent cardboard tube making its way back to earth. With any luck it would land in our garden, and the following day we could collect them all up – soggy from a night’s rain and making our fingers smell of bad eggs and damp gunpowder.

  The night before Bonfire Night was feverishly anticipated. It was known as Mischief Night. As soon as it grew dark, we would leave the house, armed with a square of greaseproof paper into which we’d sneaked a spoonful of Lyle’s golden syrup. Gleefully Kath and I would round up Janet and Mickey Hudson, Stephen Feather and Philomena Forrest, Virginia and Robert Petty and set off on our mission of mayhem.

  Doorknobs would be smeared with the syrup, then we’d knock on doors or ring bells and run and hide. The girls ran off first leaving the boys to do the dirty work and be quick off the mark. It was not enough to ring a doorbell once and disappear; you had to ring it several times until the owner was so exasperated that they came outside and pulled the door closed after them, smearing the syrup on their hands and muttering, ‘Little buggers’, as they stared out into the night, trying to focus their eyes in the darkened street.

  The other trick was to fling people’s metal dustbin lids into their b
ackyards, making as much noise as possible. They’d run out to see what was the matter and we’d be hiding behind the wall, hardly daring to breathe.

  Only once did I get caught – by Wilf Phillips at the bottom house on the other side of the street.

  I’d already lobbed his bin lid over the wall of the yard twice and was starting to feel brave. I sneaked back to do it again, holding my breath and not daring to make a noise. As my hand reached for the lid once more, so Wilf leaped up from the other side of the bin. I let out a yell and ran like hell, my heart thumping in my chest, but he was a good runner, even in his slippers, and caught up with me on the corner of the road and cuffed me round the ear.

  ‘Miserable sod,’ said Stephen Feather. ‘Why can’t he take a joke?’

  But we didn’t do it again.

  Our sports came in seasons – marbles in summer, conkers in autumn and jacks in winter. When the grass down by the river was tall and lush, we’d make squeaking noises by blowing on a single blade, sandwiched between our thumbs. Mickey Hudson had Japanese knotweed growing in his back garden. It made perfect pea-shooters. A packet of dried peas from Thornber’s top shop could last us all day.

  And then, in Wimbledon fortnight there would be the tennis. Mum’s battered pre-war racket would be hauled out from the cellar – bent and buckled by damp – and pressed into service against the bus-garage wall at the bottom of the street on which a white line would be chalked three feet off the ground, and the three chalked wickets rubbed out with spit. Mickey’s racket was old, too, but at least it was painted, not wooden like mine. And he had a press.

  Stephen Feather, or Fezz, as we called him, was very dismissive. ‘I’m getting a new one,’ he boasted. ‘A Slazenger – from Dobbies and Robbies.’

  Dobson and Robinson was the sports shop on the Grove – an Aladdin’s cave of Slazenger and Dunlop Maxply Fort rackets as well as rugby balls, football boots and every sporting requisite a young boy could dream of. It smelled of leather and rubber, and sold tennis balls that were white. Ours were all dark grey and didn’t bounce very high. Some of them had lost all their wool from being worried by the dog. Still, when we played cricket with them, the ones that did still sport a bit of fluff didn’t sting quite as much as a cork ball when you tried to catch them, or caught a side-swipe from Dokey Gell on your cheek.

  We admired Fezz’s new racket and tried to cover our jealousy, though it was hard not to feel a bit pleased when he misjudged a return and scraped off the paint on the bus-garage wall.

  ‘Aw, me Mum’ll kill me!’

  We found some white paint in the saleroom yard and touched it up, but I think she noticed. He wasn’t allowed out the following night.

  Holidays were the times when the family was thrown together – often in the same room. Twice we braved Butlins at Filey – my parents attracted by the fact that it cost £60 all in for the four of us, with them in a double bed at one end of the chalet and Kath and me in bunks at the other. But most years it was Bispham – considered by Mum to be the select end of Blackpool, but not as stuck-up as Lytham St Anne’s, which she said was a bit dull.

  We never went abroad. Not until I was twenty. I think Mum was nervous of overseas travel with two small children. Mrs Walkinshaw, from the chip shop – who hadn’t any teeth – had recently spent a holiday in Spain. Mum was clearly rattled by Mrs Walkinshaw’s profligacy and ever afterwards she was known as ‘Spain without the teeth’, the inference being that she should have got her priorities right and invested in dentures before sunshine.

  Pendennis in Hesketh Avenue was our choice of boarding house, run by Mr and Mrs Schofield and Mrs Schofield’s mum. Well, Mrs Schofield’s mum didn’t really run it, but she sat just inside the kitchen door in her floral pinny and dispensed wisdom to all who would listen. Dennis and Joan Petty, next door but one to us in Nelson Road, had said it was clean and economical so we went on their recommendation. Mum and Dad would have a double bed in one room, and my sister and I would have a double in the room next door. There would be one suitcase between the four of us – a blue cardboard one with expanding locks – and a new set of towels each year. Mum had standards.

  We’d catch the coach outside Tipping’s, the coal merchant’s that doubled as a travel agent’s in Brook Street, and the journey to Blackpool would take us the best part of the day, with a stop on the way for coffee and squash just over the border in Lancashire.

  And when we got back on the coach, did Mum have to ask, ‘Have you been?’ in a voice just loud enough to be overheard?

  That night, supper would be a funny sort of meal – a bit of fish for those who had just arrived, and a pot of tea or a glass of milk. Not until the following day would the crate of pop – the Vimto and the despised cream soda – be brought to the table for the children to choose from.

  On the first day there were jobs to be done – theatre tickets to be booked for Ken Dodd at the Winter Gardens and tickets for Charlie Cairoli at the Tower Circus. We’d go to the zoo at the Tower if it rained, to see the lion who lived there and looked more bored each year as he paced the cage – three steps and turn, three steps and turn. I dreamed of letting him out. Kath said it wasn’t a good idea: there’d be nothing for him to eat in Blackpool – apart from the people.

  We’d go to the Tower Ballroom if Reginald Dixon was in residence, and watch him rise up out of the floor to the strains of ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside’. Mum and Dad would have a dance or two across the shiny parquet floor, while Kath and I ate biscuits and waited patiently for them to finish.

  There were donkey rides on the beach – Nellie and Samson with their names painted on their bridles, each of them far too old and far too wise ever to break into a trot, no matter how hard you dug in your heels.

  There were grey-green crabs to be fished for with lumps of bread dangled from string into the boating pool, and occasionally a trip to the Pleasure Beach to see the laughing clowns in the glass case and the big dipper, where groups of young women with their hair in curlers and pink nets would be taken for a ride by cocky-looking Teddy boys with long coats and Brylcreemed hair.

  Mum could not see the women who had come out in unsuitable dress without murmuring under her breath, ‘Silly dames.’ At Butlins they were known as ‘misguided misses’.

  The women would scream as the carriages hurtled down the track, and the boys would grin gormlessly and hold on with just one hand to impress them. In the evening the curlers would come out and the nets would come off in readiness for a night on the tiles in stilettos and tight-waisted skirts. If you came home late from the theatre or the circus, you could see them tottering back to their digs shrieking with laughter and sometimes throwing up on the prom.

  ‘Don’t look,’ warned Mum. ‘They should know better.’

  On sunny days we’d stay on the beach from ten in the morning until late afternoon, and Dad would pretend to fall asleep so that we could bury him in the sand.

  As a special treat for being nice to my sister for a whole week, Dad would take me for a boy’s night out at the cinema to see a film – The Guns of Navarone or Zulu – while Mum and Kath did a jigsaw in the silent sitting room behind the net curtains at the front of Pendennis.

  ‘Did you enjoy that, Algy?’ Dad would ask when we came out into the fading light.

  ‘Yes. Can we go again?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  But we never did. Instead, on the last evening, we’d walk up to the end of the road, cross the promenade and stroll towards Fleetwood and Thornton Cleveleys looking at the illuminations – strings and strings of coloured bulbs blowing in the stiff breeze and reflected in the rain-washed prom, and set pieces with moving parts that shone like jewels in the pitch-black night. Between them all snaked the green-and-cream trams, clanging their way along the tracks and creating their own illuminations on wet nights with a shower of sparks.

  Dad would hold my hand to cross the road. It would be softer at the end of the week than the beginning – softened by a w
eek of relaxation and an absence of plumbing. Past shabby kiosks selling ‘Kiss me quick’ hats and candyfloss, plastic Zorro swords and pirate bandanas, we’d wander wearily back to the digs for a bit of supper – a Rich Tea biscuit and a glass of milk for me, a bottle of Double Diamond for Dad.

  This would be the pattern of holidays for most of the folk in our street. Just a week – not a fortnight – and usually at Blackpool or Scarborough, Filey or Brid, as Bridlington was always known. Grannies and older aunties would go to Morecambe or Whitby. Posh people would go to Lytham St Anne’s. Cornwall was another country, reserved for those ‘up the Grove’, and anyway, it would take you a couple of days to get there and then what was left of the week?

  All too quickly Saturday morning would arrive and we’d pile back on to the coach for the long journey home with the bursting suitcase and the once-new towels that now smelled of sea and sand.

  There was only the one proper holiday every year for Dad, apart from a few days off at Christmas and a day or two at Easter and Whit. For the rest of the time, Kath and I dreamed and Mum and Dad saved. It was worth it for the Guns of Navarone and the smell of sea and sand, and the sight of Mum and Dad dancing together like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers across the glossy floor of the Tower Ballroom.

  I went back a few years ago, not on holiday, but to work. It was an incongruous Songs of Praise from the Pleasure Beach. The kiosks and the candyfloss are unchanged, and the big dipper was still flinging rows of teenagers down its perilous slopes. The music is different now, but the thrill is the same and the girls still scream, even if they don’t wear curlers any more.

  Comfortingly, some things never change – the smell of fried onions, toffee apples and fish and chips. The sight of donkeys on the rain-soaked sand. The trams still squeak and clang along the prom, and the two laughing clowns were still rollicking in their glass case outside the Pleasure Beach. A few of the boarding houses in Bispham are still hanging on to an air of respectability, by the skin of their teeth, though I doubt that the bottle of Vimto has quite the pull that it used to.