Annie Groves - A Mother’s Blessing

‘Gawd, she’s got her nose so stuck up in the air it’s a mercy she doesn’t fall over her own feet,’ June complained to Molly as she slammed Frank’s mother’s gate forcefully behind them. ‘So much for your idea, eh, Miss Clever Clogs?’

‘Well, at least Frank will be pleased that you offered,’ Molly told her, trying desperately to salvage something from the situation. Privately, she half suspected that June quite enjoyed her set-tos with Frank’s mother and even deliberately encouraged them, but her loyalty to her sister prevented her from saying as much.

‘It works both ways,’ June replied. ‘So how about you going round and asking Johnny’s mam if she wants a hand with her curtains?’

‘She’s got Johnny’s sisters to help her,’ Molly protested, but she knew her face was burning guiltily.

‘What, them pair of useless articles?’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘A lot of good them two will be, from what I know of them.’

‘All right then,’ Molly gave in reluctantly. ‘I’ll go round and see her as soon as we’ve had our tea.’

Half an hour later, Molly was standing in her apron, slicing what was left of the Sunday roast for their cold meat salad tea, to be served with hot new potatoes from the allotment, while listening to the wireless, when she heard the sound of her father’s heavy work boots on the back step. Leaving what she was doing, she went to fill the kettle.

‘Kettle’s on, Dad.’

His walk back from Edge Hill railway yard had brought a sheen of perspiration to Albert’s sun-reddened forehead. As always, Molly was filled with a rush of love for him when she saw him. Left with two young daughters to rear alone, he could have opted to hand her and June over to their mother’s family and got on with his own life, but instead he had done everything he could to provide them with a loving happy home. It must have been so hard for him. He had had to work long gruelling hours at the gridiron to ensure there was food on the table, but he had never once missed reading them a bedtime story, nor listening to them recite their times tables, nor checking their spelling homework. Tears pricked Molly’s eyes. She could scarcely remember her mother but she knew from the way he still talked about her that her father had loved her and still missed her.

‘I’ll get washed up, love,’ he called, disappearing into the small back scullery. Repairing railway lines and working on rolling stock was dirty and often heavy work, but Albert took pride in his appearance and was fastidious in scrubbing up the minute he got home. ‘Costs nowt to be clean’ was one of his favourite phrases. Medium height and slightly stooped, he faithfully clung to the small domestic details of family life originally put in place by the girls’ mother. A bath once a week, their hair washed on Sunday night ready for school on Monday, a kitchen that was kept spick and span with the pans, like the family’s shoes, polished so brightly that you could see your face in them. Albert had instilled in his daughters his own respect for cleanliness and neatness. There was another side to him, though, a side that had him cultivating flowers in the tiny back garden.

‘Your mam allus loved them,’ he had once told Molly when she had admired the scent of some roses, his arthritis-damaged fingers gently touching the velvety soft petals.

And he was not the kind of man to go off to the pub of a Saturday night, leaving his young motherless daughters to the care of a neighbour like some men in his position would have done. Instead, in winter the small family had gathered around the wireless after Saturday night’s supper, whilst in the summer the girls had gone down to the allotment with their father.

‘You’ll never guess what’s happened at the factory today, Dad,’ June announced once they were all sitting down and eating.

‘Aye, well, you don’t want to go getting on the wrong side of that Miss Jenner,’ Albert warned his elder daughter after she’d finished telling him with relish how she had outwitted the new supervisor. He knew June could be a firebrand at times.

Molly could see the worry in her father’s eyes and vowed silently to do what she could to keep June from baiting Miss Jenner. No one else would take on a machinist who had lost her job for cheeking a superior.

Once the meal was over and everything cleared away, and their father had set off for his allotment, Molly ran upstairs to comb her hair. She knew she couldn’t put off the visit any longer.

Johnny’s mother and sisters lived three streets away from Chestnut Close, down a narrow backstreet. Its double row of small terraced houses were of poor quality. Unlike the houses on the close, those of Moreton Street did not have gardens or indoor bathrooms, but had to make do with small dank back yards and outside privies.

Two tow-headed little boys, playing in the dusty street, stopped their game to watch Molly until a young very pregnant woman, with untidy hair and wearing a grubby apron, called out to them to get themselves inside.

Moreton Street had a slightly rank smell, and Molly tried not to wrinkle her nose at it. On the cul-de-sac, they had the benefit of more modern housing, the allotments, with their smell of fresh earth and air, and even the scent of roses from some front gardens. Not that some of the residents of Moreton Street didn’t make an effort. Several of the houses had freshly donkey-stoned steps and clean windows with neat curtains hanging in them, but unfortunately Johnny’s mother’s house wasn’t one of them.

Molly climbed the steps and knocked on the shabby door.

She could hear sounds of people talking inside the house, but it seemed an age before the door was finally opened to reveal the elder of Johnny’s younger sisters, Deirdre, her hair in curling rags, and a grubby brassiere strap visible as she clutched at the front of her dressing gown.

‘’Ere, Mam, it’s our Johnny’s fiancée,’ she called back to the darkness of the cluttered hallway.

Molly’s tender heart couldn’t help but pity Johnny’s mother, with her nervous air, her hands disfigured and reddened from her cleaning job at the hospital. It must have been so hard to bring up three children alone with only one wage coming in. It was no doubt because their mother had had to work such long hours cleaning that Johnny’s sisters were the way they were. The fact that their mother was out at work all day and most evenings meant that they had had far more freedom than most girls in the area, whose parents kept a much stricter eye on them.

‘Well, I never … we wasn’t expectin’ you, otherwise—’

‘Give over fussing, Mam,’ Deirdre objected. ‘If she’s gonna marry our Johnny she’s gorra get used to us the way we are, instead of expectin’ us to put on a lorra fancy airs.’

‘Deirdre, you pig, if you’ve bin using my rouge, I’ll skin yer alive.’ Heels clattered on the stairs, barely covered by a threadbare runner, as Johnny’s other sister, Jennifer, came downstairs, her hair carefully curled to emulate the style favoured by the film star Jean Harlow, her flimsy short skirt all but showing off her knees.

‘’Ere, Mam, me hem’s coming down. Have you gorra safety pin, so I can pin it? Only me other one needs a wash, and I ain’t got nuttin’ else to wear, like.’

‘Perhaps it might be better to sew it,’ Molly couldn’t help suggesting.

‘Give over,’ Jennifer laughed, giving a dismissive shrug. ‘I ain’t gor any time for that. I’ve gorra meet me new fella in ten minutes and I don’t want no other girl pinchin’ him from us ’cos I’m late. Gizz us a woodie, will yer, Deirdre?’ she demanded. ‘I’m gasping for a fag.’

‘You’re gonna have to cut that out if we’re going to have a war,’ her mother warned her. ‘Fags’ll be on the ration as well, you mark my words.’