Anne Bennett - Pack Up Your Troubles

Kevin wasn’t the only barefoot or badly shod child at the school, and in October a man came to see them from the Birmingham Mail Christmas Tree Fund. Kevin came home a few days later clutching not only a pair of new boots stamped so they couldn’t be pawned, and a pair of socks to go with them, but also a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a navy jumper and shirt. Maeve was glad of the decent warm clothing, but mortified that she was unable to provide them herself, especially when she knew her husband was in full-time work for which he was paid a living wage.

What made it worse were the two hundred men who’d marched from Jarrow in the northeast of England, where unemployment stood at sixty-eight per cent. They were demanding jobs and had marched to London with a petition, but the Prime Minister refused even to see or to speak to them.

Maeve felt she could have accepted her poverty better if Brendan had been unemployed and they’d had to exist on dole money. She’d read somewhere that the average family of husband, wife and two children needed six pounds a week to keep them above the poverty line. She knew many earned much less than that, but she was pretty certain that Brendan earned that much and more, for his job was skilled. But she was lucky if she saw the odd pound of it, and while her husband seemed to have money to do as he pleased, the rest of the family were definitely in poverty.

As the year drew to a close, Edward, the uncrowned King, abdicated. He said he ‘found it impossible . . . to discharge my duties as King . . . without the help and support of the woman I love.’

Everyone was shocked at what he had done. ‘Love, my arse,’ Elsie said angrily. ‘What’s he playing at? He’s the King and that should come first. As my mother would say, love flies out the window when the bills come in the door.’

‘Well, that would hardly apply to them, would it, Elsie?’ Maeve said with a laugh, amazed that her friend should care so much.

But most people had an opinion on the abdication and she found it was discussed everywhere. But however anyone felt, by 12 December 1936 Britain had a new King – Prince Albert, who would be known as George VI. He’d married a lady called Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who would be Queen, and he had two daughters. The elder, Elizabeth, who was then ten years old, was now heir to the throne.

Maeve listened to it all on Elsie’s wireless and later read about it in the paper, but all in all she felt nothing in her situation was likely to change, whichever King was on the throne, and she looked forward with little enthusiasm to 1937.

FOUR

‘Terrible world to bring kids up in, this,’ Elsie said to Maeve one day in the spring of 1938. She was eyeing Maeve’s swollen stomach as she spoke, because Maeve was six months gone again and when she’d told Brendan about it she’d borne the marks for almost a week. Still, he’d more or less left her alone after that. This was one at least she hadn’t miscarried. And there was nothing to be gained by going on about it. The world was a dangerous enough place with enough to worry about, God alone knew. Elsie often thought it was as if the whole globe was like a tinderbox and ready to go up at any time. ‘I mean, bloody civil war still going on in Spain,’ she said. ‘And that bloody Hitler and Mussolini like bosom buddies and now the Nips attacking the Chinese.’

‘Yes, but none of it affects us,’ Maeve said, ‘not really. I mean, it’s all happening miles away.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Elsie countered. ‘If you ask me, girl, we’re teetering on the edge of war.’

Elsie wasn’t the only one to think that way. ‘Needn’t think I’m fighting if it comes to war,’ Brendan growled one evening.

No, Maeve longed to say, you’d rather fight women and weans. But she said nothing to him, as she often didn’t these days, and carried on making a cup of tea. He’d finished his meal and began slurping at his tea while he read the paper. The children sat together on one of the armchairs watching him.

‘I don’t know why he insists on them being there,’ Maeve complained to Elsie one day. ‘I feed them before he comes in and if they’re still hungry I try and give them a bite before bedtime, but he insists they have to sit while he fills his face with things they can only dream about. Grace is frightened enough to sit still and say nothing, but Kevin isn’t. He’d rather be out in the street playing with the others and he’s always fidgeting. One of these days there will be trouble, I can smell it, because although he’s scared witless of his father, he hates him for what he does to me and to us all. Sometimes it comes out in his voice when he talks to him and the way he glares at him. The child isn’t old enough yet, nor wily enough to hide his feelings.’

Just a couple of weeks after this conversation things came to a head. It was mid-June 1938 and six-year-old Kevin had been playing out in the street with his friends and his little sister when his father came home from work.

‘In the house now, Grace, Kevin,’ Brendan rapped out. Grace, in her haste to obey him, scurried along the street, down the entry and across the yard. But Kevin, though he acknowledged what his father had said, made no move to follow him straight away.

When he did leave his friends reluctantly and went in, it was to see his father unfastening his belt, and the child’s face blanched with fear.

Hoping to distract her husband’s attention from Kevin, Maeve hauled herself awkwardly from the chair, her pregnancy hanging heavily on her, and said sharply to the boy, ‘Where have you been? You were called in ten minutes ago.’

Kevin looked at her and Maeve was sure he knew what she was trying to do. ‘You’ll go straight to bed this minute,’ she said angrily. ‘Maybe then you’ll remember to come in when you’re called.’

She knew if she could get him away, out of Brendan’s sight, he had a chance. Afterwards, she intended to talk to Kevin, as she gave him a little supper after his father had gone to the pub, and tell him never to risk that situation again.

She thought – even Kevin thought – they’d got away with it. Keeping his eyes averted from his father’s, for to look at them turned his legs to jelly, Kevin walked across the room and without a word opened the door to the stairs. It was then that he felt the wrench on his collar as he was yanked back into the room with such violence the buttons were torn from his shirt and the back of the material ripped open, and, as Brendan tore the rest of it from his body, Kevin began to shake.

‘This young man’s got too big for his boots,’ Brendan said. ‘I say he needs teaching a lesson. What d’you say, Maeve?’

‘No!’ Maeve had been knocked off balance by Brendan’s actions, but she pulled herself away from the wall and cried, ‘Don’t you dare touch him, Brendan! Don’t you bloody dare!’

‘Dare! Dare!’ While she was still holding Kevin, Brendan grabbed Maeve’s arm and bent it up her back so that she cried out with the pain of it.

‘Leave him, Brendan, for God’s sake,’ she pleaded when she could speak. ‘He’s just a wee boy.’

‘Aye, and a wee boy who has to grow up with respect for his father,’ Brendan snapped, and he pushed Maeve from him and laid Kevin across his knees.

The boy’s anguished eyes met those of Maeve. ‘Mom,’ he cried, and jumped with pain at the suddenness of the belt on his bare skin.

The belt had come down on Kevin’s back once more and his screams were reverberating through the house before Maeve recovered enough to throw herself against Brendan again. This time he was more furious with his wife, but he held on to Kevin tightly, knowing if he let him go he would scurry away. He tried to shrug Maeve off, but she wouldn’t be shifted. Instead she lunged forward and raked her fingers down his face. Enraged, he turned round, holding Kevin tight in his arms, and aimed a vicious kick towards Maeve’s stomach, and the force of it sent her cannoning into the wall. She banged her head, knocking herself dizzy, and slithered down to a sitting position with her head spinning and such severe shocking pains in her stomach that she doubled over in agony.