Anne Bennett - A Strong Hand to Hold

Linda had felt sorry for the frightened creatures. A visit to Pimm’s Pet Shop was always one of the highlights of any trip to the Bull Ring when she’d been younger. The shop had a wide variety of animals – hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits, together with adorable kittens or boisterous puppies that nipped playfully with their sharp little teeth. Then there were the birds; she used to spend ages standing in front of the budgies trying to get them to talk. The canaries, she recalled, always sang so beautifully, and occasionally there’d even be a parrot or a mynah bird.

There were no pets now, and the clock the children and many adults had been fascinated by was also gone. There were fewer flower-sellers than before the war, Linda noticed. This came as no surprise. Everyone was digging up their lawns and gardens now to grow vegetables. They had been urged to ‘Dig for Victory’.

She herself couldn’t ever remember having flowers in the house, or growing in the garden. Patty had told her that her father had tended the garden nicely before he got too sick, they’d had vegetables in the back and flowers in the front, and he’d often cut a bunch and bring them into the house for his wife. But eventually he’d grown too ill to see to the garden and Bert Latimer came to mow the lawns. The vegetables and flowers went to seed and died; Ted Prosser, her second husband, never had any interest in it. Linda remembered Patty’s sad face as she’d said that, and she thought if ever she had any spare money, she’d buy a bunch of flowers to cheer her up.

As she followed behind Patty, she saw Jimmy Jesus taking his place by St Martin’s Church. ‘Look, Mom!’

‘He’s early today,’ Patty remarked. ‘Must have plenty to say.’

They’d stood a minute to listen to the old down-and-out with the long white hair and beard that had given him his name. ‘Though your souls be as black as pitch, if you repent of your sinful ways, your soul can be washed cleaner than the whitest snow by the blood of the lamb,’ Jimmy began.

A few hecklers shouted at him from the crowd, but Jimmy Jesus took no notice and opened up his Bible. ‘Oh, Gawd blimey, come on, chuck,’ Patty had urged. ‘I ain’t in the mood for a bloody sermon today.’

Linda followed her mother as she made her way towards the Rag Market, but sneaked a look back at Jimmy Jesus as she went. He’d always fascinated her; though she couldn’t understand all he said, she liked the sound of his voice which was surprisingly gentle and without an accent of any kind.

The Rag Market was used as a fish market through the week and the reek of fish was still there; Linda wrinkled her nose at the smell, but she knew as well as anyone that this was where the bargains were to be found. Sure enough, after a little bit of haggling, Patty had got a pair of stout shoes for Linda costing three bob, as well as plenty of cheap vegetables, a few apples and some fresh fish at a very reasonable price. Patty was pleased with herself and it wasn’t until they were on their way home on the rickety, smoky tram that she’d begun to cough; the next morning, Sunday, Linda phoned for the doctor from the phone box on the corner.

She didn’t mind sending for Dr Sanders now. He’d become a good friend to them all. She remembered the first time she’d gone to see him early in August. Patty had collapsed five days earlier.

Linda told the doctor it was the telegram that had brought it on, but she knew it wasn’t, not really. Linda guessed that her mother was secretly glad when she got the telegram to tell her that her second husband, Edward Prosser, would not be coming home from Dunkirk. He’d been a bully and Linda knew he used to hit her mom. She’d hated Ted Prosser for what he did to Patty and because he was horrible to the boys. There was another reason for hating him too, but she had never breathed a word to her mom about it – wouldn’t ever have to now, ’cos that pig was dead and gone and couldn’t hurt them any more.

However, when Patty had read the letter that came later, she had dropped like a stone to the floor in a dead faint. Dr Sanders had put her condition down to delayed shock and depression, and he prescribed tablets. He hadn’t informed the Welfare Authorities about the family though he knew he should have done. Instead, he’d arranged for a district nurse to call daily until Patty was on her feet. He’d said it was too much for any twelve-year-old, coping with a sick mother as well as the housework and cooking and looking after her two little brothers aged three years and just twelve months, even with the quite considerable help she got from the next-door neighbour.

When Patty recovered, he’d got her a job in Armstrong’s on the Lichfield Road making cartridge cases; he also used his influence to get a place for George and little Harry at the day nursery across the road.

It was great now, Linda thought. Money wasn’t quite so tight; they no longer had to hide from the rent man and could begin to pay the doctor’s bill, though he’d told them there was no rush. It grew better still when Beattie talked her Bert round into letting her take a job too. She’d said she was bored stiff at home with the lads fighting and her daughter married and living in Leeds, and anyway, she wanted to be doing her bit. But it meant that she’d pop in in the morning, help to get the boys ready and help Patty bring them back in the evening. Linda knew they had a lot to thank Beattie for. Even now, with Patty ill again, she’d taken the boys and left them at the nursery on the Monday and that day, Tuesday too, knowing that Linda would have her hands full as it was.

Patty watched her daughter bustling about, getting a meal for the two of them. ‘We’ll put the wireless on later, bab,’ she said. ‘Have a bit of music to cheer us all up.’

They hadn’t had the wireless very long and it was still a novelty. Patty had wanted one at home because they always had ‘Worker’s Playtime’ on at the factory and she loved to sing along to the songs. When any of the girls said how terrific her voice was, she always replied that they should hear her daughter Linda, as hers was even better, and she tried hard to remember the words of the songs to teach Linda in the evening. Then she heard of the ‘never never’ or ‘hire purchase’ scheme where you could make a down payment on a wireless, then pay so much back a week. But oh, the excitement in the house the Saturday it was delivered!

Linda had looked as if Patty had given her the Crown Jewels. ‘Can we afford it, Mom?’

‘Let me worry about that,’ Patty had said. ‘Any road, we need to hear the news, don’t we, or this flipping lot will be invading us and we’ll know nowt about it till the church bells start to ring.’

‘Oh, Mom!’

‘I’m only joking,’ Patty said. ‘But we do need to know what’s happening. If it gets too miserable we can always turn the dial to summat else, eh? They have good plays on, the girls at work were telling me.’

The thing they enjoyed the most was singing together, and they’d join in the old favourites belting out from the wireless. Beattie loved to hear them. Patty and Linda had been singing together ever since Linda was just a nipper, but it had all come to a stop when Patty married Ted Prosser. Didn’t like to hear it, Patty had said. Didn’t like much, if Beattie’s opinion had been asked. Didn’t seem to take to Linda either and resented any closeness between her and her mother. But then he didn’t go great guns for his own babbies either. Funny man altogether and Patty was better off without him, not that she went around telling her like, but she was.

Patty knew what Beattie thought, for even if she said nothing, her face spoke volumes. They’d been neighbours since she’d come on to the estate in 1930. Patty Lennox she’d been then, of course, and she thought she was in heaven getting one of the new houses on the Pype Hayes Estate, after living in one room in a rat-infested house in Aston since her marriage three years previously. She was so proud and kept the place like a new pin. She enjoyed looking after her husband and little girl, and hoped there would be more children to fill the house with their chatter.