Anne Bennett - Keep the Home Fires Burning

‘You never understood Pat,’ Polly went on, adding sadly, ‘and you never really gave him a chance. It was true that he couldn’t provide for me, but then neither could many other men.’

‘It was that he used to drink. Even when you had no money he would drink,’ Marion said. ‘I could never understand that.’

‘When you think what some of the poor sods have to come home to, it’s no wonder they linger in the pub,’ Polly said. ‘But then you see the other side of the coin – what some of the wives and children have to put up with … Don’t glare at me like that, our Marion, because Pat was never like that. Yes, he would go to the pub, but only once a week, and all he had in his pocket was just enough money for one pint of ale.’

Marion felt a little chastened by Polly’s words and she remembered that Bill had always said something similar about Pat. But however she felt about him, it would do no good running him down in front of her sister.

‘Pat tried so hard to get work that he used to wear his boots down to the uppers. I had to insist that he took a couple of pennies for himself, and he never would have more than that. He gave up the cigarettes years ago. He ain’t a bad man, Marion, though he may sometimes be foolish, but then, God knows, few of us can put up our hands and say we are always so wise and sensible.’

‘I’m sorry, Polly, and you’re right,’ Marion said contritely. ‘I didn’t fully understand your situation and I have never really let myself get to know Pat. My view of him was coloured by that day that you came to seek me out to tell me you were expecting.’

Polly was never one to bear a grudge, and she said, ‘In a way I can understand it. You were my big sister and you used to look out for me. A forced marriage to one of the infamous Reillys was not what you wanted for me.’

‘No,’ Marion admitted, ‘but Bill once said to me that Pat made you happy and that is what I wanted for you so I should have been a lot more understanding.’

She knew that Pat Reilly and his lax attitudes might still irritate her at times but he had been kindness itself since Bill enlisted. She vowed she would try harder to be more tolerant and certainly not carry tales back to her mother.

‘The point is,’ said Polly, ‘when the boot was on the other foot and you had the money, you were always very good with me – with all of us ? but now you’re too stiff-necked to let me help you.’

‘You are helping me,’ said Marion with a wry smile. ‘On my own I would never have got seventeen and sixpence for that bundle of clothes,’ and the two women burst out laughing.

As November loomed, Marion’s Separation Allowance was eventually worked out, and though the back pay was an added bonus, she knew that the normal weekly allowance would buy little but food for them all, and it didn’t even pay the rent. Buying coal, which became more necessary as the days grew colder, was a constant headache, not to mention footwear for them all.

The evacuated children began filtering back home and, to Marion’s grateful relief and that of many more mothers, the schools reopened. Marion didn’t bother sending Sarah, who would have been leaving at Christmas anyway. Mrs Jenkins at the corner shop was looking for a girl to train up, and though the wages were only eight shillings, Sarah was anxious to take it, knowing even the small amount that she would be able to tip up would be welcomed.

First, though, despite the fact that she would be wearing an overall in the shop, Marion felt Sarah had to have at least a couple of dresses that fitted her because she had developed a bust as she passed her fourteenth birthday and some of her dresses now strained to fasten and were decidedly skimpy. Richard’s boots, too, needed cobbling again as they were leaking. He had to travel to work each day on the tram and Marion knew it would help none of them if he was to take sick because of his inadequate clothing.

She went to the Rag Market in the Bull Ring for the things she needed for the children, but even paying Rag Market prices left a sizeable hole in the backdated allowance, and she had nothing left for the twins or Tony, not if she were to pay the rent, though the younger children had all been complaining that their feet hurt.

The children’s shoes were so tight that when they got to school they removed them, like many others. When the man came round from the Christmas Tree Fund, when they had been back at school only a few days, he gave them a docket for new boots and socks to collect from Sheepcote Road Clinic. Marion was mortified by shame when the children came home from school and told her this. She tried to be grateful but she only felt degraded that she wasn’t able to provide for her own children, and this feeling intensified when she was also given a jersey and trousers for Tony, and skirts and jerseys for the two girls.

This is what it is to be poor, she thought that night as she lay in bed. She remembered with remorse how she had looked down on Polly for years. Now she was in the same boat herself and she knew the children needed the things too much for her to refuse them.

Neither Marion nor her sister envied Sarah working for Mrs Jenkins, who was known as a mean and nasty old woman. Her character was apparent in her thin lips, though her face was plump. There were plenty of lines of discontent on it, and the powder she obviously applied in the morning lay in the folds of her skin by afternoon. Her hair was piled untidily on her head, but her glittering eyes were as cold as ice and so was her thin nasal voice.

‘Wouldn’t give you as much as the skin off a rice pudding,’ Polly said one Saturday afternoon when Sarah arrived home after she had been working at the corner shop a fortnight. But Sarah knew one of the reasons Polly said that was because Mrs Jenkins wouldn’t allow people to put things on the slate and pay at the end of the week. She had made it plain to Sarah when she arrived.

‘Now I don’t want you to stand any nonsense,’ she’d said, looming closer so that Sarah’s face was inches from her and she smelled the stale smell of her and saw rotting teeth in her mouth. ‘If they don’t have the money then they don’t get the goods. Point out the notice to them if they object.’ There was the notice, stuck on the wall behind the till: ‘Don’t ask for credit for refusal often offends.’

When Sarah told her aunt this, she snorted in contempt. ‘Stingy old bugger,’ she said. ‘And your mom tells me that although Mrs Jenkins pays you only eight shillings she don’t throw a few groceries in as well to make it up, like.’

Sarah laughed. ‘Oh, Aunt Polly, you must be joking,’ she said. ‘I’m not even allowed to take home the odd cracked egg or stale buns at the end of the day.’

‘I can’t understand the woman at all,’ Polly said, shaking her head. ‘Do you serve in the shop all day?’

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘My first job when I go in is to bag things up in the storeroom upstairs and send them down the chute to the shop.’

‘Like sugar and that?’

Sarah nodded. ‘And flour, tea and mixed fruit, raisins and that, and anything else Mrs Jenkins wants me to weigh up. She says there’s rationing coming in January so things might be different then, and it might not be so easy to have things under the counter for favoured customers.’

‘I’d say not,’ Marion said. ‘Course, it all depends what’s being rationed.’

‘So do you like the job?’ Polly persisted. ‘Because I heard the last girl left in a tear.’

‘Well, I won’t,’ Sarah said. ‘We need the money too much.’

Neither Polly or Marion argued with that because they knew Sarah was right.

Sarah didn’t moan much, but she did find Mrs Jenkins hard going, and her grating, complaining voice really got on Sarah’s nerves. And Aunt Polly was right: Mrs Jenkins was incredibly mean. She’d give her a cup of weak tea mid-morning, usually when she had finished the bagging up, and another mid-afternoon, but she had to drink these on the shop floor because as soon as she was in the shop Mrs Jenkins made herself scarce. She even seemed to begrudge her the half an hour she gave her to eat the sandwiches Marion put up for her, and there was no cup of tea made then so Sarah usually washed them down with water. However, a job was a job and she thought this would do until something better turned up.