Anne Bennett - Keep the Home Fires Burning

‘Right you are then.’ Bill strode down the road holding a twin by each hand, while Tony ran ahead like a young colt. The sun peeping out from beneath the clouds made even the water in the mud-slicked canal sparkle and the paintwork on the boats and barges gleamed. The Whittakers wandered along the towpath towards Salford Bridge. These days the barges had small motors to drive them, but Bill said when he was a boy they had been horse drawn: ‘Big solid horses with shaggy feet.’

‘Like the one the coalman has?’ Magda asked.

‘The very same. They’re called shire horses and are built for strength and stamina, not speed. Now, when they would come to a tunnel, the men and big boys would have to unshackle the horse and walk the barge through with their feet. It was called “legging it”.’

‘And I suppose the horses had to go over the top?’ said Tony.

‘That’s right. A younger boy or a woman or girl would lead it over to meet up with the barge on the other side. It was a grand sight to see, but motorised barges make life much easier for them.’

‘Faster too.’

‘I don’t know if it would be that much faster, Tony. A barge isn’t allowed to go at any great speed anyway. They’re not built for it.’

‘No,’ Tony said, ‘they’re not, but I wish I’d seen the horses pulling them, anyway.’

‘And me,’ said Missie, as she gave a sudden shiver.

‘Are you cold?’ Bill asked.

‘She can’t be cold,’ Tony declared. ‘It ain’t the slightest bit nippy and them kids don’t seem to think so either.’

He was referring to the bargee boys. They were brown-skinned, often scantily dressed and barefoot, and they didn’t seem to feel the slightest chill as they leaped with agility from boat to boat or out onto the towpath to operate the locks.

Tony watched them with envy. ‘Wouldn’t that be a grand life, Dad?’ he said. ‘Just to do that all day long. I’d never get fed up of it.’

Bill smiled as he turned back along the towpath. ‘I think you would, son,’ he said. ‘It’s not that fine a life; I think a fairly hard one, for the children at least. Many of them never have the benefit of a proper education, with them moving up and down the canal the way they do.’

Tony looked at his father in amazement. ‘I wouldn’t care a whit about that,’ he maintained. ‘A life like that would suit me down to the ground.’

Bill let out a bellow of laughter. ‘I think, Tony, that you and school are not the best of friends.’

‘No,’ Tony said. ‘I hate school, if you want to know. Everyone does, don’t they?’

‘No, they don’t,’ Magda contradicted. ‘I don’t. I like school. Don’t you, Missie?’

Missie nodded as Tony said disparagingly, ‘That’s because you’re still in the infants. You wait till you’re in the juniors in September. You do summat wrong, or don’t do your work right or quick enough, and they hit you with a big cane, or bring the ruler down on your knuckles.’

‘How many girls does that happen to?’ Bill asked with a sardonic grin.

‘Well, not that many, I suppose,’ Tony had to admit. ‘They seem to have it in for boys.’

‘That’s because boys are always playing up,’ Magda said.

‘And you don’t, Miss Goody Two-Shoes?’

‘No,’ Magda said. ‘I don’t like being yelled at, and really the only person who seems to do that all the time ? to me anyroad ? is Grandma Murray.’

‘Don’t take that personally,’ Bill said. ‘She seems to have it in for a lot of people.’

‘But it’s not fair,’ Magda said. ‘The one she should tell off more is Tony, but he always gets away with it, just ‘cos he’s a boy.’

‘Can’t help that, can I?’ Tony said with a cheeky grin, and Bill had to compress his lips to stop himself from smiling.

‘Come on, stop bickering,’ he said, ‘it’s time to head home. If we’re late we’ll all be in for the high jump.’

Magda gave a grimace in her sister’s direction because the twins knew exactly how it would be when they got home. As far back as they could remember, their grandparents had come to tea on Sunday. It was always served in the parlour, the room their mother set such store by, like she did about the piano. Sarah had told Magda and Missie their father thought the piano a waste of money, for no one had ever learned to play it, but their mother had wanted the piano because she said none of their neighbours had anything so fine.

‘Why does that matter?’ Magda had asked.

Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t know why,’ she’d admitted. ‘It just does.’

It was very confusing to both girls but, as Missie said, grown-ups often did odd things, and Magda had to agree.

All the furniture in the parlour, like the piano, was big, dark and gloomy. On Sundays it all had to be moved about to accommodate everyone. Six days a week, the big mahogany table would be set in the bay window behind madras net curtains. It would be covered with a dark red chenille cloth, with an aspidistra in a decorated pot in the centre of it. Either side of the table were two straight-backed dining chairs with padded seats, and two more dining chairs stood either side of the matching sideboard.

The picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which Jesus held one hand to his heart dripping with blood in his open chest ? a picture that always made Magda feel queasy ? hung on the wall above the fireplace. That was surrounded by marble tiles and protected by a brass fender. In front of it sat the dreaded horsehair sofa.

However, on Sunday afternoon, the aspidistra would be placed on the sideboard and the chenille cloth changed for one of Nottingham lace. In order that the table could be pulled out with the four padded chairs round it and two wooden ones brought out from the kitchen for Sarah and Richard, the horsehair sofa would be swung in front of the piano. And every Sunday the twins had to sit on it in silence and wait for the adults to finish eating before they could have anything, because their grandmother said it would put manners on them.

It was just like that when they went in that day. Marion and Sarah were carrying things to the table in the parlour where the children’s grandparents were already sitting, but Tony was nowhere to be seen. He had been with them as they walked back home and when they went in through the back gate, but between there and the back door he sort of melted away and Magda knew he had gone over the wall again. So did Bill, and he couldn’t blame the boy, nor had he any intention of going after him. As soon as he had started doing this, a year or so ago, Marion had said that he should discipline him. ‘For what?’ Bill had said angrily. ‘For refusing to sit still and silent for as long as it takes us to eat our tea on a Sunday, and all because that’s what your mother wants? It’s bad enough for the girls but Tony would never be constrained that way and you know it. It would be more trouble than it’s worth.’

Marion knew that Bill spoke the truth and she would spend the whole of the meal telling Tony off, so she had said nothing more. Every week Tony got away with it, as far as Missie and Magda were concerned.

‘No Tony again, I see,’ Grandma Murray remarked as the girls settled themselves on the sofa. ‘Ah, well, boys will be boys.’

Grandma Murray was fond of sayings. One she usually directed at Magda was, ‘Little girls should be seen and not heard.’ Magda often wondered if there had been a similar one she attached to grown men because Granddad Murray never seemed to say much more than please and thank you at the table where his wife held sway, and even her father was less talkative at Sunday tea.

‘Magda, if I have to tell you again about keeping those legs still I might be forced to administer a sharp smack across them,’ her grandmother suddenly snapped, and Magda realised that they were waggling again, just as if they had a mind of their own. She fought to gain control over her wayward legs because she had felt the power of her grandmother’s slaps before.