Keep the Home Fires Burning

SEVEN

Marion had in the end taken the five shillings that Polly had pressed upon her so that the children could eat well on Christmas Day. To give the twins at least something to open Christmas morning she also got the two girls a couple of wind-up toys from a man in the Bull Ring selling them from a tray round his neck, but she could find nothing for Tony, and neither could Sarah and Richard. They all felt bad about that.

Then after breakfast on Christmas Day, Richard dropped a cloth bag into his young brother’s hands. ‘Happy Christmas, Tony.’

Tony’s mouth dropped open with astonishment. ‘Your marble collection,’ he said with awe, his voice choked with emotion, because it was the one thing that he had coveted for ages, which Richard would never let him touch.

Richard knew better than to comment on Tony’s reaction and instead he said almost nonchalantly, ‘You may as well have them. I never play with them any more.’

Tony tipped them out onto the table and examined them. He knew he’d be the envy of his friends when he hit the streets with those. Not even Jack had so many, or such fine ones.

‘Thanks, Richard,’ he said. ‘I’ll take real good care of them.’

Marion was glad that for Tony and the twins, a little magic of the day was retained.

After dinner Polly came around with a bundle of clothes for them all. She had a warm coat for Tony that she said was an old one of Jack’s, but Marion had never seen Jack wearing anything like it and it was rather big for Tony. However, before she was able to say anything at all, Tony exclaimed in delight and put it on, very glad to have it because the only coat that fitted him was very thin and did nothing to keep the cold out.

‘This is great,’ he said, and Marion saw his eyes were shining so, though her eyes met her sister’s over Tony’s head, she said nothing.

There were also scarves, gloves and smart berets for the twins, and a smart cap with ear flaps, the same brown as the coat, for Tony. Polly even had a couple of dresses and a cardigan for Marion she said she had no use for. Marion was moved to tears by her sister’s kindness and generosity. When she tried to say this, however, Polly waved her thanks away almost impatiently.

‘Think nothing of it. How many times did you help me out?’

‘That was nothing,’ Marion said. ‘It was just a bit and, anyway, I didn’t do it so you would feel you had to pay it back.’

‘And I didn’t do it for that, like a kind of duty,’ Polly said. ‘You made life much more comfortable for me and mine for years and years.’ She put her hand over Marion’s. ‘Now, through no fault of yours or mine, the positions have reversed a bit. It pleases me to be able to help you. Let me do it while I have the means to do so.’

Marion couldn’t speak, the lump in her throat was too large, and tears trickled down her cheeks.

Polly stood up, jerked Marion to her feet and put her arms around her. ‘Come here, you silly sod,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be crying on Christmas Day.’

Marion made a valiant effort and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but it’s made me feel … I don’t really know … Anyway, Happy Christmas, Polly.’

‘And to you,’ Polly said, and her smile seemed to light up her whole face.

Marion thought that although that Christmas was one of the poorest she had ever spent, because of Polly and her kindness she felt suddenly filled with warmth and happiness.

The year turned, though Marion had no great hope that 1940 would be any better than 1939. All they had to look forward to was rationing starting on 8 January.

‘We’ll have to register with a grocer and a butcher,’ Marion told Polly. ‘Everyone gets a ration book, even the nippers.’

‘Well, that’s not that surprising, is it?’ Polly said. ‘I mean, the smallest has to eat.’

‘Well, they won’t get much on the ration,’ Marion said. ‘It’s only bacon, butter and sugar that are rationed so far, but they reckon there’ll soon be plenty more.’

‘Yeah, I think every damned thing will be rationed in the end,’ Polly said. ‘They’re just breaking us in gently. Shall we go down this afternoon and get ourselves sorted?’

‘If you like, but I’ve got to do something first.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got to pawn Bill’s watch,’ Marion said. ‘I hung on to that till the last minute, but I’ve fallen behind with the rent and need more coal.’

‘Do you want me to come?’

Marion shook her head. ‘I must do this on my own,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep relying on you holding my hand all the time.’

‘Well, don’t let yourself get fleeced,’ Polly cautioned. ‘Don’t accept the first offer.’

Marion, though, was too saddened at having to pawn all the things she had treasured so much to argue overly about the value of the watch. She knew the money raised would buy food and coal and pay off her rent, but she was very much aware that she had pawned the last item of value that she possessed apart from her wedding ring. She knew that would be the next thing to disappear and she was filled with depression at the thought of losing that golden band that she had never taken from her finger since Bill had put it there in 1922.

Just a day or so after this, Tony and Jack were once more serving at early morning Mass. Tony felt very miserable because the previous evening meal hadn’t really filled him up and he had gone to bed with his stomach grumbling. And then he had to get up early in the coal black of a winter’s day and go out into the frost-rimed streets with nothing to eat or drink at all because he would be taking Communion. By the time he got to the church, despite his good thick coat, he was cold all through and feeling very sorry for himself.

Jack was already in the vestry when he got there and he took one look at Tony’s glum face and said, ‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing,’ Tony growled out. ‘I’m all right.’

‘God, are you really?’ Jack said ironically. His dark eyes sparkled with humour. ‘Hate to see you when you’re not all right, that’s all I can say. You have a face on you that would turn the milk sour.’

‘Oh, shurrup, can’t you?’ Tony cried.

‘Now, boys,’ the priest said, coming in at that moment, ‘what’s all this? I hope you’re not arguing in God’s house.’

‘No, Father,’ the boys said in unison, and the priest, not believing them for an instant, said, ‘Good. Now I have to go out for a while. One of my parishioners is very ill and asking for me and I want you to wait here until my return.’

‘What about school, Father?’

‘You’ll be away in plenty of time to go to school, Jack, never fear.’

But shall we be in time to eat some breakfast, such as it is, before school? Tony thought, but didn’t say anything. Father McIntyre had been a bit sharp with both of them since the business with the holy water font. So the boys waited as the minutes ticked by.

Eventually Jack said, ‘I reckon he’s not coming back. Shall we just go home?’

‘We can’t do that,’ Tony answered. ‘If he comes back and we’re not here, I will get in one heap of trouble.’

‘We’ll get the strap if we’re late for school.’

‘And if I don’t have something to eat soon I’ll fall into a dead heap on the floor,’ Tony said. ‘I’m starving.’

‘I could eat something too,’ Jack said as he began to prowl around the room.

He opened a long cupboard and saw the priest’s vestments hanging there. They were very beautiful, in vibrant colours or stark white, according to the Church calendar, in satin or shiny silk and heavily embossed and decorated with intricate embroidery in gold or silver.

‘My dad said these cost a packet to make,’ Jack said, flicking his finger through them. ‘He said before the war, when people were starving ‘cos there weren’t no jobs or owt, it seemed all wrong to him to see the priests dressed up in these when they came to Mass on Sunday morning. Price of them, he reckoned, would feed ten families for a year.’

Tony didn’t doubt it. ‘Don’t you think you’d better shut the door now, Jack? If Father McIntyre comes back—‘

‘Aren’t you one scaredy-cat, Tony Whittaker?’ Jack said jeeringly. He shut the door, though, but opened the door on the other side. There was the bottle of Communion wine. The bottle had been opened ready to mix with water in the chalice at the Mass. ‘D’you suppose it’s real wine?’ he said, withdrawing it from the cupboard.

‘I don’t know, but put the flipping thing back, Jack, before the pair of us are killed.’

‘Like I said, you’re a scaredy-cat.’

That jibe, issued for the second time in so many minutes, cut Tony to the quick. ‘I ain’t,’ he said, ‘but I just get punished much more than you if we do owt.’

‘Prove you ain’t scared then.’

‘How?’

‘Let’s try some.’

‘You’re barmy.’

‘And you’re scared,’ Jack said. ‘I dare you. I’ll do it first, if you like. He won’t miss a few sips of wine, will he? He has a whole bottle.’

Tony thought that he would show Jack what he was made of and he grabbed the bottle from Jack, put it to his mouth, took a couple of hefty swigs and began spluttering and gasping.

‘Don’t think you’re supposed to neck it like that,’ Jack said. ‘And you have taken an awful lot. He’s sure to notice.’

‘Now who’s scared,’ Tony said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

‘I ain’t scared,’ Jack declared, taking a hefty swig himself.

‘God, Jack, there ain’t that much left. What we going to do?’

‘S all right, we’ll fill it up with water,’ Jack said. ‘He mixes it with water, anyroad, so he won’t even notice.’

‘Come on then.’

‘Not yet. We can have a bit more if we’re going to fill the bottle up anyway. Let’s have some more. It’s good stuff, this, ain’t it?’

Tony had actually never tasted anything so foul, but no way was he going to admit that, and he nodded his head vigorously and put his hand out for the bottle.

When Father McIntyre returned a little later he found two highly intoxicated altar boys in his vestry, and the bottle of Communion wine only a quarter full.

That evening, Marion wrote to Bill.

I told you about the incident with the water pistols, and Pat’s reaction to it. Well, early this morning the boys did something far worse. While they were supposed to be serving at Mass, the priest was called out of the sacristy to deal with something and what did those two rips do but help themselves to the Communion wine. They drank so much that they were unable to serve at the Mass, or do anything else either. The pair were once again marched to our Polly’s. Pat hadn’t left for work and Father McIntyre told him that if he didn’t thrash his son and Tony too, as you are away, then he would do the job himself. So he had to thrash them, for once. Honest to God, Bill, if we’re not careful that son of ours will end up in Winson Green Prison. When you come home I want you to have a stern word with him.

Bill knew the boys had to be punished, but he was very glad that Pat had done the thrashing and not the priest. Father McIntyre would have seen it as his bounden duty to scourge the wickedness out of them. And yet he felt sorry that Marion had to deal with all this on her own. She did have her hands full and he could do little to ease it, but he did write a censorious letter to Tony, telling him that he was letting the family down and he had to behave himself. He only hoped that it might make a difference.

It did make a difference. Bill had never written to Tony in that way before, and Tony valued his good opinion, so he was determined to try to be good.

Marion was glad that he was behaving because she had so much more to worry about. She was forced to part with her wedding ring and Mary Ellen brought her one in Woolworths to replace it.

Now Marion was really worried because she had nothing else left to pawn. Soon she would need coal again and she didn’t know how she was going to scrape the money together.

When she mentioned this to Polly she said, ‘You must get your Tony doing what Chris and Colm had to do many a time.’

‘What was that?’ Marion asked.

‘He’ll have to go down the Saltley Gas Works real early in the morning …’ Polly said.

‘The carts the horses are pulling are laden down with coal,’ Marion told Tony later. ‘And when they come out the gate and speed up over the cobbles some of it falls off. You must go down with a bucket to collect it up and you must be there before seven in the morning.’

‘Ah, Mom!’ Tony cried. ‘That’s miles away.’

‘Not at all,’ Marion said briskly, though she felt for her younger son. ‘If you go down Rocky Lane and along the canal it will take you no time at all.’ Then seeing his disbelieving expression she said sharply, ‘And you can take that look off your face because that is what you must do and that’s all there is to it.’

When Tony related this to Jack at school that morning he knew all about it. ‘My brothers did that,’ he said, ‘but I never had to. Our Chris used to say that some kids took two buckets, one for the coal and one to collect the horse shit to use on their garden or allotment.’

‘Ugh! That’s disgusting!’

‘Well, you ain’t got to do that, anyway,’ Jack said. ‘D’you want me to come with you?’

‘Would you?’ Tony would be glad of his cousin’s company in those inky black and dismal mornings.

‘Course,’ Jack said airily. ‘Anyroad, two’s better than one.’

‘Won’t your mom mind?’ Tony asked.

‘Course not,’ Jack said confidently. ‘Why would she mind?’

Tony could think of a hundred and one objections his mother might have made to such a plan, but Jack’s parents were a different kettle of fish altogether. Tony didn’t tell his mother of Jack’s involvement, though.

From the first day Tony was glad that Jack was beside him. Jack was much bigger than Tony, for a start, and not so easily pushed around. That was important because there were loads of other boys at the same thing. By the time they set off home Jack always had more in his bucket than Tony did. Not far from the Whittaker house, Jack would tip the contents of his bucket into Tony’s and he would take it home and tip it into the coal shed. Even with the two of them scavenging, he only had a meagre amount of coal, but he knew that every penny counted to his mother, and buying coal was an expensive business.

One morning, when Tony had been collecting the coal for a fortnight, he was full of misery when he met Jack.

Catching sight of his glowering face in the beam of the shielded torch he had thought to bring, Jack said, ‘What’s up with you? You have a face on you like a smacked bum.’

‘There ain’t nothing wrong,’ Tony muttered.

‘Don’t give me that.’

‘Well, what’s the use of telling you owt anyway?’ Tony said. ‘It ain’t as if you can do owt about it.’

‘Well, I can’t if you don’t tell me.’

‘All right then,’ Tony burst out. ‘Every day we stand here to collect a piddling bit of coal that does no good at all. When I come home from school, the house is always sort of cold and damp, and there’s usually just a glow in the range, nearly buried under a heap of slack.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘we know where the coal’s kept, so why don’t we wait until it’s dark, crawl under the fence and get ourselves a couple of bucketfuls?’

Tony was doubtful. ‘Ain’t that stealing?’

Jack considered the matter. ‘It ain’t any more stealing than picking up the lumps that fall off the carts when they clatter up the road. They fill them up too full on purpose so that some will fall off and we get to pick them up. This way we are sort of saving them the bother.’

The way Jack explained, it sounded fine to Tony. After all, there was so much coal in the gas works mound; he had seen it through the gate. Surely they wouldn’t miss a little bit. Then Jack said, ‘Let’s see what we can get this morning anyway, and then tonight when everyone has gone to sleep we’ll go for plan B. What time in your house does everyone go to bed, ‘cos it would be best to keep this to ourselves?’