The Staircase Girls Page 11

  Bet was dressed and made up before Ann had changed, and in an effort to hurry her along took the fine wool pink sweater Aunt Win had bought Ann the year before from the wardrobe and handed it to her. ‘But it’s been eaten by moths,’ she told Bet, disheartened. Bet tutted and reassured her, ‘Don’t worry, you can still wear it, it looks fine from the front. Look.’

  She forced it over Ann’s head and ordered her to put the jacket on. Ann did so, and Bet pushed her to the mirror. ‘See! It’s fine. You’ll be fine, who’ll see it if you keep your jacket on? You look lovely.’

  Ann had to admit that it looked OK, and the jacket was lovely.

  ‘Now come on!’ Bet urged her. ‘Barrel will think I’ve stood him up if we don’t hurry.’

  Ann smiled – it was good to see her sister so happy – took Bet’s hand and ran down the stairs and through the front door, calling as they left, ‘See you, Mum, Dad, we’ll be at the Beaconsfield, won’t be late.’

  At the hall a local accordion band from New Street were playing, and Barrel was standing by the door tapping his feet. ‘There he is, Nance! My Barrel!’ Bet almost sprinted away from Ann. ‘I’ll see you in there, Nance,’ she said, making a beeline for him.

  Looking delighted, he planted a great big kiss on her cheek, looked Ann up and down and said, ‘You scrub up well, girl, don’t you, Nance?’

  Ann smiled, she liked Harry Reynolds because he reminded her of Lou Costello. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little cruel that he’s nicknamed Barrel?’ she’d asked Bet after their first meeting.

  ‘No, he doesn’t mind, it’s not just because he’s short and a bit round that he’s called that,’ she laughed, ‘it’s because he likes a bit of a tipple from the brandy barrel!’

  As she watched them skip onto the dance floor giggling, Ann found herself thinking that if they would hurry up and get married, she wouldn’t have to go out with Bet any more.

  Ann looked for somewhere to sit that would enable her to have her back to the wall. She knew nobody could see through her bolero jacket, but it was enough for her to know that her sweater was full of holes to make her feel uneasy. Heading for a chair at an empty table, she was stopped in her tracks by the looming figure of a tall, besuited young man. ‘Good evening. It’s Ann, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Winifred and George’s niece?’

  Ann blushed a bright scarlet as she recognized the man. He was a lodger at Aunt Win’s house, where they’d met a couple of months earlier at Nana Wolfe’s funeral party. His existence had come as a surprise to Ann. ‘I didn’t know Aunt Win had a lodger. What do you know about him?’ she had whispered to Bet after narrowly avoiding being introduced to him by Win. Bet had already taken a glass (or two) of sherry and was looking flushed.

  ‘Aunt Win’s started a lodging house for the colleges, and he’s a fellow.’ Noticing how Ann stared at him, Bet continued. ‘Bit old for you ain’t he, Nance? Must be at least thirty! Although he is educated, and he’s from Kent, I’ve been told.’ She looked him over. ‘He is rather handsome though, ain’t he? I reckon that’s what Errol Flynn will look like in a few years.’ Knowing the actor was Ann’s heart-throb, she nudged her and drew a smile out of her desperately shy sister. Ann had run away on some pretence when Win tried to introduce them. But now, here in the semi-darkness of the dance hall, during a lull between numbers, Peter Constable was trying to get her to talk to him.

  ‘I love this band. I’ve seen them a couple of times here,’ he said, and Ann, in complete contrast to when they had previously met, began talking and didn’t know when or how to stop.

  ‘Erm, yes, my dad used to play the accordion before he became deaf. He played it out in India, to the batmen mainly. They loved his playing, he said. He can play the banjo as well, although he likes to play like the minstrels used to, how his dad had taught him. He doesn’t play any more though really. Well, he bangs some tunes out on the piano but he doesn’t know if they’re in tune because of his deafness. Better than me though, I can’t play any music, I had trouble with my ears when I was a little girl so I can’t play a tune, neither.’

  When she did stop talking, Peter had a slightly lopsided smile on his face, and didn’t say anything immediately. Oh no, she thought, he doesn’t want to hear all of this. He’s just being polite, he only said ‘hello’, he didn’t ask for my life history. She should have just said yes, and that would have been it.

  ‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked.

  Now tongue-tied and blushing, Ann looked down at the dance floor. ‘Oh no, you’re alright. I don’t dance,’ she replied.

  ‘OK, well at least let me get you a drink?’

  ‘No, I don’t drink. Thanks, though.’

  He laughed. ‘Actually, neither do I, we can have a soft drink.’

  What was she going to do? He wasn’t going to give up, she thought.

  Peter stepped to Ann’s side, gently took her elbow and started walking her towards the same table that she’d been heading for. ‘There’s a table, please come and sit down,’ he said softly. ‘It would be a pleasure for me to spend an evening with someone with a true appreciation of this style of music.’ He pulled a chair out for her, and as she moved past him, Peter put a hand on the collar of her jacket. Ann froze.

  ‘Let me take your jacket. I’ll put it in the cloakroom for you on my way to the bar.’

  ‘No, please don’t, I . . .’ Peter gently pulled the jacket backwards and down her arms. As the pink sweater was revealed he stopped and stared just long enough for Ann to shrug the jacket back on. Then she ran.

  ‘Sorry . . . Ann, I, I didn’t realize . . . Don’t go!’ Peter called after her as she escaped him.

  Watching from the dance floor, Barrel nudged Bet. ‘’Ere, ain’t that your Nance running to the lavs?’ he asked.

  Bet turned in time to see her sister fleeing towards the toilets, and ran after her. By the time she got through the door Ann had already locked herself into a cubicle. ‘What’s happened, Nance, are you in there?’ Bet asked, knocking on the door.

  ‘It’s Aunty Win’s lodger, he’s here,’ sobbed Ann from behind the door. ‘He saw the holes in my jumper, oh Bet, I want to die!’

  Bet put her forehead against the door, closed her eyes and tried to bully her sister out of the locked cubicle. ‘Don’t be so blooming stupid, come out.’

  ‘I am not coming out! Go and get me a drink, lemonade or something. I’m going to stay in here until Dad comes to meet us!’

  ‘Oh great. Just great. You can’t stay in there all night!’

  Getting no reply, Bet turned on her heel and marched back to Barrel and threw herself into a jive, as if kicking her legs could free her of the guilt and shame that she felt for her sister. True to her word, Ann stayed in the toilets for two-and-a-half hours. Bet twice returned to check on her, and saw Ann watching from the entrance as she approached and dodge back into the cubicle as she got closer the first time.

  ‘Where’s my drink?’ she demanded through the door, as Bet pushed into the room. ‘I’m not coming out until I at least get a lemonade!’

  Bet sighed in exasperation and left without a word. Half an hour later she returned, and as Ann watched, she saw Bet had a drink in her hand, and so stayed in the entrance, half in and half out of the loo.

  ‘Oh, Nance. Don’t worry, no one saw it,’ Bet tried to cheer her sister as she handed the lemonade to her.

  ‘He bloomin’ saw it, alright. Is he still here? ’Cos I’m not coming out until he’s gone home and that’s for sure.’

  ‘He’s gone, about ten minutes ago,’ Bet said. ‘He looked ever so sad, stood there all alone, for an hour, he was. Then he just left.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Ann felt miserable. ‘Can we go now, then?’

  Bet sighed. ‘Give me a couple more dances, Ann. Then we’ll go. OK?’

  Ann nodded and stepped out of the toilet completely. She sidled along the wall sipping her drink as Bet returned to Barrel. Their dad would be outside in a short while and then Ann could
go home and throw away the horrible sweater.

  JOYCE

  Cambridge 1941–46

  From that day in January when Joyce’s mum came back giddy after sheltering under a fuel lorry, the bombing of Cambridge intensified. The air raid sirens went off almost daily, although the actual raids were fewer and further between than Joyce, her mum Celia and the twin babies had known in Surrey. The sky was often filled with the sound of aeroplanes, but they were more often ‘our boys’ as the grown-ups called them, either on training flights or in fighters passing over on their way to one of the many bases situated further north and east in Norfolk, or south in Suffolk.

  Late one night at the end of February 1941, the highest number of people killed in a raid on the city occurred when three waves of bombers targeted Cambridge. Eleven people met their end in the attacks. Heading from east to west over the town, explosives hit Cherry Hinton Road on one side of the railway tracks, Hyde Park Corner again and Grantchester Meadows on the other. Incendiary bombs were dropped in some number, but following the January raid when firemen had trouble getting their hoses attached to pipes, the council installed static water tanks by the side of major roads for easy access. They proved useful three months later when more than fifty houses between Hills Road and Trumpington (again on either side of the railway) were hit. All of the fires were put out within minutes, the local paper reported.

  It was odd, as Aggie their landlady kept saying, that none of the university buildings had been hit. King’s College still stood proud and untouched, even if its windows were covered in a black tar paper and you could no longer see the pretty designs on them. That new, tall tower library should surely be a plain target, Aggie said she heard lots of blokes in the pub say, only it hadn’t been. There were always lines of army trucks parked up on the backs, by the river, behind all the old colleges, too, but they were never hit.

  Aggie took the family for a stroll along the river and the backs when the sun came out in May. She explained that it was called the backs because all you could see was the backs of the college buildings from there. She pointed out King’s and St John’s, which was having a lot of building work done near the round church and on Bridge Street, too. There were rumours, Aggie said, that they were putting in a bomb shelter under a house on Bridge Street that only the college people could use. ‘Typical,’ she said, ‘always us and them, gown versus town.’

  Their wandering took them over a pretty little bridge and along a lane that brought them out in Trinity Street, in the town centre. There were lots of men in uniforms walking about, both army and RAF. ‘There’s a lot of cadets stationed at St John’s,’ Aggie explained to Celia who commented on the number of fly boys about. ‘They’re using up the space where the students used to be, in their rooms I think, though they have some tents too. According to a lady I know who works in the kitchens, there’s a right to-do between the RAF blokes and the bursar about food and supplies going missing from the college kitchens.’

  That warm Sunday proved to be the first of many in the summer of 1941. There were no air raids in the summer months and Joyce and Celia got to know the place well by walking Douglas and Trevor around in the pram, crossing the many green commons and ‘pieces’ as the locals called them. Joyce soon learned which college was where. Many of Aggie’s friends and neighbours seemed to either work there, or used to, before war broke out.

  The summer months always used to be less busy in the town and at the colleges, Aggie explained to Celia, due to there being no students around until October. Although there were still the fellows who needed to be cooked for and cleaned up after, their shoes blacked and laundry done.

  Joyce, whose ears always pricked up when mention of the colleges was made, interrupted the adults. ‘What do you mean, “fellows”? Ain’t they all fellows?’ she asked.

  ‘I mean their teachers, them what live at the colleges,’ Aggie smiled at the young girl, always happy to tell her what she knew about the colleges. ‘Most of them don’t have a wife and don’t ’ave a home to go to, neither. A lot of them are ancient an’ all, these days especially,’ she continued. ‘They might have never lived nowhere else since being students themselves, I reckon. There’s one old boy, I heard, who couldn’t dress himself no more, and the housekeeper has to do it, she’s more of a nurse to ’im if you ask me. Mind you, some of them fellows are young men, too. Or was, until they all got called up, of course, or joined up. The ones that are married don’t live in the colleges, of course, they get houses what the college own and rent to ’em. I sometimes had what they call a graduate student lodging with me, he was a bit older than them that are undergraduates, and he was going on to become a doctor, though not in hospital.’

  ‘So they have a hospital in them colleges too, do they?’

  ‘No Joyce, love, not really. There’s a lot of hospitals round here, though. There’s the one round the corner on Mill Road near Gwydir Street what used to be a workhouse and where all the babies are born – if you can make it there in time, of course, and afford it. Up the road a bit further there’s Brookfields, which is a disease hospital, but the big one’s called Addenbrooke’s and it’s on Trumpington Street where there’s a lovely kiddies bit, only about ten years old, that is. There’s another old workhouse over the river at Chesterton that’s a hospital. Of course, some of the villages have one too, like the TB clinic at Papworth where my Uncle Ted spent his last days in the twenties. The students what study medicine get to go an’ practice on the poor buggers in them hospitals. I wouldn’t have any of them looking at me, though. I mean, it’s not decent, is it? They’re not proper doctors and one time I was in the hospital having my appendix out when a bunch of them came round the ward, and they stopped at my bed and asked if they could see my scar. “Not bloody likely!” I told ’em.’

  Joyce giggled with delight at the idea, and Aggie continued. ‘There was only one of the students in among them who’d lived in my house the previous year, wasn’t there? Dougal, it was. A lovely, quiet boy, he was Scottish, used to have lots of birds’ skulls in his room. I thought he was training to be a vet.’

  Celia and Joyce laughed together. ‘How do you know the kiddies’ hospital is nice?’ Celia asked Aggie, who had a basket of washing that she was taking into the yard to put through the mangle. Resting the washing basket on the doorstep, Aggie wiped her brow and looked at Joyce, folded her arms and leant towards Celia. ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea if your Joyce hears why I know. She takes it all in, I’m sure she does.’ Joyce was told to stay inside, and the women stepped into the yard, closing the door behind them. Joyce sighed with frustration. She found the conversations of grown-ups much more interesting than anything she heard in school, even if a lot of it didn’t make sense to her.

  After the relative quiet of the summer months, the Germans attacked Cambridge at the end of August, when two houses around the corner from Aggie’s were hit, and again in September when the main road near Castle Hill was bombed. After that, though, there were no more raids for ten months, not even when the Luftwaffe began their ‘Baedeker Raids’ of April 1942 when they chose historical sites in cities like Norwich, Exeter and York out of Baedeker’s Guide to Great Britain to bomb, said the radio news. The last big raid on Cambridge happened in late July of that year, during the school holidays. Earlier that day Joyce had been out with her mum and the twins looking at the shops on Sidney Street which were then hit by fire bombs during the night. They hadn’t aimed at the town centre before. Joyce was scared.

  Two days later as she walked down the same street, Joyce felt a funny fluttering in her stomach and a nervousness that she hadn’t had since leaving Redhill. The town had changed. Slowly and surely, the streets of the town had seen railings and metal gates disappear ‘to help make bombs and guns’, said her mum. The remaining iron was painted white, so that they could be seen during the blackout. The spaces opened up by the loss of gates and fences, along with the newly created holes and missing buildings, made the town seem differen
t after every bombing. For the seven-year-old Joyce, Cambridge was an ever-changing series of streets, alleys, over-grown gardens, open spaces and cobbled lanes that she could easily get lost in.

  Even after bombing raids dropped off, Joyce still wouldn’t want to go into the centre or even too far from her street without an adult to hold her hand. She took it on herself to ‘look after’ the twins as much as she could, and would play with them in the street along with other kids around her age. Douglas and Trevor were too young to play with the bigger boys, so Joyce rolled up newspaper into a ball and let them kick that between them, as she sat on the doorstep half-watching them and half-watching other kids run about, the girls skipping or playing hopscotch in a grid chalked on the road, the boys playing war, football or marbles that would occasionally turn into brief fights.

  At school Joyce and all the children were given a spoonful of cod liver oil and another of malt every day. Occasionally they’d be given foodstuffs to take home, it having been donated by countries in the Empire unaffected by the war. The best one, Joyce would always remember, was a tin of powdered chocolate from nice Canadian People (the teacher wrote it on the board for them). Her fingers and her mouth were all brown by the time she got it home. Joyce would go home for dinner at noon, when she would make jam sandwiches for herself and the twins, before going back to school for the afternoon. If there was any, she’d have a glass of milk at school before heading home again at the end of the day.

  When Joyce felt brave enough, she began to explore further afield than Newmarket Road and East Road, where she had lived ever since being in Cambridge. In Gwydir Street she discovered a baker’s shop that made fresh pies every day, a chip shop that still fried fish, at least at the end of the week, and gardens in which people kept all kinds of livestock, everything from chickens to pigs and goats. None of the houses had electricity (neither did hers), but all seemed to have very smart front rooms half-hidden behind net curtains that covered only the bottom half of the window. Being nosey, Joyce would stand on front walls where railings had been removed and peer in, wondering who lived in such a nice, tidy house. She supposed that those rooms were only used on Christmas and Boxing Day like in her old home, and the rest of the house was as crowded and plain as her own.