The Staircase Girls Read online

  Granddad didn’t come home until after they’d had their dinner. ‘The big bomb two roads over didn’t do too much damage, but I got a lift from a mate in his delivery van and went down to your old place, Celia,’ he looked at Joyce’s mum. ‘There was a big bomb landed in Emlyn Road,’ he said as he put his cap on the table, ‘they got poor old Eliza Gates and her daughters, and one of her grandsons, too, as like. Her house and three others, smashed to pieces.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Gran cried, ‘from the grocers?’

  Joyce felt a shiver run down her neck. She knew the green-grocer lady, and liked how her hair – which stood on top of her head like an ice cream whirl – always looked perfect, even in high winds. All she could think of was how her hair must look after being bombed. Perhaps it fell off in one large cone, just like ice creams sometimes did if you weren’t careful.

  ‘Yes,’ Les replied, ‘them and a couple of people they reckon in the other houses. Silly buggers hadn’t gone to the shelters – like mad Dawn next door, who I keep telling to get in our shelter if she wants, and not to stay under her table. Lots of people in the street were hurt by stuff falling on them.’ As he sat and ate his egg salad, Granddad went on to say how the houses were all smashed up, their walls torn down, but showing off bedrooms and bathrooms with pictures and mirrors on the walls, coats and the ironing hanging off wardrobes and furniture all undisturbed-looking. It was as if they were giant doll’s houses with the front left open.

  Gran kept saying, ‘Poor old Eliza.’ She said Eliza had run the greengrocers in Emlyn Road near Earlswood station for years, and she only had her daughters Alice and Mabel and her teenage grandsons with her because the men were off in the army. Mabel had only moved from the East End in order to be safe from the bombing a few weeks back, and now look – they’d all been killed in a bloody air raid anyway!

  All the time Granddad and Gran were talking, Joyce noticed that her mum was silent, and sat in the armchair by the fire, the twins asleep in her arms. She looked funny, thought Joyce. And then, ‘Right,’ her mum snapped, looking at her own mother. ‘That’s it. I’m not stopping here with these kids any longer. I owe it to them to get them away from all this bombing, and I ain’t gonna to let them be taken away from me, neither. I don’t want ’em evacuated, I’m going to sort us out a place to go and live together, where there ain’t no bloody German bombs!’

  Feeling excited by her mother’s mood, Joyce jumped off her chair and threw her arms in the air. ‘Whooo-ee,’ she shouted, ‘we’re goin’ where the Jerry’s ain’t gonna be!’ The adults all stared at her for a second in silence, and then her mum burst out laughing. Soon everyone in the room was laughing, so Joyce danced around whooping some more, until – tired – she stopped and grabbed her still laughing mum’s arm.

  ‘Mum?’ she asked, watching tears roll down her cheek.

  ‘Ohhh, yes my lovely?’

  ‘Can I have an ice cream?’

  ANN

  Cambridge 1941

  ‘I s’pose Nance could work up at one a’ the colleges as an assistant to one of them old bedders if there were any men left to bed for. Uncle Jake said there’re only a few old ones left at his college. The RAF have taken it over.’

  Ann’s ears pricked up at her mother’s mention of her nickname, Uncle Jake and the colleges. How on earth could I work at one of the colleges, Ann thought, I’m not yet fourteen and far too young. The eldest of the Pilcher children was seated at the table in her Nana Wolfe’s house in Cambridge in the spring of 1941, glad to be there with her mum who she hadn’t seen for two weeks. Ann, her two sisters and brother had been separated and lodged with different aunts around the town a few months earlier, while their mum lived with her own, elderly and poorly mother. This Saturday, Ann had been delivered at Nana Wolfe’s house for breakfast by her Aunt Edie, who gave the girl some lumpy porridge and turned her attention to what Grace was saying.

  Grace had been talking to the pot on the stove as much as to anyone in the room, but she turned to her sister and continued in an offhand manner. ‘Anyway, when those students were here they din’t really do anything useful. It’s not like they was making any money, is it, Edie?’

  ‘No,’ Edie agreed cautiously. ‘They just sit ’round talking without really saying much. Maybe they can make a living out of that, but I’ll be blowed if we can.’ They both laughed.

  Ann wondered where this conversation was leading. It was past nine in the morning and her sisters and brother hadn’t arrived yet. When Aunt Edie had picked her up from her Aunt Violet’s house, she’d told her that she thought Grace had a surprise for her, and Ann was hoping for a rare family reunion.

  ‘What’s all this talk about bedders for, Grace?’ asked Edie.

  Grace looked at Ann, seated at the plain wooden table with its leaves folded down. The girl rested her feet on what looked like flowers carved into the bottom of a leg at her corner. ‘We would still have to lie about your age and I’m not so sure we’d get away with it at them colleges, what with all their “education”. They’re sticklers for details, them bursars.’ Her mum seemed to think about that, before adding, ‘I really wouldn’t have wanted you there, anyway. It’s like begging for scraps, being a bedder.’

  ‘No, Grace, don’t,’ Edie said in defence of the job. ‘It’s not bad pay and there are perks, you know. Back in our day the tram used to smell lovely of the bread that the bedders had sneaked out of the colleges on their way home. They got a lot of free things at the job. At the end of term they’d get given old cups and clothes that the students or fellows had left behind.’

  ‘No, no,’ Grace continued, paying no attention to her sister’s reminiscence. ‘No child of mine is ever going to work there, they think they’re so superior and do you know what? It’s beneath us, that job.’

  Ann furrowed her brow and asked, ‘Why are you talking about me being a bedder?’

  ‘You’re not!’ Grace said firmly. ‘You’re going into service for some horse owners in Royston, like I used to do. I was fourteen but there weren’t a war on then, and I got a room in the attic to share with an older, ginger girl named Mary. I learned how to make silver shine and fires burn proper. The sooner you can get a job like that and learn them things, the better. You can live with them like I did, before I got married to your dad.’

  Ann was shocked. So her mum was planning on getting rid of her, just like she had Joy. Perhaps Bet, Rene and Derek would never get to live with her again, neither. Although Grace wouldn’t say that she was planning on getting all of her children off her hands, she was about to attempt to get Ann a full-time, live-in job.

  Quite simply, she needed Ann to start earning for the sake of the family (and her mother’s peace of mind). Grace told all of her children when they had reached school age, ‘None of you are going to go to posh schools. You can take that there eleven-plus exam, but don’t bother passing it, ’cos there’s no point. We can’t afford the uniform, and you’re going to be working as soon as you’re able.’

  An hour later Ann was being half-dragged by her mum to a big house near Royston Heath. She was going to try for a job as a house servant, said Grace, who had put on her smartest dress and hat. They’d dressed smartly in order to ‘make an impression’, she said. Ann wondered about the ‘impression’ she was going to make with her short, unruly, curly dark hair that made her look like a boy, as did her skinny frame on which Grace had made her wear a plain grey smock. She looked much younger than she was.

  ‘I don’t look smart like you, Mum,’ she told Grace.

  ‘It’s where you come from that’s important, not what you look like,’ her mum replied.

  Ann didn’t think that where she’d come from – Folkestone – was going to do her much good. The houses that they were passing were all big, and stood apart from one another. There were only a couple of streets with houses like that in Kent that she could remember, and she’d never been near them. All Ann knew were long rows of small terraced houses with two bedrooms, a lard
er and an outhouse for the washing, with the toilet at the end of the yard. Anyway, Ann had decided that she would much rather work in a college than anywhere else. Even as a bedder.

  Grace yanked Ann’s sleeve and turned into a driveway, they passed under an arch that had the letters ‘Hat n Ho se’ carved into it. Instead of going up the stone steps to the front door, Grace led the way round the side of the house, to a back door. She pulled the metal bell handle and tried to stick Ann’s hair down with a lick of her fingers as they waited.

  A young boy who looked about Ann’s age, wearing a blue shirt under a brown waistcoat, opened the door and, before Grace could say anything, turned his head back into the house and shouted, ‘Mrs Hedges, it’s for you.’ He turned back to Grace and Ann, said, ‘Wait here, please,’ and disappeared through a frosted-glass inner door into the darkness behind.

  Ann looked into the porch, which had black and white tiles on the floor, and coats and hats hung on the wall to the left.

  ‘Who is it?’ boomed a rich voice, before the glass-panelled door swung open and a large, florid woman in a black dress with white collar and cuffs emerged. She looked mother and daughter up and down. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Hedges,’ Grace put on her ‘posh’ voice, Ann noticed. ‘It’s me, Grace Wolfe, that was, I used to work here, do you remember me?’

  The housekeeper screwed her eyes up and pulled her head back into her shoulders, as if she were trying to focus properly on something that was too close to see all of it. ‘Grace? From 1922 or thereabouts? You’ve changed a bit. What do you want, dear, it’s washing day.’

  ‘Yes, I remember; how’s that old mangle holding up, Mrs Hedges? Used to fair make my wrists hurt that did.’

  ‘It’s gone, Grace, we had a new one a few years back. You’ve not come to ask to do our laundry, have you? Because we . . .’

  ‘No, no, missus,’ Grace said hurriedly. ‘This is my Ann,’ she pushed her daughter forwards, and Ann reluctantly stepped in front of her mother.

  ‘How do, dear,’ Mrs Hedges lowered her eyes to Ann and then looked over her head at Grace with a puzzled look. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, I was hoping that you’d take her in like you did me, and teach her how to be a scullery maid. She’s a good girl.’

  Mrs Hedges took a half step backwards and put both hands on the door edge, as if about to slam it in their faces. ‘Lord no, dear,’ she said, and pointed at Ann. ‘Look at her, skinny little thing. She wouldn’t last longer than a week.’

  Ann felt a sense of relief rise in her chest, and then apprehension at what Grace would do.

  Mrs Hedges continued, ‘And anyway, if you haven’t noticed we’ve gota war on and we can’t afford to take in any more girls. I’m sorry, but it’s been nice seeing you again, Grace.’ With that she closed the door.

  Grace looked as if she was about to kick it, but instead took hold of Ann’s hand and turned to stalk back along the gravelled path, her head held so high that Ann wondered if she could see where she was going.

  The trip was never talked about again.

  The next Monday, Grace, along with three of Ann’s aunts, went to Histon and got part-time work at Chivers Farm.

  At school, Ann was dying to tell her sister Bet what had happened on Saturday. ‘Mum took me to some house. Wanted me to start working in the kitchens or as a chambermaid . . . it was embarrassing, Bet, they took one look at me and said no. I wanted the ground to swallow me up, I did.’

  Bet looked outraged. ‘You can’t work yet! You’re too young.’

  ‘That’s what the housekeeper said.’

  ‘Blimey, she don’t waste any time, do she?’

  Bet was staying at their Aunt Win’s house, and had been for two weeks. The sisters who’d been so close when they lived in Folkestone were only able to spend any time together in Cambridge at school. They sat at separate desks but next to each other, with just enough of a gap for the teacher to walk between. She hadn’t arrived yet – the sisters wouldn’t dare talk when she was in the room. They learned from their first day that Mrs Smales didn’t take kindly to talkers after she’d marched along their row and dealt Bet a hard slap on the back of her hand, just because she had leaned across to her sister and asked to use her inkwell.

  ‘I don’t mind getting a job if it’s going to help us get a place where we can all live together,’ Ann told Bet. ‘Really I don’t. It’s not like I’m any good at school, is it? I’m not like you, Bet, you’re good at everything. I wish I could make things like you can, sew and draw like . . .’

  ‘Ann!’ Bet interrupted her at the mention of drawing. ‘You know that Uncle George paints? Well, he’s given me his oils so I’m painting a lot at his house! I love it there, it’s bloody luxury, Nance. I’ve got my own bedroom and my own bed! They’re so kind. You know Aunty Win gave Rene a bone bracelet when she stayed there?’

  Ann nodded, used to her sister’s jumping from one subject to the next mid-sentence. Bet continued without a pause. ‘I don’t want to leave. Every time me or you stay at Aunty Queenie’s we have to look after her baby Brian, and ’cos Rene’s too young really, Queenie likes one of us to do it. I don’t know why we have to keep swapping all the time. I can look after myself when Aunty Win’s at Nana’s.’

  ‘Mum said none of us should be left alone ever,’ Ann reminded her. ‘Think about it; if Uncle George is out on volunteer duty with the fire brigade and Aunty Win’s at Nana’s and you’re in the house and a bomb hits it – what then? You’d have no one, and the council don’t know we’re here yet, so how would people know if you’re dead or alive?’

  Bet smiled sweetly at her. ‘There won’t be any bombs here, Nance. It’s Cambridge, not Folkestone.’

  ‘You don’t know what Hitler’s planning, Bet.’

  Bet didn’t want to argue with her sister, so she nodded and smiled. After all, it was their mum Bet was angry with – not that she’d let Grace know it, of course.

  ‘And,’ Ann remembered, adding cheerily, ‘Uncle Bill said he thinks he might have found somewhere for us all to live. So we should all be together with Mum soon.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Bet muttered under her breath, as Mrs Smales marched through the door barking, ‘Sit down, be quiet and face the front!’

  The day began with a session of needlework in which Ann was forced to start again on a piece of embroidery that was almost finished when she dropped a stitch and so was told to unpick the lot. Towards the end of the afternoon, Bet was shouted at by Mrs Smales for asking Ann if she could borrow a pencil, and the teacher strode over to Bet’s desk. She stood with her back turned to Ann and smacked at Bet’s hand just as Ann lifted the lid of her desk, looking for the pencil. She hadn’t noticed how close Mrs Smales was to her, and the lid caught the teacher’s elbow. The shock made Ann laugh and the rest of the class joined in.

  Enraged, Mrs Smales smacked Ann across the face. Bet jumped up, pulled the teacher’s arm and yelled, ‘You leave my sister alone!’ which was countered with a smack from Mrs Smales.

  Ann opened her desk lid again, this time knowing that it would hit Mrs Smales’s elbow. Her face glowing red, the teacher turned, quick-stepped back to her blackboard and shouted, ‘Get out, get out!’ at the sisters.

  Bet and Ann started the walk to Nana Wolfe’s house in silence. The girls were thinking about what Grace was going to do to them when they got there and had to tell her that they’d been sent home by the school. Ann felt desperately glum. She really wanted to explore Cambridge on her own and maybe visit some colleges. Her mum had said no once, because it was supposedly ‘too dangerous’, her reason being that, ‘If anywhere is going to be bombed in Cambridge it’ll be one of those colleges, you mark my words.’ Now Ann knew her mum would punish her by making Violet keep her in the house all the time, just to spite her. She also worried what Grace would do to Bet when they got to Nana’s house; Bet was bound to give her lip.

  As they turned into their nana’s street, both girls had their eyes fixed firmly
on the ground, their apprehension growing as they neared the house. Bet was about to tell Ann not to worry, that she’d say it was all her fault, when their brother Derek could be heard shouting, ‘It’s Dad, we’re with Dad!’

  They looked up to see their father Jack in his Sunday suit, his boots all shined up and his trilby tilted back on his head, half-skipping along the road holding Derek and Rene’s hands. Bet ran towards him shouting, ‘Nance, it’s Dad, it’s Dad!’

  Ann stood rooted to the spot, not believing what she was seeing. Jack smiled and hugged Bet as Derek yelled, ‘He can’t hear anything!’ and Rene added, ‘He’s completely deaf.’

  ‘I don’t care! We’ve got our dad back,’ Bet cried.

  ‘Come here, Nance,’ Jack called out, and Ann ran over to become part of a family hug that seemed to last for hours.

  The greeting from his children after their three-month separation was in stark contrast to the one that Jack had received from his wife a little earlier. ‘What are you doing ’ere?’ Grace asked with a scowl when he pushed open the kitchen door. He stood and smiled and she asked again. ‘Why you ’ere, eh? You got leave?’

  Jack, still smiling, said, ‘Hello, love, I’ve come to live with you and the kids for good.’

  Grace clenched her fists. ‘Oh yeah, and where are you going to work?’ she shouted at her bewildered husband.

  He shrugged his shoulders and held his arms wide. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer to her question, he simply hadn’t heard it. In the last few months, under fire from German bombs in Folkestone, the deafness that had started in the trenches of the Great War had become profound. Jack brought his hands together at chest level and mimed writing on his palm.

  Grace stamped her foot in frustration, turned on her heel and pushed past him, out of the kitchen. Jack looked around to see where she had gone just as she reached the toilet. She strode back into the house carrying scraps of paper and found a pencil on the mantelpiece. In her large, child-like scrawl she wrote: ‘WHAT ABOUT WORK? MONEY?’