Keep the Home Fires Burning

‘No,’ Marion said. ‘I was going to cut it down for Richard – he’s fast growing out of the one he has now – and any extra material I was going to save to patch Tony’s trousers. He goes through the seat of those more often than I have hot dinners, and I’ll not send him to school like some poor souls with their bottoms nearly exposed.’

‘All right, we’ll leave the second-best suit and the watch for now,’ Polly said, pulling out more of Bill’s clothes to lay on the bed.’This is a sizeable bundle anyway.’

‘I’m really nervous,’ Marion said.’I’ve never been in a pawnbroker’s before.’

‘You’re luckier than most round these doors then.’

‘Not these doors,’ Marion corrected.’You never see anyone here taking a bundle to be pawned on Monday morning.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe none of their husbands thought it their duty to fight for King and Country to try and protect the rest of us,’ Polly said.’And while they’re doing that the bloody Government think a few measly shillings a week is all a woman needs to feed and clothe her family and keep them warm.

‘Now,’ Polly said as the two women left the house, ‘I usually go to Sarah Moore, but she can be a mean bugger, so we’ll try Jones on the corners of Wheeler Street and Clifford Street. He’s a bit stern-looking ? is a retired JP, I heard – but he is fair.’

Marion had always had an assumption that pawn shops were dark and rather seedy places but she was pleasantly surprised because Jones looked quite respectable from the outside. She had a surreptitious look round to see if anyone she knew was watching her before she went in the door, feeling sick to her soul that she had to part with Bill’s clothes in such a way in order for them all to survive.

Despite this, though, she thought the inside of the shop had an air of respectability about it and this was compounded by the very smart and erect white-haired gentleman who came to attend to them. As Polly had said, he was rather severe-looking, but his voice and manner were pleasant enough.

On the way down to the shop Polly had warned Marion what to expect, and Jones did just as she said and examined each article with a disparaging look on his face. Then he rubbed the material of the suit between his finger and thumb, and though he said nothing, by the look on his face Marion knew he didn’t think much of it.

‘I’ll give you ten shillings for the lot,’ he said eventually.

Polly gave a toss of her head. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she said. ‘That bundle is well worth a pound and you know it.’

‘They will be left on my hands,’ Jones complained.

‘That’s your business,’ Polly said. ‘I don’t care whether they are left on your hands or not. You are not getting a bundle like that for ten shillings.’

‘Well, I will not pay as much as a pound,’ Jones said. ‘Shall we split the difference and I will give you fifteen shillings? You can’t say fairer than that.’

‘Yes, I can,’ Polly said. ‘Seventeen shillings and sixpence and the bundle’s yours. That’s all I will settle for.’

Jones sighed heavily.’You will have me robbed between you all,’ he said, but he went to the till as he spoke and wrote out the pawn ticket.

‘It’s all a bit of a game to them,’ Polly said to Marion, as they walked away from the shop. ‘Their aim is to give you as little as they possibly can for what you are trying to pawn. Course, if you pawn your old man’s suit every Monday, like lots of women do round here, then you know what you will be offered for it, but with something like your bundle today, when he said ten shillings, I know that it was worth more than twice that amount.’

‘He still gave you only seventeen and six, though.’

‘I know,’ Polly said. ‘And I knew as well that that was as high as he was prepared to go and we’d have likely got less at Sarah Moore’s.’

Marion sighed. ‘It seems a terrible way to have to go on.’

Polly, catching sight of her sister’s face and hearing the despondency in her voice, knew just how bad she was feeling, and she said gently, ‘What you did today, Marion, some women have been doing for years because it’s the only way of surviving.’

‘I know,’ Marion cried. ‘I really do understand that. It’s just …’

Polly laid a hand on her arm. ‘Let’s see what bargains are going in the Bull Ring, shall we? At least you have money enough for now.’

Marion managed to buy two bowls of faggots and peas to share between them all, which cost her a shilling, spent another sixpence on potatoes to go with them, nine pence on a loaf for the morning, and still had money left for the rest of the week. She’d also be able to pay more off the rent arrears and she felt light-hearted with relief as she and Polly made their way home.

Later, sitting in Marion’s kitchen with a cup of tea, Polly said, ‘When Pat got that job in the munitions I was that proud. When he couldn’t even get into the army he took it bad. Now he’s doing a job that is well paid and he feels he’s doing his bit as well.’

‘Is that important to him?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course, it’s a novelty to have money in my purse and I’d be lying if I said the money didn’t matter, but for Pat it means more than that. He said to me that he feels proud to earn the wage that he picks up at the end of the week. It’s what he has wanted to do for years.’

Marion remembered laughing with her mother about Pat getting the job in the first place and saying he would drink himself to death with the extra money he would have in his pocket, but there had been no evidence of that, and she felt guilty that she made fun of him over the years. If she was honest, even though she helped Polly out financially, in a way she did it as a kind of looking down on her and Pat, and that was why she balked at the suggestion of accepting money from them. Whatever reason she gave Polly, the real one was because the tables would be turned completely and she couldn’t really have borne that.

‘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.

SIX (#ulink_e84c65fd-9a7a-5b16-b506-a1f53d45a615)

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.’