Keep the Home Fires Burning

Bill nodded miserably. ‘There is one thing I can do to put a smile on their faces.’

‘What?’

‘I intend to buy fish and chips for us all this evening.’

Marion felt her mouth watering at the thought. ‘Oh, Bill, you couldn’t buy anything that would please them more. They’ll think they have died and gone to heaven, so they will. You just wait and see when you tell them that tonight.’

And Bill did see. The children were almost speechless with pleasure. And later he watched them devouring the meal with such relish it brought tears to his eyes.

A couple of days after Bill had left, Polly said to her sister, ‘Look, Marion, if you won’t take any money off me then at least let Tony and the twins come to our house dinner time for a bite to eat. You and all, if you want.’

Marion hesitated and Polly said, ‘Go on, Marion. Don’t be so stiff-necked.’

Marion knew Polly could afford to give the children something wholesome. Then bread and scrape for tea, and thin porridge for breakfast would matter less. On the other hand rationing was coming in soon and everyone would get only so much. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to take yours,’ she said.

‘We don’t know what’s going to be rationed yet,’ Polly pointed out. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. But now Pat, the boys and Mary Ellen eat their dinners in their works’ canteens and so I’ll save on any rations they would eat.’

‘All right,’ Marion said. ‘Thank you, Polly. We’ll see how it goes. But you just see to the children. I’ll get something for myself.’

Polly knew she probably wouldn’t. She ate not nearly enough, in her sister’s opinion, but at least Polly could ensure that the children were well fed once a day.

The children were delighted when Marion told them they would be having dinner at their Auntie Polly’s. They all loved her crowded and untidy house. Aunt Polly wasn’t one to be always on about people washing their hands either, and as there were barely enough chairs to sit down at the table, which was mostly cluttered anyway, they usually stood around with food in their hands, which the Whittaker children thought wonderful.

‘The only downside to all this,’ Marion said to Sarah one evening when the younger ones were in bed, ‘is that Tony sees even more of Jack.’

‘Jack isn’t that bad,’ Sarah protested.

Marion shook her head. ‘I’m worried about Tony and the power Jack seems to have over him. I’m very much afraid our Tony needs a father’s hand to stop him going to the bad altogether.’

In a way she was right, because Tony missed his father so much it was like an ache inside him. Richard, sitting in Bill’s chair when he came in from work and rustling the paper he often bought on the way home, as his father had, just annoyed Tony more and he tended to gravitate more to his uncle Pat and envied Jack that his father came home each night.

In fact, he envied Jack for many things, not least because he could think up such exciting things to do. When Tony was with him and up to some mischief or other, he didn’t miss his father half as much.

At some point, most boys tried to hitch a ride on a horse-drawn dray, and Jack and Tony had done so many times. The journeys never lasted long because the driver was either aware they were there or a passer-by would alert him. ‘Oi, put yer whip be’ind,’ they would shout, and any clinging boy would drop swiftly from the cart before the driver’s curling whip could bite into his skin.

However, when Jack suggested doing the same to a clattering swaying tram Tony thought it the most exciting thing he had ever done. Neither the conductor nor the driver noticed them, but they were thrown off into the road when the tram took a corner at speed and they narrowly missed being crushed to death by a delivery van, whose driver swerved just in time to avoid them.

Marion was told this by the policeman who delivered the shamefaced and tearful Tony home, but his contriteness was wasted on her when the policeman told her that the delivery driver might never be the same again. After hauling her son inside, she paddled his bottom with a hairbrush and wished she could administer the same punishment to her nephew.

All the other children were shocked at what Tony had done and both Richard and Sarah told him so.

‘Haven’t you got a brain in that bonehead of yours?’ Sarah railed at him. ‘Didn’t you think for one minute what a stupid idea it was?’

Tony was silent. He was feeling incredibly miserable. His bottom felt as if it was on fire and his stomach yawned emptily, for he had been sent to bed without anything to eat. It hadn’t seemed stupid when Jack suggested it. It had seemed daring, and that’s what he tried to tell his sister. Sarah looked at his brick-red face and his eyes still so full of tears that his voice was broken and husky but she felt no sympathy for him.

‘Well, that one daring act might have cost you your life,’ she cried, and added witheringly, ‘Oh, you must be very proud of yourself.’

‘I ain’t,’ Tony sniffed. ‘I never said I was proud of it. I just thought it would be a bit of fun.’

‘Fun!’ Sarah repeated as if she couldn’t believe she had heard right. ‘Well, do you realise that you have probably cost that van driver his job? He more than likely has a wife and children dependent on him and, according to what the policeman told Mom, he might never be able to drive again. So you think on that, Tony Whittaker.’

Tony did think about it, though he couldn’t help wondering what Jack felt about it all now. He knew that his family would probably not be half as harsh with him. Uncle Pat might even laugh at his antics. He often did. That was always a great puzzle to Tony.

The thin porridge the next morning didn’t even go part way to assuaging his appetite but he did feel ashamed when he noticed lines of strain on his mother’s face that he had never seen before.

‘I have enough to worry about as it is, with your dad away and us barely having enough to live on,’ Marion said to him as she cleared away his bowl. ‘You can at least try to be good and listen more to me and less to Jack Reilly.’

‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ Tony said sincerely. ‘It was just a lark but I won’t do it again.’

‘See you don’t then,’ Marion said grimly. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘I know. I really am sorry.’

‘All right then,’ Marian said, mollified a little. ‘We’ll say no more about it.’

Jack and Tony gave trams a wide berth after that little episode. It had given them quite a scare, not that either of them ever admitted that.

Marion opened the door the following Saturday morning to see the priest, Father McIntyre, on the doorstep. She was a little flustered because she hadn’t been expecting him, but she smiled and said, ‘This is a surprise, Father. Come away in and I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘No, Marion,’ the priest said stiffly. ‘This isn’t a social call.’

‘Oh?’ Marion felt her stomach sink as she looked at the priest’s disgruntled face and suddenly she knew that her younger son had something to do with Father McIntyre’s ill humour. Jack and Tony, like most Catholic boys of their age, had been trained to serve at Mass, and they should both have been serving at early Mass that morning. ‘Did the boys not turn up, Father?’ Marion asked anxiously.

‘Oh, they were there, all right,’ the priest said. ‘And afterwards showed total disrespect for the Church and the sacrament they had just taken part in.’

‘What did they do, Father?’ Marion asked fearfully.

‘They each had a water pistol and I caught them filling them up from the holy water font.’

‘Oh, Father!’ cried Marion, shocked. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your place to be sorry,’ the priest said. ‘It’s up to your son to be sorry and mend his ways. Jack Reilly admitted that both pistols were his and that he had given one to Tony.’

‘Somehow Tony seems to lose all sense of right and wrong when he’s with that boy,’ Marion said. ‘I will deal with him, Father never fear. Where is he?’

‘Knowing that your husband is away, I have taken them both to Pat Reilly’s house to let him deal with the pair of them.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ Marion said. ‘I will be away now to fetch Tony home.’

And she did fetch him and berated him every step of the way. That night she wrote to tell Bill all about his recalcitrant son.

Not surprisingly, Pat didn’t take it at all seriously. Do you know, he even asked the boys if they had chosen holy water because it improved their aim …

Bill smiled when he read that because he could well imagine Pat saying it, and knew he himself would have taken the same line and viewed it for what it was, a boyhood prank. He also knew that Marion would never see it like that. She was really upset over it.

How is Jack to grow up with any sort of moral fibre with a father like that one as an example? And whatever mischief he is at, Tony is right behind him. I cannot seem to keep any sort of check on him and never know what he might be up to next.

A week after the last upset with Tony, Marion pawned the silver locket Bill had bought her the year after they were married and the delicate chiming carriage clock that had been Lady Amelia’s present to her when she’d left service to marry Bill. It had pride of place on the mantelpiece in the parlour for it was easily the most beautiful thing the family owned. Marion shed bitter tears when she was alone for she hated having to part with such treasured items.