A Family Affair

‘Oh, sod the cat, Clover.’ Mary Ann frowned and placed her own plate on the table, sitting down opposite Jake, with Clover on her right. ‘Well…now we’m a family we’ll have to decide who’s doing what in the pub afore we open. What do you say, Jacob?’

‘Quite right,’ Jake responded, nodding and chewing bacon rind. ‘It’s good if we all have a routine. Ramona, you can bottle up while Clover sawdusts the floor and polishes the tables. I’ll stoop any barrels and mek sure as there’s plenty oil in the lamps and coal in the scuttle. What’ll yo’ be doin’, Mary Ann?’

‘I reckon I’ll have me work cut out cooking we dinners when I get back from church, Jacob. But have no fear, I’ll come and serve while it’s a-cooking.’

‘Well at least Zillah will do the spittoons for me now,’ Clover informed them. ‘After yesterday she’ll be glad to do anything.’

‘And serve her right,’ Mary Ann remarked. ‘Still, I liked the way you handled it, our Clover. Good idea to give her a pint of beer every day. Save her pinching it and more.’

‘But I don’t think we should put on her, just because of what’s happened,’ Clover stressed. ‘She’s been a good friend to us in other ways. You know she has.’

‘And in a day or two it’ll all be forgotten, I daresay,’ Jake said.

Clover turned to Ramona. ‘I’ll show you all round the house after, Ramona, so you know where everything is. How did you find your bed, by the way?’

‘Lumpy, if you want the truth.’ She dipped a piece of fried bread into her egg yolk. ‘I didn’t sleep very well. I’m not used to a lumpy bed.’

Clover watched for her mother’s reaction.

‘Then we’ll go down the town to the Worcestershire Furnishing in Wolverhampton Street in the week and order you a new one,’ Mary Ann said with a finality that was unassailable.

Clover could hardly believe her ears. Such sudden and unbounded generosity. ‘Can I have a new bed as well?’ she asked, not wishing to be outdone.

‘What do you want a new bed for, our Clover?’ Mary Ann asked, evidently irked that her daughter might be trying to take advantage. ‘They cost money and the one you’ve got is best feather and down.’

‘But it’s all lumpy and hard, Mother. Same as Ramona’s is.’

‘Try giving it a good shake. How come you’ve never moaned about it afore?’

‘’Cause I knew you wouldn’t buy me a new one. But if Ramona can have a softer bed, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’

Jake stuffed a forkful of best back bacon into his mouth and it amazed Clover how so much food could pass his huge moustache without leaving its mark upon it. ‘If the wench wants a new bed she can have one, Mary Ann, as I see it,’ Jake adjudicated fairly. He looked at Clover and smiled. ‘Nobody wants to kip on a hard bed, do they?’

‘Thank you…Pop.’ She was having difficulty getting used to calling him that.

‘Huh!’ Mary Ann tutted indignantly. ‘Tis to be hoped you’m as finicky when you get married, our Clover. Lord help whoever it is as gets you.’

Conversation paused while the family, all self-conscious of each other in their new situation, concentrated on their breakfasts. Despite Clover’s concern about just how radically the presence of a new stepfather and stepsister might affect her, it seemed that things might not be so bad after all. Maybe she was going to like her new stepfather. He seemed very fair.

‘Are you courting, Clover?’ Ramona asked, tackling her food with determination.

Clover shook her head and smiled self-consciously, glancing at her mother. ‘No, no, I’m not courting.’

‘Not courting at nineteen?’ Jake sounded incredulous. ‘Why they must be a-queuing up – a fine-looking madam like thee.’

Clover smiled demurely and continued eating.

‘Oh, there’s one or two that come in the taproom and ogle at her all soft-like,’ Mary Ann admitted. ‘But I wouldn’t give tuppence for e’er a one.’

‘I’m a-courting,’ Ramona stated proudly. ‘I’ve been courting more than six months now.’

Jake burst out laughing. ‘Courting at seventeen, eh? What d’you think about that, Mary Ann?’

‘I think seventeen’s a bit young to be a-courting, Jacob,’ Mary Ann declared disapprovingly. ‘I take it as you ain’t serious with this chap, Ramona? Whoever he is.’

‘No, I ain’t serious, Mother,’ Ramona felt inclined to confirm. ‘It’s just a chap I know.’

‘There’s no harm in the wench stepping out with a young chap a couple of nights a week if she wants to, Mary Ann,’ Jake said. ‘As long as she’s back home afore ten.’

‘What they can do after ten they can do afore it, Jacob,’ Mary Ann argued. ‘I don’t hold with young women being out nights on their own with men, as our Clover knows. Specially at seventeen. But if you’m content, Jacob, then I’ll be ruled by thee.’

‘She’ll come to no harm, Mary Ann.’

Clover smiled to herself. Things were really looking up, because whatever Ramona could do, she would be able to do also under this new regime.

The terraced buildings that lined both sides of George Street and Brown Street on Kates Hill were made up mostly of dwellings, but were interspersed with little shops. Brown Street, generally the busier of the two, boasted shops that sold lamp-oil and clothes pegs, sweets, haberdashery, greengrocery, as well as a barber’s shop, a fish-and-chip shop, a couple of butchers’ shops and several public houses. George Street hosted a newsagent, a pawnbroker, a coal yard, and a grain merchant. A mere three pubs vied for trade in George Street; the California Inn, the Jubilee Inn – which was the headquarters of the pigeon club – and the Jolly Collier. But then it was less than a hundred yards from one end to the other.

Clover proudly showed Ramona around Kates Hill that afternoon to help walk off their Sunday dinners. Groups of children tumbled through the narrow streets on their way to Sunday school, and courting couples strolled hand in hand. All were wearing their Sunday best.

‘It’ll be nice having a sister,’ Ramona said chirpily as they ventured up Cromwell Street, and Clover began to feel they were growing close already. ‘’Course, with my mother dying when she had me there was no chance of a brother or a sister after.’

‘Oh, I didn’t realise your mother had died in childbirth,’ Clover said sympathetically. ‘So your dad’s been on his own all these years.’

‘More’n seventeen years now. I worked it out – they had to get married, you know. They’d only been married five months when I was born.’

‘But that’s tragic,’ Clover remarked with the utmost sympathy. ‘Your poor father. He’s hardly known any married life. And he must have reared you by himself.’

‘With a bit of help from my two grandmothers. When I was little, I used to go to one of my gran’s when he went to the market.’

‘I like your father,’ Clover proclaimed. ‘He seems very fair.’

‘He’s all right. Your mother don’t smile much, though, does she?’

Clover chuckled good-naturedly. ‘She was smiling this morning at your father…’

‘I know…What if she gets pregnant, Clover?’

‘Pregnant? At her age?’

‘Well, I know she’s forty-two but women do have babies at that age.’

‘No, not my mother, Ramona. Not Mary Ann. She wouldn’t. That sort of thing wouldn’t interest her.’

‘It interests every other woman. Why should she be different?…Anyway, Clover, tell me about your father.’

‘I can hardly remember him. Just a few vague impressions, that’s all. He was called Toby. He and Mother became licensees of the Jolly Collier in 1890 when she was twenty-five and I was just two. He died of pneumonia when I was four.’

They passed the Sailor’s Return on their left, which fronted the Diamond Brewery.