At The Town Hall Fountain

I remember sitting on the low wall that hemmed in the old fountain.  I call it a fountain, but the water hadn’t moved for ages.  It was more of a large stagnant puddle with rusted up workings in the middle.  An empty Park Drive fag packet bobbed about the surface and I was watching it.  There was nothing else to do.

My Mum was in the Town Hall, queueing to pay the rent on our council flat.  It was a warm day anyway, but inside the badly designed extension it was sweltering.  People in the shuffling lines fanned themselves with their rent books and final reminders.  I was at that age where patience has yet to be appreciated and this was an age of fewer fears so I had gone outside to wait.  The sun glinted off the stagnant water making it look a vaguely pleasurable place to be.  I watched the bobbing fag packet and tried to resist putting my hand in the water.

The sound of shouting made me look.  A man and a woman were striding down the walkway, arguing.  They didn’t belong round here.  Local people did not argue so publicly, so passionately.  People that I knew simply grumbled and exchanged looks from under heavy brows.  But these two – they yelled, they waved arms, jabbed fingers.  She threw a carrier bag of something at him. This was the best entertainment ever.  Their accents reminded me of something you’d hear on the BBC telly.  As the man drew closer I realised why I thought this.  He was the man off the telly.  The man off Play School, the programme I watched when I got in from school.  He was oblivious to me as he passed close by, still yelling.  Mum came down the steps, putting her rent book in her handbag then holding out her hand for me to take. 

“Ooh, that’s him!”  She said “I wonder what he’s doing round here?”

“Having an argument” I observed.

“These telly types…” she tutted.

We walked on, passing the theatre where his face beamed out from a poster.  That explained it.    

An Accumulation

Harry Price had started in the Bookmaking trade in the yard at the back of the Crown.  He had done so when his father had decreed that he was ready to take over.  The punters trusted him, and he had always inspired loyal service from his runners.  The coppers left him alone and business was good.

When the 1960s came, new laws said that Harry need no longer hide away behind a back street pub.  And so, along with so many of his fellow tradesmen, he reluctantly joined the High Street.  He took on a small shop at the shabby end.  Formerly a fishmongers, he could never quite get rid of the smell – but the tiling was easy to clean and the spit and fag ends could be removed in one sweep.  Indoor life without windows didn’t suit so well though, and Harry nurtured a resentment.  The rent, the electric and the sweeping brushes were all a source of irritation.

One particular Saturday Harry’s habitual scowl became more pronounced. A big chain had opened up a bookies a bit further down the street, and to top it, Billy Jackson’s accumulator was close to coming up.  Just one more race to go – if the favourite came in Harry was done for.  Everything he owned would belong to Billy.  As the commentary started, the shop fell into quiet.  The punters all watched Harry either with sympathy or delighted interest.  The favourite led the field.  Harry wondered if it was time to retire anyway.  The final furlong came.  The favourite won. 

Harry shooed them all out of the shop and went to lock the door.  Some protested – what about Billy’s money when he came for it?  Harry told them that Billy knew where he lived, and he set off up the High Street.  He walked into the new bookies and flourished a neatly folded slip under the screen.  He’d agreed with Billy’s predictions and had placed the same bet – with triple the stake - with the new shop.  He smiled to himself as one of his old regulars pretended that he wasn’t there. 

The Rare Medium

He’d been gone a whole month now and still it was no better.  The very idea of never seeing Garry on screen again made June feel sick. No-one was able to console her.  The only time that she felt happy was when she climbed into her unchanged bed and began to drift off to sleep.  Then she could settle into her regular dreams, the ones where Garry was alive and well and visiting Rotherham on a promotional tour.  He would visit the cinema where she worked, clap eyes on her as she sold him an ice cream…and never take his eyes off her again.  He would lead her into the projection room and…and…well never mind, she’d usually nodded off by this stage.

Alexandra Haseldown-Smith.  The stars’ chosen Medium.

The advertisement was bold, confident, assertive.  June decided that there must be some substance to her claim or she wouldn’t place it in a national newspaper.

In regular contact with stars of stage and screen whom have passed over.  Seances held regularly in theatres and studios at the request of several well-known directors and actors.

If anyone could help her to make contact with Garry, it would be Alexandra Haseldown-Smith.  June hadn’t got much money, only what she’d saved for her bottom drawer.  But it looked like she’d never need that.  No other man could ever live up to Garry.  Especially in Rotherham.  Sod marriage, now that Garry hadn’t much else to do, he might talk to her, advise her in some way.  Tell her he would wait until she joined him.   June went out and bought the most spiritual looking notepaper that she could find (blue with faint lines).  She cleared the pots and pans off the kitchen table and sat down to write.

“Dear Miss Haseldown-Smith.  I need you to help me make contact with an actor that passed over recently.  I believe that he might have something to tell me.  Please can you help me?  I have a few pounds and can come to London if you need me to.  My future and my happiness depend on it.  I enclose a stamped addressed envelope.”

Cat in a Bag

As she tells me that she’s in trouble, she looks at me in the same way that a kitten might. She wants me to pick her up and pet her. Tell her that I’m going to keep her. But every bit of me wants to bundle her up in a sack and drop her in the deepest part of the Thames.

She’s been trailing me ever since I got back on my 48 hour pass from the base. I thought she was just hungry for some more of what she had last time, but there was never going to be any of that. Poor, innocent little kitten, doesn’t she know there’s a war on? Everything’s temporary these days. But now she’s telling me that there’s something lingering after that regrettable whiskey fumble. She’s telling me about reputations. Apparently I should be making hers my business.

But I’ve got another idea. Didn’t I once hear about a quack fellow in Soho who took care of these problems? It’s just persuading her. She’ll be hard work. I can see the reflection of the wedding flowers in her tiresome tears.

I regret my curiosity. I only wanted to be sure that all that kind of thing wasn’t for me. A test.  Now I know for sure that girls are just not my thing. The sooner I’m rid of this one… Then I can get to the boys on the base and the frisson of the smell of their sweat in the huts. There’s going to be some nice new raw recruits joining us tomorrow.

She’s stopped her jabbering now. She’s waiting for me to speak. I take out my wallet and offer her crumpled notes. She throws them back at me, and, oh Lord here we go, she begins to wail. The air raid siren starts up in sympathy. I turn her around and push her towards the tube station steps. The steep, steep staircase delves down into the ground before us. The place begins to get crowded. A stumble into the depths would be easy to engineer in the dark and the rush...all I have to do is prise those little claws out of my jacket sleeve.

Some People Use War as an Excuse for Everything

Mrs Bagshaw lived for disapproval.  Not that she wanted anyone to disapprove of her.  Her behaviour was of course exemplary.  Otherwise she wouldn’t be qualified to offer out her opinions on the way that other people ran their lives.  Everyone else was doing it wrong.  But Mrs Bagshaw had a husband, two children, a full washing line and front doorstep that gleamed, even on a foggy day.  Of course she was doing everything right.  But her across the road at number 12, well!  She was a different kettle of fish altogether.

It was in the war when her at number 12 went wrong.  Women of her sort used the war as an excuse for all sorts of ridiculous behaviour.  First of all she married that pilot.  She went silly over the uniform.  And if anybody was going to get themselves killed it was a pilot.  The marriage didn’t last a year before he went down in the North Sea.  And what had she done in the meantime?  Got herself pregnant.  Talk about setting yourself up for sorrow.  So, there she was – no husband, a kiddy that won’t stop crying because it’s got an unfit mother and no food in the cupboard.  No time to grow anything she said – even though she’d a lovely patch of soil round the back.  So, she fetched round the ARP warden to see about growing some potatoes – and ends up growing much more into the bargain.  Another baby no less.  The ARP Warden went running back to his wife, saying that there was no proof that the blighter was his.

But the real disapproval started at the end of the war, when young Peter Bagshaw turned 19.  Just the day after his birthday, he was caught sneaking out of number 12 at 1 o’clock in the morning.  Peter got a red ear but he never lost his grin.  Local opinion was divided on whether number 12 had done it out of spite to Mrs Bagshaw, or because she just genuinely couldn’t resist a strapping young lad.  Either way, when there’s a war on, you take your pleasure where you find it.

*Title inspired by a line from Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

Empathy on the Bus

The child continued to scream even after the mother had paid the fare and settled down gratefully into a seat.  The child remained in its pushchair, but the brake had to be applied, so rocking was not possible.  A gentle push to and fro is what usually sends them off.  Instead, the mother hoped that the burr of the engine would soothe her child to sleep.  One or two older people tutted as the precise pitch of the screaming was delivered straight into their eardrums by their hearing aids.  One woman ostentatiously turned hers off.  Another offered a solution under her breath – “take the damn thing out of its pram.”

But the mother was determined to remain firm.  Sleep time means no cuddles, no matter how loud you scream.  I’m all out of cuddles just now.  She leaned forward and in a compromise to appease other passengers, took her child’s fist in her hand and began to stroke it with her worn out, steriliser-raw thumb.

A woman in the adjacent seat looked over at the mother; too distracted from her book to read anymore.  She wasn’t annoyed, like those whose child rearing days were long past.  She simply felt relief that the child wasn’t hers.  That her children were safely in school and that she would be able to walk away from that heartbreaking sound.  Those days were not so long ago, when she felt just like this mother looked.  Exhausted not even strong enough a word.  She remembered the nights sat on the landing, sobbing because her child wouldn’t sleep and her office desk awaited her in 4 hours time.  That determination that normal life must continue, even in the face of a tyrant who communicates only through nuances of top volume.  She wanted to tell her that it would end one day.  Sooner than she knew.  But the bus stop loomed. And the child began to mew dozily.  Instead, she gave a conspiratorial smile and walked on.

In a Waiting Room, 8th October 1952

It’s busy in here.  This fog’s a proper pea-souper.  It’s coming under the doors and down the chimney.  Usually with a fog like this I struggle to breathe but I don’t feel so bad today.  I haven’t coughed since the train either.  The train.  I was on the train.  So what am I doing in a waiting room again?  Where has George gone, I wonder.  Oh, I feel a bit sleepy.

Here’s some more people.  I’d better shuffle up and make room.  At least these seats are comfortable.  Must be first class.  Hang on, here’s some people with uniforms on.  He’s a driver, surely.  That’s not done, letting engine staff into a first class waiting room.  I’ll have to write a letter to the Stationmaster when I get home.  If I ever get home.  What on earth is going on?  Yet more people?  This really is a disgrace, and no-one here to give us any information.

Ah! Now here’s someone who looks like they’re going to take charge of the situation.  Those buttons on his waistcoat are awfully shiny.  That’s very reassuring.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?  We are so sorry to keep you waiting, we weren’t expecting so many of you at once.  Please be assured that we will deal with each of you in order of your time of arrival.’

How does he know which one of us was here first?  Extraordinary.

‘Mrs Barnes?  This way please.’

Mrs Barnes and the man with shiny buttons disappeared into the fog.