Mary Ann and Bill Read online

Rose Mary was hanging on to her mother’s arm now, and, her lips trembling and her voice full of tears, she looked at her brother and cried, ‘Well, tell her, you! If you don’t I will, ’cos I’m not goin’ to not go to Doncaster the morrow through you. See! ’Cos you won’t play with me if we don’t go, so tell her.’

  Both Mary Ann and Rose Mary now concentrated their gaze on David; and David stared back into his mother’s eyes and remained mute, and Mary Ann had her work cut out not to box his ears instantly.

  Aiming to keep in command of the situation, Mary Ann turned her eyes slowly away from her son’s penetrating stare and, looking at her daughter, said, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’

  Rose Mary swallowed; then, her head drooping onto her chest, she whispered, ‘He swore.’

  ‘SWORE!’ Mary Ann again looked at her son. ‘You swore? Who did you swear at?’

  Rose Mary once more supplied the information. ‘At Miss Plum.’

  ‘You didn’t, David; you didn’t swear at Miss Plum!’ Mary Ann was really shocked.

  David’s round face stretched slightly as he pulled his lower lip downwards and pushed his arched eyebrows towards the rim of his ginger hair.

  ‘What did you say?’ Mary Ann’s voice was tight, and when the only response she got was the further pulling down of his lip and the further pushing up of his eyebrows she put the question to Rose Mary, ‘What did he say?’

  Rose Mary blinked, then bit on the nail of her middle finger before she said, ‘Lots.’

  ‘Lots! You mean he swore more than once?’

  ‘Ah-ha.’

  Mary Ann closed her eyes for a moment. She knew this would happen some time or another. The boy spent too much time down in that garage and with the workmen on the site, and knowing some of the adjectives used by the workmen, she trembled to think which one of them he had levelled at his teacher.

  ‘Go on, tell me,’ she said. She addressed her daughter.

  Rose Mary nipped at her lower lip; then, wagging her head from side to side, she cast a glance at her brother, who was now staring straight at her, and said, ‘Fumblegillgoozle.’

  ‘Fumble-gill…? But that’s not a word. I mean, that’s not swearing.’

  The twins now exchanged a deep look which Mary Ann could not interpret, and she said, ‘Well, it isn’t. It’s a made-up word, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Mam; but Miss Plum said that he said it like swearin’.’

  Mary Ann hadn’t a doubt but that her son could put the inflection on fumble-gill-goozle to make it sound like swearing. He was learning words, he was fascinated by words, and he had a way with his inflection. ‘Is that all he said?’

  ‘No, Mam.’ Again the brother and sister exchanged a deep glance before Rose Mary, continuing with the betrayal, whispered, ‘Antimacassar.’

  Again Mary Ann closed her eyes, this time to prevent herself from laughing outright. When she opened them she looked directly at her son and said, ‘Antimacassar and fumblegillgoozle aren’t swear words. But it all depends how you use them, and you know that, don’t you, dear?’

  ‘Yes, Mam.’ It was the first time he had spoken since he had come into the house, and the sound of his own voice was like an ice breaker cleaving a way through his imposed silence, for now he added rapidly, ‘I don’t like Miss Plum, Mam. She’s big. And I don’t like her hands. And when she bends over you you can see right down her throat, and she’d had onions. And she marked me sums wrong and they weren’t wrong; and she gave Tony Gibbs ten, and he’s a fool. Tony Gibbs is a fool. An’ I told her I’m not sittin’ next to her at Mass on Sunday any more. I told her I’m goin’ to sit with Rose Mary…’

  ‘Yes, yes, he did, Mam. He told Miss Plum that.’

  Rose Mary’s face was alight with her pleasure. For many months now she had been deprived of her twin’s company in so many ways, and to be separated from him in church was to her the last straw. It had been Miss Plum’s idea to keep them apart, hoping that the separation might go some way towards enabling David to break the dominance of his sister. Undoubtedly this strategy had helped towards David’s independence, but now there was nobody more aware than David that he did not need Miss Plum’s help, or that of anyone else for that matter, to make him talk.

  ‘You cheeked Miss Plum, David?’

  ‘No, no, I just told her.’

  ‘You must have cheeked her.’ Mary Ann was bending towards him. ‘What else did you say?’

  David looked up into his mother’s face. His eyes were twinkling now, and the corner of his mouth was moving up into a quirk, and when Rose Mary spluttered, he spluttered too, until Mary Ann said sharply, ‘Stop it! Stop it, the both of you. Now I want to know what else you said.’

  They stopped their giggling and David lapsed into his silence again and Rose Mary said, ‘…Gordon Bennett, Mam, and Blimey Riley.’

  Mary Ann swallowed deeply. Gordon Bennett was a saying that Jimmy down below in the garage often resorted to. He didn’t swear much in front of the children but his intonation when he said ‘Gordon Bennett!’ spoke volumes. And Blimey Riley. Well, that was one Corny often came out with when he was exasperated. He would exclaim between gritted teeth ‘Bl-i-mey, Riley!’ and it certainly sounded more like swearing than swearing. So, in a way, David had sworn.

  Poor Miss Plum; she had her sympathy. She had thirty-eight in her class and she needed only two or three Davids to drive her round the bend. She said now sternly, ‘Miss Plum had every right to keep you in, and if I had been her I would have given you the ruler across your knuckles.’ She looked from one straight face to the other. ‘And don’t think you’re out of the wood yet. Wait till I tell your father about this. Now go and get yourselves washed and then come back and have your tea. And there’s no play for you until I say so, understand?’

  They stared at her for a moment longer, then as if governed by the same impulse they turned together and went out of the room, and as they passed through the door she cried after them, ‘What is that you said, David?’

  She was on the landing now looking down at her son. She took him by the shoulders again and shook him. ‘Tell me what you said.’

  When she paused for a moment and his head stopped bobbing, he spluttered, ‘Rub-rubber guts.’

  Mary Ann drew in a deep breath that seemed to swell her small body to twice its size, and she twisted him round and grabbed him by the collar and thrust him into the bedroom to the accompanying pleas of Rose Mary, crying, ‘Oh, no, Mam! Oh, no! Don’t, don’t, Mam. Don’t bray him.’

  With one hand she thrust Rose Mary back onto the landing, then, standing with her back to the bedroom door, she swiftly stripped down David’s short pants and laid the imprint of her hand four times across his buttocks. And then she released him and, panting, stood looking down at him.

  She was looking now not at a cheeky little devil, but at a little boy with the tears squeezing from under his tightly closed lids, and she had the desire to grab him up into her arms and soothe him and pet him and say, ‘There, there! I’m sorry, darling, I’m sorry.’ But no; Master David had to be taught a lesson. Rubber guts, indeed!

  When she turned and hurried from the room she almost fell over Rose Mary, and she yelled at her, ‘Get into that bathroom and get yourself washed! You’re as bad as he is. Wait till your father comes in. There’s going to be a change in this house; you see if there isn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Mam, Mam, you shouldn’t; you shouldn’t have hit our David. I’ll tell me da of you. I will. I will.’

  Now Rose Mary found herself lifted by the collar and thrust into the bathroom and her dress whipped up and her knickers whipped down, and she screamed open murder as Mary Ann’s hand contacted her rounded buttocks. And when it was over she sat on the floor and looked up at Mary Ann and cried between her gasping, ‘I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I’m going away. I’m going away to Gran’s. And I’ll take our David with me. I will, I will. I don’t love you.’

  Mary Ann went out, banging the bathroom door after her;
and on the landing once more she put her hand up and cupped her face. ‘I don’t love you. I don’t love you.’ The words were like a knife going into her. Although she knew it was a momentary spasm, and one she had indulged in many a time herself, it had the power to send her spirits into the depths.

  She was just going into the kitchen when Corny came bounding up the stairs. ‘What’s the matter? I could hear her screaming downstairs. What’s up?’

  Mary Ann sat down on a chair and looked up at her tall, homely looking red-haired husband, and what she said was, ‘Oh, Corny!’

  Dropping onto his hunkers, Corny gathered her hands into his and gazed into her twisted face as he asked softly, ‘What is it, love? What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘I…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I…I think I’ll cry…I’ve…I’ve had to skelp both their behinds.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be the first time. But what’s it about, anyway?’

  ‘He’s…he’s had one of his defiant moods on. They were kept in at school. He’s been swearing at Miss Plum.’

  ‘No!’ He sat back on his hunkers; then grinned, ‘Swearing? What did he say?’

  ‘Antimacassar.’ She watched him droop his head onto his chest, and when his eyes, wide and merry, came up to meet hers, she said, ‘And fumblegillgoozle.’

  ‘…Fumble-what?’

  ‘That’s what I said, fumble-what. It’s one he’s made up. Fumble-gill-goozle. Have you ever heard anything like it?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But that isn’t the worst…Gordon Bennett.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Yes, Gordon Bennett. And you can imagine the emphasis he would put on it. And wait for it, Mr Boyle.’ She inclined her head towards him. ‘Blimey, Riley!’

  He took one of his hands from hers and covered his mouth to smother his laughter; then his shoulders began to shake.

  ‘And he called me rubber guts.’

  The next minute his arms were around her and their heads were together.

  After a moment she pressed herself away from him and, looking into his face, she said, ‘We can laugh, but, you know, it’s serious. He’s got this thing about words; you never know what he’s coming out with next. And I’ve told you he spends far too much time down in the garage, and on the site, and you can’t put a gag in men’s mouths.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t hear anything really bad down in the garage. There’s only Jimmy there; he might come out with a damn and an occasional bloody.’

  ‘It’s plenty.’

  ‘Aw.’ He rose to his feet. ‘If he hears nothing worse than that he won’t come to much harm.’

  ‘He does hear worse than that on the site.’

  ‘Well, I can’t tie him up, and I can’t keep my eye on him all the time, we’ve just got to let things take their course. He’s a lad, Mary Ann. You see’—he turned to her again—‘all his life, not being able to talk, he was cut off. To him it must feel as if he’d been born just six months ago, and from the minute he found his voice, he’s been experimenting. Let him be and don’t worry. Come on, up you get.’ He pulled her to her feet, then ended, ‘It’s a break you need. Tomorrow’s a day out; it’ll do you good.’

  She looked up at him, saying coolly, ‘A day out you said? Who for? The Blenkinsop boys?’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be a repeat of the time they were here. There’s plenty of room up their place. That big field beyond. And then there’s the ponies and what not. Once you get there you won’t see them or ours until we’re coming back. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a good day…Come on, let me inject you with that feeling, Mrs Boyle.’ Swiftly he picked her up in his arms and kissed her hard, and when he put her down again he said, ‘There, how’s that? Feel the difference?’ And when she replied, ‘Not that you’d notice,’ he said, ‘You know, the trouble with you, Mrs Boyle, is you’re growing old.’

  She didn’t laugh with him or retaliate in any way but, going into the scullery to start the tea, she thought, ‘Yes, I am growing old. I’m twenty-seven.’ And the train of thought caught a grievance that was in her mind a lot of late, that asked her, what had she done with her life? What was she doing with her life? The answer came as before, nothing, except cooking and cleaning, and washing and shopping, and worrying, and waiting for Corny to come up from the garage so she would have company; then watching him going to sleep watching the telly. Then awakening to it all over again the following morning.

  Yes; she was twenty-seven, and she was getting old.

  Chapter Two: The Day Out

  Rose Mary looked up unsmiling into her mother’s face. Although she loved her mother again this morning she wasn’t really kind with her, because she hadn’t said she was sorry about braying them last night.

  They had an arrangement regarding clearing the air after incidents like last night. Whoever was at fault was to be the one to say sorry, and then everybody was kind again. There was no doubt in Rose Mary’s mind that her mam was at fault for braying them, because, she reasoned, Miss Plum had punished David for swearing, or for sounding like swearing, and it was awful for her mam to lather into him again.

  When Mary Ann said, ‘Now, let either of you get a mark on your clothes and you’re for it. Do you hear me?’ she said stiffly, ‘Yes, Mam.’

  ‘Do you hear me, David?’

  ‘…Yes, Mam.’

  ‘Well, remember it. Now go downstairs, but don’t you move away from the garage drive. And don’t go into the garage. Understand?’

  They both looked at her silently, then turned and walked slowly away.

  The scene outside was most unusually quiet today. There were no cranes and grabs clanking across the road; no sound of men’s voices shouting; no lorries churning up the mud in the lane; and for once no car standing at the petrol tanks opposite the wide space that led into the hangar-like shed that constituted the workshop and garage.

  Bringing her eyes to David, who was standing with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, Rose Mary now said, ‘She never said she was sorry.’

  He returned her glance and wagged his head twice before saying, ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘I know some more words.’ He slanted his eyes at her.

  ‘Eeh, our David! You’d better not. Mam’ll give it to you…What are they?’ She leant her head towards him, and he grinned at her, then whispered ‘Skinnymalink.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not a word; I know that one.’

  He jerked his head; then said, ‘Well, you don’t know skilligalee.’

  ‘Eeh! Skilligalee.’ She whispered the word back at him. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘One of the men.’ His chin was jerking again.

  ‘Is it a bad swear?’

  ‘Ah-ha.’

  ‘Eeh, our David! Mam’ll tan you purple if she hears it.’

  He grinned at her again, then walked jauntily towards the opening of the garage, and Rose Mary followed him. And there they both stopped and looked into the dim interior where Jimmy was standing talking to a shock-haired, tight-trousered young man, whom they recognised as Poodle-Patter, the nickname given to one of the group with which Jimmy played.

  As David went to move forward Rose Mary pulled him back, saying, ‘Don’t go in; Mam’ll be down in a minute, and you know what she said.’

  ‘I’m not going in; I’m just going to the office door.’

  ‘Eeh, our David!’ Rose Mary remained where she was, but David moved forward, and at the office door he stopped and cocked his ear to hear Jimmy say, ‘Yes, I know I could get more money at Baxter’s but I don’t want to go, man.’

  ‘You must be barmy.’ Poodle-Patter dug Jimmy in the chest with his fist. ‘Five quid a week more and you’re turning your nose up at it.’

  ‘I’m not turning me nose up at it, man. It’s just that I’m well set here. I’m all right.’

  ‘How long is it since you had a rise?’

  ‘Couple of months since.’

&
nbsp; ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten bob.’

  ‘Ten bob!’ Poodle-Patter’s nose crinkled in scorn. Then leaning towards Jimmy, he said, ‘You want to come in with us in the car, don’t you?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘Well then you’ll have to do something about it. Duke’s got his eye on this minibus. He can get it for two hundred if we put the money down flat, I told you, but if it’s spread over it’ll mean another thirty quid on it, and as Duke says somebody’s got to take the responsibility of the never-never and he’s not going to. He’s been done afore, you remember? It’s cash and equal shares: forty quid each, then we’ll all have a say in it.’

  ‘Forty quid?’ Jimmy’s voice was scornful. ‘I couldn’t raise forty shillings at the minute, and you know it. Look here, Poodle.’ He now dug his finger into Poodle’s chest. ‘You an’ Duke an’ the rest talkin’ about responsibilities, well, I’ve got responsibilities; and to me mam. There’s only one wage comin’ into our house, and that’s mine; and there’s three of us to keep on it, with Theresa still at school. You can tell Duke from me he can buy his blasted car and count me out.’

  ‘Ah, don’t get ratty, man; you know we wouldn’t do anything without you. Anyway, you’re necessary to our lot and we know it; there’s not one of us knows owt about a car, we’d have to pay God knows what for repairs. You’ve kept The Duchess going over the last year when she should have been on the scrap heap. I don’t know how you’ve done it. I said so to Dave and Barny. “I don’t know how Jimmy does it,” I said. Look.’ Poodle-Patter moved nearer to Jimmy, his voice wheedling now, ‘I’m not asking you to do anything out of line, I’m only saying make a move. Everybody should make a move, and you’ve been in this dump long enough. And it isn’t as if you’re not sure of a job. I tell you, Baxter’s are wantin’ somebody like you, a bloke with experience. And that’s the basic they’re paying, fifteen quid a week. Will you think on it?’

  ‘Look!’ Jimmy bowed his head while thrusting his fist out towards Poodle, and Poodle, playfully gripping it between his hands, wagged it, saying, ‘That’s a boy! That’s a boy! Sleep on it. There’s no real hurry, not really; The Duchess has carried us a good many trips, she’ll carry us a few more. I’ll tell Duke you’re considering it. Look, I must be off. See you, fellow.’