A Girl Can Dream. Anne Bennett
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pointed to a corner in front of Hobbies shop. They wandered over to see a man trussed up like a chicken. A table was put over him and a large shimmering gold sheet laid over that by his assistant. There was a lot of movement behind the sheet, a roll of drums, and then before they knew it, the man stood in front of them, unfettered and unharmed.
Even Meg was impressed. Then, as they were making their way to the area behind the Market Hall where a group of ragged-looking women were beginning to gather, Terry suddenly sniffed the air.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Hot potatoes,’ Meg said. ‘And they taste as delicious as they smell, but I’m afraid we have no money for such things.’
‘I know,’ Terry said resignedly.
Meg suddenly felt very sorry for her young brother, but there was nothing she could do about it. They passed a man prostrate on a bed of nails. Terry’s eyes were standing out on stalks, for not only was the man lying there as if it was the most comfortable bed in all Christendom, but there was a young man standing on top of him. The girls standing around were giving little cries of alarm, but the man, whose brown skin gleamed in the light from the flares, and who was scantily clad with only a white cloth wrapped around his loins, appeared to feel no pain. Indeed, he had a big smile on his face.
‘How does he do that?’ Terry whispered to Meg when they were out of earshot.
‘Search me,’ Meg said. ‘There must be some sort of trick to it, but for the life of me I can’t see what it is. I mean, you could see the nails pressing into the man’s skin.’
‘Not half,’ Terry said.
Some of the stallholders were getting ready to close up and Meg handed Terry one of the bags. ‘It is better if we stand apart from one another,’ she said. ‘We may get more that way.’
When Meg took her place in the small group, though, she looked at the scrawny-looking woman with gaunt-faced children and felt as if she had no place there. Some of the children looked as if they had never had a square meal in the whole of their lives and their mothers seemed resigned to the fact that they were not able to feed their children adequately. Meg knew she needn’t have been there if her father had tipped up enough housekeeping. But then she reminded herself that her father was not the only man in Birmingham who put his love of drink above the welfare of his family. Any of these women could be in a similar boat to herself. Thinking of her siblings, she stepped forward determinedly.
She had expected to feel embarrassed and ashamed, accepting food without paying, but the stall owners didn’t mind that much – if they didn’t give the food away, they would have to throw it away. The butcher and his assistant nearest to Meg tried to be fair and give something to everyone in the jostling crowd surrounding them. Meg was given a sizeable piece of pork and she was also offered some wizened-looking carrots from the stall selling fruit and veg and some peas still in their pods. Terry, standing by another butcher, had come away with a large ham bone with lots of meat still on it, and some slices of liver. He had also dived under barrows to collect anything that might have fallen off in the course of the day and had come up with a few apples, a cabbage and a fair few potatoes.
A group of musicians set up in a corner just before they left; they began playing the sort of jolly, foot-tapping tunes he remembered his mother lilting to him when he had been younger, and for a moment he felt the pang of loss so sharply that he gasped.
‘What’s up?’ Meg asked, but she knew what it was when she saw the shadow that flashed across his face.
Terry gave himself a mental shake. ‘Nothing,’ he said, and to stop Meg asking any more questions that might cause him to think of a situation he could do nothing to change he said, ‘What do you think of tonight’s haul, then?’
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Meg said, catching Terry’s mood. ‘We have the makings of a few good meals in these bags. The wolf shall be kept from the door for a wee while yet.’
The food had virtually gone by Wednesday so Meg did something else that she had never done before: leaving Ruth with the children she went to Moorcroft’s and asked for tick. Mrs Moorcroft knew the Halletts as a respectable family touched by a terrible tragedy that had made Charlie Hallett turn to the bottle. She assumed, like most other people, that in time he would pull himself together; meanwhile he was in reasonably well-paid work so she was prepared to give Meg some money on account.
Meg, though, found the whole thing mortifying, but there was no other way she could find to feed everyone.
She bought a tin of National Dried Milk for Ruth, a small bag of sugar and another of oatmeal to make porridge, one loaf, sausages, onions and a pound of potatoes. It made Terry’s blood boil to see the bread with a scrape of marg on, which was the meal for him and Meg and the others, while that same evening his father tucked into a plateful of succulent sausages in onion gravy and mashed potatoes.
‘He has to have the best food,’ Meg said later that night when Terry complained after his father had left. ‘He has to keep his strength up to go to work. He provides for us all.’
‘Not very well he doesn’t,’ Terry said mulishly. ‘Not when he spends most of what he earns behind the bar of the Swan.’
‘Hush, Terry.’
‘Why should I hush?’ Terry demanded. ‘And why are you making excuses for him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Meg admitted. ‘I suppose because he is our dad, the only one we have, and I once loved him so much. I suppose I still do, really, and I feel guilty that I can’t fill Mom’s place. I mean, I can look after all you lot and everything, but I can’t fill the hole in Daddy’s life. For all he has us, I think he is incredibly lonely.’
‘So what can we do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ Meg said. ‘Just wait. Only time will help Dad now.’
But Terry wasn’t prepared to wait, and when his father alighted from the tram the following day, Terry was there, glad to see that his uncles Alec and Robert got off just after his father.
‘Why, Terry,’ Charlie said, catching sight of his son, ‘what are you doing here? Anything up?’
‘No,’ Terry said, almost contemptuously. ‘Not “up” exactly. It’s just that knowing you are paid tonight, I wanted you to give me some housekeeping for Meg before you go to the pub and blow a big portion of it.’
Charlie just glared at his son but Robert burst out, ‘Terry, that’s a terrible way to talk to your father.’
Terry tore his eyes from his father’s wrathful scowl and faced his perplexed uncle. Meg might want to make excuses for their father, he thought, but he had no intention of doing the same. ‘Uncle Robert, we owe three weeks’ rent,’ he said. ‘The landlord came round himself and threatened Meg, but she hadn’t any money to pay off the arrears because Dad hadn’t given her any. She had so little money we had to go to the Bull Ring on Saturday night and get the stuff left on the barrows.’
Robert gave a start – only the very poor in the city resorted to that – and he glanced at his brother.
But Terry hadn’t finished. ‘Even then it wasn’t enough to feed us. By yesterday Meg didn’t even have milk for the baby and she had to go to Moorcroft’s and ask for tick. Only Dad had a dinner; the rest of us made do with thin porridge and bread and scrape.’
Robert saw embarrassment and shame flood across Charlie’s face but he still asked him, ‘Is this true?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘I suppose if Terry says so. I didn’t know about them going to the Bull Ring,’
‘Then how did you think we would eat?’ Terry burst out. ‘And you knew the landlord had been demanding the arrears the other day