Jane kept the National Insurance card and the birth certificates, often thinking wistfully of the missing sisters.
She never felt that way about the ones she’d got. Georgette was wet. Wet, smelly and uncomfortable. She spent large parts of each day in her high chair in a hand-knitted pink matinée coat and a pair of elasticated plastic panties. Doreen had potty-trained Kenneth with terrifying speed at the age of twelve months. Jane remembered it happening almost overnight. The next-door neighbour was busy training a new puppy at the time and the four-year-old Jane had really begun to wonder if Doreen, too, had just rubbed Kenneth’s nose in it. And yet, since those no-nonsense days, Doreen had read a women’s magazine (in the doctor’s waiting room – she didn’t waste her money on that rubbish) which had other ideas. As a result Georgette was still producing bucketfuls of shitty terry towelling and showing no interest at all in the shell-pink celluloid potty that Doreen had bought for her. The whole upstairs stank like scented sewage.
The family was sat round the gate-leg table for tea. No cloth. Tablecloths made work. So did napkins. There wasn’t a napkin in the house although, funnily enough, there were lots of napkin rings: one set of silver plate and one set of pearly Bakelite. Doreen had got them as wedding presents and they lived with a family of silver fish in the bottom drawer of the sideboard.
‘You’re late.’
Still no hello or nothing.
‘We had a late customer. Had half the stock out.’
The lie flowed nicely. Jane had once explained that she had gone for a quick drink with the girls after work (actually a rather pushy young man from the camera shop in the Arcade) but Doreen’s envious fury had taught her to think better of it. Drink? When did she ever get a chance for a Drink?
‘No consideration,’ said Doreen, lightly spraying the table with food.
Doreen always talked with her mouth full, waiting until a fresh forkful had been shovelled in before starting up the next complaint. It was disgusting enough anyway but it also meant you got to see her teeth. Doreen had all her own teeth – no one else would have wanted them. She had resisted the mad rush for National Health dentures after the war, deciding that it was ‘common’. Uncle George took one look at the gleaming white gum shields being knocked out by Mr Bevin’s army of dentists and decided to make his own arrangements with a private man on Putney High Street. German Jew. Good craftsman. The result, artfully chipped and stained here and there, were a perfect fit and completely undetectable – or would have been if Doreen hadn’t gone on about them all the time.
‘Of course, I prefer raspberry jam,’ she’d say in the queue at the self-service, ‘but the pips get under George’s plate.’
The family was still up to its knees in a row that had started at ‘breakfast’ (burned toast and marge with a scraping of damson jam). A small silver and white cardboard box containing a smashed slab of wedding cake had arrived in the morning post. No one had the least idea who it was from. Uncle George’s mother had been the youngest of fourteen children (disgusting, Doreen said) and they’d all bred ferociously. The various grades of removed cousins had topped a hundred some years back.
‘Well, whoever it was didn’t ask us to the bloody wedding,’ whined Doreen, squinting crossly at the little box’s torn wrapper. Not that they went when they were invited – not after the last time, years ago when Jane was about six. It meant Expense. Pop-up toasters. Hats. New clothes. Not likely.
June and Kenneth had been wrangling enthusiastically all teatime about who would get to eat the cake. Doreen solved the problem by shutting it up in a rusty biscuit tin with a rather self-satisfied Yorkshire terrier on it. ‘Wedding cake keeps for months.’ Not this piece, though. Doreen, who habitually thought of all foods in terms of reward and punishment, made herself a little present of the cake later that evening with a cup of tea. A nice cup of tea.
Jane was itching to finish the meal, wash up and get back upstairs. She refused pudding which always drove Doreen mad – ‘You’re skin and bone. You want to eat more.’ Only Jane didn’t want to eat more: The cold fact is that you cannot possibly be fat and chic. But Doreen ate more: much, much more. Kenneth had left the egg, June the meat and Jane the pastry of the slices of gala pie, thus making a whole extra helping for Doreen. It was as if she knew.
Later, when everyone was out of the way watching Take Your Pick, Doreen would get to work on the strangely abundant leftovers. Doreen wasted not. The larder was empty except for a few bottles of sauce and whatever was to be eaten that day. No one ever got more pie or Spam because there never was any. But there was always too much jelly or custard or blancmange, or spotted dick (puddings were the only thing she could be bothered with). Every night the remains of the dish would be whisked away ‘for tomorrow’ only to disappear into the softly expanding Doreen who would stand by the larder door, spooning them into her mouth straight from the Pyrex bowl as she gazed unseeingly at the fat, ripe peppers and aubergines that garnished the kitchen wallpaper. Vegetables she would never actually taste. Vegetables George would probably have liked.
Jane carried the plates out to the kitchen to wash up. Doreen didn’t believe in rubber gloves (Jane bought her own). Fortunately Doreen didn’t believe in drying-up cloths either – Germs. That and the lazy-cow’s tea her aunt had made meant there were only the plates to do (Uncle George had to do his own grill pan: a kind of penance) which could all be left on the slimy wooden draining board. Ten minutes later Jane escaped upstairs to her beautiful suit and the beautiful girl in the crocodile bag.
*Norbury: The Story of a London Suburb, J. G. Hunter and B. A. Mullen, 1977)
Chapter 3
Want to be a success? Look posh.
Jane had the big room at the back. Kenneth had the box room. June had the small front room. Doreen and George had the large room at the front: bay window, twin beds (much good they’d been) and his-and-hers burr walnut veneer wardrobes. Georgette’s cot had been in her parents’ room at first but she made so much noise – even when fast asleep – that they had moved her out on to the landing. There had been talk of her sharing Jane’s room. There had also been talk of Jane not rotten well putting up with it and finding a nice bedsit somewhere. Nice bedsit? Fifty bob a week for some bug-ridden box in Earl’s Court? Don’t make Doreen laugh.
Jane shivered into her room and switched on the one-bar electric fire. Hardy Amies’s suit hung from the picture rail and there was a bulge under the pink candlewick bedspread where she had stuffed the bag. She used to try hiding things under the bed or under the mattress but, while Doreen had stopped making Jane’s bed when she started at primary school, she still liked to nose about in such places. That was how she found poor Kenneth’s dirty postcard (a black and white Rokeby Venus). That was how she found Jane’s secret library: Lady Be Good, a pronouncing dictionary and Anita Colby’s Beauty Book (Let’s make a star out of you!). Doreen had a field day. Some people didn’t half fancy theirselves. But she never actually looked inside the bed – she had enough to do without waiting on Jane – so everything was now tucked safely away under the eiderdown.
Jane wedged a chair under the door handle, sat down at the frilly dressing table and posted a penny into her flowery china pig: A daily penny put away becomes 30s 5d in a year; buy two savings certificates and in seven years they will be worth £2. She pulled the big mock-tortoiseshell slide from the back of her long brown hair. She brushed it hard then reached for her china pot of hairpins – A present from Whitstable – God knew who from: no one in the family had ever been there. She fumbled her hair on to the top of her head then dabbed on a bit of lipstick. Too much. Outline your smile with a brush then blot with care. Try to give the outer edges a merry, upward flick. Never forget that a man will judge a girl’s disposition by her lips. Better, but it was still a rotten cheap colour. Geranium. She’d be better with Rose Satin or Raspberry Ice. Finally she slipped into the skirt and jacket, shuddering as the cold silk of the lining slid over her skin.