For eight years I’d continued living with Gran and Grandad Hart. Not a few weeks but eight long years! After arriving back in Eldersgate at the tail end of 1970, I’d been expecting to return home in the New Year. The nightmares had ceased, and the wardrobe door and haunted house no longer seemed daunting, because I had Lenka with me. In fact, the prospect of going home was so exciting I couldn’t wait for Christmas Day.
Mum and Dad were due to come for the big day, and a fizz of anticipation built up inside. At four in the morning, I lay wide awake listening to the sleet spatter against the windowpane, wondering if Father Christmas had filled the old darned sock at the bottom of my bed, if there would be chocolates that day, and, most of all, if Mum and Dad would take me home with them. The ordeal was nearly over.
Later on that morning, while the Greenway Moor brass band played ‘Silent Night’ and ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ on the gramophone, Grandma Hart asked me to help with dinner preparations in the scullery. Grandad had opened a bottle of sherry in the front room and was tapping the chair arm in time to the music. The more he drank, the harder he beat time.
We set to peeling and chopping, chatting, rinsing and stirring.
I was beginning to think about packing, and if Dad had painted my bedroom purple yet, when Grandad started shouting. Neither of us paid much attention. He seemed to be ranting to himself, but Grandma Hart had tensed up, chopping and peeling faster now, the conversation dying on her lips.
“Bloody bastards! Did you hear me? I said bloody bastards!”
I took in a bowl of crisps and set it down next to his glass. As I did so, he looked up and glared. Did he want something else? I didn’t know what to do. His eyes were bloodshot, and the lower part of his face had set to grim.
“If it weren’t for our lads, Eva, they’d ’ave marched all over us. You kids don’t know you’re born!”
He poured out another glass of sherry, slopping it over the rim.
From the scullery, which was full of steam, Grandma’s voice warbled over the top of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.
“Me dad were just a lad, seventeen when he went to t’ trenches. Most of ’em lied about their age – thought they were going to fight for king and country and back ’ome in no time. Bloody tragic it were, and all because them at t’ top decided it were a good idea to wade in. Millions were killed in them trenches, just kids, sent to their deaths like they were nothing—”
I slipped up. “That was the First World War. Weren’t you in the Second?”
Half a bottle of sherry he may have had, but he was quick on the draw. “And what do you know about it? Were you there?”
“No, of course not—”
“Well, shut the bleedin’ ’ell up, then!”
He stared me down, red-veined eyes burning a hole in the side of my face. I had the feeling, as Lenka had done with Uncle Guido, that he saw something in me he didn’t like.
Fortunately, Gran came to the rescue. “Eva, love?”
“Yes?”
“Set the table in the parlour, will you? I’m almost ready.”
I shot back to the scullery, rooting in the cutlery drawer. “Mum and Dad aren’t here yet, though.”
She gave me a tiny pat on the shoulder. “No, love. They’re not coming. Just set it for three.”
It was a bullet to the gut. “What? Why not? Why?”
“Don’t take on, love. We had a telephone call last night to say they couldn’t come. So we’ll just have to make the best of it, eh? Now be a good girl and set the table.”
The effort it took not to burst into tears was immense, Christmas dinner interminable. Every time I caught her eye, she shook her head and turned away – pandering to Grandad Hart, trying to make him laugh, to cajole and divert him in order to avoid an explosion of rage.
So it was not until he’d lolled into a snoring stupor by the fire that the truth came out.
We were washing up. Would they be coming over tomorrow, I wanted to know? Why not? Was I still going home after Christmas? When could I see my mother?
“It’s like this, Eva, love. Your mum and dad have gone what’s called bankrupt. The house has got to be taken back by the bank, and your mum’s not well. They’ve got to go into a Bed and Breakfast, you know – a lodging house – but your mum’s got a bad chest, a nasty bit of flu, so it’s best you stay with us a while longer.”
I blinked back the tears. “How much longer?”
“Don’t make a fuss, Eva, and for goodness’ sake, keep your voice down. Don’t wake ’im up. They’ll get themselves sorted, you’ll see. It’d help, mind, if your mother pulled her weight – our Pete’s ’aving to work night and day.”
“Can I see her?”
“Not just yet. When she’s better, p’rhaps.”
“What about Sooty? Is Sooty all right?”
No one told me what had really happened, though. That didn’t come out for years. The truth was covered up, further questions went unanswered, and in the end I stopped asking. Maybe that’s why Lenka’s story became so important over the years, and why it was such a blow when the dreams stopped and she too, it seemed, had cut all ties.
When I woke up on my sixteenth birthday, my first thought was to wonder why there had been another dreamless night. My second was that I could now leave if I wanted! Why not, except there was nowhere to run to? Besides, it was sunny and there was a party to look forward to. Being sixteen, I honestly thought it would be a brilliant day and even held out hope that the whole nightmare had ended. Looking back, there was a nagging feeling that something cataclysmic was brewing… but maybe that was because of what happened to Lenka when she turned sixteen? It didn’t have to be that way for me though, did it? I shoved it to the back of my mind, anyway.
Nicky’s mum had organised a huge celebration, and most of the street was invited on that heady blue-sky day in May. Even Eldersgate looked pretty with cherry blossom in full bloom and green grass dotted with daisies instead of litter-strewn mud. People had hung up baskets of geraniums, and the ever-present smell of petrol and soot was now laced with the early fragrance of lilac and honeysuckle. I wore a pair of navy culottes and a white halter-neck top. Nicky had a red halter dress. I’d have killed for something like that, but Grandma Hart had taken me to C&A and bought ‘something serviceable’.
Mrs Dixon went to a lot of trouble. There were sandwiches and sausage rolls and birthday cake, all set out on a trestle table in the backyard, and after everyone sang, ‘Happy Birthday’, we played games and danced. ‘Everybody Dance’ was Nicky’s favourite. ‘Night Fever’ by the Bee Gees was mine. She had better taste, but the thing that united us more than anything was dancing. We danced ourselves into a trance until the velvet of dusk descended and a few of the neighbours shouted, “Turn that bloody racket off, it’s fucking ten o’clock!”
It was a good day, though. The best. I’ll never forget it. Some things you just hold on to, don’t you?
Because exactly as Lenka’s world had eclipsed the day she turned sixteen, mine did, too. Although it happened somewhat differently, the outcome was pretty much the same.
I was walking home, still smiling because Mark Curry had come to the party and he’d looked at me. A lot. He’d worn brown baggy trousers with big pockets stitched onto the sides, and a denim jacket. His hair was black and straight, his grin mischievous, which was to be expected – I’d experimented a little, popping thoughts into people’s heads, and the images I’d popped into his would definitely make him smirk. We had a slow dance to Yvonne Elliman’s ‘If I Can’t Have You’, and he held me. It felt so nice, his hands circling my waist like that, kind of warm and safe… but when the dance finished, neither of us knew what to do, and his mates were jeering. So he sauntered off and lit a cigarette and stood there staring at me until the sun went down, and Mrs Dixon told all the boys to scoot off home.