Blood Line: Sometimes Tragedy Is in Your Blood. Julie Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ and June would share the one opposite. And the boys had done better in the bed stakes as well. While the girls had to use the filthy smelly mattress they’d brought with them, Annie had managed to beg a new one from the church for the boys. Well, not exactly new – it had apparently belonged to another parishioner, who’d died. But not while actually on it, Annie had quickly reassured them.

      It was still a squash, though, and if Charlie had one wish about his mam’s pregnancy it was that whatever came out at the end of it was a girl. It was hard enough trying to sleep sharing a mattress as it was; throw in a new baby and he might as well say goodbye to sleep at all. Not the best training for a professional boxer.

      It was just two weeks after the move when he had an answer to that question. It was early September now and most of the kids were back in school. Charlie and Reggie, however, too old for school these days, had been told that on no account were they to do a disappearing act, as their dad was at work and their mam was getting close now. Enjoying the peace and quiet that had been enforced on them – they were jointly in charge of minding their baby brother – they were boxing in the back garden, cheered on by little Keith, who was just three.

      They heard Margaret coming out before they saw her.

      ‘Quick, Charlie!’ she said briskly, beckoning them to come back inside. ‘It’s time. One of you needs to go for the midwife.’

      Margaret was normally at work too – she was a machinist down at Brigella Mills – but she’d decided not to go in so she could keep an eye on their mam. She’d already looked like she might be starting that morning.

      ‘Go on, you go, Reggie,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll stay here and mind our Keith. And if she’s not in, you know the drill, don’t you?’

      Reggie nodded. He knew the drill because they all did. Emma the midwife, who lived round in Nene Street, was a familiar face around the whole of their part of Bradford, and over the years had brought most of the local kids into the world. And if she wasn’t home, she had a piece of slate propped on her doorstep, on which she’d chalk the addresses of all the women she’d planned on visiting that day. That way, if she was needed, there was always a way to find her, though, more often than not, she was usually found out and about, going from patient to patient on her shiny black tricycle.

      Having delivered her orders, Margaret went back inside to look after Annie, so there was nothing for Charlie and Keith to do but wait. There was certainly no point in running down to the Punch Bowl to fetch his dad back from work; Big Reggie, as people had taken to calling him since little Reggie’d been born, had no truck with men getting involved in such things. He’d come home, there’d be another nipper, and that would be that, something Charlie didn’t really understand. Why did he keep on giving his mama all these babies if he couldn’t be bothered with them when they came?

      ‘You want to fight me?’ he asked Keith now. ‘Punch me lights out, little man?’

      Being the baby, little Keith got lots of attention from his brothers and sisters, but by this time tomorrow, Charlie thought, that would change. Though not from him – he had a real soft spot for his little firecracker of a brother. He was scrawny as a chicken but he had a confident way about him – a certain chippiness that always made Charlie smile. Perhaps he’d make a fighter of him yet.

      He lifted his fists. ‘Come on,’ he said, pretending to duck and dive and land punches in Keith’s direction. ‘Put ’em up! Go on, give it to me,’ he urged, trying to look frightened as little Keith jabbed his tiny fists at Charlie’s face.

      ‘Come on, Keith, faster! Pow! Pow! Oh look at you! You’re like James Cagney, you are. Come on, on me chin, lad – that’s it.’

      ‘Gocha, gotcha!’ little Keith shouted, squealing with delight.

      It was a good half hour before there was any sign of action from the house. Being out in the back garden, they had no way of knowing whether Nurse Emma had come or not, and that suited Charlie just fine. They’d know soon enough, because Margaret would come and tell them. Tell them and start barking her usual orders. Go get this. Go do that. Definitely don’t do the other. And it would be like that for ruddy weeks, too. A new baby caused chaos and a terrible amount of noise. No, best to make the most of the peace while it lasted.

      But it was Reggie who appeared out of the back door, rather than Margaret. He stood on the back step, looking ashen, and Charlie became worried.

      ‘Where’s nurse Emma?’ Charlie asked him. ‘Couldn’t you find her?’

      Reggie nodded backwards. ‘In there. Urgh – but it’s disgusting, Charlie. Horrible. Blood ’n’ guts all over the place. Ugh!’

      Charlie grinned and chucked Keith round the chin. It was his brother Reggie who needed toughening up. ‘Shurrup, you sissy,’ he said, ‘before I set our Keith on you.’

      Keith didn’t need to be asked, crossing the yard and landing a punch on Reggie’s thigh. And might have landed another, were they not interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a newborn baby’s cry.

      Charlie leaned in through the back door. ‘Boy or girl, Margaret?’ he shouted.

      ‘Boy!’ came the answer, followed by a long string of instructions.

      That was that, then. A few weeks sleeping in the drawer beside his mam and dad’s bed, then the little bleeder – whatever they decided to call him – would be in with the rest of them.

      Great, Charlie thought, doing a quick calculation. That would be his share reduced to just a sixth.

Chapter 5

      The war was beginning to make itself felt. Charlie remembered how, growing up, his mum had told him all about how certain groceries were rationed in the Great War, but now this one was under way it was still a shock to see how many things you couldn’t get any more. And even the things you could get were strictly controlled – you had to buy them by producing a coupon from something called a ration book, coupons that were rationed in themselves. They were used to buy things that, when you could afford them at least, used to be plentiful: sugar, butter, tea, jam, meat, cheese and eggs. All gone – or as good as, because they were in such short supply. Charlie reckoned that Hitler, the horrible German leader who seemed to want to take over the world, must be trying to starve everyone into submission.

      But, as Charlie had learned a long time ago, during the boxing match he’d won a shilling at, with desperation there usually came determination. And though he wasn’t that desperate, he knew others were, and even those that weren’t still had a hunger for the sort of basic things they’d once taken for granted.

      Which meant opportunity.

      Charlie had grown into a strapping hulk of a young man. To the astonishment of his mother (which always amused him) he now stood a good two or three inches over his father, and because he boxed at every opportunity he was strong, too. He’d also carved out a bit of a reputation for himself locally, and not just with the girls who swooned over him either. He’d lived on the Canterbury estate for less than a year now but already he was well known as someone you could rely on – or someone you didn’t mess with, depending on your point of view.

      Charlie was also independent, which mattered to him greatly. It had never really appealed to him, the idea of getting a job and working for someone else, and because he was clever and opportunistic, and had several ways of making СКАЧАТЬ