Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

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       THREE

      I was six when Sel came on the scene. I’ll never forget the day. We’d had team games that afternoon, out in the yard at Bright Street Infants because it was such a nice day and I’d been called out to the front to show the class good ball control. I was feeling very pleased with myself and then when I got to the corner of Ninevah Street I bumped into Mrs Edkins.

      ‘Cledwyn,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a new bab at your house so you’d better come to me for your tea tonight.’

      I ran home so fast, to see if it was true about the bab and beg Mam not to send me to Mrs E’s. Normally my sister Dilys could have given me my tea. She was fourteen. Only she was on holiday at Aunty Gwenny’s, getting over tonsillitis. But when I ran in the door there she was, back from the country, and Mam was on the couch in her nightie and His Numps lay in a drawer out of the sideboard, all wrapped up in blankets and a woolly bonnet.

      First thing I said was, ‘Can Dilys give me my tea? I’ll be good.’

      Mam said, ‘Look at you, in a muck sweat. What have I told you about running? See what’s in the crib?’

      ‘Is it a bab?’ I said. I’d never really seen one close up. ‘Where did it come from?’

      ‘Under a gooseberry bush,’ Mam said. ‘Now go and wash your face and then you can give him a kiss.’

      I said, ‘How long is he stopping?’ and Mam and Dilys both laughed. The main thing was, I didn’t have to go to the Edkinses for my tea, as long as I went about on tiptoe and didn’t wake the baby. I hated going next door. There was nothing to play with and Mrs E smelled of fried bread and sometimes she didn’t button up her blouse properly, so you could see things, unless you closed your eyes tight. Dilys wanted to name the bab Skippy, like in the cartoons, and I wanted him to be called Billy Walker, like the Aston Villa captain, but Mam said neither of those were proper names and he’d to be called Selwyn. Selwyn Amos, like I was Cledwyn Amos, after her brother Amos who’d died in the Battle of the Somme. Dad wasn’t around at that time so he didn’t get a say. Even in 1928 it could be hard finding the right kind of work. A man had to be willing to travel. By the time he turned up again the new bab had opened his eyes properly and was all signed up as Selwyn Amos. It was official. Dad didn’t seem to mind.

      According to Mam, our dad had had a college education, though where he’d had it we never knew, and it didn’t appear to have done him much good because he was always getting laid off, or having a falling out that wasn’t his fault and being sent on his way. It was a good thing for us that Mam had a profession.

      Mam met our dad when she came to Birmingham before the First World War. She’d been in Oswestry in service, and then she’d come to a big house in Edgbaston, to be a governess to somebody’s kiddies, teaching them their ABC and piano and manners. She was Anne Roberts, from Pentrefoelas, and she was quite the traveller of the Roberts family. Her sister Gwenny married Rhys Elias and never went any further than Denbigh.

      Aunty Gwenny and Uncle Rhys had three sons, all named John because only the youngest one lived, and he did pretty well for himself. He ended up in Chester, in wholesale fruit and veg.

      Dad’s people were the Boffs and they came from the Shrewsbury area. I don’t think we ever met any of them.

      Aunty Gwenny didn’t approve of Dad. ‘You could have done better, Annie,’ she always said and she nicknamed him ‘Gypsy’, which stuck.

      But I never heard Mam say a word against him. ‘Gwenny doesn’t understand,’ she’d say. ‘She’s not seen the world the way I have. Your father’s overqualified for the work that’s on offer around here.’ As to why we didn’t all move somewhere nearer to work that was up to his high level of aptitude, that was never gone into. Actually, it quite suited us, his not often being there. It was only a small house and he was a big man. And Mam kept cheerful enough. She had her piano pupils and there was always Uncle Teilo if she needed a new light bulb screwing in.

      I’ve often wondered if our dad’s problem was drink. We were teetotal so we never had alcohol in the house, but money did seem to run through his fingers and he used to weep sometimes, too, which might have been brought on by the demon drink.

      But Mam always stayed calm. ‘Go down to Sturdy’s,’ she’d say. ‘Mr Edkins says they’re setting men on. Go and ask at the gate.’ She’d give him the bus fare and a bit extra, to help him feel like a man, but she never let him see where she’d fetched it from. Mam had hiding places all over. In her shoe sometimes. In her brassiere. ‘And remember not to mention your college education,’ she’d say.

      But he’d usually come back with a long face and a story. He was too old. Or the powers that be had it in for him. I question whether he even went to Sturdy’s gate and asked.

      I liked having a bab in the family. After Sel arrived I didn’t get so much attention paid to me, which meant I could stay out in the street later, practising my ball СКАЧАТЬ