Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ said, ‘Sit on those kitchen chairs, the pair of you, and each of you hold one of the babies.’

      I was up for it, but Sel wouldn’t. ‘Their legs are too thin,’ he said. ‘And they’ve got funny skin.’

      There were certain things he never liked to touch and there was no persuading him. He could be very funny that way.

      ‘Well, Dilys,’ Mam said. ‘Now you’ve got your work cut out.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Dilys said. ‘I’ve got a good man to help me.’

      After that peace broke out and we saw Dilys most weeks. If Villa were playing at home she’d bring the girls over to see Mam while me and Arthur went to the match. I always liked Arthur. He was as gentle as a lamb. Then sometimes we’d go over there, to Great Barr, on a Sunday afternoon and we’d have tinned salmon and salad and pears in syrup or fruit cocktail, and then walnut cake, with white icing and glacé cherries. Happy days.

      Then, of course, along came the war and I decided to jump before I was pushed. I tried for the Engineers and when they realised I could get a tune out of a cornet they made me a bandsman, which meant being a medical orderly too in case we saw action. I was at home, on embarkation leave, when Dad turned up. His face suddenly appeared at the kitchen window, cigarette behind his ear, silly grin on his face, as if he’d just come home from work, not been missing, whereabouts unknown, for more than twelve months. ‘Put the kettle on,’ he said. ‘Where’s your mam?’

      She was at Spooner’s, fetching gammon for my send-off tea.

      ‘Bloody wars,’ he said. ‘I did my bit in the last lot. And you’ll be all right at Greely’s. Reserved occupation.’

      I said, ‘I volunteered.’

      ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘More fool you. And what are you doing, half-pint?’

      Sel was snipping holes in a piece of paper, making a doily for the cake stand. ‘Helping my mam,’ he said. ‘And there won’t be enough gammon for you. You weren’t expected.’

      But of course Mam gave up her rasher for Gypsy and when Uncle Teilo called in she came over very light-hearted. Whatever Dad said, she laughed, whatever Teilo said, she laughed, although he didn’t seem to be in a very humorous mood. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Annie,’ he said, as he was leaving. ‘You know where to find me.’

      ‘Home is the hunter, Teilo,’ she said. ‘So I won’t have to trouble you for any more light bulbs.’

      We didn’t sleep much that night. I was wondering what war was going to be like and Sel wasn’t happy about the new arrangements. ‘Don’t go in the army, Cled,’ he said. ‘What if you get shot?’

      I said, ‘I have to go, our kid. It’s my duty. And it’s your job to look after Mam.’

      ‘I always look after her,’ he said. ‘But why did he have to come back and upset everything?’

      I said, ‘You know Dad. He probably won’t stay long.’

      ‘Yes he will,’ he said. ‘He told Mam he’s going to build her an air raid shelter.’

      But Sel didn’t know Gypsy Boff as well as I did. By the next time I came home on leave he was history. Mam had volunteered him for the Miller Street Home Guard but he only lasted a week or two and then he’d disappeared for the duration.

      I said, ‘I suppose he was too brainy for the Home Guard?’

      But Mam wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. ‘People lose touch when there’s a war on,’ she said. ‘As you’ll find out.’

      I reckon he must have had a woman somewhere. Some lonely widow who was glad to have his ration book. We did see him again after the war, though, so whatever else had transpired, the Luftwaffe hadn’t flattened him.

      I didn’t have a bad war, compared with some. I saw some terrible sights but at least I came home. There were quite a few I’d known at Bright Street who didn’t make it, and then there was Mr Grimley from next door. He was believed to have copped it when they bombed the cannon factory in Armoury Road. They never found anything of him. He just never came home again.

      I was demobbed early in 1946 and not long after I arrived home Sel got called up to do his National Service. He had to report to a recruitment station in Acocks Green.

      Mam said, ‘This government seems determined to rob me of a son.’

      I said, ‘They’ll never take Sel. One look at him and they’ll send him home.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s a fine-looking boy.’

      He was tall and well-built, but there was that soft girlie side to him too. I couldn’t see him clambering up and over a cargo net. He didn’t have the musculature for it. I couldn’t see him getting stuck in to bayonet practice. And neither could he. ‘I’m not letting them cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell them I’m a pacifist.’ So he went off to Acocks Green, whistling and smelling of talc and expecting to be back in five minutes, but he was gone all day and when he did turn up he looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. ‘Fat lot you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve only gone and got into the RAF.’

      Now, there was a lot of competition for the air force. Nobody just walked, especially not a boy who didn’t have the right attitude.

      I said, ‘You can’t have done. You’ve misunderstood.’

      ‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘They asked for anybody who’d passed their School Certificate and there was only me and one other, so they said we were both in. Now what am I going to do? I don’t want to fly aeroplanes. I want to work on my singing career.’

      Mam said, ‘Go back and tell them you’re musical. Tell them you’re willing to serve in a concert party.’

      I said, ‘This is National Service, Mam, not Take Your Pick.’

      ‘Then he can be a bandsman,’ she said, ‘like you. I’ll write to them.’

      I said, ‘He can’t play anything.’

      She said, ‘He can play the triangle. You don’t need to be Paderewski to be an air force bandsman.’

      He said, ‘But I don’t want to be a bandsman. I’m going to be a singer.’

      Dilys said, ‘The RAF does have a nice uniform, Sel. Anyway, perhaps it won’t come to it.’

      But it did come to it. Well, it did and it didn’t. He got his papers to go to RAF Padgate for basic training. He left on the Friday while I was at work and by Tuesday night he was back home, medically exempt due to ‘Weak Back and Nervous Temperament’ and whistling again. He walked straight back into his job in the payroll office at the ice cream factory, Uncle Teilo got us some club bookings and we all settled down again.

      Sel practised his singing in front of the dressing-table mirror and I kept up to date with the hit parade. A song didn’t have to be aired many times before I had it committed to memory, and we were known around the circuit for offering a good mix of old and new. I began trying my hand at composition too and, although I didn’t receive a lot СКАЧАТЬ