Child on the Doorstep. Anne Bennett

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       TWO

      Early in 1924, when Connie and Sarah were almost eleven, Sarah’s eldest sister, Kathy had left school and gone to work in the Grand Hotel in Colmore Row, Birmingham. Though she worked long hours, she loved the job and enthused about it so much that Sarah’s other elder sister, Siobhan, applied for a job there too two years later when she also left school.

      Although her sisters taking live-in jobs meant that they were no longer all squashed on the one fairly small mattress in the attic, and there was more space generally and they couldn’t boss her about any more, Sarah missed them a great deal. She also knew, now that Siobhan had joined Kathy, the carefree days of her childhood were at an end, for she was the eldest girl and so she would be the one now to help her mother. She had been cushioned by the presence of two older sisters but now it was time to step up as the eldest daughter and help her mother and take a hand with her younger siblings, particularly Maura who was no longer a cute baby but a spoilt toddler. Sarah was convinced that Maura’s screams when her wishes were thwarted could shatter glass and her tantrums had to be seen to be believed.

      Connie too had begun to rethink her life. She was coming up to thirteen now and in the senior school, and couldn’t miss the reports of the miners’ General Strike.

      Now that the coal exports had fallen since the Great War, the miners’ wages were reduced from £6.00 to £3.90. The government also wanted them to work longer hours for that, and a phrase was coined that was printed in the papers:

       Not a penny off the pay and not a minute on the day.

      No buses, trams or trains ran anywhere, no newspapers were printed or goods unloaded from the docks, the drop forges and foundries grew silent, no coal was mined and, much to the delight of many children, schools were closed. The strike finished after nine days but little had changed and though the miners tried to hang on longer they were forced to capitulate in the end.

      ‘It is so sad really,’ Angela said, reading it out to her daughter from the newly printed newspaper. ‘We should be thankful we are so much better off than many.’

      ‘We could be better off still if you would let me leave school next year when I am fourteen and get a job like Sarah intends.’

      ‘Connie, we have been through all this.’

      ‘No, we haven’t really done that at all,’ Connie said. ‘You’ve told me what you want me to do with my life, that’s all.’

      Angela frowned, for this wasn’t the way her compliant daughter usually behaved.

      ‘You know that going on to take your School Certificate and going on to college or university is what I’ve been saving for. What’s got into you?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Connie said. ‘It’s just that … Look, Mammy, if you hadn’t me to look after you would have more money. You could stop worrying about money, wipe the frown from your brow.’

      ‘If I’ve got a frown on my brow,’ Angela said testily, ‘it’s because I cannot understand the ungratefulness of a girl being handed the chance of a better future on a plate, which many would give their eye teeth for, and rejecting it in that cavalier way and without a word of thanks for the sacrifices I’ve made for you.’

      Connie felt immediately contrite.

      ‘I’m sorry, Mammy,’ she said. ‘I do appreciate all you do for me and I am grateful, truly I am.’

      ‘I sense a “but” coming.’

      ‘It’s just that if I go on to matriculate I won’t fit in with the others, maybe even Sarah will think I am getting too big for my boots and …’

      ‘Connie, this is what your father wanted,’ Angela said and Connie knew she had lost. ‘He paid the ultimate price and fought and died to make the world a safer place for you. He wanted the best for you in all things, including education. Are you going to let him down?’

      How could Connie answer that? There was only one way.

      ‘Of course not, Mammy. If it means so much to you and meant so much СКАЧАТЬ