All the Days of Our Lives Read online

  ‘Lily Davies. She’s . . .’ She’s all right, Katie wanted to say. Not as much fun as Em, though. Sometimes she thought her mother didn’t really want her to have friends at all – she wanted her all to herself, at her beck and call. ‘Yes, she’s nice.’

  ‘And she sounds as if she comes from a good family – for round here anyway. There, so that’s all settled. I know it seems harsh, dear, but it does count, who you associate with. It forms your character. We shan’t be here forever – as soon as we can, we’ll move somewhere much better. You’ll thank me in the end, I promise you.’

  Katie nodded, trying to swallow down her tears. She couldn’t keep from her mind the mucky state of the Browns’ house, and of Em herself. And the wretched sight of Em’s face when Katie had handed over the cruel verdict: ‘Mom says she doesn’t want me having anything to do with you . . . She says it ain’t right (why had she said “ain’t”, if not to defy her mother!) the way she’s gone and left you. She says your mom’s not right in the head . . . that I’m not to be friends with you.’

  Worse even than the cruel words, the hurt they painted on Em’s face, was the glimmer of enjoyment that Katie knew she’d had in saying them. In those moments she’d felt high above Em. We’re better than you . . . And now she was sorry and she hated herself for it.

  In a thick voice, she said, ‘It ain’t Em’s fault, ar it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ her mother said ominously.

  ‘It’s not,’ she corrected. ‘It’s not Em’s fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Vera O’Neill agreed. ‘Not directly. But what’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. She’ll be tarred with the same brush in the end. You keep away from them, do you hear? Now – I need to finish this before the light goes. As you know, I have to work very hard to keep us. Now off you go.’ And she turned, bending her elegant head back over her work table.

  Freed at last, Katie hurried down to the little room she shared with her mother and flung herself face down on her bed.

  ‘See,’ she muttered, as if Em was in front of her. ‘Mom says your mom’s a loony – that’s why I had to do it. A mad, stinking loony, so there!’ And then she burst into tears.

  Kenilworth Street, in an old district just to the northeast of the centre of Birmingham, had only been their home for just over a year. Before that Katie had been to St Joseph’s Roman Catholic School, near where they had lived off Thimble Mill Lane, about a mile away. So far as Katie was concerned, things had been happy enough there. She’d made friends and done well. But her mother had suddenly announced that they were moving, and before the school year was even finished she had been snatched away and landed up in Kenilworth Road, in a new class at an ordinary council school where there were no crucifixes or statues.

  ‘Your uncle has found us a more suitable house,’ her mother told her. ‘We need to leave immediately.’

  It was true that the house had an attic room, unlike the last one they’d been living in, but otherwise it didn’t seem much better. To Vera’s shame, it still backed onto a house that faced into a yard, which meant walking round and sharing the communal toilets. Vera, who hadn’t seen the house before they moved, was furious.

  ‘I told you – I want a house with its own privy!’ she ranted at Uncle Patrick. ‘How could you? You know how I feel about having to associate in this horribly intimate way!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Vera,’ Patrick said, in his usual gentle, sagging way. ‘But it is a better house than before – there’s a room for you to work in, and the rent’s not much more, either.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll just have to put up with it – for now,’ Vera snapped.

  Katie, then aged seven, didn’t question anything. Her mother was not someone to argue with, and it just seemed the way things were. When she asked about seeing her friends from St Joseph’s, since they weren’t an impossible distance away, Vera said sharply, ‘There’s no need to keep up with those people. You’ll soon make new friends. And pray to God we shan’t be here long in any case.’

  Vera O’Neill was always keen to remind Katie that she hadn’t spent all of her eight years in such a poor place.

  ‘When your father was still alive we lived in a much better neighbourhood,’ she would say. The time before – that is, before her father, Michael O’Neill, contracted TB and died, when she was not yet two and a half years old – was always spoken of as a lost golden time, like the time in the Garden of Eden, before anyone had come across any talking snakes or apples. It sounded very nice to Katie. She had only the vaguest memories of her father, but they were good ones, warm ones of being held, and his death felt like the gateway into loneliness.

  But for her now, this was home: the constant whiff of the gas works at Windsor Street, the whistle of trains going in and out of the shunting yard, the great chimneys of the power station looming behind the long skeins of sooty brick houses and the equally sooty brick edifice of Cromwell Street School. And going to school – because she lived at number six and the Browns lived at number eighteen – had always meant calling for Em on the way. But not any more.

  Two

  She woke the next morning from a broken night’s sleep and a dream of seeing Em at the Browns’ green front door, of them both smiling and linking hands and everything being all right. She woke with a terrible ache in her chest.

  And now she was going to have to walk past Em’s door on the way to school, without knocking for her.

  But by the time she had dressed and tried to swallow down the porridge that her mother insisted on her having, she had worked herself up into a different mood. She was full of confusion – but she had to obey Mother. So she put on all her pride. Wasn’t it true that Em’s family was a bit rough? Some of the things her brother Sid came out with! And Bob, her dad there with his stubbly cheeks, coming home all covered in coal dust from the power station! But Katie ached to have a father, like all those other children who waited for them outside the pubs in ragged shorts and with grubby knees, knowing there was a dad in there who, in the end, would come out to them. And it had been lovely seeing Em’s baby sister Violet – Katie had felt very jealous. If only she had a baby sister to play with! And a house with other brothers and sisters, and all sorts going on. But then, as Mother had pointed out, some people round here bred like rabbits, having all these children they couldn’t afford to feed. Maybe she and Em shouldn’t have been friends after all, she told herself. It had only been because there was nobody better. Now Lily Davies had come along – and she only had one older sister – Katie could have a friend who was more like her.

  She set out along Kenilworth Street in the chilly morning with her head held high. As she approached the Browns’ house she saw that the lady across the road, Jenny Button, who ran her little bakery from her front room, was out cleaning her step. Jenny was a very corpulent lady and knelt down with a grunt, took her scrubbing brush from her pail of water and called out, ‘Morning, bab!’

  ‘Good morning!’ Katie called softly, not wanting her voice to carry as far as Em’s house. She kept facing away from number eighteen, her whole body tingling with dread in case the door opened and Em should come out on the way to school.

  But Em did not come out. Em had first stopped coming to Girls’ Life Brigade, which they’d done together before, and lately she’d been absent from school a lot. When Katie had called for her, Em would say miserably, ‘I’m stopping at home today.’

  As she passed by, out of the corner of her eye Katie saw Molly Fox come out of the entry to the yard near Jenny Button’s shop. She could tell it was Molly from her thick, blonde hair. The Foxes lived on one of the back yards, where five or six jerry-built houses would be constructed facing inwards, sharing three or four toilets at the end, a communal wash-house with a copper and a mangle for laundry and usually a stinking pile of ash and refuse. Molly’s house was not that different from the one Katie was living in, which had one room and a scullery downstairs, two small rooms on the first floor and an atti
c. But while the O’Neills’ house faced the street and backed onto another house, the Foxes’ was built hard up against the wall of a factory. And like the other houses in that particular yard, it was in a wretched condition.

  Katie saw Molly hesitate on spotting her, and she didn’t call out to ask if she could walk with her. Molly shrank back until Katie had gone right past. Katie gave a smirk. She knew Molly was frightened of her, of her popularity and her sharp tongue. It made her feel powerful, making Molly cringe. She knew Em thought her rather unkind to Molly. Em was softer-hearted, even though she found Molly annoying as well.

  Sitting in the classroom at the little double desk with its attached seat that she had used to share with Em, Katie sat in dread for the first few minutes of seeing Em come in through the door.

  A couple of weeks ago, when Em had been absent a number of times, Miss Lineham had tutted and said, ‘Again! This is too much. Now – Lily Davies!’ Lily, as the new girl, had been put in the empty seat alongside Molly Fox. She had kept complaining to Katie about the smell. Molly always had a powerful reek of urine about her. ‘Lily – come and sit next to Katie O’Neill – quickly, please.’

  Katie saw Molly controlling her face so as not to show how much she minded. She always seemed to end up on her own, but she really was dreadfully smelly – even the teachers noticed. And Miss Lineham wasn’t known for her kindness. Though quite young, she was harsh and spiteful.

  Now Lily had taken over Em’s place, it was Em who had to sit next to Molly, if she ever turned up. Seeing her empty seat, Katie remembered with a sudden pang all their games with Ella and Princess Lucy. Em had a rag doll, Princess Lucy, with patched pink cheeks and yellow wool hair and her eyelashes stitched on. Katie’s doll, Ella, had a white china face with tinted cheeks and a rather flat cloth body. They had had hours of fun with them. Even Princess Lucy and Ella couldn’t be friends now! The thought brought tears to Katie’s eyes, which she quickly wiped away so that Lily didn’t see and ask what was wrong.

  Miss Lineham called the register. Once again, Em was absent.

  It was a great relief that Em wasn’t at school that particular day. Katie found Lily rather dull in comparison, but she was eager enough to be bossed around, which Katie found flattering, and she didn’t have to spend the day trying to keep out of Em’s way, or sit next to her and see how unhappy she was. Em had looked so pale lately and, when she did come to school, Miss Lineham had caned her for not paying attention. Em never got the cane as a rule and it had come as a terrible shock.

  Katie didn’t really understand what was going on in the Browns’ house even now. First there was the baby – Em’s mom had given birth to the youngest in the family, Violet – then Em had gone all distant and subdued. She no longer looked clean and nice, like she used to. Then she more or less disappeared from school, and now there was this talk about Mrs Brown going to the asylum. Katie tried to shrug it all off. She was not to know or have anything to do with people like the Browns, Mother said. And she always had to do what Mother said.

  Over the following weeks Katie lived in dread of running into Em. To her relief, Em was still staying off school a lot. But one evening, when Katie was playing jackstones out on the street with some other girls from school, Em came out of the house. Katie lowered her head immediately, pretending she hadn’t seen her.

  ‘Oi, Em! You coming out to play?’ one of them called. There was no reply at first, so the girl tried again. ‘Em?’

  ‘Can’t – I got to go somewhere.’

  Katie kept her head down, hearing Em’s feet hurrying past. She hoped Em hadn’t seen her there in the group. She felt so ashamed, and so unsure what to think. Should she trust her mother’s version of things or her own – that Em was her friend? But it was too late now anyway.

  But as winter set in, one day Em started coming back to school. One bright, crisp day Katie nearly ran into her going through the school gate. Her heart started thudding with panic. This was so horrible! If only Em would go away, just leave the school so that Katie didn’t have to face all this, and the way she had been so mean and nasty to Em! As their eyes met, Katie turned her lips up into a quick, darting smile. She didn’t dare do more, but she didn’t want to turn away without doing something that said: I didn’t really mean it. I want to be your friend really, only I’m not allowed.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about it all morning, and all the more so because Lily Davies was absent that day, leaving the space next to her empty. What if she made it up with Em? Would her mother ever know? But with a plunge of dread she knew that she would, somehow. Mother always found out everything. On the other hand, if they made it up for a bit, at least they could be friends again for a while and Em might not think so badly of her.

  After playtime Miss Lineham ordered them all out into the playground for PT. She produced a pile of wooden hoops and the children stood squinting in the bright sunlight, rubbing their hands together in the cold.

  ‘Right, children,’ Miss Lineham commanded, ‘Line up in twos, please!’

  Katie’s heart started to beat very hard again. Dare she ask Em to be her partner? In the old days they would always have shared a hoop, no question. For a few seconds she dared to hurry towards Em, and thought she saw Em watching her hopefully and start moving towards her as well. But then Molly Fox was at Em’s side. Molly Fox of all people! The thought of the Fox family made Katie’s flesh creep. Katie was stung by the rejection. A sneer spread over her face. Well, if that was what Em wanted, Katie didn’t want to be her partner, or her friend. She could keep rough, stinking Molly Fox, so there!

  ‘Will you be my partner?’ she asked a mousy girl called Gladys Day, who agreed eagerly, flattered to be asked.

  At the end of the lesson, though, when they’d gathered up the hoops and were heading inside, Katie noticed that Em was near her in the line and she hung back so as not to get close to her. But to her discomfort, Em turned round, her cheeks blushing pink and said, ‘Hello, Katie.’ Her voice trembled a bit. ‘Can you come and play out later? I haven’t seen you for a long time.’

  Katie looked down at her feet in their neat black pumps. She felt raw from what seemed like Em’s rejection earlier. Fancy choosing Molly Fox as a partner over her! And Mother said . . . Against her better nature, she looked up at Em contemptuously.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I? How many more times?’ She repeated all the reasons in a superior voice. She wasn’t to have anything to do with someone whose mother was in the asylum, let alone anyone who played with Molly Fox. ‘My mother says I should keep away from both of you. We thought you were from a nice family – but you’re not.’

  She turned, looking away so as not to see Em’s face again this time, and ran after the others. She could see the last of the children in the playground eavesdropping on what had happened. Some of them were making faces at each other. Nosy parkers! But as Katie was going in through the school door, she glanced back. Em was standing in the playground where she had left her, all alone, as if she was rooted to the spot.

  Three

  All Katie knew was that her mother had married for love, a man who was an Irishman and a Catholic, and because of this Vera O’Neill’s parents had cut her off like a diseased limb.

  The one photograph of their wedding day – he dark, handsome, much taller than his stately bride with her old-fashioned hair and adoring smile – rested in its frame on the front mantelpiece.

  When Katie thought about her father, she remembered a pair of well-polished black boots close to the brass fender by the fire, her sitting beside them, running a finger over the shiny surface and his voice, ‘Can you see your face in there then, Katie-Kitten?’

  She could recall the sound of him more than a face – a gentle, lilting voice. There was an overall shape, the memory of black hair, hands with black hairs on the fingers and neat half-moons in the nails, of being held in strong arms, a smell of tobacco, that voice which held a smile in it.

  No certain memory of his illnes
s had stayed in her mind at all. Her mother said he had been ailing for months, starting with the coughing, then worse, and heartbreaking to watch. Katie had been so young they had kept it all from her somehow. But she did remember being taken up to see him in bed once or twice.

  ‘Why did Daddy pass away?’ she asked, several times over the years, trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘I told you, he was very poorly,’ Vera O’Neill would say, putting on a soft, sing-song voice when she spoke of this, almost as if it were a tragic fairytale. ‘He had a sickness in his lungs called tuberculosis. I nursed him for as long as I could. He suffered so much, my poor darling Michael, and he went into the hospital at the end. I felt I’d failed him, but it had to be. That’s why you don’t remember.’

  Uncle Patrick had come home from Africa within months of his brother’s death, but Katie didn’t remember this either. It felt as if Patrick had always been there. Yet she had never once confused him with her father, despite the fact that what she recalled was often muddled and disjointed. There was another memory of being carried, this time by her mother who was wearing a green coat; Katie remembered curling her left index finger through one of the buttonholes, which had darker green stitching round it. They were outside a black, shiny door with a narrow window halfway up, below which was a brass knocker. Then the door was open: in a dark hallway a large man with a neat moustache, who stood up very straight. A woman, much smaller, was trying to see round him, just her head and shoulders showing and sandy brown hair. She knew now that these people had been her grandparents, but she had never seen them again after that day. Things were said, no voices raised, but a poisonous tone, eyes narrowed, frowns, then the door slammed in their faces. And on the way back her mother kept talking in sharp bursts, but not to her. There were enormous emotions somewhere. That was what her mother was like. Just under the surface, something swelling, frightening, that Katie could never understand.