‘Yes…she’s been badly.’
‘Ah! Works too ‘ard does Biddy.’ Fountain Crossland seated himself in the horse-chair by the fireside, all the while regarding Queenie through careful eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what, lass,’ he said quietly, ‘let’s you an’ me ‘ave a little talk eh?’ His broad smile was disarming, and when he stretched out a hand Queenie went to him.
At once he pulled her on to his knee and Queenie was quickly enthralled by the stories he told her…funny stories about little creatures who lived in folks’ mattresses and who had the most marvellous adventures.
It seemed that Fountain Crossland got carried away in excitement, because once or twice Queenie found herself being violently jiggled up and down on his lap. And when at one stage Fountain Crossland took to acting out a scene where he took off his trousers and put on Auntie Biddy’s pinafore he looked so silly that Queenie fell about laughing.
It was this scene that Auntie Biddy came upon when she brought herself down from the bedroom to investigate the noise. It took her but a moment to see Fountain Crossland’s real game and with a cry of ‘You fornicating old sod!’ she grabbed up his trouser belt and whacked it hard across his bare legs. ‘Out! Get out and don’t show yourself here again!’ she told him. Even when Fountain Crossland took to his heels and ran off up the passage without his trousers, Auntie Biddy would have followed him if it hadn’t been for the fact that the bubble of energy she had summoned was now depleted. Falling into the nearest chair, she told the gaping Queenie, ‘Throw ‘is old trousers after him, lass.’
This Queenie did, firmly closing the front door after both Fountain Crossland and his trousers had disappeared through it, only to be tripped head over heels by Mrs Farraday’s terrified ginger torn. When she returned to the parlour, Queenie was uncertain as to whether she would be blamed for letting Fountain Crossland into the house, and looked into the little woman’s face with a sheepish expression.
‘I’m sorry, Auntie Biddy,’ Queenie said. For a moment there came no response. Then, just as Queenie began to think she would not be forgiven, she noticed a twinkle which spread into a smile and the smile erupted into laughter. Queenie ran to her Auntie Biddy and together the two of them rocked helplessly at the memory of Fountain Crossland fleeing up the passage in a pinny, after having his buttocks well and truly thrashed by Auntie Biddy.
There were other more or less permanent sentinels, too, like old Mr Craig from No. 46:
Queenie liked Mr Craig, who spent long lonely days sitting outside bis little bouse. The rickety stand-chair had a permanent place on the flagstones by the front door. Folks had long ago stopped asking questions or wondering why it was that a stand-chair should be left outside in all weathers year in year out. They’d gotten used to the old fellow sitting there, happy to pass the time of day with anyone who could spare it. From early morning to last thing at night when the biting chill of evening forced him in, he’d just sit there smiling and chatting to one and all, and generally watching the world go by.
During her flag-counting sessions, Queenie would often run errands for him, or come and set herself on his step, where she’d listen enthralled to exciting stories of his daredevil days and frightening accounts of the war he’d fought in as a young man.
‘You have to love life and love people if you are going to write stories,’ says Jo today. ‘You must live the part of every character, even the bad ones. When I am writing I am laughing and crying, and feeling angry and sad. I have so many stories I would have to live to 200 to write them all.’
Time and again it is Jo’s women who make the strongest characters: ‘Ada Humble in Angels Cry Sometimes was my mam’s friend, Mrs Brown. She was a fat little woman, a lovely, lovely person.’ Ada is noted for her washing line and ‘the numerous shirttails that pranced in the drying breeze, telling the world and its neighbour that she was the proud custodian of seven darling men.’ The novels are littered with imaginative observations from the perspective of the curious little girl next door. More significant, however, was Ada’s red trilby. ‘She had a red trilby, and, do you know, she wore that trilby everywhere. She lived next door to us, and we would laugh when every morning she would come out and bend down to pick up the milk and her trilby would stay on! She never would be seen without that trilby.’
Ada Humble was only forty-one, but looked much older. She laid no great claims to beauty and her demands were few. The great sagging belly which always looked well-advanced in pregnancy had been stretched and shaped that way by the six strapping lads she’d borne her husband Toby Humble.
The podginess of her rosy cheeks gave her a cheery clownish appearance, emphasised by the vivid colour of her round eyes, which shone bright and brown, ‘like a good strong brew of tea’ Marcia had often observed. But the most surprising feature about her was the red broadbrimmed trilby, which had become her trademark. It had been white at one time. But after cadging it from the local muffin-man, in exchange for an old pair of pram wheels for his dilapidated wicker-trolley, Ada Humble had dipped it in a dye of her own making. The end result had not been the deep respectable plum colour she’d intended, but a screaming bright shade of tarty-red. It didn’t deter Ada from wearing it though. There wasn’t a living soul now who could ever remember Ada Humble without ‘that trilby’.
‘What happened to Ada was very sad,’ Jo tells me. ‘She had five sons. One of them wouldn’t go to school. She used to come and tell my mam, and my mam said, “Take him in. Put him through the door. Make sure he gets into the classroom.” Ada did this, but he would still run off and the truant officer kept coming round, and finally he said, “If the boy doesn’t go to school, you’ll have to go to Court.” Ada was taken to court. My mam went with her.’
An uncomfortable silence settled over the court-room as the magistrate’s thin bony face twisted itself into an expression of painful thought. Then calling the same man to attention, he asked in a sharp voice, ‘May we ask the reason for the non-removal of Mrs Humble’s headpiece?’
Marcia hadn’t thought of that! She’d been so used to seeing that bright red trilby atop Ada Humble’s head that it had become part of the little woman herself, yet by the tone of the magistrate’s voice, he was pompous enough to consider its presence as a deliberate mark of disrespect.
‘We would beg the court’s pardon,’ the young man returned, extending his apology to include a reminder of the recent death of Mr Humble, and of the accused’s condition of mourning. ‘It is meant in no way as an affront to the court or its proceedings.’ But the magistrate was obviously not placated. In fact, judging by the sour expression on his face, and the sharp way he turned to consult his colleagues, Marcia felt almost as though Ada’s red trilby had suddenly become the issue, and not Blackie’s truancy.
‘Poor thing, she was jailed, for six months!’ says Jo. ‘They decreed that Ada’s husband [Toby] couldn’t have been blamed because he had been at work, it wasn’t his fault – he had been innocent of this – it was the mother at home’s fault, so Ada was put in jail. When she came out she was broken! She had lost all her weight – she was like a stick! – she was white, she was haggard and she died soon after. It was terrible.
‘Now, when somebody died, all the people in the street had to go along and pay their respects, and the children too. I said, “No.” I didn’t want to go. And I kicked and screamed. But my mam dragged us along, and there was little Ada in her coffin without her hat, and she was completely bald. That was why she had always worn the trilby! None of us had known. My mother saw the hat on the chair and she picked it up and put it on Ada’s head. I’ll never forget that.’
Now Marcia’s gaze travelled along the gleaming chrome trellis which proudly bore the weight of that tiny, polished wood coffin. Of a sudden she was staring at the inner silk which lay ruffled over the little figure in white billowing folds, and slowly she reached out to touch the podgy