Family Pride Read online

  Family Pride

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  An Army of Smiles

  Copyright

  Family Pride

  Grace Thompson

  To my parents, Ede and Bill Atwell, and my uncle, Bill Doble, who started it all with their yarns.

  Chapter One

  The droning of planes overhead woke her. Or perhaps it was the air-raid siren that had broken into her dream and roused her. Gilly lay in her bedroom above the bake-house, wondering apprehensively if the planes were enemy bombers or the RAF pursuing them. The sound of the engines faded away so slowly she thought it a wonder they didn’t fall from the night skies. A distant, long drawn out, c-r-u-m-p made her curl up under the covers, her thin arms, the sheets and blankets a mock protection. Ages passed and she didn’t move. Her mother didn’t come in to take her to the under-stairs cupboard where they said it was safer. Then the single note of the all clear sounded and she relaxed.

  Living near the docks of a South Wales seaside town there were few nights when they weren’t disturbed by the wailing air-raid warning. Often, the siren was all they heard and, unless her mam came to fetch her, Gilly would spend the time between warning and all clear kneeling by the window watching the search-lights seeking out enemy planes. These past weeks, with bombs falling and planes fighting overhead, she’d frequently been moved from her attic bedroom to go down to a safer place.

  She sighed. The small town had changed from a place where families came to relax and have fun, to a noisy, threatened area where danger from above disturbed the peace, night and day. It had become a place where beaches were cordoned off from the public and warnings of mines were displayed on once popular footpaths. A place where the docks, famous throughout the world, were a target for bombs and landmines.

  She still hadn’t moved from her iron-framed bed but lay there tense, wondering what the time was and listening to the house for clues. She was sixteen but still child enough to depend on Mam to tell her what to do. This was a household that rose early. It was still dark. Not even the faint rectangle of the window was distinguishable in the blackness as it was covered by thick blackout curtaining. Yet she knew it was very early even though the war-time late summer mornings were always dark and cold. Her room was at the top of the house and faced north so the narrow window never let in any warming sunshine.

  Below her doors opened, voices murmured and she listened more intently, raising herself from the pillow. The sounds from the yard were muffled, yet she knew what was happening as clearly as if she could see. Wide awake now, she slipped out of the blankets and reached for her dressing gown. A cardigan and her slippers were tucked under the end of the bed-covers so they wouldn’t strike cold. She put them all on and opened the bedroom door. Granfer would be pleased to see her and he would be sure to have a pot of tea freshly made in the humming warmth of the bake-house.

  Down the chilly oil-cloth covered stairs she went, not needing a light to find her way. Muffled voices gave minimal instruction as Granfer and Uncle Sam worked quietly together with the ease of many years partnership. She stood at the open door of the bake-house where the last of the first baking was already in trays ready to stack onto the cart for delivering. The jingling of harness and the clatter of hooves outside told her that her Uncle Sam was backing the horse into the shafts. The straw that covered the yard to reduce the sound having little effect.

  “What you doing up, little Gilly? Raid woke you, did it?” Sam called as he led Ianto out of the stable and brought him to the door of the bake-house. “Dad,” he called back, “Gilly’s up. Wanting a cup of tea she’ll be for sure.”

  Granfer came into view around the corner of the stables, small, neat and dressed in white. Flour powdered his face and hair and added to the effect that he was as ready to bake as his loaves. He was followed by Sam’s twin brothers, Vivian and Victor. They had thrown light brown overalls over their clothes and were preparing to refuel the coke-ovens ready for the second baking of the morning.

  “Why didn’t someone call me?” Gilly demanded.

  “Didn’t seem worth it, girl. Several raids we had and none lasting more than a couple of minutes. Fancy, you slept through them. Lazy you are, Gilly Collins,” Uncle Sam teased.

  Gilly waved and called good morning to her twin uncles who only nodded in reply, then she went to the cupboard beside the sink to get out five cups. The kettle was singing softly and she made tea and busied herself with milk and sugar. When her uncles came back to the bake-house she knew at once they had been arguing again. She loved them all, but knew that the twins, with their “hurry up” temperament and lack of patience, and the slow, plodding Uncle Sam would never agree.

  “How it’ll be when I’m gone I daren’t think, Gilly,” Granfer sighed when the cart had gone and Victor and Vivian were knocking up the dough for its final rising. “Damn me, they end up bickering the minute they meet. How are they going to work together and run the business? Victor Jenkins and Sons, Quality Bakers it’s called and that’s what it’s been for three generations but I can’t see it carrying on for a fourth!”

  Gilly glanced at the twins working together in silence, cutting and weighing the dough and dropping the two-and-a-quarter-pound pieces into the two pound tins. They were both small like Granfer, quick moving and strong. Uncle Sam was the only one who didn’t follow Granfer in appearance. He was tall, burly, slower moving and amiable, and Gilly loved him the best of all her uncles.

  “Don’t worry, Granfer. Mam says once the war’s over they’ll all knuckle down.”

  “Fine for your mam to talk, Gilly. She doesn’t have to work with the irritable buggers. Victor and Viv snapping at Sam and Sam going as slow as slow for the purpose, just to aggravate them. It’s driving me wild it is.” He raised his voice and added, “Damn me, as if we haven’t got enough to put up with! Not being allowed to make the bread the way I’ve always done, restrictions on this and that and everything! Them away in the navy and coming home to do more fighting here than when they’re facing the hun! And me seventy years old and having to manage alone.” He paused to regain his breath. “You’d think they’d make an effort to get on for the brief time they’re home, wouldn’t you? Sending me to my grave they are with their arguing!”

  Gilly saw that his face was red and a little puffy, with sweat bursting out like beads on his forehead. The fair hair, with only a sprinkling of grey in spite of his seventy years, was as neat as ever around his small-featured face. The early morning stubble was barely visible as his skin was so fair and rosy. But there was a blazing look about him, blue eyes rounder than usual and the colour brighter. There was a tightening of the mouth and his breathing was shallow and noisy. With fear squeezing her heart Gilly realised that Granfer might be ill.

  “Sit a moment, Granfer,” she said trying to control her shaking voice. Hadn’t Mam said he’d work himself up into a seizure? “They’re only here for a few days, be glad they got leave at the same time for once.” She put on a scolding voice and added, “Glad you should be to have them all safe home together.”

  “Glad I am girl, or I was for the first ten minutes! That’s how l
ong it takes for them to start rubbing each other up the wrong way. Then for the purpose I get this damned indigestion. Your Auntie Bessie will insist on baking scones when I can do them better. Taste of nothing but bi carb they do and her thinking she can make better ones than me!”

  She watched as he struggled to move a sack of flour placed on the table for weighing. The flour was usually kept in a store-room at the far side of the yard and brought in a barrow across a high walk-way to the loft above the bake-house. It was then dropped down through a chute straight into the troughs that Granfer and the uncles called “trows”, for mixing, but the store-room was empty, waiting for a new delivery and the few sacks left from a previous delivery had been brought down and put onto the tables to be manoeuvred by hand. It took two people to moved the two-hundred and eighty pound sacks but, in his impatience and anger, Granfer struggled alone. His hands were small and half hidden by the too long sleeves of his overall. He was slightly built and could never find overalls to fit comfortably.

  “Aren’t you frightened when they have to go back to the navy, Granfer?”

  “Terrified, Gilly, and that’s a fact. That’s why I get so upset when they argue so bad.”

  “When will the war end?”

  “By Christmas.” He spoke emphatically, as if his certainty could make events happen. “This Christmas’ll be the best we’ve ever had, young Gilly. Christmas 1940, that’s when we see the end of it. Two more months and we’ll have that Hitler running hell for leather with nowhere to hide.”

  He began to splutter as he tried to add something more and Gilly saw his hands slide off the sack of flour, saw the flour spill out and cover the table and fall like a scene in a comedy film onto his shoes. He groaned then and bent over, his fingers clutching at the heavy brass scales. The scales clanged like a doom-laden funeral bell.

  Gilly screamed and ran up the stairs for her mother.

  “Mam! Auntie Bessie! Come quick. Granfer’s ill. Oh, please hurry!” She ran back down. Granfer was in a heap against the table, flour still pouring from the sack and covering him. She scrabbled it away from his face and cuddled him. “It’s all right. You’ll be all right. It’s only that you’re tired, that’s all,” she murmured to re-assure herself.

  In moments the room was full of people. The twins ran in having heard her cries, Mam and Auntie Bessie clattered down the stairs, still in their night attire and helped them carry Granfer up the thirty-four stairs to his bedroom.

  Gilly stood in a corner of the bake-house shivering in spite of the fierce heat of the place. Her blue eyes, so much like Granfer’s, seemed extra large in the thin face, her long light-brown hair was still in plaits making her look very much a child.

  She still hadn’t moved when Sam returned from the first delivery. He heard what had happened then ran up to join the others. For an age she stood there, murmuring to herself, “He’s dead. Granfer is dead and I’ll never see him again.” As if in a dream she heard the doctor’s car arrive, listened as he clattered up the stairs then down again. Everyone had forgotten her, she decided, when an hour had passed.

  Then her Uncle Ivor wandered in and, with a moistened finger, picked some of the crusty crumbs from the early baking. He was slow and, at thirty-five, still had the mental age of a small boy. He smiled at her, unaware of the drama of the moment. He wore distorted tortoise-shell framed glasses on his wide-eyed, carelessly shaved face and looked at her trustingly as she adjusted them for him.

  “Granfer isn’t well, Uncle Ivor,” she said.

  “Oh. Did you know the kittens have come home again?” he said conversationally. “I did give them away, honest I did, like Bessie and your mam asked, but they’ve come back again.” He wandered off to the stable, picking up a bottle of milk as he went, to spend an hour admiring the newest batch of kittens produced by Puss the stable cat.

  Gilly forgot him and stared towards the staircase. She wanted to go and look at Granfer. She’d never seen a dead person and thought she should. Surely Granfer wouldn’t be frightening? Even if the life had left his body and he was limp as a rag doll and perfectly still, like the fish her uncles caught in the stream. But it was as if her legs were made of wood and they refused to bend and allow her to climb the stairs. She left the bake-house and stood in the cold passageway trying to hear what was going on above. Her feet and legs were blue with cold and goose-pimples covered her thin body. Forcing her legs to obey, she slowly, stiffly, moved up the staircase and finally stared into Granfer’s room.

  The others had gone down the back staircase she supposed as she hadn’t met them. Granfer lay on the smooth, starched sheets, alone and unmoving. His face was grey amid the startlingly white sheets and pillows. His face should be covered, shouldn’t it? She took a step nearer, the grey face almost unrecognisable as her fidgety, always busy Granfer. So small and so still he was a stranger. Death took away the person and left a shell. She noticed as if for the first time how perfectly his eyebrows were formed. And how the low hair-line was an immaculate curve. The eyes were closed, their brightness gone for ever. Then they opened wide, staring at her with an intensity that was unreal and she gave a low, groaning scream. Then one closed in a wink and she laughed, with tears amid the laughter.

  “Granfer. I thought you were – sleeping,” she amended quickly.

  “Better than them downstairs then.” His voice was low and very slow. “They thought I was dead and ready to meet my maker.”

  “They had a real fright I expect,” Gilly said, running to kneel beside his bed. “Perhaps the uncles won’t quarrel any more.”

  “P’raps pigs’ll fly and we’ll have to shoot for bacon!” He grinned and closed his eyes again.

  Shivering visibly now, Gilly stood up and backed towards the door. She would go and dress and come back to watch him as it seemed that no one else was bothering. The blue eyes opened again and she ran back to hear the whispering voice say, “Go down and listen to what’s being said, good girl, then come up and tell me. Be my eyes and ears ’til I get out of this bed, there’s a love. I need to know what that lot are planning in my absence.”

  “I thought I’d sit with you, Granfer—”

  “Your mam and Auntie Bessie will sit with me turn and turn about. It’s what’s happening downstairs I want to know about and I can’t ask either of them two, not now.” He rested briefly and went on. “Humour me they will. Treat me like a dimmo now they’ve got me in bed! Remember, Gilly, once they get you in bed they think you revert to being a helpless baby. Can’t think, have to have someone make decisions for you, told what you want to eat, and how much, and when.” He paused again and smiled at her. “When it suits them, that’s when! You’re talked to as if your vocabulary has diminished to that of a two year old. Even the tone of their voices lifts to the condescending one used for infants.” Gilly laughed. He tutted impatiently. “Gilly, I want to know what’s being said and thought and planned so I can have my say. Right?”

  The speech, although given in short bursts seemed to have exhausted him and she tucked the sheet unnecessarily closer around his neck and nodded agreement. “I’ll be back in a while, Granfer.”

  Eyes closed, he could only nod.

  * * *

  The following day was a Sunday and, leaving Granfer in the care of his friends, Smoky Vic and Sticky Vic, the rest of the family went to church. Gilly usually sat between her mam and Auntie Bessie but today Gilly was alarmed to learn that her mother intended to go to the morning service with Gerry Daniels. Fanny walked to the church with Gerry’s mother and his disreputable Auntie Megan and she with them in their pew apart from her own family, a hand on Gerry’s arm as they walked in and out of the building.

  “She’d never dare do that if Granfer wasn’t ill and stuck at home,” Auntie Bessie murmured. Gilly didn’t reply. She was worrying about what would happen to her if her mother married Gerry Daniels as a few had begun to predict.

  Gilly’s mother, Fanny, was the second eldest of Granfer Jenkins’s brood and a wi
dow; Gilly was her only child. Fanny was anxious about her father’s attack and feared that it might prevent him working, at least for a while. Or worse, that the old man might die. Then what would they do? With the boys serving in the navy and only the occasional help of Sticky Vic, Smoky Vic and the dull and unreliable Ivor to help her and Bessie, how would they get the bread made and delivered?

  She had thought at once of Gerry Daniels and decided to go and see if he would help.

  “Gawd help, not him,” Bessie sighed when her sister told her her plan. “He wouldn’t like getting his hands dirty, would he? Not Gerry Daniels. Him working in a bank and acting as if he owns it!”

  “Gerry’s helped us out before and we don’t have much choice,” Fanny reminded her.

  “What about Dai? He’s helped before?”

  Dai Smoky was the son of one of Granfer’s friends and long considered an extra uncle. Granfer’s real name was Victor Jenkins and in school he had become friends with two more boys also called Vic. To simplify matters they had been nick-named: Baker Vic who was Granfer; Smoky Vic, who was smoking woodbines by the age of eleven; and Sticky Vic, whose mother made home made toffee. All now in their seventies, they had remained friends throughout their lives. Dai Smoky was the son of Smoky and Edna Worthy, usually known as the Smokys.

  “We can ask, but I think Gerry will be the one to help us.” Bessie’s only reply was a humph of disapproval. She said nothing more, knowing how futile it was to argue with Fanny when she was wearing that stubborn expression.

  They were sitting in the bakers shop which fronted the house and bakery. Here they sold bread and cakes for those who didn’t want a delivery. Most of the first rush of bake-house work was done and they had come to prepare the shop for opening, rubbing the marble tops free of every speck of dust, polishing the chrome fittings and the scales. Satisfied, they sat and sipped the tea Gilly had brought them in the lull before the first flurry of customers came in demanding fresh bread.