The Future Homemakers of America. Laurie Graham

       21

      I was in Kath’s kitchen, giving her a home-permanent. We had the door open, on account of the fumes, even though it was raining out there fit to drown a duck, and I could hear John Pharaoh the other side a the wall, moving his traps about, getting up to whatever it was he did in there.

      I said, ‘We could have done this at my place, shone a bit more light on the subject. Way I’m groping around in this gloom, you’re gonna end up with some kinda hairstyle. You know I never mind fetching you over.’

      ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but that gives me the creeps, the place you live. Barbed wire. Men with guns looking in your motor every time you drive in. That puts me on edge.’

      I said, ‘I didn’t know that. I thought you liked coming to the base? You like the electric light.’

      She did, too. Every time she came she flicked it on, make sure it was still working.

      I said, ‘You like the commissary.’

      She loved the commissary. Seeing all those products stacked high. Stuff she had never heard of. Miracle Whip. Niblet corn. My-T-Fine Chocolate Pudding. We always bought something for her to take home and try.

      ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do like some of it. I like seeing you, and little Crystal, and your pals. But it’s all the rules and regulations I don’t like. You haven’t hardly got a mind to call your own. Can’t go down near the airyplanes. Can’t get yourself a little job, put a bit of jingle in your pocket. You can’t even pin a nice picture on your wall for fear you’ll get in trouble with the bosses. I couldn’t be doing with that, Peg. I mean to say, I know we haven’t got the electric in yet, but at least I can please myself. I can go anywhere I choose.’

      I said, ‘And where would you go? If you could choose anywhere?’

      Her eyes shot across to that old postcard she had pinned up. ‘Cromer?’ she said.

      I said, ‘Not London, then?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s a terrible place. Hundreds of streets. I’d get lost in a minute. I’ve been to Norwich, though. That’s another big place. We went for a Sunday School outing. Superintendant got a charabanc up. We had a crate of fizzy lemonade on the back seat, started exploding. Must have been all the jolting.’

      I said, ‘You got any photos? I’ve never seen any pictures of you when you were a kid.’

      ‘We did have,’ she said, ‘but they’re long gone. When Mam was poorly, near the end, she got some funny ideas. One day she emptied the drawer. Photos, certificates, she firebacked the lot, thought they harboured disease. And you can’t replace them. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t know what she was doing.’

      I said, ‘You got on well with your mom?’

      ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I do miss her.’

      John appeared in the doorway. He laughed when he saw Kath’s head sprouting curlers.

      ‘Never mind laughing,’ she said. ‘When Peg’s done this I shan’t have to bother putting it up in pipecleaners every night. You going now?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I just paunched a few rabbits.’ Foo, was how he said it. ‘I thought I’d take ‘em down to Brakey. See what I can get for them.’

      ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t bring strawberries. I’m sick of them.’ She had brought some to the base one day. Real live strawberries with their leaves on and a smell of fruit and everything.

      John started to go.

      ‘And do you see Jim Jex, don’t end up leaning on a bar with him…’ she said.

      He left.

      ‘…come home reeking of ale,’ she shouted after him. ‘Talking a load of twaddle.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s for his own good,’ she said. ‘He’s easy led. You still got your mam alive, Peggy?’

      I did, for what it was worth. Thing about Mom was, she was always more interested where the next man was coming from than how her kids were doing. Whoever my daddy was, I didn’t remember him. Just a long line of new daddies breezing through, making Mom laugh behind closed doors, then yelling some and disappearing in a cloud of dust. Some of them were okay. Most of them didn’t stay long enough for me to find out. One took his belt to me and my sister Connie bit him on the leg. Only act of sisterly solidarity she ever showed me. Mom liked Connie better because she would usually oblige the latest daddy with a winning smile. Also, she had pretty blue eyes.

      I said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s in San Antonio, Texas. But you marry a aviator you’re always on the move. Makes life easier if you’re not all the time looking back over your shoulder, hankering for family.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see that. You’ve got a nice bunch of pals, though.’

      There was something I had to tell her, made me feel nervous.

      I said, ‘Yeah. And did you hear, Lois is having a baby?’

      ‘Is she?’ she said, and her face lit up. Then I knew, whatever she was thinking, it wasn’t the terrible thought I’d been having from the moment Lois told me she was pregnant.

      ‘Oh, how lovely!’ she said. ‘What a lovely bit of news. I shall have to knit her something. I’ll do something in blue. They’ll be hoping for a boy this time, I expect. Or lemon. Either sort can wear lemon. When’ll that be, then?’

      ‘Christmas,’ I said. ‘Now, shall we plan a trip? You really want to go to Cromer?’

      ‘Oh, yes please,’ she said. ‘That’s a proper seaside there.’

      Kath had never been to the beach.

      ‘All that water,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can see to the other side?’

      I said, ‘Well, I never was at Cromer, but I believe it’s some kinda ocean there, so I guess not.’

      She said, ‘I know the water comes in and goes out again ’cause that’s called the tide and Harold Jex was at Cromer, sent us a picturepostcard, and he seen this tide business with his own eyes. But the thing that mystifies me is, how does it know when to come in and go out? What if it forgot to go and just kept coming?’

      I said, ‘Kath, that’s two questions more’n I have answers for. Now, let’s have a glass of soda while your curls are cooking.’