At My Mother's Knee Read Free Page A

revealing
a well-defined hairy chest, and a leather cap perched at a
jaunty angle covered his greasy black curls. He had two sidekicks,
'the miserable one' with a lugubrious expression and
'the bit of a lad' who was very young and blushed under the
coal dust whenever a woman spoke to him. I thought that Alf
and his cronies were part of The Black and White Minstrel Show on the TV, a suspicion that was confirmed by Alf's repertoire
of popular tunes. He fancied himself as something of an
opera singer and his powerful rendition of 'The Toreador
Song' echoed around the yards and alleys, transforming them
for a moment into the back streets of Seville and my mother
and the other women into Carmens.
    'What do I owe you, Alf?' my mother would coyly ask as he
tipped the sack of coal that he had draped nonchalantly over
his shoulder into the bunker with a sly smile.
    'Run away with me to New Brighton for a night of passion
and a fish supper and we'll call it quits,' he'd reply with a dirty
wink, making her blush and sending her into a fit of girlish convulsions.
He said the same line to all the housewives, making
them feel like desirable women again even if only for a moment.
    During the winter, regardless of how well prepared my dad had
been with his primitive loft insulation of newspapers and old coats, the pipes always froze and burst, inevitably during the
night. Water cascaded through my parents' bedroom ceiling.
The neighbours, awoken by the commotion, would arrive,
their clothes hastily pulled over their nightwear, armed with
buckets and mops to help clean up the mess. My dad vanished
into the loft to assess the damage and my mother, soaked to the
skin and looking slightly demented, pushed the wet hair from
her face with the back of her hand and began mopping up the
flood. I'd be evacuated to Mary and Frank's, our next-door neighbours' . Mary worked in the brewery and got on my
mother's nerves because she used to 'pop in', unannounced and
uninvited, while we were eating our tea and hang over the back
of a chair, fag in hand and reeking of Guinness, expounding
some crying shame. Mary was an ardent movie fan and loved
a good 'fillum'.
    'There's a marvellous Bette Davis fillum on the telly this
afternoon, Molly,' she'd say to my mum over the backyard
fence as she ran some washing through a mangle so big that
she had to jump as she turned the handle. ' Now, Voyager , with
Paul Henreid.' She'd pause from her leaping for a moment to
remove the Capstan Full Strength from her lower lip, taking an
enormous pull on it first. 'It was Bette Davis that got me
smoking, you know,' she'd reflect proudly, exhaling a cloud of
smoke in a manner emulating her heroine. '"Oh, Jerry, why
ask for the moon when we have the stars . . ." Now, Voyager . . . they don't make fillums like that any more.'
    As a testimony to her love of the silver screen, Mary had
developed a corned beef leg. The skin on the side of her left leg
had turned shiny and tight, red and mottled like corned beef
from a lifetime of sitting too close to the fire with her stockings
rolled down to watch fillums on the telly. According to my
mother, corned beef leg was the mark of a slut. So was going
about with your stockings rolled down to your ankles, a fag
dangling out of the corner of your mouth and more than a hint of Guinness and whisky on your breath. To be seen running to
the shop for the Echo in your slippers and a pair of men's socks
was inexcusable. Mary, staggering home from work slightly
the worse for wear one night, fell over the bin in the back yard
and revealed that her choice of lingerie was an old pair of her
husband's underpants, grey with age and secured at the waist
with a large nappy pin. This damning evidence was enough to
condemn Mary as a slut of the Highest Order of Sluttery for
life. Out taking his daily wander, Jacko the Labrador strolled
into Mary's kitchen one afternoon and helped himself to
Frank's tea, a nice piece of yellow fish. He was halfway down
the back