In a Class of Their Own Read Free Page A

into her eyes as she breathed the sweet scent of lilac and new-mown grass. So different by far from Admiralty Street, where vile body odours met with the smells of stale cooking in dark, dank, narrow lobbies.
    “The left-hand bottom one,” she whispered dreamily as she pointed to their new home. “All it needs is the grass cutting.”
    “Grass cuttin’!” Where the hell d’ye think we’ll get the money for a pair o shears? Let alane a bluidy lawn-mower! “Look, let’s awa oot o here richt noo.”
    “You want us to give up this house just because we’ve not got a lawn-mower?”
    “Naw! Cos we’d nae feel at hame here. Aw snobs they’ll be across the wey there. They’ll no want tae ken us,” moaned Johnny, jerking a finger at the elegant stone-built villas facing them.
    Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “But we won’t be living across the way. We’ll be staying here !”She pushed open the gate and marched up the pathway. With a shake of his head Johnny slowly trailed behind while she fished the precious keys from her pocket and unlocked the door, which swung open to welcome them into a sun-drenched, two-windowed living-room that was half as big again as the one in Admiralty Street. She didn’t linger there though, because the scullery beyond seemed to invite Rachel to enter through its open door.
    Johnny gaped. That scullery was near as big as their single-end living room. To his right stood a three-ringed gas cooker and beside it a large storage cupboard – a walk-in cupboard at that, complete with shelves. He turned to speak to Rachel but she was now standing by the sink and wash-tub. Both had hot and cold water taps which she immediately turned on full and gurgled rapturously in unison with the cascading water that ran bubbling into the drain.
    “Hot and cauld water on tap, eh?” said Johnny.
    “Aye, four taps. And see outbye there.”
    Johnny crossed to look out at a manicured drying-green with its dancing lines of washing: shirts, blouses, towels and sheets, all flapping boisterously in the wind. His eyes strayed beyond the green to the spot where Sam was already playing happily with the wee lad from next door.
    “Want a gemme?” Chalky had asked, lobbing a football to him.
    “Aye,” said Sam. “Cos yin day I’m to be playin’ for the Herts.”
    “Herts! Nae Herts for me,” his new friend retorted. “Naw. Naw, I’ll be goalie tae the Hi-bees.”
    Without saying a word, Johnny sought Rachel’s hand and guided her back though the living-room, this time noticing the brightly polished brass canopy over the fireplace with its pipe-clayed hearth. Hesitating only for a moment, he drew her gently into the small hall that led towards the two bedrooms – but it was the adjacent bathroom that compelled his attention – a room without bed, table or chairs. Just a bath, a wash-hand basin and a lavatory. A lavvy they wouldn’t have to share with anyone else. His eyes strayed back to the bath: Johnny was thirty years old and had never taken a bath in a house. Until he married Rachel, he’d lived in a room and kitchen with his Mum, his Dad, his sister and his younger brother.
    “I’m away oot for half an hour, Johnny,” his mother would say. “So ye get yer private bits washed at the sink. There’s enough hot water for ye in the kettle on the range.”
    But when he had married, Rachel insisted he’d queue up at the public baths in Junction Place. Sixpence it cost if you allowed them to run the water but they never put in more than would just cover your legs. For ninepence though you could run your own bath – a luxury he’d never experienced. Johnny nodded his head silently. Rachel was right after all. Times were changing and the bairns deserved better than he’d had. Maybe too she was right about them going to a better school hereabouts. Or maybe Ella knew better when she’d said that Rachel was giving them delusions of grandeur.
    “Heavens alive!” he thought to himself. “What if we