Stalin Ate My Homework Read Free Page B

monkey which had escaped from some
seafarer’s house that needed to be chased up and down the back entries by a
gaggle of over-excited kids, and sometimes you might see a Cunard Yank’, a
seaman who worked on the North Atlantic run, operating the great liners that
ploughed the grey seas between Liverpool and the United States. He would be
easy to spot, dressed as he was in the bright blue, yellow or red beebop, zoot
suit with hand-painted tie that he had bought in a clothes shop in Harlem,
Galveston or one of the Mexican barrios of Los Angeles.
    Oakfield
Road was the main shopping thoroughfare of our neighbourhood and Valley Road,
the street we lived on, ran off it at a right-angle. While you could go from
one day to the next without a motor vehicle going down our street my parents,
particularly my mother, were convinced that Oakfield Road was a continuous
stream of thundering traffic that would mow a delicate child like me down as
soon as he stepped off the pavement, so I was forbidden to cross it on my own.
There was certainly some traffic. Highly polished steam lorries in the blue and
gold livery of the Tate and Lyle company chuffed up and down, travelling from
the refinery near the docks to the toffee factory where Uncle Joe’s Mintballs
were made, white clouds of smoke streaming from their chimneys. There were
freighters in the dark green of British Road Services pulled by their own
strange three-wheeled Scammell tractor units. Buses too, of course: the numbers
26 and 27 in smart green and cream Corporation livery, their destination boards
both showing ‘Sheil Road Circular’, ran in a loop in and out of the town
centre. Apart from that, though, you could set up a fruit stall in the middle
of Oakfield Road and only have to move it a couple of times an hour. This was
another reason why I had wanted to go and see Bambi with a gang of kids
from the street — it would have been the first time I had crossed over to the
other side of Oakfield Road without my mum or dad.
    Over
Oakfield Road, everything seemed better and more enticing. There was a toy shop
called Fleming’s with all kinds of colourful stuff stacked up to the ceiling —
footballs, puppets, dolls, toy guns and teddy bears. There was a delicatessen
run by two men both of whom appeared to be called Dickie, equipped with a giant
chromed meat slicer whose spinning, razor-sharp wheel reduced stocky salamis
and burly hams to tame, paper-thin slices. Further along the parade there was a
cave-like general store which seemed like it had been transported from the
American Wild West and sold paraffin, sacks of seeds and slabs of pet food in
jelly that you purchased wrapped in newspaper that became damp and
evil-smelling by the time you got it home. A large branch of the Co-operative
store, three storeys high, dominated the smaller shops. Inside there were
separate meat and dairy counters, and people’s change went zinging around in
brass cylinders suspended on wires above the shoppers’ heads as if their money
was travelling about by cable car at a ski resort. And next to the Co-op stood
my objective, the Art Deco Gaumont cinema, part Egyptian, part Aztec, part
brick blockhouse, the current film displayed on a neon-lit awning above the
doors, coming attractions advertised by lurid posters along the face of the
building and the crowds managed by a uniformed commissionaire dressed like he
was a soldier in a very neat war.
    The
shops on our side of Oakfield Road, shops that I was free to visit on my own,
seemed dull and tawdry by comparison. There were only two that I was even
mildly interested in: the newsagent’s where I went to get my comics and the
women’s clothing shop on the corner of our street. Behind the dusty plate glass
of this emporium there were arranged the strange items of underwear women wore
beneath their dresses — flesh-coloured foundation garments adorned with hooks,
clasps and straps like the uniforms of some sort of bizarre