Mr Starlight Page 3

  But he’d usually come back with a long face and a story. He was too old. Or the powers that be had it in for him. I question whether he even went to Sturdy’s gate and asked.

  I liked having a bab in the family. After Sel arrived I didn’t get so much attention paid to me, which meant I could stay out in the street later, practising my ball control. And with Dilys helping in the kitchen I could get away with things Mam didn’t allow, like not eating my crusts. Then, just before Sel’s first Christmas, Dilys got a start as a jam tart packer at Oven Fresh, which meant Mam had all the housework to do again and I could get more time on the piano.

  I loved my music. Mam had children sent to her for lessons who had to be threatened with the stick before they’d practise, but not me. And I caught on fast, too. Mam wasn’t a great one for dishing out praise but she did tell me once I had natural ability.

  Sel was a wakeful type of baby and he only had to see me lift the lid of the piano to start smiling. That’s how I picture us then: him propped up in the corner of the couch, big and bonny, blowing bubbles and dribbling down his bib, and me playing him my little pieces, still too short to reach the pedals.

  After he learned to walk he’d tag along behind me everywhere and on school mornings, when I had to go and leave him, he’d cry as though his heart was broken.

  Mam’d say, ‘You’re too soft, Cledwyn. Just walk out of the door and don’t be so daft. Babies are meant to cry.’

  I never really understood the wisdom of that.

  So me and Sel were close from the beginning although, of course, as the years went by we had our ups and downs. By the time he started at Bright Street I was nearly ready to move on to the big school. I didn’t want him trailing behind me, expecting me to play with him like I did at home, but one thing about Sel, wherever he went people liked him. He made some little friends of his own that first week and that was how he carried on. He was no footballer and I don’t even remember him joining in a game of conkers, but he got along with the girls, like Vera Muddimer and Joan Wagstaff, skipping with a rope and playing Kings and Queens and getting up little concerts. He joined the Cub Scouts but he only went once. He said, ‘I’m not going back.’

  And Mam said, ‘You don’t have to, darling, not if you don’t like it.’

  I said, ‘You made me go. You said I had to persevere.’

  ‘Selwyn’s cut from a different cloth,’ she said. ‘He’s not tough, like you.’

  So he was allowed to stay at home and develop what Mam called ‘the domestic arts’. Stitching an S on all his hankies. Rearranging Mam’s ornaments. Decorating biscuits. Dilys used to bring bags of mis-shapes home from Oven Fresh and he loved titivating them with coloured icing and silver balls. He could be quite artistic. I was already working at Greely’s by the time he passed for the Grammar School. I said to Mam, ‘I hope he’ll get on all right there.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’ she said.

  I was worried about him because the Grammar School was boys only. I said, ‘He’s going to miss Joan and Vera.’

  ‘Selwyn makes friends wherever he goes,’ she said. ‘And there’s time enough for girls later.’

  And it was true, he did have the knack of playing the fool and winning folks over, even the ones who called him a sissy. It was as though he was daring the whole world not to like him.

  When Dilys was eighteen she started walking out with Arthur Persons. Mam never let them out of her sight. They had to keep the door open while they said goodnight out on the front step, even if there was a gale blowing, and if she couldn’t be in the room supervising them, I had to keep watch.

  ‘Play your new piece for Arthur,’ Mam’d say, which meant she needed to go outside and pay a penny and I was supposed to guard our Dilys’s virtue.

  Poor Arthur. He endured two years of that while they saved up for a bed and some easy chairs, and then they got married, in the spring of 1933. The wedding took place at Miller Street Congregational. Dilys wore a blue suit made for her by Mrs Grimley and Uncle Teilo walked her up the aisle, our dad having had to rush away to Gloucester to follow up a business opportunity. Me and Selwyn were attendants. I wasn’t keen but Dilys begged me. I was twelve years old by then and I’d seen some of the get-ups attendants were expected to wear. There were often weddings round the corner at St Botolph’s and I’d seen boys dressed in velveteen and lacy collars. But Mam said there’d be nothing like that, just a bath the night before and a nice clean shirt and tie, so I agreed. Sel had long white socks and new shoes, and he carried a lucky cardboard horseshoe to give to the happy couple as they came out of the chapel, and the reason I remember that is he was so pleased with his white socks he spent the whole time looking at them and worrying in case they got smudged. If you look at Dilys’s wedding photo all you can see of him is the top of his head because he’s busy gazing down at his legs.

  Dilys and Arthur started off in one room at Arthur’s parents’ house in Tysely, and then they got a flat with shared kitchen and bathroom on the Pershore Road, and all the while Arthur was climbing the ladder at Aldridge’s Machine Tools and doing very well for himself. By the time Dilys was in the family way they were buying a house at Great Barr with a garden front and back, so much down and then so much per month.

  Every so often Dad would turn up with a bag of laundry and holes in his socks, and I’d be sent to Jewks’s for a skein of darning wool. ‘And while you’re out,’ Mam’d whisper, ‘run round to Uncle Teilo’s and tell him your father’s home.’

  It was one of Dad’s homecomings that led to a big falling out between Mam and Dilys.

  ‘Tell Arthur your father’s available for work,’ Mam said.

  ‘No need,’ Dilys said. ‘I expect they’ll be giving it out on the wireless. But Arthur can’t get him work.’

  ‘Of course he can,’ Mam said. ‘If he’s any kind of son-in-law. If he’s as high up at Aldridge’s as he cracks on.’

  Dilys said, ‘If Arthur sullied his hands setting Dad on he soon wouldn’t be anything at Aldridge’s. I’m not asking him.’

  Mam said, ‘Then I’ll get him a start. I’ll go to Aldridge’s myself and tell them who I am.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody dare,’ Dilys was shouting. ‘Don’t you bloody bloody dare.’ I could see her point of view. There were always complications where Dad was involved, complications and recriminations. It was just as well Dilys stood her ground because Arthur was too mild to have done it for himself.

  Then Dad went off to the Labour Exchange one morning and didn’t come back. It was the usual pattern.

  Mam said, ‘I expect he was offered something. He’d heard there might be an opening in the Potteries. That’s how it is. If an opportunity presents itself you have to jump in quick, before someone else does. You don’t have time for goodbyes.’ But I noticed his spare shirt was gone and so was my Brylcreem.

  I went over to Dilys’s to tell her Gypsy was gone. I said, ‘So you and Mam can patch things up now.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a relief not having to see her.’

  I said, ‘Sel misses you.’

  ‘Bring him over on the bus,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. And Mam doesn’t need to know.’

  But however much Sel missed Dilys it wasn’t enough for him to go behind Mam’s back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Mam’s the mam and Dilys is the girl, so what Mam says goes. And if you go to Dilys’s again, I’m telling.’

  So we were incommunicado until Arthur came round one night and said Dilys had had two lovely baby girls and it was time to let bygones be bygones. And as it was Dad they’d quarrelled over and he himself was a bygone just then, Mam relented and we all went to see the new arrivals. They’d named them Betsan and Gaynor.

  I was fifteen and Sel was nine, which seemed young to be uncles, but we were both pretty chuffed about it.

  Dilys said, ‘Sit on those kitchen chairs, the pair of you, and each of you hold one of the babies.’

  I was up for it, but Sel wouldn’t
. ‘Their legs are too thin,’ he said. ‘And they’ve got funny skin.’

  There were certain things he never liked to touch and there was no persuading him. He could be very funny that way.

  ‘Well, Dilys,’ Mam said. ‘Now you’ve got your work cut out.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Dilys said. ‘I’ve got a good man to help me.’

  After that peace broke out and we saw Dilys most weeks. If Villa were playing at home she’d bring the girls over to see Mam while me and Arthur went to the match. I always liked Arthur. He was as gentle as a lamb. Then sometimes we’d go over there, to Great Barr, on a Sunday afternoon and we’d have tinned salmon and salad and pears in syrup or fruit cocktail, and then walnut cake, with white icing and glacé cherries. Happy days.

  Then, of course, along came the war and I decided to jump before I was pushed. I tried for the Engineers and when they realised I could get a tune out of a cornet they made me a bandsman, which meant being a medical orderly too in case we saw action. I was at home, on embarkation leave, when Dad turned up. His face suddenly appeared at the kitchen window, cigarette behind his ear, silly grin on his face, as if he’d just come home from work, not been missing, whereabouts unknown, for more than twelve months. ‘Put the kettle on,’ he said. ‘Where’s your mam?’

  She was at Spooner’s, fetching gammon for my send-off tea.

  ‘Bloody wars,’ he said. ‘I did my bit in the last lot. And you’ll be all right at Greely’s. Reserved occupation.’

  I said, ‘I volunteered.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘More fool you. And what are you doing, half-pint?’

  Sel was snipping holes in a piece of paper, making a doily for the cake stand. ‘Helping my mam,’ he said. ‘And there won’t be enough gammon for you. You weren’t expected.’

  But of course Mam gave up her rasher for Gypsy and when Uncle Teilo called in she came over very light-hearted. Whatever Dad said, she laughed, whatever Teilo said, she laughed, although he didn’t seem to be in a very humorous mood. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Annie,’ he said, as he was leaving. ‘You know where to find me.’

  ‘Home is the hunter, Teilo,’ she said. ‘So I won’t have to trouble you for any more light bulbs.’

  We didn’t sleep much that night. I was wondering what war was going to be like and Sel wasn’t happy about the new arrangements. ‘Don’t go in the army, Cled,’ he said. ‘What if you get shot?’

  I said, ‘I have to go, our kid. It’s my duty. And it’s your job to look after Mam.’

  ‘I always look after her,’ he said. ‘But why did he have to come back and upset everything?’

  I said, ‘You know Dad. He probably won’t stay long.’

  ‘Yes he will,’ he said. ‘He told Mam he’s going to build her an air raid shelter.’

  But Sel didn’t know Gypsy Boff as well as I did. By the next time I came home on leave he was history. Mam had volunteered him for the Miller Street Home Guard but he only lasted a week or two and then he’d disappeared for the duration.

  I said, ‘I suppose he was too brainy for the Home Guard?’

  But Mam wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. ‘People lose touch when there’s a war on,’ she said. ‘As you’ll find out.’

  I reckon he must have had a woman somewhere. Some lonely widow who was glad to have his ration book. We did see him again after the war, though, so whatever else had transpired, the Luftwaffe hadn’t flattened him.

  I didn’t have a bad war, compared with some. I saw some terrible sights but at least I came home. There were quite a few I’d known at Bright Street who didn’t make it, and then there was Mr Grimley from next door. He was believed to have copped it when they bombed the cannon factory in Armoury Road. They never found anything of him. He just never came home again.

  I was demobbed early in 1946 and not long after I arrived home Sel got called up to do his National Service. He had to report to a recruitment station in Acocks Green.

  Mam said, ‘This government seems determined to rob me of a son.’

  I said, ‘They’ll never take Sel. One look at him and they’ll send him home.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s a fine-looking boy.’

  He was tall and well-built, but there was that soft girlie side to him too. I couldn’t see him clambering up and over a cargo net. He didn’t have the musculature for it. I couldn’t see him getting stuck in to bayonet practice. And neither could he. ‘I’m not letting them cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell them I’m a pacifist.’ So he went off to Acocks Green, whistling and smelling of talc and expecting to be back in five minutes, but he was gone all day and when he did turn up he looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. ‘Fat lot you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve only gone and got into the RAF.’

  Now, there was a lot of competition for the air force. Nobody just walked, especially not a boy who didn’t have the right attitude.

  I said, ‘You can’t have done. You’ve misunderstood.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘They asked for anybody who’d passed their School Certificate and there was only me and one other, so they said we were both in. Now what am I going to do? I don’t want to fly aeroplanes. I want to work on my singing career.’

  Mam said, ‘Go back and tell them you’re musical. Tell them you’re willing to serve in a concert party.’

  I said, ‘This is National Service, Mam, not Take Your Pick.’

  ‘Then he can be a bandsman,’ she said, ‘like you. I’ll write to them.’

  I said, ‘He can’t play anything.’

  She said, ‘He can play the triangle. You don’t need to be Paderewski to be an air force bandsman.’

  He said, ‘But I don’t want to be a bandsman. I’m going to be a singer.’

  Dilys said, ‘The RAF does have a nice uniform, Sel. Anyway, perhaps it won’t come to it.’

  But it did come to it. Well, it did and it didn’t. He got his papers to go to RAF Padgate for basic training. He left on the Friday while I was at work and by Tuesday night he was back home, medically exempt due to ‘Weak Back and Nervous Temperament’ and whistling again. He walked straight back into his job in the payroll office at the ice cream factory, Uncle Teilo got us some club bookings and we all settled down again.

  Sel practised his singing in front of the dressing-table mirror and I kept up to date with the hit parade. A song didn’t have to be aired many times before I had it committed to memory, and we were known around the circuit for offering a good mix of old and new. I began trying my hand at composition too and, although I didn’t receive a lot of encouragement, I’d say many of my early efforts have stood the test of time: ‘Gnat on the Windscreen of Life’, ‘Knee Deep in Love’, which I wrote for Renée when we started courting, ‘You Pulled the Chain on Me’, written after she called things off.

  Renée had a look of Rita Hayworth about her and she was my first experience with the fair sex. Mam didn’t like her, but Mam never got along with other ladies. She’d chat for hours with Mr Edkins next door, laughing and joking, but the minute Mrs E poked her head out she ’d turn frosty. And she was the same with any girl I looked at. ‘Too full of herself,’ she’d say. Or, ‘All kid gloves and no drawers.’

  Me and Renée had to do what courting we could in the back row of the Gaumont, so after six months I asked her to marry me, in the hope of moving things along in the bedroom department. After we got engaged Mam had to allow her in the house, begrudging as she was. It looked like being a long haul, saving up for our bits and pieces, but at least we could be in out of the cold. At least we didn’t always have to have fish and chips and a cuddle in the bus shelter. We even had full-scale relations, just the once, when Mam was getting over pleurisy and went to stay at Aunty Gwenny’s.

  But then Sel had to open his mouth and ruin everything. ‘Mam,’ he said. ‘I reckon there’s a spring gone in the front-room couch.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Have you been going in there, wearing it out?’


  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But Cled did, and when he lay on top of Renée it didn’t half make a noise.’

  It was all very well for him. He hadn’t matured to that degree yet. His idea of having a good time with a girl was meeting Vera Muddimer for the Shoppers’ Lunch in Lewis’s. He thought it was highly amusing when Mam said I’d have to move out if I was going to treat the place as a knocking shop. But I couldn’t move out. We didn’t have enough in our savings account, and after that Renée wouldn’t show her face in Ninevah Street. ‘I’ve got needs, Cled,’ she said. ‘So you’ll have to decide. Is it me or your mam?’

  I said, ‘If you’ll just be patient. Another twelve months and we’ll be set up.’

  But she suddenly got it into her head to leave Greely’s and be a bus conductress, five pounds a week, free uniform and half-price travel. And then, well, the writing was on the wall. A bus conductress has men hopping on and off all day long. It was really no job for an engaged person who was having second thoughts.

  FOUR

  After Sel had recuperated from his suit poisoning Uncle Teilo was keen to get us bookings for our comeback season, but His Numps wouldn’t apply himself to it. ‘Time to move on,’ he said.

  Uncle Teilo said, ‘Oh yes? Where to? Has Norman Hewitt been talking to you?’ Norman was another big fixer in Birmingham. Sel just laughed.

  I said, ‘Well, I think I should be kept in the picture.’

  ‘Look, Cled,’ he said. ‘We’ve been a good team, but we’ve got different plans. I’m a pro and you’re playing for pin money. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ It was that business with the lady in white.

  I said, ‘You don’t have to go to America to branch out, you know. We could travel further afield, do some private functions. Sutton. Lichfield. We could get a little motor.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to America. I’ve outgrown this place.’

  I said, ‘Please yourself. I’ll go solo. You’re not the only one with a following, you know. I’ll always find a welcome at the Birmingham Welsh.’