The Man Of The House

HISTORICAL SHORT STORY BY EIRIN THOMPSON

In this story, set after WW2, My dad was glad to return to being the head of the family. But my brother thought that was his job now!

When we won the war in Europe, I thought Dad would be home the very next day. But he wasn’t. It took a bit longer.

“Come away from the window, Elsie,” Mum kept telling me. “Keeping watch won’t bring him home any quicker.”

Then, when he did come, I suddenly felt so shy.

I hid behind Mum when she opened the front door and couldn’t look at him.

“Give your dad a hug, Elsie,” Mum ordered.

I shouldn’t have hesitated. I should have thrown my arms around him before he could look disappointed when I hung back.

“Never mind,” Dad said, digging in his pocket. “How about some chocolate?”

He produced a whole bar – well, nearly a whole bar – and handed it to me.

Mum told him to sit down and she’d make him a pot of tea and a sandwich.

Dad said he’d go upstairs and have a wash and change his clothes first.

While Dad was upstairs, I heard the familiar whistle in the alley that meant my brother, Wilf, was home from work.

He pushed open the back door and sauntered in.

“Guess what, Wilf!” I cried, wanting to be the first to tell him. “Dad’s home!”

“Is he?” Wilf replied, sitting down heavily in the chair by the range and opening up his newspaper.

“Yes, love,” Mum said. “He’s upstairs, but he’ll be down in a minute. When he appears I want you to give him that chair.”

“Give me a chance, Mum. I’ve been working hard all morning.”

“Yes, and think of all your dad’s been through.

The least he deserves is a warm welcome from his family.

“I saw Tilly out skipping in the street,” Wilf said to me. “She’ll want you to play.”

But I didn’t want to play. I wanted another look at Dad.

It was peculiar, but it was like he was strange and familiar at the same time.

Wilf didn’t hug Dad, either, but he did give him the chair.

“Wilf’s just popped home for lunch,” Mum explained.

“You’re all grown up, Wilfie,” Dad said. “You’re taller than me.”

“It’s just Wilf,” Wilf told him. “Nobody calls me Wilfie any more. I’m sixteen, you know.”

Mum looked a bit uncomfortable.

“I’ve made you that tea, Alfred, and some bread and jam. Elsie’s already had hers, and it’s time she was running back to school.”

“Do I have to go back?” I asked in a moaning voice.

“Yes, you do,” Dad replied. “School’s important. I wish your brother had stayed on a bit longer.”

“I didn’t leave out of choice,” Wilf piped up. “Someone in this family needed to earn a bit of money.”

“Wilf!” Mum snapped.

But the words were out there.

“Sit down, love,” Mum told Dad. “Drink your tea.”

“I’ll have it later,” Dad said. “I think I’ll go for a walk first.”

You would think that with us being apart from Dad for so long, we’d all have plenty to say.

But round the table that evening, the only sound was of knives and forks scraping on the plates.

“Take more potatoes, Alfred,” Mum said in a bright and breezy voice.

“If we eat all the spuds tonight, there’s going to be nothing for tomorrow,” Wilf put in.

I saw Mum flinch.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she replied.

“Which means you’ll be on at me to bring home something from the bakery,” Wilf complained. “You can’t expect me to ask for stuff all the time.”

This wasn’t like him. Usually he was delighted to show us the mis-shapen loaves, baps and buns he and the other bakers were often told they could take home, as they couldn’t sell them.

“I’ll go to the factory tomorrow,” Dad said. “See if I can get my old job back. Then no-one’ll have to worry about asking for scraps.”

“I never ask for scraps!” Wilf cried. “It’s all perfectly good bread, and I earn it.”

Mum looked like she was going to cry.

“It’s as if Wilf doesn’t want Dad back with us,” I told Tilly, as we tucked our dolls into their cot.

“He keeps being horrible to him – as if it was Dad’s fault he had to go away.”

“Your mum told my mum it’s because Wilf was just a little boy when your dad went off to fight.

“Now he’s a man, and two men in the same house is never easy,” Tilly replied, kissing her doll on the head.

“Time to go to sleep, little Lottie. Sweet dreams.”

I was finding it hard to sleep myself these nights.

There always seemed to be the rumble of angry words coming from downstairs.

Dad hadn’t been able to get his old job back, and hadn’t found anything else to replace it.

This meant Wilf had to give Mum more money to feed us all and nobody was happy about that.

“Now do you see why I couldn’t stay on at school?” Wilf reminded Dad every day.

“Don’t talk to Dad like that, Wilf,” I begged him when we were on our own.

“What if you make him go away again? Aren’t you glad he’s back?”

Now that I’d got over that first strangeness, I was enjoying having my father in the house with us.

We wound up paper sticks together to light the fire from Wilf’s old newspapers.

He taught me the best way to polish my shoes and showed Mum and me how he’d learned to cook an omelette in France.

He read me the copies of “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped” he’d got for Wilf when he was younger.

But Wilf still carped about Dad getting the armchair, or Mum giving him the extra slice of bacon when he didn’t have anything to put into the housekeeping kitty.

Then, one day, Dad went out.

He said he was going to try to find work – anything at all that would pay.

Wilf was already at the bakery, so he didn’t get to say anything about it.

Mum asked when he’d be back, but Dad said he wasn’t sure.

I went into the street to play with Tilly and our dolls.

We couldn’t think of any new adventures for them, so we just swapped over their clothes.

They looked funny in each other’s things.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Tilly suggested.

I ran in and told Mum what we were doing and she gave us a sugar lump each and told us to be back in time for tea.

Arm in arm, we strode over the cobbles and went to have a look in all the shop windows.

We were just imagining what we would buy if we had the money when Tilly exclaimed, “There’s your Wilf, going in the pub!”

Sure enough, when I looked where she was pointing, I saw Wilf’s back disappearing into Madden’s.

“But he’s not old enough to go in there,” I told her.

“Let’s see if we can peep in the window,” Tilly said.

When we crossed the road, we discovered that we couldn’t see a thing through the frosted glass, but then a customer came and stood in the doorway to light up his pipe.

If he stayed where he was, we could see and hear everything.

I winked meaningfully at Tilly.

From outside the pub, we could see Wilf standing at the bar waiting to be served.

Two bottles of stout? What age are you?

the man behind the bar asked gruffly.

“Get off home and have a glass of milk with your tea.”

We couldn’t hear what Wilf replied, but the man leaned across the bar in an angry way.

“Beer’s a man’s drink, and you’re only a boy,” he added loudly.

“Oh, no!” I cried.

Wilf had pulled back his arm like he was going to thump the man.

Suddenly, a third figure appeared on the scene.

Up from the end of the bar stepped Dad!

“I’ll get these,” he said, clearly enough for Tilly and me to hear.

“Make that four bottles of beer, and I’ll take them home.”

He put an arm round Wilf.

“If you’re old enough to do a day’s work – which you are – I’d say you’re old enough for a bottle or two of beer of an evening.”

The barman didn’t look happy, but he took Dad’s money and handed over the bottles.

“They’re coming!” I hissed. “Scarper!”

We raced all the way home.

The reason Dad was in the pub was to treat himself to a special drink to celebrate. He’d got a job.

It wasn’t back at the factory; in fact, it wasn’t in the town at all. It was at Grange Hall, on the outskirts, working for Lord Fitzwilliam.

“Doing what?” I asked. “Will you be in service?”

But it wasn’t like that.

“I thought I might get some work on the estate,” Dad explained.

“But I found myself face to face with Lord Fitzwilliam himself.

“We got talking about this and that, and I ended up telling him about you and Wilf, Elsie, and the books I’d read to you, and how much I enjoyed it.

“Turns out his lordship likes Robert Louis Stevenson, too, and Sir Walter Scott.

“But since he was blinded in battle he can’t read, and he says his wife isn’t best suited to reading to him.”

Everyone knew about his lordship being blinded and how all his money couldn’t buy him back his sight.

“Then we got talking about how he’d like to write his memoirs, how he’d like to go fishing, walk with his dog, get out and about.

“I told him what he needed was the services of a man who could turn his hand to all those things.

“‘Exactly so,’ his lordship replied with a mighty sigh.”

“But you love stories and fishing and dogs!” I cried.

“Exactly so,” Dad replied with a big grin, and he clinked glasses with Wilf, who, by this time, had eyes like saucers.

Dad’s job worked out splendidly.

They fished and they wrote, they walked Merlin, Lord Fitzwilliam’s black Labrador, and they read.

Dad said the Fitzwilliams had such a library that they would never run out of books, and his lordship let Dad borrow any he wanted to bring home to us.

The job paid well, plus Mum got some hours at Wilf’s old bakery.

This meant that Wilf was able to go back to school, where he worked hard to catch up with all that he had missed.

When he’s not in school, he’s studying, going to classes to learn shorthand and typing, as he’s set his heart on getting a job with “The Chronicle”.

Every Friday night, when the work’s week is done, Dad brings home four bottles of beer – two for him and two for Wilf.

They make them last the whole evening and they never get what you’d call drunk.

“So that’s all your family sorted out,” Tilly said as we pushed Maisie and Lottie up the street in the pram.

“Except you. What are you going to do when you grow up?”

“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “But I’ve plenty of time to decide.

“Poor Wilf had to grow up quick, but I’m happy I’m allowed to keep on being just a little girl.”

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