when you needed it. All the same, she couldn’t help thinking that it would have been nice to have a bit more help today.
‘Here you are, poppet.’
Joan placed a blue and white striped plate in front of her. On it were piled two chunky slices of fried bread, a rasher of bacon and two large fried eggs, the whites crispy around the edges, just the way she liked them.
Scarlett sat down at the rickety table with its checked yellow oilcloth cover.
‘Two eggs?’ she questioned.
‘Well—we need to keep our strength up,’ her mother said, but she only managed to work her way through one egg herself before she pushed her plate to one side and sat holding her teacup and staring at its contents.
Scarlett looked at her. Anxiety stirred within her.
‘What’s the matter, Mum? You all right?’
‘Yes, yes, quite all right.’
‘You ain’t eaten your breakfast.’
Her mother never left food on her plate. It was a waste. After years of wartime rationing, nobody ever wasted a crumb.
‘I will. In a minute.’
Joan’s hands were shaking. She put the teacup down.
‘Mum? You’ve gone all pale.’
‘It’s all right. I’m fine. Just a touch of heartburn, that’s all. Go and fetch me the Milk of Magnesia, there’s a good girl.’
Scarlett ran to the corner cupboard and got out the blue bottle. She gave it a good shake and poured the thick white liquid into a spoon. Her mother swallowed it down.
‘That’s it. That’ll do the trick.’
But still she pushed her plate towards Scarlett.
‘You finish it off for me, darling. Go on, before it gets cold.’
Scarlett did as she was told, though worry made it difficult to eat.
‘P’raps you ought to go to the doctor, Mum.’
‘Oh, doctors—I know what he’ll say if I do. Take a tonic and get some rest. Rest! Who’s going to do my work if I rest, that’s what I’d like to know.’
‘I could, if you’d let me.’
Joan patted her hand.
‘That’s very nice of you, dear, but you do quite enough to help round the place already. And you got your studies. You got to do well at school. That’s the way to get on in life.’
Scarlett sighed. She knew there was no shifting her mother on that point.
‘Well, get someone else in, then. Just someone to serve behind the bar on a couple of evenings, so you wouldn’t have to work every day. Everyone else has a day off a week, Mum. Why shouldn’t you?’
Unspoken between them was the fact that Victor went to football every Saturday afternoon and to the greyhound racing at Southend every Wednesday evening without fail.
‘Get someone in? A barmaid? Oh, I don’t know about that, lovey. We couldn’t afford the wages. Things are tight enough as it is, without starting paying other people to do what I can perfectly well do myself.’
‘But Mum—’
‘Look, I’m all right, see? There’s nothing wrong with me that another cup of tea won’t cure.’
She certainly didn’t look as white and clammy as she had done a few minutes ago. But Scarlett couldn’t shake the persistent anxiety gnawing at her overfull stomach. This wasn’t the first time her mother had had one of these turns.
‘But Mum—’
‘Enough said, pet, right? I don’t want to hear no more about it. We didn’t come into this world to have an easy ride. You got to keep at it, like Scarlett O’Hara. She never let anything stop her. Wars, famine, whatever, she still kept right on. That’s why I named you after her, Scarlett. I wanted you to be like her—fearless, not a little mouse like me.’
‘You’re not a little mouse, Mum.’
Scarlett had heard this story countless times before. It was one of her mother’s favourites.
‘Oh, but I was. Still am, really. Of course, I didn’t have much of a choice. I had to look after my mum and dad, didn’t I? First him and then her, both of them invalids. All those years.’
Joan sipped at a fresh cup of tea, looking inwards, back down the years. The commentator on the wireless was describing the crowds gathered for the coronation, but neither woman heard him.
‘Thirty-seven, I was, when poor Mum died. Never had a job, never went out dancing with young men, never done nothing except go to the library and borrow lots of books. Didn’t know how to do anything but run a house and look after invalids. And there I was, alone in the world with the rent to pay and no pension nor nothing coming in now they’d passed on, God bless them. So I thought I’d better get something doing the same thing. I couldn’t be a proper nurse—I didn’t have the training—but I thought maybe I could get something live-in with another invalid. And I guess I would have done just that, and been a poor old maid with no life of my own, if I hadn’t—’
‘—met my dad,’ Scarlett said for her.
Joan smiled. Her voice was soft with love. ‘Yes. Your dad. Oh, he was so handsome! Like a film star. Tall, dark, lovely black hair he had, just like yours, and those flashing dark eyes, and that lovely smile. Just waiting there at the bus stop he was. My fate. Just think, if I’d got there five minutes later, I’d of missed him, and then I wouldn’t be Mrs Smith now, and you would never of been born. Just think of that! No Scarlett in this world. No wonderful daughter to love and watch over. Best thing that ever happened to me, you are.’
‘Oh, Mum—’ Scarlett leaned over and gave her mother a hug. ‘You soppy old thing.’
‘I mean it,’ Joan insisted, hugging her back, stroking her hair. ‘I couldn’t ask for a better daughter than you. My Scarlett. Gone with the Wind. Oh, how I loved that book. Scarlett O’Hara was everything I wasn’t—she was rich and beautiful and brave and she didn’t care what she said or who she took on. And just look at you! You’re beautiful and brave, and maybe one day you’ll be rich.’
‘Oh, yes, and then I’ll have a big house with a swimming pool, like a film star,’ Scarlett said.
It was a game they often played, the When I Am Rich game. Sometimes it was Scarlett who was going to become rich, by marrying a millionaire or being a beauty queen, sometimes it was Joan, who was going to win the football pools.
‘Wasn’t so long since you wanted a pony and a pink taffeta dress.’ Joan sighed. ‘Now it’s a big house with a swimming pool.’
‘Yes, well, I’m fourteen now,’ Scarlett reminded her.
‘Fourteen. Quite the young lady.’
Joan held her daughter’s face between her hands and looked at her long and hard. Then she gave a nod and stood up.
‘Yes, quite grown up. Grown up enough to read Gone with the Wind. I’ll fetch it for you.’
She bustled out of the door. Scarlett started to clear the table and pile the plates up by the sink. At last she was going to be allowed to read the story that had figured in her mother’s tales ever since she could remember. Since she had joined the adult section of the public library, her hand had often hovered over a copy of the novel. She had even picked it up, opened it, read the first page. There was nothing to stop her from borrowing and reading it, nothing except the amazing grip it held on her mother’s imagination. It had been held out to her as a huge treat, something to look forward to, something almost as good as marrying a film star or winning the football pools, except that the sensible part of her knew that she would probably