Cuckoo in the Nest. Michelle Magorian

Mrs Egerton-Smythe?’

      ‘I dunno. No one tells me anything.’

      He laced up his boots and attempted to hide the tremor of excitement he felt at doing up the raincoat.

      ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he said at the door.

      ‘Prompt’, said Queenie.

      He hovered outside the stage door. He wanted to be seen in the raincoat. He hoped his hobnailed boots didn’t spoil the effect too much. He removed his cap, held it behind his back and stepped in. Wilfred was sitting in his cubby-hole reading a newspaper. He looked up and frowned. ‘I just came to thank you,’ said Ralph hurriedly.

      The man’s face unfolded. ‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognise you. ’Ow’d it go?’

      ‘It went well. I didn’t get a job, but I hope to be allowed to attend the strike this Saturday.’

      ‘Good,’ he said, and he returned to his newspaper.

      Ralph gazed awkwardly at him. ‘Well, cheerio, then.’

      Wilfred looked up again. He gave a wave. ‘Cheerio, lad.’

      Ralph cycled home disappointed. He had wanted the man to leap up and down and say, ‘Well done, lad! You’ll go far. Mark my words.’

      It was pitch black when he wheeled his bike into the street. A tiny slip of light was shining across the pavement from Elsie and Joan’s room. He ran round to the yard and leaned his bike by the wall. His father’s bike was not there. Relieved he ran to the back door, flung it open and ran straight into a damp sheet.

      Of course, it was Monday. The room was still slightly warm from the copper’s being stoked all day. He wiped his feet and opened the scullery door to the kitchen. Elsie was sitting at the end of the table, head down, scribbling at tremendous speed as if her life depended on it. Harry sat near her with a dogeared comic. His mother emerged from under the cascades of washing which were hanging from a wooden clothes rack from the ceiling. Months ago he had been embarrassed at the sight of male and female underwear swinging amongst sheets and shirts and petticoats. Now he took it all in his stride.

      ‘Ralphie!’ she began, and then gaped at his trench coat.

      At that moment, the door behind him swung open and Auntie Win entered. The two women gazed at him stupified. Ralph grinned.

      ‘It’s on loan,’ he said. ‘Till it stops raining.’

      ‘What do you look like?’ said his aunt.

      ‘Inspector Gideon of the Yard,’ said Harry in awe.

      ‘It’s soaked,’ said his mother, feeling it. ‘You’d better hang it up.’

      She lowered the wooden clothes rack. Ralph hung the raincoat over the end and watched his mother haul it up. ‘Where’s Joan?’ said his aunt.

      ‘In her room,’ said his mother, ‘changing. You’d better get out of your togs too,’ she said looking at his aunt’s sodden coat. ‘So how did it go, Ralphie? I kept wondering what you were doing in all this rain.’

      ‘Getting to know the garden shed.’

      There was a sound of a whirring bicycle in the yard. Suddenly Elsie gathered up her books and Harry grabbed her satchel. In seconds they had gone. A waft of cold air billowed in.

      ‘Shall I disappear too?’ he asked.

      ‘You’d best face the music sooner than later,’ she sighed.

      His Auntie Win draped her coat in front of the range and rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan as if to do battle. His mother, noticing this defiant gesture, turned away hurriedly to look at the supper.

      Harry returned and sat on his father’s bed, bouncing up and down.

      The scullery door opened and his father slumped in, visibly smaller. Ralph gazed helplessly at him. Harry shot off the bed and stepped towards him grinning. ‘Well, Dad?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Did you ask? Did you ask about me?’

      His dad looked startled. Harry could hardly contain himself with excitement. ‘What did they say? Did you tell them I only got a few months to do?’

      He made school sound like a prison sentence, thought Ralph.

      ‘Harry, sit down,’ said his mother. ‘Can’t you see your dad’s tired.’ She glanced up at Ralph. ‘Can’t you all sit down. It’s crowded enough in here as it is,’ she said. ‘Elsie, lay the table.’

      ‘Elsie’s not ’ere,’ said Win.

      His father then looked at Ralph with such hatred it frightened him.

      ‘Bad, was it?’ his mother said softly.

      ‘It’ll pass,’ snapped his father.

      ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’

      ‘Mine?’

      ‘You shouldn’t have let him go to that grammar school. He don’t belong ’ere.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Ralph sardonically.

      ‘Don’t give me none of your lip.’

      He turned swiftly to Ralph’s mother. ‘He hand over his wages last Friday?’

      ‘Course he did.’

      ‘You hand over the same wages this Friday, lad, and no more fancy visits to that theatre.’

      ‘Joan goes to the cinema three times a week. Are you going to ask her to hand over all her wages?’

      ‘Joan works hard.’

      ‘So do I.’

      ‘Did, lad, did.’

      ‘Dad, they didn’t sack me because I wasn’t working hard enough.’

      ‘Don’t give me that. They need good workers.’

      ‘I’ll be a good worker, Dad,’ said Harry eagerly.

      ‘I was that ashamed today,’ he said angrily.

      ‘Why?’ argued Ralph. ‘Why didn’t you stick up for me? Isn’t that what real fathers are supposed to do?’

      ‘Are you telling me I’m not a real father to you when I get you a plum job?’

      ‘Doing what I hated doing!’

      ‘This is real life, sonny. Work’s work. You’re lucky to have it with so many ex-servicemen hunting for jobs.’

      His mother began laying the table.

      ‘Elsie should be doing that,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’

      ‘In her room.’

      ‘I’ll get her,’ said Harry hurriedly and he dashed out.

      There was a stony silence. His aunt sat back in her chair with a look as if to say, ‘Men, didn’t I tell you, Ellen?’

      His mother stood helplessly, the cutlery still in her hand. The door opened suddenly and Elsie appeared. She looked pale. ‘What you bin doing?’ roared her father. ‘You know you’re supposed to be helping. I’ll not have two layabouts in this house.’

      ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said quietly, and she took the cutlery from her mother.

      ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’ Elsie looked up startled. ‘I’ll ask you again. What have you been doing?’

      ‘Talking to Joan. She’s got another letter from Kay.’

      Ralph groaned inwardly. That would be another evening of Joan looking like a wet weekend because she could have been living the life of a movie star like her friend, instead of selling ladies’ clothes in