Closer than Blood: Friendship Helps You Survive

Shirley blinked at her. Fancy sending his bloody sister over to ask for him! So, for all his swagger, Keith Hudson was obviously not as brave as he liked to make out, then.

‘Well, you can tell him no thank you,’ she heard herself saying.

Annie Jagger drew on the cigarette again and blew some more smoke rings before answering. ‘You still seeing him, then?’ she asked finally. ‘That John Arnold lad?’

‘No,’ Shirley began, shaking her head. ‘We’ve split up.’

Annie Jagger nodded knowingly. ‘I should think you would an’ all, love! He’s a wimp, he is, John Arnold. Why’d you want to go out with a wimp when you could be going out with a proper man?’

Shirley stared at her, bristling at the dismissive sneer on her face now. Bar pointing out that ‘proper’ men asked for their own dates, which she didn’t dare to, she wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. But it seemed she wasn’t required to.

‘A lad like our Keith,’ Annie added, sending another inch of ash in the general direction of the ashtray, but missing and showering it on the table and over Shirley’s skirt instead. ‘A proper man, one who was off doing his bit for his country. While John bleedin’ Arnold was hiding behind your flarey skirts, love!’

Now Shirley really didn’t know what to say, and neither, it seemed, did Anita. She’d picked up her glass and was hiding as well – behind her beer. But, even as Shirley blushed, she felt a sudden rush of annoyance. No, he might not have been a fighter, but he wasn’t hiding from anyone – not as far as she could tell, anyway – and at least he’d always behaved like a gentleman towards her. He’d always treated her like a lady, right from day one. Buying her flowers, buying her chocolates, holding doors open for her. So, yes, she might have grown a little bored with him, but that was her business, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t for anyone else to say. Wasn’t for anyone else to be rude about him, either. Especially not this tiny little full-of-herself mouth on legs.

‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ Shirley said, pointedly brushing the ash off her skirt. It was her best one, and that annoyed her as well. ‘You can go and tell your brother that I wouldn’t go out on a date with him if he was the last man on earth.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, Anita looking on nervously, while Annie Jagger sat and glared at Shirley. She then scrunched out her half-smoked cigarette, raised her pencilled-in eyebrows and got to her feet. Shirley wondered if she should stand up as well, just to emphasise the difference in their heights, but then realised Keith’s sister was no longer scowling but smiling. Not that Shirley intended to return the compliment and smile back. Who did she think she bloody was?

Annie laughed then. ‘Ooh!’ she said, stepping delicately out and round to the other side of the table. ‘Game on, then, it is, love? Well, let’s see how long you can resist the Hudson charm, shall we?’

And with that, she sauntered back to her brother at the bar, hips wiggling suggestively as she picked her way through the dancers, soaking up the admiring glances that she was obviously used to gathering, like she was a magnet for every male eye in the room.

It came into Shirley’s head then. The words John had used two years back. He’d got quite cross, too – the day after they’d been in court, it was. Said her and Keith Hudson’s eyes had been just like a pair of magnets. And she’d had to say again and again and again just how ridiculous he was being. And then Keith Hudson had simply disappeared out of her life. And that had been that. Gone and forgotten.

But if that were so, why was she finding it so hard right now not to follow Annie Jagger’s progress back to her brother, just for her eyes to land again, however fleetingly, on his?

‘Jesus Christ, Shirley!’ Anita was spluttering, dragging her attention back. ‘It’s a wonder she didn’t clock you one! She’s a nutcase, she is!’

‘I don’t bloody care,’ Shirley said, picking up her glass and gulping a mouthful of beer down. Her fingers were trembling, which annoyed her even more. ‘She’s not laying down the law to me!’ she huffed as she set it down. ‘I have more than enough of that at home, thanks.’ She then picked up the glass again and downed the rest of the beer in a couple of swallows, before banging it more heavily onto the table. She had no idea if she was being watched but she bloody hoped so, just so she could press her point home and ignore them. ‘Come on, Anita,’ she said, all appetite for dancing now gone, not to mention the dreamy post-Cliff euphoria. ‘It’s getting late and I’m tired. We’re off home.’

‘But it’s only –’ Anita began protesting.

‘You stay if you like,’ Shirley said, leaving the table, ‘but I’m going home. I’m not staying here to be told who I should or shouldn’t be seeing. The cheek of her!’

Anita grabbed the cardigan she’d not long taken off and hurriedly shoved her arms into it as she followed Shirley out, via the far side of the dance-floor.

‘You all right?’ she asked Shirley. ‘Don’t let it get to you. Just take no notice.’

‘Oh, I will be. And I won’t! Who do those bloody Hudsons think they are?’

It was a thought she kept thinking for the entire 45-minute walk home, of necessity. As was their impromptu Cliff Richard and the Drifters sing-along – to quell the butterflies that were now dancing in her stomach.

Chapter 2 (#ufa6136de-ceb5-5303-ac0c-961130b740c2)

Shirley’s dad was in a worse mood than she’d seen in a long time. ‘One of those Hudson boys?’ he snapped at her. ‘Them from Little Horton? You’re bloody well not going out with him, and that’s that!’

It was nearly six o’clock and Shirley knew she’d have Keith knocking on the door any minute. And her mam hadn’t even finished pinning up her hair yet. ‘Mam, tell him!’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m 17 now and I’m working, so I should be allowed to go out with who I like!’

Though now she was wishing she hadn’t even told them. Well, wishing she hadn’t told her dad, at any rate. Her mam had been fine. But as for her dad … well, that had been something of a revelation. She never imagined in a million years that her dad even knew who the Hudsons were – he hardly ever left Clayton except to go to work, after all. But as soon as she’d said the name and where they came from, he’d gone berserk. The family’s reputation must have been even greater than she’d realised.

‘What’s wrong with being from Little Horton?’ Shirley’s mam tried on her behalf.

‘Yes, exactly,’ Shirley added. ‘Dad, you’re just being a snob.’

‘Everything!’ Raymond barked, all the veins in his neck bulging. ‘It’s that bloody Charlie Hudson’s brother from Canterbury, that’s who it is! How the bloody hell did you get mixed up with the likes of him?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with him!’ Shirley began, as her mam tried to finish her hair off. Not that easy when she was finding it almost impossible to keep still. ‘He’s –’

‘So you say,’ her father carried on, talking right over her. ‘Oh, I know how this has happened,’ he said suddenly, waggling a finger in her direction. ‘It’s that bloody Anita’s fault, isn’t it? It’s her got you mixed up with them, isn’t it? That friend of yours is never happy unless she’s gallivanting around the bloody town, that one!’

‘Why do you always blame Anita?’ Shirley shouted back, rising from the table. If there was one thing that annoyed her more than any other criticism, it was having it suggested that she didn’t make her own decisions. Actually, no – it was worse than that. What was really annoying was his suggestion that she let her best friend make them for her. The cheek! ‘It’s got nothing to do with Anita, Dad,’ she fumed. ‘I’m not a baby, you know! I make up my own mind. And I’ve made up my own mind about going out with Keith Hudson, so there!’

But he didn’t seem to be listening. ‘So you say,’ he huffed, marching back and forth across the front-room carpet, craning his neck every so often to look out into the street. ‘But she never liked that John of yours, did she? It’s all falling into place now. Is that why you’ve blown him out all of a sudden?’ He ran his hand through his hair, trying to haul the disobedient curls back into place. ‘And for one of them bleeding Hudson reprobates as well. Hell-fire, Shirley! You can do better than that.’

Shirley sat and fumed, cursing her honesty. She shouldn’t have told him. It was as simple as that. She should have lied, like so many other girls did, about where they were going, what they were doing and who they were doing it with – and for precisely the reason she was cursing herself now; because some fathers so obviously couldn’t see reason themselves. Who was her dad to say what Keith Hudson was like? He’d never even met him! Just listened to gossip and taken it as gospel, that was what, and now she was stuck with the distressing possibility that Keith would turn up and immediately be sent packing.

The thought was mortifying and she wished she’d been altogether more crafty – sneaked out while he was looking the other way. As it was, he was very much in her way, seemingly determined to ruin everything, and she needed her mam to help her try to get him to see reason. Though if he didn’t, she decided, she was going out with Keith Hudson anyway, hook or by crook, whether her dad liked it or not. He wouldn’t wait around for ever, after all.

Up to now, it had to be said, Keith Hudson had been impressively patient. Well, perhaps persistent was the better word, Shirley decided, and she decided she liked that a lot. She had no idea what his sister had reported of their conversation at the Lister’s a fortnight previously, but she had a hunch – given what Anita had told her about Annie – that she would have repeated it verbatim. Probably would have enjoyed doing so as well, Shirley reckoned, given the mischievous gleam she’d had in her eye.

But whatever the facts, two other facts had subsequently become clear – that she couldn’t seem to get Keith Hudson out of her mind and that, even if she had, he’d have popped straight back in again, because he’d certainly been popping up in person. It felt like he’d been everywhere these past couple of weeks, showing up when least expected; he’d suddenly started going to Farmer Giles’s coffee bar – where she and Anita often hung out when they were bored – and he’d turned up for the Saturday matinee at the picture house, too. He’d even been waiting outside the sewing factory Shirley worked at. She’d come out after her shift on the previous Monday and there he’d been, large as life – well, actually, not so large in Keith’s case – casually leaning against the bus stop, smoking a cigarette.

‘You again?’ she’d said, trying to come across as offhand but failing miserably, as the colour tracked up her cheeks and her stomach danced a jig. ‘You’re like a bloody bad penny, you are,’ she added, ‘always showing up. Haven’t you got anything better to do?’

She waved off her work friends, who were all in danger of getting the giggles and embarrassing her even further. Then she stood in front of him, conscious of his lingering, up-and-down look.

He grinned. He had the nicest smile ever, she decided, with his beautifully straight white teeth and the slight dimple in his chin. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can’t blame a bloke for trying, can you? Anyway, you’ll have to walk me home or you’ll be responsible for me losing half a week’s wages.’

Shirley shook her head in confusion. ‘And how exactly do you work that out?’

‘Well,’ Keith explained, ‘our Annie bet me a pound that you were too much of a snob to let a tyke like me take you out, and I really can’t afford to lose a pound, Shirley.’ He winked. ‘So you’ll have to take pity on me, won’t you?’

She’d refused, though. Same as she’d refused on the Tuesday and Wednesday, but then on the Thursday night, when she’d gone out with Anita to the Ideal Dance-hall and he’d turned up there as well, she’d finally succumbed to the feeling in her tummy that, try as she might to ignore it, simply wouldn’t go away.

‘Yes, okay then!’ she’d almost huffed at him, after his casual announcement that she really didn’t know what she was missing. Because that was the problem; she was beginning to think she did know. Or, at least, that she was very keen to find out, however much it galled her to know Annie blinking Hudson was obviously right about her falling for the legendary Hudson charm.

There was also the issue of the pound she’d owe her brother, which Shirley reckoned served her right. So they’d made arrangements for Keith to bring her back there on the Saturday night, when there was a band playing that she liked.

The intervening 48 hours had felt like the longest in Shirley’s life, as if time had slowed down especially to annoy her. And now, at the eleventh hour, with him due to knock on the door at any minute, her blasted dad could go and ruin everything.

He was beyond angry now. She could tell. He’d just said ‘bleeding’ and he never said that word unless he was about to blow a fuse. And the thought of him blowing a fuse at Keith Hudson was unthinkable. He’d run a mile and probably never come back. Probably think she wasn’t worth the trouble after all.

Shirley decided to change her tack. Perhaps taking him on wasn’t the best way of going about things. ‘Please, Dad,’ she begged, softening both her voice and her expression. ‘Keith’s not like his brothers. Honestly, he isn’t. He’s really nice and he’ll be here calling for me in ten minutes. Please don’t show me up, Dad. I couldn’t bear it.’

Shirley’s mam had picked up a tin of lacquer and was now spraying the Tony Curtis quiff she’d created in Shirley’s hair. ‘Raymond, leave the lass alone,’ she said, as the can hissed around her. ‘I mean it. She does right playing the field for a bit instead of getting herself tied down to the first man she meets. How else is she going to meet mister right?’

There was a heavy emphasis on the ‘right’ bit, but Shirley’s dad didn’t seem to notice.