Closer than Blood: Friendship Helps You Survive

‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘Where we off to? Aren’t you taking me back, then?’

‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘I thought it was time I took you home to meet the family. Mam said she’d do us a pot of tea and some bread and dripping.’ He turned towards her. ‘If you want to, that is. Just for a bit. Nothing formal. Then I’ll walk you back before I meet the lads.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ Shirley said politely. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Though the truth was that as soon as the words were out of his mouth, she felt nervous as hell. What if they didn’t like her? What if they thought she was stuck up? What if they took the mick out of her like his sister Annie had? What if – she blanched at the thought – Annie was actually there?

‘They’re going to love you,’ Keith reassured her, as if reading her mind. ‘Though I’m not sure a posh bird like you is going to love them,’ he added, bursting out laughing as he ducked to avoid the slap that came winging his way.

The Hudsons lived on a road called Tamar Street, in the middle of the sprawling Canterbury estate. Shirley hadn’t been here before, but she knew all about it. Everybody in Bradford knew all about the Canterbury estate. According to her mam and dad, the people who lived there were as hard as they came and didn’t give a bugger about anything.

Actually walking through it was another eye opener. It was even bigger than she’d imagined – almost like a whole town in itself – and with her only ever having lived in a village before, it seemed a lot scarier, too. By the time they got to Keith’s street she was so nervous about her surroundings that she was seriously regretting having agreed to come. What would the sort of people who lived here think of her?

Shirley remembered meeting John Arnold’s mum and dad back when she’d first started seeing him and the butterflies that had danced in her stomach then. They were all taking flight again today, only more so. Stop being silly, she kept telling herself. You’re almost 18 now. A grown woman! But the closer they got and the more the contrast between her life and theirs became obvious, the more her stomach lurched at what Keith’s family would make of her.

The first thing that struck her was the enormous front garden, though ‘garden’ was probably the wrong word. The word ‘garden’ meant something very different from what she saw now. Her own front garden was a fenced area in front of their house, neat and trim, with emerald grass that her father mowed religiously every Sunday.

This front garden looked nothing like that. It was huge, for one thing, and it was also a state – there was no other word for it. The grass was overgrown – in fact, there was no grass in places, just patches of dried mud, cracked and crazed from the sun. It was littered with broken bike wheels and various planks of wood, and at the bottom, by the fence, was an old bomb shelter.

‘The big houses all had one,’ Keith explained, as they walked up the concrete path. ‘They built one on each street so that during the war all the families on each street could use them when there were air raids.’

Shirley had never seen a proper air-raid shelter before. She could barely remember the air raids themselves, but her mam had told her that when the sirens went they used to go down Granny Wiggins’s cellar, so this was something completely new to her.

‘What’s down there now?’ she asked Keith, wondering about the doubtless dank, spidery darkness of it.

‘Probably a load of old junk,’ Keith said. ‘All us kids have played in it over the years. Our Joe and David had it as their den last, so God knows what they had stashed down there.’

They reached the front door, which, from the remaining strips of paint still gamely clinging to it, was a glossy black a long time ago. Keith squeezed her hand again. ‘Don’t be shy, Shirl,’ he told her. ‘And don’t expect too much, either,’ he added, as he pushed the door open and pulled her into the hallway. It was the first time she’d had a sense that he might be self-conscious about where he lived, and it immediately made her love him even more.

Once inside, the first thing that hit Shirley was the noise. The small hallway led to stairs and a couple of doorways, the first of which Keith now pushed open. The volume, already loud, was now almost ear-splitting, as her eyes took in what looked like about 20 different people, young and old, tall and short, and all seemingly talking at once.

It couldn’t be 20, surely, Shirley thought distractedly as she hovered behind Keith in the doorway. But it was certainly more people than she’d ever seen gathered in anyone’s room. There were adults of all ages – some holding babies – kids and teenagers – she could hardly take everything in. And in the middle of it all, sat a man – must be Keith’s father, she reckoned – who’d lowered the newspaper he’d been reading, presumably to get a look at the visitor.

Shirley smiled at him politely, and though he didn’t smile back, she would have said hello to him as well, were it not for the fact that almost as soon as their eyes had met, he rattled his paper and retreated behind it again.

‘Mam!’ Keith called across the room to an older woman who was stirring a pot on a big cooking range. ‘This is Shirley. I’ve fetched her for a cuppa if there’s one going.’ He then turned to Shirley and stepped aside so she had nowhere to hide. As she’d expected, everyone suddenly seemed to notice her. ‘This is my mam,’ he told her. ‘Annie. And that grump in the armchair over there’s my dad, Reggie. Come on,’ he said, tugging on her hand. ‘I’ll find us somewhere to sit.’

The room went from the front of the house all the way to the back, and was divided into a front half, which seemed to be for sitting, and a back half, which housed a dining table and was presumably where they gathered to eat. But how on earth did so many manage to get round it? She followed Keith into the back, then looked on nervously as he poked two young lads who were sitting in chairs at the table. ‘Shift it, you two,’ he barked, grabbing the closest by his shoulder. ‘Me and Shirley want to sit down.’

So that must be it. They didn’t. They took turns. The two boys, who Shirley judged must be his younger teenage brothers, certainly stood up without complaint and relocated to the floor, where they looked Shirley up and down curiously. She heard a female voice from behind her then. ‘That’s our Joe and David. They’re the youngest of the clan.’

She turned around. It was Keith’s sister, Annie, who’d obviously walked in from the back garden – the door was still open – and looked completely different from how she had before. For starters, she had a toddler perched on her hip and a young girl clinging to her arm, who looked about four.

She looked different. She had rollers in her hair, which was covered by a headscarf, but even so, with her painted eyebrows and ruby red lips, she still managed to look stunning. ‘I wondered when he’d bring you home to meet Punch and Judy and the rest of us,’ she said, grinning at Shirley as she set the little boy down on the floor.

Shirley found herself unexpectedly pleased to see her. And to see her so friendly and welcoming, rather than spiky and sarcastic. In any event, her presence immediately made Shirley feel much less ill at ease. She sat down at the seat Keith was now holding out for her at the table and found herself looking straight at the news. She blinked. Instead of a lacy tablecloth like the one they had at home, the Hudsons’ table was neatly covered in the pages of old newspaper.

‘Cheeky mare!’ Keith’s mum was saying, reaching to clip her daughter round the head. ‘I’ll give you Punch and bloody Judy! Here you are, Keith – two pots o’ tea for you and Shirley. Do you want any stew?’

Annie pulled out another chair and joined them both at the table, while Shirley looked in wonderment at what Keith’s mam seemed to be handing to him. It looked for all the world like a couple of jam jars. ‘So you two finally got round to it, then?’ Annie said, as she lit a cigarette and addressed the children. ‘Go on, you two, back outside for another run round before we go home. Go on, hoppit!’

Shirley smiled shyly back at Annie. ‘We did,’ she confirmed.

‘Pack it in, sis,’ Keith said, taking the tea from his mam. ‘Don’t show poor Shirley up.’

Shirley looked down at what he’d placed before her. She’d been right. They were actually jam jars full of tea.

‘And no thanks,’ Keith told his mam. ‘We’re not staying long. Shirley, do you want some bread and dripping, though?’

Shirley caught the gazes of the two boys who were still on the floor looking at her, feeling as if every eye in the room was on her now. It was only now that she really took in just how many people were crammed in there, including another older man who she thought she recognised at the far end of the room, on the sofa, also reading a paper. Would that be the famous (or, rather, infamous) Charlie? And the young woman, the spit of Keith, this one, except for her platinum blonde hair, also with a toddler on her hip. Shirley racked her brains, trying to recall all the names Keith had told her. So this must be his sister June. She looked far too young to be either Margaret or – what was the other one’s name? That was it. Eunice.

She returned all their smiles, then looked helplessly at her jam jar of hot tea. Where did she start? She wasn’t even sure how she’d pick it up without burning herself. Did everyone in the family have asbestos hands? She remembered Keith’s question. ‘No, thanks,’ she said, suddenly struck by the poverty she was seeing. ‘This is just fine,’ she added, gesturing to the jam jar in front of her. ‘My mam will have my tea made when I get home.’

‘You sure, love?’ Keith’s mam said. ‘It’s a long walk back to Clayton.’

‘I’ll have hers then,’ one of the boys on the floor piped up. ‘If you’re sure, like,’ he added, blushing furiously.

Which was pleasing. So at least she wasn’t the most scarlet cheeked in the room.

Shirley’s embarrassment subsided almost immediately, in fact. Keith introduced everyone; the other girl was June and the quiet one on the sofa did turn out to be Charlie. She’d been right; she’d recognised him from back when he’d been in court. Then there was another man who arrived just after they had – he was apparently Ronnie – with the same seemingly trademark slick of thick inky hair. And after the niceties had been observed and she’d finally dared to pick her tea up, the room returned more or less to the way it had been when she’d arrived.

She’d never heard so many people speaking and joking and laughing all at once, and she soon forgot about feeling sorry for them about all the things they didn’t have – no proper curtains, no carpets and, as Keith had already told her, no electricity – and instead she was soon feeling envious of what they did have and what she definitely didn’t: such a big happy family, such an obvious camaraderie, all those little ones, all that lovely hustle and bustle and noise.

The noise, in particular, felt so strange, but in a good way. Apart from at the weekends, when her mam and dad got drunk (which was always horrible), Shirley was used to polite chit chat, order, meals eaten in silence. This was a much more exciting way to live – as far as she was concerned, anyway – and helped make sense of the way Keith was always so confident and easy going, so at one with himself. She couldn’t wait to embed herself within it.