Far From Home

However, there was another quality to Kate, and that was her ability to see good in most people. She was a genuinely nice person, and it was her personality as well as the way she looked that drew people to her. The combination drew men as well, but Kate never took advantage of that – in fact quite the opposite, for she never encouraged them at all. At the dances she was lovely, polite and courteous, and danced with any man who asked her up, but it never went any further than that.

That had never bothered Susie much before, but three years had passed since Kate had come to live in Birmingham and Susie had met a man called Nick Kassel at the weekly dance. She thought he was one of the handsomest boys she had ever seen: his hair was jet black and so were his eyebrows, while his eyelashes ringed eyes of the darkest brown. He had a classic nose, beautiful, very kissable lips and an absolutely fabulous body, and it had seemed perfect when she realized that his mate, David Burton, was smitten with Kate.

However, Kate didn’t feel the same way about David. They met them every week at the dance and, though when Susie pressed Kate she admitted that she liked David, that was all she would agree to. So when Nick eventually asked Susie out, she had shaken her head regretfully; although she had longed to accept, she felt that after urging Kate to come to Birmingham, she could hardly just swan off and leave her, as she knew that Kate relied on her. Nick hadn’t really understood this and he had been quite grumpy when she’d tried to explain.

She had promised to redouble her efforts to try to get Kate and David together, but she knew that the time to talk about this was not on the tram on the way to town, especially with Sally there. So she pushed her concerns about David and Kate from her mind and there was a smile on her face as she greeted them both. ‘We don’t have to go into town to please Sally,’ Kate told her. ‘She is impressed enough by this place.’

‘You haven’t seen the cinema yet,’ Kate said. ‘The Plaza.’

‘The Plaza,’ Sally repeated, enthralled. ‘Even the name sounds exotic,’ she added, and was surprised when the two older girls laughed.

‘It’s all right for you two,’ Sally said hotly. ‘But I have never even seen inside a cinema. I can hardly believe that Kate is taking me in there to see a film tomorrow afternoon.’ And she spun around with the excitement of it all and hugged herself with delight.

Susie laughed. ‘Let’s go and have a dekko on the boards outside now and see what’s on.’

‘What about the tram chugging up the hill at this very moment?’ asked Kate.

‘What about it?’ Susie said. ‘There’ll be another one. Trams to town of a Saturday come every few minutes, you know that, and it won’t take us long to have a look outside the flicks.’

Kate gave in, and when they passed the chip shop, which was opposite the cinema, Sally said to Kate, ‘I can’t believe either that you have hot food like this on your doorstep – and such delicious food as well. Is that the chip shop you used last night, Kate?’

‘Yeah,’ said Kate. ‘There is one nearer down the Slade, but this one is better and gives bigger portions. And I was going to Susie’s anyway, so it seemed sensible.’

Sally nodded, but then they crossed the road and the cinema took all her attention. Just to stand so close to that wonderful emporium while they studied the boards outside gave her butterflies in her stomach.

‘The Lady Vanishes is on at the moment then,’ Kate said to Sally. ‘That all right for you?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Sally said with a squeal of excitement. ‘Going to the pictures is another thing I’ve never done in my life. I’d like to see anything.’

‘It’s just that it’s a Hitchcock thriller and that means it might be a bit frightening for you, that’s all.’

Sally shook her head. ‘No, I promise, I won’t be the least bit frightened.’

Kate smiled at the look of excitement on her sister’s face and she linked her arm and said, ‘Come on then, Sally. Birmingham, here we come.’

‘Yes,’ added Susie, taking hold of Sally’s other arm. ‘And if you think these shops are something special, girl, you ain’t seen nothing yet.’ And the three giggling girls hurried off to the tram stop. They had only to wait a few minutes before they spotted a tram at the bottom of the Streetly Road. As Sally watched it clatter up the hill, she said, ‘I saw trams when I came out of the train station last night, and I don’t mind admitting that I am really nervous of them.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Kate said with a laugh. ‘I was the same at first. Do you remember my telling you so in one of the letters I wrote when I first came to Birmingham. I was terrified the trams were going to jump off the rails when they took a corner at speed or something, especially as Susie had told me that there had been some accidents in the early days.’

‘Yeah, there were,’ Susie said, as the tram drew to a clanking stop beside them. ‘They are safer now, though,’ she assured her as they boarded.

‘We’ll take your mind off the journey,’ Kate promised. ‘Let’s go upstairs and it will be easier to point things out along the way.’

As the tram rattled and swayed down Slade Road towards the city centre, Kate and Susie told Sally all about the canals of Birmingham that ran behind the houses. ‘A lot of them meet at a place called Salford Bridge,’ Susie said. ‘But you’ll see this for yourself when we cross over the bridge in a minute.’

Once they were in sight of the canals, Sally admired the brightly painted boats she could see there, and was very surprised when Kate told her people lived in them. ‘When my Dad was young my Nan said he was always messing about on the canals. He learnt to swim in there when his brother pushed him in,’ Susie told them.

‘Bit drastic.’

‘Oh, I’ll say,’ Susie agreed. ‘He was glad after, though, because in the summer a lot of the boys used to strip off and go skinny-dipping in there. Still do as well.’

‘Oh, the boys do that in the rivers in Ireland too,’ Sally said.

‘I remember,’ Kate said. ‘And all the girls were forbidden to go near, never mind look.’

‘And weren’t you ever tempted to have a little peek?’ Susie asked with a grin.

Kate exchanged a look with her sister and admitted, ‘I was sometimes.’

‘And me,’ Sally said. ‘But I never did. I mean, Mammy would go mad if she found out, but really it was because I would have had to confess it to the priest.’

‘Oh, the priests in Ireland hold the morals of the young girls tight,’ Susie said. ‘And it annoys me sometimes that the boys have all the fun, but in this case – while I wouldn’t mind plodging in the clear sparkling rivers in Ireland – you wouldn’t get me near a mucky canal for love nor money.’

‘Nor me,’ Sally and Kate said together.

Sally turned her attention back to the sights. They were over the bridge now, leaving the canals to weave down behind the houses again. Kate said, ‘Now we are coming to Nechell’s, where you will see really squashed-up houses – I’d say not that much bigger than the canal barges.’

Sally agreed with her. ‘They don’t look real,’ she said. ‘And there are so many of them, all tightly squeezed together.’

‘Oh, they’re real all right,’ Kate said grimly. ‘They call them back-to-back houses. And you’ll see plenty more when we go through Aston.’

‘Yeah, Kate’s right,’ Susie said. ‘And we’re coming to Aston Railway Station now.’

Sally looked around her with interest. They passed a large brick building that Kate told her was a brewery and a big green clock that had four faces on it, standing in a little island all on its own; it was surrounded by all manner of shops, very like those at Stockland Green. Susie told her, ‘There are factories too. Small ones tucked in beside the houses.’

Sally shook her head. ‘It’s all so different from Ireland,’ she said. ‘You must have found it all strange at first, Kate.’

‘Oh, I did,’ Kate admitted. ‘And for a time I was really homesick, but it was something I knew I had to get over. But now I’ve made my life here and I wouldn’t ever want to go back to Ireland to live. And look, we’re passing the fire station now and soon we’ll turn into Steelhouse Lane and reach the terminus.’

‘Steelhouse Lane is a funny name for a street.’

‘Not if the police station is on the street too,’ Kate answered. ‘And opposite is the General Hospital and that’s another hospital that used to be a workhouse.’

‘Yes, and people have got long memories,’ Susie said. ‘Mom says there are old people today who still refuse to go in that hospital.’

And Sally could understand a little of the trepidation people felt when she alighted from the tram and stood before the solid brick building of the General Hospital. It had a great many floors and she imagined all the poor inmates housed in there when it had been in use as a workhouse. ‘Come on,’ Kate said to her sister, catching hold of her arm, ‘there are much more interesting places to look at.’

Sally tore her eyes away from the hospital and allowed herself to be led up the wide, tree-lined street with tram tracks running up the middle of it that Susie told her was called Colmore Row. They passed an imposing building with arched windows to the front and supported by ornate pillars. ‘Another station,’ Susie said to Sally. ‘That one’s called Snow Hill.’

‘And if you look across the road you will see St Philip’s Cathedral,’ Kate said, and Sally looked across and saw the church set in a little oasis of green interspersed with walkways and benches set here and there. ‘It isn’t the Catholic one,’ Kate went on. ‘And I don’t think it’s very big to be a cathedral. I thought it would be much bigger than it is.’

‘I would have thought so too,’ Sally said. ‘It’s pretty, though. I bet when the light shines through those stained-glass windows it’s lovely inside.’

Susie nodded in agreement. ‘We’re going to cross over the churchyard now because we want to show you the shops.’

The pavements on New Street were crammed with busy shoppers and the road full of traffic, and because the cloud was so low and dense, like on the previous day, many had their headlights on, glimmering through the slight mist. But the shops were magnificent, many of them with more than one floor and so fine and grand that Sally said she was a little nervous. Her anxiety wasn’t helped by the frightening-looking man in uniform standing outside the first shop they came to. ‘What‘s he doing?’ she said quietly as they drew nearer.

Susie and Kate laughed. ‘He’s a commissionaire,’ Susie told Sally. ‘He stands there to keep the riffraff out.’

‘Like us you mean?’ Sally said with a laugh.

‘No, not like us at all,’ Susie said in mock indignation, and with a broad grin she pushed open the door with a confident air. Sally, her arm linked in her sister’s, followed her more cautiously, blinking in the shimmering lights that seemed very bright after the dull of the day. Kate smiled at the rapt attention on her sister’s face as they wandered around the store, remembering how she had been similarly awed in her initial forays into the city centre.

The models were draped in all sorts of creations, fashion able clothes the like of which Sally had never seen, and in materials so sheer or so luxurious that the spectacle rendered her speechless for a moment. She loved the vast array of colours used. She remembered the dullness of the shops in her home town, where material for their clothes was purchased at the draper’s and run up by a dressmaker. ‘Nice, aren’t they?’ Kate said as she saw Sally gently touching a velvet rose-red ball gown.

‘Oh, far more than just nice,’ Sally said. ‘And the colours, Kate. Do you remember the way it was done at home: straight up-and-down clothes with no style to them at all?’

‘I remember it well,’ Kate said with a grimace. ‘And the colours on offer were invariably black, grey, navy blue or brown. But to be truthful, though we thought it would be fun to show you the store, most of what they sell is too dear for my purse. Susie has a bit more left over at the end of the week than me, don’t you?’ she asked her friend.

‘Yeah, because I still live at home,’ Susie said. ‘But I still have an eye for a bargain. I don’t want to throw money away.’

‘And the bargains are to be had in the Bull Ring, which is where we are going later,’ Kate said. ‘But for now come and look at the hats,’ and she led the way up a short flight of stairs.

There were hats galore, of all colours, shapes and sizes, displayed on head stands or on glass shelves. Most were breathtakingly beautiful, decorated with ribbons and bows or the occasional feather and veil. Others were frankly bizarre: artistic constructions that looked ridiculous and even comical.

Sally smiled at the thought of the stir it would cause if she was to wear any one of those to Mass at home. But still she said to the others, ‘Wouldn’t you love to try some of these on?’ And she spoke in a whisper because it was the kind of place where to whisper seemed appropriate.

‘Shouldn’t, if I were you,’ Susie warned. ‘Not with hatchet face looking on.’ Sally followed Susie’s gaze and saw a very haughty woman behind a nearby counter who seemed to be keeping a weather eye on them, and so they wandered back to the main floor. No one paid them any attention there because it was very busy and Sally watched the smart shop assistants standing behind gleaming counters, confidently punching numbers into gigantic silver tills. Sally had seen tills before, but never any so large or magnificent.

They visited other stores, too: Sally found the most entertaining were those that had no tills at all. There the assistant would write out the bill and put it with the money into a canister. This would be carried on wires crisscrossing the shop until it reached the cashier who would sit in a high glass-sided office. She would issue a receipt and this, together with any change, would be put into the canister and the process reversed.

After Sally had watched this a number of times, Kate said, ‘If I’d known that this would entertain you so much, I wouldn’t have bothered to take you to town at all. I could have just taken you to the Co-op by the Plaza and you could have watched it all afternoon – they use the same system.’

‘Do they?’ Sally said. ‘I think it’s a great way of going on.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Kate said with a smile. ‘But I want to pop into C and A’s as we pass Corporation Street on our way to the Bull Ring. Let’s see what you think of an escalator.’

‘What’s an escalator?’

‘You’ll soon find out,’ Kate said, taking her sister’s arm in a firm grip and leading her into the street.

‘They move,’ Sally exclaimed a little later. ‘They’re like stairs but they move up on their own.’

‘And down,’ Susie said. ‘Round the other side they go down as well. D’you want a go?’

Sally shook her head. ‘I’d be scared.’

‘Nothing to it,’ Kate said airily.

‘Oh, just hark at her,’ Susie said with a hoot of laughter. ‘Let me tell you, Sally, your sister was shaking like a leaf when she went on the escalator first.’

‘I was not!’

‘Yes, you were,’ Susie said. ‘I well remember it. Come on, Sally,’ she said, offering her arm for Sally to link, which she took gratefully. ‘Don’t let Kate get one over on you. Show her how brave you are.’

‘Right, I will then,’ Sally said, and stepped forward, boldly holding Susie’s arm.

After the initial tingles of nervousness, Sally enjoyed the escalator, and went up and down quite a few times and on her own too before Kate and Susie could get her off it. ‘I’ve had such a lovely time already,’ she said as they hurried along. ‘And now I have the Bull Ring to look forward to.’

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