Born to Trouble by Rita Bradshaw Page A

house with the boys after leaving the perambulator by the back door. She looked dirty and unkempt, and her features had coarsened over the last couple of years. She was fanning herself with one of the penny magazines she loved to read, her blouse half undone and her breasts hanging slack.
    ‘Where the hell’ve you bin?’ She reached for the glass of gin at the side of her, knocking it back in one gulp. ‘There’s the dinner to see to.’
    ‘You said you wanted the bairns out of the way so I took them out.’ Both boys were holding a bunch of flowers, and as they offered them to their mother, Pearl said, ‘Look – they picked them for you.’
    ‘What do I want with flowers?’ Kitty flapped her hand at the children. ‘Put ’em on the table.’
    ‘I’m taking them straight up, they’re tired out. I’ll see to the dinner when I come down. It’s cold meat and potatoes. I didn’t think you’d want anything warm with the weather being like this.’
    When her mother made no reply to this but poured herself another tot of gin, Pearl took her brothers upstairs. She and the boys shared their older brothers’ room now, all sleeping together in the double bed the room held. James and Patrick were barely awake when she undressed them, and fell asleep as soon as their heads touched the pillow. She stood looking down at them for a moment before kissing each small brow. They were growing so fast, they wouldn’t be babies much longer, she thought with a pang. She wished they could remain babies for ever, ignorant of anything outside their small world of eating, sleeping and playing.
    Turning abruptly, she made her way downstairs and brought out the smoked bacon and potatoes which had been left over in the pantry on the cold slab from the previous day’s dinner, adding a loaf of bread and pat of butter to the table.
    It was as they were finishing their meal that Kitty said nonchalantly, ‘Mr F is comin’ by shortly, so make sure the front room’s clean an’ tidy. He likes things proper, Mr F.’
    Pearl put down her knife and fork; she suddenly had no appetite for the remainder of the food on her plate. Her mother always referred to her regulars by the first letter of their surnames – Mr T, Mr W, Mr A – but of the several or so men who called at the house on certain nights, it was only this one individual, Mr F, she was frightened of. If any of the others caught sight of her, they would often smile and say hello, and even toss her a coin or two and tell her to buy some sweets, but Mr F wasn’t like that. She shivered deep inside. He just stared at her with that funny look on his face, his eyes going all over her and making her feel she had to wash wherever they’d touched, as though they’d left a trail of slime like the slugs did.
    ‘I don’t like him,’ she said flatly.
    ‘Don’t start that again. You don’t know when you’re well off, that’s your trouble, madam.’ Kitty glared at her daughter, taking in the sunflushed cheeks and luminous eyes with their thick lashes. It seemed as though with every month that passed, Pearl got lovelier, and the dislike she had always felt for this flesh of her flesh verged on something stronger these days. ‘Get your backside off that chair,’ she went on, ‘an’ earn your keep – an’ you can change the sheets on the bed while you’re about it. Mr F likes clean sheets.’
    As Pearl looked at Kitty, there came to her a strange thought. Her mother would have done what she did in the front room sooner but for marrying at sixteen, and she would have been happier. It was only her father, and then Seth, who had prevented her from going down this road years ago. There had been talk in the wash-house among their neighbours for months now – she’d heard them whispering when they thought she wasn’t listening or didn’t understand. But her understanding had been broadened considerably since Seth had gone. The neighbours thought her mother was a trollop, and Mrs Cook