Twenty-Nine

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ Cynthia shouted, over Robbie’s hysterical screaming. ‘You’ve made a rod to beat yourself with, that you have.’

Em was standing over her son, trying to persuade him to eat his breakfast.

‘Come on now, pet. You know Mommy’s got to go to work – and you’ll be here with Nanna, just like you always are. Now just calm down . . .’

Her quiet pleading suddenly cracked open and she snatched him up frantically from his chair, holding him in her arms and shouting into his tear-stained face, ‘Just stop it, Robbie! Stop this shrieking. You’ve got to eat your breakfast and behave yourself – I can’t stand any more of it!’

And then it was her turn to cry, all the strain and tension of the past week since Norm had come home pouring out.

‘Oh, Mom – what’m I going to do? He’s like a different child since his dad came back. I can’t stand to see him like this!’

Robbie, seeing his mother’s tears, cried even more.

‘Oh now, stop that, the pair of you. Come ’ere Robbie.’ Cynthia, still in her pale-blue nightdress with a cardie over the top, came and took her distressed grandson from his mother. ‘Look, I said this would happen, didn’t I?’ she grumbled, her own nerves on edge with all the screaming. ‘You’ve given in to him all the way along the line, sleeping with him, letting him have it all his way, as if the world revolved round him . . .’ Realizing that this lecture was not helping especially, she buttoned her lip.

‘Look, bab,’ she added more gently, stroking Robbie’s quivering back as he clung to her. ‘You get off to work. We’ll be all right. He’ll calm down once you’re gone.’

‘Mom, MOM!’ Robbie started to scream again at the top of his voice, kicking and struggling.

‘Robbie,’ Cynthia cried firmly. ‘Just stop that – now! D’you hear? Go on, Em, for heaven’s sake.’

Em, still crying, left the house, with obvious reluctance. Cynthia stood watching, jiggling her grandson on her hip. Now that Em had gone, he quietened gradually and she sat him down at the table again.

‘There you are, you silly thing. What was all that for, eh? Your mom’s just gone to work, that’s all. She’ll be back. Now you eat up – there’s a good boy. What a kerfuffle!’

Cynthia’s words rode on the back of a sigh. She began to clear the breakfast things away. Some days it felt as if the end of the war had made things more difficult instead of less. All that hope and expectation they’d had: that the war would make everything better, everyone trying so hard and doing without, in the grand cause of beating Hitler. And now look at us! she thought, going into the scullery to fill the kettle for washing-up water. We’re all crammed into this house, there’s even less to eat than before and no end of it in sight. What was the carrot now, to keep them all going?