Free A Woman's Place by Maggie Ford

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    Len Fenton was a man of few words but expected his authority to be respected. Stocky, having become slightly bow-legged as the years wore on, he looked the typical London Cockney. Uneducated though he was, he still had a good head for facts and figures, and although he rarely aired his opinions, when he did everyone knew immediately where they stood. His taciturnity would sometimes give Mum the impression that it was she who ruled this roost, then one word, one look from him would tell her that she didn’t. All in all, things in this house went along smoothly enough. Only Eveline, being very much like him except that she talked more freely, was a thorn in his side more often than not.
    To her relief Mum, involved in dishing up, eating, discussing the shop and the takings and the way money went out of the house, said no more about the someone her daughter had admitted to meeting.
    The evening meal was a time for lively chatter. No one ate in silence. Her younger brothers, nine-year-old Jimmy and seven-year-old Bobby, were giving each other lip until Mum, who’d been ladling gravy on to little Alfie’s plate – at not quite three he still needed help with his food – turned and tapped each squabbling boy sharply on the head with the gravy spoon. This left traces of gravy which they spread further into their hair as they vigorously rubbed away the sharp little pain from the contact of spoon on scalp.
    Seventeen-year-old Len was talking football to Dad. Very athletic, he was playing in his club’s Sunday match tomorrow and Dad was going there to cheer him on. May and Mum were discussing trivialities between mouthfuls of mash, cabbage and sausage but Eveline knew it was only a matter of time before Mum turned to her to hear more about this young man she’d met. It had to come – the way she kept glancing at her while talking with May.
    ‘So what’s ’is name, this bloke yer met?’ she finally asked as May got up to clear away the empty plates.
    Dad had gone to sit in his well-worn armchair by the fire to study football results in the
Evening Star.
He looked up enquiringly, but Eveline didn’t return his look as she got up to help her industrious sister.
    Mum’s eyes followed her. ‘Or didn’t he say what ’is name was?’
    She didn’t like the way it was being made to look as if she had been casually picked up. She had to correct that.
    ‘Of course he said.’ May came in for the rest of the debris and Eveline busied herself gathering up the tablecloth ready to shake over the kitchen sink, keeping her eyes down.
    There was no escaping her mother’s probing. ‘What was it then?’
    The name already felt at odds with the world she lived in. ‘It’s … it’s Laurence. Laurence Jones-Fairbrook.’ Strange that she could remember it, she who never had a great memory for names. ‘Larry,’ she ended lamely.
    ‘Good Lord!’ her mum burst out. ‘You don’t ’alf pick ’em! You ain’t goin’ ter see that one no more, I can tell yer. Bloke with a stuck-up name like that – yer won’t see ’im again.’
    Yes, she would – in three days time, at the pageant. And she was going to buy a new hat on Monday evening so as to impress him.
    ‘So, where did yer meet ’im?’
    ‘Up West.’
    ‘How? How did yer come by meeting a bloke with a name like that?’
    It was getting harder by the minute. She ignored the throaty cough from her father signalling his interest as well. She ignored too the stare from May. May, not working but seen as the good daughter, the stay-at-home who seemed to prefer household chores to going out of an evening; May being held up time after time as an example to herself.
    ‘I just met him, that’s all,’ she said a bit too sharply and hurried out to the kitchen with the tablecloth. Shaking it over the pots and pans lying in the sink she quickly folded it and thrust it in a kitchen drawer.
    Even out here there was no peace. May’s eyes were on stalks behind her round,