Jellied Eels and Zeppelins by Sue Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

Years later, the girl had a flat down our road. She had married another man - nobody knew who the father of the baby was and I never knew what happened to it.
    I wasn’t like that at all. In fact, Dad told us that if we ever got into trouble, we’d be out! I remember at work in the factory one day, a male colleague walked past me and slapped my bottom. I objected, as that was not allowed, and reported him to my foreman, who thoroughly reprimanded the man. Even though the other girls did not like anything like that happening, I was the only one who ever reported an incident of that kind and for that I was labelled ‘The Prude.’
    I was 15 when I started going out with this chap called Bobby. I met him at Ensign. He worked in a different department. I got engaged to him when I was 18 or 19, something like that. If we went to the pictures, he would pay to get in and I would buy the sweets. I used to sit indoors waiting for him to turn up. My friend, Doris, used to say ‘He’s pulling your leg,’ but I wanted evidence that he was cheating on me. I was with him for seven years in all.
    One year, we had to make some royal blue box cameras for Black Cat cigarettes. They were giving them away if you saved so many coupons in packets of cigarettes. To get this big quota out, we had to work all over Easter, then we could have bank holiday Monday off. So I thought ‘That’s good,’ ‘cos I was saving up to get married.
    Anyway, when I told this chap that I would be working, he said ‘We’ll go out on Monday then. I’ll be down for you at 2 o’clock and we’ll go to the fair at Lea Bridge Road, Leyton. (My Mum and Dad had gone down to my sister’s for the weekend.) By 6 o’clock, he still hadn’t turned up. When he did eventually come round, I asked him where he had been. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I popped round to my uncle’s and couldn’t get away.’ I noticed that he had dust all over his boots, so I asked ‘How did you get your boots so dirty?’ He said ‘That was when I walked round to my uncle’s. I took a short cut.’ So I left it at that.
    We never went to the fair - we just went for a walk. On Tuesday, when I went back to work, I spoke to a friend of mine, Lily, who seemed pretty reasonable, and asked her how she enjoyed her bank holiday. She replied ‘My friend and I went out and we went to the fair. And we met two fellas. We didn’t leave there ‘til gone five. We stung ‘em proper for money. And, do you know the field opposite?’ (There was this field opposite, you could walk through there and that used to bring you to the top of my road in Coppermill Lane, near the reservoir). ‘Well,’ she said, ‘My friend was waiting for the bus and the chap that was with me, walked me across the field and started taking liberties, so I hit him on the chin and knocked him out!’ (Lily was a Cockney, you know.) ‘Rotten devil - wanted to make us pay for the money he’d spent on us, I suppose.’ And then she asked ‘What did you do on your bank holiday Ethel?’
    While I was telling her what had happened, I showed her a photo with Bobby in it. She said ‘That chap in the back row. Is he a friend of yours?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, fancy picking someone like that,’ she said. ‘How do you mean?’ I said. ‘Well, you know that fella over the field? That was ‘im!’ When I told her that he was my fiancé, she said ‘Oh, I’m sorry, perhaps I made a mistake.’ But I said ‘No, you haven’t made a mistake, I have,’ and I packed him up straight away after that. I had my proof.
    When Dad asked me why I had finished with Bobby, I said ‘I have my reasons. I’m not a child.’ Dad liked Bobby, and I’m sure that Bobby had told him a different story as to why we had broken up, saying that it was me who had been out with another fella, when in fact I had been out with a girlfriend one evening.
    Dad wasn’t happy and accused
me
of cheating. We had an almighty row and I told him - and it was