Sugar Baker – Chapter I

Forty one days before the Germans went into Poland my family went to Margate, and Father passed so briefly through my life. Back home in East Ham, the summer was close and muggy. There was a sugar bakery near our house and the fumes had gotten unbearable, seeping and reeking with clammy sweetness sticking to the very air we breathed. There were times when you felt you were inhaling syrup and it set your throat on fire, so you can imagine how we welcomed our escape to the coast. In her quieter moments, Mother would soothe me with talk of how ‘Father’s skin had a glow smooth as them gold canes stacked by the wall’ as we walked along by the bakers. ‘Beautiful Nettie, he was. Just beautiful.’ And that was all she’d ever say, lifting her eyes to the clouds and making me feel impolite to probe any further. And so I never did. Somehow this brought me relief, as well as a funny kind of consolation.

Margate’s sea air was meant to blow away the heat, but looking back I wonder if it fanned a different kind of fire for me. One that never did go out. When I asked Mother why my skin was darker than most or why Father had gone away or what it meant when the girls on the corner sneered ‘my golly’ and pulled at my cardi for no good reason I could see, Mother told me that ‘all kinds of misfortune could befall a man with his background’ and that it wasn’t for me ‘to be querying the mysteries of God’s creation.’ Sometimes she said X and sometimes she said Y but basically she said that that was that, that I should be grateful for small mercies, and that he wasn’t coming back. Was gone for good, in fact. He could be dead for all she knew (sign of the cross). And how was she to know that there was someone watching him so closely and so ready to tell me all that they knew, even though I’d never asked them for it?

*
Isle of Wight, Ramsgate, Southend, Cliftonville, Shoeburyness – we went to all the greats, the fun-filled resorts and pleasure beaches of the day. Though we were far from what you might call flush, our merry outings were a matter of custom to the family and we put savings aside all year round, like alms intended for the Church collection box.

That summer of 1939 I plunged my toes into the cool yellow sand of Margate and watched hoof-prints loom and fade at the shoreline as my cousins rode on donkeys down the bay. We were staying in the Granville Lodgings near the beach and Mother and I shared a room overlooking nothing but a white brick wall that plunged to a damp court-yard below. I did so cherish the open skies and long horizons of the coast when they were laid out before me. And I loved to swim in those dear dear English waters. I slept in my bathing costume some nights and each morning, before the others woke, I slipped from my bed and stole barefoot down the stairs. I ran across the Prom to the pool on the foreshore, inhaling great gulps of the day’s bright beginning, just to make sure I got enough of that clean air into my lungs to see me right til next time, just like Mother said I should.

Some mornings groups of fishermen would be on the front, fixing the nets they had draped on the railings and I wanted to ask if they had ever seen mermaids (though I must admit I never did). I longed to swim in the open sea but I was alone then, and I couldn’t bear the thought of seaweed grasping at my ankles or fish-hooks stabbing through my skin, never mind disappearing down the quicksand in Walpole Bay, so I stuck to the saltwater pool in the Lido. If truth be told, when you ducked and squinted your eyes at the water level you could imagine you were floating on the deep blue sea anyway, paddling and tumbling and basking just like the seals and porpoises in the Great Atlantic Ocean.

As a family we were accustomed to the water – seafarers and stevedores for generations, we’d been. Even Auntie Ellen who didn’t like to get her hair wet had won First Prize in the 1929 swim season and Uncle Jack was said never to be happier than when tied to a mast in high seas. Later, their son John would swim across the Channel smothered in goose fat while we all waited on the docks at Calais to cheer him over the finish line. At the waterside Auntie Annie whispered lewd jokes about how his woollen trunks’d probably shrunk in the sea and we stared right through our shame as he heaved himself onto the jetty. I say ‘we,’ as if we were united, but really that was only the half of it. We were and we weren’t, but there was so much I didn’t know. There was so much I would never really understand.

When I arrived at the Lido on that Sunday, July 24th 1939, the only other people at the pool were an old man in an old bathing suit and the Lifeguard on a high-chair at the side who had the look of Laurence Olivier about him: same amorous eyes and dimpled chin. I liked the way he smiled and nodded me good morning. In the cubicle at the poolside, I chucked off my clothes and sandles, not even bothering to hang them on the hook, and then dived straight in to the water and started practising front-crawl. No warm-up that morning since it was what you might call bracing, but I loved it all the same. I remember I could do five strokes without taking a breath and then when I did it was only from the side of my mouth and my face went straight back down in the water and my arms propelled me onwards as if I were a torpedo. I was hoping to compete next season, though I hadn’t said as much to anyone.

Up and down, up and down the lengths of the pool I went. I’d done 16 already – nearly a quarter of a mile – before I noticed a small group of boys had gathered at the waterside to stare. The Lifeguard was crouching down and beckoning me to the side. The boys were in a huddle, looking my way, exchanging words and glances. The Lifeguard seemed very aggravated, and blew his whistle til his face grew stern.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get out miss,’ his cheeks were red and his mouth had become awkward. The muscles of his jaw were pulsating. ‘These boys need the pool for training miss. Out you get.’ He stood up. ‘Come on now.’
‘What, now? Straight away?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Now. Out.’
Those boys didn’t look like they were in training, I must say. They looked podgy with puppy fat and grey about the gills to me. But the Lifeguard’s manner had taken such a turn that I was startled from the pool. The boy with the blunt cut hair had stepped forward to glare at me with a look that seemed so full of hatred that I didn’t much want to hang around.

I hauled myself up the aluminium steps at the side of the pool and dressed quickly, slinging the damp towel across my shoulder and tasting the salt upon my lips. As I walked past one of the boys gave me a hard little kick and a sneering smile – surreptitious like, so’s not to be noticed. He muttered something that I couldn’t catch beneath his breath. I winced at the kick and his pals let out a quiet cheer, so I didn’t bother rub the welt that I could feel was rising on my shin. A crisp breeze skimmed across my forehead and I looked down at my unbuckled sandals, nonplussed by what it was that made me feel such shame. In all honesty, I sensed the fire rising up inside and wanted so to hit them in the face for cutting short my swim and kicking me just like a bleedin’ mule would kick a dog. But instead I was just frightened, as if there were a whole crowd of glares and not these boys’ strange eyes boring into me. I knew right there and then that I had to cut my losses, beat a swift retreat and make my way back on these legs and feet that didn’t seem like mine no more.

*

When I arrived at the Granville Lodgings, breakfast had already started and I could hear the clink of spoons on china and Uncle Frank’s Capstan Navy laugh as I reached the bottom step. I felt so out of sorts, like I’d been set adrift. Mother was in the window with Aunt Kate. They waved me in ‘before you catch your death,’ and stood up to fuss and cluck and scrub me with the towel. Auntie Ellen was in curlers and Rose was in the corner trying to make sense of her ruffles with the Premier Laundwell iron while everyone else ate bread and jam and bacon and hoped no one’d notice if they supped their tea from saucers.
‘You mind you get clear of all that salt young lady before you enter church this morning,’ commanded Aunt Kate.
‘Never mind church our Nettie,’ said Uncle Frank grabbing me round the shoulder, ‘we’re all washing for posterity this morning aren’t we, Annie, eh?!’
‘That’s right,’ Auntie Annie grinned, ‘it ain’t a holiday without snaps! The Sunbeam man’ll be over here before long my girl. Now you get yourself upstairs and ready for the snap of the century. I want everyone outside and looking nice by 10 o’clock sharp.’ And so Mother shoved me gently up the stairs.

Auntie Annie and Uncle Frank always insisted on doing photos, whenever we went away. Even now I’ve got a battered case full of printed post cards, negatives, receipts and faded albums filled with the faces of people I don’t even know. When I look back at the snapshots of that July morning, it makes me glad to see that some of us spared time to crack a smile and put aside all thoughts of what we had waiting for us around that corner. They put me in the second row to hide my un-pressed slacks and I must say my shoulders do look rather broad in those puffy short white sleeves. Everyone seems so full of sunshine and so laid back, though I myself can see the trouble on my face. I often think of them as the very last of our clear moments before Father passed by me and the war came through and took it all away: Uncle Jack’s legs, Frank’s life, Ellen’s joy and the little ones until they returned, orphaned by the Blitz.

The man from the Sunbeam Studio turned up prompt so’s to catch everyone in their Sunday best – except that the boys Stan and Richie were still running around in trunks and pumps like little ballerinas and Cynthia was refusing to put on her frock. We were 22 women that day, as opposed to just 9 of the men. The older boys were already away, three months in to their military training – Royal Navy – what with war being in the offing and them wishing they could follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Those of ours that hadn’t gone were only spared on the basis of being dockers, a ‘reserved occupation’ essential to the war effort. And then there was Bernard who wasn’t able-bodied anyway. You can see him in the back row next to Frank and Jack, looking all wan and weedy.

*

After the photographs, I went upstairs, told to change into a skirt and take off that daft turban because what did I think I looked like, Lady Muck, or some third rate starlet from the movies. We weren’t in America, you know, Mother and Aunt Kate said before they left the Sunbeam Man behind and got on their way to church. I was in our bedroom rushing to fix up my hair when there was a knock upon the bedroom door.
‘Miss Cates?’
‘Yes?’
‘Call for Mrs Cates. Says its urgent.’
‘Right. Coming!’
I put my brush down, thrilled at the thought of a telephone call. I leapt up and out of the door, almost knocking down the messenger as I flew down the stairs two at a time to the hallway. We still didn’t have a phone at home.

Mrs Johnson was standing by the dresser, holding the receiver in one hand and a bundle of washing beneath the other arm. I smiled, and pointlessly ran the flats of my hands over my fresh skirt, and took the phone from her.
‘Yes? … Hello?’ I said, hoping I would sound just like Bette Davis in Jezebel. Mrs Johnson looked puzzled and walked away down the hall.
‘Olive Cates?’ the man said.
‘I’m afraid she’s not here. This is Miss Cates. Miss Nettie Cates.’
‘Right, well,’ he cleared his throat, ‘you don’t know me I’m afraid love, but I have some information that’ll see you right.’ The man spoke with an accent that came from home, make no mistake. ‘You can tell your mother that she will find one Harold McKay to the West of the pier this afternoon if she goes looking. He’ll be there with a group. Be sure to go and find him. He’ll be getting his deserts.’
‘I say, now look here … ‘
The line burred in my ear and the caller had gone. I replaced the receiver carefully and slowly returned to my room.