“Alfie,” she said, her face pale and tired from another night with so little sleep. “Alfie, wake up. It’s six o’clock.”
He groaned and rolled over, pulling the scratchy blanket over his head even though it meant his feet would stick out the other end, and tried to go back to sleep. He’d asked Margie for a new blanket, a longer and heavier one, but she said they couldn’t afford one, that times were too tough now for unnecessary expenses. Alfie had been having a dream where he set sail for North Africa but his ship was destroyed in a storm. He’d managed to swim to a deserted island, where he was living off coconuts and fish and having any number of adventures. He always had this dream whenever he read Robinson Crusoe, and he was halfway through it again, for the fourth time. He’d stopped reading the night before just as Crusoe and Friday were watching the cannibals arrive in canoes with three prisoners ready for the pot. A big fight was about to break out; it was one of his favorite parts.
“Alfie, I don’t have time for this,” said Margie. “Wake up. I can’t leave the house until you’re out of bed.”
Her voice was unforgiving; one thing that Alfie noticed about the way his mother had changed over the last four years was how harsh she’d become. She never played with him anymore—she was always too tired for that. She didn’t read to him before bed; she couldn’t, as she had to be back in the hospital by eight o’clock for the night shift. She talked about money all the time, or the lack of it. And she shouted at him for no reason and then looked as if she wanted to burst into tears for losing her temper.
“Alfie, please,” she said, pulling the sheets back so the cold got to him. “You have to get up. Can’t you just do this one thing for me?”
He knew he didn’t have any choice, so he rolled over onto his back once again, opened his eyes, and gave a tremendous yawn and stretch before climbing slowly out of bed. Only when his feet were both planted on the floor did Margie stand up straight and nod, satisfied.
“Finally,” she said. “Honestly, Alfie, I don’t know why we have to go through this every day. You’re nine years old now. A little cooperation is all I ask for. Now get some breakfast into you, have a wash, and go to school. I’ll be back around two o’clock, so I’ll cook us something nice for our supper. What do you fancy?”
“Sausages, beans, and chips,” said Alfie.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” said Margie, making a laughing sound that wasn’t really a laugh at all. (She didn’t laugh very much anymore. Not in the way she used to when she said she’d run off with the postman.) “Tripe and onions, I’m afraid. That’s all we can afford.”
Alfie wondered why she asked what he fancied when it didn’t seem to matter what his answer was. Still, he felt pleased that she would already be home when he finished school. It was usually much later before she got back from work.
“We’ll have a bit of tea together,” she said, softening slightly. “But I’m on a night shift again I’m afraid, so you’ll have to look after yourself this evening or you can pop over to Granny Summerfield’s if you like. You won’t get into any trouble, will you?”
Alfie shook his head. He’d tried talking her out of night shifts before but he never had any luck; she got a quarter extra in her pay packet when she worked after eight o’clock at night, and that quarter, she told him, could be the difference between them keeping a roof over their heads and not. He knew better than to bother trying anymore. Margie stared at him for a moment, her hand reaching out and smoothing down his hair, and her expression changed a little. She didn’t seem angry now. It was as if she were remembering the way things used to be. She sat down on the bed next to him and put her arm around his shoulders, and he cuddled into her, closing his eyes, feeling sleep returning.
After a moment he looked up and followed the direction of his mother’s eyes until he found himself staring at the framed portrait of his father, Georgie, that stood on the table next to his bed. He wasn’t wearing a soldier’s uniform in it; instead he was standing in the yard at the dairy with a very young Alfie sitting on his shoulders, a big smile spread across his face, and Mr. Asquith standing next to both of them, looking at the camera with an expression that suggested that this was an indignity he could do without. (Alfie always said that Mr. Asquith was a very proud horse.) He couldn’t remember when it had been taken, but it had been standing on the table by his bed since the day Georgie had left for Aldershot Barracks four years earlier. Granny Summerfield had put it there that same evening.
“Oh, Alfie,” said Margie, kissing him on his head as she stood up and made her way toward the door. “I do my best for you. You know that, don’t you?”
* * *
After she left for work, Alfie went downstairs, ran outside for the scoop that sat behind the back door, and filled it with ashes from the base of the kitchen range. Then he ran down to the privy at the end of the garden as quickly as he could, trying not to feel the ice in the air or spill any of the precious cinders. He hated going there first thing in the morning, particularly now, in late October, when it was still so dark and the air was so frosty, but there was no way around it.
It was freezing inside, seven different spiders and something that looked like an overfed beetle crawled over his feet as he sat there. He could hear the scurrying of rats behind the woodwork, and he groaned when he remembered that he’d forgotten the squares of yesterday’s newspaper that he meticulously cut up every night before going to bed—but fortunately Margie had taken them outside earlier, pinned a hole through their center, and hung them from a piece of string off the hook, so he didn’t need to go back indoors.
When he had finished his business, he poured the ashes down the toilet and hoped that the compost heap around the back of the outhouse—the worst place he had ever seen in his entire life—would not get clogged up again. It had happened a few months before, and Margie had to pay the night-soil men two shillings to clear it all away; afterward, uncertain whether they would have enough money for the rent, she had sat down in the broken armchair in front of the fireplace and cried her eyes out, whispering Georgie’s name under her breath over and over again as if he might be able to come back and save them from possible eviction.
Alfie ran back inside, washed his hands, and sat down at the kitchen table, where Margie had cut two slices of bread for him and left them on a plate next to a small scraping of butter and, to his astonishment, a tiny pot of jam with a muslin lid held in place by a piece of string. Alfie stared at it and blinked a couple of times. It had been months since he’d tasted jam. He picked it up and read the label. It was handwritten and contained only one word, written with a thick black pen.
Gooseberry.
Sometimes the parents of the soldiers in the hospital brought in a little something for the Queen’s Nurses, and when they did, it was usually a treat like this: something they’d made themselves from the fruit they grew in their gardens or allotments. That must have been where Margie had got it. Alfie wondered whether his mother had eaten some herself or whether she’d kept it specially for him. He stood up and went over to the sink, where his mother’s breakfast things were sitting, still unwashed, a small pool of cold brown tea sitting at the base of her mug. In the old days, before the war, Margie would never have left things like this; she would have rinsed them out and turned them upside down on the draining board for Georgie to dry later. He picked up the plate and examined it. There were a few crumbs on the side and a trace of condensation from where the heat of the toast had clashed with the coldness of the porcelain. He looked at the knife. It was almost clean. He gave it a sniff. It didn’t smell of butter and there wasn’t a trace of jam on it. If she’d used any, it would have left a bit behind.