From Rags To Riches
Angie’s stomach twisted into a knot as the thought popped into her head: Why were they so poor?
It was 1974 and 10-year-old Angie hated her parents. She hated her two brothers, too.
She also loathed the semidetached council house where they all lived. She despised the ramshackle shed her dad had built himself out of discarded wood and she detested her tiny box room. She thought she hated everything… except for her friend Debbie.
She lay on her bed, her fingers running up and down the seam in the sheet. Her mum had made one single out of a threadbare double last week. No wonder Angie hated it when Debbie came round to her house. The makeshift sheets on the beds, the old blankets, the faded carpets and her mum flitting about getting excited about the next jumble sale. It all stacked up into a mountain of shame.
‘Angie?’ her mum called from the hall below. ‘Debbie’s here!’
Angie raced out of her room, her white knee socks a blur as she thudded down the stairs.
A twin-tub washing machine thudded away in the kitchen as her mum twittered on to Debbie about how much washing she’d got through that day. Her mum wore her usual pinny and slippers and her dull limp fringe hung in her eyes as she fed the churning grey waters more dirty clothes with a pair of wooden prongs.
Debbie’s own hair shone
(she washed it every day). Her shiny shoes came from Clarks, not a church hall table piled up with cast-offs. ‘I came round to play,’ she said as soon as she saw Angie. Her accent sounded crisp and refined. She’d moved down from London with her family into one of the brandnew houses on Azalea Drive. What a lovely name. Not at all as dreary as Workhouse Lane, where Angie lived.
‘Couldn’t we go to your house for a change?’ Angie had yet to visit there. She felt selfconsciously at the collar of her second-hand turtle-neck jumper as her friend frowned. ‘Do you want to? Really?’ ‘Yes, I do. I’ll just get my shoes.’ Angie streaked away.
Back upstairs in her room, her heart thudding so hard her ribs felt like a xylophone, she gathered up her black shoes. She pulled up the buckles, then grabbed her hairbrush and made six quick passes through her tangled mane. She was going to Debbie’s… at last!
After they’d walked to Azalea Drive, Angie marvelled at number 12. She smiled at the little tree in the middle of the lawn and the bedding plants surrounding it. Her dad never bothered with flowers. He grew potatoes and carrots just about everywhere instead. She knew Debbie’s dad worked in an office, not on a car production line like her own. No, Debbie’s dad had a proper job.
‘You have a car… and a caravan!’ She gasped at the sight of both. A big red Cortina sat on the drive, while behind a set of glossy wrought-iron gates a caravan loomed. All white and shiny, it had a big orange stripe down its front and sides. Only rich people owned caravans.
‘Yes,’ her friend said, as she pushed up the gate’s latch. ‘We go to Wales in it sometimes.’
Angie’s dad didn’t even own a car. He zipped about on a little motorbike.
After her friend showed her into the house, she couldn’t help but gawp at the Formica doors of the fitted kitchen, at the flowery tiles and the bold wallpaper in a dizzying spiral pattern. They barely had
Debbie’s shiny shoes came from Clarks, not a church-hall table…
a cupboard at home, let alone ones that perfectly matched in acid yellow tones. The air reeked of onions; a big pile of chopped ones lay on a thick wooden board on the countertop.
A thick-set man’s appearance ended Angie’s examination of the room. He bustled in carrying a china cup and saucer. He wore a blue shirt and brightly coloured tie. Its knot as wide as her hand hung loose. ‘Oh,’ he said when he saw her. She stared at the lino, sure her cheeks must be glowing, they felt so hot.
‘This is Angie,’ Debbie said. ‘Angie, this is my dad. He finishes work early on Fridays.’
‘Yes. Yes. Hello.’ His thick brows lowered like drawbridges over his muddy brown eyes when Angie dared give him another glance. ‘Well, run along and play then, Debbie,’ he said.
Angie decided, since he sounded so gruff, he must have a very important job.
Debbie grabbed at her sleeve and tugged her across the kitchen and out into the hall. There, the thick carpet felt springy under her shoes. There, too, she noticed the radiator. Central heating! It did exist, only not where she came from.
Debbie tugged her all the way up the stairs. On the landing, where family photos covered the walls, she pushed open a door. ‘This is my room.’
Angie’s gaze flittered between the thick pink candlewick bedspread and the flowery curtains. This is how princesses live! ‘You… you have a rocking horse!’
The beast made of wood owned a luxurious mane, a leather saddle and big silver stirrups.
‘Yes. Dad got it for me. Do you want to play with it? We could pretend we’re in the pony club or we’re at a gymkhana.’
Angie didn’t have time to decide which, since a woman interrupted this time. Tall
and thin, she wore her hair in a shag haircut. She looked just like Jane Fonda.
‘You must be Angela,’ she said, in voice as posh as a queen’s. ‘Are you staying for dinner? We’re having spaghetti Bolognese.’
Angie blinked. She heard of that but she’d never eaten it before. Her mum made meat and veg almost every night, though her dad did love a plate of tripe and onions. It would be rude to say no to dinner. ‘Oh, yes please,’ she managed in a whisper.
‘There’s no need to be shy,’ the woman said. ‘How about you two go and set the table?’
Angie’s heart played another tune against her ribs. Her mum and dad ate their dinner in the kitchen. She and her brothers ate in front of the telly. Their own dining room had the best furniture in it. Only important visitors went in there, like the insurance man when collecting his money. She blew air up into her fringe, feeling hot again. ‘Come on,’ Debbie urged her. In the dining room, Debbie pulled from a sideboard the size and colour of a small boat, a blinding white tablecloth.
She unfolded it before flinging it over the table’s sheen. Then she started handing out cutlery as if she expected Angie to know what to do with it.
‘We… we don’t do this in my house,’ Angie said in a stutter. ‘I don’t know where it all goes.’
Debbie shrugged. ‘I’ll show you. We only need cutlery for the pasta and dessert. You should see how much I have to set at Christmas when Mum does three courses.’ She laughed.
Angie’s stomach twisted into a knot as thoughts popped into her head. ‘Why didn’t you show me how to do this, Mum and Dad? Why don’t we own a caravan, a car and a kitchen that matches? Why don’t we have carpets that feel like they’re full of air? Why are we poor? I hate it.’
She copied Debbie as she laid out the knives and forks, mats and serviettes. There were five settings. Debbie brother lurked somewhere in the house. A thin-faced boy, he always mooched about. Angie had seen him do it at school.
With their work at the table done, they stood back to admire it. “There, I told you it was easy.” Debbie beamed.
‘Let’s play snap until dinner.’
Smells wafted in from the kitchen as they played the card game on the table between the forks and spoons. The scent of tomatoes, onions and herbs Angie couldn’t even name, made her nose itch. She did eat mint sauce now and again at home when her dad picked it from the garden. Her mum sometimes bought lamb chops cheap from the butchers. Her dad always got the biggest one.
‘It’s nearly ready.’ Debbie’s mum appeared, carrying a jug of water and a bottle of wine.
Angie’s eyes widened. ‘Are we having wine, too?’ she thought.
As Debbie cleared the cards away, her dad strode in. Her brother sloped in behind him, round-shouldered and morose. Then Debbie’s mum served up. She hurried in with plates full of pale, worm-like pasta topped with a brown, lumpy sauce.
Angie unfolded her serviette across her lap, copying Debbie’s every move. When Debbie’s mum set a plate of food in front of her, she picked up her fork in anticipation. As soon as everybody else sat twirling their way into the spaghetti strands, she did the same.
She kept her head down, sure Debbie’s dad sat examining her every twitch.
She piled dinner into her mouth, sucking up the strands the way it seemed you were meant to. The sauce tasted odd to a girl used to plain old mashed potatoes and gravy.
Debbie’s dad asked then, ‘Have you eaten this before?’
Angie swallowed hard.
‘No. Never.’
He puffed out his chest. ‘Spaghetti hasn’t reached Workhouse Lane then yet, has it? I’m not terribly surprised.’
Debbie’s mum said tartly, ‘Don’t be so rude, Nigel.’
‘Uh,’ he retorted, as grumpily as a bear.
Angie sat with a rigid back then as a white-hot look passed between her friend’s parents. She’d never seen a look like it before. The air about her felt so cold she expected snow to
The air at her friend’s house felt so cold she expected snow to fall
fall. She watched transfixed as Debbie’s mum poured a huge glass of wine. She took three gulps, while across the table her husband’s dark brows dipped lower and lower. ‘Haven’t you had enough of that tonight?’
Debbie’s mum drank a lot more, then said, ‘No. Not yet.’
Angie, now as tense as the strings of a tennis racket, finally realised the truth. Debbie’s parents didn’t like each other.
Eating suddenly felt as hard to master as a circus act as she tried to keep her spaghetti under control. The only voice around the table was the one in her head saying over and over: ‘I want to go home.
I want to go home.’
‘Help me clear the table, girls.’ Debbie’s Mum’s brittle tones cut through the silence when the torture ended at last.
Angie lifted up her plate and gave it to Debbie, who added it to the pile she carried into the kitchen. Once there, Angie whispered: ‘Can I go now?’
Debbie frowned. ‘But what about dessert?’
‘I’m not really hungry any more. I think I want to leave.’
Debbie’s eye filled with dread. ‘Can I come with you?’
Her mum, carrying glasses, overheard. ‘It’s too late to go out now, Debbie. Go tomorrow, sweetheart, after school.’
‘Yes, tomorrow.’ Angie nodded. Debbie did spend a lot of time at her house. There, they usually put their dinner plates on their knees on a folded piece of newspaper and chewed away in front of the
TV. Her brothers would natter through every mouthful. Even over the noise of it all, her mum and dad’s laughter would drift in from the kitchen –her mother’s chuckle, all sing-song and sweet, her dad’s guffaw a big, deep, comforting rumble.
‘Yes, come to my house again tomorrow,’ Angie said, as Debbie showed her out.
‘I will. I like your house, Angie.’ Angie didn’t hate it any more either, she realised, as she walked down the drive. She didn’t hate her two brothers or loathe the rickety shed her dad had nailed together. She didn’t even resent her tiny box room and its makeshift sheet. On that day in 1974, she changed her mind about it all.
‘It’s all right, Debbie,’ she thought as she glanced back to the glossy wrought-iron gate, the shiny caravan, the big red car and the bedding plants she believed only rich people could afford. ‘We’ll have loads of fun together tomorrow. I’m really sorry my house is so much better than yours.’ THE END