Kiss Kiss
By
Gwen Grant
Copyright 2012 by Gwen Grant
Smashwords Edition
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24th December 1956
So, here I am, sixteen years old and fed up to the back teeth. There was no good fairy at my christening. Probably fell down a hole because there are plenty of holes round here to fall into.
This is a town of holes.
Pits all round us and miners and pit lads who come in here looking like Pandas with their eyes ringed with coal dust.
‘Ounce ‘a baccy, duck,’ they go, staring at me with bloodshot eyes circled with black.
They get washed at the pit baths and forget they’ve got eyes.
This is one of the best winters I remember because when I look out of the shop window, I can see the whole street glittering and snow plastered to the sides of the lamp-posts so that they look like Maypoles, only needing a handful of ribbons to finish them off.
Mr. Grogan came back from delivering the Orders, looks at me, then says, ‘You going out tonight, then?’
‘Of course, I’m going out. It’s Christmas Eve. I’m going to the Palais.’
‘Tut, tut,’ he goes. ‘Never in, you’re not. No wonder you were late this morning.’
But I wasn’t late this morning because I got up with our Joe and walked with him to work. He starts at half past seven. It was bitter cold when we got outside but I was sick of lying in bed, watching the clock tick tock tick tock tick tock all night.
I was glad I’d put my stilettos in my bag because it had just started to snow. It was so heavy, it was already lying and there was a bit of a wind, so before we’d got to the end of the street, we looked like snowmen.
That was when Joe said, ‘I’m signing on for the Army. I’m not waiting to be called up. I’m fed up of the life here. There’s got to be more to it than this.’
I always knew he’d go.
‘When are you going to sign on?’ I asked, and he said probably the first week in the New Year.
‘Then I’ll be gone by Spring.’
That makes me sick.
I want to get away from this town, too, but where my Mum’ll say, ‘Good idea,’ to our Joe. ‘Get yourself off and learn a trade.’
To me, she goes, ‘You are not going to Canada, full stop,’ yet he’s only eighteen months older.
The Canadians have taken over a little shop in the town and plastered the windows with posters of Canadian mountains, Canadian lakes, Canadian cities and Canadian sunsets.
I took one look at them and fell in love.
‘EMIGRATE TO CANADA,’ they say. ‘ A NEW COUNTRY. A NEW LIFE.’
I need a new life.
The thing is, you can go to Canada at sixteen if your Mum and Dad’ll sign to let you go. They pay your fare, give you a chaperone, a room of your own and a job in Calgary.
And I want to go.
I want to see Calgary. I want to live there. I want a chaperone. And I want a job and a room of my own but I can’t have anything unless my Mum and Dad sign, and my Mum won’t.
I said to Joe, ‘You’re lucky you can escape,’ and he goes, ‘Well, I don’t want to be stuck at the factory all my life and I don’t want to go down the pit, so it’s the Army or nothing.’
And that’s the end of that conversation.
Mr. Grogan says again, ‘What time did you get here, then?’ and I turn away because I know what he wants me to say.
He wants me to say I got here early.
But I won’t.
‘I got here on time,’ I tell him, but I think he knows I’m lying because when I left our Joe, I caught a bus into town and got to the shop too early.
When I put my key in the lock, I was surprised because it opened straight away and I didn’t have to use my big key in the other lock.
I stepped inside. The shop has a kind of velvety darkness and it’s warm and smells of rich tobacco. I love this first minute of the day, when everything is quiet and fresh.
I took a deep breath, then nearly choked because I heard a noise, a soft, odd sound.
My first thought was that someone had broken in. We have piles of
boxes in the cellar, all with dozens of cartons of cigarettes in them, then there’s all the packets of tobacco.
Steal that lot and you’d make a fortune.
But then I realised the sound wasn’t coming from the cellar. It was coming from upstairs. From the office. So maybe somebody was after the money in the safe.
That’s when I went upstairs
I took my shoes off and kept to the sides of each step because this whole building is about four hundred years old and the stairs creak.
Pad, pad, pad, I went and when I was halfway up, my head level with the bottom of the open office door, I peered in and there was Mr. Grogan and that blonde woman from the Bank and whatever they were doing half undressed, they were not stealing the money.
If Mrs. Grogan had been there, she’d have killed them so I headed back down those stairs as fast as I could before they saw me.
I opened the back door again and went out, shutting it behind me so carefully, it only made the tiniest little click. I walked down the yard and stood under the archway for ages until I thought it was safe, then went back up singing.