“Two sets of twins in the middle. Boy and a girl each time.
Mind, it was ‘ard work.”
Unmitigated drudgery, thought Roz.
“Did you want them?” she asked curiously.
“I can’t think of anything worse than having nine children.”
“Never ‘ad much say in it, dear. There weren’t no abortion inmyday.”
“Didn’t you use contraceptives?”
To her surprise, the old woman blushed.
“Couldn’t get the ang of them,” she snapped.
“The old man tried a rubber once but didn’t like it and wouldn’t do it again. Old bugger. No skin off ‘is nose if I kept falling.”
It was on the tip of Roz’s tongue to ask why Ma couldn’t get the hang of contraceptives when the penny dropped. If she couldn’t read and she was too embarrassed to ask how to use them, they’d have been useless to her. Good God, she thought, a little education would have saved the country a fortune where this family was concerned.
“That’s men for you,” she said lightly.
“I noticed a motorbike outside. Does that belong to one of the boys?”
“Bought and paid for,” came the belligerent refrain.
“It’s Gary’s. Motorbike mad, ‘e is. There was a time when three of the boys ‘ad bikes, now it’s just Gary. They was all working for one of them messenger companies till the bloody coppers went round and got them sacked. Victimisation, pure and simple.
“Ow’s a man to work hif the police keep waving ‘is record under the boss’s noses. Course, they lost the bikes. They was buying them on the never-never and they couldn’t keep up the payments.”
Roz made sympathetic noises.
“When was that? Recently?”
“Year of the gales. I remember the electricity was off when the boys came ‘ome to say they’d been given the push. We’d got one blooming candle.” She firmed her lips.
“Bloody awful night, that was. Depressing.”
Roz kept her expression as neutral as she could. Was Lily right, after all, and Hal wrong?
“The nineteen eight-seven gales,” she said.
“The first ones.”
“That’s it. Mind, it ‘appened again two years later. No electricity for a week the second time, hand you get no compensation for the ‘ardship neither. I tried and the buggers told me hif I didn’t pay what I owed they’d cut me off for good and all.”
“Did the police give a reason for getting your boys the sack?” asked Roz.
“Hah!” Ma sniffed.
“They never give reasons for nothing. It was victimisation, like I said.”
“Did they work for the messenger company long?”
Old eyes regarded her suspiciously.
“You’re mighty interested all of a sudden.”
Roz smiled ingenuously.
“Only because this was an occasion when three of your family were trying to go straight and build careers for themselves. It would make good television if we could show that they were denied that opportunity because of police harassment. Presumably it was a local firm they were working for?”
“Southampton.” Ma’s mouth became an inverted horseshoe.
“Bloody silly name it ‘ad too. Called their selves Wells Fargo Still, the boss was a ruddy cowboy so maybe it wasn’t so silly after all.”
Roz suppressed a smile.
“Is it still in business?”
“Last I ‘card, it was. That’s it. You’ve ‘ad your ‘our.”
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Brien.” She patted the tape-recorder.
“If the producers like what they hear I might need to come back and talk to your sons. Would that be acceptable, do you think?”
“Don’t see why not. Can’t see them sneezing at fifty quid apiece.” Ma held out her hand.
Dutifully, Roz took two twenty-pound notes and a ten from her wallet and laid them on the wrinkled palm. Then she started to gather her things together.
“I hear Dawlington’s quite famous,” she remarked chattily.
