for several long moments before he dared to murmur: ‘Working.’
‘Working! What do you mean, you’ve been working?’
He hung his head. ‘I overheard you telling Gran you’d lost yer job, so I thought if I could earn some money while you got set on in another, you wouldn’t be so worried. I forgot about the Board man. When I told Betty what I was up to so she could cover for me, she wanted to help too so she’s been doing it after school.’
‘I’ve bin running errands for the neighbours,’ Betty told Aidy. ‘I’ve made one shilling and tuppence up to now. I was hoping to have two bob to give you by Friday. Not as much as George has made, but it all helps, dunnit?’
Aidy was gawping at them both, astounded. She shot a look at Bertha and saw she too was utterly astonished by this news. Returning her attention to her siblings, guilt filled her. Her emotions overspilled. With tears of gratitude rolling down her face, Aidy pulled them to her, hugging them both fiercely. Over the tops of their heads she saw their grandmother was crying too. Sensing another presence, she looked over and saw Marion had arrived back. Legs crossed, she was looking worriedly at them all, not quite knowing what was going on.
Aidy ordered her, ‘You come here and get a hug too.’ When Marion was encircled in her arms she said to them all, ‘I really should be very angry with you. But how can I be when all you were trying to do was help?’
Aidy eventually straightened up and in a tender voice addressed them all. ‘You all already do what you can to help out.’ And they did, by plaguing the greengrocer on a Saturday evening as he was shutting up for any perishable vegetables he was throwing out; by following the coal cart for dropped lumps, and collecting the horse’s droppings to sell on to men who had allotments; by keeping their ears open to learn where any wood was going begging; by running errands for the neighbours, and any other things they could do when opportunities presented themselves to earn extra coppers. ‘What you all do helped Mam enormously, and now it does me.’
She smiled at the girls. ‘You two go and finish setting the table for me. I want to speak to George.’ When they had gone off to do her bidding, she asked him, ‘Who employed you? You’re only ten years old.’
‘Nearly eleven,’ he corrected her.
‘Still not old enough by law to stop going to school. You have to be fourteen. You look nowhere near that. Whoever you lied to to get the job, must have known he was breaking the law.’
‘I didn’t need to lie about me age – I wasn’t asked how old I was. I just asked if there was any work going and got set straight on, sorting out the scrap. I can’t say as I enjoyed it. I’m a bit glad I got found out. It was such hard work! Some of them big bits were so heavy … Me legs are covered in bruises. I never got to stop all day, ’cept ten minutes at lunchtime to gobble down me sandwich. When I leave school, I ain’t going to work for no scrappy, that’s for sure.’
Aidy was determined he wasn’t going to either. She was going to make sure her brother was equipped to achieve far greater things than sorting scrap metal for a living. Fury rose within her against the unknown person who had abused her brother’s need to earn a pittance by giving him back-breaking tasks to do.
‘Who was it you were working for?’ she insisted on knowing.
‘Gibbons’ scrap yard,’ he told her.
She knew the place. It was not far from where her mother-in-law used to live. It was a known fact that all the firms that operated in that district were owned by swindlers and crooks. You only dealt with their like out of desperation. ‘How much did Gibbons pay you?’
‘He ain’t paid me n’ote yet. Said he’d give me ten shilling on Friday night … that’s tomorrow … as long as I’d proved me worth. Well, I have proved me worth to him. I’ve worked me guts out.’
And Aidy strongly suspected sly Mr Gibbons had no intention of ever paying a penny for that week of hard labour. Well, over her dead body he wouldn’t! She stepped over to the armchair and grabbed up her handbag from beside it.