Diana and guided her to a pile of washing up that needed drying. Diana felt very comfortable in this warm bright room with Len’s energetic mother, who started recalling for her son all the activities of her neighbours.
Within ten minutes of arriving at her house, a face appeared around the kitchen door.
‘A treat for you, Amy,’ said a perky cockney voice. A man with twinkling eyes and a flat cap came into the kitchen, placing two pears into the older woman’s outstretched hand.
‘Where did you get those from, Ron?’ Amy asked, one hand on her hip as she eyed him suspiciously.
‘If you don’t ask, I won’t tell,’ he joked with her. ‘See you later.’ He nodded and then he was gone.
Five minutes later, somebody else appeared with a joke and a story and then another person to update her on a child in the neighbourhood who had been ill. Then one returning a borrowed plate, another with some seeds. Diana watched in bewilderment as one person after another funnelled in and out of the house, which was a constant hive of activity.
Len’s mother seemed to know the whole neighbourhood, and they all seemed to come via her house on the way to wherever they were going.
As the kitchen filled and emptied, Len introduced Diana to numerous people, uncle this and auntie that. Many, she suspected, weren’t even really related. Len seemed to know all of them by name, and they all chatted in a happy, carefree way. Diana watched him: Len was so comfortable with people. He was kind and funny as he joked with them all and was so thoughtful with his mother, helping her whenever he could. However, Amy was fiercely independent, with tireless energy as she moved around the kitchen with such speed it made Diana dizzy. When Dina had a chance to chat to Len alone, she asked who everybody was.
‘It’s my mum,’ he said with a smile. ‘She just draws people. She knows everybody, and they all know her.’
Diana thought about her own family. Because of her dad’s illness after the Great War, there was an unwritten rule about people coming over. Her mother didn’t want too many people in the house in case somebody popped a cork or cracked a loud joke and set her dad’s nerves on edge. Also, he wasn’t always good at talking to people any more with the weakness in his chest. He couldn’t speak comfortably for very long, and it created a void in any conversation he was having.
Her home life was the direct opposite of the way Len had grown up. They’d both grown up as only children, but Len had lived in this revolving front door of a life with numerous friends and family sharing the same space, and she’d been brought up in a loving, but much more solitary environment. Amy seemed to know everyone by name and was continually feeding people. Where she was getting the food from, Diana wasn’t sure, but people seemed more than happy to repay her kindness if the pears were anything to go by.
After a while, Amy pulled on her coat and said, ‘Come on, let’s go and get a drink.’ Off they streamed to the local pub where the same thing happened all over again, as Amy made her rounds in the room, Len behind her, and Diana tottering along behind them both, meeting what felt like hundreds of new people. Everybody eyed Diana with interest and smiled knowingly at Len, who seemed more than proud to show her off to his friends.
‘This is my… friend, Diana,’ he would announce.
Not ‘girlfriend’ Diana noted with a little disappointment, feeling the wariness of earlier return.
‘She’s down from Birmingham, working on the barrage balloons.’
People would nod their heads with admiration and appreciation as they shook her hand warmly.
Finally, Amy settled down at what was obviously her usual table, and it wasn’t long before one of her many friends was on the piano, and the whole table joined in singing old-time music-hall songs. Others started to get up and dance around the room, hitching skirts onto their hips, some even shuffling around in carpet slippers as they crooned and circled to tunes about coppers and chorus girls.
Diana just watched in amazement. She loved the camaraderie they all seemed to have with one another. The love they had for each other; it was contagious. But did Len just see her as someone to add to their tribe? Another friendly face in their crowd?
Len whispered