Read At My Mother's Knee for Free Online Page A

her
voice. 'What sort of a job?' she shrieked at her husband,
picking bits off his ham like a carrion crow.
    'We need a paper lad for a few weeks,' he said, moving the
ham away from the claws of his wife and to the safety of
the refrigerated glass-fronted counter. 'Do you have any better
ideas? We're desperate, we can't afford to be fussy, there's no
one else unless he wants to get up and do it.' Here George
Henshaw inclined his head towards the back room, where the
child prodigal sat stuffing his face with an Arctic roll and
watching the telly.
    Eileen bristled and in no uncertain terms told her husband
that no child of hers was going to walk the streets of Tranmere
with a bag of newspapers weighing four times his own
body weight, twice a day in all sorts of weather, and if anybody
dared to think that she would be party to such a thing then
they didn't know her. 'And besides,' she added, 'he's far too
busy with his homework to deliver papers.'
    She glanced into the back room to where the prodigal, now
replete, lay sprawled out on the sofa preparing for a long
session of children's telly and quickly closed the door. She
turned and looked at me over the counter as if she were forced
to buy a diseased slave at the market and then, shaking her
head in disgust, enquired grandly if I had any references.
    'Don't talk daft, woman,' her husband snapped. 'We only
want him for a few weeks until the regular lad gets back. What
do you want references for? Get those papers marked up, he
can start now.' Child labour laws meant nothing to George.
    And so, until Eileen sacked me a week later for missing a
Sunday morning when instead of dragging a sack of Sunday
papers around the streets I went to Wales with the Legion of Mary like the good Catholic lad I was, I became the Henshaws'
paper boy. My mother reckoned I was sacked because the Henshaws were Protestants and it served me right for working
for them. The paper round covered quite a large area, from
Old Chester Road to Church Road, which meant a lot of steep
hills with two sacks of heavy Echo s.
    Eileen marked the papers up with the names and numbers of
the various streets, admonishing me all the while to pay
attention and put the right Echo in the right letter box, and not
to be late in the morning. The papers were then packed into
two large canvas bags and lowered over each shoulder. I
literally staggered off under the weight and out into the night.
I didn't care, I was earning half a crown a week.
    Two hours later I reeled home and into the kitchen.
    'Where the bloody hell have you been?' my mother said.
'Your father's been worried sick and your tea's ruined.'
    'I've got a job,' I explained.
    'A job? A job? What sort of job? Do you hear this, Paddy, he
says he's got a job?'
    'I'm delivering papers for Henshaw's,' I said proudly, 'half a
crown a week.'
    My mother stopped stirring gravy and stared at me as if I'd
just admitted that it was me who had shopped Anne Frank.
    'Papers?' she exclaimed, screwing her face up and raising her
voice ten octaves. 'Papers! Henshaw's? Half a crown? Are you
listening to this, Paddy?' she shouted into the front room,
fanning herself with a tea towel. 'Delivering papers for
Henshaw's, how could you?' she asked. 'Mother of God!'
    She couldn't have been less pleased if I'd announced that I
was joining the Ku Klux Klan. I'd thought she'd be delighted,
but there was no telling what the reaction would be when it
came to my mother. She used to accuse me of being contrary
and unpredictable – well, Mother, who did I inherit that from?
What's in the bitch comes out in the pup, to quote Aunty
Chris.
    My dad came out from the front room. 'What's going on?'
    'He's only gone and got a job with Henshaw's delivering
papers, that's what,' she said in the voice of a woman betrayed.
Glaring at me, she asked, 'What were you thinking?'
    'Now, Molly . . .' My dad, forever the bearer of oil for
troubled waters, pointed out that it would do me no harm, was
only for three weeks