Jenky

"The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours."   William Hazlitt
 
Although she was extremely small, Jenky was formidable.  She stood well under five feet tall, but her personality rose mightily.  She was our next door neighbour and as well as being my God mother (I recall no special favour around this fact - I don't think she really liked me all that much.) She also led my mother astray and into debt.

Magdalena Jenkinson, to give her full name, was a big fan of hire purchase.  My mother was young when she moved next door to Jenky and was easily taken off the solvent path.

Turner's was a shop of many parts and folk were invited in to find the items that would give them the household accessories of their dreams.  It was a trendsetter.  Turner's was also, incidentally, the source of a well-known British band's name.  TURNER'S it said in bold red letters, and just beneath 'everything but the girl.'  Why?  Because it assumed that men did the earning and the shopping and women stayed at home.  Here, at this shop, a man could buy everything except the girl.

It's a wonder to me how my father didn't notice the various bit of furniture that began to appear in the house: the sleek sideboard, the state of the art wardrobe, but he didn't.  Neither, for several months, did he notice the Tally man who - wearing the giant boot of a man who had one leg shorter than the other - appeared at the back door for the repayment of monies owed.  There was not much left from the house-keeping at the end of the week - as my mother's repayments mounted up. Jenky's solution was to get another loan. And so it went.

I didn't really have much idea about the rows between my parents, certainly when I was very young, but I heard this legendary ONE: where my dad found out about the debt Jenky had encourage my mam in.  When my mother said she'd only done what everyone else had done, what Jenky had suggested, he, my father, said this oft repeated and immortal line, "If Jenky was to shit in the middle of the road, why would you have to do the same?"
She would not, my mother said.

Not now.  Not ever.

And yet, she'd sneaked a look at a different kind of life of having the latest thing, which came crashing to an end in that moment.   And not just for my mother, but for us all.  We entered then a period of austerity as the debt was, bit by bit, paid back.  Dad withdrew all the savings he had managed to muster and taking on extra work paid off the debt.  To his credit, he never mentioned it again and to hers, my mother became a paragon of virtue taking up budgeting as though it was going out of fashion.

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