The Way We Heard: Three Coins In The Fountain (1954) (Pt.2)

Cherry

By airyfairy

Tue, 21 Jul 2026
  • 349 reads
26 comments
 

THE WAY WE HEARD: THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN

(September 1954)

 

A swirl of violins floated over the back fence.

“Talking of deaf,” said Grace, shaking her head, “the Bells have got a new radiogram. With the volume knob stuck as high as it’ll go, apparently.”

“Oh, I like this one,” Shirley said. “Three Coins In The Fountain. Me and my mum went to see the film.”

Grace smiled. “Me and Reen went.” She chuckled. “That Rossano Brazzi, eh? Wouldn’t mind a bit of that to keep me warm at night.”

Shirley giggled. “I like Louis Jourdan. It’s them accents, isn’t it? Makes all the words sound better.”

The song crooned on the air.

“Mind you,” said Grace, “I wouldn’t say no to a bit of Frankie Sinatra either. Frankie Sinatra and all his money.”

“You’ll have to fight off Ava Gardner first.”

“Yeah,” said Grace. “I hear she can be a bit fierce.”

Shirley laughed. Then she asked, “Do you think it works for all fountains, throwing the coins in? Or do you have to be in Rome, at that special one? The Trevi.”

“You could try chucking a couple of pennies in at Trafalgar Square, see what happens.”

“I’d rather go to Rome,” Shirley said softly.

Grace looked towards the house. “If Ray goes on fleecing my husband, you might be able to.” She looked back at Shirley. “You don’t mean with Ray, do you?”

Tears glistened in Shirley’s eyes. “He doesn’t want the baby, Grace. He doesn’t want me. He only married me because he was afraid of my Dad. I mean, there wasn’t actually a shotgun, but Dad has some dodgy friends.”

“He’ll come round, Shirl. He’s scared, that’s all. All men are scared when they know they’re going to be fathers. Especially someone like Ray, footloose and fancy-free until he’s thirty-two and then suddenly, he’s got a wife to look after and a child on the way.” She reached out and patted Shirley’s hand. “He’ll come round.”

“I don’t know that I will.”

Grace’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want it, Grace,” she whispered. “I don’t want the baby. I’m twenty-two and I wanted to be a nurse, and go to America. They like British nurses in America. I want to go to America and be a nurse and marry an American and have a big car and go on holiday to Rome and Paris and everywhere else. I don’t want to be renting half a house in Plaistow. I want to go and throw coins in the Trevi fountain.”

“You don't mean that, Shirley. Not about the baby. I understand about Ray, I know he’s difficult, but the baby…”

Shirley said, “There’s a woman my friend Addie knows.”

Grace stared at her. “Shirley, you’re six months gone! You can’t seriously be thinking…”

“I could say it was a miscarriage.”

 “It could kill you,” Grace said.

Shirley shrugged. “Between my Dad and Ray, I’m not sure that’s the worst option. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man who doesn’t love me, surrounded by nappies and screaming kids and hearing him go on about French whores.”

Grace stood up. “I know it’s difficult, Shirley. Neville came about because Jack had a short leave from the army, and then Jack went back to the war and I was on my own all through the pregnancy, and when I had him. And I had Renee to look after as well and she was only three, and I thought I might be on my own for ever, with my son never knowing his Dad and my daughter not remembering him. But I never, ever, thought about not having Neville. Children are a blessing, Shirley, whatever the circumstances.”

Shirley said, “Have you never thought about how things could have been different? After you saw that film, didn’t you think about throwing a coin in the Trevi fountain?”

“No. That’s a dream, Shirley. And the thing about dreams is, you have to wake up. And be grateful for what you’ve got.”

“And what have I got, Grace? Jack married you because he loved you. He wanted you. As far as Ray was concerned, I was just another pick-up at the Palais, only it went wrong. If it wasn’t for the baby, and my Dad’s dodgy friends, Ray wouldn’t even remember my name.”

The song keened its way to a close, its final notes yearning as the afternoon light began to fade.

“You’re going to be a mother, Shirley, and that’s the most beautiful thing that’ll ever happen to you.” Grace sat down again, and clasped her sister-in-law’s hand between her own palms. “Women get scared too, you know, the nearer it gets. And no, blokes don’t understand. They never will, but most men want to do the right thing, even if it takes them a while to realise it. The baby will hold you and Ray together.”

“He hits me.” Shirley’s voice was flat.

After a moment Grace said, “I’m sorry, Shirley. He shouldn’t, especially not with the baby. But like I said, they get scared, and that makes them…react. They get over it. They get better.”

“I told my Dad and he said, well, it’s not my business now, he’s your husband, you’re his wife, I’ve got nothing to do with it.” She shrugged. “So dreams are all I’ve got, Grace. And sometimes I think that’s where I’d like to stay. I don’t want to wake up.”

“Oi, you two!”

Ray was standing at the kitchen door, hands on his hips. He squinted against the lowering sun.

Grace stood up. “What you yelling about?”

“How about a cuppa tea? I’d ask Rennay here but she’s elbow deep in dishes. You two taking the afternoon off?”

“Chance’d be a fine thing.” Grace turned to Shirley. “Come on, Shirl,” she said, quietly. “You’ve not got long to go, and I promise you, when he sees that baby, he’ll be so proud. It’ll all work out.” She smiled. “We’re women. We make things work out.”

Shirley hauled herself to her feet. “If I have a girl,” she said, “one day, when she’s grown, I’m going to take her to Rome, and we’re going to throw coins in the Trevi fountain. And then meet Rossano Brazzi. And Louis Jourdan.”

“You might have to go to Paris for him.”

“Then we’ll go to Paris.”

“What if you have a boy?”

“Then I’ll make sure, when he grows up, that he takes his girl to the Trevi fountain, and whatever she wishes for, he helps make it come true.”

As they walked across the grass, towards the house, the swirl of violins came across the fence again.

“I swear to God,” said Grace, “one day I’m going to go over there and smash that radiogram to bits. And all their records. Even Frankie.”

The music followed them and wove itself into the air, as Shirley raised her face to seek the very last of the autumn sun.

Certificate 15
Story
Imitating Life (One-off Stories)
Historical Fiction
Other Fiction

Comments

Submitted by GlosKat on

What a limited life women used to have.  I remember my Mun saying she thought it was harder for girls my generation because we had so many choices, but I'm grateful that we did. 

My grandmother married in 1920 because she was pregnant and spent a miserable life married to a womaniser (he got a black eye from a husband once, and we kids were told he fell off his bike).  She literally didn't have the money to leave.  

I think you've captured the bleakness, and the brief consoling fantasy that films and music offered , very well.

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you. Some of this comes from stories my Mum told me about those times. My grandmother always insisted she could never find her parents' 'marriage lines'. My Mum finally discovered that the marriage certificate revealed there were only a few months between the marriage and my grandmother's birth. My grandmother was terrified people would think less of both her and her mother because of it. That was at the turn of the twentieth century, of course, but the shame persisted and was to some extent repeated when my mother's sister was married at the 'side altar' (Catholic upbringing), in an ordinary dress rather than a wedding dress, because she too was pregnant. That was the late 1940s.

There are some who would like to take us back to those times.

Submitted by Ewan on

  No wonder they enjoyed those Hollywood fantasies, when their life was much more like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). My mum and dad got married in 1953, rationing in the UK (still) and a life in black and white, a year later they were in Paris, my dad getting a beaut of a posting to Fontainebleau. They were lucky, I guess.

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by airyfairy on

My parents were a bit the same. They were married in 1951, (my Mum was born and brought up in Wapping, and was indeed bombed out and relocated during the war) and because my Dad was a canny working class lad who'd got his School Certificate and passed the Civil Service exam, he blagged his way into a posting in Hong Kong, where I entered the scene. He subsequently went to work in the oil industry and they spent most of their married life living abroad. Mum had mixed feelings about losing Wapping; it was both shit and a close knit community that she never really found again.

Thanks for reading, Ewan.

Submitted by insertponceyfre... on

This is wonderful airy - you've captured the essence of those times with the sadness and resilience of those two women brought to life. Well done

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you, insert!

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

Sensitively written. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

That's a very kind thing to say, Rhiannon. Thank you for reading.

Submitted by Di_Hard on

i so want to know what happens with Shirley!!! This is BRILLIANT, every single sentence matters

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you so much, Di. At the moment, Shirley's story ends here, but I did get rather fond of her while I was writing this, so you never know. Perhaps we'll meet her again.

Submitted by celticman on

it captures not dilemmas, but people. People I know. Nan, whose husband drank everything, and had to exist on child benefit and handouts. So many more. It funny how many mothers who were pregnant at the altar give their own daughters such a hard time, when they too are pregnant at the altar. 

 

Submitted by Ewan on

  "You've got to see it to be it" is a little trite. For more than a few, it might be more appropriate if it were "If you see it, you'll be it." And that's as depressing a thought as I've had in many a day.

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by airyfairy on

I do think a lot of it was fear for the daughters, that they would become trapped in bad marriages and have no chance of the better lives that their mothers had maybe hoped they'd have. Some of it may have been morality, but perhaps practical ife experience was what made them really dread this happening to their girls.

Submitted by Turlough on

This makes me think of my Nan, with my Grandad and all her in laws living in tiny red brick terraced houses in the same street. It was a different war but similar circumstances. And the hardships never really went away.

These days you have to pay to see the Trevi Fountain but you can also buy fibreglass replicas in B&Q.

 

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

The 1950s and 60s as an era fascinates me, because so much changed but so much remained the same. I get impatient with the myth that everything burst into technicolour and psychedelia round about 1965, because the poverty and social deprivation was appalling. It was far more Up The Junction than Magical Mystery Tour. The echoes from the dislocation of both world wars rippled down for decades. And now we're on repeat.

And another earworm! I am truly grateful!

Thanks for reading, Turlough.

Submitted by Turlough on

When I was a kid we weren’t really poor but we were never anywhere near to being rich. My dad (a former Irish navvy) always worked away, constantly changing jobs within the building  industry and my mother worked long hours in a fruit and veg shop. In comparison with the current way of life, many aspects of what I grew up with might be described these days as primitive; the usual list… central heating, colour tellies, fridges, and even landline phones were considered luxuries. But when I look back, especially to my teenage years and my twenties, everything was more interesting and exciting, and saving hard to get hold of almost unobtainable things was usually the only way. Since then corporate money has ruined everything I loved, especially football, popular music, pubs, night clubs, high streets and city centres, libraries, and so on. They’ve all been either destroyed or homogenised. Life might not have been easy in the sixties and seventies but, having been born in 1957, I wouldn’t have wanted to be around at any other time.

At the start of our ‘The Way We Heard’ challenge I looked at the list of records that had topped the charts in the 2010s and 2020s and not only were there none that I liked but there were none that I’d even heard of. And I didn’t watch a single minute of the World Cup we’ve just had because there is absolutely no magic to it these days for a kid whose first World Cup was Mexico ’70 with all its magic.

I’ll always feel sorry for my grandparents and parents for the rough times they lived through, but I also feel sorry for my kids and grandkids because anything that was any good has gone. The only thing of significance that remains from the past is war, which is something my generation didn’t have to get involved in even though the threat always existed. Which reminds me, I used to read Commando comics filled with stories about war heroes but in these days of long-range drones and missiles they won’t even be able to match up to what we had. It’s a sad day when we come to say that even war isn’t as good as it used to be. But don’t tell ‘em Pike!

And nobody can even write a decent earworm these days. They do exist but they’re not very good, so I’d strongly advise against ever watching an episode of Paw Patrol.

And what a load of old rambling that is that I’ve just churned out. You can stop reading now.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

It isn't rambling Turlough - it's social commentry.  And I agree with every word.

I lived for eight years with a boyfriend who was twelve years younger than me - so I was born in 1955 and he was born in 1967.  There was my childhood with a ration book (although my mum never had to use it), feeding apples to the milkman's horse, a weekly bath, going to visit my great grandparents who were born in the 1880's (yes I personally knew people born 20 years before Queen Victoria died !), walking a mile up the hill to the phone box if we wanted to phone someone, washing the sheets in the bath, butter and milk kept in the cool cupboard under the stairs (no fridge).

And there was him who had grown up with colour tv, central heating, wall-to-wall carpeting (a synonym for luxury in my childhood when you had lino with a rug.  Big rug if you were well off, little rag rug if you weren't), a shower in the bathroom, parents with a car, two phones in the house, freezer, dishwasher, etc

We could have been born on different planets for the huge difference those 12 years made. 

 

 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Kat, had the boy ever heard of the Woodentops and Twizzle? In my romantic encounters that has always been the first question I have asked on a first date.

One of the greatest disappointments in my life occurred in a trendy nitespot in Veliko Tarnovo not far from home. It's called the 'Lino Bar' but would you believe there's not a scrap of linoleum floor covering in the place. My heartache intensified when I learnt that in the Bulgarian language lino is the neuter form of the adjective meaning shit. My Nan would have been furious if she'd known this whilst kneeling on her own floral design lino to blacklead the grate.

  

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

Worse than that never hearing of the Woodetops, Andy Pandy or The Flower Pot Men, Tim hadn't read a single book since he left school apart from a Wilbur Smith novel which someone had given his mother when she was in hospital.  This was nothing to do with his intelligence  (he was probably the most intelligent person in our IT department where I met him) but he lived in a world where people simply didn't read.  

This was gob smacking to me as I had grown up in a family where most of us read.  It was like discovering a new tribe.  Tim had grown up with TV and computer games, and went to a Portsmouth comprehensive where if you got through the day without getting beaten up that was considered a result. Nobody would have thought of reading novels for pleasure.

Anyway I let him loose on my bookcases and he developed a real love of books particularly Hemingway and Steinbeck.  

I'm sure your gran would be happy in her superior knowledge that the 'lino' in linoleum means flax and refers to the canvas backing.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

You mentioned the word 'Portsmouth' so that explains everything. My sister lives near there (Waterlooville) so I have experience of the area.

I didn't know about the lino-flax connection. I'm feeling very educated now. I wish my Nan was here. It was something we never discussed.

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

Turlough - there aren't even debs anymore, never mind in coffee houses.

I have ambivalent feelings about modern times. Born in 1954 (I chose the song because it was No.1 in the UK when I was born, self-centred thing that I am), I'm glad that I grew up when I did because despite all the shit that was still around, there was a feeling that things would change. Fascism was bad, even on the right, education and the welfare state was the way to go, greater social liberalism being advocated in Parliament, and the young were looking to a brighter world in all senses. No matter how difficult things were for so many people, there was a feeling that those things really could only get better.

It took me a long time to realise that I grew up in a blip, in a brief moment of respite before big money reasserted itself, albeit in a different form from the class-based power we had before. Although what's happening now does feel a bit like pre-revolutionary France, where the haves do not just have more, they apparently inhabit a completely different planet from us. Big money has modernised - it realises that there is still, at the moment, some danger in popular opinion, so it throws a chunk of the money at making us hate each other, so we won't hate them. Their aim, of course, is to render us completely unable to do anything, and they get nearer and nearer to the goal. I recently watched a documentary about the Tech Bros who are founding so called independent states where one Tech Bro is king and the rest buy the right to have a say in proceedings. It was almost funny, because at the moment it looks like little boys building a tree house and declaring it the Kingdom of Our Gang, but that's how they want the world to be and, given how Trump's done pretty much that with the USA, who's to say they won't succeed.

But I also remember, in the '70s, when I was in between jobs in London, trying to sign on for rent support, and being I told I couldn't because I shared a flat with a man, and because we also shared the bedroom, he had to pay my rent. When I pointed out that basically meant I was being forced into charging for sex, the poor young lass behind the counter, who was even younger than I was, blushed to her roots. A couple of years later, I was being told that my bigger salary couldn't be couldn't be counted as the main one for a mortgage, because he was the man and I was not. I remember my Mum threatening to burn down the Co-op because they wouldn't let her sign a Hire Purchase agreement for a new settee without my Dad's permission. I remember standing on a corner with a poster and a placard during the campaign against the Corrie Amendment (trying to bring down the time limit for abortion), and the Black bloke who turned out every week with us being beaten to a pulp by the National Front while the rest of us tried unsuccessfully to fight back with our placards and the police stood over the road and watched.

Sometimes it does feel like everything's gone to hell in a handcart, but at least my gay family and friends can now get married, my kids were never looked down on because their parents weren't married, you can't put 'No Irish, No Blacks' on a Room To Let sign. Admittedly, no-one on an ordinary wage can afford a decent place to live, violence against women and children is increasing, and I read today that an AI application decided of its own volition to hack some company's systems for no reason at all. The blip is well and truly over.

As is this ramble. If you made it to the end, bless you, and you will get your reward in the heaven of your choice.

Submitted by Turlough on

I agree with every word of your ramble Airy, especially this bit…

Big money has modernised - it realises that there is still, at the moment, some danger in popular opinion, so it throws a chunk of the money at making us hate each other, so we won't hate them.

It’s as if the shit that we have to live with metamorphoses with time.

Respect and thanks to you for being one of those people who always stands up against the world’s wrongs.

And I’m already in the heaven of my choice. It’s far from perfect but I can’t imagine that I’ll ever find anywhere better.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

Jane I'm with you all the way there., very well expressed.   I think there was a brief golden period, where things were tough befor and now a few staggeringly rich and powereful meglamaniacs rule the world and affect every person in it.

I recently read about that new 'country' of Liberland.  If it had been April 1st I would have assumed it was a spoof.  Elitism gone mad, especially the bit about the more money you have the more votes you have.  It's not that far from Turlough, between Croatia and Serbia on the west bank of the Danube River. It's just like that novel 'Atlas Shrugged' where all the rich people go off planet and abandon everyone else.

 

Submitted by marandina on

A tale of every day folk and broken dreams.

We had a radiogram back in the day. My dad loved his Mario Lanza LPs and my mum her Roy Orbison and Elvis.

I was engrossed all the way through.

A story that ripples outwards like a pebble skimmed on a pond.

Your attention to detail is immaculate, Jane. 

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you so much for reading, Paul. My Mum was a big Mario Lanza fan, also Richard Tauber and, in a slight change of gear, Nat King Cole. Dad was more a Sinatra guy.

My Dad was very proud of his radiogram. Though his bubble was slightly burst when a friend invited us round one afternoon to listen to his brand new spindly-legged radiogram, which also had: STEREO!

Submitted by celticman on

stereo! who would have belived it? No wonder the world has gone to pot. I blame Frank Sinatra. Which makes a wee change from blaming Trump, even though they are the same age. One of them is dead, I think, probably the wrong one.