by Marie Joseph
His wife, dead for almost a year now, had kept the black fireplace burnished to perfection. Once a week she had applied the blacklead with a small brush, polishing it up with a bigger brush, then finishing off with rags. The steel fender had been rubbed hard with emery paper until, as she had always said, it winked right back at you. As a tribute to her memory Seth had tried to keep it in the same condition. Apart from washing days, when Seth’s combs and flannel shirts steamed gently on a clotheshorse drawn up to the fire, to be aired afterwards on the rack hoisted up to the ceiling, the little back room was a cosy place to be.
Calmer now, Seth looked round at the baby. It looked right somehow, sleeping away on the prickly sofa, tucked up like a parcel in the grey shawl. Tentatively Seth reached out and touched the fringe, drawing his hand back and tut-tutting when he realized it was damp.
Almost without volition he began to unwrap the baby, wincing when he saw the mark of blood on the towel from the recently severed umbilical cord. You didn’t have to be a midwife or a doctor to know this baby was just new-born. Seth caught his breath as the tiny legs, mottled like a plucked chicken’s, drew themselves up, then straightened out again. A little girl … And all of a piece. Nothing missing, not a finger, not a toe; all of a piece, and beautiful.
In spite of his less than average height, Seth Haydock had the hands of a man more than twice his size. Sitting on his low stool, worn into a comfortable hollow by generations of cloggers before him, hammering away at clogs mended dozens of times before, Seth’s short broad fingers could handle his lengths of waxed gut thread as if they were strands of the finest silk. He could make a pair of red clogs for a baby – the only time a departure from the traditional black was permitted – and strike in the nails with less than a whisker between them. He could hammer in a tiny brass toeplate no bigger than his thumb and never falter, but now, as he carefully wrapped the baby up in the towel and grey shawl again, those same fingers shivered as if he was coming down with the Black Death.
When the baby began to cry again, his own face crumpled. ‘Hush, little chuck,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t take on. Seth’ll get you back to your mam somehow.’ Awkwardly, he lifted the baby, holding her against his shoulder, rocking his body to and fro, patting her back as he’d seen other women do.
Childless himself, Seth loved children. A great swelling rose in his chest as he felt the tiny body against his shoulder. Taking him by surprise, the tight feeling came up into his eyes, flowing as tears down his cheeks. Sobs tore at his throat as the fiercely held in grief since the death of his wife erupted. ‘Oh, Clara! Clara!’ Over and over he sobbed her name, crying with the new-born child in a paroxysm of despair over which he had no control.
This tiny creature should have been her baby. Clara’s and his. For once Seth abandoned his calm acceptance of God’s will. It should have been his wife sitting here in the middle of the night, holding her baby, with the firelight setting the brasses winking, and the red chenille cloth on the table glowing with the richness of ruby velvet. It wasn’t right that his Clara was lying up there in the cemetery on its windswept hill, with the rain beating down on the jamjar of daffodils Seth had put there the Sunday before. She was only lying there till the day the trumpets sounded on the Day of Judgement, Seth believed that. He had to believe it. How else could he go on?
The baby had stopped crying, but he failed to notice. Fear held him rigid as doubts crept from the shadowed corners like evil living things. His eyes, a pale limpid blue at variance with the blackness of his hair, were wide with a terror he hadn’t felt once in his days of soldiering. His hand cradled the baby’s head, feeling the soft down whisper beneath his fingers.
Suppose it wasn’t true? Suppose that when his Clara died her bright spirit had died with her? That even now the water was seeping into her coffin, as he’d heard it did, destroying all that was left of her? Seth lowered the baby onto his knee, hardly knowing what he was doing, touching the tiny pouting mouth with a finger. And immediately felt his finger taken in a sucking movement.
Afterwards, years afterwards, Seth knew that was the moment the fear went from him. The doubting, the terror, all gone. This baby was his. It had come to him out of the darkness that had been his life since Clara died. From where he couldn’t even begin to guess, but it had been his door the stranger had knocked at.
‘Take it. Love it,’ the gruff voice had said.
Seth sighed. His prayers had been answered. ‘Help me,’ he’d prayed, over and over. And now the good Lord had replied.
Sentiment played no part in Seth’s down-to-earth disposition. Mystical happenings he laughed to scorn, but as though an unseen hand had turned up the gas, it seemed to him that the little room was filled with light. In that moment he knew what he would do.
Leaving the baby safely tucked into a corner of the sofa, he took a taper from the cocoa tin in the hearth and lit the candle set at the end of the cornice. The stairs leading up from the little back room were narrow and steep, but he climbed them with the bouncing step of a young boy.
The bedroom on the left, at the front of the house, was furnished with a double bed and a flock mattress he pawed over each morning to smooth out the lumps, the way he’d seen his wife do. Over by the window with its yellow paper blind stood a wash-hand stand, with a water jug and basin on its marbled top. A row of pegs along the wall served as a wardrobe, and as Seth took down his jacket his glance rested on the high round table by his bed.
There they were, reassuring and familiar, his well-thumbed Bible and his copy of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Their very presence gave him comfort. He took up the candle again. How could he have doubted? Bunyan’s total certainty that there was a life after death had soothed and eased him into sleep many a night. What had he been thinking about, upsetting himself just now? His anguished tears had shocked him into a realization of his own unsuspected vulnerability, and yet he felt drained of emotion now, at peace, the way it was ordained that a true believer should always be.
The baby was sleeping peacefully, so Seth sat down in his rocking chair, folded his big hands over his chest and prepared himself for his long vigil.
Lily West across the street needed her sleep if anybody did, he told himself, bringing her to mind as if she’d suddenly appeared like an unlovely vision in the doorway leading from the shop. Lily West was so poor that, but for the Poor Law authorities stepping in, she and her family would have starved. Six sons Lily had borne, every one a scrounger and a scavenger from the day they could walk. Even the youngest one, Walter, a baby of five months old, had a shifty look in his crossed blue eyes, and Seth guessed it wouldn’t be long before he was down on the market at closing time on Wednesdays and Saturdays begging for bruised apples, cut oranges, overripe bananas. The West boys, black-haired and blue-eyed, with more than a touch of the Blarney in their ancestry, known to every trader in the district for their cheeky grins and Lancashire humour.
‘Go on, mister, gie us a toffee! Carry your bag up from the Co-op, missus?’
Clogged free by Seth from the day they could totter on bandy legs across the street to his shop, each pair of clogs passed down the line. And then, inevitably, the despair of their benefactor as they cracked their clogs on the stone flags to raise sparks, ending up with the iron dangling from its moorings.
Seth leaned forward to place a cob of coal dead centre on the brightly burning fire. Yes, he reckoned Lily West owed him possibly the biggest favour he was ever likely to ask from anybody. Taking his jacket off, he laid it gently over the sleeping baby, then went back to his chair.
Arnie West, Lily’s shiftless husband, had dropped down dead in the street of a seizure the day his wife had told him she had fallen for the sixth time. But that wasn’t what killed him, so rumour went.
‘Found himself three sheets to the wind at old Mrs Lewis’s Teetotal Mission,’ the doorstep gossips had said. ‘Signed the pledge against gambling, drinking and smoking. Promised God in front of witnesses to lead a life of
cleanliness and constant sobriety. Found out what he’d done when he come to, and died of shock, the poor bugger!’
Seth half rose from his chair as the baby stirred, then settled back again, setting it rocking. Ah, yes. For a while it had seemed the workhouse would be the only solution, but folks in the street had rallied round and with the eldest two boys working and bringing in four shillings a week apiece, plus the free dinner tickets given to the lads still at school, the West family survived.
At almost five o’clock the baby woke and began to cry. Now was the time …
Outside the rain had stopped, but the cobbles were still wet and greasy, so treading carefully Seth carried his precious bundle across the street to the only house with an unmopped front step. Taking a deep breath he raised his hand and rapped smartly on the door.
Lily was a long time in answering, and when at last she stood there, peering out into the grey morning, Seth’s heart sank. Never a sight for sore eyes when dressed in her best, Lily West in her night attire was enough to put even the hungriest man off his dinner.
At the age of thirty-four Lily West had the appearance of a woman well into her fifties. Her hair, already turning grey, was scraped back from her face and tied at the back with a piece of string. Years of undernourishment had rotted her teeth, which stuck out so much it was said she could eat an apple through a tennis racket. Although her legs were as thin as matchsticks, her body was top heavy with breasts as billowed as a feather bolster tied in the middle.
‘Can I come in, Mrs West?’
Seth followed Lily inside, wrinkling his nose against the musty smell coming from the once white flannelette nightdress and the woollen shawl round her shoulders. Only the determination fostered in him during the long waiting hours spurred him on.
‘It’s a terrible time to come calling.’ He stood in the doorway of the back room as Lily lit the paraffin lamp set in the centre of the big square table taking up most of the space in the tiny room. No gas for Lily. Gas meant bills to be paid and, besides, the oilman wheeling his drums round the streets on his barrow was always a soft touch where Lily was concerned.
‘My door’s never shut to you, Mr Haydock.’ Straightening up from lighting the lamp, Lily saw the baby for the first time. Her eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open in disbelief. ‘God rest me soul, Mr Haydock! Where the ’ell have you got that from?’
Moving at speed round the table, she took the baby from Seth’s arms. As she stared down into the little face a look of great sweetness crept over her features, a poignant reminder of the not unattractive girl she had once been.
‘Who’s a bonny little lad, then?’ Her eyes over the baby’s head were suddenly filled with suspicion. ‘It’s not our Jim’s, is it?’ She lifted her face upwards. ‘He’s nobbut fifteen, but he’s a one for the lasses already.’
Seth looked Lily straight in the eye. ‘It’s a girl, Mrs West, not a boy.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Lily did not see. She was far from seeing, but if nice Mr Haydock was for keeping his mouth shut then it was all right by her. To cover her confusion she tut-tutted at the baby. Who would’ve thought it of a chapel-going man like Seth Haydock? Her mind was going round in circles. Still, he was a man for all his hymn singing, and the Bible thumpers were often the worst. She jigged the baby up and down. Well, Seth Haydock wouldn’t be the first man to have his sins come home to roost. Her imagination soared. Most likely the girl’s mother, or her father, had fetched it round and just handed it over, and Mr Haydock being the upright kind of man he was had taken it in to do the decent thing.
She fingered the grey shawl. Not much of a clue there. Most of the women roundabouts wore shawls like this one, fastened beneath their chins to keep the worst of the weather out. Lily’s head lifted. Her mind raced ahead. She could guess what Mr Haydock wanted, and the very thought of it was making her bosom twinge. She smiled.
‘Looking for a wetnurse, Mr Haydock? Because if you are then you’ve come to the right shop. There’s enough milk here for a dozen, and full cream. Just look at my lads. Not a runt in the whole of the litter.’
Seth stepped back a pace. He could feel a blush spreading up from his throat like a sudden scorch. He wouldn’t put it past Lily West to undo the buttons down the front of her nightgown and feed the baby there, right before his very eyes. For hadn’t he seen her doing the very same thing only last week on an unnaturally warm day, sitting out on her step feeding young Walter, as brazen as brass.
‘Just for a start-off,’ he said hoarsley. ‘Till I get sorted out for bottles, and a tin of Cow and Gate.’ Feeling in the pocket of his jacket he found and held out a ten-shilling note. ‘For nappies and things,’ he said wildly. ‘And three shillings a week for you till the time she can go on the bottle.’
‘Bottle?’ Lily’s brown eyes raised themselves ceilingwards. ‘Bottle? This little chuck’s not going on no bottle, not while Lily West’s titties keep filling up with the proper stuff.’
Seth felt he might faint. What on earth was he doing here, having such an unlikely conversation at five o’clock in the morning with Lily West? Why hadn’t he waited till it got light, then taken the baby down to the doctor’s? Or the town hall? Or the police station? Wasn’t what he was doing, or thinking of doing, an unlawful, wicked act? A baby wasn’t a thing you could take to yourself and keep. Somebody in this town had given birth to this beautiful child less than twelve hours ago. He stared at Lily with a hunted expression. But whoever had brought forth – the biblical expression came easily into his mind – this exquisite creature hadn’t wanted it. He shook his head in disbelief. They’d wanted him to have it. Him. Seth Haydock. Knowing he was the man to cherish it and love it. Always …
‘She can go in a drawer,’ Lily was saying. ‘But I’d be glad of a bit of blanket to line it with if you can spare it, Mr Haydock.’ With the ease of long practice she sat down and began to unwrap the baby, her brown eyes soft as a doe’s above her beaky nose. ‘She’s a proper little beauty all right, Mr Haydock. Just look at them tingy-wingy fingers. Oo’s a lovely fairy, then?’ She looked up suddenly. ‘What are you going to call her, Mr Haydock?’ A longing crept into her voice. ‘If I’d had a girl I was going to call her Petal.’
‘Clara,’ Seth said quickly. ‘After my wife. That’s the only name I’d ever think of calling her. Clara.’
‘Well, that’s a bit off under the circumstances,’ Lily muttered to herself. ‘Foisting his dead wife’s name on his little bastard.’
‘Clara,’ she said aloud. ‘Well, there’s plenty worse names than that, I suppose. Will you be having the minister up the top do her? You being a godfearing man.’
‘Do her?’ Seth hadn’t bargained for this.
‘Christen her. You know. Sprinkling her with ’oly water and that. I’ve never got round to having any of my lads done, but I can’t see they’re any the worse for it.’
A sudden noise on the low ceiling above their heads drew Lily’s attention. ‘That’ll be our Joe. He’s only seven but he’s always first down. Goes helping the salt man saw his blocks for loading on his cart before school. Three foot long them blocks are, but you want to watch our Joe lift ’em.’ She nodded to the boy rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he stumbled into the room, tripping over what could only have been the pattern on the worn oilcloth. ‘Say ’ello to Mr Haydock. Your porridge is in the pot, lad.’
It was obvious that the boy, big for his age, with rosy cheeks and minus his two front teeth, had got straight out of bed to climb into a pair of short trousers three times too big for him, and slide his bare feet into a pair of clogs, mended by Seth the week before. Already the toes were scuffed and dented. Seth’s mouth actually opened to protest, but this wasn’t the time to deliver yet another lecture on the trouble he’d taken with this particular pair. The way he’d hand-cut the soles, getting them accurate to a fraction of an inch just by feeling the contours of Joe’s sturdy foot.
With a last lingering look at the baby, Seth tur
ned to go. ‘I’ll be back with the blanket, Mrs West. After the shop’s shut tonight I’ll start work on the cradle. A proper one with rockers. She’ll be snugger in that than in a drawer.’
Backing away, unwilling to leave, he saw young Joe ladling porridge into a dish from the brown earthenware pot in the fire’s side oven. Good thick oatmeal porridge, stiff and nutty from its slow all-night cooking. Just the thing to put a lining on a boy’s stomach before he went out into the cold.
‘Clara always used to have a pot like that on the go,’ he said, and at once Lily jerked her head towards a rickety stand-chair.
‘Get your feet under the table, Mr Haydock. Yon’s a bottomless pot. There’s more than enough to go round.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but no thank you.’ Seth smiled at the sight of Joe hunched at the table, slurping the porridge down with a speed that made his blue eyes bulge. Halfway through scraping the dish clean, he stopped to knock a dewdrop from the end of his nose with the cuff of his felted jersey. There was a crackle of the brown paper that Seth knew was lining Joe’s chest as he pushed the dish away. Twisting round in his chair, the young boy stared at the baby on his mother’s knee.
‘That’s not our Walter, is it?’ His eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. ‘Have you ’ad it in the night, our Mam?’
Quietly Seth made his way through the never used front room, opened the outside door, only to have it wrenched from his hand as Joe shot off down the street like an arrow from a bow. Seth stood quite still for a while on the pavement. He looked up at the sky, paling into dawn, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. The drama of Easter was over. By now the fair, with its swingboats and hobby horses, would be well on its way to Preston, not to return for another year.
Seth walked across the street, limping slightly, shivering in the cold damp air, the urge to kneel down and offer up a prayer quickening his uneven steps. His Methodist faith was simple, based on his Bible. He had closed his shop on Good Friday to sit in his back room reading from the Scriptures. It was the first Easter since Clara had died, and it had seemed that the agony of Jesus in the garden, on the Mount of Olives, had merged into his own sadness.
