Wearily Lizzie shook her head. “No, Noel,” she said, knowing the terrible blow she was dealing him. “My mother never disobeyed my father once in her entire life, and she didn’t do so where her will was concerned. No money, or possessions, were left to me by her.”
No one spoke. No one could think of one earthly thing to say. Nina began to cry. Rose moved nearer to Lizzie, sliding her hand in hers. At last Noel said in strangled tones, “There must be an alternative! There must be!”
Lizzie’s hand tightened on Rose’s. “Oh yes, there is an alternative,” she said, knowing that the moment of decision-making had come. “If I began to take in sewing and we lived very, very frugally, we could perhaps make ends meet – but only if we no longer had to pay such a high rent on our home.”
Noel wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, so grateful at the thought of a reprieve, any reprieve, he didn’t give a thought to what the alternative of not paying a high rent might be. Nina stared at her blankly. How could the rent they paid on their home be reduced? Even she knew that rents never went down, that they only ever went up.
Rose blinked, a glimmer of understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it? What Noel would think of what she was sure their mother’s solution to their problem was going to be, she didn’t know, but she knew that Nina would hate it. She frowned. Nina couldn’t possibly hate it as much as she would hate not being able to continue with her studies at art school. No one could. It simply wasn’t possible. And there would be compensations. They would be nearer Bull Royd and the Beck and …
“It would mean our moving into another, smaller house,” Lizzie said, breaking in on Rose’s racing thoughts, “and one in not such a nice area.”
“Blow the area,” Noel said, again running his hands through his hair but this time in a gesture of infinite relief. “I could do some work evenings and weekends to help out, maybe even give some private art lessons.”
“Where?” Nina asked tautly, her eyes locked fearfully on her mother’s. “Where would we move to that we could afford? This area is hardly staggeringly smart, is it? I know it’s nice enough and our neighbours are professional people, but we’re still in sight of Lister’s mill chimney and the mill back-to-backs are only a stone’s throw away. Where on earth could we move to that would be cheaper?”
Lizzie felt her heart twist in her breast. She had never once regretted her action in turning her back on a life of luxurious ease in order to marry Laurence, but she did bitterly regret her father’s oxlike obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge her children. It meant that none of them enjoyed even a taste of the lifestyle Walter’s children enjoyed and though Noel seemed uncaring of the fact, and Rose oblivious, she knew that Nina longed for the kind of clothes and travel and society that were so well within her cousin Lottie’s reach – and as far from her own reach as the moon. And she knew that for Nina, the move she was about to suggest would be a fate worse than death.
She hesitated for one last, agonizing second and then, knowing there was no acceptable alternative, she answered Nina’s fear-filled question, “The mill cottages,” she said. “There’s one empty next to the Wilkinsons and the landlord says we can move in immediately.”
Chapter Four
Ever after, Rose was to look back on the next few moments of time as being nearly almost as bad as the moment when her father had lunged senselessly across the kitchen table, plunging their lives into previously unimagined upheaval.
Noel’s reaction had been one of stunned incredulity, but even as his eyebrows had shot high and his jaw had sagged, reluctant acceptance had flared through his eyes. He would be able to continue his studies. What did it matter where he lived as long as he didn’t have to risk injury to his hands by working at a loom or a twisting machine?
It was Nina’s reaction that touched the moment with unforgettable hideousness. She hadn’t protested, hadn’t even spoken. She had simply screamed.
Lizzie had sprung to her feet with a speed of movement totally alien to her usual effortless grace. Seizing hold of both Nina’s hands she had tugged her to her feet, shouting at her for the first time ever. “Stop that, Nina! Stop that this minute! What on earth will your father think is happening? Do you want him to have another stroke? Do you want to make things even worse than they are?”
“I’ll go in to Pa and reassure him,” Noel had said, his thoughts already turning to how he would find room, in a back-to-back, for a makeshift studio.
“It won’t be so bad, Neen.” Rose had felt physically sick at the depth of Nina’s distress and her voice had been fraught with urgency as she had tried to offer some comfort. “Polly Wilkinson’s mother is ever so nice and she and Ma are already friends.”
Nina hadn’t been remotely comforted. Stunned with shock at being shouted at in such a way by her mother she had ceased screaming and, sobbing hysterically, had gasped, “Why should we have to live in a mill worker’s back-to-back? We’re Rimmingtons as well as being Sugdens! What will our cousins think if they find out? They’ll never have anything to do with us, will they? Not ever, ever, ever!”
“Somewhere along the line your values have got exceedingly misplaced, Miss!” Lizzie had let smartly go of Nina’s hands and had breathed in deeply, her fine-etched nostrils pinched and white. “And unless your cousins’ values are equally cock-eyed, and I sincerely hope they aren’t, where we live will make not the slightest difference to them.”
Nina had shaken her head, her hair tumbling wildly around her shoulders. Her mother was wrong. She knew her mother was wrong. And she knew that she would never be able to become accustomed to living in a house with no plumbed-in bath and no indoor lavatory and amongst neighbours who wouldn’t even know what a dress designer was; neighbours who would wear clogs instead of shoes, and shawls instead of hats and coats.
“It isn’t fair!” she had whispered, her face blotched and streaked by tears. “It isn’t fair!”
Lizzie had known it wasn’t fair, and that other things weren’t fair either. It wasn’t fair Laurence having been struck down and left unable to move unaided and unable to communicate articulately. It wasn’t fair that when her father had such vast personal wealth she wasn’t able to go to him in their time of trouble and have that trouble eased.
Her spurt of anger, occasioned only by her own distress, had vanished and with an aching heart she had drawn Nina into the comfort of her arms, saying with loving compassion, “Life isn’t fair, my love. It never has been and never will be, and it is something each and everyone one of us has to come to terms with.” Smoothing Nina’s fiery, turbulent hair as if she were a child she had added gently, “And we have to contain our distress, my pet, for if we don’t your father is going to be aware of it and then he is going to be distressed even further and that won’t help his recovery. It won’t help his recovery one little bit.”
As Nina had drawn in a shuddering, steadying breath the stairs had creaked and Rose, knowing what the sound signified, had walked out of the kitchen. Noel was returning to his paints and brushes and their father was on his own again. As she crossed the foot of the stairs, heading towards the parlour, she wondered how her father would feel at moving from their modestly substantial home into a mill cottage – a mill cottage near identical with the cottage he had been born in and had worked so hard to escape from.
“I suppose the mercy is, Mr Sugden won’t be aware of where you’re having to move to,” Rose overheard Mrs Mellor saying to her mother a week later as her mother stood at their front garden gate supervising the loading of their belongings on to a removal cart.
Lizzie checked there was enough crushed newspaper packing a crockery-filled tea-chest and said evenly, “My husband has lost some power of movement and speech, Mrs Mellor, not his wits. He’s quite well aware of where we’re moving to – and he’s grateful that our new next-door neighbours are a family Rose and myself have long been friendly with.”
“Is that so?
” There was arch disbelief in Mrs Mellor’s voice. She didn’t for one moment believe stylish Lizzie Sugden had, as yet, had anything to do with any of her new neighbours-to-be. How could she have? The social gulf dividing the residents of wide, tree-lined Jesmond Avenue from the mill workers and similar who inhabited the long narrow streets of the back-to-backs, was as deep as a chasm.
Rose’s arms tightened around the bedding she was carrying. “The house we’re moving into is next door to my very best friend’s house,” she said fiercely, well aware of Mrs Mellor’s scepticism.
Mrs Mellor sniffed. Where Rose was concerned, nothing would surprise her. She resisted the temptation to ask Rose if it would have been more correct to have described her friend’s house as being back-to-back with the house they were moving in to, not next door, but Lizzie Sugden was still within earshot and she thought better of it, saying instead. “And how is your poor father going to be moved into your new home? He’s not going to be able to walk there, is he?”
Lizzie saved her from replying. She had been having a brief word with the removal man’s boy and she now stepped away from him, saying as she began to walk back up her garden path, “Dr Todd has kindly offered to chauffeur my husband to our new address,” and then, turning her attention immediately to Rose, “Don’t stand dawdling and chatting, love. I want the eiderdowns and pillows on the cart before the beds and mattresses are loaded.”
As Rose obediently hurried off in the direction of the removal cart with her bulky cargo, Mrs Mellor watched Lizzie re-enter her now half-empty house, an expression of grudging respect in her eyes. ‘Chauffeur’indeed! Lizzie Sugden might be suffering a severe reversal of fortune but she’d certainly lost none of her annoyingly effortless style. She folded her arms across her chest and sniffed. Stylishness, as Lizzie Sugden was so painfully finding out, was all very well but it didn’t pay the rent, nor would it go down too well in a street of back-to-backs. Lizzie Sugden was going to have to trim her sails in more ways than one when she moved in amongst her new neighbours. Mrs Mellor sniffed again. She wouldn’t want to be in Lizzie Sugden’s shoes – not for all the tea in China.
“We’re ready, Missus,” Albert Porritt, the removal man, said an hour or so later as he patted his horse’s muzzle, his shirt sleeves rolled high, a battered trilby pushed to the back of his head. “You’re flitting into number twenty-six Beck-Side Street, aren’t you? I don’t want to be off-loading all your worldly goods at t’wrong house.”
“Neither do I.” Lizzie kept control of her composure with difficulty. The moment had come; was finally here. Noel and Dr Todd had already, and with the greatest difficulty, manoeuvred Laurence into Dr Todd’s motor car. The house behind her, her home for all her married life, was stripped bare. Nothing was left but the roses in the garden. She stood at the gate for the last time, breathing in their scent.
On the far side of the street a muslin curtain twitched and another was pulled discreetly aside to enable the watcher behind it to see more clearly. A flare of anger, white-hot, spurted through her. What were her neighbours, who for years had been civilly friendly towards her, afraid of? Did they think the bad fortune necessitating her family’s move might be contagious? Whether they did or not, it was obvious none of them intended coming out into their front gardens in order to say goodbye to them.
Rose slid her hand into hers. “We’ll make real friends in Beck-Side Street,” she said, reading her mother’s thoughts all too clearly. “Did you know Mr Porritt lives there? Do you think he’d let me ride there on the cart? I’m sure there’d be enough room up on the front of it.”
Lizzie squeezed her hand. It wouldn’t be a very dignified way for Rose to arrive at their new home, but what did that matter? She was the only one taking the move in her stride and if she wanted to arrive on the removal cart, and if Mr Porritt didn’t have any objections, then neither did she.
Nina, seated in the rear seat of Dr Todd’s motorcar, her arms around her father in order to keep him at least half upright, hadn’t been nearly as understanding.
“She’s doing what?” she had said, the last vestige of blood draining from her face. “But how can you allow it, Mother! People will think we’re tinkers!”
“People will think what they want to think,” Lizzie said crisply, determined not to enter into a conversation that would cause Laurence even more distress than he was already suffering.
With Dr Todd’s gentlemanly assistance she settled herself in the front passenger seat, aware of an unnerving sense of déjà vu. This wasn’t the first time she had turned her back on a way of life. Before, it had been in order to pursue her own happiness; now, it was in order that her children could keep their precious dreams and one day, God willing, attain them.
“I think we’re ready to leave, Dr Todd,” she said steadily, adjusting her black straw hat with a net-gloved hand. “Noel has gone on ahead with the key to open up the house and Mr Porritt has promised that the instant he arrives, he and his boy will unload the sofa so that Laurence can rest while the remaining furniture is moved in.”
Dr Todd made a noncommittal noise in his throat. He wasn’t accustomed to letting his patients’lives touch him so closely and wasn’t overly enjoying the experience. Beck-Side Street was no sort of address for a family like the Sugdens and just why they were moving there, instead of the older children finding employment and compensating for Laurence Sugden’s loss of income, he couldn’t for the life of him understand.
Albert Porritt, ignorant of the fact that the insipid-looking young fellow who had gone ahead to open up the house, and the dramatically pale young woman tending her sick father in the rear of the motorcar had, between them, never done a day’s paid work in their lives, was equally flummoxed. He’d moved all sorts of families in his time, and under all sorts of conditions, but he’d never moved a family quite as hard to fathom as this one.
They didn’t talk right, for one thing. Here they were, about to move in to a mill back-to-back, and even the friendly little lass now wedged between him and his lad, spoke as if she were a nob from Harrogate or Ilkley. He wondered if the sick head of the household had been a Grammar School teacher. Lots of Grammar School teachers were very particular about how they spoke and how their children spoke. He cracked his whip over the head of his horse in order to hurry it up a little. One thing was for sure; the entire blooming family would have to learn to speak a little differently if they were to feel at home amongst their new neighbours.
“That newfangled motorcar’ll’ave arrived at t’house by now,” his son, Micky, suddenly said, awe at the very thought of Dr Todd’s motorcar, thick in his voice. “I bet there’s nivver bin a motorcar in Beck-Side Street afore. I bet its mekkin’a right commotion.”
“T’Lord Mayor has one,” Albert said knowledgeably. “And if I had a cart wi’a motor instead of this’ere old’oss, I’d be able to do that many jobs, that blooming quick, I’d be as rich as t’bloody Lord Mayor mesself.”
Rose listened to the conversation with interest. She liked Mr Porritt. He’d let her hold his horse’s reins all the way down Jesmond Avenue, only taking them from her when the horse had clip-clopped out into the busier roads.
“My grandfather has a motorcar,” she said artlessly. “It’s much bigger than Dr Todd’s and it isn’t black, like Dr Todd’s, it’s a lovely blue-green colour.”
“Oh, aye?” Albert looked down at her, disbelieving amusement in his eyes. She might speak all lah-di-dah but she wasn’t lah-di-dah enough to have a grandad with a motorcar even posher than the one now ferrying her father to Beck-Side Street, because if she had been, she and her family wouldn’t be moving into Beck-Side Street in the first place. “And I suppose it has a flag in front, like t’King’s?” he said affably.
Rose, well aware that he was teasing her, grinned. It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe her. All that mattered was that he was yet another resident of Beck-Side Street she was on friendly terms with. She wondered whereabouts in Beck-Side Street he
and his son lived, and where he kept his horse. She wondered, if she asked nicely, if he would let her help him look after it.
“There’s a right crowd gathered to see t’motorcar,” the previously silent Micky now said, as the horse turned into the top end of Beck-Side Street and they could see clear down to the bottom end of it, and the fields and the Beck beyond. “I knew it’d cause a commotion. I bet that cheeky Jenny Wilkinson is pestering to have a ride in it.”
“Jenny Wilkinson isn’t cheeky,” Rose said, immediately defensive. “She’s my best friend.”
Micky shifted his feet against the board they were resting on, his heavy wooden clogs making a grating noise. “I know,” he said, not looking at her as he had carefully avoided looking at her all morning. “I’ve seen you and her laiking together in t’street.”
His father’s eyebrows rose slightly. If the freckled-faced baggage so enamoured of his horse had, indeed, already a friend in Beck-Side Street, then she wouldn’t have much of a problem in quickly feeling at home there. He couldn’t imagine her elder sister having a friend there, though. He couldn’t imagine her elder sister having a friend there ever.
As Dr Todd’s motorcar putt-putted over the cobbles of Beck-Side Street and people crowded out on to their front steps to gawp at it, Nina’s arms tightened around her father, not so much to steady him as to gain some comfort from him. The street was even worse than she had imagined it would be. Long and straight, it seemed to stretch downhill into infinity, only the arches of the built-over passageways leading through to the ‘backs’breaking up the uniform tedium of smoke-blackened stone.
“I’m so so … orry li … ittle l … ove,” her father said with immense effort, patting her arm lovingly with his still mobile left hand.
She blinked away the tears that had been threatening to fall. “There’s no need for you to be sorry, Father,” she said fiercely, feeling instant remorse at having allowed him to read her feelings so clearly. “You couldn’t help having a stroke. And we won’t live in Beck-Side Street forever.” Her eyes were brilliant as emeralds with the force of her determination. “We won’t live in Beck-Side Street a day longer than is absolutely necessary!”
Yorkshire Rose Page 6
