Mill Town Girl

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘You haven’t a child,’ she said evenly.

  ‘Danny says they had a baby, but I know it was you, Carrie. Our baby. Rose Kennedy.’

  ‘Not me. Oh no, Patrick. It was our Jane who had the babies. She and Danny have had three. It’s him and Jane as have had babies. I’ve got nothing,’ she said with slow deliberation.

  The look of hope went from his eyes. ‘What do you want, Carrie? What do you want of me? You’ve got the houses. You’ve got me brother and your sister under control. What in God’s name do you want?’ he said.

  ‘Your brother’s coming to see you. I’ll give him two tickets to Dublin. There’ll be money in the Irish Linen Bank. Two hundred pounds. It’s what I feel is owing. To you and Danny.’

  ‘You want Danny to go back with me, do you?’ Patrick asked. ‘He’ll not do that. He loves his wife and children.’

  ‘I can look after our Jane and the children,’ Carrie told him. ‘It makes no difference to me if he goes or stays. He might stay. But again, he might be tempted by the money for he only earns twenty-five shillings a week. And I charge them eight and six for the rent.’

  ‘Is that all you care for? Money?’ He shouted at her. ‘You were a fine woman, Carrie Shrigley. What’s become of you?’

  ‘Quiet!’ The warder had gone for his arm and was twisting it, making him wince, pulling him away from the counter towards the door behind him.

  He was still protesting as they dragged him out of her sight. She could hear him. She heard a gate slam in the distance, then there was silence.

  Chapter Six

  When the door clanged behind the warder, Patrick slumped on to the hard bench-bed and tried to collect his thoughts. He fought down the anger that was still in him; he had learned over these years that silent fury made incarceration harder to bear and that the best way to control the feeling was to come to a decision.

  He looked down at his hands, tightly clenched in his lap, and deliberately loosened them. He’d known all along, even when he was telling her that she was a woman driven, that there was more to Carrie Shrigley than sensuality. He’d known since the first time he’d seen her, crossing the market square on a Saturday morning, taller than the women around her, straight and proud, her flaming hair pulled tightly back into a severe knot, that he could not take his eyes off her and had to get to know her. If love at first sight existed, and he’d have laughed at the idea before he saw her, then he had come as near to it as anyone ever had. And he’d sensed, before he had even spoken to her, from her face, her walk, from her dress, that she was a strong woman of strong purpose and strong passions.

  The noise of the other prisoners returning from work was growing louder; whistles were blown, bells clanged, but the shouts and tramping boots outside his cell were no longer a menace. He had a cell to himself at last. They were feeding him better, letting his hair grow, all so that he’d be in good shape when he was released. He put up a hand and felt the hair. It was good not to feel the shaven stubble, though he had not got the good head of hair he’d arrived with five years ago. It was greying, and thinner – but so was he. He stood and flexed the muscles on his legs. In a week or so he’d be done with it all.

  And he’d be done with Carrie, by the look of it. He had been drawn to her as he had never been drawn to a woman in his life before. The restlessness, the wanderlust that had been a part of him until he met her, he had believed at the start of their love affair, would leave him if he had Carrie Shrigley at his side. Yet she had been so fierce, so inflexibly religious, so frightened by her own passions that he dared not reveal to her his own careless, improvident past.

  Carrie would never have understood, having only known her strict father, that young men could grow wild living without fear of authority; that he had gone from one town to another, one occupation to another, joining the merchant navy to see the world, playing the fool on his leaves, even marrying when he and his drinking partner, old Bridget, had thought to settle.

  It was the war that freed him. Joining the Royal Navy – the great adventure, the terrible fear, the active service and the realisation that if he survived then his life would take on meaning. It had changed him. War had made him put his past behind him. His old Chief Petty Officer McGregor had told him to keep in touch and he found that McGregor had gone to a little town in Cheshire. Danny went with him; Danny, invalided out of the fusiliers, his lungs damaged from the poison gas. They both wanted to start anew.

  He heard a whistle blowing. He didn’t want to eat. Tonight he would refuse the thin soup, stale bread and strong, stewed tea. The warder outside his cell would not put him on punishment. Patrick went to the door and listened. Yes, it was the easy-going warder who was on duty tonight.

  Sitting on the bench again, his thoughts went back. Carrie never forgave herself for revelling in the wonderful, glorious passion he had for her – or her eagerness to share it. It was impossible to confess to her that he was a married man and a bankrupt Irish builder. He’d tried to tell her but fear of losing her had stopped him.

  Suddenly, in one of those flashes of memory that came without warning, he could smell the clean, fresh air off the hills and the scent of her room, taste the light saltiness on her skin, feel the silken warmth of her, hear her sighing when they were sated – and he wanted to weep.

  He got up again and strode restlessly up and down the small, narrow cell, forcing his mind from sweet recollection. Carrie loved him still, he knew that. He’d seen it in her face today. A man couldn’t know a woman as he’d known her – love a woman as he had loved her – and not know it. It was she who knew nothing of love. Carrie, who had never looked up to anyone except perhaps her father, and him only in death, believed that what she called respect was love. She would not find that. She never saw herself as anyone’s subordinate.

  And the child? She’d called their child Rose. Whether she knew it or not, it had been the memory of that night, the evening by the lake when the child was conceived, that had prompted her to call the child – his child – Rose.

  But she’d have nothing to do with him now. And he could not blame her. From what he knew about her, she’d not have known she was with child at the time of the trial. But he had known. He had known the moment it happened. And he’d known for sure when she’d stood up in the witness box, avoiding his eyes, pale and hollow-eyed herself. Her denial hadn’t fooled him.

  He’d not go back to Macclesfield. He’d not embarrass her or Danny and Jane with his own wants. He’d never been the settling sort; not like Danny. Jane and Danny would give his child a proper upbringing – they’d be better parents than he or even Carrie would. He had wanted Carrie with or without a child. He’d never craved fatherhood for its own sake. And she was the same, though she couldn’t see it.

  She believed that she had handed the baby over because it was the best thing for the child. He was sure she thought it an unselfish act – maybe she saw it as her own punishment – but she had not seen what she was doing, what she did every time there was a choice to be made. She had refused to open the gates of her being; refused to go out, truthful, into the day, for together, with or without a child, with or without the blessing of a church, they could have shared a lifetime of loving.

  Now his anger was returning. He had no interest in other women. But he’d paid the price for his weakness. He’d taken the rap. He’d have no more of it. There were to be no more recriminations.

  Carrie could keep her money. He’d take what Douglas McGregor had offered to him, the fare to Australia, an introduction to Douglas’s cousin there and a job on a sheep station. He’d make good and, one day, he’d see his daughter. He had always been a wandering man.

  Rose liked to think about ages and dates. Mum had just had a big birthday. Dad said she’d been coming of age and had bought her a lovely gold wristwatch. Aunt Carrie, she had discovered, was thirty-three and she, Rose, on the summer day when she fell off the garden wall, was six years old.

  Mum was busy indoors with her siste
rs Mary and Vivienne so she let Rose go into the garden to play on the swing Dad had built for her. The swing had a narrow wooden seat and thick ropes, which went right through the top bar where they were knotted together. If she swung very high the ropes made a lovely groaning sound and she felt as if she could sail off into the sky, far above the grass.

  It was August, very hot and the breeze she made swinging upwards ruffled her hair. But through her ruffled hair, when she rose to the top she could see a boy in the garden over the wall from hers.

  When at last she stopped, gouging the grass with the soles of her sandals to drag the swing to a halt, she went to the wall and tried to climb it. There was a garden roller right against the wall and she pulled herself on to it, holding tight with plump little hands. She had lost one of her front teeth and made sipping noises as she poked her head over the top of the high brick wall. The mop of red hair was escaping from the big white bow on top of her head and a heavy strand fell forward across her eyes.

  Now she couldn’t see for the hair. She raised a foot until she had her sandal over the coping stones, her face creased in concentration as she lifted herself slowly upwards. When both legs were up she found that she had her back to the other garden and would have to stand.

  She balanced herself for a second, half-standing, and opened her blue eyes wide in astonishment as she looked for the first time into the leafy orchard of the house in Lincoln Drive.

  A boy was cycling round the trees at a furious pace, his thin legs going so fast they appeared circular. He had black hair, silky on top and very short to his ears. His head was held close to the handlebars whilst his eyes were narrow slits under a furrowed forehead. He made a noise like the cars she’d seen on the roads and he leaned this way and that, wheeling and turning. Rose’s eyes followed him as he drove ever faster, circling first one tree then another, never letting up the growling, throaty noise.

  She stood right up and managed to get both feet pointing the same way. Then her untidy hair fell forward again and as she lifted her hand to push it back she found herself tipping over, hands outstretched to save herself and nothing to reach for – arms and legs hitting the wall as she fell and landed with a painful shock in the long grass at Alan McGregor’s wheels.

  Rose couldn’t help but cry. Her knees had little red beads of blood popping through the dirt where they’d scraped against the wall. Her hands, too, were prickling and long purple scratches marked her arms. ‘I fell,’ she wailed to the boy who stood before her, red-faced from his exertions.

  ‘Stop crying,’ the boy demanded.

  She stopped. The boy seemed very bossy. He might become rough like the boys in the boys’ playground at school were. The boys at school were only noisy and scary when they were all together though. This boy was by himself. She stuffed her fists into her wet eyes to clear the tears and sniffed loudly.

  She looked up to see that the boy had propped his bicycle against an apple tree and stretched out his hand to help her to her feet. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll wash your knees.’

  The grass was shorter near the trees. It no longer brushed against her legs and Rose held on to the boy’s hand as he led her across a vast lawn strewn with toys, to the open French window.

  A fat lady with white hair was sleeping in an armchair, her short legs supported on a little stool. The boy put a finger to his lips. ‘Nanny Tansley,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll go to the kitchen.’

  Rose padded over the deep pile of Indian carpet and followed the boy along a wide hall, keeping to the carpet runner so as not to make a sound until they reached a big square kitchen, tiled in white to a height above their heads.

  Alan placed a folded towel on the wooden draining board and held out his hands to the little girl. She raised her arms and, as he tried to lift her, wound them around his neck and held tight.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re to sit on the towel.’ This was going to be the hard part. He knew what to do once she was seated. He put her down again and watched in fascination as her eyes filled with tears, her mouth crumpled and dirty little fists flew up to her face. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring a chair. You climb up.’

  Alan had only played with boys. There were no girls at his school. Some of his friends had sisters but they didn’t join in with the boys’ games. He knew they were silly because his friends said so. Girls cry a lot, his best friend, Gerald, had told him.

  When she finally settled on the towel and her tears subsided he asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Rose Kennedy,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alan McGregor,’ he told her. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘I’m nearly eight. Well, seven and a half,’ he added truthfully.

  She held her hands out to him and he washed them thoroughly with the clean flannel Nan kept in a white china dish under the sink. He’d also brought out cotton wool, bandages and iodine but he wondered whether or not to use the iodine, in case she cried again. She had screwed up her eyes and pushed her face towards him.

  Alan rinsed the cloth and wiped her face. ‘Don’t cry when I wash your knees,’ he ordered in his most grown-up voice.

  Her eyes never left his as he wiped and doused the angry red patches. She drew her breath in sharply when he pressed the towel, none too gently, to dry them.

  ‘You have to have iodine on when they’re clean.’ Alan watched her face intently for signs of another ‘waterfall’ as Nan called it. ‘Are you brave? Like boys are?’

  She nodded her head vigorously, compressed her lips and held tightly to the edge of the towel, silent as he pressed the iodine-drenched cotton to her raw knees.

  Dad had taught him not to cry when he hurt himself. His dad was brave. His dad was the bravest and strongest man in the world. This little girl didn’t cry so she must be very brave – for a girl. Her lively hair bounced as she shook her head and the sun, streaming through the window behind her, lit the bronze curls with sudden brilliance. He’d have a go at tying her hair ribbon when her knees were clean.

  ‘I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,’ he said. ‘I can bandage legs.’

  ‘I’m going to be a mummy,’ she told him. ‘Where’s your mummy?’

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ he answered.

  ‘You have to have a mummy. Everyone has a mummy,’ she said.

  ‘Mine’s dead.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. He wondered what it would be like to have a mother. Nan Tansley was nice, but she wasn’t young and pretty like a lot of real mothers were. But real mothers didn’t let you get dirty, Gerald said. He and Dad went to Nat Cooper’s farm and rode on carts; they got dirty and wet whenever they could and nobody told them not to.

  He rolled bandages round her knees until the sore bit was covered completely and he finished off with very large knots in front of her shins before helping her to climb down, stiff-legged, on to the mat.

  He caught sight of Nan as he lowered Rose. She must have woken up at last. ‘Well, young man. Where did you find your little patient, eh?’ Nan said.

  ‘She fell in. Over the wall,’ Alan told her.

  ‘From Wells Road? We’d better take her back before her mother gets a fright like I did,’ Nanny Tansley said. ‘Get a little treat for her, Alan. She’s a brave girl.’ Alan chose the biggest banana in the fruit bowl and handed it to Rose.

  ‘Can she stay here for a while?’ he said. ‘She can play with my toys.’

  He didn’t want to let her go now he’d found her. She was as good as a boy, not crying when she had iodine put on a cut. His dad wouldn’t be home until bedtime and he had nobody to play with.

  ‘Come on then. We’ll ask her mother. Follow me. Eeh, you are a one, Alan. Poor Nan looked high and low for you. Poor Nan just took a peep at the paper and the next thing she knew, you were bandaging up your little friend’s knees. What’s your name, love?’

  She led them out into Lincoln Drive and round the corner to Rose’s house. Alan walked be
side Rose as they followed Nan’s broad figure.

  ‘Will you come and play?’ he asked her. ‘I’ve got jigsaws and a toy farm in the playroom.’

  ‘Can I ride your bicycle?’ She stopped to tuck up the end of bandage that had loosened and her eyes were bright blue and full of laughter.

  ‘I’ve got a fairy-cycle that’s too small for me. You can ride that, if you like,’ he promised and wondered what else he might offer, to tempt her. ‘You can be my best friend,’ he added.

  ‘Can we play mums and dads?’ Alan thought for a few seconds. He wasn’t sure how you played that game. ‘I’ll be the dad,’ he said at last.

  ‘I’ll come when Aunt Carrie’s at her house,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve never had a friend.’

  Rose ran ahead of Alan and Nan Tansley into the house. ‘Mum,’ she yelled. ‘Come and see my friend.’ She was gasping for breath, saying, ‘Sorry I fell off the wall, Mum,’ at the same time as she pulled Alan into the room.

  Mum and Nanny Tansley shook hands and laughed and chatted and sent her and Alan into the garden to play while they held the babies.

  Rose pointed out the little patch of flowers that Dad grew and the row of lettuces but Alan wanted to see if he could climb the wall she’d fallen from. She watched him, lost in admiration as he found cracks between the bricks, pulled himself easily on to the rounded top and walked the length of the narrow garden without falling off.

  ‘Show me how,’ she pleaded. Alan had long, thin legs with large, lumpy knees that seemed wider than his thighs or shins, enormous feet and ankles and a wiry body. He stretched out his arms as he reached the end and turned carefully for the run back. ‘Girls can’t climb!’ he called, without taking his eyes off the wall.

  ‘They can!’

  ‘Can’t!’ He’d reached the other end and was placing his feet, heel to heel for the return, but Rose was scrambling up, fitting her small feet into the cracks he’d used, loosening the bandages on her knees until at last, straining and panting, she straddled the top and her blue eyes were triumphant as she laughed at him. ‘See! Silly!’