Mill Town Girl

by Audrey Reimann

  She got out of bed and went to the wardrobe where she kept the ebony box in a drawer, lest Rose should come across it. It was light outside and she took his last letter to the window and read it again.

  ‘Here is a photograph of John McGregor and me, timber felling,’ he’d written. Carrie put on her glasses and peered again at the two men whose faces were nearly obscured by steel helmets. Patrick, recognisable in the foreground, was holding what was evidently the focal point of the picture, an unwieldy power saw cutting through the massive trunk of a pine tree.

  She had felt a wholly irrational stab of jealousy, she remembered, on seeing the same picture, only larger, on the Wells Road mantelshelf. It seemed he was beginning to settle to something at last. He and John McGregor had been loggers for a few years. Patrick was the manager of the company now.

  Then, here it came in the last paragraph: ‘Is it satisfying, Caroline Aurora? Your hide-bound existence behind closed gates? Does seeing the Kennedy girls every day meet your own needs? Are you getting enough out of life?’

  How could he ask such things? Satisfying? Get enough out of life? Needs? Did he ask these things deliberately, to unsettle her? She stared into the empty space around her, and pulled the angora bed-jacket closer, over the top of her cold arms. He knew. He knew it wasn’t enough. It was not even enough that she would have Rose to herself for two weeks.

  She forced herself to think of Rose, not herself and the longings, the sinful lusts of the flesh, that Patrick called ‘needs’. Rose was growing up and looking ahead to her own future; a future, modern girls being what they were, in which parents would not loom large.

  The papers were full of the carryings-on of the young women in London, the Bright Young Things they were called. It would be a while before it spread up to Macclesfield but Manchester wasn’t far away and Rose was going to take her School Certificate examination and was talking about going to a college in Manchester.

  She’d got that from him. From Patrick. He’d been educated. Patrick had been to a good college, Danny boasted. Well, it hadn’t done him much good. Apart from writing a good letter – and they were good – they made Canada come alive for everyone who read them – apart from his vivid descriptive powers he’d wasted all his learning. He should stick to writing about the lovely places he’d seen, instead of upsetting her with questions like that; making out her life was empty.

  Her life was full.

  She would stop thinking about him. She would not think about his questions. And she must see that Rose was put to something. If she wanted to train for a job she could be apprenticed to a dressmaker since she liked sewing. Or take up shorthand and typing, here in Macclesfield. Rose must only meet the best people. She was a cut above the rest.

  When she was older, Carrie herself would introduce her to some nice young people from respectable, chapel-going families. There was to be no more talk about going away to college. If Rose had got that from him – the wandering streak – she’d have to squash it. Oh, dear, her thoughts were back with him again. Her daughter must be a credit to her. Looked up to. Particular.

  She went back to bed and concentrated her mind on planning for their holiday. She would not, dared not, imagine the gratifying of her needs and wants.

  Chapter Ten

  The first train journey was to Manchester where Aunt Carrie took her to a cafeteria; the first one Rose had seen. She was so bewildered and tempted by all the dishes and took so long to make up her mind that the people behind her complained and received the sharp end of Aunt Carrie’s tongue in reply.

  Aunt Carrie was beginning to smile. She’d closed her eyes on the second train and taken her glasses off and Rose saw that her aunt was relaxed and happy. It was also the first time she’d ever seen real beauty in her aunt’s face and the thought came to her that her aunt was really quite a good-looking woman. If she smiled more often, didn’t need those ugly glasses and wore pretty colours she’d look much nicer, she thought.

  Then they were following the crowd out of Southport station and waiting in a long line for a taxicab. It would be her first ride in a motor car.

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ she said when the taxi turned on to Lord Street’s wide boulevard. ‘Look at those shops, Aunt Carrie! And the trees! Imagine the lucky people who live here!’

  The taxi stopped outside a terraced house, not far from Lord Street and the driver carried their case into the tight little hallway. The lobby, Mrs Bloor called it. Mrs Bloor was very old. She was a quiet little woman who provided, for eight and sixpence a week each, what she called Rooms with Service; a bedroom with two iron-framed beds, washstand and wardrobe and, downstairs, a sitting-dining room.

  They ate in the sitting room. They ate their own food, which Mrs Bloor cooked for them, the way Aunt Carrie told her to; and they ate the kind of rich food Rose had never tasted before. It was as if Aunt Carrie didn’t want to lose face. Every day she shopped in the morning for thick rump steaks and new potatoes or fresh salmon and garden peas and every single day they ate strawberries and cream with bread and butter for their tea.

  Aunt Carrie was never like this at home. In Macclesfield she complained if Mum bought too much stewing meat or more than enough fish to go round. And here she was spending as if she had no end of money.

  Every morning they’d wash in the water Mrs Bloor brought up to the bedroom and not even bother to empty it into the pail under the washstand. There was no bathroom at Mrs Bloor’s house and Rose felt sorry for the frail old lady having to lift the heavy china washbowl. But as soon as Rose went to pour it away on the first morning Aunt Carrie stopped her.

  ‘Leave it,’ her aunt ordered. ‘We’re paying her to do it.’

  When they were dressed they went downstairs and took Grape-Nuts and butter out of their cupboard and Mrs Bloor brought toast, fried bacon and eggs and a large pot of tea. They didn’t have to ‘side the table’ as the girls did at home but left the little house, to shop and amuse themselves all morning.

  The first two mornings Rose spent in choosing heart-shaped brooches for Mum and her sisters from a shop that sold mother-of-pearl. Dad was to get a stick of pink peppermint rock and a pipe-rack with his initials done in poker-work.

  It was hot, even for Southport in July. Everyone said so. Rose swam in the sea-water lake every afternoon. She wanted brown legs, so she lay on her towel, face down, then face up for an hour afterwards before joining Aunt Carrie at the military band concerts round the Lord Street bandstand. She had to stand behind her aunt’s chair as the session was nearly over. Even though Aunt Carrie was spending so much money it seemed that she baulked at paying for a seat that would only be used for the last half hour.

  It was funny, too, the things that Aunt Carrie was doing here in Southport. Things she never did in Macclesfield. They went to the cinema here every evening yet Aunt Carrie always had something to say if Mum and Dad took them to the pictures too often at home. Dad always told them, laughing, that Aunt Carrie went secretly, by herself, sitting in the best seats with a box of chocolates but Rose had never believed him, until now.

  Here, they laughed uproariously at Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times and held their breath with excitement, seeing Robert Donat in The Thirty-Nine Steps. There were thirteen cinemas in Southport and with the programme changing twice a week it was hard choosing which to go to every night. They went to the Trocadero at the end of the first week to see The Scarlet Pimpernel where Rose sighed every time Leslie Howard came on to the screen; she would be madly in love with him for days afterwards.

  She noticed Aunt Carrie’s eyes brightening when the man who played the organ went into the haunting tunes of ‘These Foolish Things’ and ‘The Touch of Your Lips’. So Aunt Carrie did have a romantic side to her, Rose thought; glad of the cool evening darkness where she tried not to let the deep plush seats scratch her hot legs, which, so far, were only freckled.

  They had been there for ten days when Rose took sick. After the shopping in the morning, as was the pattern
of their days, they had taken the tram to the top of the pier and watched the pierrot show. Rose knew by heart all the songs the Follies sang. She was going to teach them to Vivienne when she got back.

  The pier was long and hot and on the return it felt as if they would never reach the end. Rose asked Aunt Carrie if she could have an ice-cream with lemonade in the great glass pavilion at the pier entrance. It seemed as if Aunt Carrie could refuse her nothing and Rose, when she had finished the ice cream, asked for a tub of shrimps from the kiosk they passed on the way to Mrs Bloor’s.

  There was a chocolate shop on the corner of Lord Street and in the window a display of chocolate rabbits in a green velvet field. Aunt Carrie bought one for her, making her promise not to eat it until after their meal but surreptitiously Rose ate the head as they walked along under the trees, almost fainting in the heat when they turned the corner.

  ‘It’s a nice bit of roast lamb, today,’ Aunt Carrie told her. ‘And I’ve asked her to do a tray of roast potatoes with it and a rhubarb tart and custard, while she’s got the oven on.’

  ‘I don’t feel very hungry,’ Rose ventured, hoping that, for once Aunt Carrie would let her leave her dinner.

  ‘You have to eat,’ Aunt Carrie told her in the voice Rose used to think of as demanding, though now she knew that her aunt was trying to be motherly and matter of fact. ‘What d’you think would happen if you didn’t eat? You’re too thin as it is. I want to see you looking well when we go back.’

  She couldn’t eat a bite. She pushed the meat around her plate, willing it to disappear. She took a forkful of chopped spinach and felt her knees go weak. She clutched at the tablecloth and saw that Aunt Carrie had put down her own knife and fork. But Aunt Carrie’s voice was coming from far away.

  ‘Why, child, you’re as white as death,’ Aunt Carrie was saying. ‘Are you feeling ill?’ Rose felt as if the floor was coming up to meet her and she was falling backwards.

  A chamber pot was being held under her chin and Aunt Carrie’s hand was around her waist. Her head was hot and yet she was shivering. She couldn’t get warm and she couldn’t be sick. She pushed the pot away and fell back on to the bed. Her breath was coming fast and her teeth were chattering. And as well as this Aunt Carrie was starting to have one of her horrid turns.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ Rose was crying hot tears from dry, prickling eyes.

  ‘I’m here, love. I’m here!’

  Aunt Carrie’s voice was high and hysterical and her outburst so unexpected that Rose’s tears stopped for a moment as she looked at her aunt. Aunt Carrie had taken off her glasses and was sitting, one hand under her nose, the other clenching and unclenching around the bedcovers and her eyes were staring and terrified.

  ‘You’ll be all right. I’m here. Do you hear me?’ Aunt Carrie began to cry.

  Rose found it made her feel even worse. ‘I want my Mum, Aunt Carrie. I feel awful. Awful,’ Rose managed to tell her but she was holding her stomach now and bending over as great knots of pain grabbed at her insides.

  ‘Mrs Bloor’s sent for the doctor. Oh, God. I wish he’d come quick,’ Aunt Carrie cried, rocking herself back and forth. She stopped in a few seconds, abruptly, as the door opened and an elderly man with a small moustache was shown into the room.

  ‘Is this the patient?’ The doctor approached the bed but before Rose could answer Aunt Carrie had grabbed his arm.

  ‘It is! Don’t let her die! Save her!’

  She was being more silly than Rose had ever seen her. Rose pulled her knees up again as another sharp pain went through her.

  ‘I want my Mum,’ Rose said. ‘I want my Mum, not you, Aunt Carrie. I’m not going to die. I just feel horrible!’ And she started to cry again.

  The doctor spoke kindly to Aunt Carrie. ‘Will you help with the examination, Miss Shrigley? Unfasten your niece’s buttons so that I can feel the abdomen.’

  Aunt Carrie pulled herself together and took the sticky cotton blouse and skirt off her. Rose reached for her aunt’s hand as the man gently pressed her stomach until she bit her lip with the sharp stabbings his touch brought. Aunt Carrie’s other hand was stroking Rose’s forehead but her eyes never left the doctor’s face.

  ‘What is it, Doctor?’ she said when he finally drew the sheet over Rose’s bare stomach. ‘Is it appendicitis?’

  The doctor smiled. ‘It’s not her appendix, Miss Shrigley. She’s suffering from sunstroke and the effects of too much rich food.’

  Relief flooded Aunt Carrie’s face. She dropped Rose’s hand and reached for her glasses.

  ‘Give her plenty of boiled water. Put a pinch of common salt into it and if she begins to vomit come round to my surgery and I’ll have the dispenser make up a bottle for her.’

  Rose spent three days in bed. For three days Aunt Carrie sat in the darkened room with her, talking to her, bringing cool drinks, sponging her down to cool the reddened skin, which had blazed forth from under the freckles. And Aunt Carrie spoke to Rose more kindly and with more understanding than she had ever seen her show before.

  ‘You’d have made a good mother, Aunt Carrie,’ Rose said on the last evening. ‘Did you ever want to get married?’

  ‘I did, once,’ Aunt Carrie answered softly. She had a faraway look in her eyes, Rose thought, as if she were remembering something lovely.

  ‘What happened? Won’t you tell me? You never talk about when you were young,’ Rose said. Aunt Carrie could fly into a rage at anyone’s questioning but she appeared to want to talk tonight. They were sitting companionably on the wooden-framed seat with cushions that ran under the window of the sitting room. It was growing dark and Aunt Carrie’s face was in shadow.

  ‘I know all about Mum and Dad. How they fell madly in love when Mum was young. How they eloped, married and had to come rushing back from Ireland so I’d be born in England.’

  ‘Is that what they tell you?’ Aunt Carrie interrupted.

  ‘Yes, and I often wondered why you didn’t find someone to love and get married to and have children with. Like Mum and Dad did. You could have been happy, like them.’

  Aunt Carrie made no reply but Rose felt that underneath her aunt’s silence a struggle was being waged. She knew her aunt too well to mistake a withholding of herself for the buttoned-tight reserve she usually adopted. ‘Do you have any regrets?’ she asked.

  The scene was one she never forgot and Rose could have sworn that her aunt was on the point of tears, her voice was so different, almost strangled as she replied. ‘Only one regret, love. I once gave away something very precious.’

  ‘Can’t you buy it back?’ Rose asked, disappointed that her aunt’s regrets only extended to property.

  ‘No. I gave up all rights. It was the most beautiful . . . the most beautiful thing that ever belonged to me. And I gave it away.’

  ‘What was it?’ Rose begged. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Rose. It belongs to someone else now.’

  ‘Will you ever tell me?’

  Aunt Carrie got up from the seat and went towards the door. ‘You’ll know when I’m dead,’ she said with finality. She then indicated, with a nod of the head, that Rose was to follow. ‘Come on. Let’s start packing. We’ll catch an early bus to the station tomorrow.’

  Rose followed her up the stairs to the bedroom, reluctant to drop the subject. ‘I’ve got a regret,’ she said, hoping to please Aunt Carrie. ‘I wish we weren’t going back tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ Aunt Carrie spoke sharply once the door was closed behind them. ‘Your Mum and Dad are good to you aren’t they?’

  ‘Of course they are. I’ve got the best Mum and Dad in the world,’ Rose answered quickly. She had only meant that she was enjoying the holiday. Aunt Carrie mustn’t think she was glad to be away from her family. ‘I think it’s a pity you never found love, that’s all,’ she said.

  It had been a mistake. Aunt Carrie’s mellow mood went. ‘Love?’ she said. ‘What’s love? There’s no such thing as lov
e.’

  ‘Then why did you want to marry, like you said, once?’

  ‘I was daft. Young and daft.’ Aunt Carrie looked hurt and angry. She paused for a moment then said, ‘Don’t you ever be beholden to a man.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to get married?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I do. But you must keep yourself for the right man. Do you know what I mean? Keep yourself?’

  Rose didn’t like the turn the exchange had taken but she dared not refuse to answer. ‘I think so,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You must know so, Rose. If I ever thought anyone would take advantage of you, I’d . . . I’d kill him!’

  Aunt Carrie’s eyes gleamed behind the lenses of her glasses. Rose wanted to calm her down yet she also wanted to let her know that she was not going to put up with her interference in the future.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Aunt Carrie,’ she said. ‘It’s 1936, not 1836. Girls don’t need chaperones these days. Girls can look after themselves.’

  ‘Ha! Girls might have changed. But men haven’t,’ Aunt Carrie answered in the voice she used when she was being unreasonable.

  Rose made another attempt to calm her. ‘I want to get married one day, Aunt Carrie. And I want my husband to be my friend. Like Dad is to Mum,’ Rose told her.

  ‘Friend! There’s no such thing as friends. You’ve only one friend in this world. And that’s your pocket. Your money! Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you. But it’s not true,’ Rose knew her aunt would be furious but she couldn’t stop. ‘I’d rather have friends. Anyway,’ she added, ‘I’m going to earn my own money. I’m going to college to be a teacher. So I’ll be rich.’

  ‘Who says you’re going to college?’ Aunt Carrie seemed to be as upset about college as she was about her friendships.

  ‘I say. Mum and Dad say. Dad wants us all to be able to earn our own livings. He’s always told us that.’ Rose began to take clothes out of the wardrobe and lay them on the bed. Aunt Carrie didn’t seem to be doing anything to help.