Mill Town Girl

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘Can you make a cup for me and Rose, and your mother?’ she said.

  ‘Aye,’ Nat said. ‘Sit down. It’ll tek about five minutes. Is she goin’ ter be all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carrie answered him, ‘your mam and I can see her safely delivered.’ She went to the kitchen range and sat in the chair while she waited. ‘It’s a good thing you found her,’ she said.

  ‘If I hadn’t she’d be dead,’ Nat answered. ‘It were a near do.’

  ‘I don’t know how I missed it,’ Carrie said. ‘How she hid it. She must have been carrying it all round.’

  ‘I’d a’ known,’ Nat replied as he placed the kettle over the fire and put the teapot to warm on the trivet. ‘She’d not a’ fooled me.’

  Carrie looked up into the big lad’s face. ‘You wanted her yourself, didn’t you?’ she said quietly.

  He smiled at her. Not the embarrassed smile she’d seen on his face when he saw Rose at the Temperance Hotel. He looked sure of himself. ‘I thought I did,’ he said. ‘But it were a kind of childish fancy that lasted a bit long.’

  ‘And you’ve found someone else?’ she asked.

  He was smiling hugely now; a big, proud smile spread over the broad, happy face. ‘I’ve got meself a little smasher,’ he told her. ‘We’re goin’ to get married as soon as I’ve told Mam.’

  He poured tea as soon as it was drawn. Carrie took it upstairs.

  Rose sat up in the bed and sipped it slowly. ‘It tastes good,’ she said. ‘I’ve not drunk tea for months.’

  ‘Fancy me never noticing,’ Carrie said. ‘I can’t get over it. You expecting. Me not seeing . . .’ She was about to say that it had been the same for herself when she’d had to conceal her own pregnancy, but Rose never liked her to talk about it, so she kept quiet. ‘Have you any pain yet?’ she asked when Rose handed the empty cup to her.

  ‘I’ve got a kind of nagging thing, very low in my back that feels like little fingers of pain creeping round me,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to try to sleep for a bit.’

  They sat with her, herself and Martha, taking turns through the rest of the night whilst Rose slept, deeply at first then fitfully.

  The intervals between pains grew shorter as the morning dawned until she no longer slept but held on to Carrie’s hand tightly whilst they passed over her.

  ‘I want you to go limp when they come, love,’ Carrie said after a much stronger one, when Rose struggled to get to her feet.

  ‘If you weren’t bleeding you’d be better walking around but we can’t risk it,’ she added.

  ‘Another one’s coming . . .’ Rose gripped her hand and Carrie looked at her watch. They were coming fast. The first part was nearly over.

  ‘And another.’

  Then everything happened at once as Carrie knew it would, as it had with her. ‘Come on lass,’ she said. ‘This is where you have to work.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t.’ Rose gasped as another, long and strong one came. But she could. She was pushing well into them and Carrie was encouraging, urging, helping her.

  ‘Put some pillows behind her, Martha,’ Carrie ordered. ‘Let her see what’s going on. Come on, Rose, push. Push your baby out.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Rose shouted in a good strong voice as she put all her energy into it.

  ‘Hold on to my shoulder, lass. Come on!’ Carrie said. ‘It’s coming.’

  She leaned across her. Rose’s grip was tight on her shoulder. Carrie looked, from the little crown of the head that was coming towards her waiting hands, to Rose’s intense and striving face.

  ‘Don’t push now, love!’ Carrie said quickly.

  ‘I must!’

  ‘Hold it,’ Carrie said, but it was coming well.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘It’s here! Oh, love, it’s here!’ Carrie put her cupped hands around the infant’s head as it came, easily and gently into the world, gasping for breath, yelling the piercing new-born’s cry, like no other cry, that made tears come to your eyes.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Carrie said. ‘A lovely, perfect little boy.’

  Then Rose was leaning forward, reaching out her arms for him, her face alive with love and welcome as Martha tied the cord and wiped his blood-streaked, crumpled little face.

  Carrie wrapped him – her own grandson – in a flannel sheet and put him into his mother’s arms.

  Then she let Martha get on with the rest of it whilst she sat, a huge lump of happiness in her throat, an arm about both of them.

  Rose, an expression of rapture on her face, gazed at the infant who, eyes screwed tight shut, was mewing like a new kitten. She looked at Carrie. ‘Have you ever seen such a beautiful baby?’ she asked. ‘Such a little marvel?’

  ‘Never,’ Carrie said emphatically. ‘Never in my life.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘What are you going to call him?’ Carrie said at last, when Martha had done and left them together. ‘Alan. Just Alan, I think,’ Rose said, ‘unless Alan gets back before he’s christened and wants something different.’

  She held the baby up and looked into his peaceful little sleeping face. ‘Hello, Alan,’ she whispered. ‘I’m your mummy.’ Then she looked from him to Carrie and smiled; a sure, knowing smile. ‘What will he call you?’ she asked.

  Carrie hadn’t thought. It had never crossed her mind. ‘What do you want him to call me?’ she said.

  ‘Mamma.’ Rose took Carrie’s hand in hers. ‘Mamma. I’ve heard children call their grandmothers Mamma.’

  Carrie couldn’t speak for the overwhelming flood of feeling that was rushing through her. ‘Do you want to hold him, Mamma?’ Rose said as she put the baby into Carrie’s arms.

  Then it was her turn to come over all daft and silly as she liked to remember it afterwards, tears of happiness pouring down her face, holding her grandson close, hearing her daughter say Mamma for the first time in her life.

  When Carrie and Martha left her and the baby slept peacefully in a wooden cradle placed on a low table beside the bed, Rose curled up under the soft, feather eiderdown and tried to sleep. She was warm and snug and very, very excited. She was not in the least tired. She didn’t think she would ever want to sleep again. She just wanted to lie here, luxuriating in peace and satisfaction. Suppose she went to sleep and woke to find it had all been a dream? Was it a dream?

  She looked over the side of the bed and saw her son raise his tiny pink hand to his face, saw a worried frown cross his forehead and flee away. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Aunt Carrie – no, Mamma she would be to the child while Rose would call her Carrie. Carrie was going to come upstairs in an hour, when Rose was rested, and show her how to put him to the breast. They were downstairs now, Carrie and Martha. She could hear the murmur of their voices.

  The baby was very like Alan she thought. There was a definite look of Alan about the nose. It was a much longer nose than she had ever seen on any other baby. And the hands too. They were long and slender like Alan’s. The baby had dark hair, dark and silky-straight. He was moving.

  She saw the frown come and flee again, saw him turn his head. She would pick him up and hold him. As soon as he was in her arms, held close, the worried look went from his face and she watched in fascination as his lips pursed and the little eyebrows lifted.

  He opened his eyes; blue and deep. They were clear and they were looking at his world for the first time. They seemed to be looking right into her soul. In that moment, as her feelings welled up inside her, the bonds of her love for her child were fixed for ever. It was a different love from that which she had for Alan and one which she needed, so desperately, to share with him.

  She would show him to Carrie and Martha, show them that he had his eyes open. Gently she laid the infant, wrapped in a fine woollen shawl, on the pillow, while she stood and slipped her arms into the crocheted bed-jacket Martha had put on the chair. She picked the baby up and smiling and silent went to the stairs and down.

  Two stairs be
fore the bottom she stopped. The baby had closed his eyes again. She sat on the stair to wait until he did it again and she would go proudly into the room to show the two women whose voices were coming, clear as bells, through the door.

  ‘She’s going to call him Alan,’ Carrie was saying, ‘after his father.’

  ‘Has there been any word about Alan?’ Martha asked.

  ‘No,’ Carrie said. ‘But she believes he’s alive. A prisoner of war.’

  ‘He might well be a prisoner of war,’ Martha replied. ‘They never found any proof that he died.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Carrie said.

  Martha was chuckling. ‘Eeh! Alan will get a shock when he gets back – if he’s a prisoner – finding out she’s had a baby.’

  ‘It seems incredible, Martha,’ Carrie said, ‘that I – who had done the same thing myself, should have missed all the signs.’

  ‘You hid yours,’ Martha answered. ‘Nobody guessed.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Another cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Carrie went on, ‘it brought it all back to me. It was just the same as when I had her – hiding it. I wore tight corsets.’

  ‘And both of you with no man.’

  ‘Aye,’ Carrie said. ‘Both of us with men in prison.’

  Rose froze. Had she heard right?

  Martha said softly, ‘So it was him – Patrick Kennedy. You never said.’

  There was a moment’s pause. ‘I didn’t mean to say it now, Martha,’ Carrie answered in a softer voice. ‘It was a slip of the tongue.’

  Rose straightened up and silently, so as not to be seen, went back to bed. She placed the baby in his cradle and got under the covers again as relief and a great surging happiness came over her.

  She lay there, idly looking at the sunlit hillside she could see beyond the window at the far side of the room, all need of sleep gone.

  Should she tell Alan, when he came back, about Carrie being her mother? Not yet, for he would want to find out who her father was. And her real father was Alan’s own godfather. She would keep it to herself, for ever if necessary. She had always been a keeper of secrets. It was only important that she knew, not that she broadcast it.

  One day Carrie would tell her the whole story and she would ask her permission to repeat it to Alan. It was all so wonderful. It was such a wonderful relief to know that her real father had been Dad’s brother. It was obvious really. Why hadn’t she guessed? Of course that was the way it must have been. Every piece of the puzzle fitted into place.

  Downstairs Carrie helped Martha to prepare the midday dinner. She found she was talking more than she had ever done in her life before. All at once she was unable to stop. She had never gone in for that kind of thing, chattering and gossip. Shock and excitement were loosening her tongue. ‘I don’t know what’s come over me,’ she said as she dropped a peeled potato into the pan of water that was set on the table in front of her. ‘It isn’t just the baby. I feel a terrible kind of agitation that’s all mixed up with happiness.’

  Martha, cutting leeks and onions into tiny pieces at the other end of the kitchen table, said, ‘It’s understandable. We none of us know if we’ll be here for long.’

  ‘Have you heard the wireless this morning?’ Carrie asked. ‘I listen all the time.’

  ‘London got it again last night.’ Martha chopped furiously at the little heap of vegetables. ‘Macclesfield fire brigade’s been in Coventry for nearly a week. There’s hardly a building standing. Poor Coventry!’

  ‘I shall have to get home.’ Carrie lifted another potato out of the pail. ‘I’ll go back on the cart with Nat when he delivers the milk.’

  ‘You can stop here if you want to, Carrie.’

  ‘Thank you. But I’ll have to see to everything. Go and tell Mary, get Rose’s room ready for her and the baby.’

  ‘She’ll have to have her lying-in here,’ Martha said. ‘We can’t have her travelling on that cart with a baby. He’s strong and healthy, but he’s six weeks early. He’ll need feeding every hour or so.’

  ‘I know. She’ll have a fortnight here. Then I’ll take her home.’ Carrie peeled slowly and very thinly.

  ‘What about Macclesfield? All the gossip? Will you be hurt by it?’ Martha looked across, unsmiling. ‘You didn’t want it. You could leave them here.’

  ‘Everyone’s too concerned with the war now to worry about keeping up appearances,’ Carrie answered. ‘Anyway, I don’t care a fig for ’em. I don’t mind what anyone says. It doesn’t matter.’

  When she had finished the vegetables she went to the sink and scrubbed her hands. ‘I’ll go up to Rose,’ she said. ‘I’ll get her started on the feeding before I go home.’

  ‘Will you come back tomorrow?’ Martha asked. ‘I can ask Nat to fetch you after he’s delivered the milk. I’m going to light a fire in the spare bedroom. There’s two beds in there. And get out all the baby things and air ’em.’

  ‘Yes. I’d like that. I could come up every afternoon and go home the next day for a bit.’ Carrie dried her hands thoroughly on one of Martha’s spotless towels. ‘I’ll look out my baby things an’ all. I’ve got a lot of stuff. I kept it all from . . .’

  ‘Go on up, Carrie,’ Martha said, smiling broadly. ‘Your daughter wants you.’

  Throughout the following week Carrie felt her agitation increasing. There was a lot to do and she had no time to dwell on her fears and fancies but they were there, intruding into her sleep; fears and fancies that had nothing to do with her daytime occupations.

  Christmas would be upon them and there was little in the shops. The counters that used to be attractively set out were almost bare. Cardboard cartons and empty tins filled the shop windows and women queued, impatient and worried, for the few goods that were available.

  There were no oranges to be had and, infuriating to Carrie, no onions. There were Brazil nuts at one and sixpence a pound and sweets, only bright wine gums and round mints, at four shillings.

  Vivienne, who was dancing for the troops at the barracks in the evenings, helped her during the day. Vivienne said that she had guessed about the baby months ago and had assumed that they were all trying to keep it from her.

  They were making mincemeat in the kitchen, Vivienne mixing the ingredients as Carrie put them through the mincer. ‘Will Mary be home for Christmas?’ Vivienne asked. ‘I want her to come to the Christmas Eve concert. There’s going to be a party afterwards for the soldiers. We need more girls.’

  ‘Yes. She’s got Christmas Eve off. She wants to work on Christmas Day. They have a “right good do” she says,’ Carrie answered. ‘Martha Cooper wants us to go up to Rainow for Christmas dinner. Nat will bring us back in the afternoon if we can get up there ourselves.’

  Vivienne looked eager. ‘I can get us a lift there and back in an army car,’ she said, ‘if Mrs Cooper invites a couple of Canadian sergeants.’

  Vivienne was quite advanced, for her years, Carrie thought. It was not a bad thing in these times, especially in the kind of life she had chosen, to have your head screwed on right. Though Carrie was alarmed by the sight of her niece, not yet sixteen and looking twenty years old. ‘I can ask her,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect she’ll say no.’

  The town was full of foreigners. The mayor himself was Canadian. He’d promised a wedding present to any Macclesfield girl who married one of his boys. ‘I think that Mr and Mrs Tereschenko are going to have some Czechs and Poles in for dinner,’ Carrie went on.

  ‘She’s been making all sorts of funny things for weeks.’

  ‘Are the Singers still here?’ Vivienne asked.

  ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? Their daughter and her children have been found. They were here all along, interred in a camp down south. They are coming to Macclesfield as soon as Mrs Singer has found a house for them.’

  Carrie stopped turning the mincer for a minute, remembering the old couple’s joy on receiving the telegram. ‘I wish you could have seen her face,’ s
he said. ‘When Mr Singer read it out.’

  ‘Will you get it all done,’ Vivienne interrupted her, ‘the mince pies and everything? Christmas Day’s Tuesday you know.’

  ‘Yes. Come on,’ Carrie said. ‘Get that mixture into the jar and I’ll start on the pastry.’ She went to the cupboard for flour and into the cold pantry for her lard. When she brought them back to the table Vivienne was putting on her coat.

  ‘Are you going to stay in those lodgings, Vivienne?’ she found herself blurting out. It had come over her again. A kind of fear, an urgent feeling that something was going to happen. A perplexed look crossed Vivienne’s face and was swiftly followed by irritation. ‘I could do with a bit of company,’ Carrie explained lamely.

  ‘I have to stay there, Aunt Carrie.’ Vivienne said. ‘I belong to the company. We are all together. We have to be.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Carrie was annoyed with herself for giving in to them – the feelings. It was the same for everyone. Everyone felt the need for love and comfort when the world was crashing about you.

  When Vivienne had gone, Carrie was overcome with a sudden urge to make everywhere safe. It was as if a voice was telling her to do so, to go through the routines she had been careless about of late.

  She went upstairs and put all her jars and bottles at the bottom of her wardrobe. Something was going to happen. She knew it. She went down and tidied the kitchen, taking the jars of mincemeat and the pies and placing them on the floor of the larder with cloths on top. Then she dashed upstairs, shaking now with fear and told the Tereschenkos and the Singers to come downstairs and prepare for a night in the cellar.

  They were all there, dressed in their warmest clothes, when the sirens went. Then they heard, droning overhead, dozens of German bombers heading for Manchester. From their hiding place in the deep cellar where they kept candles burning throughout the night, they could hear the guns.

  It was too much for her, cowering in the depths of the earth. There was a smell of damp that clutched at her throat and turned her sick. At half-past two in the morning Carrie drew her overcoat around herself and told them all that she was going upstairs.