by Anna Jacobs
Chapter Seven
May 1909–June 1911
In May, Eva heard that she’d got a scholarship to the secondary school and all hell broke out in the Kershaw household. Percy insisted she was to take it up and was not swayed by tears from his mother or pleas that they couldn’t afford this, that they’d all end up in debt and in the workhouse. For once in his life, he held firm.
“Thank you, Percy,” Eva said the first night. The crumpled letter from the school was safely in his pocket, only one corner singed where Meg had tried to throw it on the fire. Their mother was now upstairs, sobbing into her pillow. “I won’t waste this chance, I promise you. If you can only persuade her to…”
They both paused to listen.
“I’ve never heard her go on like this before,” Eva said in a worried voice, when the weeping didn’t stop.
“Me neither. What our lodgers must be thinking, I don’t know. Eeh, we can’t let her carry on making that row.” He went upstairs, flinging open his mother’s bedroom door without knocking. “That’s enough!” he roared in a voice so loud he surprised himself.
The sobs abated only a little.
He went across to the bed and jerked her upright, giving her a good shake.
Meg gulped. “Percy—”
“Enough, I said! I’m the one bringing the wages into this house and I’m telling you now, if you don’t let Eva go to that school, I’m leaving.” He let go of her and folded his arms, his expression grim. “I wasn’t able to take up my chance, but she’s going to get hers, by hell she is!”
Terror replaced the anger in Meg’s heart. If he left, she’d lose everything, for the money from the lodgers would not be enough to keep a family.
“I mean it!” He glared down at her. Then, because it was not in his nature to bully and demand things, he turned round before her tears could weaken his resolve, saying over his shoulder, “I’m off to the pub and I don’t want to hear any more about this after I get back—or you know what I’ll do.”
They all suffered from their mam’s bad temper for the next few days, but Eva did take up the scholarship. The knowledge that Miss Blake had persuaded the brewery to pay for the schoolbooks and had got the Pilbys to provide the school uniform helped with Meg. A little. But her fear of Percy’s leaving helped far more.
* * *
At the same time as Eva was preparing to change schools, Lizzie was at last able to leave elementary school and work full-time at Dearden’s. Her mam grudgingly agreed to let her buy some new clothes, and again Mrs. D stepped in to prevent things from being obtained through the Clothing Club which sold only cheap stuff, with no wear in it. And anyway, she wanted her assistants turned out more smartly, if Mrs. Kershaw didn’t mind.
Mrs. Kershaw did mind. Very much. But once again she was helpless to prevent such extravagance and did not dare protest openly.
So Lizzie purchased two neat navy serge skirts for work and four blouses, each with detachable high starched collars and sleeves which would roll up, rather like the ones Mrs. D herself wore.
Her mam wanted to buy her some corsets as well, but the idea of being laced up absolutely horrified Lizzie. “I don’t need corsets! I’m thin enough already,” she protested. Then, seeing the determination on her mother’s face, added, “And what’s more, I won’t wear them.”
Meg breathed deeply for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose it would be a waste of money, when you’re so scraggy.” But she always wore corsets herself, because it wasn’t respectable to go without, in her opinion, and anyway they kept your chest warm. But you could never tell that Lizzie anything. A right madam, her eldest daughter, and heaven help the man who married her. If anyone ever did marry her. And if her figure got any bigger, she’d have the corsets, whether she liked the idea or not.
Lizzie had never had brand-new clothes before and when she got home, she ran upstairs and changed into them straight away, then came rushing down to show them off to Percy.
But as she sailed into the kitchen, calling, “Look at me!” she was embarrassed to find that Sam Thoxby had come in while she was changing and was also part of the audience. He was indeed looking at her, but in that funny way he sometimes had, his eyes focusing for a moment on her breasts which had grown somewhat that year and then flicking up and down her figure, as if assessing her.
“You look very nice,” Percy told her, nodding approval.
“I like that blouse,” Sam said. “Very grown-up.”
“Th-thank you.” Face scarlet, Lizzie escaped upstairs again.
“You’re as large as you ever will be and no amount of staring will make you larger,” Meg said the next day when she caught Lizzie looking at a sideways view of her figure in the front room mirror. “There’s no denying you take after my side of the family and Eva takes after your father’s. She’s going to have a lovely little figure, our Eva is. But you’re worse than me, you’re all skin and bone.”
Lizzie tried not to show how that remark hurt. She’d far rather have lush curves like a lady on a postcard that had taken her fancy at the newsagent’s. Everyone she knew had a collection of postcards, but she’d never wanted any before. She’d bought this one, however, instead of a comic, and kept it in her drawer, looking at it sometimes when she was on her own. Such a lovely, pillowy lady, with piled-up hair of a glorious blonde colour, not dull and black like Lizzie’s, which fell straight down again if you tried to pile it up. Not that anyone would let her wear her hair up yet. Even Mrs. D said she was too young for that and should just tie her hair back with a navy ribbon to match her skirt and wash it every week to keep it shiny. It wasn’t fair keeping her looking like a child.
* * *
On Sam’s next visit to Bobbin Lane, he looked so pleased with himself that Meg asked at once, “What’s the good news, then?” He was a great favourite with her nowadays and often called in on a Sunday, sitting with them in the front room, teasing her as no one else dared and chatting comfortably to the lodgers if they came down. He had remained on good terms with them on the principle that it never hurt to get on with folk.
“The news is…” He paused teasingly and grinned at a chorus of voices saying, “Get on!”
“Well, the news is that my gran’s going to get an old age pension now she’s turned seventy—and they’re going to give her the whole five shillings a week. Mr. Lloyd George is in my good books, he is that.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” said Meg at once.
Sam grinned reminiscently. “Gran was so pleased she celebrated with a couple of extra glasses of porter last night and they had to call me to get her home. Danced down the street she did, seventy or not. She was a bit grumpy this morning, though.” Had screamed at him like a fishwife, actually, for making such a noise when her poor old head was aching fit to burst.
“I think the pension should be given to everyone when they get to be seventy,” Meg said. “There’s not that many who do live so long and no one can do a proper day’s work by that age, can they?”
But the pensions were not given to everyone and those who “had failed to work habitually, according to their ability and need” or “to save money regularly” were excluded, she’d read that in the paper. She’d memorised the phrases in case those were still the rules when she got really old. At least she was earning some money with her lodgers and she was saving, too, so if they didn’t change the rules, she’d qualify when her time came. “I’m that glad for your gran, Sam. It must be a great comfort to her.”
“It is. Though I’d have looked after her when she got too old to do owt.” And actually, his gran had a knack of earning bits of money here and there, and even had some saved. But she kept most of that under a loose floorboard, with just a few pounds in the savings bank for show. She didn’t really trust banks, but knew about the rules for getting the pension.
“There’s a lot of changes going on in the world,” Percy said thoughtfully. “Look at that Louis Blériot, flying all the way across the English Channel.”
The idea had really caught his imagination.
“He’s a fool to risk his life in one of those rackety flying machines, when he could get across to England perfectly safely in a ship,” was Meg’s comment.
“There’s the cinema as well,” Lizzie chimed in. If she’d had more money, she’d have gone to the cinema every week. They had some lovely films. Jack had been telling her about his favourite. It was called “The Great Train Robbery” and he’d seen it three times now. Ever so exciting it was.
“It’s a lot of nonsense that cinema is,” Meg declared. “It’ll never last.”
Percy rolled his eyes at Sam and the two young men began talking about going for a walk. Everyone else found an excuse to go out so Meg was left alone again, which didn’t please her at all.
* * *
As she worked in the shop, Lizzie often listened to the better off customers voice their resentment that their taxes were being “given away” to old people in the form of these pensions, and she thought of Gran Thoxby, all twisted and worn, so grateful not to have to scrub floors any more though she still laid out dead people.
But Lizzie kept her thoughts to herself. You didn’t argue with customers. They’d been saying the same thing since the beginning of the year when the pensions started, and she was fed up of the subject by now. But they’d only to hear of someone else getting the full five shillings and they’d be off again, grumbling away to one another.
Even Jack Dearden was driving her mad with his talk of aeroplanes. He was as bad as Fred had been about motor cars. During slack times in the shop, when they were making up packets of sugar or currants in the back room, he passed on to Lizzie all the latest news he’d garnered about flying, for he was allowed to read the newspaper at night, once his dad had finished with it.
Lizzie had a secret interest in what the suffragettes were doing, though of course she didn’t let on to her mam or Mrs. D about that, just talked about it with Miss Emma sometimes, who was also a secret supporter. Miss Emma couldn’t talk about getting the vote for women in front of her sister, either, since Miss Harper disapproved as strongly of the suffragettes and their activities as Lizzie’s mam did.
“Women have just as much sense as men and deserve the vote,” Emma said to Lizzie one evening when they were alone together in the kitchen. “Not that I’d lower myself to make such a public fuss about it all.” She didn’t think she’d have the courage to join the protests, either, for there was often a lot of unpleasantness attached and people threw rotten fruit at you, or flour—or worse.
“There was one chained herself to the railings down at the Town Hall today an’ she shouted at the Mayor when he came out,” Lizzie said. “I saw her with my own eyes. She was a lady from her clothes, an’ yet she screeched an’ kicked when them policemen dragged her off. Mind you, I saw one of them thump her. I don’t think that was right, either.”
“That’s shocking. The police have no right to hit anyone. They’re there to serve the public, not abuse them.”
“I can’t see what good it does anyone to get arrested and sent to prison, though,” Lizzie said thoughtfully. “That won’t get women no votes. Do you think we’ll ever get them?”
“I certainly hope so.”
Lizzie really enjoyed talking to Miss Emma, who made her think about the world as no one had ever done before, and who lent her story books to read in her rare moments of leisure. Her mam said reading was a waste of time and gave Lizzie extra jobs to do if she caught her with a book, so she could only read them when Mam was round the pub with Percy and Sam. All Meg wanted to talk about was the rising prices.
Times were terrible hard, Mrs. D said, but the shop still seemed very busy to Lizzie. As she walked to work, however, she often saw men who had no work standing around on street corners looking cold and miserable, or children with pinched faces going to school without breakfast. She knew she was lucky to have a job, and if only her mam would stop nagging her, life would be lovely. But Mam had been in a bit better mood lately, especially when it was her day to go to the pub.
* * *
In May 1910, just after Lizzie turned fourteen, the old King died and everyone went around talking about it in hushed voices. “End of an era,” they said, or, “Last real link with old Vicki.” Lizzie didn’t see why they were making such a fuss. He was a fat old man, King or not, just the sort that tried to pinch your bum in the shop when Mrs. D wasn’t looking.
Halley’s Comet blazed across the skies on the eve of the King’s funeral, which some thought was a bad omen, others a good one. Peter Dearden said it was just a “natural phenomenon” and so did Miss Harper, and certainly nothing seemed to come of it, but it made you feel funny to see it.
It was Peter who insisted on Dearden’s buying a motor van to deliver goods to the outlying districts, and that caused great excitement among the staff. He said motors were the coming thing and made a lot less work and mess than horses did, though Lizzie liked to go and stroke the horses’ noses in the stables and slip them a piece of carrot. They had such lovely velvety eyes.
Peter even gave Lizzie a ride home in the van one dark night, when it was pouring with rain. “Your first ride in a motor vehicle?” he asked indulgently.
“Yes.” She beamed at him as the rain beat down on the roof. “Thank you so much for bringing me home.”
“Well, it won’t be your last ride, not by a long chalk, young lady. They’re the thing of the future, motor cars are, and one day every family who now has a carriage will have a car instead.”
She gaped at him.
“I mean it, young Lizzie.”
She didn’t like to contradict him, but she couldn’t see these noisy smelly machines taking over from the horses her father had loved so much. She still thought of Dad sometimes when she saw a brewery dray in the street, and then she had to blink her eyes and quickly find something else to look at.
Lizzie saw Peter sometimes looking at his father with the same sorrow in his eyes. Mr. D coughed a lot, and he looked all yellow and shrivelled up, like Miss Harper had when they first came to Bobbin Lane, though she was looking better now. Lizzie felt for Peter and Jack. It was a hard thing to lose your father.
But mostly Lizzie was too busy to stop and think about anything much. And that was how she liked it. She’d leave all the thinking to Eva, thank you very much.
* * *
In June of the following year, when Lizzie was fifteen, the Coronation of King George V took place, a great event for which most streets in Overdale were having parties. People were planning to bring out their tables and chairs, set them all in a long row and share their food and drink—but were keeping their fingers crossed that it would be a fine day.
All the shops had patriotic displays in the windows. Dearden’s had “Produce of Our Glorious Empire” taking up a whole window and a big golden crown outside, perched above the double shop doors. Peter had acquired that and arranged for it to be lit up at night by electric bulbs, but Mrs. D didn’t half complain about the cost.
Sam went round selling bunting, some of it obviously well used, but folk were buying it anyway and hanging it across the streets.
“He can always turn an extra penny, that lad can,” Meg said fondly. “Why don’t you go in with him on some of his jobs, our Percy? You could make a bit on the side.”
“I’m not the sort.”
“You’ll have to be the sort with our Eva going to that school!”
So next time Sam offered him a chance to make a bit of money on the side, Percy swallowed his doubts. “All right.”
Sam grinned. “What’s got into you, saying yes?”
“Didn’t you mean it?” Percy felt relief wash through him, then saw he was being teased.
“A-course I did. This fellow from Rochdale’s got a cartload of stuff to sell an’ we need some help unloading it.”
Not until Percy was helping transfer things into two handcarts in a dark area behind Pilby’s did he realise from what the stranger was saying
that the stuff was stolen. He froze where he stood, unable to lift another item.
Sam nudged him. “Get on with it!”
But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He thought he heard someone coming along the street and his blood ran cold. “It’s stolen, isn’t it? This stuff?”
His companion’s teeth shone briefly for a moment in the fitful moonlight as he smiled. “I wouldn’t know. All I care about is it’s going cheap an’ I can make a profit.”
“I can’t do it, Sam. I just can’t.”
Sam grabbed his arm. “What do you mean, you can’t do it? We’ll be finished in half an hour. Money for old rope.”
But for once Percy wasn’t to be persuaded. “No. I’m not doing owt dishonest.”
The stranger came over to them. “What’s up with him?”
“He’s got a belly-ache.” Sam’s fist jabbed suddenly into Percy’s belly and he folded up in pain. “Groan!” a voice hissed in his ear. “Or he’ll bash your brains in.”
So Percy groaned.
Sam clapped the stranger on the back. “Ah, we’ll manage fine without him. I shoulda knowed he’d get the gripes. He allus does when he’s nervous. I shan’t offer him work again.” He turned to Percy. “An’ don’t come to me for payment afterwards.”
Percy turned and left abruptly, rushing off down the alley as if a pack of wild dogs was after him. Behind him, he heard laughter. When he saw someone coming down the street towards him, he forced himself to slow down and even nod a hello. But the man was drunk and greeting all the world, no one he knew, thank goodness.
He shivered all the way home and at every step half-expected a policeman to jump out from a dark doorway and ask what he was doing out so late. As he lay in the bed, vainly trying to fall asleep, all he could think of was that he would never, ever do business with Sam again. Did his friend often deal in stolen goods? Surely not?
Sam offered him a chance to make money several times after that. “Guaranteed honest,” he said with a mocking grin each time.
But Percy just shook his head. “Buying and selling isn’t my sort of thing.”
