Down an English Lane

by Margaret Thornton

  She had told Bruce that when her grandmother had died she had been left all on her own, with no family and only a few friends; and that that was why she had joined the WAAF. It was true that her grandmother had died, but she had not joined up immediately. She had been invited by Sadie Gascoyne, a kind-hearted friend who worked in the office with her at the woollen mill, to go and live with her and her family.

  The Gascoynes’ home in the district of Heaton was a far cry from the squalid mean streets of back-to-back houses in the White Abbey Road area where Christine, until then, had spent her days. Not that her grandmother had been a feckless or slovenly sort of woman. Far from it; she had kept her windows clean and her front step had been regularly donkey-stoned. Indeed, old Lizzie Walker’s house had stood out from the rest of the shabby and run-down houses in the row. Inside, too, she had always made an effort to be clean and tidy. Such furniture as she possessed had seen better days, dating mainly from the time of her marriage towards the end of the previous century; but she had dusted and polished it to within an inch of its life and had black-leaded the kitchen grate each week until you could see your face in its surface.

  Lizzie had also tried to instil in her granddaughter the idea that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. Christine had not been too sure of the godliness part, although she had gone dutifully to Sunday school each week as her gran had insisted she should do, something which her mother had never bothered about. But from an early age she had wanted to keep herself clean and tidy and as pretty as she could possibly make herself. A weekly soak in the zinc bath in front of the fire, and the washing of her fair hair, had been a ritual even when she had lived at her parents’ home – no one could accuse Myrtle Myerscough of being dirty; that was not one of her failings – and it had continued all the time she had lived with her grandmother. But how she had longed for a house with a proper bathroom upstairs and an indoor lavatory, not a stinking privy at the end of the backyard. There again, Lizzie Walker had done her utmost to keep it clean, but she had been fighting a losing battle against her less particular neighbours.

  Christine knew that she had had a good start as far as looks were concerned, having inherited the blonde, naturally wavy, hair and clear silver-grey eyes of her mother. Myrtle’s hair had darkened considerably though, now, and maintained its brassy blonde colour only by regular treatments with the peroxide bottle.

  ‘Yer mother’s a tart,’ Lizzie Walker, who did not believe in mincing her words, had told her granddaughter, when she thought she was old enough to understand. ‘To think that a daughter of mine should sink so low. I’m ashamed of her; in fact I’ve disowned her and I don’t care who knows it.’ Indeed, folks did know about Myrtle Myerscough; they knew about the visitors to the house and the reason why she was able to afford silk stockings and a fox fur and flashy jewellery.

  ‘Of course she always fancied herself did yer ma; thought she was a cut above the folks round here. Happen we spoiled her, Charlie and me, with her being the youngest, like.’ Lizzie’s husband had died when Christine was a small girl, and her two sons, several years older than Myrtle, had long since married and moved away. ‘But the rot really set in when she married him, Fred Myerscough. We told her he was no good, but she wouldn’t listen… Oh aye, I know he’s yer dad, and she’s yer mam and she reckons that she loves you. And if she wants to see you now and again it’s not for me to say she can’t. But it’s a rum sort o’ love to me. An’ I had to get you away from it all, Chrissie love; it weren’t right. It weren’t right at all that a child should see such goings-on.’

  Christine had been only vaguely aware, until she was eight or nine years old, of what was happening in the house where she lived on Lumm Lane, only a few streets away from her grandmother’s home where, later, she was taken to live. Her mother worked at a nearby woollen mill, starting early in the morning and not returning until well after the time that Christine finished school, so the child was often left to her own devices. She let herself in with a latch key and then set about the task of peeling the potatoes and setting the table, as her mother had told her she must do, before Myrtle returned from the mill. Her father was a lorry driver, delivering machinery, sometimes to distant parts of the country, and he was often away all night. It was then that the men started to visit the house, and on the evenings that Myrtle entertained her ‘gentlemen friends’, as she described them to Christine, the child was sent to bed extra early.

  She recalled an almighty row one night when her father had returned home unexpectedly; loud shouts and screams and the sound of crockery being thrown around, and she had hidden her head beneath the bedclothes until the furore had died down. Her mother had had a black eye the following morning, but she had gone to work as usual, and Christine had been told nothing of what had gone on. Strangely, though, the visits of the gentlemen had not stopped. Moreover, it seemed as though her father knew about them and did not say anything so long as he was away from home at the time.

  Christine knew that her mother was a pretty woman, and very clean and tidy, unlike a lot of the other mill workers, some of them mothers of her schoolfriends, who looked poor and shabby and wore shawls instead of coats, something that Myrtle had never done. She was not neglected, not in the material sense; there was always enough food to eat and adequate warm clothing, mainly bought from second-hand shops or jumble sales. But the child was starved of real affection. She was an only child and, therefore, might easily have been indulged and made much of; but she had begun to realise, especially after she had left her parents and had started to work things out for herself, that she had been an unwanted child, possibly a mistake that was not intended to happen, considering the lifestyle of her mother and father.

  Myrtle and Fred had moved soon after their daughter had left, leaving behind their rented property and buying a small house on the road to Shipley. Her mother no longer worked at the mill. She became a barmaid, as well as pursuing her other occupation; and Fred, as well as being a lorry driver, became known as a petty thief. He had already had one or two convictions and stretches inside. Christine, over the years, had visited them only irregularly. She had not seen them since she had joined the WAAF two years ago.

  She had loved her grandmother dearly, and she had known, for the first time in her life, that she was really loved too. She remembered the row that had gone on between her mother and grandmother before she was taken away to live with Gran. She had been told to go upstairs to her bedroom, but she had been unable to help hearing some of what was being said, or rather, shouted.

  ‘You’re not fit to have a child, you shameless hussy…’

  ‘…none of your business. I’ve never neglected her and neither has Fred.’

  ‘…that good-for-nothing! You’re just as bad as one another. I’m taking the child to live with me.’ By this time Christine had been listening quite openly.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I say! Try to stop me an’ I’ll report you to the cruelty people.’

  ‘Cruelty! You interfering old…’ Her mother had let fly with such a tirade of dreadful words that Christine had seldom heard before, certainly not from her mother’s lips. It was not cruelty, she raged. The child was well fed and well clothed and she was coming to no harm.

  ‘No harm? You’re harming her morally,’ said her grandmother, but Christine had not understood fully at the time what she had meant. ‘What you’re doing is immoral, and if that’s not cruelty, then I’d like to know what is… I’m telling you, Myrtle, if you don’t let her go with me, then she’ll be taken away from you forcibly by them cruelty folk. And I’m not going to stand by and see that happen to a granddaughter of mine…’

  It had all gone quiet then. She did not hear her mother say any more. Maybe Myrtle had decided that it was for the best after all, that she, Christine, would be happier with her gran, or maybe her mother had decided that she simply did not want her… She had never known why her mother had given in without a struggle, but it seemed as though that was what ha
d happened. Myrtle told her the next day, quite kindly and gently, that she was going to live with her grandmother ‘for a little while’. Gran was lonely and she, Myrtle, was busy working at the mill, and her father was seldom there to look after her… So the child had packed up all her belongings and walked off with her gran with scarcely a backward glance. The ‘little while’ had lasted more than ten years.

  In some ways – material ways – life was harder now for the little girl. Lizzie Walker was by no means well off and would not accept so much as a penny from ‘those two’ for caring for their child. There was always enough to eat, although Lizzie had to buy the cheaper cuts of meat, and often scoured the market stalls at the end of the afternoon to purchase the leftover fruit and vegetables for a much cheaper price. There were few luxuries like shop-bought cakes – Gran did all her own baking – or ice-cream, which her mother had quite often bought. Christine was taught to save up out of her ‘Saturday pennies’ to buy the things she coveted. It was very seldom that her gran was able to buy her treats.

  She was a clever girl, but as a Grammar school education would have been out of the question – even if she had been granted a free place they would have been unable to afford the uniform and the extras – Christine had left school at the age of fourteen and had gone to work at the mill; not the one nearby where her mother had worked but one further afield which involved taking a trolleybus there and back each day.

  She hated the clamour and the clatter of the machines and the boring nature of the work, but she stuck it out diligently for three years. It was then that she heard of a vacancy in the office and decided to apply for it. To her amazement – and to the gall of some of her colleagues in the weaving shed who considered she was already too big for her boots – she was told that the job of office junior would be hers provided she took lessons in shorthand and typing. Her grandmother was proud of her, and night school tuition soon brought her up to the required standard.

  The girls she met in the office were more on her wavelength than her former work mates, whom she began to think of as common-or-garden mill girls. She, Christine Myerscough, was definitely a cut above them; she had always known that she was. In some ways she was her mother’s daughter, but she would never be tempted to sink to the depths her mother had done to make a better life for herself. The payment for her work as a wages’ clerk, which she eventually became, was quite adequate, and she was able to pay her gran a satisfactory sum each week. To her credit, she knew that the old lady more than deserved it for looking after her all those years.

  Her new friends in the office, Sadie Gascoyne – her special friend – and Daphne and Vera, knew very little of her background. She had told them that she lived with her grandmother, and she supposed they knew, from the direction of the trolleybus which took her to and from the mill, that she lived in a rather less affluent area of the city than they did. But she did not see the harm in telling what she thought of as a white lie or two; and soon she almost began to convince herself that what she told them was true; that her parents had been killed when she was ten years old and that that was why she lived with her gran. And as she did not invite her friends to her home there was no likelihood that they would discover the truth. They seemed to understand the reason she gave; that her grandmother was old and frail and that company of any kind wearied her.

  She had lost touch with her former schoolfriends, some of whom had known, or had guessed at, the truth about her background. But Sadie, Daphne and Vera, she was quite sure, had no idea. When she was invited to their homes she became even more aware of the difference between her circumstances and those of her friends. Their parents owned their own houses, which were in far more affluent districts. Sadie lived at Heaton and Daphne and Vera at Frizinghall, a little further away from the city centre.

  It was Sadie’s home that Christine visited the most. It was situated on a leafy avenue near to Lister Park, not far from the point where Manningham Lane, the long road that led out of the city centre, changed into Keighley Road. It was, in truth, quite a modest semi-detached house, but to Christine, after living in ‘two-up, two-down’ cottage type dwellings, first with her parents and then with her gran, in a far less salubrious area, this was luxury indeed. There was hot water whenever it was required from something called an immersion heater, even in the summer months, without having to keep the fire banked up on the hottest of days; gardens with lawns at both the front and the back; and a garage where Mr Gascoyne kept his Morris Minor car. He drove to Bradford each day to his job as an insurance clerk, and sometimes Sadie travelled with him. Christine was envious of her friend’s lifestyle, although she hid her feelings very well. She was determined, however, that one day she would do even better for herself. She knew, though, that as long as her grandmother was alive it was her duty to stay with the old lady who had been so good to her, and she never flinched from it.

  She was, truly, broken-hearted when her gran died suddenly, after a massive heart attack, at the age of eighty-two. She had not really been ill, apart from the odd twinge or two, which, typically, Lizzie had tried to ignore; so it had been even more of a shock to the girl, who was now left, virtually, homeless. She could have afforded the rent of the property, and she was, in effect, the sitting tenant; but she saw this as an opportunity to make her first move towards a better life. And so when Mrs Gascoyne, who had always been fond of her, invited her to share their home, she jumped at the chance. Besides, there was a family of six already waiting to move into the property that her gran had rented. Christine told the landlord that their need was far greater than her own, which was true. She soon moved her possessions, such as they were, and went to live in the district of Heaton.

  There she had her own bedroom, the smallest of the three, but she preferred to have her own space rather than share with Sadie. There were comforts such as she had not known before; an interior spring mattress on her single bed, rather than the flock one she had been accustomed to; an electric fire to plug in when the weather was cold; and a bedside reading lamp. She paid Mrs Gascoyne for her board and lodgings and settled down to a comfortable existence.

  But it did not last for very long. Both she and Sadie realised it was their duty to enlist and do their bit in the war, which was showing no sign of ending. They made the decision despite the fact that their mill was now manufacturing uniforms of khaki and airforce blue, and therefore their jobs could be said to be of national importance. But there were younger women ready to step into their shoes; and so, in 1943 Christine joined the WAAF and Sadie the ATS. They were good friends, but did not live in one another’s pockets, and neither of them tried to persuade the other to change her mind about the choice of service.

  Now, in the September of 1945, Christine had been demobbed, whereas Sadie was not due to return home for another few weeks. But Christine knew that this would not worry her friend. Sadie was now enjoying her reunion with Roland, her fiancé, who was an army captain. He had already been a serving officer in the Regular Army before the war began and had recently returned from Germany to the camp at Aldershot.

  ‘Yes, I think we will soon be hearing the chime of wedding bells,’ Sadie’s mother told Christine, in great excitement. ‘He’s a lovely young man is Roland. Bill and I have really taken to him. He will be staying in the army of course; it’s his chosen career. So I dare say he and Sadie will move into married quarters…’

  The two of them were enjoying a chat over a cup of tea in Barbara Gascoyne’s cosy kitchen, Christine having arrived back in the mid-afternoon. ‘What about you, dear?’ she asked. ‘Have you and your young man made any plans yet?’ Christine could see the older woman casting a surreptitious glance at her left hand. She felt a trifle annoyed, but she hid her vexation and smiled airily.

  ‘No…we have no definite plans as yet. We are not officially engaged, but it won’t be long before we are…’ At least not if I have anything to do with it, she added to herself. ‘We do have an understanding. The RAF is Bruce’s chosen career
as well, like Roland’s in the army, although he is quite a few years younger than Roland.’ She had not yet met Sadie’s fiancé, who, she had been informed, was twenty-eight… A much more marriageable age, she mused; but she was determined that Bruce’s lack of years should not deter him. She was convinced she would be able to bring him up to scratch if he showed any sign of hesitance.

  ‘How old is your young man, dear?’ asked Barbara. ‘About the same age as you?’

  ‘Er…he’s twenty-one,’ replied Christine, adding on a few months. She had not been thinking what she was saying just then, telling Barbara that he was several years younger than Roland. ‘He’s a little younger than me, as a matter of fact, but it doesn’t matter. He’s very mature for his age.’

  She knew that this was not strictly true. Bruce had led quite a sheltered and a privileged life until he had joined the RAF. The company of other men, many of them older than he was, had brought about the change from boyhood to manhood – he had told her that himself – but she knew that there was still a certain naivety and innocence about him. At twenty-two, Christine was just a little less than two years his senior. But Bruce did not know that. He believed her to be the same age as himself, although why she had deceived him she was not altogether sure. From the fear that he might have been frightened off, she supposed… But she was sure enough of him now – with her fingers tightly crossed – to risk telling him the truth.