She pushed him away, leaned on one elbow and said, 'It's Barnaby. Take Sarah. You could be together again ...'
He sat up and looked away. Elsie had been wanting to ask him this for a long time. She said, 'You've never told Sarah about us?'
'Of course not.'
'I couldn't bear it., .' She was going to say 'I could never share you', but instead she added, 'I'd never be able to face her …’
He said, 'The fact that she comes to you for her dresses proves it. Sarah doesn't know.'
'She might have suspicions ...'
'She would have to hear it from someone. Nobody knows!’
'You have never -in a weak moment? When you are in bed ...?'
He did not answer at once. Then, 'You know very well that Sarah and I have separate rooms.' He spoke the truth. Why did she torment herself, thinking he lied? After another few moments he said, 'We could go to Torquay for a week if you’re afraid of bumping into anyone from Macclesfield.'
She sat up and reached for her camisole. 'Take your family, Frank. I want to be with our Lil.'
'I'll only be away a week. I'll try to find a new designer if I've nothing better to do. The Macclesfield girls are all turning out the same old stuff. Paisley or little roses.'
'Pass my blouse, will you,' Elsie said, 'And now you mention it, will you let me have some of that paisley print before you go to Southport?' He gave her cloth, at cost. 'I'll order from Howard Willey-Leigh as well.' Howard would bring her buttons and belts this week.
'All right.' As he picked up her blouse, he suddenly laughed. 'You don't buy from Willey-Leigh, do you? That poor, silly old bugger?'
She'd wanted to make him jealous by mentioning Howard, and he'd seen through it. She became snippy. 'He is not a silly bugger. He is not poor. He has a factory in Manchester and a big house in Southport.' She was cross with herself for rising to the bait. She never put herself into a position where Frank or Howard, or anyone could question her. Doing the questioning and not answering was the way to learn other's secrets and keep yours.
He had no interest in Howard Willey Leigh. 'Sarah's taking Ray to Archerfield for a few days,' he said. 'The Hammonds can't go away from home, with little Magnus so weak.' He stared into space for a moment before saying, 'I'd take Ray on holiday, but Sarah and her father don't let him out of their sight. I've told them he'll grow up thinking the world's waiting fur him.' Then he brightened. 'Still, we all want the best for him. He is a lad in a million. No man has a finer son.'
Elsie had to bite her tongue, because she did not want him to sing Ray's praises when he had barely mentioned Lily. She put her clothes on while he watched. She dared not show jealousy but could not resist saying, 'How old is he? I always forget.' She never forgot.
'Nine in August.'
'That's right.He was conceived just before Christmas the year war broke out, wasn't he?'
'Just after. I was in training that Christmas.' 'You must have got it wrong, Frank. It takes nine months and a week, sometimes a bit longer.’
'You know very well that we had to get married.' He would soon be angry with her. 'I told you about it. Sarah and I did it in January. It was Sarah's first time. And mine. Ray was premature.'
Elsie sighed. 'He was a beautiful baby,' she said asshe handed Frank his shirt, 'I saw him before you. I used to see the nurse pushing him round the park in his pram when he was only a week old.'
Elsie had made it her business to see Frank's baby and talk to the nurse - the very nurse who had been engaged for Sarah's confinement. When Frank was in Gallipoli, fighting a war Sarah Chancellor gave birth to a lusty ten-pound baby with long fingernails you could trim down to size. He was the sort of baby who arrived late, not prematurely. Frank was supposedly a clever man, but men didn't know much about childbearing, and no doubt had ever crossed Frank's mind, Elsie was certain. But it did not tax the brains of a half-baked sheep to draw a conclusion from the size and weight and fingernails of Sarah's baby.
One of them was lying: Sarah to Frank, or Frank to Elsie. For herself, Elsie did not believe that Ray was Frank's child. Sarah was mad enough to give herself as a religious favour to a man of God - and clever enough and rich enough to buy her way out of trouble. Frank had been bought by the Pilkington family, in Elsie's opinion. He’d been bought for a row of houses and shops and he'd be sold when they had no more use for him. But she knew better than to suggest to Frank that Ray was not his own flesh and blood.
He took the shirt from her and knelt on the rug while he put his arms in. 'How will we manage? When our Lil comes to live with you?’
'Come round late at night,' she said. Frank spent three evenings a week with her. He had keys to her gate and back door. He'd go to the Swan, and when there was nobody about he'd take a short cut through an alley or an entryway. 'Come after our Lil's in bed.'
It would be better when Lily came to live with her. Frank did not see enough of the child. And it was Elsie's belief that Lily was Frank's only child. It would be better for all of them when Lily lived with her in Jordangate.
Lily was five and could not bear to think that her time at Lindow was running out. Macclesfield was not home to her. She was taken to Mam's house at least once a week and she hated it. Mam's shop had a window on to Jordangate filled with cards of buttons, hooks and eyes, lace and reels of cotton. Inside, on a long, polished counter, cloth samples and pattern books were heaped. There was no place for childhood's things. A thin partition separated the windowless storeroom from the shop. The living kitchen lay behind. It was the only part of the house Lily liked.
At the back of the kitchen was a damp scullery with a stone flagged floor and a slopstone sink with a rank, sour smell where Mam and she must wash themselves as well as the pots and pans. The only big room was above the shop, full of the paraphernalia of Mam'a trade; a treadle Singer, tailor's dummy, pressing table with gas ring and flat iron, long cutting table and cloth everywhere; cloth bits on the floor, stiff cloth patterns, cloth lengths on the shelf and windowsill. There was nothing in the house for her, for Lily. The promise of a friend, Doreen Grimshaw, was the only prospect that beckoned.
Mam talked about Doreen a lot, saying to Nanna, 'Doreen will have green eyes in September. I've made a big fuss of Doreen over the years because I didn't have Our Lil.'
And in Jordangate there was no garden, just a yard with a high, whitewashed brick wall, and behind it an alley, another wall and a ten-foot drop on to the waste ground behind Crown Street. Mam's home had dark, echoing hallways with terrible shadows that leaped up the walls as you went by with your candle. There was no cosiness, no warm clippy mats, no feather s - just lumpy flock beds at Mam's.
'Where will I sleep?' she asked Mam on her last visit to Lindow. 'Top floor.’ There were two bedrooms above Mam's workroom. 'In a room of your own next to mine.’
'I want to sleep with Nanna,' she wailed. It was comforting, knowing Nanna was only a whispered call away from her feather-bed nest in the low cot under the window. Lily was always awake when Nanna came huffing and puffing up the stairs. She peeped when Nanna took off the layers of clothing; the woolly, the frock, the big white petticoat and huge cream coloured knickers that came down to her knees, the stiff pink corset and, winter and summer, two pairs of stockings and the long knitted vests she wore night and day. Lily would watch Nanna fold her clothes carefully, put up her lovely fat arms and pull the voluminous winceyette nightdress over her head; watch her kneel at the bedside and say her prayers.
When she finished prayers Lily would let out a long sigh, 'Ah-ah.’
Nanna understood. She would stop before she blew out her candle and whisper, 'Are you waken, our Lil?' and Lily would slide out of bed to clamber in and snuggle down beside her warm, soft grandmother.
She'd miss those loving arms wrapped round her in the night, and she cried again, 'I want to sleep with Nanna...'
'You are too old for that,' Mam said.
She stopped crying for a second, seeing a chance to have a little of he
r own way. 'Can I take the piano?’ Nanna and Grandpa smiled.
Mam said, 'I’ve no room for a piano. And you'll be here at weekends. You can play it then.'
A lump came into the back of Lily's throat. She could not bear to have no more sing-songs with Nanna. She clung on to Nanna's arm. 'Who'll sing with you when I've gone?' she cried.
Nanna had taught her all the chapel hymns, and they would sing them as loud as they could while Nanna's feet pedalled and her fingers flew and dropped so fast the little cottage piano rocked back and to.
“Shall we gather at the River? The Beau-oo-ti-ful, the Beau-oo-ti-ful, the Ri-ver. Shall we gather at the Ri-ver, That flows by the Throne of God.” Nanna sang in a powerful, piercing soprano voice, jerking her head to help her keep time, Nanna sang the first verse, while Lily stood beside the piano and piped back,
“Yes! We'll gather at the River. The Beau-oo-ti-ful, the Beau-oo-ti-ful, the River. Yes! We'll gather at the River, That flows by the Throne of God.”
She was sobbing, and this time she could not stop. 'Who will you sing the hymns for, Nanna?'
‘I’ll sing for Jesus, till you come home again,' Nanna said with tears running down her face.
Chapter Four
Before she went to Macclesfield for good, Lily wanted to say goodbye to the Hammond family. It was a cloudless day and she dressed in her best - a sprigged organdie frock, white pinafore and straw bonnet with silk rosebuds on the brim, to walk the half-mile to Archerfield House. To get there she had to pass along the driveway that ran by a brook, a tributary of the Bollin, one side overhung with rhododendrons. On the other side a low wall and grassy slope separated the carriageway from the water.
She was afraid of Magnus's mother, but she loved Mr Hammond, who had a beautiful voice and an aristocratic manner, though he was not cold or standoffish. He made every lady or girl feel unique and fascinating, and Lily adored him. She always put Mr Hammond's patrician face on God when she imagined Him.
Mr Hammond went every day to Macclesfield to his mill and his bank but he was also a keen photographer, often to be seen in one of the local beauty spots on Saturday afternoons with his camera. He was a pianist as well. When he was at home Archerfield rang with his playing of popular classical pieces - the corridors alive with the music of Schubert, Chopin and Beethoven but what Lily admired most was that Mr Hammond was a devoted father.
Once she said to Grandpa, 'I think Mr Hammond loves Sylvia and Magnus better than anyone in the world. Did my dad love me, Grandpa?'
She was desperate to hear about her father. But nobody told her anything about the fair-haired young boy in the uniform of a private soldier of the West Lancashire Regiment, whose photo and medal were the only proof she had of his ever having lived. 'If he's dead, where's his grave? Was he kind like Mr Hammond? Would he love me, do you think?'
'If he could see you, he'd love you as much as your Grandpa does.' Grandpa's eyes were bright. It wasn't fair, asking for comparisons and making Grandpa's eyes fill with tears so Lily did not pursue her questioning.
Sylvia and Magnus must have told everyone she was coming because before she could go round to the back entrance where the maids usually let her in, the front door was opened by the butler who led her into the drawing room, a big room filled with glowering portraits and chairs and chaises-longues. They were there, Sylvia , Magnus, Mr Hammond and Mrs Hammond who was tall and imperious and terrifying to Lily. She wore a high feathery hat as if she'd just come in from Doing Good.
Mrs Hammond had a fair, classical beauty but to Lily she appeared high and mighty, tall and thin, with high cheekbones in a long face and china-blue eyes like Sylvia's. Her mouth was set firm and she spoke in the strange voice which Mam said came from Edinburgh. She made her intentions known, starting her sentences with 'I insist ...' and 'I cannot allow you to ...' And Lily sensed that it was only because of Grandpa that she was allowed to play with Sylvia .and Magnus. Grandpa went to see his old partner once a week, to play chess.
Lily was never asked round when the Scottish cousins came to visit or when Mrs Hammond invited other children; rich mill-owners' children. She would catch Lily as she left the house, saying, 'It's not good for Magnus to have no other friend but you, Lily. Don't come tomorrow when the Ryles’ boys and Ray Challenor are here.'
Lily was proud and would not have gone to Archerfteld if Mrs Hammond didn't want her but Nana said that Mrs Hammond was not being horrible. It was just that being foreign – she was Scottish -she knew nothing of English ways. She did not know what embarrassment was, nor did she mince words or gush. Mrs Hammond devoted her life to her children.
But Lily saw that Mrs Hammond treated Nanna like an old retainer. A maid would come running down to Lindow at breakfast, saying, 'Please, Mrs Stanway, Madam says will you please come as soon as you can?' for Nanna was wise and good-hearted and full of nature lore and country remedies. 'Magnus is not at alI well. Bring the girl with you.'
Lily hated seeing Nanna spoken down to by Mrs Hammond. Mrs Hammond was a workhouse guardian and she Did Good. Perhaps that was why Nanna got flustered when Mrs Hammond asked the driver of her Daimler to stop at Lindow gates if she saw Nanna in the garden. Lily noticed it every time, heard the note of apology in Nanna's voice as Mrs Hammond questioned her. Mrs Hammond took exception to Lily's presence and would look down on her as if she were a great burden to be borne, and ask when Nanna was going to have a bit of time for herself. At other times, as now, here in their drawing room, Mrs Hammond looked right through her.
Turning away from Lily, she smiled at Magnus, 'Your little playmate is going to live in Macclesfield?'
Magnus's blue eyes were alight with happiness. 'Lily's going to school, Mama,' he said. Then, to her, 'I love you, Lily. Come back soon.'
Lily smiled in relief and took his cold, thin hand in hers.
Mr Hammond said, 'Which school, Lily?'
'Beech Lane,' she said. 'The one near Mam's shop.'
Mrs Hammond's eyebrows went high. 'Let's hope you don't turn out like the little savages who go there, then.'
Sylvia said, 'Lilies are not savage. Lilies are pure and beautiful, Mama.' 'Lily's coming back. She's coming to see me again,' said Magnus, who was becoming upset.
Lily pressed his hand gently. Mam had told Nanna not to be afraid when Mrs Hammond wore her high hat. Mrs Hammond was a 'jumped-up nobody' with a pretty face who'd set her cap for Mr Hammond. If Mam said not to be afraid, Lily was not.
At Magnus's words Mrs Hammond's expression softened. She glanced at Lily before she let her eyes go to the clock, and said, 'Is there anything else? Anything I can do for you, Lily?'
A rush of colour came to Lily's cheeks. Mrs Hammond was asking if she could do anything for her. Maybe she'd been wrong ... Lily could scarcely believe her ears. She hesitated and Mrs Hammond repeated, 'is there anything I can do for you?'
Lily took a deep breath, let go of Magnus's hand and said in her best voice, 'Will you jump over your hat?'
'Jump?' Mrs Hammond said. Mr Hammond smiled, then tried to hide it. Lily wanted to see Mrs Hammond go heels-over-cap. 'Mam says you can set your cap and jump up.'
There was a shocked silence. Mr Hammond began to cough and Lily saw at once, with a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she'd said the wrong thing. Blushing hotly, she tried to make matters right. 'It doesn't really matter, if you are too old.'
Mrs Hammond's face was red. Furious, she rounded on Mr Hammond and said, 'I cannot allow this brat to play with our children, John. Don't think I’m not sorry for her. I pity her. I would pity any child who had that woman for a mother!’ She drew breath again. 'There is not a chance in Hades that this girl will make a decent life for herself. She'll be just as brazen a little hussy as Elsie Stanway was.'
There were cries of, 'No, Mama!' from Magnus and Sylvia, and 'Oh, dear!' from Mr Hammond, but Lily hung her head. Her mouth was dry. She couldn't utter a word. She only half understood the significance, but Mrs Hammond said that she'd never
be decent and that was a lie. She had a bath every Saturday night. Mrs Hammond pitied her. She did not want pity. But what she had said about Mam hurt most. 'Brazen', she'd said. Brazen was a bad word. Mrs Hammond had used it of Mam.
The injustice, without Mam here to speak for herself, was more than Lily could bear. She trembled with confusion and panic. She wanted to shout 'Go to blazes!' but instead she ran from the room, tripped over the carpet at the door, righted herself clumsily and looked over her shoulder to see them all staring after her: Sylvia and Magnus's faces pale and fearful.
She would not let them see her crying. Choking back tears, she fled down the long hall, shrugged off the butler's restraining hand and flung herself against the front door. He opened it and she was out and tearing down the driveway as if devils were snapping at her flying feet. Then, out of sight of the house, and over the stone wall, she flung herself on to the bank beside the tumbling brook, and pressed her face into the sweet, cool grasses.
Nobody followed. It was quiet and she lay for minutes in her misery hearing nothing but the burbling water, until after a little while the feeling that she'd been unfairly treated grew very keen in her. Slowly at first, then with more conviction, there came to life a new emotion - anger -and with the anger came a need for retaliation that in future would spring up at every bad turn she endured.
Magnus started to scream when Lily left. 'Why do you hate Lily? I hate you, Mama!' He flung himself at his Mama in a rage.
'Darling. Magnus. Don't cry!' His Mama took hold of his arms in a panic. 'What is the matter?' she said to Sylvia, while she held Magnus as firmly as she could. 'Run upstairs for Nurse. I'm afraid he'll throw himself on to the floor and bruise.'
Sylvia gave Magnus one of her bossy looks, and at the top of her voice said, 'Stop that noise, Magnus! Stupid boy. If you bruise, you will be in bed for weeks. You will not see Lily. Or Rowena and Ian.'
'I will.' Magnus tried to pull away from Mama and throw himself on to the floor to make Mama cry. He screamed, 'Lily's going to school.'
Wise Child Page 6
