Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘I’m not ready for old,’ she informed the grate. ‘I don’t love him any more. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever did really love him. Did I really think we’d be different, me and him?’

  She thought about various men in the vicinity who had abandoned wives and children, could not bring to mind any women guilty of the same crime. When a man left home, people looked to the wife, pitied her, wondered whether she had treated her husband properly. How would they react when a woman took off? she wondered. Females stayed. They endured all kinds of ill-treatment, yet they remained simply because they were housewives, skivvies, creatures owned by their men.

  Lily gulped. Even the thought of such a venture brought fear to her heart. No, she wasn’t frightened, not really. Still calm, she was beginning now to worry about the children of a woman who had chosen to absent herself. Danny and Aaron would be talked about, but they would survive. As for Sam – well – he could drown his sorrows in another pint of Magee’s.

  Roy wandered in. ‘Mam?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why does Smelly live like that?’

  Lily stared at her son, through him, into a future that she needed to change. ‘She’s lost all heart, Roy. She just can’t be bothered with anything.’

  ‘Why?’ His face screwed itself into a mask of questions.

  Lily shook her head slowly. ‘Well, she’s deaf and dumb for a start. She’s lonely and miserable, she’s got nothing to do, nothing to hope for in the future.’

  ‘She can read, Mam.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She goes to the library and reads all sorts. They’ve even made her her own corner because she stinks so bad. Nobody’ll sit near her. And why is she always going to the picture house if she can’t hear what’s being said?’

  Lily sighed and swung the kettle over the fire. ‘Somewhere to go,’ she muttered.

  ‘Did she have a mam and dad?’ Roy asked.

  ‘Course she did,’ answered Lily impatiently. ‘Everybody has a mam and dad. But they’ll be dead now. Nellie Hulme’s not far off seventy.’

  Roy looked at his own mam. She seemed different, a bit sad, down in the mouth. ‘You’ll never get the town to her, will you, Mam?’

  Lily gasped. This was a rare moment of empathy, a few beats of time during which she realized that this boy, her youngest, understood her completely. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose I won’t.’

  ‘Because that’d be cruel, wouldn’t it?’ asked the voice of innocence.

  ‘Yes, lad, it would.’

  She heard him trudging upstairs, the metal-studded clogs crashing into each step. He had set her thinking about Nellie Hulme now. The mystery of Nellie Hulme – it sounded like a crime book, one of those her own mother had used to read.

  According to folklore, Nellie had simply appeared one day, the adopted daughter of Sid and Edna Hulme, a childless couple in their late forties. They had lived here, in Prudence Street; the little girl had been kept at home and taught by them. She had learned to read, to write, to count, to do a bit of lip-reading, had grown up under the protective gaze of two solid, trustworthy citizens.

  After their deaths, Nellie had remained in the same house, had allowed it to fall into its present state. Her original beginnings were unknown, though she never seemed completely bereft of money. So she had probably come from a comfortable family, people who could not cope with a deaf child, preferring instead to pass her on to folk who would take a wage for rearing her.

  ‘Poor owld soul,’ murmured Lily as she made a brew in a pint pot. ‘Still, they must have left her a few bob.’ Nellie had never worked, had kept her body and soul together on conscience money, no doubt, payments from her real family, a cache from which the now elderly spinster could take her weekly pittance.

  Lily sipped at hot, sweet tea. Aye, this was a strange street, all right, Catholic on one side, Protestant on the other, never should the twain mix, though those rules had relaxed somewhat since the end of the war. The other end of Prudence Street had been bombed, leaving several houses uninhabitable, others flattened, two mills intact. ‘Trust them to survive,’ said Lily now. ‘Bloody mills and pits, they’ll never stop killing us.’

  She thought her way along the houses, lingering on each dwelling as if saying her goodbyes. There was Nellie Hulme at number 1, sad, overweight, deaf, lonely. Then, at number 3, the Hardcastles struggled along – Lily herself, Sam, the three lads. Five Prudence Street housed Dot and Ernest Barnes whose family had long grown and left. Ernest and, for a while, his boys had been the Orange Lodgers, the taunters of the Catholics, though time and a bolting brewery horse had eroded their zeal for that cause. The sons had grown out of it and into sensible men, while Dot had never been involved at all. It had been him, Ernest, bad bugger he was.

  Charlie Entwistle occupied the last house on Lily’s side. He owned a rag-and-bone yard, was a miser and a target for many a woman’s attention. Since his wife had passed away, Charlie had spent a great deal of time polishing his running shoes, as he had no intention of sharing his wealth with the women who chased him. ‘What’s he saving it for?’ Lily asked out loud. ‘No kids, no-one to leave it to. What’s he doing living here? He could afford a grander place, I’m sure.’

  Her mind’s eye sallied across the street to the papist side. A lovely woman lived at number 2. She was named Margaret O’Gara, though most called her Magsy, a nickname she had acquired as a child. She had a daughter called Beth and a late husband who was buried in Italy. Then there were the tearaways at number 4, a brood reared by John and Sarah Higgins. Lily had lost track, though she knew that all the children were girls and that their names included Eileen, Theresa, Vera, Rachel, Annie – and others too numerous to mention. A running joke in the neighbourhood supported the legend that Sal Higgins called a register every morning just to make sure that all members were present and correct.

  Which left only Thomas Grogan, the orphan. The sole survivor of an air raid, Tommy Grogan had been taken in by the Higgins family. He was their son, the boy they had never managed to produce. With her eyes closed, Lily saw the lad’s face, eyes haunted by the sudden absence of his family. His dad, whose sight had been terrible, had never been called on to fight for his country. He had died in his home and in the arms of his loving wife.

  There had been no division then, when the bombs had been deposited on Prudence Street. Catholic and Protestant had struggled side by side to release little Tommy from beneath a solid kitchen table. Oh yes, everyone had come together against the Germans.

  He was ten now, little Tommy Grogan. He owned the face of an angel, cherub-cheeked, red-lipped, the beautiful countenance topped by a mass of blond curls which he flattened with water. After a few minutes, the curls would spring up again and all around him would smile. He was the perfect child. Although indulged by the Higgins family, Tommy Grogan managed not to be spoilt. Lily wondered where they all slept; rumour had it that several had beds in the parlour, while the lovely cuckoo in the nest occupied the kitchen at night. Well, Sal Higgins had best keep herself to herself – any more babies and they’d be using the scullery and the coal hole as sleeping quarters.

  Time was passing, as it inevitably must. Lily rose and began cobbling together a stew that enjoyed a passing acquaintance with meat. Sam had drunk the black market meat money, of course. Oh, God, she couldn’t go. She was the one who made sure that Danny and Aaron got a hot meal after work and school. As for Roy, he would never leave his father.

  Lily dropped into a ladder-backed chair, peeler in one hand, carrot in the other. So this grim, grey life would go on and she, like so many others, would fade into her grave like a mere shadow, forgotten as soon as earth and sods were replaced.

  She blamed much of her disquiet on Charles Dickens, a writer she had discovered in the big town library. A little boy in a graveyard, a woman sitting at a decayed wedding breakfast, a girl who would break Pip’s heart. ‘Great Expec-bloody-tations,’ cursed Lily. ‘Just a book, a pile of lies. Nobody meets a ri
ch criminal in a cemetery, not in real life.’

  Dickens had known all about real life, yet the man had dared to project a ray of hope onto the backcloth of merciless reality. ‘They have to do that, writers,’ she mumbled as she attacked vegetables, ‘have to make sure it all comes right at the finish – otherwise, who’d bother flaming reading?’

  There would be no Magwitch for Danny, Aaron or Roy. They would work down pits until their skin became blue with absorbed dust, until their eyes were reddened by that same gritty substance, until their lungs were scalded and too ravaged to do their job.

  Lily closed her eyes, saw her father coughing into a blackened cloth, watched the black as it turned brown, then scarlet, heard the laboured breaths shortening as his body closed down. Oh, for a Magwitch! Oh, for just enough to buy a little business, sweets, tobacco, newspapers, bits and pieces. How could she sit and watch while Danny and Aaron donated their youth to coal?

  ‘You’re selfish, you are, Lily Hardcastle,’ she informed herself in a whisper. ‘You want to go off just because life doesn’t suit, because you can’t care about nobody except yourself. Well, get fettling and make life suit.’ She got fettling, mustered her stew into order, piled ingredients into a soot-blackened pot, treated herself to a Woodbine.

  As she inhaled rich Virginia, she thought about Charlie-at-the-end, that famous rag man who bestrode his useless fortune like an old hen squatting on a precious egg. He had money, yet his life was no better than hers, not really. Poor old Nellie in the next house had little but death and the Tivoli cinema to anticipate, while the Higgins clan across the street lived from hand to mouth, hardly a pair of clogs between two girls, barefoot on the cobbles, voices raised in prayer every night as they did the rosary.

  What good had their prayers done? Lily squeezed the end of her Woodbine and placed the remaining half behind her ear. In the Vatican, Pius the twelfth lived among riches beyond counting, while those who supported him and his pastors had to take turns going to school, sharing clothes and shoes, headlice, fleas and diseases. It was a rum world, all right.

  Lily stood up, smoothed her hair, retied her pinny. She stirred the stew, seasoned it, went to the front door for a breath of air. Across the street, Magsy O’Gara stood on a wobbly stool, a ragged leather in her hand.

  This was daft, Lily thought. Why shouldn’t she cross the street? In shops, everyone spoke to everyone without asking, ‘You a Catholic or a Protestant?’ And the war had pulled people together, while the religious maniac who lived next door to Lily was quieter in his old age. Surely those days of religious discrimination were over?

  Pinning a smile to her face, she crossed over and steadied Magsy’s stool. ‘There you are, love,’ she said, ‘we can’t have you falling, can we?’ Bugger the Orange Lodge, thought Lily. Bugger the lot of them. It was time the women stuck together, whatever their denomination.

  ‘Er . . . thank you,’ said Magsy.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ answered Lily. And she meant it.

  Two

  Nellie Hulme had a habit of smiling to herself as she waddled along, often completely oblivious of those who avoided her or gossiped about her. Although stone deaf, Nellie had a strong sense of atmosphere, while her sight was as sharp as any gimlet. But usually, she managed to absent herself, wallowing in a secret pride, a knowledge that in one particular area of life she was special, almost unique, certainly a one-off in the township of Bolton. What would they say if they ever found out? Would they want to become friends, to rub shoulders with her hitherto unacceptable persona?

  None of them knew. Even the Hulmes, Nellie’s adoptive parents, had not survived long enough to discover her talent. Nellie’s vocation had been discovered on a wet day some forty years ago, a dismal Tuesday with low-hanging clouds, persistent drizzle and a chill that cut through to the bone. Every time she remembered that day, Nellie shivered, partly with the remembered weather, mostly because of its glorious outcome. She had sidestepped into a wonderland called Bolton Central Library, had wandered, cold and dripping, through the arts and crafts section.

  Of course, the house had started to deteriorate soon afterwards, but the house had not mattered then, scarcely mattered now, though she thought about it sometimes, wondering how long it would take to clear up. What mattered most was the astonishing fact that Miss Helen Hulme of 1, Prudence Street, Bolton, Lancashire, was so sought after that people of note wrote begging letters, while her order book was fuller than a newly opened sardine tin, crammed with names, specifications, measurements. Miss Helen Hulme was a self-made star.

  On her grimy parlour fireplace, crested cards were stacked three and four deep, messages from the staff of earls and dukes, two or three in the copperplate hands of princesses, one from the queen herself. Nellie lived in a world of bobbins and damask, of threads and linens and fine, sharp needles; Nellie was lacemaker to a king, to lords and ladies, to the newly rich and to the established upper crust. She was wanted, needed, valued.

  She opened her door, kicked a few boxes out of the way. Nellie knew every creak of her floor, though she did not hear anything; she felt movement in boards, was aware of vibrations when a door slammed, when an unsteady sash dropped its window too quickly. She could see for yards ahead, was able to sense any change in weather long before it arrived, had the ability to sit for hours on end with pattern books, bobbins and threads. She was thoroughly focused on her calling and, apart from her visits to the library or the Tivoli Picture House, she devoted most of her time to the design and manufacture of household linens.

  Straight away, she had known how to make lace. Her first set of bobbins had been extensions of her own fingers, implements she had recognized right away. Had she been here before, had she lived already in another time, in a place where women had sat in the Mediterranean sun, digits flying over cottons, silks and linen?

  Not interested in newer, quicker methods, disenchanted by cheap materials, Nellie stuck to the old rules, her work cemented in centuries long dead, patterns culled from Brussels, France, Nottingham, Honiton. She was a true perfectionist, an artist with imagination, flair and the determination to succeed. So, while the residents of Prudence Street imagined her to be lazy, she was, in truth, dedicated to work that was absorbing and intensive.

  She threw a pile of old clothes to the floor and settled her bulk on an ancient armchair. In a minute, she would get up and take off her coat, but she was so tired, so . . . Her eyes closed and she was asleep in seconds. For the thousandth time, she was picking up the letter, the letter, the one that had changed her life. Beneath the crest of York, a few words, fourteen words, ‘Thank you for the beautiful tablecloth; the duke and I shall treasure it always’ . . . And she had signed it herself, Elizabeth, Duchess of York. What a boost that had been to the ego of Helen Hulme. That same Elizabeth was now queen, while her gentle, frail husband occupied a throne vacated by a cowardly man who had chosen an easier way of life.

  Nellie snored and snorted her way through the dream, recalling invitations to visit the palace, writing again in her sleep the polite refusals. She was too deaf to travel, too frightened, too ill. She was far too dirty for Buckingham Palace, though she never told them that. How could she inform a lady-in-waiting that, in truth, she was too weary to wash, too keen to sit up each night with her threads and bobbins? No-one would ever understand fully, so she made no attempts to explain herself.

  Thus a scruffy, deaf woman from a northern town had become a maker of table linens for the gentry. One day, after her coffin had been carried from the house, the street would learn that she, Helen Hulme, had made and decorated cloths to cover tables bigger than her own parlour, had woven love into sets of sixty or eighty napkins, had served her king, her queen, her country. Royal heads rested on Hulme antimacassars, while silver coffee pots and delicate cups stood on Hulme tray cloths.

  She shifted, and the dream changed. The world was big and green; a man dangled her from his shoulder, pretended to let her fall. Nearby, a pretty lady smiled. Birds
sang. She heard them, listened to cadences so precious, so sweet . . . Oh, what joy there was in the throats of those feathered creatures. The wind in the trees was audible, whispering and rustling among leaves before emerging at the other side to skip away towards other mischief. The pretty lady laughed, a tinkling noise that sounded almost like little bells rocked by a breeze. When the man laughed, Nellie shivered. His laughter was deep, low, almost threatening.

  Nellie woke with a jolt. Sound. Only in sleep did she remember sound. Hearing had been taken from her, had been removed by the hand of . . . Whose hand? Had God done this to her, had He visited this upon an innocent child? Perhaps she had been ill, laid low by a fever that had invaded her brain and her ears.

  She needed to remember, had to remember, could not remember. And therein lay her bitterness, her unwillingness to comply with rules, to live as others lived. Because, once upon a time and in a faraway place, she had been a hearing, speaking child. But her fairy tale promised a different ending; there was no prince, no slayer of dragons. The words happily ever after were not on the page.

  Roy ran into the kitchen, his face almost purple, a look of triumph decorating the homely face. ‘Mam?’ Breathlessly, he gulped. ‘I’ve seen it. You won’t believe it when I tell you, Mam, ’cos you’d never guess in a month of Sundays.’

  Lily was doing shortcrust to make a lid for the stew. In her experience, a layer of pastry on top of a dish made the food go that bit further. She moved a rolling pin to and fro, not needing to glance down at her handiwork. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you look suited. What have you done now?’ He had at least six holes on his face and would probably grow up looking like an uncooked crumpet.

  ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it and she’s come back, Mam.’