Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

  When Dorothy Barnes had returned to her own house, a place she was about to leave after going on forty-five years, Lily breathed freely at last. The thoughts she had entertained earlier in the day were suddenly not so wicked, not as unusual as she had believed. Women had had enough. As the world entered the second half of the twentieth century, females were beginning to think for and of themselves. After all, hadn’t they managed well enough for six years while men had fought for king and country?

  She prodded her pastry to make sure it was cooked, fetched a loaf, a knife and some butter. The difference between herself and Dot was that Dot hated her husband with a deep, quiet passion. For Sam, Lily entertained no such feeling. She didn’t love him, didn’t hate him, was able to tolerate the man as long as he brought some wages home.

  Then there were the boys. Dot’s two were long gone, one into the army then the Merchant Navy, the other into the pit, out of the pit, into a little general store in a pretty village. ‘There’ll be butterflies there,’ whispered Lily, ‘butterflies, flowers and birds.’

  She found herself envying Dot, the woman she had always called ‘poor thing’, realized that she wanted exactly what Dot was moving towards – fresh air, country walks, a nice little job.

  The front door crashed inward. ‘It’s only me,’ yelled Sam.

  It was only him. He said those same words every time he came home. Yes, yes, it was only him, miner, drinker, husband and father.

  Lily picked up a large knife, held it like a dagger, smiled as she plunged it into golden pastry. If little Dot Barnes could find a new life, then anything was possible. Brown gravy trickled through the stab marks. Yes, there would be changes next door. And not before time, too.

  Three

  Sarah and John Higgins lived in happy, careless squalor with their eight daughters and a son they laughingly claimed to have kidnapped, as he was not of their blood. A meaty couple of average blond looks, they had combined to clone children of remarkable beauty and even, generous temperament. Strangely, this yellow-haired pair had produced dark-haired offspring, though each Higgins daughter was blessed with a fair complexion.

  In a house with just two bedrooms, a parlour, a kitchen and a tiny scullery, they made their unorthodox living arrangements, ate while sitting, standing or lying down, went to school, went to work, sang and played until they faded into sleep. There were few quarrels, and any small skirmishes were always settled before bedtime, to make, as John put it, a clean sheet for the morrow.

  Ranging in age from eighteen down to eight, the daughters were Rachel, Vera, Theresa, Eileen, Annie, Mary, Angela and Maureen. They were all the same, all pretty, with dark hair and flawless Irish skin, soft eyes in a variety of shades, and singing voices like a heavenly choir. Ambition was not a compulsory part of their schedule, so most of the girls passed effortlessly from school to mill or to serving in shops, happily, with no apparent resentment towards their parents, siblings or employers.

  John and Sarah, the latter commonly known as Sal, were inordinately proud of their daughters. Grief, whenever it floated to the surface on a sea of black beer, was attached to Peter, John and Patrick, the three sons who had failed to thrive, and Nuala, a baby girl who had been stillborn. The loss of their babies was a cross they bore stoically between them, neither blaming the other, each managing to remain in love with life, with wife or husband and with the children. Life was good and they were noisily grateful for the little they had this side of eternity.

  In the front parlour, three beds were squeezed, two along the walls and one under the window. During daylight hours, these formed the basic seating arrangements, but were transformed into beds for the use of the four older girls, who took turns to sleep ‘single,’ then top and tail on a rota basis. The four younger occupied a pair of double beds in the larger of the two bedrooms, while their parents were squeezed into the smaller room at the back.

  Thomas Grogan, whose unofficial name was Laughing Boy, slept in solitary splendour in the kitchen. He was special. Not only had he survived a bombing raid without so much as a scratch, he had taken the place of John and Sal’s lost boys. Unlike the Higgins brood, he was blond, with a mass of curls and long-lashed blue eyes. Spoilt by too many women, he expected his own way and usually got it, though toys and games were few and far between in this impoverished household. He knew one thing; not for all the tea in China would he swap this loving, noisy family.

  It was a Saturday night in September when John Higgins declared that war was about to begin. All were squashed into the parlour, some on beds, others on the floor. As usual, there was a jug of beer fetched from the outdoor licence shop, some chips to share, John’s melodeon standing by for the singing. ‘Frank came for her,’ announced John gravely. ‘So poor Dot didn’t even have the time to collect all her things. She’s away just now to the village to start a new life, and it’s luck we wish her, indeed it is.’

  The children were silent. They had heard the tales of Ernest Barnes’s dislike for Catholics. And now, someone had told Mr Barnes that his son was about to become a Catholic in order to marry one. And that particular Catholic lived here in number 4 Prudence Street. Several pairs of eyes were fixed on Rachel, the intended of Frank Barnes. She sat in silence, a cloud of black curls surrounding a perfect, oval face. Although she had not begun to weep, her lower lip trembled slightly.

  ‘I wonder who told him?’ asked Sal. She touched her husband’s arm. ‘After all, doesn’t everyone know what a bigot he is? It would have to be a troublemaker, so.’

  ‘Sure he’s not on his own,’ replied John, ‘for there are many Orange Lodgers who would enjoy causing this type of bother.’ He looked again at Rachel, whose fiancé had just removed his poor, ill-treated mother from the arena across the street. ‘Frank’s a good man,’ he said softly. ‘Aye, no matter what the carryings-on might become, he will stand by both you and his mammy.’

  Rachel closed her eyes, wished that it could all be over, that she might raise her eyelids and be up on the moors with Frank and his mother in that sweet little shop. ‘Why do people fight about Jesus?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it all the same? Didn’t Jesus come for the whole of mankind to open the gates?’

  John smiled sadly. ‘Ah, now there we have the pure truth. And we should all see it.’ He remembered the ferocity of priests back home in Dublin, their insistence that only Catholics would enter the kingdom. ‘Faults on both sides,’ he declared, ‘for aren’t some of us as bad as some of them? We should fool them all and become fast friends, Catholic, Protestant, whatever.’

  ‘True,’ replied his plump, blond-haired wife. ‘And there’s none of us perfect.’

  ‘Frank’s dad will go worse,’ said Rachel. ‘If he hears Frank is on the turn – oh, God – he’ll be out of his mind altogether.’

  ‘Then he’ll wear out no shoe-leather,’ answered John, ‘for his journey to madness will be a short one. Many’s the time I’ve seen him demented. I recall him getting holy water, spitting in it then pouring it down the grid.’

  ‘He put the Mother of God in his front window,’ said Sal, ‘a great big picture with glasses, a beard and a moustache. ’Twas a terrible sight, but.’

  It began then, the rumbling seeds of laughter that pervaded this house on a regular basis. Sal rocked back and forth, young ones rolled about the floor, John opened his mouth and released a loud guffaw. The situation was made worse, of course, by the fact that their glee, attached to mental images of a bearded virgin, was monumentally naughty.

  ‘Ah, ’twas a terrible thing,’ moaned Sal, collapsing against her husband’s shoulder, ‘because, you see, it was a desperate painting to start with. In fact, I would go so far as to say . . .’ She mopped at streaming eyes. ‘That Mr Barnes did her a service, since she looked so much better in the guise of a man.’

  The older girls fell about the beds in agony, while the younger ones continued to mix themselves up on the floor, arms and legs tangled as they pushed and pulled at each other. Even Rachel, worried as sh
e was, managed to giggle. In the doorway, little Thomas Grogan laughed along with them. If he couldn’t have his real mam and dad back, these were the very people he would have chosen for himself. The papers had been signed; he was now Thomas Grogan-Higgins and he was happy.

  Ernest Barnes was on the floor of the kitchen. His inability to return to the vertical was the product of anger rather than a result of his bad leg. The bitch; the scheming, good-for-nothing piece of trash. He had married her, had stood by her, had kept her fed, clothed and warm until that damned horse had finished him. God, if he could just get his hands on her now . . .

  Of course, she had denied all knowledge of Frank’s intentions. Here she had sat in the very chair against which he leaned, oh no, she had heard nothing, oh no, their Frank had never said a word. Liar. She was a damned liar and he was no fool.

  He closed his eyes and replayed the scene. Bert Mansell stood in the doorway, hat twisting in his hands. He came straight out with it, his face red with embarrassment. It hit Ernest deep in his guts, as if he had been kicked by yet another brewery animal. ‘Our Frank?’ he asked more than once, as if an echo would make the words sink into his numbing brain. This had to be wrong, had to be a mistake. A Barnes sinking into the abyss dug by popes and Irish idiots? Impossible.

  ‘It’s one of that lot from across the road,’ concluded Bert. ‘Eldest, Theresa or Rachel or some such daft name. Aye, the oldest, I think, nice-looking girl, works at Derby Mills.’

  Dot put the kettle on.

  ‘But . . . no,’ stammered Ernest. ‘He’s forty-bloody-two, Bert. He’s never been one for the women, more interested in saving up to get out of the pit.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard it’s right,’ Bert said, ‘my missus is never wrong about these things.’

  Dot poured hot water into the brown teapot.

  Ernest stared hard at the back of her head, trying to enter her mind, almost. Did she have a mind? She had said very little during forty-five years of marriage, had scarcely screamed when beaten. In fact, it was the calm, the lack of reaction that angered him. She forced him to hit her, forced him to see red. Apart from the fact that she made meals and kept the place tidy, she wasn’t much of a person at all, seemed to have no opinions, no ideas.

  Bert Mansell hovered in the doorway. ‘Bolton’s at home,’ he said. ‘So . . . well . . .’

  Dot stiffened. Although the movement was barely discernible, Ernest marked it, notched it up in his mind. Frank always visited his mam after a home match. ‘Sit down,’ he advised Bert, ‘have a cup of tea and tell me all about it.’

  Bert lowered himself gingerly into a chair, his eyes darting from Ernest to Dot and back again. Knowing full well that the news he carried would bring trouble, he believed sufficiently in the cause to see this through. No way could he have sat back and watched while Frank Barnes turned Catholic. Frank was of an Orange family, a long line of papist-haters. But Bert replied to Ernest’s barked questions in monosyllables, fingers still clawing at the already tortured cap. All he wanted was to be outside when the balloon went up.

  Dot made the tea, poured it into the solid silence that filled the room. Ernest never took his eyes from her. ‘Well?’ he asked as he lifted his cup. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘How should I know?’ she replied.

  ‘He tells you everything.’

  ‘Frank’s said nowt to me,’ said Dot.

  And in that moment, Ernest Barnes knew. She didn’t fool him, not for a second. The trio drank tea in uncomfortable silence, then Frank arrived, his joyous cry declaring that Bolton had won and would surely get to Wembley soon.

  Bert Mansell left the house as quickly as a hounded fox.

  Frank took Bert’s place at the table, looked at his parents, realized the significance of Bert Mansell’s visit. ‘All right, Mam?’

  ‘Oh, fair-to-middling.’ Her voice trembled as it hit the air. ‘Aye, lad, fair-to-middling.’

  Frank looked at his father, held his gaze. ‘Get your stuff,’ he told his mother. ‘Go and fetch all you can carry, Mam, because I’m not leaving you here with this bad bugger.’ He continued to stare into Ernest Barnes’s eyes. ‘You’ve hit my mam once too often and I’m taking her well beyond your reach.’

  Ernest roared, leaned sideways, picked up one of his sticks and waved it across the table. Unafraid, Frank caught the stick with his right hand, scarcely flinching as the wood crashed into a coal-hardened palm. ‘No more of that.’ His voice was low.

  ‘This is my house,’ snarled Ernest.

  ‘It was our home,’ replied Frank, ‘mine, our Gerry’s and Mam’s. This was where we came after a long day at school, the only place we had. When we got here, we had to tell Mam all our troubles before you came home.’

  ‘Give over,’ Ernest yelled, ‘you sound like a flaming nancy boy.’

  ‘Do I?’ Frank wrestled the stick from his father’s hand. ‘Well, let me tell you what you are. You’re a big bully, a stupid, nasty piece of work who gets a thrill out of hitting people and hurting them. I bled every time you strapped me for wetting the bed. Well, it’s finished, done with, all of it.’

  It was then that Dot spoke up. She stood in the kitchen doorway, a bundle of unironed clothing in her hands. ‘Why won’t you die?’ Her voice, soft and gentle, did not fit the seemingly callous words it framed. ‘While I’ve polished yon grate, while I’ve cooked and washed, I’ve prayed for you to die. All I’ve ever wanted was a life without you in it.’

  Ernest found no reply.

  ‘I’ve felt like killing you meself,’ she continued, ‘but it’d only have made a mess. I’ve cleaned enough of your messes.’ She glanced at Frank. ‘I thank God for him and our Gerry. Gerry enlisted in the army, joined the Merchant Navy, because of you, just to get away.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ shouted Ernest.

  ‘You’re the rubbish,’ was Dot’s retort, ‘and ooh, I’ve waited long enough to tell you that.’

  Frank threw the walking stick onto the hearth. ‘You’re going to be alone now,’ he advised his father, ‘because Mam will be living with us.’

  ‘You and a bloody Higgins,’ snapped Ernest.

  ‘Aye.’ Frank nodded. ‘She’d make ten of you.’

  ‘Papist shite,’ spat the furious man.

  Frank took an item from his pocket. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘for counting prayers on.’ He rattled the brown rosary beads. ‘For the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys and the Glory Be’s.’

  Ernest tried to snatch the beads, but his fingers closed around fresh air as Frank pulled the rosary out of reach. ‘I hate you,’ he informed his father, the voice not quite as gentle as Dot’s had been. ‘For as long as I can remember, me and our Gerry hated you. You drove us to that.’

  ‘Get away with your bother,’ roared Ernest, ‘you’d have been nowt without me.’

  Dot pushed past her older son, placing her bundle of possessions on the dresser. ‘Without you?’ she asked. ‘Without you, they would have had skin on their backs. Do you know they’ve both got scars?’ She rolled up a sleeve to display black, brown and yellow bruising. ‘See them? Well, you made them marks. But you have hit me and mine for the last time, Ernie Barnes. And if you need help, go to your lodge, see if any of your friends’ll give a hand. As far as I’m concerned, you can starve to bloody death.’

  She bundled her belongings into baskets, picked up her coat, walked out of number 5 for the last time. Both men heard the door slamming shut in her wake.

  Frank eyed his father. ‘You’ll have to shape now,’ he said, ‘no Mam to be running after you all the while.’

  ‘I’m a cripple – in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘I noticed,’ said Frank. ‘At least it slowed you down a bit. And who saved you, eh? Who got the horse’s head and calmed it down? Who risked getting a gobful of hoof? John Higgins did.’

  ‘Well, he needn’t have bothered.’

  Frank inclined his head in agreement. ‘That’s what we thought and all. He should have left you, should
have let the horse dance on you. But no. My Rachel’s dad saved your life. A bloody Catholic came to your rescue.’

  Ernest said no more.

  When his son had left, he reached for his other stick, crashed to the floor and stayed there for a good half hour. He would get no tea, no supper. The fire would die down. His breathing became unsteady as he wondered how he was going to manage. For the first time in years, Ernest Barnes was truly afraid.

  Slowly, he made his way through the panic attack. He had never been alone. He had gone from childhood home to this house, had not spent a single night in a place without other people. Of course, he could have managed had he not been disabled. Couldn’t he? Could he?

  It occurred to him then that he had seldom made a cup of tea, that he had never made toast, let alone a full meal with spuds and gravy. He had no idea about cleaning, polishing, ironing. The house would deteriorate until it became like Nellie Hulme’s, an indoor rag-and-bone yard filled with grime and filthy clothes.

  Self-pity took up residence in his mind. He did not deserve this, because he had worked hard all his life until that damned horse had bolted. Ernest Barnes had never sent his wife out to work, not until he had become too disabled to provide for her. She had taken up a few hours’ cleaning, but their main income had come from interest on his savings and on the compensation paid out by the brewery. Who would do his shopping now? Who would make sure that he had the basics – bread, milk, butter, sugar?

  Anger moved in then, red-hot and fed by bitterness. It fuelled him sufficiently to stand up, his hands shaking as he held on to the table. This was all the fault of them across the road, that teeming, senseless family whose members succeeded in being happy even on bread and scrape. Eight ragged girls, and his son was about to marry one, was training to be a Catholic. Oh, the shame of it – he would never live this down.