Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘God isn’t like that,’ said Magsy.

  ‘Then happen the devil heard me,’ cried Lily.

  Magsy made all the right noises, yet she knew that Lily’s anguish was unreachable, that this poor woman would not respond to reason. Having been in this state so recently, Magsy understood that no amount of argument would serve to calm Lily.

  Someone knocked at the front door. ‘I’ll go.’ Magsy abandoned her weeping neighbour to allow Nellie Hulme into the house. The old woman waddled up the hall, her arms filled with gifts. These she deposited on Lily’s table. ‘No fire. This house is cold,’ she mouthed at Magsy before approaching the weeping woman. Nellie, too, was close to tears. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling at Lily’s hands, ‘come and see.’

  Lily allowed herself to be dragged to her feet. Nellie led the way, a reluctant Lily behind her, while Magsy brought up the rear. They entered Nellie’s house, both visitors gasping when they saw how neat and clean it was. Lily was so startled that she forgot to cry as she looked at the furniture, the new rug, a spotless hearth where a fire burgeoned. ‘It’s . . . clean,’ she stammered.

  Spot threw himself at Lily, pleased to see the one who had been there right at the beginning of his life. He fussed, yapped, then did a lap of honour round the three women.

  Nellie took them through to her kitchen where a black-leaded grate boasted new polish. Flames danced across the room, falling on a table whose cloth was exquisite. ‘I made dinner,’ Nellie mouthed proudly, ‘but upstairs first. I show you.’

  ‘Would you ever take a look at that cloth,’ exclaimed Magsy. ‘I swear that’s hand-made and worth a fortune.’

  But Nellie was ushering the pair of them towards the stairs. When they reached the top, the deaf woman turned and beamed at them. ‘My secret,’ she said.

  Lily already knew the secret, as Roy had seen it, but her breath was taken away when she entered Nellie’s back bedroom. It was spotless, gleaming, had obviously been kept in this state for years. The walls were lined with rolls of linen in white and ecru, while shelves bore piles of completed items. A work table was spread with dozens of bobbins, most in pairs identified by beads, small bells, wooden cubes.

  ‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed Magsy.

  ‘Roy climbed up the drainpipe,’ said Lily, ‘and told me about this.’

  Nellie showed them letters from the households of gentry, barons, dukes, princes, Buckingham Palace. Magsy wandered across to look at a fan on a wall, its lacework so delicate that it almost required magnification to see the detail. Letters from the mothers of debutantes were also pinned to the wall, as were requests for table linens, collars, chair covers. ‘Bloody hell,’ Lily exclaimed, ‘her does this for royalty.’

  ‘She does indeed,’ said Magsy quietly. She thought about the old lady, given up for adoption due to deafness, isolated by that same condition, depressed to the point where she had cared naught for her appearance, for her diet, for the state of her home. And here was a room filled with beauty, the island on which Nellie had marooned herself with silent deliberation, a place filled by books, pricked-out patterns, the cushions on which those patterns were executed.

  Magsy turned and made eye contact with Nellie. ‘Beautiful,’ she said.

  Nellie nodded. ‘Always hope.’ The two words, perfectly framed, emerged soundless from her lips. ‘This is my hope, mine.’ She hit her breast with a closed fist. ‘You must never stop the hope, because it is all we have.’ She spoke perfectly, yet soundlessly, the words accompanied only by the rasping of her breath. An expert lip-reader, Nellie Hulme had practised for many hours while standing in front of a mirror.

  Magsy threw her arms as far as they would go around Nellie, who, in spite of recent weight loss, was still a hefty woman. Lily joined them, and they hugged like children in the street, a band of humanity joining in tearful confusion. Nellie’s tears were almost noiseless, but Lily made up for the absence of sound, her whole body heaving as she broke her heart once more.

  They separated, each woman sniffling and patting at nose and eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘You’ve worked hard,’ Magsy told Nellie.

  The deaf woman nodded. ‘They say I was born on a Saturday,’ she mouthed.

  ‘So was I,’ exclaimed Magsy, ‘and Beth was, too.’

  ‘And Saturday’s child works hard for a living,’ said Lily, the words fractured by sobs.

  Nellie led them downstairs and served up a lunch of chicken portions cooked in red wine – ‘I found a book in the library,’ she explained soundlessly – with roast potatoes, parsnips and a selection of vegetables. Lily did her best, but emotions were still too raw for her digestive system to accept much food, though Magsy, strangely calm, did justice to the feast, even accepting a second bowl of trifle.

  Nellie cleared the table. While she was in the scullery, Lily spoke. ‘Well, she’s turned over a new leaf. Cooking, cleaning, going up to the High Street baths every Thursday.’

  Magsy sipped at her coffee. ‘More than a single leaf, Lily. This is the whole encyclopedia up-ended. From somewhere, Nellie has taken courage. Imagine living in a silent world, though. How must it be never to hear music, never to listen to a play on the wireless? Very lonely. I am glad to see that her life has taken a turn for the better, that she seems positive now, full of a kind of joy, I suppose.’

  ‘Dog’s done her good,’ replied Lily.

  ‘It started before the dog.’ Magsy placed her demitasse in its saucer. ‘It was something to do with the big clear-out. What prompted that?’

  Lily lifted a shoulder in a careless gesture. ‘God knows.’

  ‘He does indeed.’

  The older woman sniffed to announce a change of subject. ‘What if they die?’

  ‘Don’t think like that. I know in my bones that Beth will come through. Never ask me why or how, but I am sure that she is going to survive.’

  ‘I don’t feel like that,’ said Lily. ‘There is no way of being sure that any of them will come out of that infirmary – except in boxes, of course.’

  ‘Then have faith, find hope and pray for them.’

  But Lily’s faith seemed to be taking a holiday. She had never been an avid churchgoer, was one who attended christenings, weddings and funerals, although her parents had been regular worshippers. For Lily, God was an idea, sometimes a good idea, too often a bad one. ‘Where’s your God now?’ she asked. ‘’Cos I think mine’s in Blackpool, top of the tower in a Kiss-Me-Quick hat. I can’t find Him, Mags.’

  ‘Will we go and look along the Golden Mile, then, Lily?’

  ‘Too bloody cold. I don’t want me feet frozen off, thanks.’

  So there was still humour. Where there was humour, there was a chance for sanity. ‘We can do nothing.’ Magsy’s hand reached out to cover Lily’s. ‘Nothing practical, that is. There is even a possibility that these streets may be cordoned off in order to contain whatever this is. We can’t visit, can’t sit with our loved ones, can’t watch over them. We have to wait.’

  Lily pondered. ‘I’m no good at waiting. I have to be doing.’ She cupped her chin and gazed thoughtfully at the remains of Nellie’s trifle. ‘I liked the war. It was good doing something useful, making bullets, having a proper job. I loved it in munitions, Magsy. Then . . . then it was all over and they came home.’

  ‘Of course they did. Well, most of them.’

  Lily wished that she could bite back her words. ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  ‘Ah, no bother.’

  ‘What I meant was that here we are, back to cleaning pubs and hospitals. That were a good job I had, you know. I got to be in charge of a whole section, me and Elsie Shuttleworth – her that lives on Fox Street – her husband’s a postman.’

  This was the longest statement Magsy had heard from Lily, so she kept quiet.

  ‘Now, it’s back to women’s jobs, isn’t it? Jobs not good enough for men. We get to clean and serve in shops – if we’re lucky. Aye, it’s a man’s world.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I
think the end of the war meant the end of me. I’m back to being nobody now.’

  ‘Everybody is somebody, Lily.’

  ‘Somebody? Is cleaning up sick and snot the sort of job you’d give to a somebody?’ Lily sighed heavily. ‘Aye, in them Emblem Street sheds, me and Elsie Shuttleworth were in charge of more than forty people. We turned out enough stuff to blow half of bloody Germany into kingdom come. And now?’ A sad smile visited her lips. ‘Now, Elsie’s back to carding cotton and I swill up after filthy men.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ replied Magsy, ‘but the forces had to have something to come home to.’

  Lily was not listening. She was ploughing a careful furrow towards her own reasons, her own guilt. ‘So I’ve . . . resented getting back to normal. My own family got on me nerves, Magsy. That day-to-day grind, everything the same, cook, shop, wash, clean the house, clean the pub. I’ve lost all heart. So I started imagining – pretending, like – a different life, a fresh start.’ She gulped noisily. ‘They weren’t in my imaginings, Mags. When I was thinking and hoping, I was on my own.’

  Magsy waited.

  ‘So when this happened – it was as if I’d brought it on.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t. You didn’t give them the germs, Lily.’

  ‘No, but I wished it on them.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself.’

  ‘Just watch me,’ answered Lily. ‘Because I will always blame my selfishness. Sometimes, it’s best not to dream, because your dreams might come true and do a lot of damage.’

  It was hopeless, decided Magsy. Whatever was said, Lily would continue to believe that she had put her own men into the isolation unit at the infirmary.

  Nellie waddled in with cheese and biscuits. An ever-hopeful Spot placed himself on sentry duty beneath the table, his stomach groaning in happy anticipation of scraps. The three women ate and drank coffee in silence, each immersed in her own thoughts. Christmas was a family time, but each had just the other two for company.

  After the meal, Nellie led them through to her front room and showed them the photograph. She mee-mawed the words, ‘My mother and father, I think,’ then poured three glasses of port wine. Raising her own glass, she toasted them with more silent words. ‘To you and yours,’ she mouthed.

  Magsy’s strange calm stayed with her throughout the whole day. Lily managed to contain her panic, while Nellie, tired after the meal, slept in her fireside chair.

  ‘Funny how she snores,’ commented Lily. ‘You can hear that all right, yet she can’t make a sound when it comes to words. And fancy her making all that stuff all these years. Aye, she’s a dark horse, is Miss Nellie Hulme.’

  ‘We all have our secrets,’ said Magsy.

  Lily turned to stare at her companion. ‘Is your secret Paul Horrocks?’

  ‘No.’

  Lily thought about that. ‘Well, happen he’s that much of a secret that you haven’t even told yourself about him.’

  Magsy found a strange yet undeniable sense in Lily’s words. There were two levels at which a person functioned, led by reason on the one hand, by emotion on the other. Between these two elements there was a no-man’s land, a chasm that could not be crossed until a bridge appeared of its own accord. Was it possible, then, to be drawn to a man in spite of one’s own better judgement?

  Ah well, none of that mattered just now. Beth was possibly fighting for her life; Beth would win through. How did she know that? Because that self-constructing bridge had spanned the gulf again. Paul Horrocks? He was a different territory, one to which she had not yet sent an expeditionary force.

  When Nellie woke, she led her two companions through the mysteries of lace, showing them books containing pictures of bobbins, beads, pillows, pricked-out patterns. They drank more port, more tea, talked about the epidemic.

  When her visitors had left, Nellie took Spot for his walk. She was well pleased with her day’s work, was proud of all she had achieved.

  Nellie Hulme, spinster of the parish, was a housewife at last.

  Ten

  Sarah Higgins, usually known as Sal, was a contented soul. Mild-mannered, kind, a ‘goodly’ woman, she expected little from life and was satisfied with her situation. She had a good husband, eight beautiful daughters and an adopted son on whom she and all the other females in the household doted unashamedly.

  It was Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 1950. Everyone had been to Mass, all had taken Holy Communion, the dinner had been acceptable, small gifts had been joyfully distributed, the melodeon had been played, each member of the family had sung, the jigsaws were well under way and the world was well.

  Magsy and Lily had gone in to Nellie’s, so that had turned out well, too. Dead were the days of Catholics on one side, Protestants on the other. Only Ernest Barnes kept the old grudge – and what a wiping his eye had taken, for hadn’t his son upped and wedded the lovely Rachel, daughter of this very Catholic household?

  Sal gazed into the flames. Opposite her, on the bed beneath the front room window, John Higgins played with Maureen, the youngest of eight daughters. Well, she was the youngest just now, but Sal had reason to believe that another was on the way. This suspicion she nursed contentedly, although childbirth had never been easy and she had thought that her childbearing years were done. During an otherwise happy marriage, Sal had lost three sons and one daughter, yet she never questioned the will of God. Peter, John, Patrick and Nuala had not been a part of the Maker’s plan, but this one would survive.

  John looked across and saw his wife smiling, recognized the way she was sitting, hands folded over her belly, a half-smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘Another?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘Another stout?’

  John shook a finger at her. ‘You know what I mean, Sal.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then there’s a good reason for us to take just one more jar of the black stuff.’ He frowned. ‘Well, God spare Beth next door and all those poor souls from Lily’s house. Is there any news?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘’Tis a plague of some kind,’ he said sadly. ‘There are more sick from up the road, you know. I hear they’re planning on taking over a whole wing of the hospital. They say it’s some kind of flu.’ Like his wife, John accepted with equanimity the possibility of another child. Rachel had gone; surely they could squeeze in another little one.

  Sal sighed. She had been watching over her brood with the eyes of a hawk, was forever feeling foreheads to see if they were cool, was doling out cod liver oil and malt by the shovelful, had bought a supply of Fennings’ powders just in case. The thought of children dying was not one she wanted to entertain, so she did what she always did – her best. Once her best was done, she reverted to type, singing, playing with Thomas and the girls. She was not a natural housewife, though the place was never filthy. Sal provided her family with food, enough clean clothes to get through the week, but any cleaning in the house was a surface job, the quick flick of a cloth, an occasional scrape of a broom. Bed-changing scarcely happened, as this family slept all over the place, some upstairs, some down, Thomas in the kitchen. Bedtimes meant catch-as-catch-can, each sleepy child grabbing for sheet, quilt and blanket.

  Sal had discovered early on in her married life that putting things away was the best she could achieve, so she tidied up every day, washed dishes, made meals. Cooking for eleven people was a chore. But, including Thomas, there were only ten now, as Rachel had gone away with Frank. The ninth natural child was still a mere cluster of cells, but Sal knew with complete certainty that this would be a fine, healthy boy.

  She accepted a mug of stout from her husband, slapped his hand playfully as he touched her cheek. Her eyes remained fixed on him as he continued his game of tiddlywinks with Maureen, who was now eight. Angela, Mary and Annie were in the kitchen with Thomas, their voices muted as they concentrated on jigsaw pieces. The older girls, Eileen, Theresa and Vera, were upstairs trying on cheap new shoes and dresses. As for Rachel, she was the best of
f of all, was up on the moors with a good husband and an excellent mother-in-law. ‘We are lucky, so,’ Sal told her husband.

  A shiver trickled down John’s spine. ‘We are,’ he agreed.

  ‘God spare us to continue so fortunate,’ she whispered.

  ‘Amen to that,’ answered John. But the ice in his spine remained.

  Rachel was wearing her Christmas finery again as she set off across the road, a platter of food in her hands. She had bought the oval plate specially, as Katherine was probably unused to the thick white pots in Rachel’s own house. There was a napkin, too, one Rachel had made from the best section of an old sheet, the initials K and M embroidered neatly into a corner. This small offering was to be Katherine’s Christmas present, and Rachel was proud of her handiwork.

  She swung the gate of Knowehead inward and walked along the side of the house. As arranged, Phyllis Hart had left the key under a brick to the right of the back door. When Rachel rose with the key in her hand, a small movement caught the periphery of her vision. This was not a fox or a squirrel – it was something else, something . . . wrong. It was an out-of-context presence, a human, Rachel decided. She stared into the rear garden for a few seconds, then shook her head and walked into the kitchen. She was becoming fanciful, had been rather jumpy since getting the message from Mam. Rachel and Frank had been ordered to stay away from Bolton, as many were in hospital after coming down with some strange disease.

  This would be the first Christmas away from Mam and Dad. What if they became ill? What if any of her siblings got lifted into hospital? What if . . . ? Rachel placed Katherine’s dinner on the kitchen table and berated herself inwardly. What-iffing would not get her anywhere. She set the tray with Katherine’s silver, tutting when she had to use a tea-towel to scrub away water stains. Phyllis Hart deserved sacking. How could anyone allow such beautiful cutlery to become so shabby?