Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘As you are already aware, your mother did not survive your birth. However, you were not the only child of that marriage; you have a sister who is two or three years your senior. I have no information regarding her exact whereabouts, though she resides in the town of Bolton and is in the care of a decent married couple.’

  He paused, looked at Katherine’s inscrutable face. ‘Shall I continue? Would you like me to fetch your housekeeper?’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I may as well hear the rest of it. Please go on.’

  ‘The little girl developed normally, but was unfortunate enough to be a witness to your birth and to the death of your mother, which event occurred when you were just minutes old. Afterwards, she became withdrawn and difficult to the point where your father could no longer bear to have her within his sight. It transpired that she was very deaf, though her hearing was, apparently, perfect before her mother’s passing.

  ‘Sweet child, when you are older, take care to find this sister, for you are born of the same mother and may have need of each other. I beg you to forgive me for any distress caused by this letter and I remain your sincere friend and governess,

  ‘M. Farquar-Smith.’

  Katherine looked at him, her lower lip quivering so badly that speech proved difficult. ‘What sort of man was our father?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘because I was fortunate, since I never had the dubious pleasure of meeting him.’

  She inhaled a long, shuddering breath. ‘How might I find her, Peter? She could well be dead.’

  But Peter’s mind was working very fast, too quickly for him to be able to organize its contents. He stood, paced about, hand rubbing his chin. Dot’s former neighbour, who had been deaf for years . . .

  ‘Peter?’

  He held up his hand. ‘A moment,’ he begged, ‘please allow me to think.’

  Then it came to him and he stopped dead in his tracks. ‘There was a fuss at the school tonight, just before the play started. Dot’s neighbour ran upstairs, recognized the house . . . Oh. Oh, my goodness. Nellie, I believe her name is.’

  ‘She was meant to stay here tonight,’ said Katherine, ‘with another woman. Where is she?’

  ‘Someone drove them home,’ said Peter slowly. ‘A science master got out his car – very proud he was, too, of his car – he said that he was taking them home. After the final curtain, Nellie went upstairs, which was why Dot and I walked back separately from Margaret and Paul – they waited because those two women went to see the headmistress.’

  Katherine could scarcely contain her excitement. She made him go through it all again, watched him closely as he gathered together the jigsaw pieces of memory. Then she leaned forward. ‘Can you see a light in the shop across the road? Upstairs, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but why—’

  ‘Because today you have found two sisters, Peter. Now, I want you to go across to that shop. Do not worry, they will understand. Ask Frank Barnes to collect us here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You and I shall go to Bolton.’

  Peter’s jaw dropped. ‘But you never leave the house, you will be in pain, this is not possible—’

  ‘None of this is possible,’ she answered, ‘yet it is happening. We shall pack me in with cushions and we shall travel at the pace of a snail. It will be done, Peter.’

  The determination in her tone was very evident. Peter picked up his coat and went to do his new-found sister’s bidding. Once outside, he realized that he was shaking, that the shock had affected him, too. He remembered a quote about a tangled web called deceit, forgot it immediately. There was a job to be done and he was the only man who could do it.

  Nellie Hulme woke with a start, her body as cold as ice, her mind alert within seconds.

  Spot was barking like a demented hound, was hurling himself at her repeatedly. She had not been to bed, had dozed from time to time, was still sitting in a chilled room in yesterday’s clothes, outdoor garments included. What on earth was happening now?

  ‘Hello?’ A man’s voice, one she did not recognize. At least she was beginning to categorize voices – until just a few weeks ago, she had experienced difficulty separating the tone of a male voice from that of a female. The door must have been unlocked all night. Her body shook.

  He entered the room, a little man who was strangely familiar, someone she had seen recently. Last night? That school, the play, a bedroom that was no longer a bedroom . . .

  ‘Miss Hulme?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’ Still drunk from sleep, she attempted to stand.

  ‘Stay as you are,’ he said, ‘I can see that you have slept badly.’ Peter Smythe took a step towards her. ‘I know you are in shock,’ he said softly, ‘but there is more to come. We have brought your sister.’

  Her hand flew to her throat, icy digits causing her to jump as they contacted flesh that was slightly warmer.

  ‘Please, please do not be afraid,’ he urged. ‘Had I known that we were disturbing you, I would have made sure that we stayed away.’ Would he? Could any force on earth have kept Katherine Moore away from here this morning? In unbelievable pain, the younger of these two women had not uttered a single groan throughout the journey from Hesford to Bolton. ‘Mr Barnes is about to carry in Miss Moore.’

  Nellie nodded.

  ‘You know that Katherine Moore is your blood sister?’

  She nodded again.

  The door swung wide and Frank Barnes entered the room, a bundle in his arms. Here was Nellie’s baby sister, no substance to her, small enough to be a child, but with old eyes glowing as brightly as two stars in a winter sky.

  It was too much for poor Nellie. She began to cry, great heaving sobs that shook her all the way to her chilled feet. Here came the child who had been dragged from a mother’s defeated body more than three score years and ten before this day.

  Frank placed Katherine on the sofa, his own chest racked by feelings he could never have explained in a whole lifetime. He looked from Katherine to Nellie, back again to the woman whose weightless yet pain-filled body he had just borne in his arms. Frank guided Peter out of the room and closed the door on a scene whose poignancy verged on the unbearable.

  Katherine, too, began to weep. She was tired, confused, yet filled with a strange joy that proved uncontainable. ‘I am Katherine,’ she managed, a handkerchief blurring the words.

  ‘I am Helena,’ sobbed Nellie.

  Outside in the hallway, two men whose emotional brotherhood-by-proxy had been created overnight, upheld each other silently, each leaning on the other in the search for more than one kind of support. ‘We must make a fire,’ mumbled Peter, ‘and a hot drink. They are too old to be left in a room as chilled as that.’ So they busied themselves in the time-honoured way employed by humanity in times of great stress, by beginning to deal with practicalities.

  The sisters calmed themselves, each eager to unearth the missing years, each needing to know the other, greedy for news, for evidence, for reassurance. Nellie was introduced to the unpalatable memory of their father, Katherine ‘met’ the Hulmes, that sweet couple whose lives had been dedicated to the care of Miss Helena Moore. For some minutes, they stared in silence at the silver-framed photograph of their parents on the mantelpiece.

  After a decent interval, the men tapped at the door, entered bearing hot tea, sandwiches, coal and kindling. Silently, Peter made a fire while Frank fed the two old ladies. The room crackled with emotion and burning wood as Peter and Frank withdrew from it.

  ‘You must come and live with me,’ suggested Katherine, ‘away from all this grime. There is so much to say—’

  ‘No,’ answered Nellie, ‘let’s do this properly. You must come to live with me.’

  The surprising truth was that Katherine knew that she would do just that, that she would leave Hesford and come here, to this mean little house set among thousands of such dwellings. This was her sister, and the bonds had been recreated instantly.

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sp; Nellie’s trembling hand guided an uncertain cup towards its resting place, a saucer balanced on the fireguard. She managed a weak smile. ‘Not here,’ she said, the newborn voice steadier, clearer. ‘Oh no, we can’t stay here, Katherine.’ As if trying the new word for size, she repeated it slowly, ‘Katherine.’

  Helena heaved a deep sigh, though a sad smile encompassed her next words. ‘I must wash,’ she said, ‘because I need to go out. Today, sister, I am going to buy a house, lock, stock and head teacher’s office. We are going home. To Chedderton Grange.’

  1952

  Peter Smythe was as happy as Larry. He had his own little workshop in one of the stables at the back of the big house, with shelves, benches, hundreds of terracotta pots. There were pipettes, Bunsen burners, bottles, test tubes, copious notes and heaps of books. He also had an assistant, a sweet-natured child with a down-to-earth attitude and a mind that was never satisfied. She was far from satisfied at this moment.

  ‘It’s the deposits,’ she reminded him, ‘and they could come from anything. So what do we do? Stop her eating altogether?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘But what? If you are right and food is giving her the inflammation, where should we start? We all need food. She’s too old to start doing without what she’s used to.’

  Peter shook his head. ‘Beth, she can walk more easily, thanks to us. I shall do another brew of boneset and motherwort, then—’

  ‘Well I think she did better on the slippery elm and prickly ash.’

  ‘With or without devil’s claw?’ he asked.

  Beth picked up a jar. ‘With. And we put wild lettuce and skullcap in that – with valerian, of course.’

  He scratched his head. ‘She will always need valerian. I say we take her off all raw foods, make sure everything is cooked.’

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing. The thought of actually forcing Katherine Moore to do without anything was ludicrous. If she wanted an apple, she would demand an apple; she certainly would not sit there while said apple was cooked, mashed and cooled.

  It was a hot day in June. The pair of amateur scientists wandered to the door of their workshop and breathed in some fresh air. The trouble with herbs was that they could get rather pungent at times. ‘Are you happy?’ Beth asked him.

  He was becoming inured to Beth’s odd questions; her mind flitted from subject to subject like a worker bee seeking the best pollens. ‘Yes, I am. I have my wife, my summer house, this workshop, a victim to practise on – oh, and a very inquisitive assistant.’

  ‘Then you are happy. Peter?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Beth wanted to be happy. She was in love with her family, with Knowehead, the house that now belonged to Mam and Paul, but she didn’t know what she was going to become. At almost eleven years of age – well, ten and a half – surely a person should know? ‘When will I know what to be?’

  He considered that question. Peter had never known what to be – he had allowed life to arrive, had accepted it as it had come. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose I just found plants, because plants are everywhere. Living with gypsies taught me the remedies, the natural painkillers, the poisons.’

  ‘You know poisons?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever used them?’

  He could not lie, would never be able to tell the truth. A stroke, the official papers said. ‘Just once. I had to get rid of a very large rodent. He was making life impossible for everyone else, so I put him down.’

  Beth thought about that. She would never be able to kill, wanted to save lives, to make lives better. ‘Whatever I do, I keep coming back to medicine,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Women can become consultants now. Come on, let’s go in for lunch.’

  So the man who was of pensionable age and the girl of ten and a half walked through the yard and in at the back door of Chedderton Grange. Helena was at the table peeling vegetables. At her feet sat Spot and Tinker, offspring of that famous failed racing dog, Skinny-Bones of Prudence Street.

  Helena looked up. ‘Katherine’s in the conservatory. She has decided to learn lace-making and her hands are stiff, so stay away unless you want Beth to learn some interesting language.’ Proud of her speech, Helena Moore was stringing longer sentences together with every passing day. Her sister was wont to remark that Helena never shut up, that the day would arrive when the full works of Shakespeare would be delivered on the lawn of Chedderton Grange.

  Beth, who was on this earth to learn, shot off towards the next lesson, which promised to be swearing. She found Katherine Moore with a small lace-making pillow, a few hundred brass pins, four pairs of bobbins and a face like thunder. ‘Hello, Katherine,’ the child said sweetly.

  Katherine looked up. ‘If they can do it, I can.’

  Beth looked at the twisted fingers and wished that she could wave a magic wand and destroy arthritis for ever. ‘Would you like me to help?’

  Katherine tutted impatiently. ‘No, thank you. Lily is on her way from town – she will tidy this up.’ She threw down the work and smiled at this terrible, adorable girl. ‘Is my sister cooking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Dorothy?’

  ‘She is at the shop minding Pinta.’

  Katherine tut-tutted. Rachel Barnes’s baby, born prematurely, had been compared to a pint pot because of her size, and the nickname had stuck. ‘She is Katherine Helena,’ she insisted.

  Beth placed herself on a stool at Katherine’s side. ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Dreadful girl,’ complained Katherine for the hundredth time. But she went through it all again, the reading of Peter’s book, discovering that she was his half-sister, finding out on the very same day that she had a full sister.

  ‘Then Helena bought this place and you all lived happily ever after. And you gave us Knowehead, which was very kind of you.’

  ‘Yes, it was very kind of me. Now, go and fetch me a drink of lemon tea, you impossible child.’

  The impossible child scampered off, leaving Katherine with her own thoughts. It occurred to the old woman that she was, indeed, happy. For the first time in her seventy-three years, she was content. With the aid of a stick, she could walk; with the aid of a wonderful sister, she was back where she belonged, in Chedderton Grange, in a house that had belonged for several generations to the Moores of Hesford.

  She dozed, travelled back in time, met her father once more, cursed him all over again. Nellie, sweet little Helena, had been given away because she had not worked properly. Father had treated his elder daughter like a domestic appliance, something that must be sent back to the factory as sub-standard.

  Miss Farquar-Smith, another of his victims, banished from the Grange because she would not allow some practitioner to attempt an abortion . . . Thank God, because Peter was immensely valuable, sensible, kind . . .

  Alone at Knowehead, endless days staring through that same window, Rachel across the road, the shop, a new blouse, smiles so broad, so grateful. Lily and Dorothy, Frank, dear Frank . . .

  She woke. ‘I am blessed,’ she told Beth. ‘Thank you for the tea.’

  Beth reached out and took a hand as fragile as a sycamore leaf in the autumn. ‘We all love you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘That’s a miracle,’ replied the old woman. ‘Look at us, the old and the young, best of friends.’

  Beth sat again, told Katherine about the herbal experiments, about Aaron and his stall, about Lily using both the Prudence Street houses, about the lace Helena and Lily were making for the new queen. ‘If the new queen sends for Helena, she will go this time. She loved the king. Ever since she sent him that first gift when he was Duke of York, she has loved him.’

  They sat together and remembered Nellie’s grief, how she had travelled to London with Lily, how she had stood in the chill of February to watch that fine man on his last journey.

  ‘It must be true,’ announced Katherine.

  ‘What must?’

  ‘The old poem. Saturday�
��s child works hard for a living. You, your mother and my sister, all born on Saturdays. You will be a doctor and that is a very difficult road. Your mother looks after me – which job is harder than that?’

  Beth laughed.

  ‘I am fortunate,’ the old lady concluded, ‘that my sister is another Saturday child. Her labour bought us back our home. But best of all, I got to choose my family. You, your mother, your wonderful stepfather. Rachel, Frank, Dorothy, our new baby. My sister and my brother whom I found late in life. Do I deserve you all?’

  Beth giggled once more. ‘What was the day of your birth?’

  A gleam entered Katherine’s eye. ‘Friday,’ she replied eventually.

  They stared at each other for several moments.

  ‘Friday’s child is loving and giving.’ Beth’s voice was solemn.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Katherine.

  Beth agreed with her. ‘Wednesday would have been better. Full of woe. Miserable.’

  They screamed with laughter, an old lady who had seldom laughed, a young girl who brought joy wherever she went.

  In the garden, a man with secrets tended his herbs. The laughter of his older sister and his young friend travelled through sun-baked air and kissed his ears.

  From Bluebell Woods, a cuckoo called.

  Everyone was home and the world was well.

  THE END

  Saturday’s Child

  Ruth Hamilton is the bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Mulligan’s Yard, Dorothy’s War, The Judge’s Daughter, The Reading Room, Mersey View and That Liverpool Girl. She has become one of the north-west of England’s most popular writers. She was born in Bolton, which is the setting for many of her novels. She now lives in Liverpool.

  Also by Ruth Hamilton

  A Whisper to the Living

  With Love from Ma Maguire

  Nest of Sorrows

  Billy London’s Girls