The River Folk

by Margaret Dickinson

  Bessie grinned and stepped across Amy’s threshold. ‘I’ve brought you a steak and kidney pie, love. It’s nice and hot so pop it in your oven to keep warm while you do yourself a few taties.’ Bessie looked at her neighbour. Amy was looking much better, so she risked a gentle jibe. ‘You ain’t forgotten how to peel a few taties and boil ’em, ’ave ya?’

  The smile, so long unused, began tentatively at the corner of Amy’s mouth and then, quivering, spread across her face. Then she reached up and put her arms about Bessie and laid her head against her shoulder. ‘Oh Bessie, what would I do without you? What would any of us do without you?’

  Embarrassed by the unaccustomed display of affection, Bessie patted Amy’s back. ‘There, there, you’ll be all right, Amy love. You’ll be all right.’

  Her voice muffled against Bessie’s shoulder, Amy said, ‘It’ll only be thanks to you if I am.’

  ‘Come on, now, before I drop this pie.’

  Amy stood back and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘You’re right, Bessie. I know you are. My George wouldn’t have wanted me to carry on this way. I will try, really I will.’

  Bessie beamed with delight and relief. ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said, as she bent to put the pie in the oven of Amy’s range. She closed the door and straightened up again. ‘And your Ron wouldn’t want to see his mam grieving like this either, Amy. He were a lovely lad – bright as a button and never without a smile for you, even if he was a bit on the shy side. He’d not have liked to see you this unhappy for the rest of your days, now would he?’

  Amy’s lower lip trembled and she caught it between her teeth. Tears welled in her eyes again and Bessie thought for a moment that she had pushed things too far too soon. But then, Amy nodded and said, ‘You’re right, Bessie. I know you are. But it’s just . . . so hard.’

  Bessie patted her friend’s arm but for once could find no words. She couldn’t say, ‘I know,’ because she didn’t. She didn’t know what it would be like to lose her Bert and one of her lads. At the mere thought of it happening, Bessie could feel her throat constrict and tears prickle at the back of her eyelids, but she could only guess at the devastation this poor woman must be feeling at the loss of both her husband and her only child. That was the reason that Bessie’s patience for Amy’s grief was unlimited.

  ‘You know, Min,’ Bessie said a short while later to her friend, ‘I reckon Amy’s really on the mend. Oh, she’ll never get over it. I ’spect you never do get over something like that, do you? But I reckon she’s starting to pull herself together a bit.’

  ‘Not before time,’ Minnie replied tartly.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on her, Min.’

  Minnie smiled across the kitchen table as the two women, their week’s washing hanging together on the lines outside in the yard, took a well-earned break over a cup of tea and a biscuit. ‘You’re a funny woman, Bessie Ruddick, and no mistake. Ranting and raving one minute and soft as a brush the next.’

  Bessie shook with laughter. ‘That’s me, Min. That’s me to a tee.’

  Min laughed with her. ‘But I wouldn’t change you, Bessie. Not one hair of your head. Life’s certainly never dull when you’re around.’ She took a sip of her tea and then asked, ‘So, what’s your next project? The woman next door, I take it, ’cos you seem to have taken charge of the little lass already.’

  Bessie sighed heavily. ‘D’you know, Min, for once in me life I don’t know what to do. I have to admit I’ve never come across a feller before who knocks his missis about. I know we’ve got a few ruffians living in the yards, I can’t deny that. One or two drunks, the odd gambler here and there and one or two not quite as honest as they might be, but in the main, the river folk are a hardworking lot and I’ve always been proud to be one of ’em, but him, well . . .’

  ‘He’s not one of us, though, is he? I mean, he’s nowt to do with the river, is he?’

  ‘No. He’s a drayman. So she says. But where he works now, I don’t know. He goes off every morning as if he’s going to some sort of work somewhere, but that’s all I know.’

  Minnie laughed. ‘It’s a mystery, all right. But I know the very woman to solve it.’

  Both women laughed as together they said, ‘Phyllis!’

  Eleven

  ‘Hello, Elsie. How are you?’ No one was more surprised than Bessie to see their new neighbour struggling up the alleyway between the houses and across the yard laden with shopping bags. ‘Been doing your Christmas shopping? It’ll soon be on us now, won’t it? Only three weeks to go.’

  Elsie Clark lowered her bags and put her hand on her thin chest. But there was a smile on her face as she said, ‘This is going to be our best Christmas ever. Sid’s got a good job and he likes it here.’ She nodded towards Bessie. ‘Your husband’s made him feel welcome, having a pint with him in the pub, an’ that. I’m very grateful. He’s settled down a lot now.’ She gave a nervous laugh and added, ‘If you know what I mean. And as for our Mary Ann, I never have seen her so happy.’

  In the weeks since Elsie had been home from the hospital, Bessie had not once heard the Clarks quarrelling. Elsie’s arm was better and there were no bruises on her face.

  ‘I’m glad, love. Here, let me help you with those.’

  ‘Oh no, no, it’s all right,’ Elsie said quickly. She bent and picked up the bags again. ‘I didn’t get cleared up before I went out. Me kitchen’s a tip.’

  Bessie laughed. ‘You’ve no need to feel embarrassed on my account. You should see mine sometimes. Looks like it’s been hit by a tidal wave. I remember sometimes on board ship when I was a bairn, ’cos the weather can be rough, ’specially in the mouth of the Humber near Hull, y’know. Well . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ruddick . . .’

  ‘Call me “Bessie”. Everyone else does.’ Bessie gave a raucous laugh. ‘I hardly know who you’re talking about when you say “Mrs Ruddick”.’

  ‘All right, Bessie, then. But I must go. Sid’ll be back soon and I haven’t got his tea ready. Is Mary Ann home? Have you seen her?’

  Bessie shook her head. ‘Now you mention it, I haven’t. I hadn’t realized it’d got so late.’

  ‘I wonder where she’s got to?’ Worriedly, the woman murmured almost beneath her breath so that Bessie had to strain to catch the words, ‘I hope she’s home before Sid, else there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘I bet I know where she is,’ Bessie said suddenly as she remembered. ‘Dan’s ship’s unloading at Miller’s Wharf. Look, you go and see to your shopping and start your old man’s tea and I’ll go and look for her. I bet the little minx is there.’

  ‘But what about your own tea?’

  ‘In the oven keeping hot. They all come in at different times, my menfolk, so I have it ready early, all plated up for when they decide to appear.’

  ‘Well,’ Elsie said, doubtfully, ‘if you’re sure, I would be grateful.’

  ‘Off you go, love. I’ll go and find her.’

  Mary Ann was not at the wharf.

  ‘Hello, Mam. What are you doing here?’ Dan greeted his mother. ‘Come to hold me hand on the way ’ome, have ya? We’re just about done, so if you hang on a minute . . .’

  Bessie’s laugh echoed across the dark waters of the river. ‘I don’t reckon it’s your old mam’s hand you want to be holding, is it, lad? Not now. No, I’m looking for Mary Ann. She’s not come home from school. I thought she’d be here waiting for you. Have you seen her?’

  Dan shook his head and a worried frown creased his forehead. ‘It’s a bit late for her to be out, isn’t it, now it’s dark so early? School finished ages ago, didn’t it?’

  Bessie nodded. ‘Yes. I thought she’d be here. I told her mam not to worry, that I’d come and find her. I was so sure she’d be here.’

  ‘We’d best get looking for her then, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Well, yes, but you must be tired and hungry.’

  ‘No “buts”, Mam, I’ll help you find her.’

  They had walked away
from the wharf and were now standing in River Road.

  ‘Do you think she could still be at school?’ Dan asked.

  ‘She could, I suppose. But it wouldn’t be like Miss Edwina to keep her there this late. Not without letting her mam or me know.’

  ‘Could she have got lost?’

  ‘She shouldn’t have. She knows the way home well enough by now, unless . . .’ Bessie pondered and bit her lower lip.

  ‘What, Mam?’

  ‘It is nearly Christmas and all the shops in the town are so pretty. I shouldn’t think the poor little mite’s expecting to get much for Christmas. Maybe she just went to have a look, you know.’

  ‘And she might have got lost, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think she knows the town very well. She’s been into Pottergate and the Market Place with me a couple of times, but if she took a wrong turning . . .’

  ‘Come on, we’ll go and see if we can find her.’

  Together Bessie and Dan wound their way through the narrow streets where the houses were so tall on either side that the alleyways were dark even on the brightest day. Now, they would have been pitch black if Phyllis’s husband, Tom Horberry, hadn’t been round already to light the lamps on the brackets set high on the wall. Twisting and turning, they came to one of the town’s main streets. Pottergate ran down to the river ending in the Packet Landing, where boats and the steam packet to Hull moored. Rounding the corner by the Woolpack Hotel, which stood close to the Packet Landing, its clientele travellers on the early boats to Hull, Bessie suggested, ‘We’ll walk up towards the Market Place. That’s where she might be.’

  Now they were passing shops which, tonight, were all keeping late hours to catch the Christmas shoppers. A baker’s where mince pies, Christmas cakes and chocolate Yule logs filled the window. Then a flower shop where Christmas trees stood on the pavement outside, leaning drunkenly against the windows, whilst holly wreathes and bunches of mistletoe adorned the inside.

  Past the shoemaker’s, the grocer’s and a china shop they walked without even glancing in the windows. Usually, Bessie loved ambling down Pottergate and would dawdle to look in every shop, but tonight she was anxious and hurried on, panting a little, as fast as she could. Dan, with long, easy strides, kept his pace to match his mother’s. He too ignored the shops, his worried glance scanning the milling crowd.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, Bessie.’ A voice came out of the shadows and she turned to see Tom Horberry wobbling down the middle of the street on his bicycle.

  ‘And to you, Tom,’ Bessie replied automatically and then added swiftly, ‘have you seen Mary Ann?’

  Tom dismounted and wheeled his bicycle towards them, and in the glow from the lighted shop windows, Bessie could see the puzzlement on his face.

  ‘You know,’ she said, unable to keep the impatience from her tone, ‘the lass who’s come to live in the yard. Next door to us.’

  Tom’s expression cleared. ‘Oh aye, I know who you mean now.’ Then he shook his head. ‘No, sorry, I haven’t. Lost, is she?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Bessie muttered. Already she was moving on.

  ‘I’ll keep a look out on me way home, Bessie,’ Tom called after them. ‘If I see her, I’ll take her home with me.’

  Bessie waved her hand in acknowledgement and called back over her shoulder. ‘Right you are.’ Then in a lower voice she murmured to Dan, ‘But I doubt she’ll go with him. I don’t think she even knows him. And she’s funny with men, isn’t she?’

  ‘I think she’s getting better. She was laughing with our Duggie the other day.’

  Despite her anxiety, Bessie grinned. ‘Well, who wouldn’t?’

  On they went again until they reached the jewellers’ on the corner where the street opened out in the Market Place.

  ‘There she is,’ Dan said suddenly.

  ‘Where? Where?’

  He pointed. ‘Over there. Just coming out of that draper’s shop.’

  ‘That’s where Phyllis works. Mebbe she’s been talking to her. And just look at her,’ Bessie said, ‘skipping along as if she hasn’t a care in the world and us worried half to death.’

  She felt Dan’s hand on her arm. ‘Now, Mam, don’t have a go at her. That little lass doesn’t get a lot of fun in her life and you’re only mad at her ’cos you’ve been worried. After all, she’s old enough to go into the town by herself now, isn’t she?’

  Bessie’s anger subsided in a second. ‘Yes, you’re right, lad. But even so, she ought to know just to tell one of us where she’s going. Even if her mam wasn’t at home, I was. Or one of the other neighbours.’

  She saw Dan’s white teeth as he grinned at her in the dim light. ‘Let me tell her, she’ll take it better from me.’

  ‘You’re right there, lad. All right, you just give her a gentle ticking off and I’ll say no more about it.’

  As they neared Mary Ann, Bessie raised her voice. ‘There you are, love. We thought you’d got lost.’

  At the sound of her voice, Mary Ann stopped, and when she saw Dan, she gave a little hop of delight and ran towards them. ‘Dan, Auntie Bessie. Were you looking for me?’

  She pressed herself between them and linked her arms through theirs.

  ‘We just wondered where you’d got to, love,’ Dan said gently, looking down at her. Bessie noticed that there was a note of firmness in his tone as he added, ‘You ought to let one of us know where you’re going, though, if you’re not coming straight home from school. ’Specially now it’s getting dark earlier. All right?’

  Bessie saw the girl glance up at him, adoration in her eyes. ‘All right, Dan. I’m sorry if you were worried . . .’ She turned her head briefly to include Bessie. ‘I won’t do it again.’

  ‘Good girl, but just say you’re sorry to your mam as well, won’t you?’

  Mary Ann laughed. ‘She’ll not care. She’ll not notice I’m not there.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Bessie couldn’t stop herself from saying now, ‘because it was the first thing she asked me when she got back from shopping. Were you home?’

  Mary Ann stopped suddenly and, with her arms through theirs, both Bessie and Dan were brought to a halt too. ‘Shopping? Me mam? Me mam’s been out shopping?’

  Puzzled, Bessie looked down at her. ‘Well, yes. It’s nearly Christmas.’

  ‘But me mam never goes out shopping. She . . .’ For a moment Mary Ann hesitated and then blurted out, ‘She hasn’t any money.’

  ‘She must have. How does she buy food and that?’

  In a small voice, Mary Ann said, ‘Me dad gets the food.’

  Bessie was quick to notice that the girl said ‘gets’ and not ‘buys’ and for a brief second she wondered if Mary Ann was implying that her father stole what they ate.

  Her next words refuted this. ‘Me dad goes to the market last thing, when the stall-holders are closing up, you know. He gets bargains and he haggles with the stallholders till he gets things for . . . for next to nothing. He says me mam’s too weak to argue. She’d give in and pay them what they asked.’

  Above her head Bessie exchanged a glance with Dan as they moved on again.

  ‘She’s been out shopping this afternoon ’cos I saw her come back mesen loaded with heavy bags.’

  ‘Maybe she’s been out buying your Christmas present, eh?’ Dan grinned down at her.

  Mary Ann grimaced as if she did not believe it, but then she smiled coyly up at him as she said, ‘That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been getting you a Christmas present.’

  ‘Me? Now why should you go spending your money on me, love?’

  ‘’Cos I wanted to.’

  The uneasy feeling crept over Bessie again. ‘Getting’ not ‘buying’ the girl had said.

  Keeping her tone deliberately light, she asked, ‘Been saving your pocket money, have you?’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t get any pocket money.’

  There was silence before Bessie was obliged to ask, ‘So where did you get the money to buy
Dan a present?’

  Mary Ann replied promptly without a hint of hesitation. ‘Miss Edwina gave me some.’

  ‘Oh,’ Bessie said, unsure now what to say. Had the girl asked Miss Edwina or had that kindly soul realized that poor Mary Ann would have no money of her own with which to buy presents? She resolved to have a quiet word with Edwina, but now all she said was, ‘That was very kind of her.’

  Bessie felt Mary Ann squeeze her arm. ‘I’ll show you later, Auntie Bessie, but you’ve to promise faithfully not to tell Dan.’

  Beside them, Bessie heard Dan’s deep chuckle.

  ‘I reckon we’ll have a party on Boxing Day evening. What d’you say, Bert?’

  ‘Whatever you like, my angel.’ Bert knew better than to point out that it would be a lot of expense and hard work for his Bessie. He didn’t mind the cost so much; the lads were all very good and chipped in with extra housekeeping money for their mother at such times. But he did worry about all the extra work it would mean for his wife. He knew she worked from dawn to dusk – and beyond – to look after him and their three sons, besides involving herself with the neighbours and their problems. To his Bessie, the inhabitants of Waterman’s Yard were one big family, even, he smiled to himself, Sid Clark.

  It was as if she could read his mind, for her next words were, ‘I suppose we’ll have to ask him from next door?’

  ‘You can’t very well leave him out, can you, love? After all, Mary Ann’s bound to be here and I expect you’ll want to ask Elsie. So . . .’ He spread his hands.

  ‘Yeah,’ Bessie sighed, but planted a kiss on the top of his thinning hair as she passed his chair. ‘You’re right, Bert. I couldn’t bring mesen to miss him out, ’specially not at Christmas.’

  Bert chuckled and asked impishly, ‘So, have you bought him a present?’

  ‘No, I have not,’ was the swift retort. Then, realizing he was teasing her, she grinned and added, ‘I’ll leave that to you. An extra pint in the pub, eh?’

  Bert pretended to groan. ‘Why do I dig a hole for myself every time?’

  ‘’Cos you’re an old softie and I always have to have the last word.’