A Whisper to the Living

by Ruth Hamilton

  I wrenched my hand away. ‘You go then. You go and catch the tram, because I’m stopping here. I shall move in with Mrs Hyatt and Tom and Freddie. Tom’ll look after me.’

  My mother sighed deeply before saying ‘Tom won’t be there, love.’ My fists clenched into tight balls as I asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tom’s off to America soon, lass. He’s away to seek his fortune and I can’t say that I’m surprised . . . Annie . . . where are you going . . .?’

  But I was already off and down the lobby, into the street and hammering on Mrs Hyatt’s door. A startled Mrs Hyatt peered through the window, then I had to wait, hopping from foot to foot until she finally let me in.

  ‘Is Tom there?’ I gasped.

  ‘Aye, he’s just sat down for his tea. I . . .’

  I flew past her and into the kitchen. Tom paused with a forkful of food in his hand as he saw me standing breathless in the doorway.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you, Annie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost . . .’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘That you’re going to America?’

  ‘By the hell.’ His fork dropped with a clatter and he pushed his chair back from the table. Looking past me, he spoke to his mother. ‘See? I told Nancy not to tell her. I told her I wanted to do it in me own time and in me own way.’ He looked straight at me now. ‘Yes, it is true, Annie. I’m going, sooner or later.’

  ‘Why? Why, Tom?’ My voice was full of pleading as I choked back the tears. How many more people would I lose? Did I have to lose everyone I loved?

  ‘I’m going for a better life, Annie. There’s more chances over there, I’ll get a good job, better training . . . oh heck, how do I explain all this to a child?’

  Mrs Hyatt came to stand beside me, her aproned bulk filling the small space between dresser and table. She placed a fat, heavy arm around my shoulder, but looked at Tom as she said, ‘Nay, Tom. This is no child. This one were never a child, God love ’er.’ Then to me she said, ‘I’ll still be ’ere, you know. And Freddie. We’ll look out for you – you’ve only to bang on the wall.’

  ‘But Tom said he’d always be here, Mrs Hyatt,’ I sobbed. ‘He said he’d always look after me . . . and he tells lies, just like all grown-ups.’

  It seemed to me that this was the last straw, the final betrayal. My Dad gone, my Mam’s affections and attentions directed elsewhere, now Tom was going . . . I would be alone. Utterly, completely, totally alone, no adult on my side, nobody to turn to for comfort or love. Even Tom, my Tom, whom I had begun to trust, was deserting me.

  ‘Is it far to America?’ I gulped between tears. ‘Can I get there on the tram or a trolley-bus?’ But I knew the answer before it came and confirmation arrived in the form of a choking sound from Mrs Hyatt, who turned away quickly towards the dresser. But she was not laughing at me. There was no laughter in those sagging shoulders.

  ‘No, Annie,’ said Tom. ‘It takes a good few days on a ship to get there.’

  I ran to him, flinging my arms about his neck and he drew me gently into his lap. ‘Take me with you, Tom. I’ll be a good girl, I promise. Just take me with you – please.’

  Mrs Hyatt, who was weeping openly now, her wide back shaking with sobs, said, ‘You’re not the only one as’ll miss ’im, Annie. Nay, ’e’ll be very sadly missed, will our Tom.’ Then she went through to the scullery, clattering the pots and pans to drown the sound of her sobbing.

  ‘You’d want your Mam, Annie,’ said Tom gently. ‘You know you can’t leave your Mam. She’ll be needing you one of these days when you’re a bigger girl.’

  ‘She doesn’t need me, Tom. She’s got him.’

  ‘But you love your Mam, don’t you?’

  What a daft question this was. Even the best of adults seemed to ask daft questions. Of course I loved my Mam. But did she love me? If she had loved me, would she have needed that dreadful Eddie Higson, would she have married a man like that? And would we be moving up Long Moor if she loved me?

  ‘Yes, I love my Mam, Tom,’ I answered, almost wearily.

  ‘And if you ever need anybody to help you, or just somebody to turn to, Freddie and my Ma will be here to see to you.’

  Obviously, Tom didn’t know anything about the proposed move. Briefly, I wondered whether or not I’d get into trouble for telling the Hyatts our business, for Mrs Hyatt was, in my mother’s book at least, a busybody and a gossip. But I couldn’t keep it to myself, so, throwing caution to the winds, I blurted out, ‘We’re moving, Tom. Up Long Moor. They’re making me go with them. But if you’d stop here instead of going to America, then I could get back and see you and . . .’

  Mrs Hyatt bustled into the kitchen, drying first her eyes, then her hands on a corner of the capacious apron. ‘Long Moor, you say? When?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Hyatt. Soon, I think.’

  ‘Well!’ She lowered her bulk into a chair. ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs! What have I always said, Tom? What have I always said? Ideas above ’er station, that one. By! Next news, she’ll be ’avin’ tea parties wi’ bone-china cups and lace doyleys. I’d not be at all surprised if she stopped talkin’ to the likes of us.’

  ‘Shut up, Mam. Before you go too far again.’

  But Mrs Hyatt was not going to shut up, not for anyone. She was on her high horse and she’d probably stop there till she fell off, or got kicked off – and Tom was too gentle a man to go hard on his mother.

  ‘Buying a house then, is it, Annie?’ she asked, her tone sweetening.

  ‘Yes. My Mam says we are to have a mort-gage.’ Instead of a rent book, my mother had said. Perhaps it was bigger than a rent book, or a different colour. Though it sounded more like an exotic fruit to me.

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to see ’ow your Mam goes about paying her mort-gage while she’s married to that soft bugger. Oh, ’e doesn’t fool me, Tom. Like I said before, ’e’s no bleeding ’ero, comin’ back snivelling from a prison camp after sittin’ it out for four bloody years. I’ll bet ’e built no escape tunnels. Only reason ’e joined up was over that lass . . .’

  ‘Watch what you’re saying, Mam.’

  ‘Anyroad, Nancy’ll have to work all the hours God sends for ’er fancy ideas. ’Cos there’s no road as ’e’ll pay for much. And shortage o’ money’s not the only thing she’ll be worrying about . . .’

  ‘Nancy knows nothing about all that, Mam. And neither do you if the truth were but told.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about truth, Tom Hyatt. Are you going to eat this or not?’ When Tom made no reply, she snatched his plate from the table, then, jabbing the air with Tom’s fork as if to emphasize every word, she said, ‘The truth is dead, Tom, dead and can’t speak up for itself. And ’e seems to me to be the right type to . . .’ she faltered, placing the fork on the plate. ‘Alright, Tom. ’Ave it your own way. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I’ve said too much in front of this one.’ She gestured towards me. ‘But I do know this – something about you-know-who is not quite right. And I can’t ’elp ’aving me say. Speak as I find, I do.’

  She wobbled into the scullery and we heard her, as she scraped Tom’s dinner into the slops bucket, muttering not quite to herself ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ and ‘a wrong un if ever I saw one’.

  Tom took my chin in his fingers and gently turned my face towards his. ‘Look, lass. I’m sorry if it looks like I’m letting you down, but I’ll be back some day with all kinds of tales to tell you – and presents for you too. Oh yes, I’ll bring back some fine presents for my little Annie. You’re a sensible girl, got a good head on them shoulders. Now listen to me. Just you stick up for yourself, do what you think’s right and do your best at school. I shall write to you every week from Philadelphia – for that’s the name of the town I’ll be bound for – and you can write to me. How does that sound? You’ll have a pen pal in America.’

  I knew I was beaten. I had no way of preventing Tom from
going to America, no way of changing my mother’s mind about moving to the other end of the town.

  When I got down from Tom’s knee and crossed the room towards the door, I was aware that I was letting him go there and then, for he had already left me, was making plans for a new start away from me. He didn’t love me, couldn’t love me. Perhaps I really was not lovable, perhaps nobody would ever love me enough to stay with me.

  Within the space of two years I had lost the three people who had been most important to me. With my father, I had had no choice, but with my mother and Tom, I felt I had made a conscious decision to let go.

  But that decision was just an invention of mind, a pride-saving piece of my imagination. Because, in truth, I had had no choice in any of these matters.

  I was forced to admit to myself, however grudgingly, that Long Moor Lane was a great improvement on Ensign Street. Although the rooms at the back of the house had flagged floors, there was a proper kitchen instead of a scullery. This large, single-storeyed square was attached to the rear living room and its unplastered brick walls were painted in a light shiny green colour.

  My mother was proud of her new kitchen, especially after she had replaced the low slopstone with a proper porcelain sink and had purchased a kitchenette, a tall cupboard, green to match the walls and with many compartments and drawers fitted into it. She also bought a real cooker which she tended with loving care, forever polishing and cleaning its various surfaces, while in truth she still depended greatly on the living-room range, though she would never have admitted her distrust in the new-fangled gadgetry with which she was filling our home.

  For many months she would not switch on the new electric lights unless she had a cloth in her hand to protect herself against the unknown. For a while, she even wore wellington boots for such occasions, having heard or read somewhere that rubber soles ‘stopped it going through you’. She adhered rigidly to the use of her flat irons until Eddie Higson proved, by plugging in the new iron to the ceiling light fixture and surviving, that she might try an easier way of pressing the clothes.

  Our living-room range was another novelty, being constructed of a beige ceramic material that required no leading and having a raised area of tiles set on to the floor in front of it. In the recesses to each side of the chimney were floor-to-ceiling cupboards in which we stored crockery and such linens as we owned, thus making redundant the large mirrored dresser that had always dominated our Ensign Street kitchen.

  There was no lobby in this house, just a small square vestibule leading straight into the front room, which had a wooden floor, a source of great pride in my mother’s book. This room also had cupboards in the recesses, but while the living-room cupboards were panelled in wood and strictly utilitarian, these were ornate by comparison, their upper portions being glazed and leaded. Into these compartments went my mother’s few treasures, bits of cut glass, framed photographs, a plaster saint or two and a set of white demi-tasse coffee cups, a wedding present for which she had never found a use. A square of moss-green secondhand carpet was acquired and my mother spent many hours varnishing and polishing the surrounding floorboards.

  But outside, there was still the midden and the tippler lavatory and no amount of fancy cupboards and instant lighting could compensate, in my mother’s mind, for these two festering sores. So when Eddie Higson’s window round became reality, when he had finally purchased bucket, leathers and goodwill, my mother began to save with a grim determination known only to the victims of true deprivation. We were forced to eat strange meals, soups thick with lentils and barley, meat and potato pies with the emphasis strictly on the potato, scones without raisins, jam butties without margarine. The closest Eddie Higson and I ever got to camaraderie was then, as we stared blankly at one another across a table that held these odd offerings.

  I had never had many clothes, but now I began to look shabby and down-at-heel, was forced to curl up my toes so that weekday clogs and Sunday best would last a few months longer. She stopped smoking too, which meant that her temper became less than even and I learned to keep my distance at certain times, like after meals when she most craved a Woodbine. Eddie Higson took to rolling his own, using bits of paper and a strange machine like a miniature mangle, often including the contents of discarded dog-ends he had picked up in the street, occasionally treating himself to an ounce of fresh tobacco.

  To give him his due, he worked hard during those first few months at Long Moor Lane and, after reading several borrowed tomes on the subject of plumbing, he undertook, with the help of his brother, the installation of our new bathroom.

  He divided the back bedroom into two equal parts, put in new windows, then fixed a bath, a washbasin and a flushing toilet into one of the two new rooms, leaving the other half as a small third bedroom. The cupboard which had incorporated the old bath became a walk-in wardrobe where my mother, who must have felt like the Queen Bee (being the first on the block to have a proper bathroom) hung her sparse trousseau.

  The second bedroom, up another flight of stairs, was an attic room with a three-sided sloping window set into the roof. This was my room, my very own domain with an interesting view up and down the road and plenty of space for my bed and the newly acquired tallboy and dressing table.

  The houses across the way were smart corporation dwellings, their occupants mere tenants, so my mother, a home owner, was on no more than nodding terms with them. Although she still worked in the mill, still came home with her hair full of fluff and the soles of her shoes encrusted with tiny steel rings, she declared herself to be up-and-coming now and announced that she would, in future, be voting Tory.

  My attic window enabled me to see over the rooftops to the moors that surround Bolton like a huge green dish. My mother had told me that Bolton was so named because it sat in a dip between moors and that it had therefore been named, originally, Bowl Town.

  Now that we lived on one of the moors, albeit on a main road, the air was cleaner, clearer and fresher than in the centre of town where the trapped dampness was so valuable to millowners whose spinning factories depended on a wet atmosphere.

  As a town-dweller, I did not, as yet, find myself attracted to the greenness beyond the roofs. Like any seven-year-old, I required playmates, the company of my peers, so I came down from my tower to explore my new surroundings, venturing a little further each day into the unknown.

  It was time to establish my territory.

  6

  Encounters

  My first encounter with other children came, of course, when I began to attend St Stephen’s school. This was five tram stops up the road towards Harwood, though most of the trams were buses now and not so much fun, so I often saved my penny fare by walking the distance to and from school.

  Standards at All Saints must have been high, because within a week I was in and out of first-year juniors and put to work with the eight-year-olds.

  I loved the school right from the start. All the teachers had legs; no more flapping habits and rattling rosaries to disturb my peace of mind.

  There was a priest though, because the school was attached to a church – in fact, the church itself was an infants’ classroom, the altar and the first few pews being partitioned off during school days, while the rest of the benches were piled around the walls, ready to be brought out for Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.

  The priest was Father Cavanagh. He was fat and bald and wore a long black cloak with a clasp of metal chains at the throat. I didn’t like him, but then I had never expected that I would. Priests, like nuns, were odd, legless animals from whom I expected neither kindness nor sympathy. This one, like most of them, asked a lot of questions. His voice was high and silly, the Irish brogue so thick that until I got used to him, he would have to repeat himself several times before I understood him. But he was, at least, a patient man and he spoke to me slowly, mouthing his words as if addressing an idiot or a deaf-mute.

  ‘You’ll be making your First Communion then soon, Annie?’
/>
  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And your family will be along to the Mass for to see you take the Blessed Sacrament?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father.’

  He patted my head. Priests always did that and I hated it, it made me feel like a dog at its master’s feet. He turned to my teacher, Miss O’Gara. ‘They never come to the church, you know. I’ll have to be paying them a visit, I’m thinking.’ He looked back at me. ‘You know, Annie, once you’ve made your Communion, you’ll have to come to the Mass every Sunday or ‘twill be a mortal sin?’

  I nodded. This was familiar territory; we were back to the immortal soul business again.

  ‘And you must come regularly to Confession to prepare yourself for the Blessed Sacrament.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ He patted my head once more.

  ‘Is your Mammy a Catholic then, Annie?’

  ‘I think so, Father.’

  ‘And your Daddy?’

  ‘I haven’t got one, he was killed in Italy when I was four.’

  The priest took a step away from me, a puzzled expression appearing on his wide face. ‘Ah well, ’tis sorry I am to be hearing that, child. But tell me now, is there not a man living at your house just now?’

  ‘Yes, Father. Eddie Higson.’

  Father Cavanagh glanced quickly at Miss O’Gara. ‘Is he your stepdaddy then, Annie?’ he enquired of me.

  ‘No. He is not my stepdaddy, Father.’

  Father Cavanagh removed his biretta and passed a fat hand over his bald pate. Miss O’Gara stepped forward and whispered something into the priest’s ear.

  I heard his sigh of relief before he spoke. ‘Ah. So they are married. Well thanks be to God for that at any rate. Now, Annie. If your Mammy has married Mr . . . Mr Higson, then he is now your stepfather both in the eyes of the law and by the rules of your faith. Are you understanding me?’