Polly's Pride

by Freda Lightfoot

  He stood up to peep over the sides of the wagon. It was too high. He had to scramble up the side and cling on like a monkey with all his toes and fingers. Over by the arches he could just catch a glimpse of the Eastwoods. They were huddled together, watching the man who operated the turntables to route each wagon on to its proper line. Benny fell back into the wagon with a clatter, cricking his ankle and wincing with the pain. What had he let himself in for?

  He could hear the gush and hiss of steam as trains approached the nearby London Road station. In his mind’s eye he could see its great glass dome with the clock, and the dark red brick patterned with cream tiles. How many times had he hung about that great central area hoping for a bit of a job carrying some lady’s luggage, or a free sandwich from the cab men? Now, here in the goods yard, he heard the piercing sound of a whistle, the clank of rods and swish of pistons, wheels screaming on the tracks and then the terrifying boom-boom, like the explosion of a giant banger on Bonfire Night as wagons banged into each other.

  He listened with keen attention because each time the man blew his horn it was the signal for the next wagon to be pushed off. It would roll fast along the track till it clanged and banged into the next and the next, running them all together faster and faster along the rails till they reached the buffers at the end. Benny had watched the process a thousand times, and admired the skill involved. This time he was inside one of those very wagons and had never been more scared in all his life.

  He told himself that all he had to do was sit tight and wait his turn. Then it would be over in minutes, and he’d be a hero. His turn came sooner than he’d expected and before he was quite prepared.

  There was a jerk and the wagon lurched suddenly forward so that he knocked his head on the floor as he fell. He made a grab for one of the iron grips that were stuck into the wooden sides but managed only to grasp hold of a gap where the planking had split. He could feel the pull of gravity as the wagon started to roll faster and faster and then found himself slipping, legs splaying uncontrollably beneath him, the wind whistling through his ears as though it came in one side of his head and out the other. Terror rushed through his body in much the same way.

  He told himself he’d be all right. He’d be a hero like Tom Mix or Hopalong Cassidy. Then the Eastwoods would let him join their gang, and leave him alone for good. All he had to do was sit tight and hope for the best. He lost his grip just as his wagon cannoned into the next.

  Perhaps it was watching her daughter’s excitement which brought Charlie Stockton back to mind. But it seemed no sooner did Polly allow herself to think of him than he was there, standing on her doorstep with a woebegone Benny at his side. Her first emotion was a sunburst of joy that he hadn’t left the city as she’d imagined, swiftly followed by relief that Joshua was out on one of his collecting rounds. For a moment she could do nothing but gaze into Charlie’s eyes. And then she looked at her son.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, what have you been up to?’ Polly couldn’t believe the state of him. He was covered in coal dust from the tips of his hair to the caps on his clogs, and what she could see of his clothing in between appeared to be hanging in ribbons from him. His socks were round his ankles and blood-red scratch marks, gravely pock-marked with black, ran down his legs like tram-lines. ‘Oh, Benny, what have you done to yourself now?’

  A pair of glistening eyes blinked at her, begging mutely for sympathy.

  ‘He’s been in a bit of bother,’ Charlie quietly explained, but it was his glances over her shoulder into the house beyond which alerted Polly to the real danger. She had Benny over the threshold in seconds.

  ‘Thank you, you can leave him with me. I’ll see to him now, and get to the bottom of whatever the daft galoot has been up to.’

  ‘Polly!’ He had his toe in the door, preventing her from closing it. Panic washed over her like a hot tide.

  ‘Don’t, Charlie. Please leave before . . .’She didn’t finish the sentence. Her son’s face was screwed up tight with pain and the effort not to cry. He was clearly hurt and Polly really didn’t know who to deal with first: Benny, who deserved no sympathy at all for whatever mischief he’d got himself into, or Charlie, who should be thanked for fetching him home, but risked life and limb should Joshua clap eyes on him.

  She came to a sudden decision. ‘Go now, please. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the cafe.’

  ‘You didn’t hold to your promise last time,’ he said, keeping the toe of his boot in place. ‘How can I be sure you will now? And this lad needs attention.’ Then, before she could do anything to stop him, he was over the threshold, half carrying the boy through into the kitchen. Dear God, Polly thought, now what should I do?

  Big Flo, having forty winks in her chair by the fire, woke with a start, surprised to find a stranger commandeering her dish cloth and asking if she had any hot water to spare. And then she saw her grandson.

  ‘By heck, he’s as sooty as the fire back! Have you been up a chimney, lad?’ Benny shook his head, still not trusting himself to speak. The shame was too great. He simply hoped for lightning to strike, or the stone flags to open and swallow him up, so that Uncle Joshua might never catch him looking like this.

  Lucy, swathed in dressing gown and towels, was giggling uncontrollably. ‘He’s welcome to my hot water.’ She indicated the bath tub which she’d been about to empty.

  ‘Ideal. I reckon you ladies had best depart. This is man’s work,’ Charlie said, rolling up his sleeves, and it seemed they had no choice but to obey.

  Big Flo, Lucy and Polly went upstairs and sat on the big double bed, clinging to each other in apoplectic laughter.

  ‘Did you ever see such a mess in all your life?’ Polly gasped.

  ‘Oh, hecky thump, that lad’ll be the death of us, he will really,’ chortled Big Flo.

  Lucy was the first to mop up the tears of mirth and put forward an alternative viewpoint. ‘I bet it’s that Georgie Eastwood. He’s been bullying our Benny for years.’

  Polly stopped laughing upon the instant. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of any bullying. Why has he never told me?’

  ‘He didn’t want to trouble you. Thought you had enough on your plate.’

  Big Flo sniffed her disapproval. ‘He has too much pride, that lad. Just like his father.’

  ‘Whatever I have on me plate, I won’t have my son bullied by a worm like Georgie Eastwood. I’ll knock him into the middle of next week, so I will.’

  ‘Nay, the Eastwoods aren’t a family to tackle on your own. You’d need the entire regiment of Lancashire Fusiliers to back thee up.’

  Lucy agreed. ‘Gran’s right, you mustn’t do anything. Benny would skin me alive if he thought I’d even told you. He must be allowed to sort things out for himself.’

  ‘But how can he? He’s only a boy, and that Georgie . . .’

  ‘Will get what’s coming to him one day, see if he doesn’t. Leave our Benny to sort it out for himself, Mam. It’ll be for the best, believe me.’

  ‘Happen she’s right,’ Big Flo put in. ‘Bullies are all cowards at heart, and unless you stand up to them yourself, they’ll go on at you forever. There’s nowt worse than a bully, I’ve allus thought.’

  Polly stared at her mother-in-law, struck dumb by this little homily. It seemed strange that Flo could see in others what she never recognised in her own son. Even so Polly conceded they both had a point, for hadn’t she countered Joshua’s hectoring and bullying by insisting she come and go as she pleased? Yet Georgie Eastwood was big and strong and Benny was - well, he was her little Benny.’

  ‘Mebbe I could give him a bit of help from behind the scenes, without telling him. How would that be?’ she suggested, and they both agreed with enthusiasm that might be the best way. But before they could discuss details, they heard the scrape of a clog on the flags outside and Big Flo beat Polly to the window by a matter of seconds.

  ‘By heck, he’s home early for once. What the hangment will our Josh say, when he finds that Charlie Stockton in
his house?’

  At one time Polly might have protested that it wasn’t Joshua’s house. But this wasn’t the moment. She flew down the stairs, grabbed Charlie, still with his sleeves rolled and hands dripping from helping poor Benny bathe the cuts and lacerations to his legs, and tried to pull him away. Her son was now shining clean, swathed in the towels she’d set to warm. The bath water, however, looked like tar. Polly knew she was babbling something unintelligible as she struggled to drag Charlie out the back door. but couldn’t seem able to get a proper grip on her words.

  ‘What in damnation. . .?’ He fiercely resisted her efforts.

  ‘For God’s sake, go. Quickly, Charlie. Go now!’ Joshua is coming.’

  ‘I must see you, Polly.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Tomorrow?

  ‘Yes, if you like. Now go. Please!’

  Only when he saw the depth of her distress did he co-operate. ‘My jacket?’

  She flung it at him and closed the back door just as Joshua walked into the kitchen.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Benny’s suffering was far from over. Big Flo lifted a square of red-hot pink lint from out of a pan of boiling water and slapped it, without any apology or warning, upon the victim’s knee. The yell that went up would have wakened the dead.

  ‘Is that absolutely necessary?’ Polly cried, running to comfort her distressed child.

  ‘It’ll go septic,’ Flo announced grimly, shaking her head, ‘if we don’t get all yon muck out.’

  No speck of dirt would have dared resist such a thorough scalding. Pink lint was Big Flo’s favourite method of first aid, that and iodine which she now plastered over all Benny’s cuts and scratches, making him yell even louder. By the time she was done, his injuries were certainly clean, if a strange combination of beetroot red and orange. Poor Benny’s head was also well larded with goose fat to bring down the swelling. Big Flo completed her first aid by fashioning a sling from an old belt and hooking it about his neck.

  ‘That should keep you out of mischief for a bit, you daft barm-pot. Next time, you hit him first.’

  ‘You’ll not tell Uncle Joshua?’ Benny begged. It was his greatest fear.

  Both women looked at each other in silence. Having postponed his tea for half an hour, Joshua was now in his ‘study’, otherwise known as the front parlour, preparing his speech for what would probably be a difficult meeting ahead. So far he had shown little interest in events taking place in the kitchen, except to be irritated by the inconvenience of bath night in such a small house. The women hoped to keep it that way.

  ‘Get yourself up them stairs into your mam’s bed for once, afore he starts getting curious.’ And half lifting her grandson from the chair with her powerful arms, Big Flo gave him a little shove in the right direction. It took no further bidding to send him scampering up the stairs, injured or no.

  Joshua chose that precise moment to leave his papers and emerge from the front parlour. Suspicion crept into his pale eyes as he took in the enamel basin of water, the bottle of iodine, and Polly’s white face.

  ‘What’s going on here? Not more baths?’

  ‘Nowt,’ said Flo, gathering up the evidence. ‘I cut my hand on the mangle, that’s all. But I’ve sorted it now. Come and eat your tea before it goes cold.’

  She placed a dish of rabbit stew in front of her son.

  Still casting glances in Polly’s direction, but realising he’d get no more information out of his mother, Joshua began to eat. The two women said nothing, didn’t even dare glance at each other until Joshua, having finished his meal, had downed a mug of tea, read the evening newspaper from end to end, then painstakingly shaved with the hot water Big Flo brought him, in readiness for going out again.

  Then he put on his best black jacket, greening somewhat with age but still giving the air of authority he craved. and collected his bowler hat. They all sat watching these preparations in silence, like children waiting for their teacher to release them from the bondage of lessons.

  ‘I believe they may well appoint me branch chairman tonight,’ he told them, ‘since I’ve made my mark as treasurer. The unit’s funds are in a healthy state, which is all down to me.’

  His fingers struggled with the studs that held the starched collar to the equally stiff shirt, and his neck in a stranglehold. Joshua insisted on wearing a white collar, since it put him a cut above the rest of the men in their union shirts and mufflers, but his mother was too fond of starch. Big Flo felt it gave a shirt the necessary degree of smartness and cleanliness in direct relation to the pain it inflicted upon the wearer.

  ‘That’ll be grand, son,’ she agreed, nodding wisely as she forced the reluctant stud through the slit, not in the least interested.

  Polly said nothing, simply thankful that he hadn’t clapped eyes on Charlie’s retreating figure, and wishing Joshua would be on his way so she could go up and see Benny. The moment he had finally gone, that was exactly what she did and to her great relief found the boy fast asleep, right in the middle of the big bed.

  Back downstairs again she confronted Big Flo. ‘What made you do that? First you help me with the carpets, now you save our Benny. What’s going on? Have you changed sides or something?’

  Flo considered the question as she cleared the table and poured boiling water into the sink. ‘Boys will be boys, and our Benny isn’t a bad ‘un. And you ain’t such a bad mother either,’ she added in a gruff voice. ‘Anyroad, happen I think Joshua shouldn’t have things all his own way. I reckon he’s mebbe had a bit too much of that already.’ Following which enigmatic remark, she buttoned her lip tight and would say no more on the subject.

  In that moment Polly felt a huge outpouring of gratitude and without stopping to think, wrapped her arms about the great bulk of her mother-in-law, and hugged her tight. ‘Thanks, I really do appreciate it.’

  ‘Nay, don’t talk soft. You’re the one who’s pulled herself up by her boot straps, not me.’ Big Flo did not find it easy to display emotion, and Polly knew these were giant strides she had taken, both in defying her son’s iron rule and in offering a compliment, however grudgingly, to her Catholic daughter-in-law.

  She felt a great desire to open up the whole subject of Matthew’s death, to ask the old woman if she thought it had been entirely accidental. But how could you ask a mother if she thought one son capable of murdering the other? Or at least standing by and doing nothing while he was mown down by a raging mob. It was certainly not a question Polly felt able to ask, perhaps because she feared the answer.

  On the day of Lucy’s first date, unaware that even at this moment her daughter was curling her hair and trying on the scarlet frock in the secrecy of their bedroom, Polly was seated in the market cafe, holding hands over the table top with Charlie. They were talking with such intensity it was as if they’d a lifetime of news to impart which, in a way, was the case.

  Charlie was telling her how worried he’d been after that first meeting at the tram stop, how he’d followed her home and finally plucked up courage to call. And how thrilled he’d been when she’d come to find him on the fruit and vegetable barrow.

  You shouldn’t have come to the house. Joshua doesn’t like strangers calling.’

  ‘Is that why you told me to stay away? Who is he this chap, your keeper?’

  Polly stirred her tea, though it didn’t need it for she didn’t take sugar, staring pensively into the swirling dark brown liquid. To explain the nature of her brother-in-law’s control over her seemed impossible, and made her feel uncomfortable and disloyal. Not only that, but her own emotions confused her. Should she even be here, with this lovely man? Wasn’t it a betrayal to Matthew? ‘I owe Joshua a lot in a way. If he hadn’t been there to watch over me after Matthew’s death, my children might’ve been taken away from me and then I’d’ve run mad.’

  ‘Or you might have got on with your life a lot quicker.’

  Polly m
et his gentle gaze and saw that could well be true. Everything was different now. At the time she’d been in need of someone to take care of her and the children. Big Flo, even Joshua in his way, had done that. The sleeping powders had helped her through the achingly long, sleepless nights. and to live through the empty days.

  Now, following what she had learned of his attack on Eileen, an attack meant for herself, Polly felt nothing but loathing for him. He might just as well have put a knife to the poor girl’s throat, the effect had been the same.

  Yes, there was a dark side to his nature. His treatment of Benny had been inhuman, and the nasty words he had used upon Lucy obscene. She dreaded to think what he might do next. The man was sick; his obsession to control and bring them all into the Methodist fold had twisted his mind. Polly shuddered even now at the memory of his violent treatment of them all.

  ‘I don’t like looking back,’ she said, the words blurted out as she continued to stir her tea furiously. Charlie took the spoon from her fingers, as if afraid she might break the cup with it.

  ‘I’m all for looking forward myself.’ His blue eyes twinkled merrily. ‘Mind you, I’ve had a few adventures in me time that I could tell you about.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me,’ she said with relief, wanting to think of other matters. ‘I love stories.’ And they smiled into each other’s eyes then looked quickly away, embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment. ‘Mebbe you’d just best drink your tea before it goes cold.’

  Polly obediently did as instructed, battening down feelings of guilt, telling herself Matthew wouldn’t want her to take the veil. He’d always been warm hearted and practical, and he’d want her to be happy. This man, this kindly ex-sailor, once a rebellious young orphan, was making her feel happy again. Polly rested her chin in her hand and thought that she could listen to him all day. He was telling her now about one of his many voyages.