Polly's Pride

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘Hang on, hang on!’ he kept shouting, whenever he feared she was about to go under. His own lungs were bursting, and he felt sure he’d soon sink beneath the brown slimy water any minute from pure exhaustion. His eyes were stinging so much he could barely see. Then, inch by inch, he persuaded and cajoled, pushed and shoved, till he edged Betty round to the stone jetty. And wasn’t he glad to hear the sound of clog irons ringing on the steps above as people came running to help!

  By the time they were safely on the jetty quite a crowd had gathered, including Liam, Don and Joe, watching the scene in utter amazement. His picture would be in the paper, they told him, since a man with a camera had just taken a snap of him. Benny was a hero.

  Betty had proved not to be so daft after all, since she’d done exactly as he’d told her to and not panicked at all, paddling her feet as instructed and keeping her chin up. She’d trusted in Benny completely, even though she couldn’t swim a stroke on her own. She even kissed him when they were both safely on dry land, and the man with the camera snapped that too. Benny only grinned, not minding a bit. He was thrilled that all the swimming he’d done in the canal over the years, quite against Polly’s orders, had finally paid off.

  Despite the fact that he was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, he had the immense satisfaction of seeing that Georgie Eastwood and his mates were looking even sicker than himself. Benny might have been the first one to act, but he wasn’t by any means the only one to have spotted the perpetrators of the crime. Georgie was in for a severe wigging from the constable, who was even now striding purposefully towards them.

  When statements had been taken and Betty led off home by two kindly ladies, Benny found himself suddenly clasped to Grandma Flo’s well-upholstered bosom. Alerted by a neighbour she’d hastened to the scene to revel in her grandson’s glory. When finally Benny managed to extricate himself from this embarrassing; display of emotion, he reluctantly agreed to be marched off to her kitchen to be dried, ‘before he caught his death’.

  Wearily he knew this would mean more Fenning’s Fever Cure, and yet another plastering of goose grease and brown paper. Georgie Eastwood and his cronies, however, were being marched off in quite a different direction.

  As Benny set out for home with his grandmother, Liam stepped quickly forward. ‘See you tomorrer then?

  Benny looked at these one-time friends of his, who’d never quite been there when he’d needed them. ‘Happen,’ he said. ‘Then again, happen not. I’ve better things to do than play daft kids’ games. And linking his arm in Big Flo’s, he strode away, head held high, enjoying every clap upon his back, every cheer and every- ‘well done lad’ as he went on his way. No one could ever call him a coward again.

  Polly felt as if a great black cloud had lifted from her. Her life at last seemed to be on an even keel. She felt so happy and carefree she kept bursting into song for no apparent reason. But then, she told herself, perhaps she did have every reason.

  A successful trip to the auction in Liverpool had resulted in their buying up all the ship’s carpets at an unbelievably low knockdown price. These were to be delivered, via the Ship Canal, the very next week and Polly was anxious to get to the warehouse and make provision for the new stock. Once she had seen her lovely family again, of course.

  In addition to this success, she and Charlie had snatched the opportunity to enjoy a precious few days together, giving them time to relax and talk, to browse among the shops in Liverpool as well as down by the docks. It had proved to be a time for them simply to be a couple. He bought her a lovely ring that might or might not be a genuine sapphire. Polly really didn’t care. To her it was the most beautiful piece of jewellery she’d ever owned. Being so far from home, they’d risked offending convention and signed into a small hotel as Mr and Mrs Stockton. If this made her a wicked woman in Big Flo’s eyes, so be it. Though Polly would make certain that the old woman never got wind of this particular show of rebellion.

  For Polly and Charlie it had been a dream come true, like a honeymoon, albeit before the wedding, which made it all the more deliciously enjoyable. He’d held her in his arms all through the softness of a mellow autumn night, stroking the silky smoothness of her skin, the glossy satin of her dark hair, and loving her as she had so longed to be loved.

  After they had slept, limbs entwined, fingers still linked in sleep, they’d woken at dawn to a sky that seemed bluer, a sun more bright and golden, and even the hoot of ships in the pool sounding almost musical to their ears. To find themselves in bed together, and at such a time, meant they must once more demonstrate their love, each drawing the other ever closer in an unbreakable bond that would last a lifetime.

  Now, Polly too was eager for an early wedding. What was there to wait for? Everything was going well for her at last. She had the privacy of a home she could call her own, where her children were free to grow unshackled by prejudice or Joshua’s bigotry. Even her own father had been taken in hand by Big Flo. Deep down, Polly felt glad that Murdoch had come back into her life, despite her reservations when he’d first arrived. Perhaps it was time for old hurts to be forgotten, with her father and with her brother-in-law too. Joshua certainly seemed to be keeping out of her hair at last.

  They found the house locked and empty on their return, with not a sign of either Benny or Lucy. Leaving their bags to be unpacked later, they hurried round to number twenty-three, assuming they might find them there. Instead they found a pile of wet clothing lying on the flagged floor. A pan of hot water had clearly been bubbling on the hob, and a wad of Big Flo’s pink lint stood handily by, as if she’d been about to use it on someone.

  Benny?’ Polly half whispered the words. ‘What has the boy been up to now? Oh, Charlie, that lad’ll be the death of me.’

  ‘Don’t panic. We’ve no proof anything is wrong yet,’ he cautioned, but a thorough search brought no answers so they set off up Dove Street, seeking news from anyone who could tell them. As luck would have it, Vera Murray was polishing the windows of her toffee shop. She spied Polly at once and came trotting over in her busybody way.

  ‘Now don’t get yourself in a lather, you. Nobody’s hurt.’

  ‘What do you mean, nobody’s hurt? What’s happened?’

  ‘That lad o’ yours has only turned out to be a right little hero, hasn’t he? You should be right proud of him.’

  ‘Benny?’ Polly was gaping, and could hear Charlie start to chuckle. ‘Benny a hero?’

  ‘Saved Daft Betty from almost certain drowning he did.’

  The chuckle swelled to a great guffaw of laughter and Polly was slapping him, telling Charlie to hush, didn’t she want to hear the whole story?

  Vera turned back to her window cleaning, and then as if the thought had only just struck her, stopped and gave her duster a little shake. ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about your Lucy either,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’ll find her. Turn up like a bad penny no doubt, as they allus do, eh?’

  Before Polly had time to time in the full import of this devastating piece of information, Nellie Sidebottom came huffing and puffing down the street towards her. She was a large woman, not built for running, and with a face as red as a turkey cock’s she was clearly in some distress. Without even pausing to comment on the dramatic events involving her sister Betty and Polly’s son, she barked loudly while still some twenty yards distant: ‘Get to the warehouse, Poll. At once. Lucy’s in trouble!’

  The great double doors of the warehouse were locked. Standing outside in the dusk of a warm September day was an anxious-looking Benny, with an equally distressed Big Flo and Murdoch. Just looking at the expressions on all their faces filled Polly with fear.

  ‘What is it? Where is she? Is she inside?’

  Big Flo grabbed both Polly’s arms in a grip that wrung the blood from her fingers, though she barely noticed. ‘He’s gone off his head! He’s gone barmy, Polly. I don’t know what the heck to do with him.’ Such despair from Florence Pride was unheard of. Polly found he
rself in the unlikely position of calming the old woman and offering the sort of platitudes that were usually her province. ‘Tell me slowly and calmly what’s going on.’

  ‘Joshua’s in there with the child. And t’door’s locked. Run mad he has.’

  Today Big Flo hadn’t even the strength to call upon her Good Friend for help. She stood wringing her hands, the lines on her worn face scored deeper than usual.

  Charlie stepped forward. ‘Let me tackle him. I’ll wring his bleedin’ neck!’ He was all for fetching a battering ram and breaking the door down, but Polly wouldn’t let him. It took some precious moments to calm him too, but finally she persuaded them all to leave the matter to her.

  ‘We don’t want any fisticuffs, or any more danger to Lucy. It’s my daughter he’s got in there, but it’s me he’s got the quarrel with. So it’s time Joshua and I had a little heart to heart as it were, and settled this matter between us once and for all.’ Then she kissed Charlie and pressed a finger to his lips. After a long moment looking into her eyes, he let her go.

  If only she felt as confident as she sounded, Polly thought. She could hear her own heart pounding as she rapped on the door, rattled the handle and finally shouted through the letterbox. ‘Joshua! If you can hear me in there, let me in.’

  After what seemed an eternity, she heard the turning of a key in the rusty old lock and the door swung open a few inches. She had time to cast back one lingering glance, seeing Charlie’s anguished face, Murdoch giving her a huge wink and Big Flo holding her grandson close and Benny for once not protesting. Then the door had clanged shut behind her, the key turned and she was locked inside the warehouse with Joshua.

  Through the thick rough panels of the door she heard Charlie’s furious shout. ‘Lay one finger on her and I’ll personally take you apart, inch by bloody inch!’

  Joshua only smiled and jerked his head, indicating she should precede him up the stairs. Polly didn’t hesitate. She was anxious to find her daughter.

  When she did, she jerked to a halt in shocked silence, struggling to make sense of the picture before her eyes.

  Lucy was not in the part of the warehouse they used for cutting the carpets. Nor was she in the office. She was in the tiny cupboard-like kitchen. A pan of water was boiling furiously over the single gas jet.

  Lucy was sitting cross-legged on top of the deal table and Polly’s eyes went straight to her daughter’s face, to find there the brightest red lipstick she’d ever seen, which seemed to extend far beyond her small pretty mouth. A mouth that was, in fact, trembling while the blue eyes glistened with tears.

  Polly glanced again at the stove. ‘What’s the pan of water.’

  ‘Your daughter needs a good scrub, a thorough cleansing, more spiritually and physically.’

  It was then that Polly noticed what Lucy was wearing. She was dressed only in a sack, her legs and feet were bare and upon her beautiful hair lay a scattering of grey dust.

  ‘She is learning the true meaning of repentance,’ Joshua’s explained. ‘By wearing sackcloth and ashes.’

  ‘Sackcloth and ashes?’ Polly turned to stare at him, feeling her mouth fall open in a foolish gape.

  ‘She spent much of yesterday cavorting in an immoral way with a young man in the park, and the evening in a theatre - surely a palace of sin if ever there was one.

  Polly heard a muffled protest from Lucy, quickly stifled, as if she’d learned during the time she had spent sitting on that hideous table that no matter what defence she offered, Joshua would not heed it. Frowning, Polly took a step towards her, only to have her way blocked, as it had been once before when she’d tried to protect her son.

  Joshua held up his hands, like a barrier before her. ‘No, do not interrupt. I brought her here last night while the sin was ripe upon her. The girl needs discipline. She is also learning the valuable lesson that we, as mere mortals, cannot improve on nature. Had the good Lord wanted young women to have scarlet mouths, I’m sure he would have made the necessary provision.’

  Polly longed to smack his hands away but had learned from bitter experience that Joshua did not react well to a display of temper. ‘She’s but a growing girl, Joshua, finding out about herself and what life has to offer. If she makes any silly mistakes with clothes or lipstick, sure won’t she learn sense as she gets older? As for her friendship with young Tom Shackleton, I know all about that and see no harm in it.’

  ‘Because you have no judgement yourself.’

  Polly told herself to stay calm and not rise to his bait. He was deliberately provoking her, so she merely smiled while edging a step closer to the table and a now openly weeping Lucy. ‘It’s because he’s a fine young man. But this isn’t about Lucy, is it? I thought we had this matter all sorted between us, Joshua? We do appreciate the care you took of us in the months following Matt’s death, but that’s past now, and time for you to stop. The responsibility for my children’s behaviour, including any punishment they might require, is mine, not yours. Wouldn’t you say that was fair?’

  There was a long telling silence and then, to her great alarm, Joshua began to laugh. The sound, coming from his thin lips sounded so unreal that it sent a chill running the length of Polly’s spine.

  ‘Joshua,’ she coaxed, ‘let her come to me. I’ll give her a good talking to, about the lipstick and all.’ Then the laughter stopped as quickly as it had begun and the silence following it was even more deadly.

  ‘To allow you control over your own children would serve only to perpetuate the sin. By becoming a part of our family, you corrupted and shamed it. But your marriage didn’t work, did it? Matthew learned sense in the end and abandoned you.’

  Polly bit down hard on her lip. ‘Because you dripped your poison into his ear. I can see that clearly now.’

  ‘You brought nothing but problems. Now your daughter is about to commit the same mistake by seducing a Catholic boy, when really she should marry a Methodist.’

  ‘I’ll never marry anyone but Tom!’ Lucy’s anguished cry echoed heart-breakingly in the tiny room. Polly’s whole body shook as she witnessed her daughter’s pain. But still she held on to her temper.

  ‘I created no problems for this family, Joshua, nor for Matthew. Weren’t we always happy, until poverty and our different ways of dealing with that came between us? A problem we might have overcome had you not interfered.’

  Joshua advanced to within an inch of her, and leaning close spat the next words in her face. ‘You ruined him, Jezebel that you are! Because of his ridiculous passion for you, Matt was more concerned with saving his own skin than rescuing our younger brother from the dangers of battle.’

  It all came out then, the hatred and the venom, the bitter resentment he had stored up over the years. Joshua poured out his version of events; how he was certain that Matthew could have saved Cecil, could have gone back and carried him from the field of battle.

  His eyes were glittering like glass, and though they gazed upon her, failed to quite focus.

  Polly stated at him, transfixed by horror. The terrible tragedy of poor Cecil’s death was being set firmly at Matthew’s door, and her own too. Young though she’d been at the time of the Great War, Matthew had told her then of Joshua’s accusation, but she’d never dreamed it could turn into a feud, almost an obsession. As if Matthew would have abandoned his dying brother in order to save his own skin! The very thought made Polly steam with anger on his behalf. But Joshua evidently believed that he had, and clearly laid some of the blame upon her too, simply because Matthew had loved her. However unfair, Joshua hated her because she was alive and Cecil was not.

  Polly was shaking her head. ‘Actually you’re wrong. Matthew did go back. Didn’t he tell you? Perhaps because he was such a modest man, and the pain of his failure cut so deep, he may not have done. Of course he tried to save his poor brother, for all he was ordered not to risk trying by his commanding officer. He ignored the order, as did one or two others. Despite lying injured for hours and needing urgen
t medical attention himself, Matt searched among the dead and dying, saving a few, thank God, but Cecil was already dead when he found him.’

  ‘Because he went back too late. Coward that he was!’

  ‘No!’ Now it was Polly who was shouting. ‘My Matt was not a coward. The situation was always hopeless but at least he tried! Look how he saved Tom Shackleton, and died as a result?’

  ‘He deserved to die.’

  Something in the tone of his voice brought Polly to a new and terrifying realisation. She recalled how once she’d suspected that Matthew’s death might not have been entirely an accident, but had dismissed the idea as the product of her own overwrought imagination. Now she looked into her brother-in-law’s frozen expression and knew that was not the case. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘I left him to die. In exactly the same way that he left Cecil. It was only right and proper. Justice for his cowardly neglect of our brother.’

  While Polly stood in a daze of shock, Joshua swivelled on his heel and reached for Lucy, pulling the screaming girl from the table by her hair, as if she were a rag doll. One hand smoothed down the rumpled sack, his fingers lingering over pert young breasts, savouring the pleasure of that moment before he moved on to grip Lucy’s slender arms. ‘And now it is your turn. You, the Irish bitch who first turned him from his family, and this child, your whore of a daughter. She’s as worthless as the muck on this floor.’ So saying, he flung Lucy to the far corner of the room, where she crumpled in a heap as if she were indeed no more than a sack of rags.

  Without stopping to think, for surely she would never have done such a terrible thing if she had, Polly picked up the pan of boiling water and tossed it into Joshua’s face. She didn’t wait to check the result of her action as his screams filled the room, but grabbed Lucy’s s hand and ran. It took several frustrating moments before she managed to get the key to turn in the lock, her hands were shaking that much. Then the door banged open at last and she was half-carrying, half-pushing her daughter out into the open where they were both gathered safely into Charlie’s arms.