There is a Season

by There is a Season (retail) (epu

  ‘Was that because they thought we’d be like Germany, taking wages home in handcarts because money had lost its value?’ John asked.

  ‘There’s no comparison,’ Lawrie said. ‘Prices are falling here, not rising like in Germany. And we’ve got gold in the Bank of England, too.’

  ‘I get fed up sometimes, Grandad,’ John said. ‘All the talk, but it gets us nowhere. The only real power is with the government.’

  ‘That’s true, lad, and that’s why I had such hopes of working men in Parliament, a Labour Government. But this so-called crisis – you see what happens. The first thing Parliament thinks of is cuts in unemployment benefit, then cuts in wages.’

  ‘But didn’t nine Labour members resign rather than pass them? That’s what I heard.’

  ‘And what good did it do? It only brought them down,’ Lawrie said. ‘And now we’ve got this National Government, but you notice Ramsey Mac didn’t lose his job? Oh, no, he’s still Prime Minister, and creeping round the Opposition. That’s what makes me lose heart, John, seeing men I’ve respected looking after number one and to hell with their mates. But I don’t want to discourage you, lad. There’s plenty of good men too, like Henderson and Clynes.’

  They were interrupted by Sally who came in from visiting a sick neighbour. Lawrie winked at John and changed the subject. Sally had only come back for a blanket and when she had gone again, he said quietly, ‘I often wish I’d done more – fought harder, you know, John. But when you’ve got children and a wife to think about, they’ve got to come first. I remember a lad I worked with when your Aunt Mary was a baby, and I was in a grain warehouse. We wanted to start a union and he said to me he could speak up because he’d given no hostages to fortune. Poor fellow, he was knifed when he was trying to save young lads from going on board ships, but I often think of his words.’

  Greg filled in the forms that Mick brought home for the entrance for the scholarship but no one expected him to pass. There was general amazement when he was awarded a place in the College, but Mick took it very calmly.

  Cathy was determined that there would be no distinction made between her children, so as when John passed the scholarship there was a family gathering at her parents’ house to celebrate Mick’s success.

  ‘We’re proud of you, lad,’ his grandfather told him, and as with John gave him one of his treasured books, suitably inscribed, before they all drank to his success.

  ‘Have you any idea what you want to be?’ Josh asked him.

  Mick shook his head. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said.

  Lawrie laughed heartily. ‘I tell you what, the College don’t know what they’ve got in store for them.’

  Josh had given Mick half a crown and he was obviously impatient to be off, John and Sarah both wanted to see friends, so the three young people went out together.

  ‘I got the shock of my life when he walked in with the envelope,’ Cathy said. ‘Not a feather out of him, and when you think how excited we were about John!’

  ‘The first one’s always the most exciting,’ Sally said.

  ‘Yes, but I’m sure he hasn’t done any extra studying,’ Cathy said. ‘If he had any homework, I never saw him do it. He always said he hadn’t got any if we asked him. I think you’re right about the College, Dad. I can see us being sent for every five minutes when he starts his capers there.’

  ‘Now don’t cross your bridges before you come to them,’ Sally said. ‘He’ll settle down all right.’

  ‘Yes, remember him in hospital?’ Greg said. ‘You’d think he’d spent half his life there, yet he’d never even seen a doctor before that.’

  ‘I’ve warned him the grant will only cover one outfit, so if he loses his blazer or cap or tie he’ll have to take the consequences,’ Cathy said. ‘But I don’t think he was even listening to me.’

  She glanced at the clock. ‘I’d better get back. I’ve got a lot of ironing to do.’

  ‘And I’d better go down to Hammond’s. I told Elsie I’d sit with her mother for a while because she’s got to go down to the shop.’

  ‘How is she? Mrs Hammond, I mean.’

  Sally shook her head and sighed. ‘Not well at all, poor soul. I know she’s been ill off and on for years but this is different somehow. She’s gone away to a shadow.’

  ‘Sarah says Elsie’s gone very moody,’ Cathy said. ‘But I suppose she’s got a lot on her mind with her mother so bad. Sarah said Elsie has to keep nipping out of the shop for things or to run home to see her mother, and she asked if she could get Elsie’s messages for her. She said Elsie nearly bit her head off.’

  They had left the house and Cathy walked with her mother to the Hammonds’ house. ‘I’ve told Sarah she mustn’t take offence if Elsie shouts at her.’

  ‘No. God help her, poor Elsie’s got a lot of worry and no one to share it.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Hammond was very low in spirits last night,’ Sally told Cathy the following day. ‘She seems to have no will to live. In fact, she said as much to me. I tried to cheer her up but she said, “No, I’ll be glad to go from this vale of sorrows.” She seems to have turned against Elsie, saying she’s brought her nothing but grief and worry.’

  ‘What a shame. Poor Elsie. She’s always been such a good daughter.’

  ‘Yes, but people go like that sometimes near the end. I’ve seen it before and I said to Elsie on the quiet, “If your mam says anything that upsets you, don’t take any notice. It’s the illness that’s causing it.”’

  ‘Did she know about it? I mean, does Mrs Hammond talk like that to Elsie herself?’

  ‘I don’t know. I see what Sarah means though. Elsie turned on me quite sharp, wanting to know exactly what her mother had said. I felt as if I was in the witness box, but I put her mind at rest. I told her the way my poor father went, even using bad language which he’d never have used in his right mind, and turning against your dad who’d been so good to him. Your dad said it was the illness had twisted his mind and I wasn’t to worry about it, and I think that comforted Elsie.’

  Less than a week later Mrs Hammond died quietly in her sleep, but Cathy was far more distressed to hear of the death of Freda’s mother. When she was widowed Freda went to live with her mother, and her unmarried sister went to live with another relative in the street so that Freda could have her children living with her.

  This arrangement had done much to comfort Freda. It had also helped her financially. Her widow’s pension was ten shillings, with three shillings for each of her five children, and if she had remained in her own house she would have needed to go on the parish.

  Moving to her mother’s house saved her from that degradation, which she later told Cathy would have been the last straw. Her mother had a pension of ten shillings a week from the brewery where her husband had worked before his death in an accident, and a bachelor son who worked in Lancaster sent her a further ten shillings a week, so with pooled resources they could manage.

  It was better for the children, too. In their grandmother’s house they were at the centre of a close, loving family life which went a long way towards compensating them for their father’s death.

  Cathy went to see Freda as soon as she heard the news. There were several women sitting with her, and Freda introduced them as her sisters or sisters-in-law. They all wore black, and their pale faces and eyes red with weeping showed that old Mrs Clancy was sincerely mourned.

  Cathy was given a glass of port wine and a piece of fruit cake then taken upstairs by Freda to see Mrs Clancy in her coffin.

  White sheets were hung round the walls, covering pictures, and candles and flowers stood on a small table. Mrs Clancy looked dignified and peaceful, and Cathy exclaimed, ‘I never realized! You’re so like her, Freda.’

  ‘I hope I’ll be as good a woman as she was,’ Freda said with a sigh. ‘And that people will be as sorry when I die. Everyone loved Mam.’

  Her tears fell and Cathy put her arm round her.

  ‘Never mind. She went
quickly, and that’s always better for the one who goes although it’s harder for those who are left.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without her when Les died,’ Freda wept. ‘No one knows. We could always come to Mam. Anything from a splinter in your finger to trouble like mine, she could always make it better.’ Cathy wept with her, in sorrow for Freda and her mother, and in terror as she imagined her own mother being lost to her.

  Downstairs again Cathy was more practical and offered to look after Freda’s children and any others whose mothers would be attending the funeral.

  ‘That’d be a great help,’ one of the other women said. ‘With us all being related, like, and all at the funeral.’

  It was speedily arranged and Cathy left, glancing down Norris Street as she passed. Mrs Parker was at her door as usual and Cathy wondered how many would grieve for her when her time came.

  She told her mother of the sad scenes in the Clancy house, and added how she felt about Mrs Parker. ‘It seems hard that someone like Mrs Clancy must die and someone like Mrs Parker be left.’

  ‘Aye, God’s ways are not our ways,’ Sally agreed. ‘As Mrs Mal used to say, everything that happens is part of a plan. What will Freda do now?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mam. It didn’t seem the time to ask.’

  Eleven children came to stay with Cathy on the day of the funeral. Fortunately it was a fine day and Sally helped her to pack a basket with sandwiches and cake, a can of tea and bottles of lemonade. She also took bats and balls, and they all had a happy day in Newsham Park.

  In the middle of a game of rounders, Freda’s eldest girl suddenly said to Cathy, ‘Should we be laughing, Mrs Redmond, when our nin is being buried?’

  Cathy hugged her. ‘What do you think your nin would want, love?’ she said gently. ‘She always loved to see you enjoying yourselves, didn’t she?’

  The child nodded and carried on with the game, and Cathy watched her sympathetically. That child, Daisy, would be a comfort to Freda, she thought.

  Mrs Hammond’s funeral had been a much quieter affair. Apart from Elsie, the only mourners had been an elderly cousin and neighbours, and after the funeral breakfast Elsie said that she would prefer to be alone to mourn her mother. Well-meant offers to stay with her or to send a daughter to sleep in the house with her were brusquely refused and were not repeated by her affronted neighbours.

  Sarah still went to the shop and sometimes Elsie seemed quite happy and pleased to have her help, she told Cathy, but at others she was very short-tempered.

  ‘I hope she’s not going to be like that when I’m working there, Mam,’ Sarah said. ‘I’d still like to work there but it was nicer the way Elsie was before.’

  ‘Bereavement takes people different ways,’ Cathy said. ‘She’ll have got over it a bit by the time you go there at Christmas.’

  ‘Only six months now until I leave school and start work,’ Sarah said happily.

  ‘Don’t be wishing your life away,’ Cathy warned. ‘And when your summer holiday starts next week, make the most of it. It’s the last long holiday you’ll have, don’t forget.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  John tried to warn Mick what to expect at the College but his brother was unperturbed.

  ‘I’m just trying to prepare you,’ John said. ‘I got a hell of a shock when I found out how much homework I was expected to do.’

  ‘I’ll just do as much as I can,’ Mick said airily.

  ‘Then you’d better harden the palms of your hands,’ John said. ‘I got plenty of punishments and I was trying to do it.’

  Later John told Cathy that he had wasted his time trying to advise Mick.

  ‘He just doesn’t give a damn, Mam,’ he said. ‘I wish I could be like that.’

  ‘The calm way he took winning the scholarship!’ Cathy said. ‘He was far more excited when Everton brought the Cup home.’

  ‘I was excited myself,’ John said. ‘What a day! I’ve never seen such crowds, and everyone feeling ten feet high. It was the gear.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done your best to tell him what to expect, John,’ his mother said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. He’ll probably fall on his feet. He usually does.’

  Cathy went again to see Freda and to take some of Kate’s outgrown clothes for her youngest child. She found her friend still sad but busy reorganizing the bedrooms. The unmarried sister who had moved out to make room for Freda and her children was going to come back there to live.

  ‘Our Margaret was awful good moving out for us, you know, Cath,’ Freda said. ‘She had her own bedroom here and everything lovely in it, but she never hesitated. She arranged to go to our Clara’s although she knew she’d have to share a bedroom with the girls.’ She sighed. ‘I wish there was a different reason for her coming back.’

  ‘Still, it means you’ll be able to manage, doesn’t it?’ Cathy said. ‘And you get on well with Margaret. Will Clara mind?’

  ‘No. It was a crush for them with Margie there, but Clara’s husband’s the only one working so that was the only place she could go.’

  ‘But why—?’ Cathy began.

  Freda lowered her voice. ‘Because the others are on the parish. They all worked at Allen’s, you see, so when Allen’s closed down the five of them went on the dole at once. Only Clara’s husband got another job. The dole finished for the others and they had to go on the parish. They’d lose it if Margie lived there.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Cathy said. ‘But there’s plenty in the same boat, aren’t there? Peggy Burns was crying in Mam’s one night about what her daughters have had to put up with. Pawning or selling everything, and snoopers coming round all the time. One fellow even told Peggy’s daughter she had to sell her plant stand and aspidistra or lose her benefit, because it was a luxury.’

  ‘I could tell you some tales of what ours have had to put up with,’ Freda said. ‘They even came here in case my sisters had hidden anything. Mam was quiet but she sent them off with a flea in their ears. Told them it was a pity our lads killed Germans in the war because the Germans sounded more decent than they were.’

  Cathy walked home, thinking how fortunate she was in comparison with others. Her husband and son both working, a job promised to Sarah, and even being able to bring money into the house herself with her waiting on job which she enjoyed.

  She had begun to save a little. At first she had a pot on the mantelpiece like her mother’s handleless teapot in which she had saved for so many years, but Cathy was not as strong-minded as her mother and as soon as the money mounted a little she took some of it for something which seemed absolutely essential at the time.

  ‘I’m hopeless, Mam,’ she told Sally. ‘If the money wasn’t there, I know I’d manage without it but while it is—’ she shrugged.

  ‘Then give it to me and I’ll save it for you,’ her mother said. ‘But I warn you, I won’t give it to you until Christmas or whatever you’re saving for.’

  Cathy was delighted with the arrangement and now every Saturday morning she gave her mother three shillings to save for her. Without telling anybody she also saved a shilling out of every four she received for a job, and so far she had resisted the temptation to use the money.

  I feel almost ashamed that everything is going so well for me, she thought. Dad seems so much better, and Greg and I have such a good life with the dances and everything. No trouble between him and John now either. She touched the wood of a doorpost superstitiously.

  When she reached home Sarah was back from school and told her excitedly that the Doyles now had a new house.

  ‘It’s not far from Alder Hey Hospital where their Martin is,’ Sarah said. ‘Maisie says it’s lovely. There’s a big garden, and a bathroom and lavvie upstairs, and three big bedrooms. The garden’s at the front and the back. They went to see it on Sunday and they’re moving on Saturday.’

  ‘I’m very glad,’ Cathy said. ‘Poor Mrs Doyle, it’s been a struggle for her trying to bring up a healthy family, but they
should all be better now. Imagine, a bathroom and lavatory upstairs.’

  Sarah went less often to the florist’s shop now, partly because she heeded her mother’s words about enjoying her last long holiday and partly because Elsie was still so moody.

  Twice she took the tram out to Dovecote where the Doyles’ new house was situated. She came home impressed and envious. ‘It’s lovely, Mam,’ she said. ‘You should see the gardens. They’ve got grass and flowers round it in the front, and Mr Doyle’s growing vegetables in the back.’

  ‘What’s the house like?’

  ‘It’s lovely too. There’s a big room with a bay window and cupboards and shelves in the corner. The grate isn’t like this. It’s black with an oven beside the fire, but it’s flat on top and there’s little lids that you lift out to put pans on, and a kind of rail thing over it where Mrs Doyle warms the nightdresses and other clothes. There’s a gas boiler there for boiling the clothes too, and Mrs Doyle said they dry in no time, hanging out in the back garden.’

  The first time Sarah had been unable to see the bathroom as Vera was having a bath, but after her second visit she came home ecstatic.

  ‘I had a bath, Mam,’ she said. ‘Maisie filled the bath right up and pinched some of their Vera’s bath salts for me. It was yummy.’

  ‘Did Mrs Doyle know?’ Cathy exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. She said it was about the first time this week the bath had been empty so I was in luck. She said their family had never been so clean, and their Vera’d wash herself away if she wasn’t careful.’

  ‘I suppose you’d like to live there?’

  ‘No. I’d like the bath and the garden but I wouldn’t like to be so far away from Grandma and Grandad,’ Sarah said.

  Cathy hugged her. ‘That’s why I wouldn’t like to move out there,’ she said. ‘And you’d be a long way away from Elsie’s shop too.’