She replaced the flap, smiled primly and nodded to Liam who was absently holding a pair of trousers in front of him, amazed by the young girl’s prolific verbal output. Within seconds the door had opened and Bridget stood with her arms crossed, frowning sternly in admonishment at Liam. ‘Why didn’t you tell me they were Harry Grimshaw’s, God bless his soul, may he rest in eternal peace, instead of leading me to believe that they were obtained by dishonest means?’ she demanded of her deeply perplexed husband. ‘And what are you doing throwing good quality clothing around on this filthy cart? Nellie must have paid a lot for all this and you’re treating it like a pile of rags. Poor Harry would be turning in his grave if he knew. Here girls, let’s get this lot sorted out before it finishes up in tatters,’ she commanded, easing Liam away from the cart as she began folding the clothes and handing them to the clearly amused girls.
‘He’s not in it yet,’ he explained, trying to diminish his isolation by offering a contribution.
‘Who’s not in what?’ Bridget asked distractedly, looking curiously at the badly worn grey flannel trousers lying awkwardly amongst the pristine suits.
‘Harry’s not in his grave,’ Liam said, jumping up the steps to push open the door for the heavily laden Pippin. ‘He’s not been buried yet.’
‘I think that it was just one of those figure of speeches, Mr Murphy,’ Pippin whispered reassuringly in the absence of any response from his wife.
‘Ah…, well,’ he mumbled and, holding his head erect, he stooped down and put the mat against the door to prevent it closing. Hastily following Pippin down the hall and into the living room, he spread a shawl across an armchair, ready to receive her pile of garments. Picking up the milk bottle and cosy-covered tea pot from the table, he removed them quickly to the kitchen. When he returned, he straightened the faded green cushions on the settee, moved the fraying jumper his wife had been repairing, and created a space for the clothes brought in by Amy. He carefully lifted the breadboard, balancing the pot of jam on the board alongside the half loaf and the carving knife and removed the newspaper that had been serving as a table cover.
‘Will you bring a clean cloth back in with you to wipe this table down, please,’ Bridget called after him as he disappeared for a second time into the kitchen. ‘We’ll need a clean sheet out of the top drawer before we start sorting these.’ Liam, basking in the thin glow of the vague approval implied by his wife’s enthusiasm, rinsed a cloth in the square, brown ceramic sink. Noticing some crumbs from the breadboard on the stone floor, he scooped them up with the cloth before rinsing it again and returning to the living room.
Bridget was holding up a dark grey woollen overcoat with a black astrakhan collar. ‘This stuff must have cost a pretty penny,’ she said, giving a low whistle of surprise. ‘How come she has given all these clothes to you, Liam?’ A hard edge of suspicion had crept into her voice. ‘She’s never been known to be on the soft side.’
‘Perhaps she’s lusting after my body,’ he replied flippantly, immediately regretting it as he saw his wife’s censorial glare. ‘I don’t know, love. She doesn’t give much away with that stony face of hers; I suppose she just felt sorry for me,’ he said despondently. ‘She said that I wasn’t doing very well.’
‘Well that didn’t take such a keen eye for business to notice that.’ Liam winced at the barbed response. ‘What else did she have to say for herself?’
‘She said not to take it to that Jacobs fellah in Cheetham Hill.’
‘Aye, she’s right there. He’d be delighted to take this lot off our hands for a few coppers.’ Bridget and the girls began to go through the clothes, inspecting the neat seams and the precise cuts, running their fingers over the material with gasps of admiration. Pippin shrugged into a silk-backed waistcoat and put her fingers in the pocket to check an imaginary fob watch. Amy heaved a black overcoat over her slim shoulders and they both howled with laughter as she paraded round the room, the coat trailing on the floor behind her, mimicking ‘His Washup the Mayor.’
Liam warmed to the task in hand when Bridget handed him a beautifully tailored black suit, instructing him to keep it because it was just his size. ‘You never know when it might come in,’ she said with an encouraging smile.
‘What are you going to do with all these, Mrs Murphy?’ Pippin asked. ‘You could put them into Isaacs’ Pawnbrokers. See what he’d give you for them.’
‘No, love. I’m not putting them into pawn. You’ll not raise the proper value that way,’ Bridget said, holding up a black jacket and a pair of pinstripe trousers. ‘But I think that I might just have a bit of an idea of what we might do. Liam, will you just nip into the front room and fetch your kit bag for me, please.’
When he returned, they had stacked Nellie Grimshaw’s clothes in two neat piles on the table. Bridget took the kit bag and emptied it onto the rag rug in front of the wooden fireplace in which tiled inserts glowed with bright coloured floral motifs. Flat-backed ceramic Dukes and Generals stared down watchfully as Bridget explained to the girls how she wanted the old clothing sorted into separate piles. Whilst they busied themselves, Liam took the jacket of the black suit that had been put aside for him and tried it on. ‘Look at this, girls. Your Uncle Liam’s going to look a real toff walking up Cross Lane in these,’ he boasted.
The others looked at him admiringly as he stood posing, until Amy delivered the final critique. ‘Well, you are a bit on the spare side for it at the moment,’ she said, and Liam tried to shrug the coat’s slightly too generous proportions further on to his thin frame. ‘Oh, I’m sorry Mr Murphy,’ she added hastily as she saw Liam’s brief moment of cheerfulness crumble away. ‘You do look a bit of a sad sack though. You’d do fine for walking in front of a hearse.’
‘Amy Benson,’ Bridget laughed. ‘You do come up with some things. I don’t think things have got that bad yet. Here, start unravelling this,’ she said, handing Amy an old brown jumper. ‘I’ve unpicked the end to start it off. Liam, will you roll it into balls as she undoes it. Here you are, Pippin. Will you do the same with this one, please, and I’ll start rolling shortly.’
She held up a grey flannel jacket, inspecting it carefully, and held them against the trousers that he had brought in that morning. ‘I thought so. Not a bad match. I’ll pop round to Florrie James in Tatton Street and she’ll do a proper invisible mend for me. A good clean up and pressing and it will look good as new.’
‘Sorry, love. You’ve lost me here,’ Liam said. ‘Why are we cleaning up old rags to take them in to Jacobs’? That’s his job.’
‘That’s as maybe but they’re not going there. Nellie Grimshaw was right. Her things are too good for that old rogue. But she has also made me think a bit about the other stuff that you bring in and whether or not we could do something different with it. I am going to take it all to the Flat Iron Market on Friday and catch the people going into Manchester,’ Bridget answered. ‘I’ll call round and see your Mother afterwards, Pippin. I’ll need a big favour off her. How are you two girls fixed for giving me a hand this week?’
‘I’m ok,’ Pippin said enthusiastically. ‘We’re on our summer holidays now.’
‘I’m working mornings at the mill this week but, other than that, I should be alright,’ Amy said.
‘Right. I’ll need all the help that I can get. Put some coal on the fire, love, and open the damper. I’ll put some of these things on the rack when I’ve washed them.’
Liam was fiddling abstractedly with the pockets in the jacket whilst listening to his wife’s plan unfolding. With a puzzled look on his face he suddenly withdrew his hand and stared at the small painting that had been in the inside pocket. His frown deepened as he looked closely at the finely painted picture of a young man standing alongside an elegant, lustrously beautiful woman of a similar age. ‘What the…, I don’t understand this. It looks like…, but it can’t be. Look Brig; see what you think. It’s got me beaten.’
He passed the picture to his wife who studied it carefully
, a perplexed frown crossing her forehead as she noted the detail. ‘Well how many more surprises are you going to come up with today?’ she demanded. ‘Of course it is you. With that silly, smug smirk who else could it be? And who’s this girl that you are with? You started going out with me when you were eighteen. Oh, don’t just stand there with your mouth open, spluttering. Give me a hand to carry these into the cellar.’
Bursting into the living room, Bridget carried over her arm a basket overflowing with groceries packed in white, brown and blue paper bags. In her other hand, she held the tightly wound neck of a hessian sack from which spilled, when she placed it with a gasp of relief onto the floor, potatoes, carrots, a swede, turnips, a cabbage and onions. Jumping out of the chair, where he had been enjoying a pint mug of tea and the Daily Herald after another not very productive day, Liam took the heavy basket off her arm and she groaned with relief as she straightened her aching limb.
He became almost incoherent in his astonishment as he fluttered between shepherding his wife into the chair, helping her off with her shawl, relocating with his foot a cauliflower that had rolled against the chair, and putting the basket on the table. ‘What the…? Where the…? Are you…?’ he stuttered before settling for the more comprehensible ‘Shall I get you a cup of tea, love? I’ve just brewed a pot.’
She nodded her head as she unpinned her bonnet and bent forward to unlace her black leather shoes before relaxing back in the chair with her eyes closed. She had worked relentlessly for the last few days along with Pippin, Amy and Pippin’s mother, Laura. They had sorted through the pile of old clothes that Liam had collected, unpicked a badly torn jacket to provide material to repair three others and make colliers’ patches for the knees of four pair of trousers. They had created two, almost colour-matched, suits with waistcoats and had unravelled a number of bedraggled jumpers, knitting them back into fashionable tops for girls with bright-coloured ribbon interwoven through the necks, pullovers for boys, socks, hats and swimsuits. For three days they had chatted and giggled, dissecting the lives of their neighbours as they stitched, knitted and washed. They had screamed with laughter when Amy told them of the girl at the mill who rarely said much but had suddenly asked them if they had ever had it on a train. And the newlywed who had told them that she had been sick when she saw her husband undressed and had gone back home to her mother’s. Laura had initially feigned shock at this revelation of the girls’ maturity but then had said, ‘Well, I suppose that if you are old enough to work, you are old enough to understand these things.’
The washing line in the backyard had been almost constantly full of drying clothes and, throughout the week, the house had reeked of carbolic-laden steam. Liam had been amazed when, the previous evening, the freshly laundered clothes had been collated together with those from Nellie Grimshaw. Stack upon stack of bright wearable garments had been assembled in the parlour – “the quiet room,” as Bridget often called it – at the front of the house. Pippin had brought her father’s kit bag to be used with Liam’s and the small items had been placed carefully in these. The rest were put into pillow cases or wrapped in sheets and, at six o’clock that morning, they had piled up the cart and set off for the Flat Iron Market. Along the way, they had been joined by Laura and Pippin who brought with them a folding trestle table borrowed from the Assembly Rooms where Laura was working as the caretaker.
Liam had helped to unload the bags and then watched for a while as, excitedly discussing the positioning of every item, they had laid their goods out painstakingly on the table and onto sheets of newspaper spread on the pavement. They had hung suits from a string that Liam fastened, under Bridget’s direction, between a rusting nail in the wall and a cast-iron drain pipe and Laura, almost magically, had produced a jar and some flowers from her shopping basket.
Despatched to get some water for the flowers and cups of tea for refreshment, Liam had been astonished and proud to see, on his return, the professional stall that they had created. It had stood in stark contrast to the uninspiring presentations laid out on boxes, and even the pavement, around them. The gloomy traders nearby, sitting on stools in the middle of their offerings of clothing, shoes or domestic utensils, their hands cupped over chipped mugs of tea, were staring morosely at the three noisily enthusiastic females as they worked about their stall. Liam had handed over the water and the cups, wished them all good luck, made arrangements as to where he could be found if he was needed later with his cart, and then left to begin his round. He had felt distinctly apprehensive at the anticipation of how he would deal with their disappointment if they didn’t achieve at least some small measure of success.
Now it seemed as if their efforts had met with some degree of success, judging from the sack of vegetables. He watched the cup carefully, ensuring that he stirred in the correct amount of milk to produce the requisite colour, and wondered if there might be some sausages in the bag. She must, in fact, have had quite a reasonable day to be bringing so much stuff back. Perhaps they would be able to pay the rent from last week as well as this week. He hated the hiding upstairs, frightened of coughing, and hoping that they had left enough time for the rent collector to have cleared the street before they could resume their normal activity. He knew that if they left it for another week, the rent man would come at a different time to try to catch them in. He detested these cat and mouse deceptions.
Bridget’s head was resting on the cream antimacassar over the back of the chair, her eyes were closed and strands of unkempt black hair hung over the small furrows on her brow. Liam put the cup down on the table then retrieved her shoes from where she had kicked them. Her small feet glowed with the evidence of the heavy demands of her long day and the bottom of her dark skirt was covered in the grey dust of the Salford roads. She still had a lacy woollen shawl round her shoulders but she had undone the collar of her white cotton blouse. Her hands were resting on the arms of the chair and he placed her shoes at the side of the fender then gently placed his hands over hers. He felt the familiar stab of guilty pain as he looked at her pale, drawn face; the vibrant energy that normally throbbed within her slight frame extinguished.
He started as he saw one eyelid flick open revealing the glowing brown eye staring at him. ‘Are you alright, love?’ he asked solicitously. ‘You look absolutely whacked.’ She nodded her head briefly. ‘You should have sent one of the girls to come and get me,’ he added. ‘Here, I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ She opened her other eye and reached out her hand. He put the cup into her waiting fingers and she sipped the hot tea gratefully. Her eyes followed him as he gently rubbed her feet and ankles, easing away the throbbing discomfort. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have done all this, Brig. You’re going to make yourself ill.’ She stared solemnly at him as he took the cup off her and stroked the hair on her forehead to one side. ‘I mean…, you know…, it’s fantastic – all this food and everything. But you’ve got to look after yourself now; with the little ‘un coming along and all that,’ he added, frowning as he worried about her condition.
Liam almost missed the smile which, at first, just flickered across her lips then erupted into a dazzling grin, matching in energy and brightness her now wide open eyes. He lent back slightly to better appreciate this transformation. Reaching her hand into her pocket, Bridget withdrew her large, brown leather purse. Undoing the clasp, she upturned it, pouring out the contents. Liam watched astonished as silver and copper coins clinked into a pile on her lap and, when she shook her purse, tightly folded notes fell out and covered the coins. Bridget was grinning like an excited child and she jiggled her knees to make the money bounce noisily. ‘There’s over twenty pounds there, Li, and that’s after giving something to the girls for all their efforts. Isn’t that brilliant? I’ve got all this stuff and I’ve been to the butchers and got some sausages for tonight and a nice piece of skirt for tomorrow.’ She ran her fingers through the coins, picked them up and dropped them jingling back into her lap. ‘We sold almost everything, sweetheart. There was
only a pullover and a woollen swimming costume left and I gave them to the miserable old divil on the next stall to try to cheer him up. Haven’t we done well?’
Liam felt the energy draining from his body. The enthusiastic words of support that he sought were hard to pick out of his confused mind. He turned away from her and moved her shoes pointlessly to the end of the fender. ‘Aye, love. You’ve done very well, the four of you,’ he finally managed to stutter.
Bridget grabbed his arm and pulled him back towards her, turning his face with her other hand, trying to catch his averted eyes. ‘Liam, aren’t you pleased? We’ve got a bit of money at last.’
‘That’s right. No tripe tonight, thanks to you.’
‘And no tripe tomorrow, either. Or maybe even the day after. Is that not a good thing?’ she asked.
He turned his face away from her and stood up. ‘I suppose it is, but what sort of a man is it that needs his wife to be putting meat on the table,’ he said bitterly.
She jumped out of the chair, scattering the coins and notes on to the floor, sprang round in front of him and grabbed his shirt in her slim, but powerful, hands. Her eyes were flashing with anger. ‘Now you just listen to me, you wittering eejit. Times have changed since you joined up. It’s the women who kept things going whilst you were away and we’re not going back to being dogsbodies now that you are home again. You did what you had to do and we played our part at home.’ She pulled him towards her so that their noses almost touched and her brown eyes searched his soul. ‘You just understand this, Liam Murphy. I married you for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health but, God be my witness, I never said anything in my vows about sitting at home like a useless wifey, waiting for my lord and master to bring home food for the table. We’re in this together and we’ve earned this money between us.’
Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel) Page 10
