At first he’d tried going on the wagon. Emma had to give him that, and from all accounts he’d given Annie the boot. He appeared at her front door one fine morning, not long after the coal episode, a big bunch of flowers in his hand and so clean that Emma could well believe that he’d used the scrubbing brush. He’d lost some of that bloated look as well, and a glimmer of the old Harold smiled at Emma when she opened the door. The Harold she’d fallen in love with when he’d returned from India after three years as a private in the British Army, where the sun had burnt his already dark complexion a deep, attractive bronze, teeth gleaming white in a face which glowed with health. At that time Emma’s heart had done a dozen somersaults and she’d been smitten. It had been in India, however, where he’d become addicted, because as he said, ‘it was as hot as hell over there and the only thing to do in that heat was to hit the bottle’.
When Emma left him he vowed to get her back. To do whatever it took, even, he’d thought in desperation, going down on bended knee. He’d almost tried it once, but thankfully hadn’t, at least saving himself that embarrassment. But even his gift of the gab couldn’t change Emma’s mind. She was adamant. She didn’t want him back and no amount of cajoling or conniving was going to do the trick.
Harold was flummoxed for a while, until the thirst got him. Then he began to turn up at number five, drunk, nasty and threatening. The last time Emma had let him in the house (big mistake), and only managed to get him out by threatening him with the poker. He’d sworn at her something terrible. Thank goodness the children were in bed, she’d thought. Then he began to make a ritual of every Friday night. Never any other night, just Friday, turning up at the house, full as a boot and demanding that she stop playing the fool and that they should get back together.
When it became obvious that this was going to be a regular Friday night occurrence Emma made sure that by seven o’clock, the time when Harold appeared, on the dot, she and the children would be out!
Then she got to thinking. Why should she have to leave the house just because her drunken sod of a husband had taken it into his head to terrorize her and the children? She’d be damned if she would, after she’d spent another Friday night at her mother’s. She was fed up having to rush home after a hard day at the mill, and all the paraphernalia of tea, for they would all be starving. Packing to go to her mother’s, then trailing to the train station, all of them tired and irritable and arriving in Accrington at about ten, every one of them exhausted.
They’d stay home and bugger Harold!
The children were in their nightwear ready for bed a little before seven. Emma drew the curtains and sat them on the kitchen table. Then they waited! At the stroke of seven they heard the faint chime of the Mercer clock on the Square. The chimes had only just finished when there was the sound of clogs on the cobbles in the back lane
‘Not a muff,’ she whispered. The clogs stopped at the back gate. The latch lifted and the door was flung back with such force that it thudded with a loud bang against the wall. They all flinched.
‘Sh…sh….’ Emma mouthed.
The steel runners of clogs rang loud on the cobbles in the back yard, coming closer and closer and then stopped. A fist thumped heavily on the back door! Janey let out a small cry, which she quickly stifled when she saw her mother’s look.
‘Open up, open up, I know you’re in there. Open t’door, Emma.’
She had never opened that door to him again, but he’d continued this Friday ritual for a few more weeks.
‘As slow as a wet week,’ Emma said to her mother with ironic humour. Everyone knew that Harold was hardly that, but he finally got the message and left her alone.
CHAPTER THREE
Emma Hammond lived for her children, literally, from when she rose in the morning, and donned her working clothes for the mill, until she went to bed at night. After the split with Harold she never looked at another man. Sometimes she would mutter, ‘Can’t abide ‘em.’.
Emma was not overtly affectionate and was, in fact, quite reserved. Nonetheless, her love for her children was obvious: making sure they were well-fed, warmly dressed in winters (have you your liberty bodice on?), that they were clean. She worried about them non-stop. She was the hub of their existence.
Leah Hammond, her daughter, never felt that a man was needed in their house. Only occasionally did she feel a pang of envy when she saw Kitty O’Shea, her friend who lived next door, sitting cuddled on her mother’s lap or walking with her father, hand in hand, up Glebe Street. At other times, however, they would hear Shamus singing loudly, his voice slurred with drink, at which times Emma would jerk her head in the direction of next door.
‘Thank goodness we don’t have to put up with that’.
‘Do I have to go, Mam? I hate going there.’
‘Now, Leah, don’t carry on. I wouldn’t ask you if I was feeling up to it.’ Emma Hammond eased herself up and leaned weakly against the pillows, pulling the threadbare blanket further around her.
She regarded her eldest daughter with heavy eyes. She’d been feeling poorly for a week now and had collapsed into bed yesterday, which had been Thursday, after she’d finished at the mill.
It was now Sunday afternoon and she hadn’t had the strength to stir since then. God only knew what the house looked like, or what the children had been feeding themselves. She knew there’d been a few bits of leftovers: bread, jam, dripping, but food must be getting low, although none of them had said anything.
Leah stood uncertainly just inside the bedroom. She was a thin girl, of medium height, with delicate features. Her auburn hair was pulled back into two tight plaits, done with great effort by Emma as she lay in bed, and her dark blue eyes were now shining with the hint of tears. Don’t tell me she’s going to cry, Emma thought in exasperation.
‘Now stop that Leah. Your Dad won’t eat you.’
Leah sniffed. ‘I know that, but why couldn’t Darkie go? He’s not a bit scared of me Dad.’
She stared at her mother defiantly. Why was it always her that had to cadge money?
Emma had a coughing fit for a minute and Leah looked at her anxiously. She was worried about her Mam, but Darkie should do a bit more. Instead it was always her and Janey who had to look after the house, and make the meals whilst her Mam was sick.
‘Why can’t Darkie go?’ Leah said again.
Emma raised her eyes to the ceiling. Give me patience God, she thought, because it was growing very thin.
‘Now you know Darkie’s on the late shift and he won’t be home till later and I need the money. I haven’t got two half pennies to rub together, and well you know. I haven’t even got a penny for the gas and if you don’t want to sit in the dark you’d better go and see your Dad.’
Leah sighed. ‘All right then, but I just wish he’d give you the money when he should. I hate that place where he lives and it’s that dark. They never seem to draw the curtains back and Agnes Smithson scares me.’
‘Ee, don’t worry about Agnes,’ Emma said. ‘She’s not a bad sort. Now all you have to do is knock on the door and ask your Dad if he can let you have a few shillings. He owes me that, anyway. It’s like getting blood out of a stone with him. Now go on, Leah and take Janey with you and make sure you get back before dark.’
Emma ignored Leah’s pleading look and turned over with a sigh of relief. Leah was hard work sometimes! She opened one eye to see Leah trailing slowly out of the room, as though she’s going to be hanged, Emma thought.
Emma heard her close the door and walk heavily down the stairs. She began to drift off to sleep thinking it would be next week before Leah got to Waters Street if she didn’t get a move on.
Janey was sitting on the settee in the living room when Leah finally made her way downstairs. Unlike Leah, who was extremely thin, Janey was quite buxom as well as tall. She had her feet up and was reading one of her numerous film star magazines, an obsession of hers.
‘Look at this,’ she said as Leah came in. ‘John Gilbert. Doesn’t he loo
k gorgeous?’ She held up the photo in the magazine. Leah wasn’t really interested. She liked the silent pictures, but she wasn’t as obsessed with them as Janey.
‘Hm…He is handsome. Look, Janey, we’ve got to go to me Dad’s so you’d better put that stuff down.’
‘You can go on your own, can’t you?’
‘No I can’t. Mam said you have to come with me.’
Janey looked sulky. She flung the magazine down and jumped off the settee in a huff and followed Leah out of the house.
Glebe Street had not changed in the ten years since Emma stood on the ladder and created such a commotion. Leah and Janey walked quickly up the street to the top where the Co-op now stood, some of it built by Harold and his cronies, all those years ago. It was bitterly cold.
‘We should have put our coats on,’ Leah said, shivering. Janey nodded, although she didn’t seem to feel the cold as much as Leah did.
‘More meat on her bones,’ Emma always said.
Waters Street, where their Dad lived was only a ten-minute walk from Glebe Street, and yet in those ten minutes they travelled through a social hierarchy of at least four levels, Waters Street being the lowest.
After Emma left Harold he’d shown very little interest in his children, especially when the booze really got him. Emma was glad of this. She didn’t want them seeing that side of Harold, but sometimes they were forced into his company, when she was desperate for the money and too sick to go and get it herself.
Emma’s feelings towards Harold were naturally reflected in her daughters. They had an aversion to him, although Emma had never indulged the natural tendency to criticize. She hadn’t needed to, really. The girls had made up their own minds. Darkie was not quite so adamant in his denunciations and Emma thought him particularly tolerant about his father. Sometimes she even felt a little peeved about it, especially when he’d admitted (once only, after seeing Emma’s face) that he felt a bit sorry for him. Men were all the same, Emma thought in exasperation, stuck together like glue, whatever the situation.
She couldn’t complain about Darkie though. He was a good lad. He worked hard down the pit, although there again, he’d followed in Harold’s footsteps. She hadn’t wanted him to work in the mines, but Darkie had been adamant because the money was good.
It was Leah who showed the most hostility to Harold and these feelings were growing stronger as she walked with Janey towards his house. How she hated having to cadge money out of him. As her mother always said, it was like getting blood out of a stone because he’d um and ah for a good five minutes before digging it out of his pocket as though digging one of his coal seams.
They crossed the Square with the huge Mercer Clock in the centre. A monstrosity with a large plaque on it that no one, not even blind Larry, could miss, extolling the virtues of John Mercer, who had invented the mercerization of cotton. Leah glanced at a huge poster pasted on the side. Lord Kitchener glared down on her with his fierce moustache and his finger pointing, at her it seemed. ‘Your country needs you’ it said underneath.
Leah was all too aware of her mother’s fear that Darkie would soon enlist. She’d been in tears when she thought of Darkie going to war. It couldn’t happen, could it? He might get killed! She couldn’t bear to think about it.
It began to rain, spitting at first and then drizzling. A few women, shawls wrapped tightly around their heads, then swathed around their bodies and tied at the back, hurried with heads down, intent on getting home. Leah and Janey began to run. Then the terrace house loomed dingy and gray in front of them. Leah knocked tentatively on the dirty knocker. There was no answer and the door remained firmly closed.
‘Knock a bit louder, our Leah,’ Janey said in exasperation.
‘You do it,’ Leah said angrily. She stood back as Janey knocked, much louder this time. There was a heavy tread from within. The door opened slowly and the lined, although not unpleasant face of Agnes Smithson, peered round. Seeing the girls she smiled at them with broken and stained teeth. Leah grimaced.
‘Ee, if it isn’t Leah and Janey. Well I never. It’s a long time since we’ve seen you two lasses. I suppose you want your Dad?’ Agnes said. Before they could reply she continued, leaving the door open for them to follow. ‘Come in, come in. I’ll get him. He’s out the back.’ She disappeared into the next room.
‘I don’t want to go in,’ Leah said.
‘We’ll have to.’ Janey stepped into the room, which was very dim. Heavy curtains covered the windows and it took them a few minutes to see in the faint light.
‘What’s that?’ Leah pointed to the table.
‘It’s a coffin,’ Janey said in a horrified whisper. The coffin was open. Leah stood petrified. She’d never seen a dead body or even a coffin before, and from where she was standing she could just see the tip of a bony nose protruding from it.
Without a sound both girls turned and raced out of the house. They ran up the street as though chased by Lucifer and his henchmen, and didn’t stop until they’d turned the corner. Leah stood panting, leaning against the wall, her face as white as the corpse in the coffin. ‘That’s it,’ she said, heaving and wheezing. ‘That’s the last time I’m ever going back there.’
Janey stood next to Leah, breathing just as heavily. ‘But we didn’t get the money.’
‘I don’t care,’ Leah said, by this time a bit calmer. ‘I’m not going back.’
‘What’ll we do then?’
Leah stood for a moment, thinking. ‘Didn’t we say we’d play cricket with Dora today?’ she said. Janey nodded.
‘Right, we’ll go and see her and ask her mother if she can lend us the money. She’s nice is Mrs. Baker.’
***********
Summer had come and gone with astounding swiftness. It had been a warm summer, long hazy days of blue skies and balmy breezes. An idyllic summer, had it not been for the war. Suddenly, however, the season broke, and there was not even a gradual slide into winter. An icy blast of cold air straight from the Arctic descended on Harwood.
As the gray light filtered through the cheap curtains of the upstairs bedroom window of number five Glebe Street, it threw into silhouette the double bed in the centre of the room. This was the only piece of furniture in it, except for a wood chair over which clothes had been flung haphazardly. There were three people in the bed. Cheap, faded oil cloth covered the floor and there was a coloured, although faded clippy mat next to the bed. It was a bare, cold looking room with only a rather garish water-colour of the Pennines on the wall.
‘This room is really horrible,’ Leah would say to Emma, who always gave the same reply.
‘Well, you can’t see owt when you’re asleep, so don’t worry about it.’
The house, like most of the others in Harwood, was a ‘two up and two down’. There was no bathroom and no inside toilet. If you wanted a ‘good wash’ you used the slop-stone in the scullery, or, luxury, in winter a tin bath full of hot water in front of the fire. The toilet (the long drop) was at the bottom of the yard. If you were lucky you might see squares of neatly cut newspaper, hung on a nail on the inside of the door.
Emma had been dozing, knowing she must get up soon but was loath to leave the warmth of the bed. It was always the same thing her mind dwelt on lately - that Darkie would join up. She knew she couldn’t dissuade him. He didn’t talk about it much, but whenever she mentioned it he’d get that closed look on his face. He was stubborn, like she was! Most people were fed up of the war and a kind of resigned lethargy had replaced the initial fanatical enthusiasm. It seemed that it would never end. So many dead, missing and maimed!
Leah lay in bed between her mother and Janey, listening to the iron runners of clogs ringing on the cobbles outside the window. The first clang always made her wake with a start. It brought back so vividly those same sounds she’d heard all those years ago when her father had made his Friday night calls. She’d never forget that time, wondered if her mother had any idea how terrified they’d been. Even now, any loud noise
made her heart beat faster. Only yesterday Paddy O’Shea, from next door, had nearly frightened her to death when he’d come up behind her and banged a pair of symbols he’d got from someone in the Salvation Army. She’d flown at him and boxed his ears in her anger, even though he was a good two inches taller.
‘You silly sod,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t do that again.’
‘All right, all right.’ Paddy had been taken aback by the normally cool Leah flying at him like a tiger. He’d only meant it in a bit of fun.
Amazingly though, none of the Hammond children seemed to have suffered from the separation. Separated women were often denigrated. You didn’t leave your man and you either liked married life or ‘lumped’ it. But not Emma, in fact she was rather proud of the way she’d got ‘that lot out’. The children never tired of her endless anecdotes and she had the knack of turning even tragic incidents into a comedy. How many times had she told them of Harold in the throes of the D.Ts? She’d lost count.
‘What a performance,’ she would begin her story. ‘Up and down the stairs, he was, like a pissing cricket. He was a Catholic, you know, was your Dad and sometimes he’d frighten me to death because he’d jump out of bed like a bullet. In the middle of the night, mind you, run down t’stairs, open the front door and say, ‘hello, Father, come in, Father.’ Then he’d close the door and run back up the stairs and jump into bed. This wouldn’t happen once! Oh no, he’d be doing it all night – up and down, up and down. You can imagine next morning he’d be worn out. And so was I.’ Emma would laugh as she told the story and wipe her eyes with her pinny at the end of it.
What she’d never talk about, and never would, was the other side of the separation: the heartache, the soul wrenching torment, and constant misery, living in the hope that the situation would improve. Then the shattering of her married life by Harold’s philandering, the devastation she’d felt. No, she’d never reveal that side of it!
The Loom Page 2
