by Marie Joseph
Father O’Leary unfastened his long black cloak and draped it over the back of a stand-chair. Annie’s mother had had her roots deep in Methodism but she had always made him welcome, listened to him gravely, then sent him on his way feeling that somehow she had been too clever for him. Her husband now … well, Jack Clancy was another matter.
‘No good coming here for a hand-out, Father,’ he’d say. ‘And no good trying to persuade me to come to Confession. I’d keep you too long. There’s not much short of murder that I haven’t done!’
Putting his fingers together like the steeple of a church, the old man smiled on Annie.
‘A warm drink wouldn’t come amiss, and by the look of you, my child, you’ll be glad of one yourself.’
He was taken aback when Annie suddenly dropped to her knees by his chair. ‘You’ve come in answer to a prayer, Father.’
‘Indeed, my child?’
What a pathetic sight she was in that man’s cap, bundled up in clothes not fit for the rag bag.
‘Take your time, Annie,’ he said, removing his glasses which had steamed up and no wonder with the room like a Turkish bath.
‘I don’t know how to say it, Father.’ She had her head down, speaking so quietly he couldn’t hear a word she said.
‘Speak up, child. There’s nothing so bad that a good confession can’t put right.’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing, Father …’
‘I’m listening. Take a deep breath, and take your time.’
‘There was a man, Father.’
The priest drew in a deep breath. Surely …? Oh, no! He had often grieved for the life this young girl led since her mother’s untimely end. It was all wrong that young Annie Clancy should be bringing up a family of boys, taking in washing to keep them fed. Never leaving the house as far as he knew except to lug a heavy clothes basket round the streets. And look at her … just look at her … He shook his head. For a minute he’d thought the worst.
‘This man. Did he say something to frighten you, my child?’
Annie’s head drooped even lower. ‘He came as a lodger, Father, back last September. Our dad told him he could stop here. He was a sailor.’
Light was beginning to dawn. ‘And now he’s sailed away on a troop ship?’
‘No! He doesn’t … he didn’t work that kind of ship.’ Her voice was ragged with shame. ‘I’m going to have a baby! An’ nothing will shift it. Nothing!’
Father O’Leary closed his eyes, but not in prayer. What he was thinking at that moment wasn’t fit for anybody’s ears, let alone God’s. The blind panic in Annie’s eyes shocked him into an anger so great he could feel himself beginning to tremble with the force of it.
‘To even think of trying to get rid of a baby is a mortal sin, child,’ he said automatically, in the instant before his natural compassion took over. ‘Are you sure?’ His mind groped for an explanation. ‘You can’t have a baby with just kissing a man, Annie.’ He put the glasses on again and coughed. ‘Did your mother not talk to you before she … before she died?’
‘I did more than kissing, Father.’
Annie stood up, and as she did so the shawl dropped away. The kettle came to a spluttering boil and she leaned over to lift it from the trivet.
It was true … Father O’Leary glimpsed the thickening of her normally slender waist, saw the big safety-pin bridging the placket of the brown skirt. He covered his eyes with a hand at the terrible pity of it.
‘Have you seen the doctor, child?’
‘Oh, no! Don’t tell me to see the doctor, Father. The last time we had him was when our Eddie had rheumatic fever bad, an’ it took more than a year to pay him off.’ Tears spilled from her eyes. ‘I don’t need no doctor. I just need to be told what to do. I don’t know what to do. I ask meself every minute what to do …’
‘Kneel down, child.’
Over the bowed head and shaking shoulders, over the sounds of her sobbing, the priest said a prayer. It was a prayer vague in content, asking for forgiveness for Annie’s sins, unproductive even to the old man’s own ears.
‘You must hand over your worry to God. He alone can show you the way,’ he finished, then reached for his cloak. ‘In the meantime there must be some woman, some good woman you can talk to …’ His voice tailed away. He should have been prepared for what this child had been trying to tell him – it was a confession he’d listened to often enough, but she had knocked him for six. He turned at the door. For a man to take advantage of young Annie Clancy, little scarecrow that she was in her bunchy ragged clothes, was an obscenity. It was a spitting on the face of God.
‘No, don’t go doing anything foolish. Will you promise me that?’
Annie bowed her head. A dreadful certainty was dawning on her. Father O’Leary hadn’t known what to do, either. She’d embarrassed him by what she’d told him. He hadn’t been able to get out of the house quick enough. His face was as red as if he’d had it boiled up in a pudding cloth.
Automatically, with a quiet desperation, she reversed a vest and a pair of bloomers on the clothes maiden. Giving their other sides a chance to dry.
It was an almost primeval rage that had flushed Father O’Leary’s face to scarlet. He was known in that part of Lancashire as a man of God, with a wealth of charity and forgiveness in him, a priest first but a man a close second. In his young days, before he left Ireland, he had worked on and off as a fairground boxer, taking on anyone for the price of a meal and a pint of good milk stout. He’d had it in him to turn professional, they’d said, and that might have been if he hadn’t killed a man one day, felling him with a single blow to the head.
It was not his fault. The man could have died at any given minute from a clot of blood just waiting to be dislodged. It was all part of the game, they said. And let him bear in mind that when he turned professional things would be more ordered, with doctors examining a man before he stepped into the ring. He was a potential champion, they swore. Altogether in the world light-heavyweight class.
Father O’Leary walked slowly down the sloping street, clenching and unclenching his hands, feeling that same strength in them from so long ago. From that time to this he had never once lifted a hand in anger, but this day … He stopped and stared down at his hands, balling them into fists.
If Laurie Yates, sailing a far distant sea at that very moment, had been able to see the expression on the old priest’s face, he would have wished himself ten fathoms deep.
It was later that afternoon when Father O’Leary came up with an idea and acted upon it. Poor little Annie Clancy had been wrong about it being too windy for snow. It was coming down like a great white curtain, soundlessly, from a leaden sky. Snow meant chilblains on the priest’s knobbly toes and fingers, swelling them up into a purple agony. His boots leaked, and the woollen mittens on his hands seemed to soak up the wet before he’d gone ten yards.
To get where he was going he had to pass the Clancy house, and to his shame he was glad to see the door closed and no sign of Annie. He walked on down the street, being careful where he put his feet, knowing it wouldn’t be long before her young brothers slurred and slithered down this stretch of flags, turning them into a lethal slide as smooth as glass.
He was passing the house with the old lady in bed by the window now. He couldn’t see her, but he knew that behind the cream lace curtain she was more than likely watching him. So he raised his black hat. To be polite.
At the bottom of this street, he had remembered or been nudged by God to remember, lived a homely widow with her son and his wife, a nondescript young woman who was disappointingly childless after three years wed. Week after week the daughter-in-law came to Mass, praying for a miracle that never happened. Kneeling there in church with her poor sore hands clasped in supplication, putting a strain on the relationship between her and her mother-in-law, so the priest had heard. So maybe Annie’s baby would altogether be a blessing in disguise.
Father O’Leary stepped as gingerly as if he walked
on hot coals and not a snowy pavement to the bottom house, lifted the iron knocker and knocked three times on the door.
‘Yon Catholic priest’s been down the street twice. Once this morning and once this afternoon. When Nextdoor came in to see to the fire she told me she’d seen him going in young Annie’s house.’ Grandma Morris submitted to being helped out of bed to sit on the commode, while Edith gave her mattress a good pawing over before she got the tea. ‘I nearly knocked on the window the second time, and asked him to come in for a bit. He looked frozen to the marrow.’
Edith was bone weary. She had stood outside three mills that morning before the fourth one had let her take the place of an absentee. Working as a ‘sick’ weaver was a thankless job. You just got used to one lot of looms then the regular weaver came back and you were out. But what else could she do when there were days when her mother couldn’t be left, when her breathing was so bad Edith kept the steam kettle on the go all day.
She gritted her teeth, waiting for her mother to finish, then helped her back into bed, feeling herself almost shaking with self-pity and a rarely acknowledged bitterness.
‘Would you like lentil sausages for your tea, Mother?’
In her mind Edith was already mixing the ready boiled lentils with mashed potatoes and onion, binding them together with an egg before forming into sausages and frying in hot fat. She was like that, one step ahead all the time, never wasting a minute. Meeting herself coming backwards, as she often said.
‘I don’t mind what I have. I could understand the Father coming once, but why twice?’
Edith’s halo slipped a bit. ‘I don’t care why he went twice. I don’t care if he came down the street seven times. I just hope he can do something for that poor young lass.’
Edith was filled with an emotion she couldn’t put a name to. She wanted to say: ‘I’m going through the change, Mother, and you’ve never even noticed. I’ll never have a baby now.’ She wanted to blame her mother for keeping her tied to her apron strings, for stopping her marrying, even though nobody had ever asked her.
‘I’m going round to see Annie when we’ve had our tea,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell her I’ll make her baby everything it needs – its whole layette. I’ll make it a christening robe and a bonnet. I’ll line a clothes-basket with flowered stuff and I’ll knit it a blanket.’ She blinked hard to stop the tears falling. ‘I’ll be its godmother if she likes and I won’t listen when the tongues start wagging. There’ll be no condemnation coming from me!’
She jumped up to go through to the back, shaking her small head from side to side as if to emphasise her determination to stand by Annie. After no more than a minute she reappeared.
‘How do I know how I would have behaved? I can’t set myself up as judge and jury, can I, when nobody ever tempted me! When no man has ever tried to lay a finger on me! How do I know what I’d have done?’
Grandma Morris sank back exhausted on her pillows. Wondering what she’d said to bring all that on. But seeing the awful sadness in it, just the same.
Father O’Leary was so relieved to get inside out of the cold he made straight for Mrs Greenhalgh’s fire, failing to see Jack Clancy, still in his pit dirt, scarpering up the stairs.
‘I’ve come on an errand of mercy,’ he said. ‘Knowing you’ve never been known to pass by on the other side.’
‘If it’s in my power, Father.’ Jack’s jacket and waistcoat were there, in full view of the priest, with his boots set side by side under the table, but the saintly old codger would think they were her son’s. ‘We only pass this way but once.’ Florrie Greenhalgh put on the pious expression she saved for going to Mass.
Father O’Leary leaned forward. Best to come straight to the point. ‘Young Annie Clancy’s got herself into trouble.’ He bowed his head. ‘With a man. I’m feared she’s going to have a baby.’ His head jerked up. ‘What was that?’
‘Nothing, Father.’ Florrie had to think quick. ‘Sometimes the next door’s cat gets in and knocks things over.’ She hoped she didn’t look as alarmed as she felt. ‘Are you sure you’re right? Begging your pardon, Father, but young Annie’s always been a bit fanciful. Is it not some fairy-tale she’s made up, thinking to shock?’
‘I pray you’re right, Mrs Greenhalgh. I pray you’re right altogether.’ Father O’Leary gathered his cloak round him. He’d forgotten how enormously fat this good woman was, how her eyes kept disappearing into little cushions of flesh. Homely. Motherly. Just what was needed. ‘If you could go and have a straight little talk with her.’ He reached for his hat. ‘It’s a mother she needs at the moment … but alas …’
‘I’ll go up right this minute, Father. I’ll just get me shawl.’
‘God bless you,’ Father O’Leary muttered, stepping out into a raging snowstorm, his hands and feet already numb. ‘May His blessing shine upon you.’
He had hardly turned the corner at the top of the street when Jack Clancy hurtled out of the bottom house, followed by Mrs Greenhalgh, puffing to keep up with him, but leaving enough breath to yell at the top of her voice: ‘You lay a finger on that lass, and I’ll have the law on you, Jack Clancy!’
Annie heard them coming, and the shame of it made her feel sick. The front door slammed back with such force that flakes of plaster fell from the wall. She wanted to turn and run out the back way, but forced herself to stand her ground, holding the ironing blanket she’d been folding in front of her like a shield.
A part of her, a small unacknowledged part, bowed to the relief of having been found out. When her father started to unbuckle his belt she accepted that to have the shame beaten out of her might even be a good thing. Once it was done it would be done.
‘Is it true? Is what Father O’Leary’s just come out with the truth?’ He ran the thick belt through his fingers.
Mrs Greenhalgh snatched it, then gave Jack an almighty shove that took him off his feet and sent him sprawling into his chair. Annie’s mouth dropped open with the shock of it.
‘Shame on you, Jack!’ Mrs Greenhalgh stood over him, wobbling with indignation. ‘It’s that sailor you should be fighting, not this child. I warned you there was gyppo blood in him, but you wouldn’t listen. Not you!’ She spoke without turning round. ‘Is it true, lass?’
‘Laurie said he wanted to marry me. He said he would be coming back for me. An’ he will. He will.’
Mrs Greenhalgh’s broad back expressed disbelief. ‘He was all talk and nowt else. I could have told you that, chuck.’ A fat finger was poked in Jack’s chest.
Annie could hardly believe what was happening. Laurie had been right. There was something going on between her father and Mrs Greenhalgh from the bottom house. He was cowering back in his chair with the blowsy woman bending over him, supporting herself on the arm-rests.
‘Aye. All talk and nowt else,’ she shouted. ‘Like someone else I could mention.’ She stabbed him in the chest. ‘No wonder you and that gyppo got on so well together. You’re two of a kind. No you don’t, miladdo!’ When Jack tried to get up she put a hand on his chest and pushed. ‘Me own son gave me my marching orders this morning. Said I could go to the workhouse for all he cared. How’s that for honouring your poor old ma? But what chance does he have against that sod he’s married to?’
Jack made a valiant effort to have a bit of a say. ‘Your Jim wouldn’t do that. I know him better.’
‘Do you?’ Mrs Greenhalgh’s broad behind quivered. ‘But you don’t know that daughter-in-law of mine, do you? There isn’t the room for her and me in the same house, not one day longer. So do I move into here, and do we get married, or do I go to the workhouse? You’ve promised to marry me often enough. I reckon we’ve been courting for at least twelve months.’
Courting? Unnoticed, Annie crept through into the back to sit on her bed and stare unblinking at the roundbellied copper. Her father and Mrs Greenhalgh married? The loud-mouthed common woman living here? Taking the place of her mother? Sharing her father’s bed? She shuddered. What would the
boys think to it all?
As if reading her thoughts the raucous voice from the other room bellowed: ‘I only had the one lad, but he’s caused me more bother than all your five put together. I’ll look to them, Jack. You know that.’
‘And Annie?’
Was that her father asking the question, as meek and mild as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth? Annie held her breath. She leaned forward, a hand to her mouth.
‘The day I come here, out she goes.’ Mrs Greenhalgh was making no attempt to speak quietly. ‘Two women can’t share the same house. I know that better than most. It doesn’t work.’
There was a silence, then the noise of the rocker moving along the flagged floor. Annie clutched her throat at the inference. That loud-mouthed woman was sitting on her father’s knee. She hadn’t wanted Jack to belt his daughter, because that would have taken his mind from the real issue. And the real issue was that she was determined to move in here.
‘Annie could get a job at the mine. She’s young and strong; she could work on the screens for a long time yet.’
Annie couldn’t believe it. Her father was pleading for her … he was … and surely that meant that he must care? Not much, but a little? She moved to the door to hear better.
Mrs Greenhalgh’s next words chilled her through.
‘An’ how long would that last once they found out she was expecting? Have a bit of sense, Jack. She can go to the workhouse to have the baby, they’ve a special section for girls in her condition. Come on, Jack. Think of the talk once it gets out. Starting with that mealy-mouthed Edith Morris …’
Annie leaned against the whitewashed wall. Oh, dear, dear God, how could she have let it happen? Here on this bed, over so quickly, paining her so much. She closed her eyes, in her mind a picture of Laurie Yates sliding the torn blouse off her shoulders, kissing her and whispering words of love. She remembered the way his body had trembled, and the heat coming from him. All she had wanted was to be held and given the comfort she craved. ‘Oh, Laurie,’ she whispered. ‘Come back to me. Please. Don’t wait a year. Come back now.’
