by The Castlefield Collector (Watch for the Talleyman) (retail) (epub)
Now that they were happily married there were no restraints on that score but nothing else about their lives had changed. They were still stuck fast in the poverty trap, scraping by on bread and dripping half the time, not forgetting the familiar stewpot. They were still pawning their Sunday coats every Monday morning and getting them back again on a Friday, if they were lucky, still with no furniture in the back bedroom they occupied, other than their bed. Oh, but they were happy as larks so what did anything matter so long as they had each other?
Dolly was utterly content. How could she not be, married to her beloved Sam? He was a good, loving husband and they spent every precious moment they could together. They went to bed early, just so they could be on their own, and on Sundays, the only day of the week they could have a lie in, they would stay in their lovely bed till dinner time if they felt like it.
‘Best day’s work I ever did was to marry you, Dolly Tomkins. If I’d known you were such a hot little number I’d ’ve done it years ago.’
Dolly giggled. ‘It’s hard to imagine that you once professed to be so awkward and shy over this love stuff between us, isn’t it?’ she giggled.
‘I was never shy, you’re mixing me up with Matt Thornton.’ He was concentrating on peeling off her nightgown so didn’t see the troubled expression that came over her face. Matt had been conspicuous by his absence for months, had only agreed to come to their wedding at the very last moment, leaving it to Davey to act as best man. ‘Though I hope you never got up to these sort of tricks with him.’
‘Course not, the very idea.’ And they both burst out laughing.
‘Can’t imagine Matt with a fast piece like you, Dolly Tomkins – er Clayton, sorry.’ And he tucked her into the crook of his arm all the better to kiss her.
‘Never. He wouldn’t know what to do,’ Dolly agreed, though even as she succumbed to Sam’s greedy kisses, a part of her felt guilty that they were making fun of an old friend, even one with whom she seemed to be at odds for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom. Why Matt didn’t approve of her marriage she couldn’t imagine, but he didn’t, and that was that. So far as Dolly was concerned it was really none of his business. But now wasn’t the moment to be thinking about Matt Thornton, not when she was lying naked in her husband’s arms, and he such an eager lover.
Excitement was mounting in her and Dolly was drifting into ecstasy when Maisie called up the stairs, her tone irritable. ‘Are you two not up yet? I’ve made yer porridge, it’s all ready and waiting.
Dolly groaned but managed, through her giggles, to shout back that they’d be down in a minute before Sam pulled her under the blankets, and started to make love to her all over again. In the end, as so often before, they forgot to go down at all.
Later in the day when they did finally emerge, Maisie complained that the porridge was ruined, that it was a waste of good food, which they could ill afford.
‘Since we’ve not enough money to go anywhere, nor coal to warm the kitchen, staying in bed saves us, doesn’t it?’ Dolly said. ‘And we can enjoy ourselves at the same time.’
Maisie clammed shut at this, not wishing to consider the implications.
Every other day of the week the house was filled with washing, great piles of it waiting to be pummelled and scrubbed and bleached, then hung steaming on the rack, or on the clothes maiden set up by the fire, taking days to dry.
‘I can’t feel any warmth from that fire,’ Sam would grumble. ‘Can’t even see it. What sort of place is this for a chap to come home to? Why can’t you hang it in the yard?’
‘Where it gets speckled with soot, or splattered by kids’ footballs? What would my customers have to say if I took their sheets back worse than they were before,’ Maisie would tartly respond. ‘I have my living to earn same as you, lad. Keeping house, minding childer and doing other folk’s washing is all I know.’
That was another thing, which began to grate on Sam’s nerves. Most days she would have one or more of her grandchildren to mind, either because they were too young for school, too sick, or she’d picked them up at the end of their school day and was minding them until their mothers collected them. They would screech and fight, demand bread and jam, or for someone to play a game with them or tell them a story. Sometimes Dolly had to agree when Sam said he felt as if he’d come to live in bedlam. There never seemed to be a moment’s peace in the little house.
On Fridays, when they all wanted a bath, Dolly and Maisie would have to sit upstairs while Sam took his turn in the tin bathtub in front of the fire. Dolly would much rather have been in the kitchen with her husband, scrubbing his back, pouring hot water over his head, and up to other sorts of mischief, but how could she do that in her mother’s house?
And if having her mam around all the time wasn’t bad enough, there was also Willy. Dolly would be acutely aware of her brother reading in his room, on the other side of their bedroom wall. And because of his bad health he was such a homebody, forever staying in. On the nights Maisie went out, which was admittedly increasing in number, they’d be breathing a sigh of relief that they were alone at last, when the front door would swing open and Willy would saunter in, cheerfully whistling, to settle with his paper in front of the fire, perfectly oblivious to the agonised glances the two newly-weds exchanged.
Maisie had once walked in and discovered them making love on her peg rug. Dolly didn’t think she’d ever live down the embarrassment of that awful moment. And the worst of it was that Mam hadn’t batted an eyelid, just headed for the kettle and told them to go and finish whatever they were doing upstairs.
Relations between mother and daughter were growing ever more difficult. Gone were the days of sharing a pot of tea and happily exchanging news and household tips. More often than not the pair didn’t speak to each other for days. They took to spending more time in their bedroom, and Dolly would only venture downstairs to make a meal for her husband when she heard the front door slam and knew that Maisie had gone out. She never asked where her mother went, but was simply glad to be free of the sight of her tightly set face and be on their own at last.
Chapter Sixteen
After several months of this, Sam was complaining bitterly over the lack of privacy, the restrictions and embarrassments and how he hated being confined to one back bedroom. ‘We need a place of our own. Why are we always so short of money? I turn it over to you regular as clockwork every week, and you’re supposed to be saving it up in the Post Office, so why can’t we rent our own little house? Where does it all go?’
Dolly too dreamed of having their own place where they’d be free to please themselves, and was equally frustrated and dismayed by the problems of sharing a home with her mother. ‘One day,’ she’d say. ‘We’ll have enough next year maybe, only we’ll need a deal of money and lots of patience before we can achieve that particular dream.‘
‘It’s not good enough, Dolly.’
‘You know I want us to be on our own as much as you do, love. But I have to pay something to Mam every week, quite a bit in actual fact. We’ll be rid of all that soon, I’m sure of it.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder.’ And he’d slam out of the house and go off to the pub for a pint. Later, he’d come home contrite and they’d make love with a new fierceness, Dolly determined to make it up to him after their quarrel.
This then was the crux of the problem. Not only did she not have regular employment but there was still the matter of the debt to settle. She’d explained the problem briefly to Sam, without actually giving figures or amounts. Dolly liked to hold on to some of her pride, and really it was her mam’s private business, not his. It hadn’t come as any great surprise to Sam as it was a familiar situation in this neighbourhood. Few people in Castlefield didn’t owe Nifty Jack money.
Despite their differences, Dolly remained firmly committed to helping Maisie pay it off. She still handed over every spare penny she could to Nifty Jack, tried not to complain about the problems of living in a tiny house with her mo
ther but sometimes, like Sam, she too would be filled with frustration. Dolly still struggled to find decent work, which made it harder for them to save. Yet her mother refused, absolutely, to come clean and tell the truth. Neither Cyril nor any of her mother’s other alleged lovers were ever mentioned, so the question of Dolly’s unknown father remained unresolved.
* * *
Harold was proving to be a good husband, cosseting and indulging Aggie’s every whim, rubbing her feet if she was tired after a long day at the mill, scrubbing her back in the bath, even going to the expense of having a bathroom installed when she complained about using the old tin bath in front of the fire. On a Sunday, he would bring her breakfast in bed before they went off to chapel, arm in arm. And in Aggie’s opinion, she was one of the best dressed women in the congregation.
Although Harold was undoubtedly prudent where money was concerned, expecting her to contribute to the household income, he often gave her a little extra to buy herself something special: a new hat for the Sunday School anniversary, a damask tablecloth, a plant stand or some other item for the house. Oh, indeed, she was surely the most cherished of wives.
She would generously give leftovers from her table, or clothes she no longer had any use for, to Dolly and Maisie, seeing herself as some sort of Lady Bountiful. Today it was a pair of boots but Dolly showed not the slightest bit of gratitude.
‘Don’t dump yer rubbish on me. I’ll buy me own boots, ta very much.’
‘Oh, and how will you manage that? Are you working at present?’
‘Not right now, no, but I’ve heard there’s chance of a job at the raincoat factory. I’m going round this afternoon.’
‘Then wear the boots. If you’re properly shod, you will at least look respectable.’
‘Meaning I’m not?’
Aggie gave a delicate shrug. ‘If there’s any doubt on the subject, the boots might help. And I don’t need them as Harold has bought me a lovely new pair.’
She also took great pleasure in exploiting the difficulties between Maisie and Dolly. She was like a dog worrying a bone, seeming to take pleasure in Dolly’s discomfort. ‘Have you told Sam yet, about what you got up to in that dreadful place?’
‘You know I haven’t. And I didn’t get up to anything.’
Dolly had meant to tell Sam long before this, of course she had, but somehow the longer she’d left it, the harder it was to pluck up the courage to do so. They had enough on their plate right now, settling into married life. Besides, he’d be sure to ask why she hadn’t mentioned it before they were wed, and Dolly knew she’d let herself be easily put off because she was fearful of losing him, too afraid that he wouldn’t believe in her innocence, any more than she could believe in Maisie’s. Not that she dare admit as much to her sister.
Aggie persisted. ‘I don’t want any gossip being bruited about. He’s going places, is my Harold, climbing the ladder of success and I’m going up with him. We’ve been looking at houses out in the suburbs, so I’m certainly not having our lives ruined by you. Not at any price. I always knew Mam was no better than she should be. Why else would poor Dad have been so miserable? It breaks my heart to think how she betrayed him.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Aggie, stop making him out to be some sort of plaster saint.’
‘And you’re no better. Like mother, like daughter, eh? Folk might start thinking that I’m tarred with the same brush. I shudder to think what Harold would say. He has his reputation to think of, you know.’
‘I did nothing. I’m innocent. My situation was nothing like Mam’s.’
‘I still think it’s fishy that the pair of you are being accused of the self-same thing. Bothering with men. I shudder to think of it,’ she said, gimlet eyes bright with curiosity. ‘Whatever did they ask you to do?’
‘Aggie, will you let it drop. I did nothing.’
‘It’s all right for you, but what about how it affects me? And Sam. It’s time you told your own husband what went on, at least. That would be a start.’
‘I’ve told you, Aggie, I’ll tell Sam when I’m good and ready and not before.’
The only problem with her own life, so far as Aggie was concerned, was that she still had to work. In her opinion the spinning room was now an uncomfortable place, full of nasty little gossips only too keen to poke fun at the overlooker’s wife. They’d switch her machine off when she wasn’t looking, give her the worst cotton which was always breaking, fetch hot water for her tea that smelled as if someone had boiled black puddings in it. They really weren’t at all nice to her.
And look at what had happened to Betty Deurden, obviously attacked by somebody from that mill. The same thing could happen to her. There were times when Aggie felt extremely vulnerable, which was really quite unfair for a woman in her position. As the overlooker’s wife she should be above all of such worries.
‘Why can’t we move away?’ she would ask Harold, as they sat down together at the dining table each evening, right under the front window where they could be observed in all their splendour by anyone passing by as they ate the smoked haddock she’d prepared, or the tasty shepherd’s pie.
‘Because, my love, we can’t quite afford to move, not just yet. But we will soon, I promise, and then we shall start a family and you will be the best of mothers.’
Much to her surprise, Aggie was growing desperate for a child and was tired of taking precautions. She watched mothers in the street with something like envy. Harold had made her go to the Mothers’ Clinic and get herself fixed up with the necessary device, unsavoury though it might be, insisting that it was a necessity. They needed to save up a bit longer for the kind of house they both dreamed of. Aggie getting pregnant, he warned, was the last thing they wanted right now. Such folly could condemn her to life in the mill as a working mother forever, as it had so many of her contemporaries.
‘So how long will it take? When will we move? How much longer must I wait?’ she would constantly ask. ‘How long before we try for a child?’
‘Very soon,’ he’d tell her. ‘A year or two, three at the most.’
‘What? I’ll be old by then.’
‘Nonsense, you’re only in your early twenties.’
But you will be, she thought, keeping that traitorous calculation silent in her head.
Aggie tried to be patient, and it was true that she enjoyed having money in her purse to spend, food on the table, a bright future to look forward to, and she certainly had no intention of putting any of that at risk. And she wanted Harold to do well so they’d have even more. Moreover, she’d certainly no intention of denying him his rights. That was the best part of their relationship, though lately he’d seemed a bit lacklustre, not quite up to his usual performance or level of enthusiasm. The poor dear was overworked and overtired.
‘Are you tired, dear? If so, I blame Nathan Barker. He’s turning into a proper slave driver, growing increasingly short tempered, snapping heads off left, right and centre. Have you noticed?’
Harold chewed on the haddock with a meditative expression on his sombre face. ‘I reckon we’ll pull out of this little dip in trade very soon. Mark my words.’
‘But he’s changed the pay system from one penny to halfpenny a yard, which means we have to work twice as fast to earn the same amount of money. Penalising us for being good workers, that’s what he’s doing.’
‘You can leave the worry of all that to me, Aggie love. Don’t let your fish go cold.’
Aggie had the sudden, traitorous thought that it was all right for Harold, swanning around doing a bit of piecing here and there, but for her, working twice as hard was exhausting.
In her view, Nathan Barker’s bad mood had something to do with that daughter of his, who’d been nothing but trouble ever since she arrived. If so, then he’d no right to take out his displeasure on innocent folk. Evie Barker was a lazy tart, sneaking off work every five minute and spoiling the record of the entire floor. Aggie resolved to give the girl a piece of her mind if she did
n’t mend her ways soon. Surely, as the overlooker’s wife, she had the right to deal with such matters.
* * *
Evie had had more than enough. She was thoroughly bored with having to get up early every morning. She hated the cotton dust that choked her lungs, the steaming heat in the spinning room and having to knock off cones, change slubbings or rovings, names and tasks which thoroughly confused and infuriated her. Evie knew that she would never learn to be a spinner, nor did she wish to. The cones or spindles, or whatever they were called, went far too fast and she never wanted to piece another broken thread as long as she lived. Her head felt as if it were bursting, exhausted by the noise and smell, and by the demand upon her to work, work, work. The sooner she was out of the mill, the better. Anything would be better than this.
As if the work wasn’t bad enough, the other girls cackled and giggled behind her back, and were always playing tricks on her, sending her for a ‘sky hook’ or ‘a long wait’. She’d thought at first that they meant weight and had stood about for ages in the rain in the mill yard while Ned, the tenter, had pretended to look for one, before realising she’d been had. She hadn’t gone back inside though. Soaking wet through, she’d stormed off home and sent the maids rushing to run her a hot bath. Clara had been most sympathetic.
‘Poor darling, I can’t imagine what has got into Nathan to make you work like a common mill girl. He really isn’t himself at the moment. But do try and pander to him, sweetie, just for a little while. Perhaps, if you make a show of learning these mysterious tasks which the mill girls perform so easily, he’ll move you into the office, then at least you could wear a pretty skirt and blouse.’
‘Oh, Mumsie, will you shut up!’ Evie had felt so tired and wet and frustrated that she’d actually burst into tears, which wasn’t like her at all.