by Marie Joseph
On Easter Sunday the little chapel at the top of the street had been filled to overflowing, the men in their shiny best suits and the women showing off their Easter finery, even if for the majority it had been nothing more than a new feather on a well-brushed hat.
‘Happy happy springtime,
Happy Easter Day.
Jesus Christ is risen.
And He lives for aye.’
Full-throated singing, faces uplifted. A swelling sound of promised joy. It was still there, resonant in his head, as if the music had never faded away.
Seth opened the shop door. A long time ago, before Clara took sick, he would sing as he worked, always hymns, from the Methodist School Hymnal passed on to him by his mother. And his customers, sliding up along the polished bench as their turn came nearer, would smile, borrowing for a while his good humour, envying his lightness of heart.
Back inside his own house Seth made his way through the shop to the back room where the fire still burned brightly in the shining grate. His own breakfast would be a couple of thick slices of bread smothered in margarine and jam, washed down with a pot of tea so strong a fly could walk across it without sinking. But this morning he wasn’t hungry. Before he opened up his shop there was wood to sort out and plane, wood lovingly stroked by his big hands, his craftsman’s hands, for the cradle for his own bonny lass.
Just for a moment his mind dwelled on the girl who had given up her baby into his keeping. Who was she? How old was she? Married, with so many mouths to feed another one was unacceptable? Fourteen or fifteen, taken against her will down some dark alley, with a mother desperate to hide her daughter’s shame from the neighbours, knowing that Seth Haydock would never turn trouble away from his door?
Going over to the slopstone set beneath the window, Seth turned on the tap and splashed cold water over his face. Outside, across the back, lights were showing in upper windows. Already he could hear the clatter of clogs from the street as the mill workers made their way down to the mill. Soon the milkman would be here on his morning round, ladling the milk from the churns standing in his cart, his horse standing patiently waiting to be told to ‘giddyup’.
How long would it be before his own child could be weaned onto milk from the farmer’s best cow? Kept in a little skip, specially for her? Amos Platt would do that for him, Seth was sure. Without a trace of self-consciousness Seth went down on his knees to thank God for the miracle that was to transform his life.
He was busy at his bench when the shop door opened and a boy with the face of an angel stumbled in, holding up a clogged foot from which the iron dangled loosely. Alec West, five years old, stared at Seth unblinkingly.
‘Me mam says can you feckle this afore I go to school? I’ve not been sparking. Honest, Mr Haydock. It just come loose on its own.’ The dark eyes seemed out of focus as he sat down on the bench, holding a sturdy leg out in front of him. ‘There’s a baby in our house with a worm coming out of its belly. It were tied up with string. Me mam washed it all over in the washing-up bowl.’ The small voice was hoarse and disgruntled. ‘It’s not as big as our Walter, but it cries bloody loud. Bleedin’ loud,’ he said, correcting himself automatically.
The next few minutes passed in companionable silence as, remembering the satisfaction of sliding up and down the slippery bench, Alec worked himself up to a good speed, almost falling off the edge in his exuberance.
‘It’s not got a cock, Mr Haydock,’ he said at last, man to man.
‘It’s a girl,’ Seth told him, trying hard to keep a straight face.
‘Aw, flippin’ heck,’ said Alec, losing interest at once. ‘Me mam says it’s yours.’
Seth smiled then, somehow still managing to keep the row of tacks between his teeth. ‘Aye, it’s mine, Alec,’ he said. ‘Her name is Clara.’
‘Clara,’ Alec said, whizzing at speed along the bench. ‘That’s a rotten name. Me mam says that worm sticking out of her belly will rot off.’
‘And your mam should know,’ said Seth, mumbling through the hardware in his mouth.
In full agreement Alec nodded. He sat there, patiently waiting, bullet head on one side, while outside the street came to life and the clouds drifted, letting through a watery sun, lighting up briefly the shop, thick with the dust of years, pungent with the aroma of real leather.
Three
TO A QUIET godfearing man like Seth Haydock, being shown up in the street was an experience he didn’t relish. He hated looking conspicuous. It ill became his recently acquired status as superintendent of the Methodist Sunday School. Especially when that nosy parker of a Mrs Davis from the top house sat back on her heels on the pavement and joined in.
‘You want to take a strap to her backside, Mr Haydock.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Davis.’ Seth was all dignity.
The stout little woman leaned forward to finish off mopping the half-circle of flagstones in front of her step. ‘By the gum, but your Clara’s got a voice on her like the twelve o’clock hooter!’
Round the corner, outside the Co-op, Seth crouched down to wipe the tears running down his daughter’s anguished face. When Clara cried she did it properly, with her mouth wide open and her eyes disappearing into cushions of reddened flesh. Seth knew that if he wasn’t careful he was in danger of quite uncharacteristically losing his temper.
‘Clara! Stop it! I’m taking you to school and that’s the end of it.’ He fought down an urge to clamp a big hand over her mouth and resorted instead to shaking her gently. ‘Little girls always get taken to school on their first day. I won’t do it again, I promise.’ Standing up, he grasped her small hand firmly in his own and walked on. ‘Why does it matter so much, anyroad?’
‘’Cos it makes me look like a soppy ’aporth, an’ I’m not.’ The wailing began again, but mercifully this time more as a continuous drone. ‘I know the way, an’ there’s no big roads to cross.’
He pointed across the street to a little girl with a black ribbon bow on top of her carroty hair, walking sedately by her mother’s side. ‘See? There’s Nellie Parkinson. Look what a good girl she’s being.’
At exactly that moment the angelic Nellie shot out a red tongue, goading Clara into a maniacal frenzy. Snatching her hand away from Seth’s grasp, she spat with such venom that a slimy globule landed halfway across the cobbles.
‘Nellie Parkinson’s a daft sausage!’ she shouted. ‘A flamin’ smelly dirty sausage!’
‘Spitting and swearing,’ Seth said sadly, dragging his daughter firmly along the pavement. ‘I know where you’ve learned that from.’
He sighed deeply. It had taken him a good hour to make sure that Clara was decent for her initiation into school life. She had clean clothes on from her vest outwards. He had fought and shoved with an unruly mob of women at the chapel jumble sale for the coat and dress, both of heavy navy blue serge, made originally for a child twice Clara’s size. Her legs in long black woollen stockings ended in a pair of clogs so burnished and shining Seth felt a glow of pride each time he glanced down at them. And set straight on her barley pale hair was a hat wreathed in buttercups worn by his wife on a charabanc outing to the Lake District.
At the Sunday School Field Day her appearance might have passed unnoticed, but for the mixed infants in the Church of England School Clara was overdressed to say the least. Seth had chosen the school mainly because of the religious doctrine he knew would be part of the daily curriculum, and also because it was a mere five minutes’ walk away from his shop.
‘You can go by yourself after today,’ he promised again, ‘but you’ve got to be registered proper. I don’t want the teachers thinking we don’t know what’s what.’
A clatter of clogs sounded behind them as the three youngest West boys whooped their way along the flagstones, stopping sparking their clogs as soon as they caught sight of Seth.
Joe, now twelve, long-legged in his short breeches, on his last term at school. Alec, now ten years old, as thickset as a wrestler, running pigeon-toed bec
ause his clogs were overdue to be passed down the line. And Walter, just five months older than Clara, but already a head taller.
The school gates were in sight now, and beyond the railings the tiny sloping square of asphalt called the playground. The school had a good reputation and Seth had been told the teachers were kind and dedicated, but the building itself was grim, of sooty, weathered stone, with narrow windows set high. Hordes of children rushed around, going nowhere, shouting and shrieking, pushing and jostling, jeering and fighting. Boys with ragged shirts hanging out of even raggier breeches, greasy flat caps pulled low over sullen faces. A group of girls, oblivious of the deafening noise, skipped solemnly with lengths of rope left over from their mothers’ clotheslines, chanting in high clear voices:
‘The wind, the wind, the wind blows high,
The rain comes scattering from the sky,
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She is a girl from the golden city.’
Seth’s heart sank. How could he leave his one ewe lamb in the midst of such a noisy rabble? Clara’s face was set in lines of stony indifference now, so he had no way of knowing what she was thinking, but her eyes, as green as grapes, moved warily in her flushed face as if she was carefully weighing up the opposition.
‘You’ll have to stop here while I see the teacher,’ he told her, and she nodded.
Inside the school the walls were painted a shiny unsubtle green. Glancing into a classroom, Seth saw rows of long desks fitted with inkwells, and a blackboard and easel standing on a raised platform at the front. Although the school must have been cleaned during the Easter holidays there was still the overriding smell of chalk and stale urine. Following the neatly upright back of Nellie Parkinson’s mother, Seth turned right into the room he remembered from his own childhood as the Teachers’ Room.
It was little more than a storeroom with a row of pegs on the wall for the teachers’ outdoor coats. A trio of folding chairs faced the headmistress’s table. She was there behind it, handing out forms to the three women standing cowed and subdued before her. Miss Barlow, brown of hair, eyes and overall, the keeper of the cane which was conspicuously laid beside a pile of blue-backed registers.
Seth had wanted to speak to her privately; to explain that his child was motherless, that she was different, wilder and somehow desperate, as if she were trying to adjust to an alien environment. He wanted to explain that maybe he’d spoilt her more than a little, been too concerned for her, that she was his own little lass, used to nothing but kindness. His eye was caught by the cane. He imagined it wielded by this hard-eyed woman, swishing down on Clara’s outstretched hand.
‘Thank you, Miss Barlow,’ he said, taking the form from her, promising to fill it in and send it back the very next day. And, intimidated by the women staring at him curiously, he turned and left the room.
In the playground he looked for Clara amongst the skipping girls, their long hair flying as they chanted their game. Nellie Parkinson was there, black ribbon bow bobbing as facing another bigger girl she skipped faster and faster.
‘One pepper, two pepper, three pepper, four …’
Seth about-faced and saw Clara over by the far wall with the West boys. She was standing on her head, using the buttercup-sprigged hat as a mat, her legs braced triumphantly against the soot-blackened wall, the long navy serge skirts falling down to reveal her bloomers.
‘Clara!’ Seth’s voice was a strangulated whisper, but his daughter heard him first time.
‘Ta-ra Dadda,’ she called out, her upside-down face rosy with effort and the pride of her achievement. ‘See yer at dinnertime!’
As Seth reached the school gate, the going-in bell clanged in the two-handed grip of a young teacher. Immediately Clara upended herself and hand in hand with Walter West ran to take her place in line. All without a backward glance at the thickset, desolate man walking away, his highly polished clogs making a ringing noise on the pavement.
Because it was the first day of a new term the minister was there to take the morning service. The Reverend David Maynard, a tall, upright man with fair hair brushed back from a noble forehead, a man who had been born and brought up in the green fields of Kent, and now followed his calling in the town of mills, massed houses, with the nearest tree or green grass in the Corporation park over a mile away.
Standing beside Walter, Clara eyed him speculatively. In his dog collar and dark suit he didn’t look all that different from the minister at the chapel. Perhaps a bit thinner, that was all. Alec had pointed out a boy to her in the playground, telling her he was the minister’s son. Swivelling her head round, Clara had a good look at the big boys on the back row. Yes, that would be the one standing next to Joe. His hair was the same colour as his father’s, but his face wasn’t as red.
‘Pay attention, children!’
Miss Barlow was tapping with a ruler on the desk, smiling but looking cross. Staring straight at Clara. Walter was fidgeting uncomfortably. ‘Stop turning round,’ he hissed out of the side of his mouth. ‘Else she’ll ’ave you forrit.’
The Reverend Maynard was clearing his throat.
‘Now, children. Before we say our prayer we’re going to sing a hymn.’ He beamed happily. ‘Winter has gone at last.’ Turning his head towards a high window he smiled at a watery sun setting the dust on the sill dancing. ‘And what comes after winter? Does anyone know?’
A girl behind Clara shot up her hand. ‘Spring, Mr Maynard.’
‘Spring!’ The vicar’s beam widened. ‘And so, to thank our God for all His many gifts to us as this most beautiful season begins, we are going to sing a hymn telling God that we appreciate His kindness.’ He nodded and smiled at the teacher sitting at the upright piano. ‘Ready, Miss Holroyd?’
With a nod of her head Miss Holroyd signified that she was, but before she began to play the vicar held up a hand. ‘Now, children, Miss Holroyd will play the first verse, then I want you to put up your hands and tell me the name of the hymn.’ He exchanged a conspiratorial wink with the pianist, then closed his eyes, waving his hand in time to the music.
Clara couldn’t believe her ears. Her father had told her that the prayers and hymns might be a bit different from the ones she was used to at chapel and in Sunday School, and yet here they were starting off with her very favourite. Of their own volition her feet began to tap out the rhythm on the floorboards. The music sang in her ears. Six verses and six choruses that hymn had, and she knew them all! Her green eyes shone with the excitement of her discovery.
‘Can anyone tell me the name of the hymn?’ The vicar rubbed his hands together in anticipation, then looked up startled as Clara waved both hands about in the air.
‘I know it, mister! I know every bleedin’ word!’
The room grew very quiet. It was a biggish room with the slides separating the classes drawn back for the morning service, but a pin could have been heard dropping in the farthest corner.
Blinking his head as if he couldn’t possibly have heard aright, the vicar inclined his head to catch the headmistress’s whisper.
I see, his nod seemed to be saying. I see. He straightened up, clearing his throat. ‘Clara Haydock. Would you like to come out here? To me?’
With a rush and a clatter of clogs on the hard floorboards, Clara came. He was so tall, this man in the round collar, she had to bend her head right back to look up into his face.
‘All things bright and beautiful,’ she said at once. ‘I sing it for me dad, an’ I sing it at Sunday School. I’m a good singer.’
The Reverend Maynard was somewhat at a loss. This child was no more than five years old. Miss Barlow, in a flurry of embarrassed whispering, had told him it was her first day at school, as if that accounted for the swearword that obviously came as naturally as breathing. The Reverend stroked the side of his nose, playing for time. This child with her corn-silk hair, her wide green eyes and her sun-kissed skin had the kind of beauty that caught at the throat. A child of the working class maybe; the rag
-bag clothes told their own tale, but there was nothing of pinched meanness about the angel face; nothing of fear, or deprivation. This little girl had lived with love, was the product of it. Up to now. Up to this very day.
‘Would you like to sing the first verse for us, Clara?’ he heard himself saying. ‘Would you?’ Closing his mind to the disapproval emanating from the brown overall behind him, he nodded towards the piano. ‘Ready, Miss Holroyd?’
Clara sang, standing quite still with her head raised and her hands clasped loosely in front of her. Her voice rose clear and pure. A child’s voice, without depth, but distinctive and true. Singing for the joy of it, without a trace of shyness, mispronouncing some of the words, but getting the music right.
‘The purple-headed mountain, the river running by,
The sunset and the morning that brightens up the sky …’
Miss Holroyd, instinctively playing with soft pedal down, the rows of children with mouths agape, trying to decide whether to watch the murderous expression on Miss Barlow’s face, or try not to laugh at the new girl’s showing off. Then when it was over, taking their cue from Joe West on the back row, clapping and stamping their feet in an orgy of delight at such an unexpected turn of events.
One single tap of a ruler on the teacher’s desk was enough to still the clapping and stamping of feet. Miss Barlow’s brown eyes betrayed no emotion, but the girls in their ragged pinafores, and the boys in their motheaten jerseys knew the reckoning would come. Not in front of the minister, never that. But later. As sure as eggs were eggs, later.
Clara decided she was going to like school. The bottom class still wrote on slates with little grey slate pencils which squeaked in a satisfactory way when she copied the letters from the teacher’s big board and easel. Singing, and slates. It was all far better than she could ever have imagined. Nudging Walter with a sharp poke of her elbow, she put him right when she saw he was drawing the belly of the letter b the wrong way round. Eager to help, she leaned sideways to spit on his slate, erasing the wrong outline with a determined rub of her sleeve.