Even if he was off work, Sam refused to look after Cilla, even for a few minutes. He still resented her presence and couldn’t bear to touch her. He never kissed or cuddled her or even took her on his knee.
Sometimes Maggie caught him looking at Cilla from over the top of his newspaper and she wondered what he was thinking. Several times she had tried to talk to him about Cilla, hoping to enlist his help with her, but he either immersed himself in the newspaper and refused to listen or he stalked off to the pub.
When this happened he usually returned home so drunk that he had a hangover the next morning and was incapable of going to work. As a result he handed over even less housekeeping money than usual at the end of the week so that Maggie eventually avoided even mentioning Cilla’s name.
Knowing how quick Sam was to use his fists if anything upset him she also made sure that she kept Cilla out of his way as much as possible. She was always afraid that Cilla’s crying might spark off some sort of reaction but, fortunately, he always seemed to ignore it, even though her high-pitched wail was almost unbearable.
The only one who was always willing to look after Cilla was Trixie. She never seemed to lose her patience with her and was always prepared to bath, feed and play with her. As a result, as the months passed, it did seem that Cilla was slowly making some progress. Even though she was now five and could stand and walk on her own, it seemed unlikely that she could go to school. She would never been be able to understand what was going on around her or take part in normal play or lessons with the other children.
Trixie was concerned that once she started work she would have less time to look after Cilla and that as a result Cilla mightn’t keep up the progress she seemed to be making.
‘You must make time to play with her and talk to her more, Mum,’ Trixie told her when she voiced this worry aloud. ‘She understands a lot more than you think.’
‘I haven’t the same energy as you have to do that,’ Maggie sighed. ‘I have all the cleaning, washing and ironing to do as well as the cooking and shopping.’
‘I know that, but talk to her while you are preparing the vegetables and cooking. Don’t just sit her in her high chair with a biscuit while you are dusting and cleaning; give her a duster and let her help you. Let her walk to the shops . . .’
‘Don’t talk daft. She’s tired out by the time we get there and then she wants to be carried and I can’t carry her and all the shopping as well.’
‘You don’t have to. Take the pram, but let her walk till she gets tired and then you can put her and the shopping in the pram, the same as you do now.’
‘You make it sound so easy, but when I pick her up to put her back into her pram she kicks and screams and makes such a fuss that everyone stops to look.’
‘She won’t make a fuss if you tell her you’re going to do it because you know she’s tired. It’s because you simply pick her up and dump her in the pram without a word that she struggles and tries to resist. Remember the hullabaloo she used to make when you went out and left her on her own in the afternoons, but now she accepts it. It takes her a while to get used to any changes and you have to tell her why you’re doing them and then she stops protesting.’
‘She does for you,’ Maggie sighed. ‘You’re more a mother to her than I am because you have more time and a lot more patience and never try and rush her.’
‘I tell you what, let’s go out shopping together on Saturday morning,’ Trixie suggested. ‘We’ll let Cilla walk to the shops and then I’ll explain to her that you’re going to pop her into the pram once we’ve done the shopping so that she knows that’s what we both want. I’m sure she won’t cry. I think the secret is to talk to her all the time and to keep telling her what you are going to do.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, I tend to think she doesn’t understand and I don’t talk to her half as much as you do. The trouble is she’s going to have to be on her own a lot more once you start work.’
‘Then before you go off to work tell her that’s what’s happening. Explain to her that she has to be strapped into her chair so that she won’t come to any harm and tell her that I’ll be home in no time at all. Perhaps if I can teach her how to tell the time you can show her where the hands will have to be before I come home.’
‘It still means leaving her on her own,’ Maggie said worriedly. ‘She’s grown quite a bit lately and is so much stronger than she used to be. I’m afraid that she’s going to struggle to get out of her high chair and tip it over and fall and hurt herself and there’ll be no one here to help her.’
‘Perhaps you should pack up your cleaning jobs and stay home and look after her. Don’t forget you’ll have my wages and I’ll be working a full week now I’ve left school, not just a few hours each day.’
Chapter Two
It was not yet eight o’clock, on a sultry Monday morning in late July, with the promise of unbearable heat to come later in the day. Maggie Jackson could hear Cilla screaming the minute she turned into Virgil Street.
She’d skimped on her work that morning in order to get home as soon as possible. Trixie had left school the previous Friday and had started work that morning so she knew Cilla would be playing up.
Although the biscuit factory in Dryden Street was only a few minutes away from their home, Maggie knew that on her first day Trixie would have left over an hour ago because she was due to clock on at seven.
That meant Cilla would have been on her own ever since Trixie had left and so she was probably hungry and thirsty and wondering why no one was picking her up. Even if Sam was still there he would ignore her.
Maggie thought again about Trixie’s suggestion that the time had come for her to give up her charring to stay at home and look after Cilla. So far she hadn’t plucked up the courage to find out what Sam thought about that.
‘You ought to tell him that’s what you’re going to do, not ask him,’ Trixie had told her. ‘If you ask him he’s bound to say it’s impossible. You need to do it right away before I get my first wage packet and he has the excuse to give you less housekeeping money.’
Maggie knew that what Trixie said was right, but she lacked Trixie’s courage when it came to facing up to Sam. She knew she ought to be the one who put him in his place, not leave it to Trixie. She sometimes wondered what would happen when Trixie left home but consoled herself that as Trixie was only fourteen that was years away.
Ever since the day war had broken out in 1914 and Sam had gone into the army he’d been a changed character; so much so that she was sometimes afraid of him, especially when he’d been out drinking.
She’d never forget the first time he’d come home on leave; he’d been like a stranger he’d been so hard and brusque. When she’d told him why they’d been turned out of their little home he’d told her she should have stood up to the boss at the abattoir and refused to move out.
He became even angrier when she told him that she was pregnant.
She hadn’t seen him again till he’d been demobbed and then when he came home and discovered that the new baby was retarded he’d blamed her. He’d been unable to accept Cilla’s condition; the situation had incensed him and turned him into a complete bully.
He’d always liked his beer, but in the early days of their marriage it had made him merry. These days it made him moody and aggressive and she had plenty of bruises to prove it. Come to that, so had Trixie, although mercifully in her case it was usually nothing more serious than a cuff across her head with the back of his hand or a slap across her face.
This was the only time that Maggie was thankful that he never touched little Cilla no matter how boozed up he might be. Sometimes she wished he would take some notice of her, sit her on his knee or even take her by the hand and help her walk down the road. Instead he ignored her completely, as if she didn’t exist.
As she expected Maggie found that Cilla was still in her cot and that there was a sheet fastened over the four corners of it to prevent her from climbing out. Cilla was
scarlet in the face from screaming, her cheeks streaked with tears and her bedding was in a tangled heap as she’d struggled to get free.
Maggie picked her up and hugged her, crooning to her to try and calm her. Then, holding Cilla in one arm and hoping that her gulping sobs would subside, she prepared some breakfast for her. She warmed up some milk and poured it on to a basin of broken-up scraps of bread sprinkled with sugar to make a dish of pobs, knowing it was Cilla’s favourite.
As she sat spoon-feeding Cilla she looked round the shabby room in despair. How had she been reduced to living like this? she wondered dejectedly. Not for the first time she felt full of guilt; suspecting that perhaps Sam was right and that it was partly her own fault because she always accepted whatever fate dished out instead of fighting back.
Even though she’d vowed that she would continue to practise her faith after she was married, Sam had soon talked her out of it. He’d derided her for getting up to go to early morning Mass, especially on a cold winter morning when she could stay cuddled up to him in a nice warm bed.
She’d been an only child, brought up in a respectable area in Anfield, in a comfortable furnished house where everything shone from all the polishing and cleaning her mother did. She was so house-proud that they even had to take their shoes off as they came in the door and the only time they used the front door was if visitors came.
Her mother had a strict routine, and each day was allocated for special jobs: spring cleaning was a momentous event and every carpet and rug was taken up, hung over the clothes line and beaten; the heavy winter curtains were taken down before Easter and crisp summer ones hung in their place; the antimacassars that protected the arms and backs of the plush green armchairs and sofa were taken off and replaced by linen ones.
Her parents had been exacting but she’d never gone short of anything. They’d lived an orderly life; regular meal times and bed times. They’d been very devout Catholics so it was always fish on Fridays and High Mass on Sunday.
It had been a tremendous disappointment to her parents when she’d said she wanted to marry Sam Jackson.
‘He’s not suitable, luv; for one thing he’s not a Catholic,’ her mother had pointed out in a shocked voice.
‘I know that, but I’ll never love anyone like I love him,’ she’d insisted.
They’d finally agreed she could bring him home so that they could meet him. They’d done their best to persuade Sam to convert, but he’d laughed at the idea. Father O’Connor had been reluctant to marry them and had tried his best to make her change her mind by saying that they would need a special dispensation in order for her to marry Sam if he refused to embrace the faith.
Sam had remained stubborn, even suggesting that they should elope if the opposition to their being married continued. It had caused a serious rift with her parents when they married in a register office, one which she bitterly regretted especially when not long after she and Sam were married her parents had gone to live in Australia.
When Trixie was born Sam objected to having her baptised or christened so she kept putting it off, partly because she no longer bothered to go to church at all any more herself. At one time she used to say her prayers morning and night like she’d been brought up to do but the demands of family life took over and she stopped doing even that.
It was only when something went wrong, she reflected, that she offered up a prayer to the Virgin Mary, or called on one of the saints to intercede on her behalf. When nothing happened as a result of her prayers she resigned herself to the fact that she’d deserted God and now he and his angels were turning their back on her.
When Trixie was old enough to start school Maggie made a futile attempt to send her to a Catholic school but had ended up sending her to the one nearest where they lived. Sam had pointed out she wouldn’t understand what was going on and if there were nuns teaching them then she’d probably be frightened to death by the sight of them in their long black habits and white wimples.
Maggie often wondered if it was because of all this that so much had gone wrong in her life, but, even so, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it openly. Instead she always crossed the road to avoid any contact with priests or nuns in case they recognised her as a lapsed Catholic and tried to save her.
One of her mother’s sayings had been ‘You’ve made your bed so now you must lie on it’ and she was trying to do exactly that. She knew she couldn’t turn the clock back, much as she’d like to; she had to make the best of what she’d got but it would be so much easier if Sam would help.
Cilla’s piercing scream for attention roused Sam Jackson from a deep sleep to the harsh realities of a new day. The bed beside him was cold which meant that Maggie must have left for her charring job some time ago.
He pulled the covers up over his head, trying to shut out the sound of Cilla’s screams but they were so piercing that all it did was muffle them.
He reached for his packet of cigarettes, lighted one and then squinted at the cheap tin alarm clock beside their bed. When he saw that it was almost eight o’clock he suddenly remembered that not only was it a Monday morning but that Trixie was starting work today at the biscuit factory.
He bellowed out her name and when there was no answer he threw back the bedclothes and padded across the room, pulled aside the curtain that separated the half of the room that Trixie shared with Cilla from his and Maggie’s bed, just to make sure she wasn’t still there.
When he saw that her bed was empty he gave a grunt of relief. From the cheeky insolence she’d shown when he’d told her about the job he’d fixed up for her he’d half expected her to defy him.
For a brief moment, as she sensed his presence, Cilla stopped screaming. Then, when he took no notice of her, didn’t even speak to her, she began screaming again and shaking the bars of her cot in a vain attempt to either get out or attract attention.
It was stiflingly hot in their top-floor rooms and he felt a twinge of guilt as he hurriedly dressed and left without even stopping to see if Cilla was all right or not.
He was late already, he told himself. If he didn’t get down to the Pier Head right away then there’d be no chance at all of him being picked for a day’s work. Not that it mattered, he thought smugly, since Trixie would be bringing home a wage packet at the end of each week from now on.
The prospect of not having to dib up as much housekeeping in future cheered him. By the time he reached the dockside he was whistling and calling out greetings as he joined the crowd of men all hoping for a day’s work. He didn’t even feel any animosity to those who’d already been taken on by a ganger and been allocated work on one of the ships.
It was going to be swelteringly hot by midday and he’d be more than happy to spend it sitting inside a pub and downing a cool beer rather than slaving in the glaring sun on the deck of a ship or on the wharf itself.
Sam considered work to be overrated. He’d been disillusioned from the day he’d found out that he’d not only lost his job, but also his home. He felt as though he’d been kicked in the face and from that moment on everything had gone downhill.
Life in the army had been grim; there’d been none of the glamour or excitement that he’d expected. Once he’d finished his basic training and been home on embarkation leave that was it; he hadn’t seen England again throughout the entire war.
They’d been in grave danger from the enemy on so many occasions that he knew he should have felt thankful to come through it all unscathed; a great many of his comrades in the trenches hadn’t done so.
His years working at the abattoir had stood him in good stead in that he could face any amount of blood and gore without turning a hair. While many alongside him were shocked out of their senses and spewing their guts up at the sight of the carnage all around them it had no effect at all on him. To him it made no difference if it was a man or a pig bleeding to death.
When the rats began attacking the dead bodies, he didn’t shudder or squirm away from them but lashed out with
his bayonet or even his boot and killed them.
The only thing he did object to was the brutal treatment that was dished out to those who suffered from shell-shock. Tying them up to a gun carriage right in the line of fire to harden them up was more of a punishment than a cure and many of them had ended up completely deranged.
What had alarmed him far more was coming home to find he was living in a slum and that he now had two kids to bring up. He’d never forget the first time he’d seen Cilla. She’d been like a little doll with the face of an angel. She had her mother’s auburn hair and huge grey eyes, so it had been a tremendous blow to discover how sickly and backward she was and to realise that he’d probably have to support her for the rest of his life.
He was also disturbed by the change in Maggie. It was hard to believe that she’d once been the prettiest girl in Anfield and that he’d been the envy of all his mates. Even though she was only in her mid-thirties her once glossy auburn hair was bedraggled and her skin sallow. She no longer took any interest in what she was wearing and she looked middle-aged and dowdy.
Finding that someone had stepped into his shoes and he had no job was a further blow. After a few abortive efforts he’d given up hope of ever becoming the skilled slaughter man he’d hoped to be and resorted to labouring.
Feeling bitter and resentful he decided that as long as he had enough money for smokes and beer and a bit left over for the dogs or gee-gees he’d try not to think any further ahead.
When, a couple of weeks after he started work, Maggie had started bleating about needing more money than he was prepared to give her because their youngest was sickly and needed special foods he’d told her to get off her backside and go and earn it. To his surprise she’d done just that.
At first he’d felt ashamed at the thought of his wife going out charring but time soon dulled his conscience. The kid was her responsibility and if she didn’t want to put Cilla in a home then she’d have to help earn the money to bring her up and the sooner she realised it the better.
Love Changes Everything Page 2