‘Whose is it then?’
Lucy didn’t answer this. What she did say was, and in a voice that made Ruby take a step backwards, ‘You touch any of that money – just one penny – and I’ll put you in the workhouse sooner than you can say Jack Robinson.’
Ruby stared at her sister. Slowly she edged past her and scampered out of the kitchen and up the stairs to John’s room. Her brother was curled under the blankets like a dormouse and didn’t take kindly to being woken by Ruby shaking his shoulders like a dog with a rat. ‘Get off me,’ he muttered irritably, trying to pull the covers over himself again. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Wake up, John, now.’ Ruby wrenched the blankets right off the bed. ‘Our Lucy’s gone stark-staring barmy and there’s money all over the kitchen floor and she won’t let us pick it up.’
‘Wh-what?’ John sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
‘Donald left a note and we’ve got to get away or they’ll put us in the workhouse, but Lucy’s gone queer in the head. She’s acting all funny and there’s money everywhere,’ said Ruby, exaggerating as she often did to get her brother’s attention.
John held his sister’s feverish gaze. ‘It’s not only Lucy who’s gone queer in the head, if you ask me,’ he said stolidly, knowing his lack of reaction would drive Ruby crazy.
Ruby glared at him. ‘All right, be like that then, but Lucy says you’ve got to get dressed an’ be quick about it.’ And with that she flounced out of the room, deeply offended.
John smiled to himself. It was his chief pleasure in life, thwarting Ruby, however and whenever he could. Nevertheless she had whetted his curiosity, particularly with the tale about the money, and he slid off the bed and began dressing. He needed to see what was what.
Within the hour, just as the first blush of dawn was stealing across the sky, they were ready to leave. Ruby and John and the twins were each wearing their Sunday clothes and spare underclothes on top of their everyday ones. It saved packing them. Lucy had brought the old trunk, which had stood at the foot of her parents’ bed in happier times, into the kitchen, and it was crammed full. Between the blankets and double eiderdown lay a saucepan, the black frying pan, the bread knife, five plates and mugs and some knives and forks, and a few other bits and pieces. It weighed a ton.
John had his father’s old knapsack on his back, which held a towel, a piece of blue-veined soap, their hairbrushes and the wooden boat Ernie had carved for John’s seventh birthday. Although Lucy had told them they could only take what was absolutely necessary, she hadn’t demurred when he had squeezed it into the knapsack. Flora and Bess held their raggy dolls.
They emerged into the back yard quietly, for Lucy had warned them not to make a sound. Flora and Bess didn’t really understand what was happening, but Ruby and John were subdued and tearful at leaving the only home they’d ever known. Not so Lucy. She was aware of feeling numb and odd, distant from everyone, as though she was outside herself looking at them all through an invisible divide. This feeling had grown through the preparations to leave, but far from fighting it, she’d welcomed the strength that the deadening of her emotions was providing.
Once in the back lane they fell into a natural formation.
Lucy and Ruby led the way, carrying the heavy trunk between them. Flora and Bess followed and John made up the rear. It was still too early for many folk to be about, just the odd blackbird or two eyeing them from the top of the walls bordering the back yards, and a dog barking somewhere in the distance.
At the end of the lane Lucy turned and looked back whence they’d come. Again there was no nostalgia in her thoughts, merely a numb acceptance that a stage of her life was over and she was leaving Zetland Street for good. How they would manage, and what she was going to do with four other hungry mouths to feed, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t think about the difficulties ahead. For now it was enough that they had to make their way over the bridge into the busy, bustling anonymity of Bishopwearmouth, where no one would know her. She didn’t let herself think about Tom Crawford in the last thought, or acknowledge it was Enid’s eldest son she was fleeing from. For the time being a section of her brain had closed off. She was functioning mechanically, her actions as basic as putting one foot in front of the other. Ruby glanced up at her sister, intending to complain that her arm was being pulled out of its socket by the weight of the trunk and it wasn’t fair that John only had the knapsack to carry. But the words never left her mouth. In the half-light Lucy had taken on the appearance of a stranger, her mouth set in a tight line and her face rigid.
Enid arrived home at noon that same day. Jacob had passed the critical stage, according to the doctor, but would likely remain in a coma for days and when he awoke – the doctor had shrugged – who knew how he would be? When a man survives a battering like the one his patient had been subjected to, there was no knowing what irreversible damage would result. But they must hope and pray, he’d added, taking pity on the stricken woman in front of him. Only God Himself knew the future for any one of them. And for the present Enid could do no good here. Better to go home and eat and rest, because one thing was certain: she would need her strength in the days that lay ahead.
She had walked home in the May sunshine rather than catching the tram, the desire to stretch her legs and get the antiseptic smell of the hospital out of her nostrils stronger than her tiredness. And when she walked into the kitchen and found her husband and two sons cooking themselves bacon and eggs she knew her life truly had been turned upside down. Not one of her menfolk had so much as raised a finger in the home before. And this feeling was compounded when Aaron told her to sit down and put her feet up and Frank poured her a cup of tea while she told them what the doctor had said.
‘Jacob’ll be all right,’ Ralph muttered without a shred of conviction in his voice. ‘They didn’t expect him to last the night, did they, and he’s still here.’
Enid said nothing. The figure lying so very still with his head swathed in bandages and distorted to twice the size bore no resemblance to her son, her baby. It was as though he’d already gone from her. She felt sick to her stomach that someone would want to hurt her lad like this and she knew Aaron was thinking the same, even before he ground out, ‘I’d like five minutes alone with the bloke or blokes who did it, me an’ a dirty great sledgehammer.’
It was Frank, aiming to take the stricken look from his mother’s face by getting her to think of something other than Jacob, who said, ‘Them next door have skedaddled by the way, Mam. I popped round this morning to see if Lucy was all right cos she was pretty cut up about Jake last night, and they’d left a note saying they’d gone. I brought it back to give to the rent man. Funny thing, though, there was some money on the floor. Perhaps it was meant to be with the note for the rent man.’
Enid sat up straighter. ‘Where’s the note? Show me.’
Frank fetched the note from behind the clock on the mantelpiece where he’d placed it with the pile of coins. ‘It don’t say, but Donald’s talked about going south once or twice.’
Enid’s eyes scanned the brief words twice. She sighed heavily as she handed the piece of paper back to Frank. She felt bitterly disappointed in Lucy. She’d have thought the lass would have hung on for a bit to see how Jacob was, and to say goodbye properly before she left, but likely Donald had put pressure on her to go, she told herself. The lad had been a different man since the accident with his da and Ernie. Still, at least it seemed he’d got off his backside at last and had taken responsibility for the family, and not before time. Lucy had looked worried to death for weeks, and all Donald had done was sit about like a big lump of nowt.
She looked at the others. ‘Folk have to steer their own course through stormy waters,’ she said flatly.
‘Aye, but to leave without a word—’
‘I don’t want to discuss it, Frank.’ She took a sip of her tea, but it nearly choked her because of the lump in her throat.
And then, to the amazement and consternati
on of her menfolk, Enid did the unheard of – she put her head in her hands and broke into a storm of weeping that rocked them to their foundations.
PART THREE
Rising from the Ashes
1928
Chapter Eleven
Five days later Lucy was desperate. With the Depression biting she had expected work to be scarce, but the fact that she was dragging four children about with her and had to admit they had no fixed abode had been the death knell to potential jobs. By the third day she had stopped taking them with her, but by then she knew she was not looking her best after two nights sleeping rough. Nevertheless, she had been offered work in a hotel as a kitchen maid, but it was live-in, and as soon as she had mentioned Ruby and the others that had been the end of that. A laundry had said they’d have to see her parents or guardian before they could take her on and she could tell the woman hadn’t believed her when she’d said she was fifteen years old. At another place, a kipper factory, the man who had interviewed her had frightened her badly when, after some pertinent questioning, she had admitted she was the sole carer of her siblings and he’d gone to call the authorities. She had known what that meant. She could see the workhouse doors opening wide in her mind’s eye. She had climbed out of the window of his office at the front of the factory while he was gone and run as though the devil himself was after her.
And now it was the morning of the fifth day and the unusually warm May weather, which had been a life-saver over the last nights, had given way to a cold drizzling rain and chilling northeast wind. Lucy awoke first in the little shelter she and Ruby and John had made at the end of an alley deep in the labyrinth of Sunderland’s East End. They’d opened the lid of the trunk and then hooked the eiderdown over it to provide a low tent-like roof, before wrapping themselves in a blanket and crawling underneath, but no matter how mild the day, it became very cold in the hours before dawn. And now it was beginning to rain and, instead of just being damp, the eiderdown was dripping. None of them had eaten in the last twenty-four hours and the day before that Lucy had gone without, so that the twins and Ruby and John could share a bowl of soup and a bag of chitterlings she’d bought from the pie shop with the last of their money. The twins had developed the persistent hacking coughs of winter once more and the little girls had cried themselves to sleep last night, their small tummies growling with hunger.
What was she going to do? So cold and tired she could barely think, Lucy lay stiff and still so as to not awaken the others. Every minute they were asleep was a minute they weren’t hungry and cold and miserable.
Should she take them to the workhouse? They would be fed and clothed there, of sorts, and it was better than starving to death. She could get them out, once she found work and got a room somewhere. It would give her a breathing space.
And then she immediately dismissed the idea. She would never be able to get them out once they were admitted, not unless she could show she could provide a proper home, along with feeding and clothing them. And the authorities would insist that one room wasn’t a home. John would be separated from the girls and consigned to the male part of the building, and if her parents’ experiences were anything to go by, each day would be hell on Earth. No, she’d rather the five of them did starve to death than that. At least they would go together.
But she wouldn’t let that happen.
Suddenly angry with herself for even thinking along those lines, she gritted her teeth. She would find work today – any work. She would, she would. It was up to her to make it happen.
A rustling at the edge of their sodden shelter brought Lucy jerking upwards. A big grey rat peered in at her, so close she could see its whiskers twitching. As Ruby and John began to stir it disappeared, but its appearance confirmed Lucy’s worse suspicions – she’d heard more and more rustlings as the nights had gone on. The rats were becoming bolder. It was common knowledge that in the tenements and hovels of the East End the rodents thought nothing of climbing into babies’ cots and taking chunks out of them while they slept. And here they were, out in the open. Easy pickings. The rats had clearly got their measure; they would have to move from here.
Within the hour she had marshalled her little brood, although it had taken some cajoling to persuade Flora and Bess to forsake their cocoons, damp though they were. The twins were reluctant to stand up, let alone walk, but as Lucy and Ruby carried the trunk between them and John had the knapsack on his back, there was no one to carry the two little girls. This didn’t prevent them whining and crying as they left the alley, but looking at their small white faces, Lucy hadn’t got the heart to admonish them.
Until now, she had resisted venturing into the roughest part of the East End by the docks. There the brothels, gin shops and spit-and-sawdust public houses did a roaring trade, night and day, and the pimps, pickpockets and other ne’er-do-wells were always on the lookout for new victims. It was a place Lucy had heard her father warning Donald and Ernie to steer clear of when they began earning their own money, and although she didn’t understand the full import of what went on, she knew enough to appreciate it was dangerous. Today, though, it was the last hope of finding work and she had no option.
Before they made their way in that direction, she led them to the old market, which was a short distance from the alley, entering its confines through the entrance in James William Street, one of three such entries. In the centre of the market was a tap with a lead basin and a lead cup attached to it, fastened with a heavy thick chain. It was here they had sated their thirst over the last days, and once or twice John had managed to find the odd mushy piece of fruit or spotted apple under the stalls when the traders had packed up for the night. The old market had happy memories for Lucy. Before the twins had been born and her mother had become bedridden, her parents had brought them to the Michaelmas Day celebrations in Mowbray Park, and they’d called in at the old market on the way home.
It had been full of people that night and noisy, bright and lively. Lucy had thought it was the most fascinating place on Earth. There had been a boxing contest going on, and a stall where you had to kick footballs through holes. Ernie and Donald had won two rag dolls, which they had given to her and Ruby and had now been passed down to Flora and Bess. Duke’s roundabout sat at the top of the market and although it was expensive, at a penny a ride on the horses that went up and down for five minutes, her da had treated them all to a go. Three-year-old John had sat on his mam’s lap and squealed with delight the whole time, and then they’d looked at the stalls. Besides the ones selling second-hand clothes and the like, there was a tripe stall, sweet stalls, a hot-pie stall and umpteen others. Her da had bought two ha’penny bags of nuts and raisins from a man with a big barrel and they’d eaten them listening to the accordion player and the buskers.
It had been a magical night. For a moment Lucy wasn’t standing in the harsh light of day, supervising Flora and Bess at the basin so that they didn’t soak themselves. She was back to an autumnal evening when the gas lamps were creating rings of blue light and turning the cobblestones blue too, and her father was smiling at her mother in that special way he’d kept just for her. And then, just for a second, she felt a warm breath on her cheek and her mother’s voice whispering, ‘Don’t despair, hinny. It’s always darkest just before dawn.’ It had been one of her mother’s favourite sayings.
Lucy shut her eyes tightly and breathed out a slow sigh. She’d sensed her mother close once or twice in the last days and she didn’t care if that meant she was going barmy, she thought painfully. She needed those brief moments of comfort.
‘Lucy, Flora’s got wet again.’ She was brought back to the present by John’s aggrieved voice. ‘I told her to press the button gently and then count to three until she heard the pipe thump before she pressed again, but she pushed too hard, so it came out in a rush. Tell her,’ he added, as Flora found the energy to punch her brother with one small fist before bursting into tears.
‘Here, lass.’ They had been standing a few yar
ds from a hot-pie stall and Lucy hadn’t been aware that the owner, a stout matron of indeterminate years, had been watching them. ‘These were left over from last night and I can’t sell ’em in case they’ve gone off, but I dare bet you won’t be too fussy, eh?’
Lucy knew they looked a sorry sight, but even if she hadn’t, the look on the woman’s face as she handed Lucy the bag would have confirmed it. But the woman’s smile was kind and Lucy took the bag gratefully, thanking her before they moved off to a quiet corner. The pies, one for each of them, were cold and broken, with congealed grease in places, but Lucy knew that to her dying day nothing would taste so good again. They finished every crumb, licking their fingers over and over, and then half-laughing at each other.
It was a sign, Lucy told herself. Hearing her mam, and then the pies. It was a sign she would get work today. It had to be.
Enid and Aaron, along with their three other sons, were sitting round Jacob’s bed in the hospital. It was Jacob’s first day of sitting up, and although Enid had waxed lyrical about how much better he looked when they had arrived at his bedside, inside she wanted to cry. Lying down he had looked dreadful, but sitting up he appeared even worse. His bruises had turned every colour of the rainbow and his face was so swollen that his eyes were slits in the mounds of flesh. Every breath was agony for him, the nurses had told them that, saying that until the broken ribs healed he would be in constant pain. And now and again he would shut his eyes and fall asleep for a few minutes. But he had recognized them all and spoken coherently for the first time – a minor miracle, according to the doctor, although Enid didn’t think there was anything minor about it. Now she knew Jacob could hear and see and that his mind was his own, she realized just how much she had prepared herself for the worst. The relief had caused a flood of emotion, which she was endeavouring to hide behind her usual forthright manner.
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