by Maggie Hope
‘It’s 8/6 a week, including breakfast but not including evening meal. You can use the kitchen to cook your own food for that. But mind, I won’t have anything which stinks the house out. Let’s say between five and six? We’ll leave you to it for that hour.’
‘That will be all right,’ said Molly, perking up a little. She hadn’t realised the price included breakfast. Perhaps if she ate a good breakfast she wouldn’t need much during the day. His next words disillusioned her on that score.
‘I’ll leave bread and margarine and jam out for you before I go to work. I leave the house at six o’clock every morning. Now, I suppose you want to see your room?’ He was already leading the way out of the sitting room. Molly got to her feet and followed him meekly up the stairs.
It was quite a large bedroom at the back of the house. A single bed stood in solitary splendour in the middle of an expanse of highly polished linoleum. It was covered with a white cotton bedspread. But there was a dressing table in the corner with a plain wooden chair in front of it, and in the corner a cupboard. Mr Jones opened the cupboard door and showed Molly a row of hooks with a shelf above. ‘You can put your things in here,’ he said, and turned and stared fiercely at her. ‘I can’t abide slovens,’ he snapped. ‘I won’t have things laid about, do you understand?’ Without waiting for an answer he went on, ‘That’ll be two weeks in advance, you can move in when you like. Seventeen shillings, please.’
‘Is there a fire?’
He looked affronted. ‘If you must have a fire, you’ll have to find your own coal. I don’t hold with fires in bedrooms. I can’t have you using electric either, I’m not made of money. It’s a coal fire or nothing. An’ you’ll have to see to getting the chimney swept yourself an’ all.’
Molly hesitated. She looked about her. There were floral curtains at the window and a tiny cast-iron fireplace with a paper fan in the grate. But there was a key in the lock; she could shut herself in at least. She wouldn’t have to see a lot of Mr Jones. And if she hated it she could always move out. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, and fumbled in her bag for her purse. ‘I’ll be back with my stuff on Sunday, I have to work Monday.’
‘I won’t have the place cluttered up, mind,’ he warned. ‘And I don’t know about Sunday. Me and Betty go to Chapel on Sunday, ten o’clock service. Are you Chapel?’
‘I’ll be bringing just a few things,’ Molly insisted, thinking that for two pins she would tell him what to do with his room. ‘I will be cleaning it after all. And since you ask, yes, I’m Chapel.’ Not that she’d been to service much since Dad died, she thought dismally.
‘Aye, well. Just mind what I’ve told you,’ said Mr Jones, and marched off down the stairs leaving her to follow.
Molly caught the bus back to Eden Hope, it came along just as she approached the stop. She sat staring out of the window, wondering if she had done the right thing. Maybe not, she thought, chewing on the corner of a thumb nail. As she had walked down the stairs in Adelaide Street the door to the kitchen was open. She had smelled boiled cabbage and overdone meat.
‘Haven’t I told you to keep this door shut, you gormless fool? The place will stink of food,’ she’d heard Mr Jones snap as he banged the door to behind him. She thought she’d heard a muffled cry too but was letting herself out of the house by then.
Molly caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window of the bus and put her hand down on her lap. It was years since she’d chewed her thumb, Mam had always been telling her off about it. Suddenly she felt such an intense desire for her mother, her father, Harry, any of them, that it cut into her like a knife. She blinked, blew her nose, and stared fixedly out of the window. The bus had just stopped. Shildon, she thought, it’s Shildon. She forced herself to think of that. Home of the railways, most of the men hereabouts worked in the wagon works. There were Christmas lights in the windows of some of the shops, shining out on to the pavement. What was she going to do to celebrate Christmas? Suddenly she dreaded the thought of it. Her first Christmas on her own. Oh, Harry, where are you? she thought sadly.
‘Fares, please.’
The conductor had to say it twice before it registered with Molly.
‘Sorry. Return to Eden Hope Colliery,’ she said. The bell on his ticket machine tinkled. She put the ticket in her bag, alongside the return ticket she had got on the bus from Bishop that morning. Oh, well, she would use both of them up, she supposed. But there was a frighteningly small amount of money left in her purse, she would have to dip into her £25 soon. And she couldn’t afford to do that too often.
Ann Pendle looked up at Molly, arrested by the sudden look of desolation which had crossed the young girl’s face. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Molly?’ she asked yet again. Ann felt guilty. She knew she should have made more of an effort to get her family to accept the girl, at least for a while. For the sake of Molly’s mother at least. But it was Joan … she had loved Harry Mason since she was a tiny girl. Her face had always lit up when she saw him. If he had smiled at her, talked to her, she had been in seventh heaven. Ann had felt her daughter’s pain when Harry had jilted her. She’d tried to comfort her but Joan would not be consoled. Harry had tried to let her down lightly, told her that she wouldn’t want to be tied to him when he was going away for years perhaps. But she couldn’t forgive or forget.
Well, I have my own family to think of first, Ann told herself.
‘You’ll be all right in West Auckland? You’ve got nice clean digs, haven’t you?’ she asked for the third time.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Molly. Her mind was on other things, like the brass poker stand in the form of a prancing horse which had been displayed on the hearth ever since she could remember. And the marble clock, a wedding present from her grandparents to her parents. She touched it with her fingers. The marble was smooth and cool. It ticked away as loudly as it had done ever since she could remember.
‘Granma took out a Universal club for it, two an’ six a week it cost her,’ Mam used to say. She had loved that clock. Maybe Molly should take it with her to West Auckland. She tried to visualise it on the meagre mantelpiece in the room in Adelaide Street but her imagination failed her. Still, she would take it, she couldn’t just let it go. It was part of her life.
‘The flat cart’s here,’ Ann announced. By the gate the horse snorted, nodding its head up and down with a jangling of brasses. The second-hand dealer from Shildon had arrived.
Molly had a kind of numb feeling as she stood by the window and watched him carry things out and place them by the cart. Her dad’s wooden-ended bed with the rose carved in the middle of the head. Harry’s cheap black iron bedstead and her own. The bundles of bedclothes, the press, a chest of drawers. Even the best of the clippy mats. She been given £11 for the lot. Well, it could keep her for a month and buy a pair of winter shoes, at least.
Ann Pendle tied a knot in the string round the box of kitchen bits and pieces and stood back as Mr Robson, the second-hand dealer, came to the door.
‘That’s the lot,’ she said.
‘Righto. I’ll get loaded.’
Mr Robson glanced at Molly’s white, set face and looked away again. He felt sorry for the lass but business was business. He went through these scenes almost every day and couldn’t be constantly thinking of the tragedies which usually went before.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Ann, and picked up a box. It didn’t take long to load the cart and Molly stood watching as her home was dismantled around her.
‘Where’s the marble clock?’
She started at Mr Robson’s question. ‘I’m not selling the clock, I’m keeping it,’ she replied firmly. ‘I told you I wasn’t selling the clock.’ Her heart beat wildly. For a minute she thought he would insist on taking it. He couldn’t, could he?
Mr Robson pursed his lips, opened his mouth to say something then thought better of it and nodded acquiescence. Taking a wallet out of his inside pocket, he counted out £10, hesitating as he considered deducting
£1 at least for the clock. But he didn’t. He added the £1 to the pile of notes on the table, reckoning he must be going soft in the head.
The house seemed strange, empty as it was but for the few things Molly was taking with her. Ann Pendle looked around at the patch of unfaded wallpaper which had been behind the press. She had forgotten that the roses on it had once been that particular shade of pink, the trailing ivy so darkly green. She took Molly by the arm.
‘Howay, pet,’ she said, ‘you’re coming round to us for a bite of dinner.’ She couldn’t let the lass go off without her Sunday dinner. After all, Joan was out today, off visiting her aunt, so couldn’t object.
Chapter Four
‘ONLY SIX MORE shopping days to Christmas,’ the voice on the wireless boomed out between records. Enid Parker, walking down the line handing out fresh batches of dress parts to be sewn, grinned.
‘To tell you the truth, I could do all my shopping in one go on Saturday. All I need is the money, I’d soon make the time,’ she said.
There was a murmur of agreement from the girls on the line. Molly bent her head over her machine, slickly slipping the seam to be sewn under the needle, throwing the two pieces into the box beside her and picking up yet another two pieces of navy blue rayon cloth.
Shopping? she thought. She hadn’t even thought about shopping. But then what shopping did she have to do? There was no one but Harry to buy for. Harry! With a sense of shock she realised she hadn’t sent him a Christmas present, nor even a card. He wouldn’t get it now. Usually she sent one weeks before Christmas. Still she would go into the town tomorrow and get something, send it at the main post office.
Her fingers busy as ever as she bent over her work, Molly’s mind wandered off on to thoughts of her brother and his friend Jackson. Where were they? Why hadn’t she had a letter since Dad died? Irrational though it was, as well she knew, she felt resentful that he wasn’t here but at the other side of the world. He should come home, really he should.
The air was filled with the tinny sound of the wireless, the volume turned up. Christmas carols resounded off the walls, the girls singing along with them. Only the bright and brisk carols, of course, it wouldn’t do to have slow, melodic ones. The BBC was well aware that bright and breezy music was needed in factories to push production levels as high as possible. The threat of war had ended the depression, there was leeway to make up.
The threat of war … People said that Chamberlain had ended that with the Munich Agreement but the fear still lurked. Molly shivered, she didn’t want to think of it. Harry was a soldier. If there was a war … Her thoughts stopped there, she couldn’t bear to go on.
Luckily the whistle blew just then, the wireless was switched off, the power to the machines stopped and the room was suddenly silent but for the chatter of the girls as they rose from their machines in relief, stretched, picked up bags and tin boxes holding sandwiches and walked out to the canteen or over the road to the fish shop.
One or two of them smiled uncertainly at Molly as they passed, still uncomfortable with someone who had been so savagely bereaved. Joan Pendle, though, didn’t even look her way as she went out, surrounded by her cronies. Joan knew how to keep people about her. She was a pretty girl with fair hair and blue eyes, and a curvaceous figure with big breasts she liked to show off under tight sweaters.
Molly wanted to ask her what the people were like who had got the Masons’ old house. Was it a big family or just a young couple? Did they look after the place? Was the man a gardener and would he keep the long narrow strip of garden trim? Dad had been a gardener. He’d loved his flowers, had a special trench where he grew his prize leeks, winning a prize for them at the club last year. But of course she couldn’t ask. Sighing, Molly picked up her bag and followed the rest of the girls out of the room.
She didn’t go into the canteen. That was one blessing of living in St Helen’s Auckland, she only had to cross the road and walk along to Adelaide Street to be back in her lodgings. She saved money there. Mr Jones was always out at work during the day and Betty didn’t mind her boiling the kettle for tea. In fact, Betty was usually glad of a cup herself, so long as the spoonful of leaves came from Molly’s caddy. Mr Jones kept a strict watch on his own.
Over the days since Molly had come to Adelaide Street, she and Betty had become quite friendly, though the girl was still reserved and quiet. Today they sat at the kitchen table eating fish paste sandwiches. Molly finished hers and picked up her cup, holding it with both hands and leaning her elbows on the table. She was grateful for the warmth of the cup as it seeped into her chilly fingers and sipped at it slowly. Ten minutes before she had to go back to work. Her thoughts strayed back to Harry, wondering what she could get for fifteen shillings including the cost of postage to India. Not much, she suspected.
‘By, it’s cold today,’ Betty volunteered suddenly, and Molly forgot about the problem of Harry’s present as she looked properly at her companion for the first time. With a shock she realised that the girl was pale – well, she was always pale but now she was even more so. Yet even as Molly gazed at her a pink flush began to suffuse her cheeks. It wasn’t a healthy flush, though, Betty looked decidedly feverish. There were shadows under her eyes and her hand trembled as she held the cup. The sandwich on her plate had only one bite taken from it.
‘You look poorly,’ said Molly in concern, berating herself for not noticing as soon as she came in.
‘I’m all right. Just a bit of a cold, I think. Any road, I have to go back to school,’ the girl replied, and started to stand up before sitting back down abruptly. Her eyes had a glazed look about them.
‘I don’t think you should,’ said Molly. All of her attention was focussed on Betty now. She looked really ill, shivering uncontrollably. The girl tried picking up her cup but tea slopped into her saucer and she put it down again.
‘I’m bad,’ she admitted. ‘I have to go to school, though, what would me dad say if I stayed at home?’
‘He would likely tell you you’d done the best thing,’ said Molly firmly. ‘Look at you, you’re not fit to go out.’
‘He’ll play war with me if I don’t go to school,’ whispered Betty. ‘I have to go.’
‘No, don’t –’ said Molly, but she was too late. Betty had stood up again and promptly fallen to the floor. Molly rushed around the table, her heart beating rapidly in alarm. She bent over the girl, put her arm under her shoulders, patted her cheek. ‘Betty!’ she cried. ‘Oh, please, God! Please, make her wake up!’
Betty moaned and opened her eyes and Molly breathed a prayer of relief. The linoleum was icy. She had to get the girl upstairs into bed, there wasn’t a fire on in the house. Mr Jones believed it was a waste of money during the day when there was no one in.
Molly bit her lip as she sat on the floor, supporting Betty’s limp form. She had had a fire in her room the night before, just a small one, perhaps there was still some lingering warmth. If only she could get Betty up the stairs.
‘Come on, pet, let’s have you,’ she said. ‘You must help me, I’ve got to get you into bed.’
‘Dad says it’s pure laziness to …’ Betty began but Molly interrupted her.
‘Never mind what your dad says, he’s not here now,’ she cried, exasperated. ‘Do you think you can walk upstairs if you lean on me? I promise I won’t let you fall.’
‘I’ll try.’
It was a struggle, Betty twice faltering and clinging to Molly, almost bringing them both tumbling down the stairs. But eventually they were on the landing. Betty turned towards the tiny boxroom which was her bedroom but Molly stopped her.
‘No, I think you’ll be better in my bed,’ she said. ‘It’s warmer there.’ By this time Betty was past arguing. She allowed herself to be led into the warmer room and put to bed.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, lying back on the pillow, her eyes closed and face as white as the pillowcase once again. She was shivering uncontrollably by now. Molly gazed at her and bit her lip
. She had to get back to work, couldn’t afford to take the afternoon off which would mean she’d have to break into Harry’s Christmas box money to pay her rent.
‘How do you feel now?’ she asked, and Betty opened her eyes briefly, attempted a smile.
‘Warmer.’
‘I’ll get the doctor,’ Molly said, but Betty became agitated. Her eyes flew open in alarm.
‘No!’ she cried and her breathing became laboured until she was gasping for breath. ‘No, me dad will have a fit if you do,’ she managed to say.
‘All right, all right, I won’t,’ Molly said hastily. ‘Don’t get upset, it’s bad for you. Lie quiet, man, will you? I’ll get you a hot water bottle. I think you’ve got the ’flu, though.’
She rushed downstairs and found an ancient stone hot water bottle under the sink, heated water and filled it. Upstairs once again, she wrapped it in her own woollen scarf and put it at Betty’s feet.
The girl was quieter now, her breathing seemed easier, she was dropping off to sleep. Maybe she would sleep herself better, thought Molly. She went to the fireplace and, using her own precious store of coal, lit the fire. Oh, to think that she should actually have to count lumps of coal! It was the only thing they’d always had enough of in Eden Hope; the miners’ coal allowance had been delivered every third week there. Heaps had been dumped on the pavements outside the back gates, a familiar sight, waiting to be shovelled into coal houses. She pictured it in her mind – the street winding upwards, stepping out carefully into the road to avoid the coal – and wept inside. The emotion took her by surprise. What a thing to be nostalgic about!
Molly blinked rapidly, closing her mind against the memory. She looked at the meagre fire she had built, sighed and added another small shovelful of coal. So she would have to do without a fire for the rest of the week. Well, it wouldn’t hurt her, she was healthy enough.
Molly looked at the marble clock, perched slightly precariously on the narrow mantelshelf above the fire. It was one o’clock already, the line would be starting up in the factory soon. She went back to the bed. Betty was sleeping. Maybe Molly could just go back to work. After all, Betty’s father would be home in three hours, wouldn’t he? She felt the girl’s forehead, which was hot and dry, tried to feel for a pulse but couldn’t remember where to find it.