Mam alternated the accents easily. She also had a third way of speaking, overlaying the accents with a tone that was husky yet girlish, and this special voice was used when any of the three men she was on first-name terms with came to the house.
Mr Hammond called to see Mam every week. He was a director of the bank his father had built and, though he went daily to Hammond Silks, on Fridays he spent a half-day at the bank before calling in at Elsie Stanway's at three o'clock.
Mam did not have a bank account but she would give cash to Mr Hammond when she had a large bill or suppliers to pay. Mr Hammond made the cheques out for her. 'It's common practice,' she said, 'That's why John comes on Fridays. In case I need a cheque making out.'
Lily never saw money changing hands but every Friday afternoon when she came in from school, Mr Hammond, in his morning suit, was sitting in the front shop on a Bentwood chair, leaning an elbow on the counter, gazing into Mam's sherry-flushed face as if she were an angel.
Lily loved Mr Hammond, who always touched her arm and patted her gently on the head and asked what she'd been doing since last time. He asked if she were top of the class and spoke in a sad voice about Magnus whose haemophilia was getting worse. Lily knew this. She saw Magnus and Sylvia every Saturday when she stayed at Nanna's. She and Magnus played house when he was well. When he was in bed Lily read books, recited and sang to him to take his mind off his pain. Magnus spent months on end in bed after some minor injury caused bleeding into his hips, knees and ankles.
For Mr Hammond Mam used her best voice. She encouraged Lily to copy her because it was only through 'talking nice' and keeping well-in with a better-off class of person that she'd be ready for the day they would 'get out of it.'
Lily believed that this was why they never had the walls papered or the house painted. They would be getting out of it any day. The second man who called on them, Lily hated. His name was Howard Willey-Leigh. He had a factory in Manchester and Mam bought fancy goods, ribbons, trimmings and cravats from him. He was tall and thin and, at forty-four, very old. He acted like a lord, boasting of his big house in Southport, the seaside town where rich Manchester mill-owners lived. He lamented that he'd been done out of an inheritance and should have been a sir. His mother's maiden' name was Willey and he had added the hyphen himself to join her name to his own.
Lily once said, 'I wouldn't boast about that! He's showing off! Fancy pretending to be someone! Fancy giving yourself a double-barrelled name, especially with a middle name like Willey!'
Mam flared. 'Never be rude to my friends! Do you understand?'
'Yes,' Lily said meekly, but she would only call him Mr Leigh.
Mam, putting it on like mad, made his name sound like 'Hah-d' and this affectation annoyed Lily so much that she'd deliberately drop her aitches to deter him from coming or cause him to refuse Mam's invitation to 'Have a seat and take a cup of tea with me. Hah'd.'
She couldn't abide the way Mam behaved for Mr Leigh, looking out for the black Lanchester, painting her mouth like a fast woman, pursing her lips, primping in the glass, leaning over the counter until you could peer down the V of her blouse into the shadows. Mam would gaze up at him, licking her lips, laughing softly like a young girl at his every word.
Mam said he was handsome but Lily thought he was ugly. His eyes drooped at the outside corners. He had crowded teeth and one of his side teeth was gold that glinted and flashed. His dyed black hair was plastered slick with brilliantine that smelled sickly sweet and left comb marks like channels across his head.
Mam did not order much from him, but he spoke in an over- familiar way about 'my best customer', saying things like, 'Good little business, this. You must be rolling in money.' What Lily hated most was when, behind Mam's back, he'd catch her eye, lift his eyebrows, wink and bare his teeth in a flashing smile. It was a little thing, but she didn’t know what to do. She couldn't tell Mam.
Mr Leigh was ten years older than Mam and unhappily married to a very old invalid lady. He was childless and Lily was afraid of being left alone with him because of what happened when she was nine.
She was recovering from mumps and longing for an orange once the swelling went down on her neck. She had not been able to swallow proper food for a week and Mam, worried that she might get thinner, said. 'Will you be all right if I run down to Leadbetter's for oranges?'
'I'll sit in the shop and watch through the window,' Lily said.
Mam wrapped her in a blanket and sat her in the wooden armchair placed near the shop window, where, with the sun streaming through the lace curtain, Lily could watch the activity of Jordangate. Mam went to the door, saying, 'If Hah'd comes you'd best let him in. Nobody else, mind.'
She had been gone seconds when the Lanchester drew up. Mr Leigh tried the door. Lily got up and unfastened the catch. 'You are looking better,' he said, and his artificial manner made her flesh creep. 'Where's your mother?'
Lily never meant to encourage him. 'She's out. Shopping.' She spoke in a rare loud voice, then threw herself back into the chair.
He put down his cases, went to the door, opened it and peered up and down the street, looking for Mam. When he came back Lily spoke up again - why, she would never know. She was not bold. What made her say 'Hurry up and shut the door, will you? My body's shivering all over, waiting here.' She never said the word 'body' out loud. It was thought coarse.
He shut the door and slid the bolt. Then he drew the brown chenille Curtain, hiding the sun, making the shop gloomy. Next he dragged the Bentwood forward. His face was near. She clutched the chair and froze.
'I’ll warm you up, my Jordangate Lily.' He reached over and lifted her blanket and all, on to his knee. She should have bitten him, fought or screamed instead of sitting there frozen with fear as he held her tight with one hand and let the other slide about, under the flannelette nightdress, feeling her bottom. Then he put cold thin fingers between her legs, stroking, trying to move her thighs apart, hurting her with his knuckles and fingernails.
Why didn't she kick or bite him? Why did she start crying' instead of fighting back? At the sound of her cries he took his bands away, dumped her back on the chair and stood up. 'Stop that noise! We don't want your mother to find out what you asked me to do, do we?'
'No,' she cried. Why did he say she'd asked him to do it? She had not asked.
'We don't want your mother to know that you are an impudent little tease who asks men to do naughty things,' he said. 'We'll keep this to ourselves. Shall we, Lily?'
'Yes.' She wouldn't tell a soul, she could assure him of that. She dared not tell Mam. She wanted him to go away, leave the house and never come back. And she wanted to do the trick of the mind, force herself to forget what had happened. It worked when she wanted to remember, so it would surely help her forget. Afterwards she flinched if he came near, but she pushed it to the back of her mind and later the memory became bound up with oranges, fevers and lack of assurance with men; so different from Mam.
Lily liked Mr Hammond and hated Mr Leigh, but she was full of admiration for Mam's third man friend, Mr Chancellor. And it was clearly important to Mam that she shone for him, for Mr Chancellor owned their house and shop, the office next door and any number in Jordangate and Hibel Road. All his properties backed on to the yard and wasteground behind Pilkington Printers. He was a good landlord, always on hand, checking his properties, keeping his buildings in good order, having running water put in and real WCs in place of the earth closets that had to be shovelled on to muck carts by the night-soil men.
Mr Chancellor was clever, quick and restless, with hazel eyes that were full of laughter. Mam said he was unhappily married but he and his wife stayed together because of their son Ray, whom the sun shone out of.
Once, Lily said, 'Is that why you call him Ray?'
'What?' said Mr Chancellor.
'Your son. Ray? For the sun that shines out of him?'
He roared with laughter. 'No,' he said.
Mam said afterwards that she had
been cheeky and she must never speak that way again to Mr Chancellor who was an important man in Macclesfield. He was well respected because he hated injustice and helped people. Mam also said that he was not only good-hearted and generous, he was astute. He bought and sold property. He had recently registered anonymously a trading company under which he could deal, buy property and lend money - as Mam put it, 'without all the nosy- parkers in Macc. knowing who's behind it'.
Mr Chancellor's brothers and his mother lived in his properties. He owned the Swan Hotel next door to the shop. He had started to buy public houses in good positions in the town. He put managers into them and when they were closed down by the licensing justices in Crewe - and this happened regularly to Macclesfield pubs - he got as much as nine hundred pounds in compensation. And he still owned the buildings, which he could rent out.
Lily promised never to be cheeky to him again, so the next time he came for the rent and asked, 'How's our Lil?' she replied in a prim, well-mannered way, 'Very well, thank you.'
He came back with one of his working-man sayings, 'Good lad, little 'un!’ and biffed her affectionately on the cheek. He always spoke to her first, she noticed, before he went on to pass a private little joke with Mam who always laughed merrily, forgetting her airs in his presence.
Lily wanted Mr Chancellor to like her and she thought he did because sometimes, when she was alone in the school holidays, he would drop by on half-closing Wednesday and ask why she was playing inside. Didn't she have a friend?
'No,' Lily answered. 'Only an enemy.'
'An enemy? At your age?' he said. 'Who is it?'
'Doreen Grimshaw.'
'Our chief clerk's daughter?' and he roared with laughter again when she nodded. 'Can't have little girls with enemies!'
Every holiday Wednesday after that he gave her a silver sixpence for a bar of chocolate, a bag of toffee and an afternoon at the Picturedrome.
Lily always sat in the front row and. kept threepence change. Lily also noticed that Mam was quieter than normal when Mr Chancellor brought his wife to the shop, and that Mr Chencellor was not so funny when he escorted her. Perhaps that was because in Mam's eyes Mrs Chancellor was a religious fanatic. Mam never went either to chapel or to church but Lily knew that secretly she'd like to be one of the select few who were in the Mothers' Union.
Sarah Chancellor looked at her husband over breakfast and gave a little cough to get, his attention. They sat far apart, one at each end of the oval dining table. Bessie, the maid, was at the sideboard, putting out the dish of scrambled eggs Frank liked every morning. The girl was loitering, listening. Sarah did not want her to go rushing down to the kitchen, telling the staff that madam and the Master had had 'words' again. The servants speculated on the state of their employers' marriage, implying that the Master must have lady friends because he had no need of his religious old wife. There was no other woman in Frank's life, of course. He was not, like those in the lower classes, a demanding man. In a town like Macclesfield it would be impossible to keep infidelity, a natural source of gossip, a secret. There were no rumours, no scandals about the good name of Chancellor.
But here, in the house, the servants would see that he never came to her bed. A good man would have shared her bed without expecting favours, if only for appearances' sake. And for the sake of their son who tried to make a joke of it, saying, 'Why do you keep Dad out of your bed, Mother? I'm beginning to think you don't love him!' She never refused Frank the right to share her bed. It was he who decided they should sleep apart. Frank had done well out of marriage.
He looked over the pink pages of the Financial Times. 'Well?'
Sarah waited until the girl had gone before she spoke. 'I hope you've remembered,' she said. 'It's my birthday.'
'Fifty.' He smiled, then went serious again. 'Many happy returns. I have sent you a card. The post hasn't arrived.'
'A card? Is that all?' He had never bought her a present. He said she had everything she wanted, when in fact he had all he wanted. He had built up quite a little empire of property. The printworks had a factory manager. Frank's work there only took up two full days of his week. And though he enjoyed his house and his way of life, he seldom spent an evening in her company. Sarah said, 'Where are you off to tonight?'
'Council meeting,’ he said. 'Why?'
Frank was an alderman - a council legislator - and if he continued the way he was going, one day he'd be mayor and a justice of the peace. She said, 'I want you here tonight. I’m having a dinner party.'
'Who's coming? Let me guess. John Hammond. Catriona' Hammond. The Bible Society. And half the town's millowners.'
'And Ray.'
Frank put the paper down and went to the sideboard, dark and angry. He said, 'He's only been back at school for four weeks.'
'He won't mind.'
'I bet he won't. And it costs an arm and a leg.'
'It's not you who pays!' At great personal sacrifice, for she hated to be parted from the son she had moulded to her ways, Sarah had sent her darling boy to Edinburgh, to the school John Hammond recommended; the school John wished to send Magnus to as soon as he was well.
Frank carried his plate back to the table and cast a cold eye on her. 'True.' He sat down. 'If I were paying he would be at my old school and I'd be able to keep an eye on him.'
'He's fourteen. He's had my guiding hand up to now. He doesn't need your example any longer,’ she answered quickly. John Hammond said that Ray was a son to be proud of - a fine boy. Frank was hard on Ray, too demanding. Ray and Frank did not have an easy relationship though Ray admired Frank and treated him with respect. But it was not Frank's capacity for work that Ray admired. It was his free spirit.
She said, 'Ray knows you don't practise what you preach. You tell him to buckle down to school work. You tell him to have respect for his mother. You don't show any.'
'My God!' Frank's face darkened. He pushed his breakfast plate away. 'You do it deliberately. Why do you come between me and my son?'
'Why don't you spend an evening in our company?' she said. Then, suddenly, she changed tack. 'It's Ray's half-term. I'm too busy to collect him from the station.'
'I'll meet him.' He got up from the table, leaving his food untouched. 'What are you doing that's so important?'
'How can you ask? Father's sinking.' The doctors said that Father had three months to live, at the most.
He raised his eyebrows. 'Love for your father wouldn't keep you away from Ray,' he said. 'What else are you doing?'
'I'm going to be shown round Hammond Silks.'
'I see.'
'No, you don't,' she said. 'You see nothing of my worries. You spend your time and money looking after your own. Your mother. Your brothers. Your tenants. Your property. Your Macclesfield!’
There was cynical amusement in his eyes. 'Airing your grievances, Sarah? Let's talk about what you are up to. You were saying...? Your father wants to make sure there are no death duties to be paid, and..?’
'All right!' she said harshly. 'I agree with Father. We've changed the name to Chancellor Printers. Everything is in Ray's name so he comes into it when he's twenty-one, without death duties and liabilities.'
'You should be glad to pay your taxes.' His voice was rough now. 'You are not using your father's weakness to try to persuade him into a merger with Hammond Silks, are you? Your father never gave in to Old Man Hammond. He wouldn't sell. Nor would I give that old weasel the satisfaction... Anyway, silk manufacturing has been in the doldrums for a good few years. Things can't improve.'
'I'm no fool.'
He lifted his eyebrows as if he did not believe her. She would not jeopardise Ray's inheritance. It would be an act of madness, to join forces with Hammond's. Even Frank said that the Printworks needed to expand to cope with all the work they had. They needed money to increase the size of the premises. They had never been so busy, printing cottons and the new cellulose fibres, as well as silk.
But she had to think of everything. She was ageing
. She might die young, like her mother. What if, with her dead and her father gone Frank then took another wife? Had more children? The printworks and all they had worked for must not be lost to Ray. Still, she was going to be with John Hammond all morning.
'Hello, Sarah my dear!’ In his office, John greeted her with a peck on the cheek. 'So glad to see you.'
Sarah's pulse quickened. It always did. She felt like a young girl again when she was near him. 'Thank you, John dear. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never been inside the Hammond Silks mill.'
He put his hand out to take her overcoat and hat and place them on a chair then looked, smiling at her for a full five seconds before saying, 'You look different. What have you done'?'
She'd had her iron-grey hair hennaed and bobbed. It had taken twenty years off her, the hairdresser said. She patted her head. 'I had my hair done.’
He was smiling. 'Catriona will be here in half an hour. We'll wait for her. We can all go round the mill together.'
He had not remembered that it was her birthday and he was coming to dinner tonight. She supposed all men were the same. He led her towards a seat by a small table in the window. An open book was set upon it. 'I thought you might like to have a look at this book of drawings,' he said. 'Made by the Chinese two hundred years ago.'
He pointed to a print on the wall; an old print of cocoon-reeling in Europe, from four hundred years back. 'Much the same methods are used today, Sarah,' he said.
He went to sit at his desk, to wait for Catriona's arrival, and she had no choice but to examine the book in which were depicted to the tiniest detail every process, from the rearing of silkworms to the woven material. This was not what she wanted. 'I had hoped to have a private talk, John,' she said. 'I need advice -about Ray.'
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