The Corner House

by Ruth Hamilton

  Maurice Chorlton paid lip-service to Methodism. He attended chapel each Sunday and, as a lay-preacher, delivered the odd sermon. He liked being holy and noticeable on Sundays. When Monday arrived, he slipped easily into his other role and received goods whose origins were sometimes uncertain. His flawed philosophy was simple: God came first on Sundays and business ruled for the rest of the week. Unfortunately, these two people were bringing God into the shop, trying to prick his conscience on a day when principles were determinedly dormant.

  ‘Well?’ Eva tapped an impatient foot.

  The shopkeeper sighed inwardly. Roy Chorlton, motherless son and heir to Maurice, had kept bad company since leaving school. The minister at Maurice’s chapel was of the opinion that the sudden death of Roy’s female parent was the cause of the temporary delinquency, but Maurice knew better. The boy was a weak character, one who, when drunk, would follow his companions wherever they led. Not to put too fine a point on the issue, Roy was a failure. Driven off track by his peers and by drink, Roy had raped a slut called Theresa Nolan. Who else but a slut walked the streets after dark? The terror of scandal drove Maurice to provide compensation for a chit of a girl who had been left bruised, bloodied and pregnant. ‘Any one of them might be the father,’ he said now.

  ‘Exactly.’ Eva nodded her head jerkily. ‘So it’s up to you to get money out of Betteridge and Hardman.’

  The jeweller shook his head wearily. Getting cash out of Hardman was one thing, because the tanner had a reputation to consider. But Betteridge, comedian and purveyor of furniture, didn’t manage to care too deeply about his son’s escapades. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ He pushed back another string of greasy hair that had loosened itself.

  Eva smiled. ‘See, we know you’re an honourable man, Mr Chorlton. You’re a decent, churchgoing soul.’ She had no time for Methodists; a sober-sided, miserable lot of grey folk, they were. But at least this fellow went to some sort of church.

  The jeweller was not taken in by Eva’s unheralded flattery. The woman wanted extra money. She always wanted something for Theresa Nolan. ‘There’s been a fair few bob paid out up to now,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Children is expensive,’ replied Eva quickly. ‘And a scandal could shut your shop good and proper. His brother’ – she jerked a thumb in Danny’s direction – ‘is a highly respected man, so if he tells the world what happened, he’ll get listened to and believed. And he knows for himself about the cost of babies, because Bernard’s wife gave birth within hours of Theresa Nolan. Remember, if Bernard opens his gob too wide, you, the tanner and that good-for-nothing chair-seller won’t hold your heads up again. As for your sons …’ She pulled a face, as if an acid taste had entered her mouth. ‘Least said about them three, soonest mended,’ she concluded.

  Inwardly, Maurice Chorlton agreed with the midwife. His son Roy was what locals might call nowt a pound, while George Hardman’s lad, too, was a waste of space. As for the furniture-seller’s son – well, that boy wasn’t worth the paper his birth certificate was written on. ‘I don’t know why it has to be down to me all the time,’ said Maurice.

  ‘Because you can be trusted.’ Eva’s tone was saccharine sweet.

  Danny felt like a bit of a spare part in all this, as he had not been involved before. He watched Eva, the expert in negotiation, manipulating, hooking her fish, reeling it in. He guessed that Eva might have done very well with the Fleetwood fishermen, because she wasn’t one for letting go.

  Chorlton opened the door and ushered the unwelcome guests into the street. While Eva muttered a few final words of wisdom into the jeweller’s ear, Danny leaned against the window.

  ‘Have you finished?’

  Danny turned his face to the right, saw Chorlton’s assistant hovering near the wall. ‘Just about,’ he replied.

  Pauline smiled nervously. She hadn’t done any shopping, because the money had run out yesterday.

  The fishmonger was at a loss for words. He wasn’t one for small talk, especially when in the company of a young woman. ‘Cold,’ he managed finally.

  ‘Aye.’ She fastened the top button of her serviceable grey coat. ‘More snow, I reckon,’ she offered belatedly.

  Danny noticed the pinched cheeks and that special pallor born of undernourishment. ‘Call round at our stall some time,’ he said with a degree of nonchalance. ‘I’ll find you a bit of fish for a good price.’

  ‘Ta.’

  He watched Eva as she finally let go of the jeweller’s sleeve, thereby allowing him to return inside and attend to business. ‘Don’t forget,’ Danny told Pauline.

  ‘I won’t. Me mam likes fish.’ Pauline scuttled off to join her master.

  Eva eyed Danny. In Eva’s opinion, Danny was wasted. ‘She lives at three hundred and one, Tonge Moor Road.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Pauline Chadwick. The woman you’ve just been talking to. Her husband died down the gasworks, got himself blew up. Her mother’s all right as long as you show her who’s boss, and they own the house outright. Pauline’s dad had a good job on the railway, engine driver or some such fancy title. She’s a nice woman, is Pauline. Make somebody a good wife, she will.’

  Danny shook his head. Bolton was an enormous town, yet Eva Harris probably knew every flea on every dog’s back. ‘What’s all that got to do with me?’ he asked impatiently. The midwife was matchmaking again. It was something of a hobby, an activity reserved for leisure hours when no babies were being born and no bodies wanted laying out.

  Eva smiled as sweetly as her premature wrinkles allowed. ‘She needs somebody. You do and all, so—’

  ‘Playing God again, Eva?’

  They sat together in the van. ‘You’re blushing.’ There was amusement in Eva’s tone.

  ‘I’m frozen stiff,’ replied her companion, who seldom felt the cold. ‘And mind your own business, Mrs Harris.’

  Eva smiled all the way back to the fishmarket. Danny Walsh and Pauline Chadwick were going to make a lovely couple.

  Maurice Chorlton returned to the table. He had ordered drinks, and was awaiting the arrival of George Hardman and Alan Betteridge. They were both late, of course. Hardman would be in the bath, scrubbing himself until his epidermis shone, as the tanning of cowhides was not the most aromatic of businesses. Even those who worked in offices at Hardman’s Hides needed Lady Macbeth’s perfumes of Arabia to cover the various stenches that hung and clung in the oily atmosphere of stripped animal fats. As for Betteridge … well, Betteridge was Betteridge, a clown, a loose cannon, a blot on mankind’s vast landscape.

  Maurice tugged at his collar, then drew the valuable gold hunter from his breast pocket. It was half past seven. He had a sermon to prepare, a small homily on the subject of pride, that deadliest of sins. Of course, some pride was necessary. There was the pride that arose from the joy of a job well done, the pride folk felt for their families … He paused. Roy was certainly nothing to write home about. Rape? The jeweller shivered, felt shame tainting his cheeks. His son had abused a woman, as had Teddy Betteridge and Ged Hardman, the offspring of the men for whom he waited now.

  ‘All right?’

  Maurice Chorlton glanced up. ‘Hello, Alan.’ He was not particularly happy to be seen with Alan Betteridge. Betteridge was comfortably off, was reasonably dressed, but he was no gentleman. He had a reputation for acting the buffoon, especially when in his cups. Betteridge had been known to dance on the Town Hall steps, to climb drunkenly onto the back of one of the twin lions couchant that guarded Bolton’s municipal centre. He was an ass, a thoroughgoing idiot.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  Maurice pushed a pale imitation of brandy under Alan’s nose. ‘Drink that,’ he said.

  ‘Ta.’ Alan poured the amber fluid into his mouth, choked slightly, then reached for George Hardman’s drink. ‘Happen the second’ll mend the first,’ he announced. ‘Let George buy his own, he’s wealthy enough.’

  The Hen and Chickens was not busy, since most decent citizens would be at
home with their families, probably messing about with black-outs and indoor shelters. Maurice coughed. ‘The child’s arrived,’ he said softly.

  ‘Eh?’

  The jeweller leaned across the small, circular table. ‘Theresa Nolan. She’s had a girl.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alan Betteridge rooted about for a Woodbine, lit it, leaned back in his seat. ‘What’s that to do with the price of Magee’s Ale?’ he asked. ‘I’ve done my paying. That stupid sod can do his own coughing up when he comes home a hero.’

  Maurice Chorlton sighed heavily. The ‘stupid sod’ was Alan Betteridge’s son, Teddy. Teddy was a loudmouthed coward, the sort who ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds. ‘We want Theresa Nolan to keep her mouth shut, Alan.’

  The furniture salesman shrugged. ‘I’m paying no more. I’ve nowt to lose if they all open their gobs and scream blue murder. We weren’t there, remember. It was your Roy, our Teddy and Ged Hardman that did the damage.’

  Maurice nodded thoughtfully. ‘Watch yourself, Alan,’ he said quietly. ‘Once the fighting’s over, the Merchants will get back on a normal footing.’

  ‘What?’

  Excellent, thought Maurice. A raw nerve had been discovered, plucked at, irritated. ‘You want to get on in business, don’t you? You’ll be waiting to hear your name going in the lists when a new Merchants’ Club committee’s chosen. Well, just mark my words, because I carry a lot of clout in that particular area, as does George Hardman. We keep our sons’ nasty mess among ourselves. One foot wrong and that midwife’ll make mud of all our names. You’ll sell no more sofas if that happens.’

  Alan Betteridge grinned. ‘Me? On the committee?’

  Maurice suppressed a shudder. Installing Alan Betteridge in a position of authority would be like training a chimpanzee to make the King’s dinners. ‘There are more influential bodies in the Merchants’ Club than there are on Bolton Corporation, including the mayor and his merry band of aldermen. It’s based on interdependence, you see.’

  ‘It’s what?’

  Maurice smiled encouragingly. ‘For example: say I’ve a family with a wedding pending – engagement ring, wedding bands and so forth. I might ask them where they were thinking of buying their furniture. I might send them to John Willie’s or Boardman’s.’ He paused for effect. ‘Or I might persuade them to step along to Betteridge’s if they want quality and a good price. Merchants take care of one another.’

  Alan Betteridge laughed aloud. ‘Now you’re talking.’ He slapped a five-pound note onto the table. ‘Stretch that as far as you can, then get back to me. Only I’ve got to go home,’ he said.

  Maurice Chorlton stared hard at the self-made idiot. Betteridge played the clown because he was stupid and because he wanted to be liked, valued as a ‘card’. His wife had left him, his son was another damned fool, so Alan smiled, joked and laughed his way through life, using jollity to paper over the fissures.

  ‘I’ve a chap coming round with some house-clearance bits,’ continued Betteridge. ‘If there’s owt in your line, I’ll see you get it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Alan Betteridge winked at his companion, blew a kiss at a fat barmaid, then left the pub.

  Maurice closed his eyes for a few moments. There were times when life didn’t seem worth living, and this was one of them. A bloody war on, everything running short, folk too timid to invest in the finer things. Betteridge expected to see little normal furniture for the duration. Once current stocks became depleted, a new breed was promised, articles thrown together with indecent haste and with Utility printed onto unvarnished rear panels. Bedroom suites were going to be made of cheap and nasty wood with thick layers of lacquer failing to conceal poor timbers. Meat was on ration, so cows and pigs stayed alive longer – where was Hardman going to get his hides? As for jewellery – well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘Hello, Maurice.’

  Maurice smiled. After Alan Betteridge’s hunched shoulders and not-quite-correct clothing, George Hardman was a sight for sore eyes. One of the richest men around, George was slender, elegant, yet undoubtedly masculine. Grey from the age of twenty-five, the man had always looked clever and eminent. ‘Betteridge has gone. I got you a whisky, but he drank it,’ explained Maurice.

  ‘Of course.’ George repaired to the bar to buy drinks.

  Fascinated, the jeweller watched as a group of newcomers stepped aside in the tanner’s favour. George Hardman had everything. He had a fine house, servants, a healthy bank account. And he had a wife who behaved like a trollop. In spite of Lily Hardman’s meanderings, Hardman continued to be admired, courted, listened to. No-one ever questioned George; if anyone considered him a cuckold, the opinion was not voiced, or not in public company, at least.

  George planted a Scotch in front of his companion, then sat in the chair recently vacated by Betteridge. ‘Is the child born?’ he asked.

  Maurice Chorlton nodded.

  ‘I thought that might be the case.’ The newcomer sniffed at the contents of his glass. ‘Not a bad Scotch,’ he announced. ‘Did she have a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A girl. And the blackmail continues.’ Maurice stared into the tanner’s pale green eyes. ‘The fishmonger and the midwife, of course, demanding money with menaces. An extra pound a week.’

  George twisted the glass in his hands. ‘Mother and child must be cared for.’ The voice was low and steady. ‘Our sons were lucky to avoid imprisonment. They were also fortunate not to have received a dozen lashes from me. We do manufacture the odd horsewhip, Maurice.’ He paused for a second. ‘Betteridge? Will he pay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we continue as before, but with another pound.’ With the air of a man competing with time and against a multiplicity of pressures, George Hardman left the Hen and Chickens.

  Maurice Chorlton remained in his seat. Life was a mess. Ellen was long dead. She hadn’t been much to look at, but Ellen Bradbury had known how to run a house, how to keep a gardener and a daily in order, how to present a meal, how to deal with company.

  The jeweller glanced at a clock on the wall, then drained his glass. Roy, Teddy Betteridge and Ged Hardman were training to be soldiers. They would go to war, they would live or die, they would be heroes whatever happened to them. But Roy had let his father down. By becoming a rapist, Roy Chorlton had besmirched the family name.

  As he made his way home to compose a lecture on the subject of pride, Maurice Chorlton gave no thought to Theresa Nolan and her bastard. Rape was ghastly, of course, but the woman had come out of it very well. With a quieter conscience and hooded headlights, the master jeweller began to recite his sermon. ‘Pride cometh before a fall,’ he said aloud. Yes, that was a good beginning.

  TWO

  Jessica Nolan was three days old before her mother managed to feed and dress her properly. Under the watchful eye of Eva Harris, Theresa Nolan struggled with nappy and pins, with hooks, eyes and the many loose ends that seemed to accompany the garb of a newborn human.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Eva, lifting the baby from her exhausted mother’s arms. ‘It’ll get easier.’ The result of rape was a contented little soul, a quiet child who fed readily, brought up wind obediently and cried only when hungry.

  Theresa sank back into a mound of pillows. Eva had enlisted the services of several miners who had been passing on the morning following the birth. At the risk of reporting late for their shift, these gentlemen had brought Theresa’s bed into the kitchen. ‘Will it really get easier?’ she asked the midwife. ‘I feel as if I’ve spent half my life in bed.’

  Eva nodded, but made no reply. Theresa, a victim of infantile rheumatic fever, was not the healthiest of Eva’s clients. The disease had left its fingerprints on Theresa’s heart, had weakened her body and her soul. It was as if the girl had lost the will to live long before coming of age, Eva mused inwardly. That father of Theresa’s hadn’t been much use either, cursing mankind for the premature death of his wife, trying not to curse God for the same reason
. And yet … and yet there was something different about Theresa today, a glimmer of hope, a tiny spark of not-quite-ripe energy.

  ‘I mean, will I still have to work?’ asked Theresa. People had to work during a war. Even the women – especially the women – were forced into factories to spin, to weave, to make bullets and bombs.

  ‘You’ll not be expected to do anything while this one’s so young,’ replied Eva. When the child became old enough for school, Theresa would probably be excused on medical grounds. ‘You’ve done your bit.’ Surviving the birth had been more than a bit. It had been closely related to the miraculous.

  Theresa sighed. She didn’t know how to thank Eva Harris. Months earlier, when Theresa had been forced by her father to leave home, Eva had come to the rescue, had sheltered Theresa, had eventually found this house for her. The midwife had also intervened on Theresa’s behalf to extract money from those who had created so much pain and sorrow in Theresa’s life. ‘Do they know?’ the mother asked quietly.

  ‘Your dad and your Ruth?’ The woman in the bed was almost transparent, so worn out was she, yet she seemed angry. Was angry the right word?

  Theresa shook her head. ‘No, not him and Ruth.’

  Eva sat at the table with Jessica in her arms. Theresa’s mother had been Jessica – it was a lovely name for a perfect child. ‘Aye, I know who you mean, lass. I paid a visit on yon Chorlton feller in his fancy shop, told him to meet his mates and come up with a few bob for this baby.’

  ‘And?’ Theresa’s heavy eyelids closed themselves.

  ‘They’ll pay. Oh, they’ll pay all right.’

  Theresa sighed. ‘But it was their sons who hurt me, Eva. The fathers did me no harm.’

  ‘Sons takes after their dads,’ snapped the tiny midwife. ‘That’s a well-known fact. If you find a bad girl, look at her mam. A bad lad nearly always has a rotten father.’

  Theresa had no axe to grind with the tanner, the jeweller or the furniture man. They hadn’t raped her, hadn’t left her bruised, pregnant and crying on Bernard Walsh’s broad shoulder. ‘I still think what we’re doing is wrong, Eva.’ Her eyes opened. ‘We shouldn’t be taking money from the parents. Especially Mr Hardman.’ The owner of Hardman’s Hides was a true gent, the sort of exception who proved, perhaps, the rule so loudly uttered by Eva. ‘They don’t always take after their dads,’ she said. ‘And it’s the sons I want.’ The voice remained low and even.