by Annie Murray
‘I might be in with a chance of the odd loaf or bag of stale cakes, you never know!’ Mercy was laughing partly with relief as she went to stand behind Susan. It had been her first shot at getting a job and she’d been nervous. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘That’s beautiful, that is!’
Over Susan’s shoulder she could see the neat job she was doing mending the astrakhan collar on an overcoat. She was good at it – and not just hand sewing either. Just after Christmas which had been drab and bleak, a miracle had happened.
Mrs White, the miserable, reclusive woman in the cottage across the yard, had dropped dead, aged fifty-seven. Mr White put it all down to nerves. Shortly after, looking a good deal more cheerful than, as Elsie put it, ‘’e ’ad a right to,’ he started carrying a whole load of stuff out into the yard.
‘I could cart it off and flog it,’ he said, unshaven but chirpy. ‘But I thought if any of yer’d give us a bob for anything . . .’
With an absolute lack of sentiment he laid out Mrs White’s small selection of clothes over a couple of battered chairs.
‘Oh my word,’ Mary Jones exclaimed to Elsie. ‘’E’s even brought ’er drawers out. Well I wouldn’t be . . .’ She trailed off.
‘What? Seen dead in ’em? Don’t suppose she ’ad that in mind either. Depends ’ow fussy you can afford to be, don’t it?’ Elsie looked thoughtful. ‘Be different if she’d been the least bit pleasant some’ow, wouldn’t it?’
There was a small, oblong mirror, a threadbare old coat and Mrs White’s few personal bits and bobs: hairpins, a brush, corset, a doll with a chipped porcelain face, old shoes with bunion-shaped hills in them, spectacles. And – Mercy caught her breath – almost seeming to glow in the knife-edged cold as it sat on its wrought iron base across the yard: an old Singer sewing machine. She galloped across.
‘’Ow much d’you want for that?’ Never mind whether it worked. They’d make it work.
‘Well ’ow much can yer give me?’ Mr White seemed in a celebratory mood.
‘’E must be as short as anything – no wage or nothing coming in,’ Mercy said to Susan after. ‘’E just didn’t seem to care.’
Susan shrugged. ‘Looks as if the only thing ’e really wanted shot of’s already gone.’
They gave him five shillings for the machine. Mabel stared at it as if it were about to lay a golden egg. Bummy Pepper gave it a clean up and oiled it, humming to himself. They bought a new needle and spools and Susan was in business. Well almost.
Gradually, by word of mouth, she was getting odd bits of work. When Dorothy came round Mercy showed her Susan’s neat skills.
‘I’m sure Mrs Weston – my mistress – will know people who need a seamstress,’ Dorothy said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The jobs had already begun to trickle in. Susan was happier than Mercy had ever seen her. Her usually tiny appetite had picked up, she had a pink tinge in her cheeks and an air of purpose.
‘I’m so lucky, aren’t I, Mrs Pepper?’ she said to Elsie one day. And Elsie’s tired face lifted into a smile. If someone in Susan’s state felt lucky, she was a lesson to all of them.
‘Now you’ve got two earners in your ’ouse,’ she said to Mercy. ‘Mabel’ll be stopping to put ’er feet up.’
When Mercy had been at work for a few weeks she came home carrying a cage in which there was a grey parrot with lead-shot eyes.
‘’Ere you are, as promised.’ She put the cage on the table. ‘It was a lark bringing this ’ome on the bus, I can tell yer!’
Mabel would be outraged with her for squandering money in this way but Mercy didn’t care.
Susan gasped at the sight of it.
‘He’s lovely! Is it a boy one?’
‘The bloke said so. What’re you going to call ’im?’ Susan put her head on one side. The parrot did the same and Susan, Mercy and Elsie roared with laughter.
‘George,’ Susan said, wiping her eyes. ‘’E looks like a George to me.’
One Saturday evening soon after, Mabel was waiting for Stan again. This time she wasn’t in bed but sitting downstairs at the stained table sipping strong tea with plenty of sugar and cursing George who was scratching round the bottom of the cage screeching to himself.
‘I’d find a recipe for parrot pie if I ’ad my way,’ she growled at him. ‘Noisy, stinking thing.’
She soon heard the latch go and there was Stan, dressed only in a singlet and braces with his trousers although it was so cold you could see your breath even in the house.
‘What’s all this?’ All these months she’d been upstairs waiting for him, and here she was fully dressed without even a promising bit of breast showing.
‘Shut the door, Stan, I’ve summat to talk to yer about.’
He kicked the door shut and went to stand by the range, slicking his hair back. Not being very observant, he didn’t notice Mabel’s excited expression.
‘What’s up – eh? We gunna go and get on with it in a tick?’ He jerked his head meaningfully towards the stairs.
Mabel started to smile, showing her big, gappy teeth. ‘It’s happened, Stan. It had to in the end, didn’t it? I’m carrying your babby.’
Stan’s face fell into a study of shock.
‘But, Mabel, I thought – I mean we’ve been at it a long time now. I thought you couldn’t no longer – not like Mary . . .’
Mabel had in a roundabout way led Stan to believe she couldn’t conceive again, and as the months passed she’d come close to convincing herself as well. All this time and nothing. But now . . . Now she had a chance of hooking herself a breadwinner at last and another babby into the bargain! This time she’d have a proper child. Someone to love her. She’d prove she could be a mother like anyone else. She stood up and went to nuzzle her face against Stan’s chest, slipping one arm round him, she unfastened her blouse with the other to show her generous cleavage.
‘Say you’re pleased, Stan?’ she wheedled. ‘Your babby. You and me. We can ’ave a fresh start now – get away from all our worries. You can get away from her.’
‘Are you mad, woman?’ Stan pushed her away, agitatedly pulled his fags out. He lit one and stood puffing away, tapping his thigh with his other hand with quick, taut movements.
‘I’ve already got four kids. You told me, Mabel—’ He pointed the cigarette like a gun in her crumpling face. ‘You lied to me, you did . . .’
Stan’s brain never worked quickly at the best of times and it was on overtime shift now. He’d never questioned Mabel’s version of her infertility since his only interest was in getting his leg over. Now she was really putting the wind up him and he couldn’t think fast enough what to do.
‘I don’t know why you’re laying the blame on me any’ow, you’re that easy. ’Ow do I know who else you’ve been with?’
He used his indignation to propel himself out of the house. Then he stuck his head back through the door.
‘And don’t you come laying the blame on me and upsetting my missis. She’s got enough on ’er plate as it is!’
When Mercy and Susan got home that evening, depositing bags of scrag-end, potatoes and greens on the table with a pound of sausage, bags of broken biscuits and bruised apples, Mabel was upstairs in her room. Good, Mercy thought, that’s her out of the way.
‘Mom?’ Susan called up to her.
No reply. The two of them listened.
‘She’s blarting,’ Susan said, amazed.
‘What on earth can’ve happened?’ Mercy was frowning.
Mabel wasn’t a weeper, normally speaking, but today she wasn’t taking any trouble to hide her sniffles and mewling noises. She’d really and truly believed Stan would drop everything for her. After all, he did nothing but complain about Mary. But now it was she, Mabel, who was being thrown aside like an old piece of scrap. Just when she thought it might be her turn for some luck for once in life! She was carrying another babby with no husband, precious little money and only that little cow Mercy to help her. Let alone what she’d get in t
he way of clever comments from smug-faced Elsie Pepper. No – she got up hurriedly off the sordid bed. She wasn’t having that. There was only one thing for it.
A few moments later she came heavily downstairs, blowsy and dishevelled-looking. The two girls turned wide eyes on her, the blotchy cheeks and swollen eyes obvious even in the gaslight.
‘Mom.’ Susan looked away, her cheeks turning pink. ‘Your blouse . . .’
‘Oh, ah—’ Mabel fumblingly buttoned herself back into it. ‘I’ve come to a decision. We’ve got to move.’
‘Move?’ Susan said, bewildered. Mercy listened in disbelief.
‘Yes, move,’ Mabel snapped. ‘To another ’ouse. Another part of town, away from ’ere. If yer must know, I’m expecting Stan Jones’s babby and I don’t want to bring it into the world around the likes of this lot.’
After a couple of days in which Mabel’s house was full of nothing but rows on this subject, Stan’s brain caught up with his body and he did some (for him) quick thinking. Here he was, still a young man, struggling, with no real skills to get a decent job, a frail and prematurely aged wife and four brats all trapped together in a rotting house. He was drowning in the difficulties of it, could feel his youth and strength being sucked from him. Didn’t he deserve another chance?
And Mabel was offering it – a strong woman, older than him, capable of working. One kid – she wasn’t bringing that cripple with her, oh no. They could avoid having any more. And she was a bit of all right in bed, Mabel was – that was the main thing about her.
On the third morning, after retching over the scullery sink, Mabel left for work with a bag and never came home in the evening. Susan was worried to death until they discovered that Stan had disappeared too and suddenly it was clear as anything what had happened.
‘I knew she was a scheming, worthless liar,’ Elsie raged to Bummy that night. ‘But I never thought she’d go and desert that kid of ’ers. And as for poor Mary . . .’
The two of them, and Mercy, spent that evening trying to comfort first Susan – ‘How could she go and leave us?’ she sobbed, hurt to the very core. ‘She’s my Mom! And to go with that idiot of a bloke . . .’ and then Mary Jones, who was almost hysterical with panic.
‘How’m I going to manage? We can barely afford to eat as it is! How could ’e? If I ever see ’im again – or ’er – I’ll kill the pair of ’em with my bare hands.’ Her youngest child lay suckling at her tiny breast as she sat sobbing and sniffing. ‘Oh Elsie, what in heaven am I going to do? I’ll have to move back in with me mom in ’er one room – we’ll be in the workhouse else!’
‘No.’ Elsie’s jaw was set and determined. ‘You won’t have to do that, I’ll see to it.’
Bummy, stood in the doorway, hoiked his trousers up from behind with one hand and nodded in agreement. ‘Terrible that is, the Parish. D’you remember?’
Elsie nodded curtly. Of course she remembered. The time when they had five young ones, Maryann, Frank, Josephine, Cathleen and Lena, the one they’d lost soon after from diphtheria. Bummy had injured his back so badly that for weeks, months, he couldn’t work. He’d lain helpless, watching his vibrant, copper-haired wife exhaust herself.
Finally Elsie went to the local Board of Guardians, timidly asking for help. She was given a weekly allowance of bread but she would never forget the terror and humiliation of it, the rude personal questions, the hard, mistrusting eyes of the people on the board. It was such a degrading time in her life, a reminder of the power others could have over her. Even now she felt panic and disgust thinking of it.
As Bummy had recovered with agonizing slowness, Elsie vowed she would never let herself or anyone else she could save from it have to put themselves at the mercy of the Parish again.
She leant over and took Mary’s hand.
‘Don’t fret. I’ve got Johnny and Tom out at work now as well as the girls. And there’s Mercy and Susan, though God knows they’ve got the rent to keep up on their own now. But we’ll all rally round – I’ll make sure of that.
If Elsie said they were going to give help to Mary, then Mercy and Susan were going to do as she said.
‘We ought to,’ Susan said. ‘After all, it’s my mom who’s caused her all this trouble.’
‘The one thing she’s good at,’ Mercy retorted.
Susan was now earning rather well. Mercy had gone round for her putting cards in shop windows, and she found new customers. Sewing for the poor brought in a very small trickle of money, but far more lucrative was the trade from Dorothy. The clothes she bought for Susan to mend were of much higher quality, sometimes they were awed by the sight of them. Dorothy made sure she was handsomely paid. One week Susan made as much as twelve shillings!
Her confidence was growing and her customers were happy too.
‘Imagine if they could see where their clothes are going!’ Dorothy said to Grace, holding up a cream satin evening gown with lace straps and underskirt. Its owner wanted it taken in over the hips.
Grace was barely listening. They were standing in the small dressing room which extended off Grace and Neville Weston’s comfortable bedchamber. Grace seemed to stare through Dorothy, her expression troubled.
‘What is it?’ Dorothy asked gently.
Grace looked into her eyes. ‘I can’t bear it, thinking of her there, in that terrible place!’
If her life had proceeded as her stern, fiercely religious father had planned, Grace’s only awareness of the conditions of the slum courtyards, the raucous life of the poor, would have been no more than snatched glimpses as she swept past in a carriage to the centre of Birmingham. The life Mercy was leading, the struggles against poverty and squalor, would have been so distant from her as to be unimaginable.
She could hardly bear to think of her desperate time as ‘Lily’. It was an abyss in her experience, those days which had denied her her name, her class, her normally comfortable life, her very sense of self. She had for a short time lived and been part of that other alien life in the wilderness. She recalled even now in her dreams the damp, bug-ridden walls, the fetid smells, the awful sense of enforced intimacy with others. And the terror of that lonely birth. Its memory was all the more horrific in its contrast with her other life. As soon as she could stand after the birth she had fled from it, imagining it would then be over, something she could close the door on as soon as she walked away from the Joseph Hanley Home.
Yet she had not forseen its consequences, that she would never escape the hold those memories had on her, or the tiny child she had brought forth.
‘It’s worse now!’ Her voice cracked. ‘Now we’ve found her – knowing where she is again. At least while she was lost to us we knew nothing, and could do nothing, except hope. And she’s older now . . . I find this present situation . . .’
She turned away, gliding into her bedchamber, a lace handkerchief pressed to her face as her shoulders heaved.
‘It’s unbearable!’ Dorothy heard her voice, barely more than a whisper. She saw Grace struggle to compose herself, as she had done so many times over the years, hearing about Mercy when she was at the Hanley Home. She bent her immaculately coiffured head, two golden plaits coiled low behind her ears.
‘Dorothy—’ She turned, eyes full of tears, appealing to her friend across the white linen of the bed. ‘I don’t know if I can endure it any more.’
Dorothy went to her quickly, putting her hands on Grace’s shoulders. ‘Of course you can, Grace, my dear one – you can. You have to be strong for the boys, and you’ve been so brave until now. The child’s a beauty – the image of you. She’s fourteen now. If you can just be sure of that position for her . . . Just keep yourself together. Good can come of all this, I’m sure of it.’
There was a pause, and both women heard footsteps. Grace pulled her expression into one approaching composure. ‘You’d better go. Neville’s coming up to change.’
As she spoke, the door opened abruptly.
‘Oh – you’re here again, are you?
’ Neville said to Dorothy, pushing past her into the room.
Grace’s eyes met Dorothy’s, urgently entreating her to leave. Dorothy slipped quietly from the room.
‘Forever hanging about, that one, isn’t she?’ Neville was full of irritation. He sat on the bed pulling his boots off. ‘Gets on my nerves.’
‘I’m sorry, dear.’ Grace spoke in a quiet, even voice, unfastening her hair in front of the mirror. ‘I wasn’t expecting you up quite so soon. Did you have a pleasant day?’ Weston’s was Neville’s family firm, providing lighting for the railways.
‘Pleasant? You think work is pleasant, do you?’ He watched his wife from behind, the gentle curve of her hips, that eternal smooth neatness of hers. By God, how he hungered for a woman with hot blood in her veins!
Seeing him watching her in the glass, Grace turned and attempted a bright smile. Neville ignored her, got up and stumped into the dressing room.
Downstairs, Dorothy thought of the two of them up there, her mouth pulled down in a hard grimace. She had always loathed Neville, had a flesh-creeping distaste for his stocky body, red cheeks and thick brown hair which sat on top of his head with the unsettled look of a wig. Add to that his selfishness and boorishness and Dorothy burned with protective indignation on Grace’s behalf, trapped as she was in her life with this ox of a man.
Grace tried to keep up at least the appearance of a civilized marriage, if not a happy one.
‘Never mind,’ she had said to Dorothy on many occasions. ‘I have all I need. I have you and I have my children.
Chapter Eleven
If it hadn’t been for Susan’s pain over her desertion by her mother, Mercy would have been almost completely happy. She was free of Mabel, could organize the place how she wanted and had kind neighbours. There were Dorothy’s visits, every week or two and Mercy had begun to feel she belonged somewhere. No one had set eyes on Mabel or Stan.
Between them, she and Susan were at last making the inside of the house more homely. Mabel, in a perverse way, had refused even to have the rotten stair tread mended, something she and Mercy were constantly having rows about.