Whatever, Barney’s marriage was not her concern. Josie repeated this vehemently in her mind as she’d done many times before when her thoughts wandered into forbidden territory. Whatever went on between husband and wife was the couple’s business and theirs alone, but oh, those cosy nights in front of the kitchen range in Betty’s house so long ago seemed to belong to another lifetime and different people now. And Barney had looked so sombre, so bleak the last time she’d seen him . . .
Enough. Enough, enough, enough. She sighed irritably. She was going home tomorrow and come Monday she was starting at the Avenue Theatre and the Palace. She’d have a word with Vera and see if they could get her mam in to see a show one night if she was up to it. She could arrange for her mam and Vera and Horace to have a box all to themselves; her mam’d be tickled pink at that.
And Oliver Hogarth? Her heart beat a little faster and she put a hand to her chest. She didn’t know what she thought about him, except that if he knew what she was really like under the paint and flamboyant clothes she had worn onstage, he wouldn’t be interested in her in that way as Lily had intimated. He was a roué and used to experienced, worldly women. His eyes had told her so. But there was something about him . . .
Well, she would see him tomorrow - she really couldn’t do anything else now - and she’d make it plain where she stood. And that would be the end of that, at least for the time being.
She turned over in the bed again, the movement sharp, and asked herself why bad men were always so much more attractive than the other sort.
Chapter Eight
Despite her promise to Lily, Josie did not meet Oliver Hogarth for lunch the next day; at eleven o’clock she and Gertie were on a train to Sunderland after an early-morning visit from Horace to say her mother was very ill and asking for her.
She left messages for both Lily and Oliver Hogarth with a clucking Mrs Bainsby whilst Horace transported their trunk and portmanteau out to the carriage he had waiting, but they were succinct in the extreme. All Josie wanted to do was to get home.
She had thought, when Mrs Bainsby had first tapped on the bedroom door to say that there was a gentleman downstairs with news about her family, that at last there had been some sort of contact from her father and brothers. Since the night she had been attacked in Newcastle, her father - and two days later Jimmy and Hubert - seemed to have vanished into thin air. Patrick Duffy had turned up some weeks after the incident and had claimed no knowledge at all of the affair when the police questioned him. The last time he’d seen Bart Burns, Duffy stated, had been at least a week before the alleged episode with his daughter, and then Bart had been talking about signing on with a ship leaving for foreign parts. Some trouble concerning gambling debts, so he’d heard. But of course he’d be only too happy to keep his ear to the ground and let the authorities know if he heard anything.
The absence of her husband had been a great relief to Shirley but not so the loss of her lads, and although some months later the doctor had confirmed her cough was due to the consumption and that a stay in a sanatorium would benefit her greatly, she had refused to move from Vera’s house. The lads would know to look for her there when they came home, she’d insisted, and no one, not even Josie, had managed to persuade her differently. And now the influenza had curtailed even the short amount of time she’d had left to her, and there could be no doubt her demise was imminent.
There was a bitter north wind blowing when Horace and the two girls alighted from the train in Sunderland’s Central Station, and the January air was redolent with the unmistakable smell of snow as a horse and cab carried its three occupants and the girls’ luggage to Northumberland Place.
Vera’s front room had been turned into a very pleasant bedroom, and Josie never stepped into her mother’s little sanctuary without deep relief and gratitude flooding her. Vera’s sacrifice had made the last four years possible.
A single bed had been placed at one side of the room under the window, so that Shirley could see passers-by through the lace curtains, and next to this a small table held her medicines and a flowering potted plant. The horsehair suite and the glass-fronted cabinet had gone but Vera had kept the piano which Horace now played most days; two large, resplendent rocking chairs with voluptuous cushions meant Vera and Horace were comfortable when they kept Shirley company each evening before they retired to bed. Evenings which, according to Vera, they all enjoyed immensely and which were filled with laughter.
There were no smiling faces today, however.
Vera had opened the door to them, which indicated she had been waiting at the window in Shirley’s room, and she embraced both girls silently in the hall before opening the front-room door and standing aside for them to enter.
Shirley’s skeletal frame barely made a bump under the eiderdown - which like everything else in the room was bright and clean - and her lined skin had taken on a pallor that had the reflection of death about it. Bronchopneumonia, the doctor had declared - inflammation of the lungs arising in the bronchi due to the side effects of the influenza which Shirley had been battling with for some time. According to Horace, she’d had some sort of seizure and coughed up basin after basin of phlegm and blood twenty-four hours since, but after the doctor had allowed free rein with the laudanum this coma-like calm had prevailed, and the bouts of coughing had become infrequent.
Her mother’s head was sunk into the pillow, her eyes closed, and as Vera followed them into the room, saying quietly, ‘The doctor’s just left an’ he don’t think she’ll regain consciousness,’ Josie thought her mother had already gone, so still was the shape beneath the covers.
And then there was a deep shuddering breath and Shirley’s eyes opened, focusing slowly on the two girls at the side of the bed. Josie was crying, ‘Oh, Mam, oh, Mam,’ deep inside, but she forced herself to speak gently and without tears as she said, ‘We’re here, Mam, and we love you. Everything’s going to be all right. You just rest now.’
‘Me . . . me bairns.’
One of the parchment-like hands lying on the eiderdown tried to reach out, and as Josie quickly enfolded her mother’s fingers with her two hands, she said, ‘It’s all right, Mam, it’s all right. We’re here.’
Gertie made a small sound in her throat at the side of Josie and as Josie turned to look at her sister, she saw Gertie’s face was awash with tears, and was conscious of thinking, She does love Mam after all.
‘Here, come away out of it, hinny, an’ have a sup tea for a minute,’ Vera said. ‘You don’t want to upset your mam, now do you?’
As the two of them, along with a silent Horace, disappeared through to the kitchen, Josie was left alone with her mother, and now she knelt down by the bed without loosening her grip on her mother’s hand, saying quietly, ‘I’m here, Mam, and I’m not going to go anywhere until you’re better. All right? I’m staying with you.’
‘Lass . . .’
‘Don’t try to talk, Mam.’ She couldn’t bear it - she couldn’t bear for her mam to die, she thought wildly, desperately controlling the grief that had the tears welling against the back of her eyes. Her mam had had such a miserable life, and it was only in the last few years she’d had anything approaching happiness, and then only with accompanying ill-health and pain. Her mam was forty-four or forty-five, she couldn’t remember exactly, but she looked decades older. Vera had said her mam had been pretty once; prettiest lass in the street and with all the lads after her, so why, why had she chosen her da out of them all? He’d never been any use to her and his last act, that of taking the lads away with him wherever he’d gone, had been pure spite. And greed. Doubtless he was living off them somewhere or other.
And then, almost as though her mother had followed her train of thought, Shirley murmured, ‘All . . . all broken up. Jimmy an’ Hubert, you an’ Gertie an’ then . . . Ada an’ Dora. All broken up,’ before her voice faded away.
‘Only for now, Mam. I’ll find them all, I promise, and we’ll be together again. All right?’
‘Here?’ This was wishful thinking on her mam’s part.
‘Aye. I never felt it with me lasses - they’ve gone.’ Shirley took another deep, shuddering breath that sounded so painful Josie found herself wincing. ‘But you’ll find ’em all, some . . . day.’
When Josie felt the grip of her mother’s fingers slacken she realised she had fallen into the deathly slumber again, and so she sat quietly, her hands still holding her mother’s.
She didn’t move, not through the long afternoon and evening and not even when Gertie went to bed in Vera’s spare room, Ruby the lodger having long since moved out. She had told her mother she was going to stay with her and she was; she explained this to Vera when that good lady, heartsore and weary, tried to prise Josie away from the unconscious woman lying so still in the bed.
During her vigil, Josie found herself thinking about all sorts of things, painful on the whole but with a few happy moments mixed in among the dark memories. Like the time her mam had made her and Gertie a small rag doll each the first Christmas after she had started the singing. It had been the only real Christmas present she’d ever had - before that, Christmas Day had been just like any other day. She and Gertie had been ecstatic. They had played with their ‘babies’ every spare moment until their father, some months later, whilst drunk and angry with her mam about something or other, had thrown them on the fire.
It was after a visit to the privy in the early hours that Josie noticed a change in her mother. It followed a bout of coughing when Josie thought her mother was going to speak again, although she hadn’t. Now Shirley was only drawing breath seemingly every minute or so; the break between her long-drawn gasps unending.
Vera joined her at three o’clock in the morning and sat quietly beside her after making a cup of tea, which they both drank without speaking. Josie was glad of its warmth because the control she had been keeping on herself had seemed to freeze her limbs as well as her insides. She dare not let the tears fall, not now, not when her mam might open her eyes again and need her, but the hard tight lump in her chest was unbearable.
And then, just as the dawn was breaking, the hand in hers moved. She saw her mother’s eyes flicker, as though she was trying to open them, and then the grey lips parted and her mam’s voice, a whisper, a breath, said, ‘Josie . . .’
And she answered, bending near, ‘I’m here, Mam, and I love you. I love you all the world,’ before she kissed her.
And then her mother’s hand went limp, the last breath was expelled softly and slowly, and she had gone. As quietly and as peacefully as that. Josie put her arms round the frail, workworn body and gathered her mam to her, hugging her as though she would never let her go and quite unaware of the tears pouring down her face as the pain in her heart imploded. Never again would she see her mam’s eyes light up when she popped her head round the door and said she was home; never again would she see that look of joy and pride on her mam’s face when she sang to her, or hear her soft, ‘Oh, go on with you, lass,’ when she told her mam how dear she was.
She knew her mam had loved her; whatever else, her mam had loved her more than she had loved anyone else, and for a moment her loss was more than Josie could bear.
‘Lass, leave that. I’ve told you we’ll see to it later. You’re all done in.’
‘It’s all right, Vera. I’d rather do it now, really.’
Vera stared at Josie, and she had to admit she was at a loss. First the lass had insisted on laying out her mother herself, which wasn’t a pleasant task and certainly not one for a young lassie to Vera’s mind, and then she had stripped the bed once her mam was clean and laid out on the wooden trestle Horace had brought into the front room, and had proceeded to scrub at the stained bedding in the wash tub until her hands were raw.
Vera remained standing at the door to the wash-house for a minute longer, her eyes on the young girl wringing the bedding through the wooden rollers of the iron mangle, and then she sighed deeply before saying, ‘I’ll make a sup tea, hinny.’
‘Aye, thanks.’
‘An’ you’re havin’ a bite, lass, whether you want it or not.’
Josie made no reply to this, and after standing a moment more Vera made her way back into the kitchen from the yard. The lass had taken it hard, not like the other one. Oh, Gertie might have wept and wailed a bit at first, but it was surface emotion nevertheless. She was a funny little thing, was Gertie.
‘She’s insistin’ she’ll finish it afore she comes in.’ Vera walked across to the range as she spoke to Gertie who was sitting at the kitchen table, lifting the big black kettle and pushing it deep into the glowing embers before reaching for the brown teapot on the shelf at the side of the range. ‘She’s half frozen out there; she’ll be bad next, you mark me words. I’ll make some girdle scones to go with the tea, eh? Nothin’ like a hot buttered girdle scone, is there?’
‘I’ll help.’ Gertie sprang to her feet, glad of something to do. She knew Josie and Vera were all upset - their eyes had been so red and puffy when she’d come downstairs this morning that they’d hardly been able to see out of them - but she just couldn’t feel the same way they did, no matter how she tried. She was sorry her mam had gone, of course, and she’d had a gliff when she’d first seen her the day before, but . . . She wrinkled her nose as she tried to sort out her feelings. Her mam had always been sickly, not like a proper mother somehow, and it wasn’t as if they hadn’t known she was middling . . .
‘Here, hinny, sift the flour an’ everythin’ together.’ Vera’s voice was brisk as she measured the currants, half a teaspoon of salt, a level teaspoonful of cream of tartar and a half a level teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda into the plain flour in the mixing bowl, before walking across to the cold slab in the pantry and bringing out the lard and milk. Gertie stared after Vera’s bustling figure. Her mother’s old friend was trying to act normally but she was the same as Josie really; forcing herself to keep active to hide her feelings. Did they think she was awful?
Vera smiled at her as she tipped the fat into the big bowl, and as Gertie began to rub in the lard and mix it to a soft dough with the flour and milk, Vera said, ‘There’s a good lass. You’ll make a canny wife for some lucky lad, Gertie.’
Gertie smiled back into the kind, rough-textured face. If she had spoken her true feelings on the matter, she would have told Vera that marriage was the last thing she envisaged for the future. She might not be particularly bright - certainly her last year at school had been a nightmare she wouldn’t inflict on her worst enemy - but over the last three or four years she had come to realise she had talents of other kinds. Practical talents. However, her whole body shrank inwardly at the thought of employing those abilities in the role of a wife. She had seen what marriage meant; subjugation, misery, enslavement. She would never willingly give the control of her life and well-being over to a man unless she could be absolutely sure he wouldn’t turn out like her da. No, she was more than happy in her capacity as Josie’s dresser and companion. Josie’s star was going to be a brilliant one, and she could assist its rise. And no one deserved success more than Josie.
‘That’s grand, lass. Now, roll it out to about a quarter of an inch thick an’ cut it into rounds, an’ we’ll have ’em cookin’ on that girdle afore you can say Jack Robinson. A good girdle cake, nicely browned, is hard to beat. You go an’ call your sister, eh? Tell her to take the weight off.’
Gertie nodded at Vera. Power. Power and prestige; that’s what got you anywhere in this life, and she didn’t need to be top of the class to know that. And what was at the root of power and prestige? Money, that’s what. She
’d heard the talk in the dressing rooms; she reckoned she knew more than Josie as to what the big stars earned. Marie Kendall was earning £100 a week three years ago, and even the middle-of-the-road performers were getting anything from £10 to £30 a week in London. And Josie was better than middle of the road. By, she was that. When she sang she could make them laugh or cry or turn somersaults . . .
Gertie finished cutting the last of the scones and brushed her hands on her skirt. Would Josie be vexed if she knew she’d left Vera’s address with Mrs Bainsby in case the agent feller should ask? And then she gave herself a mental shake of the head. Why ask the road you know? Josie’d go stark staring barmy. But it was done now. And she wasn’t sorry. If he was keen enough, he’d follow them here to Sunderland, and if he wasn’t, well, in spite of what Lily had said there must be other agents with as many connections as this Oliver bloke. And now their mam was gone, Josie was free to work further afield.
‘I’ll get Josie then.’ She spoke to Vera’s back; Vera being busy turning the first batch of scones on the hot girdle.
‘Aye, you do that, lass, an’ I’ll pour us all a sup tea. I don’t know about you but me tongue’s hangin’ out.’
Vera’s voice was suspiciously thick and Gertie suspected she was crying again. It was going to be a long few days till the funeral. Horace had had a word with the parson on his way to work that morning, and the parson had been straight round before Josie had even finished laying their mam out. ’Course, the fact that Josie had told Horace to say they wanted a funeral with all the trimmings might have something to do with his promptness. Waste of good money, she called it. You were either going straight to heaven or the other place from what she could make out, and neither venue took any notice of what sort of send-off you had on this mortal plain. Still, she wouldn’t alter Josie’s mind on this, same as she wouldn’t on anything else. Josie thought with her heart more than her head but she had a mind of her own, and that mind was formidable when it was put to anything.
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