The Dressmaker's Daughter

by Nancy Carson

  She looked at her father. He was picking at his breakfast with a singular lack of interest, and it seemed that the cold was making his breathing more difficult. Henzey ate her own breakfast quickly, downed her cup of tea and made an excuse that there was something she wanted to show her mother in the bedroom. Lizzie followed her upstairs.

  When they were in the front bedroom she closed the door. ‘I’m worried about dad, Mom. He don’t seem well at all. These past few months I’ve noticed he’s got no interest in anything.’

  Lizzie peered out into the street absently through the frost that coated the inside as well as the outside of the window panes. ‘I know. I’ve had my eye on him.’

  ‘Do you think I should fetch Donald Clark?’ Henzey started to get dressed and shivered as she took off her dressing gown ready to put on her best Sunday clothes.

  ‘He can do nothing, Henzey.’

  Lizzie pulled the net curtain to one side and scratched the frost on the inside of the window panes with her fingernails. Outside, everywhere was silent. The fields around Turner’s Farm, visible between the brass foundry and the dairy house, were white over, and the hawthorn trees bowed under the weight of snow. The hills to the east wore their new, white dress like a shroud. In the street below, Beccy Crump was trudging to Holy Communion in her best coat, a shawl around her shoulders and a pair of Albert’s thick socks over her boots to stop her slipping. Smoke curled up leisurely to the grey sky from every back room chimney.

  ‘Donald can do nothing for him,’ Lizzie repeated with conviction. ‘He can only ever get worse, not better. He’s not stupid, your father, and he knows what’s what. Sitting on that sofa day in, day out, upsets him more than he ever lets on. He blames himself for the state he’s in, and the fact that we’ve got no money nor decent clothes to wear. It bothers him, our Henzey, and I reckon he’s had enough, comfortable as we try to make him feel … And much as we care for him.’

  Henzey pulled her clean dress over her head and, as she wriggled to get it on, she tossed her head to redistribute her thick, dark hair.

  ‘But don’t he see that we don’t mind being poor just as long as we’ve got him?’

  ‘Oh, I reckon he knows that. He knows that well enough, but it doesn’t alter anything. If things had been different we’d be well off now. He reckons it’s his fault that we’re not.’

  ‘Do you think it’s his fault, Mom?’

  ‘He was the one who decided to join the army in the war. I didn’t want him to go, but he wouldn’t listen. He gave up a good job in a reserved occupation. There was no need for it, Henzey, that was the annoying bit … But what I think is neither here nor there now. It won’t alter a thing.’

  ‘But it’s no good him sulking about it, Mom.’

  Lizzie picked a stray piece of cotton from Henzey’s dress and dropped it into the small, empty fire grate. ‘Your father’s too sensible a man to sulk. Over the years he’s had a lot to contend with one way and another. Now, besides, he reckons the world’s going mad and isn’t worth living in anyway.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Just be kind to him, our Henzey. Be kind to him while we’ve still got him.’

  Henzey bit her bottom lip and tried to stop her own tears. But it was in vain. The tears rushed forth and would not be stemmed.

  ‘Oh, Mom, I don’t want my dad to die. I love him … I love him so much.’

  *

  Ben Kite was taken seriously ill on the 4th of May 1926; ironically, the day the General Strike started. In his fever he was vaguely aware of Donald Clark examining him, of Lizzie giving him drinks, of his children sitting with him quietly, of night and of day. Most of the time he dozed, drifting in and out of consciousness, his world alternating between reality and fantasy. When darkness came, he was aware of Lizzie lying beside him, her arm welcome around his waist, her soft, warm body snugly fitting his. For more than a week he lingered in this twilight world of semi-consciousness, tortured with pain in his chest, in his head, and in his heart. He saw his father, black faced and stinking of beer, leaning on his shovel: ‘Ben, Ben. Wheer’st thee bin? Wheer’s thy slut of a mother? ’Ast brung me fittles?’ Those victuals were a basin of broth wrapped in a muslin cloth, and a chunk of bread. He saw his mother, as he remembered her when he was a child, pushing him in a second-hand bassinet as she took him to watch some top-hatted dignitary lay a foundation stone for a new Methodist chapel in Tipton. Then, he was running along a muddy tow-path with Cedric, his eldest brother, chasing him playfully. But this pain in his chest as he drifted back into sentience …

  … An idea: if only he could hold his breath for long enough … if only … oh, God, it hurt so much, but he would try … Yes … oh, yes … A magnificent garden … sunshine, masses of beautiful flowers, red, blue, orange, yellow. He’d never seen such brilliant colours before … a grotto of moss-covered rocks, overhung with weeping willows, ivy, and vines, and the sun penetrating in blinding shafts of yellow and blue light. But this extraordinary beauty was marred by excruciating pain within him. His chest was about to burst. Oh, please, God, release me from the misery of it … Then he began to choke violently, blowing, heaving, and the pain was even greater, intolerable, returning him to consciousness to see Lizzie hovering over him, alarmed. It was as if death itself had woken him, cynically cheating him of its final comfort. The automatic responses of even his poor, ruined body were denying him peace. But why, when he wanted so much to exit this constricted life? Why, when he desperately needed to die?

  On the day the General Strike finally crumbled – the 12th of May, Ben Kite passed away peacefully. He was visited in his last days by his brothers, their wives and their children. His ageing mother prayed tearfully at his bedside. In his final hour the Reverend Mr John Mainwaring poignantly recited the commendatory prayer for a sick person at the point of departure, while Lizzie wept quietly.

  During his eight years as an invalid there was little Ben could do; the Kaiser’s gas warfare at Arras had ensured that. Yet his mind remained signally alert and, to compensate for his physical disability, he studied the newspapers from front to back and became a knowledgeable man. He knew the name of every footballer in the football league, every cricketer in the county sides and every horse and jockey that was placed in any race since 1918. Not least of his interests was politics. He’d always held strong views, and he’d grown more bitterly opposed to what he saw as trades union abuse of power, and the fostering of discontent among their members. To his mind it was abject nonsense that anyone could gain anything by striking; he believed it was nothing more than their leaders’ attempts to force a misguided ideology down the throats of an apathetic people, and thus tear to shreds the fabric of ordered society. He was certain that it was a plot, no less, to create the chaotic conditions that would haul them and their beloved Communism to power at Westminster. He would have given anything to have been fit enough to go out and combat it.

  But it wasn’t just politics that concerned him. He saw futility in everything, including his own confined life, and he was utterly frustrated at his inability to do anything about it. He was perpetually angry with himself that he’d messed up the lives of his family by his rashness when the Great War began. He’d been a fool, but he realised it too late. He’d been an even greater fool for driving his wife into the arms of another man, and her resulting pregnancy had wrought its own intolerable hell. It was all his fault. He could no longer live with himself. Such a fool did not deserve to live. Thus, he lost the will to fight the depression that engulfed him. He willed himself into his grave. But he left a widow, three daughters and a son, who adored and respected him, and who had brought him so much joy.

  In many ways it was a relief. Lizzie’s life had declined into drudgery to the point where she had no life. She never ceased working and she never ceased worrying. The dinner table bore the cheapest meals; poverty stared them continually in the face and the things she had to do to nurse poor Ben stretched the bonds of marriage to breaking point.

  Yet they had
been happy once, and she was thankful for that.

  At the funeral, John Mainwaring had much to say about Ben; much that his family didn’t even know. He told how many years ago Ben had saved a young child from drowning in the Birmingham Canal at the back of the Coneygree Collieries; how he was the best boxer at his school at Burnt Tree; how as a youth he’d even written to the then Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, expressing his fears about Keir Hardie’s plans for the trades unions. But that he’d felt the need to volunteer to fight for his country in the Great War, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three growing children, was well known to all.

  ‘Thus was Ben’s sense of duty,’ John Mainwaring said. ‘Thus was Ben’s appreciation of what he perceived was right, and what he perceived was wrong. Thus was Ben’s understanding of what was good and what was evil. If we ourselves, and I mean the whole human race, could determine right from wrong, good from evil, with the same clear perception as Ben Kite, then the world would indeed be a far happier, far better place in which to live.’

  The two families, and some close neighbours, turned out for the occasion. While Lizzie and Herbert attended the service and the poignant lowering of Ben into his grave, Henzey and her two sisters remained at home making sandwiches, pies, and cakes for the mourners afterwards. They borrowed an enormous kettle and an equally enormous teapot. Early that morning Jesse Clancey had ladled several pints of milk into several borrowed jugs, and they were all standing on the cold shelf above the cellar steps. Price’s bread cart delivered four loaves of fresh bread, still warm, and smelling divine, all of which they sliced and buttered.

  For Ben’s children the sorrow of the day was offset somewhat by the appearance of their aunts, uncles and cousins; all totally different; some of whom they had not seen for months or years. They were fond of them all in varying degrees.

  In the scullery Jesse Clancey made a point of catching Lizzie as she was hanging the kettle over the fire. She turned to him, and he saw that her eyes were still red from crying at the funeral, but at least now they were dry.

  She smiled bravely. ‘Hello, Jesse. Thanks for coming. He would’ve appreciated it.’

  ‘It’s the very least I could do. He was a character, your Ben. It’s been a privilege knowing him. He was a good friend. I’m just sorry he’s gone.’

  ‘He was good to me, Jesse.’ Tears flooded her eyes again, so she took a handkerchief from inside her sleeve and wiped them, trying to regain her composure. ‘He was as good as gold to me, but the more I think about him the more I think he was his own worst enemy, God bless him. Only he knew what the pain was like. He suffered unmercifully, you know. At least he feels no pain now, Jesse. And that’s a blessing.’

  The burning coals slipped, and she turned momentarily to check the fire.

  ‘Listen, Lizzie, I want to tell you something. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – if you need any help at all – it don’t matter what it is, send for me, ask me. I want you to feel you can rely on me for anything. Don’t be too proud to ask … I mean it.’

  ‘Oh, Jesse, you’ve always been kind to Ben and me – and the children. I do appreciate it. Ben always appreciated it as well. But I’ve no desire to bring the wrath of Sylvia down on me again.’ She smiled through her tears, aware that Jesse would know what she meant.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Sylvia.’

  ‘But if you’re courting her again it wouldn’t go down very well if she thought you were doing something to help me.’

  ‘Like I said, Lizzie, it’s nothing to do with Sylvia. If I want to help you, I’ll help you, and nobody’ll stop me. I don’t belong to Sylvia. We’re not betrothed. Not yet at any rate. We’re only friends.’

  ‘Only friends?’ She gave him a knowing look. ‘I bet she doesn’t see the two of you as only friends.’

  He tilted his head from side to side as if weighing up the facts of the matter. ‘No, I don’t suppose she would. Neither would she see me and you as only friends, but that’s all we are, Lizzie.’

  ‘And I hope we’ll always be friends, Jesse.’

  *

  In August Henzey left school, to the envy of her brother and sisters. Straight away she found a job in George Mason’s provisions store in the Market Place. Edie Soap, Annie’s granddaughter, had suggested she apply. There was a vacancy to be filled as one of the girls was leaving to get married. Wally Bibb, the store manager, duly impressed, offered Henzey full time employment at a starting wage of seven shillings a week. That extra money would help alleviate the extreme financial hardship the family were experiencing since Ben’s death.

  In the late afternoon of the same day that Henzey started her new job, Lizzie walked home from the shops in Brown Street. She could hear Jesse Clancey singing in the yard of the dairy house as he cleaned out churns with a hose pipe. She smiled to herself, and decided she would go over and say hello. After all, she had half an hour or so to kill. Just so long as Ezme wasn’t about. She had no wish to see Ezme. Jesse’s trousers were tucked into his rubber boots as he worked, and his cow-gown was spottled with water. When he saw Lizzie he at once turned off the tap in the brewhouse.

  ‘Lizzie! I was just thinking about you. I was going to come and see you later.’

  ‘Why, what’s up?’

  Jesse looked very solemn. ‘When Harry Skilbeck got back from his round he told me that Tom Dando was taken ill this morning. Your Aunt Sarah’s had the doctor in to him. Sylvia reckons he’s very poorly.’

  ‘Oh, no. What’s the matter with him, Jesse? D’you know?’

  ‘Heart attack.’

  The colour seemed to drain from her cheeks. ‘Oh, Lord. I’d best go and see him. I’ll go and see him tonight.’

  ‘Well don’t forget as Sylvia’ll very likely be there, as well.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t care less about Sylvia, Jesse. If she’s there, she’s there. If my Uncle Tom’s poorly I want to see him.’

  Jesse smiled. ‘That’s the spirit.’

  ‘Poor Uncle Tom. He wasn’t well last time I saw him. That’s old age, Jesse. It gets you like that if you live long enough. I don’t know which is worse – to die young or to live long and suffer.’

  ‘Or worse still – die young and suffer, like Ben did.’ He hoped she wouldn’t regard it as a tactless remark. ‘How are you now, Lizzie, anyway? Are you coping?’

  ‘Well enough, thanks, Jesse. Our Henzey’s started work today, and Herbert’s going red mad to leave school and find a job. He can’t leave yet, though. Not till he’s fourteen. But I do wish he’d find himself something to do in the holiday and at weekends. He’s a bundle of energy, but all he wants to do is go fishing and play football.’

  ‘All lads are the same, Lizzie. So how d’you think he’d take to a little job of a Saturday?’

  ‘I daresay he’d love one. Where, though?’

  ‘Well, you know, I could do with some help when I collect the money. The round don’t warrant taking anybody else on full time, just a Saturday. I never thought about Herbert, though. It’d suit him, and suit me.’

  ‘Oh, he’d love that, Jesse. Helping you on your float.’

  *

  It so happened that when Lizzie arrived at the house in Grainger Street, Sylvia had left her father ten minutes earlier. Tom Dando was very poorly, and Donald Clark had ordered complete rest. Another such heart attack would kill him, he warned. So Lizzie did not stay long. But while she was there her Uncle Tom held her hand tightly.

  ‘Yo’ll never know how grateful I am as yo’ve called to see me,’ he said weakly. ‘Yo’m that much like your mother was at your age … a picture.’

  ‘But my mother was a lady,’ Lizzie answered self-deprecatingly.

  ‘Ar, your mother was a lady all right. And so am yo’, our Lizzie.’

  Lizzie smiled, grateful for his kind words; especially grateful for the consideration and affection he’d always shown her, as well as her mother.

  ‘… Now yo’m a widder … and yo’m no age. It’s a sin. How
old am yer now, our Lizzie?’

  ‘Thirty-six. Clocking on a bit now, Uncle Tom.’

  ‘Thirty-six. Lord’s sakes, how the years have fled … Thirty-six … It’s a sin, it is. Your mother was forty-two when ’er had yo’, God bless ’er … So there’s still time, yer know. Somebody’ll come along and sweep yer off your feet again. Yo’d be a worthy bride at thirty-six.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, yes? And who’d want me with four kids in tow?’

  ‘Many a one,’ he said feebly. ‘But pick a bloke careful like, our Lizzie. The one yo’ had was a good lad – a damn good lad. Yo’ll do well to match him.’

  ‘Any suggestions?

  ‘Suggestions?’

  ‘Well, how about our Stanley? He’s still single.’

  ‘Our Stanley? Good God, no! Our Stanley’s no good for yo’, Lizzie, my wench. Have no truck with our Stanley whatever you do. He’s too fly … Too thoughtless … Him? He’s like a fart in a colander – out one hole, straight in another.’

  Lizzie felt herself blush. ‘Let’s hope they’ve got plenty colanders in Rhodesia then,’ she said, for want of a more suitable reply.

  ‘’Tis to be hoped.’ Tom sighed, and was silent for a few moments while Lizzie adjusted his pillow. ‘Am the children all right?’ he asked eventually.

  She confirmed that they were well, and that Henzey had started work that very day.

  ‘They can be a big comfort, children.’ He sounded emotional, but also very tired.

  Lizzie stroked his forehead gently. ‘I hope nieces can as well … You’re tired, Uncle Tom. I’d better go now and leave you in peace. I’ll call again in a day or two.’

  He shook his head lamely. ‘Doh goo yet, our Lizzie. Sit wi’ me a bit longer. Yo’ doh know just how much it means to me for yer to come and see me.’

  She kissed him on the cheek. ‘’Course I’ll stay a bit.’