A Whisper to the Living

by Ruth Hamilton

  Part Two

  . . . is a Whisper to the Living

  1

  Martin and Simon

  On 13 July 1955 Ruth Ellis was hanged for murder. The campaign for the abolition of capital punishment was reinforced by this terrible occurrence and for weeks after the event the newspapers argued the issue. Annie Byrne sat in the reading room of Long Moor Lane Library and wondered anew about man’s inhumanity. How far had Ruth Ellis been driven? For how many months or years had she suffered before committing this so-called premeditated crime?

  Annie replaced the paper in the rack and picked up her book. They would let you have just one book at a time, so she had been reading a novel each day during the first part of her summer holidays, losing herself in pages of the historical romances which had become something of an addiction now. Every morning she would stand at the library gates waiting for the staff to arrive, an impatient foot tapping the ground if the door remained closed one minute after ten o’clock. On Saturdays, she always chose an extra-thick book to get her through till Monday morning. This was escapism and she knew it. It was exactly what she needed. In a world that hanged desperate women, that forbade blacks and whites to travel together on the same bus, a world that had recently sent six million Jews to a filthy and unspeakable end, one needed to escape before madness set in. There was so much to run from now, because everybody’s life seemed to hang by a thread, a slender strand that might so easily be snapped by another Hiroshima. So Annie divided her time into three parts, housework, study and reading. The first left room for thought and she got through it hurriedly in order to engage her mind elsewhere, in a place where she might ignore the Bomb, forget man’s current cruelties by reliving those of the past, deny, by burying herself in the intricacies of algebra and Latin, that she might become the next Ruth Ellis.

  She stepped out into the sunlight and stood for a moment on the top step to watch her particular bit of the world go by. Did any of these people worry about the atom bomb? Would any one of them care if they knew that in their midst there resided a potential Ruth Ellis, a girl almost grown to womanhood, a young female who might easily commit a premeditated murder any day now? Twice she had struck down her stepfather, twice she had allowed him to remain alive. The next time he might not be so lucky and Annie Byrne could well end up in prison or, if the event should be postponed until she reached her majority, then the gallows would be used again.

  From Bryant’s corner shop a figure emerged, jaunty and carefree in Edwardian suit, thick-soled shoes and bright orange socks. He called across the road, ‘Ho there, a pike – prick me this dog’s hide,’ thereby identifying himself as a Cullen, harkening back to the time when the seven of them had tried to ruin her performance in a school play. Not that she hadn’t recognized him in the first place – anybody who walked about looking like that was seeking attention.

  He called again. ‘Oy – Freckles – go blind with all that reading, you will.’

  She turned to go back into the library, but in a trice he was by her side, a wide grin stretched over his own freckled face, the oily quiffed hair stained a darker auburn by liberal applications of grease.

  ‘D’you like me hair?’ he asked, turning his head so that she could see the slick folds at the back. ‘It’s called a DA – that stands for duck’s arse.’

  ‘Thank you, Martin. I always wanted to know that.’

  ‘Anyroad, you shouldn’t be reading. You should be helping yer mam.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’ Cool green eyes swept over him.

  ‘Well . . . because you should, that’s all. All girls help their mams.’

  ‘And boys – aren’t they supposed to help in the house too? Or is there some special dispensation that gets them out of it?’

  He shuffled uncomfortably. She just wasn’t the same any more, was she? She used to be great fun, did Annie Byrne, always up to mischief. Why, Annie and his twin sister Josie used to be the best pair of tomboys going – all the way through the juniors the two of them had plagued the living daylights out of everybody. Annie had always kept up with the lads, roaming the brows on conker hunts, trekking all the way down to Trinity Street to stand on a soot-covered bridge getting train numbers, usually ready for a fight too. Now she talked . . . well . . . posh like, made you feel as if she knew things, as if she was better than everybody else. He’d heard that she still capered on at school and was popular for her sense of humour but at home – well, she seemed as miserable as bloody sin. And it had taken him two flaming years to pluck up the courage to talk to her now she’d gone posh. Oh heck! But there was something about her, something special that made his stomach churn, made him angry and happy at the same time. Was he, Martin Cullen, famous hard case of this parish, smitten with a lass?

  ‘Boys do different things,’ he muttered. ‘Our Josie and our Ellen help me Mam, do the house and that.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I mended the washing line this morning.’

  She looked towards heaven before stepping back through the library door and he called after her, ‘I fetched the coal in!’

  Annie walked past the startled librarian who probably wondered why she had returned so soon. She slammed the door of the reading room and threw herself into a chair. So he’d brought the coal in, mended the bit of rope where Bertha Cullen, on rare occasions, hung her dripping grey wash. Not that Annie wasn’t fond of Mrs Cullen – oh she was, she really was, but Martin was becoming a real pain these days, a pain Annie could well do without. He was forever hanging about outside the house with his motley group of Teddy Boy friends, always casting the odd glance up towards her bedroom window where she would sit reading or scribbling.

  Yes, perhaps she should go out sometimes for a walk over the Jolly Brows or the top field, get some fresh air and a bit of sun. But Annie only went out in the evenings. During the day she stayed in, emerging only when her mother left for the mill, then walking miles to visit aunts, friends, acquaintances from school. And if she were to come out in the afternoons, Martin would no doubt find her, follow her and regale her with tales of dances at the Palais where he could ‘pass himself off as eighteen’, or, worse still, he would fill her ears with nonsense about the fights down Folds Road, clashes with rival Teddies. Still, he wasn’t all bad, she knew that. Somehow, she realized that his heart was not really in it, that he was out to impress, that he was not truly aggressive like some of the others.

  She turned to glance through the window at the little garden at the back of the library where rhododendron leaves gleamed rich and dark while overblown roses tossed their weighty heads in the morning breeze. Because there was no school, Annie had been up since six o’clock as usual, raking out ashes and setting a new fire in the range. By 7.30, she had beaten the rugs, washed, rinsed and mangled the overnight soak and had hung the clothes to dry in the back street. The wash had to be out early so that it might be brought in before the lamp man came or the ragman’s pony ploughed through the streets while his master called ‘rag-a-bone, donkey-rubbing-stone . . .’ By eight she was finished for the day, floors swept, steps scrubbed and stoned, kitchenette cupboard wiped out, sink bleached, table laid, kettle bubbling on the range. The next two hours had been spent in the attic studying until library opening time. Yes, Annie helped her mother alright. She did what little she could in that deadly atmosphere to help the poor benighted soul who had brought her into the world. But for how much longer would she be able to carry on? He had recovered now; he was watching, waiting, planning . . .

  She jumped up from the table, opened the door and walked past the wide-eyed librarian, then after checking that the coast was clear, she left the library and went down past the doctor’s to the Milk Bar where she ordered a coffee. The place was empty, the juke-box mercifully silent. Annie took her book to a corner table and began to read.

  Across the road, Nancy Higson carried her husband’s breakfast dishes through to the kitchen. She felt tired, bone-weary, worn out after twenty years slaving in a cot
ton mill and the same number of years worrying about money. But she carried on, filling the bowl, washing and drying the pots, carried on just as always for the sake of peace and for Annie. At least the rows between her daughter and her husband had virtually stopped now. Funny how he’d given over cursing and screaming at Annie since the accident. Something to be thankful for, she supposed. And there were people a lot worse off, weren’t there? But oh, she wished things could be . . . different. Annie couldn’t bear to be in a room with him for more than two minutes and it was such an uncomfortable way to live, trying to please everybody and finishing up pleasing nobody, least of all herself. But she was a good girl, was Annie – the house fair sparkled of a morning when she was off school. ’Course, she’d be over at the library now, picking a book to read.

  Eddie Higson sighed, looked out of the window to assess the weather and took a Woody from a paper packet of five. The room was stuffy and overheated because of the range, but he said nothing. Nancy wanted a better cooker for the kitchen, a safer one, she said – one that wouldn’t fight back and spit at her. The range had been good enough till now, so she could sod off for her new cooker. Anyroad, it was likely all down to that daughter of hers putting fancy ideas about because of all that education. Bloody education. The girl should be setting off for the mill any day now and if he’d had his way, he’d have driven her down there with a whip if necessary.

  ‘It’s half past ten, Eddie,’ Nancy was reminding him now. ‘Best of the day’ll be gone if you don’t get going.’

  ‘Don’t start your mithering, woman. I’m on my way.’

  He nipped his cigarette and placed the stub behind his ear then shuffled through to the yard for his bucket and leathers. As he steered the newly acquired ladder cart through the gate, he grinned to himself, dragging the feet of the ladder across the bottom of a snow-white sheet. ‘That’ll show the young bitch,’ he muttered, pausing to feel for the cigarette-end behind his ear. He’d have his day with that one as sure as eggs were eggs.

  As he walked away, he didn’t notice Nancy standing in the gateway shaking her head. After he had disappeared, she painstakingly removed the large double sheet from the line. It would have to go in the dolly for another soak – oh, if only she could afford one of those washing machines! Well, the cold war between Eddie and Annie was far from over – the thick black lines on the sheet were proof enough of that.

  ‘How did that happen, Mother?’

  ‘Ooh Annie, you made me jump!’ Nancy clutched the sheet to her chest. ‘Eddie caught his ladder on it . . .’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘It was likely an accident, love . . .’

  ‘An accident? He did the same thing last week because he knows I’m doing the washing.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it.’

  ‘That’s a load of rubbish, Mam and you know it. He’s mean and spiteful – oh God how I hate him!’

  ‘Now you just stop that kind of talk, Annie. He puts food in your mouth, doesn’t he? Do you think you’d be at St Mary’s if he’d never worked to keep us all going? He took you on, I’ve told you before. He took us both on . . .’

  ‘And killed your baby!’

  They stared at one another across the small yard, then Nancy, her voice low, said, ‘I think we’d better go inside, don’t you?’

  After closing the outside door carefully, Nancy rounded on her daughter. ‘What do you expect, eh? You treat him with nothing but contempt – oh yes, I’ve seen the way you look at him. He helps us pay our way and don’t you ever forget that!’

  Annie’s laugh, which was not really a laugh at all, made Nancy shiver. ‘And you’re grateful? Grateful to a lazy lump who should have been out cleaning windows for two hours at least? Grateful because you’re forced to scrimp and save while he pours shillings down his throat in the Star? Oh, Mam.’ As usual, in her anger, Annie fell back into her old way of speaking, vowels flattened, ends of words missing or distorted. ‘You took him on, just you remember that. You took on a murdering bastard! He was fit for nowt when you married him and he hasn’t improved over-much.’

  ‘Annie!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mam. Sorry you have to bear the brunt of it. I’ll go upstairs now before I say any more.’

  Nancy Higson stood alone in the kitchen, her knuckles as white as the sheet she twisted between her fingers. Yes, she’d taken him on out of pity. Or was it out of fear? Had it been panic that forced her hand, panic because Billy had died and left her with a child to support? Would she have got another chance if she hadn’t leapt at Eddie Higson’s offer so readily? Or could she and Annie have managed alone? They’d have been re-housed, possibly somewhere nice – and she could have got a grant for Annie’s needs. Dear God, why had she married him? He was a cruel man, of that she was sure. His victim had needed no grave, but he had murdered and in cold blood too. Nevertheless, Nancy felt duty-bound to defend her husband no matter what he had done. Marriage, like death, was inescapable and a thing to be endured.

  Annie climbed to her room at the top of the house. From her window she watched Martin Cullen leaning on his gate. He took a comb from a top pocket and smoothed his fashionable quiff. A strange lad, that one, she thought as she took her seat and opened the Seton novel. He was brainy but stupid. Briefly, she wondered how somebody could be clever yet daft at the same time, but then she did know others of the same ilk: nuns, priests, teachers who were all clever but as thick as two short planks when it came to common sense.

  The angry exchange with her mother had been upsetting, was yet another thing to forget. So she opened the book and immersed herself in the tale of wild romance. The room, the road, the moors didn’t exist any more.

  Annie had escaped.

  She wouldn’t look down, he knew that. He was beneath her in more ways than one, her sitting up there like a bloody princess in an ivory-tower, him standing in the street thinking about her as usual. She didn’t even care whether he thought about her or not, didn’t notice his existence most of the time. Whenever he did manage to engineer a meeting she always treated him as if he was only tenpence to the shilling, a few bricks short of a load, as if he needed another brain cell to qualify as a plant.

  If only he’d tried harder. If only he’d passed that flaming scholarship instead of arsing about as if he didn’t care or worse still, as if he didn’t have enough chairs at home to do the soft test. Well, he wasn’t thick – he’d show her that, right enough. Anyway, what difference would it have made if he had got a place? They would still have been separated, her with the nuns and him with the brothers. But she might have looked at him different if he’d passed. ‘Naw,’ he muttered, kicking a stone into the road. His Mam would never have let him go to the grammar anyway; she wanted him working pretty damn quick with all those mouths to feed.

  Martin hated being in their house now. It had been alright when they were kids, it had even been fun living in a midden then, but now he was sick to the back teeth with it. Better out here on the road than in there, nowhere to sit, dirty pots and mucky clothes heaped everywhere, his Mam sitting either pondering or laughing in a corner, kids crawling out of every crack in the walls, muck and stench all around them. He wanted more than that, better than that. He wanted order, quiet, cleanliness and above all, success.

  Ah, what the hell – she wasn’t going to come out again today; he knew her pattern better than he knew his own. Even if she did come out, he’d likely open his big gob and put both feet in it again, start going on about girls and gangs and fights. And he did know about other stuff, he did! She wasn’t the only one who read books and things. They did have common ground, he knew it. But what if the lads ever found out he could discuss Samuel Taylor Coleridge instead of just carrying on about James Dean and Bill Haley? But he wanted . . . oh, he didn’t know what! Yes, he did. He wanted to say things. To her. Words he thought of while he lay in that stuffy, overcrowded back bedroom, things his mates would never understand in a million years. How the hell could he approach her? You c
ouldn’t walk up to a girl in the cold light of morning and say ‘your hair’s nice’ or ‘fancy a walk over the top?’ Not with this girl, anyway. She was different and that was why he needed her.

  He took a deep breath then gritted his teeth and looked up at her. She was like a statue, never moved except to turn a page or to push a strand of hair from her face. She didn’t wear her hair in a pony tail like the other girls did. It hung loose like a silken waterfall down her back and shone in the sun, a mixture of gold and platinum threads – but he could never tell her that. And her eyes, cast down on the book now, were clear and green with long gold-tipped lashes. She was a tall girl, taller than him by an inch or more, but his thick crepe soles helped a bit. Still, she wasn’t the type for a Teddy Boy, was she? He couldn’t imagine her bopping at the Palais on a Friday or having a bit of fun in a doorway on the way home. He’d never gone all the way yet, but he’d had one or two of them breathing hard, panting for something he still felt too inept to try. He couldn’t imagine her like that, giggling and groping in the dark, giving you a feel for the price of a lemonade and a couple of Woodies in the dance hall. One day, he would marry a girl like her, a girl beyond price.

  The Hall i’ th’ Wood bus rattled past and she looked up from her book. Embarrassed beyond measure, Martin jumped up onto the garden wall and, holding an imaginary pole for balance, he executed an impromptu tightrope walk up and down, falling off at the gate and rolling on the ground as if mortally wounded. He picked himself up and began to walk with an exaggerated stiff-legged limp, then, turning to look up at her once more, he made a deep bow. She was standing at the window now, clapping her applause and half doubled over with laughter. He had made her laugh!