Polly's Pride

by Freda Lightfoot

  At least no damage had been done. Nothing had been pinched, and each morning when she came into the kitchen to riddle the fire and put on the kettle, it was a delight to find no sign of a blackjack.

  After her assault on the beds, Polly swept the horse-hair sofa, beat the rag rugs on the line in the yard, shamed by the amount of dust and powder that came out of them, and black-leaded the fire range till she could see her face in it. Then she scrubbed the rough deal table with bleach and washing soda, a lethal mixture which would either clean it or rot it. Then she gave the same treatment to the stone-flagged floor till any remaining bugs would surely call it a day.

  Finally she polished the mahogany sideboard that took pride of place in the small front parlour. This was their most treasured possession, being the first item of furniture they’d bought when they married. It had taken two years to save up for it and not a day went by without Polly giving it a rub of her duster. The only other items in the parlour, which was used for special family occasions, was a small leather buffet, a clean new rug and Matthew’s armchair. They’d not done too badly, she decided, considering they’d started with nothing, and wasn’t she proud enough of her little house?

  This thought brought a smile to her face now as she donkey-stoned her doorstep, seeing many another woman doing the self-same thing or cleaning their mucky windows, as if they didn’t know they’d be filthy again in five minutes from the foul smoke belching from the numerous chimneys near by. The women would chat together as they went to collect water from the tap in the street; ‘having a natter’ or ‘doing a bit of camping’ as they called it, over the problems of the day.

  Every now and then they’d walk in pairs down to the University Settlement buildings where they’d bathe their children, five or six at a time, then climb in themselves for a quick once over. The rest of the time they had to make do with a sponge-down from a wash basin, or a painstakingly filled zinc bath by the fire. Was it any wonder it was hard keeping the bugs at bay with no running water in the house except what ran down the walls?

  Polly had once asked Big Flo if she’d ever thought of leaving. ‘Nay,’ the old woman had said. ‘I’d be lost if I left Ancoats.’ Manchester, even Ancoats, wasn’t too bad a place to live in, Polly supposed. Her loyalty to her own home country had faded somewhat in recent years, and she was happy enough here with Matthew, though truth to tell she wouldn’t be against something a bit better for her children. Wasn’t that always the way of it? But if Dove Street was poor in material possessions, it was rich in friendships. As Big Flo was fond of saying, ‘Break your ankle and the whole street limps.’

  Within days of poor Mrs Murphy’s funeral, new people moved in next door, a family with four girls this time who might at least make less noise than the Murphy lads, now probably much subdued in a children’s home, bless them.

  The mother introduced herself as Eileen Grimshaw. She seemed too young at twenty-two to have had so many children, though she looked older. But Polly liked her. She was small with a mane of red-orange hair and a cheerful grin, despite seeming worn out half the time, and even thinner than Polly herself.

  ‘They eat like hawks and me like a sparrow,’ she said on that first day when Polly, seeing she was worn out by the move, asked her in for a cup of tea and offered her a bit of sad cake. ‘Are you sure you can spare it?’ Eileen was gazing longingly at the pale crust of pastry.

  ‘It’s not got any currants in it, nor have I any butter to put on it either, but it’s fresh baked. Go on, get it down you.’ The crumbling pastry, still warm from the oven, was gone in seconds and Polly wished she had more to offer, the girl looked so frail. But she’d saved the rest, one piece for each of her family for supper. Even so, the girl was starving, it was plain as the nose on your face. Polly gave Eileen her own slice. ‘Go on, I had a piece earlier,’ she lied. That vanished too, as quickly as the first.

  ‘By heck, I wish I could bake like that! My mam allus said I were useless. Terence tells me so all the time.’

  Polly smiled. ‘Is Terence your husband?’

  ‘Says he is, so I reckon he must be. They’re his childer anyroad. Mostly,’ she finished with a grin.

  Polly decided not to follow up that enigmatic ‘mostly’. Eileen was not like the other women in the street. She refused to wear a shawl or cover her head in any way when she went out. Nor did she wear the usual drab-coloured dresses or skirts the other young women wore beneath their apron. Her dress was bright green and very short. She claimed to have been given it by a woman she’d once worked for. The hem was loose and since she wore it every day, it wasn’t overly clean.

  Eileen continued, ‘Terence likes me to look smart. Not like these old besoms round here. Miserable old sods! And at least they’ll see me coming, eh?’ And she cackled with laughter, bright blue eyes flashing.

  Nor did she wear clogs. ‘Nasty, noisy things’ she called them.

  ‘They’re good for your feet,’ Polly pointed out, giggling. Eileen Grimshaw was going to bring some light and laughter into her life, she could sense it. ‘Keep them dry, with plenty of room to wriggle your toes.’

  Eileen’s feet, Polly was to discover in the days following, were often bare, but today she wore a pair of old boots that might once have belonged to a tramp. In the evenings, if she went out for a beer with her husband, she wore the kind of shoes that round here were called ‘fast’.

  There was a knock on the door and Big Flo walked in. It wasn’t the custom to wait to be asked. ‘It’s only me. By the hangment, what has the wind blown in?’ Arms akimbo she considered Eileen from top to toe. ‘Thee’s come from t’music hall, right?’

  Eileen took this as a joke and chuckled. ‘I once went to the Variety with me pals. Eeh, that were a right good do? We saw Albert Modley. Oh, he was a laugh, he was. Pretended to be driving a tram.’ She stood up to demonstrate, as if operating the driver’s handle. “I’m goin’ to Duplicate,” he says.’ And she bent double with such joyous laughter that soon she had Polly giggling too, and even Big Flo couldn’t hold back a smile.

  ‘So what brought you to Dove Street? Are you married? Have you any childer? Where did you hail from? How do you earn your crust?’ Flo tossed a string of questions at the visitor while Polly brewed fresh tea, mugs were refilled and the women settled themselves for a lengthy chat.

  ‘Sparkle Street,’ Eileen informed her interrogator. ‘So that’s what I try to do. Sparkle.’

  ‘You come from the Dardanelles?’ The scorn in the old woman’s voice was clear. ‘There’s bloody murder done in the Dardanelles every Saturday night.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true,’ Eileen blithely agreed. ‘Which is why we’ve moved up here to this posh neighbourhood.’ This brought a stunned silence. Posh not being a word usually associated with Dove Street.

  Big Flo mildly remarked, ‘Aye, well, happen you were right to come. They’d rob their own mothers in the Dardanelles.’

  ‘That’s because the mothers don’t put their daughters on the stage - they put ‘em on the game,’ said Eileen, giving that by now familiar chuckle. ‘Only I was lucky. I escaped that fate by marrying Terence.’

  In the stunned silence that followed this amazing confession, Polly strove to restrain the laughter that threatened to erupt. Finding her voice at last, she asked, ‘Did you call for any special reason, Flo?’

  ‘Nay, I were just passing.’ The old woman set down her mug with a snap and got briskly to her feet, ready to give the lie to this with her next words. ‘Whatever’s ailing that child o’ yours, thee’d best ‘ave a word with her and sort it out. She looks like she’s lost a shilling and found a tanner.’ And, having shed this worry concerning Lucy, Big Flo departed, surprisingly light on her feet for a woman so big and muscular. At the door, she turned and addressed her parting remarks to Eileen.

  ‘What does yer husband do?’

  ‘He’s unemployed at present.’

  ‘Well then, you won’t spoil a pair.’ And having delivered this damning indictmen
t of feckless folk who didn’t work, she departed, arms swinging like an all-in wrestler’s.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Polly said with a wry smile after the door had slammed shut behind her mother-in-law. ‘She’s harmless enough really.’

  Eileen gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t mind. Does this mean we’re going to be friends?’ It struck Polly as an odd thing to say, but she answered as cheerfully.

  ‘I should hope so. Isn’t that the finest thing in the world, to have lots of friends? Call in any time you’ve a mind, and I’ll pop in to see you.’

  ‘I’ll rather come in here, if it’s all right with you? Terence doesn’t care for strangers in his house. He likes to keep himself to himself.’

  ‘But we wouldn’t be strangers, we’d be neighbours.’

  ‘I know.’ Looking troubled for a moment, Eileen shrugged it off with a laugh. ‘It’s with me being in t’family way again. He says I’ve no time for nattering, I work slow enough as it is. And he’s right. But then, I’ve generally childer draped round me neck like a bloomin’ necklace. Me mam’s taken them today while we get moved in.’

  Polly couldn’t disguise her astonishment. The girl looked too thin to sustain her own life, let alone that of another. ‘You’re pregnant?’

  ‘I am, aye.’ The two young women looked at each other, one wondering how much to tell, the other whether this was a moment for congratulations or commiserations. The answer came in a bubbling flow of words. ‘Not that I wanted another, you understand. But you can’t stop them coming, can you?’ And for all the self-deprecating smile on her new friend’s rouged lips, Polly sensed desperation in the question.

  ‘I’m a Catholic, so perhaps I’m not the best person to ask.’

  ‘But you’ve only the two. How did you manage that?’ Then, surprisingly, the girl blushed bright red and got hastily to her feet. ‘Eeh, listen to me. What a thing to ask. Terence allus says I put me foot in it every time I open me mouth. I’d best be off.’ But as she fled to the door, Polly stopped her.

  ‘I don’t mind your asking. I didn’t do anything special. No more came, that’s all. I did want another baby for a while, but then I counted my blessings. Two’s enough to keep, eh?’ Again she considered the frail figure of the girl with her determinedly cheerful countenance. Underneath that mask of bravado, Eileen was clearly suffering.

  ‘You do get a bit of rest every afternoon, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, aye, Terence lets me have half an hour. He’s very good. He even holds the door open for me while I fetch in the coal.’ And she chuckled at the joke. ‘That’s one of Albert Modley’s. Though it’s pretty accurate so far as Terence is concerned, lazy sod.’

  Polly smiled too, then impulsively put her arms about the girl, apparently weighed down by children though she seemed little more than a child herself. ‘Half an hour is no time at all. You need to take better care of yourself than that. You come in here every afternoon. I’m usually home by four. What men don’t see they won’t worry over, isn’t that the way of it? And you and me can have a bit of a natter. Now wouldn’t that be grand?’

  ‘Oh, aye, it would that. I will come in, whenever I can. It’d be grand to have you for a friend, Polly.’

  And they grinned at each other in perfect understanding. Then Eileen was on her way to the door, clearly itching to be off. ‘Mam’ll be fetching t’childer back soon, and I should be getting on with cleaning and tidying, and washing nappies.’

  ‘Ach, a woman’s work is never done,’ Polly smilingly, agreed as she watched her new friend hurry away. Privately she vowed somehow to find the answer to her new friend’s question. There was surely a limit to how many babies a woman was supposed to have, and some way to prevent them. If ever a woman was in need of help, Eileen Grimshaw was.

  Chapter Four

  Polly sang as she worked, letting her voice trill loudly on the old Irish melodies, for didn’t she have a secret?

  Big Flo was right, Lucy had been in one of her moods for days, but little thought was needed to give Polly the reason why. The poor lass wanted to take part in the Whit Walks as she always did, and because money was even harder to come by than usual, hadn’t dared pluck up the courage to ask her mother if they could manage it this year. But she needn’t have worried. Tattered and poverty-stricken though they may be, nobody in the whole of Manchester would miss taking part in the Whit Walks. Like everyone else, Polly had been saving all year for this purpose. Her ‘nest egg’, as she called it, was hidden away in a tin beneath a loose floorboard.

  Besides working at Yates Tavern, she’d been lucky enough to find extra work, cleaning. Perhaps she’d got the job because she’d presented herself so well, showing some pride in her appearance, shawl neatly pinned at her throat, skirt clean, clogs shining. She’d certainly not told her new employer where she lived, which had surely helped. No, there was nothing her daughter needed that she wouldn’t provide, if it were at all possible.

  Not that she’d told Matthew yet about the new job. Did that mean she was turning into a cheat? Polly worried. But indeed why should it, for wasn’t it only for her family’s good that she worked? It was right what she’d said to Eileen. Men worried too much. She completely forgot how anxious she’d been over the fumigation.

  What Matthew failed to appreciate was that the children were growing fast and so were their appetites, and however hard he worked, it wasn’t enough to feed them all adequately, let alone provide all the other things growing children needed. She’d no choice but to work, and deep down he knew that.

  As for the Whit Walks, well, they were special, taking place only once a year. They brightened everyone’s lives, and what was wrong with offering witness to the Almighty? The problem was they all needed new clothes or boots for this grand occasion, and Lucy a beautiful white dress. Now she had achieved her purpose, Polly knew that it was time for her to tell the truth, admit to her secret and face her husband’s ire. Then she could at least put her daughter’s mind at rest.

  There was a break in the canal wall at the end of Dove Street, quite close to the mill. It was here that the narrow-boats tied up. Some of them brought in coal all day long, carried along two planks that ran from the boat into the entrance of the mill fire-hole. It was one of Matthew’s jobs to fill a wheelbarrow with slack, run it along the plank, tip it into the hole then go back for more. It was casual labour, paid by the hour, but glad of the work, he’d happily do this task for twelve or sometimes fourteen hours a day. If it was a tiring, back-breaking slog, he never complained or even seemed to notice. It was employment, casual or not, for which he was grateful.

  On other days he might be employed at the dock in Ducie Street. Here he would help unload bales of cotton from the three narrow-boats pulled by a steamer all the way from Liverpool. Later the bales would have to be sorted and reloaded for the final stage of their journey on to smaller narrow-boats or carts for those mills without access to a canal or the River Medlock.

  Though Matthew didn’t work in the mill as Joshua did, he was as affected by the state of local industry as his brother. If orders for finished cotton went down, workers like him were laid off or put on short time. Then there was less demand for the coal and coke which kept the boilers going, or for the great bales of raw cotton that came down the Ship Canal from Liverpool, and Matthew spent half his life shifting one or other of these commodities.

  Today, as he worked, he thought of Joshua’s words that night at the barracks. Following their argument, Matthew had finally been persuaded to attend one of his brother’s meetings, trying to appease Joshua’s ill temper as he so often did. It had, as Matthew had anticipated, been no occasion for a celebration of brotherly love.

  He knew that Joshua was hoping to lead a group from Dove Street to speak against their employers and form a union of cotton employees. This would include all who worked at the mill, and those who shipped the cotton either in its raw or finished state. Joshua was right in saying that the industry was not what it had been; the days when c
otton was king long gone, with increasing fears for its future. New orders were badly needed, though where these would come from was anyone’s guess.

  The meeting, which had been poorly attended, passed a resolution that what they needed most was someone to lobby Parliament; make them do something about the cheap imports which were flooding the market. Trade had been poor for years, and the general strike hadn’t helped. The election of a Labour government in the spring had seemed to offer new hope at first; now no one was quite sure. Nothing was really being done to improve matters. The bosses could still call the tune.

  Matthew was not alone in dreaming of that seemingly impossible goal, a full week’s work. Even then, the pay would be so low he knew he still couldn’t hope to keep his family on it without the few extra shillings Polly brought in.

  ‘You must join us in our fight,’ his brother had insisted. ‘Then you’d have a proper living wage to take home and your wife wouldn’t have to work in that beer-house.’

  Matthew had bridled, reacting badly as always to any hint of criticism against Polly. ‘It’s not a beer-house! It’s one of Yates’s Teetotal Taverns, as you well know. She spends most of her time serving lentil soup at a penny a time, and making sure the customers don’t hack the spoons off the walls to which they’re chained.’ Still it shamed him to have his wife work so hard. And he hated to have his brother point out his inadequacies as a provider.

  ‘The men’ve asked me to stand for election as president of our local group, but Cal Eastwood is standing too. He’ll be a tough opponent to beat, since he has ways and means of making folk vote for him. Nevertheless, I believe right will prevail and I’ll be chosen, but I shall need all the support I can get, Matthew, including yours. You must be my right-hand man and make sure I win.’

  Matthew was shocked. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Canvass for me. Help put out leaflets, talk to people, persuade them to see me as the right candidate for the job. You surely owe me some loyalty? Or does your sense of self-preservation exclude even that fundamental requirement in a brother?’