by Anna Jacobs
“Not if she’s clean!”
They burst out laughing. “Come on, then,” said Annie. “Let’s get it over with!”
Kathy made no protest at the stripping and cleansing of her person. Indeed, she almost fell asleep in the tin bath. Never in all her short life had anything felt so warm and soothing! The two women were appalled at the bruises and scars on her emaciated body, but they kept their thoughts to themselves, merely exchanging expressive glances from time to time.
Once the bathing was over, they wrapped the child in a blanket and settled her in a chair by the fire. When they gave her some bread and ham, and a cup of tea, she wolfed it down as if she expected someone to snatch it away again. Then her eyes closed and her head rolled backwards against the chair. Annie left her to sleep. There was no question of work just yet.
“I never thought I’d say this,” muttered Alice, “but she’d have done better in the union workhouse.”
“I don’t know about that.” Annie shivered. “My mam was put on the parish and she wouldn’t ever talk about what had happened to her.”
“But look at what’s happened to Kathy!”
“Yes.” They both fell silent again.
Charlie, when he came in, just smiled at the idea of having Kathy live with them. “It’ll be nice, havin’ you here, lass.” He loved children, as long as they weren’t rough and noisy. He always shrank away from May and Lizzie, but this thin little creature instantly aroused his compassion.
Kathy stared at him as if he were the man in the moon.
“I’ll make you a bed chair,” he promised her. “Saw one once. Not hard. Get some wood tomorrow. The bottom pulls out to sleep on. It does. Neat as anythin’.”
Annie intervened. “Let her get used to you.” She kissed her husband’s cheek. “You’re a kind man, Charlie Ashworth. And don’t worry. She’ll earn her keep. She can learn to sew and help me with William when she’s stronger. She’ll need feeding up first, though, poor thing. You wouldn’t think she was nearly twelve, would you? She’s only a year younger than Lizzie.”
He scowled at the name. “I don’t like Lizzie. No, “I don’t like her.”
“I don’t either, but she’s my sister, so we’ll have to put up with her. The only one who does like her is May. The two of them are as thick as thieves, and welcome to each other, as far as I’m concerned.”
When Tom came round, as he did most nights, he was less pleased. “You’re gettin’ soft, our Annie,” he said scornfully. “There’s plenty of kids as’d come an’ work for their food. Smart kids. Why did you have to pick this one? Everyone knows that Kathy Dykes is slow. That’s why no one’ll take her on. She’ll be no use at all.” He took a very proprietorial interest in Annie’s business and often turned up at the market once the mill had closed on Saturdays, to try his hand at selling.
In spite of his disapproval of the transaction, however, he agreed to go round to Number Two with his sister, “if only to stop them tryin’ to get any money out of you.”
“I’m not that daft, our Tom!” retorted Annie. “If they thought there was money to be got from me, they’d never be off my doorstep.”
They took a big piece of paper with them, to impress Kathy’s parents. Annie giggled as she wrote it out, using all the long words she could think of and her very best handwriting. She even drew flourishes on the top.
“That looks good,” said Tom. “I didn’t know you could draw so well.”
“Oh, I used to have a go sometimes at Park House. Miss Richards taught me and Ellie a few things. I like drawing. I only wish I had time to do it properly.”
As Tom had predicted, George tried to get Annie to pay him a shilling or two a week for Kathy’s services. Tom took over the bargaining at that point. When George started threatening Annie, Tom marched over to him and grabbed him by the shirt. George made a feeble attempt to fight him off, but then subsided on to a stool. Like Polly, he was drunk most evenings. Several filthy, half-clothed children watched wide-eyed from the back of the room till George shook his fist and roared at them to get into the back kitchen.
“Now, George Dykes,” said Tom, “either you sign an’ let Annie take your Kathy an’ train her to sew, or I’ll go an’ bring her back right now, this very minute. I don’t mind. I think Annie’s soft to take her on at all. I wouldn’t! She don’t know how to sew or do anything else much. She’s not worth a farthing scrape of dripping, that one!”
Grandpa Jack spoke up then. “You do as he says, our George. Tom’s right. The little lass is good for naught else. She’s not strong enough. You said so yourself only yesterday. Let ’em take her off your hands.” Jack Dykes was beginning to show his age and now that he could no longer beat his son in a fight, tended to sit quietly in his corner after work. He was terrified they’d put him in the union workhouse once he grew too old to work. But he had a soft spot for little Kathy and enough wit to see that here was her big chance in life.
Reluctantly George Dykes agreed to sign his cross.
“Go an’ fetch our dad, Annie,” said Tom, who’d now taken complete charge. “We need a witness to this. That lawyer chap said it was to be done proper.” They had consulted no lawyer, but the word impressed Polly and George into complete silence.
John Gibson came round and solemnly signed his name after George and Polly’s crosses, then they all left. Before he went back into Number Three, John patted Annie’s shoulder. “You’re a nice lass doin’ this. Your mam would’ve been proud of you.” Then he whisked inside, his eyes suspiciously bright.
At the door to Number Eight, Annie stopped and looked at Tom. “You handled that well.”
He grinned. “Told you I could take care of meself. Wait till your business is goin’ proper! I’ll come in full-time, then. We’ll make money, you an’ me, one way or another. Lots of money. You’ll see.”
“Yes. I hope so. But not till times get better. Charlie can cope with things himself for now. I want to make money as much as you do, Tom, but I’m going to be very careful how I do it.”
Part Two
21
1839 to 1844
Engrossed in her business and her son, Annie hardly noticed how the years were passing. The Chartist movement went by almost unobserved by her, although Sam Peters talked about it to her father, and her father mentioned it to her once or twice. Annie still did not get on with her stepmother, but Emily had changed over the years. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, to find everything just too much to cope with. She had absolutely no comprehension of what Chartism meant and took no interest in the wider world. She only cared that John brought home enough money to feed them all. Some of the mills in Bilsden had a struggle to survive, though Hallam’s always did better than the rest. Emily was quite bewildered by all the changes going on around her, as were many of the older people.
In almost no time, it seemed to Annie, William was turning six, a sturdy little boy, too much of a mammy’s boy, some would have said, for he spent a lot of his time with her, doing his lessons and helping her in his childish way. He hardly played out at all because she didn’t want him associating with riff-raff. The rest of his spare time was spent with the man he called Dad, for Charlie adored him and always had time to talk to the child or play with him or teach him new skills. Sheltered and cared for by Annie and Tom, Charlie grew gradually to near normality, slow still, but achieving a kind of gentle dignity and acquiring an aura of cheerful kindliness that made people stop calling him ‘barmy’, even out of Annie’s hearing.
Every now and then, as the years passed, Annie would pause to marvel at the changes in herself, but mostly she was too busy making a living and putting a bit by to waste time in introspection. Until William was five, times were hard in Bilsden. A general recession, trade fluctuations in the cotton industry, the death of a leading mill-owner, a fire in one of the big mills, all these hit the small town hard and, of course, inevitably reflected on the junk trade. No question yet of bringing Tom into the business full-
time; there was sometimes barely enough work for Charlie. They would just have to bide their time.
Fortunately they were not only dependent on what Charlie could bring in. There was the five shillings a week from Hallam’s still, the rent money on the cottages and what Annie could earn with her sewing. There was no week in which she did not put at least a few pennies away in the tin box, and more often it was a few shillings.
Annie grew into a lovely woman, but it was a cool, reserved loveliness that offered no promises and held out no lures to the men with whom she came into contact. Indeed, she kept everyone except William and, to a lesser degree, Charlie and Tom, at arm’s length. So engrossed was she in her work that she paid little attention to her own appearance, as long as she was clean and neatly turned out. But when the sun shone on her auburn hair or when she smiled at her son, men sometimes turned to look at her admiringly. Most of the time she didn’t even notice them.
She had no time to waste on chit-chat and rarely paused to gossip with the other women in the street, except Sally and Bridie O’Connor. And even with them, she spoke decisively and crisply, and did not linger for long. Time was money.
Little by little she grew used to giving orders to her employees. The orders were usually couched as polite requests, but Alice, Kathy and the other women who intermittently sewed for her obeyed them without question, for Annie would stand no nonsense. Only Tom sometimes questioned what she said and did; only Tom could provoke her into a quarrel, for they were too alike to co-exist in complete harmony.
During those years Tom had no choice but to stay on in the mill. Although this fretted him greatly, he generally managed to hide his feelings and he gained a reputation as a good, steady worker, one of the most skilful, for all he was so young. He could turn his hand to anything and was always one of the last to be put on to short time. He eked out his earnings when Hallam’s was on short time with odd jobs, or made extra money from the bits and pieces, as he called them, in the good times. So, like his sister, he began to accumulate money, make contacts and hone his skills.
However, Tom also acquired a reputation as a mean man to cross. Neither Benworth, the overseer, nor Matt, now assistant to Benworth, found occasion to criticise Tom’s work or dock his money for minor infringements of the rules – he had too much native cunning to be caught out doing anything against the mill rules – but neither of them marked him out for further advancement. Tom Gibson had a way of looking you straight in the eyes, as if he were daring you to find fault with what he was doing and there was not a subservient bone in his body. Even Frederick Hallam frowned at his attitude, but there was nothing that he could put a finger on to complain about and the man was such a good worker that it’d be a pity to lose his services, just because he had the wrong expression on his face at times. Frederick had developed an obsession about building up a more skilled workforce and had no intention of training men to serve other masters.
After work Tom associated with a dubious crowd whom Annie didn’t like and about whom she and Tom had words regularly. He was also fond of women, though he was careful to confine his attentions to married women or women of loose morals, because he had no desire to let himself get trapped into marriage. He’d seen enough of what a bad marriage did to a man, with Emily and his father.
In appearance Tom was not prepossessing, for he was one who would come late to full physical maturity, and his face still reflected the youthful uncertainties that raged within him. He had grown little since he was fifteen and was of barely medium height, only an inch or two taller than Annie and about an inch taller than his father. He was, however, as strong as an ox and seemed to take a perverse delight, every now and then, in testing out his strength and fighting prowess in what he called ‘a bit of a rough-house’. Annie called it brawling, and she called most of his friends ‘scum’.
When he was eighteen Tom left home and went to lodge with Widow Clegg, because he could no longer stand the crowded conditions at Number Three, even for the sake of living cheaply. John Gibson’s second marriage continued to be disastrously fertile and Emily was still presenting him with a new child almost every year. By the time William was six, Mark, Luke and Rebecca had Peggy, Joan and baby Edward to keep them company. Another baby, a boy, had died at birth and Emily had also had two miscarriages. A bewildered Emily found it hard to cope with the demands of such a large brood of children. She changed gradually from a shrew into an apathetic, overworked drudge, who turned more and more often to gin as her only means of solace.
But in spite of her backsliding, Emily still clung to her religion and regularly staged scenes of fervent repentance about her drinking and general inadequacies. The help of her brothers and sisters in Christ was one of the main things that prevented her from going completely downhill, like Polly Dykes. Cast-off clothes, gifts of food, a helping hand when she was ill or confined to childbed, all these were forthcoming when things grew too much for her or when the mill was on half-time.
Within the Gibson family, Lizzie and May always kept themselves very much to themselves. Both now worked in the mill, but in a community where early marriage was the rule, neither had ever shown the slightest interest in boys. By 1844, Lizzie was nineteen, pale, plump, with lank gingery hair. May, at seventeen, was a younger version of her mother, scrawny and with sharp features and mousy hair. When May was fifteen, she and Lizzie had issued an ultimatum to their parents. Either they got the small back bedroom to themselves or they would leave home. John blustered and protested, but he had lost a lot of his old forcefulness and in the end he and Emily had to give way to their daughters’ demands and move themselves down to the front room, putting the rest of their brood in their old front bedroom. A year after that, Lizzie and May moved right out, giving no warning, just packing their things one day and moving to a room in Florida Terrace. The loss of their earnings was a big blow to the family.
Pauline Hinchcliffe, usually the organiser of help for Emily Gibson, shook her head over the woman’s improvidence and said that she was one of life’s incompetents, but Saul would not countenance any diminution in help to one of his congregation and reminded Pauline sternly of the parable of the lost sheep.
Annie helped, too. Emily had completely forgotten her old animosity towards her stepdaughter and was humbly grateful nowadays for the help she regularly gave.
“The woman’s a fool!” Pauline would exclaim to Annie. “You’re just wasting your time with her.”
“I know,” Annie would sigh, “but if I don’t help out a bit, it’s my dad and the children who’ll suffer.”
“And so he should! If he were more continent, they would not have such difficulties!”
“I know, but …” And Annie would dip into Charlie’s junk to provide clothes for the new baby or a dress for little Rebecca. But she never gave them money, for she knew Emily would only spend it on gin. She also discouraged her father’s family from popping in and out of Number Eight, because she didn’t want interruptions to her business.
Except when she was pregnant, Pauline kept up her practice of dropping unexpectedly in at Number Eight and demanding a cup of tea. She said she needed someone intelligent to talk to once in a while. She was a stimulating conversationalist and not one to bow to the prevailing mores. She had found and wooed a husband when she felt the need for one and she would bestow her friendship where she chose, too. She was not a regular member of the local social circles. Chapel did not usually associate with church and she owed her husband some loyalty. However, her family had been landowners in the district for a long time, and she would occasionally condescend to exchange hospitality with her peers and even with those higher up on the county’s social scale.
During those years Pauline bore two sons. Her narrow body was not well suited to childbearing and it was over two years before she first conceived, years in which she came near to despairing over her inability to have a child. She was in poor health all the time she was carrying a child and her first labour was long and arduous.
It was only thanks to Jeremy Lewis’s skill that young Stephen Collett Hinchcliffe emerged unharmed into the world.
It took three more years for Pauline to conceive again, and this time, the birth was so difficult that Jeremy forbade her to have any more children if she valued her life. This child she allowed her husband to name Wesley Emmett, and for a few years Saul nourished hopes that his son would follow him into the ministry. But in spite of his name, the boy was as like his mother as his elder brother was, and neither of them ever paid more than lip service to their father’s religion.
One day, when Pauline had fully recovered from the birth of her second child and was looking round for more challenges, she announced to Annie, “It won’t do, you know.”
“What won’t do?” Annie was puzzled.
“That dress.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Annie looked down in surprise. “It’s clean and I mended it carefully. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Heaven grant me patience!” Pauline shook her head, and then cast patience aside in favour of brutal honesty. “How a person dresses is most important. What must people think of you when they see you in a dress like that? It’s faded and patched and the hem’s been turned.”
Annie shrugged.
“Put down that sewing and listen to me! In that dress you look just like any other woman from the Rows – a bit cleaner, maybe, and certainly prettier than most, but a woman of the poorer classes.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” said Annie defensively. “I live in the Rows. I can’t change that. What need is there to dress more smartly?”
“Because better times are coming and because you want to improve yourself, to make money, to leave the Rows – or so you’ve always said. Have you changed your mind about that?”