by Knight, Lynn
Further along from Westward Ho! and Vanity Fair stood Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar Wallace. Annie liked Horror but her secret vice was Crime. She no longer had time to read novels, but satisfied her longing with Detective Weekly. Sinister figures loomed large and terrifyingly on its front cover; Cora turned over the magazine so she could not see the nightmarish silhouettes making intimidating gestures by lamplight.
Annie’s all-time favourite was Sexton Blake, the ‘Crime Expert of World-Wide Repute’. Sexton Blake was everywhere. (‘I am Sexton Blake,’ one Chesterfield drunkard insisted, before being hauled off to the cells.) On the evenings Willie disappeared for a pint at the Victoria Club, Annie settled into her chair with the latest exploits of the famous detective and his loyal side-kick, Tinker. Page-turning-page of suspense, with only the occasional illustration to relieve the tension until, ‘The wooden door flew open, and standing on the threshold was the figure of Sexton Blake.’ By the time she reached the denouement, Willie was due home.
Far more intriguing (and with no immediate and satisfying conclusion) was the visit from the mystery lady who came to Racecourse Road. My mum was six years old when Annie appeared in her classroom and asked if she could remove her daughter. This was memorable in itself – teachers (and Annie) were sticklers for school rules: no one left the classroom before the afternoon bell. And this was no swan-like Annie either. She lacked her usual poise and seemed hot and flustered, as if she’d run the four hundred yards to the school.
‘Someone very special has come to see you,’ she told Cora, hurrying her into her coat, ‘a lady in a chauffeur-driven car.’ Cars were still rarities in Racecourse Road, let alone cars with chauffeurs. But as Cora and Annie rounded the curve and the house came into view, there was no car ahead of them. ‘He must have left the lady in the house,’ Annie said. Yet, when they reached the house, there was no lady there either.
The cupboard where my mum kept her books and toys was open, with all its contents revealed as if on a stage. Her child-size desk and chair stood beside the open cupboard doors and her doll’s house beside them. ‘I showed her your things,’ Annie said, ‘and your photographs.’ All the photographs on the piano were of Cora. ‘And she wanted to see you. But, obviously, the lady couldn’t wait.’
The lady was wearing a mid-calf navy-blue costume (ladies wore ‘costumes’ in those days), with a matching hat and, possibly, a short veil – at least, that’s how I see her, though I’ve actually no idea what she wore. My grandma did not describe or explain her, and my mum was too young to ask many questions. Some time later, Cora asked Mrs Blake if she had seen the lady, but she had not, nor the car, and no other neighbour mentioned seeing a vehicle. Which was just as well. The sight of a smart woman stepping from a chauffeur-driven car could have licked like a flame round Racecourse Road, though that thought probably did not occur to their well-heeled visitor, who disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, leaving a mystery behind her.
17
Woolworth’s Gems and Saturday Treats
Dorothy and Eileen were a bit older than my mum but adapted to her games with good grace, making bottles of rose-petal scent that reeked after one day and had to be poured down the sink. Occasionally, they were joined by Margaret, who was older still and rather superior. One day, she mentioned church. She was Church of England. What were they? Eileen went to the Catholic church; Dorothy attended Chapel. And Cora?
‘I go to Woolworth’s,’ she said.
Woolworth’s belonged to Eva’s days off and was part of a larger excursion into town via the Great Central Railway, one of the few times my mum caught the train from Wheeldon Mill: a three-penny ticket and a Nestlé’s chocolate bar expelled from the machine on the station platform. Eva and Cora travelled into Chesterfield throughout the year, but their winter trips were the most memorable because of the return journey: clouds of steam billowing against the dark night sky and the gaslights winking as they stepped from their compartment into the grip of cold air.
Trips into town required a special effort: a brown leather clutch bag, gloves and cloche hat for Eva; a brown velvet handbag for Cora, with an appliquéd Minnie Mouse on the flap. If Eva took out her compact to check her face for smuts from the train, my mum consulted her Mickey Mouse mirror.
There were always several things saved up for their next expedition: a pair of T-bar sandals for Cora; stockings or talc for Eva and Annie, purchased from Swallow’s or John Turner’s, with their hushed and carpeted interiors and canisters of loose change whizzing along overhead pipes. Woodhead’s grocer had its own particular fragrance of loose tea, and a recently refurbished café upstairs. No longer turn-of-the-century Oriental, it was now thoroughly up-to-date with dark wooden panels and chrome-edged swing doors finished in pistachio green. Eyres’ was equally modish, selling muffineers and match-holders by Clarice Cliff.
Woolworth’s cornucopia of tat came near the end of their itinerary and regularly supplied sixpenny treats: a toy watch with an elasticated strap or a sparkling ring. Some Woolworth’s gems shone even brighter than those sold by the corner shop.
Chesterfield market was their final stopping point, its stalls bustling late into the evening, the whole market aglow with a greenish hue from naphtha lights pinned to canvas awnings. The market was a reliable source for buttons and knitting wool, with baskets you could rummage through for lengths of decorative braid. A man in a striped blazer supplied sheet music: ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow Wow,’ if Eva was choosing; something from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, if the decision was Cora’s. Last stop of all was the stall where Eva bought a cup of mushy peas. Cup and spoon were passed between them, sixpenny winter warmth.
Afternoons with Eva generally involved a degree of adventure, however small; she could make the most ordinary walk seem exciting. If there was something unexpected to discover in a hedgerow, she found it: a discarded toy or a hair ribbon fluttering from a twig. Eva walked fast, but her walks could be quite slow because of the number of people she knew. And there was afternoon visiting with Eva, and, of course, seasonal galas.
My mum had a prestigious role at galas, accompanying Eva selling sweets, still the same usherette’s tray; still sprinting and egg-and-spoon races and, one year, a much-anticipated motorcycle demonstration. Half a dozen men wearing leather helmets with narrow chin straps and enormous leather gauntlets lined up their metal steeds to perform daring feats, revving up their bikes on to planks laid across a series of oil drums, and leaping from one to the next. They executed bold skids, before coming to a halt with one foot on the ground, swerving only feet away from their audience. Back at the corner shop, Cora’s tin motorcyclist leaps from the sugar bowl to the milk jug to show Betsy what she’s missed.
There was nearly always a greasy pole and a rowdy tug of war, which presented no difficulties to those who battled subterran-eously with enormous tubs of coal but was harder work for the Sheepbridge clerks. To get a better purchase before grasping the rope the colliers spat on their hands. ‘There’s no need for you to copy that,’ Betsy tells my mum when she mentions this particular manoeuvre.
Dick winks at Cora. There is a kind of pact between them. It’s as if Betsy is in charge of them both. Being deaf means that, if Dick’s chair is in the way, or he fails to respond, Betsy gives him a shove. ‘Am I ’im?’ he asks Cora. ‘You are, Grandad,’ she answers solemnly. ‘Oh, you are a man,’ Eva chips in, laughing at them both.
The grandfather who was happy to be called Dickie Dutton by Cora while she combed his white hair, and who, having no idea of his actual birthday, agreed to celebrate it on 1 April, had a side to him the family never saw, which was reflected in his membership of the Buffs. In the early 1930s, Dick was raised to the Buffaloes’ Roll of Honour and photographed in the full rig – medals, braided cuffs, embroidered apron. The man in that picture is a revelation to me. He looks nothing like the genial father and grandfather who never raised his voice or fist. Those stern features turn him into someone else entirely: a character
he put on, along with his Tuesday regalia. Dick was reasonably satisfied with the result and thought the picture a fair likeness, but his daughters felt he had tried too hard and overdone the formality. Whenever Annie or Eva came across it, they said the same thing: ‘I don’t know what my dad was doing, pulling a face like that.’
America, France, Africa, Spain, Italy, Egypt, India, Persia, Turkey, Palestine…Cora produced a list of Countries My Dad has Visited. Nineteen in all, but she wanted a round twenty: ‘Oh, alright then,’ Willie said, ‘Put Alsace-Lorraine, that little place the French and Germans are always squabbling about.’ He taught her American currency (that went into her notebook too), the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, and how to spell Mesopotamia. She was proud of her dad’s achievements and when she got a new notebook, listed the countries all over again.
Notebooks came in handy while adults talked. After the Saturday tea things had been cleared away, there was invariably an hour or so of talk. While Annie and Eva discussed the events of the week, Cora occupied herself by writing or drawing. Being an only child meant that if she crayoned quietly, adults tended to overlook her presence when they were engrossed in conversation. Some of the topics they discussed were already known to Cora – the Mill kids had told her of the eighteen-year-old who shot himself in the stable beside the gypsy field and of the boy her age who drowned in the River Rother – other events made an impression because of their effect on Annie and Eva.
Today, a marble angel guards the graves of Rhoda Bradford and her young children. At the time, their disappearance made local headlines: ‘Have You Seen Them?’ Even Scotland Yard became involved. Annie and Eva didn’t think much of Rhoda’s husband, but they liked her and the children and were appalled to hear they’d disappeared. Their last known sighting was at a sweet shop where Rhoda bought sweets to pacify the children who were fractious and crying. ‘Come on, ducks,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home.’ These were the last words she was heard to say before the three of them stepped out into the fog.
Their bodies were not found straightaway, nor were they together when the river finally gave them up. Another death preceded theirs: eleven months earlier, Rhoda’s eldest daughter had been ‘called home’, aged six. Rhoda had visited the grave on that last afternoon. Some anniversaries are too hard to face; some griefs cannot be mended.
‘He’ll be alright till t’bobby sees him,’ was a common enough phrase used of husbands as well as sons who seemed to be up to no good and wouldn’t ‘be said’. Lads still made their plans within Betsy’s hearing, but when she heard mention of a rope and of a window that was generally left open, and listened to voices rising and falling in whispered exclamations, she was uncertain what to do for the best. She needed her neighbours’ trust, but she could not bear to hear these young lads plotting something as foolish as a robbery (and what would Mrs Pollard say if her young Arnold was sent away?).
The local bobby still called at the house for his mid-evening cuppa and so, despite her reservations, Betsy reported what she’d heard. A quiet word from the constable foiled the would-be robbery and the plotters even laughed when Betsy told them of her intervention in their scheme. It seems extraordinary that they could joke about it together, but perhaps their plot was ‘too daft to laugh at’, as my great-grandma used to say, and she wanted to shake these youngsters into some common sense or at least deter them from plotting within her hearing.
On one occasion, Betsy consulted the bobby on her own behalf. Although afternoon strollers regularly used the shop at weekends, it was rare for a stranger to call midweek, and in all the time my great-grandma ran the corner shop, only one customer was in any way threatening. A middle-aged man came into the shop when she was there by herself; a bedraggled-looking chap, though no more scruffy than some of her customers. It was not his clothing that aroused Betsy’s suspicions, but the fact that he did not seem to know what he wanted and appeared to be eyeing up the stock and her with it. The stranger had made a mistake with my great-grandma who, though in her seventies by now, was far from fragile and could still manoeuvre the vinegar barrel and sacks of corn when need be. Betsy had his measure straightaway. He had not reckoned on Teddy either, whose crescendoing snarl seemed to come from nowhere.
‘I’d leave now if I were you,’ Betsy said, summoning her most authoritative voice, ‘or this dog will have you, and I’m going to tell the police.’ She half turned as if to open the house door. There was no phone in the building, but the stranger couldn’t know that. And, like most people who encountered my great-grandma, the man did exactly as he was told.
Detectives sometimes swelled the Saturday evening numbers, knocking on the house door to ask if they could watch the comings and goings at the Great Central Hotel. They could stand unobserved in the shop’s dark interior and keep an eye out for those they wanted to question about poaching or some other dodgy deal. Pub-watching provided family entertainment too. Betsy, Annie and Eva regularly peered through the gloom at tipping-out time. Friday and Saturday nights were invariably occasions when arms-around-the-shoulder, good-natured camaraderie could flare into anger in an instant. Some pantomime swings were taken by brawlers too drunk to land a punch, but there were serious fist fights too, with men squaring up to an opponent. Annie and Eva were used to sights like these; street fights had been part of their childhoods, and, although neither had any desire to be closer to the scene, they thought nothing of positioning themselves for the best view – in front of the counter, slightly to the left side of the sweet window.
For three or four weeks, they watched Bobby Taylor challenge whoever was willing to take him on. This short, stocky man flared up in his cups; at other times, no one took much notice of him. Perhaps that was part of his problem, though I suspect that, like his brother Albie, Bobby was a tin god at home. For weeks, he challenged anyone who crossed him and took a swing at those fool enough to intervene. He was never staggering drunk – and there were many who said no man was drunk unless he was staggering – but he made a nuisance of himself all the same. After several weeks of this aggravation, Arnold Dugsby floored him. Six foot tall in his stocking feet, with knuckles the size of walnuts, Arnold knocked Bobby to the ground with one punch. He kept himself to himself after that.
Watching fights was a purely female activity; Dick never stirred from his chair. He had probably witnessed more fights than he cared to remember (a photograph from Dick’s brickyard days includes one chap with a real shiner). This particular spectator sport was left to the women: Betsy in her starched white blouse with a neat brooch at her throat; Eva and Annie fingering their beads.
My grandma and Cora rarely left Wheeldon Mill until after ten o’clock. The last leg of their journey, as they neared Racecourse Road, was frequently illuminated by Old Man Burton peeing his way home from the local pub, but even that did not persuade Annie to set out earlier. No matter how often Betsy and Eva remonstrated and Dick insisted, ‘Shouldn’t that little duckie be home in bed?’ Annie went her own sweet way.
There were cross words and remonstrations about another aspect of Annie’s timekeeping: my grandma never put my mum to bed. Cora fell asleep on the sofa and was taken upstairs when Annie went to bed herself. Cora was not kept awake, but had no fixed bedtime and so always spent the first few hours of sleep downstairs. I wonder if Annie wanted the company (though she kept Cora with her whether Willie was there or not), or if she was trying to shield Cora from how she had felt as a very small child, put to bed in those dark workman’s cottages; or, even as a slightly older girl, sandwiched between who-knew-what in the attic up the next flight of stairs, and her parents, fastened behind a door one storey below. Whatever the reason, Annie did as she liked; once she made up her mind about anything, she would not budge. The same went for her thoughts about Willie.
Cora came into the living room one afternoon to find Annie swaddling the silver cake stand in pieces of cloth from the rag bag. She wrapped the silver sweet basket in its own cotton strips and laid these treasures sid
e by side in the bottom of Cora’s old pram. Next, the silver-and-cranberry-glass cones were tucked into a blanket and patted down. The sideboard was denuded of silver. ‘I’m taking these to Mam’s,’ Annie said, with that look of hers that resisted questions.
The sideboard was buffed with a duster and a glass vase moved into prime position in the centre, but it was a while before the vase ceased to look like the impostor it was. Annie’s silver was the first thing that struck you when you opened the living-room door, but Willie said nothing when he came in.
The constant grinding sensation in Willie’s gut was best chased away with a beer or subdued with a pint of milk, but not that flyblown stuff that gathered dust unless Annie was in the house when it was delivered. Willie preferred bottled milk with a top that sealed which, though more expensive than milk ladled from a can, was at least not warmed in the porch half the day.
Fresh, bottled milk was only sold by one shop at the far end of Whittington Moor, so Willie’s preference involved a long walk which, on bad days, was beyond him. One afternoon, he asked Cora to collect the milk instead and promised her sixpence in payment. Sixpence was a great deal of money for a child. This was typical of Willie: always generous, whether or not he could afford to be. (Friends of Cora’s occasionally stopped Willie in the street: ‘Give me a ha’penny, Mr Thompson.’) A ha’penny was the usual tip an errand could command; if a child received a penny they were extremely grateful. Sixpence meant untold riches. But it was a hot afternoon and a long trail up to the top of Whittington Moor and back again, and Cora and neighbour Grace Blake were in the middle of a game and Jimmy Davis said he’d go instead. Jimmy had never had sixpence of his own. And, of course, Jimmy told Willie how very pleased he was, and, for the first time ever, Willie was extremely quiet with Cora.
Another emergency ambulance came to the door and there were the same dark-green disinfected corridors to wander down and get lost in, but this time it was worse because the severity of Willie’s situation was hardening into irrefutable facts. After his ulcer burst the second time, Willie was warned he would not come through a third. ‘But perhaps there won’t be a third time,’ the doctor said, suddenly becoming interested in his shoes.