by Knight, Lynn
It was a bigger girl, this time, in the year above my mum at school. Hers was a playground jibe, pitched out of nowhere. ‘Oh, do you know you don’t belong to your mam?’
Her question seemed quite casual, an afterthought almost, by the by – yet it must have been sucked on and savoured beforehand and judged for the right moment to lob. Once again, Annie put on her coat and went visiting. Then, silence. Like the last time. The whole thing was put down to schoolgirl spitefulness.
My mum had no reason to doubt this. Yet, there were times when she felt herself to be different from Annie and Betsy, situations in which their reactions were not necessarily the same as hers. She was too young to pinpoint exactly what these were, and perhaps it was merely a generational thing – but, for whatever reason, Cora sometimes felt different, despite the fact that everything around her – their love, affection and the attention she received – confirmed how much they loved her and that she was theirs. Why would she not be? Just as Annie and Eva were sisters, and her grandma’s sisters visited, and Dick’s nephews too. There was evidence of family all around her. As yet, Cora had no idea how complicated those connections were.
Chapter 19
Fast Cars and Darker Stories
JACK HARDY’S SCRAPYARD WAS A WELL-KNOWN GRAVEYARD for clapped-out cars, decrepit vans and broken gaskets. Any local vehicle that ‘won’t pap nor nowt’ ended up here. The yard included an old railway carriage which Jack’s father and younger brother had helped to convert into an office of sorts. The father said nothing and the brother not a lot. This taciturn pair remained in the office; amiable young Jack greeted all comers.
Like father, like daughter, my mum loved cars when she was young. Low-slung getaway vehicles with their engines ticking over on darkened streets – step on the gas and quick about it – or sleek purring limousines that steered Hollywood vamps to new horizons just before the credits rolled. For games like these, Jack Hardy’s scrapyard was perfect. Cora asked Jack if she and two of her neighbours, Grace and Tommy Blake, could play with his cars. And, amazingly, he said yes. No other children were allowed near the yard – ‘Clear off, you little buggers,’ Jack shouted, if they so much as ventured near the gate. I suspect Jack knew and liked Willie.
Somewhere among the old carburettors, greasy axles and great hulks of rusting tin, there was usually a car that had not quite succumbed to dereliction, and still boasted seats and a steering wheel, even if it lacked one or two niceties like an engine or doors. The occasional cracked veneer dashboard was a considerable plus. The yard mostly fielded broken commercial vehicles, private cars still being treated with kid gloves. Relatively few of those landed here, but – oh, the ones that did. They had chrome knobs to twiddle and play with, starters to pull out or push; heavy pedals to depress, if you could reach them, and enormous steering wheels to get you where you wanted to go. For a child reared on the cinema – and Willie’s love of cars – afternoons at Jack Hardy’s were bliss.
After a few fantasy miles and adventures, Jack gave Cora and Tommy some car seats of their own. Hers did service in the back garden: pushed up against the gate on the days when she and Grace had had enough of Tommy; or else providing seating for a card school. The kids at Wheeldon Mill taught my mum how to play pontoon; she passed on the favour to her neighbours. Cardboard coins stood in for currency; she wrote their monetary value on each one. The car seats also served as a useful buffer if the fastest girl on wheels achieved too high a speed roller-skating across the concrete strip by the back door.
My mum was about eight years old when Willie hurried into the house looking excited and extremely pleased with himself. He had borrowed a car, he told her and Annie, with a walnut dash and soft red seats that still smelled of leather. Its bodywork was absolutely gleaming. Could he take Cora for a drive?
Annie was peeling potatoes at the sink when Willie opened the back door and she barely considered his request before she squashed it. I can hear her knife scraping potatoes and feel the power behind that ordinary kitchen task and her refusal: knife, water, potato skin. I’m reminded of that game – scissors, paper, stone. Annie’s domesticity trumped Willie’s fanciful notion.
It was a school afternoon and she was preparing Cora’s tea, but I wonder how long Annie paused before answering. Was she angry at being excluded from the invitation, nervous of his driving, or just plain infuriated by Willie? He left the house and did not return until the next day. It was not the only night Willie spent with the Kiplings.
*
On the days when he was feeling well, Willie walked up to Billy Kipling’s garage mid-morning and spent several hours watching him at work and chatting on the forecourt. Usually, he wore baggy trousers held up with braces and an open-necked shirt; a flat cap had replaced his trilby. The natty dresser was gone but there was still an insouciance about Willie, even if, now, the figure he cut was more dustbowl than dandy.
Walking back from the garage one afternoon, Willie was chuffed to see a car draw up ahead and his doctor stop to offer him a lift. Riding home in Dr Sutcliffe’s car, accepting one of his cigarettes and matching the man puff for puff, Willie could almost forget his predicament. He was still the kind of person his doctor was happy to ride with. No job, no prospects (no caged birds anymore), but he was still himself. Still Willie.
At Wheeldon Mill, someone had scrawled ‘Jam Rag’ across Mrs Sugsby’s coalhouse door. The lettering was patchy, but the chalked words were clear enough. Noreen Carter explained to Cora that Nella Sugsby had a terrible disease which made her feet bleed and meant she had to wear special bandages.
When not gossiping, misleading one another or engaging in general misrule, there was time to sit on the causey edge and teach one another the latest songs. The Mill kids taught Cora ‘Home-town’ and other popular tunes, which they sang while walking along the canal path and when waiting to be picked at rounders. They showed Cora how to flick her wrist so the dice landed on the back of her hand in a game of snobs and took turns in swigging from one of Mrs Spencer’s halfpenny bottles of nettle beer while ‘pickin flies off folk’ (noting adults’ peculiarities): Mrs Taylor carrying her handbag as if her arm were in a sling; Mrs Rudge with her suspiciously black hair, or Violet Jakes taking the downhill slant of Station Road at full tilt: ‘me ’ead’s ’ere and me arse is comin”.
Most of Cora’s friends at Wheeldon Mill were older than her; and some too old to ever be considered playmates. But whatever their age, they all underwent an immediate transformation on starting work. Boys who had dammed the riverbank and scudded stones across the water one day were wrenched from childhood the next. Equipped with a jacket and one of their father’s old belts with new holes punched in it for this occasion, they instantly left their younger selves behind. From that day on, they formed part of the adult ranks, with rarely more than a cursory glance for those remaining on the other side. With girls, the change was even more startling: they seemed to burst from their childhood chrysalis into women, and, in the case of young women, could be just as easily crushed.
There was a new vitality about Amy Foster as soon as she started work. With a home perm and a smart dress – not one her mam had made over – she seemed to blossom into herself. Amy and her siblings had always had a sullen appearance; everything in their lives was scarce or begrudged, but, for a few short months, that changed. Amy splashed out on a studio photograph to record her brand-new self, but, in no time at all, she’d a ring on her finger and, all too soon, a baby, her new-found freedom erased as easily as the lipstick she no longer had much call to wear.
Or there was Sarah Cooper, with her broad, slow smile, too smiling always, too ready to placate. Running to catch up in every sense, she was included in childhood games as much through sympathy as friendship. As she grew older, Sarah found new ways of making friends; she became very pally with one boy in particular. They were often seen together on the grassy bank, insufficiently screened by the trees. ‘I see Sarah’s down the canal again,’ someone would say to Betsy, who’d draw in her
breath and shake her head. What prospects for a big slow girl – hardly a young woman – with a too ready grin and an eagerness to please that made you fearful on her behalf? Most neighbours felt sorry for the girl and turned a blind eye, though some objected: it’s not nice, this canoodling; a disgrace. Then, the inevitable happened: she became pregnant. That was the last my great-grandma saw of Sarah Cooper.
There was much to discuss in the corner shop as the thirties drew to a close, and little of it optimistic. In October 1938, an accident at the Markham Colliery, some two miles away, brought death to the neighbourhood in the worst mining disaster Derbyshire had witnessed to date. At 5.30 a.m. on 10 May, 171 men were nearing the end of the night shift when an explosion blasted the Blackshale Seam; seventy-nine were killed and forty injured. One of the deceased, Alfred Furness, had lived at Wheeldon Mill. Annie and Eva took Cora to the graves so they could pay their respects. Those who lived within the shadow of a colliery never forgot what coal could do.
The last gypsies to arrive at the Mill before the Second World War were very different from Bud and his family. There was no scope for romantic illusions about gypsy idylls this time round. The Darbys camped in more or less the same spot as the previous family, but they lived in a trailer with tiny windows, the two oldest boys sleeping in a small tent pitched beside it. There were no grazing horses this time either: the Darbys’ trailer was towed by a beat-up old car.
As with other visiting Romanies, Betsy and Eva supplemented Mrs Darby’s meagre purchasing with anything they could spare from the shop, but her permanently weary expression showed how difficult it was to bring up five children by herself. When the family first pitched camp, some said her husband was in jail; on the few occasions he did appear, he stayed only a few days, looking almost as grey as his suit.
The most significant difference between the two gypsy families, as far as the Mill kids were concerned, was that most of the Darbys were old enough to join their games. There was nearly always one of them looking to play and generally two: Harry and Marky.
Harry was the oldest of the children; he shared his mother’s dark colouring and features, whereas Marky had blue eyes and auburn hair. Though they did not look alike, the brothers were close in age and of a similar height and build, and so, initially, were assumed to be twins. They dressed alike too, which re inforced this impression. Their clothing also distinguished them from the Mill kids. At a time when most boys their age dressed in grey shorts, nondescript shirts and pullovers, Harry and Marky wore long black trousers and ginger shirts. More significant still, the brothers were inseparable and, even on the occasions when their behaviour was perfectly innocent (although, admittedly, there were fewer of those), looked as if they were up to mischief.
Marky introduced himself and his siblings to Cora. She could hardly believe the grandeur of his full name – Marcus Cornelious Darby – yet knew he was telling the truth. Most of the time, however, Marcus was plain Marky and, sometimes, ‘that damn Marky’ was nearer to it.
The brothers were unlikely to sit quietly in a classroom, but they could certainly write and spell four-letter words. If any adult reprimanded them, their lavatory door bore the brunt of it the following day. Knowing who was responsible was one thing, catching them red-handed quite another. No one ever saw them at their chalking and each was capable of denying anything with the straightest face. Harry and Marky’s vocabulary further set them apart: the Mill kids’ swore, but their repertoire was less extensive. And, as for my mum, Betsy made it very clear: ‘They swear. You don’t.’
The two boys joined in with all the Mill games, were fast runners and eager playmates, but adults regarded them differently. Several neighbours complained to Betsy and Eva about those two young scoundrels. There was no prank Harry and Marky would not contemplate; no devilment was beyond them. They behaved themselves in the shop, however, thanks to Betsy’s usual tactics: ‘Now then, Marky, what is it you’re after?’ the friendly but firm greeting conveying, ‘And don’t think I haven’t got my eye on you.’ She adopted the same tack when talking to Punka Stokes, especially after he passed Cora a counterfeit pound note (which she, having never held such a large sum of money, immediately gave to her grandma). Betsy liked Punka but was nobody’s fool; she was also a match for Harry and Marky.
One of the houses opposite the gypsy field was occupied by Mrs Lane, a middle-aged woman who looked much older because of her scrunched-up face: she was constantly angry about something. One day, inevitably, her anger was directed at Harry and Marky. Though they could swear, and excelled at it as far as the local children were concerned, they did not have Mrs Lane’s years of practice. No one was more proficient at hurling abuse. She raged at them across her garden fence and when the boys ignored her, chased them towards the corner shop, shouting and waving her arms.
The following morning, two brown steaming parcels appeared on Mrs Lane’s doorstep. It was not difficult to guess who had deposited them (two piles being something of a clue) but, as with the overnight chalking, there was no proof. Everyone expressed their disgust and disapproval, but there were one or two private smiles at the thought of cantankerous Mrs Lane being the recipient of Harry and Marky’s summary justice.
One weekend, however, the Darby boys went too far. Cora arrived at Wheeldon Mill to be told that, this time, they were in real trouble: Mrs Jenkinson had received a lewd note and marched straight round to Mrs Darby’s trailer. Mrs Jenkinson played merry hell and did not care who heard her. If those lads did not sort themselves out, she was going to the police. The family left the Mill shortly afterwards.
A few months later, Cora was standing outside the Lyceum waiting for Annie when Harry came out of the chip shop. ‘Marky wants to give you a kiss,’ he said, smiling, and they chatted until Annie joined Cora for the film. That was the last she saw of the Darbys, who disappeared again as quickly as they’d reappeared.
Their story has a terrible coda. During the 1950s, my mum saw an article in Annie’s Daily Express. A young woman had been strangled on her first date and Marcus Cornelious Darby arrested for her murder. For all his misdemeanours, Cora could not believe this of Marky; the picture did not fit with the boy who’d joined in with the Mill kids’ songs. Week after week, she scoured the paper, looking for a further report. Eventually, Cora found one: ‘Gypsies Weep for Killer.’ Marcus Cornelious Darby was hanged at Strangeways Prison.
20
Wartime Snow and Ice
FOR TWO OR THREE YEARS BEFORE THE WAR, THE WOMEN OF Brimington and Wheeldon Mill enjoyed a late summer mystery tour. Annie and Eva booked places for themselves and Cora. The price of a charabanc ticket bought a drive through Derbyshire, the sightseeing an excuse for a port and lemon in a country pub and a singsong on the way home, following a rare afternoon free of responsibilities. Ashover, Bakewell, the plague village of Eyam, Monsal Dale, the stone circle at Arbor Low. Meandering through millstone grit and limestone, past acres of rolling green before rising on to bleak moorland, the White Peak succumbing to the Dark. No matter how many times you saw it, Surprise View was always as exhilarating as its name, and there was the bubbling softness of Burbage Brook and the elegant stature of Chatsworth House, sitting low but commandingly within ancient parkland, the tip of its hunting lodge peering through the treetops.
The trip reaffirmed a sense of belonging, of being stitched into the landscape, that tug of knowing those Derbyshire miles were home. Mistress of ceremonies, Mrs Clark paraded the aisle issuing jokes and the introductory lines of songs which she proceeded to conduct with the tip of her feather boa; chatting to neighbours, Maud Cartwright, Kathleen Driver and Ellen Taylor, leading them in holiday revelry, until, with a growing piquancy, in 1939, the post-pub singsong swelled into ‘Jerusalem’, as the clock counted down through that last hot summer.
Floss stood at one window of the cab, and I stood at the other.
Now we were going to see the wonderful sights of London…
What did we see? Long rows of tall, dark h
ouses, with hard, stony roads between them. Crowds of people were walking along the sides, and all sorts of carts and horses were clattering down the middle.
‘If you see the King, Floss, you must tell me,’ I said. ‘If I see him… I will call you…’
Mother smiled. ‘I am afraid you will have to look a very long time before you see the King.’
‘O Mother,’ I said, ‘when the Pussy Cat went to London she saw the Queen… If a cat can see the Queen why cannot Floss and I see the King?’
Mother smiled again. ‘Well, perhaps, some day, if you are very good, I will take you to see him.’
Floss and I looked out again, but we did not see anything wonderful. There was not a tree or a bit of grass to be seen. Only the dull, dark houses, the carts and the people.
The Hard Words in this chapter: crowds; won-der-ful; sights; rows; ston-y; walking; mid-dle; smiled; puss-y; Queen; perhaps
– From Up to London to See the King, read by Cora at the Edmund Street Infant School
Annie took Cora to London in August 1939. She wanted her to see the capital city before who knew what destruction befell it. It was my mum’s first sight of London, or so she thought, and Annie did not contradict her. As far as Cora was aware, her mam was also seeing London for the very first time. They saluted the Changing of the Guard and stood where Charles I had stood in Westminster Hall; they gazed at the Houses of Parliament, attempted to count all the windows in Buckingham Palace, and even made their way to Dirty Dick’s pub, but the highlight of their day, as far as Annie was concerned, was 145 Piccadilly, home to the King and Queen when they were Duke and Duchess of York. There, Annie and Cora saw the childhood bedroom of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, its sky-blue ceiling pricked out with yellow stars.
Theirs was a whistle-stop tour, something to remember if the worst came to the worst, a phrase often repeated, though never fully explained to Cora. On the way home, just when it seemed all treats had been exhausted, they discovered The Adventures of Robin Hood on a St Pancras bookstall. Glorious technicolour pictures of Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn. Cora spent the return journey in silent rapture.