Chapter 64
The springs on the iron bedstead twanged as Winifred slid, shivering, out of bed the following morning, glad she’d kept her woollen socks on during the night. She picked up the clock from the cupboard at the side of her bed; it was only five.
Glancing over at Tom she saw he was still asleep, a small lump under the bedclothes, his breathing a soft snuffle.
Parting the thin curtains revealed the mosaic of frost on the window, sparkling in the flickering flame of the gas street lamp. She pressed her finger on the pane and peered through the small hole she’d made. Snowflakes fluttered in the darkness and snow banked up against the houses on the opposite side of the road.
There’d be no rush to open the shop. Even so, Winifred knew she wouldn’t go back to bed; there was a pile of Tom’s socks waiting to be darned and it would be good to sit in the kitchen on her own for once.
But when she crept downstairs Florence was already in the kitchen. Muffled in her coat over her dressing gown she was coaxing the fire into life with the large iron poker.
‘Granny?’ There was a spiral of steam coming from the spout of the kettle on the range; the old woman had obviously been up a while. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, ducks.’
They spoke in whispers over their mugs of tea, not wanting to wake Ethel.
‘I want to go to the yard, to see Horace and his mam. I thought he looked more poorly than he said.’ Florence’s mouth turned down. ‘And his poor arm. How are they going to manage if he can’t work? At least in the army he had his pay. Now he’ll be thrown on the scrapheap. He’ll be no good in the mines, or in any of the factories in Morrisfield.’
‘I know. It’s awful.’ Winifred looked out of the window. The sky was still dark but the thick line of snow on the lavvy roof was a pale lemon, reflecting the light from the kitchen. ‘Snow looks thick, Granny, and it’s still coming down. It’ll be hard walking.’ Looking at the determination of Florence’s face she felt a squeeze of anxiety but still joked, ‘I’ll have to give you a piggyback.’
‘See how it is later, Winnie.’ Muted footsteps passed the house. ‘Not stopped that lot anyhow.’
Winifred went through to the shop to watch the miners, heads down, shoulders hunched against the cold, a sudden lurch when the clogs of one at the back of the group slipped on the packed snow.
‘No.’ She went back into the kitchen. ‘But we can’t go out in this; it looks treacherous.’
‘We’ll see.’
Winifred smiled at her grandmother, shaking her head. ‘If I’m as strong as you when I’m your age, I’ll be very grateful.’
‘Good Northern stock, ducks. You will be.’ Florence laughed. ‘Now, if you’ll fetch my clothes down I’ll put them on the range to warm up and I’ll get dressed here, before she comes down.’ Florence rubbed her hands together. ‘And then I’ll make some porridge to warm us up before we tackle those streets.’
But by late morning Winifred’s grandmother was back in bed.
Chapter 65
‘It’s still snowing.’ Winifred had been standing by the kitchen window for some time. The top of the yard wall and the steps up to the lavvy, were inches thick. Tom was gathering snow into a heap to make snowman. He turned to look at her, laughing and waving. She lifted her hand and laughed in return. ‘Tom’s having fun out there.’ But he was the only one as far as she could see; they’d be stuck indoors with her mother and, to make things worse, there’d been no-one in the shop all morning. ‘I really don’t think we should go out.’ When she glanced back at Florence she was shocked to see her struggling for breath, her cheeks bright red. ‘Granny?’
Her grandmother held out her arm. ‘I don’t feel too good, Winnie.’ Florence’s voice was husky. ‘I think I’ll go for a lie down.’
‘That’s all right, I’ve got you.’ Winifred moved quickly to help her to stand. She could feel the heat coming from her grandmother’s body and, when she put her hand to her forehead, it was dry and hot. Hiding her worry, she kept her voice light. ‘I think you’re starting with a bit of a cold. Let’s get you back to bed and under those covers.’
‘I’ve got such a bloomin’ headache.’ Florence was trembling. It took Winifred all her strength to support her up the stairs.
‘I’ll get an aspirin and the hot water bottle.’
Helping Florence to undress, Winifred frowned; now her grandmother’s skin looked a peculiar colour. She looked at the window and then back to the old woman. Perhaps it was with the snow blocking out some of the light?
But when she came back with the tablet and stone bottle she was alarmed to see her grandmother’s skin was blue. Fear travelled through her whole body.
‘Here we are. Open your mouth, take this.’ Winifred popped the aspirin into her grandmother’s mouth and held the glass to her lips.
‘I can’t… I can’t swallow it.’ There was panic in Florence’s eyes. She pushed the tablet out with her tongue. ‘Throat hurts.’
‘Okay, I’ll get some honey instead, that should help.’ The old woman grabbed her wrist. ‘Don’t be frightened, Granny.’ Winifred pushed the stone hot water bottle into the bed, her heart pounding with agitation; trying not to show it. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Downstairs Winifred grabbed her coat and ran into the shop. ‘We need to send for the doctor for Granny.’
‘What for?’ Ethel frowned. ‘What’s wrong with her this time?’
‘Well, can’t you hear? Just listen.’ The sound of harsh prolonged coughing came from upstairs. ‘And she looks dreadful.’ Winifred pulled open the door and a wedge of snow fell in.
‘Now look what you’ve done. You can clean that…’
Winifred didn’t wait to hear her mother’s words. Slipping and sliding, ankle deep in the smooth snow, she ran, dragging the cold air into her lungs. Outside the doctor’s surgery on Morrisfield Road she stopped to catch her breath.
The waiting room was full of people. A fug of antiseptic and lavender furniture polish was mixed with a variety of human odours. The hushed, resigned group followed her progress across the room to the reception alcove.
‘Can I help you?’ The doctor’s wife smiled at Winifred.
‘Oh, Mrs Kirby, it’s Granny, Florence Duffy.’ Winifred blurted the words louder than she meant to. ‘I think–I think she has the influenza.’
She heard the intake of breath behind her. Saw the wary flicker in the eyes of the woman she faced.
‘That’s the second I’ve heard today,’ someone whispered.
And then the deeper gruff tones of a man. ‘Young Horace from the yard died this morning, an’ all.’
Winifred spun round. ‘Horace? Horace Corbett?’
‘Aye, that’s right.’ The man tucked his scarf higher around his neck, even though he was scarlet and sweating in the heat of the room. ‘Poor lad got all through the war in one piece…’
‘Well, not quite.’ A woman at his side corrected him.
‘But he’s dead? I only saw him yesterday. How did he die?’ Winifred asked the question but didn’t want to hear the answer.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘The influenza,’ the man muttered.
‘Oh dear god.’ Winifred clutched the edge of the counter of the alcove, her legs suddenly weak. ‘I need to go. Mrs Kirby, please ask the doctor…’
‘I will.’
Winifred pulled the door closed behind her and stood on the step, her hand to her throat.
The man’s voice followed her. ‘Much good the doctor will be.’
Florence died within twenty-four hours. Even as she grieved, Winifred acknowledged it was a relief. Her grandmother’s pain through the prolonged bouts of coughing was unbearable to watch. With each attack frothy blood covered her mouth and nose choking her and splattering onto the bedclothes. The light seemed to hurt her eyes so Winifred sat in the darkness throughout the night placing cold compresses on the old woman’s forehead that gave no relief. T
he room stank of blood, urine and sweat. The only sounds were the gasping breaths and the coughing. When Winifred tried to hold her hand Florence flinched as though the touch gave her pain.
When dawn had finally arrived it was still snowing and the snow that had settled on the windowsill was halfway up the panes, cutting out most of the light in the bedroom. Startled from a restless sleep in the chair Winifred sat up, rubbing at the tightness of dried tears on her face. The silence in the house wasn’t strange at first but there was a stillness in the room that frightened her.
‘Granny?’ She stretched forward, her hand hovering over Florence’s shoulder. Standing, she moved closer. Her grandmother looked younger in death than she had in life. Except for the darkness of the blood around her mouth her skin was pale and smooth. ‘Oh, Granny.’ Winifred touched the old woman’s forehead with the back of her hand. Cool, but not cold. Not yet.
‘Mam?’ Her son’s voice revealed his anxiety.
‘Don’t come in, Tom. Go downstairs.’
‘Mam? I don’t feel well.’
Winifred dragged her eyes away from her grandmother’s body, unable, at first to take in what her son had said.
‘Tom?’ She moved swiftly towards him and touched his forehead. His skin was dry but he was burning up. Lifting his chin with her forefinger she studied him, her heart thumping. Blue shadows under his eyes made them appear larger, more hollowed than usual.
‘Bed,’ she said.
‘Great Granny…?’
‘She’s asleep.’ Winifred didn’t know what else to say. ‘Now, let’s get you snuggled down in bed.’
Whenever Winifred looked back to the following week the days merged into a blur of tears and desperation. Everything that her grandmother had gone through in a day took seven with her son. Slowly but surely his temperature rose despite the compresses to his forehead and the times she wiped his whole body with cold cloths. She held him through the paroxysms of coughing, her own body jerking with the convulsions.
With the door of their bedroom closed, she didn’t even notice when the undertaker took her gran away. The few times she left Tom, either to go to the lavvy or to fetch more cold water, she and her mother didn’t speak. But there was always a bowl of soup or a mug of tea waiting for her. The same bowl, the same mug. Ethel didn’t go near the bedroom. Winifred knew she was terrified of catching the influenza. But at least she was trying to be kind, something Winifred hadn’t seen before, and she was grateful. Sometimes, with a nod of thanks, she took it upstairs with her, other times she couldn’t face it. She became thin and drawn, her own throat dry and sore. The fear of losing her son curdled in her stomach. It was a new fear, one she’d never expected and she wasn’t prepared for it. She found herself praying, saying the same thing over and over again in her mind; please God, please God. To someone, something, she hadn’t acknowledged in years.
Sometimes she heard the shop doorbell, the murmur of voices, the muffled clogs and boots of the miners, but that was a different world. The one she existed in was a small room filled with sickness and despair. Blood and sweat and phlegm.
Until the morning she woke, lying next to her son. He wasn’t breathing. She held back her own breath and, balancing on one elbow she stared at his pale face, the pain of her loss spread from her gut to her throat. Touching his cheek with her forefinger he was cool. She didn’t move, didn’t want to leave him, didn’t want him to leave her. Not like this.
And then Tom’s chest moved, so slightly she almost missed it. His eyelids flickered, his cracked lips opened. She could see the tip of his tongue.
Her mouth stretched wide open. She didn’t recognise the guttural sound of relief as hers.
Days later she discovered that Ethel had arranged her gran’s funeral on a shoe-string and in haste. She’d told no-one when it was. She didn’t even go herself. Her grandmother had been put in the ground without a soul to mourn her. It was Ethel’s final revenge. A revenge that set Winifred’s hatred for her mother in stone.
A week later, Ethel had put the sign in the window. ROOM TO LET.
Chapter 66
April 1919
The train pulled slowly out of the station. Bill settled back against the carriage seat and stared through the smeared window, watching the crowds waving daft little flags and hugging the soldiers who were on the platform. He couldn’t hear the cheering now the doors were shut, but he saw the open mouths, the smiles of greetings.
No bloody right, he thought. They have no bloody idea what we’ve been through. Leave the poor buggers alone to get home.
Where would he go? He’d no idea. When he was stuck in the transit camp in France, waiting to get on a ship, he’d thought he would go back to see his stepmother. If she was still alive. But it never got further than a thought. It was over eight years since he’d seen her and his stepsister; he’d nowt in common with them then and he doubted he’d be welcome now – even if they were the nearest he’d got to family.
The gloom of the station and the tall brick walls that enclosed the railway lines gave way to industrial buildings and large stone woollen mills silhouetted against a grey sky, black smoke belching out of the chimneys. For a moment, Bill, regretted not getting off in Manchester. Surely there’d be work there?
Too late now.
He loosened his tie and twisted his neck from side to side; glad to be free of the restriction. Wincing, he rubbed his shoulder where the sniper’s bullet had hit him. The bastard medic at the Dispersal Centre had refused to give him a certificate for free treatment; said the wound was healed. Bill wished he’d given in to the sudden urge to thump him; to thump anyone with the anger that brooded inside him.
His demob suit under his fingers was thin and coarse. Pretty poor quality he thought, fingering the material; he should have taken the clothing allowance, he’d have done better having fifty-two shillings and sixpence so he could have bought his own stuff.
The two blokes opposite him were still in uniform, muffled up in their greatcoats, helmets balanced on top of their kitbags between them. Stupid beggars had signed on again from the looks of it.
‘You one of the Bantam lot?’
The question took Bill by surprise. He sat up, straightened his back, irritated. ‘Yeah. What’s it to you?’ He narrowed his eyes, weighing up the tall thin soldier who’d spoken.
‘Nothing. Just that I fought alongside some of you chaps towards the end; bloody fierce little devils and all. Can’t fault your bravery.’
‘Having guts doesn’t depend on the size a bloke is, you know.’ Bill clenched his jaw, cracked his knuckles one by one.
‘I didn’t say it did.’
‘An’ what good did it do in the end, eh? It’s all a bloody mess. Them in charge didn’t give a damn what happened to us. Still don’t. We’ve done our bit and now they can’t wait to get rid of us. And what with, eh? What with?’ Bill pulled a small book from his jacket inside pocket. ‘A Demob Ration Book to take to a Food Office for an Emergency Card. Beg for food, that’s what we’re expected to do.’
‘Everyone has to have a ration book.’ The other man spoke for the first time. ‘And didn’t you get half a year’s pay as well, to tide you over until you get work?’
Bill snorted. ‘Oh, aye, and two medals.’ He pointed to the pawn ticket pinned next to one medal. ‘And I’ll be hocking this one as soon as I can. And I’ve a certificate to show what I’ve done in the army.’ He sneered. ‘Where d’yer think I’ll get a job killing people and blowing ’em to smithereens? Cos that’s all I’ve done these last four years. That and marched around in soddin’ circles ’til whichever officer we’d got decided we’d gone far enough up our own arses.’ He flung himself back against the seat, coughing and thumping his chest.
When he couldn’t stand their silence anymore he asked, ‘So, where’re you off then?’
‘What now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Back home. My father has a sheep farm up on the moors beyond Ashford, so I’m going there
. Just for a month.’
‘You mean yer lived on a farm? Yer didn’t need to join up, yer do know that, don’t yer? It was a reserved occupation, yer daft bugger.’ Something he’d found out too bloody late; he would have stuck it out with Moira if he’d thought it through. If he hadn’t lied at the recruitment office and said he was unemployed with no home, he’d have had it easy.
The man shrugged. ‘We didn’t know what it was going to be like, did we?’
‘But you’ve signed on again? Yer mad, man.’
‘It’ll be different now.’
‘Huh! What was it them in Government promised us? “A land fit for heroes?” Well, it was a bloody lie. I’ve no time for ’em.’ Bill spat on the floor of the carriage and turned to look through the window. He rocked with the soothing motion of the train. They were passing a town; rows of terraced houses and the occasional glimpse of people, trams, horses and carts, diminutive by the distance from the railway tracks. Further away on the skyline, the pit wheels and headgear of a colliery. He watched it all without really seeing.
‘Anyhow, you haven’t told me where you’re going?’ The soldier reached over to rest his hand on his helmet that wobbled precariously as the train rolled on the tracks. ‘Where your home is?’
Home? Where would he go now? Bill didn’t answer, he had no idea.
There was a time when he’d thought he’d have a home; a home, a wife. Perhaps even kids. They’d found a house to rent, him and Annie. Set the date for the wedding even. Sweet Annie Heap; so tiny, so pretty. His.
The first time they’d made love was after a picnic on the banks of the River Colne on a hot summer’s day. Looking up to the sky, his arms folded under his head, he’d listened to the splashing of the water as she paddled and sang.
‘Shall we marry now?’ Annie looked at him as he dried her feet, anxiety clouding her eyes.
Bill stroked her white, slim calf. So smooth, he thought, letting his fingers trail up to her thigh.
She stopped him. ‘Bill?’
‘Is that what you want, love? For us to marry?’
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