Chapter 74
Their Sunday evenings became a ritual both Bill and Winifred enjoyed. As soon as the back gate latch clicked behind Ethel, as soon Winifred heard him coughing, his tread on the stairs, she made the tea.
Sometimes, Tom hadn’t gone to bed and she would see the way his eyes shone as he showed Bill the illustrations of King Arthur and his Knights, reading passages from the book to him, and she’d smile at the way the man shook his head in amazement at her son’s enthusiasm and they’d all laugh, softly in case they were heard next door. Winifred was filled with a contentment she hadn’t experienced for a long time. It was as though they lived in a different world for those few hours, complicit in a secret only they shared.
At first she was worried that Tom would resent Bill. But, in fact, it was the opposite, almost a welcome recognition of another male in his life; someone to share a grimace with, a rolling of the eyes when Ethel complained about the mess he made with his books of stamps or the jigsaws on the table.
Winifred guessed Bill couldn’t read very well. But if Tom knew it he didn’t say. It was enough for him to show the man the different countries on the map he kept with his stamp book, to read out the names.
And Bill was clever in his own way, she knew that. Often he and Tom would stand at the back door while Bill would point out the North Star or the Seven Sisters and talk about the time his grandfather had taught him the wonders of the night sky until Winifred, seeing the way her son’s shoulders drooped in tiredness, would usher him upstairs.
And, somehow, even though she’d not said anything to him, Tom seemed to know not to mention the times they shared when his grandmother was out if the house.
Only once did Bill mention Tom’s father again. Winifred thought he seemed genuinely concerned. ‘Tell me what happened that day he left.’ His voice was gentle.
She wouldn’t look at him. ‘We got separated. I’ve often thought about what might have happened. He could have been arrested, sent back to Ireland.’ She stopped, remembering the fear. It was as though the air had been taken from her lungs. She put a hand to her chest. After a moment she spoke again. ‘It was very violent. I think he may have been killed.’
She turned quickly to see his reaction. He met her gaze.
‘Anyway, I never saw him again.’ The words were blunt.
He lowered his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I have Tom. Whatever anyone says, I’m thankful for that.’
Bill smiled. Held her hand. ‘He’s a good lad.’
Winifred was glad he understood.
She savoured those few precious moments with him before her mother returned, refusing to think about the future.
Chapter 75
She’d known that he had something on his mind as soon as he came down the stairs.
‘Your mother doesn’t like your Tom,’ he said. It was a statement rather than a question.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘She only talks to the lad to tell him off.’
Winifred sat opposite him. He hadn’t sat in his usual place but at the kitchen table, his elbows firmly planted, his hands under his chin, watching her brewing the tea.
He’d been to the public baths; she could smell the chlorine in his damp hair, meticulously arranged, as usual, in the two waves. Unusually, he was dressed in his best shirt and trousers, although without a collar and tie.
Glancing at him she saw the way a nerve twitched under one eye. He was holding his lower lip between his teeth. The smoke from his cigarette curled from his cupped hand.
To her enquiring look he said, ‘Sorry, just needed a fag.’
‘I’ll open the back door so she can’t smell it when she gets back.’
His face relaxed at her casual tone.
‘Tom’s a good lad, does as he’s told,’ he said. ‘I’d be proud of him if he was mine.’
Gratified, Winifred smiled. ‘He is. Sometimes I wish Dad was still with us; he’d have loved Tom, done things with him and taken him walks on Errox Hill like he did with me when I was a child. We used to talk about anything and everything; things I’d done in school, books I’d read. Even when I was twelve and left school to work in the shop he’d make time for those walks with me.’
Bill had gone pale. When he next spoke she thought it obvious why; she’d brought back bad memories for him.
‘My father didn’t give a damn about me. Sorry for the language.’ Bill spoke in a matter of fact way. ‘And I hardly ever went to school.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘The day after he was killed, I went down the mines.’
‘Didn’t you go to school when your father was alive?’
‘Not really. I was a sickly kid and me mam kept me home a lot. I think she liked me being there when he wasn’t.’ Bill nodded his thanks when Winifred put his cup of tea in front of him. ‘We laughed a lot when we were on our own.
‘I hated him,’ he said abruptly. ‘Friday nights he’d go to the pub with his wages. I’d lie in bed waiting for him to come home. When I heard him coming up the ginnel, I could tell how drunk he was from the sound of his clogs on the cobbles. If he was all over the place…’ Bill threaded his fingers and rubbed his palms together; making a soft scratching sound. ‘You know, clogs clattering and scraping…’
‘I know.’
‘Well then it wouldn’t be so bad; he’d fall asleep downstairs. It was different if he was singing…’
He put his cup down and sat back in the chair, his eyes hidden from her. When he looked up they glistened with unshed tears.
‘I knew then me mam was for it – in a way I didn’t understand. Not then anyway…’
Winifred could feel the heat rise on her cheeks; it wasn’t proper for him to speak in this way. Yet she didn’t stop him; she knew he had to talk about it.
‘I’d hear him throw his clogs on the floor; often he’d fall against the wardrobe or the tallboy. I’d hear him laughing and cursing.’ Bill stopped, pinched his nose. ‘And then all this noise, like struggling, and Mam crying as though she was in pain.
‘I wanted to go in and kill him.’ He sat very still for a few moments. ‘But once, after a night when that had happened again, there were nothing like that for a long time. Instead they fought; a lot of fights. The worst one he beat her so badly that she couldn’t get out of bed. We even had to have the doctor. Every time he’d make a note in a little black book of what we owed…’ Bill made a writing gesture.
‘One night Mam started screaming so loud the neighbours all came in. I was taken to sleep at someone’s house. I was told in the morning she’d had a boy.’ Bill closed his eyes and pinched his nose again. ‘But he was born dead. Would have been my little brother.’ He sniffed. ‘I would have made a good older brother, I think.’ He stood to throw his cigarette end into the fire and stayed there. ‘Mam died a couple of days later.
‘I don’t know where all that came from, Win. You get me telling you stuff I’ve told no-one else in my life.’ He paused, running his fingers through his hair, ruining the carefully arranged waves. ‘Anyway, there’s summat I want to say.’
‘Oh?’ Winifred was glad she was sitting down; all at once she knew what had been on his mind earlier. He was leaving. Her hand shook, the tea in her cup slopped over onto the tablecloth and she watched the stain spread dark on the green material.
‘Will you marry me?’ His voice was low.
The shock made her dizzy. She clutched the corner of the table so hard the edge hurt her palm. She closed her eyes, rocking back and forth on the chair.
‘Win?’ His fingers were warm, the skin hard, calloused, on the side of her neck.
She was glad he was touching her but she kept her eyes closed until everything stopped spinning. ‘I’m all right.’ She opened her eyes. The room was bright, everything was in sharp detail. She stared around the kitchen, the room that had held her prisoner for so many years. She wanted to remember every detail, every second of this moment. ‘I’m all right,’ she repeated t
urning, at last, to face him. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I will. I will marry you.’
He would take her away from the life she thought was her punishment. He would take her away from a mother who despised her. He would make her respectable.
Chapter 76
Winifred’s trust in him humbled Bill. Her belief in everything he said made him careful in what he did say. There was so much that could easily change how she felt about him. So much. The worst time was the day she told him about the way she’d found her father dead on the floor of the shop.
‘I heard my mother shouting.’ Winifred twisted the damp handkerchief between her fingers, the tears spilling down her face. ‘He was just lying there, Bill, He must have been there for hours and I didn’t know…’
‘Don’t think about it, love.’ Bill put his arms around her.
‘I can’t help it. I think about it all the time. Please let me tell you.’ There was pleading in her eyes. ‘You’ve said that you have nightmares about the war. So I’ll know what to expect…’ Her cheeks flushed. ‘I’ll know what to expect at night when we’re married. This is my nightmare that wakes me, makes me cry…’
‘Okay.’ He hugged her, but there was an unwelcome tightness in his throat. The guilt that flooded through him was something he’d had to live with. He’d stopped telling himself it was an accident; he’d faced up to the fact that, in his anger and desperation he went to the shop to steal and, although he hadn’t meant to kill John Duffy, he had thrown the box in anger.
But there was still that vague sense of relief lurking beneath his thoughts; how different his life would be now if the man hadn’t died.
Winifred pulled back and looked at him. He knew he’d been silent for too long. ‘I don’t know what to say, love.’ He stroked her hair away from her forehead and looked into her eyes. ‘It must have been awful for you.’
‘It was. He was a lovely man, Bill. You would have loved him as I did. Not once in his life did he harm anyone.’ Her eyes hardened. ‘Unlike the thief that killed him. I wish whoever he is was standing here now, in front of us. He deserves to be punished. God forgive me, but even after all this time I’m still hoping that one day the police will find him and he’ll be hanged. Granny was never the same after she he died; he was her only son. If he’d been alive I think she would have fought harder when she got the influenza. I believe the murderer killed her in the end as well.’
That night Bill slept badly and almost missed hearing the knocker-upper’s whistle outside his window the following morning. After his shift, instead of going back to the house he went to the Wagon and Horses and washed pint after pint of ale down his throat to swill away the memory Win’s words had conjured up. It was late when he let himself in by the back door and staggered up the stairs to his bedroom
The following morning one look in the scrap of mirror hung on the wall above the jug and basin told him all he needed to know. The dark pouches of flesh under his eyes, the red criss-cross of veins in the whites, the hammering of blood in his skull, pulled him up short. Had he seen her when he got back from the pub?What had he said? Had he given himself away? Told her the truth?
But, after a day-shift underground that seemed to last forever and a walk back to his digs when his footsteps on the cobbles hurt his whole body, he stepped into the kitchen to see Winifred smile at him
The relief loosened the tension. With a quick glance to make sure her mother wasn’t there he took her in his arms and spun her around, leaving black smudges of coal dust on her clothes and hands as she held onto him, laughing.
She was so soft, so light in his arms. In that moment he promised himself that he wouldn’t be so stupid in future, that it would be the last time he’d get so drunk. All the awful things he’d done were in the past; the actions of a different bloke.
He would be a better man. He would try to stop swearing as much because she didn’t like it. He would work hard to give her everything she wanted. He would be a good husband. He would be a good father to the lad.
He pushed away the faint unwelcome underlying resentment of Tom. Because, always, when he looked at the boy, he saw the Irish bastard. Conal…bloody…O’Reilly.
Chapter 77
‘I want to sell the shop, Mother.’ Winifred paced the floor of the kitchen. ‘I’m getting married to Bill and then I’m leaving Lydcroft. I want us to move right away and start a new life.’ She stood still, clasped her hands at her waist and gazed at her mother. There, it was said.
Ethel slowly continued to wrap the small brown loves in tissue paper and line them up on the tray to carry into the shop. ‘Married eh? And to the lodger.’ She didn’t look up. ‘And what about me? What am I supposed to do?’
‘You may either buy us out—’
‘Us?’
‘Bill and me—’
‘Oh, it’s “Bill and me” now is it?’
‘What’s mine will be his as well when we’re married. We’ll share everything.’
‘And have you?’ The words were flung over Ethel’s shoulders as she carried the bread into the shop. ‘Have you told him about your wildness? About that one’s…’ she lifted her eyes upwards. ‘Your son’s father? The man who couldn’t wait to run off as soon as he had his way with you.’
Anger crept up in Winifred. ‘I have. He knows.’ She followed her mother into the shop; she didn’t want her son overhearing them. ‘But that’s nothing to do with you. I’m just telling you I want to sell up.’
‘And if I don’t agree?’ Ethel transferred the loaves onto the shelf. ‘There’s not much you can do about it.’
‘I think there is.’ This was what Winifred had expected from her mother and she was ready. ‘The shop is two thirds mine since Granny left me her share, so I have the greater say. And I’d have thought you’d be glad to sell. You’ve said yourself that the takings in this place have been down for years. You’ve even said you knew why. Now,’ she pursed her lips, ‘what was it? Ah, yes, it’s because of me; because I shamed you, because I’m a fallen woman. You have a slut living under your roof.’ The anger turned into cold contempt. ‘But it wasn’t that, was it Mother? The takings were down because you’ve been helping yourself to them for years. Did you really think I didn’t know?’
‘You…’ Ethel swept the tray from the counter, her face contorted with rage. She lunged towards Winifred, her hand raised to slap her.
Winifred caught hold of her arm, held it until her mother shook her off.
‘I took what’s mine by rights.’ Ethel spoke through gritted teeth. ‘You shamed me with your shenanigans and the takings did drop when the brat arrived. I hate you, madam. You’re the cause of all I’ve had to put up with for years. All the sniggering, the gossip. Go – sell this place.’ She waved her hands wildly in the air. ‘I want you gone just as much as you want to go. Go! People might then begin to forget I have a slut for a daughter.’
‘Better than them knowing I have a thief for a mother, do you think?’ It was an instinctive response; there would be no way she could prove it and anyway who would care about something like that happening between members of the same family? And her mother knew that.
‘I took what’s mine. And, anyway, who would believe anything you said? No-one around here.’ Ethel lifted her top lip in a sneer but Winifred didn’t miss the apprehension in her eyes.
‘Mud sticks, Mother. Isn’t that what you’ve said in the past?’
Winifred closed her eyes, she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t, but her whole body shook so much she needed to hold onto the door handle of the store cupboard. Without seeing her mother go she sensed the woman was no longer standing in front of her.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ she whispered, listening to the floorboards in Ethel’s room above creaking. An overwhelming feeling of release flooded through her. ‘It’s done. She’s been told.’ She drew in long breaths, steadying herself. Now she should talk to Bill; he should know what she planned to do.
Chapter 78
‘So y
ou’re willing to take her on? I wonder why…’
Bill heard the sarcasm in Winifred’s mother’s voice and frowned. What was she getting at? He crossed, uncrossed his arms, jammed his fists into his trouser pockets.
‘And the lad?’
The swift sharp question took him by surprise. ‘Of course. We all make mistakes. I’ve loved Win since I first saw her.’ He wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving the kid with this old cow even if he’d thought Win would agree. But why was the old bat being so sarky?
‘She says you have no intention of staying here after you’re married.’ Ethel watched him. ‘You both want to move to away.’
Well, that was a turn up for the books. He’d thought he’d be set up here; house and job. He blinked rapidly, waiting for her to carry on. How did Winifred think he could afford for them to move? It had taken him long enough to find the job at Stalyholme.
But in a quick turnaround he wondered if she was right. Getting away from Lydcroft with all the memories and guilt might stop some of the nightmares. And he’d got a bit of brass put by that’d tide them over for a week or two.
Ethel moved around the kitchen, running her hand across the oilcloth on the table, re-setting the glass vase more into the centre of the cream crocheted mat on the sideboard, pushing at the drawers, adjusting the level of the country scene painting on the wall.
As though settling something in her mind.
Bill shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clenched his fingers. He couldn’t make her out at all.
Someone came into the shop. He heard the soft tones of Winifred’s welcome, the silence that answered her. She had the patience of a saint; he’d give the miserable bastards a mouthful if he’d been her. How she put up with the sanctimonious shit he didn’t know. It’d be different when they were wed, he’d make sure of that, no problem.
Ethel had done a full circle of the room by the time she stood in front of him again.
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