His thoughts were turning increasingly to the gentle curves, the flawless, white flesh that lay warmly under the embroidered cotton of her nightdress and he despaired. He could only lie next to, but not close to, this graceful, confident, beautiful woman that had once been his wife.
‘Come on, drowsy head, time to get ourselves together and get home,’ she sang quietly to him, shaking his shoulder as she kissed his cheek. ‘Will you get the coats down off the rack.’ Later, when the lads had gone to bed, she brought him in a mug of tea, took his Evening Chronicle off him and sat on his lap. ‘Right, now, Liam Murphy,’ she said, putting her arm round his neck. ‘We have some serious business to discuss.’
‘Well, yes, I know, love, but I have been trying. Nobody wants carters these days. It’s only those with a trade who have been finding anything. I am looking; something will turn up soon.’
‘Yes, Sweetheart, I’m sure it will. But this is more serious than that. I want a little girl before I am too old and I can’t do it by myself. I need a little bit of help from my favourite man.’
Chapter 4
Twisting a finger into the curl of fair hair hanging onto her shoulder, Amy Benson stared absently at the lad who had just scored a goal. The dark haired, wiry youth was now running back to the centre with his hand aloft in acknowledgement of the applause from his teammates. He worked at the mill on Ordsall Lane, two floors up from where she still worked on a part-time basis, and he used her as a go-between in his amorous pursuit of many of the other girls. His preening arrogance when he had first brought the iron wheeled tubs down to her floor had been severely deflated by Amy’s acerbic tongue. Being a figure of mockery, he had realised, would badly damage his prospects for future conquests. Enlisting her as an ally and rewarding her compliance with occasional bags of Devon Creams had proved a better option.
He was wearing a pair of faded khaki shorts, probably salvaged from his father’s army service, and had rolled down his socks to ensure maximum exposure for his thin legs and the sparse covering of dark hair of which he no doubt felt unjustifiably proud. His two, rather startling white knees, fringed by bands of dark hair, reminded Amy of two bearded monks. He ran over to where they were seated, performed some imaginary dribbling movement, and then danced around flexing his arm muscles.
‘What did you think of that brilliant shot, Amy? You won’t see many goals like that.’
‘No, thankfully, I probably won’t. I’m surprised that you managed to even kick the ball with legs like that.’ She didn’t relish, at that moment, the prospect of an interchange of ripostes with the posturing footballer, even though she would have clearly dominated.
‘It’s just not fair, Ames,’ Pippin said. ‘Why should they be allowed to play football and cricket whenever they feel like it and we’re supposed to sit at home doing boring stitching and things.’
‘They are welcome to it at the moment. I couldn’t run up that field for love nor money. I’ve had this horrible cramp feeling in my stomach all day.’
‘Oh!’ Pippin gasped sympathetically. ‘You’ve not eaten some bad fish again, have you, Ames?’
‘No, it’s not that. I think that it might be this period thing that the girls at work talk about.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t really know, Pip. It’s really scary because I think it’s something to do with having babies.’
‘Wow! How’s that? What can it have to do with babies?’
‘I don’t really know. It’s a bit confusing. Millie Hughes said she has been told that if she sits on toilets that boys have used then she will have babies.’
‘Oh, that’s scary. We only have one and our Edward and our Ben use it, apart from Dad.’
‘I know. We are alright, I suppose. There’s only me and Mam at home. You’ll just have to not sit down.’
‘That sounds a stupid thing to have to do. You can’t not sit down. I hope that I don’t start getting these pains.’
‘Apparently all women have it and it goes on until your old,’ Amy told her gloomily.
‘No wonder so many look so miserable.’
‘Well, it’s worse than that. Millie said that you start bleeding from down there as well.’
‘What!’ Pippin cried, shocked at these revelations. ‘That is really scary. What if you don’t stop? You’ll die.’
‘A woman in the next street to us died and nobody knew that she was even ill.’
‘I can’t believe that, anyway. If you start to bleed, how do you bandage yourself up? And how do you go to the toilet?’ Pippin asked, now beginning to doubt the veracity of her friend’s story.
‘Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to try and find out. Perhaps we could ask your Mother.’
‘No, Ames. I couldn’t do that. God, I can feel myself going red just thinking about it. Couldn’t you ask this Millie that you work with? How old is she?’
‘She’s fifteen now but I think that she only started having these problems just before her birthday. She doesn’t seem to know much about anything anyway. When I told her that I was born in Bury she thought it was something to do with Weaste Cemetery.’
‘I know what we’ll do,’ Pippin said, suddenly more cheerful, ‘we’ll go and see Aunt Sarah. She seems to know most things and you can talk to her alright.’
‘Brilliant!’ Amy enthused. ‘We could go up there this afternoon.’
‘While we are at it, we could ask her why girls are not allowed to play football. Why it is that boys think that it is only them who can kick a silly casey through those stupid goalposts?’
‘They’re just frightened that we might be better than them and they don’t want showing up,’ Amy answered, stretching her arm along the back of the park bench on which they both sat. ‘That goalkeeper keeps looking over here. I bet that he’s fancying you with your red hair.’
‘He’s worried more like. I clouted him the other day when I caught him trying to pinch our Ben’s bogie.’
‘Oh, Pip. We’ll never get any lads like Lily Grantham does if you keep thumping them all.’
‘That’s only two. Anyway, our Edward said that Lily Grantham lets lads put their hands up her jumper. That’s why she has so many.’
‘That’s two this week already though, Pip. You hit Harry Hardcastle when he tried to grab your bag of chips. And they’re not putting their hands up mine.’
‘I don’t care. He should go and get his own. I had been waiting all week for those. Nor mine either.’
‘Winnie on our floor says that once they start they don’t know where to stop. They get like animals and you can’t control them.’ Amy looked over to where the dark haired goal scorer was now running up the field, shouting for the ball. ‘Winnie says that the one over there, the one with the baggy, khaki shorts, he needs his hands tying behind his back before any girl talks to him. She says that it is like kissing a “sodding octopus.”’
Both girls giggled and Pippin put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, Ames. Good job that your mother didn’t hear you. She’d have put a bar of soap in your mouth.’
‘She would,’ Amy laughed. ‘Perhaps I’ll get a few more in while I’ve got the chance. Sodding, sodding and bloody,’ she shouted.
Pippin was horrified and put her hand over her friend’s mouth. ‘Shut up, Amy. I mean it. Sssshhh before somebody hears you.’
‘Oh, my God! Here’s that Little Sister of the Poor who does for Father Geraghty,’ said Amy, startled by the sight of the approaching nun who had stopped to survey the bed of wild geraniums, buzzing with the drone of foraging bees. ‘If she heard me we’ll be in for a right ear wigging.’
‘She’ll probably go round to your house and tell your mother.’
‘I know. Then Mam will go on for the rest of the weekend about showing her up in public. At least my dad’s not there; he would have taken his belt off and given me a good leathering.’
The nun approached sedately, her beatific smile giving no clue to the havoc that she might wreak on their li
ves. ‘Good morning, girls.’
‘Good morning, sister,’ they chorused.
‘It is so rewarding to be able to enjoy God’s bountiful gifts on such a beautiful day.’
‘Yes, sister,’ they chorused.
‘Are you both football supporters?’
‘Not really, sister,’ Amy answered. ‘We’ve come down to watch her brother, just for something to do.’
‘Well, try not to let your enthusiasm transport you into an ecstasy of behaviour that might not be appropriate for young ladies. Bless you my dears.’
The nun continued on her benign progression through the park, stopping occasionally to relocate fallen twigs onto the grass with a suddenly revealed toe. ‘Thank you sister,’ Pippin muttered.
‘Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus,’ Amy called after the retreating black figure.
‘What did you say that for?’ Pippin asked, aghast. ‘You’re not a Catholic.’
‘I know that, but it sounded like something that might stop the old bat saying anything to my mother. She’s joined their Make and Mend Circle with Mrs Murphy and you don’t know what gets said there.’
Chapter 5
Easing himself into the small space on the crowded rail alongside his friend, Edward Craigie, looked to be a formidable challenge for Liam. Next to Edward, the tall, angular Chopper Hennessy, whose cavalier approach to football had earned him his nickname, was reluctant to concede any space from the portion of the bar to which he had established his right by frequent use. The torn sleeves of his brown tweed jacket were placed firmly on the left side of the black painted stripe that denoted his position as convincingly as if it had his name on it. Liam tapped the far shoulder of the big man and squeezed both arms onto the rail as Chopper turned round. He looked out at the drab grey throng of the unemployed that populated the four corners of this major road junction. The central section of each rail was the province of the War veterans and the older men. Youths who temporarily tested their manhood here moved away deferentially on the approach of their droop shouldered elders. At weekends there was a sometimes uncomfortable realignment as those who had jobs vied for the portion of the rail that they had once held by right. Mostly, however, it was accepted that a position was forfeited when employment was achieved. The tubular steel curvature round each corner had been traditionally a territorial boundary for those who lived behind it but, since the War, there had been more interchange as returning soldiers mixed with their old comrades. There was reassurance in silently sharing the dark memories with the man on your shoulder. The men huddled over the rail, leathery hands cupped over the comforting Woodbines which they sucked down to little more than a few shreds of tobacco.
Edward, living in Myrtle Street, belonged on the opposite corner but was welcomed on each of them. His pre-War prowess as a stand-off for the local rugby team, where he had thrived on the service that he had received from Liam at scrum-half, and his quiet determination as a soldier in the last four years, guaranteed him a welcome on each corner. ‘Big turnout on your side today, Eddie’ Liam said, nodding towards the diametrically opposite corner where large groups of men with padded patches on their knees, thronged outside the Ship Hotel.
‘I hear there has been a walkout from the pit at Pendlebury. The owners are trying to force the lads to take a cut in wages.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. It’s bloody awful working down there and dangerous as well.’
‘Aye. It was bad enough digging those shafts in Turkey. God knows what it is like doing it day-in-day-out for a living,’ Edward reflected.
‘It’d be a nightmare if you ask me,’ Liam offered. ‘Scrabbling round in a hole under the ground all day to shift two tons of muck? And for just two pounds a week? No thanks. Leave that to the moles. Little sods are built for doing that.’
Edward smiled. ‘You won’t be going for a job down the mines then?’
‘Naaah. Couldn’t be crawling round on my hands and knees all day; anyway, the headaches would crease me,’ Liam said, ruefully touching the scar on the side of his head where the German bullet had ripped into his brain.
An open-topped tram rumbled to a halt at the junction and the conductress gave a cheery wave. ‘Morning, love. How’s your Bridget? Tell her that Alfie Beardsall has taken a turn for the worse, will you?’
Liam nodded in acknowledgement as the tram pulled away.
‘Still got bloody women doing our jobs on the trams,’ Chopper scowled.
A truck, bearing a fading red cross of the medical corps on its side but carrying a stack of timber, overtook a somnambulate carter trudging doggedly along at the side of his mare’s head, and crashed to a juddering halt at the corner.
‘Whoa,’ the carter shouted through his drooping cigarette, pulling the leather leading strap to restrain his puffing mare. ‘Young buggers, speeding round everywhere. Think they own the road these days. Smelly bloody things.’
‘Well don’t withdraw your labour in protest, Joe,’ Liam said to the spluttering carter. ‘Might be that no one will notice.’
‘There was a demonstration outside the Dock gates yesterday,’ Edward said. ‘They were protesting about the lack of beer.’
‘What?’ Liam said, astounded. ‘Are they after a mug of beer instead of tea for their lunch?’
‘No. It’s because all the pubs and the outdoors are running out of it,’ Chopper grumbled. ‘It was drier than sodding Egypt up Cross Lane last night. Only The Craven Heifer and The Market were open and they’d run out by nine o’ clock. I’d have settled for a pint of that cat’s pee in Alexandria if I could have got one.’
‘The government are still imposing a restriction on beer production,’ Edward said. ‘It was only supposed to be a wartime measure; the lads want the union to try to get it overturned.’
‘Well I wouldn’t know,’ Liam said morosely. ‘I haven’t been out since Paddy’s funeral. Can’t afford it at a tanner a pint.’
‘Aye, but I’ve nothing to stay in for,’ Chopper said. ‘The wife has taken the kids and gone to live at her Mother’s. She said that she’s got used to managing on her own in the last four years and she’s not going back to having me make the place untidy and farting in the bed all night.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, Chopper,’ Edward said hastily, slightly embarrassed by this brief revelation of their friend’s domestic trauma. ‘That’s a bit tough for you.’
Chopper straightened himself up and fiddled with the white silk scarf that was knotted at his throat. ‘It’s not too bad. Those kids are two little sods now but her mother will sort them out. She’s a real dragon, that one; could strip paint off your wall at twenty yards.’
‘I know her,’ Liam slapped the rail. ‘Lady Knickerstight – lives near the uppercrust on Seedley Park Road.’
‘Mrs Bickersdyke,’ Chopper corrected, laughing at being reminded of the nickname that they had used as lads for the overpowering lady. His mother-in-law had felt it inappropriate to stay near Trafford Road after her husband had been promoted to Office Manager in the Dock Offices. Within one week of Mr Bickersdyke being offered this new position, she had acquired a new bowler for him and rented a new house for them and their two prissy daughters.
An electric tram rumbled across the junction and down Trafford Road to the Docks on the Manchester Ship Canal. The bottom deck was filled by women returning from the market on Cross Lane with heavy wicker baskets. The old, in grey shawls or black coats and gloomy black hats, slouched near the back gripping heavy walking sticks and grumbling about their aches and pains and the brazen girls with their calf-length dresses. Younger women, braced by the right to vote conceded to those who were thirty or over, sat boldly, their hands resting on the handles of their baskets, and gossiped with their neighbours about husbands and children, the price of bread, the meals for that day. Ahead of them, in a dramatic declaration of their youth and energy, the girls wore dresses of white, green, blue or pale yellow; chattering and giggling all the while about local boys and far off film
stars. The upper deck of the tram, filled with mumbling youths, Woodbine smoke and flat-capped men, hovered like a dark grey cloud over this animated group on the lower deck.
Motor powered vehicles were increasingly replacing the horse drawn carts that had been predominant before the War but the early summer breeze was clearing the exhaust fumes away. Bales of raw cotton from Egypt, timber from Norway and potatoes from Ireland passed up Cross Lane whilst rolls of finished cloth, neatly wrapped in brown paper inscribed in large black letters with obscure destinations and random numbers, were transported down to the Docks.
‘How’s it going with you Eddie?’ Liam asked. ‘Are you back at the sawmill now?’
‘No, afraid not. I stuck it for two days but the dust was the problem. Couldn’t stop coughing.’
‘You were on a loser there, mate. After the gas that you got while we were away, you had no chance.’
Edward bent his head and rubbed his fingers through his dark hair. ‘Aye, I was going to tell you that there might be a job going but the foreman started his nephew the next morning. I only got back in there in the first place because Jimmy Cartwright retired. There’s nothing going for long these days. What about you; anything turned up yet?’
‘Naah. No chance now with this lot,’ Liam said, nodding towards the motorised trucks that were crossing the junction. ‘They are taking all the work off the carters. They do it faster so they don’t need as many men.’
‘I suppose it was bound to happen,’ Edward said, raising his hand to acknowledge a greeting shouted from the adjacent corner. ‘They demobilised more trucks than they did horses.’
Liam grunted as Chopper nudged him forcefully in the ribs and indicated over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘See Miss La-di-dah over there,’ he grumbled. ‘She’s one of those bloody sufferingjets. She was breaking the windows in that bank before the War, now she’s married the Chairman’s son. Cheeky sod.’
Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel) Page 3