Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  His daughter stared at him open-eyed. ‘You mean that that’s why they started to say…?’

  ‘Yes darling. But these days it is a bad word and we shouldn’t use it. It’s now just a part of swearing. So you tell the Maltese lad that he is not allowed to use it because it is a legal term and only policemen can say it.’

  ‘That’s ok, Dad. But if he doesn’t speak English, how is he going to understand all that? You might as well just let Granddad crack him.’

  Edward sighed and drank his tea. His efforts to impart to his daughter these often esoteric acorns of information, which he personally nurtured and cherished, were generally met with a keen, though possibly feigned, interest followed by a practical, common-sense conclusion. It was exactly the response that he would have got from her mother; measuring it not for its value as a piece of pure knowledge but for its usefulness in dealing with the reality of daily life. He didn’t really miss the pointless badinage of the trenches but he remembered fondly the rambling discussions with which they endured the endless waiting hours. He cherished the insights into the fears, the loves, the hates and the dreams that the distance from home and the imminence of death had induced them to reveal and to share, to be then locked away like a secret cache of incongruous relics. In quiet moments he would examine these small packages of memories, finding himself tugging at the string tying up the fading brown cloth, to reveal the crumbling remains of an intimacy shared with a friend whose tomb became the cloying mud of a French battlefield. Like an old song remembered from his youth, the words exchanged over a shared cigarette would return, a guilty, childhood secret, a family discord or a marital transgression, uncertainties over the existence of God and the possibilities of an afterlife. In the countdown to an attack, there had been those who quietly perused the flashing images of their earlier lives, played in their minds like a dithering cinema film, and there were those who felt compelled to share them.

  ‘Dad, are you not going to ask me?’ His daughter’s voice broke through his mental meanderings.

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, Pip. Ask you what?’

  ‘Ask me why we went to see her.’

  ‘Who? Ah, you mean Granny Higgins. I was just thinking about something else for a moment. Alright then. Why did you go to see Granny Higgins? I take it that you went with Amy?’

  ‘We went to see her because she is so old and has probably known thousands of people. We thought that she might have heard about this woman who is worrying Mr Murphy.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The woman in the picture. Why do you think it is worrying Mr Murphy?’

  ‘Because he keeps mithering about it. And Billy says that he keeps saying things to his mother about “the blasted woman.”’

  ‘Does he? What sort of things does he say?’

  ‘He keeps saying that he swears to God that he doesn’t remember anything about that woman. And if he had ever set eyes on her, which he seriously doubts, then she must have been in that part of his brain which has been blown away. And how come he can remember everything else but he can’t remember her, whoever she is? He’s worried that Mrs Murphy thinks that he has been doing something he shouldn’t. But Billy said that she just thinks it’s a bit weird and she says that his father wouldn’t do anything like that because he would be frightened to death if he met somebody that looked like the woman in the picture.’

  Edward laughed at his daughter’s breathless delivery. ‘Well, I think that she’s probably right. I think that he feels a bit better now because he believes that it is somebody from years back. What did Granny Higgins have to say about it, then?’

  ‘It was a bit frightening, really. She got really upset when we said that Mr Murphy had found a picture of a woman that they used to call the Salford Canary.’

  ‘That’s odd. Eppie got very upset when he saw the picture. Did she say why she felt like that?’

  ‘She said that her son finished up in the River Irwell because of her. And she’d have swung for her if she could have got her hands on her.’

  Edward picked up his mug of tea from the hob and enjoyed its soothing sweetness. His daughter’s face glowed with eager enthusiasm for her project, though with little empathy for the personal tragedy that lay behind the old woman’s bitter words. The information had not stirred any recall of the event in his mind but such deaths had not been rare. ‘I didn’t realise that she had a son. I knew that she had two daughters.’

  ‘Well, she did say “my lad,” so it sounds like it.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything else about her? Did she say what had happened to her?’

  ‘She said that she had become famous in the nineties and she had heard that she had made a name for herself in London.’

  ‘Really? And what else?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ Pippin said, screwing her face as she strived for recollection. ‘But she did make it sound as though she had a lot of men chasing her. She said it as though she was a bit hard.’

  ‘Did she tell you her name?’

  ‘No. She said that she had said enough. We thought that she might start crying or something so we left.’

  ‘Well, Pip. You did a good job there. That settles it, now. Mr Murphy will be pleased because it proves that he hasn’t been having some improper relationship; he would have only been a young lad at the time.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe.’

  Edward looked at his daughter’s quizzical face and knew that the matter wasn’t settled. She would shake this rag, just as her mother would, until all the bits fell out of it. ‘Why the “hmm, maybe”?’

  ‘Because it’s only a part of the puzzle. Mr Murphy might not worry so much now about what Mrs Murphy thinks but the big mystery is still there. Why was Mr Murphy in the painting at the side of this Salford Canary woman? Has somebody found an old picture of the singer and then painted Mr Murphy next to her?’

  ‘Come on, Pip. That seems a bit unlikely. Why would they want to do that?’

  ‘Maybe they are trying to make trouble for him. Perhaps a German spy is after him for something that he did in the war.’

  ‘Well, he was with me for most of the time so I don’t think that’s possible or they would be after me as well.’

  Pippin looked shocked by this unconsidered possibility. ‘Don’t say that, Dad. What can we do if they are? We’ll have to start locking the door all the time.’

  Edward laughed at his daughter’s anxiety but became serious as he realised how concerned she was. ‘It’s ok, sweetheart. That’s never going to happen, so don’t worry about it. We were never involved in anything that would justify them sending German spies to find us. We were just not that important.’

  ‘You can’t be too careful, Dad. Just be on your guard for anything unusual. But if it’s not a German spy then there is something else that is odd.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s the painting. All you men were so busy staring at how beautiful the woman was that you probably didn’t realise that for her to look that nice, the quality of the painting must have been really good.’

  ‘No, I suppose you are right there. The artist certainly did a good job.’

  ‘So, Dad, that wouldn’t be cheap. Who does Mr Murphy know that could afford that sort of money.’

  Edward took another sip of his tea, sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deeply into congested lungs. His daughter had clearly been more objective than they had; their thoughts being so much focussed on the implications of Liam’s apparent infidelity with such a stunning woman that they had failed to consider the detail that his daughter had seen. ‘You’ve got me there, Pip. We have got the meeting next week with the others. We’ll tell them what you have found out and ask Mr Murphy if he has some rich enemies.’

  ‘No. Your dad didn’t say that word did he?’ Amy shrieked as Pippin told her about the conversation with her father the previous week. ‘I can’t believe your dad would have said the actual word. What would your mother have said if she had heard him saying that to you?
She’d have gone mad.’

  ‘My dad didn’t really say it,’ Pippin explained. ‘He just told me that it is a bad word and should only be used by policemen because it is a legal thing. He said that it stands for “For unlawful carnal knowledge.”’

  Amy sipped at the hot Vimto that the greengrocer, Mr Artingstall, had now added to the range of products that he offered. ‘Carnal knowledge, what’s that supposed to be? Is it something that they learn at that Manchester University?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Pippin laughed. ‘My dad said that it was another way of saying,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper and glanced round to make sure that Mr Artingstall was out of earshot, ‘you know, rape.’

  Amy’s mouth dropped open as the words expressing her shock remained unspoken. She gulped another mouthful of Vimto and adjusted her position on the wooden bench that Mr Artingstall had thoughtfully provided as a comfort to his weary or, in this case, cold customers under the rack of hanging rabbits and capons. She bowed her head conspiratorially to Pippin’s and whispered eagerly, watching the door behind which she suspected the inquisitive Mr Artingstall might be lurking. ‘That’s what your Aunty Sarah was telling us about. You know, men giving women babies, that sort of thing. But rape is when they don’t want them to.’

  ‘Oh! You mean, doing everything? Things like that?’

  ‘That’s right. The women at the mill say that it happens to them sometimes when they say no but their husbands take no notice. Why was your dad telling you that, anyway?’

  ‘Because I told him that we had been to see Granny Higgins and he said that she comes from near Northwich, which is why she has a funny accent. I told him about the Maltese boy in my Gran’s street who hardly speaks any English but he says the f word.’

  ‘What did your dad say about the things that Granny Higgins told us?’

  ‘He was surprised that she had had a son because he didn’t know about him. I think that he was pleased for Mr Murphy that it proved that he couldn’t have been going out with her because it was so long ago. So I said to him that that might be the case but it doesn’t explain how Mr Murphy came to be in the picture and that it must have been somebody rich who had it painted because it would cost a lot of money to pay for a proper artist.’

  ‘That’s right. I wonder if somebody is just trying to make trouble for Mr Murphy?’

  ‘But, Ames, what’s the point,’ Pippin reasoned. ‘Mr Murphy hasn’t got any money and, obviously, this person has enough already. I told my dad it might be a German spy who is trying to get back at him for something that he did in the war, but my dad said that it was impossible because they were always together and that would mean that they would be after him as well.’

  ‘Wow, Pip, that’s frightening. What would a German spy look like? We’ll have to watch out for them.’

  ‘I don’t know. But there is something else that is a bit funny that we don’t know the answer to. Mr Murphy found the painting in a suit that Nellie Grimshaw had given to him and she said that he would have to ask the owner of the suit about it, whoever that was. I mean, suppose that the suit belonged to Harry Grimshaw. Why should he have a painting of a woman who was a singer from years ago? She must have been famous when Queen Victoria was alive.’

  ‘That’s the answer,’ Amy shouted, startling an elderly lady in a brown coat with a squirrel fur collar who had been squeezing the Spanish Sevilles. ‘Oh, sorry missus,’ she apologised before returning to a more confidential, but not quite muted, whisper. ‘I’ll bet Harry Grimshaw was in love with her like Granny Higgins’ son was.’

  ‘But why is Mr Murphy in the painting?’

  ‘Because Harry Grimshaw had it painted and had Mr Murphy put in it so that Nellie Grimshaw wouldn’t suspect anything.’

  ‘It seems a bit weird. Why did he choose Mr Murphy who was only a young man? And the singer woman had been left for years by then.’

  ‘Because he was good looking and because it would make Nellie think that it wasn’t anything to do with Harry,’ Amy reasoned.

  ‘But, Ames, surely he wouldn’t still be in love with her all those years later. If Mr Murphy was about nineteen or twenty at the time, the Salford Canary would have been gone for at least ten years by then.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Amy agreed. ‘But that Eppie man still seems to be in love with her. Fancy being able to have that much power over all those men. You could just click your fingers and a glass of champagne would appear. Or I could have Billy Murphy at my beck and call to rub perfumed oils all over me.’

  ‘Oh, Amy,’ Pippin scolded, ‘fancy saying things like that. People might hear you. It does seem a bit of a coincidence, though, that it was Mr Murphy who finished up with the painting.’

  ‘It’s a pity that we can’t just go and ask him.’

  ‘Who?’ Pippin asked.

  ‘Harry Grimshaw.’

  ‘Oh, no. That would need a bit of a miracle.’

  ‘I know,’ Amy exclaimed, finishing her Vimto and standing up. ‘Why don’t we ask that strange man, Eppie. He’s really old and might remember something.’

  ‘Not likely,’ Pippin said, shuddering. ‘He’s mad and might kill us. He got really upset when Mr Murphy asked him about her.’

  ‘Who is that, then, girls?’ Mr Artingstall had appeared from the back room and was putting some onions in a brown paper bag for the lady in the brown coat. She had abandoned her scrutiny of the Spanish Sevilles and was now considering the merits of the Savoy cabbages. ‘That’s not one of my customers that you are thinking is a bit mad, is it?’ he asked jovially.

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Artingstall,’ Amy hastened to reassure him, ‘it’s the man who wears funny clothes that they call Eppie that we mean.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You mean our local scrivener, legal adviser and renowned thespian,’ the greengrocer said. ‘I don’t think he is mad though, my dear, maybe just a little eccentric.’

  ‘He was a fine man in his day,’ the elderly lady said, flushing a little. ‘And clever with it, too.’

  ‘Did you know him, then, missus, when you were younger?’ Amy enquired eagerly.

  ‘Well, I did in a way, I suppose. And his name isn’t Eppie, it’s Henry – Henry Molineaux.’

  ‘Wow, that’s incredible,’ Pippin enthused. ‘Do you know where he came from?’

  ‘I’m not sure now. It was well over thirty years ago. I think that it might have been London. It was down south somewhere.’

  ‘How come he is such a know-all when, half the time, he just seems a bit potty?’ Amy asked with naïve indiscretion.

  The lady in the brown coat appeared a little flustered. Her hand fluttered over the tray of onions, and then the shallots, without touching or really seeing any of them. ‘He had a classics education,’ she said apologetically. ‘He was at Oxford. Loved the theatre. He was evangelical about enriching the lives of the masses with Shakespeare.’

  ‘Were you and Eppie good friends?’ Pippin asked politely.

  ‘I… I suppose that we were,’ she said. The flush in her face spread beyond the rouged, cosmetic colouring of her cheeks and down into her throat. ‘For a while,’ she added sadly. ‘Just for a while.’

  Mr Artingstall removed the glasses that the girls had now emptied and took them into the back room. The lady took off her spectacles, wiped them carefully on a lace-edged handkerchief, replaced them slowly and continued her agitated though unseeing inspection of the tray of onions. Pippin pulled Amy back onto the wooden bench and placed her hand on her arm, shaking her head slightly as she perceived the enthusiastic enquiry in her friend’s face.

  ‘I hope that you don’t mind me asking,’ Pippin began, hesitantly. ‘But, did this Mr Molineaux know a lady that they used to call the Salford Canary? I think that she might have been a singer.’

  The lady’s face became tense and pale and she turned her back on the girls and resumed her consideration of the Spanish oranges. Pippin looked at Amy and grimaced and her friend shrugged her shoulders. Eventually the lady tur
ned back to them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I know that you mean no harm; it’s just that it is a bit personal, a bit hurtful, even after all these years. She was a wicked woman; took any man that she wanted. Cared nothing for the hurt that she caused.’

  ‘Oh we’re very sorry,’ Amy said soothingly. ‘We didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry if that was a bit hurtful,’ Pippin added. ‘It was just that we had heard that…, well, you know.’

  ‘It’s alright, my dear. I’m just being a bit silly after all this time,’ the lady in the brown coat reassured her. ‘He was a good man, Henry Molineaux, and I feel partly responsible for what happened to him. He only stayed in Salford because of me but we had such a lovely time. For six months I was in heaven and I wanted it to last for ever.’

  Mr Artingstall coughed and spluttered as he stared with surprise at the lady. ‘Now then, Mrs Frobisher, your Herbert would be a bit uncomfortable hearing you talking like that.’

  ‘My Herbert is long since gone, Mr Artingstall, as you well know. But it’s time that the record was set straight for poor Henry. That woman caused his breakdown with the way that she treated him. He could have been a great man; just a bit dramatic at times, but he gave of himself so freely. I was deeply hurt at the time, very deeply hurt, but fortunately Herbert came along and helped me to gradually rebuild my life. I owe him so much. You girls should think about that when you are finding yourselves a man; a good, solid type is worth a lot; reliable and solid and bringing home a regular paypacket. Look for somebody like that and it’ll take a lot of heartache and anguish out of your life. Find a man like Mr Artingstall here, not like that butcher, Percival, down the road. Gets his hands on too much raw flesh for his own good, that one.’

  ‘Oh, ah, thank you Mrs Frobisher.’ Mr Artingstall smiled weakly, unsure of whether he would secretly have preferred to have been perceived as slightly more aligned to the rakish butcher, Percival. ‘Would you like a couple of those oranges weighing out for you?’