‘Oh, all right,’ Elsie gave in, grumbling. ‘I ain’t never going to get there by meself, but I’d still like to know what you and John Travis have been up to.’
‘We haven’t been up to anything, and never likely to, if you must know,’ Carrie muttered, completely forgetting her vow to say nothing at all about it.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve finished with him already! If you have, I’d be more than willing to take him on,’ Elsie giggled as if she’d said something very clever, and stumbled as Carrie pulled at her arm.
‘Come on, I haven’t got all day. I’m supposed to be home by eight o’clock, and it’s nearly that already.’
She suddenly realised that she was never going to be indoors inside her curfew if she took Elsie all the way home. But Elsie was in no fit state to get there by herself … silly little idiot that she was, Carrie simply couldn’t abandon her.
She almost pelted her down the winding Hotwells Road towards the hovel where she lived. Once there, they were both winded, and Elsie’s face was flushed and sweating.
‘Will you be all right? I’ll have to go, or Pa will skin my hide for me,’ she said desperately, as Elsie swayed against the door, fumbling for the latch.
‘Good God, where’s the fire?’ she said nastily. ‘Don’t worry ’bout me. You look after number one, as usual.’
As she got the door open she almost fell inside, and Carrie got a swift whiff of the dingy interior. It was a mixture of old age and stale urine, allied with the pungent aromas of Elsie’s cheap scents with which she lavishly splashed herself.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Carrie gasped, almost retching at the thought of putting one foot inside that door. ‘I’ll see you when I see you.’
* * *
She fled back along the waterfront, dodging the lounging sailors and tavern boys who whistled and called after her. She tore up Jacob’s Wells Road, holding her skirts above her ankle so she could run faster. She felt undignified and dishevelled, and it flashed through her mind that never in a million years would Miss Helen Barclay be arriving home like this after an outing with a young man.
Not that John Travis would care a jot about how she arrived home by now! The disastrous ending to the afternoon made her eyes smart, and then she forgot all about John Travis and the likes of Miss Helen Barclay as she saw what was ahead of her. Her Pa was standing outside their door, waiting for her, and his dark brows were drawn together until they met in the middle of his forehead. It didn’t bode well.
‘I’m sorry, Pa. I met Elsie and she’d been taken ill, so I walked her home,’ she began stuttering at once.
‘Get in the house, girl, and don’t stand on the doorstep blabbing your excuses,’ he thundered. ‘What kind of a state is this to be coming home in, and showing off your body to all and sundry?’
Carrie dropped her skirt at once, forgetting she’d been holding it aloft. Her face flamed. She had hardly been showing off her body, just the merest sliver of ankle to help her running. She felt the flat of Pa’s hand on her back as he pushed her inside. To be punished now was the final straw after this terrible day … and then she saw why he was more aggressive than usual.
‘Ma! What’s happened?’ she croaked, everything else forgotten as she saw her mother lying prostrate on the settle, a cushion beneath her head. It was so unusual to see her mother lying down, or even sitting for more than minutes at a time, that Carrie was sure something must be terribly wrong. She felt a great fear in her heart. Ma was their mainstay, and if she was really ill …
She ran to her side, kneeling down and taking her mother’s cold hands in her own. She had been so hot after her racing home, and then her Pa’s censure, and now she was sure she must be as deathly white as Ma, with the fear tying her stomach up in knots.
‘There’s nothing wrong, Carrie, leastways, nothing that’s going to kill me,’ Ma said testily. ‘Don’t take on so, girl. Our Wilf’s gone for the doctor, though he had no business doing so. There’s no money to spare for night visits. I know what ails me, and it was just a bout of faintness, that’s all, but your Pa wouldn’t listen to me.’
She was talking much faster than usual, and Carrie looked uncertainly from her to her Pa. She was struggling to sit up now, and the colour was starting to come back to her face. Carrie ran her tongue around her dry lips.
‘What do you think it is then, Ma?’ she said huskily. All kinds of wild ideas ran around her mind. The tuberculosis, or scarlet fever … or even some fever of an alien nature that Frank might be unknowingly carrying from his sorties with the foreign sailors at the docks.
‘I think ’tis another babby,’ Ma said calmly. ‘And the Lord only knows how we’re going to keep it.’
* * *
Wilf’s arrival with Doctor Flowers was convenient enough for Carrie to hide the total shock she felt at the words. She glanced at Pa, and couldn’t begin to read his expression. She thought she could guess at the way his thoughts were going. Another mouth to feed was the very last thing that was wanted in the house, however much a babby was thought of as a cause for rejoicing.
She was quite sure Pa wouldn’t reject his own child, even though the men were already relying on the womenfolk for the bulk of their needs. But Ma would be growing bigger every day and unable to attend to much of the Clifton wash … and at the whirling thoughts inside her head, Carrie began to feel as though the entire weight of the family survival was going to sit squarely on her own slim shoulders, and wondered if she was going to faint off herself … and a fat lot of good that would do, she thought angrily.
She and the men stayed back in the room as Doctor Flowers say down beside her Ma. He looked deep into her eyes and asked a few questions before he nodded. It didn’t seem like much of a consultation, but Carrie presumed that a woman who’d borne four children already, and helped to birth quite a few more, knew the signs well enough. But Ma wasn’t a young woman now, and things could go wrong … Carrie felt panic wash over her again, and then the doctor was getting to his feet and brushing aside Ma’s murmurs about payment for his visit.
‘You’ve done enough good turns in your time, missus, so we’ll forget all about payment this time. I had business in this part of town anyway, so just rest up as much as you can and send your girl to arrange for the midwife when your time comes. If anything untoward should happen between now and then, you know where to find me.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Carrie heard Ma say faintly, far less vocal than usual. It was true then. There was going to be another babby in the house, and the Lord knew where they were going to put him. Pa had fashioned Billy’s crib, but it had been passed on to needier folk long ago. Now they were the needy ones, but at least crib-making would give Pa something to do with his idle hands.
Carrie suddenly avoided looking at her Pa, thankful that he was showing the doctor out of the door. She’d never thought about her Ma and Pa doing the kind of things Ma had been warning herself against. She wasn’t daft enough not to know that married folk did it, but you never wanted to think of it in connection with your own parents.
Wilf wasn’t looking at Pa either, she realised, and was offering to go and look for Frank to tell him the news, now he was sure she was all right.
‘You go, Wilf, but don’t you be worrying him about any of this, mind. I’m as strong as a dray-horse, so you remember that as well.’
Carrie crossed her fingers as she heard the words. Ma was … she had to think quickly. Ma was nearly forty-five years old, and it was too old to be having another babby. She had been too old for childbirth when she’d had Billy, and although that was eight years ago now, Carrie could still remember the screams and moans through the paper-thin walls of Ma’s bedroom, and how she’d hid her head beneath the bedclothes to shut out the sound. She didn’t want Ma to have to go through that again.
She went across to her quickly, and sat down beside her on the settle, taking her cold hands in hers.
‘I’ll help you all I can, Ma,’ she said huskily. ‘You�
��re to do as the doctor says, and rest up as much as possible.’
May removed her hands from her daughter’s. She couldn’t abide sentiment, even though Carrie would have thought this was the perfect moment for the special bonds between them to be strengthened. Carrie longed for Ma to see her as another woman, to embrace her and rely on her for once. But it didn’t happen. As always, Ma had to be the strong one, and Carrie felt herself pushed aside, relegated once more to the dutiful daughter.
‘I’ll rest up for a day or so when I’m confined and not before, so I don’t want no fuss about this, Carrie,’ she almost snapped. ‘The babby won’t come until it’s ready, and I ain’t sitting on my backside doing nothing until that day. So you can come and talk to me while I make some cocoa if you’ve a mind, and tell me about your day.’
Her day was all but forgotten in the more momentous happenings in the Stuckey household. It seemed of little importance now, and when they were in the scullery together, she blurted out that the tea had been quite pleasant, but that she wasn’t sure that she and John Travis were altogether suited after all.
‘Why not?’ Ma said, pausing in lifting the heavy kettle onto the stove, and ignoring Carrie’s quick remark that she shouldn’t be doing it at all. ‘He didn’t do any of the things I warned you against, did he?’
‘No Ma, he was a perfect gentleman,’ she said wearily, wondering just why relationships between men and women had to be so complicated. She and Elsie could have the most blistering rows, and it made not the slightest difference to their friendship. While she and John had had the merest of brushes, and already they seemed to be poles apart.
Suddenly, she felt her face go as hot as fire. Her Ma was expecting another babby, and while the news was kept inside this house, they had only themselves to consider. But now she wondered how other folk would see it. Elsie and her hooting, incredulous laughter; Gaffer Woolley and Pa’s old mates at the wharf, who would no doubt be sniggering behind their hands at the thought, or else calling Pa a sly old dog and lifting their ale jugs at the waterfront tavern and sending him home rolling drunk.
And John Travis, who would raise his fine eyebrows at the news and hide his real feelings behind those handsome features … and Miss Helen Barclay, whose cook had once told Carrie grandly that the Barclay family issue had ended after the arrival of their one beautiful child, since it was deemed infra dig to flood the county with children. Carrie hadn’t understood the words any more than cook did, but in any case, she could never imagine the snooty-nosed Barclay parents performing it more than once in their lives.
‘Have you gone into a trance, girl? I’ve asked you twice about your young man’s uncle and what his home was like,’ she heard Ma saying.
Carrie couldn’t think for a moment. What the Jack Jones did any of that matter, compared with the fact that her Ma was having another babby? A fact that folk might snigger about, or sneer at, or simply avoid mentioning, knowing the dire straits in which the Stuckeys were finding themselves? She felt fiercely protective of Ma, and without thinking, she rushed to her and put her arms around her.
‘What’s all this about?’ Ma said crossly, pushing her away and eyeing her keenly. ‘You ain’t answered me properly yet, Carrie. Did that young man do summat he shouldn’t? Was that your reason for bein’ in late?’
Carrie felt her throat thicken. ‘Oh Ma, there was nothing like that! I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’
Her mother looked genuinely astonished. ‘What ever for? There’s nothing for you to be worrying about on my account. A babby’s just nature’s way of saying the family ain’t yet complete, that’s all.’
‘But you always said it was,’ Carrie heard herself say, as the ghosts of past whispered conversations between her Ma and Pa nagged away at her. ‘You always said our Billy was an afterthought, and that enough was enough.’
‘I don’t want to hear no more of that talk,’ Ma said briskly. ‘Our Billy don’t know yet, and there’s no reason for telling him for a while yet.’
‘When will it be, do you think?’
The painful mysteries of child-bearing were an alien part of life that Carrie didn’t want to think about, but now she was being forced to think about it. And she guessed that Ma would already have it all worked out, without the doctor’s or the midwife’s say-so.
‘Soon after Christmas, I’d say. Maybe even on the Lord’s day itself. That ’ould give it His blessing and no mistake. He’d never allow things to go wrong on His day.’
She turned away to attend to the singing kettle. She was talking almost to herself by then, but Carrie was able to catch the last muttered words well enough. And she knew then, that it wasn’t only herself who was afraid. Ma was afraid too.
* * *
On Sundays the Stuckeys went to church, as ship-shape and tidy as any other family. They prided themselves on that, though it had always been down to Ma to insist on it. Pa would undoubtedly have preferred to spend the day idling, but since that was mostly all he did these days, going to church was something of a welcome outing instead. And it was the same church that many of his old workmates, and the dockside bosses attended, and that included Gaffer Woolley and his pretty daughter.
Carrie sang the last hymn from the hymn sheet on that brisk August morning, with already a hint of autumn tinging the air, and smiled to herself at Billy’s lusty, but slightly off-key notes beside her. But at least he could read the words, which was more than many another child of his age, or even older. Billy was as keen to learn his letters as all the Stuckey children had been, and Ma and Pa should be proud of that too. And then she caught the minister’s eye on her, and hastily pushed down all thoughts of sinful pride that were so out of place in this House of God.
Afterwards, as they all spilled out into the morning sunshine, the minister was there to shake each hand, and the finer folk among them stopped to chat to one another, while the lesser ones stood farther back to admire or envy them.
‘How go things for you, Sam?’ the minister said to Carrie’s father. ‘Do you have work yet?’
‘We do not, and there’s nothing on offer as far as I can see,’ Pa said, more curtly than usual at the pious question. The minister pressed his hand more firmly.
‘Have faith, man, and the good Lord will provide.’
‘Well, you might tell Him to provide it soon, Mr Pritchard,’ Pa said, his patience running out. ‘For there’s hardly enough food to put in our bellies as it is, without —’
‘Sam, that’s no way to speak to Mr Pritchard,’ Ma said, before he could blab to all and sundry about the coming baby. She turned to the minster apologetically. ‘Please excuse his manners, sir. The times don’t make for pleasantries.’
‘I understand, dear lady, and I take no offence. I shall pray for you,’ he said, adding more oil to Pa’s explosive fury.
‘Come on, Pa, let’s get home.’ Wilf almost pushed him ahead of them. He was already aware of Gaffer Woolley and Nora talking with their friends. Nora had glanced his way, and even managed a secret smile at him, but he was too humiliated by his Pa’s little outburst to do anything other than pretend he hadn’t seen her. Then, to his horror, Pa noticed them too, and strode right across to the little group.
‘’Tis a pity you can’t carry out some of the Lord’s work and provide summat for good workers, Gaffer, instead of chucking ’em on the scrap heap,’ he said loudly. ‘Ten years of my life I gave you, and my sons followed on, thinking we had a secure future with Woolleys —’
‘Go home, man. You’re drunk, and you’re a disgrace to your family,’ Gaffer Woolley said coldly.
‘I ain’t drunk, and I’ll kill the first man who says I am,’ Pa suddenly yelled. ‘And it’s my family I’m thinking about, same as the rest of ’em around here, if only they’d up and say so.’
But it was obvious to him, as to everyone else, that most were subservient to the bosses, and unlikely to uphold anything Sam Stuckey was saying without due warning and sufficient rebel-rousing.
Carrie wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She’d heard the saying, and thought it melodramatic, but now she knew the absolute truth of it. Frank was almost grinning, impervious to Gaffer’s insults, and Billy was huddled close to Ma’s skirts. But Wilf … she realised that Wilf was as tense as herself, and that Miss Nora Woolley had gone a fiery red and looked as though she’d like to make herself invisible too. And then the minister intervened, speaking in his most condemning pulpit voice.
‘May I remind you both that this is still God’s House? Please continue your discussions outside the church grounds, and I suggest you each make a private examination of your anger and resolve your differences before you set foot in this place again.’ He turned on his heel to continue greeting the rest of his flock, clearly dismissing this unruly element in his church.
The slight to his own character, allied with Sam Stuckey’s, made Aaron Woolley’s florid neck seem to inflate like a bull-frog’s, Carrie thought, in sudden awful fascination. She wondered if it would inflate sufficiently to explode right here and now.
‘I shan’t forget this, Stuckey,’ Gaffer grated. ‘You and your brood will never find work with me again, and you can tell that lusty sprog of yours to stop sniffing around my daughter.’
Before any of them could take all of it in, he had bundled Nora away to his waiting carriage. It was Wilf who hustled his family away in the same manner. But not before Sam had looked at him in a fury, seeing the truth of Gaffer’s statement in every brittle movement his son made.
He had never guessed … but why should he, when Wilf was the most secretive, more sensitive of his sons? Not like Frank, who was grinning openly now, and ragging Wilf unmercifully all the way down to Jacob’s Wells Road. Wilf stuck it out in cold silence for most of the way, and Pa was too busy getting tongue-pie from Ma for the shameful show outside the church, but Wilf reached the limit of his patience at Frank’s final taunt.
‘Anyway, I doubt that you’d get anywhere with the lovely Nora, bruth. They say she don’t look kindly at any man earning less than five hundred a year.’
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