‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I said no. The rates and rents of city centre premises are too high. They’d cripple us.’
Admittedly this had been Hubert’s response too when Benny had made the suggestion to him. Now he shrugged philosophically as he conceded defeat. ‘All right then, off centre, close to Castlefield, Salford or wherever you think suitable, only it must be retail premises. No reason why you can’t keep the warehouse on for storage and your carpet manufacture,’ he airily conceded, as if money were no object. Polly, her mind racing ahead, homed in on this point.
‘And where is all the capital coming from for such ambitious expansion, might I enquire?’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry, most of the finance is all set up. You only need find enough to take on and fit out a shop and Hubert will provide the stock on sale or return. He also says that if you need it, he can offer you ample credit on an interest free loan. He can’t say fairer than that, now can he?’
‘Why?’ Polly’s eyes glinted with suspicion. ‘Why would he be so generous?’
Benny’s whole body became taut, rigid with tension as he rested his knuckles on the polished desk, desperately holding on to his rapidly diminishing patience. Why were old people so over-cautious? Was it any wonder he’d refused his mother’s invitation to work with her. It was an attitude which would have to change. ‘Because we’re family now, and it’s in his interests to help the business to grow. The profit margins are high enough for us both to make a good living out of it.’
Polly insisted he explain it all over again, from start to finish, till she had it clear in her head. But she was sorely tempted by the offer of a secure customer base, most of all by the prospect of having Benny come in to the business with her. What better than to be working with her own son, just as she’d always dreamed of, with peace declared between them at last.
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ she promised him, while deep down she wondered how she could refuse, when she was the one who’d set the whole thing in motion.
Tom found them a house to rent just a few doors down at number 67. It would need some attention before they could move in, but a bit of painting and decorating would work wonders, he was sure. Weren’t women supposed to be expert in such matters these days? It would keep Lucy nicely occupied instead of pining over that stupid job and Michael bloody Hopkins. She was, however, less than enchanted about the whole idea.
‘Can we afford it?’ Whether out of guilt, or perhaps conceding much of what her mother said to be true, Lucy didn’t feel able to dismiss the suggestion out of hand, despite her fears of more intimate relations with him.
‘I wouldn’t be taking on it on if I didn’t think so,’ Tom snapped. ‘Besides, I’ve an interview for a job lined up, at the dye works on Liverpool Road.’
‘Fenton’s place?’
‘That’s the one. It would be good money.’ He was excited, so pleased with himself that Lucy couldn’t help but feel glad for him. He’d fought in the war, been a POW for years, suffered untold horrors of which he refused to speak and escaped only to return to a wife who was having an affair with another man. No wonder he was scratchy. At times she felt nothing but shame at her own behaviour. He surely deserved better than she’d been able to offer him? And it wasn’t as if she enjoyed cleaning people’s houses. If it weren’t for this madness of loving Michael she would surely have been delighted to have him back, have welcomed him with open arms.
Tentatively he put out a hand to stroke her hair. He rarely touched her and she felt almost flattered that he felt able to do so now, while at the same time nervous it might encourage him to go further. ‘I want to make you happy, Lucy. I want us to have a chance. We need time together like a proper married couple.’
She quietly moved out of his reach, aware that here, in her mother’s house, they never had a moment alone and secretly welcoming that fact. He believed this to be the main problem between them, that once he had his wife to himself he could make her fall in love with him all over again. Lucy wondered if that were true.
She remembered how she’d once waited so eagerly for him to come home, how young and excited she had been when they’d first married, believing the war would be merely a blink in their young lives, over in no time, not rob them of their youth completely. She’d been madly in love with Tom Shackleton for as long as she could remember, though perhaps she’d simply been in love with life, and youth, and the idea of marriage. He’d made it so enchantingly easy with his good looks and undoubted charm. Now she’d changed, grown up. So had Tom. Neither of them were the people they’d once been.
‘I’ll give it a try,’ she agreed.
As they worked together, cleaning the little house, Tom’s behaviour continued to trouble her. Everything had to be just so, sweeping brushes carefully washed after they’d been used and left to dry in the open, not put away dusty. The floors scrubbed over and over again. Every scrap of wood skirting or window frame had to be scoured a dozen times before he would let her anywhere near with a paint brush. Not even cleaning cloths were allowed to get soiled and if they were, he made her boil them till they were white again. It all seemed far more tiring than it need be but Lucy put it all down to the difficulties he’d experienced as a POW. He was ill and would get better, given time. Her one consolation was that he showed endless patience with the children.
Sean was enjoying having his dad around now, if behaving a bit silly and wild, always wanting to show off in front of him, which was understandable as the little boy craved his attention. Sarah Jane, on the other hand remained shy but then she’d always been a quiet, timid sort of child. She was old enough to remember the shock of losing her dad, and needed time to readjust to him being alive. As did they all. But Tom could easily tease her into blushes and giggles and very slowly she was coming round to accepting him. Polly said it was up to Lucy to encourage the relationship, for them to spend more time together as a family.
‘Don’t rush it, Mam,’ Lucy would say, still wary. Yet when they moved, that’s exactly what would happen. Lucy worried over how it would feel not to have Polly around, almost as if she needed her mother’s protection, although from what, she couldn’t imagine, apart from the increasing intimacy she dreaded.
She couldn’t help noticing that the stories Tom told of his escape and illness varied slightly from day to day, depending on his mood. Sometimes he spoke of Italy, at other times France or even Africa, but never about conditions in the POW camp. All she knew was that he’d been taken to Germany after Italy surrendered.
But none of it quite added up and Lucy wondered just what he really had been up to during those missing years, certain he was holding something back. His letters had always been sporadic and, even allowing for the censor, oddly vague and unsatisfactory. Perhaps there was a woman in his past somewhere. A part of her rather hoped so, then she wouldn’t be the only one with guilt on her conscience.
He’d walked back into her life as cool as you please and seemed to think he could pick up exactly where they’d left off. When she’d needed him he hadn’t been there for her, hadn’t even written. Now that she was in love with someone else, he’d come home. How unfair life could be.
Later that day, scrubbing the stone-flagged kitchen floor in the house she didn’t want to live in, with a man she could no longer look upon as a husband, Lucy could see Michael’s face in the swirls of soapy water. She couldn’t get her need for him out of her mind, out of her aching body even as she knew that she must never seek him out again. Never! Heaven knows what would happen if one of them didn’t learn to exercise some control over their emotions. She must accept that whatever had been growing between them, was over.
Tiring of the endless chores, she flung the scrubbing brush back into the bucket, sending water spraying everywhere and wasn’t quite sure whether it was tears or dirty mopping water that she wiped from her face.
Chapter Eighteen
The manufacturing of new carpets was pr
ogressing well for Polly. The wool arrived in soft, unwashed hanks from the West coast of Scotland. The washing was done in a long trough with the wool being fed around huge drums on the same principle as a mangle. As she watched the process with some degree of pride, Polly was hoping and praying that her daughter’s marriage would survive and Lucy would be happy. Many didn’t in these difficult times. She and Charlie had had it easy in a way, with no war to separate them and always having the family around but it had torn apart her family all the same. Soon, for the first time in their married lives there would be just the two of them. Not that she minded. Charlie might get more rest.
She walked from the washing room into the dyeing area, and became quickly embroiled in a long discussion on the varying shades of green. Customers liked a strong pattern in their carpets but not necessarily strong colours.
‘This bright green didn’t sell so well Polly,’ Josh, her chief dyer told her. ‘Better to soften it to more of a leaf shade don’t you think?’
‘And a pinky beige to go with it?’
Polly personally traced out the patterns on to squared paper, each square representing one tuft in the carpet, usually at a rate of seven to eleven tufts per inch depending on the quality of the carpet. Drawing the designs was one of her favourite tasks. Sales were buoyant and she longed to buy more looms, to expand, but was nervous of doing this too quickly and overextending herself. She’d always thought there was little point in building the business too big if her children weren’t interested. Now that Benny had agreed to come in with her, the situation had changed dramatically. It would be a relief to have more help, even though she still held some reservations about Hubert Clarke and his scheme. By the time she’d finished the day’s work it was past eight and she had energy to do no more than grab a meal and fall into bed.
‘All this hard work,’ she groaned, rubbing her aching back, ‘and for what?’
‘For us, sweetheart,’ Charlie murmured sleepily into her ear. ‘For our lovely family and to keep us in our old age.’
‘And will we take the risk, as Benny wants us to?’
‘Would it make you happy?’
‘I think it would, Charlie.’
‘Then do it. If you’re happy, so am I,’ and cuddling up like a pair of old spoons, they fell asleep in perfect contentment.
So Polly took the risk. She took out a small mortgage on her house, rented large shop premises at the Castlefield end of Deansgate and took delivery of a consignment of furniture from Hubert Clarke. Pride Carpets now moved in a new direction, into buying and selling, though she continued with, and even hoped to expand, the manufacturing of new carpet. Credit trading would not have been her first choice but if it made Benny happy, wasn’t that something?
Benny felt like a real man again. From the very first morning he stayed late without complaint and put all his energies into the job. On his first pay day, he gave Belinda a bit of money to spend on a new frock, if she could find one to fit, just to cheer her up but she said it would be a waste and hoarded it away for when the baby was born. At least she was eating properly again. She queued at the butchers for a bit of steak and kidney, which she made into a steamed pudding. They ate like kings and she bloomed as a result. It was worth all the effort to see her happy again.
All family differences seemed to be resolved with what might tentatively be called a reconciliation between Belinda and her parents. Benny felt content to be working with his mother, as it was on equal terms. And this was only the beginning. As the business grew, moving ever onward and upward, nothing and no one would stand in his way. Since his father-in-law was a self-made man with an innate shrewdness and business acumen, Benny had every confidence in his judgement.
Being so close to her time, Belinda didn’t care to spend too much time on her own, so took to spending the afternoons with Lucy. She was able to do little beyond brew tea and chat while her friend trimmed and pasted the wallpaper, and climbed ladders to hang it, nevertheless she was happy and content. There was much giggling at Lucy’s mistakes, not least when Sean and Sarah Jane got themselves covered in paste as they helped to mix it.
Sometimes the two girls would wrap the children up well and take them sledging on the waste ground, or for a walk along by the Manchester Ship Canal to watch the barges go by. Lucy would talk of her hopes for Tom to heal and be like the Tom she remembered. But she never quite found the courage to mention her secret love. Belinda would say how content she was now that everything had come right for Benny at last, and how happy she was, despite missing her ATS friends.
‘However, I’m sick of this huge bump, and I cry with frustration sometimes over the most simplest task.’ She giggled. ‘Like starching Benny’s shirt collars. I made too much starch the other day and without thinking, I tipped the remains all down the yard thinking it would mix with the snow and slush, but it made such a terrible slimy mess you took your life in your hands just crossing the yard to the lavatory.’ The two girls dissolved into helpless laughter, young and happy, oblivious for a short time to all their problems.
Tom did not get the job at Fenton’s Chemicals because he never went for the interview. There was a problem standing in his way and, determined to find employment so that Lucy wouldn’t get any fancy ideas in her head about going back to work herself, he meant to solve it.
He called upon his brother-in-law and found Benny, surprisingly enough, in the new shop sticking price labels on a set of chairs. It was already open for business and several customers were browsing among the carefully designed furniture displays. Tom leaned against the door-jamb and chuckled. ‘I thought your job was to run the show from a fancy office and let some chit of a girl write out price labels.
Benny grinned. ‘I don’t mind doing my bit. It’s all profit in the till at the end of the day. Anyroad, we’re a bit short staffed.’
‘Sounds like I could be the answer to your prayers then, if you can sort out a little problem for me.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you had any problems, now you’re back in dear old Blighty.’
‘I had to make Lucy give up her job. She was seeing too much of that Michael Hopkins.’ Tom was relieved to see Benny nodding wisely, as if he understood. ‘But we have to live, which means work. But before I can get a job, I need papers. An identity card. Right?’
Benny frowned. ‘Not if you have your AB64. Your army book will do just as well.’
‘But I don’t have one of those either. I lost it some place.’
‘So go to ...’
‘Look, it’s not as easy as all that. Can we talk, in private?’
Benny led Tom into his office, which was cramped and not very tidy but he could at least close the door, take a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard and pour them both a nip without anyone seeing. He offered Tom a cigarette and propped himself against the desk to listen. Within seconds of Tom launching into his tale, Benny’s mouth was hanging open and he’d forgotten all about the cigarette which burned to ash between his fingers. He disposed of it and lit another.
‘Are you saying that you weren’t a POW at all?’ Benny was riveted with shock.
Tom shrugged. ‘I was wounded at Salerno, as were many others in that quagmire of mud and misery, very nearly captured but I managed to get away. You see ...’
‘You deserted!’ Despite himself, Benny was appalled. Admittedly he’d had a safe war, more uncomfortable than dangerous. Even so, he’d done his bit and he didn’t care for deserters, not one bit. Nobody did. Couldn’t stomach them at any price, as a matter of fact. Yet this was his brother-in-law, married to his sister. Even so ... ‘Don’t say any more. I don’t want to know.’
‘I didn’t say I was a deserter. You did. I said I lost my papers.’
‘You’ll never get away with it. Someone will shop you.’
‘Why should they? So far as the neighbours are concerned I was a POW, escaped, lost, and now home. End of story. There’s plenty of other chaps coming home daily with similar tales to tell. I thought
, since you were once in the same boat, seeking official documentation that is, you’d understand my situation and be prepared to help.’
‘Not me.’ Benny felt relieved he could honestly wriggle out of this obligation. ‘I never managed to sort out a licence. I’m having nothing more to do with either joinering nor bureaucracy. I’d be no help.’
‘Yes you would, by giving me a job - here. We’re family, after all, and you want your Lucy to be happy, don’t you? You wouldn’t want her to run out on our marriage.’ Benny scowled, for this was all too true. The last thing he wanted was for her to run off with Michael Hopkins, a known conchie. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to get one over on them bureaucrats for once, eh, by ignoring all the niceties of paperwork?’
Benny’s cigarette had again burned away to ash and he stubbed it out in his glass, sighing deeply and not bothering to light another. This all sounded very complicated and a bit worrying. ‘I don’t know Tom. I would help, if I could, you know that. But I’m not on my own here. There’s Mam to consider, and she always likes things above board.’
‘What about Hubert Clarke? Is he quite so particular?’
Benny shrugged. ‘Couldn’t say. You’d have to ask him.’
‘Mebbe I will. But not a word to your Lucy about this conversation, right? It’s just between you and me. Man to man. One squaddie to another.’ And since Benny thought it in his family’s best interests for Lucy to stay with her husband, rather than go off with Michael Hopkins, he reluctantly agreed. What Lucy didn’t know surely couldn’t hurt her. Who was he to judge? Salerno had been a mess. Everybody said so.
Tom wasted no time in going to see Hubert Clarke who, after considering the young man with interest and some curiosity agreed to look into the problem for him. It took little more than a week to produce the paperwork he needed.
Polly's War Page 21