So the following week when they met, she admitted to Michael she hadn’t yet found the right moment to mention divorce. He looked so hurt and disappointed that she struggled to explain her reluctance. ‘Tom is working hard, settling in nicely at his new job. I’m afraid to risk upsetting him. It isn’t easy for me, Michael. He can be up one minute and down the next. Life is so much better when he’s calm, as he seems to be at the moment.’
‘Better for you maybe,’ Michael grunted, disappointment causing an uncharacteristic bitterness to curl his lips. ‘Not for me.’
‘Are you suggesting that I didn’t really try?’
‘How would I know? What proof do I have? I’m just your fancy man.’
‘Don’t say such a thing. You know it’s not like that. You know that I love you, and want to be with you.’ Not for the world did she want Michael to suspect this foolish fear that was growing inside her that Tom was only too aware of where she went every Thursday evening, yet chose not to mention it. Why she thought that, she couldn’t say but if she was right, then it somehow made her extra wary of raising the subject of leaving him. It was as if one word from her might topple him from this pinpoint of patience upon which he balanced.
As summer progressed and the country talked of little else but the hope of a Royal wedding it became ever harder to keep Michael happy. Even Lucy began to shudder at the stained sheets they must lie on, the cobwebs festooning the cracked lamp shade above their heads and the fly-spotted mirror as she replaced her lipstick after their lovemaking. It all began to feel cheap and sordid as they furtively made sure they caught different buses back to Castlefield. Yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to walk out on a husband who was clearly unstable, damaged by a war he’d never asked to be a part of, and would allow his wife and children to live in a free world.
By August Lucy knew she had fallen pregnant. She was quite certain that Michael must be the father, perhaps because she wanted him to be. Tom had bothered her less lately so it seemed likely, but how could she be sure? How could she go to either her lover or her husband and say with any conviction or sense of joy that she bore his child. She decided to say nothing to either. After all, it might prove to be a false alarm, and the delay would give her time to think.
Delay, in fact, only made Lucy worry more. She felt herself shrink a little whenever she felt Tom’s eyes upon her, almost as if he knew what was happening inside her own body.
Afraid she might start to show, she took to wearing a corset whenever she was at home with Tom or out and about where people would see her, pulling the pink laces in quite tight. Only when she was with Michael did she leave it off, half hoping he would notice the slight thickening of her waistline and then she might at last find the courage to tell him of her suspicions.
It shamed and troubled her to discover how indecisive and weak she was becoming, as if she’d forgotten who she was and had lost all faith in herself. Why didn’t she just come out with it and tell Michael she was pregnant with his child. Tell Tom she was leaving him. Tell Polly ... Oh, lord, she couldn’t.
What she dreaded most was what her mother would say.
Not that Polly would have noticed anyway, she was too caught up in her own business. Perhaps she didn’t even care, Lucy thought, uncharitable in her misery.
While little Matt struggled to shake off a summer cold, Benny grew increasingly harassed trying to cope with a fractious baby all night while maintaining a full day’s work at the shop. Despite his own concerns, even he realised Lucy wasn’t herself when he again asked if she’d mind baby Matt for an afternoon, and she sadly refused.
‘Where’s that bright rebel of a sister I once had?’ he teased. ‘I know you’re missing Belinda. I am too, for Christ sake, but life goes on. We can’t stop in bed and grieve for ever, much as we might want to.’ He had to pause here to compose himself before continuing. ‘Couldn’t you have the babby now and then, Luce. I feel awful putting on good old Doris all the time.’
‘It’s not that. It’s - it’s Tom. He doesn’t like me working. He thinks I have enough to do.’
‘Ask him again,’ Benny argued. ‘Use your feminine charms.’ Lucy merely looked at him and knew, deep in her heart, that the longer she put off confronting Tom about anything, the less likely she would ever to find the courage.
In the first week of September, Lucy called upon her mother at the warehouse. Polly showed her usual pleasure at seeing her daughter but barely paused in her labours of setting up a new loom with her mate, Maisie Wright, except to ask if she wanted a job as a spool setter, as she’d be needing another.
Lucy thanked her for the offer, wishing fervently she could accept but knowing Tom would never agree. Besides, if it was true and there was a baby on the way, what would be the point? She felt desperate to share the agony of her suspicions with someone who cared, but Polly was too busy explaining the process to listen.
‘See here, each square on the pattern sheet has been given a number relating to the particular shade of wool to be used, a total of two hundred and fifty-two for the pattern width. Then we set out the correct shade of bobbins on to this spool table, in rows of colours which correspond to the pattern of squares. Clever eh?’
‘Mam, can I just have a word.’
‘Course you can m’cushla. Then these threads see, will be wound in short lengths on to spools and then taken over to the loom for weaving into carpet. Isn’t that clever? You’d learn it in no time.’ Polly seemed oblivious to her daughter’s distress. When Lucy didn’t respond, she glanced up, perhaps noticing for the first time her daughter’s pale cheeks and pinched expression. Polly’s shrewd gaze narrowed in that familiar way. ‘I was forgetting Tom’s views on women working. You’ll have to take that husband of yours in hand. He’s living in the past, so he is. The war has changed all that nonsense. Talk to him, Lucy. Getting a job would do you good, instead of being cooped up in the house all day. It might put a bit of colour in your cheeks. Explain that to him.’
‘I’ve tried. The thing is - it isn’t simply Tom. Actually I’m ...’
‘Aw, give me the right thread for goodness sake, Maisie. This job’s difficult enough as it is.’ Polly wiped the sweat off her brow. ‘It’s number 37 not 34. The pale blue. Keep your mind on the job and not on your new chap,’ Polly teased her friend. ‘Sorry love, what were your saying?’
‘The problem is ...’
‘Aw Maisie, will ye keep hold of it. Hadn’t I just threaded it through the flippin’ hole.’
Lucy suddenly yelled at Polly. ‘You talk to him. I can’t. He just won’t listen. Matter of fact, nobody ever listens to a word I have to say.’ Whereupon she turned on her heel and stalked away, head in the air. Polly stopped threading wool to gaze after her daughter in startled surprise.
‘What can be eating her? Did she get out of bed the wrong side?’ Polly shook her head in despair, pushing back a lock of hair with a tired hand before picking up the wool again and threading it through the correct slot. She longed to rush after Lucy, to ask what was wrong but this task couldn’t wait. It was desperately important that they get the loom running. Knowing it was essential that the business prosper, she’d invested heavily in this third new loom, stretching herself to the limit in order to meet the orders she had waiting. She wouldn’t be so strapped for cash if so much money wasn’t tied up in dratted furniture that wasn’t selling near fast enough for Polly’s liking. ‘What a trial life is at times.’
‘It is indeed, and then you die,’ Maisie agreed.
Polly made it her business to keep up to scratch on everything that was going on in her family and, in spite of Charlie’s advice not to interfere, could rarely resist doing so. She was always ready to take up the cudgels on their behalf and fight all comers. But now she took note of his wise words and left well alone.
If Lucy had got herself into some sort of a muddle then she must, as both Minnie and Charlie insisted, get herself out of it. What could she do to help the daft eejit anyway? Benny had
a battle of his own to fight and was waging it well. She admired him for the care he took of his son, and for the work he was putting into the business. Shouldn’t she be the happiest woman in the whole world to have him here with her at last? Yet she felt swamped by worry.
Although some of their customers came into the new shop by chance while out and about in the street, most came via the credit club operated by Hubert. In many ways this was an advantage. It was a sure market, necessitating very little in the way of advertising. They were paid within thirty days for every sale, no matter how long it might take the customer to pay Hubert on a weekly basis. And if customers got behind in their payments, or did a moonlight flit, which was common enough in these parts, this would be dealt with by the ubiquitous Ron. Polly suffered no financial loss at all. In addition, the profit margins were excellent. It was largely because of this side of the business that she was able to expand her carpet manufacturing side quite so rapidly.
Because of these benefits, Polly was reluctant to complain to Hubert when she experienced difficulties. Inevitably some items moved less quickly than others, while some wouldn’t shift at all. Right at the start he’d assured her that he had other outlets in the city as well as in Rochdale, Stockport and Bolton, so could easily move goods on to there. Unfortunately, he consistently failed to do so and Polly became increasingly frustrated and finally infuriated by the delays.
‘You’ll have to tackle him about it,’ she curtly told Benny one day, after counting sixteen unsold balloon-backed chairs. ‘Nobody wants these Victorian monstrosities. Haven’t I told him so a dozen times.’
‘He’s asked us to give them a proper chance.’
‘So we have. Far longer than any other shop would tolerate.’ She smoothed a hand over the chair seats. ‘Feel that leather. It’s cracking already. Cheap, that’s what they are, just like those dratted book shelves which are coming apart at the seams. Tell him I’m still waiting for compensation on losses there too. No wonder we aren’t selling these chairs. Manchester folk have too much sense than to buy outdated rubbish. See you get rid of them. If you don’t talk to Hubert, I will.’
She could tell by the way Benny’s mouth folded into a tight line that he didn’t care for her blackmail tactics.
‘Don’t sulk, laddie. Business is business. Sale or return means exactly what it says - if they don’t sell you return them. Have ‘em packed up this minute and Tom can drive them to Hubert’s warehouse this very afternoon.’
The next morning on her way to work Polly called again at the shop and there the chairs still were, all lined up against the wall as if they were at a ball waiting for some Victorian young ladies to recline upon them. She felt a tide of hot-blooded Irish fury bubble through her veins as Benny patiently explained how Ron Clarke, in charge at the time Tom had called, had absolutely refused to unlock the stockroom doors so he’d been forced to bring the chairs back again.
‘Something about the proper paperwork not being done.’
‘Proper paperwork? Sure and won’t I give the pair of them proper paperwork indeed.’
Benny wagged a placating finger. ‘Mam, don’t interfere. This is my part of the business remember, and Hubert Clarke is my father-in-law, er - ex father-in-law. I’ll deal with the matter.’
‘ Then see that you do,’ Polly warned him tartly. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, if it wasn’t one of her children creating havoc in her life, it was the other.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once the new loom had been set up to her satisfaction Polly spent a quiet morning in the office pouring over the accounts, which were becoming a real source of concern. She wished now that she’d waited a bit longer before taking on a third loom, even if the manufacturing side of her business was doing well. It was the retail part which troubled her.
Charlie was perking up, insisting on getting out and about more as the pain subsided a little and Polly was glad about that. But the responsibility of being the main bread winner in the family still lay heavy upon her.
After a quick sandwich lunch, the first of several young girls answering the advertisement for spool setters began to arrive and she went to interview them. This took an hour of her valuable time and even when she’d set two girls on, neither of them much over thirteen since they’d just left school, Polly wished with all her heart that Lucy too would come into the business. She would have made more of the job than the pair put together. What an old stick-in-the-mud Tom was, to be sure. Should she have a word with him herself? she wondered.
Charlie was against the idea. ‘So how would you speak to him, as his employer or his mother-in-law? Leave well alone or you’ll make things worse for Lucy.’
That was hard to do as Polly was only too aware she’d neglected the girl lately, fussing about her own affairs when all the time she might need her. Something was wrong. She could sense it. What had Minnie said about Tom? Shifty! Polly promised herself a private word with Lucy, at the very first opportunity.
The next morning she put one of the young girls with Maisie to learn about spool setting, the other she took over to Joyce, who checked faults in the newly woven carpets; created because the hessian hadn’t properly been woven in or gaps had been left where they shouldn’t, or the warp had broken.
‘Show her how to mark the faults, Joyce. If she cottons on to that in six or seven weeks and watches you carefully, I’ll mebbe let her have a go at mending them. Work hard and you’ll be happy enough here, lass. Though the pay’s terrible, isn’t it Joyce?’
‘Crippling,’ Joyce agreed, and took the young girl under her wing, grinning widely.
It was half past seven by the time Polly got home. Charlie was trying to read the paper and complaining his eyes weren’t focusing properly. ‘I think I need specs.’
‘You’ve already got some. Put them on.’
‘They don’t work any more. I need new ones. New eyes too,’ he cheerfully told her.
Polly sighed, wondering if he’d given any thought to what they might eat. Her stomach felt as if it were full of razor blades, all sawing at each other, yet she felt too exhausted to do anything about it. ‘No part of your old body seems to work as it should according to you. I’d ask for a complete refit if I wasn’t so fond of the old one,’ and she kissed him on the nose.
‘How’s it gone at the warehouse today?’ he enquired, setting down his newspaper and fetching a dish of hot pot from the stove.
The steaming aroma made her juices run as he spooned it out. Polly mumbled a reply as she gratefully forked the first load into her hungry mouth, the meat so tender he’d clearly had it in the oven for half the day. ‘Ooh bless ye, this is good. Unlucky in business but lucky in love, eh?’
Charlie chuckled. ‘Shop not going too well then?’
‘Don't ask.’ Steam issued forth on her breath and it wasn’t till she’d half emptied her plate and sated some of her hunger that Polly addressed the question properly. ‘I’m going to see Hubert Clarke first thing tomorrow to tackle him about this furniture, whether our Benny likes it or not. A deal’s a deal and if he promises sale or return, that’s what I mean to have.’
Polly and Charlie spent all that evening going over the accounts yet again; bank statements, petty cash books, details of loan payments and profit ratios and their worst fears were confirmed. If the business was to prosper and all payments were to be met, drastic action was called for. But the next day, faced with Hubert Clarke’s solid figure, he proved to be as arrogant and unruffled as ever, setting out to pacify and urge Polly not to panic, to show faith and courage in the enterprise.
‘It’s not courage I lack, it’s money,’ she bluntly informed him, planting herself in his office as if she’d taken root there. ‘If you don’t stand by your promises, Councillor Clarke, then I’ll be forced to take my business elsewhere.’
He smiled at her, moustache twitching, only the dark eyes beneath the ridge of bushy eyebrows giving any indication of his irritation. ‘Nay Polly lass. Don’t get in a lather. It’ll
all come out in the wash as they say.’ He chortled good-humouredly at his own silly joke.
Polly frowned. ‘It’ll have to come out somewhere for sure. I’m not going on like this. Haven’t I shown the patience of a saint, to be sure? Over twelve months I’ve had those chairs and sold only two. You promised me faithfully that you’d take ‘em back, yet still I’m waiting and still you’re delivering more stuff each and every week. Incidentally, that sideboard Benny ordered the other week never arrived, and we’ve a customer waiting.’
‘I think you must be mistaken. That lad of yours must’ve got in another muddle over paperwork. Ron delivered it personally.’ He smiled benignly at her, his expression seeming to challenge her to deny it, which Polly most certainly did.
‘I don’t think so. We’re very particular with our invoicing and docketing. I’ve too much money tied up in stock and some of it must go.’
‘Go?’
‘Don’t you deliver stuff whether we order it or not? We’ll have furniture coming out of our ears soon, so we will. It’s not good enough, Hubert.’
‘There’s no need to worry lass,’ he assured her, coming from behind his great desk to pat her shoulder with a placating hand. He went on to promise that Ron would persuade one or two of their better off customers to take the balloon chairs or, failing that, he’d mebbe agree to her returning half a dozen. When Polly insisted he should take the lot, due to the state of the leather seats he instantly backtracked, saying he couldn’t take defective goods, not at any price.
‘But they were in that state when you delivered them,’ Polly insisted, shocked by his attitude. ‘And what about those bookcases? Like cardboard they are, coming apart at the joints.’
‘Happen they’ve had careless handling in your shop,’ Hubert gently scolded, as if she were a naughty schoolgirl. Polly felt a strong urge to smack his arrogant face but managed to curb her temper and leave without doing any such thing. She did bang the door rather louder than she should on her way out. Later, she gritted her teeth with frustration when she told Benny that the chairs would need to be reduced in price and sold off at whatever they could get for them.
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