‘Some of the sheets have been turned sides to middle, but there’s plenty of wear in them.’
‘The shroud-maker is always interested in decent sheets … assuming you don’t redeem them.’
How did he know? ‘How much will you give me?’
‘For the clock, twelve shillings; the candlesticks, ten shillings for the pair; the photograph frame, half a crown; with a redemption date of three months. I’ll write slips for these items while you unfold your sheets. I need to see their condition.’
‘I told you: sides to middle.’
‘I wish to see they’re unstained and free of holes. Don’t take offence, Mrs …?’ He must have caught her hesitation. ‘It’s seldom advisable to give the wrong name and address to the pawnbroker.’
‘Hibbert,’ she whispered. ‘Mrs Hibbert. 5 Lark Street.’
‘Now if you don’t mind …’
Unfolding her sheets when anyone might peer through the window made sobs rise in her throat, but she held them clenched there, determined not to give in.
The horrid business dragged on, her skin prickling as the slips mounted up.
‘And finally.’ He reached for the blue-and-white vase.
‘No!’
Her hand snaked along the counter to snatch it back. Pure instinct. Pure stupidity, more like. She needed the money. She needed every penny – every farthing. But she couldn’t part with Nan’s vase.
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ She stowed it inside the bag. ‘But there is one more thing.’
She gave him the handkerchief, watching as he unwrapped the gold ring. He glanced at her and she wanted to rip off her glove and cry, ‘That’s not my ring – this is my ring,’ just so he would know she was decent and respectable and not in need of pity.
Anger swelled inside her. Damn Stan. She had known he wasn’t the best husband in the world; his so-called drinking had brought her down to earth long since; but she had never deserved to be dragged down like this. The anger evaporated, leaving her cold and small. She felt no satisfaction as the pawnbroker counted out the money into her hand. She wanted to run and hide and wake up when everything had returned to normal.
‘Mrs Hibbert,’ he said as she turned to leave. ‘You’ve forgotten your slips. A word to the wise,’ he added when she made no move to take them. ‘If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you should leave them in a prominent place in 5 Lark Street, as proof you haven’t stolen these articles.’
Stolen? Stolen? If Stan should dare lay any blame on her, after what he had done—
She stuffed the slips in her pocket and marched out.
‘You’re late. Where the heck have you been?’
Charming. Nell walked into her mother-in-law’s hallway, outwardly composed, inwardly – well, never mind. She was ignoring the inward things now. It was the only way to cope. She threw her arms wide as Alf ran to greet her, hugging him tighter than she had ever held him before. From now on, he had only one parent. She was filled with an acute sense of resolve. She would never let him down.
‘Nanny says you’re late.’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Nanny says it’s rude to be late.’
‘Does she?’ She looked at Mrs Hibbert. How many times had this battleaxe put her in her place?
Mrs Hibbert bridled. ‘Well, it is.’
‘Almost as rude,’ Nell said quietly, ‘as telling a little lad his mummy is in the wrong.’ Turning away from the gawp of astonishment, she released Alf. ‘Fetch your things, pie-can.’
Soon they were on the pavement. Mrs Hibbert stood on her step.
‘Thank you for looking after him,’ Nell said for the final time.
Mum would have said, ‘No thanks needed. He’s a little love.’
Mrs Hibbert said, ‘Aye, well.’ Nell had never worked out what that meant, only that it made her feel beholden.
‘Give Nanny a big hug.’
Hug him, hug him, you stupid woman. This is goodbye. You’ll be sorry in days to come that all you did was pat his head.
Or maybe not. She would be too busy blaming Nell.
Nell and Alf walked home, hand in hand, and went in. Would he notice the missing things? No, but he did notice the carpet bag.
‘What’s this for, Mummy?’
‘It’s a secret for now.’
‘Can I have three guesses?’
His excitement sent a wave of guilt washing over her. How could she take him away? He worshipped Stan.
She prepared dinner. It was meant to be mince and vegetables for Alf, and the same in a pie this evening for herself and Stan. Instead she made a pie for herself and Alf, and pasties for the journey. There was still mince left. Leave it for Stan? Not while there was a more deserving cause. She opened the door. The stray appeared, prancing on tiptoe. She put the plate down.
‘Make the most of it, cat. Muggins won’t be here to feed you tomorrow.’
It was time to get ready. Her heart turned over.
‘We’re going on an adventure,’ she told Alf.
‘Is Daddy coming?’
‘No, just you and me. Do you think you could wear your other jumper on top of this one? It’s a special way of packing, so you take as much as you can. And we’ll each have a blanket round our shoulders over our coats.’
‘Like cloaks. Can I bring the sword Daddy made me?’
It was extraordinary how you could tuck your life inside a carpet bag. Extraordinary and pitiful and scary. Stan deserved to rot in hell. Clothes. Knife, fork and spoon each; plates. A towel. The sheet from Alf’s bed – and he could carry his pillowcase with some things inside. Knitting needles, some things from her sewing box. As much food as she could cram into her shopping bag. Tins of sardines and peaches. Marmite. Evaporated milk. Bread and cheese wrapped in a tea towel. The tea caddy.
And the important things: Nan’s blue-and-white vase, Mum’s pitifully small collection of letters from the boys – dear heaven, what was she doing? She couldn’t leave. How would the boys find her if they came home? She had to be here.
But they would never come home. Neither would Vi. She knew it in her head. She wasn’t stupid. But her heart was stupid. Oh, her heart was stupid.
‘Mummy, the rag-and-bone man’s here. Is this it, Mummy? Is this our adventure?’
‘Yes, pie-can. Go and have a wee, please.’
She bustled him to the back door. Her heart was building up to exploding. She must be mad. Pulling on her coat, she drew the pawnbroker’s slips from the pocket and placed them on the mantelpiece, where the clock used to be.
‘Mummy, there’s a cat asleep on the coal bunker.’
‘It’s got a full tummy, that’s why it’s asleep. Coat, scarf, gloves, please.’
‘And my sword.’
‘And your sword.’
‘How do you know the cat has a full tummy?’
‘Now, please, Alf.’
She didn’t want to leave a note, but the slips weren’t enough. She wanted Stan to know. On the back of a slip, she wrote 14 Vicarage Lane and left it on the top of the pile.
‘Oh, lummee,’ said that damn nurse’s voice in her head.
‘Who does it belong to?’
‘What?’
‘The cat.’
‘Nobody.’
‘Then who fed it?’
‘I did.’
‘Will Daddy feed it while we’re having our adventure?’
‘Time to go. Mr Fry is taking us to the station.’
‘We’re going on a train?’
Charlie Fry took their meagre luggage, then lifted Alf onto the seat. Nell climbed up beside him.
‘Ready, missus?’
‘Yes—wait!’
She jumped down. It was a stupid idea. She had far too much else to worry about. She fetched her wicker basket, opened one side of its lid and lined the inside with a hand towel. Damn cat. She should never have fed it. She opened the back door.
‘Hey, cat.’ She stroked it gently. She hadn’t touched it bef
ore, not on purpose. ‘Do you want to go on an adventure?’
Chapter Three
Manchester, March, 1924
Posy dreaded Saturdays. You were meant to love them, to spend all week at school looking forward to them. And today was sunny and fine, which should make it better, but didn’t.
She spent the morning playing out. ‘Don’t come back till dinner,’ Ma had instructed, same as every other mum in their road, in the whole country, probably. Mums were always sending you out to play – well, except for Mrs Hibbert. She was different. She spent loads of time indoors playing with her Alf and Cassie, even though Gran said she worked all the hours God sent. Sometimes Gran called Alf and Cassie ‘them poor little mites’, because their mum had to go out to work, her being a widow. Being widowed young was reet buggeration, as Posy was well aware, having heard Mrs Watson next door to Gran say so.
Eh, she did like Mrs Hibbert. Fancy a mum playing with her nippers. She was careful not to say so at home, though.
‘Spoilt brats,’ was Dad’s opinion of the Hibbert children. ‘A nancy boy and a little madam in the making.’
Dad didn’t like Mrs Hibbert. He grumbled about her having her feet under Gran’s table, though at other times he would tell Ma, ‘That Hibbert female is lucky to have a roof over her head, Hilda. The least she can do is fettle for your parents and save you traipsing over there all the time. Your place is here, looking after your husband and home.’
And daughter. Posy had waited for him to say ‘and daughter’, but he didn’t. Maybe that was what grown-ups meant when they said eavesdroppers never heard good of themselves. Not that she was an eavesdropper, as such. Eavesdroppers listened on purpose, but she couldn’t help it. With Dad and Ma sitting in the armchairs by the kitchen range, and her sleeping in the scullery, she couldn’t help overhearing. It wasn’t her fault if they assumed she fell asleep the instant she put her head down. Frankly, she wished she could. It wasn’t any great pleasure lying on the board Dad had made to go over the sink, with her legs on the wooden draining board, even though she had a cushion to go under her head and a blanket to wrap herself in.
Whatever Dad thought of Mrs Hibbert, Posy thought she was wonderful. Imagine it – a mum who had been known to play out with the children. She would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes one Saturday when she was at Gran and Gramps’s. All the kids in Finney Lane were playing out as usual and Mrs Hibbert had played cricket with them; and by crikey, could she bowl. Afterwards, at the tea table, she had said summat about growing up with older brothers.
Mrs Hibbert was the biggest kid of the lot, according to Gran, though she never said so in front of Dad; but Gran knew she could say it to Posy. She and Gran understood one another. She wished she lived closer to Gran and Gramps instead of a bus ride away, especially now Gramps was poorly.
If only they had enough room to bring Gran and Gramps to live with them, but they had only the downstairs – the front room, which was Dad and Ma’s bedroom, the kitchen and the scullery. The house belonged to Mr Warren, who lived upstairs – well, it didn’t belong to him, as in owning-belonging. He rented it and he did something called subletting the downstairs to Dad.
Dad didn’t like living under another man’s roof, but he liked it that Mr Warren had put a runner down the hall and up the stairs.
‘It shows the neighbours we’re better than they are,’ he said, as though the strip of carpet was his personal property.
He liked to go for a walk on a Saturday morning too, just in case anyone forgot that he finished work on a Friday, unlike Mr Unwin and Mr Rutledge who worked in shops, and Mr Greaves and his son who were road menders, and Mr Grey who worked in the sorting office. He never actually said that was the reason for his weekly walk, but from the way he puffed out his chest, Posy knew.
That was where Dad was now, having his Saturday morning strut.
Saturday.
Posy dreaded Saturdays.
Posy’s throat hurt, as if the tough bristles on the clothes brush were lodged in her gullet, making it difficult to eat, even though it was potato rissoles, which was one of her favourites, especially the way Ma made them, with the green bits off the spring onions, the way Gran had taught her. Gran was the best cook in Lancashire, according to Gramps.
She forced in another forkful and tried to chew, but it felt rubbery in her mouth. She ended up chewing too much and it went mushy and tasteless and she didn’t want to swallow it. She dipped her head down so Ma and Dad wouldn’t see her pulling faces.
‘Eat up, Posy.’ Ma sounded more fretful than encouraging. ‘Dad wants his pudding.’
Posy struggled on. Afterwards there was treacle pudding to plough through. Any other day, she would have emptied her bowl, but not today. After dinner, she sat at the table while Dad and Ma had a cup of tea. At last Ma removed the cups and Dad held out a ha’penny on the palm of his hand. Posy always felt as though her hand would vanish inside Dad’s, because his were big and square. He was a big man, was Dad, which was odd when you thought about it, because other dads were taller.
Off she went. Other kids were emerging from their houses; so were those who wouldn’t have had a meal because there wasn’t the money, but they went indoors anyroad for the sake of appearances. Games of marbles and hopscotch started up. A couple of lads walked up and down, arms slung round each other’s shoulders, singing, ‘Hands in the band for staggy … hands in the band for staggy …’ It wouldn’t take long for others to join in. Posy was good at staggy, darting about, keeping out of the way of getting caught; and when she was caught, she was good at running with her partner to catch others. Fleet of foot, Gran called her, which made it sound like her feet were in the navy, but Posy knew what Gran meant.
She had to pass three corner shops before she arrived at the sweet shop. Inside, it smelt of wooden floorboards and sweetness, sugary, fruity, sharp. You wouldn’t think there could be so many kinds of sweetness, but there were. The smell of the sweet shop used to make her mouth go moist with anticipation. Now it made it go dry.
Two youngsters were oohing over the penny tray with its array of sugar mice, bootlaces, shrimps, blackjacks and fruit salads. Lucky beggars. The glass jars of sweets were all very well, but everyone knew the penny tray was the best thing in the shop.
All too soon it was her turn.
‘What would you like?’ asked Mr Bennett. ‘As if I need ask,’ he added in a jokey voice.
‘A quarter of caramels, please.’
He took the jar from the shelf. Positioning himself behind the scales, he put the weight on one side and tipped the jar over the dish until the two sides were level.
How many? Please, please.
He returned the jar to its place between the rhubarb and custards and the lemon drops before flicking open a little cone-shaped white paper bag and holding it against the pointy end of the weighing dish. Posy raised herself on her toes, trying to count as the sweets tumbled into the bag. She tried every week, but she never managed.
Mr Bennett folded the top of the bag. ‘A ha’penny, please.’
Posy handed him the coin and then took the bag. It was crisp in her fingers. She said thank you and left the shop.
She carried the bag with care, not so loosely that she was in danger of dropping it, but not tightly for fear of crumpling it. She suffered the weekly temptation of opening it, but if she did, the folded-over top would lose its sharp edge. Her fingers twitched, wanting to feel the caramels through the paper, but the bag must get home in pristine condition to show she hadn’t tampered with it.
When she arrived, Dad was reading the paper and she had to wait. Her legs felt hollow and her brain buzzed. At last Dad stood up. He held out his hand, as big as a spade. Goosebumps chilled Posy’s arm as she gave him the bag. The look he gave her nailed her to the floor. He went to the table. A dark green oil cloth covered the table between meals. A glass vase with silly little pretend-handles that you would be lucky to get a finger through stood in the
middle, filled with daffodils. The paper cone rustled as Dad emptied it, letting the caramels in their see-through wrappers slide out, each one landing with a tiny tapping sound.
Here they come, one two three, please please, four five, please please …
Buggeration.
Not six, not six. Not not not six six six.
Dad looked at her and she knew how it felt to be a caramel, because when you popped one in your mouth, it went all soft and melty and you could use your tongue to stretch it. That was how the bones in her arms and legs felt now, soft and waxy and incapable. She would never be able to move again in her whole life.
‘Five caramels. When will you learn? Rupert should know what you’ve done. Go and fetch him.’
And even though her legs were soft and melty, even though she couldn’t move, Posy went.
Chapter Four
‘Nell Hibbert! Why do you do that? You want your bumps feeling.’
With a glance after Mr Flynn’s stooped figure as he loped away, and another to ensure Miss Lockwood had her back to them as she scrutinised Mildred Shaw’s seams, Nell looked across the aisle to where Elsie Jones sat behind the next sewing machine.
‘Keep your voice down.’ Her fingers hovered over the polka-dotted navy cotton, ready to feed it through the machine the instant they finished their illicit chat.
‘You carry that bloke, you know you do. You know it, he knows it, we all flaming know it. Without you handing him the work rosters on a plate, he’d end up getting the sack.’
‘And then I could step into his job, I suppose.’
‘You’d be a darned sight better at it than he is.’
‘Except I wouldn’t get it, would I? It’d go to another man.’
Why did the world assume it was just men who needed good jobs? Yes, Mr Flynn had a wife and family to support, and yes, he had left his nerves behind in Flanders, but she had responsibilities too. A young widow with children needed a decent income every bit as much as a family man did.
A Respectable Woman Page 3