by Annie Murray
Silently they let her through as if she were royalty. She heard someone say, ‘It’s the child’s mother, the poor cow.’
A man was standing in front of his cart holding the bridle of a heavy black horse. Dora always remembered from that day the smell of the sweating animal, its damp heaving flanks in the sunlight and the stunned expression on the man’s ill-shaven face.
At his feet lay the shape of her child. Even in the few moments since it had happened someone had run into their house and brought out an old torn net curtain and laid it over Violet, covering her completely.
Dora saw the ghostly features of her little girl’s face through the two layers of net and the blood soaking into the slippery material. ‘What d’you go and cover her face for?’ she shouted.
She knelt down quickly and pulled back the soft curtain. Her face was expressionless as a stone as she saw the deep wound in Violet’s skull and the shards of bone sticking out at grotesque angles. She was dead. Clearly, from the second that the horse’s hoof had smashed into the right side of her head she had had no chance of being anything else.
The man with the cart was distraught. ‘I hadn’t a chance, Missis. She was just there, under the horse. I never even saw her till it were too late.’
Dora nodded at him numbly. She felt no anger towards him. At this moment she felt nothing. She had no idea why Violet had been there when she should have been in the yard. Gladys Pye appeared and led her home. Someone else carried the child’s body back to the house.
When Sid came home he stood looking down at her as she sat unmoving at the table. He put his face close up to hers, his breath stinking of beer.
‘Can’t even look out for your own kid now, can you?’
Three days later Rose was banging hard on the door of the vicarage.
When Catherine opened the door and saw the girl’s pinched face and the look of desperation in her eyes she immediately led her inside and sat down with her. Ronald arrived as well, back from conducting a baptism service.
‘It’s me mom,’ Rose said, starting to cry as the words came out of her mouth. All the anguish of the past days started to pour out of her. ‘Our Violet was killed by a horse on Wednesday.’
Catherine and Ronald looked at each other, appalled, but something stopped Catherine from following her instinct to put her arms round the girl. Rose was a warm person, but there was still a self-contained, dignified core to her that they’d seen in the small child they had carried in from the rain.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ronald said. He knelt down beside her. Catherine watched, fascinated. For once she couldn’t think what to do and Ronald, gentle and sympathetic, knew instinctively.
‘But it’s my mom,’ Rose repeated. ‘She hasn’t said a word since Wednesday when it happened. She just sits there as if something’s gone – you know – in her head. My dad’s blamed her for Violet going. She ran out of the court when she wasn’t s’posed to, on some prank or other. Dad says her getting killed’s all Mom’s fault. But she won’t say nothing. She’ll hardly move or eat or anything.’
She cried harsh, frightened tears.
Ronald suddenly stood up as if something had been decided. ‘I’ll come down and see her,’ he said.
‘You?’ Rose and Catherine spoke exactly together.
‘Yes, I,’ he said and smiled wryly at their astonishment. ‘After all, I’m supposed to be a messenger of the Good News, remember. And I presume you came to us for some sort of help, Rose? Well, this is the best I can do.’
Rose, who was suddenly terrified that Sid might be in when they got home, had no idea how much inner turmoil the vicar was experiencing as once again they walked together along the road towards town and Catherine Street. Rose’s head reached above his elbow now, but she still had to make little skips to keep up with his long strides.
Ronald knew this was going to be a decisive morning in his life. He had realized gradually over the past years that he was in the wrong place. That his work in his present parish was not where his heart lay. He had encouraged Rose to tell him more and more about her life in the courtyards, of the conditions they lived in. Now he was going to visit the kind of place which drew him. Of course he could have chosen to walk round the Birch Street area at any time, but something had inhibited him. He would have been merely a voyeur. Now he had a real reason to go.
When George opened the door, Dora saw Rose standing outside with an enormous man, his dark clothes topped by a dog collar. She knew at once who he must be. At any other time she would have felt like giving Rose a good hiding for bringing him at all, let alone with no chance to get the place spick and span first. But at this moment she couldn’t have cared less.
Dora stood up silently. She looked more gaunt and pale than ever. Ronald saw just how small were the houses in which so many large families had to live, how mean and cramped.
‘Mom,’ Rose said. ‘This is the Reverend, Diana’s dad. I told him about our Violet and he wanted to come and see you himself.’
Dora looked at this stranger whose head nearly touched the ceiling, and uttered her first words for days. ‘You’d better make a cuppa tea, Rose,’ she said. ‘Kettle’s boiled.’ And then to Ronald: ‘Have a seat.’
Ronald sat down on a wooden chair at the table, carefully avoiding a blob of congealed porridge on the side of it. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’
He felt foolish as he spoke, knowing that apart from death itself and the Means Testers from the Parish he was the greatest intrusion they’d had for years. He could hear the baby crying upstairs.
Dora folded her arms across herself as if to hide her breasts. ‘Go and get him, Rose. I’ll have to feed the babby, if you’ll excuse me,’ she said to Ronald in a flat, lifeless voice.
Rose carried Harry down. He was a bonny four-month-old who looked as if he’d taken all the nourishment from his mother. He was beginning to look rather like Sam.
‘Now,’ Dora said decisively to Rose. ‘You can take this lot outside and leave us.’
She sat down with Harry on her lap, covering herself modestly with an old cardigan as she fed him. Rose, bemused, shoved Grace and George out of the door.
When the children had closed the door behind them Ronald said, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about little Violet, Mrs Lucas.’
The moment he spoke he saw her eyes fill with tears. ‘All I can think of is how all her life I’ve been that worried by everything I’ve hardly had a kind word to spare for her.’
She felt very shy, sitting feeding her child and blarting in front of this huge, educated stranger. But she could also feel an enormous sympathy emanating from Ronald Harper-Watt. And he had two things that she needed: distance from her own situation, so she could talk to him, and time. His job allowed him the opportunity to sit and listen.
‘You’re a good mother, Mrs Lucas,’ Ronald said gently. ‘You mustn’t think otherwise. Rose often talks about you – fondly.’ He’d noticed that more and more recently. ‘And it’s easy to tell you always do the best you can for your children. I know things haven’t been easy for you. I’m sure Violet knew you cared for her very much.’
Dora looked up at him, at his wide, handsome face, the brown hair swept back from his face and his kind, grey eyes. He was the first truly gentle man she could remember meeting.
She began to talk. She had sat in her house for three days feeling she was losing her mind. She had been afraid to speak for fear of what might come out – mad, raving gibberish so that she’d have to be locked away and never let out again.
For about twenty minutes Ronald didn’t speak at all. He sat listening attentively, watching Dora as she talked while the baby sucked and sucked at her breast.
She told him everything, from the early, happy days of her marriage to the present, how her once loving husband forced himself on her several times every month and she had almost no feeling left for him in her heart. She spared nothing, talking entirely out of her own need as if it was her last chance.
Final
ly she stopped and prepared more tea, laying Harry down on a chair. He had fallen asleep with a streak of milk still wet on one plump cheek.
‘So that’s my life, Mr Harper-Watt,’ Dora said, pouring more water into the pot. ‘Not much to show for it, is there? Sorry you had to listen to it all, but it’s been a relief to have a talk.’
‘No.’ Ronald sat forward to emphasize what he wanted to say. ‘You don’t realize. It’s been a privilege.’
She noticed suddenly that his large hands were trembling, and she felt disarmed by it.
‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘you’ve probably helped me more than I could ever help you. You see, I’ve been feeling very – out of place, shall we say? – in my work. I’m thinking of moving to work in a parish such as your own – like St Joseph’s.’
Dora stared at him. ‘You’re coming to St Joseph’s?’
‘Well, no. But I’d like a parish near the middle of the – a – city. In places which aren’t quite so . . .’ He was lost for tactful words.
‘In the slums, you mean. Well, if you’re asking me, I’d say do it. I’ll be frank with you, Mr Harper-Watt. I’m not a churchgoer myself, but I’ve been to more than the odd wedding and funeral at St Joseph’s and that Reverend Gasbag, or whatever he calls himself, he ain’t living in the same world as the rest of us. We could do with someone a bit more human like you.’
Ronald sat back, feeling he’d received a great compliment.
‘And by the way.’ Now Dora had found her tongue again she couldn’t seem to stop using it. ‘I’ve never thanked you and your wife for all your kindness to my Rose. You’ve done a lot for her. And your Diana’s a good kid. I thought it wasn’t on at first, them two being pals, but now I’m glad it’s happened.’ And she almost smiled.
‘We think Rose is a marvellous girl,’ Ronald said, sipping his cup of extremely sweet tea, and to his surprise enjoying it. ‘We’re all very fond of her. She’s a bright child, you know. Given the right opportunities she could go far.’
Even as he spoke, Ronald realized that he was talking out of a different world. Opportunities were not things that had arisen much in Dora’s life. She just nodded at him.
When he got up to leave they shook hands, warmly.
‘Thank you for talking to me,’ he said. ‘And for the advice.’
‘It were good of you to come,’ Dora said bravely. ‘I know I can’t sit moping here forever. Life has to go on, and I’ve got my young genius to look out for!’
In silence Rose watched his tall figure walk across the court. Just before disappearing through the entry he turned and waved to her. At that moment she really thought he must be an angel.
Seven
July 1936
‘I’ve got a job!’
They were Rose’s first words as soon as Diana opened the door.
‘Jolly well done.’ Diana beamed at her. ‘I’m so glad.’
Catherine came into the hall to add her congratulations, looking as stately as ever. She was wearing a cool, cream dress that flattered her curves and her thick hair was pinned up in a fashionable style round her head.
‘Come and have a glass of home-made lemon,’ she said to Rose. ‘We were just sitting outside.’
They went out to the back of the house where there was a blue-brick terrace facing the old walled garden. Tendrils of wisteria hung down from the house and the garden felt warm and languid as bees buzzed round the hollyhocks and tiny yellow roses climbing the garden wall.
Judith looked up from the book she was reading on her lap. She was quite unlike Diana and William, with a smaller frame and dark hair and eyes. ‘Hello Rose,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re all going to talk now.’ She slipped off the chair and went to lie with the book on her stomach on the grass.
‘Come on, tell us about the job,’ Diana said as she sat down. ‘Was it the first one?’
‘Yes,’ Rose said proudly. ‘My first interview. It’s at Lazenby’s Butcher’s Remnants Company near the market. They deal with all the bits of the animals that people don’t want to eat. The whole name of the firm is Lazenby’s Butcher’s Remnants Co. and then in brackets, Skin, Hide, Fat, Wool etc.,’ she recited proudly.
‘Goodness, that sounds a bit gruesome,’ Catherine said. She was afraid Rose had jumped impulsively into the first job that would employ her simply because she was so anxious not to go into service or on to the factory floor. Which was in fact not far from the truth.
‘It does stink round there a bit,’ Rose admitted. ‘But I’m their new office girl. I start on Monday. And the offices are ever so nice. They’re upstairs above the yard.’ She was all puffed up with pride.
‘So what did you have to do?’ Diana asked, dipping shortbread into her glass. She saw Catherine frown at her.
‘There was two lads up for the job as well,’ Rose said, starting to enjoy herself. ‘And Mr Lazenby – that’s the gaffer of course – he said we had to show him how we could read and write. So I said to him, “I bet I can read and write better than either of them two.” And he made us write a few things down, addresses and that. And then we had to read him a bit out of a book.’
Rose had stood and read as well as she possibly could, remembering not to drop her aitches, which she could do when she thought about it, and trying to put expression in her voice.
‘And when I’d finished,’ she giggled, ‘Mr Lazenby said to me, “It’s all right, we’re not here to put on a Shakespeare play, you know. We just want a kid for round the office.” ’
But one of the boys had scarcely been able to read and write at all and the other, who seemed to be terrified of Rose, had read slowly, stumbling over the words. And Rose knew she had left school with an excellent reference from Miss Whiteley.
‘So he said the job was mine!’ she said. She didn’t tell them the last part, that Mr Lazenby had said, ‘Right. You can start Monday. You’ll be getting eight and six a week.’
‘Excuse me,’ Rose said politely. ‘But I thought it was ten shillings you was offering.’
‘Oh yes.’ Mr Lazenby stretched his jowly face into a smile. ‘But you’re a lass. We’ve only ever taken on boys before.’
Rose was a bit put out, but eight and six seemed a good amount to be taking home. Besides, she was proud to be the first girl that Lazenby’s had ever employed.
‘And I was thinking,’ she chattered on, not noticing in her excitement that the others were very subdued. ‘Just because I’ve left school doesn’t mean I can’t go on learning. You can teach me about all the things you’re learning at school, can’t you?’ At this moment, Rose felt she could do anything.
Diana was looking lovely in a pale blue dress, her wavy hair tied up in a bouncy ponytail. Her skin was tanned from playing tennis and sitting out in the garden. But Rose suddenly noticed her miserable expression. Emerging from her own preoccupations she looked across at Catherine and saw she too had a solemn face.
‘What’s the matter?’ She tried joking: ‘If I ever saw two people looking as if they’ve lost tuppence and found a farthing, you’re the ones!’
‘Rose,’ Catherine said, smiling kindly at her. She held her glass on the wood of the tabletop and slowly circled it round. ‘Don’t think we’re not delighted that you’ve found a job – and so quickly. It’s marvellous news. It’s just that we have some news as well, and we’re not sure yet whether it’s good news or not.’
‘You may not be sure,’ Diana said, scowling. ‘But I am.’
‘Well go on – what is it?’ Rose spread her long dark fingers on top of the table as if preparing herself for a shock.
Gently Catherine explained that Ronald had been looking for a new kind of job, and that as the diocese had not been able to place him in Birmingham he had accepted a post in Manchester.
‘Manchester?’ Rose was completely knocked for six. It might as well have been Australia. She wasn’t even precisely sure where Manchester was. ‘But what about your school, Di? And your pals? I’ll never see you again if you a
ll go up there.’
Rose’s eyes filled with tears, and Diana was already crying.
‘It’s really rotten,’ she sobbed angrily. ‘Daddy decides he wants a different job and the rest of us have to change everything.’
‘Look darling,’ Catherine said to her outraged daughter. ‘I know you think it’s not what you want, but you won’t know until you’ve gone and tried it. And when you’ve settled in, I’m quite sure you’ll make friends every bit as good as you’ve got here.’
She wasn’t aware of the appalling tactlessness of her last remark and its effect on their visitor.
But Diana said, ‘It’ll be beastly. And I’ll never find another friend like Rose. How can you even think it?’ She got up and put her slim arm round Rose’s shoulders. Rose’s lips were trembling with the effort of not crying.
‘Oh, goodness, Rose,’ Catherine corrected herself, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean – oh my poor child, I’m so sorry. How awfully rude of me. But Diana will be able to come down on the train in the holidays and visit.’
‘What, and sleep at our house?’ Rose asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
Catherine chose to ignore the girl’s tone, knowing she was upset. ‘Not necessarily. There are other friends of ours whom she could stay with.’
Rose stared into her lap. A tight, mutinous feeling was rising up inside her. She wanted to scream and throw all the glasses off the table. Horrible things were happening again that she couldn’t do anything about, just as she thought she was beginning to get somewhere. Her joy at having found her job was for the moment completely wiped away.
‘Listen girls,’ Catherine said, looking at the two sullen and tearful faces in front of her. She leaned one of her plump elbows on the table. ‘I know it’s bad news and none of us is pleased about it. Judith and William are upset as well. But we’ve all got to make the best of it. And it’s not happening for a couple of months yet, so let’s all be brave and enjoy the time we have got here together, shall we?’
Catherine changed the subject, talking about the civil war that was breaking out in Spain, and how she felt that Mr Stanley Baldwin was not doing any better than the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald had at tackling the problem of people out of work. Both the girls realized she was trying to say how small their problem was compared to some of the big things going on in the world. But of course that didn’t make them feel any better. Already it felt as if things were not the same. And Rose had a feeling that now they never would be.