But Nan, though certainly dramatic (always) wasn’t silly. She saw that marriage to Arthur would drag Lily down just as marriage to Dave had already dragged Jean, and Jean was far tougher than Lily. Those rooms which even Margaret Ann had found miserable had appalled Nan – she couldn’t bear to see Jean confined to them with one baby already and another on the way and very little money to manage with. ‘What a life!’ Nan had exclaimed, and noticed Jean did not rush to claim that her life was actually what she wanted, if not wonderful. Lily’s fate, in Nan’s gloomy estimation, would be worse because at least Jean had loved Dave with the requisite amount of passion, and they were a pair. They liked the same things, they had a similar outlook. Nan was damned if Lily and Arthur had. Jack, who admired Lily too (he thought nothing of Jean), said Arthur had not the class for Lily. She could do better for herself than marry a manual worker in a factory. The worst of it, both Nan and Jack agreed, was that Lily had thought about this marriage so carefully and for so long and could not be accused of not weighing up the pros and cons. She’d weighed them and made her bargain, trading a job she loved and good money, and a comfortable home with her mother, whose company she found more than congenial, for marriage to a man she cared for, but for whom she did not feel overwhelming attraction, in order to fulfil her destiny as a woman and have those children for whom she yearned.
Nan made Lily’s wedding-dress, not white, though there was no one more virginal than Lily, but a pale blue silk gown, long, with a soft draped collar, a graceful dress to suit graceful, modest Lily. The hat was, Nan felt, a little unfortunate, too close-fitting and too low on the brow for Lily. Her own was much more flattering, but then it had come from Newcastle where she got all her hats – in Nan’s opinion Carlisle did not know about hats – and Lily wouldn’t run to the expense of it. Nan thought her own dress, as bridesmaid, nicer too, a shimmering deeper blue taffeta with a deep V-neckline. Arthur was smart in a new three-piece suit and a startlingly white shirt with a collar stiff enough to cut his neck and a blue tie which, rather sweetly, matched Lily’s dress. Margaret Ann had a new dress, not made by Nan but bought for her by Lily at Bullough’s. Privately, Nan thought it a disaster – her mother was now too stout for spots, for mercy’s sake, and the double chiffon it was made of clung unattractively. It was not formal enough for a bride’s mother either. Arthur’s mother, Agnes, though not at all elegant or good-looking, looked better in a simple light-weight grey woollen suit and cream blouse, with a dark cream hat. It was with a struggle that Nan kept these thoughts to herself (only to trot them out, whenever Lily’s wedding was mentioned, for years and years to come).
Margaret Ann gave a wedding breakfast, a much happier affair than Jean’s had been. No one on Dave’s side had been at his wedding, but Arthur’s were well represented at his. His parents were not the easiest of guests. George, his father, was so taciturn and abrupt he made his son seem positively sophisticated, and Agnes, his mother, was excitable and nervous. Margaret Ann had been to have tea with them in their house in Richardson Street on the far side of Denton Holme. George Forster was only a fitter at Pratchitt’s but he’d bought his own house through judicious gambling on horses. His brother was a bookie and rather to Margaret Ann’s alarm – gambling was almost as bad as fornication and drunkenness – young Arthur was proud of having obliged his uncle by doing a bit of ‘running’ (laying bets) for him. Agnes was clearly under George’s thumb and was always on the lookout for his approval. She only spoke freely when he was not around, but then at least she was extravagant with the compliments about Lily. She had no daughters, only Arthur and his young brother Bob, to her everlasting regret. She described most piteously to Margaret Ann how she used to sit in her parlour on Sunday afternoons crying with envy as she watched other women walking past with their daughters and craving her own. Lily was everything she had wished for and she would treat her as hers.
Once Lily had married, Margaret Ann was living by herself. Jean was in Motherwell, Nan in Glasgow (best not to mention exactly where or with whom) and even the lodger, cousin Florrie, now had her own place. She was sixty-two years old and her health was beginning to trouble her. More and more she rested, as she was now well able to do, but it didn’t suit her. She said she was plagued with thoughts when she rested. Lily asked what kind of thoughts. What was worrying her? Surely she had no worries of any great importance? None to confess, anyway. Lily imagined her mother was fretting about Nan and blamed her sister for being the cause of their mother’s secret anxiety which rose to the surface of her mind whenever she rested.
Surely, though, the ‘plague’ was Alice? Alice, who lived so near to Bowman Street still, in Brook Street, who could hardly have failed to use the same shops as her mother, walk the same route to the town, board the same trams. And yet still, after thirty-eight years, she was not acknowledged. Unless Margaret Ann had visits from Alice without anyone knowing, or unless she didn’t want to rest alone in her empty house because it made her vulnerable to this first daughter she went on spurning? There was no Tom to act as her representative, as he had done at Alice’s marriage, no Tom to protect her from guilt or ease her resentment. But what kept Alice, and had kept her all these years, from forcing her presence on her half-sisters? Was she paid to stay away? By whom? Had a promise been exacted that she would make no contact? But how?
Plenty, in any case, to plague Margaret Ann’s restful afternoon naps.
V
Lily’s contact with her mother remained very close. She was an exemplary married daughter, visiting her mother at least twice a week and inviting her to her own home for Sunday dinner. Nearly always Arthur would be mending someone’s car over the weekend and he would go to pick up his mother-in-law and take her and Lily to church in the evening. The church was St Paul’s now, the sister church of St Mary’s which had been demolished. Lily, with her beautiful contralto voice, was still in the choir there and Margaret Ann loved to hear her sing.
Those Sunday visits to 44 Orton Road were happy ones. Lily was so organized, the dinner always on time and well cooked. And the house had a pleasant atmosphere. It seemed light and bright after Bowman Street, which in the manner of old terraced houses was rather dark. The newly distempered walls of Orton Road were refreshingly modern compared to the heavy wallpapered rooms Margaret Ann was used to, and though Lily’s furniture was very basic it was all new and added to the general freshness of everything. There was a dining-table with extending leaves (said to be oak but Margaret Ann doubted it) bought for £3 5s. od.; four dining-room chairs (9s. 11d.); a sideboard (£4 10s. od.); a bedroom suite (wardrobe, bedstead and dressing-table, all for £11 19s. od.); two armchairs (£6 15s. od.) and a settee covered in leatherette, not actually new but as good as, given to Lily by her Aunt Sarah. The whole house had been furnished for under thirty pounds, not counting the rag rugs and the strip of stair carpet. Arthur’s parents had given him and Lily a china tea service as their present, and Margaret Ann herself gave them a canteen of cutlery. Everyone thought the young married couple were well set up, especially considering the times.
Those times were hard. It was 1931 and business was bad throughout the whole country. Arthur had moved from Pratchitt’s to the Metal Box factory (where he worked as a fitter, maintaining machines) which was now on short time. Men came applying for work every day and were turned away. Lily didn’t know how much Arthur earned – in common with most men, of whatever social standing, he didn’t reveal his wage to his wife – but she knew it wasn’t as much as she had been earning herself in the Public Health Department where, at £4 10s., she’d been nearly as well paid as the chief clerk himself. Arthur was earning £2 4s. when he married Lily and of that he kept only the shillings and gave her the two pounds for all housekeeping and bills and every expenditure. It was quite a shock for her to know she must manage and try also to save, all on two pounds a week – she had been used to having two pounds to herself for some time before she married, giving the balance to her mother. But she was a good man
ager and had seen her own mother manage on far less and never once get into debt. The rent was six shillings a week, collected by the rent man every Monday and always ready for him, on top of the rent book, and coal, gas and electricity took another six shillings. So it needed no mathematical genius to see that this left £1 8s. for everything else. Lily did sums all the time to make that amount go furthest. Bacon was 1s. 6d. a pound and Arthur was heavy on bacon. His mother had stressed that he had to have bacon every morning and he liked it well done but not frizzled. Lily thought this a great extravagance. She was sure other men couldn’t be feasting on bacon every morning, but since she had lived her adult life in an all-female household she wasn’t certain. There was the bacon and then the beef, a weekly joint of about three pounds in weight at 1s. 4d. a pound in money; eggs at 1s. 6d. a dozen; and butter at 1s. 5d. a pound. These were the staples, plus bread, but that was cheap and she baked it herself. Vegetables were cheap too – carrots only 2d. a pound, a cauliflower the most expensive at 5d. But her father-in-law gave them vegetables from his allotment and soon Arthur’s own would begin producing – he was a very good gardener. Arthur’s wage, then, was sufficient for the moment but the ever-apprehensive Lily always had one eye on the future and she saw clearly how she would have to give up all frivolities such as new clothes or holidays if any savings were to accrue.
Early married life was for Lily rather a sequence of giving up things. Her entire day was radically different. She had been used to rising at eight to be at her work at nine o’clock but now she rose at six-thirty and lit the fire, which Arthur had cleaned out and relaid, and put his bacon on and made his bait: sandwiches, made with thick white crusty bread and containing either potted meat or cold sausage or corned beef – Arthur had to have meat of some sort. Then she made his breakfast, the bacon and a bit of bread fried in dripping, and tea, and off he went at seven o’clock on his bike to the Metal Box factory, a good mile’s ride away. When he had gone, she got washed in the back kitchen, because that was where the sink was (the bath was for weekly use and the water for it heated only when the fire had been on long enough to heat the boiler). It was a cold room, freezing in winter. The walls were painted brick, dark green from the floor up to four feet and then a dull beige to the ceiling. She hated that green, but Arthur would paint it over later. She dressed in her morning clothes – a tweed skirt, a jumper and a pinny on top and her hair in a turban – keeping her smart office clothes for the afternoon. Then she washed the dishes, swept the floor, dusted and made the bed. If it wasn’t wash-day, she then shopped.
There was a butcher’s across the road and a general store, but she preferred to walk to a row of shops ten minutes away, liking the exercise. Once a week she went to the market and brought the joint home and any vegetables not available from the Forster allotment. She was always back well in time to have Arthur’s dinner steaming on the plate for half past twelve – or twelve twenty-four, to be precise, which Arthur always was. They had that in common, reliability, punctuality, a liking for order. Meat of some sort most days, mince or stews, and potatoes with everything, boiled, mashed or fried. When Arthur had returned to work she got changed. It was at this point in the day that she felt lost. She didn’t quite know what to do. There was mending and ironing, but these could be done in the evening. She’d remember the office and all the bustle and the sense of importance and the company, and feel suddenly detached from life, marooned, a little panic-stricken. To deal with this alarming feeling she went visiting, to her mother twice a week and to her mother-in-law the same, on different days. But though this used up her afternoons pleasantly enough, as it was intended to do, she still felt vaguely uneasy and even guilty, though there was nothing to be guilty about – this was what all married women did, if they were lucky, if they had a man to support them. But she appreciated all over again how much her job had meant to her, how she’d loved the organizing and the people, loved being part of some meaningful operation.
Arthur came home at seven o’clock, at the end of a long, hard day in the noisy factory. His overalls were filthy, every bit as greasy and dirty as Nan had envisaged when warning her sisters off marrying fitters. When he’d washed thoroughly, in the kitchen, which meant she had to try to keep the food clear of the splashings and sluicings, they had tea, a sort of high tea. Then Arthur would garden or sometimes they went for a walk, up Wigton Road and down Farmer Brown’s lonning. Arthur had sold his motor bike, his beloved two-stroke Enfield, to pay for the furniture which was a pity because if he’d still had it they could have gone out into the real country all around that end of Carlisle. Arthur had his push-bike, his Raleigh, and went for rides into the country at weekends. It wasn’t the healthy ride he went for though, it was to bet at hound trails. Lily hated him betting but if it was only with the few shillings he kept for himself she supposed he was entitled. In the winter they both listened to the wireless, though there was some clash here – Arthur liked sport, any sport, and variety and light comedy, and Lily liked hymn-singing and plays and stories and talks.
Margaret Ann told Lily to make the most of this easy time before the children started coming, and Lily tried to but she was relieved as well as happy when she became pregnant very quickly. The baby would be born in March, eleven months after she was married, a very gratifying interval. She was going to have the baby at her mother-in-law’s home, a rather odd decision but one brought about partly because of her own mother’s health – the angina attacks had begun and Margaret Ann was in no fit state to nurse either Lily or any baby – and partly because Agnes Forster was so desperate to have the thrill of her grandchild being born in her house. She craved the sort of involvement she felt she would have had with the daughter she had never produced. Margaret Ann was a little sad about not being able to look after Lily, as she had just looked after Jean when she gave birth to another boy in January, but she knew she had to be sensible. Lily was near enough for her to visit and see the baby as soon as it was born and she had to be grateful for that. She rather hoped Lily would have a girl, but it was a boy, born on 20 March. Three grandsons now, and inevitably she thought of Tom and how thrilled he would have been – three fine, strong, blond boys. It was hard for Jean to come to Carlisle, what with two babies and the expense to consider, but at the end of that summer she managed a trip through and Margaret Ann had the gratification of having all three grandsons on her knee. Only Nan to be settled and then she said she could die happy. Her job would be done, another family cycle complete. She had founded her own family and seen its members do the same in turn and that was what a woman’s life was about.
If memories of another member of her family, of Alice, ever troubled her at this time of near contentment she did not speak of them. Alice, whether her mother knew it or not, had just moved to Upperby. She was no longer just round the corner, liable to be met any day on the way to the shops in Botchergate, always passing the house out of which she had seen her half-sisters coming and going for the last decade. What had kept Alice from declaring herself? What kind of agreement had been reached? Margaret Ann’s confidence all those years of living in Bowman Street had been extraordinary.
Having a baby changed everything yet again for Lily. Those aimless afternoons disappeared. She had Gordon to look after and for a while she was entirely fulfilled. She looked after him beautifully and didn’t mind the extra washing. Mother had trained her well. She knew how to work the boiler in the outside wash-house and how to use the dolly-tub and the mangle. She had three washdays a week now, what with all the terry-towelling nappies and baby sheets and clothes and towels, and she kept everything spotless. Arthur filled the boiler with water before he left for work – it had to be carried in buckets from the kitchen – and lit it and then when the evil metal cauldron was bubbling away with the at-last boiling water she added soap powder (‘a wonderful invention’ Mother always said) and plunged the clothes in and left them to boil for ten minutes before lifting each item out again with long tongs and dropping them into a wai
ting tub of clear water and setting to with the washboard, scrubbing everything viciously after the whole lot had been pounded with the dolly. The rinsing was another performance. It took ages, filling and refilling the dolly-tub with clean cold water, and when it was done there was the back-breaking mangling, feeding the clothes between the heavy rollers and turning and turning the handle, constantly tightening the screw to narrow the gap between these rollers so that the maximum amount of water was squeezed out. This was the last laborious stage before the next battle, the attempt at drying, attempts often doomed to failure. Arthur had made some magnificent clothes props – she wasn’t short of those – and he’d put a good, sturdy washing line up, but once the washing had been pegged out there was the weather to contend with. If it began to rain there was an agonizing decision to be made to unpeg or not. If she unpegged and carted in the heavy, still-wet washing and then the rain came to nothing, she’d wasted more time and energy, but if she risked leaving it pegged and the rain fell in earnest, then the wretched washing would get even wetter and have to be remangled and she’d get soaked herself dashing backwards and forwards. Oh, washing was such a trial. It was the event of the day every day it was done, that dreaded, dreadful washing, only worth it to keep the baby’s clothes pristine. Mother said she’d warned her: this was what a woman’s life was about. She and Jean, with their history of good jobs in offices, hadn’t known the half of it, whereas she, Margaret Ann, domestic servant from her youth, had spent her life like this.
Hidden Lives Page 9