A Daughter's Shame

by Audrey Reimann

  A lump came into the back of Elsie’s throat. ‘You want me to wait till our Lil’s grown up?’

  ‘And Ray’s off my hands.’ He was not smiling. He was brisk and decided. He stood, put his glass down and reached for his clothes.

  Elsie was dumbfounded. ‘Going home?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were going to stop …’

  ‘I never stop overnight. Can’t afford to get caught.’

  Elsie held back her tears of disappointment as he threw his clothes on as fast as he could, tied his shoelaces with great ferocity and bent down to kiss her on the nape of her neck. Then he was gone. He slipped out at the back door. She heard his careful tread across the yard, the back gate closing and his footsteps growing fainter down the entryway with the confident cautiousness perfected over the years.

  Elsie’s tears fell. He had promised nothing, said nothing significant. Did he expect her to wait until Lily and Ray were off their hands? Until their children were married? Was he asking her to wait at all?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mam’s forecast about the money making no difference to their way of life was not the only one that had been wrong. She said they would have a holiday, and they didn’t have that until Lily was fifteen, in 1934. Some of her friends were working. Magnus was helping his father in the mill. Shandy had left school willingly to keep house for her father and brothers.

  Lily had passed six RSA exams. Her ambition was to pass the School Certificate exams and think of a career. She was drawn to the law but didn’t know whether there were lady lawyers – and even if there were, being illegitimate, whether she could become one. Doreen was still at school, doing a commercial course of book-keeping and typewriting. She was also getting a name for herself. The older girls said she was a ‘bad girl’.

  They were both, Doreen and Shandy, ahead of Lily in physical development. Doreen was tall, broad-shouldered and busty. Shandy was small and athletic, but both of them had ‘started’ and Lily hadn’t. Nanna said it would happen in time, and if she started later she’d keep her good looks for longer, like Mam.

  Mam had kept her slim figure and was proud of her appearance, but in the two years since the legacy she had grown harder, and it showed in the sharp lines on her face that made her appear older and slightly desperate. It was as if she’d had a disappointment that had made her bitter, and not the unexpected windfall that had made Lily pleased with life.

  Mam and she walked arm in arm through the market one warm, summery Saturday afternoon in April. The eighty stalls were crammed between the Town Hall and Sparrow Park and reached through the arched Unicorn Gateway, which separated two pubs, the Unicorn and the Unicorn Gateway.

  ‘We’re going to Nanna’s after dinner.’ Mam stopped in front of a stall that sold honey and big round oatcakes. ‘Buy a dozen. We’ll take them with us.’

  ‘We?’ Mam hadn’t been to Lindow and stayed overnight for ages.

  ‘Yes. I want to talk to Nanna and Grandpa,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided it’s time we had that holiday we’ve been promising ourselves.’

  ‘Where are we going? Can we afford it? How long for?’ Lily asked. They talked about holidays but always the plans fizzled out as Mam never would tear herself away from Macclesfield when everyone else was away at Barnaby or October Wakes week.

  ‘We’re going to Southport.’ Mam put the honey and rolled oatcakes in her shopping basket.

  Lily’s high spirits plummeted again. ‘Mr Leigh lives in Southport,’ she said. ‘We’re not staying at his house?’

  ‘No!’ Mam smiled. ‘That wouldn’t be right. But Southport’s a better class of place than Blackpool. Half of Macc goes to Blackpool. I want to get away. We’re going to take some money out of the bank. Stay in a hotel.’ She went back towards the Market Place, through the gateway, walking fast, Lily dawdling behind, ignoring the cries of vendors, the aroma of roasted meat, lost in a dream of hotels, sand and sea and sunshine.

  ‘Come on, Lil,’ Mam said over her shoulder. ‘I don’t want to hang about.’

  Lily caught up with her. ‘You’re not tired already, are you?’ It was worrying, the way Mam flagged; lost her energy. But that wasn’t the problem this time.

  Mam had spotted someone she didn’t want to speak to. She set her face in the direction of Jordangate. ‘Come on!’ she said, tugging Lily’s arm. ‘Look behind in a minute. Not now. Don’t let her see you looking!’ Mam’s expression was fixed, furious.

  Lily adjusted her shoe buttons and, looking back, saw the cause of Mam’s anger. Nellie Plant and the little boy she had recently adopted were standing in front of the Bull’s Head. Nellie was corseted into a tight pale-blue costume with, ridiculously for the warm day, a huge fur coat wide open to show off the suit and coat. She and the little blond boy, who was about five, were laughing out loud with a bunch of the ne’er-do-well men who gathered outside the Bull’s Head on market days. Lily stood and hurried to catch Mam.

  ‘Common as muck!’ Mam whispered. ‘Filthy little piece! Brothel-keeper! That’s what she is!’

  Lily was used to Mam’s tongue-lashing of Nellie Plant, but this was going too far. ‘Mam! What’s brought this on?’

  ‘You know Frank Chancellor’s bought the Unicorn?’

  ‘Yes. It’s no secret.’

  ‘He’s blatant!’ Mam replied. ‘He’s set his fancy woman up now.’

  ‘Nellie Plant?’

  ‘I don’t know how he gets away with it. And him a JP.’

  ‘Being a magistrate doesn’t stop you from buying property does it?’

  ‘He’s bought a licence. She’s the landlady of the Ring O’Bells up Backwallgate.’ Mam was spitting fire. ‘He’ll be ringing her bell, all right!’

  That must be an insult. Lily tried another tack. ‘Does it matter?’

  Mam replied by gripping Lily’s arm tight without revealing her mood to passers-by. ‘Matter? Of course it matters! Hah-d is trying to decide between buying a house and taking a room at the Ring O’Bells. He says that all the talk about Nellie Plant’s ministering to her residents is salacious rumour. He says the Ring O’Bells has a good reputation for food and accommodation.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘Well, I’ve told him, if he moves in with Nellie Plant he can court her an’all! I‘m sick of this town. I’d get out now, if I could.’

  Doreen Grimshaw, sullen and bad-tempered and dressed up to look more like a twenty-year-old than her fifteen years, glared at Lily across the compartment. Lily ignored her. They were on the first leg of the journey to Southport, and she didn’t want any part of her holiday ruined by Doreen. The Grimshaws were going to Manchester.

  Lily tried to switch off the listening part of her brain as she gazed over the flat fields where the Bollin looped and curled. She thought about her four brand new bought dresses. Today she was wearing a blue and white striped dress of linen. It had a dropped waist, short sleeves and a finely pleated skirt. The wheels’ regular rhythm, ‘chatta-ta-tom … chatta-ta-tom’, was music to her ears as she breathed what was to her the stimulating smell – sulphurous fumes and tobacco smoke – of the compartment.

  Mam was speaking to Mr Grimshaw. ‘What were you saying, Bert? About Chancellor’s?’

  ‘I said, Ray doesn’t believe in fixed wages and regular hours,’ Mr Grimshaw said. ‘The factory is going on to piece rate and shift work.’

  Mrs Grimshaw nodded agreement. ‘They are lucky to be in work. Not signing on at the labour exchange every day.’

  It was impossible to concentrate on the view. Mam should have had her fill of Macclesfield gossip, but she was working up to finding out the latest scandal about Nellie Plant. She was too good at investigating with that feigned casualness to let the Grimshaws guess what she was after. Mam’s face was animated as she and Mr and Mrs Grimshaw talked about Chancellor’s, the depression and the closure of Macclesfield mills.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ Mam agreed. ‘You’d think with so many out of work, the pubs would be doing badly.
But there you are. The Ring O’Bells must be doing well if Nellie Plant can afford to adopt a child. Swanking round town, dressed like a tart with that lad done out in his posh school uniform. St Bride’s indeed! And him only five years old!’

  ‘You off to Southport, Elsie?’ Mrs Grimshaw said. ‘Miss Plant comes from Southport.’

  ‘So she says!’ Mam said.

  Doreen had a sly expression on her face. ‘Are you going to stay with Mr Willey? Mr Willey comes from Southport, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Willey-Leigh!’ said Mam. ‘Mr Willey-Leigh has a very large house in Southport. We are staying at the Beach View. On the prom.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Doreen.

  ‘No you don’t,’ Mam snapped back.

  Mr Grimshaw, whose mind had not yet hopped from the original subject, said, ‘Miss Plant used to go back to Southport. She went once a month for a long weekend. Her mother died recently.’

  ‘Well I never,’ Mam replied.

  Lily sighed. Mam did know that Nellie Plant went to Southport. She always wanted to know what Nellie Plant was up to. She asked Howard Leigh about her all the time. Lily glanced at Mam, who was wearing her red-spotted artificial silk two-piece with the flat-brimmed white straw hat. Mam opened her vanity case and inspected her mouth for her lipstick.

  ‘She nearly lost her mother a few years back,’ said Mr Grimshaw. ‘She took six months off. Compassionate leave. Mr Chancellor said her job would be waiting for her.’

  ‘I don’t remember Nellie Plant leaving Macclesfield for all that time,’ Mam said. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘It’s over five years since,’ said Mr Grimshaw.

  ‘Oh, Heavens! Why on earth are we wasting our breath on Nellie Plant?’ Mam snapped down the lid of her compact in a dismissive way that covered a burning interest. ‘She’s of no interest to us.’

  ‘Everyone’s saying …’ Mrs Grimshaw leaned towards Mam, ‘it’s her child. They say her mother looked after it, but when her mother died Nellie cracked on she’d adopted him!’

  ‘Well, I never heard the like,’ Mam replied. ‘I wonder who … ?’

  Mam said she was sick of Macclesfield and would get out of it if she could. Lily would never fathom Mam out.

  After leaving the Grimshaws in Piccadilly they crossed Manchester by tram, caught the train at Exchange and arrived in Southport at midday. They stepped on to a long, sunny platform where porters bustled for business and Mam gave her orders in her posh voice to the taxicab driver. Lily could hardly contain herself for pleasure in the salt-scented air, the sun, the wide streets and the prospect of the drive on the tree-lined boulevard of Lord Street.

  ‘Look!’ she said in the taxi as one sight after another unfolded. ‘A fountain. A bandstand with a band playing, and it isn’t Sunday.’ At the sight of the flower-decked glass canopies over the shops she was at last silenced. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’

  Mam said to the driver, ‘Please drive slowly along Cambridge Road before you take us to the promenade.’ Then, to Lily, ‘Hah-d has a house in Cambridge Road. We’ll have a nosy!’

  They left Lord Street and were being driven past houses such as Lily had never seen, huge houses standing in great tree-filled gardens, four-storey shiny red-brick mansions with towers and turrets and bay windows you could fit Mam’s whole shop into. They had grand sweeps of steps up to ornate front doors, and wide gravel drives with dazzling cars threading in and out.

  ‘I wonder which it is,’ Mam said.

  ‘The Beach View’s this end of the promenade,’ the taxi driver said. ‘Not far from Cambridge Road. Soon be there.’

  ‘Can you tell me where the registrar’s office is?’ Mam asked him next. ‘I have to make a few enquiries.’

  ‘Cambridge Arcade. Opposite Christ Church School.’

  Lily said, ‘Is Mr Leigh going to show us round his house?’

  ‘No. He’s coming to see us, though,’ Mam dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Don’t tell Hah-d we’ve been nosying.’

  When they reached the hotel Mam was not a bit fazed. She sailed in, giving her orders in her best voice, and soon they were unpacking in a great big bedroom that had two double beds in it and both piled high with eiderdowns over embossed silk bedspreads. Lily couldn’t tear herself away from the bay window and the view of the sea and the second longest pier in England. ‘Oh, Mam!’ she said. ‘I’ll never want to leave.’

  Mr Leigh put in an appearance on the second day, and after that he called for Mam every morning, leaving Lily to her own devices. She and Mam spent the afternoons wandering under the glass canopies in Lord Street, inspecting the gown shops. They sometimes spent ten minutes or more looking at the kind of outfit they would never see in Macclesfield, before they wandered up to the Floral Hall gardens, paid for deckchairs and sat, breathing in sea air that was laden with the scent of flowers, listening to the band, while Lily drew in her notebook, all kinds of variations on the clothes.

  Lily’s mornings took on a routine. After breakfast every day she walked down the pier and rode the tram back, then in the fresh salt air she strolled back to the Beach View by way of all the little booths and kiosks where the snappers’ photographs were displayed. Photographers stood at the pier entrance or walked along the promenade and the Marine Parade, snapping without invitation. The photographs were displayed in the windows of the kiosks, and she was half expecting to see one of herself, for people were snapped indiscriminately and sometimes didn’t know they had been taken until they saw the picture in a window.

  Afterwards she’d stroll in the side streets where buckets and spades and shrimping nets spilled on to the pavement from the gift shops, and she’d linger, laughing at the funny postcards, looking for gifts for Nanna, Grandpa and Shandy.

  Then, near the end of the week, they spotted Sylvia and Magnus in Woodhead’s Cafe where they went most days for tea. Sylvia was seventeen, beautiful and elegant, scented with cool Atkinson’s lavender and wearing a lime-green sleeveless dress. She was tall and slender like Magnus, and her face and arms were covered in pale freckles. A suntan made her eyes seem larger and bluer. Her hair had been bobbed, and it slanted in waves over her brow, curling towards her cheek.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lily asked.

  Magnus got to his feet, exclaiming at the surprise of it all. He looked taller in his striped blazer and was evidently trying to grow a little blond moustache; the hairs shone like golden prickles over his smiling mouth. ‘We’re staying at the Palace Hotel in Birkdale. Where … ?’

  ‘Beach View. On the prom,’ Lily said. Sylvia gave Mam a sweet, well-bred smile. ‘It is good to see you, Mrs Stanway. Are you enjoying the holiday?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mam said. ‘It’s a nice town.’ She sounded offhand. Lily looked at her quickly. Mam pushed her chair back. ‘But I’ll leave you young ones. I’ll nip over to the Cambridge Arcade while I‘ve got a minute.’

  Lily ordered. Magnus said, ‘What do you do in the evenings, Lily?’

  ‘There are ten cinemas,’ she said, ‘that change their programmes three times a week. We can’t keep up. What do you do?’

  Sylvia laughed. ‘Uncle Kenneth and Mama sit over dinner and talk non-stop about Edinburgh. They don’t dance. There’s a band and cabaret every night at our hotel.’

  ‘Is your uncle with you? From Edinburgh?’

  Magnus answered, ‘Yes. And Ian and Rowena. Ian came in at Formby yesterday. He crews for a friend who has a twenty-seven-foot boat at Gourock. But it’s a bit of a swizz having no young things at the Palace. Imagine having to dance with your cousins every night! Now we’ve bumped into you,’ he went on, ‘let’s bring our swimming costumes tomorrow. Meet us here at two o’clock, Lily?’

  ‘All right. I’m sure Mam won’t mind,’ she said, before settling down to enjoy a delicious cream tea. Afterwards, Lily had to leave them there, waiting for the taxi that was to take them back to the Palace. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why they needed a taxi when there were motor buses and trams galo
re running between Lord Street and Birkdale.

  Her concern was that Mam might be drinking in secret in the bedroom. She had already polished off two bottles of port and one of sherry since they’d arrived. Twice she’d missed her dinner, so Lily had eaten alone, giving her apologies and saying Mam had gone to bed early and could she have a plate of something cold to take upstairs for later? Lily was afraid Mam might stagger downstairs, desperate with hunger after drink.

  Her feet went faster and faster until, turning the corner of Nevill Street at a trot, she went haring down the promenade to the hotel. She found Mam in the room, sitting sober and quiet, staring at her hands.

  The following afternoon Sylvia and Magnus were waiting for her at Woodhead’s Cafe, Sylvia holding a crocheted bag with swimming things inside. Lily had hers in a little string bag. It was hotter than ever. Sylvia and she both wore cream shantung dresses with low waists, and both wore straw hats.

  ‘Snap!’ they said together, although they were not at all alike. Sylvia was tall and blonde, Lily five feet four only, with dark curly hair worn long and fastened with a scarlet silk bow at the back of her neck.

  ‘I’ll call a taxi,’ said Magnus.

  Lily was about to protest, but Sylvia shot a warning glance as Magnus made towards the kerb. It was then Lily saw, by his rambling gait, that Magnus could barely walk. She had last seen him walking normally at Easter. Now his left leg was bent and drawn up so that only his turned-in toes touched the ground. He leaned against one of the plane trees that bordered the wide pavements as he attempted to hail a cab.

  Sylvia took her arm and whispered, ‘He won’t be stopped. His left knee and hip are dreadful. He won’t use sticks. Pretend not to notice.’

  ‘All right,’ Lily squeezed Sylvia’s arm but wondered why it seemed like treachery to talk about Magnus’s affliction. His family had no need to lie. Everyone could see that Magnus was a cripple.

  Sylvia said, ‘Yesterday we went to the cinema. And on the newsreel we saw that dreadful Herr Hitler. And I know that these things could never happen here, but Magnus was upset because they are forcibly sterilising people with deformities and diseases, feeble citizens, the blind and the deaf. They were herding Jewish people on to trains for concentration camps, and if they resisted, they charged them with “fighting the storm troopers”.’