A Whisper to the Living (7 page)

I had never had many clothes, but now I began to look shabby and down-at-heel, was forced to curl up my toes so that weekday clogs and Sunday best would last a few months longer. She stopped smoking too, which meant that her temper became less than even and I learned to keep my distance at certain times, like after meals when she most craved a Woodbine. Eddie Higson took to rolling his own, using bits of paper and a strange machine like a miniature mangle, often including the contents of discarded dog-ends he had picked up in the street, occasionally treating himself to an ounce of fresh tobacco.

To give him his due, he worked hard during those first few months at Long Moor Lane and, after reading several borrowed tomes on the subject of plumbing, he undertook, with the help of his brother, the installation of our new bathroom.

He divided the back bedroom into two equal parts, put in new windows, then fixed a bath, a washbasin and a flushing toilet into one of the two new rooms, leaving the other half as a small third bedroom. The cupboard which had incorporated the old bath became a walk-in wardrobe where my mother, who must have felt like the Queen Bee (being the first on the block to have a proper bathroom) hung her sparse trousseau.

The second bedroom, up another flight of stairs, was an attic room with a three-sided sloping window set into the roof. This was my room, my very own domain with an interesting view up and down the road and plenty of space for my bed and the newly acquired tallboy and dressing table.

The houses across the way were smart corporation dwellings, their occupants mere tenants, so my mother, a home owner, was on no more than nodding terms with them. Although she still worked in the mill, still came home with her hair full of fluff and the soles of her shoes encrusted with tiny steel rings, she declared herself to be up-and-coming now and announced that she would, in future, be voting Tory.

My attic window enabled me to see over the rooftops to the moors that surround Bolton like a huge green dish. My mother had told me that Bolton was so named because it sat in a dip between moors and that it had therefore been named, originally, Bowl Town.

Now that we lived on one of the moors, albeit on a main road, the air was cleaner, clearer and fresher than in the centre of town where the trapped dampness was so valuable to millowners whose spinning factories depended on a wet atmosphere.

As a town-dweller, I did not, as yet, find myself attracted to the greenness beyond the roofs. Like any seven-year-old, I required playmates, the company of my peers, so I came down from my tower to explore my new surroundings, venturing a little further each day into the unknown.

It was time to establish my territory.

My first encounter with other children came, of course, when I began to attend St Stephen’s school. This was five tram stops up the road towards Harwood, though most of the trams were buses now and not so much fun, so I often saved my penny fare by walking the distance to and from school.

Standards at All Saints must have been high, because within a week I was in and out of first-year juniors and put to work with the eight-year-olds.

I loved the school right from the start. All the teachers had legs; no more flapping habits and rattling rosaries to disturb my peace of mind.

There was a priest though, because the school was attached to a church – in fact, the church itself was an infants’ classroom, the altar and the first few pews being partitioned off during school days, while the rest of the benches were piled around the walls, ready to be brought out for Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.

The priest was Father Cavanagh. He was fat and bald and wore a long black cloak with a clasp of metal chains at the throat. I didn’t like him, but then I had never expected that I would. Priests, like nuns, were odd, legless animals from whom I expected neither kindness nor sympathy. This one, like most of them, asked a lot of questions. His voice was high and silly, the Irish brogue so thick that until I got used to him, he would have to repeat himself several times before I understood him. But he was, at least, a patient man and he spoke to me slowly, mouthing his words as if addressing an idiot or a deaf-mute.

‘You’ll be making your First Communion then soon, Annie?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘And your family will be along to the Mass for to see you take the Blessed Sacrament?’

‘I don’t know, Father.’

He patted my head. Priests always did that and I hated it, it made me feel like a dog at its master’s feet. He turned to my teacher, Miss O’Gara. ‘They never come to the church, you know. I’ll have to be paying them a visit, I’m thinking.’ He looked back at me. ‘You know, Annie, once you’ve made your Communion, you’ll have to come to the Mass every Sunday or ‘twill be a mortal sin?’

I nodded. This was familiar territory; we were back to the immortal soul business again.

‘And you must come regularly to Confession to prepare yourself for the Blessed Sacrament.’

‘Yes, Father.’ He patted my head once more.

‘Is your Mammy a Catholic then, Annie?’

‘I think so, Father.’

‘And your Daddy?’

‘I haven’t got one, he was killed in Italy when I was four.’

The priest took a step away from me, a puzzled expression appearing on his wide face. ‘Ah well, ’tis sorry I am to be hearing that, child. But tell me now, is there not a man living at your house just now?’

‘Yes, Father. Eddie Higson.’

Father Cavanagh glanced quickly at Miss O’Gara. ‘Is he your stepdaddy then, Annie?’ he enquired of me.

‘No. He is not my stepdaddy, Father.’

Father Cavanagh removed his biretta and passed a fat hand over his bald pate. Miss O’Gara stepped forward and whispered something into the priest’s ear.

I heard his sigh of relief before he spoke. ‘Ah. So they are married. Well thanks be to God for that at any rate. Now, Annie. If your Mammy has married Mr . . . Mr Higson, then he is now your stepfather both in the eyes of the law and by the rules of your faith. Are you understanding me?’

This I would not pretend to accept. It was bad enough having him pat me on the head all the time and listening to his stupid questions, but this was going too far.

‘No. He is not my stepfather,’ I said quietly. ‘My Daddy was my father and I don’t want a stepfather.’

Father Cavanagh tutted his dismay, then shaking a finger at me he said, ‘You know your Commandments, do you not?’

‘Yes Father.’

‘And is not the fourth “honour thy father and thy mother”?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Then surely you must honour Mr Higson, for he is looking after you as a father would, caring for you, is he not? It will be a mortal sin for you not to honour your stepfather, Annie.’

My stomach turned over. Whatever I did, wherever I went, there were adults tying me in knots, confusing me to the point of madness. And the worst offenders were these priests and nuns with their laws about this and that, telling me what I must think, what I must believe, how I must act – even who I must be.

But I kept cool, nodding my assent. My lips had formed no lie, but that nod, with its mute falsehood, laid yet another stain on my immortal soul which was by now, I felt sure, so pitted with black holes that it might have been used to drain cabbage.

I took my place next to Josie Cullen who was eight and nearly as tall as I was. We did not sit together by choice, but simply because we were both on the same page of the sum book and sum books were always one between two. Yet in spite of the fact that our proximity to each other had been forced upon us, we were fast becoming friends.

Josie and I were termed tomboys because neither of us wore ribbons or hairslides, nor did we play sedately like the other girls. We were frequently dispatched to the washroom after playtimes, for we seemed to attract dirt, gathering it about our persons like a pair of magnets collecting filings. The boys liked us, respected us almost, as we were not averse to a bout of rough and tumble and while Josie was conker champion of St Stephen’s, I excelled at marbles, cleaning out the boys’ stock of glass alleys and bolly-bearings with a frequency that alarmed them and won their admiration.

Josie nudged me. ‘Take no notice of ’im. ’E’s a soft old sod.’

I gaped at Josie. She had already made her First Confession and Communion. She would have to tell Father Cavanagh in the confessional that she had called him a soft old sod. I voiced my concern in a whisper.

‘Don’t be so daft,’ she hissed back. ‘For a kick-off, I can always disguise me voice. Or I can go down to St Patrick’s and tell some other soft sod as I’ve called this soft sod a soft sod.’

This was terrible. Now I had two immortal souls to worry about – mine and Josie’s! ‘You can’t call a priest a soft s . . . a name like that, Josie. It’s a sin. You’ll go to hell!’

‘Oh shut up, Annie. You’re beginning to sound like a bloody soft sod yourself . . .’

Although I was worried by all this, I felt elated somehow. I suddenly knew that it wasn’t just me, that I wasn’t the only one who entertained bad thoughts about people, important people too, like priests. But I would never have dared to voice my contempt as Josie just had. Whenever I got bad thoughts, whenever my temper rose, I became overwhelmed by guilt, weighed down by the knowledge that I was heading for certain damnation. But if Josie felt any guilt, she never showed it.

She chewed now on the end of her pencil. ‘What’s eight eights?’ she asked.

‘Sixty-four.’

‘How do you do that, Annie?’

‘Do what?’

‘Sixty-four just like that, without having to go back to one eight is eight.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know.’

‘Well I don’t.’

‘See? I told you you were a soft sod.’ Furtively, she passed a sticky square of chocolate across the desk and I pushed it into my mouth before Miss O’Gara could spot it.

‘Want another?’

‘No. Save it for playtime. Where did you get it, anyway?’

‘Paper shop.’ She copied down another sum. ‘I nicked it. It’s dead easy at Warburton’s. Anyroad, there’s never any toffee coupons at our ’ouse.’

I almost choked. I was eating stolen chocolate. Thou shalt not steal, that was number seven on the list of Commandments. Josie’s soul must be as black as hell itself. Mine too, since I was sharing her spoils. Or would the stains be brown? Chocolate was brown . . .

‘Annie Byrne. Have you finished those sums?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Then get on with your work and stop daydreaming.’

I got on with my work.

Eddie Higson blamed me for a lot of things. Firstly there was the atmosphere in the house, which was not good as I spoke to him seldom, going for days on end without even looking in his direction. Then there was the fact that I would not, even when I did deign to speak to him, call him Dad. When I spoke of him, he always got his full title and this angered him greatly whenever it happened within his hearing. He blamed me for shouting too much, singing too much, being too quiet. He blamed me for the cost of living and most of all for being alive, for being another man’s child.

As time went by and it began to appear that my mother would have no more babies, he apportioned this problem to me also, saying loudly and often that I had ‘ruined’ my mother by being born such a huge great lump. Of this I took little notice, because I was impressed by none of Higson’s opinions and was determined to minimize his influence on my life.

But I was afraid of his quick, blind rages, tense in his presence and I took to absenting myself from the house for hours at a stretch, taking refuge in Josie Cullen’s chaotic but happy household.

The Cullens lived in a corporation house in Ince Avenue at the back of the library. There were so many Cullens that they were forced to eat in relays, the littlest ones often being sent to sit on the stairs with a bowl on their knees and one spoon between two or three.

Mrs Cullen put me in mind of Mrs Hyatt from Ensign Street, being of similar build and nature. Although her house was already filled to bursting, she always found space, time and a wedge of bread and dripping for me. ‘There y’ are, lass. Get outside o’ that, it’ll stick to yer ribs. Now, our Josie, get that wash in to soak. And where’s our Allan? ALLAN!’ she would scream through the ever-open door, ‘Get thisen in ’ere while I mend yer pants.’

Mrs Cullen would then turn to survey her rumbustious troop. ‘Right now, Ellen, get down that corner shop and ask fer five o’ spuds on tick. Be nice. Smile at the woman for God’s sake. Martin, get that knitting needle off our Tony, ’e’ll ’ave ’is bloody eye out like a lolly on a stick in a minute. An’ get that bloody cat out o’ the cupboard, Cathy. Yes, I know she’s lookin’ where to ’ave ’er kittens – find ’er a box in the front room an’ a couple of old
Evening Newses
. Now. ’Oo’s took the bloody lid off me bloody kettle? Annie love, go an’ ’ave a look round t’ back garden will yer? An’ while yer about it, see if you can catch sight o’ me fryin’ pan. Only they’ve been playin’ ’ouse again, so you’ll likely find a cup or two while yer at it . . .’

I loved every minute I spent in that smelly, untidy house. There was nowhere to sit, scarcely an inch of room to even stand in, but at the centre of it all was Mrs Cullen, her great belly heaving with laughter as often as not, calmly dealing with each crisis as it arose, spreading her love and generosity equally amongst all-comers.

When I would go home, always reluctantly, I could not help comparing my mother with Mrs Cullen. Long hours in the mill were taking their toll and it was plain that my mother was not a happy woman, for her face, once rounded and well-fleshed, was becoming sunken and seemed to be acquiring new and deeper lines with each passing day. Even her Titian hair was losing its vibrance, while her shoulders became rounder, as if they were carrying a great invisible weight.

Higson, on the other hand, appeared to be thriving on good food and fresh air and had regained most, if not all the strength he had lost while in the prison camp. But however many windows he cleaned, however many spools my mother doffed, however many frames she tended, there was never enough money in the house.