Love Changes Everything (2 page)

Trixie had just started school when Sam's mum died suddenly in October 1911. None of them had known that she had a bad heart so it came as a great shock when she collapsed while out shopping, was rushed to hospital and died the same day. The following year Sam's father, who was unhappy on his own, decided to leave Anfield and move to Rochdale to live with his widowed sister.

Gradually they'd lost touch because other more startling developments were taking over their lives. There was talk of war and when it finally broke out Sam was one of the first to volunteer. He'd begun to find that married life with a young child had become somewhat humdrum. Maggie had changed; she was no longer the sparkling twenty-year-old he'd courted and married. After several miscarriages she was frustrated knowing that Sam wanted a son and that he was angry and disappointed because she was failing to give him one.

No sooner had Sam gone into the army than his boss at the abattoir informed Maggie that she would have to vacate the two-roomed house that had been their home ever since they were married. With Sam no longer there to act as caretaker someone else would have to take on the job and he needed the accommodation for them.

On her own, with no money saved and expecting a second baby within a few months, Maggie didn't find it easy to find somewhere else to live. She had ended up renting the upper rooms of a house off Scotland Road, one of the poorest areas in the whole of Liverpool.

When Sam came home on his first leave a couple of months later he was mortified to discover where she was living and even more taken aback when she told him she was six months' pregnant.

On the last night of his leave, after a night out drinking, he'd even refused to believe that it was his child she was carrying. He'd given vent to his anger and frustration by giving her such a severe beating that when he'd finished Maggie was unconscious and had to be rushed off to hospital. It was left to the neighbours to take care of Trixie till Maggie was well enough to come home again.

Cilla was almost three when Sam returned home at the end of the war and saw her for the first time. His first impression was her pretty round face, auburn curls and huge grey eyes.

Then, when he'd become aware of Cilla's disabilities, he'd been appalled and had refused to have anything at all to do with her. He couldn't even bring himself to hold her hand when she attempted to stand or walk. Whenever she had one of her crying fits he'd retreat to the nearest pub.

Maggie treated Cilla as if she was still a helpless baby, but Trixie refused to accept that she was backward and always talked to her as though to someone of her own age. Cilla would listen, her big grey eyes fixed on her sister's face so intently that Trixie was convinced she understood every word she said.

Trixie also encouraged her to walk and play. No matter how great a hurry she was in she would hold Cilla's hand and let her toddle along at her side, instead of sweeping her up into her arms like a bundle of washing like Maggie usually did.

When Sam Jackson had come out of the army and was told that his job at the abattoir had been given to someone else, he'd been bitter and disillusioned.

Maggie had found it was quite difficult to manage on her army allowance while Sam was a soldier but at least it had been regular and, with careful budgeting, she'd managed to keep out of debt. Now, though, she never knew how much housekeeping money she'd have from week to week. Sam claimed that it was because he never knew how much there would be in his wage packet; it all depended on whether he managed to get taken on or not.

Maggie suspected that it depended on whether he was sober enough to get out of bed early enough to be on the dockside in time to be selected by the ganger.

About a month after he'd been demobbed, she was finding it impossible to manage and asked him for more money because Cilla needed so many special things and Trixie was growing so rapidly that she needed new clothes; Sam laughed contemptuously. He told her bluntly that if she wanted more than he gave her she'd have to get off her backside and earn it.

Cleaning offices first thing in the morning and again in the evening had been the only sort of work she could find that fitted in with twelve-year-old Trixie being there to look after Cilla. As it was, it meant that Trixie had to leave for school in the morning before Maggie returned home from work and in the afternoons Maggie sometimes had to leave home before Trixie came in from school.

Now that Trixie had just left school, her father's insistence that she should take a job at the biscuit factory in Dryden Street where she would be starting at seven in the morning worried Trixie. It would mean Cilla would be on her own much longer each morning because her mother didn't get home from her charring job till around nine o'clock. That was unless her mother gave up her charring now that there was more money coming in. But would she? Would her father let her? Once I'm working he'll probably give her even less housekeeping money than he does now, Trixie thought resentfully.

There were times when she thought that they might have been happier if her father had never come home from the war. Why should a hard-hearted, bad man like him still be alive when so many good, kind men had died?

Trixie felt wicked when these thoughts came into her head but she couldn't help wishing that he would behave as a husband and father should do.

Leaving Cilla on her own meant that for her own safety she had to be tied either into her cot or into her high chair. In the morning she was usually still asleep and Maggie told Trixie to simply fix a blanket over the cot to stop her climbing out and that it would be all right because she'd be home before Cilla woke up. Often, though, Maggie came home to find Cilla not only awake, but screaming so loudly that she could be heard out in the street and both Maggie and Trixie worried in case one of the neighbours reported them for neglecting the child.

At first it had been much the same in the afternoon. When Maggie tied Cilla into her high chair she screamed and cried. Maggie hated leaving her on her own, even though she knew it would only be ten or twenty minutes before Trixie was home.

Gradually, however, Cilla became used to the routine and more or less accepted it. Maggie always gave her a rusk or a biscuit before she left and this seemed to pacify her.

Even if he was off work, Sam refused to look after Cilla, even for a few minutes. He still resented her presence and couldn't bear to touch her. He never kissed or cuddled her or even took her on his knee.

Sometimes Maggie caught him looking at Cilla from over the top of his newspaper and she wondered what he was thinking. Several times she had tried to talk to him about Cilla, hoping to enlist his help with her, but he either immersed himself in the newspaper and refused to listen or he stalked off to the pub.

When this happened he usually returned home so drunk that he had a hangover the next morning and was incapable of going to work. As a result he handed over even less housekeeping money than usual at the end of the week so that Maggie eventually avoided even mentioning Cilla's name.

Knowing how quick Sam was to use his fists if anything upset him she also made sure that she kept Cilla out of his way as much as possible. She was always afraid that Cilla's crying might spark off some sort of reaction but, fortunately, he always seemed to ignore it, even though her high-pitched wail was almost unbearable.

The only one who was always willing to look after Cilla was Trixie. She never seemed to lose her patience with her and was always prepared to bath, feed and play with her. As a result, as the months passed, it did seem that Cilla was slowly making some progress. Even though she was now five and could stand and walk on her own, it seemed unlikely that she could go to school. She would never been be able to understand what was going on around her or take part in normal play or lessons with the other children.

Trixie was concerned that once she started work she would have less time to look after Cilla and that as a result Cilla mightn't keep up the progress she seemed to be making.

‘You must make time to play with her and talk to her more, Mum,' Trixie told her when she voiced this worry aloud. ‘She understands a lot more than you think.'

‘I haven't the same energy as you have to do that,' Maggie sighed. ‘I have all the cleaning, washing and ironing to do as well as the cooking and shopping.'

‘I know that, but talk to her while you are preparing the vegetables and cooking. Don't just sit her in her high chair with a biscuit while you are dusting and cleaning; give her a duster and let her help you. Let her walk to the shops . . .'

‘Don't talk daft. She's tired out by the time we get there and then she wants to be carried and I can't carry her and all the shopping as well.'

‘You don't have to. Take the pram, but let her walk till she gets tired and then you can put her and the shopping in the pram, the same as you do now.'

‘You make it sound so easy, but when I pick her up to put her back into her pram she kicks and screams and makes such a fuss that everyone stops to look.'

‘She won't make a fuss if you tell her you're going to do it because you know she's tired. It's because you simply pick her up and dump her in the pram without a word that she struggles and tries to resist. Remember the hullabaloo she used to make when you went out and left her on her own in the afternoons, but now she accepts it. It takes her a while to get used to any changes and you have to tell her why you're doing them and then she stops protesting.'

‘She does for you,' Maggie sighed. ‘You're more a mother to her than I am because you have more time and a lot more patience and never try and rush her.'

‘I tell you what, let's go out shopping together on Saturday morning,' Trixie suggested. ‘We'll let Cilla walk to the shops and then I'll explain to her that you're going to pop her into the pram once we've done the shopping so that she knows that's what we both want. I'm sure she won't cry. I think the secret is to talk to her all the time and to keep telling her what you are going to do.'

‘Perhaps you're right, I tend to think she doesn't understand and I don't talk to her half as much as you do. The trouble is she's going to have to be on her own a lot more once you start work.'

‘Then before you go off to work tell her that's what's happening. Explain to her that she has to be strapped into her chair so that she won't come to any harm and tell her that I'll be home in no time at all. Perhaps if I can teach her how to tell the time you can show her where the hands will have to be before I come home.'

‘It still means leaving her on her own,' Maggie said worriedly. ‘She's grown quite a bit lately and is so much stronger than she used to be. I'm afraid that she's going to struggle to get out of her high chair and tip it over and fall and hurt herself and there'll be no one here to help her.'

‘Perhaps you should pack up your cleaning jobs and stay home and look after her. Don't forget you'll have my wages and I'll be working a full week now I've left school, not just a few hours each day.'

Chapter Two

It was not yet eight o'clock, on a sultry Monday morning in late July, with the promise of unbearable heat to come later in the day. Maggie Jackson could hear Cilla screaming the minute she turned into Virgil Street.

She'd skimped on her work that morning in order to get home as soon as possible. Trixie had left school the previous Friday and had started work that morning so she knew Cilla would be playing up.

Although the biscuit factory in Dryden Street was only a few minutes away from their home, Maggie knew that on her first day Trixie would have left over an hour ago because she was due to clock on at seven.

That meant Cilla would have been on her own ever since Trixie had left and so she was probably hungry and thirsty and wondering why no one was picking her up. Even if Sam was still there he would ignore her.

Maggie thought again about Trixie's suggestion that the time had come for her to give up her charring to stay at home and look after Cilla. So far she hadn't plucked up the courage to find out what Sam thought about that.

‘You ought to tell him that's what you're going to do, not ask him,' Trixie had told her. ‘If you ask him he's bound to say it's impossible. You need to do it right away before I get my first wage packet and he has the excuse to give you less housekeeping money.'

Maggie knew that what Trixie said was right, but she lacked Trixie's courage when it came to facing up to Sam. She knew she ought to be the one who put him in his place, not leave it to Trixie. She sometimes wondered what would happen when Trixie left home but consoled herself that as Trixie was only fourteen that was years away.

Ever since the day war had broken out in 1914 and Sam had gone into the army he'd been a changed character; so much so that she was sometimes afraid of him, especially when he'd been out drinking.

She'd never forget the first time he'd come home on leave; he'd been like a stranger he'd been so hard and brusque. When she'd told him why they'd been turned out of their little home he'd told her she should have stood up to the boss at the abattoir and refused to move out.

He became even angrier when she told him that she was pregnant.

She hadn't seen him again till he'd been demobbed and then when he came home and discovered that the new baby was retarded he'd blamed her. He'd been unable to accept Cilla's condition; the situation had incensed him and turned him into a complete bully.

He'd always liked his beer, but in the early days of their marriage it had made him merry. These days it made him moody and aggressive and she had plenty of bruises to prove it. Come to that, so had Trixie, although mercifully in her case it was usually nothing more serious than a cuff across her head with the back of his hand or a slap across her face.