Polly's Pride (15 page)

‘Now isn’t this a grand lark?’ she said to her children with a wide smile, as she took her seat on an orange box. ‘It’s like a picnic in our own home. Eat the spuds while they’re hot. We’ve even a dab of marg to put on ‘em today. Aren’t we the lucky ones?’

And Polly and her children steadfastly ate their dinner in what passed for a contented silence.

Chapter Ten

Big Flo sat in Polly’s kitchen, her back as rigid as her morals. Apart from a starched white pinafore, she was clothed all in black from her shawl to the clog tips that peeped out from under her long black skirts. And the dour expression on the old woman’s lined face seemed perfectly in accord. Florence Pride knew more commandments than the Good Lord had ever thought to give Moses. There were the usual ones about never complaining, making do, and standing on your own feet. Being clean in thought and tongue was one of her favourites. ‘Wilful waste brings woeful want’, was another. ‘Idleness addles the brain’ was one she was particularly fond of, along with ‘Hard work never killed anyone’, even though it clearly did, judging by the number of miners and cotton workers dying of consumption from the muck they breathed in at their places of employment.

‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’, which must include popping the furniture without your husband’s permission, was the one she was airing at the moment.

‘I’ve never seen him so cut up! The poor lad doesn’t know which way to turn.’

Polly admitted that it must have come as something of a shock. It had been well past midnight when Matthew had slid between the blankets beside her, and a great relief to her that he’d come home at all. But neither of them had spoken. Even at breakfast his silence had lain heavily between them. Now she confronted her mother-in-law with face set and fists clenched. ‘That being the case, it’s even more important I should make it work.’

‘Aye, I can see it would be. Our Josh told him he was a fool to marry you, an Irish Catholic, and that it served him right if you’d gone and lost every decent bit a’ stuff you ever owned. Reverting to type, he called it.’

Polly felt her cheeks start to burn. How dare Joshua say such a thing? He’d always made it plain he disapproved of their marriage but it had never mattered before because she and Matt were happy and the two brothers not even close. But never had Joshua spoken so plainly against her and for once, it seemed, Matthew had agreed with him. It made her heart ache to think of it.

‘Will you help me?’

‘Me?’ Big Flo’s white eyebrows climbed to the heights of her wrinkled brow. She was ready to flounce out of this mad Irish woman’s house for good. From the start she’d created discord between her precious sons; now she’d gone completely off her chump and thrown away everything Matthew had built up over the years. Talk about hitting a man when he was down! She’d have nowt to do with the floozy ever again, Flo decided, yet curiosity kept her on the seat, for all it was only an orange box that could break beneath her weight at any moment. ‘Help you do what?’

‘I mean to sell on the market. No one can afford to buy a big carpet like this, not round here, but cut into smaller pieces it’d sell, if only because it’d save the work of hooking a rug and look much better. So, will you help me clean and cut it up?’

Big Flo looked as if she’d been asked personally to pay off the National Debt. ‘By heck, that’s a tall order.’

‘Why? It’s a simple enough task.’

‘You’re asking me to take a stand against me own sons?’

Polly tilted her chin. ‘If it works and I get a good price for the pieces, I’ll be in profit. Then I can get some of our furniture back. All of it maybe, in time.’

The old woman shook her head in sadness. ‘Our Matthew was right fond of that sideboard. It represented why he’d worked so hard for his family.’

Polly felt a constriction of emotion tighten her throat. ‘I feel exactly the same. I did try to avoid selling it, but there wouldn’t have been enough money otherwise. I doubt I could manage to get it back, not for a while anyway, but I might manage a chair or a table fairly quickly, if I can sell some pieces of the carpet.’ Then she leaned forward, eagerly grasping Big Flo’s work-worn hands. ‘Don’t you see? I had to do it once the idea was in me head. It could be the answer. Not simply to give us something to eat tomorrow but to provide us with a future away from this God-awful place. Wouldn’t that be grand?’

‘Aye,’ said Big Flo, consideringly. ‘I can see you’d think so. I were born and brought up in Ancoats and, I’ll tell you, there’s worse places though I can’t offhand name one. Folks are good here. But I can see you’d happen want summat better for them childer.’

‘So?’

‘So them’s only dreams, and the likes of us can’t afford to believe in dreams.’

‘Why not?’

It took two pint-sized mugs of tea and a great deal more persuasion before Big Flo agreed. ‘Aye, go on then,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll help you sew this lot, but no more mind. You manage the rest by yerself.’

‘Aw, bless you, Flo.’ Polly would face that problem when she came to it.

`Bit you sell ‘em yerself.’
 

‘Agreed.’

They unrolled the carpet square and laid it out in the empty front parlour. The room was so cold there was a rime of frost on the inside of the windows. The parlour had rarely been used, save at Christmas and Whit Week. Now it looked forlorn and damp as well as empty. The two women automatically reached for their shawls, wrapping them tight around themselves and tying them in a knot at the back. Even so they were chilled to the bone, their breath cloud the freezing air.

‘I’ll light a fire,’ Polly said. ‘We can’t work in this.’

‘Don’t waste the coal. If we work fast we won’t be in here long. Once it’s cut up we can take a piece at a time in the kitchen to bind the edges.’

It took longer than they expected. They rubbed the stained carpet first with the used tea leaves Polly had kept specifically for the purpose. Then they left it for an hour or two while they went to warm themselves over a mug of tea by the fire. After that, they swept it vigorously with stiff brushes to make the pile stand proud, and were delighted to see the rich browns and beiges revitalised by the treatment.

‘It has a good all-over pattern, which is important since we’re to turn it into small rugs.’ Polly could feel a glimmer of excitement inside her. It would work, she was sure of it.

Cutting the carpet proved to be more difficult than she’d imagined. Even though she’d spent some of the precious money on a large pair of scissors for the purpose, she simply did not have sufficient strength to cut through the thick wool. After watching her for a minute or two, Big Flo took the scissors from her hand.

‘Give ‘em ‘ere. You couldn’t cut butter.’ And the old woman, crawling about on all fours, revealing more of next week’s washing than she realised, cut through the carpet with her ham-like hands as if it really were butter. When they were done they had nine smaller rectangles instead of one large square.

‘All we do now is bind and sew them. Still, I have the time, do I not, since there’s no furniture left to dust,’ Polly said, with a touch of
wry
humour.

‘Nor a comfy spot to sit while we sew,’ Big Flo pointed out, eyeing the offending orange boxes with distaste. Taking a couple of the carpet pieces with her, she marched off to her own snug kitchen.

This task was to keep them busy for days. Polly continued to work at the temperance tavern, but in the afternoons and evenings she sat on an upturned box and stitched the strips of hessian she had bought to the edges of each rectangular piece of carpet, turning it into an attractive rug.

Lucy was late home from school a few days after the cutting of the carpet, but before Polly had managed to draw breath to scold her for idling, the girl took the wind right out of her sails.

‘I start work tomorrow on Dorrie Glynne’s tripe and trotter stall on the market. And before you say anything, I don’t care any more about Paulden’s or the fancy shops on St Anne’s Square or King Street, I just want us to be happy and have enough food on the table, and for Dad to come home. So I’ve left school and I’m not going back.’

Polly sat down hard on an orange box, every vestige of colour draining from her face. Was this what they had sunk to? In pursuing her own dream, she had robbed her daughter of hers. ‘Oh, Lucy! But you should stay on, then you’d have a fine certificate to show at the end of it.’

‘Things have changed. I don’t care about any of that.’ The tremor of her daughter’s lips gave the lie to her brave words and Polly held out her arms to comfort her. Lucy came and knelt by her mother’s side while the pair of them hugged and cried together, letting the tears of disappointment flow.

‘Ach, this won’t do,’ said Polly, pulling out a hanky and starting to mop up their tears, staunchly smiling as she did so. ‘You know this isn’t what I wanted for you, m’cushla.’

‘It’ll be all right, Mam. I’m not a child. I want to pay my way, whatever you say. I can earn a bit of brass, and one day - one day I will work in a fine shop, see if I don’t!’

‘Of course you will,’ Polly assured her, blinking back fresh tears. ‘And won’t that be grand? Now come and see how much I’ve done today.’ And as mother and daughter continued the laborious hemming of the carpet rugs, they began speculating about the future.

‘Happen we’ll have us own shop one day,’ Lucy said, her blue eyes bright.

‘And why not indeed? You shall be manager.’

‘No, that’ll have to be Dad. I shall be the chief floor walker, and you’ll do the buying. We’ll make pots of money, eh?’

‘The divil we will.’ And all this happy dreaming helped their needles fly.

The next day Joshua called and ordered Polly in no uncertain terms to stop this nonsense immediately.

‘And what nonsense would that be?’ she blithely enquired. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, so far as I can see.’

‘Matthew is my brother. I’ll not see him made into a laughing stock.’

‘The divil you won’t! It’s never bothered you before if he was unhappy. What’s so different this time? Is it because I’m the cause of it for once and not yourself?’

‘You’ve shamed the entire family with your worship of Mammon.’

Polly stood on her own doorstep, hands on hips, and almost laughed into his face. ‘Mammon, is it? You don’t think it might have something to do with needing food to put in me children’s bellies?’

Joshua took a step closer, towering over her in a manner that set alarm bells ringing. In his pale, unblinking eyes there was an expression that bordered on savagery. ‘Your vulgarities will not soften
my
heart, Mary Ann Shaugnessy. I have your measure.’ It had been so long since she’d heard her full name used, or her maiden name for that matter, that it startled her.

‘I’m thinking you’re taking a bit much upon yerself,’ she mildly remarked. ‘This is a private matter between myself and my
husband
.’ She laid particular emphasis on the last word.

‘I know what it is that has set you off on this craving for money. You think Matthew has failed you.’ His slack, moist mouth almost spat the words at her. ‘You came out of the bogs of Ireland thinking you’d be sitting pretty married to him. Batting your eyelashes at him, coaxing him to wed you before he went off to war, selling your body in order to escape your drunken father. But it hasn’t quite worked out as you expected, has it?’
 

She could see the hairs bristling in each flared nostril, smell the sickening odour of mothballs from the suit he always wore to his many meetings, and hated him for his worldly aspirations and his arrogance and hypocrisy in daring to criticise her own.

‘May the good Lord forgive you for such terrible thoughts! I reckon you’ve said enough, brother-in-law.’ Polly could feel herself trembling and fought to keep control, determined not to let him win. ‘It may be true that my life with my parents was not what it might have been, but Matthew and I married because we loved each other and for no other reason. We still do love each other, for all we disagree on this matter. So take your dirty mind off my clean step before I knock it off with me sweeping brush!’

Polly tried many times to secure Matthew’s support for her plan, but to no avail.

When he finally realised she did not intend to redeem their furniture at the end of the week, not even his favourite chair let alone the precious sideboard, he began quietly to collect together a few of his belongings, with a grimness that cut her to the heart of her.

Lucy’s leaving school and starting work seemed to him yet another nail in the coffin of his pride. The women of the household were now gainfully employed while he saw himself as cast on the dung-heap, living in a house now bare of his worldly possessions so all the world could see his shame. It was more than any man could possibly tolerate.

He stood before them all, bag in hand, and announced that he was moving in with his mother where, he said, he could at least sleep in a bed, sit on a chair and eat off a solid table. ‘I haven’t fought in a war or worked all my adult life to be deprived of such basic necessities.’

‘But I need you here,’ Polly said, startled and afraid by this sudden decision.

‘Bring back our furniture and I’ll come home like a shot.’
 

‘How can I get the furniture back, Matthew?’ Though Polly had a little money left from the sale, stowed safely away in her secret hiding place, it was nowhere near enough to replace all that she had sold. Besides, she still had to buy a cart or stall from which to sell the carpet rugs. Frustration mounted in her. Why couldn’t he understand and work with her on this? ‘Don’t be stubborn, Matthew. ‘It’s only your damned pride I’ve hurt. Surely you can live with that for a while?’