Polly's Pride (6 page)

What Matthew failed to appreciate was that the children were growing fast and so were their appetites, and however hard he worked, it wasn’t enough to feed them all adequately, let alone provide all the other things growing children needed. She’d no choice but to work, and deep down he knew that.

As for the Whit Walks, well, they were special, taking place only once a year. They brightened everyone’s lives, and what was wrong with offering witness to the Almighty? The problem was they all needed new clothes or boots for this grand occasion, and Lucy a beautiful white dress. Now she had achieved her purpose, Polly knew that it was time for her to tell the truth, admit to her secret and face her husband’s ire. Then she could at least put her daughter’s mind at rest.

There was a break in the canal wall at the end of Dove Street, quite close to the mill. It was here that the narrow-boats tied up. Some of them brought in coal all day long, carried along two planks that ran from the boat into the entrance of the mill fire-hole. It was one of Matthew’s jobs to fill a wheelbarrow with slack, run it along the plank, tip it into the hole then go back for more. It was casual labour, paid by the hour, but glad of the work, he’d happily do this task for twelve or sometimes fourteen hours a day. If it was a tiring, back-breaking slog, he never complained or even seemed to notice. It was employment, casual or not, for which he was grateful.

On other days he might be employed at the dock in Ducie Street. Here he would help unload bales of cotton from the three narrow-boats pulled by a steamer all the way from Liverpool. Later the bales would have to be sorted and reloaded for the final stage of their journey on to smaller narrow-boats or carts for those mills without access to a canal or the River Medlock.

Though Matthew didn’t work in the mill as Joshua did, he was as affected by the state of local industry as his brother. If orders for finished cotton went down, workers like him were laid off or put on short time. Then there was less demand for the coal and coke which kept the boilers going, or for the great bales of raw cotton that came down the Ship Canal from Liverpool, and Matthew spent half his life shifting one or other of these commodities.

Today, as he worked, he thought of Joshua’s words that night at the barracks. Following their argument, Matthew had finally been persuaded to attend one of his brother’s meetings, trying to appease Joshua’s ill temper as he so often did. It had, as Matthew had anticipated, been no occasion for a celebration of brotherly love.

He knew that Joshua was hoping to lead a group from Dove Street to speak against their employers and form a union of cotton employees. This would include all who worked at the mill, and those who shipped the cotton either in its raw or finished state. Joshua was right in saying that the industry was not what it had been; the days when cotton was king long gone, with increasing fears for its future. New orders were badly needed, though where these would come from was anyone’s guess.

The meeting, which had been poorly attended, passed a resolution that what they needed most was someone to lobby Parliament; make them do something about the cheap imports which were flooding the market. Trade had been poor for years, and the general strike hadn’t helped. The election of a Labour government in the spring had seemed to offer new hope at first; now no one was quite sure. Nothing was really being done to improve matters. The bosses could still call the tune.

Matthew was not alone in dreaming of that seemingly impossible goal, a full week’s work. Even then, the pay would be so low he knew he still couldn’t hope to keep his family on it without the few extra shillings Polly brought in.

‘You must join us in our fight,’ his brother had insisted. ‘Then you’d have a proper living wage to take home and your wife wouldn’t have to work in that beer-house.’

Matthew had bridled, reacting badly as always to any hint of criticism against Polly. ‘It’s not a beer-house! It’s one of Yates’s Teetotal Taverns, as you well know. She spends most of her time serving lentil soup at a penny a time, and making sure the customers don’t hack the spoons off the walls to which they’re chained.’ Still it shamed him to have his wife work so hard. And he hated to have his brother point out his inadequacies as a provider.

‘The men’ve asked me to stand for election as president of our local group, but Cal Eastwood is standing too. He’ll be a tough opponent to beat, since he has ways and means of making folk vote for him. Nevertheless, I believe right will prevail and I’ll be chosen, but I shall need all the support I can get, Matthew, including yours. You must be my right-hand man and make sure I win.’

Matthew was shocked. ‘What can I do?’

‘Canvass for me. Help put out leaflets, talk to people, persuade them to see me as the right candidate for the job. You surely owe me some loyalty? Or does your sense of self-preservation exclude even that fundamental requirement in a brother?’

The derision in Joshua’s tone left Matthew bereft of words. They both knew to what he was referring. It went right to the core of the bitterness between them. They’d never been close, not even as young boys, but Cecil’s death had soured their relationship for all time.

Even now, fifteen years later, it hurt Matthew to remember his younger brother, the eager young idealist who had volunteered along with his two elder brothers for action in a war he did not comprehend. As luck would have it, he and Matthew were posted together to France and Matthew had promised his mother faithfully that he’d look after the boy. In the event it had been a naive and foolish vow to give, empty of meaning once they’d seen what was waiting for them over there.

They’d lived day by day, sleeping in the same tent, eating the same food which was all too often caked in mud, even sharing the same stinking trench and the same devastating battlefield. But it hadn’t been enough.

Matthew could still bitterly remember the day of his young brother’s death. It was etched into his mind as painfully as any physical wound. Given the choice, he’d gladly have cut off a limb to have Cecil alive and well.

He recalled the preparations they’d made with painstaking care, the plans, the instructions, the mockery of rehearsing a battle charge. He remembered the September mists, the stink of gas, the poplar trees gently rustling in the breeze.

Encumbered with equipment, rations, rifle, pick or shovel, flags and Ayston fans, for clearing gas out of dugouts. they’d struggled to take up position in a long winding trench or in one of the few dugouts or gun emplacements. Matthew had tried to help the boy by offering to carry some of his load, but he would have none of it.

‘Don’t treat me like a child,’ had been Cecil’s constant cry. So Matthew had treated him like a man. And like a man he had fought and died.

They’d spent a miserable, cold night with precious little sleep and nothing but mouldy bread and cheese to eat. Then it was time to abandon the majority of their equipment so they could ‘chase’ the enemy. The view of Hulluch and Loos, high on the ridge above them, had seemed benign, even beautiful in the early mists of dawn. Except that the road ran right through the German trenches. No one was in any doubt about that.

They learned it was time to go into action when they received a message from the Adjutant. He ordered the attack to be carried out with bayonets fixed. The two brothers had done as they were bidden, then looked at one another, each silently acknowledging the fragility of this defence. Their battalion had three machine-guns and a bag of Mills bombs. Matthew had 150 rounds of ammunition; plenty, he believed, to see him safe. He checked on Cecil, despite his protests, and seeing he had 50 rounds fewer, split the difference with him, so each had 125.

‘Keep your bloomin’ head down!’ was the last thing Matthew had said to him. Cecil simply grinned and winked in that cheeky way of his.

The first thing to go wrong was the wind. It blew the gas they’d thrown right back into their own faces. Matthew could remember men falling down, choking from its effects.

And it took no time at all for them to realise the inadequacy of their preparations. They’d been hopelessly outnumbered. There were German gun emplacements or bomb throwers every few yards. They’d walked openly up the hill as if on parade, the morning sun winking on their tin helmets, and marched straight into the jaws of hell.

Men fell all around, swallowed up by the banks of mist and swirling smoke from the bombs, rolling in screaming agony down the hill they had just climbed. One minute Cecil had been there beside him, solid, firm and alive, firing for all he was worth. But by the time Matthew had reached the German wire, he’d been quite alone. He’d set off running then, skirting the fringes of the defences, desperate to find his brother. A blow to his shoulder had flung him into a shell hole, already occupied by two dead men and one who quietly died with the cigarette Matthew had given him still between his lips. Matthew had lain half buried in that stinking hole for what seemed like days but must have been six or eight hours, perhaps as many as twelve, he couldn’t tell.

Acutely aware that going forward he would be shot and going back would mean facing a court martial. He could do nothing but remain where he was. Every time he risked lifting his head, the thud of a bullet hitting the ground inches away would send him scurrying back like a rabbit into its hole.

It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit again. His own shoulder wound had been superficial, but the battalion was well near annihilated, scarcely anybody left. Matthew would never forget the sight of all those prone figures; those young-old faces frozen in death.
 

Those left alive crawled or staggered any way they could to get back to safety, in a silence so terrible it was almost tangible. It was as if even the Germans were sickened by what they had done.
 

Cecil had not been amongst the living.

Ever since that terrible day Joshua had insisted that Matthew could and should have done more for the boy. He shouldn’t have lost sight of him, should have brought him out so he could receive first aid for his injuries. He refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation; how their own officers would let none of the men back on to the field to collect the wounded, not in the middle of a pitched battle.

In response to this explanation, Joshua added his accusation of cowardice, charging Matthew of saving his own skin at the expense of his brother’s, of wanting only to return safely to the new wife he had left waiting for him at home. He swore Matthew had reneged on his word and blamed him entirely for not guarding Cecil more carefully. How could Matthew disagree? Didn’t he blame himself even more for Cecil’s death? The hatred engendered between the brothers as a result had festered and grown ever since that day.

Florence, of course, had stoically borne her grief in silence, believing her youngest son had died bravely and nobly.

Matthew grieved for the brother he’d lost as keenly as anyone, if not more so. He’d torn himself apart with guilt; suffered the agonising pain of his memories and refused to speak of the war for years afterwards. He was saved from madness only by Polly’s unfaltering love and devotion.

‘Are you planning on doing yerself in, lad?’ hissed a voice in his ear, bringing Matthew sharply back to the present. ‘You’ve been gawping at that mucky water so long, I thought you were about to jump in it.’ The voice was that of his gaffer, Jim Taylor, a man prone to fault-finding even where none existed.

Matthew started. ‘No, I’m grand, ta very much.’ Hot with panic at his own carelessness, he grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and shot up the plank at a cracking pace.

The man followed him to stand on the deck of the narrow-boat, shaking a fist at him. ‘If you don’t shape yourself, you’ll be turned off, Matthew Pride. You’ve gone
 
slack lately. You were late back after that so-called funeral you went to, t’other day.’

Matthew stopped, startled by this accusation. ‘It was the funeral of my neighbour, I told you. And I wasn’t late at all.’ He heard the intake of breath of his fellow workers, sensed a frisson of sympathy and something very like fear emanating from them, and knew he’d made a mistake in arguing. It wasn’t wise to engage in a spat with the gaffer.

‘Are you calling me a liar? You were late back by two minutes, I timed you.’

It was a lie, and everyone listening knew it. Matthew Pride had never been late for work in his life, funeral or no. It was all too clear management was starting a policy of discouraging some of the regulars as work grew harder to come by, and perhaps having heard about the meeting, Jim Taylor was anxious to make an example of anyone not toeing the line to prove what could happen if they didn’t all watch out. Gritting his teeth, knowing why he was being baited, Matthew wisely said no more, merely continued stolidly with the task of refilling the barrow.

‘We’ll have no shirkers getting paid money they don’t earn. We can do without lazy louts taking too much time off and idling instead of working.’

Red in the face with the effort, yet Matthew held his tongue.
 

‘Though you manage to find time to attend meetings and visit your lady friend, eh? Its common knowledge one of you Pride brothers is servicing a young widow woman.’ And Jim Taylor looked about him with a smirk on his face, as if he’d said something very clever.

It was too much for Matthew. Though conscious of the way his workmates were silently willing him not to react, he felt driven to speak up by this terrible slur on his character, and on his lovely Polly. White to the lips, he said, ‘That’s not true. I’ve always been faithful to my wife, which is more than most can say.’