Polly's War (39 page)

Lucy was shaking with emotion, shivering with shock yet not for a moment dare she venture downstairs for a cup of tea or a warm by the embers of the kitchen fire. She was too afraid. Eyes wide open, she lay staring up into the darkness, her thoughts turning to Michael like an angel of light in her head.

He would have been disappointed, of course, that she hadn’t managed to get away but he’d understand, and soon it wouldn’t matter for they’d be together always. Thinking of his love made the shock ebb slowly away and a warm sensation to flow through her veins as she came to a decision. She realised now that she could never find the courage to tell Tom she was leaving him, not face to face. She saw that there was only one recourse open to her. Tomorrow, while he was at work, she’d pack her things, hers and the children’s and go to Michael. Then they would indeed run away together. Far away from Pansy Street and the gossips of Castlefield.

She didn’t expect to sleep but she must have done, for it seemed no more than a matter of moments before morning came and she was dragging herself out of bed, searching for fresh clothes. Tom was already seated at the kitchen table by the time she reached it, waiting for his breakfast as he scanned the morning paper, just as if it were any normal day.

‘There’s nothing in here about any fire,’ he said, as if she’d made it all up.

‘It happened too late for them to print anything.’ Lucy crossed to the sink to fill the kettle. Every muscle screamed with pain, even her bones ached as if she’d fought the fire herself instead of simply helping Polly carry out as much stock as they could before it took a proper hold. Sadly, they’d managed to save precious little as it had spread frighteningly fast. Lucy guessed she must be covered with bruises. ‘It’ll be in the Evening News. I’ll go and see Mam this morning. She’ll be in a terrible state.’

Exhaustion dragged at her, fogging her mind so that she couldn’t think properly, making her eyes feel like burned holes in her head.

Lucy cooked kippers for Tom’s breakfast, handed him his hat and coat, even let him kiss her cheek as usual when he left the house. He made no mention of the baby, or her ‘accidental’ fall down the stairs. Neither did she. They simply kept up the pretence of normality, which had become second nature to them.
 

When he’d gone she forced herself into action, hastily packed bags with clumsy fingers, stuffed clothes in anyhow, ironed or not and instead of taking the children to school she walked and dragged and hustled them to the end of the street where she knocked on Minnie Hopkin’s door. Michael, she knew, would be delighted to look after all three of them.

It was Minnie who opened the door, holding a handkerchief to her face. Lucy saw at once that the old woman had been crying. Her first thought was that she’d heard about the fire but then how could she, it surely wasn’t generally known yet and why would that make her cry? Nobody had been hurt, but then inside of her a creeping fear swelled and began to fill her entire body.

‘What is it? Where’s Michael? Dear God,
no
!’ Somehow it same as no surprise to hear Minnie Hopkins open her toothless mouth and wail that he had gone, vowing never to return.

They all four crowded into Minnie Hopkin’s tiny kitchen to listen to her sad tale. ‘He was all I had. To be honest, he weren’t really my nephew at all. He were me son,’ she confessed on a great gulping sob. ‘My mam and dad were so ashamed of my fall from grace they were going to send me to a home for wayward girls. So I up and run away. Never went back.’

 
‘Oh Minnie, I didn’t know.’ Lucy could hardly take in Minnie’s story, as she sat in a state of disbelief. This couldn’t be happening to her. Michael wouldn’t go off and leave her. Yet she knew that he had. Hadn’t he told her to choose? That this was her last chance. Last night, the very date when she was to give him her decision, she’d missed their date completely because of the fire. He wouldn’t have known why she’d failed to turn up, of course. He would simply assume that she’d made her choice, and that it wasn’t him. Oh, dear God, why hadn’t she gone to him last night, however late it was.

‘It was nobody’s business but mine,’ Minnie was saying. ‘Least said, soonest mended.’

‘But how did you survive, a young girl on her own?’ Lucy now found her sluggish mind racing, half of it listening to Minnie’s tale, the rest of it desperately seeking a solution to her own tragedy.

‘Oh, it was hard at first. I near starved. Lived rough for a year or two but I weren’t the only one in t’same pickle. I met other girls. We helped each other. Then I found a job working on the wharves packing, and Michael used to help me. He were only small like but he were a right little Trojan. Wife of my gaffer spotted him and told me it was no place for a child. She were the woman what owned this house. Come down in t’world she had, but still had a bob or two. She took me on as housemaid and told me I could fetch him wi’ me. I said he were me sister’s child, though I never had no sister. For my lad’s sake it seemed better if I made out I were his aunt. Saves all that nasty name-calling. But he were t’best thing that ever happened to me.’ Despite her tough words, Minnie’s faded eyes again filled with tears which she quickly stifled with a large white handkerchief, blowing her nose vigorously.

‘Oh Minnie, I’m so sorry.’

‘He said you and him had quarrelled last time you were together, that you’d refused to ...’ She ran out of words, of breath even as choking sobs finally doused her control.

Filled with a new, deeper shame and guilt for robbing this old woman of her one and only joy in life, Lucy put her arms about her. Sensing the rigid shoulders, the unyielding spine, she went instead to grab the kettle and began to issue orders, as if someone had been taken ill and they must all rally round to deal with the emergency.

‘Sarah Jane, fetch the cups. Sean get the biscuit barrel.’ Something sweet for shock, wasn’t that right? But it was only the children, bewildered and exchanging anxious glances who dipped into it. At least the treat kept them quiet and happy while she strove to think. Poor Minnie didn’t even have the heart to suck one of her favourite pear drops.

She’d no idea where Michael might have gone, but no, she didn’t think it would be back in the army, because of the missing foot. ‘They wouldn’t have him, would they?’ Nor did she know the names of any of his friends outside of Castlefield, or even Pansy Street for that matter. The rumours of his being a conchie had done their worst. And she didn’t expect him to go back to his old house either since it’d been flattened by a bomb. It was as they talked that the true reality of her situation finally hit Lucy as the tears slid down her cheeks. Michael was gone, she knew not where. She was carrying his child, of that she was quite certain, and since she’d no intention of ever returning to her husband, she knew she must bear it alone, just as Minnie had done.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hubert was satisfied that events were swinging his way. He could feel his tide of luck turning. His own financial situation was growing stronger by the day, greatly assisted by having taken over a small but significant clothing manufacturer which had stubbornly evaded making proper payments on a loan. Taking control of the company would make him a far greater profit in the long run which had been his object from the start. Yet another case of someone else’s grey cloud providing him with a silver lining. All most satisfactory. Some people collected works of art. Hubert preferred more substantial artefacts, like property or businesses. With his next victim already picked out, he lit a cigar and sat back in his smart leather chair with a smile to wait for events to unfold.

He was interrupted in his reverie by the strident clang of the door bell. Hubert waited, one ear cocked for Joanna to answer it as she always used to. The door bell clanged again.

‘Damnation. What was wrong with the woman?’ True, losing Belinda had proved to be a severe blow to his wife and she hadn’t been the same since. Never in the darned house for one thing, her excuse being that where was the point in making a fuss about meals and her garden when there were only the two of them, a state of affairs which would now never change.

He clamped the cigar between his teeth and strode to the door, flinging it open with a growling, ‘well?’

He was mildly surprised to find his son-in-law standing on the doorstep, a gurgling baby propped on one hip as if he were some gyppo who couldn’t afford a pram, and despite the fact it must be well past the child’s bedtime. Class, Hubert decided, always revealed itself unless properly trained.

‘I’ve come to ask if you’d anything to do wi’ that fire,’ Benny bluntly announced. ‘Because if you had, I’d like to know why, since it damages your grandson as much as anybody.’

Hubert was momentarily startled. By heck but Ron had been quick off the mark. He hoped it had been a bad one. He covered his confusion by studying the child which seemed to be surprisingly well cared for, all smartly dressed in a blue knitted jacket and balaclava. Joanna had dreamed of grandchildren, yet couldn’t quite bring herself to accept Belinda had actually given her one. Nor more could he. It came to Hubert in that moment that there was one obvious way he could curb his wife’s restlessness and make her happy for once.

‘Why would I harm this little chap, Benny lad. Or the business he might inherit? All I can do now that I’ve lost Belinda, is to ensure her son gets what would’ve been hers by right.’
 

Hubert really had no wish to be harangued by this ruffian, whom he’d never liked. Nor had he any intention of allowing the Pride family to keep either their business or his grandson. Little Matthew's inheritance would come from quite a different source. He’d easily get custody of the child, for Joanna’s sake, when the moment came. Once he’d won his revenge over what this rogue had done to his beloved Belinda.

Time, it seemed, had warped Hubert’s memory of his relationship with his only daughter and he now viewed it as a close one, spoiled only by Benny and not by his own machinations. He’d conveniently forgotten his part in her eviction from the shop, the very reason she’d given birth in a freezing back street with no medical assistance until it was too late. The fault, in his mind, lay entirely with this no good piece of dross who was cluttering up his doorstep.

Benny was still glowering, as if trying to decide whether to believe his father-in-law or not. ‘If you had any hand in what went on last night, don’t think I won’t find out, and do summat about it.’

‘What right have thee to threaten me?’ Hubert’s carefully practised diction always deserted him under stress, revealing that self-made man though he may be, underneath he was no more than a step removed from his lowly origins in Quay Street. His mother had taken in washing to earn an honest crust, her one ambition to buy a better life for her only son. And hadn’t he clawed and cheated his way up the ladder of success ever since, right to the bloody top, if only to prove she hadn’t wasted her efforts. He certainly had no intention of being knocked off his perch by this piece of dirt. ‘I’ll thank you to take your mucky boots off my doorstep. It’s a pity, to my mind, that I ever let them stand on it at all. I should’ve knocked your clock off the first time I clapped eyes on thee. Then my Belinda might still be alive today instead of ...’

He got no further. Snapping to attention, Benny took a step forward to shake a furious fist less than an inch from Hubert’s nose. ‘Damn you to hell, Hubert Clarke. Mam’s right. You
are
the lowest of the low whether you set that fire or not.’ In that moment he was very much the soldier with a power he wasn’t above using. The ferocity of the action so startled Hubert that he instinctively backed away while Matt, alarmed by the anger in his dad’s voice, started to howl. ‘Make no mistake. Our family sticks together. Take on one, you take on the lot.’ Then as the baby’s cries rose to a higher pitch, Benny smoothed his son’s head with a gentling hand, swung on his heel and marched away.

It took till the middle of the next day before the fire brigade was satisfied the fire was completely out. When they’d finally gone, all Polly’s pent-up fury erupted in a tide of temper almost as hot as the flames themselves. ‘Will ye look at this mess? What the fire hasn’t ruined, the water has.’ She began to cry, hands outstretched, encompassing the awful scene. The new looms were a mass of charred metal while almost every scrap of wool, every bobbin and shuttle, every yard of carefully woven carpet was destroyed. Over the whole building hung a stinking pall of smoke. It looked as if the Luftwaffe had been over and dropped their last bomb. Polly stood in puddles of water and looked about her in desperation for someone to blame. Her gaze fell upon poor Benny and she at once laid into him for not having removed the waste as he was supposed to do.
 

‘We were lucky I happened to be there at the time, dealing with some bills,’ she ranted. ‘Otherwise, saints preserve us, the whole building would have come down. Have you no sense in that head of yours?’

She regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of her mouth. The accusation was unfair and they both knew it. Benny wasn’t the only one responsible for clearing away the waste wool. He worked as hard as she did on the business, sometimes even harder for, apart from little Matt, it was his only solace. She knew that he was desperate to fill every moment of his day with work, even if it meant carrying the baby about on his hip while he did it. This was the only way, he’d admitted to her in one unguarded moment, that when night came he could lay his head on his pillow and sleep, instead of thinking about Belinda till the pain swelled in his chest so that he could scarce breathe.