Saturday's Child (8 page)

‘We’ll get there, Mammy,’ said Beth when the noise faded to a giggle.

‘That we will, my love. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, we shall get you there.’

‘Not just me, Mammy. This is for us, for both of us.’

Magsy smiled, though her eyes pricked. Beth would move forward, would meet her William – please God – and travel on along her own road. ‘Just remember,’ she whispered
now, ‘that you are my daughter. It isn’t pride, Beth, but I know there is something in me and that I have passed it on to you. Yet whatever you do, it must be for yourself.’

‘You gave me strength, Mammy. You gave me reading and writing, you gave me happiness and fun.’

‘Even when there was nothing to eat?’

Beth closed her eyes against the sweetest pain. ‘Especially then, Mammy, especially then.’

There was trouble in the street, a disquiet that passed itself along Nellie Hulme’s spine until the hair on her scalp rose and tried to walk away. She didn’t know
what this sixth sense was or where it came from, but it was very much a part of her essence. It might have been best described as a tingling sensation, as if some kind of electric current switched
itself on in her stomach, feelers spreading until her backbone was on red alert.

She had seen it all from behind the tattered remnants of her adoptive mother’s curtains, had watched Ernest Barnes hobbling across the street to the Higgins house. What a fall he had
taken, too. Mother had explained to Nellie about Catholics and Orange Lodgers, but why hadn’t all that ended? The war had altered things, surely?

Restless on that Sunday, she watched Magsy O’Gara waving young Beth off to Mass. An insomniac, Nellie saw most of what went on in the early mornings. Five o’clock, Magsy O’Gara
had set out for work on the Sabbath. She had done about four hours, and was now sending her daughter off to church, to the eleven o’clock Mass, a long service with no communion. So Beth might
have eaten, at least. In Nellie’s opinion, the custom of denying food before communion was nothing less than barbaric, but at least she didn’t hate Christians who chose to worship the
Roman way.

Magsy had walked down with a young man from Fox Street, a personable character with good looks and a nice smile. Dressed in working clothes, he, too, had been called upon for Sunday work.
Something to do with building, Nellie guessed, from the cut of his clothes. She smiled. Was this the beginning of a courtship? Oh, she hoped so. When she wasn’t working, Nellie had a penchant
for lurid love stories. Their bitter-sweetness reminded her of all she had missed, yet the same quality reassured her that life and love would go on for ever.

Nellie was still restless. A strange urge had come over her, a need that was just an almost impossible dream. Nellie wanted a clean house. No matter what she did, no matter how well she
protected her materials, they stank – even though they went straight from the laundry to the customer, there was still a whiff of Nellie about them.

Her sense of smell was well developed and she wished that it would deteriorate. She had been quite happy with her haphazard life, but she had suddenly started to notice how filthy her house
really was. The job of clearing it was too much for her, too much for ten men. Yet who could she get to help her? And there was no point in starting with personal cleanliness, as she would quickly
revert to her original condition if she went to the slipper baths only to return to this unprepossessing place.

Nellie picked up a tin, its lid sealed against dirt. She would do this, she really would, because she wanted to, wanted to give something to the people across the street. Ernest Barnes might be
in hospital, but Nellie’s sympathies lay with the large family opposite, the happy band whose father had been at the receiving end of Ernest’s stick.

She opened the door, looked left and right. It was such a short distance, yet a lifetime away. Nellie had never crossed the street. She had walked up it, down it, but never across it. Her
parents had kept themselves very much to themselves, and Nellie had followed suit. But she stepped down onto the pavement and waddled over to the Higgins house.

Sal opened the door. ‘Hello,’ she said.

Nellie knew with a blinding certainty that she was not being judged, that this woman took folk as she found them. ‘Toffees,’ she mouthed, ‘kiddies.’

Sal’s face spread into a huge smile.

‘Clean.’ Nellie shook the tin, showed that it was closed.

‘Come in?’ asked Sal.

Nellie shook her head. Why should her filth infect a household that was already troubled?

Sal took the sweets. ‘Thank you.’ Her mouth moved all over the place as she sought to make contact with this deaf woman. ‘Very good of you.’

Nellie turned and walked back to her hovel. She had done an important thing today. She had made contact with a nice woman and she had given sweets to children. It was a giant step. Now, she
needed cardboard boxes, sacks, tea-chests – whatever. An inch at a time, she would get this place right.

It took over half an hour to find the top of the dresser, but Nellie experienced a feeling of pure triumph when she discovered its surface. Slowly, very slowly, she would get to the bottom of
things.

As she gazed at her blurred face in the dusty mirror, she suddenly realized the full extent of her intentions. The reason behind her recent activity had little to do with living conditions. Her
heart bounced around in her chest like a kiddy’s toy. She faced her reflection, faced the days to come. The decision was disturbingly sudden. Because Nellie Hulme was going to find out who
she was and where she had come from.

Ensconced once more in her favourite chair, exhausted by her effort to clear that minute section of her cluttered home, she slept. The dream came again, a tall man, an elegant lady. This time,
Nellie was inside a house, but the room was vague. It felt like a large room and it contained a great deal of furniture. There was a portrait over the fireplace, but the figure depicted was
unclear. The lady sat near the window; she was sewing very quickly. The tall man was near the fireplace – he was seated and reading.

Plates clattered. Nellie left the room and found herself in a kitchen. A large lady was banging something on the table, probably dough for bread. Nellie could hear each crash as the woman
pounded the mix. A dog barked. Outside, birds twittered in the trees, their conversation loud and quarrelsome.

Nellie ran through the doorway into that green world. The fields went on for ever, rising in gentle slopes towards a far horizon. She was so small that she could not look into the horse trough,
even when she stood on tiptoe. A ladybird crawled up her arm, unfolded its wings and flew away. In her dream, the beating of the insect’s wings was as loud as the flapping of a hen. Yes,
there were hens, and there was a cockerel who made a terrible noise. Cows lowed. In a nearby field, they began to congregate, lining up like a row of people in a shop. They were going to be
milked.

She woke, sweat pouring down her forehead, stinging her eyes. Those two people were her parents, of that she felt sure. They had given her away to the Hulmes because she had turned out
sub-standard, deaf, non-speaking. Somewhere in this terrible house, there was a clue – perhaps the whole answer.

Every month, the money came, the amount increasing to keep pace, just about, with the cost of living. It sat now in a bank account, as Nellie had no need of it. In 1949, her income from
lace-making had been over four hundred pounds, enough to buy the house in her dream. Why, if she could face the humiliation, she could easily afford a few cleaners to come in and mend this place.
No. She had to do it herself. Whilst having no concept of what she was looking for, she knew that she would recognize whatever it was when she found it. Someone else might throw it away with all
the other wreckage. After all, it was probably just another very old piece of paper.

Yes, the money was there, but money was not the issue; what Nellie wanted was to trace her own history, her background. To do that, she needed to be clean and respectable. The Hulmes, gentle,
kind people, had been good to her. They had taught her to read, to count, to draw, paint and sew. They had loved her, had protected her from a world that was often cruel to a child who was
different. But those two good people had told her nothing beyond the fact that they had chosen her to be their daughter.

Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to revisit the dream, to remember the sounds contained within it, but, as ever, she failed. Yes, it was time to find out the whole truth.

Why did the little things get her down? Lily Hardcastle put the iron on the hearth and sank into a chair. In the end, it was the tiny details of life that corroded the surface,
burning away till flesh and bone got wearied.

For a start, there was him and his nose. He’d never warned her before the wedding, hadn’t bothered to tell her that he spent most of his time at home with a finger stuck up one of
his nostrils. Sam Hardcastle was probably the world champion nose-picker, such a perfectionist that his wife was surprised that he had stopped short of removing brain tissue.

Lily shook her head and heaved a great sigh. Her husband ought to have cups and certificates all over the house, his name in the papers, a letter from the king. And Sam had become so absorbed in
his hobby that his features seemed to rearrange themselves throughout these regular excavations, gob wide open, face like a fit, as Lily’s mother had been heard to opine. At work, he mined
coal; in his house he carried on mining, wiping each retrieved item on the cushion that supported him. Lily was tired of washing his ‘crusties’ off the cover. At least the deposits were
mostly on just one side of the chair, as his second picking finger had been blown off in the war. Sam always used his little finger, just occasionally inserting a longer digit when that extra
quarter-inch was required.

Danny, her eldest, had started to drink, although his attitude remained apologetic and he always tipped up money for his keep, bless him. He ate with his mouth wide open, did Danny. It was like
sitting across from a miniature version of a cement mixer, contents rolled this way and that, a great deal of noise accompanying the process. She’d told him over the years that these
performances rendered her sick in the stomach, and the lad had tried, but he couldn’t seem to eat like a normal person.

Aaron. Oh God, Aaron. Where had she gone wrong at all? Aaron had feet. He hadn’t always had them, but they had burgeoned in recent months as he strode towards manhood. She had bought a
special bowl for Aaron’s feet, and many pairs of socks, too. He was supposed to clean his feet straight away when he returned from school, though he seldom did. Whatever came out of
Aaron’s socks should be taken to a laboratory for analysis and given to the War Office to be used as an offensive weapon next time Germany kicked off. It would be like Napoleon’s
retreat from Russia, the enemy drifting away into oblivion, many never to be seen again.

History was interesting, thought Lily, who had started to pick up factual books from the library. Yes, and Aaron’s feet produced something very close to mustard gas, of that Lily was
certain. She never had to wonder where Aaron was – she just followed her nose.

Roy was still a kiddy, but Lily knew what was coming. Both the older boys had been blessed with teenage spots, though they had managed to stop short of manufacturing craters all over their
faces. Roy had fiddled with his chicken pox until his skin had started to bear a strong resemblance to the surface of the moon. And there was something about redheads that made such blemishes more
visible, probably because their epidermis was finer than the skin of most other folk. The red hair had come from Sam’s side of the family, so Lily took no blame for that.

She was sure that other wives and mothers didn’t sit here with a pile of ironing to complete and shopping to do, their minds fixed on feet, nose-picking, eating habits and teenage acne.
She wasn’t normal. Women loved their families instinctively – real women, anyway. They didn’t loll about with a Woodbine, minds fixed on faults, thoughts reaching the point where
they said, out loud, ‘They’re boring, that’s the problem.’ Lily had just said it, had heard the words coming from her own mouth.

Someone tapped at the back door.

Lily jumped up, threw the cigarette end in the fire, smoothed her apron. She had to look the part, even if it was all just an act. Women fettled. They were here to fettle, to keep the house
nice, provide food, warmth and clean clothes.

Lily opened the door. ‘Nay, lass, you should have just walked in, no need to wait.’

Magsy O’Gara stepped inside, followed Lily into the kitchen. ‘Ironing,’ she declared, ‘don’t you just hate it?’

Lily laughed as she pushed the kettle onto the fire. ‘I’d sooner drink a cuppa any day of the week.’ She was glad that Aaron was still at school, because there was a natural
elegance to this beautiful young woman, and Lily could not imagine her tolerating the smell that accompanied her middle son through life.

After being invited to sit, Magsy placed herself at the table. ‘Now, I hope you don’t mind me coming.’

‘No bother. I needed an excuse to leave that lot alone for a few minutes.’ Lily inclined her head in the direction of clean but wrinkled clothing. She busied herself with cups and
saucers. Magsy O’Gara might be poor, but she was definitely not the type for an enamel mug or a cheap pot beaker. And here was history in the making, a Catholic taking tea in a Protestant
home!

‘I was in the back street here,’ Magsy began to explain.

‘That’s as may be,’ replied Lily, ‘but you can come to my front door any time you like.’

‘Thank you.’ Magsy accepted a slice of malt cake.

‘Can’t be doing with this Cat-lick and Proddy-dog business,’ mumbled Lily. ‘Look what it’s done for that daft beggar next door. Dot’s gone, you know.’
And oh, how Lily wished that she had the courage to follow the woman who had always been known as ‘poor Dot’. Well, Dot was poor no more, God love her. At least she had reaped some
reward after years of drudgery and violence.