Read Always I'Ll Remember Online
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
Always I'Ll Remember (2 page)
‘Course you got in, me bairn. I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Even them airy-fairy types at the technical college recognise a little gem when they see one.’
‘Oh, Da.’ Again she pushed at him, her smile widening. ‘You just put all your details on an application form and send it in.’
‘Aye, but you said there was a bit where you had to tell them all about yourself and why you wanted to go on the course.’
‘Aye, there was, and like I said, I put down I’d been saving for ages and that I didn’t want to work in a factory all of my life.’
‘There you are then, that’ll have clinched it. Shows a bit of backbone, you see.’ And his eldest bairn had plenty of that. Raymond glanced at his daughter who, at the age of sixteen, was already showing signs of a beauty that would take a man’s breath away in a few years. The last remnants of puppy fat were fast disappearing from the still slightly childish face and body, and the thick wheat-coloured hair and large, heavily lashed brown eyes were an unusual contrast. She’d shot up since her birthday in January too; he reckoned she must be at least two or three inches taller.
This last thought caused Raymond to tweak the long plait falling to below his daughter’s shoulder blades as he said, ‘You’ll soon be taller than your mam, lass, the rate you’re growing. I thought you was going to take after my side but I could be wrong.’
She grinned at him again, her round face alight. From her first day at school when two older girls had pointed out she was small and fat like a beer barrel and had made her life a misery for months, she’d become acutely aware of her shape. Even after she had gone for them one day and in the ensuing fracas ensured they didn’t pick on her again, she had remained sensitive to the fact that she was tubby and the smallest one in her class. But that was changing at last. It was almost as if reaching sixteen had triggered some magical change and she couldn’t be more grateful.
‘So . . .’ As the two of them turned off Silksworth Row, continuing past the bottom of the tramway depot and into Rose Street, Raymond said, ‘How you going to put it to her then, lass? You know she’ll kick up blue murder.’
Abby nodded, her bright smile fading. Her mother had raised the roof two and a half years ago when she had said she wanted to stay on at school rather than leaving at fourteen, and she had found herself installed in the pickle factory in the heart of town before she could blink.
She was lucky she had the chance of a decent job, her mother had ranted. Any other girl would give her eye teeth to be set on somewhere, with unemployment so widespread, and what did she want with learning anyway? It was no good to a lass. She ought to be down on her bended knees giving thanks to a mother who would take the trouble to go and see an old acquaintance - who also happened to be forewoman at the factory - to ask for work for such an ungrateful little chit of a daughter.
Abby hadn’t gone down on her bended knees. Instead she had argued in vain for her point of view to be heard, and the result had shown itself in a bruise across one cheek-bone which had still been faintly visible when her father returned from sea some two weeks later. But it had all been too late by then. She had been forced into the noisy, hot, smelly confines of the pickle factory, where the days were long and exhausting and most of the time you couldn’t hear yourself think. The stench of onions was ingrained in hair, skin, nails - a stench which no amount of scrubbing in the old tin bath in front of the fire would remove - and her eyes were constantly irritated, causing them to weep and feel raw. But it was the mind-deadening quality of the job which was the biggest cross to bear.
Abby looked at her father’s profile. ‘I’m not staying on at the factory a day longer than I need to, but I won’t leave until I’ve finished the shorthand and typing course and got another job. She’ll have to be content with that.’
‘Hinny, the day I witness your mam being content about anything’ll be the day Father Finlay says hello and God bless you.’
Abby giggled, her hand going over her mouth. Her da was awful the way he was about the priest, but then the Father wasn’t very nice to her da, saying he’d burn in hell’s flames and always going on at him to repent and join the one true faith.
She supposed the priest had to try and convert her da. It was his job in a way - if you could look at it as a job, which you probably couldn’t. But Father Finlay didn’t have to be so - the word which sprung to mind was nasty but she didn’t dare use it about the priest - so dogmatic, did he?
As a child the priest’s visits to her mother had made her feel physically sick, worrying herself silly about her da not being a Catholic and taking Father Finlay’s dire warnings about the state of her da’s immortal soul to heart. It was only when she started work at the pickle factory and heard the chit-chat among the workers at lunchtime that she had begun to think differently, and question - if only in her heart - whether the priest was always right. There were all the missionaries and people like that who weren’t Catholics for a start, she just couldn’t imagine the same God who sent His Son to die for the sins of the world consigning them to hell’s flames along with ordinary men and women who just happened to be Protestants or Hallelujahs or whatever.
‘If I were you I’d tell her when we’re having a cup of tea after the meal. That way the others can skedaddle with full bellies if they need to.’ Raymond had stopped a couple of houses short of their front door, his voice low, and as Abby stopped too she nodded her reply.
The grim terraced street was full of bairns making the most of the dying sunshine, playing hopscotch, swinging on a rope secured to the iron lamp post or playing marbles in the gutters. Abby knew full well her sister, Clara, wouldn’t be outside. In spite of being only four years old, Clara would be inside doing chores their mother had set for her. And Wilbert, a year younger than herself but who’d been working a forty-seven-hour week at Austin’s shipyard for the last twelve months, would be expected to do his quota when he got in from work. She didn’t know what their mam did all day given the amount of chores that awaited them all when they got home of an evening. Her da was the luckiest one, he was away out of it on the sea for most of the year.
This last thought prompted Abby to say, ‘It was nice of you to meet me out today, Da. You been to the shipping office?’
‘Aye. You know me, lass, a week on dry land and I’ve just about had me fill.’
Abby knew it was her mam he’d had enough of but she didn’t comment on this, merely saying, ‘When do you sail?’
‘First thing Thursday morning.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Two or three months.’
Her heart sank but the training of years prevented it from showing in either her face or voice, and she reminded herself for the umpteenth time that it could be worse - Wilbert could have chosen to follow their da onto the ships and then it would have been only herself and Clara at home with their mam. She had felt pleased but guilty when Wilbert’s childish dislike of the sea had grown the older he’d become; her da would have loved his only son to work with him, but for herself she felt only overwhelming relief that Wilbert was staying put. It wasn’t just that the pair of them had some good cracks together, or that it was nice to have a man around for some of the heavier jobs like bringing in the sacks of coal or taties, more that Wilbert, with his sunny, relaxed nature, kept an uneasy peace in the house some of the time. Mind, even her brother wouldn’t be able to pour oil on troubled waters this night.
Her shoulders instinctively straightened at the thought as though she was already doing battle with her mother, and a battle it would be. She knew it. Her mam was as determined to keep her working in the pickle factory as she was to escape it. It would be seen as a personal insult that her daughter had had the temerity to save what she could from the two shillings doled back to her from her weekly wage of ten and ninepence, solely in order to produce the fee needed for the shorthand and typing evening course at the technical college.
‘Well, lass, the fish’ll be biting at the dead man’s finger if we stay out here much longer. The sooner we’re in, the sooner dinner’ll be on the table and the sooner you can get what needs to be said off your chest. Ready?’
‘Aye, I’m ready, Da.’ As ready as she would ever be when a confrontation with her mother was looming. No one, not Wilbert or even her da, knew how her stomach knotted and how bad she felt when her mam was on her high horse about something or other. But she couldn’t say nothing and let her mother gallop roughshod over her like the rest of them did. It was just not in her somehow. Her mam said she was an awkward little madam and too big for her boots, and maybe she was, but she couldn’t help it.
As always, Abby’s spirits dropped as she approached the house. Heavy starched lace curtains hung at the windows, the front door knocker was shining and the front step had the smart cream-edged finish which said the occupant was diligent with the scouring stone. She hated that step. She sometimes spent half an hour or more stoning the surface before her mother was satisfied it was done, and then the next minute someone trod on it with muddy boots or the grime and dust of the street settled again. It was pointless. She didn’t intend to ever stone her step when she was married and she didn’t care what the neighbours said.
For some reason the thought strengthened her, enabling her voice to sound quite perky as she opened the front door and called, ‘We’re back, Mam.’
There was no reply but she hadn’t really expected one. Quietly now, she and her father hung their coats on the brown pegs along one wall of the hall and walked past the front room door which, as always, was closed, and into the kitchen at the back of the house.
Number 12 Rose Street comprised four rooms and a scullery, being a two-up, two-down terrace with a privy in the backyard. The brick-built lavatory was their own but they shared a wash house and a yard tap with number fourteen. Her mother’s sister lived in this house with her husband and four children and Granda Dodds, who had been bedridden for years due to an accident at the shipyard just after the influenza had taken his wife in the winter of 1928. Abby loved her mother’s father and she knew the irascible old man loved her; she’d also known from a child without a word being said that this was not the case between her granda and her mother.
‘You’re ten minutes late.’
Nora Vickers did not look at her husband and eldest child as she spoke. She lifted a large casserole dish out of the oven and placed it on the steel shelf at one side of the range, then began to slice a large loaf of new bread into thick slices. Clara was busy setting the table with cutlery and dinner plates, and the sisters exchanged a swift smile before Abby said, ‘Da met me out of work and we got talking.’
‘Got talking! Nice to have the time to waste to talk.’ It was said with contempt.
Abby’s father shook his head in warning and Abby bit back the hot words hovering on her tongue and followed him through into the scullery. A tin dish half full of water and a tablet of carbolic soap were standing on a small table under the narrow window, next to which hung a towel from a nail driven into the brick wall. As they were drying their hands they heard Wilbert’s voice, and a moment later the tall, gangly figure joined them in the scullery. Smiles were exchanged but not a word was spoken as Abby and her father went into the kitchen and took their places at the table. Wilbert followed a moment later, rubbing his damp hands on his trousers.
As her mother ladled out the first plate of meaty stew and dumplings from the dish beside the range, Abby said, ‘Shall I help you with those, Mam?’ and rose from her seat.
‘Bit late for any help.’ It was sharp. ‘You stay where you are.’
It wasn’t until they had all begun to eat, helping themselves to shives of bread from the plate in the centre of the table, that Nora broke the silence. ‘Did you get a ship?’ she asked, without looking directly at her husband.
‘Aye.’ Raymond ate a large piece of dumpling, chewing slowly and swallowing before he added, ‘We sail Thursday.’
If anyone had been looking at Nora they would have seen her stiff frame relax slightly, but no trace of this came through in her voice when she said, ‘How long will you be gone this time?’
‘Couple of months, maybe three.’
Let it be three. Three months free of the irritant of having to look at him, to feed him, to lie with him. How could she ever have thought herself in love with this useless windbag of a man? It was a question she had asked herself numerous times over the years, and the answer was always the same: I was young and silly and swept off my feet by his looks and manner. He’d been so charming and handsome then - he still was handsome, but his attractiveness had long since failed to hold any appeal.
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