Dancing in the Moonlight (2 page)

She had finished the ironing and was just adding dumplings to the mutton broth which had been slowly simmering on the hob when Ruby and John came bursting in, their cheeks and noses red. They
were arguing, and as usual Ruby got in first with her side of things.

‘Tell him, our Lucy.’ Ruby stood, all melting snow and indignation, with her mittened hands on small, stocky hips. ‘He swore in front of Mrs Travis up the street, he
did.’

‘Did not.’ John stuck his tongue out at his sister for good measure.

‘Ooh, you liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire.’

‘Enough!’ Lucy glanced over at the bed before drawing both children to her and sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘What did you say to Mrs Travis, John?’

Her brother, a true Fallow male with his dark straight hair and brown eyes, stared at her innocently. ‘I asked her if her cat was better. It had half its ear bitten off last
week.’

‘You
said
’ – Ruby was incensed – ‘how was her
damn
cat.’

John’s gaze moved to the sister he considered the bane of his life. ‘Well, that’s what Mrs Travis calls him. That damn cat.’

Lucy tried not to smile. John was right. She had never heard their elderly neighbour of a few doors away refer to the cat which she loved to distraction, but which caused her constant and vocal
grief, as anything else but ‘that damn cat’. The feline in question fought with every other moggy it came across, constantly vomited up the contents of its stomach in the house and was
forever bringing half-dead mice and birds into the old woman’s bed.

Keeping her face straight with some effort, Lucy shook her head. ‘Ruby’s right. You mustn’t say “damn”, John.’

‘Why not?’ John stuck out his chin. ‘Mrs Travis does.’

‘Mrs Travis is a grown-up. It’s up to her what she says, but Mam and Da wouldn’t like you using that word.’

‘But I can when I’m grown-up?’

‘You’ll have to decide for yourself then.’

John considered this. ‘How old is grown-up?’

Lucy tweaked his snub nose. ‘You’ve got years and years to go yet, so don’t worry about it. Now the pair of you know you should leave your wet things in the scullery. Go and
take off your hats and coats and leave your boots on the mat, and come and get warm in front of the fire. You can play with Flora and Bess while I get you a drink and a shive of bread and dripping,
to tide you over till dinner time.’

‘I want to tell Mam I got a star in my writing book today.’ Ruby darted over to her mother’s bed before Lucy could stop her, only to turn and say, ‘Lucy? Mam’s
bad.’

Lucy was at her mother’s side in a moment and she could see what had alarmed Ruby. Her mother’s eyes were open, but they seemed to have sunk into the back of her head and the deep
pallor of her skin was frightening. A kind of a gurgle emerged from her throat, but when Lucy took her mother’s hand, the bony fingers held onto hers with surprising strength.

Without letting go of her mother’s hand, Lucy pushed her sister. ‘Go and get Mrs Crawford. Tell her Mam’s been took bad.’

Ruby didn’t need to be told twice.

Mrs Crawford must have been doing some baking because her hands were floury and she had her big pinny on when she hurried into the kitchen a minute or two later. Lucy had never been so glad to
see someone in all her life. Standing by the bed, Enid Crawford said softly, ‘Oh, Agnes, lass. Now lie quiet and we’ll send for the quack. Don’t you fret none.’

‘Shall I go for Dr Pearson?’ whispered Lucy.

‘No, hinny, you stay with your mam. I’ll send our Jacob,’ Enid replied in like tone. A big hefty woman with a voice on her that could drop a bullock at ten paces when she was
in a temper, her face was uncharacteristically tender as she stood staring down at her longtime friend. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was it, and in truth who would wish for Agnes to go on
suffering? But she would miss her, and so would the little lass kneeling by the bed. The full weight of the family was going to fall on Lucy’s shoulders, and her only twelve, but then it had
been that way for the past eighteen months or so.

Enid’s gaze rested on Lucy, taking in the gleaming golden-brown hair, tendrils of which had escaped the child’s single thick plait to curl round the small heart-shaped face.

Bonny as a summer’s day, this bairn was, and as bright as a button to boot. Lucy had always been top of her class and one night before the twins were born and Agnes had been took bad, her
friend had come round bursting with pride because Lucy’s school report had said something about the child training to be a teacher when she was older. Of course that had been knocked on the
head, not that it could have come to anything anyway. Whoever heard of a bairn from round these parts – especially a lass – training for something like that? Where did these teachers
imagine the money was going to come from? It was all folk could do to keep body and soul together, and with the slump worsening, there were plenty who couldn’t even do that. Most of the
shipyards were on short time now, and Thompson’s would be next. Everyone was just waiting for the axe to fall.

Gathering herself, Enid bent down to Agnes. ‘I’ll send our Jacob for the quack, lass, and your Lucy’ll stay with you. All right, pet? An’ I’ll take the others back
with me an’ give ’em their tea.’ It was a stroke, by the look of it, and it had taken her left side; the corner of Agnes’s mouth was dragging and her left arm and hand lay
still on top of the blankets.

Enid couldn’t bear to look at her friend’s agonized face another moment. Turning, she glanced to where Ruby and John, each with a twin in their small arms, were watching her, tears
seeping from their eyes. ‘None of that,’ she said briskly, although for two pins she’d join them. ‘That won’t help no one. We’re going to leave your mam to have
a little sleep till the doctor comes and you can help me make a round of singin’ hinnies, would you like that? An’ I’ve got a fresh pat of butter to go with ’em.’

Ruby and John’s countenances changed. If there was one thing they loved it was the little currant cakes that made a singing sound while cooking on the griddle and were delicious eaten hot,
with butter on.

Agnes lay looking at Lucy in the stillness that followed, the only sound her daughter’s broken voice as she murmured words of reassurance. She was dying, she knew that, but she
hadn’t expected it to be like this, the pain in her head threatening to suffocate her and her throat closed up so that she couldn’t swallow. Her chest was aching with a fiery ache and
each breath was a conscious effort, but strangely the fear was fading as the light dimmed. She could hear Lucy saying, ‘I’ll look after the bairns and the house and everything, I
promise, Mam, you just rest now and don’t worry’, but she couldn’t see her daughter any longer through the blackness which had descended as the pain in her head became
unbearable.

But then the pain stopped. Suddenly and completely. And at the same time an airy lightness came upon her worn-out body, filling it with pulsating energy, so that she was aware of every muscle
and sinew, filling her mind too, with an overwhelming desire to move forward.

Through the darkness she could see a pinprick of something shining brightly in the distance and it was to this that she was drawn. She walked slowly at first, unused to the feeling of freedom,
and then, finding she was as light as a feather, she gathered speed, carried along on a wave of happiness which consumed her to the exclusion of everything else.

The pinprick grew into a brilliant radiance, and now she was running forward with the joyful abandon of a child and smiling with every pore of her body; she was going home . . .

The day of the funeral was dark and overcast, but the severe snow storms which had swept the Northeast for a week had let up to just the odd light flurry now and again. An hour
ago the undertakers had come for Agnes’s body. This had been lying on a trestle table in the front room since Enid and another neighbour had laid her out, the brass bed having been turned on
its side against the wall. Walter had been adamant about this mark of respect for his wife and had slept in the bed in the kitchen since her passing. It was this same way of thinking that had
prevented Lucy from attending her mother’s funeral; her father didn’t hold with women and children being present, and nothing she had said had been able to change his mind.

She looked across the kitchen now to where Enid was busy cutting up a fruit cake. Enid had brought this and several other items, including a large ham-and-egg pie, as her own contribution
towards the wake. Lucy was grateful, although she knew her father wouldn’t have liked what he’d have seen as charity. But Mrs Crawford understood her da and had waited until the menfolk
had left, walking behind the horse-drawn hearse, before she’d appeared with her offerings. Once the men were back from the cemetery all the neighbours would come in and, although the table
was groaning with food, it wouldn’t go far.

Lucy bit down on her lower lip as she glanced at the table. On the same day her mother had died the shipyard had put their employees on short time and already they were feeling the pinch as a
family, yet her da had gone out and bought beer and whisky for today with the rent money. She had felt like crying when she’d found out what he’d done.

‘It’s a fine spread you’ve put on, lass.’ Enid smiled at her. ‘You’ve done your mam proud and no mistake.’

Lucy smiled back, but said nothing. She knew Mrs Crawford wouldn’t understand if she said what she was thinking. None of the neighbours would. A family could be starving and they’d
still beg, borrow or steal to give someone what they called ‘a good send-off. And no doubt the neighbours had got up a collection for flowers for her mam, which would be placed on the coffin
with some ceremony at the church before being left at the side of the grave later. Not only would most of the folk who would have contributed have been glad of the money for their own family, but
she could have used however much it was for food or the rent money. And she hated the way these offerings were done, with a written list so that everyone could read what everyone else had put in.
It was a form of blackmail, to her mind, and when she’d said that once to her mam she’d got the impression her mam agreed with her.

‘Now, lass, with the bairns out of the way, how about you and me put the front room to rights for your da?’

Mrs Crawford’s voice was brisk and Lucy had learned enough about her mother’s friend over the past days to know the no-nonsense tone was the way Mrs Crawford hid her feelings about
her mother’s passing. That, and lending a hand when she could, like this morning when she had suggested Ruby take John and the twins round to her house so they weren’t underfoot while
the food was prepared.

Quietly Lucy said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Crawford. I don’t know what I’d have done without you over the last week.’

‘Go on with you, lass.’ Enid sniffed loudly, hiding the emotion that had brought tears to her eyes by flapping her hand vigorously as she stomped out of the kitchen.
‘I’ve done nowt but what your mam would have done for me in the same circumstances.’

Once in the dismal front room, they worked in semi-darkness, the curtains remaining firmly closed as a mark of respect for the deceased. The small fabric bags filled with dried lavender flowers,
which the undertakers had supplied when her father had called to see them to discuss the funeral, couldn’t disguise the stench of death that lingered in the air. Lucy had always liked the
scent of the fragrant shrub, but over the last days she’d come to hate it. She longed to open the windows wide to let the icy-cold breath of winter in, but such a scandal would never be lived
down.

The bed restored to its rightful position and made up, and the room tidied, they returned to the kitchen. Lucy’s eyes were drawn to the spot where her mother’s bed had resided for
the last eighteen months or so. It had been carried upstairs by her father and Ernie this morning, Donald following behind with the mattress, and had been squeezed in at the foot of the lads’
bed. It had been decided John would sleep in it, as it was a small narrow single and the double bed was more suited to Ernie and Donald, who were both long and lanky. On hearing that John was to
have a bed all to himself, Ruby had gone into a massive sulk, but Lucy hadn’t had time to cajole her sister round, with the hundred and one things she had to do that morning. Consequently
Ruby had left for Mrs Crawford’s with a face like thunder, and Lucy didn’t doubt the poor twins would feel the back of her sister’s hand more than once.

‘There, there, hinny. You’re doing fine.’ Enid had noticed the direction of Lucy’s gaze and her family would have been amazed at the tender note in her voice, accustomed
as they were to her sharp tongue. ‘Likely you’ll feel better once today is over and things get back to normal. I always say you’re in a kind of limbo till the funeral’s
done. Look, they’ll be back soon and then it’ll be bedlam. I’ll make a pot of tea, shall I?’

Lucy nodded, struggling not to cry. She wanted her mam, how she wanted her mam. She felt very young and helpless and frightened. She’d promised her mother she would look after the bairns
and see to the house and her da and the lads, and she’d meant it. But could she? She didn’t know how she was going to feed the family over the next few days, let alone the next months,
now the menfolk were on short time. John had holes in his boots, so his feet were wet through and blue with cold, and Ruby couldn’t fasten the buttons of her winter coat, it had grown so
small. Mrs Crawford had said she’d feel better once things got back to normal, but they were never going to be normal again. That was the truth of it. Her mam was gone and she would never see
her again.

Her breath caught in her throat in a great sob and the tears spurted from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks in an unstoppable flood. She felt Mrs Crawford put an arm round her and turned into
the comforting bulk in a paroxysm of weeping, as the grief she’d been holding in demanded release.

It was a minute or two before she drew away and rubbed at her wet face with her pinny. Her eyes focused on Enid’s face, which was also wet, and she murmured, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs
Crawford.’