Hannah massey (4 page)

Rose remembered the morning when Hannah had suddenly got into her hat and coat and said, "Get your things on, " I'm taking you to the Secretarial School. That's what you'll do;

take a course and become a private secretary, and likely you'll end up running the firm; secretaries do. " She had smiled a conquering smile which effectively dissolved all protest. So they had gone to the

Principal, and within a fortnight of leaving school Rosie found herself at school again, but with a differ MASSEY

ence. Instead now of wavering near the bottom of the class she was soon pushing towards the top; she knew she was. cut out for this.

When at the end of the three-year course she came out top of her class both in typewriting and shorthand her mother had been borne skywards with pride. For days she floated, enveloped in a cloud of sagacity which had had its birth--so she told her family in her own words--the day it was revealed to her what her daughter was to be. And when the great moment of prize-giving came and Rosie was presented not only with certificates but with a medal, Hannah, sitting in the front row of the audience, made no outward or coarse show of her pleasure, but passed herself like a lady, born to see honours bestowed on her family. As she said cryptically later, "When the thunder is rolling you don't get to your feet and shout, " What's that noise? "" The world knew that her daughter, besides being beautiful and with a figure that had none its equal in Fellbum, or any other town for that matter, was also a brilliant scholar.

And so said the papers the following morning. Fellbwn Weekly had shown a photograph of Rosie being handed her medal by no less a person than the mayor. Hannah had bought half a dozen copies of the paper, and immediately despatched one to her eldest son Patrick who was in

Australia. One to her next son, Colin, who was in Canada, and one to Michael, who lived in Cornwall, which could have been as far away as Australia or Canada for all she saw of him or his family. And she had thrust one at her schoolteacher son, Dennis, when he had paid her one of his infrequent visits just to let him see he wasn't the only member of her family with brains. And she had told him to show the paper to his Godless lady wife.

As the not-so-distant past came back to Rosie she twisted round and dropped her head on the pillow. It was all so ordinary, her past, at least the past that held its place in Fell- bum. Nothing had really happened to her here; she had just been part of a large family, of which her mother was ruler and pivot.

Even the business of Ronnie MacFarlane seemed of little account now, although at the time she had thought it the worst thing in the world that could happen to anyone. For a man to go mad and tear the clothes off your back when you were just sitting with him holding hands on the fells on a Sunday night was shocking. and him a Catholic. That had made it worse. It had seemed the most horrifying thing at the time, that a Catholic could be so full of lust as to lose control. How

simple she had been. How naive. Yes, how naive. And she knew now

that if she had cared anything for Ronnie Mac Far- lane he wouldn't have had to pull the clothes off her. But you live and learn. The

awful part of it was that you had to live before you could learn. And she had made Ronnie the excuse to leave home and find out about living.

And she had done just that. The thought brought her teeth clamping into the pillow, and when the tears forced themselv's from between her closed lids she pulled herself up straight and rubbed her hand over her face, saying to herself, "Don't start now. Later... later. Take things quietly;

it'll all work out. Go and get a wash and put on the suit. " Oh, the suit. Would it fit her? It would have to.

She went down the two flights of stairs again and into the bathroom.

It was cluttered with cups, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hair cream,

after-shave lotion and towels. It was a man's bathroom. But it was warm and it was. it Was home. She had the silly feeling that she

wanted to embrace it and ask it to forgive her, ask the whole house to forgive her. After she had washed herself her face looked whiter than ever. She had no cream, no powder or make-up, not even a lipstick, nothing. She smoothed her skin with her hand, she looked awful, then she stared at herself in the mirror as she thought there would be

plenty in Karen's room. But no, she couldn't use her things without asking her.

Karen. She hadn't thought much of Karen. If she was to stay home

there would always be Karen. Karen and she had never hit it off.

Barny had often referred to Karen as a little bitch, and that's what she was, a little bitch. It was difficult to realise that she herself was Karen's aunt because there was only two years between them, Ever since she was a child Rosie had heard of Moira--her sister Moira.

Beautiful; vivacious, fascinating Moira, who had been her mother's first child, and who, at the age of twenty- four, had died giving birth to Karen.

Even when they were children together Rosie knew that Karen resented her and the affection displayed towards her by the men of the family.

So the dislike between them grew, and there was no one Rosie knew

happier than Karen when she had left home for a position--a grand

position, in her mother's words--in London.

In the attic again she unlocked the case, and lifting out the wrapped bricks she went to the far corner of the room, and sliding back a piece of loose floorboard that gave access to a junction box she pushed the bricks far back between the beams. They had served their purpose; they had taken the emptiness from the case.

Now she tried on the suit. The skirt proved to be a little large but the rest fitted her as if it had been made for her.

Before going downstairs she locked the case, but stood hesitating with the key in her hand, then dropped it into a china trinket bowl. Her mother was not likely to go rummaging around "until tomorrow, by which time she would have given her a reason why the case was empty.

On her way downstairs she went into the bathroom again and brushed her hair with one of the men's brushes, taking it upwards and back from her brow; then bit on her lips and pinched her cheeks. And when she

entered the living-room her father and mother turned and gazed at her in openmouthed admiration.

"Aw, that's more like my Rosie." Hannah came towards her, pride wreathing her face.

"That's new, isn't it?" She touched the short coat.

"By, it's a smart set; I bet it knocked you back something." She poked her head towards Broderick.

"Look at it, Brod."

"Aye, it's real bonny. But it's the bonny lass that's in it that makes it out, isn't it? ... I tell you what." He sounded excited.

"We're not goin' to waste you on these four walls the night. You'll come along to the club with us. Just let me get me self changed and we'll all go and make a night of it."

"Aye, that's the ticket," cried Hannah.

"The very thing."

As they looked at Rosie for approval the smile left their faces and Hannah said, "You don't want to go, lass?"

"Not tonight, Ma; that's if you don't mind. I think I'll get to bed early. I... I still feel a bit shaky from the 'flu, and the journey was tiring."

"Aye. Yes, of course." Hannah nodded understandingly. Then almost dreamily she pushed her hand backwards towards her husband, saying,

"You away to the club on your own; I'm going to have a natter with me girl."

"No, no, Ma, you go on. You always go on a Friday night."

"Well, I'm not going the night and that's flat. Now that's settled....

Yet" --she held out her arms in a wide dramatic gesture"--it's a shame to waste you, it is that, and you so bonny.

Doesn't she get bonnier, Brod? Doesn't your daughter get bonnier with every year that's on her? "

"Aye indeed; but I'll like her better when she gets a bit more fat on her. I likes 'em plump." He slapped at Hannah's buttocks.

As they laughed loudly Rosie smiled, and the front door bell rang and Hannah cried, "That'll be Karen." She nodded towards Rosie.

"She's doing a late turn at the exchange. I'll go and open it. She's been coming the front way 'cos it's shorter."

Rosie heard her mother's voice from the hallway extra loud and hearty, saying, "Fve a surprise for you. You'll never guess. Who do you think's come?" The next minute Karen was standing in the doorway.

"Hello, Karen."

There was a pause.

"Hello. What's brought you?"

"What's brought her?" Hannah's voice was high.

"Doesn't matter what's brought her; here's one that's mighty glad to see her." Her voice dropped now to a soothing tone.

"She's had the 'flu, she's come to convalesce."

Karen made no rejoinder to this, sympathetic or otherwise. She moved forward but not near to Rosie. She never stood near to Rosie, to do so emphasised the difference between their heights and their figures, for Karen was five foot four and tubby. If she'd had a beautiful mother there was no sign of it on her. She looked over her shoulder towards her grandmother and said, "I don't want any tea, I'm going to a dance."

"You can't dance on an empty stomach," said Hannah, still in a conciliatory tone.

"She doesn't dance on her stomach she dances on her feet, eh, don't you?" Broderick thrust out his hand playfully towards his

grand-daughter's cheek, but she ignored him and, turning slowly about, went out of the room.

Broderick, taking his pipe now from the mantelpiece and grinding his little finger around the empty bowl, said, "Begod! I don't know who that one takes after; it's none of us, yet she was me own child's."

"Oh it's green she is. Always has been, you know yourself, of Rosie here. An' the lads make more fuss of her when she's on her own. Yet she won't trouble you." Hannah looked towards Rosie.

"She's never in the house five minutes, in and out like a gale of wind.

She's going steady, I understand, though he's not much to crack on by all accounts. He's on a job on the new estate but has never reached more than fourteen a week yet. One of them that doesn't like overtime.

Still, it's her choice."

Rosie had always been puzzled at her mother's attitude towards her grand-daughter. She had never bothered about finding her a job, nor had ever timed her comings and goings's she had those of herself. With regard to intelligence, or having it up-top, as her mother would say, Rosie knew that Karen had much more "up-top" than she had. With very little trouble she had got on to the. switchboard at the telephone exchange. The criterion for such a job might not be brains, but Rosie doubted whether she herself would have been able to achieve this

without her mother behind her; she wouldn't have had the nerve to

canvass a councillor and to go round asking for references as Karen had done. Karen had the quality she herself lacked--initiative.

When Broderick went upstairs to change and they were alone, Hannah beckoned Rosie with a curl of her finger as she whispered, "Look, I want to show you something. Come into the front room, come on."

Rosie followed her mother into the hall and across it, and when the lights were switched on in the front room she gazed at the new suite almost in awe before she murmured, "My! What made you get this, Ma?"

"Well, I saw one like it in a shop in Northumberland Street in Newcastle after the war and I said to me self " Hannah, you'll have one like that some day," an' there it is. I told 'em, the lads and him, it was just over a hundred pounds, but guess what?"

"I don't know." Rosie was shaking her head.

"A hundred and forty-five." "No!"

"God's me judge."

"Oh, Ma, a hundred and forty-five!"

"It's what you call a Parker-Knoll. Look." She whipped off the cords that held the drop sides of the settee to the back.

"Look, they go flat. Isn't it magnificent?"

"Beautiful, beautiful." Rosie's eye narrowed as she looked into Hannah's beaming face, and for the first time since coming home a touch of humour came into her speech. She said seriously, "What do the lads wear when they come in here, Ma?"

Hannah, smothering a gust of laughter, dug her in the ribs with her elbow.

"That'll be the day when I let them sit on that, or the chairs.

They've been in once, but I had it covered over, every inch of it. "

She ran her hand along the pale green tapestry and said almost

reverently, "There's never a day goes past that I don't come in and just stand and look at it.... Oh be god She flapped her hand at

Rosie.

"You should have been here the day it was delivered. Go ... h!

The curtains. Every curtain in the street had the tremors. There they were, with their faces behind them, their eyes Sticking out like pipe shanks. As for Jessie"--she thumbed in the direction of the wall"

--the green's still sticking on her yet. Oh, she's a bloody jealous old sod, that one. "

Somewhere deep. within Rosie there trembled a quirk of genuine

laughter--no swearing in the house she had said. Oh, her ma, her ma.

"It's always been the same since the days we were in place together.

Determined to rise she was, and I said to me self "All right, Jessie, for every step you take I'll take a jump," and be god I have. " She nodded solemnly at Rosie.

"With the Almighty's help I have done just that. A<" >' I'll goon doing it until the day I die. But whist a minute. " She lifted her finger to Rosie's face as if admonishing her for interrupting.

"Wait till she hears me latest. I've g(st something up me sleeve."

She stretched the cuff of her woollen cardigan without taking her eyes from Rosie.

"An' she won't be the only one that'll be knocked off their feet with surprise this time. Aw, me lass...." With mercurial swiftness her attitude changed yet again, and her big arms dropping to her s-ades, she stood before her daughter as if in supplication as she went on, softly now, her words hardly above a whisper, "Therff's a saying, and true, that frock coats are not to be found on middens That was true years ago but more so the day, for who gives a damn for you if you've got the wisdom of Christ and his parables but are living in Bog's End; who would listen to you from there, I ask you? No, you know yourself I've always ssaid a man is judged by the cut of his coat an' a woman by the" front of her house. "