Saturday's Child (2 page)

He went outside and thought about climbing over the wall, but the excitement had gone now that he had Mam’s permission; things weren’t half as exciting when adults approved. He
scuffed clog irons on yard flags, kicked a stone about, admitted that chicken pox was not a good idea. He missed having people to talk to – even teachers were better than nothing at a
pinch.

Lily sank into a fireside chair. She was in a funny sort of mood, one she couldn’t quite get to grips with. Her thoughts were all over the place, darting about like a butterfly on a hot
summer’s day. And how many butterflies had she seen this year? How many chances had there been to look for a butterfly? Week after week, she went from posser to clothes line, oven to table,
cleaning to ironing, the only change in routine a three-hour shift as dogsbody at the Prince Billy. Had she cleaned the ashtrays, did she know they were nine beer glasses short, when was she going
to scrub the floors? And it would likely go on like this for ever.

‘Thirty-eight,’ she said aloud. ‘Thirty-eight and bloody finished. Well, it’s either me or them, and it’s not going to be me. I’ve got to get out of here
before I turn daft.’ An inner voice told her that she couldn’t go, but she shushed it, her tongue clicking impatiently against her front teeth. A door opened to let folk in and to allow
others out. Surely stepping away would be easy?

She looked at the Home Sweet Home sampler above the fire, glanced at a few blue-and-white plates on the old dresser. Whatever was she thinking of? She had three sons, one down a Westhoughton
pit, one ready for leaving school, Roy still a little lad. Then there was Sam, who was not the worst husband in the world. She noticed how she kept processing the same thoughts, the same excuses
and reasons. She was staying put because things could have been worse, was trying to prevent herself from looking for better. This might be 1950, but women were still not allowed to wander. They
could vote, could run a country while men ran about with guns, but they remained morally tethered to their duties.

She saw Roy through the window, knew from the noise that he was sparking his clogs against the flags. Normally, she would have berated him for wearing out his irons, but she couldn’t be
bothered any more. Something had ended today. What, though? What was different about today? What was suddenly so wrong? Perhaps she was having the change of life early.

There was usually enough food on the table; even when Sam drank his way through five bob, they managed to have sufficient to eat. But bellies were topped up by Lily’s Prince Billy money.
By rights, Prince Billy money should be saved for Christmas, for days out, clothes, kids’ birthdays. He wasn’t pulling his weight, wasn’t Sam. He had never pulled his weight, come
to think.

She tapped her fingers on the edge of the fireguard. Agitated on the surface, she was experiencing an inner calm that was almost frightening. It was ten minutes to one. Danny, her eldest, would
be back from the pit at about six o’clock. She had a soft spot for Danny, who helped out as best he could when it came to money. Aaron, the fourteen-year-old, would be leaving school in a
couple of months. That left Roy, nine years old and as much trouble as a barrel of monkeys. He was too young to be abandoned. Had she stopped loving her children, then? Was she one of those women
who lacked true maternal feelings? Questions, questions, no bloody answers, no way of escaping the eternal circle.

And where the bloody hell did she think she was going, anyway? Buckingham Palace? ‘Excuse me, King George, but I could do with a job – oh – and can my Roy go to school with the
little princesses?’ No, the princesses weren’t young any more – the older was married with a baby son of her own. Lily was losing her mind . . . or was she? A note to Danny
– please look after Aaron. Aaron. Daft name, that. But Sam had insisted on it, as Aaron had been his grandfather’s name.

Perhaps that was the answer – she had never been allowed much of a say in anything. Sam went to work, brought in the wage – after it had been depleted by his drinking – so he
ruled the roost. Men ruled. They were in charge, which was why the world was for ever at war. ‘I’ve got to do it,’ she explained to herself. ‘I have to get myself off out of
here before it kills me.’ But there was no certainty in the words, no conviction. It was a dream.

‘I’m going,’ she announced firmly. She would not run to her family. She was determined not to become a burden to anyone. So first, she had to find herself a job, somewhere to
live, a new school for Roy . . . Raising her head, she looked at him once more. He was hanging over the wall that separated the Hardcastle family from the disgraceful house next door. Roy adored
his father. Lily could not discuss her half-formed plan with a nine-year-old. Born after his father’s enlistment for war, Roy had made a hero of the man who had returned with a scarred face
and one finger missing.

‘I can’t say a word to you until the last minute,’ she whispered at a disappearing pair of legs. ‘And if you don’t want to come, I won’t force you.’
This was like a fairy tale, something out of a book with big coloured pictures inside. She wove the story, wished with all her heart that she dared to live the fable.

She took a deep breath. The twentieth century was half done and the war was long over. Some items were still rationed, many things were hard to get, and there was a restlessness in people, a
feeling that things should be better after a five-year ceasefire. They had suffered deprivation beyond measure, had endured hardship because the country had needed to ‘pull together’ in
the face of the enemy. Where was the reward? Where was the compensation? War widows existed on pensions too paltry to feed a cat, a few wounded heroes sat on doorsteps waiting for life to begin
again. As for herself – Lily Hardcastle had lost two stone since the birth of Roy, had directed all rations at her children, had become old.

‘I’m not ready for old,’ she informed the grate. ‘I don’t love him any more. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever did really love him. Did I really think we’d be
different, me and him?’

She thought about various men in the vicinity who had abandoned wives and children, could not bring to mind any women guilty of the same crime. When a man left home, people looked to the wife,
pitied her, wondered whether she had treated her husband properly. How would they react when a woman took off? she wondered. Females stayed. They endured all kinds of ill-treatment, yet they
remained simply because they were housewives, skivvies, creatures owned by their men.

Lily gulped. Even the thought of such a venture brought fear to her heart. No, she wasn’t frightened, not really. Still calm, she was beginning now to worry about the children of a woman
who had chosen to absent herself. Danny and Aaron would be talked about, but they would survive. As for Sam – well – he could drown his sorrows in another pint of Magee’s.

Roy wandered in. ‘Mam?’

‘What?’

‘Why does Smelly live like that?’

Lily stared at her son, through him, into a future that she needed to change. ‘She’s lost all heart, Roy. She just can’t be bothered with anything.’

‘Why?’ His face screwed itself into a mask of questions.

Lily shook her head slowly. ‘Well, she’s deaf and dumb for a start. She’s lonely and miserable, she’s got nothing to do, nothing to hope for in the future.’

‘She can read, Mam.’

‘I know.’

‘She goes to the library and reads all sorts. They’ve even made her her own corner because she stinks so bad. Nobody’ll sit near her. And why is she always going to the picture
house if she can’t hear what’s being said?’

Lily sighed and swung the kettle over the fire. ‘Somewhere to go,’ she muttered.

‘Did she have a mam and dad?’ Roy asked.

‘Course she did,’ answered Lily impatiently. ‘Everybody has a mam and dad. But they’ll be dead now. Nellie Hulme’s not far off seventy.’

Roy looked at his own mam. She seemed different, a bit sad, down in the mouth. ‘You’ll never get the town to her, will you, Mam?’

Lily gasped. This was a rare moment of empathy, a few beats of time during which she realized that this boy, her youngest, understood her completely. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose
I won’t.’

‘Because that’d be cruel, wouldn’t it?’ asked the voice of innocence.

‘Yes, lad, it would.’

She heard him trudging upstairs, the metal-studded clogs crashing into each step. He had set her thinking about Nellie Hulme now. The mystery of Nellie Hulme – it sounded like a crime
book, one of those her own mother had used to read.

According to folklore, Nellie had simply appeared one day, the adopted daughter of Sid and Edna Hulme, a childless couple in their late forties. They had lived here, in Prudence Street; the
little girl had been kept at home and taught by them. She had learned to read, to write, to count, to do a bit of lip-reading, had grown up under the protective gaze of two solid, trustworthy
citizens.

After their deaths, Nellie had remained in the same house, had allowed it to fall into its present state. Her original beginnings were unknown, though she never seemed completely bereft of
money. So she had probably come from a comfortable family, people who could not cope with a deaf child, preferring instead to pass her on to folk who would take a wage for rearing her.

‘Poor owld soul,’ murmured Lily as she made a brew in a pint pot. ‘Still, they must have left her a few bob.’ Nellie had never worked, had kept her body and soul together
on conscience money, no doubt, payments from her real family, a cache from which the now elderly spinster could take her weekly pittance.

Lily sipped at hot, sweet tea. Aye, this was a strange street, all right, Catholic on one side, Protestant on the other, never should the twain mix, though those rules had relaxed somewhat since
the end of the war. The other end of Prudence Street had been bombed, leaving several houses uninhabitable, others flattened, two mills intact. ‘Trust them to survive,’ said Lily now.
‘Bloody mills and pits, they’ll never stop killing us.’

She thought her way along the houses, lingering on each dwelling as if saying her goodbyes. There was Nellie Hulme at number 1, sad, overweight, deaf, lonely. Then, at number 3, the Hardcastles
struggled along – Lily herself, Sam, the three lads. Five Prudence Street housed Dot and Ernest Barnes whose family had long grown and left. Ernest and, for a while, his boys had been the
Orange Lodgers, the taunters of the Catholics, though time and a bolting brewery horse had eroded their zeal for that cause. The sons had grown out of it and into sensible men, while Dot had never
been involved at all. It had been him, Ernest, bad bugger he was.

Charlie Entwistle occupied the last house on Lily’s side. He owned a rag-and-bone yard, was a miser and a target for many a woman’s attention. Since his wife had passed away, Charlie
had spent a great deal of time polishing his running shoes, as he had no intention of sharing his wealth with the women who chased him. ‘What’s he saving it for?’ Lily asked out
loud. ‘No kids, no-one to leave it to. What’s he doing living here? He could afford a grander place, I’m sure.’

Her mind’s eye sallied across the street to the papist side. A lovely woman lived at number 2. She was named Margaret O’Gara, though most called her Magsy, a nickname she had
acquired as a child. She had a daughter called Beth and a late husband who was buried in Italy. Then there were the tearaways at number 4, a brood reared by John and Sarah Higgins. Lily had lost
track, though she knew that all the children were girls and that their names included Eileen, Theresa, Vera, Rachel, Annie – and others too numerous to mention. A running joke in the
neighbourhood supported the legend that Sal Higgins called a register every morning just to make sure that all members were present and correct.

Which left only Thomas Grogan, the orphan. The sole survivor of an air raid, Tommy Grogan had been taken in by the Higgins family. He was their son, the boy they had never managed to produce.
With her eyes closed, Lily saw the lad’s face, eyes haunted by the sudden absence of his family. His dad, whose sight had been terrible, had never been called on to fight for his country. He
had died in his home and in the arms of his loving wife.

There had been no division then, when the bombs had been deposited on Prudence Street. Catholic and Protestant had struggled side by side to release little Tommy from beneath a solid kitchen
table. Oh yes, everyone had come together against the Germans.

He was ten now, little Tommy Grogan. He owned the face of an angel, cherub-cheeked, red-lipped, the beautiful countenance topped by a mass of blond curls which he flattened with water. After a
few minutes, the curls would spring up again and all around him would smile. He was the perfect child. Although indulged by the Higgins family, Tommy Grogan managed not to be spoilt. Lily wondered
where they all slept; rumour had it that several had beds in the parlour, while the lovely cuckoo in the nest occupied the kitchen at night. Well, Sal Higgins had best keep herself to herself
– any more babies and they’d be using the scullery and the coal hole as sleeping quarters.

Time was passing, as it inevitably must. Lily rose and began cobbling together a stew that enjoyed a passing acquaintance with meat. Sam had drunk the black market meat money, of course. Oh,
God, she couldn’t go. She was the one who made sure that Danny and Aaron got a hot meal after work and school. As for Roy, he would never leave his father.

Lily dropped into a ladder-backed chair, peeler in one hand, carrot in the other. So this grim, grey life would go on and she, like so many others, would fade into her grave like a mere shadow,
forgotten as soon as earth and sods were replaced.

She blamed much of her disquiet on Charles Dickens, a writer she had discovered in the big town library. A little boy in a graveyard, a woman sitting at a decayed wedding breakfast, a girl who
would break Pip’s heart. ‘Great Expec-bloody-tations,’ cursed Lily. ‘Just a book, a pile of lies. Nobody meets a rich criminal in a cemetery, not in real life.’