Saturday's Child (9 page)

‘I have visited him in the hospital.’

Lily froze, caddy and spoon in her hands. ‘You what?’ she asked, too shocked to stop herself.

‘And glad enough he was of it,’ continued the visitor. ‘Sure, he’s had not one single caller except for myself.’

Lily brought the teapot to the table. ‘Mags,’ she declared, ‘that man has only himself to blame, I can tell you that for no money. Years he’s laid into her. I’ve
not enough Christian charity in my soul to go and see him on his sickbed.’

‘I know he was cruel to her.’

‘And the kiddies – when they were kiddies. Flayed their little backsides raw, he did. As for Catholics, he would have tarred and feathered the lot.’

Magsy sat back while Lily poured.

‘Whatever were you doing in our back street?’ asked Lily.

‘Oh, it’s young madam,’ replied Magsy. ‘lost a button off her cardigan while playing tig. Whoever caught her dragged so hard that the button flew off. She’s a
caution. She’s out there now still searching, thinks it may have gone down a grid.’

Lily swallowed a bite of malt cake. ‘Isn’t she supposed to be one of them child prodigies? Like Mozart?’

Magsy burst out laughing. ‘Not quite, but she’s blessed and cursed with an inquisitive mind, Lily. She’s leaving me behind, but. It’s all anatomy and physiology –
clear as mud.’

‘I read,’ Lily said. ‘I enjoy reading – it takes me out of myself, gets me mind going. Yes, I love books.’

‘You do?’

‘Oh yes.’ Lily nodded gravely. ‘I’m doing the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. You know, he was only little, that Bonaparte, but look at the damage he did. And
I’ve been having a go with that there Dickens. He goes on a bit, but he takes you there, pulls you back a hundred years.
Tale of Two Cities
was what dragged me into the
Revolution.’

Magsy sipped at the thick tea favoured by people in these parts. So Lily Hardcastle was a reader and amateur historian. It was amazing what went on behind lace-curtained windows. Perhaps Beth
wasn’t so unusual after all. ‘Well,’ she said carefully, ‘I came about a strange matter, Lily.’

Lily, eager as ever for gossip, leaned forward. ‘Oh?’ she said expectantly.

Magsy smiled. ‘Have you heard no noise from next door?’

‘Which side?’ Lily asked, wondering whether Ernest Barnes had had the burglars in.

‘From Miss Hulme.’ Magsy placed her cup in its saucer.

‘Well, she rattles about a fair bit.’ Lily frowned. ‘When she pulls a day’s clinkers out of her fire bottom, I sometimes think me wall’s going to cave
in.’

Magsy laughed. ‘That’ll be her deafness – she doesn’t know how loud she is. But it’s not the fire she’s tending. She has her kitchen window pushed right up,
and there’s stuff flying out into her yard at a grand rate of knots.’

‘You what? Never.’

‘It’s true,’ insisted Lily’s unexpected guest. ‘I’ve never seen the like except on the back of a rag-and-bone cart. There’s paper, cardboard,
clothes—’

‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed Lily, ‘she’ll have all the rats and mice on the move. What the hell’s she playing at?’

‘Not tig, that’s for sure,’ came the quick reply. ‘You know what?’

‘No, I don’t know what.’

‘I think she’s having a clear-out, Lily.’

Lily blanched. ‘Never.’

‘Then why all the piles of rubbish in her yard?’ asked Magsy.

Lily considered the question. ‘Well – happen the house is full to the brim and she’s started on the outside. I mean . . . no. No, love. That place has seen neither sweeping
brush nor mop since her mam died. Adopted, were Nellie. She got brought up clean, decent and Methodist. According to what I’ve heard, she were doted on. Then, when the Hulmes were dead, she
started to let things slide. She’ll not alter, lass, not at her time of life. She must be well past seventy, you know.’

Magsy took another bite of cake. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured, ‘that’s good.’

Lily all but preened. She was a fair hand at baking, though she didn’t do it very often these days. Come to think, there were quite a few things she’d cut down on, like polishing and
black-leading, brass-cleaning, bed-changing. Her heart wasn’t in it any more. The house was clean and tidy, but it no longer sparkled. Like herself, it was losing its sheen. ‘I wonder
how Dot’s going on?’

The wistful edge to Lily’s words was not lost on Magsy.

‘I mean, it’s countryside up yon,’ Lily continued, ‘all fresh air and fields. Her Frank’s got a little shop.’

‘Yes,’ said Magsy.

‘When’s the wedding?’ Lily asked.

‘Just a few weeks.’ Magsy finished her cake.

‘Dot’ll be happy,’ said Lily. ‘She’ll like that, nice little shop, their Frank settled and happy, decent place, no factory chimneys, no soot getting stuck to her
curtains.’

Magsy reverted to the original subject. She could almost feel Lily’s sadness, as if it reached out and touched her. ‘We should find out about Miss Hulme,’ she said now.
‘All this sudden hard work at her age might kill her.’

Lily Hardcastle pondered. In a funny kind of way, the dirty old woman next door owned a sort of dignity, an aloofness that had come from many years spent alone. Magsy O’Gara was the same,
just a little Irish girl with nothing to her name, few expectations, yet she managed to be a lady. Magsy wasn’t dirty, but, like old Nellie, she was . . . unusual. ‘We can’t just
walk in,’ said Lily eventually, ‘and there’s no use knocking.’

‘I know.’ Magsy pulled a silky skein of hair from her face. ‘Lily, I can’t leave her like that. What if she takes a fall? What if she gets a heart attack?’

But Lily remained hesitant. She didn’t want to go pushing her way into the hell that was next door. The very thought of it made her shiver, as if someone was ice-skating over her grave.
‘You go,’ she said after a few moments’ thought. ‘You go, have a look what’s going on, then, if you need me, come and fetch me.’

‘Coward,’ grinned Magsy.

In that moment, Lily realized how much she liked this young woman. It was as if they had known one another all their lives, as if the religious divide had never existed. ‘Listen,
you,’ she said, ‘I’m the one what has to live next door. She might turn on me.’

‘Away with your bother,’ answered Magsy, ‘she’s just a little old woman who needs a bit of help.’

‘Aye, so were Dot,’ replied Lily. ‘Nobody tried to help her, did they? She was in more trouble than enough every day of her life.’

‘Then let’s not make the same mistake again.’

Lily fixed her eyes on a woman who still managed to look about eighteen, not a line on her face, a sprightly figure, eyes that shone with health. She was a worker, too, forever at the hospital,
always looking for overtime. ‘You’re saying two wrongs don’t make a right.’

‘I am indeed.’

Sighing, Lily dragged an old cardigan from the back of a chair. ‘Come on, then,’ she ordered smartly. ‘Let’s go and get it over and done with. She might clout
us.’

‘Aye, she might.’ Magsy giggled at her own attempt to speak Lancashire.

In the scullery doorway, Lily ground to a halt so sudden in nature that Magsy all but shunted into her back. ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ she exclaimed.

Magsy grinned. ‘And it isn’t even Christmas.’

Something about this remark found a giddy spot in Lily, and she started to laugh. It was a deep, almost manly chuckle that grew in strength until even poor Nellie next door might have heard it.
She backed into the kitchen, pushing Magsy into reverse. They finished up at the table, each bowed over its surface, both on the verge of collapse. They could scarcely remember why they were
laughing, because nothing very funny had happened.

‘You . . . er . . . I think you had a thought,’ managed Magsy, her voice trembling with the last vestiges of glee.

‘Did I?’

‘Course you did. You stood on my foot when you decided to come in here backwards.’

‘Did I?’ repeated Lily, the two words causing another few seconds of manic amusement.

Gradually, they calmed themselves. Lily thought her heart would burst with gratitude, because she hadn’t laughed like that in years. They were like sisters, tuned into one another, one
English, the other Irish, one Methodist, one Catholic, both blessed with a marvellous sense of the ridiculous. ‘By,’ said Lily when sufficient oxygen fuelled her lungs,
‘I’ve not carried on like that since the war finished. You do me good, you do that.’

Magsy straightened face and spine. ‘The thought?’ she insisted.

‘Eh?’

‘Don’t be starting again with me, Lily. ’Tis a desperate state I am in already. Share your thought, please.’

Lily Hardcastle pulled herself together. ‘There’s a clean room.’

It was Magsy’s turn to be taken aback.

Lily, pleased by her coup, nodded vigorously. ‘Our Roy went up her drainpipe a few days ago and he were that surprised, he near fell off and broke his neck. Back bedroom. All cloth, he
says. Piled up on shelves.’

They stood in awed silence for several seconds. Lily, who had conveyed the information, was surprised by it all over again, as if saying it out loud had made it brand new. Magsy, who had lived
opposite Nellie Hulme for some years, could not absorb the concept of any cleanliness behind those filthy windows. ‘He’s only a boy,’ she said thoughtfully.

Lily inhaled deeply. ‘There were something about his face, Mags. He were that shocked – it has to be true. She’s making stuff up there.’

‘And throwing stuff out down here.’ Magsy pondered. ‘I’ve had a thought, too. My Beth is the answer – send her to talk to Nellie. Beth has a funny little way with
people – she could revive a corpse, I’m sure.’

The back door crashed inward. Roy, still slightly speckled by chicken pox, poked his head into the kitchen. ‘Oh,’ he said, a carefully arranged smile fading to nothing. ‘Erm .
. . erm . . .’

‘He’s up to something,’ Lily said. ‘See that left eyelid? It’s twitching about like a monkey up a stick.’

‘Erm . . .’ continued Roy.

‘Three erms,’ said Lily.

‘We found it. Well, Beth found it.’

Magsy smiled. ‘Thank goodness for that – all those buttons would have needed replacing had she not managed to find the missing one.’

‘You what?’ Roy asked, momentarily confused.

Lily knew instinctively that she was perched on the edge of something monumental. Roy’s face was screwed into a relief map of South America, all ridges and dips. His mother sat herself in
a spindle-backed chair, her breathing still short after all that merriment. ‘Methodists don’t swear,’ she said slowly, ‘but what the bloody hell have you been up
to?’

Roy hadn’t bargained for this. He had recruited the aid of Beth O’Gara, a pretty girl months older than he was, a great deal wiser than he was, and with a face that would melt the
iciest heart. And here he was, on the brink of a new career, but Mam had a visitor.

‘Beth says she’s . . . erm.’

Lily turned to Magsy. ‘Is your daughter an erm?’

‘Well, she wasn’t when last I saw her.’ Magsy bit down hard on her lower lip. She was not going to laugh. Whatever had reduced Roy to erming, it was terribly serious in his
book.

‘Roy?’ Lily had that steely look in her eyes.

‘Beth says she’s pregernunt.’

Magsy closed her eyes. Too young to be pregnant or pregernunt, Beth must have been spreading her limited knowledge of anatomy and physiology all round the world.

‘She can’t be,’ declared Lily, an edge to her words.

‘She is,’ insisted Roy, ‘she’s lumpy on her belly and thin everywhere else. You can see her bones.’

‘Jesus, Mary and holy St Joseph,’ muttered Magsy.

‘Oh, I forgot – we found the button and all.’ Roy threw this mitigating circumstance into the arena. ‘It were nearly down a grid, right on the grating.’

It happened then. Announced only by a scuttering on scullery flags, a creature entered the room. Fastened to the animal by a length of clothes line, Beth O’Gara was dragged into the
kitchen. ‘Roy’s right,’ said the breathless child. ‘This is a greyhound and it’s going to have pups.’

Not a single word was spoken while the dog escaped from Beth’s clutches to do three laps of honour round a very confined space. After these exertions, the bitch walked up to Lily and
placed her head in a stiff and startled lap.

‘She likes you,’ cried Roy.

Beth remained in the doorway. It had taken at least ten seconds for Roy to fall in love with Skinny-Bones, as he had christened the unfortunate beast. But Mrs Hardcastle didn’t seem so
smitten by the canine. Perhaps she would grow to like her. There again, perhaps she wouldn’t.

‘This takes the flaming biscuit,’ announced Lily.

‘I bet she likes biscuits.’ The hope in Roy’s tone was dying fast. Mam had a mood on her, one that looked like staying for a while.

Lily looked down. A pair of frightened, hungry eyes returned the stare. The words ‘Help me, please’ were emblazoned across its features. A swollen belly announced the animal’s
condition, while bony protuberances spoke of hunger and neglect. ‘She can stop till we find whose she is,’ said Lily, thereby surprising herself and all other occupants of the room.
‘Needs somewhere to have these pups,’ Lily added, ‘and you, our Roy, can do all the feeding and cleaning up, ’cos I’ve got enough on me plate.’

Roy could not say a thing. His throat was closed, while his chest filled up with a feeling he could not have named in a thousand years. He had a dog; soon, he would have a lot of dogs.
Greyhounds were worth money – he had the potential to become a rich man. ‘I can sell ’em,’ he said at last.

Lily laughed mirthlessly. ‘They’ll be mongrels.’

‘She’s a greyhound,’ Roy insisted.

‘But the father could be anything,’ said Beth. ‘You have to have two greyhounds to have greyhound pups.’

Roy scratched his ginger thatch. This was all beyond him. But nothing mattered now. He had a dog, and that was all he needed. ‘Can I give her some scraps?’ he asked.

‘Soak some bread in warm milk and water,’ Lily advised, ‘half and half. Give this poor thing anything stronger and she’ll fetch it straight back up. Aw, it’s a
shame.’

Roy’s shoulders relaxed. Mam was always on the side of the unfortunate. If Skinny had been any healthier, she might not have got a look-in at the Hardcastle table. He busied himself with
bread, milk and water. When the sloppy concoction had been prepared, the dog all but inhaled it, eyes huge as she raised them from her empty plate. All the love and gratitude in the world came to
reside in Skinny’s face. She was home. She was safe, warm and ready to have her pups by a real fireside.