Authors: Freda Lightfoot
She did recognise, however, the problem with the bugs. Despite Polly’s best efforts with gallons of washing soda and disinfectant, cockroaches still crept out every night from under the fire grate, though there were none in her pantry, thank God, nor in the meat safe that sat proudly in her yard. And there wasn’t a flea in the place. Didn’t she take the lighted candle to the bedsprings every night of her life? And her children grew tired of her nightly ministrations with the fine tooth comb. So she hated to think of anyone considering her house as bad as those in the Dardanelles, for instance, or the notorious district of Angel Meadow.
Polly Pride put money in the poor box every week for those less fortunate than herself, for all she rarely attended mass these days, preferring to worship before a picture of the Sacred Heart and a crucifix in her own front parlour. Since the church considered her husband to be a heretic bound for hell, and this being one piece of their doctrine to which she could not subscribe, Polly had not set foot in a Catholic church since the day she wed Matthew Pride fifteen years previously. Sometimes she would have liked to find a church in the city where she wasn’t known and quietly attend mass and make her confession. But this was a comfort she had so far denied herself, if not her children. They’d both been raised in the Catholic faith, to the bitter disapproval of Matthew’s family and in particular his brother Joshua.
If she and Matthew were outcasts, what of it? Weren’t they happy enough without the blessings of either church? Generally speaking, with the exception of Father Donevan, Big Flo, and a few like them, within Ancoats itself nobody much cared one way or the other who you were, where you came from, or whether you attended church. They had far greater problems to contend with than religion.
What mattered was whether you had enough food in your belly, a roof over your head, and were a good neighbour to those about you, ready to lend two spoons of sugar whenever necessary. As a result of this pragmatic philosophy, it was where you lived and the allegiance you had to your own street that counted most, not which banner you carried on the Whit Walks. Each was cheered as loudly as the next in any case, and Polly appreciated that fact. Although if it rained on the Friday when the Roman Catholics walked, Big Flo would say the sun only shone on the righteous.
‘Live and let live’ was largely the order of the day. The one thing that could set apart neighbour from neighbour in the district was trying to appear better than the rest. ‘Getting above yourself was the real sin.
‘Thinks she is someone,’ they’d say with a sneer if anyone put up new curtains or dared to set fresh flowers on their windowsill instead of paper ones bought from the tinkers. The next day there could be a half-brick thrown through it.
But still Polly had her pride, and could be fussy about her own curtains - when she had any. Her house was clean, no doubt about that, so fumigating it was entirely unnecessary and filled her with shame for all she understood it couldn’t be singled out from the rest.
‘What if the soldiers won’t let us back into our own house?’ Or what if, despite all the Derbac and lye soap she used, they found something wrong with her children and took them away, saying she wasn’t a fit mother? ‘What if they put Lucy and Benny in Ancoats Hospital or, worse, a children’s home and I never see them again?’
‘Nay, lass, you’re getting all a-flunter over nowt.’ Big Flo, who knew exactly where she stood in life, had never been troubled with ‘nerves’ while this lass seemed full of them, so far as she could see. Polly lived in constant fear of her two children getting into trouble, pinching something and ending up in the reformatory. That’s if they didn’t walk under a tram, get TB, diphtheria or any of the other dread diseases that stalked this street almost daily, it seemed. Moreover she didn’t seem to appreciate family ties, and wanted out of Ancoats, for all it was one of the friendliest places on God’s earth, if also one of the muckiest.
By the time Big Flo had gone back to her own house, which she shared with Joshua, just four doors away, for once Polly couldn’t blame her mother-in-law for feeling exasperated. She had indeed worked herself up into a fine lather with largely imagined terrors. Every year it was the same. Being turned out of her own home, even for the annual fumigation, filled her with insecurity. She longed for Matthew to come home, knowing he would understand her fears and soothe them.
Her husband was good and kind and strong. She felt herself lucky to have been courted and wed by such a man. He didn’t drink all his money away like some, but brought it home for the care of his children, and the wife he loved and cherished above everything. She’d looked forward to his coming home all day, as she always did, but tonight there would be no easy chat over supper, no time to cuddle up beneath the blankets and old army greatcoats in their own bed. But he’d be there all the same, her rock, so really she had nothing to fret about at all.
When Matthew did arrive home, exhausted after a day spent up and down the Rochdale canal on the narrow-boats, it was to find his wife and children standing forlornly in the street, herded together with his neighbours, ready to be carried off like refugees.
‘Hello, lad,’ Connie Green hailed him. ‘Here we go again, on us holidays.’
‘Aye, who wants to go to Blackpool when they can lie on t’floor of Ardwick Barracks?’ quipped Bet Sutcliffe, who owned the old clothes shop a few doors up the street.
Matthew managed a smile but, distracted by problems of his own, didn’t come back with a joke as he would normally have done. He could see Davey Murphy ordering his wife about as usual while trying to disguise the fact that she sported another bruise. Matt nodded to him, acknowledging his presence, then turned away, not wishing to appear over-curious. Instead he put his arms about his own wife and drew her to his side, knowing how she hated this annual ritual.
The smell of the gasworks, rubber works and chemical factory was strong in his nostrils, but to this would soon be added the stink of the fumigating gas. The men were already busily sealing fireplaces, windows and doors with sticky tape. Then they would set fire to tins of powder which would hiss and spit as they ran out, slamming the doors behind them, sealing each one with a sheet of rubber to keep the gas in. By the time the occupants were allowed back from their sojourn at the barracks, the houses should be blessedly free from their unwelcome visitors, for a while at least.
Matt felt Polly shudder in his arms and, experiencing a rush of love for her, gave her a little squeeze. ‘Don’t fret, love. It’ll be over soon enough, and think what a blessed relief for us to be rid of the blackjacks for a while.’ He helped her climb aboard the truck which would take them to the barracks, where he knew they’d spend an uncomfortable, cold night sleeping on bare boards. Not that he minded. The way he was feeling right now, sleeping on a clothes line wouldn’t trouble him in the least, he was that tired.
‘I’ve told them my house is clean, but they’ll not listen.’
‘The bugs would still come, love, clean or not.’
‘I know,’ she admitted with a rueful smile, feeling better already just to have him there.
He smiled back at her, a gentle giant of a man with fair hair and blue-grey eyes that did not quite meet her gaze as they usually did, so that he could hide his own insecurities and fears. He’d been doing reasonably well lately, getting three, or sometimes four days a week regular work, but the gaffer had warned of a slack period coming up with fewer shipments due. As a result, pay and hours would be cut and a restlessness was growing among the men, with renewed talk of unions which employers viewed as a threat to their power.
Matthew did his best to avoid such talk and patiently hoped for the best. He’d no wish to involve himself in any political protest which he knew could degenerate with frightening swiftness into something violent and unpredictable. Besides, hadn’t he had a bellyful of fighting, enough to last him a lifetime? Let someone else take on this battle.
He lifted up eight-year-old Benny and told him to be a good lad and
sit
still for once, then helped twelve-year-old Lucy climb aboard. She went at once to take hold of Polly’s hand.
‘Don’t worry, Mam. It’ll be over soon. They’ll be doing Jersey Street tomorrow, then Hood and Blossom Street. Row by row, everyone will have their turn.’
‘Stay close, mind. I want naught to happen to the pair of you.’ As she spoke, Polly glanced anxiously about for her young son, but he was happily nattering to his friends.
Reaching up, Matthew planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Nowt will happen to either of them. Stop your fretting. Its only the bug brigade, not the bloomin’ coppers.’
‘You daft bitch!’ A sudden shout rang out, making everyone in the truck lean over the sides and crane their necks to see what was going on. Dove Street was never short on entertainment.
‘What the ... ?’ The body of a woman thudded against Matt, knocking the wind out of him and jarring his shoulder against the truck. Poor Mrs Murphy, suffering yet another bruising blow from her husband.
‘
You
bloody whore
!’ As Matthew bent to help the woman to her feet, she was whipped away from his hands and flung back with a loud crack as her head met the wall.
‘Hold on, what the blazes . . .’ But Matthew got no further as a fist connected with his nose; the kind of punch that left his teeth rattling and his head spinning. He could hear Polly screaming, and fought to keep consciousness even as he lunged for Murphy yet again. But he lost his balance and punched nothing but air.
Then from the door of number five emerged one of the railway guards, who really oughtn’t to have been there at all, and would almost certainly have remained hidden had the fumigation squad not unexpectedly flushed him out, and Davey Murphy had not been deprived of his usual pint or two at the pub that evening. Murphy shook off Matthew as if he were no more than an irritating gnat.
‘So this is what you get up to woman while I’m out looking for work, day after bleedin’ day. You entertain your fancy man in me own bloomin’ house.’
‘I weren’t, he only called . . . But whatever it was he’d supposedly called for, they were never to discover. A scuffle broke out as the two men flung punches at each other, Davey Murphy connecting more than the guard who was getting the worst of it, being less practised in fisticuffs than the big Irishman.
Then before anyone could guess what he was about to do, Davey swung round, letting fly at his wife with one balled fist. There was a terrible sound of crunching bones, a piercing scream, followed by a sickening thud as she fell to the ground,
‘Dear God, he’s done for her.’
Even as blood spurted and her arms stopped flailing to defend herself, the rain of blows and clamour of shouting and swearing did not let up until Matthew and the fumigation men finally managed, with great difficulty, to drag Davey off her. The winner and the loser of this terrible contest were by now patently obvious. Moments later it was the sound of police whistles that broke the awed silence which had descended on Dove Street.
Davey Murphy was led away, no doubt to Strangeways, with his hands in cuffs and not a trace of remorse on his face. The children would be found places in an orphanage somewhere while his poor wife’s troubles were over at last, at least in this world.
‘Why do we live here?’ Polly said in a hoarse whisper, wanting to retch as she held her children protectively close, for all they had seen similar occurrences time and again. But for once there were no soft words of comfort from her husband, and his voice was uncharacteristically harsh as he answered her.
‘Because we’ve no choice.’
Filled instantly with remorse and guilt over her fussing, which now seemed ridiculous in comparison to the horrific fate which had befallen poor Mrs Murphy and her children, Polly slid an arm about her husband’s neck the minute he came and sat beside her in the truck, leaning against his shoulder as if she could will the strength of him to flow into her own body. With his fair hair, blunt chin and hatred of embarrassing emotional scenes he was a typical Englishman, yet she loved him for it.
‘I’m sorry, Matt, for making such a blather about everything today. At least we’re happy, are we not, and don’t have the problems the poor Murphys had, you being in such a fine good job an’ all. Is that not so?’
‘Aye, ‘course it is,’ he agreed in his bluff way, thinking how lovely she was, and how silky her skin as he kissed her cheek; holding her protectively close as the truck jerked into motion. But his eyes were glazed over the dark sheen of her hair as she lay against his shoulder; the unseeing inward vision of a man with more troubles on his mind than he cares to admit.
Chapter Two
The night in the barracks was every bit as cold and uncomfortable as Polly had feared. Stripped of their clothes while they were deloused, the whole process seemed to her thoroughly humiliating.
The young students from the Roundhouse Mission, operating under the auspices of the University Settlement, offered fresh second-hand clothes to those who wanted them. Few took up the offer. Ancoats folk hated charity above all things. And there were some who’d rather do a bit of light-fingered fending for themselves, which at least necessitated taking a risk, than accept a hand-out; a perverse philosophy with which Polly sympathised though she did not subscribe to it herself. She frequently made a point of drumming into both her children the possible outcome of any such misguided outlook; how they might be clapped in the reformatory for seven years, just for looking as if they’d stolen something.