Authors: Freda Lightfoot
Polly herself gladly accepted the offer of clothes, thanking the young man in his tweed suit and striped tie as he stood guard behind his table, making him gaze with startled wonder upon this raggedly dressed woman who had such a bewitching smile and skin as fine as porcelain.
‘I’ll not wear it,’ young Benny complained as Polly popped a ‘new’ cap with a smart blue peak upon his head.
‘Sure an’ you will if I say so.’
‘They’ll laugh at me.’ She’d already kitted him out with an equally ‘new’ cotton shirt that only had one darn in it, and a pair of grey trousers which hung from his braces to well past his knees so would last him quite a time. He still wore his own clogs, for which he was thankful.
‘And won’t they just wish their mams had been so clever as to take up this fine young man’s offer?’ She smiled at the student again, causing him to gulp.
Benny sulked. He loved his mother dearly, but she didn’t always understand the ways of the world, not Dove Street ways anyroad. It didn’t pay to be different. He had no wish to stand out in a crowd, yet his mam did it all the time. Grown-ups could be very confusing. She’d sometimes quite happily let him play out on a Sunday when all his friends had been marched off to church but then in the evenings, when he and the lads were just starting to enjoy themselves, she’d be the first to fetch him home.
‘You’ll not learn your lessons without a good night’s sleep,’ she’d say. ‘Work hard and one day
you’ll
be the best reader in the class, Benjamin Pride, so you will.’
Benny had no wish to be the best reader in the class. Reading was for cissies. Everyone knew that. But would she listen? She’d even gone so far as to have Mr Reckitt, the Dolly Varden man who lived two doors away, look out for books among the rubbish at the better-off houses. She’d been given
The Old
Curiosity Shop
that way, and after weeping over it herself, gave it to Benny to read. A more boring book he had yet to find.
Worst of all, the Dolly Varden men, so called because they wore a wide-brimmed hat like the famous Dolly Varden, a music hall singer of the naughty 90’s, emptied the rubbish bins, so the book stank.
And what Georgie Eastwood would say when he saw the blue peaked cap, Benny dreaded to think. Georgie wouldn’t be seen dead in a cap like this. He wore a union shirt, open at the neck to reveal a blue muffler, waistcoat, jacket, and long trousers held up with a wide buckled belt. On his feet were a pair of clogs with the fiercest metal toe caps Benny had ever set eyes on.
Georgie and his gang waited for him night after night when school had finished for the day, or would prowl around the Recreation ground where Benny and his mates went to play football. Why they picked on him he couldn’t quite work out, but Georgie would poke him in the ribs with a stick, or threaten to clout him with
the
buckle of his belt if he didn’t agree to pinch a few sweets from Vera Murray’s toffee shop.
So far Benny had always managed to escape, thanks to the intervention of his friends. They sometimes talked of setting up a gang of their own, here in Dove Street, but Benny worried about how they could ever hope to stand up to the Eastwood Gang. Didn’t Georgie claim that his dad had once been leader of one of the legendary Napoo Gangs? And he meant to be equally famous. But even if they did get one going in Dove Street, it was perfectly clear to Benny that a leader of a gang would never wear a blue peaked cap.
Now he pulled the offending article off his head and pursed his lips till his jaws ached with the effort.
‘I’ll not wear it, I tell you. I won’t,’ he insisted one more time. But because his mam had that determined, warning light in her eyes, fists stuck into her waist in that fierce way she had, further protests quickly died and he surrendered to the inevitable. Then Benny obediently lay down on the cold floor, closed his eyes and feigned sleep. Inside his head he prayed that Georgie Eastwood’s mother would also have got him some ‘new’ clothes, but didn’t hold out much hope. The Eastwoods had their own way of getting what they needed, and didn’t depend on others to provide it.
Polly settled herself beside her son, and called for Lucy to join them.
‘Aw, I’m having a natter with Sal,’ Lucy protested. ‘I wont be more’n a minute or two.’
‘See you’re not then,’ Polly scolded. ‘It’ll be black as pitch in here when all the candles are put out. You’d never find us in the crush.’
Lucy only laughed, too used to her mother’s anxieties to pay them much heed. Besides, Sal had a brother Tom, who she knew had a shine for her, though he’d not admitted as much. She might not be old enough yet at twelve to go out on the monkey-walk on Eccles New Road, which was what they called the stretch of road where the girls and lads normally got together, but she could surely seize on this opportunity to bring him to the point of asking her to be his girl.
It made her go all fizzy and warm inside just to look at him, as if she’d eaten a lemon sherbet. Even if he didn’t say anything, it would certainly be more fun to tease Tom Shackleton than talk to her parents. Dad was engrossed in an argument with Uncle Joshua as usual, Mam acting as referee, while Grandma Flo was enjoying herself sitting with all the other matriarchs of Dove Street, having a good old chin-wag.
Matthew was, as Lucy suspected, deeply embroiled in a discussion that encompassed hopes for the revival of the cotton industry, the iniquities of the benefit system for the unemployed, and endless grumbles about miserly bosses who objected to any hint of a union amongst their workers. His brother Joshua, long limbs coiled uncomfortably on the wooden floor, lean face looking almost cadaverous in the candlelight, seemed to pulsate with cold fury. He spoke with that measured, assured calm which drove Matthew to the limits of his patience.
‘If we sit back and let them, they’ll continue to abuse us. It’s up to us to fight. We’re all working men - in this together.’
‘How can we stand up to those who hold the purse strings?’ Matthew wanted to know.’ Them bosses would turn us off without a second thought if we put one foot wrong. Out on our ear, we’d be. It’s all right for you, Josh, a single man. Some of us have a wife and childer to consider.’
Joshua glared at his brother with the kind of intense gaze which made lesser men shiver. He’d heard this argument too many times to be persuaded by it. In his opinion Matthew made his wife and children the excuse for every decision or action he ever made, or rather those he failed to make. He put the Irish woman before everything, even his own family - which in one instance, as they both well knew, had proved disastrous.
Polly, ever wary of these confrontations between the two brothers, attempted to mediate. ‘You’re both right, in a way. But standing up to the bosses would need every working man to be in agreement and on one side, and you’d never achieve that.’
‘And how would you know? You’re only a woman.’ For all the fury in his ascetic features, Joshua’s voice remained cold and expressionless, commanding respect and deference from his listeners.
Polly could only look into his nasty pale eyes and think how different he was from her gentle Matthew. There’d never been any love lost between the pair of them, for her dislike of him dated right back to the war and the way he’d blamed Matt for the death of their younger brother, Cecil. A scandalous and cruel accusation for which she’d never forgiven him. In her opinion, Joshua Pride hadn’t one morsel of compassion in his entire being; so if he talked of his concern for the working man, she saw only his own need for power and influence.
He was still talking, addressing the men gathered about with the kind of authority they appeared to respect. Since many of them attended Zion Methodist Chapel, where he acted as lay preacher, they were used to heeding his words. ‘There are unions everywhere now, so why not here in Dove Street? The bosses will continue to put the squeeze on, keep reducing our hourly rate and putting us on shorter time, if we don’t band together and stop them.’
‘Happen that’s what Band of Hope should be doing, instead of trying to make us all go teetotal. They’ve about as much chance of success,’ said Percy Williams, well known for his droll sense of humour. But he soon wished he’d kept his mouth shut when it was his turn to bear the heat of Joshua’s scorching glare. ‘Aye, well, it were only a thought like,’ he mumbled.
Matthew, who liked to approach life with more caution than his brother, gave a scornful laugh. ‘How can we make the employers, union or no union, agree to any changes if the work isn’t there in the first place? The major industries have been on the slide for years. Now we’ve sold looms to India, the competition is beating us at our own game.’
‘My argument entirely,’ his brother insisted. ‘We should think ahead, think of our own future, stick up for the working man.’ There were murmurs of assent, while others began to call out obscenities about their own particular employers. The gathering in the stinking, overcrowded room quickly grew as heated as a political rally.
‘How many folk work in these bloomin’ mills?’ one man asked, trying to illustrate how dependent the district still was on cotton, even if not as completely as it once had been.
‘About half of ‘em, lazy so and so’s,’ quipped one wag, who’d grown tired of the argument. Everybody laughed and tension instantly eased, the conversation moving on to other, less contentious topics.
If it hadn’t been for the good humour of her neighbours, Polly decided, the night would have been miserable indeed. Instead, almost a party atmosphere developed as one or two folk started to sing in the darkness, others joining in. The last song was a rousing rendition of ‘Sweet Rosie O’Grady’ before silence finally settled upon the overcrowded room, or what passed for it among the snuffles, burps, grunts, snores and other less edifying sounds that went on under cover of darkness.
In the distance could be heard shunting and banging from the railway goods yard. Soon Matt was snoring gently beside her, but Polly lay listening to every sound while turning over in her mind how she could rid her house of the smell of gas, whether anything would have ‘gone missing’ during the fumigation process, and where she would find the money for Lucy’s white frock for this year’s Whit Walks. Even when sleep finally claimed her, these thoughts continued to crowd her dreams.
Benny was happily fitting the sounds of the railway to pictures in his mind. One minute he was the driver of the magnificent
Prince of Wales
, stoking the engine so that steam soared from its short fat chimney; the next he was the man working the turntables, routeing each wagon on to its correct line. As he slid contentedly into sleep, he was speeding through the countryside, the wind cold upon his face and the sound of the engine whistle screeching in his ears.
None of them was aware of Lucy, stumbling back to her place beside them, nor heard her quiet sobs under cover of this multitude of nocturnal sounds.
Poor Mrs Murphy was buried with little fuss by the remaining members of her family. They raised a loan from the Eastwoods in order to pay for it, knowing it would cost them dear in repayment, but not wanting her to suffer the humiliation of a pauper’s funeral. With her husband and children gone, the residents of Dove Street felt it incumbent upon themselves to turn out in force. An ineffectual, rather foolish woman, yet she surely deserved a last show of respect. She’d been married to a brute of a man, after all.
Polly and Big Flo made it their business to attend, removing everyday aprons and shawls and slipping on their Sunday coats, though along with the other women it meant begging a half-hour off work in order to attend. Polly from her job at the Yates’ Temperance Tavern, Big Flo from the daily chores. Matthew too asked for time off, the gaffer being far from pleased by this request but willing to allow a short break on condition he made up the time during his dinner break. Consequently Matthew told Polly he couldn’t be there for the service but he’d be sure to attend the burial, as was only right and proper, them being next-door neighbours.
‘Eeh, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Roman Catholic church before,’ Big Flo said, looking about her as if she half expected the Good Lord to strike her dead upon the spot for daring to do so now.
Polly laughed, though for her own part she was welcoming the peace of the church, the smell of the incense and the familiar rituals, wondering if she dare ask to take the sacrament yet knowing she’d be refused. ‘It’s quite a while since I was in here myself.’
‘You must live in fear of the priest coming to call?’
‘Why should I? We had our disagreement years ago. Father Donevan has his job to do, whether he likes it or not, and we get on fine despite our differences.’
Big Flo looked disbelieving. She knew all about these Romans. How they were half-starved because their priests took all the money; how they weren’t allowed to touch a Bible, and had queer ideas about the holy bread they swallowed. It was no surprise to her that only the priest got a taste of the wine. In Zion Methodist they drank blackcurrant juice, which was quite adequate for the purpose and didn’t lead you into evil ways; a measure some of these so-called holy priests would do well to follow, in Flo’s humble opinion. She told her daughter-in-law as much now, not for the first time. Polly merely sighed resignedly.
‘Let’s not fall out over religion, Flo. I didn’t ask Matthew to turn for me, and rarely attend church myself. I only insist that our children be brought up as Catholics. Surely that’s not too much to ask? And we’re happy. What more d’you want?’