Authors: Freda Lightfoot
‘You’re not trying to tell me it’s that Holy Joe brother of yours who services the woman? He doesn’t look capable of such a manly pursuit.’ And the foreman laughed.
Matthew flushed a darker red. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not my brother’s keeper. You’ll have to ask him yourself. It’s nowt to do with anyone, least of all me, what Joshua does. And what if I do attend the odd meeting? It’s not a crime, is it? I give a good day’s work for my pay, and nor was I shirking just now. I was thinking, while I stopped to catch me breath for a minute.’ He was keenly aware he hadn’t defended Joshua quite as ably as perhaps he might, but knew it was too late to say more. And he had perhaps defended himself too well.
‘Thinking, eh? My word, we’ve got Einstein among us and didn’t know it.’ The foreman looked around him again as he chortled with laughter, expressing his scorn of the very idea that Matthew might have a brain in his head to think with. Some of the other men judiciously joined in the enjoyment of his little joke. ‘Well then, perhaps you should share these grand thoughts with us all. Give us the benefit of your wisdom like.’
Matthew was furious with himself. He clenched the handles of the barrow so tightly his knuckles whitened. ‘It wasn’t anything important,’ he said, and set off down the plank, anxious to be done with this dangerous conversation and get on with his work.
‘Don’t you turn your back on me!’
It happened so quickly that afterwards Matthew couldn’t work out what exactly had gone wrong. One minute he’d been wheeling the full barrow-load of coal down the planks, the irritated voice of Jim Taylor buzzing like a fly in his ear; the next the whole caboodle was at the bottom of the canal. Had he somehow rolled over the edge, or had he really seen a stick flicked under the wheel to catapult it into the water? One glance into the foreman’s sneering face suggested the latter, and his next words confirmed it.
‘That’s you finished, lad. Collect what’s owing to you and go. I’ll not have troublemakers on my shift. This is the last time you’ll get work on this wharf.’
When Matthew told Joshua what had occurred as a result of his attending the meeting, and that Jim Taylor had accused him of bothering with women, his brother gave him a cold assessing glare, the barest hint of a frozen smile on his thin lips.
‘Are you trying to lay the blame on me, because you were idling and got yourself sacked?’
‘I didn’t say that, and I’ve told you, I wasn’t idling.’
‘What were you doing then?’
Suffering torment after years of guilt, Matthew thought, yet not for the world would he admit as much to his brother. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Dear me. What will the little wife say about you losing your job?’
‘Damn you to hell!’
‘No, Matthew, I don’t think so. You’re the one who’ll end up in hell.’ Joshua pushed his face up close, nostrils flaring with a cruel resolve which did nothing to brighten those dead eyes. ‘And perhaps I’ll be the one to put you there.’
Chapter Five
Polly chose that very night to reveal her secret. As soon as supper was over, she went to fetch the dress. which she’d stored in a drawer wrapped in a piece of unbleached cotton. She carefully unfolded it and held it up for them all to see.
Lucy was almost speechless with delight. ‘Oh, you’re the best mum in the world! Where did you get it? Did you make it yourself?’
‘Wasn’t I stitching away whenever the house was empty for five minutes?’
Lucy hugged and kissed her mother, and even Big Flo, sitting by the fire with her feet up on the steel fender, smiled.
‘Well, go and put it on then. Let’s have a look at it.’
Lucy turned and ran, bare feet skittering on the wooden stairs, giggling like the child she still was.
In the silence which followed her departure, Benny said, ‘I’m not walking in no cissy procession.’
For once it was his father who answered, telling him to hold his tongue and do as he was told. If his son considered further protest, he soon thought better of it as the atmosphere in the room dropped to freezing.
Matt, seated on a wooden chair polishing his clogs, knew this was the moment he should admit to Polly that he’d lost his job, and that he might well have kept it if only he’d buttoned his lip a bit tighter. It was guilt over this which now held him silent. Instead he asked in clipped tones, ‘And how did you manage to find the brass to buy such fancy stuff?’
Polly’s cheeks grew red but she answered in a firm voice, bracing herself for his disapproval, ‘I got another job, cleaning.’
‘Cleaning what?’
She shrugged and moved to the table, flicking unseen crumbs away, wiping down a surface that had been wiped ten times already. ‘Whatever needs cleaning. Sure, and isn’t there plenty of that around here?’
‘And where did you do this cleaning?’
She could hear the tightness in his voice, feel his anger. She glanced anxiously at her mother-in-law, waiting for Big Flo to wade in on the side of her favourite younger son, as she so often did. But for once the old woman held her tongue.
‘Well?’
Polly sighed. ‘At the Peveril of the Peak near the Hippodrome, if you must know. ‘It’s a decent enough pub. Better than most, I dare say. The actors call in during the interval, and the money is good so . . .’ Her voice tailed away as she watched his face darken. Even so, it was her mother-in-law whose outrage was the first to surface.
‘You’ve been working in a pub! Where hard liquor is served and lewd actresses with Red John on their cheeks parade themselves before men? Was it that slut next door what put you up to it?’
‘Eileen isn’t a slut. She had a bad start in life, that’s all. Anyway, I wasn’t serving at the bar,’ Polly protested. ‘Only cleaning up every afternoon while it was closed for an hour or two. What can be wrong with that, may I ask?’
She stood with arms folded as she faced her husband, but her eyes weren’t so much defiant as pleading with him to understand. ‘How could I buy our Lucy a frock to wear for the Whit Walks, or Benny the new coat and boots he needs, on what we have coming in? Would you have me children look like beggars?’
Matthew was on his feet, anger making his face ashen. ‘So that’s what you think I achieve by grafting all hours on the canal? Making my children look like beggars.’
‘No, I didn’t mean it how it sounds . . .’ But it was too late. Matt thrust his feet back into his shining clogs, clipped the clasp on each, then picking up his jacket strode from the house, clog irons sparking on the stone floor. Polly knew he’d be back later, after he’d walked off the worst of his temper, but it pained her to see how she’d hurt him.
Big Flo chose this moment to put in her twopennorth. ‘Now see what you’ve done! You shouldn’t show your husband up, not a fine proud man like our Matthew. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘I only wanted to help.’
‘No brains, like all Irish.’
Polly was so used to this accusation, she managed a tight smile. ‘But plenty of heart, Flo. You have to admit that.’
The two women considered one another in silence. There’d been many times when her mother-in-law claimed to have given someone ‘a good talking to’ and Polly always felt great sympathy for the poor miscreant. But her silences could be worse. Matthew had once told her they could be so condemning as to bring his father, as strong a man as you could hope to meet in a long day’s march, to his knees, begging forgiveness for whatever misdemeanour he’d supposedly committed. After that poor man’s death, from exhaustion some said, Flo practised her well-honed skills on other unfortunates. Now Polly found herself on the receiving end of that forbidding gaze and saw exactly what Matthew meant.
Whether she would have found the courage to break the silence she was not to discover as a sound of clattering feet and excited laughter intervened. A breathless Lucy stood before them in her new frock.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He had to go out. Don’t worry, he’ll see you on the day. Oh, and don’t you look fine and dandy? A proper beauty.’ As indeed she did. So lovely with her fair hair curling softly on her shoulders and her grey-blue eyes bright with a youthfulness and innocence that quite took Polly’s breath away. The dress was lovely, too, a blaze of startling white in the shabby room.
‘It was worth every stitch, to be sure,’ said Polly, swelling with pride at the wonder of her own daughter’s beauty. The hours of labour on her knees scrubbing and cleaning had also been worth it, no matter what Matthew might say.
‘Aye,’ Big Flo softly agreed, equally bowled over by the transformation from ragged urchin to something very like a fairy princess. ‘Happen you’re right there.’
Matthew came home late that evening, quietly undressed and slid beneath the blankets. He told his wife that her job at the Peveril of the Peak was over. He’d called in and informed the proprietor she’d not be returning. ‘You can keep the job at the temperance tavern, but nothing more. You’ve enough to do coping with that and looking after us.’
Polly was shocked. She had expected him to grumble, even rant and rave for a while, but never before had he attempted to override any decision she’d made, especially when they needed the money so badly. She attempted to say as much, but he wasn’t listening.
‘There’s an end of the matter, Poll.’
She was forced to bite back any further argument, seeing that he meant it. Matthew could be very obstinate. For a long time they lay stiff and silent, side by side, shivering slightly as the nights were still cold and there was a dampness in the air. Then she reached out a tentative hand and gently touched his arm. ‘It’s cold I am. Will you warm me?’
He made no move so she tried again. ‘I didn’t mean that you kept us like beggars, Matt. We might be poor but there’s plenty worse off than us. We don’t go short of anything we really need. Aren’t you the finest husband any woman could ask for? And the best of fathers. It’s only that I want the best for our children, to have them look fine and beautiful before God, so’s I can thank Him for giving them to me.’
‘I know, lass. But happen you want too much sometimes,’ he stubbornly insisted.
‘ Mebbe I do, and you’re growing tetchy in your old age,’ she teased, mimicking him as she curled her body against his. She kissed the cold stiffness of his cheek, moving on to tease his lips, and heard him groan her name. Then his arms came around her to pull her tight against his bare chest and, chuckling softly, she wriggled herself beneath him. It didn’t take more than a few moments for all differences between them to be forgotten, and he was her loving Matthew again, and she his lovely Polly.
But still he hadn’t told her the truth.
Nor did he tell her in the days following. He got up at the same time every morning and went off to work as usual, but though he turned up in good time for his usual shift he was always ignored, overlooked in favour of one of the other men. He tried the dock at Ducie Street but there were few steamers coming at present since orders were down.
He then set about combing the other wharves and docks. He picked up the odd day of casual labour here and there but nothing certain, nothing regular. It was as if word had gone out that Matthew Pride was trouble and therefore unemployable. Every foreman, gaffer and stevedore had his favourites, of course, and those vacancies which did come up were generally spoken for, often promised over a pint in the pub the night before. As the days slipped by Matthew began to despair, for he couldn’t keep up this pretence for much longer.
He made Joshua swear to keep the information to himself, which caused his brother some amusement. But he appeared to keep his word for Polly was entirely unsuspecting. Though how she would take it if he was forced to own up to having lost his own steady job while making her give up hers, Matthew didn’t like to think.
He pawned his suit and his only pair of boots, hoping he’d find better work soon which would bring in enough money to redeem them before he had need of them for Whit Week. He was lucky and got two days labour at Trafford Park, which meant he could once again postpone telling his wife.
Polly had done her best to like Terence Grimshaw but had failed miserably. Mostly when she went next door, which admittedly wasn’t often, he would be sitting with his feet propped up on the fender, reading the
Sporting Chronicle
or the
Manchester Evening News,
while Eileen fussed over her brood like a clucking hen. There seemed to be so many children in the tiny living kitchen that every surface was crowded. Even the ceiling, Polly sometimes thought.
As well as feeling too small, the room had a sweetly sour smell about it, as if too many unwashed bodies had lived within its four walls, which was probably the case. Even now half a dozen grey nappies hung from a string looped above the fireplace, drying in the drift of smoke that emanated from the small pile of coals below.
‘Our Beryl needs changing,’ Terence would inform his wife as she stood at the sink peeling potatoes for tea. Or
he’d complain that the child was crying. Polly didn’t know how she managed to bite her lip and keep from interfering. Only once had she risked it.
‘Eileen’s busy,’ she’d casually remarked. ‘Why don’t you give the child a cuddle yourself? I reckon that’s all she needs.’
He’d looked at her as if she’d blown in straight from Prestwich Asylum. ‘The child needs her mam. And we can do without strangers telling us what to do with us own childer.’