Rosie prayed for patience before she said quietly, ‘Well, it’s worth a try, Mam. The Co-op pay well and they treat their staff better than most.’
‘Aye, I know that, an’ that’s why they can afford to be picky as to who they take on.’
‘
Mam.
’ Rosie took a deep breath. She couldn’t let her mother get to her, not this morning, and now her voice was controlled again when she said, ‘Like I said, it’s worth a try.’ And if this didn’t work out she didn’t know what she was going to do. Their main meal of the day for the last week had been potatoes baked in the ashes of the little fire in the sitting-room grate, with a slice of pig’s pudding or a few chitterlings, as Rosie watched every penny.
They had been in residence at Benton Street for four weeks now, and in that time Rosie had gone after every single job she had heard about, only to learn they were long since gone by the time she had applied. Which wasn’t surprising with more and more men either out of work or striking.
Not that Zachariah was pushing them. She had made sure she paid him the rent each week and when she had nervously explained that the jobs at Bradman’s hadn’t worked out, he had asked no awkward questions, merely saying, in that quiet way he had about him, that if the rent became a problem she must come and see him about it. But she couldn’t take charity from him - he had been good enough about the low rent as it was and she appreciated that, more than he would ever know - and anyway, she needed a job in more ways than one. Her mother was driving her mad, and after the conversation with Davey a couple of nights before the two rooms had become positively claustrophobic. No, she was determined to get work, and please God it would be soon.
‘Worth a try you say.’ There was an odd note to Jessie’s voice, high and yet at the same time flat, and it reminded Rosie of Molly in her latest paddy first thing that morning when her sister had stated that it wasn’t
fair
she couldn’t have a party for her birthday in a few weeks’ time, all the time staring at her out of great accusing green eyes that declared quite clearly whom she held to blame for her misfortune. ‘Well, them that aim highest, fall furthest, as your da used to say.’
Oh, her mam! Rosie shut her eyes tight and bit hard on her lower lip before she turned in one sharp movement and called to Molly and Hannah who were squabbling in the bedroom, ‘Come on, you two.
Now!
’
‘Hannah can’t find her knittin’.’
‘What?’ Rosie swung Molly about and pushed her back towards the top of the stairs as the young girl made to walk through to her mother in the sitting room. ‘You’re not going back in there, you’re going to school. How many more times?’
‘Hannah can’t find her
knittin
’.’
Molly’s resistance against her hands, and the quick and very definite kick backwards with one of her feet caught Rosie on the raw, and before she had even thought about it she slapped her sister on the backside. It wasn’t a hard slap - it was more in the nature of a warning - but Molly’s reaction was the same as if she had been knocked to the floor. She flung herself on Rosie, pummelling with her hands and all the time screaming, ‘You dare! You dare skelp me, you dare! I hate you! I do, I hate you, an’ I hate livin’ here. I want to go home.’
Rosie was aware of her mother standing silently in the doorway to one side of her, and of Hannah emerging from the bedroom like a bullet out of a gun as she flung her arms round Molly’s waist and got knocked to the floor for her efforts, but she didn’t notice Zachariah until he pulled Molly from her, his massive chest and muscular arms subduing the sobbing child instantly although she continued to twist and turn in his hold like a demented rag doll.
‘What’s going on?’ Zachariah was looking at Rosie as he spoke, but it was Molly who answered as she cried, ‘I want to go home, I hate it here. You - you!’ She spluttered at Rosie, a well of tears spurting from her eyes. ‘You think you know everythin’ an’ you don’t, you don’t. An’ you was always pushin’ in with me da an’ Sam an’ Phil, makin’ out they liked you best. An’ I want to see them again, I don’t want them to be dead.’
‘Stop this.’ Zachariah shook her, his eyes never leaving Rosie’s white shocked face. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’
‘I won’t!’ And as Molly sensed where his sympathies lay she added, her voice as cruel as only a child’s can be, ‘An’ you can let me be an’ all, you Tommy-noddy. You can’t tell me what to do.’
‘
Molly
.’ At the slang reference to Zachariah’s lack of inches Jessie entered the rumpus for the first time, her voice sharp. ‘You say you’re sorry to Mr Price, d’ye hear me?’
‘No I won’t.’ And then, as Molly realized the enormity of her crime, her sobs became a wail that threatened to take the roof off as she collapsed in a heartbroken little heap on the floorboards.
Rosie’s heart was pounding so hard it was like a drum in her head and her mind was saying, How long? How long had Molly been feeling like this? She had tried to talk to her numerous times over the weeks since her father and brothers had died, but each time Molly had been quick with her rebuff and some act of naughtiness had followed. But perhaps she should have forced the issue, got it out into the open so that all the hurt and the confusion could have been dealt with and brought into the light. All this bitterness fermenting under the surface in a nine-year-old child was not healthy, and Molly was suffering as much at her mother’s withdrawal as anything else.
‘Molly, pet, now listen to me--’
‘No, I’m not gonna listen, I’m not.’ At her name Molly had clapped her hands over her ears, her face scarlet. Rosie indicated with a swift movement of her hand for Zachariah to carry the child into the sitting room, and as he sat her down on the saddle at Rosie’s prompting, Rosie knelt in front of her and took the small hands in her own. She looked straight into the beautiful green eyes as she said, her voice weighty, ‘Molly, I don’t care if you hate me but I love you, I do. And so did Da and the lads, you know that. But they are gone now, they’re gone and nothing can bring them back so we have to love each other all the more. Do you understand me, Molly? Everything I do I do because I love you and Mam and Hannah and I want us to be all right. I would have loved to be able to tell you we had enough money for you to invite all your friends at school for a birthday party, but we just haven’t. And Da and the lads didn’t love me more than you, Molly, but I was older and they talked to me about more grown-up things, that’s all. You know that. You do, don’t you?’
Molly tossed her golden-brown ringlets, her rosebud lips clamped together, but Rosie could see their quivering and she knew she was getting through.
‘Molly, I would love to go home and have Da and the lads back and everything like it used to be, but I can’t make that happen.’ Hannah had sidled to Rosie’s side and now she stood sucking her thumb, her other hand on Molly’s knee, and as Zachariah watched the little tableau from across the room, his eyes on Rosie’s earnest face, he experienced a physical ache in his chest as her gentleness touched him. ‘And now we’ve all got to pull together as best we can, yes?’ Rosie added persuasively as she hugged Molly to her.
‘Yes.’ And now, in one of the mercurial changes that had epitomized Molly from a baby, she threw her arms round Rosie’s neck, hugging her back as she said, her voice tearful, ‘I don’t want to die an’ be buried under the ground, I don’t, Rosie.’
‘You’re not going to die.’ Rosie moved Molly back fully onto the saddle again in order to look into her face as she added, her voice soothing, ‘Is that what has been worrying you, hinny?’ And, as Molly gulped and nodded her head; ‘Molly, you’re young, you’re nothing more than a bairn, you’ve got years and years and years ahead of you.’
‘Our Phil was only five years older than me.’
‘But Phil was killed in an accident, a mining accident, you know that. You’re not going to go underground, now are you?’
Molly shook her head. ‘Is that why Davey is goin’? ’Cos he don’t want to go down in case he gets killed?’
‘Davey?’ Even as Rosie said the name it dawned on her that Molly had been up to her favourite trick again, listening at keyholes.
‘I heard him, the other night.’ Molly knew she had given herself away and prevarication was useless. Besides, with Rosie in this mellow mood it was better to confess all now than later. ‘An’ you cried at the bottom of the stairs after he’d gone. Don’t you want him to go?’
Rosie took a deep breath. Now was not the time to discuss Davey Connor and she was very aware of Zachariah’s eyes on her as she said, ‘It’s sad when friends leave, Molly, and Davey was Sam’s best friend, wasn’t he? Now, we’ll talk some more when you come home from school.’ She wiped Molly’s face with her handkerchief before she added, ‘And I think you’ve something to say to Mr Price before you go?’
Apologies offered and accepted, Rosie chivvied the two little girls into their coats and down the stairs, and as they clattered away Zachariah, who was standing at the side of her on the landing, said, ‘You all right, lass?’
‘Yes, I’m all right. Thank you for your help, Zachariah.’ It had become Zachariah rather than Mr Price at his prompting. What would he say, Rosie thought now, if she spoke the truth and told him she was far from all right? That she was being torn apart inside and all the little bits of her were striving to make some sense of the confusion that had become her life? Think she was going barmy most likely.
‘The lass’ll settle down in time, it’s early days yet.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Rosie nodded slowly. ‘And we’ll get through. I’ve found the best way is to take it a day at a time and keep reaching for tomorrow. My da used to say that “trouble toughens and comfort corrupts”.’ She smiled as she added, ‘But a little corrupting would be nice right now.’
By, she’d got some guts, this lass. If he’d been born with two strong straight legs he’d have moved heaven and earth to have her, in spite of him being a good few years older. That very first night, after she’d gone, he’d told himself he was a blasted fool, that he was imagining things, that love couldn’t hit as quickly as that. But it had, oh aye, it had, and it
was
love - not lust, as he’d tried to convince himself ever since.
He’d had women since he was a lad of seventeen, and he’d only paid for it at the beginning when he’d thought an ordinary lass wouldn’t look the side he was on. But there he had had a surprise. As the years had gone by he’d found there were quite a few who were willing. Granted it often started with curiosity; as his old mate Tommy Bailey had crudely put it, they were falling over themselves to see if his handicap had affected what was atween his legs. But the lasses had liked him too, one or two of them more than liked, but he hadn’t loved any of them. And then when he’d met Janie, and her a well set-up widow with no bairns or family, he’d decided to settle down, as he’d described it to Tommy. At thirty, Janie had been five years older than him, and after ten years with a brute of a husband she’d had no inclination to tie the knot again. But she’d wanted company and someone in her bed now and then, and so they had found they suited each other just fine. Zachariah was fond of Janie but he didn’t love her, although he was aware that over the three years their association had been going on he had come to mean more and more to her.
But how he felt about Janie, and all the lasses before her, was quite different to the way he felt about Rosie, and the thought of this little lass seeing him undressed, seeing him in his full glory as he put it to himself, was quite inconceivable. And the torment he had felt the last few weeks was as bad as when he’d first realized, as a little bairn, that he was different. Conspicuously different.
‘Tommy-noddy, Tommy-noddy; big head an’ little body.’ Tommy-noddy. Oh aye, he’d heard that one afore and plenty more besides from some of the lads he’d been at school with, until he had worked his arms and his chest and developed his strength and the power in his torso to a point where they thought twice about tangling with him, small as he was.
‘Zachariah?’
‘Aye, lass?’
The front door had closed behind Molly and Hannah, Jessie had remained in the sitting room and the door onto the landing was closed, but Rosie still lowered her voice as she said, ‘I’m sorry, about what Molly said.’
He didn’t prevaricate. ‘About me bein’ a midget?’ He forced his voice to sound airy. ‘Likely that’s how she sees me, lass, an’ bairns are great ones for callin’ a spade a spade.’
It had hurt him, she knew it had hurt him because she had seen the blow register in those beautiful blue eyes, but he would never admit it. She was surprised how much it upset her. ‘She didn’t mean it, you know, she lashes out when she’s angry.’
‘Aye.’ He nodded now, and his voice lost its airy note for a moment when he said, ‘I’ve never bin one for blowin’ bubbles, lass, you know, like that song that was so popular last year? I know what I am, none better, so don’t you be a frettin’. You’ve enough on your plate as it is.’
‘Oh, Zachariah.’ Her voice had a cracked sound. He was so kind, so nice, if she hadn’t found this place they would be in dire straits by now. The thought reminded her about the interview at the Sunderland Equitable Industrial Society - the Co-op, or Store as it was always called by the locals - and when her expression changed and she said, ‘I’ve got to be making tracks, I’m going after a job at the Store today,’ he turned immediately, saying over his shoulder, ‘Aye, you get along, lass, an’ good luck.’