All her pals had been mad on the small but personable sailor. When he had singled her out, her head had been turned, it was as simple as that. But she had paid for her vanity a thousandfold and would continue to do so - unless the sea claimed him. This thought made her uncomfortable - not the idea itself because it was by no means a new one, but the fact that it carried an ever increasing yearning with it.
Nora glanced round the well-stocked table, her gaze moving to the shining range a moment later. She worked her fingers to the bone keeping them all fed and the house like a new pin, and not a word of appreciation, she thought bitterly, yet her fat lump of a sister was like a pig in muck and everyone thought she was wonderful. Her next words followed on from this train of thought. ‘Did you know next door have just got a new wireless?’ She looked straight at her husband for the first time since he had entered the house.
‘What? A wireless? No, I didn’t.’
‘Strikes me Audrey would have been better spent putting the money into the house. Her curtains are a disgrace and there’s holes in the lino and dirt an inch thick on the mats. Filthy hole.’
Raymond’s hand moved stealthily under the tablecloth and tapped Abby’s knee in silent warning. His daughter was sitting bolt upright, her face flushed with indignant colour. ‘Ivor made their old set donkey’s years ago,’ he said mildly. ‘Likely it gave up the ghost.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘It’s their choice how they spend what comes in. I don’t suppose they’re doing too badly with Ivor and the three lads back in work now all this talk of war is making the powers that be windy. You can’t fight a war without shipyards. ’
‘War. Huh.’ Nora tossed her head. ‘Ten to one nothing will come of it and they’ll be back on short time or the dole before you can say Jack Robinson. And what good will a new wireless do them then, eh?’
He’d known something had got her goat from the minute he had walked in but he’d thought it was him and the lass coming in together - she never had liked it that Abby thought a bit of him. But it was her sister and this damn wireless. By, she was a bitter pill, was Nora. He bent his head to his meal without saying anything more, pushing his plate from him when he was finished.
This was the signal for Abby to rise to her feet and gather the dirty plates and dishes together. She took them through to the scullery where she placed them on the table next to the tin dish ready for scouring later. She returned to the kitchen, took the kettle off the hob and swilled the big brown teapot with a little hot water to warm it before thrusting the kettle into the heart of the flames to bring the water to the boil. Once the tea was mashing she busied herself bringing the milk jug, sugar bowl and cups and saucers to the table, her heart thumping a tattoo all the while. It was only when she had poured everyone a cup of tea, Clara’s being mostly milk with a little sugar to sweeten it, that she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve some news, Mam.’
‘You? You’ve got news, you say?’
Her mother’s tone made Abby’s heart beat still faster. ‘Aye. Good news.’ Just say it. Don’t make a big thing of it, just spit it out. ‘I applied for an evening course at the technical college, shorthand and typing, and I heard today I got in.’
Her mother’s eyes were unblinking as she stared at her.
Wilbert smiled. ‘Well done, Abby. When did—’
Abby cut across him, the look on her mother’s face causing her to gabble. ‘They had to turn some people away because they had too many for the one course but I got in, so that’s good, isn’t it? Thursday and Monday nights I’ve got to go, every week till Christmas, then if I pass the exams I can go on to the next stage and—’
‘How long have you been planning this?’
‘What?’ Her mother’s voice had been so quiet it took a moment for the words to register, and then Abby said, ‘For-for months,’ hating the fact she had stuttered. ‘Ever since I left school, I suppose,’ she added more strongly.
‘And where do you think the money’s coming from to pay for it? Thin air?’
‘No. I—’
‘It’s out of the question. There’s an end to it.’
A swift rise of anger suffused Abby but she forced herself to say calmly, ‘It’s all paid for. You have to give the money when you apply and then they return it if you don’t get in. That’s what the lady in the office said.’
‘You gave her the money?’ Nora rounded on Raymond so quickly she took everyone by surprise. ‘How dare you put her up to this!’
‘It wasn’t Da,’ Abby protested, her tone vehement. ‘I saved up.’
‘Saved up? Oh, of course you did.’ Nora nodded her head, her tone vicious. ‘It must have been easy with all them pounds and pounds you’re earning. Do you think I was born yesterday, girl?’ And then, as a thought hit, she said, ‘You had a raise you haven’t told me about?’
‘You know I haven’t. You have my wage packet each week with the slip still in it. Like I said, I’ve been saving, right from when I first started at the factory. It’s taken me a long time but—’
‘Then it’s a pity the money’s been wasted because you’re not going.’
Abby was stumped for words for a second; there had been a grim finality to her mother’s voice.
Raymond had been quietly sipping his tea but now he inclined his head towards Wilbert and Clara who made themselves scarce. Then he faced his wife.
‘No need to get on your high horse, Nora,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason why the bairn can’t do this if she wants to. She’ll still be working at the factory in the day, after all.’
‘Oh you, I might have known you’d take her side, encouraging her to think she can go behind my back like this. Well, I won’t have it, I tell you. It’s all right for you, you’re not here for the best part of the year and it’s me who has to do everything.’
‘Don’t start that tack. Through the worst of the Depression you were damn glad I wasn’t in the mines or the shipyards like them lot next door, now then. You still collected me wage from the shipping office each week and you wanted for nowt, so think on. Trouble with you, Nora, is that you’ve got a short memory when it suits you. Half of Sunderland were starving and your own sister among ’em. And while we’re on the subject, if them poor blighters next door want to buy a wireless after the misery they’ve been through for years I, for one, don’t begrudge ’em it.’
‘No, well, you wouldn’t, would you! You’ve never been able to see further than the end of your nose.’
It was with visible effort that Raymond controlled his temper. He took a deep breath before he said, ‘This isn’t about you an’ me, it’s about the bairn and this notion she’s got to try her hand at something different.’
‘And I’ve said I’m not going to have her gallivanting off here, there and everywhere. I need her here helping me in the evenings.’
‘I’ve paid for it and I’m going, Mam.’ Abby looked straight into her mother’s eyes. ‘I’ll still help in the house but I’m doing the shorthand and typing two evenings a week.’
‘You are not, madam, so think on.’
The brown gaze did not falter. ‘I am.’
Nora now rose from her seat, coming to stand in front of her daughter. Her voice low, she said, ‘You’ll defy me then? Is that what you are saying?’
Her mother’s eyes were cornflower blue and her face heart-shaped. All Abby’s friends at school had thought she was lucky to have such a pretty mam. Why this thought came into her head at that precise moment she was not sure, unless it was the way her mother’s face had pulled tight so she didn’t look pretty at all. Abby jerked to her feet, pushing back the kitchen chair with her legs. She had seen the look in her mother’s eyes, the look that always accompanied a ringing slap across the face, and in spite of her father being home she knew her mother was incensed enough to go for her. For the first time in her life it made her angry rather than afraid. She hated her mam. It might be wicked and against everything Father Finlay preached, but she did.
She took a deep breath. ‘Fanny Kirby at the factory, her lodger’s just done a moonlight flit and he only paid three bob a week for his room,’ she said loudly, as though her mother was in the scullery rather than right in front of her. ‘And she likes me, Fanny does.’
She saw her mother’s eyes widen for a split second. ‘You threatening me, girl?’
‘No.’ Normally by now she would be backing away from the intent in her mother’s face but tonight there was fire in her belly. Her dream, her lovely dream of getting out of the factory and working somewhere where the air was clean and sweet, of doing something she liked, was not going to die. She wouldn’t let it. And her mam needed her at home. Only the two of them knew just how much she needed her - all the ironing, cleaning the range from top to bottom every week, scouring out the privy every other day and doing the kitchen from top to bottom every second Saturday, besides the everyday cleaning and washing and seeing to Clara. All that on top of giving her mam most of her wage each week. Her mam would be a fool to let her go and, whatever else she was, she wasn’t that. ‘I’m not threatening you, I’m saying I’m going on the course whatever happens.’
Abby saw the indecision in her mother’s face and knew her hand was fairly twitching, but Nora didn’t lash out and send her flying. They stared at each other for what seemed like a long time to Abby’s overstretched nerves, and then Nora said, her words slow and flat, ‘You’re an upstart, girl. You know that, don’t you? From the minute you were born you’ve been trouble. But just remember this, there’s none that get so high that they can’t be brought down, and that’s what’ll happen to you one day.’ And she turned on her heel and left the room.
Abby was still biting hard on her bottom lip to prevent it trembling; it didn’t register for a moment that she had won.
‘That might have been hard, lass,’ her father said, ‘but if I’d stood up to her years ago instead of taking the easy road, things’d be different now.’
Only then did Abby relax. But she felt no flood of joy that she had got her own way. The look on her father’s face and the way he had just spoken had taken care of that. He didn’t like her mam any more than she did and she wondered why the seriousness of that had never fully dawned on her before.
Chapter Two
W
hen Abby walked into her aunt’s backyard the next morning she could smell bacon frying. She opened the scullery door and called, ‘Anyone at home?’
Her aunt’s voice came back at her from the kitchen. ‘Abby? Is that you?’
‘Hello, Aunty.’ As always Abby felt a sense of coming home as she took in the cluttered kitchen and the plump figure of her aunt standing at the range. This kitchen and more especially the woman in it spelled comfort and warmth and belonging, and what was a layer of dust or battered, tatty furniture anyway? Her aunty’s house wasn’t dirty like her mam said, it was just that everything was old and worn but that didn’t matter a jot.
‘This is a turn-up for the book, your mam letting you come round here at this time in the morning,’ Audrey Hammond commented wryly.
Abby grinned at her aunt. ‘She doesn’t know. She’s gone to first Mass and she’s made Wilbert and Clara go with her.’
Audrey’s eyebrows lifted. ‘And not you?’
‘She’s not speaking to me.’ Abby’s nose wrinkled. ‘We’ve had a row, a big one.’
‘You’ll have another if she finds you in here.’
‘I don’t care.’ Abby settled herself down at the big wooden table, the top of which was marked with a hundred indentations and scratches. ‘I wanted to talk to you before I go to work.’
‘And it couldn’t wait until tonight?’
‘Everyone’ll be here then.’
Audrey nodded. Another ten minutes and Ivor and the lads would be down and then it would be bedlam until they’d eaten and she’d packed Ivor and the oldest three off to work, and little Jed, the baby of the family at five years old, to school. And the evenings were worse. But she wouldn’t swap a minute of her days for all the tea in China. The good Lord had blessed her when He’d seen fit to send Ivor her way, and none knew that better than she did. Daft as it might be, and she’d certainly never voice it to a living soul, but he still made her feel weak at the knees when she looked at him. She flapped her hand at her niece. ‘There’s still some tea in the pot, hinny, and I’ll be making a fresh brew for that lot upstairs in a minute so help yourself. You want a bacon butty with it?’