Contents
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Part One: The Fall of a Leaf . . .
1. Beginnings
2.Neighbours
3.My Immortal Soul
4.Changes
5 Moving on
6 Encounters
7 Communion
8 The Killing
9 On the Run
10 New Pastures
11 Losing Faith
12 Fighting Back
13 The Worst of Times
14 The Best of Times
Part Two: . . . is a Whisper to the Living
1 Martin and Simon
2 Edna and Simon
3 With Premeditation
4 Tensions
5 Disruptions
6 Laughter and Worry
7 The Rape
8 Repercussions
9 Confrontations
10 Dénouements
11 Dolly’s Lot
12 Departures
Part Three: Anne
1960
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Ruth Hamilton
Copyright
In loving memory of my parents.
Also for Allison Williams, a true friend who is sadly missed.
Many thanks to: My two sons who tolerate me while I write; Diane Pearson for her patience and encouragement; Lyn Andrews who made me carry on through thick and thin; Dr Sonia Goldrein for her help, support and advice; the Bolton Evening News and the Liverpool Echo for factual guidance; the people of Bolton and Liverpool, my two home towns; friends and colleagues in Kirkby, especially those at Millbridge, Millbrook, Northfield and Springfield Schools.
This is a work of fiction. However, Bolton is a real place and although I have altered names of some streets and roads, these actual locations do exist. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. I had a tale to tell and I set it in one of the places I know and love best.
‘The fall of a leaf is a whisper to the living.’
English proverb
On 28 January 1940, I was born dead.
My mother, Nancy Byrne, after suffering for forty-eight hours on a horsehair sofa under the stairs, placed me as gently as she could on the peg rug in front of a cold range, then collapsed on to the stone floor beside me.
Fortunately for both of us, the widow from next door had, with the help of her two sons, managed to clear a way through the nine-foot drifts of snow, thus enabling Dr Clarke to put in a somewhat tardy appearance. This had been one of the worst winters in living memory and Bolton had ground to a virtual halt.
My mother, small-boned, fragile – no more than five feet tall, had produced an oxygen-starved infant whose head, swollen and blackened from long imprisonment in the birth canal, seemed larger than its body. Mrs Hyatt from next door, before busying herself with paper, kindling and coal, hastily bundled the motionless girl-child into a blanket which she then stuffed into a cardboard box.
Tom and Freddie Hyatt, her strapping fourteen-year-old twins, were dispatched upstairs, from whence, with much cursing and clattering, they fetched my mother’s bed. The infant remained ignored in its box, the doctor’s main concern being for the state of Nancy Byrne’s health, for the lower part of her body had lost all feeling.
It was therefore a very shocked Tom Hyatt who heard my first mewlings, who stared down into my makeshift coffin, his mouth agape, Adam’s apple bobbing wildly as he tried to attract the doctor’s attention.
I was snatched from the box and carried through to the scullery, where Dr Clarke cleared the obstructive matter from my throat, permitting me to express my anger at the incompetence with which I was surrounded.
I believe that my character was formed almost completely in those first few moments of life. My fear of small spaces, my attitude to authority, my tendency not to trust or depend, all these were born with that furious ear-splitting scream.
I was given to my mother, who smiled wanly and said, ‘Eeh, she looks about six months old already.’ To which Dr Clarke replied, ‘Well, she must weigh at least eleven pounds – you’re very lucky, both of you.’
My mother did not feel lucky. Firstly, she was in no two minds that my father had set his heart on a boy. Secondly, this infant did not look at all normal – in fact, it was ugly to the point of revulsion. And lastly, most importantly, would she, Nancy Byrne, ever walk again? From the waist down she had no sensation at all; it was as if she had been cut off at the middle.
I was a bitter disappointment to her. Had I been pretty, or even manageable, then I might have been forgiven for being female. But there I was, bald and blue-black about the face, screaming incessantly, a hideous reminder of the uselessness of her lower limbs.
She handed me to Mrs Hyatt. ‘Here, you take her home, love. I can’t cope with her while I’m this road. Give her a bottle or something.’
So I spent the first two or three weeks of my life at number 22, while, in the kitchen of number 20, my mother drank Mrs Hyatt’s beef tea and concentrated on her toes.
Her two short white legs lay stiff and still on top of the army greatcoat that served as quilt for the bed and she stared at them for days on end with never a word for the nurse who came in daily or for Mrs Hyatt who fed her, washed her, emptied her bedpans.
Now that the thaw had set in, visitors began to arrive, aunts bearing black-market fruit and cigarettes, uncles with bottles of stout and words of encouragement. They visited me too, declared me to be a fine lass, but still my mother would have none of me.
By the middle of February, Nancy Byrne’s self-hypnosis began to pay off. She moved first her toes, then her feet, after which happy event she set about the business of learning to walk again. This proved a painful process, because her spine had been damaged during confinement, but her determination was so great that she was fully mobile by the time I was two and a half weeks old.
She collected me from next door, carried me home in a hand-knitted shawl and, with her usual deliberation, began to know and love me. As she explained to me in later years, ‘You see, lass, you can only do one thing at a time. The road as I looked at it, I had to get me legs back. If I’d have never got me legs back, I’d have given you away. Better a foster Mam with legs than a real Mam stuck in a bed or on a chair for the rest of her life. And I didn’t want to be looking at you and blaming you for me legs, ’cos it weren’t your fault. But human nature, aye, mine included, being what it is, I would have blamed you in a way. Anyroad, all’s well that ends well as they say.’
My father, far from being disappointed, was delighted with his daughter. As a regular soldier fighting, as he put it, ‘for King, country and a pair of bloody boots as ’11 fit’, he was home infrequently, but he lavished me with love, attention and such gifts as could be obtained during those war-torn years.
And it was a terrible war, both inside and outside our house. While German planes droned their nightly song overhead, my mother, who would go nowhere near the air-raid shelter in the back yard, would sit in the darkened kitchen clinging to me under the table, a rolled-up Bolton Evening News clutched tightly in her hand. When the all-clear sounded, she would creep out furtively, turn up the gas mantle and begin her own war on the cockroaches, battering them to pulp with the paper and crunching them into the flags with the wooden soles of her clogs.
Thus, having learned early on to count cockroach corpses, I was quite numerate by the time I began to attend nursery class at the age of three. Also, once my mother had recovered from her disappointment at my not being a boy, she determined to make the best of things and began the task of teaching me to read and write at a very early age. I was, as a result, precocious and very advanced in comparison to my classmates at All Saints nursery.
The mills were still turning out cotton in spite of the war and my mother returned to her work as a doffer and spinner just after my third birthday, abandoning me to the tender mercies of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, who had little patience with a waif as maladjusted as I seemed to be. I had been baptised by Father Sheahan in Mrs Hyatt’s scullery a few days after my birth, and was therefore designated Catholic, although my mother no longer practised her religion.
Until I was three, my world had been very small. It contained me, my mother, a father who visited occasionally, our immediate neighbours, an aunt or uncle who would drop by from time to time and the parish priest whom I hated with an unreasoning venom known only to small children. I disliked his long black cloak, which terrified me, especially when the wind shaped it into something unspeakable and nightmarish. I loathed his silly biretta which sat on his large head like, as my mother put it, a pea on a drum. Most particularly, I objected to his big red hands reaching down, patting me on the head, or, worse still, lifting my chin so that I had to look into his grey, lifeless face. The face shaped itself into a smile sometimes, a smile that never reached the eyes.
When my world was made larger, I noticed the same unamused eyes in the faces of the nuns and although I didn’t recognize it yet, my quarrel with Catholicism had begun.
Miss Best was not a nun. She wore proper clothes and her legs showed. Also her eyes smiled, but not all the time. They were not smiling now. ‘Annie Byrne, get into your cot. Now – this minute!’
‘No.’ I stamped my new red clog onto the polished floorboards. It was daft, going to bed every afternoon. I had never been to bed in the afternoon before. Bed was for night, not for daytimes. The cots were set out in rigid rows, canvas structures on folding metal frames, each with a pink or blue blanket. Under every pink or blue blanket lay a child, round eyes popping as they stared at me, the sole dissenter.
‘Come on now, Annie, take off your clogs.’ For answer I kicked out at her, narrowly missing a lisle-stockinged leg.
At that moment the door was thrown open and there stood Sister Agatha, headmistress, despot, monarch of all she surveyed. From her right hand there dangled a short leather whip which she was tapping gently against her thigh through the thick folds of her voluminous habit.
‘What have we here?’ Her Irish voice held none of the pleasant lilt common to most of my own immigrant uncles.
Miss Best all but curtseyed. ‘Oh . . . Sister . . . it’s just that little Annie doesn’t like to lie down in the afternoon.’
After a bone-chilling silence, the nun spoke, her voice cracking with anger. ‘Doesn’t like? Doesn’t like, is it? Well, we’ll just have to see about that now, won’t we? Get into that cot now, this instant, you bold girl.’ I said nothing, but some devil in me made me drag my eyes from the whip, forced me to stare up at her, straight into those icy eyes.
‘Did you hear what I said? You’re not deaf as well as stupid, are you? Did you hear me, girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
Miss Best put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Yes, Sister. You must say yes, Sister.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ I muttered through clenched teeth.
Sister Agatha drew Miss Best aside. Although my heart was pounding in my ears, I caught snatches of their whispered conversation.
‘. . . very advanced, Sister . . . more like a six year old . . . doesn’t need the sleep . . .’
‘They must conform, Miss Best . . . grow up delinquent . . . mother lapsed . . . child too big for her boots . . .’
It looked to me as if Miss Best was getting into trouble and it was all my fault. Quietly, I slipped off my clogs and lay flat on the cot, pulling the blanket high over my head. The two women stopped talking. I knew they were staring at me, for I could feel the chill of the nun’s eyes as they swept over my body.
This was my first remembered encounter with compromise. Many more were to follow, but this became, for me, a point of reference. For a long time afterwards, whenever I had to relinquish my principles in order to keep the peace, I would say I was ‘doing my Best’, for Miss Best was the one who taught me to make room for people, to consider others as well as myself.
Fortunately, I knew nothing of what lay in store for me. I would be ‘doing my Best’ for many years to come.
We war babies grew up quickly. Each day, we set off for school, gas masks swinging from our shoulders, stopping off at Connie’s corner for a ha’porth of cocoa and sugar, scurrying into the playground to stand in regimented rows beneath the eagle eye of Sister Agatha, then lining up once more for our daily dose of cod liver oil and orange juice.
I became outwardly docile, realizing quickly that I must have no opinion, voice no objection, because if I did, I would invoke the wrath of my elders and invite the alienation of my peers. Nevertheless, I established myself as pack leader, organizing playtimes, inventing games of dragons, of princes and princesses in which I always played the chief role.
Just after my fourth birthday, I was moved into the infants’ class because of my ability to read and write. I was heartbroken, not so much because I had been placed with a nun, for Sister Immaculata was near-human, the exception that proved the rule, but because I had to leave behind my beloved Miss Best. However, I settled quickly into the new routine, enjoying the challenge of learning, soaking up like a sponge everything that was on offer.
The sirens often sounded as we left our school. They were part of our lives and we never hurried when they began their raucous wailing. Even at three and four years of age we were responsible for ourselves, negotiating main roads, scurrying across trolley and tram tracks, making our own way home through mazes of terraced streets and cobbled entries.
I never went straight home, but stayed with Mrs Hyatt till my mother came back from the mill. But one afternoon, as I passed my own house on my way to Mrs Hyatt’s, I noticed that our front door was open. I heard voices and muffled crying coming from within, so I sat on the step and listened. It had been my experience thus far that anything worth hearing would never be spoken in front of me.
So it happened that I learned of my father’s death as I sat on a cold doorstep with nobody to comfort me. It was a chilly September afternoon in 1944. I stared up our sloping street towards Derby Road, remembering the times I’d watched my father running down faster and faster towards me, how, when he had reached me, he would pick me up high in the air, tossing me about, making me squeal and giggle. I recalled the smell of him, tobacco and beer, sometimes whisky.
I had always snatched the Glengarry from his head, cramming it down onto my own yellow curls as he sang ‘A Gordon for Me’. He would never come again. Never. My Daddy was dead. My Daddy who always took me to the lions in the middle of Town, under the big clock.
No, he couldn’t be dead, not my Daddy. He’d be there with the lions. It was a mistake. Grown-ups were always making mistakes.
As fast as my legs would carry me, I was up and away to the top of Ensign Street, down Derby Road towards the town. The sirens were screaming again, but I never heeded them, so intent was I on reaching my goal. Blindly I ran past the deserted market place and through Moor Lane, stopping only to catch my breath as I reached the Civic Buildings.
The Crescent was empty of people; no vehicle moved and though dusk had begun its descent, not a single lamp was lit as I climbed the Town Hall steps towards the lions. I sat, shivering on the stone slabs waiting for my father. Opposite, I could see the memorial to those who had lost their lives in the previous war, the war during which my parents had been born.
Somewhere, bombs were falling, but I was used to that; I had never lived in a world at peace. When the bombers had finished vomiting their contents onto Manchester, a thin, cold drizzle began to fall, wetting me through to the skin within minutes. A warden found me there sometime during that night, but I was not grateful to him, for even in my weakened state I fought to maintain my vigil.
‘I’m waiting for my Dad,’ I insisted.
‘Nay, lass. Tha can’t stop ’ere. Jerry’ll be back, more than likely.’ He picked me up and I hit him full in the face with a clenched fist. ‘I’m stopping. I’m waiting for my Dad. They said he’s dead, but he’s not . . . he’s not. He always comes to the lions. Please let me stay, Mister . . .’ But the man was already carrying me down the steps to a waiting policeman who shone a dimmed torch into our faces.
‘I reckon she’s bloodied tha nose, then, ’Arry.’
‘Aye, she ’as that. But she’s in a fair state, wet through an’ all. Tha’ll ’ave to tek ’er ’ome.’
‘Where dost live, lass?’ the policeman asked.
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘Oh, well then.’ The policeman removed his helmet and scratched his head. ‘Well, in that case, we’ll ’ave to tek thee to t’ Cottage ’Omes.’
The Cottage Homes? That was for children that nobody wanted, that had no mams and dads. Still, if I hadn’t got a dad, I might as well go and live at the Cottage Homes. But then, if I did, I might never see my Mam again. And I did have a Dad. I did.
‘Number 20, Ensign Street,’ I muttered.
‘And what’s yer name?’
‘Annie Byrne.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Four and a half and a bit.’
‘By. Tha’s a clever lass for four and a half and a bit. What are you doing stuck out ’ere with old ’Arry an’ a couple o’ pot lions?’
‘I’ve told you once. I’m waiting for my Dad.’
‘Right. Well where’s yer dad comin’ from?’
I thought hard before answering, ‘Italy, I think.’ The two men looked at one another over my head before Harry handed me to the policeman, whispering as he did so, ‘They’ve told ’er ’e’s dead.’
I stiffened in the policeman’s arms. ‘They haven’t told me nothing. They never tell me nothing. But I heard them saying it.’
There was a lot of rain by this time and the policeman’s muslin-draped torch gave little light, so I wasn’t sure that I saw tears running down his face. He raised his head, craning his neck towards the sky. ‘Sod you,’ he shouted and his voice was high and strange. ‘Sod you bloody bastards.’
Normally, I would have been fascinated by such interesting language, but by this time I was too tired, wet and worried to wonder anew about the anomalies of grown-ups and their rules, one law for them and another for me.
When we finally reached home, my mother was in a state of total hysteria, laughing and crying at the same time, clutching at my hands, slapping me for my naughtiness, then hugging me in her relief. I was shocked to the core when Mrs Hyatt got up from her chair, crossed the room with her waddling gait and hit my mother very hard across the face. I could not understand this at all.
But I was given little time to wonder, for they stripped me off and wrapped me in a warm blanket, then we sat, my mother and I, the policeman and Mrs Hyatt in the four chairs that surrounded the kitchen table.
My mother, after drawing several shuddering breaths, said, ‘Annie, your Dad’s not coming home any more.’ The gaslight flickered and I stared at the spluttering mantle, trying to fix my attention on something – anything other than what was being said to me.
The policeman took my hand in his. ‘Tha’rt a big, fine lass, Annie. Yer dad ’as died for ’is country. When yer older, you’ll be proud of ’im.’
‘Who killed him?’ I asked, of nobody in particular.
‘Why, the Nazis, luv – the Germans,’ answered the bobby.
‘The ones that dropped the bomb on Emmanuel Street and killed Rosie Turner?’
‘Aye, lass.’
‘The ones that dropped the bombs tonight?’
‘That’s it, Annie, they’re the ones.’
A terrible anger rose in me, heaving in my throat like vomit. I fought for breath, pushing away the hands that reached for me. Something in my chest swelled and swelled until I felt I would burst. I had to do something bad, something really bad to let the anger out. Jumping up from the table so quickly that my chair fell away, I flew to the window and threw back the blackout.
Staring up into the rain-filled night sky, I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Sod you bloody bastards.’ And my mother, who would normally have berated me for such gross misconduct, pulled me into her arms, pressing her tear-soaked face against mine.
‘That’s right, lass,’ she sobbed. ‘You tell ’em.’
Apart from the war ending, two things of note happened during the sixth year of my life. Firstly, old Mr Higson from the end house, number 30, died on the outside lavatory. We children received this news with a mixture of sadness and revulsion, the former because he had been kind to us and the latter because we didn’t think anyone should die with his trousers down.
The second event, which was not completely unconnected with the first, was that my mother started courting.
Mr Higson’s youngest son, Eddie, who had been a prisoner of war for several years, was allowed out of the Infirmary to attend the funeral. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, he went with his older brothers to thank the neighbours for their kind thoughts and floral tributes. His appearance appalled and fascinated me. A cadaverous head was not improved by flesh of a yellowish shade which seemed to be stretched like parchment over forehead and chin, only to darken in great shrivelled hollows where cheeks should have been. His eyes were sunken too, small navy-blue dots set well back in circular craters of bone. The nose was prominent, wide-nostrilled and with a gristly bump near the top, while his lips were thin almost to the point of total absence, giving the mouth the appearance of a slit in the fold of some ageing newspaper. This whole death’s head was crowned by an incongruously vigorous mop of crinkly dark hair, all flattened and shiny with grease.
Eddie Higson had never been married. My mother immediately pitied him for his poor condition and took to visiting him at the hospital to which he had had to return immediately after the burial of his father.
During these visits, for which my mother prettied herself up with powder and rouge, I was left with Mrs Hyatt who voiced her disapproval of the affair regularly – not to me, but to her two sons. Freddie, the elder by ten minutes or so, made little response to his mother’s mutterings, while Tom, who always seemed to feel a degree of responsibility towards me, would whisper, ‘Hush, Mam. Not in front of the lass.’
I was fond of Tom. He always brought me sticks of barley sugar on a Friday when he got his wages and sometimes, when I was daydreaming, I imagined that Tom might be my uncle. Not my Dad, nobody could replace my Dad, but Tom was the best uncle anybody might wish for.
I sat in Mrs Hyatt’s rocker by the fire, sucking my stick of barley sugar. Mrs Hyatt took a rice pudding from the range oven and banged it down onto the table between the two men.
‘’E’s got sly eyes. I never did like ’im. When yer dad were alive, ’e never liked ’im neither.’
‘Listen, Ma,’ drawled Freddie. ‘Me Dad never liked nobody, specially when he got near the end. People with cancer isn’t noted for their sense of humour.’
Mrs Hyatt clipped Freddie round the ear with the oven cloth. ‘Bit of respect when you talk about yer dad. And it were nowt to do wi’ cancer. It were to do with . . . well . . . with other things.’ She cast a furtive glance in my direction, then mouthed a few silent words at Freddie and Tom.
‘That was all just talk, Mam. Nothing was ever proved,’ said Tom. ‘And mind what you say. Little pigs have big ears.’
I reacted not at all, pretending to concentrate on the sticky sweet as I stared into the fire. Tom went on, his voice almost a whisper, ‘Nancy Byrne has her own life to lead now. You can’t go telling her who she must go out with and who she mustn’t. And she knows nothing about . . . all that, I’m sure she doesn’t. What’s more, that tongue of yours will get you into trouble one of these days, mark my words. What you’re saying about Ed . . . about you-know-who is nothing short of slander. Aye, you’ll choke on that tongue, you will.’
Mrs Hyatt bristled visibly, her back straightening, her head moving slightly from side to side as she spoke. ‘Slander, you say? Slander? Why do you think he joined up so bloody quick, eh? ’E’s no flaming ’ero, I can tell you. And who’s to speak up now? Aye, answer me that one – if you can. With ’alf Emmanuel Street flattened and them as was involved cold in their graves? Oh aye, it’s all forgotten now, isn’t it? But I’ve not forgot, the dirty evil bast . . .’
‘Be quiet, Mother.’ Tom stood and raised his hand. ‘Hush your noise. Give the man the benefit of the doubt.’
‘And what about ’er?’ Mrs Hyatt jerked a thumb in my direction.
‘I’ll watch out for her,’ answered Tom.
‘Aye, well. You’d best grow eyes in t’ back of your ’ead, then.’ With this final remark, Mrs Hyatt grabbed her coat from its peg and, picking up a tall white jug from the dresser, announced her intention to go to the outdoor licence for a drop of stout.
A few minutes after her departure, Freddie went out to the air-raid shelter – which he now used as a pigeon house – to tend his prize birds, leaving Tom and me as sole occupants of the kitchen.
I gazed into the fire once more, wondering yet again if I could trust my instincts and place my faith in Tom. Most grown-ups got mad if you asked questions. Those who didn’t get mad treated you as if you were soft in the head or something. But Tom never got mad with me. Would he now? There was only one way to find out. Without turning my head, I asked, ‘Is he a bad man, Tom?’ The clock ticked noisily.
‘I don’t know, Annie.’ This was promising. Adults were usually so positive, so sure of their ground – an admission of indecision could be a step in the right direction.
‘What did he do?’ I asked carefully.
He came slowly round the table, then squatted down on his haunches in front of me. ‘Annie, love – I can’t answer your questions. But I will say this to you. If anything ever worries you – anything at all – you come straight to me. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘You know I was there when you were born. If it hadn’t been for me . . . well, never mind all that now. You’re almost a little sister to me, Annie. If anything ever happens to you . . . if anybody . . . well, you just come straight to your Uncle Tom.’
‘I will.’
‘No matter what?’
‘No matter what, Tom.’
Footsteps in the narrow lobby made him rise to his feet. My mother, flushed and smiling, burst into the room, her eyes sparkling as she cried, ‘He’s coming home Friday, Tom. Ooh, I can’t believe it. He’s near ten stone again – he was only seven and a half when he got back. I’m that excited – we must have a party. And guess what, Annie?’
I stared at my radiant mother as she threw her handbag down onto the table and ripped off a white cotton glove to reveal a narrow gold band with a small shining stone set into its centre. ‘Your Mam’s engaged – you’re going to have a new Dad, Eddie’s going to be your Dad. Isn’t that great news?’
I looked from Tom to my mother, then back to Tom.
‘Well? Have you nothing to say, Annie?’ she cried.
My hands were shaking as I rose to my feet and I gripped the fireguard tightly as I positioned myself next to Tom, leaving the table as a barrier between us and her.
‘He will not be my Dad,’ I heard myself say. My mother, seeming to deflate visibly, sank down onto one of the ladder-backed kitchen chairs.
‘No, I know he won’t be your real Dad, but he’ll be your new Dad.’
‘NO. NO. HE WON’T.’ I stamped my foot on the hearthrug. ‘You are choosing him, Mam. I’m not. If I wanted a new Dad, then I’d choose my own. And I don’t want one, anyway. Especially him. He’s ugly and . . . and . . .’ I groped for words, then Mrs Hyatt’s statement, after echoing in my head for a split second, fell out of my mouth. ‘He’s got sly eyes,’ I announced.
The silence that followed was nearly deafening. My mother looked almost pleadingly at Tom, but he turned his back to reach a pipe from the rack to the side of the range.
‘What can I do with her, Tom?’ For answer, he shrugged his shoulders.
‘She can’t run my life for me. I’m too young to be . . . well, you know, to be without a husband. I need to settle down again and I know he’s right for me. And I might not get another chance, being as I’ve got An . . . being as I’m not on me own.’
Tom stuffed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe before turning to face her. ‘It’s a bit soon for the lass, Nancy. Billy’s not that long gone, maybe the child needs to serve out her mourning.’ The implication that Nancy herself was not mourning did not miss its mark.
‘You can’t mourn forever, Tom,’ she said quietly. ‘And kids gets over things quicker than what we do. She’ll get used to him.’
Tom stared at my mother for some time before answering, ‘If you say so.’ Whereupon he turned to light a spill at the fire.
‘You don’t like him, do you, Tom?’
‘I’ve no feelings either way, Nancy. You know him better than I do, though I daresay there’s folks round here as have known him longer. Anyway, what should you care about the opinions of a lad not yet twenty?’ He applied the spill to his pipe, puffed for several seconds then swung round to face her once more.
My mother turned her gaze on me. ‘You coming home then, Annie?’
I kicked at the rug with the toe of my clog.
Tom nudged me gently. ‘Get on home then, lass.’
I made up my mind there and then that should my mother become Mrs Eddie Higson, then I would move in with Tom, Freddie and Mrs Hyatt. It seemed a simple enough solution. If my mother loved Mr Higson more than she loved me, then I would go and live among people who really cared for me.
It had not yet occurred to me that I would not be allowed to put this plan into action. But, having found Tom, the one adult in whom I could place a measure of trust, I went home if not happy then at least comforted, believing I had discovered some if not all of the answers.
Like many ugly babies, I had developed into an acceptably attractive child. Although I outstripped my peers by a good couple of inches in height, a fact that often made me a target for Sister Agatha’s wrath (since I was the most visible victim in my class), I was blessed with an abundance of soft yellow curls and wide-spaced green eyes. Other assets included two sets of fine strong limbs that made me an adequate competitor in games involving either sex and a respected adversary when it came to combat of any kind.
Of course, like most females, I was not satisfied with my appearance. My mouth was too big for my face, my nose silly, small and freckled, my knees were lumpy, making the long calves appear thin, while my elbows always protruded at odd angles from the few skimpy dresses I owned.
Nevertheless, I was reasonably at peace with myself, having established my leadership at school, having learned to live with, if not to like, the various compromises required by the adults who dominated my life.
My mother was fond of me; of that I was fairly sure. During the long years of war we had shared a bed, shared our hiding place under the solid squareness of the kitchen table, we had divided equally between us our odd meals of dried egg and blackened potato. We had also pooled our fears, my mother often turning to me with her worries, making me far older than my years.
Our dependence was mutual; often I played the role of comforter when she returned from long fruitless hours of queuing for food or when, in the dark hours, she would turn to me in her loneliness, her tears wetting my pillow as well as her own. For her part, she nursed me through those black days after my father’s death, never once leaving my side until I had wrung myself dry of grief. ‘We must stick together now, Annie,’ she would say. ‘You’re all I’ve got and I’m all you’ve got.’
I began to plan our future, seeing it mapped out before me with all the clear simplicity of a five-year-old mind. ‘I’ll never leave you, Mam. When I’m fifteen, I shall be a hairdresser and we’ll get a shop. You won’t have to work in the mill any more and I shall keep your hair pretty for you.’ And she would smile her sweet sad smile, looking all the while into the flickering flames of our ill-fed fire, wondering, probably, about her own future.
She was only twenty-seven when my father died, a beautiful, tiny woman with Titian curls, grey-green eyes and the sort of walk that made men turn and stare when she passed by. I knew that my mother was pretty, but I never thought of her as young or marriageable. We had had a Daddy, my Daddy. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think that she might want, or need, to replace him.
So when she turned to Eddie Higson, she turned away from me, threw away all my carefully thought out plans, dismissed me almost, from her thoughts, from her heart and from her life. She stopped loving me, stopped caring about me. And no amount of cajoling or bribery on her part or on his could alter my very set opinion.
I became louder, more boisterous at school, seeking trouble, accepting my punishments almost gladly, because I was no longer lovable and deserved to be punished. My teachers, alarmed at this change in me, sent for my mother.
‘She has gone wild, Mrs Byrne. We have all tried.’ Sister Agatha raised her eyes ceilingward, her hands rattling the large rosary that hung from her waist, because she held no whip at this moment. She never held the whip when a parent visited. ‘We in the convent have offered umpteen decades to implore our Blessed Lady to intervene.’ She turned her steely gaze on me. ‘But nothing at all seems to be setting this . . . this poor child back on to the right path.’
My mother squirmed in her chair, putting me in mind of Willy Walford from the Cottage Homes, an orphan boy who came for his lessons with his head shaved against the nits. He was a squirmer, was Willy Walford. And here was my mother carrying on the same way, the only difference being that she was bigger and had a full head of hair.
I knew I was getting angry. My mother might not love me any more, but I didn’t want old Sister Nasty Knickers (as we called her on the sly) making my own Mam squirm like somebody from the orphanage. I fixed my gaze on the statue of the Immaculate Conception with the blue-glassed night light burning at its feet.
‘Have you anything to say for yourself, Annie Byrne?’
I shifted my eyes towards the black-robed figure which, silhouetted against the window, looked like a grim monster from hell.
‘No,’ I replied, my voice clear and high.
‘No, what?’
‘No, Sister.’
The nun came round the desk and stood in front of me and my mother and although this left but a few inches of space between her and us, I determinedly held my ground, though my mother did scrape her chair back a fraction, which made me even more angry and impatient.
‘Did you or did you not write those . . . foul words on Sister Immaculata’s blackboard?’ There was a long silence.
‘Answer the Sister, Annie.’ I felt very annoyed with my mother. Although her accent was never strong and her speech was virtually free of the usual Bolton colloquialisms, here she was, trying to talk dead posh just because we were in old Nasty Knickers’ office. My mother was afraid of Sister Agatha! Well, so was I, but I wasn’t going to let it show.
‘Yes. I wrote them.’
Sister Agatha’s lip curled into a snarl. ‘Then I suggest you learn to spell, girl. The undergarment you mentioned in your scribblings begins with a K. And my name, young lady, is Sister Agatha.’
My mother’s face was bright crimson by this time. No doubt she had already been informed that I had inscribed on the blackboard ‘Sister nasty nickers is a wicked old wich.’ It had only been for a dare anyway. Peter Bates had promised me his biggest, silverest bolly-bearing if I’d do it. And I’d done it, while Peter Bates had not, as yet, fulfilled his side of the bargain. I would deal with him later. Even if he did have irons on the soles of his clogs, while I had only rubbers on mine, I’d deal with him. I knew where to kick the boys to make it hurt.
‘Come on now, girl. Do your catechism,’ Sister Agatha was now saying. ‘Show your Mammy that we’ve taught you something, at least. Who made you?’
‘God made me.’
‘Why did God make you?’
‘God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.’ I paused for breath.
‘And have you any idea at all of what that means, Annie Byrne? It means that you are to be a good girl for the sake of your immortal soul.’
My immortal soul was something I had not yet managed to come to grips with. Sister Immaculata had drawn an immortal soul on the blackboard only last week. It was like a balloon. When it was full of grace, it was round and coloured in with bright pink chalk. When it was empty, it sagged and had no colour at all. Except, of course, for the black spots of sin covering it like an attack of measles. And there again, you only got the measles if the sins were venial. Should your misdemeanours be mortal, then the soul would surely be black right through to the core – black, deflated and totally without shine.
Of the location of my immortal soul I was unsure. Perhaps it was in my chest where I got the bad feelings when I was angry; perhaps that swelling, choking sensation I got was my immortal soul erupting and letting all the grace drain away. But I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I knew that my soul was in my belly where I often suffered pain after a bout of naughtiness. The whole thing was a terrible worry and I tried not to dwell on it too frequently.
‘And you will be making your First Confession soon, Annie Byrne. After which you will receive the most Blessed Sacrament of all, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.’
I felt sick. I had no notion of cannibalism and therefore no opinion on the subject, but this did not sound quite right to me. I looked pleadingly towards my mother, who was no help at all. She just sat there staring at her shoes, her face grim and still crimson.
Sister Agatha tutted her annoyance then, warming to her subject, went on in a shrill tone, ‘My goodness, child, have you not a grateful bone in your body? Jesus Christ suffered for you, died for you . . .’
I didn’t hear the rest, because here was something I could latch on to, something I appreciated and understood. Jesus Christ was a hero. He had died for me. Well, my Dad had done the same; he was a hero too, he had died for me, for all of us, in fact. Why, he’d even died for old Nasty Knickers, though I felt sure she didn’t deserve it. My Dad had died so that the Nazis would stop bombing the mills and our houses. They were hopeless shots, Nazis. Four or five times they’d had a go at Trinity Street Station and missed. And they didn’t just miss a bit, they missed by miles.
‘Are you listening to me, Annie Byrne? Would you look at that now, Mrs Byrne. She’s away daydreaming while we’re here, the both of us, concerned with the survival of her immortal soul.’
My mother nudged me none too gently with her elbow. ‘Whatever are you thinking about, Annie?’
‘Nazis,’ I replied, looking straight at Sister Agatha. Perhaps my original half-formed idea had been to elaborate, to tell Sister Agatha that I now understood the theory of martyrdom, that I was beginning to appreciate the fact of Jesus’s sacrifice. But something held me back and that single word, dropped into the room from the mouth of a five-year-old, seemed to have almost as devastating an effect as another bomb on Emmanuel Street. Sister Agatha nearly sat down on the edge of her desk as she groped for support, her right fist clenched tightly over her left breast, while my mother’s chin dropped, her gaping mouth allowing her a vacant and rather idiotic appearance.
‘Did . . . you . . . hear . . . that, Mrs Byrne?’ gasped Sister Agatha. ‘This child is wicked . . . wicked, I tell you!’
I waited for my mother to speak, hopefully in my defence, but no answer came, though her tongue moved in her mouth as if she were trying to shape her thoughts.
Sister Agatha began to pace back and forth across the room, throwing her arms wide then crossing them over her chest, looking for all the world like an ugly black crow trying to get off the ground. ‘She called me a Nazi . . . a Nazi – you heard her, Mrs Byrne.’
She marched towards me, her claw-like hand pointing towards my face, the extended index finger stopping about an inch from the end of my nose. I looked straight at her, didn’t flinch, made no move away from her and I could see plainly that my boldness was not appreciated.
‘You will go, Annie Byrne, into the corridor. There you will say a decade of the Holy Rosary before the Sacred Heart. You will not stand, you will kneel and you will have no cushion for your knees.’
Knowing I had done something bad, but having no real concept of what my sin had been, I toyed with the idea of standing my ground. Had my mother not been there, had I not been a witness to her lack of sympathy for me, I probably would have chosen to remain and take a whipping. But knowing that my mother would neither support nor defend me, I took one last look at her mortified expression before creeping out into the corridor to stare at the effigy in the corner.
It was a statue of a long-haired man in a red cloak, patience and suffering etched deeply into its face. One hand lay across its chest where a heart dripping vivid red blood sat on a plain white undergarment. This was the Christ who had died for me. This was the Christ whose Body and Blood I would have to receive. I still felt sick.
I touched an icy bare foot, tracing the toenails with the end of my finger. Well, this was definitely not body and blood. I scraped away a bit of the flesh-coloured paint to reveal chalky white plaster underneath. Then, kneeling on the cold marble floor, I took the beads from my pocket and began to count my way through the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys and the Glory Bes. My knees hurt. On the end of my rosary, another Christ figure dangled, this time crucified and made of base metal and I swung this item about a bit to relieve the monotony.
I knew I didn’t believe in what I was doing, in what I was saying. None of it made any sense. I shut my eyes tight and fought to believe, reaching down inside myself, trying to locate my immortal soul, hoping that it would inflate and fill with grace as I prayed. Nothing happened. I shuffled about the floor, trying to ease the agony in my knees.
When I opened my eyes and gazed once more at the dripping heart, my stomach heaved and I vomited noisily onto the clean black and white floor before sliding down into unconsciousness. They found me there eventually, cleaned me up, put me into a nursery cot and gave me sips of water and a cool cloth for my head.
From that day on, Sister Agatha ignored me almost completely. She never seemed to look directly at me again, avoiding me whenever possible, delegating my punishments to beings lesser than herself. Occasionally, I caught her looking at me sideways, but as soon as I met her eye she would turn away quickly, leaving in the space between us an atmosphere I did not yet recognize as shame.
My contempt for her grew then lessened as other, more pressing, events pushed her from my mind. She was, after all, a person of no importance.
‘See what Eddie’s got for you, Annie. Come on, hurry up.’
I pretended not to hear, whipping my newly chalked top into further frenzy until it skidded to a halt among the cobbles at the pavement’s edge. Sheila Davies, my best friend for the moment, straightened from her task of marking out a hopscotch on the flagstones. ‘Yer Mam’s shouting, Annie.’
I picked up my top and sauntered over to Sheila.
‘Why don’t you go and see what she wants?’ she asked. ‘I think you’re right daft not playing with all them things he’s bought you.’
She was right, I supposed. There I was with a veritable treasure trove – a scooter, a skipping rope set in varnished wooden handles with ball-bearings for smooth turning, a dolls’ house with curtains and smart furniture, all ignored out in the air-raid shelter. I couldn’t explain, not even to Sheila, why I wouldn’t play with the things. In truth, I found it difficult – indeed impossible – to explain to myself why I couldn’t, or wouldn’t take advantage of Eddie Higson’s generosity.
‘Get in here now, Annie!’ The tone of my mother’s voice precluded the possibility of any further attempts to ignore her.
On entering our kitchen, I found Eddie Higson sitting, as usual, in the big rocker, my father’s rocker. This was placed to the left of the range and sideways on to the window, a position chosen by my father because the light enabled him to read his Bolton Evening News until dusk forced us to use the gas.
I resented Eddie’s presence in my Dad’s chair, resented his presence in our house, the way he would put his feet up on the fireguard while my mother fetched him pint pots of thick, stewed tea and wedges of window pie. I had always loved window pie; it had been my favourite, made specially for me and only for me. Now I refused it, just as I refused to share anything with this man who had invaded my house, stolen my mother and spoiled my life.
But this time, it was not going to be easy, for Eddie Higson held in his lap a beautiful ball of blue-grey fur, a tiny scrap of feline life that mewed and clawed gently at the man’s fingers.
‘It’s a little cat, Annie,’ he announced, his small deepset eyes narrowed in anticipation. Did he think I was daft or something? I’d seen cats before. My heart went out to the little creature. I longed to pick it up, stroke it and love it, make it my very own. It would love me in return, I knew it would.
‘It’s a Persian,’ said my mother. ‘Eddie’s paid a bob or two for that, I can tell you.’
I knew what was expected of me. I knew what I wanted to do – I wanted to do the very thing that was required of me, to take the kitten, express my gratitude and forge a link that both he and my mother were waiting for – depending on, almost.
I wandered to the dresser and picked up my copy of Robinson Crusoe, the one my father had bought for me during his last leave.
‘Well?’ enquired my mother. ‘Aren’t you going to thank Eddie for getting you such a pretty little cat? Smokey, he’s called.’
I flicked through the pages of my brightly illustrated children’s version, then snapped the book shut loudly. ‘I don’t want a cat,’ I said, carefully avoiding looking at Smokey whom I wanted in that moment more than I’d ever wanted anything before in my life.
‘Bloody hell,’ cursed Higson. ‘There’s no pleasing some folk. What does she want, then?’ he enquired of my mother who simply raised her arms in a gesture of despair.
‘What do you want, then?’ he asked of me.
I placed my book back on the dresser. ‘Nothing,’ I replied.
‘She bloody hates me, Nancy,’ he shouted, furious now. He hurled the kitten to the floor and I steeled myself not to flinch as its little body hit the peg rug. My breathing quickened and became shallow as that familiar feeling of anger and confusion rose in me, overwhelming me almost, filling my chest to bursting point. I had always known instinctively that this was a cruel and vicious man, but now the living (or dying) evidence lay at our feet, mewling piteously before the fire. I also knew that had I accepted the cat, his fate would have eventually been similar, for Higson would have used the animal to get at me sooner or later. I was full of hatred for Higson, full of contempt for my mother, who was stupid, so stupid not to see through this terrible man.
She ran now and picked up the kitten, cradling it in her arms as she screamed at me. ‘Now look what you’ve done, Annie. Poor little thing.’ Obviously, she was blind as well as stupid. I took a slow and deliberate breath. ‘I didn’t do it, Mam. He did.’ I pointed an accusing finger at Eddie Higson. ‘He is a bad man,’ I announced. ‘And I don’t want him in my house.’
Higson crossed the room in two strides and hit me full across the face with the flat of his hand. This was the first time he had hit me, but I knew, with an unwavering certainty, that it would not be the last, that should my mother marry this man, then I would suffer for a long time to come.
‘Don’t touch her,’ screamed my mother. ‘Don’t you ever hit her, Eddie.’
Although my face smarted from the blow, I stood my ground as he glowered before me. ‘Don’t hit me again,’ I said quietly, simply repeating my mother’s words and staring full into his small, deep-sunken eyes.
I never found out what happened to the little cat, but I wept bitter tears for him in the privacy of the air-raid shelter. When my tears were dried, I took the scooter and the skipping rope down the back street and flung them onto the Emmanuel Street bombsite. The dolls’ house followed suit, but it looked incongruous sitting among the dust and rubble of ruined homes, so I picked up a half-brick and destroyed it as efficiently as the German bombers had wiped out the real houses that once stood there.
At the end of my destructiveness, I felt exhausted but victorious. One battle at a time. If I won enough skirmishes, I would surely win the war.