A Whisper to the Living (9 page)

Once this lot was piled into the narrow hallway, there was scarcely room for Mrs Cullen to make her descent past all the children who had gathered on, around and under the mound of debris.

‘Now,’ she announced, her huge breasts heaving with exertion. ‘Tha mun get this lot out the back, then we mun mek a start on t’ front room. Allan, put them corsets down. No, yer can’t keep ’em. What the ’ell are you plannin’ on doin’ with ’em anyroad – makin’ a rabbit ’utch? No, Josie, you are not ’angin’ on to that jerry for growin’ daffs in, yer don’t know where it’s been. Or, more ter t’ point, yer do know where it’s been. An’ Martin – put them false teeth down – hey, not on yer Dad’s chair this time! Where’s our Josie gone wi’ that jerry? Annie – put that bloody kettle on, lass, I’m fair clemmed . . .’

On this particular Thursday night, we had started on the front room, which was the worst room in the house, having been given over to the children as a place to play, leaving only the large kitchen as true living space for this huge family. The front room was so bad that even opening the door to get in required careful planning and Lizzie, being the smallest of those old enough to walk, was pushed through a tiny gap in order to remove the main obstacles from behind the door, thus enabling the rest of us to enter the room.

Once inside, we met a total and glorious chaos. There were large matted tangles of wool and string, three-wheeled skates, wooden crates with pram wheels and lengths of rope attached and what seemed to be about a hundred cardboard boxes in various sizes and states of decay. Although nothing was intact, everybody had a good reason for wanting to keep some of it.

Allan wanted the boxes as he was a compulsive collector and needed ‘things to keep things in’. He also had grandiose ideas for the crates on wheels and insisted that he could get the skates mended by an old farrier up Breightmet who had taken to skate-mending now that horses had become fewer and farther between.

But Mrs Cullen was ruthless in her insistence. Everything must go into the back garden where it would join last year’s mouldering and rusting heaps of prams and broken furniture.

We had just begun to transfer the last of the rubbish into the hallway, when a sharp rapping at the door made us pause, a sudden and miraculous silence falling over the whole ensemble as we pondered. Would it be rent, water or gas? Had they come to turn us off, turn us out or was it just the bum bailey? The latter would have come as no surprise and little threat, for few bills had been paid and there was nothing worth the bailiff’s trouble to carry away, the few sticks of furniture that had survived the seven children being too scarred and battered to be of any value whatsoever.

Mrs Cullen paused, a finger to her pursed lips, then she whispered, ‘Tha’d best open t’ door, Annie. Say yer not family, at least that’s the truth. Tell ’em to come back tomorrer – wi’ a pick-axe an’ a police escort.’ Josie giggled and Mrs Cullen clipped her gently round the ear. ‘Shut up, our Josie. It might even be the flamin’ priest an’ I can do wi’out ’im ’Oly Maryin’ all over me back kitchen an’ me in t’ middle o’ me clearout.’

I crept surreptitiously down the hall and opened the door just a crack.

‘Can you come back tomorrow?’ I whispered through the gap, trying not to giggle as Josie’s stifled snorts of laughter reached my ears.

‘No, I can’t come back tomorrow. Get out here now.’

I must have stiffened visibly because Mrs Cullen came forward, negotiating her way carefully around the pile of rubbish.

‘’Oo is it, luv?’

I opened the door to reveal Eddie Higson standing on the step, a Woodbine making his lip curl even further into the snarl that usually occupied his face when he looked at me.

‘Get yourself home,’ he snapped. ‘It’s way past your bedtime.’

I stood my ground. ‘I’m helping Mrs Cullen,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to keep the fear out of it, trying, most of all, not to lose face in front of Josie – I didn’t want her to know how much I feared this man who was supposed to be my stepfather.

Eddie Higson swept a contemptuous eye past me towards Mrs Cullen and her brood, bringing his gaze to rest finally on the vast mound of debris at our feet.

‘I reckon Mrs Cullen’s got enough helpers of her own. She doesn’t need you. Anyroad, happen she should get the council to shift that lot.’

Mrs Cullen drew herself up to her full five foot two, arms clasped beneath the pendulous bosom. ‘My ’usband will see to all this when ’e gets in from the ropewalk. You go, Annie luv.’

‘Aye,’ Eddie Higson said, pulling the cigarette from his mouth and grinding it underfoot on the step. ‘Come on. Get yourself out of this midden before you catch something.’

Mrs Cullen’s body seemed to swell with anger as she stumbled closer to the door. ‘This is no midden, Eddie Higson.’

‘Oh aye?’ he drawled. ‘Well, you could have fooled me, for I’ve seen less on a corporation tip than what you’ve got here.’

Mrs Cullen was at the door now and she faced him, her complexion reddening as her anger rose. ‘Aye, well, ’appen you spend a lot o’ time up at corporation tips. Most people usually manages ter find their own level, their own place, like. I see you’ve found yours. So get back ter t’ tip where you belong. Only don’t tek Annie wi’ you. She don’t belong on no tip.’

‘That’s why I’m taking her home. Out of this bloody tip. You want to watch yourself, Mrs Cullen. You’ll be having the Health round next and getting yourself fumigated.’

‘Fumigated? It’s your bloody gob wants fumigatin’. We may not ’ave t’ poshest bathroom up Long Moor, but at least we ’ave an ’appy ’ome, one as your Annie’s glad to run to. Poor little waif can’t get away from ’er own ’ouse quick enough, seems ter me.’

Eddie Higson was shouting now as he said, ‘You slovenly old bitch, you. She’ll not be coming here no more, I’ll see to that. And her mother will too when I tell her what a state this place is in. Get here now, you,’ he screamed at me.

‘No. No, I’m not coming,’ I cried, the tears beginning to flow down my face and into my throat, choking me so that I had to fight for breath.

‘Get here now or I’m coming in for you.’

Mrs Cullen pushed me behind her then stood in the doorway, her legs spread wide. ‘You’ll ’ave ter get past me first. An’ I’m not lettin’ you in my ’ouse wi’out a fight, you bad-mouthed bugger, you. Come on then. Try it. Just you try to get in. Don’t forget, my George’ll be ’ere in a minute. ’E’ll sort you. You’ll be climbin’ no bloody ladders fer a week or two if ’e gets ’is ’ands round that scrawny little neck o’ yours.’

I could hear Mrs Cullen breathing heavily in the silence that followed and I held my own breath, fighting back the sobs.

‘Are you coming or not?’

‘No,’ I managed to gasp.

‘I’ll beat the bloody living daylights out of you, lady,’ he yelled. ‘You’ll have to come out of that pigsty sooner or later and I’ll be waiting.’

Mrs Cullen, after slamming the door in his twisted face, turned to look at us, leaning heavily against the stair rail for a few seconds before speaking to me. ‘Now don’t tek on, lass. You can double up wi’ our girls tonight – till yer Mam gets back off ’er evenin’ shift at anyroad. Likely she’ll come and collect you once it’s all sorted. Don’t worry, ’e’ll calm down, it’ll all be forgot, you’ll see.

‘Now come on, you lot. Get this muck shifted before your dad gets back an’ breaks ’is neck over it. I’m goin’ to warm a drop o’ milk fer Annie. Lizzie, see if yer can find a clean cup. Martin, get in that meatsafe see if there’s a bit o’ brandy left. Bring ’er through to the kitchen, Josie. Come on now, come on . . .’

My mother did not come for me at the end of her shift. I spent the night at Josie’s house and it was not comfortable, for there was little room in the bed which contained four of us, two at the top, two at the bottom, like sardines in a tin.

Things were not made easier by Lizzie who wet the bed and everyone in it, which I later discovered to be a regular occurrence. For the whole of the next day at school I reeked of drying urine, a smell I recognized now as that which usually surrounded Josie, Lizzie and most of the rest of the family. I was also covered in spots, tiny red bites bequeathed to me by all the other creatures that occupied Josie’s bedroom.

When I reached home that afternoon, Eddie Higson had not yet returned from his round. My mother was at the living-room range, her back towards me as I entered the room and she seemed, at first, to have little to say. When she turned to face me, I understood why she was so quiet, because her cheeks were bruised, her lower lip swollen to twice its normal size and one of her eyes was closed and surrounded in purplish black flesh.

She had received my beating. Because of my disobedience, because of my cowardice, my poor little mother had been beaten half to death by a man who must surely be crazed to inflict such wounds on his wife.

I ran to her and she flinched as I flung my arms about her waist. It was obvious that her body, too, was hurt.

Easing herself gently away from me, she pressed me into a chair. ‘Annie, love. Things is hard enough without you making this kind of trouble. Why didn’t you come home when you were told?’

I hesitated before replying, ‘Because he was nasty to Mrs Cullen, Mam. He called her a slovenly old bi . . . well, a bad name. He showed me up in front of my friends.’

‘Friends? Friends, love? Can’t you smell yourself? They’re mucky folk, Annie. You shouldn’t be mixing with mucky folk. Oh, I wish I’d come and fetched you home after my shift, but I couldn’t – not like this. You’d be best stopping away from the Cullens in future.’

‘I like them,’ I said stubbornly, yet immediately torn between wanting to agree with my poor hurt mother and wanting to defend those who had been good to me.

‘You should have come home when he first came for you.’

‘I don’t want to come home with him. I don’t like being here with him. Why can’t you be here? Why can’t you work days like you used to?’

‘Because I can’t, love. It’s as simple as that.’

Flinching visibly, she lowered herself into a squatting position in front of me. ‘Now, listen, Annie. You’re a big girl. I fell downstairs last night – you understand? I fell down the stairs. Now I’ve got a letter here from . . . er . . . from Dr Pritchard. I want you to go down to Millhouse mill and give it in to Ernie Bradshaw. Nobody else. If Ernie’s not there, you bring this letter back. Can you remember that?’

I nodded and she went on. ‘Only I can’t go into work looking like this now, can I? I’d likely frighten the mill cat to death – let alone me mates if they saw me like this. So after tea, when the hooter’s gone off, you get your coat on and go down Folds Road. You catch the 45 and get off at the stop after the bend. Go up Millhouse Lane till you get to the mill – you can’t miss it, it’s about the same size as Buckingham Palace. Ask for Ernie Bradshaw, second floor. And remember, that letter’s for him and only for him.’

She rose painfully and took a step back. ‘While you’re there, Annie, have a good look round. And I mean a good look – you see what it’s like in there, take it all in. Because except for today, I don’t want you ever setting foot inside a mill again.’ She reached out her hands in an imploring gesture. ‘You’ve got chances, Annie. Chances I never had. Things are going to change, specially for women, you mark my words. Well, I want you to take them chances.’ Her hands closed into tight, gripping fists. ‘Take them, use them opportunities. Because I’ll never rest in me grave if I know you’re a spinner or a doffer.’

‘You’re . . . you’re not going to die, are you, Mam?’

Her face stretched into as much of a smile as the damaged tissue would allow. ‘No, lass. I’m not shuffling off just yet, not till you’re a doctor or a lawyer or . . .’

‘An Indian chief,’ I said, finishing off the rhyme.

‘You’re going to be something great, Annie. I’ve always known it, right from the start when you brought yourself to life. There’s something in you, something I can’t put me finger on, so you’d best put your own finger on it, love. Because the choices are there for you; they weren’t there for me – it was the mill at fourteen and I’ve never known any other life. But you will, oh aye, you will.’

She placed my meal on the table in front of me. ‘Remember, Annie. I fell downstairs.’

‘I’ll kill him, Mam,’ I said quietly.

As she turned from me, I thought I heard her say, ‘You’ll have to get in the queue for that.’ But I wasn’t sure.

It was an experience I would never forget.

Now that the trams and trolleys were gone, I had finally got used to the new buses, but this time I was going in the wrong direction, down the moor rather than up, travelling back towards Town and, it seemed, backwards through the century too.

The further down the road I got, the untidier the area became until, at the bottom of Folds Road where I alighted from the bus, it seemed that I was back in Ensign Street, for the tiny Victorian terraces ran in deep rows to the left and to the right of me as I walked down Millhouse Lane. Each street seemed so like Ensign Street, so neglected and small and squalid, that I began to appreciate my mother’s ambition to move up the moor.

Had I really lived in a house as small as these were? Had I really played in those narrow, cobbled backs with open middens so close and never noticed the smell?

Our own midden up Long Moor Lane was now a coal shed, while the building that had once housed the tippler was used to store tools and Eddie Higson’s buckets and leathers. Oh yes, we had come a long way up in the world, but what price were we paying? And would I have to tell in confession that my mother had taken my beating and that I wanted Eddie Higson dead?

I stopped at the mill gates as I pondered, realizing after a few minutes that, yes, I would indeed rather live in Ensign Street without him than up Long Moor with him. Perhaps we could leave him and go back? But no, even after the beating, she would never leave her new bathroom. And, of course, as a Catholic, she could not abandon her husband no matter what he did to her.

I clutched in my hand the envelope that held a sheet of lies, a tissue of total fabrication that would protect Eddie Higson. Shouldn’t I tell somebody the truth? Instinctively, I knew that in order to protect my mother, I could never, ever tell anyone about what had happened in the house. Someone had to look after her. It would have to be me. And how many more times would she have to ‘fall downstairs’? Was that the price she would have to pay for her bathroom and electric light? And what would he do to me once she went back on evening shifts? Would he beat me too? Would I need a note to say I’d fallen down the stairs?