Saturday's Child (3 page)

Dickens had known all about real life, yet the man had dared to project a ray of hope onto the backcloth of merciless reality. ‘They have to do that, writers,’ she mumbled as she
attacked vegetables, ‘have to make sure it all comes right at the finish – otherwise, who’d bother flaming reading?’

There would be no Magwitch for Danny, Aaron or Roy. They would work down pits until their skin became blue with absorbed dust, until their eyes were reddened by that same gritty substance, until
their lungs were scalded and too ravaged to do their job.

Lily closed her eyes, saw her father coughing into a blackened cloth, watched the black as it turned brown, then scarlet, heard the laboured breaths shortening as his body closed down. Oh, for a
Magwitch! Oh, for just enough to buy a little business, sweets, tobacco, newspapers, bits and pieces. How could she sit and watch while Danny and Aaron donated their youth to coal?

‘You’re selfish, you are, Lily Hardcastle,’ she informed herself in a whisper. ‘You want to go off just because life doesn’t suit, because you can’t care
about nobody except yourself. Well, get fettling and make life suit.’ She got fettling, mustered her stew into order, piled ingredients into a soot-blackened pot, treated herself to a
Woodbine.

As she inhaled rich Virginia, she thought about Charlie-at-the-end, that famous rag man who bestrode his useless fortune like an old hen squatting on a precious egg. He had money, yet his life
was no better than hers, not really. Poor old Nellie in the next house had little but death and the Tivoli cinema to anticipate, while the Higgins clan across the street lived from hand to mouth,
hardly a pair of clogs between two girls, barefoot on the cobbles, voices raised in prayer every night as they did the rosary.

What good had their prayers done? Lily squeezed the end of her Woodbine and placed the remaining half behind her ear. In the Vatican, Pius the twelfth lived among riches beyond counting, while
those who supported him and his pastors had to take turns going to school, sharing clothes and shoes, headlice, fleas and diseases. It was a rum world, all right.

Lily stood up, smoothed her hair, retied her pinny. She stirred the stew, seasoned it, went to the front door for a breath of air. Across the street, Magsy O’Gara stood on a wobbly stool,
a ragged leather in her hand.

This was daft, Lily thought. Why shouldn’t she cross the street? In shops, everyone spoke to everyone without asking, ‘You a Catholic or a Protestant?’ And the war had pulled
people together, while the religious maniac who lived next door to Lily was quieter in his old age. Surely those days of religious discrimination were over?

Pinning a smile to her face, she crossed over and steadied Magsy’s stool. ‘There you are, love,’ she said, ‘we can’t have you falling, can we?’ Bugger the
Orange Lodge, thought Lily. Bugger the lot of them. It was time the women stuck together, whatever their denomination.

‘Er . . . thank you,’ said Magsy.

‘You’re welcome,’ answered Lily. And she meant it.

Nellie Hulme had a habit of smiling to herself as she waddled along, often completely oblivious of those who avoided her or gossiped about her. Although stone deaf, Nellie had
a strong sense of atmosphere, while her sight was as sharp as any gimlet. But usually, she managed to absent herself, wallowing in a secret pride, a knowledge that in one particular area of life
she was special, almost unique, certainly a one-off in the township of Bolton. What would they say if they ever found out? Would they want to become friends, to rub shoulders with her hitherto
unacceptable persona?

None of them knew. Even the Hulmes, Nellie’s adoptive parents, had not survived long enough to discover her talent. Nellie’s vocation had been discovered on a wet day some forty
years ago, a dismal Tuesday with low-hanging clouds, persistent drizzle and a chill that cut through to the bone. Every time she remembered that day, Nellie shivered, partly with the remembered
weather, mostly because of its glorious outcome. She had sidestepped into a wonderland called Bolton Central Library, had wandered, cold and dripping, through the arts and crafts section.

Of course, the house had started to deteriorate soon afterwards, but the house had not mattered then, scarcely mattered now, though she thought about it sometimes, wondering how long it would
take to clear up. What mattered most was the astonishing fact that Miss Helen Hulme of 1, Prudence Street, Bolton, Lancashire, was so sought after that people of note wrote begging letters, while
her order book was fuller than a newly opened sardine tin, crammed with names, specifications, measurements. Miss Helen Hulme was a self-made star.

On her grimy parlour fireplace, crested cards were stacked three and four deep, messages from the staff of earls and dukes, two or three in the copperplate hands of princesses, one from the
queen herself. Nellie lived in a world of bobbins and damask, of threads and linens and fine, sharp needles; Nellie was lacemaker to a king, to lords and ladies, to the newly rich and to the
established upper crust. She was wanted, needed, valued.

She opened her door, kicked a few boxes out of the way. Nellie knew every creak of her floor, though she did not hear anything; she felt movement in boards, was aware of vibrations when a door
slammed, when an unsteady sash dropped its window too quickly. She could see for yards ahead, was able to sense any change in weather long before it arrived, had the ability to sit for hours on end
with pattern books, bobbins and threads. She was thoroughly focused on her calling and, apart from her visits to the library or the Tivoli Picture House, she devoted most of her time to the design
and manufacture of household linens.

Straight away, she had known how to make lace. Her first set of bobbins had been extensions of her own fingers, implements she had recognized right away. Had she been here before, had she lived
already in another time, in a place where women had sat in the Mediterranean sun, digits flying over cottons, silks and linen?

Not interested in newer, quicker methods, disenchanted by cheap materials, Nellie stuck to the old rules, her work cemented in centuries long dead, patterns culled from Brussels, France,
Nottingham, Honiton. She was a true perfectionist, an artist with imagination, flair and the determination to succeed. So, while the residents of Prudence Street imagined her to be lazy, she was,
in truth, dedicated to work that was absorbing and intensive.

She threw a pile of old clothes to the floor and settled her bulk on an ancient armchair. In a minute, she would get up and take off her coat, but she was so tired, so . . . Her eyes closed and
she was asleep in seconds. For the thousandth time, she was picking up the letter,
the
letter, the one that had changed her life. Beneath the crest of York, a few words, fourteen words,
‘Thank you for the beautiful tablecloth; the duke and I shall treasure it always’ . . . And she had signed it herself, Elizabeth, Duchess of York. What a boost that had been to the ego
of Helen Hulme. That same Elizabeth was now queen, while her gentle, frail husband occupied a throne vacated by a cowardly man who had chosen an easier way of life.

Nellie snored and snorted her way through the dream, recalling invitations to visit the palace, writing again in her sleep the polite refusals. She was too deaf to travel, too frightened, too
ill. She was far too dirty for Buckingham Palace, though she never told them that. How could she inform a lady-in-waiting that, in truth, she was too weary to wash, too keen to sit up each night
with her threads and bobbins? No-one would ever understand fully, so she made no attempts to explain herself.

Thus a scruffy, deaf woman from a northern town had become a maker of table linens for the gentry. One day, after her coffin had been carried from the house, the street would learn that she,
Helen Hulme, had made and decorated cloths to cover tables bigger than her own parlour, had woven love into sets of sixty or eighty napkins, had served her king, her queen, her country. Royal heads
rested on Hulme antimacassars, while silver coffee pots and delicate cups stood on Hulme tray cloths.

She shifted, and the dream changed. The world was big and green; a man dangled her from his shoulder, pretended to let her fall. Nearby, a pretty lady smiled. Birds sang. She heard them,
listened to cadences so precious, so sweet . . . Oh, what joy there was in the throats of those feathered creatures. The wind in the trees was audible, whispering and rustling among leaves before
emerging at the other side to skip away towards other mischief. The pretty lady laughed, a tinkling noise that sounded almost like little bells rocked by a breeze. When the man laughed, Nellie
shivered. His laughter was deep, low, almost threatening.

Nellie woke with a jolt. Sound. Only in sleep did she remember sound. Hearing had been taken from her, had been removed by the hand of . . . Whose hand? Had God done this to her, had He visited
this upon an innocent child? Perhaps she had been ill, laid low by a fever that had invaded her brain and her ears.

She needed to remember, had to remember, could not remember. And therein lay her bitterness, her unwillingness to comply with rules, to live as others lived. Because, once upon a time and in a
faraway place, she had been a hearing, speaking child. But her fairy tale promised a different ending; there was no prince, no slayer of dragons. The words happily ever after were not on the
page.

Roy ran into the kitchen, his face almost purple, a look of triumph decorating the homely face. ‘Mam?’ Breathlessly, he gulped. ‘I’ve seen it. You
won’t believe it when I tell you, Mam, ’cos you’d never guess in a month of Sundays.’

Lily was doing shortcrust to make a lid for the stew. In her experience, a layer of pastry on top of a dish made the food go that bit further. She moved a rolling pin to and fro, not needing to
glance down at her handiwork. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you look suited. What have you done now?’ He had at least six holes on his face and would probably grow up looking like an
uncooked crumpet.

‘I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it and she’s come back, Mam.’

‘Has she? I’m right pleased to hear that, Roy. And who’s she? The cat’s mother?’

Roy hopped from foot to foot. He was bursting with words, yet he couldn’t organize them into a sensible sequence. ‘Drainpipe,’ he achieved eventually. ‘I went up it while
she were out, Mam. Smelly’s drainpipe. It weren’t easy to climb, but I managed at the finish – and – well, I saw it.’

Lily slammed the rolling pin onto the table’s surface. ‘You what? You daft little bugger. Everything in that house is rotted, lad, including the drainpipes. It’s a wonder
you’re not lying in her yard with your back broke.’ She noticed that his expression was one of shock and bewilderment. ‘Well? Has the cat’s mother took the tongue from your
head?’

He sat down. ‘Back bedroom,’ he stammered, ‘her back bedroom. Mam, it’s clean. It’s . . . it’s cleaner than our house, cleaner than owt I’ve ever
seen.’

‘You what?’

‘It’s clean,’ he repeated.

‘Clean? What do you mean, “clean”? Her’s never batted a mat since we moved in here. As for a sweeping brush, I bet she hasn’t got one to her name.’

‘There isn’t no mats. It’s lino or oilcloth, I think, and the room’s full of stuff. There’s a big, long table, Mam, all shelves up the walls, boxes on them, a
massive chair what she must sit on with a little table next to it and loads of oil lamps and books and cotton – big reels, not like what you have in the sewing box, Mam – and cloth,
white cloth stood up in a roll and it’s clean. It were like looking into a hospital room, all spotless, like.’

Seconds staggered past. ‘Clean? Clean? She never has a bath. Yon tin bath in her back yard fell off the wall years since, when the handle rotted away.’

‘One clean room, Mam. Window’s clean and all. She must have sat out.’ Sitting out was an activity that always frightened Roy. The women of the street often chatted to each
other as they cleaned the upstairs windows, bodies outside, legs inside and usually pinned down by children whose responsibility was to stop their female parents from dropping to certain death.

‘She’s never sat out, Roy. I’d have noticed.’ Very little in Prudence Street escaped the notice of Lily Hardcastle.

‘She might do it at night, Mam.’

Pastry forgotten, Lily cupped her chin with her hands, thereby depositing self-raising flour all over her neck. ‘Well,’ she breathed, ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs
and sing “Land of Hope and Glory”. Whatever next?’

‘There’s a thing hanging on the door,’ he offered now.

‘A thing? What thing?’

Roy struggled once more for words. ‘It’s on a coat-hanger, but it’s like . . . like a big frock, only it’s not a frock.’

Lily waited, watched as gears fought to mesh within her son’s nine-year-old brain. When was a frock not a frock? And was this youngest of hers all right in his head?

‘It’s like . . . like two sheets sewn up with a hole for her head and holes for her hands. Like a tent, it is.’

Well. Lily Hardcastle didn’t know what to think or say, so she took the docker from its place of residence behind her right ear, lit it, inhaled deeply. A clean room? In Nellie
Hulme’s house? ‘I thought she never went upstairs, Roy. I thought she slept in her front parlour.’

‘It’s not a sleeping room,’ the boy answered, ‘it’s a making room. She makes things.’

‘What things?’

He shrugged. ‘Cloth things.’

Lily, seldom at a loss, could not lay her tongue across a single syllable. Cloth things? Anything coming out of Nellie Hulme’s dump must have stunk to high heaven and low hell. And if the
old woman was making clothes, why didn’t she fettle a few bits for herself? There was neither rhyme nor reason to this. ‘Are you sure, Roy Hardcastle?’

‘Yes, Mam.’

‘You’re not making it up?’

‘No, Mam.’

The mystery of Nellie Hulme was deepening fast. ‘Put that kettle on, son, I need to get me brain working.’

He put the kettle on. ‘And a paraffin stove.’

‘You what?’

‘There’s a paraffin heater, Mam. That’s clean and all, like shiny. It were that much of a shock, I near slipped off the drainpipe.’