Secrets to Keep (13 page)

Having put dishes and cutlery down on the table,
Bertha bustled over to the range to give the thick creamy porridge a stir. ‘It didn’t, me duck. You slept like a log, didn’t move all night.’

‘So why are you up at this time? I have to be, but you don’t.’

Bertha turned to face Aidy, her face set firm. ‘I was up and about before, helping yer mother see the kids off to school and her off to work, and I’ll do the same for you. And I’ll still be doing what I can around the house, same as I did for Jessie. Porridge won’t be much longer. While yer eating it, I’ll rouse the kids.’

Aidy smiled warmly back at her. The worrying prospect of how she was going to manage moneywise without Arch’s help was daunting, but how could she have assumed that all that went into running the house and looking after the occupants, making sure they were clean and fed, would be entirely hers to bear, too, when she had a grandmother of the special type she did? The kids would do what they were capable of also, she had no doubt of that.

‘Thanks, Gran,’ Aidy said softly.

On arriving down for their breakfast, the children all tentatively poked their heads around the doorway that led into the back room from the stairs. It was apparent they were checking that between the time they had gone to bed and now, there had not been a change of heart and Pat and Jim Nelson had after
all moved in to take over their care. The relieved expressions on all their faces were very apparent. They were far from their normal lively selves, though, very subdued in fact, doing what was asked of them without any quibbles, obviously all still very much grieving the loss of their mother.

Mid-morning, as she was bent over her machine amongst fifty machinists, all labouring away in a large, windowless, dust-filled room, the booming voice of the department’s forewoman cut into Aidy’s thoughts.

‘There’s approaching two million unemployed in this country at the moment, Mrs Nelson, so getting a replacement for you won’t be any trouble. Now, I appreciate you lost your mother only days ago, but the boss doesn’t care about that. What he does care about is getting orders out, which we aren’t going to do with the amount of time you are taking to sew a sleeve into one dress! Two minutes forty-five seconds is the allotted time. You’ve been on that one fifteen, to my certain knowledge.’

Despite fighting hard to concentrate on her work, Aidy’s thoughts seemed always to be straying. She couldn’t stay focused on what she was doing. Coping with her emotions was proving hard, but rising above her pain was worry about just how she was going to keep a roof over her family’s heads, and them fed,
clothed and warm, on only her wage and the little bit her grandmother made. Looking fearfully up at her superviser, she gulped. Somehow she had to stop her personal problems from interfering with her work. Because if she lost this job …

She blustered to her forewoman, ‘It’s the material, Mrs Hardwick. It … er … keeps slipping. And this new batch of cotton keeps breaking, so I have to keep stopping to re-thread my machine.’

Imelda Hardwick was the no-nonsense sort of forewoman. She had to be to keep harmony and production flowing between the fifty seamstresses, ten juniors and three runabouts under her charge, all with different characters ranging from the sweet and innocent to the hard-nosed types who’d sooner lash out via verbal abuse or with their fists than calmly talk over any issues they might have with another workmate. Having started in the factory herself on first leaving school, and progressing through sheer hard work and determination to better herself, Imelda had been in her present position approaching sixteen years and meant to keep her job until she had to retire. She would not allow anyone to jeopardise that for her.

She knew every trick in the book to defend bad workmanship, had heard every excuse to justify lateness, reasons for absence, causes for finishing early or attempts to cover any manner of other misdemeanours during working hours. The excuse Aidy Nelson had
just given to justify her own slackness was a well-used one that would probably appease more gullible types of forewoman, not Imelda. But despite her formidable reputation amongst her workers, that only the most brave ever dare challenge, and to their own cost, Imelda did have a compassionate streak that would surface occasionally with those she felt deserving of it.

She had been landed with numerous school leavers over the years. She’d had to keep a beady eye on them, to judge their level of ability then use her own initiative in deciding what job in the factory these individuals were best suited for. Some were not cut out for factory work at all and were dismissed to try their luck in another profession, but others displayed real promise. Aidy was one of those. From the off, she had shown she was a strong character, never allowing the older stalwarts to use or abuse or get the better of her, and Imelda had admired that quality in her. Aidy was not a natural at any job she had been given, but had been eager to learn. Imelda was to discover that drive in her continually to improve her position was fuelled by a desire to help her deserted mother and to care for her siblings. Imelda admired that quality in her too.

In all the years Aidy had worked under her, she had never before given Imelda any reason to reprimand her for trying to pass off shoddy work, a bad attitude
or timekeeping. This current lapse was obviously due to grief at the death of her mother. Imelda had lost her own a couple of years back, and although mother and daughter hadn’t been what could be classed as devoted, nevertheless she had been fond of her and the passing had taken her quite a while to come to terms with. Aidy had only lost her mother four days ago. Judging by the strain on her face and her subdued demeanour, she was suffering deeply. Imelda felt entitled to stretch the rigid factory rules and go gently on her this time.

Leaning over to whisper in Aidy’s ear so none of the other girls could overhear … not that it was likely over the loud buzz of fifty sewing machines plus the chattering of the workers … she said to Aidy, ‘With a headache as bad as you’ve got, I’m telling you to take the rest of the day off. Take tomorrow too if you need it, but I want you back in here Friday morning and I’ll be expecting what I normally get from you and no less.’

Aidy stared at her for a moment, digesting what her superior was telling her. When she finally did, she blurted, ‘Oh, I really appreciate that, Mrs Hardwick, you don’t know how much I do, but I’ve already lost three days’ pay from being off dealing with my mam’s death. I can’t afford to lose any more. I’ll buck my ideas up, really I will.’

Imelda looked thoughtfully at her. Of course Aidy
needed every penny of her wage packet, like every other woman who worked in this factory, and the loss of even one penny of it could make a big difference. A penny short for the rent was a penny in arrears. A penny short of the cost of a bone for soup meant no nutritious broth for their evening meal that night. A penny short to make up a shilling for the gas meant they sat in the dark. A penny short for a bag of coal meant they went cold. She told Aidy, in a low voice, ‘I’ll see your pay packet isn’t short, in the circumstances.’

She saw the quizzical look that Aidy gave her, knew she was wondering how her forewoman could manage to get the wages manager to sanction payment for work she hadn’t done. Imelda wasn’t about to divulge to her that worksheets were often lost by slipshod junior clerks en route from the factory floor, and figures were often redone from the forewoman’s say so. There were always discrepancies in the output of garments too, with articles mislaid or pilfered, so if the output and hours didn’t quite match, for someone in Imelda’s position it was easy to write off any discrepancy.

‘Go, before I change my mind,’ she ordered her charge.

Bertha was busy washing and drying small brown bottles in readiness for filling with a new batch of
one of the potions she was in the process of brewing. An eye-wateringly pungent smell was filling the kitchen, originating from a large blackened pan of simmering nettles and dock leaves and other peculiar-looking ingredients.

Bertha’s interest in natural remedies had been sparked as a young girl by an old friend of her grandmother’s. The old woman had lived in a ruin of a cottage surrounded by fields and woods a couple of miles out of town. How her grandmother had become friends with the wizened old creature in the first place would always remain a mystery to Bertha, but she would periodically pack a basket with home-made food and, taking her granddaughter along for company, set off on the two-hour journey to visit her.

The inside of that cottage was a source of wonderment to young Bertha. The low-beamed ceiling was lined with hooks from which hung bunches of wild flowers and vegetation in varying stages of drying out. Rows of shelves on the old wattle walls were crammed with bottles and jars containing ready-prepared potions and ointments. A basket of strangelooking fungi stood by the hearth. A rickety table at the back of the room was where the old crone made up her concoctions from a tattered if meticulously detailed recipe book, using a pestle and mortar and a set of weighing scales. The cooking up of her potions
was done in a cauldron-like pot hanging from a hook over the fire. Bertha’s grandmother always returned home from these visits with her basket filled with an assortment of potions, ointments and pastes which she’d use to help ease, or hopefully cure, the ailments suffered by herself, her family and close friends.

How the old lady went about making her potions and what went into them fascinated the young Bertha. On one visit, forgetting her manners, she bluntly asked the old lady. Delighted that a youngster was interested in her pastime, she happily answered her questions, and from then on during each visit would enlighten Bertha further on the healing and soothing properties of different plants, flowers and fruits, and how she used each one or combined it with others, with a pinch of this or that, to make up cures which covered just about every ailment. She wasn’t, though, just an authority on the beneficial properties of what Mother Nature produced, but also on everyday products found in household pantries, which could also be used in the making up of healing and soothing concoctions.

It was with great sadness that on one visit Bertha and her grandmother arrived tired from their long journey to find the cottage deserted. On enquiring after the old lady’s whereabouts with her nearest neighbour, they learned that she had died in her sleep a few weeks before. Much to Bertha’s shock, though, the neighbour had been keeping for her a sealed box
with her name scrawled on it in the old lady’s spidery handwriting. Curiously opening it up, she found inside the recipe book, pestle, mortar and scales.

Even at that tender age, Bertha was very touched by the old dear’s bequest to her and determined to put it to good use. The recipe book became her favourite bedtime reading and, as soon as she was allowed to go out alone, she would roam the countryside gathering her ingredients. She set up what she called her ‘potion room’ in her grandmother’s outhouse, cooking up her ingredients in a battered old cauldron on an antiquated oil stove begged from her grandfather. It took her many failed attempts to perfect each concoction, using her long-suffering family as stooges. They all lost count of the number of rashes and sores they endured from her mistakes. But her perseverance finally paid off and soon word of her successes began to spread around the neighbourhood. People began calling in, requesting her to help ease their complaints.

When she was young, the locals labelled her ‘the potion gel’. When Bertha married it was changed to ‘the young wife’. Now she was reaching the end of her life, she was known as ‘the old woman’.

For years her charges for these remedies had just covered her outlay in producing them, as she was content to be helping others, but on her husband’s retirement and with their savings gone to help their
daughter through her own difficult time, Bertha had no choice but to up her charges to make herself a little profit. These days one or more of her young grandchildren would accompany her on country expeditions, to help her gather and carry back her ingredients which were then hung to dry in the outhouse. But the preparing and cooking up was done now in the more hospitable environment of the kitchen when all the family were out, either at school or at work. Bertha could have taken the easier option and bought all her requirements from a herbalist in town, but she refused to pay what she perceived were their extortionate charges and as a result have to put up the cost of her finished products.

To her dismay, though, and despite her trying to encourage them, none of her family, including her daughter, showed the slightest interest in what she did. It was her sad conclusion that, when her time came to meet her maker, her knowledge would die with her too and the old lady’s treasured recipe book lie gathering dust on a shelf.

At her unexpected return home, Bertha shot Aidy a worried look and demanded, ‘What’s happened? Why are you back at this time?’

Aidy explained to her.

When she had, Bertha smiled. With the likes of Pat Nelson in mind, she said, ‘So there are some nice people in the world after all. Cuppa?’

On being awarded some unexpected time off by her benevolent fore woman, Aidy had decided not to waste a minute of it. The first thing she ought to do was sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and work out the family budget from now on. She knew it was going to be tight, but it was how tight that worried her. Still, her mother had managed to keep them all on what she earned, which was less than Aidy did, so she was determined to manage.

On first walking through the back door, she had almost keeled over at the smell that met her. If it was true what her grandmother was always telling her, that the worse her remedies stank the better they were for you, then in this case whatever she was cooking up would instantly destroy the most virulent disease known to man.