Authors: Eileen Haworth
They were scraping their plates clean and supping the scalding tea by the time the curled-up bodies began to unwind...which came as a relief to Billy who had been wondering if they were all dead...then within minutes Mucky Mick was run off his feet frying bacon and eggs and slicing a never-ending pile of loaves.
Towards the end of that long day Joe’s lorry broke down and had to be abandoned on the outskirts of Derby. The long trek back to Blackburn entailed hitching a lift to the nearest railway station followed by a series of connecting trains, not to mention hours spent in platform waiting-rooms at various points along the track.
Twenty-four hours later, Father and son, tired, hungry and dirty, arrived home to a family that had feared the worst. Billy thought it had been worth every minute with lots of exciting tales to tell his friends of how his clever dad had somehow managed to get them all the way home.
1952
Montague Street dipped steeply off Preston New Road and stretched for almost a mile, its large terraced houses at the top giving way to humble two-up and two-down weavers’ cottages further down. Scattered amongst them were a handful of Working Man’s Clubs, pubs, grocery stores, a doctor’s surgery, a pawnshop and a couple of Joe’s favourite antique shops.
It was within Montague Street and it’s side-streets that European refugees, including Manfred, had coexisted alongside their Blackburn neighbours since the end of the war.
Having finally plucked up enough courage to end her engagement, Betty made her way down the hill to Manfred’s lodgings. She couldn’t think why she’d agreed to get married in the first place, it certainly wasn’t love. She didn’t even believe in love, not after seeing her mother with a husband that swore blind he loved her one minute and swore blind he hated her the next.
And then there was Granny Sefton with a husband that knocked her black and blue whenever he felt like it. She didn’t want that sort of cat and dog life with Manfred or any other man. And after what Ellie had just gone through with that Irish wastrel, well it simply confirmed that
all
men were a waste of time.
All right, she had been attracted to the tall sophisticated Manfred but not enough to want to be tied to him for life, she must have been barmy to even think of it. She’d had her eyes opened since they’d got engaged and he’d turned into a boring killjoy. All he talked about was how much money
he’d
saved for the wedding by not taking the bus to work that week, and how
she
should be more careful with her money, or
our
money
as he’d started calling it.
‘For two days I have taken with me for lunch only one apple and have not taken the bus to work,’ he would say smugly, ‘and so until I get my wage on Friday it will not be necessary for me to use another pound note.’
What did he want, a round of applause? It drove her daft to see her friends off to the pictures or the dance hall when she wasn’t even allowed to buy a new lipstick. And then there were his moods that could last for days, after nearly twenty years of her dad’s moods she’d had enough of that.
She pushed open the front door with its peeling brown paint and Manfred led her upstairs to his sparsely furnished, rented bed-sitting room. She’d been up there once or twice before, although her mum and dad would kill her if they knew. Not that they’d ever need to worry about Manfred, the perfect gentleman. He gave her a brief kiss on the cheek and took her hands in his.
‘Now, what is this, Betty? New polish for the nails?’ he said reproachfully. ‘Our money you should not be wasting on such things. Remember we must save our money for our wedding.’
Oh no, here we go again, she thought. He towered head and shoulders above her but, refusing to be intimidated, she mustered all her courage.
‘I’m sorry Manfred I can’t go through with it. There isn’t going to be a wedding, I’m too young, I’m only nineteen… I’m not ready to marry you or anybody else.’
There, she’d said it. She didn’t want to marry him and there was nothing he could do to change her mind.
‘This is not true Betty, what you are saying to me? It is arranged already for us to be married… you cannot come here and say such things.’ What little colour he had drained from his sallow face. ‘What will my friends say that we are not to be married? How will I have the shame?’
‘Well, you’ll just have to blame it on me…’ she mumbled, increasingly nervous yet determined not to back down, ‘tell ‘em it’s all my fault… I don’t care what you tell ‘em, Manfred… I just know I don’t want to get married, that’s all.’
His eyes narrowed, his anger building visibly until his whole body was shaking; it was the first time that she had seen any real emotion from this cold, controlled man. He didn’t care about her, he only cared about how it would look to his friends.
She turned to leave and thought she had walked into the doorpost…she had walked into his fist. Her head spun to one side as she reeled back against the wardrobe struggling to stay on her feet.
He threw her roughly on to the bed and her scalp bounced against the metal frame where the thin mattress didn’t reach. There came the terrifying sound of her blouse being torn apart, then one fist was clutching her throat while the other was landing a blow on the opposite side of her face. Her hand went briefly to the back of her head where her scalp was already damp with blood. The room was filled with the screaming of a language that could have been German or could have been Polish. She didn’t understand the words yet understood the hatred they represented.
Could this be the same sophisticated Manfred with the perfect manners who until tonight she had no reason to fear?
This was like one of her frequent nightmares in which she tried to scream but only managed a strangled moan before wakening in a cold sweat. But this was real, there would be no scream, no strangled moan and a strong possibility that she would never waken… in a cold sweat or otherwise. She gave way to the blackness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
‘Betty?’ Her mother’s anxious voice came from the front bedroom. ‘It’s going up for midnight, where d’you think you’ve been while
this
time, Lady?’
‘Missed the last bus,’ Betty muttered through swollen lips before escaping across the top of the stairs to her room.
‘Where’ve you been, kid? Mum and dad have been going mad,’ Ellen asked drowsily, then went back to sleep without waiting for an answer.
Betty climbed into the single bed that had been pushed up against her sister’s since they were little girls. Her head throbbed and the pain of a dozen knives shot up inside her battered body. She trembled uncontrollably, her bed rattling violently as if in sympathy. From deep beneath her eiderdown her muffled sobbing wakened Ellen who reached across the darkness for her sister’s hand.
‘What’s up kid?’ she whispered. The whimpering continued. She sat up and took Betty into her arms, rocking her gently. ‘Sh…it’s okay kid…tell me about it tomorrow then…hush now kid, and get to sleep.’
They slid down on to their pillows and, just like so many times before, fell asleep in each other’s arms.
*
‘What the bloody hell’s happened to
you?
’ Joe leaned his fists on the kitchen table and peered across at Betty. Her head was in her hands shielding her bruised face but a walnut-sized lump was clearly visible through her matted hair.
‘Come on then,’ yelled her mother, ‘for God’s sake tell us… what’s happened to you?’
She cupped Betty’s chin in her hand and forced it towards the light. ‘Oh my God! What a
bloody
mess!’
‘Stop shouting at her, the pair of you, leave her alone,’ Ellen put an arm around her sister’s shaking shoulders, ‘it’s that Manfred…
he’s
done it.’
‘What?
He’s
done it?
He’s
done it?’ Joe spluttered. ‘And ‘e thinks…’e thinks… we’re gonna let him wed you after this? I’ll see him in hell first.’
‘She doesn’t
want
to wed him, that’s how it’s all started,’ said Ellen, ‘she went to tell him last night and he did
this to her
.’
‘I’ll murder him, the bloody foreign shithouse,’ Joe was crying with rage, ‘I’m telling ya Florrie, I’ll swing for him, the lousy coward… he must be a
coward
if he can
hit a woman.’
Long ago, on hearing of Florrie’s betrayal, Joe had been that lousy coward who could hit a woman, the one and only time he had ever struck her but for now his anger wouldn’t allow his memory to reach that far back.
Betty kept her head down. If she raised it they would see her disgrace… see how dirty and disgusting she’d become since last night.
‘Right,’ said her father, ‘get your ‘at and coat on Betty, and show me where that bugger lives.’
Betty hadn’t owned a hat since her school-days but in her family
getting
your hat and coat on
was something you did, or threatened to do, when you meant business.
For more times than she could remember, her mother had ‘wished she’d never had any kids’ and threatened to ‘get her hat and coat on and bugger off and leave them all.’
And sometimes she’d come home from the mill shouting that if the overlooker had any more complaints about her weaving she’d ‘get her hat and coat on and tell him where to shove his job.’
And how often had Granny Sefton screamed at her dad, ‘I’ll get my hat and coat on, and you’ll not see me in this house again’, to which her dad would reply, ‘Just stick to your word about that you nosey old sod and we’ll all put the bloody flag out.
All this ran through Betty’s mind as if by concentrating on things as mundane as hats and coats she might block out the terror of last night. Ellen’s voice came from miles away.
‘Dad look at the state of her. She’s not fit to go anywhere let alone go and see
him
. I know where he lives, I’ll go with you.’
‘Well be sharp then. Get your ‘at and coat on, and let’s get going.’
Ellen took a few deep breaths to regain control. Her knees were wobbly and she felt more like collapsing than getting her hat and coat on, but her dad was already out of the door. She caught up with him halfway down the street.
‘Don’t lose your temper, please dad. You’ll finish up in jail.’
‘Lose me temper? Lose me temper? Ellie I’m telling you straight, I’ll kill that bugger when I get ‘old of him.’
The front door of the large house was open, an escape route into its small overgrown front garden for the steamy whiff of stewed cabbage and that pungent smell of garlic which Ellen knew so well.
The Eastern European boys at the Saturday night dances were so well mannered, such good dancers and so romantic till they opened their gobs and breathed that unpleasant garlic stuff all over you. Catching her breath she led her father along the dimly lit hall.
‘May I help?’ Manfred’s landlord, Pavel, appeared from the rear of the house.
‘I bloody hope so,’ said Joe. ‘Where is he?’
Pavel looked from one to the other. ‘You are looking for
Henri
? You are Betty’s sister, I can
see
that.’
‘And
I’m
her dad. Now come on and never mind that
Henri
stuff, where is he?’
‘He has gone. I am sorry for you. I do not know where he is. This morning his room was empty. His clothes have gone. His rent book with the money for this week was on the bed. I do not know the reason.’
‘Well I just wish ya could see for yourself what the rotten swine’s done to our Betty. Black and blue, she is. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be a friend of yours or not but I bet ya didn’t know he were a German?’
‘I do know that, and also my wife and friends have known from the beginning. He used our language but with the German accent. But Henri was not a Nazi and not responsible for the bad things. He caused no trouble here in my house and so we pretended… just as he did.’
Spitting obscenities at the absent Manfred over his shoulder Joe staggered from the house with Ellen trailing behind and puffed and panted his way up Montague Street.
Stan Formby, sweeping the pavement outside his antique shop, watched them draw nearer. Ever since Joe had first come looking for antiques more than twenty years ago the lad had been like a son to him. None of the stuff he’d bought would ever make Joe a fortune but still he stopped by every week, climbing over the dusty relics with the same old joke, ‘What’s
new
, Stan?’ which always brought a smile to the old man’s face.