‘Shall I get Gus out of the loft, Mr . . . Uncle Tom?’
Her smile cut right into him, because it was clear that she would have had dimples had her face been fully fleshed. ‘If he’s happy, leave him where he is. Mrs Mason has some fish for him, I believe.’
‘She likes you, does Mrs Mason.’
‘And I like her.’
Sally thought for a moment. ‘Yes, but she likes you the same way as she liked Mr Mason till he got blew up in France.’
He laughed. ‘I’m too old for all that nonsense, child.’
Enlivened by the food, she decided to ask a question. ‘How old are you?’
‘Somewhere between forty and fifty,’ he said with mock gravity.
Her jaw dropped. Nobody except Granny Ivy was as old as fifty. Yet Mr Goodfellow – Uncle Tom – had dark brown hair, light brown eyes and skin that looked young. ‘But you don’t look old,’ she exclaimed.
He threw back his head and chortled. ‘And the reason for that, Sally, is that I have avoided the female predators of this world. No woman has managed to ensnare me.’
She sniffed, pondered. ‘Scarlet’s a woman bird, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she lays eggs for you to have more pigeons and she’s Beau’s missus. So you have got some fee . . . some females, ’cos they’re out there in cages.’
He laughed again. ‘Where they belong, isn’t that the case?’ If he could just shut Maureen Mason in a cage, then his life might become a little easier. No, no, he was surely being uncharitable. And Maureen was extremely gentle and pretty . . . But the good Irish lady had taken to wearing powder and paint, had started simpering whenever she found a reason to visit him. The reasons had deteriorated, had become mere excuses. And now, the excuses were so feeble that most showed signs of rigor mortis as soon as they dropped from Maureen’s reddened lips. ‘Could you lend me a couple of spoons of sugar, Tom?’ This after he had seen her coming out of the Co-op with the tell-tale blue package perched on top of her shopping. He had ‘mended’ bedsprings, doors and window catches. He had almost choked on air redolent with California Poppy, had been plied with enough tea to refloat the
Titanic
.
‘You can get married if you want,’ advised Sally. ‘Then you won’t have to do the cooking and polish your cups.’ She pointed to the rows of trophies. ‘What’s that one for?’
He shrugged. ‘Tennis.’
‘Oh.’ Her eye followed the line of trophies. ‘That big one?’
‘Yachting.’
She looked hard at him. ‘Boats?’
‘Yes, boats.’
He was a lot more interesting than she had thought, then. ‘What’s the round plate for?’
‘Golf.’
Sally wasn’t one for questions. Because few of her peers spoke to her and, since her mother seldom noticed her, Sally had failed to master the basic arts of conversation. Also, she worked hard at being inconspicuous. When near invisibility proved impossible, she tended to opt for silence or total acquiescence. But curiosity overcame her on this occasion. ‘Was them all won before you lived here, like?’
He nodded.
‘Where did you live, Uncle Tom?’
‘Hampshire, then Surrey. A year or two in Plymouth.’
‘Oh.’ She mulled over this information. ‘Is them places down London way?’
‘Most of them are in the south, yes.’
She smoothed the tattered dress and made for the door. Everything had been explained now. Folk from London were different from folk round here. They had loads of money, cigarette holders, nice frocks, motor cars and a lot of time for games like tennis. After thanking her host for the meal, she made for the door, stopped, turned round, this movement fuelled by sudden impulse. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I arrived and I stayed,’ he said softly.
‘Can you not go home no more?’
He put a hand to his clean-shaven chin. ‘I could, I suppose.’
Sally’s eyes were like saucers. ‘Do you stop here because you want to, then?’
‘In a way, yes.’
She allowed her gaze to wander round Mr Goodfellow’s house. It was nice, she supposed. Clean, better furnished than most. But it still had the mill blocking out the light at the front, then an outside lav shed at the back. He talked like . . . like the man whose voice came out of Maureen Mason’s wireless set. When she’d been only five or six, Sally had peered for hours through the tight mesh of the set’s speaker, had never seen the tiny people inside. Of course, at the grand age of seven, Sally knew that those men and women were full-sized and from London, though she hadn’t managed to work out how they shouted loudly enough to be heard from so far away . . .
‘Sally?’ He loved to watch her face, enjoyed its mobility. Females with expressionless features were judged to be the most attractive according to something he had read recently. That might well explain the vacuous ladies portrayed in so many paintings. Ah, she was going to speak again.
‘But it’s dark here, Mr—’ She grinned in response to his deliberately fierce expression. ‘Uncle Tom. It’s poor. Everybody’s poor. They all work in Paradise Mill or down the pits. And you’re . . . not the same.’ The difference was impossible to verbalize, but she was certain of its existence.
He raised his hands, pointed to various portions of his body. ‘Two arms, two legs, two eyes. I am made of flesh and blood and bone. How am I different, Sally?’
‘You just are.’ Why did he never go to work? she wondered. Everybody else clattered off at the crack of dawn, but Mr Goodfellow just messed about with books and pigeons all day. No, she wouldn’t ask him about work, because that might be rude, like accusing him of laziness. He wasn’t lazy. He helped her dad, washed him, lifted him on and off the potty chair. ‘Ta-ra,’ she said.
Ivy Crumpsall stood in the parlour of number 1, Paradise Lane, a bunched and white-knuckled fist clamped hard against her mouth. There was neither rhyme nor reason to any of this. He’d always been a good lad, had their Derek. Born at the start of a war that had taken his dad, Derek had remained in good health long enough to defend his country against the Third Reich, yet his reward was . . . She stifled a sob. Derek’s reward was cancer.
It was the pit that had done for him, she thought. Not one man emerged from the bowels of the earth unscathed. Each and every miner she knew was older than his years, seemed to be starved of air and sunlight, deprived of most sensory perceptions for eight or more hours of every day. Coal was killing her boy.
She sank into a chair whose stuffing had exploded through several cracks, eased herself off a protruding spring and wondered what was going to happen next. Lottie had been and gone, the doctor had been and gone for medicine, Sally had simply gone. She would be with Goodfellow, no doubt. The poor child was escaping at every opportunity, because she had no mam, no dad . . . Ivy was determined not to cry. She’d cried enough already, had wept a river during recent months.
Still, at least Derek had been lying in clean linen when the doctor had arrived. The sheets weren’t Derek’s own, but they were spanking clean. ‘You’re doing a good job, Mrs Crumpsall,’ the medic had said. Well, the smart-mouthed Lottie was not going to get her own way this time. Ivy intended to stay, as it was plain that Derek was nearing his end.
She leaned back and closed her eyes, was once more in Worthington Street with the newborn Derek. Her husband, almost ten years her junior, had set off for the trenches a few weeks earlier. Sam never saw his son. Her mind rushed forward, endured the pain of the lad’s first day at school, the weeks spent at his bedside during measles, mumps, the whooping cough that had nearly taken him. But she had hung on to him. She had hung on until Lottie.
Ivy’s eyes flew open. Lottie Kerrigan. Lottie Kerrigan, daughter of a nasty piece of work, another nasty piece in the making. How Ivy had pleaded with her son. But Derek had begun to fear his mother’s over-protectiveness, had run straight into the arms of a woman who had removed him from his mother’s apron strings. For years, Ivy had seen little of her son, then the family had moved back to the Paradise streets. Paradise. She made a tutting sound, looked through the front window and saw nothing but red bricks and mill windows. If this was Paradise, most gradely folk would opt for the other place any day of the week.
She crept through the room, peeped into the kitchen, reassured herself that he was sleeping. Back in the uncomfortable chair, she mused on the choices of names for these streets, tried to keep her mind busy. Paradise was a newish mill, just about sixty-odd years old, she thought. Worthington owned it, and a bad bugger he was, too. His dad had built the factory, had set out the capital H that formed this far from godly creation. The mill sat in the top of the H, the recreation area in the lower half. Ivy’s street formed one of the uprights, then Spencer Street ran parallel. Between Worthington and Spencer, the horizontal was created by Paradise Lane. Andrew Worthington and Prudence Spencer’s marriage had been made in heaven, so the cobbled way that connected the two longer streets had been christened appropriately.
In spite of herself, Ivy allowed a faint smile to caress her worn features. The Worthington-Spencer alliance had been hell for both parties, though few knew the truth about the mismatch. Ivy’s information had come from a reliable source, as one of her friends had once been cook at Worthington House. And from personal experience, she had learned about Andrew Worthington . . . she’d be better not thinking of that. Yes, the old swine had failed twice, because his marriage was miserable and Joseph Heilberg had refused to sell the Paradise houses and the recreation ground. Paradise Mill Number Two was still on the drawing board, was a mere phantom created by architect and draughtsman. And so it should stay for ever, if Ivy Crumpsall had her way.
‘Granny Ivy?’
The old woman came out of her reverie. ‘Hello, our Sal. Have you been to Mr Goodfellow’s?’
Sally nodded. ‘He’s from London way. That’s why he talks like the wireless. All them cups and things is from golf and tennis. And a boat, too. Why is he here?’
Ivy shook her head slowly and placed a finger to her lips. ‘Hush, love. Your dad needs his sleep.’ Soon, too soon, he would have all the sleep he needed. ‘Have you eaten, lass?’
‘Yes. Sandwiches.’
‘Crusts cut off?’
‘Yes.’
Ivy’s head dropped, because she could scarcely bear to look at the poor ragged child who depended on neighbours for sustenance. But when she saw the state of the floor, she raised her head again sharply. Dirt and Ivy were not on good terms. The child would have to move to Worthington Street. If Ivy could get a couple more hours’ cleaning work, they would manage.
‘My dad’s going to die, Gran.’
What could she say? How was she going to comfort a child whose parents were about to make an exit from her life? ‘Aye. Well, I suppose it’s God’s will.’
‘That’s what you said last time,’ replied Sally, her voice devoid of emotion. ‘I’ve stopped going to chapel, because God’s let my dad be very ill. He hurts. Sometimes, he cries when he thinks I’m not looking.’
‘I know, lass.’ At least she was talking, was saying something. A hint of pale-rose in Sally’s cheeks proved that she had eaten. ‘Look, I’ll see to you, Sal. There’s no way you’ll be on your own as long as I’m alive.’
Sally studied her grandmother. She stooped a bit, did Granny Ivy, almost had a hump on her back. Granny Ivy was probably the oldest person in the whole world. No – not quite. There was often a huddle of shawlies at some street corner or other, women who, like Gran, were always dressed in black. Some of them were smelly. The snufftakers ponged of tobacco, the pipe-smokers reeked of tobacco, and most carried the aroma of unwashed flesh. Gran wasn’t like them. Gran was always having baths and all-over washes. But a lot of shawlies had lived for years in houses without coppers and inside taps, and they had grown used to the scent of dirt. So there were other old folk like Ivy Crumpsall, people whose lives had spanned the end of one century and the start of another. ‘Thank you, Gran,’ she said at last. ‘Because Mam won’t be here, you know. I can stay with you till she sends for me.’
Ivy made a strange noise, but said nothing. That bold strumpet would never send for Sally. Even if she did find time and energy to persuade the Yank with the daft name, Lottie Kerrigan wasn’t going to saddle herself with the child. ‘You can come and stop with me soon,’ she promised. ‘And Mrs Hargreaves will happen make you a couple of decent frocks.’ She nodded sadly. ‘I’d have got you some clothes before now, Sal, but I thought . . . well, you know how things are.’
Sally knew how things were, all right. ‘Uncle’ Morton, who had been good at getting his hands on things, had bought a beautiful outfit for Sally one Christmas. She remembered it now, could see it if she closed her eyes. A red coat with white fur trim, a hat to match, then little red boots. It had been put away in a cupboard, though Sally had sneaked outside in it once or twice. After Morton Amerson’s departure, the clothes had disappeared into Mr Heilberg’s shop. Mam had never mentioned the outfit and neither had Sally. But she’d seen it again, oh yes. A girl at chapel had flaunted it. Sally, in worn clogs and too-small coat, had been forced to listen after the service while the congregation made comments about the red coat.
‘It’ll get better, love.’
‘Yes.’
‘Try to buck up, Sal.’
‘Nobody liked it anyway. They all said it were too bright for chapel.’
Ivy had no need to ask any questions. She recalled the occasion, had sat with Sally until the tears had dried. The books would likely have gone the same road and all. She would have a word with Joe Heilberg when she got the chance, see if he’d hang on to Derek’s books so that Sally could have them one day. ‘It were a very common colour, that red,’ she said, her voice gentled by love. ‘He’d no taste, yon Yankee man. A pretty little lass with your colouring should wear blue. Now, you’d look lovely in a navy velvet frock with a bit of lace. One day, I shall take you to our chapel and you’ll look like a little princess, love.’
Sally, who had asked several questions that day, suddenly found her lips framing another. ‘Why do you always wear black, Gran? Is it ’cos Grandad died? And all the other shawlies – why do they never wear colours?’