Forty-One

‘Aunty Emily, where does Lucy live?’ Harry asked after they’d had dinner.

‘Not far away. Walkley Street. It’s about ten minutes away. Why?’

‘I – um – I’d like to see her, but I’ve never been to her home.’

‘Lucy is working now. She’s started training to be a nurse at the Royal Hospital. She works all sorts of different shifts.’

‘Even on a Sunday?’

Emily laughed. ‘Yes, Harry, even on a Sunday. Poorly people need nursing on a Sunday too.’

‘Do you think I could go round to her house? Just to see if she’s at home?’

‘If your dad says it’s all right, then, yes, I’ll tell you the way.’

After a moment’s hesitation, Josh nodded. ‘Mind you’re back by five, though. We’ll have to leave then. I must take over from Mr Kirkland.’

‘Don’t get lost,’ Amy said nervously. The city frightened her. She couldn’t understand why Emily had chosen to live here instead of coming back to Ashford. But, as he walked along the streets with the piece of paper on which Emily had written directions for him, he could understand his aunt’s love of the city. There was excitement in the air, even on the Sabbath. It was a fine day, though cold, yet people – workers, he supposed – were out in the city’s streets and parks, dressed in their finery and a group of girls walked along the pavements laughing and calling out to young men. One or two, who were not much older than he was, Harry thought, were coming towards him. They stopped in front of him and almost encircled him.

‘Now, here’s a handsome young man. What’s your name, luv?’

‘Harry.’

‘That’s a nice name. And how old are you, Harry?’

‘Fifteen.’

The young woman asking the questions grimaced. ‘Aw, that’s a shame. You’re a bit young for us, luv. Ne’er mind, eh? You’ll grow and then I’ll be watching out for you. Ta-ra, luv.’

Laughing, the group moved on. Harry watched them go with a heavy heart. No doubt Lucy would think just the same as they did. He wasn’t quite sure of her age, but he thought Lucy was at least two years older than he was, if not more. Maybe she even had a boyfriend by now. He hesitated, wondering if he should turn around and go back home. Then he shook himself and laughed wryly. He’d hardly come a’courting. He just wanted to say “hello” to her, that was all. Squaring his shoulders, Harry glanced down at the piece of paper and set off again. But when he arrived at the address which Emily had written down, his nerve almost deserted him again.

There was a man painting the front window and when he turned round, Harry recognized Lucy’s dad, Mr Henderson. The man stared at him for a moment and then smiled. ‘Hello, there. It’s Harry, isn’t it? I almost didn’t recognize you. You’ve grown a lot. What are you doing here?’

‘We’ve come to visit Aunty Emily and I just thought I’d call round and say “hello”. I hope that’s all right.’

‘’Course it is.’ Steve climbed down from the ladder, wiped his hands on a rag and led the way down the passageway between the terraced house and the next, opened the gate, then the back door of the house and ushered him inside.

‘Nell, look who’s here, all the way from Ashford. The family’s visiting Emily and Harry’s just called round to see us. You sit down, lad, and Nell will make you a cuppa. I’ll just call Lucy down. I ’spect you’d like to see her. She’s often talked about meeting you at Lizzie’s wedding.’

‘Hello, Harry. Come in, luv, and sit down.’ Nell smiled at him. ‘How’s everyone in Ashford?’

‘Fine, thanks, Mrs Henderson.’

‘Are you working yet?’

Harry hesitated, but there was no use in even trying to bend the truth. Nell knew only too well exactly how old he was.

‘I help out at the hotel after school and at weekends, but –’ he grimaced – ‘Mam and Dad are insisting I stay on at school.’

‘Quite right too.’ She glanced quickly at the door and then lowered her voice as she bent towards him. ‘I’ll let you into a little secret, Harry. I never learned to read and write until I met your aunty Emily. She taught me. You get all the learning you can, luv. It’s never wasted, whatever you want to do in life.’

‘Aunty Emily says you’re the best buffer girl she’s ever known.’

Nell smiled. ‘She’s right there. I’m never one for false modesty, but I wish I’d had a bit more education, you know. Just think what I might have done then. I’d have been a force to be reckoned with.’

Harry grinned. He liked Nell. ‘I think you probably are anyway.’

Nell laughed loudly, throwing back her head and standing with her hands on her hips. ‘You’ve been listening to too many tales from your aunty.’ Then she glanced up as the door opened.

‘What’s all the noise going on in here?’ Lucy said. ‘Hello, Harry. How nice to see you.’

Harry got to his feet. She was even prettier than he remembered her and she looked so grown up dressed in her nurse’s uniform. Her clear green eyes looked straight into his. With her auburn hair tucked neatly beneath her nurse’s cap, she looked very smart and professional.

‘I’m just off to report for duty at the hospital, but you can walk with me, if you like. I’ve not forgotten I promised to show you one or two places in the city when you came to visit again. Only you must remember your way back.’

‘Let him drink his tea first,’ Nell said, placing a cup and saucer in front of him. ‘And you’d better have one before you go.’

The four of them sat around the table chatting until it was time for Lucy to leave.

When they parted at the hospital gates and Harry began to find his way back to Carr Road, the boy, on the threshold of becoming a young man, knew he had fallen in love. But he was honest enough to realize that he probably had no hope where Lucy Henderson was concerned. She was older than he was and the years between the fifteen-year-old and the young trainee nurse, who looked so grown up already, was a chasm. A pretty girl like her would soon have a string of suitors. He doubted she would wait for him to grow up.

The same weekend that Josh took his family to see Emily, Adolf Hitler, in deliberate defiance of the peace Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, marched into the Rhineland, but at the same time he offered a new treaty to guarantee peace for twenty-five years.

‘If you believe that man, you’ll believe anything,’ Trip muttered over the breakfast table as he read the news on the Monday morning. ‘One of the journalists in this paper says – and I quote – “He has merely re-occupied his own backyard.” That’s all very well, but it takes him about a hundred miles nearer France and consequently us too.’

‘Trip, can you take Lewis to school today? Mrs Dugdale isn’t well.’

Trip looked up, his thoughts about world affairs forgotten. ‘Anything serious?’

‘I hope not. Just a head cold at the moment, but you know how it always goes to her chest. I’d rather she stayed in the warm.’

‘What about Simon?’

‘Could you pick him up from Nell’s?’

‘What about after school?’ Usually, Bess took the two young boys to school each morning and collected them in the afternoon, keeping them at her house until their parents arrived home, though Lewis was beginning to protest that at nine, almost ten, he was able to walk to and from school on his own. Perhaps she was being a little over-protective, Emily thought, but the memory of Lucy’s abduction on her way home from school could never quite be buried.

‘She says she’s all right to look after them,’ Emily went on. ‘If she’s not, I’ll let Lizzie off work early to collect the boys and take them home. She might as well take the rest of the day off and let her mother rest.’

‘Right you are,’ Trip said, folding his newspaper and getting up. The problems from overseas were forgotten in the demands of their daily lives.

But as the months went on it was impossible to ignore the news coming from across the Channel. In July, a civil war broke out in Spain, both sides of the conflict seeking aid from other countries. In August, the Berlin Olympics were used to glorify Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. What echoed round the world perhaps more than anything was Hitler’s deliberate snub to the black American, Jesse Owens, whilst personally congratulating German athletes on their success. At home, unemployment still caused great hardship and in October, two hundred Jarrow men undertook a long march to London carrying over eleven thousand signatures. They wanted the Government and the people in the south to understand the hardships they were facing in the North-east, where there was seventy per cent unemployment.

Trip rarely lost his temper, but on Tuesday evening, 6 October, he returned home fuming. ‘D’you know what’s happened, Emily?’ he raved, pacing the hearth. ‘About half my employees have taken leave without permission to join the marchers, without even asking or saying what they were planning to do. Evidently, they set off yesterday. I thought nothing of it then because I just accepted it as a ‘Saint Monday’, but when there were so many missing this morning, I started to ask questions. It’s left the factory hardly able to operate. I’ve been too soft. I expect they think I’m a pushover. Well, not any more. I’ll sack the lot of ’em. There’re plenty of unemployed men in this city to take their place.’

‘No, you won’t, Trip. You won’t do anything of the sort, but when they return, you need to call your whole workforce together and express your displeasure. Warn them that if anything like that ever happens again, they’re out.’

‘I’d have the unions on my back, if I did that,’ Trip muttered. ‘Richard thinks it was Percy Arnold who instigated the whole thing. And after all we’ve tried to do to help that family, that’s the thanks I get.’

‘You need to be calm, Trip, when you talk to them. It’ll have far more effect than ranting at them. A steely calm – that’s what you need.’

As his temper cooled, Trip saw the sense of Emily’s reasoning and by the time the marchers returned, some of them now anxious when they realized what they’d done, he was composed and had prepared a calculated speech.

They assembled at his demand in the largest workshop.

‘I understand why you joined the Jarrow lads and I do have sympathy with their cause. What I am angry about – very angry – is that you just took the time off without so much as telling us what you were doing.’

‘You’d not have let us go, Mester Thomas, if we’d told you.’

Trip’s gaze sought out the man at the back who’d spoken. He was not surprised to see that it was Percy Arnold. He paused a moment before saying steadily, ‘Over the past few years, when times have been very difficult, I have laid off only a few men – a lot fewer than other factories in the city – and only when I really had no other choice. Some firms, as you well know, have closed down altogether, but we have struggled to keep going. And we have struggled. Some weeks, I haven’t known if I’d have enough money at the end of the week to pay you all. But we’ve coped. I’ve kept most of you in employment, sometimes when I couldn’t really afford to do so, but I have. Even my stepfather gave notice at his own suggestion, so that it left one of you in work.’

There was a murmuring amongst the men and Trip waited until it had died down again.

‘Most of you here, but not all,’ again his glance found Percy, ‘will remember the time of the General Strike. I gave you that time off willingly because I didn’t want anyone running the gauntlet of the picket line, or being vilified for coming to work. And besides, I was on the side of the strikers, if truth be known. We weathered that together and, maybe, if you’d only spoken to me this time, I would have found a way to let some of you take time to show your solidarity for your fellow workmen from the North.’

He paused to let his statement sink in. Then his tone hardened. ‘But I am not the soft touch perhaps you think I am. I give willingly, I help others where I can, but nobody – nobody – takes from me.’

He looked around the assembled company and already a few were hanging their heads, understanding that this time they had taken advantage of a generous man a step too far.

‘If anything like this ever happens again, those taking part will be sacked without references.’

‘T’unions’d have summat to say about that,’ came the same voice from the back.

‘I don’t doubt that they would have, but I’ll fight them, if I have to. Just remember,’ Trip added, his tone frighteningly calm now. ‘My brother and I own this factory. We can close it down any time we like and walk away without a backward glance. Just think on, eh?’

He stepped down from the box where he’d been standing to speak to them all and marched out of the room, leaving his workforce stunned and not quite able to understand what had actually happened. Had they still got a job or were they all sacked?

‘What are we to do, Mester Richard?’

Richard hid his smile. ‘I should get back to your work pretty quick and keep your heads down.’

The men literally scuttled back to their machines until there was only one man left standing in the middle of the workshop.

‘What about me, Mester Richard?’ Percy Arnold asked. ‘I ’spect I’m on me bike, am I?’

Richard shrugged. ‘He didn’t say so, but I do think you’re on a final warning, Mr Arnold. Like my brother said, we can shut the doors any time we like – unions or no unions.’

With that he, too, turned and left.

Later, when Trip recounted the whole incident to Emily, her reply was surprisingly harsh. ‘We’ve done a lot to help that family, Trip. If he makes any more trouble for you, I’d get rid of him. Philanthropy only goes so far.’