There was a brief interval of calm in which they sipped cups of strong tea. While Margaret composed herself, Annie told Aunt Harriet about their journey: the bus to Bristol, the train from Temple Meads station, the tram journey with Jack Sidwell. She did not mention the fainting fit on the tram, for which Margaret was grateful. She marvelled again at her little sister’s energy. Annie did not seem at all tired.
As Aunt Harriet was pouring them a second cup of tea, they heard faint sounds from the yard, voices and the clump of boots.
‘Ah – they’re coming out,’ Harriet said. Seeing their puzzled faces she said, ‘Eb’s shopping is at the back – that’s what we call the workshop where we make everything. There’s an entry –’ She nodded towards the back window. They could hear footsteps and voices, passing along the side of the house. ‘At least they don’t have to come through the house all the time. Although there’re Jack and Sid with their rooms upstairs, tramping in and out. That’s another reason we want to move – keeping the place clean is the devil.’
There came the sound of a deep, warm voice ‘pom-pomming’ tunefully somewhere along the passage at the back. A moment later the voice boomed, ‘Hatt?’
‘All right, love, we’re in here!’ Aunt Harriet smiled. ‘It’s Eb. He’ll be pleased to see you.’
‘So – have those young ladies . . . ? Ah!’ Their uncle stood at the doorway. ‘Here you are!’ Margaret smiled, the sight of him warming her heart. Although Uncle Eb and her mother did not exactly look alike, she could see Leah, her mother, in him and it was a great comfort. She knew for sure then that it had been right to come here and seek refuge with these kindly, reassuring people.
Uncle Eb was a solid, cheerful-looking man, his fleshy face topped by grizzled curly hair and, beneath a bulbous nose, a bushy grey moustache. Over white shirtsleeves he wore a dark weskit, shiny with age, curving at the front to cover a bow-window belly which protruded over dark-clad, also bowed, legs. He held his arms out, beaming.
‘So – our Young Ladies have arrived! Come on, wenches, come and give yer uncle a kiss!’
The girls got to their feet to be kissed and embraced. Uncle Eb smelt of chemicals and pipe tobacco.
‘Well . . .’ He held each one of them by the hand and gazed into their faces. ‘Look at you both! Is that you then, our Maggie – my word, she’s the image of her father, isn’t she, Hatt? And little Annie – gracious, I’ve never known who you take after, bab. You don’t favour your mother much, do yer?’
Annie shrugged, smiling. ‘I must be from under the gooseberry bush,’ she said and her uncle and aunt laughed.
‘Oh, I doubt that very much!’ Uncle Eb laughed. ‘Any road – you need a bolt hole? I can’t believe you young missionary wenches could be getting into too much mischief. What’s going on?’
‘Eb.’ Harriet’s voice was sharp. ‘Don’t start on the poor girls now. They’ve only just arrived.’
‘Oh, pardon me.’ Eb held his hands up in surrender. ‘There I go, both feet in as usual. Don’t mind me. What lovely wenches you are! Bit on the scrawny side, though – need feeding up, the pair of yer. Have a bit of cake? Make yourselves at home – our home is your home – Liberty Hall, eh, Hatt?’ He squeezed their hands, then let go. ‘Any tea left in that pot? Georgie’s still here – he’s coming in to see you as well.’
Seconds later their son Georgie, a tall, slender man, appeared at the door, and stood watching them, smiling. He was handsome, with dark hair and a sallow complexion, very obviously his mother’s son. He must be twenty-six now, Margaret thought, startled.
‘Margaret and Annie, isn’t it?’ He came and shook their hands shyly, but his brown eyes gave off liveliness and interest. ‘Nice that you could come – how long are you staying?’
‘They don’t know for sure yet,’ Aunt Hatt said as they looked at each other awkwardly. ‘Now, Georgie, stay for once and have a cup of tea with your cousins, won’t you?’ She looked at Margaret and Annie, pulling a face. ‘He’s always off somewhere, this one – for the firm, I mean.’
‘Can’t, Mother.’ He rolled his eyes comically. ‘Clara wants me home – or there’ll be trouble. He smiled at the girls. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow. Hope to see you then.’
‘Well, if you’ve really got to rush off again,’ Aunt Hatt said long-sufferingly, ‘before you go, you could carry these young girls’ bags upstairs for them.’
‘Of course,’ Georgie said, with a smile.
They heard his fast steps climb and descend the stairs and with further goodbyes, he disappeared.
‘He does most of the travelling for us because Eb won’t budge from home if he can possibly help it. Georgie’s even been to America!’ she said, clearly full of pride. ‘Mind you – I’m rather hoping, him being a married man now . . . Oh, and you’ll meet our little Jimmy . . .’
Aunt Hatt regaled them with stories of their grandson Jimmy, with whom she was obviously besotted. They would soon come to realize that most of the photographs on the mantel were of either Georgie or Jimmy. Georgie was Eb and Hatt’s only son and now he and his wife Clara had little Jimmy, they had decided to move out of their shared attic at number twenty-six. They had a newly built little house outside Birmingham, in a district called Handsworth. And it was close to there that Aunt Hatt and Uncle Eb were soon to move as well.
‘You’re lucky you caught us when you did,’ Aunt Harriet told them later as they ate Mrs Sullivan’s meal of brown stew with beans and potatoes which, Margaret found, went down very comfortingly. ‘Since Georgie got his own place we decided to move out ourselves – into the country. So we’ll be gone in a few months. We’ll have to take them out there and show them while they’re here, won’t we, Eb?’
They were all seated in the soft lamplight of the cluttered, cosy room. It was very warm and stuffy on this hot night, even with the window open on to the yard. Eb sat in his place at the head of the table, his napkin tucked into his collar almost as if he was at the barber’s.
‘Lucky for you we hadn’t rented out Georgie’s room!’ he said, through a hearty mouthful.
‘Do you need more space, Uncle?’ Margaret asked. She was increasingly aware of a painful throb in her temples; she felt utterly exhausted and was struggling to keep up a conversation. Eb chewed mightily and swallowed, wiping his moustache on the back of his hand.
‘Napkin, Eb! What do I give you a napkin for?’ Harriet scolded.
‘There’s always someone wants a workshop,’ he said, making apologetic use of his napkin. ‘I’ve got my shopping out the back, as you can see . . .’ He held his arm towards the window where another building loomed very close to the house. ‘But when we move out we can have all these extra rooms bringing in rent.’ He smiled jovially at this thought.
‘And we can extend the office into here,’ Aunt Hatt said, looking round the room.
‘Hmm.’ Her husband’s mouth was presently occupied with potato.
‘No, Eb – you’re not renting this out as well – we’ve hardly room to turn round in there,’ Aunt Hatt said heatedly. ‘We’re practically sitting on each other’s knees . . .’
Eb, still chewing, looked round at them all and gave a wink.
‘Don’t mind him – he just likes to mither me,’ Aunt Hatt said.
‘So these houses have a good many different businesses in them?’ Annie asked. She looked much revived, after food. Margaret was grateful to her for keeping up the conversation. ‘Mother used to tell us about it.’
They had grown up hearing stories from Leah Hanson about this district spreading north from the heart of Birmingham, on what was once the old Colmore estate – also known as Hockley.
‘We’re very interested to see,’ Annie went on. ‘There are so many different trades!’
‘Ar – there’s a fair few,’ Eb agreed. ‘Some places round here have a different firm in every room. Next door, see – downstairs is all Tallis’s place. He’s a silversmith. Bit of an oddity, Tallis.’
Margaret wondered about this description. ‘What does he make?’ she managed to ask.
‘Oh, a variety – condiments sets and napkin rings, candlesticks, all sorts,’ Eb said.
‘He does very nice silver-backed dressing-table sets,’ Aunt Hatt added.
‘Yes, and there’s a sports line – tankards, trophy cups. He’s an engraver so they do a line in that. Any road, that’s Tallis – smaller outfit than we’ve got here but he does fine work. Then upstairs, there’s – Caleb Turner, he’s a die sinker. Good lad, Turner is – does quite a bit for us. See, us, we live at the back of this house. So up there –’ he nodded towards the ceiling at the front – ‘there’s Sid Cole. We gave ’im the front room for the light. Gem setter, ’e is. A good’un. Does a lot for me an’ all – lives in there too, he does. And there’s Jack the lad in the back attic, who you met. Enamelling’s his line.’
‘Does he live here as well?’ Annie asked with a twinkle at Margaret.
‘Our Jack? Oh, no – lives round the corner, with his mother. I think she’s hoping he’ll find himself a lady sooner or later – poor old Jack. He don’t seem to have much luck in that department.’
‘We saw the plates on the wall next door,’ Annie said. ‘Die sinkers . . . What’s a die sinker, Uncle Eb?’
Eb finished his mouthful, swallowing with dignity and setting his knife and fork down; then he pulled his pipe and a leather pouch from his pocket and began to stuff the pipe bowl with tobacco. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘anything you make, out of metal, like – see that brooch Hatt’s wearing?’ He pointed the pipe at his wife.
Aunt Harriet leaned forward to show them a gilt-edged brooch, intricately designed with a classical-looking head wreathed in leaves, and more flowers and tendrils around it, all in vivid-coloured enamel.
‘Anything like this that you’re going to make, first you’ve got to design it – just on paper, like. Then, to get it so you can stamp it out of metal, you’ve got to have a punch and a die with the design engraved in it – two bits of metal that fit into each other. The patterns in ’em are all cut by hand – that’s what being a die sinker is. I’ve got shelves of them. You put your bit of metal on – copper or zinc and the like – between the two sides and you stamp the design into them. You can come and see the workshop tomorrow.’
‘It’s so small and so complicated – however do they do it?’ Margaret exclaimed. The colours seemed to call to her, their brightness reviving her the way the vividness of flowers did in the spring. ‘It’s beautiful!’
‘It is.’ Eb took a sip from his glass of stout – its appearance a shock for Margaret and Annie. Alcohol never crossed the threshold of their own home. The drink left a milky froth on Eb’s moustache. Then he lit up the pipe, puffing with obvious enjoyment.
‘There’s no shortage of skilled men around here – and a few wenches, at that. They say there’s about thirty thousand people working just in this part of Brummagem. Oh – and while we’re on that subject –’ He sat up straighter and looked at his nieces with a twinkle. ‘There’s the question of what you young ladies are going to do while you’re here? Extra pairs of hands – we can soon put you to work . . .’
Margaret felt dismayed. She had not thought of this. What on earth did Uncle expect them to do? But Annie sat up straight.
‘Oh, yes!’ she began, but Aunt Hatt cut in.
‘Eb! Not now, you terrible man. These poor girls have only just arrived. Their heads must be spinning! There’s no earthly need for them to work – surely they won’t be here long enough for that? And we certainly don’t need to talk about anything like that tonight.’
‘All right.’ Eb held his hands up in surrender. ‘Very good, very good. Eh – you wenches . . .’ He leaned forward with a grin. You tell me this then: what’s the difference between a tube and a foolish Dutchman?’ He paused, triumphantly. ‘No idea? Well – I’ll tell you – one is a hollow cylinder and the other a silly Hollander!’
Their baffled faces and Aunt Hatt’s severe look dared him to say another word.
‘Don’t mind him and his jokes,’ she said.
‘But I want to do something,’ Annie insisted, as if there had been no interruption to the conversation. ‘To earn my keep, for a start. And I want to see what life is like for . . . for people who work in factories, for people outside the village. I want to know about life.’
‘Annie!’ Margaret interrupted. ‘Don’t be so silly. You can’t seriously be thinking about . . .’
But even Margaret found Aunt Hatt’s glare directed at her and she subsided. An awkward silence had grown up in the room.
‘Now,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘What about some plum pudding and custard?’ And then you girls can have another nice cup of tea and we’ll let you go up to bed. You look ready to drop, the pair of you. I’ll put some water on the boil for you.’ She smiled at them with concern and said kindly, ‘It’ll all look better in the morning.’