Everyone ignored Annie as she settled at her press the next morning. After all the business over piecework, she had looked around her cautiously as she clocked in. She was ashamed that she felt so wary of some of the women – afraid, in fact. She found it hard to admit, but she had made bad mistakes in her first weeks at the factory and now she was anxious to make up for them. It was an unusual feeling for her to have to be humble.
I mustn’t work too fast, she thought. It cut against her pride, her competitive nature. But she could see she was only going to make trouble for herself. And the effort had also been truly exhausting.
Doris was blathering on as usual in her booming voice. The other women all greeted Lizzie and joked and chatted with each other. Annie felt a pang of loneliness.
Lizzie sat on her stool not looking from one side to the other. Annie wondered if the other women had warned even sweet-faced Lizzie not to talk to her and her loneliness increased until she remembered that Lizzie had been feeling unwell the day before, saying she felt sick, and she had not eaten anything at dinner time. She did look pale, Annie thought, glancing round at her.
The bell rang and everyone set to, the rhythmic stamp of the presses all along the room. Annie worked steadily but not too fast. Better to lose wages, she thought, than turn everyone against her.
It was hard to look about you anywhere when you were working and it was not until later in the morning that she heard a disturbance.
‘No one’s allowed out of here until one o’clock, you know that, Lizzie Poole.’
‘I’ve got to, Miss Hinks.’ Lizzie’s voice came low but urgent. She said something else that no one could hear.
‘Well –’ Miss Hinks sounded very displeased. ‘I suppose you’ll have to then . . .’
Miss Hinks, though austere and usually unbending, let Lizzie out of the room.
‘Well, I never,’ someone else remarked. ‘There’s not many can sweet-talk old Hinky.’
Lizzie came back in later, head down, and carried on working.
When the bell rang at one, Annie stopped work, pulling back her aching shoulders. Lizzie’s scrawny form was slumped over the bench next to her press, head resting on her arms.
‘Hey, Lizzie,’ Hilda called. ‘What’s up with you today then?’
There was no answer. Hilda and another of the women went over to her.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Annie heard Lizzie say. She got to her feet, forcing a smile even though she was as white as a sheet.
‘All right, then, bab.’ Hilda and the other woman moved away. ‘Get some food inside yer and you’ll feel better.’
When Annie came back from her dinner break, she went out to the lavatories in the yard. There were two for the men, two for the women. Both the women’s were occupied so she waited by the rough wooden doors. There was a gap under each and from inside one she heard the sound of someone being sick, followed by a wretched moan. It was a long time before the door opened and other women were coming up, complaining.
‘Hurry up in there!’ One of them elbowed Annie sharply out of the way and banged on each door. ‘You ain’t the only one as needs to go, yer know!’
The other door opened and as someone came out, the woman pushed in there without a backward look at Annie.
Charming, Annie thought, flushing with annoyance.
It was Lizzie who emerged from the second lavatory and Annie was shocked by the look of her. She was half bent over, her face pale and shiny with perspiration, seeming hardly able to get along. But by the time Annie had hurried in and done her business, Lizzie was back at her work place. Annie cast nervous glances at her when she could. She had often visited people who were sick in the village, taking gifts of food or remedies from their mother, offering to help in any way she could. The one thing she had never been able to get over was feeling sick in sympathy with other people and all afternoon her stomach was queasy on Lizzie’s behalf.
It seemed an age until the evening bell rang. As soon as the presses were stilled and the others were hurrying away, she went over to Lizzie, who was sitting resting her forehead on her hand.
‘Lizzie?’ she said timidly.
‘What?’ Even though Lizzie’s voice was faint, she sounded hostile, as if she just could not rise to another thing, even talking to anyone.
Annie felt foolish. Here she was, with big dreams of preaching, and she hardly had the first idea how to conduct even a simple conversation in this place! She found it impossible to join in with any of the chat about husbands and suitors, wedding plans and children – let alone the earthy sense of humour which was entirely new to her. But it did feel as if, by keeping quiet and just getting on with her work, she would gradually be accepted. One or two of the shyer girls had given her a nod in passing, as if in sympathy, and it warmed her heart. She was surprised how much she discovered she longed to fit into this strange place.
‘I . . .’ She struggled for the right words. ‘I can see you’re not very well. I just wondered if you wanted any help?’
Lizzie raised her head. Her eyes were sunken and she looked very pale and sick.
‘What d’yer think you’re gunna do to help me?’ she said sarcastically. ‘I just need to get ’ome, that’s all.’
‘D’you live far?’
A slight shake of the head.
‘Perhaps you should have gone home earlier,’ Annie ventured. She was trying to help. All her upbringing had conditioned her to help, but Lizzie did not seem in the least grateful for this. ‘You look really poorly.’
But at this show of sympathy, Lizzie burst into sobs, clutching her face and her body shaking. Annie saw that her young hands were rough and chapped, the nails bitten to the quicks.
Scared of being rejected, but moved by this pent-up suffering, Annie gently touched her shoulder.
‘We’ve got to get out of here. Let me help you get home, Lizzie.’ She spoke very gently. ‘I don’t mean any harm to you. You do look very ill.’
Lizzie caved in like a rag doll. She slid from her stool and Annie took her arm. Slowly they made their way out to the street, where the lamplighter was already lighting up the dusk.
Lizzie told her she lived in Pope Street. The very name of it repelled Annie. She wondered if the street was populated by Roman Catholics, who to Annie inhabited a foreign country, full of dark superstition and lurid, bloodstained statues.
And Pope Street after sundown seemed to Annie the darkest, most threatening place she had ever been. They moved away from the main factories of the quarter into long, mean side streets, poorly lit, with rough, uneven cobbles in the road and the houses like black crouching shapes in the gathering dusk. It was a cool night and a stinking fog was gathering, yellow tinged, blurring the edges of everything. At intervals, she saw the blacker, yawning mouths of alleyways, or entries as they were called here, looking like places for deeds that the eye would not want to see. There were a few people, men mostly, standing smoking or slouched against the wall as if waiting, in a way that she could only think sinister. The light was fading fast now and she was glad of Lizzie beside her.
Arm in arm, they passed along the darkening pavements, amid the people hurrying from the factories and workshops towards hearths and evening meals. Lights were on in the many pubs and Annie regarded them with as much horror as she did Catholics. She had had to get used to the idea that her uncle spent several hours each week in his favourite watering hole, the Jewellers’ Arms. Alcohol never touched the lips of her family who looked upon public houses as the cradles of evil deeds and family neglect.
She shuddered as a gust of air, loud with raucous voices and laced with beer and tobacco, burned inside her nostrils like the harsh stink of sin. The night-time streets shocked and frightened her and she held herself tightly as a defence against them.
Lizzie revived a little in the fresh air, but after a few minutes she had to stop and rest, leaning against a wall.
‘I dunno how I’m gunna get in tomorrow,’ she muttered faintly. ‘I feel that bad.’
‘Oh, Lizzie,’ Annie said. ‘You’re very poorly – you must stay in bed.’
‘Huh.’ Lizzie made a bitter sound, almost a laugh. ‘How d’yer think I can stay in bed? If I don’t work, no one’ll eat. Mom’s worse than me.’
Annie stared at her in horror. Lizzie was bent over, pressing her hands on her thighs. Standing upright made her feel sicker.
‘But Lizzie, what about your father? Doesn’t he keep the family?’
‘He’s . . . gone.’ It was costing her to speak.
Gone. Harsh, judgemental thoughts filled Annie’s mind. An abandoned family!
‘And . . . who is in your family?’
‘Our mom – and my brother and sisters . . .’
Annie looked at the pathetic figure curled against a sooty factory wall and was filled with rage. A feckless man, no doubt drinking down his wages and taking off when responsibility no longer suited him – off to sow his seed elsewhere, leaving his family close to destitution. Hadn’t she heard this sorry story so many times before! She felt as if the Lord stood in righteousness at her shoulder and she was filled with anger and exaltation. So – here was her mission, in a different guise! This was the beginning.
‘Come on, Lizzie,’ she said in a steely voice. ‘Look, let me put my arm round your waist. We must get you home.’
Lizzie found her way as if the street was a part of her own body. Soon she stopped at one of the entries.
‘You’d better loose me,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not very wide.’
Annie obeyed, but to her relief, Lizzie caught her hand and led her along the black slit, where the fetid stenches seemed to linger and gather strength. She thanked God that she had at least already looked along one of these alleyways in daylight, or now she would have been utterly terrified.
There was dim light at the end. As they emerged into the yard, she saw a gas lamp bracketed to the wall in the middle of the row of back houses, giving off a miserly light, as if even the gas supply was poorer in this district. The air was so thick with the stench of dry pan lavatories, of chemicals and smoke, that the foreign concoction of smells was making her just as nervous as the dark strangeness of the place. She found herself glad of the shrouding dusk, afraid of what daylight might show her. Sounds came from the houses: voices, a rhythmic banging from the end of the yard like someone putting an axe through wood, and somewhere, a young child was letting out a grizzling cry.
‘Watch it –’ Lizzie pulled her away from a black pool gathered in a low point of the uneven brick yard. ‘You don’t need to come with me – I’m home now.’ Lizzie pointed at the crouching row of houses. Even sick as she was, the girl seemed ashamed at the idea of taking anybody inside.
Only then did it dawn on Annie that she was somehow going to have to get home again through this dark warren. She had not paid much attention to where they were going.
‘It’s all right, Lizzie,’ she said, bracing herself. ‘I can come and meet your family. And you’ll have to tell me the way back again.’
‘All right,’ Lizzie said doubtfully, but she had no energy to argue. ‘My brother can go with yer.’
She pushed the door open. Inside, Annie saw the wavering light of a candle and the sound of the crying child grew louder.