The sun was shining when I came out of Manchester’s London Road Station that January afternoon. A good omen, I thought, for the start of my new life. For the second time that day I took a hansom - which made me feel guilty at the extravagance. I was not exactly used to travelling around in cabs.
At the Young Women’s Christian Association, I booked myself in for a week as I needed a place to stay and to store my luggage until I found my feet. I looked for furnished digs in the Manchester Evening News and I was spoilt for choice as there seemed to be hundreds of them if I wanted to live in one of the posh districts like Didsbury, Chorlton, or Whalley Range. Half of that part of Manchester seemed to be renting its rooms to the other half but it wasn’t so easy locating something suitable in Ancoats. Eventually I found a furnished room in Sherratt Court off Oldham Road, not far from my mam’s and Aunt Sarah’s. The ‘digs’ were nothing to write home about since they consisted of a small front parlour and the use of the lavatory in the back yard. Still, for three and six a week they would do until I could fix up more permanent arrangements.
The landlady, a Mrs Hudson, was a sourpuss and a fusspot. She was a small, thin woman of about fifty. She implied she was doing me a big favour letting a room to me.
‘I don’t let rooms as a rule but my husband’s an officer in the merchant navy and is away a lot. So I like a bit of company in the house.’
Anyone would have thought she was running the Ritz Hotel the way she inquired into my background, my family history and asked to see references. She was taken aback when I showed her one on printed notepaper from a Macclesfield family. Just the same, she couldn’t resist reciting the rules of the house.
‘You must not entertain men in your room.’ She sniffed. ‘You must not bring drink into the house. There must be no eating of food in the bedroom. Finally, you must keep your room clean and you must be in at night before ten because I lock the front door at that time.’
‘What if I’m visiting my mother and I’m a bit late?’ I asked. ‘If you’ll trust me to have a key, I would creep in quietly.’
‘No, it wouldn’t work,’ she replied, giving me a tight smile as if she was in pain. ‘I’m a light sleeper and I’d hear you. I’m sorry but I don’t issue keys to all and sundry.’
It didn’t sound promising but I had no choice. There was nothing else so near to Mam’s.
I promised to pay her two weeks in advance and to take up residence the following week.
The job market in Manchester was easy, though most of the jobs offered to women were the boring and repetitive kind - putting squiggles on chocolates, laundry work and that kind of thing. I rejected any idea of taking up domestic service again even though there were lots of posts for parlour maids and cooks available in places like Victoria Park and Fallowfield but five years of slavery had been enough for me. No, I wanted to be free to help my own family, and servants’ jobs were too tying. Apart from that, the pay in Manchester looked poor because many of the
households were small and employed only one or two servants.
As I sat in my little room in the YWCA, I looked at the Situations Vacant advertised in the Evening News and considered the possibilities. It seemed strange to be making career choices at the ripe old age of twenty-one. The opportunities seemed endless.
There were pages and pages of jobs for seamstresses in the Cheetham Hill district, making rainwear for firms like Weinberg’s, Greenberg’s, Frankenberg’s and all the other bergs. Hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the pay was piecework which meant sweated labour to make a living wage. I’d been top of the class in needlework at Swinton Industrial School but I had seen the effects of years of close stitching on some of the Ancoats women - many of them almost blind by the time they reached thirty. Definitely not for me.
What about a job with my mam in a bagging factory? Long hours in a stuffy atmosphere breathing in fuzz, hairs, and God knows what else. No thank you.
A barmaid in one of the many thousands of Manchester pubs? Once again, long hours but this time dealing with drunks, ruffians, and other forms of lowlife. And if by some mischance I landed up in a pub serving Chesters beer - the so-called fighting beer - it would be a matter of sorting out screeching women and brawling men at closing time every night. I’d no vocation for work like that and anyhow I associated bawdy drunken behaviour with McTavish in the workhouse.
The rest of the list seemed as gruesome. Corset and surgical appliance maker? Upholstery stuffer? Carding machine operator in a cotton mill? All equally loathsome. Then I saw a vacancy as an assistant in a large emporium. That was more like it, I said to myself - until I saw the
hours and pay. Eight shillings and sixpence a week for a ten-hour day. A genteel way of starving oneself to death. I’d about given up when my eye caught sight of a job at Westmacott’s, the mineral water firm in Ancoats. Hours: 8 to 6 with an hour off for dinner. Wage offered: fifteen shillings a week. Ideal, I thought, especially since it was only a stone’s throw from my own room and Mam’s place. Besides, Westmacott’s were famous in that part of Manchester. Everyone had heard of their tonic water and ginger ale.
Next day, I presented myself at reception and introduced myself to the boss, Declan Dowd, who welcomed me with open arms. Well, almost. He was a big, lanky, red-headed man with a ready smile, a loud laugh, and a walrus moustache. As we discussed the job, I was conscious of the noise of machines and the rattling of bottles from the works behind the office. One encouraging sound was the cheerful singing of the women as they did whatever it was that mineral water operatives did. The strains of ‘Lily of Laguna’ rang out, drowning the noise of the steam engine.
He looked at me closely. I suppose I was a bit too well- dressed for the job and I think I’d picked up a bit of a refined accent in Macclesfield.
‘Are you sure this is your sort of work?’ he asked. ‘It’s quite rough.’
I assured him I wanted the job as the wage was good and, most important for me, it wasn’t far from my mam’s.
‘Very well,’ he said at last: ‘We’ll take you on trial to see how you get on. We’ve been short-handed for weeks and so you’ll be most welcome. When can you start?’
‘Before I agree to take the job on,’ I replied, ‘can you tell me what it involves? I’ve not had training for work like this.’
‘No problem. We’ll give you training on the job. We also supply suitable clothing.’
‘Suitable clothing?’
‘For a start, you’ll need a waterproof overall and clogs as you’ll be working a lot in water. You’ll soon pick it up.’
I agreed to start on the Monday of the following week. I couldn’t help wondering what my old friends back in Macclesfield would have thought of my change in circumstances. Old Ned would have approved - ‘Good on you, Kate, me darlin’ ’; Mrs Armstrong would be disappointed that her culinary training had been wasted on a skivvy now labouring in a mineral water factory; James would look down his nose at such menial work; and Mrs Lamport- Smythe would be aghast that one of her ex-employees had sunk so low in the world. But who cared about them? It was a matter of survival in the rotten old world.
‘One thing I’ll say,’ laughed Declan Dowd. ‘We’re a happy ship and have a happy crew.’
‘No need to tell me that,’ I said. ‘I can hear it for myself.’
Before starting the new job, I had a week free to get myself and my mam organised. The sight of Mam’s furnished room was enough to fill anyone with dismay but I drew a few pounds out of my savings and we got down to beautifying the place.
Under the sink, under the table, and under the bed I found enough Guinness bottles to fill several crates and our first job was to collect them together. I lugged them round to the snug at the Land o’ Cakes and collected five shillings on the empties.
‘I’m not kidding, Mam,’ I said, as I loaded the crates on baby John’s pram, ‘you’ve enough bottles here to open up a brewery of your own.’
‘I didn’t drink that lot by myself,’ she protested. ‘I had help.’
Help, I thought. She meant Frank McGuinness and her stout-drinking cronies. I hoped we’d seen the back of them.
Mam was busy looking after her new baby, and so, I roped Uncle Barney in to help, despite his coughing and spluttering. The weather was dry and so we carried the big items of furniture - the table, sofa, bed, chairs - onto the pavement outside while we stripped the walls of the dark, depressing wallpaper.
‘People round here will think we’re doing a moonlight flit,’ Mam joked. I couldn’t remember when I’d last heard her trying to be funny and it did my heart good to see her laughing again.
Eddie joined in the fun of tearing off the five layers of paper we found stuck to the walls.
‘You know, our Kate,’ he said, ‘this wallpaper’s probably been holding up the house for the last fifty years. It belongs in a museum.’
‘A museum! Noah’s Ark more like. We’d better be quick and get the new stuff up,’ I said, ‘before the house falls around our ears.’
We dislodged a few bugs lurking in long-term residence behind the paper but we soon made short work of them with Jeyes Fluid. We visited a decorator’s shop on Butler Street and bought the things we needed - brushes, scrapers, paint, paste, and Mam chose a lovely paper with bluebells and buttercups.
We got back to the room, and standing on a table, I slapped the Walpamur on ceiling and upper walls. Next came the painting of the cornice, the picture rail, and the skirting board.
When all was dry, it was on with the bright flowery paper. Silently, I said a prayer of thanks to my teachers back at Swinton for their practical training. The room was
taking on a clean, fresh aspect and Mam was beaming with happiness. So was young Eddie.
Next, we bought new lace curtains, a linen tablecloth, and for the floor a colourful congoleum square and a patterned peg rug. We added the finishing touches with a new mirror and a picture of a stag entitled ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ by Sir Edwin Landseer which we unearthed at a second-hand stall on Tib Street market. Finally, I returned the jam jars they’d been using as cups and bought a willow crockery set from Shufflebotham’s on Rochdale Road and, while I was at it, a basic canteen of cutlery and a burgundy chenille table cover.
When all was finished I looked over our handiwork. Somehow, it didn’t look right. I’d missed something. What was it? Suddenly I saw what was wrong. Their clothes! They were shabby and out at the elbows. Didn’t go with the new decor. There was nothing for it but to take Mam and Eddie out to May’s, the outfitters on Butler Street, and buy them a completely new rig-out. And not wishing to leave out baby John, a layette and a pram set. Now the picture was complete.
This was a happy time for me. How I loved helping my family get things back together again, to see the light in Mam’s eyes as her place was transformed from a slum to an attractive living room. It set me back a few pounds and made a big hole in my hard-won savings, but what did it matter! For years I’d dreamt about this day of putting things right again. Then I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. I took Mam back to Solly’s pawnshop on a special errand, though, to be honest, I didn’t expect to have much luck in our quest. But miracle of miracles, the two items we were seeking were still there hidden away at the back of the shop, covered in dust but, amazingly, intact and unsold! Mam’s wall clock and her most precious possession, her
boat-shaped teapot! Although it cost me five pounds to redeem them - still the same old Solly, as tight-fisted as ever - it was worth every penny to see the delight on Mam’s face.
In the midst of this joy, though, there was a fly in the ointment. Frank McGuinness. Every day he put in an appearance. Heaving a big sigh as if the task of breathing in and out was too much for him, he flopped down in one of the chairs. With a large mug of tea in one hand and a Woodbine in the other, he kept up a flow of criticism and suggestion.
‘I’m pouring in sweat here watching you. I hate to say it but you’ve missed a bit there, Kate. I don’t think much of the colour you’ve chosen. You can see the joins in the wallpaper, Kate.’
I was ready to throw the paint tin at him.
‘Instead of pontificating,’ I said, ‘why don’t you get a brush, climb on a chair, and give some help.’
‘I’d love to help,’ he wheezed, puffing on his fag, ‘but I can’t do a thing because of my war wound.’
‘Where were you wounded?’ I asked impatiently.
‘Mafeking,’ he replied.
‘No, I mean which part of your body?’
‘Left buttock. Nearly had my arse shot away. It takes me all my time to stand up, never mind climb onto a chair with a bucket of whitewash.’
I noticed that he managed to drag himself round to the boozer each dinnertime, to spend some of his war pension. I wished somehow I could Wave a magic wand to make him disappear from the scene but Mam seemed to put up with him well enough; Understandable, I supposed. After all, he was the father of her child. Maybe I was being unfair and misjudging him but when we’d been going through hell in the workhouse, and in my lonelier moments
in service, I’d had lots of time to imagine this blissful moment when I would begin restoring the family home. Somehow, Frank McGuinness had never been part of that picture. I hoped Mam didn’t decide to marry him as I didn’t want him as stepfather ruling over us. The situation was complicated by the fact that he had two sons of his own living with his sister on Red Bank. In fairy tales, stepparents never seemed to work out. Was it the same in real life?