Though I’d had the row with Mam and was living in lodgings again, there followed a happy period. The Friday night trip to the theatre became a regular feature for the six of us and one we looked forward to eagerly to round off the week. Manchester had its own theatreland concentrated along Peter Street and Oxford Street and many of the top artistes of the day came, sometimes to try out an act before putting it on in London’s West End. If a show went down well in Manchester, it would have no problem elsewhere because it used to be said (mainly by Manchester people, I think) that ‘what Manchester thinks today, the rest of the world thinks tomorrow’. So over the weeks we saw some of the greatest performers of the variety world, people like George Robey, George Formby (Senior), Harry Champion (Boiled Beef and Carrots ), and Florrie Forde with her song ‘Oh! Oh! Antonio!’.
One Friday, Angela booked seats at the newly opened cinema and we saw Mary Pickford in a film called Her First Biscuits. The placards outside described her as ‘the world’s sweetheart’. We loved her from the moment we set eyes on her.
‘She’s not a patch on you,’ Tommy said to me as we came out.
‘Flatterer,’ I said. ‘Mary Pickford is the most beautiful
girl in the world. It says so on the poster.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘She’s only a flickering shadow on a screen but you’re the real thing, flesh and blood, and she can’t hold a candle to you.’
After a while, Angela began organising outings for Sunday afternoons; she never seemed to run out of ideas. One Sunday, it was a cruise down the Manchester Ship Canal on the SS Maud which boasted its own resident banjo player to serenade us all the way to Warrington and back. Another week, we paid a visit to Belle Vue Zoo to gawp at the animals. In the elephant house, Jumbo held out his trunk across the little moat and touched Jimmy to beg for a bun. Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and held up his hands apologetically to show he had nothing. Slowly, the elephant withdrew its trunk, dipped it in the water and deliberately soaked Jimmy from head to foot. It wasn’t funny and we had to go into a cafe to dry poor old Jimmy off. But if it wasn’t funny, why were the rest of us giggling for the rest of the day?
‘I don’t know about that saying elephants never forget,’ Tommy remarked. ‘Somehow, I think Jimmy will never forget that elephant.’
As the months rolled by, we kept up our Friday night routine but we began to meet during the week as couples as well. Jimmy and Angela had a longstanding courtship, of course, but Danny now went out with Hilda, and I with Tommy.
One Friday night Tommy and I decided to go all posh and as a change from variety book seats to see a play by Stanley Houghton at Miss Annie Horniman’s newly opened Gaiety Theatre in Peter Street. For me, it was a night of drama all right. At the interval, Tommy went into the crowded bar to buy cigarettes and a couple of drinks. I waited outside and then I saw him. Bernard Sheridan! He
was talking with a group of friends. The sight of him set my heart fluttering wildly. I turned away, hoping he wouldn’t see me, but too late! He broke away from his circle and with a broad smile on his face came over to me.
‘Kate,’ he said, kissing my hand. ‘How wonderful to see you again. You look as charming as ever! What are you doing here at the Gaiety?’
‘The same as you, Bernard. I’ve come to see the play. Is Miss Emma with you?’ I asked, looking over his shoulder for her.
‘That fell through, Kate,’ he said, looking deeply into my eyes. ‘Emma was so wrapped up in her social work and women’s emancipation that she hardly had time for me. What about you? Are you still in service?’
‘Not now, Bernard. I’ve changed my job. So many things have happened since the Macclesfield days.’
‘Look, we must meet up some time and share our news. There’s usually a change of play every week and if you’re at the theatre maybe we’ll see each other one of these nights. Perhaps we can have a quick drink in the interval or something.’
From the corner of my eye, I could see Tommy returning with the drinks.
‘I don’t think so, Bernard,’ I mumbled. ‘My life is different now and I. . .’
‘I understand, Kate,’ he said quickly. ‘Not to worry. But it would be nice to have a chat about the old days in Macclesfield. I work in our bank’s head office here in Manchester now so maybe we’ll run into each other some time - the town can’t be that big. Anyway, great seeing you again, Kate.’ He shook my hand warmly and strode off to rejoin his friends.
‘Who was that?’ Tommy asked. ‘He seemed to be on friendly terms with you.’
‘No one important,’ I replied. ‘An old friend of the family I used to work for.’
Tommy seemed happy with my answer and changed the subject to a discussion of the play we’d come to see. I hoped my feelings were not apparent because inside I was in turmoil.
I hardly paid any attention to the play in the second half. All kinds of ideas buzzed round my head. I thought I’d forgotten Bernard Sheridan and that I’d got over him. I’d put it down to a stupid infatuation. If that was so, why did I feel so confused? I’d dismissed any feelings I’d had for him a long time ago and accepted that he and I lived in two different social worlds. When Miss Emma had announced her engagement on the morning I took in her tea, that had sealed it once and for all. Now he was back, as handsome as ever, and I was all mixed up. He seemed interested in seeing me again. Maybe there was a chance for me after all, now that Miss Emma had bowed out of the picture. Bernard was educated, well-off and in a job with wonderful prospects.
For the rest of that week, my head was in a whirl. What to do? Should I go to the theatre alone next week in the hope of meeting Bernard or should I stick to my early decision to forget him? Perhaps I was being stupid and letting my imagination run away with me.
Amongst my own little group, it was now accepted that Tommy and I were courting, or walking out. And when I use the word ‘walking’ I don’t use it lightly because for Tommy, walking was walking!
‘Going training tonight’, he would say.
‘What, on a Sunday night in winter!’
‘Got to keep fit.’ He would grin, hold out his arm, and say, ‘Get your leg in bed.’That meant linking. Off we’d go and he walked my feet off. We weren’t exactly the romantic
types though we did manage the occasional kiss and cuddle, but that was as far as it went.
Tommy worked hard during the week but on Saturday afternoons he played football for a team on Newton Heath loco recreation ground. And for that he had to keep in training. All very well, but I didn’t see why I had to keep in training as well. In the evenings we walked - maybe marched is a better word - for miles and miles. We’d set off from Ancoats and end up five or six miles away in places like Crumpsall, and on one occasion as far away as Moston. It was there that Tommy’s stammer nearly got us in trouble. We went to quench our thirst in the Ben Brierley and I asked for a glass of shandy. Tommy went up to the bar to get the drinks.
‘A pint of mild,’ he said, ‘and a glass of sh-sh-sh shandy.’ He managed to get the word out at last.
‘Here, you!’ the bartender barked. ‘No more for you! You’ve had enough already.’
‘Don’t you “you” me, you!’ Tommy shouted angrily. ‘Give me the bloody drinks before I land you one.’ He grabbed the man by the lapels and was about to nut him. I could see there was trouble so I hurried over to the bar to calm things down.
‘Sorry,’ I said to the bartender. ‘Tommy here has not had a single drink today, I can vouch for that. He has a slight problem getting the words out. Now please, could we have a pint of mild and a shandy?’
Tommy and the barman cooled down. We got the drinks and went to our places in the corner. Tommy took a Player’s Weight from his packet and lit up.
‘I don’t really stammer, Kate,’ he said. ‘Well, not much anyway. Just with words beginning with “sh”.’
‘Then I won’t ask you to say “Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers,” ’ I said with a laugh.
Tommy returned the laugh. ‘Nor tongue-twisters,’ he said, ‘like “She sells sea-shells on the sea shore”.’
‘But you said that perfectly. So what’s the problem?’
‘It’s only when I have to speak to a stranger or I’m nervous that I get tense and start to stammer.’
‘You’re going to have to learn to relax, to take a deep breath before you speak. And when you do, speak slowly and calmly. Don’t get excited. But apart from that,Tommy, how long have you had the stammer?’
‘As long as I can remember. As a kid I got knocked around a bit and I’m not sure but maybe that has something to do with it.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Tommy lit another cigarette. ‘Are you sure you want to hear about it?’ he asked anxiously.
‘I’m sure.’ And indeed I was sure as I’d never seen Tommy blow his top like he’d done at the bar. There had to be some explanation as he was usually gentle and as mild as milk.
‘Very well, you asked for it. I don’t remember much about my early childhood but my old Aunt Julia tells me my mother and father were a happy couple at first. He was a tailor in one of the rainproof factories in the Strangeways district and earned a good wage. They had their own little house in North Kent Street in Ancoats. Then tragedy struck. According to the death certificate, he died of spinal meningitis and my mother Mary was left to fend for herself.’
‘That’s terrible, Tommy. How old were you?’
‘I was three years old and so I don’t remember much about my father but he was only twenty-five when he died and my mother was twenty two.’
‘Your mother must have been heartbroken. How did she get by with her husband gone?’
‘She was a bracemaker at Blair’s and though her wage wasn’t good, she managed to make ends meet,’ he said, pulling on his cigarette. He wasn’t finding it easy to tell his story.
‘I remember that firm on Oldham Road,’ I said. ‘They made braces and corsets with genuine leather - solid so that they lasted.’
‘That’s right. Anyroad, my mother had to give up the house ’cos she couldn’t afford the rent and so we went into lodgings in North Kent Street. She used to leave me at the top of Gould Street with my butties whilst she went off to work. She would kiss me and say, “Now go straight to school, son. I’ll see you tonight when I get home.” All I had to do was run down Roger Street and she went to Blair’s on Ancoats Lane.’
‘Your mother was a brave woman.’
‘She was that all right. When I was about seven - and I remember this part only too well - tragedy struck for the second time. You see, I slept in the same bed, it was the only bed, with my mother. During the night, she complained of a terrible thirst and asked me to get her a drink of water from the tap outside. I did so and she drank it right down in one go. She cuddled me in her arms and we settled down for the night.’
I hardly dared to breathe when I asked, ‘What then?’
‘Next morning when I awoke, she was still holding me tightly to her breast.’
‘And?’ . .
‘She was dead. The doctors put her death down to angina pectoris - whatever that is. They had to force her arms open to pull me out.’
‘Oh, my God, Tommy. And you only seven.’
‘I was seven and my mother was twenty-six. I was an orphan and the big question was: what to do with me?
There was some talk of putting me in the workhouse.’
‘I pray to God that they didn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve had some and I know what it’s like.’
‘No, I was spared the Bastille but sometimes I wonder whether it might have been better than where I landed up. My mother had a married sister by the name of Dorothy Langley and after a lot of humming and hahing, they agreed to take me in. Everyone knew me as Tommy Langley but I never forgot I was a Hopkins.’
‘You said they were worse than the workhouse. I don’t think anything could be worse, Tommy.’
Tommy’s hands were shaking as he went on with his story.
‘The Langleys lived in Almond Street off Rochdale Road and there was this old grandad who’d lost an eye in the American war. He used to belt the living daylights out of me with a horsewhip for the slightest thing. One day I was playing ball with some lads and we broke a street lamp. The others managed to get away but I was caught by a policeman and taken home by the scruff of the neck. That old grandad didn’t half lay into me with his whip.’
‘He reminds me of our workhouse master who tried to do the same thing with my young brother Danny. Such people should be locked up. But how did you come to end up in Smithfield Market?’
‘Since I was an orphan, I was allowed to attend school part-time. So every afternoon they sent me to work in Smithfield Market driving a pony and cart delivering fruit and vegetables all round the district until late at night. I was so exhausted at the end of each day, many’s the time I slept in the stable with the pony.’
‘You must have got out of their clutches at the finish.’
‘I did and all. Being market people, the Langleys were heavy drinkers. One Friday night when I was about sixteen
- I was a market porter by this time - I came home after a long day and found them all half canned. “Hey up!” I heard the grandad say. “Here’s our Thomas home with his wages” (they always called me Thomas when they wanted something) - “we’ll be all right now for a jug of ale.” It was then that I wrapped up my shirt and got out.’
‘That’s when you got your present lodgings, I suppose.’
‘Not by a long chalk. I had to go through a few before I found my present place.’Tommy chuckled at the memory of his first experiences at going it alone. It was good that he could see the funny side of a situation and a relief to know that hardship hadn’t destroyed his sense of humour. Not only that, I loved his attractive, infectious laugh.
‘A mate of mine in the market recommended a place called Cain’s Lodging House on Shudehill. “You pay half- a-crown,” this lad told me, “and you’ll get a bed and a box to store your things.” That meant my shirt! “You buy and cook your own food,” this mate said. “Be independent!” I didn’t much like the look of the place. There were a lot of old men and lots of boozers and that. Anyroad, I got myself a few groceries - bread, butter and tea - but the next morning when I went to get the stuff out, I found a great big beetle on the bread. That was enough. I lapped up my shirt for the second time and moved on.’
‘It could have been worse.’ I giggled. ‘You could have eaten the beetle. Joking apart, your life story could have come straight out of Charlie Dickens. So what happened next?’
Tommy was now smiling broadly and enjoying himself. ‘One of the lads called Billy Ingrams on Deakin’s market stall told me that his mother - a widow - sometimes took in lodgers. I went along and she seemed a nice old lady and the house looked clean. Nothing can go wrong here, I thought. I’d been there about a week and I came home a
bit late. They’d already had their tea - bacon and cheese - it sounded good. But when I saw their dog licking the frying pan that my tea was going to be cooked in, I thought it was time to call it a day.’
As I listened to Tommy, a part of my mind compared him to Bernard Sheridan. Tommy had neither prospects nor money. He certainly wasn’t as handsome as Bernard, yet there was an indefinable something about Tommy that attracted me. Perhaps it was his quiet modesty and cheerful optimism that I found irresistible. Like me, he’d been through the mill and survived.
That night, he and I sat together in the corner of the Ben Brierley laughing and crying our hearts out, and when he’d finished telling his story, I knew that Tommy was the only man for me. We talked the same language and there was a bond of understanding between us. I forgot all about Bernard Sheridan and his glittering prospects. He could find one of his own kind to share his wealth. As for me. I’d spent half my life trying to recapture my early childhood bliss but from now on I decided I would devote my time trying to make up for everything that fate had done to this man sitting before me. I’d make it my aim to bring him happiness. We’d been through such rough times and had laughed at the same kinds of daft situations that I knew we were meant for each other.