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‘It’ll be all right, Ma.’ Ethel stopped pushing clothes into the bag so that her hands were free to hug her mother. The older woman shrank back – they’d never been a family who touched or displayed emotion. But, after a moment, she relaxed and accepted her daughter’s embrace. Ethel tightened her hold, surprised by the sharpness of her mother’s shoulder blades and the wave of emotion this provoked within her.
A tear trickled down her mother’s face.
‘I’ll miss you, hen.’ She scrubbed the moisture away with a hand as wizened as her cheek.
Ethel turned back to her packing.
‘I need to get this finished before Da comes home.’ She shivered at the thought. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d suffered from her da’s fists, but she had no intention of staying and being one more punch-bag for him.
She pulled the top of the bag closed and took a final look around the only home she’d ever known. Two damp, dilapidated rooms, similar in size and layout to every tenement house in Dundee. The front room, known as the kitchen, connected to the front door by a tiny lobby. This was where the family ate, washed, slept and lived. Another door at the rear of this room led into a box-room.
The kitchen was a spartan place, containing a jawbox sink in front of the dingy, net-covered window which looked out on to the shared landing. On the opposite wall, an ash-filled fireplace, in sore need of the black leading brush, held a dead fire that rarely blazed. The table in the centre of the room was strewn with the remains of the last meal. Milk in a bottle, sugar still in its bag, and dirty plates and cups littered the surface, leaving scant space for anything else. An unmade bed, partially hidden in a curtained alcove, awaited its night-time occupants.
Her ma had brought up eight kids in these two rooms while her husband spent his life in the pub. Ethel was the only one who had remained. The rest of them had fled as soon as they were old enough.
Ethel remembered her ma when she was younger. Not that she was old now, although she looked more like a woman of sixty-five than the forty-five she was. Ma had been bonnie then, but Da had beaten that out of her over the years. There was no way Ethel meant to fall into the same trap. Men! She’d see a man in hell before she’d take one.
‘I can’t come back, Ma. You know that, don’t you?’ She looked at the older woman with troubled, brown eyes. They were a warmer, deeper, more vibrant version of her mother’s.
Margery Stewart nodded.
‘He’d have the hide off me if I returned.’ She grasped her mother’s hands. ‘I love you, Ma.’ She’d never told her mother this before and it embarrassed her. Hugging her one final time, Ethel ran out of the door, leaving behind her childhood home and all the poverty and dirt and hurt it contained.
She fled along the landing, a stone platform suspended in mid-air which provided a passage from the central stairwell to each individual house. These platforms, known locally as platties, jutted out behind all the Dundee tenements. No one knew what miracle stopped these platties, and the stairs that led on to them, from collapsing; though that was one worry which didn’t enter Ethel’s mind as her feet clattered along the stone surface.
Several sets of grubby net curtains twitched as she ran past and a new worry took root. What if someone followed her? What if they told her da where she’d gone? It didn’t bear thinking about. She didn’t stop running until she reached the foot of the Hilltown. Da never frequented the town centre and rarely came this far down the steep hill. He preferred the drinking howffs nearer to home. Ethel leaned against a wall, waiting until she stopped gasping and her breath became more even, then she started to move forward again, walking at a more sedate pace.
* * *
MARGERY STEWART WATCHED her daughter leave the house. Ethel was her youngest child, her favourite, but she wouldn’t stop her from going. She’d done her best for the child but knew it hadn’t been enough. Ethel was twenty-one now, her own person, and she could do what she wanted. But Hughie never saw it that way. A shudder passed through her slight frame. Hughie looked on Ethel as his possession in the same way Margery had become his to do with as he wished when they married.
Hughie wouldn’t like it when he found out Ethel had defied him and left home. Margery clasped her hands around her middle, already feeling the blows to come. If Ethel wasn’t here, he’d take it out on her. She moaned gently in anticipation, a wounded sound which seemed to emanate right from her heart. And yet, she was glad for her girl. Ethel had escaped and, so long as she wasn’t fool enough to return to this dingy house, Margery knew her youngest daughter would do all right for herself.
Margery stood. She’d best get food ready for when Hughie came home from the pub. It would be one less excuse to hit her. Not that he ever needed one, but it didn’t pay to antagonise him. She opened the paper bag sitting on the table. It contained one meat pie. That would do for Hughie; it didn’t matter for herself, which was just as well, because she’d only had enough money for one, and Hughie wasn’t the sharing kind. She scrabbled under the sink for two potatoes and, running the tap, started to peel them.
Once the potatoes were cooking and the pie was in the oven, she cleared a space on the table for her husband’s meal. She threw the dirty dishes into the sink, swilled a dirty cup under the tap and replaced it, sniffed the milk to make sure it hadn’t soured and placed a knife and fork at the empty place.
She should tidy herself now but was too tired to care what she looked like. Her dusty, brown hair straggled in rats’ tails on her neck, and she spent her whole life in her mill clothes. What was the point of doing anything else? Hughie never noticed, and anyway, it didn’t matter if she got blood on her working clothes.
There was a blankness in her brown eyes as she stared at her surroundings. What did anything matter any more?
She sat down and waited for Hughie to come home.
* * *
‘I THOUGHT YOU WERE never coming,’ Martha said, as she opened the door and took the bag from Ethel.
‘It was a wee bit difficult. Ma was upset.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Martha closed the door behind Ethel. ‘It was to be expected. But your father – did you get away without him knowing?’
Ethel followed Martha up the corridor. This house was massive compared to the one she’d grown up in, as well as being a lot cleaner and better furnished.
‘Yes. He’ll be in the pub until closing-time.’ A worried frown creased her forehead. ‘I expect Ma will catch the brunt of his temper.’
Martha set the bag on the floor.
‘He’d do that, anyway, whether you were there or not. You’re well out of it.’ She led Ethel up a staircase and opened one of the doors off the landing. ‘This is your bedroom. I hope you like it.’
The room was small and functional, with a double bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers, chair, and thick, red, velvet curtains. To Ethel, it was a palace.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered. ‘You’re sure you won’t regret offering to take me in?’
‘Regret? Why would I regret it? You’re part of the cause and you’ve already proved your worth.’ She reached out and placed a hand on Ethel’s shoulder. ‘Take your time, get unpacked and join me in the drawing-room when you are ready.’