Fay found it hard now that Elsie was out of the house so much, for all the skivvying work fell to her. In the past she had never minded mucking in with the household chores, or looking after the younger kids whenever Elsie asked her to help out, because it was always fun being with her older sister and she was happy to share the work. Elsie had an endless stock of stories, real and made up, that made Fay laugh and she was always getting into scrapes with her silly pranks. Elsie didn’t like the harshness of their life any more than Fay did, but somehow she never let it grind her down. The face she showed the world nearly always had bright eyes and a ready smile. Fay didn’t know how she managed it or where she got all her energy from. Fay always felt tired and the days when the younger children were her sole responsibility were often more than she could cope with. Yet her mother seemed to think that Fay should take on all the duties whenever Elsie wasn’t around and used her pregnancy as an excuse for not doing them herself.
‘You know how difficult it is for me to be getting around, love,’ was her favourite plea for not doing what Fay would have considered her fair share.
Maybe Elsie was right with what she said about their mother. It would have helped Alice to build up her strength if she had done some work around the house instead of sitting in the threadbare armchair most of the day gazing out through the mud-speckled window into the street. Alice spent hours watching the neighbours going by, occasionally chiding the younger children who tried to scramble over her as she sat listlessly picking at dust on her shabby housecoat. Meanwhile Fay was expected to cook as best she could in the blackened pot that hung permanently over the fire, to clean as much as the house ever got cleaned, do the washing, and to keep an eye on the little ’uns just as Elsie did whenever she was available.
The house was permanently dirty and keeping the children clean was impossible. There was mess everywhere and Fay dreaded laundry day on a Monday when she’d spend all day slaving over the tiny copper in the outhouse at the back. Scrubbing and washing for the whole family was backbreaking work – the clothes never seemed to get any cleaner and were often sodden and damp-smelling for days afterwards in the colder months. Fay was sorry now she had left school. She thought she was being helpful to Elsie, doing her bit for the family. But all she had done was to scupper her own life. Her chances of fulfilling her ambition and getting to a college to learn how to be a secretary got slimmer every day.
One of the problems for Fay about working so hard was that she was permanently exhausted. She was so tired that most evenings she could hardly stop herself falling asleep as soon as she sat down. She almost had no energy left to drag herself up the stairs to bed. What she missed most, now that Elsie was not around so much, was the long chats together they’d both enjoyed. Of course she understood that of late Elsie’s time had been taken up with Stan. Fay liked him and she could see that Elsie was really sweet on him too, but something had gone seriously wrong recently. She hadn’t yet seen Elsie to find out what it was. And then there was the second job Elsie had, working in the pub – the job that she had somehow managed all these months to keep from her father; the job Fay had only recently found out about.
Often of an evening if there was no mending or darning to be done Fay would go next door where she wouldn’t have to worry if she nodded off. Megan James’s children were grown up and had fled the nest and the older woman was lonely. She invited Fay to join her to keep her company whenever she wanted and didn’t seem to mind if the young girl fell asleep. She seemed to value Fay’s company any time she felt like coming to sit in the warm, which Fay loved to do, particularly of a winter’s evening when the embers would still be glowing in the grate. She didn’t know how Mrs James managed to keep them going all day. And Fay would sit in the alcove and enjoy the cosy warmth. It always amazed Fay to think that the layout of the next door house was identical to her own, because from the inside they looked in no way the same. For one thing, Mrs James’s oven door was still in one piece and with no family left to cook for she had the luxury of using the oven to keep warm.
‘We don’t use either of the upstairs’ fireplaces,’ Fay said chattily one late afternoon when she was at her neighbour’s. She had watched as Mrs James put another small scrap of coal in among the twigs and had a sudden picture of having to heave a coal bucket up the narrow stairs. ‘At least it’s one less chore for me to do.’ She sighed. ‘You don’t light a fire up there, do you?’
‘Nay,’ said Megan James. ‘Too much like hard work – and for what? Between you and me, I never wanted to encourage any of the buggers to stop in bed.’ She chuckled.
‘I’d rather have a cold bedroom than have to drag coal all the way up there an’ all to light a fire,’ Fay agreed. ‘You can always keep warm if you gets dressed fast enough. And it’s first up best dressed in ours anyway. If there’s only one clean dress to be had of a morning, I like it to be for me.’ She stretched and yawned. ‘I wonder if the rain has stopped yet.’ She got up and peered out of the window. Night was drawing in. ‘I’d best get home and see what scraps I can find to make for tea. My dad’s bound to be yelling for summat as soon as he gets home from the pub.’
There was a smell of grass and fresh mud in the air as she walked over the wet cobbles, stepping gingerly for they felt as slippery underfoot as they looked in the yellow gaslight. As she crossed to the passage beside the houses, she heard a commotion from number 18 and hurried along to see what the matter was.
The front door was ajar and she pushed it open carefully. Her father was standing in the middle of the room and he was slowly and menacingly taking off his belt. Two of her sisters, Phyllis and Nancy, were standing in front of him, their faces set. Fay was surprised to see they had their fists raised. A stranger to the scene would have been forgiven for thinking the two young girls were seriously thinking of squaring up to their father. But anyone who lived in the neighbourhood would have known that, for all the bravery of their stance, in a matter of minutes both girls would be left with black eyes and raised welts across their backs. Phyllis, the older girl, already had a black eye swelling up where she had obviously been punched.
Fay rolled her eyes. None of them could ever escape the old man. Except her mother, it seemed. For today at least she was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding in one of the neighbours’ houses while they were left to his wrath.
The scene was not unusual in the Grimshaw house and as Fay came into the room and took it all in, her first instinct was to ignore it and duck right out again. She could go back next door till it was all over. But when she caught sight of a stranger standing near the table, she stopped and looked again, not sure what was going on. He was standing with his cap and a small bag in his right hand, his left hand supported by a grubby-looking sling. He was staring down at the sawdusted floorboards as though trying to pretend he had no part in it all, but when she entered he looked up and for a moment she met his steady gaze. She had never seen such pale blue eyes before. And he seemed equally taken with hers, which she knew were by contrast the darkest of brown. His face had a boyish look though his skin was tough and weathered; she put him at about nineteen. There was a keenness and earnestness to his expression that set him apart from the usual reprobates and chancers that her father hung around with. He gave her a smile of crooked chipped teeth, but before she could smile back she was distracted by a sudden movement. She turned to see that her father now had his belt off and was binding his fist with it, leaving the buckle dangling like the sizable weapon it was. Usually whenever he took his belt to any of the older girls there wouldn’t be a peep from them, except maybe some swearing under their breath. But tonight the younger one, Nancy, was crying.
‘I don’t want to share our bed with him,’ Nancy wailed. ‘He smells.’ Her voice was surprisingly strong and she jerked her thumb in the direction of the stranger. ‘There’s hardly enough room for the four of us as it is. If he comes, it’ll be a right squash – and him with a bad arm an’ all.’
‘Where’s your sense, lass?’ her father snapped. ‘You’ll not be sharing with him. You’ll be moving downstairs to muck in with your sisters.’
At this, both girls looked astonished. ‘What, all nine of us? We can’t all be sharing one bed.’
‘You’ll share with who I says you’ll share with, my lass, and there’s an end on it.’ Her father took a step towards her and Nancy backed away.
Phyllis scowled and rubbed her distending eye with her grubby fingers, which only made the swelling worse, but she said nothing.
Arthur Grimshaw glanced at the stranger, then turned to Fay. ‘See this young man here …’ he began to say. He didn’t get any further. Fay doubted he would for she could already hear the slur in his words. ‘See this young man … he’s our new lodger.’ He tried again and this time he turned to face the stranger. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘’arry. ’arry Wilton,’ the young man said modestly as he fidgeted with his cap.
‘Yes, well,’ Arthur said, looking back at Fay. ‘It seems young ’arry Wilton has fallen on hard times and is in urgent need of some decent lodgings. I seed him down at the Three Hammers. And do you know what I thought? I thought, it’s the least we can do, to offer him somewhere to sleep for a while.’
Fay stared first at her father then again at Harry. It seemed unbelievable, but she knew she had better believe it. For a lodger, in her father’s book, meant money. And Arthur Grimshaw was never far away when there was a bit of cash up for grabs. She would have liked to know how much this poor man was being stung for, for the privilege of sleeping in a damp bed on the second floor in a filthy bedroom. She couldn’t help wondering whether he knew just how many of them there’d be in the bed downstairs so that he could be accommodated.
‘My lass here, Fay, will be pleased to give you a bite of bread and cheese, I’ve no doubt.’ Arthur seemed to have got the hang of talking again even if he didn’t always manage to keep control of his tongue. ‘Though that will be extra, of course.’ He gave a toothless grin. The belt had slipped off his hand and he seemed to have forgotten it for a moment when he put his arm round Fay’s thin shoulders. Instinctively she shook him off and without looking at Harry again she went straight into the back scullery, thinking she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had any cheese in the house and hoping to salvage some scraps.
‘What the hell’s going on ’ere, then?’ Elsie wanted to know when she finally climbed into bed alongside Fay later that night. There were more little girls than usual and they were all asleep, if the level of snoring was anything to go by. She and Fay could barely make themselves heard as they were whispering, snuggled up close. ‘Ain’t we got enough mouths to feed? What’s the old bugger thinking of, taking in someone from the streets?’ Elsie wanted to know.
‘A couple of extra bob to chuck down his throat, that’s what he’s thinking of,’ Fay said. ‘Must have seen a row of pint pots in his dreams.’
‘But who is this … what can I call him?’
‘I believe the fancy word is lodger, but scruffy tramp is more like.’
‘You’re not far wrong there. Where on earth did Dad pick him up?’ Elsie demanded.
‘In the pub of course. Apparently, he’s not long back from Spain. Got shot there in the war – or so he says.’
‘Not sure I’d believe a word he says. He’s got those shifty-looking eyes.’
‘Oh, I don’t think they’re shifty – he looks interested, that’s all,’ Fay said coyly, then she grinned. ‘Though they were following me all round the room.’
Elsie laughed when Fay said this. ‘Oh aye. Or so you’d like to think. Is that what you mean by “interested”?’
‘Why not?’ Fay sighed. ‘Thinking costs nowt.’
‘It’s the only bleeding thing that doesn’t.’ Elsie shifted position though it was almost impossible to get comfortable. ‘Do you think he might have seen Stan in Spain?’ Elsie said, for she had already confided in Fay about Stan’s disappearance and whereabouts.
‘I suppose it’s possible. But Spain’s a big place, isn’t it?’
‘Bigger than England?
‘It certainly looked that way on the globe we used to have at school.’
‘So why didn’t this Harry bloke go home once he got back to England?’ Elsie changed the subject. ‘He’s not from these parts, is he?’
‘Stockport way, so he says. According to him, when he got back he found he had no home to go to. Someone else was living in his house and both his parents had been sent to one of those Public Assistance Institution places while he was away.’
‘What’s one of them when it’s at home?’
‘You know, they’re like the old workhouse. Same thing really; it’s for folks on their uppers with no one to look after them – mostly old codgers and vagrants. Unless he wanted to go in there too, seems he had nowhere to go.’
‘That is, until he met Mr Muggins in the pub who saw pounds, shillings and pence signs flash in front of his eyes.’ Elsie sounded sceptical.
‘Summat like that. He’s supposed to be looking for work in one or other of the factories, so maybe he’ll be able to earn a bob or two soon enough.’
‘And till then? All I can say is, I wish him luck. Not much in this neighbourhood for a one-armed pirate.’ That made Fay laugh. ‘Seems we’re stuck with him for the time being.’
‘I can tell you, the little ’uns aren’t happy about it,’ Fay said.
‘Me neither,’ Elsie agreed, aware of little Freda’s elbow digging into her back. ‘But they’ll have to put up or shut up, like the rest of us.’