Hannah Massey Read online

  ‘Oh, Ma!’

  ‘Look…look at it this way. We paid seventeen for this house. ‘We’ll get three thousand for it like a hundred shot.’

  ‘But houses are not selling, Ma. There’s so much unemployment now; you know yourself the lads are lucky to be all in work.’

  ‘I tell you, just leave it to me. There’s a buyer for everything. But you’re right. Houses are not sellin’ the day; that is the two thousand pound ones are not sellin’, for most of them goin’ for that price are finding it tight…And don’t tell me about the unemployed. I’ve had me share and I’m not goin’ to cry over those whose turn it is now. Nobody cried over me when I was stretchin’ a penny into a shilling. We’ll sell this house, never fear, and what we get from it will be put down for the other. Then there’s another thing, I’m not on me beam end either, I’ve got a bit put by.’ She poked her finger into Rosie’s arm. ‘I’ll show you the morrow; you and me’ll have a crack. You leave all this to me. I don’t suppose…’ She paused and dropped her head slightly towards her shoulder and screwed up her eyes to pinpoints before going on. ‘I don’t suppose you’d think of stayin’ home, lass, would you, and gettin’ a job here? Oh, me cup would overflow to have you home.’

  Rosie was looking straight down towards her feet while moving her lips hard one over the other.

  ‘Oh, all right, all right. It was only a suggestion like. Mad I am at times with me plans. It’s all right, lass. Now don’t fret yourself, it’s all right.’

  Rosie lifted her head slowly. ‘I’ve…I’ve been thinking about it, Ma, but—but there’s Ronnie. I couldn’t bear that to start up again.’

  ‘Oh, but it wouldn’t lass, it wouldn’t.’ Hannah’s whole body expressed her excitement. ‘I’m positive of that. He’s married an’ his wife’s going to have a bairn. He hardly ever comes into Jessie’s—well at least just pops in at the weekend to see her…Aw, lass, would you? Would you?’

  ‘Then there’s Karen. She hates me being at home.’ Rosie was looking into her mother’s face now.

  ‘Karen will have to take what she gets if she wants to stay here.’ The aggressiveness slid from her voice and she murmured, ‘As I said, she’s goin’ strong, and I’ll do nothing to stop it, I’ll help it on. Aw, lass, you mean it? You could get a job in Newcastle and be home at nights and I’ll see your face every day.’ She was upping Rosie’s white face between her two brown-blotched, vein-traced hands, and as she stared at her daughter the expression on her own face was changing yet again. Her lips parted and her brows moved into enquiring points and she became still. Her expression rigidly fixed now, she gaped at Rosie, until, her eyes springing wide, there came over her face a look that could have been taken for terror, that is if the emotion of fear could have been associated with Hannah Massey. ‘It’s just struck me,’ she said in an awed whisper. ‘You wouldn’t…wouldn’t be in any sort of trouble? Name of God! You comin’ home on the hop like this, it’s just come to me…’

  ‘No, Ma, no…’

  ‘You’re not goin’ to have a bairn or anything?’

  ‘I’m not going to have a bairn, Ma.’ Rosie’s words were cold but without any touch of indignation in them, and Hannah, breathing deeply, bowed her head for a moment before saying, ‘I’m sorry, lass, I should’ve known not to say such a thing to you. You’d be the last creature on God’s earth…’ She put out her hand. ‘Oh, don’t turn away from me, lass, I didn’t mean it. But there’s so many of them at it these days, the town’s peppered with them. And some of them still at school. Aye, it’s unbelievable but they’re at it afore they leave school. Two cases in the papers last week. I said why don’t they do the thing properly and have rooms set up for them in their playtime.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’ Rosie sounded shocked; and Hannah put out her hand and pulled her around to face her, and with head lowered she said, ‘I’m a rough, coarse-mouthed old woman and I beg your pardon for besmirkin’ you with me thoughts.’

  The humility was too much. It brought Rosie’s hands to her face to press her tears back, and her voice sounded like a whimper as it came from between her fingers, saying, ‘Don’t, Ma. Oh, don’t, Ma.’

  ‘Aw, don’t cry, lass.’ She was enfolding Rosie now, pressing her between her wide breasts, stroking her hair. ‘I can humble meself to you. I couldn’t do it to any one of them, but I can to you, the last of God’s gifts to me.’

  Rosie felt her flesh shrinking away from her mother’s. How would she be able to bear it? The circumstances of the last few days had made her obsessed with a longing for home and now she was here there was the old fear rising in her, and the fear was of her mother. This woman who loved her; this strong, irrational, masterful and childish woman.

  Hannah said, ‘Aw, but you’re shivering, and me keepin’ you in this cruel cold room jabbering.’

  ‘Have you got a hanky, Ma?’

  Hannah groped in her jumper, saying, ‘No, I haven’t one on me but go up to me drawer, you’ll find plenty there…But wait.’ She put her hand out tentatively now. ‘I’m not keepin’ on, don’t think that, me dear, but it’s just come to me you hadn’t your big bag with you, you hadn’t any handbag…Look, Rosie, there’s something not quite right.’ She bent her head forward. ‘Tell me.’

  Rosie took one long deep gulp of air. ‘Can we leave it till the morning, Ma?’

  ‘Then there is something?’

  ‘Well…yes. But I’ll tell you in the morning. All right?’

  For a brief second Hannah’s face wore a dead expression, then she smiled and said, ‘All right, it’ll keep; we’ll have a long crack in the mornin’ when we have the house to ourselves. Go up now and get what you want out of me drawers.’

  Rosie went slowly up to her mother’s room. Once inside, she stood with her back to the door and looked about her, but without seeing anything.

  The room held an ancient brass bed with a deep box spring on it that cried out in protest at the modern biscuit-coloured bedroom suite. But the bed was one thing Hannah would never change. The reason for her clinging to the brass bed was usually gone fully into after a visit to the club, when Hannah, a few double whiskies down her, would inform her family yet again, and almost word for word, the reason why she meant to die in the brass bed. Rosie’s skin had never failed to flush on these occasions, but the men grinned or laughed or, when bottled up themselves, went one better than their mother. Anyway it was all like ‘God bless you’ to them, for hadn’t they been brought up to the sound of slaps and laughter, and groans and grunts coming from their parents’ room? And hadn’t some of them slept on a shake-down for years at the foot of their parents’ bed? What was there to hide? Silently they agreed with their mother; if God hadn’t wanted it done he wouldn’t have provided the implements.

  The stark vitality of her mother, almost like male virility, pervaded the atmosphere of the room, and Rosie found her flesh shrinking again, as it had at one time been wont to do from things…not nice. As she crossed the room to the dressing table she glanced at the little altar perched on a wall bracket in a corner to the right of the bed. There were two half-burnt candles on it. When the thought came to her that her mother was putting in overtime on the Brampton Hill project, she chided herself for her caustic comment. Her mother meant well; she always meant well.

  Out on the landing, Karen was knocking on the bathroom door, calling, ‘Granda, hurry up, will you! I want to get in.’ Karen glanced at her as she passed. It was a calculating glance, raking her from head to foot, but she didn’t speak.

  Downstairs, as Rosie entered the living room from the hall there came into the room from the far door leading out of the kitchen a man carrying a plate in his hand. When he looked at her with his mouth half-open before exclaiming in amazement, ‘Why, Rosie!’ she knew that her mother hadn’t loudly acclaimed her presence to Hughie, Hughie being of no account.

  The man put the plate, which held a portion of fish pie and peas which didn’t look hot, onto the table without taking his eyes from her
, and again he said, ‘Why, Rosie.’ Then, ‘When did you come?’

  ‘Oh, just an hour or so ago, Hughie.’

  Still looking at her, he went to the corner near the fireplace and picking up a chair he brought it to the table and sat down; then lowering his glance towards his plate he said, ‘Nobody told me you were coming.’

  ‘They didn’t know, Hughie; I made up my mind all of a sudden. They all got a gliff when I walked in.’

  ‘Oh, I bet they did.’ He was smiling up into her face. She went to sit down and face him across the corner of the table, but hesitated, while he, looking at his plate again, took a mouthful of the fish pie before saying, ‘Your ma’s just gone along to the MacFarlanes. I saw her as I was coming in.’ Still eating, he added, ‘How are you keeping?’

  ‘Oh, all right, Hughie.’ But as she answered him her mind was on her mother running to tell Jessie MacFarlane she was home. That was cruel really.

  Hughie lifted his eyes to her where she sat opposite to him now. They were dark brown and round and quiet looking, and seemed at variance with his long, thin, mobile face. He looked at her for a moment before beginning to eat again, but he made no remark whatever on her appearance.

  She said to him now, ‘And how are you getting on, Hughie?’

  ‘Oh…’ He smiled, a self-derisive smile. ‘Oh, you know me.’

  She looked at him softly, kindly. Yes, she knew him. She had for years thought this man was her brother, for there never had been a time when she hadn’t seen Hughie in the house. She was seven when her mother said to her, ‘He’s no brother of yours, he’s a waif.’ And her father had put in quickly, ‘No. Now, Hannah, he’s no waif. If the lad gets on your nerves so much let him clear out. He’s big enough to stand on his own feet…Nineteen…he’s a man.’ Nor had there been a time when she didn’t realise that her mother disliked Hughie, even hated him. Nevertheless, she also knew that twice, when he was just turned fifteen and had tried to run away, she’d had him brought back. Once he had stowed away on a ship. She had never been able to understand her mother’s attitude towards Hughie. That day her father had told her Hughie’s story.

  Hughie was twelve in 1940 when his mother was killed in an air raid; his father had died a year earlier. His mother and Broderick Massey had been half-cousins. Broderick had said, ‘We must have the lad.’ And Hannah had said, ‘Of course. What’s one more or less? And the child with no-one in the world.’ This wasn’t strictly true because Hughie had an elder sister whom he could only remember faintly. She had gone to America as a private nurse before the war. So Hughie had been taken into the Massey household, and his shy nature had blossomed in the warm, rough atmosphere, until he was fourteen…well just coming up fifteen, when Broderick remembered that Hannah had turned on the boy. Why, he couldn’t get out of her. But from that time he could do no right. Yet when he had run away she had gone to great lengths to get him back. Aw, Broderick had said to Rosie, there was no understanding her mother’s heart. It was so big a man would need a couple of lifetimes to get into its workings.

  Rosie had always liked Hughie, perhaps because he was so different from the other men in the family. Yet she liked her brothers too. But Hughie was different, thoughtful. She felt he was clever in a way. Perhaps this was the reason her mother didn’t like him. But no, the reason went farther back, before Hughie could have proved his cleverness in one way or another. The lads took Hughie for granted; he was part of the fittings of their home. They chaffed him about the women he had never had, and Miss Springer who lived down the road and who had had her eye on him since they first came to live here. One year he had received a Valentine, and they all declared it was from Miss Springer. But he had never passed more than the time of day with the trim but not unattractive woman who worked in the drapery department of Bailey’s store. To Rosie, Hughie was…comfortable. He had no male virility oozing out of him, sparking off disturbances. He was a sort of cushion one could lean against, if one dared; but her mother had always checked any friendly contact between Hughie and herself. If she had come across them talking, the subject being nothing more than the weather, she would divert them into separate ways, and to Rosie herself she would speak sharply but with no real reprimand behind it but her voice, when she spoke to Hughie, thrust him back into his place, and his place was a wooden chair in a recess near the door, away from the warmth of the fire. This, when Rosie thought about it, seemed significant of her mother’s whole attitude towards Hughie, pushing him away, always pushing him away yet never letting him go beyond the wall, so to speak.

  ‘It’s nice to see you back, Rosie,’ he was saying.

  ‘Thanks, Hughie. It’s nice to be back…for a time.’ She dared say that to him.

  He did not, as the others had done, exclaim about her white, peaked look; but after swallowing the last mouthful from his plate he straightened his shoulders against the back of the chair and repeated her words thoughtfully: ‘Yes, for a time.’ Then glancing round the room and towards the two doors, the one leading into the kitchen, the other into the hall, he brought his head forward towards her and said under his breath, ‘I might be making a move soon meself, Rosie.’

  ‘Really Hughie?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I haven’t told any of them; that is, except Dennis. He knows. But it’s likely I’ll be on me way soon.’ He nodded again.

  ‘But where to, Hughie?’ She was leaning toward him now, interested, even slightly excited for him.

  Again he looked from door to door, then said, ‘Another time. I’ll tell you all about it another time, only keep it to yourself, will you?’

  She nodded back rather sadly now. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking on his part. From time to time over the years she could remember him saying, ‘One day I’ll make a break, I’ll be away, you’ll see, you’ll see.’ When she came to think of it now they were like the words of a prisoner threatening to make a run for it. There were lots of things about Hughie she couldn’t understand. Jimmy, who was nearest to Hughie in age, being only three years younger, always said Hughie was the type of fellow you couldn’t get to the bottom of, close, tight-mouthed about things. And working in a cobbler’s shop by himself for years hadn’t tended to open him out.

  She had at one time asked her mother, ‘Did Hughie want to be a cobbler, Ma?’ And Hannah had replied, ‘He’s damn lucky to have a job at all; he’s fallen on his feet. If he’s got any gumption in him he’ll make a business of it.’

  This was at the time when her father, who had tried to scrape a living for years as a cobbler, was turning his back on it to go into a factory. But the cobbling business was still to be kept going, and by Hughie, whom Broderick had trained from a boy.

  The cobbler’s shop was an eight by ten foot room with a small cubby hole leading off the back. It was placed at the end of twenty similar workshops, all peopled by men striving to make a go of it on their own. When Hughie had worked with Broderick, part of his job had been to collect the boots and shoes for mending, and later to return them. Another part of his job was to solicit orders; but Hughie was no salesman, so when Broderick got the chance of a nine pounds a week job in the factory he jumped at it. And so Hughie was left…with the business. Rosie remembered saying to him at the time, ‘Wouldn’t you like to go into the factory, Hughie, and earn big money?’ and he had smiled at her and said, ‘I would sooner be on me own, Rosie.’

  From the day Hughie had taken over the little shop her mother had forbidden her to go near it.

  With the sound of the back door opening Rosie got to her feet and moved from the table, and she was sitting near the fire when her mother entered the room.

  Hannah came in blowing her lips out, saying, ‘Whew! It’s enough to cut the nose off you out there. I’ve just been along to Jessie’s.’ She smiled towards Rosie but said no word to Hughie, and he, rising from his chair, gathered up the dirty dishes from the table and went towards the kitchen. But as he passed from the room he turned his head over his shoulder and, looking towards
Hannah, said, ‘Can I speak to you a moment?’

  ‘Speak to me?’ She didn’t even bother to look at him. ‘Well, I’m here, aren’t I? Spit it out. There’s nobody in the house but Broderick and Karen upstairs, and Rosie here, and she’s me daughter.’ She smiled at Rosie as if she had said something extremely witty, and on this Hughie turned about and went into the kitchen.

  Hannah bending towards Rosie whispered low, ‘There’s a sod if ever there was one; deep as a drawn well, he is. Do you know what I learnt the day?’ She pressed her lips together, pulling her mouth into a tight line. ‘Him and our Dennis are as thick as thieves. He’s been over to their place.’ She nodded quickly. ‘And it’s not the first time he’s been there. Oh, I could spit in his eye. And our Dennis. Wait till I see him. Five weeks it is since he darkened this door.’

  ‘It’s the weather likely, the roads are—’

  ‘Don’t you start makin’ excuses for him. If you took a tape measure from door to door it would be three miles. But I know who I’ve got to blame for it. Oh, begod, yes! Oh, we’re not up to the standard of his lady wife. But wait, just you wait; I’ll show them or die in the attempt.’

  ‘I think you should know something.’ Hughie was speaking from the doorway. He never addressed Hannah by her name or with the prefix of aunt, which would have been natural. He had for the first three years of his sojourn in the house, and at her own request, called her Mam, but this endearing term had come to an abrupt end.

  ‘Well, what should I know?’ She was standing facing him, aggressiveness emanating from her.

  Hughie, looking straight back at her, said quietly, ‘Teefields are putting on a search for stolen parts.’

  The shiver that passed over her body seemed to sweep the aggressiveness from it and leave her without support for a moment. Her mouth closed from its gape, then opened again, and in a much mollified tone she asked, ‘Where did you hear that?’