A Whisper to the Living (12 page)

I walked all the way to the centre of Bolton, keeping to the backs except when I reached Crowley Brow, a large bend in the road that was, in fact, a bridge over a very steep drop where water sometimes ran and I stared down for a few minutes into the dried-up bed before continuing on my way.

Everything around me seemed so normal. How could the world carry on like this, as if nothing had happened? Birds sang, early buses began to run, the sky was lightening in a promising way. And I was the one out of step, the one with the beaten-up mother and the dead brother or sister. I was the one who must live with a monster. Nobody cared. I tried to concentrate on not walking on the cracks. ‘Stand on a nick, you’ll marry a brick and the ghosties ‘11 come to your wedding,’ chanted my mind as I went along. But it didn’t work. Nothing could rid me of this crawling flesh where I could still feel the filth of his hands on me.

When I reached the middle of town, I walked to the cenotaph and paused before the statue of a mother holding a dead or dying son in her arms. In a few weeks, I would be laying my father’s cross here, just as I had done every year, a plain white wood cross with a red flower at its centre. At home I had a scroll from the king, to commemorate Sergeant William Byrne, Gordon Highlander, ‘who gave his life to save mankind from tyranny. May his sacrifice help to bring the peace and freedom for which he died.’ But where was my peace, my freedom? Where was my mother’s peace? Had my father died just so that we might be handed to another kind of tyranny – oh, there were no bombs this time, but war was war, however small the scale.

And that other hero, Jesus Christ – where was He now with His forgiveness and His goodness and His ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’? Suffer little children was damn right, for I was suffering, suffering beyond all measure. I was eight years old and on the verge of believing that there was no sense in life because life hurt, and that there was less sense in death, especially sacrificial death, which was futile as it solved no problems for those of us who must continue alive.

I stopped for a cup of tea and a piece of toast at an early café on Deansgate. The woman looked at me suspiciously, for it was only seven o’clock. ‘You’re about early, love.’

‘I’m meeting my auntie,’ I lied easily, yet amazed at my presence of mind. ‘We’re getting the train for Blackpool.’

‘Ooh, lovely. Wish I was coming with you – here have a bit of marmalade with that . . .’

I ate mechanically, like a machine that must be oiled and fuelled, pushing the food down my tightened throat, scalding my mouth with the hot sweet tea. When I had finished, I sat in the café for a while. It was still a bit soon to call on people, whatever the reason, so I crossed over past St Patrick’s and on to the railway bridge by Trinity Street Station. Had I been in a better frame, I would have enjoyed this, because I loved to stand looking down on a train as it pulled in, loved to be enfolded in that cloud of steam and smoke, was a budding train fanatic were the truth known, being in possession of a list of engines longer than most of the boys’, though I usually collected my numbers at a smaller station, having been forbidden by my mother to venture too frequently into the centre of Town.

I caught the 39 up Deane Road and walked through as this would kill yet more time and once again I was amazed at the size of the houses, at the proximity of the rows and, most of all, I was shocked by the stench of poverty. But when I reached Ensign Street I found, to my horror, that the houses were mostly empty, windows broken or boarded over. Our own house was not occupied and it was plain that the Hyatts too were gone.

I ran across to number 17 and hammered on the door. Surely by half-past nine there should be somebody about in Wakes Week – only a few colliers and busdrivers and the like worked in Wakes Week. A head appeared at an open upstairs window. ‘Annie!’

‘Hello, Mrs Maguire. I’m looking for the Hyatts.’

She pushed her head through the gap. ‘They got put in James Street, lass. The bombs made these houses unsafe, you see. We’ll be going ourselves soon. Do you want to come in?’

‘No, thanks. I’ll get to James Street.’

She paused fractionally before speaking again. ‘She’ll not be there, love. They’ll be up at All Saints – wait there till I come down then I can talk to you proper . . .’

But I didn’t wait. As soon as she closed the window, I ran off towards Derby Road and across to the church, arriving just in time to see Freddie and a lot of other men, all dressed in black, lifting a coffin through the church gates. I stopped in my tracks, thunderstruck. Who was dead? And where was Mrs Hyatt? She’d be inside the church, wouldn’t she? I walked forward slowly and spoke to a weeping woman who made little sense at first.

She bowed her head as the coffin passed her and I did the same.

‘Salt of the earth, salt of the earth,’ said the woman before blowing her nose into her handkerchief.

‘It’s Mrs Mort, isn’t it?’ I asked. She looked down at me. ‘Oh, Annie, hello love. Fancy you coming all this way. Mind you, we were all neighbours, weren’t we? She’ll be missed, will Florrie. Pity Tom’s not here, but still, I doubt he’s heard yet . . .’

I leaned against the railing for support, toast and tea rising in my gorge and I swallowed hard to stop myself from vomiting. Mrs Hyatt dead? Where would I go now? And why could I feel no real grief for this lovely lady who was dead? ‘How . . . I mean, what happened?’ I managed.

‘Heart attack, love. Out like a light, she went. Are you coming in for the service?’ I shook my head. She followed the cortège into the church and I stood in the street, my head buzzing with exhaustion and the strangeness of it all. The one person who might have understood was being buried this very day. I looked up at the sky. Somebody up there, in that heaven of Sister Immaculata’s, had it all wrong. Or was I being punished yet again? But now, I must find somewhere else to go, somewhere to stay for a while. My Grandad’s? No, he would send or even take me home tonight. I could never tell him that I didn’t want to go home and why, because I could not find the words for his ears and even if I could, he would make a fuss and Eddie Higson would kill my mother and me.

Aunts and uncles fell, of course, into the same category. I would have to find somewhere to be alone, absolutely alone until my mother got out of the hospital. And, strangely, my desire to visit her had gone, because my body was dirty now, had been dirtied by Eddie Higson’s vile hands and I could not, as yet, countenance the idea of seeing my mother. She was alright. Dr Pritchard had said she was alright. So now, I must play for time, keep away from Higson, think things through.

I bought a bottle of lemon pop, two candles and a box of matches from Connie’s Corner, then walked down the Ensign Street backs until I came to our old house. The gate swung open easily and I stepped into the tiny yard, just avoiding the corpse of a large rat that lay to the left of the empty midden.

The air-raid shelter was unbelievably dark, yet I took a strange comfort from the blackness, was glad that I could now concentrate my thoughts without fear of disturbance or distraction. But however long I thought, whichever course my mind took, it was always circular in that it brought me back to the same point. I could not, would never be able to, tell anyone about what Eddie Higson had done to me and to my mother. He was evil, truly evil and if I were to seek help, then he would surely finish off both of us.

And so the air-raid shelter became my home. I carefully rationed out my bread and cheese, anxious to save Eddie Higson’s money for a real emergency. But as night closed in, I became chilled to the bone and, huddled in my corner, I decided that I must have a blanket. This would be my goal for tomorrow – to acquire more food and some kind of warm covering for the nights. I slept little, merely dozing in the cramped cold, easing myself from one uncomfortable position to another, all the time tense and on my guard in case he came and found me.

The next day I stole three flannelette sheets from the backs in James Street and a blanket from a line behind Cannon Street. My second night was, therefore, warmer but no more comfortable.

After that, I never went out again. I had run out of food, drink and candles, but an apathy had descended upon me, my head hurt and was burning and I coughed almost incessantly. On about the fourth day, I knew I was dying and I didn’t care too much about it, even if my immortal soul was black from stealing. My head was filled with words and pictures all jumbled together and I slipped from time to time into blissful unconsciousness, only to be wakened by the coughing and the rasping noise of my own breathing.

They found me and took me to the Infirmary, though I remembered nothing of my journey there. I had something called pneumonia and had Mrs Maguire not recognized my name in the
Bolton Evening News
, had she not remembered seeing me in the street, had she not instigated the search of the area, I might never have been discovered.

My mother visited me in my ward and, as I got better, I went to see her in the other ward. Eddie Higson never came near, though I understood that he had been the one who had reported me missing. I told my mother nothing. In fact, once my illness was over, I began to wonder if I had imagined Eddie Higson’s attack on me, for I had had some strange nightmares in my delirium.

My mother was allowed home before I was and she came to visit me each day, once bringing flowers from Mrs Cullen and Josie, another time a doll from Rita and her parents. The police questioned me, but I gave them no answers. I was dismissed with a telling off for being such a naughty girl and, towards the end of October, I returned home.

He was there when my mother brought me in.

‘How are you, Annie?’ he asked, pretending to be pleasant.

I stared at him and knew it had been no dream. Gripping my mother’s hand, I said, loudly and clearly, ‘You can go to hell.’

My mother’s hand clutched mine tightly, but Higson merely chuckled, saying ‘I see she’s back to normal, then.’

He turned to the sports page and carried on reading. And I knew there and then that whatever he did to me, I could overcome it. There was no way he could hurt me any more than he already had and I intended to emerge victorious. How little I knew!

It happened again, of course. I was not always able to sleep at Rita’s house and he got to me whenever he could, each time putting me through the same sick ritual, though it varied slightly as the years went by and he began to collect and scrutinize my underwear, looking for the tell-tale sign of menstruation, waiting, as he put it, for me to ripen.

By the time I was ten years old, I knew about sex, knew what Eddie Higson was planning for me, yet I managed to live with it, taking each day as it came, accepting, as children tend to accept, that things were far from right but that I could do nothing to alter or improve my situation.

My mother withered again; of Ernie Bradshaw I saw and heard no more except I knew that he had left the mill.Whether or not he got his beating, I ceased to care. But now I felt sure that I could never tell my mother about what was happening between Higson and me.

‘You tell her, you tell anybody and next time I do you proper, ready or not – understand?’ I never answered him, just sat or stood wherever he put me and let it happen, whatever he did, I just let it happen.

When I passed my scholarship, he said I could not go to St Mary’s but, for once, my mother put her foot down and got a grant for my uniform, a nasty set of brown and yellow clothing that was all several sizes too big so that I would get my wear out of it. The hat was a monstrosity, a wide-brimmed brown velour with a yellow band and a badge in the front. Even the knickers were brown and long in the leg while the coat looked like something rejected from army stock.

We stood, my mother and I in front of her big mirror and she oohed and ahed over my appearance, her eyes glistening with pride and unshed tears.

I felt nothing except revulsion as I looked at the sight of myself in the mirror, was aware of little except the soreness of my tiny breasts and the pain between my thighs.

‘You must work hard,’ my mother was saying now. ‘Work hard and get them exams you do at sixteen, then you can stop on and do the others when you’re eighteen.’

My eyes met hers in the glass. ‘I’d rather go to boarding school,’ I said. ‘I want to get away from him.’

‘You can’t, Annie. Anyroad, he never hits you now, does he? I mean, we’ve had no trouble since . . . well . . . since I lost the baby.’

‘Since he murdered your baby.’

‘Now, Annie love . . .’

‘Don’t defend him, don’t you dare. He’s a murderer and a wicked man.’

‘We’ve all got our faults, Annie. Look at me and how daft I was over that Ernie Bradshaw. I just pushed your Dad too far, that’s all . . .’

‘HE IS NOT MY DAD. My father is dead and that . . . animal is nobody’s father. He is not fit to be a father . . .’

‘Alright, Annie. Now get that lot off while I sew the nametapes on. Will I put one on your vest as well?’

‘No!’ I did not want to take off my vest, could not allow my mother to see the bruises. It was getting so hard, this business of protecting her.

Just then Higson entered the room and I paused in the act of removing the gymslip, allowed it to fall once more around my calves so that I remained fully clothed.

‘What’s this then?’ he snarled. ‘Bloody fancy-dress parade?’

‘I’m just getting her ready for her new school, Eddie.’

He threw himself onto the bed and lay there staring at the two of us, a wicked smile distorting his face. ‘I don’t see why she needs all that fancy book-learning,’ he said. ‘All she’ll do is finish up wed and then what good will her education be?’

I turned slowly to face him. I knew I would suffer later, yet still I had to say it. ‘My education will keep me out of the mill. It will also make sure I don’t finish up married to a window cleaner.’

He raised himself to a sitting position. ‘You’ll be lucky if anybody marries you.’

‘Oh, I’ll find somebody, don’t you worry. And I’ll make sure he’s a big man who can fight my battles.’