A Whisper to the Living (22 page)

‘Thank you, Mrs Cullen,’ I said.

‘Aye well. You deserve nice things, lass. Allers got yer ’ead stuck in a book – yer want ter get out an’ enjoy yerself sometimes.’

‘She’s got to study, Bertha,’ said my mother. And Mrs Cullen who, although she did not understand it, now appreciated my mother’s need for me to succeed, picked up the large box of crackers I had bought for her family to share, made her goodbyes and beckoned me to follow her to the front door.

‘’Ey Annie, luv,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘I made it up.’

‘Made what up?’

‘About ’avin’ a friend at th’ Infirmary. Only I reckon ’e’s sat on ’is laurels fer long enough, that bugger.’ She began to giggle like a girl. ‘Ooh, what am I sayin’? Pity they didn’t cut ’is bloody laurels off altogether, eh?’

‘Behave yourself, Mrs Cullen.’

‘’Ey, don’t you start laughin’ an’ all. It were ’is laurels as were the problem – am I right? Does ’e still ’ave ter sit on one o’ them rubber rings what you blow up wi’ a bike pump?’

‘No!’

She wiped her eyes. ‘No, listen. I’m bein’ dead serious now. I’ve reckoned ’is number, I ’ave. T’ longer as ’e sits there doin’ nowt, t’ less likely ’e is fer t’ get back on t’ round. That bloody mate of ’is ’11 be buyin’ it off ’im next news if we don’t do summat. But ’e’ll go back now, mark my words.’

And he did. But this proved to be a mixed blessing, because although my mother was able to give up her morning job, he seemed to grow stronger with every passing month and I noticed, gradually, that he was watching me again. But he made no moves in my direction and I managed to stay out of his way most of the time, studying with friends, visiting the Cullens, taking advantage of the fact that I was now old enough to make my own decisions about when I must arrive home and when I must go to bed.

Another year sped by, another Christmas, another birthday – my fifteenth. For eighteen months, he and I had spoken scarcely a word to one another and my mother had by now given up her attempts to enforce an armistice between us. Her own relationship with him was obviously strained and there was little speech or laughter in the house except when he was absent from it. I continued to grow and by the summer of 1955 I was five feet seven inches tall, weighed a good nine stones and was very strong. And he continued to watch, never coming near me, seldom speaking to anyone but watching, always watching.

I threw myself into my work, because I had just twelve months until my GCE examinations; now, there was no time for sitting on walls, little contact with others except fellow students, few opportunities for fun or relaxation. The term drew towards its close. Mother St Vincent remained concerned about me, but she had long since given up on the idea of my confirmation. The ‘little chats’, which we both enjoyed thoroughly, carried on and she was pushing me gently towards Oxbridge. My mother had been proved right yet again, because the 1950s had indeed opened new doors for the working classes and for women. But although I had decided that I would not leave the North, I did not enlighten the little nun about my intentions. Law and medicine were both available in Liverpool or Manchester and I would go no further from home. To leave my mother alone with him after all her sacrifice would be a crime for which I would never be able to forgive myself. Yet I kept my counsel and agreed with everything the headmistress said.

We spilled out of school on the last day of our fourth year, made our goodbyes, promised to meet sometime during the holidays and went our separate and widespread ways – Leigh, Farnworth, Westhoughton, Affetside, Bolton. The lucky ones would be going away for holidays, perhaps abroad or to Scotland. I had been offered a holiday in Maria Hourigan’s caravan, but I could not go. Nothing in this world would entice me away from home, for I would never trust him alone with my mother. He feared me, had good reason to fear me. But without my constant vigilance, he would surely make her pay for what I had done to him. And my mother had already paid enough for me.

As I rode home on the 45, I found myself noticing, as if for the first time, how the world around me had changed during my short life. In the streets I saw girls who no longer looked like younger versions of their mothers, girls with a style of their own – the princess line was slowly making its exit and wide colourful skirts with waspie waists were taking its place. By the side of these girls walked lads with long slicked-back hair, drainpipe trousers, bright socks, deep-soled shoes and knee-length jackets. I realized that something of a revolution had been taking place while I wasn’t looking, that young people were demanding attention, seeking a slot of their own in society, snatching a place for themselves, a place that had never been offered or even imagined by adults. They had their own spokesmen too – James Dean, Bill Haley and a new star called Elvis. The music and the words of the Fifties screamed rebellion and I was beginning to notice it.

Everything was changing. Even grown-ups seemed crazy during this decade, entering the throwaway society with enthusiasm as if attempting to deny that there had ever been war, shortages, rationing. Plastic-coated coffee tables with fly-away edges began to appear in the sitting rooms of the nouveau riche, while in thousands of homes a large glass eye called television sat in a corner, often discreetly hidden behind tiny doors. Someone called Fairfield Osborn was warning us that we were using up the world’s resources too fast, but nobody heeded him. It was an age of madness, an era of excitement and carelessness. I wondered who they were, these people with money to throw about, because they certainly didn’t live in our road. My mother still ran a household on five pounds a week, paid coal and electricity bills, fed three people and managed a mortgage with that paltry sum.

The bus stopped and I got off opposite the library. Martin Cullen, who seemed to have found his tongue when he acquired his first Teddy Boy suit, yelled a greeting across the road and I waved at him. Yes, everything was indeed changing. Now was the time for me to speak out, to join the rebels in my own way. But no, there she was at the gate waiting for me, her hair made fiery by the rays of an afternoon sun. I threw my satchel into our small patch of garden and lifted the tiny woman off her feet, pretending to be happy to have six whole weeks off school. One day, I promised myself, she would be comfortable and my education would buy her peace of mind and provide a passport out of the mill. For now, I must continue to act my part, must keep her as happy as I could manage. This was not the best of our times, but the best was yet to come.

On 13 July 1955 Ruth Ellis was hanged for murder. The campaign for the abolition of capital punishment was reinforced by this terrible occurrence and for weeks after the event the newspapers argued the issue. Annie Byrne sat in the reading room of Long Moor Lane Library and wondered anew about man’s inhumanity. How far had Ruth Ellis been driven? For how many months or years had she suffered before committing this so-called premeditated crime?

Annie replaced the paper in the rack and picked up her book. They would let you have just one book at a time, so she had been reading a novel each day during the first part of her summer holidays, losing herself in pages of the historical romances which had become something of an addiction now. Every morning she would stand at the library gates waiting for the staff to arrive, an impatient foot tapping the ground if the door remained closed one minute after ten o’clock. On Saturdays, she always chose an extra-thick book to get her through till Monday morning. This was escapism and she knew it. It was exactly what she needed. In a world that hanged desperate women, that forbade blacks and whites to travel together on the same bus, a world that had recently sent six million Jews to a filthy and unspeakable end, one needed to escape before madness set in. There was so much to run from now, because everybody’s life seemed to hang by a thread, a slender strand that might so easily be snapped by another Hiroshima. So Annie divided her time into three parts, housework, study and reading. The first left room for thought and she got through it hurriedly in order to engage her mind elsewhere, in a place where she might ignore the Bomb, forget man’s current cruelties by reliving those of the past, deny, by burying herself in the intricacies of algebra and Latin, that she might become the next Ruth Ellis.

She stepped out into the sunlight and stood for a moment on the top step to watch her particular bit of the world go by. Did any of these people worry about the atom bomb? Would any one of them care if they knew that in their midst there resided a potential Ruth Ellis, a girl almost grown to womanhood, a young female who might easily commit a premeditated murder any day now? Twice she had struck down her stepfather, twice she had allowed him to remain alive. The next time he might not be so lucky and Annie Byrne could well end up in prison or, if the event should be postponed until she reached her majority, then the gallows would be used again.

From Bryant’s corner shop a figure emerged, jaunty and carefree in Edwardian suit, thick-soled shoes and bright orange socks. He called across the road, ‘Ho there, a pike – prick me this dog’s hide,’ thereby identifying himself as a Cullen, harkening back to the time when the seven of them had tried to ruin her performance in a school play. Not that she hadn’t recognized him in the first place – anybody who walked about looking like that was seeking attention.

He called again. ‘Oy – Freckles – go blind with all that reading, you will.’

She turned to go back into the library, but in a trice he was by her side, a wide grin stretched over his own freckled face, the oily quiffed hair stained a darker auburn by liberal applications of grease.

‘D’you like me hair?’ he asked, turning his head so that she could see the slick folds at the back. ‘It’s called a DA – that stands for duck’s arse.’

‘Thank you, Martin. I always wanted to know that.’

‘Anyroad, you shouldn’t be reading. You should be helping yer mam.’

‘Oh. Why?’ Cool green eyes swept over him.

‘Well . . . because you should, that’s all. All girls help their mams.’

‘And boys – aren’t they supposed to help in the house too? Or is there some special dispensation that gets them out of it?’

He shuffled uncomfortably. She just wasn’t the same any more, was she? She used to be great fun, did Annie Byrne, always up to mischief. Why, Annie and his twin sister Josie used to be the best pair of tomboys going – all the way through the juniors the two of them had plagued the living daylights out of everybody. Annie had always kept up with the lads, roaming the brows on conker hunts, trekking all the way down to Trinity Street to stand on a soot-covered bridge getting train numbers, usually ready for a fight too. Now she talked . . . well . . . posh like, made you feel as if she knew things, as if she was better than everybody else. He’d heard that she still capered on at school and was popular for her sense of humour but at home – well, she seemed as miserable as bloody sin. And it had taken him two flaming years to pluck up the courage to talk to her now she’d gone posh. Oh heck! But there was something about her, something special that made his stomach churn, made him angry and happy at the same time. Was he, Martin Cullen, famous hard case of this parish, smitten with a lass?

‘Boys do different things,’ he muttered. ‘Our Josie and our Ellen help me Mam, do the house and that.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘I mended the washing line this morning.’

She looked towards heaven before stepping back through the library door and he called after her, ‘I fetched the coal in!’

Annie walked past the startled librarian who probably wondered why she had returned so soon. She slammed the door of the reading room and threw herself into a chair. So he’d brought the coal in, mended the bit of rope where Bertha Cullen, on rare occasions, hung her dripping grey wash. Not that Annie wasn’t fond of Mrs Cullen – oh she was, she really was, but Martin was becoming a real pain these days, a pain Annie could well do without. He was forever hanging about outside the house with his motley group of Teddy Boy friends, always casting the odd glance up towards her bedroom window where she would sit reading or scribbling.

Yes, perhaps she should go out sometimes for a walk over the Jolly Brows or the top field, get some fresh air and a bit of sun. But Annie only went out in the evenings. During the day she stayed in, emerging only when her mother left for the mill, then walking miles to visit aunts, friends, acquaintances from school. And if she were to come out in the afternoons, Martin would no doubt find her, follow her and regale her with tales of dances at the Palais where he could ‘pass himself off as eighteen’, or, worse still, he would fill her ears with nonsense about the fights down Folds Road, clashes with rival Teddies. Still, he wasn’t all bad, she knew that. Somehow, she realized that his heart was not really in it, that he was out to impress, that he was not truly aggressive like some of the others.

She turned to glance through the window at the little garden at the back of the library where rhododendron leaves gleamed rich and dark while overblown roses tossed their weighty heads in the morning breeze. Because there was no school, Annie had been up since six o’clock as usual, raking out ashes and setting a new fire in the range. By 7.30, she had beaten the rugs, washed, rinsed and mangled the overnight soak and had hung the clothes to dry in the back street. The wash had to be out early so that it might be brought in before the lamp man came or the ragman’s pony ploughed through the streets while his master called ‘rag-a-bone, donkey-rubbing-stone . . .’ By eight she was finished for the day, floors swept, steps scrubbed and stoned, kitchenette cupboard wiped out, sink bleached, table laid, kettle bubbling on the range. The next two hours had been spent in the attic studying until library opening time. Yes, Annie helped her mother alright. She did what little she could in that deadly atmosphere to help the poor benighted soul who had brought her into the world. But for how much longer would she be able to carry on? He had recovered now; he was watching, waiting, planning . . .