A Whisper to the Living (11 page)

‘Is she dead?’ I moaned.

‘Nay, lass. She’ll be alright in a day or two. Are you stoppin’ at Entwistle’s tonight?’ I shook my head. ‘No. Rita’s down with the chicken pox. I’ll have to stop . . .’ Oh no, I couldn’t bear it. ‘I’ll have to stop here.’

‘Did ’e beat ’er up, luv?’

‘Yes,’ I answered flatly. ‘But she’ll say she fell downstairs.’

Mrs Cullen shook her head. ‘That’s what they always say. There must be more folk fallin’ donw t’ bloody stairs than there is folk walkin’ up ’em. Now listen, Annie. Like as not that bugger’s gone off down the pub for the night. ’E’ll be terrified o’ what ’e’s done, you see. With any luck, ’e’ll not be back till late. If you get worried about yer Mam, I’ll send George down the Infirmary, see ’ow she is. You know where I am. If you need me, just come down. You stop ’ere, see if the doctor brings any news. ’E’s a nice feller is Dr Pritchard, go an’ see ’im a bit later on. Are you alright now?’

I nodded, unable to speak. Mrs Cullen wobbled away, turning as she reached the edge of the pavement. ‘Don’t you worry now. Come round later if you like.’

I was frantic after she’d gone, driven almost out of my mind, pacing about the house like a caged animal, couldn’t sit down, couldn’t stand in one place for two seconds at a time. What should I do? What could I do? Panic flowed over me in waves, a blind, unreasoning feeling that was not really connected with what had happened, because my mind would not, just now, fix on any of it. This was fear in its purest sense, for I could not discover its real source. Yes, my mother was hurt, yes, I feared for her life – somewhere inside me I knew all that. But it was as if I were facing a tiger, a wild beast with an unpredictable nature that might pounce at any time and I ran from this invisible animal, room to room, storey to storey, until dusk fell and I knew that this house could no longer contain me.

The doctor’s wife opened the door to my hammerings and looked at me as if I were something the cat had dragged to her doorstep.

‘Yes? Can I help you?’

‘I want the doctor, Dr Pritchard . . .’

‘There is no surgery just now, I’m afraid, but if you’d like to come back in, say, fifteen minutes . . .’

‘I want to see him now. It’s an . . . an emergency.’

She looked me up and down again as if assessing my worth, her cool eye somehow making me feel better, because I was used to this type, had got used to this type at All Saints. She might have legs, but this one was a real nun if ever I saw one and I could deal with nuns any day of the week – yes, even now. She ushered me through to the waiting room.

Dr Pritchard was a kind and gentle man with a farseeing eye and a respect for humanity that was unusual in a man of his calling. He treated everyone with equal respect, always bent a willing ear, always had a smile and a jelly-baby for a child, even during rationing.

He joined me on the brown leather waiting bench.

‘Hello, Anne. Now, you’ll want to know about your Mummy, won’t you?’

I nodded and he took my hand in his.

‘Well, dear, I have telephoned just now to the hospital and she is in no danger whatsoever. They are managing to replace the blood she has lost and apart from being a little tired and bruised, she is doing fine, just fine.’

This was another thing I loved about this dear man. He always explained things like what made your blood clot when your leg bled and why you should never scratch your chicken pox.

‘What about the baby?’ I asked quietly.

He paused before replying, ‘The baby is gone, I’m afraid, Anne.’

It was then that the tears came and I leaned heavily against this man as I wept, clinging to his tweed jacket as my tears poured down the front of his clean white shirt. He leaned back and pressed a button on the wall. His wife appeared in the doorway after a few seconds and he spoke briskly to her. ‘Warm tea, Edna – warm, not hot and with two teaspoons of sugar.’ He dried my eyes on his capacious handkerchief and instructed me to blow my nose into the same. She stood in the doorway, an expression of disdain tightening her already bitter features.

‘Tea, Edna.’ She slammed the door behind her as she disappeared.

‘Are you feeling better now, Anne?’ He always called me Anne. I liked that.

‘A bit, Doctor.’

‘Crying’s good medicine, you know. Better than all the stuff in the chemist shop. It’s like – let me see now. You know how the sky goes black and the air hangs heavy before a summer storm?’ I nodded. ‘And then after the thunder and the rain there’s a lovely clean feel to everything? Well crying can be like that. It clears the brain.’

‘Is she hurting, Doctor?’

‘No. They have put her to sleep. When she wakes up she will be all mended.’

‘But with no baby.’

‘That’s right, dear. We could not save the baby.’

Oh God, how I hated that Eddie Higson. How would I face him now after all this? How could I live with a murderer? My mother was alive, but he had killed her baby, I knew that. My knowledge of anatomy was limited, but I was sure he had killed my unborn brother or sister.

‘What’s sterile, Doctor?’ He sat bolt upright and stared at me before attempting to answer this one.

‘It means . . . well . . . bearing no fruit. Or, in the case of an animal or a person, it means bearing no young ones, no babies.’

She entered then with the tea, thrusting the china cup and saucer into his hands as if she would as soon approach a snake as come near me. After she had left without a word for either of us, Dr Pritchard asked, ‘Why were you asking about the word “sterile” Anne?’

Instinctively, I was on my guard. ‘Oh, it’s something I heard at school. I knew it was to do with . . . well . . . babies and all that, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.’

‘Ah.’ He leaned back once more and studied me as I sipped my tea.

‘Tell me, Anne,’ he asked after several seconds. ‘How did your mother come to be so hurt?’

I stiffened. What should I say? If I told the truth, would Eddie Higson be locked up? And would that be what my mother would want? I decided to go cautiously. ‘I wasn’t there when it happened, Doctor. I think she fell down the stairs.’

The doctor sighed loudly. ‘Yes. That’s what she said, too, so I suppose she must have fallen downstairs, mustn’t she?’

He looked meaningfully at me and I answered meekly, ‘Yes, Doctor.’

He took the cup from my hand and led me through the hallway to the front door. ‘Come and see me again, Anne. And don’t worry, your Mummy is in very capable hands.’

I felt better now. The panic had left me; something about this warm and gentle man had calmed and soothed me. I had only to get through the next few days and my Mam would be home again.

I let myself into the darkening house and crept into the kitchen to make a bit of toast at the grill. Now I would have to look after myself, but as for him – well, he could go to the devil for his dinner. If the worst came to the worst, I at least had friends, could eat with Josie or Rita. He had nowhere to go and that was what he deserved.

When he staggered in at about eleven o’clock, I was on the sofa in the back living room, still fully dressed and with my mother’s coat over me for warmth. Although I had been asleep, I woke the instant he entered the house, pulling the coat over my head, feeling, as an ostrich must, that if my face were invisible then he might not see me at all. I heard him switch on the light, then go through to the kitchen. He was making something to eat; I could hear the kitchenette compartments opening and closing, the sound of bread being cut on the board, the click of the cheese-dish lid.

He sat then at the table, not three feet away from me and I listened to the disgusting noise he always made when he ate.

What would he do to me? I knew he would never let me get away with it; I had hit him over the head with the rolling-pin and he was not one to forgive and forget. Also, I could smell the beer on him; the fumes permeated the room, soaked through my mother’s coat and into my nostrils with a sickening intensity. Eddie Higson did not hold his drink well. I shivered as I awaited my fate.

I was suddenly blinded when, in one movement he crossed the small space between us and whipped the coat from me, throwing it across the room and almost into the grate where lay bloodstained towels and the twisted wreck that used to be my mother’s best rug.

‘Get up,’ he growled. ‘And where’s your mother?’

I looked up into his hideous face. ‘She’s in the hospital.’

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Aye and that’s where you’ll be and all if you ever pull a trick like that again.’ He pointed to the back of his head.

‘She’s . . . she’s lost her baby, the doctor says.’

‘Good. And what else did the doctor say? Does he know how she lost the kid?’ He seemed frightened and I made him wait for a few seconds before answering, ‘No. She told them she fell downstairs – again.’ I did not manage to keep the venom from my tone.

‘Get up when I tell you! From now on, you do exactly as I tell you – you hear me?’

I made no reply, but got up and stood by the sofa. He grabbed my arm tightly. ‘You do whatever I say. Otherwise, I’ll kill the bloody pair of you – you and your filthy mother. Because she’ll pay for this, by Christ she will. And so will you. You knew all about it, didn’t you? Well so do I now, ’cos a chap in the Star put me right tonight. I know the rat’s name, rank and number now and his number’s very near up, I can tell you. Ernie bloody Bradshaw, eh? I’ll twist his sodding neck round for him; he won’t know whether he’s coming or bloody going by the time I’ve done with him.’

‘He’s bigger than you,’ I ventured.

‘Is he now?’ His tone was sarcastic. ‘And I’ve got brothers, so he can be as big as he likes. Now get up them stairs you and into that bath. You’re as black as the ace of spades.’

I fled while the going was good. How was I going to warn Ernie? I would have to get to him tomorrow somehow and tell him that Eddie Higson was after him. What if I couldn’t? I had no money for busfares, no money for anything and I wasn’t going to ask Higson for money. I would have to walk, yes, that’s what I’d do. School was still out, this being the September wakes week, so tomorrow I would go to the hospital to see my mother and, on my way back, I would wait at Millhouse mill for the evening shift to come on, then I could tell Ernie to keep his wits about him in case Eddie Higson carried out his threat.

The water was not very warm as the fire had gone out, so I had no intention of lingering in the bath. I scrubbed myself clean, wondering all the while how my mother was and whether or not I would get to Ernie in time.

Higson pushed open the bathroom door and stood leering at me. There was no lock on this door as Higson had declared himself averse to locks; had not his own father perished while bolted into the backyard tippler?

The look on his face was horrible as he approached me, his eyes glazed, his mouth open in a weird and nasty grin. He bent down, picked up the sponge and began to wash me, the smell of stale beer on his breath making me heave almost.

Then he made me stand, lifting me up by the armpits. Muttering words I could not hear, he soaped my chest then my legs, his hands forcing my thighs to part so that he could touch me in a place I had never imagined to be touchable except by myself when washing or drying. So this was to be my punishment. I stood perfectly still while his fingers probed my body, wishing that he would beat me instead. Anything, anything at all would be better than this.

His voice thick now, he asked, ‘Do you love me?’

God, the man must have been drunk. Could anybody love a man who did this? He thrust his other hand into his pocket and began to move it quickly, then, after a few seconds of frantic activity, he sighed and knelt down on the floor at the side of the bath.

But my punishment was still not complete, for now he jumped up and grabbed me so tightly by the hair that I felt some of the roots snap away.

‘You tell anybody – anybody about this, I’ll kill the both of you – understand?’

I nodded mutely, my head moving just a fraction in his cruel grip.

‘I’m going to teach you a thing or two – right?’

Again, I nodded.

‘And you’ll learn to enjoy our little lessons. Yes, you and I are going to get to know one another really well.’

He released me and I fell down into the water as he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Fiercely I scrubbed my body in the icy water while red-hot tears of shame coursed down my cheeks. I did not understand what had just happened to me, but I feared it and hated it. And who could I tell? How could I find words to frame this terrible act that had been perpetrated against me? How would I prevent it from happening again?

I did know one thing though. Tomorrow I would run away to someone who would care for me, someone who would understand. Ernie Bradshaw would have to take care of himself. Until my mother got out of hospital, I must disappear, get to the other side of Bolton, as far away from here as I possibly could.

The rest could take care of themselves. I was put into this world to survive and survive I would.

The next morning, I was up by 5.30, creeping about the house like a burglar in my efforts not to waken him. My body still hurt, partly because I had scrubbed myself so hard with the loofah after the assault, but mostly because of the attack itself which had left me bleeding slightly through the night.

Quietly, I opened the bottom-right-hand drawer of the kitchenette where he kept his money, silver in a spinning-ring tin from the mill, copper in a larger wooden cigar box. I would not ask; I would simply take because by this afternoon I would be beyond his reach and among others who loathed and despised him.

I took a shilling’s worth of copper for busfares and then emptied the whole of the silver tin into my schoolbag. From the kitchenette cabinet, I picked up the remaining bread and cheese, then, pausing only to collect my mac with the hood, I left the house by the back door, having decided that I was less likely to be seen from the backs. Even at this early hour there were people about, colliers in particular, who often faced a long ride or even a long walk before their working day could start.