Polly's Pride (46 page)

‘To allow you control over your own children would serve only to perpetuate the sin. By becoming a part of our family, you corrupted and shamed it. But your marriage didn’t work, did it? Matthew learned sense in the end and abandoned you.’

Polly bit down hard on her lip. ‘Because you dripped your poison into his ear. I can see that clearly now.’

‘You brought nothing but problems. Now your daughter is about to commit the same mistake by seducing a Catholic boy, when really she should marry a Methodist.’

‘I’ll never marry anyone but Tom!’ Lucy’s anguished cry echoed heart-breakingly in the tiny room. Polly’s whole body shook as she witnessed her daughter’s pain. But still she held on to her temper.

‘I created no problems for this family, Joshua, nor for Matthew. Weren’t we always happy, until poverty and our different ways of dealing with that came between us? A problem we might have overcome had you not interfered.’

Joshua advanced to within an inch of her, and leaning close spat the next words in her face. ‘You
ruined
him, Jezebel that you are! Because of his ridiculous passion for you, Matt was more concerned with saving his own skin than rescuing our younger brother from the dangers of battle.’

It all came out then, the hatred and the venom, the bitter resentment he had stored up over the years. Joshua poured out his version of events; how he was certain that Matthew could have saved Cecil, could have gone back and carried him from the field of battle.

His eyes were glittering like glass, and though they gazed upon her, failed to quite focus.

Polly stated at him, transfixed by horror. The terrible tragedy of poor Cecil’s death was being set firmly at Matthew’s door, and her own too. Young though she’d been at the time of the Great War, Matthew had told her then of Joshua’s accusation, but she’d never dreamed it could turn into a feud, almost an obsession. As if Matthew would have abandoned his dying brother in order to save his own skin! The very thought made Polly steam with anger on his behalf. But Joshua evidently believed that he had, and clearly laid some of the blame upon her too, simply because Matthew had loved her. However unfair, Joshua hated her because she was alive and Cecil was not.

Polly was shaking her head. ‘Actually you’re wrong. Matthew did go back. Didn’t he tell you? Perhaps because he was such a modest man, and the pain of his failure cut so deep, he may not have done. Of course he tried to save his poor brother, for all he was ordered not to risk trying by his commanding officer. He ignored the order, as did one or two others. Despite lying injured for hours and needing urgent medical attention himself, Matt searched among the dead and dying, saving a few, thank God, but Cecil was already dead when he found him.’

‘Because he went back too late. Coward that he was!’

‘No!’ Now it was Polly who was shouting. ‘My Matt was not a coward. The situation was always hopeless but at least he tried! Look how he saved Tom Shackleton, and died as a result?’

‘He deserved to die.’

Something in the tone of his voice brought Polly to a new and terrifying realisation. She recalled how once she’d suspected that Matthew’s death might not have been entirely an accident, but had dismissed the idea as the product of her own overwrought imagination. Now she looked into her brother-in-law’s frozen expression and knew that was not the case. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’

‘I left him to die. In exactly the same way that he left Cecil. It was only right and proper. Justice for his cowardly neglect of our brother.’

While Polly stood in a daze of shock, Joshua swivelled on his heel and reached for Lucy, pulling the screaming girl from the table by her hair, as if she were a rag doll. One hand smoothed down the rumpled sack, his fingers lingering over pert young breasts, savouring the pleasure of that moment before he moved on to grip Lucy’s slender arms. ‘And now it is your turn. You, the Irish bitch who first turned him from his family, and this child, your whore of a daughter. She’s as worthless as the muck on this floor.’ So saying, he flung Lucy to the far corner of the room, where she crumpled in a heap as if she were indeed no more than a sack of rags.

Without stopping to think, for surely she would never have done such a terrible thing if she had, Polly picked up the pan of boiling water and tossed it into Joshua’s face. She didn’t wait to check the result of her action as his screams filled the room, but grabbed Lucy’s s hand and ran. It took several frustrating moments before she managed to get the key to turn in the lock, her hands were shaking that much. Then the door banged open at last and she was half-carrying, half-pushing her daughter out into the open where they were both gathered safely into Charlie’s arms.

Polly and Charlie were married by a delighted Father Donevan just a few weeks later. Not only had he the pleasure of welcoming Polly Pride and her children back into the Faith, but a new member as well. Charlie had willingly attended classes every Thursday evening with the old priest in order to make this change, which he saw as a new beginning for himself. Polly was also delighted to be at last returning to her Church, which felt like coming home in a way. Strangely, in the end, it seemed Joshua’s quarrel with her had not been about religion at all, but a bitter feud of his own making.

She lit a candle in memory of Matthew, as she would do every year at the anniversary of his death.

She and Matthew had been happy until poverty and his pride had got in the way. But then she was not without the sin of pride herself. Nevertheless, they would have overcome their difficulties, in time, if Joshua’s obsession hadn’t twisted Matt’s mind against her. But whatever had happened in the past could not be altered, simply endured. Now it was time to move on and face a new future. She’d been given a second chance to love and be loved by another good man. Oh, indeed, she was a lucky woman.

As she walked down the aisle on the arm of the man she loved, Polly looked upon her family with pride and joy.

There was Benny, seated beside Tom Shackleton in the front pew, looking quite the young man in a new grey suit, and giving her a wink as she passed by. He would be coming into the business full-time at Christmas, or so he’d informed her. Polly had welcomed the idea, for wasn’t he a great asset? Charlie too had plans for a big carpet store in the centre of the
city,
given a year or
two’s
good trading.

She could see Big Flo grinning from ear to ear, refusing only to kneel along with the rest of the congregation as she preferred to sit with her back as ramrod straight as her morals, so that she could talk to her God face to face.

Polly knew that her mother-in-law was not quite the woman she’d once been. A part of her robustness had gone, perhaps for ever. Her large frame seemed to have shrunk a little, although not for a moment did she complain. Watching her only remaining son struggle with those scalding burns after that terrible day in the warehouse should have filled her with compassion. But she’d shown no sign of such an emotion.

When Joshua had recovered sufficiently to leave hospital, Big Flo had looked at the scars on his face and told him that they would forever be a warning to him that he had no understanding of the words love or compassion.

She’d gone to see him off when Joshua had left on a cheap passage to Canada, Polly by her side at the dock on the Manchester Ship Canal, as support. But not a single tear had touched her mother-in-law’s cheek, nor had she waved, or wished him well as she’d stood, hands folded, spine rigid. She’d watched the ship carry her last son away, knowing she would probably never see him again, and that he was the cause of her losing her second son.
 

‘You still have us,’ Polly had told her.

‘Aye, lass, I know. I take great comfort from my two grandchildren, and my brave daughter-in-law.’

They’d smiled at each other then, and walked home together arm in arm.

‘Are you happy, Mrs Stockton?’ whispered a voice in her ear.

‘How could I not be?’ Polly said, sighing.

They stepped outside of the church to be met by a sunburst of brilliant light and smiling faces, everyone laughing and throwing rose petals and confetti. A cameraman with a tripod called instructions for the bride to look his way. But turning her head in quite the opposite direction, Polly sought out Lucy, who looked enchanting in a soft blue satin bridesmaid’s dress that exactly matched her eyes.

‘Catch. You next!’ she cried, and tossed her wedding bouquet of roses and lily-of-the-valley. But she was too happily engrossed being kissed by the groom to check whether her daughter actually caught it.

Read on for an extract of Polly’s War – the next book in Polly’s Journey

Chapter One

1945

Polly Pride stared at her boss open mouthed. ‘Laying me off? I’m thinking that’s a mean-minded, low-spirited thing to be doing to a body, particularly since you know I’m the family bread winner just now.’

‘Your Charlie no better then?’ Jack Lawson had the grace to look uncomfortable, as well he might faced with the blistering power of Irish temper which now confronted him.

Standing with her fists screwed into her still slim waist, Polly Pride was an awesome sight even in a crossover pinny. She was still a handsome woman, her dark shining hair with its glimmer of red catching the light as she shook her head at him, greeny-grey eyes flashing dangerously. The fact that she was still known as Polly Pride for all she’d been wed to Charlie Stockton, her second husband, for near a decade spoke volumes. ‘Indeed you know full well he’s been off work these three weeks past. So how are we to manage without a wage coming in, will ye tell me that?’

Lawson’s solemn face did not soften the slightest degree. ‘Same as everyone else Poll. By doing the best you can. Anyroad, your Benny’ll be home from the front soon, and your Lucy’s chap. That’s why we have to let all you women go, to make way for our boys.’ He raised his voice a little, glancing about him as if appealing to their compassion but more than one woman in the workshop shook a clenched fist and told him where he could stick the cards he was giving them all.

‘Put ‘em where the sun don’t shine,’ yelled one, not known for her finesse.

‘Aye, and then take a long jump off th’end of Irwell Street Bridge.’

Many of the women no longer had husbands, brothers or fathers who could come home, and those men who had survived in one piece weren’t necessarily coming home to them. Jack Lawson turned away, almost at a run, so eager was he to evade their accusations and sharp wit. The workers in this warehouse close by Potato Wharf weren’t the only ones to get the chop, not by a long chalk. The building had served as a
 
store for many things during the long war, cotton, timber, packing cases, even food. Now it was returning to its original purpose - a print works. There’d be no employment then for women like these.

The waters of the canal basin looked as black as ever, thick with oil and cluttered with rubbish, seeming to echo the women’s dour mood as Polly and her friends made their way home at the end of their morning shift. For all they’d dreamed of this day for years, happily planned the celebrations for weeks, yet there was precious little laughter as they walked up Medlock Street and past Liverpool Road Goods Station, the taste of coal dust in their mouths and the booming and shunting of trains loud in their ears so they had to raise their voices to shout to each other.

It’d been the most exciting summer anyone could remember. They’d already enjoyed VE Day with jubilant street parties as well as the usual May Day Parades with Shire horses bedecked in ribbons and rosettes and the coronations of the various district May Queens. Now, with the surrender of Japan, hostilities really were at an end and red, white and blue bunting flapped joyously in the breeze, criss-crossing every street the women passed through, from bedroom windows more accustomed to blackout curtains during the long days of war. A Union Jack painted on a back yard wall, the hammer and sickle flying side by side with the stars and stripes; bright, brave flags heralding a day the likes of which had never before been seen, not even in Manchester where they knew how to have a good laugh. They’d soldiered on and ‘made do’ for nigh on six years, and they were only too ready for a good knees-up.

Bright eyed children in threadbare jerseys with holes in the sleeves. Boys in sleeveless pullovers and trousers they would ‘grow into’ hung on elastic braces, sparking their clogs on the setts as they kicked a ball about; girls skipping in skimpy cotton frocks, dirty bare feet thrust into scuffed sandals, not a hair ribbon among them to hold back shining bobbed hair recently washed and trimmed for the occasion but their singsong voices rang out with youthful joy and a certainty in the future, one their mothers were now beginning to fear.