Authors: Ruth Hamilton
Saturday's Child
I dedicate this work to the memory of my little sister Susan Mary Nixon
Susan died 25 August 2000 in Hamilton, New Zealand, aged 52 years.
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
One
Few people spoke to Nellie Hulme.
For one thing, she hadn’t cleaned and stoned her step since the turn of the century, while the inside of her house was reputed to be worse than Charlie Entwistle’s rag-and-bone yard.
Lily Hardcastle, who suffered the questionable fortune of sharing party walls with Miss Hulme, was inundated with mice, silverfish, cockroaches and some little brown things for which no-one could
discover a name.
Lily was worn out with it all. She felt like bringing in the sanitary people, but she couldn’t quite persuade herself to do it. There was something sad and pitiable about the lonely woman
next door, that shambling figure that made its way from home to shop, from shop to library, out of the library and back home to squalid isolation.
Another reason for avoiding Nellie Hulme was that she stank like old books, aged sweat and, for some strange reason, over-boiled cabbage. According to theory, she never cooked, living instead on
chip shop meals, pasties, pies and the odd sandwich on a Sunday when shops were closed. As cabbage was not a part of this odd equation, the folk in Prudence Street guessed that some ancient
vegetable matter had found its resting place beneath piles of newspapers and rat droppings.
Whatever, the old lady was a disgrace, while her house should have been condemned years ago – even the bombed-out properties in the street were in better condition than number 1. Yes, the
first house in Prudence Street was a festering boil, and something should have been done about it years ago.
Lily Hardcastle, who was scrubbing her step and her ‘first flag’ – decent people always scoured the slab just outside their front entrance – stopped the movement of brush
and sandstone when Nellie Hulme’s door opened. Even now, out in the so-called fresh air, Smelly Nellie’s aroma tickled Lily’s nose. The woman was a disgrace. Soap and donkey-stone
cost nowt. Nellie had enough old clothes in that house to swap for a hundred scrubbing stones off a passing rag cart. Should Lily have another go at getting through to Nellie? Did she have the
energy for such a confrontation?
Lily sat back on her heels. It was no use; there was no point in going through all that mee-mawing again. Nellie Hulme was deaf and dumb. To communicate with her, a person had to enunciate each
syllable and match the words to invisible drawings produced by hands waving about in the air. Lily was fed up with carrying on like a windmill. It was all right for everybody else in the street,
because Nellie’s house was an end one, so poor Lily was the only one who suffered the constant smell and the frequent invasions by wildlife of many denominations. ‘Mucky owld
bugger,’ she said under her breath. ‘House wants burning down, everything in it and all. Aye, the lot needs shifting.’
Lily’s youngest, an urchin named Roy, joined his mother in the doorway. ‘Her ashpit’s got maggots in it,’ he declared, ‘loads of them. I reckon I could sell them to
people what go fishing. I wonder how much I could get for ’em?’
Lily clouted him across a leg with her floorcloth. ‘Get out of me wet,’ she ordered, ‘mind me donkey-stoning. Any road, you’re supposed to be in bed, lad. Have you been
scratching them spots? What have I told you about that, eh? If you keep digging away like that, your gob’ll be smaller than the pox.’
Roy was not a thing of beauty; his freckle-spattered face was topped by a bright red thatch, and his skin was not improved by several bloody pits from which he had dug the pustules of chicken
pox. ‘You’ll be marked for life,’ chided Lily. ‘Get back inside before I clout you again. And I hope you’ve not been poking and piking about over yon.’ She waved
a chapped hand in the direction of next door. ‘It’s trespassing, is that. One of these days Nellie Hulme’ll get the police on you, me lad.’
Roy went back inside. He had ‘gone over’ once more, even though Mam had told him to stop. She had told him so often that his backside had stung from many a slapping, yet he could not
resist climbing the yard wall to have a dekko through Nellie Hulme’s scullery window. It wasn’t easy, either, all that muck inside and outside the panes, but he had scraped a bit off
and now wanted to tell somebody about the tree. It wasn’t every day a lad found a tree growing in a scullery.
Mam came in, her body bent sideways by the weight of a bucketful of water. ‘You’ve been and gone and done it again, haven’t you?’ she asked. ‘After all I’ve
said, you’ve been hanging about in that filthy midden next door.’
He nodded mutely.
‘You’ll catch summat. You’ll catch the back of my hand and some terrible disease and all if you keep going over that back wall.’ She clattered the bucket onto the flagged
kitchen floor. Curiosity overcame her. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What did you find this time? More maggots? Rats as big as cats?’
‘There’s a tree growing in the sloppy,’ he said.
‘Dirty owld bugger,’ muttered Lily. ‘In the slop-stone? It’ll be an onion. She likes raw onions on her cheese butties, or so I’ve heard. What else?’
The thin lad raised a shoulder. ‘I saw a mouse eating some bread. Well, I think it were bread and I think it were a mouse – could have been a small rat. Tins everywhere, milk gone
green, newspapers on the floor. And the kitchen fire’s been raked out all over the place, ashes everywhere.’
Lily leaned against the table. She was getting wearied to the back teeth with Miss Nellie Hulme. Here she was, doing her best against all odds, three lads, a husband who liked his ale, a
tuppence-halfpenny job at the Prince William, not a decent rag to her back. And at least half her day was taken up by fighting this losing battle against Smelly Nellie. ‘I’ll have to
fetch the town,’ she declared. ‘Because it’s not right – we shouldn’t be living next to all that. She should be cleaned up and moved out. We’ll all be coming
down with some sort of a plague – you mark my words.’
Roy picked at another itchy spot on his forehead. Mam was always going on about how everybody should mark her words.
‘I said mark my words, not your face. Now, give over doing that – I’ve told you,’ yelled Lily. ‘Scarlet fever’ll get into your system through them holes what
you keep digging. Mithering about round ashpits while you’ve got open wounds – have you got no sense at all?’
Roy sighed. He didn’t know what to do with himself, because he didn’t feel ill, yet no-one was allowed to come near him until he had stopped being infectious. Although he disagreed
with the theory that education was a necessity, he had to admit that school was a damned sight better than being stuck here with Mam, washing, ironing, cooking and scrubbing. He couldn’t even
go next door. Nellie Hulme didn’t seem to mind; she had seen him, had made no effort to chase him off. ‘I’ve nowt to do,’ he moaned, wishing immediately that he could bite
back the words. ‘I can find summat,’ he added hastily, ‘I could read in me bedroom or . . . or I can make sums up, practise, like, for when I can go back to school.’
Lily skewered him with a hard look, handed him the Zebo and some rags. ‘Get that grate shining,’ she ordered. ‘Use plenty of leading and elbow grease. No finger marks, no dull
bits and wash your hands when you’ve finished.’
‘But Mam—’
‘You heard me, so shape.’
‘The heat makes me spots itch,’ he moaned, ‘and I’m still not well. See, I’ve got a fever, all sweaty and . . . and . . .’ His voice died. The expression on
his mother’s face declared that all negotiation was fruitless, that there would be no treaty, no quarter given. ‘All right,’ he mumbled. He smeared Zebo on the oven door and
wished with all his heart that he had kept his mouth shut, because Mam often found work for idle hands, declaring that she would use them before the devil did. That was yet another of Mam’s
sayings – the one about the devil and idle hands.
Lily stood in front of the dresser mirror and looked at the reflected stranger. She was only thirty-eight. Her eldest was seventeen, her middle one fourteen, her youngest, now making a feeble
effort to shine the oven door, was nine. ‘I suppose I’m a lucky one,’ she mouthed. After all, Sam wasn’t at her all the time, wasn’t forcing her to have a baby every
year. And there were ways and means, methods unavailable to the hordes of Catholics across the street. Aye, things could have been a damned sight worse, she reminded herself yet again.
But she looked so tired, so faded. It was a toss-up, she supposed, between poverty caused by too many children, or the same produced by a man who drank half his wages, thereby rendering himself
incapable of procreation most nights of the week. Well, she would try hard to be grateful, she really would. The inner voice wore a sarcastic edge.
Lily wanted more than this, more than a life that had become a fight against many kinds of filth. Even thinking about the men’s lavs at the Prince William made her gorge rise, all those
deposits left everywhere, vomit, faeces, phlegm. And some of it was likely Sam’s, as he was one of the ne’er-do-wells who frequented that particular hostelry. Yes, she hated cleaning
that pub. She was meant for better things, for a decent home, a pleasant life . . . wasn’t she? Was any member of her generation going to step outside these mean streets with their
soot-coated walls and ill-tasting air? Where was there a decent life? Where should she go to seek it out? God, she had no idea what she was thinking about.
She’d been a bonny girl in her time, apple-cheeked, auburn-haired, straight of spine, strong in wind and limb. But now . . . She stepped closer to the speckled mirror. She could have been
any age over forty, just a white face whose definition had become blurred by the fatty deposits from a poor diet, faded hair that was almost mousy, tired eyes, a forehead lined by care.
‘Mam?’
‘What?’
‘Do I have to finish it?’
Lily swallowed. Marriage finished it every bloody time. She thought about the friends she’d had at school and in the mill, every last one of them worn down by motherhood, poverty, some by
abusive husbands. That was the other good thing about Sam – he had never lifted a hand to her or the kids . . .
‘Mam, I’m tired.’
Aye, they were all bloody tired, all pale-skinned through living in narrow alleys supervised by mill walls, mill chimneys, mill smoke. There had to be more than this, she told herself. The best
she could expect was a chara ride to Blackpool once a year, some visits to and from relatives, a cigarette when she could afford one. There was no point in expecting new frocks and decent shoes, no
sense in dreaming about a hairdo or a lipstick. And the idea of a better, cleaner life had to be the product of a disturbed mind. She had to accept it, live with it, just like everybody else . .
.
‘Mam?’
‘Oh, leave it, Roy – you’re getting on me bloody nerves – and that’s swearing.’ Not one of her sons could be described as either use or ornament. Like their
father, they were selfish, thoughtless, feckless. No, that wasn’t true, because Danny sometimes looked at her sideways before handing her an extra shilling.
‘Mam?’
She rounded on him. ‘Go,’ she said, her tone dangerously quiet. ‘Go and look at her next door’s tree, her maggots, her green milk. I’m past caring, Roy. I’m
past all of it. Only don’t come running to me when you catch the scarlet.’ She was tempted to add, ‘Because I might not be here’, but motherhood held back those words.
Roy studied his mother for a few moments. She had a temper as red-raw as any Irish Catholic’s, but there was something a lot worse than temper in Lily Hardcastle. She had a cold place, a
part of her that sat way below ordinary anger. Perhaps that was because she wasn’t a Catholic. Catholics lived on the other side of the street. They were noisy, ill-kempt and full of fun.
When he grew up, Roy Hardcastle was going to become a Catholic. They had singsongs, tunes played on a melodeon, fights, dramas.
