Little Grace Ashworth had her mother’s dimples and her father’s dark hair, and at the age of eight was by all accounts a strikingly pretty girl. Evelyn brushed and plaited her soft hair every morning, marvelling at its silkiness, and she stroked her daughter’s smooth face and gave a gentle prod where the dimples would appear on each cheek. “Let’s be putting those dimples on show today, eh?” she would say. “Be a happy good lass for your Mam.”
But she herself would never see those dimples. And Grace had already acquired something of her father’s brooding and taciturn nature, so that for days on end very few other people did, either. Sometimes Evelyn worried that in her daughter’s silences there was a reproach meant for her, as if it were Evelyn’s own fault that she was blind. A mood would settle on the little girl for days at a time and Evelyn would fret to herself that she would never be forgiven for the fact that Grace had been born to a mother who was unable to see her.
If only Stan had taken more trouble and time with his daughter, but he only noticed Grace on the very few occasions on which she was naughty. He had as little to do with her, or with Evelyn, as possible. She never had found out any more about the girl in blue and yellow. When it occurred to her, weeks after the day on Kinder Scout, that she would be quite within her rights as a wife to insist on knowing, it had no longer seemed important. Then Grace had been born and it seemed less important still.
Now, whenever he wasn’t at work he would be out somewhere. He had long since stopped saying where he was going and Evelyn had long ago stopped asking. After all these years, whether Stan was at a meeting or drinking with Alan O’Reilly, or carrying on with some girl or another, it made little difference to her. All she knew was that with the passing of time her own heart seemed to grow smaller.
In the house, he and his mother continued in their old ways, ignoring his wife and daughter as much as they could. It seemed to Evelyn that she only really existed when her mother-in-law was laying down the law to her about some detail of their arrangements. Would Evelyn kindly oblige her by not taking up more than half of a rail of the drying pulley in the scullery. Would Evelyn point out to Grace that shoes must not be left on the stairs. Life under old Mrs. Ashworth’s roof was uneasy to say the least.
When war came again in 1939 Stan was among the first to join up, to everyone’s surprise except Evelyn’s. For years now he had been using his meetings mainly as an excuse to spend hours out of the house, and Evelyn had guessed at once that no lingering left-wing political ideals would withstand the temptation presented by the chance to join the army and get away for months or maybe years, even if it meant going into danger.
For her, life went on much as usual. It was certainly no better with him gone. If anything Mrs. Ashworth went even further out of her way to be difficult. She was no help with Grace, even though Grace was an unnaturally quiet and undemanding child. She was “living on a knife edge” with her only son away, fighting for his country, and she couldn’t do with a child stampeding around, added to which, she claimed, she was an old lady now and too nervy to leave the house.
When everyone was issued with gas masks in March 1940, the war had come suddenly much closer to home. And when, only a few weeks later, Grace was evacuated to the Cheshire countryside, Evelyn thought her heart would break. She now had an intimate knowledge of every quirk and pitfall of the house in Bank Street and could look after herself well enough, and she tried to draw comfort from knowing that Grace was out of danger and away from her irritable grandmother, and in the country, where surely fresh air and homegrown vegetables would be in greater supply than in smoky old Aldbury. Her own wants were few, and Stan’s army pay was regular.
The local shopkeepers knew her and her white stick, and were all friendly, and neighbours went out of their way to pass the time of day with her, perhaps sensing that she would be lonely with her little girl gone. Everybody respected her for her cheerfulness and her way of dressing her shy, polite daughter so beautifully, in expertly hand-knitted garments, every stitch made by herself. Just as important, they knew old Mrs. Ashworth and the kind of woman she was. Most of them had felt the rough side of her tongue at one time or another.
So the butcher took special care that bacon for young Mrs. Ashworth was sliced from the lean end of the slab, and that she wasn’t left out if, for example, some nice rabbits came his way, delivered after dark to the back of the shop. The grocer next door might whisper that he’d had a special delivery, nothing official, mind, but maybe she could find room for an extra egg in the bottom of her shopping bag and mum’s the word?
It was months later, towards the end of a day’s shopping in preparation for a bleak Christmas, on December 23, that the raid came. London and the other big cities in the south of England had been taking the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s attention for months, yet the first raid on Manchester still came as a shock. For one thing, though the raid went on for a number of days and nights, nobody had expected it to begin in broad daylight. A still bigger shock, and a puzzle, was the apparently random dropping of bombs on Aldbury, several miles away. Theories abounded: simple incompetent targeting by a plane aiming for the Ship Canal or the docks, or a navigational error, or a pilot getting rid of bombs too heavy for the hazardous daylight flight back to a base in Norway. But whatever the reason, the line of bombs blasted away several buildings over four Aldbury streets and left a burning scar a mile long. People said it was a miracle more damage wasn’t done and more people weren’t killed, it being so near to Christmas and folk out and about. But 43 Bank Street was among the eight houses destroyed, and old Mrs. Ashworth was among the five people who died.
Daphne’s brother Paul, like Stan, had enlisted, so with the help of Colin and Jem, the two other Baker brothers, Evelyn salvaged a few possessions and moved in gratefully with Daphne and her family. Mrs. Baker, on Evelyn’s behalf, contacted Stan’s regiment. She was told that Private Stanley Ashworth was serving somewhere in North Africa and was instructed that if she wrote with the details of Mrs. Ashworth’s death, her letter would be forwarded to Stan’s commanding officer and the sad news conveyed to Stan. They were not to expect a quick reply. Compassionate leave could be not granted in the circumstances and the old lady’s funeral should not be delayed.
The first communication from North Africa came early in the New Year. It was not what Evelyn had been expecting. It was not from Stan. His unit had been engaged in heavy combat against the Italians in Egypt and Stan had been declared missing, presumed killed, after a desert battle lasting several days that had begun on December 14.
So Mrs. Ashworth had been spared the knowledge that Stan had been killed. That was Evelyn’s chief thought when she heard the news. The same numbness that she had felt on hearing of her own father’s death when she was twelve came over her again. She tried to shed tears for Stan but none came. Perhaps that was just as well, she thought; it wouldn’t do Grace any good to see her mother break down when she travelled out to Cheshire to tell her she had lost her father.
It was in times of adversity, Daphne’s mother said, that you found out who your true friends were. Sometimes contrary to appearances, she added darkly. For although he had been a most infrequent visitor to his sister and nephew in Bank Street, it was Stan’s uncle, who now owned five shops, who stepped in and insisted that Evelyn would not make the journey by bus and train by herself to visit Grace and break the news. He would drive her there and back, he said, waving aside Evelyn’s concern about the petrol ration.
Grace seemed to take the news very calmly, but on that frosty day, walking across the village green while Stan’s uncle waited in the car, Evelyn would never again in her life wish more fervently that she could see her little girl’s face. If only Grace would speak her thoughts and feelings, but she said very little, and although she did not snatch away her hand when Evelyn squeezed it tightly in hers, she consented rather stiffly to her mother’s hug and seemed impatient when Evelyn stroked her hair. She began to fidget when Evelyn drew her close and cradled her head in her arms. Neither of them cried.
Evelyn was glad for Stan’s uncle’s cheerful presence, and overawed by his generosity. He treated them to a luncheon in the sombre dining room of the Victoria Arms in Warrington. It was a meal of Brown Windsor soup, mock lamb cutlets, and vegetables, followed by tapioca pudding. He ordered for himself and Evelyn large glasses of port to keep out the cold, and insisted throughout the meal that Grace take nips from his glass as well, until he saw the roses in her cheeks again. Grace was quiet and ate solidly, while Evelyn answered for her the many kind questions that Stan’s uncle asked her. When they took her back to the elderly couple with whom she was staying, Stan’s uncle pressed half a crown into Grace’s hand and told her she was a bonny girl and he’d tip her again next time if he heard that she’d been good and brave while he was away.
On the journey back, Evelyn grew thoughtful. In a matter of a few weeks her life had changed completely. She was now solely responsible for her strange, aloof little daughter, and however difficult life had been with her mother-in-law and husband in Bank Street, she no longer had either of them. Her own mother was very frail now and had moved in with Aunt Violet and Uncle Bill after Auntie Peg’s death in 1937. There simply was not enough room in their already cramped house for her and Grace. It was only through the charity of friends that she even had a roof over her head, but she couldn’t stay with the Bakers forever.
But she couldn’t get a place of her own, with no way of paying the rent. There was no factory work she could do, and her widow’s pension would cover only the essentials of life. She made a bit knitting this and that for people and getting paid a little for it, but it wasn’t anything like a living. What would become of Grace? Who would believe any blind woman capable of bringing up a child, let alone a blind woman living alone in poverty? Evelyn had not until now faced the stark truth. The child of a poor, blind, widowed mother would be taken away and put in a children’s home. It was then that she began to cry.
Stan’s uncle revved the engine and cast an anxious look at his passenger.
“’Course you’re upset, love,” he said, patting her knee. “You just let it all out. People may have their faults but when all’s said and done it’s a terrible business, war.”
Evelyn blew her nose and nodded.
“Now, young lady, I’ve been thinking,” Stan’s uncle went on. As you know, I am Leslie Hibbert, Purveyor of Confectionery & Tobacco, sole owner and proprietor of five premises of that name across the northwest from Blackpool to Bakewell. I am a man as has always stood on his own two feet. I am a man as likes to see other folk standing on their own two feet.”
“I know. And that’s only right and proper, Mr. Hibbert,” Evelyn said a little uncertainly.
Stan’s uncle cleared his throat. “Call me Uncle Les. Now, here’s the gist. I am, furthermore, a man as is placed to give a helping hand to those as tries to stand on their own two feet. I like to see folk try to make a go of it. And you’ve tried to make a right good go of it, what with your handicap. Stanley was never easy. You’re a right clever lass, handicapped or not, and there’s nobody can tell me otherwise.”
“Well, you can only do your best, can’t you?” Evelyn said, puzzled.
“Aye. Now, it so happens I’m getting rid of a bad ’un. Beggar that’s running the Irlam shop, he’s had his fingers in’t till. He’ll be out on his ear come Friday. There’s rooms on the two floors over’t shop and I’ll not take any rent off you. I’ll get you in some help behind the counter but you’re manageress. You’ll do the books and the orders and answer to me for the profits. Daresay little Grace will be a help to you, she’ll know her figures by this time and the stock’s not heavy to lift. You’ll find me a reasonable man.”
“Mr. Hibb-, Uncle Les, I don’t know what to say. Me and Grace, you mean we’d live over the shop? For nowt?”
“Aye, but I’m expecting you to keep an-” Uncle Les’s voice stumbled on the word “eye.”“I’m expecting you to keep it all running smoothly. Make sure we’re open prompt, keep the stock turning over, keep the hired girl in line. You’ll get the hang of the ordering and doing the books, you’re a clever lass. That hasn’t escaped my notice.”
Evelyn tried to stammer out some words of gratitude but Uncle Les interrupted her.
He cleared his throat. “Nay, don’t thank me. All I ask is I’ll trouble you for your company now and then, you and little Gracie. I’m a lonely man since Mrs. Hibbert passed on and family’s family, when all’s said and done. I like to see a kiddie about the place and I’ve none of my own. Mrs. Hibbert wasn’t able. And a home’s not a home without a kiddie.”
The night following was thick and humid, the sky as heavy as wax. The matches had gone soft and when I finally got one to light, the shed glowed a thundery yellow and smelled wormy and sulphur warm. Though the weather was not ideal for it, I had a particular plan. I had not attempted it until then because of the noise it would make, but that was no longer a consideration. We had an understanding. He was ready to let me do more for him; I could tell that even before I had read his letters to me.
Once he was in the attic I made my way upstairs. I went straight to the spare room where I knew he had been leaving his dirty clothes. The place was strewn with them, banked up on the bed and across the floor in a jumble of turquoise, lime, orange, purple, plain, checked, patterned. I had seen him ransack the heaps time after time, although less often since he had taken to wearing the raincoat. There was not a clean stitch left. Everything had been worn until it stank, then dropped on the floor and most probably worn again.
Back in the kitchen, I didn’t need any light. The feel of the materials told me that most of his things were synthetic. I shoved the first load in and started the machine. Pretty they were, the lights on the dials in the dark, and the machine shook and winked and juddered in a way that was businesslike, and somehow energizing. I ran upstairs and brought down more clothes and waited for the first load to finish. I hauled it out and started the second. If I worked fast then I could get all of it done and out on the line and it might even be dry before I had to leave. Even though there was not a breath of wind, I might get everything in, folded and ready. He would come down to a house smelling of clean clothes.
There is something robust and proper about a good wash day. Whether on a Monday morning, as happened in my grandmother’s time, or on a warm summer’s night, laundry needs to be tackled, not picked at. It isn’t a job to be slipped through at odd moments so nobody notices it’s happened at all except when, one by one, garments reemerge clean from somewhere; a full, wet clothesline deserves notice as the small statement of competence it is. I believe that the washing of clothes ought to raise the temperature, make the walls run, fill the air as it did that night. So if I had a criticism of Ruth it was this: her arrangements suggested that she laundered on the quiet. I don’t think she even dried things in the proper way, hung outside on a line, because there was only a short length of rope on a hook, coiled against the house wall, that stretched a few feet across the terrace. I guessed her habit was to put things on hangers and leave them dripping in the conservatory or over the bath. I searched the shed and found a decent length of line. I fixed it to the neck of the downpipe at one corner of the conservatory and took it down across the grass and tied it off round the top of the pergola at the far side of the garden.
It was still dark by the time the first three washes were hung. I walked along the line for a while, smoothing and squeezing garments as I went: his pegged-up slacks and shirts and sweaters, the underpants and socks, a row of shapes so soft and indistinct as to have almost no dimension at all, pasted on the night air like the afterimages of a departed procession of dismembered torsos and limbs. But there was nothing sinister about it. They looked too much like bits of giant puppet to be anything but faintly comical; there was also something amusing, touching even, about masculine clothes separated from their wearer.
I brought in the first load, chilly to the touch, and ran a warm iron over everything to drive off the damp. The kitchen filled with the watery, cold sweetness of grass and the almost melting tang of hot polyester; it was absurdly thrilling. I went back upstairs and picked up towels and bed linen and put those in the wash, too. Back and forth I went from the machine to the garden, ironing things as they came in. There wasn’t a lot of space left in the kitchen with the ironing board up and mounds of clothing, but during a lull around two o’clock I dragged in one of the conservatory chairs. I made myself tea and sat watching the machine as it shuddered and droned from its corner in the dark.
I woke up to a stillness inside the house. The machine had stopped. The only sounds were a lashing wind and the rattle of rain coming down against the windows and roof. Outside, the whole line of washing was swaying and the empty laundry basket I’d left out was rolling around on the terrace. I dashed into the conservatory.
The storm had come on so fast. His clothes and towels were already soaked and being whipped around by the weather, and they were getting muddy too; rain was spiking into the grass and sparking straight back up. All I could see was a squally swirl of shapes and dripping shadows, like dark and darker paint running down the glass.
I ran outside to the far end of the line and started working my way along, unpegging. Cold sprays of rain bit my face. I slung some of the clothes over my shoulder and dragged other things down into the crook of my arm, but it was like hauling waterlogged creatures in from the sea; I started to go numb under the weight of them and their icy cling. I couldn’t make out anything much; as well as the rain and my running eyes, the drenched washing still on the line cracked around me like flags.
He didn’t make a sound, so I don’t know what made me turn when I did, but there he was, not six feet away, sidling towards me on the other side of the line, his face set grim against the rain, hair flattened and dark over his skull, and his raised arms draped in laundry. Maybe he didn’t call out because his lips were clamped tight on a row of clothes pegs. They arced out of his mouth like the struts of a stubby, naked fan. I hadn’t thought about the pegs, I’d just yanked them out and let them fall on the ground. I made a movement towards him and then he started, let the pegs fall from his mouth, flipped the wet bundle from his arms onto the grass, and hurried, limping, back to the house.
27 Cardigan Avenue
Dear Ruth
Wish you’d write.
But thank you, dear. Clean togs welcome.
Can’t get far on the legs, down to bottom of drive two or three times a day to read Della’s poem is about it.
I sat on the stairs for a long time today.
Have had to submit to soup from across the road. Mrs. M’s son The Great Tony the paramedic came over with it-bossy bugger, like mother like son. He also had a shopping list. He said Mrs. M had jotted down some basics and would I run my eye over it and add anything else I could think of. He got my debit card number off me and said he’d get the whole thing fixed up online and I wouldn’t even have to sign for it-Mrs. M would take delivery and drop it all over regular as clockwork, I wouldn’t need to stir. BUT it would do me good to get out and he’d take me shopping anytime I cared to go.
I scratched my head over that-can’t recall what I agreed to, list is still here somewhere. Maybe it’s all written down. Could you deal with it?
Later on was rootling around in some of your heaps and found something on mimosa! WAS it necessary however to hang on to so much paper? Here’s the bit:
All I Want (Mimosas)
Maria G. Bracci-Cambini
to Joan
May 20, 1983
From “your Tosca”
A farmhouse
that’s all I want
out of Life.
A farmhouse,
and Sun,
and
Mimosas
In a willow-y tree.
Where, when shadows fall
and seasons pass,
an echo of long ago
will speak to me
And the mimosa sighing
On the willow-y tree.
Who was Maria Bracci-Cambini? And who was Joan? I knew you were fond of mimosa and we both liked a bit of sun now and then, but did you want a farmhouse too, Ruth? You never mentioned it.
All these words everywhere. I keep coming across things you never talked about.
I never knew there was such a word as willow-y-willowy, yes. It looks nice, though-willow-y.
There’s a book out now about punctuation. I expect you’d have bought it.
Arthur