The Dressmaker’s Daughter. Nancy Carson

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СКАЧАТЬ them, conveying some private understanding. Lizzie wondered whether her mother ever felt she’d married the wrong man. If she’d married Uncle Tom instead, she, Lizzie, would not be sitting here now, contemplating it all. Lizzie was curious how her Aunt Sarah viewed all this; since she must know about this relationship of decades ago. It was so long ago that surely it must be a joke now; regarded benignly as some folly of youth. Certainly Tom and Sarah seemed content. They’d reared a family, too.

      Uncle Tom must have looked a lot like Stanley when he was young, Lizzie thought. He was dark, too, and tall, and slender as a lath. He must have been very handsome as a young man with his twinkling, blue eyes and his roguish laugh.

      Lizzie’s thoughts turned inevitably to Stanley. She’d heard nothing from him since he joined the army, though she knew he’d been back home for a few days when his training finished. She often thought about him, wondering whether it was because of her that he joined? Was it to get away from her? Was it because he’d started something he didn’t feel inclined to finish? She hoped not; she could scarcely countenance the thought of him being hurt in some skirmish of war, when he might otherwise have been at home. She would always feel responsible. Or was it collusion between Uncle Tom and her mother, after she had asked if it were true that cousins could marry? But she and Stanley were young; little more than children; lots of things might have happened to part them, even if they had started courting. There was nothing to say they would ever get married. So why should he have gone away?

      Such thoughts plagued Lizzie from time to time. Stanley lingered in her heart, and because she could not have him she wanted him all the more. Boys were interested in her; she could tell that from the way they looked at her, but no one with Stanley’s good looks. Jesse Clancey was beyond her reach anyway because he was courting Sylvia Dando, as Aunt Sarah was always at pains to remind them. Sylvia couldn’t have picked a nicer chap, and Jesse couldn’t have picked a nicer girl, she told them proudly every time she visited. They were a perfect couple. And with Jack Clancey talking about retirement, Jesse would take over the dairy business and eventually inherit a tidy nest-egg.

      *

      It was in June of 1907 that Jack Hardwick’s standing in the community was highlighted. Jack lived next door to May and Joe, and they not only shared the privy at the top of the yard with the Hardwicks, but also the stink and the squealing of his pigs. Like Jesse Clancey, Jack was an only son, and the Hardwicks identified with the family from the dairy house, aspiring to success, too, in their own small business. Their way of going about it, after many family discussions, had been to set up Jack in their own converted front room as a butcher, a trade he’d learned well. Business had been brisk ever since the venture started and Jack was growing in confidence daily.

      Another trader, Percy Collins, a greengrocer, watched Jack’s scheme with envy. He owned a corner shop at the bottom of Hill Street. Percy had a son as well, Alfred, a core-maker at the Coneygree Foundry in Tipton, who had no interest at all in the family business. It galled Percy, therefore, to see Jack Hardwick enthusiastic in his butchery, and his own son apathetic to greengrocery.

      Despite the envy, Percy had to admire the Hardwicks’s enterprise and success, especially in view of the number of butchers’ shops already on Kates Hill. He was content to patronise him by encouraging his wife, Nora, to buy their Sunday joint from him every week. However, each time she returned, she felt Jack had overcharged her.

      One Sunday dinnertime, Percy returned home with their joint of beef, roasted to perfection as usual at Walter Wilson’s bakery, after the last bread had been baked. But, on the way, Percy had called in The Junction for a pint or two of ale.

      ‘I’ll just goo and tek the dog a walk afore I have me dinner, Nora,’ Percy suggested.

      ‘No, leave her be,’ Nora replied curtly, prodding cabbage leaves into a pan of boiling water. ‘Her’s on heat. You’ll have every dog for miles sniffin’ after her and piddlin’ up the front door. Carve the joint instead.’

      So Percy took the carving knife, sharpened it and strove manfully to cut the meat. But it was so tough the knife would barely cut through it. He took the knife outside and sharpened it again on the front door step. When he returned and tried once more, he imagined the beer had sapped his strength, so didn’t complain as he hacked half the joint into small bits. The remainder he left intact, having too little patience to continue. Soon Nora served up their Sunday dinners. Again Percy had difficulty cutting through his first slice of beef, and so vigorously did he try that the said slice slid off the plate and ended up in his lap, along with a potato, some cabbage and a goodly dollop of thick, brown gravy.

      ‘Oh, Perce! For Christ’s sake, what the hell yer doin’?’ Nora scolded. It was another mess for her to clear up. ‘You’m wuss than a babby.’

      Percy scraped his errant dinner back onto his plate with his knife and mopped his trousers with a dishcloth, fetched from the scullery. Undaunted, he sat down and attempted to cut the beef again.

      ‘Look at the state o’ this meat, Nora. I defy anybody to cut it.’

      ‘It is a bit ’ard, I agree, Father,’ Alf mumbled, chewing determinedly, encountering similar, though less spectacular, difficulty.

      ‘Hard? I should say it’s bloody hard. The damn cow as this lot come off must’ve been fed on sand and cement.’

      ‘I noticed yo’ had a bit o’ trouble carvin’ it,’ Nora commented wryly, ‘but I reckoned as it was the drink. The price it was it ought to be as tender as a bit o’ chicken.’

      ‘How much did he charge you for it?’

      ‘Two an’ nine.’

      ‘How much? My God, it was dearer than bloody gold. He ought to be ashamed, that Jack bloody ’Ardwick.’

      So the Collins family ate what they could and, afterwards, Percy fell asleep in his chair. He awoke some two hours later, still troubled by the irreconcilable difference between what Nora had paid for their joint and its quality. Then an idea started to take shape and Percy smiled to himself. Yes, he would do it. He would show up that Jack Hardwick for what he was – a robbing charlatan. Tomorrow dinnertime would be the perfect time, just as the workers from the brass foundries were turning out. In the scullery, he found the meat, cool now, hidden under a muslin cloth to keep the flies off, and set about carving two thick slices.

      Monday dinnertime seemed a long time coming. But just before the ‘bull’ whistle was due to blow at the brass foundry at the top end of Cromwell Street, he donned his working boots, tied the laces and strutted down the steps of his shop, carrying the remains of the offending joint wrapped in newspaper under his arm. A black and white mongrel, which had been rooting round the allotments opposite, instantly caught a whiff of meat and trotted over to investigate, sniffing eagerly at the footpath.

      At that moment, the hooter blew and, in just a few seconds, a throng of people were released from the three brass foundries and sundry other establishments into Cromwell Street. Some headed towards The Junction, some in the other direction towards The Dog and Partridge and The Sailor’s Return.

      Another dog, a cross between a Jack Russell and a Scots terrier, picked up the same scent and joined the first animal sniffing at Percy’s feet. Yet another emerged, panting, from Granny Wassall’s entry in Cromwell Street. Soon there was a whole pack of dogs yapping at Percy’s heels, and his own labrador bitch escaped by jumping up onto the ledge of the lower half of the stable door and over the back wall, to join the hunt.

      Most of the workers bid Percy good day, and some asked why he was accompanied by so many excited dogs. Percy was happy to tell them, so it was with great СКАЧАТЬ