CHAPTER EIGHT

Grandmother was in a good mood so I took the opportunity to ask about things that puzzled me.

“why does Granddad Oliver have headaches so much?” I asked.

“Oh why?” replied Grandmother as she wiped her red hands after she had finished peeling the potatoes.

“He was in the Boer War, you know. He was in the Cavalry and was kicked on the side of his head by a horse. I think he was a Medic. I suppose that is where your Mammy got her notion from. You do know that your Mammy was a nurse, don’t you?”

“No Gran, I didn’t”.

“Oh yes,” said Gran “She also had her cap and gown. She taught the piano for quite a long time.”

I wondered what a cap and gown was but I was so interested I didn’t interrupt.

“Your Mammy was a lovely young lady and a good woman, if you grow up to be like her I will be most pleased.”

I felt so proud and remembered what Mammy had said to me on that last day when I sat on her bed.

“You will be such a lady and I will be so proud of you.”

I now realised that Mammy knew she was dying when she told me that all her jewellery would be put away until I was old enough to wear it.

My ears were filled with the imaginary sound of Mammy Irene playing the piano, so sweet and so gentle she was and how sweetly she played. I was aware that Gran had begun to speak again.

“Your Dad had a cousin whom he idolised he was called Sydney. Sydney was drowned at Roker. He lived in Sunderland and it was he who first introduced Irene to your Dad. Your Dad was devastated when Sydney drowned, he was unable to swim so could not help him. Ah yes a fine lad was Sydney.”

I looked up at Gran she seemed to be talking to herself sort of reminiscing, slipping into the past with her memories. A tear fell from her cheek.

“You see,” she continued “Albert couldn’t swim, Sydney tried to teach him but he never could. Sydney was too far out when he called for help and poor Albert was helpless. He went for help but it was too late. When the tide went out Sydney was wedged between two rocks. His left foot was gone. It was as though something had snapped at him and pulled him down. Albert never forgave himself for not being able to help him.”

It was my seventh birthday and Granddad in the bed place who never forgot my birthday was no more. Nobody but Ron remembered my birthday. In the evening when Mam and Dad were getting ready to go out, she raised her hand to adjust her hat, I saw Mammy’s gold watch on her wrist; my heart missed a beat. I was furious. Daddy had given my gold watch to Hannah.

She turned to me asking “What are you looking at”

But I was speechless.

The pangs in my stomach were too much, I ran out of the room to the toilet. I felt sick as I sat there, I don’t know for how long. How could he! How could he!

My mind filled with the memory of Dad’s voice telling me he didn’t like little girls and wished I had been a boy. Being only seven years old I had no way of knowing that he was probably only teasing me. He never did anything to reassure me otherwise. I really believed that he meant what he said. I had done all I could do to be good and make him love me, but this last insult just crushed me, I just wanted to die. My watch which should have been put away safe. How could he? Mammy’s watch. I couldn’t bear it any longer and burst into tears. Ron found me like this.

“Oh never mind” he said “You will get it later, I’m sure.”

Ron was always a comfort to me, so I dried my eyes and was glad that when we went into the house Mam and Dad were gone.

Next morning when I went out to see Trixie I noticed the cage in which we kept white mice was gone.

When I asked Ron “Where are the white mice?”

“Hannah told me to get rid of them.”

I wondered if she was frightened of them.

The postman came the next day with a parcel for me, Hannah opened it, I was not allowed to.

“It’s a box of chocolates and a Birthday card from Aunt Ethel, but you can’t have them.”

That afternoon she parcelled up the box of chocolates in brown paper and tied it with string, putting in a note saying that ‘There are two children in this house’.

Three days later a large envelope arrived addressed to Hannah, no message just the string and brown paper which Aunt Ethel had sent back. I suppose it was a gesture that she wanted nothing from Hannah.

Ron and I ran out into the glass porch so that she could not hear us having a good giggle about it.

It was not funny realizing that the last link with Mammy Irene was broken. That is, all but Granddad Oliver who still lived with us. The old Great Aunts Grace and Dinah had both died.

Now that I was seven years old I had to leave my little school and attend the Junior School for girls. This school was at Deaf Hill and was not as far to go, and there were footpaths all the way too. Ron still went to his school at Trimdon Grange, so we now went in opposite directions.

School milk was just starting in my new school, it came in bottles a third of a pint in size. Those who could afford to pay for it paid a half penny a day, but people who were still out of work and on the Dole or the Parish got it free. I did not qualify for the free milk, and Hannah would not pay for it. So I got none. She also stopped our Emulsion, Malt Extract and Parishes Chemical Food, saying that it was not necessary. This was after the stock in the cupboard ran out.

The next job to be added to my list was to scrub the plain wooden toilet seat every Saturday morning. I was only thankful that we had a flush toilet and not a midden. When Dad came in that evening I was astonished to hear Hannah complaining about me.

“It’s about time you took that young lady in hand. She’s so lazy and does nothing to help me.”

I was struck with horror to hear this. I worked all Saturday and every evening after school. What more could I do? I prepared the veg and potatoes for Sunday dinner and went all of the messages.

Dad looked at her saying “Ah Hannah be fair, after all she’s only a bairn.”

I flew out into the back lobby and just broke my heart, hugging Trixie. Not because of the lies that Hannah had told, but because Dad for the first time spoke up for me. I think he kept quiet a lot of the time just for the peace. I know he didn’t tell her about the time I forgot to take his pit watch from his jacket pocket before dashing it against the wall to shake out the dust. It was smashed beyond repair, but Dad said it was his own fault, he had forgotten to take it out himself. He had gone through so much, I suppose that he was afraid to be left again. I truly believe that he did not know half of what she did. and how she yelled and shouted at us. We had been brought up to consider that telling tales was not nice. I also thought that maybe she had not had a happy life, and could not bear to see us happy. As time went on she became harder and harder. We, that is both Ron and myself, were not allowed to do anything after tea until we had knitted a six inch square. These were all kept in a bag until she thought there was enough to sew together into a rug.(The rug still exists today.) Many times by the time I had washed the tea things and knitted my square it was too dark to go out, so I sat darning socks whilst I was allowed to listen to the wireless.

On one such evening

“Sit up girl” Hannah commanded,

“Keep your knees together. Young ladies do not sit with their knees apart.”

“But I – ”

“Don’t answer me back” Hannah said.

I had only wanted to go and get a drink of water from the kitchen. When it got to seven thirty I asked if I could go to bed. I could see that she was in one of her bad moods. I walked across to the table where Ron was doing his homework, he had finished his knitted square long before me.

“Leave Ron alone” she snapped. “Get yourself off to bed”

I could not understand why she behaved like this, but I was thankful to go to bed out of her way.

One morning she said

“I don’t like getting up on a morning, so you will have to get your own breakfasts.”

Before Hannah came we always had porridge with honey and goat’s milk, followed by a boiled egg with toast. We were always given a small bar of Hazel nut milk chocolate to eat on the way to school. But now it was bread and jam and nothing else.

“And you can bring me up two cream crackers spread with best butter with a cup of tea.”

This became the ritual each morning after that, but we were glad as it meant that we could go out to school each morning in peace, after calling up to her

“Good morning, Mam.”

this she insisted upon, whenever we came in or went out we must greet her with

“Good morning, Mam.”

“Good afternoon, Mam.”

“Good day, Mam.”

I felt rather silly saying “Good Day, Mam” when I went back to school in the afternoon. I now came home for my OXO and bread. This also meant extra jobs in the dinner-time. She would not let me go until she thought I had just enough time to get back to school. I was very often late, but I could never tell the teacher why.

Hannah made regular trips to the shops in West Hartlepool, her home town. Her sister Emma had a baby boy called Brian. He was now almost one year old, and it was thought by the elders that I would be handy to keep him happy.

My new aunts Emma and Ruth went to The Empire on Saturday nights, confident that their new found playmate for Brian would cope. Fair haired George, Aunt Emma’s other son who was one year younger than me, was quite a pleasant lad, we got on very well together. He took me to the Library and the Museum. I did not know that Libraries or Museums existed, we certainly didn’t have them in the country. It was wonderful, all these rows of books and all free. I came to look forward to my week-end trips to West Hartlepool. Aunt Emma’s house was small neat and clean, but she could do nothing to rid it from cockroaches. Pest powder was put underneath the sideboard each night, this was swept up the following morning with all the dead cockroaches, forty or so of them. This had been done ever since they had moved into this house, but still the problem persisted.

Aunt Emma always made a dinner every day, to my delight as Hannah only made dinner on a Sunday. Brian was a happy little boy, so I didn’t mind looking after him. One Saturday afternoon George was there at the bus stop in Park Road to meet me. He took me down into the town where other relatives of his lived. It seemed a long walk, we crossed York Road and down past the Central Store, down Musgrave Street which was full of people bustling in and out of the shops. I had never seen so many shops in one row before. We crossed the road to Brunswick Street.

“My Gran lives here” he said, “Gran Harriman.”

This was Hannah’s mother, now my Gran. A strange old lady dressed all in black rocked gently to and fro in her chair.

“Hi, Gran” George greeted her.

“This is my new cousin from Trimdon.”

“Hello, Doris” she said as she took my hand.

“Hello, Gran” I replied.

She then took two sweets from her apron pocket and gave them to us.

“Mind you don’t drop the papers on the floor or our Lil will have something to say.”

My new Aunt Lil, Gran’s youngest daughter, and her husband Wilf also lived there.

“Would you like me to do anything for you, Gran?”

“Yes dear you can go to the butchers for me, and get a half pound of sausages and two penny ducks, savoury ducks, you know.”

She took money from the purse which she pulled out from underneath her black apron, her hands were wrinkled just like prunes, the skin so thin the shape of the bones were clearly visible. Her face was equally wrinkled, she had no teeth and very thin lips. Her hair was very black and very shiny, pulled straight back and tied into a bun. I wondered why her hair was not grey as she was obviously very old. When we got outside I asked George about Gran’s hair

“It’s always been like that” he said

“It’s shiny because of the margarine”

I was puzzled “Does she eat a lot of margarine?”

George laughed and said

“No, she rubs the empty papers on her head.”

I was dumfounded, I had never heard of such a thing.

“Oh yes, she has been doing this for a long time and does not wash her hair. She says that if she does, she will catch cold.”

I could not believe this, I was sure that he was pulling my leg. But Hannah told me later that it was the truth. Hannah said her mother was a wise old woman and in full possession of her mind, but this was just one of her foibles, and I must admit that she did not smell as one would imagine.

We left Gran’s house and going in the direction of Burbank Street down towards the Steel Works. These were straight streets similar to those in Trimdon, but much longer. There were many children running about in the streets playing with balls, and hopscotch. The main thing that I noticed was that most of them were not wearing shoes. They were raggedly dressed with unkempt hair and rather dirty. The sound of their town accent rang out loud as their bare feet thundered down the pavement equalling the sound of their bouncing balls. The horrible smell coming from the Steel Works was like rotten eggs. Two women stood at the corner, their black shawls stretched over their ample bosoms were fastened with large safety pins. Their hair hung around their shoulders which I thought made them look like a pair of fat old witches. One of them had an old clay pipe in her mouth and a jug in her hand.

“Ave yer been fer yer beer, Sally?”

“Aye it’ll be me last this week, unless ah pop ‘es suit agen. Ah just got it out last week fer his father’s funeral, an he ses ah av’nt te do it agen. He asn’t werked fer three months now, but ‘e starts next month and he’ll need a new shert.”

“Aye well ah haven’t ad a new frock since our Martha was wed, and she as three bairns now.”

I was used to hearing some of these things but what did she mean by pop his suit, and the sound of their accent was so strange. George chuckled at my comments and told me that a popular phrase to illustrate the West Hartlepool twang was

“My Dad had gone to werk

In his derty perple shert”

and if you want to insult a Hartlepudlian all you have to say is

“Who hung the monkey?”

I laughed at this but thought that George was pulling my leg again, I decided that I would ask Ron about this.

“Oh, that smell.”

I uttered with my hand over my nose

“It’s not as bad when the wind is in the other direction” George assured me.

We came to Aunt Nell’s house which was quite clean, she was quite a tall woman with her hair tied up in a scarf just like a pudding. Her apron neatly tied in a bow, it’s frills crossing her shoulders. She looked quite pretty as she offered us one of her newly made buns. George explained to her that he was taking me around to meet some of my new Aunties in the town. As we were leaving she asked me

“You will come and see me again?”

“Yes I would like to, thank you for asking me.”

We thanked her for the buns, said good bye then ran off across the long metal bridge which took us to the other side of the railway line. I was surprised that we were now on the sea front. We spent about an hour on the sands throwing pebbles into the waves before we set off back to George’s house for tea. Aunt Emma was getting ready to go with her sister Ruth to the Empire, she said that when Brian was old enough she would take us all with them. Uncle Bob George’s Dad went to the pub on a Saturday night and George said

“Next weekend I’ll take you to meet Gran Hodgson my Dad’s Mam.”

I’d already been to Aunt Ruth’s house with Hannah and also met Uncle Jack her husband. They had four children. Jessie, Sonny, Teddy and Nancy who were all quite nice.

I asked Mam Hannah about the hanging monkey.

“Yes George was quite correct. The old people are quite annoyed about it. You see it’s an old tale about the time of the Napoleonic war. A monkey was washed up on the beach half drowned. It was thought to have come from an enemy ship. The people are supposed to have hung it thinking it to be a spy.

So they are now outraged at having their intelligence insulted in this way. The younger folk see it for what it is and just laugh.”

“But what is it Mam?” I asked

“Well a more modern version would be that on those big battleships the young boys who had to climb the ladders from the powder hold, carrying the powder up to the gun deck were called ‘Powder Monkeys’. So it was more than likely that it was one of those boys who had been washed ashore. But the old tale is still told to this day, much to the annoyance of the elders.”

Ronnie told me about the ‘Pawn Shop’ and how they conducted their business. I was amazed at this. Fancy using your clothes to get money, and then having to have money to get them back.

“What do they do when they have no money?”

“Well they have to do without their things until they have some.”

“Is that where all the children’s shoes are?”

Ron laughed as he replied

“No they just had no money to buy any in the first place”

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