A Whisper to the Living by Ruth Hamilton Page B

slamming the door in his twisted face, turned to look at us, leaning heavily against the stair rail for a few seconds before speaking to me. ‘Now don’t tek on, lass. You can double up wi’ our girls tonight – till yer Mam gets back off ’er evenin’ shift at anyroad. Likely she’ll come and collect you once it’s all sorted. Don’t worry, ’e’ll calm down, it’ll all be forgot, you’ll see.
    ‘Now come on, you lot. Get this muck shifted before your dad gets back an’ breaks ’is neck over it. I’m goin’ to warm a drop o’ milk fer Annie. Lizzie, see if yer can find a clean cup. Martin, get in that meatsafe see if there’s a bit o’ brandy left. Bring ’er through to the kitchen, Josie. Come on now, come on . . .’
    My mother did not come for me at the end of her shift. I spent the night at Josie’s house and it was not comfortable, for there was little room in the bed which contained four of us, two at the top, two at the bottom, like sardines in a tin.
    Things were not made easier by Lizzie who wet the bed and everyone in it, which I later discovered to be a regular occurrence. For the whole of the next day at school I reeked of drying urine, a smell I recognized now as that which usually surrounded Josie, Lizzie and most of the rest of the family. I was also covered in spots, tiny red bites bequeathed to me by all the other creatures that occupied Josie’s bedroom.
    When I reached home that afternoon, Eddie Higson had not yet returned from his round. My mother was at the living-room range, her back towards me as I entered the room and she seemed, at first, to have little to say. When she turned to face me, I understood why she was so quiet, because her cheeks were bruised, her lower lip swollen to twice its normal size and one of her eyes was closed and surrounded in purplish black flesh.
    She had received my beating. Because of my disobedience, because of my cowardice, my poor little mother had been beaten half to death by a man who must surely be crazed to inflict such wounds on his wife.
    I ran to her and she flinched as I flung my arms about her waist. It was obvious that her body, too, was hurt.
    Easing herself gently away from me, she pressed me into a chair. ‘Annie, love. Things is hard enough without you making this kind of trouble. Why didn’t you come home when you were told?’
    I hesitated before replying, ‘Because he was nasty to Mrs Cullen, Mam. He called her a slovenly old bi . . . well, a bad name. He showed me up in front of my friends.’
    ‘Friends? Friends, love? Can’t you smell yourself? They’re mucky folk, Annie. You shouldn’t be mixing with mucky folk. Oh, I wish I’d come and fetched you home after my shift, but I couldn’t – not like this. You’d be best stopping away from the Cullens in future.’
    ‘I like them,’ I said stubbornly, yet immediately torn between wanting to agree with my poor hurt mother and wanting to defend those who had been good to me.
    ‘You should have come home when he first came for you.’
    ‘I don’t want to come home with him. I don’t like being here with him. Why can’t you be here? Why can’t you work days like you used to?’
    ‘Because I can’t, love. It’s as simple as that.’
    Flinching visibly, she lowered herself into a squatting position in front of me. ‘Now, listen, Annie. You’re a big girl. I fell downstairs last night – you understand? I fell down the stairs. Now I’ve got a letter here from . . . er . . . from Dr Pritchard. I want you to go down to Millhouse mill and give it in to Ernie Bradshaw. Nobody else. If Ernie’s not there, you bring this letter back. Can you remember that?’
    I nodded and she went on. ‘Only I can’t go into work looking like this now, can I? I’d likely frighten the mill cat to death – let alone me mates if they saw me like this. So after tea, when the hooter’s gone off, you get your coat on and go down Folds Road. You catch the 45 and get off at