Another Man's Child Read online

  Another Man's Child

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  For help with my research I would like to thank – my son Iain, my cousin Patsy Marshall, her friends and staff at Burscough Library, Don Hyman of Crosby Writers Club and his ninety-year-old father-in-law Charlie Williams, and last but not least, Hayes & Finch Ltd who’ve been supplying my church with candles for years!

  Chapter One

  ‘Yer’ll give up that room and come and live here!’ A moment ago the voice had sounded thin and drained of life but now it had gained new strength.

  From eyes swollen with weeping Molly May stared at her mother-in-law, the bane of her youthful life since marriage. She drew the black shawl more securely about her slender shoulders and trembled inwardly. She had never had to fend for herself in her whole life but she couldn’t let the woman who so patently disapproved of her take her over now. ‘No,’ she said shakily.

  Ma Payne’s salt and pepper eyebrows twitched together, hooding her protuberant eyes as she folded skinny arms across her non-existent bosom, scaring the life out of Molly May. ‘I didn’t hear that,’ she said tersely. ‘Our Cath’ll go with yer. Help carry what yer’ve got for the baby.’

  Molly May swallowed nervously, one hand straying to her swollen belly. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t let this overbearing, self- opinionated woman get her claws into Frank’s child. ‘No,’ she repeated, voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘Don’t be so bleeding stupid, girl!’ the woman said wrathfully. ‘How are yer going to manage on yer own with no husband and nowt coming in? Yer too near yer time to find yerself some work.’

  Molly May lowered her head and swallowed, her brown eyes fringed by reddish-gold lashes full of trepidation. ‘I’ll manage.’ How she wished her mother was still alive. Mabel wouldn’t have allowed Ma Payne to boss her like this. Nor would Nanna. She drew on all her resources of courage and stammered, ‘You might rule the whole bl-bl-bloody street but you-you’re not going to rule me and mine. With Fr- Frank gone there’s no reason for m-m-me to be as nice as pie to you and yours anymore. I’m-I’m off!’

  There was a concerted gasp from Ma Payne and her two daughters. ‘The cheek of her, Ma!’ said Josie, the eldest, who was tuppence short of a shilling. ‘She needs a clout round the earhole for swearing at yer like that. Her and her stupid accent.’

  ‘You-You just try it,’ said Molly May, wishing the ground would open and swallow her up. I’ll-I’ll knock the spots off you.’

  ‘Yous? Yous couldn’t punch a hole in a paper bag!’ crowed Josie. ‘Yerra heretic and yer’ll go to Hell! Our Frank should never have married yer! Yer not one of us. You tell her, Ma.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Ma Payne turned on her daughter. ‘How could I stop my boy? He was well past twenty-one. We’ve just got to make the best of a bad job, that’s all.’

  Molly May’s heart sank. That was how Ma had viewed her from the start – as a bad job. It was so very different from how Nanna had seen her. ‘I don’t want you making the best of me,’ she said, clearing her throat nervously. ‘I know you-you never thought me good enough for F-Frank.’

  Her mother-in-law fixed her with a baleful glare. ‘Too right but you were his choice and I had to go along with it. Now I want that baby so I’m prepared to put up with you and yer slapdash ways. Spoilt, that’s what you’ve been, girl! But I’ll soon knock yer into shape once yer living here.’

  Molly May didn’t want to be knocked into shape. Nanna and Frank had thought her perfect as she was, so why should she change for this woman? She decided to make a move and tilted her head defiantly. ‘I’m going. Maybe I’ll see you again one day, and maybe I won’t.’

  She headed for the door but was brought to an abrupt halt by a tug on her hair. Molly May clutched her hat as it slid sideways and turned carefully to face Josie, who stood grinning at her like a Cheshire Cat.

  ‘I got her, Ma,’ she crowed.

  Molly May’s heart plummeted even further as she took a grip on the hair which hung down her back almost to her waist and tugged to free it. But her sister-in-law, who sometimes scared her out of her wits with her wild laughter, hung on like grim death to the handful of curls she had seized. ‘Let g-g-go!’ insisted Molly May though her teeth chattered with fright.

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Ma Payne, long black skirts brushing the floor as she marched across the room. She thrust her face close to her daughter-in-law’s. Determined eyes as dark and evil-looking as brackish pools in a marsh gazed into Molly May’s and the girl’s knees shook with terror as she sent up a quick prayer for deliverance. ‘Yer haven’t any understanding of a mother’s luv, have yer, girl?’ said the older woman, shaking her head. ‘That babby is my boy’s and it belongs to us as much as you do. So yer staying here!’

  ‘No! You-you can’t m-make me,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady, trying to be neither browbeaten nor scared. Her mother had often said in the exasperated tone of voice she’d frequently adopted with Molly that it gave your opponent an advantage if you showed weakness. Tears threatened as the girl remembered her mother who had died only eighteen months ago in childbirth. They had moved to Bootle three years after the old queen died in 1904, the widowed Mabel May having met her second husband on a trip to Southport. Until then mother and daughter lived with Nanna in Burscough, an agricultural village in Lancashire which had gained some importance when the huge mere at Martin had been drained and the new Leeds–Liverpool canal was built.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Ma Payne’s voice was silky and heavy with threat. ‘Cath, help Josie get her upstairs. She can go in the front attic now it’s empty. The door has a lock on it.’

  Josie’s expression was jubilant as she seized Molly May’s arm. ‘Haven’t got much to say for yerself now, have yer? If yer cheek me again, I’ll give yer a swipe!’

  Oh, God! How Molly wished she dared tell her to take her filthy paws off and then give her that look Mabel May had used to demolish her enemies, but she just didn’t have the guts.

  ‘Maybe I’ll hit yer anyhow,’ said Josie, eyes glistening, and her hand came up.

  Ma Payne seized hold of it. ‘Control yerself! We’ve got to look after her. Don’t want her going into early labour and losing me boy’s babby.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Molly May, relieved. ‘You’ve got to take care of me.’

  ‘I am a caring woman,’ said Ma Payne solemnly, adjusting a strap beneath her frock. ‘But many a mother dies in childbirth… so think on that.’

  ‘I do,’ said the girl honestly, forcing down the fear which drenched her in perspiration every time she imagined going into labour.

  ‘Good,’ said Ma Payne, sounding pleased. ‘It’s a fact of life, girl, as yer know. Now, if yer had any sense you’d throw in yer lot with me and mine. After all, we share a common grief since the sea claimed my boy.’

  Her boy! There had been times when Molly May had felt like exploding on hearing those words. It was that possessiveness in Ma that filled her wi
th dismay. She thought of all the times this woman had interfered, not only in her and Frank’s lives but in so many others, with her rigid morality and fixed ideas on what was best for them all. Due to her one of the girls in the street was ostracised for falling for a baby while she was unmarried. Her own parents had cast her out and the poor girl later drowned herself in the canal.

  ‘Well, are we moving?’ said Cath impatiently. She was twenty and the brains of the family, with dark red hair and a creamy skin. ‘Is Moll being locked up or not? I think you’re daft meself. She’s going to be nothing but trouble.’

  ‘I wanna do it,’ said Josie, almost jumping up and down with impatience. She brought her face close to Molly May’s so the girl could smell onion on her breath. ‘You’d better start being nice to me,’ she said in a sing-song voice.

  Molly May shuddered, scarcely able to believe this was happening. It was like something out of a penny dreadful. Oh, how she wished Nanna or Frank were here! She fought every step of the way but when Josie lost her footing on the stairs, almost dragging her down with her, realised there was a real danger of falling and losing the baby, maybe even her life, so stopped struggling.

  She walked into the front attic without being forced, her heart banging away beneath her ribs as she heard the key turn in the lock. She wanted to burst into tears as she stood in the middle of the room, gazing at the whitewashed walls. On one there were hooks for hanging clothes and beneath the window a single bed. A chest of drawers and a washstand stood opposite. It was a terrible room and had been the lodger’s until he’d left a week ago. Before that it was Frank’s.

  Oh, Frank, Frank, why did you have to die? Tears trickled down Molly May’s cheeks and she wiped them away with her hand. How many times had her mother told her crying would not solve a thing when she came home from work to find Nanna pandering to Molly May’s every little problem with soft words, a large embroidered handkerchief ready to mop her tears, and the delicious buttery homemade scones and jam sponge permanently on offer? ‘You spoil her,’ Mabel May would say. ‘Poor little mite,’ Nanna would reply. ‘She’s got no father to look out for her and thee’s never here.’ ‘I’ve got to do something to keep us,’ Mabel May would reply irritably. ‘You can’t do it with your game leg.’

  She’d always been irritable with Nanna and herself as long as Molly May could remember. Nanna said it was ever since Molly’s father had been killed in that terrible accident. Still she was dead now and the girl would have had her back in an instant for all she’d been forever finding fault. Mother had looked after her in her own way, even marrying again to provide Molly May with a better standard of life or so she’d said. Though how rooms over a pub in Bootle could be better than Nanna’s cottage with its roses round the door, a roaring fire in the grate and delicious smells coming from the oven, was something the girl had found hard to understand. It was true she had seen a lot more of life there, even though the fights that broke out most Saturday nights had soon sent her diving for cover under a table in the farthest corner of the saloon bar.

  She sniffed back tears, thinking it didn’t do to remember the past. She had wept enough when the agent from the White Star line had called to tell her that Frank’s ship had gone missing during a hurricane off the coast of Maryland. She and Frank had only been married nine months: Since June 10th, 1908. He had been twenty-six to her eighteen years.

  She sighed shakily, remembering him coming into the pub on Stanley Road where her stepfather was the licensee. Her mother had been dead only a short time and he and Molly May were finding life hard and frustrating. She considered it her duty to stay and try to look after him but he expected too much of her in her opinion. It seemed almost as if he wanted her to take her mother’s place: cleaning, working behind the bar, cooking, shopping.

  It was not what Molly wanted from life and she just could not live up to his expectations. She was seriously thinking of going back to live with Nanna when Frank had appeared on the scene. Dark-haired, brown-eyed, broad-shouldered, and with a voice that could charm the sparrows from under the eaves, he made her laugh with his impersonation of Vesta Tilly (of all people!) singing ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow’. He soon had the whole pub looking on. She was collecting glasses and stopped to watch him. Their eyes met and that was that. Here was a man she felt certain would look after her, a seaman like so many of the men who came into the pub, bringing with him the flavour and freshness of the wide oceans he sailed. He opened her eyes to a whole different world: exciting and romantic. He was strong and caring but not always there to criticise her slapdash housework. And if her cooking failed there was always the shop round the corner which specialised in roasted hearts, pig’s trotters and steaming hot spare ribs. But now Frank was gone and she did not know how she would survive without him.

  She took a deep quivering breath and moved slowly over to the window to kneel on the bed. She pulled aside one of the curtains, staring at the rivulets of rain making their way down the window pane. It was difficult to see out so she unfastened the sash lock, forcing up the lower window to gaze out on the glistening pavements below.

  The lamplighter was doing his rounds and she heard him greet one of the neighbours. Her ears caught the faint plop as the gas mantle ignited and a pool of warm yellow light was reflected in the water rushing along the gutters. A couple of boys were splashing about. Racing sticks, she thought, listening to their voices above the noise of the rain. She lifted her eyes to see the huge drumlike containers of Linacre gasworks looming behind the shining roofs of the houses. She took several deep breaths of the smoky, damp air before withdrawing her head and closing the window.

  The sight of so much water and the sound of it rushing along the gutters reminded her of the canal with its locks. Her father Joseph, of whom she had no memory at all, had been crushed against a lock wall after falling into the Leeds–Liverpool canal. The childless Nanna Fletcher was Mabel May’s foster mother and had taken them in without hesitation. It was she who’d looked after Molly May when Mabel found work in Ainscough’s flour mill repairing grain sacks. She was just a plain seamstress but Molly May had been taught fine embroidery by the vicar’s daughter at St John’s National School. Not that it had proved of much use since moving to Bootle.

  She frowned as she gazed at the floor, absently noting the cracks in the brown linoleum. She must get away from here and Nanna Fletcher’s house was the very place to go. It was three months or more since Molly May had paid the old woman a visit although she wrote to her regularly, knowing Nanna would get someone to read the letters to her. A bargee’s daughter herself, Nanna had attended school only infrequently. Any news from her was passed to Molly May via Jack Fletcher, a distant relative, who worked for Williams coal and timber merchants, Liverpool. He plied the canal daily, using a steam-driven tug which pulled four to six barges laden with coal from Wigan. Some of his load he would drop off at Linacre and Athol Street gasworks before going on to Williams’s depot in the city of Liverpool. Then he would do the return trip loaded up with timber for Tyrer’s boat-building yard at Burscough.

  Molly May lifted her head, hope stirring faintly inside her. If she could somehow get to the coal depot at Linacre then Jack Fletcher would certainly take her as far as Burscough Bridge.

  The baby moved inside her and she placed one hand protectively over her belly. Her and Frank’s baby. The muscles in her throat constricted and she had consciously to relax them to force down a lump that felt like an egg in her throat. She had not thought of a baby when she had married Frank but did not want to wish it away now, however difficult it would make her life. Nanna would help her cope… if she could just escape this house.

  Feeling weary to the bone she decided there was nothing she could do tonight. With difficulty she bent and unfastened the buttons on the boots which were the last present her mother had given her. She wriggled her squashed toes, cold and damp because one of the soles had a hole in it and let in the rain despite the cut-out cardboard she had pla
ced there, and undressed down to her camisole before gingerly pulling back the blankets. She was aware of the smell of damp and bug powder and shuddered, remembering Nanna’s lavender-scented sheets. Still, no use dwelling on them right now. She must not allow this or anything else to prevent her from resting. She needed to conserve her strength. She must think of a plan to get out of the house. But within moments, with the abandonment of an exhausted child, she fell asleep.

  Molly May woke from a dream in which she was clasping her baby to her breast. But hands, two hands, were clutching at it, determined to take it from her. It was still dark and a figure was bending over her, covering her mouth. ‘Don’t make a sound if you know what’s good for you!’ hissed Cath’s voice in her ear.

  Molly May’s blood, already chilled by the dream, froze. The whole family were at it! Mad! Nervously, she tried to bite her lower lip but instead bit the hand covering her mouth. Cath caught her a stinging blow across the cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘Stop that!’ She sounded exasperated. ‘I’ve come to help you. You want to get out of here, don’t you?’

  Molly May let out an exclamation, scarcely able to believe that help could come from such an unexpected quarter. ‘Of course I do. But why are you helping me?’

  ‘I want you out of here and best now before you really begin to get on Josie’s and Ma’s nerves and I suffer for it,’ Cath hissed. ‘So are you going to shift your carcase or do I do it for you?’

  ‘No need for that,’ said Molly May, rejoicing, swinging her legs nimbly over the side of the bed. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just gone six. Here, get your boots on.’ Cath nudged them with her foot in her sister-in-law’s direction. ‘Now if Ma wakes and catches us, we say you’re going to the lav. Hurry, though, because I’d rather we didn’t bump into her.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Molly May, quaking at the thought of bumping into Ma Payne.

  Heart hammering, she crept down the top flight of stairs. She felt like a heroine from a Victorian melodrama as they paused on the landing, listening intently, before creeping down the next flight of stairs. She forced down a nervous giggle. ‘I never thought you’d do me a favour,’ she said when they reached the kitchen.