Early in 1924, when Connie and Sarah were almost eleven, Sarah’s eldest sister, Kathy had left school and gone to work in the Grand Hotel in Colmore Row, Birmingham. Though she worked long hours, she loved the job and enthused about it so much that Sarah’s other elder sister, Siobhan, applied for a job there too two years later when she also left school.
Although her sisters taking live-in jobs meant that they were no longer all squashed on the one fairly small mattress in the attic, and there was more space generally and they couldn’t boss her about any more, Sarah missed them a great deal. She also knew, now that Siobhan had joined Kathy, the carefree days of her childhood were at an end, for she was the eldest girl and so she would be the one now to help her mother. She had been cushioned by the presence of two older sisters but now it was time to step up as the eldest daughter and help her mother and take a hand with her younger siblings, particularly Maura who was no longer a cute baby but a spoilt toddler. Sarah was convinced that Maura’s screams when her wishes were thwarted could shatter glass and her tantrums had to be seen to be believed.
Connie too had begun to rethink her life. She was coming up to thirteen now and in the senior school, and couldn’t miss the reports of the miners’ General Strike.
Now that the coal exports had fallen since the Great War, the miners’ wages were reduced from £6.00 to £3.90. The government also wanted them to work longer hours for that, and a phrase was coined that was printed in the papers:
Not a penny off the pay and not a minute on the day.
No buses, trams or trains ran anywhere, no newspapers were printed or goods unloaded from the docks, the drop forges and foundries grew silent, no coal was mined and, much to the delight of many children, schools were closed. The strike finished after nine days but little had changed and though the miners tried to hang on longer they were forced to capitulate in the end.
‘It is so sad really,’ Angela said, reading it out to her daughter from the newly printed newspaper. ‘We should be thankful we are so much better off than many.’
‘We could be better off still if you would let me leave school next year when I am fourteen and get a job like Sarah intends.’
‘Connie, we have been through all this.’
‘No, we haven’t really done that at all,’ Connie said. ‘You’ve told me what you want me to do with my life, that’s all.’
Angela frowned, for this wasn’t the way her compliant daughter usually behaved.
‘You know that going on to take your School Certificate and going on to college or university is what I’ve been saving for. What’s got into you?’
‘Nothing,’ Connie said. ‘It’s just that … Look, Mammy, if you hadn’t me to look after you would have more money. You could stop worrying about money, wipe the frown from your brow.’
‘If I’ve got a frown on my brow,’ Angela said testily, ‘it’s because I cannot understand the ungratefulness of a girl being handed the chance of a better future on a plate, which many would give their eye teeth for, and rejecting it in that cavalier way and without a word of thanks for the sacrifices I’ve made for you.’
Connie felt immediately contrite.
‘I’m sorry, Mammy,’ she said. ‘I do appreciate all you do for me and I am grateful, truly I am.’
‘I sense a “but” coming.’
‘It’s just that if I go on to matriculate I won’t fit in with the others, maybe even Sarah will think I am getting too big for my boots and …’
‘Connie, this is what your father wanted,’ Angela said and Connie knew she had lost. ‘He paid the ultimate price and fought and died to make the world a safer place for you. He wanted the best for you in all things, including education. Are you going to let him down?’
How could Connie answer that? There was only one way.
‘Of course not, Mammy. If it means so much to you and meant so much to my father, then I will do my level best to make you proud of me when I matriculate. Maybe Daddy will be looking down on me and be proud too.’
Angela gave Connie a kiss. ‘I’m sure he is, my darling girl, and I’m glad you have seen sense and we won’t have to speak of this again.’
Connie hid her sigh of exasperation and thought, as she wasn’t going to be leaving school any time soon, it was about time she started making herself more useful. She decided she would take care of her grandmother, rather than the other way round, and help her mother around the house far more.
So the next morning she slipped out of the bed she shared with Mary in the attic and, while her mother set off for work, made a pan of porridge and a pot of tea and had them waiting for Mary when she had eased her creaking body from the bed, dressed with care and stumbled stiff-legged down the stairs. She also filled a bucket with water from the tap in the yard and the scuttle with coal from the cellar and told her grandmother she would do the same every morning.
And she did and Angela was pleased at her thoughtfulness. On Monday morning Connie began rising even earlier to try to be the first one to fill the copper in the brew house with water from the tap in the yard, light the gas under it and sprinkle the water with soap suds as it heated. Then she would carry all the whites down to boil up while Angela made porridge for them all before she left for work. By the time Connie had eaten breakfast and seen to her grandmother, the whites were boiling in the copper and she would ladle the washing out with the wooden tongs into one of the sinks and empty the copper for others to use. That was as much as she could manage on school days and her mother would deal with everything else after she had finished at the pub, for lateness at school was not tolerated and all latecomers were caned.
In the holidays Connie would help her mother pound the other clothes in the maiding tub with the poss stick, or rub at persistent dirt with soap and the wash board. Then whites were put in a sink with Beckit’s Blue added, and sometimes another with starch, before everything was rinsed well, put through the mangle and pegged on lines lifted to the sky with long, long props to flap dry in the sooty air.
For all they were such a small household, it took most of the day to do the washing and most of Tuesday to do the ironing, unless of course it had rained on the Monday, in which case the damp washing would probably still be draped around the room on Tuesday, cutting off much of the heat from the fire and filling the air with steam. Connie never moaned about this because she knew it was far worse for many bigger families, like the Maguires for instance. She could only imagine the amount of clothes and bedding, towels and clothes they went through in a week, though Sarah said that was another thing that had become easier since her sisters had left home.
‘I can’t wait to do that myself either,’ Sarah said.
‘What?’
‘Leave home,’ said Sarah. ‘Siobhan and Kathy are going to keep an eye out for a job at their place and as soon as I am fourteen I’m off.’
‘Does your mother know that?’
‘Course. Only what she expected,’ Sarah said. Then she looked at Connie and said, ‘Your mammy wants you to take your School Certificate exam and go to college, don’t she?’
Angela nodded her head.
‘Do you want to?’ Sarah asked
‘No,’ Angela said. ‘I want to get out and work. All my life Mammy has worked and provided for me and Granny and I want her to take life easy for a change. If I am earning she will be able to do that. But …’ she gave a shrug, ‘she has her heart set on it. She has been to see the teacher and she says I am one of the children that could really benefit from a secondary education and so that is what she is determined I will have.’