Lizzie leaned towards her mother’s better ear. ‘So how did you meet my father?’
‘At their old Uncle Eli’s funeral. Tom took me to show me off to his family. We’d been courtin’ a long while. It was there as I met your father all done up in his best black suit and best bowler. Oh, our Lizzie, I only clapped eyes on him and I knew as I’d marry him. He was a lot older than me – about twenty-six at the time – but they said as how he was still a bachelor and a right one for the women, an’ all. Well, when we’d gone back to their uncle’s house for the wake, Isaac come a-talking to me and Tom. After a bit, Tom went to get himself another drink, and Isaac told me how lovely I looked and how as he’d love to kiss me. I remember I blushed to me roots, but there was something about him as took me fancy. After that I kept on thinking about him, even when I was with Tom. Anyroad, afore long I met him again, and I was all of a tiswas. Well, he asked me if I’d meet him one night. So I did, unbeknowns to Tom. I enjoyed meself that much I said I’d see him again and, afore I knew what’d hit me, I was in love – well and truly … and I reckoned I could cure him of his womanising. Anyway, when I told Tom what’d been going on he was heartbroken.’
‘So were they friends after that, Uncle Tom and my father? I wouldn’t have been very pleased if a cousin of mine had stolen my man.’
‘Well, they weren’t very friendly when it first happened, our Lizzie, I can tell you, but they still worked together. They had to. Jobs was scarce in them days and they had to put up with one another, ’cause they worked as a team. But, when Tom met Sarah, they patched up their differences. Tom never forgave your father, though, for pinchin’ me off him. Even the day I got married he told me as he’d always love me.’
‘And did you cure my father of his womanising?’
Perhaps Eve did not catch Lizzie’s question, or pretended not to, but it struck Lizzie how convenient deafness could be at times. ‘You know that lovely Coalport China tea set what’s at the top of the cupboard up there? That was Tom’s weddin’ present to me. When I’m dead and gone it’s yours, our Lizzie. But I want you to promise me now as you’ll cherish it.’
‘Course I’ll cherish it, if it means that much to you.’
Eve nodded and remained with her thoughts for a few minutes, till she picked up her newspaper and began reading again. Lizzie smiled to herself. Evidently she was to be told nothing more. But what she’d been told did not surprise her. Often she heard Uncle Tom and her mother laughing about some incident or some person from the old days; she’d seen the glances that flashed between 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