The cotton town girls, p.1
The Cotton Town Girls, page 1
For Jenny, with love and thanks
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a reissue of my third novel, originally published in 1996 under the title: Days of Bread and Roses under my original name, Helene Wiggin. I wanted to commemorate a hundred years since women were first given the vote in 1918. Although most women were not eligible until 1928. Now that I am better known as Leah Fleming, I’m keeping life simple by sticking to that name.
The events and characters in this story are entirely fictitious and any mistakes in locations or dates are entirely my own. The recipes are ones I have gleaned from friends and family.
*
Women began campaigning for a vote in the nineteenth century. Suffrage societies in the cotton towns of the North of England joined together in 1897 to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) under Millicent Fawcett. Their colours were red, white and green. Activities were low-key, ladylike and law-abiding, delivering many tons of petitions to Parliament, raising awareness amongst all political parties about the many injustices against womankind. This peaceful approach was inevitably slow to progress.
In 1903 impatient members, such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her three daughters, broke away with their supporters to form the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Their colours were purple, green and white and their motto: ‘Deeds Not Words’. They attracted wide support around the country and moved their base to London. Nicknamed ‘Suffragettes’ by the Daily Mail in 1906, they took a more militant approach which was high profile, daring and used civil disobedience as a weapon.
The split between the law-abiding Suffragists and these ‘Panks’ was bitter and long term, especially when the press lumped them all under the same contemptuous title of ‘Suffragettes’.
SOME USEFUL DATES
1903
Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst forms the Women’s Social and Political Union at her home in Nelson Street, Manchester.
1905
Demonstration in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Arrest of Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney.
1906
General Election with new Liberal Government. Beginning of split between the militant ‘Panks’ and the ‘Suffs’.
1908
Anti-Suffragist, Lord Asquith, becomes Prime Minister. WSPU steps up militant campaign.
1909
Hunger strikes and forcible feeding of Suffragettes begins. Winston Churchill campaigns in Bolton, Preston and Lancashire in run-up to General Election of 1910. WSPU organise demonstrations.
1910
Liberals are returned. The Conciliation Bill is defeated. Militants resume violence, resulting in Black Friday assault and arrests after clashes with police at Westminster.
1911
Coronation Processions and truce. Second Conciliation Bill is defeated. WSPU responds with outbreak of window smashing.
1912
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies supports pro Labour Candidates at by-election.
1887
Chapter One
‘Go on! Dare you, Seddon,’ sniggered the lads. ‘Give us a flash of your drawers!’ The aisle of St Anselm’s, Plover Street, stretched out before them like a hopscotch board of gaudy tiles. The Vicar was late and Standard Five was bored. The girl hesitated. ‘Cowardy cowardy custard, yer face’ll turn to mustard!’ the taunts continued.
She spun herself expertly down the aisle with ten cartwheels to the chancel steps and the class cheered. The Reverend Rowland Thompson chose that moment to emerge from the vestry behind his young daughter who carried a vase of garden roses. A flying clog caught the girl’s hand, sending the whole display into the air. A gobsmacked hush descended upon the congregation, followed by the crash of shattered crystal on the terracotta-tiled steps. The two girls collided together, falling in a tangled heap, pink-faced and breathless. The culprit scrabbled across the tiles, desperately hoping to undo the damage, picking up the shards of glass with raw fingers.
‘Here, let me help,’ whispered the Vicar’s girl as she knelt down beside her: a girl of her own age with bluebell eyes and golden braids hanging over her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a vase. Plenty more in the vestry.’
The Vicar stood over the proceedings like an avenging angel, booming, ‘You stupid girl! Desecrating God’s holy temple with such horseplay. Grace dear, leave her be! Let this creature clear up her own mess. What’s your name, girl?’
‘Phia, sir,’ spluttered the girl, close to tears.
‘Fire? What sort of name is that? None that I’ve baptised!’
‘It’s Sophia, sir, Sophia Seddon.’
‘Well, that’s not on my register, either. A Wesleyan, are we?’
‘No, sir, me dad don’t believe in it, sir!’ piped the girl, silencing any chatter.
‘Unbaptised, uncatechised . . . What will happen to you if you die? Has your father thought about that?’
Phia stood her ground. ‘Yes, Reverend Thompson. He don’t hold with any of it . . . says it’s rubbish, all of it. We’ve a bad enough time here without it going on for ever and ever, he says.’
Out popped Wilf Seddon’s heresies like bullets from a gun. She was for it now.
The Vicar plumped up his ruffled feathers and addressed the congregation. ‘Behold a little heathen in our midst, a product of free thinking and Socialism, a defiler of God’s Temple. Is this what we breed in Plover Street School? Is this what Miss Norris teaches Standard Five? Who need plough the Mission field when such a harvest is at our door?
‘So, Miss Sophia Seddon, how do you intend to make reparation for this destruction?’
‘Yer what?’ replied Sophia, blood dripping from her fingers on to the grubby pinafore skirt of her cotton overall. ‘Sorry, Vicar.’
‘So you should be, silly girl. I want to see you in church every Sunday in Lent or I will pay your father a visit and ask him for a replacement crystal vase.’
‘But, Papa, she’s bleeding. Come with me,’ ordered his daughter, grabbing Phia by the wrist and dragging her into the vestry parlour to clean her fingers under the tap. It was a musty-smelling, panelled room, dark and cluttered with vestments hanging eerily on hooks.
To Phia’s untutored eye, the only brightness shone from Grace Thompson, dressed like a picture-book princess, straight from the pages of Girls’ Own. Her cream calico dress hung loosely from a dropped waist and box-pleated skirt to mid-calf, and from under it peeped white cotton socks and the shiniest patent leather ankle-strapped shoes. Not for her Cissie’s clomping hand-me-downs, scuffed and shabby. These were delicate shoes from an expensive catalogue. It was worth torn fingers to be so close to this creature from another world; a world where roses bloomed in the highwalled Vicarage garden instead of being nicked from the park and stuck in a jam jar.
‘Thank you, miss,’ said Sophia.
‘Thank you for cheering up the Catechism class.’
‘Are you being confirmed then?’
‘I expect so. Will you come to church?’
‘I might. What’s it like?’
‘Come and see,’ replied Grace Thompson as she rummaged under her skirt for a handkerchief, winding it tightly around the cut fingers. ‘There, that’ll see you home. Your mama can bandage them properly then.’
‘I haven’t got a mother. She died when Ethel were born . . . but there’s my dad, Gran and Cissie, Jack, Walter and Ethel.’
‘Goodness! How do you all fit in? There is only Papa and I in the Vicarage but Aunt Calvert comes to stay in the holidays.’
‘So you’ve got no mam either?’
Grace shook her head. ‘She was ill. I don’t remember . . . It was a long time ago.’
‘Grace, hurry up, child, and join the class!’ The Vicar stood at the door, glowering.
‘See you on Sunday then, Phia?’ The two girls smiled as he unlocked the vestry door and half-pushed the culprit out into the weak sunshine of a February afternoon.
‘Now, Grace, I don’t want you mixing in the street,’ he said, turning back to his daughter. ‘That girl spells trouble!’
‘But, Papa, I thought you wanted me to be a missionary?’ she said, smiling sweetly as she placed the roses in another vase.
Phia sped along the sunless side of the street, past the regiments of red-brick terraced houses flanking the cobbled road, saluting St Anselm’s Parish Church as it rose from their ranks like an over-decorated general. She was too excited even to leap over the bogeymen lurking under the cracks in the flagstones.
Grace . . . Grace Thompson. I bet she has two Christian names . . . Grace was such a beautiful name, not rough like the names on the Board School register. All the Bessies, Berthas, Aggies and Ellens: names fit for cart horses. Grace sounded so refined, so dignified, so inspiring. She was going to need a bit of inspiration herself to get to see Grace Thompson again.
Sophia dawdled down the back entry to number nine, pausing to watch puffs of blue smoke drifting from behind a loose brick in the privy. Dad was home early, locked in the lav for a quiet smoke. He knew the score on baking days. If he put his pipe across the doorstep, Gran would yell, ‘Get that filthy thing out of my clean house, Wilf Seddon . . . We’ve enough fumes from that load of dust, what Mr Higson carts round on his wagon as coal.’
This was the only order Dad obeyed. Mam had never liked the smell of baccy either. Still it was Friday night and that meant billiards and darts at the Spindlemaker’s Arms, so he would be in a good mood. The girl loitered in the yard.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, our Phia.’
‘Why did you call me Sophia?’
Wilfred Seddon sucked on his pipe and smiled to himself. ‘I thowt you’d need some sense, being a lass. As I recall, the name’s summat to do wi’ being wise . . . What’s brought all this on?’
‘Dad,’ she continued, ‘can I join the Sunday School?’
‘What the hell do you want to go God-botherin’ for? Haven’t I told you it’s a load of tripe?’
‘Yes, I know that, but I’m not getting much schooling, what with mindin’ Ethel and helpin’ Gran on wash days. I hear they do reading and writing there as well. I could do wi’ some practice. And you do say never miss a chance of free learning, don’t you, Dad?’
Silence from the throne.
‘Aye . . . well, go on then,’ he replied. ‘Reckon I named thee right enough.’
Sophia grinned to herself. That was the first hurdle over. Now to tackle the second.
The smells wafted through the yard, better than Warburton’s bakery. The table was laden with trays of currant buns, railway slice and Eccles cakes (fly cemeteries, Jack called them, to put you off your share); a mouth-watering display of untouchables. In the side oven the first of the barm cakes and over bottom bread tortured nostrils and belly.
Bun Gran drew up her wrinkled face into one of her stringbag looks of disapproval. ‘Where’ve you bin till this time, lady? Park larkin’? Look at you, like Madge Wildfire! I needed you to take Ethel out of my hair. She’s twined all afternoon, Phia. How’ve you got blood all over yer pinny? And you can get yer thievin’ fingers off my bakin’. Stop pickin’!’
‘Sorry, Gran, but I got in a bit of bother in the Vicar’s class.’ Sophia held up her fingers for sympathy. ‘Look, the Vicar’s daughter bound them up with her hanky. Can I wash this for Sunday church? See, it’s real lace with her initial embroidered in the corner. “G” is for Grace. She was ever so kind.’
‘Is she yon pale-faced stick o’ a lass, the one as looks as if she needs a square meal inside her? I’m surprised Parson lets her mix with Board School kiddies. ’Er who cleans up at the Vicarage says she’s right chesty and he don’t want her pickin’ up germs and thick vowels. She goes to some fancy school up town, away from all the smoke and fumes of the iron foundry.’
‘She’s goin’ to be my friend so I must get this washed.’
‘Well, soak it in a pan with cold water and salt to get the blood stain off. You can boil it up later if there’s enough fire left. I’m not puttin’ no copper to boil for one lace hanky. It can wait while Monday when we do the wash, and you can collect Walter and Ethel from next-door’s yard. You’ll ’ave to mind her bairns tomorrow.’
Millie Walker, affectionately nicknamed ‘Bun Gran’, wiped her floury brow and pitched into her last batch of dough with sturdy arms, bending her cottage-loaf shape, with its round bosom and ample hips, to the task. When her daughter had died in childbirth she’d come to the rescue, leaving her own hearth to keep house for them all. Now she was feeling every one of her sixty-five years.
‘Can I knock back the bread for you?’ Sophia loved punching her fists into the warmth and stickiness of the dough and sitting by the fender turning the bowl. Bread was mysterious, rising secretly under its cloth, lumpen and lifeless at first then puffed up ready to bake.
‘Not with them fingers, you can’t. Beat the rag rug or donkey stone the front doorstep. We’ll not have anyone in Plover Street say I keep a dirty house. Not like them slopers next door. I don’t think she cleans her nets from one spring to the next.’ Gran bashed into the dough. ‘Mind on, our Phia, you don’t get good bread without a hard knockin’ back. The more you bash, the higher it rises. So work hard at yer lessons, young lady, and perhaps you’ll rise like bread!’
‘Got top marks again for composition. Miss Norris says my essays are a revelation. Can I stay on . . . do proper lessons? Miss Norris says I could be a Pupil Monitor. I don’t want to go into Berisford’s Mill, I want to be a teacher like Miss Norris.’
‘Ada Norris has no right to put ideas into yer head. It’s all right for her, being an only child and no oil painting either. Her dad could afford to give her an education. She’ll not tempt any curate with yon squashed face of hers! But education’s not for the likes of us in Plover Street, and certainly not for a harum-scarum flibbertigibbet like you, so don’t get yer hopes up. Any road, it’s yer dad who decides. Berisford’s Cotton Mill is good enough for Cissie. Why should you be different, my lady?’
‘Cos I’m a clever clogs, so sharp I’ll cut myself! You’ve told me that a hundred times. It’s not fair to shove me in the mill. I’ll shrivel up with boredom.’
‘Boredom? Where do you get such words? No one is ever bored in a mill. Just ask Cissie. She’ll soon put you straight.’ Gran sniffed the range and flung back the black-leaded door in a flurry. ‘Look! Your day dreams nearly burnt the bread.’
‘Just like King Alfred,’ came the reply.
‘Enough of your uppity nonsense. People like us are here to keep the numbers up, so no more fancy notions. Make yerself useful for a change.’
Phia slipped a bun deftly into her pocket and skipped out into the back yard with a grin. On Sunday she intended to meet Grace Thompson properly.
‘All dolled up like a dish of tripe’ was the verdict on Sophia’s Sunday appearance. She curled the frills around her best cotton smock with the goffering iron, polished her clogs above their station, tortured her thick brown hair into rag-rollered corkscrews. Cissie gave her a piece of pretty off-cut ribbon to tie back her curls in the fashion of the Royal Princesses, as stamped on their biscuit tin.
‘You’ll do,’ said Bun Gran grudgingly, reluctant to admit that the girl paid for dressing up, with her raisin-coloured eyes, glossy chestnut mane and square little body, just like her poor departed mam’s. ‘You know I don’t hold with all them smells and bells! Religion should be plain, not fancy. St Anselm’s is definitely fancy. That Reverend Thompson is a right one for dressing up the church and himself, and not above poaching from the Wesleyans given half a chance! But mind you behave yerself. We may be working folk but the Seddons can hold their head up to anyone in this street.’
The girl stuffed the lace hanky into her pocket and headed out of the front door, listening to the five-minute bell tolling from the soot-blackened church tower. She took her place amongst the rows of scholars penned in pews by the side of the Lady Chapel, swinging their legs, bashing the oak panels, poking their noses and wiping off snot on the hassocks. She scanned the pews for the outline of Grace Thompson and saw her sitting in the front row.
A shaft of dusty sunlight bathed Grace’s head like a halo; a band of silk flowers was swathed around her bonnet and cascades of blue satin ribbon tumbled nonchalantly down her back. Miss Grace Thompson looked just perfect. Phia recognised the satin ribbon from the trimmings stall in the open market. Even if she minded all the kids in the street for a week to pay for a yard or two, it would never look smart on her bashed-up straw hat. Only its shabbiness would be enhanced.
The service was boring. What a relief when they were turfed out before the sermon, row by row. A truculent toddler refused to budge from the front pew and Sophia could see Grace struggling to cajole the child and subdue its wails. She shot forward and grabbed the toddler. ‘Give her here, miss . . . Annie Thornber’s a right pain.’
‘Thank you,’ said the other girl with relief. ‘So you came after all?’
‘Yep. Thowt I’d give it the once-over. What do I do next?’ she whispered, conscious they were holding up the other children.
‘Well, you go to Bible Study in the Church Institute room.’ Grace pointed to the building tucked in a corner behind the school yard. ‘I have to look after the tinies in the Infants’ Hall with the other ladies till we go back in again.’
‘Back in again?’ gulped Sophia.
‘Yes, of course, for Communion. We just bow our heads for the Blessing until we’re confirmed.’
Sophia knew all about Confirmation Sunday. That was when the ones who had stuck out the classes were draped in borrowed lawn veils and white frocks, swanking their finery along the street like fairy queens. Not that they were as grand as the Catholic girls from St Peter and Paul’s who paraded in long bridal dresses, necks adorned with gold crucifixes, and covered from head to toe in cobweb lace. Now they were something to gawp at. Even Kitty Kelly, who was a right cow, looked like a Vestal Virgin from a distance. Gran said that the Kellys went hungry for weeks, pawning their souls to see Kitty done up properly. No, a St Anselm’s confirmation was a poor second and Bun Gran certainly wouldn’t abide any dressing up.
