Our ethel, p.19
Our Ethel, page 19
Mr Joyce rose to his feet.
‘Mrs Sathersthwaite,’ he said, ‘Mr Cox has made you cry in court. Did you weep alone with Ethel Slater too?’
‘We wept with joy after he was born, and we wept with grief after he died.’
‘Did you help out with William on the days in between?’
‘I took ’im out in ’is little pram whenever I could. Every day. I showed ’im off, I suppose. He was my Eddie’s.’
‘Did Miss Slater mind? Did she push you away?’
‘No, she doted on ’im. She was all in, exhausted, but I think she’d got the only thing she ever really wanted. And ’er baby was a little bit of me too.’
Twenty-Six
The judge retired to his office behind the courtroom, unlocked the wall cabinet and took out his crystal decanter, poured himself just a small sherry as it was still quite early in the day, sat behind his desk, and kicked both his shoes off. He opened his notebook and licked the pulp of his fat thumb, then began to peel back through his notes on the trial with a vague sense of loss. Today was the last day for the prosecution, and it was probably the penultimate day of his long but not particularly distinguished career. Mrs Weaver had begun to pack their suitcases before he left for work. They were bound for Southampton in a couple of days’ time to pick up their cruise.
He always enjoyed the prosecution more than the defence. His old friend Dr Lawson had put on a creditable last show for him, even though he was possibly slightly out of his depth. Mr Cox had been his usual theatrical self, and the skull had been a nice touch. All today had on offer was the last prosecution witness, the landlady of a grubby backstreet pub in Rochdale and no doubt a wizened gin-soaked old hag, and then the defence would open their case. The accused looked to be a miserable, cross-eyed specimen, thought the judge, who wouldn’t put up much of a fight. Then they had some upstart doctor drafted in from miles away. He hoped he could wrap all that up by end of play today, then in the morning he could rattle through the closing speeches and summing up before he sent the jury out to decide. He couldn’t see them taking more than an hour. Justice Weaver rarely guessed a verdict wrong. With luck he would have wrapped everything up by noon tomorrow. He had only ever sentenced one female to hang, a coarse, thickset woman who had stabbed her husband to death, and whose name he had forgotten. Mr Joyce could possibly launch an appeal in due course, but that was no concern of his. He would be dining at the captain’s table on the Queen Mary by then.
The highlight of the case had undoubtedly been Olive Songhirst. The judge had drawn a box around her name on the page with his pen. Why, oh why, reflected the judge, had Mrs Weaver never had a body like hers, even when she was in her prime? He closed his notebook with a pleasing thud, took his robes from the peg and made for the courtroom door. He expected little of his last full day in power. Rochdale had never been on his list of holiday destinations.
The court rose as one as the judge made his entrance. He nodded the slightest of bows to the court before lowering himself onto his seat, pleased that at least Mr Cox’s last witness was a woman. Yet again reality far exceeded his expectations. She looked, he thought on first impression, as if she was about to pull a pint of best in the witness box. She had the common lined face and thick vulgar lipstick he would want in a landlady, plus some bulk barely concealed by tight clothing and a cleavage to match. Justice Weaver wrote down the name of Annie Lofthouse at the top of the last page in his notebook, and drew his customary box round it.
‘Mrs Lofthouse,’ said Mr Cox, ‘I understand that you are the landlady of The Junction Inn in Rochdale, and you live there with your husband and children. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right, love,’ she replied. ‘And I could really do wi’ bein’ back there for openin’ time if you could see your way to it.’
‘Well, we can only do our best,’ Mr Cox said.
This woman is a straight-talker, thought the judge. He nodded his approval to Mr Cox.
‘How many children live in the pub with you, Mrs Lofthouse?’
‘Ee, you’ve started with a crackin’ good question, love. I lose track meself sometimes. I’ve got Sadie, Colin, and Ada for the present. An’ there’s our Raymond just turned fifteen now, an’ he comes an’ goes as he pleases. I’ve sometimes a job on to know if he’s stayin’ with us or with his gran. Sadie’s me youngest. She’ll be eight in a few weeks’ time.’
‘And you’ve other children as well, haven’t you? Have they left home now?’
‘Yes, they have, thank the Lord. Not that I don’t love ’em, don’t get me wrong. An’ they’ve not moved far. It’s just jugglin’ beds for ’em all can be a problem. The pub’s only got four bedrooms at a push so we ’ave to double up. There’s Ann an’ our Molly, and Molly’s a young ’un of her own now. We ’ave ’im to stay over an’ all if Molly’s stuck for a sitter. She’s on her own, you see.’
‘Have you lost any children, Mrs Lofthouse?’
‘Blimey, I ’ave, love,’ she replied. ‘How on earth did you know that? There was little Flo. She died of scarlet fever the same week the war ended. An’ she were born the same week it started.’
‘And I believe you’ve a sister a couple of years older than yourself. Is that correct?’
‘By, you ’ave done your ’omework, ’aven’t you, lad? Yes, Mary, our Ethel’s mum. We ’ad a brother too, Reg, a good few years younger than the both of us. He was a bomber pilot. We lost ’im in a raid over Berlin in 1944.’
There was nothing Annie liked more than talking about family. She could tell that Mr Cox was a nice man, who had taken an interest in her children. She’d taken to him. This was going well. She raised her hand in a friendly wave to Ethel facing her in the dock and gave her a smile.
‘Mr Cox, please,’ interrupted the judge, ‘this is all very homely, but where is it all taking us? Please get to the point as soon as you can.’
‘Very well, m’lord,’ Mr Cox said. ‘Mrs Lofthouse, tell the jury if you would. With The Junction full of children and short on beds, how did you find room for Ethel Slater over Christmas last year?’
‘There was bother back at home in York. She’s family.’
‘What kind of bother?’
‘I’d probably best not say.’
‘I’ll make things easy for you, Mrs Lofthouse. The police seized several letters from Miss Slater’s handbag after her baby died. I have here one that was addressed to yourself at The Junction Inn in Rochdale and posted from St Paul’s Terrace. Be so good as to read it out to the court, please.’
Annie believed things were always better said face to face than written down. She remembered meeting Ethel off the train at the station last Christmas, but she’d not seen the letter since. She took the folded scrap of paper from the clerk and put it down on the ledge in front of her while she rummaged around in her handbag for her spectacles.
‘Dear Annie,’ she read to the court in a slow, stumbling voice, ‘ar Ethels in the family way and Dennis as teken agenst it. Can she stay at the junction pleese to sort evrything out? You always know whats for the best with babies.’
‘Do you recognise this letter?’
‘Yes, I do remember it now.’
‘Who wrote it, do you know?’
‘Mary. Or at least she probably ’ad Olive write it down for her, I reckon. Our Mary’s badly.’
‘Your sister, you think, Ethel’s mother? And did you try to sort everything out, Mrs Lofthouse?’
Annie hadn’t read anything much into Mary’s letter, and she didn’t understand the question. Of course she’d taken Ethel in and looked after her and the baby in her womb. That’s what families are for; everybody knew that. She had to get her out of Dennis’s way. He’d started to hit his wife when Ethel was a noisy new baby in their cluttered little house, and there was nobody at home now to stop him doing the same to his daughter, or even to a baby.
‘Of course I did,’ she replied. ‘I’m her auntie, for God’s sake. Of course I looked after ’er.’
‘But that’s not what this letter had asked you to do, is it? You’d been asked to sort out the baby, not look after Ethel Slater.’
What? Same difference, thought Annie.
‘You have not been entirely truthful with us, have you, Mrs Lofthouse?’
‘Claptrap! I’d never lie to you, lad,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you the God’s honest truth.’
‘Well, I’m not so sure about that. I understand from your sister Mary’s statement that you spent some time in hospital in 1947. You’ve told us that you lost just the one child little Flo through scarlet fever. But what took you into hospital after the war? Had you just lost another baby then?’
Annie hesitated and fumbled with the letter on the ledge.
‘I ’ad a miscarriage, that’s true. It’s not summat I like to brood on, though.’
‘But tough women like you don’t go to hospital with a miscarriage. They just knuckle down and get on with things. I suggest to you that you had a termination, an abortion, an abortion that went wrong, septic. You had a pub full of children; the last thing you needed was another mouth to feed. Is that the truth of it, Mrs Lofthouse? Sorting the baby out, that’s what this letter meant, isn’t it? Get it aborted. What better place to send a pregnant girl than to the backstreets of Rochdale to an old hand like you?’
‘Nay, lad,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve never ’eard owt so daft in me life. It’s insultin’. I love my babies more than life itself.’
A knowing smile crept over Ray Cooper’s face. He sat back on his jury bench and looked up to the ceiling. He could see that Annie’s last few words were hollow. He’d seen the scowl on this seedy old landlady’s face as she dropped her gaze onto the letter and fiddled with her handbag when the questions had changed from cosy family life to backstreet abortion. Olive Songhirst had admitted to the court, or as good as, that she’d written the letter to ask for an abortion, and Ethel’s auntie had just told them that she could arrange one. What more did they need to hear? Surely, he said to himself, any more witnesses are a waste of everybody’s time.
‘Mrs Lofthouse, were all your babies born at home, at The Junction in Rochdale?’ Mr Cox continued.
‘Yes, they were, lad. I ’ad a nurse there, a midwife, for the first one or two, but then Vera from the corner shop ’elped out with the others. Sadie were born wi’ no-one else there, in front of the fire. I didn’t even wake Albert, she came so quick.’
‘Vera is a friend you trust?’
‘Wi’ me life, love. She’s ’ad plenty of ’er own, mind you. She knows what she’s doin’. She’s a grand lass. She ’elps out behind the bar anytime I’m stuck. She can turn ’er ’and to anythin’.’
‘Were you anxious with the first one? Things can go wrong, can’t they?’
‘I were a bit worried, love, I must admit. Any young mother is, but things generally work out.’
Annie understood Mr Cox’s little game now and didn’t like what she could see. These questions were taking aim at Ethel really, not herself. She was being led into a trap, down a blind alley, and there was nothing she could do about it.
‘And you took in Miss Slater, a young mother-to-be, and under your wing in The Junction. A mother hen. Was she nervous, do you think?’
‘Ethel were more worried about ’er mum copin’ on ’er own back in the terrace than givin’ birth, I reckon. She’s selfless, is our Ethel. That’s why she’s in the mess she is. I tried to tell ’er that Mary was safe in Olive’s ’ands. She weren’t so much nervous, to be honest wi’ yer, as scared out of ’er wits. She must ’ave known all hell were goin’ to break loose back at ’ome with a bairn. She buried ’er ’ead in the sand. Wouldn’t talk about it. But at The Junction she just served in the tap room an’ mucked in. She’s a good worker. The regulars liked ’er.’
‘Well, maybe Miss Slater had good reason to be worried by what might be happening back at home. Olive Songhirst was sleeping in her bed, we’ve been told. Did you give Ethel the benefit of all your years’ experience with childbirth?’
‘I did that.’
‘Did you offer to help Miss Slater give birth to her baby at the pub?’
‘Well, no, not as such. I’ve enough on there as it is really.’
‘Let’s think about that carefully, Mrs Lofthouse. You tell the jury you have enough on there with your own children and a shortage of beds. I can see that. Yet still you could empty a room and give it to Miss Slater all to herself, but you can’t let her stay on then help with the birth. Like Vera helped you. How do you explain that?’
‘I’ve all on with our Albert. He’s not a well man. He’s badly with ’is chest. An’ Ethel wanted to get back ’ome.’
‘Your husband’s chest is of no concern to me. You tell Ethel Slater she can’t have the baby at The Junction, but you’ve told the jury you love babies more than life itself. This doesn’t all quite make sense, does it?’
Annie felt she was tied up in knots. She knew just what she meant, and she had done her best to explain, but he wouldn’t take it in and now she was lost for words.
‘Did Miss Slater talk to you about the baby’s name?’
Lydia came to her mind, but then it was her favourite name and it might have been her own suggestion. She looked at Mr Cox, then at Ethel, then shook her head.
‘I suggest the jury can take it from your own silence, Mrs Lofthouse, that Miss Slater’s silence didn’t make much sense to you either. Do you know what plans she made to look after the new baby once she was back home?’
‘She wouldn’t talk about it. She were terrified.’
‘Or was she hoping to have it adopted? Do you know?’
‘The vicar ’ad tried that an’ he’d scared ’er to death.’
‘None of what you say tells me that Miss Slater was frightened at all. On the contrary, she was as calm and collected as you like. Cold and scheming. She didn’t talk to you about this baby’s future because you both knew it didn’t have one. She knew that if this baby didn’t die at the hands of a backstreet abortionist in Rochdale, it would die by her own hand in St Paul’s Terrace in York. She’d been jilted, she couldn’t stay at home, and you had more than enough babies yourself. Ethel Slater had hatched a plot with Olive Songhirst and then you were drawn into it too. That’s the terrible truth of the matter, isn’t it, Mrs Lofthouse?’
‘Objection, m’lord.’ Mr Joyce had risen to his feet, his hands tucked into the lapels of his gown. ‘Mr Cox is putting words into this witness’ mouth.’
Justice Weaver looked up from his notebook. He’d added deck shoes to his list of luggage for the cruise.
‘Is he? Sorry,’ the judge said. ‘Mrs Lofthouse, don’t answer that last question. And members of the jury, ignore those last comments. It’s my job to summarise the evidence, not yours, Mr Cox. Now hurry along, Mr Cox, hurry up.’
‘I’ve no further questions, Your Honour.’
‘Grand. Mr Joyce, do you have any questions? The floor is yours.’
‘One or two.’ Mr Joyce remained on his feet. ‘Mrs Lofthouse, what took you into hospital for a time in 1947?’
‘Pain in me belly, your lordship. I was servin’ in the tap room an’ it came on sudden like I’d been ’it by a train an’ I collapsed. Then some bleedin’ down below. Albert sent for an ambulance an’ I ’ad to ’ ave an operation an’ I was laid up for a fortnight. They said I ’ad a baby growin’ in one of me tubes an’ it burst. So they took the ’ole lot away. I didn’t even know I was expectin’. Came as a complete shock, I can tell you. I thought I was done wi’ babies with our Sadie.’
‘Could you see that Ethel Slater was expecting when she arrived at The Junction?’
‘You can say that again! She was a few months on the way. You could see that through ’er coat. Me an’ Albert met ’er at the railway station. I was a bit shocked, to be ’onest, quite how far she was gone. I knew she was in trouble but I just thought she must ’ave found out an’ told our Mary and ’er Dennis, an’ the balloon ’ad gone up.’
‘Did Miss Slater talk to you about her pregnancy and the baby?’
‘No, she didn’t really, to be honest with you, sir. Not much at all. I knitted things and we’d sit an’ chat a bit about what she wanted to do, but that were about it. That’s our Ethel for you, though. As I said to the other gentleman, she were just very frightened, I think, of what she’d done, an’ what would happen with ’er mum, and what ’er dad would do. She’s timid, I think the word is. She’s allus been frightened of ’er own shadow, is young Ethel.’
‘Did you knit this teddy bear for her?’
Mr Joyce reached over in front of Mr Cox and took the little bear off the lid of its box.
‘Yes, I did, love, an’ I posted it on for ’er.’
‘Let me put this suggestion to you. Did Ethel Slater come to you at The Junction hoping you’d help her get rid of the baby, one way or another, Mrs Lofthouse? Perhaps you know of a woman in Rochdale who helps out young girls in trouble?’
‘Of course not. I told ’im next to you. I’ve never ’eard owt so bloody ridiculous.’
She pointed her finger at Mr Cox.
‘So why did she come to you?’
‘Same reason most folk walk through the front door of The Junction. To get away from ’ome for a while, see a friendly face an’ put their worries be’ind ’em.’
‘Is that the only reason you took her in?’
‘A bit more.’
‘Go on.’
‘Kindness, warmth and a bit o’ tender lovin’. Our Ethel doesn’t ask for much. She’s plain an’ simple.’
Twenty-Seven
‘Call Ethel Slater.’
Silence fell on the room as Ethel’s head jerked up from the rail in the dock. She looked down into the court. The judge watched her eyes roaming from side to side. Her dowdy figure then turned about and descended into the well of the court, shuffled along between the jury and the table top of skull, teddy bear, and papers, and climbed up into the witness box. She had left one cage for another in the space of a few small steps. She stood at a rail again, cornered, trapped, alone.
