This is my fourth assignment - life writing. The choice was biography, autobiography or life writing. I was going to write about the fire at Hanley Castle, which is mentioned in my Grandad, Longley Norman's memoirs, but found I was far more interested in the details of the family's day-to-day lives. I based this passage - and we were asked for a passage, not a complete piece - on the day the letter (which is fictional, as no-one can remember how they found out about the fire) came. I spent a happy couple of days interviewing my dad and my uncle Bill (who is now Uncle Walter - a story for another day) and sharing their memories.
Arthur, Jimmy and Dennis scuffled along the backses[1],
elbowing each other into the gutter which ran along the centre of the cobbles,
tossing their caps between them. Both Easter and spring were late this year[2],
but it was finally warm enough that the boys were not levered into their winter
coats for the journeys to and from school. The three of them looked ready for
Friday night bath-night, with their dirty knees showing between grey, woollen
shorts and fallen-down socks. They paused at the corner to tug down their
jumpers, carelessly tuck in the fronts of their shirts, and bang their caps
against their legs to remove the worst of the muck.
‘See yer.’
‘See yer.’
Arthur turned into his house at the top
of the street and the others continued on. The front door to number six was
open as usual, but, as he opened the vestibule door, Arthur realised something
was not right. Normally, at this time, the front room would be empty, the fire
not lit until after tea, when his father went off down Werneth Club. Once the
boys had gone to bed, his mother would sit there with Grandma and the Aunts,
making a scuttle of coal last the evening. The stairs’ door would be left ajar
to let the last of the kitchen warmth seep into the bedrooms – though it never
seemed to get as far as the attic, where Arthur slept. Alan, the baby, still
slept in with his mother and father, and Walter slept on a truckle bed, in the
front room with Grandma, during the cold months. There were plenty of those in
Oldham in the 1920s.
Walter
was sort of the odd-one-out in growing up, in that he was always ‘sickly’, he
was always ‘poorly’. He…had to be coddled a bit because he was different, you
know. He had a bad heart. He had a leaky valve, so he had to be ‘looked
after’…he went half days to school and this sort of thing [Alan Norman].
‘What’s up? Where’s Mum?’
Grandma looked up from her tatting[3]
as he came in. Alan waved his chubby little fists in the air and kicked out his
legs in excitement, nearly rolling backwards on the rag rug in front of the
fire. It was only Walter, curled up behind him, playing with a toy car, that
kept him sitting up.
‘She’s in t’ kitchen. She’s had a bit o’ bad
news so I’ve brought t’ boys in here to give her five minutes. You can go in
and help wi’ t’ tea if you like.’ Grandma leaned forward and moved the baby
away from Walter, whose hair he was now pulling.
‘Has t’
skiver pinched off [4]
again today, then?’ Arthur indicated his middle brother with a flick of the
head. Walter scowled at him and Grandma just looked at him, eyebrows raised.
Arthur opened the kitchen door and the smirk was wiped off his face as he saw
the letter propped against the clock on the mantelpiece.
There
were certainly no telephones…[and] telegrams, you know, after the First World
War they were…a telegram was something you got with trepidation…they’d probably
have got a letter…
[Walter
Norman].
His mother was laying the table for their
tea. The little drop-leaf table would only seat four, so the boys and Grandma
would eat before his father and the Aunts got home.
‘Wash your hands, Arthur.’ His mother
looked as she always did, pinny over her weekday skirt and blouse. She would
take it off once she’d tidied up after tea, fold it over the end of the
fireguard and put on her cardigan, ready for the cooler climes of the front room.
‘Why is there a letter from Grandma
Mellors on a Friday?’ Arthur crossed to the stone sink and rinsed his hands in
the warm water in there. He rubbed them dry on the back of his shorts and moved
back to study the spidery, black writing that he knew so well. ‘Is there summat
up?’
Word
from Hanley Castle, fire destroyed Home and All in it. Doris’s Mum and Dad
lucky to get out OK, place gutted…at first, feared Old Lady must have roasted
in the blaze, but the following morning she turned up…I still think this was
Arson…[Longley Norman].
‘Never you
mind. Call t’ others through and fetch t’ baby, would you? Tea’s ready.’
It was the following morning before
Arthur found out anything more. By the time his father and the Aunts had got
home from work, he, Walter and the baby had been dunked in the tin bath in
front of the fire and scrubbed until their skin tingled. Arthur was grateful
that his ten years meant he got to bathe alone, even though it was after the
younger two.
‘You create too much sediment,’ was his
mother’s only comment when he proposed that, as the eldest, he should go first.
Later, he’d listened to the murmur of the adult voices as he read his
much-thumbed copy of Ripley’s Believe it
or Not by the flickering candlelight in his attic bedroom. When the front
door banging shut had announced the fact that his father had gone to the club
as normal, Arthur had relaxed, knowing that, however bad it was, it hadn’t
disrupted the scheduled, Friday-night card game.
The smell in the kitchen on a Saturday
morning baking day was lovely, thanks to the dough that was rising in a big
mixing bowl, covered with a damp tea-towel, on top of the fireside bread oven.
His mother smelled the same way, warm, yeasty and comforting, when he hugged
her. Once the breakfast table was cleared, she would knock back the dough and
put it in the bread oven to cook in time for dinner - fresh, still-warm bread,
melting, yellow butter, churned at the local dairy and home-made jam, thick
with lumps of strawberry or gooseberry. Arthur bent over his porridge bowl and
tried to ignore Walter, blethering on to Aunt Ciss about something. Ears
flapping, he concentrated on the muted conversation that was taking place
between his parents.
The
Vicar…was awoken by the bells of the Fire Engine. It had to come all the way
from Upton, so, as you can imagine, it was nearly All Over by the time it
arrived. They had to cut through my lovely rose bushes to get to the well, as
it was Far Too Dangerous to use the garden path. It all felt So Hopeless…We are
now staying in The Old Rectory and they say there is No Hurry for us to move
on…I hope you can come down, my dear. Your Mother needs you. Father says
there is no insurance, so I don’t know what we’ll do, I’m sure. We must put our
Trust in God. From Your Affectionate Mother.
(Letter
from Eliza Mellors to Doris Norman)
‘Why would Father burn t’
place down if they weren’t insured, Longley? No.’ His mother looked down at the
letter, which she’d just read again.
‘No.’ More decisively this time. ‘I know he wanted th’ old lady out, but
really…’ She slid the letter back into its envelope. ‘We need to go down.’
‘All in good time. You need
to write and ask about accommodation. It’s all very well, but we’ll need some
place to stay. We could get t’ train down on Thursday, and stay over Easter
weekend. I’d need to be back Monday, but it might be that you can stop on a
while.’
‘We’re going to Granddad’s!’ Arthur leaned across the table,
interrupting Walter’s tale. ‘He might take us out looking for birds’ nests.’
‘Am I coming? Mum, Mum, am I coming?’
Arthur’s
flapping hand and shushing noises came too late to quieten Walter and their
father stood, hitching his trousers with their wide, leather belt.
‘You’ll wait till you’re asked,
young Walter. And, as for you, Arthur, you’ve got jobs to do, if I’m not
mistaken.’
He’d say ‘Let’s go out for a walk and
look for birds’ nests…and we’d have to search…and you’d find this little nest
with these little apparent eggs in it and they were sugared almonds [Walter
Norman].
He’d a habit of saying…’Look at these
flowers down here’ and he’d pull out some sugared almonds…He was always
considered a bit stern, and a bit of a terror, you know. I don’t remember him
in that way [Alan Norman].
Saturday was for playing out once the
jobs were done. Even Walter might be allowed to sit on the front step, well
wrapped up, and watch the bigger boys. Arthur stacked the pots by the sink as
his father tucked the paper under his arm and went off up the yard. As he
whisked up the lather in the warm water, poured from the kettle that always
simmered on the hob, Arthur heard the rat-a-tat of the door knocker and his
Aunt Bea’s heavy tread as she went to answer.
‘Can your Arthur come out to play?’
Arthur
smiled. He’d a proper story to tell yon lads once he’d done here.
