Snowflakes in the Wind Read online

  RITA BRADSHAW

  Snowflakes in the Wind

  MACMILLAN

  This book is dedicated to baby Dakota, and to her amazingly brave parents, Jane and Scott, and to Dakota’s nanna, my dear friend, Maureen.

  There are no answers to such heartache this side of heaven except trust and faith, but Dave’s word from God at Dakota’s funeral rings in all our hearts.

  We believe, Lord.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  No Going Back, 1920

  PART TWO

  The New Life, 1921

  PART THREE

  Womanhood, 1929

  PART FOUR

  Bedpans, Sluices and Lavatories, 1930

  PART FIVE

  A Divided World, 1939

  PART SIX

  When All That’s Left is Hope, 1944

  Epilogue, 1949

  Dancing in the Moonlight

  Beyond the Veil of Tears

  The Colours of Love

  Lullaby

  There’s snowflakes in the wind, my bonny babby,

  Snowflakes in the wind, my little lamb,

  But don’t you fret, don’t you cry,

  The sun will come out by and by,

  And till then I’ll keep you warm, my bonny babby.

  PART ONE

  No Going Back

  1920

  Chapter One

  Where the hell was she? Gone eight o’clock on Christmas Eve and she wasn’t home yet. Did she think he was that much of a fool? Did she?

  Edgar Kirby ground his teeth, his hands gripping the wooden arms of the old armchair he was sitting in so that his knuckles showed white through the skin. The chair was one of two positioned either side of the fire in the black-leaded range in a kitchen that, although shabby, was spotlessly clean. Some effort to mark the season was evident in the paper chains criss-crossing under the ceiling, and the grate held a good fire of glowing slack and coal that the draught from the chimney kept bright. Two gas mantles on one whitewashed wall hissed and popped now and again as they shed their limited light over the room, and the smell of the pot roast in the oven was mouthwatering.

  Anyone entering the kitchen would have been struck by its simple cosiness, from the thick clippy mat the armchairs stood on, to the sunshine-yellow flock cushions positioned on the battered six-foot wooden settle set against the wall opposite the fireplace.

  A natural homemaker lives here, they would have thought, as their eyes took in the yellow curtains at the window in the same material as the cushion covers, and the small earthenware pot of white hyacinths in the centre of the scrubbed table. Someone with the touch of making the most wretched surroundings comfortable – and certainly this terraced house, like the ones surrounding it in the tight grid of streets in the heart of Sunderland, was as poor as they come.

  Edgar sat immobile for a few minutes more, staring at the fire but without seeing it. Instead his mind was full of moving pictures of Molly and the man she worked for; lewd, explicit images that burned against his eyeballs and caused a rage that brought him to his feet whereupon he started pacing the room, his hands clenched fists.

  A creaking of the kitchen door brought his head swinging round to see his nine-year-old daughter standing in the doorway, her younger brother behind her. ‘Is Mam home yet?’

  It took all his self-control not to shout at them to get back upstairs, and his face must have revealed what he was feeling as he watched both children take an instinctive step backwards. It was this that curbed his tongue. He knew they were frightened of him or, if not exactly frightened, then certainly wary, he thought bitterly. Abby had been barely three years old when he had left in the summer of 1914 for the front, anxious to do his bit in the war ‘before it was all over’, and Robin a babe in arms. When he had returned from the conflict he was a stranger; to them, to Molly, even to himself. The unspeakable things he had seen and had had to do; how could you go down into the depths of hell and not be changed? And the noise, the incessant screaming shells, the mud, the blood . . .

  Edgar jerked his mind back to the children staring at him as the roaring in his head that accompanied thoughts of the war became louder. As though it was someone else speaking, he heard himself say, ‘Why aren’t you asleep? Them stockings’ – he nodded at the two hand-knitted red stockings hanging limply either side of the range – ‘will have nowt in ’em come morning if you don’t go to sleep like good bairns.’

  ‘We wanted Mam to tuck us in.’

  ‘Aye, well, doubtless she’ll come up once she’s back but she won’t be best pleased if you two are still awake, now, will she? Now get yourselves to bed and no more coming downstairs, all right? I mean it, mind.’

  Abby bit her lip. She wanted to say that her mam wouldn’t mind if they were still up, not on Christmas Eve. It was a special night, the night when baby Jesus had been born and laid in a manger with all the animals around Him and the shepherds and wise men worshipping Him, and the star over the stable lighting up the sky. But she didn’t. Her mam had told her that their da was poorly. They must always remember that, her mam had warned, and never do or say anything to trouble him. He would get better, her mam had gone on, but it would take time, and they had to be careful never to cheek him or argue, but always to do exactly as they were told and to be quiet when he was in the house. Her mam had added that last bit after one day in the summer when Robin had been jumping on his bed and had fallen off with a crash loud enough to wake the dead, and her da had scrambled under the kitchen table and sat there with his hands over his ears and his eyes shut, his whole body shaking.

  Abby now turned, and pushed Robin ahead of her towards the stairs. That had been the day when she had realized that her da wasn’t quite . . . right. In the head. And from that time she had understood why her mam put up with the way he was.

  At the foot of the stairs she looked back towards the kitchen door which was now shut. And she’d felt sorry for her da that day, she had, and she still did, except for when he went for her mam. Her mam was the best mam in the whole wide world and she was so kind and good, but sometimes, when she and Robin were in bed, she could hear her da going on at her mam downstairs for what seemed like hours. And once, when her mam was doing the weekly wash in the wash house in the yard with her sleeves rolled up, she’d seen big bruises on her arms. Her mam had quickly covered them up and said she’d had one of the boxes of vegetables at the shop fall on her.

  Abby’s full-lipped mouth tightened. But she didn’t believe it was a box that had done that to her mam. Same as she didn’t think her mam had walked into a door and given herself a black eye the very day after Father McKenzie had called by one evening to see her da. The priest had let slip that her mam had confided she thought her da needed help but that the doctor wouldn’t have any of it, and her da had all but ordered Father McKenzie out of the house.

  Abby slowly followed her brother upstairs. She had been sitting on the bottom of the stairs listening that evening, and after the priest had gone her da had ranted and raved and she had heard scuffling and sounds from inside the kitchen, and then had followed a silence broken by her da’s sobs and her mother’s voice, soft and soothing.

  Her stomach churning, Abby followed Robin into the bedroom they shared in the two-up, two-down terrace. Her brother had already snuggled under the heaped covers on his bed on the opposite side of the room, and when a small voice came, saying, ‘Will you tuck me in, Abby, like Mam does?’ she walked across and did as she was asked, kissing the top of his head as she murmured, ‘Go to sleep and in the morning when you wake up it’ll be Christmas Day and we’ll have our stockings.’

  ‘And Christmas dinner. Mam said she was going to try an’ get a duck or a turkey at the ma
rket on her way home.’

  ‘Only if they were cheap at the end of the day, though,’ Abby warned, ‘so don’t go getting your hopes up. It’ll be a nice dinner whatever Mam does, and we’ve the plum pudding after, don’t forget.’

  ‘With a sixpence inside.’ There was a note of awe in Robin’s voice. He had watched his mother make the pudding and add the silver coin, and had said a little prayer that he would be the lucky recipient of such wealth on Christmas Day.

  ‘Aye, with a sixpence for someone so mind you eat your bit carefully cos you don’t want to break a tooth on it or swallow it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind if I broke me tooth if it meant I got the sixpence.’

  Abby smiled to herself. ‘Go to sleep now,’ she said softly, ‘and tomorrow will come all the quicker.’

  It was another ten minutes or so before Robin’s steady regular breathing told her he’d dropped off, and when she was sure he was asleep, Abby sat up in her own bed which was underneath the window and then knelt and opened the curtains.

  Outside was a white, cold world. It had snowed on and off since the beginning of December with the temperature rarely rising above freezing even in the day, and the snow was packed hard on the ground. The room she shared with her brother was at the back of the house and overlooked the stone-flagged yard holding their small wash house and the brick-built privy, with the back lane beyond. She breathed on the window and then scraped away at the ice which had formed on the inside of the glass in order to make a little patch where she could see out.

  There was a snowflake or two blowing in the wind, and it reminded her of the lullaby her mam had sung to her and then to Robin when they were babies. Even now if they were poorly her mam would sit and sing them to sleep while she stroked their brow. Softly, she began to hum to herself and then to sing the words that always made her feel loved and safe:

  ‘There’s snowflakes in the wind, my bonny babby,

  Snowflakes in the wind, my little lamb,

  But don’t you fret, don’t you cry,

  The sun will come out by and by,

  And till then I’ll keep you warm, my bonny babby.’

  The stark chill of the room caused her to shiver after a while and she burrowed back under the blankets, glad of the thick eiderdowns her mam had bought for the two beds at the beginning of the winter. Her mam was so good, Abby thought again; she never bought anything for herself, and she never complained about the long hours she worked at the shop even although the constant being on her feet had made her varicose veins so bad.

  She was still thinking of her mother when she drifted off to sleep after saying her prayers, the gist of them being that God would make her father better so that he could get a job and her mother could stay at home like she’d done when she and Robin were younger. She could remember that time, remember playing out in the back lane with the other bairns secure in the knowledge that her mam was at home and everything was right with the world.

  She had been happy then, Abby thought drowsily, and her mam had been happy too, even if some weeks they had all had to sit on the stairs when the rent man had called and pretend they weren’t in. She would keep awake until her mam was back so that she could tell her she loved her, she decided, and then promptly fell fast asleep.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Ee, lass, I’m sorry I’ve kept you so late and on Christmas Eve an’ all, but it seems like everyone’s left their shopping till the last minute this year. We’ve been rushed off our feet, haven’t we?’

  ‘We have, Mr Foster.’ Molly Kirby smiled at the shopkeeper, and not for the first time she reflected that she could have worked for a lot worse than William Foster. He was a nice man and a fair and kind employer, and generous too, always slipping her the ends of the bacon or ham to take home for the bairns along with a wedge of cheese or a couple of stale loaves. Not that she could admit to Edgar that Mr Foster had given her the extras; she always made out she had paid for them. Edgar’s jealousy didn’t take much to fan into a red-hot flame.

  William Foster looked fondly at the young woman he liked and respected. Gossip had it that her husband was something of a ne’er-do-well, and that he’d returned from war as whole as the day he had left Sunderland but that he sat on his backside all day and did nowt. Of course you couldn’t altogether trust the old wives’ tittle-tattle, and what they didn’t know they’d make up, but he’d seen Edgar Kirby once and the man looked all right to him – no missing limbs, no scars, no signs of the gas poisoning that some poor devils had to cope with. But Molly wouldn’t hear a word against him, bless her, and perhaps that was as it should be.

  Reaching behind the counter, he brought out a bag of groceries, saying, ‘These are some extra bits for the bairns, lass. There’s some nuts and fruit and half a ham, and a box of crystallized jellies. All the bairns like them, don’t they. And this’ – he drew an envelope out of his white overall – ‘is for you, lass, a Christmas box from me an’ the wife. Buy yourself something nice, eh? You deserve it.’

  Molly couldn’t say anything for a moment for the lump in her throat; it wasn’t just the gifts that had her fighting back tears but the way Mr Foster had spoken, so kindly and gently as if he understood how bad things were at home.

  But not all the time, she corrected quickly in her mind. Sometimes Edgar reached out to her, saying that he needed her, that he didn’t know what he would do without her and that he didn’t know why she stayed with a mental case like him. But he wasn’t mental, he just needed help, help the doctor refused to acknowledge was necessary despite her pleading with him on more than one occasion when she had gone to his surgery without Edgar knowing. Not that she would go again after the last time.

  ‘Your husband ought to be thankful that he survived what so many did not,’ Dr Graham had said coldly, when she had told him yet again about the screaming nightmares Edgar suffered most nights, the terror of loud noises, the inability to think or talk clearly at times and the blackness that enveloped him like a dark suffocating blanket. ‘I’m sorry to be blunt, Mrs Kirby, but he needs to pull himself together and act like a man. We could all wallow in depression and melancholy at times but we choose not to. It’s an act of self-will. He has a home, wife, children – he’s a lucky man.’

  Molly had stared at the doctor and but for the fact that she knew he had lost his three sons at the beginning of the war in the bloodbath that had been Mons, she would have shouted that this wasn’t about self-will or choice, it was about being terribly, desperately ill. But it was useless. As far as Dr Graham was concerned his sons were dead and Edgar was alive so Edgar was the lucky one. And it wasn’t just the good doctor who felt this way; so many of her neighbours had lost loved ones, and she had met with closed faces and tight lips when she had tried to explain why Edgar hadn’t found work and why he rarely left the house. Mrs Shawe, from three doors up, had even gone so far as to take her aside one day when they had met in the back lane and tell her that everyone thought it was a crying shame that she’d been forced to go out to work to keep a roof over their heads. ‘Your man needs a good kick up the backside, lass,’ Mrs Shawe had said with a self-righteous sniff. ‘There’s lads like my Kenneth, shipped home minus his legs and in pain every minute of the day but not a murmur of complaint or feeling sorry for himself, and there’s your man as whole as the day he was born and content to sit on his backside and do nowt. I pity you, lass, I do straight.’

  She had told Mrs Shawe what she could do with her pity, Molly remembered now, and they hadn’t spoken from that day to this, but strangely, rather than discouraging her, the woman’s attitude had made her all the more determined they would battle through this harrowing time and Edgar would get better.

  ‘All right, lass?’

  Molly came out of her reverie to find Mr Foster staring at her in concern. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry, it’s just that you are so kind and . . .’ She couldn’t go on, the tears spilling from her eyes.

  ‘Don’t take on, lass. You’re tired, that’s al
l.’ Mr Foster patted her arm, somewhat embarrassed. ‘Now you go home to them bairns of yours and have a grand Christmas. I’ll see you Monday morning, seven o’clock sharp.’

  After wiping her eyes and putting on her hat and coat, Molly said her goodbyes, thanking the shopkeeper once again and then his wife who had come down from the flat over the shop to wish her a merry Christmas.

  It was now nine o’clock and the last-minute shoppers had dwindled somewhat, probably because the snow was coming down thick and heavy and the wind was raw. Stopping in a doorway a short distance from the shop, Molly opened the envelope Mr Foster had pressed into her hand. Her wage packet of ten shillings was in there, along with another ten-shilling note. A week’s wages as a Christmas box, she thought gratefully. Oh, they were kind, the pair of them, and she had the bag of groceries too. It would make all the difference this Christmas. It was a constant battle to put food on the table and pay the rent, and she was always weeks behind with the latter no matter how she penny-pinched. What she would do without the extra bits that Mr Foster regularly slipped her way she didn’t know. It was a life saver.

  She breathed deeply of the icy air, a smile touching her lips. She could get a fine bird for tomorrow’s dinner now, and a small toy each for the bairns to add to the orange and sweets and penny whistles she’d already put by for their stockings. And some tobacco for Edgar’s pipe. Two ounces. No, three.

  Molly set off for the old market in the East End a short distance away, her steps lighter than they had been in months, even though within a minute or two her feet were soaked through and numb with cold from the holes in her boots. She had first been introduced to the old market one Saturday night a few days after she and Edgar had got married. Edgar was a Sunderland lad, born and bred, but she was from the Borders with its hills and wide-open spaces and the old market was like nothing she had experienced before, so full of people and noise and light she’d felt she had stepped into another world. There had been boxing going on, and a stall where you had to throw footballs through holes. Duke’s – at the top of the market – was a roundabout, like a fairground, and there were shops of all kinds and a stall where a giant of a man with snow-white hair had sold different kinds of sweets, next to people with barrels of nuts and raisins and hot chestnuts, and a stall that sold tripe. She had been amazed and had stood stock-still, trying to take everything in, until Edgar had laughed at the look on her face and picked her up in his arms, holding her tight as he had kissed her smack on the lips in front of everyone.