A Daughter's Choice Read online

  ‘They were all bloodied and dirty from the trenches,’ she explained.

  One of those men was my father. Horace Holden was only fifteen when he joined up in the Sherwood Foresters Regiment during the First World War, and just sixteen when he was wounded in France and taken as a prisoner to Germany.

  When he returned home to Blackburn, skin and bone from being a prisoner of war, he and my mother met at the railway station and started courting. She soon fell pregnant and in 1920 they were forced by both sets of parents to marry. He was nineteen and Mother was seventeen. He took a job in a cotton factory – it was a terrible place to work but he had no choice as he now had a wife to keep and my brother Bobby was on the way. Fortunately, two or three years later, his father was able to give him a better job, working in the Tanners’ Arms. By the time I came along, five years after Bobby, we lived in at the Tanners’ most of the time. I suppose it was easier that way.

  I didn’t usually go into the pub part of the Tanners’ in the evening when it was very busy, but I often walked through at quieter moments in the morning or afternoon.

  There were two or three regular drinkers I came to recognize, who used to smile or wave if they saw me. One of these was a lovely man called David Furness. Mother told me he had a large house overlooking the river Ribble but he spent most of his days at the Tanners’. He always had a skiver bag with him – a small bag, made of the finest leather. He laid it on the table, next to his pint, while he talked with his mates. Or sometimes he sat on his own.

  One day, when he sat alone, I asked him what was in his bag.

  ‘Why don’t you look and see?’ he grinned and pulled a chair round for me to sit on.

  I clambered up and knelt on the chair, so that I could reach his bag. He opened the tab for me and I looked inside.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Empty it out and see,’ he suggested.

  So I gently poured the contents out onto the tabletop. ‘Oooh,’ I exclaimed as I saw the gold coins glinting in the sunlight from the window. ‘Is it money?’

  ‘Yes, in a way,’ he agreed. ‘But it’s old money.’

  I pulled the coins across the table so that I could see them better.

  ‘They’re gold sovereigns,’ he said.

  I turned one over to see both sides. Pointing at the head engraved on its surface, I asked him, ‘Is this you?’

  He laughed kindly. ‘No, it’s the king. He’s better-looking than me.’

  Whenever I saw him in the pub after that, he always let me play with his sovereigns. I would pile them up carefully to make a tower, or place them side by side in a row, making a pattern with them on the table. My mother even gave me some paper and a crayon so that I could make rubbings of them to keep in my room.

  Like most small children, as I approached school age my life was exciting and carefree. I had no idea that frictions between my mother’s staunchly Protestant family and my father’s equally devout Roman Catholic family had existed even before they got married. In those days, Catholics were not allowed to enter a Protestant church or marry a non-Catholic, so my parents had to go to a registry office. Both sets of grandparents were very wary and critical of each other’s religion. But that wasn’t all. The animosity between them was much more to do with the circumstances of my parents’ marriage, as my mother had fallen pregnant so young and out of wedlock.

  As a young girl I was ignorant of these troubles so their sometimes strange interactions with each other just made me laugh. Grandma Holden used to peg a large sheet on the washing line at the Tanners’. I thought it was so the two sets of grandparents couldn’t see each other across the fields. I found this funny, especially when Grandad Harrison got out his telescope while I was at their newly built bungalow in Salesbury and looked through it in the garden to annoy them at the Tanners’. Later my mother told me that the real reason for the sheet was to signal when we left the Tanners’ to walk over to my Harrison grandparents’ bungalow, so that they knew we were on the way. But I liked my version of the story better! Grandma and Grandpa Holden were older, stricter and mostly ignored me but Grandma and Grandad Harrison always welcomed me into their home and loved to watch me playing in their garden. I knew who I preferred.

  There were growing tensions, too, of a different kind, between my mother and father. After my mother’s frustrated reaction on the day my father got drunk and came home without me, things never really felt the same. Though they did try to shelter me from all that most of the time. I know now that there must have been a lot of pressures on their marriage, having been made to wed so young, when they had hardly had time to form a true relationship. I never witnessed any arguments between them but sometimes heard raised voices when I was tucked up in bed at night. One such night, in our Goldhey Street house, there was a knock on the door and I heard my cousin Billy’s voice.

  ‘I was passing a pub just as Uncle Horace came out,’ he explained to my mother. ‘He looked as if he’d drunk too much, so I thought I’d better bring him home, or there’d be no knowing what he’d ’a done next.’

  I heard my mother thanking Billy in a tired voice as my father stumbled into the house and shouted gibberish back at him. That wasn’t the last time Billy brought him home.

  2

  Family Frictions

  1930

  As my fourth birthday came and went, Father’s mood and his drinking didn’t seem to be getting any better. One morning, we were all sitting round the table in our Goldhey Street house – Father, Mother, Bobby and me, eating our breakfast. I can’t remember who was talking, but suddenly Father made a rude noise. It made me burst into a fit of giggles. Mother gulped as Father’s face turned red with anger.

  I suppose I should have seen the signs and stopped there, but I was too young to pre-empt the consequences.

  ‘You trumped,’ I said in my innocence.

  This enraged him even further. He shoved back his chair, scraping the quarry-tiled floor, thumped his fist on the old wooden table and stood up, towering over us. We all fell silent, unsure what he would do next.

  ‘Don’t you dare use rude words against me!’ he shouted, pointing his finger at me, his eyes bulging with anger. He grabbed his belt, undid the buckle and pulled it off, winding part of it round his hand. As he took a step towards me I heard Mother cry out.

  ‘You can’t hit little girls!’ She looked alarmed and upset. I’d never seen her show this kind of emotion before. Suddenly I was afraid.

  ‘Right,’ barked Father, turning to my nine-year-old brother, Bobby. ‘I’ll punish you instead.’ Father took hold of his ear and propelled him outside into the yard, where he thrashed him with several lashes of his belt, till his anger ran out.

  I cried and cried, but Mother held me back, gently but firmly. Finally Father let Bobby go, so he stumbled back inside and, with his hand on his sore back, he gave me a wink.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, trying to reassure me. From that moment, I feared my father’s unpredictability, especially his anger, and avoided him whenever I could. It took a long time for me to get over what had happened that day, but Bobby and I bonded more closely than ever as a result.

  My father’s drinking pals started coming to the Tanners’ every weekend. He didn’t believe in taking money from them . . . and he had a lot of ‘friends’, so it was free drinks all round. I used to stay away from the bar area when it was busy, so I never got to know any of them personally. I could often hear how loud and rowdy they were, though.

  Grandpa and Grandma Holden, landlords of the pub, started to worry about the growing number of ‘friends’ arriving every week, so thought up a solution to avoid losing so much drinks money. They arranged for us to go away at weekends, when the weather wasn’t too cold. We used to take the train either to Southport, Blackpool or Morecambe, where we stayed in boarding houses. To keep the cost down, we used to take some food with us and the landlady would cook it for our tea.

  I always liked those family weekends by
the sea – Mother, Father, Bobby and me. Mother, Bobby and I played on the beaches, visited the piers, watched Punch and Judy shows and went for walks. Father would sometimes tag along but mostly went off in search of the pubs.

  We used to take the train back on Sunday evenings, sometimes after dark. One moonless night, on our way back from Blackpool, Father had had quite a bit to drink. It was a long walk back to the Tanners’ from Langho Station, along York Lane, which was unlit. About halfway along, Father suddenly tripped over a cow lying in the middle of the road. He said a funny word which I’d never heard before. Wanting to show off that I’d learned this new phrase I repeated it again and again as I skipped along. Suddenly, his temper flared and he motioned for me to come and stand in front of him. ‘Don’t you dare use a word like that!’ he scolded. Surprised and hurt, I kept walking at a distance from him. Mother came and took my hand gently and I knew to keep quiet the rest of the way home.

  I enjoyed our trips, but I was always glad to get back to the Tanners’ on a Sunday evening. Even I could tell that things seemed to be changing, though. Instead of going to the pub, my father started playing cards for money with his friends at the kitchen table in our Goldhey Street house. Mother was ‘not pleased’, as she told me later, and I tried to keep out of their way as much as possible. So, if it was fine weather, I would go and play out on the street with the other children while Bobby kept a close eye on me. If Father had an evening off from the pub, I would usually be in bed asleep by half past six when his ‘friends’ came, though I often woke to hear male voices talking or laughing. Mother also had to stay out of their way, so she went into the front room, furthest away from the kitchen, and did some sewing or knitting. She seemed rather subdued around my father and his ‘friends’, but was always careful to hide her true feelings when I was in the room. I’m sure she must have shed tears when she was on her own. She certainly had a lot to cry about.

  As tensions grew at home, my big brother, Bobby, used to go and help out at Veevers Farm over the road from the Tanners’ after school and in the holidays, to avoid my father. He helped the farmer and his wife all through the year in their big creameries, stirring the vats to separate the cream, then the curds from the whey to make cheese. Through the winter he helped to feed the cattle in the barns and in the summer he collected the eggs laid by their free-range hens and joined the vegetable and fruit pickers. He loved it at the farm and spent all his time there, which is why I didn’t see him much during the day. Every evening, though, without fail, he told me a bedtime story in the room we shared or sang me to sleep.

  Bobby’s favourite time, and mine too, was haymaking. That summer, he asked me if I would like to come with him to help.

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes please.’ I idolized Bobby, so I felt proud that he wanted to show me the things he did at his favourite place. He took me across the road from the pub and I said hello to the friendly farmer and his wife, who always waved at me when they saw me in the lane. Their children were grown-up, so they seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

  As they did at this time every year, the merry haymakers had come over from Ireland to work at the farm. I loved their laughter, their lilting accents and the Irish songs they sang as they worked. I remember giggling one lunchtime as I watched them eating slithery white tripe with their fingers. After lunch one of them lifted me right up to the top of the hay wagon for a ride, trundling along on the uneven ground with the prickly hay scratching the backs of my legs – I can almost feel it now. But I laughed and laughed at their antics, which I’m sure they put on especially for me. They let me join in their songs too, like the last bit of the chorus to ‘Molly Malone’ – I used to love singing ‘Alive, alive oh!’ That made them all laugh. Those were wonderful, fun-filled, carefree days – some of the best of my childhood.

  Just after I turned five, my mother’s brother, Uncle George, suddenly took me to stay in Blackpool with his wife’s family, who lived there. Maybe it was to give Mother a break. He was the most successful of Grandma and Grandad Harrison’s three children, as he helped Grandad to run the building business and was also an alderman in Blackburn Town Council. His wife Evelyn was often poorly, but she seemed better than usual on this holiday, perhaps because we were staying with her parents in the seaside air.

  My mother had given me some spending money for the first time ever, so, on my first day there, I decided to buy some small presents to take home for everyone. There was a shop across the road from their house, so I went there to choose what to buy, paid and carefully took everything back to my room, where I put them in my own little case. It’s amazing how clear that time is to me now. I can recall every detail – the colour of my leather suitcase, a patch where it had been mended underneath and a scuffed corner; the flowery cotton dress I was wearing, made by my mother.

  Auntie Evelyn’s sister Norma also came to stay at her parents’ house for that week. She was very pretty, I remember, and her boyfriend Connor was Irish. The weather was so sunny on that second day that we all went to the Pleasure Beach to make the most of it. We had sandwiches and ice cream for lunch and Uncle George bought me some Blackpool rock. But later that day, when we returned from the beach, the happy atmosphere of the morning turned sour. My aunt and uncle told me to go and sit in my room and I knew something was wrong. I felt nobody wanted me there any more.

  What I didn’t know then was that while Uncle George took me for a stroll to the nearby park with swings, Norma and Connor had told her parents and Auntie Evelyn that she was pregnant. Well, that was a terrible shock for them. It was quickly agreed that, like it or not, Norma and Connor would ‘have to’ get married. Auntie Evelyn must have told Uncle George when we got back, as he went quiet, no doubt recalling the exact same situation between my parents . . . and the repercussions.

  Sensing the tense atmosphere around the house, I got out my case from under the bed and packed my few possessions in it. Then I tiptoed down the stairs and out of the back door without anyone hearing me. My plan was to walk home to Blackburn. I didn’t know how far it was or how long it would take, but I was quite confident I would find the way.

  Of course, it wasn’t long before someone noticed I was missing, and Uncle George came after me. He soon spotted me, a small child carrying a case and striding along on my own. He took me back to the house, but it was no longer a happy stay in Blackpool. I couldn’t wait to get home.

  A few months later, Norma and Connor’s baby boy was born. Sadly, Norma died in childbirth. The family were devastated, particularly Auntie Evelyn and Uncle George. Regardless of their connection to the new baby, they snubbed Connor because of the stigma of unmarried pregnancy and his Catholic religion. Norma’s parents really felt it was Connor’s fault their daughter had died, so he was left to bring up his son alone. We never saw the new baby boy.

  While Bobby escaped to Veevers Farm, I used to love going to my maternal grandparents’ house in the countryside at Salesbury, about an hour’s walk from the Tanners’. I went to see them at every possible opportunity. They were much easier to be with than my father’s parents. I loved their house, a spacious bungalow built by Grandad’s workmen, all beautifully decorated and furnished. The rural area that surrounded it was perfect for long walks through the woods and I would bake biscuits or play card games with Grandma when it was wet. I loved them. I thought the world of them. But I didn’t love Grandad’s silence punishment.

  I don’t know what I’d done to deserve it, but I do remember that, every Sunday afternoon, after tea, I had to sit on the chair in front of the clock on the mantelpiece and not move or speak for a whole hour. I wonder now whether perhaps they just wanted a rest. I tried to sit still and watch the minute hand as it hardly moved at all. I began to count the seconds in my head, up to sixty each time, and then see if I was right – had the hand moved a minute? I was frightened I might cough or sneeze – would that count? And what if I had an itchy foot? It was a terrible trial for a small, energetic child like me. After a while
I stopped watching the clock and started making up stories in my head. When the hour was over, Grandad used to give me a shiny new penny. I wouldn’t do that to a child. But, after that, whenever I couldn’t get to sleep, I started counting seconds and minutes . . . and soon nodded off.

  As I’ve said, this was not a family who openly showed affection. Neither side gave me hugs or kisses. The only time I can recall my mother being affectionate was when she cuddled me in her rocking chair when I was a toddler. I don’t remember it happening again. Regardless, Bobby always looked out for me and cheered me up if I hurt myself, and Mother was always making me clothes and taking me for walks, so I knew I was loved. They just chose to show it in different ways. With my father spending less and less time with us and my parents not being close, the idea of adults hugging or kissing each other never occurred to me. But one morning, while I was staying at Grandma and Grandad Harrison’s house, Grandma was cleaning out the fireplace. She was on her knees in front of the grate and Grandad was ready to go out. I came into the room and stopped still as I saw him bend down to kiss her. I thought that was marvellous, absolutely wonderful. I was awestruck. I have never forgotten that moment. It was the only time I ever saw anyone in my family kiss.

  Grandma and Grandad Harrison had three children: Mother, George and Elsie. We saw Uncle George every week and sometimes his wife Auntie Evelyn, when she was well enough. Mother’s sister, Auntie Elsie, never married and lived with Grandma and Grandad throughout my childhood, though I didn’t see much of her, except when she wanted me to help clean her shoes.

  My father’s parents were, coincidentally, born with the same surname, Holden, and came from Hurst Green, quite close to the river where my mother would take me and I would play with the otters. Father was the youngest of their four sons – Percy, John, Eddie and Horace, my father, but we only regularly saw Uncle Eddie, who lived and worked at the Tanners’. He was not the friendly sort and kept to himself because he was shy.