A Brighter Tomorrow

gross, though it took Ellie’s help to achieve that. Repetitive, long hours sewing the bases to the sides and the same with the lids, Ellie pasting the white glazed paper to the finished article, stopping only for a midday meal and supper, Mum often working on into the night if she was behind with the work; and sometimes her fingers would be red raw from constant stitching. From what she earned she had to buy the paste, needles and thread herself, but she’d always try to put a little aside from what she earned, hidden away in case Dad found it. He’d never shown any appreciation of her hard work, and now his only thanks had been to up and leave her.
The real truth was that he liked not only his drink but his women too. Even at fifteen Ellie knew it. In his mid-forties, darkly handsome and always making sure of being well dressed while his family could go in rags for all he cared, on one occasion he’d brought home a fancy woman, taunting Mum and calling her an ugly, tiresome old bitch. Mum had cried.
True she was rake-thin, life’s ravages plain on her face, but a framed, sepia photo of her showed her to have been extremely pretty when young, as Ellie was now, and Dora too. It was probably why Dad, with an eye for a pretty woman, had married her, but he’d never made her married life happy.
She should have left him, but where would she have gone? Despite it being the turn of the century, with people talking about it being a new world, there was nowhere for a married woman except at her husband’s side, whether he was a good one or a thoroughly bad one; and James Jay, to Ellie’s mind, was a thoroughly bad one with no scruples whatsoever where drink and women were concerned.
A couple of months ago he’d even turned his attention on her, his own daughter, reaching out to touch her young breast and remarking that she was growing into a beautiful girl. ‘Like yer muvver was but she ain’t no more. Always ill, no comfort to a man’s needs.’
At first she hadn’t understood, but as his hands began to grow bolder over the weeks, she soon had, dreading him coming near her and wondering how long before Dora took his eye.
Not long ago, her older brother Charlie had come home unexpectedly, catching his father with his hand up his older daughter’s skirt as he sat next to her on the sofa, thinking himself safe, with her mother out shopping, Dora at school and she too scared to stop him lest he hit her. He was good at hitting people. He had belted Mum before now. Dora had felt the weight of his hand many a time. So had Ellie. Only Charlie was never attacked, being nineteen, taller and quite beefy.
Had he not walked in then, with Dad fondling her, before taking her upstairs, which he’d done on two former occasions – that first time slapping her face for trying to resist when she’d cried with shock and pain – she’d have been taken upstairs yet again.
Charlie had let out an enormous yell of horrified fury and sprung at him, dragging him up by his shirt front. There had been bouts of fighting in this house before, with furniture knocked around, even broken, but this time his fist had caught his father full in the face, sending him flat on his back, blood pouring from his nose. Charlie had stood back saying he’d had enough of this bloody family. He was leaving. He’d not been seen since.
Now her father had deserted them. Ellie couldn’t blame her brother. Mum hadn’t been ill then; but her father had left a desperately sick woman. For that she hated him with all her heart and soul, and as she sat in the room downstairs with Dora waiting for the doctor to finish his examination upstairs, she vowed that one day she would seek out her father and find a way of avenging his desertion of her mum.
The doctor was making his way down the steep, narrow stairs, the bare treads creaking under his rotund weight.
‘Ah, there you are, my dears,’ he announced as he came into the room. ‘Your mother needs to be washed and decently laid out. I’ll arrange for a woman to attend to it straight away. She lives nearby, so you’ll not be too long on your own.’
Dora said nothing but merely sat staring bleakly into the low fire.
He turned to Ellie. ‘Would you boil a kettle of water while you are waiting, young lady?’
As she nodded dismally, he came to lay a hand on her thin shoulder. Cringing slightly, she looked sharply up at him, but the eyes half-hidden by podgy cheeks held sympathy, not lust.
As he surveyed this slip of a girl in her faded dress and pinny, Doctor Lowe felt only pity as he surveyed the wan but pretty face framed by its mass of uncombed, dark-auburn hair. In the sickly light of the room’s single gas lamp the eyes glistened clear and green with unshed tears. No doubt tears would eventually come as the enormity of her and her sister’s plight finally took hold.
‘Good girl,’ he said quietly, moving his hand away, suddenly and inexplicably embarrassed by the way she had shrunk ever so slightly from his touch. ‘If I can be of any help…’
He broke off as she shot him a strange look and gave a small, self-conscious cough. ‘Perhaps you will kindly show me out, child.’
The door was closed on him immediately he stepped into the street. He turned and stared for a moment at the now closed door, then up and down the street, narrow as an alley.
Gales Gardens – what a name to give a place like this.
Gales Alley would have been more appropriate, so why such a grand name for such a miserable street? A leftover from brighter times, maybe,