The Dressmaker’s Daughter. Nancy Carson
’em wonder. Come on. Let’s carry on with our walk. As long as we’re back before midnight so you can let the new year in for us …’
January saw Ben Kite and Lizzie Bishop meeting three or four times a week when he was not working the night shift. Even when the weather was too inclement to venture out Ben would make the uphill trek from Tividale to Kates Hill and spend the evening at Cromwell Street with Lizzie, content with a lingering, goodnight kiss at the back door before he returned home. To be alone they would take a stroll, either through Oakham’s quiet lanes, or into the town where they could gaze into shop windows and weave their dreams.
Eve took to Ben at once. She would have no qualms if things progressed to marriage; he was all she had hoped for in a son-in-law.
And Ben was eager to show off his lovely new sweetheart to his mother and his brothers. So one cold, crisp night, when snow was lying a couple of inches thick, he persuaded Lizzie to walk with him to Tividale to meet them. He had four brothers, but on this first visit she met only two, since the other two were married and lived elsewhere. Ben’s mother, Charlotte, pale, thin and withdrawn, had sought solace in Methodism. His father was the reason.
‘I can remember even when I was a babby, Lizzie, how my father used to come home blind drunk of a night,’ Ben told her as they sauntered hand-in-hand past the old brick works, towards Kates Hill. ‘He used to set about me and my brothers, and then our mother. Mother always had a black eye in those days. He served her barbarous. We hated the sight of him … Still do … If I thought I was going to turn out like him, I’d do away with myself. By the time he came back home of a Friday night, all his money had gone on drink and betting. Mother seldom had any money to feed us and we’d never got backsides in our trousers, nor soles on our shoes. If it hadn’t been for other Methodists my mother knew, and our Cedric and David bringing some money in, we’d have starved. I got no respect for him. No respect at all.’
‘It must be terrible to have no respect for your father.’ Lizzie’s breath hung like mist.
‘It is, I agree. But, as I see it, being a father don’t entitle you to respect. Respect’s something you have to earn – even your own father has to earn it. Mine never earned any respect from anybody – not even his workmates – least of all from us lads. He’s nothing but a pig, Lizzie.’
‘Thank goodness you’re nothing like him.’ She put her arms around his waist and squeezed him warmly. ‘If I ever see you getting like him, I’ll remind you what you said.’
‘There’s no fear of it, Lizzie.’
‘I think I know that already, Ben,’ she said softly, all her love in her eyes. ‘I think you’re too considerate to be like your father.’
‘Despite him, or because of him, I understand the difference between right and wrong – between good and bad. I can see what makes folk happy, and I can see how some folk can make others unhappy, as if there’s a sort of sadistic pleasure to be gleaned from it. It generally all stems from drink, you know, like it does with him. Not that I’m against drink, Lizzie – I like a drink myself.’
‘There’s no harm in having a drink. It’s when folks get proper drunk … all the time.’
‘What about your own father, Lizzie. Did he drink?’
‘Like a fish. He liked a drink more than anybody, but at least he never knocked our mother about … And he always turned his money up. Mind you, I’ve found out, since I’ve been older, that he was fond of women. Rumours maybe, I don’t know for sure. But even our Joe thinks he had one or two other women in his time. I loved him dearly though. He was always kind to me, and to the others, as far as I know.’
‘Does your mother know he had other women?’
‘She’s never said as much. Not to me at any rate. Either way, it never stopped her being a good wife.’
‘It’s amazing how tolerant some women can be.’
‘Daft, more like. I don’t think I’d be as tolerant, Ben. I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’d be a suffragette.’
They walked on in silence for a few moments, the snow underfoot crisp with frost.
‘What do you think of the suffragettes?’ Lizzie enquired. ‘D’you agree with what they’re doing?’
‘No, I don’t. But I agree with what they stand for – the right for women to vote and all that – there’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t agree with the way they’re going about it. The more outrageous the things they do, the more they alienate ordinary, decent folk.’
‘You’ll have to talk to May about Mrs Pankhurst, Ben. May thinks Mrs Pankhurst’s a saint.’
‘Mrs Pankhurst’s a bloody fool, Lizzie. Women would get the vote a lot sooner if she shut up. Women are denied the vote now out of defiance for the way she and her cronies carry on.’
‘Well, I think she’s a brave woman. May says the only reason women won’t get the vote yet is because the Liberals would lose too many votes to Labour. Campbell-Bannerman would be out of office.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t argue with that. It’s obvious as the Liberals would lose out. Labour supports the suffragettes, and most women would vote Labour. But it’d be Lord help us if that damn fool Keir Hardie ever got to be prime minister.’
Lizzie then had a précis of the life of Keir Hardie. The way Ben argued it she agreed with him that somebody less radical might be the best choice for Britain.
They reached the back door of 48 Cromwell Street, and Lizzie let her mother know she was home. They stood for five minutes at the top of the entry whispering to each other and giggling, punctuating their words with kisses. But the bitter cold precipitated Ben’s departure sooner than either would have preferred.
Lizzie was in love. Ben was never out of her thoughts, and seldom out of her conversation. It was like the time when she was infatuated with Stanley Dando; except that what she felt for Ben seemed many times stronger. Perhaps it was because her love was reciprocated. Perhaps it was because the memory of the heartache of that earlier unhappy time was fading. She did not have to cope with dejection, of wondering why this lad was avoiding her, for he was not; he would walk Great Britain to be with her. She had not told him yet that she loved him, but she suspected he knew. Anyway, it was up to him to tell her first. When they were together they were blissfully happy, joyful, easy with each other. Their affinity was strong, but not intense and, when they were apart, they relived over and over in their minds the moments they shared.
*
Jesse Clancey managed to catch sight of Lizzie one evening as she was returning from work. He’d walked to Brown Street to get his hair cut and buy a gallon of lamp oil, and as he came out of Totty Marsh’s shop carrying his can Lizzie was passing on the other side of the street. He called to her, and she turned round.
‘How are you, Lizzie?’
He crossed over to join her, and she replied with an open smile that she was well. She knew she must meet up with Jesse sooner or later, for she had not seen him since the fiasco of New Year’s Eve; but she’d been dreading the moment.
‘You look well, Lizzie. You always look a picture.’
She smiled and thanked him again.
‘You’re courting strong, I hear. Is it the same chap as was at Joe’s on New Year’s Eve?’
She nodded with a self-conscious smile as they turned the corner into Cromwell Street. They passed a woman and her daughter, poorly dressed, pushing a small handcart containing a few lumps of coal along the gutter. Jesse greeted them cheerily, then turned to Lizzie.
‘I expect you’ve heard about Sylvia and me, eh?’
She looked up at him. ‘No,