A Family Affair. Nancy Carson

know, but change her life it would; irredeemably. Maybe it would change it for the better – there was plenty of room for improvement – but maybe it would not. Time alone would tell. And that time would not be long coming, for the change was to commence one week from tomorrow. Preparation, however, was about to start right now. And with a vengeance.

      ‘Get your hat and coat on, our Clover,’ Mary Ann, her dour mother instructed. ‘I’m taking you to the dressmaker’s. Zillah has promised to look after the taproom till Job comes on.’

      ‘I’d better change into something clean, Mother, and wash my face and hands. I’ve just got in from work. I’m filthy dirty.’

      ‘Well make sure your underwear’s decent and all. I don’t want folk talking about me behind me back, saying as how me only daughter’s riffy.’

      ‘You’d be riffy as well if you had to work in a foundry making cores,’ Clover complained as she headed for the stairs. ‘Why can’t I have a nice clean job in a nice posh shop?’

      ‘Because the pay’s better in a foundry,’ Mary Ann called after her. ‘As you know well enough.’

      In her spartan bedroom, Clover unfastened her home-made working frock and underslip, took off her headscarf and unpinned her dark hair. She placed a sheet of newspaper over the podged rug at the foot of her brass bed and vigorously brushed her hair over it to dislodge any bits of sand that sometimes penetrated to her scalp. Tiny grains of black sand rippled gently onto the newspaper, which she screwed into a ball to throw away in the miskin outside. She washed her face, her ears and neck, and then her feet in cold water which she poured from her ewer into the bowl that adorned the wash stand. Dried, and feeling immensely more presentable, she rummaged through her wardrobe for a clean dress, and in the drawers of her dressing table for a decent underslip, clean drawers and clean stockings. She loathed dirt, especially foundry dirt, and it was such luxury to change into clean clothes. When she was finished, wearing dainty shoes and all, she returned to the parlour.

      ‘I’m ready.’

      ‘I’ll just tell Zillah we’m off then. Wait outside for me, our Clover.’

      Mary Ann, her hair tied back severely with a black ribbon, was wearing the long black coat she’d owned ever since Toby, Clover’s father, had died in 1892 – fifteen years ago. It was profoundly unfashionable, but fashion was a luxury they could not afford. The coat, however, was not the only Victorian thing about Mary Ann. The stern, unsmiling, tight-lipped demeanour prevailed, as did the total rejection of anything that was not orthodox or had not been entirely sanctioned by the Good Book. For Mary Ann was also a devout Christian. However, as a licensed victualler, her loyalties were often divided, especially when the intolerant aims and ideals of the Band of Hope were thrust in her equally intolerant face, as they so often were.

      Still reeling with consternation from the news her mother had imparted, Clover walked outside into George Street and stood with her back to the Jolly Collier, the public house her mother owned and ran. It was a red-brick affair, dingy on the outside from the smuts of heavy industry and intensive coal mining. The roof was missing one or two slates and the window-frames were shedding their dull green paint in brittle, curling flakes. Inside, the curtains reeked of cigarette smoke and stale ash and even the wallpaper on the upstairs landing was yellowing with nicotine stains from the thick smoke that drifted upstairs from the taproom. The stale smell of beer was pervasive. But it was home.

      As Clover turned her face to the slanting sun to consider once again this monumental change that was facing them both, she heard the tap-tap of her mother’s footsteps on the quarry-tiled floor of the inside passage. She turned, ready to go. They walked briskly up George Street and turned the corner into Brown Street. Clover had a thousand questions she needed to ask her mother, but there was no time now. They arrived at the door of Bessie Roberts and entered her front parlour, which had been converted into a shop-cum-sewing room many years earlier. Inside was a stout woman with grey hair and spectacles.

      ‘Mrs Beckitt, how lovely to see you again,’ Bessie Roberts greeted obsequiously in her thin voice that was incongruous with her size. ‘How long’s it been?’

      ‘A year or two, Mrs Roberts, by anybody’s reckoning. Our Clover here wants a new frock. Suitable for a wedding.’

      Bessie looked Clover up and down with a well-practised look of admiration. ‘Oh, a wedding dress, eh?’ She smiled professionally. ‘Very nice. Oh, she’ll make a lovely bride and no mistake. I reckon I’ve got the very thing.’

      ‘It’s me that’s getting married, Mrs Roberts, not our Clover,’ Mary Ann pronounced self-righteously. ‘And I know what I’m gunna be wearing. Like I said, it’s me daughter as wants the frock.’

      ‘Forgive me, forgive me, Mrs Beckitt. I naturally thought…Well, fancy…that’s nice as you’m getting wed again. Let me congratulate you. Shall you be staying on at the Jolly Collier?’

      ‘Oh, yes, we shan’t be going nowhere. So what have you got in the way of material, Mrs Roberts? Something blue or green, I fancy.’

      ‘Oh, blue to match your daughter’s eyes,’ Bessie Roberts affirmed. ‘I reckon I’ve got the very thing.’ She hunted beneath her counter and flopped a roll of azure-blue satin material on top. ‘This is beautiful stuff, Mrs Beckitt. Just feel…And the colour would contrast beautifully with her lovely dark hair…Don’t you think?’

      ‘Have you got e’er a pattern what I can look at? The fashion seems more for fitted bodices and skirts these days from what I can see of it.’

      ‘I’ve got the very thing, Mrs Beckitt.’ She hunted again in a cardboard box. ‘When is the happy day, Mrs Beckitt?’

      ‘A week on Saturday.’

      ‘Good Lord! So soon?’

      ‘Yes, we’ll all have to get our skates on, I’m a-thinking. I take it as read that you can accommodate we, Mrs Roberts?’

      ‘It’ll be a bit of a rush but, yes. Ah…Here we are…’

      Mrs Roberts placed the printed sketch of the dress on top of the roll of material.

      ‘I like it,’ Clover said, taking the first available opportunity to get a word in. ‘I think it’s perfect.’ She looked at Mary Ann for consent. Mary Ann nodded and, without further ado, the decision was made.

      ‘I’d better take some measurements, young Clover. Would you like to slip into the back room with me and take your dress off? I like to take an accurate measurement.’

      The three women trooped into the tiny back room. Clover took off her dress and stood in her clean underwear while Bessie Roberts produced her measuring-tape from her apron pocket.

      ‘Such a lovely figure you’ve got, Clover,’ Bessie commented. ‘Doesn’t she, Mrs Beckitt? It takes me back to when I was as slender…Just lift your arms a little bit, please…That’s it. Now your waist…I see you don’t wear a corset, Clover.’

      Clover thought she detected disapproval in Bessie’s tone. ‘I don’t need to, Mrs Roberts.’

      ‘It’s one thing we can never agree on, Mrs Roberts,’ Mary Ann complained. ‘I’m a firm believer that all women should wear a corset.’

      Clover smiled secretly as she alone caught the unintended humour in her mother’s words.

      ‘Oh, as you say, Mrs Beckitt, but your daughter’s very trim.’ She gently prodded Clover’s belly. ‘Just look…I wish my belly was as flat…Can you hold the end of the tape for me, Clover?…At your waist…while I get the length?…That’s lovely.’

      It was half an hour later when they left. Mary Ann had paid a deposit on the dress which would be ready on Good Friday, provided Clover could come for a fitting about the same time next Wednesday.

      When they returned to the Jolly Collier Mary Ann placed two plated dinners in the oven to be reheated. The meal had been cooked earlier by Zillah Bache.

      ‘Are