Bone Street

Front matter

BONE STREET

By William Mackinder

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

1

BONE STREET

CHAPTER ONE

BONE STREET

IN the past years, a Street Improvements Committee, and a Health Committee, have in their own way made history, and effected some small difference in Beckton.

The town has been straightened out a little, a few of the main streets broadened, and here and there the slums have been nibbled at.

Built and paved in the famous Yorkshire building stone, and black as a tar barrel from the continuous sootfall from the countless factory chimneys, the show parts of the town have a certain dignity and even elegance—like a young lady in black. Even Bone Street does not (to the Northern eye) offend so much in shabbiness and squalor as the brick-built slums of neighbouring towns.

Down Bone Street, gently sloping, you might walk years ago as to-day, and mark the doorsteps and window-sills glaring with yellow scouring stone, and catch the cheerful wink of the fire playing on a kitchen range, the housewife’s pride. Within some dwellings you would note the gaudy pot-vase of imitation flowers, or even an attempt at a conservatory of window plants. These are the front houses, costing sixpence a week more, and conferring a dignity and status on their occupiers. At every sixth house, a tunnel three feet wide goes through to what you would imagine to be the back doors, but you would be wrong. The street is built of back-to-back houses, and the tunnel opens into a court of these back houses, the exact counterpart of those in the front. The court is paved with stone flags, badly laid in the first place, and, sunken and warped by time, trip the unwary foot in the dark. Where constant wear does not cleanse them, the surface is greasy black, and the interstices are filled with ashes and grease. Down one side of the court is a row of privvy middens, common to all the houses back and front, and the space of about six feet from the doors of the back house to the middens is the playground for the children; so the court, the street, and even the air, seemed perpetually impregnated with filth, which with the hot stink from the woolcombing sheds, hung round the district like a plague.

On a doorstep in such a back court at ten o’clock one Saturday evening in August, many years ago, John Newcome Bradley, the child of the Beckton back streets, nine years and eleven months old, sat there waiting for his father, and as he waited he read Ivanhoe.

The book on his knees, and the rapt, eager huddle of his body over it, was a rare enough sight in Bone Street to attract notice, though to the casual observer the boy had little else to distinguish him from his mates. He might have been a little more ragged than they, though there was, perhaps, a gleam of intelligence and fineness in his eye. Certainly the glow of his hair gave him the title of “redhead” among his mates, by whom fancy shades such as auburn were disregarded.

Although the book absorbed him, Jack, with the divided mind of a child, had a subconscious thought for his father. It was Saturday night. He might come home drunk. If so, he would be morose, and Jack had best be off to bed the minute he heard him enter the passage. On the other hand, it was worth while to risk staying up till the last minute, for if he should only be tipsy he would perhaps talk to the lad. At such times there was companionship between the two, and Jack would hunt for words to fit the unformed thought in his mind and speak it with almost the confidence of a grown-up man. But it was a clipped pleasure: sleepiness would intervene, and nothing came of these intimate passages.

Except at week-ends, Jack saw little of his father, for he worked on the night turn, and Bradley spent his week-ends partly at the Crown and Anchor, and partly in gloomy lounging.

No one could imagine what the nights meant to this wee boy, or indeed the day for that matter, for usually his father finished work at six in the morning. Walking home, and breakfast, took him until seven-thirty, and as they occupied the same bed, this of course wakened up the boy, who would get up, wash, and prepare his own breakfast, perhaps read a little, and then get off to school for nine o’clock. At noon he would again get a meal ready, a piece of fried fish, an egg, or a pennyworth of corned or potted meat, another few hours at school, home at four-thirty, when he and his father would have their tea together, and the elder man would be off to commence work at five-fifteen. This left the lad to his own devices until time to go to bed. Of course he had his mates, but there were many long lonely hours for him before bedtime, and that tended to make him introspective, for loneliness is not good for grown-ups, much less a child. Fortunately, he had his books, for, young as he was, he had been introduced to the Free Libraries, where a veritable treasure trove was his for the taking. But night was really the worst, especially going to bed alone. He heard noises, saw strange indistinct figures on the wall; sometimes his dream would awaken him, and an indescribable loneliness would overcome him, but he never reasoned these things out, for of course he was too young. He just felt them.

Footsteps passed in the street, with the eerie quality of footsteps which echo on hard pavements as night approaches, tapped on, echoed loudly down the tunnel-way, and died in the street. Already the lamp in the court was lit, turning the day into night, and setting its clean yellow against a sky whose colour had turned into a nameless blue, when the familiar step came through the passage.

“Noan drunk,” said Jack, and then, “I’d happen better get him some tea,” and he darted into the dusky cavern behind.

It was the usual type of the “one-up and one-down” style (one room upstairs and one room downstairs). The floor like the court outside was in stone slabs, ill laid and ill fitting, and innocent of covering.

By the window stood a rickety sofa and about the room at haphazard a kitchen arm-chair, a small chair, and a rough wooden stool. A cheap alarm clock ticked on the shelf, and in the centre of all, a three-legged table, grey with grime. On this was spread a sheet of newspaper, bearing a knife and a plate or two, a can, two pint mugs, and part of a loaf.

Here was no house pride, there was no half-starved plant in the window or fancy pots on the mantelshelf. Squalor of the most abject wrote itself on every object. Over the mantelpiece, and the glass dimmed with dust, was a framed tinted enlargement of a photograph of a woman—Jack’s mother. Even through the stiffness of a bad portrait the eye of sincerity and trustfulness could be discerned.

Three years ago the room had been habitable, the doorstep glowed with yellow, and the kitchen range glinted with blacklead and brass, there had been curtains at the window, and coco-nut matting on the floor, but gradually these things had disappeared and were but a faint memory, faint as the memory of the face that looked down on him from above the mantelpiece. Since her death, his father, the house, and all, had gradually deteriorated, and Jack, though he saw the higher standards of his neighbours, and occasionally shamed for his own, still accepted his present standard.

Jack laid his book on the table, and took the can off the gas as his father entered. He was neither drunk nor tipsy, but had drunk enough to make him talkative.

“Been reading again?” he asked in his East Riding accent, differing in vowel and phrase from the speech of his neighbours. “Tha’s a lucky lad to be able to read—I wish I could, I’d happen drink less if I could read a bit. What’s t’book?”

“Ivanhoe,” replied the lad, intent on tea making, “and it’s grand.”

“What’s it aboot?” said his father.

“Oh, knights, and serfs, an’ swine-herd called Gurth. I’ve just started, and it’s extra. Mun I read you a bit?”

“Aye, read a bit, lad,” was the reply. “Thi mother would oft read to me a bit afore her eyes got bad. It wor a fair treat to hear her.”

With almost painful delight Jack realised that this was to be an intimate evening, and in good fellowship they sat down to their supper.

After supper, Jack brought forth his Library book, and the reading began, but he knew nothing of skipping dull passages, and the hard words which are usually taken as read by a small boy, who reading to himself devours a romance, now insisted on being tackled in detail. The flattery of his father’s interest kept him at it, but soon weariness and sleepiness were winning. His voice was getting uncertain when his father said:

“I’ll tell thi what, lad.”

“Aye,” said Jack with a revulsion of relief and comfort.

“That’s t’best bit I’ve heard for a long time. Sithee, if tha likes we’ll tak’ t’book first thing in t’morning and summat to eat wi’ us, and go and read it on t’moors, what says ta?”

The lad was quivering with interest.

“Aye,” he said.

“But happen we’d better wait till t’trams start running after dinner,” continued his father.

“No, first thing, dad, first thing. We can ride back.”

“Reight, let’s go to bed, and we’ll start first thing.”

And Jack went off to bed to the sound sleep of tired youth, his father to new visions. It was worth while talking to the lad like a pal, and give him a bit of a treat. Perhaps it would be worth while to give more than occasional confidence and treats. The lad knew the worst in him, yet without knowing it, loved the best in him.

And through the vague thoughts the vision of the other person who had seen the best of him flashed with sudden pain. Things had been better when Mary was alive: then there was someone to make an effort for.

“I wonder,” said Bradley, “can we pull up?” and with his hand on the tap to turn off the yellow gas jet, he looked up at the portrait, and a steady gleam came into his eyes. “We’ll try. Good night, lass.”

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CHAPTER TWO

THE AWAKENING

NEXT morning Jack awoke at eight o’clock. For two minutes he puzzled over the gaiety that lay close to his heart. Then the events of the previous night drifted back to him. The fact that the morning was sunny took on a new significance. A moment sufficed to fix the day’s promise in his mind, so he carefully crawled over his sleeping father, dropped noiselessly off the bed, gathered up his clogs and clothes and went downstairs.

He put the can on the gas for tea. This contrivance, before the day of gas mantles, was a simple one, and the usual way with working folks in the West Riding.

Filling the can with water, he climbed on a chair, then on to the table in the middle of the room, and hung the can on a hook suspended by a wire from the ceiling, a proceeding which would appear strange to the onlooker until he observed that the gas jet which lighted the room was directly underneath. This Jack lit, and then proceeded to dress himself, an affair of seconds.

His wash at the sink took longer, for it was a special wash. He explored the intricacies of his ears, he pulled off his shirt to wash his back and chest until the cold water trickled down his legs. He was even considering taking off his clogs and beginning at the other end, when Tzzt!—the can boiled over, and at the same moment noises from above showed that his father was getting out of bed.

Jack scrambled on to the table again which was now messed with sooty water, but that mattered little. The only real calamity in connection with this panboiling arrangement was when the can boiled over on to someone who unwarily sat underneath. The same method often served for frying bacon, except that you held the frying-pan over the flame, and that made your arm ache.

Jack dropped some tea into the can while the water was still seething, and at that moment his father came downstairs, his temper hovering between the benign and irritable. But the tea was ready and smelled good, the boy was clean and naked to the waist, and there is something about the leanness of a child’s body which clutches every human heart.

While his father went to wash at the sink, Jack finished preparing the breakfast. Bread and dripping doesn’t take much preparing, and last night’s pots served for morning’s breakfast, without an intervening dish-cloth. By nine o’clock they had finished their meal, and Jack was sent across to Granny Hinchcliffe’s little corner shop for a quarter of a pound of cheese. He returned in a few minutes with joy on his face and a parcel which certainly was not cheese.

“What’s ta gotten theer?” asked his father.

“Granny Hinchcliffe gave me two currant cakes,” was the lad’s reply.

“What’s she given thi ’em for?” was the further question.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I telled her we wor going on t’moors, and she said she wished she could come an’ all, an’ I wor to bring her some heather. I can, can’t I, father?”

“Aye, we’ll noan be short of heather,” said Bradley.

Jack, with the self-consciousness and reserve of the neglected child, hardly spoke a word as they passed along the sunny and almost deserted streets. His hand was in his father’s, he felt himself to be in touch, and held his breath for fear of breaking communion; but his heart lilted blithely to the marching rhythm. They went up the familiar streets until they came to Bramfitt’s Mill, where they turned off at the street opposite the mill, and continued along the main road until they had almost left the town, and Jack commenced to get his first real look at the country, for this time he had a guide who knew a little of the topography.

“Sithee, lad,” said his father, “yon’s Beacon Hill.”

And so he showed the lad the various landmarks as they passed them until they turned off the highroad to make their way to the moors. Here the first churchgoers passed them by, stiff rigged in top hats, rustling silks and black alpacas. They looked curiously at the man and boy, and Jack heard the word “Tramps,” which caused an acute consciousness of the gaping hole in his ill-fitting corduroy trousers to cast its first shadow on his day. He even tried to still the clatter of his clogs, but that feeling soon passed away, leaving only a conscious thankfulness that he was with his father.

They passed the church, and in a few minutes the beautiful wooded hill-side lay before them, and towering above it a great dome of another hill. To the left and behind the hill, lay the moors, and now strange odours assailed his nostrils. The pungent scents of meadowsweet and wild peppermint across from the marshy fields below, the nutty fragrance of heather in the distance, the perfect morning and the August smell of sun under the breaking foliage were a revelation. High overhead the larks trilled their continuous song, and a small stream splashing down its fern-hung rockery bore a mellow burden.

They stopped as if by mutual consent on the edge of these marvels, where a rocky path led up to the wooded hill, and for a full minute drank the air.

“Can we goa up theer, dad—does it lead to t’moors?” said Jack.

For a moment his father looked on him with a face so grave and wistful that for a moment the lad was afraid, and then replied:

“Aye, we’re going up theer, and I’ll tell thee what else, lad—we’re going to live again, just thee and me. Ah tell thee we’ll be born again. Tha little knaws what tha lost when thi mother died, but tha won’t lose thi father again. Aye,” and his face softened with a smiling tenderness, “we go up theer, are ta tired?” To which Jack replied by bounding forward up the slope.

A mile and a half and the moors spread out before them. The heather smell breathed strong in their nostrils. The sun had climbed the zenith, the air trembled in the heat, one lark, incredibly high, gave forth a silver thread of song, the moors burned noon-time incense to the Creator.

They flung themselves down upon that fragrant bed, staring at the sky until all things grew pale to the eye, then turning better to smell, Jack buried his nose in a bilberry patch and tuned his ear to the ceaseless summer music of a myriad of small insects.

“John Newcome Bradley,” said his father to himself, looking at the lad, and his thoughts wandered back to another John Newcome.

Nearly twelve years ago, Bradley, a farm labourer, had hired himself out to John Newcome, a Lincolnshire farmer, and had gone, as the custom was, to live at his farm. Newcome was soured and harsh. He had lost his wife a few years before, but he had a daughter, Mary Newcome, a blithe lass with cheeks like apples and hair of ruddy gold, with no sourness in her nature. She was an only and a lonely child. Bradley was neither big nor handsome, and had neither gold nor learning, but he lacked the servility that marked his caste in those days. They met on almost equal terms, and in the end, youth held out a hand to youth, and they were sweethearts before they knew it.

One day, Newcome taxed his daughter with being fond of the farm-hand, and bid her cease, but Mary, driven suddenly to assert her womanhood, replied with defiance. Bradley was dismissed on the spot, but he went only as far as Gainsborough, where he found a motherly woman who agreed to provide a lodging for Mary in her own house, and another for Bradley in the house of her brother, until the banns had been published and they were wed.

But soon their tiny store of money was almost exhausted, the hirings were distant, and there was no work to be got on the farms. They drifted to Leeds, from whence Mary sent an appealing letter to her father, but there was no reply. “She has made her bed, and must lie on it,” thought Newcome, sitting sternly in his low-roofed farm-house, steeling his heart against the vision of his daughter.

The couple finally reached Beckton, and found work in the woolcombing shed. Things were hard with them, but bearable. They could live. In time their baby came, and for a few brief years they had known an incredibly bare existence, but one which gleamed with happiness.

When there was any work, they both worked in the sheds, he on the night turn, she on the day, so night and morning they would meet in the street, one going to work, the other leaving, and give each other the door-key, while a neighbour took charge of the baby for a shilling or two a week.

Week-ends were their happiest time. On Saturday afternoons, when the mill work ceased, they cleaned up the house, he scrubbing the floor while she scrubbed the table. He washing the windows while she baked. They got in each other’s way on purpose, and abused each other with laughter. He would rise up from the black-leading with his hands the colour of the grate he had been operating upon, and offer to knead the bread for her, and Mary would retort with a threatening gesture of a clout or a rolling-pin while baby Jack, in his high chair, laughed and chuckled at the joke. Then she died.

“Aye, we mun pull up,” thought Bradley for a second time. He let the lad lie for awhile and then nudged him gently.

“Biting on time, lad,” he said, “aren’t ta hungry? Ah know ah am.”

“Aye, me an’ all,” said Jack.

And they laughed in each other’s faces.

So they took the beaten track to the left, and after a little walking came to a cottage with “Teas” painted in huge white letters on the gable end. Here, for twopence each, they got a mug of tea, and sitting at the small rustic table in the garden, they undid their parcel, ate their simple food, and then, after the meal, while Bradley sucked in comfort through his pipe, Jack explored the premises.

“D-a-ad,” yelled a small excited voice.

Bradley got to his feet and met the lad as he came running, but it was experience not tragedy pitched the small shrill voice.

“An apple-tree, dad. There’s real apples growing on it, and there’s a big pig and ten little pigs ower yonder.” And with a smile and a twinge, Bradley followed him to admire.

Presently the lad bethought himself of the bargain, and again they set forth to another part of the moors, and throwing themselves down on Nature’s glorious mattress, the reading began.

You who have read books at your pleasure ever since childhood, can you imagine the mind of an illiterate?

Mary, it is true, had been clerk to her husband, and as is the case in many working-class families, even to-day, she had written what letters they wrote, and occasionally read to him, perhaps from an evening paper. For a time they had taken in a weekly paper, and she had read to him the serial story, the details of which still clung in his mind. He had intelligence, and talk with his mates who could read gave him a general hazy idea of the events of the day, good enough for the easy standards of those times. In his brain, undoubtedly, a tiny secret library existed, a library of superstitions and folk-lore, native to the soil, a library of country-side culture. But this he had learned to hide from mortal sight; it was foreign to the townsman, and Bradley had learned that to be comfortable he must conform to pattern, and so his avid mind was in abeyance. What food for the mind he had was taken in with drink at the Crown and Anchor, and consisted of poor dull talk and poorer songs.

Ivanhoe bewildered, yet gladdened his heart. Its myth and glamour found a ravenous appreciation in the attendant spirit of his secret library. Yet it was bewildering.

“That’ll be old times, like,” he said once.

“Aye,” said the lad, eager to explain. “Happen a thousand years ago.” And then his honest little soul requiring accuracy he cast up sotto voce: “William the Conqueror, 1066; William the Second, 1087; Henry the First, 1100; Stephen, 1135; Richard the First, 1189”; and then followed a subtraction, “Nearly seven hunnerd years.”

“Afore my time, lad.”

Jack chuckled at the joke, and continued his reading, and so alternately reading and discussing, the hours slipped by, until Bradley, judging by the sun that it was after five o’clock, broke in:

“I’d like thi to go on a bit, lad, but we’ve no tea with us, what’s ta say if we set off home?”

And to Jack, gravely consulted, it never occurred to be troublesome. “We can come again, happen. Have we to go the same road back?”

“Aye, we’ll come ageean t’first fine Sunday. Noa, we’re noan forced ta goa t’same way back, we can goa t’low road. And doan’t forget thi heather.”

And so, after making a great bunch of ling, they took their homeward path, Jack trotting contentedly enough by his father. But when the low road was reached he began to flag. His clogs were rubbing the skin off his heels, but he limped along bravely to the point where the old horsecars started.

They got a short lift, and soon were in Bone Street, where he was bid to sit down while his father prepared tea.

Tea revived him, and renewed his zest for the glorious present. He caught his father’s affirmative eye, seized the bunch of heather, slipped out of the door, burst out of the passage with a whoop, and ran across the street to Granny Hinchcliffe’s.

Left alone, Bradley felt his resolution tested. Male company at the Crown and Anchor would be a change; on the other hand, such a day as he had spent would not fit in with the public-house company, and another thought struck him. Hitherto, Jack had been too young to examine his father critically, but soon he would do so, of that he felt sure. He wavered, and half made a move for his cap and coat, and in turning his eyes fell on the portrait of his wife. With a muttered groan he sat down, still looking at the picture of his mate. Why was she taken away, leaving him like this? “But there’s the lad,” said a voice within. Then perhaps his guardian angel decided that the trial had been long enough, for a knock came at the door, and a cheery voice hailed him. It was old Ezra Hinchcliffe, Granny’s husband.

“Can ta come across to ahr house a minute?” he asked, and before Bradley could fairly pronounce a sentence about his not being washed or dressed for calling, added hurriedly, “There’s thy Jack telling t’tale to t’missus abaht heather, apple-trees, an’ pigs, an’ ah doan’t knaw what. T’lad brought her some heather back with him an’ they’re reight set up wi’ one another; I’ve had my nose put out reight.”

“Aye, he was set up wi’ t’heather,” said Bradley, as almost reluctantly he followed the old man across the road.

The Hinchcliffe room gleamed with polish. The small kitchen range shone and the fire-irons answered it, the fire shone and the mahogany tallboy answered it with all the pride of a tallboy polished once a week for eighty years. It reflected the winking fire to what appeared to be another tallboy, but whose drawer-handles were a mere sham. This was in fact the shut-up bed in which Granny Hinchcliffe had slept ever since her rheumatism had become so severe that the journey upstairs was an almost impossible agony.

The glass dome over the wax fruit shone, and the lustres on the old-fashioned dessert-stand winked back at them. The horsehair-covered sofa and the rocking-chair shone. Ezra Hinchcliffe’s white hair shone, Jack’s eyes shone, and Granny Hinchcliffe’s mild old eyes answered them all.

Bradley and Ezra, sitting in the background, fell into companionship immediately, smoking and exchanging a sentence now and again, and watching, as from a stage box, the love scene being enacted on the hearthrug where Jack sat and talked, gesticulating with his whole body, and Granny Hinchcliffe supplied a chorus of “Eee, bless the bairn,” “Well, I nivver did,” and such-like remarks.

The tended room and Ezra’s friendliness quietened Bradley’s restlessness, and he stopped thinking of the Crown and Anchor. Once or twice he caught the mild appraising eye of Granny Hinchcliffe, and then the boy had her sole attention again.

But the story was thinning down, and soon it came to an end. One or two questions revived it fitfully, but only for awhile. The glinting head began to droop and Granny Hinchcliffe met Bradley’s eye. He rose, bent down and gathered the boy in his arms, and turned to leave the house.

“Ah’ll be back in a minute,” he said over his shoulder, adding thoughtfully, “If you’ll have me.”

He was Granny Hinchcliffe’s from that moment.

3

CHAPTER THREE

MARTHALICE

BRADLEY returned to Hinchcliffe’s after putting Jack to bed. This had been a delicious joke between father and son. Jack’s sleepiness had been part of the fun, so Bradley was enabled to pretend that the boy was a baby again, and Jack to allow himself to be laid on the bed and undressed by his father without any loss of dignity. He caught his father’s eye with a chuckle, and then wriggled the squalid bedclothes into comfortable folds round his neck, and was asleep in twenty seconds, the smile not fading from his face. And the smile copied itself in the father’s face as he again entered Hinchcliffe’s living-room; Granny Hinchcliffe looked for it, and found more than she had hoped.

“Sit tha dahn, lad,” she said. “Let’s talk it over; he’s a grand lad, and a bonny lad, but he’ll spoil if tha doesn’t brighten up a bit at hoam. Ezra and me has been talking it over, and we’ll be glad and willing to help tha.”

Bradley put up his hand in complete surrender.

“Ah’ve been thinking what I could do every minute of this day,” he replied. “Ye knaw, missus, when ahr Mary deed, three years sin’, Ah got that Ah couldn’t bear to be in yon house alone, an’ ther wor nowheer to goa but t’pub. An’ Ah couldn’t bear another woman abaht t’place, an’ besides, Ah haven’t that much wage. So Ah tried to manage by misen. Ah’ve made a poor business of it, but it isn’t all t’drink, missus. If once Ah can get straight, Ah can keep off t’ale.”

“Nah then, then,” said sensible Granny Hinchcliffe. “Let’s mak’ a start wi’ t’house. It’ll want some cleaning reight, Ah’m sure Ah doan’t knaw hah thar’s managed so long. But Ah’ll tell tha what we’ll do. Ah’ll get ahr Marthalice to come in and straighten up a bit. Such as papering and whitewashing tha can do thisen, an’ then she can clean t’house up after thi, an’ tha’ll be cap’t what a difference a clean house can mak’. She won’t want much: a shilling or two, happen. Ezra,” she added, “thee slip dahn an’ fetch ahr Marthalice.”