A Whisper to the Living by Ruth Hamilton Read Free Book Online

function had been to deliver oil for lamps, sold just about everything from donkeystone to sets of china, though where he got the stuff during the shortages nobody seemed to know. His cart was wonderful to behold and to hear, for it shone like a million jewels and jingled magnificently as pans and bottles clattered together whenever his cartwheel hit a rut between cobbles.
    So although my mother had married a man I despised, I took comfort from the familiarity of my surroundings, drew solace from the continuing routine, reassuring myself that nothing had really changed, that life was still, more or less, the same. I knew every flagstone, every crack, every cobble that paved my walk to and from school. I was even allowed to the shops now and had made friends with the keepers, enjoying a chat in the fruit store or the Co-op, pretending to be grown-up as I commented on the price of a gas mantle, the cost of a tape of Aspros or a packet of Fennings Cooling Powders. The Co-op was my favourite place, because I loved the smells, loved to watch the staff as they deftly shovelled up potatoes or scooped precious sugar into blue bags. I would breathe in the odour of ground coffee, the scent of hanging bacon, the perfume of the earth that clung in wet lumps to potatoes and carrots. If there was a heaven and if there were smells in heaven, I knew it would be just like the Co-op.
    But for recreation, the bombsite was my favourite place, because again I could play shops, resting an old door on two piles of bricks for a counter, grinding up brick dust to ‘sell’ as sugar, using small stones for fruit and sweets. I had never seen a field except from a distance, had never needed a field, for I had, right on my doorstep, a real adventure playground. Of course, the bombsite was forbidden territory, a fact that made it all the more attractive to us and we never minded the trouble we got into for playing there.
    Tom Hyatt remained my dearest friend. He was twenty now and a very great age this seemed to me. He had become a qualified tradesman, a painter and decorator and he brought me sweets every Friday when he got his wages. As soon as Lamp Eel had been and gone, I would rush next door to visit and collect my bounty, sitting in the big rocker with dolly mixtures and halfpenny spanishes while Tom told tales of the great houses beyond the moors where he was working. During the first few months of my mother’s marriage, Tom often asked, ‘Are you alright?’ and I would nod, not wanting to worry him.
    There were some beatings, just a few, but my mother and Eddie Higson ignored me for the most part. I was left more and more to my own devices and although this neglect did not make me exactly happy, at least I was free to do much as I pleased.
    So when I discovered that we were moving, that Eddie Higson had found a job of sorts, that we would be leaving the street and Tom and the bombsite – and yes, even my school suddenly became attractive when I thought of moving to another – I felt as if my world had been completely shattered.
    Higson was out. I faced my mother across the kitchen table where she was rolling out pastry, arms covered to the elbows in flour. This time, I was fully determined to dig in my heels and get my own way. They couldn’t do this to me. Hadn’t they done enough already?
    ‘You and him can go if you want, but I’m going nowhere. I’m stopping here and that’s that.’
    She wrapped the pastry round the rolling pin and transferred it to a blue-rimmed enamel dish.
    ‘Ah, so you’re stopping, are you? And who’ll pay your rent and do your dinner? What about your washing and who’ll drag you out of bed every morning for school, eh?’
    ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
    ‘Well then, I suggest you start knowing and caring pretty damn quick. We are moving up Long Moor and that’s flat. Now stop being so daft and pass me that pan of mince off the range.’
    I banged the large iron pan hard onto the table,