But she couldn’t get a place of her own, with no way of paying the rent. There was no factory work she could do, and her widow’s pension would cover only the essentials of life. She made a bit knitting this and that for people and getting paid a little for it, but it wasn’t anything like a living. What would become of Grace? Who would believe any blind woman capable of bringing up a child, let alone a blind woman living alone in poverty? Evelyn had not until now faced the stark truth. The child of a poor, blind, widowed mother would be taken away and put in a children’s home. It was then that she began to cry.
Stan’s uncle revved the engine and cast an anxious look at his passenger.
“’Course you’re upset, love,” he said, patting her knee. “You just let it all out. People may have their faults but when all’s said and done it’s a terrible business, war.”
Evelyn blew her nose and nodded.
“Now, young lady, I’ve been thinking,” Stan’s uncle went on. As you know, I am Leslie Hibbert, Purveyor of Confectionery & Tobacco, sole owner and proprietor of five premises of that name across the northwest from Blackpool to Bakewell. I am a man as has always stood on his own two feet. I am a man as likes to see other folk standing on their own two feet.”
“I know. And that’s only right and proper, Mr. Hibbert,” Evelyn said a little uncertainly.
Stan’s uncle cleared his throat. “Call me Uncle Les. Now, here’s the gist. I am, furthermore, a man as is placed to give a helping hand to those as tries to stand on their own two feet. I like to see folk try to make a go of it. And you’ve tried to make a right good go of it, what with your handicap. Stanley was never easy. You’re a right clever lass, handicapped or not, and there’s nobody can tell me otherwise.”
“Well, you can only do your best, can’t you?” Evelyn said, puzzled.
“Aye. Now, it so happens I’m getting rid of a bad ’un. Beggar that’s running the Irlam shop, he’s had his fingers in’t till. He’ll be out on his ear come Friday. There’s rooms on the two floors over’t shop and I’ll not take any rent off you. I’ll get you in some help behind the counter but you’re manageress. You’ll do the books and the orders and answer to me for the profits. Daresay little Grace will be a help to you, she’ll know her figures by this time and the stock’s not heavy to lift. You’ll find me a reasonable man.”
“Mr. Hibb-, Uncle Les, I don’t know what to say. Me and Grace, you mean we’d live over the shop? For nowt?”
“Aye, but I’m expecting you to keep an-” Uncle Les’s voice stumbled on the word “eye.”“I’m expecting you to keep it all running smoothly. Make sure we’re open prompt, keep the stock turning over, keep the hired girl in line. You’ll get the hang of the ordering and doing the books, you’re a clever lass. That hasn’t escaped my notice.”
Evelyn tried to stammer out some words of gratitude but Uncle Les interrupted her.
He cleared his throat. “Nay, don’t thank me. All I ask is I’ll trouble you for your company now and then, you and little Gracie. I’m a lonely man since Mrs. Hibbert passed on and family’s family, when all’s said and done. I like to see a kiddie about the place and I’ve none of my own. Mrs. Hibbert wasn’t able. And a home’s not a home without a kiddie.”
The night following was thick and humid, the sky as heavy as wax. The matches had gone soft and when I finally got one to light, the shed glowed a thundery yellow and smelled wormy and sulphur warm. Though the weather was not ideal for it, I had a particular plan. I had not attempted it until then because of the noise it would make, but that was no longer a consideration. We had an understanding. He was ready to let me do more for him; I could tell that even before I had read his letters to me.
Once he was in the attic I made my way upstairs. I went straight to the spare room where I knew he had been leaving his dirty clothes. The place was strewn with them, banked up on the bed and across the floor in a jumble of turquoise, lime, orange, purple, plain, checked, patterned. I had seen him ransack the heaps time after time, although less often since he had taken to wearing the raincoat. There was not a clean stitch left. Everything had been worn until it stank, then dropped on the floor and most probably worn again.
Back in the kitchen, I didn’t need any light. The feel of the materials told me that most of his things were synthetic. I shoved the first load in and started the machine. Pretty they were, the lights on the dials in the dark, and the machine shook and winked and juddered in a way that was businesslike, and somehow energizing. I ran upstairs and brought down more clothes and waited for the first load to finish. I hauled it out and started the second. If I worked fast then I could get all of it done and out on the line and it might even be dry before I had to leave. Even though there was not a breath of wind, I might get everything in, folded and ready. He would come down to a house smelling of clean clothes.
There is something robust and proper about a good wash day. Whether on a Monday morning, as happened in my grandmother’s time, or on a warm summer’s night, laundry needs to be tackled, not picked at. It isn’t a job to be slipped through at odd moments so nobody notices it’s happened at all except when, one by one, garments reemerge clean from somewhere; a full, wet clothesline deserves notice as the small statement of competence it is. I believe that the washing of clothes ought to raise the temperature, make the walls run, fill the air as it did that night. So if I had a criticism of Ruth it was this: her arrangements suggested that she laundered on the quiet. I don’t think she even dried things in the proper way, hung outside on a line, because there was only a short length of rope on a hook, coiled against the house wall, that stretched a few feet across the terrace. I guessed her habit was to put things on hangers and leave them dripping in the conservatory or over the bath. I searched the shed and found a decent length of line. I fixed it to the neck of the downpipe at one corner of the conservatory and took it down across the grass and tied it off round the top of the pergola at the far side of the garden.
It was still dark by the time the first three washes were hung. I walked along the line for a while, smoothing and squeezing garments as I went: his pegged-up slacks and shirts and sweaters, the underpants and socks, a row of shapes so soft and indistinct as to have almost no dimension at all, pasted on the night air like the afterimages of a departed procession of dismembered torsos and limbs. But there was nothing sinister about it. They looked too much like bits of giant puppet to be anything but faintly comical; there was also something amusing, touching even, about masculine clothes separated from their wearer.
I brought in the first load, chilly to the touch, and ran a warm iron over everything to drive off the damp. The kitchen filled with the watery, cold sweetness of grass and the almost melting tang of hot polyester; it was absurdly thrilling. I went back upstairs and picked up towels and bed linen and put those in the wash, too. Back and forth I went from the machine to the garden, ironing things as they came in. There wasn’t a lot of space left in the kitchen with the ironing board up and mounds of clothing, but during a lull around two o’clock I dragged in one of the conservatory chairs. I made myself tea and sat watching the machine as it shuddered and droned from its corner in the dark.
I woke up to a stillness inside the house. The machine had stopped. The only sounds were a lashing wind and the rattle of rain coming down against the windows and roof. Outside, the whole line of washing was swaying and the empty laundry basket I’d left out was rolling around on the terrace. I dashed into the conservatory.