Polly's Pride Read Free Page B

in comparison to the horrific fate which had befallen poor Mrs Murphy and her children, Polly slid an arm about her husband’s neck the minute he came and sat beside her in the truck, leaning against his shoulder as if she could will the strength of him to flow into her own body. With his fair hair, blunt chin and hatred of embarrassing emotional scenes he was a typical Englishman, yet she loved him for it.
    ‘I’m sorry, Matt, for making such a blather about everything today. At least we’re happy, are we not, and don’t have the problems the poor Murphys had, you being in such a fine good job an’ all. Is that not so?’
    ‘Aye, ‘course it is,’ he agreed in his bluff way, thinking how lovely she was, and how silky her skin as he kissed her cheek; holding her protectively close as the truck jerked into motion. But his eyes were glazed over the dark sheen of her hair as she lay against his shoulder; the unseeing inward vision of a man with more troubles on his mind than he cares to admit.



Chapter Two

    The night in the barracks was every bit as cold and uncomfortable as Polly had feared. Stripped of their clothes while they were deloused, the whole process seemed to her thoroughly humiliating.
    The young students from the Roundhouse Mission, operating under the auspices of the University Settlement, offered fresh second-hand clothes to those who wanted them. Few took up the offer. Ancoats folk hated charity above all things. And there were some who’d rather do a bit of light-fingered fending for themselves, which at least necessitated taking a risk, than accept a hand-out; a perverse philosophy with which Polly sympathised though she did not subscribe to it herself. She frequently made a point of drumming into both her children the possible outcome of any such misguided outlook; how they might be clapped in the reformatory for seven years, just for looking as if they’d stolen something.
    Polly herself gladly accepted the offer of clothes, thanking the young man in his tweed suit and striped tie as he stood guard behind his table, making him gaze with startled wonder upon this raggedly dressed woman who had such a bewitching smile and skin as fine as porcelain.
    ‘I’ll not wear it,’ young Benny complained as Polly popped a ‘new’ cap with a smart blue peak upon his head.  
    ‘Sure an’ you will if I say so.’
    ‘They’ll laugh at me.’ She’d already kitted him out with an equally ‘new’ cotton shirt that only had one darn in it, and a pair of grey trousers which hung from his braces to well past his knees so would last him quite a time. He still wore his own clogs, for which he was thankful.
    ‘And won’t they just wish their mams had been so clever as to take up this fine young man’s offer?’ She smiled at the student again, causing him to gulp.
    Benny sulked. He loved his mother dearly, but she didn’t always understand the ways of the world, not Dove Street ways anyroad. It didn’t pay to be different. He had no wish to stand out in a crowd, yet his mam did it all the time. Grown-ups could be very confusing. She’d sometimes quite happily let him play out on a Sunday when all his friends had been marched off to church but then in the evenings, when he and the lads were just starting to enjoy themselves, she’d be the first to fetch him home.
    ‘You’ll not learn your lessons without a good night’s sleep,’ she’d say. ‘Work hard and one day you’ll be the best reader in the class, Benjamin Pride, so you will.’
    Benny had no wish to be the best reader in the class. Reading was for cissies. Everyone knew that. But would she listen? She’d even gone so far as to have Mr Reckitt, the Dolly Varden man who lived two doors away, look out for books among the rubbish at the better-off houses. She’d been given The Old Curiosity Shop that way, and after weeping over it herself, gave it to Benny to read. A more boring book he had yet to find.
    Worst of all, the Dolly Varden