With Love From Ma Maguire Read Free Page B

humming quietly in spite of tiredness and the sound shocked her to the core. Singing? When did she last have a tune in her? She looked round the whitewashed brick walls and all along the shelves where her bottles and jars sat. And in that moment, she recognized that she was happy because she was at home. Philly belonged, would make a place for herself. For the first time since her marriage, she had stopped feeling alone.
    The morning was long, tiring and tedious. By the time eight o’clock arrived with its half-hour breakfast break, Philomena was too exhausted to eat her meal of bread and butter. Everyone else sat round the edges of the room, some on skips, others on the floor, eating their food on the oil-covered boards, using as tools fingers thick with heavy yellow grease. Her stomach heaved and she made a mad dash for the toilet. There was only one on each floor, so she was forced to stand and gag while others took their turn. When at last she closed the door and relieved herself, she noticed, not for the first time, the degree of infestation in the tiny room. A particularly vile type of cockroach – a strange and unusually huge beast – patrolled this area in vast numbers and she reached for the worn-out brush that had been placed here to keep these foragers at bay. It wasn’t right, any of it. Fifty-five and a half hours a week she worked in this place for a few paltry shillings, out of which sum she was forced to pay her little- and side-piecers, children who would break their backs for a chance of an extra penny. For what hellish reason? For them all to finish up sick or dead, killed off by accident or by disease carried on the backs of rodents and other vermin?
    During the rest of that morning, Philly looked at the spinning room with newly opened eyes. Twelve-year-old half-timers slid about in thick oil, bare-feet skating to keep up with the work. From time to time a shrivelled little-piecer with the body of an infant and the face of an old man ducked under a mule with brush and wiper to clean, bent over double so as not to break the precious ends of cotton. Although she was paid by the draw, which meant she depended for her living on how many times her mule opened and closed, she deliberately slowed herself down to look around. It was a waking nightmare of dirt, noise, heat and damp.
    Then, just before the dinner hooter was due, a minder across the room trapped his piecer when the mule returned to its creel. No screams were heard above the deafening noise of machinery, yet some instinct told everyone that something was amiss. Work stopped as the limp child was carried out in the minder’s arms, then resumed as soon as the drama was over. With a living to earn and piecers to pay, no spinner could pause for more than a minute. Within half an hour, the child had been replaced and life continued as if the incident had never occurred.
    When the dinner break sounded, Philly stopped her mule and walked over to the accident site. ‘How is he?’ she asked.
    The man shrugged thick shoulders. ‘Alreet. Lost a finger, though. I’ve had a look round, can’t seem to lay me hand on it at all.’ He grinned crudely. ‘I’d have a job to find it round here, wouldn’t I? Never mind, the mice’ll happen get a good supper . . .’
    She delivered a resounding slap to the side of his surprised face. ‘I see it,’ she said. ‘And it will be eaten by no mouse.’
    Philly stalked out of the room, her heart pounding loudly. Well, today was as good a time as any other to leave this infernal place, she reckoned. Boldly, she hammered on the manager’s door.
    ‘Come,’ boomed a loud voice.
    She entered the small office only to find no less a person than Mr Richard Swainbank himself, mill owner, landlord, gentleman farmer and respected citizen of these parts. He sat at the large desk, thumbs in waistcoat pockets, heavy gold chain across his chest, a diamond pin securing his silk tie. She took in all the trappings, the shiny