Candles in the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

for her grandmother’s inspection. ‘Full price an’ all. Tuppence each for them big bloaters, an’ the cods’ heads went straightaway down in the rougher end of town.’
     
    Nellie nodded. ‘They make a fillin’ meal when they’re boiled an’ the flesh scraped off an’ mixed with potatoes, as we know, eh, lass?’ There was many a spell, especially in the hard northern winters, when they’d had to sell all the fish just to pay the rent and stay alive, and then the scraps of cod came into their own. But her bairn was a marvel and a natural housewife. Daisy had a way of making a penny stretch to two and she wasn’t averse to hard work neither, although - and here Nellie sighed silently - it pained her when her lass’s hands were raw and bleeding from helping George and Tom with the nets, or when she came in exhausted and sick to her stomach from gutting the fish and washing the offal.
     
    ‘Da’ll be pleased.’ Daisy had left her grandmother’s side and walked across to the range. Now she busied herself spooning two ladlefuls of broth from a big black saucepan standing on a battered wooden table to one side of the range into a smaller pan. She then placed this on the hob, pressing it towards the glowing coals before warming a few drops of goose grease and bringing the pannikin over to her grandmother. ‘Rub this in, Gran, while I see to things.’
     
    ‘Eeh, lass, you’ve enough to do without worryin’ about me, now then.’ Nellie slowly raised herself on to her elbows, and Daisy adjusted the straw bolster around the bony back before handing her grandmother the warm pannikin, whereupon she turned back to the range. And then she halted halfway across the room, glancing about her as she thought, This might not be as grand as Alf’s mam’s, but it’s a palace compared to some in the streets I’ve been to today where the pervading smell’s like sitting in the privy.
     
    Some of the fishing cottages, of which Daisy’s was one, had their own privies, square brick or wooden boxes with a wooden seat extending across the breadth of the lavatory and filling half its depth. These were situated outside the back door, and for those who were forced to share, the visit could be either foul-smelling or relatively odourless, depending on the fastidiousness of the last occupant. Daisy made sure a bucket of fresh ashes found its way to their privy every morning and evening, but the keen salty wind that was forever in evidence, even on the mildest of summer days, was the best purifier. She had been thankful she lived in the cottages situated on the shoreline ever since her first visit to the towns to sell fish. The strong odour of fish and seaweed and tar here, which clung to every cottage and infused clothes, bedding and furniture with its pungent smell, she did not even notice.
     
    The cottage itself was very small, merely two rooms downstairs - the living room and a scullery - and one room above, although some of the fishermen’s families had no upstairs at all. In the Applebys’ case a third of the bedroom at the end by the window had been partitioned off many years before by means of a ramshackle floor-to-ceiling screen, which George had made with odd scraps of timber he’d salvaged. This was Daisy’s space, and there was just enough room in it for her narrow box bed - nothing but a foot-high wooden platform, again cobbled together by her father, and an ancient flock mattress - an orange box containing her meagre items of clothing, and two more boxes placed on top of each other to form a kind of table. These were draped with a piece of thick yellow linen which reached to the floor, and which had given Daisy great pleasure ever since she had found the cloth washed up on the shore years before.
     
    This, together with the fact that she could sit up in bed and look out of the window - a mixed blessing in winter when the draught was enough to waft her hair about her face and ice coated the glass an inch thick