Elm Tree Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘We’d like you to marry us as soon as possible, if that’s all right. I’ll get a special licence. I think it’ll be money well spent, because we want to start off as we mean to go on here.’
    ‘I shall be very happy to marry you.’ He turned. ‘Ah, Mrs Lambden. May I introduce you to Mr Greenhill and Miss Fuller, who are soon to marry and are just setting up home? And this is Miss Fuller’s sister, Renie, who is to live with them.’
    An older woman stopped beside him, studying them, then smiling as if she approved of what she saw. ‘Welcome to our congregation. I’ve got an old bedstead that I’ve no use for. You’ll have to mend the webbing, but it’s got years of use in it yet.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Nell said. ‘We’d be very grateful for it.’
    Others came across and she kept a count in her head of the bigger items they’d been offered. Cliff’s face was grim and he clearly was hating this, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get into her own home.
    Mr Garrett whispered to them not to leave yet and went to speak to others. Once the last people had left, he came back. ‘I’ll mention you in my next service today in Milnrow. Oh, and I’m sure I can organise the loan of a horse and cart to take the things to your new home.’
    ‘We’re very grateful for your help,’ Nell said. She’d repeated those words several times but Cliff seemed not to find them easy to say, so she was doing it for them both.
    As they walked back to his cousins’ house, they smelt bread baking and went round to the back of a bakery to find the man selling loaves, even on a Sunday. They bought two loaves and some scones and took them back to Cliff’s cousins’, which brought a near-smile to Pauline’s narrow face.
    ‘I’ll buy some more margarine tomorrow,’ Cliff told her.
    But the night again seemed long and uncomfortable to Nell, cuddled up to her sister on the thin rag rug, which hardly softened the hard floor.
    She’d never slept so badly in her whole life, never felt so miserable. She was getting married soon, ought to be happy, but how could you be when life was so uncomfortable and the man you were marrying looked at you sometimes as if he hated you?
     
    On Monday Nell gave Cliff her birth certificate in case he had time to get a special licence, then she waved him off to work. She looked down at the money he’d given her to buy some margarine and another loaf. Two shillings. Not exactly generous, but even so, she’d spend as little of it as she could. She and her sisters had had a lot of experience in being careful, with a father as stingy as theirs.
    She glanced up at the sky and was relieved to see that though there were patchy clouds, it didn’t look like being a day of constant rain, at least. They’d be able to stay away from Pauline and her sour face. There were three small children at home in the house, and two had gone off to school. The two toddlers were sent into the corner of the kitchen to ‘play quietly’, and were smacked if they made anoise. The baby was laid in a shabby high pram, not even sat up so that it could look round, poor thing.
    Five children! thought Nell. And so close in age. No wonder Pauline’s grumpy. Nell intended to persuade Cliff not to give her too many children. There were ways of preventing them, she’d heard. She did want two or three children, of course she did, but not a whole gaggle of them, and not close together, either.
    As she and Renie were getting ready to go out, there was a knock on the front door.
    Pauline went to answer it and came to the door of the front room. ‘It’s for you.’ She went back to the kitchen without a word of explanation.
    Nell hurried to the front door to find Mr Garrett standing there. ‘Do come in!’ Thank goodness she’d cleared away their makeshift bedding from the front room!
    He stood there beaming at them. ‘We had a lot of offers of help from the Milnrow congregation as well as the Rochdale one, and my wife has