Saturday's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Glory”. Whatever next?’
    ‘There’s a thing hanging on the door,’ he offered now.
    ‘A thing? What thing?’
    Roy struggled once more for words. ‘It’s on a coat-hanger, but it’s like . . . like a big frock, only it’s not a frock.’
    Lily waited, watched as gears fought to mesh within her son’s nine-year-old brain. When was a frock not a frock? And was this youngest of hers all right in his head?
    ‘It’s like . . . like two sheets sewn up with a hole for her head and holes for her hands. Like a tent, it is.’
    Well. Lily Hardcastle didn’t know what to think or say, so she took the docker from its place of residence behind her right ear, lit it, inhaled deeply. A clean room? In Nellie
Hulme’s house? ‘I thought she never went upstairs, Roy. I thought she slept in her front parlour.’
    ‘It’s not a sleeping room,’ the boy answered, ‘it’s a making room. She makes things.’
    ‘What things?’
    He shrugged. ‘Cloth things.’
    Lily, seldom at a loss, could not lay her tongue across a single syllable. Cloth things? Anything coming out of Nellie Hulme’s dump must have stunk to high heaven and low hell. And if the
old woman was making clothes, why didn’t she fettle a few bits for herself? There was neither rhyme nor reason to this. ‘Are you sure, Roy Hardcastle?’
    ‘Yes, Mam.’
    ‘You’re not making it up?’
    ‘No, Mam.’
    The mystery of Nellie Hulme was deepening fast. ‘Put that kettle on, son, I need to get me brain working.’
    He put the kettle on. ‘And a paraffin stove.’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘There’s a paraffin heater, Mam. That’s clean and all, like shiny. It were that much of a shock, I near slipped off the drainpipe.’
    ‘Then don’t go up it again, else I’ll tell your dad.’
    ‘Right.’ He inhaled deeply, hopefully. ‘Can I have a dog?’
    ‘No, you can’t.’ Roy often did this, distracting her then slipping in that same request, though sometimes he asked for a cat. He was desperate for an animal of some kind.
    ‘Well, a cat would kill the mice,’ he said, ‘and a dog would chase the rats away.’
    Lily threw her cigarette end into the fire. She draped pastry across her rolling pin, flicked it effortlessly onto the top of her brown baking dish. He wanted a dog, a cat, a rabbit and a good
hiding. ‘Did you see any of the things Nellie had made, Roy?’ Lily scalded the pot and made tea.
    He folded his arms. ‘I could look after a dog.’
    She sniffed. ‘You looked after them goldfish, didn’t you? Dead in a week, they were. You fed them enough to keep a whale going for a year.’
    ‘Cloths,’ he replied.
    ‘What kind of cloths?’
    ‘I’d take it for walks. I could take it to the park every day after school. It would guard the house and all.’
    Lily fixed him with a hard stare. ‘What kind of cloths?’ she repeated.
    ‘I could teach it tricks. They sit up and beg.’
    ‘I’ve enough beggars round my table, so think on and tell me about them cloths. No use leaving me with half a tale – you know it’ll mither me for the rest of
today.’
    He studied his mother, assessed that her mood was fair-to-middling. ‘Holes in the corners,’ he replied finally. ‘At the pictures, in posh houses, they wipe their gobs on them
while they’re having their dinners.’
    Lily popped the dish into the fireside oven. She had learned more today about her next door neighbour than she had found out in ten years. But she still couldn’t work out how Nellie kept
the stuff clean. Then she remembered. She’d seen Nellie once coming out of the Chinese laundry on Derby Street, a large brown paper parcel under an arm. Nellie in a laundry? It was like
trying to imagine an iceberg in the desert.
    ‘Cats don’t eat much,’ persisted Roy.
    ‘Neither do I,’ retorted Lily, ‘and we’re not having a cat, they howl in the night.’
    ‘A dog, then,’ he wheedled.
    ‘I’ll think on it.’ She threw a handful of cutlery onto the table. ‘Get