Saturday's Child Read Online Free PDF

shaping and set the places,’ she snapped.
    He set the places. Mam had said she would think on it. Next time the subject came up, he would remind her of that. Now, all he had to do was choose a name for the dog.
    At the other side of Lily Hardcastle, number 5 Prudence Street, lived Dot and Ernest Barnes. Like Nellie Hulme, they had survived two world wars and had spent many years in the
same house, doing the same things week in and week out, no hiccups in the regime, no excitement, few surprises.
    Ernest, whose contempt for Catholics had become a legend in his own lifetime, no longer attended lodge meetings. The owner of a troublesome leg, he walked infrequently, with a limp and with the
aid of two walking sticks. He slept in the parlour, read a great deal and listened to the wireless every evening.
    But Ernest’s main hobby, wife-beating, had been all but removed from him by a bolting brewery horse. Bitterness about this accident had twisted his face and his mind, rendering him coldly
furious, implacable and verbally abusive to the point of slander.
    Dot hated him. She hated him quietly but thoroughly, wishing him dead every moment of every day while she cooked, cleaned, washed and shopped her way through each waking second of time. Shopping
was the best; she stayed out as long as possible, gossiping in queues, meeting old friends on corners, pretending that life was normal and liveable.
    But when she returned to Prudence Street after these expeditions, her feet slowed, her expression changed and her limbs stiffened in anticipation of the greeting she would inevitably receive.
She had married a bad man and had paid the price for forty-five years.
    Still nimble at the age of sixty-five, Dot knew exactly where to stand to be beyond the reach of Ernest’s heavy sticks. But sometimes he caught her unawares, sneaking up behind her when
his leg was not too painful, cracking her across the back with a length of thick, polished wood. When this happened, Dot would absent herself by leaping through the scullery, out into the yard, and
locking herself in the lavatory. It wasn’t fear that drove her out of her home, not any more. When her sons had been in residence, she had experienced terror; now, she ran off into solitude
to pray. She prayed fervently and endlessly for strength; she prayed that however powerful the temptation might become, she would not kill him.
    Dot was bringing in her washing when Lily Hardcastle’s face peeped over the wall. ‘Hello, Lily,’ said Dot, syllables contorted as they fought past two pegs gripped between her
teeth. ‘Bitter for September.’
    Lily had never mentioned to Dot the noises she had heard over the past decade. It would have been impolite, intrusive, because, in spite of her situation, Dot Barnes was blessed with a quiet
dignity that did not invite expressions of sympathy. ‘Our Roy’s been up Nellie’s drainpipe,’ Lily explained, ‘and he says she’s got a factory up in that back
bedroom. Do you know owt?’
    Dot shook her head and dropped clothes and pegs into a wicker basket. ‘Nothing surprises me any more, Lily. I’ve gone well past shock, I have.’
    Lily understood. Here stood the creature in whose soft-padded footsteps Lily might well follow. The woman from 5, Prudence Street was enough to put anyone off marriage. Dot had shrivelled into
her current state, had allowed herself to be dried out by a man who should have been hanged, drawn, quartered, minced and thrown to the lions at Belle Vue. Lily jerked her head sideways in the
direction of Dot’s house. ‘How’s Ernest?’
    ‘All right.’ Dot folded a towel. ‘Well, he’s as all right as he gets, if you take my meaning.’
    This was a different day, Lily told herself. Today, she had walked on the Other Side, the Catholic side where few Protestants trod now that war was finished. Of course, they were all polite to
one another when they met by chance in shops or in other streets, but the quiet division