our new bathroom.
He divided the back bedroom into two equal parts, put in new windows, then fixed a bath, a washbasin and a flushing toilet into one of the two new rooms, leaving the other half as a small third bedroom. The cupboard which had incorporated the old bath became a walk-in wardrobe where my mother, who must have felt like the Queen Bee (being the first on the block to have a proper bathroom) hung her sparse trousseau.
The second bedroom, up another flight of stairs, was an attic room with a three-sided sloping window set into the roof. This was my room, my very own domain with an interesting view up and down the road and plenty of space for my bed and the newly acquired tallboy and dressing table.
The houses across the way were smart corporation dwellings, their occupants mere tenants, so my mother, a home owner, was on no more than nodding terms with them. Although she still worked in the mill, still came home with her hair full of fluff and the soles of her shoes encrusted with tiny steel rings, she declared herself to be up-and-coming now and announced that she would, in future, be voting Tory.
My attic window enabled me to see over the rooftops to the moors that surround Bolton like a huge green dish. My mother had told me that Bolton was so named because it sat in a dip between moors and that it had therefore been named, originally, Bowl Town.
Now that we lived on one of the moors, albeit on a main road, the air was cleaner, clearer and fresher than in the centre of town where the trapped dampness was so valuable to millowners whose spinning factories depended on a wet atmosphere.
As a town-dweller, I did not, as yet, find myself attracted to the greenness beyond the roofs. Like any seven-year-old, I required playmates, the company of my peers, so I came down from my tower to explore my new surroundings, venturing a little further each day into the unknown.
It was time to establish my territory.
6
Encounters
My first encounter with other children came, of course, when I began to attend St Stephen’s school. This was five tram stops up the road towards Harwood, though most of the trams were buses now and not so much fun, so I often saved my penny fare by walking the distance to and from school.
Standards at All Saints must have been high, because within a week I was in and out of first-year juniors and put to work with the eight-year-olds.
I loved the school right from the start. All the teachers had legs; no more flapping habits and rattling rosaries to disturb my peace of mind.
There was a priest though, because the school was attached to a church – in fact, the church itself was an infants’ classroom, the altar and the first few pews being partitioned off during school days, while the rest of the benches were piled around the walls, ready to be brought out for Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
The priest was Father Cavanagh. He was fat and bald and wore a long black cloak with a clasp of metal chains at the throat. I didn’t like him, but then I had never expected that I would. Priests, like nuns, were odd, legless animals from whom I expected neither kindness nor sympathy. This one, like most of them, asked a lot of questions. His voice was high and silly, the Irish brogue so thick that until I got used to him, he would have to repeat himself several times before I understood him. But he was, at least, a patient man and he spoke to me slowly, mouthing his words as if addressing an idiot or a deaf-mute.
‘You’ll be making your First Communion then soon, Annie?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And your family will be along to the Mass for to see you take the Blessed Sacrament?’
‘I don’t know, Father.’
He patted my head. Priests always did that and I hated it, it made me feel like a dog at its master’s feet. He turned to my teacher, Miss O’Gara. ‘They never come to the church, you know. I’ll have to be paying them a visit, I’m thinking.’ He looked back at me. ‘You
He divided the back bedroom into two equal parts, put in new windows, then fixed a bath, a washbasin and a flushing toilet into one of the two new rooms, leaving the other half as a small third bedroom. The cupboard which had incorporated the old bath became a walk-in wardrobe where my mother, who must have felt like the Queen Bee (being the first on the block to have a proper bathroom) hung her sparse trousseau.
The second bedroom, up another flight of stairs, was an attic room with a three-sided sloping window set into the roof. This was my room, my very own domain with an interesting view up and down the road and plenty of space for my bed and the newly acquired tallboy and dressing table.
The houses across the way were smart corporation dwellings, their occupants mere tenants, so my mother, a home owner, was on no more than nodding terms with them. Although she still worked in the mill, still came home with her hair full of fluff and the soles of her shoes encrusted with tiny steel rings, she declared herself to be up-and-coming now and announced that she would, in future, be voting Tory.
My attic window enabled me to see over the rooftops to the moors that surround Bolton like a huge green dish. My mother had told me that Bolton was so named because it sat in a dip between moors and that it had therefore been named, originally, Bowl Town.
Now that we lived on one of the moors, albeit on a main road, the air was cleaner, clearer and fresher than in the centre of town where the trapped dampness was so valuable to millowners whose spinning factories depended on a wet atmosphere.
As a town-dweller, I did not, as yet, find myself attracted to the greenness beyond the roofs. Like any seven-year-old, I required playmates, the company of my peers, so I came down from my tower to explore my new surroundings, venturing a little further each day into the unknown.
It was time to establish my territory.
6
Encounters
My first encounter with other children came, of course, when I began to attend St Stephen’s school. This was five tram stops up the road towards Harwood, though most of the trams were buses now and not so much fun, so I often saved my penny fare by walking the distance to and from school.
Standards at All Saints must have been high, because within a week I was in and out of first-year juniors and put to work with the eight-year-olds.
I loved the school right from the start. All the teachers had legs; no more flapping habits and rattling rosaries to disturb my peace of mind.
There was a priest though, because the school was attached to a church – in fact, the church itself was an infants’ classroom, the altar and the first few pews being partitioned off during school days, while the rest of the benches were piled around the walls, ready to be brought out for Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
The priest was Father Cavanagh. He was fat and bald and wore a long black cloak with a clasp of metal chains at the throat. I didn’t like him, but then I had never expected that I would. Priests, like nuns, were odd, legless animals from whom I expected neither kindness nor sympathy. This one, like most of them, asked a lot of questions. His voice was high and silly, the Irish brogue so thick that until I got used to him, he would have to repeat himself several times before I understood him. But he was, at least, a patient man and he spoke to me slowly, mouthing his words as if addressing an idiot or a deaf-mute.
‘You’ll be making your First Communion then soon, Annie?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And your family will be along to the Mass for to see you take the Blessed Sacrament?’
‘I don’t know, Father.’
He patted my head. Priests always did that and I hated it, it made me feel like a dog at its master’s feet. He turned to my teacher, Miss O’Gara. ‘They never come to the church, you know. I’ll have to be paying them a visit, I’m thinking.’ He looked back at me. ‘You
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