Mary Burns : revolution, romance and revelation : Mary Burns : a work of autobiografiction.

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MARY BURNS

PhD SUBMISSION

BELINDA WEBB

SEPTEMBER 2011

SUBMISSION FOR PhD

THESIS TITLE:

MARY BURNS

SUBSECTION TITLES:

REVOLUTION, ROMANCE, AND REVELATION

MARY BURNS -A WORK OF AUTOBIOGRAFICTION

AUTHOR:

BELINDA SUSAN WEBB

DATE:

22 February 2012

This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Kingston University for the degree of PhD.

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ABSTRACT Mary Burns includes two sections: a short thesis called Revolution, Romance, and Revelation, and a work of autobiografiction, Mary Burns. Mary Burns is the major contribution to this PhD submission. It tells a story of the common-law wife of Marxist co-founder, Friedrich Engels, and a contemporary character, Ula Tully, who is attempting to tell Mary's story. The major part of this submission began as an attempt to write the novelised chronological biography of Mary Burns, yet through the writing process, ended up as a work of split-narrative autobiografiction. The stories of Ula and Mary are linked, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously; two women who belong to different centuries but who have much in common. Both stories also represent the dire scarcity of that figure in English literature - the working-class woman. In this way we can see the telling of a story for Mary as an effort at `rescuing' a figure of whom more 'should' be known, given her place beside the major Marxist figure. Revolution, Romance, and Revelation is a critical paper in three sections, the aim of which was to highlight the stereotypical characterization of Mary Burns in the biographies of Engels. This first section also goes some way to explain the ways in which I departed from these stereotypical characterizations of Mary in my creative work. The second section moves onto the later figure of Ethel Carnie, a workingclass female writer of whom, again, little is known, except that she was a staunch socialist, novelist, journalist, and founder of The Clear Light, an antifascist journal that ran from 1920-1925. I also assert that Ethel, whenever mentioned it is as a 'romance' novelist, adopted a dialectical approach to her work, drawing on both romance and the New Woman novel. In doing so, I contend that she more closely wrote within the autobiografictive framework that was formulated by Stephen Reynolds in 1906, and which I discuss in the final section. Page2 of 254

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The third section defines autobiografiction, and explains the process of my adoption of it for my creative work. It is in this section that I also call for this `mash-up' form to be a more amenable way for working-class women to produce their literature, as practised by Ethel Carnie, moving away from the novel form, which has, from its inception, been synonymous with the middleclasses.

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CONTENTS

Page

Abstract

2

Acknowledgements

5

Revolution, Romance, and Revelation

6

Bibliography

55

Mary Burns -a work of autobiografiction

63

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Acknowledgements

-Dedicated with love and respect to Dr Bruce Lloyd-

And in memory of my parents: Thomas Valentine and Joan Theresa Good people who taught me so much more than they realised ***

The biggest thank-you is due to Norma Clarke, Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Kingston University, who supervised this PhD. I never had cause to doubt my initial instincts as Norma proved to be the best mentor I could ever have wished for.

I would also like to acknowledge the generous studentship that I was fortunate to be awarded by Kingston University, without which postgraduate study of this nature would have remained firmly beyond reach - as it is - and becomes even more so - for countless others who would relish this hard, yet rewarding journey of growth. Thanks are due to my brothers and sisters, particularly my older brother, Sean. Behind this PhD candidate was a fellowship of brilliant friends, whose kind and wise words, often amounting to no more than 'keep going' encouraged me in the low moments. And, of course, to the spirit of Mary Burns (1822-1863) no mere mistress.

No endeavour is the work of an individual.

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SECTION ONE Revolution, Romance, and Revelation

Introduction In 2003, I rediscovered the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Over previous years I had read their works, but the inclination to engage in any sustained study eluded me. However, this time I took to it with vigorous interest. I progressed onto secondary reading and was drawn to Engels as a single character, or as a 'shadow prophet', which was the title of Grace Carlton's 1965 biography of him. It was in this work that Engels's long-term partner, Mary Burns, a working-class woman of Irish descent, became a source of intrigue to me. I continued my reading yet found only a few additional references to Burns. I identified with her, being of working-class Manchester-Irish descent myself, and I resented this. I was, I noted, therefore somewhat morbidly heartened to see that Burns's death, on 7thJanuary 1863, caused the one major fall-out between Marx and Engels, when Marx appeared to brush over Burns's premature demise as insignificant (Marx, Engels, Raddatz, 1981). As I pieced together these few scraps I decided I could 'rescue' Burns from the shadows of history by writing her biography, but this turned out to be far from straightforward. I was forced to confront both the limitations of the form biography - and my co-dependent wish to ride in and rescue. Out of this struggle has emerged a work that attempts to use historical research and autobiographical enquiry -'autobiografiction' - to tell a story about Mary Burns. Section one outlines all the information currently available on the historical Mary Burns, primarily in biographies of Friedrich Engels and in studies by local historians and Marxist historians. I argue that the representation of Burns by Engels's biographers has pushed her further into the background, denying her a voice. I move on to explain the representation of her in my work, Mary Burns, which departs radically from some of that information. One of these departures consists in my positioning Burns as working as a prostitute at the time of Page6 of 254

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meeting Engels, which has been alluded to in recent biographies of him. This was a decision that caused me some anxiety, forcing me to consider whether I was making unwarrantable assumptions and, in doing so, helping to marginalise Burns further. Section two remains with the issue of the neglected working-class woman by uncovering some of the life and work of Ethel Carnie (1886-1960). I came across Carnie during my research into working-class women in literature. A politically engaged working-class writer and journalist, Ethel Carnie worked in the factories as a young girl and woman. Carnie exemplifies the neglect of working-class women who achieved much, but who have still been unduly overlooked. In this section I question her use(s) of the romance form and make the claim that, in borrowing aspects of both Chartist and New Woman fiction, Carnie adopted a dialectical approach to her writing. Section three begins with an outline of my own process of setting out to 'rescue' Mary Burns. This process was dialectical in nature, progressing from one version (thesis) to a second (antithesis) until reaching a third and final version (synthesis) that was drawn from the tensions and narratological conflicts of the previous two. A dialectical process is congruent with the subject matter of Mary Burns, given that the dialectic is central to Marxist thought. As I show, it can be seen in Ethel Carnie's work in her grappling for an appropriate form and medium through which to write of issues pertaining to the working-class woman. Frederic Jameson went some way in defining the Marxist dialectic when he stated that 'the self-consciousness aimed at is the awareness of the thinker's position in society and in history itself, and of the limits imposed on this awareness by his class position...'(1972, p. 340). Had I settled with my first conception of Mary Burns I would have failed adequately to demonstrate my own position in society - the context in which I, as author, operate. It is also clear that, thinking about the work in this way, each version came to overthrow itself. Jameson also found that: 'Such thought (in this case of how the book was to be presented) is... essentially process: it never attains some ultimate place of systematic truth in which it can henceforth rest, because it is as if it were

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dialectically linked to untruth... against which it is perpetually forced to reclaim a fitful apprehension of reality' (pp. 372-3 ibid). The process of working on Mary Burns revealed many of my own personal, political and professional needs. I decided to include an alter-ego, Ula Tully, whose story frames, and is framed by, that of Mary Burns. Each of the revelations of process came from regular intensive questioning of what I was doing - an inquiry of writing. In this regard I agree with Sidonie Smith, who states that: 'When a person from what is sometimes called the metropolitan center (sic) seeks out and interviews people from marginalised and oppressed cultures in order to hear their story, we need to be especially attentive to their purposes and their strategies' (1993, p. 401). Appropriately, I have sought to make clear my own purposes and strategies in my treatment of Mary Burns. By introducing the alter-ego I changed what was initially a novelised biography into a work that can best be described by the term 'autobiografiction', coined by Stephen Reynolds in 1906 in a paper of the same name. He went on to write A Poor Man's House (1908), a book concerned with working-class life that became popular with labour historians. Reynolds's use of the term is posited within a sense of class-consciousness, suggesting that he felt the need to find a form(s), a frame that was not only different from the novel's standard bourgeois form, but which also challenged it. I decided upon the use of this term because it most closely describes the mixture of genres that comprise Mary Burns. I conclude this section, and this paper, with the claim that autobiografiction can provide an appropriate form for the working-class author concerned with working-class issues.

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Section One Revolution Mary Burns (1822-1863) spent over twenty years as the common-law wife of Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of Marxism. Biographies of Engels, the most notable of which are Friedrich Engels, A Biography by Gustav Mayer (1936), Grace Carlton's Friedrich Engels - The Shadow Prophet (1965), W.O. Henderson's The Life of Friedrich Engels (1976), David McLellan's Engels (1977), Terrell Carver's Engels (1989), and most recently, John Green's Engels -A Revolutionary Life (2008), and Tristram Hunt's The Frock Coated Communist The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (2009), offer glimpses of Mary Burns that are drawn according to stereotypes of her class and Irish nationality. Local and Marxist historians paint Burns more as an individual, such as Roy Whitfield in Friedrich Engels - The Search for a Shadow (1988), and Edmund and Ruth Frow in Frederick Engels in Manchester and The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1995). Yet these too, whilst admirable in their efforts, prove frustratingly meagre. Irish playwright Frank McGuinness attempted to bring Mary Burns and her only sister, Lizzie, to a wider audience with his 1989 play, Mary and Lizzie, which is the only other real attempt to provide them with a story. His interest in the sisters was sparked by reading To the Finland Station, Edmund Wilson's 1940 study of socialism, in which Wilson described Engels as living with two Irish sisters. In Mary and Lizzie McGuinness sought to restore to history voices that had too often been relegated to the level of the insignificant, to provide a voice to the otherwise historically mute sisters. Unfortunately, McGuinness succeeds only in creating confusion. Helen Lojek agrees, claiming the confusion was due in large part to McGuinness's deliberate refusal to provide a linear plot, which made the play a challenge, particularly for anyone expecting naturalism (2003, p. 31). It could be argued that McGuinness's attempt was bound to fail from the outset, not least because, as Lojek herself pointed out, the play was never likely

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to attract or engage a wider audience because it was too hard to follow. But even in its aim of restoring the voices of the Burns sisters, Mary and Lizzie is problematic, not least because he makes no effort to differentiate the sisters. In addition, his characterisation of Mary and Lizzie, especially in comparison with Jenny Marx, as in the eighth scene `Dinner with Karl and Jenny', is crude and inaccurate. McGuinness depicts them as engaged in mutual antagonism with Jenny Marx. He may have wanted to present the sisters as `earthy' and `natural', untainted and in possession of their sensuality, unlike Jenny Marx the bourgeois wife, whose calling cards read Baronness von Westphalen. However, this runs counter to the fact that Jenny Marx got on well with the Burns sisters. Their amicable relationship is evidenced in a letter written by Eleanor Marx to Louise Kautsky, to whom she tells of her parents' fondness for the Burns sisters. McGuinness seems reluctant to acknowledge or consider the possibility of a socialist sisterhood alongside that ever-present brotherhood between Marx and Engels. It is also significant that McGuinness represents the sisters as not just illiterate, but willfully so: MARY:

We can't read.

LIZZIE:

We don't want to. (p. 28)

In Mary Burns I have attempted - partly by using a split-narrative - to construct characters that more realistically represent the overlooked, politically active working-class women of the nineteenth century. In this way I hope to `...consolidate the past in the present' in order to `alter our conception of the present by changing our version of the past of our literature' (Davies cited by Hawthorn, 1984, pp. 125-138). I also hope to have challenged the myth of progression. For instance, it is clear that Burns resided in a political space that fostered class and gender solidarities, in stark contrast to Ufa Tully in the twenty-first century. Although there are those such as Elaine Showalter (1979), and Sheila Rowbotham (1997), who summarise the problem of the history of working-class women there remains a deficiency of texts that either include (fewer still that have been produced by) openly self-identifying working-class women. Page 10 of 254

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Mary Burns was born in 1822. She was the oldest surviving child of textile dyer and factory operative, Michael Burns, and Mary Conroy. Irish immigrants from Tipperary, Mary's parents had married at St. Patrick's, one of few Catholic churches in Manchester at that time. Manchester was still dealing with the aftermath of the cataclysm that came to be known as the Peterloo Massacre. Organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union, 60-80,000 of the working-classes and radicals congregated on the site of St. Peter's Fields on 16thAugust 1819 to peacefully protest for parliamentary reform. By the end of the day fifteen had been killed and several hundred injured. The Massacre, sardonically named to allude to the battle of Waterloo, occurred when magistrates, alarmed at the size of the 'mob', had called in the nearby cavalry from Ardwick Barracks. Armed with swords, they charged into the crowd to arrest the writer Leigh Hunt and other key speakers. The consequences of the military action resulted in mass condemnation and stirred many public figures to speak out. It moved the poet Shelley so much that he wrote The Mask of Anarchy, a ninety-one stanza poem. Mary Burns had just one surviving younger sister, Lydia, known as Lizzie, five years her junior (1827-1878). There were two other sisters born between Mary and Lizzie but they did not survive infancy. It is likely that Mary Burns began working in a factory at the age of nine. Whilst this is impossible to substantiate, it was certainly a `normal' age for poor Engels noted that: 'These operatives are children to commence work. condemned from the ninth year to their death to live under the sword, physically and mentally' (1969, p. 160). Burns would have begun her working life as a scavenger, a physically strenuous role that involved running underneath the machinery in order to keep it clear of detritus. Burns's mother died sometime after the birth of Lizzie in 1827, and certainly by 1835 (Whitfield, 1988, p. 69). Aged, at most, thirteen years old when her Mother died, the young Burns's income would have been vital to the household, which, like many homes in poor and slum districts, was little more than a damp and pestilent cellar.

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Burns is fortunate that her youth ran parallel to the growth of the Chartist movement, which was established in 1837. Most biographers of Engels have failed to mention that a Mary Burns is listed as a contributor to the 1839/40 legal defence fund of John Frost and other Chartists who were involved in the Newport Rising (Chartists, 2010). Burns does not appear in records again until the 1841 census, by which time she and her sister were in domestic service. Mary Burns worked for a family called the Chadfields, the head of which, George Chadfield, was listed as a Master Painter (Whitfield, 1988, p. 22). At a time when society offered scant social provision in times of unemployment domestic service would have been more dependable than the periods of casual factory work, although for those who had previously worked in factories, service meant sacrificing a greater degree of independence. The Burns sisters' entry into service may also have been a means of escape from a new stepmother. If Mary Conroy died in 1835, then Michael Burns waited less than a year to wed Mary Tuomey, a widow who brought with her a son. Michael Burns and his new wife had several children together within a relatively short period of time, although only one of these, Thomas, survived infancy (ibid. p. 69). From the end of 1842 Mary Burns's whereabouts and activity are more easily imagined, because this marked the time of Engels's arrival in Manchester. It was not long before he and Burns met. Keen to prise him away from his revolutionary activities and subversive journalism in Barmen, Engels Senior had sent his son to work at the family factory, Ermens & Engels, in which Engels Senior had recently become a partner. The factory 'employed around 800 workers in the specialist process of manufacturing sewing thread' (McLellan, 1977, p. 20). The factory was situated in Weaste, Salford, but the office where Engels and the Ermens brothers spent most of their time was at 7 Southgate, off Deansgate. The southern part of Deansgate was notorious for its wretched living conditions. It is here where Mary Burns and her family lived, at least some of the time. The northern part consisted of commercial businesses - offices and fine shops, such as Kendal's, the main department store, which still exists. Page 12 of 254

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There is much doubt amongst biographers as to where Engels and Burns met. It is claimed, most notably by Edmund Wilson and the socialist Max Beer, that Burns was working at the Weaste factory. This has been rebutted by several biographers because of Engels's own impressions of the women working at his father's mill as being `...short, dumpy and badly formed, decidedly ugly in the whole development of the figure' (1969, p. 191). Deformation was certainly an occupational hazard: many operatives were so malnourished and overworked they became deformed and were often below average height. Whilst Whitfield cites Edmund Wilson's assertion that Engels was having a love affair with an Irish girl named Mary Burns who worked in the Ermens & Engels factory, he warns the reader to exercise caution because Wilson did not provide sources for his information (Whitfield, 1988, p. x) A recent biographer, John Green, is one of those who refuted this meeting, but instead states that Burns met Engels whilst she was in service, something that Engels's latest biographer, Tristram Hunt, has repeated. Edmund and Ruth Frow's conjecture that Burns was not working in service at this time. Nor do they seem convinced of the possibility that, at the time of meeting Engels, she was an Ermens & Engels employee. They suggest that, whilst 'there is no positive knowledge as to where Friedrich Engels and Mary Burns first met, it is quite possible that it was in the Hall of Science' and that it was here where she apparently sold oranges, an occupation which could serve as a euphemism for prostitution (1995, p. 9). Soon after publication of The Frock-Coated Communist, Hunt speculated that Engels's: Lifetime partners were two illiterate sisters - first Mary, then Lizzie Burns - of "genuine Irish proletarian blood", who he might have picked up from his father's mill. Engels had once condemned the tendency of mill owners to take advantage of female hands; here, he did just that (Hunt, The Guardian, 2009). The sexual obligations that many female factory operatives were burdened with are made clear by Hunt. It is a point that reinforces the prostitution claim; that the sexual economy was taken for granted. One reviewer has stated that Hunt

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is `tempted to sneer, suggesting hypocrisy on Engels's part' (Birchall, 2009). Hunt's treatment of Burns is in stark contrast to the independent and proud figure offered by Wilson. What all of this demonstrates is just how casually a voiceless person like Mary Burns has been treated and how such treatment has served to keep her sidelined. Despite the uncertainty as to where the couple met, one thing that many biographers can agree upon is that Burns was responsible for guiding Engels around the slums that provided the material for The Condition of the WorkingClasses in England in 1844. This is not just emphasised in the play by McGuinness, but also by Green, who goes so far as to say that `the first hand investigation he carries out of the lives of working people in Manchester could never have been done without the help and collaboration of Mary Burns' (2008, p. 69). Burns became intimate with Engels during his first eighteen month stay, but she was hidden from those with whom he associated during his official social and business life. However, this was not the case in terms of his political and personal life. Karl Marx was fast becoming Engels's closest friend. Others who also knew of Engels and Burns's relationship include the Chartist figures Julian Harney and James Leach, the latter being 'the author of Stubborn Facts from the Factories, whom Engels regarded as a good friend' (Henderson, 1976, p. 22). Another close friend was the German poet Georg Weerth. Weerth, working and living in Bradford, often visited Manchester on his day off and joined Burns and Engels on their walks around the town. Pounding the streets of Manchester: at all hours of the day and night, on weekends and holidays for example, on Whitsunday, 1844, Georg Weerth a young German workingman and aspiring poet, who was employed in Bradford and whom Engels had befriended... came over to Manchester and spent the day with him, and the daylight hours were consumed by their wandering all about the city... (Marcus, 1978, p. 94).

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Engels managed to maintain this dual life by keeping his own separate lodgings at Great Ducie Street. He also rented 24 Daniel Street, a cottage in Hulme, an area favoured by the Irish well into the twentieth century. Close to the centre of the city, Hulme also bore the brunt of the rapid urbanisation and mechanisation, which turned this once rural area into a slum blighted by mass sewage, railway steam and factory smoke, which often blotted out the sun and caused acid rain. Homes were built quickly and carelessly; sanitary conditions were so bad that the area had one of the highest mortality rates. Despite the wretched conditions of most in the area, it was here that Friedrich and Mary were able to live as a couple. Hunt describes them as being `in each other's arms over 18434' (2009, p. 100). This was brought to an end when Engels was called home by his father. Engels `appears to have (had) no plans to return to Manchester, so it has to be assumed that he considered his affair with Mary Burns to be over' (Green, 2009, p. 95). Whilst he threw himself into action Engels could not escape increasingly difficult family relations. Despite his father's wishes he refused to return to what he called `damned commerce'. In the spring of 1845 Engels left Barmen for Brussels. He was following Marx, who had been deported from Paris at the insistence of the Prussian Government. Accompanied by Marx, Friedrich returned to Manchester in August 1845 for a six-week stay, and it was during this period that he and Burns were reunited. This relatively short period of time that Engels and Marx spent in Manchester is focussed on by all biographers, not least because it was Marx's first visit to the seat of the Industrial Revolution. Many biographers devote a sentence or so to Engels's and Burns's reunion, but there are those, such as Stepanova, who fails to mention it at all. This is in stark contrast to how much is made of the amount of time these founding fathers of Marxism spent at Cheetham's library. It is here that biographers conjure a scene of intellectual bliss as Marx and Engels immerse themselves in the study of economics. Engels managed to convince Burns to return with them to Brussels, Belgium, undoubtedly her first trip abroad. She and Engels would live together here for over a year, which Page 15 of 254

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indicates the strength of their relationship. In Brussels Burns formed good and friendly relations with Marx's wife and they were soon joined by George Weerth. Green has suggested that, despite Burns living openly with Engels and enjoying a network of solidarity, Brussels was a time of great loneliness for her: with only English and a little Gaelic, she will have found it virtually impossible to converse with the others, apart from with Weerth and, to a limited extent, with the Marxes. But with Marx and Engels spending most of their days and evenings locked away in intensive reading and writing, and having little money herself, she will have felt very isolated (Green, 2008, p. 101). Engels was estranged from his father and his father's money, which meant that the year was a time of financial struggle. Weerth 'helps them financially when he can, but they are living from hand to mouth most of the time' (ibid. p. 103). Despite this, Brussels is the start of what I see as the beginning of Friedrich Engels's and Mary Burns's `proper' relationship; the time when she is increasingly referred to as his `wife'. Harney wrote to Engels from England that `when I informed my wife of your very philosophical system of writing in couples till 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, she protested that such philosophy would not suit her'. Harney later joked that had Mrs. Harney been in Brussels `she would get up a pronunciamento amongst your wives... ' meaning that she would incite a military uprising, or coup, from those wives against their husbands (Hunt, 2009, p. 129). This letter, used by many biographers as evidence of Marx and Engels's increasingly close partnership, overlooked the increasing importance of Burns and Engels's relationship, with Mary now being referred to as Engels's wife. In the summer of 1846 Burns returned to Manchester alone, whilst Engels travelled on to Paris. There is no information to suggest what Burns may have done during 18469, but it is reasonable to assume contact was maintained through correspondence if, as I contend, she was literate. These may also have been the letters between them, (or simply from Engels to Burns, for he was a prolific

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communicator), which Engels was said to have later destroyed. Whitefield asserted that Engels's purpose was to `remove all references to his personal life with Burns and to the methods he had employed to try to disguise his dual existence during those years' (Whitfield, 1988, p. 7). At this point we learn nothing more of Burns until 1850, the year Engels returned to Manchester, at which point the couple seem to have proceeded more formally than in 1843/4 and 1845/6: `Shortly after returning to... Manchester... he set up house with her in a modest suburb, her sister Lydia (Lizzie) acting as housekeeper. At the same time he occupied bachelor lodgings nearer the centre' (Carlton, 1965, p. 113). The pair are tracked by Whitfield as Mr & Mrs Boardman and Mr & Mrs Burns as, amongst other aliases, over the years, they move from Moss Grove, Moss-Side to Dover Street in Rusholme to Ardwick and then the address where Burns would spend her last night alive, at 252 Hyde Road, Ardwick. Burns is next mentioned by reference to the fact that her father and stepmother admitted themselves to Manchester's notorious workhouse, or 'Poor Law Bastille', on New Bridge Street. Michael Burns died there in 1858 and was buried at St. Patrick's Church in Miles Platting (Whitfield, 1970, p. 7). Whatever the reason for Michael and his wife becoming unable to fend for themselves, be it lack of employment and lack of supportive social provision, or habitual fecklessness, Burns's relationship with them at the point at which they entered the workhouse must have reached plain indifference. Just two years before her father's death, Engels and Burns took a holiday to Ireland. The letter Engels wrote to Marx upon their return, in May 1856, demonstrates the maturation and settled nature of his relationship with Burns, casually referring to 'we', and 'our' as in 'during our trip to Ireland...' (Letters). The trip also served to instil in Engels a genuine sympathy for the Irish plight. I have portrayed this trip as serving to deepen Burns's sympathy for her deceased Father.

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Burns and Engels saw approximately two thirds of Ireland during this trip. They travelled from 'Dublin to Galway... then 20 miles north and inland, on to Limerick, down the Shannon to Tarbert, Traice and Killarney, and back to Dublin...' (Engels, 1856). He referred to the famine when they saw all the derelict farmhouses, 'most of which have only been abandoned since 1846... 1 had never imagined that famine could be so tangibly real. Whole villages are deserted...' His sympathies are evident when he wrote '...through systematic oppression, they have come to be a completely wretched nation and now, as everyone knows, they have the job of providing England, American, Australia, etc., with whores, day labourers, maquereaux, pickpockets, swindlers, beggars and other wretches' (ibid.). Apart from this trip to Ireland there is little more to be gleaned of Burns. Even her premature death from a heart attack is considered by Engels's biographers only for the fact that it gave rise to the much discussed, infamous letter between Engels and Marx. Soon after Burns's death Engels and Lizzie Burns formed an intimate relationship that would last for the next fifteen years. Lizzie Burns died in 1878, whilst they were living on Regent's Park Road in Primrose Hill, London. A day before her death Engels had conceded to Lizzie Burns's dying wish that they marry, making her Engels's only official wife.

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1832 My first major departure from the portrayal of Burns by Engels's biographers is the decision to start Mary Burns in 1832, and not in 1831, the year she was said to have begun work. There were many dramatic advantages to this. It was a year made notable for its outbreaks of disease, resulting in increasing panic, which stirred public health figure Dr. Kay to compile what became his internationally renowned improvement works of Manchester's fourteen districts. His inspection of these areas formed the foundation of his report, propelling him to public prominence. Ironically it was also the year in which the economy experienced its `green shoots of recovery' from the cotton depression of previous years. The year of 1832 made an ideal starting point for a povertystricken young girl to take her first foray into the increasingly hungry factories. The conditions of work were severe. The average day for a factory worker was to wake at 5 am, work from 6-8 am, at which time half an hour for breakfast was granted, and then work until noon. An hour was given for the mid-day meal, `which contained little meat, and might be only boiled potatoes with lard or butter. They then returned back to work until 7pm, perhaps later' (Messinger, 1985, p. 23). From Burns's first day I show how one can submit to factory life, suppressing the rage, falling into the daily monotony and grind of the condition described by Marx and Engels as alienated labour. I show Burns's fascination and growing engagement that occurs as a result of her attendance at Chartist meetings, which makes her a part of an increasing mass intent on self-preservation through dissent. Led by Feargus O'Connor, the Chartists demanded Six Points that were set forth in a Charter. Initially devised by William Lovett and the leaders of the London's Working Men's Association the Charter had originally called for women's suffrage, yet this was quickly abandoned for fear that it would result in no suffrage at all. However, Lovett, a Knowledge Chartist, who believed that education was the key leading to reform, was at odds with O'Connor, a physical Page 19 of 254

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force Chartist. O'Connor believed that the various movements within Chartism, such as temperance Chartism and moral force Chartism, distracted away from their true cause. He believed that the granting of these six points should not be contingent on whether they were tee-total, engaged in arguments of morality or on how educated they were. I show Burns remaining true to O'Connor. This was a decision based on Engels's own 'impatience with patience', and his favouring of O'Connor and other prominent physical force Chartists, such as George Julian Harney. Part of Feargus O'Connor's attraction, particularly for first and secondgeneration Irish immigrants, lay in the rumour that he was descended from the ancient Kings of Eire. This became a legend which O'Connor made no move to dispel and which helped attract Irish workers to stand alongside their English counterparts, swelling the Chartist ranks even more. The collective memory of Peterloo fuelled the need for justice from many of the Chartists and was regularly invoked amongst them. Indeed, the symbolism of that day, and Peterloo's links with the French Revolution, can be seen in the proud wearing of Liberty Caps on public occasions. I allude to Mary Burns's father as burdened with the memories of Peterloo and the failures of protest, which serve as partial explanations for his cynicism towards the Chartists, and which adds another point of antagonism between father and daughter. I show that the death of Burns's mother is a turning point for her - Burns holds her father partly responsible for that death whilst she also has to become more responsible for her younger sister. In 1842 I feature Mary grappling with a period of despair as she has left her employ with the Chadfields, unable to tolerate the fictionalised sexual advances of the lecherous Mr. Chadfield. The sexual advances of the `mill masters', as well as male heads of households, was a point often made in working-class protests. It also featured in literature, particularly around the birth of the novel, such as the earliest works of Samuel Richardson. Yet these are the hungry forties, with 1842 being the worst year of that decade, and Burns is left in the

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vicious circle of trying to return to factory work. It is here that I portray her as having to resort to prostitution, which leads to my second departure from Engels's biographers and local historians. Portraying Mary as a prostitute Whitfield, Green, and Hunt claim that Burns was still in service at the time of meeting Engels in early 1843 (1988,2008,2009). Yet I wondered where she would have had the time, freedom and energy to guide Engels around those areas for The Condition of the Working-Classes in England in 1844. Maids-of-all-works worked very long hours - dawn till dusk - and could not be conveniently slotted around Engels's office hours or even at weekends. There is also the only document directly pertaining to Burns to take into consideration, a poem by George Weerth (Cited by Green, 2008, pp. 102-3 from Sommer, KD, (ed.) 1970, Poesiealbum 37), which is laden with allusions and double-entendre as it refers to Mary's 'bearded acquaintances' at Liverpool Docks, where she sold her 'juicy fruits'. The prostitution motif is obvious. Mary Von Irland kam sie mit der Flut, Sie kam von Tipperary; Sie hatte warmes, rasches Blut, Die junge Dirn, die Mary. Und als sie keck ans Ufer sprang, Da riefen die Matrosen: "Die Dirne Mary, Gott sei Dank, Gleicht einer wilden Rosen!"

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Sprach ein Gesell mit Grüßen: "Die Dirne Mary, Gott sei Dank, Geht auf zwei weißen Füßen." Und als sie saß zu Liverpool Mit schwarz verwegnen Blicken, Da wollten sich um ihren Stuhl Die Menschen schier erdrücken.

Von Irland kam sie mit der Flut, Sie kam von Tipperary: "Wer kauft Orangen, frisch und gut?" So rief die Dirn, die Mary. Und Mohr und Perser und Mulatt Und Juden wie Getaufte Das ganze Volk der Handelsstadt, Es kam und kaufte, kaufte.

Da fuhr kein Schiff den Fluß hinauf, Da schwamm auch keins zum Meere: Saß ein verliebter Schiffsjung drauf Und dacht: Oh, wenn ich wäre Erst auf dem Markt zu Liverpool,

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Da sitzt von Tipperary, Mit den Orangen auf dem Stuhl, Die junge Dirn, die Mary!

Gab es wohl größre Liebe je? Die Dirn am Mersey-Strande Hatt tausend Schätze auf der See Und mehr noch auf dem Lande. In jeder Zone, wo der Mast Von einem Fahrzeug krachte, Schwamm eine Seemannsseele fast, Die an Orangen dachte. -

Sie aber trotzte wild und keck, Ob auch die Lippen brannten, Stets an des Markts geschäft'ger Eck Den bärtigen Bekannten. O Leid um all die frischen Küss Sie hatte kein Erbarmen, Sie fluchte, schrie, und ach, sie riß Sich los aus allen Armen!

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Und mit dem Geld, das sie gewann Für saft'ge, goldne Früchte, Lief hurtig sie nach Hause dann Mit zornigem Gesichte. Sie nahm das Geld und schloß es ein; Und erst im Januare Gen Irland sandte flink und fein Das blanke sie und bare.

"Das ist für meines Volkes Heil, Das schenk ich euern Kassen! Auf, schärft den Säbel und das Beil Und schürt das alte Hassen! Wild überwuchern möchte gern Den Klee von Tipperary Die Rose England - grüßt den Herrn O'Connell von der Mary (My emphasis on'dirne'. ) Correspondence with Green highlighted the word 'dirne' in the second stanza. Dirne, particularly in the nineteenth century, referred to a girl or young maid. However, it was also used as a synonym for prostitute, harlot, or strumpet and this is now its contemporary meaning.

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Engels biographer Hunt refers to the poem by saying that Werth `recounts in deliciously laboured verse the life of a vivacious young Fenian girl selling oranges on the Liverpool docks' (2009, p. 99). Traditionally, the selling of oranges was a euphemism for prostitution. It sprang up during the Restoration period and applied to girls/women who sold oranges at the theatre. This is not to ignore Engels's description of the Hall of Science in a letter of 1843, in which he states that: 'In one corner of the hall is a stall where books and pamphlets are sold and in another booth with oranges and refreshments, where everyone can obtain what he needs or to which he can withdraw if the speech bores him' (Letters). When the established euphemism of `selling oranges' is combined with Weerth's salacious tone as well as his possible use of the synonym of dirne, the allusions made by a few of Engels biographers are clear. One of the main questions arising from the poem is whether Weerth would have taken such liberty with Burns in print had she been Engels's official wife? It seems unlikely. Yet the last stanza presents her as a mythological character the spirited woman who sells her 'juicy fruits' to donate money to the Irish Cause. Seen in this light Burns is changed from a common 'whore', or even 'grisette' (an ambiguous term that will shortly be discussed), to one who is involved and committed to the causes they champion. Weerth's poem also draws on the same motifs of Christina Rossetti's famous poem, Goblin Market, written in 1859 and published in 1862. Rossetti's poem, about two sisters named Laura and Lizzie, contains unmistakable sexual imagery, bound up with the goblin merchants' selling of 'fruits'. Prostitution during the century was rife and Engels, like many young middleclass men about town, had a 'roving eye'; it is well known that he liked to indulge himself when it came to wine and women. In one of his allusions to Burns's prostitution, whilst also stressing the deep affection between Burns and Engels, Hunt also states that she was 'for Engels, a very helpful entree into the dark continent of industrial Manchester. Taking him by the hand, Mary Burns

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acted as his underworld Persephone, profoundly enriching Engels's appreciation of capitalist society' (Hunt, 2009, p. 100). Shortly after the publication of his biography, Hunt claimed that Engels was a man mired in `supreme self-contradiction - particularly when it came to feminism': He was a socialist who condemned the use of prostitutes as "the most tangible exploitation - one directly attacking the physical body - of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie," but then regularly enjoyed their services. He demanded female equality, but couldn't bear the company of highminded women. Engels was the intellectual architect of socialist feminism, and an old-fashioned sexist (Hunt, The Guardian, 2009). Hunt's particular claim that Engels visited prostitutes was reached on the basis of a letter that Engels wrote to Marx in 1846 in which Engels said: If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes well and good! Despite the point that Hunt emphasises, it is doubly strange that he fails to 1 openly entertain the idea that Burns could also be a 'grisette'. The failure of Engels's biographers to make any claims about a woman already in Engels's shadow may be a result of assuming that prostitution was a downward spiral with all chance of returning to 'decency' relinquished. It is a picture that we have inherited from the Victorians. Prostitution as a state of total ruin from which there was no return abounds in the art and literature of the period, such as Augustus Egg's moralising triptych Past and Present, or many novels by novels by Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell. Yet this apocalyptic scene was far from true. One such counter voice came from Dr. Acton who, writing in 1857, said that: 'prostitution is a transitory state, through which an untold number of British women are ever on their passage' (p .73). There is also a strong argument, much-echoed, particularly by Judith Walkowitz, that Green has pointed out, in response to Tristram Hunt's piece in The Guardian, that the term 'grisette' has a number of meanings; it does not mean 'prostitute' by itself, but either 'workingclass girl' or it can also mean a young woman combining part-time prostitution with some other occupation.

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prostitution was something that was resorted to in times of legitimate unemployment and which would, in the wake of the 1834 Poor Law, keep the gates of the Workhouse at a healthy distance. In short, it served as a life preserver in times of desperate need. Acton sought to dispel the myths that 'once a prostitute always a prostitute'; that there was no possible advance, moral or physical, in the condition of the actual prostitute; and that the harlot's progress is short and rapid' (Acton, cited by Walkowitz, 1980, p. 45). It is telling that many saw working in the factories and mines as differing little from actual prostitution, not least Engels himself. Engels's biographer Henderson emphasises this when he underlines Engels's claim that prostitutes learn their trade in the factories (Henderson, 1976, p. 327). I portray Burns encountering Engels as she waits by the Hall of Science, a suitably symbolic site of exchange. By quickly following this with a placement of Burns within the Ermens & Engels mill I hope to have shown prostitution as this short-term measure. It is in the Ermens & Engels mill that they encounter each other in a different context, along with an earlier meeting at a Chartist gathering. These two meetings, coming quickly on the heels of their night together, then serve as the basis for a strong continuing relationship. In correspondence with me in early 2010, Engels's biographer John Green explained that he could not imagine that Engels could have built a lasting relationship with Burns had she been a prostitute. His response raises the issue of projecting middle-class (masculine) morals onto our subjects, as well as the motives of his biographers. Each biographer, confronted with a dearth of information on Burns, has presented her to suit their own ideas as to who Engels was and what his prejudices may have been; in doing so they have upheld stereotypes about working-class (Irish) women of that era. The treatment of Burns by Engels's female biographers is different to most of the male biographers. Stepanova, for instance, describes the relationship as being on a surer footing, stating that it was only in the company of his Irish wife, Marry [sic] was he able to relax and meet his Communist friends... [Mary was] a devoted and loving woman [who was] a powerful support and comfort to Engels Page27 of 254

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during the dark days' (1958, p. 118). This is in marked contrast to the impression given by Carver, who describes Burns as little more than 'a bit on the side', which he reinforces by neglecting to mention her until mid-way through his, albeit slim, book (1981, p. 35). Yet even here he brings her into the narrative only to comment upon Engels's departure to London to be near Marx and that, with Burns having died in 1863, `her sister Lizzie took her place in Engels's life until 1877, when Engels married her the day before she died [after which] Engels's household was then managed by Lizzie's niece...' (ibid.). Carver creates the impression that Engels treated the Burns sisters, and the niece, as being there only to service him; when one packed up another soon took its place. Even Whitfield, who devoted the most space to Engels's relationships with Mary and Lizzie Burns, also commented of the sisters that `the experience they gained in service would have equipped them for their positions in later years as keepers of the Engels household' (1988, p. 22).

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Illiteracy Engels's biographers have consistently portrayed Mary Burns as illiterate, which constitutes my second major departure in how I characterise her. I came to view this illiteracy as being another easy track followed blindly by each subsequent biographer. It was certainly a cliche too easily attributed to the working-classes during this time. It is ironic, then, that whilst those such as Hunt and Green attribute much credit to Burns for making The Condition of the Working-Classes in England in 1844 a reality, her illiteracy has gone unchallenged, despite there being information on literacy amongst the working-classes throughout the nineteenth century to suggest otherwise. Hilaire Belloc claimed that widespread illiteracy was a myth (cited by Webb, 1950, pp. 333-351). Ironically, Hunt comes close to conceding Burns's literacy when he refers to a quote saying as much. However, two pages later he claims she was not. This is not lost on Birchall: [Hunt] 'makes a rare slip in describing Mary as "illiterate" when two pages earlier he had given proof that she could read and write' (Socialist Review, 2009). The proof to which Birchall refers is the oft-cited letter, from Eleanor Marx to Karl Kautsky, in which Burns is described as '... a very pretty, witty and altogether charming girl... Of course, as she was a Manchester factory girl, quite uneducated, though she could read, and write a little. ..'(cited by Hunt, 2009, p. 98). As a Chartist Burns was an active woman with a strong political consciousness garnered from within a like-minded robust and knowledgehungry community. Chartism was a political organisation that valued autodidacticism for its emancipator potential. It also relied on the written word - from banners to newspapers to petitions. Indeed, it needs to be questioned how uneducated a group of people actually are when the poetry of Shelley and Byron, and the works of those such as Thomas Paine, were often fluently recited and consciously used as tools of political rhetoric. The glimpse of Burns offered by Eleanor Marx certainly cast a new light on her in my mind. It helped me feel that, in giving her a direct voice, in the narratalogical sense, I would be moving towards greater authenticity. I Page 29 of 254

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employed first person in the epistolary section of her story when, from 1845-6, have her writing to her sister whilst Mary Burns is in Brussels. I increasingly came to view Burns's illiteracy as impossible - not least when one considered the great value Engels, himself a life-long learner, placed on literacy and learning. Before I began what would be the third version of Mary Burns, I found myself describing Burns to a friend as illiterate, to which his reply was, 'Well, wouldn't Engels have taught her?' The fact that this was not considered by his biographers reveals much about the relationship they assumed Burns and Engels had. ***

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Section Two Romance The Education Act of 1870, which outlined a framework for the formal education of children aged from five to twelve years of age, came too late for Mary Burns.2 Although it would benefit a later generation it would not remove working-class children from the clutches of the factories. Ethel Carnie was one such beneficiary of the Act, but had to work part-time in a factory from the age of eleven, before leaving school and going full-time from the age of thirteen. Like Burns Carnie was politically active, although Carnie channelled her experiences into writing. She began with poetry and moved into journalism, founding one of the earliest anti-fascist journals, The Clear Light, in addition to producing ten novels. Carnie wrote her last novel in 1931 and died in 1963. Since then her work has been known only to a few, including Dr. Kathleen Bell of De Montfort University who has championed Carnie's work. From these efforts a re-issue of her book, This Slavery, is set to appear in 2011, to include an introduction by Nicola Wilson, who declares that the work is 'a rare novel written by a workingclass woman and marks a key intervention in socialist feminist interwar debate' (Cottontown, 2010). Gustav Klaus (1987) also explored some of Carnie's novels, along with Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai (1993), Pamela Fox (1994), and Mary Ashraf (1979). Christopher Hilliard mentioned Carnie in his 2006 work, in a section examining working-class writers who wrote 'for their own people'. Carnie's heroines are working-class women, struggling to keep body and soul together, whether it is in domestic service, the factory, or the institution of marriage. It is in 'writing for her own people' that perhaps best explains Carnie's neglect, despite the fact that all her works share the concerns that preoccupy many: anti-capitalism, socialism and feminism.

2 Whilst the Act was introduced in 1870, it was not until after 1880 that education of children was made compulsory.

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The reason why Carnie's work has been ignored has much to do with a general disdain for working-class literature, or'writings', as they are commonly referred to. This demarcation between literature and writings invokes the high/low culture debate, undoubtedly accounting for their absence from 'literary' canons. Predisposed to melodrama, and predominantly concerned with the collective, working-class literature loses out to the bourgeois psychological journeys of the individual. Valentine Cunningham represents the view of the academy when he observed that working-class writers fail to avoid: the faults of their sort: triteness and melodrama of plot, sentimental ... class chauvinism about workers, urgent dogmatisms, as well as a tendency to make the workers, especially members of the Communist Party, into men and women of excessive heroism and unbelievably steely militancy (1998, p. 309).

Another reason for Carnie's neglect could be that her most active period was one in which the dominant women's literary tradition was the 'mediocre middlebrow', which continued in full force until the 1950s. Efforts have been made to recover those middle-brow novels considered to have been unjustly forgotten. Subsequently they have been introduced to a contemporary readership, via both feminist and mainstream publishing houses. These efforts have also produced essays aimed at the academic, thereby reaching a new generation of students and readers. Carnie's works have also been blocked out by the critical preoccupation with modernist writers of this era. However, apart from Bell, Klaus et al, there have been efforts to uncover neglected voices such as Carnie's. Since the nineteen seventies there has been an increased call by feminist academics such as Elaine Showalter, Sheila Rowbotham, Angela Ingram, Daphne Patai, and others, to 'rescue' women writers who have not just been 'forgotten', but overlooked, and 'abandoned'; to bring them from the margins of history and introduce them to a wider audience; to give them, the shop girl and the factory worker, a 'voice'. Of course, there are far fewer of these to bring to light. Barriers to working-class women writing include time and resources; those who did write may not have maintained

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personal papers such as diaries and correspondence for future generations to mine. The absence of the working-class woman from mainstream discourses is compounded when we realise that the very term `working-class' has long been constituted as masculine. In addition, male working-class writers such as Walter Greenwood, John Braine, and Alan Sillitoe have, to a certain extent, been subsumed into the mainstream. This masculine constitution of `working-class' is evidenced by the recent launch of an online archive of working-class literature (although the site is called workingclasslit, it refers to them as 'writings'). The archive was conceived by Timothy G. Ashplant, which is comprised of 812 authors; 784 are male, and the remaining twenty-eight are of 'unknown sex'3. Not one woman has been listed. There are small projects that have chosen to focus on women such as Carnie. For instance, Meagan Timney of Dalhousie University is building an online archive of Victorian working-class women poets, comprised of eighteen women.4 Carnie's poetry has garnered some critical focus. Patricia Johnson (2005) hones in on the development of a working-class feminist vision in Carnie's poetry, but her novels are barely touched on. The same approach to Carnie's poetry is also made by Susan Alves (2000). This focus by some on poetry when it comes to working-class literature is understandable, given that it played a vital role in working-class politics. The Northern Star, the main Chartist newspaper, had its own poetry section, to which readers steadily submitted. Unlike our contemporary age of high-tech multi-media, poetry had fewer forms of entertainment with which to contend. Publications such as Punch carried cerebral comic verse, and the Poet Laureate of the era, Tennyson, was a much-sought after celebrity. The areas in which Carnie grew up in Lancashire were also marked by a particularly strong poetic tradition. One possible reason for the adoption of poetry by the working classes as part of their political activities is that its

This is the case as of time of writing: November 2010 The archive can be found at http://wcwp. corpora.ca

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condensed form is more amenable to the powerful polemic than the novel. Poetry also earned Carnie her first way out of the factory. Robert Blatchford, a founder of the Independent Labour Party, read Carnie's earliest verse, which led him to offer her a position on his London-based magazine, The Woman Worker. Carnie took this opportunity to cover issues that affected working-class women. However, she left just seven months later. Roger Smalley suggests that Carnie's departure was due to Blatchford's uneasiness at Carnie's increasingly political and vociferous views (Smalley, 2006, p. 99). Following her return to Lancashire Carnie was replaced by Blatchford's own daughter, Winifred, at which point the title took on a more genteel and impartial tone (ibid. p. 89). The title was also changed to the less leftist and more 'feminine' `Women Folk'. Despite this Carnie continued to have articles published by the title (ibid. p. 89). According to Edmund & Ruth Frow, it was not long after her departure Carnie felt that poetry was no longer meeting her expressive needs. She moved away from the abstract notions of beauty and nature found in her poetry to the concrete, pragmatic prose that she employed in her novels and '... became aware of herself as a woman, consciously and conscientiously writing with women as the pivot of her stories (1987, p. 251). Her increasingly political writings are no surprise given her upbringing. Ethel Carnie was born in 1886 in a small Lancashire mill town. Her father was a member of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF)5,which was established in 1881, more than three decades from the end of Chartism. Key SDF members included Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor. Carnie's father encouraged her political knowledge, and would later take his daughter to political meetings and helped to clothe her instinctive socialist attitudes with scientific understanding (Frow, 1982, p. 251). There was much to kick back against. The years from the collapse of Chartism to the emergence of the SDF were `the golden age of British capitalism, with free trade and individualism the 5 The SDF

was founded by H.M. Hyndman. Friedrich Engels refused to give the party his support. In 1911 it formed with other radical groups to become the British Socialist Party. For more background information on the SDF see Beer, M (2002 edition), A History of British Socialism, London: Routledge or Crick, M (1994), The History of the Social Democratic Federation, Staffs: Keele University Press.

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dominant ideologies' (Crick, 1994, p. 13). Whereas earlier in the century Mary Burns grew up under the collective memory of the Peterloo Massacre, Carnie grew up under the memory of the original `Bloody Sunday', which occurred in November 1887. Testing a ban on all public meetings in London's Trafalgar Square, the SDF and other radical groups, like their Chartist predecessors, formed a demonstration against the coercion in Ireland. Thousands of police and hundreds of troops, including volunteer constables, formed to quell the proceedings. The demonstration, intercepted before reaching Trafalgar Square, resulted in hundreds of injuries (ibid. p. 47). It would seem that whilst these mass demonstrations did not result in revolution, the sense of injustice that the police and military exacerbated through their heavy-handedness, and the heroic mythologizing of the protestors, fuelled awareness of the causes that were of particular importance to the working-classes. Carnie's first novel, Miss Nobody, published in 1913 by Methuen, was written between serving customers at the draper's shop her mother had taken on in Little Harwood (cited by Smalley, 2009, p. 58), and between lectures at Owens College, where she registered as a non-degree student from 1911-191 (ibid. p. 58). This was followed by Helen of Four Gates (1917), The Taming of Nan (1920), The Marriage of Elizabeth (1920), The House That Jill Built (1920), General Belinda (1924), This Slavery (1925), The Quest of the Golden Garter (1927), Barbara Dennison (1929), All On Her Own (1929), and Eagles' Crag (1931). Carnie gave up novel writing in 1931, at the age of 46, an age arguably within a writer's prime. Years after Carnie's death, her daughter, interviewed by Edmund and Ruth Frow, said that her mother stopped writing novels because she was 'worn out'. The familiar northern idiom that Camie's daughter used is telling; it can be unpacked in this literary context to suggest that she may have turned her back on the novel because she felt that she had exhausted herself writing, perhaps with a sense of futility, about women like herself. The very nature of Carnie's subject matter is itself exhausting, albeit lightened somewhat with romance, although even this was obviously not enough for her to continue.

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Novel writing, as Carnie's daughter makes clear, had become a long struggle, which brings us to consider Raymond Williams's observation that: The novel with its quite different narrative forms was virtually impenetrable to working-class writers for three or four generations, and there are still many problems in using the received forms for what is, in the end, very different material...... the forms of working-class consciousness are bound to be different from the literary forms of another class, and it is a long struggle to find new and adequate forms... (Williams, 1987, cited by Beverly, 1992, p. 92, in Smith & Watson, 1992, pp. 91-114). The struggle for an 'adequate form', particularly one that could wed class with gender, may have been responsible for 'wearing' Carnie out. This search is evident in her work, and is the main reason I felt compelled to include Carnie's work for how her'cobbling' together various genres reflects the approach I finally chose to adopt in my own Mary Burns -A Work of Autobiografiction. For instance, her novel Miss Nobody juxtaposes 'urban and pastoral sites, along with realist, proletarian, and "folk" narrative, (as a result) it defies simple categorization' (Fox, 1994, p. 61). This ambiguous categorization can also be seen as another reason for Carnie's neglect. Fox agrees, claiming that her work has been ignored or mishandled by critics otherwise keen to embrace workingclass writers because it defies assumptions about working-class politics and literary practice' (ibid. p. 58). Carnie's dialectical approach - the 'motor' that drives the autobiografictive content - can, I believe, be seen in her wedding of class with gender by appropriating aspects of the New Woman novel with the Chartist novel. This can be seen in her 1924 novel, General Belinda. This is despite the fact that '... the Marxist interpretation of culture did not become widely effective in England until the 'thirties of our own century' (Williams, 1987, p. 655). As well as being a pioneer working-class female writer, Carnie was also ahead of her time in her anti-fascist politics. This is demonstrated in her founding of the journal, The Clear Light. Therefore there is little reason not to believe her being 'ahead of the curve' when it came to Marxist interpretations of culture. Yet, put simply, the dialectical approach is adopted by any writer keen to expose contradictions and intent on providing a story that raises questions and which seeks 'a' truth, in this Page36 of 254

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case about working-class women like Carnie and Burns, and their representation, or lack thereof. Carnie's dialectical approach can also be read in her use of romance, particularly in light of her quote on 'innate cheek' that is included further on, with which she works knowing its contradictions. Her attitude towards the institution of marriage is one that was shared by Engels and, presumably, Burns. It should also be noted that, the mere act of providing interpretations of Carnie's novels also bestows on them the same dignity of theory that has long been afforded to those works considered to be literary, but which it could be argued, only the interpretation of a 'critical industry', serving as a stamp of approval, can provide. The New Woman novel, which I claim Carnie wed with the tradition of the Chartist novel, was preoccupied with middle-class women's need for freedom in the public sphere and from the constraints of domesticity and patriarchy. Instead of this archetypal middle-class 'New Woman' in General Belinda, Carnie nestled the working-class woman into place as a 'General', providing an image of a working-class woman who was not afraid to be herself. Carnie's heroines can be seen as a challenge to mainstream representation of working-class women because they run counter to two long-held images of such women as either the victimised, bedraggled and overly humble who needed to be 'rescued' by middle-class 'missionaries', by novelists such as Dickens and Gaskell, or those 'bigmouths', who were mocked in the mainstream press - both stereotypes that I was anxious to avoid projecting onto Mary Burns. From the early eighteenth century onwards politically aware and active working-class women were often portrayed as harpies and harridans in the cartoons of the day, such as those regularly appearing in Punch magazine, many of which, like Burns, found their voices in the Chartist movement. In providing this space for women 'of her own kind' Carnie challenged the image of the working-class woman as ripe for mockery or condescension, of needing to either be helped or silenced, as well as the idea that the exclusive feminist pioneer was the middleclass woman. The calls from `New Women', particularly on the issue of Page37 of 254

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universal suffrage, were made long before by the likes of Mary Burns and Chartist members of both sexes. In addition, Carnie also subverted 'mainstream' New Woman feminism by claiming the private sphere to be an urgent concern for the working-class woman - the freedom to stay at home and be a mother. Carnie's appropriation of the Chartist novel is a continuation of the workingclass political and literary tradition. Mary Ashraf uses three of Carnie's novels as part of a scheme to show connections between working-class writing from the Chartist period in the 1830s - Mary Burns's era - through to the advanced socialist literature of the early twentieth century, so that she can claim it is part of a historically determined social process (Smalley, 2009, p. 51). Carnie drew on the Chartist novel, particularly its predilection for melodrama. The Chartist novel, writers of which included Ernest Wilson and Thomas Hood, borrowed heavily from the tactics of the increasingly popular magazines, which also contained much romance. This neglect and misreading of the working-class woman and her work, which Carnie exemplifies - and which, as I demonstrated in the first section, was the treatment of Burns by Engels's biographers - has as much to do with the women of the academy as it does the men; working-class feminism clearly did not, and to a significant extent still does not, accord with that of the middle-class woman who now also 'mans' the literary gates and decides what is recovered/'uncovered', and what remains hidden. Similar to the way that, whenever Burns has been mentioned it has been in stereotypical terms, so too Carnie. Whenever Carnie is mentioned in regard to her novels, it is as a romance novelist, (despite the ambiguity of genre mentioned by Fox), which serves as another reason for her neglect, given that romance has long been seen as 'unliterary' and frivolous - and therefore unworthy of rigorous critical treatment. The popularity of romance with workingclass women has also long been ridiculed as little more than a pacifier. Carnie's male contemporaries added to the chorus of disapproval, including the Lancashire School, a group comprised of Arthur Laycock, Fred Plant, Allen

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Clarke, James Haslam, Peter Lee and John Tamlyn. Unlike Carnie these men enjoyed a common outlet and writerly solidarity in which to foster their work and ideas - all without needing to encounter the vagaries of the private publishing house. Instead, the Lancashire School published through Clarke's publication, The Northern Weekly. Paul Salveson observes that 'without this it seems unlikely that the Lancashire School would ever have appeared at all, given its highly political content, and the strong regional thrust, through its use of dialect and depiction of local customs and culture' (Salveson, 1987, pp. 172-202). Fox opens her essay, in which she claims that Carnie used romance as a political tool, with a quote from James Haslam, member of the Lancashire Group, from an article in The Manchester City News (1906): 'Romance, romance, romance', is their monotonous cry. Romance served up in penny batches; romance that depends upon nonsensical scenes, shallow thoughts, spurious philosophy, and unreal life, for its popularity (Fox, 1993, p. 57, in Ingram, A& Patai, D [Eds]). Fox argues that, being a linchpin of the patriarchal system, romance has always been ripe for critique from writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. For working-class women, however, 'beginning in a different place in relation to the convention of romance... it can never be fully available as an "intimate" register of cultural practices' (ibid. p. 59). Desiring the romance script itself, she claims, can be seen as a transgressive act. Working-class women had to be much more pragmatic. This is clear in Burns's case, when she has to resort to prostitution, a move reinforced by Dr Acton's study that explains the transitory nature of prostitution being tied to periods of economic necessity. It can also be seen in my creative work when Engels returns to Manchester in 1845, and Mary dare not fall into romantic dreams that Engels has returned to 'rescue' her. Fox continues this long-running meme of necessity that runs through the history of working-class women, with mothers traditionally telling daughters that 'romance was purely a fantasy with little relevance to their lives and that marriage was primarily an economic relation, rather than a fulfilment of love, to be performed as a perfunctory ritual (if at all) (ibid.).

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In the opening to one of her essays Fox begins by citing Carnie from her days at The Woman Worker, where she pleaded with her fellow women to 'go out and play' (ibid. p. 57) citing Carnie - Woman Worker 14th April 1909). She also cites Carnie from an earlier issue in an article entitled The Factory Slave, in which she shows only too clearly Carnie's alertness to what is considered subversive of the working-classes when she writes: 'Girlhood glides into womanhood, and one falls in love. (Which shows the innate cheek of the working-class, who dare to dream of happiness living from hand to mouth)', (ibid. 3rdMarch 1909). Echoing Fox, who cannot fathom Carnie writing romance for the sake of romance without there being a political message, a resistance to stereotypes, Roger Smalley claims that Carnie used romance to coax women into the more serious political issues included in her stories. It is a common justification of why politically aware writers opted for the romantic `page-turner'. It is appropriate then to turn to the act of reading romance. Janice Radway's study of romance reading breaks no new ground in telling us that romance reading is a form of escape and relaxation (1984). There is no reason to think this was any different in the 1920s. In fact, this was more likely to be the case in a country mourning hundreds of thousands of men who were killed in the First World War, destroying the marriage and family prospects of as many women in the process. However, Radway's study makes apparent that it is not just the content of these novels that provides the escapism, but the actual act of reading. In Carnie's case the reading was straightforward and `pragmatic', which made her novels easier for work-tired women to enter into. This immersion into reading, is also the `utopian private arena in which one is valued for one's gendered self alone' (Fox, p. 24,1993 [Eds. Ingram, Patam, 1993]), which Fox claims that romance provides. Many of the women surveyed by Radway say they received disapproval from husbands and families who would rather the attention accorded to these books be diverted to them instead, implying an emotional absence on the part of the reader. Therefore who has the stronger claim in terms of Carnie's use of Page40 of 254

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romance - Smalley or Fox? And are they not simply on the same sheet - that the romance is itself a transgressive act, one that offered a temporal space of escapism, as well as including political concerns? It cannot be determined whether Carnie's readers were brought to consider issues they would not usually as a result of reading her books. However, it is important also to highlight that those surveyed by Radway seem to be reading for something different than those readers from Carnie's time - the latter set can be seen as reading for escapism from, amongst other things such as the daily grind, as lack of marriage and romance prospects, and the former set - as perhaps did earlier generations - read for escapism from married life and, for working-class women, the daily grind of having to work outside the home. The point that applies to both Radway's romance readers and those of Carnie's is the same escapism. Is it a transgressive act? It is when we consider the fact that it can cause problems in relationships and in the home in that it diverts attention away from the spouse and family. Romance reading can be seen as being both covert and overt transgression. Despite being opposed to marriage as an institution, unlike Burns, Carnie did marry. Whilst working at The Woman Worker, her comments on the issue were, in Smalley's words, 'uniformly hostile...She believed it was an inimical institution which society would be better without' (2006, p. 78). Yet Carnie's treatment of marriage in General Belinda is not hostile, but pragmatic, allowing no room to desire the romance script. The heroine is thirty years old and lives with her parents until her father's death. The next door neighbour wants to marry Belinda, yet she declares that he cannot afford to marry. In doing this Carnie is drawing attention to several issues. Firstly, the inherent feminism that is revealed as the story develops is one that also considers working-class masculism. A man cannot earn enough to be able to marry and raise a family and so they are both financially, emotionally and physically repressed. The daughter of Belinda's employers, Cora Ridding, a New Woman who refers to Belinda by her first name and who mocks her mother's grandiosity, is being coerced into marriage with an old man for financial gain. There is no romance in this either. It is a situation Engels was certainly keen to avoid - particularly with Page41 of 254

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Mary -a relationship, it could be argued, was kept more alive and stimulating because he could not, or would not, bring it into the bourgeois mainstream and thus potentially 'deadening' it through convention. Engels can be seen - in a different way - as yearning for romance more than the women, thus challenging the stereotype so scorned by Haslam et al. It is through both women in General Belinda, Belinda as the working-class domestic servant, and Cora as the New Woman, that Carnie seeks to build a bridge romance can be sought by both, but that, until there is concerted action to change capitalist society romance is little more than an illusion. Mary Burns is portrayed as instinctively knowing this, and being wary of it, particularly as she flees from the room in which she and Engels spent their first night. When we see the female cross-class solidarities between Belinda and Cora in General Belinda, the way Mr. Riddings, ordinarily a seducer of the servants, respects Belinda enough to confide in her a shared class heritage, we are shown the respect one is accorded when there is a strong and unashamed sense of self. Carnie resists the portrayal of helpless victims that feature so strongly in 'slum fiction', often a convention of melodrama. Belinda succeeds in portraying herself as strong, matter-of-fact and mentally and emotionally sharp, all qualities working-class women generally needed to be in order to carry the weight of often difficult lives. Belinda Higgins's father calls her `The General', because she can control and marshal the people about her, albeit limited to, or enjoyed in, the domestic sphere. Belinda Higgins can be seen as a working-class heroine; active, opinionated, assertive. She is a subversive character because she is all of these things whilst employed in domestic service. Carnie's particular use of melodrama warrants further attention, particularly in the way her use of it in General Belinda deviates from the way that it was employed by Chartist writers, who adopted 'melodrama over realism (because it was) more expressive of their lives and aspirations (Vicinus, 1982, p. 9,1982 in Klaus [Ed.], 1983 pp. 7-25).

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The use of melodrama suited the working-class author and reader because It:

seemed like a psychologically accurate reflection of working-class life. Melodrama's character typing, with the clear struggle between good and evil, was attractive at a time when traditional values were being undermined; moreover, it provided a vehicle for the full expression of sentiment and emotion, without concern for character motivation or development. Melodrama appeals to those who feel that they have no control over their lives, but are prey to larger social forces (ibid.). The development of melodramatic Chartist fiction coincided with the proliferation of women's magazines, which carried articles on fashion and stories of romance. By portraying a feminine ideal that was out of reach, these magazines reflected the unfulfilled desires of many working-class women, something which Carolyn Steadman would later be concerned with in Landscape fora Good Woman (Virago, 1986). With this distinctive mix of melodrama and New Woman, without betraying the particular needs of the working-class woman whose aspirations are more towards the private as opposed to the public sphere, it can be seen that, far from being a two-dimensional writer that the comments of Cunningham would suggest, Carnie is much more complex than originally treated. In fact, in addition to claiming that Carnie approached her literature dialectically, I also assert that her work is better described as autobiografiction. It was the result of her striving for a form that began with the poetry that served as her way to a journalistic voice, leading into the essay form of The Clear Light, and coalesced and tried to find expression throughout her books. I identified with Carnie's quest for a suitable form, as I scrabbled from one version of Mary Burns to the next - attempting to seamlessly integrate research into a more recognisable historic novel of Burns; feeling all portrayals of overt romance between Burns and Engels to be contrived and false because of what would have been Mary's caution of it, just as Carnie instilled into her characters, before moving onto the autobiografictive mode that would allow me to write across the genres whilst maintaining my own integrity as the creator and conveyor. **

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Section three Revelation Autobiografiction is a term that was coined by Stephen Reynolds in a paper of the same name in 1906, before he went on to write A Poor Man's House (1911). Reynolds was specifically interested in working-class life, and A Poor Man's House, written according to his defining principles of autobiografiction, became popular with labour historians (Saunders, 2008, pp. 13-15). The few serious mentions of this term can be located in the past decade. In 2001 the term was used by Charles Swann in relation to the problems of autobiographical fictions and fictional autobiographies (2001, Modern Language Review), characteristic of what are widely taken to be the first novels, particularly those by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. In 2003 the term was used as the title for a conference, held at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on lifewriting6. It was from this conference that Max Saunders, like Reynolds, wrote a paper of the same name, although Saunders therein argued for a revision of Modernism based on its relationship with autobiography (TLS, 3rd October 2008, pp. 13-15). My use of this portmanteau term is primarily a literal one; it describes most clearly the genres that comprise Mary Burns: autobiography, biography, fiction ergo autobiografiction. However, there are other reasons why I felt compelled to use the term, and deploy it, with regards to both the form and content of Mary Burns. I shall expand on these reasons as I unpack Reynolds's own definition. A factor in my adoption of autobiografiction on a strategic level, or as a guiding framework, was the obvious affinity with Reynolds's representation of working-class lives. Mary Burns could not have been written in any good faith (to use the existentialist term) within one homogenous and bourgeois form, or genre, that seeks to convey the illusion of seamlessness - that, quite literally,

6 Autobiografictions - Conference hosted by the British Comparative Literature Association and the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on 8-10 September 2003. The conference addressed the intersections between fictional and autobiographical writing.

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hides the work or suspends disbelief, in any case presents it as coherent and whole, which the novel has overwhelmingly sought to achieve from its inception. The novel, linked with the rise of capitalism, can be seen as analogous with the very state of the workers as reported by Engels in his Conditions of the Working-Classes in England in 1844. He is reproachful of those town planners and industrialists who designed Manchester so that the living and employment conditions of the workers were kept out of sight of those travelling in from the suburbs. The true source and seams of the work, to use a suitable textile reference, were hidden behind facades designed to tell boastful and nationally progressive stories. Nowhere is this more true than in the construction of the Watts Warehouse, the Britannia Hotel since 1982. A distinctive landmark on Portland Street in Manchester city centre, the sandstone building has a tremendous facade. The warehouse was ambitiously designed in an eclectic palazzo style, yet inside there existed a sweatshop of misery for thousands who spent long days churning out cotton, the use of which was to make dresses and fine outfits to present yet more of this misleading and boastful facade that added to the dubious narrative of national prosperity. My intention in writing what evolved into the third version of Mary Burns, then, was to foreground the work in form and content. It was also an act of refusing to comply with discrete genres. I did this by not remaining within one or even two genres; not specifying which content is auto/biography or fiction; nor, more interestingly, stating which content is a melding of the three. This ties in with Reynolds's own definition of autobiografiction as connoting: 'shortly a minor literary form... of a nature at once very indefinite and very definite', (1906, p. 28). (My emphasis. ) Jacques Derrida refers to genre as laying down a set of rules or conventions. "Do," "Do not" says "genre" (The Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1980, pp. 55-81). One of the conventions in historical fiction is that the research/factual foundation of the novel be integrated seamlessly, so as not to hinder the story and draw attention to the `stitch marks', to provide the prime conditions by which the reader can 'suspend disbelief. In rejecting the 'illusion' of homogeneity that is needed to present the reader with a 'credible' work in which the research and

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the author herself do not get in the way, I then had to present the work as a story that holds author-ity, and the roots that bestow this authority by both showing and implying the links between Mary Burns and Ula Tully. Going against the grain of illusion that is so bound up with the novel was a conscious act aimed at achieving overt leftist political affiliation and integrity, by the obvious revelation of these seams of fact/research by the simple inclusion of newspaper extracts and actual reports, in addition to the very simple tactic of stating, in the work's full title, that it is one of autobiografiction - and eschewing the novel branding. Of course, it could be argued that the novel is roomy enough to hold the insertion of factual reports, biography, and autobiography without losing its marketable name, such as Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor, but, judging it to be predominantly a work of non-fiction, I found that I could not honestly use the term. The biography element of my work, the reader may assume, is straightforward, for this belongs to Mary Burns's narrative. But to assume even this much would be erroneous. There are no clear boundaries - Mary Burns c'est moi - and me, her. Another way in which I strove to avoid illusion was by an, at times, jagged pace that is more reflective of time and how the writer remembers episodes, such as Ula's wait behind a wall for her Mother to appear, which reminded her of the lengthy waits outside pubs during her childhood. The purpose of the inclusion of the factual extracts can be seen as a voiceenabling device; a way of including the voice of many others hitherto denied it, as the extracts inserted imply the struggles and barriers to having an actual voice in literature, as Carnie experienced, and discussed in the previous section. In this way the employment of these extracts also widens the network of cross-generational solidarity between the narratives of Mary Burns and Ula Tully and thereby recreates it as a collective endeavour, as opposed to the individualistic one that is the hallmark of the novel. Reynolds's use of the term was also not limited to the discrete genres that the term is comprised of. He also defined autobiografiction in relation to a quest for the 'inner life', which Saunders says 'led to an increasing sense of generic

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instability' (2009, p. 1042). This quest, as used in connection within a workingclass consciousness, can be seen as innovative, for the inner life has long been the domain of the middle-classes; introspection is afforded to those with a greater framework of intellectual and cultural references, and the time with which to engage in a wider variety of discourses. I also approached the final version of Mary Burns with an understanding that Liz Stanley's 'kaleidoscope' approach needed to be adopted in my work, knowing that 'the' truth could underpin the work only if the differing configurations of the author's life were acknowledged, in terms of gender, race, class, and age (Stanley, 1995). The inclusion of Ula Tully as an alter-ego was one of the ways in which these influential conditioning factors could be implied and/or revealed. The use of an alter-ego written in the third person provided me with the distance I felt I needed in order to achieve a balance of the leftist tendencies, for Mary Burns is (leftist) tendentious, an earlier type of which was so scorned by critics such as Valentine Cunningham. I wanted to avoid a personal subjectivity that could so easily have overshadowed Mary's Story. This is a charge that could be levelled at works with similar conceits, such as The Lost Child, by Julie Myerson, in which she attempts some distance in the memoir side by referring to her son as 'the boy', whilst also including the story of Mary Yelloly, a nineteenth century artist and writer. Yelloly's part of the narrative was wholly overshadowed by the media furore that followed the controversial identification of her son. Mary Burns is a story of fathers and daughters and strained relationships, but, like many tendentious works, the issue of work is its core theme. I sought to contrast the nobility of work, as exemplified in Thomas Tully and so distinctly lacking in Michael Burns, with seeking a greater freedom to introspect and question, as demonstrated by Mary and Ula. In The Ethics of Working-Class Autobiography, Julie Bindinger states that 'it might be said that all autobiography recounts some kind of transformation in the author... ' I would go so far as to say that, in my own case, the inquiry of writing of auto/biografiction has resulted in `some kind of transformation' in the author, or any author of working-class origins because this inquiry forces one to

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confront the politics and limitations of forms, and how these can be seen as analogous as one's place or role in society and its cultures. It is telling, then, that Bindinger refers to a particular kind of transformation: one's crossing of class, cultural, and social boundaries; one's attainment of higher education than one's parents had; one's entry into a life that includes writing and abstract, analytical thinking; and the processes of self-invention and re-invention that one has undergone throughout this movement... (2006, p. 1). I recognised that, should I ever have written a 'straight' first-person autobiography, and turned myself into the subject of my own scrutiny along a traditional chronological/linear narrative, I would have only patronised myself; placing myself in a tradition, a genre, that has, of late, become popular in recounting the (working-class) struggle to accomplish, to 'get on' or 'get into' or 'get out of. In addition, I did not want to replicate the individualism bound with conventional the first person autobiography. It in this regard that Pamela Fox refers to the 'pressures of a proletarian master narrative', and yet those pressures are also to do with trying to find compatibility in a form that, as already mentioned, grew up with the rise of the bourgeois. In short, I did not want to pigeon-hole myself or my life in what I felt would be an inauthentic and constraining and unbearingly subjectivist way. Saunders added to autobiografiction's description by stating that its '... narratives are not simply reducible to the facts of one's formal biography or autobiography' (p. 1057). I recognised that my life to date amounted to more than the mere facts; biography and fiction became essential. I also felt the need, as a working-class female writer, to consciously resist constraints by straddling many genres and forms within fact and fiction, in order to represent a working-class life and how it also continues an, albeit tenuous, conversation with the more politicised working-classes of previous generations. In this way I was also able to bypass the anxiety of influence of other novelists that may also have served to 'wear out' Ethel Carnie. I also experienced an instinctual aversion in trying to conform to the feminist academic tradition, so bound up as it has been with the middle-class woman and her history and needs. For instance, whilst I studied for a BA in English

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Literature, modules on 'women's writing' presented the lives of middle-class women's issues as the norm. Yet I did not even recognise them as my norm, never mind that of my grandmothers', who did not have the luxury of time and space needed to 'play out' the patriarchal constraints that were said to give rise to neuroses such as hysteria. Working-class women had also long since 'enjoyed' the 'luxury' of the right to work, which also refers to the much-used term within working-class politics. In honouring class-based needs then, a novelised biography of Mary Burns could have been written in a style that adhered to either Lukacs's social realism or Brecht's avant-garde. To do so would, as already mentioned, have proved unappealing, yet also needlessly conformist to existing accepted approaches, albeit leftist. This is particularly true of social realism, which, whilst different in its various gradations from run-of-the-mill to gritty to dirty realism8, differs little to the 'mainstream middle-class literature'. In short, it offers no new way of seeing. In this regard it could be seen a contrary approach to want to aim for defamiliarisation, as espoused by the Formalists who judge a work on its literary devices and techniques only, and pay no regard to the author or the political context that has proved so vital for Marxists. On the other hand the avant-garde would only have served to alienate itself from those readers who do not fancy themselves as being able to work out some writerly puzzle, hence the contradictions and tensions. The mixing of discourses and genres into the production of 'autobiografiction' is a 'counterhegemonic' act. The answer to those who would ask 'why not imagine her (Burns') story, then just write it?', would be that, to have done so would have operating from bad faith, false consciousness, or little (class) consciousness at all. The working-class woman writer cannot simply and unquestioningly put on the dress of the middle-class woman writer; in order to

been

be true to herself she has to wear it inside out; to show the seams that ' The term 'right-to-work' has re-appeared in Leftist protest discourses since the Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition government came into power in May 2010. 8 Dirty realism refers to narrative that is stripped down to its fundamental features; derived from minimalism, the aim is economy with words and focus on surface description. It originated in North America in the 1970s and 1980s.

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She can best achieve this by writing within autobiografiction, and thus build a tradition that not only honours herself and her descendants, but those of previous generations who could find no voice, and demonstrate the work.

with who she can extend solidarity, and convey the importance of repeating history in our present societies. Resistance Pamela Fox, in 'contesting theories of social and cultural reproduction developed by Louis Althusser, Pierre Bourdieu, Samuel Bowles, and others,' instead chose 'a body of work' arguing 'for the existence of a dynamic and relatively autonomous working-class culture which always retains the capacity to resist dominant ideologies' (1994, p. 103). I concluded in the previous section that this can be found in autobiografiction. It is notable that this mixing of discourses has recently become more prominent. At the time of writing, the most recent 'biographical novel' that comes to mind is the aforementioned O'Connor's Ghost Light, which revolves around the love-affair of the ruling class Anglo-Irish playwright John Millington Synge and the working-class actress Molly Allgood. There are many ways in which Synge and Allgood resemble those differences between Burns and Engels. 'Separated by class, religion... their relationship is severely disapproved of by their families' (Hopper, 2010, p. 20). O'Connor switches between past and present, and the descriptions of Molly are in second-person, intimate, free indirect style, 'while Synge is remembered more distantly, in the third person...'(ibid. ) There is also the stereotype of the working-class female at play as Molly is described as both 'feisty' and 'resilient'. O'Connor has woven 'a wide range of discourses into the fabric of his text: ballads, limericks, fragments of plays, films, guidebooks, graffiti, newspaper clippings, book inscriptions and epitaphs' (ibid.). Ghost Light also achieves a strong sense of place - O'Connor grew up in the same areas of Dublin as Allgood - which complements the sense of the past, in the same way I have attempted in Mary Bums. The insertion of extracts from newspapers and reports into Mary Bums attempts to evade hegemony. It has not been written within the tradition characteristic of capitalism - where cultural production and 'creativity'

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bows to the instant entertainment needs of a society whose escape is sought through cliche (of form or content); the cliche being the form that is most recognisable, manageable, and comforting to the average middle-class reader. The inserted extracts serve many purposes, not least the seams of the work itself; how it is comprised, of where inspiration and information was sought and gleaned, instead of simply integrating it into the work as though it came into being like a five-year-old just emerged from the womb. However, as some critics were quick to note, Ghost Light raises questions to do with the practice and ethics of novelising the life of Allgood, which has been fictionalised in many important respects. O'Connor's representation of Allgood, it can easily be argued, whilst 'rescuing her from the shadows' of Synge, also misrepresents her by providing the reader with a stereotype, and in so doing, O'Connor can be accused of using her and succeeding only in keeping the positive spotlight on the sickly sacrificial Synge. This issue of misrepresentation, surely has no place in a work of fiction? But can the work still be called 'fiction' if the protagonist is based on a real figure? Mary Burns certainly could not, as should by now be clear. Compared to Allgood the biggest difference was that there was no significant information or records that could assist me in the construction of Burns in the same way as O'Connor could have achieved for Allgood. It was only in the third and final draft of Mary Burns that Ula Tully became a character. As previously stated, her purpose was to present a different aspect of the author's self in a sufficiently distanced way. This initial decision came about when I realised that writing Burns's story was not just an attempt to fit into the feminist academic tradition that sought out overlooked women and gave them a voice. I was also using Mary to say something about myself, my life and social/political context in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Ula Tully's story runs alternately, but forward, yet in the past tense to indicate political apathy; progressing chronologically yet being stuck in the past. Mary Burns's story is told going backwards - to her childhood - but in present tense, indicating that the working-class movement then seemed more progressive and engaged - certainly more vital - than it is today.

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Tully's memories of growing up bubble to the surface as she returns to Manchester from London in order to help her father during the illness that leads to his death. Tully grapples with the need to find, or accept, her working-class heritage as identity through her writing, to find, as Reynolds says, a 'spiritual experience' that will serve to transform her. Like Burns's, Tully's relationship with her father is strained, and her mother has a fleeting presence in her story. Her father, Thomas Tully, evades real engagement with his daughter because she represents a threat to his perspective. It is clear that he has been brought up during a time, and in a milieu, when working-class women did not simply give up 'good little jobs' as chambermaids in fancy hotels, as his daughter had, to go to university and write. For Thomas Tully to try and understand his daughter's needs it would require a revision of how he views himself, and a confrontation with the way he has lived his life - of having spent the best part of thirty years as a labourer with little reward. Clearly, to do so would prove too painful and, some would argue, unnecessary at this point in his life. It is also clear that Thomas Tully has little connection with the 'established' Irish culture. This is apparent in the scene when his daughter visits him in the pub, upon whose walls are mounted old, dusty photographs of the likes of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, et al. Ula Tully points to each of them, naming them, in a bid to connect to her father through 'his' culture, yet she comes away only with a sense of his cultural bankruptcy or disconnection. Thomas Tully has led the life he was expected to live - that of the proverbial cart-horse, in a similar way that Belinda is treated in Carnie's General Belinda. He toed the line, worked hard every day, and, as a result, lacked a rewarding inner life. He would also die much younger than his middle-class counterparts as a result. However, the employment of the autobiografictional mode, which shows Ula Tully's recognition of the issues that motivated her to writing about Mary Burns, is an act of loyalty to class issues as well as acknowledgement of the politics of form. ***

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Bibliography

Acton, W (1972), Prostitution Considered in its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects in London and Other Large Cities and Garrison Towns, with Proposals for the Control and Prevention of its Attendant Evils. London: Cassette. Print. Alves, S (2000), Whilst working at my frame: The Poetic Production of Ethel Carrie. Victorian Poetry, Volume 38, Number 1, Spring 2000, pp. 77-93. Article. Belchem, J (1985), English Working-Class Radicalism and the Irish 1815-1850, in Gilley, S& Swift, R (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City, London: Croom Helm. Print. Bennett, T et al, (2009), Culture, Class, Distinction, Abingdon: Routledge. Print. Beverly, J (1992), The Margin at the Centre: On Testimoni (Testimonial Narrative), pp. 91-115, in Smith, S, & Watson, J (1992), De/colonizing the subject: the politics of gender in women's autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Print. Bidinger, E (2006), The Ethics of Working Class Autobiography: Representation of Family by Four American Authors, Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Co, Inc. Print. Birchall, 1(2009), Review of The Frock-Coated Communist, The Socialist Review. Accessed: 27th May 2010. . Web. Briggs, A (1998), Chartism, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. Print.

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Brown, R (1998), Chartism, Cambridge Perspectives in History, Cambridge: CUP. Print. Burnett Archive Index: Brunel University http://www.brunel.ac. uk/services/library/research/special-collections/burnettarchive-of-working-class-autobiographies Web. Carnie, E (1917), Helen of Four Gates - London: Herbert Jenkins. Print. Carnie, E (1924), General Belinda - London: Herbert Jenkins. Print. Carver, T (1981), Engels, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Chartists - http://www.chartists. net/Walker-and-Inge.htm - date accessed 27 February 2010. Web. Chase, M (2007), Chartism -A New History, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Print. Coates, ZK (1945), The Life and Teachings of Friedrich Engels, London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. Print. Crompton, R (2008), Class and Stratification, 3rd ed., Cambridge: Polity Press. Print. Cunningham, V (1988), British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Davies, T (1984), Unfinished Business: Realism and Working-Class Writing, in Hawthorn, J, The British Working Class Novel in the Twentieth-Century (pp. 125-136). Print.

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Donnell, A, & Polkey, P (2000), Representing Lives: Women and auto/biography. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Print. Dvorak, M (2001), Autobiografction: Strategies of (Self) Representation, Commonwealth Essays and Studies, Vol. 24, no.1, pp. 91-101, Autumn 2001. Article. Dyos, H.J, & Woolf, M (Eds. ) (1973), Literary Voices of an Industrial Town: Manchester, 1810-1870, in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul), II, pp. 739-761. Engels, F (1969), The Condition of the Working-class in England in 1844, Panther Books edition., London: Grafton Books. Print. Fox, P (1994), Class Fictions - Shame and Resistance in the British WorkingClass Novel 1890-1945, London: Duke University Press. Print. Frow, E&R (1989), Political Women 1800-1850, London: Pluto Press. Print. Frow, E&R (1995), Frederick Engels in Manchester and `The Condition of the Working Class in England' in 1844, Manchester: Working Class Movement Library. Print. Green, J (2008), A Revolutionary Life: Biography of Friedrich Engels, London: Artery Publications. Print. Greenslade, L (1992), White Skins, white masks: psychological distress among the Irish in Britain, O'Sullivan, P (ed.) The Irish world wide, Vol 2: the Irish in the new communities Leicester: Leicester University Press. Print.

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Greenslade, L (1997), Colonialism, Health and Identity Among Irish Immigrants in Britain in MacLaughlin, J, Location and Dislocation in Contemporary Irish Society: Emigration and Irish Identities, Cork: Cork University Press. Print. Gudmundsdottir, G (2003), Borderlines: Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodem Life Writing, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Print. Hampton, C (Ed.) (1984), A Radical Reader- The Struggle for Change in England, Nottingham: Russell Press Ltd. Print. Hawthorn, J (1984), The British Working-Class Novel in the Twentieth Century, London: Edward Arnold. Print. Henderson, W.O. (1976), The Life of Friedrich Engels, Frank Cass: London. Print. Hetata, S (2003), The Self and Autobiography, PMLA, Vol. 118, No. 1. Special Topic: America: The idea, the Literature (Jan 2003), pp. 123 -125. Article. Hopper, (2010), Review of Ghost Light, 3rd June, 2010, Times Literary Supplement, p.20. Print. Hunley, DJ (1991), The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels -A Reinterpretation, New Haven: Yale University Press. Print. Hunt, T (2009), The Guardian, Tristram Hunt on Friedrich Engels -A Strangely Enlightened Sexist - 29thApril 2009 - date accessed 30thApril 2009. fhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/29/friedrich-engels-E)rostitutionsuffrage?INTCMP=SRCHI. Web. Hunt, T (2009), The Frock Coated Communist - The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, London: Penguin. Print.

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Ingram, A& Patai, D (1993), Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals - British Women Writers 1889 - 1939, London: The University of North Carolina Press. Print. Jameson, F (1972), Marxism and Form: Twentieth-century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press. Print. Johnson, P (2005), Finding Her Voice(s): The Development of a Working-Class Feminist Vision in Ethel Carnie's Poetry in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Fall, 2005), pp. 297-316. Article. King, S, & Timmins, G (2001), Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society 1700-1850, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Print. Klaus, G (Ed) (1987), The Rise of Socialist Fiction 1880-1914, Sussex: The Harvester Press. Print. Lanser Sniader, S (1992), Fictions of Authority - Women Writers and Narrative Voice, London: Cornell University Press. Print. Ledger, S (2002), Chartist Aesthetics in the Mid Nineteenth Century: Ernest Jones, a Novelist of the People, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jun., 2002), pp. 31-63, California: University of California Press. Electronic. Lester, P (2004), Kathleen Dayus and Working-Class Women's Writing, West Midlands: Protean Publishers. Print. Lloyd-Jones, R, & Lewis, M.J. (1988), Manchester and the Age of the Factory: The Business Structure of "Cottonopolis"in the Industrial Revolution, London: Routledge

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Lojek, H (2003), Contexts for Frank McGuinness's Drama, Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Print. Marcus, S (1974), Engels, Manchester and the Working Class, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Print. Mather, FC (1980), (Ed) Chartism and Society - An Anthology of Documents, London: Bell & Hyman. Print. Mayer, G (1936), Friedrich Engels, A Biography, London: Chapman and Hall Ltd. Print. McLellan, D (1977), Engels, Sussex: Harvester Press. Print. Messinger, G.S. (1985), Manchester in the Victorian Age - The Half Known City, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Print. Mukharjee, S (1998), Friedrich Engels: His Thoughts and Works, India: Deep & Deep Publications. Print. Nield, K (Ed) (1973), Prostitution in the Victorian Age - Debates on the Issue From 19th Century Critical Journals, Hants: Gregg International Publishers Ltd. Print. Parkinson-Bailey, JJ (2000), Manchester: An Architectural History, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Print. Pickering, P.A. (1995), Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Print.

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Plotz, J (2000), Crowd Power.,Chartism, Carlyle, and the Victorian Public Sphere, Representations, No. 70 (Spring, 2000), pp. 87-114, University of California Press. Electronic. Raddatz, J (Ed) (1981), The Marx-Engels Correspondence - The Personal Letters 1844- 1877 London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Print. Radway, J (1984), Reading the Romance, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Print. Reynolds, S (1906), Autobiografiction, Speaker, new series, 15, no. 366 (6 October 1906), pp. 28 - 30. Transcribed by Saunders, M (2009). Published by King's College London. Date accessed: 1 January, 2012. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ip/maxsaunders/ABF/Reynoldstext. htm Web. Rose, J (2001), The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, London: Yale University Press. Print. Rowbotham, S (1997), Hidden From History - 300 years of women's oppression and the fight against it. London: Viking. Print. Royle, E (1996), Chartism Seminar Studies in History, Harlow: Longman. Print. Salveson, P (1987), pp.172-202, Allen Clarke and the Lancashire School of working-class novelists, in Klaus, G, The Rise of Socialist Fiction 1880-1914, Sussex: The Harvester Press. Print. Saunders, M (2009), Autobiografiction - Experimental Life Writing from the Turn of the Century to Modernism, Literature Compass, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 1041-1059, Sep 2009. Article.

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Schwarzkopf, J (1991), Women in the Chartist Movement, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Print. Smith, S (1990), Self, Subject, and Resistance: Marginalities and TwentiethCentury Autobiographical Practice, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 9, No.1, Women Writing Autobiography (Spring 1990) pp.11-24 Article. . Smith, S (1993), Who's TalkinglWho's Talking Back? The Subject of Personal Narrative, from Signs, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Winter 1993), pp. 392-407). Article. Sommer, KD, (ed.) (1970), Georg Weerth, Poesiealbum 37, Berlin: Neues Leben. Print. Spacks, Meyer, P (1976), The Female Imagination -A literary and psychological investigation of women's writing, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Print. Stanley, L (1995), The Auto/Biographical 1: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Autobiography, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Print. Steedman, C (1992), Past Tenses - Essays on writing, autobiography and history, London: Rivers Oram Press. Print. Steinberg, M.W. (1999), Fighting Words - Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England, Cornell University Press, London. Print. Stepanova, Y (1958), Frederick Engels, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Print. Swann, C (2001), Autobiografiction': Problems with autobiographical fictions and fictional autobiographies. Mark Rutherford's Autobiography and

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Deliverance, and others, Modern Language Review, Vol. 96, No. 1, p. 17: 2001. Article. Swift, R& Gilley, S (Eds) (1985), The Irish in the Victorian City, London: Croom Helm. Print. Swift, R (2000), Behaving Badly? Irish Migrants and Crime in the Victorian City - University of Chester Inaugural and Professorial Lectures - Delivered at Chester College of Higher Education 23 November 2000, Chester: Chester University Press Taylor (1983), Eve and the New Jerusalem - Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century, Virago, London. Print. Tholfsen, T (1976), Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England, London: Croom Helm. Print. Thompson, D (1976), Women and Nineteenth Century Radical Politics: A Lost Dimension, in The Rights and Wrongs of Woman, eds. Mitchell, J, & Oakley, A, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Print. Thompson, E.P. (1991), The Making of the English Working Class, London: Penguin Books. Print. Torr, D (General editor) (1948), From Cobbett to The Chartists, History in the Making series, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Print. Walkowitz, J (1980), Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State, Cambridge: CUP. Print. Ward, JT (1970), Popular Movements c1830-1850 - Problems in Focus series, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Print.

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Watkins, S (2001), Twentieth-century women novelists - feminist theory into practice, Hampshire: Palgrave. Print. Webb, R.K. (1950), Working Class Readers in Early Victorian England, The English Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 256 (Jul., 1950), pp. 333-351. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Electronic. Werley, J. M (1973), The Irish in Manchester 1832-49 - Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 18, No. 71 (Mar., 1973), pp. 345-358 Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd. Electronic. Whitfield, R (1988), Frederick Engels in Manchester - The Search for a Shadow, Salford: Working Class Movement Library. Print. Wilson, E (1940,2009), To the Finland Station, New York: NYRB Classics. Print.

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Mary Burns -A work of autobiografiction By Belinda Webb

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent. Carl Jung

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. Albert Camus

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Ula Tully inched her way through the two-way filing of passengers, painstakingly traversing the platform. She dropped her holdall for a moment to push the fallen shoulder bag further onto her shoulder, forcing those behind to walk around her as the obstacle she had become. It was then that she saw Erin waiting by the gates. Ula picked up her piece of luggage thinking, as she approached, that her younger sister looked fragile. Erin held tightly onto a square brown leather bag that hung diagonally across her body. As soon as she saw Ula she brightened, raising her eyebrows with a smile, her grasp on the bag loosening. Erin had moved back to Manchester three years ago. The day she arrived she called Ula in London and cried down the phone for the first five minutes, unable to overcome herself as the sobs bubbled up. Their parents had met Erin on the platform. Simply recalling the shame of it rendered her speechless. Erin confessed to Ula that she had walked straight past the grimy couple, their Mum in stained jeans and dirty slippers, her hair a three-tone grey, auburn and brown mess, their Dad looking like a tinker old before his time, in a ragged jacket that shouted his resignation from life. The shame that Erin wept over had become so etched in Ula's mind that she felt as if she had been there herself that day, seen them, felt the weight of it. Ula's heart had ached for her sister, their parents, and for herself. And now Ula acknowledged to herself that not only did she feel the stubborn stain that was always associated with her native city, but projected it onto her sister too. The self disgust was always hard to shake off, no matter how she reasoned with herself. She believed that people could see those roots, tenacious as weeds, and that they judged her on it the way she judged herself; a sly wordless discrimination. "You look well," Erin said. "So do you," Ula replied. Ula had forgotten how quickly her sister walked, just like their Mum, but within a few steps had also fallen into the same brisk pace. She had to watch her step

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as the kerb in places had crumbled, over-sized lumps of concrete littering the side of the road. By the two run-down shops, an off-license and a grocery store, in the middle of a cluster of identical mid-brown brick houses, stood a 26-storey block of flats. Residents were seldom seen entering or leaving and the main door, covered in squares of studded metal, was tagged in graffiti. Ula remarked on how quiet it all was but they both knew that the area housed drug addicts whose presence could be more keenly felt in the darker hours. Zombies, Ula thought. They continued past the park. Once the area's main cemetery it anonymously covered the bones of nineteenth century industrialists and their families. In between two large squares of unkempt grass that hosted a constant littering of dog-shit was a pair of hard courts. "The Chinese are using them.., don't know why they were ever put there... " Erin said. "The Chinese?" "No! We know why they're here - just like all immigrants, escaping something I mean the tennis courts. As if us lot were going to ever book in for early morning tennis matches before going to fix the roads and clean the hospitals." The sisters laughed. They both knew they weren't tennis courts, just concrete courts with basketball hoops and the ground markings, but it would have spoiled the story that served to differentiate the culture between the town planners and themselves. Ula looked up at the shabby maisonettes that faced the park -a Chinese man looked down from his third floor balcony, a cup in his hand, watching them as they looked up at him.

"They do Tai Chi in there..." Erin said. "Oh. So it's not sapped their energy just yet then, give it a year," Ula replied. She saw the front door of their family home in the distance and her stomach flipped. "I was sick on the train," she said. "Oh my god, were you?" "Yeah, travel sickness..."

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"Thought you looked pale," Erin said. Ula turned to look at her sister as they maintained their pace. "You said I looked well..." "You know what I mean... " Erin replied, not looking at her. Ula wasn't sure that she did.

Erin grabbed the handle and pushed down so hard to swing the door inwards that it hit the under stairs cupboard door behind it. Ula took a deep breath. The familiar smell wafted out: fried bacon, cats, and layers of disinfectant and cheap air-freshener that failed to mask them. And the thick black newly-laid tar of the roads. Ula was still certain that she could detect the roads on all bank notes, even though she reminded herself that it was because she had associated it with the pound notes her Dad had given her for spends from tar-splattered hands each Friday evening; money that had been anxiously removed from brown wage packets and carefully counted.

Erin stood in the narrow doorway of the living room, beckoning her sister to enter. Ula allowed the holdall to drop to the floor of the uncarpeted hallway and cautiously followed her in. Their Dad had just risen from his seat -a crimson armchair that he'd dragged home from a nearby skip, puzzled at what other

people considered junk.

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It was only later that Ula chided herself on putting her hand over her mouth like that. Her Dad immediately sat back down and lifted his hand to his forehead as if that was all it would take to hide his shame-shot ravaged self. He remained silent for a moment, frozen. "Well... he's not well is he...?" Erin said in defence. Ula felt a surge of anger and glared at Erin, silently charging her with withholding the full truth. She wanted to shout, `Just what the fucking hell has been going on?' and shout it hard enough to transport herself into a space in which she only cared that she was heard, and to be frightening enough to wake them from the slumber of denial. Erin looked away and scuttled into the kitchen. Ula urged herself to understand the resignation that her Dad's thin, fragile self embodied. She found it both pitiable and infuriating. Where was the hottempered warrior who had once thought nothing of kicking in a television screen at the sight of Margaret Thatcher, or of calling the Queen a dirty old hooer and her family a bunch of black and tan good-for-nothings? That part of him might have mellowed over the years, but Ula was sure he had to reclaim it if he was to recover. She sat down and tried to swallow the ball of hurt that was rapidly growing in her throat, aching, until the tears ran down her cheeks, which she quickly wiped away with each hand. She peered at him, his gaunt face in profile as he stared up at the window. A legion of red sores had erupted on his face, like the mini volcanoes once characteristic of his moods; his thin arms that could have been wrapped three times around with the dirty sleeves of his tatty jumper that had been repeatedly caught on the same protruding nail that, somewhere, needed to be located and hammered back in. "I'm a mess, aren't I?" he said, without looking up. His voice was gentler, more redolent of the West Coast of Ireland that he had sprung from but which he had left before he could vote.

"I didn'tthink it was this bad."

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"Arragh, it's all the tablets they're giving me, so `tis, feckin' steroids and all sorts." He ran his hands over his face before quickly pressing one of the buttons on the electric two-bar fire with its plastic coal cover that was meant to be lit up from two orange bulbs underneath. "They've got me on ten different tablets a day now, so they have..." He sat back and stared at the television, on low. "Have they not said when you'll improve or what, is there no plan or programme or special diet or...? " "Arragh, sure, I'm sick of asking them... what can they do?" he asked. He leaned forward again, this time pressing the switch to bring on one bar of the fire. He held his hands above it, waiting to feel the heat. His neck was half covered in bristle, half razor-rashed. He was losing his hair. Ula's anger began to dissipate and sadness dominated the heavy silence that followed. "How long did it take you on the train?" he asked after a few minutes. "Two and a half hours," Ula replied, looking up at the leaden sky through the windows. "She was sick on the train," Erin added in a tone that seemed to collude with her Dad's desire to bring the situation back onto the safer plain of denial. Erin put a steaming cup by Ula's feet, and their Dad's on the mantelpiece. "You were sick, were ye? " he asked. "Travel sickness, that's all... it's the trains, they tilt now, from side to side, makes them go quicker..." Ula said, not wanting the inane chatter that he had once despised. She had spent years trying to engage him in conversation - any talk at all - but he wouldn't have it. Once he returned from work he would eat his dinner whilst watching the news, and then, when she had returned his plate to the kitchen, to lose himself in the second or third newspaper of the day: The Manchester Evening News, The Mirror, The Irish Independent or Western People. He would sometimes tut loudly and repeatedly, shaking his head, but rarely shared the story that had attracted his disdain. "Tilt?" he asked.

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"Yes... from side to side," Ula repeated, and gestured with her hand the tilting, to which Thomas didn't respond save to shake his head in disbelief. They each took sips of their tea. The cat that lay on the sofa opened its eyes and yawned, baring little fangs. Ula reached over and stroked him but it elicited only a low mewling growl. "How long are ye here for?" her Dad asked. "I don't know yet..." "Are ye not in work?" "I've just finished some freelance work... " 'What, temporary?" he asked, his incredulity clear. Ula nodded. She picked up her hot cup and took another cautious sip. "Erin, would you switch it over to four, " he said. Erin got up and changed channels. The theme tune to the horse-racing played out and Thomas reached down the side of his armchair and pulled out a wad of yellow betting slips and a small blue pen. They sat in silence as Thomas studied the form from the back pages. Ula became aware of the space, and how small it felt compared to her last visit. "You're in the middle room," Erin said. Ula felt her heart descend at the thought of a stay that was indeterminate in length and yawned ahead into nothingness. "OK, thanks. When did you last see Mother dearest?" Thomas stopped writing and tufted. He tried to continue but his brows furrowed as he silently grappled with the unwelcome reminder of the woman who had walked out. "We sometimes see her round the back there," Erin said. "Round the back where? " Ula asked. "Not we; I haven't seen her round there, so I haven't," Thomas said. He got up with a click of his knees, muttering about aches and pains, and took the few laborious steps into the kitchen. "That older man she's been seeing, Jack, he lives at the back of the shops. " "Is she living with him?"

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"I dunno... she's meant to have her own flat in Hulme that the council gave her but..." Erin said before she too rose, peered out of the window whilst muttering about the rain threatening to drench the clothes. She dashed out to the garden. Ula listened as her sister yanked each item off the line causing the pegs to jump up and land on the path; another sound that led to the past. She waited a few moments until she called out that she would go upstairs and unpack. ***

Hyde Road. Manchester 2"d January 1863 The shadows created by the flames of the small fire dance up the walls of the bedroom. They rage and resist, matching the whims of the draught that seepsthrough the frame of the only window. Mary Burns lies awake in an old mahogany bed that takes up most of the room. She sprawls out onto the empty side and remains like this for a short while, relishing the coldness of Fred's pillows until the heat from her face has warmed them and the restlessnessreturns. Lizzie's laughter suddenly rises up from the room beneath; it is a deep, throaty, knowing laugh. Mary imagines that it trails off into a corresponding glance and a flirtatious flick of her sister's waist-length shiny jet black hair. It is followed by Fred's deeper indecipherable chatter, and this time they laugh together

-

high surprise and low knowing. Mary turns and faces the wall. She pulls the warm stone water bottle against her stomach, which is separatedonly by her thin cotton nightdress that reachesdown to her ankles so that when she lies in the shapeof a fetus she can make a tent of it over her knees. There are lower voices now which, not just to a fevered mind, could signal conspiracy. Lizzie's laughter again, higher this time, as though Fred's jokes are becoming increasingly shocking. Mary leaps up and brings her foot down twice onto the thin rug. Both voices stop and Mary lies back, kicking the blankets into a concertina at her feet. She can sensethem still looking up to the ceiling and then to each other, perhaps with raised eyebrows or rolling eyes. She expects the ascending footsteps that follow. The door opens, letting in a slice of light that breathesnew life into the dull ache in Mary's temples. A broad ribbon of Fred's cigar smoke winds its way up the stairs,

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hovers in the light of the doorway, and slowly floats into the room where it lingers. Mary leans over the side of the bed, which makes the blood rush to her head, the thud now deeper, harder, and then a pain in her stomach. She wraps her arms around herself. "Is it no better, Mary? Shall I ask Fred if we'll call the doctor out?" "No! " Lizzie chews the inside of her cheek. Mary listens to the tiny little suckling noise that it creates; it is a sign that Lizzie is wondering what to do next. "Have ye a drink there?" Lizzie asks. Mary looks up at the cabinet to seethe tumbler. She props herself up, slower than a minute ago when anger forced her deftness. Lizzie dashesover, picks it up and pushes it into Mary's hand. "What's so funny down there?" Mary asks as soon as shehas let the liquid trickle down her throat. Whilst waiting for the answer, she lifts the gin to her lips again and takes in a steadier stream; it is so warm that shewishes it would cut more of a track down her insatiably dry throat. "Fred was just telling me about one of the old red-faced Cheshire eejits from the hunt today. Sure, you know yerself what he's like when he's been at the foxes..." "I know what he's like? Of course I know what he's like. He's my husband, Lizzie! " Mary slumps back onto the bed with a loud sigh. "Will I get you another drink? What about somebeef tea? I could warm some up... ye could..." "NO! Fuck it! I'm sick of beef tea. And I don't want another drink, my head's split in two as it is."

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A moment of silence. Mary listens to her increased heartbeat.A few seconds later her attention is diverted to the vibrations that ripple around her forehead, emanating from the back of her eyes. "You'll feel better in the morning, if you don't we'll get the doctor out. Fred said the same thing." Mary stops herself from snapping in response. "He's worried about you. You know that. He adores you - and you know it! " It is now Lizzie's turn to take a deep sigh that hangs in the air a short while, which Mary reads as an attempt at one-upmanship. Before Mary has thought of anything to say Lizzie is creaking her way back downstairs. Feeling a shiver on her arms Mary gets back under the blankets, pulling the warm water bottle back to her stomach. She wills herself to detach from the pain. She begins to listen for Lizzie's low tone; no doubt telling Fred shehas snappedat her. In this silence of waiting a pang of remorse descendsas she realises that shehas been snapping at her younger sister all day. It was also the fourth time this week that shehad felt the need to state that Fred was her husband, even though officially he was not; never had been, and never would be. `It will be alright in the morning, ' she tells herself in a kind voice; it is the type of voice that she imagined she would have used had she become a mother. The words take effect and she allows herself to fall into the gin-cushioned fog of sleep. Mary watches herself dance amongst the people of the Continent: French, German, Dutch, Belgian... a few English. 'A banquet, Fred had said. Hadn't I rolled the word around my tongue many times: 'ban-qu-et'. The day had been taken up with talks intense, animated, at times angry. Fred had translated for me when I told them my own storyof the Irish worker. I 'd been so scared - but not for long. Heated differences. We knew about those! But then, the evening came and many of us women perked up. The debating tables were transformed into candle-lit tables et deux, quatre, six... the dresses revealedfar more of the wives politics than anything they, or their husbands, declared'. Page72 of 254

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`Jenny.Good old Jenny. Mrs. Marx when it suited her. She was kind, if bourgeois. She and Fred got on. I had expectedfrostiness from her, but there was none; a warm embrace and an attempt at conversation. ' 'Poor poet Werth. Hadn't he thrown audacious glances my way whenever Fred's head was turned? Yet I have never been so coy as to pretend that I was not flattered. I only wished the glances had been there whilst Fred was looking... aahh go on, Mary, you can admit it to yourself now, you see.Although he knew, especially when Werth wrote that poem for me ': The young lass, Mary Even if her lips burned...Oh, the waste of kisses galore ... A poem...for me... what did Karl say about Shakespeareand being rememberedforever in the words of a poet? But what's the good being immortalised in a poem that few will get to read, unlike Fred - he will live on long after I have gone. But I have remained true to Fred thesepast twenty-oneyears. It is all slipping away now - the voices of the past are coming and going. Strangefaces from long ago, faces of the girls and boys I started work with all thoseyears back - my entire childhood wrung out by the loom my lost brothers and sisters - myfather - mother, poor mother. Where are Fred's and Lizzie's voices going? Leave them be... it is becoming as black as... as black as the chimneys of the most prosperous mills Manchester has to offer. And all consuming... Leave Lizzie to him... Leave them be... **

London, 8 Januarv 1863 Dear Engels, The news of Mary's death surprised no less than it dismayed me. She was so good-natured, witty and closely attached to you. The devil alone knows why nothing but ill-luck should dog everyone in our circle just now. I no longer know which way to turn either. My attempts to raise money in France and Germany have come to nought, and it might, of course, have been foreseen that £15 couldn't help me to stem the avalanche for more than a

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couple of weeks. Aside from the fact that no one will let us have anything on credit - save for the butcher and baker - which will also cease at the end of am being dunned for the school fees, the rent, and by the whole gang of them. Those who got a few pounds on account cunningly pocketed them, only to fall upon me with redoubled vigour. On top of that, the children

this week -I

have no clothes or shoes in which to go out. In short, all hell is let loose, as I clearly foresaw when I came up to Manchester and despatched my wife to Paris as a last coup de desespoir. If I don't succeed in raising a largish sum through a loan society or life assurance (and of that I can see no prospect; in the case of the former society I tried everything I could think of, but in vain. They demand guarantors, and want me to produce receipts for rent and rates, which I can't do), then the household here has barely another two weeks to go. It is dreadfully selfish of me to tell you about these horreurs at this time. But it's a homeopathic remedy. One calamity is a distraction from the other. And, au bout du compte, what else can I do? In the whole of London there's not a single person to whom I can so much as speak my mind, and in my own home I play the silent stoic to counterbalance the outbursts from the other side. It's becoming virtually impossible to work under such circumstances. Instead of Mary, ought it not to have been my mother, who is in any case a prey to physical ailments and has had her fair share of life ... ? You can see what strange notions come into the heads of 'civilised men' under the pressure of certain circumstances. Salut. Your K. M. What arrangements will you now make about your establishment? It's terribly hard for you, since with Mary you had a home to which you were at liberty to retreat from the human imbroglio, whenever you chose. "

Manchester, 13 January 1863

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Dear Marx, You will find it quite in order that, this time, my own misfortune and the frosty view you took of it should have made it positively impossible for me to reply to you any sooner. All my friends, including philistine acquaintances, have on this occasion, which in all conscience must needs afflict me deeply, given me proof of greater sympathy and friendship than I could have looked for. You thought it a fit moment to assert the superiority of your `dispassionate turn of mind'. Soit! ***

The middle bedroom felt even more box-like than Ula remembered. She sat on the edge of the bed for a while, twisting a lock of her hair around her finger. It was but half of the habit for which she had once scolded her Mum who would absent-mindedly tease a greying curl from the sides or top back of her head and tug it out with a ripping sound before dropping it to the kitchen floor as casually as the bearskins of ash from the cheapest extra-long cigarettes. Jane would only stop when she had summoned up enough courage to hold a cracked mirror at a confronting angle. The sober sight of a series of small bald patches, ranging in size from half-pennies to old big ten pence pieces, would shock her and she would wear a headscarf until it grew back, when the cycle would recommence. Trich-o-fill-o-mania, Ufa announced to her one day, as though the word would carry the cure, but her Mum said 'Oh shut-up, Ula! You and your long bloody words!' The business of words. It reminded Ula that there was work to be done, another reason for her return. Mary Burns. She unzipped her holdall and removed a couple of books - correspondence between Marx & Engels and Grace Carlton's biography of Friedrich Engels. On top of these she placed an A4 hard-backed notebook whose cover bore a Shakespeare quote: 'Chance may crown me'. She remembered telling Erin during one of their phone conversations that she could never have studied Shakespeare in Manchester, that she couldn't imagine how her native city could be conducive with the profundities of his work. Page 75 of 254

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She only realised how pretentious it sounded when the words were out of her mouth, but reasoned it was only what she had felt. Mary Burns was different; with Engels she had once lived and worked in the places that bore Ula. Go out. She would say she needed to go to the shop. She had to get out. The estate was quiet, reminiscent of childhood Sundays. Morrissey's 'Everyday is like Sunday' began to play in her head. It was a far cry from her teenage years spent in Moss-Side, where it was all out in the open: the drugs, the pimps, the joy-riders, the disaffected youth looking for thrills, the provocative police - all on parade, and because of it an honesty that meant there was less space for fear. It wasn't like that in Ardwick, or Chorlton-on-Medlock as her Mum always insisted. Ardwick had never shaken off its sinister tone. She lived there for almost five years before they moved to Moss-Side when she was twelve. Her parents had done a full circle. They had lived in a bedsit on Moss Lane East in Moss-Side when she was born, then moved to a maisonette in Hulme, from there to Ardwick before returning to a house in Moss-Side and finally back to Ardwick; only now Jane Tully was half in Hulme, half Ardwick; shacked up with some man they had never met but whose reputation as a good-for-nothing was well known. The Dad that Ula recalled from childhood had a face framed by jet black hair. He had pale yet intensely blue eyes, a combination that betrayed his constant simmering anger that was always threatening to strike without warning. His was the historic and ongoing resentment that found freedom and fuel in the exclusively Irish pubs he once frequented, patriotic pubs that proudly bore portraits of Michael Collins, and played music dominated by deep thudding drums, a call-to-arms that travelled on an ever-lasting journey through generations of noble warriors in the mould of Cuchulainn. He seldom smiled, except for when he was drunk, and even then it was more of a lop-sided grin the sort of grin he associated with eejits, fools and lachicos. When Ula had first learned of her Dad's condition, a chronic case of Crohn's Disease diagnosed in his early fifties, she assumed it would be treated and that

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would be that, even when she learnt he had to give up work - and anyone who knew Thomas Tully was aware that he had never taken a day off work; he was ox-like. That was his nature. Work was what Thomas measured his own, and others', worth by. It was impossible to imagine him being forced to give it up altogether. Denial had served both Ula and her Dad well; it kept him questionably sane, and Ula's life in London relatively guilt-free. She had phoned intermittently. He never. The calls were often strained. He was forced to respond to small talk, rarely having patience for it, considering it to be frivolous because of its lack of tangible utility. Erin, living with him, would sometimes call her, but those calls hid more than they revealed and would more often be about the latest rumours and speculations on their mother's antics, that one-woman whirlwind who drew in everything around her. Jane Tully's speciality was running everyone ragged as she raced around the houses of fairweather drinking friends whose lives had long since fallen over the edge of dysfunction. Ula reckoned it must have been close to five years since she had last seen her. She could no longer remember the subject of the last argument, only that it had resulted in a long, stony silence. Mary Burns. The latest bit of information she had discovered was the fact that in 1858 Mary's father had died in Manchester's New Bridge Street workhouse the Poor Law Bastille. Five years later, at the age of 41, Mary was dead. Ula wanted to imagine everything that Mary could have felt at the death of her father in such wretched conditions, but she could never get beyond how she herself would have felt. The heaviness of the task, which had only gained in importance since its inception, bore down on her and she gave a deep sigh. Ula reached Brunswick Street and paused to ponder her next move. Turning left would take her up to Upper Brook Street, past the Chinese cash and carry, and up then to Manchester University on Oxford Road, which was in a completely different register, almost conservatively metropolitan. If she crossed the road straight she would pass more houses, a mixture of council and private and an old neglected graveyard that once belonged to All Souls church, which had stood proudly back from the main road until 1851. The abused graves had long since led only to a large field that offered no purpose except as a thoroughfare, Page 77 of 254

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and for dog walkers who wouldn't be mithered by those insisting on poop scooping; not that it was an area in which owners always walked their dogs

-

many were content enough to shoo them out until minded by the barking. Through all this lay Plymouth Grove and a large Victorian-era police station that had a reputation for deaths in custody. Turning right up Brunswick Street led towards the Apollo Theatre, about which there was nothing theatrical, hosting wrestling matches, comedians, and the occasional heavy-metal group. And then there was Ardwick Green. Brunswick Street's main row of shops had deteriorated. Three out of the original eight were boarded up. The chemist had expanded into next door, which had been the hardware store where Ula had been sent as a child for hooks and eyes for curtains, for mop heads and black rubbish bags. Inside the chemist people waited for medicine: a couple of old people were surrounded by young mothers whose children ran around outside by the vandalised phone-boxes. An emaciated man and woman waited together outside, pacing, and smoking. A sudden feeling of calcified desperation made Ula pull the hood of her jacket up even though it wasn't raining, and secure the fastening that covered the rim of her chin. She was no longer skinny enough to be taken for an addict, and her healthy complexion was one of the few bits of herself that she liked; that and her long, thick auburn hair. A group of bearded Muslim men in traditional dress stood around a pallet of boxes outside the grocery store a few yards down. It had once been the Spar, managed by Mr. Savage, whose surname the young Ula had always felt suited his face, even though his voice contradicted it. He had sold her lager and Guinness from the age of eight, either putting them into a thick 5p branded carrier-bag or into one that her Mum had provided her with. Ardwick Green lived up to half of its name; it was centuries since it had been King Aethelred's farm or hamlet, but there was some green that had benefited from the attentions of a gardener. The area had retained some of the nineteenth century buildings but these once grand houses were now offices. Ula walked through the small playground with its swings, slide, climbing frame and see-saw and a couple of boppy rabbit things that were meant to be sat on and bounced.

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She entered the gardens that were once, in the days when the grand houses were homes, the exclusive domain of the residents. Hardy plants grew in neat rows. She sat on the nearest bench. The persistent unease transformed itself into the unmistakable blow of failure. She submitted to the need to lean over, as though by looking away from the sky the dreams projected up to it could be avoided, and stared at her shoes. The urge to flee Manchester had once tormented her every waking moment before she finally escaped all those years earlier. Whereas once it had felt urgent and aggressive it now felt deeper ingrained - the irremovable depression she once endured. Perhaps, she thought, what she was experiencing was just an echo from the cave of those days? But it remained, and she was tormented with questions for which no satisfactory answers came: what had she achieved in London in close to two decades? Hadn't she just run away? Couldn't she have achieved greater things in Manchester and been of greater use to her parents? Couldn't she have confronted that tormenting darkness that pushed her out, finding gold that could have changed everything? She looked up and into the distance at the bigger Victorian houses and suddenly wondered which one Charles Dickens had stayed in when his sister had lived in the area. Perhaps he worshipped in the Grade II Georgian Church of St. Thomas's with its campanile-style tower, now also offices. She couldn't see them but she could hear the trains slowing behind the buildings, the route she had entered, and the way she would leave.

Each step felt heavy as she headed back, but this was forgotten when Ula saw her Mum. She stopped and held her breath as she watched the figure dart across the lower end of Brunswick Street. Ula quickened her pace and shouted

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'Ma'. The certainty that it was her, it was Ma, lightened Ula and quickened her step, but it was not enough; the figure had disappeared. The flash of clarity was extinguished as she reminded herself again of the years. Finding a gap in the steady stream of traffic, she dashed across and down the same path that led past the back of a row of brown-bricked houses. There was no-one. She wondered if her Mum's boyfriend lived around there, and not behind the shops as Erin claimed. It sounded wrong to Ula to even think those words, 'her boyfriend', as if she was being forced to validate the pairing into some realm of decency she felt it could never deserve. It was the chaos of it all: hadn't her parents journeyed through the roughest of days together? Didn't that count for something? Had they been through the worst episodes as a couple only to part when they needed each other the most? Ula hadn't meant to tell him, but within minutes of returning she had splurted it out, like a child keen to get a parent on side against the other. "Arragh, what can ye do, she does what she likes and that's all there's to it, so 'tis, " Thomas said. But his face changed. He looked up to the window, and then back down to his newspaper and in that moment Ula regretted opening her mouth. Her parents' lives fanned themselves out in a series of mental snapshots, how she imagined they were before and how they were when they met. Prior to arriving in Manchester her Dad had lived in Edinburgh. He said that he had spent nights on frost-sheeted benches in Edinburgh train station after being thrown out of digs overlooking Holyrood Castle. She tried to imagine him at nineteen and alone in the world, homeless, forced to venture to England, the one country he had wanted to avoid. Within a few years of arriving he met Jane, who was by then working as a cleaner in the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Ula didn't have to work too hard at picturing her Mum's stories; she had borne the burden of them from childhood. Ula wondered what her young Dad's reaction was when her Mum told him that she had spent the best part of seven years from the age of 17 to 23 - in Europe's largest mental institution up in the Ribble Valley: in witch country, the hinterlands separating Lancashire from Yorkshire. She might have said, 'not mental as such, but wayward; in any case, too angry Page80 of 254

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for a girl', even a girl destined to enter one of the soap and cereal factories that were springing up daily on Trafford Park Industrial Estate. It wasn't the way Jane told Ula - instead, she had fed her daughter with the toxicity of her resentment towards a younger brother with whom she had fought, and who was the real reason she had been 'taken away'. The upshot was, Ula concluded, that her uncle was allowed to fight and be angry, and her Mum was not. All this had angered Ula as a child, the unfairness of it all, but as she entered her teen years she learnt to block out the pictures that fuelled the feelings, if not the words. Ula pondered this emotional detritus as her Dad watched the racing, tapping the bookie's pen against his false front teeth. What had it all been for? It was that which dug at her. It was not just in that moment that Ula knew she would never marry - she had always known. Thomas folded his newspaper; it was his turn now to groan as he emerged from the world of his own thoughts.

"Another day done...," he said. He asked her if she wanted the fire on, but she shook her head and he turned it off and went to bed. Ula paid no attention to the television programme that featured a woman walking around the Lake District, informing the viewers of the various routes they could take up the fells. She went upstairs and fetched back down the few books she had brought with her. She opened the notebook, presented with the doodled name that signified the frustration Ula felt at trying to be the chronicler of Mary's life.

ýI ry' ý1

ýýýý\

ýýý

ý 1

V

It had become an itch, one that she couldn't quite find each time she attempted to set about scratching it. She wondered at Marx and Engels's only recorded

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falling-out; heartened to discover that Marx's flippant response to Mary's death had been the cause; a demonstration, surely, of Engels's love. ***

Manchester September 1858 The evening is darkening, yet it is still light enough to seethe boy's yellowing and bloated face. He hands Mary the folded slip of paper not deemed worthy enough to have been inserted into an envelope. She reads the few lines, looks up to the boy, and looks back down at the words in a moment of silence before refolding it. She takes a coin from her dresspocket and hands it to him. "Shall I bring word back?" Mary shakesher head. She watches the boy run down the road with surprising vigour until he is out of sight. She returns into the house where Lizzie passesher on her way to the stairs. "Come into the front room..., " Mary says. Lizzie asks her why but she is given no answer, so follows. Mary stands at the mantelpiece and takes a deep breath. "What's the matter? Where's Fred?" "He's fine, he's at the Albert, he won't be back until late... sit down, you're making me more nervous." "I'm making you nervous? What's going on?" Lizzie asks, sitting down on the edge of the settee. "It's Da, he died yesterday morning... they've already buried him up there." Mary watches Lizzie's face as it freezes, then falls. "At that place! Of all places!" "Well where else do you think he'd die? You know what those places are like? Once you're in, you're not coming out alive. He put himself in there...," Mary says, the tone

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of defensivenesssurprising them both. Lizzie leans forward and wraps her arms around herself. "I knew it would happen. I knew it... they wouldn't let me in... the bastards wouldn't let me in..." "When did you go?" Mary asks. "A month ago. I heard he wasn't well... they wouldn't let me in. They said he'd gone in saying he had no children at all... not even Thomas..." "Why didn't you tell me?" "You've always made it clear where he's concerned..." "Well it'll surprise you to know that I tried too... a while ago, it started not long after we got back from Ireland. It changed things, being out there. When I came back I saw him... " Lizzie looks up and holds her hand over her mouth. Mary continues. "He disowned me. I tried again but the beadle and the rest weren't having it. " Mary doesn't for her to seehow add that she thought he only agreed to seeher in order to spite her bad he had got since he went in and to then send her away with that image of him in her mind; the inculcation of guilt. "Oh Mary! " Lizzie cries, making pitiful mewling noises. Mary sits down beside her and puts her arm around her shoulders. "We should try and get in to seeCathy at least...," Lizzie says. "You can. I won't, " Mary says. Lizzie shrugs Mary's hand away and leaves the room. Mary sits back and listens as Lizzie walks around upstairs before it falls quiet. Mary remains in the darkening room as the lamp goes low and the only noises come from before ripping it up, outside and the steady ticking of the clock. She re-readsthe note telling herself that it is over now, that part of her life, but before she can stop it the tears run down her face and she leans forward to hold her stomach as shecries. #*#

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Mary and Fred join the streams of Irish boarding the steamboatfrom Kingstown, Dublin Bay, but instead of joining the massesonto the deck they are shown the way down to the cabins. Mary slumps onto one of the hard narrow beds and closes her eyes, not caring whether the nauseashe feels is due to the overwhelming sadnessthat the trip has left with with, or whether it is something more. "Any better?" Fred asks from the narrow doorway of the cabin. Mary mutters no. "Shall I ask the ship's doctor for a sleeping draught?" "No... I'll be fine, just leave me be a while... " Fred hesitates for a second. Mary suddenly opens her eyes and asks him where he will go. "Up on the deck of course, intelligence gathering from our Irish brethren." Mary holds his gaze for a second, seesthe same earnestnessand yet fire that she had he seenin him the first time they had met. She offers a half smile and takes the step over to her and bends down to kiss her head. He leaves, softly clicking the cabin door shut. Mary relives the images of the country that the grey moody sea is now steadily separating her from. She had anticipated the indefatigable spirit of those who claim they insisted on loyally staying in a country tested by God, even of those who had no choice, but not the savagery that went with it; yet sherealises that in a raped country savagery is the other side of the coin. Memories that for so long remained dormant now stream in; home drunk, singing with her Mother before her of being young and her Dad returning illness took over; her parents promising that they would all return home once they had enough money. Mary wakes to being gently nudged. Fred is perched on the edge of the cabin bed. "Are we home yet?" sheasks.

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"Not far - you were crying in your sleep." "Was I? Must be overly tired... The trip... It stirred me up. I didn't think it would but... There you go," Mary says,wiping her face to find it damp and clammy. "Some of those in steerageare almost naked... They think they're going to find freedom at Liverpool dock! I hadn't the heart to contradict them." Mary sat up and brought her knees up to her chest, resting her head on them, peering sideways at Fred.

"My nervesare bad." "Come up to the bar - stiff drink! " Mary doesn't reply. "It's terrible - going over some of the same steps my folks took, them thinking they'd be finding freedom - freedom from hunger at least, yet not even that, not really. " Fred plays with a stray lock of Mary's hair, before pulling it behind her ear. "Didn't that Hegel fella say something about greater freedom? I just wonder if my folks unspent freedom was passedonto me? Do you know what I mean?" "So that means I'm playing out my father's unspent freedom. Yes. Pietist to the core. He couldn't seeit - the yearning he had for something more, to break away, I suppose that he took it a step further than his parentsthough - if he'd have done what I did they'd have disowned him from the first act." Mary lay back down and curled up against the wall and Fred lay next to her, his arms around her. *

Manchester, May 23rd 1856

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Dear Marx, During our trip to Ireland we travelled from Dublin to Galway on the West Coast, then 20 miles north and inland, on to Limerick, down the Shannon to Tarbert, Traice and Killarney, and back to Dublin. In all approx. 450-500 English miles within the country itself, so we have seen approx. 2/3 of the entire country. With the exception of Dublin, which is to London what Düsseldorf is to Berlin, bears altogether the stamp of having been a small royal seat and is, moreover, built entirely in the English style, the whole country and particularly the towns give one the impression of being in France or Northern Italy. Gendarmes, priests, lawyers, bureaucrats, lords of the manor in cheerful profusion and a total absence of any and every industry, so that one could barely conceive what all these parasitic plants live on, were there no counterpart in the wretchedness of the peasants. The `iron hand' is visible in every nook and cranny; the government meddles in everything, not a trace of so-called self-government. Ireland may be regarded as the earliest English colony and one which, by reason of her proximity, is still governed in exactly the same old way; here one cannot fail to notice that the English citizen's so-called freedom is based on the oppression of the colonies. In no other country have I seen so many gendarmes, and it is in the constabulary, which is armed with carbine, bayonet and handcuffs, that the bibulous expression of your Prussian gendarme reaches its ultimate state of perfection. Peculiar to the country are its ruins, the oldest 5th and 6th century, the most recent 19th, and every stage in between. The earliest, all churches; from 1100, churches and castles; from 1800, farmhouses. Throughout the west, but particularly the Galway region, the countryside is strewn with these derelict farmhouses, most of which have only been abandoned since 1846. I had never imagined that famine could be so tangibly real. Whole villages are deserted; in between the splendid parks of the smaller landlords, virtually the only people still living there, lawyers mostly. Famine, emigration and clearances between them have brought this about. The fields are empty even of cattle; the countryside is a complete wilderness Page 86 of 254

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unwanted by anybody. In County Clare, south of Galway, things improve a bit, for there's some cattle at least and, towards Limerick, the hills are excellently cultivated, mostly by Scottish farmers, the ruins have been cleared away, and the country has a domesticated air. In the south-west, numerous mountains and bogs but also marvellously luxuriant woodland; further on, fine pastures again, especially in Tipperary and, approaching Dublin, increasing signs that the land is occupied by big farmers. The English wars of conquest from 1100 to 1850 (au fond they lasted as long as this, as did also martial law) utterly ruined the country. With regard to most of the ruins, it has been established that the destruction took place during these wars. Thus the very people have acquired their unusual character and, for all their fanatical Irish nationalism, the fellows no longer feel at home in their own country. Ireland for the Saxon! That is now becoming a reality. The Irishman knows that he cannot compete with the Englishman, who comes armed with resources in every respect superior to his own; emigration will continue until the predominantly, indeed almost exclusively, Celtic nature of the population has gone to pot. How often have the Irish set out to achieve something and each time been crushed, politically and industrially! In this artificial manner, through systematic oppression, they have come to be a completely wretched nation and now, as everyone knows, they have the job of providing England, America, Australia, etc., with whores, day labourers, maquereaux, pickpockets, swindlers, beggars and other wretches. Even the aristocracy are infected by this wretchedness. The landowners, wholly bourgeoisified everywhere else, are here completely down-at-heel. Their country seats are surrounded by huge and lovely parks but all around there is desolation and where the money is supposed to come from heaven only knows. These fellows are too funny for words: of mixed blood, for the most part tall, strong, handsome types, all with enormous moustaches under a vast Roman nose, they give themselves the bogus martial airs of a colonel en retraite, travel the country in search of every imaginable diversion and, on inquiry, prove to be as poor as church mice, up to their eyes in debt, and living in constant fear of the Encumbered Estates Court.

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About England's method of governing this country - repression and corruption (long before Bonaparte tried them) - more very shortly if you don't come up soon. What are the prospects? Your

F. E. **#

Manchester. April, 1856 Mary loiters in the rain outside the workhouse. She doesn't venture too close to the gates,which are manned by a surly looking guard wearing a dirty cap who looks like he has seenit all; no longer surprised to find babes wrapped in the thinnest of blankets in boxes and crates - dead and alive - or the most infirm and aged propped up against the gates. It has been a while since she heard that her Dad and his wife admitted themselves. She wonders if they have set her Dad to work or whether it is true that they treat the older ones more kindly because they are the `deserving poor'. There is no noise from the grey building. A grocer's trailer draws up to the gates and is granted entry before disappearing out of view. "Don't be standing there too long my girl, they'll whip you in before you know it... " Mary turns to seethe toothless smile of a man pushing a rag and bone cart. She ties her scarf tighter around her head and sets a brisk pace home. ***

Ula stared up at the opposite wall where the wallpaper had peeled off in large sections, exposing a deep purple. It was as though someone had thought they might decorate it but then lost interest. Cackling laughter rose from outside and music that had formerly been kept low increased. Erin ran heavy-footed up the stairs and crashed into Ula's room. "It's those students again!" She went to the window, pulled back the net, and put her face right up to the cold glass to scrutinise the goings on at the student Page 88 of 254

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accommodation block. It had been built on the site of Sunny Hill, a former old people's home, to house students from Manchester University. Despite being on the estate it was gated off and had its own small car park, just yards from the back of the house. "Would ye tell those bastards to keep the noise down, would ye? " Thomas called, his voice straining. He began to cough and then lament that he was a sick man and that he shouldn't have to listen to noisy imbeciles at that god forsaken hour. Without hesitation Erin opened the window and a sharp draught blew the net up above her head like a veil. She shouted at them to shut the fuck up, which only produced more laughter. One of the male students shouted at Erin to get back to the set of Shameless. "Cheeky bastards!" Erin shouted, slamming the window shut. "Leave it now, leave it, the shower of cunts... nothing short of it," Thomas called. "Shameless? Cheeky fucker!" Ula said, shaking her head. Erin left the room and returned to her own. Ula lay awake, listening to the noise from the students as it increased. She thought of calling the police until it lowered into a chill-out zone, then died completely. A few dogs barked in the distance and cats fought in one of the neighbouring gardens. Unable to lie still she stood at the window and lifted the net so that it rested in a ruffle on her head, examining the dark scene, lit only by a few orange street lights emitting a low level hum. A cat was perched on the neighbouring fence preparing to pounce. Ula surveyed the back garden for the first time - the shed seemed ready to collapse in a heap. It sported three different coloured paints - pink, light green, and brown - in haphazard stripes that displayed the coarse bristle lines of the brushes. The door was open and the breeze knocked it gently against the fence - the dark doorway inviting someone into a horror scene.

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She recalled the backyard from the house they had lived in around the corner. She was ten when her Dad, one long bank-holiday weekend, built a playhouse extension that adjoined the shed. By the time he had finished it dwarfed the standard council-issued hut in width and height. Her Dad's effort reminded her of something from The Grapes of Wrath; a patchwork cabin that had been built with mismatching planks - one of the panels on the roof had been the cupboard door of an old beaten mahogany sideboard that he had once brought in from a junk shop.

Thomas Tully had risen early that summer weekend. After breakfast he began erecting the frame; he methodically joined each mismatched plank with vigorous hammering until the entire frame was covered. There were gaps. It was never going to be weatherproof - but it was a wendy house, of sorts. Ula could still conjure up the smell that enveloped her when she first entered; the pungency of darkness and damp that reminded her of mushrooms; the smell of the soil from the wide exposed gaps in the flagstones. She had been so proud of it, of him for making it with his own two hands for her and Erin. When she went to school on the Tuesday the teacher asked, ironically, as Ula would realise only with hindsight and a developed sense of irony, where they had been for their bank holiday weekends. Ula shyly relayed the news of her new shed-cum-wendy

house to the class. A couple of the kids

mouthed 'wow', but they would never be invited to play in it, and she was never encouraged to visit them. The following year Thomas dismantled it, hypnotically feeding the wood to crackle in several fires. The flagstones were then taken up, smashed into large pieces and rearranged in freshly laid cement to produce

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crazy-paving. The image that had been seared into her mind all those years before was of her father as Worker; Grafter. He wasn't the everyday worker the person who simply went to work - he was work; he embodied it. Work was the noble act that was of worth for its own sake. Ula had inherited this ethic and brought it to bear most fully in her late teens, in her job as a chambermaid at the Charterhouse Hotel, on Oxford Street. It was a grand hotel that had been built in the former Refuge Assurance Building; a landmark identifiable by its crowning glory of a clocktower from which the whole of Manchester could be viewed and, from that height, appreciated. At the end of most days she felt pleasingly tired; her aches and tiredness a sign that she had been useful. For fourteen months she cleaned anything from ten to twenty rooms or suites per day for which she was paid £2.50 per hour. Her Dad called it 'a good little job', and regularly reminded her, apropos of nothing, to 'hold onto it', as though famished groups were following her around waiting to wrest it from her. The day began at 7.30 am when the chambermaids met in the out-of-theway housekeeping office to have tea and change into identical overalls. By eight she had stacked a trolley with heavily starched white linen, which lay folded in piles on two shelves. Above these was a tray of various compartments, in which were placed all the sundries to be found in a hotel room bath and shower gel, miniature soaps and shower - tea and coffee supplies, caps. A red bucket hung from the handle, which contained detergents and sponges. She would push or pull the cumbersome trolley around the maze of corridors. It was 'hard graft' as Sylvia the supervisor had always said, whilst adding 'the only tip you'll ever be left with is the room itself!' Yet at the completion of each room Ula examined her work and took some satisfaction from knowing that the restored scene had been due to her efforts alone. It was how writing felt when she managed to absorb herself in it. Ula could not remember a time throughout her young years when she hadn't admired her Dad for his workerly attitude, mainly because he had been an anomaly on the estates on which they had lived. Yet because he had seen that ethic as an end in itself and not a stepping stone, he had accrued nothing.

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When Ula moved to London her Dad became less heroic; if anything, he became more of a victim, and sadder for it because he didn't realise; didn't realise that his daughters wanted more, or that his wife wanted more - most of all, didn't seem to entertain the notion that he himself may have wanted more; but Ula saw it in him, even though he had tried hard to keep it hidden because to uncover it would mean more pain and, sure, wasn't life hard enough without that sort of thing? It was with trepidation that she had visited him shortly before embarking on her first degree in literature in London. It was a Saturday. Erin was still in Edinburgh. When she'd arrived at the house no-one was there. She found him not in the noisy pub with the Wolfe Tones and Chieftains blaring out that he had once favoured on a pay night, but in the smaller, quieter Ceilih House on the same road. Enya's 'Sail Away' played low from the corner jukebox. Two men sat separately at the bar, and a couple chatted in the corner. Her Dad sat at one of the rectangle tables, a half-pint of Guinness before him, only a few mouthfuls taken, leaving a series of frothy rings above the black liquid. It was only as Ula reached him that he recognised her, his face registering his surprise. "Ula! What are you doing here?" "There was no-one at the house so I thought I'd come and find you. You alright? " she sat beside him. He put his hand into his trouser pocket and rooted for change. "Here, would you get a drink for yourself?"

"No really,I'm fine... I don't want anything," Ula said, lettingher bag drop to the floor. "No drink? Are ye sure? I'll go up and get one for you, will l? " "No, Da, really, I'm fine." Thomas looked at his daughter askance for a moment until letting the change clink back into place.

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"Be careful with that bag down there on the floor like that, there's those junkies in and out looking for bags, didn't they cut one from your Mudder's shoulder not so long back. Jesus Christ. Never heard the end of it! I'm always telling her... her own bleedin' fault, so it were... " "How long have you been in here?" "Oh, not long, I just came out to put a bet on, this is my first... I wouldn't stay the whole afternoon like some of them do..." he said then took another sip. Ula surveyed the small fading pictures of Irish writers dotted along the walls. "How is everything?" Ula asked. He looked up at her in surprise. "Oh, grand!" he replied. He picked up the dog-eared beer-mat and tapped it gently on the table. "I start university in two weeks time..." Ula bit her bottom lip. Thomas took a mouthful of Guinness and wiped the half line of froth from his mouth.

"Are ye not working?" "I'm getting a part-time job... English literature, that's what I'm studying..." Thomas looked down at his glass, gauging the level. "Your Mudder's fallen in with an awful shower round there..." "Has she?" Ula asked, her face fell. "She'd drink with anyone ...arragh, I tell her to be careful but she doesn't listen so what's the point." "It's three years, the degree..." "Three years? Jesus!" The words hung heavy in the air. Thomas began to examine the veins on the back of his hand. Ula looked back up at the wall and sighed.

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"That's James Joyce up there, Da," she said, pointing to the bespectacled author. Thomas picked up the beer-mat again and continued to gently tap it on the table. "I'll have to get bread and milk on the way back... and more fucking cat food... that fucking cat... eats more than me and your mudder put together, so it does. And then it has you awake meowing then, up at the crack of dawn, so 'tis... it's your mudder who brings them into the house. We can just about look after ourselves, sure." "That's Samuel Beckett... he lived most of his life in France...he said that he'd rather live in Paris in war time than Ireland in peace time." I should have stayed up in Scotland... I liked Edinburgh..." "Is that when you left Ireland?" "'Twas. Long time ago. Jesus, the time flies... Dead before you know it," he sighed before taking a longer draught of his Guinness. "Oscar Wilde." "Was he the queer fella?" "Yes." "He was on the television..." "Oh, you mean Stephen Fry, he played him." "Is he the queer fella?" "Yeah. " He took the last of the drink and picked up a carrier bag from beside him. "Meat, from the butchers..." he said.

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Ula was about to return to bed when she caught sight of a shadowy figure passing the long side fence. The house was the last in a row of three and it was situated next to a path that went round to the front of their row. It wouldn't be unusual for someone to use the path as a throughway; it's what it was there for, but it was the way in which Ula saw it skulking. She put the net curtain back into place but kept watch through the cut out acorns that formed the pattern. The figure peered through the fence. Ula couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman, but she recognised the emaciated frame. It moved a few steps along, continuing to stare through the gap in the fence, oblivious to being observed. A shiver of fear ran through Ula, accompanied by a sense of dejä vu, as she was hit with the nagging yet vague feeling that it resembled a once recurrent dream. She threw up the curtain and banged on the window. The figure looked up with eyes made wide by a gaunt face. They locked gazes for a second before it darted off down the back of the row and to the path at the farther end. Ula stared out, her heart beat racing. She went straight into Erin's room, turned the lamp on and nudged her awake. Erin opened her eyes in fright. 'What? " she asked, sitting up. Ula hushed for her to be quiet and relayed it to her. "They may have been checking the place out - burglars!" Erin said, half closing her eyes. "But there's nothing to take... what do they want? " Ula asked, in a higher pitch, giving a little shrug.

"Yeah but they don't know that do they. Theyjust want an easy target." "Have you seen them checking places out before?" Ula asked, her voice a decibel higher, urged to convey her incredulity in the face of nonchalance. "I haven't, no, but I saw a junkie running down the road with a widescreen TV last week... she could barely carry it. Oh, I dunno. What can you do? " Erin asked. She lay back down. Page 95 of 254

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"And no-one does anything?" Ula whispered this time. 'Well it's like I've said, what can you do? People round here aren't about to form their own whatdoyoucallit, a vigilante group, Ula. Most people just want to be left in peace. Like now." "It's mad!" Ula hissed. "Oh well, right, I'm going back to sleep, I've got work in the morning," Erin said and pulled the duvet back up to her chin. Back in her room Ula found herself jumping at every noise from outside. She sat up and leaned over the bed for her notebook and began to write. The fear attached itself to the idea of the book and in those small hours Ufa began to question what she was doing, why was she doing it, why did it feel imperative? She knew the answers to the questions because they were questions that she had asked herself many times - that Mary needed `rescuing' from the margins of Fred's life; that Mary's life was interesting in and of itself for what it said about Irish working-class women in the nineteenth century. But she knew it was more than that; it was personal. It was because she had grown up and walked those same places wondering what was to be done. It was also because Mary had been treated by Engels's biographers as though she were little more than a mistress hidden away when it seemed to Ula quite different. She thought of previous relationships where she had felt unworthy, relegated to playing a bit part in the sidelines of some man's life. It occurred to her that she wasn't trying to give Mary Burns a voice, but herself. She closed the notebook, as though something of her dark, shameful, self-aggrandising shadow had appeared before her. Did the realisation render it invalid? She twiddled a section of her hair and tried to force clarity on it all, but could not. She wondered whether other writers felt this way - of course they did - she told herself, but she didn't know - not for sure. She thought of her Dad next door and her Mum who was god knows where, and her sister, all of whom she felt saw her as some pretender. She reopened the notebook only to stare down at the page. "tt

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7, Rue de Alliance, October 1845 Dearest Lizzie, This address will be a more permanent one, so Fred has me believe. Not much has happened in the past month and yet so much! I mean, within myself. As soon as I am back we must go off out of Manchester for a little while so you can feel how different it is to get away from that place. I was homesick for the first week -a pining in the pit of my stomach - I'd never have guessed it whilst I was trudging round those black streets begging for work! It makes me want to cry, Lizzie, to think about all of that, it really does. Yet if you're thinking we have it easy here you'd be wrong; Fred's father's purse has been drawn tight. George Werth arrived a week ago and he has brought some funds, and there are others, which has meant we've been able to muck in together, but who knows how long that will go on for? But it is different, Lizzie, here; I feel a freedom that I craved back home. The days are my own. Fred spends those - and some of the evenings - with Karl; if they're not deep in talk they're hunched over books and scribbling away as though their - and our - lives depended on it. Karl's wife, Jenny, is very nice - not at all stuck up like I thought she might be - but her English is not very good. I'm trying to learn a bit of French although when I told Fred that I was still learning English he burst out laughing, then repeated what I had said in German to Karl, Jenny and George, and that set them all howling. There's a real feeling of warmth and community. I spend some of my days walking around this strange city alone - the main square is Grand Place and it's very grand, yet has a dark feeling to it too - Gothic. There's also an area called `Little Manchester', where many workers live and work and I've been alone and with Fred, who has held meetings there. There's much appetite for revolution here, Lizzie, and it can't be long before it wends its way through greater numbers in England. The shame of it all is that most workers do not know - or even care to know - to what extent they are enslaved. I see the

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situation much more clearly here, but also see how small we keep ourselves, even in protest. I am full of hope, Lizzie, for myself, for Fred, for you - for us all! Your loving sister, Mary xx **

Ostend. Belgium, September 1845 Dearest Lizzie, We arrived in Belgium safely, although I feel terrible and am still not well. I spewed my guts up on the boat non-stop and while I was spewing I couldn't help but think of our poor mother -I remember her telling me once how awful sick she had been on the boat over from Ireland to Liverpool; she said it was just terrible, she thought she was dying and would have begged someone to throw her overboard so she could be done with it - well that's how I felt, although I had Fred with me otherwise I don't know how I would have coped. It made me feel closer to her, being sick. I know it's been a long time now since she passed away but I still think of her Lizzie - in fact, not a day passes without her in my thoughts, even if it's just a little thought about what she would think of this, or that. I wonder what she would make of Fred mainly..... and then there's Da and what she would have to say about that brazen old hooer he calls his wife! Yesterday Fred got us into a boarding house not far from the port and last night I was able to get some much needed sleep, although I woke up in the early hours feeling as though I was still swaying. We are off to Brussels by diligence tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to send you our more permanent address over the next few days, although I know it would be difficult for you to send a letter back I just feel easier knowing that you know where I am. Hope all is as well as can be expected and that gobshite Ermens isn't making your life difficult, but I know you are much more diplomatic than I could ever hope to be and that whilst I am gone it will stand you in good stead, but you know if things Page 98 of 254

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get unbearable you know to send word and I'll get Fred to pull some strings, if not at Ermens, then at least with a position elsewhere. That is all for now, my dear sister, I hope you're not lonely and that you are at least out at the Chartist meetings being with people and making new friends (maybe even meeting a few nice lads! ). Au revoir (It's French for goodbye!) Your loving sister

Mary x ***

Anyone spending their first night on the estate would have been surprised by the frantic fusillade of birdsong that came with dawn, bringing a different atmosphere to bear in all the bedrooms: sparrows, magpies, robins, crows and wild luminous green red-beaked parakeets. Most of them were perched in the tall beech trees that lined the edge of the park. Ula lay still, listening, even as Erin got up and readied herself for work. She heard her knocking on their Dad's door, Erin asking him if he wanted tea brought up. She could hear him say `good girl' as she later placed it onto a hard surface. Ula waited until Erin left before rising. The panel on the side of the bath was missing, exposing the base of the tub and several pipes running alongside. A mirror was propped against the wall. Ula stared at her reflection, slightly disjointed because of a large diagonal crack. She dragged her hands down her face, stretching the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked away and scanned the various items on the shelf. She picked front label that also up a plain box. 'Colostomy' stared up at her from the small bore her father's name. She perched on the bath's edge and slowly looked around, the room presenting itself as a metaphor - the tub and its exposed She recalled a line pipes, the cracked reflection, the walls in need of decoration.

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that the outside was just a reflection of one's consciousness - as within, so without. She conducted a quick mental inventory of every single room - even the shed he had built all those years ago; all himself, his own mind. She shuddered, scared by seeing her Dad anew, estranged. She reminded herself that this was far from being the first time such revelations had occurred. She stared back down at the box. A mess. Her Dad was crumbling away into nothing, unable to perform basic functions. Why had Erin not told her? The question hovered until Ula couldn't be sure she hadn't been told. Had she shrugged it off or had Erin simply been so matter-of-fact that it had gone unnoticed? She began to cry in silence, but her eyes remained dry; an attempt at purging the frustration that sat lodged in her chest like a stubborn wishbone that could neither be rescued or digested. She thought of returning to London on the next train but it was immediately followed by the picture of her Dad sitting in his chair beside the fire, wondering why she had left after a day. She wanted to cry for him, but she could barely cry for herself. Ula stood at the back door with a cup of coffee. The birdsong had long faded, leaving no sounds to latch onto and follow.

She knocked on the thin door before entering to see that her Dad's room could offer no comfort to anyone, least of all a sick man. The bed lay alongside the half-opened window. He had always insisted on windows being opened. As a child she recalled him lying in bed, the open window blowing the curtains into the room as he watched the thunderstorm, lightning illuminating the night sky over Hulme's concrete crescents. Her Mum had hidden in the small cubby-hole beneath the stairs, accompanied by a flagon of Guinness and her cigarettes. "Ula?" Thomas asked, only slightly turning his head up, but enough for Ula to see that his exhausted pillow was dirty and stained. There were also what looked like old blood stains on the naked duvet covering him. "Are you ok, Da?" she asked.

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"Arragh..., " he replied and let his head fall back down onto the pillow. "Do you want me to make you some breakfast? I think there's some porridge downstairs... " "No, I'm fine... " "Right. What about some tea? Or coffee? " "No, Ula, no, I'm fine, your sister brought me some tea up before she went out." The words seemed to Ula to carry a tinge of accusation but she dismissed it as her own projection. Wright then... " she hesitated at the door. "There was someone out there last night..., " she said, aware she was carrying a tone of drama. "Out where? " he asked, raising his head again, his interest piqued. "Outside the back garden, I caught them looking in through the fence... " "Was it your mudder? " he asked. "No, no, it wasn't her, I think it was a junkie... checking the place out..." Her Dad tufted and banged his head back down. "Arragh. There's too fucking many of that breed around here. Let them come in, there's fuck all to take, so there is." **

It was mid morning when Ula arrived at the white domed Central Library in St. Peter's Square. She was still impressed by the Portland stone building that had been influenced by the Rome Pantheon. She hadn't ventured inside for years since the days when she had played truant from high school, hiding within, feeling the world and its troubles to be beyond reach. She had browsed fat encyclopedias in the Reference room, which relayed the most impressive echo. Ula would relish the sound of placing a heavy tome onto one of the desks just to hear it magnified and hollow.

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A couple of Lowry prints and an old Clarion poster adorned the walls in the local history room. A young Chinese woman busily checked the titles on the spines of a lower shelf of books. Once seated at a desk Ula's pen hovered above the clean page. She thought of her Dad back at the house, in that bedroom. Hadn't she tried, she asked herself, wondering what would satisfactorily constitute 'trying'; she told herself that she could at least have forced him to get up and eat a good breakfast. In fact, she could have got him out of that room altogether and turned it into something more habitable in a day if she had put her mind to it; elbow grease and a no-nonsense approach being all that was needed. But she knew that he would only have sworn and told her to get back to London out of it. She sighed heavily and audibly, causing the Chinese woman to glance up and smile. Ula remained like that for a little while until she lost herself in the world of Mary Burns. After almost six hours of concentrated immersion in an older version of that same city Ula left the studious silence for the busy square. Buses, cars, taxis and trams travelled around her. It felt too early to return to the house. The notion that her Dad was dying occurred to her but she quickly batted it away; the family jinx that had once been her Dad's constant refrain couldn't extend that far - not to him at his age - and she found herself concluding that, if anything, it would be her Mum who would be the first to go. Ula had imagined, at times with a morbid relish, receiving a call to say that her Mum had been

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found in some gutter. She came to see these imaginings as rehearsals; a way of preparing herself for the possible demise of a woman who got up to god knows what, with god knows whom. No, her Dad was the ox and he would come through this and be back working and shouting the odds again in no time. Instead of heading down Oxford Street, Ula turned right up Peter Street. She imagined Mary Burns walking in her same footsteps, past the Midland Hotel, formerly the Free Trade Hall. A non-descript plaque declared it to be the site of the Peterloo Massacre. She crossed to the other side to pass the old Theatre Royal, towards Deansgate. The Town Hall clock chimed a quarter past the hour just as light rain began to fall but Ula felt compelled to continue, delighting in the distinctive smell that rose up from the raindrops as they stained the pavement in increasingly larger patches. Reaching Deansgate Ula pushed on a few minutes to New Bridge Street. It was a busy road, overlooked by the high steeple of an old mill. The rain slowed but there had been enough of a downfall to make the cars fizz by and for the scene to appear like a grey watercolour, so that the colours of the cars, canary yellows, cornflower blues and flashy reds, seemed more vivid, especially in contrast to the old mill in the background. Ula wondered how many skeletons lay underneath her feet; all those who had died in the former workhouse and who had been buried in mass graves without so much as a first name or a shroud between them. She stopped at a bus stop where she was able to survey the road without garnering suspicion. She remained there for the best part of half an hour, looking, unconsciously chewing her bottom lip until the knot of anxiety began to make itself felt again, tightening. Who said that anxiety was the dizziness of freedom, she wondered. It felt like the opposite. Hegel? She wondered if Mary read anything of him or whether he came up in discussions with Engels. She would surely have known by heart the rousing poems of Byron, lines from the works of Thomas Paine, and Shelley. It occurred to Ula that she could return to London the next morning - making her visit almost two days. The familiar dread invaded her, dragging her down. `Come on, Ula, come on...' Without looking she turned to head back the way Page 103 of 254

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she came, but had only a second to register the young mum, whose buggy seemed to career into her, although she knew even as it was happening, that it was she who was careering into it. "Oh my god!" Ula said, grabbing hold of the bench in the bus shelter and using it to straighten herself. 'What the fuck! " the girl shouted. Without thought Ula hardened her face to match the young mother's expression, whose resentment was writ large as she tufted and pushed the buggy, calling behind her, "Stupid bitch, should look where you're going!" A cold heat washed through her veins and Ula ran after her, spinning her round by the shoulder. "Who the fuck d'you think you're talking to, eh?" Ula shouted. "Fuck off!" the girl shouted back, and she stepped away from the buggy to prepare herself. It was the long beep of a van's horn to the car in front that shook Ula enough for her to turn away without another word, the child setting up a wail of fright tinged with misery. It was only as she reached the city centre that the post-adrenaline trembling took hold, the remorse grabbing her as she thought of the child. Taking shelter in a tram station for a few minutes Ula tried to slow her breathing; watching as people emerged from Marks & Spencer's laden with bags of shopping. Walking the last stretch home with a bag of groceries Ula felt calmer. She thought of her book, realising that it could never be passed off as some sort of straight biography; Mary, she reminded herself, was integral to the Marxist movement, how could any biographer or writer using her as their subject simply just put pen to paper as though it had all simply come into being - like a dress whose seams were all hidden? History digested and re-presented in a way that defied the work that had gone into it, like the shed her Dad had built, the way its construction could be seen, every plank of wood and how it had been fitted into

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place, both haphazardly and perfectly, as if shouting that this had been built by one man who revered work for the sake of it; because he could. **

"He's still in bed, " Ula said. Erin slumped into their Dad's chair. "He's been like this before - days up there..." "Fuck's sake Erin, you've never said anything on the phone..." "What's to say? He takes to his bed." Erin reached down to her bag, removed a cigarette box and went into the kitchen. Ula followed her. Erin opened the top half of the back door. Not long after he moved in their Dad had sawn the door across in order to create a stable-type opening. Ula and Erin had assumed that it was what he had in the rural Irish house he had grown up in, of which he hardly spoke. Erin lit her cigarette and fed the dark air generous ribbons of smoke. Ula leant against the sink unit - the strip of cold stainless steel a band across her lower back. She fell into wondering how hers and Erin's lives would have differed had they grown up in Ireland. Would they be married with a brood of children by now? Would she still consider herself a Catholic as opposed to an atheist? It seemed likelier - as without so within. Laid out on the work-surface were the items that Ula had brought back from town; a tub of colcannon, lamb chops, carrot batons and broccoli florets, and a family sized luxury strawberry trifle that declared in large bold print that it had been made with 'real strawberries'. "Did you tell him you'd got dinner in?" Erin asked. "Yes. I said to him, do you want some lamb chops and colcannon? " "What did he say?" "What?" "What did he say? "

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"That's what he said." "Oh, " Erin replied and took another drag on her cigarette, one arm folded. "Did you tell him there was trifle for afters?" "He's not a kid holding out for pudding!" Ula replied.

The cat saunteredin and rubbed itselfagainst Erin's legs, meowing. "I left a bottle of water and a glass up there... he needs that at the very least." They remained silent, listening to his footsteps; even the cat stopped meowing and began to groom itself. The bathroom door opened and closed and Ula's thoughts turned to the boxes. "I don't think he'll be down here tonight now," Erin said and flicked the orangeheaded cigarette stub out into the garden before closing the top half of the door. **

Both sisters had retired to their rooms by ten, the television news not enough to keep them downstairs. Ula wrote until the early hours, until she heard her Dad get up. She checked the time - 02:43. He visited the bathroom before cautiously descending the stairs. The pipes whistled as he filled the kettle.

"You ok, Da?" Ula asked, standing by the settee. "Arragh, I don't know...," Thomas said and shook his newspaper - his hands were shaking. He looked even thinner. "You should eat something you know." "What can I do if I have no appetite I have no appetite... there's no point in eating if there's no work to be done, sure, I'd be better off dead out of it, so I would."

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"Da!" Ula felt her face heat up and tears prick at her eyes as though an old wound had been prodded. Thomas didn't look up but continued staring at the page. **

"He's getting dangerously thin you know," Ula said from the kitchen doorway the following morning, blinking heavily to alleviate her tired, gritty eyes. 'We'll have to call the doctor out then," Erin replied matter-of-factly, twisting a tea-towel inside a mug. "I'll go round there this morning and speak to his doctor then shall I?" "Speak to his doctor? You'll be lucky! The amount of times I've been round there...," Erin said. "Are you saying I shouldn't go then?" "No! I'm just saying!" Erin said. She put the mug down, shook out the tea-towel and folded it over one of the cupboard doors. "I'll go round then, someone'll have to come, don't care who it is," Ula said. Erin took the slice of toast from the toaster, buttered it, and crunched into it. "Right then... I'd best be off - the systems are in a right fucking mess at work and I seem to be the only one who's running round like a mad woman! " Erin grabbed her bag, holding the half eaten toast by her teeth as she picked up her coat off the sofa and left. She called up the stairs as she reached the front door, "bye Da, going to work!" and with that she was gone. Thomas didn't reply. **

Ula knew the two storey prefabricated medical centre from when she was a child. Their family GP, Dr. Valance, had been a kindly grandfather type who thought nothing of stitching Jane's head after Thomas had smashed a plate over it. He had seen plenty of that. Like everything else on the estate the centre Page 107 of 254

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was run-down; it didn't help when Ula entered to find the entire reception counter shielded with Perspex; a heavy enervation seemed to leech the second one entered. An emaciated man paced back and forth. Ula waited behind an elderly Muslim man who swayed on the spot as he struggled to keep himself upright on two sticks, a younger woman beside him, her hand by his elbow. As he was called to the desk the next receptionist along called her down. "My Dad's ill, he needs a home visit," Ula said. The receptionist, a middle-aged woman in a cheap suit with a brooch of a fish on her jacket, raised her eyebrows. "We don't have the resources to just send doctors out willy-nilly," she said. Ula felt her heartbeat increase and the spiky ball of anxiety began to release its spores. It was then that she understood the need for the screens, even though the very presence of them seemed to instil the need to lash out. She told herself to calm down - the last thing she wanted in trying to help her Dad was to have him removed from the centre's list. She finally managed to persuade the receptionist that there was no chance that her Dad would manage to walk around himself - nor did he yet warrant an ambulance to take him to hospital. Ula knew that both of these things were untrue in their own way but the receptionist conceded. Ula returned and tidied the living room and threw out a pile of dated newspapers from beside her Dad's chair. She cleaned the windows and mopped the floor, fed the cat and wiped the kitchen cupboards. She even managed an hour of reading about how Engels returned to Manchester in the summer of 1845, inviting Mary to live in Brussels with him. As she scrubbed at the living-room skirting Ula imagined what a great excitement that must have been for Mary - the chance of escape; being rescued; her own version of the fairytale - but also the tug of home-sickness that had been so familiar to Ula in the first few weeks of leaving Manchester, and the same palpable guilt of leaving people behind in the mess.

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It was late afternoon when the doctor arrived. Ula ran upstairs to tell her Dad, knowing she had done the right thing when he offered no response. The unsmiling Doctor made his own way up, refusing the offer of tea. Ula wiped surfaces in the kitchen that were already clean - over cigarette burns and patches where the countertop was heavily knife-scored, reminding her of the way her Mum had once sliced carrots to put in the watery Wednesday stews of her childhood. She hadn't expected the Doctor to return downstairs within five minutes to mutter that her Dad just needed to eat and take his existing medication. 'It's really very simple', he added in heavily accented English. Ula shrugged and the Doctor let himself out. She returned to the kitchen and opened a tin of chicken soup. She waited for the heat bubbles to appear around the thick liquid's edge and then travel towards the centre with the tumbling heat. She reminded herself that she needed to find her Mum. She was not naive enough to think that Jane would ever return to stand watch over a pan of chicken soup, but she could bring vitality - if only a rowdy argument to get him fired up out of the apathy that was pulling him further into sickness. "Da, you've got to have this soup..." Ula's hand shook as she placed the mug onto the small table beside her Dad's bed. "I can't Ula, didn't I say...?° he said - his voice coming from a cave. "But you have to..., " she pleaded, almost crying. There was a moment in which they both seemed to be thinking what to say next. "Get me some Lucozade from round the shops...," he finally said. **

Ula pressed the bottom bell, feeling a surge of adrenalin, preparing her for fight or flight. The flats at the back of the shops were quiet, yet there was an air of silent, simmering resentment. The voice of an ageing male smoker coughed over the intercom before asking, 'yeah?'

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"I know she's there - my Mum - Jane - can you tell her Ula's here. Her daughter. " The few seconds silence that followed confirmed it, but Ula sensed the lie that would follow. "There's no Jane here... you've got the wrong one," Jack replied. From these words Ula built up a profile of his character, concluding that he was mean, shady and generally no-good -a man bitter that the world had not delivered what he had too long thought was his due. "I know you're lying," she shouted and gave the door a fierce kick, making

it

reverberate. "Piss. Off!" he said and hung up. A second was all it took for regret to dig its claws into her; worried that her Mum would bear the brunt of her words. ***

London. August 1845 Dear Lizzie, We arrived in London two days ago and are here for a couple more whilst Fred and Karl see some people. We are getting the boat from Thames Wharf to Ostend and then onto Brussels. I was going to turn back at Victoria, I felt so homesick, and I couldn't stop crying on the train. I didn't want to leave you, surely I didn't. Please be strong now, this is a test for you, sure, it's your first time alone in the world, Lizzie, and it will make you stronger. I hope so. I know so. Poor Fred thought it was his fault but I assured him that I wanted to be with him. Apart from a few words in English Karl spoke only in German and spent the rest of the time reading. It was Fred's turn to guide me around this city yesterday. It's ten times the size of Manchester - we walked so much I thought me feet were going to fall off. He showed me the Houses of Parliament. The river Thames reeks worse than Little Ireland's middens! I joked with Fred and said I

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should have took the petition off the Chartists myself and brought it with me that me and Fred would take no for an answer! But then we walked down to St. Giles, like Little Ireland, only it is much worse! There was the usual filth and squalor but there were even a few of them looked like the walking dead! Fred said they were as high as kites and I asked him if he meant drunk and he said no, that they were on opium or laudanum or something, like the drink only quicker... and even though I was with Fred still some of the girls came out touting for business. He laughed them away and I just kept my trap shut and let him deal with it, but inside I was furious! They would never be so brazen in Manchester, Lizzie, Manchester tarts have more manners! But besides that the poor wretches were all bones and scabs. I miss you Lizzie, but at least now I'm writing, but only when Fred isn't here. I feel too aware of myself sitting here writing away, nowhere near as quick as his scribbles, but there you are. I shall write when we get to Brussels - the promised land! Your loving sister, always Mary x ***

Manchester. August 1845 Mary standsby the door, close to Lizzie. Her stepmother is sullen, her face bloated, her nose crimson, and her cheeks are a map of broken veins. Their father sits in the only chair, his legs resting on an upturned tea crate, a brown bottle in his hand. "What's brought ye here, neither of you have a lad yet, have ye not?" he asks. It is hard to tell whether Michael Burns is closer to anger or teasing; in these moments when he is not at work, yet fed and with a bottle in his hand, one would think it was the latter,

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yet many a time the girls - and others - have been caught out by his capricious moods. Mary looks at her stepmotherjust in time to catch from her a sly sideways glance.. "I'm off to Brussels... " Her father registers no surprise. He takes a swig of his beer. Mary is certain that it is a

flicker of jealousythat runsacrossher stepmother'sface. "Where'd you say?" her father asks a second after he has swallowed the warm liquid. "Brussels, it's in Belgium... " Mary says, grabbing hold of Thomas's little hand. "I know where it fucking is for Christ's sake, d'ya think your Da's an auld eejit altogether?" he asks.He takes another swig of his beer, quick, angry. "I'm going with Fred... " "Aah, the old hooer master's back in town is he? Well, good luck with that one, he'll probably leave you strandedout there with child, so he will... and what about your sister, you leaving her here? What would your poor mother say?" "Lizzie has her job here... " Mary says. "I'm alright Da, why would I want to be leaving Manchester?" Lizzie says. "Isn't Manchester good enough for you or summat?" her stepmotherasks, folding her arms, her lips thinning into what Mary seesis a rigid line of spite. "I've been asked to go away to Brussels, somewherenew, I don't know how long for, might be a week, might be a month... but something's brewing on the continent and Fred needs to be there... and I need to be with him... " "On the cont-i-nent! Ooh, la-de-di here..." her father says. His wife sniggers.

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"It'll be good to be a part of something - change!" Mary adds, reminding herself not to react. Michael looks at his daughter, his face set in anger. "Change? Don't make me sick! I was at Peterloo in 1819 - we were the ones actually out there fighting for change! All most of your lot seemto want to do is write and talk `bout it all... makes me sick it does." He takes a bigger glug of beer and swallows it with a gulp. "Well at least we do more than wear liberty caps and keep going on about 1819!" Mary shouts from a surge of long-held anger that feels good, too good. It doesn't just make her little stepbrother jump, but from the flicker of surprise across her father's face, him too. Her stepmother looks at Michael, waiting for his responsewith what looks to Mary too much like glee. "Get out! Go on! You're a little hussy and you're not welcome here... " Michael shouts. He throws the unfinished bottle of beer against the wall. Mary takes a couple of steps back into the doorway. "That's all you can do - you're a coward! A coward for a father is all we have, Lizzie! And a hooer for a wife! " Michael lunges for her and Mary, ready, grabs Lizzie's hand and they dash up the stairs. It is only outside, walking down Henry Street amidst throngs of workers on their dinner breaks that Lizzie notices that Mary is crying.

"What did you expectfrom him Mary?" "I dunno, `goodbye'? Why doeshe hate me so much? He always has!" Lizzie shrugs and keeps pace beside her sister as they head towards Deansgate. "Ever since Ma died," Lizzie said after a short while.

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Mary stops and faces her sister. "No it isn't, Ma's death has nothing to do with anything! It's him, he's always been an angry feckless good-for-nothing fucker... angry with all the wrong people! I think that after Peterloo he just gave up but gave us all his fucking anger! Well fuck him! And that bitch hooer of a wife of his." "Mary!

"

"Well, it's true! And I'll tell you another thing Lizzie Bums! I will not miss him one little bit, so I won't. Him and that bitch of a wife will end up in the workhouse one day, mark my words, and I'll not be there to help them! " Mary quickens her pace. Lizzie starts crying. Mary stops to wait for her sister to catch up and pats her on the back. "C'mon now, little wench, you'll have me at it... " "I'm scared of being on my own Mary... " "I've given you enough towards the rent for a few months... and... and I'll try and write to you Lizzie, that's what I'll do! I want to go, Lizzie, please don't make me stay." Lizzie nods. "I know, I'd want to go if it was me too, and Fred is such a nice man, you're so lucky Mary... it's becauseyou're prettier than me... and cleverer. " "Don't talk shite Lizzie, it isn't true and you know it - I'm just a few years older, that's all, and one day you'll meet a nice lad, someone like Fred... and what are you talking about, prettier? Who says?Aren't we sisters?Don't we both take after our Ma? She was pretty, wasn't she, such a shame..." "She was, wasn't she Mary, our pretty Mother... I don't want to marry someone like our Da Lizzie, I don't, I don't want to die a long, slow death..." "You will not Lizzie! Don't talk like that. And do you know what, by the time I get back you'll be a much stronger woman for it, so you will, me too." They both laugh and Lizzie wipes her tears.

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"Now come on, you've to help me pack... I can't organise my wardrobe alone!" They cross the road and continue at a brisk pace. "Oh yeah, right Mary, your huge wardrobe! " "Well it'll take all of ten minutes..." "It'll be good for you, Lizzie. " "Do you think so?" "I do, and you may meet a lad or you may not, either way you need to find your own feet, without me, it's important for you..." "Yeah...,, "I'm scared too Lizzie, leaving Manchester, England even! Imagine! And they'll all be talking differently and... but I want to be with Fred... I love him Lizzie, I do." "I know you do... Have you told Ermens?" "Fred says he'll go in and have a word, so I'll leave him to it, Ermens won't like it, but he'll have to stick it in his pipe and smoke it. Whatever you do, don't crumble in front of that man. Just get on with your job and he'll leave you be, understand?" Lizzie nods. They continue to walk amongst the straggles of factory workers and clerks keen to get the most from the daylight hours, darkened as they are by the ill-fed sky. It suddenly dawns on Mary that shewill miss Manchester, her home, as much as the time she has spent hating it. ***

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Manchester. Aueust 1845 Mary staggers a little as she, Fred, and Karl leave The Old Boar ale house. Fred wraps an arm around her shoulders and draws her to him. "We need to seeHarney and O'Connor before we go back to Brussels...," Fred tells Karl in German. Mary hiccups and Fred gives a little laugh. Karl replies in German, yet Mary has the distinct sensethat they are discussing her, even though she cannot catch her name in the jumble. It is confirmed when Fred stops and holds Mary before him. Karl sings opera as he continues at a slow, staggering pace. "Mary, will you come back with us?" Fred asks, his eyes wide, the beer on his breath. "Back? To Mrs. Whittle's? No, look, you don't want to be getting into trouble with the landlady, even if she is an old dragon..." She releasesher arm from his hand and walks ahead. Fred quickens his pace. "Back to Brussels..." he says. Mary stops. Karl's voice deepensinto an impressive baritone. Mary furrows her brow and gives a little laugh. "Don't be an eejit, it's the drink talking, c'mon... " shesays. "It's not the drink talking Mary, I'm hardly drunk! Just... cheerful... jovial... and, actually in my right mind! And Karl likes you..." "Karl likes anyone when he's had a drink... " Karl stops underneath a gas-fuelled lamp and stops singing. He looks back at them. "That is utter tosh, I am no Falstaff! " he says in heavily accented English. Mary turns in surprise. "I don't like Mrs. Vittle..., " he says. Mary laughs at his mispronunciation. "Karl, come hither! Tell Mary how much I'd like her to come back to Brussels with us, I daresay she'd get on with Jenny too..." He turns to Mary, "that's Karl's wife... " Page 116 of 254

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"Mi amor, my Jennykins, it would be a monster not to get along with that woman...," Karl says,now leaning against the wall whilst taking out a cigar. "There's plenty more besidesMrs. `Vittle' that Karl doesn't have the stomach for, believe me," Fred adds,throwing Karl a knowing look. "Come on, let's be off, some of us have to be up at dawn, remember?" Mary says and skips a few steps ahead. "But that's it, don't you see, if you're coming back with us, to Brussels, then you can tell Godfrey to... well, you know... " Mary feels the anger rise up from her stomach. "Arragh stop, Fred, will you, please?" she looks away, adding, "If you're serious then ask me again in the morning and we'll see..." She quickens her pace and Fred runs to catch up and links his arm through hers. Karl blows smoke rings and resumeshis opera singing behind them. ***

Ula carefully removed the amber wrapping from the bottle, relishing the sound and feel. One of the things she remembered most about her Dad as she grew up was what seemed like his constant thirst for throat-cutting fizzy drinks that were drank in long draughts as if each time there was the possibility of an eternal slaking. They used to get through bottles of lemonade; Iron Bru or American Cream Soda; dandelion & burdock or Vimto. The pop man would arrive on the estate on a Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The lorry was more of a pick-up truck with crates of brightly coloured glass bottles on the back, which rattled to announce itself as it turned the corners. The kids would shout 'the pop man's here! The. Pop. Man. He's heeere!' Thomas would stop what he was doing, dig his hand into his trouser pocket and examine the coins, before handing either Ula or Erin the heavy hexagonal coin, saying to get a bottle of whatever they wanted. They would carry the bottle back into the house as though they were transporting gold bullion - fearful of dropping it. Thomas poured it into cups at half-tilt, and they would drink it in front of each other, the Page 117 of 254

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four of them. Ula and Erin gave an audible and exaggerated `aaahhhh', copying their parents. Erin returned from work, entered the kitchen and looked askance at the glass in Ula's hand for a moment. "Will you take it up?" "Did he ask you to get it?" Erin asked, brightening at the thought of their Dad getting back onto his feet. "Yes. " Ufa passed the drink to Erin, who immediately took it upstairs, leaving Ufa to set about pulling back the clear cellophane coverings of the food she had bought for the previous evening. She managed to find a couple of oven-proof bowls in the cupboard and was about to decant the contents from the plastic pots when Erin's scream shot through the house. Ula dropped the spoon and attacked the stairs two by two. "He's half gone!" Erin cried, nudging their comatose Dad by the shoulder. "Da! Da! Come on, Da, wake up, it's me, Erin!" Ula could see that he was trying to talk, battling against heavy-lidded eyes. She ran downstairs and called an ambulance. **

The siren cut violently into the silence of the estate. It shook Ula as she paced the road by the student block, her arms folded as though she was a pit-wife seeking freedom from hungry children within as she kept watch for the husband late on pay-night. She alternated between looking up to her Dad's bedroom window and the road that led into the estate - road, window, road, window. The second the blue flashing light appeared she sprinted back to the house and up the stairs.

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"They're here no, Da, they're here, you're going to be ok. They're here," she said, catching her breath. The young paramedic wheeled him out of the house. As soon as he and his colleague arrived they had set into action, which made Erin cry even more. Ula moved to the doorway and watched, a hand held up to her mouth as if that was the only way to keep the nerves from escaping to snatch her into total chaos. The sisters set a frantic pace in near silence. They had left the house in a half run until Ula assured Erin that they would be there in good time if they just walked quickly - that the paramedic must have thought their Dad would be ok given that he didn't offer even one of them a lift. They squelched across the water-logged grass that lay in-between the homeopathic clinic that never seemed to be open, and the Mawson pub, from which no noises could be heard. They passed the back of the Chinese cash & carry. A couple of men unloaded big sacks of beansprouts; one man in the back of a van threw them to the other on the ground, who stacked them onto a pallet, creating the sound of efficiency - the catching of the sacks, the stacking of them and the lifting of the pallet by the forklift truck - all wordlessly, like a message that, no matter what personal troubles unfolded, people still beavered away in silence. An oxygen mask rested on Thomas's face. Two hospital bracelets, transparent except for a label that bore blue-inked scribbles, hung from his wrist. His body was swamped in a green standard issue gown. There was no room for a slither of denial to creep in and take even tenuous root; this was the truth. He was afforded some privacy when a nurse walked the green curtain half way around the bed, although Ula's seat still gave her a view of the ward. The bedside machines bleeped. Erin kept on falling into silent sobs, periodically reaching for tissues from a box on the bedside cabinet. Ula closed her eyes for a while, transported to years long gone. Thomas stood at the bathroom sink shaving, the two dimpled indentations in his lower back moving slightly with each dip of the guarded blade into the water, still as he carefully rasped the razor up over his jawline. The scars were from when he had half of his kidney removed at that same hospital, a few years before Ula was born. He had been found in a pool of Page 119 of 254

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blood in the bedsit on Moss Lane East. He was twenty years old and not long in Manchester. He would often muse on a wistful Sunday evening how his life might have turned out had he somehow found a way to remain in Edinburgh. He might not have needed the innocuous nasal wash that set off a reaction that led to the near fatal bleeding had he stayed in Scotland. Ula often wondered about these alternative lives, not just of her parents, but of everyone - the roads not taken. What did they mean and were they in fact being lived by another version of themselves in a parallel world? She usually stopped herself from taking these notions too far. Yet nor did she believe, when she heard others say that you have one path, in pre-determination. As she got older she found the notion and the political implications increasingly abhorrent. The thought that they might be on fixed paths angered her; the helplessness of her own fate; that her Dad had been a Grafter all his life because that's what was meant to be and no arguments about it; that it was all meant to be - que sera sera, and there was no point in fighting for something else and making life too difficult. 'Why don't you go home and get some kip, eh? You'll need it -I think your Dad'II be ok for a few hours now," the nurse said after she checked the machine. Ula opened her eyes. Erin was wide awake. It was 6.30am. **

"We'll have to find her," Ula said as they left the hospital. "Find who?" Erin looked at her sister through red, swollen eyes with what seemed to be genuine puzzlement, but which Ula then doubted. She wondered, not for the first time, why her sister had to play out these little acts of dumbness. What did she get in the space of a few seconds between posing the unnecessary question and Ula having to spell it out? "Who'd you think? She's got a right to know..." "She's got no rights - these past few years that woman has only been round to see him when she's run out of money; when she's got no cigs or money for drink, that's all. She doesn't give a shit!" Erin said.

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Ula thought those few seconds might be a drawing in of resources; steeling herself to respond waspishly. 'Well, that might be right but..." "Anyway, you'd have to find her first... and even if you do, she won't care!" "I saw her yesterday go into some flats behind the shops." "Yeah, that fancy man of hers! He lives round there. I told you." "Maybe I should go again." **

As soon as they entered the house it felt wrong. They looked around the living room, and then at each other. "It's the fucking telly! Bastards!" Erin shouted. Ula stared at the empty space in the corner where the television had sat. They both ran into the kitchen where they found the upper half of the back door and the garden gate open. "Didn't I say!" Ula said, one hand on a hip. "Dirty cunts! " Erin shouted and kicked the bottom half of the door before opening it back so hard that it slammed into the kitchen wall, the knock of the handle causing a cracked dent that resembled a freshly tapped egg. She marched into the garden spluttering expletives and slammed the gate, dragging the rusting old bolt across it. From the door Ula noticed the curtain twitching of the ageing next-door neighbour. It was a couple of hours before the police came and took a report, advising them that there was little hope of either the culprit or the television being found. Afterwards the sisters sat in silence in the living-room until Erin went upstairs to sleep. Ula stared at his empty chair, picturing him lugging it back from some skip like some Murphy character from a Beckett novella, returning to tell Erin that there was nothing wrong with it, nothing at all, and that it was a perfectly good chair,

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so it was. She thought about the need to replace the television for when he came out, and then there was his bedroom that needed to be tackled. Ula tried to get some sleep but it eluded her as her mind followed the same lines of thoughts over and over again; had she done enough? If she had been more attentive would it have made a difference? She longed to share it all with someone, she thought; longed to pick the phone up and tell someone all about it - but there was no-one, not like Mary Burns had Fred, and he her. They both had fractious relationships with their fathers. Ula suddenly asked herself whether this was the primary motive for her writing about Mary. She felt that it wasn't, if only for the fact that had anyone asked her whether she had a fractious relationship with her Dad she would have said 'no'. But she wondered how else it could be described if not that. It was hardly warm or easy. Communication had never flowed between them - but then it hadn't flowed between her Dad or anyone else either - including himself. Mary hadn't needed to hide anything, though, nothing of her life - the stain of it that Fred freely used to inform his book, and as a result bore witness to her life. Ula realised she had Erin to clarify and confirm how bad the past had been at times; how angry and frustrating and sad and dysfunctional - but now? *«*

Manchester, August 1845 The steam train chugs into Victoria. Fred Engels jumps down onto the platform and wastes no time in taking his large carpet bag from the eagerporter, a boy of no more than fourteen, to whom he gives a coin. He drops the bag on the concourse, and takes the opportunity to stretch out his arms, up towards the smoky sky, and then, without regard for anyone's glances,he leans over to touch his toes. He turns to face his friend who, cigar hanging from his bottom lip, is stepping off the train in a more leisurely manner. His brown eyes twinkle as he scansthe station of the town that he has heard so much about. He gives a deep breath - not of contentment, more of arrival. He is finally here. It was a long journey that did not begin with getting on the train from one station to another, but several years before. The two men share an excitement at reaching their

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destination, for reasonsseparateand shared.Fred's thoughts turn to Mary but he tells himself it will be soon enough. "I would start practising the art of shallow breathing if I were you, Karl, deep breaths in Manchester are rewarded only with blackened lungs." Karl Marx standsbeside his friend and they survey the busy platform and then around and up at the station's infrastructure - impressions that are feeding these similar minds with sensory data that will be interpreted into rapidly forming theories. Karl's brown eyes dart, rest, interpret, dart... always betraying the keen and restless intelligence of their owner. "What would Shakespearehave said about Manchester?" Karl asks as they make their way through the bustle of merchants, factory owners and their families, porters, bigarmed black-faced train drivers and their coal carriers and women begging with their babies slung in their shawls on the front of their thin bodies. Karl's eyes widen even more outside the station when they are met with life at the heart of the industrial revolution. A row of horse-drawn carriages line the cobblestonedroad. "Which carriage f yor case, Sir?" the porter asks as he hups Karl's case from one shoulder to the next. Karl shakeshis head, not taking his eyes off the scenesplaying themselves out in front load. He hands him of him. Fred signals for the porter to unburden himself of his another coin before sending him on his way. Two young men shovel horse manure up off the road, swiftly moving from one dumps it into hessian sacks. The steaming mound to the next, whilst a third collects and day's headlines are being shouted by several men and boys on four separatecorners each trying to outdo one another. Several women loiter provocatively in side-streetsjust out of view. Karl tells Fred that he has smelt nothing like it. The stench is indescribable bodies, rotting meat and sour milk, yeast and - sewage,sulphur, manure, unwashed hops from the breweries, the burning of coal that keeps the world supplied with textiles.

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Even Fred, having become accustomedto it during his last stay, is now breathing through his mouth, certain that it has worsened. "We shall walk, it's the only way to seeit, to feel it... " Fred says and leads the way to Great Ducie Street. Karl's dark bushy brows furrow as he looks at his case,puzzled. "C'mon, Moor! Big man like you...," Fred says, laughing. Keeping the cigar in his mouth, Karl lifts his caseup with the minimum of exertion and lodges it, as the porter had done, on his left shoulder, his left arm holding it steady. They set a moderate pace as they leave the surroundings of the station and head towards their lodgings, attracting a few glances as they stop regularly to talk and survey before finally arriving at Mrs. Whittle's boarding house. **

In the evening, somewhat rested, the two men stroll back into town. When Mr. Thomas's Chop House is in sight Fred laughs to himself. Marx nudges him. "No jokes allowed without sharing." "Is that going in our Manifesto? Jokes are the property of the collective as soon as they spring to mind?" "Quite! The more laughter, the better!" "Aah, but not all jokes are funny. " "Then it isn't a joke, " Marx says. "Aah... well, I was just thinking of Mary Burns - this is where we met, " Fred said, figuring it is as good as true. He leads the way into the noisy but cheery establishment. "Mary again. You need to get a hold of her while we're here."

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"She should be at the mill - if shehasn't already clobbered Godfrey Ermens over the head." "Direct action is sometimes vital. " The two men take their seatsand order. Marx looks around, his eyes darting from one table to the next. Finally he bangs his knife on the table, "food! " he says, as the waiter approachesthem with their fare. Fred and Karl tuck in to hearty meals of chops, potatoes, carrots and thick slices of freshly baked wholemeal bread, which they fold and eat without butter. They stop every few minutes to slush it down with ale. "Before we head off to the library we'll have to stop off at the mill. We'll jump in a carriage - have it wait then get to Cheetham's library at a decent hour. This evening I shall take to you the little club I joined whilst here last."

"Aah, Mary...,, "Well I do owe her a copy of the book," Fred says. "She reads German?" Karl asks. "No... not sure if there's a chance of having it published in English either... unless I pay for it myself. " "Give it a while, seewhat the reaction is back home." "Perhaps," Fred says. Karl lights a cigar, filling the small cab with strong dense smoke. Fred reachesinto the his newly published spacious inside pocket of his coat, wherein reside two copies of book, The Condition of the Working Classesin England. He thinks back to his return to Barmen last year; he wasted no time in setting to work on re-writing it all out before it sending it to the publisher. He hadn't anticipated living through all again and how it Page 125 of 254

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had made him feel - the times he and Mary had tramped their way all over the town, to places he would never had known had it not been for her. How she teasedhim when she first brought him into Little Ireland - that he was not to worry if they were cornered by scuttlers or others, for she would protect him. It had turned him on, the way shewas so alive, teasing, and then, when alone, how she would yield to him and run her hands up and down his back whilst hers became arched and her calves taut. His loins now stirred. **

Godfrey Ermens rests his hand on Mary's shoulder. He signals for one of the scavengers to take over the machine that she operates.A pale boy with a couple of facial scars, no more than eleven years old nudges Mary aside, assuredof his action under the eye of their boss. Too noisy to verbally protest or ask questions Mary follows Ermens out of the main mill and up a short flight of stairs. They enter a small office that serves secondary to the main one guests are received in, which is situated on the more publicly respectable Deansgate.Mary leaves the door ajar, but Ermenspoints to it and Mary clicks it closed, turning the drones of the looms and machinery into a deep muted hum. Godfrey Ermens allows Mary to stare expectantly for a moment. He is not a man who finds it necessaryto amusehimself with small instancesof power but when the Engels family is involved it is a different matter. "Well? " he asks. Mary shrugs. "You called me in here, Sir, " she says. "Mr. Engels is back in town... does this mean that you and he will be resuming your... sordid little... " Mary flinches. "I wasn't aware that Mr. Engels was in Manchester Sir, I'd have thought I'd be one of the last to know. And I don't seewhat that has to do with my job... " Ermens sits at the leather bound chair at his desk. Mary recognisesthe feeling that invades her - the same feeling shehad with Mr. Chadfield.

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"Have you no dignity? No morals? How many men have had their way with you since Mr. Engels left last year? Well? It is all of my business, Miss Burns, all of my business. I will not employ women of ill-repute, there are those mills that are little more than harems, well, it is no good for my soul or my business - and Mr. Engels Senior would surely agree." Mary clenches her fist whilst urging herself to calm down, not to rise to the bait. She isn't fired yet. "I have plenty of morals, and I'm a good worker, " shesays, wondering where Fred is, who he's with, where he's staying, the reason for his visit. Ermens looks down at the papers on his desk. "You'll never have more from him, you know that, don't you?" he says, rifling through the papers, "You're just a mill girl, Irish at that! You and he are lucky I've never mentioned the rumours to his father, who, at the risk of having to repeat myself, is just as much your master as I am." He looks up at her now. Mary remains silent, pushing her tongue as hard as shecan against the back of her teeth to stop herself from crying. Ermens orders her back to work and to think upon his words. The familiar feeling of being trapped falls down around her shoulders. She takes a few deep breaths as she descendsthe stairs from the office and returns to the machine. She pushes the scavengerout of the way with a hard dig and reclaims the mechanical mule. With each movement she tries to banish the senseof doom that comes with realising that her entire life could be spent in this, or any other mill. The feeling of wanting to break free, to run out and never set foot in another mill again threatens to dominate. She thinks of Fred but just as quickly pushes him out of her mind by forcing herself to focus on the movements of the machinery. The long bell signals the end of the day both quicker than Mary would have liked, and yet not quick enough. Whenever Fred comes to mind the flutter of anticipation - and of Page 127 of 254

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fear - holds her hostage. She loiters for a few minutes, waiting for most of the factory hands to file out of the building before she makes her own exit. "Think hard about our little talk..., " Godfrey Ermens calls from the other side of the mill. Mary looks at him to acknowledge that she has heard him, and leaves. Even with the light summer evening sky the black clouds of factory pollution mar the skyline. Lizzie loiters by the gate. There is no sign of anything out of the ordinary. She quickly looks around, but apart from a few workers hurrying to get home or to the alehouse,there is no-one. **

Despite it being the middle of summer an evening chill hangs in the air, and the sky threatensmore showers of acid rain. Mary and Lizzie are seatedon the floor, each with their only blanket wrapped around them, beside the dead fire. Shouts can be heard from the upstairs room as the old man and his two grown up sons argue and something is thrown against the wall before the door opens and slams shut. From the room beneath two babies, twins, cry. Their mother is now alone with them. Her husband lost his leg to infection, originally causedby an accident at the Arkwright Mill. From outside come the familiar cries of the street hawkers and the children playing their various games. **

Manchester, August 1844 Mary spies from behind a wide pillar in Victoria train station. Twenty-five yards away Fred smokes a cigar, a trunk and carpet bag at his feet. Mary tells herself that she could have accompanied him to the station. Fred said he understood when she refused with a shake of her head, her head down. Then he was gone. The click of the door as it shut behind him seemedto echo for a long while afterwards until the ticking of the clock became louder. At the last minute Mary had grabbed her shawl and raced to the station.

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The porter grabs Fred's trunk and loads it onto the train. Fred lingers for a second, takes a quick look around, drops his spent cigar to the floor and climbs aboard. Several travellers rush past Mary onto the platform, scrabbling for the open doors. She stepsout from behind the pillar and waits, urging him to notice her. The whistle is blown. It pierces through her and jangles her nerves anew. The train starts up, its steam rising in fat clouds that form one big mushroom that hovers before transforming into a thick ribbon that follows the length of the carriages. Several of the windows are pulled down and many heads emerge to wave goodbye. Mary hones in on Fred immediately. He looks down the platform and around for a second, before they lock eyes. He shakeshis head at her, waves and blows a kiss. Mary waves back, forgetting herself as the tears run down her face and drop off the end of her chin. And then he is gone. ***

Ula loitered behind a six-foot wall at the back of the shops. She pulled her hood up over her tied back hair and dug her hands deep into her pockets. She looked suspicious, but Ula knew that no-one would be likely to come and question her. She had finally managed to sleep for a few hours, having figured if Erin wasn't worried about a burglar returning then she shouldn't be either, not least because there was little left of any value. Ula looked up as an obese woman emerged from a neighbouring block only to deposit a bag of rubbish in the communal bins. Ula kept watch, despite there being no movement from any of the four windows. Light rain fell and she slouched against the wall listening to the magnified patter of raindrops on her hood, sounding like miniscule balls of polystyrene falling on a microphone. She thought of her Mum and how much she had changed over the years, as though Jane had been desperate to squeeze from life the dubious freedom of oblivion. It felt too familiar, waiting there for her as an adult woman, just like she had as a child, although back then an hour had felt like an aggravating eternity. It was still so easy to go back there - too easy - stood beneath a tide of cigarette smoke that was sucked out into the night air as soon as it reached the always open door; the smell of peanuts and crisps, lager, stout, and bitter, with barely a spirit in sight through the week. The waiting. Always the waiting. Page 129 of 254

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*

"Here, and don't ask for anything else! I won't be long!" Jane says wearily. Ula takes the glass of still orange with both hands, watching the wobbly surface of the liquid in case it spills over the rim. Once it is safely lodged atop the cold, dirty radiator, she doesn't so much as take the crisps as have them impatiently foisted onto her. Ula gives a deep sigh of contentment at the prospect of having something to occupy her for the next ten minutes. She leans against the wall that is lined with posters advertising Irish bands and opens the rustly bag of crisps, on the back of which a smiling potato points to an image of a bin. She takes a crisp and sucks at the cheese and onion powder, like a dog trying to get at the marrow of a bone. Facing the doorway she watches the rain fall, setting herself the challenge of trying to actually see a mercury-hued raindrop in its entirety before it settles to the ground, in much the same way as she had tried to see a proper snowdrop the preceding winter. She alternates each crisp with a sip of the still orange, taking a quiet delight in how they complement each other on her young palate - feeling at some peace as she loses herself in a meditative state that, whenever she enters into at home Jane tells her to stop staring into space - that it makes her look simple; backward, or just plain gormless. This state is occasionally invaded by the raising of voices from the snug. As long as none of the voices belong to her Mum she is ok. Ula imagines her Mum sitting with a half of Guinness before her, on a heavily scratched and cigarette burned dark wood table. Her Mum always asks the landlord or landlady of each pub she enters 'can my daughter come in and sit with me, she's quiet'. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no. This evening is a no. Ula knows her Mum is talking to some man -'harmless', her Mum will say to her as they walk home, after telling her not to mention it to her Dad. Ula feels the weight of secrecy until she wakes the next morning having forgotten. She can't see her through the distorted glass in the top half of the door anyway, which reminds her of the glasses an old neighbour wore, which made her eyes look too big and then too small. The crisps have been eaten. The orange has been drained. The rain has stopped, there are only the sounds now to latch onto, although the gust blows hard-edged ripples across the moon-reflecting Page 130 of 254

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puddles outside, but she only imagines this as she listens, staring out to the darkening evening. Ula moves from against the wall to the doorstep. It isn't all that cold. She is lit by an overhead wall-mounted lamp, which attracts flies and circling moths; if the moths get too near she will run back in and wait. She knows the light has been put there so that people don't miss the step, but they often do regardless, which Ula tries hard not to laugh at. There are times when she has laughed and then pressed her small hands over her mouth, and the person who missed the step turns, gives a drunken tut that is sometimes interrupted by a jolting hiccup that seems to surprise them, until they laugh back with her. It is funny when they turn and stare accusingly at the step. If she is sat on the step, every time someone comes out or goes in she sidles up to make room for them. More people on the way in will complain grumpily about a little girl sitting on the doorstep, yet they often say nothing on the way out. Ula sometimes gets a pat on the head; sometimes even a ten pence coin pushed into her hand, which is enough for a Jaw Breaker and a packet of monster munch or a ten pence mix-up with the blackjacks, foam bananas and fizzy cola bottles. An old man comes out armed with a doorstepper of a book - the biggest that Ula has even seen. She stares at it as the old man slowly emerges, each step laboured. He stops and surveys her for a second. He isn't drunk, but Ula can smell the mustiness of damp, the smell of stale custard cream biscuits, and the strength of unfiltered cigarettes smoked in cold, damp rooms. His fingers are stained yellow. He looks at her for a second before pushing the book into her hands. He tells her she might as well read if she's going to sit on pub doorsteps all evening. Ula has to extend her arms to carry the book. It feels almost as heavy as the block weight that holds the butcher's shop door open, and which any child entering can't resist trying to lift as those parents who are worried warn of hernias. The old man doesn't miss the step, but slowly negotiates it, one hand on the doorframe for support. Ula rests on her haunches against the cold radiator, not wanting to sit on the sticky carpet. She opens the book, the pages emitting the same musty smells. It is an encyclopedia and the grainy black and white pictures and their accompanying paragraphs that she only scans, make the time go quicker. When her Mum emerges she wants to

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know what the bloody hell that great big thing is and who the bloody hell gave it her. Ula walks behind her, the book in her arms like a paving stone, as they return to the Hulme maisonette where her Dad is either sleeping or sat simmering. She is about to say that it's harmless but instinctively stops herself for fear of a clip round the ear. *

The main door of the block opened and a stocky man appeared. His grey hair was combed back, and his face was mean: thin lips, narrow eyes, thick eyebrows. Ula knew it was him, Jack. She removed the phone from her pocket, tapped a number on the keypad and began to talk as he passed her. As soon as he turned the corner to the shops she closed the phone and ran across the small car park. She pressed the bell and waited as her heart thumped in fear. She willed an answer. She looked up at the windows but no-one was visible. She pushed the bell in again. "I told you! She's not here!" Ula span around to see the man heading back. His heavy-palmed hands hung slightly away from his body, bracketing his paunch. She willed herself to stay, but fear moved her away from the front door to stand aside so that she would have an easier run to escape if needed. "Didn't I tell you?" "I don't believe you!" Ula said. "See where you get your attitude from. She's not here, now clear off, go on... " "I have to speak to her - it's my Dad... Her husband." Sneering, he stopped as he reached the main door and inserted his key into the lock. "She left. Last night. She's gone back to that hovel of hers in Hulme. And good riddance! Your mother's more trouble than she's worth, always causing ructions, she is." He opened the door and slammed it shut.

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**

Erin was sat in their Dad's chair when Ula returned, a cup of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. 'Well? " Erin asked. "He said she's in Hulme..." "Oh well... I think if she turned up at the hospital she'd only make things ten times worse! Daddy's not gonna want to deal with her while he's trying to get better." Ula slumped onto the sofa, her jacket still done up and her hands firmly in her pockets. She wanted to say that it would make the difference to him fighting to get well or not, but didn't, unwilling to summon the energy needed. **

His eyes opened and he looked up and then to each side without lifting his head. Ula smiled and Erin stood up and looked over him, her hands on the side rails. "Hiya, Da!" Erin said. His eyes acknowledge their presence. One of the nurses came over and she also stood and looked over at him before checking the machines and ticking the end-of-bed chart. ***

Manchester, July 1844 It is early evening and still light outside. It is a Sunday, and the sky exhibits hues of lavender. Many of the workers will make the trek up to Green Heys Fields, in MossSide, to enjoy the fresh air - trying to sup in as much as they can. Mary lies on the sofa at the small cottage at Daniel Street, Hulme. She is singing quietly, her dark brown hair with red hints is spread out behind her on Fred's lap. He skims through a newspaper,

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adding the occasional remark. Lizzie comes bounding down the stairs in time to answer the knock at the door. Fred lowers the newspaper and listens to the few words that are exchanged in the hallway until the door is closed. Lizzie enters and hands Fred a cream coloured heavily-stamped envelope. "Forwarded from Great Ducie Street, he said," Lizzie says. Mary sits up and watches Fred as he opens the envelope, then read and digests its contents, his face falling. She feels his mood slump, which only servesto drag hers down. She reachesover and takes a sip of wine.

"Well..." he begins,"I havemy departuredetails..."

Mary turns swiftly. "When?" she asks, feeling a bubble of fear and sadnesswell up within her like a balloon being filled with air. "Next week. Back to Barmen..." he sighs, lowering the letter onto his lap.

A silence sits between them until Fred folds the letter and places it back into its his departure. Mary briefly envelope, as if the action can reversethe knowledge of for her in Barmen, but the entertains the idea of asking whether there could be a place She is suddenly shot conversation has been had; his family would never accept her. through with anger at being reminded that the world deems her not to be good enough for the man she loves, and who she knows loves her. Fred rises to pace the room, deep in thought. Mary watches him but her mind turns to matters of a pragmatic nature; to keeping the Daniel Street cottage he has so far rented for them. She thanks her own good sensefor having kept her job at the Ermens & Engels mill; to be back in the is situation of having to look for work and a roof at the sametime something she cannot fathom at this moment for the memories of evictions and despair are still etched too firmly in her mind. It has been well over a year since she has had to contend with both and it now seemslike a barbarism. "I always knew that return was inevitable - if only to have the book - our book -

published."

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Mary offers a half smile and looks down at her worn hands.

"What can I do? The old man... he who holds the purse holds the rod, isn't that it? " He sits down beside Mary and puts his arm around her shoulders.Mary shrugs it off and it is now her turn to pace the room.

"We've had a nice time together. You'll go back, continue the family business, marry a nice young lady, have your own brood, and maybe your son will rebel against you the way you have your own?" shesays, not looking at him. She picks up a green velvet ribbon from the mantelpiece and ties her hair back. Fred comes up behind her. "Mary Burns! You know me better than that! "

"Do l? " she asks, her eyes flashing as she looks at him through the mirror that they

both face. Fred puts his hands on her shoulders and attempts to draw her closer to him, but Mary shrugs him off and rushesout of the room. He follows her down the narrow corridor and into the kitchen. Lizzie is chopping carrots but stops, resting the knife on the block. She looks up at her sister and Fred, waiting for the explanation. "How's dinner?" Mary asks, picking up a wooden spoon and mindlessly stirring the pot

on the heat. "Stew," Lizzie says.

"My favourite! Irish stew! I'll miss it. You'll have to give me the recipe for -"

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"The cook?" Mary says.

"Yes, actually, you don't think I'm going to do it myself? I'd never do it justice, " Fred says. "What's going on?" Lizzie asks.

"I'm leaving Manchester."

"Oh! The letter... " Lizzie focuses on Mary who continues to stir the pot.

"I think this needsa pinch more salt Lizzie, " Mary says.

"And I think you need a pinch more sugar my girl..., " Fred says.

"Me? "

"Oh Fred...," Lizzie cries. Fred turns and puts his arm around Lizzie.

"You will be fine here for six months after I've gone..." he begins.

"That's not what I meant...," Lizzie protests, her face reddening, but both she and Mary know that, to a degree, it is exactly what she means.

"I know. I know, but we must be practical, eh?"

"Yes. Practical," Mary repeats,storming out of the kitchen and rushing up the stairs.

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Fred follows her.

Mary paces the width of their bedroom. Children's squabblesrise up from outside.

"I know. I know. You warned me. I know," Mary says,keeping her gaze to the floor as shegoes from one side to the other.

"I'm going to miss you more than I thought...," Fred says, leaning against the small

dressingtable. "Is that supposedto make me feel better?" Mary sits on the edge of their bed and examines her bitten nails. She begins to pick at her ragged cuticles. "I will return... I'm just not sure when... let's not ruin these last few days by getting caught up in bourgeois nonsense...didn't we have a grand old time? " he asks, sitting next to her. "Bourgeois nonsense?Feelings are nonsense?" Mary shouts.

Fred crosseshis arms across his chest, as if protecting himself from validity of Mary's emotions. Mary sighs. She asks herself how she can blame him. Didn't she know all along that it She suddenly imagines was only ever going to be as casual as a sting of factory work? the rest of her life yawning ahead of her, swallowing her into a black abyss. He slides off the edge of the bed and crouches in front of her. He cups her face in his hands and kisses her. Mary responds,despite the increasing senseof dread that hovers above her like a vulture. **

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Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the lrwell. On the right bank of the lrwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill, south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Chortton on Medlock; still farther, pretty well to the east of Manchester, Ardwick. The whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a workingpeople's quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the working-people's quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle- class; or, if this does not succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of charity. Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial district, perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting almost wholly of offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night; only watchmen and policemen traverse its narrow lanes with their dark lanterns. This district is cut through by certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast traffic concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined with brilliant shops. In these streets the upper floors are occupied, here and there, and there is a good deal of life upon them until late at night. With the exception of this commercial district, all Manchester proper, all Salford and Hulme, a great part of Pendleton and Choriton, two-thirds of Ardwick, and single stretches of Cheetham Hill and Broughton are all unmixed working-people's quarters, stretching like a girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the commercial district. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper and middle bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in the vicinity of the working quarters, especially in Chorlton and the lower lying portions of Cheetham Hill; the upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick, or on the

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breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city. And the finest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring districts to their places of business without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and the left. For the thoroughfares leading from the Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of selfinterest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and can care for it. England & Wales in 1844, Engels, F - The Condition of the Working-Classes in **

I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at once to describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the Old Town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, Going from the Old and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible. Church to Long Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better-built districts, and have left the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access can be gained only through covered passages, in Of the irregular which no two human beings can pass at the same time. cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the Page 139 of 254

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tangle in which they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea. And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only recently reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is left to be further occupied. The Conditions of the Working-Classes in England in 1844, Engels, F

A stream of different coloured buses competed with each other for the hordes of student passengers on Oxford Road. Ula and Erin weaved their way along, parting ways when they reached the brown BBC building that faced the old dance studio. Erin turned right to continue to work whereas Ula made to go straight ahead to the library, where she told Erin she was going to spend the day. Instead, as soon as Erin was out of view, she crossed the road and took a left off the main road towards Hulme. She ventured down the cobbled streets which, in places, gave more signs of the city's Industrial past, until reaching Cambridge Street. Several of the old mills, newly restored, housed various creative and commercial enterprises. These sat in juxtaposition with the old Dunlop factory and the network of Brutalist pedestrian subways situated on the opposite side of the road. They were overlooked by the familiar landmark of the octagonal chimney, which she had always assumed belonged to the Dunlop factory, but later learnt had been owned by the Chorlton Mill on the other side of the road, which was connected to it by an underground flue. She recalled her Dad coming in from work one evening and telling her that the city, as if it was a separate and conniving entity, hid a network of tunnels and bunkers. Some of them were built by the Polish after the Second World War, he said, 'because they couldn't speak English and so wouldn't let on what they were doing'. It was evidence to him that it was a conspiracy. Ula hesitated before entering the subway, but forged ahead with purposeful strides. The stench of urine and beer was as strong as it had been when she

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was a child. Barely an inch of the grey tiled walls were not covered in black and blue graffiti.

She emerged moments later into varying shades of mercurial grey; the sky a sulphorous hue that threatened rain; several mounds covered in darker grey flagstones resembled concrete boils that had erupted from the earth and scabbed over. It was down these mounds that the more adventurous skateboarders and mountain bikers once dared each other, although the teens now preferred a smoother version half a mile across the other side of Oxford Road. Traffic coursed its way around her as she continued across the concrete island until forced to enter yet another subway, which took her out to the bottom of Chester Road. A small, neglected brown-bricked estate on the left had been taken over by new-age squatters. A row of vans, which looked equally squalid, seemed to have been stationary for years in the fenced off road that separated the two blocks of maisonettes. The view evoked a pang of nostalgia for the best days of her Hulme childhood, before everything became rotten. The imposing church of St. George's on the right hand side, now a development of apartments, seemed to her, as it had all those years ago, out of reach, although she recalled once crossing the roads with a friend when she was seven and walking on top of the thick slabs of gravestones as though it was the local version of Stonehenge.

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Ula had discovered the Hulme address in her Dad's pocket diary that he kept on the window ledge in his bedroom. Looking inside whilst Erin got ready for work she had felt saddened by the entries, written in her Dad's distinctive hand. They amounted to no more than doctor and hospital visits, race dates and horse and jockey names: Kempton 3: 30 Ruby Walsh `Molloy', Ludlow 2: 10 Frankie Dettori `Casabianca'; measurements for the living room curtains were scrawled on a Sunday in March. The Hulme address had not been listed under a name but scribbled in the back under `Notes'. She checked the contacts section and found only her own and Erin's mobile numbers. St. Wilfred's R. C. Church was no longer a Church but an `enterprise centre', the entrance to which was at the back of the Church. She looked through the window into the office but there were no signs of activity, save for a sickly plant that stood sentry duty by the door. In front of her the field - in which she had once raced with an egg and spoon, cheered on by her Mum - sprawled out to the perimeter hedge that separated it from the main road. To the right lay another open space, Birley Fields, at the far end of which a new playground was situated. To the left sat her old primary school bearing the same name as the Church. All the lights were on in the single storey building and she could see little figures within the rooms. An electrical bell rung and within a minute all the children ran out, their unfastened coats flapping. Ula stood and listened intently to the buzz and hum of their chatter and laughter, imagining herself back as part of that soundscape in which nothing else mattered except the relations between class mates. She knew that wasn't true as soon as she thought it. She had never cared that much for the relations between those she found herself in classes with, often walking around the edge of the playground Page 142 of 254

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alone, waiting for the bell to ring again so she could return to class and lose herself in things she was good at, namely reading and writing. She made her way back to the front of the squat neo-Gothic Church. Its doom-laden medieval type door, thick and heavy with large studs running across in lines, was firmly closed. She tried to find a gap through which she could peer, but there was none. Harder still to fathom was the thought that she had once sung in that church - she could remember not one of the hymns. 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' came to mind, but then she realised that she must have got that from the television because they would never have sung such optimism. She sat on the stone step, the one which she had crossed, smiling shyly, on the day she made her First Holy Communion. The marriage of a child to Christ and the faith into which it had been baptised years before. Her Mum had insisted on a short dress. Feigning an air of grandiosity in the small specialist Irish-owned shop that she had taken Ula to with just minutes to spare on the day before the event, her Mum had proclaimed that little girls should not wear long dresses; 'it makes them look like old women'. Ula had worn the whitest dress she had ever seen, with white gloves to match, sandals, a white silk tiara of roses, which was meant to symbolise Christ's crown of thorns, and a little round netted pouch that dangled off her tiny wrist by a white ribbon. It was inside this she would hide the ten pence pieces that many of the adults were handing out at random. Her parents, like all the other parents and the priest, had then proceeded to get drunk in the adjacent catholic social club. There was little questioning of all this, the lives they led, until one Monday evening when her Dad came in from work and turned the television over to the documentary programme, World in Action. She had become confused when she saw a girl from her class sitting on a coarse-cloth brown and orange settee that was similar to their own. The girl sat between her parents, who were being asked questions by an unseen interviewer. The parents then showed the interviewer and cameraman around their flat, which was situated in the old Bull Ring, or Crescents. These deck access flats were built in a ring around a patch of open space and had been inspired by Bath's royal crescents. Ula and Erin

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had laughed when they told their Dad, but he hadn't laughed because he had not seen Bath's Royal Crescents. The camera did not flinch from showing the bathroom that Ula's friend must have washed in. It was infested with cockroaches and severe damp; mould grew up the walls like someone had dropped down a roll of thin green carpet from the ceiling. The bedrooms were no better. The camera then moved outside and from the deck they were provided with a wide shot of the Bull-Ring itself. Ula cried out in recognition, pointing to the television and then looking at her Dad in puzzlement. -

-i ,r. Ae

-t.

tr

0.

T

IN ýti,

_r F-in

--ZZZ

She walked around the school's fence until she faced the old evangelic Tabernacle on Rolls Crescent, named after the luxury car maker whose first cars were made there. Beyond it, where the Bull-Ring used to be, stood new houses and flats that had been built in the last round of regeneration. The school, the field, the church and the Tabernacle were some of the few landmarks from the time she had lived there. Even with so much gone the feeling was a familiar one. She felt a longing, as though it were an invisible itch that she had been tormented to scratch ever since they left the area - or that something had been irretrievably lost with each subsequent move, something that she had never given up looking for. Perhaps, she reasoned, it was simply the passing of the years. The part of Hulme that Ula crossed two main roads to reach was called Cornbrook, bordered by the busy Chester Road that ran up through Old Trafford and into Stretford. She reached Barrack Street and counted the doors

on the right hand side until she stood before 63. It was another two-storey block housing four small flats. She pressed the button and waited. There was no Page 144 of 254

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sound from the intercom. She was about to walk around to the back when she heard from within the opening of a door. She waited, but there was no further movement. She peered through the long, narrow communal letterbox and into the brown-tiled foyer, which contained two small flights of stairs. She could only see the closed door of the flat closest to her. "MA! It's me, Ula." There was no response. Ula released the letterbox and stood up straight. She heard the soft clicking of a door closing within and looked up at the windows, but there was no sign. It was then that Ula wanted to cry and scream at her to come out. She spun around, as though it was all going on behind her back, but no-one was there. 'Ma! ' she shouted now, but still no-one emerged. Ula raised her hand to her forehead and began to cry tearlessly out of sheer frustration. She looked up again before leaving. ***

Manchester. February 1843 Fred creepsup the stairs of his lodgings at Great Ducie Street, Strangeways. He is halfway up and counts the seven stepsthat separatehim from his rooms. He is close to congratulating his stealth like movements when he hears the voice that he has come to dread over the past year; a voice that works hard at trying to overcome an accent that betrays the roots of which the owner is ashamed. "Mr. Engels, not here again last night, what am I to think when my guests do not return safely at night? Mrs. Whittle standsat the foot of the staircase, the door to her from genuine worry, but own apartment beneath,ajar. She wrings her pale hands,not from the affectation of it. Fred turns and looks down at her. "I am touched by your caring, Mrs. Whittle, but I can assureyou, should I meet with unfortunate circumstances you will soon know... "

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"Mr. Engels!" she replies, putting a hand over her mouth. Fred reminds himself that here, he is the customer. He inhales deeply, making his chest rise enough to create the effect of the haughty entitled., which intimidates people like Mrs. Whittle. "Mrs. Whittle, would you get me some coffee please, I have only returned to prepare for going back out." He turns and bounds up the rest of the stairs.

"Back out? It's freezingcold out there." "I'm getting to know every inch of this town of yours, Mrs. Whittle, what else? You're forever telling me how great it is, well, I've found a few treasuresof my own, " he calls from the top hallway. "Treasures?" shesays, shaking her head, before returning into her own apartment to make coffee. **

The yeasty steam that puffs from the brewery's chimneys fills the nostrils of all within a two mile radius. Mary leans against its perimeter wall, listening to several newspaper boys competing to shout the loudest headlines. She gazesinto the middle distance and recollects the previous evening with Fred. They had spoken with each other about their parents - about their frustrations, their desires, their values, their thoughts, and had then made the most tender love until the small hours, when they fell asleep on the hotel's soft mattress. Mary is snappedout of this by the sight of familiar figures in the distance. She quickly shifts around the corner and peers around at them. As they get closer she recognises them as lads from the dying room at the factory. One of them shouts and then stops, dragging up from his wheezing chest the most revolting spit. She quickly turns away, flattening her back against the wall, grimacing in queasiness.The last words that her Dad's wife threw at her come to mind: `when are you going to be wed then, eh? There's plenty of lads around here looking for a wife to give them a family. ' Mary's heart sinks and she gives a deep sigh. "Why so heavy?" Fred asks,now beside her.

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Mary jumps, her hand over her heart, before smiling at him. "She let you back out then, old Whittle? " "She did. She really is the cat's mother in this case! And you know something? She has the audacity to question me on where I'm spending my nights and then I find she has opened by mistake a couple of my letters. By mistake,pogue mahone!" Mary laughs at Fred's use of the Irish. He holds up the item he has brought with him. "Here, put this on," he says, shaking out a long coat and holding it up so that Mary can put her arms into it. "I should have given it to you long before now, " he adds. Mary staresat it and pulls a face.

"What? Come on, Mary Burns! No nonsense,you're to

put this on, I'm not having you survive my Father's factories only to die from the cold becauseof his son, eh!? I picked it up on the way, I'm guessing it will be a little big but better that..." Mary pushes eacharm into the sleeves. The coat is dark green and made of a thick wool. It is a size too large but, once on, Mary feels as though someone has enveloped her in a thick woollen blanket. Fred takes each sleevecuff and folds it up at the end before Mary digs her hands into eachdeep pocket.

"What doesit look like?" sheasks,andtwirls around. "You look warm! Now, listen, I hope you don't mind but one of the letters was from a friend of mine from back home, George Weerth, a poet of all things, and he's coming into Manchester this very morning, and I've warned him he'll find nothing poetic here except the delightful Mary Burns..." Mary playfully nudges Fred. "But he'll want to come on our walk, do you mind?" "No, no of course not," Mary replies, but shefeels that she could somehow be judged and found wanting. **

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The pair maintain a brisk pace to Victoria railway station to meet the Bradford train. Mary wonders what it is like to go on a train to somewherefar away from Manchester, and whether her life would be any different if shedecided to just get up and leave and take her fortune as she found it. People were now able to get on the train and be taken all the way to the capital. London, shemuses, has no great mill districts, a distinct advantage. But Manchester is still home, whatever that means. She is also realistic enough to know that such a move would only force her into one of two directions: prostitution or service. The train inches into the station, barely visible with the clouds of smoke that cover its front. A group of bare-footed children in rags shout through the concourse fence, competing with the train's final `choo choooo'. A battalion of porters spring into action, racing to open the doors of the first class sections. Travellers who have come from further north, Carlisle and Durham, spill out onto the platform. A parade of young ladies chaperoned by older matriarchs and wallet carrying papas' emerge to stock up on dresses and bonnets for the forthcoming season.Mary feels herself shrinking down into her old new coat as they passher by, leaving behind them the faint aroma of rose-water and lavender. "There he is! George, over here!" Fred shouts, waving. A young man around the same age as Fred, but a few inches shorter, waves enthusiastically. Mary is pleased to note that he is dressedin plain indiscernible garb that will keep him warm and indistinguishable. George quickens his pace, grabs Fred's hand whilst also taking hold of his arm most heartily. He looks at Mary beside him and quickly scansher features. "Well, this is Mary Bums then? I've heard only good things about you," he says,his voice far more German than Fred's, and holds out his hand. Mary smiles. She offers her hand to George who kisses it. Mary blushes. "So you're a poet are you, George?" she asks after they have taken a quick coffee in the station and now walk towards Hulme.

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"A poet yes, indeed, or rather, I try to be, although I have to earn my bread whilst working as a clerk in the worst hell-hole on earth!" "Bradford is worse than Manchester?" Mary asks, feeling a little put-out that her home town has been usurped in the mind of a foreigner. "I tell you, Mary, and you too, Fred, although you must be fed up of me harping on about it as I do in every letter - every other factory town in England is a paradise in comparison to the sh- sorry, hellhole that is Bradford! Here in Manchester, the air lies like lead upon you, in Birmingham it is just as if you were sitting with your nose in a stove pipe, in Leeds you have to cough with the dust as if you had swallowed a pound of pepper in one go - but that is nothing compared with Bradford! There, you think you have been lodged with the devil incarnate. If anyone wants to feel how a poor sinner is tormented in purgatory let him travel to Bradford! " Mary looks to Fred, who nods to confirm what his friend says. Mary leads the brisk pace through the sharp cold while listening to the jovial, sometimes heated, German and English conversation between the two men. They come to a standstill as they approach St. George's Road. "There's a whole load of them at the back, over there, see," she says, pointing into the distance. "Right then, pencil and notebook at the ready; George, my friend, you are about to see how the Manchester proletariat live. Do you have any contactshere, Mary? " "A couple of people from the old mills live round there, and I'm sure there'll be a few more faces that'll know me own. " "Lead on, dear Mary, lead on, " George says. Aside from three stores,one selling countless-handfurniture, a gin shop, and dry provisions, the only other non-residential building is that of a squat and forbidding neo-

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Gothic church of St. George's. The stamp of clogs can be heard a few moments before a group of fustian-clad men emerge, two of whom are talking heatedly in the native Irish tongue. "How do," Fred says, casually passing them by. "How do! " one of them replies. One of the Irish look back at them but they pass without further remark. Despite the cold the smell of cesspits becomes more pungent the further into the Hulme rookeries they venture. The noise increases:the sound of babies wailing with hunger and sickness, a woman shouts, someone laughs, dogs bark. Below this cacophony there are the quieter half-cries, eerier for it, of those babies who are being kept subdued in the mill hours by steady doses of gin and or laudanum, so that their mothers can work. The lanes become narrower, funnelling so that only one thin person at a time is able to pass, in between the dirty doors of the hastily constructed houses. George and Fred begin to talk in German. Mary spins round and silences them with a finger to her mouth. A woman emergesfrom out of one door only to glance at Mary and then dash into an opposite open doorway. The lane widens again down which a dark brown mush of sewageis setting. "Mary Burns, is that you?" a woman calls. The trio turn to the harassed looking woman with a dirty bare-footed toddler perched on a bony hip. Mary examines the face for a second, until recognising it to be that of a woman with whom she had once worked. "Polly? Polly, it's you, it's been a long time." Mary passesFred and George. She smiles at the woman, and takes hold of the toddler's hand, swinging it gently. "Is he yours then?" she asks. "Well he's no bugger else's, chance'd be a fine thing. Are they with you?" sheasks, looking to Fred and George. "Yes, Fred is a friend of mine, and that there is a friend of his, George, he's down from Bradford... " Mary watches as Polly continues to study the two out-of-place faces.

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"What you up to then?" Polly asks. Mary hesitates for a second. "Well... Fred writes, he's writing about the conditions of these areas and..." "You're showing him?" "That's right, " Mary watches the flicker of resentmentor disgust travel across Polly's face, with her making no effort to conceal it. "Have you nowt else better to do with your time then? Not working I s'pose? Not with child yet? What's up with you?" "There's no need for that! " Mary says, feeling as though shehas been cut, and wanting to thump Polly for speaking to her like that in front of Fred and George. Mary lets go of the baby's hand and puts her own into her pockets. "Well! It's as if you've joined those reformers from the Sunday school who come round here with pegs on their noses, telling us it's our own bleedin' fault all this. Fancy yourself to havejumped t'wall then? Makes me laugh it does, you'd best go, go on, clear out of it..." "Polly? " Mary pleads, but the toddler has already screwed his face up and is crying, as if totally fed-up of everything that his short life had so far delivered him, and his angry mother. "Never mind, you were just as above yourself at Arkwright's. Are ye a kept woman now, are ye? Is that it? I bet ye are. I wonder what your Da has to say about it! " Mary rushes away. She turns and shouts: "Why don't you ask him, you'd have to check every beer-house in Manchester first though - or ask my Ma - oh but you can't, because he helped kill her!" and then strides ahead,not caring whether Fred and George are behind her, until a moment later she feels Fred tugging at her sleeve.

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"Mary, it's alright, we don't have to stay here, we can leave, I don't want to make things... " "Difficult? " Mary turns to face him, her eyes angry, tears falling off the bottom of her chin, unable to explain what the confrontation has unearthed within her, unable to figure it out for herself at that moment, bewildered at the venomous feelings she still harbours towards her Dad. Fred's kind expression doesn't change and Mary relents, letting her face soften. She pulls her arm from his hand and wipes her face on the sleeveof her coat. The wool, whilst warm, is harsh enough to leave a reddish rash across her cheek. George stands behind Fred, staring at the ground in silence and embarrassment. ***

At the bottom of Barrack Street, instead of turning left, Ula turned right and entered Barrack's Park. She and Erin had played there when they were young. The gravel path that ran alongside a football field and led to a playground had seemed long then despite being no more than 75 yards. The playground, like the field, was empty. She sat on one of the swings and gazed on the old white Barracks house opposite, a listed building amongst the old terrace and modern council houses. When she was younger Ula would tell Erin it was haunted and they would dare each other with a nudge to get as close as they could to the entrance. Neither of them managed more than a few yards before running back, taking delight in the screaming; in the prospect of the fear. They were convinced an old woman lived within who only came out at night. It had now been turned into flats, or `apartments', as the wooden sign planted in front of the house declared. Ula couldn't imagine that her Mum was back there in solitude. She picked up her bag and walked into town.

In the silence of the local studies section Ula wondered whether Mary had any idea how hers and Fred's life would become so entwined from that first night alone. Was she far more brazen - or shy? Ula knew that she would never know anything about Mary for sure, that she was only building up a life from the

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thinnest fragments; pretending that she knew more than what she did, or could. She felt she had gone through life, ever since leaving Manchester, pretending at everything; pretending to be clever, pretending to be someone, anyone other than who she was - yet didn't the prospect of making Mary into a someone also share the potential of making her, as writer, a someone? Not just someone from that family, that house, but someone with a voice and something to say; something valuable. She had seen that in her Mum, years ago. Jane Tully would sometimes wake her young daughter to accompany her on long walks to kill off her 'nerves'; anxiety as it was now called. Ula struggled to keep up with her Mum's quick pace through the night streets - down Denmark Street and onto Oxford Road - around Whitworth Park and past the University. Her Mum would sometimes ask for a light for her cigarette from someone waiting at a bus stop; she would strike up a conversation with the person from a seemingly innocuous remark about the weather or 'these buses', even though she wasn't waiting for one herself. Ula had stood there, watching - 'taking it all in' as her Mum would say. A couple of times Ula realised that her Mum was flirting with the man she had asked for the light - not overtly, for her Mum wasn't brash or brassy - but Ula sensed that her Mum was looking for some sort of saviour in those tiniest and yet innocent exchanges. It was with hindsight that Ula realised that her Mum had been looking to be saved from the life she had found herself in; the life that had happened to her. They would continue walking around in a loop, onto Upper Lloyd Street and back up towards Great Western Street. Ula had found herself doing the same thing on anxious evenings in London when sleep seemed to taunt her - that way she got to know bits of the big city that she may have remained unaware of otherwise. On the nights when she was trying to walk off a brewing anger she would shout obscenities at beeping cars and vans, her female form still apparent despite wearing anoraks and jeans. Trainers or boots. **

Ula and Erin sat in soporific silence at their Dad's bedside. His oxygen mask lay in his uncurled hand as he dozed against a thick white wall of pillows. The

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machines continued to beep and every now and then a different nurse checked them. A cleaner worked her way in silence from the top of the ward with a wide floor duster. She caught Ula's eye and they exchanged a polite smile. He opened his eyes the instant the doors opened. Ula and Erin turned around to see their Mum enter. She carried a red handbag, and her newly dyed hair was frizzy from the rain. As she got closer tiny beads of water could be seen on the surface of her hair, holding on. "Oh look who it is, to what do we owe this honour, Ula? Jane said, as though Ula was the one arriving. "I could ask you the same thing, mother!" Ula said. "Oh no!" Erin tutted as she turned back to face her Dad and began to rock her foot back and forth in agitation.

"No arguing!" Ula hissed,gettingup to pass her seat to her Mum, secretlyglad that a senseof dramanow introduceditself into what had been the best part of two hours on the overheated,energy-sappingward. "Jane." Ula and Erin turned to their Dad as if to confirm his first word since his admission. "That bloody rain...," Jane said as she took the seat. "A red handbag?" their Dad asked hoarsely. "Da, don't talk too much," Erin said. "He's ok..." Ula said Jane rolled her eyes, folded her arms and sat back.

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'What? I like it! What's wrong with red? Oh, I suppose you think it's a tart's colour... charming," Jane said. A few seconds strained silence sat between them all. "You've put a bit of weight on, Ula," Jane suddenly said. Ula flinched inwardly. "Only a stone. It's better than smoking again." "Oh god! Given up smoking now as well, I suppose you're still not drinking either? Hark at Saint Ula here!" she said, shaking her head, giving a short, almost cruel laugh. 'Well it's not as if I grew up not being surrounded by enough warning signs." 'What? What the hell does that mean? Here we go again... That's all your generation seem to do these days - blame the poor parents." "Forget it then," Ufa said "I've always kept my figure! Always been a perfect ten, me." "Well we can't all live on Guinness and god knows what else you drink these days," Ula said, feeling herself start to shake. "Watch it, Ula. You're not too big for a slap. " "I'm thirty-four. I think I rather am." "Rather am? Have you heard this one?" Jane said, nodding to her husband who now stared up at the ceiling. "Everything ok, Mr. Tully?" the nurse asked. "'Tis, thanks nurse," he replied. The easy way in which the nurse asked him made Ula realise that her Dad must have spoken during the day, when they weren't there. "The neighbours said you were really bad..." Jane said, disbelievingly. "He nearly died!" Erin hissed. Page 155 of 254

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"He looks alright to me. He can still talk, can't he! Wish I could get some bed rest... " Ula watched her Dad. Erin got up and said she was going to get a cup of tea. "I'll leave you two to talk then, I'll be back in the morning, Da," Ula said. Thomas nodded. Ula reached over and grabbed his limp hand and squeezed it. To her Mum she said, "We'll be at the house if you're coming over." "Do I look older to you?" she asked. "Yes. " "I do not! " "Don't ask me then." "How long you staying?" "I dunno yet...a couple of weeks?" Ula bent down down and gave her a kiss on the cheek, hit by the scent of Oil of Ulay. She had once told Ula that it was the only thing a woman needed on her face - and a thin smudge of eyeliner. She had once joked that she had named Ula after her favourite moisturiser, but Ula suspected it had been more true than not. **

"I'm not coming home until she's gone," Erin said as they walked down the corridor. "Right..." "You went to see her didn't you?" "Yes and no." "What does that mean? You shouldn't have. She stresses him out.,,

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"I went to her address in Hulme but no-one was there. Anyway, you saw how he brightened up when she waltzed in." "I bet you said for her to come round to the house as well!" "Of course I did, could very well not, could I?" Erin didn't reply. They parted at the vending machine by the ground floor exit. **.

Manchester, January 1843 Mary pushes her breath out in small clouds. `Come on, ' she mutters, asking herself if she was tapped to want to spendher only day off work tramping around in the cold and filth. Just as she is reminding herself of the shillings she is being paid as a guide his familiar figure approaches.He wears a wide smile, and dressednot in frock coat, for that would immediately single him out on this impending tour of the slums, but in a pair of fustian trousersand a heavy overcoat buttoned to the neck. Unable to keep her eyes on his as he gets closer she looks away to the other side of the road where a young boy and his father shovel up the manure dumped onto the road by the row of cabs awaiting business. Fred grabs hold of her arm. "Mary, still no coat?" Mary pulls her arm away, hit by the shame. "I've been fine these past twenty years, I'm sure I'll be fine for the rest of today," she says, already setting a brisk pace up Oxford Road. "So, where to then, my hardy lady?" "There's up over in Irish Town... " she says.Fred matches her pace and grabs her arm, forcing her to stop. Fred raises his eyebrows at her. "What? " she asks, forcing a straight face.

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Fred takes out the coins and holds them on the palm of his hand, reminding her of their agreement; she concedeswith a nod. "Little Ireland then! " "It's what we agreed!" "'Tis, so..." Fred pockets the coins, smiling. "Well. I s'pose it's as good a place as any," Mary replies. She crossesOxford Road at All Saints church yard, which is overlooked by the church of the same name. The church bells peal the first mass of the day yet theseroads remain relatively still. They pass a general store, take a right turn off the main road and right again. The smells become more pungent, the noisesof general commotion more wearisome. Pots and pans are being scraped; something is smashed;a pair of women are shouting at each other in Irish. A pig and two piglets come racing out into their path. Mary deftly swerves out of their way and leads Fred into the small heart of Little Ireland. The din of shouts, screams, laughter, livestock and clogs is at its fullest here. A group of barefooted, dirty-faced children are chasedaround by an older child who is waving a stick, on the end of which is a small dollop of pig shit. It drops to the floor and the children stop running and wait for their tormentor to poke the stick back into it and to resume chasing them. A man lies huddled up on the roadside, a brown bottle in his arms, a pool of vomit above his head. Everywhere Fred steps has to be surveyed for human or animal detritus. Despite the frosty weather the smell of the middens and pestillence hangs in the air. A few of the children run towards the steps of one of the houses and watch as a gang of miserable looking boys, teenagers,with donkey fringes and peak caps emerge from out of one of the cellars. The leader of the gang nudges past Mary, spinning her around. He stands before Fred with a face that conveys venom. "What are you playing at?" Mary asks.

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"Who's he? Why's he here?" the boy asks, looking Fred up and down. Fred takes a step to one side, but then the boy does the same and the three other boys stand behind Fred, ensuring he has no escape. "He's with me!" Mary says, forcing herself in between Fred and the ring-leader. "It's ok, I'm herejust to walk, and get a feel for the place... and to help... by reporting on the conditions..., " Fred begins. Mary cringes. The boy sniggers, joined by his mates a second later. Mary nudges Fred and shakesher head. "Yeah, do as shetells ye..." one of the lads says, laughing along with the others. "Where're youse from? " the ringleader asks. "Barmen, Prussia..." Fred replies. "'Ere, bloody hell, listen at him... all the way from Russia and you're here to help by `reporting'? Are you now? Well, we get plenty of those round here poking their noses in and doing bugger all, don't we lads? All they want to do is get us to skivvy after `em and go to church, well, we won't, will we lads?" the friends murmur their agreement. "Come on; move outta the way..., " Mary says, and gently pushes her way past him, but he shoves her to the side. She almost topples but steadiesherself. One of the boys holds a large blade under Fred's chin. "Go on, cut 'im! " one of the boys shouts.

"Yeah, let `im `aveit, " anotheradds,andjumps up anddown in excitement. "What are ye playing at? Don't I know your folks? Don't think I won't have ye up..., " Mary shouts, tears pricking at her eyes. The blade is pressedfurther against Fred's neck and his eyes widen in fear; he holds his

breath.

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"Hey! Is that little Mickie I seethere?" Mary spins round to see her Dad appear at the top of the cellar steps. "For fuck's sake!" she mutters and brings her hand up to rest on her forehead before turning back round to face Fred. Her Dad casually strolls over, a tin of steaming black tea in one hand, the other in his trouser pocket, his braces hanging down in two loops. The boy turns both himself and Fred around to face Michael Burns. "Yeah, what of it?" he asks, unable to control his trembling. "See, don't I know your old man, now, what d'ye think he would say?" Michael asks. "What does he care?" the boy replies. "He'd give you a good kicking, like he did the last time, remember? Cos I do." "I'm not scared of my old fella! He's a uselessold imbecile is what he is." "I didn't hear you say that to him the last time he gave you a hiding! " "Why you sticking up for him?" the boy shouts, nudging Fred. "Look at him. He's not "eh? Eh? Why you `ere?" one of us, why's he here? Eh?" He peers sideways at Fred, "He's already told ye, feckin' eejit! " Mary shouts, angry that Fred could be forced to do-gooders desperatefor make her cringe again, sounding like one of the Church conversions Michael throws Mary a dirty look. "Look at him, sure, he's not come to arrest anyone, has he? And I daresay he's not one of the church - not if he's come with my daughter...," Michael says, and gives a short sneering laugh. Mary throws him a dirty look.

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"Well we don't care, do we lads?" The lads murmur their agreement once more. "And just `cos you know me old man doesn't mean you can order me round, we've had enough of that..." "Have ye now?! " Michael asks. "Yeah, that's right, " the ringleader says and he flicks his head to move his fringe from covering his eyes. Michael seizesthe opportunity and throws the hot tea in his face, splattering Fred, which makes him jump back. Mickie cries out before running off with his mates, the knife still in his hand. Mary dashesto Fred's side. "That's my tea gone now! " Michael says, holding the tin upside down to show that it's empty. "Who's the fella?" he asks, looking at his daughter. "I'm Fred, pleased to meet you, thank you for stepping in... " Fred stands before him and extends his reddening tea-soakedhand. They stand like that for just a second but Mary pushes Fred's hand down. Michael stareshis daughter out for a few secondsbut Mary shakesher head at him before he walks away to return to the cellar. A group of residents have come out and stand talking by the railings, continuing to eye up the pair. "Well, have ye seenenough?" Mary shouts and walks away. Fred follows her. "Before you ask, that's my Da, and no, I don't want you to mention him again," she says. "These lads... they need more to do... they're crying out for a real purpose... they need to be with our cause." "There's plenty for them to do in this town, Fred, plenty for us all to do... except when there isn't... Well, what d'ye want to see? `Cos this is it, really. " Mary stops and extends her arm to signal the rest of the area. She is angry at where she's from; angry that she's it guiding him through this slum for money, angry that may mean that he won't want to seeher again becauseof it.

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"I'm sorry Mary, I didn't... " Mary takes a deep breath and places a hand on her hip. "It's not your fault! It's him, he always puts me in a mood! " "Well, it's a good job he turned up. Unless you were about to rescue me..." "I would have...," Mary says,she notices his hand, having reddened angrily. She takes it and holds it. "It must sting... " "Yes well, it's not too bad, it still works..., " he says,and squeezeshis hand to show her. "It's better than a slit throat." "There's always that so, what next?" Mary asks, grinning. ... "We keep going - we've barely begun, you and I, " he says. "So you've not been put off? " On the contrary..." "I don't know... " "I do," Fred says, "Me and you have a purpose, and you can't say I've been held at knifepoint and burnt my hand for no good reason." Mary shakesher head. A sudden shot of anger hits her as mistrust sets in, telling herself that she will not succumb to being taken into any imaginary long-term plans. A tired old horse dragging an old open carriage that has arrived from the docks at Liverpool pulls into the road adjacent, bringing with it the tired wailings of several babies. Fred and Mary move to the side, keen to take in the full misery as a ragged

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travel-weary horde climb down from the rickety carriage and form a sorry group, eyeing what will be their new neighbourhood. A young man jumps down off the carriage and leads them up the stairs of one of the cottages. "Let's go then...," Mary says,and the pair continue on their walk. ***

Manchester December 1842 Mary looks at the shilling that sits on the table between her and Lizzie. "It'll last the week for food but then we're back to square one scrabbling around for the rent again...," Lizzie says. "C'mon, we've a full belly, we have to get out and carry on looking, " Mary says, rising from the table and grabbing her shawl.

"But Mary, therewasnothing out thereyesterday,I don't think it'll be any different today." Lizzie lets her head drop to the table with a thud. "Lizzie! " "No, Mary, not today, I've got my curse for the first time in months and my stomach's killing me and I just want to sleep it away..." Mary looks at her sister for a minute. "Alright then, I'll seewhat I can find us, but think don't want to hear any shite ahead, if I come back and I've only got work for meself I from your mouth. " Mary trudges the same circuit of mills up Shudehill and down along Deansgate and back up St. Peter's Streetjust as a group of well-fed men emerge from the cotton exchange.She crossesthe road and turns off past the new police station. She carries on

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past the small church of St. Mary's, otherwise known as the Little Gem. She stops to sit on a wall. Just as she is giving into the descending dread she remembers that there is a Chartist meeting house not half a mile away. After five minutes rest she heads in the direction of Tib Lane. Arriving early enough to help arrange the seating for the evening's speakers,Mary is given free tea and a pie. She is also given an orange but she puts this into the deep pocket of her dress,determined to save it for Lizzie. Despite having her pick of the seats Mary sits in the middle row. She practices her reading from a few leaflets that update her on Chartist activity, another on lectures at the Hall of Science and the third on how best to maintain one's health and avoid common conditions such as scurvy. By the time she looks up the room is almost full with around 40-50 people of all ages.Mary doesn't look at the man who seatshimself to her right, or the woman who sits to her left. She watches the woman at the front of the room who is clearing her throat, looking down at a page of notes, preparing to speak. A hush descendsand the speaker clears her throat one final time and talks to them about the importance of unity. She says nothing new but the audience politely wait and give her a round of applause when she finishes. "I daresay you'd do a better job up there," the man seatednext to her whispers to her. Mary looks at him. He is wearing glassesand an old cap and a scarf that covers his neck, but sherecognises the eyes, the voice. "Fred? " He smiles and winks at her. "What are you doing here?" she whispers back. "I told you, I'm with you when it comes to the tyrannical mill masters." Mary feels the butterflies race around her stomach. John Watts, a Chartist lecturer well known to the audience, appearsand a hearty applause is given. "Meet you outside afterwards?" he asks in a louder voice.

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Mary says nothing but looks ahead, clapping harder. **

Fred and Mary enter a small pub on Plymouth Grove, where they had ended up walking, keen to leave the centre of town behind them. They sit next to each other at a corner table, attracting no interest from the few other patrons. Fred orders them a beer each and a potato pie. They talk of the Chartist meetings in between mouthfuls and dissect John Watts's lecture on Rousseau.It is an hour later when Fred slugs back the last of his second beer. "I have a proposition for you... how about I seeif I can get you and your sister a job at the mill my father is a partner in. I work there too of course, but in the main office on Deansgate, the mill is in Salford. Would that be a problem to get to?" "No, no it wouldn't, " Mary says. But as she says it shealso feels a hint of disappointment. She tells herself that she should be grateful but she wonders whether he is just another man who has come to the meetings out of idle interest but whose real reason is to get the workers on side. "Good. Now for the second half of the proposition. I want to examine every bit of the workers lives in this town, and that meansventuring into the poor areas,but I can't do that without some help. Your help." Mary's eyes widen.

"My help?" "Yes. It would mean accompanying me on walks, guiding me... mainly Sundays for obvious reasons."

"Oh... well, what would I sayto anyonewho knowsme?" sheasks. "The truth? The thing is, Mary, I have to live a lie in my work life, with my father and a few others, but I don't have to live a lie with the workers and... well, that's not to say

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that I'm saying you have to tell the truth, but that I won't hide who I am, as long as you know the need for my two faces, as it were." "Well... " Mary begins to eliminate all those who would object to her walking with him each Sunday. Her Da, well, she tells herself, she no longer cares what he thinks, and Lizzie, well she would probably be all for it if it meansa few extra shillings a week and if it's for the causethen... "I can't see why not." Mary feels lighter and is almost giddy as they laugh and joke on the walk back. They part company at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall, by All Saints, and no sooner has she said goodbye, him with a twinkle in his eye, that she warns herself not to let her head run away with her heart. ***

The cold started to bite and Ula clenched her hands. She swerved out of the way as a group of lively students ran across her path to join a snaking queue outside The Academy. Many were singing the songs of the band that they were waiting to see, passing bottles between them for healthy glugs. She would never say as much to Erin but the truth was that Ula still believed in happy endings and the potential to reunite her parents, and what that reconciliation could mean to them all. Perhaps his illness could give them both the opportunity to redeem themselves in some way? For the first time since her arrival Ula felt upbeat. *

The next morning Ula woke early with a renewed sense of vigour and purpose. The cat meowed at her when she entered the kitchen, her bare feet recoiling from the cold floor. "I'm going to sort his room out...," she announced as Erin came in behind her and reached for the cat food.

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"Oh right, I was gonna but, well, I suppose you've got nowt else to do," Erin said. Ula let the comment slide. "Yeah well, it's worth doing for its own sake. And I want to, maybe I can get Mum round here to help me," she said, filling the kettle. "I wouldn't bet on that. " "She asked him for money last night before she left," Erin said with an air of triumph, banging the fork onto the rim of the cat's dish to remove the last bits of jellied meat. Ula was determined that her mother's self-seeking wouldn't make a dent into the optimism; the truth was, she told herself, that it was the relationship their parents always had - their mother asked, their father gave. Only since his forced worklessness there simply wasn't the same money to give. Impossibility entered to take root. Without her husband's wage Jane just wasn't interested. The years counted only whilst they had counted.

'What did he say?" "I told her, I said, he's got nowt in here, what are you asking him that for, can't you see how sick he is? " "Oh god! " "Yes, Ula!" "Don't start... I'm not the one who told her remember, well, not directly... anyway, she's got a right to know." "I keep hearing about these damned rights of hers but I don't see any responsibilities going with 'em, " Erin replied, dropping the fork into the sink with a clank. "Well it's not as one-sided as you make out either you know, you've got to remember how much he put her through in the early years."

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"Yeah well, she had a choice didn't she! And it wasn't as if it was all unprovoked. "

"Are you for real?" Ula asked in a higher pitch, her eyes wide as she held her sister's stare that declared she would not yield no matter what. "He smashed plates over her head. I was five years old. You might be too young to remember me having to run out to phone boxes to call the police and banging on neighbours doors, but I'm not." There was a moment's silence as Erin turned the hot water tap on and began to wash the few pots that lay in the sink. 'Well, they both changed - he got better and she got worse. " "That often happens..." "Did you read that in some book?" "Oh fuck off, Erin! It's just not as simple as you make it out to be." The kettle was building up to bubbling point and Ula took a mug off the hook on the wall and spooned coffee into it. 'What did she say when you told her that he didn't have any money for her?" Ula asked, taking milk from the fridge. 'What do you think? She told me to fuck off - that she wished she'd never had kids." Ula started laughing and bent over, the carton of milk still in her hand. "It's not funny all this, you know! " Erin said, wiping her hands on the tea-towel before opening the top half of the door and quickly lighting a cigarette. Ula straightened up. "Ugh, what are you doing - are you not going to have a drink first?" "Oh shut up!" Erin replied, the smoke streaming out of her mouth only to be whipped up and away by the cold air racing in.

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"Oh here we go -I was laughing because she said 'kids', we're hardly that are we." 'Well one of us isn't. " "Cheeky cow," Ula said and poured the milk into the cup. She didn't ask Erin if she wanted any coffee but made her one anyway, handing it to her. "She walked out, her and that red bag of hers." 'What's with the red bag?" Ula asked. "You know what Daddy's like, he said..." it was Erin's turn to start silently giggling, her mouth closed tight but her shoulders bobbing up and down - she regained her composure and adopted an Irish accent, "what's she doing coming a place like this with a bag that colour, they'll be thinking she's an auld hooer." They both laughed until it fell into a natural silence. Ula leant against the fridge and sipped at her coffee until the mood in the room turned as melancholy as Manchester's rain. "I'm the one who's been here the past few years, the one who's seen him through his illness, the one who has seen him run ragged by her," Erin said, keeping her gaze out to the garden. UIa stopped herself from telling Erin that, just as her sister had claimed that their Mother had had a choice, returning to Manchester had been no-one's choice except her own; she knew that that was too simplistic; a cheap shot. "And he was happy that you did. " "Yeah well... it's a good job, otherwise he'd have been on his own and then what would have happened?" Erin's face crumpled as she fell into sobbing. "Oh for fuck's sake, Erin, get off the cross, we need the nails." "Oh piss off!" she said, straightening her face. Ula softened and stood beside her.

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"Look Erin, he would never have been on his own." 'Well would you have come back?" Erin shouted, standing in front of Ula. "I don't think so! No... not Ula who thinks she's got far more important things to do up in that fucking London." Ula slammed her mug onto the work surface so that a slop of liquid jumped out. She stood closer to Erin, the sisters now in direct confrontation. "It's down in that London, actually, and maybe Mum would have stayed if you, saint fucking Erin, hadn't come back to play the precious fucking martyr, have you ever thought about that? No, I don't s'pose you have." "As if! Daddy was right about you - you think you're a cut above - think you're too good for a normal job, but look at you, what have you achieved, a few letters after your name and you've been pissing about writing a book for god knows how long! You're just a joke. " "At least I've tried to get away from this! " Ula shouted in her face. "From what? " "This! All this. The dysfunction, the hopelessness around here! " "You're so full of it! " Erin said and marched out of the kitchen. Ufa picked up her mug and dashed it to the floor, the coffee splattering up the legs of her jeans. The front door slammed shut. Ula began to cry, at first from frustration, and then as she continued, from sadness. They had been genuinely happy, she thought, when she and Erin returned home from school one Tuesday afternoon to find their parents had got married at Jackson's Row Registry Office, having their lunch at The Sawyer's Arms on Deansgate. "It's all going to be different now," her Dad had declared, when from that day on things got increasingly worse. ***

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Manchester, December 1842 A heavy silence hangs around the soon to be openedHall of Science. It has not long stopped raining, making the cobblestonesthat have been stomped over years by armies of clogs, gleam like mother of pearl. She tries to ignore the feeling of regret - that, somehow, she may be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the tinge of despair that she could have to return to Piccadilly, yet the thought of returning to the centre, as the early evening punters start their mooching around, causeher to resent anew the first man to whom she had sold her body. She tells herself to think, think, think. `Come on, Mary, use your loaf, there's got to be something else, another way, there has to be...' Yet any ounce of hope she may have had has fallen hard into the pit of despair of her malnourished stomach, which all too often in the past six months has loudly proclaimed the most abject neglect. Mary has heard of people taking their own lives. Over the past few days the thought had crossed her mind with increasing strength, as though to do so may be the only act of kindness that she is able to give herself. But sheknows, or tells herself at least, that she hasneither the blackest, bleakest despair that would push her into it, nor the courage - no matter how hard the push. Her thoughts turn to Lizzie, having already lost too many brothers and sistersand then their Mother. How could she take away her only sister too? She will sell what is left of her body instead and get a few coins that way. She knows that the return to Piccadilly is inevitable if she is not to be found dead from starvation. Mary imagines being found lifeless on the cobblestones outside the Hall of Science. Her body would not even be fit for the black arts, as they call them, the cutting up of dead bodies from the workhouses. She pulls her shawl as tight as it will be pulled around her frame. Head down, she emerges from behind the Hall. She seeshis shoes first. A good, yet solidly used pair of laced-up black leather shoes.She stops and looks up at their owner. "I'm so sorry, " he says,and makes to pass her. The prospect of a sale focuses her.

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"You looking for company?" sheasks quickly, unable to keep the desperation out of her voice. He stops, turns, and studies her face. He seemsflustered, runs his hand through his clean, light brown hair, then falls into an easy composure. "You must be cold..., " he says. Mary responds with a shrug. "What are you charging?" he asks. His voice, educated,has a hint of foreign. Mary has long stopped wondering how far one may have travelled to end up in Manchester for the money to be made, as long as one has money to make it with. The town has now for several years attracted visitors and workers from places she had never even knew existed. She and Lizzie have walked through ghettoes like their own Little Ireland, with equally self-evident names, like Little Italy and Little Gibraltar. Like their own there is much talk in the respective native tongues, peppered with pidgin English. "You are charging?" he asks,his eyes widening. "Two shillings, " Mary replies quickly, feeling the panic of audacity; has shepriced herself out of the market? She is about to cut the price in half. "Two shilling it is! " He says. He puts his hand into his jacket pocket from which he displays a leather purse. Mary marvels at his trust. His long fingers nimbly retrieve two coins, which he hands to Mary with neither subterfuge nor fuss. Mary closes her palm quickly over the coins, hardly daring to look up at him. "So..., " he begins. "We can go... behind..." Mary suddenly becomes painfully self-conscious - frozen and removed from her own body as though she is looking down on herself. "Behind where? Not outside, surely? I would freeze to death!" he exclaims in a higher tone. Mary's face reddensand her head pulls itself downwards where she realises that her clogs look ridiculous compared to his shoes,as though she is dragging a pair of bricks on the ends of the pale sticks.

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"My dear girl. Don't be ashamed...how about I pay you another two shillings for your time and we go and get something to eat, a drink... I daresay you could do with both, and then we could retire to a modest but warm room? I would like to make an evening of it. God knows I've been traipsing around this town of yours all day long - maybe you can tell me all about it? " **

The noise from Mr. Thomas's chop house can be heard a full twenty-five yards before they arrive. Once the doors are openeda wall of clatter, chatter, buzzing and laughter hits them and they are willingly enfolded into it. This is the first time Mary has entered a chop house and she surveys the full dining room to check whether she can seeothers like herself; there are a few other young women, supping and gnawing on chop bones; laughing, talking. The long communal dining tables are mainly occupied by men of all hues; spinners to clerks; managersto masters. A small army of serving staff weave their way in and out of the available spaces- removing empty platters of bones serving full dishes of roast potatoes, replenishing jugs of ale. Mary suddenly remembers Lizzie who is back at the cold damp room, eating god only knows what, and she is hit by the guilt. She imagines surprising her tomorrow morning with a breakfast feast, and this thought helps her to relax as she sits at the end of a long table, opposite Fred. She mirrors him when their platter of food and dish of potatoes is served. He is not much older than sheand has already introduced himself as `Fred'. He picks up a crispy lamb chop and chews at the tasty meat with abandon, and so does she, albeit with greater selfconsciousness,although it dissolves in proportion to the quantity of ale she drinks, which also sharpensher appetite. But she is not unconscious of the unease in the pit of her stomach, the fear of someone- anyone - her Da, or someone from any of the mills she has worked in, coming in and seeing her with this man who seemsto speak to her as though he has known her all his life. "So, your folks were Irish?" "Are. Well, me Da... he re-married, I don't like talking about her though, she's a hooer... Mum died..."

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"A hooer?" Fred asks, and laughs, pronouncing the word again. "The Irish! " he proclaims, waving the nearly bare chop bone around before pointing it at her for a second, then gnawing the rest of the meat off. "What a temperament, I tell you Mary, I stopped off at St. Giles in London, which I suppose is like your Little Ireland, on my way here and the Irish there! Some of them as wild as beasts!" He throws the bone down into his bowl, laughing, and leans in closer to his new companion. Mary feels as though a wound has been prodded, yet Fred's eyes continue to smile at her. "Are you wild, Mary... what's your surname?" "Bums! " "Burns, eh! Good name! Wild and hot! I'm surprised no Manchester Industrialist has claimed you for himself and his alone, set you up in a cosy little arrangement." "You mean a mill master?" "Who else? Aren't they all at it? Samuel Richardson, wasn't he right with Pamela, although she would have been made long before." "I hate the lot of them! Mary declares with unexpected venom, ignoring the talk of Samuel and Pamela, having no idea to what or whom he was referring. She studies his smile, waiting to seeit diminish, but it only sparkles even greater. "I hate them too! It's true, I do... you don't believe me do you, but I do...," He declares, "Let's drink to hating the mill tyrants!" Fred picks up his beer and holds it aloft. He raises his eyebrows at Mary and bangs his cup against hers. He slugs the rest of his beer down so fast that several lines of the warm amber liquid shoot over his chin and down his neck. Mary copies him, wipes her mouth with the back of her free hand, and slams her cup onto the wooden table. They both fall into laughter. "Now, Miss Burns, I say you deserve a good time, eh? To which drinking establishment next, eh? The night is but young, you know, and you and I, we need some..." Fred places his hands on the edge of the table and does a drum roll. Mary's eyes brighten and she smiles, waiting. "FUN! " he shouts.

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Mary laughs deep and long, holding onto her sides. She feels a rush of excitement that her Da would have called `mad skitting giddiness'. The instant that Fred has settled the bill shejumps up and leads him out into the air now made warmer by the food and ale; she is so excited that she speedsahead, unable to run in her clogs, nonetheless leaving Fred to run to catch her up. When he reachesher he slips his arm around her tiny waist and the strength of his arms holding her as they walk suddenly touches upon a deep pang of sadnessthat takes Mary by surprise. She laughs even louder. Far away enough from the drinking haunts of her Da and Little Ireland they head through the town, increasingly coming to life for those intent on squeezing more than an ounce of fun from the day before having to return home. Groups of factory girls scream their way through the centre, arm-in-arm. A group of lads jeer at them. A man is sick at the roadside. A row of cabs wait their next passengers,the horses munching on their nosebags. "Where are you from, Fred?" Mary asks. "Prussia! " Mary has never even heard the word before and replays it to herself the way he had `hooer', `Prusha! Prusha! ' "Gin? " the landlord asks. "No, not gin, myself and the delightful Mary Bums shall have red wine - Burgundy, Claret, you choose!" Fred says.The landlord scratcheshis fat paunch and clears his throat before reaching for the nearestbottle of wine. He doesn't pour the rich red liquid so much as sloshesit in. She takes a sip, feels her face grimace then the sides of her tongue hold onto the smooth after notes before slugging the rest back. Fred laughs calling for her glass to be re-filled. He takes his own, gently swirls the wine around the thick glass, lowers his nose into it whilst keeping his gaze on Mary whose brow furrows in confusion. The barman refills Mary's glass right up to the rim and bangs the bottle down onto the bar. "The bouquet, Mary Burns, it's not just about the taste."

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"Well I didn't much like the taste either! " Fred sips, clearly savouring the taste. "Toffee and... raspberries," he decides. Unable to lift her glass without spilling it over the edge Mary positions herself at the bar so that she is crouched before the full glass. She lowers her mouth onto the surface of the wine and slurps before straightening herself and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She lets the wine wash over her tongue, waiting for flavours from her meagre repertoire. "Burnt sugar mice and... grass!" she declares with excitement. "Now we've started," Fred says. Within the hour Mary is amongst a small crowd clapping hard without a trace of the fatigue that blighted them earlier in the day. They encourageFred, who rewards them with a strangedance on top of one of the rectangle tables, whilst singing an old Prussian folk song. **

The hotel is not typically used by men bringing back women for whose bodies they have paid, and despite Fred's occasional securing of such services he would have no idea which hotel would suit. Yet to all appearancesit would favour the bourgeois adulterer for it is small, discreet and relatively well-maintained. Mary had linked arms with Fred as they both sung their way into a cab, only quietening the second they pulled up a short distance away. Whilst they had silenced themselves they had remained arm in arm, although Fred guided Mary into the moderately sized hotel foyer and up the one flight of heavily scrubbed steps, which lead to a quiet narrow corridor. The self-stifled pair begin to giggle as soon as Fred steps on a creaking floorboard. He removes his arm from Mary's and quickly turns the doorknob to their numbered room, which gives Mary the opportunity to press both hands over her mouth, showing her worry-gnarled nails He opens the door and Mary follows him into a sparse,yet decent and clean room. Upon sight of the two narrow beds, which are separatedby a table, upon which sits a cheap tatty Bible, Mary drops her handsby her side. The overwhelming need to giggle now dampenedby the reality of the evening's beginnings, and the obligation still to be met.

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Yet one look at Fred's face, which is one of the kindest she has had the fortune to set eyes upon, and she offers a half smile. Fred stands before her and leads her steadily backwards until she stops with a gentle thud against the wall, where she remains as he begins to kiss her. **

Mary slowly comes to before opening her eyes. She cannot decide where she is, or even when. A rapid, scratching sound comes from her left, which she dismisses as a mouse or rat. She itemises her body beginning with her feet and legs, which feel rested. Her stomach growls a little, yet she feels not the usual hunger upon waking. Her head is much foggier than usual, and it is only when she moves slightly that sheremembers the proper blankets, and the comfortable sponge-like mattress. She remains like this for a few minutes, piecing together the jumble of jigsaw pieces from the previous evening. A short burst of panic invades her and sheraises her head up off the feather pillow to see the man she met the night before, or rather his profile as he works at a narrow desk facing the window, through which the daylight bursts in a one inch gap through the curtains. His hair is browner than sheremembered, with a hint of deep red that the slice of daylight emphasises.He is hunched over in the deep concentration and industry of a from left to right, seemingly unable scholar, yet the swiftness of a hack as his arm races to get his thoughts onto the paper quickly enough. It is from this the mouse-like be worrying and the previous scratching is produced. Lizzie comes to mind; she will if Lizzie had gone out to search for night's excitement is churned into fear. She wonders the older sister who failed to return from the hunt for factory work - what thoughts must have raced through her mind throughout the night and now well into the morning? She puts it to one side, urging herself to seereason; that shewill be back within a short itself into a frenzy she staresat enough time, yet the fear remains, attempting to works the well-cleaned skirting in front of her, forcing herself to focus on a blank spot but her stomach growls again, this time louder. The scratching stops and Fred turns his body to meet Mary's eyes. She betrays her attraction to him as shequickly looks away to the beside the bed, fighting the one threadbare rug that lies on the wooden floor overwhelming urge to leap out of bed and run down the stairs and out the building and all the way back to the hovel she calls home.

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"Good morning, Mary Burns! Are we going to get some breakfast?" "Breakfast? " she asks, wondering if he can seethe shameshe feels at her stomach having proclaimed what she never would. "Yes, the breaking of the nocturnal fast. We worked up some hunger, I dare say, eh?! Fred emits a short laugh. "I can't... my sister..." "You have a sister?" "Yes, Lizzie... " "Lizzie. Aah Yes." "Yes, she'll be worrying... I hadn't told her..." Mary realises she is naked and is wondering how to get out of bed. "You had no idea you'd be staying out the whole night with a handsome young Prussian, eh!" "No..., " Mary says, turning to eye her clothes on the floor. She quickly replays the scene in which they had been willingly pulled off her, pushing away the shiver of delight that runs through the core of a self she hadn't been aware existed until last night.

"So I am to breakfastalone?" "Yes! " Mary snaps, still puzzling over how she can get her naked body from the bed to her clothes. "Direct. I admire that," Fred says,and gives another short laugh. "Look... " he says, holding her gaze,"I'll turn and continue scribbling while you get out of bed in all your glory. " He promptly turns and after a couple of secondssilent thought, which Mary waits to pass, falls into a more consideredscribble. Like a scared mouse Mary pushesthe blankets back and darts to the sorry pile of clothes, one hand trying to protect her modesty. She lets go as she works out that it

will

be impossible to climb into her clothes otherwise. She quickly sets herself into action,

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pulling on the few items while keeping her eyes on Fred's back, ready to hunch herself down if needed.Her clothes seem shabbier to her, not fit for wear, and the senseof shamegrows as she shoveseach foot into the sorry looking clogs. "Ready! " she says, picking up the shawl that now feels like little more than a pathetic rag that she wouldn't even had been allowed to use as a duster in the Chadfields. Fred turns with a smile and stands. Mary tucks her hair behind her ears, remembering how they had been caressed,her face reddening once more. "You've got your money safe?" he asks. They are the words that Mary did not need, not simply for the reminder of how, why, they met, but for her the implication that for him it remains a deal. Done. Yet shereminds herself that it is her primary concern. She checks the small pocket of her pinafore for the shillings. She nods. "Well, " Fred says. "My sister..." "She'll be worrying, yes... Well... we had a good time, eh! " he says, suddenly animated. "Yes, though my head hurts." Fred approachesher but she takes a step back, keen for him not to touch the ragged self that she is becoming increasingly contemptuous of. "Enjoy the rest of your time here then, Friedrich, Sir, good bye! " she says, in as proper a tone as she able to summon, and shedashesfrom the room. She takes care to be as quiet as she can as sherushes down the two flights of stairs, past an unmanned office that is situated off the foyer, and out onto the busy street. .. *

The steel blue toolbox was flecked with rust and its hinges were stiff and squeaky as Ula opened it to reveal a mish-mash of tools, nails and screws, evoking days that were both healthier and yet more dysfunctional - days of greater activity and a different type of want. She realised that her Dad would

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never again put those tools to use. She closed the lid and lifted both handles from either side to meet each other and carried it. It was still heavy, but she didn't need all of two hands to lift it as she once had. She placed it against the hallway wall, beside the other things that she had removed from his room. She opened the bedroom window as wide as it would go and set to work with the sweeping brush, pushing to one corner the dust and dirt in short, efficient strokes that were hard enough to quell the need to cry. It was with a sense of achievement that Ula walked over to the hospital with Erin that evening. They even afforded themselves a slower pace as they made their way across Upper Brook Street. If they had been going any quicker they may have missed seeing what looked like the back of their Mum enter The Grafton pub not two minutes from the hospital's entrance. "I bet she's just come out of seeing him," Erin said. "We could always go in and ask her." "I'm not going in there!" Erin said. *

Ula knew something was wrong when one of the regular nurses met them halfway down the ward's corridor. "Listen girls, " she began, in a voice that pleaded for understanding. "What? What is it?" Erin asked. "He's ok. He's just in a side room. His own room, just down here, " she said, turning to nod in the direction of a row of single occupant rooms. "He's caught MRSA or something, hasn't he?" Ula said. "Yes, Ula, yes, I'm afraid he has." "Oh no! What the fuck's going on? " Erin cried, she ran past the nurse and looked in each of the side rooms until entering one. She could hear her Dad

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and Erin talking, but not what they were saying. The nurse ran after Erin, and Ula followed. "You can't stay with him unless you put a gown and gloves on roll your sleeves up," the nurse said. Erin and Ula followed her to the ward office where they were handed sterilised disposable gown and gloves. "Listen, they had to do the test for c.difficule as well, you know the superbug, but he's all clear on that, it's just the MRSA...," the nurse said as Ula tried to pull the white plastic gloves on so that they would fit, instead of making her fingers look half as long. "Just? " Ula asked, returning her focus to the nurse. "I know, love, your Dad's pulled through so much only to be knocked down again, but we've given him the strongest antibiotics and we've got him under very close observation... and he's quite bright in his mood, which counts for a lot." Ula shrugged. He seemed little different than he had the day before, but instead of one drip he was now attached to two. Erin seated herself on the bed beside her Dad's legs, which only reminded Ula of the Spike Milligan lament on who drew such legs? The sisters looked at their Dad, who looked at them with their white plastic covering, rustling with every move. They all started to laugh, a giggling that had a shoulder-hunching shame about it, that wouldn't allow itself the expression of a full-throated laugh. Erin snorted, which set Ula off into a silent fusillade of stomach contractions, unable to speak. They soon recovered themselves and let the silence take over once more. Thomas Tully turned to Ula, and then to Erin, as if making sure he had both their attention, before lamenting, "Sure, you couldn't make this up, so you couldn't." Erin shook her head in agreement. "MRSA!" he said.

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"I know. They said you'll be ok though...," Ula said. "Arragh, I'm fucking sick of the whole thing, I'll tell you," he said, shaking his head. "Don't say that, Da," Erin said. "Has she just been in?" Ula asked. "Your mudder? No, she wasn't here, why have you seen her?" "She went into that hovel, The Grafton," Erin said. "Into The Grafton, did she?" he asked. Ula could tell he was thinking. He gazed at the window. "She'd not put on the plastic gown and the gloves though, I'm sure of that, " Thomas said. Ula stifled a laugh at the thought of her Mum in the same get up as she and Erin. She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. She didn't want her Dad to think of her as skitting needlessly. She had often found herself back in London, on the tube or the bus, suddenly recalling a funny situation and giggling to herself, then trying to stifle it lest she appear demented. "We don't know for sure that it was her, we only saw what looked like the back of her going in," Ula added. "Besides, she'll more than likely be in later, you know she likes a drink first." "Arragh, well, what can ye do? She goes her own way, that one, so she does. " "She's a bitch!" Erin said, folding her arms and sitting a little more upright. "Erin!" their Dad said. "If you're going to get him all worked up, Erin, you might as well go home." "Don't speak to me like I'm a child," "I didn't! " "Whisht now!" Thomas said.

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The three of them sat under the weight of a loaded silence for a while. "I've done your room out," Ula said, brightening. "Have ye? That's good. I don't want to be in here too long, I'll tell you that now for nothing." "Don't worry, Da, you'll be out soon..." Erin said. "I'd be happy with another five years, so I would..." "You'll have longer than five years. You're strong, look at all those years working on the roads...," Erin said. Ula thought otherwise but said nothing. The cleaner who had exchanged smiles with Ula on a previous visit popped her head around the corner. "Come in, Brigit, don't mind the girleens, " he said. Ula and Erin looked at each other. 'We're hardly girleens now, Da," Ula said. "Daughters are always their father's girleens..." the cleaner said, her accent similar to their Dad's. "So you're Irish too?" Erin said. "Can you tell?" Brigit replied, laughing. "She's from Mayo like meself...the boglands, the back of feckin' beyond," their Dad said. "Well you'll never guess what -I was cleaning in there beside your father's bed when I said to him, would you be a Mayo man by any chance and he said he was. And I said, I heard you talking..." she laughed, as if to compensate for anyone who didn't. Ula forced a laugh. "Anyway, listen to this, it turns out that your Dad and me used to go to the same dance hall, the Carousel, isn't that right, Thomas?" she asked, leaning both white-gloved hands on the floor duster, waiting for his reply. Page 183 of 254

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"'Tis, sure, they were the days alright-young and carefree, " he said. "Oh, they were that," Brigit replied, lifting one hand across her mouth. The nurse entered. Brigit gave a little start. She winked at Erin and set about pushing the duster around the bed with a little hum. The nurse checked the machines, asked their Dad how he was, to which he replied `grand', and ticked his chart before leaving them. Ula watched these two strangers, for her Dad felt almost like one in these exchanges with Brigit, and the way in which they served only to confirm to her the self he had kept hidden. She also watched Erin come to life; responding to her Dad's cheerfulness. When Brigit finished her lingering job she stood beside his bed and held out her hand. He pointed to his dressing gown that was draped across the end of his bed. Erin made to reach for it but Brigit beat her to it with a smile and a wink, and Erin took delight in this, pointing at her with an 'aaahhhhh - beat me to it'. Instead of going into the pockets Brigit handed it to him. He took it and shakily removed a betting slip and passed it to her. Brigit tapped the side of her nose with a grin. No-one saw Jane in the doorway, who was watching the scene play out. "I put the sly pound on for your Da and if he wins we share it," she said, giving Ula a nudge and lifting the front of the plastic gown to put the betting slip into the wide pocket on the front of her overall beneath. Ula looked up at her and smiled. "Anyway, I'd best be off, ta-ra girls, ta-ra Tom," she said, turning to face Jane. "Ooh, don't mind me love, but my husband's name is Thomas. " His face reddened and he tufted, shaking his head.

"Ma!" Erin said. "Don't 'Ma' me," Jane said.

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"I beg your pardon," Brigit said, turning round as if the man in the bed held the appropriate answer. "I prefer Tom, " Thomas said. "Don't worry about her Brigit, I'm surprised she still remembers his name," Erin said, folding her arms and straightening her posture again, in the same way of the mother she now rebuked. "Stop it! " Thomas said. "I've work to do," Brigit said, and left. Jane perched on the edge of the bed, her arms also folded, as if waiting for an explanation. "Tom, my arse!" she said after a moment. 'Why don't you just fuck back off to the pub?" Erin said as she made for the door. "Listen. You. Our marriage is none of your damn business." 'Whisht! " Thomas said. Ula watched it all play out, recognising only too well the look of jealousy that flashed across her Mum's face, which Ula thought was a good sign. "Is that your fancy woman then?" Jane said, and laughed, taking a different tack. "It is not! But I'll tell you something for nothing, I wish to god that I'd never met you, so I do... I'd have done far better!" Jane stood up. "Done better? Like hell you would, no other woman would have let you kick her around that maisonette in Hulme when them two were kids." "And you were no angel yourself, sure, you've outdone me in that regard ever since. So you have. I've been guilty too long, well no more, I've seen the light Page 185 of 254

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now. " Jane threw Ula a dirty look, which Ula read only too well as a scolding for having not stuck up for her. Ula realised that her Dad had been busy trying to cut the ties that had bound him to his wife, and that perhaps there was no hope left where they were concerned. Erin was in high spirits as she and Ula walked home at just gone ten. Ula looked back towards the pub, from which music played, as they crossed Grafton Street. "Isn't she nice, eh, that Brigit? Just Daddy's type and all," Erin said. Ula was still pondering what her Dad had said to their Mum. "Yeah but you've got to think about his condition..." "Oh Ula! It's just what he needs. And besides, at their age, it's more companionship than anything else." "His age? He's still in his fifties, remember. What he's suffering from isn't old age, Erin! It's illness." "Whatever. I'm glad that he's made it clear to Mum - he's taken his power back." "Power?" Ula asked.

They crossed Upper BrookStreet in silence. "He could have a new beginning, just think," Erin said as they approached the old neglected All Souls graveyard, a roundabout way instead of going all the way down the busy main road. "Mum used to walk around here sometimes and read the gravestones," Ula said, keen to change the subject. "When?"

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"When we lived around here before. When she had no drink she'd walk for miles remember, she'd always make me go with her. I hated it at the time... although I liked the night air, it's clearer..." Many of the headstones were cracked and broken. In the light of day syringes, foils, cider bottles and condoms could be seen strewn around. "You have to realise that she's never going to come back to him. And now he doesn't want her back." "I do realise that, Erin, I would just rather they were at least friends..." "Friends? UK's! There you go again with your London nonsense." "I don't think the south has a monopoly on separated couples being friends you silly cow!" "She's gone. Let her stay gone. They need to focus on their own separate lives now." ***

Manchester, October 1842 Mary has sat in Piccadilly and watched the girls, young and old, sell themselves for the inside of her mouth. She pushes past three hours. She haschewed a good section of the herself up and headstowards the back of the store that faces the Infirmary. She lingers. She feels the eyes of suspicion from the other women. She doesn't have to wait long. A man dressedas a low paid clerk passesfirst once, then twice. He looks her up and down and then his leery gaze rests on her face. Mary holds his gaze and then slowly walks ignore the repulsion that away, sure she hashim. She turns back and smiles, trying to threatensto take over survival. He follows her, his mouth agape. "It didn't take you long, bloody whippersnappers.Ruthless is what they are!" a woman shouts at her from the doorway of a decrepit gin palace.

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"Don't get het up - she'll not be that fresh for much longer... none of us are...," an older toothless woman calls and cackles, before supping on a bottle of beer. Mary leans against the wall out of sight of the main passers-by.The stench of middens and gin-soaked urine fills the air. She suddenly smells it, pungent, like never before. Yet her stomach contracts with hunger. The clerk stands before her "How fresh are you?" he asks, sneering to show a set of stumpy grey pegs in place of teeth. "The first time," Mary replies. "Yeah, course you are," he says, and laughs. He reminds Mary of a lad she used to work within one of the mills, the samespiteful face that needed either a good slap, or a pitying stroke, yet not passion. "Tuppence," he says, and pulls out a couple of pennies. "A shilling... " "A shilling indeed, we'll have none of that! " he says,pushing the pennies towards her. "A shilling for my first time! " Mary insists, staring at him, keeping her own face as straight as possible whilst watching him ponder the issue; in that moment the ravenous glint in his eyes shows her that he is more in need of what she has to offer than she is of food. This is Mary's first real lesson in sexual politics. There had been times when she had been harasseddown the street by a Scuttler lad, or been stared at salaciously by all sorts of older men but she had never submitted. Chadfield comes to mind and for a brief second she regrets leaving - but it just as quickly passes.The man removes a shilling from his pocket. The minute Mary takes the coin it hits her. A shudder of repulsion and shame runs through her like a force that seems intent on pulling her down and forcing her to cower against the wall. She holds her breath, closes her eyes, and lifts up her dress with shaking hands. He wastes no time, pressing himself up against her like a dog, She is sure she can and begins to slobber his tongue up and down her neck. smell

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pickled onions and stale pastry. She looks over his shoulder and into the far distance. A woman sits on an upturned crate, swigging from a brown bottle of beer. Mary feels, and hears, him fumbling. She is pushed further against the wall so that she can feel every imperfection of the bricks against her spine. A stabbing sensation forces her to take a sharp breath as he pushes himself into her. "Ooh, you weren't kidding me either... lovely... " and Mary wants now, more than anything, to push this wretch away from her and stamp on his head until he stops breathing; she is one shilling away from rage. Yet she does not have long to wait until, grunting, he shivers against her and relaxes, still making noisesof satisfaction that only repulse her even more. Mary pushes him away and feels a stream of warm fluid run down the inside of her legs and her stomach tenses as she pushes any liquid from him out of her body. "Will you be here next week, pay day's Thursday! " he asks, buttoning his trousers. "No, no, I will not," Mary replies. She turns and wipes herself with a rag she had brought with her and gives way to a couple of silent retches, her stomach lurching, unable to bring anything up. "You won't stay alive with that attitude," he says. She holds the back of her hand up to her mouth as he disappearsout of sight. The old her thoughts to bread and a glass woman is still supping on the brown bottle. Mary turns of gin to take the edge off the repulsion she feels at this godforsaken city full of men with money and poor hooers whose lives have amountedto nothing. Yet she knows day, she will be forced into that, unless she is to find some factory work the very next the same. ***

Ula heard their voices before she entered the room, and then a laugh, forcing her to hesitate, but then urged herself in. "Ula, what are you doing here?" Thomas asked. He looked brighter, the same relaxed man he would be after just one or two pints. Page 189 of 254

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"I've come to see you, what do you think?" "Course she has, daftie," Brigit said, giving Thomas a gentle tap on the hand. "Are ye not going up to the library today then or what?" Thomas asked, picking up his newspaper only to fold it. Brigit grabbed hold of her floor duster and polished it out of the room and into the corridor with a `see you later then... ' Ula smoothed down the white plastic gown before answering that she didn't feel she had the right head space to write that morning, hearing each word as he would hear them. She also wondered why he was asking her - he had never mentioned her writing or the library before. Brigit. Resentment stabbed her momentarily. She considered telling him all about Mary Burns and even wondered whether she should ask him if he would like to read it, but it was a fleeting idea quickly dismissed. "Would you reach into that cupboard down there for me, Ula, good girl, and take out a card...," he said, pointing to the bedside locker on the other side. The cabinet was bare except for a cellophane wrapped card. Ula turned it over to see that it said 'Be My Valentine' in fancy red script. She tried hard not to show what she thought about it as she silently handed it to him, but he waved it back to her, told her to open it. Ula opened the card and read the greeting to herself - 'Our hearts have spoken to each other...' "Who got you this?" she asked. it was Erin's idea - did she not let on?" "No... " "Arragh, I felt stupid when she said it like, but it can do no harm... I've to think of myself now, so I do. I don't know how long I'll have when I get out of this bed,

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your mudder's gone... and Brigit's a nice enough woman... " He welled up. He cleared his throat and took a sip of water from the half tumbler that stood on the over-bed table. He put the water back, his hand shaking as he seemed to want to land the tumbler on the surface without the sound of the object meeting the surface of the table, like a novice pilot landing a helicopter, but still he cleared his throat noisily. Ula's pen hovered above the blank space in the card. "Do you think I'd show meself up?" Ula pulled a face and shrugged. Thomas nodded, then shook his head as if to say he wouldn't do it. In that moment Ula felt deeply for him; assaulted by the deep pang of sadness that she felt he had always harboured and tended, like a secret garden whose walls he thought too high for others to see into. "What about Mum?" she asked, despite feeling it to be an unfair question. "I've told you... I've to put my own needs first now, so I do. It's taken me long enough to see that." Ula nodded. "Do you know for sure that there's something there?" she asked. Thomas scratched his head. "We have a laugh, she puts bets on for me... she doesn't drink either, well not the way your mudder does, she's a good little worker too, so she is." Ula thought that his criteria for a good partner weren't off beam; someone to share one's hobby, social drinking, a work ethic, and a sense of humour. Ula got a brief glimpse of his hope - the thought that he could will himself a new life after all; as within, so without; that there could be a happy ever after with his name on. He wasn't exactly old and, as he said, even if he had just five years left, shouldn't it be one of happiness and risk-taking? She wondered if she should sound out Brigit's true feelings, but Ula already knew. Brigit liked

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Thomas, she had a laugh with him, but she had liked and laughed with many of the male patients. They were sick men that posed no threat and their mutual banter lightened her day, and theirs, but then Brigit went home and they didn't. "You could take a risk...," she said. She could see him weighing up the situation and thought that she should have used the word `gamble' instead. "Give it here, when is Valentine's Day, it's tomorrow, arragh, I'll see, I don't want to make meself look a proper auld eejit altogether...," he said. Ula passed it to him and he stuffed it behind his pillows, giving a moan as he half turned, as though the pain had returned in direct proportion to the dashing of hope. "I'll put it back for you," Ula said, standing and putting her hand out for the card. "No, no, it's fine...," Thomas replied, turning back around. Thomas stared ahead whilst his left hand toyed with the plastic bracelet on his right wrist. Ula's thoughts turned to Mary Bums, and the spirit Ula felt herself to have once shared, but which life, particularly the last ten years, had leeched off her; a bit here, a bit there, sucking more, until she felt it at a level too deep to do anything about, left wondering how it had happened. "I'd rather be buried in me own back garden, so I would," Thomas said suddenly, quietly. He often delivered such statements. When he was younger he used to say all people should be put down at three score years and ten. He said it during Thatcher's reign, when the news was full of old people unable to afford heating and were found either dead, or close, the camera getting a shot of a frail blue-lipped man or woman being wheeled out a flat cloaked in silver foil. He declared that it would solve a lot of problems all round - Thatcher herself. Ula had dismissed it as an anger borne of impotence in the face of a world that had proved too confusing, and of failing to overcome the strictures and structures that had so devastatingly formed him; what better way to couch that anger in a biblical term. Ula had never fully realised how much the Biblical Page 192 of 254

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informed his outlook until she reached adulthood. She had always known certain facts - like how he had attended a convent school in Ballyhaunis, and become an altar boy at St. Patrick's, but she hadn't realised that he knew Latin; or rather, that he had the ability to recite enough to get through a mass. She called him on her 33`° birthday, to thank him for the pink birthday card 'To Our Daughter on Her Birthday' that he had sent to her, signing for Jane. He said he was glad she liked it, before adding 'Our Lord was 33 when he died'. Ula responded by asking what he had for his dinner. "1like the sound of those eco-friendly burials...," she said. "You mean where they put you in the cardboard box?" "That's the one, they bury you in woodland, with a little plaque, cheaper too." "I saw an advert for them, so I did, would ye get me that bag over there with the papers in?" He pointed to a thick plastic laundry bag beside the cabinet. Ula placed the bag, stuffed with newspapers, on his bed when Thomas proceeded to rummage through the contents with as much energy as he could muster. Ula watched him pull out a stack of ragged-edged coupons and adverts, clipped or tom from various newspapers and magazines. "Who did all those?" "Me, myself... Brigit put them in the bag for me, I have nothing to do in here now and I'm getting some of my strength back, and I'm not paying for that fecking TV to be on all day long, seven pounds a day to watch that shower of eejits on that, whatdoyoucallit, Jeremy Kylie." Ula laughed. "Kyle," she said. "He's worse than those lachicos he has on there...," he said, holding up the advert for the 'green burial'. "The only thing is it's... what do you call it... humanist...is that it?"

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"Yeah well, you're human..." Ula said. "Arragh, I'm not sure of that in here... Am I not still a Catholic though?" "But you're a human before you're Catholic. You hardly went to church... you didn't even come to hear me when I was in the choir at St. Wilfred's, " Ula said, surprising herself with the emotional inflection.

"There's a lot of things I didn't do, so there is... I was all the time working. I never got back to Ireland for one..." "You used to say we'd all go back, remember?" Ula saw herself trying to reach up and over the verandah at the back of their maisonette in Hulme for a view of a maze of concrete. Thomas stood beside her, his arms resting on the rail as he stared into the distance, recollecting his native country for fear it would be forever erased from his memory. "You said me and Erin would be able to run wild and free. " "Arragh, didn't I say a lot of things?" Ula thought it strange that he saw himself in that way - as a man who talked about a lot but didn't put those words into action; he hadn't spoken enough. "Well I'm not so sure it'd have been one long holiday over there. " "True enough, Ula, that's true enough. Arragh, I'll not be getting back there now, you leave it too late, it gets harder then you see... life!" "Is it also to do with the fact that your parents had died? " "I suppose it must have...", he said. He continued going through the adverts and coupons. "Must have been hard, that..."

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"Arragh, Ula, What can you do. I haven't even seen the graves except from a photograph. " "I dare say they'd not have gone for eco-burials, eh?" Ula said, with a short laugh. "They would not. Mind you now, they'd spend more on the dead than the living... " He referred to the photograph his sister had sent him when they had new headstones mounted at his parents' graves in Ireland. Black marble with gaudy gold lettering, although it wasn't as ostentatious as some of the surrounding headstones and memorials, some of which stood six feet tall angels with wings spread out like peacocks tails. "I could do more for you, when I'm back in a full-time job, if I get this book finished... you and Mum could go on holiday together..., " Ula began but her Dad was waving at her to be quiet. "Whisht, would ye. What can you do? It won't change things, Ufa, you've your own life to take care of, it's hard enough these days, so it is.,,

"But you've not been anywhere..." "Haven't I been to Wales? It was Wales we went to that time wasn't it?" it was a one week trip there in 1984!" "Well. Twas good enough. I enjoyed it. " "So did I," Ufa said, lying. The week at Butlin's in Pwhelli had seen her parents flit between the betting shops and the pubs. "No-one seems to want to work anymore..." "I started work at 15, remember!" Ula said.

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"You should have held onto those jobs, those were good little jobs ye had." "Da! They were cleaning hotel rooms." "There's nothing wrong with that. When my father died I was only nine years of age, my older brothers and sisters were over here, my mother still had to rear me and the others. She had three jobs. All cleaning. She got on with it. Not one complaint from that woman. I'd have to sit at the door and wait for her to come back to make me dinner, and I felt enough guilt at that. We had to leave as soon as we could, sure, you couldn't be a burden do you see? Ye lot now, ye seem intent on making life difficult, so you do... you go to work, you go home and you have a family. It's simple." "What if you don't want a family? What if you don't get paid enough to even be able to live a half-decent life? What if you only earn enough just to pay the bills? What life is that? What about creativity, fulfilment? I was never asked if I wanted to stay on at school..." she found herself getting angrier, forcing herself to stop, despite the need to continue. "Arragh, Ula, I don't know! I do not know!" he said. Another slice of silence forced itself between them. "And she was only in her fifties when she died," Ula said, keen now to remove the antagonism away from herself. "She was. And me here in this same hospital. They didn't tell me until I was near to leaving, didn't want to set me back you see. I nearly died. I was in here for my twenty-first birthday." He picked up one of the adverts and signalled for Ula to take it. Ula studied it, 'Special Bracelets at Special Prices..." the three bracelets in Celtic designs were modelled on tanned arms.

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"I hope you're not thinking of getting Brigit one of these," Ula said, wondering how he could afford one, even at the `special prices'. "Don't be daft, is it a total eejit ye take me for? I was thinking of getting one for yourself and Erin - sure, I'd have nothing else to leave behind. " "Da! We don't need anything, we know you love us." He held his hand out and Ula returned the advert. "Let me see about it," he said, putting the advert back into the bag with the others. ***

Barmen. Germany. October 1842 Friedrich runs his finger over the smooth down of his upper lip as he strolls alongside the River Wupper. The sky is grey, although the weather is mild. The water runs a factory. Fred knows that his polluted purple due to dyes that spew out of his Father's father is aware of his authorship of the subversive articles that have been appearing in the press under the name of Oswald. His latest article hardly differs from previous ones that have appeared;all attack the hypocritical money-making Pietists, a group his Father forefathers - belongs to. - and "Friedrich! Friedrich! " "Yes, Father!" Fred replies, angry that he is exerting himself to create a tone free of insolence. He makes no of ort to walk towards him, nor doeshe look up as his Father nears. "Am I to come to you, is that it? " his Father asks, stopping by the river bank. "Very well Father! I shall come to you. As you so obviously command! " Fred says, Senior, in his usual black suit, taking the few steps to stand before his master. Engels Page 197 of 254

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looks around to seewhat workers are within earshot, ever aware that he must maintain his authority at all times. There are already rumours of his son's revolutionary zeal amongst the workers. "You are going to Manchester tomorrow. The clerk is already seeing to the travel particulars" "Tomorrow? But, Father!" Fred wonders how he will manage to notify eachof his Barmen friends and numerous acquaintancesin such a short space of time. "No more, Fred, no more, if you stay here you will not only destroy yourself but will bring even more shameon the family with your ridiculous satires, your subversive... nonsense...on all your forefathers have helped create... no more. It's the only offer on the table. Your mother and I also prayed for guidance and we believe this is His wish for you." Fred turns away to face the river. "Do not turn away from your Father when he is talking to you! " Fred's face reddens with anger and he spins round. "Then please have some feeling for your son when he is being ordered around like a problematic child, and not what he really is, an intelligent and capable man! " "Well, " his Father begins before lowering his voice, "you are the one who has insisted brigand and a blackguard. And there on behaving like a child, worse, nothing less than a is little intelligence in that! " "Maybe I would have more of this intelligence had you not insisted on making me cut firm! " short my education to enter the precious Engels senior wipes his forehead in exasperation.

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"Well, I may be forced to agree, after all, you've certainly fashioned an inferior intelligence since then!" "By choosing and pursuing my own values, my own ideals? I hardly think so, Sir. In fact, any reasonableand rational human being would seeit as the mark of a superior intelligence! " "Pah! Values?Ideals? Nonsense,boy. These so-called values you have been infected with will leave you destitute and in the gutter, and the family name with it. Manchester will wake you up - once and for all. Tomorrow. I suggest you spend what little time you have with your Mother and sisters. It is they you have worried endlessly and to distraction, and who will now shedtears upon your going away - go and be with them and not chasing the reprobate acquaintancesyou insist on calling friends - and assure your poor mother that Manchester will be the making of you." ***

Not long after her Dad dozed off Ula left. She avoided the exit that would take her out onto Grafton Street and instead walked the long hospital corridors that led onto Hathersage Road. She turned right onto Oxford Road and waited at the bus-stop for the bus into town. A few students discussed the night before, whilst a thin black woman held her infant child close under the shelter. As the bus approached, something tugged at her gut and Ula broke away from the line of passengers and made for the nearby Whitworth Art Gallery. A red late-Victorian building situated next to the park the gallery was another of the places along that stretch of road inside which Ula hid when she should have been at school.

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Little had changed, even the solitary security guard in his foyer booth seemed familiar. The first picture that arrested her was Moore's 'At the Coal Face'. It was more than familiar. This, she thought, all this on their doorstep for years places that had long ago served as her truancy boltholes - and her Mum and Dad had never once stepped foot inside. She thought about bringing her Dad, if only to see this one picture - maybe even the day he was discharged. She decided there and then that she would. Yes, she told herself, she put her foot down and insist on this little detour for him to see 'At the Coal Face'; when he saw that art included such pictures it may open up something within him, and offer a new outlet in his days of enforced worklessness. But she knew it was bid to escape the reality. Thomas and ridiculous - pining again for the ideal in a Jane Tully were never going to enter. It wasn't just the fear of being tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave, but the purpose of art itself; it served no that a glass of alcohol could; purpose to them. It could not provide the escape could not provide the raising of hopes that a win on the gee-gees or the lottery they couldn't be wrong, for could; there was no one meaning that would ensure flailing around in their own truths and meanings was a concept too alien to 'Digging' her immediate consider. When Ula first read Seamus Heaney's the phone to him, to get him to feel reaction was to call her Dad and read it over the same way about it that she did - or even to grasp the significance of the had dug Mayo poem in their relationship; how his forefathers and mothers fields, her father had dug Manchester roads, and how she was now using a pen to dig at the past, in part, some attempt at trying to furrow the unlived potential of her parents. Although Jung's claim that there was nothing more devastating for a child than the unlived potential of its parents, it did not mean that potential had to be artistic. But even as she felt it, she knew that he couldn't have been

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indulged in having a poem read to him over the phone; he would have scratched his head. made an excuse and passed the phone to Erin.

Leaving the gallery she walked the length of Oxford Road, all the way down past All Saints and to St. Peter's Square. Inside the library she tried to ignore the rising anguish as the melancholy threatened despair. ..

Ula had not gone to the hospital that evening. She returned from the library late. Erin returned from seeing their Dad close to nine. From the way the door was open and slammed shut, and Erin threw her bag onto the settee, Ula knew something was wrong. "Poor Daddy!" "What? What's happened?" "Brigit found the card that he got her." "You mean you got her!" Erin placed a hand on her hip. "If it had been left in the cupboard like it was yesterday then she'd never have found it." "No, she'd just have been given it and wondered 'what the fuck is this? ' How did she know the card was for her? Could have been for anyone!" Page201 of 254

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"Oh yeah right, she's not stupid that Brigit!" Erin said. She reached into her bag and pulled out her cigarette box and lighter. She sat in her Dad's chair and hesitated to light the cigarette, as if questioning a thought. 'What did she say then?" Ula asked. "Nowt. Apparently the card had fallen down the back of the bed, she picked it up off the floor while she was cleaning and just looked at it. She put it on top of the cabinet and then quickly worked her way out of the room." "What did Da say?" "He just said she couldn't get out of the room quick enough and that was answer enough. " "I still say it was better than giving it to her." "Well... maybe it wasn't, maybe she did think it was for someone else, Mum maybe, and thought 'I haven't got a chance, '" Erin said, smoke escaping at the same time. She strode into the kitchen, returning with an ashtray. "I don't think that's true at all. " "Well," Erin said, dragging her bag over to her feet and retrieving the card. She held it up. "He said to give it to you, that maybe you'd have a use for it!" Erin said, throwing the card to Ula, which landed beside her. Ula's face flushed with anger as she grabbed the card and threw it back at an angle, like a frisbee, so that it lodged at the side of the cushion of their Dad's chair. "He did not, Erin! More like he gave it to you! You're more in need of giving that to someone." From Erin's smirk Ula knew that she was right. "What time do the visiting hours end?" she asked, getting her jacket. "Nine." "Are you going over there now? They won't let you in."

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Ula slammed the front door behind her. .:

It was her Mum's laugh that forced Ula to look over. Jane was smoking in the beer garden, a paved, fenced off terrace at the back of the pub, the side of which could be seen as Ula walked through the front car-park of the hospital. There were lights from two outdoor heaters, which illuminated her Mum and Jack. Ula had taken the first few steps to them when she felt the urgent tug that each passing moment decreased her chance of seeing her Dad and the thought of him, sick, alone and now rejected, as palpable as if it was her own pain. She knew she wouldn't get any sleep that night. She felt too alert to everything that was going on. Ula figured that her Mum was going nowhere, and so ran into the hospital. The nurse paused for only a moment before buzzing Ula in. It was only when she entered the room that Thomas turned her away with a wave of his hand. Curled up in the foetal position he muttered that he was too tired, that Erin had not long gone and that he couldn't take any more talk. She stood in silence for a moment before giving him a kiss on the head. A porter pushed an old man on a trolley through the long dimly-lit corridor. Ula found herself stationary, her back against the wall, watching it pass by, silent save for the slight squeak of one of the wheels. The old man's skin looked like tracing paper, revealing a network of pale blue rivers offset by jaundiced eyes. Ula wiped the tears that streamed down her face, fighting the urge to run back up to the ward to insist that her Dad tell her that he was ok; that they were ok. She sobbed as soundlessly as she could as she continued at a slow pace, each step heavier than the last - realising that she had always wanted to know the exact point in her life that hers and her Dad's relationship had developed a faultline so that she could go back and repair it, even though it meant she would have had to pretend to be someone else; the ideal daughter, quiet, submissive, uncomplaining, humble, not daring to dream of anything more than a good little job that kept her in her place, because the way she was reflected too much

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back to him. Enervated, she stopped at the bottom of a dusty and deserted staircase and sat on the bottom step. She lean over her knees and cried in a way that she hadn't since she had been a child, the pang of deep sadness, inconsolable, at what her parents had lost, what she had lost, what they had lost as a family - and how it was all probably going to end unresolved. There were no happy endings. With her eyes red and swollen Ula passed by the side of The Grafton's beer garden, a group of people were smoking; one woman cackled before falling into smoker's cough. Ula carried on walking - the need to go in and see her Mum had passed with the realisation that there was nothing to say. ***

Manchester. September 1842 Mary Burns leans against a wall, which overlooks a row of old tumbledown cottages that face onto the black River Medlock. The apathetic current carries detritus slowly barely swallow without along. She is hungry. Her throat is so parched that Mary can feeling like she is trying to force a bale of sun-parchedhay into her gullet, and so tired that she could sleep standing. She has heard the word uttered many a time: despair. But it is only now that she can tell herself that she is consumed by it, as black as the river, and the obstacles as many as it carries. Anyone new to these parts would have to hold a hand over their face for the odour is breathtaking. A couple of bare-footed children run hungry hours begging at past, followed by a thin pig. Mary trudges on to spend more each factory for work. ý**

Manchester, March 1842 Mary polishes the long winding handrail of the staircasewhilst reciting to herself the biblical passageuntil she is able to repeat it to herself, over and over. All the clocks in the house chime six - two hours since the Chadfields have been served tea and another

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two before dinner. Mary's stomach turns. In the distance she hears a door being slammed and then the angry voice of Chadfield himself. "I will not tolerate it. do you hear me?" The young parlour maid racesby, her eyes red, and rushes up the stairs. The study door opens and closes. Chadfield suddenly appearsat the bottom of the stairs. Mary gives a little jump, her hand darting up to her heart, the other hand holding tighter onto the scrubbing brush. He walks away. Mary realises that she is to follow him. The atmosphere in Mr. Chadfield's study is heavy. "Stand before me," he orders, seatedbehind his desk. The bible is open before him. Mary approachesthe desk. "Pick it up! " he says. Mary picks up the bible. "Hold it up..." Mary feels confused but holds it up with one hand. Mr. Chadfield stands. "Do you know what an oath is, Mary? " he asks. Mary nods. He comes out from behind the desk and stands before her. "What is it then?" he asks. "It's a... it's a... an oaf is a good for nothing..." "An oath! Oath! O-A-T-H - it is a pledge!" Mary nods her understanding. "You know then that to lie with the bible in your hand is the most wicked of sins?" Mary wants this over and done with. "Yes, " she replies. "So, tell me, have you ever lain with a member of the opposite sex?" "A lad you mean?"

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"A lad! Yes! A lad." "No sir, I have not! " Mary replies, and looks at her feet. "I don't believe you... a pretty thing like you... a temptation... presenting men with the possibility of sin. Get undressed!" he demands, now perched on the desk in front of her. "What? " "Undressed! No more niceties. You've already committed a most grievous sin." "I have not! I have not! " Mary raises her voice now, gaining confidence as her anger pushes her into a state in which fear no longer exists. You will not raise your voice in this household. Am I clear?" he shouts, his face reddening, his eyes twitching with what Mary recognisesas fear. Mary throws the bible at him, which hits his forehead. "HEY! " he shouts as he leaps through the room after her, but Mary is already pulling the door back so hard that it slams against the study wall, and she is out of there, but with heavy, determined feet. running down the corridor, not like the parlour maid, She attacks the stairs two by two, but only managestwo when she is dragged back by her hair - and then thrown against the wall. Her thin arm is pushed up her back and her cry of pain shoots through the entire house,until the agony renders her breathless.He relaxes her arm enough for her to take a deep breath. "Let me go! Otherwise I'll scream louder, and keep screaming until you have to kill me." You can scream all you want. " Mary understandsnow that she is alone in a house full of timid women, against this man. Something freezeswithin her and she lowers her voice. "Listen carefully, " Mary begins, "becauseit's your only chance. I know people who will only too willingly come here and have you, no matter what you do to me, you or any of your family will never be able to leave this house without looking over your

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shoulders. Never. Do to me whatever you want, but that will not change, unless you let me go. " He releases her arm yet Mary remains pressedagainst the wall her arm weak and aching. Mrs. C'hadficld appearsholding her handkerchief to her mouth in worry. She looks at Mary and unleashesa torrent of abuse.Mary climbs the steps, one by one, to the attic. She wastes no time in stepping out of her uniform and into her own clothes. When the floor creaks sheexpects to seeMrs. Chadfield, urging her to get going, but it is the maid who hovers in the doorway, her eyes red and swollen. "Arc you not going yourself? " Mary asks,removing her cap and running her hands through her hair, which now hangs loose down her back. "I've nowhere to go. It's here or the workhouse. Or worse." "I'd rather be a hooer for half an hour and be paid for it than all that horseshite here with the Bible! These people are tapped - demented,so they are," Mary says. She passesthe maid, about to descend the steps to freedom from the Chadfields. She stops and turns back. "You have to eat shit either way, " she says and runs down the stairs and out of the house. Mrs. Chadfield shouts after her as Mary foregoes the back entrance and lets herself out through the front door. ***

Manchester. March 1842 "Enter, " his deeper voice commands.Mary opens the wide oak door and enters Mr. Chadfield's study for the first time. As far as Victorian studies go it is typical but to Mary it is like entering another world. She focuses on an ornate pot, which contains a mess of long, thin green leavesthat flow over the sides.Mary has never seenthe likes of this plant even grow outside and

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wonders what it is doing inside. The pot is held in a tall brass stand. Next to this are floor to ceiling mahogany shelves of books, all neatly arranged by size and colour; deep crimson, dark green, royal blue - all with gold engravedlettering on their spines. Even in the shoes Mary has been given as part of her uniform she can feel the plush thick carpet underfoot. The patterned wallpaper of dark green plants like that in the pot disorients her and she looks to the right and seeshim, seated in a leather chair. He sits behind a wide, dark oak desk, watching her with a look of amusement. "Come over, that's it, " he says. Mary standsbefore the desk, her arms hanging by her sides, yet wanting to rise up and fold themselves across her in protection. She consciously pressesher thumb and index fingers together - as though doing so will ground her. "You may be seated," he says, now leaning back in his armchair. The desk top is just as cluttered as the room. A round ceramic pot that is decorated with the orange and black stripes of a tiger. A gold quill leans forwards in its stand, purely ornamental in front of him, a fountain pen lies another plant crawling out of a gold coloured pot and on the openedplain unruled cream vellum notebook, next to which is an opened textbook. Mary pulls out the heavy seat with its rounded back and sits on the edge of the leather pinned down cushion. "Father Broomfield is very disappointed in you." Mary raises her eyebrows in surprise. He holds her gaze, forcing Mary to look down at her hands, as if the answer is there, in the bitten down fingernails, or the network of faint blue swollen veins. "Look at me," he whispers, yet with all the authority of a deep voice. Mary freezes, urging herself to look up, but cannot. It occurs to her to jump up and run out, but finds herself absolutely frozen. "Look at me, Mary Bums," he repeats,a little louder. Mary feels her head move just a degree, but no more. "Do you know why you cannot look at me?" Mr. Chadfield asks - now leaning in closer to his desk. Mary shakesher head.

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"SHAME! Just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden," he booms. A wave of red flushes up Mary's neck and face, and the degree to which she was able to raise her head now becomes two degreesfurther down. "Where did you go, Mary Bums, when you should have been at mass saying your prayers?" "To my Da's, home," she replies, now looking at him directly, aware of the flicker that runs across his face like a swift ripple across an otherwise still pond. "Home? " he asks in what Mary feels is a tone of mockery. "Home! " "I have a

... predicament

before me, Mary Bums, do you know what predicament

means?" Mary looks back down at her hands. "A problem... you see,we, 1,agreed that you were to come into the Chadfield household and work for my family. The proviso was that you were a decent, honest girl, a girl who proved this by weekly attendanceat her Church, and you have so far failed to honour that contract... you know how important a contract is, Mary Bums? Contracts are what make this country... this Kingdom... this Empire, great! " Mary suddenly feels like ripping her skin off and shouting at him `is this good enough for you'? "Now. Do you want to be put back out on the street? Do you really want to return ... home... to your 'Da' and his wife?" Mary realises he knows more than she had realised. She shakesher head. "So you want to remain here with the Chadfields? In this house where many a girl in your situation would be honoured, would warrant themselves privileged? " Mary feels sure that the question carries more than the words. "Yes. "

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A silence. "Do you have a bible, Mary? " "No sir, " Mary replies, looking at him. "No? " "I cannot read properly, Sir. " "Your Church has not given you that?" "Given me?" "The ability to read?" Chadfield rises quickly and takes two quick steps to one of the shelves to his side. As he sweeps by Mary smells a strong aroma; cigar smoke mingled with what shedoes not know is sageand lemons. He removes one of the smaller deep crimson titles and slams it on the desk before her. "it is yours, when you've learned enough to read properly, when you can read and interpret a passage,any passage,from the bible, " he declares. Mary is confused. The book looks expensive. "How am I to learn?" sheasks. "I will teach you... even though I am a busy and prominent man I will take some time to teach you... becauseI think it is important to know the good book, it turns girls such as yourself into better people, teaches you the importance of obedience, it makes life easier becauseyou are aligned with the true order of things, " he says. He pulls his chair He takes a couple of blank pages, out from behind the desk and places it next to Mary's. the text books upon which he places said paper, and his fountain pen. He points to a passagein the bible. "I want you to copy those words, as they are." He hands Mary the pen, which feels too heavy in her reddened hand as she takes it and begins to copy the passagefrom the Book of Peter:

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Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. As soon as she finishes the last word Mary feels his hand is on her thigh. His hand is large and hairy - on his wrist a gold bangle that contrasts against his starched white shirt cuff. Gently, he picks up her hand and places it onto his lap. Mary now staresat her own hand as though it is not hers, frozen on the dark green tweed. "See, that's not too bad, is it? " he asks. "Now, how would you interpret that passage from the Book of Peter?" Mary holds her breath, feeling only a slowing beat in her ears. She wants the fire to is frozen. return, to unleash her rage against this man, but she "I'm a kind man, you see, Mary, " he says,and puts his hand over hers and pushes it up his leg an inch further. Mary snatchesher hand from under his and jumps up. "Now now, " he says quickly, also rising. "Ask anyone, and they will all tell you that I I have to fire people, but only am a kind, respectable,god-fearing man. Occasionally Mary Bums, is ingratitude. This is when I have to... what upsets me more than anything, humility, to honour thy elders, for they know what the passageyou havejust copied, best." He picks up the piece of paper and offers it to her. "Take this... and meditate on its meaning." Mary takes the piece of paper, but he does not let go. "I want you here tomorrow, same time, and we'll do more. Copying the bible and understanding its true import, that's the only way you shall move forward. You'll be better yourself, " he says. He lets go considered literate before you know it - and you'll his chair back behind his desk. of the paper and immediately sets about putting "Well. Run along then," he says.Mary rushesout. ***

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Manchester, March 1842 "And you are the new maid, are you?" Mary looks up at the whiskered, suited man who looks down at her with intense and searching brown eyes. His cheeksare well fed, covered with thick sandy bristle, perfectly and neatly trimmed by the hand of another. "Yes... Sir, " she replies, wondering whether she is to turn and continue scrubbing the corridor's skirting. He says nothing for a second and Mary looks beyond him, to the door that leads to another corridor, which leads to the drawing room and dining room. "Irish, " he says,as though reminding himself. Mary does not answer. She knows it is not a question. "Can you read?" "A little... " Mary replies. "A little, hch? Well... that's all for now, " he says and continues on his way. Mary figures he can't have walked notices how shiny and black his laced up shoes are and ducks the heavy, harsh bristled brush into very far in them - certainly not outside. She the brown tepid water, disrupting the top film of scum, and continues scrubbing. It is when everyone else has retired and she is finally able to venture up to the attic and sit alone on her bed that the anger bubbles away, asking questions - too many questions Why here? Why ever? Why? Why? Why? She imagines telling Mrs. - why her? Chadfield to go and take a running jump - and far worse - calling her a good for imbecile. A dirty uselesshooer. And then she nothing English parasitic cunt. An idle imagines using their words, using them back on them - such as `you're a disgrace, an fit only to be seen,sometimes, and certainly not ape, a blight on the face of civilisation, heard'. But the anger does not subside, but simply gives up in favour of the fog, the need images of torment and darkness of of sleep, which spends the night bringing forth feeling trapped and smothered and suffocated and walled in. Of being buried alive. Until she wakes in the darkness to begin another day.

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***

Manchester, Februare 1842 "Mrs. Chadwick wants us to keep the entire house clean but she doesn't want to seeus doing it mind, only when she ventures down here, which is many times a day, depending on how aerated she is," the cook explains whilst she lines a tin with pastry, ready to fill with the finest cuts of steak and kidney that simmers on the stove for the Chadficld's dinner. Mary sips at the mug of hot beef tea, her hands aching as they thaw out after the cold, brisk walk. She had said goodbye to Lizzie by Deansgatestation, telling her that it would be alright with the Fothergills, the family Lizzie was going into service with not a ten minute walk away, whilst she turned for the leafy gentrified suburbs of Moss-Side. Father Broomfield had ordered them to the church the day before, where both sisters had to keep their headsbowed, and only speak when spoken to. Broomfield explained that both families were important church-going well-to-do-folk who were only keeping them out of starvation, and the factories, by his recommendation alone. He reiterated that it would bode ill for the church if either of them did not live up to expectations. It was left to the cook to explain that, unlike the mills, Mary would not get paid weekly, but every three months, in arrears, with any damagesto or loss of household items being docked. Mary takes a bigger sip from the rapidly cooling beverage.Before she has the chance to finish it she is ordered to follow the other maid-of-all works up four flights of backstairs. The draughty, dusty attic is to be her bedroom. It contains a narrow bed and She is to collect the water a cupboard, on which sits a heavily chipped white pitcher. from the scullery every night before retiring. Folded up beside the pitcher is her uniform, a shapelessblack and white overall, and a small white cap. She picks up the holds it up against herself; too overall, stiff with starch and cold, and shakesit out. She big, but it has to do.

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"When you've changed and combed your hair back off your face and into a neat bun under your cap you can come back down and find me, the day's only half way through just yet. The Master and the Missis are having a dinner party, which always means more work for us." As soon as the other maid leaves the attic room and descendsthe wooden stairs Mary slumps onto the bed, which is as hard as it is narrow, but it is not that that bothers her so much as the feeling of being trapped. She feels the upper half of her body closing over towards her knees and a weight comes crashing down inside her now that it has half the chance. Mary sighs heavily, almost groaning under the burden that she feels - she tells herself that she must, at all costs, do exactly as sheis told, for there are no other choices. It is this, or nothing, and the knowledge of that brings her down further than she ever thought possible. ***

Ula finally fell asleep at dawn, waking just after ten. She padded downstairs and into the kitchen, the cat meowing at her heels. She took the tin of cat food from the window-ledge and spooned out the last of it, then stood and watched, revelling in its loud purr as it attacked the food and then licked the plate clean. The cat turned and stared at her. Ula picked it up, holding it close as it continued to purr and for a moment she felt at peace, as though everything was going to be ok because things would unfold no matter now much she worried. She was in her room pulling up her jeans when the front door crashed against the wall and Erin rushed up the stairs, out of breath. "We've got to go over there, they just called me, they said he's having problems breathing." They ran and walked in silence. Ula had to pull Erin back from stepping out too soon onto the traffic-clogged Upper Brook Street. Ula could feel the adrenalin surging around her body, threatening to both fell her and push her. Her heart

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felt at turns both hot and icy cold as they dashed into the hospital and down the corridors. The ward doors were already open.

"Da!" Erin shouted. A porter and a nurse stood at the doorway of his room, directing the sisters away. ...

THE NORTHERN

STAR

p.4

Manchester,September1838FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND MEN AND WOMEN AT KERSAL MOOR. There is no system which has not a fashion, and none more general than that of relying upon the opinions of fashionable fools, when offered in opposition to that of sensible men. The great spirit which is now abroad, and the universal determination to be free, has rendered the mere numbers who may be able or allowed to attend public meetings of comparatively little importance, and, there fore, our present object is rather to expose folly than to cavil about numbers. The Manchester Guardian, of "Wednesday, condescends to estimate the meeting of Monday at 30,000". When the scribbler wrote this, he knew it was a lie, and though a base one, we offer it as an apology for the gentleman. But we shall argue the question as though he really meant it, and we shall argue after his own fashion, by mere sound, and by measurement of ground, and voice, and space, and distance, and position. The Guardian asserts that Mr. O'Connor, by his observation as to eighty acres being covered, estimated the meeting at 1,936,000 ; but yet the Guardian states that Mr. O'Connor said-" Now, as I don't attempt to calculate the numbers here by looking at their teeth or the colour of their hair, I'll do it by this proposition, and you shall afterwards take my judgment, and see what the aggregate is. "When I came down this field, there were over eighty acres of full-grown men, women, and children." Mr. O'Connor says the same now; and if the Guardian, who seems to have taken Page215 of 254

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his "guess from military men, knew anything of military movements, he would have known that much more space is occupied by a body in motion, than by the same body when closely packed. Perhaps he does not understand " rear-rank, take close order, and rear-rank, take open order, and that the same body of men who will appear to touch "when covering eighty acres, will pack into twenty acres when joined at a meeting. But we had 30,000! As the question of numbers has caused frequent disputes of late, we shall see what our friend's arithmetic amounts to. "We shall first test the 30,000 by the numbers which customary places of meeting are known to hold. The Town Hall of Birmingham is said to hold 12,000, however we shall sink a sixth and take it at 10,000, and he will find according to the Guardian, arithmetic that Monday's meeting only occupied as much space as would be required for three such buildings as the Town Hall. The Crown and Anchor large room holds 2,500, again we will sink a fifth and say 2,000, and we find that only 15 such buildings would find space upon the ground occupied by the meeting. Now as to sound, the Guardian, to protect the "Whigs from a majority of the odium of a verdict against them, asserts that only a minority heard Mr. O'Connor, while we assert that, situated as the people were, 100,000 could have heard Mr. O'Connor distinctly; and yet the Guardian declares that he was not audible to 15,000 which number would find room in half an acre of ground. Now, as to military authority, it is the very worst that can be offered in cases of packed numbers, inasmuch as a military man invariably makes a bad guess at the area, and then considers how many armed men, with knapsacks, could be exercised in the space ; and that space which would contain 50,000 men at a meeting, would not be sufficiently So much for the spacious for exercising four regiments, or 4,000, soldiers. Guardian's arithmetic. And now to lay down some rule by which the curious may be guided. If the large room in the Crown and Anchor will contain 2 000 persons, we assert without fear of contradiction, that considerably more than 200 rooms of equal size could be built upon the space densely occupied by Monday's Meeting. If the Town Hall of Birmingham will contain 10,000 persons, we assert with equal confidence that more than forty such rooms, could be built further assert, that no town in upon the space occupied by the meeting; and we

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the world, containing a population of 30,000, would hold, in streets and houses, the numbers assembled on Kersal Moor. "When Mr. O'Connor said that 80 acres were covered the whole body was moving, and upon the first sound of the trumpet, the meeting pressed into one-fourth of the ground/previously occupied, which space was 20 acres, and which 20 acres would contain 500,000 persons, and which 500,000 were upon the moor. We will go further. The military gentleman gave us 300,000 at the Peep Green Meeting, in May, 1837, and all who witnessed both, admit that the Monday's Meeting was out of all comparison larger. Those who saw the astounding Birmingham Demonstration admit, that it was not half the amount, and to prove how marvellously well Mr. O'Connor judged in that case, he said, when speaking, There are eight acres of you, which by the Standard's rule, which is a foolish rule, would amount to about 200,000; and which was the very number which the London Press allowed for the meeting. Any man of common sense, who has been accustomed to measure land, can judge twenty acres and we assert, without fear of contradiction, that when the chair was taken, twenty acres of ground were densely covered with human beings who, in spite of the Guardian and his twin-brother, the Leeds Mercury, will be free. From Bolton and its neighbourhood from 20 to 24,000 marched to the ground. The Chronicle asks where they came from, and we answer "What's that to them? " Let them mind " Coronations," and let his friend, the Globe-, count the number of rabbits which the Duke of Sussex shoots; but let neither of them meddle with calculations till they have learned to count a House of Commons sitting, with wands in their hands for the purpose; of which at present we hold them incapable. ...

Manchester. September 1838 The crowd moves along at a steady pace, growing in size as it winds its way through the back streets of Piccadilly. It attracts those who have not long finished work, those who little else to do. Mary's arms ache. She are looking for it, and those who simply have Page217 of 254

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rues her insistencethat she could take one of the flame-lit torches, which she now holds aloft like many others. FeargusO'Connor is at the front of the procession, encouraging the substantial numbers of by-slanders to join them when breaking off in leading the chants: "No taxation without representation!" and "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work! " "Irish apes!" a frock-coated old man standing beside the safety of his carriage shouts, waving his cane in the air as they pass. "Feck off, you old eejit! " Mary shouts, along with the taunts of many others. One of the broad-armed spinners lunges for the frock-coated man, which sets up warnings and his words is bundled into his cheers in equal measure,but the man - so free with jeers of the crowd will ring in his ears for carriage and driven to safety, although the more than a mile. By the time the crowd, or mob as the presswill call them, makes its way through C'heethamHill and towards Kersal Moor the number of protesters is in the hundreds of thousands.The air is jubilant, as though cashing in early the triumph Feargus O'Connor is promising will be theirs. Mary passesthe torch to one of the spinners ahead of her, banner that urges: `Support the and instead holds onto the handle of a wide Chartist workers! ' ***

Ula sat sideways on the window-ledge in her Dad's bedroom, her legs raised in a triangle with her arms wrapped around them. When she entered Thomas's room the smell of thick black tarmacadam hit her, transporting her back to a myriad of memories as he returned from repairing the roads in years gone by, the dust of the road heavy in his hair, and his wounded hands. She stared out at the back garden, trying to picture that patchwork hut, but the image refused to be bidden. Mulligan the cat sat on the shed roof, the east wind blowing his fur in one direction, exposing lines of baby-pink skin.

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"What time is it?" Erin asked, raising her head above the duvet. Ula looked over at her sister who was curled up in their Dad's bed. "I dunno... about ten I think, the church bells kept going before... they don't do funerals at the Holy Name unless you're well known. The last one they did was for someone from Coronation Street. "

"Don't." Mulligan made his way along the top of the fence, all the way around the garden until he reached the small flat roof underneath the window. He jumped up and Ula opened the window to let him in. He let her stroke him for a few seconds before dropping down onto the floor and leaping onto the bed. Erin began crying again, pulling the cat closer to her. Mulligan purred as he allowed himself to be brought in to the nook underneath Erin's chin. The three of them remained like that for another hour or so until Ula went downstairs and heated soup, bringing it back up in mugs. She sat upright in the bed next to Erin and they slowly sipped at the hot liquid, despite every mouthful feeling like an injustice against their day-old grief. "I'll have to go and tell her later." "Yeah," Erin replied. :.

Feeling ghostlike Ula left the house for the dark evening, taking long deep breaths of the menthol-cool air. A car with its stereo at full blast sped down Whitekirk Close, coming to a sudden, jerking halt at the gated entrance to the student block. The driver got out, laughing at something one of the passengers called out after him, and held up his keyfob to the entrance mechanism. Ula increased her pace, but the anger grew until she reached the car as the driver was getting back in. Pushed by a surge of energy Ula slapped the flat of her hand against the car door. The two girls seated in the back looked through the window at her, looked at each other, and fell into giggles. Enraged, Ula kicked

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the back door, wanting to reach in and grab one of them out and bang their head against the metal until sated. "Hey! What's your fucking problem?" the driver shouted at her. "I'll tell you what my fucking problem is you fucking selfish idle fuckwits, the noise you make around here, that's the problem, there are families who live around here, WITH KIDS, and you people in there have NOT ONCE shown any fucking consideration. Selfish, idle bastards, the lot of you, you need to go and get real jobs! " She felt herself shaking. The man shook his head, got into the car and raced into the car park, the gate automatically closing behind him. It was not enough. Ula wanted to climb the fence, force her way into the block and bang on each and every door to give them a piece of her mind. The students left the car and ran into the building, the driver glancing at her as he rushed in with a case of beer under his arm. "CUNTS!" she shouted, holding onto the railings as though she were a caged animal.

"Youtell 'em Ula!" Erin shoutedfrom their Dad's bedroomwindow. "You give it 'em, noisy bastards! About time they were told, I'm sick of complaining, no bugger listens to us!" an old woman called from the doorway of her house opposite. Ula carried on walking, trying to talk to herself - to calm the bubbling grief, and the shaking of the anger that sat on top of it. Laughter rung out as she passed the Mawson pub. She reached Upper Brook Street as it started raining and Ula felt calmer, comforted by the steady stream of vehicles as they sizzled along the wet road on their way to and from town. It was only as she got within 25-yards of the main traffic lights that a figure, down on her haunches with hands gripped onto the roadside railings, became recognisable. Jane looked up at her daughter, her face pale and ravaged with worry, illuminated by the orange light of a nearby lamppost, which instantly called up for Ula an image of her Mum, years back, late at night sat by the two-bar fire, when it had bulbs to light up the sheet of fake coal -a horror film on low.

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"Ma! What are you doing? " Ufa called, repeating herself in a high-pitched tone. "Oh Ula! Ula! Thank God you're here, help me over the road, you have to help me over the road, there's a good girl... It's my nerves, they're shot - my nerves are shot," she said, her voice shaking. "What are you doing though? What?" "I can't cross the road. I'm going to get myself run over... a couple of people passed, you ask people for help these days and they look at you as if you're mad." "Ma, Dad's dead. He's gone, " Ula said, her face crumpling as she said it, her mouth gaping open into a low wail. "Oh god! I can't take much more of this," Jane said. Ula lowered her head into her hands for a minute, urging herself to stop. She looked up and her took Jane by the arm. "Ma, come on, she said, trying to strengthen her voice, "you have to come back to the house, Erin.... Erin's in a right mess." "Erin? Oh no! Oh bloody hell! I can't deal with this... help me cross the road, I can't believe it, your Dad gone? Are you sure?" Jane held on tight to Ula as they crossed the road. Waiting outside the pub Ula focus on her breathing. She wrapped her arms around herself and forced her half expected her Mum to emerge and ask her if she wanted crisps and orange. She had to remind her that she didn't drink, not even a 'short for the shock'. She leant against the cold wall outside the main double doors, listening to the light hum of chatter within, thinking how ridiculous it was - to be in her thirties and She kept telling herself that he waiting outside a pub, like two decades before. was in there, in the hospital's morgue. Neither resurrection or redemption. A drunken man staggered by before turning back and entering the pub, the opening of the doors emitting the fumes of yeast, hops and smoke. It was only when the church bells rang for the second time that she realised she had been Page221 of 254

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waiting for over an hour. She stepped onto Grafton Street and paced a few steps back and forth. He had wanted to go, she thought. Her Dad wanted out he just gave up; depleted. Ula thought of Mary Burns, whose feet had once traipsed the same ground, and the death of her father in the workhouse. She tried, again, to understand how, but reached the same conclusion that he had done his daughters great harms, but Ula would never feel confident enough to guess what those great harms might have been, apart from the usual fecklessness that served as a cloak to a lifetime of hurts and disappointments taken out on those closest. She figured she may once have felt the same towards her own parents, but then dismissed this as rubbish - that was never going to happen because she had sought and succeeded in understanding them, even though at times both space and time had been essential. She had from The Grafton she was never stopped loving them. When her Mum emerged transformed. Raising a hesitant hand Jane stroked her daughter's head. ýf"

Manchester. August 1837 It is a while since their last visit, yet numbers have swelled. The room above the Old Shamblesis packed to bursting. Workers line the stairs and corridors. Mary, Lizzie and John the spinner's son can barely squeezethrough. After some effort they give up and, listen to the voices streaming along with others, take seatsoutside. Mary shivers as they becauseshe feels just as fired up as through the windows, not becauseshe is cold but bangs down hard and a boom of a voice she was the first time she was here. A gavel carries to those outside: "If thesesix points of this here Charter are to be fulfilled we need unity, we need to become Chartists! Who's up for becoming Chartists then, eh? Or are ye all just talk? " Just as those listening outside and up in the room roar collective assent fifty or more into the square.A group of soldiers dismount and cavalry from Ardwick Barracks storm

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charge up the stairs, swords by their sides. Mary and Lizzie remain close to each other. John takes the opportunity of copying a nearby group of donkey-fringed young men, and picks up a handful of stones. He lobs them at the mounted soldiers. A couple of the cavalry shout after him. John runs, revelling in the thrill of the action and the soldiers give chase. Mary and Lizzie can only keep to one side and watch. Lizzie cries, holding onto Mary's arm. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE! " one of the senior magistrates,a red-faced, whitewhiskered man commands. The order creates pandemonium. People begin to flee in all directions. Someeven climb over the bridge and inch their way down to street level. Mary grabs Lizzie's hand and runs around the periphery of the square, their size to their advantageas they push through the narrowest of gaps in the walls of people. They do not stop until they are on the busy main street of Deansgate,where more groups have congregated. Shop-keepers and shoppers can be heard talking about the defiant rabble intent on causing trouble. "Are they going to get us Mary? Will they throw us in prison Mary? " "No, Lizzie, " Mary says, trying to catch her breath. "I wonder what's happenedto John?" "He was looking for trouble, goading them like that, thinking he was one of the Hulme boys! " Mary says,angry. She starts biting what's left of her nails. "It's Peterloo all over again!" an ageing man in rags declares, passing them, "Peterloo all over again, never learn, just never learn! You'll not beat that lot! " "You'd have thought they'd have learnt their lesson back then, but oh no... chips on their shoulders the lot of 'em," one of the shop-keeperscries. Mary and Lizzie continue down Deansgate,weaving their way in and out of the streams of shoppers who come in from the suburbs to visit the stores, both disgusted and

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intrigued by the bare-footed fustian wearers with whom they are forced to share the same road. "I heard Da saying about Peterloo," Lizzie says. "He was there," Mary replies. "Was Ma?" "It's where they met." Lizzie pulled Mary's arm, bringing them both to a stop. "Noooooo! Did they? I never knew that, how come I didn't know that Mary? " Mary shrugs. They are both deep in thought as they continue. They reach St. Anne's Square and sit in the far corner of one of the steps, covered just enough to avoid the rain that is now darkening the sky, buildings and pavements.Mary rests her chin on her knees and staresat the falling silver drops. She pushesher feet an inch out, so they hang out on the next step, and watches the rain force trackmarks through the dirt. " Pctcrloo is where all those soldiers came and killed a load of people, Da says he was lucky to escapewith his life, says he was shoved all over the place, fell out of his clogs and ran in his bare feet and didn't stop until he reachedMedlock Arches, where he saw our Ma coming down the road on her way back from the mill, " Mary says. Lizzie hangs onto every word. "And what are those caps they wear?" Lizzie asks. "Something to do with liberty, " Mary replies. "Do we have liberty, Mary? " "No, Lizzie, we don't, " Mary replies. "Do you think Mammy's in heaven, looking down at us, Mary? "

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Mary hesitatesfor a second, before giving in to her sister's need to believe. "Yeah, " she says "C'mon, we'd best get back..." she gets up, and both girls walk home, oblivious to the drenching. ***

Manchester, September 1835

Mary is one of those laid off from the mill that very morning and so with not all her energy depleted, now pushes and pulls so hard at the gates of the New Bridge Street Workhouse that it is lifted off its hinges, before being releasedto clank onto the rough road. The target is a group of Poor Law Commissioners within, executorsof the new Poor Law that decreesthose in need will no longer be able to receive poor relief during the times they are forced out of work, but will instead have to admit themselves to what has already become known as a Poor Law Bastille. None of these Commissioners venture as far as the main door to tell the protestersto clear off - and none of those protesting will venture as far from their position to the main door, lest they be somehow dragged in. There is no work to be had through the next fortnight. This is despite begging for it from those factory bossesthat Mary would then slag off left, right and centre at the Chartist meetings springing up all over the place, which means Mary can attend a different Chartist group most evenings, at which she can listen to the news read out by those who can read. They read from FeargusO'Connor's Northern Star newspaper, or the Manchester Gazette, or, for a great old laugh, The Times, which always makes clear, directly and indirectly, its hatred of the industrious-classes.There is also some food at Chartist meetings - orangesand hunks of bread and cheese. The girls manageto keep the landlord at bay the third week after being laid off. However, being a Manchester landlord, he is not stupid when it comes to delaying tactics, having evicted many a mill girl and lad in his time. So it is no surprise when, at the beginning of the fourth week, they are woken up by the landlord's agent and an ugly young man with a stick who is only too happy to use it. Page 225 of 254

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"C'mon. Out. The pair of you. Got someone paying upfront today..." "But we've nowhere to go," Lizzie pleads. "That's your own bloody lookout, should have kept onto your jobs or your family. " "Never mind Lizzie, come on," Mary says already packing. They stand at the roadside, Mary with the small bag and a changeof clothing, Lizzie with just a change of clothing, a couple of green velvet ribbons, and what she is stood up in. They look first in one direction, and then the opposite. "( don't want to go back to Da's, " Mary says. "Nor me. but he seemeddifferent last time we were there. I think us moving out has made him realise..." Mary nods and shrugs, agreeing, then confused. "Maybe... " shetries to push to the back keep any change sustained over of her mind the doubt at how long he can manageto any significant period of time. Although she doesn't think of that doubt in those words the shrug of ambivalence says it all. The girls head for their Da's cellar, now at Conway Street but still within the notorious District 13. "Where'll you both sleep?" their step-mother shrieks. Mary thinks she seemsmore haggard than the last time shesaw her, a matter of only a few weeks. Lizzie heads straight for their grizzling, red-cheeked teething baby half-brother and picks him up. She wipes his nose on the bottom of her skirt before cooing at him, hoping to block out the rising volume of words between her sister and her Da's wife. "We'll make up a bed!" Mary says,swinging her arm around the cellar room as though it is The Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace. "Sure. where will ye get the blankets?" Cathy asks, sitting down in one of only two chairs.

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"We'll find some..." "Have you no lad for yourself yet?" Cathy asks, taking a sip from ajar of clear liquid. "1'm fourteen! " Mary shrieks. "I was married at your age and with child! " Mary has no answer. She sits down at the table on the other free chair. Her father's breakfast plate, smearedwith egg and grease is in front of her. "We could help around here until we get more work, " Mary says. "Sure, no help at all, don't need it, " Cathy replies, getting up to take the laughing baby away from Lizzie. -Fine step-mother you are!" Mary says.

"Haven't we enoughherewith a baby...?" Cathy shouts. Just at that moment their elder step-brother, Giles, creeps in, eyeing the two girls curiously before looking back to his Mum. "Where have you been you imbecile?" Cathy asks. Giles shrugs. He approachesLizzie him to say something, but he does and stands before her. Lizzie, expectantly, waits for looks over to Mary, before moving not, only staresat her. Lizzie, her eyes widening, away from Giles. "Is he alright? " Mary asks. "Is he what? What did ye say? Are you saying he's a bit tapped?" Cathy screams. The baby begins to cry and chew on his fist. "Jesus Christ, the woman's demented!" Mary cries, standing up.

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"What was that? Now I'm an idiot too am I? Well I'm sure your Da won't be too happy to hear you calling his wife names and I suppose he's an imbecile too for marrying me, is he?"

"Well why don't we ask him whenhe getsin," Mary says.Sheleavesthe cellarand climbs the stepsto the road. Lizzie is two stepsbehindher. Conway Street is not much different from Cotton Street, the irregular straggles of immigrants and poor natives return to the same types of shared rooms and cellars after days spent looking for work. Then there are the children and old people who spend the days begging from the shoppers on the main streets.They will sometimes return to their slum homes to share some of their gains with those closest to them, be they neighbours or relations. Mary sits on the roadside, Lizzie beside her. They pull their black shawls closer around themselves, the end of Septemberbringing a chill. Sitting here reminds Mary of her childhood, outside Cotton Street, digging the earth up with a stone, and she feels her heart sink. For the first time in her young life Mary wonders whether her life will simply be a carousel of work and the despair of monotony, and no work, and the despair of finding some, and all the time the despair of poverty, never being able to keep a roof over her head for a good five minutes. She has heard all of this at the Chartist meetings from the older members and she had agreed with them, yet shehad never really felt that black despair of knowing, just absolutely knowing, that this could quite easily be her entire life, no matter what action she takes towards the cause, no matter how hard she works, no matter what - that this could be it - all there ever is or will be, the pushing of an enormous boulder up an endlesshill. She begins to cry now, not the tear-flowing, heart-breaking cry but a dry-eyed, gut-wrenching cry of frustration. Lizzie says nothing but rests her head on her knees and waits. They remain outside for the best part of two hours, interrupted only once by Cathy, who emerges from the cellar only to check whether they are still there. Mary's heart falls even further when she sees her Da clogging his way towards them. Lizzie jumps up. "What's happened?" he calls, still twenty-five yards away. Mary also stands,her arms folded above her shawl.

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"We were thrown out of the room this morning, " she says. "Aah now, didn't I say ye'd find it hard. Now you know! And youse after staying here now? " he. ays. His voice makes clear that he has not taken drink.

a

Lizzic setsup into a wail, her fingersat her mouth. "Arragh, whisht, what are ye crying for? You'll stay here, am I not still your Da?" he says. and he walks ahead of them, down the steps and into the cellar. They follow him, Mary with her arms still held tightly across her, waiting for the shrew within to begin again. She knows not to take her father's word at face value, for he is nothing if not mercurial, but it is enough for now. Cathy simply looks up at them from a simmering

pot. "You're there, I wondered where ye girls had got to, sit down now and have some of this stew," she says,and spoons out three bowls of vegetable stew, first handing Michael his before giving the girls a bowl each. Mary and Lizzie look at each other. "What's the matter with ye? Eat it while it's hot. Aren't you lucky now to have a stepmother?" Michael asks. The girls tuck in. Giles takes his bowl over to the corner from where he is better able to survey the scene. The evening is also as quiet as can be expected,and Mary and Lizzie snuggle up to each other on the floor. ***

"Yc can think on if ye think the wool can be pulled down over my eyes," Cathy says, standing over Mary and Lizzie. They both wake, realising their Da must have just left for work. "Cathy, we don't know what you're going on about, we're getting up now, aren't we, Lizzie, and as soon as we find work we'll not be here much longer," Mary says, kicking the cover off her and getting up, moving by Cathy, unsure as to whether she will

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suddenly strike out, prepared to retaliate if she does. They hurriedly get dressed,having to forgo a wash. **

"Two of us, both hard workers, " Mary statesas forcefully as she can to the manager, a thin, wiry man with a thin line for a mouth. "There's been over a dozen of you in already this morn, N. O. If there were work I'd give it, but there's none." "But we're different, we're really hard..." "NO! Out! None of this pissing around, got work to do meself you know, " he says, and gives them both a push towards the side door. "That's seventeenmills, Mary, I counted them... and two shops for messengerwork, that's nineteen places, I bet Da's never asked at nineteen places in one day in his life, " Lizzie says. They take a rest on the roadside at the back of Piccadilly. "He'd tell you he's done that in an hour! " Mary replies, but her focus is elsewhere, she is watching the girls on the far opposite side of the road, off Piccadilly, some younger even than herself, as they lure the occasional man out of view, and then re-appearin hardly any time at all, a few coins richer for their troubles. She is sure she recognises one of them, and it comes to her, a girl she had worked with at the Price Mill the year before. She nudges Lizzie, who wearily lifts her head up. She used to be a mill girl and look at what she's doing now! " "What? " Lizzie asks, dopily looking around. "Over there! Look! That girl, she's... you know..." "What, Mary?"

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"She's selling herself. to men. For money!" " Oohhh, that's... ugh! That's a desperatesin is that, the Christian women told me! " Lizzie replies, unable to take her eyes off the poor wretch. "Why would they be telling you that?" Mary asks, studying her sister's face. Lizzie shrugs. "I dunno... probably becausethey thought we might... " "We might do... that." Mary shrieks. "Don't shout Mary, I don't know what you have against Christians, they're true followers of Christ and all... " "True followers my arse!" Mary shouts, jumping up, "I'm your sister, you should be on m" side!" "There arc no sides Mary! There are the righteous and the sinners, but that we're all " sinners, but there arc... I'm getting mixed up now... "1'm not interested. What are we going to do for work? " Mary gets up and walks away without waiting for an answer. Lizzie forces herself up and trails behind her. One of the women said...," Lizzie begins. Mary stops and turns to her. "Said what?" Said that Father Broomfield might be able to help us get into service..." "Service?" Mary suddenly imagines herself as a maid-of-all-works, having to say `yes miss,,madam/mistress/master'every five minutes, and maybe even having to curtsey.

"I think it could be worsethan the factories," shesays. "But is it worse than having no work and staying with Da and Cathy?" Lizzie asks. "We'd live in. We could try and get the samehouse, for the pair of us."

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"You're getting carried away with yourself Lizzie, it wouldn't work that way, " Mary says. walking of

"We couldaskthough,couldn't we?" "No, Lizzie, no, I don't know why, just no, not yet, I think we should wait a little while longer, there has to be more work at the mills coming up, c'mon we'll go to the meeting and see if there's word there, we'll get some bread and soup at least," she says and they head in the direction of Tib Lane. *s*

It is a hard month later that Mary and Lizzie finally find more work at a mill in Hulme. At three shillings a week each the money is abysmal but they know there is no choice in a mill-masters market. They rent another room to share. It is a relief to be away from their Da and Cathy. but instead of being happier Mary falls into a period of blackness. She rises each morning and goes into work as though she is hollow and often wonders when it will all end. lb *0

A Catholic funeral gave Thomas Tully the send off he would have wanted, despite the talk of eco-burials in cardboard boxes and being laid to rest in far out woodlands. Ula had visited St. Augustine's, the 1960's church that faced All Saints gardens. Like the local Gartside Gardens, All Saints was also a former burial ground. In the priest's all-beige study Ula had gone through the readings. All the while she felt that the priest was sounding out her Catholic knowledge, asking her which readings she preferred, replying that she would be happy to take his lead, adding that she would like to read a poem. He told her that Christina Rossetti was a preferred choice of many of his mourners. Ula told him that it wasn't Christina Rossetti. When she left she sat in the All Saints gardens alone.

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**

The morning of the funeral saw the hearse and one funeral car cruise up alongside the student block. Ula, Erin and Jane waited at the roadside in their black clothes. Jane was uncharacteristically quiet. She smoked two cigarettes in the ten minutes from when they left the house to the cars arriving. A couple of the neighbours came out and watched from their doorsteps, crossing themselves as the cars proceeded slowly. Ula sat at one window, Erin the other, Jane in the middle. Ula stared out, grateful of the slow pace. Jane Tully came to life as they drove through MossSide, down Moss-Lane East, said that was where she and Thomas had met, lived together in that terrible little bedsit. They turned left onto Princess Road. A black man coming emerging from a boxing club dropped his large sports bag from his shoulder and crossed himself. Ula wanted the car to stop so that she could thank him. It had been a long time since she had believed in a god, but she hadn't lost faith in these humane gestures. The car went the full length of Princess Road, through Moss-Side, Fallowfield, and Withington before arriving at Southern Cemetery. The priest was waiting for them and Ula introduced him to Erin and their Mum before they all entered the small cold chapel. A few people were already seated within; no more than ten. Jane and her daughters took their seats in the front right pew. When the priest signalled halfway through the abridged service Ula

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approached the lectern. She cleared her throat, looked up at the few faces, and read Robert Hayden's 'Those Winter Mornings'. The sisters left their Mum on Oxford Road, where they watched as she scuttled off down Grafton Road to be consoled by whatever was served in a glass. Ula sat by the fire, her arms folded as she stared into the middle distance and tried to understand what had happened, even though she knew that it was impossible. The return to London beckoned. She didn't want to go back, but she didn't want to stay in Manchester either. She let the silence envelop her as the evening slowly covered daylight - her mind travelling through memories happy and painful; snagging on the hurts that had not faded with the passing of years. She pondered the notion that there are those children born, not to be parents to their own children, but to that couple who had brought them into the world who, in turn, had not been parented. Of her Dad it was the ever-present sense of the unsaid. Ula knew that she still waited in that space - and there seemed no way of escaping it; it was, she knew now with an uncharacteristic certainty, that it was the reason she had not successfully met the soul of any man. It was only when the church bells chimed ten that Ula rose and made coffee. The possibility of moving somewhere else, totally different, occurred to her as she waited for the kettle to heat up. She had always fancied Iceland and a log cabin. But it was more metaphor than reality. Mary Burns came to mind; that former factory girl whose prince had arrived with his earnestness and excitement; his conviction of purpose and fun. And she had waited for his return. Mary, Ula thought, had a lot more than she ever had. Although there were the horrors -a childhood in which death of baby siblings was standard. Ula asked herself whether she had given enough attention to Mary's childhood, marked by death and toil. Jane's voice came to her just write the damn thing if you're writing it'. Ula spun round with a sudden sense of fear, despite knowing that no-one was there. She gave a short, nervous laugh and finished making the coffee. Her Mum's voice echoed in her mind; the voice of a woman before alcoholism had marred her beyond recognition; hope. It was the voice of a

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woman she missed and of whom she had mourned for years.They had neither of them been there really - Jane and Thomas - the broken pair who ignored their own wounds; Jane through neuroticism, unable to reach the plane of legitimate suffering. And Thomas because of guilt and realising that actually there was little to be done with all that stuff. He found no solace in talk - the baring of the soul - sure, wasn't life hard enough without that sort of thing? ""

It was only when Ula hugged her sister at the station a week later that she felt a rush of clean emotion, crying as she told Erin that must come to London more often, that no matter what, they were sisters. Erin waved at the window before disappearing down the concourse. ***

ManchesterJuly 1835 The looms click-clack so loudly that Mary can barely hear herself think. She tries to keep looking over at her sister's progress.Mary imagines having her own place, of being able to look forward to going home after a hard day's work, and not view it as yet another wearisome task. "Would you get that daft sister of yours to get a move on. " Mary jumps, careful not to lose control of her own set of looms as the overseercomes up behind her and shouts into her car, but he pushesher so hard that Mary nearly falls over. She feels the anger rise up, a surge of emotion that suddenly makes her feel alive after the past hours as a drone. She looks over to Lizzie, alarmed to seethat she looks like she is in a perpetual state of panic as she scurries under the looms. On full alert Mary anticipates what is going to happen. "LIZZIE! " shescreams.

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The machinery continues to dictate the noise with its rhythmic toing and froing and clackety-clack. Not everyone looks up as Lizzie is knocked to the floor by a hammer blow from the loom as it goes in and out, catching her hair as it comes back and now, as it goes back out, threatening to rip it from her head. An operative jumps into action and dashesover. Mary is by her side, trying to hold back the machinery that is intent on jutting forward, as though keen to prove its power against its feeble human slave. Taking a large pair of scissors from a front apron pocket, the operative snips Lizzie's hair clean across, freeing her from being skull dragged like a rag doll. Mary pulls Lizzie out of danger. Lizzie laughs hysterically before slumping into a faint. The machinery comes to a shuddering stop and the room quietens except for a few moans from one of the male spinners at the back of the room, lamenting the employ of women. Mary and the operative lift Lizzie by each arm until shewakens and immediately sets about wailing. "I'll take her home," Mary tells the overseernow beside them. "And who'll do your work? " he asks. Mary holds the gaze of the overseer for a second. "If you go off for the day now you'll have no-one on your section and I'll have to get half day's work? " someone in and what am Ito tell `em, eh, there's a Lizzie stops crying and wipes her face. "It'll be alright, I'll be fine, Mary, I'll be away home on my own, you stay here," Liiie says with the maturity of someonemany years older than her almost ten years. She startscrying again, this time silently, the tears cutting clean tracks down her face. You will not! " Mary replies. Without another word she leads her sister out through the factory, down the path, through the gates and onto the street. Li7zie continues to whimper as both girls walk home. Mary is shaking, the sadness having hardenedto anger. She tells herself not to get riled up at them, that they're not

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worth it, and anger that their Dad wasn't there to punch the overseer, but underneath is the worry of getting more work and starting the cycle all over again. She feels doomed. She looks at Lizzie beside her and she softens. "Your hair will grow back shinier and healthier, isn't that what Ma used to say? Remember when she had to cut our hair for the nits? And she'd also say that you were lucky, really, lucky that it's only your hair, " she says,putting an arm around her sister's shoulders. "Don't. Afarv. please don't talk about her, don't, I wish she were here..." and Lizzie falls into loud pitiable sobs. Mary stops and without question Lizzie stops also, staring down at her feet and wailing for much more than her hair. "C'mon, Lizzic, it's so shite, all of this but what else can we do?" "I dunno... what if Da's back home...?" "We don't have to go back, not yet... you're not feeling dizzy or `owt are you?" Lizzie looks up at her sister, as if it is shewho owns the answer to whether shefeels dizzy or not. "No. " "That's alright then, we'll not go back, where do you want to go?" ",Nowhere, with no hair, " Lizzie cries, bringing her hands up to her bare neck. "Oh Mary' r'

"You've got hair, Lizzie, it's just short,sure,haven't plenty of girls hadtheir hair shornoff?" "Stop it, Mary. I'm not a feckin' sheep...you're not making me feel any better..."

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"Well come on then and be glad it wasn't worse, don't you still have your hands and legs...? Aren't there many children with no hands and legs?" "I don't want to go back there, Mary... I don't want to go back...I'm scared." "Well we won't be going back to that mill, `cos they won't take us, not now, we'll have to look for more work first thing... " Mary makes to continue walking but Lizzie remains in the one spot. "No, Mary, I don't want to -I don't like them, the mills, they're like monsters, and next time I could be dead, you could be dead..." "Never mind all that now, Lizzie, " Mary says, holding back the urge to tell her sister that she should seeit as her welcome to the real world and that she'd better get used to it double quick. Lizzie's face uncrumples from the crying and setsharder. "You think you're a big woman, Mary Bums, but you're not, you're all of thirteen! " "Older than you! " They glare at each other for a second before giving up. Lizzie looks down at her feet whilst Mary looks up to the smoke-dark sky. They continue in silence. They reach the main market on Shudehill, a jumble of stalls selling every possible thing livestock to matches. A boy speedspast them with a freshly plucked chicken in - from his hand, followed by an irate man in a blood-splattered apron. It is only when Mary eyes a small animated group that contains the son of the spinner from the mill, heading towards the Old Shambles square,that she remembers. "Hcy, Lizzie, guess where they're going." Lizzie looks over. "Where?" "Come on and I'll show you."

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Lime holds her hands in her face a minute and stares at the cobblestones.Mary indulges her, then grabs her hand and pulls her along. **

The warmth in the room is generated only by the body heat of the assembledcrowd. A few of the men and women have cups of ale brought up from the pub downstairs by young boys and girls wearing adult-sized aprons that skim the floor. A woman's voice struggles to make itself heard, until stopping, only to resume with full force. "Look at this poor child! A stump for an arm! " she shouts from the side of the room. Everyone in the room directs their attention to the boy who she pushes ahead to the front. His head lowered, the woman forces his mutilated half arm up in the air, waving it, whilst its owner keeps his eyes on the floor. "Look at what's happenedto him in those dirty bastard mills! And not a decent meal out of it by way of apology, who's gonna take him on now, eh? Who? In our society he's fit only for the scrap heap - used and spat out like a piece of rotten meat." Mary and Lizzie inch through the crowd before settling at the far side of the packed room. Lizzie chews the inside of her mouth whilst transfixed by the boy and his half arm. "I should push you up there, Lizzie! " Mary jokes, nudging her gently, but Lizzie pulls herself away, folds her arms and throws her sister the meanest look, angry that shehas been reminded just at the moment she had forgotten. Mary giggles and Lizzie leans forward and slaps her sister's arm, "shut up! " she hisses, "in't nowt to laugh about." Mary nudges her sister again, this time harder, as the same man shehad seen on her first visit approachesthe platform. "That's the man who was here last time... " she whispers. The crowd fall into a hush as the man who hastaken to the stage surveys the crowd. He points out a couple of individuals and waves at them, and gives a nod of recognition to a few others. He clears his throat and waits for perfect silence.

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"Brothers. Sisters. Welcome to your future freedom! " he begins. A cheer rises up. A down Mary's shiver runs spine. "That poor boy there has lost his hand, which you can seehere for yourselves as clear as day, not that you need me to remind you, some of you seeit every day. That boy is maimed for LIFE! Never will he have that hand returned to him! " The boy begins to cry. The woman wipes his face with her big hand, dragging his features downward. "Many more children, women and men, will lose their hands, their arms, their legs even, in factories up and down this doomed land, what land I heard you say? Doomed! Doomed land, that's what I say, not Eng-er-land! Doomed land! It can only be a doomed land that allows its industrious classes,the very workers upon whom this town is being built daily, to be treated this way whilst a small elite sup at your expense! They force you into the mincing machine from which they make their money." Mary is at one with the energy as it waves through the room, giving rise to exuberant cheers, claps and a few long whistles. Like a conductor in front of his orchestra Fergus O'Connor lowers his jewellery-clad hands in front of him to bring the room to a hush. Only when there is the expectant silence, does he resume. "All this talk of African slaves, they need to free our dark brothers and sisters from their bondage, yay! Who can deny that? Not us! Yet the rich do this to redeem their guilty conscienceson what they are doing here. Smoke and mirrors, my friends, all smoke and mirrors - look over there, ignoring what's happening over here. They never seethe slavery under their own noses.WHAT ABOUT OUR CRIPPLED AND MAIMED CHILDREN IN BONDAGE UNTIL THEIR EARLY DEATHS? BORN INTO A DEATH SENTENCE! Our bondage. What freedom us, eh?" The crowd again rises in agreement. O'Connor lowers his voice, and they listen all the harder for it, as if he is letting them in on a secret. "Displacement, you see! Displacement! Denial. DISGRACEFUL! " I

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A thunderous round of applause rings out with stamps of clogs that shakesthe room. The pale speakerholds the cheers and applause a little while longer, surveying the excited faces, drinking it in, until raising and lowering his arms until he whispers: "It has to change! Oh yes! It has to change!" and then in a higher voice, "It has to change! It has to change! It has to change!" and, before they know it both Mary and I_w is arc part of that unified voice chanting: "It has to change, it has to change, it hasto change!" **

"Don't tell Da about the Old Shambles and if he asks how much the new job pays tell him three shillings a week each, not four," she whispers to Lizzie as they lie on the floor. They listen to their Da talking and laughing to himself as he stumbles down the steps and enters. But it is not himself he is talking to, they quickly realise. A woman's raucous laughter enters the cellar with him. Without any thought Mary rises taking the lit candle beside her. "Who's there?" Mary calls. "Whisht and mind your own business!" her father replies, to now quieter giggles from that strangewoman. Mary moves away from her bed, towards the table. "DA! We'll not have another woman in here!" Mary shouts. Lizzie sits up, trying in the dim light, to take in the full measureof the woman. This is Cathy..." he says, and makes an exaggeratedshow of extending his hand to introduce her. She comes from behind him and gives a drunken curtsey. Mary feels the rage take hold of her. "GET. OUT! GET OUT! " she roars, straining her voice as far as it will go, unable and unwilling to quell the anger now consuming her. She cannot hear Lizzie's pleadings for

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her to stop, even when Lizzie stands beside her, grabbing her by the arm. Mary pushes the lit candle into Lizzie's hand and launches herself at the woman, pushing her fists into her and pushing her out of the room. Mary is pulled backwards by the hair, half lifted and half dragged. Her father doesn't stop until he has dragged her to the wall, where he gives her a sharp kick in the back. "(let off her, you, you've always been an evil little witch, " he shouts. As soon as her Da has gone to help pick up his woman friend Mary leaps back up and again launches her entire strength against the woman. Once again her Da drags her off, this time by her ann, almost yanking it out of its socket, throwing her across the room. Lizzie stands in the dark corner, crying and calling for Mary, but doesn't venture forth, knowing only too well that she will be given the same. Mary's head hits the wall, and it is only the dizziness that scaresher enough to stop. Lizzie runs to her side. The girls dash out of the cellar to walk the late night streets, returning only as dawn rises to see them lying in her mother's bed in a pile. It is not enough to stop the woman, this `Cathy' from staying at the cellar that night, or the next night, or any other night for that matter. Nor do Mary's attempts, turned to resentful silence, stop Cathy Tuomey not only moving herself in, but her fifteen year old son, Giles, who, despite seeming a bit `tapped' to both sisters, is not `tapped' enough to not make himself a comfortable little bed underneath the table each evening. Each dinner time, when Mary and Lizzie file out of the Price Mill, they find a spot to sit outside with a potato pie. They talk endlessly about how much they will spend on renting and how it will mean becoming `free women', despite Lizzie being all of ten years old, and Mary thirteen; free of their Da and his lush of a woman and her strange son. ***

Manchester, March 1835 Mary lies on the floor in the one-candle darkness,staring at what was her Mother's bed. Although the thought has crossed her mind she resists the temptation to remove the few thin covers for herself. She moves her gaze from the bed to the black expanse of wall

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and finds herself drifting off. She is only conscious a few moments later of what she has been attempting to do imagine what it would be like to be dead. In a second she feels certain that death is more like staring a black at wall in a slum cellar than sailing on a white cloud in the Palace of God that too many would have her believe. Her Ma had found solace in those beliefs, and reminding herself of this Mary is angry, clenching her hands. Mary is still knotted in simmering anger when the church bell rings five. Her Dad snoreson in the corner of the room. Mary knows that Lizzie's days of freedom are now at an end. Her younger sister will have to be found some work becauseit is clear they cannot rely on their Dad. She gets herself up and surveys his sorry heap, beer bottles beside him, wondering how she ever had any respect for him and his sorry pathetic ways. She wishes he had died and her

Mum had been spared,that, she thinks, would

have been the right order of things. ***

Manchester, May 1832 All night Mary Burns lies awake, chewing on the strips of loose skin of her bottom lip. Beside her Lizzie gives a little snore. She lies underneath a blanket and an old armless Mary's focus is coat that had seenaction in the Napoleonic wars. For just a short while drawn to the shenanigansoutside: a man shouts before a bottle is dashedto the cobblestones;a woman screams. Apart from the familiar rumbling in her tiny stomach the much rarer surges of anticipation and excitement alongside the more familiar fear. Mary may only be ten years old - but she is also too aware of how the majority of the crippled and the limbless have become that way. These images now, in the very early hours of what will be her first day at work, are the perfect opportunity to demand extra vigilance and dexterity of herself - she will be a good worker, she will be quick and nimble. Maybe they could then pay for a doctor to venture into District 13 to seeif he can cure her Mother.

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t!

Even outside the main factory halls the noise clashes in Mary's ears; ceaselessclickclacking, the industry of whistling steam, and shouting. She looks up the stern looking, grey-faced overseer with the metal grey hair and tiny dark eyes. Her Dad nods at him in agreement before leaving his daughter whilst he enters the dyeing section. Mary feels a cry of panic rise up within her that threatensto scream out for him not to leave. She has the urge to run after him and grab hold of his ankle and never let go until they were far away from the monstrosity she is being forced into. But in a heartbeat she knows her Father would only kick her off and tell her to act her age. He would also shout at her not to be such a feckin' cejit, to stop showing them up. But Mary does not cry. She swallows the sobs that well up, forcing her lips into a rigid line to stop them wobbling. She stands absolutely still and finds herself staring at the wooden set of teeth in the overseer's mouth as he barks the rules and regulations. Operatives will be fined for having dirty fingernails. Operatives will be fined if their necks are dirty. Operatives will be fined if their hair is left loose. Operatives will be fined if they are late. He points to a board upon which each rule is scribbled, which she cannot read. When he has finished he looks her up and down to estimate her strength. Mary had expected this. Her Mother had lain awake most of the night too so that, at 5am, as Mary rose, she called to her oldest surviving child and told her all of the things she remembered all too well that she had to do on her first day at work - learnt through trial and error as a new and famished immigrant. As soon as Michael was up and his back turned Kathleen had also presseda penny into her daughter's hand, whispering that she is to get herself a potato pie at dinner time and to eat it all on the way home, for she would need the extra energy. "You're to watch Ellen over there for ten minutes first, and then you'll be off and away doing it for yourself, d'y'ear me, eh?" the overseer shouts, the din making it now almost impossible to hear him. Mary nods as soon as his mouth stops. He turns and points to the large hall. She seeshe has a humpback. Beyond this she staresin awe at the huge looms, up to eight at a time operated by the fastest woman shehas ever seen.A young scavengeris beside this woman, darting underneath and in pursuit of the stray fluff and cotton, all the while careful to avoid being hit in the face or head. This is the

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girl she will have to learn from. No-one speaks,only the machines are allowed their monotonously loud drawl. Soon enough Mary is flying underneath the looms, collecting stray cotton, the fear she feels at being hit by one of these looms createsadrenaline. The machine has become something that she must fight; shefalls into hyper-vigilance at the machine's movements and the drop of each bit of fluff. Before long the first bell has rung and the machines call a truce as they reach a standstill. For the first time in hours Mary feels the relief of standing up straight. She can hear her own heartbeat drumming in her ears and she is aware of herself and her own body like never before. She sways a little as she remains standing in one place for longer than a minute. The adrenalin continues to pump around her small frame, making her feel jittery and wobbly. She examines her hands, now shaking, to seethat her veins are big and fat. "Go and get your dinner, love, go on, " the operative, a yellow-skinned bean-pole of a woman tells her in a kindly voice. She gives Mary's shoulder a gentle yet matter-of-fact nudge towards the door. Mary runs out of the mill like a foal taking its first stepsamongst the throngs of hunger like fresh, clear water, but stricken workers. She gulps at the air, which now seems which is still dangerously polluted. She stops and waits at the gates. She observes,with darting eyes, the small groups still emerging, trying to find her Da's face amongst the blur of workers. She waits a couple of minutes but already knows that he would have been one of the first out. Her stomach stabs away at her now and she takes the penny out of her small pinafore pocket and holds onto it tightly; it is the first time in over a year since she has been given a penny; she draws comfort from what it will buy. She tags behind a few older girls to the nearestpie shop. There are twice as many pie and ale shops as there are mills. She takes her place in line and listens to the workers in front of her. It is her turn and she hands over her money to the young boy behind the counter. As soon as she is given the pie she feels the nauseadescend and she quickly leavesthe shop, her pie in hand and a small bottle of warm ale underneath her arm. The warmth of the pie is in stark contrast now to how cold her body is becoming after its

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vigorous morning. She leans against a wall and bows her head, waiting. She has heard about mill fever. She urges herself not to be sick. She straightensherself up and takes deep inhalations. Her heart continues to race. She instinctively forces herself to breathe slowly. As soon as she feels a gap in the nauseashe takes a big bite from the pie. She chews it quickly, not wanting to taste it. She waits as the first bite travels down her throat and into her stomach where it sits like lead. She begins to feel less jittery and she ambles back to Cotton Street, taking regular bites. A boy with one arm stretcheshis hand out for any offerings just as she pushes the last piece into her mouth. She shrugs at him, chewing. She washes it down with the warm ale, like she seesthe others doing, feeling herself become looser. Mary is struck by how differently her Mum and Lizzie treat her when shereturns home that evening; they constantly ask her how she is. Lizzie has found an extra few rags from somewhere and spread them out on the floor in order to afford her sister more comfort. When she finally lies down, despite having the extra padding to rest her body on, she feels that her body is sinking into the floor, as though the bare concrete is yielding imagines the machines settle in underneath her. Her body settlesdown the way she her into She to fast; mind her urges stop going so submission. clicking and clacking has to return and repeat the thoughts spin without control, taunting her that she same day all over again in just a few precious hours, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...

"Ow! " Mary whimpers at the hard knock to the bottom of her spine. She turns to face her Dad's clog, urging her to get up off the floor. She looks up at his bloated hungover face, his bloodshot eyes. "Get up! Don't be moaning about a few achesand pains, sure don't we all have them what about your poor mudder lying there in the bed half dead, don't you think she'd like to havejust a few achesand pains and to be up and out to work? Eh?"

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Mary concedeswith a murmur. She forces herself up. She feels as though every bone in her body has been set to with a hammer. A bout of nausea sweepsover her and she feels the blood drain from her face. Lizzie turns and she and Mary lock eyes. Even though Lizzie conveys how forlorn she feels for her sister, despite how weak shenow feels, Mary would like nothing more than to bang her little sister's head off the floor and then drag her to the mill with her - just to seehow she likes it. This is alleviated only by the knowledge that it will only be a matter of time before Lizzie is forced to work; the urge to crack open her younger sister's head is replaced by a dropping of her heart into that just as dank and dark cellar of her own being. She tells herself that it will be ok. One day. ...

MANCHESTER TIMES & GAZETTE Saturday April 28 1832 We intended to comment at some length this week on Dr. Kay's pamphlet 'On the Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes, employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester', but other subjects have occupied our attention, and other matter has pre-occupied our columns. As, however, the subject is one of great importance, and as an honest representation of the evils under which the working classes are suffering may serve to direct attention to the means of raising their condition, we now lay before our readers the following painful, and we fear too true, picture of the consequences of unremitting and illrequited toil:Prolonged and exhausting labour, continued from day to day, and from year to year, is not calculated to develop the intellectual or moral faculties of man. The dull routine of a ceaseless drudgery, in which the same mechanical process is incessantly repeated, resembles the torment of Sisyphus - the toil, like the rock, recoils perpetually on the wearied operative. The mind gathers neither stores nor strength from the constant extension and retraction of the same muscles. The intellect slumbers in supine inertness; but the grosser parts of our nature Page247 of 254

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attain a rank development. To condemn man to such severity of toil is, in some measure, to cultivate in him the habits of an animal. He becomes reckless. He disregards the distinguishing appetites and habits of his species. He neglects the comforts and delicacies of life. He lives in squalid wretchedness, on meagre food, and expends his superfluous gains in debauchery. The population employed in the cotton factories rises at five o'clock in the morning, works in the mills from six till eight o'clock, and returns home for half an hour or forty minutes to breakfast. This meal generally consists of tea or coffee with a little bread. Oatmeal porridge is sometimes, but of late rarely used, and chiefly by the men; but the stimulus of tea is preferred, and especially by the women. The tea is almost always of a bad, and sometimes of a deleterious quality, the infusion is weak, and little or no milk is added. The operatives return to the mills or workshops until 12 o'clock, when an hour is allowed for dinner. Amongst those who obtain the lowest rates of wages this meal generally consists of boiled potatoes. The mess of potatoes is put into one large dish; melted lard and butter are poured upon them, and a few pieces of fried fat bacon are sometimes mingled with them, and but seldom a little meat. Those who obtain better wages, or families whose aggregate income is larger, add a greater proportion of animal food to this meal, at least three times in the week; but the quantity consumed by the working population is not great. The comparatively innutritious qualities of these articles of diet are most evident. the population nourished on this is crowded into dense mass, in cottages ... ... separated by narrow, unpaved, and almost pestistential streets ; in an atmosphere loaded with the smoke and exhalations of a large manufacturing city. The operatives are congregated in rooms and workshops during twelve hours in the day, in an enervating, heated atmosphere, which is frequently loaded with dust or filaments of cotton, or impure from constant rexpiration.... They are drudges who watch the movements, and assist the operations, of a mighty material force, which toils with an energy ever unconscious of fatigue.

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The persevering labour of the operative must rival the mathematical precision, the incessant motion, and the exhaustless power of the machine. Hence, besides the negative results - the total abstraction of every moral and intellectual stimulus - the absence of variety - banishment from the grateful air and the cheering influences of light, the physical energies are exhausted by incessant toil, and imperfect nutrition. Having been subjected to the prolonged labour of an animal - his physical energy wasted - his mind in supine inaction - the artisan has neither moral dignity nor intellectual nor organic strength to resist the seductions of appetite. This unjust system is not merely accompanied by economic evils affecting the accumulation and distribution of wealth. The moral and physical depression of the people, which we deplore, may be traced to this fruitful source. The difficulty of changing the system is every day increased, until, ere long, it may become a serious question with other countries, whether the advantages to be derived from free trade can compensate for the sacrifice of capital embarked in their commercial establishments.

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Manchester,February 1832 Ten-year-old Mary Burns sits on the dirty roadside outside the aptly named Cotton Street, number 32, digging a small trench between the cobblestones with a sharp stone. Her tongue lolls to one side of her mouth. Her blue eyes stare intently at her unconscious efforts. Her long brown hair falls in front of her eyes every few seconds, which she flicks out of the way with an accompanying sigh. "Mary! " Lizzie, her six-year-old sister, calls from the door of the cellar that she, Lizzie, her sick mother, Kathleen, and her father, Michael, call home. They are constantly told how lucky they are to have the cellar room to themselves. Mary is young but she knows that thesewords are often heavy with sarcasm. Nevertheless, every other room of the house's upper floors are occupied by at least two families each, sometimes more. Room also has to be made for the pigs, serving as both pet and meat. They are within spitting distance of the rookeries, littered with such explicit vice, crime and violence that the newly established peelers don't even like to humour and dollops of venture within. It is all washed down with buckets of gallows heavy sentimentality. Now it all seemsmerely disordered, as opposed to the chaos that dig with her stone. She doesn't bother often defines it at later hours. Mary continues to to look up as the army of children who live across the road fight and argue as to whose turn it is next to skip with the heavily frayed rope before the oldest girl pulls it from her younger brother and whips him across the face with it. This sets him up in a loud wail. A man appearsat an upper window and shouts at the boy, asking him if he's a little girl all of a sudden, a challenge he respondsto by setting his dirty face in grim determination, his lips thin and set in anger. He picks up a half brick and lobs it at the offending sister's leg. ' Mary.!" "WHAT? " Mary shouts back, looking around and down at the cellar door. "Mammy says you're to come in..."

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"Arragh. go away back in Lizzie, she did not! "

"She did!" Mary looks over to the wailing girl whose brother hasjust thrown the half-brick. Her skinny white leg has a bright red weeping wound. The injured girl insists on lifting up her leg and parading it under the eyes of each and every one of her friends, brothers and sister. They stare at it as though it is the most fascinating thing they have ever clapped eyes on, even though she still cries, her mouth agape. Mary gets up and drops the stone. She is careful to avoid the broken beer bottles that litter the road after the particularly raucous previous evening that kept them awake. She ventures down the cracked and crumbling steps and enters the cellar. One candle glares from a corner, which is enough only to illuminate the makeshift bed in which her mother lies, covered by fustian blankets Mary does not ask her Mother whether she has told Lizzie to call her in or not. She knows it is not nearly time to take the water or waste bucket to the public pump two streetsaway: there is plenty of time until their father's potatoes for dinner will need to be boiled. It is two days until pay-day, so there will be no bacon or any other type of meat to go with it, just a drop of grease,to be washed down with two mugs of black low jumps out from beside grade tea. Lucy the pig lies under the table, squealing as Lizzie her Mother and begins to pet her. She attempts to mount it in the hope of a ride around the room, but Lucy is not in an obliging mood, grunting and oinking to remove itself from the surprisingly firm grip of the child. "Stop acting the fool, Lizzie! " Mary says,more in the impatient, angry tone of her Father, than the weary drawn out tone of her Mother. "Make yourself useful and take the bucket out, " she adds,meaning the bucket for human waste, glad for the chance to sneak it into an order. Lizzie moans but takes the foul smelling bucket from underneaththe window. It is less a window but an old rotting does as square frame stuffed with old rags, oilskin and balls of old newspaper.Lizzie she is told. She carefully negotiatesthe steps in her bare feet, counting as shegoes. On

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more than one occasion she has slipped and ended up with the contents all down her, resulting in Mary having to hurriedly push her at arm-length to the pump to be soaked clean. Lizzie had continuously bawled; first at being covered in waste, and then being soaked in freezing water. She takes it round to the back of Cotton Street and tips the bucket's contents into the middens to join the waste of every other inhabitant of Cotton Street. Mary re-arranges the blankets and rags that cover her Mother's waxy white body and pats her arms, as if her Mother is the child. "It'll be hard in the mills you know Mary, " her Mother whispers. "It'll be alright, Ma, I'll be able to buy you and Lizzie green ribbons for your hair, " Mary says,suddenly brightening. "I'm too old for ribbons now...," her Mother trails off, waiting. "Who's too old for ribbons? Maybe we'll get Da one whilst we're at it. " They both giggle until Kathleen falls into a fit of coughing. Mary is well drilled. She calmly reachesfor the brown bottle of beer that stands beside her Mother's bed, waits for the coughing to stop and then patiently lifts the bottle to her Mother's lips and lets it trickle in a steady yet staggeredand manageablestream, watching her Mother's scrawny neck rise and fall with swallowing. The secondher mother's eyebrows are raised she removes it. The girls quieten as they hear their Father curse his way down the stairs, yet they know that he is sober. Sometimes they don't know which is easiest - him drunk or him sober. He enters and surveys the scenebefore him for a second before kicking off his clogs and barking at Mary to get his dinner. "Kathleen? " he calls. His wife respondswith a small voice. "Mary's coming into the mill tomorrow - scavenging job... " Mary stares into the fire above which the pot of water simmers, keeping the food warm. She knew to expect it but now that it is here she feels nervous.

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"You'll be up at five... come in with me," he says, when shehas handed him the bowl of food. He shovels in the first spoonful of potato. Mary sits on the floor underneath the window frame. She drinks the thin porridge from the one bowl that Lizzie had finished with moments before. "MARY'S A MILL GIRL! " Lizzie shouts, and dances on the spot in front of their mother's bed. "DON'T SHOUT! LITTLE WITCH! " Michael roars, and Lizzie, hurt, climbs in beside her Mother. She peepsher head over to look at Lucy the pig, curled up at the bottom of the bed, keeping Kathleen's feet warm. Mary tells herself that she'll do it for her mother, her younger sister. Herself. ***

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Images used Image I- red chair - Copyright2009 BS Webb Image 2- St. Thomas's Church, Ardwick Green, Copyright 2011 The Georgian Group, London Image 3- cabin - reproduced with permission - copyright Image 4- Cover of May Day issueof The Clarion, illustrated by Walter Crane, held at the Working-Class Movement Library, Salford Image 5- Hulme subways 1985 copyright Kelzo Icie 1985. Creative Commons copyright. Image 6- St. George's Church, Hulme, Manchester - copyright Image 7- Hulme Crescents - copyright 1985 Image 8- Whitworth art gallery, Manchester - copyright Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Image 9- At the Coal Face by George Moore, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester copyright Image 10 - Grosvenor Square plaque, All Saints - copyright 2009 BS Webb

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