Parallels

On our way to the butchers we would pass – well, for want of a better word, a one-up, one-down shack. and it was used, when I was a boy, as a saddlers, a harness makers shop.   My granny would sometimes look at it, and she would say, ‘that was poor old mother’s house.  That was where poor old mother died` or something like that.  And she would wipe away a genuine tear.   She was a very soft-hearted person.  She could laugh and cry at the same time.  And by and by I wormed out of her the story of this mother of hers.  Apparently there were two girls and a crippled boy, and the crippled boy made his living by being a shepherd. He looked after sheep.  Well, of course he did, and I don’t know why I bothered to tell you that.  He could do that because they supplied him with a donkey to ride on.  And then there were these two girls. And their father died rather young.  These girls were in their teens and of course there was no widow’s pension, there was no nothing, they had to get food and live as best they could.  The parish, I believe, supplied them with so many pounds of flour per person per week but to supplement this, the mother used to go to work, to work like a man, cutting corn with a sickle, doing all kinds of work on a farm which she could possibly do.  And she wore herself out, there’s no other explanation to it.  She died – I suppose she would be between 30 and 40, worn out.  And I remember my granny telling me that she and her sister sat and watched their mother die and they had nothing in the house to give her.  And I thought this was very sad but I suppose it was only one of many.   We talk of the good old days, but they weren’t so very good, were they?  They were pretty tough.  Those had it had the lot and those that had nothing had even less than nothing.