The Bedbugs of Halifax-The Green & Pleasant Land-Harry Leslie Smith

Hello:

Below is Chapter 15 from Harry Leslie Smith’s The Green And Pleasant Land.

Baring rapid worsening of my lung disease, a return of my cancer or homelessness I will have finished all the edits and piecing together of my dad's unfinished work by May. 35k words of the 80k word manuscript is now complete. It’s been a long haul because I have other projects that I must do to try to keep the lights on and to be quite honest am knackered. But who isn’t in these shit times that we live in? . But I am pleased I have voyaged this far with the manuscript.

Photo by Fleur on Unsplash

Chapter 15:

Through each hour, day and month of 1931, my mother clung to Bill Moxon the way a shipwreck survivor holds tight to the side of an overturned lifeboat. She tried her best to never let him out of her sight because Moxon was a man in employment, a rarity for Yorkshire during the worst of the Great Depression.

His job didn't pay much at the pig farm. But it was steady work, and because of it, fried bread, drippings, and potatoes- as well as an occasional roast, kept our bellies full.

Moxon was our meal ticket, and Mum was always fearful he'd bolt from her affection, leaving us worse off than we had been when our dad lived with us. Mum was paranoid because Moxon leaving her was always a real possibility. Moxon had no loyalty to her and certainly had none for Alberta, me or our little brother Mathew as we were his by default rather than by  blood.

Moxon wasn't a man of deep thought of loyalties, and after the first year as my mum's boyfriend, he grew tired of her and the responsibilities that came with it. He wanted out and found his exit by quitting his job as a pig man at the industrial farm on the outskirts of Bradford. He thought he'd be clear of her and us children. The one thing he didn't bargain on was my mother was a desperate woman. She wasn't going to let him slip away from her without a fight.

One Friday evening, Bill returned from the pub and announced he had quit his job. “There be no more shovelling pig shit and muck for me. I am moving to Sowerby Bridge. Some rich bloke built a sparkling new rendering plant there. And, he promises good wages for anyone willing to put in a hard day's labour slaughtering livestock.”

Moxon figured that considering he'd done his fair share of killing Germans in the Great War, he'd be all right butchering cows from sun up to sundown.

Bill told my mother he'd be leaving the next day. Half-heartedly, Moxon said- once he was sorted- he would send for her and us.

My mother was aware that Bill was no more likely to send word for us to join him in Sowerby Bridge than he was to purchase a pair of dentures; which he was in desperate need of as he had lost most of his teeth from decay and brawling.

Panic overcame my mother at this news. If Bill left, she had no means to feed and keep us housed in the doss.

Mum's only option was to travel to Sowerby Bridge and convince him through guilt and seduction that he was responsible for her and her children.

A few days after Bill left Bradford, my mother made preparations to find him in Sowerby Bridge. Alberta and I were taken out of school on the excuse there was a near and dear relation on death’s door. My brother Matt was deposited with our mum's sister Alice because he was far too young to assist in our nomadic search for Bill Moxon.

The three of us took a bus to Halifax where Mum let a room in a doss for me and my sister while she tracked down Bill in the neighbouring Sowerby Bridge.

There, Mum deposited us in a dilapidated and seedy doss house. We were left with two loaves of bread and some jam.

Mum said before leaving.

 “Don’t scarf it all at once; I might be gone a few days. Be good. Don’t get under anyone’s feet.”

In our room was one bed with a mouldy mattress that reeked strongly of the sweat of the many who had rested on it before my sister and me. After our mother had left to find Bill, my sister and I began to eat the bread with some jam slathered on top. In between, chewing, we talked about whether our mother would find Bill and convince him to be the head of our household again or whether we were for the workhouse.

By nightfall, my sister and I began to feel hungry. From our bedroom, we smelt a stew cooking on a stove in the nearby kitchen. We ventured out of the room and headed toward the direction of the aroma. We quickly found the kitchen and were pleased because no one was in it.

Alberta told me to return to the room and fetch what was left from our remaining loaf of bread. She said it would be a shame not to taste the stew cooking on the stove.

When I returned, my sister and I took turns soaking chunks of the bread into the pot of hot and succulent meat, potatoes, and veg simmering on the stove.

Sated, we went back to our cramped room with content stomachs. Tired- both of us slipped underneath the dirty blankets of the bed and gutted the candle on the table beside us. But once the light was doused, bed bugs began to devour us. The bugs sucked our blood with as much relish as we had shown when we stole another resident's meal in the kitchen. Itching and dejected, we spent the night squashing them with our bare fingers and then used our shoe against the ones we flicked with our fingers onto the floor.

The following morning, Mum returned to collect us and told us her hunt for Bill Moxon was successful. Mum described her encounter with Moxon as if it was a victory for her and us. But in truth, it was a complete surrender of her autonomy.

Mum begged and pleaded with Bill. She even swore subservience to him if he promised to protect her and her children.

Bill accepted my mother's terms of unconditional surrender. The conditions were harsh. If we wanted to eat, we had to follow without deviation Bill Moxon’s orbit. The trajectory my mother was placed on to break free of the gravitational pull of our poverty was about to become a rocket ride of violence against her from Bill.

Hi all:

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