Buttriss Jacquie - A Daughters Choice: A True Story of Hardship, Heartache and Hope

The pavement was hidden under a sparkling white blanket of snow as I stepped out of the front door of our house on Robinson Street for my long-awaited wedding day. Uncle John, who had reluctantly agreed to walk me down the aisle, sat in the back seat of the hired car, waiting for me. I took a deep breath and got in next to him. We sat in silence as we drove through the snow and the slush to St Albans Church, watching the glittering rooftops and trees go by.

I should be happy and smiling, I thought, but instead I was full of anxiety that things would not go to plan: would tension bubble up between our families? Would my older brother Bobby try to stop the wedding? Or even worse, would Joe find a way to ruin everything? At that moment, it seemed to me that the whole world was against us having the perfect day wed dreamed of.

Perhaps Id had too long to think. Maybe I wasnt ready. Conflicting thoughts raced around my brain. By the time we reached the entrance to the church, as I saw him standing there, stamping his feet in the snow, waiting for me with a wide grin on his face, I felt overwhelmed by doubts... I couldnt do it.

Drive away please, I said suddenly.

Are you sure, miss? the driver replied.

I need to get away.

Uncle John gave me a sideways look, but he didnt say a word just tutted and turned back, staring straight ahead.

As we reversed out of the drive I watched my fiancs smile drop, replaced with a look of baffled dismay, then shock. How could I do this to him? But wouldnt it be worse to subject him to a shattered dream? And it wasnt just about him. I knew he loved me completely, but what if I didnt love him enough? What if I lost my independence? I could see a future stretch ahead of me that I wasnt sure I wanted...

My husband Jim, for sixty-seven years of love and adventure.

My mother, who never confided or complained.

Raymond and Leslie, for their love.

Jacquie Buttriss, for her interest in writing this story.

Clare Hulton, my literary agent.

Ingrid Connell, Charlotte Wright and everyone at Macmillan.

Margaret Ford was born in Blackburn in 1926 and grew up there between the wars. She moved away after marrying in 1947 and today lives near Carnforth.

Born blue, the baby was slapped and swung round in the air by her ankles till she cried.

I was that baby. I started life loudly amidst the silenced mills of Blackburn following the General Strike of May 1926. I was born in our two-up, two-down terraced house in Goldhey Street, Little Harwood and was weaned on Oxo. These were hard times for working families in Blackburn, but, although we were cash-poor, both sets of grandparents made sure we always had enough to eat.

Our house was on top of a hill, about fifteen minutes walk from the centre of the city and not far from where my mothers parents lived. Grandad Harrison was a master builder and had his own building company, with a large yard near to their home. They lived in a detached house near Daisyfield Station, about two hundred yards from Goldhey Street.

Grandad had bought our house for my parents when they got married, so we occasionally stayed there, but most of the time we lived at the Tanners Arms in Dinckley, a village about six miles away from central Blackburn. The Tanners was a popular pub which was owned and run by my fathers parents, Grandma and Grandpa Holden, with the help of my father, Horace, and his brother, Uncle Eddie. They both worked full-time because Grandpa Holden also had another job as a mills inspector, touring all the local cotton mills to check they didnt break any laws. He was a stern man with dark, greying whiskers, a moustache and a bushy beard. He wouldnt tolerate any bad behaviour.

His wife, my grandma, was just as stern. I once heard one of their customers calling her a cantankerous woman. She always wore long, dark clothes and was fierce in her mission for cleanliness. She had a temper and I remember her snapping at my mother if she didnt do something the way she wanted it. She was often cross with her sons too. Uncle Eddie was never quick enough for her, and Father was too generous when he measured out the drinks. Everyone had to jump to, or thered be trouble.

Although all seven of us lived together on the first floor of the pub, it was a large building and I didnt spend much time with my Holden grandparents. I shared a room upstairs with my brother Bobby who was five years older than me. Downstairs was all to do with the pub. In the main room, there was a big open fireplace and a long bar with a wooden top that had to be polished every day. I think that was my fathers favourite place, drinking with his friends at the bar. Along the back was a row of wooden barrels with low taps on them.

One day, as a toddler, I was sitting on the stone slabs of the floor behind the bar and I turned on one of the taps. The brown liquid poured out all over me and I screamed because I couldnt stop it. I was sitting in a spreading pool of ale, crying my eyes out, when Uncle Eddie rushed across and turned the tap off, then roughly lifted me up and bundled me upstairs.

You must never do that again, he scolded as he handed me over to my mother. I didnt like Uncle Eddie much as he wasnt very kind or friendly. I dont think he liked me either. He ignored me most of the time.

The bar area led to two smaller rooms filled with curved-back chairs around tables, each with a heavy ashtray. There was also a kitchen on the ground floor. Most of the customers were local agricultural workers, passers-by or travellers during the week, but at weekends, high days and holidays people from Blackburn came in their droves to the countryside for a day out, especially in good weather.

The Tanners Arms was surrounded by acres of open fields and farmland. Veevers Farm, across the road, had land that stretched out in all directions with a long walk from the road to the large stone farmhouse. It was a wonderful place to grow up.

Grandpa Holden also used to keep animals, like pigeons and hens, on some ground outside. At the time I thought they were pets but we sometimes used to eat pigeon pie and I never thought to ask where the filling came from! I only realized one Sunday, when Grandad wrung a chickens neck so that we could cook and eat it for lunch. I had watched this chicken and her friends running carefree around their pen in our garden just an hour before. Now the hen squawked and screeched in her death throes. I was horrified, but none of the grown-ups comforted me. This was not a demonstrative family. Only Bobby put his arm round me, which cheered me up.

Apart from the chicken incident, I have only happy recollections of my early childhood, not then knowing or even sensing the frictional undercurrents that existed across my extended family.

My two earliest memories were of being with my gentle mother, Alice a pretty young woman with thick chestnut curls, a round face and a thin waist. The first was at our Goldhey Street house, where Mother was always more relaxed. Perhaps thats why we went there, away from the pub, just the two of us. I was sitting on her knee in her rocking chair in the living room, rocking to and fro in front of the coal fire in the hearth just as the klaxon was sounding for the mill workers to go home. I watched the flames leap in the fire and I remember the cosy, warm feeling I had, feeling safe in her company. The other was on a bright, sunny day when she took me half a mile down the lane from the Tanners to the river Ribble in my big pram.

When we reached her favourite spot, she lifted me out of the pram and held my hand as I toddled down to the waters edge and sat on the patch of sand that she called Little Blackpool. While she sat next to me and did her crocheting, I splashed about with my stubby fingers in the puddles on the sand. Slowly, a baby otter approached and dared to come out of the water, followed by his more timid siblings. I remember watching them as they played with each other, turning and tumbling on the sand around my legs as if they trusted me. I think the brave one let me touch him. Mother laughed with me at their antics. Ive loved otters ever since. Its just as well that I knew nothing then about the annual Boxing Day gathering of otter hounds and their masters, along that very stretch of the river. I was always happiest with my mother. Unlike Father and some of the other grown-ups, she was never raucous or unpredictable, angry or upset when it was just the two of us always calm and happy.