Mrs Drayton lived at Number Thirteen in a row of small houses on Travis Brow. The houses, blackened by smoke and coal dust, sloped down to a viaduct which, at night, arched high above the roofs, made the street seem a dark and lonely place. Water dripped down its walls, and if you stood beneath the arches and shouted loudly there would come back a hollow and mournful echo. Across the viaduct went the trains on their way to the country and beyond it spread the grey, hilly town, noisy with trams. Facing Mrs Drayton's house was a brick wall as high as the wall of a prison. Behind it, in the Goods Station, coal wagons rattled and clanged and shunted, and stationary waggon and stationary engines sent over, into Travis Brow, fussy black clouds of smoke.

Outside Mrs Drayton's front door were two paving stones scoured with 'donkey soap' to a bright yellow colour. To neglect scrubbing the street flags was considered by Mrs Drayton, and all hard working northern women to be no less an sin than not scrubbing the floor of the back kitchen. For the neighbours and passers-by it was the outward sign of thrift and respectability within the house. No matter what smoke and dust came over the wall from the Goods Yard it was never allowed to settle for long on Mrs Drayton's patch of flags. Her windows, too, were kept shining and clean. We never forgot the afternoon when, from the top of a tram, we saw Mrs Drayton sitting outside on the bedroom window sill, hanging perilously over the street with a duster in her hand and the window shut down tight across her knees.

We always thought of Tuesdays and Fridays, when Mrs Drayton came to wash and clean, as the most interesting day of the week, for she had strange things to tell of Travis Brow. There inside the dark little houses, husbands beat their wives and children were often hungry. Sometimes our Amy - Mrs Drayton's married daughter - was beaten too. Then Mrs Drayton would have to spend the money she had saved to give the Club and Burial man and buy food for her grandchildren, George, Alice and Annie. Sometimes our Willy had lost his work again. Willy was a coalman and a 'daftie'. People laughed at him in the street and we were afraid of him because of his red-rimmed eyes. There were many times when he stayed all evening at the 'drink house' near the viaduct and then Mrs Drayton would sit in my mother's rocking chair and weep into her apron, for she was very fond of our Willy.

But there were days, too, when Willy was 'quiet' and nobody had been beaten in Travis Brow. Then Mrs Drayton was cheerful and would talk about her new teeth and the huge brown tea-pot with two spouts which she kept in a dresser in her front kitchen. The possession of such a tea-pot had, long ago, set Mrs Drayton aside as a very special person. As far as we knew there was no one else in the whole of England who could pout out two cups of tea at the same time from one tea-pot.. And sometimes she would tell us about her holiday in 'Wakes week' when, for one day she would catch the train which ran across the viaduct at the bottom of Travis Brow and, with a bag of sandwiches and little Alice, and sit in the Mellor fields far out in the countryside. All these things Mrs Drayton told us as she scrubbed the floors and cleaned the brasses - the letter box, the candlesticks, the brass monkey, the draught stopper, the fender and the fire-irons - or as she sat at dinner before a steaming, earthenware bowl of hot-pot.

At nine o'clock on holiday mornings we would be out in the garden to meet her. Leading to our back gate was a narrow alley way which, in the summer, was made into a shady, secret tunnel by overhanging lilac and laburnum bushes. Down this tunnel, every Tuesday and Friday, walked Mrs Drayton carrying a red carpet bag  and wearing   an old  velour  hat given to her by my  

mother. At the bottom of the bag were a heap of 'donkey stones', a pair of clogs, an apron made of sacking and a latch key. Now and again my mother would pack a bundle of old scraps which Mrs Drayton exchange 'donkey stones' with the rag and bone man.

When she arrived in the kitchen the kettle would always be on the boil. There would be a plate of ham sandwiches and a fancy cake. And while Mrs Drayton drank several cups of dark, sweet tea we would ask after Willy and Amy and her drunken husband. "Now, don't let them put upon you..." my mother would say. The gentle concern in her voice would bring tears to Mrs Drayton's mild eyes and she would sit longer than usual in the rocking chair by the back door, looking straight out beyond the bolsom flowers which grew to a great height above the fence. On these days we went away into the garden. It was hard not to cry when Mrs Drayton was crying. My sister would say, reassuringly: "I expect mother well give her a pot of jam to take home, do you?"

Before starting her work Mrs Drayton would step out of a blue serge skirt, loop up a striped petticoat round her waist, in bustle fashion, then safety-pin, over another petticoat, the apron from the carpet bag. If it was washing-day she put on her clogs and pushed her grey, limp hair under a frilled cap made of white calico. Then she clattered down the stone steps into the cellar where we would hear her coaxing and blowing up the boiler fire and rolling the tubs round the old iron mangle. There was a time when we liked to sit on the wide stone slab under the cellar window and listen to feet moving in the drawing room above. We liked the curious sensation of being in a hole below the level of the lawn and seeing nothing but the bootsof the baker and the postman as they walked to the front door. We liked to watch the skirts and blouses come out of the boiler at the end of a long stick looking forlorn, like wet scarecrows. And sometimes Mrs Drayton would chase us through the water with a yard brush when she was swilling at the end of the afternoon.

Then one night, in the spring, Jacob our parrot, died. When we came down to breakfast there was a cloth over his cage. At dinner time the cage was gone and my mother would not let us go into the cellar. Later we saw Mrs Drayton carrying a paper parcel down the steps and we knew that Jacob was going to be burned on the boiler fire. I remember that we hid all afternoon in the laburnum tunnel and my sister put her fingers in her ears. We asked each other, why could not Jacob be buried in the garden, like the cats and birds and the dog, Paddy? Was it because Mrs Drayton lived in a dark, poor place like Travis Brow that there seemed nothing sad or dreadful to her about putting Jacob into the boiler fire? For a long time after that we did not like going into the cellar on washing-day.

At five o'clock Mrs Drayton would have a boiled egg for her tea. My mother would stick a stamp on her insurance card and if there was anything to sign Mrs Drayton would make a large X instead of writing her name. (When she was very young she had left the Board School and gone to work in the mill before she learned to read and write) She would then put into her carpet bag her apron and clogs, two or three pots of home-made jam - one of them for our Amy's little children - and, on summer Tuesdays and Fridays, a bunch of carefully selected sweet-peas. We would go with her through the narrow green tunnel as far as the trams on the main road. "Have I got my coppers and my latch key?" Mrs Drayton would say, as we waited for the tram to Travis Brow. Then she would go off on the long ride home in good time to boil up the kettle and cook a 'bit of something' before our Willy came in to his tea.