Читать книгу A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin - Helen Forrester - Страница 16

January 1938

When Patrick came home, it was late evening. He was wet and exhausted. All day long, he had worked, through rain and sleet, wheeling trolleys of sacks of wool from dockside to warehouse and stacking them neatly into ever higher piles, as a biting wind blew remorselessly up the river. He had then walked back through ill-lit, almost deserted streets where thin rain still whirled in the wind.

Although he had bought himself a quick lunch at a tiny café during a brief break, he was very hungry: the thick cheese sandwich, made from white bread, had been decently large and the mug of tea welcome; nevertheless, it had cost him his last twopence. He hoped that Martha would have something better waiting for him.

She had, of course, put aside Patrick’s share of soup, potatoes and bread. Like most other women, it was the fundamental tenet of her life that he was the wage earner and had to be fed first; the fact that she also earned rarely occurred to her.

Nearly half the ewer of thick soup lay warming in the hearth in front of the fire; and a quarter of a loaf of bread, together with two big potatoes, had been rewrapped in one of her cleaner rags and placed in the oven, where she could watch that the children did not attempt to steal it. She longed to have some soup herself; but she refrained for fear that the food she had kept for Patrick was not enough for a labouring man.

The only light in the room was from the embers in the range and it was comparatively quiet.

Bridie had had her face wiped and a clean cotton frock found for her. Still complaining that the garment was too small for her, she and her sister Kathleen had gone upstairs to be reunited with a Dollie now in a much better temper and full of bread and jam given her by a wise and sympathetic Auntie Ellen.

They were going to play cards, by the light of a candle, and had been warned by Martha that they must do it quietly because ‘Your Auntie Mary Margaret is resting.’ She was glad to be rid of them for a while; it made more space in the room for her husband.

Joseph, Ellie and Number Nine slumbered on the mattress at her feet.

Tommy had gone to visit one of his pals in the court house nearest the street entrance. Brian worked late on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Martha’s eyes drooped and she, also, had nodded off to sleep.

As the door opened to admit Patrick, she awoke with a start. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim red glow of the fire. Then, with a mere nod towards his wife, a vague shadow in the gloom, he picked his way past the mattress on the floor, and sat down with a thud on the old wooden fruit box opposite her to heave off his donated boots. He rubbed his freezing toes in front of the dying embers of the fire, and then looked ruefully at a blister on his heel.

Martha stood up and stretched herself. She gestured to the vacated chair, and said, ‘Come and sit here – it’s comfier, and give me your mac; I’ll hang it on the line over the fire – it’ll be dry by morning.’

Still silent, he stood up in his bare feet and padded across the mattress on the floor towards the chair, being careful not to tread on his sleeping children. He took off his mac and handed it to her. His jacket underneath was also damp, so he divested himself of it and silently passed it to her. Then he sat slowly down on the chair and leaned his head back. He longed for a pint of ale.

After hanging up his clothes and loosening the laces in his boots, so that the heat got to their interior, Martha briskly moved the hob with the kettle on it over the fire. It began to sing almost immediately.

She opened the oven door and first took out a large empty white pudding basin put there to warm. She silently handed it to Patrick to hold. Then she lifted the tin ewer out of the hearth.

‘Hold the basin steady,’ she instructed, and when he had it firmly on his knee, she slowly slopped the soup into it. Finally, she turned the jug upside down and shook out a few recalcitrant bits of carrot. She straightened up, smiled, and said, ‘There you are.’

She fetched another box from the other side of the room and placed it beside Patrick. Then she unlatched the oven door, took out the bundle of bread and potatoes and laid it on the box.

From the mantel shelf, she took down a ladle, which she had earlier used to measure out soup for the children, and handed it to him. It had not been washed, but he took it from her without comment. He opened up the bundle, broke some of the bread into the soup, and began to slurp the food into his mouth.

Though he knew he had had to leave her without money that morning, he did not ask where the soup had come from: Martha always found food somehow. She sold her rags in the market, didn’t she? Tommy brought in pennies and, occasionally, a silver threepenny piece, which he earned, according to him, from holding the bridles of carthorses while the drivers went into a pub for a quick pee and a drink. Brian gave her his five-shilling wage each week, and Lizzie, his girl in service, sometimes sent her mother a one-shilling postal order from her tiny wages. And, when he himself earned, he always gave her enough for the rent and a bit over for coal and candles, didn’t he?

As food and warmth began to put life into him again, he admitted idly to himself that he drank too much and it took money – but she herself could get through several half-pints while sitting in the passageway of the Coburg with the other women, while he drank in the bar with his friends. The brightly lit pub was the only warm refuge they had, the only consolation which kept him going from day to day, week to week.

He grinned. Most of the children had been conceived in the narrow, fairly sheltered alleyway behind the pub, while they were a little drunk and still sufficiently warm to enjoy the encounter.

While he ate, Martha poked the fire, and then made a fresh pot of tea, courtesy of Mary Margaret, who had given her a couple of spoonfuls of tea leaves in thanks for bringing her the soup and bread. She laid two mugs on the floor beside the range, where they could be visible in the firelight. She then sat down close to Patrick on yet another sturdy fruit box, used for storing coal.

Inside the box were a few lumps of coal, which Mary Margaret had also given her. Since Mary Margaret’s room did not have a fireplace, she cooked what little she had to cook on a primus stove. When she did not have paraffin for her stove, she would put a stew pot beside Martha’s on Martha’s fire.

Mary Margaret’s Dollie thought it was a great game to follow a coal cart round the local streets and pick up any lumps that the coalman dropped. When he lifted the one-hundredweight sacks from his cart and carried them across the pavement to pour the contents down the coalhole in front of each terraced house, she would listen for the clang of the lid being put back onto the hole, and for the weary man to shuffle away. Then she would race over and pounce on any small bits she could find. Sometimes, when the horse moved with a jerk to the next house, a few pieces would roll off the back of the cart. Quick as a cat after a mouse, she would garner these, too, before any other child could beat her to it. She would bring it all back to her mother in an old cloth bag.

Her mother promptly gave the coal to Martha in thanks for being allowed to share her fire. She would tell Dollie, ‘Without your Auntie Martha, I don’t know what I’d do, I don’t.’

As Patrick finished the last ladleful, he gave a small sigh of relief, and handed the bowl back to his wife. She put it with the ladle on the mantel shelf: if it had stopped raining by tomorrow, she would take out anything to be washed to the pump in the court and rinse it there.

She picked up a potato from the box top and, with a little smile, handed it to him. He tore it into pieces and ate all of it, including the skin.

After he had finished eating, he belched and then sat for a while staring silently at the glowing embers.

When Martha felt he was rested enough, she broached the subject which was worrying her most. She asked, ‘Did you know that Court No. 2 is to be emptied? That means that our Maria and George has got to move.’

Patrick belched again, and then said, ‘Oh, aye. George told me. They’re getting a new house in Norris Green.’

‘What’s he going to do out there?’

Patrick gave a grim laugh. ‘Go on Public Assistance. He’ll have to sling his hook.’

Martha nodded. George would, indeed, have to hang up his docker’s hook for ever, if he was to live so many miles away in a suburb with no places to work and no transport. Even if there were a bus to take him down to the docks, how could he afford bus fares on a docker’s wage? It was ridiculous.

‘Can’t they find a Corpy flat nearer here for them?’

‘Na, Corporation flats is all filled up. All the court houses is being cleared, as you well know.’

He stirred uneasily. ‘I heard some more today, though. They’re going to build air-raid shelters outside in the street all along here, right across the pavement from the front entry.’

‘Holy Mary! What for?’

‘They reckon there’s going to be a war. And what’s more, they’re going to pull down the wall of our court, so we’re open to the street.’

‘Humph, and where are they going to put the rubbish bins? They’re fixed in the wall.’

‘Don’t ask me. Maybe the council will give us a bin or two. They must reckon that if there’s no wall, we can run into the shelter real quick.’

It did not strike either of them that the Public Health Department had viewed the statistics of the recent influenza epidemic with anxiety. Unable to bulldoze the remaining unhealthy courts until more City housing was built, they were using a cheap remedy, the removal of the enclosing wall, to get some cleaner air to circulate in the crowded court.

Martha gave a little laugh of relief as her fear of being moved receded. ‘They must be expecting that this court won’t be moved for a while, if they’re building us a shelter.’ She chuckled. ‘We’d have a right job all of us getting through the entry at the same time, that’s for sure – Alice Flynn upstairs is that fat she has to edge through it sideways already. Why aren’t they moving us to Norris Green?’

‘Dunno. I suppose they haven’t built the houses yet.’

‘It’s real funny that they’ve found a way to make room for an air-raid shelter, but they can’t build new houses for us right here.’

‘Maybe they’ve stopped building houses everywhere and are doing air-raid shelters instead?’ suggested Patrick.

Martha leaned forward to put her empty mug on top of the oven. ‘Is there really going to be a war, Pat?’

‘Oh, aye. I believe so.’

‘But Thomas said as Mr Chamberlain was talking with Adolf Hitler, and thought Germany was being reasonable.’

Patrick shrugged, and then said shrewdly, ‘Na. All he’s doing is get us a bit of time to build tanks and guns. He’ll sell the Czechs down the river to do it, you’ll see.’

‘Will you have to go for a soldier, Pat?’

Pat laughed. ‘Me? Na, I’m too old.’

‘Well, praise all the saints for that. And our Brian is too young?’

‘Oh, aye.’ He glanced round the dark room. ‘Where is the lad?’

‘He’s working late – it’s Thursday. And Tommy’s gone down to see his pal. They’ll be back just now.’

Their father heaved himself up from the chair. ‘Well, I’m going to turn in. I’ll be working tomorrow.’

He knelt down and moved little Joseph further across the mattress. He winced as he laid himself down, turned on his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in seconds.

Martha sighed, got up, took an old coat from a hook on the front door and laid it over him. She then rearranged Number Nine’s blanket to cover his sister Ellie as well. She would not lie down herself until she had decided what to do about breakfast – she would have to go out again into the cold, that was for sure.

She stood uncertainly, her toothless mouth tightly clenched as she looked down on the sleeping children and her snoring husband. She had not a crumb left to give them for breakfast, and, as she had sat patiently waiting for Patrick, this fact had been gnawing at her, almost outweighing her fear of being whisked off to Norris Green.

After the children’s fighting that afternoon she had not wanted to leave home until Patrick returned. She reckoned that Mary Margaret alone could not reasonably be expected to watch them all tonight; she really was not well, and this knowledge added to the painful ache of Martha’s own hunger and to her other worries – Kathleen, for example. She’d have to give the girl a good talking to: she must be taught to take care of the kids better.

She turned, and quietly padded up the stairs and through Sheila and Phoebe’s room to reach Mary Margaret.

Her friend was asleep on her narrow camp bed in the far corner, her head pillowed on a roll of rags, her shawl wrapped tightly round her.

By the light of a candle, the girls were playing very quietly close to the entrance to Sheila and Phoebe’s empty room. Martha hissed at her daughters to come down and settle for the night.

In chorus, they hissed back that they weren’t making any trouble and why couldn’t they play longer.

‘Because your dad’s home, and he wants you downstairs and sleeping – now! Meself, I got to go down to the corner shop for a few minutes. You come on right now – or do I have to get your father to you?’

At this awful threat to tell Mr Connolly, Dollie Flanagan picked up the grubby cards and shuffled them neatly together. If Mr Connolly was home, probably her father soon would be from the pub. He could deliver a slap a good deal harder than the one Mrs Connolly had given her – and suppose Mrs C told her father about her behaviour that afternoon?

‘You’d better get going,’ she told her guests with a sigh, and got up off the floor.

With Martha’s brood safely wrapped in bits of blanket, they were each allotted in irritable whispers a piece of floor on which to sleep.

Finally, Martha warned, ‘Now, our Kathleen, you’re in charge, remember? Brian and Tommy will be in just now.’

‘Oh, Mam!’ protested Kathleen, as she reluctantly spread herself as close to the fireplace as she could get without her mother noticing that she was hogging most of the heat.

‘Shut up and go to sleep. You’re the eldest. And mind you don’t wake your father.’

Martha picked up her shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it tightly round her. When she opened the outer door, she flinched at the cold. Her long walk up to the Lee Jones had tired her, but desperation drove her out again.

She quickly shut the door behind her and looked up at the tiny patch of sky visible between the enclosing court housetops. It had stopped sleeting, and, far above her between dark shadows of cloud, she glimpsed a single star.

Despite her despair, she thought, ‘Perhaps it’s my lucky star. At least They won’t turn us out come tomorrow.’