Читать книгу Yes, Mama - Helen Forrester - Страница 8

Mrs Polly Ford was a widow, aged twenty-three. Six weeks before the Queen’s visit, her husband, a docker, had fallen into the hold of a ship and had died, almost immediately, of his multiple injuries. Two nights later, in her parents’ crowded cellar dwelling, his frantic widow had given birth to her first child.

Born on to a pile of rags in a windowless, waterless, heatless home, without even a clean sheet to be wrapped in, the baby boy had decided, three weeks later, that life was not worth living and had quit it. Polly wished passionately that she had been allowed to follow him. She was, however, a strong, healthy woman and, despite her despair, her milk surged in her.

Weeping helplessly, she had sat by a tiny fire lovingly built for her by her father, James Tyson. He had walked down to Seaforth sands to search for driftwood, in order to provide a little heat for her.

‘We didn’t know the babe was goin’ to come so quick – or be born here – and we run out of coal and money,’ he told her almost apologetically, his bearded face turned up towards her, as he knelt to feed the flames with chips from an old railway sleeper which he had found on the shore.

‘I know, Dad,’ she told him gently between her sobs. ‘You shouldn’t’ve took the wood from the sands – you could’ve been arrested for it.’

‘Och, I know that. Devil take the bleeders!’ He got up off his knees and stood leaning against the rough, brick chimney, the firelight catching the golden hairs of his beard and eyebrows. ‘What you goin’ to do now, duck?’

Her mother, Bridie Tyson, had been sitting beside Polly on the backless bench. Wrapped inside her shawl, to keep him warm in the foetid cellar of the court house, lay Billy, Polly’s baby brother. His wide brown eyes glittered, as he peeked out of the enveloping shawl to watch the dancing flames of the fire. Now his mother sighed, and asked, ‘Aye, what to do?’

‘She can stay with us,’ responded her husband immediately.

‘Aye, Dad, you’ve got enough trouble without me,’ Polly told him.

She looked helplessly round the tiny room, dimly lit from the open door leading to the steps up to the court itself. Down those steps, on wet days, trickled sewage from two overflowing earth lavatories which served the fourteen houses surrounding the court, to add to the overwhelming misery of the ten people living in her parents’ windowless room below ground level. But her father was a casual labourer on the docks, and this, though he was as good a man as ever heard a Wesleyan sermon, was the best he could provide for his family from his irregular earnings. Also living with him was his widowed sister-in-law and her five children.

Polly’s aunt had been sitting, almost unnoticed, on a three-legged stool tucked up by the fireplace. Under her black shawl, her stomach was swollen with pregnancy. She cackled suddenly, ‘Youse wet with milk. You could mebbe wet-nurse.’

Polly’s breasts ached with milk. She had let her little brother, Billy, suckle from her to ease the pain, but still the milk pressed within and damped her calico dress.

‘Some fine lady’d pay good for that – and you’d be well fed to keep it up,’ her aunt went on.

‘Aye, you’d live the life o’ Riley,’ her mother agreed eagerly.

James Tyson looked down at his womenfolk and shrugged. This was woman talk, and, anyway, it was time to go down to the dock gate again, to stand in the rain and hope to be picked out for half a day’s work. He patted Polly on the shoulder as he passed, and left them to it.

Through a grapevine of female cousins and aunts, inquiries went out to ask anyone in service whether their mistresses were expecting.

From Fanny, the little skivvy in the Woodmans’ house, came the information via her aunt, that the Missus was expecting any day and was proper mad at it. In Fanny’s considered opinion and judging from the gossip in the kitchen, she would be glad enough to be relieved of feeding the expected child and of looking after it; its nearest brother, Master Charles, was ten years old and had gone away to boarding school. His nurse had long since been let go.

On her Sunday afternoon off, Fanny visited her aunt in her tiny house in Shaw’s Alley and confided to her that a real blow-up about the child was expected daily, between her Master and Mistress. ‘It int his kid,’ Fanny told her. ‘And he’s got a temper like you’d nevaire believe. Always pickin’ on her, he is – and yet he can’t talk – he took up with a woman as keeps a tobacco and sweets, back o’ Water Street, downtown.’

Fanny bent to wring out a rag in a pail of cold water and reapplied it to one of her aunt’s eyes, which her husband had blackened the previous night. Her aunt was hardly listening to her niece; she was wondering dully if, after last night, she would be in the family way again, and she sighed at the very thought of it. It would be the fifteenth and, out of the whole bloody issue, only three of them full grown.

Wearily, she tried to give her attention to what Fanny was saying, and replied, with pity, ‘Well, you talk to Rosie and Mrs Tibbs about Polly Ford. The poor gel is broken-’earted and ’er Mam is near out of ’er wits over it.’