A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (10 page)

As she opened the spring door to the corner shop at the end of the street, Mr O'Reilly was edging his way between three customers being served at the counter by his wife. Thin, bald, garbed in a fairly clean white apron, he was sweeping the wooden floor of his grocery shop.

Martha stood shivering directly in the path of his broom, unsure how to approach him amongst so many chattering customers.

He stopped his broom in mid-sweep and stared at the small, black bundle of womanhood. Martha Connolly!

Trouble, he knew it. And she still owed him two shillings from last week. Play it carefully, he adjured himself.

The courts, with their tight knot of casual labourers and merchant seamen, were the main problem of his life. Yet, if, on the day the men got their Public Assistance or even a bit of a wage, he could squeeze out of them what they owed him, they were a very profitable part of his business.

For example, their wives bought single ounces of lard or margarine: a fourpenny pound of margarine, cut into sixteen one-ounce pieces at a penny a piece, or a sixpenny pot of jam, sold by tablespoonfuls at a penny a spoonful, represented a wonderful profit; it helped to cover inevitable bad debts. At the same time, this splitting up of jars, packets and bags for his clients' benefit, gave him an enviable reputation for kindly helpfulness.

‘Evening, Mrs Connolly,' he greeted her carefully, as he leaned on his broom.

Martha gulped. ‘Evenin', Mr O'Reilly,' she replied, as two of the customers picked up their baskets and turned to depart. They knew her, and, as they
edged past to get to the door, they greeted her quite cheerfully.

She smiled faintly at them, jealous that they had full shopping baskets. She did not even own a shopping basket, only a laundry one in which she carried her rags for sale in the market.

When they had gone and the third customer seemed safely involved with Mrs O'Reilly at the counter, she muttered, ‘Could I have a word with you, John?'

Resignedly, Mr O'Reilly turned and led her to the far end of the little counter, beside the bacon slicer.

‘I was wondering,' she began cautiously, as he leaned his broom against a pile of boxes of Sunlight soap stacked against the wall, and turned towards her. ‘I was wondering if you could let me have a loaf of bread and some bacon bits – on the slate, till tomorrow night?'

He looked down at her without expression. Then he said firmly, ‘You still owe us two bob from last week.'

‘I know, John – but I always do pay…' she whined.

‘Not always. I've had to write it off more than once.'

‘Come on. Not that often.'

‘Too often.'

She tried again patiently. ‘Including tomorrow – that's Friday – me hubby'll have four days' work this week. But he won't get paid till Saturday, of course. Meanwhile, on Friday night I'll get Brian's wages. I'll be able to pay for sure by Saturday night, at latest.'

‘Oh, aye, if Patrick don't spend it all down at the Baltic.' As a Wesleyan – a Protestant – he was a firm teetotaller. He felt for his broom, as if to start sweeping again.

At his remark about Patrick, Martha looked deeply hurt. ‘John O'Reilly, that's not fair. He don't drink that much. He's got a heavy, sweaty job and he needs to drink lots, and you know it.'

She was trembling now, with weakness from lack of food. She thought, If I can't get a loaf of bread out of him, I'm buggered. Despair filled her.

As the faintness which had threatened all day finally overcame her, she began to reel. She clutched the counter, and then slipped to the floor.

Shaken, Mr O'Reilly called to his wife, ‘Oh, my goodness! Mam!' as he bent over his would-be customer.

‘Dear me!' exclaimed the lady, as she looked up from folding a small blue bag of sugar for the
customer she was tending. ‘That'll be fourpence,' she told the man.

He laid down the pennies and picked up his sugar, as she ran around the other side of the counter, lifted part of it and carefully stepped through the opening, past the boxes of soap.

She knelt down by Martha, and laid her hand on her forehead. It was icy. No influenza to infect her, thank goodness. Must be a faint.

As the customer opened the shop door to depart, he stared at the two women. He shrugged and said good night to no one in particular. Women were always fainting.

Mr O'Reilly glanced up as the door slammed. He hoped the unknown man had not shoplifted anything in the few seconds during which both his and his wife's attention had been diverted. You really couldn't be too careful.

In an effort to waken her, Mrs O'Reilly patted Martha's cheeks, but an exhausted Martha was well out. The shopkeeper bent over and felt her hands. They also were ice-cold.

Mrs O'Reilly looked at her husband.

‘I think it's the cold,' she said doubtfully. ‘We'd better get her by the fire.'

‘She's almost certain to be lousy,' Mr O'Reilly warned her.

The last thing Mrs O'Reilly wanted was lice or bugs in her furniture. But she knew Martha, and she had used her children to run messages for her. Anyway, the woman had to be revived somehow. She could not lie on the shop floor as other customers came and went – her own reputation as a very understanding person would be irrevocably lowered.

She stood up. ‘We'll put her on a wooden chair,' she said. ‘Ted's doing his homework on the table. Ask him to come and mind the shop while we move her inside.'

So twelve-year-old Ted was shouted for, and came reluctantly out of the back room. He was surprised to see Tommy Connolly's mam lying on the floor, and he asked, ‘What's up?'

‘She's fainted from the cold,' his mother replied. ‘We'll put her by the fire for a bit, and I'll make her a cup of tea. You mind the shop.'

He opened the swinging lid of a biscuit box and nonchalantly helped himself to a digestive. ‘OK,' he agreed and wandered down behind the counter.

Martha slowly returned from a deep blackness to find herself in a very strange place. She was in a wooden rocking chair and in front of her glowed what looked like a big fire. She was bathed in its blissful warmth. She closed her eyes again.

Something cold was pressed to her forehead and trickles of water ran down her face and neck.

She blinked and turned her face away from the cold. The fire was still there and, strangely, a big black kettle which certainly did not belong to her was steaming on it.

A relieved voice said, ‘Ah, she's coming round now.'

Annie O'Reilly? Memory suddenly flooded back to her. She tried to sit up straight.

‘Now, hold still, love,' urged the voice. ‘Give yourself time. John's making you a cuppa tea.'

She thankfully relaxed. She was so very tired and the room was so blessedly warm. And what a room! She smiled slightly at the idea of an invisible Annie standing behind her, wet teacloth in hand, as she herself looked at the good brass clock on the mantelpiece and the equally well-polished brass fire irons in the whitened hearth, not to speak of the worn green velvet chair on the other side of the hearth. It was a room beautiful enough to dream about.

She must, she realised, be in the O'Reillys' living room, which she knew lay behind the windowed door at the back of the counter. The window was always discreetly lace-curtained so that people in the shop could not see into the living room, but
the O'Reillys could see if anyone had entered the shop.

Suddenly she wanted to cry. Two big tears slid slowly down her face to join the cold water already there.

John O'Reilly slipped between her and the hearth. He had a big brown teapot in one hand which he filled from the boiling kettle.

‘There now,' he said, and she heard the plunking sound of his putting the teapot down somewhere behind her.

The wet cloth was removed from her forehead, and Annie said in an anxious hiss, ‘John, take this out and throw it in the yard – lice.'

The humiliation of the remark made Martha's tears run a little faster. Who didn't have lice? No matter how much you used Mary Margaret's lice comb, the wretched insects were there again in a day or two. And who could afford to waste paraffin by rubbing it in your hair, to really kill them?

Annie O'Reilly came into focus. She held a mug of tea in one hand and a couple of biscuits in the other. Martha looked at her through tear-filled eyes.

‘There, there, Mrs Connolly. Don't take on so. You just fainted, that's all. You'll be all right in a minute. Now, have a sip of tea. I'll hold the cup for
you.' Careful not to touch her guest's shawl, Annie O'Reilly tipped the mug gently against Martha's lips.

Martha dutifully sipped.

It was marvellous tea. Strong, with plenty of milk and lots of sugar. She tried to steady the mug herself, as she drank eagerly. When it was emptied, she said, ‘Thank you, Annie. It were lovely.'

Annie's shrewd little blue eyes weighed up her patient, and she said with real kindness, ‘Take these bickies, while I pour you another.'

While Martha smiled slightly and then stuffed both biscuits into her mouth, her hostess went to get the promised second cup of tea.

Martha leaned back in the chair. Her own unadmitted hunger welled up in a tremendous pain inside her. For the moment, it outweighed her fear at having nothing for Patrick's or Brian's breakfast, and her awful apprehension that little Number Nine could die very easily if he did not have, at least, some more milk. He and the other children must be fed somehow, even if she had to steal from the very people who were being so good to her.

When Mrs O'Reilly returned with another cup of tea and a plate holding two big slabs of stale bread and margarine, Martha felt very guilty at her sinful thought of theft.

Annie O'Reilly said to Martha, almost apologetically, ‘I thought you ought to eat something solid before you face the cold again.'

Martha looked at the offering on the plate. Her first instinct was to say with pride that she really did not need it.

But I do, I do, she cried inwardly. I can't bear it any more – and, somehow, Annie has sensed it.

Humbly she mumbled thanks and took the plate from her.

Annie watched, fascinated, as Martha broke the slices of bread and crammed them into her mouth with both hands. The woman must be starving.

As, with her toothless gums, she ground up the last piece, Martha said apologetically, ‘Ta ever so. I was fair clemmed. It's been a long day.'

Annie smiled slightly. Hunger and cold at the same time was something she remembered suffering in her own childhood, after her father had been called up for the Great War: it had been a while before her mother could find a job with a living wage. But she had never been physically filthy as the women in Court No. 5 were, and her pity for her unwelcome guest was tempered by her disgust at the sheer smell of her – at present, her nice clean living room had the strong odour of humanity, which her shop sometimes had on a
busy day. She could endure that stench outside the lace-curtained door, but not in her home.

‘How are you feeling now?' she asked Martha.

Martha did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Despite her best efforts, the tears began to run down her face once more. She had not been so beautifully warm for months, and the pain in her stomach had been assuaged; yet she still had no breakfast or lunch for Patrick and the children.

She sniffed and swallowed hard. ‘I'm feeling steady now, Annie. You've been so kind.' She stood up and immediately felt woozy again.

She grinned at Annie. ‘Oh!' she exclaimed. ‘I'm wobbly – feel as if I've had too much to drink!'

What am I going to do? she wondered desperately. I can't ask these people to let me have bread on tick, after they've been so good. Maybe, if I walked round to see Maria, she'd give me a loaf.

Not likely, she decided. I told her weeks ago in my stupid temper to go to blazes. Tonight, she'll be all packed up ready to move to Norris Green first thing tomorrow morning. I should have gone to see her about her eviction and made it up with her, and now it's really too late. And, Jaysus, I'm so tired.

She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. Sisters were a quarrelsome lot at best.

Annie made a determined effort to be hospitable once more. ‘Sit down again and rest for a few minutes. There's no hurry; we're not that busy in the shop. And I'll get our Ted to walk you back home.'

Martha sat down rather quickly, because she had no option. For the moment, she realised, she could not walk home.

Ted, who had been relieved from his shop duties by the return of his father to the counter, was again struggling with his geography homework. He was partly trying to remember the tributaries of the Mersey River and partly listening to the two women.

When his mother committed him to escort duty, he muttered ‘Blast!' and chewed his pen savagely. The last thing he wanted to do was to walk a dark and, to him, rather threatening street with a woman from the courts. Though he knew Martha's Tommy, he did not play with him – Tommy was a Catholic.

Both the O'Reillys had been born in the district. His parents' attitude, however, was that they were socially far above court people, except when dealing with them as customers. This petty snobbery had rubbed off onto their only child, making him, occasionally, even more vulnerable to attack by
the Roman Catholic urchins round him. He was scholarship material, his father would tell him; they hoped he would win one to a grammar school and do really well for himself; his teacher said he could. Perhaps he could hope to be a teacher himself, one day.

So Ted was sometimes a little hard-pressed to find enough boys to put together a game of footer or cricket in the side street onto which the living-room window looked, and he was prone to being bullied.

‘You don't have to bother Ted, Annie. I'll be all right in a few minutes.'

‘Are you sure?'

Martha fought back her tears. ‘Oh, aye,' she said.