A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (20 page)

Theresa would never forget walking down to the shipping office to collect Mary Margaret's first
allotment payment during the previous winter. As the widow of a sail maker, she had had no direct experience of shipping offices or the kind of officialdom she might face: she feared she might not receive the allotment if, at any point, she made a mistake.

Found wandering in a huge Edwardian office building, she had been directed to a mahogany counter over which she could just peep. She had explained to a clerk on the other side of the counter that her name was Theresa Gallagher and she had come to collect her daughter's allotment. ‘Mrs Flanagan, that is.'

The clerk checked a list. In an accusing voice, he queried her name.

She was scared as he leaned over the counter to see her properly, but she faced him without flinching; she was inured to being treated like muck.

‘Me son-in-law arranged for me to collect it for her because she's proper sick with TB.'

‘I have no record of it. What is her husband's first name?'

‘Thomas.'

‘Mrs Flanagan must come herself.'

‘I tell you, she's sick.'

‘Many people with tuberculosis are quite mobile.'

Theresa stared at him stonily. ‘Mary Margaret can't barely walk.'

She made no movement to slink away. Instead, she suggested, ‘Ask your boss.'

Pinch-mouthed, the irate clerk went in search of his manager, while the queue behind Theresa became restive. They muttered as the delay lengthened, and shuffled their boots on the wooden floor. The muttering slowly became loud remarks on the inhumanity of shipping agents. Other clerks, though safely defended by the high mahogany counter, became short-tempered, as they dealt with other queues of black-shawled women, some of whom could neither read nor write: they signed with a cross, witnessed by the clerk, for the cash handed to them.

Theresa steadied herself by clinging to the counter, so that the clerks on the other side were faced with two rheumy blue eyes, a greasy, yellowy-white tumble of hair over a dark forehead and ten dirty claws.

When she glanced hastily back at the increasing queue, the woman behind her saw a dark visage which had never had more than a cursory wipe since she was born, a figure thin and frail, a tattered black shawl drooping over a tiny body. Her only sign of cleanliness was a large
white pinafore, carefully washed for this important occasion.

It was a familiar sight, and the woman behind her, who was younger but did not look much better, smiled sympathetically at her plight.

The clerk returned with a bald-headed, bustling man who ignored Theresa, as he riffled through papers on the counter. Then he looked up, and asked the name of Thomas's ship.

She told him in a very loud, though quavery voice, as if he were deaf.

‘She's in the wrong office. She should be downstairs.' The man turned and hurried away.

Since the women who came to the office usually sorted themselves out quite successfully, the clerk had assumed that Theresa's seaman relative was in the same ship as the husbands of the two women who had preceded her. He was annoyed with himself, and spoke sharply to Theresa.

‘You heard,' he said and turned to the woman behind her. ‘Next, please.'

Theresa had had only a cup of weak tea for breakfast, and her knees were beginning to give under her. She gripped the counter more firmly and did not reply.

Another great staircase to struggle down, another huge tiled hall to cross, probably another queue in
which to wait. She could not do it. Even with the woman behind her trying to push her to one side, she could not move.

A younger woman, further back, who had been idly watching the wraith at the top of the line, saw that Theresa was shaking. She left her place in the queue, and went to the old woman. She tapped her on the shoulder.

Theresa jumped in surprise, and half turned her head.

The woman said kindly, ‘You sit on that bench over there till I been done, and I'll take you down.'

Theresa nodded. She slowly let go of the counter, crept over to the beautifully polished bench which had been indicated, and thankfully sat down. For a minute, the office whirled around her and then settled back into place.

A number of women smiled quite benignly upon her, as they flowed slowly along in the queue: it was unusual for any of them to take a seat in such a sumptuous place, and they were pleased to see that there had been no objection to Theresa's doing so.

The young stranger was as good as her word. After a slow and careful descent of the stairs, her hand under Theresa's elbow to steady her, she even made sure that the old lady was at the right counter; and she remained with her until her request for
the allotment had been checked against the company's records and had been carefully counted into Theresa's clawlike hand and she had equally carefully signed for it: she was proud of being able to write her name.

‘Put the money in your skirt pocket, love, afore you goes outside,' the young woman advised Theresa.

Theresa saw the point and stuffed the cash well down into the deep pocket in the folds of her black skirt; no pickpocket could extract it from there.

‘Be all right now, love?'

‘Oh, aye. Ta ever so.' Theresa smiled toothlessly.

With a great sense of unexpected opulence, she treated herself to a twopenny tram ride from the Pier Head. It dropped her near home and, through a sudden shower of sleet, she then dragged herself up a short slope to the court.

Ever since then, as long as the allotment was available, she had taken two hours' leave of absence from her sack-mending to collect it. She was always proud that she had been able to cope successfully with the staff of such a big office.

July to September 1939

Patrick Connolly found himself surprisingly busy during that lovely cloudless summer; there were many more ships in port. Occasionally, he ached so much from the long consecutive hours of physical labour that he did not go to the stand: he would argue that he had earned enough that week for the family to get by on.

Instead, he sometimes took the tram out to Aintree to watch the races.

More often, he could be found in Meg's cocoa room or in a pub. In either of these places there would be a bookie's runner to take his bets, whether on horses or on greyhounds. If he lost a bet, a comforting mug of cocoa or a glass of ale was immediately available: its cost would be recorded
on a slate hanging behind the counter, to be paid when he drew his wages at the end of the week.

He did not, of course, tell Martha about these expeditions. She did, however, nag at him for more cash, because she knew from the general gossip in the court that the docks were much busier, and she felt that he must be earning more than usual.

When he was at home, her nagging tended to send him, in fast retreat, upstairs to visit Mike in the attic, on the irreproachable excuse that he had promised old Mike; exactly what he had promised, he never told her. Sometimes, it was to deliver to the invalid winnings he had made from bets Patrick had laid on his behalf; sometimes it was merely to escape from her shrieks of rage.

To most of the men who lived in the court, Mike was a good friend. Many of them could not read very well, and Mike had far more up-to-date sports reports than did the newspapers, thanks to his radio.

The radio was itself a subject of respectful conversation, and every family longed to have one. Mike's ran on a wet battery and a dry battery.

Getting the wet battery periodically recharged was one of Alice's regular chores, and Mike would
lie and fret until it was safely set up again by his bed.

No matter how carefully she carried the battery down the steep, narrow staircase, the acid always slopped onto her black serge skirt and sometimes onto her swollen, bare ankles. It burned badly both skirt and skin, so that her garments were much more darned than those of her neighbours. There was, also, the fear that the leg burns would go septic, which they occasionally did.

The infection necessitated hot poultices made from rags, so a piece of cleanish linen was begged from Martha and boiled in a pan of water on Alice's primus stove. The water was squeezed out, with much wincing because of the heat. Then the steaming poultice was slapped onto the sore. The recipient invariably shrieked with pain as her tender skin was scalded.

This treatment was repeated until the sore was declared clean, a matter of several days.

During this miserable period, Mike often consoled his suffering wife with tots of smuggled rum given him by seagoing relatives.

In Martha's opinion, a casualty of the Battle of Mons was entitled to male company and plenty of rum. Furthermore, he was married to kindly Alice: so, when Patrick vanished up the stairs, Martha
would content herself with a final furious threat from the bottom step. She swore that there would be further mayhem if he didn't get up betimes in the morning and get himself to work.

Seated by the invalid on one of the family's two chairs, a Woodbine dangling from one corner of his mouth, Patrick, too, was sometimes given a small tot of rum. Glasses in hands, both men were at their happiest when they could hum along with the radio to old wartime songs. It did not matter whether the songs belonged to the Boer War or to the Great War. Occasionally cigarettes were removed from lips, while they belted out a particular favourite, like ‘Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you'.

Alice did not always share their enthusiasm and sometimes sought temporary refuge from the noise on the front doorstep. There, she would hear from a fuming Martha about Patrick's failure to do all the days of work offered to him. They decided that men, on the whole, were a real cross to bear.

Alice had reason to know this. From time to time, she wept over poor Mike, who often became irascible because of his enforced confinement and his sexual impotence.

Though she was now at work and did not hear the news so often, she sometimes picked up bits of
information from it. She was able to tell the other women about the impending distribution of gas masks and the instruction which would be given on how to use them. This information struck fear in the hearts of all who heard it.

Nobody had forgotten about the use of gas in the last war, and most people knew a man who had died as a result of it or who was still struggling from its effects.

‘Maybe the man what was painting the kerb was right,' Alice added nervously.

When Bridie overheard the conversation, she interrupted it. ‘We was shown in school. I can put on a gas mask.'

Her mother rounded on her. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

Bridie shrugged. ‘You never asked me.'

It was Alice, on her way to work at the ship chandler's, who, a few days later, met the postman on the doorstep. He inquired if Patrick was at home.

‘He's at work, and his wife's at the market,' Alice replied.

The postman hesitated. The front door had an opening through which letters could be dropped onto the floor of the hall. But he knew, from experience, that they could be easily lost in such a
house – and that could cause an inquiry to be made. He preferred to hand the missive, if possible, to the addressee.

As a wounded veteran, Mike received more letters, official or charitable, than most of his neighbours, so the postman was acquainted with Alice. He asked if she would take the letter in.

She liked the trim little man in his neat navy-blue and red uniform, popularly known in the court as His Nibs. She cheerfully agreed, took the missive from him and tucked it down the neck of her blouse to rest safely between her breasts.

As he made a note of her name so that, if necessary, the letter could be traced, he said, ‘Be sure to give it to Mr Connolly himself. It's got the City coat of arms on the back of it – it could be important.'

‘Oh, aye,' she promised. Inside, she felt suddenly sick. A letter from the town hall? What could that mean, other than an eviction notice preceding slum clearance?

After she returned home from work, she retrieved the letter from between her breasts, and, with a heavy heart, turned it over and over in her hand. She did not show it to Mike: no need to worry him yet, she decided, and laid it on a shelf beside her mugs.

As she prepared tea for Mike, she listened anxiously for the return of Martha or Patrick.

While she was sitting by Mike's bed, sharing bread and jam and tea with him, she finally heard Martha open the door of her room and greet Mary Margaret.

On the excuse of getting some more water from the pump, she picked up the kettle and ran downstairs.

Martha was standing swinging her empty basket and talking to her friend, who, as usual, was hemming in the light of Martha's window. At Mary Margaret's feet, Number Nine was curled up on an old coat sound asleep, unaware of the struggles of his babysitter.

Seated cross-legged on the floor was Dollie, also hemming, though rather slowly.

Even after the allotment had come through, she had continued to be kept at home sporadically, to sew.

‘Because your mam is sick and you got to help her a bit,' her relentless grandma had told her, despite her mother's gentle protests.

Mary Margaret was slowly realising, however, that she could not work as fast as she used to. She had decided that it would be as well if Dollie became adept at sewing as soon as possible; if her
mother died, she might, with such a skill, manage to maintain herself and thus keep out of the hands of Them.

At Alice's unheralded entrance, Martha swung round.

Alice smiled at Mary Margaret, and then said to Martha, a little breathlessly, ‘I've got a letter for your Patrick. The postman left it with me to give him. Will you tell him when he comes in? It's from the town hall.'

‘Mother of God!' exclaimed Martha. ‘And what would that be meaning?' She reached out to take the letter from Alice, shades of Norris Green running through her head.