A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (27 page)

In an effort to find a more cheerful subject, the visiting sister volunteered. ‘Me cousin's got a job as a street sweeper. She's taking the place of a man. Getting near a man's wage,' she finished proudly.

Though this did give Martha the idea that she might herself get a man's job, it did not ease her conscience about Colleen. She determined to make the journey to Leasowe the following afternoon. Meanwhile, she agreed with the Greek chorus on the step. She sighed. ‘I were caught napping with poor Mary Margaret afore the war. It come sudden, like.'

Tears rose to her eyes, and Kitty hastily interjected to remind her visitors that Mary Margaret had been a much loved neighbour.

Martha rose and said she must go down to the market: she had managed to put together a last basket of rags for sale; she needed money for food.

The other women bid her, ‘Ta-ra, well,' and then turned to discuss their own problems. Kitty's sister-in-law, a street flower seller, pointed out that the supply of fades was falling rapidly.

‘The market men is selling faded flowers as well as fresh ones, now,' she said with a worried frown. ‘It cuts off me supply, like. And, you know, it's very strange, there's a bigger market these days for flowers.'

‘Now, why would that be?'

‘Don't know.'

‘For graves?'

‘Could be. But, today, a real smart lady bought me last four bunches – to decorate a church for a wedding, she said. That's why I got time to come over to see you.'

Her companion smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, aye,' she said slowly. ‘Youngsters is getting married 'cos the lad's called up, and they don't know when they'll see each other again. With them U-boats, there's lots of decent lads what won't come home again.'

When Patrick came home at teatime, Martha's sourness at his refusal to give her the fares to Leasowe sent him out for a gill immediately after he had eaten.

‘Colleen is for you to deal with. Children is your job,' he had said primly; he could not even remember what the girl looked like.

Tommy had witnessed the exchange between his irate parents, and shyly offered his mother a shilling for her fares. She gratefully accepted and gave him a big hug. ‘My, we are rich today. What did you do to get that?'

‘Cleaned out a big stable,' he replied with a grin. ‘Lovely horses in it – real gentle Belgians.'

His sister Kathleen regarded him silently over the box on which tea had been served.

You bloody liar, she thought. You always say that.

Then she felt sick: he was her kid brother, yet she felt sure that he was doing something like Ann did for a living; what the nuns at school were always hinting at and warning you against. You could be condemned by God to burn in hell everlasting. Worse still, you could even have a baby. The latter fate, she knew, was unlikely where Tommy was concerned.

That night, in real fear, she prayed for the souls of kindly Ann and Helen – and of sweet, generous Tommy.

The following morning, in order to look respectable for the hospital, Martha borrowed the clean white apron of one of Ellen's clients: Ellen starched it specially for her. ‘Let me have it back tonight,' she warned. ‘I got to redo it for tomorrow, so Mrs Williams gets it back with her regular wash.'

Martha promised.

She enjoyed the train journey out to Leasowe, grateful that the train was running despite last night's air raids: the Jerries seemed to love hitting railway lines.

Nobody sat by her, because she wore a shawl and
was, therefore, probably verminous. This shunning did not worry her; she was used to it and regarded, with cynical amusement, other passengers shuffling past the vacant seat next to her.

At the station, set in peaceful countryside, she had to ask directions, because it was so long since she had visited that she had forgotten the way. She was directed politely by the porter on the platform; he was used to parents visiting the hospital.

The wind, carrying the beginning of rain, blew her black skirts, her white apron and her untidy hair into disarray, and she was breathless when, at last, she reached the hospital's inquiry desk.

‘Don't you know that Thursday is not a visiting day?' she was asked testily by a nurse.

‘No.'

‘You'll have to come tomorrow.'

Martha's temper began to rise. She stood her ground. ‘I come all the way from Liverpool, and I don't have the money to come again,' she replied baldly.

‘Tush. The children have to rest, you should know that. They can't be disturbed by anybody who turns up whenever they feel like it.'

Martha took in a big breath, prepared to go into the attack. Her small frame seemed to expand before the seated woman.

‘She's my kid and I want to see her now.' She closed a bony fist and thumped on the table, so that the inkpot began to slide off it.

The nurse caught the pot.

She snapped back. ‘You'll have to see Sister, then. That's her door over there.' She looked poor Martha scornfully up and down, and added, ‘Knock, and wait for her to answer before you go in.'

Martha vented her scorn, by sticking her nose in the air and saying, ‘Ta, ever so. I know me manners.' She swept over to the door indicated.

Sister was a more thoughtful lady than the nurse at the desk. Since Martha had come such a long distance, she could pay a short visit. But she must be very quiet, so as not to disturb the other patients.

She looked reprovingly at Martha and then went on, ‘Colleen has not had a visitor for a long time. I'm sure she will love to see you.'

Engulfed by guilt, Martha bobbed a small, old-fashioned curtsey as she thanked her. The nurse took her outside the building itself, down to the end of the open verandah. She leaned over the small bundle in the last bed, and whispered, ‘Your mother's come to see you, Colleen.' She then hurried back to her desk.

With an effort the child turned her head. Sleepy
blue eyes regarded Martha, and a thin voice inquired doubtfully, ‘Mam?'

Martha forced herself to be cheerful, though her heart sank: she had seen that grey look, lightened only by pink on each cheek, on too many other faces in the courts: and, come to that, didn't her own daughter know her?

‘Of course, it's your mam, love. How are you?' She put out a grubby hand from under her shawl and touched the child's cheek playfully. ‘Don't you know your old mam?'

She got a faint smile in response, and, emboldened, she now dug into her skirt and disinterred a small, fairly clean stuffed rabbit, which she had bought in a second-hand shop. ‘See what I brought you.'

Colleen struggled to get a hand out from under her bedclothes, but she was tucked in so tightly against the cold wind that she was unable to do so.

Martha hauled the bedding loose, regardless of the keen sea breeze, and put the toy into the curve of Colleen's flannel-covered arm. She then quickly covered her up again. She was shivering herself, and a little unnerved by the steady beat of the incoming tide on the sandy shore; the noise seemed to go on and on.

Fresh air was supposed to be good for tubercular patients, but she decided that it was hard on ill-clad visitors.

With the rabbit tucked into her arm, Colleen's pinched little face with its deadly red rose on each cheek wrinkled up into a tiny beatific smile.

‘Like him?' inquired Martha in order to fill the silence between them.

‘Yeah.'

‘His name's – er – Charley,' she invented.

Colleen smiled again and closed her eyes.

Martha laid an arm over her and began to pat her gently. She sat there for what seemed like ages, keeping up a slow pat, pat, pat, in unison with the waves, with no idea what to say.

Finally, the nurse descended upon her and told her that her time was up.

Martha quietly removed her arm, rose, and looked down at her sleeping child. She did not, for fear of the disease, dare to kiss her.

Almost in tears, she said, ‘God's blessin's on yez, love,' and moved out of the way of the nurse, who impatiently retucked in the disturbed bedclothes.

Back at the desk, the nurse said, ‘Before you go, Sister wants me to check your address and telephone number.' She paused for a second, and then added with a sneer, ‘If you have one.'

With an effort Martha refrained from slapping her. She carefully gave her address. ‘I don't have no telephone.'

She cried all the way back on the train, whilst a sudden squall beat in sympathy upon the windowpane. Crouched in her seat, she kept her shawl up over her head so that her red eyes would not show.

In the dreadful, snowy January of 1941, Colleen died. Since Martha had no burial insurance, she was given a pauper's burial.

Freezing, as she pushed her pram down to the coal yard, Martha mourned the child with sniffy whimpers. At the same time, she worried that Joseph, now a skinny ten-year-old, slow-poke Ellie, aged seven, and her darling Number Nine, who was just five, would die of cold, if they did not first get picked up for delinquency of some kind.

Despite being underclad, they ran wild in and out of the courts. Thank goodness, they all had boots, thought Martha.

Though Patrick was mean enough, the regular money he was bringing in, her own efforts to keep her business going, and Kathleen's and Bridie's wages were having their effect. Cold-blooded Bridie had hunted for employment which would give her the most money for the least work, and had opted
for a job as a cleaner in a munitions factory. There, as she slowly swept floors all day, she hoped she would be exempt from any call-up of women.

With Bridie working, however, Martha did not have a girl to watch the youngsters, while she herself coped with the avalanche of unexpected problems brought on by the war.

‘You can't even count on being able to catch a tram,' she would grumble, ‘never mind find a mouse trap in the shops.' And all her weary friends would agree heartily. More money was coming in to some families, but there was little to buy.

In addition, though she and Patrick had discussed it, she had not had time to look for a better house for the family, never mind considering what rent they could now afford to pay.

Martha had become so wedded to the idea of buying goods through the system of cheques that the cheque man coming to collect the consequent weekly repayments became another dreaded Satan Hisself, like the rent man.

As she sadly considered the extra debt she was in and endured the icy cold of her sodden feet, while haunted by the ghostly thought of Colleen being thrown into a public grave, she turned into the coal yard.

Apart from coal, she wanted desperately, a good
cry, a cup of tea and an aspirin. But there was no tea or aspirin in her home. And, while in the crowded coal yard, she dared not even cry: on seeing her weep, most of the other women would have burst into tears: sure as fate, they would have lost somebody and be mourning them, she decided grimly.

February 1940 to May 1941

During his next voyage, a worried Daniel Flanagan did not receive a single letter from home. For company, he finally joined a couple of orphaned ordinary seamen, Peter and Ethan, who never bothered to inquire if there was any mail for them when the eagerly awaited letters were brought by the pilot boats to their ship.

‘Don't you even have a girlfriend?' Peter asked Daniel, as, from a distance, they watched the pilot climb aboard.

‘Can't afford one,' replied Daniel with a wry grin. ‘Do you?'

‘Nope,' replied the others. They laughed sheepishly.

Then Peter said with a hint of defiance in his
voice, ‘Got a girl in every port. No commitments then.'

They laughed, this time with knowing winks. Then they were suddenly sobered by the sound of the bosun's whistle.

Back home in the court, it did not occur to his uncle, Desi, that he should write to his already bereft nephew, since his wife could not.

During an air raid Auntie Ellen had been hit by a piece of shrapnel. She was in Walton Hospital and was not expected to live.

As an air-raid warden, Desi was himself too exhausted amid the nights of bombing and their aftermath to think of anything other than his wife and how to remain on his feet.

He also found himself more grief-stricken than he had expected. He had always referred to her as the Old Tartar. Now he was surprised to realise that he loved her very much. Amid the jungle of the ruins around him, he prayed almost incoherently that she would live. He was tender with love when, at the end of March 1941, she returned home, frail and very dependent upon him.

On the same February evening that she was hit during the pounding of Liverpool, Daniel was guarding the gangway of his boat while docked in New Orleans. During a quiet moment, while
boxes of fruit, intended for his ship, were being unloaded from a train, the bosun exchanged a casual word or two with him on the need for vigilance.

He cussed the slowness of the railway porters, and walked uneasily up and down the deck. Then he stopped near Daniel, and drew an opened letter out of his pocket. He peered at it, but evidently decided that it could not be read in the fading light. He put it back in his pocket.

He noticed Daniel watching him with interest, and said with sudden cheerfulness, ‘Letter from the wife. Just got our first boy.'

Though the bosun's voice was normally like a foghorn, he made this announcement with quiet pride.

‘Congratulations, sir.'

The bosun smiled and nodded. According to most of the deckies, the bosun was known to be human – occasionally. In the temporary quiet on the deck, the thought encouraged Daniel to say, ‘I've not had a letter from home since we left Liverpool – and I'm proper worried.' He immediately followed this with a roar at a small boy sidling up the gangway, probably bent on petty theft.

‘You get down there, afore I throw you down.'