A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin Read online

  When the child had finished, Martha told Tommy to bring in the rest of the food from the pram, ‘Before anybody from upstairs gets ideas about it!’ she added savagely: petty theft was always a problem which had to be guarded against.

  Feeding everybody was going to be a loaves and fishes job, she worried. Patrick had not returned at midday so she hoped that he was working. She must keep something in reserve for him and for Brian. Mary Margaret would want to do the same for her Thomas.

  SEVEN

  ‘Suffering Christ! Norris Green?’

  January 1938

  Supported by Martha’s arm round her back, Mary Margaret sipped the promised tea. From long being kept warm on the hob, it was a bitter brew, its flavour unrelieved by either tinned milk or sugar: but it was at least hot.

  As she regained her senses, Mary Margaret glanced vaguely round the room crowded with children, some of them still whimpering, and asked, ‘Where’s Dollie?’

  Martha explained Dollie’s temporary banishment and that, by now, she was probably safe with her Auntie Ellen. ‘She knows how to look after herself, she does,’ she said with a wry grin.

  Mary Margaret sighed. ‘Oh, aye, she does. I wasn’t quick enough to separate them – I didn’t want to drop me sewing on the floor – the ould fella gets mad if the hankies aren’t clean when he comes to collect them.’ She paused, and then went on more firmly, ‘But Bridie did cheat.’ She took another sip of tea.

  ‘Oh, aye, she probably did,’ responded Martha, eager not to start a quarrel. She looked up at blood-spattered Bridie, whose nose was still running red. ‘I’ll deal with her later.’

  At the implied threat, Bridie rubbed her dribbling nose on her sleeve and broke into a fresh howl.

  ‘Shut up,’ shouted her harassed mother, ‘or I’ll really give you something to cry for.’

  Bridie feared another slap, so the howl was reduced to a whimper. She considered joining Dollie outside. Then reluctantly decided against it: Dollie had probably cooled off, but she might still be resentful enough to hit her again, a harder blow than her own mother would give her. Though the sight and smell of her own blood was scary, she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and held back her sobs.

  Tommy had been to see what was in the pram. The situation eased as the children’s attention was diverted when he brought in the brown bags.

  Now, he inquired eagerly, ‘What you got in the bags, Mam?’

  His mother actually smiled. ‘Something to eat,’ she replied. ‘And don’t you touch it – any of you,’ she added, as her smile turned to a glare.

  She poked Kathleen, standing uneasily beside her. ‘You and Tommy line up all the mugs – and your dad’s bowl. And there’s Mr Flanagan’s bowl by the hob. Put that by your Auntie Mary Margaret.’

  She turned back to the sick woman. ‘I got your jar filled with soup for you and a loaf of bread – and some spuds, ready-baked. Do you want to have it now – or will I put it up in your room for when your hubby comes home? It’s cold already – from the walk home.’

  There was an audible gasp of hope from her two little girls, as Mary Margaret hesitated. ‘Maybe we could make a fresh cup of tea, now – I’ve got a quarter of tea upstairs – and we could have some bread with it – and a bit of potato.’ She looked at her expectant children, still kneeling by her on the mattress, and promised, ‘We’ll get Auntie Martha to heat the soup when your dad comes home – and we mustn’t forget Dollie, must we? And Mr Connolly and Brian.’ She turned back to Martha. ‘I’ll share the tea with you.’

  Martha nodded agreement. ‘I got a tin of milk I was keeping for Number Nine,’ she offered. ‘Instead, he can have some soup at teatime like the others. Then we can use some of the conny-onny in our tea.’ She got up off her knees, and was suddenly aware of how wet she was.

  She kicked off her boots into the hearth and shook out her skirts, to which a nervous Number Nine was again trying to attach himself. Mother of God, how cold her feet felt. She smiled down at her baby, as she picked up her shawl from the floor and hung it on the oven door to dry. The coal added by a quietened little Joseph was beginning to catch, praise be, so she paused for a moment to warm her hands over the fire and let her feet be eased by the warmth of the hearth.

  Still rubbing her swollen red hands, she turned to Kathleen and ordered her to fill the kettle and put it on the fire.

  Mary Margaret asked Connie to get her precious quarter-of-a-pound packet of tea from underneath her camp bed upstairs.

  ‘And, love, take the jar of soup up for me,’ she instructed. ‘Be very careful, ever so careful not to drop it!’ There was a hint of laughter in her voice at this latter instruction.

  The children caught her lighter tone and began to giggle. Even Bridie grinned slyly. Though she was sick hungry herself, she thought what fun it would be if Connie did drop the jar and break it; then, surely, she would be slapped for clumsiness.

  Bridie thought sourly that she had had it up to there with the Flanagans: Connie had backed up her sister Dollie in her accusation of cheating. She’d learn them, she promised herself.

  As she watched in savage hope, she began to pick the drying blood out of her nose.

  While the younger children watched pop-eyed, Tommy eased the loaves of bread out of their brown paper bags and, on Martha’s instructions, laid each family’s share on top of its bag on the floor.

  He watched Connie climb the stairs, with her mother’s glass sweet jar clutched against her stomach. Despite the shuffling about in Martha’s room, they heard the thud as it was slowly lowered to the floor above, and in a moment a triumphant Connie came whizzing down the stairs with the packet of tea in her hand: unlike Kathleen, she was enjoying being treated as a big girl, while Bridie, who was older, was in disgrace.

  The kettle boiled, tea was made. One of the loaves was handed to Mary Margaret to divide as she thought fit for her own family, the slices laid out in a neat row on the bag. Then the knife was returned to Martha, who also had to divide her two two-pound loaves very carefully.

  The mothers gave each child a slice. Some of them sat on the stairs, the little ones on the floor near the mattress. Then tea was poured, carefully diluted for the children with more hot water from the kettle and a little tinned milk. The mothers then allowed the pot to simmer on the hob for a while so that they could obtain a stronger cup.

  The children wolfed down their share of bread; even little Number Nine came out from his mother’s skirts and was fed piece by piece by her so that he did not abandon any of it on the floor. He ate with gusto, pushing the bits into his mouth with grubby fingers.

  The older children looked longingly at what remained of the loaves, but knew better than to ask for more. Their mothers carefully wrapped the remains in sheets of newspaper and put the bundles inside the brown bags again, to be kept for the members of the family who were absent.

  For the first time since arriving home, Martha relaxed in the chair she owned, while her friend continued to recline on the mattress. The night was drawing in and the only light was from the fire; the little room was cosy.

  After eating their bread, the children had decided that the stairs were a bus; Bridie forgot her blood-stains and appointed herself bus conductor and Tommy became the driver. Their noisy altercations over unpaid imaginary fares were a contented background, broken occasionally by muttered curses, as tenants from the upper floors pushed resignedly by them to get to their rooms.

  ‘Hisself didn’t come home at dinnertime?’ Mary Margaret inquired of Martha.

  ‘Patrick? No.’

  ‘Maybe there’s another boat in?’

  ‘Could be.’ Martha nodded.

  ‘If he is working, it’ll be his third day this week, won’t it?’

  Martha agreed doubtfully. Then she said, with a wistful sigh as she remembered that she had to pay the moneylender on Saturday, ‘I hope he is working, not just hanging around somewhere. But he did tell me that there’s been more ships this last two month
s than there’s been for a long time.’

  ‘Now, why would that be?’ asked Mary Margaret.

  ‘He thinks there’s a war coming – and the warehouses is being filled up – in case. A lot of grain went into the terminal last week, he said. And maybe it’s true – you could hear the trains shunting all night, as they moved out.’ She made a wry mouth. ‘It’d take a lot more stuff coming in, it would, to give him a chance at a full week. There’s so many men fighting for work.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t need to tell you – there’s half a dozen in these very courts.’

  ‘There’ll be fewer men soon, Martha. Did you hear They’ve closed off Court No. 2?’ asked Mary Margaret. ‘I suppose they’ll pull it down one of these days, like they done the other courts.’

  ‘They’ve closed it? Jaysus Mary!’

  ‘Oh, aye, They have. Thomas says there’s more kids in that court than in any other one, and he said they’re dead set to get them out of it. It’s going to be all boarded up, and everybody’s to be moved out come Friday.

  ‘You must have noticed they’ve been emptying houses there for a while, and boarding them up.’ Mary Margaret hitched her shawl closer round herself, and then went on, ‘I remember your sister saying. And they were real hard on a family which opened up one room again and camped in it – the rent man told on them, and they got marching orders real quick. Alice Flynn upstairs told me.’

  ‘Where are they all going to live?’ asked Martha in a shocked whisper, as the implications of this piece of news sank in. ‘Me sister Maria’s lived there all her married life, as you know. She must have known. She never told me.’

  ‘Well, you had that fight with her not too long back – and I’ve not noticed her visiting us much lately,’ Mary Margaret replied with a sly grin, and then continued, ‘Most of them is going to Norris Green. Some is going into Corporation flats in the city. They decided to do it quick. Don’t ask me why. Maybe the kids was getting sick.’

  Martha did not have Mary Margaret’s calm acceptance regarding the deeds of Them. She exclaimed in horror, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Suffering Christ! Norris Green – or one of them flats? All stairs, they are. But Norris Green, that’s awful; it’s miles away. How’s George going to get hisself down here to work? How’s Maria going to manage, even in a flat, with only City housing round her? In Norris Green, there’s no factories, no markets, no shops, no schools, they tell me; not even letter boxes out there. I’m told there isn’t even a pub!’

  Mary Margaret shrugged. She truly could not imagine the bleakness of a new housing estate; neither Martha nor she had lived anywhere else but in a court.

  She did not seem to realise, however, as Martha immediately did, that the almighty They could descend, next, on their own Court No. 5. Then both their unskilled husbands would probably be out of work for the rest of their lives – simply because of the problems of travel.

  Thomas was probably right – They usually pounced on the biggest families first when clearing out a court.

  And, Mother of God, her own family would likely be the biggest remaining hereabouts. Martha, not easily scared, was, at that moment of revelation, terrified.

  How could any dock labourer living out in a desert like Norris Green get down to the docks twice a day to stand in the calling centre and wait for work – even if he could afford a bike – and few could? How could a ship’s fireman, like Mary Margaret’s hubby, sign on, if he was miles from ships or the Mercantile Marine Office, or anywhere a merchant seaman was supposed to be?

  Martha was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. If her family were marooned in a council house on the far outskirts of Liverpool, it would take away from them any hope they ever had of obtaining regular work. Even the pennies she brought in by her dealing in rags would not be possible in a soulless Corporation estate consisting only of houses. No docks, no factories, no market, no nothing; not even rich people who had rags to dispose of. Not even schools for the kids.

  And what would young Brian do? And he with every hope at present of being taught how to be a butcher, and really improving himself one day.

  ‘Holy Mother, help us!’ she muttered in a moment of white terror.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Mary Margaret lazily.

  Martha swallowed. She did not want to frighten her sick friend. ‘Ach, nothing,’ she gasped. ‘I was only muttering to meself.’

  EIGHT

  ‘He’ll Have to Sling his Hook’

  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.