A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin Page 8

  ‘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 G
reat 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.

  Ted sighed with relief, and wondered if the Leeds–Liverpool Canal counted as a tributary.

  ELEVEN

  ‘You Can’t Do Nothing about Consumption’

  January 1938

  Martha sat for a few minutes more in front of the O’Reillys’ fire, and talked desultorily with Annie. She mentioned the likelihood of the removal of the wall which shielded her court from the main road.

  ‘Aye, I heard that,’ replied Annie, as she straightened up after adding some pieces of coal to the fire with a pair of tongs. ‘It’ll give you more fresh air.’

  ‘I’m afraid of strangers from the street getting in,’ responded Martha, her mind temporarily diverted from her current woes. ‘I mean, you know everybody in the court. You can sit on the step in the dark, and know all who pass, even if they’re drunk – a strange seaman walking through the street entry shows up like a sore thumb – and you can watch the kids – makes them more careful, because they know you’ll tell their dad if they steal or are real naughty.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ agreed Annie amiably; she was nothing if not diplomatic. She silently thanked God that she had married a widower, who already had decent living quarters behind his busy corner shop.

  Finally, with a shaky sigh, Martha rose from the high-backed wooden rocking chair. This time she felt reasonably steady. She wanted urgently to be engulfed in the darkness of the street so that she could have a good cry.

  She leaned towards Annie to kiss her in thanks. Annie hastily stepped back. Then to cover her horror of picking up vermin, she took Martha’s hand and squeezed it hard, as the disconcerted woman, in stumbling fashion, expressed her gratitude.

  Annie turned and opened the door into the shop, and Martha walked through it. There were a number of customers, standing around chatting to each other. When Mr O’Reilly heard the door open, he glanced back over his shoulder and said, with forced cheerfulness, ‘Ah, Mrs Connolly. Feeling OK now?’

  As all the customers turned in surprise to view her entrance, she hitched her shawl over her head, and said, with an embarrassed smile, that yes, she was. Annie followed her and lifted the counter lid for her so that she could move to the customer side of it and thence to the street door.

  Martha noticed Alice Flynn, her neighbour from the attic, among the interested customers and nodded politely to her. Thanks to her crippled war-veteran husband, she, at least, had a regular small pension coming in, thought Martha enviously – and he couldn’t get out of bed to spend it.

  She jumped, when John O’Reilly called to her, ‘Hey, don’t forget your groceries. I’ve got them under the counter here.’

  He bent down and fished out a brown paper bag, lifted it over the counter and put it into her arms. ‘See you tomorrow night,’ he said with a wink.

  She wrapped her shawl round the bag, as she gasped. ‘Why – why – thank you, Mr O’Reilly. I’m much obliged.’ She stood looking at him, her mouth agape, not believing her luck. She could smell the bread in the bag and she salivated.

  Since she had her hands full, a man waiting at the back of the little knot of customers opened the door for her.

  With a huge sob, she turned and ran down the two steps to the pavement, while the customers, in surprise, turned to Mr O’Reilly for an explanation.

  He said, in unexpected defence of Martha’s obvious distress, ‘She’s a bit upset. She fainted in the shop. So we took her into the house, and the wife’s been taking care of her.’

  All the customers grinned and resumed their chatter; the story confirmed their high opinion of the O’Reillys, even if they had the misfortune of being Protestants. Always got a smile for you, they had, and would let you have a bit on the slate – most of the time.

  Annie O’Reilly let out an audible sigh of relief. She ignored the need of her help in the shop, and went to wash down with pine disinfectant the chair in which Martha had sat.

  It was not that she disliked Martha, she told herself, as she scrubbed the cleanser thoroughly into every joint in the chair and her living room was flooded with the strong odour of disinfectant. Martha was a good woman and kept her kids in order. It was that the very thought of lice made her crawl all over.

  She was not sure if it had been wise to give the woman a bag full of groceries – if other customers spotted it, it might make them too ambitious about obtaining credit. But John had carried it off very well, she realised, in simply handing it to Martha as if she had already paid for it.

  Martha cried all the way home. She opened the door as quietly as she could and was greeted by Patrick’s steady snoring. She glanced quickly round the room, to check that everybody had returned home.

&nb
sp; Despite the darkness, she managed to account for all the children, who seemed sound asleep.

  A hoarse, newly broken voice from one corner greeted her, however. ‘’Ello, la, Mam.’ In the dimness, a shape unfolded itself.

  ‘Hello, Brian, love.’ Martha was thankful that the darkness hid her tears.

  It did not deceive Brian. He sensed from her voice that something was wrong, and he asked, ‘You OK?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I just went down to O’Reilly’s to get something for breakfast. Did Kathleen tell you about the bowl of soup in the oven for you?’

  ‘Oh, aye. Thanks, Mam. I’ll light the candle for you.’

  He reached over to the mantelpiece and accidentally kicked Bridie. She muttered crossly and slept on. He cussed her, as he found the matches. Then he struck one and revealed a room which, with its crowded bodies, resembled one of Hogarth’s engravings.

  ‘That’s enough, lad. No swearing.’ Martha stepped cautiously into the room, carefully avoiding the pee bucket and the water bucket. She dumped her parcel on the floor.

  She turned towards her son and, for a second, the dying match showed the boy a shiny wet face and weary puffed-up eyes.

  ‘Mam,’ he whispered. ‘What’s up?’

  In the darkness, he dropped the dead match and moved towards her. He put his arms around her.

  Broken, she sobbed out her humiliation at the great kindness of the O’Reillys, who had been so diplomatic when giving her the groceries.

  A skinny, clumsy youth, Brian did not say anything much. He simply held her tightly, and stroked her tangled hair. He knew all about humiliation, the sniggers of the other butchers because his employer sometimes gave him leftovers; even the very mention of where he lived was enough to tell anyone that he was scum.

  Thanks to the efforts of the League of Welldoers to provide diversions for boys in the slums, he was learning to box. It gave him unexpected hope that, one day, he would not be simply a trained butcher’s assistant living in a court; he would be a champion boxer, like Joe Louis, and be able to beat the daylights out of anybody in the whole world; the magical stories he had seen at the cinema had confirmed this hope.