A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (33 page)

‘The ladies who come to the hospital arranged for me to come in here: they needed the hospital bed for someone real sick, and I didn't have nobody to take care of me if I was sent home.' Her lips trembled. ‘I just signed with a cross anything They asked me to sign.'

She sighed, as she remembered the secret dread she had suffered while signing. ‘When you can't read, you just do what They ask and hope it's all
right. They always say it's OK and for your own good and tell you not to worry!'

She sighed again, and went on, ‘By the time I come out of hospital I wouldn't have had no home, anyway, because I didn't pay the rent while I was in hospital.

‘You know, Sheila, I never thought about the rent, to be truthful: I only thought about the pain in me leg. The landlord – his agent, that is – would've put the bailiffs in and they'd have sold up every stick I owned in there, to cover the rent I owed. They'd think I'd just done a flit to get out of paying. Then they'd put in a new tenant.'

She did not rant about this. Bailiffs were a fact of life, and you did your best to evade their invasions. Bad luck, if you didn't move your furniture out quickly, before they got to you.

Anyway, she was stuck in this Home for ever, as far as she knew. She shifted restlessly, as she returned to the subjects of their conversation, visitors and getting Angie a gift. ‘Are you expectin' your sister or anyone to visit, Sheila?' she asked.

‘No. I'll be lucky if she writes me for Christmas; she lives in London. She's working and she's got kids still. I had one friend who come to see me in the hospital. But she's not young and it's a long ride out here.'

‘People soon forget you, don't they?'

‘Not really. But life's not easy for anybody since the war – and after the war things didn't change much for years, did they? Still rationing and shortages of everything. And so many people was moved around, while the war was on, and never come back home!'

Martha agreed heartily. England had been left a shabby, hard-pressed wreck, with a population transplanted hither and yon, who tended to settle where they had been planted.

‘You still had kids at home at the end of the war – you was telling me,' continued Sheila. ‘What happened to them? They should be here.' Sheila was very downright.

‘Well, I told you how Patrick died in January 1951. We both had the flu so bad: it were a big epidemic. And there isn't much you can do about flu, except stay in bed and wait to get better. I got better and so did Number Nine.

‘Patrick just died one night – give me the shock of me life. But truth to tell, he were worn out by the war – and real cut up when the auxiliary fire service finished up. He worked on reconstruction sites for a while, but he were out of work when he died.' She stopped, and then said, ‘He weren't a bad husband – he did his best, God rest him.'

‘And the kids?'

‘Scattered, like you'd never believe.' She hesitated, and then said, ‘Our Tommy died during the war. He got fits. He was in hospital for a little while. But there was nothing they could do for him.' Her voice broke. ‘Aye, he were a lovely-looking kid, and, you know, I been told that if they had had the medicines they got now a few years earlier, the doctors could have saved him.'

‘Aye, that must hurt.'

‘It did, Sheila. It did.' She sat quietly for a while: she had never quite understood Tommy, as she had her other sons. He had always been very secretive – never outgoing. Even if he told you something, you were never quite certain if it was true.

Both she and Patrick had been terribly shocked when they learned the cause of death. Syphilis.

Observing their fraught expressions, the doctor had told them gently, ‘You know, the lad needed only one girlfriend to give it to him.'

Patrick had accepted this as reasonable. Martha had nodded agreement; but many odd memories of Tommy were suddenly making sense. She closed her eyes to hide her distress, as she reproached herself bitterly. ‘To think I only watched me girls!'

Sheila, respectful of the loss her new friend had endured, did not disturb her.

After a while, Martha sniffed and cleared her throat, and went on with her litany.

‘Joseph were called up to do his national service after the war, and they sent him to Africa – to Bulawayo. When he'd done it, he could stay there if he wanted – their government was looking for white settlers – and he did; and he married out there. I don't never hear from him – I doubt if he knows where I am. Anyway, men aren't letter writers, are they?' Then she said sadly, ‘And me big boy, Brian, were killed in Normandy.'

‘Oh, Martha, how dreadful.' Sheila's voice was full of pity. Then she asked, ‘Who else was there?'

‘There was Ellie and Number Nine.'

‘I do love the way you called your baby Number Nine.'

Martha smiled. ‘His proper name was James, after Father James, our priest, dear man. He were our gift to the Church.

‘I don't think families do it much now. But when we was living in the courts, it were usual to give one kid to be a nun or a priest. Was it like that with you?'

‘We had in mind to give our second girl…'

‘Aye, you poor dear. It must have been terrible to lose her.'

‘Martha, it finished my real life to lose everybody
in one go. I haven't never really been alive since.' For once, Sheila sounded defeated, and she shook helplessly.

To steady her, Martha stretched out towards the other bed and rested her hand on her arm. ‘Well, I'm proper grateful that you're here now,' she said earnestly. ‘You're a real comfort to me.'

Sheila allowed her eyes to fill with tears. Then she said, ‘Likewise, love.'

They remained quiet while the ghosts of their past visited them, and then Sheila made an effort at being more cheerful. She said, ‘You mentioned another little girl, Ellie, I think it was.'

‘Oh, aye, Ellie. That was real queer. You know, after the war, we thought all the foreign soldiers would go home – or at least stop being soldiers and settle down with us, like a lot of Poles did.'

‘Sure, I remember.'

‘But they didn't. The Americans stayed for years and years in camp; they're still there, some of them. Most people didn't even know they were there for a long time, 'cos they wore civvies when they was out of the camp.

‘Well, our Ellie met one at a dance and married him. Even after she were married, she was still in England, but not always in the same place. Then he took her to Pittsburgh, in the USA, where his
parents were. Last I heard of her was that he were working in an iron foundry. No kids.'

‘And she doesn't write?' asked Sheila.

‘Nope. You know, Sheila, when you got so many kids holding onto your skirts, like I had, and you don't know where the next meal's coming from, it's hard to give them all the attention they deserve. Especially the middle ones in the family: they're just hungry faces waiting to be fed or bare feet that you got to find boots for. And they resent it. Working full time through the war didn't help me much to give time to them, either.

‘Kids like that is happy when they're big enough to get out from under you and have a life of their own. They don't think what you've done for them, do they?'

Sheila did not know. Her children had, in her mind, grown up as dream children, who earned good wages while they were home, and then, when they married, had brought pretty, playful grand-children to visit her. She often thought what a lovely life might have been hers. Now, in a week of hearing stories of Martha's children, running loose, always hungry, in a crowded court, disillusionment had set in. Children thought only of themselves and how soon they could leave you – and get lost.

That sounded hard on harried mothers.

‘And what about Number Nine?'

Martha's face softened. ‘Oh, aye. He were a bright little boy. He did well, he did. He finished secondary modern school and then he did his national service – he didn't get sent abroad like Joe did. And all the time, Father James keep in touch with him, 'cos he was named after him.

‘When he finally come home his dad were gone, of course. Just Ellie and me was home at the time; and Father James reminded me of me promise to the Church.

‘Quite honestly, I thought Jamie wouldn't want to go – but he did. So I'd no sooner got him back from national service than he was off again to a seminary, and now he's in Manchester helping in a parish. He's a priest, of course.'

She giggled. ‘It's funny to have a learned scholar for a son, seeing as I can't even read!'

‘Good luck – bad luck?' suggested Sheila.

‘Well, it would've been nice to have a man around the house; and he were a real man by the time he'd done his two years in the army. It would've been less lonely,' she finished wistfully. Then she said more cheerfully, ‘It was a great day when he was ordained. I was that proud of him.'

‘Don't he ever come to see you?'

‘He's been home a few times to see me, and
he does write home. But, you see, he's probably written, and I'm not there. There'll be a new tenant in the house who doesn't know me.'

‘That's a proper difficulty. You must have his address, though?'

‘Oh, aye. I know his address off by heart.'

‘Why don't you get somebody to write to him for you?'

Martha stared at her incredulously. ‘In this place? Here, you're lucky if anybody'll come to help you pee. I doubt if Matron would stand me a stamp to post it either, she's that mean. I wouldn't dare ask her.'

‘I can write for you, if I can get me hands on me pocket money.'

Martha frankly did not believe that Sheila could get a letter smuggled out of the building, unless she could persuade one of the aides to carry it out, which she doubted.

In any place money not in your skirt pocket was liable to vanish. You'd fight that bitch downstairs for it and lucky you would be if you got it; you'd fight for pen and ink; for a stamp, and then you couldn't be sure of getting the letter to a pillar box. And the thought of an irate Matron standing over you with pills to be taken so that you were too dazed to bother her again made Martha crawl with fear.

So great was her desperate confusion at the loss of all she had known, she decided that, like Angie, she hadn't the strength even to tip a bloody wall bin, never mind fight Matron.

June 1941

In June 1941, Daniel Flanagan finally sailed into his home port of Liverpool after a voyage lasting over a year, as his ship crept from port to port, backwards and forwards, round the coast of Africa, picking up and putting down freight. Amongst the crew's mail brought aboard by the pilot boat were two letters for him, one from the police.

He tore open the latter, anxious to get at the contents. The police were looking into the disappearance of his sisters and hoped to have news for him shortly. The letter was a few months old. During the rambles of his tramp freighter, it had followed him to Cape Town, only to be returned and retained in the company's office to await him, because his ship had already left for Port Elizabeth
– with further ports of call as yet uncertain, to quote a pencilled scribble on the envelope.

He smiled. There would probably be more recent news by now. He failed to appreciate that, in the midst of the chaos with which the police were dealing, some kind soul had thought to write him a letter of reassurance.

The second letter was more recent and was an almost unbelievable shock. It was from the agent which served his father's ship in Liverpool and had been sent to him care of his own ship's agents there.

In reply to his inquiry as to his father's whereabouts, they regretted to have to tell him that Thomas Flanagan, trimmer, had gone on shore leave in Sydney, Australia, and had failed to return to his ship. He was now officially classed as a deserter.

Daniel was horrified. The shame of it! It was too much, enough to make one commit hara-kiri. Added to the shame was a new worry. Even if they found his sisters, how would he manage the kids and go to sea at the same time? He himself simply did not earn enough money.

Desertion, particularly in Australian ports where British immigrants were welcome, was far from unknown, but it was a very serious matter, and he
wondered why his father had been mad enough to do such a thing.

He would have broken a legal agreement, lost his kit and his wages. Also lost would be that vital final entry in his discharge book, saying that his completed service in his last ship had been ‘Very Good'. This entry would normally ensure his being considered for re-employment in another ship: without it he did not stand a chance.

Since there was a war on and laws fenced one in more tightly every day, Daniel wasn't sure whether or not his father would be liable to a prison sentence if he was caught.

His mind reeled.

He himself would now be paid off and would then be obliged to apply for another ship. He was dead tired, having spent most of the very long voyage wrapped in a life jacket, which was not easy to either work or sleep in. There was also the dreadful tension, night and day, of knowing that the U-boats were waiting like cougars ready to pounce; every seaman knew that an ageing freighter, liable to drag a little behind the rest of a convoy, was an easy prey.

It was late afternoon by the time he had walked past the cynical eyes of the customs officers, who occasionally took a man on one side to check his
kitbag or tin suitcase. Jostled by the stream of men behind him, he longed to lie down and sleep. He had no home to go to, however, and had no desire to spend money on a room in a lodging house.

He stood on the dock road, trying to get a grip on himself. Should he go straight to the police station? Or maybe to Auntie Ellen?