Pure as the Lily (3 page)

Come on you’ he grabbed Mary’s arm ‘else the town crier will be out lookin’ for us. “

“Just a minute.” Mary thrust her hand into her pocket.

“Here, Granda.”

She held out two mintoes towards the old man, and as he took them he said, “Oh, mintoes! Good lass, I love a mintoe. But, you know’—he thrust his finger at her ‘if I go in suckin’ one of these your grannie’ll be on me like a prairie dog, she will, she’ll swear that I’m just coverin’ up me breath. And where did I get the money for drink! An’ she’s stood enough of me coming in as full as a gun, an’ she’s going off with Charlie Riddle.”

“Aw, come on.” Alee tossed his head impatiently as he pulled Mary away from his father.

Tar-rah! “ called out Peter.

“Tar-rah, Granda,” Mary called back. Tar-rah! “

“Aw, tar-rah, goodbye, and so long!” said Alee. Then a few steps further on he looked at Mary, and she at him, and she slipped her hand once again through his arm, when they both laughed softly and Mary said quietly, “I love him,” and Alee replied, “Well, I hope you love him enough for both of us at this moment, ‘cos he got that threepence out of you, didn’t he?”

“Oh, Da! what does it matter? Threepence!” And then she remembered, he very likely hadn’t threepence; the few coppers her ma allowed him out of the depleted dole, depleted because there were two people now working in the family, he would likely have spent on his trip across the water this morning. She knew he had felt a bit better when neither her mother nor she was working and for six weeks at a time he could tip up twenty-seven shillings on to the kitchen table as if it was his wages. She thought now she had been foolish, she should have given the threepence to him and not to her gran da

95 Cornice Street comprised four rooms, a scullery and two staircases.

It had a lavatory in the backyard, separate from the one belonging to 93, but it shared the wash-house and the only supply of water, a yard tap, with the tenants downstairs.

Alice Walton had been known to brag that her house was the best furnished in the street, and on this she was right When in 1916 and at the age of seventeen she had married Alee, he was just out of his time in the shipyard and owing to the war earning good money. By 1918 he was earning treble what his father had been earning in 1914. From the first Alice had known what she wanted out of life and had been determined to get it. The determination had brought her from one furnished room at the top of the Church Bank to two rooms in Hope Street, then on to four rooms in Cornice Street. They had arrived in Cornice Street in 1921 when Mary was four and Jimmy two years old, and she had planned that their stay there would be no longer than three years at the most, by which time Mary would want a room of her own.

She did not intend to have any more children, not if she knew it; and at this stage she had made it plain to Alee and told him he must do something about it. She didn’t know what exactly she expected him to do nor did he know exactly what he was expected to do, except use something, and he wasn’t going to all that palaver; so whether it was by chance or management they never knew, but they had no more children. This enabled Alice to set about furnishing her house properly.

By 1923 she had a real front room, containing a three—piece suite, a china cabinet, a glass-fronted bookcase and two occasional tables. The floor was not covered with lino but with a grey cord carpet right to the walls, a great innovation in those days; and in the living-room she was the proud possessor of a drop-leaf table, a sideboard, four Georgian—type chairs which she had bought second-hand and did not know the value of, only that their shape appealed to her, and two arm chairs that had once graced a club room. In her own bedroom she had an austere satinwood bedroom suite and a double wooden bed; no brass knobs for her. She had, however, to be content with two iron beds in the children’s bedroom. Her curtains were all heavy Nottingham lace, and there was deep imitation lace on the bottom of the yellow paper blinds.

It was in 1924 when she was looking further afield that her eye alighted on “Moat Cottage’. Why a six-roomed cottage standing in half an acre of land on the outskirts of the town should have been given this name wasn’t evident, because the ground all about was level and there was no sign of a moat, wet or dry. She had passed the cottage often on her walks into the country with the children but it wasn’t until she saw it empty that she coveted it. When, all agog, she put the proposed move to Alee his first question was, “ What’s the rent? “

“Eleven-and-sixpence.”

Almost double what they were paying for the present house, was she mad?

Mad, or no mad, she had said to him, she was going to have that cottage; she wasn’t going to stay all her life in a grubby street like Cornice Street looking into somebody else’s back kitchen and somebody else looking into hers. Moreover, she was tired of living next to a lot of numskulls.

At this he had answered quietly, “I have news for you, we’re on half-time next week.” And that had been the beginning of the end of her dream of Moat Cottage. It had also been the beginning of a change in her character.

Previously, the objectionable facets of her nature had found vent in the ambitious drive to get on, to have a better house than the next, better-dressed children than the next, and cleverer children than the next.

Alec’s place in the sphere of her ambitions was the provider of the wherewithal to achieve at least two of her ambitions.

On short time. Alee became an irritant, but when he became unemployed Alice’s irritation leapt to bitterness bordering on hatred for him, and what little love she’d had for him became centred, not on her firstborn, her daughter, but on her son, James. James was going to accomplish for her all that his father had failed to do.

She now looked at her son, where he sat on the corner of the high fender, his knees almost up to his chin, engrossed in a dog-eared comic, and said, “Put that away and get on with your homework!”

“What, Ma?”

‘you heard me. Put that rubbish away and get on with your homework. “

“But, Ma, I never start me homework until after I’ve had me tea.” He peered up at her, and she said,

“We’re not havin’ tea until those two come in; I’m not mashing twice. And where does she think she’s got to?

Almost five o’clock here and she finished at two. The more you do in this house the more you might, you get no help. Do you hear me? “

Her voice was shrill now.

“Put that away and get on with your homework!”

Jimmy rose from the fender, folded the comic, and was about to push it into his pocket when it was grabbed from his hand and Alice bawled at him, ‘how many times have I to tell you you’re not to stuff your pockets with things! It puts them out of shape. God knows your clothes are hard enough to come by. Take your coat off and hang it up. I’m tired of tellin’ you. “ She sighed deeply and, her voice dropping, she said, Aw boy, It’s for your own good. Don’t you realize that? “ She bent towards him, and he answered sullenly, “ Aye, Ma. “ At this she closed her eyes, gripped her hands togetheYand pressed them to her breast as she said,

“Aye, Ma. Aye, Ma. What good is the secondary school to you when you cannot get away from the common jargon of the street? Aye, Ma. You can’t even learn to say yes.” The boy stood with his head bent staring down at his feet, and as she went to push him towards the little table in the corner of the room there came the sound of the bottom staircase door opening, and her chin jerked, then her head moved in a half-circle, nodding in its passage from one shoulder to another.

“They’ve arrived,” she said and marched across the room, pulled open the kitchen door that led into the scullery from where the back stairs dropped, and glared at Mary who was ahead of Alee and demanded,

“Where do you think you’ve been, miss?”

“With me da.” Mary was taking off her hat and coat as she spoke.

“I I met him and went to the allotments with him.”

Went to the allotments! “ Alice retreated back into the room, her hand thrust out towards the table that was set for tea.

“This, madam, is what you are supposed to get ready. You’re supposed to be home here at three.

There’s a pile of ironing. It’s been lying there three days, and’—she now turned her face in the direction of her husband but did not look at him as she ended ‘not a drop of water up. And no coals either. Am I supposed to do it all?”

Alee never spoke. In the scullery he took off his coat and cap, hung them on the back of the st airhead door, went to the table under the little window on which stood a tin dish and an enamel jug of water and, pouring some water in the dish, he washed his hands, rubbed the back of his clean hand over his mouth, then rubbed his damp palm over the surface of his hair, after which he went into the kitchen and silently took his place at the table.

The table was well equipped for a mid-week tea in these

time^. There was a large loaf of new bread, a big square of marge on a glass dish; another glass dish holding plum jam, and a plate on which there were some thin slices of pale brown paste, their edges rimmed with yellow fat.

The tea poured out, the meal continued in silence for some minutes; then Alice, as if there had been no interval in her haranguing, exclaimed. Three times a day, every day in the week, I have to go out, and do I get any hell. “

The crash of Alec’s cup into the saucer startled them all. The tea spilled over on to the clean cloth, and it was this that Alice looked at as he jumped to his feet, crying, “There’s nobody makin’ you go out three times a day! It’s your own bloody choosin’. You break your neck to go out. A ... w!” The sound of his teeth grinding caused Mary to hunch her shoulders and she did not look up as he stalked from the room; she did not look up until she heard the staircase door bang. At the sound, Alice, who for the moment had seemed taken aback by his sudden attack, now got to her feet and yelled in the direction of the scullery, “No need to go out, you say? No need to go out? Bad lookout for everybody in this house if I didn’t go out. Bare legs and empty bellies it would be for the lot of you!... And you’—she turned on Mary who was rising from the table ‘where do you think you’re going?”

“Just into the room.” Mary’s voice was flat.

“You’ll sit down and finish your tea.”

“I don’t want any tea.”

“You’ll do what I say.” Alice’s hand on Her shoulder thrust her down on to the chair, and the impact of her spine with the wooden seat made her gasp.

“And when you’re finished you can get that ironin’ done, me lady.” Mary now turned an indignant face up to her mother.

“It’s Tuesday; I go to the pictures on a Tuesday, you know I do.”

“Well, you’re not goin the night then

I am so! “

Alice drew herself up while she glared at her daughter and, her voice low now, she said, “You’ll defy me then?”

Mary turned and looked down at her plate; she bit on her lip, and then she said, “It’s the only night out in the week I have. It’s only threepence, you know it is.”

“Well, this is one night, threepence or sixpence or nothing, you’re not going.” And on this she marched out of the room and into the bedroom, where she grabbed up her coat and came back into the kitchen buttoning it. Looking from one to the other of the solemn figures sitting at the table, she said, “Now I’m tellin’ you; you both know what to do, you the ironing, and you your homework,” and went out.

There was quiet in the kitchen, and the brother and sister did not look at each other but sat staring at their plates for some minutes, before slowly, as if activated by one mind, they started to eat.

When the rain began to pelt against the window, Mary went hurriedly into the scullery, and as quickly came back saying, “He’s gone out without his coat, he’ll get sop pen

“Will I go and look for him and tell him she’s gone?”

Yes, go on, do that. Go up Ellison Street first. He might be standing in one of the shop doorways, the dead shops, or down Ormond Street. “

“Aye. Aye.”

“And here, put your old mac on else you’ll get sop pen an’ all. An’ it’s icy cold.” The boy felt grateful when Mary helped him on with his coat. He didn’t know why this should be for he never felt grateful for the kindnesses received from his mother. He had the same nice feeling when his da said a kind word to him. He knew that his da liked Mary better than he did him, but he didn’t mind that, well not really, for he liked Mary an’ all. Yet he knew he would feel better if his da would take more notice of him, because he thought a lot of his da, no matter what his ma said. It wasn’t his da’s fault that he was out of work, but his ma talked as if it was. There were only four boys in his class with da’s in full-time work. Another two had

da’s on part time; for the rest, they were all in the same boat, so why should his ma go on like she did .

?

He found Alee standing in the doorway of a barricaded shop, a shop that had died when the shipyard died. He went in out of the rain and stood beside him, and, blinking up at him, said, “She’s gone, Da.” Who’s she? The cat’s mother? “

This was an attitude of his da’s he couldn’t quite make out. He said softly, The ma’s gone, Da. “

“That’s better. Don’t they teach you manners at that school?” Jimmy didn’t answer this but said, “Mary said will you come back, she’s keeping the pot hot.” This last was a bit of his own invention, but he felt nice inside because he had thought of it.

Alee looked down on the boy, then he put his hand on his shoulder, and as he felt the porous mac he said, You shouldn’t have come out, you’re wet through. “

“We’re both in the same boat then.” The boy smiled up at him, and now Alee smiled back and cuffed his ear, then they stepped out into the driving rain. It was seven o’clock when Grandma McAlister came.

Mabel McAlister was just an older replica of her daughter. She had the same thin face, sharp-pointed nose, and the same small over-full mouth, a feature that was at variance with her type of face; her hair was pale brown, fine of texture and sparse, and stuck out in wisps from under her blue felt hat; but the face still, held the shadow of a onetime attractiveness.