A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (16 page)

The ship's master, anxious to sail, was quite thankful to have his crew completed so quickly. The ship's agents, to whom they had hastened next, were even more so; the demurrage bill was mounting up.

With a sly grin, Thomas reflected that Sam had
earned the grand evening they had had together on the twenty-five per cent in cash advanced by old Grossi.

Mary Margaret lay flat on her bed and considered resentfully how the money left over from getting the kit out of pawn and buying any extra necessities from old Grossi would have helped to feed the kids for the eight weeks before Thomas could earn another month's wages.

At the end of eight weeks, she herself would receive part of his wages from the shipping company as an allotment. At best, when a man was at sea, you delayed the rent payment and lived on credit. You also scratted around for any job you could get yourself – because the allotment was never enough: you were dependent upon your man reaching home again with the balance of his earnings nearly intact, so that you could face the rent man and the corner store and pay your debts.

She gave no consideration to the sickness there had been aboard ship. Sickness was as common in ships as it was ashore – as Martha had reminded her after the nurse's visit, when she had been talking about how tuberculosis could be spread by a seaman.

‘What time you got to show up tomorrow?' Her voice was dull and listless.

‘Seven o'clock.'

Thomas laid his head on the table and suddenly succumbed to sleep. He dreamed a frightening dream of the hell of heat he would work in for the next few months. As a trimmer, he would shovel the coal to the firemen, who would feed it into the huge furnace in the bowels of the ship. In up to 140 degrees of heat, he would work to exhaustion.

It was an Australian ship working its way back to Sydney, he comforted himself as he half awoke in a panic, something he had not told Mary Margaret. It belonged to a small company which tramped between Australia and England. It was known to be fair to its crew and, according to Sam, the food was not bad either.

He dozed again and the dream continued. In it, he realised that he was too old to stand the stress of the job. He saw himself die and then fly through the sky to Australia, where, unexpectedly resurrected, he stayed and picked apples for a peaceful, cool living amid a myriad of trees in full leaf.

As loud snores erupted from her husband, Mary Margaret knew that he would never, if left to himself, wake up in time to join his ship in the morning.

It was too late in the evening to ask Martha to give him a call when the knocker-up roused her.
Since her own alarm clock, though it still ticked, had long since given up on its alarm settings, she dared not sleep.

She must dispatch him in time; a seaman who missed his boat could be in real deep trouble, no matter what his excuse: it was the law.

Despite a night which stretched her endurance to the limit, she finally surrendered to slumber; it was Dollie and Connie fighting over their blanket who actually woke Thomas in time.

October 1938

By half past five, in response to the knocker-up, Martha was shaking Patrick and the children awake. She wanted time to go down to the garage near the Pier Head to peddle her rags and, perhaps, if she had enough stock, do a bit more at the market. Since it was Saturday, Patrick, also, must collect his week's earnings.

Patrick met Thomas by the water pump in the court, as they went to splash their faces in its icy water. The seaman had a blinding headache as a result of his spree with Sam Molloy the previous evening.

As they roughly shaved themselves with their long-bladed, cutthroat razors, both complained that their razors needed stropping and wished
that they had some soap. Pat told his neighbour that his strop was still useable and that Thomas could come in, any time, to sharpen his razor; he said he had forgotten to sharpen his own the previous night.

As he rinsed and folded his razor, Thomas mentioned that he had a ship.

‘Oh, aye? That's good.' Patrick took off his flat cap, and ran his hands through his unruly curly hair in the hope of arranging it to cover his bald patch. Before replacing his cap, he thoughtfully twisted the ends of his droopy moustache. ‘There's a right collection of boats in this week. More than I seen for years.'

‘You're right, Pat.'

‘War's coming.'

Thomas nodded. ‘Heard from the old woman, months ago, that they was going to build an air-raid shelter on the street. They haven't got round to it yet, though.'

Other men and women were appearing on their doorsteps to peer up at the leaden sky, before going to the latrines. Patrick and Thomas hastened to these filthy conveniences, before a queue should form.

Then, still together, they clumped back to their home, two comparatively young men already bent
and greying, and, as usual, hungry.

Thomas slipped his razor into his kitbag and tightened the rope that held it closed. He ate the cold soup for breakfast.

With a stub of pencil stolen by Dollie from school and by the light of the last candle, he wrote down in large print on the margin of an old sheet of newspaper the name of his ship and that of its agents with their address.

He repeated this aloud for Theresa, who, like Martha, could not read.

‘I'll try to fix it so you can collect the allotment instead of Mary Margaret,' he told his mother-in-law with a yawn. ‘I don't know for sure, with a foreign company, how to fix it – but Sam Molloy will know.'

Lying on her bed, absolutely exhausted from her broken night's sleep, Mary Margaret missed the significance of her husband's boat being a foreign tramp.

Though it was obvious from Thomas's remarks that Sam Molloy, a Liverpool man, had served for some time on it, it did not mean that the boat would necessarily return to Liverpool. It could wander from port to port, picking up and delivering cargoes wherever they could be found: Thomas could be away for six months or even a year.

At her husband's promise about the allotment, Mary Margaret relaxed slightly. Her mother was the only person in the world she would trust with her allotment money. Furthermore, she was sure that, if need be, Theresa was capable of standing up to some irate clerk in the shipping company's office who might query her being there instead of Mary Margaret herself.

Facing up to shipping clerks was no joy to the barely literate, smelly wives of some of the crews. At best, the clerks were patronising; at worst, they were quite ill-tempered.

Mary Margaret smirked as she remembered how the wives, shuffling along in the queue, occasionally retaliated by making snide, disparaging remarks about the manhood of the men on the other side of the mahogany counter.

The innuendos did not endear them to the shipping company staff, still less did the stench which rolled across the counter.

Thomas kissed Dollie goodbye on the top of her head, because her mouth was full of bread. The bread had been donated the previous evening by the O'Brien sisters: with more ships coming into port there were more seamen, so they were doing very well, and could afford to be generous.

Dollie stopped munching and stared balefully up at her father before she turned her back on him. He picked up Minnie, who was still clutching her morning crust, and kissed her on her cheek. He dealt similarly with Connie, who was thankful he was going away.

Sensing that something unusual was happening, Minnie broke into frightened howls.

‘Be quiet, can't you?' hissed Theresa. She stood in the background, hands folded under her black shawl, looking resentfully at her three grand-children, aware of the responsibilities likely to be thrust upon her.

Thomas ignored the wailing. He hesitated by the bed and said heavily to his wife, ‘You'll be all right with Theresa here.'

‘I suppose so.' Didn't the fool understand that she might not be here when he came back? Didn't he realise that she didn't know whether she was going to be able to keep the family fed for the next eight weeks – without the strength to work herself or get help from Them? She was not like Martha, who could take things day by day. Martha had the strength to do it. She had not.

She thought wearily that he was a typical seaman, shaking off the responsibilities of home the minute he had a ship. He'd never be any different. She
closed her eyes. Afraid of infection, he did not kiss her.

Guilt-ridden, not knowing what else to do, he turned, hoisted up his kitbag, and left her.

‘Goodbye, everybody,' he shouted towards Theresa, as he opened the door to the oakum pickers' room.

Awakened by Minnie's howls, Phoebe and Sheila were not yet up. They muttered a malediction at Thomas's passing through and at the noise coming from both the Connolly and Flanagan families. Then they groaned as they turned over and tried to sleep again for another half-hour.

En route out of the front door of the house, Thomas shouted goodbye to Martha and Patrick.

The Connolly door was hastily opened and the whole family surged out to shout farewell and good wishes. Getting a ship at last was stupendous luck for Thomas, they agreed.

The noise caused further havoc to the hopes of sleep for everybody in the house. This cheerful sendoff, however, raised Thomas's spirits considerably.

Patrick turned back to deal with the chaos in his own home. ‘Lucky devil,' he muttered.

Mary Margaret listened to the noise, trembling with weakness.

‘What am I going to do, Mam?' she asked Theresa frantically. ‘Eight weeks before I see a penny from him!'

In the failing light of the guttering candle Theresa looked down at her daughter, her lips folded in over toothless gums. Her forty-nine years weighed upon her. She had outlived most of her friends, and she was tired of the constant struggle to stay alive. She said dully, ‘I'll get a job, and you can sew your hankies – you could get Dollie on them, too. She can hem.'

‘She won't like that – and neither will the old goat from the school.'

‘Ach, we'll think of something to tell him. And she's got to learn to like it. It's time she worked.'

At these words, Dollie paused, a piece of bread halfway to her mouth. Stay at home all day in Martha's room, stitching and stitching? Not bloody likely. Unless she was paid, which was unlikely.

She glanced up at her stony-faced grandmother, her mouth open to protest. Then she had second thoughts; Gran was a real tartar. She could still deliver a cutting blow to girls who queried what was said.

If she had to stay at home, she would bargain later with her mother about getting some money for her work.

She finished her piece of bread, and then sidled out to visit Bridie Connolly and go out to play in the street, before her grandmother or her mother could order her to do anything else.

October 1938

On the Saturday on which Thomas told him about his finding a berth, Patrick collected half a week's pay. Despite a huge row, Martha had been unable to squeeze all his wages out of him. She decided, therefore, to accompany him to the Coburg that evening to help him spend the portion he had withheld.

First, however, it was vital that she go down the street to pay John O'Reilly at the shop, out of the money her husband had given her. She knew that she must do this; otherwise she might never get credit again.

Then she had to wait for Jock, the rent collector, popularly known as Satan Hisself, to come bicycling into the yard to do his round. She was already
paying off arrears at the rate of a shilling a week and dared not miss another week.

If rent remained unpaid, Satan Hisself's employer had the power to call in the bailiffs to sell the contents of their room, and put the family out of the court: they would be left sitting on the pavement, with little hope of finding local accommodation.

It would be worse than being condemned to Norris Green; at least, if she was moved there by the City, a roof would be provided for them.

Contentedly aware of his threatening nickname, Jock arrived in the late afternoon at Court No. 5.

Martha paid him unsmilingly. She was very weary from the fight she had had with Patrick. The sound of her screams of rage demanding money for plimsolls for Tommy and Joseph had been heard throughout the house, as Patrick woodenly refused. He had a fixed idea that she could conjure up other essentials from her own earnings or from charities.

‘I give you the rent and O'Reilly's bill, plus a bit. You do the rest,' he had snarled.

Fearing that he might beat her if she insisted further, Martha was silenced. She was seething with quiet rage, however, as she turned to Kathleen. The girl had finished gulping down her bread and cold tea, and she ordered her to take Martha's own share upstairs and deliver it to Mary Margaret.

‘With me love, don't forget,' Martha instructed her, as she gathered up Number Nine's leftovers, some of them strewn on the floor, and stuffed them into her own mouth.

Later, Kathleen came slowly back downstairs. Auntie Mary Margaret had accepted the little newspaper-wrapped bundle with suitable thanks.

Martha's room was nearly dark now, lit only by the distant rays of the lamp at the court's entry. It was also cold. Her mother seemed to have forgotten that they had no coal and that, consequently, the fire was out.

‘And, being Saturday, they'll go out tonight,' the girl lamented to herself. ‘Then they'll come back home, the pair of them, so drunk they'll hardly be able to stand on their feet.'

She wondered what it would be like to sit a whole evening in a really warm place like a pub, and get drunk. When she had asked Helen O'Brien whether pubs were warm inside, she had been assured that, indeed, they were. It had sounded most enjoyable.

One night, Helen O'Brien had given her a sip of her evening glass of gin, before the sisters set out on their evening amble in search of seamen just paid off. As usual, they both had their hair done up in neat buns and their faces garishly painted.
To Kathleen, they seemed ghostly in their floured whiteness.