A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (21 page)

Alice immediately said, ‘It's on me shelf upstairs.'

Martha looked surprised that she had not brought the letter down with her, so Alice added apologetically, ‘I got to give it to Patrick only. His Nibs has got me name down in his notebook, seeing as I took it in.'

‘Tosh! I'm as good as Patrick. You can give it to me.'

‘I'd better not, Martha. I don't want no trouble with the Post Office. And you might open it.'

That was exactly what Martha wanted to do. ‘I wouldn't do nothing like that, I wouldn't,' she wheedled.

‘No,' said Alice again. ‘His Nibs trusted me.'

Martha's face darkened, so Alice hastened to add, ‘I'm sorry, Martha.'

Martha crossly threw her basket into a corner and went over to the range. She picked up the poker and attacked a few smouldering embers. Then she took some small lumps of coal from the box and laid them very carefully on top.

‘I don't see why not,' she snarled at Alice.

Mary Margaret dropped her sewing into her lap. The last thing she wanted was a quarrel between two of her friends; she could not bear the stress of it.

Anxious to placate, she said, ‘Martha, love, it won't be long till Pat comes in – and the kids will come back from school any minute now. Let's have a cuppa tea and enjoy it while we got a bit of peace. Never mind the letter.'

Martha swung the hob with the kettle on it over the fire. Her lower lip stuck out belligerently, as she said, ‘I want to know what's in it.'

Mary Margaret laughed gently. ‘We all want to know. But Alice is right, you know. His Nibs did trust her – if Pat complained that you opened it, you never know what might happen.

‘There's Theresa now. She sometimes gets letters about her pension; if she wasn't home, rather than
chance leaving letters with someone, His Nibs might send them back. He'd say he couldn't find her. Her pension would stop, sure as fate, while They checked that she was still alive.'

The kettle began to sing. ‘Well, he's stupid. He can trust anybody in this house,' Martha responded sharply, knowing full well that she was lying through her teeth.

‘Love,' Mary Margaret pleaded. ‘You might get it from Patrick if you open his letter. And I couldn't bear for you to get a black eye. You couldn't read it, anyway; I'd have to – and if he were angry enough, he might hit me.'

Martha paused, teapot in hand. Mary Margaret was right – and a blow might kill her friend.

She said with a wry grin to Alice, ‘Aye, none of us wants a beating. Would you like a cup of tea before you go back up?'

‘No, ta. I left Mike eating his tea. I'd better go.' And she thankfully ran back upstairs.

‘Where you bin?' asked Mike.

‘Oh, I just got caught by a bit of gossip from Mary Margaret. The school attendance man's after her to send Dollie to school.'

‘Humph.'

Downstairs, apart from Martha being rather short in her responses to Mary Margaret's efforts at
placating gossip, they did have a peaceful cup of tea.

The rattle of cups woke Number Nine. He stretched and exposed his bare bottom. Then he turned over, arched his back, and unexpectedly produced a spray of water over the women's skirts.

‘Jamie,' screamed his mother, giving him his correct name to show her displeasure.

Unable to do anything else to stop the tide, he hastily turned onto his stomach again and soaked the coat under him.

Mary Margaret began to laugh, and soon both women and Dollie were laughing.

Number Nine giggled.

Assured that he would not be scolded further, he finished his peeing and scrambled to his feet. His distended stomach glistened with wet.

He caught his mother's damp skirt. ‘Butties?' he asked innocently.

The women were convulsed with merriment.

July to September 1939

When the daylight failed, Mary Margaret and Dollie packed up their sewing and went upstairs to their room, where, by the light of a candle, Mary Margaret gave her children some bread to eat. Then she and Dollie, crouched together by the candle, began again to sew.

Soon after Mary Margaret had left, Martha's children ate their tea of bread and margarine, and went out to play in the court.

‘Now you, Kathleen, get out there and watch they don't go out of the court – it's getting dark.'

‘Oh, Mam!' wailed Kathleen. She always felt tired these days.

‘Shut up and get going.'

Kathleen went.

A few minutes later, a weary and irate Patrick came home. He passed his children without a word; Kathleen shuffled to one side of the step to allow him to pass her, but kept her head down.

Feeling the benefit of more money in the house, Martha had fed both the children and herself more generously, and she was in a better mood.

For Patrick, she had stewed some minced beef and baked two potatoes: this repast had been intended for his midday dinner. But he had done a full day's work and, at midday, he had not returned; instead, he had bought a sandwich at Meg's cocoa room. She now produced his plate from the oven, where it had been warming up for the past hour.

As usual, he did not greet her. He merely sat down on the chair and slowly took off his boots and tossed them into the hearth. His bare feet looked red and swollen.

As she sat on a box and watched him eat, his wife did not say a word about the letter. After the hubbub of the dockside, the silence was welcome to him.

When he had finished, he handed her the empty plate. Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. In the warmth of the fire, he was about to drift off to sleep, when Martha remarked casually,
‘Alice has got a letter for you. The postman asked her to take it in, 'cos I was out.'

Patrick's eyes opened slowly, but when the import of the remark sank in, he jerked upright, his fatigue forgotten. ‘A letter? You don't say?'

Martha smiled a little grimly. ‘She has, and – you'll never believe it – she wouldn't give it to me. The postman wrote down her name and she was afraid he wouldn't trust her again, if she give it to anybody else.'

‘Humph.' He rose slowly to his feet, and leaned down to retrieve his boots from the hearth. ‘Who's it from? Do you know?'

‘Town hall,' she replied. ‘Hope it's not an eviction.' She kept her voice calm, though she was on tenterhooks.

He shrugged, and slipped his feet into his boots. Anything was possible: you never knew what They would hit you with next. Without another word, he went slowly through to the hall and then she heard him clumping up the stairs.

She was frantic to know what the letter portended and she felt that, just to be awkward, he might keep the information from her, so she let him get to the foot of the second flight and then quietly followed him.

He knocked on Alice's door, and on hearing her
response, he opened it and walked in. The room was dimly lit by a candle.

Mike raised a hand in lazy salute, and said, ‘I just heard you got an invite from the Mayor asking you to tea!'

A vastly interested Alice smiled and hastily took the letter down from the shelf. She handed it to him. Patrick grinned slowly, and said ‘Ta' to her. As he walked past her towards Mike and the candle, he tore open the envelope.

Martha slipped in through the open door. She winked at Alice. In perfect silence all three watched, as Patrick unfolded a single sheet of paper and began slowly to spell it out to himself.

Alice could read well and she longed to snatch it off him and run through it more quickly; nevertheless, wanting to be polite, she remained quiet.

‘Well, I'll be buggered!' he finally exclaimed.

‘What is it?' hissed Martha.

‘It's a job – for a fireman. It's not from the town hall, it's from the municipal offices.'

‘Temporary?' queried Mike promptly.

Patrick agreed, and continued to stare at his letter.

Alice noticed that Martha was puzzled by the emphasis on the job's being temporary, so she explained. ‘The City's near stony broke, love. So
they won't want to pay for, say, a pension scheme for you.' She paused, and then said thoughtfully, ‘They don't have to pay nothing but the wages, if they make all new workers into temporary, even if they're not. I read it in the paper a long time back.'

Patrick sank down on the corner of Mike's bed. He looked at Alice and handed her the letter. ‘Could you read it to me, Missus, to make sure I got it right?' he asked quite humbly.

Delighted to have her superior abilities acknowledged, Alice took it from him, while Mike remarked with a nod towards her, ‘She's a real good reader, she is. Loves a love letter.'

Alice laughed, as she perused the short epistle. ‘This isn't no love letter – my bad luck! But you're right, Pat. The job's yours, if you can do the training and pass the physical exam. Three pounds a week to start, and all.'

Martha looked at Pat, stupefied. ‘Three pound a week? Every week?'

‘Yes,' confirmed Alice.

‘It's like winning the pools!' burst out Martha.

Alice laughed again, and went on, ‘It says that a councillor who knows him has been kind enough to recommend him.'

Mike snorted with amusement. ‘No names, no
pack drill! Since when has you been hobnobbing with 'igh society, Patrick, me lad?'

‘Must be the councillor I hauled out of the river. I thought he'd forgotten me.'

‘When've you got to go?' asked Martha, her mind already running over the question of a new shirt and some socks.

‘Next Thursday,' replied a bewildered Pat. ‘I got to think about it, though.' His main thought was that Martha would, if he took the job, know exactly what he earned – and that could make life difficult.

‘Who signed it?' asked Mike.

Alice peered at the signature. ‘It says Per pro J. Brown, Civil Defence Service. Never heard that name before, have you?'

‘Nope,' replied Mike. ‘Except Civil Defence Service is a set-up to make ready for a war, I know that: BBC said so. Extra police an' all that, and firemen and air-raid wardens and rescue service. It'll be shift work, sure to be.'

Patrick continued to sit quietly on Mike's bed, while the rest of them discussed his future. He saw himself toiling for eight hours a day, with no hope of going to the races when he felt worn out; he wasn't sure that he wanted that. He glanced apprehensively at his wife. He knew what she was thinking: he'll be a walking bank!

He got up slowly, and said, ‘Ta, ever so,' to Alice, who handed his letter back to him. Then he looked down at Mike. ‘See you later, maybe.' He sighed heavily. ‘It's a big change. I got to think about it.'

‘Think about it, my foot!' muttered Martha, as, after saying goodbye, she flew down the stairs after him like a flapping raven after a piece of meat.

It took about ten minutes for the news to percolate throughout the court.

1965

Early one chilly, overcast morning, just after breakfast, feeling hopelessly overworked and very frustrated herself, Angie addressed her favourite patient rather irritably when she found her crying.

A weeping patient was not that unusual, and Angie asked mechanically, ‘Now, what's up, Martha?'

She set down a basin of warm water on the commode by Martha's bed, preparatory to helping her wash herself.

‘I was thinking,' replied Martha with a huge sobbing sigh. ‘Just thinking.'

‘Well, there's nothing wrong with thinking, is there? Here's the flannel. Come on now, wash your face and maybe you'll feel better.'

Martha sat up and reluctantly folded back the
bedclothes. She rolled her tiny body to the edge of the bed, so that her spindly legs dangled over the side. She took the wet flannel and slowly ran it round her face and neck.

‘I was wishing I could read and write. Then I could write a letter – if I had paper and a pencil and a stamp.'

‘You mean you can't write?' Angie took the face flannel away and handed a piece of soap to Martha. ‘Hands next.'

‘No. Lots of women like me can't read nor write.'

She obediently soaped her hands, rinsed them in the bowl of water, and dried them on a towel. Slow, hopeless tears ran down her cheeks and she hardly saw how tired the black face before her was.

‘Well, bless me, I didn't know that. Put your towel under you, now,' Angie instructed her, as she vigorously soaped the flannel again; she was obviously not very interested in Martha's lack of basic education. ‘Let's do your underneaths.'

Though Martha had all her life accepted being humiliated by others, nothing made her feel worse than opening her legs in front of various carers, even a doctor.

She sometimes complained that, ‘Even me hubby never seen me in me skin.'

She did her best, however, to wipe herself clean without soaking the undersheet on the bed. Then, as she dabbed herself dry, she tried to stop weeping. She wiped her runny nose on the towel, before handing it back to Angie.

‘Could you write a letter for me, to my Jamie, Angie? He's in Manchester.'

‘I don't have time nor money even to write to me own friends, dear. Ask Matron.'

If Angie dared to do anything extra for a patient, she envisioned, an enraged Matron might dismiss her for wasting time. In addition, if she found out about a letter, she might not like whatever message or complaint was escaping from her domain, and blame the aide for any subsequent trouble. It was safer to refuse.

A little more awake after her wash, Martha was smart enough to realise Angie's fear of her own Them. A black immigrant would have to watch what she did.

‘It's OK, Angie. I just wondered,' she said.