Martha's Girls (19 page)

*

‘Sheila, what are you doing in there?’ shouted Martha.

From under the stairs came a muffled answer and the sound of a tin bath being dragged.

‘Tell me what you’re looking for. I’ll know where it is.’

‘I’ve got it!’ There was the sound of boxes being moved and Sheila appeared in the doorway carrying an old Crawford’s biscuit tin.

‘Oh Sheila, do you think we should be bothering with all that this year?’

‘What do you mean ‘all that’, Mammy? It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. We’ve got to have some decorations and if no one else is going to put them up then I will.’ She put the box on the table and removed the lid.

‘Don’t be getting all that stuff out!’

‘What’s the matter with everyone in this family? Pat and Peggy have been miserable since the concert, Irene’s got no energy for anything, but at least that’s understandable, and you usually love getting ready for Christmas.’ Sheila stopped. ‘You haven’t made the Christmas cake yet. You’ve always made it by now.’

Martha turned away to rinse her cup in the sink. ‘It’s different this year … you can’t get all the ingredients.’

‘That’s never stopped you before. We have to have a cake!’

Martha stood with her back to Sheila, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I don’t want a cake, or decorations. In fact, I don’t want Christmas at all,’ she said softly.

‘Mammy, what’s the matter?’

‘I can’t face it. I just can’t!’ Martha covered her eyes with the heels of her hands. Sheila watched her mother’s shoulders heave as each sob escaped her lips. When she spoke again her voice was low and Sheila strained to catch her words. ‘I don’t want Christmas … all the cooking, cleaning, trying to make everyone happy. For two pins I’d lock myself in my room and not come out ‘til January.’

‘But sure you love all the fuss and the preparations. Remember last year when Daddy said not to bother yourself with Christmas pudding and trifle? And you said: Christmas comes but once a year and didn’t Jesus’ birth warrant a bit of effort.’

Martha spoke softly, ‘And now Daddy’s gone, what kind of Christmas are we to endure without him?’

Now Sheila understood.

Martha went on, ‘What are we to do? Put on paper hats, pull crackers and sing carols round the piano without him?’

‘Yes.’ Sheila held her mother’s damp hands. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do and we’ll imagine that Daddy’s here somewhere at home with us, smiling and watching everything we do. And he won’t be sad when he sees us. He’ll be happy that we are living our lives and his dying isn’t hanging over us like a black cloud.’

Martha looked at her hands clasped in Sheila’s and not for the first time she was taken aback by the eloquence of her youngest daughter. ‘But it’ll be so hard.’

‘That’s why you have to make up your mind to do it. You have to show us how to behave; how to deal with the fact that Daddy isn’t carving the turkey or leaning on the piano singing ‘Oh, Come All Ye Faithful’. We’ve got through these last few months because you’ve shown us how.’

‘Aye that’s as maybe, but there’s something else. I didn’t want to tell you girls … I kept hoping something would turn up.’ Sheila heard the hard edge to her mother’s voice.

‘What is it, Mammy, what’s happened?’

Martha crossed to the high mantelpiece and felt for the brown envelope she’d hidden there. Without speaking, she handed it to Sheila who removed the white sheet of paper. The typing was sparse and in capital letters, full of its own importance. Beneath the heading ‘Royal Victoria Hospital’ it read ‘Reminder’, followed by ‘Unpaid Invoice’. Sheila had never heard the word invoice before, but a quick scan of the remaining words and the total £5/10/- at the end made the letter’s purpose clear.

‘Why do we owe all this money?’

‘We have to pay for the penicillin that saved Irene’s life and the advice of the consultant who wanted to remove Irene’s hand which, thank the Lord, we didn’t take!’

‘Do we have to pay it?’

‘I’m afraid so and within five days.’

‘Why can’t we just ignore it?’

‘Because, Sheila, you have to pay your debts in this life, for sooner or later they’ll catch up with you and twice the size they were.’

‘But have we got the money?’

In reply, Martha again stood on tiptoe, took the coronation tea caddy from the mantelpiece and emptied the contents on to the table. ‘There’s nearly four pounds there in change; I’ve been saving a little each week since last Christmas. Lately I’ve had to dip into it, but I thought four pounds wisely spent would make Christmas a bit more bearable. Now it’ll have to go towards paying the bill.’

‘Ach, Mammy, sure we don’t need special things at Christmas. A plate of champ will do rightly. We can make our own entertainment like we always do. It’ll be fine, so it will.’

Martha breathed deeply and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. ‘Aye, well it’ll have to be, won’t it? I’ll go down town tomorrow to see what I can pick up cheap at the last minute before the shops close. Now promise me you won’t say anything to your sisters about this.’ She replaced the bill on the mantelpiece. ‘Especially not Irene.’

‘Of course I won’t. We’ll manage, I know we will and I’ll take a run down to the McCracken’s this afternoon; they’re putting together people’s orders for tomorrow, they might pay me a little bit to help. Should I put the kettle on for a wee drink of tea before I go?’

‘Thanks, you’re a good girl. I’ll just get a breath of fresh air.’ Martha went out the back door and into the garden.

Sheila busied herself with cups and saucers, but images of a bleak, miserable Christmas flitted in and out of her head. So too did the realisation that her mother had shared her worries with her as though she was a grown up, an equal. While the kettle boiled, Martha made a tour of the garden, stopping to check on some staking then turning to look back at the house from chimney to doorstep. Sheila, at the window, raised the teapot and Martha acknowledged it with a wave of her hand.

*

The days had grown steadily colder as Christmas approached. Outside the City Hall flower sellers supplemented late autumn chrysanthemums with sprigs of holly and mistletoe, and the man who played the saw offered carols in return for loose change. But Peggy’s routine was unchanged. She sat on the bench under Queen Victoria’s statue in the gardens and seethed at the sight of meat paste on her sandwiches.

‘You’ve a bake on ye like someone who’s lost a ten bob note an’ found a ha’penny!’

She turned away from the voice and studied a flock of starlings lifting off the lawn into the deepening grey sky.

‘Cat got your tongue, again?’

She felt the slats under her shift as he sat down, sensed the slide of his arm along the back of the bench and his weight leaning into it.

‘You got home all right then the other night?’

‘No thanks to you!’ she screamed in her head.

‘Peggy, Pet … I don’t know what to say. I had something important to do … just couldn’t get out of it.’ He laughed then, a quick nervous laugh. ‘More than my life was worth.’

The starlings wheeled in a wide arc and disappeared behind the green dome.

‘I’m sorry, Peggy, really sorry. Do you think you could give me another chance?’ The slats shifted, his arm moved further along the bench. ‘I’ve got tickets for the big Christmas Eve dance tomorrow at the Plaza Ballroom. Like gold dust they are.’ He rushed on, promise following promise. ‘We’ll go for a meal, drink champagne. What do you say, Peggy?’

The starlings reappeared, stretched to a streak of black, then regrouped to swoop low towards the lawns again. It seemed to Peggy that something else had also lifted and settled with subtle shifts imperceptible to all but her. She turned to Harry. ‘On Christmas Eve I’ll be at home with my family, not gadding about the city with the likes of you.’

*

Martha spent the afternoon mopping the oilcloth and washing down the paintwork with a damp cloth dipped in carbolic. Around four, Betty rapped on the kitchen window and, with a wave of her arm and a tilt of her head in the direction of her house, invited Martha to join her. At Betty’s back door lay a bundle of glossy green holly tied up with twine.

‘That’s for you to take home. Jack cut it this morning. Best crop of berries in years he says and you know what they say about berries on holly?’ Martha looked uncertain. ‘It’ll be a long, hard winter! As if it won’t be bad enough with a war on, shortages of food and, Lord bless us, maybe bombs too, without being up to our oxters in snow as well!’ Betty’s tone changed. ‘I’ve a wee treat for you, so I have.’ On the table was a tray set with two tiny glasses. ‘Will you have a glass of port with me?’

Betty was already pouring when Martha exclaimed. ‘Oh no I couldn’t, sure you know I don’t drink.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t normally myself, but my brother bought it for me and it is nearly Christmas.’ She handed Martha the glass and, as there was hardly more that a tablespoonful in it, Martha took a small sip.

‘Were you doing a bit of sewing there, Betty?’ A man’s shirt lay on top of a needle work box on the table.

Betty pulled a face. ‘Never much of a sewer at the best of times and here I was tryin’ to turn the collar on Jack’s favourite shirt. Sure the whole thing was frayed and the shirt itself as good as new. I got the collar off all right, but getting it back on the other way around has me beat!’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’ Martha had given many of Robert’s shirts a new lease of life by turning the collar and it wasn’t long before she’d unpicked the clumsy stitches and started again with new thread in a smaller needle and a copper thimble on her finger. As Martha worked, Betty relaxed, sipped her port and chatted about Jack and his vegetable garden. Around five Martha finished the collar. ‘There you are, Betty. Good as a ten shilling new one from Spackman’s!’

‘Oh you’re a marvel, Martha, right enough! Hang on a wee minute. I’ve something for you.’

Irene was the first to arrive home. She bounded up the stairs two at a time shouting ‘Mammy’ at the top of her voice. Martha was getting the good tablecloth out of the hot press.

‘I see you’ve got some of your energy back today.’

‘I have and something else as well. Close your eyes.’

‘Ach come on, Irene. What is it?’

‘No. You have to close your eyes.’

Martha played along.

‘Now hold out your hands.’

‘Irene, what—’

‘No, you have to do it.’

Martha’s squeezed her eyes tight; her hands shook a little in anticipation. She felt something being placed across her palms and waited for the instruction.

‘You can open them now!’

The notes were grubby and crumpled, but their value unmistakable. Five one pound notes. A fortune.

‘Irene, where did you get—’

‘I pawned the sari.’

‘What!’ Martha looked from the notes to Irene. ‘Why?’

‘I know about the hospital bill. I found it on the mantelpiece … I couldn’t let you pay it.’

‘But we’d have managed.’

‘Not at Christmas, Mammy. It’ll be hard enough as it is.’

Martha hugged her eldest daughter. ‘You’re a good girl, Irene. We’ll find a way to get you your sari back, I promise you. Now come downstairs and I’ll show you what Betty’s given us.’ Martha opened the cool cupboard under the sink to reveal carrots, sprouts and potatoes, the latter still caked in earth. ‘That’s two gifts today,’ she laughed. ‘I can’t wait to see if there’s a third on its way!’

*

The sitting room was cosy and festive by the time Sheila arrived home. Peggy, wearing an old pair of leather gloves, had trimmed and shaped the holly and hung it in graceful boughs from the picture rail. Irene had begged a branch from the spruce in the McKee’s garden and she and Pat were decorating it with baubles.

Sheila stood in the doorway, giving off the chill of the outside air. Her navy nap coat was buttoned right up to her collar. They hardly looked at her, intent as they were with the decorations. She smiled uncertainly and carefully untied her headscarf. Pat stepped away from the tree and turned to choose a bauble from the tin. She froze. She stared. The warm languid air was instantly charged as each of them turned to the stranger in their midst. She was much younger, her eyes huge, ears tiny and perfectly shaped so close to her head. Her hair was darker and cropped like a boy’s. Martha was the first to move, instinctively knowing what had happened and why. Sheila held out a tin of biscuits. ‘The McCrackens sent you these, Mammy.’ Martha took them from her, set them down and began unbuttoning Sheila’s coat.