by Martina Cole
‘Where is he, the dirty Irish git? I’ll fucking kill him first, before I let him come to you!’
At that moment the man himself arrived on the doorstep and lifted Madge off the little Irishwoman with easy grace.
‘Calm down, woman. Sure you’re making a show of yourself to the whole street. Have you no shame?’
Cathy pulled her mother from his arms. ‘After her years in the docks, shame is the last thing she’d possess, don’t you think? Well, let me tell you something, Eamonn Docherty - you’re a rotten bastard for doing this to her! And as for her . . .’ She poked Junie in the chest. ‘If that’s what you really want, I wish you well, but she put her old man in the grave and hopefully she’ll do the same thing to you and all. My mother’s worth better than you, you drunken Irish ponce.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better meself,’ Betty chimed in loudly, enjoying the scene they were creating before Junie Blacklock’s neighbours. ‘And if I was you, lady, I’d get yourself to a pox doctor. Docherty’s normally dosed up to the fucking eyebrows!’
Madge was still crying uncontrollably. Pulling herself from her daughter’s arms, she beseeched Eamonn: ‘Please come home, love. We’ll sort everything out, I promise you. Just come home, Eamonn, please come home.’
The big man looked at her in disgust and said through his teeth, ‘Go home, woman. Would you look at yourself for once? What man would want you? Even one like me. You’re an old whore - look like one and smell like one. You’re a disgusting article. Get away out of here now before I put me boot in your arse.’
As he walked back into the house with Junie, his arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, Cathy followed him inside. In the neat and tidy front room she stared around her for a moment in wonder. Through a doorway she could see a polished wooden table set for two people with a holly centrepiece and a proper cloth napkin beside each plate. Everywhere was polished or scrubbed, and the warmth was somehow clean, not the stuffy cloying warmth to be found in her own home. It was a room to aspire to, a room of which Cathy admitted deep inside herself she would love to be mistress. The anger left her abruptly. Who could blame Eamonn for wanting this, laid out on a plate for him, without even having to pay towards the rent? He was a man who used women, lived off them. Junie could offer more than her mother. It was an easy choice to make.
‘Eamonn will bring your clothes round, OK?’
The big man held Junie in his arms and shook his head in distress. ‘I’m sorry for what I said, but you’re a sensible child. You can see how it is.’
Cathy smiled nastily. ‘I can see how it is, all right. You fell on your feet here. I wouldn’t advise knocking her from pillar to post like you did me mother, though. Do you know what I can’t understand in all this?’ She looked into the little woman’s face. ‘I don’t get what it is exactly that you see in him. Because my mum might not be Woman of the Year, I accept that, but I always thought even she was too good for him. He’s Irish scum, lady. But then again, so are you, I suppose.’
She walked out into the hallway. Then: ‘Oh, by the way, you’d better set another place, his son will be here soon. My mum wouldn’t give him house room after this.’
Outside she looked at her mother crumpled in Betty’s arms and felt the first stirrings of a headache. As they walked down the neat pathway to the gate, Cathy glanced at the neighbours standing curiously on their doorsteps. Brazenly she bent down and picked up a stone, hurling it through the front window of the neat and tidy little house.
‘Had a look, have you? Want a bleeding photograph!’ she called to the onlookers.
Betty, despite herself, started to laugh. ‘You’re a girl, Cathy Connor, and no mistake.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, that’s Christmas fucked. Another fun day in the Connor household. Here, give me an arm and I’ll help you carry her home.’
The three women walked along with as much dignity as they could muster, which as they all secretly acknowledged wasn’t much.
Eamonn Junior had left and Madge was in bed sleeping off the bottle of Scotch she had put away soon after getting home. Cathy tidied round and then, finding she was hungry, opened the oven door.
All that was left of the chicken was the bones: Eamonn had picked the bird clean. Putting her head in her hands, she cried.
Looking around the tiny cramped kitchen, with the damp on the walls and the faded lino on the floor, Cathy Connor saw the rest of her life.
In her mind’s eye, she saw once again the tidy house with its clean curtains, polished furniture and newly papered walls. Eamonn would be in his element there after years sleeping in a bed piled high with coats, her own haphazard cleaning and her mother’s cloying scent pervading the house. The boy would think he had died and gone to heaven.
Much as she hated to admit it, Cathy envied him.
Junie was over the worst of her shock, and a few sherries later was dishing up the dinner and chatting twenty to the dozen about how everything would be grand. Madge would understand now, and they could start life together in peace.
Young Eamonn’s eyes nearly popped from his head as a plate was piled high for him with turkey, stuffing, carrots, cabbage and roast potatoes. He saw his father smile and smiled back happily. After wolfing down the turkey dinner, he was further amazed to see a huge sherry trifle brought wobbling to the table in Junie’s capable hands. Thanking God that he had finally landed on his feet, he’d polished off two bowls before his father admitted defeat and retired upstairs with Junie ‘for a rest’.
Turning on the brand new television set, the boy sat and laughed at Tony Hancock. He was cracking nuts and drinking a beer when Junie came down in her dressing gown.
Taking the cut-glass bowl from his lap, she replaced it on the sideboard. Grim-faced she slid a doily under the glass he used for his beer and peered at him closely.
‘Let’s get this straight first off, young man. You are here on sufferance because your father’s here. I’ll feed you and water you, and we’ll be civil. But you don’t touch anything in this house without my express permission. Do you understand me?’
Eamonn Junior looked into her cold grey eyes and nodded.
‘Now get yourself up and have a bath, you smell of the slums, boy. In future you’ll bathe twice a week and you’ll leave your boots outside the front door. And if you don’t like it . . . well, you know what you can do, don’t you? Your father burned his boats today. If I give you both your marching orders, what else is there for you? Think on that.’
In the shiny bathroom, Eamonn thought of sausage sandwiches and Madge’s haphazard attentions and realised that he had been better off where he was. His dad was doing all right, but what was there in all this for him, he wondered. The old biddy didn’t like him, and he certainly didn’t like her.
Downstairs he could hear his father’s booming laughter. Eamonn shuddered. He was missing the old place already. For all the niceness of this house, he knew he’d never be welcome. Hadn’t June gone out of her way to tell him he was only here on sufferance?
When he arrived downstairs, she was all sweetness and light, making them turkey sandwiches and cups of sweet tea. When she finally went out to the kitchen to wash up, Eamonn Senior looked at his son and said with pride: ‘I’m for marrying her, son.’
The boy laughed softly. ‘You’re joking, Dad!’
His father frowned. ‘What’s to joke about? Are you blind or something? Look around you, for Christ Himself’s sake. We’re well set on here, you fecking eejit!’
The boy shook his head and sighed. ‘And you called poor old Madge a whore! You’re no better. You lived off her and now you’ll live off this one.’
His father’s expression changed then, a subtle change that told Eamonn he had better watch his step. His father was still on his best behaviour but he’d hammer the boy if the need arose.
‘And you’re no better than me. You’ve always looked out for number one, and no doubt you always will. I’d exchange you in the morning for young Cathy
, because she’s got more heart than you’ll ever have. Madge will be all right all the time she has Cathy to look out for her. I only wish I’d been blessed with such a child, because you’d see me dying and look for the angle before offering me help!’
Eamonn Junior stared at his father. ‘Well, I had a good teacher, didn’t I?’
The big man was not offended. He nodded solemnly. ‘Aye, son, you did that. If I gave you nothing else, I gave you a shrewd brain.’
Junie bustled into the room once more, pleased as punch to have the big Irish navvy sitting in her late husband’s chair. Smiling at him, she settled into her own and began to sew, humming softly under her breath.
Eamonn watched his father put away beer after beer and sandwich after sandwich. Looking round the room, he costed up everything in his head. One day, when he was older, he’d clear this place out and leave the pair of them with nothing.
The thought cheered him, more so when he saw his father making sheep’s eyes at the little dark-haired widow with her soft Irish accent and heart of steel.
Later, lying between the crisp white sheets of a proper bed, he decided to go round to Madge’s the next day. He’d eat and sleep here, but he wouldn’t forego Madge’s and Cathy’s attention. In this house he’d be starved of it. That old bitch would launch him out like a rocket given half a chance.
But he’d play the pair of them at their own game, and bide his time. He wasn’t the son of Eamonn Docherty for nothing. As he had said to his father earlier, he’d had a very good teacher.
Betty, in a bid to cheer up her friend, had rustled up two men of indeterminate age and occupation. Both wore suspenders on their socks and both had brightly coloured braces, National Health false teeth and thinning hair. Their names were Charlie and Bill. Charlie was obviously a regular customer of Betty’s, and as such felt he was in charge. As he topped up her mother’s glass, he winked jovially at Cathy.
‘What did you get for Christmas, love?’
Cathy looked into his cold eyes and said quietly, ‘What I get every year. Sweet fuck all.’
Charlie grinned and gave his exaggerated wink once more. Grabbing the front of his trousers, he said loudly: ‘I’ve got something here for you, if you think you can handle it.’
Cathy rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘Leave it where it is, little boy. I want nourishment not punishment!’
Madge and Betty roared with laughter.
Bill, realising what the girl had said, put in, ‘She’s a bit knowing, ain’t she?’
‘Oh, leave her alone, you two. She’s only twelve.’
‘Big girl for twelve, if you ask me.’
Betty turned on the man beside her and cried, ‘Well, no one is asking you, are they? Cut her a bit of slack, for Christ’s sake.’
But there was an underlying note of jealousy in the woman’s voice and Cathy got up and walked out. Pulling a dresser against her bedroom door, she began to tidy up her room. Hearing the radio and the laughter in the background, she sighed heavily. Another man and her mother was the old Madge once more. Tomorrow she’d be crying and threatening suicide again, but for the moment all was well with her.
Looking out of the window Cathy saw all the neighbours’ Christmas trees and the warm glow from the fairy lights around them and wondered what it must be like to live in a normal household, with a normal mother and father and a normal life.
Closing her eyes, she bit back tears. She was missing Eamonn badly. For the last seven Christmases they had been together, the two of them against the world - or against their parents anyway. She could put up with anything if he was there beside her. Now they were parted and she wasn’t sure she could cope. He was her ally, her brother, her friend. Eamonn was everything to her.
In the front room she heard a glass break, and a man swearing, then loud laughter once more. This would be her life from now on - she had to accept that or go mad.
It would be back to the bad old days of errant men, haphazard money, and the phantom pregnancies her mother suffered every few months. Back to prying money from Madge to provide food and warmth. Back to listening to the groans and snores of men she would never see again, if God were good. Listening to bedsprings and fights or bedsprings and laughter.
She glanced around the room which was about to become her nightly prison, and sighed heavily. Living with her mother, a lunatic alcoholic, was one thing - she could cope with that - but living without Eamonn was a different kettle of fish altogether.
From now on she’d be living without love.
The love he’d given her was what had kept her going this long. Madge’s love didn’t count in the equation, because her mother’s love was transient, only really apparent when there was no man on the scene. Betty’s petty jealousy had struck a warning note in Cathy’s mind and she knew, deep inside, that she had to sort herself out now. In a year or two it would be all too easy to go the way of her mother and Betty, and that was something she was determined wasn’t going to happen to her. Not in a million years. Her life would be different. She had decided that much.
Finally she slept with images of Eamonn before her eyes, a tiny terraced house full of shining furniture, and herself, her belly full of arms and legs, waiting for her conquering hero to come home.
She had a smile on her face as she slept, and her eyelids fluttered as she dreamed of the good life, her other life. The life she knew was waiting for her.
One day it would all come true, she had to believe that. Because without her dreams Cathy Connor had nothing, and no one was more painfully aware of that than she was herself.
Chapter Three
1966
Madge Connor was having trouble breathing. Clearing her throat loudly, she sat up straighter in her chair and downed the rum in front of her in one swallow. The coughing abated and she smiled lazily before hawking in her throat once more, bringing the spittle and phlegm into her mouth.
A voice protested loudly: ‘Leave it out, Madge, you’re making me feel sick!’
She spat into the spittoon by the bar and shrugged. ‘Better out than in.’ Holding up her glass, she signalled for another large drink and lit another cigarette.
Betty shook her head and sighed. ‘One of these days, Madge Connor, them fags is going to kill you.’
‘Blow it out your arse, Bet, and let’s get to work.’
The barman brought the drink and Madge downed it at a gulp, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing lipstick and spit across her face.
‘You’re pissed.’
Madge put on a surprised expression and said sarcastically, ‘No? Thank Gawd you told me, Betty, I’d never have sussed that one by meself!’
Betty sighed again. ‘You’re always pissed lately, ever since that Irish ponce got married.’ Her voice became softer then. ‘Come on, Madge, let’s get to work before all the blokes are taken.’
Madge shook her head. ‘I can’t be bothered any more. We’re pissing against the wind there. Can’t you see, we’re too old for this lark?’
Her faded eyes were alight with honesty and Betty couldn’t stand looking into them any longer. The trouble with Madge was, when she got drunk, she told the truth. And the truth hurt.
Betty patted her hair, dyed black these days, looking in the bar mirror. ‘Suit your fucking self! I’ve got to earn a few quid even if you ain’t.’ Slipping off the stool, she made her way out of The Blind Beggar pub and towards Victoria Park. She’d pick up the bus and be in Custom House within half an hour.
As she approached the bus stop she heard Madge’s tell-tale high heels behind her.
‘Hold on, girl, I’ll break me neck in a minute!’
Taking out a crumpled tissue, Betty wiped her friend’s face clean and helped her apply more lipstick. As the bus came into sight two young boys on the opposite side of the street started shouting.
‘Oi, you old slappers, how much for a quick flash?’
Ignoring them, Betty helped her friend on to the bus, oblivious to the hos
tile stares of the women already seated. Madge and Betty’s cheap fur coats and plastered-on make-up were a dead giveaway. They were ridiculed wherever they went and both stared stoically ahead, as they’d learned to years ago.
‘Come on, Cathy, let me.’
She shook her head as she pulled his hands from under her jumper.
‘Stop it. You know I won’t do that.’
Eamonn leaned back against the settee, gritting his teeth. ‘I don’t believe you, Cathy. We’ve done everything else but, and at the last minute you knock me back!’ Jumping up, he arranged himself and pulled up his flies.
Cathy watched him, full of fear that he’d walk away from her, this time for ever.
‘You’re a tease, Cathy, you know that, don’t you?’ he complained bitterly.
She closed her eyes. The cider he had given her had made her drunk and she wished she was in bed asleep, instead of lying on a settee, half naked and upset.
‘I’m frightened, Eamonn.’
Picking up his coat from the floor, he smiled unpleasantly. ‘Thanks a lot, Cath. That says it all, don’t it? After all these years, you’re frightened of me. Well, don’t worry, I won’t be coming back, love.’
As he made for the door, she ran to him, her unbuttoned tartan skirt hanging loose around her waist and threatening to slip to the floor.
‘I’m sorry, Eamonn, really I am. Don’t go.’
He turned and looked at her hard. ‘Does that mean you’re going to let me then?’
She dropped her gaze and concentrated on the old scarred dresser in the corner of the room. She heard his sharp intake of breath.
‘I can’t, Eamonn.’ Her low voice was barely audible.
‘Not can’t, Cathy. Won’t. See you sometime.’
He turned from her and left the room. At the front door he waited a few seconds, sure that she’d beg him to come back. But she didn’t, and feeling the temper rise within him, he slammed out of the door.
