by Joan Lingard
Business was slack on a Monday morning. Most of the time they stood behind the counter and yawned. Miss Marshall did not have much to say apart from referring to her experience in haberdashery and whenever Sadie brought up another topic she would look at her with mild blue eyes and say nothing in return. She herself moved forward to serve every customer and Sadie was only permitted to serve when Miss Marshall was otherwise engaged. Except for Saturdays, when the store was crowded and people were impatient, they did not really need two on the counter.
Sadie stood with her back against the wall and thought about old friends and neighbours. There were some she longed to see and find out what was happening to them. She would even like to see Linda Mullet, her old friend and enemy, with whom she had gone to school and played in the street. Linda, with her wiggly walk and her pert way of holding her head, and her mother with her fizzy blonde hair and steep-heeled shoes lounging against the door jamb smoking a fag … ‘How’re you the day, Sadie?’ she would say, hoping for scandal.
Sadie loved to give it to her. Mrs Mullet had plenty to keep her going now. ‘Fancy Sadie Jackson getting married to a Mick! Mind you, I always said she’d come to no good.’ Sadie grinned. If Linda and Mrs Mullet were to come walking across the floor now, she would leap over the counter to meet them, like the winners at Wimbledon did when they were carried away by excitement. That was what got her down here: there was never a chance of meeting someone you knew unexpectedly. She walked always amongst strangers.
By lunchtime Sadie had sold one zip fastener and a reel of white thread.
‘Couldn’t say I’ve earned my keep,’ she said to Miss Marshall as she lifted her handbag.
Miss Marshall said nothing.
Sadie sat in the cloakroom to eat her sandwiches. The other girls went out to cafés round about but she could not afford to spend the money. When she had eaten she went round the shops buying a few groceries and choosing things in shop windows that she would buy one day. After lunch she released Miss Marshall and for one hour Sadie was alone behind the counter. That was the hour of the day she liked best.
The shop closed at half-past five. By then she was tired even though she had not done much work. All the hanging around with nothing to do was more tiring than working hard.
When she came into the cloakroom at the end of the day, three or four girls who were talking together stopped and looked round at her.
‘Hi!’ said Rita, who worked on shoes.
‘Hi!’ said Sadie.
‘Have you a minute?’
Sadie went over to them.
‘We were wondering if you were free this evening?’ said Rita. ‘You see, we’re having a night out, a few of us. And we thought maybe you’d like to come.’
‘Oh I would,’ said Sadie at once, but her enthusiasm died quickly as she remembered Kevin. ‘But I can’t. You see, my husband –’
Rita nodded. ‘We didn’t know if he’d mind or not.’
‘He would,’ said Sadie. ‘But thanks a lot for asking me.’
‘Come another time.’
‘All right.’ Sadie nodded. She took her coat down from the peg, happy that they had asked her, sad that she could not go. She longed to go out for an evening with a bunch of girls and have a good laugh. She and Kevin were together on their own all the time and sometimes she felt bored. The thought appalled her. She bit her lip. But she loved Kevin. Of course he didn’t bore her. You couldn’t be bored by someone you loved. Or could you? There were still a lot of things she was not sure of.
‘Goodnight, Sadie,’ called Rita.
‘Goodnight,’ called the other girls with her.
‘Goodnight,’ said Sadie. ‘Have a good time.’
They went out chattering and laughing, full of the joys of the evening ahead. The cloakroom was quiet now. Sadie thought of going home to the dingy room to fry sausages on the gas ring and then to sit in front of the fire talking about things they could never have. She wanted to go dancing and laugh and talk with lots of people. She didn’t want to sit every evening in a room with one man, even though she loved him.
She walked slowly to the tube station. A train was leaving the platform as she got in and she had to wait a while for the next one. It was packed. The passengers looked tired and hungry and unhealthy, their faces were fawn-coloured and their eyes red-rimmed. Someone stood right in the middle of Sadie’s foot and did not even turn round to apologize. She made a face at his back. Her foot would probably be bruised for a week.
She hobbled out of the station remembering the sound of the girls’ laughter; she thought of them chattering and enjoying themselves. Suddenly she realized that she had left the shopping in the cloakroom. Kevin would be waiting for her to bring in food and cook it for him. He would be there now, starving, wondering what was keeping her, his brow creased with irritation because she was late. Why shouldn’t she be late if she wanted to? Why should he expect to sit there waiting to be fed? Standing there in that cold foreign street she wished she was free to do what she wanted. She hated being married. And she hated London. She wanted to go home to Belfast, bombs and all.
CHAPTER FOUR
At lunchtime Kevin sat on a wall by the side of the road eating his sandwiches. In front of him the strip of road was open, dug up by drills and picks that now lay idle. The other men had gone to the pub. They usually did in the middle of the day, and often at the end too. Digging up roads was thirsty work. Occasionally Kevin went with them for a pint of beer but he could not afford to do it very often, nor did he want to particularly. He took quite a bit of teasing from the men.
‘You’re the brave boy getting yourself tied to a woman at your age!’
Most of the men were Irish and Catholics like himself, but from the South. They had left home, not because of bombs and trouble but because they couldn’t find work at home. Many had left families there to whom they sent money every week. They were rough, tough men, ready to fight. Kevin had known many like them before. He remembered a neighbour, Pat Rafferty, a big hulk of a man, with hands like hams held ready to fight at the slightest provocation. So Kevin found the men familiar and could hold his ground with them but found no one amongst them whom he would want to have as a friend. To start with they all drank too much and on Friday, pay night, went straight to the pub, scoffing at him for hurrying home to give his pay packet to his wife.
But Kevin was not thinking of the men now or their drinking habits. He was thinking of what the foreman had told him this morning: he was to be laid off on Friday along with two others. There wasn’t enough work. The words had brought sickness to the pit of Kevin’s stomach.
He had been out of work before, in Belfast, and knew what it did to you to have long idle days with nothing to do and no money to collect at the end of the week. The foreman had said Kevin would be sure to find something else if he went along to the Labour Exchange. He would probably get another casual labouring job and that would last a week or two or maybe more and then he would be back again at the Exchange looking for something else. He was sick of this way of living, doing casual work that meant nothing except for the money you collected at the end of the week. He couldn’t see himself going on like that for ever. He didn’t want to be digging holes in the road when he was forty.
He finished the sandwiches, ate the wrinkled apple and wondered how Sadie was getting on. In the evening she would tell him about the other girls and make him laugh. They sounded like a real bunch of eejits. He uncorked the thermos, poured the scalding tea into the top and drank, enjoying the warmth of the liquid flowing down through his body. It was a cold day to sit on a wall and eat lunch, even for him. He had put on his jacket, which would have pleased Sadie.
The last drop of tea gone, he stood up, stretched himself and began to walk. He looked at the faces of the people as he passed. People did not seem to really look at one another here. They were not interested. They were too busy hurrying. What for, he wondered? When he walked streets he was used to the sight of known faces and
now he missed them. He shook his head ruefully. He was feeling homesick today, longing for a sight of his mother or sister Brede. At his age!
He bought a newspaper and leant against a corner to read it. FIVE DEAD TEN INJURED; the headline was the first thing his eye hit on. He read the report carefully, looking for the names of the victims. No one he knew. He sighed with relief. One day there was bound to be someone. It was getting worse and he did not see how it could even start to get better. And yet he longed to be there, for it was not all bombs and blood and suffering. People laughed a lot and enjoyed themselves, when they were allowed to, and they were friendly. They were certainly not friendly in London and he knew it was getting on Sadie’s nerves.
He folded the paper, put it in his jacket pocket and walked back to the site. All afternoon he worked with a juddering electric drill, standing in a narrow trench. As he worked he thought about the pleasant things of Ireland, the green glens of Antrim, the Atlantic rollers breaking on the white sands of Portrush, the sea whipping round the rocks at Bangor in County Down. He and Sadie had spent many good days in the country and at the seaside. Here they found it difficult to get out into real country. It took a long time and cost a lot of money.
‘Hey, Kev!’ yelled the man next to him in the trench. ‘Wake up there! Knocking-off time.’
Kevin put aside the drill.
‘Don’t want to work overtime,’ said Dave. ‘Not unless they’re paying you. You were far away by the looks of it.’
‘I was thinking about … about Ireland.’
‘That place! Devil a place that it is. It gets into your blood. You can’t stand it when you’re there and you can’t get it out of your mind when you’re not.’
Kevin smiled. Dave was all right. He had hard calloused hands and a face like leather that had come from working as a labourer in London for twenty years. He still talked about going home for good even though everyone knew that he never would.
Kevin went to the Labour Exchange before going home. He said that he would dearly like to try something different.
‘Could I start as an apprentice in a trade?’ he asked, though even as he said it he wondered how they would be able to manage on the small wage. But he did not have to worry about that for even if he could have survived on the money he was not allowed to try. He was too old.
‘Too old?’ he repeated. ‘I’m only nineteen.’
‘You have to start before.’
‘I see. Oh well …’
The woman said she would see what work there was going next week in labouring. If he would call back on Friday …?
Ah well, at least it was work, he reminded himself. When he had been out of work in Belfast he had had to live off his family.
He walked all the way home. It was nearly three miles but he did not mind for he was not in a hurry. Sadie did not come back till after he did and he hated going into the cold empty room to sit and wait for her.
But he was back before her in spite of the delay at the Labour Exchange and the walk. It was grey dusk in the room and the chill seemed worse than the street. He put on the light and the electric fire, and set the kettle to boil. Then he turned to the letter with the Belfast postmark that he had found on the hall table. It was from Brede. He ripped open the envelope.
Their mother was ill and was to go into hospital for an operation. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ wrote Brede, who would write that no matter what the trouble was.
‘Just a routine operation, the doctor says, but I thought I should let you know. I am taking time off work to look after the family.’ Brede had often looked after the family, every time her mother had gone into hospital to have another baby. Kevin bit his lip. How bad was she? He would write tonight to his father and ask to be told the truth.
He glanced at the clock. Where on earth was Sadie? He was too restless to sit; he got up, went out again and walked back down the road to the Underground station. He watched the crowds pouring out but did not find Sadie amongst them. She might have got off at a different station, a little further away, just to make a change. She did that sometimes, for she hated getting in a rut and doing the same thing day after day. He returned home but the room was still empty and quiet. The single bar of fire glowed, a wisp of steam escaped from the kettle spout, nothing else in the room moved. He boiled the kettle up again and made a pot of tea, leaving the curtains open so that Sadie would see the light shining out as she came up the street.
As he drank his tea he reread Brede’s letter, searching for any shred of extra information between the lines. But there it was, the bald fact that his mother was ill and was going into hospital to have an operation. And he was hundreds of miles away, not even able to go and visit her. He thought of Brede bearing it all alone, except for their father. She would look after the other seven children, feed them and scold them and worry about them when they were not home by dark, and she would go up to the hospital to reassure their mother that everyone was all right.
He poured more tea. He held up the cup to the light: there was a crack in the side clogged with grime and through it tea trickled in small droplets. He made a face at it. He had meant to buy two new mugs on his way home tonight, bright yellow ones that he had noticed in a window, but with thoughts of his job whirling in his head he had quite forgotten. Sadie would like the yellow. Two yellow mugs sitting on the table would be like two splashes of sunshine in the room. ‘We’ll have to make our own sunshine,’ Sadie had said when they had first seen the room on a grey, rainy day.
Where the devil was she? His stomach rumbled with hunger. He looked at the clock again: she should have been back nearly an hour ago.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Where on earth have you been?’ Kevin demanded, as Sadie came into the room.
‘What do you mean – where have I been? At work of course. Where do you think I’ve been? Out enjoying myself?’ Her eyes flared with annoyance.
‘But you’re near on an hour late. I’ve been sitting waiting on you.’
‘Too bad isn’t it?’ She flung herself down in a chair without taking off her coat. ‘I suppose you’ve been sitting here waiting for me to come back and make your tea.’
‘Well, I’m hungry. I’ve been working all day.’
‘So have I. And I’m hungry and all. Why should I have to come back and cook your tea while you sit and twiddle your thumbs? You never think to cook mine.’
‘But the woman usually does the cooking.’
‘She does, does she? Well, I don’t see why she should. Not if she’s working all day and gets in after the man.’
Kevin looked at her but she would not look at him. She glanced around the room, her mouth set in a hard line that he had not seen on her before.
‘If you’d wanted me to do it you could have asked me,’ he said.
‘You might have thought to offer,’ she said.
Feet clattered overhead making their ceiling shake. Sadie looked up.
‘I hate this place,’ she said.
‘We can’t afford anything else and you know it.’
‘Oh, I know it all right.’
‘Want a cup of tea?’
She shrugged. He poured her one and she took it, still without looking at him.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I’m just fed up.’
‘Fed up?’
She looked now. ‘Yes, fed up. Fed up working and not being able to buy myself any decent clothes or go out at night and have any fun. It’s like being a prisoner shut in this box.’
‘It’s the same for me, Sadie,’ he said in a low voice.
‘I’m not saying it isn’t.’
He tipped the teapot up. It was bone-dry. He refilled the kettle. He might as well have another cup of tea at least. It didn’t look as if he was going to get any food.
‘Are you saying you wish you hadn’t got married?’
‘I never said that at all,’ she snapped.
‘That’s what you seemed to be say
ing.’
She did not like the sound of his voice. When it was low and well controlled it meant he was angry underneath, getting ready to boil up and lash out, and when he was angry his eyes were black and dangerous and she felt a little afraid of him. She wriggled, undid the top button of her coat.
‘Don’t tell me you’re staying,’ he said sarcastically.
‘I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to,’ she answered, her temper rising too now. She wondered how she had ever thought he loved her. She wished she never had to set eyes on him again.
‘If that’s the case I can soon leave myself,’ he said, lifting his jacket.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘Out. To the pub. Or wherever I fancy. And maybe I’ll find myself a girl with a sweeter tongue on her than you. I’m not staying here to be spoken to like dirt.’ He went to the door.
‘Don’t, Kevin!’ she cried.
He turned back and stood looking at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never meant it.’
He took a step towards her, she rose out of her chair to meet him. They put their arms round each other’s necks and hugged one another. Sadie was laughing and crying at the same time.
‘Course I want to be married to you, Kev. I don’t know what gets into me at times. I say the wildest things. Oh, but we’re like a couple of kids fighting still!’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I was just worried about you being late. I was thinking of you under a bus –’ He stroked her hair.
‘You needn’t worry. I’ll never fall under a bus.’ She wrinkled her nose at him and he laughed. ‘It’d need to be some bus that’d get me.’
‘What was up with you then when you came in the door?’
