by Joan Lingard
‘Krishna is studying,’ said Lara. ‘He wants to become a teacher.’
‘And then we will move to a real house,’ said Krishna.
Lara smiled at him. Then she asked Kevin about Sadie.
‘You could go and look at her, Lara,’ said Krishna, and to Kevin added, ‘Lara is a trained nurse.’
‘Would you come?’ asked Kevin eagerly.
Lara rose. ‘Of course.’
Lara and Kevin went to Sadie. She was still tossing and turning and moaning in her sleep.
‘Those drums!’ she cried.
‘Drums?’ Lara looked at Kevin.
‘It’s the drums in Belfast.’
‘Ah!’ Lara nodded. She put her slender hand on Sadie’s brow and frowned.
‘Is she bad, do you think?’ asked Kevin.
‘Not good,’ said Lara, now becoming very brisk. ‘If you could give me a clean towel I will sponge her down and try to lower the temperature.’
He had a job to find a clean towel: they were short of towels. They were short of everything. Lara understood. She said a semi-clean one would do very well. She took a bowl of tepid water and began to sponge Sadie with it. Sadie opened her eyes and frowned.
‘It’s me, Lara,’ said Lara softly. When she finished the sponging, she gave Sadie some water to drink. ‘She needs plenty of liquids, Kevin.’
Kevin nodded.
‘Evening class, Kevin,’ said Sadie thickly.
‘Sure I’m not going to that tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m staying here to look after you.’ To Lara he said quietly, ‘What do you think then, Lara?’
‘I’m worried about her temperature. It would be better to have a doctor look at her.’
‘But where will we get one?’
‘We have a friend who is a doctor. I’m sure he would come. I will go and ask Krishna to telephone him.’
Kevin sat beside Sadie whilst Lara went next door. Her hand in his was hot and she was thrashing around in the bed like a wounded animal.
‘My head,’ she said. ‘It’s going to lift off.’
He stroked her brow, pushing the damp hair back from it. Lara was right: her temperature was very high.
A few minutes later Krishna came to say that their friend was on his way.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Kevin.
‘A pleasure,’ said Krishna, with a small bow.
His friend arrived soon. Kevin saw the car stop outside.
‘The doctor is come, Sadie,’ he told her.
The doctor’s name was Dr Menon. He too was Indian, in his twenties, a plump bustling little man with white teeth that showed every time he smiled.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ he asked, rubbing his hands. ‘We will have you dancing up the street in no time, young lady.’
He hummed slightly to himself as he examined Sadie. He examined her thoroughly. He winked at her when he saw her watching him so seriously.
‘You will not die yet,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘You think life is good?’
Sadie nodded.
Kevin smiled at her. He looked at the bare, dirty-fawn wall behind her head and thought that one day they would have their own house and everything in it would be bright and new. He would buy her some flowers tomorrow. Yellow chrysanthemums. He had passed some standing in a bucket outside a shop that day.
‘Now then, Sadie,’ said Dr Menon, ‘you have to be a good girl and do what I say. You stay in bed and take the medicine that I give you and drink a lot. Isn’t that easy? And I will come back to see you tomorrow.’
He gave Kevin a prescription and also a bottle of medicine for Sadie to start taking straight away.
‘I am very grateful,’ began Kevin but Dr Menon brushed his thanks aside.
‘What am I a doctor for?’ he demanded.
‘What a nice man!’ said Sadie, after he had gone.
She slept restlessly that night; Kevin did not sleep at all. He stayed up all night wiping her head, giving her drinks, talking to her when she wanted him to. In the morning she was cooler and quieter. He left her sleeping and set off to work.
She awoke to find that it was full daylight. There was even a hint of winter sunshine in the room. ‘Kevin,’ she called, but he was not there. He had been there all night though: that she remembered. His hand had been cool and firm against her head. Her body was damp again but more comfortable. Her limbs ached but she was more at peace.
She was pleased to see Lara when she came in. She was wearing a deep pink sari. She glided smoothly round the room beneath the shimmering colour and when she moved, Sadie smelt her perfume, light and aromatic.
‘You look lovely, Lara,’ said Sadie, nodding with approval.
‘And you look much better,’ said Lara. ‘I can stay a few minutes whilst the baby is sleeping.’
Dr Menon arrived soon afterwards.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘A social gathering? And my patient is lying there smiling when last night she was trying to pretend she was at death’s door.’
He and Lara talked to one another with much laughing and joking. They came from the same province in India, had come over to London about the same time. He had married a friend of Lara’s, another nurse.
‘I think you are on the mend,’ he said to Sadie.
‘Sure I think you’re right,’ said Sadie.
‘But you must stay in bed. I shall come again tomorrow.’
Sadie was content that day to lie in bed. The weakness in her body made even standing difficult but next day she felt a little better again and began to be restless. Lara visited her, bringing soup and two books from the library.
‘I don’t read much,’ said Sadie. ‘When I was a kid I was always running about the streets.’
‘Why don’t you try?’ suggested Lara.
Sadie read one of the books after Lara went away.
‘I enjoyed it,’ she said with surprise to Kevin at teatime. ‘It was a good story. I think I might take up reading.’
Kevin smiled.
On Wednesday, the shop’s half-day, Rita and Sally called.
‘We thought we’d better make sure you were still living,’ said Rita, throwing herself into one of the armchairs. She looked round the room. ‘Blimey, what a place! Couldn’t you get yourself anything better than this?’
‘No,’ said Sadie. ‘We’d no money when we arrived in London and Kevin’s not making much at his job.’
Sally yawned. ‘I’m dead today. We were out last night, didn’t get in till four.’
‘It was murder getting up for work this morning.’ Rita grinned. ‘Joe sent you his love.’
‘He can keep it,’ said Sadie. ‘I’m not interested.’
Rita and Sally stayed till Kevin came home. Sadie thought that they would, they were curious to see him. She did not mind: she enjoyed having them there, chatting and laughing, full of stories of the outside world, a world that she felt cut off from.
‘Nice meeting you,’ said Rita to Kevin. She eyed him up and down, obviously with approval.
‘It’s nice to meet you too,’ said Kevin.
‘See you soon, Sadie,’ called the girls. ‘Ta-ta for now.’ They were going home to get ready for a party.
‘What did you think of them?’ asked Sadie after they had clattered past the window.
‘Not much,’ said Kevin.
‘What do you mean?’ cried Sadie. ‘They’re all right. They’re my friends –’
‘Hey! Your temperature will go up.’ He grinned. ‘And we haven’t had a row since the night before you were ill. Don’t let’s break the record.’
Sadie subsided. Kevin cooked the meal. He was getting handier in the kitchen, she told him. He made a face and said he didn’t fancy himself as a housewife. Sadie stretched her toes in contentment.
‘Life is OK,’ she said.
She recovered rapidly though Dr Menon would not let her go back to work until she was completely fit. It did not matter whether she missed a few
days at work, he said, no one would collapse because of it.
‘We are not all that important,’ he said. ‘Except to ourselves.’
‘And the people we live with,’ said Sadie.
‘That’s true!’
When he had gone she went to see Lara. Now Lara asked her to come in when she called. Krishna had accepted them, said Lara, he had just needed time.
Today Lara said, ‘I am going to have a little dinner party on Saturday evening. Dr Menon and his wife are coming to visit us and Krishna and I would be pleased if you and Kevin would join us too. We will be having an Indian dinner. Would you like that?’
‘Like it?’ Sadie’s eyes shone. She threw her arms around Lara’s neck. ‘Oh Lara, how marvellous!’
Lara laughed. ‘You would think I was giving you a hundred pounds. It will not be that grand.’
‘But you see,’ said Sadie, ‘it’s the first time Kevin and I have ever been invited out together since we were married.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lara’s dinner party was a success. Sadie and Kevin enjoyed the food, even though the curry burnt their throats and almost brought tears to their eyes. They had been determined to enjoy it. They drank several glasses of water.
‘You’ll get used to it in time,’ said Dr Menon.
He was jolly and full of fun. He and Lara laughed a lot. His wife was quieter and did not smile so much. Her face was pock-marked; she was not as pretty as Lara, but her sari was beautiful, flame-orange. Sadie sighed, and said she wished that she was Indian and could wear saris. That amused Lara. Alina, Dr Menon’s wife, just looked at Sadie with mild eyes. Krishna was quiet but agreeable, allowing Dr Menon and Lara to do most of the talking. He sat with his long thin fingers linked round his knee listening, nodding, contributing sometimes.
Back in their own room, drinking a cup of tea to slake their thirst before going to bed, Sadie talked over the evening happily. She speculated on Alina and Krishna, discussing every aspect of the evening.
‘You’d think Lara would have been better married to Dr Menon,’ she said. ‘They seem better suited.’
‘Who can tell?’ said Kevin. ‘Perhaps they need someone different. Like you and I.’
‘Are we different?’
‘In many ways.’
‘Oh, religion and all that –’
‘All that makes people different.’ He smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’
Sadie went to bed and dreamt of herself floating around in saris of all colours of the rainbow. It was a happy dream until the drums started to bang and the flutes to play and then she awoke in a sweat.
‘It’s the curry that gave you indigestion,’ said Kevin.
‘But why do I keep dreaming about drums and Orange parades? And every time Father Mulcahy calls I’m sure to dream of them afterwards.’
Kevin shrugged. ‘We can’t get away from Ireland all that easily.’
‘If you didn’t put on the news every half-hour of the day we might forget it.’
‘How can we turn a deaf ear to what’s going on?’
Kevin listened avidly to the news broadcasts, Sadie tried to ignore them. She knew Kevin was apprehensive about his family: they lived in one of the most troublesome areas in Belfast, they were a large family and his father had brothers and sisters with large families, and it seemed only a matter of time until one of them stopped a bullet or was blown up by a bomb. Her family was safer for there was less trouble in the Protestant streets, but no one was really safe anywhere in the city. Every day a bomb exploded in a shop, pub, or an office building. It hung over their heads like a black cloud.
‘We would worry less if we were there,’ said Kevin.
‘You’re not suggesting we go back? We’ve been through all that.’
‘No, I’m not suggesting that.’
Letters from home were ripped open at once and quickly scanned for reports of disaster.
‘Brian Rafferty’s been arrested,’ said Kevin, looking up from a letter from Brede. Brian Rafferty lived in the same street and they had played together as boys.
‘Serves him right, doesn’t it?’ said Sadie.
‘If he’s guilty,’ said Kevin. ‘A man’s innocent till he’s proved otherwise.’
‘Oh, you make me sick! You know full well Brian Rafferty was mixed up with the Provos. Didn’t he show you a gun under his bed and then framed you so that you got the blame for it?’
‘Aye, but still –’
‘Still what? He and two of his pals beat you up for going out with me, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, they did,’ said Kevin.
They had beaten him up and he had beaten Rafferty in return and sickened himself of violence. Walking to work he thought of it. He had had Rafferty’s blood on his hands. Their marriage had been born out of bloodshed and trouble. Because of them, too, a man had died, a good kind man who had befriended and helped them. Was it right to let your own happiness cause such misery to others? And yet, if they had given in, it would have been like giving in to all of it, the prejudice and hate, the violence and stupidity.
‘What’s up with you this morning, lad?’ asked Mr Davis.
‘Nothing.’
Kevin sat down at the bench, took up a screwdriver. He was working on a radio. He enjoyed his work, the satisfaction of taking something so intricate apart, fixing it, putting it back together again and seeing that it worked. His fingers moved deftly, each week becoming surer and surer. As he worked he dreamt of owning his own shop one day.
‘Trouble at home?’ asked Mr Davis.
‘There’s always trouble.’
‘Aye, lad,’ Mr Davis sighed. ‘You just have to live with it.’
Kevin nodded. They lived with it over there, still going about their daily lives, shopping, working, going to school. You couldn’t sit at home cringing with fear for what might happen.
Kevin finished the radio, screwed the back into place, turned on the sound. Music poured out.
‘You’re doing well, Kevin,’ said Mr Davis. ‘You’ve caught on fast. I was thinking it would be a good thing for you to have some driving lessons. It would be a help if you could drive the van. I’ll pay for half of them. I couldn’t afford to pay the lot.’
‘Driving lessons are dear,’ said Sadie with a sigh when Kevin told her. ‘But I suppose you’ll have to have them.’
‘It’d be fine and handy to be able to drive, Sadie. It means there’s other jobs I could do if the telly business went down.’
Sadie made stovies that night: potatoes cooked with fat and onions, a real Irish dish, a dish for people who had to live on the minimum of money.
‘Sure it tastes good,’ declared Kevin, wiping his plate with bread. ‘I was brought up on them.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Sadie. ‘Me ma said it was for potato pickers. We had stew and ham and eggs.’
‘You came from a good Protestant working-class family, don’t forget!’ said Kevin good-naturedly. ‘They were always better off than the Catholic working class. They were in work more often.’
‘And they had fewer kids to feed,’ retorted Sadie.
They grinned at one another. They could argue again without bitterness, as it had been in the old days.
Kevin set off for his evening class feeling contented. His stomach was full of savoury potatoes and he was less worried about Sadie. She had perked up again, she was very friendly with Lara and had found a young girl further along the street who had just arrived from Sheffield and was lonely. Sadie invited the girl in for coffee a couple of evenings a week and they sat together and sewed.
Sadie had also struck up a street friendship with an old man who walked his dog up and down the pavement every hour on the hour. The old man lived alone and was almost blind, and no one ever came to visit him. He had four sons whom he had not seen for ten years, which outraged Sadie. She fumed against them to Kevin. Whenever the old man was ill she called at his house and went shopping for him and made him a cup of tea. He had once been in
the navy and had tales to tell of life on the high seas. Kevin smiled to himself. Sadie was making inroads on the street. She said good morning persistently to everyone she passed. It would not be long before she knew them all. She needed people, neighbours, contact in the street, more than he did. She was beginning to settle.
‘London is not so bad,’ he said to her as they walked on Hampstead Heath one Sunday.
‘Not so bad,’ she said. She pointed across the heath. ‘What about that house? The one with the big garden on the corner. One day when you have your own shop …’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the telegram came, they felt no surprise. It was as if they had been awaiting it, as if it had only been a matter of time; and yet, strangely, it was totally unexpected, for bad things in life seem always to happen to other people.
Sadie took the little yellow envelope from the post office boy. It was such a small flimsy envelope that it could scarcely contain any news of importance. But the yellow colour was ominous. She could only remember a few times as a child when a telegram arrived. Each time it had been bad news. Her granny had died, an aunt was seriously ill. If news was good people wrote letters and did not waste their money. The post office boy picked up his bicycle from the gutter and rode off.
‘Sadie?’ Kevin called from within the house.
‘Yes?’
‘What are you doing out there, for dear sake?’
‘Nothing.’
She continued to stand on the step looking at the envelope. Mr Kevin McCoy, the name said. She was afraid. Afraid to go in and give it into his hands and watch him open and read it and see the hurt in his eyes.
The old man with the dog went past on the other side of the street. He held up his stick in greeting; she waved back automatically. The world was moving just as it always did.
‘Are you going to stand there all day?’ Kevin came up behind her, put his hands round her waist and squeezed her. ‘There must be something desperately interesting going on in the street to keep you out here gawping!’
