Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

With difficulty, he retrieved his walking sticks. Normally, she would have fetched them, would have helped him up, all the time wishing him dead. That quiet, docile woman had been a traitor, an invisible knife poised and ready to plunge into his flesh. ‘I’ve prayed for you to die,’ she had said. And now, by depriving him of her help, she had condemned him to total uselessness.

  He stumbled to the front door, opened it. The house opposite was quiet for a Saturday evening; well, he would disturb their peace soon enough. Stepping cautiously, Ernest Barnes crossed the narrow street, cursing under his breath each time his sticks made poor purchase on damp cobbles.

  When he achieved his goal, the door was already open.

  ‘So you’ve been told,’ said John Higgins.

  ‘You know I have,’ came the terse reply.

  ‘I got wind of you being told while I was up on the road,’ said John, ‘so I’ve been half expecting to see you.’

  Ernest’s leg felt as if it were on fire.

  ‘Will you come in and sit?’ asked John.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then the mountain must be fetched.’ John Higgins disappeared, only to return moments later with a chair. He placed it on the pavement, then stepped back into the doorway, a sentry set there to guard his castle.

  Ernest sat. ‘Are you telling me you knew nowt about my son and your girl?’

  ‘No, I am saying no such thing,’ replied John, his voice steady as a rock. ‘Sure, we knew about Frank and Rachel, but we found out just today that you were about to learn the good news. He’s a fine man.’

  ‘He’s a Protestant,’ spat Ernest.

  John decided to make no reply. His faith was simple; he differentiated between good and evil, but left room for all Christians to choose their own way through life and into the hereafter.

  ‘She’s too young for him,’ continued Ernest.

  ‘I’ve never thought age differences to be that important,’ answered John, ‘and as for religion, had she wanted to marry out, we would have supported her.’

  Ernest drew a deep breath. ‘My wife has gone,’ he stated baldly. ‘She knows my opinion, and she has taken off with Frank, to live with him and your daughter, I suppose.’

  John nodded. ‘Aye, that’ll be the truth of it.’ He cast an eye over the man on the chair. ‘This’ll leave you in a merry pickle, I expect.’

  ‘Nothing merry about it,’ came the swift reply.

  ‘You only need to ask,’ said John Higgins.

  It was then that Ernest saw red. Here he sat like a begging dog, unable to achieve level eye contact with a man who represented all he despised. ‘You think you’re so clever,’ he said.

  ‘Do I now?’

  ‘Hiding this from me.’

  John leaned an arm against the door frame. ‘Can you imagine any one of us choosing to tell you, Mr Barnes? What sort of reception would we have got? My daughter is inside the house just now, quaking in her shoes—’

  ‘So she has shoes?’

  ‘She does, so.’

  Ernest’s rage was surfacing. He took one of his sticks and drove the end of it into John’s stomach, pushing so hard that John fell inside the house, while Ernest, unsteadied by the ferocity of his own movements, crashed backwards onto cobble stones. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was a crowd of Higgins faces peering down at him.

  John stood up, his hands folded over a sore stomach. ‘Ernest needs the hospital,’ he told Sal.

  Rachel wept quietly in the kitchen doorway. Although she loved Frank Barnes with every fibre of her being, she was beginning to wonder how much trouble she was bringing on those she loved. ‘Oh, Daddy,’ she wept. ‘Is it worth it?’

  John looked at his wife, at his poor-but-clean home, at the holy palms above the fireplace next to a framed papal blessing. There was a little font of holy water inside the front door, a small statue of the Infant King on the mantelpiece. ‘It’s worth it,’ he advised Rachel. ‘A good marriage is the best gift of all.’

  Sal smiled at him. ‘Thomas,’ she told their adopted son, ‘away now and fetch the ambulance for Mr Barnes. Dr Clarke will telephone for you. And tell the girls to put a blanket over him, or he’ll be frozen stiff before he sees the hospital. Go with Thomas, Rachel. The rest of you – go out the back way for a while after you’ve covered up Mr Barnes.’

  When they were alone, John sat next to his wife, took her hand in his. ‘I’ll never get to grips with this Catholic and Protestant stuff, all the persecutions and the sadness caused. But I looked into that man’s face, Sal, and I saw a blind, boiling hatred for me and mine.’

  ‘Frightening,’ she answered.

  ‘Tell me again, Sal – as if I don’t know – why did Jesus come?’

  She giggled like a child uncertain of her catechism. ‘To save us,’ she said.

  ‘All of us?’

  Sal nodded.

  John squeezed her fingers gently in a fist that might have cracked a walnut wide open. ‘Then the ambulance must be got,’ he whispered, ‘so that even Barnes might have a chance.’

  Four

  He woke in a bed, his head sore and bandaged, the bad leg burning, an angel leaning over him. Had he died? No, the angel was familiar, one he had seen many times before. Where was Dot? He would be needing his baccy and papers, clean pyjamas, decent food if his memory of hospital dinners served him right . . . Dot. Oh God, where was she? She was a fixture in his life, a thread of continuity, something he saw every day.

  She had left him. Memory flooded back into place, the surge causing his head to hurt even more. He had spoken to Higgins, had prodded him with a stick, thereby unseating himself. All those damned girls had crowded round him, then he had passed out. And he still had his problem. Who was going to look after him? A bang on the head might buy him a few days in hospital, lumpy porridge, lumpier mash and soggy toast, but what about afterwards? The angel was not smiling. She was simply staring at him, her gaze unflinching.

  ‘Mr Barnes?’

  Oh, God. Another flaming Irish Catholic, another voice that sounded as if it belonged in a musical box. He grunted a ‘yes,’ the monosyllable echoing in his skull. She lived at number 2, had a daughter who was reputed to be some type of genius. The trouble with these Irish types was that they were often endowed with an extraordinary beauty. She looked like something off one of those holy picture cards – all she needed was a halo and a bunch of flowers.

  ‘I’m just now going off duty, so I thought I’d come and look at you. How’s your head?’

  ‘Sore.’

  She nodded sympathetically. ‘The ward sister said a neighbour of mine had been brought in. Well, I hope you will soon be feeling better.’ This was one terrible man. Until his leg had been shattered, he had introduced misery into many lives. Magsy O’Gara prayed for patience, but could not offer much of a smile to the man in the bed. He had cold eyes, no expression in them, certainly no hint of remorse in those steely orbs.

  Ernest cleared his throat. ‘And I might as well tell you before the street does – my wife has left me, and my son is going to marry one of the Higgins lot.’ He could not remember speaking to Magsy O’Gara before. As she lived at number 2, she was attached to all the din that came from the Higgins household. She had just the one child, as her husband had died before the papist breeding programme could get off the ground properly. Rabbits, they were. They should be marched en masse to a vet for neutering.

  ‘Then I am sorry about you, Mr Barnes.’

  He tried to lift his head from the pillow, failed. ‘I don’t want your pity,’ he replied.

  ‘’Tis your situation I feel sorry about,’ she said, the soft Irish voice lilting across the space between the two of them. ‘Feeling sorry for you personally would be a difficulty, as you invite no concern and no friendship.’ Well, she told herself, it was time somebody put the truth to him. He would have to ask for help now, would be forced to drop his guard.

  His jaw slackened after she had spoken, but he offered no answer.
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  ‘Well, I’ll be off,’ she said now.

  He considered his immediate needs. ‘Will you fetch me some tobacco and papers?’ he asked. He pointed to the bedside locker. ‘There’s a ten bob note in there.’

  She retrieved the money, held it up for him to see. ‘I will get your tobacco. Anything else?’

  ‘No.’ After a moment spent beneath that gentle, undemanding stare, he added, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll be going, then.’

  He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t know why he didn’t want her to go. ‘Are you a nurse?’ he found himself enquiring.

  ‘A cleaner,’ she answered. ‘I’m on extra hours today.’ She eyed him dispassionately. ‘Beth is cared for by my neighbour, Sal Higgins. After all, what difference to them is one girl-child more or less? I mean – they have so many already.’

  He caught the benign challenge, did not rise to it. ‘You lost your husband right at the end of the war. Couple of months later, it was all over bar the shouting.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  If he had been capable of squirming, he would have squirmed. Ernest had never been so close to Magsy O’Gara before; she lived on the Catholic side while he was an inhabitant of the Protestant terrace in Prudence Street. Why was he bothering with her? And why did he feel so uncomfortable? She had the advantage – she was in a standing position while he lay flat and helpless – but it was more than that. She was so . . . composed. In a way, she put him in mind of Dot, the woman whose failure to react had caused all the trouble at home. Women were devious; they drove men to drink and worse.

  ‘But you have to remember that my late husband was only another Irishman, Mr Barnes.’

  He shifted his gaze until it rested on a man across the ward, an aged chap with no teeth and very little hair. ‘What time is it?’ he asked now. The old chap was dribbling onto a bib tied round his neck.

  ‘Time I was off to Mass,’ she answered.

  ‘On a Saturday?’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ she informed him, ‘you have been unconscious for the whole night. That was quite a crack you took, according to the nurses. But you’ve been X-rayed and you seem to be in fair condition.’ She paused, and her eyes twinkled slightly. ‘That’s a good, thick, Protestant skull you have there, Mr Barnes. If you will wave sticks at your neighbours, you’ll be needing those strong bones. Mr Higgins is a large man.’

  He attempted no answer.

  ‘So, I’ll be off to the early service at St Patrick’s, Mr Barnes. Will I say a little prayer for you?’

  Again, Ernest found nothing to say.

  Magsy drifted away down the ward, stopping to chat with several patients on her way out.

  In the doorway, she paused, turned and looked at Ernest Barnes. He was the enemy, yet she could not think of that pale, shrivelled and injured man as a foe. He had beaten his wife and his children; he was a deeply, radically unhappy man.

  She came out of the hospital and breathed deeply. The smell of pine disinfectant, floor wax and human waste was cleared from her nostrils in seconds. She hated her job, but was glad to have work. In Magsy O’Gara’s life, there was one aim – her daughter must not be a workhorse. Oh no, Beth would live to see better and easier days. To this end, Magsy O’Gara worked ceaselessly. If there was overtime to be had, she took it, and the powers were so impressed that she was under consideration for an orderly job. Orderlies, still dogsbodies, helped the nurses, cleaned patients instead of floors, and the pay was another sixpence an hour.

  It was a fair stride from the infirmary to Prudence Street, but Magsy would walk home. Only in the filthiest weather did she allow herself the luxury of a bus ride through town and up Derby Street. She covered her head with a scarf, pulled up the collar of her coat and trudged towards the fire station. The weather was not particularly cold, yet she armed herself, covered as much skin as she could. Because Magsy had an enormous problem.

  The problem was men. Men coveted her. Everywhere she went, she discovered a follower, a would-be suitor who wanted to ply her with drink, take her for a walk, take her home to meet his mother. At the age of thirty-one, Magsy still managed to look like a teenager. She had accepted this with equanimity for a while, but, after having been chased by a group of marauding youths, she had decided to cover herself up and keep her head down. William was dead; she wanted no other man in her life.

  Well, it looked as if Ernest Barnes was in a fix. Scarcely able to walk unaided, he had finally been abandoned by that poor, thin little wife. He must have been in a bad temper to force himself to walk across to the Higgins house – his hatred for that particular family was hardly a secret in these parts.

  After calling in at St Patrick’s for early Mass and Holy Communion, Magsy soldiered on, striding past the open market towards Derby Street. His anger might have helped him to move, she supposed. And there again, he had probably wanted a word or two with John Higgins. A Barnes marrying a Higgins? Never! God, there promised to be some fair and not-so-fair fighting within the foreseeable future.

  ‘Hello, love – sorry to bother you – don’t I know you?’

  She shook her head.

  The man stepped out in front of her. ‘Course I do, we live near one another.’ He swallowed audibly, then took the plunge. ‘I could take you to the pictures later on.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted.

  He grinned, displaying a set of teeth almost too white to be true. ‘I’m a stranger in a way,’ he said, ‘only I’m not, because I live nearly back-to-back with you, just a few yards away. We’re neighbours. I’m Paul Horrocks.’

  Magsy eyed him. Yes, she had seen him about. ‘And I’m late,’ she told him.

  ‘No, you’re Margaret O’Gara.’

  She fought a threatening smile – she didn’t want to encourage him. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Horrocks, I have to fetch my daughter from my neighbour’s house, then I must get her off to church.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you. Some funny characters about, you know. Never know who you’ll bump into.’

  Squashing the obvious reply, she stepped around him. He caught up immediately. ‘I work for a builder,’ he said. ‘Bit of overtime this morning – the extra always comes in handy.’

  Magsy tried to ignore him, but this was a man who refused to be sidelined. There he was, striding along, jaunty as a young pup, carrying on about bricklaying, plumblines and how to mix mortar.

  ‘I’m tired, Mr Horrocks,’ she said during a brief pause in the monologue.

  ‘Oh, are you?’

  She wasn’t going to enter into details about double shifts, about saving up so that Beth might have extra books for proper schooling. It wasn’t his business – wasn’t anyone’s except her own. ‘Yes, I am exhausted, Mr Horrocks.’

  ‘You can call me Paul.’

  She inhaled sharply. Why should she have to put up with this sort of thing all the while? A person should be able to go about her business without being a target. ‘I am tired,’ she repeated, ‘tired of this . . . this type of behaviour.’ She stopped, faced him. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said distinctly. ‘I do not want to go for a drink, nor do I wish to visit the cinema. I have worked hard all morning and I need to get home to my daughter.’

  He frowned. ‘And what do you do in your spare time?’

  Magsy raised a shoulder. ‘I eat, sleep, look after my child.’

  ‘And for fun?’

  ‘I educate her.’ She stepped away and carried on in the direction of home. All the time, she knew that he was still there, that he was following her, that he would persist until she reached her door. She squashed a disobedient bubble of excitement that rose in her throat, a feeling that caused her breathing to quicken slightly. He was just another of ‘those’ men, after all.

  Paul Horrocks was not a man who gave up easily. He had fixed his eye on this young widow some months ago; it had taken every ounce of his will to finally speak to her. He had done that all wrong, too, sounding like a callow youth, did she fancy a night at
the pictures. Beauty such as hers was not easy to approach, since it seemed so out of reach to the ordinary man. He had made a right pig’s ear of it, a total mess. It was hard, too, talking to somebody who looked like she should be in the films instead of in the audience.

  And there she was, a yard in front of him, all muffled up against intruders, her mind on the little girl, her eyes fixed resolutely on the path to home and the way towards her future. She, too, was possessed of determination. He caught up with her again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I never meant to upset you.’

  ‘Forget it,’ she advised. ‘I have.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he said, ‘please don’t.’

  Magsy was shocked, not by what he had said, but because she had heard something in the words, a vulnerability, almost a fear. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, you know.’

  He tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong, like a cross between a witch’s cackle and the neighing of a sick horse. ‘I know,’ he managed, his voice higher than normal, ‘it can’t be easy for you.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘I mean . . . I mean you didn’t ask to be born looking like a film star.’

  It was Magsy’s turn to laugh. ‘Hardly a film star, although I do get more than my fair share of attention. But I am so sorry if I have offended you.’

  He perked up. ‘Then you will come out with me?’

  They turned into Prudence Street. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but no.’

  Magsy retrieved Beth from a tangle of Higginses who were playing cowboys and Indians, though all the cowboys were girls and poor Thomas was the sole Indian, his face caked in gravy browning, a few paper feathers in the blond curls. In the middle of total chaos, Sal sat on one of the beds knitting at a rate of knots. Magsy surveyed the scene before dragging a reluctant Beth out of the Higgins house and into their own.

  The silence was a blessing. While Beth drank a cup of milk and chewed on a shive of bread and jam, while she found her rosary and missal, Magsy took off her work clothes and put them in soak. She sent her daughter to church, dressed herself in skirt, blouse and apron, made a fire, brewed tea and threw together a meal of eggs and bacon. When Beth had returned and the food had disappeared, when crockery and cutlery sat and waited for another kettleful of water, the pair got to work.