A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin

by Helen Forrester

  Martha was very disappointed. She had had a sudden hope that the jewellery might be a valuable gift from one of Bridie’s admirers. She reluctantly stuffed the box into her pocket.

  She was agreeably surprised, however, when the pawnbroker gave her ten shillings for the clothing.

  She said, ‘Now I want to buy a working jacket for meself. I got meself a job, working outside.’

  She went joyfully home with a man’s heavy tweed jacket with a generous collar. She wore it until the end of the war when men came home to reclaim their jobs, and, as Martha succinctly put it, women were back on the rubbish dump.

  Most of the mixed crew of working-class women amongst whom she found herself were wives or sweethearts of skilled men, and the finer grades of snobbery were already established. Martha ranked as the very bottom. She was to all of them a dirty, uncouth Roman Catholic from the docks. It was said that she could not even read or write. She stank and was probably verminous. As far as possible, they shunned her. Even in the company canteen, she ate by herself, unless the café was so crowded that sharing a table became a necessity. Surrounded, as she had been, by neighbours similar to herself, she did not care about her fellow workers, except for odd spurts of carefully suppressed indignation, because they, too, could be quite foul-mouthed. ‘They don’t know nothing,’ she muttered to herself.

  In fact, despite them, she always said that her years of scrubbing oil barrels were some of the best of her life, because, for once, she had steady money to buy what food was available.

  At first, she rode to work on the overhead railway. Then, when she found a house in Dingle at a controlled rent, she was able to walk to work.

  Patrick was irritated to death that he then had to take the overhead railway, in reverse, to get to his fire station near the Pier Head. He grumbled even more when the line was damaged a number of times by the heavy bombing, and he had to switch to buses, which charged higher fares.

  The new house, which led straight off the street, had a parlour with a small fireplace and a kitchen-living room with a large kitchen range. There were three little bedrooms upstairs, and Ellie was amazed when Martha told her, on the Sunday they moved in, that the smallest room would be for her alone.

  ‘Soon as we can get a little mattress for yez,’ she promised.

  At first, Ellie was silent at the idea. Then she began to whine. ‘I don’t want to be by meself. Why can’t I be with you?’

  ‘You’re going to be a big girl soon – and you’ll like to have your own place.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I want to go home.’

  ‘Ach, don’t be stupid. This is your home, today – now!’ Martha had had a bad day and was growing irritable. ‘Shut up, afore I give you something to cry about.’

  Ellie backed away, then turned and clattered down the bare staircase. In the tiny hall, she hesitated and then ran through the open front door into the street to find her brothers.

  The street was unfamiliar and strangers turned to stare at the child’s sudden exit.

  Joe found her silent and miserable, squatting by the side of the tiny doorstep, the front door slammed shut behind her by Martha.

  ‘Come on, and explore with Number Nine and me,’ he said cheerfully.

  Behind the house was a small, brick-lined back yard. At the end of it in a shed was a flush lavatory, which Joe demonstrated to her. She was scared by the noise of the flush.

  On the Sunday night of their removal, the vast empty space of their new dwelling hit Martha, Patrick and the children so forcibly that they all huddled together, without complaint, on their solitary mattress which had been temporarily dragged into the parlour. Martha saw an immediate problem in that she had no blackout curtain big enough for the little bow window.

  She felt herself suddenly bereft of the support of Auntie Ellen, Kitty, Sheila, Helen and Ann, and Alice, on all of whom she had relied to keep an eye on her children: the reality hit her like an icy draught, and she shivered.

  And I’m the one what will be blamed by Patrick for anything what goes wrong, she decided dismally. And I don’t have nobody to turn to.

  When Patrick and Joe went together back to the court to return the borrowed handcart on which they had moved their scant belongings, and the younger children had gone out on their own exploration, she sat on the bottom step of the staircase and cried.

  She cried not only for her old friends, but also for Brian, Tommy, Kathleen, Lizzie, Colleen and even for naughty Bridie. For all the communication she had with them, they might as well be dead, like Colleen, she sobbed.

  Despite the triumphs of a better house and a better-paying job, for the moment she lost completely her usual sturdy optimism.

  Without the sense of being enclosed safely in a tight group of friends and family, she felt naked in a cruel world.

  ‘Jaysus! I don’t know how I’ll fill all the emptiness,’ she whimpered to herself, as she remembered with longing the cosy living room of the O’Reillys and their many kindnesses to her. ‘It must have taken them all their life to get together a home like that; I’ll never manage it. And, dear Holy Mother, I’m so tired. I wish this bloody war were over.’

  She dragged herself to her feet, meaning to go to make herself a cup of tea. Then she remembered that she had used up all her tea, and would not get a fresh ration until Monday.

  ‘Blast them Jerries!’ she muttered, as she heated a cup of hot water on the kitchen’s ancient gas stove.

  She was quite glad to scuttle off to work the next morning, just to be amongst people, even if nobody spoke to her, except to give an order. You could always get a mug of tea from the canteen.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Too Tired to Tip a Bloody Wall Bin’

  1965

  A week after Sheila’s arrival at the home, Martha and she were sitting up in their respective beds, still gossiping, while they drank their illicit cups of tea: Martha had prevailed on Angie to bring an additional mug for Sheila.

  ‘A cuppa tea is a real comfort,’ she had pleaded, and Angie agreed. She hoped that she would not be dismissed for breaking rules before she found another job: Matron was, every day, becoming more dogmatic and bad-tempered.

  ‘The evening aide – Freda, isn’t it? She said last night, when you was dozing, as Angie’s going to leave us,’ reported Sheila, after draining her cup.

  Martha clapped her cup down on top of the commode. ‘Oh, Mother of God, say it isn’t so. What will we do? Sheila, if we’re left to Dorothy and that Freda – and that awful Mrs Kelly woman wot sleeps all night and never hears you call – you could die and they wouldn’t care.’

  Sheila nodded agreement. ‘I feel sick about it meself,’ she said.

  Martha’s voice quivered, as she went on, ‘I can’t blame her, though. Angie is too tired to even tip a bloody wall bin, poor kid.’

  Sheila sighed and hummed tunelessly, as she considered this. ‘Dunno that we can do anything,’ she replied finally. ‘Maybe they’ll find another Angie.’

  ‘Humph. I doubt it. Angie is real smart – and she feels for yez. I wish I could give her a nice goodbye present, if she’s really leaving.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Sheila, we don’t have no money. And if we had it, how would we buy her anything? We’re stuck here – in bed.’

  ‘What you mean? No money? We got pocket money.’

  Martha slowly turned herself in order to see Sheila better. ‘Pocket money?’ she queried, absolutely amazed.

  ‘Yeah. They take your old age pension to pay this Home. But you’re supposed to get a bit every week out of it for “insensuals” – you know, what I mean. Buy yourself a new nightie or a newspaper or some sweeties.

  ‘In all the time I was in hospital, I got me full pension; me friend saw to it for me. Hospital was under National Health – didn’t have to pay a penny for that. Used to buy meself magazines to read, from a woman who came round with a pushcart to sell them – and she’d get you books from the library.’
<
br />   She paused to rescue one of her supporting pillows which was about to fall off her bed. She wobbled perilously for a moment as she shoved it close to her side. ‘I was expecting to be paid me bit yesterday, but nobody bring it or tell me it was there for me.’

  Martha was dumbfounded. She slowly got out of bed and went to her friend, to tuck the pillow in more firmly: without extra support, Sheila found it difficult to balance herself when sitting upright. She finally said, ‘I got a widow’s pension, and, of course, I were working – cleaned a school after the men returned from the war and wanted their jobs back in the petrol installation.

  ‘I don’t know what happened about the pension after I were took into hospital. I thought I’d collect the arrears when I come out of here: never dreamed I’d never get better and be stuck here in bed for ever.’ She paused to consider this, and then continued, ‘I never thought about me pension being used to pay for me to be here. I weren’t never told anything about it being paid to Matron. I suppose it must have been written down in all the papers that They made me sign – with a cross, of course.

  ‘You see I can’t read or write, so I had to trust the ladies who arranged to put me in here.’

  ‘You can’t read or write? Hmm. Well, I can. I’ll ask Matron,’ promised Sheila. ‘She’ll know.’

  ‘She’s never been up here to see us since Pat died. And you’d better be careful what you say. Make even a small nuisance of yourself and you’ll be made to take pills to keep you quiet; Angie told me once.’ Martha nodded knowingly.

  ‘I’ve heard that about other places,’ Sheila responded slowly. ‘To think of it! Me sister come all the way from London to find a place for me, and she chose this one ’cos it’s got a name for being well run, and, what’s more important, they had a vacant bed. I’m sure she never thought about me being drugged for speaking up.’

  Martha snorted. ‘Well, she’s right in a way. They clean the place regular and the meals come OK. But that’s it.’ Martha’s idea of cleanliness was not very great. She went on to say, ‘But the staff is on the go all the time. Only Angie tries to find time to talk to yez.

  ‘What drives me mad, Sheila, is that there’s nothing to do. You can’t even walk around for a bit to get yourself strong without being ticked off and brought back to bed.’

  Sheila ignored Martha’s last remark: without legs, you were in no shape to walk.

  ‘Do you ever get any visitors?’ she inquired. ‘One of them could buy whatever we said for Angie. We could ask one of them to talk to Matron about our pocket money to pay for it.’

  ‘Sheila, I don’t have no visitors. Me sister and her family I were in touch with was moved out to Norris Green. Last time I saw her was when I visited her once, during the war, and I’ve never heard a word since then.

  ‘The ladies who come to the hospital arranged for me to come in here: they needed the hospital bed for someone real sick, and I didn’t have nobody to take care of me if I was sent home.’ Her lips trembled. ‘I just signed with a cross anything They asked me to sign.’

  She sighed, as she remembered the secret dread she had suffered while signing. ‘When you can’t read, you just do what They ask and hope it’s all right. They always say it’s OK and for your own good and tell you not to worry!’

  She sighed again, and went on, ‘By the time I come out of hospital I wouldn’t have had no home, anyway, because I didn’t pay the rent while I was in hospital.

  ‘You know, Sheila, I never thought about the rent, to be truthful: I only thought about the pain in me leg. The landlord – his agent, that is – would’ve put the bailiffs in and they’d have sold up every stick I owned in there, to cover the rent I owed. They’d think I’d just done a flit to get out of paying. Then they’d put in a new tenant.’

  She did not rant about this. Bailiffs were a fact of life, and you did your best to evade their invasions. Bad luck, if you didn’t move your furniture out quickly, before they got to you.

  Anyway, she was stuck in this Home for ever, as far as she knew. She shifted restlessly, as she returned to the subjects of their conversation, visitors and getting Angie a gift. ‘Are you expectin’ your sister or anyone to visit, Sheila?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’ll be lucky if she writes me for Christmas; she lives in London. She’s working and she’s got kids still. I had one friend who come to see me in the hospital. But she’s not young and it’s a long ride out here.’

  ‘People soon forget you, don’t they?’

  ‘Not really. But life’s not easy for anybody since the war – and after the war things didn’t change much for years, did they? Still rationing and shortages of everything. And so many people was moved around, while the war was on, and never come back home!’

  Martha agreed heartily. England had been left a shabby, hard-pressed wreck, with a population transplanted hither and yon, who tended to settle where they had been planted.

  ‘You still had kids at home at the end of the war – you was telling me,’ continued Sheila. ‘What happened to them? They should be here.’ Sheila was very downright.

  ‘Well, I told you how Patrick died in January 1951. We both had the flu so bad: it were a big epidemic. And there isn’t much you can do about flu, except stay in bed and wait to get better. I got better and so did Number Nine.

  ‘Patrick just died one night – give me the shock of me life. But truth to tell, he were worn out by the war – and real cut up when the auxiliary fire service finished up. He worked on reconstruction sites for a while, but he were out of work when he died.’ She stopped, and then said, ‘He weren’t a bad husband – he did his best, God rest him.’

  ‘And the kids?’

  ‘Scattered, like you’d never believe.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘Our Tommy died during the war. He got fits. He was in hospital for a little while. But there was nothing they could do for him.’ Her voice broke. ‘Aye, he were a lovely-looking kid, and, you know, I been told that if they had had the medicines they got now a few years earlier, the doctors could have saved him.’

  ‘Aye, that must hurt.’

  ‘It did, Sheila. It did.’ She sat quietly for a while: she had never quite understood Tommy, as she had her other sons. He had always been very secretive – never outgoing. Even if he told you something, you were never quite certain if it was true.

  Both she and Patrick had been terribly shocked when they learned the cause of death. Syphilis.

  Observing their fraught expressions, the doctor had told them gently, ‘You know, the lad needed only one girlfriend to give it to him.’

  Patrick had accepted this as reasonable. Martha had nodded agreement; but many odd memories of Tommy were suddenly making sense. She closed her eyes to hide her distress, as she reproached herself bitterly. ‘To think I only watched me girls!’

  Sheila, respectful of the loss her new friend had endured, did not disturb her.

  After a while, Martha sniffed and cleared her throat, and went on with her litany.

  ‘Joseph were called up to do his national service after the war, and they sent him to Africa – to Bulawayo. When he’d done it, he could stay there if he wanted – their government was looking for white settlers – and he did; and he married out there. I don’t never hear from him – I doubt if he knows where I am. Anyway, men aren’t letter writers, are they?’ Then she said sadly, ‘And me big boy, Brian, were killed in Normandy.’

  ‘Oh, Martha, how dreadful.’ Sheila’s voice was full of pity. Then she asked, ‘Who else was there?’

  ‘There was Ellie and Number Nine.’

  ‘I do love the way you called your baby Number Nine.’

  Martha smiled. ‘His proper name was James, after Father James, our priest, dear man. He were our gift to the Church.

  ‘I don’t think families do it much now. But when we was living in the courts, it were usual to give one kid to be a nun or a priest. Was it like that with you?’

  ‘We had in mind to give our second girl…’


  ‘Aye, you poor dear. It must have been terrible to lose her.’

  ‘Martha, it finished my real life to lose everybody in one go. I haven’t never really been alive since.’ For once, Sheila sounded defeated, and she shook helplessly.

  To steady her, Martha stretched out towards the other bed and rested her hand on her arm. ‘Well, I’m proper grateful that you’re here now,’ she said earnestly. ‘You’re a real comfort to me.’

  Sheila allowed her eyes to fill with tears. Then she said, ‘Likewise, love.’

  They remained quiet while the ghosts of their past visited them, and then Sheila made an effort at being more cheerful. She said, ‘You mentioned another little girl, Ellie, I think it was.’

  ‘Oh, aye, Ellie. That was real queer. You know, after the war, we thought all the foreign soldiers would go home – or at least stop being soldiers and settle down with us, like a lot of Poles did.’

  ‘Sure, I remember.’

  ‘But they didn’t. The Americans stayed for years and years in camp; they’re still there, some of them. Most people didn’t even know they were there for a long time, ’cos they wore civvies when they was out of the camp.

  ‘Well, our Ellie met one at a dance and married him. Even after she were married, she was still in England, but not always in the same place. Then he took her to Pittsburgh, in the USA, where his parents were. Last I heard of her was that he were working in an iron foundry. No kids.’

  ‘And she doesn’t write?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘Nope. You know, Sheila, when you got so many kids holding onto your skirts, like I had, and you don’t know where the next meal’s coming from, it’s hard to give them all the attention they deserve. Especially the middle ones in the family: they’re just hungry faces waiting to be fed or bare feet that you got to find boots for. And they resent it. Working full time through the war didn’t help me much to give time to them, either.