Shoddy Prince

by Sheelagh Kelly

  ‘Bright Maguire’s. It’s in a couple o’ weeks.’

  Kendrew responded first. ‘Got yourself a ladyfriend, eh?’

  Maria tittered. Nat could not condone this disloyalty and vanished behind the curtain to throw himself onto the bed.

  ‘D’you want any tea?’ called Maria.

  ‘Had it.’

  Only now did she enquire as to his previous whereabouts. ‘Where?’

  ‘Mrs Maguire’s.’

  ‘Eh, he’s got himself mixed up with a married woman!’ laughed Sep.

  The quip was met with disdain. Lying on the bed, Nat rested his chin on his hands. A picture formed of Bright in Mr Maguire’s arms. Well, much as he envied her a father he could never accept Kendrew in that special role.

  * * *

  Alas, in only a matter of weeks this unthinkable proposition became dangerously close to enactment. Though Kendrew had a job now as a hospital orderly, it did little to reduce the amount of time he spent in Nat’s abode. Every teatime, every Saturday, every Sunday, the wretch would pop up to destroy Nat’s home life. He was, it transpired, a determined man who never wearied of trying to coax a positive response from the boy. It was relatively easy for a self-possessed child like Nat to ignore these attempts at infiltration. What could not be dismissed was Maria’s obvious attachment to the man, for which the only feasible explanation could be Sep’s propensity for showering her with gifts. His mother had been well and truly duped by this indolent charmer. It disturbed and sickened the little boy, who began to have fantasies in which his father would burst through the door, knock Kendrew to a pulp, then take Nat and his mother off to live in a palace. But no one came.

  Nat found himself having to rely more and more on Bright’s company. He liked Bright, she was different from anyone he had ever known. The children of such areas were normally sullen, their pinched faces carrying all the worries of the world – as indeed did Nat’s. In contrast, Bright’s shone out like a beacon, always ready for laughter rather than tears. She was vivacious, impulsive perhaps, but never overbearing in manner and had the knack of making him feel warm on the coldest of days. If she had one fault it was that she told awful lies. He had noticed some red weals on her hand. When he had asked what they were she told him Sister Martha was responsible. As if a nun would do that! He never knew when to believe her. However, he enjoyed her birthday party and liked Mr Maguire enormously. Now there was a man he’d be proud to call Father. The jovial Irishman kept everyone entertained with songs, tales and jokes. He was very strong too, despite his wiry build, and was forever displaying his talents by doing balancing tricks with the furniture, the sinews bulging out on arms that looked thin enough to snap under the weight. Everything about him was so far removed from Kendrew, nothing more so than his smile which extended to eyes that were very dark and twinkly. And that smile was never more in evidence than when directed at Bright. He doted on her quite blatantly, the other children having to content themselves with the odd word of praise. However, to Nat he was immensely kind, as indeed were all the Maguires. Even in the knowledge that he had no father, circumstances which seemed to damn him in others’ eyes, they did not temper that kindness. Whatever they had, be it precious little, they shared with him.

  ‘Come whenever it takes your fancy!’ they told him, and so, instead of pacing the streets when his mother went to work he began to spend the better part of his evenings by the warmth of their black-leaded range. When Bright had merrily informed him that he would become immune to the stench of pigs he had disbelieved her. Now, however, the only smells he noticed were the comforting aromas of freshly baked bread or another of Mrs Maguire’s excellent recipes. Even the smell of clean linen as it hung over the fire on a rainy day was an improvement to the lonely decay of his own home. At times, though, it could be a little intimidating; with five grown men in the house there was always the danger of a brawl when one of the sons made a stand against their father’s rule. Even twelve-year-old Eugene and Patrick, eleven, seemed a lot older and rougher than Nat. Fortunately these episodes were rare and were soon brought under control by the womenfolk. More of an ordeal to Nat was their insistence that he join in their conversation. If only they would allow him to sit here quietly, watching and listening, all would be perfect, but no, it was questions, questions all the time until he hardly dared catch anyone’s eye lest the encounter provoked another bout of interrogation.

  Tonight, though, Nat was being spared, as it was the eldest son Michael who was their target. He had acquired a sweetheart who was also crammed into their midst, having to put up with a lot of joshing from his brothers. In the end, Michael sprang up. ‘Is a man not allowed any peace with his intended without having to put up with this lot o’ chattering magpies! Come on, Dettie, let’s be going into the front parlour.’

  ‘Aren’t ye forgetting something?’ Mrs Maguire barely glanced up from her knitting. ‘Didn’t Bernadette’s mother say she had to be chaperoned?’

  Michael groaned. ‘Away then, Bright.’

  ‘Oh sure! Take the most innocent one so’s she won’t know when you’re doing anything ye shouldn’t,’ laughed Martin.

  ‘Shut that or I’ll gob ye!’ warned his father.

  ‘Ye can take Mary,’ instructed Mrs Maguire.

  ‘God Almighty,’ heaved Michael as his sister complied. ‘Won’t I be glad to be away from this blessed place – and would the person responsible for that wretched stink get shut of it by the time I’m back!’

  ‘Christ, if he isn’t right,’ muttered Mr Maguire as his son shut the door. ‘I’ve been wondering all night if something’s crawled in here and died.’ He leaned over and sniffed at Granny Maguire.

  ‘Tis Nat,’ returned Gabriel, the second eldest.

  Mrs Maguire scolded. ‘Now that’s not a very nice thing to say… are ye sure?’

  ‘Aren’t I sitting right next to him?’ Gabriel took a theatrical sniff of Nat, who was crimson by now, then reeled away.

  ‘Away over here, son.’ Mrs Maguire beckoned. Reluctantly, Nat came to stand before her chair. She took a tentative sniff and made a face. ‘God love us, tis right you are, Gabe.’

  ‘It’s the bacon,’ mumbled Nat, shamefaced.

  ‘What?’ Mr Maguire was confounded.

  Nat opened his shirt to reveal two fatty ends of bacon sewn into either side of the garment.

  ‘Jesus, tis almost bloody putrid!’ bawled Maguire. ‘D… d… d…,’ he stuttered and made frantic scissor movements with his fingers at his wife. ‘Get rid of it, woman, else we’ll all expire o’ something horrible! For what does the silly b – why does your mother want to be doing a foolish thing like that?’

  ‘To stop me getting a cough.’ With the onset of the cold, damp weather Nat always suffered from bronchitis. Every year his mother adopted this remedy and never once had he known it to do anything other than make him even more unpopular than ever with his classmates.

  ‘Stop ye getting a cough?’ barked Maguire. ‘Why, a few weeks o’ wearing that and ye’d not catch anything – ye’d be dead from the smell.’

  ‘Don’t be taking it out on the lad,’ said Mrs Maguire and, performing the delicate amputation, carried the bacon in outstretched hand to the fire.

  ‘Don’t put it on the fire, woman!’

  ‘Dad wants it for breakfast!’ Gabriel fell about laughing.

  Every occupant of the room lurched away with hand over mouth, covering both laughter and revulsion as Mrs Maguire followed her husband’s directive to, ‘Stick it on the midden pile – preferably in the next street. Ah sorry, Nat!’ Maguire reached out to pat the boy, who was highly offended by the episode. ‘We meant no harm. Er… Mother, have we a spare shirt the lad can wear till he goes home? Funny how smells linger, ain’t it?’

  ‘I’m off now.’ Nat went to the door.

  ‘There’s no need!’ Bright tried to prevent his departure. ‘Ye barely smell at all now.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I wouldn’t go home through the Pig Market
,’ warned Gabriel, with as straight a face as he could muster. ‘The pigs might complain.’

  Bright lashed out at her nineteen-year-old brother, who accepted the beating with laughter then grabbed her in a bear hug and kissed her. She was still trying to wriggle free when the front door banged.

  ‘Nat! Nat! Oh look, you’ve upset him now,’ she scolded the lot of them, ‘he can’t help it if his mother made him wear it.’

  ‘I wonder what he’ll have inside his shirt the morrow,’ mused her father. ‘Pig’s trotters, a necklace of chitterlings?’ And everybody thought it was a huge joke except Bright.

  ‘Poltroons all! I wouldn’t blame Nat if he never came again – an’ if he doesn’t then I’ll never forgive yese.’

  ‘Don’t fret,’ vouched a cynical Martin. ‘Your man knows when he’s onto a good thing.’

  * * *

  Martin was wrong. Nat refused to visit the Maguires for many weeks after this. At first his failure to do so was due to being offended by people he had thought were true friends. He avoided the places where he knew he might run into the youngest Maguire daughter, for though she had not hurt him she would bombard him with questions that he did not want to answer. By the time his injured feelings had healed he had fallen prey to the December rains and was now in the full throes of bronchitis which, if true to form, would keep him indoors for a month. Too ill to object, he allowed his mother to tuck him up in bed where he remained for the duration of his illness.

  ‘I don’t like to leave you but I have to earn the money for the doctor’s bill and medicine and extra stuff you need.’ Maria sat on the bed and pushed the hair back from his glistening brow. She had done the right thing and taken Nat to a doctor, for she knew from experience that to treat the malady herself would only prolong it and this had once brought him close to pneumonia. She did not wish to go through that again, though caring was expensive.

  ‘Sorry.’ The effort of that one word caused a bout of painful coughing which overtook his whole body. His eyes bulged and his face turned crimson as he tried to expectorate the filth from his lungs.

  Maria looked both concerned and irritated at the same time. He had been barking all day and every day for weeks. There was only so much a mother could endure. ‘Don’t be silly, you can’t help being ill.’ She waited for the tremors to cease, then attempted a joke. ‘Least it keeps you off school.’

  Nat swallowed and gave a sickly grin, then closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing shallow in order to prevent the coughing he knew annoyed her. For once he willed her to leave, for then he could cough and cough to his heart’s content until the woman in the room below hammered on her ceiling with a broom handle.

  ‘Here, let’s sit you up a bit.’ She lifted his thin body, banged at the pillow, then gave him a sip of water before lowering him again. ‘Now, I’ll have to go. Will you promise to remember your medicine at ten o’clock?’ She pointed at the bottle on the table. He nodded. ‘Right, well you’re all set up, you’ve got your drink of water there and you’re nice and warm…’ The bed had been pulled up to the fire where a kettle was steaming to keep the atmosphere moist. ‘I’d better take this off else it’ll boil dry.’ She took it from the fire and left it on the hearth. ‘I’ll put it back on when I come home. Now, you’ve got your poultice… what else? Oh yes!’ She rushed to a shelf, took down a bottle of brandy and poured out a spoonful. ‘There! That’ll warm your cockles. Was a boy ever coddled so much? Now, I know I’ve said it half a dozen times but I definitely have to go. Be a good boy and I’ll see you later.’ She left him with a kiss.

  Being ill did have its recompenses, a mother’s kisses not the least of them. Apart from not having to attend school Nat had been spared Kendrew’s visits of late. The boy’s coughing had become such an irritation that Sep had taken to meeting Maria outside the house. Conscious of his new power, Nat maintained the cough long after his illness was past its worst, until Maria got wise to his artifice and instead of offering sympathy delivered a cuff round the head and the opinion that once the New Year arrived he would be well enough to return to his education.

  Once again, when he returned from his trials and tribulations at school Nat had to endure the detested Kendrew. There was no other option than to fall back on the Maguires. Even though they had hurt him with their laughter their youngest daughter remained in his favour. Bright had not mocked him. One January night when his mother had gone to work he braved the freezing, slithery alleys and called upon his friend. Bright was the one who answered his knock and in her delight at seeing him threw wide the door. ‘Tis Nat, everybody!’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake tell him to come in or piss off!’ shouted Gabriel. ‘But shut that bloody door!’

  Nat was ushered down the passage just in time to witness Mr Maguire’s retribution. ‘Go wash out your filthy mouth! I’ll have no foul talk under this roof.’ He dealt the young man a blow to the head before spinning congenially on the visitor. ‘Ah, if it isn’t G-nat! We thought ye must’ve been off globe-trotting, hasn’t it been so long an’ all since we last saw ye.’

  ‘I’ve been poorly.’ Nat tried to edge his way through the crowded room to the fire.

  ‘Oh dear, nothing contagious, I hope?’ Mr Maguire pulled out a rag and covered his mouth.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Sure and Mr Maguire is only having a bit o’ fun with ye, pet,’ Bright’s mother donated her serene smile. ‘Cup o’ tea, is it?’

  ‘Aye, wouldn’t mind.’ Nat wriggled in between Eilleen and Mary who were making a rug, and perched on the fender to enjoy the heat from the fire.

  ‘We had the notion we might see y’over Christmas,’ remarked Mr Maguire, settling back into his chair.

  ‘Oh, didn’t we have a lovely party!’ Bright grinned and sat on her father’s knee. ‘There’s the decorations I made.’ She indicated two paperchains that were strung, criss-crossed, from corner to corner of the room.

  ‘Aye, they should be coming down.’ Her mother eyed them and passed a mug of tea to the boy.

  ‘Aw, just a wee bit longer,’ pleaded Bright. ‘Don’t they look so pretty, Nat?’

  Face hidden in the mug, Nat was thinking about the party he had missed. Guessing that his own birthday must be imminent, he swallowed the mouthful of tea and mused, ‘We could make some for my birthday party.’

  Bright clapped her hands. ‘Ooh, are we all invited?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘Er… I’ll have to find out.’ He lowered his face into the mug again.

  ‘You’d better take this up with your mother before inviting all these hooligans round,’ warned Mrs Maguire.

  Nat was adamant that there would be no difficulty. If he had already invited them his mother could hardly refuse.

  The next morning before school he put forward what he thought to be an academic question. ‘Can I have a party?’

  ‘A what? You cannot!’

  ‘But isn’t it my birthday soon?’

  Maria paused for thought. ‘Aye, it’s next Saturday, but nobody said anything about a party.’

  ‘I’ve invited all my friends!’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to uninvite them. Here, eat your porridge – it’s no good whining and looking all forlorn! I haven’t the money to waste on fripperies.’

  This was hard for Nat to grasp. The Maguires were obviously not rich but they always found the means to enjoy themselves.

  His look of dejection pricked both conscience and temper. Maria had only yesterday bought herself two new dresses in town – after all, it was necessary to look nice in her line of work. ‘It’s all very well for them friends o’ yours!’ Nat had told Maria everything about the Maguires. ‘They probably have half a dozen wages going into that house. No, I’m sorry but I just can’t afford it what with having to fork out all that money on doctor’s fees – think yourself lucky you’ve got a mother who puts her son’s health before her own enjoyment.’

  Nat
was doomed to carry this excuse back to the Maguires. ‘Me mam spent all her money on the doctor, you see. So I can’t have a birthday.’

  Spontaneous in their generosity, they declared that he should celebrate his birthday with them. ‘And won’t we give him a right old hooley!’ promised Mr Maguire. ‘D’ye know what a hooley is?’

  ‘Yes,’ lied Nat, unwilling to look a fool.

  ‘Good, well when is your birthday?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Then, Master G-nat, come Saturday and you put on your best togs, present yourself at this establishment and the Maguires will give ye the best party ye never had!’

  Nat assumed his mother would be delighted that he was to have a party after all and was taken aback by her terse response. ‘They must think you’re hard done by. I never had a party in me life and it never did me no harm.’

  Bewildered, Nat did not raise the subject again and neither did Maria. Saturday began like any other Saturday. He and his mother rose late, went shopping and partook of the usual iced bun. When they returned in the late afternoon Kendrew was on the doorstep with a bunch of snowdrops and a lecherous grin. Nat did not linger. ‘I’m off for me party now.’

  Maria divested him of the shopping basket. ‘Righto.’

  ‘Party?’ Sep looked amazed. ‘Can we come?’

  A moment of panic. Nat backed away. ‘Er, no…’

  Sep did not appear to be too worried. He stamped his feet against the cold and winked at Maria. ‘Pity. We’ll just have to make our own fun and games here.’ And with a roar he chased Nat’s mother into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Nat wasted no further thought on Kendrew. Having past experience of a Maguire party he enjoyed a thrill of anticipation as he hurried over Foss Bridge.

  ‘Ah, the guest of honour’s finally arrived!’ At Nat’s entry Mr Maguire sprang up. ‘I hope you know we’ve postponed our bath night for this.’ He pulled his own chair away from the table and directed Nat into it. ‘Away over here, the important man always sits at the head of the table.’ He himself shoved the youngest boys from the chair they were sharing, and they in turn displaced Bright from her seat. Mr Maguire planted her on his lap. ‘Well now, and how are ye today, G-nat? Bitten any good people lately?’