Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘We could go to Victoria Park if you like. I could take you on the boating lake. Show you my muscles.’

  ‘I reckon that’d be smashing.’

  They stared at each other for a long moment, then Molly turned her head away and said nervously. ‘Look, don’t bother walking any further with me. I ain’t got far to go. Just leave me here. I know yer’ve gotta be getting home yerself, and, I don’t wanna sound like a little kid or nothing, but my dad, he really is ever so strict.’

  Instead of thinking, as Molly had expected, that she was daft, Simon just laughed. ‘Sounds like my uncle.’

  ‘Honest?’

  He laughed again. ‘Honest. And that’s why I didn’t mind when you pretended you were someone else to those boys. I knew how you felt. And I understand about having to keep things from your family sometimes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ Simon took his handkerchief from out of his pocket and rubbed it over Molly’s hair. ‘And if you’re going home we’d better get you dried off a bit. You look a real sight with your hair plastered flat to your head.’

  Molly pulled away from him.

  ‘Sorry, you say you’re the one who opens her mouth without thinking. That came out all wrong. What I should have said was that you look a really beautiful sight. And I’m honoured to be your secret.’

  Simon shoved the wet handkerchief into his pocket, and, with a brief touch of his lips to her cheek, he sprinted off along Preston’s Road.

  Molly stood and watched until he had disappeared round the corner into Poplar High Street.

  Then, with a soppy smile on her face, she began to walk slowly home; her soggy hat in her hand, her dripping wet cardigan sagging from her shoulders and her shoes squelching every blissful step of the way.

  6

  BY BREAKFAST TIME the next day it would have seemed to an outsider that, superficially at least, most things in the Mehan household were back to normal, and that it was just another summer Monday morning, with squabbles and smiles in about equal proportion. But it wouldn’t have taken a very close inspection to realise that all those sitting around the kitchen table were wrapped up in their own concerns, and it would have been clear to anyone that something or other was going on.

  For a start, Pat had left for work even earlier than usual, Katie not even having realised he had gone until she woke up to find the cold cup of tea he had brought her on the bedside cabinet. And then there was Katie herself – she might have been blustering around as though it was a normal Monday morning, but she was preoccupied, hardly bothering to tell anyone off for their bad manners or for taking liberties with one of the others, as she usually did. And if she had been taking more notice, Katie would have had a word or so to say to her daughter, for Molly was acting decidedly shifty. Molly kept flicking furtive glances at her family, convinced that at any minute her nanna would come in from next door and start blabbing – why had she told her? – or that any one of the others sitting around the table would somehow guess what was going on inside her head, and would blurt out to the rest that Molly had a terrible, guilty secret: she had two boyfriends at the same time!

  If any of them had been interested enough to try to see into Molly’s mind, it certainly wouldn’t have been Sean. He was sitting there, slumped in his chair, self-absorbed, mopey and uncommunicative, behaving like a typical fourteen-year-old, in fact.

  Unusually, Michael and Timmy were keeping just as quiet as Sean that morning, but they were far more content with their lot. They were happily taking advantage of their mother’s rare preoccupation, by not eating any more of the dreaded porridge that had in the past only been inflicted on them as an occasional economy measure, but during the last few months had become the family’s breakfast staple. One bowl of the stuff was definitely more than enough for either of them.

  The porridge was also the reason for Nora’s absence; since the sad day of the regular introduction of the awful sludge to the table of number twelve, she had taken to having a lie-in until half past eight and only then, when she was sure the so-called breakfast had been finished, would she come in from next door to help her daughter with whatever chores were to be tackled that day.

  Even Danny, who was ordinarily as reliable as the kitchen clock, had altered his routine that morning. As soon as he was washed, dressed and shaved – strictly speaking, and dark as he was, shaving was still only a twice-weekly affair for him, but he had taken to going through the daily masculine ritual of it lately – Danny had nipped round the corner to Chrisp Street to buy the early morning paper.

  Katie had protested that he shouldn’t be wasting money like that, and that his father would be bringing in the Star after work if he was so desperate for a read. But Danny had insisted that he was only taking an interest in things as his dad had told him, and that Katie should be pleased instead of complaining.

  Too distracted to bother to argue with her eldest son, or even to tell him off for being so saucy, Katie had let him go and waste his money, and now he was sitting there at the table, head buried in the paper as though it had been his breakfast habit of a lifetime.

  He didn’t realise how fortunate he was, sitting there safely hidden behind the news, for Katie, to the alarm of her two youngest, was holding up the porridge pot to offer round the grey goo for a third, threatening time. To their almost overwhelming relief, the boys were saved from having to eat any more of the horrible muck by an unexpected rapping at the front door. It was a surprise to everyone, not only because it was barely eight o’clock, but because whoever it was hadn’t just walked in along the passage with a cheery ‘Don’t worry, it’s only me’ as regular visitors did.

  Katie put down the pan on a square of folded newspaper, put there especially to save the table top from burns, and pointed to Molly. ‘See if any of this lot wants any more before them two little ’uns dive in and scoff the lot, will yer, love?’

  As her mother checked her hair in the overmantel mirror and then went out to the passage to see who was there, Molly tapped Danny’s newspaper, lifted the big wooden spoon from the pot, and pointed it at him, letting it drip with glutinous porridge.

  Looking round to make sure that his mum wasn’t within earshot, Danny shook his head firmly. ‘No fear, Moll. What d’yer think I am? Just look at it, it’s like flipping cement. Now, if it had been a nice bit of streaky, or a couple of slices of black pudden . . .’

  ‘How about you, Michael? Tim?’

  Wide-eyed, they both shook their heads as firmly as their big brother. ‘No thanks!’ they said in unison.

  ‘Mum must think we’re barmy,’ added Michael, made brave by his mother’s absence, ‘if she thinks we’d eat any more of that dog poop than we have to.’

  ‘Hard times is hard times,’ said Molly, dropping the spoon back into the pot with a shudder of distaste. ‘Now come on, you lot, let’s get this cleared away and save Mum a job.’

  Sean shoved his chair back and stood up. ‘If yer so keen, you do it.’

  Before Molly had the opportunity to protest, Sean had snatched the surprised Rags from under the table, where he had been hoping that someone might slip him some unwanted morsels, had tucked the little dog under his arm, and was out in the yard, clambering up and over the back wall.

  ‘You little sod,’ mouthed Molly, as he disappeared from sight. ‘And where d’yer think yer taking that flaming dog?’ she hollered.

  While this was going on at the back of her house, Katie was standing at the street door, smiling encouragingly at Mrs Milton, while silently cursing her kids for showing her up in front of a neighbour with all the row they were making.

  ‘Why don’t yer come in for just a minute, eh Ellen?’ she said invitingly. ‘There’s a pot of tea just been made, and it’ll only go to waste.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘’Cos by the sound of it in there, the kids’ll be off out any minute.’

  ‘That’s very nice of yer, Kate, but I’ve only come over to return yer stewpan. It was ever so good of yer. Ta.’<
br />
  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Katie, doing her best to smile convincingly at the pathetic little bundle that the hollow-eyed woman was holding in her arms. The baby looked nearly as poorly as its mother, as it screwed up its drawn little face and let out a high, thin cry. ‘Yer can say what yer like, Ellen, I ain’t taking no for an answer. And I just can’t wait to have a cuddle of this one.’ Katie jerked her head along the passage towards the kitchen. ‘Come on.’

  ‘It ain’t that I don’t wanna, Kate,’ Ellen said wearily. ‘I’d love to sit down and have a cuppa with yer, but yer know how things are. I wouldn’t be able to ask yer over mine. Yer’ve been so good to us, I’d hate yer to think I was mumping.’

  ‘Whatever gave yer that idea?’ said Katie, hoping she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. Reaching out, she took the baby from its mother’s arms and strode purposefully along the passage, knowing that Ellen Milton would be dragging herself along behind her. The baby was only three months old and wherever it went, so would the little scrap’s mother. Katie looked over her shoulder and, sure enough, there she was.

  When she reached the kitchen doorway, Katie saw Molly was about to scrape the remains of the porridge pot into the bucket that Nora kept by their back door to collect scraps for her chickens. ‘Moll,’ Katie snapped. ‘Leave that.’

  Molly straightened up. ‘I was only going to—’

  ‘Never mind you was going to, you and Danny get yerselves off to work, and you two little ’uns, you get yerselves out in the fresh air, look how pasty-faced yer looking. Go and get some sun on them knees o’ your’n.’

  Seeing the determined look on their mum’s face, and more than happy to escape both the porridge and the screeching baby, they all did as they were told. As they filed past out into the passage, they all mumbled good morning to Mrs Milton and then hurried past as quickly as they thought their mother would consider polite in front of company.

  Timmy, who was the last to make his escape, was hoiked backwards by his collar. ‘Hang on, you,’ said Katie. ‘Where’s our Sean?’

  ‘He’s gone out already, Mum.’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie letting him go. ‘And no fighting. Right?’

  Katie held the baby tightly to her shoulder and pulled out a chair for her neighbour. ‘Right, that’s that mob out of the way. School holidays, eh? They’ll be the finish of me, I swear they will. Tell yer what, if them old schoolmarms had kids at home to put up with, they’d soon have ’em back in class. Still, thank Gawd we’ve got a bit of time to ourselves, eh?’ Katie was carrying on patting the baby’s back and jiggling it up and down, but there was no distracting the poor little thing. ‘Mum might pop in later,’ Katie said brightly, trying to pretend that the yelling wasn’t piercing her eardrums, ‘but no one else’ll disturb us. You take her a minute, love, and I’ll get us that tea.’

  As Katie handed the baby back to its mother, she saw a look of quiet desperation cloud Ellen’s haggard face. ‘Me milk’s nearly dried up,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘I dunno what I’m gonna do.’

  ‘You just sit there a minute.’ Katie went over to the stove and lit the two front gas rings. She put the kettle on one set of jets and held a slice of bread carved from the remains of a loaf on the end of a toasting fork over the other.

  ‘You ain’t making none of that for me, are yer, Kate?’

  ‘Course I am. Us mums need a bit of something before we start grafting for the day.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts.’ Katie blew on the toast to put out a flame that had caught the corner of the thick hunk of bread. ‘There, stick some marg on that and get it down yer. And yer can give that precious bundle back to me.’

  Katie took the baby from her exhausted neighbour and pulled the cover back from the child’s angry, contorted little face. ‘I bet this one’d go mad over a sugar tit,’ she said. ‘All right if I do her one?’

  Mrs Milton nodded weakly. ‘Ta. It might quieten her down a bit.’

  ‘It ain’t that, is it, darling?’ Katie cooed at the infant as she sat at the table and crossed one leg over the other. Then she lay the shrieking baby on her lap, its head supported in the crook of her knee. ‘I just wanna give her a little treat, don’t I, sweetheart?’ With the practised hands of a mother of five, Katie took a clean handkerchief from her apron pocket, then she scooped a spoonful of marg and a spoonful of sugar into the centre of the cloth, kneaded the two together with the back of the spoon, rolled the hankie tight and, with the baby cradled in her arms, offered the cotton teat to its bawling, puckered mouth. At the first taste of the sweet concoction the baby, forgetting its fury, fastened its lips hungrily around it and her little body relaxed into easy, rhythmic sucking.

  ‘There,’ said Katie, touching the back of her finger to the child’s cheek. ‘That’s better, ain’t it, little ’un? Now, let’s make me and yer mum a drop of tea before that kettle boils its head off.’

  Half an hour later, when Katie’s mother had come in to help her daughter start the laundry, Ellen Milton became flustered and, for fear of outstaying her welcome, wanted to leave immediately. But Katie would only hear of Ellen going if she agreed to allow Katie to top up the remaining half-pot of porridge – the breakfast that Molly had almost sacrificed to her grandmother’s ever greedy hens – with a couple of big dollops of condensed milk, and pour it into a clean basin so that Ellen could take it back home for her kids.

  Despite all Ellen Milton’s protestations that she couldn’t possibly, Katie Mehan, as usual, refused both to take no for an answer or to listen to any thanks. In Katie’s understanding of how the world turned, there was no need to thank a neighbour for lending a helping hand. As she saw Ellen and her now peacefully sleeping baby to the door, she looked across the street to number eleven, Frank Barber’s place, and thought about how trying to help him had caused so much trouble, but she quickly dismissed the thought from her mind. Pat would have to sort himself out about his jealousy; he might have a lot of worries, but so did she, not the least of which was all the washing she had to do. There were piles of the stuff, and that was more than enough to occupy any woman’s mind on a Monday morning.

  Nora rested the copper stick across the tin bath full of rinsing water and rubbed the back of her suds-covered hand across her forehead. ‘It’s no good, Katie, love,’ she puffed, arching her aching back. ‘There’s not enough soap left to wash another single sock, let alone the rest of these sheets. And we could do with some more Reckitt’s blue and all.’

  She stepped out of the little lean-to scullery that housed the copper, the tin bath, the rubbing board, the mangle, and all the other paraphernalia associated with washday, and wiped her hands dry on her crossover apron. ‘Is Michael or Timmy around? One of them can run over to the shop and get some.’

  Katie took the dolly peg from her mouth and stuck it firmly over the wet pillow slip, anchoring it securely to the line. ‘No, leave ’em, Mum. I’d rather go meself.’ She looked over her shoulder at Nora. ‘They’re all right out there playing. Yer know what they’re like once they’re indoors. They’ll be under our feet and we’ll never get done.’ She squinted up at the clear, summer sky. ‘It’d be a pity to waste this lovely sunshine.’

  She bent down and picked up the blue-rimmed, white enamelled bowl that had held the wet washing ready for pegging, and handed it to her mother to put in the scullery ready for the next lot of rinsed, blued and mangled laundry.

  ‘I’ll be two minutes.’ Katie untied her damp apron and threw it over the line to dry out while she was gone, then fetched a chair from the kitchen. ‘There y’are. Take the weight off yer feet for a bit.’

  ‘What weight, yer saucy mare?’ said Nora happily, as she dropped down gratefully on to the chair. ‘I’ll have you know I’m the weight today I was on the day I married your father.’

  ‘Must have been a big frock,’ laughed Katie.

  ‘Yer not too big for a slap, yer cheeky madam,’ grinned Nora. ‘I’m still a
fine figure of a woman.’

  ‘Fine figure of two women, more like,’ Katie said, skipping neatly over the back step and into the kitchen, well out of reach of her mother’s raised hand. ‘Anything else we want, Mum?’ she asked, checking her hair in the glass.

  ‘Two bob’s worth of five-pound notes,’ called Nora, closing her eyes and tipping up her face to be warmed by the blazing sun.

  While Nora dozed contentedly, her mind filled full of glorious childhood visions of green Irish fields and fishing boats bobbing in the harbour, Katie walked to the blocked off end of the street, then stopped to examine a cardboard box outside the shop.

  It was full of men’s slippers and had a notice pinned to the side, explaining that they came in size seven only but would stretch with wear. For a brief moment, Katie considered buying a pair for Nora, but the moment soon passed; new slippers were a luxury for times easier than these. But slippers weren’t the only things piled on the pavement outside Edie and Bert Johnson’s shop to tempt her. There was a towering stack of galvanised buckets, just one of which would make emptying and filling the zinc bath easier than the leaky effort she had to make do with on bath night. Then there was a double row of wooden boxes full of fruit and vegetables, balanced on barrels brimming with pigeon and hen food; and a regiment of different length mops and brooms that would help her whisk her way through the never-ending housework in half the time.

  But even these attractions only gave the smallest clue to the astonishing amount and variety of goods actually sold by the Johnsons. Once across the threshold, it would have taken a determinedly difficult shopper whose needs could not have been met. As Katie stepped inside the dark interior, her nostrils twitched in recognition. There was the sharp odour coming from the big cans of disinfectant vying with the robust tang of the huge wheel of crumbly, mature cheddar; and then there was the musty aroma of teas, competing with the mouthwatering saltiness of delicious boiled ham ready to be carved into great pink slabs straight from the bone for those who could still afford the occasional luxury. All these were mixed up with other less assertive, yet still identifiable scents and smells that, when they were all added together, made up the familiar, scintillating combination which not only made Katie’s nose tingle, but her mouth water.