Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  Nora’s grin broadened. ‘Nice is he? This one?’

  ‘Yeah. He is. Bit sort of bossy sometimes. He likes to sort of take control. But I don’t mind ’cos he’s really, you know, a bit of all right.’

  Nora’s grin disappeared. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never thought I’d hear a granddaughter of mine say a thing like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ Molly demanded indignantly. She could have kicked herself; why had she said that?

  ‘Like yer don’t mind him being a bit bossy, that’s like what. For God’s sake, girl, where will that lead yer, eh?’

  Remembering the need to keep her voice down, Molly moved closer to Nora and said almost inaudibly, ‘We’re all different, Nanna. And we all like different things.’

  ‘Not that different, I hope,’ said Nora sharply. ‘You wanna watch yerself, my girl. A feller telling my granddaughter what to do. Whatever next?’

  ‘But I didn’t say that, did I?’

  ‘Didn’t yer? That’s what I heard.’

  ‘No. And anyway, he’s a mate of our Danny’s, and he wouldn’t let no one take a liberty with me, would he?’

  ‘He’d better not.’ Nora was bristling.

  Molly chewed at her lip, trying to decide whether what she was about to do would get her out of the mess she seemed to be in, or whether it would make it a million times worse. Stupid as she thought it might be, her impulsive nature got the better of her. ‘Can I tell yer something Nanna? Without yer raising yer voice and shouting and going barmy?’

  Nora said nothing, she merely raised her eyebrows imperiously.

  ‘Know that secret I told yer, Nanna? The one I told yer to keep to yerself?’

  ‘When have I ever not kept a secret yer’ve told me?’

  Molly knew that her nanna had never let her down, but she also knew that this was one secret that she really didn’t want to risk her spilling to anyone, and she knew how impetuous her grandmother could be – didn’t everyone say that that was where she got her own wild nature from? But she plunged in regardless, wanting to make it clear to her nanna that she wasn’t a fool letting boys use her. ‘Remember that other boy I said I liked and all? The one that I was going to see?’

  Nora’s grin returned.

  ‘Well, I’m sort of, well, still seeing him and all.’

  Nora was triumphant. ‘Two fellers still on the go, eh? That’s more like what I want to hear from my Molly.’

  ‘Sssshhh, Nanna! I told yer, it’s a secret.’

  Nora spat on her palm and held her hand out to Molly. ‘Still our secret,’ she reassured her granddaughter. ‘Now, tell me all about it, but be quick, or that lot’ll be dragging me on to the back of that lorry and I’ll be going mad with not knowing till I see yer next week.’

  ‘I’m seeing him this afternoon,’ Molly whispered. ‘His name’s Simon. And I think he’s smashing.’

  Nora let out a contented sigh. ‘Two fellers, eh? Must be, what, a month yer’ve been seeing ’em now?’

  Molly nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, unable not to look pleased with herself.

  ‘Maybe I should meet ’em when I get back? See what I think of ’em both?’

  Molly gulped. She really hadn’t thought this through. ‘Well, I might not still be seeing ’em, Nan. I might—’

  Nora shook her head and pulled her handbag further up her arm. ‘Like I told yer before, you just make sure yer keep ’em both on a string till yer know what yer want, darling,’ she said wisely. ‘Sure, God didn’t give us our good looks for us to just throw ourselves at any Tom, Dick or how’s yer father who comes along and flashes a smile and waves a handful of ten-bob notes in our face.’

  Molly’s mouth dropped open. Even by Nora’s standards that was a real piece of don’t-do-as-I-do-but-do-as-I-say double-talk. Everyone in the family knew that that was exactly what Nora had done when she had run off and married Stephen Brady, a chancer from Cork City, with roaring good looks and an even more impressive line in Blarney. He had whisked Nora away from under the very nose of a decent farming lad from Wicklow – to whom she was engaged to be married – and had brought her over to London, and, so the story went, before he had even made an honest woman of her.

  But even if Molly had been bold enough to argue the point with her nanna, she had missed her chance. Phoebe and Sooky had appeared on the scene and, even with the amount of indignation Molly felt, there was no chance of her questioning her grandmother’s integrity in front of anyone, let alone those two old gossips.

  They came strolling across the street as though it was the middle of the afternoon. Both were dressed up in coats and hats, and were being followed, somewhat grudgingly it looked, by their hapless husbands, Albert and Jimmo, who were struggling to carry an assortment of bundles wrapped up with bits of knotted string and creased brown paper.

  With a sour-faced silent gesture, Phoebe directed Albert to hand her parcels to Joe Palmer and then for Jimmo Shay to do likewise.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ asked Joe. His question wasn’t strictly necessary, as he knew all too well what it was about.

  ‘Yer going to London Bridge Station, ain’t yer?’ snapped Phoebe accusingly.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, so are we.’

  ‘So you ain’t going with that lot from Chris Street in the back of Neaves’s van, then?’

  ‘Does it look like it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s right. We thought we might as well go on the train for a change. So get that lot stacked on the back of yer motor, Joe Palmer. Proper mind, we don’t want nothing broke. And yer can keep it away from that tripe hound and all.’ She sniffed and glared through narrowed eyes at Rags and the boys, who peered back at her from under the blanket on the back of the truck. ‘Then yer can give me a hand up as well. And yer do know a woman o’ my age’ll have to be travelling up in the cab, don’t yer?’ She jerked her head towards Nora and Katie. ‘Not on the back with that mob. The screws in me knees wouldn’t take it.’

  ‘Screws in her neck more like. Look at her, just like Boris Karloff in that Frankenstein film,’ said Michael, leaning over the side of the lorry; his cheek earning him a grin from his dad and a quick flip round the ear from his mum.

  Joe didn’t bother to argue with Phoebe, he just beckoned to Pat to help him load up. As they slung the parcels on to the back of the truck, Joe had a look of complete resignation on his face, but he was muttering darkly to himself. ‘Just five minutes and we’d have been away and these two old trouts would’ve had to have gone in the back of Neaves’s van with that lot from round the corner. I told ’em to hurry up, but would they listen? No. Now they’re gonna be stuck with ’em on the train, and serves ’em bleed’n right and all, if you ask me.’

  Phoebe, arms folded, stood herself on tiptoes and cast a critical eye over Pat and Joe’s loading techniques, making several suggestions about rearranging things, which they pointedly ignored. But Phoebe wasn’t one to put up with such disrespectful behaviour. ‘Look at that Joe’s face, will yer? Miserable bastard,’ she said loudly, jabbing her finger at him. ‘Yer can see he hangs his fiddle up when he gets home.’

  Molly rolled her eyes at Nora. ‘Yer’ve struck lucky, Nanna. You and Mum’re gonna have Phoebe and Sooky bending yer ear’oles all the way down there.’

  ‘We can handle them, love. Sure, we won’t even notice the battered old cows.’ But Nora had spoken too soon.

  Phoebe had repositioned herself, this time in front of Katie. ‘I’ll bet that Frank Barber’ll miss you,’ she said, with a nasty smirk on her face. ‘And all the – what is it yer call it now – help, what yer’ve been giving him.’

  Nora stepped between her daughter and her vicious-tongued neighbour. ‘Yer lucky my son-in-law wasn’t standing here to listen to yer filthy tongue,’ she fumed.

  ‘It don’t matter, Mum,’ Katie said coldly. ‘Ignore her. She ain’t got nothing better to do with her time.’

  Phoebe turned to Sooky. ‘Jus
t look at these two, Sook,’ she said, tipping her head towards Nora and Katie. ‘Stop a clock, their faces would.’

  Nora and Katie seethed at the insult but both knew that they couldn’t start anything, not with Pat around. They’d have to bide their time.

  Molly wasn’t feeling quite so controlled about it all, and it was only Joe Palmer insisting that if they didn’t go there and then, he would go back to his bed and the lot of them could walk to London Bridge Station for all he cared, that a row was prevented from breaking out.

  The indignant-looking group clambered on to the truck, called a chorus of tense goodbyes and waved stiff farewells to their loved ones as Joe, with not inconsiderable relief, pulled away out of Plumley Street.

  ‘Just say one word about being tired or cold, Michael Mehan,’ Katie warned her son through gritted teeth, ‘just one word, and, I promise, I’ll skin yer.’

  When Pat came home from work to Plumley Street the next evening it felt strange, cold: his kids weren’t playing out in the street, the house wasn’t full of the noise and the bustle of women talking and laughing while they got the tea ready, and Rags wasn’t jumping all over him, begging Pat to scratch him behind his ears. Even though he should have been used to it by now – Katie went to Kent almost every autumn, after all – the house, as he stepped inside the passage, had an emptiness that would never seem right to him. And, though it was hard to admit it, he knew why. It reminded him too much of when he had been a little kid himself, and he had come home from school and his mum had been missing yet again. Young as he had been, he had known she had gone off with some new man, and would be away until she got fed up with him and was ready to come home and face the rows and the violence which would inevitably start . . .

  He tried to bury those memories somewhere deep inside him, to stop them hurting him, and usually he succeeded, but at times like this when he felt so alone, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop them rising to the surface to torment him. It was just like the blackness that overwhelmed him whenever he saw Katie talking to another man. He knew it did no one any good, but he just couldn’t help himself.

  He looked around the empty kitchen and rubbed his hands roughly over his face, dragging his fingers down his weather-beaten cheeks. With his wife miles away from him, and after the day he had had at the docks, Pat Mehan was feeling not unclose to weeping.

  He walked over to the tap and filled the kettle. He’d have a cup of tea. That would make it feel a bit more like home. He took off his cap and flicked it on to the draining board. Immediately he checked himself – Katie would never have allowed that if she was there – so he picked it up and took it out into the passage and hooked it on one of the coat pegs in the glory’ hole under the stairs.

  Then he went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table and set about rolling himself a cigarette, while he waited for the water to boil, and thought about his day.

  Even for a Monday it had been dismal down at the docks, but usually, no matter how quiet things had been, Pat managed to get at least a couple of hours’ paid work under his belt. He was a stevedore who was well-respected by men and management alike, known for his reliability, his strength and his willingness to have a go at any job no matter how demanding; and he had always made sure that the union, regardless of how tough their demands, had played fair with the governors, and they had always looked after him in return. But not that day. It had been dead down there, and even Pat had been told, sorry, there was nothing doing, they might as well all go home.

  He had been so fed up that he was tempted when one of the other blokes, whose wife had also gone hopping, had asked him to go for a few jars rather than straight home to their empty houses, but had decided against it. Not only were visits to the pub something he couldn’t afford if he wasn’t earning even a few hours’ pay, he had his Molly, Danny and Sean to think about. Pat might have been a big, powerful-looking man, but he cared as passionately about his children as he did his wife, and he wasn’t ashamed of it either. In fact, he was one of the only men ever to have been seen pushing a pram along Plumley Street, he had been that proud of becoming a dad. So, it was with no excuses that he had said thanks all the same, but not today, to his workmate’s offer, and had taken himself off home to make a start on the tea.

  It wasn’t only that Pat felt responsible for his children, he was also keen to see that they were eating properly, so he could reassure Katie, when he saw her at the weekend, that her precious chicks were having at least one decent meal a day. He knew what youngsters could be like, and he knew how Katie worried about them. In fact, if he had had a few bob to spare he would gladly have bet it all that Sean would have gone through the whole day with nothing more passing his lips than the two slices of bread and scrape he’d shovelled down himself at breakfast time.

  Pat looked over at the gas stove. The kettle was steaming like a train. He ground out his dog-end in the pickle jar lid that served as an ashtray, took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He’d have a cup of tea later, when he had got himself organised. It shouldn’t be too difficult making a bit of tea for his three eldest, he’d had some practice over the years seeing to his own supper when Katie and the kids had been hopping, after all. Admittedly, in the past, he only had himself to see to, and had tended to stick to bread and cheese or visits to the eel and pie house or the chip shop, but Katie had left a list of instructions and enough stuff in the larder to get them through the first few days so they wouldn’t have to resort to eating cold food or fish and chips just yet awhile.

  Unfortunately, Pat was a willing rather than a skilful housekeeper and when Danny and Molly came home from work they found him in the kitchen surrounded by every saucepan, pot and dish they owned, and enough sausages, mash and fried onions to feed at least a dozen people. Even when he had dished up their helpings and had put a pile on to a plate for the absent Sean, there was still a mountain of it left over.

  Pat scratched his head and stared at the heaped up plates. ‘I can’t think where all this came from,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I was peeling that many spuds.’

  ‘I think yer must’ve used up the whole week’s worth,’ grinned Molly, sprinkling salt over her mound of food.

  ‘D’yer reckon?’ Pat frowned at the drifts of peelings snaking all over the draining board. There had been no instructions on Katie’s list about how many potatoes he should peel, just ‘enough for the four of you’, it had said. What was that supposed to mean?

  ‘Look, when we’ve had ours I’ll nip over to Mrs Milton’s with the rest. Them little ’uns of her’n won’t let it go to waste.’

  ‘Right. Good girl,’ said Pat, handing Danny a plate piled so high it was more like a serving dish than a single portion. ‘Get that down yer, son.’

  ‘Ta,’ Danny said flatly.

  Pat sat down at the table with his own equally enormous supper, picked up his fork and pointed it at his son before digging it into the mashed potato. ‘You’re quiet, Dan. Nothing wrong at work, is there?’

  ‘No. Nothing’s wrong at work. Not exactly.’ Danny cut into one of the shiny, dark brown sausages, making it pop as the skin split, sending a spurt of hot grease into the air. ‘I was thinking about something I saw in Joe’s evening paper just now.’

  Pat swallowed his food and nodded approvingly. ‘Been reading the paper, have yer? Good on yer. So, what was it yer saw?’

  Danny took his time answering; it was as though he was weighing up the best way to put it. ‘It’s all this stuff . . .’ he began slowly, drawing his fork backwards and forwards through the mass of potato his father had presented to him.

  ‘What stuffs that then, son?’ Pat encouraged him.

  ‘This stuff about how Hitler’s meant to be treating Jews so bad. And how he’s meant to be a warmonger. I can’t believe how they’re trying to make him sound such a villain.’

  Molly flinched as Pat smashed his knife and fork down on the table, sending the salt pot flying and the mustard jar crashing t
o the floor and spinning off across the lino. Hurriedly she scrambled under the table as much to get out of the firing line as to retrieve the condiments.

  ‘Sound such a villain?’ Pat echoed his son disbelievingly. ‘Are you off your head, boy? Are you a complete idiot?’

  ‘No, I ain’t,’ said Danny defiantly. ‘Everyone knows Hitler’s the best thing what could have happened to Germany. He’s gonna sort that country right out, you just see. They’ll all be in work over there, and everyone’ll have plenty. And what’ll be happening in this stupid country? We’ll have nothing, that’s what. Right laughing stock, we’ll be.’

  ‘I can’t believe this – a son of mine talking like them no-good bastards what stand on street corners, giving out them stinking leaflets. What yer gonna do next? Start smashing old people’s windows?’

  Molly gently put the mustard jar and salt pot back on the table and sat down. She picked up her knife and fork, but she didn’t start eating again, she was too engrossed by her brother arguing with their dad in a way she would never have believed he would dare.

  ‘You reckon you know it all,’ Danny went on aggressively. ‘Well, if you’re so clever, how comes yer doing so bad for yerself? Couldn’t even get yerself a few hours work today, could yer?’ He leant back in his chair and smirked. ‘And you reckon I’m the idiot.’

  Pat clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles stuck out sharp and white against his sun-tanned skin; he was struggling against an almost irresistible urge to raise his hand and strike his son hard across the face. He closed his eyes and, in a voice trembling with temper said in a barely audible whisper, ‘Gawd, I wish yer mother was here to sort you out. I can’t trust meself to keep me hands off yer, yer stupid little sod.’ He opened his eyes, shoved his chair back and stood up. ‘I’m going out for a drink and some fresh air.’

  Pat must have said he wished Katie was at home in Poplar at least a hundred times during the first week that she was away in Kent. Not only because he was missing her – and he was, badly – but also because he needed her to help him sort out the nonsense that Danny had got stuck in his head. And Sean needed something more than the talking to that he could give him as well. Pat genuinely hadn’t realised just how much work it took to keep the kids in order. Whenever there was any trouble with them, Katie and Nora put it down to their age, but that excuse – and it was an excuse Pat was convinced, because he was never like it as a boy – could only really apply to Sean. Danny was eighteen, a young man, not a kid, and he definitely should have known better by now. Pat just counted himself lucky that at least there were no problems with Molly, or he really wouldn’t have known what to do then.