‘Yer mother isn’t gonna be best pleased, yer know.’
‘Nanna, please, don’t tell her. I know yer mean well, but don’t. Promise. I don’t care if yer tell me off; if yer tell me I’m gonna rot in hell even, but don’t tell Mum. She’ll make me give him up, I know she will.’
Nora reached out and lifted Molly’s heavy curls away from her forehead. ‘What d’yer think I was praying for back there, eh? I’ll tell yer. I prayed that my family would be happy. And I know your mother, whenever she puts her hands together, prays for just the same. And this young feller, he makes you happy, doesn’t he?’
Molly nodded miserably.
‘So what more could she want?’
‘For him to be Catholic.’
‘I’ll get round her.’
‘No, Nanna, please!’ Molly begged her. ‘Don’t go spoiling things for me. If you tell Mum—’
‘Now would I do anything to hurt my best girl?’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. Now come on, let’s get ourselves off home and on the way I’ll tell yer all about how I fell in love with the biggest rascal in Cork City, God love him.’ She squeezed Molly’s hand. ‘Don’t you go fussing and brooding. It’ll be all right. I’ll find a way to make it all right.’
‘But you have to promise you won’t say nothing to Mum unless you ask me first.’
‘Course I do. Now, I had gone into Cork City with me mammy, your great-grandmother, buying things for me trousseau, when who should come riding past with a donkey cart and a bowler hat perched over one eye, but the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on . . .’
As they walked along and Molly listened to her nanna beginning the familiar story of how she was stolen away from right under her fiancé’s nose by the charming Stephen Brady, and how love conquered all, Molly began to feel slightly more easy about having told her nanna. Maybe she had done the right thing after all. Maybe her nanna would be able to help her.
It didn’t seem to matter to Timmy and Michael that they had been in bed for only a few hours, and that they had been warned for months now not to expect too much in their stockings – the loan club money could only go so far – it still wasn’t quite light when they were up, dressed and down in the front parlour of number ten, shaking their nanna awake and pleading with her to come in next door to number twelve to see what had been left for them under the tree.
Nora wasn’t the type who needed very much persuading when it came to having a bit of fun, and she was as keen as the boys to get Christmas started.
Pulling her coat on over her nightdress – she could get herself all done up as befitted such an important day later on – Nora called upstairs to Sean and Danny that if they wanted any breakfast they had better get themselves in next door to their mother, because that’s where she and the little ones were off to, and, she added at the top of her voice as she was willingly dragged outside into the freezing early morning air by her two young grandsons, she wished them both a Happy Christmas.
Timmy jammed his hand through the letter box, impatiently fishing around for the key on the piece of string, while Michael urged him to hurry up and let them inside.
With the door open the boys plunged head first into the passage like a pair of greyhounds leaving the traps, yelling a discordant chorus of greetings to their sleeping parents and sister. It was only their nanna’s iron grip on their shoulders and her warning that they had to wait for Molly to come down, that prevented them from rushing straight into the front room and ripping their way through their stockings.
They didn’t have long to wait; Molly appeared almost immediately on the little landing at the top of the stairs.
She might have been half asleep and, at almost seventeen years of age, hardly a little girl any longer, but she seemed as keen as the boys, and came skipping down the stairs as though she was the same age as Timmy.
Kissing her grandmother, Molly whispered, ‘Thanks for being so kind about it all, Nanna.’
Nora chucked her under her chin and whispered back, ‘If yer love him and he makes yer happy, there’ll be a way, you just see.’
Then Molly threw her arms around her brothers and wished them all a Happy Christmas, poked out her tongue, ducked round them and into the parlour and made straight for the Christmas tree.
The stubby, sparsely needled fir might have been barely half the size of the ones that Molly remembered from previous Christmases standing there in pride of place in the corner, by the fire, but she still thought it looked wonderful, covered as it was in the sparkling glass and wooden decorations that came out year after year from the glory hole under the stairs. Next to it, in a big heap, were all the stockings, actually old ticking pillow slips, just waiting to be investigated.
Molly dived in and pulled hers out from the pile. She was already nibbling carefully at a segment of tangerine – a fruit to be savoured not rushed, she always thought, as it had the very smell of Christmas about it when you stuck your thumb into the shiny peel – before the boys and Nora had even found theirs.
By the time Katie had joined them, and Pat had gone next door to fetch Danny and Sean, who without their dad dragging the bedclothes from them would probably have slept right through their Christmas dinner, never mind the presents, the front room floor was covered with discarded boxes and paper, orange peel, nutshells and little clockwork toys.
Nothing in the room had cost very much – there hadn’t been much money to spend – but everything had been given with love and with a lot of thought.
Nora gave silent thanks that her prayers had been so clearly answered when even Sean entered into the spirit of things and presented both her and his mum with a box of lace-trimmed hankies each.
When Molly saw the pleasure on her nanna’s face as Katie kissed Sean and thanked him, she knew she had done the right thing when she had nipped out into the passage to slip to Sean, as he had slouched in from next door, the hankies she had bought for him to give them. She smiled happily to herself; it was the thought that counted after all.
But as Molly unfolded the brown paper bag that her mum had used as wrapping for her present, she stopped smiling and wondered what sort of thought her mum had had in mind exactly when she had gone out to get this for her. It was a Tangee lipstick. Molly felt her cheeks flush.
‘Mum?’ she said, keeping her back to Pat so that he couldn’t hear her. ‘What d’yer get me this for? Yer know yer said I ain’t to wear no make-up yet.’
Katie, kneeling in front of the fire as she fed the flames with shattered nutshells and abandoned wrappings, looked over her shoulder. She was grinning. ‘I ain’t silly, Moll. I’ve seen yer hankies.’
Molly flushed an even hotter shade than the lipstick as she pictured the cosmetic-stained handkerchiefs she thought she had been laundering in secret.
‘Yer hand washing ain’t very good, yer know, Moll. I’ll have to give yer some lessons.’ Katie swept the hearth clean with the little broom and shovel from the companion set and then pulled herself to her feet. ‘That shade’ll suit you much better with your red hair,’ she whispered. Taking her daughter’s face between her hands, she kissed her tenderly on the cheek. ‘Just don’t let your dad see yer with it on, that’s all.’
‘Door,’ shouted Michael, making no effort to move from his pile of treasures on the hearth rug, as someone rattled noisily on the letter box.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Timmy, eager to try out his skills on his pair of the wooden stilts that Pat had made for him and Michael.
‘It’s for you, Mum,’ Timmy said as he tottered unsteadily back into the room. ‘These’re much better than them tin can and string ones what Danny made me. Can I go out and try ’em in the street?’
‘Just you wait here while I go to the door, Timmy,’ said Katie, edging past him. ‘And yer can go out when I get one of the others to keep an eye on yer.’
‘Mum!’ Timmy whined.
‘One minute!’ she answered, holding up her hand to show she meant it.<
br />
Katie was surprised to see Frank Barber standing on the doorstep. Pulling her dressing gown modestly round her, she smiled pleasantly. ‘Merry Christmas to yer, Frank.’
‘And Merry Christmas to you and all, Katie.’ He held out a parcel wrapped in a sheet of greaseproof paper that, from the look of the grease spots all over it, had probably seen earlier service wrapped around a piece of cheese from the corner shop.
‘What’s this?’ Katie asked, taking it from him.
‘A little gift. To show our appreciation, like.’
‘What for?’
‘For altering that winter coat for Theresa and for making her angel outfit for her. She’d never have been able to be in the nativity play if you hadn’t have done that.’ He paused, embarrassed. He stared down at his boots and added in a low voice, ‘I was so proud to see her standing there in church last night. And I know my Sarah would’ve been and all,’ he crossed himself, ‘God rest her soul.’
‘But yer can’t afford to go wasting yer money on me, Frank. I know how hard things are.’
‘It didn’t cost me nothing,’ he said with a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I made it for yer.’
‘Yer didn’t!’ Katie unwrapped the paper to reveal a rough carving of the head and shoulders of a tiny winged cherub. ‘It’s lovely, Frank. Really smashing.’
‘D’yer really like it?’
‘Yeah, I really do. Ta.’
‘Katie? Who’s there?’ they heard Pat call out from the front room.
‘It’s me, Pat,’ Frank called back. ‘Frank Barber. Happy Christmas to yer, mate.’
Pat appeared in the passageway. He didn’t acknowledge Frank. ‘You wanna get yerself in the kitchen and get that leg of pork in, Kate, or we’ll have no dinner.’
Frank nodded. ‘Yeah, I wasn’t thinking. Sorry, don’t let me keep yer. I know how busy yer must be with a family to see to and everything.’
Timmy wriggled his way past his dad and tapped Katie on the back. ‘Mum, can I try me stilts out now?’
‘Don’t interrupt when grown-ups are talking,’ snapped Katie.
‘I’ll be off then,’ said Frank with a smile.
‘Right,’ said Pat.
Before Frank had the chance to say anything else, Pat reached round Katie and shut the street door on him.
‘So can I, Mum?’ Timmy persisted.
‘Be quiet, can’t yer? Don’t keep going on all the time.’ Katie pushed past her son, then stomped along the passageway and into the kitchen, her dressing gown flapping around her. ‘Don’t yer know I’m too busy putting the flaming pork in the oven to talk to no one?’
Pat followed her, angrily demanding to know what she thought a wife should be doing on Christmas morning if it wasn’t cooking the dinner for her husband.
Timmy followed them both, sulkily dragging along his stilts behind him.
In the kitchen Nora had already positioned herself at the sink, head bowed, quietly cleaning and peeling the vegetables.
Katie strode over to the table and began taking her temper out on the leg of pork. She slashed furiously at the skin, cutting long, deep scores with the vicious-looking carving knife and then rubbing handfuls of salt into the surface.
Pat stood next to her, his arms folded, opening and closing his mouth as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t quite make up his mind exactly what he had to say.
It was Timmy who actually did say something.
‘It’s miserable enough in here,’ he said, his bottom lip quivering, ‘with everyone having a go at everyone else all the time. But I bet it’s even more miserable over Mr Barber’s house. Just them two, with no mum or nothing. I’d hate that, if one of you was dead.’ He looked up at his parents with his big blue eyes and said earnestly, ‘I’m glad yer me mum and dad, even if yer do shout at me. But I like it best when yer friends like yer was this morning.’
Pat and Katie glanced at each other, but both hastily averted their eyes.
Nora didn’t look round, but just carried on with her peeling and scraping into the sink. ‘Out of the mouth of babes,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what they say? And d’yer know, I think they might be right.’ She dropped a peeled potato into the basin of water on the draining board, carefully selected another, then went on. ‘I’ve never interfered with you two, it’s not my way.’ Now she did turn round to face them. ‘But, for God’s sake, it’s Christmas Day. A bit of peace and goodwill wouldn’t come amiss now, would it?’ Having said her bit, Nora returned to her vegetables.
The room was silent for what felt like an age before Pat spoke. ‘Mags and Harold have asked us all down the Queen’s tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘For a bit of a jolly-up, like. Apparently Mags is a bit choked, what with her young Margaret staying down Dagenham way in her new house and not coming home for her dinner.’
Katie nodded non-committally. ‘That so?’
‘She said yer not to go to any trouble getting yerself dressed up or nothing. It won’t be nothing fancy, just the neighbours getting together.’
Michael suddenly burst into the kitchen from where he had been hiding in the passageway, listening to his mum and dad, gauging the atmosphere before he asked if he and Timmy could try out the stilts yet, but the thought of going into the pub later on was far more intriguing. ‘And us?’ he asked eagerly. ‘Can me and Timmy go to the Queen’s and all?’
Pat looked at his wife. ‘Katie?’
Katie looked at Pat, holding his gaze for a long moment. ‘Yeah, why not? Sounds good, I reckon.’
When they led their family along the road to morning Mass, Katie and Pat wished all their neighbours a Happy Christmas almost in unison. They helped one another to the tastiest bits of crackling when they had their dinner; practically came to blows over their both wanting to do the washing up – almost delegated it to Molly and Nora – and then decided to do it together.
And at the Queen’s that evening, the conciliatory mood between them continued. Although Katie sat with the women while Pat stood up at the bar, they kept glancing across at each other, raising their glasses and mouthing silent toasts. Not only were they both determined to enjoy themselves at the knees-up that Harold and Mags had been kind enough to invite them all to, but, as Timmy had made them realise in his own childish way, they should count their blessings.
Their parents’ commitment to goodwill seemed to be contagious: Sean, Michael and Timmy had actually joined Albert Tucker and Jimmo Shay at one of the little round tables to play cards for matchsticks without being threatened into it. Pat wasn’t sure whether it was the Christmas spirit his boys had in them or the bitter shandy he had slipped them when he thought Katie hadn’t been watching, but whatever it was, as he sipped his beer up at the bar, he was proud to see them spending time with the two sour-faced old curmudgeons. And he was proud to have his other son, Danny, standing up at the bar with him, talking with all the men.
Danny had been dancing with Liz Watts to the old-fashioned medleys that Sooky Shay was bashing out on the piano, but Liz had got fed up with the sight of her mum grinning at them both.
She knew exactly what was going through her mum’s mind: Peggy was making plans for her and Danny’s wedding. Even though Liz protested endlessly that she and Danny were just good friends, Peggy would hear none of it. So, as much as she loved dancing with Danny – he was really good at it – Liz could stand her mum’s leaden hints no longer, and had cut off her nose to spite her face. She had gone to sit with the women after packing Danny off to the bar with his dad.
She watched him standing there, chatting away and laughing with all the men. There was her own dad, Bill, Bert Johnson, Joe Palmer and Harold. The only men from the street who were not in the Queen’s that night were Frank Barber, Mr Milton and Arthur Lane.
Frank had thanked Harold and Mags for inviting him but his little girl was exhausted, what with all the excitement of Christmas and being in the nativity play the night before and had fallen asleep straight after her tea.
Then there w
as Mr Milton; welcome as he and his family were, no one had actually expected them to turn up. And as for Arthur Lane, according to Phoebe Tucker he had been spotted the night before, leaving the street in a cab with Irene, who had herself all done up like a dog’s dinner. Not only that, but they had got the driver to carry out a set of matching suitcases, something unheard of in Plumley Street and as sure a sign of criminal activity as having on a striped sailor’s shirt, a face mask, and a bag marked ‘Swag’ slung over your shoulder. It was obvious, wasn’t it, Phoebe said to anyone who would listen, how else could someone in the East End afford a set of matching bags? And as for that Irene, she had only had the cheek to wish Phoebe a Merry Christmas, but Phoebe, being a decent woman, had, of course, turned her back on the little madam, and slammed the door in her face.
The women of Plumley Street, including Nutty Lil – who by the way she was dressed up, complete with tinsel ribbons in her wild grey hair, could have stood in for the Christmas tree fairy without the need for rehearsal – were divided into two groups. They were either standing around the piano, swaying and singing along to Sooky’s enthusiastic if somewhat hit and miss playing of all the old songs, glad to be away from Phoebe’s trap for five minutes, or they were out the back of the pub, helping Mags cut piles of sandwiches, using up the enormous goose that a customer from the market had given her and Harold in exchange for a few bottles of light ale, when he hadn’t been able to sell the bird off last thing on Christmas Eve.
Also dotted around the pub in variously sulky and jolly huddles were assorted relatives of the Shays and the Tuckers. Both families had invited their elderly aunts and uncles to spend Christmas evening with them, but Phoebe had persuaded Sooky that, like her, she should refuse, and make them all come to Plumley Street. After all, neither of them wanted to miss anything that might go on in the Queen’s, and the grub was free.
Molly and Liz had gone into the back kitchen to help Mags and Edie Johnson from the shop make the sandwiches, soon getting into the rhythm of buttering the bread, covering it with layers of sliced goose and topping it off with a good sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Just Around the Corner Page 22
