Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘I know, Nanna, but it’s something she said to me. I can’t stop thinking about it.’

  ‘What’s that then, darling?’

  ‘She said she’d been upset ’cos of how me and Danny have been. You know, how we’ve not been close like we always used to be.’

  Nora tipped back her head so she could look into Molly’s eyes. ‘Surely she knows he’s busy with young Liz taking up all his time?’

  ‘That’s what I said, Nanna, but Mum said she didn’t mean that, and it was making her really sad to see us. Then I said she’d got it all wrong.’ She looked away from her nanna as more tears spilt from her eyes. ‘“Honest, Mum, there’s nothing wrong between us.” That’s what I said to her. And d’yer know what she said to me, Nan?’

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘She said, “Yer not lying to me, are yer, Molly?” And I said, “Would I ever lie to you, Mum? Yer know us Mehans never lie.”’

  ‘Sssh, don’t take on so. Yer just seeing a lad, that’s all. Yer’ve not done anything wrong.’

  ‘But I have, Nanna,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve kept it all from Mum, ’cos I know what she’d say. I know she’d make me give him up ’cos he ain’t Catholic. Yet I love him so much, Nanna. But I know what it makes me and all. A rotten liar.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘You just don’t understand.’

  But Nora did understand. She thought of the night back in Ireland when she had left a note stuck on the pile of turf by the hearth, saying that she couldn’t face living without Stephen and was running away with him to England. She had been just about Molly’s age then – a child of seventeen, who thought she would die if she couldn’t be with the man she loved, but whose heart was breaking at the thought of leaving her home and hurting her mother. And even when he’d gone and left her, and she’d had all those years of struggling to bring up their child alone, still she loved him. Yes, she understood all right.

  ‘Right,’ Nora said, ‘here’s what yer gonna do. Yer gonna come back in that kitchen with me, eat yer dinner, then get yer face washed and go off and meet this Sunday feller o’ your’n.’

  ‘But, Nanna—’

  ‘No. I won’t hear another word out of yer, Molly. Yer know that you lot being happy’s the best medicine for yer mam. That’s all she’s ever wanted in life. So just do as I say and it’ll all work out for the best. You just see.’

  In just a few weeks, Katie was strong again – at least her body was – and, if there had been any chance of their taking her on again at the laundry she would have been back there like a shot. But being ill had cost her her job, and someone else had filled her place.

  For Pat, too, the situation at work was becoming even more difficult. Dockers had never expected to be in a position where they could mess their bosses around by being ill or taking time off – whatever the reason – but, by the middle of November, even the most loyal and compliant of Pat’s fellow employees were beginning to wonder what was going on.

  Pat had been expecting something like it for weeks, but, when he read it right there in the newspaper in black and white, it still came as a shock. This was going to cause real trouble, he just knew it.

  He slammed the paper down on the table and shoved his chair back across the lino.

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Kate.’ He folded the paper up and shoved it under his arm. ‘Look, I ain’t gonna bother with no breakfast, or nothing. I’m gonna get straight into work.’

  ‘All right, love. Tell yer what, I could make yer a fried egg sandwich to eat going along if yer like.’

  ‘No thanks, Kate, I couldn’t eat a thing.’

  ‘There’s something wrong, ain’t there?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s something wrong.’ He pulled the paper from under his arm and waved it angrily. ‘The union bosses,’ he spat the words out contemptuously, ‘have accepted a deal of fivepence, yeah, that’s right, fivepence more a day. What’s the point in being part of a sodding union when they ignore what the workers want?’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘You ain’t wrong there, girl.’ Pat strode out of the kitchen and grabbed his jacket from the glory hole under the stairs. He stood in the doorway, jamming his cap down tight on his head. ‘The bastards have let us down – every last one of us – and with no other jobs about, they know there ain’t a poxy thing we can do about it.’

  Michael didn’t even giggle.

  ‘Geezers in the big docks like our’n have been stuffed with a sodding eleven and sevenpence minimum.’ He smacked the flat of his hand hard against the door jamb. ‘Bastards! Marvellous innit, eh? And them poor buggers in the smaller docks, they’re on a bloody shilling less. Their kids must have smaller bellies, I suppose. Don’t need so much grub in ’em.’

  Katie stood up and went over to him. ‘Pat, you won’t go doing nothing daft, will yer?’

  ‘No, I won’t do nothing daft.’ He bent forward and kissed her distractedly on the top of her head, then he turned on his heel and muttered angrily to himself as he stomped towards the street door, ‘But if I never had a family to think of, I’d have them bastards. I’d show ’em what it means to suffer.’

  The situation at the daily shapeup on the stones outside the dock gates grew tenser every day as ever-increasing numbers of men gathered there earlier and earlier each morning hoping for the chance of some casual work. There weren’t only the regulars who came from the surrounding neighbourhoods looking for casual, but there were desperate newcomers who had come flooding into London from all over the country, and even some of the stevedores – the skilled dock workers like Pat – were queueing up for bits of dockers’ unloading work. With families to feed and landlords to satisfy, no one could afford to be particular.

  It was a freezing February morning, one of those days when it would get dark almost before it had ever really got properly light, but Pat was on a promise of a decent job for a change, and, cold as it was, he was feeling quite chirpy, whistling tunelessly to himself as he walked up to the gates. But as he passed the anxious, care-worn faces of the crowds of men whose hope was draining away the longer they had to wait, he stopped his whistling. If he hadn’t, he’d have felt like he was rubbing their noses in it.

  He was about ten yards from the dock coppers’ booth, the place from where suspicion of thievery and smuggling emanated like a physical force, when one of the gangers appeared at the gate, and the crowd behind him suddenly surged forward.

  ‘Oi, watch it.’ Pat, though considerably taller and broader than a lot of the others, was still carried forward on the tide of desperate men. It was literally every man for himself in the struggle to catch the man’s eye who could make the difference between earning the rent that week or being forced to do yet another moonlight flit because you couldn’t pay the landlord for the second week in a row.

  Pat battled his way to the side of the mob. Rather than try to get to the gates, he reckoned he’d be better off hanging back for a while until they’d all calmed down a bit. He knew he could look after himself if it came to it, but he had no argument with these men, and if tempers were going to be lost then he’d prefer not to be part of it.

  He watched, doing his best to remain dispassionate, as the majority of them jostled with one another, trying anything and everything they could think of to get the attention of the foreman. They stuck their heads forward, stood up straight, puffed out their chests – anything to make themselves look strong, willing and worth taking a chance with a day’s work.

  But then there were the others, the really pathetic ones who had turned up from who knew where to try and earn a few bob. They probably didn’t really believe that anyone would ever pick them out of the crowd. They were the ones who had become used to being rejected wherever they went, the ones with that terrible sense of despair about them, the ones with the same look that Pat recognised in that poor bugger Milton as he dragged himself along Plumley Street, his head bent down into his hunched shoulders as though he were scared that someone m
ight see him in his shame.

  It disgusted Pat to see how some of the registered men were having a go at the more sickly-looking outsiders.

  ‘We’ve been standing here day in day out, for hours on end in this sodding freezing cold and these bastards have got the cheek to turn up here like they’re entitled,’ one of the regulars yelled. He was jabbing his finger close to the face of a man who was quaking from what looked to Pat like a combination of fear and the icy wind that was ripping through the man’s threadbare coat. ‘Now look what yer’ve done, yer bastard. He’s picked his crew and I’ve missed out. And it’s your fault, yer no-good slag!’

  Pat took out his tobacco pouch from his jacket pocket. He had been saving his last bit of Gold Flake to have after his dinner, but there were times when a man needed a smoke, and this was one of them. He’d have his cigarette, then he’d go through the gates.

  He was just raising the paper to his lips to lick it, when an elbow jammed into Pat’s side, sending his last precious bits of tobacco fluttering down on to the damp cobblestones.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Pat kicked at the stones, punishing them for taking his smoke. Then he took a deep breath and turned to face the idiot who’d made him drop it. He was about to say, ‘All right, mate, just give us a fag and we’ll forget it.’ But as he looked round, he saw the wild look in the man’s eyes. Instead of just apologising good-naturedly, the man drew back his fist and slammed it forward with all his force, directing it at Pat’s chin.

  Pat, blinking with surprise, dodged back out of his way, but now he too had his fists up and at the ready.

  ‘Look, moosh,’ Pat said, weaving around in front of the man, who was a good head and shoulders shorter than he, ‘I don’t want no trouble. Let’s just—’

  But Pat’s words were wasted. A torrent of frustration had been loosed in the man’s head and he had to take it out on someone, and, small and weak though he was in comparison, he launched himself on Pat again.

  The man was lucky that he had chosen Pat to start on.

  Pat flung his cap to one of the bystanders who, glad of the distraction, had all gathered round, and went through the motions of fighting him. Everyone who knew him could see that Pat was just blocking and avoiding, dancing almost, around the skinny little runt who was barmy enough to take on Pat Mehan, a bloke who could take on fellers twice his size and beat them with one hand tied behind his back.

  ‘My good Gawd, Pat,’ one of the bystanders shouted. ‘That the best yer can do with a little twerp like him? I ain’t betting on you no more. Go on, bash him one!’

  ‘Just keeping meself warm, Con,’ Pat shouted back. As he bobbed around, avoiding the little man’s flailing fists, Pat looked over his shoulder and treated Con to a wide, genial grin. ‘If you fancy yer chances, I’ll take you on next.’

  ‘Watch it!’ a voice hollered from the crowd.

  Pat wasn’t sure what happened next, he just knew that he was sprawling on his side on the hard, wet ground.

  ‘What the hell?’ Pat rolled over on to his back and propped himself up on his elbows.

  ‘It’s all right, Pat.’ A hand reached down to him to help him up. ‘It’s me, Frank Barber. I shoved yer down out of the way.’

  ‘Yer silly bastard,’ roared Pat, smacking Frank’s offer of a hand out of the way and springing to his feet. ‘What d’yer have to go and stick yer nose in for?’

  ‘Lucky he did, Pat,’ said Con, handing Pat his cap.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Look.’ Con lifted his chin towards the little man who had attacked Pat; he was being held by three men.

  One of them lifted a docker’s hook high in the air for Pat to see. ‘You was lucky, Mehan,’ the man said. ‘He was just gonna use this to part yer hair for yer while yer was sodding about grinning at Con boy over there. I reckon you owe Barber for saving yer life.’

  Pat stood there, dumbfounded, as two of the dock coppers came out of their booth and took custody of the man. ‘Who else was involved in this?’ one of them asked.

  The crowd was silent.

  ‘Fighting with himself, was he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ someone shouted. ‘He’s barmy, see. It’s having no money and no job and no grub in his belly. Makes yer go round the bend, don’t it?’

  ‘All right, all right, clever. That’s enough of that. Now, we’ll see to him while you, ’cos you seem to know everything, go and fetch the law.’

  After that grudging, if veiled, acknowledgement that their jurisdiction was confined to the docks, the other dock copper added, ‘Now the rest of yer, there’s nothing more to see and there’s no more tickets being issued. Fun’s over and so’s yer chance of any work. Now on yer way or there’ll be more trouble, and we’ll be the ones causing it.’

  With that they marched the now ashen-faced man back to their booth and locked the gates firmly behind them.

  ‘Shit!’ Pat dashed his cap to the ground. ‘Another sodding day’s work down the shoot.’

  Frank Barber retrieved the hat and handed it back to him. ‘Hard, innit?’

  ‘Eh? Aw, yeah.’ Pat brushed the dirt from his cap and jammed it back on his head. ‘Thanks, like, for, yer know,’ he began grudgingly. ‘For what yer did just now.’

  ‘Pleasure, mate. I mean, it’s me what owes you really, innit? What with everything your family’s done for me these last few years. Ever since my Sarah . . . yer know.’

  Pat, a gorge of shame threatening to rise up and choke him, managed to say, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I know.’

  Frank pulled out a packet of Woodbines and offered one to Pat, who took it with a nod.

  ‘Might as well be getting off home, I suppose, eh, Pat?’

  Pat struck a match and held it out to Frank. ‘I reckon I could afford to stand yer a cuppa tea first. For saving me life, like. What d’yer think?’

  ‘Ta, I’d like that.’ He shrugged. ‘Yer know what it’s like, I ain’t got nothing to rush home for.’ He laughed, an easy, self-deprecating chuckle. ‘Except about half a hundredweight o’ washing, me windows to clean and the tea to get on. It’s a hard life for a feller being mum and dad to his kid.’

  ‘Yeah. It must be.’ Pat hesitated, then gave him a friendly slap on the back. ‘Come on then, I’m getting bloody freezing standing here.’ He looked over his shoulder towards the booth by the dock gates. ‘And I don’t fancy waiting round here for the law to turn up.’

  As they hurried along towards Chinatown to find a coffee stall, Frank chatted away as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him and Pat Mehan to be going to have a cup of tea together.

  ‘Makes yer wonder, dunnit, Pat, what’s gonna become of us all when yer see men acting like wild animals, fighting one another over a day’s pay?’

  ‘There’s a lot of unhappy people about, all right.’

  ‘Yer can say that again. One of the blokes back there just now, he was telling us about some poor sod down the Victoria Dock. He got trampled the other day. When they got him to Poplar Hospital, he was dead.’

  ‘I never heard nothing about that.’ Pat ushered Frank towards a stall where a group of men were huddled around the big silver urn on the counter, doing their best to keep warm. ‘Two teas, please, mate,’ said Pat with a lift of his chin.

  ‘S’pose they kept it out of the papers to stop the likes of us from hearing about it,’ said Frank. ‘Always the way, ain’t it?’ He nodded his thanks as the stall holder handed him his tea in a thick, chipped china cup. ‘I mean, they don’t want us poor bleeders whose sweat earns the profits for them rich bastards, knowing what’s really going on in the world, do they? We risk life and limb, and wind up fighting amongst ourselves and getting bugger all out of it.’

  As Pat listened to Frank, he stirred three heaped spoons of sugar into his tea; it was a luxury he didn’t get much of lately, and a tight-fisted stall holder’s angry glare wasn’t going to put him off.

  ‘I was talking to Harold the other day.’ Frank sipped at his cup, the hot tea
making him sniff and his breath form into white, misty clouds.

  Pat glanced sideways; this bloke was really surprising him. ‘Yer know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen yer in the Queen’s, Frank.’ There, he’d called him by his name.

  ‘No, I don’t get the chance to do much drinking, do I, with me nipper. No, I was in there doing a bit o’ bottling up for Harold. I go in most mornings, right early, before Theresa wakes up, see. It brings in a few bob and I can do it before I get down the dock to see if anything’s going down there. I mean, I can hardly tell me little ’un to stop growing just ’cos I ain’t got no money for new shoes for her, now can I?’

  Pat swallowed hard. Katie always worried about things like that. He just earned the money – when he could – and handed it over to her. He didn’t know what he’d do if he was expected to think about sorting out shoes and washing and windows and stuff as well.

  ‘Anyway,’ Frank went on, ‘Mags was telling me about her daughter, yer know Margaret, her what’s living in Dagenham.’

  ‘Yeah, I know Margaret.’

  Well, she told Mags how the Prince of Wales went down there to see the motor factory. And d’yer know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All the silly sods was out waving and cheering him. They ain’t got a pot to piss in, most of ’em, and they turn out to cheer the likes of him.’ Frank shook his head at the mystery of it all. ‘Don’t understand it meself.’

  ‘Yer a man after me own heart, Frank. Yer talk a lot of sense. Tell yer what, if yer can find someone to keep an eye on the little ’un, maybe I could stand yer a pint some time.’

  Frank smiled, pleased by the idea. ‘Maybe Katie’d let Theresa sit in with your boys for half an hour? A Friday’d be best, ’cos of her having to get up for school. You know.’

  Pat’s jaw stiffened and he felt a rush of heat creep up his throat. He gulped at his tea, emptying his cup in two swallows.

  Frank put down his own cup, folded his arms, and looked Pat straight in the eye. ‘Yer jealous, ain’t yer, Pat?’ he said matter-of-factly.