Mulligan's Yard

by Ruth Hamilton

  Diane perked up. At least they wouldn’t be on their own, stuck in the middle of a field with nothing to do, nobody to see. And Gran used to be a very fast knitter.

  Ida’s gaze was fixed on her new home. It was the bonniest place she’d ever set eyes on in real life. There were houses like this in books, but she’d never expected to live in a real cottage in a real village. She allowed a long sigh to escape her lips. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s hope we deserve it.’

  James Mulligan cleared his throat.

  ‘He’s embarrassed,’ Ida informed her grandchildren. ‘Still, never mind, he’s learning. He can talk to more people now – instead of just one at a time, I mean. Happen we can train him to be a Lancashire man.’ She swept a glance over the driver, pretended to think hard. ‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s no cure for an Irishman, is there? And definitely no mending a Catholic.’ Having pronounced, Ida opened the door and stepped gingerly into her new, rather slippery life. She had better get a fire going: then there’d be cinders for the ice.

  Tilly and Mona were having a row. There was nothing unusual about this since the Walsh sisters worked together, lived together, seldom enjoying time apart. When explosions occurred, nobody in the vicinity took much notice. The reality was that these two saw far too much of one another, with the result that they fought like a married couple. The neighbourhood closed its doors and got on with life; the warring pair was no longer of interest to the community.

  ‘You’ve done nowt only sulk,’ yelled Tilly, massive chins wobbling, face scarlet with temper. ‘Anybody’d think Mulligan were an old flame, the road you’re carrying on. What would Guardian Wilkinson say if he knew, eh? It’s disgusting, him a Catholic and all. You know what the Light thinks about Catholics.’

  Mona opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, snapped her dentures into the closed position. There was no reasoning with their Tilly, not when she’d come out of the wrong side of the bed with a chip on her shoulder and ants in her knickers.

  ‘Cleaning bloody windows every five minutes just so’s you’ll be able to have a dekko whenever he shifts himself. You’ve wore yon glass thin enough to shatter in a breeze, you have. Well, just listen to me, Mona Walsh. I’m not carrying you. The laundry’s our bread, butter and jam, so shape. That service wash you did today was more of a wash-out. Underwear inside out, socks mixed up, no starch in the collars. We’ll be losing trade.’

  Mona poured herself a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. A cat could look at a king, she told herself resolutely. She wasn’t doing any harm, wasn’t making a nuisance of herself. And she’d seen other women looking at him the same road, a bit like hungry dogs with their eyes pinned to sirloin steak. Well, bitches rather than dogs, she supposed.

  ‘You’re thinking about him now,’ accused Tilly.

  This time, Mona caught the bait and chewed on it. ‘What I think about is my business,’ she answered. ‘Even you can’t get into my head, Tilly, though God knows you’ve been up to your armpits in everything else that was mine.’

  Tilly’s bosom swelled until it developed a strong resemblance to a double-bed bolster. ‘Making a fool of yourself, you are. Showing me up and all.’

  Mona was fed up right to her porcelain molars. She couldn’t breathe, spit, swallow or break wind without Tilly making a comment or offering a suggestion. Well, Mona had come to the end of this particular road. Up to now, it had been more like one of those cul-de-sac avenues, only one way out, one way in, and everything the same day after day. She and Tilly were wearing one another down, picking and moaning, no joy, no rest.

  ‘Even if you were twenty-five, he’d never look on your side of the street,’ continued Tilly. ‘You were never much to look at.’

  ‘Then I’ll find another bloody street,’ snapped Mona.

  Tilly’s upper body deflated visibly, like a balloon with a slow leak. ‘You what?’

  ‘And I want half the furniture.’

  The older Miss Walsh stumbled into the wooden rocker. ‘Half the . . . ? What are you on about at all?’

  Mona drained her cup, inhaled deeply, set the cup back on its saucer. ‘I’ve got my own place,’ she announced, with the air of one who had decided to divulge a state secret. ‘It’s being decorated and done up for me, just me, on my own, new lino and a gas cooker.’

  Tilly gulped.

  ‘It’s time we had separate lives,’ continued Mona. ‘It’ll do us both good, I reckon. We’ll still work together, like, but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – it’s too much. I’m getting on your nerves and you’re getting me down.’

  ‘My mother will be spinning in her grave,’ said Tilly.

  Mona shrugged. ‘If she is, then she’s having more fun than me, I can tell you that for no money. You won’t let me do nothing. I can’t go on the fair when it comes, mustn’t be seen eating black peas or trying to win a coconut. If there’s owt on at the Tivoli – owt as I want to see – you have to find out if the film’s suitable.’

  ‘But the guardian says—’

  ‘Bugger the guardian,’ shouted Mona. ‘He’s ugly, stupid, and his religion stinks. Collecting children to send to America? Running round with his lantern what was lit off the burning bush of Moses? Daft. I’m thinking about going back to chapel, so shove that in your pipe. I’ve had enough of you, the Temple, the Light and Peter Wilkinson. But mostly I’ve had enough of you. So I’m off.’ There, it was said. Mona had nursed her resentment for years, so it had grown until the pressure had got too much for the lid to stay screwed down.

  For the first time in many a year, Tilly Walsh was very nearly lost for words. Their Mona couldn’t live on her own: their Mona had what might best be called a nervous disposition. If somebody looked at her wrong, she got upset. When she’d been a kiddie, she’d had to walk round big puddles in case she fell downwards into the reflected sky. ‘You’ve never in all your life slept in a house by yourself.’

  ‘First time for everything, as they say,’ replied Mona smartly. Inside her chest, her heart was flailing about like a trapped rabbit, but she wasn’t going to let her sister know about the fear. Mona had enough put by to allow her to live a simple life, no worries about rent, plenty of pennies for the gas, for little outings to the pictures, for her snuff, for the little romance magazines that she had always hidden from Tilly.

  Tilly’s mouth hung open as she considered the prospect of Mona living on her own. Who would tell her what to do? Mona was a follower, not a leader. ‘So where is this new house?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the Hewitts’. Number thirteen John Street.’

  ‘It’ll be a hovel,’ Tilly pronounced.

  Mona smiled. ‘It is, but it won’t be. I’m getting a back boiler put in, a hot tap in the scullery, new flooring, decorating. And because I’m paying for the improvements, my rent’s been halved.’

  ‘What about fleas and bugs?’

  ‘That’s all getting sorted out as well.’ Mona took a bite from a scone. ‘You’ll have to get a lodger, someone you can boss about,’ she spluttered through a mouthful of crumbs.

  Tilly closed her mouth. She cursed herself inwardly for all the times she had wished Mona far away. The boot was suddenly on a different foot, Mona making the rules, Tilly sitting helplessly while the balance shifted. ‘You’ll not thrive,’ she promised, her voice quieter. ‘Half the time, you don’t know whether it’s Sunday or half past three. If I weren’t here, you’d be walking about in odd shoes and with your curlers still in. Right.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘I suppose I’ll have to move with you if you’re set on going.’

  Mona finished her scone, wiped her hands on a pot towel. ‘No,’ she said, when the perfunctory ablutions were done. ‘I have to be by myself. You see, I’ve something special to do. You wouldn’t like what I’m going to do.’ She grinned impishly, making her round face younger.

  ‘You don’t half talk some tripe at times,’ said Tilly. ‘What have you got to do? Is it something to do
with Mr Holy Roman flaming Mulligan?’

  ‘No,’ lied Mona. ‘It’s nowt to do with nobody excepting me.’ She decided to soften the blow. ‘Look, we can visit one another for our tea – you cook on a Monday, I’ll do it on a Thursday. And I’ll not leave the Temple, not yet, so we’ll see each other there.’

  ‘What about Sunday dinner?’ asked Tilly. ‘It’s always been a big tradition in our family.’

  When Mona thought about it, the Walsh family’s life had revolved around food. At the end of a meal, plates had been so clean that they’d hardly needed a dip in the bowl. Bits of gravy had always been scraped up with bread, because the leaving of God’s gifts on a plate had been a huge sin in the eyes of Mr and Mrs Walsh. As a result, both girls had burgeoned, had been overweight all their lives, often berated by their peers, sometimes ignored, never chosen to join in games. ‘There’s only us two left, so that’s hardly what you might call a family,’ said Mona. ‘Sunday dinner was all right while Mam and Dad were alive, but we don’t need a load of meat and veg now. I’d be happy with a chop. No, I think Sunday dinner’s a thing of the past, Tilly. Any road, I’d forget to cook without you at the back of me, so you’d arrive at an empty table if I were in charge. Didn’t you just say I never know whether it’s Sunday or half past three?’

  Tilly held her tongue, put her temper on a leash.

  ‘We’ve ate too much all our lives,’ continued Mona. ‘Porridge, then eggs and bacon for breakfast, pies, pasties and chips at dinner time, great big teas, then suppers. If you get any bigger, you’ll not fit in a chair with arms, and I’m not much thinner than you.’ She nodded pensively. ‘If we’re separated, that mould’ll get broke. Mam fed us wrong, now we feed ourselves wrong.’

  Tilly was shocked to the core. She hadn’t bargained for this sort of thing, not from their Mona. And what was it about, anyway? There was Mona, two feet under the table as usual, face stuffed with scone, yet going on about too much food? ‘I’m not talking to you no more, not until a bit of sense manages to float out of your gob. Looking for trouble, you are. We’ve got this nice little house, a bedroom each, and you decide to pike off down John Street. You are on your own, Mona Walsh.’ On this note of high drama, Tilly left the room and stamped upstairs.

  Mona experienced a few minutes of discomfort, her symptoms including palpitations, sweating, a bit of a headache and a sick feeling deep in the pit of her stomach. She and Tilly had never been separated, not for a day. They’d been in different classes at school, but, from the age of fourteen and fifteen, they had been a team, a pair of workhorses. Well, it was no use carrying on tied together if they were arguing and pulling in different directions. Mona needed her own cart. He’d told her that. He’d told her to get herself sorted out.

  She smiled. They’d met twice in his office, had discussed A Cut Above, the new business that hadn’t even started up yet after the death of poor Mrs Burton-Massey. She’d promised to be the presser, the ironer in a very high-class establishment – if it ever opened, that was. It had been nice, talking to him on her own like that, as if she were important. Once his little maid’s foot had mended, Mr Mulligan had stopped fetching laundry in, but Mona still saw him, oh, yes.

  Then, one day when she’d pretended to be at the dentist’s, she and Mr Mulligan had enjoyed a good long natter. He was looking for somebody mature and sensible, a kindly soul from the Deane and Daubhill area, because he was worried about the Temple of Light. He’d decided to speak to Mona, because she had confided in him, had told him that she was a member of the Temple, but that she had been dragged along by her sister.

  On that day, Mona’s mind had made itself up. She had decided there and then to live on her own. She’d even managed not to blush when he’d expressed his fears for young girls who were being prepared for export. Mona was now a spy. She could work from inside, as well as from outside the Temple. Best of all, she would report to him, to James Mulligan. ‘Eeh,’ she breathed now. ‘I should never have said owt to our Tilly about going back to chapel. Never mind, I’ll pretend I said it all in temper.’

  She stood up and looked in the mirror. Wanting to be prettier was nothing to do with him, yet everything to do with him. He was too young for her, yet she needed to look better because . . . because he existed. It was daft, and she could not have explained it in a century of years, but she had to lose weight and perk up a bit.

  She smiled at her reflection. ‘Tilly’s right,’ she said happily. ‘You want your head testing.’

  Margot Burton-Massey longed to tell the world about her lover, but she dared not speak a single syllable. Bright-eyed and living on the edge of her nerves, she did not realize that some of those about her recognized the symptoms. When she wasn’t singing, she was daydreaming; when she wasn’t in a trance, she was curling her hair, trying out new makeup, trimming blouses.

  Rupert was waiting for the right time. Christmas would arrive soon, and he did not want to make any announcements during the festivities. When New Year was over, he and Margot would begin to make plans for their future. Sometimes, a tiny cloud of doubt appeared on Margot’s horizon, but she blew it away repeatedly. Rupert was right – the engagement needed to be made public when everyone stopped being so busy.

  Margot sat in her bedroom at Caldwell Farm. She was in a giggly mood, was laughing inwardly because she, the baby of the family, was now a woman, fully fledged, initiated by Rupert, who would be the one and only love of her life. The feelings she had entertained for James Mulligan had been shallow and childish. Now, she knew all about real love. Real love was needing to give oneself away whenever possible, in barns, in a car, in the woods. Real love was cursing inclement weather, waiting breathlessly for opportunities, for families to go out so that precious moments might be snatched.

  When separated from her beloved for more than a day, Margot would walk through fields and over moors, just to use up her energy, just to stay away from Eliza and Amy – the latter especially, since Amy had started to ask questions. Margot was above questioning, because she had her own man, someone who would take care of her and love her for the rest of time.

  It was almost the end of November. Rupert was engaged in family activities, trips to Manchester and Liverpool in the company of his mother, Christmas shopping excursions, visits to theatres and cinemas. He wasn’t avoiding Margot, could not, would not do that. But life without him was so dull, especially here. Amy was improving, was talking more, yet this house was so quiet.

  When Amy entered the room after knocking, Margot was surprised. She looked up, saw her sister hesitating in the doorway. ‘Come in,’ she said.

  Amy closed the door and sat next to Margot on the bed. She didn’t know where to begin, but it had to be done, had to be said. The anger she felt on Margot’s behalf still simmered, so she slowed her breathing before embarking on the speech she had tried to prepare. She cleared her drying throat. ‘Margot, I . . . I do hope you haven’t gone overboard for Rupert Smythe. People do strange things after the death of a family member.’

  Margot made no reply. She and Rupert had been ‘doing things’ long before Mother’s death . . .

  ‘Mrs Smythe came to visit me this morning. You were out walking, I think.’

  ‘Yes.’

  This was so difficult. Amy did not want to hurt her little sister, but Amy had to hurt her little sister before anyone else damaged her. ‘Mrs Smythe was very clear, Margot. She wants Rupert to stop seeing you.’

  Margot leaped up. ‘What? Why?’

  Amy, bone weary after worrying about Christmas, about A Cut Above and about Margot, closed her eyes for a second or two. Mature enough to realize that she was too young for all this, she wished with all her heart that a long-lost family elder would appear and take the reins for a while.

  ‘Amy?’ Margot’s tone was just a fraction quieter than a scream. ‘Why?’ She had lost her mother – was she about to lose Rupert, too?

  ‘Because we are poor, I suppose.’ Helen Smythe had not mentioned money; she h
ad simply stated that, in her opinion, Rupert and Margot were not suited. ‘Compared to the Smythes, we are church mice,’ said Amy.

  ‘That’s silly and cruel,’ exclaimed Margot. ‘And we are of what Mrs Smythe would call good stock.’ What would she do without him? And surely Rupert was not going to obey his mother? Rupert was of age, was old enough to decide for himself.

  As if reading Margot’s mind, Amy spoke again. ‘Mrs Smythe is an interfering, domineering sort of woman, dear. Remember how she was always there when Mother was preparing to open the business? Mother had a knack of pretending to be guided by her, though she never allowed Mrs Smythe to make a final decision.’

  Margot sat down again and grabbed Amy’s hand. ‘But Mrs Smythe is all modern. She allowed Camilla to start a business, she’s always lecturing women about taking charge of their own lives. So what makes her dislike me so much? Am I a bad person? And would she have dared to do this to me if Mother had lived?’

  ‘No, you’re not bad, Margot, not at all.’ She was silly, stubborn and a bit selfish, but Margot could never be described as bad. In fact, she would probably turn out well in time.

  ‘What exactly did she say, Amy?’

  ‘That she wanted Rupert to spread his wings and fly south.’

  ‘London?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘That’s part of our plan. He and I have talked about moving to London. Amy, why is she doing this?’

  The older girl suppressed a shudder as she remembered her earlier conversation with Helen Smythe. A lady to the core, Amy had distressed herself by yelling, like a fishwife, ‘No, I should not choose Rupert as husband for my sister, or for anyone of my acquaintance. It is he who is not good enough, Mrs Smythe.’

  ‘Amy, what am I to do?’

  Amy drew her sister close, pulling the tousled head on to her shoulder, heard the words she had delivered so recently to Rupert’s mother. ‘You are a fake, Mrs Smythe,’ Amy had announced. ‘Modern women are supposedly encouraging their children to find their own feet, yet here you sit, dictating like a mid-Victorian father, forbidding this, insisting on that. If Rupert were a man, he would not listen to you. And his record is not exactly clean, so perhaps you would do better by sending him to London. After all, he has ruined no chorus girls in that part of the world. Yes, pack him off to where he is unknown.’