A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  The chapel was long and narrow, and as dark and quiet as she remembered. The little red light still flickered to show believers that Christ was present and Kate walked slowly towards it as if drawn by a force too strong for her weary soul to resist. She went down on her knees at the altar but stared straight ahead, not bowing her head subjectly and reverently as Mary Kate had taught her.

  Why, God, why? she cried inside and then the tears came and she wept silently. She had not wept when Mary Kate had died, for after she had wakened from her exhausted sleep she had been too busy and confused to cry. Now she wept for her brothers and her mother and for her father’s pain. How long she stayed she did not know, for she knelt quietly there for some time after the tears had stopped while the little light twinkled in the semidarkness, and a feeling of the most indescribable peace cradled her like a mother. At last she rose, and genuflected, and as she left, blessed herself with holy water from the little bowl at the door.

  Painfully the old priest pulled himself up from behind the altar. The time was not yet. He had known who she was of course and his first impulse had been to go and comfort her and welcome her home. But not yet. For now the dialogues had to be between Kate and her maker.

  Totally unaware of the presence of the old man, Kate left the chapel and walked on, in a daze almost, until a voice hailed her. ‘Kate, I don’t often see you out this way?’

  She had reached Dr Hyslop’s house without noticing. She looked at him. Here was someone she could talk to, someone who would take some of her pain and make it for a moment less severe.

  ‘Kevin too,’ was all she could say.

  ‘My poor child,’ he said and held her against him quite naturally for a moment while his eyes stared away into the distance looking for the face of another of the babies he had brought into the world and would never see again.

  She moved away from him, gently warmed by the contact.

  ‘I must away home. I’ve no idea of the time.’

  ‘Just noon. Come,’ he said and was surprised at what he heard himself say, ‘take some lunch with us. Doctor’s orders.’

  Kate was shocked. Miners’ bairns didn’t take lunch with doctors.

  ‘It wouldn’t be fitting,’ she said, deliberately becoming broader to show him the social gulf he had forgotten.

  ‘Miss Hyslop is at home, Kate,’ he explained, thinking that she was afraid. ‘Lunch won’t be so delicious as one of your pies, I’m told, but you need to rest.’

  She smiled at him. ‘You are a good man, sir, and I will never forget your kindness.’ And she turned and ran like a tinker’s lassie down the road to the miners’ row at Auchenbeath.

  5

  THE DEATHS OF his sons caused Liam to withdraw farther and farther from his surviving children. Never a talker, he now spoke less and less, and Kate voiced her worries to Dr Hyslop. She did not consult him in his surgery on the Main Street, of course, for that would have been a professional consultation. Perhaps he watched for her; she never knew, but it seemed that more and more as she walked up to meet Bridie at the primary school, Dr Hyslop was in his garden. His garden grew more beautiful as the war grew more ugly.

  ‘I seem to feel the need to be close to the earth, to create with God’s help, perhaps just to take my mind off the war,’ he told Kate one afternoon as she stopped, ostensibly to admire his roses.

  ‘But you’re a doctor, you create all the time.’

  ‘God creates, Kate. Sometimes I wonder if I’m half as clever as these new mechanics for those motor cars.’

  Privately Kate thought that was the daftest thing she’d heard him say yet they were not near so intimate that she could say he was daft to his face.

  ‘You don’t agree, Kate, but you see it seems to me that mechanics are between man and machine and I’d bet heavily on man every time but with medicine . . . well, there’s the doctor’s knowledge and skill and experience but God has to have a hand in somewhere and the patient has to want to get well.’

  Again he was talking nonsense. Surely everyone who was sick wanted to get well; no one wanted to die.

  ‘And how is everyone at home? I see the wee ones . . . getting bigger and bonnier every day . . . but what about Deirdre and your father? He’s a man with the world on his shoulders these days.’

  And then she was able to spill it all out. How Liam was eating less and less each day and still working down the pit every hour God gave him, and not speaking much, even to Bridie whom he’d always adored, and never mentioning Deirdre who was so close to her time and scared and wanting her Da and her Davey who was in France too.

  He sighed and straightened his back. ‘Maybe the baby will be the best medicine, Kate. Somehow we have to get them together. Has he seen her since the wedding?’

  ‘No, and he never asks how she is, but he leaves money for me to buy her extra things.’

  ‘Then I would say that she should come home for her confinement. He’d not throw her out.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Last year I would have said “no”, but since the boys, I just don’t know.’

  They stopped talking to admire a Red Admiral on a rose petal. The sun shone on the butterfly’s wings and on the doctor’s bald head and burnished the girl’s blue-black hair, and all three were filled with a momentary sense of peace. There were other flowers to invade and the man and the girl followed the butterfly’s flight until it disappeared into a sunbeam.

  ‘Talk to Deirdre and let me know, Kate. I’ll be there if she needs me.’

  She almost forgot that she had promised to meet Bridie and Colm so full was her mind with the possibilities raised by her chat with Dr Hyslop. It was the first time that she had actually faced the physical facts of Deirdre’s situation. She, Kate, was her sister, and since there was no mother to help, it would only be seen as natural that she help Deirdre. Deirdre would come home or she would go to Deirdre. Either way she was going to become intimately involved in the birth process and Kate, always honest, had to admit that the idea filled her with dread. What if Deirdre should . . . no, she refused to think of that. How many mothers had survived the birth process since Mary Kate’s death? Dr Hyslop could have told her and told her too how many mothers had had babies over and over again since. It was a perfectly natural function. Deirdre would be fine and she, her big sister, would help her.

  In the end it was not a grandchild who forced Liam from his depression, but Charlie.

  Each week Kate sat down and wrote a letter and each week she found the letter harder and harder to write. Sometimes she found herself wondering who this Charlie was who took up so much of her precious time. She tried to see his face or hear his voice but the real Charlie was growing farther and farther away from her. The Charlie she wrote to was someone she had to protect from her sadness because he had too much of his own to tolerate. She had to pretend that everything was going well although it seemed as if every day yet another commodity was rationed, sugar, butter, bread, eggs. Where would it end? As wages became inadequate to sustain even the low pre-war standard of living of the working class, there were unofficial strikes all over Britain. Not much cheer to give a man who only wanted ‘to get away from this hell and home to ma dearest Kate’.

  She was not his dearest Kate. She was Kate who had promised her dead mother that she would nurture all her brothers and sisters; she was Kate who sometimes woke up in the night in a sweat of fear and dread because she had failed to keep that promise – two boys dead and Deirdre marrying because she was – but, dear God, how could she tell him this while he was in the trenches? He wrote to her of men who were shot as deserters because they desperately tried to get home to wives who no longer wrote loving letters. What a juggling act life was. And now here was Liam unable to eat enough to keep a wee lassie like Bridie alive never mind a miner.

  And then came the day when Mrs Murphy cast herself into Liam’s arms, hysterical with fear and dread because Charlie was ‘Missing presumed dead’.

  Immedi
ately Kate forgot her own worries and set herself, with her father, to calming Mrs Murphy’s fears.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea, Da. She’ll be the better for that. Sit her down there at the fire,’ for Mrs Murphy was making no effort to pull herself out of Liam’s arms and he was holding her and saying ‘there, there’, as if she was a bairn needing comfort.

  ‘He’ll all I have left, Liam, and he’s dead, the poor laddie.’

  ‘Drink this nice strong cup of tea, Mrs Murphy.’ Kate forced the cup into her hands. ‘He’s not dead, Charlie’s not dead; sure it says only that he’s missing.’

  ‘Kate’s right. Isn’t it such a mess out there with smoke and rain and all, that you could be beside your brother and not know him. Didn’t both my boys, God rest their souls, complain about the dark?’

  It was a long speech for Liam and it had the right effect on Mrs Murphy. She calmed down and drank her tea and even played with a scone although her heart wasn’t in it and Kate was startled to realize that Charlie’s nice, fat wee auntie had lost a great deal of weight in the past months.

  I’ve not been looking after her for Charlie, she thought guiltily. I’ve been so anxious to keep her away from Da.

  ‘Mrs Murphy, stay and take your tea with us. The bairns’ll be in from the school in a minute and Bridie always cheers you up with her prattle. I’ll away to the back kitchen and get the soup on and a few more tatties and we’ll have a grand shepherd’s pie.’

  She refused to look at the neighbour to see the effect of her invitation but punished herself for what she saw as her thoughtlessness by leaving Mrs Murphy and Liam alone together by the fire. She even refused to pray that the bairns would run straight down from the school instead of dawdling as they usually did. God must have decided that she was punished enough, if punishment were needed, for Bridie and Colm tumbled into the house a few minutes later, hungry as hunters and more than ready to distract Mrs Murphy’s attention.

  Kate dried her hands on her apron and bustled back into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll make the bairns a sandwich to tide them over . . .’ she began and then stopped for Liam was putting his coat on.

  ‘I think Mrs Murphy needs something stronger than tea with the shock, Kate. I’m taking her up to the pub for some brandy. Sure her cousin will give us a glass in his front room; a public house is no place for a woman.’

  Kate stared at them. What could she say? What could she do?

  ‘The soup’s on and the pie’s ready for heating up.’

  ‘We’ll be back within the hour, Kate. I wouldn’t want a decent woman in a pub for longer than it needs.’

  ‘We’ll be in my cousin’s house, Liam,’ smiled Mrs Murphy, ‘but just you feed the bairns, Kate, and yourself too if you don’t want to wait. We won’t be long though; I’m that pleased to be asked for my tea.’

  Kate could say nothing.

  How dare she? How dare she? Feed the bairns, indeed. Who was she to tell Kate Kennedy what to do?

  Liam, the least demonstrative of men, seemed to sense his daughter’s distress. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Would I let one of your pies get cold, my Katie? We’ll be back afore you know,’ and he smiled that special smile, the one that must have torn the very heart of Mary Kate Moore out by the roots all those years ago in Limerick.

  ‘We have to help our neighbours, Da,’ she tried to smile. ‘It’s just the. . . .’

  ‘If I didn’t take to the drink when my laddies went, Katie. . . .’

  How could he be so blind? She wasn’t worried about drink. That she could handle. It was his being with another woman. She could not explain.

  ‘I’m sorry, Da. Away you go and have a nice time. Sure the pie will be the better for keeping a little.’

  She tried to smile but as she stood at the window and watched them walk up the road towards the miners’ club she knew that nothing would ever be the same.

  And so it was. Mrs Murphy haunted the house or Liam was with Mrs Murphy; working in her garden, helping her write letters she wanted to write to nameless officials at the War Office, shovelling her coal into the cellar.

  ‘Kate, when are we going to see Deirdre?’ Bridie asked one Saturday morning a few weeks after the news had come of Charlie’s disappearance.

  Kate looked down at her little sister. Yet another worry. How much had the death of her brothers affected her? How concerned was she about her sister’s condition or, perhaps, was the little girl merely excited about the arrival of a baby, something she perhaps saw as a little doll?

  ‘We’ll go to see her on Saturday, Bridie love. Would it not be fun if she was to come up here to have the baby. Doctor Hyslop thinks you’d be the world’s best nurse.’

  Bridie smiled and Kate looked down at her with love. She was not, even in the eyes of the most devoted mother, a pretty child, but something shone out of her grey-green eyes. What was it if not pure goodness?

  She told Liam of the projected visit and it seemed for a second that he looked slightly embarrassed.

  ‘I meant to tell you, Kate, and I should have afore this,’ he tailed off.

  ‘What is it, Da? Have you had news? There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong but Molly . . . Mrs Murphy thought, you’re too young, Kate . . .’

  (Dear God in Heaven, too young. Hadn’t she been there, a mere babby when Mary Kate died?)

  ‘Go down and take the wean, but Mrs Murphy suggested, asked if she might help at the lying in, and she’ll stay till Deirdre’s on her feet. Sure it will be good for her to have something to do besides grieve for Charlie.’

  ‘Molly is taking a lot on herself, isn’t she? Deirdre should be here in her own home with Dr Hyslop and me, her sister, and you her da, although you seemed to forget who you are . . .’

  Never in her life had Kate Kennedy been insolent to her father and it was difficult to tell who was the more surprised at her outburst. Liam recovered first.

  ‘You’ve not been yourself lately, Katie. Mrs Murphy was noticing as well. Weren’t we talking about you last night. Sure, don’t I know your heartbreak over Charlie and the lads. A birthing would be too much for you.’

  ‘I’m no grievin’ for Charlie. Why can’t you understand that? Oh, I don’t mean I’m not sorry, of course I am, but . . .’

  He wasn’t listening to her. At least he was listening but not hearing. It was better to say nothing, to keep it all inside, to be controlled.

  ‘And what about Deirdre . . . maybe she doesn’t want a stranger with her at a time like this?’

  Again Liam looked abashed.

  ‘I heard from the carrier. She has nice friends in the staff at the castle. Even her ladyship is taking an interest. Deirdre wants to be there, Kate –’ he tried to make her smile – ‘with her kipper for her breakfast.’

  ‘You’ll need to away or you’ll miss your shift. I have a wash to do.’ And she turned and left him. She knew where she wanted to go but she couldn’t, not yet, with the wee ones still to get up. She would hang out her washing, get the bairns ready for the school, and then walk them up the road. It was looking to be a grand day; a day for drying sheets and maybe even curtains.

  Three hours later she was on her knees in the dark little chapel. The old priest had made one overture of friendship to her on one of her visits but when she rebuffed him had said merely that she was always welcome in God’s house and that he was there should she wish to speak to him. She did not. Not yet. She was too confused. She knew only that here in the dimly lit little room with its spluttering candles she found something – peace, tranquility, reassurance, call it what you will. She was able to argue with herself, to see her unreason-ableness over Liam’s friendship with Mrs Murphy. Deep down she had been afraid that she might have been called upon to help Deirdre and yet she was angry that Mrs Murphy had taken it upon herself to do what Kate felt was her duty. Now she could breathe deeply and resolve to be grateful. Mrs Mur
phy had had a child; there were no mysteries to frighten her and helping Deirdre would, as Da said, help her come to grips with her grief over the loss of Charlie. It did not mean that she was going to marry Liam. There, she had said it. Marry Liam. And why shouldn’t she marry Liam, a little voice whispered in her head. Would that be so awful? Grow up, Kate Kennedy. Men seem to need women more than women need men and it’s not just because they can’t cook and wash and sew. It’s that other thing. If it wasn’t for that, I would be enough for him. How will I face it if he brings her into our home? And Bridie? What about Bridie? She’ll try to be her mother and I’ve been her mother all these years. No, Kate, you’re her sister. Dear God, help me to bear it if Da marries her. I suppose I could go and live with Deirdre till this war is over if it is ever over.

  The chapel or the one-sided conversation with God – was it one-sided; she was never aware that He answered, but somehow she always felt better about what she knew she had to do – worked its usual magic and she was able to face Mrs Murphy, if not with enthusiasm, at least with tolerance.

  ‘It’s good of you to help out with Deirdre.’

  Mrs Murphy looked at her and smiled tentatively. She’s afraid of me, thought Kate. Why on earth should she be afraid of me? Isn’t it me that’s afraid she’s after me da?

  ‘Good God-fearing men like your father, men that have lived their religion very seriously, take it awfully hard when one of their own breaks the rules, Kate. He was maybe frightened he hadn’t brought her up right, no lettin’ you go tae the chapel where your mammy would have wanted you to go.’

  ‘You don’t have to go to church to be a good person; there’s no a finer man in Auchenbeath than my da and God knows it too.’ Maybe she could get him to go back as she was going back. On her visits to the chapel Kate had thought only of herself. Now she would pray for Liam, for them all, for Deirdre.

  It had been the wrong thing to say to Mrs Murphy, who assured Kate that she was the last person to need reminding of Liam’s goodness.