Winnie of the Waterfront

by Rosie Harris

  Most of the time, Winnie had a sweet nature and was uncomplaining. It was only when the nightmares surfaced that there was any real problem. He could handle it, but Grace was completely intolerant.

  ‘All she needs is a good slap across the backside when she starts that bloody screaming instead of pandering to her tantrums,’ she told him scornfully.

  It worried him to even think about what Grace might do if he was ever ill or not around when Winnie was in the throes of one of her nightmares.

  Chapter Two

  WINNIE MALLOY COULD barely remember ever being able to walk or run like other children.

  She remembered that sometimes her dad had carried her on his shoulders when she’d been very small. She’d held on tight to his mop of black wavy hair, her heart pounding because she was afraid that she might fall off.

  She’d been able to run and skip and jump in those days. Her dad had played ball with her and taught her to skip. He’d tied one end of a length of rope to the lamppost outside their house, and while he held the other end and turned the rope over and over in the air, she had jumped over it.

  When the weather was nice he’d taken her to the park to feed the ducks. There had been pretty flowers and a big lake. On hot summer days he’d let her tuck her dress up inside the elastic of her knicker legs and take off her shoes and socks and paddle in the water.

  At Christmas-time he had carried her into town to see all the lights and pretty decorations in the shop windows, and to gaze at a huge Christmas tree that stood outside St George’s Hall. They’d listened to the Salvation Army band playing on their drums and tambourines as they sang Christmas carols.

  Those were the happy memories, the ones which she brought out from her memory box when she was feeling sad, because thinking about them always cheered her up.

  Then there was the long time when she’d felt too ill to smile or talk to anyone. Only her dad had seemed to understand how she felt. He would sit by her bedside for hours, simply holding her hand, not expecting her to say anything.

  She had tried to blot out those long days of suffering when she had been lying flat on her back in a hard, uncomfortable hospital bed. She’d been so weak that she’d been unable to even turn onto her side. She hadn’t even had the strength to try and push away the bedclothes when they smothered her face, too ill to even call out for help.

  She could remember how the nurses came and washed her face and hands and straightened her bed when the matron and doctors were about to make their daily rounds. Some of the nurses tucked the sheets in so tightly that she could hardly breathe. When they’d finished they pulled up the iron bars at the sides of the bed to make sure she didn’t fall out. She’d felt completely imprisoned.

  At mealtimes the nurses spooned some horrible milky sludge or thick soup into her mouth, and made her swallow even though it almost choked her to do so. They were cross and scolded her when it dribbled out of the side of her mouth and soiled the sheets.

  The worst part of all had been when the nurses and doctors stretched and pulled at her legs. The pain had been unbearable. They tried to cheer her up by telling her that they were doing it for her own good so that one day she would be able to get out of bed and perhaps even walk again.

  She’d thought that day would never come, because back then she was so weak that she couldn’t even sit on the edge of the bed or hold her head up without someone supporting her.

  Now she was older she often wondered whether being crippled and unable to move was the same as being buried alive. Some of the time when she’d been in hospital she had felt that it must be.

  Ever since then, since she was four years old, her legs had been encased in cruel iron supports to try and straighten them. It meant that the only way she could really get about was in the funny old cart that her dad had made for her.

  Other people might think it was an old pram, dolled up to look like an invalid carriage, but to her it was magical. It meant that she didn’t have to stay in the house all the time, but could get out and go places.

  True, she had to rely on someone to push her, but when her dad was at home he was always willing to do that. She loved it when he raced down Water Street. They went so fast that sometimes she was terrified that they were going to run straight into the Mersey. He always managed to stop in time, though, before they reached the edge of the waterfront.

  Coming back up was not so easy for him, though. He’d be puffing and panting like a dray-horse by the time they reached the top of Dale Street. Then he’d take it slow, struggling to get his breath back as he pushed her home along Scotland Road.

  Her mam was no good at all at pushing her. She said that even taking her to the corner shop and back again made her back ache. As for taking her anywhere else, that was completely out of the question. Even when they went to Mass on Sunday it was her dad who pushed her there and back.

  When she’d first come home from hospital, a few days before Christmas 1912, she’d simply lain in bed every day. She’d been so weak that everyone said it was too cold for her to go out. She hadn’t got the invalid carriage then, so it had meant that her dad had to carry her and they had to catch a tram if they wanted to go into town or anywhere else. That was why he’d been so determined to make the carriage for her.

  When he’d first talked about getting one her mam had been against it, because she said they cost too much for the likes of them. ‘If our Winnie has to go out to visit the hospital or the doctor and you aren’t there to carry her then I’ll borrow a pram and take her in that,’ she’d stated.

  Her dad didn’t like the sound of that so he’d gone out and bought a second-hand pushchair and changed it into an invalid carriage by putting a long wooden platform on it to take her legs. When he’d finished he told her that it was a magic chariot that would take her anywhere in the world that she wanted to go.

  ‘What’s the point of filling her mind with such nonsense,’ her mam had said angrily.

  When, on her sixth birthday in May 1914, she’d asked, ‘Could I go to school in it?’ her mam had been very dismissive.

  ‘How can you learn lessons, crippled like you are?’ she’d snapped.

  ‘She can learn to read and write and do sums the same as any other little girl,’ her dad had argued.

  ‘She’d never be able to manage in school, she can’t even walk across the floor on her own. She’d be knocked down and trampled on. She wouldn’t fit into any of the desks, either, with those legs of hers.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have to fit into a desk if she sat in her special chair all day,’ her dad pointed out. ‘I’ll talk to Father Patrick and see what he has to say about it.’

  ‘He’ll tell you that you’re a puddle-headed fool!’

  Father Patrick had looked thoughtful and promised to have a word with the school. The next thing they knew, Father Patrick was telling her dad to take her along in her invalid chair to see the head teacher, so that she could decide whether it was feasible for Winnie to attend classes or not.

  Miss Phillips, the head teacher at St Francis Infants School, considered the situation very carefully and then finally gave her consent. ‘There is a problem because she’s never attended school before, even though she is six years old,’ she frowned. ‘I’m afraid she will have to go into the bottom class with the very young children who are just starting school.’

  Winnie didn’t see that it mattered, not as long as she was at school. It seemed to worry Miss Phillips though, so Winnie promised she would work hard and learn all her lessons so quickly that next year she could be in the same class as children of her own age.

  She’d achieved it. She was so anxious to learn, especially to be able to read, that she really put her mind to it. She begged to be allowed to take her books home so that her dad could help her each evening when he came in from work.

  At first her invalid chair had been something of a problem because it took up so much space in the classroom. However, once Miss Phillips found the right spot for it, whe
re it was in no one’s way, it was as though it was just another one of the fixtures in the room. Winnie was wheeled into the special space first thing in the morning and she stayed in the same spot all day. At lunchtime she sat there on her own and ate the jam butties her dad had made for her before they left home.

  At first the other children had been curious about her legs being in irons and the fact that she had to sit in the chair all the time. Some had teased her, others had simply ignored her, but gradually they took her presence for granted. Several of the girls even stayed in at playtime to keep her company.

  Getting to school and getting home again was her main problem. Her mam refused to push her there because she said it made her back ache. This meant that Winnie had to leave the house at the same time as her dad did, so that he could push her to school before he caught a tram down to the docks. As a result, she arrived almost an hour before anyone else and had to sit outside and wait until the school opened. She then had to ask one of the teachers to push her into the classroom.

  At night it was the same routine. A teacher would push her out onto the pavement and leave her by the school gates until her dad arrived back from work and wheeled her home.

  Most of the time she didn’t mind at all, but when it was pouring with rain, even though there was an overhanging roof by the school gate that provided some shelter, she did get very wet. In the winter it was also very cold, but that wasn’t so bad because her dad always made sure that she had some good thick blankets to wrap around her to keep herself warm. On very cold mornings he filled a stone hot-water bottle and tucked it in beside her for extra warmth.

  She didn’t mind the waiting either, not once she had learned to read. She’d always got a comic or a book of some sort down the side of her carriage. Even if there was no one to talk to she was quite happy to sit and read until her dad arrived or the school opened up.

  Things had become so much better since she first started school. Miss Phillips had been very patient and encouraged her to do extra work and paid special attention to her in class. Winnie was grateful that Miss Phillips had done all she could to make sure that she caught up with all the lessons she’d missed.

  At first, Winnie had found it a tremendous struggle to understand all the intricacies of reading and writing. She badly wanted to be able to read. She loved it when her dad read stories to her and the thought of being able to read them for herself spurred her efforts on. Once she could read, she told herself, she’d never be lonely or unhappy again. There were hundreds of books in the world and they were all different, so it was going to take her years and years to read every one of them.

  Her determination was rewarded. One day she was struggling to recognise all the strange shapes and symbols and the next they had clicked into place and she was reading. Or that was how it had seemed to her.

  Once she could read, then learning to write had seemed easy. It was only a matter of copying the letters from her reading book onto her slate. As soon as she had succeeded in doing that properly she was allowed to copy them onto the lines on a sheet of paper.

  Sums were quite different, but her dad was good with them and helped her every evening. By the end of her first summer term at school, Winnie found that she had achieved more than she had ever thought possible and Miss Phillips was delighted by her progress.

  ‘When you come back after the summer holidays,’ Miss Phillips told her, ‘you will move up into the class you should be in at your age.’

  Winnie’s chair was not only a means of getting out and about. During the summer holidays, when she was seven years old, her dad had made a tray to fit across her lap so that she could use it as a table. She was able to use it to hold her plate and cup at mealtimes. First thing each morning while he was getting her breakfast ready, her dad would bring her a bowl of water and rest it on the tray-table so that she could wash her hands and face. Then he’d hand her a mirror and she was able to comb her hair and make herself ready for school.

  Her long black ringlets had been cut off while she had been in hospital, and now, from time to time, her father trimmed her hair so that it stayed in tight curls around her face.

  ‘It’s easier to manage that way,’ he told her when she asked him why she couldn’t grow it again. ‘You don’t want long hair that gets full of tangles, now, do you? Think of all the trouble that would be.’

  ‘No, but I’d like it to grow a bit longer,’ she pleaded.

  A few months later as they studied her reflection, her dad agreed with her. Once they had let her black curls grow so that they framed her heart-shaped face they both found it did suit her much better. In fact, when she smiled, she looked quite pretty.

  If only her legs worked, Winnie thought wistfully, she’d be the same as all the other girls at school!

  But they didn’t, and it seemed they never would so she knew she had to give up daydreaming that one day she would walk again. She sometimes wondered why she still had to wear the heavy irons that were so uncomfortable, since they weren’t doing any good. Her dad didn’t seem to have the answer to that either, but he persuaded her that she ought to go on wearing them because that was what the doctor had said she must do.

  Now that she was in a class where the other children were the same age as her, or even a little bit older, she was more conscious of her disability. Although they accepted her and very rarely commented on the fact that she couldn’t walk or run, it made her feel different from them.

  She felt so envious when she saw them running around the playground at dinnertime that it brought tears to her eyes. One day she was so sunk in her own misery that she didn’t hear anyone come into the deserted classroom and she almost jumped out of her skin when a voice asked, ‘What you snuffling about then?’

  Startled, she looked up defiantly at the tall, redheaded boy, rubbing away her tears with the heel of her hand.

  ‘I’m not snuffling. I … I got something in me eye, that’s all.’

  ‘What you doing staying in here instead of coming outside?’

  Winnie shrugged. ‘I like it here.’

  ‘No you don’t! That’s why you were crying. You wanted to be outside in the playground like the rest of us. Go on, admit it.’

  ‘Well, I can’t be there, can I?’

  ‘You could be if I pushed your chair outside.’

  They stared at each other in silence. His emerald-green gaze locked with her turquoise-blue one and a spark of mutual understanding flashed between them.

  ‘All right,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘I ain’t going to play with you, though,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I never asked you to, did I?’

  After that, Sandy Coulson, or occasionally one of the other big boys in her class, pushed her chair out into the playground at midday. Miss Phillips made no objection except to say that it caused too much disruption for Winnie to be wheeled out for their ten-minute mid-morning break.

  Winnie loved it because it meant she could take part in all sorts of games with her friends. She could catch and throw a ball, play I-Spy, and join in some of the quieter games the girls played.

  The boys would have liked her to join in their games. ‘Come on, we can use your chair as a battering ram,’ one of them urged her one lunchtime.

  When a couple of them tried to persuade Winnie to let them lift her out so that they could have a ride in her chair, Winnie refused because she was afraid that they might damage her chair and she couldn’t let that happen. Her dad had gone to such a lot of trouble to make it for her, and he would be so unhappy if it ended up broken.

  Furthermore, if anything happened to it then how would she get to school? Her dad wouldn’t be able to take her out either, because she was far too heavy for him to carry these days. Even carrying her upstairs to bed left him gasping for breath.

  Miss Phillips, who was in the playground, heard what was said and had immediately forbidden it.

  ‘Certainly not! Winnie might be hurt or one of you could be injured,’ sh
e admonished in a shocked voice.

  Chapter Three

  GRACE MALLOY FELT the bedclothes lifting as Trevor crept in beside her. As his ice-cold leg grazed against her she pulled away.

  ‘Keep away from me – you’re like a bloody iceberg!’ she muttered irritably. ‘When I told you to stop Winnie from crying I didn’t mean you had to sit by her bedside until she went back to sleep.’

  ‘She was having one of her nightmares so I took her downstairs for a while until she’d calmed down, so that she wouldn’t disturb you.’

  ‘Bigger fool you! Senseless, the way you pander to that kid. Make a right little martyr of her you do. That’s why the mardy little madam is such a pain in the arse and plays up so much. She knows she’s only got to open her gob and yell and you’ll be there to comfort her.’

  ‘I only wish there was more I could do to ease her pain and suffering,’ Trevor said wistfully. ‘It’s such a sad life for the poor little thing.’

  ‘It’ll be an even sadder life for you if you aren’t up in the morning for work. Lose that job and you won’t find another one in a hurry, especially one where you’re sitting on your backside all day, I can tell you. With this war on you’ll be shoved into a munitions factory and be on your feet all day.’

  ‘I’ll be up like a lark the minute the alarm goes off, and I’ll bring you up a cuppa before I go out,’ Trevor promised.

  ‘Well, make sure you put two sodding spoonfuls of sugar in it, not just one,’ Grace muttered as she turned her back on him and humped the bedclothes up around her shoulders.

  Within minutes, Trevor was asleep and snoring gently, but Grace now felt wide awake. She twisted and turned and thumped her pillow angrily, but sleep eluded her.

  The anger inside her was like a pain. She didn’t know which she found the hardest to contend with, her marriage to Trevor or the terrible burden that Winnie had turned out to be.

  She must have been mad to get married again at her age, she thought morosely, especially to a weedy specimen like Trevor Malloy. He was too much the perfect gentleman for her taste. Too eager to do the right thing and always trying to please everybody.