Across the Barricades

by Joan Lingard

  Sadie thought of Mr Blake in his nice quiet house. She wished she could get away from this street. She used to enjoy it, the life and movement, and always someone standing in a doorway ready to pass the time of day.

  ‘What about a cup of tea?’ she asked.

  Her mother turned to her in surprise. ‘What’s up with you? Offering to make tea?’

  Sadie shrugged. ‘I’ll go in and put the kettle on.’

  ‘Away and help her, Linda,’ said Mrs Mullet, but Linda did not want to miss anything in the street.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Sadie, who did not want Linda’s company anyway. She wanted to be alone to think.

  She set the kettle on the gas and took down the cups from their hooks. The kitchen was spotlessly clean and tidy. Her mother was a good housewife. ‘You could eat off the floor,’ she was fond of saying proudly, but Sadie always asked who would want to eat off the floor.

  After a few minutes Tommy joined her. ‘It seems they’ve got Mrs McConkey out. But she’s badly burned.’

  ‘Poor Mrs McConkey,’ sighed Sadie.

  They would never again lean on her counter amongst the trays of sweets and rows of newspapers and comics. A part of their childhood had gone.

  ‘The tea’s ready,’ said Sadie. ‘Will you call them in?’

  The two families sat down in the kitchen together.

  ‘The firemen are still at it,’ said Mr Jackson. ‘The shop’s a goner, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Let’s hope Mrs McConkey’s not,’ said Mrs Jackson.

  ‘And to think I was in there just a few hours ago having a yarn with her,’ sniffed Mrs Mullet. She lifted her head thoughtfully. ‘There was a girl in when I was there. A stranger.’

  ‘Have a biscuit, Mrs Mullet,’ said Sadie quickly, thrusting the plate under Mrs Mullet’s nose.

  Mrs Mullet took a biscuit absentmindedly. ‘Yes, she came here afterwards.’

  ‘She had nothing to do with it,’ said Tommy shortly.

  ‘It was Kevin McCoy’s sister, wasn’t it?’ said Linda. ‘I saw her from the window.’

  ‘Kevin McCoy’s sister?’ said Mr Jackson.

  ‘What if it was?’ Sadie got up, took her cup and saucer to the sink and washed them. ‘You’re not trying to say that she was in the shop planting a stick of gelignite?’

  ‘How do we know what she was in here for?’ demanded Mrs Mullet.

  ‘Well, what was she here for?’ asked Mrs Jackson. ‘It’s the first I knew of her being here at all.’

  ‘There’s a lot going on without you knowing, Mrs Jackson, I’m thinking,’ said Mrs Mullet.

  ‘Go on, then, Sadie,’ said Linda, planting her elbows on the table,’ tell us what she was here for.’

  ‘Why should I? It was private, between us.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what you think,’ said Linda. ‘Maybe she was sent to spy out the lie of the land.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid!’ Tommy turned on Linda.

  Mr Mullet got to his feet. ‘Don’t you dare speak to our Linda like that! Come on, Linda, Jessie, we’re going home. It seems that Tommy and Sadie aren’t fussy about who they keep company with, but I’m fussy about my daughter’s company.’

  The Mullets ushered their daughter out before she could get a chance to protest,

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ declared Sadie.

  ‘That’ll do, Sadie,’ said her mother. There’s no need to cause any more trouble. We’ve enough as it is.’

  ‘But the cheek of them suggesting Brede McCoy was coming round here to blow up Mrs McConkey!’

  ‘And what was Brede McCoy doing round here?’

  ‘I told you before: it was private.’

  ‘That’s not a good enough answer.’

  ‘It’ll have to do,’ said Sadie. She left the kitchen and went up to bed.

  In the morning her mother was tight-lipped and silent. Sadie ate her breakfast and left the house at the usual time. She went round to the next street. On the corner was a blackened shell that had once been a shop. The adjoining house was slightly damaged and there were signs of a hasty removal.

  As she stood on the pavement she saw Steve coming along on his way to work. She was about to move away when he called her.

  ‘Bad bit of work that, eh?’ She agreed, and he said, They’ll not get away with it.’

  ‘What’s the point in going on? They’ll just come back again. It could go on forever.’

  ‘You’re wrong! There’s more of us. Anyway, Sadie Jackson, you’ve changed your tune a bit these last few years.’

  There’s some never sing anything but the one note all their lives!’

  She walked off before he had the chance to reply. She liked to have the last word, she knew it full well, but who better to have it with than someone like Steve?

  Linda was at the bus stop. They ignored one another in the queue but when they got on the bus Linda came and sat beside her.

  ‘I didn’t really mean what I said last night,’ said Linda.

  ‘Why say it then?’ snapped Sadie. She looked out of the window the rest of the way into town. She was not going to give Linda Mullet any satisfaction. Brede McCoy was worth ten of her. Linda chattered on regardless.

  Sadie tried to lose her at the City Hall but Linda was persistent. She kept in step with Sadie all the way along the street to the shop where Sadie worked. Had worked. She was going to have to go inside now, pretend that she still did work there. Linda was a typist in an office a few yards further on.

  ‘Will I see you at lunch time?’ asked Linda.

  ‘I’m busy for lunch.’

  Sadie left her abruptly and went in through the side entrance for employees. She met the head of the hat department inside the door.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

  ‘Just taking a last nostalgic look,’ said Sadie and walked out again. She saw the rear view of Linda disappearing into the crowd.

  Sadie walked back along to the City Hall. She supposed she should go to the Labour Exchange and try to get a job but they would probably offer her another job in a shop and she felt she could not face that.

  In front of the City Hall the news vendors were selling the morning papers. She saw their billboards. SHOP BURNED DOWN. WOMAN DEAD.

  So Mrs McConkey was dead. Sadie felt a wave of sickness rise in her throat. Why should Mrs McConkey have had to die? She had never done anyone any harm; she had leant on her counter and chatted with the women and shouted at the wilder kids, sometimes giving one a clout on the ear when he got out of hand, but nothing more. Sadie swallowed, and the sickness passed.

  She had a day ahead and did not know what to do with it. She would have liked to be able to go and visit Kevin, to sit by his bedside for half an hour and talk to him. But she could not.

  She suddenly thought of Mr Blake. She would go and talk to him.

  13

  The dog, who was sitting on the garden path, saw her first and got up with a welcoming bark. Mr Blake looked up from his weeding.

  ‘Sadie! Anything wrong?’

  ‘No.’

  He came to the gate. ‘You don’t look your usual bouncy self.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve got the sack and Mrs McConkey is dead. Mrs McConkey kept the shop near us.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I wanted someone to talk to. So I thought I’d come and see you.’

  ‘Come in.’

  They sat in the kitchen. Sadie rested her folded arms on the kitchen table.

  ‘We always used to make fun of Mrs McConkey,’ she sighed, ‘We would shout names at her when we were small and then run like blazes before she could get hold of us. She never did because she was too fat. And now she’s dead.’

  ‘Aye, it’s bad, Sadie, there’s no denying it. Scarcely a day goes by without somebody getting killed, but when it’s a person you know it’s not so easy to take.’

  ‘It’s not easy at all,’ said Sadie. She told him then about the woman in the hat department
. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’ll have to get something else before I tell my mother.’

  Mr Blake looked thoughtful. He stroked the dog’s coat, flattening the fur until Jack purred contentedly.

  ‘Sadie, I could be doing with a bit of help. I used to have a daily woman and then she got a bad back and couldn’t come any more. I could only afford to pay you for mornings but it would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Mr Blake, do you mean you’d like me to work for you?’

  Mr Blake laughed at Sadie’s astonished face. ‘Why not?’

  ‘But I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I got the lowest marks in my class for Domestic.’

  ‘Marks don’t always mean anything. I wouldn’t want all that much done. A bit of clearing up and washing and maybe you could cook my lunch?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘All right,’ she said slowly, trying to adjust to the idea of herself being domesticated.’ I’ll have a go.’

  ‘Good! It’ll cheer me up to see you coming in every morning. The other woman had a long face and was always complaining about her back.’

  ‘You don’t need any cheering up, Mr Blake,’ said Sadie, making him laugh again.

  They agreed on rates of payment; and in addition Sadie was to be given her lunch and bus fares.

  She said she would like to start work straight away. Her earlier mood was forgotten; she was gripped now by a fever for action. Mr Blake went back to his gardening, leaving her to examine the array of vacuum cleaners, mops and dusters. She decided to scrub the kitchen floor first, not that it looked as if it really needed it, but because it was the kind of job that made her feel virtuous and hard-working. For Mr Blake she wanted to be hard-working. She sang as she scrubbed and found pleasure in sitting back on her heels afterwards to look at the gleaming wet floor. Her mother would never believe it! The thought of her mother spurred her on. She vacuumed and dusted the sitting-room, lifting all the photographs and replacing them carefully. It was funny how she did not mind doing these jobs in someone else’s house. She would have hated it at home. And when she looked out of the window she saw Mr Blake bending and stooping and pottering about. It was very much better than the hat department.

  For lunch she cooked mince and potatoes and carrots. The mince was slightly burnt and the carrots a little hard but Mr Blake declared that he did not mind a bit, in fact he rather liked well-done mince.

  ‘I’ll get better with practice,’ promised Sadie.

  After lunch they took Jack for a walk. There was a park close by in which the dog could run freely off the leash. He knew most of the small children playing under the eye of their mothers. He trotted round sniffing and licking them.

  There’s Moira Henderson,’ said Mr Blake, when they came to the swing park. He nodded at a pretty dark-haired girl in her twenties who was sitting on a bench with a baby on her knee. She was watching two smaller children on the swings. ‘She’s a neighbour of mine. Nice girl. Come on and meet her.’

  He introduced Sadie and Moira and then they all sat together on the bench. The baby was pressing up on to his feet, treading his mother’s lap, pulling at her hair with his small fat fist. From time to time she called out to the other two children. ‘Watch what you’re doing, Peter. No higher, Deirdre!’

  ‘Not much peace, have you, Moira?’ said Mr Blake.

  ‘No,’ she said with a laugh.

  They walked back home with her and the children, Deirdre put her hand into Sadie’s and clung to it tightly. She looked up from time to time into Sadie’s face- ‘You seem to have made a new friend,’ said Mr Blake. When they reached the Hendersons’ gate Moira asked them to come in for a cup of coffee.

  Her sitting-room was identical in size and shape to Mr Blake’s, but very differently furnished. It was modern and colourful, and instead of photographs, paintings covered the walls.

  ‘What lovely paintings!’ cried Sadie. They looked vivid and exciting to her: they were alive.

  ‘Moira did them,’ said Mr Blake. ‘She’s a painter.’

  ‘Was, you mean!’ said Moira. ‘I don’t get time any more.’

  ‘You will again, one of these days.’

  ‘In five years’ time! By then I’ll probably have forgotten how to hold a brush.’

  Sadie and Mr Blake stayed for an hour. ‘That was good crack,’ said Sadie on the way back to his house. ‘I like a good chat and I liked Moira.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘I saw she’d a crucifix in the hall. Is she a Catholic then? She didn’t look all that like one.’

  Mr Blake was amused. ‘Yes, she’s a Catholic.’

  ‘I thought the place would have been smothered with holy pictures and statues.’

  ‘You’ve got some funny ideas, Sadie. By the way, Mike, Moira’s husband, is a Protestant.’

  ‘Is that right? She seems happy.’

  ‘I think she is. Oh, I don’t suppose everything’s a bed of roses all the same - that would be too much to expect - but they survive all their troubles.’

  They went up Mr Blake’s path, into the house. ‘It’s easier if you’re middle-class,’ said Sadie. He looked at her. ‘A Protestant and Catholic getting married, I mean,’ she added.

  Mr Blake nodded. ‘Yes, I know. It’s fair comment. Some of the people round here might not be too fond of a mixed marriage but it’s not likely they’re going to chuck a petrol bomb through their window.’

  ‘That’s what’d happen if you were to do it in my street.’

  Sadie thought about Moira and Mr Blake all the way home on the bus. It had been a most interesting day. She was in high spirits when she swung open the kitchen door.

  Her mother and father sat at the table looking grim-faced.

  ‘What’s up?’asked Sadie.

  ‘That might be for you to tell us,’ said her father.

  ‘It would be nice not to have to depend on linda Mullet for all our information,’ said her mother.

  Sadie sat down. ‘linda Mullet? What’s she been saying now?’

  ‘She told us you’d got the sack,’ said Mr Jackson,

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What do you mean - is that all?’ demanded Mrs Jackson. She pursed her mouth. ‘What eke could she have told us?’

  ‘Nothing. Anyway, I’ve got another job.’ Sadie told them about Mr Blake and his villa, how she had washed the floor and cooked the dinner.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said her mother. ‘You doing domestic work? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to,’ said Sadie, ‘for it’s true.’

  Next morning she cleaned Mr Blake’s windows, inside and out. She rubbed rill her elbow was tired and the glass glistened. Then she stepped back to admire the shine, reaching out here and there to obliterate any traces of a smear.

  ‘Does it give you a glow of satisfaction?’

  Sadie looked round to see Moira Henderson at the gate, with her three children.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does.’

  ‘Good.’ Moira laughed.

  Sadie went down the path, polish in one hand, rag in the other, and leant on the gate to talk to Moira.

  ‘I wish I could get a glow of satisfaction out of housework,’ said Moira. ‘Maybe I don’t do it well enough.’

  ‘I expect you get that from your painting?’

  Moira nodded. ‘That’s why I miss it so much.’

  ‘I was thinking about it on the way home on the bus last night,’ said Sadie. ‘And I thought I could look after your kids in the afternoons until I get another job and you could paint.’

  ‘Sadie, what a great idea! I’d pay you of course.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes! I’ve been vaguely thinking of getting someone to look after the kids. Mike’s always going on to me about it and I never do anything. He’s keen for me to start painting again.’

  They shook hands on the bargain over the top of the g
ate. Sadie began at the Hendersons after lunch the same day. At tea-time she announced that she now had two jobs.

  ‘I’m working as a nanny in the afternoons,’ she said loftily.

  ‘Minding kids?’ said her mother.’ You?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve been a kid myself, haven’t I?’

  ‘And never out of mischief,’ groaned her mother. ‘If there was any trouble going in the neighbourhood I could be sure you were there.’

  ‘Best experience there is for looking after kids,’ said Sadie. ‘I know what they’re going to do before they do it.’

  ‘I should think Sadie would keep them in line all right,’ said Tommy.

  Mrs Jackson scratched the scalp between her rollers. ‘Honest, Sadie Jackson, I never know what you’re at from one day to the next.’

  Just as well, thought Sadie, thinking of Kevin, and unconsciously smiling. Her mother, noticing her smile, frowned suspiciously.

  On Friday, Kevin came to Mr Blake’s. He still had the bandage round his head and a slight limp but apart from that was almost back to normal.

  ‘You look a new man,’ said Sadie, taking his hands in hers.

  ‘I’ve been resting.’ He grinned. ‘Every time I moved two yards my mother yelled at me. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Not resting. Wait till you hear!’

  Mr Blake took Jack out for a long walk before supper. Sadie and Kevin sat on the settee and she gave him an account of her week.

  ‘Sounds like you know half the neighbourhood by now.’

  ‘I like to pass the time of day when I go in and out of the shops.’

  ‘In other words, you’re a blether!’

  They laughed together. She rested her head against his shoulder. She felt happy.

  ‘Maybe it’s as well I nearly collapsed along by the Lagan,’ said Kevin. ‘Though at the time I didn’t think so!’

  ‘Mr Blake is the best thing that ever happened to us.’

  ‘We must be careful that no one gets to know about him and us.’

  Sadie nodded. ‘You’re right there.’

  14

  Kevin was not allowed to go back to work for another three weeks. His job involved too much heavy lifting, the doctor said. The days were long for Kevin. The house was too small; the street, in the daytime hours, was the prerogative of the women and young children. The women gossiped in their doorways, arms folded, their eyes sharp for any speck of interest. When he came by they called out to him, willing him to stop, but he seldom did. He talked less to anyone now than he ever had.