A Glimpse at Happiness

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘Had a good day at school?’ he asked.

  ‘We studied India today and I told Miss Porritt that you’d been there,’ Annie answered. ‘Do you want a mug of tea, Pa?’

  ‘I could murder for one,’ he replied and Annie giggled.

  She couldn’t imagine her pa, who had nursed her through scarlet fever and rushed Mickey to the casualty ward at the hospital when he’d slashed his leg on a rusty hinge, hurting anyone. But she knew he could because the boys at school told her their fathers rated hers as a hard man. Even so, Annie still couldn’t see it at all. Even the best parents gave their children the odd back-hander when they were out of line but, as far as she could remember, her pa had never laid a finger on either her or Mickey.

  ‘Gran said supper’d be ready soon,’ Annie said, picking up the lamp from the mantelshelf and taking it to the table before going over to the fire and making the tea. That done, she took her father’s special mug, and hers and Mickey’s, together with the brewing tea, to the table. Patrick pulled out a packet from his shirt pocket and gave it to his daughter.

  ‘Spillage,’ he said as she took it from him.

  Her pa had told her that bargemen were allowed to keep a part of their cargo if it burst or spilled onto their boats. It was a tradition. She didn’t quite know what he meant exactly, but she did know it meant a full bucket of coal in the winter and sweet tea from time to time.

  Sometimes, if there was a lot, the bargemen would sell it to the local shops. When she went shopping with Gran, things weren’t always on display but, if asked for, they would appear from under the counter - unless, of course, one of the local police happened to be walking by.

  Annie placed her father’s tea in front of him and Mickey jumped off Patrick’s lap to sit cross-legged on the floor. Annie handed her brother’s tea down to him and he slurped at it noisily and took up his sailing ship again.

  ‘Tell me where you got that cup, Pa,’ Annie said, watching her father’s large hands cradle the pictures that ran around the bowl.

  ‘I stole if from a maharaja,’ he said. ‘I crept into his palace one night when he and all his court were asleep and I whipped it out from under his very nose.’ He winked. ‘Of course, I had to fight off his tigers.’

  ‘Oh, Pa, you do tell ’em,’ Annie laughed. She loved it when her father joked, which he seemed to do more often latterly, especially after one of Miss Josie’s visits. ‘Last time you said you were given it by a chief on a South Sea island.’

  ‘That was the tea pot,’ Patrick said, an exaggerated look of outrage on his face.

  Annie laughed again. ‘Where did you get that?’ she asked again.

  ‘Well now, let me see, there was this Chinaman in—’

  Mickey abandoned his toy and sat back on his heels. ‘Pa! I bet you can’t even remember how you got it.’

  Her father studied the china mug for a moment and then looked back at his children.

  ‘I’d been at sea for about two years when we shipped out of London. It was a terrible voyage, the worst I’d ever known before or since. There were times when I thought the waves crashing over the deck would take us straight to the bottom. We fought day and night but, finally, with the arms almost torn from our shoulders and the skin nearly gone from our hands, we made it to port. And there on the side of the quay was the prettiest girl I ever saw waiting for me. I’ll never forget what she looked like, with her deep brown hair tied up in a green bow and her bright smile. It had been my nineteenth birthday a month before and, as I staggered towards her on my sea legs, she gave me this.’ He held up the mug.

  Annie turned her face up to him. ‘It was Ma, wasn’t it? That pretty girl waiting for you.’

  Her father gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Of course it was.’

  Annie knew it wasn’t. She could hardly remember her mother. In fact she couldn’t remember anything clearly before she arrived at Gran’s house; otherwise it was just vague shadows and fears.

  Gran and Aunt Mattie occasionally referred to her mother as ‘her’, when they thought she couldn’t hear, and crossed themselves swiftly after. Annie couldn’t understand why until one day she overheard Aunt Mattie saying that it was ‘wicked how she had treated Patrick’. What had her mother done that had been so wicked? She didn’t know, but she knew it made her pa very, very unhappy and she didn’t like that.

  ‘Miss Josie’s very pretty, isn’t she?’ she asked, watching her father closely.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ he replied, an expression Annie couldn’t understand flitting across his face. ‘Very pretty.’

  ‘She bought me and Mickey a candy twist today,’ Annie told him.

  Mickey looked up from his ship. ‘It made my tongue go blue,’ he said, sticking it out to emphasise his point.

  Patrick ruffled his son’s hair. ‘Don’t do that to Gran or she’ll fetch you one.’

  ‘When Miss Josie was here yesterday she helped me cut out a shirt for Michael and she says she’ll help me sew it properly.’

  ‘That is very kind of her,’ her father said.

  ‘Did Ma make your shirts, Pa?’ Annie asked.

  The relaxed expression on her father’s face was replaced by the same taut look he always wore when her mother was mentioned.

  ‘She wasn’t too good with a needle,’ he replied in a flat tone. Then his face brightened. ‘But with Josie’s help you’ll be like your Aunt Mattie soon and she can sure whip up a shirt in the blink of an eye.’

  Annie noticed the change in her father’s voice as he said Josie’s name. It had a warmth about it that she rarely heard. She got off the chair and took her father’s empty cup from him.

  ‘Aunt Mattie told us that you and Miss Josie used to be sweethearts, before she went to live in America,’ Annie said in a conversational tone.

  ‘Did she now?’ He stretched his legs and settled back in the chair, letting his head rest on the back.

  Annie continued to tidy the cups. ‘She did, and she said that you used to wait around in Gravel Lane just so you could walk Miss Josie home.’

  ‘I walked her home a couple of times,’ he replied, tucking his hands behind his head. ‘I hardly call that being sweethearts. I doubt Josie even remembers it.’

  ‘She does, because she told me herself as we were sewing Aunt Mattie’s dress. She told us about the time you took her to the fair by Bow Bridge and how she saw a mermaid.’

  ‘What else did she tell you?’

  ‘That you took her to see the jugglers and that there was a dog with a ruff around its neck that jumped through hoops and flipped somersaults,’ Mickey chipped in before Annie could answer.

  Patrick sat forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘She said that you bought her a lemonade and knocked three coconuts down on one of the stalls to win her a green ribbon.’

  Patrick threw his head back and laughed. ‘That lemonade cost me tuppence,’ he said. ‘A bit of a cheek for a splash of water and a spoonful of sugar. But I remember how that green ribbon shone in her hair.’

  Annie smiled. ‘Miss Josie said that she still has it and uses it as a marker for her Bible. She said you were at her mother’s wedding and danced with her all night.’ Annie giggled. ‘She told us you could lift your feet to a fiddle second to none, although Aunt Mattie said you had two left feet.’

  ‘She can talk! She might have a right foot and a left, but neither can keep time with a fiddle,’ he told her. His grin widened. ‘If I say it myself, and I shouldn’t, I’m a fair one for the old dancing.’

  ‘Will you dance with Miss Josie at Aunt Mattie’s wedding?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, stretching again with his hands back behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankles. ‘Goodness, that seems such a long time ago that we danced together in the church hall after Mr and Mrs Munroe got married,’ he said, staring at a point on the opposite wall. ‘Of course, we were only young then but she was the prettiest gi
rl I’d ever seen.’

  Annie giggled. ‘Thought you said that was Ma,’ she said, hoping her father would laugh at being caught out.

  Instead her father sat up. ‘So it was.’ He stood up. ‘That was a lovely cup of tea, Annie.’ He smiled at her, but the joy had fled his eyes. ‘Pop down and see if your gran’s got supper ready yet, there’s a good girl.’

  He turned away and began to strip off to wash in the bowl on the stand.

  With sorrow welling up in her chest, Annie opened the door to the narrow upstairs landing. She didn’t know what her mother had done to hurt Pa but, whatever it was, she was still hurting him from beyond the grave.

  Chapter Nine

  Clutching her package in one hand and holding her skirts tightly around her with the other, Josie side-stepped the wooden privy that served the inhabitants of the twenty or so houses in Walburch and Trench Streets. The alley where the communal toilet sat ran between the backs of the crowded cottages. There was a gully down the centre so that the dirty water and overnight soil from each house could drain into Red Lion Street at the far end.

  Although Josie had used the front door on her first visit to the Nolans, close acquaintances always came through the unbolted back door. Not to enter a long-time friend’s house this way would have been judged as standoffish. So although it meant navigating her way through the hazards of household rubbish and scavenged scrap metal, Josie respected the custom. She made her way to the yard door and lifted the latch, ducking under the full washing line slung from a hook in the wall to the gatepost, and entered the rectangular space at the back of number twenty.

  The length from the back fence to the house was no more than fifteen feet and, unlike some of the yards she’d passed on her way, neat and tidy. There was a small raised vegetable bed at the sides where the first green shoots of the runner beans were already winding their way up the tied canes while, between them, tight fists of cabbage poked out from peaty soil. The tin bath hung on the far wall above the chicken coop in readiness for Friday night. As Josie’s skirts brushed against the wire fencing at the front, the brood hens started to trill and cluck.

  ‘Yoohoo! Only me,’ she called, as she pushed open the back door.

  Mattie got up from the table and hugged Josie, then glanced at the parcel in her hand.

  ‘Just something for Mam,’ Josie explained, managing to keep the excitement from her voice. She set the round box tied with a mauve ribbon carefully on the fireside chair.

  Mattie took Josie’s hands and bobbed up and down. ‘I can’t believe it’s less than a month until Brian and me are wed.’

  She stopped her jigging but her eyes still danced. ‘Now tell me this, Miss Josephine O’Casey, and tell me no more. Isn’t my Brian the most grand handsome man on God’s earth?’

  Josie thought of another who could fit that description but shoved the notion aside.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly filled out,’ she replied, remembering how as a lad Brian had always looked as if a strong wind would blow him away.

  A mischievous expression crossed Mattie’s face. ‘It’s heaving coal all day that does it. Like with our Pat. Years of heavy work on ships has made him just the same.’ Josie gave her a puzzled look and Mattie rolled her eyes. ‘You know’ - she flexed her biceps - ‘pleasing to the eye.’

  Josie blushed and snatched up the pile of newspapers. ‘I’ll lay these out while you get into your dress.’

  ‘All right, and if you move the kettle onto the fire it will be ready to make a cuppa when we’re finished.’

  Mattie disappeared and Josie dragged the kettle forward, then moved the furniture back to leave them a working space in the middle of the room. She rolled up the rag rug and tucked it under the table then collected the broom from the corner. After sweeping the dirt floor twice she set the newspaper out in a large square to keep the hem of Mattie’s dress from gathering dust from the floor. She’d just set the last sheet down when Mattie came back in her gown. She held the skirt up and tiptoed into the centre of the spread papers.

  ‘Fasten me up,’ she said, dropping the fabric in her hand and scooping her hair out of the way.

  Josie tugged at the back and popped the hooks over the corresponding eyes then stood back. Mattie spun around and they beamed at each other. The two of them had worked hard over the past three weeks and now, with just four weeks until Mattie would walk down the aisle, the wedding gown was almost ready.

  Josie clapped her hands. ‘Up on the stool,’ she said, dragging it from beside the hearth.

  Mattie jumped up and turned slowly as Josie checked the fit of the gown.

  ‘Well?’ Mattie asked, twisting around and trying to look behind herself. ‘Is it fine or do we need to take another tuck?’

  ‘No, I think it’s just right,’ Josie replied, cocking her head to the side. ‘But there is one thing missing.’ She reached across and picked up the parcel she’d brought with her and handed it to her friend.

  Mattie pulled at the ribbon holding the lid on and opened the box.

  ‘Oh, Josie,’ she said, lifting out the ring of waxed orange blossoms woven together with a green ribbon. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She turned the headdress around in her hand. ‘They almost look real.’

  ‘I know. It’s very clever how they make the wax so thin without it cracking.’ Josie pointed to the join at the back of the wire circlet. ‘And look, you can adjust it to fit. As soon as I saw it in Liberty’s I knew it was made for you. The shop assistant said it was a copy of the one worn by the duchess of somewhere or other when she got married last year.’

  Mattie looked impressed. ‘A duchess you say?’ Her chin started to wobble and she threw her arms around Josie. ‘It is such a darling present and you’re a darling girl yourself. I’m so glad you’re here to see me wed my Brian.’

  The girls clung together then Josie untangled herself. ‘Come on then, put it on.’

  Mattie nodded and carefully settled the white and green circlet on her ebony hair.

  A lump caught in Josie’s throat. ‘You look so beautiful, Mattie. Brian will fair faint away with pride when he sets eyes on you.’

  ‘Go away with you,’ Mattie said, gently touching the headdress with her fingertips, then holding it next to the skirt of her gown. ‘It will show off the colour of the dress.’ She fingered the lace at her cuffs and then at her throat. ‘And the dress fits like a glove.’ She smiled at Josie. ‘You’re so clever. I would never have been able to make my wedding gown so perfect if you hadn’t helped me.’

  ‘I learnt it from Gran; she used to make clothes for the girls in the Angel and Crown where Ma sang, until her fingers got too stiff,’ Josie replied.

  Josie had duly passed on her needlework skills to her two sisters and, though Bobby approached sampler making in the same thorough manner she did everything else, Charlotte never managed more than a row or two without having to have her thread untangled. The quiet afternoons sewing in the parlour had lost their appeal now Mrs Munroe was there. She sucked all of the pleasure out with her constant demands that Bobby and Charlotte sit up straight and stop fidgeting.

  It was one of the reasons why, when Mattie had asked for help with her wedding gown, Josie had jumped at the chance. And, of course, there was another reason for her eagerness to visit Mattie and her family . . .

  Naturally, she and Patrick were only friends. In view of his confession about Rosa still being alive they could be nothing else, but each time she saw his laughing eyes and flashing smile she remembered just why she’d been eager to marry him all those years ago.

  In her sensible moments Josie was almost grateful that Patrick was still married. She couldn’t deny his attractiveness but knowing that he was not free stopped her heart from being tempted into folly. Handsome and exciting won’t pay the bills she reminded herself when she accompanied Sophie on her pastoral visits, although Josie couldn’t help but imagine what her life might have been like if she had married Patrick.

  He earned good money co
mpared to many in the area but that wouldn’t run to a tenth of the luxury she now had. The two roomed cottage that was her home until she was twelve had a rag rug instead of carpets and bread and dripping instead of cakes and jam, for tea. In those days she only had food in her belly and boots on her feet because Mam and Gran scrubbed their knuckles raw on other people’s washing. Her mother had added to their small income by singing in the dockside pubs for an extra copper or two, but even then the three O’Casey women were always just a meal away from the workhouse.

  If she’d married Patrick she might still be living as precariously as she had before . . .

  Patrick must have loved Rosa so much to be heartbroken still, she thought. After all, four years had passed since she left.