A Glimpse at Happiness

by Jean Fullerton

  She exchanged a glance with her mother and, judging by the irritable look on Ellen’s face, Josie guessed she felt much the same. But there was nothing for it. William Arnold had been invited to take afternoon tea and he must be welcomed. Ellen leant forward to pick up the teapot but Mrs Munroe forestalled her.

  ‘Now, Ellen dear, what would my son say if I allowed you to overtire yourself?’ she said, grasping the pot.

  ‘I hardly think pouring four cups of tea would send me staggering to my bed,’ Ellen replied.

  A tremor of annoyance passed over Mrs Munroe’s face. ‘Even so. Robert’s instructions must be obeyed,’ she turned to the man beside her. ‘Tea, Mr Arnold?’

  Josie stifled a yawn.

  It wasn’t that Mr Arnold was boring; in fact, by any standards he was a very nice young man, pleasant and accommodating, unremarkable to look at but smart in his dress and manner. It was just that Josie often forgot about him, even when she was in his company.

  But it wasn’t William Arnold who was interfering with her concentration this afternoon, it was Patrick Nolan. She’d put her sewing into the china cabinet yesterday and then poured hot milk in her fruit juice at breakfast this morning.

  ‘Until you hear the full story.’ That’s what Mattie had said. But what story, and why should she care to hear it anyhow . . .

  But she did care. She cared very much because, although she tried to pretend otherwise, she had noticed the change in Patrick’s voice when he spoke to her and she hadn’t mistaken the warmth in his eyes.

  But where did that leave her? Nowhere. He was married, and that was the end of it. Or it should have been, but images of Patrick kept drifting into her mind and, even though it was wrong to love another woman’s husband, she knew she did. She loved Rosa Nolan’s man.

  Josie glanced across at Mr Arnold, who was sipping his tea and - while Mrs Munroe and Ellen talked across him - gazing at her with a besotted expression on his face. Would he be quite as adoring if he knew the unmaidenly thoughts running around in her head?

  Her mind raced on. What would have happened if Mattie had not come back into the kitchen? She had had the distinct impression at that very moment that Patrick was about to kiss her, and the thought that he still cared for her had unleashed feelings that she hadn’t realised she still possessed.

  ‘Josie!’ Her mother’s voice cut into her reverie and Josie jumped. ‘Mr Arnold asked you if you enjoyed the church’s Sunday tea last week.’

  Josie shoved Patrick from her mind and smiled at the young doctor. He smiled back at her, his light blue eyes warm and eager, his pale cheeks still pink from his morning shave.

  She’d noticed that, unlike most of the other men in the dock who only shaved on Sundays, Patrick was always clean-shaven. Despite this, the dark shadow of his beard was always visible, and she wondered what it would feel like to run her fingertips over the rough part of his face and onto the smooth . . .

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Arnold,’ Josie said. ‘I enjoyed it very much, especially when the Sunday School children sang.’

  Mr Arnold’s prominent Adam’s apple rose up and then settled back just above his starched winged collar. ‘I can see you have a kind heart, Miss O’Casey,’ he said.

  ‘I like to see children happy and fed,’ she said. ‘Some of the children from the poorest families are so thin.’

  Mrs Munroe drew herself up. ‘Then it would be better if their mothers bought food instead of strong spirits with their housekeeping. Don’t you agree, Mr Arnold?’

  The doctor opened his mouth but Josie interrupted

  ‘You are mistaken,’ she said, noting that Mrs Munroe’s lace cap began to shake as it often did when she tried to contain her annoyance. ‘Most of the women I have met on my home visits go hungry themselves in order to feed their little ones.’ She thought of Meg and her children.

  Josie had been as good as her word and, after speaking to her stepfather, had found Meg a job cleaning at the hospital. It was casual work but regular, and a neighbour had agreed to mind the children for a few pence each week.

  Mr Arnold’s face brimmed with approval. ‘Miss O’Casey, your compassion is an example to all.’

  Mrs Munroe shot him a hard, sideways glance before her munificent smile returned. ‘Are you still thinking of joining the army, Dr Arnold?’ she asked.

  The memory of Patrick’s eyes came back to Josie. She remembered how excited they’d become as he explained to her the shape and form of the animals and birds he’d seen on his travels.

  Mr Arnold shifted forward and gazed at Josie as he answered. ‘I was, but I have been offered the chance of a practice not too far from here,’ he said, with only the faintest trace of eagerness in his voice. ‘My father, Sir Henry, went to school with Sir Gerald Morpeth who has a medical practice in the village of West Ham, a rural farming area just on the other side of the river Lea. He is retiring soon and looking for someone to take over. I understand there is a fine house with an orchard at the back of the surgery.’

  Ellen smiled at him and Josie felt as if the parlour walls were closing in.

  ‘Cake, Mr Arnold?’ Mrs Munroe asked, flourishing the silver slicer at him.

  Mr Arnold took the cake offered and sank his teeth into it, leaving a faint line of white sugar at the edge of his top lip.

  ‘Delicious,’ he said. ‘One of yours, Miss O’Casey?’

  Josie shook her head.

  ‘My daughter is a wonderful cook, though,’ Ellen said, ‘In fact, she is quite the little homemaker. I don’t know what I would have done without her these last weeks. She has practically taken over the running of the house.’

  The smitten young doctor looked suitably impressed.

  ‘And I have been adding those little details that are so important in proper society,’ Mrs Munroe said, smiling serenely at her daughter-in-law, before adding, ‘of course my son looks on Miss O’Casey as his own daughter and he has a regard for her future.’

  For goodness’ sake, why doesn’t the old trout just tell him what Pa has settled on me and be done with it, Josie thought. In fact, why not just tie a big label around my neck with my price on?

  She wasn’t a commodity; she was a woman who wanted and needed to be loved.

  She cast her gaze around the sumptuous furnishings of the parlour, its china fireplace ornaments, the lace at the windows, and the chenille curtains hanging from brass poles, and let out a sigh as she thought of the full larder downstairs and how every bedroom had coals in the grate. But this was the way it was done. For all her mother’s assurances of wanting her to marry someone who would care for her, she knew that Ellen would not be easily persuaded to give her consent to any man without a sizable income or future.

  Love didn’t fill cupboards or buy coal. Josie understood that.

  Life had been hard - very hard - before her mother met Robert Munroe, and there had been many nights when Josie had fallen asleep with hunger gnawing at her aching stomach. When there wasn’t money for coal, she, Mam and Gran would huddle together for warmth in the creaky bed. Ellen had even crossed over the harsh line of respectability and sung in a public house in order to send Josie to school.

  The memories of their earlier poverty haunted Ellen, and Josie understood that. But Ellen hadn’t married Robert for security or because he could provide a four-storey house with servants; she had married Robert because she loved him, and Josie vowed that when she married it would be for the same reason. She hadn’t actually got around to telling her mother about Rosa. Naturally, she had to pick her moment. Goodness only knew what her mother would say when she found out her unmarried daughter had been on an excursion with a married man. No, that was a lie. Josie knew very well what her mother would say and in undiluted Irish too. She might even forbid her to visit Mattie, which is why Josie hadn’t raised the matter. She didn’t want to spoil Mattie’s wedding.

  As Patrick crunched over the cobbles of Wapping High Street in his studded boots, he inhaled the tangy smell of the exotic s
pices stored in the warehouses around him. It reminded him of loading the aromatic sacks of cinnamon and cumin and ginger into the Seahorse’s hold in Calcutta. It also brought an image of Josie into his mind. When he’d waved her goodbye that last time seven years ago in New York, he had been standing on the quarterdeck of that very same ship.

  In truth, he didn’t need anything to bring Josie to mind because she was with him every moment of his day and every beat of his heart. Why else was he so eager to get home when she was there sewing with Mattie? How was it that he could recall every little detail of what she said and remember how she looked? And how he relished the pleasure he got from hearing that she’d spoken about him to Mattie and Annie . . .

  Turning into Walburgh Street, Patrick’s weary eyes rested on his front door at the end of the road. What he wouldn’t give to have Josie waiting for him behind it, he thought, as he pushed it open. Although it was early evening, the air was humid and the soot clung to his damp skin. Sarah was stirring the pot on the fire but turned as her son walked in.

  ‘There you are, lad,’ she said, her eyes resting gently on him. ‘Good day?’

  ‘Fair, though this heat’s murder,’ he replied, warmed by the tenderness in her voice.

  He began to wash his hands and face in the bowl of cool soapy water his mother had left at the end of the table for him. ‘Where’s the young ’uns?’

  ‘Upstairs. I told them I had a headache.’ Sarah reached up to the mantelshelf and picked up a letter, which she handed to him.

  Patrick wiped his hands on the towel draped over the back of the chair and took the letter.

  Instead of the new-style envelopes that were now generally used, the letter with Patrick’s name scrawled boldly across it was a solid sheet of paper, tucked and folded and held together with an old-fashioned wax seal. Above the seal, in smaller letters, was written: Lieutenant Edward Smyth, adjutant to Colonel FitzWallace of The First Anglia Infantry Regiment, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,

  Patrick stared at it. It had been over four months since he’d written to enquire after Rosa - just before he’d met Josie again. He hadn’t been optimistic about a reply. He knew that the comings and goings of one of the camp followers wouldn’t be a high priority for the garrison’s commanding officer.

  ‘It arrived at Wardells’ store yesterday and I collected it this morning along with a letter from Aunt Bridie,’ Sarah said. ‘Aren’t you going to open it, Pat?’

  Patrick’s heart pounded in his chest. The squat-sealed letter in his hand might just give him the key to happiness with Josie.

  He’d originally written to satisfy his own mind as to his wife’s fate, but since Josie had come back into his life, knowing Rosa’s fate had become urgent. He unfolded the page and began reading.

  The regimental sergeant major informs me that on the last occasion that he saw Mrs Rosa Nolan she was still in the company of Corporal Keble of the Fifth. She accompanied the regiment when it left for Egypt six months ago. However, mindful of your difficult situation, I have taken the liberty of forwarding your letter to Mr Watson, chaplain to the garrison in Alexandria, and an old school friend of mine, in the hope that he might have further knowledge of your wife’s whereabouts.

  My God, Alexandria!

  ‘What does it say?’ Sarah sat down opposite him. ‘Tell me that she’s dead, God forgive me!’

  Patrick gave her a disapproving look and Sarah crossed herself hastily.

  ‘She was alive six months ago but now in hell - of sorts,’ he replied. ‘She went to Alexandria. The colonel has forwarded my letter to the chaplain attached to the fort in Egypt. There is a slim chance we may still hear news of Rosa.’

  Sarah folded her arms tightly across her bosom. ‘Well, good riddance to her.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t relish any woman having to suffer Alexandria, not even Rosa,’ he said. ‘You smell the place on the wind long before you see it, and it’s so infested with disease that one in six of the local population is killed by it - and for the English double that. When the Seahorse berthed I heaved my gut over the side because of the stench of rotting, bloated animal carcasses - and human ones too - floating in the shallows. Soldiers garrisoned there called it Egypt’s arse, and anyone who’s been there will know why.’

  Sarah regarded him for a few moments, then one eyebrow rose. ‘If the place is as bad as you say, Pat, then you might even now be a widower.’

  Hope and guilt vied for position in Patrick’s mind. He wanted his mother’s words to be true so much it was like a physical hurt, but he forced his unworthy thought aside. It was a mortal sin to wish Rosa dead, no matter what she’d done. But as his eyes settled again on the letter Patrick - even if he were doomed to a thousand years in purgatory - silenced his conscience and prayed that his mother’s words might come true.

  Mattie rolled against Brian as the front wheel of the cart dipped into one of the many potholes along Cable Street. He smiled down at her and snapped the reins lightly on old Flossy’s dappled rump. Behind Mattie, carefully packed away in three boxes, was her bottom drawer. Well, bottom three drawers and a chest to be precise, and very soon she would be putting them to use as a new wife.

  Brian shortened the right rein to turn Flossy into Cannon Street Road but he didn’t need to. The old horse knew her way home and had already plodded around the corner. The iron rimmed wheels squealed as they scraped over the cobbles and through the horse muck and dirt in the gutter.

  Sensing her warm stable and her bale of fresh hay waiting for her, Flossy picked up her pace and practically trotted into the yard.

  The acrid smell of the coal filled Mattie’s nose as she looked around at what would be her new home in less than a week. Brian’s father had started the business some twenty years before by filling a hand cart each day at the Limehouse coal depot and then selling it by the bucket around the streets. After two years he’d bought a horse, and after five he’d taken the lease on an old cooperage yard and adjoining house. The oblong plot had the business at one end and the house at the other, with the stable for the four horses in between. At the business end of the yard were four piles of coal divided by wooden fences and ranging from Best Parlour coal to Washed Nuts at half the price.

  ‘Yo there, old girl,’ Brian called, applying the brake and winding the reins around the side board.

  He jumped down and then held his hands out to Mattie. She slid forward on the seat and his large hand gripped her around the waist. He lifted her effortlessly down but instead of releasing her held her close.

  ‘Give us a kiss,’ he said, tickling her.

  ‘Brian Maguire! Not here, in broad daylight. You’ll set the neighbours talking,’ she said, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Plant one on me and I will,’ he replied, puckering up.

  ‘What about your men?’

  He glanced at the three delivery carts standing in a row in front of the stacked coal. ‘The men have gone. It’s just you and me, so come on.’ He winked. ‘A lot of girls would, you know.’ He pulled his mouth tight again.

  ‘Well, really,’ Mattie said, giving him her severest look but fighting to keep the smile from her face.

  Brian made a couple of kissing sounds then Mattie stretched up and did as he asked, feeling the scratch of his end of day bristles on her lips.

  Why wouldn’t she? Wasn’t it what she wanted to do every time she set eyes on him?

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, letting her go and unhitching Flossy, who trotted into her stall and stuck her head into the trough while Brian took off her harness. He gave the square rump a affectionate slap and hooked the leather straps on the post, then closed the gate. He cast his eyes over the other three horses then strolled back to Mattie.

  He had collected her after he’d finished his last delivery and still wore his work jerkin and canvas trousers, both of which were coated with coal dust, although the protective headgear that covered him down to his shoulders lay beside her boxes in the back of th
e wagon. His face was crisscrossed with black lines where the dust had seeped into the small creases around his eyes, mouth and neck. It contrasted strangely with his bright red hair, sky blue eyes and white teeth. It would take Brian an hour of scrubbing at the kitchen sink to clean the last of it away.

  He picked up the largest box from behind the seat and pretended to stagger back. ‘What have you got in here, woman, cannon balls?’

  ‘It’s the new iron pot that Mam’s given me and my bits of china,’ Mattie replied, taking up the box with her clothes in.

  Brian heaved his load onto one shoulder and then collected her bundle with the cotton sheets and bolster case inside that she had been stitching for the past year.

  ‘The chest should be all right there for a moment,’ he said.