No Cure for Love

by Jean Fullerton

  Robert grasped Davies’s hand in a firm handshake. ‘Thank you, sir. I am honoured.’

  Six

  Josie watched the muscles of her mother’s arms grow taut as she lifted the large copper from the hook over the fire then, in a swift move, pour the steaming water into the tin hip bath in front of the fire. She stepped back as the steam rose upwards and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.

  For as long as Josie could remember, this had been the Shannahan women’s Friday night ritual: a shared bath in front of the fire, followed by a cup of tea and the rare treat of a sugary bun. The bought bun with its currants and glazing of sugar was terribly expensive, a farthing each. It was the one luxury they allowed themselves. As her gran always said, if anyone in the whole city of London deserved a bit of spoiling on a Friday night it was them, and Josie agreed.

  One thing her mother and grandmother both did, day in and day out, was work. As a child, sitting on a blanket on the beaten earth floor, she could remember them bent over a large tub full of soapy washing. As she grew, Josie had joined them in their daily toil. It had always been that way, just the three of them, since her father had met his untimely end at the bottom of the London docks.

  Josie couldn’t remember her father. She had still been barely able to stand when he was carried home by three fellow dockers. She had gleaned snippets about him from friends and neighbours and, of course, from her mother and grandmother, and knew that he had had dark curly hair and been admired by the women of the area. She knew that he had worked in the docks - when there was work - and that before marrying her mother he had sailed the coal barges between Newcastle and the Port of London. She also knew that Michael O’Casey had been popular around the streets of Wapping and even now, ten years after his death, she would be told by an old mate of his that ‘your father was always ready to stand his round’.

  This had satisfied her as a small child, imagining that her father, had he lived, would have taken her to the fair and treated her to toffee apples and ribbons. She had always assumed that after he died her mother was too heartbroken to think of putting another man in his place.

  Not that she had questioned the lack of men in their lives. She wasn’t the only child in the streets around without a father, but most of them had had a couple of stepfathers and the occasional live-in uncle whereas no man had ever put his feet under their table.

  Josie hadn’t given this matter a second thought until she overheard a chance remark in the market the day before. One of the stallholders, thinking she was out of earshot, had referred to her mother as a ‘choice armful’ and several around him agreed heartily. It had given the girl pause for thought.

  ‘Come on, Josie, jump in,’ her mother called, snatching the towel from the rail over the fire and shaking it at her playfully. With a smile on her face, her mother looked like a girl only a few years older than herself. The apron she always wore when in the house was tied tight around her waist, and Josie noted that its circumference had not expanded like some other women’s around and about. Why had no man sought her mother out?

  Josie half turned and stripped off her clothes. Although they all lived closely together and even shared a bed, she had become shy of standing naked before her mother and gran. She had noticed a month or so ago that her breasts had budded, making her bodice sit tight across her chest. A number of the boys in the area had noticed the changes, and Josie had started to wonder if they thought her a choice armful too.

  ‘Stop dallying,’ her gran said in an indulgent voice, looking better than she had earlier. On her return from school Josie had found Gran clutching her chest in the yard. She had tried to brush away Josie’s concern, saying she was just catching her breath.

  Josie stepped gingerly into the tin bath. Ellen lifted a pitcher of warm water and poured it carefully over her. She took in a breath as the water flowed over her face. Her mother handed her some soap and Josie set to lathering it over herself. She had to be quick because the water she stood in would chill fast and there were still her mother and grandmother to make use of it. Ellen’s hands were on her hair rubbing in the sage cream to ward off head lice. Josie’s eyes felt as if they were being shaken out of their sockets as her mother applied the pungent ointment vigorously. She didn’t believe there would be any head lice lurking in her hair, not after the painful daily tweak with the small tooth comb that her mother administered before braiding her hair for school. The water fell over her face in a curtain again, rinsing the sage paste into the water around her feet.

  Hunching down in the tub Josie rinsed off the remaining soap and stepped out to be enveloped in a large towel by Ellen, who hugged her and kissed her on the forehead, drying her rigorously all the while. When she was satisfied that every last drop of water had been dried off, Ellen handed Josie her long nightdress and swathed her in a crocheted shawl. She then picked up a comb and started to untangled her daughter’s long tresses.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Why haven’t you got married again?’ Josie asked.

  Ellen’s eyes opened wide. ‘Whatever put such a notion into your head?’ she replied, bustling to separate strands of hair and not meeting Josie’s gaze. ‘And haven’t I got enough to do looking after you?’

  ‘Why not?’ Josie persisted.

  An exasperated look crossed Ellen’s face.

  ‘I never met a man I wanted to marry.’ There was a long pause. ‘I was very young when I met your father and not much older when I lost him,’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘So I’ve got used to being alone.’

  There was something wistful in her mother’s tone that caught Josie’s attention.

  ‘Don’t you miss me pa?’

  For an instant Josie thought her question would be pushed aside, but then Ellen sighed. ‘I haven’t told you this before but you’re a grown girl now and understand how things are between men and women.’ She paused. ‘Times were hard, and although your father did the best he could work was scarce. Then you arrived and your father, well, your father...’ She stopped and spread out her hands and looked squarely at Josie. ‘A man was entitled to a drink after a long day heaving goods from a ship’s hold, but the truth of the matter is your father thought he could find the answers to his problems at the bottom of a glass.’

  ‘Don’t tell me Pa was like Tiddly Tooley?’ Josie asked, thinking about the unkempt Irishman who could be found dead drunk in the gutter at any hour of the day.

  ‘No, he was not, Josephine Bridget. He was a good man who worked hard for his family. He just liked an ale or two, that’s all.’ Ellen folded her arms across her chest shutting off further discussion

  It wasn’t all. Exasperation sprang up in Josie. Did her mother think she was a child? Did she think that she didn’t notice that whenever her father’s name was mentioned her grandmother crossed herself quietly in a corner? Did her mother not think she might have heard that before he fell to his death Michael O’ Casey had been drinking for two days in the Prospect of Whitby?

  Josie scowled up at her mother, who was teasing out a knot from her hair, her arched brows pulled tightly together in concentration.

  Her mother treated her like a child because she loved her. Her mother scrubbed her fingers raw with extra washing so Josie could go to school. Her mother had made do with her old repaired boots so that Josie could have a new pair with stout leather soles. After a long day up to her elbows in suds, she sang in the Angel for that fat Danny Donovan, so they could go to join Uncle Joe in America. Everything her mother did, from the moment she got up in the morning to the moment she laid her head on the pillow beside Josie at night, was done because she loved her.

  ‘Ma,’ Josie said looking up at her mother’s face. Ellen gazed down at her with bright eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Ellen replied in a clipped voice.

  Josie threw herself into her mother’s embrace and hugged her. The feeling of safety that she had known all her life and had taken for granted
swamped her, catching in her throat and bringing tears to her eyes.

  ‘Love you, Ma,’ she said.

  Ellen ran her hand lightly around her daughter’s face and smiled. ‘Love you, too. Now, get yourself your bun, while me and Grandma have our bath.’

  ‘She’s a sharp one is our Josie,’ Bridget said, finally as Josie moved out of earshot and Ellen stripped off, ready for her wash down. ‘I’d say the fivepence a week on Josie’s schooling is money well spent.’

  ‘A bit too sharp if you ask me,’ Ellen replied as she stepped into the bath. ‘She was asking me about Michael.’

  ‘I hope you told her the truth,’ Bridget said as she poured the water over Ellen.

  ‘Not yet. Not until she’s a year or two older.’

  ‘It won’t make the story any prettier,’ Bridget said, looking at her daughter’s body in the glow of the firelight as she began washing herself with the rough flannel. ‘None would know you’d had a child, Ellie.’

  Ellen shrugged, and her mind went to Doctor Munroe. After admitting that she had been sharp with him, Ellen had expected to see him in the Angel, but he hadn’t come.

  But why would he? A physician and a gentleman would never look at her, a poor singer, and to some no better than a streetwalker. But he had looked at her and she liked it, she liked it a great deal. Ellen’s musing was brought to an abrupt end when Bridget smacked her playfully on her bare bottom as she stepped out of the tub.

  ‘Away with you, woman,’ Bridget said to Ellen’s startled expression. ‘Every woman wants to feel a strong man love her.’

  ‘Ma,’ Ellen said, glancing at Josie snuggled in the armchair and engrossed in her book. ‘What do you know of such things?’

  ‘I know plenty, I tell you,’ Bridget said with a wistful sigh in her voice. The kettle on the range whistled and Bridget poured it over the tea leaves. She swilled it around for a moment or two then poured it into two cups through a strainer. She sat at the small kitchen table opposite Ellen.

  ‘You still miss him,’ Ellen said, as her mother drank deeply from the cup.

  ‘Aye,’ Bridget said softly. Loved your father, I did,’ and a sentimental expression stole over the older woman’s face. ‘It was coming here that killed him. He brought us to London for a better life, but no one would give him a job as a clerk, so he had to take what he could get. Whipping coal was no job for a man like your father.’ Bridget smiled a bittersweet smile. ‘But I’ll tell you, Ellie, I loved that man so fierce it still hurts.’

  As she looked at her work-worn mother, Ellen envied her To love and be loved by someone that deeply happened only once in a lifetime to some - and never to most. No matter what life threw at her mother, she had that love deep in her heart and no one, but no one, could take it from her.

  Once again, Ellen’s mind conjured up Doctor Munroe, standing tall in his dark frock coat, and tears suddenly stung the back of her eyes.

  A chorus of coughing greeted Robert as the workhouse superintendent, the unbelievably thin Mr Trundle, and his wife, the unbelievably wide Mrs Trundle, bowed respectfully.

  Arranged around the wall of the bleak ward were narrow cots in which sallow inmates languished. Although he was used to the various smells associated with sick humanity, the stench of the ward caught Robert in the back of his throat. Putting his clean handkerchief over his mouth he turned and glared at the two who had followed him in. They shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘As I say, Doctor Munroe, it is funds that do keep us from providing as we would like. Is that not so, my dear?’ he appealed to his wife.

  She nodded vigorously, setting the frill around her cap flapping, and said, ‘Indeed, Mr Trundle, funds are always in short supply.’ She fixed Robert with a defiant look and crossed her short arms across her bosom.

  ‘Emptying a slop bucket requires very little funds.’ Robert indicated several buckets brimming with stale urine by the beds.

  Mr Trundle’s eyebrows drew upwards at the centre as his face took on a contrite expression. ‘But funds are needed to pay those who empty buckets.’

  Robert spied a young woman in what looked like a dirty maid’s uniform sitting at the other end of the room. Her head had dropped onto her chest. He strode towards her, Trundle and his wife scurrying along behind him. As he reached the woman, Robert heard soft snoring. Leaning forward he smelt gin, and cleared his throat loudly. The young woman woke up and peered around her.

  ‘What’s the crack,’ she slurred, then hiccuped.

  Not trusting himself to speak, Robert spun on his heels and headed for Mr and Mrs Trundle’s private quarters. On reaching the warm parlour, crammed with furniture and garish china ornaments, he held out his hand.

  ‘Your accounts, if you please,’ he demanded sternly.

  Mrs Trundle glared at him. ‘You have no right to—’

  ‘Now, now, my dear,’ Mr Trundle interrupted with a deferential expression and placed a hand on his wife’s fuzzy forearm. ‘We have nothing to hide and Doctor Munroe is the appointed chairman of the Parish Emergency Committee.’

  His wife pressed her lips together and glared at Robert, reminding him of a kettle on the point of boiling.

  ‘Doctor Munroe,’ Mr Trundle said, handing over a greasy red ledger.

  Taking the ledger to the table, Robert opened it and began perusing its columns. He glanced up at the superintendent and his wife, who stood watching him like hungry dogs.

  ‘I’ll send for you once I have reviewed the entries,’ he told them. For a second or two Mr and Mrs Trundle hovered uncertainly, then the superintendent grabbed his wife’s elbow and all but dragged her from the room.

  As he flicked through the pages of the workhouse accounts, Robert’s face grew grim. After an hour of making notes he called the superintendent back. Mr Trundle returned, minus his stout wife.

  ‘I trust that everything is in order, Doctor Munroe?’ Mr Trundle asked.

  ‘It certainly is not.’ He tapped the page of the ledger. ‘From the extortionate prices you pay for the workhouse provisions, the inmates should be living like kings, not lying half-starved in urine-soaked beds.’

  ‘My wife is in charge of the purchase of food for the workhouse,’ the superintendent told him, twisting his hands together.

  ‘Where is your wife?’

  ‘She had to go on an errand. I am expecting her back shortly.’

  ‘Very well. Now about the wages for—’

  The door of the parlour burst open and a red-faced Mrs Trundle puffed into the room.

  ‘Oh! Doctor Munroe,’ she said in a friendly voice that had been absent so far from her conversation. ‘You’ll not credit it, but I just turned the corner into Angel Gardens when I happened on Mr Donovan, er, taking the air,’ she said, looking coyly at Danny Donovan, who stepped into the room. ‘I mentioned that you were paying us a visit and nothing could stop him coming to bid you good day.’

  The Trundles exchanged a quick look then stood back, letting Danny Donovan take centre stage. Robert regarded him coolly.

  He had seen Danny a couple of times as he made his way around the streets and alleyways that ran off Ratcliffe Highway. He had always been greeted by the ebullient Irishman as if he were a long lost brother, and pressed to take supper at the Angel again. Eventually taking up the invitation, Robert persuaded himself that he was not going there to see Ellen in particular, but found himself bitterly disappointed that she was not singing that night.

  Danny Donovan now swaggered towards him, snatched up his hand and subjected it to the usual abuse. ‘Now, here is a fortuitous coming together.’

  ‘How so?’ Robert said, noting another glance between the superintendent and his wife.

  Danny drew up a chair and sat down, the checked fabric of his trousers straining across his thick thighs.

  ‘Mrs Trundle tells me you are not familiar with the arrangement of the workhouse. Is there anything I can be helping you with, Doctor?’ He nodded at the open book in front of Robert.

  �
�There are some matters between Mr Trundle and myself that are not altogether clear, but I can’t think how you could be of assistance. There seems to be some discrepancy between the quality of goods purchased and the rotting vegetables and mouldy bread that appear to be the daily diet of the poor wretches I have seen this morning,’ Robert said, watching Donovan’s face closely.

  ‘Discrepancy?’ Donovan boomed as he turned to the man and his wife huddled in the corner. ‘As a member of the workhouse governors I take a very dim view of such things.’

  A shrewd expression crossed Robert’s face. ‘Quite so. But can you explain how “Supplied by Messrs Donovan & Ass.” described here as’ - he peered at the open page and ran his index finger under an entry - ‘“best cut beef shin” only yesterday shows no evidence of it ever having been in the grubby kitchen?’

  ‘I showed you the meat, Doctor, hanging in the larder,’ Mrs Trundle said with a puff of indignation.

  ‘The couple of dry, scraggy pieces of meat I saw hanging on hooks in the pantry are hardly what I would call prime shin,’ Robert replied, fixing his eyes on Donovan. The Irishman held his gaze, Robert looked back to the ledger. ‘There is also the matter of the delivery of three sacks of newly dug potatoes two days ago.’

  ‘They were in the pantry too,’ Mrs Trundle interjected.

  ‘Those potatoes you showed me may have been “newly dug” a month ago, but are now green and sprouting.’

  ‘There must be some mistake. My man at the yard must have sent the wrong supplies,’ Danny said after a second.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  Leaning forward and resting on his elbows on the table, Robert steepled his fingers. ‘It could be that the workhouse was being charged high prices for poor supplies.’