Comfort Me With Apples

by Comfort Me

  At the office the next day he saw his uncle briefly when they met in a corridor. James Seddon glowered at him without speaking but James was not intimidated.

  His position in the general office was invidious. His connection with his uncle made the other clerks wary of him, yet he and his uncle ignored each other as far as possible. James had closed his mind to the past and refused to explore his feelings of fear and revulsion towards his uncle, although he frequently suffered nightmares, and his uncle rarely spoke to him. Only his mother’s insistence, James knew, had resulted in his position in the office.

  As the weeks passed, he often thought of Frances’s suggestion that he should change his job but he put off doing it, lacking the confidence to make the move. Frances said no more about it, or about selling the house, content to have planted the seed in his mind. Meanwhile, she was gradually spring cleaning the house, and there was always a bright fire burning and a savoury meal ready when he returned home.

  Frances’s meals were more to his taste than those provided by his mother and after he had eaten he would leave the gloomy house and walk for miles, thinking and planning. He wove fantasies about marrying Dorrie although he knew that realistically there was little hope for him. So many men with more to offer materially and socially are attracted to her but no one could possibly love her as much as I do, he told himself. His walks always took him near her home at some stage and he often saw her but never had the courage to approach her.

  After Mass and Benediction he was usually among the group surrounding the girls and Dorrie was always gentle and sympathetic towards him because of his bereavement.

  He was unable to resist talking to Frances about her and Frances said she knew the family. ‘The poor mother. She lost every child she had after Dorrie,’ she said. ‘But the two girls she has left are always together. The younger one’s a lovely looking girl and a nice nature too. She’ll make a fine figure of a woman. Pity the older girl’s so thin but she’s nice too. Very classy-looking. Lovely eyes and with those bones she’ll still be lovely when she’s an old woman.’ But James only wanted to talk about Dorrie.

  As usual, Frances offered good advice. ‘You can’t do anything about other men falling for her,’ she said. ‘But you could smarten yourself up. You’ve lost weight these last few months and that suit’s hanging off you. It’s old-fashioned too. You should go to one of them new tailors in town and try a different barber and all.’

  James took her advice and the tailor shook his head over James’s old suit. Before he realised it James had ordered two suits, a business one and a lounge one. From there he went to a new barber and although he was amazed at the luxurious premises and the high prices he decided that the result was worth it.

  As the weeks passed the sisters saw James regularly at church and Dorrie, who felt he must be lonely without his mother, made a point of smiling at him warmly and sometimes speaking to him. In this he was more fortunate than her other admirers. She flirted light-heartedly with all of them but never made any distinction between them.

  Anna, more realistic than Dorrie, believed that James was more relieved to be free of his overbearing mother and she began to worry that James was being encouraged too much.

  ‘You smiled very sweetly at James Hargreaves this evening, Dorrie,’ she said as they prepared for bed one Sunday night. ‘I could see that Jim Halligan noticed it.’

  ‘I can smile at whoever I like,’ Dorrie said indignantly. ‘It has nothing to do with Jim Halligan.’

  ‘I know, but do you think you might be encouraging James Hargreaves too much?’ said Anna. ‘He might think he’s your Mr Right, as they say in those sugary novelettes you’re so fond of. Unless, of course, he is your Mr Right,’ she added teasingly.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Dorrie. She smiled dreamily. ‘I will meet him one day though, Anna, I’m sure, and when I do I’ll know instantly that he’s the man I’m going to marry.’

  ‘And he’ll know too,’ Anna teased her affectionately. ‘And you’ll both fall in love and live happily ever after.’

  ‘But I believe it, Anna,’ Dorrie said earnestly. ‘That there’s someone in the world for everyone and if I meet my someone we’ll fall in love and marry. If we don’t, I’ll be an old maid. I could never marry a man I didn’t love.’

  Anna smiled, but said nothing, and Dorrie went on, ‘I know you laugh at my novelettes but I think the sentiments in them are true – just as true as those in those big books by Mr Dickens and Mr Bennett that you read, Anna. Mrs Wendell reads novelettes and she’s very clever.’

  Later, in bed, Anna lay awake long after Dorrie was asleep, worrying about this conversation. Dorrie was too trusting, she felt. Often she failed to see the malice behind a jealous remark and smiled at the speaker. In this way her goodness and innocence protected her but Anna worried that it might also betray her.

  All their social life centred round the church and people they had known all their lives but Anna distrusted some of the young men, whom she classed as ‘bad hats’. What if Dorrie fell in love with one of these? she thought.

  Ada Cleary, a classmate of Anna’s, had married a man who had soon begun to gamble away his wages and had been seen on a ferryboat with another woman. What if Dorrie’s Mr Right behaved like that after they were married? Ada had rather enjoyed the sympathy she received and enjoyed even more the retribution which fell on her husband when his affair became known to her brothers, but she had never truly loved him.

  Anna felt that her sister, loyal and obstinate, would never change once her love had been given. She worried that in Ada’s situation Dorrie would pretend indifference in public but in private her heart would be broken. Then, suddenly realising how absurd it was to worry about something that might never happen, she turned over and fell asleep.

  Chapter Three

  Anna soon had a more real cause for worry. Her mother still refused to leave the house and spent most of her time lying on the sofa, in spite of being urged to take some exercise by Dr O’Brien.

  ‘If your mother doesn’t use her legs soon she won’t be able to,’ he said bluntly to Anna but any attempt by Anna to persuade her ended in hysterical tears and accusations that Anna was cold-hearted and selfish.

  ‘Wait until you know what it is to lose your health for your children,’ her mother sobbed. ‘And to think that of all my lovely daughters you had to be the one to survive.’

  Bitterly hurt, Anna decided she would do no more to encourage her mother. Her father was due home in a few weeks’ time and perhaps she would listen to him.

  Mrs Furlong was still angry with Anna when Clara decided one Sunday to visit an old friend who had been prayed for in the list of the sick at Mass. She asked Dorrie to accompany her and Anna was left to prepare the dinner and look after her mother.

  Anna had basted the meat and peeled the potatoes and she took a cup of tea to her mother and sat with her to keep her company.

  They spoke about the dying woman Clara was visiting and Mrs Furlong said disparagingly, ‘She was always a queer creature. Used to say that women were equal to men. She even said it to Father once.’

  ‘I agree with her,’ Anna said. ‘I think women are equal to men.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Anna. Women’s brains are smaller,’ her mother said crossly and the next moment they were involved in a heated argument. Suddenly Mrs Furlong fell back against her pillows, her hand on her heart and her eyes closed.

  Nothing that Anna did revived her. She patted her mother’s cheek and called her name but she lay motionless until her arm slipped from across her body and her hand swung limply, brushing the carpet.

  I’ve killed her, Anna thought with horror, and she rushed in panic to their next-door neighbour, Mrs Deagan, for help.

  Normally she would have knocked at the door but in her terror she pushed it open and raced down the hall, then stopped in amazement at the open living-room door. The three sons and two daughters still at home, all responsible adults who either owned t
heir own business or held a respectable position, were standing in silence as their tiny widowed mother stood in the centre of the room, stamping her little foot in a brightly polished button boot, and declared fiercely, ‘I’m master and mistress in this house and let no one forget it.’

  Her family chorused meekly, ‘Yes, Ma,’ then Mrs Deagan saw Anna and her angry expression softened.

  ‘What is it, girlie?’ she asked gently. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Mama. She’s fainted. I can’t bring her round,’ Anna gasped and the next moment she found herself at home with Mrs Deagan bending over her mother, who still appeared to be unconscious.

  ‘Have you tried smelling salts?’ Mrs Deagan asked.

  ‘I couldn’t find them. They’re usually on that little table,’ Anna said anxiously.

  ‘Never mind, I’ve brought some,’ Mrs Deagan said, taking a bottle from her apron pocket and passing it under Mrs Furlong’s nose. She wrinkled her nose but her eyes remained closed and Mrs Deagan said abruptly, ‘Fetch me a jug of cold water, child. Cold water in the face often does the trick.’

  At these words Mrs Furlong’s eyelids fluttered and she moaned and sat up hastily. ‘Where am I?’ she said in a die-away voice.

  ‘On your sofa, where you spend far too much time,’ Mrs Deagan said forthrightly. She thrust her hand down beside Mrs Furlong and turned to Anna. ‘Look. The smelling salts were here all the time after all.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you,’ Anna said but Mrs Deagan replied robustly, ‘Nonsense. You were right to come for me, girlie, but your mama’ll be all right now.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Deagan,’ Anna said gratefully, as she escorted her neighbour to the door. ‘I was so frightened.’

  ‘Well, you know what to do now, girlie, if it happens again. A jug of cold water,’ said Mrs Deagan. ‘What brought that on?’

  ‘I was arguing with Mama,’ Anna admitted. ‘I said men and women were equal.’

  ‘Equal!’ Mrs Deagan exclaimed. ‘The man hasn’t yet been bom who’s my equal, girlie, and never will be. Men! They’re poor tools, even the best of them, and they’d be lost without us.’

  Anna was smiling as she closed the door and went back to the parlour. Her mother had rearranged herself on the sofa with a novelette in her hand and she scarcely raised her eyes when Anna went in, although she said petulantly, ‘There was no need to bring that woman in here. You are useless in an emergency, Anna.’

  Anna flushed with anger. ‘It was good of Mrs Deagan to come,’ she said and before she could stop herself she added tartly, ‘She seemed to know the right remedy anyway.’ Then she went back to the kitchen, leaving her mother staring at her, speechless, and resumed her cooking until Dorrie and Aunt Clara arrived shortly afterwards.

  Anna said nothing about the events of the morning to her aunt, unwilling to expose her mother’s dramatics to Clara’s spiteful tongue.

  Mrs Furlong had said nothing either, even to Dorrie, and for once there was harmony in the house. Even Clara seemed contented, pleased that Anna had the preparations for dinner well underway. Anna asked about the sick woman and her aunt shook her head. ‘Not long for this world,’ she said mournfully, ‘but she’ll go to her reward if anyone will.’

  Anna was amazed to hear her aunt speak well of someone and couldn’t believe her ears when Clara went on, ‘She was a good woman, Philomena Boyle, and she did a lot of good. She worried about poor children and she got things done to help them. Not making things for bazaars either. She’d tackle anyone, landlords, businessmen, city councillors. She spoke her mind to everyone but she got things done.’

  ‘Dr and Mrs O’Brien were there,’ Dorrie said. ‘They were both really upset, weren’t they, Aunt?’

  ‘Yes, they thought the world of her,’ Clara replied then, with a return to her usual manner, she added, ‘He must’ve been upset. Never mentioned the war once, not even the relief of Ladysmith.’

  Later, when she and Dorrie were alone, Anna told her sister what had happened earlier and of her terror when she thought her mother had died.

  ‘I could tell Mrs Deagan knew Mama was play-acting though,’ she said. ‘She soon recovered when cold water was mentioned but she fooled me. I was terrified, Dorrie. I really thought she was dying.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t been on your own,’ Dorrie said. ‘And I’m glad you could go for Mrs Deagan.’

  ‘Yes, and Mama referred to her as “that woman,”’ Anna said indignantly. ‘I admire Mrs Deagan.’

  ‘So do I,’ Dorrie agreed and their admiration for their neighbour grew even more when they talked to her daughters the following week.

  A group had been formed to make articles for a bazaar planned for 1901 and Anna and Dorrie had been working with Norah and Kate Deagan. Norah was a quiet, artistic woman, twenty-nine years old, and owned a small florist’s shop. Kate was two years younger and more extrovert and was a dress buyer for a shop in the city.

  ‘You must’ve got a shock on Sunday, Anna,’ Kate said, laughing. ‘Seeing us all getting the rounds from Ma. I know some people think she’s a tartar but she had to be hard when we were young or we’d never have survived.’

  ‘I was too upset about Mama to notice,’ said Anna. ‘Your ma was so good.’

  ‘Ma’s had a hard life,’ Norah said in her quiet voice. ‘Married at sixteen and widowed when she was twenty-seven.’

  ‘And she had twin boys who died as well as the six of us,’ said Kate.

  ‘After Da was buried she only had five penny pieces in her purse and six of us to feed,’ Norah went on. ‘She just gathered us round her after the funeral and told us if we all pulled together we’d get through.’

  ‘You must have been very young,’ Anna said.

  ‘Yes, Kate and Gerald were only babies. Maggie was ten and Jim eight,’ said Norah. ‘They both got little jobs after school and on Saturdays and Ma took in washing. She made pea soup and scouse too and sold it for a penny a basin. But we were always clean and well fed, even if it was mostly scouse and pea soup, and we always had good boots.’

  ‘I don’t know how Ma did it,’ said Kate. ‘You know she can’t read or write, although nobody’d do her out of a farthing, but she even found the pennies to send us to school. It used to be if you hadn’t got the penny it was the Ragged School and she wasn’t having that.’

  ‘Yes, she was determined we’d all be scholars,’ Norah said quietly.

  ‘She must be very proud you’ve all done so well,’ Dorrie said and Kate replied, laughing, ‘We didn’t dare not to.’

  Later Dorrie and Anna agreed that it was no wonder the Deagan family submitted so meekly to their mother. It was out of respect, not fear, they felt.

  Mrs Furlong still seemed to feel resentment towards Anna so she spent more time helping her aunt when she was at home and less with her mother. It was easier because the girls now went out on Sunday afternoons with the Wheelers, a church group, riding into the countryside near Liverpool or across on a ferryboat to beauty spots on the Wirral.

  They usually had a cream tea in a cottage before riding home and both thoroughly enjoyed the outings with a lively group of young girls and men.

  Their mother had objected, saying that cycling was unladylike, but she had been overruled. The fact that she objected meant that their aunt had supported them and had spoken of it to Dr O’Brien when he called.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ he said. ‘Very healthy exercise. There would be less TB if more girls got out in the fresh air.’

  Mrs Furlong could only hope that when her husband returned he would forbid it and also forbid Anna to attend any more concerts with the Deagans.

  Both Jim and Norah Deagan were very musical. Jim played the violin and Norah the piano, which was also a pianola. Anna and Dorrie were sometimes invited to the Deagans’ Sunday evening gatherings of family and friends, and when Jim discovered that Anna liked the pianola rolls which played music by Chopin and Mendelssohn better than the ones which played mo
dern ballads, he and Norah invited Anna and Dorrie to attend concerts with them.

  Dorrie was bored by the classical music concerts and soon only Anna accompanied them but she returned so exalted that her mother became suspicious.

  ‘Jim Deagan’s old enough to be your father,’ she said to Anna.

  ‘He’s just had his thirty-fourth birthday,’ Anna replied.

  ‘Exactly and he’s still not married,’ her mother snapped. ‘He must be desperate to find a bride.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Anna. ‘Why should he marry unless he really wants to? He has a good home and a full and enjoyable life as he is.’

  ‘There are things you don’t understand about men,’ Mrs Furlong said. ‘Anyway, it’s his duty to marry. Someone of his own age. There are so many single girls.’

  Anna thought the comment so ridiculous that she said nothing. Typical of her mother’s generation, she thought with disgust, their minds always ran in the same rut, and she continued to enjoy the concerts with her neighbours.

  Anna looked forward to her father’s return but with some apprehension. Dorrie seemed to be eagerly counting the days but even she said one day, ‘I wish Father was more like Captain Jenson, Anna.’

  Anna nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘But I suppose people are just true to their natures or perhaps all Dutchmen are like Captain Jenson.’

  When Isabel’s father was at home in January he had welcomed them warmly when they called for Isabel. He was a big man with a full golden beard and curly hair and he had hugged Anna and Dorrie. ‘So what is this?’ he said in his booming voice. ‘All more beautiful every time I come home. Mama and Isabel and now you, all more beautiful. It must be the Liverpool air!’

  Several of the little boys were clinging to his legs and he said, ‘Like a ship with barnacles I am. I must go in dry dock to be scraped, eh, boys?’ He had laughed heartily and they had all laughed with him.

  Dorrie and Anna were silent now, thinking of that scene, then Dorrie said loyally, ‘Father loves us, though, and worries about us. We know that by his letters, don’t we?’