‘What about Star? She’s got to get some learning,’ said Martha, aware of her own great lack of it.
‘Mrs Bowen says she can go to the village school – and she’ll ask the school teachers to watch her, so she don’t get bullied.’
Martha was quiet, as she chewed. Then she said, ‘We’ll really miss you, love, won’t we, Sheila? Don’t know what we’ll do without you.’ Then she remembered the chocolate and took the little box out from under her pillow. She held it out shyly to the girl, and said, ‘I kept this for you. You was so busy this past day or two, I forgot to give it to you.’
A surprised Angie opened the box.
‘It’s all I’ve got to give you, after I shared them with Sheila and the ladies,’ Martha said with real regret. ‘Those two strange ladies who come to visit me give me a box of them.’
Angie came round the side of the bed to lean over the little woman. She put her arms round her and hugged her closely. She said, ‘I’ll miss you, too. Tell you what, though, I’ll write to yez – and maybe Sheila will read it for you.’
Sheila put down her mug of tea. Her head was clearing. ‘For sure, I will. Don’t I get a hug, too?’
She was duly hugged.
Angie said, ‘I were talking to the cook downstairs, and there’s a rumour that this place is to get a real overhaul. Department of Public Health, and all. Sounds as if things will be better for you.’
‘Oh, I hope you’re right,’ said Sheila fervently.
‘They might close it down if Matron don’t pull her socks up,’ warned Angie.
Martha looked shocked. Fear swept through her of what those terrifying people, the Theys, could do once they got started. ‘Where would we go?’ she asked apprehensively.
‘Right,’ replied Sheila. ‘Where could they put us?’
It had not been Angie’s intention to scare her two patients, and she said quickly, ‘Matron’s nothing but a bloody bean-counter, for all she claims to be a registered nurse. But if They put enough pressure on her and watched her, this place could be quite good. One thing, if they put in a lift, then folk like you could move around.’
Sheila’s grunt was dismissive.
‘Why not, Sheila? You could learn to lift yourself out of bed and into a wheelchair and away you go; with a few alterations in a kitchen, you could keep house in a flat. And I’ve caught Martha here walking not so badly.’ Angie smiled down at her favourite patient.
Without much real hope, Sheila and Martha awaited events. They both noted with relief that no more nightly pills were pressed upon Sheila: a shaken Lavinia had told Dr Williams about it, and the outraged doctor had, over the telephone, reduced the Matron to tears, a phenomenal victory.
A week later, a sturdy walking stick was delivered to the nursing home, with instructions from Dr Williams that it was for the use of Mrs Connolly, who was to be encouraged to walk. It was taken in by Rosie, who brought it upstairs to Martha.
Since the Matron rarely visited the first floor, it was some time before this dereliction of duty on Rosie’s part was discovered: a jubilant Martha was already walking quite steadily on the day she bumped into Matron escorting Dr Williams upstairs to the second floor, where lay two more patients whom the doctor felt should, like Martha, be able to walk.
Dr Williams expressed his pleasure at seeing an upright Martha. The Matron said nothing. Looking at her face, Martha began to fear a pill.
She managed to get herself back into bed, and, after a moment’s thought, lifted the stick in with her. ‘With that bitch, you never know: she might take it away.’
She leaned back on her pillow and spent the next several hours, including teatime, filled with foreboding, until Freda, the evening aide, shook her out of a doze.
‘Come on,’ she said sharply. ‘Time for bed. Get out and do a pee before I put the lights out.’
Sheila was already perilously poised on a bedpan, and she giggled, as Freda went over to persuade the dementias to do similarly. ‘No pills!’ she whispered gleefully.
‘You’re right,’ responded Martha. ‘Thanks be!’
Martha said her prayers, her face alight.
Like a pair of Sleeping Beauties, they slept soundly and naturally, as hope lifted their spirits.
They awoke to the usual sounds of Angie’s heavy tread across the wooden floor, and her cry, ‘Time for up, girls,’ and then the nervous whimpers of the dementias, as they struggled up in their beds in alarm. A basin, with a ewer of warm water beside it, was plonked on a table beside the stroke victim, and she was swiftly wiped down.
Martha, who had for much of her life managed with little water, did not complain when her hands and face were washed in the same water. Sheila, however, refused to use it. An irritated Angie, who knew she was in the wrong, but was, as usual, hard-pressed, snatched up the basin, took it to the bathroom and threw the water away.
Without a further word, the basin was refilled from the ewer and presented to Sheila.
Looking as upright and determined as she must have done before she was disabled, a tight-lipped Sheila triumphantly washed her hands and wiped her face.
Though she was fond of Angie, Martha watched the scene in awe. Sheila had actually corrected an aide! Long since drained from Martha was the determined optimism and physical strength which had got her through her earlier years, when she had fought to keep her family fed. Her later isolation in a respectable Protestant neighbourhood had also taught her to keep her mouth shut. Our Sheila was being real brave, she decided.
Angie had barely given the faces of the dementias a quick wipe, when the dumbwaiter rumbled up to their floor from the kitchen. She opened the tiny lift’s wooden door and took out the ward’s breakfast trays. Breathing hard, she carried the five trays, balanced on top of each other, to Martha’s commode and dumped them down.
As a tray of porridge and slopped tea was handed to Sheila, which she was expected to balance precariously on her thighs as best she could, the invalid continued to be her usual acerbic self.
‘I feel I come from Glasgow,’ she remarked to Martha, as she dipped her spoon into the milkless porridge. ‘With so much of this stuff, I’ll be wearing a kilt next.’
Martha suddenly choked with laughter. Here was Sheila as she ought to be. She hoped frantically that pills could, for ever, be crossed off their list of nightmares.
They spent most of the morning discussing whether one really could arrange a scullery so that an invalid in a wheelchair might be able to cook.
‘I gave up me home,’ confided Sheila. ‘It were a little house. I reckoned I was stuck for life in this place – and I may be yet. Me next-door neighbour what used to come to visit me in the hospital put some of my stuff in her attic, but most of it were sold.’
Martha nodded, her expression dismal. ‘Same with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t own nothing. And I lost touch with most of me friends when I moved to the Dingle.’
When they were supposed to be taking an afternoon nap, they were, instead, still enjoying a great game, as they explored ways to arrange a scullery for a wheelchair, and what fun they could have together cooking their favourite meals.
‘Tripe and onions!’ cried Sheila.
‘Ribs and cabbage!’ Martha almost shrieked.
They were still laughing at their wild bursts of imagination when the muffled sound of male voices arguing in the hall below drifted up to them.
They paused in their discussion, suddenly fearful that they had made too much noise.
Martha queried, ‘Doctor giving Matron what for?’
More than one pair of boots could be heard trudging up the long staircase.
FORTY-ONE
‘Kids Is the World’s Worst Liars’
1965
Both women looked up as, through the open door, two men almost burst into the room.
A dumbfounded Martha was engulfed in two sets of arms, as the men chorused, ‘Mam, Martha, thank God we’ve found you!’
As Martha looked into Number Nine�
�s wide, innocent blue eyes, she burst into tears.
‘Oh, Jamie, love, I never thought to see you again.’ She turned to the other young man, ‘Danny, me love. Oh, Danny!’
An amazed Sheila was spellbound. Then she noticed Number Nine’s cassock, and, as Daniel produced a pocket handkerchief to mop up Martha’s tears, she ventured to ask, ‘Are you Martha’s boys?’
‘He is,’ replied Daniel, giving Number Nine a friendly poke with his elbow. ‘I’m just a friend.’
‘Not just a friend,’ replied Martha through her sniffs. ‘He’s Mary Margaret’s boy, what I told you about.’ A scrawny arm came out from the confining sheets, to wrap round Daniel.
‘Aye, how you’ve grown. You’re a real man! Haven’t seen you since the war. Whatever happened to you?’
Sheila gulped. She was determined not to spoil the reunion for Martha by crying. But such an arrow of pure loneliness shot through her that she badly wanted to scream to high heaven with the pain of it.
Martha gathered her wits, while a very handsome man sat down on either side of her bed. Each of them held a tiny gnarled hand.
‘How did you find me?’ she demanded. ‘I couldn’t even find somebody to write to tell you where I was.’
‘Somebody here would have done it, Mam. Surely they would?’
‘Not this place,’ spat Martha.
James decided to leave that issue to another time. He said, ‘All the letters I had written to you for weeks past, at home, came back in a bunch, last week. They were marked “Gone away”. It scared me to death, because they were so old.
‘Usually, you’d get Tara to read them to you, and occasionally she’d write a line back for you. So I asked for a week’s leave, and was given it.
‘I went to our house, and a perfect stranger answered the door. I was really amazed.’
Martha gave him a special squeeze. ‘Poor lad!’
Number Nine smiled at her. ‘The man said that he had returned all the letters in one go. He had kept them on the mantelpiece, because he didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, he asked the rent collector for advice, and had been told how to return them, and he did so.’
Martha interjected, ‘And Tara went to Ireland, to Cork, to live with her married daughter, a couple of weeks before I fell down the stairs – I miss her. She wouldn’t know where I was neither.’
James paused, and nodded, and then went on, ‘I wasn’t too sure what to do next. So I tried next door.’
He grinned mischievously, and Martha saw again her beloved little boy. ‘The woman there was obviously very surprised to have what looked like a Catholic priest on her doorstep. She nearly slammed the door on me. I told her quickly that I was trying to trace my mother, and she then said that you had been taken to hospital weeks and weeks ago – didn’t know which hospital. Didn’t know you, only of you. Not very helpful.
‘She had seen the bailiffs take over – and had bought one of our chairs at the sale which they held.’
‘Blasted Prottie,’ muttered Martha angrily. ‘Would hardly speak to me because I’m Catholic. Wall-to-wall Protties, it is, down there. All through the war, as you may remember, they made us feel small.’
Once they had moved from the court, James had been very short of playmates, other than his brother and sister. He ignored his mother’s bitterness, however, and smiled at her.
He continued, ‘I tried all the hospitals. Nobody answering to your description was on their lists. I was beside myself. And I didn’t have much money for tram fares, and so on.’
Daniel spoke up. ‘So he went to see old Auntie Ellen – she lives with Shaun – she’s never been well since she was wounded in the war. You’ll remember what a bad time she had – and Shaun himself?’
‘Oh, aye, I do.’
‘Well, Number Nine stayed the night with her. And, by chance, I docked the next morning. Signed off and came up to see her. I were proper surprised to find Jamie visiting her too,’ he finished irrelevantly. Then he said with pride, ‘We done all the hospitals again, together.’
James smiled gently. ‘We got the bursars to check ex-patients’ files – you’d be surprised how many Martha Connollys there are who’ve been treated in hospitals over the years!
‘Once they understood more precisely what had happened, they were very good and it didn’t take long. The lady who found you said I had been notified, as I was your next of kin. But they had our home address not the seminary’s – an empty house – so the letter was returned.’
He sighed and glanced at silent, sad-looking Sheila. Then he said, ‘And that’s how you were handed over to a social worker, Mam. Somebody had to take care of you.’
His mother nodded reluctant agreement. ‘I remember the woman. She said to sign this, sign that. So I make me cross; and all I knew was that I would be sent here to be looked after till I was better.’
She looked at her son and then kissed him again. ‘Jaysus, I’m so thankful you come.’
A startled, but delighted, Angie performed a minor miracle by squeezing four cups of tea out of the kitchen.
As she thankfully sipped her tea, Martha asked in curiosity, ‘What happened to Dollie and Connie and little Minnie? Were they found and do you still see them?’
Daniel grinned. ‘Oh, aye, I see them from time to time.’
Martha’s face lit up. ‘Tell us,’ she urged.
Sprawled on the end of her bed, he paused to gather his memories, and began.
‘Well, you know, in the war, some of the civilian population, folk like us, was much less looked after than They would like you to believe. It was simply because of the pure muddle of fighting a war and feeding people and everything: nothing worked quite perfectly, specially for bunches of nobodies like us what often didn’t know what we was supposed to be doing.
‘Remember our Dollie? Now, she was tough, you know that, and she were eleven years old by then, quite capable of looking after other kids. And she was scared stiff, after Mam died. And, of course, Dad and me, we were at sea.
‘The three girls were bundled off into care, and within two days they was evacuated with the other children to Shropshire. It seems that in the general rush to get the children out of the city, no paperwork was done on them – I guess They thought They would catch up on it once they was safe from being bombed.
‘Dollie told me the three of them was absolutely terrified, because they didn’t understand what was happening to them, except that their mam was dead and their dad was at sea, and none of Them seemed to like Auntie Ellen or Grandma Theresa. They didn’t seem to have a single familiar person to cling to. She said they were bundled about in all kinds of strange places by women who didn’t even know their names and fed food they didn’t like by these strangers.
‘They ended up with a crowd of other kids they’d never seen before outside a railway station, and more strangers came to look at them. They were even more scared when the strangers picked out a child or children and took them away. It was clear, she said, that nobody wanted three dirty little girls, even if they were evacuees fleeing from the expected raids on Liverpool.
‘So they slid behind a parked car and then run like hell down a back lane of what must’ve been a village in Shropshire.
‘That night, a farmer found them curled up together, sleeping in his stable. They were cold and hungry, and Dollie had told Connie and Minnie not to say a word to anyone. When the farmer tried to get them to say who they were, none of them answered, so he persuaded them to come in to see his wife. She bathed them, to warm them up, she said, and then gave them some breakfast and soon they were out collecting eggs with her. She got their first names out of them. But they all lied that they did not know their surnames or their address – and, of course, they really didn’t know the address of the Home they’d been taken to. But the farmer knew from their voices that they come from Liverpool.
‘Dollie said she thought he wanted them to stay and work for him, because his daughter and his labourer were both calle
d up. Because, you know, they wasn’t helpless. Dollie was over eleven, Connie was about eight and even Minnie was over six. Many a farmer’s kids are helping by that age.
‘When he went to market, he inquired if They had any children that they still wanted to billet. He was told that they had all gone.
‘So he must have simply chanced keeping them without saying any more. Who would notice, anyway? Within a few weeks, they would be regarded as the farmer’s three evacuees from Liverpool.
‘And Dollie kept them there until the war ended. It wasn’t all beer and pickles, and Connie said that at first Minnie cried a lot. But the farmer’s wife grew very fond of them and fed them reasonable.
‘Dollie never thought of trying to write to me, care of Auntie Ellen. She reckoned, anyways, that, once they connected with Liverpool again, they would be put back in an orphanage, and their life on the farm was much better than any orphanage would be.
‘Each morning they went to school, and Dollie gave their full names. But she said they were orphans and had no family left in Liverpool. She said she was deliberately vague about how they had come to be evacuated. The school was quite disorganised, because another evacuated school was foisted on it in the afternoons. Our Dollie was always a good liar, and her story was accepted without query.
‘When I was trying to find them, the people I talked to wasn’t much help, and even the police accepted the billeting officer’s word that they could be easily traced and that their brother would be informed of where they were.
‘Connie told me that they heard on the farm’s radio about the bombing of Liverpool, and that scared the three of them even more.’
Martha smiled lovingly into Number Nine’s neatly shaven face, and then turned to ask Danny, ‘So where are they now, poor little lambs?’
Danny laughed. ‘Our Dollie was never a poor little lamb. They’re all married and with kids of their own now. Before the end of the war, when Dollie was fourteen, she had had enough and demanded that the three of them go back to Liverpool – ’cos most evacuees had returned. By that time, the police had finally traced them anyway They ended up in foster homes for a bit, in Liverpool. Later on, we all lived together for a while in a little flat, with a social worker keeping an eye on us. The girls, as they left school got jobs.
A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin Page 29