Letters From a Patchwork Quilt

by Clare Flynn

  Mary Ellen had been the tallyman’s best customer, frittering away money from their limited household budget on knick-knacks that were neither useful nor decorative. She had appeared to equate the accumulation of possessions with her position in society, raging against her humiliating descent down the social ladder. The upstairs parlour had become crammed with items that she had no practical use for – a large empty birdcage: the pair of canaries that had resided therein having perished when she forgot to feed them; three separate sets of china dogs; a Singer sewing machine that she never bothered to find out how to use; a series of empty gilded picture frames – she had never got around to arranging for the family photographic portraits she had intended would fill them. Just as Jack had come to the conclusion that he would be repaying the tallyman for his wife’s inessential indulgences for the rest of his life, she stopped spending. She barred the tallyman from the door and neglected the shops that she had once haunted.

  Meanwhile, Jack continued to eschew the temptations of alcohol. Standing behind the bar night after night seeing a procession of men drinking away money that by rights should have been taken home and handed over to their wives for feeding and clothing their families, hardened him against alcohol. He felt guilty that the bright lights and roaring fire in the bar acted as a siren’s call to men trudging home tired from their labours at the docks, steel mills and iron foundries. As well as the lure of beer and spirits, there was the attraction of the billiards table, where each man had to pay a penny a game, with the loser funding the winner’s charge. It was easy enough to notch up serious losses before Jack called time at the end of the evening. He was careful to keep trouble out of the premises, now that the law determined the publican would be liable himself for any public drunkenness. Middlesbrough had a public house on every street so the competition should have been fierce, yet the demand meant that all of them thrived. Whether customers consumed their beer on the premises or carried it home, there was no sign of trade falling away as the town continued to expand.

  Mary Ellen and her daughter’s growing conviction that the closure of all public houses was an essential element of their campaign against the demon drink, caused inevitable friction. The resentment Jack had felt for his wife causing the ruination of his life, returned with a vengeance. The fact that she was united with the priest’s bastard daughter in railing against him deepened his anger.

  In response to the constant complaints of the two women, Jack’s own drinking began to creep up. The one sociable pint of bitter that he once managed to stretch out through the whole evening was soon supplemented by two or three others, but he was careful to steer clear of the spirits. Every time he put his empty glass under the beer pump and primed it again, the image of his late father would cloud his brain and remind him that drink led to violence. Many mornings he woke feeling thick-headed, tongue furred and stomach churning, and each time he vowed he would lay off the beer that evening. When evening came, these resolutions fled and he grew adept at convincing the little voice of conscience in his head that a drink was deserved – a reward for his hard work.

  Drinking was also the means of forgetting. The alcohol flushed away thoughts of the life he might have been having if he had escaped with Eliza, granting him a temporary acceptance of his lot. But his increasing retreat into alcohol was more than matched by Mary Ellen’s opposition to it.

  One evening as he was getting ready to open up the pub, she and Marian entered the bar, carrying the silk Temperance banners they had been occupied in embroidering for the past six months. Mother and daughter were cloaked and bonneted and ready to set out on their nightly mission to protest outside the taverns of the town.

  ‘Get that stuff out of my bar,’ Jack snapped. ‘You can take your protests elsewhere.’

  ‘We are committed to visiting every public house in Middlesbrough. Why should this one be an exception?’ said Marian

  He was polishing glasses behind the bar and slammed one down so hard that it smashed into pieces. He cursed and sucked at the blood that had started to pool on one of his fingers.

  ‘It’s drink that puts the food on your table. It’s drink that pays for the clothes on your backs.’

  ‘I married you when you were a teacher,’ Mary Ellen said. ‘I didn’t marry a publican. You can always be a teacher again. I’m ashamed every time I see the priest or carry this banner. My own husband is shaming the family and the church by encouraging people to drink.’

  ‘I don’t encourage anyone to drink. It’s still a free country as far as I know. If people choose to forget about their miserable lives by paying for a bit of comfort then who am I to stand in their way?’

  ‘If this place were closed they couldn’t drink here,’ she said.

  ‘If this place were closed they’d cross the street and drink in the White Horse.’

  ‘Look, Father, we have to make a stand.’

  It was rare that Marian addressed him directly and he hated it when it she referred to him as Father. He could hardly tell the girl to desist; nor could he reveal the truth of her parentage, but as always when he looked at her he felt the familiar anger bubbling inside him. Years of Mary Ellen’s sermonising and the constant undermining of his role as breadwinner by his wife and daughter had worn him down. He looked at them and felt a burst of defiance.

  ‘Make a stand? I’ll make a stand.’ He reached behind him and grabbed a glass and poured a large measure of whisky into it, downing it one. It felt good and he filled the glass again.

  ‘Are you happy now, the pair of you? There’s at least one man in this town you’ve driven to drink. You’re like a pair of cockerels that won’t stop crowing. Well, you can go and do your crowing elsewhere. This is a public house and my customers will be arriving any minute and they don’t want to look at those banners and your sour, sanctimonious faces.’

  Mary Ellen opened her mouth to respond, but Marian took her mother by the sleeve and led her towards the door.

  That was all it took. One whisky led to another and Jack soon became accustomed to drinking steadily throughout the evening.

  Jack wasn’t expecting Mary Ellen to lose her previously voracious appetite for sex, so it came as a surprise when it happened. It was one thing to accept the offer of his wife’s body the way that he had done throughout the years of their marriage, and quite another for Jack to seek her out and demand his conjugal rights. His pride was too great for that, so he lay alone in bed, conjuring images of Eliza as he tried to satisfy himself, remembering how, when he was a small boy, his mother had warned him against fiddling with himself for fear of madness or blindness. He wondered whether he should seek the services of a prostitute – a simple financial transaction for services rendered. There were enough women who would be only too ready to oblige, not only the professionals, but housewives and widows who were struggling to put bread on the table – why not return some of the money their menfolk spent in his bar? While he no longer went to Mass, a lifetime of being indoctrinated by the church was enough for him to fear that this would be a sin too far.

  He went to the doctor, embarrassed as he tried to explain his predicament. ‘My wife,’ he said, ‘no longer wants to have children and has closed the bedroom door.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘How old are you, Mr Brennan?’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’

  ‘Still a young man then. It’s unlikely the urges will pass for some time yet, even if they have in your wife. She’s younger I presume? How many children?’

  ‘My wife is fifty. We have six living children. Two died as infants and two were still born.’

  ‘I can perhaps see why Mrs Brennan is reluctant to continue with her matrimonial duties. A woman does get tired, I suppose. Nonetheless, Mr Brennan, you are completely within your rights to demand that she permits you to fulfil your duty as a husband or, if she refuses, to take her by force. But I presume since you are sitting here you have already ruled that out of the question?’

  Jack nodded.

  �
�Yes, some men do have qualms about such matters. Can’t say I understand myself. A wife has little enough to do that she should wish to withhold from her husband what’s rightfully his. It’s a well known fact that most women are untroubled by sexual desire of any kind and so gentlemen often have no alternative but to force the issue. Times are changing and not for the better in my view. So, Mr Brennan, if you are not prepared to persuade your wife, it appears to me that you have little choice in this matter. There are but two options. Abstinence or seeking satisfaction outside the matrimonial home. Self-pleasuring must be avoided at all costs. It is now an undisputed fact that masturbation leads to insanity, physical weakness and flabbiness of the body and frequently brings on consumption.’

  ‘There’s no medicine you can give me for my wife? To make her willing to do it again?’

  ‘Alas, no. I would be a very wealthy man if I could lay my hands on a potion such as that. My advice to you, sir, is to try to curb your urges by taking regular exercise. When the need to relieve your desires becomes overwhelming, discreetly seek out a woman who can provide you with what you need. Make sure you choose a clean woman, free of disease. The old adage “You get what you pay for” is as relevant in financial transactions such as this as in buying a horse.

  Jack tried it just once. She was a woman who had come into the Tudor Crown a few times in the past to try to encourage her husband to return home at the end of a long drinking bout. The husband in question was now off sick from the ironworks, suffering from blood poisoning. The lack of wages coming into the already straitened home caused the woman to seek alternative means of feeding the family during his illness.

  She approached Jack in the street when he was returning to the Tudor Crown before opening time.

  ‘Mr Brennan?’

  He turned to look at her, surprised.

  ‘My husband’s one of your regulars but he’s been off sick for three weeks already and no sign of him going back. Money’s tight. I thought he were paying his dibs into the sick club every week but turns out he wasn’t. I’m desperate, Mr Brennan. I’ll take on any work. Do you have any cleaning jobs going? I’m a hard worker.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We already employ a cleaner.'

  ‘Look. I’m also willing to do a bit of the other, you know? You get my meaning? I don’t want to stop people on the street. But if you hear any gentlemen in your pub saying they want some you know what, maybe you could send them round to our house? It’s 21 Nelson Street. Needs to be late – after the pubs close. Don’t want the neighbours knowing. I’d be ever so grateful. I’m a good wife. I hate to be doing this. But things are really bad. I have to feed my kids.’

  Her despair was palpable and Jack felt sorry for her. She had a pretty face but it was pale and lined and she was painfully thin. He asked her if he might call on her himself that night after he’d shut the tavern and she looked so grateful he felt even more guilty about what he was about to do.

  He knocked on the door to her small two-up-two-down terraced house and she showed him into a tiny, cold room. He could smell the damp in the air and the grate was empty.

  Jack looked around him at the bare room. Barely a stick of furniture. It was clear she had started to pawn their possessions. ‘Where?’ was all he could say.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘There’s nowhere else. The children are upstairs.’ She nodded towards a door at the rear. ‘My husband’s sleeping in there. But it’s all right. He knows what I’m doing. He knows we’ve no option.’

  She lay down on the floor and lifted her skirts up and spread her legs wide. ‘Hurry up. I hope you’re not one of the noisy ones. I don’t want Fred to wake or the kids to come down.’

  He hesitated, shame at what he was doing welling up inside him. How had it come to this? He looked down at her. Her fair hair was matted and dirty and her eyes were sad. For a moment he thought of leaving the money on the table and walking out of the house, but he knelt down between her open legs and lowered himself onto her body and took her there quickly on the dirty kitchen floor. When it was over and he was hurrying away, head bowed, down the street, he realised he hadn’t even asked her what her name was.

  33

  The Seduction

  Jack vowed he would never again seek sex from a prostitute or a despairing mother. Uncertain what to do, he considered seeking the counsel of Father Reilly. He brushed aside the fact that the man was O’Driscoll’s cousin, instead remembering that, when he had talked to him in the confessional box, he had been down to earth and practical.

  Since he had stopped going to church, Jack’s only contact with Father Reilly was when the priest called in at the Tudor Crown. Mary Ellen had insisted he come to bless the house and during Lent invited him to their home to say the mysteries of the rosary with the family. These visits were outside licensed hours but Jack always excused himself, although always showing courtesy to the Irishman. He felt embarrassed, being in the company of the priest and Mary Ellen, remembering what he had told the man about their marital relations, in the confessional box.

  Occasionally the priest dropped into the public bar for a pint of ale.

  ‘I don’t hold with all that temperance nonsense, Jack. A little bevvie in moderation never did anyone any harm. I don’t approve of men getting blind drunk but we shouldn’t be trying to shut down the public houses. That’s punishing the many for the sins of the few. All due respects to Mrs Brennan and your daughter, Jack, but you’ll not be seeing me carrying a banner through Market Square any day soon.’

  Every time he saw Jack, the priest would say the same thing. ‘And will I be seeing you at Mass on Sunday, Jack?’

  And every time Jack would offer the same reply. ‘Not this Sunday, Father.’

  Jack knew he couldn’t bear to have sex the way he had done on that kitchen floor again. It had felt like exploitation. He knew the woman was grateful for his money but it had been sordid and humiliating for both of them. Perhaps with a proper prostitute it might be easier. The toffers, as the better class of prostitutes were known, used private rooms to conduct their business with their more affluent clients. He could never take a woman in a dark alley, behind the pub, or at the back of the railway station as he knew so many men in the town did – he would never do what O’Driscoll had done with Mary Ellen, a quick and furtive “thrupenny upright” against a brick wall.

  He got as far as the church door and stood on the threshold looking at the rows of kneeling women and the few men, waiting their turn in the confessional. These people were about to share their innermost secrets with Father Reilly. Telling this unmarried Irishman about their money troubles, their petty jealousies, their lust, their anger. Seeking his counsel on all these matters. Begging him to intercede on their behalf with God. As Jack watched them going in and out of the curtained box, his jaw began to ache. No wonder people were in thrall to the Catholic church when it allowed them to go out and sin all week, only to be fully absolved in the confessional box in exchange for a few Hail Marys. Go in peace your sins are forgiven. Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Men like Bill Logan who beat up their wives then asked for absolution only to go out and do it again.

  He breathed in the lingering smell of incense from last night’s Benediction. What was he thinking? It was a folly. He must be deluded. Asking the advice of a celibate man about sex? Jack walked away from the church, hands thrust in his pockets.

  There was only one solution. He realised he’d known it all along. He must take a mistress.

  There was only one candidate. Now he needed to work out how he was going to convince Gertrude. He walked alone along the sand dunes, mulling the idea over. He didn’t love her, nor did he suppose she loved him. That meant he wouldn’t be hurting her. They would each embark upon the affair with their eyes open. She owed no fidelity to that brute of a husband. Hadn’t she told him many times how much she hated him?.

  But there was the matter of her refusal to let Jack touch her. It was not going to
be possible to touch her or kiss her and let one thing lead to another. He wondered if her sensibilities on this count reflected a coldness in her, a lack of feeling. She’d already told him she didn’t want him to touch her at all. She hated the idea of sex. But surely making love with him would be a very different proposition to having to endure it with her fat old husband? Yes, he reasoned. He’d be doing her a favour – showing her that she could after all have pleasure with a man. She would be grateful to him. They would find comfort in each other.

  Eventually he decided there was only one way to set about it. He would have to be honest with Gertrude – appeal to her reason. He would tell her what he proposed and then set about convincing her to agree to his plan. It would not be straightforward. It would require patience. It might take some time.

  It was a Thursday afternoon. The first dry day after weeks of rain. After not seeing Gertrude for so long he had missed her. He missed her smile, her open countenance – her expression that reflected her trust in him. The way she said exactly what she felt without dressing it up.

  As he walked along the pathway towards Coatham Sands, he felt his heart racing and his walking pace speeding up at the thought of seeing Gertrude again, of beginning his seduction of her. Why did he feel this way when he didn’t love her? Didn’t even really desire her? Not the way he’d desired Eliza. He certainly wouldn’t have picked her out in a crowd. And yet, she had a way with her. A wild spirit that drew him to her. Her love for the sea, for the sky, for the birds. Her visceral hatred of the town and what it represented.

  He was nervous at the prospect of making love to Gertrude. Perhaps a bit guilty? He wouldn’t be planning to seduce her if there was any alternative. And he’d be doing her a favour, wouldn’t he? Showing her that sex was not always unpleasant and to be endured.