Forget-Me-Not Child

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Mammy’s right,’ Barry said. ‘It is the only thing to do. Put the ball in Betty’s court. They must be the ones to tell David the truth since they were the ones that didn’t tell him the truth in the first place and cut you out of the boy’s life into the bargain.’

  ‘I agree with Mammy and Barry too,’ Angela said. ‘And being as you can’t see the solicitor till tomorrow I’d get the letter to Betty written straight away.’

  ‘And the one for Daniel to leave with the solicitor,’ Stan said. ‘I’ll see to them both this evening. Something else I have decided and that’s to give up the tenancy on the house. I don’t know when I’ll have leave again and while I know the house is not much cop, it’s better than nothing and a family could have the use of it. It’s selfish to keep it on.’

  ‘And if all else fails,’ Barry said, ‘you can always have the use of our settee.’

  ‘Or floor,’ Stan said. ‘I’ll be a seasoned soldier by then and able to sleep anywhere.’

  So all was done by the time Mary and Angela, with Connie between them, assembled at New Street to see Stan off, as he was joining his company on the South Coast, and they all knew without much doubt that he would be off to France soon. Angela’s insides trembled, and she held Connie’s hand so tight the child complained.

  Angela knew anyone watching them would think them a family and though Angela had grown to love Stan, she didn’t love him as she loved Barry – that love was special. However, that morning she did embrace him and kiss his cheek and Mary followed suit for it just felt right. ‘Look after yourself,’ Mary said and then remarked ruefully, ‘What a daft thing to say to a man off to war.’

  Stan smiled. ‘I promise I’ll keep my head down,’ he said as he lifted Connie into his arms. ‘Will that do?’

  ‘I suppose it will have to,’ Mary said gruffly. ‘Connie, give Uncle Stan a kiss. He has to be on the train shortly.’

  Connie wound her podgy little arms around Stan’s neck and kissed his cheek soundly. ‘Bye Unky Tan.’

  ‘Bye-bye my darling girl and I will be back to see you as soon as I can,’ Stan said and he handed Connie into Angela’s arms. ‘You will write to me?’ he said as he stepped into the train.

  ‘Of course,’ Angela said. ‘Promise I will.’

  The train doors were slammed, the whistle blew and billows of smoke filled the air as the train began to chug its way out of the station, leaving behind the acrid smell of coal dust. And Angela’s eyes blurred with tears as she wondered if she would ever see Stan again.

  Life continued as before as rumours of battles in strange places with foreign names filled the papers and now that Stan was probably embroiled in it, Angela read the papers as avidly as Barry, though previously she had only skimmed the headlines.

  Stan wrote to them, but could tell them nothing of his location or any other war-related news, for the censor would cut it out if he tried. Instead they got little missives that gave them snapshots of army life, like the dugout assigned to the men when they had time to relax:

  In the middle of a war our appearance still matters a great deal and I really can’t see the point of being so particular …

  In early December Stan sent a clue that he was in France when he wrote:

  Sometimes I really can’t stomach the food in the Naafi and it would be nice to be able to go into town for a home-made pie and some of the pastries they are so famous for.

  ‘Got that through the censor,’ Angela said.

  ‘It doesn’t say anything.’

  ‘It says enough. ‘The pastries they are so famous for” – that’s France surely?’

  ‘I’d say you’re right, Angela,’ Mary said. ‘Anyway this has decided me. I will make him a small Christmas cake of his own and mince pies too and put them in the box I am making up.’ She had already bought him gloves and a scarf and Angela added ten packets of cigarettes, a set of men’s handkerchiefs and a big bag of the bullseyes he was partial to.

  ‘Good English food,’ Mary said in approval. ‘No need to eat the French stuff unless he wants to. And I’m sure pastries are all very well, but they would hardly fill a man. You need things that stick to your ribs a bit in cold weather like this.’

  Angela thought Mary not far wrong because the days leading up to Christmas were raw ones. It didn’t help that as December took hold there was little in the shops to buy and often the grocery shops’ shelves were half empty. Everyone was talking about it. It was said that the wealthy were parking their cars or carriages in side streets and sending the drivers in with long lists of things. This left the poor, who couldn’t afford to stock-pile, to manage the best way they could, although it was hard to feed families without even basic commodities.

  ‘I’ve never actually seen this myself,’ Angela said, ‘though a lot of things I used to buy from the grocer aren’t there any more and in the paper they said there’s a lot of it going on and it must be true because the food I used to buy has got to go somewhere. Surely it’s wrong.’

  ‘Of course it’s wrong,’ Mary said. ‘How can you mange without bread and milk and tea? And some of the butchers’ slabs are near empty as well and the greengrocer’s hadn’t a potato in the shop the other day. Shopping takes all day because you go from shop to shop along Bristol Street to get a bit here and a bit there and still come back with your bag half empty. And,’ she added, ‘at least we have the money to do that. What of the poor devils who are tied to the one shop because they’ll let them run up tick till pay day? What are they living on if there’s nothing on the shelves?’

  Angela thought about the number of people George Maitland gave tick to and knew Mary had made a valid point. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ she said. ‘The government should do something to stop it.’

  ‘They won’t care about the likes of us,’ Mary said. ‘They have a war to win. As long as the soldiers are adequately fed I would say, as far as the government are concerned, the rest of us can sink or swim. But I’ll tell you what, the war can’t go on for ever and people have long memories and they won’t forget those shops who let down their loyal customers. They’ll go somewhere else when the war’s over.’

  ‘We all have to live till then,’ Angela said. ‘Barry is working the long hours he has to just now and needs good solid food inside him, and Connie too, for she has a lot of growing to do.’

  ‘Well if it comes to that we all need proper food,’ Mary said. ‘What would happen if you or I were to go down sick because we were so malnourished?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Angela said. ‘So let’s start our boycott now. I’m going to start getting the groceries at Maitland’s. It’s a bit of a trek, but at least I will be able to get all I need.’

  ‘How do you know he isn’t into this selling to the toffs as well?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Because I know him,’ Angela said, with assurance. ‘He is an honest man with integrity and he would see this as wrong and have no part in it. And added to that he is no great lover of toffs. As for the greengrocery and the meat, we can buy all that from the Bull Ring because any toff or toff’s lackey would get short shrift there.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Mary with a chuckle.

  ‘And not a word to Barry,’ Angela warned. ‘He has enough on his plate just now.’

  Angela was in fact quite worried about her young husband whose eyes often looked quite haunted and his face had a definite greyish tinge to it. The hours he put in at the factory were punishing, for the Government was pressing for greater production. Even more lines were set up and the employees had to work longer hours and much faster than before to make the products that were needed. Not many grumbled, for most had loved ones at the Front and wanted to do their bit too.

  Barry always told Angela he was ‘fine’ when she asked him if he was all right, for he could never tell her what was really tormenting him, which were the pictures he had seen in the papers of the injured soldiers returning to Britain. He didn’t want to be among them, of course he didn’t, he just felt bad about the who
le thing. And worse were the others who had made the ultimate sacrifice and whose bodies littered a foreign field somewhere.

  So Barry never knew of the women’s journey to buy decent food in sufficient quantity to put on the table. George Maitland, when he heard why they were changing grocers, said he’d had toffs’ drivers target him too, but he had sent them packing.

  ‘This man I’d never seen before gave me this big order, like a roll of wallpaper it was,’ George said. ‘And I said that as I hadn’t seen him before he must be a stanger to the area and if so, didn’t he have a local grocer to deal with such a large order.

  ‘He said that he didn’t, so I asked him why he needed so much food and if he was buying it on someone else’s behalf. ’Course he coloured up then and so I said, “If I fill your order it will nearly empty my shelves, so then what do the customers do who’ve been coming to me for years if I have nothing left for them to buy to feed their families?”

  ‘“Can’t you restock?” said the cocky young chap.

  ‘“’Course I could,” I told him,’ George said to Angela and Mary. ‘But then I said to him, “I couldn’t do that immediately. It might be three or four days before stock was back in the shop. So you sling your hook and don’t come back and tell your Mistress she’ll have to tighten her belt like the rest of us are having to do.’

  Angela shot Mary a smile of triumph for she’d known just how George would behave. And then George said, ‘It might have been more difficult to do if Dorothy had been in the shop, though I would still have done it because I make the decisions, but Dorothy would tell Matilda and she would moan at me and Dorothy would put her oar in as well.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Angela said. ‘Is Dorothy your new assistant’s name?’

  George shook his head, ‘No, worse luck. My assistant left to work in the munitions where the money is better and she didn’t have to cope with Matilda. Dorothy is Matilda’s sister. She’s recently been widowed and Matilda wanted her here till she gets over it. Upshot is she’s moved in lock, stock and barrel and Matilda suggested she works in the shop at busy times. I seem to spend a lot of time in the shop at the moment.’ Both Mary and Angela could understand why and Mary said, ‘You should take yourself to the pub a time or two and leave them to it.’

  George smiled. ‘That’s never been my way.’

  ‘Well maybe it should become your way,’ Mary said. ‘Make some friends of your own. All work and no play, you know?’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ George said, reaching into the lollipop jar to give one to Connie as he went on, ‘And it will be lovely seeing you on a regular basis. I did so miss Angela when she left, but I bet you have your hands full now.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Angela said. ‘Connie takes some watching all right, but she is really the light of our lives.’

  ‘Was he asking you to go back?’ Mary asked as she pushed the pram back home.

  Angela nodded. ‘I think he was sounding me out.’

  ‘Would you be tempted?’

  Angela shook her head vehemently. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave Connie unless I had to and I definitely think Barry would be against it.’

  ‘And he’s bringing home plenty of money now too,’ Mary said.

  ‘That’s all the overtime,’ Angela said. ‘And it can’t go on at that rate for the hours are quite mad at the moment. I’ll be glad when it’s Christmas and he can have some time off, because he looks a little strained to me.’

  ‘I’ve noticed he’s quieter than usual,’ Mary said. ‘Let’s hope you’re right. Thank God Christmas is no distance away.’

  The McCluskys woke on Christmas morning to find it had snowed in the night and was still snowing, the snow turning to shimmering pools of gold beneath the lamps which gleamed in the night sky, for it would be a few hours yet till daylight. Connie had never seen snow and she was enchanted and straight away wanted to get dressed and go out in it despite the cold and the darkness.

  Downstairs however, Santa had paid a visit and left Connie a jack-in-the-box that amused her immensely. And that wasn’t all. She also had a new fleece-lined winter coat from her American Uncle Finbarr. It was royal blue and there was a matching bonnet and mittens. She looked as pretty as a picture in it. But more importantly Angela knew she would be as warm as toast in that coat and she intended to write and thank Finbarr heartily for he also sent ten dollars for them to treat themselves.

  She wanted to congratulate Finbarr too for he wrote that he was getting married to a girl called Orla McCann who he had met at Mass. Mary gave a sigh of relief when Angela read that out because if he had met this Orla at Mass then she must be a Catholic. But it was even better than that for not only was she of Irish descent, but her family came from Donegal as the McCluskys did. She couldn’t be more suitable and Mary was relieved that Finbarr’s future at least looked set.

  Colm hadn’t any news like that himself but there was another ten dollars inside his letter and he said that Mammy need have no worries because Orla was a great girl altogether and he was to continue to live with them after they married until he was ready to settle down himself. He hadn’t forgotten his little niece either and for her there was a beautiful large book and Angela gave a gasp as she lifted it out because she had never owned anything so fine. It was called The Treasury of Nursery Rhymes and every nursery rhyme anyone could think of was written on the wonderfully illustrated pages. Angela stroked the book almost reverently and looked forward to hours of enjoyment for her and Connie as they shared the book together.

  There was another parcel too that year and it was from Stan who explained in the letter that he had found himself billeted near a small French town as Christmas approached and so was able to buy them some authentic French presents, so both women had silk stockings and they were truly magnificent and felt delicious against the skin, but neither woman could think of an occasion when they would wear them for they were too ostentatious for Mass and they seldom went anywhere else. Barry on the other hand was very appreciative of the French Cognac.

  ‘I think it’s really lovely for Stan to remember us at all,’ Angela said with a small sigh. ‘And it seems horrible to seem ungrateful, but he seems not to have a clue what women like us would find useful.’

  ‘Well how would he know?’ Mary said. ‘I think women are a great mystery for men, for Matt never had a clue what I might want or need either. There was no money ever for fripperies, but now and then I would have been grateful for a pair of stout boots, or warm slippers, but unless I gave out huge hints I usually went without.’

  ‘Well we’ll write and thank him anyway,’ Angela said. ‘And at least we won’t have to pretend when we say Connie was delighted with her present, for she loved the kaleidoscope he sent when she had been shown how to twist it round.’ And so Christmas went by and Barry tried to lift his despondent mood because it was Christmas after all. Angela wasn’t fooled and she listened to her husband’s restlessness in bed at night and worried about it, but she never shared her concerns even with Mary.

  SEVENTEEN

  The New Year was quiet and January was cold enough to numb fingers and feet, to form icicles on window ledges, to freeze the tap in the yard rock solid and for snow to fall from leaden skies, driven into drifts by the bone-chilling biting wind.

  Getting about was hazardous, but groceries had to be fetched because there was little left to eat. Angela refused to let Mary come with her to Maitland’s. ‘It’s too far for you. You might fall and break a leg.’

  ‘So might you.’

  ‘Yes, I might,’ Angela conceded. ‘So I’ll be extra careful and if I should break something, I’ll likely heal quicker than you. Look, it would be really helpful if you mind Connie for me and I’ll take the pram. I can bring more back that way.’

  Mary crossed to the window and gazed out. ‘You’ll never push the pram in this,’ she declared. ‘And it’s still coming down thick and fast.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Angela said. ‘Someone has to go and ‘I’ve got
that lovely warm coat from last year so I’ll not freeze and if I can’t push the pram I’ll pull it. I did it a time or two before.’

  However, despite her spirited words to Mary, Angela found the trek to Maitland’s was challenging for the roads were thick with snow on top of impacted ice, the icy wind buffeted her from all sides and the pram she pulled behind seemed to get heavier and heavier, and that was when it was empty, so she didn’t relish the journey home. She intended getting a full week’s worth of food to keep them going longer so she wouldn’t have to make this journey again in a hurry.

  George, though glad to see her, expressed concern that she had ventured out on such a day.

  ‘Needs must,’ Angela said. ‘The cupboards were nearly bare. I was waiting for a better day myself, but each one is worse than the one before and if we were going to eat I had to get supplies. I’ve left Connie with Mammy though, the day is not fit for either of them to go out.’

  ‘Oh no it isn’t,’ George agreed. ‘You did the right thing there. Now let’s have that order and I’ll fill it out for you as fast as I can, so you can be home warm and safe and dry as quickly as possible.’

  And George lost no time in filling the order and as Angela was packing it all away in the pram, she marvelled that she could buy a full week’s food. She knew many of her neighbours couldn’t, even if their husbands were in full-time work, for wages were so low, many lived from hand to mouth.

  The wages the men brought home were usually enough for the wives to pay the rent and any tick they had owing in the shops, get their husband’s suit out of the pawn shop, buy food for the weekend and if there was any left at all, maybe buy a hundredweight of coal. On Monday morning they would pawn the husband’s suit and use the money for foodstuffs and if there was more week left than money, they would run up tick at the grocery shop.