Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘Mum!’ Michael moaned, shrinking his head down into his shirt. ‘Don’t. Yer hurting me.’

  ‘What, d’yer wanna show me up?’ Katie asked, parting his hair as she set about her examination. ‘Yer know them snotty-nosed home-dwellers all think we’re lousy.’ She glared at the still grinning Timmy. ‘And you, young man, you can get next door into Nanna’s and take yerself up off to bed for a few hours’ kip before we go.’

  Timmy was indignant. ‘But it’s not right dark yet, Mum, and all the other kids are still playing out.’

  ‘If all the other kids stuck their heads in the gas oven, would you?’

  Timmy opened his mouth and closed it again. He knew he was beaten. His mother did it every time, saying things like that, things that he could never quite figure out what they had to do with what he was saying. Things that he never knew how to answer. He turned, neck hunched into his drooping shoulders, and made his way slowly from the kitchen.

  ‘Night-night, baby,’ jeered Michael. ‘Make sure the bogey-man don’t get yer.’

  Michael was silenced by his mum stinging his ear with a quick swipe of the comb. ‘That’s enough of that,’ she said briskly. ‘And you, Timmy, you can come and say goodnight to yer dad before yer go.’

  Timmy slouched back into the room and over to the back doorstep where Pat was sitting. ‘Night-night, Dad,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Night-night, God bless, son,’ said Pat, ruffling his youngest boy’s hair. ‘Here. Hang on.’ He leant back and dug his hand deep into his trouser pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He sorted through them, picked out a shiny sixpence, held it out to his son and winked. ‘There’s a sprazey anna for yer. You treat yerself when yer away, but not all on the first day, eh? Don’t want yer getting the bellyache from too many sweets or yer mum’ll be after me. Now go on, do as yer mum says and get in next door for some kip.’

  ‘Cor, ta, Dad.’ With his eyes gleaming at his good fortune, Timmy waved the sixpence in his brother’s face and then skipped out of the room.

  ‘Don’t forget yer prayers,’ Katie called after him, without looking up from her search through Michael’s hair. ‘That was good of yer, Pat,’ she added gently. ‘But yer don’t wanna go spoiling him.’

  ‘I can’t help the way I am, girl,’ said Pat. ‘I care about me family, and I don’t reckon yer can spoil no one by loving ’em.’

  Katie’s hands suddenly stopped their exploration of Michael’s scalp.

  ‘Right,’ said Michael, trying to scramble to his feet. ‘That me done and all?’

  ‘Eh? No, no.’ Katie sounded preoccupied. ‘I was just thinking.’

  With a loud sigh, Michael dropped back down on to his bottom, gritted his teeth and waited for the dig of the comb. But it didn’t come. Instead his mum started talking again.

  ‘Yer a good man, Pat Mehan,’ she said.

  Michael groaned quietly with embarrassment. He hated it when his mum and dad acted all soft. He’d thought that they’d got over all that, now they’d started rowing with each other all the time, but here they were, at it again. He was just glad that they were indoors and none of his mates could hear.

  ‘And I’m a lucky man and all, being married to you, Kate.’

  ‘Yer will look after yerself when I’m away, won’t yer, Pat?’

  ‘Course I will.’

  ‘Yeah, course he will, won’t yer, love?’ said Nora, stepping into the kitchen. ‘’Cos yer a good ’un, aren’t yer, Pat? I’ve always said so.’

  ‘Just what I was saying meself, Mum,’ Katie agreed, smiling up at her mother.

  ‘Hello, Nanna,’ said Michael eagerly, knowing his grandmother was always a potential accomplice in any battle against other adults.

  ‘Hello, me little darling,’ said Nora, winking at her grandson. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘I think I’m really tired, Nanna,’ Michael whined, playing his trump card in his efforts to escape the nit comb. ‘I reckon I should go in next door to bed.’

  Nora raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Well, that shows what a grown-up lad you’ve gotten to be, now doesn’t it? Ten years old and yer taking yerself off to bed without being told. Soon as yer mam’s finished, yer can go right in.’

  ‘Cup o’ tea, Nanna?’ said Michael, trying another, less promising, tack.

  ‘No, yer all right, Michael. I just popped in to let yer mam know that I’ve put young Timmy in my bed instead of upstairs in your room,’ she paused for effect, ‘’cos the poor little mite seems worried about some old bogey man what someone was scaring him with. I wonder where he got them silly ideas from, eh?’

  Michael ducked his head, but was still caught by the inevitable sting round his ear.

  Nora folded her arms and looked wistfully at the wall that divided her kitchen from her daughter’s. ‘Yer should see him in there, all propped up on my feather pillows, looking though a comic, he is. With that little angel face of his, he looks like a baby prince in a fairy tale, sure he does.’

  Michael snorted derisively at the image conjured up by his grandmother, but was soon hushed by another crack of the nit comb.

  ‘Sure yer don’t want no tea, Mum?’

  ‘No, thanks, Katie, or I’ll be in and out to the wotsit all night. I just wanted to say me goodbyes to Molly and the boys.’

  Katie glanced over at the clock. ‘They shouldn’t be long. They said they’d make sure they’d be back nice and early to see yer.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  Pat hoisted his big, muscled frame from the step in one easy movement. ‘There,’ he said, holding out the two pairs of boots for everyone to see. ‘That’s done.’

  ‘A good job jobbed,’ said Nora, nodding her approval. ‘Now, Katie, I won’t leave Timmy next door by himself. Will yer send the kids in to me when they get home?’

  ‘Course I will.’

  ‘Right.’ Nora went over to Pat, reached up and touched his bristly cheek. ‘You’re a good feller, Pat Mehan, and there’s not many as can say that about their daughter’s husband.’ She dropped her hand but still looked up into Pat’s dark brown eyes. ‘I’ll see yer in a while, but I’ll leave yer for now with yer wife.’ She turned and held out her hand to her grandson. ‘Come on, Michael. Nanna’ll finish scalping yer next door.’

  Knowing his nanna’s more lax attitude towards nits, Michael was up and out of the door with a hurried, ‘See yer later,’ before anyone had the chance to change their minds.

  Nora followed him at a still lively, but slightly more dignified pace, leaving Pat and Katie in the kitchen by themselves.

  ‘Tea?’ asked Katie, carefully screwing up the newspapers to make sure that no creatures, if there were any, could escape into her clean kitchen.

  ‘I thought we might have a glass of something,’ said Pat. ‘There’s that quart bottle of light ale I brought back from the Queen’s last night and never started.’

  ‘That’ll be nice. Ta.’

  Katie shoved the newspaper into the bottom of the rubbish bucket outside the back door, and sat herself at the kitchen table, while Pat poured the foaming ale into two thick glass tumblers from the set Katie had bought in Woolworth’s at a time when sets of glasses hadn’t been an unthinkable luxury.

  ‘Shall I take yer a chair out the front?’ Pat asked, handing her her drink.

  ‘How about if we sit out in the yard instead?’ Katie felt oddly shy with her husband. It had been so long since they had been nice to one another, what with all the money worries and the bad atmosphere since he had flown off the handle about her helping Frank Barber, she didn’t quite know how he’d take things.

  She smiled with relief when Pat said, ‘Good idea, girl,’ and, with one hand, grabbed the back of two of the bentwood kitchen chairs and lifted them out over the back step.

  Katie took off her apron, hung it on the nail behind the door, went outside and sat down in the warm night air. She sipped at the tepid beer and looked round the dusty little yard with the patch of scruffy pot marigolds that had grown
there since she had helped Molly plant them when she was a toddler. It really wasn’t like her, but Katie found herself at a loss as to what to say.

  ‘Penny for ’em?’ Pat said, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

  ‘Eh?’ she answered, surprised by the sound of his voice. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Worrying about what we’ll get up to while yer down hopping?’ he asked with a chuckle.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Katie nodded and took another mouthful from her glass. ‘Especially our Sean.’

  ‘He’ll be all right. I’ll ask around again next week, see if anyone’s heard of anything going. And, who knows, he might be in luck. The way they’re laying off all the older lads, they might be after a bit of cheap young labour.’

  Katie sighed. ‘Wonder if Mr Milton’s got himself fixed up with anything yet.’

  Pat shook his head. ‘No. Joe said he saw him lining up outside the labour exchange again on Thursday. Arse practically out of his trousers, poor feller. Said he looked too weak to do anything even if there was a job for him.’

  Katie stared down at the pale golden foam on top of her beer. ‘I know times are hard, Pat, but we should be grateful, yer know. We’ve got so much when yer see how other people have to manage.’ She hesitated, then added quietly, ‘That’s why I always do what I can for other people. It seems only right. And I know how yer get, Pat, but honestly, I never meant to upset yer about Frank Barber. I really was only helping him with his little girl.’

  Pat didn’t answer, he just lifted his glass and silently swallowed the rest of his beer.

  ‘I don’t wanna start nothing with yer, Pat, I just wanted to clear the air before I go.’

  When he still didn’t respond, she stood up and went inside to fetch the bottle from the kitchen. She refilled Pat’s glass, draining out the last drop, stood the empty by the back door, ready for someone to take back to the Queen’s, and then sat down again. ‘I’d better get meself shifted soon,’ she said, ‘or it’ll be time for us to go and I won’t have nothing ready.’

  ‘You sit there for a while, girl,’ Pat said. ‘I’ll help yer in a minute.’

  Katie ran her fingers through her thick auburn hair, pulling it away from her face and neck. ‘It’s that hot, I don’t think I could sleep tonight even if I had time.’

  ‘Kate,’ Pat said.

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘I’ll miss yer, yer know.’

  Katie reached out her hand and stroked the back of her husband’s great rough paw. ‘I know,’ she whispered.

  Pat stood up, took his wife by the shoulders and pulled her towards him. Leaning back against the door jamb, Pat kissed her urgently. ‘Katie,’ he gasped, tipping back his head, ‘please, let’s go upstairs.’

  Katie nodded and reached up to kiss him again. Their lips had just touched, when they heard Molly’s voice calling from the passage. ‘We’re back, Mum. And even our Sean’s on time.’

  Pat let his hands fall to his sides.

  ‘I’ll make it up to yer, Pat,’ Katie whispered. ‘When yer come down and see us. I promise, I will.’

  Sunday had come at last – just. It was half past two in the morning and Joe Palmer was manoeuvring his pride and joy – a recently purchased flat back truck – out of his yard at number eight Plumley Street.

  He pulled up on the corner outside the Mehans’, where Katie and Nora were waiting for him with all their gear packed in the two tea chests and assorted bundles and parcels that were piled up around them on the pavement.

  ‘I knew we should have got Joe to take us all the way by lorry,’ Katie was saying to her mum. ‘I dunno why I let them boys kid me to go by train. What we gonna do with all this lot at the other end if the farmer ain’t there with his wagon? We’ll never be able to hump it all the way to the farm by ourselves.’

  ‘He’ll be there, Katie,’ Nora assured her. ‘Don’t you go worrying yerself about that. Sure doesn’t he need his hops picked? And what would the feller do without us to pick ’em for him?’

  ‘I can still drive yer if yer like, Kate,’ said Joe, jumping down from his cab and going round the back to let down the tailboard. ‘Don’t make no difference to me.’

  Katie looked anxiously at Pat as he clambered up on to the back of the truck. ‘What d’yer think? Should Joe drive us all the way?’

  Pat shook his head as he took the first of the tea chests from Joe. ‘Yer know the boys’d be choked if they didn’t get their train ride.’

  Katie’s frown softened into a smile. ‘Yeah, I suppose yer right.’ She turned to Joe who was swinging another parcel up to Pat, and her smile broadened into a grin. ‘It’s your fault, Joe Palmer,’ she joked. ‘If yer didn’t let ’em hang around that yard o’ your’n and have goes in yer truck all the time, they’d have been making me promise to let ’em go by flaming lorry.’

  Aggie Palmer, her hair in metal curlers, was leaning out of the upstairs window of the flat she and Joe lived in above the yard, watching them load up.

  ‘You sure yer don’t want Joe to take yer, Kate? I don’t mind.’ She started laughing. ‘Keep him down there with yer for the picking and all, if yer like. Your Danny can do all the work here and I’ll have a rest from Joe’s snoring.’

  ‘Cheeky mare,’ laughed Joe fondly, handing the final parcel up to Pat who stacked it with the other luggage hard up against the back of the cab. ‘Right. That’s that lot done. Now, let’s be having the passengers.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Nora, making everyone jump. ‘Sure, how can I go when I don’t know what I’ve done with me handbag?’

  ‘Mum,’ Katie shushed her, looking anxiously up and down the street at the curtain-shaded windows. ‘Yer’ll have everyone awake.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nora, ‘I need it.’

  ‘Why? We ain’t going to church, we’re going hopping.’

  Nora leant close to Katie, scowling at her daughter’s foolishness. ‘Sure, hasn’t it got me penny policies in it. I want to make certain that Pat pays ’em for me while I’m away.’ She looked over her shoulder to check that no one could hear her private business. ‘What would it look like if something happened to me and I couldn’t even pay for me own funeral and I had to be buried on the parish?’

  ‘Mum! Don’t go talking like that.’

  Nora straightened her already upright frame until her back was like a ramrod. ‘It’s all arranged,’ she said proudly. ‘I’ve told the insurance man to come of an evening instead of in the afternoon.’

  Nora turned round and spoke to Molly, who was standing hollow-eyed with tiredness, her coat thrown on over her nightdress for modesty’s sake, waiting to wave goodbye. ‘Would yer do a favour for yer old nanna?’ asked Nora needlessly.

  ‘Course,’ yawned Molly.

  ‘Go inside and see if yer can find me handbag for me, love.’

  Stifling another yawn, Molly nodded and began to move slowly towards her nanna’s house next door.

  ‘And send them boys out here and tell ’em to fetch the dog and all, while yer at it, please, love,’ Katie added.

  Timmy and Michael appeared on the doorstep. They had slept in their clothes so that they would be ready for the early start, and, as they staggered out on to the pavement, it showed. With their creased shorts and shirts and their hair standing on end like cock fowls, they looked like two bundles of rags ready to be sorted through on a toot stall.

  ‘Muuuum,’ wailed Michael, rubbing his eyes. ‘Molly’s gone and dragged us out of Nanna’s bed, and she’s really hurt me.’

  ‘Don’t you dare start,’ said Katie, wagging her finger at him. ‘It was you two what wanted to go on the hoppers’ special in the first place. Now go and get Rags, and make sure he’s done his business before we get in Joe’s truck.’

  Michael made no attempt to move, he just stood there looking dejected.

  Timmy appeared every bit as dishevelled as his older brother, but he was wide awake. ‘I’ll go and fetch Rags, Mum,’ he said, taking a run
ning kick at a stone, sending a satisfyingly bright spray of sparks from his boot as the Blakeys made violent contact with the pavement. ‘Cor, look, Mick,’ he said, the dog forgotten as he experimented with different effects. ‘It don’t half look good in the dark.’

  ‘It won’t be dark for much longer,’ said Joe, squinting at his pocket watch. ‘And trains don’t wait for yer, yer know. Now are you lot coming or what?’

  As Katie busied herself with fussing around the boys: first chasing them indoors to get Rags, and then settling the three of them on an old blanket on the back of the truck, Molly was searching for her grandmother’s handbag. She eventually appeared in the doorway, holding it aloft.

  ‘There y’are Nanna,’ she said, handing over the battered brown bag. She lowered her voice. ‘It was out the back in the lav.’

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ said Nora with a grin. She sorted through the papers that were its only contents and set about issuing Pat with instructions as to how he was to make the payments to the insurance man.

  Pat was perfectly familiar with the bowler-hatted, bicycle-clipped Mr Randall, who, being the nearest thing to a professional that most of the neighbours ever saw, spent much of his time touring the area on his sit-up-and-beg bike, dispensing wisdom as to the state of the world, writing letters explaining school children’s absences, and even settling disputes. But it still took Pat a while to assure his mother-in-law that he had managed to grasp the principles involved in paying her weekly premium. When he finally succeeded, he turned his attention to saying goodbye to his wife, while Nora turned her attention to her granddaughter.

  ‘See anyone last night?’ she enquired. ‘A feller maybe?’

  ‘Nanna,’ protested Molly, pulling her coat primly round her shoulders, ‘keep yer voice down, can’t yer? Everyone’ll hear yer.’

  ‘Not if yer don’t go shouting yer head off with yer complaints, they won’t,’ said Nora with a sly grin. ‘Now, come on, you can tell yer nanna.’

  Molly swung her shoulders from side to side. ‘I might have done,’ she said, staring down at her bare feet.