Trinidad Street

by Patricia Burns

  After the celebrations of the day before, everyone was restless and irritable. Somehow, they had expected Tom Johnson’s new age to dawn at once. Instead, they were still in debt, with no food on the table and Percy down to the dregs of the last barrel.

  The groups in the bar were divided sharply into English and Irish. Though the men had not been involved in the fight over Siobhan, there was a lot of bad feeling in the air.

  At that moment a skinny boy of about twelve came hurtling into the pub.

  ‘Quick, quick! It’s Gerry Billingham, he needs help!’ he shrieked, his shrill voice cutting through the noise. ‘They got Gerry Billingham! They’re giving him a right pasting!’

  Harry caught the boy by the arm. ‘Who? Who’s got him?’

  ‘It’s the carmen on the West Ferry Road. Quick! You got to help!’

  Harry looked round at the men hunched over their drinks. ‘You heard that? Them mad bleeders have got our Gerry! Are we going to stand for that?’

  ‘No!’ howled those around him.

  The Catholics said nothing, but Harry knew how to get them behind him. Not for nothing had he led the street gang for two whole years.

  ‘Nobody touches someone from Trinidad Street and lives! Death or Glory!’

  ‘Death or Glory!’ came the battle cry.

  Harry turned to the boy.

  ‘Where are they? Show us.’

  The lad sped off down the street, with Harry at his heels. Behind him, Harry could hear the pounding boots of his lifetime friends, and glancing back over his shoulder he was heartened to see that the Catholics were with him. With an army like this, he could face anyone.

  They raced into the West Ferry Road. There on the other side of the cobbled highway a knot of assorted vans and drays was held up while a mêlée of men staggered this way and that, fists flying. Harry plunged straight through the nearside traffic, ignoring the curses of a tram driver. Fuelled with anger and anxiety, he waded in, trying to get to the centre of the trouble.

  ‘Gerry!’ he yelled. ‘Hold on, Gerry! We’re here!’

  Around and behind him he could hear and see the Trinidad Street men laying in. Shouts and curses greeted their arrival.

  ‘Blimey, it’s his mates!’ someone shouted. ‘Scarper!’

  But Harry’s army was not going to let them get away just like that. They were spoiling for a fight, and this was just the outlet they were looking for. Passers-by gathered round and shouted encouragement while the Trinidad Street men wreaked revenge on the carmen.

  Through the tangle of flailing arms and falling bodies, Harry could see his cousin. He looked for all the world like an abandoned heap of old clothing, pitifully small and vulnerable. Even as he tried to fight his way through to him, he saw men tripping over him, iron-shod boots ramming into soft flesh.

  ‘Gerry! Move – get out of it!’ he bellowed.

  But there was no response.

  Harry put his head down and barged a way through. Gerry was lying curled up, foetus-like, with his hands protectively over his head. He was quite still. Harry straddled him, bracing his body against the ebb and flow of the battle. He had to get Gerry to safety, he was in danger of being kicked to death here. He bent down and gripped his cousin under the arms, then backed towards the pavement, dragging the inert body with him. Gerry’s boots bumped and grated against the cobbles. A retreating carman fell backwards over his legs and was pounced on by an O’Ryan. Harry yelled at them to get off, but they were oblivious of him. It was only when the Irishmen hauled up the carman to punch him more easily that Harry could continue his journey. To his horror, he realized that Gerry was leaving a trail ot blood on the road. He redoubled his efforts, heaved him up into his arms like a baby, and carried him out of the brawl and through the ring of spectators till he finally made the safe haven of a shop doorway.

  ‘Oi!’ The shopkeeper was incensed. ‘You can’t put him there, he’ll make a mess.’

  Harry drew himself up to his full height and glared at the man. ‘Not half as much of a mess as I could make of you, mate. Now go and fetch us some water and a cloth.’

  For a moment the man held his eyes. Then he backed down and disappeared into the back of the shop.

  Harry knelt down beside his cousin. What he saw sickened him. Gerry’s face was a pulp of cuts and bruises and his hair was matted with blood. Harry laid a hand on his chest. Beneath the protruding ribs, his heart was still beating. His worst fear was allayed. But what really alarmed him was Gerry’s right arm. The left sleeves of his jacket and shirt were hanging loose, cut almost through, revealing a huge jagged wound that was oozing bright red blood. Harry was tight with anger. That had not come from a fair fight. That had been made by a piece of glass or sharp metal.

  He tried to stop the bleeding by wrapping the flap of cut sleeve round the arm. But when he pressed down, he found blood welling up through his fingers.

  ‘I think this is a job for the hospital,’ he said to the shopkeeper’s wife. ‘You got anything I can borrow to wheel him in? A flat cart, a barrow, even?’

  She shook her head. ‘Them mad carmen are the ones to ask.’

  ‘They’re not going to help, are they?’

  ‘Him next door but one’s got a barrow. He’s all right, is Jim. He’ll lend it you,’ a passer-by chipped in.

  Harry thanked him, and while the man went to ask he and the shopkeeper’s wife set to work, cleaning the worst of Gerry’s cuts and bandaging up the open wounds. Within a minute the water in the bowl was scarlet.

  The battle with the carmen was coming to an end. A couple of policemen appeared on the scene and all those who could make a break for it had gone. Everyone was explaining to everyone else what had happened. A large navy-blue-clad figure loomed over Harry.

  ‘Right then. What’s been going on? Is he hurt bad?’

  ‘What’s it bloody well look like?’

  ‘Them carmen said as he was blacklegging during the strike. They was out to get him for it,’ explained the man who had asked for the barrow.

  ‘We got to get him to hospital,’ Harry insisted. ‘He could be bleeding to death lying here.’

  The constable rose to the occasion magnificently, calling a police ambulance and assisting with the first aid. The next fifteen minutes felt like the longest Harry had spent in his life. He answered the constable’s questions without thinking, believing that Gerry was slipping away before his very eyes. He was so deeply unconscious, it was only by feeling his chest that Harry could tell that he was still alive.

  ‘Married, is he?’ the constable asked, flipping a page in his notebook.

  With a jolt it hit Harry that if Gerry were to die . . . He tried to brush the thought away, ashamed that he should even have entertained it. But it lingered, tantalizing, refusing to be banished.

  The policeman repeated the question.

  ‘Oh – yeah. He is.’

  ‘Name of the wife? Living at the same address?’

  If Ellen were free . . .

  The ambulance arrived. Full of concern and guilt, Harry tried to go along with his cousin.

  ‘No need for that, sir. Doesn’t exactly want you to hold his hand, now does he?’

  Along with all the others, he was rounded up and taken down to the station for further questioning.

  Ellen and Alma waited for what seemed like hours in the echoing brown-tiled hall. Around them, accident victims and emergency cases were brought in, porters and nurses and doctors passed to and fro, other relatives sat anxiously waiting for news. The place had a hostile feel to it. In the harsh light, everyone’s faces looked tired and drawn. They were all stiff from sitting on the uncomfortable benches, their nostrils offended by the overpowering smell of disinfectant. At first they talked, putting their gnawing worry into words, repeating their fears over and over to each other, as if they might work like an incantation and stop the worst from happening. But as time went on and it became more and more likely that Gerry was seriously injured, Ellen subsided into silence,
no longer able to keep the horrors at bay.

  Here in the hospital Gerry was fighting for his life. Back at home little Tom was getting weaker by the hour and she felt as if she was being torn in half. Hardly able to contain herself, she paced up and down in front of the hard wooden bench, chewing at her knuckles.

  ‘Sit down, lovey. You’ll wear yourself out,’ Alma begged.

  ‘I can’t. I can’t sit still,’ Ellen said.

  At last the pressure of guilt was too much to bear.

  ‘It’s all my fault. I should’ve told him not to get that stuff. I should have stopped him.’

  ‘What stuff? What d’you mean?’ Alma was mystified.

  ‘When the strike was on. He said he was going to fetch some stuff from over Stepney and he wasn’t going to let no blooming carmen stop him. I told him, I said, “You be careful, Gerry”, but I should’ve done more than that. I should’ve stopped him. If I’d’ve stopped him, he wouldn’t be here now.’

  If she was hoping for some reassurance from Alma, she was disappointed.

  ‘Well, bloody hell, girl, why didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d listen! You know what he’s like when it comes to getting a bargain. There’s no stopping him. And he never believed in the strike. He never said it, but I knew what he thought. He thought it was a nuisance, getting in the way of trade.’

  ‘You still could’ve tried! For God’s sake, girl . . .’

  ‘I told him to be careful –’

  A nurse appeared, stiffly disapproving, and told them to keep their voices down or they would be asked to leave.

  Alma was not cowed. ‘How much longer are we going to be kept waiting here? That’s my son in there. I got a right to see him. I’m his mother.’

  ‘You’ll not be allowed to see him if Doctor thinks you’ll disturb him,’ the nurse said chillingly. ‘Patients’ welfare always comes first.’

  After another excruciating wait in which neither Alma nor Ellen said anything to each other, an exhausted-looking junior nurse came and informed them that Mr Billingham had been taken to one of the wards upstairs.

  ‘Can we see him?’ both women chorused.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The young girl was confused.

  ‘You take us there,’ Alma told her.

  ‘I can’t, I’m on duty here.’

  ‘Tell us where it is,’ Ellen urged.

  They were both of them far too upset to listen properly. They got lost round the endless stairways and corridors and argued over which way to go next. At last they found a porter who was willing to help them and discovered they were in quite the wrong part of the building. With his directions, they finally got to the right ward.

  The sister barred their way.

  ‘All patients are settled for the night now.’

  ‘But he’s my son.’

  ‘My husband . . .’

  ‘I can’t have my patients disturbed.’

  Ellen laid a hand on her immaculate arm. ‘Please, just tell us how he is.’

  The sister regarded her for several seconds, her lips pressed closely together.

  ‘I want to see him,’ Alma insisted.

  But the sister was adamant: no visitors outside visiting hours. That was the rule. If they tried to disobey, a porter would be fetched to evict them.

  ‘I’m staying till he wakes up,’ Alma decided.

  ‘Then you will have to wait downstairs. We have no facilities for relatives here.’

  Defeated, Ellen and Alma made their way back to the hall.

  ‘Old cow,’ Alma muttered. ‘Keeping a mother from her sick son. Ain’t right.’

  On and on she went, making dire threats. Ellen could hardly bear it. She was doing no good here, and Tom must be wanting her at home. Her breasts ached with unused milk. But if she went now, Alma would suspect the truth, the secret she had kept so carefully all this time, that she was not the devoted wife she made herself out to be, that there were others that came way before Gerry in her heart. But Tom might be awake, he might be crying for her, he might have taken a turn for the worse . . .

  First Gerry pulled at her guilt, then the baby at her heart, turn and turn about, until she did not know what to do. Time ticked slowly by, measured by the large clock on the tiled wall.

  Something made her turn and look towards the big double doorway. Her brother Jack stood there, searching the room with his eyes. Terror clutched at her, taking her breath away, striking her speechless. In that moment, she knew. Jack spotted her and came striding across, his boots ringing on the stone floor.

  ‘Ellen.’ His voice was unusually gentle, his eyes large with compassion. ‘Mum says she thinks you ought to come home.’

  Ellen ran as she had never run before. On and on through the dark streets she ran, till she felt as if her legs were about to splinter and her lungs to burst. She had no breath even to whimper. Only the terrible fear pressing round her heart drove her on.

  How she got the last half-mile down the West Ferry Road she did not know. She was dimly aware of Jack clutching her waist and holding her up. Round the last corner and into Trinidad Street they went, and then they were there at her parents’ house.

  Martha was sitting in the kitchen with little Tom in her arms. A stub end of candle lit her worn features.

  ‘Ellen, love.’

  Ellen licked her dry lips. ‘Is – is he . . .?’ she croaked.

  Martha held out the baby to her. Ellen took him, searching his tiny face by the feeble light of the candle flame. He seemed to have shrunk even in the short time since last she saw him. His little nose and chin were not softly rounded but pointed, so that he took on the look of a wizened elf. But he was still breathing.

  Silent tears of relief slid down her face. She dropped on to a chair and held Tom to her. It was all right. He was alive. Her whole body throbbed from the nightmare journey home, but it did not matter. She hardly noticed Jack going off to bed or her mother wearily making a cup of tea and asking after Gerry. Her entire being was focused on the little bundle in her arms. Gradually she realized that she could feel his bones through the threadbare shawl.

  ‘He’s so thin, Mum. He’s – he’s fading away. Has he been sick much?’

  ‘No, love. Not at all.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s getting better.’ She refused to acknowledge the worry in her mother’s voice.

  Martha sat down beside her and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Ellen, he’s very poorly. You know that?’

  Ellen nodded. ‘But he’s getting better, Mum. He’s sleeping quiet and you said he’s stopped being sick.’

  ‘He’s got a very bad dose, love. Very bad.’

  ‘But Billy, he had the same and he’s pulled through, ain’t he?’

  ‘Yeah – I think he’s on the mend.’

  ‘And Billy was always sickly. Tom’s a strong baby.’

  ‘Don’t always follow, lovey. You know we none of us raise all our kids.’

  Ellen closed her mind. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ she stated.

  She repeated it as his shallow breathing quickened a little and his eyelids flickered open to show dull, sunken eyes too big for his pinched face.

  ‘See – he’s awake.’

  The small mouth opened as if to cry but no sound came out.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ Ellen whispered. ‘What do you want, eh? A feed?’

  She pulled at the buttons of her blouse, her fingers useless with fatigue. But before she could get them undone, Tom’s eyes had closed again. Frustration filled her. The only thing she could do for him was feed him, and he was too weak to stay awake.

  ‘You must wake up, darling,’ she begged him. ‘You must feed. I got to make you strong and well again.’

  She stared at the pointed features, and somewhere in her heart a cold terror started. Even as she spoke to him, he had slipped away.

  Alma stood in the waiting hall. The morning activity washed round her: crying children, shuffling old folk, people limping and moaning
from road or work accidents. She saw none of it. She was cold and numb, unable to think or even feel very much.

  They had let her see him. They led her behind the screens and drew back the sheet from his poor bruised face. Internal bleeding, they said. He had never regained consciousness, so he had felt no pain.

  He hardly looked like her son, lying there so still and white. He belonged to them, to the starched and stiffly efficient nurses. She reached out to touch him, feeling for the hands crossed over his chest. He was cold. A great shudder of revulsion went through her, followed swiftly by anger. She would not let him go. They would not have him.

  ‘Gerry, Gerry!’ She gathered him up in her arms, trying to rouse him, to give him her life, to banish the suffocating smell of hospital and death. She cradled his head to her breast, great sobs tearing from her.

  ‘Come back to me, Gerry. Speak to me. Oh, please don’t go, Gerry, don’t go.’

  They tried to pull her away, but she fought them, with tears streaming down her face, and threw herself forward on to the bed, her large living body covering and protecting his fragile dead one. Frantic in her grief and loss, she knew only that she must not let him go.

  It took three strong porters to pull her away. The nurses clucked with disapproval at the disturbance to their orderly ward. She did not know what happened next. There were rooms and faces and voices and papers to sign. And then she was here, in the hall, with a small bag of Gerry’s belongings at her side. She was quite empty, a great hollow shell, and totally devoid of any idea what to do next.

  ‘Alma?’

  The name meant nothing. She ignored it.

  ‘Alma, it’s me, Perce. What’s the matter, girl? He’s not . . .?’

  Slowly her eyes focused, her brain took note. Percy, large and familiar, his battered face creased with concern – Percy had come to find her. The numbness dissolved. The pain came back, but with it was life. She fell into his arms and buried her face in his barrel chest, weeping anew.

  He held her tight, patting her shoulder and rocking her. He was warm and alive, he smelt of sweat and pipe smoke and beer. She clung to him, crying until she could cry no more. Only then did he release his hold. With one arm still round her, he bent to pick up the pathetic little bag.