by Maureen Lee
“Our Eileen’s going to make . . . what’s it called, luv?”
“A flan.”
“A flan, that’s it. A strawberry flan.” He thrust the bowl at Matt.’Take one.”
The fruit felt soft between Matt’s fingers, though the taste was exactly as he remembered it. He wondered if they realised strawberries didn’t keep. “You’re supposed to eat them straight away,” he said, “otherwise they go off.”
“Do they now?” Jack looked down at the bowl. “We’ve never had strawberries before, not even in peacetime.
Well, I never! You learn something new every day.” He grinned at his daughter. “In that case, we’d best eat them now. You can have one of them there flans already made next time we go to the cottage.”
“Perhaps you and Ruth would like to come out to Melling with us one Sunday,” Eileen suggested.. “You know where it is, don’t you?”
It seemed incredible, now, that he hadn’t given her a second glance the day he’d turned up at the cottage on Easter Monday to see Ruth, though he’d found her rather vulnerably appealing on the few occasions they’d met since, but had put this down to the situation she was in. As he watched, she tilted back her head, opened her mouth and dropped the strawberry in, as if determined to get all the enjoyment out of fruit as she could. Her bare arms had caught the sun and downy fair hairs were noticeable against the faint gold flesh . . .
Oh, God! Matt felt his entire body break out into a sweat as a long-forgotten feeling swept through him, a feeling he’d never thought he’d experience again after losing Maria. He’d felt convinced that part of him was dead forever. He began to panic, remembering Ruth, his wife, but told himself it was only temporary. Once the adoption was sorted out . . .
“Are you all right, Matt?’Jack said, concerned. ‘You’ve turned quite red.’
Matt ran a finger around the collar of his jacket. “It’s hot in here,” he muttered.
“Oh, you should have taken your coat off!” Eileen turned accusingly on her father. “You’ve no idea how to behave with visitors, Dad. You didn’t ask for his coat when he came in.”
“It’s all right. We’ll have to be going soon.” The rest of the room became a blur and Matt was aware only of Eileen Costello, all pink and cream and red, as luscious at the strawberries her father had picked that morning. He felt perspiration trickle down the back of his neck, troubled by the ardour of his thoughts, worried that she could read his mind. If she as much as sensed what he was feeling, she would think him the biggest heel in the world; married less than two months, and already attracted to another woman. Matt told himself that one day soon he would be a single man again, free to get to know Eileen Costello better.
Chapter 20
“Mind your manners!” Alice Scully reached out and slapped her sister sharply on the wrist. The little girl looked as if she were about to cry.
Eileen Costello smiled warmly at the child. “They’re lovely cakes, aren’t they? I can’t wait to have one meself.”
“She must learn to wait until she gets the say-so,” Alice said sternly. “Manners maketh the man—or the woman.”
It was hard to believe that this little ethereal creature could be so strict, even heartless, Eileen thought. Alice Scully looked exactly as her dad had described her, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, yet she kept her younger brothers and sisters in line with a will of iron.
Sean, home on leave from Lincolnshire for the first time in months, was staring at Alice with a silly, almost besotted, expression on his face. Eileen regarded him with a mixture of amusement and trepidation. This was the first time she’d met Alice and her family, and, like Sheila and her dad, she wasn’t sure if she approved of the match.
“Where’s the tablespoon for the jelly?” Alice snapped.
“I’ll get it, luv.” Sean jumped to his feet.
“No, you don’t. Our Tommy was supposed to set the table.” Alice glared at the eldest boy. “Tommy, the big spoon, if you don’t mind!”
As the boy meekly went into the back kitchen, Eileen glanced around the room. The Scullys occupied four rooms on the second and third floors of the tenement, which were reached by an iron staircase at the rear. Alice had obviously gone to great pains to make the place look nice. The windows sparkled, there was a vase of paper flowers on the sill, and the blackout curtains were freshly washed and ironed. Through the window, washing could be seen drying on the open-air landing. Everywhere was scrupulously clean and smelt strongly of a mixture of furniture polish and disinfectant, but Alice could do nothing to disguise the abject poverty in which she and her family lived. Eileen noticed the faded, damp-stained wallpaper was held up by drawing pins on the outside corners and the bare floorboards were rotten in several places. There was scarcely any furniture, just the table, which had a piece of folded cardboard Underneath one leg, and several rickety hardback chairs, none of which matched, yet, apart from the back kitchen, this was the room which served all the family’s daily needs.
There were no armchairs, not even a proper sideboard, merely a chest of very chipped and scratched drawers which had a well in the middle, as if it had once been a dressing table.
The five younger Scullys were as thin and underfed as Alice herself, yet their darned and patched clothes were immaculate, their faces scrubbed, the hair of the two little girls plaited painfully tight. The eldest boy, Tommy, who Eileen understood was at work, though you would have never have guessed, because he looked no more than twelve, wore a suit which was several sizes too big for him, as if it had once belonged to his late father. Alice’s own brown wool frock hung loosely on her fragile frame, the material far too thick and heavy for such a warm summer’s day.
Yet, despite all this, when Eileen and Sheila arrived, the table was heaped with food: two plates of wafer-thin tomato sandwiches cut into triangles, fairy cakes -with a little piece of cherry on top of each, two jellies, one red and one green, decorated with hundreds and thousands, and a bowl of custard. Alice had clearly gone to enormous trouble to impress the two women who might become her sisters-in-law.
“Take your elbows off the table,” Alice snarled. For a moment, Eileen thought it was she who was being rebuked. She hastily removed her right arm, but it turned out to be Tommy who had thoughtlessly relaxed for a moment to talk to Sean.
“Has everyone had enough butties?” asked Alice.
“Yes, ta, luv. They were really lovely,” Sheila said politely. “Weren’t they, Eileen?”
Eileen nodded. “Very nice indeed.”
“Would you like a fairy cake?”
The children made a united grab for the cakes, but Alice turned on them -with a face like thunder.
“You’d think you’d never had a bite to eat before.” She lashed out at the nearest child, one of the boys, and caught him around the ear. “It’s manners to let our guests help themselves first.”
Sheila caught her sister’s eye and made a face, but Eileen pretended not to notice. She reckoned Sheila was glad she’d left her own kids at home with the neighbours, as their table manners were non-existent compared to the Scullys, who seemed unnaturally well-behaved.
“Y’can have a cake now,” Alice said when the two women had taken theirs, “and eat them properly, like, else you’ll get a clout.”
“Yes, Alice.”
The meal was gradually becoming torture. When the time came for the jelly and custard, Eileen was terrified one of the children would spill theirs on the clean cloth and Alice would lash out again. She began to wonder what on earth Sean, so goodnatured and easygoing, could possibly see in this intolerant, ill-humoured little tartar.
“Well, I suppose we’d better be going . . . ” Sheila stood up and pushed her chair back as soon as she’d finished, as if anxious to get away.
“Y’haven’t had a cup of tea yet. Colette, put the kettle on.”
The girl trotted obediently into the back kitchen, and soon after, Alice followed, dragging her left foot as she went. When the t
ea arrived, Eileen noticed her own cup and saucer, as well as Sheila’s, were new, as if bought specially for the occasion.
“Would you like me and Sheila to do the dishes, luv?” she asked when the tea was drunk.
“No, ta.” Alice looked indignant. “It’s the girls’ job to do the washing up.”
“Is it all right if I pop upstairs for a few words with your mam? I’ve never met her, have I?”
Alice looked undecided. “If you like,” she said eventually, “though she’s probably asleep. She nearly always is.”
The curtains were tightly drawn in the bedroom where Mrs Scully lay, and no amount of disinfectant could disguise the sickly smell of death that hung there. You could scarcely move in the room, which had a double bed in one corner, where no doubt Alice and her sisters slept, and a single one in another which was occupied by the frail form of the dying woman.
“Mam!” Alice knelt beside the bed and stroked her mother’s forehead. “You’ve got a visitor, Mam.”
Eileen found it difficult to believe this gentle girl with the soft voice was the same person they’d just had tea with.
Her opinion of Alice Scully altered considerably for the better, though she still found it hard to accept the way she treated her brothers and sisters.
“It’s Eileen Costello, Mam, Sean’s sister.”
The vivid July sunlight shone like a halo around the edges of the blackout curtains, and Eileen could just about see the eyes of the woman on the bed slowly nicker open.
Alice took a step back and pushed Eileen forward.
“Are you Jack Doyle’s girl?” Mrs Scully whispered. Her face resembled a skull, with the skin stretched sharply over the bones, translucent and as thin and fine as the softest silk. At first, Eileen thought the sunken eyes were sightless until the pupils caught her own.
“I am that,” she answered.
“He’s a good man, the very best.”
“I know, luv.”
“I’m dead proud of the fact your Sean’s taken up with our Alice.”
The dad’s proud, too.” Eileen lied with utter conviction. “Your Alice is one in a million.”
Mrs Scully nodded almost imperceptibly and, as if the effort was too much, her eyes closed and she turned her head away.
“She’s gone to sleep again,” Alice said. “I’ll give her some jelly and custard next time she wakes up.”
“Just look at this place, it’s dead scruffy!” Sheila said disgustedly when she and Eileen were outside. Several barefoot and only partially dressed children were playing in the gutter. Further down the road, two boys were chucking debris out of the broken window of one of a row of four partially demolished houses. They cheered each time something landed in the street outside with a thunderous crash. “Come on, let’s get out of here quick!”
She grabbed her sister’s arm. “I thought that meal would never end. I was dreading those kids doing something else wrong and getting another clout off Alice.”
“I felt the same, but even so, she went to an awful lot of trouble.”
“I don’t care,” Sheila said in a hard voice. The heart sinks when I think of her getting her hooks into our Sean!”
“I reckon it’s the other way round, and it’s Sean trying to get his hooks into Alice. Did you see the daft way he kept looking at her?’Eileen laughed. ‘I don’t think our Sean will come to too much harm if he marries Alice Scully.’
“Can we go outside and play, Alice?”
Alice Scully stared desperately at the four little faces which were looking up at her expectantly. “Only if you promise to keep your clothes clean for school tomorrer,” she said.
As the children raced for the back door, she screamed, “There’s no need to rush. Walk properly—and don’t forget there’s the dishes still to be washed.”
Tommy appeared to have settled down for a chat with Sean, whom he regarded as some sort of god. Alice jerked her head. “Make yourself scarce, our Tommy. I want to talk to Sean.”
“But . . . ’Tommy began indignantly.
Alice wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Sod off,” she barked.
Tommy said, with as much sarcasm as he dared, “You mean I’m allowed to play out in me best suit?”
“Mind your tongue, Thomas Scully, else you’ll feel the back of me hand where it’ll hurt most. Just because you go to work . . . ” Alice took a threatening limp towards him, and Tommy scarpered pretty sharpish, pulling a face at his sister as he went.
“And keep clear of that Joey Kelly,” Alice called after him. “If you come back smelling of tobacco, there’ll be hell to play.”
“He’s getting too much lip, that boy,” Alice sighed as Tommy’s boots clattered down the iron staircase. She began to clear the table like a whirlwind.
“I thought you wanted to talk to me,” Sean said as she flew in and started stacking the dirty plates, one on top of the other.
She stopped, and Sean noticed her hands were trembling.
Suddenly, without warning, she sat down at the table with her head in her arms and began to sob uncontrollably.
Alarmed, Sean sat beside her and put his arm around her thin shoulders. “What’s the matter, luv?”
“They didn’t like me,” Alice wept. “Your Sheila’s never liked me, now your Eileen doesn’t, either. Your dad hates me, too. It was a stupid idea to ask them to tea.”
“Don’t be silly.” It was impossible for Sean to imagine anyone not liking Alice. “Of course they liked you. What makes you think they didn’t?”
“I could tell by the way they looked at me and the way they kept looking at each other,” Alice said despairingly.
“Oh, lord, Sean, I spent all yesterday cleaning the place from top to bottom. I washed the curtains and the tablecloth and all the towels. I even washed the bedding, which was a good thing as your Eileen asked to see me mam. Today, I’ve done nowt but cut sandwiches and make cakes and jellies. I even sent our Colette to church to light a penny candle to make the jellies set when it looked as if they mightn’t.”
“Everywhere looked really nice, and the meal was first class, luv,” Sean assured her, but she appeared to take no notice.
“Those tomatoes were five shillings a pound,” she moaned, “though I only bought a quarter, and the man in the Co-op wasn’t a bit pleased when I only asked for an ounce of cooking cherries. I walked all the way to Paddy’s Market last Friday to buy two cups and saucers, ‘cos ours were all chipped. Y’see, I’ve never had anyone to tea before, this is the first time - and the last! Me nerves were at breaking point the whole meal through.’
Sean mentally tried to work out how many sheets and bolster cases she’d had to launder to buy everything, but” was too upset by her tears to cope with the sum.
She looked up at him, and his heart turned over at the sight of her tear-stained face. “D’you think they noticed the way I cut the butties?” she enquired plaintively. “I saw one of me ladies do it that way, in triangles ‘stead of squares, and I thought it looked dead posh.’
“I’m sure they did, luv.” Sean felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t noticed himself.
“Your Eileen brought a sponge cake with her, as if we mightn’t have enough food,” Alice sniffed, clearly offended, “and Sheila gave me a quarter of margarine. You’d think we were dead poor or something.”
“People always do that since the war,” Sean explained, “because they don’t like using other people’s rations.”
“Do they?” Alice looked at him anxiously. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.” Sean patted the pocket of his blue-grey battledress. “I’ve brought you something, too.”
“A letter! Is it a letter?” She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and her grey eyes lit up. “I’ve still got all your letters. I keep them tied up with string underneath the bed.”
Sean kissed her tenderly on the lips. “And I’ve kept yours.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to write so many pages. I was never any
good at writing at school, but when I asked one of me ladies how to spell a word, she gave me a thing called a dictionary, and I use it every time I do a letter.”
“Anyroad, this isn’t a letter, it’s something else.” Sean tapped his pocket again. “D’you want to see?”
“Of course I do.”
Sean took a tiny box out of his battledress and opened it. A solitaire diamond ring nestled within the velvet centre.
Alice stared at the ring, round-eyed. “What is it?”
“An engagement ring, of course,” Sean said smugly.
“How much did it cost?”
“Four pound, ten shillings. It was the smallest in the shop. I hope it fits.” “What!”
“I told you, four pound ten.”
Sean felt the atmosphere in the room turn cold and Alice seemed to shrivel beside him. To his dismay, she stood up, knocking against him, and the box containing the ring flew across the room.
“You’re nowt but an idiot, Sean Doyle,” she screamed in a fury. “Four pound ten for a bleedin” ring. What is it they say, “a fool and his money are soon parted’?”
“But Alice . . . ”
“Don’t ‘but Alice’ me. You need your head examined, you.” Her little body looked as if it might explode. She began to throw the remaining plates on top of each other, stopped, sat down and dropped her head in her arms again and began to cry even louder than before.
“Jaysus, Alice,” Sean complained. “I can’t keep up with you. I thought you’d be as pleased as Punch.”
“I am, I am,” she cried, distraught. “Where is it? Oh, where is it? If it’s gone down a crack between the floorboards, I’ll kill meself.”
Sean retrieved the box. The ring remained safely tucked in the padded slit. “Try it on.”
The ring slid easily over Alice’s knuckle and rested, twinkling, on the third finger of her tiny left hand.