A Wise Child

by A Wise Child (retail) (epub)

  ‘Right away, son,’ Maggie promised.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Nellie offered and Maggie came to the door with her.

  ‘Tell them he was born and reared a Catholic until his mam died when he was ten but he hasn’t bothered since,’ she said.

  Although it was only four o’clock in the morning several people were already astir in the street, dockers and women who were ships’ cleaners. Nellie hurried to the presbytery after answering a question from one of the women and by the time she returned the news had run round the street.

  Women were at their doors and the priest followed a few minutes later.

  ‘Poor girl. God help her,’ Bella said loudly, expressing the sympathy they all felt for Maggie.

  The two girls had come downstairs and they all crowded into the scullery to leave Johnny alone with the priest. A little later the priest knocked on the door.

  ‘We will all say the prayers for the dying,’ he said gently. ‘John has made his confession and received Extreme Unction.’

  Nellie noticed that the bedclothes had been turned back from Johnny’s feet and his feet touched with oil.

  It all seemed dreamlike and unreal to her as Susan ran upstairs for the young boys who came down rubbing sleepy eyes. They all gathered round the bed as the priest recited prayers and they answered, ‘Amen.’

  Johnny was quiet now. His struggles for breath which had made his listeners feel that they were choking too had ended and his breathing was quiet and shallow. The priest raised his hand in a blessing of all the family and when Nellie opened the door as he left she slipped into her own house.

  She felt that she would be intruding as the family gathered round their husband and father for what must be his last hours. It was less than an hour later when Josie knocked on her door.

  ‘Me dad’s gone, Mrs Meadows,’ she said simply and Nellie drew her indoors and wept with her.

  Later she went to sit with Maggie and found her calm and resigned. ‘He’d suffered enough, Nell,’ she said. ‘All these years since 1916. Nobody knows. And that time we was on the Parish. It nearly finished him, Nell. He was a proud man and then seeing our Richie with the rickets and Henry bronchial and not being able to do nothing to get them food and that.’

  ‘But he’d had his job a good few years,’ Nellie said. ‘He was made up about that.’

  Maggie twisted a handkerchief in her fingers. ‘You know before you come in last night, Nell. He had a good spell and d’you know what he said?’ She began to cry and Nellie put her arm round her. ‘He was just laying there holding me hand,’ Maggie sobbed, ‘and he suddenly said, “I’ve done it anyhow, girl. I’ve last out until some of them are reared to look after you.” That was my Johnny. Always looking out for me.’

  She sobbed bitterly and Nellie cried with her and then as they dried their eyes Nellie said consolingly, ‘Anyway, he had a peaceful death with all his family round him the way he would have wanted.’

  ‘I got a shock when he asked for the priest,’ Maggie said. ‘I knew he was born and reared a Catholic but he never said nothing about it. You was good to go for the priest, Nell. That’s why I sent Josie to tell you right away.’

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Nellie said. ‘They’re both good girls.’

  ‘Aye, but Josie’s the one I’ll rely on,’ Maggie said. ‘Our Susie’s gone to pieces. Mind you, Johnny doted on her and she thought the sun shone outa him. She’s just told me that lad she’s started courting is a Catholic. Said she’d told her dad but she never said nothing to me.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what made Johnny think of the priest?’ Nellie suggested.

  ‘Maybe. Me mam would turn in her grave, the idea of a Catholic priest in the house, but I don’t bother about nothing like that,’ Maggie said. ‘I had them all christened, like, but after – it took me all me time to scrat and scrape to keep them alive, never mind worrying about the like of that.’

  Nellie encouraged Maggie to talk. She knew that the reality of Johnny’s death had not yet reached her and she wanted to postpone the moment as long as possible.

  ‘I don’t bother neither,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I was christened even. I don’t think me mam would’ve bothered but maybe me dad did.’

  ‘Your mam wasn’t afraid of God or man, was she? You might have been done before you come here though. So you wouldn’t know where to find out. Where you was christened,’ she explained, seeing Nellie looked bewildered.

  ‘But I thought I was born here,’ Nellie said.

  ‘No, you come when you was a baby. Bobby was born here,’ Maggie said.

  ‘So that’s what that Ada Ginley was getting at,’ Nellie exclaimed. ‘She said I didn’t even belong round here.’

  ‘Your ma and Janey come here when you was new born,’ Maggie said, ‘from somewhere but nobody never found out where.’ She laughed. ‘They didn’t fancy asking Janey or your ma.’

  They were both silent for a moment thinking their own thoughts when Maggie sighed.

  ‘I can’t get over Johnny asking for the priest. I’m glad I got him though. Seemed to give him ease, didn’t it?’

  ‘I thought it did,’ Nellie said. ‘He seemed nice, the priest. I was just thinking of Ada Ginley and her husband fighting over religion and they never go near church.’

  ‘You wasn’t here when she had the fight with her ma-in-law, was you, Nell?’ Maggie said.

  Nellie shook her head and Maggie went on, ‘It was when her first boy was born. The old woman sneaked a bottle of holy water into the house under her shawl and as soon as Ada turned her back she baptised the baby Michael. When Ada realised, there was skin and hair flying.’

  ‘But is that legal, like?’ Nellie said doubtfully.

  ‘I dunno. Ada’d already had him done William. I’ve never seen a fight like it, Nell. Everyone in a ring round them and they was rolling all over the road, biting and scratching and tearing each other’s hair out. But the funniest thing when people was taking his mother away she turned back. Her bodice was in shreds, like, and her hair hanging in rats’ tails, not a hairpin left in it, and her face was all scratched and bloody.’

  ‘And what was Ada like?’ asked Nellie.

  ‘The same,’ Maggie said briefly. ‘But the old woman turned back and shouted, “Well at least I’ve saved his immortal soul.” The street was up. She was like Sarah Siddons.’

  They were smiling when Susan came downstairs and looked reproachfully at her mother. Misery seemed to sweep over Maggie and Nellie stood up. Susan came to the door with her and Nellie said hurriedly, ‘I was just talking, like, trying to distract your mam’s mind a bit. Talking about people in the street who fall out over religion.’

  Susan said nothing, staring stonily at Nellie and obviously thinking that nothing could distract her thoughts from her father. Nellie hoped that Josie would soon be home.

  Nellie felt guilty because she had spent less time with Maggie since she had become so friendly with Katy and Gertie but she resolved to do all she could to help Maggie with her loss.

  Johnny’s coffin was placed in Maggie’s parlour, which they had never been able to use because anything left in it was mouldy within weeks. ‘The damp and the cold won’t bother me poor lad now,’ Maggie said sadly.

  Nellie was surprised to learn that Johnny was only thirty-nine years old. ‘The same age as meself,’ Maggie said. They had both looked so much older.

  The day after the funeral Katy’s son was born after an easy labour. Bella and Katy’s older sister Queenie attended her and they were both there when Nellie went to see the baby.

  ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ Nellie exclaimed, cuddling the handsome little boy.

  ‘Yes, not red or anything,’ Bella said. She shook with laughter. ‘He doesn’t take after me, but mind you, our Katy doesn’t neither, do you, girl? Queenie’s more like me. Falling into flesh an’ all.’

  Queenie, a woman almost as big as her mother, only laughed, her flesh quivering as Bella’s did. Bella had taken the bab
y and was kissing and cuddling him and Katy said, ‘Just look at her. Anyone’d think it was her first grandchild. How many is it now, Ma?’

  ‘He makes twenty-three but never you mind, our Katy. Every one’s as precious.’

  ‘Aye, while they’re like that,’ Queenie said. ‘But give him a few years, Mam, and you’ll be clouting him and calling him a bloody nuisance.’

  They all laughed but after Nellie left she found it hard not to envy Katy. To have a lovely little boy like that and her mother and sister to rejoice with her and to have her husband home every night. Nellie thought of when Tommy was born and the fears and worries which had clouded her joy in him.

  Tommy’s cough had cleared and he seemed quite fit again but Nellie was growing tired of hearing about Miss Helsby. She was still undecided about the wisdom of allowing Tommy to be trained to speak differently to his parents and neighbours, and although she had mentioned the lessons in a letter to Sam she had received no letters from him for weeks.

  The next day was bitterly cold and Nellie was shivering when she arrived for work at Merton Road. The cook would have given her a hot drink but the housekeeper was waiting for her.

  ‘Get those steps done immediately,’ she said to Nellie. ‘They’re a disgrace. Absolutely filthy.’

  ‘But I cleaned them yesterday, Mrs Grogan,’ Nellie said.

  ‘I didn’t ask what you did yesterday. I’m telling you what to do today. This minute,’ the woman snapped.

  I wonder what’s gone wrong with her, Nellie thought, but she collected her bucket and scrubbing brush and went to scrub the flight of shallow steps below the front door.

  She had barely started when large hailstones began to fall and she picked up her bucket and cloth.

  Mrs Grogan appeared in the doorway. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. ‘Finish those steps at once.’

  Nellie obeyed, her teeth chattering with cold and the hailstones bouncing off her as she scrubbed. She felt chilled to the bone when she was finally able to empty her bucket and go in to the house for further work. The cook was waiting for her with a steaming cup of cocoa.

  ‘Get that down you,’ she ordered. ‘That one’s got a cob on about something but she’s not taking it out on you. Doing the steps in hailstones!’

  Nellie gratefully drank the hot cocoa and ate a piece of currant cake. There must be something about me and cooks, she thought. I always get on well with them.

  The hot drink revived her but the housekeeper continued to chivvy her about all morning, and to find her jobs such as scrubbing the floor of a stone-flagged unheated storeroom, and cleaning windows inside and outside. She was glad to escape at nearly two o’clock but she had promised to visit Meg on her way home and to do some shopping for her. Meg’s pregnancy was not going well. She had been troubled with morning sickness and now she had developed a hoarse cough.

  Nellie found her crouched over the fire wrapped in a shawl, sipping a hot blackcurrant drink, and coughing continuously.

  ‘It’s bronchitis,’ she told Nellie. ‘Bob fetched the doctor in last night. He told me to stay in bed but I don’t cough so much when I’m up.’

  Nellie replenished the coal scuttle and went for the shopping that Meg needed, then made tea for herself and Meg. She was alarmed by her feverishly bright eyes and red cheeks but Meg told her that she had often had bronchitis before and it would soon pass.

  Meg was interested to hear of Katy’s handsome baby and told Nellie that she hoped that her baby was a boy. ‘Just like Bob,’ she said fondly. She said that she felt much better after Nellie’s visit but Nellie still felt worried about her as she walked home.

  Was it only such a short time ago that she had felt so happy, she thought. Lately everything seemed to be going wrong. The weather, the job, illness and death and no letters from Sam. Surely she would be told if something had happened to him.

  She was annoyed that both Tommy and Janey were late home and the meal she had prepared was spoiling. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded when Tommy came in.

  ‘Miss Helsby said we could stay behind and she’d learn – er – teach us some more. Speech training she calls it and she’s learning us manners too.’

  ‘She should learn you to think about your mother,’ Nellie said. ‘Staying on like that and me worrying. Your tea getting ruined an’ all.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ Tommy said, looking crestfallen. He soon recovered his spirits and chattered to Nellie about Miss Helsby’s teaching. ‘Around the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,’ he declaimed.

  ‘Wharra you on about?’ Nellie said irritably.

  ‘It’s what we’ve got to say to practice,’ Tommy explained. ‘And we’ve gorra stand up when a lady comes in and take our caps off when we go indoors.’

  ‘Daft capers,’ Nellie snorted. They had both finished their dried-up hash and Tommy picked up the plates to take them to the sink.

  He hesitated for a moment. ‘You know when you finish, like, Mam? Miss Helsby says the knife and fork should be laid side by side to show that you have finished your meal, not just put down anyhow,’ he said in a sing-song voice, obviously quoting the teacher verbatim.

  Nellie gaped at him for a moment then suddenly her temper flared. Her exhausting day, her sorrow at Johnny’s death, the worry about Meg and the lack of letters from Sam all came to a head and she jumped to her feet and gave Tommy a stinging blow to his head.

  ‘It’s a pity about Miss Helsby,’ she shouted, ‘telling me what to do. The likes of us don’t need no messing about with knives to show we’re finished. We’re finished when there’s no bloody food left on our plates but she wouldn’t know nothing about that, would she? Or the struggle to purrit there neither.’

  ‘Ar eh, Mam,’ Tommy protested, hurriedly taking the plates away while Nellie sat fuming.

  She moved to sit beside the fire, rattling the poker around the bars of the grate and working herself into a greater fury.

  ‘That settles it. You’re not having no more of these lessons. Learning you to turn your nose up at your mam and dad. Your poor dad that’s kept you in comfort all these years. Slaving away and then leaving himself short very often, buying you ganseys and boots and toys no less. An’ the life he had when he was your age.’

  ‘I never said nothing about Dad,’ Tom began, astounded by the fury he had unleashed, but Nellie swept on unheeding.

  ‘You’re getting a right upstart. When I think of them Doyles and a few more round here like them. Never know a full belly and being belted and battered every night be the father. We’ve been too soft with you. Maybe some of that battering woulda done you more good. Learning you to look down on your own flesh and blood.’

  She began to cry and Tommy timidly put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, Mam. I won’t go no more,’ he said. He flinched back as Nellie raised her head but she only put her arms round him.

  ‘It’s all right, lad,’ she said drying her eyes. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It all just got too much. Make a pot of tea, Tom, but be careful, lad.’

  The boy said no more about Miss Helsby for the rest of the evening but before he went to bed Nellie told him he could carry on with the lessons. ‘You can still go back early at dinnertime,’ she said, ‘but you’ve gotta tell me if she wants you after school. And don’t be trying to learn me. She’s supposed to be just learning you them things.’

  Later when she lay in bed herself Nellie marvelled at her outburst at teatime. I must’ve been bottling it all up, like, she thought, and poor Tom got the brunt of it. And the way I carried on about his teacher and it’s good of her to give up her own dinner hour and after school for them lads.

  Her anger seemed to have purged her of her misery and she felt cheerful again, although nothing had changed. Two days later a large bundle of letters arrived from Sam to give her real cause to feel happy.

  Sam was delighted with the two letters he had received from Tommy and enclosed a letter for him in one to Nellie. She re
ad the letter to Tom first.

  Dear Son,

  I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at present. I was made up with your letters. You done well with them marks. It is hot and sticky here. You could do with it at home. We seen monkeys hanging off trees be there tails. I have a lot to tell you.

  Your Loving Father.

  PS Look after your mam.

  Nellie’s eyes filled with tears. Ah God, she thought. The way Sam must have struggled to think of something to tell Tommy. He must have been that made up with Tommy’s letters and then saying about looking after me.

  Her own letters were more stilted but in one of them he told her that one of his mates had died of a poisoned foot. ‘A fellow from Elwy Street,’ he wrote. ‘We took on a lad I used to know from the Akbar, said he missed his ship because a witch doctor put a spell on him. He is a real case. We have a good laugh.’

  Sam had told her in an earlier letter about Billy Olafson and she knew that George Adams was with him so she was happy that Sam had such good mates but sad to learn of the man from Elwy Street. I wonder is he married? she thought, trying to imagine how she would feel if she heard such news about Sam.

  Tommy was wildly excited when he read his letter. ‘The gear,’ he shouted. ‘I’m dying for me dad to come home, Mam. D’yer think he’ll be long?’

  ‘Only about another six months,’ Nellie said, but seeing the boy look downcast she added quickly, ‘It could be sooner than that.’ They went together to see Meg and Nellie was pleased to see that she looked much better. Her cough had almost gone, but Meg said that she had been worried about Nellie, more than herself.

  ‘I’ve had bronchitis before and I knew I’d soon get over it but you looked worn out that day, Nell. Frozen to the bone too.’

  ‘I was,’ Nellie admitted. ‘I thought I’d never get warm again. That one making me scrub the steps in the hailstones. I’m back there tomorrow. I wonder what she’ll have lined up for me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t stay,’ Meg declared. ‘I’m sure you could do something else.’

  Tommy was playing with Meg’s kitten in the corner of the room and Nellie glanced at him and lowered her voice. ‘You should’ve heard the way I carried on at him,’ she said. ‘And all over nothing really. He didn’t know what had come over me. I was sorry after I let fly at him but I was that fed up that night.’