The one window faced out onto the backyard and the open expanse of weeds and stumpy bushes beyond. A few tree stumps dotted the scrubby earth, waiting on Da to dig or burn them out, while large gum trees stood sentry on the back boundary line. To the right his vegetable plot thrived, marked by the greenery of carrots and cabbages and the litter of potato leaves hiding a feast below ground.
It made her wonder – was she a potato to her parents? She might be – so much of her value lay hidden to them – caked in the dirt of sin that even a good confession and a wedding ring had failed to wash clean. Or was she, worse, blighted? One to be shunned and burned in order to save the rest from taint. She sighed, recognising her fanciful musings returned around her parents. She searched through the window for her son and found him running in circles, dragging a stick behind him in the dirt and mapping his path in his wake. She breathed again and the floorboards steadied beneath her feet.
She resolved to ask Joe what ailed Da, since clearly her parents didn’t count her adult enough to confide in. There could be no denying something was wrong, Da’s back hunched like that poor cripple in the story of Notre Dame and him sighing like a man done in. He refused her attempts to help with the tea and continued to steep the leaves, adding a cosy to the pot. She wanted to wrap his skinny frame in the warmth of her arms the same, but, at a glare from Maw, contented herself by sitting down instead.
‘When’s your wean coming?’ asked Maw, stilling her knitting needles and eyeing Mary’s belly, lips pursed.
‘I don’t know that there is one yet,’ said Mary, but knew Maw thought her a liar the way she raised her eyebrows and peered over her spectacles, giving her a chance to recant.
‘Maybe August, if there is any such wean.’
‘Well, I’d be planning on it judging by the state of your skin. A wee girl, I’d wager – if sinful enough to put money on it.’
‘Maw, don’t be superstitious. I’d like a girl. Don’t go jinxing it.’
‘Lie down and I’ll let me wedder tell you.’
Mary frowned. ‘None of your gypsy nonsense, Maw. You should know better. I’ll leave it to the Lord God Almighty to make that decision and surprise me in a few months’ time.’
‘It’s a bit of fun, is all, and I’ve not found it wrong more than once.’ Maw was already removing her thick gold wedding band and threading it over a length of wool bitten off from the end of the skein she was knitting up.
Mary shook her head.
It was unthinkable to lie down and let Maw swing her ring over her naked belly so as to reveal the gender of her unborn child. A silly superstition and one no good Catholic would take seriously. Maw acted holier than thou, yet at other times she was downright blasphemous.
‘No, Maw. I’m not playing. You wanted me to grow up. Well, I’m grown.’
THE PUNISHMENT
AUGUST 1918
‘I’m sorry to have to ask you, Jane. You know how he gets.’
Don’t worry, Mary. I’m always happy to come play with this wee boy. Aren’t I, Conor, laddie?’ Jane jigged the wean on her knee.
Mary smiled across the rickety table, grateful to Jane for calling at their new lodgings in Watt Street in the hope it might keep Liam’s tongue civil. In the month that they’d been living in the flat, his vocabulary had deteriorated along with his temper. His visits to the Repat always heralded a day of misery for all of them. Or days, as it was becoming. Though there wasn’t much anyone could do, or say, when he was in one of his moods.
Both Mary and Jane jumped at the slam of the boarding house front door.
‘Come on, Conor, laddie. Let’s go play hide and go seek.’ Jane hurried the boy into the bedroom.
The next second, the flat door crashed open – no doubt chipping the paint and into their bond again.
‘Them feckin’ doctors are useless,’ raged Liam. ‘I’m not copping their shite any more. And don’t give me that look, woman. The wean ain’t even in the room.’
Mary couldn’t fathom how Liam could even tell, when the largest of their miserly two rooms crowded in with a Dover stove; a table and two mismatched chairs dumped by the previous tenant; an overstuffed chair, losing its stuffing; and, to her mind, the ugliest, oldest sideboard in the whole of the world. She couldn’t be sure if it was the drab closeness of the place, the mingy chimney that refused to draw properly, or her husband being back in the house that was smothering the breath from the air.
She held her tongue while Liam attempted to stomp about, growing wilder at each obstacle blocking his path, glaring dagger eyes at her like it her fault there was no room to move. The dafty dropped tobacco shavings in his wake, unable to roll his cigarette, too busy doing his temper.
‘Those bastards are the ones bleeding mad, asking a man the same damn questions and pushing their useless feckin’ powders.’
Mary wrung her hands in case Jane was hearing the scene and her brother’s language, but even Conor racing out the bedroom and into the melee didn’t stop Liam from wrenching off his boots and hurling one at the wall. His next round of expletives turned Jane’s ears beet-red and sent her scurrying out the flat door with their son.
‘What happened this time?’
Liam didn’t answer, but thrust a scrunched up bit of paper into Mary’s hands. ‘I’m not a feckin’ head case. I’ve got a fucking pain in me head, is all.’
Mary glanced down to the crumpled page, gnawing on her lips at the sight of the Repatriation insignia. Stalling the moment she’d have to read it, she stared around at the dingy walls and dark ugly wallpaper of their new home, gulping in fear over what ill news the page was going to give up. The same terror hiked in her belly as the day Catherine held firm, ‘If you plan to grow a family, do it under your own roof.’ Thank you very much.
She had to sit down, her knees shaking so much at the news Liam’s pension was to be halved again – the only words she could make out in the typeset dancing on the page, before she folded the sheet in her lap to stop her hands from shaking too.
Even though she’d feared the same decision coming for months, it took the wind out of her. How could they survive on half of what they’d been getting?
The pronouncement pounded like a punishment in her head, along with the censure of the military doctor the last time she attended the clinic with Liam. She’d gone along to insist on some relief for the pain in his head, but was told firmly, instead, her coddling was threatening her husband’s ‘manly independence’ and it was time ‘he got back on the job’.
Didn’t she know it, not a penny in her purse. Her babe only days off coming and her belly near to bursting. Risking a glance at Liam, a wonky fag hanging out his mouth, rocking on the edge of the chair and scrunching his head between his hands, grimacing like a rat were gnawing inside it, the same question of months gnawed at her – how could he possibly work?
She wrapped her arms around her bloated belly, resisting the urge to start rocking herself. You will not cry. Think. Think of something. Say something. Look at him.
But words would not come to her lips. Liam hated sympathy. Hated people treating him like an invalid. But … wouldn’t it be worse, if people thought him … ?
Don’t you go thinking it too.
Was it too cruel then to think the cut to his pension could be a prayer answered? Even if it the reverse of what she’d been praying for? If Liam couldn’t get his regular grog money, mightn’t it force him to get a job? Prove to him that he could work?
If the doctors said he was well enough, surely he must be. Maybe if he got a damn job, he’d come to believe it himself.
Julia Ellen Merrilees, the second, arrived fair and bonny in the third week of August. The joy was buoyed even further by twelve days of headlines leaping across the newspapers. ‘Enemy surprise, ground won, prisoners taken’ and the gains of the allied offensive sweeping across the Western Front. Could it at last be the turn of the tide? Mary prayed her daughter’s birth was a like good omen for them too.
The
wean slid out bawling and kept right on as if she’d be satisfied only once they all understood she was now the boss. ‘Another blessed angel,’ Mary whispered, kissing the babe’s forehead, bragging her Granny O’Donnell’s carroty locks and sure to have the same gene of temperament.
‘Oh my God, Mary, can you believe what we made!?’
A sob snagged in Mary’s throat at the tears glistening in Liam’s eyes as he gazed down at his tiny daughter, him reaching out to take her. Again to watch him walk the wee bundle around the room, cooing to the child, ‘You’re the loveliest lassie in the whole of the world.’
When he turned the same beam of pride on Mary, a sob broke her lips for all the smiles and kind words not passed between them since his return.
‘Everything’s going to be all right now, Mary. You’ll see,’ he reassured her, jigging the babe in his arms. ‘We’ve got to look after this wee princess. I’ll get some kind of job. I promise.’
Mary pinched herself under the bedcovers and offered up another prayer that the wean might yet be their saviour.
In the peace of the following weeks, Mary fell a little in love with the babe herself, all pinkness and sweet-smelling. She forgave the brat much through colicky, sleepless nights to see the smile back on Liam’s face.
He doted on his daughter in a way he never did his son, walking the floor with her of a night, and all over Wonthaggi in her pram of a day to settle her, no mind to his damaged leg. Never mind it might twitch and pain the few minutes he did lie down in the bed at night, keeping both he and Mary awake more than the babe, and driving Mary to distraction, he would be ready to march another five miles the next day if the babe fussed or fretted.
Mary grieved that her small son stood back, watching his da, hawklike, as if to make sure he didn’t hurt the wean. Conor adored his baby sister from the start and scrabbled to be first to her side if she squawked so much as a squeak.
‘You’ll ruin that child, the both of you,’ Mary chastised. She’ll be wanting attention every minute of the day and, when the novelty wears off, who do you think’ll have to run to her cries?’ Secretly though she delighted seeing the two united in their passion for the babe, almost like the family of her dreams.
True to his promise, Liam did get a job. He got about eight of them over the next six weeks. As a barman, he pulled beers, but peeved the publican when he drank more on the sly than he served up to his customers. He swept floors in one of the picture theatres, but the work tickled up his asthma and by the time he returned from his sick bed, the job, of course, was gone. He touted for Jack Ryan, the SP bookie, at the Dalyston races, but got the boot when Jack caught him laying his own bets with a few insider tips. Mr Perkins, the accountant, kindly gave him a trial adding up his ledgers ’til the numbers sent Liam home, blind with the pain in his head. He even bagged sugar at the Co-operative store for a day’s wage. Harold Briggs, risen up the ranks from shop-boy to assistant, his boss for that one shift. Mary could imagine fat Harold’s delight in sacking Liam when he caught him with his fingers in the liquorice jar and would not hear it only one piece for his wife, who liked the allsorts.
She could understand Liam wasn’t able to do a lot of jobs with his bad leg and that his headaches drove him out walking more often than old lady Garter’s chooks went off the lay. But when she saw Robbie Clarke, the poor man’s leg blown off in Fromelles, hobbling around the blacksmith’s shop on crutches, not able to go down the mine anymore with his Da, yet carrying a load of steel and about to drop the lot trying to wave at her, it occurred to her, not everyone got through their pain or days with a bottle in their hands.
The exasperated expression on Joe’s face, when she caught him dragging his son home from the pub a third time, said he knew the way of it well enough. Joe’s back bowed not just from the weight of Liam’s body.
No prayers or tears from her, nor anger from his father, could prompt Liam to even try for work again. It was as if he’d given up. Yet he refused to hear one word about her getting a job, but instead would glare at her as if she’d shot him in the leg herself at the suggestion.
So she shut her mouth. Until the afternoon, a few weeks later, when shutting the door for the second time that day to threats of eviction from Mrs Garter, Maw’s accusations ringing in her ears, she could put off the inevitable no longer.
THE NIGHTMAN
LATE OCTOBER 1918
‘Ain’t no shame in an honest day’s work. Now, don’t look at me like that, my girl.’
Mary had no argument for her mother, but busied herself instead bluing the sheeting, more fit for the rag-bag than a bed. She could not meet Maw’s eyes. Much as Maw was probably right, she didn’t see her volunteering to speak to her son-in-law. Not to repeat Harry Judd’s offer.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she could only imagine how the nightman’s offer would go down with Liam.
How was she supposed to speak to him when there was sweet little talk between them at all these days? Anyone would think it was she who’d cut his pension, when the only thing you could cut between them was the air.
No relief came from the codeine molasses, nor from a darkened room or children bribed to quietness. Nor from the cold flannel laid over his forehead and replaced on the half-hour.
His teeth were growing flatter, milling the pain all his waking hours and half the night. Agony squinted in his eyes from sunup ’til down. Sometimes he would scream at her near mad with the pain, eyes afire and enraged. Like that changed anything.
Why couldn’t Maw and the doctors see the damage was not in his body but in his head? If only it was in his leg or his lungs, then maybe someone could help him.
‘You’ll not help your husband by coddling him.’
‘Not you too, Maw. Leave off. Liam’s not well.’ Mary wiped the steam from the washtub off her forehead. She’d not hand her mother more fuel by making excuses, but it seemed Maw needed no extra fuel from her.
‘He’s well enough to get himself to the pub. And well enough to walk all over town in the middle of the night scaring poor Mrs Wilkins silly, whistling past her outhouse and calling to her in the wee hours! Poor woman nearly wet herself.’
‘You can’t blame Liam for Mrs Wilkins’ leaky bladder, Maw.’
‘Don’t be disrespectful. Or changing the subject. We’re talking about your husband. He’s always been too prideful and we all know very well what pride comes before. Oh, give me that sheet, girl; it’s dingy as a dust rag. Have you no clue? And look at you, a bag of bones. Your son the same.’
The accusation over Conor grated in Mary’s ears. Did Maw not think it grieved her to see his once plump wee cheeks shrunken? She was not eating most nights herself, to be sure he got enough.
‘It’s up to you to make your husband get a job. Don’t let him be an invalid. He’ll be one for life and you’ll be wiping his backside the rest of it. You don’t see your Da taking to his bed, the man coughing up his knee caps half the night. No! Liam looks well enough to me. I think that one fancies himself too high and mighty still to get his hands dirty. And, I hate to say it, God rest her soul, Julia let him get above himself. Coddled his high ideas. It’s done him no good. Or you either.
‘Now, daughter, are you going to let your children starve?’
Mary flung the dripping sheet off the potstick into the rinse tub, fury steaming her cheeks, fighting the urge to abandon it there. Maw too. Walk out the door just like her husband and keep on walking. But she kept herself calm – and nice. How could Maw accuse her of letting her children starve when she was sewing herself blind of a night to bring in a few extra shillings? Wrestling what little she could out of Liam before he threw what was left of his pension down his throat at Taberner’s. She’d written to the Repatriation Department pleading, if not begging them to reassess his pension, explaining that her husband could not work for the pain in his head. Only Liam put his hand to the reply before she could get a hold of it. Shaking it and his disgust at her. ‘Have you no damn pride at all, woman – b
egging?’
Neither found strength to summon the words to argue with the Repatriation. The letter stating Private Merrilees was deemed fit to work and, in not so many words, it up to Mary as his wife to make sure he did.
How could she defend herself, or Liam, against such thinking, as if it were simply a matter of will?
She’d tried – again and again – to convince him to go back to the Repat, make them see what was wrong. Or get some relief from the pain.
‘I’m not bloody mad, woman. Just sick. Sick and tired of you on my back.’
He’d screamed at Joe for making a like suggestion.
‘They’re feckin’ useless them doctors, the whole lot of them. Don’t offer me hope where there ain’t none, Da. Just give it up. I have.’
Mary agonised if she should mention the nightman’s offer, but even Joe stared her down on the subject. Thanks to Maw’s big mouth.
‘A man has his pride, but when the day comes his family is starving and wearing rags, that’s the day he’d better climb down off his high horse and get a job. And if the only job a man can get is carting muck on his back, then that’s the job he should take.’
Still Mary stalled. Another three days, until she didn’t know if Judd’s offer still stood, yet knowing she must raise it with Liam before Maw saw him for Sunday dinner and attacked where there no need – if the job gone already.
Who was she fooling? They could be tossed out onto the street and it would make no difference. Liam would be dead before he’d accept Judd’s offer. The eejit just never got that he was too up himself, no better man than Harry Judd.
She could not admit, even to herself, it was a shame on her too. If she couldn’t speak the words to bring up the offer, what more could she expect of Liam? But what if Maw and the Repatriation were right and she was coddling him? If, in fact, she were the one stopping him from getting a job?
It wasn’t like Liam couldn’t walk. His leg might look a fright but it walked well enough. Most days, he never even used a stick anymore. And Maw was right about one thing. If he was going to tramp all over the countryside half the night, what would it matter if he threw a can on his back to go on his way?
No Small Shame Page 27