No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

  Oh God, I don’t know. I don’t know.

  There was only one thing she did know. If Liam wouldn’t or couldn’t get a bloody job, she would damn well get one herself. And hear no more argument about it.

  She wasn’t going to let her children starve.

  ‘Do you want to shove me in the hole, woman? Why don’t you just slit me throat? Carve me heart right out of me chest. I might as well be dead. A fucking night man. Slinkin’ into people’s yards in the middle of the night to cart their soil. Jesus, Mary, I knew you hated me, but so much …’

  Liam’s voice rose shrilly and Mary thanked God she’d had the foresight to take Conor to his granda’s, warning Joe that the boy might have to stay there until his father calmed down or surprised them all and spoke to Harry Judd.

  When Julia began to sook, she wished she’d done the same with the babe. At least she’d thought to put her in the bedroom, out of earshot of her father and her from him.

  Liam, playing patience at the table, froze with the Queen of Hearts in his hand. He turned it over without laying it down, glaring at her, before flicking it across the table-top to flutter down to the ratty excuse for a rug on the other side.

  ‘I’m not asking you to do it forever, Liam,’ she pleaded. ‘Just for a wee while. We owe Mrs Garter a month’s rent. And there’s no money for the account at the Co-operative store. They won’t put another penny on tic.’

  For the merest second, Liam’s head drooped and she grew hopeful that shame might bring a compromise. But when he raised his eyes again, the hatred greeting her left her in no doubt where he saw the blame.

  ‘You must be laughing your damn head off, Mary. Ain’t it funny to see Mr High and Mighty come a cropper? You never wanted me to raise meself up, did you? Not even to get out of the mine. How pleased you must be to see me brought so low.’ He flicked the next card off the deck, not watching it sail over the table-edge, staring at her instead.

  Unable to fight what she feared a ring of truth, Mary kept on, missing the warning in the quiet of Liam’s voice.

  ‘It would only be ’til we get on our feet. Don’t you want us to hold up our heads in the street? Pay our own way? Your da is bringing us food. He thinks I don’t see him putting tea and sugar and flour on the shelf when my back is turned. We’ve children to feed. We have to be responsible. Please, Liam. Harry Judd won’t wait on you forever.’

  Still Liam sat silent as a bog toad. One by one, he flicked the remainder of the cards across the table onto the floor. Until the last.

  With a damning sweep, he sent those already laid out on the table-top cascading to the floor. Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he stood up and tossed the table aside as if it were light as a paper box.

  She shrank from the resulting crash and the scalding hatred in his eyes, afraid that this time he might lash out at her deliberate. But he did not. Instead he rammed on his hat.

  ‘Since you’re the only one with any balls in this family, Mary – why don’t you take up Judd’s offer? Da’ll be right proud of you at least.’

  With that, he was gone out the door.

  She wouldn’t have known what she’d have dared say had he stayed. Only what she dared do next.

  The next afternoon, Mary stood gazing at her reflection in the mirror in the tenants’ bathroom, naked after her bath. She ran her finger tips over the silvery scars on her chest, barely discernible to her touch these days. How long since she’d really looked at them. Her husband, never. Though he’d have felt them for sure in his gropings, she laughed bitterly. Perhaps he feared them too ugly to see.

  In dark moments in the months after Liam had deserted her, she’d sometimes wondered if her scars the reason. For her mother’s disdain and distance too. The lines and ridges a map to both their scorn. Well, she’d survived that awful time and burn and illness and them both too. The fading of the scars in her mind at least proof she was stronger than she’d once believed. She stood up taller and breathed in deeply. She would be strong for her children too.

  Staring at the determined face in the glass, another image sprang to her mind. A slip of a girl, hair sticking out in bunches – the handiwork of that nurse aboard ship, whose name she couldn’t even remember. And Julia Merrilees’ sweet face, soothing her upset and telling stupid stories about Liam loving her ‘faerie’ hair.

  Well he couldn’t have loved it that much even back then. She’d bet she could shave every hair off her head now and the dafty would never even notice.

  She took the pins out of her bun and unwound the thick auburn length, letting it cascade over her shoulders. Taking up a handful, she held the scissor blades open around the strands and, closing both her eyes and the blades, sheared a goodly swathe before opening her eyes again. The short section left bounced up into soft curls around her ear.

  ‘You’ll have to do a proper job of it now, won’t you?’ She poked her tongue out at the mirror, refusing to let emotion get to her this time.

  Minutes later, the job was done. The best she could manage at any rate. Turning about, as far as she could see, it wasn’t all that bad. Curls helped hide a lot of sins. Not like that, ah … Nurse Britts’ evil job of it all those years ago.

  And Liam can be mad as he likes. He’s gonna be madder than hell about the other thing. Besides, you can do what you like with your own damn hair.

  Stepping back into flat, she jumped when Liam stepped out from behind the door – scrunching a ball of material in his hands, before shaking it in her face. ‘What’s this, then?’

  Mary faltered, cursing her carelessness in not putting the garment away out of sight. No matter. It didn’t change the facts. ‘It’s my uniform. For the hospital. Matron’s given me a job.’

  ‘You’re bleeding joking, ain’t you?’ Liam scowled, wringing the mess in his hands to the point Mary feared he might tear it.

  She blanched, but resisted the urge to reach out.

  ‘Well, that’s just fucking grand, ain’t it? Now you can rub my nose in it. Show how bloody clever you are while all your useless husband’s capable of is carting shit. You’re laughing at me, ain’t you, Mary? You got the bleeding balls all right.’

  Liam thrust the rag into her hands.

  She snatched it back, nearly tearing the thing herself, recalling that morning, standing by the row of concrete wash troughs, eyes closed against the billowing steam and putrid smells while she poured bucket after bucket of boiling water into the concrete sink, flinching as drops scalded their way around her rubber apron to sting through her skirt.

  The stink lodged in her nostrils even now, hardening her to the scorn on Liam’s face. And loosening her tongue.

  ‘Do you think you’re the only one to give up your damn dreams, Liam? Where do you think mine ended up? Buried under bedpans and vomit bowls, but do you hear me complaining? No. No matter my job foul and disgusting and not just carting but cleaning up other people’s shit.

  ‘Neither of us has to like it. I’m not blaming you that you can’t work, but don’t blame me that I can. All you have to do is mind the weans in the mornings, till after their naptime and I’ll be back.’

  Slamming the bedroom door, a moment later, she barely recognised the woman glaring back at her from the looking glass, still wobbling on its stand. But she couldn’t help liking her. And her hair.

  Through the following weeks into November, the silence between her and Liam grew deafening. But at least he stopped home and minded the weans while she was at work. And when she could bear a lecture on all the things she and her husband weren’t doing right by their children, she dropped them to Maw for a shift.

  Some days, coming in, catching Liam larking about with his daughter, it seemed not such a bloody burden on him after all. Once, she even came home to her small son laughing and running in the yard, pulling a kite made of newspaper and sticks and trying to hurl the rag tail into the breeze. ‘Look, Maw. Look what Da made for me.’ The grin on the laddie’s face making her hopeful that Liam was trying with his
son at last. Perhaps it was talk of the war ending that had brought a change in the air.

  For a week, the newspapers had teased on armistice demands, the Kaiser resigning, Austria’s collapse, the eve of Victory, but no capitulation yet from Germany.

  A small part of Mary cringed in fear at what the end of the war might mean for them in the Merrilees’ house. Would Liam recover in his mind without news of battles and fighting and death constantly about him? Or would he become even more bitter if he found no improvement in himself, realising he wasn’t ever going to live the life of his dreams? Because it seemed unlikely to her that the Liam she’d known back in Scotland was ever going to come back.

  THE PLAGUE

  EARLY 1919

  The New Year saw troopships bring the heroes home – to victory marches, welcome speeches and reassurances of the bright future that now lay ahead.

  Only it turned out, it wasn’t just soldiers teeming off the ships. Mary read in horror of a new plague sailing home with allies and enemies alike, dropping their menace in every port from pole to pole. It too late by the time anyone realised the poor weak buggers dropping from the pneumonia were not merely debilitated soldiers, but victims of the same plague that had ravaged Europe the previous summer – pneumonic influenza.

  Joe and Da arrived to their shift one morning in March to a sign posted at the union office, standing down the men for a week and warning them to avoid congregating in crowds. Across the country, people were warned to stay home, fumigate, disinfect, and steer clear of even talking to others in the street. Theatres, schools, sporting clubs and major events across the country were closed or cancelled.

  Neighbour eyed neighbour with suspicion and phenyl manufacturers piled up profits while Mary and every other housewife tried to scour and bleach their way clear of the scourge.

  It was a serious concern when Kate took to her bed on the Sunday and the house in Ivor Street put under quarantine. Three days later, Da went down to it quicker than a dry-nosed dog. His recently diagnosed phthisis not helping and his lungs filling with fluid faster than he could cough it up.

  Maw dosed them with aspirin and quinine, but by the Saturday following, Da contracted the pneumonia and was transferred to the state school, converted to a makeshift hospital. Maw was beside herself at being quarantined in Ivor Street and unable to visit him. She sent messages for Mary to take him broth and bread and fresh nightwear. All in the hope Mary might get a foot through the doorway and press into his hands Maw’s rosary beads and report back that he wasn’t going anywhere without her permission.

  Sister Mary Roberta met her at the door and Mary pressed the packages and rosary beads into her hands. ‘He’s not good, Mrs Merrilees. You might want to prepare your mother.’

  If Mary had been in two minds over a plan growing in her head before, the nun’s words made it up for her in a moment. She shivered in the shadows until the muffled voices and crying in the corridors beyond the doors grew quieter, then she slipped inside and along the corridor to the bub’s grade room where she knew Da to be incarcerated.

  She found him in a cot in the corner and sat beside him on the floor, listening to the litany of coughs and moans through the ward, wishing all those past her prayers blessed relief. All bar one whose hands and soul she was not giving up, not even when Nurse Ridgeway came and tried to pry her loose before the good sister gave up her objections as too late now and flung a mask at Mary to replace her grubby handkerchief – likely three hours too late.

  Da deteriorated in less. Mary could feel him going. His eyes dim before she got to him; the râle in his chest unmistakeable.

  By midnight he clung to her hand, his skeletal fingers grown so rigid he couldn’t keep his rosary beads clamped between them. The ones Maw insisted she take, ‘Give these to the bugger whether he wants them or not. If necessary tie them round his neck and tug them tight. I mean it, Mary. He’s to keep them with him.’

  Da tried, but couldn’t close his hands around them. Mary could not bear it.

  ‘It’s the rigors, dear,’ said Nurse Ridgeway, her eyes radiating the kind of sympathy Mary did not want.

  ‘It’s okay, Da. I’m here. You’re going to be better in the morning.’

  She woke around three to feel his hand fall away – told herself sleep was blessing him at last. But her eyes opened on the fixed stare of the same sweet man who’d laughed with Conor, just one week ago, smoothing out the laddie’s hand so he could feed the pit ponies a carrot. No-one was dying then or even looking in that direction.

  In the quiet of the big room, a shadow passed alongside her with a soft swish of skirts. The moans and groans and crying of earlier started up again in her ears. Only then did she notice Nurse Ridgeway bend down beside her and close her father’s eyes, then take her hands and haul her to her feet. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, dear. Go home now. Your husband’s at the door. Report to the health officer if you show any symptoms.’

  Mary walked trance-like out of the hospital, sick in the knowing she’d not been able to fulfil her promise to Maw.

  Liam took her arm at the door and walked with her home.

  In silence, she stepped in time with each rise and fall of his boot steps. Funny she’d never noticed before how small her husband’s feet.

  THE SWING TREE

  MARCH 1919

  Her mind might’ve shut down in the days following. Few moments held meaning beyond what had to be done – bar one.

  ‘This is no good for you, lass,’ said Liam. ‘Come for a walk with me and the weans. It’ll help clean out your filthy liver.’

  Mary could muster no energy to tell him it weren’t her liver in need of cleaning. Neither did she have the breath to argue. So she walked – putting one foot in front of the other, seeing nothing and no-one.

  Liam pushed the perambulator while she held Conor’s hand, warm in her chill one.

  Only one hundred yards from home, she halted. ‘I can’t. I want to go back.’

  Liam’s hand appeared firm under her elbow, ushering her forward. ‘Just a wee bit further, lass. I’ve something special to show you and the laddie. Something Julia and I found on one of our jaunts.’

  ‘Can we, Maw? Please, can we?’ Conor tugged on her sleeve.

  She might have refused one set of pleading eyes, but not two banded together in common want for the very first time.

  ‘It’s not far now,’ said Liam. Without waiting on her answer, he guided her onto a dirt track through the vacant land behind Fahey Street, freshly carved into new house blocks.

  Building had started on some and, by the looks of the trench markers hammered into the ground nearby, several more would shortly join them.

  ‘Old Ketter’s sold his field, but there’s something I want to show you before they cut down all the trees.’ The ripple of excitement in Liam’s voice contradicted his typical snarl.

  By his prattle it might be any day of the week bar the day before her father’s funeral. But then, she couldn’t argue when she was struggling to make sense of a happening she could not possibly let penetrate as real. So she stepped on, neither listening to Liam rave on about the loss of the field, nor caring very much. Since when had he an affinity with any piece of land – anywhere? What could he want to show her when she’d no mind to think of anything beyond tomorrow?

  When they’d put Da in the ground. Never to see his kindly face smile at her again? If she knew her father, he’d be banging on the Pearly gates already, insisting Saint Peter tell him where to find that bloody Limbo’s edge so as he could go and fetch up his sleeping babe and bring him to his brothers. If anyone could get Saint Peter to tell, Da would. He’d be up there scolding her too, telling her to get on. The same motto he’d lived by his whole life. With never a word of complaint. Giving up his home and migrating twice. Determined to build his own house and going down the pit, even with it making him ill and taking him before his time with all his damn coughing. But … I’ll try, Da. For you. And for my children.

 
; Liam pushing the carriage and Conor reaching in to tickle his sister’s belly, setting the child to laughing, she believed the promise true. She could put up with just about anything for the family they must look to the world, out strolling in the sun.

  Her feet tripped on small stones scrabbled loose in the dirt under the paddock grass. Step upon step, until Liam stopped under a gum tree in the middle of the field. Aged, with thick pink-and-grey boughs and a full-leafed canopy, the breeze rustled through its ancient branches. Hanging from a limb above their heads, a rope tied onto a roughly sawn spar.

  Even a boy of Conor’s tender age recognised a rope swing when he saw one.

  ‘Can I swing, Da?’ Without waiting on an answer, he tried to hook one leg up and over the spar.

  ‘Give your Maw first go.’

  A week ago, she’d have delighted in a rope swing, but today Mary shook her head and reached into the perambulator, plucking out her daughter to head off any argument. Curls bounced around the angelic wee face, now seven months old and knowing no sadness. As was only right.

  Right too that Conor should ride. Why should a child, unknowing, have to mourn his granda dead at so young an age?

  The boy’s eyes lit up expectantly, but he said nowt, waiting on a nod from his father. Only his hands clasping into bunches gave away his impatience.

  To her mind, Liam made the boy wait overlong before he picked him up and set him on the crossbar.

  ‘Better hang on tight, laddie. This swing goes higher up than heaven.’

  The child’s eyes bulged with sudden fear.

  But Liam gave him no chance to wonder, along with a hefty push.

  Conor flew through the air on an upward sweep.

  Standing to the side, Mary could see the thrill flush his wee face. On the downward rush, he glanced back at his da, shrieking with joy. Liam responded, laughing loudly.