It was at the laundry that she met him. At the back doors, near to the kitchen, where he came three times a week, helping out on the delivery cart that fed supplies into the great industrial building.
She’d noticed him watching her, felt his eyes on her, on her back when she turned round, over her skinny shoulders and tiny bosom as she faced him, helping to wheel in the detergent and boxes of starch.
She kept her eyes down, but drew them up to sneak a peek, to catch his eyes and then look away, appearing coquettish to him, the way she knew a man liked to be looked at. He held a thin cigarette between his lips and he puffed on it, stopping to tap the ash onto the ground.
“You’re new?” he said to her, the cigarette flapping on his lips as he spoke and she could smell it now, the warm familiar tobacco smell encircling her. He was a good few years older than her, old enough to be a man.
“Give us a fag,” she said.
“You’re forward,” he said with a laugh.
She scowled at him and he laughed again.
“You have to earn fags around here,” he said.
As the days passed and they began to get familiar with each other, as she opened the heavy doors to take the baskets and supplies into the back hall, she began to let him near her, to allow his hand to rest on her back as he spoke, to touch off his fingers when he offered her those cigarettes, bending her face to his knuckles as he struck the match.
Seeing Christy, waiting for him, seeing his boyish smile, letting him brush off her back and bottom and bosoms whenever she could get away with it, became the highest, loveliest parts of her week. On the days when there were others there, other girls from the kitchen, other men who did the deliveries, they kept their distance from each other and these were bad days because it was harder to sneak a smoke and even harder to touch each other.
She thought how he was the first man she had ever loved. That all the others, all the men her mother had been through, all the layabouts and soldiers and sailors, none of them could compare to him. She dreamed about him at night, about his dark hair that curled behind his ears, the smell of him on her face, on her lips. She began to wake when the siren went off and get up immediately, in anticipation that she might see him that day, that they might embrace, that he might touch her and send shivers through her skin.
If they didn’t get to meet, her mood would drop and she’d snap at everyone around her. Even Kitty, bless her, who didn’t know why her sister was in a bad mood, but that it happened some days and the best way to deal with it was to keep out of her way and stay quiet.
But those days made the good days even better. It made the days where he moved in and stood close and she could feel him and everything that he was, all the sweeter. And when he made his moves and told her what she had to do to make him happy, well, then it got even better. Look what she could do for him. See how she made him feel, how she was able to make his body shudder like that?
It pleased her that she could do these things for him. And she knew that it was only a matter of time before he came through on his promises, that he could get her out of there, that he could get both of them, her and Kitty, out of there, maybe even go to live with him. He didn’t live that far away, he told her, in a cottage that would suit them all grand.
A little palace, he said.
She dreamed of the cottage most nights, the three of them living together, baking and cleaning and going to his bed at night, doing all the things he asked, pleasing him and maybe even pleasing herself. Kitty asleep next door, her belly full of food, going to a local school, no more long heavy days in the laundry.
He was her answer to everything, her escape from there, the one person who could change their lives. And so, she had to do everything she could for him. Whatever he asked. Whatever that entailed.
Standing at the back road, having pushed the stones back into place in the wall, she felt her legs moving and leading her to where they’d always gone when she escaped. The opposite direction of the workhouse, walking out into the countryside.
New houses had been built, a smattering of cottages, whitewashed and fresh-looking, and as she walked on, some larger houses, some two-storey, a pebbledash to the front and cornerstones painted on them. It took money to build houses like that.
The sky parted and a weak sun appeared, burning through heavy clouds that had hung suspended. She looked up into the brightness and wondered if God was shining down on her Himself.
Her heart was starting to pound, tightening in her chest, and she slowed down her pace, in case it was her steps that were causing it. But it wasn’t. She knew it was where she was going that was making her whole body tighten in anticipation. It was him.
The walk was longer than she remembered. The road narrowed as she ducked under a stone archway that supported an artery for the train line. She watched the black bushes, concentrating on the entwined branches, looking for birds.
She slowed her pace even more when the house came into view. It was a small cottage in the middle of a row built by the council some years ago to house the needy. The whitewash had turned dark and was chipping off at the front, a scattering of flakes on the ground outside. The mud at the door had hardened in the cold air and puddles gathered in small tracks where footsteps had trodden. Smoke hung in the air around the houses, the smell of something sharp burning, rubbish or scraps, the smell of the poor who burned whatever they could.
There was no movement. No neighbours out. Nobody at the windows.
She remembered what it felt like to come here. Back then it had looked fresher, a few plant pots filled with bright red geraniums at the door. Now only one remained, a large crack in its side, the plant withered in the cold.
ab
She remembered the night she had slipped in under that lintel, her first visit. She’d knocked on the window and found him, surprised, standing behind the door in his stockinged feet.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you,” she said, pushing past him, walking straight into the cottage to survey the room. A small fire burned in a raised grate, bars across it dripping grease where he’d placed four sausages to cook. A black pot bubbled, without a lid. Potatoes.
“So, it worked then?” he asked.
“It worked,” she said. She put her hand on her hip and took a good look around the room.
“And no one saw you?”
“No one saw me.”
Two rough cupboards stood in the corner, a basin sitting on top. There was no table. A solitary settle stood bench by the fire. The room smelled of damp. Of mould.
“So this is your palace?”
“This is my palace,” he said and held his hands out.
“Some palace,” she muttered.
Still, the sense of freedom sent bubbles through her blood.
“Have you anything to eat?”
She walked over to the uneven hand-built presses in the corner. He’d mounted flat pieces of wood across them to make a surface to work on. The basin was filled with water, ready for washing.
Opening a cupboard to find a single small plate and a sack of potatoes lying knocked over she closed the door with a bang and said: “I’ll have some of them sausages so.”
A splatter of grease fell onto the coals and sizzled. He walked to the fire and turned the sausages over to blacken the remaining white slivers. He lifted the lid of the pot and stabbed the potatoes with a fork.
She went and sat on the settle bench, looking at the only door in the room. She wondered if it led to another room, his bedroom, or to outside.
She waited in silence as he prepared the meal, fetching the other plate from the cupboard, spooning out the potatoes, taking the salt down from the mantelpiece and liberally shaking it over their food. There was no butter.
“It’s not much,” he said, handing a plate to her, “but I suppose the company’s not bad.” He smiled but she was too busy lifting the potatoes with her hands to even notice.
She ate the sausages,
one chunk at a time. Then her giddiness gave way to some nausea. She leaned back, placed her head on the wooden reach of the settle bench and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
He was sitting right close to her, their legs touching.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s just nice to ... not be in there.”
“How long do you have?”
“Not long,” she said. “They’ll be round in a while – I’ve to be back for then.”
“Have you time for ...” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
She pulled back. “Now, now,” she said, teasing.
“Oh, come on,” he said, his voice purring. His hand clamped her thigh and rubbed it.
She turned her head, coyly.
“You know I think about you. When I’m here, in this bed, at night,” he said.
He tapped the settle bench. This is where he slept. That meant there was no bedroom so. It was a one-room cottage, the other door led to the back outside, not to another room like she hoped. If she came to live here with Kitty, they’d all be together in this room, squished up.
She turned her head slightly towards him and he took it as his opportunity, gripping her face with his other hand, pulling her chin towards him, kissing her.
The familiar feeling of a man’s mouth on hers made her arms and legs clench. She forced them to relax, to lean back, letting him kiss her, passionately.
His hands wandered her body, feeling her breasts under the coarse workhouse dress. There was a scent about him, something lingering that made him attractive. She liked the look of him with his dark hair oiled back and the wide smile that he had, but it was the smell of him, the taste of him, that she wanted.
She lifted her arms so that he could pull her dress over her head.
“Can we put out the bed?” she asked.
He nodded and jumped up, opening out the settle bed and revealing a thin striped mattress and battered pillow.
It smelled of sweat and hair oil.
She took the woollen blanket which was rolled behind the pillow and spread it across the mattress, lying back on it. He lay down beside her, embracing her.
She listened to his panting as he kissed her neck, her breasts, her belly. He pulled all the linen off her to leave her naked on the damp bed. Only then did he start to strip, revealing a broad chest and a slightly pouched stomach.
It was the first man she had ever looked forward to making love to.
And as he rose within her and she too rose to meet him, she looked at the ceiling, gripped him and held.
She remembered it now, that feeling, that sense of togetherness, as though she were not alone, but a part of someone else, whole.
Soon, she would feel that again.
Soon, they would be one again.
She was tempted to rap on the door, to see if anyone came out, but she knew by the dust ingrained on the window and the raggedy curtain that hung, undisturbed, that the cottage was empty.
Next door, the wiped-down windows indicated life inside.
She startled when the neighbour’s door swung open and an elderly man came out, a ring of white hair snipped around his forehead.
“Are you all right?” he asked, friendly enough.
“Grand,” she said. “I used to know the man next door.”
“Him,” said the man. “I hope he never comes back.”
The jibe hung in the air between them.
“Ten years hard labour and it’s that now. He’ll be back any day, I reckon. More’s the pity.”
He obviously didn’t remember her from when he’d seen her sneaking in all those years ago. Nipping by in the dark, running from the workhouse.
Although she looked very different back then.
Sure she was only a child really.
Chapter 17
Mrs. McHugh
The tears streamed down her face as she walked. She didn’t see the people as she passed or take in the familiar townhouses and cottages as she made her way back up the North Road. Children played by the kerb, whooping and crying out to each other, some queuing for a rope swing flung over a lamppost.
She reached home without knowing how she got there, her mind a blur, only William Thomas’s angry face and his words running in her mind.
Mick was at the table reading a newspaper and his face fell when he saw hers.
“My love, what’s wrong?” he said.
He got up from his chair and it shot backwards on the lino.
He had seen her upset the past few weeks, seen her wretched with tiredness from the new baby, seen her white in the face that tragic and awful day when Mrs. Thomas had unexpectedly passed. But here she was crying again, her face crushed, her emotions seeping out of her. For such a level-headed woman, he had never seen such turmoil.
She went to him and embraced him, shaking with sobs and it was all he could do to put his hands on her and make soothing noises and allow her to compose herself before she could spit out the words behind the tears.
“Let go?” he said in disbelief. “He let you go?”
When she finally got out the story over a cup of sugary tea, she had to tell Mick to sit down and hold on to his arm and tell him he would do no such thing as to march down to Number 43 and make a scene.
“It won’t do any good,” she said. “You’ll just end up breaking something or worse, going for him and where would that get us? Leave it, it’ll get sorted, somehow.”
She did wish there was a way to fix the situation, to get that nanny and shake the truth out of her.
“I’ll talk to Betty, she’ll know what to do,” she said hopefully.
She couldn’t wait to go and see the old woman, to talk to her about what happened, to watch her reaction and listen to what she would tell her to do. She would go and see her first thing tomorrow. If she could bring herself to walk back down that road and step so near to Number 43.
She made another cup of tea but couldn’t drink it. It soured in her throat.
“Maybe we should go for a walk. Take your mind off things. Do you remember when we used to go courtin’?”
“Aye,” she said.
“What I liked about you then, Winnie, is what I like about you now. No nonsense.”
“I put up with your nonsense.”
“Aye, but you like my nonsense.”
He was quiet for a minute, trying to think of something to cheer her up.
“I’ve a better idea,” said Mick. “Why don’t we hire a jarvey, head out for the day? Visit our old haunts?”
“Ah, would you go ’way!”
“Why not? When do we ever get to do something like that? Let’s make the most of the day. Sure what else would you be doing, only mopin’ round here. It’s a grand day. I can go down and fetch a cab. You pack a picnic there, good woman.”
He stood up and got his coat.
“Mick,” she said.
“I’ll be back in half an hour.”
“Mick!”
He left, leaving her in the kitchen looking after him.
Bloody Mick.
Slowly she started putting items into her basket, finding a flask and a tin for their sandwiches. She took the thin picnic blanket down from upstairs.
All the while, she went over that day’s events in her mind. She couldn’t see past Mr. Thomas’s face. The anger, seething, holding it back. Worse was the disappointment. How could he think she would betray him like that?
And the Nanny. And that smirk of hers.
How was she going to put things right?
When Mick came back, complete with a hansom cab and driver, she had put on her best shawl. Before they turned the key in the front door, she went back to the kitchen and took two bottles of cider, laying them in the basket and covering it with the thin picnic blanket.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” she said, eyeing the sky. “Where are we off to?”
“Monasterboice first,” said Mick and he tapped the roof to let the driver know to move off.
> It was a thrill to be moving at speed. She hadn’t taken a lift like this in so long. It was a real treat to be out like this, just Mick and her, the driver perched behind them, tall, silent, as though he weren’t there at all.
They took the road out by Killineer, the hills rising up beside them. Buds had appeared on the trees, patching light green along the dormant branches.
The air was cool and she was glad of the wooden door over their legs, which sealed them into the cab.
“Isn’t this romantic?” said Mick and he laughed. “An unexpected day out with my Lady Love.”
It was romantic, yes, she thought. But she’d rather have been at Number 43, where she was supposed to be.
“I was thinking,” said Mick as the cab turned down towards Monasterboice, the road narrowing and the monastery showing in the distance, “that we should take the steamer, head over to Liverpool again. It’s been long time since we did that.”
“Going over to buy me a scarf?”
“We could get you a new scarf, aye.”
“Well, there’s no need now, is there, seeing as I got it back.”
“That absolute wench! I swear … if I ever get hold of her …”
“Shush now, Mick.”
When they were first married, they went to England every year, a holiday they could afford on account of having no children.
It was on those holidays that she loved Mick the most, admiring his shoulders, moving under the shirt, the way he tugged at his neckerchief as they marched up city lanes and country roads. She warmed when she saw him smack his lips and smile after the first gulp of stout as they sat outside one of the many pubs they came across. It was in those moments that she felt luckiest, lucky that she had found a friend to share her days with, lucky that she had waited until she was older to find this warm, companionable man.
“Still though, it’d be grand, wouldn’t it? A trip across the Irish sea?” said Mick.
The Nanny At Number 43 Page 10