A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin. Helen Forrester
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Название: A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin

Автор: Helen Forrester

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Классическая проза

Серия:

isbn: 9780007387380

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ a pauper’s funeral.

      Summer turned to foggy autumn and still they heard no more of the councillor.

      Patrick grinned cynically, when Martha brought up the subject. ‘It’s to be expected,’ he told her. ‘Why should he remember? Folk like us never waste our time voting.’ He laughed. ‘We don’t mean nothin’ to nobody.’

      He continued his usual dockside waits for work; he knew no other world.

      THREE

       ‘We Buried Him With Ham’

       October 1937 to March 1938

      Influenza swept through the courts, and suddenly it was winter, that deadly bitter winter of 1937–1938, a time when lack of coal, lack of light, lack of medical attention and lack of food tested the courage of every man, woman and child: some of them simply gave up; as uninteresting statistics, they quietly died. They left behind them, however, consternation amid their myriad of dependants.

      The stalls in the market were practically deserted, and Martha and the inhabitants of Court No. 5 were so desperate that they barely noticed, floating in the background, the black storm clouds of threatening war. All they cared about was how to stay alive each day, and, somehow, keep their big families going. In particular, if their husbands had survived the flu, the women sought desperately to find enough food to keep them fit for any work that might be available.

      Two mothers in the next court died, leaving widowers with young children, some of whom also had the flu. This caused a flurried effort, even in Court No. 5, as a little food was collected to be taken in to the stricken families, to help until they could contact relations to come to their aid.

      Local charities were besieged, their limited resources stretched. Women begged for coal to heat their freezing rooms, for a blanket in which to wrap a grandfather, for boots for their children’s bare feet, even for pairs of woollen socks, anything woollen.

      They especially needed more food, any kind of food. Rubbish bins behind restaurants were climbed into by men, more agile than women and accustomed to the awkwardness of ships’ interiors. The contents of the bins were quickly picked through in the hopes of salvaging table scraps or unfinished cigarette ends. Street rubbish bins were, likewise, anxiously inspected.

      Unemployment insurance, Public Assistance or the wages for casual labour all failed to yield more than bare existence, particularly in winters like this remorseless one, where coal was a grim necessity.

      In Court No. 5, Mary Margaret’s five-year-old younger son, Sean, died of the flu, and a number of others very nearly did. A Sister of Charity came to help the broken-hearted woman prepare the skinny little body for the ultimate insult, a pauper’s burial: few in the court could afford to pay the Man-from-the-Pru sixpence a week for burial insurance.

      Tear-stained Mary Margaret had not the strength to follow the little body to the cemetery: his grim, silent father, Thomas Flanagan, did, however, and watched it being thrown into a common grave.

      Mary Margaret’s tears overflowed again, when a neighbour remarked cruelly that the child’s death was not all bad – it was one less to feed.

      A week later, her eldest son, Daniel, a ship’s boy, came home after a long voyage. She greeted him with both relief and joy. He had put on a little weight, though his face was pasty, and his voice had broken.

      ‘You’re my real big lad now,’ she told him as she hugged him to her.

      Best of all, he had a bit of money in his pocket. As a result, a good wake for his little brother was unexpectedly enjoyed by the whole building.

      ‘At least we buried him with ham,’ a weepy Mary Margaret announced with pride to her patient, oakum-picking friends, Sheila and Phoebe, in the adjoining room. With a sigh and a gentle pat of the hand, they agreed with her. Sometimes, kids just died and there was nothing you could do about it.

      When all Daniel’s funds had been spent on canned ham, fish and chips, and toddy made from smuggled rum, the songs and rueful jokes exhausted, Mary Margaret relapsed into an apathy broken only by her occasional fits of coughing.

      Martha Connolly wished very much that she had a lad at sea. A boy at sea earned little, but you did not have to feed him while he was away. You’d be paying for his kit every week, of course, on the never-never system. But he would still make a few shillings to give to his mother, which she could spend on canvas plimsolls for some of her other children. She could even, perhaps, buy some black wool to crochet herself a new shawl – that would be nice, she considered wistfully – her current one was threadbare and there was no warmth in it. But her own needs were at the bottom of the list.

      After Patrick’s unexpected swim at the Pier Head in the milder days of the previous spring, when charities had not been quite so hard-pressed, it had taken her several days to prise out of one of them another pair of boots for Patrick. She had plodded through the narrow streets from charity to charity, begging for boots, so that he could once more stand at the docks, morning and afternoon, waiting for work.

      She had endured long interviews in no less than three offices, during her quest, as she was redirected from one charitable organisation to another. Visits by voluntary social workers ensued, to make sure that she belonged to the clean, deserving poor and that her husband was not simply a lazy good-for-nothing. When the first visitor refused to recommend help for such a shiftless-looking household, Martha swallowed her rage as best she could: it was unwise to lose one’s temper with Them.

      It was clear to Martha that the second lady visitor, also, was completely overwhelmed by the sight of one small room filled with the impedimenta of daily life. It was cluttered with wooden boxes on which to sit, a pile of rags in a corner, presumably on which to sleep, and an old mattress leaning against a wall; even the mantelpiece was heaped with grubby rags. In the middle of the floor sat five children, shouting and arguing as they played with pebbles.

      As she viewed the room, one small girl got up, hitched up her skirt to exhibit a bare bottom and peed into a bucket. Unconcerned at a visitor being present, she returned to the game. The outraged visitor turned and walked out. Her written report was damning about a mother who would so neglect a child’s manners.

      As she had walked through the court itself, the third visitor had heaved at the odour of the lavatories. Before knocking at the open door of the house, she wrapped her scarf across her nose and hoped she would not be sick. She gave the name of her charity and Martha asked her to come in.

      She spent about one minute at the door, surveying nervously a room in which a number of children were quarrelling violently, striking out at each other with fists and bare feet.

      Martha shouted angrily to her warring offspring, ‘You kids get out – now! Or I’ll tell your dad.’

      The noise stopped. The children stared at the visitor. One of them sniggered. Martha belted her across the head and pushed her towards the door. The visitor hastily got out of the way.

      Protesting and snivelling, the children shoved each other through the narrow doorway into the courtyard, where their original altercation recommenced.

      The visitor swallowed. She took a notebook and pencil out of her side pocket. ‘Now,’ she said with false brightness through the thickness of her scarf, ‘how many bedrooms do СКАЧАТЬ