A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (18 page)

‘No,' retorted Kathleen firmly. ‘It's too dark.'

‘Dollie and Connie's out there already.' Bridie moved towards the door. ‘You're not Mam. You can't stop me.' Her lower lip protruded menacingly.

Kathleen smirked. ‘No, I'm not Mam, but I'm bigger than you. And I can tell our dad when he come home – and you know what he'll be like. And what's more, it's raining.'

‘I don't care. I want to.' Bridie stamped her foot and clenched her fists.

The threat of further violence was suddenly extinguished by the return of Tommy at the open doorway. He absently pushed Bridie to one side and shut the door slowly behind him. He stared emptily past Kathleen and Bridie into the jungle of a room. His hair was plastered down by the rain. Drops of moisture clung to his guernsey and shone faintly.

Joey opened the door behind him and he and Ellie crept in.

Tommy suddenly woke up from his lethargy and shook himself playfully like a dog. ‘'Lo, la. Ack, it's wet out there,' he greeted Kathleen.

Kathleen pointed at the wet boy, and said tartly, to Bridie, ‘See. I told you!'

‘What?' responded Bridie without interest. She was watching Tommy.

‘Guess what I've got,' said Tommy and rattled something behind his back.

In the shadowy darkness, Ellie could not see what he was holding behind him. She toddled round him. ‘Let's see,' she commanded.

Tommy danced away from her. ‘No. You got to guess.'

Remembering the toffee, Ellie suggested hopefully, ‘A sweetie.'

Tommy stopped his little dance. In mock astonishment, he replied, ‘You're right, love. You pick the first one.'

He brought forward a half-pound box of liquorice all-sorts. He opened the lid and exposed their lurid pink, black and white glory.

Ellie swallowed and then plunged her tiny, clawlike hand into the gaily decorated box to scoop up a handful.

‘Ah, ah,' Tommy warned. ‘One at a time.'

Very carefully, she selected a large one covered with brilliant pink speckles, while Joey jostled her in his haste to be next.

Little Number Nine, in Kathleen's arms, stared
down at the box. He had never seen a whole box of sweets before and did not know quite what he was looking at. He was still sucking his toffee and was fairly content with that. He did, however, demand to be put down, so that he could get a share of whatever it was that was on offer.

Her eyes on the box, Kathleen slid him slowly down onto the floor.

Who would give you a whole box of sweets? And for what?

As the delicious odour of liquorice and coconut reached her, a burst of saliva ran down her chin. Then she looked at Tommy. His expression was so strained, far beyond normal, and his cheerfulness so forced. Was she correct in the uneasy suspicions at his long absences which had haunted her for some time?

Real pain shot through her. Not Tommy, surely?

Tommy hastily lifted the box high so that the contents should not be spilled by Number Nine's groping hands.

‘One at a time,' he ordered, and chose a big black and white one for the baby. While the others clamoured for more, Number Nine looked doubtfully at the sweet.

Kathleen slowly and thoughtfully squatted down by him to encourage him to take a little bite. He
hastily swallowed the remains of his toffee, and obeyed her. Then he immediately grabbed the all-sort and stuffed it into his mouth.

She did not know whether to laugh at the child, or cry for Tommy. Would he burn in hell?

As she rose, Tommy thrust the box under her nose, and grinned. She took a sweet and tried to smile back at him. With his ill-gotten gains, Tommy was being as generous as a seaman just returned to port.

‘How did you get them? Pinch them from Lewis's?' she inquired hopefully.

He swallowed, and then responded quite surlily, his expression defiant. ‘Them what doesn't ask questions, doesn't hear no lies.'

‘Ma'll ask you quick enough if she hears about it.'

‘She won't care.'

‘Tom, you know that there are things that she won't stand for. Lewis's is a big store, and she's often took socks and such herself. Lewis's or Blackler's is fair game. But some other things – you know what I mean – she'll raise hell about.'

He stood like a small statue for a moment, while his face began to flush and his defiance faded.

He looked wretched, as he mumbled, ‘I don't
know what you mean.' Then realising the kindness of her concern for him, he said, ‘Kath, don't bother your head about me. The kids'll eat the sweets before she gets home.' He shrugged wearily. ‘All Mam will hear, if she's sober enough to listen, is that I brought a few sweets home – and it made a treat for the kids.'

She was silent. She did not know how to cope with the situation.

He continued to plead. ‘You know that anybody'll give you a sweetie or two just for going a message for them.'

‘But they didn't, did they? That's a half-pound box.'

Improvising quickly, he replied, ‘I mucked out Mr Murphy's cow shed on Wesley Street.'

The milkman did indeed keep several cows in his shed, considered Kathleen. But was he that generous? She doubted if he could afford to be.

She absently took another sweet out of the box he was still holding. What could she say? Come to that, what could she do?

If she told her suspicions to either Mam or Dad, Tommy might get a real beating and run away from home and go to sea. Boys did that regularly. Paedophiles were a common enough danger; but
even at sea, if what was whispered was true, he would almost certainly be similarly misused. In a ship, there would be no escape.

Perhaps he had been hurt enough already; he certainly didn't look too good.

‘OK,' she agreed reluctantly. ‘That's what we'll say, if she asks.' She paused, and then pleaded, ‘Don't be angry with me. I'm worried about you. You don't have to do it.'

He slowly screwed up the empty box, and then smiled grimly. ‘Don't worry,' he replied. ‘I can look after meself. I'm not going to go hungry, when I can earn a bit.'

Bridie had been watching the pair of them. Now she lost interest, and turned away, thoughtfully picking pieces of liquorice out of her front teeth. She knew very well what Kathleen was referring to. Freer to roam than Kathleen, she had observed other boys do it.

She stored the incident of the big box of sweets in her memory, to be used as a threat to tell their dad and thus squeeze pennies out of both Kathleen and Tommy.

Kathleen turned sadly back to the subject of babies. Her mother had instructed her never to let a man touch her, ‘Because you can get terrible diseases from them. You can rot to death – lose
your nose, like African Mary did.' Did her warning include fathers, she wondered fearfully?

This threat of disease was, to Kathleen, far worse than the nuns' vague warnings about babies. Sickened, she wondered if Tommy would lose his nose – or did it only happen to girls?

In her desperate ignorance, the more Kathleen pondered over the situation, the more muddled and frightened she became.

1965

Martha was seated in a few inches of lukewarm water in the Home's original Victorian bath. Angie was bent over her, hastily scrubbing her back with a soapy face flannel.

‘Done your underneaths?' asked Angie, as she sloshed water over her patient's bony shoulder blades.

‘Yes,' replied Martha reluctantly. Ever since her arrival in the home Matron's obsession with soaping all over the body, especially ‘underneaths', had been beyond her. With a faint wisp of humour, she wondered what Patrick would have had to say if his wife had smelled of Sunlight soap instead of like a proper woman.

After such a soaping, she always feared that she
would come out in spots or that she would peel. She was certain that her skin would never be the same again.

In the latter idea she was correct. For a woman of sixty, except for her red hands, a remarkably fine skin had been revealed once the dirt had been removed. It now had a peerless, almost unwrinkled whiteness which had been protected all her life by its natural oils, and Angie had made her laugh by telling her that she had a skin like a pearl.

Martha's proud boast had always been, like many women of her ilk, ‘I never had a bath in me life, not since I were born.' Now she could not even be proud of that after the bath Angie had given her, she cursed inwardly. Pearl, indeed.

Angie wrung out the face flannel. ‘Right. Now I'm going to help you onto the chair and you can dry yourself and put on your nightie. I got five bed baths to do yet.'

As she straightened up, Angie paused for a second and winced. God, how her back hurt nowadays. She blamed the pain on having to lift and turn too many patients. She wished the home had a proper invalid's bath, where you sat the patient in a kind of spoon which lifted her in and out of a tub. Things like that would certainly ease matters for nursing aides, she thought wistfully.

Not that Mrs Connolly was particularly helpless. Angie felt that, with exercise to strengthen her muscles, Martha could manage for herself. But she dared not suggest any such thing to Matron. Matron had the fixed idea that the only way to make sure no patient had a fall was to keep her charges in bed: and Martha had certainly been sent to the home because she had broken her hip in a fall, and, in consequence, could not look after herself.

It was Angie's private opinion, based on experience, that the underlying cause of Martha's fall had been weakness caused by malnutrition. During the time she had been in the home, despite being unsteady on her legs, the woman had begun to bloom on the boring, mushy food provided.

It was, however, not her business to tell Matron how to care for her patients. Nor did she dare tell the doctor, who came in from time to time, that, rather than take for granted Matron's reports to him on her charges, a thorough examination of the patients might show that some of them could be discharged. They would first need proper physiotherapy and, of course, good advice on their own care, thought Angie, and help to buy walkers or sticks.

But empty beds did not bring in any money, she concluded cynically, and beds filled with really sick
people, who needed proper nursing, would cost Matron more to run: she would have to employ more aides.

She placed her arms under Martha's and clasped her firmly. Then she lifted her to her feet and steadied her, while Martha raised one foot carefully over the side of the bath and onto the rumpled mat; then, after a little hesitation, she swung the injured leg over.

Angie seated her on a chair draped in a towel.

‘She's still not much weight,' considered the aide, as she compassionately viewed her tiny naked patient. ‘But she does look better.' She put another towel in Martha's lap, and said aloud, ‘Your nightie's on the rail there, love. Must run. Back in a few minutes.'

She fled to assemble what she needed for the first bed bath. For fear she would increase her work by having to run back to the storeroom for something forgotten, she enumerated her needs as she ran: hot water, towels, soap, face flannel, clean nightie, bedpan, toilet roll.

Meanwhile, Martha sat naked and depressed by the bath of dirty water. Until she had been taken to the hospital, she had rarely looked at herself. Now, she gloomily examined her stomach. It had never looked rounder, except when she had been
expecting. When she leaned forward, her waistline bulged slightly, and all of her looked exceedingly white; even her legs, with their blue varicose veins, shiny pink skin and the scar left by the surgeon when setting the broken hip, seemed to her very different from normal.

The hurt leg seemed to have shrunk, she noted nervously.

She wondered what her face looked like: all mirrors had been taken down off the walls before she came to the Home. Dementia patients were, she understood, liable to get very upset if they saw a reflection in a mirror.

She picked up the towel and rubbed her wet hair. She then decided that she had dried off well enough, and took the nightgown off the rail. She hated it because it was open at the back and was held together by a tape at the nape of her neck. How was a woman supposed to look respectable in a garment like that?

She reluctantly pushed her arms through the appropriate holes and clumsily tied the tapes. Then she sat looking at the scratched woodwork of the half-open door.

She had meant to chat with Angie about the nice time she and Patrick had enjoyed at the Coburg on the Saturday night after Thomas got a ship. She felt
it had been a turning point in their lives, because, the following week, Patrick had, for the first time for months, worked the full week. He had finally coughed up money for two pairs of plimsolls, a pair for Tommy and another for Joseph.

And when Father James had asked him, he had actually found a shilling for him towards the building of the new cathedral. Of course, it wasn't anything like the ten per cent of whatever you had that you were supposed to give to the Church. But it had pleased the respected priest very much.

And then there had been the Letter which had changed their lives.

Now, the preparations for the impending visit of the doctor to the Home had spoiled her plan to continue telling her story to Angie. She was sorely disappointed. Talking to Angie kept her sane, it did.

Angie did not return to take her back to her bed. Matron had waylaid her. She had ordered her to help another aide, coming in to relieve Angie herself, to get a wandering dementia patient back into bed and strapped down until the doctor arrived.

Finally, Martha pushed her feet into her bedroom slippers and decided that she would go back to her bed alone. ‘As if I can't do it,' she muttered scornfully.

Very carefully, she used the edge of the bath to raise herself to her feet. Then, to steady herself, she caught the brass handle of the door. It wobbled slightly, but she managed to keep her balance.