A Woman Undefeated (30 page)

What did she think about sharing a bed with Jack again, she pondered? Would he expect his conjugal rights? Did she want to sit around the family table at Christmas time, after worshipping together at St. Winefred’s? Would she be able to be a good actress during the season of goodwill?

“I’ll have to think about it, Michael,” she replied, undecided. “Of course Jack can come here to recover. It’s his home, isn’t it? And I know Alice will want a decision fairly quickly, because she will have to make arrangements with her boarder, so I’ll think quickly on it. I’m presumin’ that this move into the front room includes our Mikey as well?”

“Well, we were thinkin’ that Michael can come in with us,” Michael replied. “It will give you time to be alone, yer know, if there’s anything yer want to discuss together.”

He began to appear nervous and started fiddling around with the collar on his shirt. She smelt a rat. So that was it, a reconciliation. Was it Alice’s idea, so that she could get Maggie living across the water at the house in Toxteth? Or her son’s idea because he wanted to try and get back his unwilling wife?

She turned, as she heard a movement in the doorway. Alice was standing there sporting a smug smile on her face, as she held Mikey firmly in her arms. She was up to something, Maggie thought, worried. Something that was going to catch her by
surprise. She got up and snatched the baby from his grandma. She would go off to the bedroom to sit in privacy with her child.

The next day, bright and early, instead of waiting until the afternoon like she had agreed with Miss Rosemary, she hurried Mikey into his outdoor clothes and set off up the road to Neston.

It was a cold day, with a bite in the wind, and the sky looked as if it could easily snow. The waves that normally only came within fifty yards of the promenade, were crashing and foaming angrily, thundering against the promenade wall, only a few feet away. Maggie felt an empathy with them, as that was how she was feeling in herself that morning.

She had lain awake most of the night, listening to her son’s steady breathing, thinking over her conversation with her father-in-law. Something was niggling. What, she wasn’t sure, but, Maggie was feeling angry, because somewhere along the line, she sensed there was to be some sort of a set up. Maybe Miss Rosemary could help her to unravel it all.

She banged on the door of the dressmaker’s shop. It wasn’t even near opening time, but Betty had always told her that she got up with the lark. True enough, the lady herself came to the door, dressed, as always, immaculately, as if she never went to bed in a nightie at all.

Her smile of welcome made Maggie feel as if she was dropping anchor in a harbour, where she could be sheltered from the storms of life that she was experiencing.

Mikey was wide awake, so he lay in her arms while Betty listened patiently to the latest twist in the tale.

“Yes, it does seem something is afoot,” she agreed, when Maggie had finished. “I have a feeling it concerns the baby too. I wonder if they are trying to scare you off, make you feel as if you’ve got to leave, but they are saying that young Michael here should share the accommodation with the grandparents, over Christmas time? You see, knowing you, you’ll be thinking that you won’t want to spend Christmas in a fraught atmosphere, pretending to
be part of a happy family. But, you wouldn’t want to deprive Jack of having his son with him, so of course you’ll say that you will leave him there. That’s what I think they are banking on. By saying you will be sharing a bedroom with your estranged husband, it will frighten you off. Leaving them to accuse you of being an uncaring mother, by abandoning your baby son at Christmas time!”

Maggie was stunned by what she thought were Betty’s prophetic words and stared at her in shock, feeling her heart pumping madly as she took in the meaning of it all. She pulled Mikey more closely to her, causing him to give a little cry of alarm!

“What am I going to do, Miss Rosemary? Are yer saying that Jack can take the child off me? Where would they think that I’d be going anyway?” Her questions tumbled from her mouth, wildly.

“If you were to leave the boy behind and say, come to me, as I’m sure they know I’d take you in, I’m not awfully sure where you’d stand with the authorities. According to the Law, you must seek permission from his father to take him with you, as I think you and the child are still considered to be part of his chattels and goods. No doubt it is your mother-in-law who is at the bottom of it all.”

“Shall I write to him and see what he’s got to say for himself?” Maggie asked, “or I could wait until his return? I thought that maybe you and I could celebrate Christmas together this year. I know we go to different churches, but we could eat our dinner here. I could buy a bird from the market and make a plum puddin’. It would be grand, Miss Rosemary, even if I have to stay back there and share a bed with Jack. That’s what I’ll do,” she ended hurriedly. “I’ll call their bluff. Say that I will move into the big bedroom, share his bed, have Christmas there at Seagull Cottage, and see their reaction then. I can’t wait to see Alice’s face when I get back there and tell her. But, is that all right with you if we have a festive meal together? They can’t take me child off me then, if I’m only away fer a couple of hours.”

She worked her fingers to the bone that following week. Stitching seams, stitching hems, inching sleeves into the shoulders, stitching carefully around the neckline. Her needle flew on each occasion that she went to the shop in her effort to assist Betty. Even her dreams were filled with stitching dresses. Green ones, blue ones, with masses of frills to be put onto cream or white petticoats.

At least it took her mind off Jack’s impending visit, stopped her thinking of what he might say. Alice had been dumbfounded when Maggie agreed that the plan of moving bedrooms was agreeable to her.

Alice had pasted a false smile on her face, forcing herself to be friendly, even including Maggie in the following weekend’s plans. It tickled her that she was one up on Alice, but inwardly she was quaking at the thought of what was to come. Betty found her staring sometimes with a vacant expression in her eyes. She would tap her on the head and tell her to stop dreaming. Time for that, when all the clients had come to collect their gowns!

Betty had arranged all her fittings to be done in the mornings. It would give all her ladies the peace and quiet that they were entitled to, instead of having to listen to a crying babe, if Mikey was restless in the afternoons. Sometimes Betty would leave Maggie to mind the shop and carry on with her frantic stitching, while she would walk the pram and its little passenger around the village streets. She told Maggie she enjoyed it. Learning a little of what it would have been like if she had married and had children of her own.

Saturday morning came soon enough. It was time for Maggie to move back into the front bedroom. The lodger had left early to visit some friends in Liverpool and Alice had asked his permission to move his possessions, so between the two women, everything was quickly done.

To Maggie’s surprise, a single mattress was placed near the double bed. Seamus had brought it down from the attic earlier on. Alice explained that Jack couldn’t possibly share his bed with Maggie, in case her movement in the night would inflict more pain on him.

“Then why all the insistence that I move back in, Alice?,” she queried, “If yer don’t want us to sleep together? Yer really are the limit sometimes, I just don’t understand.”

“Appearances, Maggie, appearances. Don’t forget we are a Catholic family and if the priest got to hear of all these shenanigans, he wouldn’t be very pleased!”

They sat together at lunchtime over a light meal of bread, cheese and a cup of coffee, waiting for Michael, who had gone to fetch Jack in a hired carriage. He didn’t want to impose the sight of a bloody looking prize fighter on the public, as they would have if, instead, they had come by ferry and the train. He had said they would arrive in Parkgate around eleven in the morning, so Alice started twitching, as the clock on the kitchen wall showed it was just past two.

“Where’ve they got to? Typical men, probably stopped off somewhere, instead of coming straight back here,” she fidgeted.

“Well, maybe there’s been a problem, Alice,” Maggie answered. “The carriage didn’t turn up maybe, or perhaps they’ve had snow in Liverpool. The sky has been very grey this morning, they could have had snow over there.”

“Or maybe something bad has happened to Jack,” replied Alice in a shaky whisper. “There’s no way of letting us know, except by letter, and you know that Michael isn’t good with a pen.”

“Listen, I can hear Mikey crying,” Maggie said quickly, as she wasn’t about to get drawn into her mother-in-law’s uneasiness.
“I’d better go and feed him. Perhaps if yer were to find something to do, instead of sitting here worrying. Maybe make a start on dinner? When I’ve finished with the babby, I’ll come and help yer. The men will need feeding when they eventually come.”

Maggie sat on the bed and opened the buttons of her bodice, glancing down proudly at her outfit as she began to suckle her child. She had managed to make the dress in time for this occasion, the bodice being full of pleats and tucks, with leg o’ mutton sleeves and an ankle length gathered skirt. Shorter than what she had been used to, but it was an up and coming style. She had chosen a deep purple colour, in thick velvet material, which seemed to bring out a deeper hue in her normally light green eyes.

She had also taken a lot of time in fixing her hair. It was now parted in the centre and brushed into a cluster of curls, that she had wound into place at the back of her head and settled with a ribbon of matching purple. On her feet were a type of ballet shoe, again fastened with purple ribbon around the ankles, criss crossed and fastened behind.

Maggie wasn’t sure why she had made such an effort. Except perhaps because on Jack’s last visit, she had felt so dowdy, compared with his peacock self. She had also made a cambric nightdress, stitching by candle light while Mikey slept. It was time she had one, she couldn’t keep sleeping in her chemise and drawers. She was a mother now and might need to visit the kitchen in the dead of night and come across one of the male persons in the household.

Strange that it had seemed so important to get the nightdress finished, especially now, when Jack and Maggie were going to share the same room again.

She heard a knocking on the front door, just as she had finished feeding Mikey. She assumed it was her father-in-law, having forgotten his key. She began to rock the baby in her arms, as he looked as if he would go to sleep again.

She heard a voice coming from below, although it didn’t sound
like Michael. Nor were there noises she expected, like the sounds of giving assistance to a weary, worn out Jack.

“I’ll have to go to him!” she heard Alice cry, to whoever it was she had been talking to.

Maggie rushed down the stairs, as fast as she could with a sleeping baby in her arms. There in the hallway stood a thin young fellow, aged around fifteen. He was dressed shabbily in cast off clothing, looking white faced, the pallor of a city boy who doesn’t get very much to eat.

Alice was putting her heavier shawl around her shoulders and trying to pull her lace cap off at the same time, to change it for her ornamental hat.

“He’s gone and done it, Maggie!” she cried, when she saw that her daughter-in-law had come down the stairs. “Just like I warned him! Got his self knocked out cold in the twentieth round, lying like a statue now in that great big house of his. The doctor’s bin called, accordin’ to the boy here. He’ll have nobody to nurse him. Michael won’t be of any use to him now!”

“Alice, calm yerself down, will yer?” Maggie said, taking stock of the situation, as there was nobody else there to do so. “Yer can’t go racin’ off across the water on yer own. Shall I go and find Seamus? Perhaps he’ll come with you? Yer don’t know this boy from Adam. It could all be a made up tale. Has he asked yer fer any money? Tell me, young man,” she said, looking at the young boy sternly, “how did yer know where to come to and how come yer know about Jack?”

The boy straightened his back and looked at Maggie steadily.

“I’m Jack’s bockel bearer, Missis. I woz there at the fight. I took over from yor Seamus, when ’is mam ’ere said she didn’t want ‘im to go. Michael asked me to bring a message over, when the doctor bloke said Jack couldn’t be moved. ’E woz only te travel as far as ’is house in Toxteth. Michael give me the price of the ferry and the train ’ere. That woz fun, I’ve niver bin on a train afore. ’E said ’is Missis would probly come back wiv me and she’d pay fer us goin’ back. Oh, an ’e said I was te be fed with sommat afore we set off.”

Maggie thought that she had a terrible way of saying things, but this boy’s way of speaking meant she had to tune in her ear. Alice looked as if she was going to pieces, so it was Maggie who went to the kitchen, to make her a cup of tea and see what was left from lunch time for the boy to eat. She put Mikey into his grandmother’s arms, hoping she wouldn’t drop him with her trembling, but determined not to let Alice make things even worse, by not being strong when it came to helping Jack.