Authors: Anne Bennett
Eventually he lowered her tenderly back into the chair. ‘I must go back and see the man and tell him what has transpired, for if I don’t do this he will inform the authorities. I’m going to ask Ida to sit in with you while I’m gone. All right?’
Rosie nodded, though she knew nothing would ever be truly all right again, and Danny left a very anxious man.
Christmas was a fraught time. Rosie was too ill to enjoy the festivities and well aware that this might be Danny’s last Christmas. She would have liked to have made it a special time, but even if she’d had the money she wasn’t able to.
But lack of money was a pressing problem. Danny had toured all the greengrocers in the area, begging for the boxes the goods arrived in, which he broke up in the cellar to eke the coal out, but both knew if it hadn’t been for the odd shovel of coal from the neighbours they would have all perished. He was desperately worried that he was leaving Rosie with just pennies to survive. ‘You must go up straight away tomorrow to see the unemployment people with your marriage lines and Bernadette’s birth certificate to qualify for separation allowance,’ he told her the morning he was leaving. ‘You’re far from well enough to go out in this perishing weather, but they won’t let anyone else go instead, and you must take Bernadette, they told me that.’
Rosie was frantically concerned too. ‘How long will it take to come through, this separation allowance?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, pet,’ Danny said. ‘One thing I do know is that the sooner you see about it, the sooner you get it, and remember, tomorrow’s Friday, so if you don’t go then you’ll have to wait till Monday. Ask about the Distress Boards while you’re there,’ he said. ‘They were meeting again tomorrow as well. Maybe you’ll get something from that.’ Suddenly, Danny pulled Rosie close and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I haven’t even enough time to see to all this for you.’
‘It isn’t your fault.’
‘Not my fault!’ Danny echoed. ‘I feel it is. In fact I feel I’ve made a balls-up of the last few years of my life. And that might be all right, if you hadn’t had to bear the brunt of it too.’
‘Hush, Danny,’ Rosie said, kissing him. ‘Don’t go like this. I know you had no choice in what you did and you’ve suffered as much or more than I have. Anyway, isn’t that what marriage is all about, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health? Go, Danny, and try and keep yourself safe, and when it’s over and you come home I’ll be here waiting for you.’
Danny ground his teeth. ‘I can’t help worrying, Rosie,’ he said. ‘As soon as I can I will arrange to send you more money.’
‘You will not,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘You’ll be fighting in a war and the times you’re not in the trenches you’ll be entitled to spend the wee bit of money you’ll have left. I won’t be the only woman to be managing on so little, so don’t fret about me.’
‘No, Rosie, I couldn’t rest. You couldn’t feed yourself or wee Bernadette on so little. Other men do, the man told me.’
‘All right,’ Rosie said. ‘But you are not to leave yourself short and if you stay any longer you’ll be late reporting in and I don’t think the army takes kindly to being kept waiting.’
Danny knew Rosie spoke the truth and Bernadette too was looking worried, catching the tension in the air. He lifted her
into his arms and said, ‘You’ll be a good girl for Mammy, sure you will.’
Bernadette nodded her head briskly and wound her podgy arms around her father’s neck and he felt his heart contract for love for her. But then he set her down and took Rosie in his arms and kissed her, hungrily, longingly. When he’d left them, after striding across the courtyard, Rosie lifted her daughter into her arms for comfort and sank into the chair in floods of tears. Bernadette patted her mother’s face, not understanding her grief, but her actions made Rosie cry more.
The following day, Betty and Rita insisted Rosie take a shilling each from them, and a penny for the tram that they insisted she take both ways. Rosie had too little to protest much. She was grateful for the money because the day was too raw and cold for her to want to walk and even the exertion of getting to the tram stop caused her to cough so badly she often had to stand on the road, turning her face from Bernadette and covering her mouth to try to protect her. She sank onto the seat of the tram thankfully, glad she had to trek no further.
She was glad too that the Town Hall wasn’t far from the terminus in the city centre, and went in and stated her business there to the receptionist who rose to greet her. Her reception was different from Danny’s, now that she had a husband who’d enlisted in the army, and she was shown into a cubicle and a woman sat the other side of it to check her credentials and fill out forms.
‘How…how long will it take before I get the money?’ Rosie asked, and added.’ ‘You see, we have none. I was working and had to leave when I had bronchitis and went on to lose my baby and am not yet able to look for any other type of employment. My husband came for help and was told something about a Distress Board.’
‘Your husband was here before?’
‘Aye. Yes, before Christmas.’
‘Then there will be a file on him,’ the woman said. ‘Wait here please.’
Just a few seconds later she came into the room reading the notes inside a folder. ‘It says here you’ve been in the country eight months,’ the woman said, tight-lipped. ‘Your husband was unemployed and he’d not registered.’
‘He knew nothing about registration,’ Rosie said hotly, angry with the unfairness of it. ‘Neither of us knew we were doing wrong. We lived with the Sisters of Mercy at St Mary’s Convent and because my husband was unable to find work I worked in Kynoch’s works at Witton. We didn’t apply for anything until I became too sick to work.’
‘Your husband had to be coerced into enlisting.’
‘He wasn’t coerced, he was forced,’ Rosie declared. ‘There was no option left open to him, but you got your way, he’s away training now and before the New Year is very old I imagine he will be in the thick of it and he may die just as easily as those who went more willingly. Bullets and shells do not discriminate.’
A voice inside Rosie was telling her to be quiet, to stop berating the woman before her, stop trying to be clever, that this woman could make trouble for her, that she must try and ingratiate herself. But she wasn’t able to do it. For the first time in her life she wanted to smack the face of the woman who was looking at her as if she was some sort of slug that had the audacity to crawl out from under a stone.
‘You have an unfortunate manner,’ the woman said haughtily.
‘It’s an unfortunate chance that’s brought me here,’ Rosie bit back. ‘I am forced to beg money from you so I don’t have to hide from the rent man again this week and can put food in front of myself and my child until the separation order comes through,’ she said. ‘Now can you tell me anything about Distress Boards?’
‘They meet today. If your case is put before them they will
write to you with their decision. They will probably visit your home.’
‘That will all take time. How will I live until then?’ The woman shrugged. ‘That’s not my problem.’ Rosie got to her feet. She would not beg further. She lifted Bernadette up, her legs straddled either side of her hips, and strode from the room, willing herself not to cough, not to show any weakness before any of these people who considered themselves better than the poor because they were fortunate enough to pick up a wage at the end of the week. She had two shillings to last her till God alone knew when and that had been a gift from her good friends. She knew she had to spend it with great care and hoped the landlord was imbibed with true Christian charity and would be patient for his rent.
The following Monday was New Year’s Eve and that morning she had a letter from the Board and took it around and showed it to Ida. ‘You might get summat then if they’re coming for a look tomorrow,’ Ida said. ‘Let’s have a dekko at the house like.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos I know that’s what they’ll do. If there’s summat, anything that they consider you don’t need, they’ll say you got to sell it before they give you owt.’
‘Oh God, Ida, they must give me something,’ Rosie cried. ‘With the nursery closed until the seventh of January, Bernadette has lived on bread and scrape for two days with the prospect of more of the same tomorrow, because that is all the money would buy, for I had to have a couple of bucketfuls of coal or we’d have frozen to death. I’m on my beamends, Ida. If they give me nothing, Sweet Jesus, I might go clean mad altogether.’
And she really thought she might, for worry and constant hunger was driving her insane. She might fall upon them,
clawing their self-satisfied faces or putting her hands around their scrawny necks and squeezing tight.
‘Listen to me,’ Ida said. ‘Get rid of two of them hard-back chairs. They’ll probably say you have no need of four, and pull up the rag rug and hide the cushions as well, and that clock, I’d get rid of that straight off.’
‘I’d never sell that,’ Rosie said. ‘No matter how hard up I was. Connie gave it to me the night we left. It’s my link with home.’
‘Rosie, they won’t give a tinker’s cuss about that,’ Ida said firmly. ‘You’ll have to get rid of that picture above the fireplace too, I’d say.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Rosie said, appalled. ‘That’s the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the nuns gave it to me when I left the convent. Most Catholic homes have a similar one.’
‘I’m telling it how it is, bab,’ Ida said. ‘I’ve seen them buggers in action. Christ! You’d think it was money out of their own bleeding pockets they was giving you. You can store the stuff in my place and have it back later, but honest, it’s best to be careful.’
Betty and Rita weren’t at work as Kynoch’s hadn’t started back yet after Christmas and they both agreed with Ida. Betty went further and suggested she lift the eiderdown and a couple of blankets from her bed and the rug from the bedroom floor and advised her to get rid of some of her dinner plates and cups.
‘It seems a shabby way to go on,’ Rosie said doubtfully.
‘It’s the only way,’ Betty said firmly.
Later, seeing the disparaging way the people from the Distress Board peered and poked around her house, Rosie knew Betty and Ida were right. She blessed her friends for putting her wise, for the man and woman did scrutinise her crockery and bedding as well as everything else and eventually agreed to give her five shillings.
‘Five shillings,’ she complained to Ida. ‘It’s not that I’m not
grateful, but the rent’s due again this Friday. That will be three weeks owing.’
‘Pay summat off,’ Ida advised. ‘Some landlords give you six weeks, some only four, so pay summat off it you can.’
‘Out of five shillings, Ida, talk sense,’ Rosie said, and yet she trembled at the thought of being thrown out of her home. She’d end up in the workhouse and so would her child. They’d be separated, she might never see Bernadette again. She’d not stand that, she’d go mad. With Danny gone and the baby dead, Bernadette was all she had. Her knees trembled so violently she had to sit down. ‘What shall I do, Ida? What can I do?’
‘There is one place,’ Ida said thoughtfully. ‘I applied to it once when my old man joined in 1914 with thousands of others and they took weeks to work out my separation pay, but this SSAFA place gave me money like, till it was sorted. I suppose they still do that.’
‘Weeks to sort out,’ Rosie repeated horrified. ‘How many weeks?’
‘It won’t be like that for you, duck, don’t worry,’ Ida said reassuringly. ‘They ain’t joining up in droves like they was then, but on the other hand,’ she added, ‘they don’t rush themselves, the army.’
‘Where is this place? Have they an office or what?’
‘An office, a sizeable one on Colmore Row. You can’t miss it, just up from Snow Hill Station and on the same side.’
‘What was the place called again?’
‘SSAFA,’ Ida said. ‘Stands for “Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Airmen’ Families Association”. I think they might help you. They d’ain’t make me feel I had no right to live on earth either, like some do.’
Rosie gave a shudder. She knew exactly what Ida meant. If only she didn’t feel so weak, if she could lie down and let someone else deal with it. But she knew if she was to live day to day, feed herself and her child, keep the house passably warm and pay the rent, she needed help, and the only
place she knew she might get it was the organisation Ida had used and benefited from.
She took her marriage lines, Bernadette’s birth certificate and Bernadette herself, as she’d done before, and the next day set off for the SSAFA office on Colmore Row.
Here she found people in sympathy with her, people who knew what she was going through, who professed concern for her and Bernadette, and after taking all the details and particulars, the fund awarded her an interim payment of ten shillings and Rosie felt the worries slide from her back as she held the note in her hand.
It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to pay some of the back rent and leave something over, together with the five shillings. If only she knew how long it had to last her. Still, she was able to answer Danny’s first letter cheerfully enough. She sidestepped questions about her health because there had been little change there. The slightest thing still made her breathless, but the neighbours were all willing to help. Ida in particular would fetch her shopping in and help her with the wash in the brewhouse and eventually, slowly but surely, as January slid into February, she began to feel stronger and her cough eased a little. She’d had to appeal twice more to the SSAFA office and as her rent was up to date she’d received seven shillings and six pence, but by the third week in January her separation allowance had been sorted out and she received eight shillings and four pence a week, plus the allotment of a further seven shillings that Danny had promised her. Life suddenly looked more hopeful, especially with Ida on hand.
She was very fond of Ida and the woman was a dab hand at making a shilling do the work of two. Though being a widow meant she got more each week than those with living husbands, ten shillings a week, a widow’s pension, another five shillings for her eldest son Jack, and three shillings and sixpence for his younger brother and little sister, she still had to be careful with every penny.