Authors: Helen Forrester
Daisy woke late and lay languidly looking out of the bedroom window at a pure blue sky, until remembrance of Nellie’s terrible need forced her to move.
She tidied the bed ready for Nellie, made a cup of tea and drank it quickly and, thus fortified, walked round to see Agnes, who received her with pleasure and more cups of tea.
“Agnes is easy,” ruminated Daisy. “You can sell her anything. When she gets in a panic, though, it’s pure mairder.”
There was no panic that morning, however. The news about Nellie only confirmed Agnes’s own long held opinion. She was glad, she said, to hear about Daisy’s job in the bottle factory and wondered if she could get a job there herself.
“Not a hope in hell,” Daisy assured her hastily. “There’s queues of them trying to get in every day.”
It did not strike Agnes to ask Daisy how
she
got in; she accepted everything that Daisy said as gospel truth. Old Daise had always been straight with her — always traded under a lamp post, she did, never under a tree.
Daisy warned Agnes that sometimes she did an extra half shift, which meant that she would come home on the first tram in the morning, rather than on the last tram at night. Agnes assured her that she would never leave poor Nellie alone.
Meg was different, thought Daisy, as she hurried over to her other sister’s home. Meg could argufy like a scuffer in front of the beak, and yet she was the best bet for real help with Nellie.
Meg’s father-in-law, Mr. Fogarty, was the true head of Meg’s
household. The three-bedroom row house sheltered him, his son, John, who was Meg’s husband, six of John and Meg’s children, aged from thirteen to seven, his second son, Tom, and his wife, Emily, and their six-month old baby, and lastly his youngest son, Albert, when he was not in gaol. Meg remarked bitterly from time to time that she did not believe that Albert could be guilty of all the thefts for which he had at different times served sentences, because when he was at home he did nothing but eat and doze comfortably on the sofa in the living room.
As Daisy rolled into the scullery, her arms neatly crossed under her shawl, Meg looked up from the greasy dishes she was trying to wash clean without benefit of soap or hot water.
“Why, look what the cat’s brought in!” she exclaimed acidly. “And what brings you here, Missus?”
“Oh, stow it, Meg,” Daisy responded crossly, as she subsided, panting, on to the only chair in the scullery.
“Who’s there?” inquired a cracked, male voice from the living room.
“It’s only me, Daisy, Mr. Fogarty. How are you?” She rose and went to the door of the other room.
A very thin, old man, his white hair ruffled up like a cockscomb, was sitting in a straight, wooden armchair. His clean union shirt was open at the neck and the sleeves were rolled up as if ready for work. He regarded Daisy with bloodshot blue eyes.
“How do you think?” he replied disagreeably to her inquiry.
“Well, I was hoping the pain wasn’t so bad,” she said brightly.
He looked down at his cruelly twisted fingers. “With arthritis? Less pain? It’s a bloody pain in the neck, I can tell you,” he growled, and then cackled with laughter at his own joke. He raised his voice to shout to his daughter-in-law. “Meg, when you going to give me me aspirins?”
There was the sound of the tap running, and then Meg appeared with a nearly empty bottle of aspirin and a cup of water.
“You never remember on your own, do you?” he berated her. He opened his mouth and she set an aspirin on his tongue and then held the cup so that he could drink. “I’ll have another,” he said. “It’s bad this morning.”
“You won’t have enough for the night if you do,” replied Meg dully.
“I’ll worry about the night when I get to it. I may be dead by then, and that would make you happy, wouldn’t it now?” He gestured impatiently towards the bottle. “Well, shake a leg, girl, and give me another.”
Meg obediently gave him another tablet.
“Cover me. I’m cold,” he ordered.
Meg brought an old overcoat and tucked it round his knees. He looked cunningly at Daisy. “Our Albert’ll get me another bottle out of Boots. Proper nimble fingers he’s got. Nothing like having a croppy head in the family, eh, Daisy?”
Daisy had no doubt that Albert could lift a bottle of aspirins out of Boot’s Cash Chemists in Lime Street, so she nodded agreement.
Meg silently returned to her saucepan washing in the scullery, and Daisy followed her. The house was quiet, except for a baby crying upstairs. “Meg’s little nevvie letting everybody know,” thought Daisy with a soft smile.
All Meg’s own children were in school, and her husband John, had gone down to the docks to sign on as being available for work. He had to do this twice a day and stand around, rain or shine, in case he was needed. It was an empty charade. There was rarely any work for him, and he often returned at night sopping wet and frozen.
“Well, what do you want?” Meg pinched her mouth tight, as she rubbed away at a soot-blackened saucepan.
Daisy cast a stabbing look at Meg’s thin back and then said in honeyed tones, “Listen, Meg. Nellie is terribly ill. The doctor come to her yesterday. Meg, she isn’t going to live unless we do summat about it.”
Meg paused in her work and let the saucepan slowly sink into the grey dish water. She watched the concentric rings of grease eddy out from it. “Going to die?”
Daisy fought back a desire to weep. She said, “It’s T.B., Meg. She’s spitting blood often now, and she can cough like you’d never believe.”
Meg’s narrow shoulders slumped even more as she slowly ran the dishrag round the pan. She liked Nellie — everybody did — but she did not like Daisy very much, so she asked sarcastically, “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, I’m going to put her in our Mam’s bed and nurse her. The quack wanted her to go into the sannie. But she won’t go and I don’t blame her — heartless bloody place.”
Meg shrugged. “Well, she’s
your
friend.”
“I know. She’s your sister-in-law, too, remember.” Daisy sighed. “And it’s going to cost a bit for medicine and things.” Meg was smart and she must be careful what she said. “Maybe Agnes told you I got an evening job — and I don’t want to give it up seeing as how I’ll have to pay the doctor, ’cos George can’t do it.”
“Ho-ho, hum-hum!” exclaimed Meg in surprise, and half turned to look at her sister. “Working, are yez? Since when may I ask?”
“I been doing it off and on ever since our Mam died. Don’t get her pension no more — and me allotment isn’t enough.”
“Where you workin’?”
“In t’ bottle factory down town.”
Meg stared at her fat sister doubtfully.
“What do you do there?”
Daisy floundered for a moment, then said, “Wash bottles and pack them in straw in cardboard boxes.”
“And what do you expect me to do — on top of the ould fella an’ all.”
“Well, I was hoping you would come and sit with Nellie some nights. Keep the fire going and help her if she coughs up.” Daisy
rubbed her arms under her shawl, and added uneasily, “Sometimes I don’t get home till early morning — doing overtime, like.”
“What about George — can’t he wake up long enough to do a bit?”
“You know our George. He allus was the dumb one and he ain’t never been the same since he was in the hospital all that time. ‘Sides he hits her sometimes.”
Mr. Fogarty suddenly bawled from the next room, “Meg, come ’ere. I want to pee.”
“Old bastard,” muttered Meg. She turned on Daisy savagely. “I got enough to do. I can’t do no more.” She pointed an angry finger at the door to the other room. “He can’t do nothing for himself now.”
“Your Emily from upstairs could help you,” Daisy suggested, a dark mantle rising up her neck. “Nell’s your sister-in-law too, isn’t she?” she added with asperity. “Make Emily do something.”
“Ha,” Meg sniffed. “She’s expecting again and the baby only six months old,” she flared. “Always whining. Wait till she’s got six. I’ll thank all the Saints if she gets a Council house and gets to hell out of here.”
Daisy wagged an admonishing finger at her. “You got Mary to help you, anyways — and your husband — John is handy — and Tom and Albert is your brothers-in-law — they owe you something. You could find some time to help me with Nellie — I haven’t got nobody.”
Meg’s thin nostrils expanded as she drew in a breath. She was tired beyond endurance, frantic that she would not be able to feed the brood which depended upon her, grief-stricken as she watched her husband’s fine body deteriorate from lack of employment and poor food. She felt her sister to be grossly unfair.
“I can’t do no more!” she cried with a half sob. “You got nobody to think about except yourself. Do you good to help our
Nellie.”
“Meg!” came an urgent voice from the other room. “Bring the pot, quick!”
Daisy got up and flounced towards the door as Meg whipped a jam jar from under the kitchen sink and made for the other room.
“Albert could do that for his father,” said Daisy furiously.
Meg paused. Her mouth twisted in a sneer. “You ask him!”
“Oh, go jump off the dock,” shouted Daisy in return.
She threw open the back door and went grumbling down the back alley like a wood down a ninepins lane. Behind her anger the tears welled up. Where
was
she to get help? Nellie had no sisters or parents. She had lost one brother in the same Battle of Ypres that George had been wounded in, and her other brother had taken his wife and family and gone south to find work only a year before. “Holy Mother,” prayed Daisy, “help me. Dear Holy Mary.”
Meg bent again to her saucepan washing. For a while her wrath at her sister sustained her, and then she began to feel a qualm of conscience about Nellie. Such a good woman deserved help, she knew. But I’m so tired, she cried silently to herself. I’m so tired.
After the saucepans had been neatly arranged on their shelf, she took a bucket of rubbish and Mr. Fogarty’s filled jam jar out to the rubbish bin and the lavatory respectively, to empty. When the repulsive jobs were done, she leaned against the door jamb to look up over the smoke-blackened brick walls of the yard to the sky, a pale, limpid winter blue through which two gulls sailed and swooped. She watched through half-closed eyes as their raucous cries came down to her. For a moment she shared their freedom of the upper air. Then from the house she heard the petulant cry, “Meg! Meg! What about a cup of tea? Where are you, Meg?”
She closed her eyes in exhaustion and lifted herself away from the door jamb. The latch of the door into the back entry clicked
and her husband, John, come slowly in. He was a tall, lanky man and his long hatchet face was shaded by a flat cap. He had his hands clenched in the pockets of an old cloth jacket stained with oil and grease on the back and shoulders. He looked as exhausted as his wife felt, but his face softened when he saw Meg.
“’lo, luv. What you doin’ out here? It’s cold.”
“Emptying the ould fella’s pot.” She put the jar down on the stone step and went to her husband.
He hastily took his hands out of his pockets and, with a quick glance round to see if anyone was looking, he enfolded her in his arms.
She laid her head on his chest and her arms crept up round his neck. He bent and kissed the top of her tidy braided head.
“No luck?”
“No. Maybe tomorrer.”
Still smarting from Meg’s rebuff, Daisy marched down the windy street to see George and Nellie. Her boots scuffed along the stone paving, as she muttered under her breath, “She’s nothin’ but a bloody bitch. No heart to her.”
She found Nellie puttering slowly round her room, a coal shovel in her hand. A sober and obviously worried George was watching her from the rocking-chair. On his lap was a back copy of a pink racing paper.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Daisy. “Couldn’t you make up the fire for her, George?”
She snatched the coal shovel from Nellie and added a few lumps of coal to the fire. She had gone round to the coal merchant the previous evening and paid him to deliver a hundredweight of the precious fuel to Nellie first thing in the morning.
George clamped his lips together sulkily.
Nellie intervened. “It’s all right, Daise. I don’t feel so bad today.”
“Good. But you get back on that bed again,” ordered Daisy. “Have you had any breakfast?”
“Just a cup a tea. That’s all I ever take.”
Daisy accepted this statement with a nod and plunked herself down on a chair, while Nellie obediently lay down on the bed.
Daisy then turned a malevolent blue eye upon the luckless George,
“Na, George. I don’t know how much you remember about
last night,” she commenced bitingly.
George glared at her. “’Course I remember,” he snapped indignantly.
Daisy grunted and looked round as if she had a large audience. “Humph, now that’s remarkable, ain’t it?”
“Don’t be eggy, Daise. He knows,” Nellie pleaded.
“Well, then, George, tell me. How are we going to get Nell to my house?”
Nellie half rose on her elbow and interposed hastily. “I don’t need to go, Daise. I’ll be all right here.”
Daise swung round towards her. Her voice took on a cooing note, as she said, “Na, look, Nell. We got to get you well somehow. And I haven’t time to come down here every day.”
“George’ll look after me.”
“You haven’t got the money to buy what’s needed, eggs an’ all. And he’s got to sign on for work and go to the P.A.C.”
“If she stays with you, the Relieving Officer will stop the allowance I get for her, t’ bloody bastard.” said George heavily.
“Not if you don’t say nothing’, you stupid bugger. You stay here and look after Joey, and if the P.A. visitor asks where Nellie is, tell him — well, tell him she’s nursing me! So she’s over at my place most days.” Daisy chortled at this idea and Nellie giggled and began to cough. Even George grinned sheepishly.
“Our Aggie will come and sit with you of an evening some nights,” said Daisy, turning to Nellie who was trying desperately to control her coughing, “But Meg has got too much to do with old Fogarty an’ all, so George and Joey’ll have to come some nights. Great Aunt Mary Devlin’ll come, o’ course, sometimes, but we got to pay her, ’cos she can’t be sitting with other people if she’s sitting with you — and she needs the money.”
Nellie and George agreed about Great Aunt Devlin.
“Meg’s got too much on her shoulders already,” remarked Nellie, clearing her throat and managing to stop her coughing spasm.
“Pah!” snorted Daisy. “She should get that Emily off her ass and make her help. And John, too.”
“Emily’s bloody useless,” said George with unexpected warmth. “And John’s got to sign on twice a day, you know that.”
“If Ellen hadn’t gone to live in Southampton, she’d have helped,” sighed Nellie, in reference to her brother’s wife.
George ignored this remark, and continued, “Best way to move you, Nell, ’d be to borrow a handcart and lay you on it.”
“Ha, using your brains at last,” sneered his unloving sister. She turned to Nellie. “He’s right, you know. Wrap you up warm. You’d be like Queen Mary in her carriage, you would.” She cackled with laughter.
“Taffy might lend us his,” said George, steadily pursuing a single line of thought.
Nellie raised her tousled head from her pillow. “Ah couldn’t, Daise! What’d people think? Me sitting on a rag and bone man’s handcart, like!”
“They won’t see you,” replied Daisy comfortingly. “We’ll do it after it’s dark, won’t we, George?” She fixed George with a stony stare. “You get the handcart and ask John to help yer. And I’ll get the fire going in our Mam’s room and have it real warm by the time you come after tea.”
George let the newspaper slip off his lap and nodded in a bewildered fashion at Daisy. Even if he had not agreed with her he would not have dared to argue. Arguing with Daisy was like arguing with a tank in Flanders. He wished suddenly that he was a seaman like Mike and could sail away from his troubles ashore for months at a time.
He got up slowly to go to see Taffy about the handcart.
Daisy got up, too. She took a half-crown piece out of her skirt pocket and stuck it on the mantelpiece. When she saw the movement, Nellie immediately protested.
“Daise! We can pay the doctor. George gets his dole today.”
Daisy laughed down at her anxious friend. “Come on. I feel
rich today. Me American uncle been and left me a thousand pounds.” She laughed again at her own joke. She felt like a monarch, as she bent to kiss Nellie gently on the forehead.
“Oh, Daise! You sure?”
“‘Course I’m sure. While I work I got money enough.”
Nellie sighed, then smiled at her friend. She laid her head down on her lumpy, stained pillow and closed her eyes. For once, the room was warm. It felt good to rest, to drift for a while. She could be certain that Daisy would look after iddy Joey — and George. She put out her tiny hand towards Daisy. Daisy took it and squeezed it passionately, as if to pass some of her own strength to her.
When the room was empty, Nellie took her rosary from under her pillow, found the cross on it and, with her lips against its comforting presence, she fell asleep.
Daisy’s first attempt at kindling a blaze in her late mother’s bedroom went out, so she got a broomstick and poked around up the chimney. Clumps of soot tumbled down and covered her arms with fine black powder. She cursed, and shoved the broomstick up again. This time part of a bird’s nest descended with a thud, as well as more soot.
She looked at the offending bundle of clay and fine twigs. “Must have built the bloody thing right in the chimney,” she fumed.
She inserted her arm as high as it would go and felt around. She could find no more of the nest, so she swept up the soot and started a fresh fire. This time it burned well.
Clucking with irritation, she washed the soot off herself and changed her ruined blouse. Then she spread over the bed the new blanket intended for her mother and two others she had redeemed from pawn. Between the sheets she slipped two bricks which she had heated in the downstairs oven and wrapped up in newspaper. She emptied the chamber pot and replaced it under the bed.
The room smelled strongly of soot, so she opened the window
and leaned out and took a big breath. Though the night was damp, the air from the estuary smelled sweet and fresh. Daisy smiled. With clean, damp air like that Nellie would find her breathing much easier.
When she tidied up her living-room, she found a post card under the door mat. Mike, as usual, was doing fine, it said, so she tossed it on to the mantelpiece to join the other ones already there. She was tired of pictures of Accra.
The card reminded her of Elizabeth Ann’s last letter, which had said that her sentence might be shortened because she had behaved so well. “Bless her iddy-biddy heart!” murmured her mother, as she leaned back in her chair and stared into the fire. A nice-looking girl who might bring a husband home to live with her mother, not like Maureen Mary. Let him be a man who smelled like a man, of sweat and dust or oil or coal, so as you knew he’d been working for you. She felt she could not endure another son-in-law who smelled of talcum powder.
With her stockinged feet on the fender, she began to doze. The young man of the previous night had tired her more than she cared to admit. As soon as Nellie had been put to bed, however, she would instruct George to sit with her, while she herself went out to turn an honest dollar. “You’re a born tart, Daise,” she told herself with a laugh.
Then her eyes sprang open with horror. With Nellie in the house, she could not bring a man home. Yet money in large sums would be needed. She would squeeze a bit of George’s allowance out of him, of course. But it would not be nearly enough. An anxious frown creased her usually smooth forehead, as she tussled with the problem.
The rattle of the handcart over the stone sets of the street, made her leap out of her chair to answer the door.
Nellie was curled up on a pile of newspapers and her old eiderdown. She was covered by John’s overcoat. The bumpy journey through the night chill had shaken her, and she lay exhausted with eyes closed.
“Maybe she’s dead already,” agonised Daisy, as she hurried out.
But Nellie opened her eyes and smiled weakly. “The boys were proper careful of me,” she assured Daisy in response to anxious inquiries.
The two great clumsy men grinned sheepishly. They stood uncertainly, watching the women while Nellie slowly raised herself.
“Na, George. Don’t just stand there. Lift Nellie out and carry her upstairs.” She turned briskly back to Nellie. “Room’s lovely and warm, luv, and waiting for yez.”
Obediently George lifted his wife and carefully carried her in. She was so light that blind terror struck him that she might really die and he would be left with only iddy Joey. He paused on the doorstep, as memories of his ill-treatment of her rushed into his mind. If she died, the devil would take him for his wickedness, he was sure of that.
Nellie felt his chest heave under her and sensed the fear in him. She lifted one tired hand and stroked his face, just as she had had the habit of doing when they were first married. He looked down at her sharply and saw for a second the young, saucy Irish girl he had married, and not a dying woman.
“Nell!” he muttered, “Aye, Nell!”
Her hand closed gently round his neck under the band of his rough cotton shirt. She smiled at him very sweetly.
“Don’t be afraid, Georgie, luv. Daise’ll help us.”
He nodded dumbly.
“Come on, George! She’ll catch her death! Take her in,” ordered Daisy, pushing impatiently from behind.
Like one of the cart horses he had tended in the past, George braced himself for the steep rise of the stairs, and then climbed them slowly and passed through to his late mother’s room.
Daisy was right. It was beautifully warm, though it smelled strongly of soot. The fire glowed a welcome, and two candles flickered extravagantly on the little mantelpiece.
He laid his wife down on the bed, while John and Daisy crowded into the room. John looked around him with surprised interest at the new wallpaper and Maureen Mary’s white curtains drawn over the window. The bed, too, looked lovely with two clean white pillows and a white sheet turned down over good blankets. He thought longingly how he would like to give Meg a room like this, with a fire in it and no children sharing it, so that they could relax in sensuous luxury like in a film.
His wistfulness was rudely broken by Daisy.
“You boys get outta here. I’m going to put Nellie to bed. Then I’m going to make her some bread and milk afore I go to work.” She nodded at John. “You go down and put the kettle on the fire for some tea for her.”
John clomped down the stairs with a “Ta-ra, Nell” as a goodbye to the invalid.
“Ta-ra, well,” responded Nellie. “Thanks, John.” She was still holding her husband’s hand as if afraid to release it. Daisy went to her and slipped her boots off her feet and put them in the hearth.
“I can do for meself, after I’ve rested a bit,” Nellie protested.
“Nay,” said George suddenly. “You let Daisy help you.”
Daisy nodded approvingly. “That’s right. Now you get out of the way and I’ll help her off with her skirt. She’d better keep ’er stockings on for warmth.” She began to untie the tape which held up Nellie’s gathered skirt. “I haven’t got a nightie for you yet, luv. I thought I’d ask the Welfare lady for one — and a coat or something to go over you when you get out of bed. It’d be more comfy.”
Nellie had never owned a nightgown and thought that Daisy was taking too much trouble on her behalf but, when she protested, Daisy pointed out practically that nighties were soon washed through and with the fevers she got she could become sweaty and then she would get cold.
Soon the little woman was laid in bed, the blankets tucked round her, a hot brick at her feet and another at her aching side.
“I’ll get some new bags of sand, tomorrow,” promised Daisy. “I threw out the ones I had for Nan ’cos they was leakin’. Sand does keep the heat better, there’s no doubt.”
George was again holding his wife’s hand and Daisy grinned at him knowingly. “Three’s a crowd. I’ll go and make the bread and milk.” And she bustled out with a speed and determination that surprised George, who had always regarded her as a lazy, gossiping bitch.
“Best get back to Joey, George.”
He nodded. He felt bewildered and at a loss in this women’s world of sickness, where the wings of death seemed literally to beat down at him from the shadowy ceiling.
“He’s all right with Mrs. Higgins for now.” The grip on Nellie’s hand tightened. He wanted to get into bed with her and hold her closely as he had done in happier days, without fear that she would shrink from him because she did not want to carry another child.
“George,” whispered Nellie. “Take care of iddy Joey. Bring him to see me tomorrow.”
He roused himself with an effort. “Surely,” he agreed. “He’ll be over on his own in the morning.”
“No.” Nellie’s voice was sharp. “See he goes to school. He can come after school.”
George dropped her hand. “O.K.,” he agreed irritably. An old wound in his back was aching and he moved towards the door sullenly. His wife watched him, her perception heightened by the fear of death.
“Aye, Georgie, come back here a mo’.”
He paused, his hand on the doorknob.
“Come ’ere, now.”
With a face as droopy as that of a basset hound, he came sulkily back to the bedside.