Outside, precious handfuls of rice were thrown over the happy couple, and people came up and kissed Florrie and shook Jimmy by the hand, but all the while they were eyeing Siobhan and her impressive partner as they stood to one side of the crowd. Gradually they began to move so that Siobhan and the conjuror rather than Jimmy and Florrie were at the centre.
‘Time we was moving along,’ Harry said loudly.
He shouldered a gap through the bodies and stood back so that his sister and her new husband could lead the way back to Trinidad Street, then took his mother’s arm and fell in behind. The rest of the Turners and Crofts followed on, along with Ellen and Gerry, until the others realized what was going on and straggled along as well. Siobhan, seeing that she was being outflanked, used her carrying stage voice to speak to the conjuror.
‘Do you want to come and see the next bit? So amusing for you.’
It was a wrong move. Those who still flocked round her were not impressed, but offended. They weren’t so dazzled that they had forgotten that she was really one of them.
‘Who does she bloody think she is?’ they muttered to each other.
Siobhan had to make do with the stares and remarks of passers-by as they made their way along the drab streets to her old home.
Everyone piled in to the Rum Puncheon. The O’Donaghues, hearing that their famous relation had turned up, came along in force. It was only a small pub and everyone was standing shoulder to shoulder, shouting at each other above the din, while glasses were passed from hand to hand over the heads of the crowd to those near the door with no chance of reaching the bar. There was one topic of conversation – Siobhan.
‘I could ring her flaming neck,’ Ellen said. She felt quite sick with resentment. ‘How dare she come along like this and steal Florrie’s day? How dare she?’
All the hatred she held for Siobhan on her own behalf came out in defence of her friend,
‘What did she have to do it for? What is she trying to prove? She’s the most cruel and wicked person I know.’
‘Can’t bear not to be the star of the show,’ Alma agreed. ‘Blooming selfish, I call it.’
‘Who went and invited her, anyway?’ Harry wanted to know. ‘The
O’Donaghues can’t have, not to the church, not with them being Catholic and all.’
‘They must’ve told her about it,’ Alma said.
‘How? She ain’t been near them for months. How come she pops up now?’
‘They could’ve written,’ Ellen suggested.
Nobody thought this was likely. Most of them could write, as they had been forced to at school, but only Ellen would have thought of sending a letter. The whole thing was a mystery. Nobody noticed Will’s silence on the subject, and only Maisie saw him begin to edge away in Siobhan’s direction.
‘Sod her,’ Alma declared, when their anger had been fully aired. ‘What are we talking about her for, anyway? Here’s to Florrie and Jimmy. Long life and happiness, and may all their troubles be little ones.’
‘Florrie and Jimmy!’ they all shouted, raising their glasses.
The toast was taken up round the packed bar.
‘Speech, speech!’ somebody yelled.
‘Yeah, come on, Jim, give us a speech!’
There was much cheering and hushing. Something near to silence was achieved, broken by uncontrolled giggling and shouts of encouragement. Jimmy was red in the face with heat, excitement and embarrassment. With a lot of help from his brother, he managed to stumble through thanks to the Turners and references to his new missus. The whole bar clapped and yelled its approval.
More drinks were called for and everyone toasted the happy couple again. Even Florrie was looking flushed and relaxed now. She hung on Jimmy’s arm, smiling at everyone and constantly looking up at her new husband.
It was only then that Harry realized he was no longer supporting his mother. At some point, she had managed to slip away. He almost said ‘Where’s Mum?’ out loud, before stopping himself just in time. Fetching her back would do no good, and pointing out her absence to Florrie would ruin her happiness. He kissed his sister and thumped his new brother-in-law on the back.
‘Glad to have you in the family, mate.’
The initiative did not stay long in the hands of the bridal group. Siobhan and the Great Cornelius were slowly threading their way through the guests to join them. A wary hush fell as they approached.
Siobhan stretched out her arms to take Florrie by the shoulders and kiss her on both cheeks.
‘Florrie, love! I’m so happy for you. And you too, Jimmy. You’re a lucky man, d’you know that?’ She kissed the groom as well and made him redder than ever, if that was possible. Even her accent was designed to set her apart. The Irish brogue had almost been wiped away. She did not talk like the rest of them, but neither did she sound like the gentry they had occasionally come into contact with, such as the ladies at the Settlement. She was strangely unplaceable.
She turned to her escort, who was standing at her shoulder, a mysterious area of silence in the midst of the hubbub. He handed her a parcel wrapped in silver paper and tied with white ribbons.
‘We brought a little something for you both,’ she said, handing it to Florrie.
‘Oh.’ Florrie was floored. Nothing as exotic as this had ever come her way in all her life. She stood staring at the object.
‘Do open it,’ Siobhan encouraged her, a patronizing edge to her sweetness.
Florrie tugged at the bows and opened the box. She pulled gingerly at the tissue paper inside. A cut-glass knob appeared. A few more layers of paper and a decanter was revealed, Waterford crystal with a gold rim. The light from the pub lamps danced and sparkled off the facets in tiny rainbows. Florrie and the others stared at it, dumbstruck.
‘I thought it might come in handy for your new home,’ Siobhan said.
Of one accord, they all pictured the one bare room the bridal couple were going to occupy. The contrast with the opulence of the decanter was almost too much to bear.
Ellen was so incensed she thought she was going to burst. She wanted to fly at Siobhan and claw her face for showing up her friends in this way, for lording it over all of them and rubbing their faces in their poverty. She could not let her get away with it.
‘You had some of them on the stall, didn’t you, Gerry?’ she said in her most penetrating voice. ‘Didn’t sell very well though. People round here don’t care for that sort of thing much.’
There was a moment of complete quiet. Scarcely a breath was taken. Everyone looked at Siobhan to see how she would take it. The smile stayed on her face, but her eyes were cold steel.
‘You can always take it to the pawnshop if you’re a bit short,’ she said.
It was such a stark truth that the listeners almost nodded in agreement. With a thing like that to put away, Florrie and Jimmy would be set up.
Florrie found her voice. She thrust the present back at Siobhan.
‘Thanks all the same, but I don’t think me and Jimmy’ll be needing it.’
Siobhan opened her mouth and shut it again. For a moment it looked as if she was going to turn tail and go, defeated. But she did not give up that easily.
‘I suppose it was stupid of me to think you’d like anything so fine. It’s not what you’d use to put brown ale in, is it? Never mind, it will go with the others I’ve got on my sideboard. They look nice in the electric light.’
She swept round and made off, people parting to let her through despite the lack of space.
‘They look nice in the electric light,’ Ellen mimicked savagely.
Everyone gave vent to their feeling in a gust of raucous laughter. The phrase was repeated until all the sting had gone out of it. Or nearly all. Siobhan left without bestowing her attention on anyone else, but she left behind her poison, like a nasty taste in the mouth after an evening’s drinking. The celebrations seemed deliberately noisy, the jollity just a shade forced.
Before the evening was half over, Jimmy and Florrie tried to get away. If they thought to slip out unnoticed they were completely foiled. Their move towards the door was spotted and a chorus of hoots, whistles and suggestive remarks went up.
‘We know where they’re going!’
‘Get to it, Jimmy boy!’
‘Hold on tight, darling.’
‘Give it all you got.’
The younger and rowdier element followed them into the street and waited outside number forty after they went in. They shouted and whistled as a light showed in the front bedroom and again even louder when it went out. They hung around for quite a while, doing their best to put the newlyweds off their stroke, before finally deciding that they needed another drink they ambled back to the Puncheon, where the singing had begun.
Florrie and Jimmy were on their own at last.
It was a long day. Teddy was cutting some back teeth and had been crying on and off during the night and fretful all day. Jessica, jealous of the attention he was getting, was being difficult. By late afternoon, Ellen could cheerfully have murdered both of them. She was beginning to understand why it was that Maisie never seemed to be in control.
‘Once the school holidays are here, I’m going to pay some girl to take you off my hands,’ she warned them.
Jessica, who could understand, burst into tears. Teddy could not, but picked up the threat in her voice and followed suit. Ellen thrust them both into the back yard.
‘If you’re going to yell, you can do it out there,’ she said, slamming the door and locking it.
She banged around the kitchen, getting tea ready for the lodgers, trying to shut her ears to the wailing coming in through the window.
‘And I suppose you’ll be late in again,’ she said out loud to the absent Gerry. ‘Don’t know why I bother cooking for you. Never know when you’re going to be here.’
Her head ached with fatigue and her whole body felt heavy. She caught hold of a pan handle without using the holder and burnt her hand. Tears welled up in her eyes and threatened to spill over.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘perhaps I’m expecting again.’
She had been tearful like this before both the babies. Another one was the last thing she wanted at the moment. She tried to remember her dates. No, she couldn’t be. But instead of relief she felt only further resentment. She couldn’t be, because she and Gerry had not made love since her last period. After the enthusiasm of the first few months of marriage, they had fallen into a habit of a once-weekly session. When she was heavily pregnant and for weeks after the births, Gerry had left her alone, saying that he was sure she would rather not do it at the moment. When the other mothers enquired whether he ‘bothered’ her too soon, she could reply that he was kindness itself, thinking only of her and how she felt. The women were envious. Despite breast-feeding their babies, nearly all of them had at one time or another fallen pregnant within weeks of giving birth.
But there was no such excuse now. It was just that Gerry did not seem to want her very often. Ellen put down the pan lid with a clatter and went to look at herself in the glass over the mantelpiece in the parlour. The face that looked back at her was haggard with lack of sleep, with bags forming under the eyes. It was flushed from the summer heat and the cooking and framed with lank hair that straggled out of a bun at the back. Still, she decided, that was no reason. Today was a bad day. She didn’t always look like this. When she cleaned up and put on a decent dress, she looked just as good as she always had. She smoothed her skirt over her hips. She still had a good figure, not too skinny, not too fat.
It wasn’t her, it was Gerry. And into her head slid the thought that Harry would not have gone off her like this. Her eyes were drawn to the front window. He might be back soon. If she sat out on the front step to shell the peas, he might stop and talk before he went in.
The temptation was too much to resist. She acknowledged what it was that was making her so short-tempered and emotional – she needed desperately to be looked on as a woman, a desirable woman, not just a mother and provider of meals. What was more, it wasn’t Gerry she wanted to look at her in that way, it was Harry. She hurried out the back to splash cold water over her face and run a comb through her hair, loosening the bun a little for a softer effect and pinning up most of the stray ends. From the back yard came the sounds of pitiful howling. Ellen listened, frozen, pulled between two loves. Then she relented. She unlocked the door and leant out.
‘All right, all right, you can come in. Mum ain’t really cross with you.’
Both children were dirty, their faces streaked with tears. Teddy hurled himself at her legs, holding on round her knees and effectively stopping her from moving. Jessica just stood glaring at her, sobs racking her small chest.
‘Come here, ducks,’ Ellen said, holding out her free arm. Slowly Jessica came.
She wiped their faces with a damp rag.
‘We’ll go and sit out the front. I expect there’ll be someone out there for you to play with.’
Jessica immediately perked up, but Teddy stayed clinging to her. With difficulty, Ellen shuffled to the front door, holding a pan and a bag of peas.
‘You can play with the pods,’ she told them both.
It had been hot all day, and the little houses were as stuffy as ovens. Outside, it was little better, with the smells from the river and the factories hanging heavily in the still air, but at least Ellen’s house faced north, so that the sun was off the front of it. She propped the door open and sat on the step with her back against the frame and the pan on her knees. Teddy leant against her and wiped his nose on her skirt. Up and down the street, other women were peeling potatoes or smearing marge on bread. Ellen waved or nodded to them, calling out to the nearer ones. In the road, children played in a lacklustre fashion, the boys at cricket with a flat piece of wood and a rag ball, the girls at five stones or cat’s cradle. Jessica wandered off to watch one pair, and was graciously allowed to hold the string once or twice. Teddy was still snivelling. Ellen looked down at him. She did not want him hanging round making that awful noise when Harry came by.
‘Do go and play,’ she said, giving him a little push. ‘Here, I have some pea pods. Pretty!’