Winnie of the Waterfront (2 page)

Knowing she was pregnant changed things dramatically. She was so upset, so distraught, that he’d felt overcome by guilt. On the spur of the moment he offered to marry her. It was his way of letting her know that he was prepared to accept his full responsibility for the baby, and to prove that he would be there for her when the time came. He had hoped it would help her to accept the situation more happily.

It hadn’t, of course. The first thing she had insisted on was that they should move. She couldn’t bear what the neighbours were saying about them and the way they were carrying on. She’d said she couldn’t hold her head up because of the names they were calling her.

To some extent Trevor could understand her concern about this. He’d also realised that she’d already raised one family, and she even had grandchildren, which was why the thought of having another baby
to
bring up when she’d thought all that was behind her was probably extremely daunting.

He hadn’t felt that way, of course. He was excited and rather overawed at the thought of being a father. In some ways he’d thought it might prove easier having a wife who’d been through motherhood before, rather than a young inexperienced girl who’d have no idea of how to cope.

He’d been wrong about that as well. All through her pregnancy, Grace was brimming with anger and resentment. She’d blamed him for her condition, almost as if she’d played no part whatsoever in what had happened.

She’d been five months pregnant when they got married. It had been a hole-in-the-corner affair early one Monday morning, the 24th February 1908, when they were sure everyone would be at work. Father Patrick’s housekeeper and the church cleaner had been their witnesses.

They’d moved from Grace’s old home in Luther Court to a small two-up two-down in Elias Street. That had been a midnight flit because she’d refused to take any of her old stuff with her. She’d insisted on having everything new, and since they’d had no savings they’d had to resort to buying all their furniture and furnishings on the never-never and the debt-collector had been calling ever since.

When a couple of months later she was rushed into hospital, and Winnie was born prematurely on Sunday 3rd May, Grace blamed him. Her words were so engraved on his mind that he could hear them to this day. ‘This is all your fault, you bloody young upstart. It’s because you turfed me
out
of my home, where I’d been for over thirty years.’

When he’d visited her in hospital she’d horrified him still further by saying she’d prayed to the Holy Mother that the baby wouldn’t survive. He couldn’t believe his ears. Such wickedness was beyond his comprehension. Aghast, he’d gone to see Father Patrick and begged him for guidance.

‘Don’t take the poor soul’s rantings to heart, my son,’ Father Patrick had told him. ‘Pray to Our Lady and try not to worry. New mothers often suffer from depression and say terrible things that they don’t really mean. In a few days time she probably won’t even remember that she said anything of the sort.’

However, Grace didn’t forget her wild, wicked words. She’d meant them! She’d hated the poor little mite from the moment she was born.

Trevor chose the name Winnie in memory of his own dear mam. In his eyes the baby was as pretty as a doll and he was besotted by her. In the months and years that followed he found it hard to forgive Grace for the way she neglected her.

She also neglected him, their home, and even herself. Half the time she didn’t even bother to change her stained dress or take off her dirty apron before she went out shopping. Often she didn’t wash her face or comb her hair from one day to the next.

She aged years in as many months. The weight she’d put on while she’d been expecting Winnie stayed, and because she did less and less housework it gradually increased. Her face became
bloated,
her skin muddy, and she looked blowsy and unkempt.

Trevor sometimes felt like leaving Grace, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that because it would be a mortal sin to break his marriage vows to her. And he loved Winnie more than he’d ever dreamed possible. He had to protect her. It became his mission in life. She occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else. He was loath to leave her in the morning and couldn’t get back to her quickly enough at night.

As she progressed through babyhood, every stage of her development filled him with wonder and delight. Her first smile, her first steps and then her first words were all important milestones to him. She blossomed in every way, growing prettier every day.

The more he looked after her, the less Grace did. The greater care he took of Winnie, the more Grace seemed to neglect her. As a result, the rift between him and Grace widened irreparably. This upset Trevor and left him feeling inadequate. He wanted to be a good husband as well as a capable father.

The climax had come with Winnie’s illness when she was four. He’d known there was more wrong with her than a sniffling cold, but Grace wouldn’t believe him. He was sure that the delay in calling the doctor and getting her into hospital for treatment had been the reason she’d developed infantile paralysis.

That had been a nightmare. It was a punishment for all his mortal sins; for bedding a woman old enough to be his mother. All his prayers and
begging
God for atonement seemed to be in vain. He haunted the hospital; he lit candles in the church; he paid Father Patrick to offer up special Masses for her recovery.

Winnie hadn’t died – at least he’d been spared that – but she was crippled, and that was an even greater punishment. It was a day-by-day reminder that she was bearing the brunt of his sins.

He didn’t know which had caused him the greatest grief, seeing her so helpless or dealing with Grace’s taunts and jibes when he’d brought her home a few days before Christmas 1912. Or perhaps it was Grace’s ongoing resentment.

Most of the time, Winnie had a sweet nature and was uncomplaining. It was only when the nightmares surfaced that there was any real problem. He could handle it, but Grace was completely intolerant.

‘All she needs is a good slap across the backside when she starts that bloody screaming instead of pandering to her tantrums,’ she told him scornfully.

It worried him to even think about what Grace might do if he was ever ill or not around when Winnie was in the throes of one of her nightmares.

Chapter Two

WINNIE MALLOY COULD
barely remember ever being able to walk or run like other children.

She remembered that sometimes her dad had carried her on his shoulders when she’d been very small. She’d held on tight to his mop of black wavy hair, her heart pounding because she was afraid that she might fall off.

She’d been able to run and skip and jump in those days. Her dad had played ball with her and taught her to skip. He’d tied one end of a length of rope to the lamppost outside their house, and while he held the other end and turned the rope over and over in the air, she had jumped over it.

When the weather was nice he’d taken her to the park to feed the ducks. There had been pretty flowers and a big lake. On hot summer days he’d let her tuck her dress up inside the elastic of her knicker legs and take off her shoes and socks and paddle in the water.

At Christmas-time he had carried her into town to see all the lights and pretty decorations in the shop windows, and to gaze at a huge Christmas tree that stood outside St George’s Hall. They’d listened to the Salvation Army band playing on their drums and tambourines as they sang Christmas carols.

Those were the happy memories, the ones which she brought out from her memory box when she was feeling sad, because thinking about them always cheered her up.

Then there was the long time when she’d felt too ill to smile or talk to anyone. Only her dad had seemed to understand how she felt. He would sit by her bedside for hours, simply holding her hand, not expecting her to say anything.

She had tried to blot out those long days of suffering when she had been lying flat on her back in a hard, uncomfortable hospital bed. She’d been so weak that she’d been unable to even turn onto her side. She hadn’t even had the strength to try and push away the bedclothes when they smothered her face, too ill to even call out for help.

She could remember how the nurses came and washed her face and hands and straightened her bed when the matron and doctors were about to make their daily rounds. Some of the nurses tucked the sheets in so tightly that she could hardly breathe. When they’d finished they pulled up the iron bars at the sides of the bed to make sure she didn’t fall out. She’d felt completely imprisoned.

At mealtimes the nurses spooned some horrible milky sludge or thick soup into her mouth, and made her swallow even though it almost choked her to do so. They were cross and scolded her when it dribbled out of the side of her mouth and soiled the sheets.

The worst part of all had been when the nurses and doctors stretched and pulled at her legs. The pain had been unbearable. They tried to cheer her
up
by telling her that they were doing it for her own good so that one day she would be able to get out of bed and perhaps even walk again.

She’d thought that day would never come, because back then she was so weak that she couldn’t even sit on the edge of the bed or hold her head up without someone supporting her.

Now she was older she often wondered whether being crippled and unable to move was the same as being buried alive. Some of the time when she’d been in hospital she had felt that it must be.

Ever since then, since she was four years old, her legs had been encased in cruel iron supports to try and straighten them. It meant that the only way she could really get about was in the funny old cart that her dad had made for her.

Other people might think it was an old pram, dolled up to look like an invalid carriage, but to her it was magical. It meant that she didn’t have to stay in the house all the time, but could get out and go places.

True, she had to rely on someone to push her, but when her dad was at home he was always willing to do that. She loved it when he raced down Water Street. They went so fast that sometimes she was terrified that they were going to run straight into the Mersey. He always managed to stop in time, though, before they reached the edge of the waterfront.

Coming back up was not so easy for him, though. He’d be puffing and panting like a dray-horse by the time they reached the top of Dale Street. Then he’d take it slow, struggling to get his
breath
back as he pushed her home along Scotland Road.

Her mam was no good at all at pushing her. She said that even taking her to the corner shop and back again made her back ache. As for taking her anywhere else, that was completely out of the question. Even when they went to Mass on Sunday it was her dad who pushed her there and back.

When she’d first come home from hospital, a few days before Christmas 1912, she’d simply lain in bed every day. She’d been so weak that everyone said it was too cold for her to go out. She hadn’t got the invalid carriage then, so it had meant that her dad had to carry her and they had to catch a tram if they wanted to go into town or anywhere else. That was why he’d been so determined to make the carriage for her.

When he’d first talked about getting one her mam had been against it, because she said they cost too much for the likes of them. ‘If our Winnie has to go out to visit the hospital or the doctor and you aren’t there to carry her then I’ll borrow a pram and take her in that,’ she’d stated.

Her dad didn’t like the sound of that so he’d gone out and bought a second-hand pushchair and changed it into an invalid carriage by putting a long wooden platform on it to take her legs. When he’d finished he told her that it was a magic chariot that would take her anywhere in the world that she wanted to go.

‘What’s the point of filling her mind with such nonsense,’ her mam had said angrily.

When, on her sixth birthday in May 1914, she’d
asked,
‘Could I go to school in it?’ her mam had been very dismissive.

‘How can you learn lessons, crippled like you are?’ she’d snapped.

‘She can learn to read and write and do sums the same as any other little girl,’ her dad had argued.

‘She’d never be able to manage in school, she can’t even walk across the floor on her own. She’d be knocked down and trampled on. She wouldn’t fit into any of the desks, either, with those legs of hers.’

‘She wouldn’t have to fit into a desk if she sat in her special chair all day,’ her dad pointed out. ‘I’ll talk to Father Patrick and see what he has to say about it.’

‘He’ll tell you that you’re a puddle-headed fool!’

Father Patrick had looked thoughtful and promised to have a word with the school. The next thing they knew, Father Patrick was telling her dad to take her along in her invalid chair to see the head teacher, so that she could decide whether it was feasible for Winnie to attend classes or not.

Miss Phillips, the head teacher at St Francis Infants School, considered the situation very carefully and then finally gave her consent. ‘There is a problem because she’s never attended school before, even though she is six years old,’ she frowned. ‘I’m afraid she will have to go into the bottom class with the very young children who are just starting school.’

Winnie didn’t see that it mattered, not as long as she was at school. It seemed to worry Miss
Phillips
though, so Winnie promised she would work hard and learn all her lessons so quickly that next year she could be in the same class as children of her own age.

She’d achieved it. She was so anxious to learn, especially to be able to read, that she really put her mind to it. She begged to be allowed to take her books home so that her dad could help her each evening when he came in from work.

At first her invalid chair had been something of a problem because it took up so much space in the classroom. However, once Miss Phillips found the right spot for it, where it was in no one’s way, it was as though it was just another one of the fixtures in the room. Winnie was wheeled into the special space first thing in the morning and she stayed in the same spot all day. At lunchtime she sat there on her own and ate the jam butties her dad had made for her before they left home.