Winnie of the Waterfront (4 page)

Between them they had made such a mess of the place that it took the heart out of her trying to keep it clean, so she gave up bothering. She’d never been fond of housework and since Mick hadn’t seemed to notice whether there were clean sheets on the bed or clean dishes on the table she’d stopped worrying. As long as there was a hot meal waiting for him when he got home, together with a plentiful supply of beer and a full packet of fags within easy reach, he was as happy as a sandboy.
Fish
and chips or faggots and peas were his favourites. The shop on the corner did both, so she usually nipped out five minutes before he was due home and bought two portions for him and one for herself. Now and again, as a special treat on a Sunday when the shop was closed, she’d do him a big greasy fry-up. Eggs, bacon, sausages, black pudding, a couple of thick slices of fried bread, and a handful of mushrooms or a tomato if she had them handy.

Trevor had different tastes altogether. She usually had her fish and chips, or pie and chips, before he came home because he preferred what she called rabbit food. A couple of slices of ham or beef with a salad was his favourite. He said that fried food was greasy and claimed that even chips gave him indigestion.

Trevor had tried to get her to eat fresh vegetables and fruit when she’d been pregnant. She’d picked at them while he was around and pretended to eat them, then the minute he was out of the door and had gone off to work she’d get the old frying pan out. If she didn’t have any bacon and eggs then she’d make herself a couple of pieces of dripping toast to keep her going until midday, and then nip to the chippy for proper nosh.

Trevor would have done his nut if he’d known. He was always on about how important it was that she ate all the right things so that the baby would be strong and healthy. He stopped her smoking fags and even wanted her to give up drinking.

A shudder went through her at the memory of
the
day when she’d been rushed into hospital because they thought she was having a miscarriage. Trevor had been beside himself with worry.

Winnie had been born premature, small and as wizened as an old crone. Grace never thought the baby would make it through the night. Prayed, in fact, that she wouldn’t. Having to raise a child at her age didn’t bear thinking about. There was something obscene and unnatural about it.

Winnie had survived, though. When Grace brought her home she’d left most of the work of caring for her to Trevor, since he couldn’t get enough of her. He had doted on the child from the moment she’d been born. You’d think she was the only kid in the world the way he carried on, Grace thought disparagingly.

Grace had fed her during the day to stop her crying, but she didn’t bother about changing her or any of that palaver. She left all that for Trevor to see to when he came home. It was his kid, after all. Trevor never complained. He pampered her and treated her like a princess. He bought her little dresses, taught her to feed herself, and encouraged her to walk and talk.

Grace had to admit that Winnie had turned out to be a pretty little thing. With her jet-black ringlets and big turquoise-blue eyes she was a little head-turner.

Trevor made so much fuss of her, though, that when Winnie had just turned four and went down with a cold and started to run a temperature he’d immediately said they must send for the doctor. His fussing had annoyed Grace. She’d dug her
heels
in and insisted that it was only a bit of a cold.

‘She’ll get a lot more of those when she starts school in a few months’ time,’ she’d told him.

‘This isn’t a normal cold,’ he’d insisted doggedly, and he’d looked so concerned that she’d almost given in and believed him.

She truly hadn’t realised how bad the kid was, not until Trevor went and fetched the doctor and he’d taken one look at Winnie and rushed her off to the isolation hospital. ‘Infantile paralysis’, the doctor called it, and she was in the isolation hospital for months. Several times it was touch and go whether she would pull through or not.

If she’d known what the outcome was going to be, Grace thought, she’d have prayed a damn sight harder than she had that Winnie would never come home again. The sight of her twisted little body when she did come home was heart-rending. The only thing she’d ever seen that was anything like it was a boy who’d lived near them when her own lot were tots. His deformity had been a bad case of rickets.

Grace couldn’t believe that Winnie’s deformity was the result of a snuffly nose and a bit of a fever. She felt guilty, wondering if there was more to it than that and if it was because she’d had her so late in life.

Trevor had been like a man demented all the time Winnie was in hospital. He’d haunted the place, going there every night straight from work. For a long time they wouldn’t let him go onto the ward, but only let him look at her through
a
glass screen. When, eventually, he’d seen her twisted little legs and was told that it was unlikely that she would ever walk again, he had been heartbroken. Since then he couldn’t do enough for her. He began talking about buying an invalid chair so that he could take her out. Grace had managed to scotch that idea when she’d discovered what a cumbersome contraption it was, with its big wooden wheels in front and wicker seat.

‘All you need is a second-hand pram,’ she told him. ‘That’ll serve the purpose just as well, since she’s only small.’

‘You can’t put a girl who’s almost five into a pram, even if she does have both her legs strapped up in irons,’ he’d argued.

In the end, though, he changed his tune. He bought a second-hand pushchair and did some work on it and adapted it so that it looked a bit like a miniature invalid carriage.

He walked for miles with her in it, took her to the parks, down to the dockside, round the shops in town. Anywhere she fancied going, he’d take her. Every Sunday he took her to church and parked the carriage in the porch, carried her inside in his arms and nursed her on his knees throughout the service.

The rift between Grace and Trevor widened into a chasm when he started taking time off so that he could be with Winnie, claiming that Grace didn’t care for her properly. Grace felt angry and sank into a depression that was only made bearable by frequent nips of gin. Most evenings, as
soon
as Trevor came home she’d saunter off to the Swan or the Eagle and meet up with cronies she’d known when Michael was alive and they’d had regular nights out. To keep her going during the daytime she kept bottles of gin hidden at the back of the cupboards, away from prying eyes, so that she could fortify herself with a nip or two when things got too much for her.

Trevor expected her to wait on Winnie and keep her happy and amused while he was at work. He even thought she should take her out for a walk somewhere when it was a nice day.

‘You’re not catching me pushing that bloody contraption into town or anywhere else, except to the corner shop,’ she told him heatedly. ‘That’s quite far enough for me and I wouldn’t even take it there except that I can load the shopping in it so that it saves me having to hump it home,’ she told him in no uncertain manner.

Her own family, Mick and his wife Mavis, Paddy and his Sandra, and even her Kathleen and her hubby Frank, all insisted that Winnie ought to be put into a home. ‘She’s too much for you, Mam,’ they kept telling her. ‘You shouldn’t be lifting her or running round waiting on her, not at your age.’

Grace agreed with them wholeheartedly although she didn’t breathe a word about what they said to Trevor.

For a long time her older children all refused point-blank to visit, in case whatever it was that Winnie was suffering from was infectious and their own children caught it.

Even now, four years after Winnie was first taken ill, they were still reluctant to come to the house and still shunned Winnie as if she had the plague.

Chapter Four

THE OFFICIAL LETTER
informing Trevor Malloy the date he must report to the Recruiting Office stood on the mantelpiece for almost a week. He only spotted it when he was looking for a piece of scrap paper to use as a spill. Wedged in amongst all the other clutter, the buff-coloured envelope was almost indiscernible.

He had a premonition about what it might be, and felt sick in the pit of his stomach as he slit open the envelope and drew out the official-looking letter inside. He read it over and over again, but he still couldn’t credit it. Every week there were men he knew who worked on the dockside leaving to join the army, but he’d never imagined he’d ever be one of them.

Trevor hated violence. When he’d been growing up in Ireland he’d been aware of the deep feelings between Catholics and Protestants but he’d never been able to understand such hatred. He’d always vowed that no matter what happened he’d never take part, never become involved. He’d felt the same way about things when hostilities had broken out in Europe. When the British had declared war on Germany in 1914 he’d wanted no part of it.

He stared unseeingly at the official notice he was holding in his hands, wondering if there was
anything
at all he could do to avoid complying with it. He wasn’t a coward, even though he hated the thought of battle. His concern was more personal than that. It was Winnie he was worried about. What would happen to her if he was called up and sent away from home? She was so helpless, so vulnerable. He knew instinctively that Grace wouldn’t take care of her like he did. Grace wasn’t in the least bit understanding or tolerant. She had no sympathy when fear sat on Winnie’s shoulders like evil black devils and tortured her.

If only he could find some legitimate loophole. If he refused to comply, or told them he was a conshy, then he’d end up in prison or he’d be sent to some sort of work camp. Either way, the results would be the same. Winnie would be left to the mercy of Grace.

For one wild moment he thought of clearing off back to Ireland and taking Winnie with him. It was a crazy idea and he wasn’t sure if it would work. If they traced him they’d drag him back to England and it would then be either prison or the army. And what would happen to Winnie if he had to abandon her in Ireland?

He looked at the letter again, trying to focus on what it said. The date when he was to report to the Recruiting Office in Dale Street jumped out and hit him like a fist in the face.

He knuckled his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. He looked again, still unable to believe what he was seeing. Today was Tuesday 12th September 1916. The date he’d been told to report was Thursday 14th. Less than two days left to make
arrangements,
to explain to Winnie what was happening, to ensure that Grace knew what was expected of her.

Suddenly, every minute, every second mattered. There was so much to do, so many things to take care of, so many loose ends to secure. Explaining to Winnie was going to be the hardest part of all. The sooner he did it, the better.

The next morning, Winnie listened in wide-eyed silence when he told her that he would be going away for a while to be a soldier, because the King needed him to help win the war.

She smiled gravely. ‘I’ve seen the King on the posters,’ she told him. ‘He’s that man in uniform, pointing his finger and saying “Your Country Needs You!”’

Trevor ruffled her black curls, which now reached to her shoulders. ‘No, love, he’s not the King. That’s Lord Kitchener, the man who looks after all the soldiers and tells them what they have to do.’

She nodded, chewing on her lower lip. ‘Does Mam know you’re leaving us?’

‘Not yet, precious. I wanted to tell you first.’

She stared at him solemnly and for a moment Trevor thought she was going to cry. ‘You’ll be a wonderful soldier, Daddy, but I’ll miss you. Will Mam take me out in my chair when you’ve gone away?’

Trevor rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘Oh, I’m sure she will. I’ll tell her that’s what you want to happen.’

Grace was nowhere near as understanding as Winnie had been. ‘You, a bloody soldier?’ she sneered. She shook a cigarette out of the packet of Woodbines lying on the table and stuck it in the corner of her mouth. ‘You’re too lily-livered for that sort of life. The other blokes’ll make mincemeat of you!’ she added cynically.

He watched as she drew hard on the cigarette and then blew out a fug of grey smoke. Did he have to go, he asked himself. Did he have to leave his dear, sweet little Winnie in this woman’s care? Grace might be his wife, but she was certainly no mother to their daughter.

Where was this merciful God that Father Patrick talked so much about and kept telling him to pray to for help and guidance. He thought of all the Masses he’d paid for and the candles he’d lit and wondered where God was now and why He wasn’t helping him.

He had only one day left before he was due to report to the Recruiting Office; one day to sort out this terrible dilemma and to try and persuade Grace to change her ways and act more responsibly.

Perhaps he should ask Winnie’s teacher, Miss Phillips, if she could help him in some way. It would mean telling her the truth about the way Grace neglected Winnie, of course, and he wondered if that was wise. Supposing she reported it to some higher authority! They might decide that if Winnie wasn’t being looked after properly by her own mother, then, since she was a cripple, perhaps she ought to go into a home.

Winnie had settled in so well at school; she was learning fast and she had made friends with lots of other children. Most of them, though, were only her own age, or a year or so older, so they were too young to be of any real help. He tried to remember what Winnie had told him about them. The only one he remembered was the redheaded boy, Sandy somebody or other. He was the one who now wheeled her into school each morning and back out again at night. She’d told him that this boy also wheeled her carriage out into the playground every dinnertime when the weather was fine.

Perhaps he could ask this Sandy to keep an eye on Winnie. He might even be able to persuade him to wheel her to and from school each day, since he was pretty sure Grace would never bother to do so.

Trevor was at the school early that afternoon, intent on talking to Sandy. He was in time to spot a redheaded boy pushing Winnie’s chair out of the school towards the niche by the gate. Trevor’s heart lifted when he saw the ease with which the boy manipulated her chair across the playground.