The following Saturday morning Angela and Connie were almost ready to go. Each had a bag with cloths and various cleaning materials in, and a scarf to cover their hair, when suddenly the door opened (for no one locked doors in that area) and Maggie stepped in.
‘You off out?’ she asked.
Angela had a big smile on her face as she answered, ‘Yes, and you will never guess where to, not in a million years.’
‘I haven’t got a million years to spare,’ Maggie retorted. ‘So you best tell me.’
‘George Maitland’s shop, or to be more precise, the flat above the shop that needs a darned good clean.’
To say Maggie was surprised would be an understatement. ‘And why on earth are you cleaning it?’
And so Angela told Maggie how it had come about. ‘It’s been empty some time and it’s in a bit of a state,’ she said. ‘And Stan didn’t ask, I offered.’
‘More fool you,’ Maggie said. ‘Won’t be the first time you cleaned his place for him either.’
‘I know,’ Angela said. ‘I reminded him of that, don’t worry.’
‘Won’t it feel strange going in there again after all this time?’
‘Maybe,’ Angela admitted. ‘But I am interested in meeting this Harry and seeing what he’s done to the shop. Stan said he gutted the place, had to really by all accounts because of the state Matilda and her odious sister, Dorothy, left it in. Why don’t you come and give us a hand?’
‘I can’t,’ Maggie said. ‘I actually called to tell you something pretty sad. Michael’s father had a heart attack last night.’
‘Oh God, is he all right?’
‘Well he didn’t die,’ Maggie said. ‘Not straight away anyway, but Michael went with his mother in the ambulance. One of their neighbours came banging on our door in the small hours and Michael got dressed and set off. I don’t know what they told his mother – Michael said Hilda was beside herself and probably would have been incapable of understanding much said to her. They were probably relieved Michael was there. Anyway, the upshot of it was they don’t think the old man will survive this, his heart is too weak.’
‘Ah,’ Angela said. ‘And here’s me going on about the shop.’
‘Well, you weren’t to know,’ Maggie pointed out. ‘And it is a shame, because Alf is a decent old soul.’
‘I know you like him better than Michael’s mother.’
Maggie grimaced and said, ‘Hilda would be all right if she would stop fussing round Michael. She’s like a mother hen and he doesn’t like it, says it makes him feel about six.’
‘Some mothers of sons are like that, they can’t bear the thought that some woman is going to be more important in their son’s life than them.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘I think she can’t get over the fact that Michael losing his leg made no difference to the way I felt about him,’ she said. ‘And now, since he has had the artificial leg fitted, few would guess he is disabled at all apart from the limp he has.’
Maggie was right, Michael had made an amazing recovery. It hadn’t all been plain sailing for there had been some chafing on his stump at first. The hospital had showed Maggie how to dress it with salve and muslin bandages before fitting the artificial leg, instructing him to make only short journeys using the leg to begin with. This had been the hardest part for Michael, who had been keen to get rid of the crutches. However, Maggie had been firm and now Michael could wear the leg all day with no discomfort except on days of intense heat. And, as Maggie said, days of intense heat in England were few and far between so that wasn’t a problem either.
Hilda couldn’t seem to see this improvement in her son though. The vision of him lying in a hospital bed after he returned from France pale and sick and missing a leg, and later hobbling round on crutches, was etched on her mind.
‘Can’t really blame Hilda,’ Maggie said. ‘I mean, she had a fine family once but she lost her eldest boy in the war and two young girls to Spanish flu and actively encouraged her next eldest son and two other girls to go to America. To lose so many children in such a relatively short space of time must have caused great heart-ache. Neighbours told me she cried for days. Alf was far more stoical and then when Michael came home sick and needing her she lavished all the attention on him. Understandable really.’
‘Course it is and I don’t think bottling things up helps either. Alf not letting himself openly grieve might have contributed to this heart attack.’
‘Could well have done,’ Maggie agreed. ‘Anyway, I best be getting on.’
‘We must too,’ Angela said. Later, as they scurried towards Maitland’s shop, she wondered if Alf died, or became too disabled to work, how much that would affect Michael and Maggie. Alf and Hilda ran a small guest-house in one of the big houses in Pershore Road and, despite it being a small concern, she doubted Hilda could cope with it on her own.
She didn’t share her concerns with Connie, who was in any case more interested in the shop where her mammy had worked before she had been born. She wanted to see what sort of person had taken it on from George Maitland, the man who had thought so much of her mammy he had left her his mother’s jewellery. Not that she could let on to her mother that she knew about that; her grandmother had told her in confidence.
Angela approached the store with a little trepidation but she needed have worried. This Harry obviously had a genuine interest in the shop, for it looked spruce and clean, large glass windows replaced the much smaller ones. The sign above the door that read ‘Maitland’s Store’ in bright yellow letters was a great improvement on the old one.
She opened the door and a tinkly little tune rang out and Harry, who was serving a customer, looked up. The shop was full as it often was on Saturday, though there was no one Angela recognised. Nonetheless, she was rather mesmerised by the store. She had thought maybe she might feel a nostalgic tug, but she didn’t. Harry had put his own stamp on it and it now bore no resemblance to the shop she had spent years serving in. She noted a far wider array of goods was on sale, much of it displayed on glass stands so that customers could help themselves. The tea was ready-weighed into quarters and the sugar into two-pound blue bags, but fruit and vegetables had to be weighed and there were still the assorted tubs of biscuits with see-through lids. The bacon cutter looked familiar and the cheese wire and the meat slicer, but the scales were new, as was the large shiny cash register beside the big gleaming counter.
Harry had been expecting Angela and Connie, so when he spotted them he knew straight away who they were.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to the woman he was serving. ‘I will just be a moment but there is something I must deal with.’
The woman said nothing, but Angela noticed with a slight smile that all the women looked in her direction when Harry came from behind the counter with a smile of welcome on his face. She guessed they were trying to work out what Harry’s business was with her.
‘You must be the Angela that Stan speaks so highly of,’ he said, pumping her hand up and down as he spoke.
Harry was about the same age as Stan, she noted, and though his hair was more grey than dark brown, it didn’t make him appear old, it sort of suited him. He was quite a handsome man and his face was kindly and his grey eyes twinkled. He had an Irish accent but it was mixed with a little American, which was like something Angela and Connie had only heard about it and so different from the Birmingham accents all around them.
‘And this must be Connie,’ he said, turning to the young girl. ‘Well, my my, aren’t you like two peas in a pod?’ And then he gave a wry smile and said, ‘And I would guess you are fed up to the back teeth with people saying things like that.’
‘Well, let’s say it’s been said more than once.’
Harry laughed. ‘A very controlled response, my dear. Well, you are both more than welcome and I am grateful to you offering to help Stan like this but I think today might be more a throwing-out session than cleaning. Do you want me to take you up? Stan is already there.’
‘No need to lead the way,’ Angela said. ‘I know it well enough and you have a shop full of people. I must say the shop is lovely.’
‘You should have seen it when I first took it on,’ Harry said. ‘Somebody – and it’s thought to be George’s wife and her sister – made a right mess of the place, probably when they realised they couldn’t sell it. And brace yourself for the flat above. It will be nothing like the place you remember, I’m sure. I think the best thing is to gut the place and start again as I did with the shop. Stan fully agrees with me.’
‘Right,’ said Angela. ‘Best take a look then.’
Leaving Harry to attend to his customers, she opened the stair door at the back of the shop. They were only halfway up the stairs when Connie wrinkled her nose and said, ‘Ugh! What’s that smell?’
‘Neglect,’ Angela said. ‘Neglect and damp.’
And minutes later when she opened the door to the flat, she was glad Harry had warned her because what she was looking at bore little resemblance to the flat she’d eaten her dinner in every day. It hadn’t got into this repulsive state because of mere neglect, it had been vandalised pure and simple.
After greeting Stan, she said to him, ‘No doubt this whole place needs a thorough clean and the damp will have to be dealt with eventually. But Harry said before all else there has to be a big clear-out and I’m inclined to agree with him.’
Stan nodded. ‘We knew it needed work, but as Daniel said, that will make it more our own and we are having the first few months rent-free to decorate and do basic repairs.’
Angela thought it needed more than mere decorating, for the wallpaper was hanging from the wall in sheets and there were great gouges in the plaster. The paint wasn’t just chipped and peeling off from the skirting board, but there were also great chunks of wood missing, which looked as if they had been chiselled out of it, and the door had deep gashes scored all down its length.
‘Can you do all this yourself?’ Angela asked.
‘Most of it, I should say,’ Stan said. ‘Daniel can help me.’
‘Yes, but it’s not just a bit of paint and wallpaper though, is it?’ Angela said. ‘You’ll have to virtually repair it all first, for Matilda and Dorothy did a real hatchet job – on this room at least. If fact, looking at the damage done to the skirting board, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had attacked it with a hatchet. Those deep gashes could hardly have been done with a kitchen knife. As for Daniel’s help, you might find he is not well versed at doing practical things like this,’ she went on with a smile. ‘He’s a book learner.’
‘You can be both,’ Stan pointed out. ‘He knows as well as I the work that has to be done to make this place habitable, and what he doesn’t know I can teach him. Stand him in good stead when he has a place of his own anyway.’
‘I suppose,’ Angela said, looking round with a sigh. ‘It’s sad to see it looking so shabby when I remember how it once was,’ she said to Connie. ‘She was so house-proud, George’s wife, and really took care of the furniture and now it’s all either broken or chopped up.’
‘I know,’ Connie said. ‘The table is totally ruined and the dining chairs smashed to bits and yet you can see that they were lovely once.’
‘There’s the three-piece suite she set such store by, according to George,’ Angela said. ‘So much so that he was not allowed to sit on it. Look at it now, greasy and stained and lopsided because one of its legs has broken off and the cushions are split open. Nothing has escaped their savagery, not even the lovely sideboard.’ She was sad to see the sideboard so destroyed for she had always loved looking at it. The wood had been perennially burnished to a glossy shine and a hint of lavender polish would often be wafting in the air as she’d entered the room. And behind the patterned glass doors had been glasses that sparkled and glittered in the light.
No one, not even George, had ever used those glasses, but they drank from thick everyday ones Matilda kept in the kitchen. Angela guessed those beautiful glasses only ever left their home in the sideboard when Matilda had taken them out to polish them to an even greater shine and then put them back. They were obviously to be looked at, not used. Now there were deep gouges in the sideboard, which was listing on three legs as one had been hacked off, and the glass on one of the doors was cracked and the door itself was hanging on one hinge.
And the rampage had obviously continued throughout the flat, for in the bedrooms mattresses had been slashed and ornaments, lamps and anything else they could crush underfoot were mangled. Wardrobes had deep gashes down them and the drawers were taken out and chopped up and curtains torn from the windows and ripped to shreds. Angela wondered if the flat had been broken into at some point – much of the damage seemed almost deliberate.
The mad rush was over in the shop and in the lull Harry joined them. Angela was still surveying the devastation where plates, cups and those thick glasses were smashed to smithereens and rancid food was ground into the ripped and sticky oil cloth.
‘Tell you the truth,’ Angela said. ‘I never expected it to be this bad.’
‘Well, that was partly my fault,’ Harry said. ‘The shop was in such a state and I knew I had to get that up and running to provide me with some money because I was running out of cash. So I have to admit I closed my eyes to the mess in the flat.’
‘You wouldn’t have had time to run the shop single-handed and do anything up here anyway,’ Angela said. The shop bell tinged and she continued, ‘You go down and we’ll start moving the stuff. See how far on we are by dinnertime.’
‘And I’ll close the shop as usual and bring in some fish and chips,’ Harry said. ‘I know why you Brits go on so much about it. Couldn’t understand it when I first came over but I’m a real fan now.’
As Harry went down the stairs Angela said to Stan, ‘Where’s Daniel when there’s work to be done?’
‘Packing his stuff up,’ Stan said. ‘Said he’d be here by the afternoon.’
‘But where’s he going to go?’ Angela said. ‘The flat will not be fit to live in for some time.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ Stan says. ‘My landlady said he can stay with me for a week until we have the place in some sort of shape.’
‘Come on,’ Connie urged. ‘We’re wasting time just chatting.’
‘Cheeky,’ Angela said, but she knew her daughter had a point and they all put their backs into clearing the flat as quickly as possible.
By the time Harry turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ and locked the door, they had collected a sizeable collection of battered and broken furniture and Harry was amazed at what they had achieved. Daniel had turned up by then and they stood in the yard and ate their fish and chips because there was nowhere to sit and indoors was little better. In fact, Angela considered it far worse because there was also a sour smell lingering in the air; though she had opened the windows to try and disperse it, it was still pretty strong.
‘I don’t think we’ll get rid of it until everything is out of the flat and I get at it with the carbolic,’ she said. ‘Tell you the truth, till then I don’t think it’s healthy to eat anything in there.’
No one disagreed with this and as they ate Angela told them all about Michael Malone’s father. ‘Maggie said he was in a bad way and his wife was in bits.’
‘Not to be wondered at, but even if he pulls through I would say this means a huge change for Maggie and Mike,’ Stan said.
‘I thought the very same,’ Angela admitted. ‘I can’t really see any alternative than the two of them moving in with Michael’s mother lock, stock and barrel but I will miss her if she moves to Pershore Road. I mean, it’s not as if we live in each other’s pockets, but I know she’s there just up the road like she always has been since we were children together. She helped so much when I had the news about Barry and then when Mammy was so ill. I mean, we even worked in the shell factory together in the war.’
‘True friendships like that will never die,’ Harry said. ’Even if you don’t see each other so often. And life changes all the time. Who knows what might happen in your life for it to change direction?’
‘Oh, nothing much happens to me.’
‘You can’t say that,’ Harry said. ‘All you can say is nothing exciting or life-changing has happened yet. Who knows what might lie waiting just round the corner? Look at me. If you had told me last year that this year I would be in England and the owner of a shop I’d never have believed it.’
‘I suppose,’ Angela said. ‘Anyway, I’m selfish just thinking of me. Maggie wouldn’t choose to live there given the choice because she often finds her mother-in-law difficult.’
‘Needs must,’ Stan said.
Angela agreed with a sigh and went on, ‘The same goes for me too. And just now, my needs are to get on with moving the rest of the stuff out of the flat because I have to be at work behind the bar at the Swan tonight.’ And she added, wiping her fingers on the paper, ‘After being at this all day I’ll need a good wash and more decent clothes before I start pulling pints.’
They all set to work again. Harry helped them till two o’clock when he re-opened the shop and by the time Angela and Connie were ready to make for home, piles of broken and battered furniture filled the yard.
‘What are you going to do with it all?’ Angela asked Harry, who had taken advantage of another lull in the shop to see how they were doing. ‘I know what you said about setting fire to it, but I don’t think you could do that because there are houses all around you.’
‘And there’s probably a law against it,’ Stan put in.
‘Sure to be,’ Harry said. ‘What I need is some sort of place where they reclaim all the good wood and get rid of the dross. They have wood yards like that in the States and the other rubbish can be taken to a tip. There must be a tip about, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking.’
‘Where did all the old fittings for the shop go?’ Angela asked.
Harry shrugged. ‘The builders refitting the shop dealt with all that,’ he said. ‘I left them to it, to tell you the truth.’
‘Well, they have to put the rubbish somewhere so there must be places like that,’ Stan said. ‘It’s just not something you search out on a regular basis. I’ll ask around. There’s an Irish fellow in my lodgings and he runs a scrap metal business and seems to know everything and everybody. Poor fellow has done his back in so the doctor’s put him off work for at least a week, and while he’s not working he’s not earning.’
‘Aye, that’s the rub,’ Harry said as the shop bell tinkled.
Just before Angela followed him down to go home she said to Stan, ‘I’m leaving all the cleaning materials that Connie and I brought here today and I’ll have a word with Breda Larkin and see if she will do my lunchtime shift tomorrow. Then we can come straight up after Mass and give it all a good going-over.’
They walked home, talking of the state of the flat, but in actual fact it was Angela doing most of the talking and Connie just making non-committal replies. She was a bit annoyed with her mother arranging her whole weekend without asking her. She hadn’t minded offering to give up her Saturday but she hoped she might see Sarah on Sunday. She knew that once Sarah started work at the hotel she wouldn’t see much of her at all and she already felt they were drifting apart. She didn’t say that though, but what she did say cut across what her mother was saying.
‘Don’t know if I’ll be free tomorrow. I do have homework to do.’
‘Well you have all this evening.’
‘Doubt I’ll get it all finished,’ Connie said shortly. ‘I’m given extra at the weekend.’
Angela glanced at her daughter as they turned into Bristol Passage and wondered if that were true or if she just didn’t want to go back to the shop. She hadn’t time to say anything about it because she saw Maggie going up Grant Street and called to her. Though Angela wanted to know the news from the hospital, time was of the essence if she was going to be able to grab a bite to eat before she had to be at work, so she gave Connie the key and told her to put the kettle on the fire while she had a word with Maggie.
Connie knew her mother would just be enquiring about Maggie’s father-in-law, who she didn’t know, and she contented herself with a wave and made her way home. Maggie told Angela Alf had died that morning just moments after she arrived.
‘Oh I’m so sorry,’ Angela said. ‘I know you thought a great deal of him.’
Maggie nodded. ‘I did, but he was an old man and the doctor said he’d never be right again, you know. And he would have hated to linger. Better he went like this, for him, I mean.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘For us it will mean massive changes,’ Maggie said.
Angela nodded. ‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Look, have you time to come in for a cuppa?’ Maggie said, but Angela shook her head regretfully.
‘Can’t, I’m working tonight.’
‘Let’s walk then,’ Maggie said. ‘I wouldn’t like any eavesdroppers to overhear our conversation.’
‘Why? What’s up?’ Angela said as the two women turned and began to walk up Grant Street.
‘Big changes are afoot everywhere, it seems to me,’ Maggie said. ‘One of the nurses told me they are going to enlarge the infirmary because it isn’t big enough. It is a teaching hospital and the only other one is Queen’s and that’s not large either. There are plans to build another hospital there where the workhouse is.’
‘When?’ Angela said urgently. ‘Did she say?’
‘I asked her that and she said when the sky falls in, which wasn’t really that helpful,’ Maggie said. ‘I didn’t want to appear too curious, you know, but I think the long and short of it is they haven’t anywhere near the money needed. But it is going to happen some day in the future. I mean, in the paper it said they are closing workhouses all over the city, so the one in the town will probably be defunct too in the end. But by then,’ she went on, lowering her voice, ‘it’s more than likely your child will be set on in service somewhere.’
Angela gave a sharp intake of breath and Maggie said gently, ‘You knew that was the best she could hope for.’
Oh yes, Angela knew, but she thought of the unfairness of life. She had condemned her child to a life lacking in any sort of love or tenderness, and she was destined for a job where she would skivvy from morning till night, probably as a scullery maid, for that was the lowliest servant, while her sister had a dazzling future before her.
‘It hurts me sometimes that I will never know what will happen to her,’ Angela admitted. But she knew that any attempt to make any sort of contact with the child would be thwarted, just as it had been when she had tried to see her at the workhouse some years before.
She sighed with the hopelessness of it all.
‘Are you all right?’ Maggie said in a low voice.
Angela shook her head. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel all right again. I go through the motions, that’s all. And yet I have no right to be upset or care what happens to that child. I gave those rights away when I left a poor helpless baby on the workhouse steps.’
‘You can’t turn feelings off like that though,’ Maggie said as the women turned back to walk down Grant Street.
‘No, but I have no right to acknowledge them,’ Angela said.
‘Why don’t you have the night off tonight?’ Maggie said, looking at her friend’s distressed face.
‘Because I am not the sort of person to take time from work unless for a very good reason. Not going into work will not change the situation one bit, but give me more time to think. I’ll see if Eddie McIntyre can take my mind off things. He’s done it before. Even made me laugh a time or two.’
‘Who’s Eddie McIntyre when he’s at home?’
‘This Irish-American fellow,’ Angela said. ‘Here on business. Came from Donegal like we did and landed in Birmingham first and then went on to New York where he has been ever since. As my brothers are there I was interested in the place. He has a stock of tales to tell. You know I don’t mind serving at the bar at all, but the conversation can be very dull and predictable at times. Eddie is a great distraction.’
‘Oh yes?’ Maggie said with a suggestive smile at Angela.
Angela lifted her eyes to heaven. ‘Just because I mention a man’s name you are convinced there’s something going on.’
‘I wish there was,’ Maggie admitted. ‘You are a free agent and I presume he’s the same? You have been on your own quite long enough.’
‘He is friendly, that’s all, and it’s my job to be friendly to all the men,’ Angela retorted. ‘And I am not looking for any more than that. Eddie is different in that he has seen and done things most people haven’t. He has things to talk about other than football or the price of beer or moaning about their wife, kids and jobs. That’s all you get from many of them.’
‘You don’t surprise me, Angela,’ Maggie said. ‘Don’t they talk about sex as well? People say it’s what most men think about most of the time.’
‘Well I don’t know what they think about,’ Angela said. ‘But if they tried any dirty talk around me they would get their ears boxed and well they know it. Oh God, look at the time,’ she said. ‘I must fly.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Maggie, I’m as well as I ever have been,’ Angela said. ‘And if I don’t get home soon Connie will come looking for me.’
Connie looked up from her books that she had spread on the table as her mother came in. Taking in Angela’s red face and slightly agitated state, she said, ‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ Angela said. ‘I spent too long with Maggie and had to run, that’s all.’
‘I’ll say you spent too long,’ Connie said. ‘I made the tea but it will be stewed now and not worth drinking.’
‘It’ll do,’ Angela said. ‘Will you do me a piece of toast on the fire while I have a wash and change?’
‘Course,’ Connie said, but when her mother had sat down to eat it and was gulping at the stewed tea, she said, ‘Well, how is he then?’
‘Who?’
‘Maggie’s father-in-law,’ Connie said. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted to speak to Maggie about?’
Angela had forgotten all about the old man and she said, ‘Oh yes, of course. He died.’
‘Golly, Maggie took a long time to tell you that.’
‘Don’t be cheeky, Connie. I’m entitled to talk to my friend for as long as I choose.’
‘Don’t think that was cheeky,’ Connie said. ‘And you haven’t time to tell me off anyway unless you don’t mind being late for work.’
It was Angela’s pet hate to be late for anything and Connie knew that full well. She finished the tea but left half of the toast and then dashed down the road. She generally enjoyed her job and even more now that Eddie McIntyre was a regular.