‘This is not the time to bring shame on your family!’
Laura sucked in her lips and bit down hard, determined not to give way to the emotion that was boiling up inside her. Her mother had been shouting at her for an hour or more, while her father sat slumped and without words, not even bearing to look at his only daughter who was the object of the family shame.
She had hoped, week after week, that it would come to nothing. A mistake in the dates, a physical dysfunction. Her monthly periods had never been very regular at the best of times. It was only when she started feeling sick every morning, her breasts hurt, and her clothes pinched around her waist that she allowed herself to accept the fact she was pregnant.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laura now murmured, her knees gave way from standing in the same spot for so long and she collapsed into a nearby armchair. ‘I’m really sorry, but...’
‘This kind of thing does not happen in respectable homes,’ Elizabeth Caldwell continued, her voice vibrant with anger and mortification. ‘Your grandmother must be turning in her grave at this moment. Laura, how could you cheapen yourself, going with somebody before you’re married?’
‘It...it was only the once,’ Laura pleaded, as if it would make things better .
‘Who was it? ‘
Laura bent her head over her lap, her cheeks suffused with the crimson colour of shame.
‘Charles Dawson,’ she whispered.
There was a stony silence before her mother went on. ‘But...but he’s married to someone else now. I’ve seen them in church on Sundays...!’
Laura’s face puckered up and her eyes filled with tears. One warm salty tear plopped onto the back of her hand. She stared at it hard as if it were a crystal ball that might tell her where her future lay.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, my God, Laura! Why didn’t you marry him three years ago when you had the opportunity. John, say something to your daughter, for goodness sake.’
John Caldwell shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His pale, lifeless eyes drifted from his wife to his daughter and then dropped to the floor between them.
‘I’ve heard of a woman who takes care of these kind of things,’ he said. ‘A Mrs Tanwell in Brook Street. Maybe Laura should go to see her.’
‘Lord in Heaven, John, what are you suggesting? Butchery ? I’ve heard some girls die after getting rid of babies like that.’
‘What choice do we have?’ John flapped at the air with a lily white, bony hand and his head sank down between his shoulders, making him look like an elderly tortoise. ‘It’s either that, or raise a bastard in your home.’
Laura looked up and drew in a sharp breath of stale air since it was summer and warm outside, but her mother refused to open windows to allow flies to come in and private matters to be overheard.
‘You can’t make me have an abortion,’ she said vehemently, jumping once more to her feet, clamping her hands protectively over the tiny unborn infant in her womb. ‘I won’t do it, I tell you.’
‘And what are you going to do, Laura? Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed and her thin lips became even thinner. ‘Don’t think you can bring an illegitimate child into this house. I would die of shame. How far on are you?’
Laura swallowed with difficulty and did a rapid calculation, surprising herself at how far advanced her pregnancy was. How could she not have realized?
‘About four months,’ she said. ‘Maybe more. I...I’m not sure.’
Elizabeth’s expression was wild as she glared first at her daughter and then at her husband. She shook her head as if trying to dislodge the problem from her brain, then ran out of the room in floods of tears.
‘Father?’ Laura stood there helplessly, palms turned towards her father. Short of sinking down onto her knees before him and begging his support, she didn’t know what to do. ‘Please, Father...I don’t know what to do.’
John Caldwell averted his gaze. His hands gripped the wheels of his chair and he started out of the room in the footsteps of his distraught wife.
‘I’m sorry, Laura,’ she heard him say in muffled tones. ‘I can’t help you. Please make arrangements to leave this house and...well, just go away somewhere. I’ll see that you have sufficient to live on until...’
His words trailed off behind him and Laura was left standing in the silent room, echoes of her mother’s sobbing over her head and the squeak of the wheels on her father’s wheelchair fading away down the hall.
There was only one person she knew she could turn to, but even her grandfather might not wish to know about her unfortunate condition. And seeing the disapproval in the old man’s eyes would be too hurtful; far more hurtful than that shown to her by her parents. Laura heaved a sigh and regretted the one act of madness that had led to the conception of an innocent child. People always said you should never go back and they were right. She had never been able to get over losing the one man she believed to be right for her. Despite his many infidelities, Laura was still desperately in love with Charles. She foolishly chased him away and he had paid her back by marrying the first woman who came along. It was far from being a match made in Heaven. Eleanor Blenkinsop was years older than Charles, a widow with three children of her own. Everyone knew she was desperate to find another husband. Charles had fallen into her net, still bruised from getting his marching orders from Laura.
If only he had not come into the little haberdashery shop where she was buying some embroidery silks, Laura thought time and time again. It was looking up and unexpectedly seeing him standing there gazing down at her, as startled at the encounter as she was. He had forgotten completely what he was there for – probably to buy something intimate and flimsy for his wife for Christmas. Anyway, their eyes met, their fingers touched, and Laura was lost.
They had continued to meet, discreetly, over a number of weeks. Laura knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. The last time, when she had given herself to him fully in the back of his big Austen automobile, he told her, on parting, he couldn’t see her again. His wife was carrying his child.
How ironic was that? Laura was too shocked by this revelation to consider the possibility that she, too, might be carrying his child. She had been a virgin and that had been her only physical encounter, apart from passionate but hurried kisses and unbearably urgent fondlings. If only she had been strong enough to withstand his more pressing advances that one time. If only! Life, Laura thought wryly, was so full of “if only”.
Laura glanced around her at the room she had known all her life. It was her home, yet there was no warmth, no welcoming feel about it. It belonged to her mother. Not even her father fitted in.
She picked up her hat and her scarf and walked, with heavy feet, into the hall. A cool breeze was wafting through the place, bringing the faint sound of people enjoying an amicable conversation. One of the voices belonged to Maureen Flynn. Or Mrs Hedley as she was now.
Suddenly the solution to all Laura’s problems seemed to cry out to her. Maureen was a rough and ready character, but she understood about life. She was just her mother’s cook, but was always on hand with good advice and friendly support when needed. Which was why the kitchen at Elizabeth Caldwell’s home was rarely empty, for people came to visit Maureen constantly. She was a long cry from the skinny little schoolgirl who had run off petrified at the sight of blood when her little brother was being born.
The doors between hall and kitchen were ajar and as Laura picked her way down the long corridor between her mother’s domain and the domestic part of the house, where her mother never went, she smelled freshly baked bread and cakes. Normally, it would have made her mouth water, but today she felt too queasy to appreciate it.
They didn’t see her enter, the three people sitting at the kitchen table clutching steaming mugs of tea, laughing and talking together. Laura felt a twinge of envy. She had never had a special friend to call her own, never felt the need for one, until now.
As she stepped further into the room, the door creaked and her shoes scuffed on the rough stone floor. Three heads shot up, their conversation suspended, the laughter frozen on their jolly faces.
‘Oh, Maureen...’ Laura gulped and fixed her eyes on the cook as pleadingly as possible. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but...’
‘It’s all right, Miss Caldwell,’ Maureen said, taking off her small reading glasses and giving them a wipe on her pinafore. ‘Come on in. Would you like a cup of tea? I could bring it to you in the lounge, if ye like.’
‘No...no, Maureen, thank you.’
‘A piece of cake? It’s carrot and cinnamon. Your favourite.’
‘Thank you...no.’ Laura’s eye flickered over the other two occupants of the room, recognizing Maureen’s brother, Billy, and the prostitute’s daughter, Bridget Maguire, who had done so well for herself, despite being dragged up by a woman with no husband and no morals.
‘What’s the matter, hinny?’
Maureen was on her feet and coming over to her, arms outstretched, ready to comfort her. It was only then that Laura was aware of how wretched she must appear. She felt a sob start deep in her chest and surge to the surface and then, as she fell against Maureen, the floodgates opened and she cried like a little lost child.
Behind them, chair legs scraped on the floor as Billy and Bridget got up and came over to see if there was anything they could do to help. Laura Caldwell had always struck them as being a strong person, not given to fuss or over-sensitive behaviour, so it must have shocked them to see her like this. Laura now wished she had simply left the house, alone in her misery.
‘Oh, Maureen,’ she gasped, meaning to break away from the woman’s hold, but found herself blurting out the reason for her emotional state. ‘I’m in such deep trouble and I...I don’t know where to turn.’
‘Oh, aye? Come on, pet, tell us what’s troubling ye ?’ Maureen pushed her into a chair at the table and pulled a second chair close to her, then sat there waiting, grasping both of Laura’s hands in her own.
Laura glanced up at Bridget and Billy and bit down on her lips. She didn’t say a word, but it was obvious that she didn’t want them to be there. Billy just stared at her, not budging an inch, until Bridget thumped his shoulder and pulled him away.
‘Come on, Billy,’ she said, pushing him out through the back door where the sun was shining on the little vegetable garden that Billy helped Maureen with. ‘It’s women’s business and Miss Caldwell needs a bit of privacy.’
* * *
‘What’s happening, Bridget?’
Billy was rocking from one foot to the other and trying to peer over Bridget’s shoulder as she listened at the door they had just come through. She left it open just a crack, obviously with the intention of listening in to Laura’s conversation with Maureen. Now, Billy’s own curiosity was getting the better of him. He hadn’t seen Laura Caldwell for months and he was shocked at how thin and deathly pale she had become.
‘Ssh, Billy. How can I hear anything with you muttering in me ear, eh?’ Bridget gave him a thrust with her behind because he was leaning on her heavily and there was a danger of them both falling headlong back into the kitchen.
Billy took a step back, but stood impatiently clenching and unclenching his fists, wishing he could be a fly on the wall. Wishing even more that he could be in there now, holding Laura’s hand, instead of his sister.
‘Oh, my gawd!’
Bridget turned from the door and put her hands up to her cheeks. Her green eyes were wide with disbelief as she stared at Billy.
‘What?’ Billy had had enough waiting. ‘Bridget! What’s wrong ? She’s not ill, is she?’
‘You could say that,’ Bridget said through her fingers, then grimaced and walked off down the garden path to the gate that led into the back lane and the wooded area that went down to the river.
Billy gave a quick glance toward the house then followed her.
‘Tell me, Bridget,’ he said, tugging at one of her arms that were swinging characteristically at her sides. ‘Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad...can it?’
Bridget stopped in her tracks and he bowled into her, nearly knocking her off her balance.
‘It depends who you are,’ she told him with another grimace. ‘Laura – Miss Prim – Caldwell has got herself knocked up good and proper. Can you imagine how her parents took the news?’
Billy shook his head and frowned at her. ‘What do you mean by knocked up?’ He couldn’t believe it meant what the lads down at the shipyard talked about when they got a girl into trouble. ‘Not...?’
‘Bun in the oven, so-so...’ Bridget stopped and grinned. ‘You are innocent, Billy. She’s with child, as the posh might say. Laura Caldwell is, you know - so-so. What’s worse is that she can’t marry the man in question.’
‘Oh, no!’ Billy’s eyes widened in shock as Bridget nodded slowly. ‘Not Laura. Are you sure that’s what she said?’
‘Not in so many words,’ Bridget informed him, picking up a twig with some dead oak leaves on it and flicking them off one by one. ‘She says she hasn’t seen anyone in four months or more and her father’s ordered her out of the house. Don’t look at me like that, Billy. It’s not my fault your precious Laura’s going to have a baby out of wedlock. Serves her right for being so snooty, that’s what I say.’
Billy glared at her reproachfully. It wasn’t like Bridget to speak ill of anyone, except jokingly. But she wasn’t joking about Laura and he wondered why. There had never been any bad feeling between the two of them, to his knowledge. And yet, there had been times, he recalled now, when Laura’s name was mentioned, that sparked something off in Bridget. Billy shook his head. He would never understand women.
‘I’m going back inside,’ he said, brushing past Bridget, who spun around and caught the tail of his shirt that had escaped from his dungarees.
‘Hey, Billy, what are you going to do? She doesn’t want the likes of you around when she’s talking about private matters. It’s family business and nothing to do with you, anyway.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Billy struck out for the house in long strides, Bridget running to keep up with him.
‘Billy? What do you mean? How’s it got anything to do with you?’ Then she stopped dead in her tracks and blinked at his disappearing back, all the colour draining from her face. ‘Eeh, dear God, Billy, it wasn’t you who fathered her bairn, was it?’ He didn’t stop; just waved a hand briefly. ‘Billy! Billy, tell me it wasn‘t you!’
When he burst into the kitchen, Bridget’s words were still ringing in his ears. Until she had called out to him, he had no idea what he was about to do. Comfort Laura in some small way, hold her close and tell her he would make everything all right, no matter what it took. But Bridget planted the seed of an idea in his head and it was with this in mind he burst through the kitchen door, snatching his cap from his head and standing stiff to attention before the two women.
‘Laura,’ he said through gritted teeth, and his sister and the woman he had always loved took a startled step back at the suddenness of it. ‘I know I’m younger than you, but at nineteen I’m a man and although I’ve been finished at the shipyard like all the others at Palmers, I’ve still got all me other bits and bobs that I do and I don’t mind working even harder. I already earn enough to feed a family on and...well, if you’re willing, I...’
‘Billy Flynn, what on earth are you on about?’ His sister was regarding him with a bemused expression, but he wasn’t interested in what Maureen said or thought.
Ignoring Maureen, Billy fixed his eyes unwaveringly on Laura and spoke out loud and clear from a heart that was nearly bursting with anticipation.
‘Laura, I’ll to marry you, if...if that’s all right with you, I mean...?’
As quickly as his courage had mounted, it was now departing as he saw the look of horror in Laura’s eyes and the way her mouth twisted as if he had suggested something vile. For a long while they stood there, staring at each other and Maureen staring just as hard at the pair of them, not knowing what to make of the situation. Then Billy swallowed hard and the noise of it could be heard by all.
‘Well, I just thought I’d ask,’ he said numbly. ‘It would be better than you struggling to raise a bairn without a man, even if it isn’t mine.’
Still Laura held her silence, and Maureen with her, though his sister made one or two small sounds as if she were bursting to laugh or cry or both – he didn’t know which, nor did he care.
He screwed his cap up in his hands, straightened it out again, then placed it awkwardly on his head and walked back outside, giving another gulp as he closed the door firmly behind him.
Down by the river, he could see Bridget sitting on a fallen tree. She was dangling her legs and dipping her bare toes into the burbling waters. Making diamonds she used to call it when they were children together. The sun was filtering through the greenery above, turning her hair into flame and giving her a kind of halo of gold. Billy went to join her, sitting as close to her as he could get He always found comfort in her closeness.
‘So what did she say to your grand proposal, then?’ Bridget asked, staring down at her fingers, which lay entwined in her lap.
‘Nothing,’ Billy said, smoothing out the stiff material of his dungarees over his thighs, the roughened skin of his workman’s hands rasping like sandpaper. ‘At least she didn’t laugh.’
‘Maybe she needs time to think it over, eh?’
‘Aye. Maybe she does.’
‘It was probably a bit of a shock for her, you asking her to marry her like that. I mean, it took me by surprise and I thought I knew everything there was to know about you, Billy Flynn.’
‘Aye, there’s not a lot you don’t know, Bridget.’
‘Do you think she’ll say yes?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Will it bother you if she doesn’t – you know – say yes?’
‘Aye. Aye, Bridget, it will an’ all.’
Bridget’s arm slid out and went round Billy’s slumped shoulders. She pulled him against her and he buried his face in her shoulder, breathing deeply to keep himself from crying, because real men didn’t cry. He didn’t see the tears that ran down Bridget’s cheeks that she swiped at surreptitiously, not wanting to give herself away.
Silly bitch! She chastised herself silently, then she whispered into the top of Billy’s fair head ‘Silly sod. You’re worth better than Laura Caldwell. A lot better.’
‘Thanks, Bridget,’ Billy sniffed and raised his head, looking at her with glistening blue eyes. ‘I doubt anybody would agree with you, but thanks, anyway.’
‘Hey, come on,’ Bridget gave him a playful dig in the ribs. ‘It could have been worse. It could have been me up the spout instead of Laura. How would you have liked being landed with me on your plate, eh?’
Billy didn’t say anything. He just stared at her for a long time, then blinked once and looked away into the middle distance, a small frown creasing his forehead.
* * *
‘Just listen to that ! Who’d have thought a little pint-sized woman could make such a racket?’
Billy grinned at the man who had spoken. They were standing at the back of a crowd of unemployed workmen, craning their necks to see the tiny, elfish Ellen Henderson, well-known Member of Parliament, who had taken up their cause. Even if they couldn’t see her too well, they had no problem hearing her, for she had a forceful voice that carried right across the square.
‘This town has been murdered!’ she was crying out. ‘There’s not a man in gainful employment anywhere in Jarrow. Who among you can afford to feed your children? We have to let the government know that they are not doing enough to help the working men of this country, and in particular this town that should stand proud, not hang its head in shame...’
It was just one of the many speeches, some of them ad hoc, that Red Ellen had made. A great roar went up as she made her closing statement calling for the men to take action, promising she would be behind them all the way.
‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I’ll do more than that. I’ll march with you!’
‘How about it, Billy lad? You going on the march?’
‘Where to?’ Billy asked, for he had been distracted at the crucial moment of the MP’s speech, having caught sight of Laura Caldwell walking by, trying to hide her pregnancy behind a shopping bag.
‘Why, London, of course. We’re all going to march to London with a petition and show the bloody Prime Minister that we mean business.’
‘Think it’ll do any good?’ said another man.
‘Red Ellen seems to think so.’
‘What! I can’t see her making any impression on anybody. She’s not the size of two pennorth of copper. Funny looking little thing.’
Billy looked across to where he had a better view of Ellen Henderson as she walked across the square and climbed into an official looking black car – probably the mayor’s. He had to agree that she wasn’t anybody’s idea of a raving beauty, and she was a bit lame too. That flaming mop of hair didn’t do anything for her either, with her pale complexion and pointed elfin features. But she was game, he would say that for her.
‘Give her a chance, lads,’ he said, and just for a split second the MP turned a bright blue gaze on him and gave him a radiant smile. ‘She looks to me like she’s made of stern stuff.’
Ellen Henderson’s smile broadened. She nodded at Billy and raised a hand in a kind of salute, and he knew that whatever happened, he just had to be among the two hundred men who would be marching to London.
Taking leave of his pals, Billy headed to Bridget’s house. She had bought the upstairs flat above the cobbler’s shop in Staithes Terrace and he often stayed there with her rather than go home to his mother and her drinking. She was more and more abusive towards him these days, though she still relied heavily on him for financial support. He hated the time he spent there in the old family home. It didn’t smell clean and fresh like Bridget’s place. There were no real home comforts left. Maggie pawned them, all but the beds they slept in and a table and two chairs in the kitchen. If he’d had his head screwed on the right way he would never have gone back there, but she was his mother, after all.
‘Bridget!’ He clumped up the stairs, enjoying the meaty aroma of whatever Bridget was cooking for dinner. ‘Hey, Bridget!’
Bridget was in the living room and turned to greet him with a face that he didn’t recognize. She looked guilty, embarrassed. Then he saw the reason why. There was someone else in the room. Laura Caldwell.
Billy stared in silence at Bridget’s visitor.
‘Miss Caldwell’s my new tenant, Billy,’ Bridget informed him.
‘Hello, Billy,’ Laura said, smiling shyly as she pulled her coat around her distended belly where her baby was residing, waiting for its time to present itself to the world. ‘I hope my presence won’t...I mean...’ She gave a huge gulp and looked to Bridget for support.
‘She had nowhere else to go, Billy,’ Bridget said. ‘Her landlady turned her out because she couldn’t afford the rent.’
‘My...my father died,’ Laura said huskily, ‘so the money stopped.’
‘Couldn’t your mother take you back?’ Billy said, his brain both seething with anger at the injustice of Laura’s situation, and frozen solid because of what had happened at their last meeting.
‘My mother isn’t very strong,’ Laura said with a quick glance at Bridget.
‘Mrs Caldwell,’ said Bridget, with little sympathy in her voice, ‘is having a nervous breakdown and can’t see her way clear to put a roof over the head of her only daughter.’
Billy had never heard such bitterness coming from Bridget. He had always understood that she had no liking for Laura. They were like chalk and cheese these two young women. He still thought of Laura as young, though she must be in her late twenties now. There was, however, something very childlike about her. An innocence and a beauty that still touched him, despite the difference in their ages and despite her condition.
‘I’m so grateful to Bridget,’ Laura was saying. ‘I’ve promised to pay her back. Every penny of the rent I owe. Just as soon as...well, as soon as I can find a job and earn some money.’
Billy gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t bank on it,’ he said. ‘There aren’t any jobs to be had, even for working men. And then there’s talk of another war with Germany. This country is going to the dogs.’
‘Oh, let’s not get maudlin, Billy,’ Bridget said, bustling about in the way he liked, looking happy and bright-eyed, though today her eyes were perhaps a little too bright. ‘I’ve got some lovely lamb stew on the go. Let’s all sit down and enjoy it.’
‘Before we do that, Bridget,’ Billy said, ‘I’ve got some news.’
‘Oh, aye ? You’ve not found a job, have you?’ Bridget turned to Laura with a proud smile. ‘Billy will never be destitute. He’s one of those entrepeneurs. Isn’t that the right word, Billy? While all the men in Jarrow are doing nothing and feeling sorry for themselves, Billy Big Boots here is working and earning. It might not always be exactly legal, but we’ll not say anything about that, eh, Billy ? There’s men who do a lot worse and get away with it.’
Billy gave a half-hearted smile. ‘I stay inside the law,’ he said. ‘Well, sort of. Anyway, that Ellen Henderson – you know, the MP? – she’s organizing a petition against the unemployment around here in the north east – Jarrow in particular. There’s going to be a march. Two hundred men marching from Jarrow to London with a petition for the Prime Minister. I’m going with them.’
All the time he was talking, Billy was aware that Laura took no interest. She looked as if she was withdrawn into her own little world, building walls up around her too solid for anyone to penetrate. Besides, he thought, he could hardly expect to impress her now he was unemployed like everybody else around here. The other lads on benefit didn’t get enough money to feed their families on. At least he had his scrap business that he had built up since he was a nipper, and it was still going strong. It was amazing what people would pay for somebody else’s rubbish.
‘I’ve heard about this march,’ Bridget said. ‘They’re raising a thousand pounds for the men to keep them in food and clothing.’
‘It’s all that Ellen Wilkinson’s doing,’ Billy told her. ‘She’s pretty strong in Parliament, always fighting for the underdog.’
‘What’s she like, then?’
‘Well, I expected somebody big and bolshy, but she’s tiny and walks with a bit of a limp. Mind you, she’s got red hair, which is why they call her ‘Red’, and she’s as fiery as a fire cracker. Reminds me a bit of you, Bridget. You can be a bit explosive when you get going.’
Bridget frowned and made a derogatory sound.
‘I don’t like the idea of you going all that way down to London. It’ll take days, two hundred men walking two hundred miles, sleeping rough and starving most of the way. And what if the weather’s bad?’
‘Well, then, we’ll get wet,’ Billy said with a laugh.
‘Maybe I should come with you to make sure you look after yourself,’ Bridget said thoughtfully and Billy was surprised to hear her sound so serious.
‘Nah, don’t be daft. Anyhow, women aren’t allowed. This is a man thing.’
‘And what’s Ellen Wilkinson, if she isn’t a woman?’
‘Aye, but she’s different. It’s her that’s in charge. She says she’ll march with us to show the Prime Minister that she means business.’
‘If she can march with you, then so can I,’ Bridget got that determined light in her eye Billy knew of old. ‘Right. That’s settled. You let me know when we have to start off and I’ll be ready.’
‘They won’t let you, Bridget, honest,’ Billy said, shaking his head. ‘It’s going to be just us men.’
‘What does your mam say about this march, Billy? How’s she going to cope with you missing for days on end? Weeks maybe?’
Billy chewed on his mouth as he thought about the plight of his mother. Maggie hadn’t been well lately. In fact, she had been so ill she hadn’t even touched a drop of alcohol for over a week. Nor had she eaten anything, so she looked like a skeleton and he fair expected to hear her bones rattle when she walked. Not that she did much walking. It was all she could do to find the strength to get out of her bed these days and a lot of the time he had to help her to the lavatory out in the back yard. She had no pride left in her. She couldn’t afford to have any when she was incapable of even wiping her own backside.
‘I’ll have to think about that,’ he said. ‘Maybe our Maureen could see to her while I’m away.’
‘Oh, it might never happen,’ Bridget said, bustling in and out of the kitchen and getting a tasty meal on the table that made Billy realize how hungry he was. ‘Come on, let’s eat. Miss Caldwell, I’ve set a place for you, if you don’t mind a bit of Irish stew, though I have to admit there’s more potato in it than meat.’
Laura roused herself enough to reply, but her voice seemed weak and her eyes far away.
‘Thank you, Bridget, but I’m not hungry. I think I’ll just go to my room, if you don’t mind?’
‘You got that back pain again ?’ Bridget asked. ‘Maybe you should see the doctor.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. I’m just tired.’
She got up, dragging her heavy body wearily to the open door into the passage. Billy received a pointed look from Bridget and he grabbed Laura’s suitcase, which she was struggling to pick up.
‘Here, let me do that,’ he said and saw a fleeting look of gratitude, though Laura remained silent as he accompanied her to her bedroom and placed the case on the bed so she could unpack it without having to bend.
He hovered in the doorway, the memory of the day when he proposed marriage to her still fresh and bothersome in his mind. But Laura was already ignoring him and opening the case, her movements slow and laborious, and he couldn’t help thinking the illness reflected in her face was the same as he saw every day in his mother’s regard. He had never seen a sadder woman than his mother, until now. Depression the doctors called it, and short of sending patients to the lunatic asylum there seemed to be no cure for the disease.
Billy started to say something, offer her some kind of comforting word, but she turned a dark gaze on him and whatever he was about to say died in his mouth.
‘Thank you, Billy. I can manage now.’
It was totally dismissive. He nodded, backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Back in the living room, Bridget was ladling out her Irish stew into two large soup plates.
‘Come on, Billy. I can’t let you go back to that house of yours without something hot in your belly, even if it is summer.’ She sat down and shoved a plate towards him, so he did as he was told and sat down opposite her. It never took much persuasion on Bridget’s part to share a meal with her, or just sit with her in front of the coal fire in the winter, or on the front step downstairs when the sun shone. Sometimes, they went for walks together, and that was good too. In fact, everything was good about Bridget. One day she would make a fine wife for some lucky fella.
He looked up at her and grinned.
‘So what’s that grin for, Billy Flynn?’ she asked, compressing her lips so that her dimples showed.
‘Ach, I was just comparing you with yon Mrs Wilkinson.’
‘You were, were you?’ Bridget’s head went on one side and she regarded him closely, one golden eyebrow raised. ‘And what conclusion did you come to?’
‘I think you’d make a fine politician, Bridget Maguire, with that tongue of yours,’ Billy said, scooping up a spoonful of stew and swallowing it with an ecstatic groan of appreciation. ‘And you’ve got the right colour hair, I’d say, but I bet Ellen Wilkinson can’t cook as good as you can.’
‘Really! So, with my tongue and my hair I’d be good at politics? Is that what you think?’
‘No, Bridget, because you haven’t got the hard-faced look to go with it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Billy hesitated, not sure if she would take his remark the right way, but he felt the need to say it, so he did ‘You’re far too pretty.’
He continued to scoop spoonfuls of stew into his mouth, concentrating his gaze on the plate before him. For some unknown reason he felt embarrassed and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand at all. This was Bridget he was talking to, and nobody was closer to him than she was. She was more like a sister than a friend and his life would never be the same again if he ever lost her.
Eventually, Billy looked up, because he wasn’t used to being in the same room with Bridget and not have her voice in his ear for what seemed a long period of time. He found her staring at him curiously.
‘Do you really think I’m pretty?’ she said huskily.
‘Aye, of course I do.’
‘I’m not used to compliments,’ she said and started to clear the table. ‘Not from decent blokes anyway. Thanks, Billy.’
‘Didn’t cost me nowt,’ he said with a shrug and what he hoped was a cheeky grin because he was feeling mightily strange down in the pit of his stomach.
‘Ye’re a daft sod, Billy Big Boots,’ he heard Bridget say as she carried the dirty dishes out to the scullery. ‘Daft, but nice.’