WHILE HIS CHILDREN were all out having a good time at their various Saturday evening occupations – Danny and Molly going to the pictures with Liz and Bob; Timmy and Michael having a rowdy kick-about with the Milton kids; Sean supposedly in the charge of his big brother and sister – Pat Mehan had wandered along to the Queen’s, the pub at the blocked end of Plumley Street, for a pint of best. He was standing at the little bar, his elbows resting on the counter, staring into his glass. Although he had never been one to waste his time, or his money if he had any to spare, in the pub, Pat did like to have the occasional jar and the chance of a chat and a laugh with his friends and neighbours.
The pub hadn’t begun to fill up yet. There were just Pat, Joe Palmer standing next to him at the counter, nursing the remains of a pint, and, in the corner, Jimmo Shay and Albert Tucker, two of the older residents of the street, who were playing crib as though their lives and reputations depended on it. The evening was still warm, but the four customers all had their caps jammed on their heads and pulled down well over their eyes, stocks tied tightly round their necks, and their waistcoats, all barring the bottom buttons, of course, neatly buttoned up, and, for the sake of their own notions of respectability and despite the heat of the evening, topped off with aged, threadbare jackets.
Pat drained his glass and looked up at the brightly dressed, elaborately made-up middle-aged woman who was standing behind the bar.
‘Two more pints for me and Joe here, please, Mags,’ he said, with a flash of his eyebrows. ‘And send a couple of halves over to them two while yer at it and all, please, girl.’
Instead of rewarding Pat with her usual broad smile and a whiff of her scent as she raised her arm to pull the pints, Mags Donovan dipped her chin and began to sniffle into a frothy lace handkerchief that she pulled from her sleeve. She flapped her hand distractedly in the direction of her portly husband. ‘Ask Harold, if yer don’t mind, Pat. I’ve gotta just . . .’ Her tears overcame her and, not wanting her customers to witness her sorrow, she dashed through to the back room.
Pat, never able to cope with a woman’s tears, stretched his lips tightly across his teeth. ‘Here, Harold, I ain’t said nothing to upset her, have I?’
The publican shook his head; he looked close to weeping himself, a real oddity in such a big, usually tough-acting man. ‘Don’t mind Mags, Pat,’ Harold said, raising an empty pint glass for Pat’s approval.
Pat nodded and said, ‘Two pints and two halves, please, Harold.’
Harold began to draw the beer, levering the wood and brass pump towards him in a strong, even pull. ‘She’s gone and got herself all worked up, ain’t she?’
‘How’s that then, mate?’
‘Well, it’s our young Margaret, see. Mags can cope with the boys moving away like.’ He set a full, brimming glass on the counter in front of Pat, which in turn he slid along the polished wood towards Joe. ‘It’s only right that boys go and live near their wives’ families, no one’d disagree with that.’ Harold put the second glass in front of Pat before starting on filling the two half-pint mugs. ‘But, like I say, it’s our young Margaret.’ He slammed the first of the smaller drinks down on the bar, slopping the foaming liquid over the polished counter. ‘She’s really gone and broke my Mags’s heart.’
Pat and Joe raised their glasses to each other in silent salute, then sipped at their beer, listening respectfully while Harold told them about his troubles – a reversal of what usually happened in the Queen’s Arms.
‘I suppose yer’ve heard all about it anyway, how she’s moved all the way to bloody Dagenham.’
Pat and Joe nodded to show that they had indeed heard what had been the talk of the whole turning for weeks.
‘Don’t know what got into her.’ Harold whacked down the second of the smaller drinks. ‘What would anyone wanna go and live in a place like that for? Everyone knows it’s all kippers and curtains down there. And our Margaret’s always been such a down-to-earth girl. Well, before she married, she was.’ Harold paused, then, sneering over the words, he added: ‘Paul Monroe. I ask yer, what sort of a name’s that when it’s at home? Paul Monroe? Suppose he thinks they’re too good for the East End now they’ve got their bathroom and their inside lav.’ Harold spoke of his daughter’s new living arrangements as though they might be horribly contagious.
Pat sorted through a handful of loose change that he’d taken from his trouser pocket. ‘Here, Harold, have one yerself, mate. Go on.’
With his jaw set to stop himself from breaking down in tears, Harold did his best to smile his thanks. ‘Good luck, Pat.’ He rang up the total on the big brass till, and slung the change carelessly into the wooden money tray. ‘I will have a half with yer.’
Harold pulled his drink and then sat himself down on the high stool behind the bar that usually stood unused, and stared into the foam as though it might hold the solution to all his problems.
Pat took the two half-pint glasses over to the little round table in the corner where the elderly men were still concentrating on their cards. He put the drinks down in front of them, careful not to disturb their game.
‘Aaaah! Just the job,’ said Jimmo Shay, winking appreciatively. ‘Ta, son.’
‘My pleasure, Jimmo,’ said Pat, slapping him on the back. ‘And cheers, Albert.’
Albert grudgingly lifted his gaze from his hand and repaid Pat’s generosity with a low growl.
Pat didn’t take offence. Albert Tucker’s gloom was legendary, and, considering that for the last forty-odd years he’d been married to Phoebe, a right old dragon who could turn milk sour with just one glance from her beady little eyes, no one in Plumley Street really expected anything else of the miserable old devil.
As Pat settled himself back at the bar, Joe Palmer was chuckling to himself. ‘Look at them two, will yer, Pat? Yer know yer won’t get no drinks back off them crafty old sods. Got rubber weskits the pair of ’em. Put their hands in their pockets and they bounce right out again.’
Pat shrugged. ‘Don’t matter, does it, treating ’em now and again. Don’t suppose they’ve got more’n a couple o’ coppers to bless ’emselves with, poor old buggers.’
‘Don’t you believe it, Pat. They’re doing all right. Since them two old goats retired from the market, my missus has fed the pair of ’em and their old girls. I’m telling yer, it’s a fact. You know what my Aggie’s like – feels sorry for every living creature, she does. If she sees a sparrow hurt she has to fetch it home and look after it, and she’s the same with that little mob. She’s over Phoebe’s or Sooky’s every five minutes with a bread pudden or a drop o’ stew. No, yer don’t wanna waste no sympathy on them, Pat. They do all right, you mark my words.’
Joe took a long swallow from his pint. ‘Now, that poor bleeder Milton,’ he went on, ‘that’s a different story. He needs everything anyone’s got to give him, he does. Never seen a decent pair of boots on any one of them kids of his.’
‘Me and Katie was saying that when we was having our tea just now. He’s a poor bastard. I mean, it’s bad enough for me down the docks, worrying the life out of meself about how to get hold of a few bob when I miss the odd day – and there’s been more and more of them lately.’
‘Yer must miss the money with a family to bring up, Pat.’
‘Yeah, that’s obvious, innit? But it’s the other things and all. Seeing yer mates, having a laugh and that. I reckon it’d drive me mental; I dunno how he passes the days.’
‘Queueing up down the bleed’n Labour Exchange waiting to be insulted, that’s how,’ said Harold, joining in from his perch on the other side of the bar. ‘Dunno how they put up with it.’
Joe Palmer took another long swig of his beer. ‘You seen him lately, Harold? Been in at all, has he?’
‘No, he’s not been in here for months.’
‘Well, yer’d be shocked, I’m telling yer. Looks just like an old man, he does now.’
Pat tipped his head back and drained his glass. ‘Drink up, Joe. Let’s have another one.’
Joe did as he was told and pushed the empty glass towards Harold. ‘What’s all this in aid of, Pat? That’ll be two pints yer’ve stood me.’
‘Just to say thanks again for keeping our Danny on. It means a lot to me and Katie to know he’s working, specially during times like these.’
‘My pleasure, Pat. And don’t go getting it into yer head that I’m doing him some sort of a favour. He’s a fine little worker. Willing. It’s good to see it in a kid of eighteen. So yer don’t have to keep standing me pints. Not that I’m saying no, mind yer.’ Joe laughed. ‘And my Aggie thinks he’s an angel, so I wouldn’t dare get rid of him, would I?’ He paused. ‘She’d have loved a kid like him, yer know, Pat.’
Pat nodded. ‘I know.’ He slapped a handful of change down on the counter. ‘Well, if you don’t want me to buy you a pint to say thanks, I’ll ask yer to join in a bit of a celebration with me instead.’ Pat lowered his voice. ‘Don’t let on to my Katie, but I had a bit of luck yesterday.’
‘What, got a tip off of Prince Monolulu, did yer?’
‘Good as.’ Pat held the glasses out to Harold. ‘Two more in here, please, mate, and have another one for yerself.’
Harold levered himself listlessly off his stool ‘Not for me, ta, Pat.’
‘Well?’ Joe was intrigued.
Pat couldn’t hold back a smile as he recalled his good fortune. ‘See,’ he began, ‘we had a bit of time on our hands yesterday, nothing to do again, and I thought I was gonna be well outta pocket. But we kind of fell into having a few rounds of pitch and toss with the customs blokes.’ He leant over the bar to Harold. ‘And you know the feeling when luck’s with yer? Well, I was nearly fifteen bob up by the finish. Fifteen bob for nothing, so I thought we’d maybe up the odds a bit.’ He looked over his shoulder to make sure that Jimmo and Albert weren’t earwigging. Both had wives who were experts in spreading tales, and the last thing he wanted was for Katie to get wind of what he’d been up to. He dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘So I said I’d take on any one of ’em. And there was one who was willing – the only one who was willing as a matter of fact,’ he added proudly, ‘who was game enough to take on Pat Mehan in a fight. Great big bleeder, he was, from over East Ham way somewhere. Right fancied his chances with me, he did.’
Harold and Joe both laughed in anticipation.
‘But he weren’t as tough as he thought he was. Aw no. “I could have you,” I said to him, “with one hand tied behind me back.” And that’s exactly what I did.’
‘What?’ Joe nodded towards Pat’s arm.
‘Yep, we went behind the sheds and I took him on with it tied behind me back with a lump of rope. Two minutes he lasted.’ Pat took off his cap and lifted his thick fringe of dark hair from his forehead. A deep blue stain showed through his weather-beaten skin. ‘I got that and another fifteen bob for me trouble.’
Joe threw back his head with laughter. ‘Don’t let your Katie find out or yer’ll have more than a bruise on yer crust, yer’ll have a frying pan there and all.’
Pat joined in with his laughter. ‘I ain’t daft.’
‘She’s a girl, your Katie.’
‘Yeah, she’s that, all right, but she’s got a heart of gold and all, Joe, just like your Aggie.’ Pat dropped his chin and said quietly, ‘Yer know what, even with all us mob to worry about she’s still been taking grub over to the Miltons for the last couple of weeks. I reckon she thinks none of us have been noticing but I’ve seen her.’
‘She’s a rare one, that missus of your’n, Pat. I mean, Aggie’s only got me and her to see to. But your Katie – I dunno how she finds time.’
Joe drained his glass and held it up to Pat. Pat hesitated for just a moment then smiled. ‘Go on then, but just half or yer’ll have me singing.’
Joe leant across the bar. ‘Two halves, please, Harold.’ He sat back, arms folded across his chest. ‘It’s like how she’s been helping out Frank Barber with that kid of his. Aggie’s been full of it.’
Pat frowned.
‘He must really appreciate it, yer know. Must be murder for a geezer like him bringing up a kid by himself.’
No sooner had Harold put the two half-pints on the bar than Pat had drained his glass. He stood up, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and started walking over to the door. Before he left he turned round to the astonished Joe. ‘Thanks for the beer,’ he said, his voice flat and his face drained of colour. ‘I’ll be getting off home now.’
Harold shook his head at Joe with a look that said: Don’t ask, mate, just keep yer trap shut if you’ve got any sense.
As Pat stepped outside on to the street the warm evening air hit him like a wall. He stood there, breathing deeply, trying to sort out the thoughts that were buzzing around in his head. Frank Barber. Joe had said it, plain as day, she’d been helping Frank Barber. Why hadn’t she said anything to him about it?
In a more rational mood Pat would have told himself that that was Katie’s way: not bragging about what she was doing for people and just getting on with things. But Pat wasn’t thinking rationally. The blackness of jealousy had closed his mind into a single, dark tunnel of anger, rooted in an undeniable, but never spoken fear of losing her. He had seen his mother go off so many times when he had been a child that he had absorbed the perverted lesson without ever questioning it, that that was what women did – they went off and left you, no matter how much you needed them, or how much you loved them. His mother hadn’t stayed away, however. She had always come back, claiming she was sorry for what she had done. But that wasn’t the truth, or so his father had hollered so loud that Pat could hear from his bedroom as he cowered beneath the blankets. The truth was that she was bored as she always was, sooner or later, by her latest man. Next there would be the screaming match with Pat’s parents accusing one another of things that Pat chose not to hear, or at least not to remember, and finally his father would explode into a violent frenzy of punching and kicking, beating his wife until she collapsed from his blows, while Pat buried his head under his pillow, sobbing for them to stop.
Pat had never asked his parents, or even himself for that matter, whether it was his father’s violence or his mother’s straying that had come first, but he had sworn to himself that when he grew up he would never live the life that they had; when he got married he would never let his wife leave him.
He pulled down his cap and prepared himself to walk back along the road to number twelve and confront her, but what he saw going on outside their house at the other end of the street was enough of an excuse to tip his fermenting anger over into a blind rage. There was Katie, broom in hand, rowing noisily with a woman Pat recognised as coming from one of the flats in the tall three-storey houses in Upper North Street; she had the reputation for being a wild street fighter who didn’t mind getting a bloody nose or a thick lip so long as she got her revenge for whatever slight, real or imagined, that she was disputing.
Usually Pat would have raced along the street and been first in the queue to support his wife, whatever the issue, against such a woman, believing implicitly that Katie could never be in the wrong. But after what Joe had just said to him, supporting his wife was the last thing on Pat’s mind.
He strode purposefully towards the little crowd that had gathered round the two yelling women, his mind full of the vision of Katie smiling up at Frank Barber, the widower from across the street at number eleven. He didn’t even notice the younger Miltons hanging out of their top window jeering and pelting things at the woman who had the cheek to be rowing with their friend’s mum. Nor did he register that Phoebe Tucker and Sooky Shay were sitting on kitchen chairs on the pavement in front of number seven, looking, apart from the fact that they were togged out in crossover aprons and trodden-down carpet slippers, as though they were in a theatre audience watching a high drama being acted out for their entertainment.
As Pat drew nearer to the rowdy scene he began to get the gist of what the woman from round the corner was shouting at his wife; she was complaining about one of his sons.
‘Your precious little Michael wants his arse tanning, the rotten little bugger. Nearly ripped the sleeve right off that jacket, he has,’ the woman hollered, poking her finger dangerously close to Katie’s mouth. She was either very brave or didn’t know that if anyone had anything bad to say about her kids, Katie Mehan had it in her to bite right through to the woman’s bone.
‘My Michael, you say,’ said Katie, deceptively calm. Crouching forward, she circled the woman, her broom clasped in her hand as though it were an Amazon warrior’s spear. ‘Aw no, yer’ve got that all wrong.’ Katie shook her head, making her halo of red waves quiver. ‘I ain’t having that. It’s not my Michael yer wanna be after. No, if yer looking for the troublemaker, yer wanna look at yer own flaming kid. Yer’ve brought up a right little monster there, if yer can call it bringing him up, the way he’s left night and day while you go out gallivanting Gawd knows where.’
Katie jerked her thumb at the woman’s scabby-kneed child, who was wishing he had never mentioned the name of Mehan to his mother.
‘It was him what picked on my boy. Michael was only protecting himself. He knows better than to start a fight, but he knows he should always be the one to finish it. Just like I’ve always taught him.’
Katie turned to Michael for confirmation of what she had just claimed and, as Michael was far more scared of Katie than of any kid, or any kid’s mother for that matter, he nodded angelically and whispered, ‘That’s right, Mum. It was him what started it. Honest. It weren’t me.’
The woman’s nostrils flared. ‘You little liar!’ She looked round at her audience, making an appeal for truth, just in time to see a lump of slate being pelted along the street with considerable speed and accuracy from the Miltons’ upstairs window. She ducked and it fell at Katie’s feet; the Miltons weren’t doing too well at protecting their champion. ‘Did yer see that?’ the woman gasped. ‘This whole street’s full of bloody hooligans.’
‘Never you mind no one else,’ Katie snarled. ‘It’s me yer’ve got the row with, not them.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ the woman roared, ‘but yer’ve got the sodding nerve to call yerself a churchgoer. Churchgoer, my Aunt Fanny! Yer no good, the lot of yer. And if yer don’t stop him now, that Michael’ll turn out just like that Sean of your’n.’
Katie straightened up from her fighter’s stance. ‘What’s this about my Sean?’
The woman again appealed to the crowd. ‘What’s this about her Sean, she asks.’ She turned back to Katie. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
For the first time, Nora, who up until now had been standing quietly observing, spoke up. ‘Yer don’t have to stand for that, Katie, girl,’ she said, flapping her hand at the other woman. ‘You get yer blouse off and paste her!’
But before Katie could follow her mother’s instructions, Pat arrived on the scene. He grabbed hold of his wife’s arms and hissed into her ear to get indoors.
So shocked was she that Pat would even dare treat her like that in the street, especially in front of the neighbours and her own mother, Katie followed him dumbly into number twelve.
Feeling that honour had been satisfied, the woman from Upper North Street treated the gawping crowd to a scornful smile, stuck her chin in the air and wandered off around the corner, dragging her humiliated son by the collar of the torn jacket that had caused all the trouble in the first place.
Nora, however, felt she had been cheated out of a proper end to the business. Determined to have a row of some kind or other, she stood her ground on the pavement between her and her daughter’s houses, and turned her attentions to her two neighbours who were still sitting on their kitchen chairs, apparently hoping for a second act to the drama.
‘And what are you two old hens looking at?’ Nora demanded loudly.
Phoebe Tucker’s skin was too thick for such taunts to worry her, and anyway she was too busy insulting other people to bother wasting her time being offended.
Leaning back in her chair, she addressed her companion loudly: ‘Like I said, Sook, it ain’t just their kids they wanna keep an eye on neither. That flaming mongrel of their’ns been doing its business all over decent people’s street doorsteps again. Disgusting, I call it, proper disgusting. Mind you, what would yer expect of a family like that? Fighting in the street. Disgraceful.’
Sooky, who always agreed with Phoebe – when she was within earshot, at least – nodded sagely. ‘Yer right there, girl.’
Michael looked aghast at the women’s accusation. ‘Our Rags never did his business on no one’s steps, Nanna. Mum’d kill me if I let him do that.’
Nora very deliberately reached into the deep pocket of her apron and retrieved her purse. Taking out a couple of pennies, she thrust them into Michael’s hand. ‘Go and get some chips and take Timmy with yer,’ she instructed her grandson. Then she pushed up her sleeves and bowled across the street to put Phoebe Tucker and Sooky Shay right about one or two things.
Inside number twelve, Katie was pacing up and down the little kitchen, trying to figure out what had got into her husband, while he sat staring at the scrubbed table top, his face fixed with hostility beneath the peak of his cap.
‘Are yer gonna say something, or are yer just gonna sit there with that face on yer?’ Katie demanded, spinning round to confront him.
‘Yer was causing a scene in the street,’ he accused her. ‘And . . .’ He smacked the flat of his hand hard against his thigh, ‘and yer’d think there’d at least be a bit of bread and cheese on the table for a man when he gets home from the pub.’
Katie was at a loss. She started her pacing again, thinking that if she stood still she might just have to take a saucepan to her husband’s thick, stupid head. He was acting like that day he had seen the feller from the market slip some extra tomatoes into her string bag; he had insulted the man, and her, by accusing him of trying to buy his way into Katie’s affections with a few overripe vegetables. That was typical of Pat’s jealousy, but she honestly couldn’t think what had made him so wild this time. It couldn’t really be about bread and cheese, he never got worked up over things like that. No, all that ever set Pat off was the idea that some bloke might have noticed she didn’t look like the back end of a number sixty-five tram.
She took a deep breath, stopped her pacing and looked at her husband. ‘Pat, yer’ve not long eaten yer tea. You ain’t hungry. So, will yer tell me what this is all about?’
‘Did I say I was hungry?’ Pat shouted. ‘Did I say that? No, I didn’t, did I?’
Katie pulled out a chair and sat down at the table opposite her husband. She spoke as evenly as she could manage, although her mouth was dry and her hands were trembling. ‘Look, Pat, I ain’t having this. Yer acting like a madman. Now will yer tell me what’s really up with yer?’
Pat bowed his head. His chest rose and fell as he breathed rapidly in and out. ‘Forget it, all right?’
‘No, Pat, that ain’t good enough.’
Pat rubbed his hands over his face, the work-worn skin of his fingers catching on the thick blue-black stubble that covered his chin. ‘All right, 111 tell yer. I’m worried. Satisfied? I’m worried that when I go in on Monday the work’ll have dried up completely. That there’ll be nothing left for no one.’ He lifted his face towards the door. ‘When yer see the likes of them Miltons and what it’s done to them, it gets yer down. It’s enough to get anyone down. Can’t yer see that?’
Katie stood up again. Her hands were now shaking almost uncontrollably as she picked up her chair and slammed it down hard under the table. ‘No, Pat. I won’t have it. Yer lying to me. All right, yer worried about work, but we both know there’s something else up with yer, don’t we? And from the way yer leading off, I reckon it’s another one of them bone-headed ideas yer get stuck into that thick bonce of your’n.’
Now Pat was standing too. He towered over her, but she stood her ground, fists thrust into her waist.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Yer really wanna know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, 111 tell yer. Yer was talking to Frank Barber. Joe Palmer said so, so there’s no use you denying it.’
Katie threw up her hands. ‘Why would I deny talking to Frank Barber?’
Pat leant forward and thumped the table top with the side of his fist. ‘Because he’s a sodding widower, that’s why,’ he bawled.
‘Yeah,’ Katie snapped back, ‘that’s right. Yer know, yer must be a flaming genius, you. His wife’s dead, so that’s what he is, he’s a widower. Now why didn’t I think of that?’
Pat said nothing.
‘And,’ Katie went on, practically vibrating with temper, ‘it’s ’cos he’s a widower that I was asking if there was anything I could do to help with that poor little kiddy of his.’
‘What’s that gotta do with you?’ Pat was blazing. ‘He’s got old girl Evans living upstairs for that.’
Katie almost laughed. ‘You are kidding, ain’t yer, Pat? Nutty Lil, with all her ghosts and spirits and hymn singing? Not to mention her gin. Everyone knows she’s half barmy.’ She shook her head in baffled wonder.
‘Kate, I couldn’t care less if she was Nutty Lil or Fag Ash Lil.’ Pat was losing track of what had seemed like a totally reasonable argument to him as he had strode along the street from the Queen’s, determined to put a stop to whatever his fevered mind had fixed upon. ‘And anyway, a feller looking after a little girl like that – well, it ain’t manly, is it? I don’t want yer mixing with him.’
‘It ain’t manly?’ Now it was Katie who was losing her grasp of what they were meant to be arguing about. ‘What d’yer think he should do? Stick her in a home because his old woman’s dead?’
Pat didn’t answer. He walked over to the sink, turned on the tap and, without even bothering to take off his cap, he ducked his head under the stream of cold water.
Katie went to stand behind him. Pointing her finger at his back she yelled, ‘Tell yer what, I admire the way he’s managing, whether you think it’s manly or not. And I dunno how you can have the cheek to even talk about whether I should be helping someone. You’re the one who fetches home every passing waif and stray, just ’cos yer’ve heard some hard luck story off ’em. I’ve had more hungry strangers sitting down at that table over the years than I could count on the fingers of both me hands. And, as for looking after kids, how about the way you’ve always helped me look after our’n?’
Pat was beside himself. He ripped his soaking wet cap from his head and dashed it to the floor, then he snatched up the little jug of daisies that Katie had put on the window ledge over the sink and threw it as hard as he could across the room. It smashed into the drawer of the painted dresser, sending pieces of jug, flowers and water flying everywhere.
‘Don’t you understand nothing?’ he bellowed, twisting round to face her. Grabbing her by the tops of her arms, in a grip that burnt her flesh, he shook her as if she were a rag doll. ‘He’s a man, Katie. And you, you’re a woman.’
Jerking her head up, Katie looked him in the eyes and said very slowly and deliberately, ‘Take your hands off me, Pat. Now.’
He whipped his hands away from her, and held his tightly clenched fists stiffly by his sides. From the murderous look on her husband’s face, it would have been understandable if Katie had backed out of the room, made off hell for leather down the passage, and then run into the street screeching for help. But that wasn’t Katie Mehan’s way.
Instead, she stood there, slowly looking her husband up and down. ‘I’m not putting up with this, Pat Mehan,’ she said. ‘I love yer, yer know that, and yer should never doubt it. But I’m telling yer this for nothing, I ain’t having this performance no more. This is yer last chance. Yer very last chance. I know yer’ve got a lot on yer mind over work, but that ain’t no excuse. If yer don’t do something about this jealousy, I mean it, Pat, it’ll be the end of us. I’ll leave yer. ’Cos I ain’t gonna wind up a punchbag like yer mum did. Even Father Hopkins himself couldn’t stop me.’
The tension in Pat’s face crumbled away as he slumped back down into his chair and crashed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands. His big labourer’s shoulders began to shake. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I’m sorry. I’d never hurt you, I swear.’ His words came in short bursts as though he couldn’t catch his breath. ‘Yer know what I get like. And, with everything else being the way it is, I just can’t help meself. I don’t mean to . . .’
With an exhausted sigh, Katie walked over to the table, sat down beside her husband and reached her arm around him. Pat turned to her and buried his face in her shoulder. As he wept noisily into her blouse, Katie patted his back and rocked him as though he were a huge overgrown child.
‘We’ll have to sort something out, Pat,’ she said, as much for her own benefit as his. ‘Yer do see that, don’t yer? This can’t go on.’
Pat lifted his face to look at her. His eyes were red and watery. ‘I know.’
Katie tried to smile. ‘Yer a great daft ’apporth. Come here.’ She brushed his hair away from his forehead and frowned at the deep blue bruise, wondering for a moment who he had been fighting and if it was anything to do with Frank Barber, but he looked so pathetic, she couldn’t bring herself to challenge him – not for the moment, anyway. She took his face in her hands and gently touched her lips to his.
With a careworn sigh of relief, Pat folded his arms round her, pulled her close and kissed her on the mouth.
Desire overcoming his anger, he stood up and took her by the hand. ‘Coming to bed?’ he asked her, his voice low and gruff.
Katie pulled away. ‘Not just now.’
His face hardened again. ‘Are you refusing me?’
‘No, Pat, I ain’t. And, if yer’d have given me a chance before yer jumped down me throat, yer’d know that I was gonna say I’ll wait down here for Molly, Danny and Sean to come home, before I come up. But you, of course, have to jump in with both feet. And, if yer think we can sort this out by just falling into bed together, then I don’t reckon yer thinking straight. Don’t you realise that’s the last thing I feel like?’
‘What, got yer mind on someone else, have yer?’
‘Do you really think that, Pat? D’you really think I’d even dream of looking at someone else?’
‘When yer acting like this, why shouldn’t I?’
Katie’s mouth fell open; she genuinely didn’t know what to say.
But then neither did Pat.
They had rowed over his jealousy plenty of times before, but it had always been Pat complaining that she didn’t realise how her good looks and her friendliness could give men the wrong impression if she wasn’t careful; he had never gone as far as accusing her of actually being interested in someone else.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence with the two of them staring at one another, Pat stormed out of the kitchen, along the passage and stood, panting at the bottom of the staircase. Michael and Timmy were sitting halfway up the stairs, stuffing themselves with greasy chips and pieces of vinegar-soaked crackling from a cone of newspaper.
Timmy smiled at him. ‘Wanna chip, Dad?’
‘Get into your nanna’s. Go on. Now!’ Pat bawled at the top of his voice as he shoved his sons out of the way, and took the stairs two at a time.
The boys didn’t need telling twice. They launched themselves off their backsides, scarpered out into the street and dived into the safety of their nanna’s house before their mother had a chance to come after them as well.
But the whereabouts of her two youngest sons was, unusually, the last thing on Katie’s mind that evening, as she sat at the kitchen table, listening to Pat crashing about above her head.
When he had quietened down and all she could hear was the occasional creak of springs from the bedstead, she got up and filled the kettle. The evening was still warm and, with all the bad feeling, the kitchen felt like it was closing in on her, but she couldn’t face sitting out in the street with her mum, not knowing that all the neighbours must have heard every shaming word of what had just gone on. So, after she had made herself a pot of tea, Katie unlatched the back door and propped it open with the chalk model of a Scottie dog that Sean had so proudly presented to her after winning it on the hoopla at the Blackheath fair last August Bank Holiday.
He had always been such a good kid, she thought to herself, as she dragged one of the kitchen chairs out into the little yard. She just didn’t know what had got into him lately. All she wanted was for her kids to be happy, but as much as she hated to agree with the snipe-nosed old harridan from round Upper North Street, Sean was getting himself a reputation – but only for being a bit sullen and having a bit too much lip at times, she was sure. He wasn’t a bad kid, not deep down. She wouldn’t have anyone say that about him.
She sat there smoking and drinking tea, looking up at the cloudy night sky, wondering when her three oldest children would eventually get themselves home. According to the clock on the mantelpiece, it was getting on for a quarter past ten and she had told them not to be in too late because of Mass in the morning. She tried to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about, that Molly and Danny were old enough to make sure the three of them got in at a decent hour, but it was no good. She had to admit things weren’t as wonderful as she had tried to kid herself. Fretting about what Sean was up to wasn’t the half of it; what was on her mind more and more nowadays was being short of money, not knowing whether she could make ends meet and panicking if one of the little ones grew out of yet another pair of boots before his older brother was ready to pass his down.
As she drained the first cup of tea from the potful she had made, and went in to get a refill, Katie stared down at the worn patch of lino in the kitchen doorway. She had scrubbed it so often that there was practically no pattern left; but she knew it was no good even thinking about buying any more. She’d just have to carry on keeping clean the raggy bit that she already had.
She stirred a spoon of sugar into her cup.
Women’s work, she thought to herself, they say it’s never done. Well, whoever they were, they had got it just about right as far as she was concerned. Cup in hand, Katie examined herself in the sparkling glass of the overmantel. Thirty-seven years old. She supposed she didn’t look that bad for her age, not too bad at all, considering, but the lines were beginning to show, and the red hair that had always been her glory was definitely starting the gradual sad fading away to what she knew would one day be like her mother’s now dull auburn, a colour that always made Katie think of a red lampshade with its bulb turned out.
She tipped her head to one side and examined her profile. Her chin was still firm and her skin as clear as someone’s ten years younger might be, but, whatever she looked like, tonight Katie Mehan felt like an old woman.
She raised her eyes to the ceiling, imagining her husband lying there, his arms flung above his head as usual, his handsome face dark against the snowy white cotton of the pillow slip. He was a good-looking man all right, she thought. And, while her looks might be on their way to getting past their prime, he was getting more beautiful every day; if anyone should be jealous . . . She checked herself, that wasn’t a sensible way to start thinking; but no one ever said that life made any sense, or that it was fair.
Settling herself back down on her chair in the back yard, Katie wondered what her mother had looked like when she was younger. Katie could only remember her as looking almost the way she did now, and she was, what, in her late fifties? She was still a fine woman, there was no denying that, but some women of that age, or rather ladies, Katie corrected herself, the ones she saw in the papers and on the newsreels, those with their fur coats and their shiny earrings, and, servants to run around after their every whim, they looked years younger than Nora, almost as young as Katie, in fact. But then they never had the worries that the likes of her or her mother had had to contend with lately.
As she sipped her tea from the thick-rimmed china cup, Katie found it hard not to wonder what her life would have been like if she had been born to money, privilege and ease, instead of to the stress and the work that made up every minute of every day of her life recently.
She hated letting herself think that way – it wasn’t like her to be self-pitying, she had always been such a contented woman, happy with her life and her family. But just for a moment she wondered, crossing herself hurriedly and flicking her eyes heavenward for forgiveness as soon as she had, what her life might have been like had she stayed single, and not had a husband or kids to drive her to distraction.