A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (12 page)

It would be so much easier for her, she often thought, if she could wheel the bundles of fents down to the market in the pram. But there was nowhere safe to put the pram while she dealt with her customers: if she turned her back on it, it could, in a flash, be stolen. Furthermore, if an interfering flattie did show up and ask to see her licence, she could abandon the rags and run for it; an anonymous woman dressed exactly like half a hundred other women around the market could soon get lost. But, encumbered by a pram, she could not move fast – and the pram was too precious to be abandoned.

She had considered keeping Kathleen out of school on market days, to come with her and watch the pram. But not only would the school attendance officer be after her, so would formidable Sister Elizabeth, who taught the kid. Sister seemed overly keen on Kathleen staying in school.

Martha was the only woman to sell clean cotton rags in this particular market, which would suggest that there was not much demand for them in a place where the majority of the shoppers were women. A surprising number of women, however,
bought them for their husbands' use: their menfolk worked at skilled jobs involving grease, paint, blood, sewage, etc, and needed to wipe their hands or their engines frequently, with material cheap enough to be discarded afterwards.

She also delivered regularly to several garages employing oil-soaked mechanics who served the increasing number of private cars in the city. The butchers, poulterers and fishmongers in the market itself were also often glad to see her, to buy a rag with which to wipe off fishscales or blood from icy-cold hands.

Her biggest problem was to assemble the basket of suitable rags in the first place, and, furthermore, to accumulate them without having to pay for them.

She begged for rags from door to door in the various neighbourhoods of Toxteth, offering, in return, a coloured balloon for the children in the house.

She also had contacts amongst the Jewish community in the wholesale dress trade along London Road, where she sometimes got very tiny pieces of new material, which she occasionally had to pay for. She sorted the scraps into big bunches of varied colours that she thought might go together, for sale to one or two women customers who did
old-fashioned quilting. They would pay as much as sixpence for an assortment of pretty new patches.

Occasionally, pawnbrokers had torn, grubby sheets hanging up outside their shops. These had been used as the outer covering for bundles of clothing which had been pawned and not redeemed, and she would bargain a penny or twopence for any that were hopelessly worn. She would then take them to the public wash house and launder them. When they had been dried on the clothesline slung across the court, she would tear them into one-foot or eighteen-inch squares and sell the smaller ones at three squares for a penny, the larger ones at two for a penny. If any were strong enough to stand being washed after use, she charged more.

Once, when canvassing in Princes Road, she stumbled on an estate auction being held on a front lawn. She watched, fascinated by the pantomime being enacted, and discovered that, towards the end of the sale, much-used cotton sheets, pillowcases, tea towels and everyday tablecloths and bath towels were almost given away.

She mentioned this to her neighbour, Alice Flynn.

‘I don't know why they let the stuff go so cheap, Alice, but if I had had a bit more cash, I could've bought a great boxful from just that one sale.'

Alice considered this information at length. She had, in her youth, been in service, and finally she said a little doubtfully, ‘I'm thinking that it's stuff from the servants' quarters, and kitchen stuff. The family wouldn't want to use it themselves. They was really throwing it away, no doubt – just put it out on the lawn to get a few pence for it, more to clear the house than anything.'

‘But there aren't that many servants nowadays, are there, Alice? We had a right job to find our Lizzie a place.'

Alice laughed. ‘Well, if they're moving out of one of them big houses, maybe they've got rid of the servants as well. But you was telling me that Lizzie isn't the only girl working for her mistress?'

‘True. There's a cook. Proper bitch she is to our Lizzie.' Martha was silent for a minute, and then she said grimly, ‘And a proper pest to her is the sons of the house.'

‘Oh, aye. And I bet the mistress don't want to know about that, even if you dares to tell her. Lizzie must watch it.'

Martha sighed. ‘I told her that.'

‘Some of them'll put a little rubber cap on their you-know-what, to avoid a bun in the oven.'

‘I did tell her. 'Cos they can afford it. Wish we could.' She laughed ruefully.

Alice Flynn laughed with her, though she would herself have loved a child. But the war had ‘fixed' her husband as certainly as a gelded horse was fixed. So that was that.

Martha could not read. She had a habit, however, of picking up any discarded newspapers she could find. Newspapers were extremely useful. You could kindle the fire in the range with them; you could stuff one between a child's jersey and his vest to keep his chest warm; if you could collect enough to fill a sack, it made a good mattress to sleep on, not nearly so cold as the bare floor.

Now, very thoughtfully, she first took the papers to Mary Margaret, who could read, and asked her if estate sales were advertised. Together they discovered that they were, and Mary Margaret read the advertisements to her.

Sometimes, Martha, looking very out of place in her black skirt and shawl, would put on her faded flowered pinafore, washed for the occasion, and go to such sales. She was viewed with suspicion by the auctioneers, as she edged through the crowd, to look at piles of old kitchenware, some of which a woman of her social station might manage to buy.

She did not draw attention to her real quarry, the bedding. No one else at the sale came near her
because she stank. She ignored them and simply watched the auctioneer. She did not bid.

Better quality blankets, eiderdowns and bedding usually went in large lots. She waited until the sale drew to a close, only to find, sometimes, that the stuff was taken indoors again, perhaps to be given to a charity.

Where a likely pile remained on the lawn, she caught the eye of the auctioneer's assistant or someone who seemed to be a member of the family tidying up, and asked if she could look through the stuff. She always told him flatly that she was looking for rags.

Sufficiently often to make it worth her while she got a pile of aged linen for a few pence, or sometimes it was even given to her carelessly, as to a beggar.

She would tie her purchases into a bundle in one sheet and hoist it onto her head to carry home.

‘Aye, Mary Margaret, love,' she said wistfully one day to her friend, ‘I wish I'd got a bit more money. I could get a lot of fents what would sell well in the market.'

Mary Margaret smiled and said placidly, ‘Wait till the kids get a bit older and can bring in something. You might start a business yet.'

‘Oh, aye. What a hope!' Martha replied scornfully and laughed at the very idea – after all, Number Nine was not yet two. What money she had was for spending – there were always so many immediate, pressing needs – and you had to have a bit of fun, didn't you? – a visit to the pictures or a drink with your hubby at the Baltic Fleet or the Coburg. One day's worries were more than enough to bear.

Of course, you could dream of having a living room like Mrs O'Reilly's, with a good coal fire constantly roaring up the chimney. But dreams were just that; you did not waste your time on them.

Nor did you normally worry too much about horrors like having to go to live in Norris Green: you only worried when it seemed suddenly that such a fate was right on top of you. And that was such an enormous worry, anyway, that she felt helpless. Sometimes all you could do was to let a thing happen to you and hope that you would live through it.

January 1938

As Martha tramped steadily down to the market, the cold wind whipped round her skirts and made her wish that she had not sent her inadequately clad children to school quite so early. Her intention had been to make sure that they did, indeed, set off to school, instead of loafing round the court all day, which would mean yet another visit from the school attendance officer. The children would, however, have to hang around in the playground for at least an hour, she fretted, until the teacher on playground duty arrived.

As she struggled to keep her heavy basket steady on her head despite the wind, she finally consoled herself with the thought that the pavements were now drying, so their feet would not be very wet,
and the sun was coming out. They would probably run all the way there, and that would warm them. And, at worst, they could stand under the rain shelter.

She refused to consider that the shelter had no walls to break the chilly wind.

She forgot, also, that, even when the teacher had arrived, they would not be allowed into the school until all the pupils had been arranged in neat lines in front of her, class by class, and the nine o'clock bell had rung. Then they would be marched into the school in numerical order, beginning with the Babies. By the time Class Eight had entered, the teacher herself, well wrapped up, would be complaining, as she usually did, that her hands were frozen, despite her gloves.

The colder Martha became, however, as she walked down to the market, the more she worried. But as she approached the building's exterior and was hailed by beshawled acquaintances, also shivering, as they crouched on the pavement amid cheap crockery for sale, she shrugged. It was no good: she could not do anything about the kids. They must learn to endure cold. They would face plenty of it when they grew up.

She always felt, with relief, that the market was her own place, totally apart from family worries.
Once she stepped over the threshold, she was in a world of her own.

Today, she made a joke with her friends about first going into the market itself to get warm and to see if she could sell some rags to her men friends, the butchers and fishmongers. The women were ribald about who her favourite stallholders were.

Inside, she was at least out of the wind, but she continued to shiver as she edged swiftly through the milling crowd like a skinny weasel seeking dinner down a rabbit hole.

Many of the early swarm of people were small shopkeepers, like John O'Reilly, who used the stallholders as middlemen from whom to buy modest quantities of fresh stock for their own tiny corner stores.

The baskets of produce on their arms were a menace to Martha, as they scraped by her, catching her crocheted shawl on the wickerwork and leaving her forearms scratched or bruised by its sharp points.

When her own basket was nearly knocked off her head by the jostling crew, she would snarl resentfully, ‘Aye, be careful, can't you?'

But the offender, heaved along by the crowd behind him, would stumble blindly past her, and Martha was left to curse him unnoticed.

She coasted to a near stop amongst the fishmongers, and called, ‘Want to buy some fents – best clean cotton, George? Hugh? Joe, there?'

Today, wet hands were even colder than usual, so she immediately sold a pennyworth of rags to each of two fishmongers. As they thankfully rubbed dry their scarlet, scale-bedewed hands, they teased her absently.

She grinned, and moved quickly out of the crowd, to a stall against a wall: the stallholder sold hot tea from a huge Russian samovar.

She thankfully put down her basket in a niche in the wall. With the twopence she had just earned, she bought herself a cup of tea and a bun. She was served by a woman whom she did not recollect having seen before.

She put the bun in her apron pocket, and, holding the cup between her hands to warm them, she cautiously sipped the scalding tea. Gradually, her shivering ceased, and she stood staring into the empty cup.

I should've bought a second cup instead of the bun, she thought regretfully. I'd have got more heat out of it.

She sighed, and put the empty cup down on the grubby counter. As she did so, she again caught the eye of the stout woman who had served her.

‘Want another cup?' the woman asked.

Martha looked wryly at her. ‘I don't have another penny to spare,' she said.

The woman clicked her tongue. ‘Here, give me your cup: I'm going to empty the samovar anyway. There's at least another cup in it. It may be bitter, but at least it's hot.' She grinned as she took the cup from Martha and held it under the little tap. As she handed back the filled cup, she said hospitably, ‘Help yourself to sugar and milk.'

Martha's face lost some of its fatigue. ‘Ta, ever so,' she said with sudden warmth, and she smiled.

She drank the hot, very bitter tea slowly, while the vendor carefully lifted the samovar up off the tube of charcoal which heated it. She added a lump or two of the fuel to the tube and then threw the tea leaves from the samovar into a bucket. She rinsed it and carefully set it back on its heater. She then filled a ewer with water from an adjacent tap and lifted it to refill the samovar.

As she lifted the heavy ewer, it caught on the edge of the counter and she spilled water down her flowered apron.

‘Blast!' she exclaimed, as the cold water penetrated her clothes.

Glad to show that she also had some grace of
manner, Martha turned and snatched a nice white rag out of her basket.

‘Here you are,' she offered. ‘Wipe yourself down.'

The woman thankfully did so. Afterwards, she held it uncertainly in her hands until Martha said grandly, ‘Keep it – for the cuppa tea, love.'

As the tea lady laid the damp cloth on the counter, she smiled her thanks, and then said, ‘I'm OK today, because you give me one, but I could use a rag or two next time you come by. To mop up, like.'

She looked Martha up and down, and then inquired, ‘I seen you around before, haven't I? Do you sell here every week?'