A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (14 page)

Miss MacPherson nodded. Faints were commonplace amid a population of inadequately nourished women, but, in this case, loss of consciousness might spell deeper trouble.

In the dim light of a guttering candle on a high shelf, she approached the narrow camp bed through a muddle of cardboard boxes, stools, a mattress littered with discarded bits of clothing, and a small table laden with dirty white crockery and a primus stove. On a solitary chair lay a pile of neatly folded, clean white cotton pieces, surmounted by a reel of thread and a pair of rusty nail scissors.

Alice Flynn still knelt by the bed, one arm flung protectively over her friend.

At the approach of the nurse, she looked up, frowned and climbed stiffly to her feet.

The nurse was shocked to see Connie curled up by her mother. Over her shoulder, the child
viewed the visitor with scowling distrust. Above her blonde head her even more distrustful mother tried to smile.

The shaken nurse said sharply to Martha, who appeared to be in charge of operations, ‘The child should not lie with her mother. She could be infected by the tuberculosis. Surely her father knows that. Do you know?'

Martha knew, but thought that mother love was more important. She answered defensively, ‘I wouldn't know, Miss. I'm just her friend what lives downstairs.' Then in an effort to exonerate Thomas from the implied accusation, she went on, ‘Her hubby goes to sea and he don't see much of his kids.'

‘Humph,' Miss MacPherson snorted. Would these people never learn?

She looked down at Mary Margaret, and said in a far gentler tone, ‘Mrs Flanagan, let your friend take your little girl so that I can get a better look at you.'

Mary Margaret obediently whispered to the child.

Connie woodenly said, ‘No.'

She pushed herself closer to her mother.

The nurse tapped her on the shoulder, and said in a playful way, ‘Come on, young woman. I must help your mother.'

Connie snarled, ‘Go away.'

Martha silently bent down and wrenched the child away.

Connie screamed and tried to fight her way out of the firm grip.

Martha bared her teeth, and said, ‘You do as you're told for once, or I'll smack your bottom so hard, it'll be the death of you!'

The nurse looked shocked. The tantrum was shut off immediately, however, because Connie believed that Martha would do what she threatened. She managed, however, to kick Martha in the stomach, before being handed over to a woman standing behind her.

‘Take her for a minute, Kitty,' Martha ordered, and turned back to the nurse.

Silent, elderly Kitty Callaghan had stolen down from the second floor to see what was up. Very lonely, because her husband was in gaol and her son at sea, she tended to get passed over by everyone in the house, except for the unwelcome attentions of Joseph, the elderly pickpocket, who lived in the windowless room behind hers.

Not knowing what to do, Kitty simply held Connie firmly by her hand and told her to be quiet. Unexpectedly, Connie obeyed; she was diverted by the nurse opening a most interesting-looking bag.

The nurse took out a thermometer, shook it hard
and popped it into her mother's mouth. To Connie it looked just like a glass cigarette, and she half expected smoke to come out of it.

Alice Flynn dragged a stool forward so that the nurse could sit down.

Miss MacPherson seated herself, and smiled reassuringly at the invalid. After a minute or two of complete silence, she removed the thermometer. Temperature normal. She inquired, ‘Tell me what happened. Are you in pain?'

‘Not very much, Miss, now,' Mary Margaret whispered. ‘It happens like this sometimes. Only after I coughed up, I were out for a while – and that frightened Kathleen. And she didn't know what to do, and she thought of you. And it's real kind of you to come.'

With an effort, she lifted herself onto one elbow in order to face her visitor. ‘But I'll be all right now.'

The nurse glanced again at the thermometer, wiped it with a cloth, moistened with a smelly disinfectant, and then put it away.

She was frequently amazed at this patient acceptance of suffering and death as being inevitable, part of existence, and that you couldn't do much about it except dull the pain – if possible. Mary Margaret's calmness saddened her.

Without hope of her advice being taken, she said gently, ‘You know, Mrs Flanagan, you should be in a sanatorium having proper treatment. I can arrange for you to be seen by a doctor at the dispensary, perhaps a specialist, who could arrange it.'

‘Oh, aye,' replied Mary Margaret hoarsely, ‘I seen doctors before and they know there's not much they can do. They thought I wasn't listening – and they said TB is “terminal” – and that means, dying, doesn't it? That's God's will, isn't it?'

Miss Macpherson opened her mouth to doubt this statement, but Mary Margaret had not finished. Her voice strengthened, as she continued, ‘So I says I wasn't going nowhere. And I come home to be with me kids and me hubby, till it happens. Sanatoriums is like hospitals; you die in them.'

She paused to catch her breath, and then added defiantly, ‘And the doctors is wrong up to now. I'm not dead yet!'

While the nurse took her pulse, she lay exhausted with the effort of such a long reply, her heart fluttering with fear that the nurse might have the power to order her into a sanatorium.

Miss MacPherson was not really surprised at her patient's reply. With sudden insight, she tried another tack.

‘Did you faint before or after breakfast?' she inquired.

A little surprised at the question, Mary Margaret replied cautiously, ‘Well, you see, I usually has a cup of tea at breakfast. But by the time I'd given our Thomas his bread and tea, the pot was empty – and I was out of tea and milk – and sugar.' She stopped for a moment, and then, in case she should be accused of child neglect, said, ‘I give the kids some bread to eat.'

‘So, if you had had your tea and some bread, you might not have fainted?'

Mary Margaret thought this over and then agreed.

‘Have you had anything to eat since?'

Mary Margaret, eyes half closed, stirred uneasily. It was hard to admit that, once she had fed the children, she had had nothing edible in the room.

‘I didn't feel like nothing when I began to cough,' she hedged. ‘Martha here brought me some tea just now. But I only took a sip or two.' She gestured towards a grubby white mug on the table.

‘I understand. You probably would not feel like it until you had washed your mouth out, would you? But to keep well you must eat well.'

At this, Mary Margaret wanted to laugh. Life was not like that – you ate when you got the chance. She did not respond to the nurse's remark: she
considered it stupid. If she had enough food, of course she would eat it.

The nurse observed a shiver go through her emaciated patient, and her expression became grim. In her daily struggle to alleviate the suffering of the sick and housebound, she could do nothing about malnutrition, that polite, political word which covered the fact of starvation. So many of her patients would be a lot better if, each day, they simply had enough to eat.

She consoled herself with the usual argument against more welfare: the dire situation of many of her patients was not helped by their own hopeless improvidence and their huge birthrate. They must themselves, therefore, shoulder some of the responsibilty for their woes.

As she took Mary Margaret's wrist once again to feel her lagging pulse, she longed, for the umpteenth time, to teach birth control to such women – another child would certainly kill this woman. Yet, she would lose her job if she did so.

Not only would there be outraged complaints at such teaching from the Roman Catholic Church, but there was in Liverpool, she felt, an unexpressed opinion that the maintenance of a mass of cheap casual labour was not totally a bad idea: labour should not be discouraged from breeding; it could
be bad for the economy. One thing was certain: any charity that did encourage birth control was liable to find that donations to their funds would shrink.

‘Are you on the housing list?' the nurse asked.

‘Been on it for five years or more. But we want to be close to here. We're in no hurry to move.'

‘Your health would improve in an airy house with windows and sunshine.'

Mary Margaret wanted to explain her husband's and her own paramount fear of being moved out to one of the new public housing suburbs, far away from the docks which were their source of work.

But her strength was fading, as she tried to cope with this unwanted interrogation. She was afraid she might faint again – in front of the nurse – and then find herself whisked away to some God-awful sanatorium, like Martha's poor little Colleen, miles and miles away from family or friends.

Martha sensed some of Mary Margaret's fear and intervened. ‘I can bring something for her to eat, right now. And the tea's still on the hob – she could try another cup – but I haven't got no milk.'

‘I got plenty of milk,' a voice from the rear interrupted. ‘You can have some now, if you want it.'

The offer came from a bleary-eyed Helen O'Brien,
the prostitute. She was flanked by her yawning sister, Ann, who nodded agreement.

At this time of day, Helen and Ann O'Brien, who lived in the room behind the Connollys', were usually in bed, resting before mincing along Canning Place in search of lonely seamen, their long skirts swishing, their blouses unbuttoned. They had had, however, a very busy late morning and early afternoon.

Warned that a whaler would dock that morning, letting loose a large number of desperate crew, womanless for six months, they had gone out early. Money for jam, they had giggled. Now, exhausted from the hard work they had done and slightly drunk from the gin they had consumed, their skirt pockets jingled with a myriad of silver half-crowns.

‘I'll bring up a pint bottle right now,' promised Ann magnanimously. She turned and tottered unsteadily downstairs to their room.

Nurse MacPherson smiled at the woman's immediate offer. It would at least stir up for this poor invalid the very lively tribal instinct that existed between such hard-pressed neighbours; from almost empty purses and larders, help would be found for her.

Such care would be far more humane than if the whole family was sent to the workhouse, which could well happen to them: Mary Margaret to the
workhouse hospital; the husband to the men's ward, so that he would never see his wife; the children to a children's department, where they would rarely see their parents.

Like the vestiges of Victorian slums in which the poor dwelt, the Victorian belief still endured among the more conservative that such families were not much better than animals: Miss MacPherson knew them to be otherwise.

The tired, overworked district nurse was determined not to push Mary Margaret unfairly into accepting anything which would make her more scared than she already was. The patient was right: her death was inevitable. Let her die at home – and let's hope the children don't get the same disease, she prayed.

She determined to emphasise to the group of neighbours, as well as to Mary Margaret, the need for the children to sleep elsewhere and not to be kissed by their mother.

As gently as possible she would suggest to her patient that her husband should be examined by a doctor. Being a seaman he might be the source of her infection: too many sailors suffered from the same deadly disease.

She would also have a word with Father James, when next she saw him. Though he was a Catholic
priest, he seemed to understand his people better than most did. She felt that the Church could rustle up a bit of practical help from the multitude of charities in the city, as well as the spiritual help they usually purveyed.

As she rose from the painfully small stool, she said kindly to Mary Margaret, ‘Have a good rest today – and keep the little girl away from you. Remember!'

Mary Margaret smiled weakly. Rest? When she had a whole new pile of hankies to hem?

As an anxious Martha led Miss MacPherson downstairs again, the nurse explained about the need to keep the children separate from their mother as much as possible. Then she suggested, ‘Try to persuade Mrs Flanagan and her husband to go to the dispensary. They can see a doctor there who might be able to suggest some treatment for her. Meanwhile, she will be much better if she has good food – and drinks plenty of milk.'

‘Oh, aye,' agreed Martha. ‘But I'll have to watch her eat; otherwise, she'll give it to her kids.'

And how are we supposed to even get her to the dispensary, she wondered resentfully. She can barely climb the stairs.

The nurse paused uneasily on the doorstep.
‘You know the family would be better fed in the workhouse?'

Martha glanced up at her in horror. ‘Oh, no, Miss! Separated from her kids, she'd die in no time.'

Mentally, she said goodbye to the pie and chips awaiting her in her own room – Mary Margaret had to be fed, that was certain, and Martha would give her share to her; perhaps Number Nine would not eat all of his and she could make do with what he left.

‘I can find a bit for her,' she assured the nurse.

Resignedly, the nurse looked down at the scrawny bundle of skin and bone wrapped in a shawl which was Martha – and admired her generosity.

She couched her report on the family in the vaguest terms and hoped that she had made the best decision for them.

February to October 1938

Frail but determined, Mary Margaret got up from her bed and, shakily, resumed her normal life. She was aided by the thought that, if she could survive the winter, she would strengthen in the warmer weather of spring and summer, which she did.

One starlit night in October, when the only other light was the dim rays from the street-lamp near the arched entry and the only sound was the rustle of rats in the dustbins, a raucous voice rolled through the court and echoed on its enclosing walls.