Rose of Tralee (47 page)

‘Why? You can’t say that when the clock’s stopped and you don’t know the time,’ Mona said, rolling heavily out of bed.

It occurred to Rose that her cousin was putting on weight; certainly when she tugged her nightgown over her head and began to dab unenthusiastically at her bare skin with the wet flannel she seemed to have
lost her waist – from the back at least. ‘Mona, you’re gettin’ fat,’ she said. ‘You ought to bike to work, like I do. It keeps you in shape.’

‘Oh aye? And how do I bike to work when I haven’t gorra bicycle?’ Mona said, heavily sarcastic. ‘Anyway, I am not fat. And if I am, it’s all the lovely grub your mam makes for us to eat. Oh, the apple puddin’ I put away yesterday! I bet it’s settled on me hips as though they were its home from home, though.’

‘Well I don’t suppose a bit of fat matters,’ Rose said. She was buttoning her blouse facing the window. ‘Oh, crumbs, that was the clock strikin’ an’ it’s seven o’clock, so you’d better scamper,’ Rose said. ‘I thought we might as well use the bathroom now Colm’s gone, but Mam said we’d only get into the habit an’ she’d scalp us if we tried it.’

‘Probably as well, if she’s startin’ a new feller soon,’ Mona said, abandoning the washstand and struggling into a pair of fancy silk knickers which weren’t going to keep her warm by the looks, Rose reflected. ‘An’ Tommy’s talkin’ about movin’ on because he needs a better-paid job. We shan’t know ourselves at this rate, Rosie.’

‘Well, now I’m headin’ upwards in the typin’ pool I’m not that fussy about fellers,’ Rose said untruthfully. ‘They only hold you back. Still, I’m goin’ to the Daulby Saturday night. Ella’s comin’ too. You never know who you might meet there.’

‘It won’t be Colm,’ Mona said, shooting a sideways look at Rose. ‘He won’t go where he knows you an’ I hang out. Why not try somewhere different? Somewhere nearer to the tunnel?’

‘Because I’m no keener to meet Colm than he is to meet me,’ Rose said firmly. ‘What’s gone wrong between you an’ Tommy, incidentally? The whole
household talks about me an’ Colm, an’ lays blame, but you an’ Tommy split up and no one even asks why.’

‘We had a ... a misunderstanding’,’ Mona said after a moment’s thought. ‘He thought I oughter do somethin’ an’ I thought I oughtn’t. That was ages ago, mind, before Christmas.’

‘You were still goin’ out together at Christmas,’ Rose objected. ‘It’s only lately you don’t seem to see much of each other.’

‘We were friends,’ acknowledged Mona. She was making up her face before their small mirror with quick, practised movements. Rose, who aimed a powder puff at hers and dabbed lipstick on her mouth when the fancy took her, realised that she had never seen Mona leave the house unmade-up. ‘We still are. Only it’s got kind o’ cooler, you could say.’

‘Like Colm an’ me,’ Rose said, trying to smile. ‘Only we went straight from red-hot to ice-cold, you might say. Still, there’s as many fish in the sea as ever come out of it.’

‘Oh aye. Only . . . well, I miss Tommy. I miss bein’ with him, I mean. Still, there you are; if he’s too keen on gettin’ rich quick to bother wi’ me, I’m best off without him.’

‘Is he? Keen on gettin’ rich quick, I mean?’

Mona, who was pulling her mouth into an odd shape in order to smooth on her lipstick, finished it off by blotting it with a piece of paper and turned to stare at her cousin. ‘Keen? Honest to God, chuck, it’s the only thing he really cares about. In fact it probably put him off meself. I mean, workin’ in a flower shop you aren’t ever goin’ to make a fortune, are you?’

‘As likely as workin’ the trams,’ Rose said, picking up her grey cardigan and her worn black handbag
and heading across the room. ‘He surely don’t expect to become a millionaire tram driver, does he?’

‘Nah ... trams are just useful on his way up, I think. You know he’s workin’ in that garage, evenings? He’s savin’ up for a lorry of his own, remember, and because he’s good wi’ engines he reckons he’ll know a right ‘un when he sees it. They come into the garage now an’ then, an’ when he’s saved enough he’ll buy one an’ start his own transport business. Oh aye, Tommy thinks big.’

‘Well, when he’s a millionaire he can jolly well give me a job doin’ his typin’,’ Rose said, going out of the room and holding the door open for her cousin to follow. ‘Because it don’t seem likely that I’ll ever marry, so I might as well have a decent job wi’ good money comin’ in.’

She set off down the stairs with Mona close on her heels. ‘Huh! Haven’t you noticed, queen, that rich folk stay richer by under-payin’ everyone else? But you’ll marry. Colm were just ... just a hiccup.’

‘I’ve been tellin’ meself that ever since he walked away from me,’ Rose said gloomily. She opened the kitchen door and walked across the room to the table, laid for breakfast. ‘Only toast an’ tea for me, Mam, I want to be in early today.’

Mona, walking briskly up St Domingo Vale and heading for the tram stop on Breckfield Road, thought back to Christmas and Tommy. She had been furious with him when he had told her to accept Garnett’s offer of a flat, because she could see very well which way his devious little mind had been working. And when, the first night she had a room to herself, he had tried to get into her bed, she had been more furious still.

‘You’re not goin’ to come in here, makin’ use of me,’ she had hissed, kicking out vengefully as he tried to scramble beneath the covers. ‘I made up me mind when I asked Aunt Lily to take me in that I’d live a proper, respectable life. And that includes not whorin’ for your profit, what’s more, an’ certainly not sleepin’ wi’ a feller who thinks so little of me that he wants me to set up house wi’ another bloke.’

‘Aw, Mona, don’t be like that,’ Tommy had said. Well, it had been more like a whine, really. ‘You know I like you better’n I’ve ever liked a gal before. Why shouldn’t we mek use of your havin’ a bedroom – and a bed – to yourself?’

‘Because I want to keep it to meself,’ Mona pointed out. She knelt up and heaved him bodily onto the floor, where he made quite a clatter as he struck something on the lino by the bed. Mona feared he might have fallen into the chamber-pot and thanked her stars she had not used it tonight, but she said nothing of that sort. She just hissed: ‘Gerrout of here or I’ll scream the bleedin’ house down!’ and had watched him go before turning on the torch she always kept by the bed to check on the damage.

It hadn’t been the chamber-pot, but the mug in which she had her cocoa; it was broken and she hoped, vengefully, that it had stuck into his horrible bum when he landed and made a nice deep slash. She looked forward to the morning, to seeing him limping down for breakfast pretending it was a touch of cramp, but having giggled over it for a few minutes she hopped out of bed, picked up the pieces of china and put them in a neat pile on her bedside table, then checked that the door was properly latched. There was a key in the lock so she turned it, got back into bed and was speedily asleep.

Truth to tell, she thought now, stopping at the tram stop, where a good many people had already gathered, he had been quite sporting about the whole business. He had apologised, said he was glad Garnett hadn’t succeeded in persuading her to take on the flat, and came home from work that night with a large box of chocolates, which he suggested they should share whilst indulging in two penn’orth of dark at the Gaumont Palace on Oakfield Road. She had taken the chocolates but had not committed herself to the cinema. Who knew what he might get up to in the back row of the stalls? But then she had thought again; despite all she now knew about Tommy, there was no doubt that he attracted her. She really liked him;
two of a kind, two of a kind
, went through and through her mind when she thought about him, even though she now considered him to be selfish and immoral.

So she had gone to the Gaumont with him, graciously accepted a strawberry ice in the interval and held his hand throughout. Whether she had done so with a view to stopping it from roaming around or because she liked him she was still not absolutely sure, but it had cemented their new relationship; friends, not lovers.

She had not been at the stop for more than two minutes, however, before she saw the 43A approaching and began to move slowly forward, for other members of the queue might not be wanting this particular tram and she told herself she did not wish to be left behind. She eased her way so successfully, in fact, that she was first aboard and settled into a seat with a sigh of satisfaction. Nice to have time to think and to be sitting down whilst she did so. Once the tram got crowded, the bottom
pinchers and gropers would try to get near a young girl in the crush and Mona, whilst not above handing out a hack on the ankle or a twist of any piece of groper she could grab, still preferred to sit down like a lady.

Relaxing now, with no need to move until Dale Street hove into view, Mona let her mind go back to her friendship with Tommy. She had been so successful in keeping him at arm’s length whilst enjoying all the fruits of friendship that she supposed she must have got a bit cocky, over-confident. She had actually let Tommy walk her up the stairs after one particularly pleasant evening, dancing at the Daulby, though usually they parted, most correctly, in the kitchen or even at the foot of the stairs. But on this particular night – they were last in, having lingered on the walk home for a few pleasant kisses in various gateways – she had allowed him to put his arm round her and accompany her to her bedroom door. She now realised, of course, that it had been a stupid, crazy thing to have done. Because he had kissed her good night, not lightly or casually but properly, for the first time since the big quarrel. And as he kissed, the cunning devil had gently opened her bedroom door and somehow managed to manoeuvre both her and himself inside. And then he had gone on kissing, making a fuss of her, helping her ever so gently out of her coat, scarf, cardigan, blouse ... in fact, before she knew it he was cuddling and caressing her so delightfully that she had not wanted him to stop – had not been able to make him stop – and then they were sitting on the bed and she didn’t seem to have any clothes on at all and he was rolling her so gently into the warm blankets, and following her, whilst murmuring that although he really must
go to his own room, he would just warm up, having got real chilled on the walk home from the dancehall ...

But it had only been once, Mona reminded herself sadly now. Just one night of wickedness, instead of the fourteen she might have enjoyed if she had known she was going to get into the family way anyhow. It seemed so bloody unfair, when you remembered how living with her mam, she’d behaved with the feller she’d thought would marry her and never a scare, even.

At first, she couldn’t believe it. I’m poorly, that’s the trouble, and me monthlies are late, she told herself. After all, no one could fall after one little kicking-over-the-traces like what she’d done with Tommy, she was sure it took more than that. Or did it? As time passed, it became clear that it could happen as easily after one loving as a dozen or more. She was going to have a baby unless she acted pretty quick and having a baby out of wedlock, she just knew, was one thing Aunt Lily would not stand.

She thought wistfully of Garnett, his money, his good position in the firm. What a fool she had been never to allow him any real intimacy! If she had she could have told him it was his child and he would probably have believed her, being a bit on the naive side. She had realised, right from the first, that Tommy would not want to be bothered with a baby. Nor with her, once she was a mother. Tommy liked to take her to dances and watch the other fellers envying him; she just knew he’d think that saddling yourself with a kid was for mugs who didn’t know their way around. Men who intended to get on, who meant to be millionaires before they were thirty, didn’t push prams.

So at first she hadn’t told Tommy. But then she had got desperate, because a girl she had once been friendly with told her that if you didn’t ’take measures’ in the early days it was too late and you had to have the baby, willing or no.

‘What measures?’ Mona had asked uneasily, though she knew, of course.

‘Mrs Hancock,’ the girl had muttered. ‘Lives just off Netherfield Road. She’s not cheap, but she’s supposed to be all right. Some of ’em ... well, the gals die, queen. You don’t want to go to someone like that.’

‘I dunno as I want to go to anyone,’ Mona had said uneasily. ‘Does it hurt much?’

‘Well, not for long, anyway,’ the girl had answered. ‘But the earlier you goes the easier it is. I’ll come wi’ you, if you like. She helped me eight months back, so she’ll know you’re all right an’ not a judy-scuffer or somethin’ like that, tryin’ to catch her out.’

‘Thanks,’ Mona had said. ‘How much d’you say she charges?’

The girl had named a sum which made Mona blink. It would take several weeks’ wages and if she had to spend all that time saving up then she’d probably be too far gone for the old witch to do the deed.

She had said as much to her friend, who stared. ‘Wharrabout the feller?’ she demanded. ‘I made the feller pay up.’

‘Oh. Yes, I suppose I could ask him,’ Mona had said. ‘He might lend me the money.’

‘
Lend
it?’ The girl was incredulous. ‘He must be tight-fisted as a bleedin’ Jew! Tell him it’s give you the money or marry you, that’ll mek him change his tune.’

The tram drew to a halt in William Brown Street and Mona gripped her hands into fists until she drove
the nails into her palms. People began to get off, shoving against her knees as they passed. She had been forced to tackle Tommy, just as the girl had suggested, and his answer had been as nasty as she had feared. ‘Havin’ a
baby
?’ he had said dis-believingly, as though he had never heard of such a thing. ‘Look, Mona, you’re a knowin’ one, I trusted you. If you slipped up then you slipped up, but it weren’t no fault o’ mine, so you’ll have to face up to it yourself.’

The old Mona would have given him a piece of her mind and probably blacked his eye into the bargain, Mona thought now, as the tram jerked into motion once more. But she was a newer, softer version now. She found she wanted someone to comfort and cherish her, to tell her to go ahead and have the baby and he would look after her. The child hadn’t moved within her yet, but she felt tender towards it all the same. She didn’t really want to go to old mother Hancock and let the old witch drag half her insides out, along wi’ what there was of the baby.