The Corner House (3 page)

The brothers took life in their stride. As providers of essential services, they had been excused call-up, which fact, as each was wont to declare, was a definite plus for Britain, since both men were short-sighted and inclined towards the special headaches that often accompany myopia. ‘Guns?’ they ruminated from time to time. ‘Guns? Our Danny [or our Bernard] couldn’t hit a dartboard with a crossbow unless he had a guide dog and a papal blessing.’

During the early months of war, Danny Walsh spent many nights on a makeshift bed in a tiny room behind the Derby Street shop, returning to his cottage only when other duties did not demand his total attention. For five nights of every week, he and Bernard were stand-by firefighters. The blazes they had doused thus far had been caused by domestic accidents rather than by bombings, although both brothers had been mentioned in the press for extraordinary bravery. Bernard was the real daredevil. He had emerged from burning buildings on more than one occasion with his clothes on fire and a child or an animal in his arms.

As January drifted its snow-softened way towards the next month, Danny declared himself to be browned off. Sirens kept sounding, but nothing ever happened. He wasn’t complaining about that, because
he didn’t want bombs, didn’t want to be picking up the dead, but he could have been at home, could have seen the moors covered in blankets of silvery-white, could have been feeding his birds and providing water for them.

He sat in his smelly little room. The brothers scarcely noticed the odour of fish unless decay had set in. Danny was of the opinion that both he and Bernard carried cod liver oil rather than blood in their veins. An ancient clock ticked uncertainly; a thin, wartime version of the
Bolton Evening News
lay on the floor next to a faded rug. The unmistakable sound of Liz Walsh’s carpet sweeper filtered through the ceiling. It was a waiting game – waiting for the baby, waiting for the Luftwaffe.

Danny checked the black-out, lit a candle, stretched out on his iron-framed cot and used a penknife to prise a few stubborn fish scales from the rims of his fingernails. Upstairs, Liz continued her relentless to-ing and fro-ing with the carpet sweeper. Seven months into her pregnancy, Liz refused to sit down and rest her legs. ‘I’ll rest when bloody Hitler rests in his grave,’ the feisty woman had been heard to shout. ‘And I’ve never sat down since I married yon daft ha’p’orth.’ ‘Yon daft ha’p’orth’ was Danny’s little brother, though ‘little’ went no way towards describing Bernard Walsh. Bernard, in spite of being an active man, was inclined towards rotundity. The general opinion of folk hereabouts was that Bernard was the full fish, while Danny, tall and skinny, was the fish after the cat had been at it – all skull and spiky bones.

The Walshes usually took turns, one remaining at the shop while the second man collected fish and then, after supplying the shop, going back to run Walsh’s stall on the market. Lately, Bernard had
stuck to the shop in order to keep an eye on his pregnant wife. As a result, Danny was often tired owing to constant early rising and an excess of responsibility, yet he remained even-tempered and benign throughout the most trying of days.

The door opened and Bernard stepped in. He wore the air of a man who had just decided on tactical retreat. ‘She won’t listen. If she polishes that sideboard again, it’ll collapse into a heap of firewood, fit for nowt but kindling.’ Because of his bulk, Bernard seemed to fill the space between bed and door, especially now, with his large arms akimbo.

‘No fires so far tonight, thank God,’ pondered Danny aloud. ‘Nowt for the brigade to go out for.’

‘Not yet.’

Danny placed his knife on a small table and waited for Bernard to let off steam.

‘She’s not stopped since tea-time.’

‘I can imagine,’ replied Danny. ‘She’s swept that carpet to within a hair’s breadth of its hessian backing this past half-hour. She’ll be coming through my ceiling in a minute. Happen you must nail her feet to the floor and chain her top half to the door handle.’

Bernard sat in an old kitchen chair. ‘It’s this baby. She wants everything clean and shiny before it arrives. I reckon she’d Mansion Wax me if I sat still for long enough. And she’s going on and on about moving out, getting away from the shop. Says she doesn’t want her kiddy going to school smelling like somebody’s breakfast kippers.’

Danny raised his shoulders in a shrug. ‘Please yourself. Once the war’s over, we can turn this into a lock-up, let some young couple have the upstairs flat.’

Bernard mulled this over for the umpteenth time.
He didn’t go a bundle on change for change’s sake, wasn’t really struck by the idea of moving. ‘I like it here,’ he said. ‘Near enough to town, near the church and the school.’ The quarters were a bit on the small side, but they had a decent living room, an adequate kitchen, a plumbed-in bathroom, a good-sized bedroom and a boxroom for the baby. ‘We’ve even got the electric, but is she satisfied? Oh, no. She wants something better, she says.’ Liz wasn’t a shrew, wasn’t a moaner, but she knew her mind.

‘Children need grass,’ offered Danny.

‘Well, we never had grass. The only green we ever saw was Queen’s Park or the Jolly Brows. Didn’t do us any harm.’

‘Country’s healthier,’ replied Danny. ‘Fresh air, loads of space. A nice garden, flowers, grow your own veg.’ Danny’s garden, unlike his house, was meticulously groomed. He grew potatoes, cabbages, lettuce and carrots. In a small greenhouse, he produced tomatoes and propagated seedlings for his many flower-beds.

With regard to the inside of the cottage, Danny’s strongly held and often stated belief was that dust settled after a while. Women tended to go into the business of shifting dirt, attacking the stuff with dusters, brushes and mops. Which was all very well, but the dust simply moved round the planet before blowing back to seek out its various sources of origin. Short of blasting the lot into outer space, there was no avoiding muck, therefore it should simply be tolerated. If a person never dusted or polished, things sorted themselves out after a year or two.

‘That life’s not for me,’ sighed Bernard. He couldn’t imagine scraping about with rakes and hoes, cutting and rolling a lawn into two-tone stripes,
pruning roses, manicuring privets and declaring war on leaf-mould or greenfly.

‘Well, you can’t stop here for ever,’ ventured Danny. ‘When Hitler gets beaten up, things’ll change. Folk’ll likely expect more from life – only young ones setting up’ll want to be living above shops. Progress, you see. Our grandad sold fish down Churchgate off a barrow, then in the old fishmarket. This shop must have looked posh to him. Expectations change with every generation.’

Bernard grunted his disapproval. ‘They should take what they can get and be satisfied.’

Danny clicked his tongue. ‘Listen, our kid. These last few months, women have started to do men’s work as well as their own. They’ll not step back easy into flowered pinnies and slippers. I know they’ve always worked in cotton, but they’ll be setting their sights on nice houses, carpets, better jobs and better grub. Whether you like it or not, there’ll be change coming.’

Bernard left his brother and trudged upstairs, happily unaware that Danny’s warning about change was to remain in his mind for some time to come.

Liz was polishing brasses, her small hands scrubbing furiously at the surface of some inanimate and blameless object. ‘You can see your face in this plaque now,’ she told him.

Bernard didn’t want to see his face. It was all right as far as faces went, but it was a round, very ordinary face. ‘Will you leave well alone, Liz?’ he begged.

She sniffed the air. ‘Shut that door tight,’ she ordered. ‘I’m not having visitors complaining about the smell of cod.’

They seldom had visitors, though Bernard chose not to remind his wife of that fact. Liz’s aversion to the odour of fish had increased in proportion to her girth.
With a seven-month belly on her, she could scarcely tolerate the scents that floated up the stairway from time to time. ‘Thank God it’s winter,’ she continued. During the summer months, the stench of fish permeated everything – even her washing out on the line.

Bernard sat down and rattled yesterday’s four-paged
Bolton Evening News
into some semblance of order. There was no peace by his fireside these days. He would have to give in gracefully once the war was over, he supposed. It would be Harwood or Bromley Cross, compulsory fresh air and weeding. Liz wouldn’t want to stop here, not with a young one to worry about. But there was petrol to consider. Where would he get the extra fuel to drive to the shop? Would petrol rationing be cured as soon as the war ended? If not, he’d have to come down from the moors on buses and trams, he supposed, and leave the van here. What time was the first bus? Early enough to meet the fish trains? And what about the flat over the shop? What about Danny and—?

‘Bernard?’

He sighed, lost the thread of his thoughts, and turned a frail page. ‘Yes, love?’

‘My waters have just gone. All over the rug and all. I cleaned it nobbut half an hour since.’

He jumped up. ‘But you’re only seven months.’

‘Try telling the baby that! Look, send Danny for Mrs Harris on View Street. She’ll have to hurry up.’

Bernard ran out, but returned when his wife howled in pain. ‘Liz?’

‘Are you still here?’ she yelled. ‘Get gone, tell Danny I’ve a baby coming.’

‘Push,’ ordered Eva Harris. She was a small woman with a voice that didn’t fit her. The ringing tones
seemed too huge for her reed-like frame and thin, prematurely greying hair.

‘You should have been a sergeant bloody major,’ breathed Liz.

And you should have taken things easy, thought the midwife, although she kept this thought to herself. ‘Don’t just lie there like a pound of wet tripe, Liz.’

‘I don’t like tripe. And as for fish …’ Pain swallowed the rest of her words.

‘I’m not here to talk about menus,’ chided Eva. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a baby’s head trying to come out of a very small opening in your nether regions. If you’d just shut up and start fettling, we might get somewhere.’

Liz fixed her adversary with as hard a look as she could manage in the circumstances. ‘It hurts,’ she said.

‘It’s supposed to hurt. If it didn’t hurt, nobody’d know they were having a baby. They’d be giving birth on bloody trams, in the Co-op divi queue and all sorts.’

‘God should have organized things a bit better,’ moaned the patient.

‘Tell Him next Sunday,’ snapped Eva. ‘See if He’ll swap nature round to suit you. Save me a job and all if kiddies gets flown in by stork.’ Eva wasn’t happy. If Liz Walsh’s export department didn’t do its job soon, a doctor would have to intervene. Eva Harris, midwife and self-appointed medical advisor of folk from the Daubhill end of Bolton, didn’t hold with doctors. They were too happy with their forceps and knives. Such tranklements, as Eva termed them, did far more harm than good.

At last, the head crowned. ‘I suppose we should be
thankful for small mercies,’ muttered Eva. ‘At least yon babby seems to have a bit of sense. Now, push when I tell you.’

‘I’ll push when I bloody well can,’ replied Liz.

Eva, keeper of more secrets than any priest, deserted her post and arrived next to Liz’s pillow. ‘Any more trouble from you and I’ll send for the fire brigade.’

Liz managed a watery smile. ‘Oh aye? My husband is the fire brigade and you chucked him out of here hours ago.’

‘An answer for everything,’ complained Eva as she reclaimed her true position in life. Liz Walsh was having a rough time of it, poor soul. She was one of those deceptive women – rounded on the outside, but with a small skeleton. This one wasn’t really built for child-bearing, which was a shame, because the Walshes would make good parents.

The child seemed to be stuck. Panic fluttered stupidly in Eva’s breast. There was nothing else for it – she would have to send Bernard Walsh for the doctor. The daft lump was just outside the bedroom door – Eva could all but hear him breathing. This was a seven-month pregnancy. Still, better the seventh than the eighth. Eva, like many of her generation, preferred prematures to arrive before lulling themselves into the long, lazy sleep usually enjoyed by the unborn just prior to full term.

As Eva prepared to throw in the towel, the child’s head emerged. It was tiny, perfectly formed and with small tufts of brownish hair punctuating the baldness. Eva reached out, guided the shoulders and received yet another life into expert hands. But this was not another life. Liz Walsh’s little daughter was not moving. Eva cleared air passages, slapped and cajoled, massaged the tiny chest, but to no avail.

Liz stared fearfully into Eva Harris’s eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ she managed eventually.

‘I’m sorry, love.’

‘No,’ screamed Liz. ‘No, no, no!’

Bernard crashed his way into the bedroom. ‘Liz?’ he managed.

‘Take the baby and put it near the living-room fire,’ yelled the demented patient. ‘Babies need warmth!’

Eva shook her head at Bernard.

‘Do it!’ ordered Liz. The chocolate-brown eyes were wide and fearful beneath a tangle of wet, dark hair. She pushed a lock from her forehead. ‘Take no notice of Eva Harris,’ she commanded. ‘There’s nowt wrong, nowt at all. Baby’s resting after working hard, that’s all there is to it.’

Bernard took the dead child in his arms.

‘Go on,’ yelled Liz. ‘Plenty of blankets.’

When Bernard had removed the sad bundle, Liz turned her fury on Eva. ‘What would you know? You’re not a bloody doctor.’

For an hour or more, Liz Walsh ranted and raved about the various stupidities of humankind, then she settled down very suddenly and gazed in silence at the wall opposite her bed. Bernard came in a dozen times, spoke words of comfort, left without receiving a reply from his wife. Danny, who was easily as distraught as his brother, paid a short visit while the midwife brewed tea. But Liz sat perfectly still in her own little world. Her mind could not cope, so she had simply shut herself down.

In the kitchen, Eva took Bernard to one side. ‘Listen, lad,’ she whispered. ‘If I were you, I’d not be in a hurry to put Liz through this again.’