‘People what had never seen one usually denied they existed – ’cos they didn’t want to know. We was a family of eleven living in one room.
‘There’s people, even now, as don’t believe anybody’s starving or living with at least half a dozen other people in one room – ’cos nice people don’t want to know.’
From her own experience, Angie knew about people who ignored the misery of others, and she nodded agreement, while Martha paused to instruct her fretfully, ‘Don’t tuck me feet in so tight. I get cramp, you know that.’
‘OK,’ Angie replied easily, in her strong Jamaican accent.
Martha repeated vehemently, ‘People don’t want to know anything as makes them feel uncomfortable, ’cos then they might have to do something about it.’ She went on to explain how men like her husband, employed on the docks, had to live within walking distance of them.
‘’Cos, they was casual labour and had to sign on for work twice a day, wet or fine, you see. So houses was built in courts, to cram as many into one acre as they could – and to cram as many people into each house as you could find a piece of floor for them to sleep on. As close to the docks as they could, like, so they could walk to work in a few minutes.
‘All you could see from the main street was an archway, and, if you went through that, you come into a little paved yard. It had eight or ten houses in it.
‘There was two privies at the far end, against the back wall of the next court, and they had to do for all of us.’
She chuckled suddenly, and then added, ‘There was often a proper rush on them, specially in the mornings.
‘For years, there was near thirty people in our house alone. That were nothing like as bad compared to them that lived there fifty years ago, when I were a little girl.
‘There was a pump in the middle of the court, so as we could get water – and you often had to queue for that, too.’
She sighed at the recollection of carrying water for eleven people into her family’s room.
Then, as Angie, astonished at such a lack of lavatories, paused in her tidying of the room, Martha continued, ‘Each house had three storeys and a cellar, two rooms on each floor. And at the top there was an attic.
‘Back rooms had no windows, of course – because their back wall was the back wall for another court’s houses behind ours, you see.
‘Because the houses was in two rows facing each other, with the two lavatories across one end, it meant that we was walled in. Only the front rooms had windows – looking onto the court.
‘The main catch about living in our court was that there was a family in every room,’ Martha went on, the words dragging out of her, as she realised that Angie was beginning to lose interest.
‘You was never alone, Angie, and it was so cold in winter. The back rooms, as well as not having windows, didn’t have no fireplaces either. So even if you could buy coal it wasn’t no good.’
‘It sounds awful,’ replied Angie politely. She did not mention that her own current accommodation was not much better. Instead, she sighed wearily, as she took a quick peek behind the curtain which surrounded Pat’s bed. The curtain had been drawn round her because the doctor was expected to come later in the week to see her, thank goodness; Matron had, at last, taken notice of the aides’ reports on her.
‘It was hell!’ went on Martha forcefully. ‘And yet, you know, I was often happy then. The neighbours was wonderful – good, solid friends.’
Angie could not think of a suitable reply to this confession. She did her best, however, to provide an understanding smile. She knew she would miss her tea if the old bird didn’t stop talking soon.
Martha sighed. She felt that she was as good as in prison. She was never taken out. She had never even been into the garden surrounding the old Victorian house, a garden which she was allowed to look out on only when she was moved into a chair by the window, while Angie changed her sheets each week.
Matron seemed to imagine that clean sheets were the most important thing you could want, and that if something to eat was brought to you three times a day and you had a bath and a shampoo once a week, that was all you needed in life.
Martha grimaced. A fat lot she knew; the frantic aides often skipped both bath and shampoo.
But where had real life gone to? Where were the family, the visiting priests, the well-meant visits of amateur social workers, the busy streets, the cars, trams and lorries making pandemonium, the cries of the stallholders in the market, the children all pestering her at once, the family rows, the trips to New Brighton, the colossal fights after the football finals, when everyone got drunk down to their last penny, the interesting gossip with friends she had known all her life, the comfort of a Saturday night pint at the local, the weddings and wakes, the processions on holy days, the men tipsy and longing for you of a Saturday night?
All gone, slowly slipping away through two generations in the turmoil of the war and its aftermath – and no hope of their return, she decided mournfully. Instead, only a clamour of angry young people who did not know what suffering was, all of them wanting things – tellies and phones and expensive blue jeans and fancy kitchens and bands what made a racket like you’d never believe. I wants, she called them.
‘Bring us a cuppa tea, Angie – when you’ve had yours?’ she whined.
The aide nodded conspiratorially, and fled: the patients were supposed to wait for tea until it was served with the last meal of the day. Martha always received a clandestine mugful from Angie, however, because no other patient in the room had a clear enough understanding to demand a cup of tea for herself.
Angie, thanks be, was proper kind to her, Martha decided; she risked Matron being real mad at her if she found out about the illicit cup of tea: she was certain that Matron would consider it to be a wilful waste of tea.
Most of the time, Angie was the only person Martha had to talk to, and now, as the girl went for her meal, an anguished sense of loneliness, of desertion, crept slowly over her. She began to cry hopelessly, allowing the tears to run down her face unchecked.
‘Jaysus, how can I bear it?’ she muttered.
Absently, she took her rosary out from under her pillow. Other than her artificial teeth sitting in a glass of water beside her bed, which she always referred to as ‘me gnashers’, it was the only personal possession she still had: she did not feel that the teeth, provided through the National Health Plan, were really hers, though the dentist had assured her that they were.
Except for the rustling movements and mutterings of the other patients in the small room, and a distant tinkle of china and teaspoons, there was no sound.
‘Dear God Almighty, how do I get out of this place?’ she prayed without hope. ‘I might as well be dead.’
Then she asked herself in despair, ‘And, come to that, if I ever get out, where can I go?’
She could not answer her own questions.
While she waited for her cup of tea, she lay with the rosary in her hand. Then she ran her fingers along the familiar beads.
‘Hail, Mary, full of grace,’ she began. At least, in your loneliness, you could talk to the Holy Mother, she sobbed to herself. Even if she never replied, her silence did not mean that she hadn’t heard you.
‘He Were an ’Ero That Day, He Were.’
April 1937
Mrs Martha Connolly, wife