Mary Sullivan heard the dragging feet in the entry and swung the door wide to see her eldest daughter Kathy just about to push it open. The dejected sag of Kathy’s shoulders told its own tale as Mary drew her inside. ‘Wait, pet,’ she said. ‘I’ll brew us both a drop of tea.’
‘No, Mammy, I can’t stay,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ve left Barry minding the weans.’ She shook her head angrily. ‘Oh God, it’s no job for a man.’ She looked at her mother, her deep brown eyes sombre, and said, ‘D’you know, he was over at Northfield today, after a job on the building he’d heard about. Course, it was gone by the time he got there and then he walked back to save the tram fare. But the thing is, his boots are falling off his feet and I don’t know whether it wouldn’t have been better to pay the fare and save his boot leather.’
‘Ah, girl, I’m heart-sore for you,’ Mary said.
‘I couldn’t stand the look on his face, Mammy,’ Kathy cried. ‘I took the few coppers he’d saved and went down the Bull Ring. I got some bones and vegetables cheap, you know how they sell them off at this time of night. At least I’ll make a nourishing meal with it tomorrow.’
Mary looked at her daughter sadly. ‘Wait,’ she said, and went out of the room, coming back a minute later with a loaf wrapped in a cloth.
‘Ah no, Mammy, you do enough,’ Kathy protested.
‘We have plenty,’ Mary said. ‘Sure everyone in the house is working now but Carmel, and she’s turned twelve, she’ll be left school in a couple of years. Take it.’
‘I will,’ Kathy said. ‘For the weans, at least. Barry said they must have the best food first. He’s terrified something will happen to them that they won’t be well nourished enough to fight. I can understand it; after all, his two young brothers were taken with TB and his da was out of work at the time. Barry said there was little money for food and none at all for doctors, or medicines, and the youngsters were too weak to fight it on their own.’
‘He’s a good man you have, Kathy, and a good father,’ Mary said. ‘Things could be worse. Maybe in the new year Barry’s luck will change. God’s good.’
Kathy sighed. She had no hopes for the new year, for Barry had been out of work for four long years and she dreaded Christmas, with nothing for the weans at all. She was beset by worries. Her daughter Lizzie needed new boots – the ones she had pinched her feet and Kathy’d had to line them with cardboard to keep her feet dry – and Danny only had one jumper that fitted him now, and that was ragged and all over holes. She couldn’t lay all this at her mother’s door and so she kissed her goodbye.
There was another worry pressing on Kathy’s head, but it was nothing she could share with her mother either, or anyone else for that matter. Barry never made love to her any more. They slept side by side in the same bed and could well have been strangers. Often Kathy would long for Barry’s arms around her, or his lips on hers – not of course that she could say that to him, but still she missed the closeness they used to share. She knew he wanted no more children till he got a job, but still…
She was not to know that Barry realised how quickly kisses and cuddles could lead to other things, and he couldn’t risk it. If it wasn’t for his in-laws helping, the two children he had would go to bed, time and enough, with empty bellies. It tore his heart out that he was not able to provide for his own weans. God forbid he would bring another into the world to the same fate.
Lizzie and Danny were the only ones Barry could be natural with. He’d never been an inactive man before unemployment, and had never given much of a thought to the children either. Their rearing would be down to Kathy, like his had been down to his mother. But he’d been laid off before Danny’s birth, and now the boy was three going on four, and Lizzie six and a half.
At first, like many others, Barry had gone to meetings, listened to rallying calls and taken part in marches and demonstrations, but all to no avail. He knew he had to get out from under Kathy’s feet during the day, but hanging around street corners was not for him and there was no money for the pub, so he began to go for long walks.
He tended to veer away from the town, a thankless place to visit when he had money for nothing in the city centre shops. At first, his feet took him towards Calthorpe Park, or often as far as Cannon Hill, where he’d walk hour upon hour and return home tired and more dispirited than ever. However, one day, tired of the same route and with his stomach yawning in emptiness, he turned down Bristol Passage into Bristol Street and from there on into Suffolk Street, coming out at the top end of town by the Town Hall, and there he saw the lending library.
Barry had never been inside the library; there had been no occasion to. Although he could read, since he’d left school there had been little leisure to do so. Except for now, he thought, and he went in, glad of the blast of warm air, for the day outside was raw and his clothes were pitifully threadbare and thin.
It was very quiet also, quiet like Barry had never met before. He’d grown up in a small back-to-back house, first among a clutch of brothers and then with a family of his own, where noise was part of life and everyone knew everyone else’s business. The silence of the library was like a balm to Barry’s bruised soul, and the only sound was that of his boots on the wooden floor.
And then he saw the papers, such an array of them laid out, presumably for anyone to read. He sat down, and as he read first one and then another, his hunger was forgotten and the time sped by, although the papers made frightening reading. After a few days of intense study of the political situation in Germany, he was more aware than most of the mad little Austrian ruling the country. He knew that if only half the tales coming out of that beleaguered place were true, the man was a dangerous and vicious maniac, and he wondered how long the rest of Europe was going to stand by and watch. He said none of this at home for, God alone knew, Kathy had enough on her plate and it would serve no purpose frightening any of the family, possibly needlessly.
He progressed from the papers to books to fill the long winter evenings, and was choosing some one day when his eyes alighted on the children’s section of the library. He could buy little for his children, on twenty-six shillings a week for himself and Kathy, and two shillings extra each for Lizzie and Danny, but the lending library was free, and so he began to bring books home for them and read to them regularly.
Lizzie loved her daddy. He had more patience than her mother and was gentler somehow. He’d taught her to love books and write her name before she went to school. She liked nothing better than to snuggle down in the chair with him, her on one side and Danny on the other, and listen while her daddy read to them.
And that was how Kathy found them when she went in that day, and for some reason it irritated her seeing them all cuddled up cosily together. ‘Get up out of that,’ she said angrily. ‘Sitting there and the pair of you like a couple of tinkers! Get down to the cellar this minute, you need a wash before bed.’
‘Oh, Mammy!’
‘Do as your mother bids you,’ Barry said, scattering the two from his knee.
Lizzie glared at her mother. Mammy always spoils things, she thought, she’s always shouting. But wanting to live to see her seventh birthday, the little girl said not a word, but walked across the room and took her brother’s hand at the top of the cellar steps.
Barry stopped Kathy as she was about to follow the children. ‘Solly came by,’ he said. ‘One of the men has been taken ill at the market, he says he’ll put a word in for me.’
‘Regular?’
‘Well, till the man’s better. Even a couple of days is better than nothing.’
‘Is it?’ Kathy snapped. ‘And what if the means test people get to hear of it? What then?’
Barry was silent. He knew Kathy had a point, but he’d been pleased, almost