A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin Read Online Free Page A

that he could no longer stand around in his drenched state. Balancing shakily, first on one leg and then on the other, he put on his sodden boots. He forgot all about the Ark Royal , but the date of its launching reminded him for the rest of his life of the day he met a city councillor.
    In an effort to be polite, he now said diffidently to the councillor, ‘I think you’ll be all right now, sir. I’ll be getting home.’

TWO
‘’Aving a Good Natter with Mary Margaret’
    May to September 1937
    â€˜And he missed the Ark Royal , he did; and nobody, except the councillor, give no thought to him at all, they didn’t,’ sighed Patrick’s wife, Martha, to her friend and neighbour, Mary Margaret, while they sat on the doorstep of their court house.
    They were warmed by a few rays of welcome spring sunshine, sneaking into the tiny court from between the chimney pots. It lit up Martha’s dark visage and birdlike black eyes, and Mary Margaret’s skeletal thinness, which was apparent even when she was wrapped in her shawl.
    As they gossiped, Mary Margaret steadily hemmed a pocket handkerchief: on a protective piece of white cloth on her lap, she held a little pile of them, already finished. Beside her, Martha methodicallytore up old sheets and folded them into small, neat squares; she would sell the squares to garage hands or to stallholders in the market, so that, from time to time, they could wipe their oily or bloody or fish-scale-encrusted hands.
    A month after the rescue, they were once again mulling over Patrick’s unexpected adventure with the city councillor – and, in more detail, his promise to help Patrick get a better job. Help had not as yet materialised.
    â€˜I suppose he must’ve forgot,’ offered Mary Margaret.
    Martha smiled wryly. ‘Right,’ she agreed, and then shrugged as if to shake off any wishful thoughts she might have about it.
    Mary Margaret Flanagan and her family lived in the back room on the first floor of the crowded court house, in which the Connollys had the front room on the ground floor. She suffered from tuberculosis of the lungs.
    Crammed in with Mary Margaret were her widowed mother, Theresa, her four children still at home, and her husband, an unemployed ship’s trimmer.
    Because of the lack of a window, her family lived, without much complaint, much of their lives in semi-darkness, relieved in part by a penny candle,when available, and the daily kindness of the two elderly women in the front room of her floor: Sheila Latimer and Phoebe Ferguson left their intervening door open, day and night, so that light from their front window could percolate through to Mary Margaret’s room.
    Sheila and Phoebe had been mates ever since they were tiny children. They had shared their sorrows through childhood beatings and sexual misuse, through marriages that were not much better, and, finally, when their husbands had been drowned at sea and their children were either dead or gone, the old chums had decided to live together.
    From other inhabitants of the court, they endured a lot of jokes as to their sexual preferences, but they had been through so much together that they did not care. They were thankful for the luxury of a room to themselves, after their earlier experiences of being packed in with children, elderly relations and bullying husbands.
    As paupers, they lived on Public Assistance, outdoor relief provided by the City. This, they both thankfully agreed, was a great improvement over the old days, when they could have been consigned to the bitter hardships and tight confinement of the workhouse. Now, as long as no one told thePublic Assistance officer about their working, they were able to earn illicitly a little more on the side, by picking oakum, which was used for caulking ships. The oakum picking meant they could buy a trifle more food, and it took them out of the packed house for most of the day. They considered