Authors: Anne Bennett
‘There’s no need.’
‘There is every need,’ Chris said. ‘She was our mother, our responsibility.’
But in the end, when the two men investigated, they found Betty had an insurance policy that would more than pay the funeral expenses and a sizeable amount in the post office. ‘You must have some of this for your trouble.’
‘It was no trouble,’ Ida said. ‘Thank you, but it is just neighbourliness.’
‘Even so.’
‘We couldn’t,’ Rosie said. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Yes it would,’ Hugh insisted. ‘It’s what our mother would have wanted, I’m sure.’
In the end they agreed to accept ten pounds each and then fell to discussing the funeral arrangements for the morning. ‘I can’t go to the service,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s because I am a Catholic, so I thought I would stay here and make up some sandwiches and such. I will go along to the graveside later and then we can all come back here if that’s all right. Many would like to pay their respects; Betty was well-liked.’
‘It seems perfect,’ Hugh said, peeling notes off the roll he had in his hand. ‘Lucky I changed to English money on the ship,’ he said, handing a five-pound note to Rosie. ‘Get what you need.’
‘I won’t need five pounds, nor anywhere near it,’ she protested.
‘Spoil yourselves,’ Hugh said. ‘That’s just for food, mind. We’ll get the booze in. Send my mother out with a big bash.’
‘All right,’ Rosie said. ‘I will.’
Betty’s funeral was talked about for days after, for Rosie spent the money Hugh gave her and the spread she made for the mourners was lavish, with food many of them hadn’t seen for a long time. The men dealt with buying the drinks and it took on an air of a party and reminded Rosie of the wakes she’d attended in Ireland.
The older people who’d lived in the street for some years remembered Hugh and Chris growing up before America beckoned them, and some of the younger people had been with them at school and many seemed bent on renewing their acquaintances.
Watching the cluster of people around Betty’s sons, Ida said wistfully. ‘My Herbie always wanted to go to the States. I wouldn’t go and leave our mam and dad, being the last like, and then we weren’t married five minutes and the pair of them was took off with TB. Just a year married I was.’
‘Why didn’t you go then?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Ida said. ‘I had their house then d’ain’t I. I mean it ain’t much, none of these houses are. Bloody awful if the truth were told, but I was brought up here like. I know all the neighbours. Betty was a sort of auntie to me when I was a nipper, she was to all the kids, and I was on with our Jack then and bloody terrified as to how I’d cope like. I didn’t want to travel halfway across the world to strangers. Herbie could see that. He weren’t a bad man and he d’ain’t press me. But I can’t help thinking, if I’d gone he’d probably be alive now.’
‘America was in the war too in the end,’ Rosie reminded Ida. ‘You can’t think that way.’
‘You can’t help it, can you. I mean, I know America came in, in the end, but my Herbie was killed at the Somme in the summer of 1916, nearly a year before the Yanks came in, and Betty’s Chris was telling me they didn’t take married men unless they had to like.’
‘That was what they said here, though, and they took them in the end, didn’t they?’
Rosie looked across the room at the ease and charm of Hugh and Chris, talking to people they hadn’t seen for years in their American drawl, recalling incidents and events from their childhood. It was as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They’d been sorry for their mother’s passing, there was no doubt, but they hadn’t seen her for so long Rosie wondered if she was like a stranger to them.
‘Why did they never come before?’ Ida said. ‘When Betty was alive and well?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rosie said sadly. ‘It’s the way of it. Everyone turns up for the funeral when the person is dead and gone. I’ll miss her like crazy. It’s hard to believe I won’t see her any more.’
‘We’ll all miss her,’ Rita said, overhearing Rosie’s comment as she passed. ‘I’ll tell you what though,’ she added, poking her in the ribs. ‘Wherever the poor old bugger is now, she’d approve of her send-off.’
Rosie, looking round at the chattering people with not a sad face amongst them, had to agree. ‘Aye, Betty liked a good party right enough. Hugh and Chris always wanted Betty to go over to America to visit them, you know?’ she went on. ‘They told me yesterday.’
‘Dad too,’ Chris had said. ‘He was alive then. And then, after he died, we redoubled our efforts, but she always refused.’
Rosie had wondered why, certainly after her husband died, she wouldn’t want to go to where two strapping sons could look after her? ‘Neither of you married?’
‘No,’ Hugh said. ‘First we were too busy working our way up and then, when we’d made it, there were no decent women left.’
‘I don’t believe that. In the whole of America?’
‘I must confess I didn’t search the entire continent,’ Chris said with a grin.
‘You weren’t worried about being conscripted into the army as single men and all?’ Rosie asked.
‘Well, no,’ Chris said. ‘We were almost at the cut-off point due to our ages. Anyway, we manage quite a large engineering plant that made a lot for the war. We could have claimed exemption, but it never came to that.’
No wonder they looked so hale and hearty, Rosie thought.
‘I bet Betty would have given her eye teeth just to cast her eyes on her sons, even if it was just the once,’ Rita said, bringing Rosie’s thoughts back to the present. ‘I’d hate Georgie to go so far and me never to see him again.’
‘Come on,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s years before you have that to think of and worry about.’
It was almost four o’clock and the light was nearly gone from the day and Rosie had had enough. ‘Come on, Bernadette,’ she said, holding her hand out to her daughter. ‘I’ll not be long after you in bed tonight.’
‘Why, aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I’m just tired,’ Rosie said, and she was deathly tired. She also had a sore throat and it hurt to swallow, but she didn’t say any of that.
Hugh and Chris, seeing the three women about to leave, came over to them. ‘I’ve just come over to thank you again for looking after our mother so well, and at great risk to yourselves,’ Hugh said.
‘Yeah, and don’t go all modest on us and say it was nothing,’ Chris added. ‘Because we heard how it was from the neighbours.’
Rosie was as embarrassed as the other two, but she recovered enough to say, ‘We were glad to do it. We were truly fond of your mother and will miss her greatly. The women all helped, they did their bit too, for your mother was a favourite with many. You only have to see how many that came to the house.’
‘You took the brunt of it,’ Hugh insisted, ‘and don’t worry about the house, we’re seeing the landlord tomorrow and taking the money out of the post office. I’ll bring your share around in the morning, if that’s all right?’
‘It seems awful to be paid for what we’d do naturally for one of our own,’ Ida said. ‘But the children never seem to stop growing and I must confess I will be glad of it.’
‘We know it’s what our mother would have wanted,’ Hugh said. ‘Her letters to us used to bring the courts and the streets alive for us, and we’d often cast our minds back, and although the occasion is sad it’s been a pleasure to meet with many friends we remembered. But there was always a reference to the three of you and what worthy friends to her you’ve all turned out to be.’
‘Ooh, be quiet,’ Rosie said. ‘Enough’s enough.’
‘Are you all right?’ Chris asked. ‘You’re very flushed.’
‘Can you wonder at it?’ Rosie said. ‘With your brother embarrassing the life out of us.’
But she felt it was more than that for heat was spreading through her body and her head spun so that she staggered and it was Hugh’s arm which steadied her. ‘It’s the unaccustomed drink,’ Rosie said with a smile, though she’d drunk little. ‘I must take more water with it.’
‘You’ve done too much,’ Rita admonished. ‘I said you would. Bed’s the best place for you. You go on now, I’ll mind Bernadette and pop in and see you when I bring her back.’
Rosie wanted to argue, to say she felt fine, but she felt decidedly weak and knew if she didn’t soon lie down she’d fall down and so she nodded her head and said thanks to Rita.
Outside Betty’s and in the courtyard once more, Ida tucked her arm inside Rosie’s. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll go across the yard together. These cobbles are ice-rimed and the last thing you want is a fall just now.’
But Rita knew it wasn’t the ice that was giving Rosie that unsteady gait as she leaned heavily against her own doorway and watched the two women. Rita never went to church and had only a vague belief in some benevolent person in the sky somewhere, but she well knew Rosie firmly believed in God,
so she silently prayed to that God there in the darkening yard. ‘Please, please let this just be a bout of tiredness. Don’t do anything to harm Rosie.’
‘Mammy, what are you doing?’ Georgie whined, pulling at her hand. ‘I’m freezing and I bet Bernadette is too.’
‘Sorry you two, I was day-dreaming,’ Rita said. ‘Let’s go in and give the fire a good old poke to get the blaze going.’ And with a child either side of her, she led the way inside.
When Rita brought Bernadette home, after having her for tea with Georgie, she found Rosie in bed asleep. ‘You must be as quiet as a little mouse,’ she told Bernadette, ‘so as not to wake your mammy. So you get undressed before the fire and I’ll have you into bed in a jiffy.’
Bernadette was usually one to argue about bedtime, hating the drab, cold attic lit only by a candlestick on a saucer, and ‘bed in a jiffy’ didn’t sound a particularly good idea. But she’d seen her mammy sick before. Maybe if she went to bed like a good girl her mammy would be better in the morning.
So she undressed and even folded the clothes she took off and laid them on a chair and with Rita’s help struggled into the pyjamas warmed before the fire and drank the mug of cocoa Rita gave her without a word of complaint.
‘You’ve been a really good girl tonight, Bernadette,’ Rita said. ‘Your mammy will be pleased when I tell her.’
‘Will she be better tomorrow?’
‘We must hope so.’
However, Rosie wasn’t better, and when Bernadette trailed into her room the next morning it was to hear that dreaded grating cough again, and added to that her mother’s eyes
looked funny. Rosie, though, got to her feet and began to dress.
‘What in God’s name are you doing up?’ Ida said, calling in that morning to see how she was.
‘I can’t stay in bed because of a cough,’ Rosie declared. ‘And small wonder I have it at all for when all’s said and done this cold weather would slice you in two.’
‘Rosie,’ Ida said warningly. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Stop it, Ida!’ Rosie snapped back. ‘You’re a right old prophet of doom, you are. Stop fussing over a wee cough.’
Ida said nothing more though she was worried and knew Rosie was, for despite her staunch words her eyes looked scared.
However, she put a brave face on it, and when Hugh and Chris came with the promised money later that morning she brushed away their concerns.
‘It’s a touch of bronchitis I have,’ she assured them. ‘It’s a weakness from working in the munitions I think, and then of course it is so bitterly cold and for all you do in these houses they are always damp and draughty. Maybe you well remember that?’
They did of course, and though Rosie looked far from fine in their opinion, she seemed unconcerned about her cough, saying she was well used to it, and so they gave her the two five-pound notes and took their leave.
Rosie leaned against the door when they’d left, for trying to pretend she was well when she felt far from it had taken it out of her, and she saw Bernadette’s eyes upon her. She hated hearing her mother cough because she remembered the last time and she’d not been allowed to see her for ages because of it.
Rosie saw her daughter’s fear and she smiled at her, though it took an effort, and said, ‘Don’t worry, Bernadette, I’ll be as right as rain before you know it.’
She pushed herself away from the support of the door and
stood holding on to it with one hand, waiting for the dizziness to pass and the room to stay still. Then she walked carefully across the room, put the money behind the clock on the mantelpiece and sank gratefully into the chair before the range.
‘Mammy, I’m hungry,’ Bernadette’s voice roused her mother and she opened her bleary eyes. The clock said it was half past two. She had slept for hours. No wonder the child was hungry, and the sleep had done her little good for the room around her spun and she knew she’d be unable to stand without help for her legs felt like rubber. ‘Get Ida,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.
Bernadette nodded and went out into the bleak, icy yard and knocked on Ida’s door. ‘My mammy’s poorly again,’ she told Ida. ‘And I’m hungry and I haven’t had my dinner.’
‘Oh dear,’ Ida said, looking at the child’s woebegone face. Now, how about if you go down to Rita’s and ask her to give you a piece of summat while I pop in and see your mammy? Will that do?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Bernadette said, and Ida waited till she saw Rita’s door open to admit the child before she went into Rosie’s.
She looked with horror and concern at the sweat standing out in globules on Rosie’s furrowed brow and her unhealthy pink cheeks, despite the fact the fire in the range was nearly out. Rosie’s breath was coming in short pants and the infernal cough doubling her up, and fear ran all through Ida. ‘Oh my God, girl,’ she cried. ‘Come on. Bed’s the best place for you and then we should have the doctor in.’
She helped Rosie to her feet as she spoke and held her tight as she swayed, taking her weight as they crossed the room and almost carrying her up the stairs. Ida was as glad as Rosie to reach the bedroom and she let Rosie down gently as she flopped back on the pillows. The sheets were like ice and Ida took Rosie’s things off her and pulled a nightdress over her
head, before saying, ‘I’ll bring you an oven shelf from my place wrapped in flannel to warm the bed before I go for the doctor, because there will be no heat in yours, the range is nearly out.’
‘I don’t need a doctor,’ Rosie protested. ‘It’s just a bit of a cough. If I have a couple of days in bed I’ll be as fit as a fiddle.’
‘Please, Rosie, humour me,’ Ida said. ‘To put my mind at rest.’
Rosie knew Ida was frightened of the same thing that was sending spasms of terror running through her own body, yet she said. ‘I can’t. I haven’t paid him yet for calling him out that time in November when I lost the baby and now this. I can’t afford the doctor, Ida.’
‘What about the money that you got from Betty’s sons? Where did you put it?’
Rosie had forgotten that. She could well pay what she owed. ‘It’s behind the clock,’ she said, and then she looked Ida full in the face and said, ‘Do you think I have the flu?’
Ida avoided Rosie’s red-rimmed eyes. ‘Let’s have the doctor in,’ she said again.
Rosie knew it was sensible and yet her mind shrank from hearing the truth. But then she remembered Bernadette, who was dependent on her, and she nodded her head briefly. ‘All right, but pay him what we owe him. Let him know that straight away.’
‘I will, don’t fret.’
‘And keep Bernadette away.’
Ida knew exactly how she felt. ‘Of course. Rita has her at the moment.’
‘I mean keep her with you. Either at yours or Rita’s.’
‘I know what you mean, Rosie, and why worry yourself over that. Between us we’ll take care of her.’
When Ida left the room, tears of helplessness squeezed between Rosie’s lashes and trickled down her cheeks. She
could die if she had the flu. She knew that. What would Bernadette do then – and Danny too? How would he cope alone? How could he care for Bernadette and work too?
She could never recall feeling so ill or so weak and her throat was sore. She wished now she’d asked Ida to make a drink. She wondered how long it would take her to bring the doctor. Maybe if she shut her aching eyes awhile it would ease the throbbing in her head.
She never felt Ida slip the warm oven shelf between the sheets for she’d fallen asleep and in fact she heard or felt nothing until the light touch on her arm and she opened her eyes to see the sympathetic ones of Doctor Patterson. ‘Hallo, Mrs Walsh.’
Rosie ran her tongue over her parched lips. ‘Have I got the flu, Doctor?’
Doctor Patterson was sure she had. Everything spoke of it. The very thing he dreaded had happened and it had to happen to Rosie Walsh, who with her chest already weakened by bronchitis the previous year was the very one least able to fight it off. ‘I must examine you first,’ he said, and he pulled the bedclothes away gently. No-one spoke, not Rosie in the bed, Ida by the door, or the doctor, but Rosie’s laboured breathing could be heard by them all.
In the end the doctor said, ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Walsh, you have got the flu and I am so very, very sorry.’
He was dog-tired. The epidemic was so bad he was working around the clock and worn down by tragedy at almost every house. He wondered at the insidiousness of this virus, that after the carnage of four years that had effectively stripped villages, towns and cities of their young men, this flu seemed to be set on attacking the rest – the women, the old, the young and the vulnerable. He was existing and operating with little sleep and he often wondered in his blackest moments if there would be many left alive by the summer.
Ida followed him downstairs and he faced her across the
room. ‘Mrs Walsh is in a bad way,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it. Take all the precautions you took last time, the sheet soaked in disinfectant across the doorway and wash your hands and arms with hot water and carbolic soap every time you touch her, and, as well as that, scald every cup and plate she uses. This is to protect yourself and your children.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll do it like you say, never fear.’
‘Have you got the time to come to the surgery?’ I could give Mrs Walsh something for the cough and quinine might bring the temperature down.’
‘No problem, Doctor,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll come directly. And send in your bill and for that time in November. Rosie has the money to pay you because Betty’s sons gave us all something and I know Rosie would want you paid, she mentioned it.’
The doctor had given up ever seeing money for that frantic dash through the night and Susie had harassed him about it and called him a fool for running to these people as soon as they crooked their little finger even when he was not receiving a penny piece for it. Maybe this payment would shut her up, and so he said, ‘Are you sure she has the funds?’
‘Quite sure, Doctor.’
‘Then I’ll bring the bill the next time I call,’ Doctor Patterson promised.
The following day a horse-drawn cart took Betty’s furniture away. ‘D’ain’t they offer you owt?’ a woman at the top of the entry asked Rita.
‘Yeah, but I needed nowt. Anyroad, I’d be worried about infection spreading, like. I got a bed for Rosie, for Bernadette can’t stay in a cot forever, but I’ll scrub it all over with bleach before I give it her.’
‘Best way. Can’t be too careful.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘How is her, anyroad – Rosie, I mean?’ the woman asked, moving slightly away from Rita as she spoke.
‘Bad enough.’
‘Poor sod. Never rains but it bleeding pours, do it?’
That was the sentiment most people expressed, but they stated it from the relative safety of their own doorstep. They thought Rita and Ida either saints or fools to go through nursing an influenza victim again, putting their lives and those of their children at risk.
But then what was the alternative? Some cramped hospital, no better than a workhouse, where the care was very basic. And there would still be the problem of Bernadette.
Ida and Rita didn’t bother talking about it, they just got on with the job of looking after both Rosie and Bernadette and waited for a letter from Danny in response to the one they wrote to him, thinking he needed to know how sick Rosie was. But by the time the distraught reply came, Rosie was far too ill to know or care.
Danny’s letter reduced Rita to tears. He said it was far too late for recriminations. All that mattered was that his woman, his beloved wife, was sick and could easily die. He wrote that his commanding officer wasn’t the compassionate type and told Danny he was just one out of the hundreds of men who had some relative affected the same way. They couldn’t all be running home to hold hands and especially in the case of the flu, as they’d possibly bring the infection back to run riot about the camp. Hadn’t they lost enough men at the hands of the Hun? No, he was afraid any leave was out of the question.
Thank you for what you are doing for Rosie. Please look after her, for she is everything to me. If I could be with her, I would and I’d hold her close and tell her I loved her and make her fight this illness and pray it would be enough. Give Bernadette a big kiss for me too and tell her I was asking after her.
‘Poor man,’ Rita said as she folded the letter up.
‘Yeah,’ Ida agreed. ‘And let’s hope she pulls through for Danny and all, because I don’t know how he’d cope without her.’
‘I know.’ Rita said with a sigh, thinking of her own loss. ‘Life’s bloody hard.’
Rita and Ida took it in turns to stay by Rosie’s side night and day, constantly rousing her to take a few sips of strained chicken soup or nourishing beef broth that the doctor recommended they make. When she cried out in delirium, threshing her arms this way and that, someone was always there to soothe or hold her tight. Even when she drenched the sheets with sweat, Ida and Rita remained calm, putting fresh sheets on the bed and dosing Rosie with quinine before sponging her down. Often Rosie didn’t know the hands that ministered to her, didn’t recognise her friends, and her vacant eyes worried them.
When the nosebleeds came, the bouts of nausea following on their heels, Rosie would be unable to lift herself and would feel herself drowning in her own emissions. But always there were hands to help, to hold the bowl out and lay cool flannels on her swollen nose.
By the end of three weeks, with January leading into mid-February and still no apparent change, Rita and Ida were dead beat. On Friday 14th February there was a knock at the door and the two women looked at one another for few knocked. It was Father Chattaway, who’d just heard word of Rosie’s sickness, and he seemed to have no fear of catching the disease himself. Rita took him up to the bedroom and he was shocked by Rosie’s condition. Unselfconsciously, he placed a stole around his neck and knelt by the side of the suffering woman and mumbled prayers into his hands.
Rita and Ida withdrew and left Rosie and the priest together. ‘If it don’t do no good, it can’t do harm either,’ Rita said.
‘God knows Rosie has gone through the mill. That priest might make the Almighty listen at least. Didn’t Rosie always say the priests were well in with God?’
‘Yeah, she did,’ Ida said with a ghost of a smile. She gave a sudden yawn and stretch. ‘Christ, I’m tired.’
‘Why don’t you have a bit of a kip then?’ Rita said. ‘It’s my turn with Rosie tonight, anyroad.’
‘What about him?’ Ida said, giving a jerk of her head upwards.
‘Who, the priest?’ Rita said. ‘What about him? He’s come to see Rosie, not us. I’ll offer him a cup of tea when he’s done like, and that’ll be that. Then we’ll wait and see if the mumbo-jumbo works.’