A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin. Helen Forrester

      Ownerless cats and, occasionally, a stray dog stalked rats and mice; and the children found big, dead rats endlessly engrossing.

      By the narrow entry from the main street, men stood and smoked and argued. They read a single copy of the Evening Express between them, in order to keep up with the racing news, and also to work on the football pools. Like a ship’s crew, they tried not to quarrel, though not infrequently fist fights did break out. These scuffles, however, were more likely to occur outside the nearby pubs, when, drunk at closing time on a Saturday night, they were emptied out into the street, to be dealt with by the pair of constables on patrol.

      Although it was remarkable how a rough kind of order prevailed amid such a hopelessly deprived little community, the younger men enjoyed nothing more than a Saturday night fight, particularly if the two unarmed police constables got involved. It formed a great subject of conversation on a Sunday morning, as they nursed their aching heads and black eyes.

      Within the court itself, a family row was high theatre, which brought almost every inhabitant out to watch. When a woman being beaten hit back, the female onlookers frequently cheered her on. ‘Give it ’im, Annie – or Dolly – or May – love,’ they would shriek, joyously adding fuel to male rage.

      As the four women sat together on their step, they did not seem to notice the general stench of the airless court or the rarity of a single beam of sunlight. Only when it rained or was too bitterly cold outside, did they seek the lesser cold of Martha’s room, which at least had a window – and a range which sometimes held a fire.

      Martha was extremely protective of her frail friend, Mary Margaret. If she had a fire in the range, she would sit her close by it on the Connollys’ solitary wooden chair. She would then boil up old tea leaves to make a hot drink for her, which she laced with condensed milk from a tin. To add to her warmth, she would, sometimes, wrap round her knees the piece of blanket in which her youngest child, Number Nine, slept at night; or she would pat and rub her back when she was struck with a particularly violent bout of coughing.

      As they gathered on the step, after the rescue of the councillor, Martha continued her doubts about him.

      ‘When we never heard nothing, Pat gave up hope, he did, ’specially when he saw the pitcher in the papers of the councillor and the boatman, and nothin’ about himself. And us havin’ to find him a new cap and scarf, an’ all. He lost his old ones when he dive in. And his boots was finished.’

      Mary Margaret sighed: the loss of a cap and scarf was indeed serious, the lack of strong boots dreadful.

      ‘Never mind, love, he were a brave man to do what he done,’ she soothed. She was one of those blessed people who travel without hope, and could not, therefore, ever be disappointed. ‘You have to make the best of it,’ she advised, as she always did. ‘At least, neither of them got dragged under the landing stage by the current.’

      ‘Oh, aye. If they had, they would have both been drowneded – and without our Pat, it would be the workhouse for us, no doubt about it.’

      For a moment, both were silenced by their permanent dread of this fate, despite the recent provision of outdoor relief by the City’s Public Assistance Committee. It was a traditional fear, which ranked close behind their horror of a pauper’s funeral.

      Summer turned to foggy autumn and still they heard no more of the councillor.

      Patrick grinned cynically, when Martha brought up the subject. ‘It’s to be expected,’ he told her. ‘Why should he remember? Folk like us never waste our time voting.’ He laughed. ‘We don’t mean nothin’ to nobody.’

      He continued his usual dockside waits for work; he knew no other world.

      THREE

       ‘We Buried Him With Ham’

       October 1937 to March 1938

      Influenza swept through the courts, and suddenly it was winter, that deadly bitter winter of 1937–1938, a time when lack of coal, lack of light, lack of medical attention and lack of food tested the courage of every man, woman and child: some of them simply gave up; as uninteresting statistics, they quietly died. They left behind them, however, consternation amid their myriad of dependants.

      The stalls in the market were practically deserted, and Martha and the inhabitants of Court No. 5 were so desperate that they barely noticed, floating in the background, the black storm clouds of threatening war. All they cared about was how to stay alive each day, and, somehow, keep their big families going. In particular, if their husbands had survived the flu, the women sought desperately to find enough food to keep them fit for any work that might be available.

      Two mothers in the next court died, leaving widowers with young children, some of whom also had the flu. This caused a flurried effort, even in Court No. 5, as a little food was collected to be taken in to the stricken families, to help until they could contact relations to come to their aid.

      Local charities were besieged, their limited resources stretched. Women begged for coal to heat their freezing rooms, for a blanket in which to wrap a grandfather, for boots for their children’s bare feet, even for pairs of woollen socks, anything woollen.

      They especially needed more food, any kind of food. Rubbish bins behind restaurants were climbed into by men, more agile than women and accustomed to the awkwardness of ships’ interiors. The contents of the bins were quickly picked through in the hopes of salvaging table scraps or unfinished cigarette ends. Street rubbish bins were, likewise, anxiously inspected.

      Unemployment insurance, Public Assistance or the wages for casual labour all failed to yield more than bare existence, particularly in winters like this remorseless one, where coal was a grim necessity.

      In Court No. 5, Mary Margaret’s five-year-old younger son, Sean, died of the flu, and a number of others very nearly did. A Sister of Charity came to help the broken-hearted woman prepare the skinny little body for the ultimate insult, a pauper’s burial: few in the court could afford to pay the Man-from-the-Pru sixpence a week for burial insurance.

      Tear-stained Mary Margaret had not the strength to follow the little body to the cemetery: his grim, silent father, Thomas Flanagan, did, however, and watched it being thrown into a common grave.

      Mary Margaret’s tears overflowed again, when a neighbour remarked cruelly that the child’s death was not all bad – it was one less to feed.

      A week later, her eldest son, Daniel, a ship’s boy, came home after a long voyage. She greeted him with both relief and joy. He had put on a little weight, though his face was pasty, and his voice had broken.

      ‘You’re my real big lad now,’ she told him as she hugged him to her.

      Best of all, he had a bit of money in his pocket. As a result, a good wake for his little brother was unexpectedly enjoyed by the whole building.

      ‘At least we buried him with ham,’ a weepy Mary Margaret announced with pride to her patient, oakum-picking friends, Sheila and Phoebe, in the adjoining room. With a sigh and a gentle pat of the hand, they agreed with her. Sometimes, kids just died and there was nothing you could do about it.

      When all Daniel’s funds had been spent on canned ham, fish and chips, and toddy made from smuggled rum, the songs and rueful jokes exhausted, Mary Margaret relapsed into an apathy broken only by her occasional fits of coughing.

      Martha Connolly wished very much that she had a lad at sea. A boy at sea earned little, but you did not have to feed him while he was away. You’d be paying for his kit every week, of course, on the never-never system. But he would still make a few shillings to give to his mother, which she could spend on canvas plimsolls for some of her other children. She could even, perhaps, buy some black wool to crochet herself a new shawl – that would be nice, she considered wistfully – her current one was threadbare and there was no warmth in it. But her own