Free A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin by Helen Forrester Page A

disbelief.
    â€˜Suffering Christ! Norris Green – or one of them flats? All stairs, they are. But Norris Green, that’s awful; it’s miles away. How’s George going to get hisself down here to work? How’s Maria going to manage, even in a flat, with only City housing round her? In Norris Green, there’s no factories, no markets, no shops, no schools, they tell me; not even letter boxes out there. I’m told there isn’t even a pub!’
    Mary Margaret shrugged. She truly could not imagine the bleakness of a new housing estate; neither Martha nor she had lived anywhere else but in a court.
    She did not seem to realise, however, as Martha immediately did, that the almighty They could descend, next, on their own Court No. 5. Then both their unskilled husbands would probably be out of work for the rest of their lives – simply because of the problems of travel.
    Thomas was probably right – They usually pounced on the biggest families first when clearing out a court.
    And, Mother of God, her own family would likely be the biggest remaining hereabouts. Martha, not easily scared, was, at that moment of revelation, terrified.
    How could any dock labourer living out in a desert like Norris Green get down to the docks twice a day to stand in the calling centre and wait for work – even if he could afford a bike – and few could? How could a ship’s fireman, like Mary Margaret’s hubby, sign on, if he was miles from ships or the Mercantile Marine Office, or anywhere a merchant seaman was supposed to be?
    Martha was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. If her family were marooned in a council house on the far outskirts of Liverpool, it would take away from them any hope they ever had of obtaining regular work. Even the pennies she brought in by her dealing in rags would not be possible in a soulless Corporation estate consisting only of houses. No docks, no factories, no market, no nothing; not even rich people who had rags to dispose of. Not even schools for the kids.
    And what would young Brian do? And he with every hope at present of being taught how tobe a butcher, and really improving himself one day.
    â€˜Holy Mother, help us!’ she muttered in a moment of white terror.
    â€˜What did you say?’ asked Mary Margaret lazily.
    Martha swallowed. She did not want to frighten her sick friend. ‘Ach, nothing,’ she gasped. ‘I was only muttering to meself.’

EIGHT
    â€˜He’ll Have to Sling his Hook’
    January 1938
    When Patrick came home, it was late evening. He was wet and exhausted. All day long, he had worked, through rain and sleet, wheeling trolleys of sacks of wool from dockside to warehouse and stacking them neatly into ever higher piles, as a biting wind blew remorselessly up the river. He had then walked back through ill-lit, almost deserted streets where thin rain still whirled in the wind.
    Although he had bought himself a quick lunch at a tiny café during a brief break, he was very hungry: the thick cheese sandwich, made from white bread, had been decently large and the mug of tea welcome; nevertheless, it had cost him his last twopence. He hoped that Martha would have something better waiting for him.
    She had, of course, put aside Patrick’s share of soup, potatoes and bread. Like most other women, it was the fundamental tenet of her life that he was the wage earner and had to be fed first; the fact that she also earned rarely occurred to her.
    Nearly half the ewer of thick soup lay warming in the hearth in front of the fire; and a quarter of a loaf of bread, together with two big potatoes, had been rewrapped in one of her cleaner rags and placed in the oven, where she could watch that the children did not attempt to steal it. She longed to have some soup herself; but she refrained for fear that the food she had kept for Patrick was not enough for a labouring man.
    The only light in the room was from the embers