Free The Travelling Man by Marie Joseph

turning them into a lethal slide as smooth as glass.
    He was passing the house with the old lady in bed by the window now. He couldn’t see her, but he knew that behind the cream lace curtain she was more than likely watching him. So he raised his black hat. To be polite.
    At the bottom of this street, he had remembered or been nudged by God to remember, lived a homely widow with her son and his wife, a nondescript young woman who was disappointingly childless after three years wed. Week after week the daughter-in-law came to Mass, praying for a miracle that never happened. Kneeling there in church with her poor sore hands clasped in supplication, putting a strain on the relationship between her and her mother-in-law, so the priest had heard. So maybe Annie’s baby would altogether be a blessing in disguise.
    Father O’Leary stepped as gingerly as if he walked on hot coals and not a snowy pavement to the bottom house, lifted the iron knocker and knocked three times on the door.
    ‘Yon Catholic priest’s been down the street twice. Once this morning and once this afternoon. When Nextdoor came in to see to the fire she told me she’d seen him going in young Annie’s house.’ Grandma Morris submitted to being helped out of bed to sit on the commode, while Edith gave her mattress a good pawing over before she got the tea. ‘I nearly knocked on the window the second time, and asked him to come in for a bit. He looked frozen to the marrow.’
    Edith was bone weary. She had stood outside three mills that morning before the fourth one had let her take the place of an absentee. Working as a ‘sick’ weaver was a thankless job. You just got used to one lot of looms then the regular weaver came back and you were out. But what else could she do when there were days when her mother couldn’t be left, when her breathing was so bad Edith kept the steam kettle on the go all day.
    She gritted her teeth, waiting for her mother to finish, then helped her back into bed, feeling herself almost shaking with self-pity and a rarely acknowledged bitterness.
    ‘Would you like lentil sausages for your tea, Mother?’
    In her mind Edith was already mixing the ready boiled lentils with mashed potatoes and onion, binding them together with an egg before forming into sausages and frying in hot fat. She was like that, one step ahead all the time, never wasting a minute. Meeting herself coming backwards, as she often said.
    ‘I don’t mind what I have. I could understand the Father coming once, but why twice?’
    Edith’s halo slipped a bit. ‘I don’t
care
why he went twice. I don’t care if he came down the street
seven
times. I just hope he can do something for that poor young lass.’
    Edith was filled with an emotion she couldn’t put a name to. She wanted to say: ‘I’m going through the change, Mother, and you’ve never even noticed. I’ll never have a baby now.’ She wanted to blame her mother for keeping her tied to her apron strings, for stopping her marrying, even though nobody had ever asked her.
    ‘I’m going round to see Annie when we’ve had our tea,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell her I’ll make her baby everything it needs – its whole layette. I’ll make it a christening robe and a bonnet. I’ll line a clothes-basket with flowered stuff and I’ll knit it a blanket.’ She blinked hard to stop the tears falling. ‘I’ll be its godmother if she likes and I won’t listen when the tongues start wagging. There’ll be no condemnation coming from
me
!’
    She jumped up to go through to the back, shaking her small head from side to side as if to emphasise her determination to stand by Annie. After no more than a minute she reappeared.
    ‘How do I know how I would have behaved? I can’t set myself up as judge and jury, can I, when nobody ever tempted
me
! When no man has ever tried to lay a finger on
me
! How do I know what I’d have done?’
    Grandma Morris sank back exhausted on her pillows. Wondering what