Free Saturday's Child by Ruth Hamilton

laughed. The precious gift of shared humour was the most valued expression of their love. It had seen them
through days with insufficient bread, no gas for light or cooking, little fuel for their fire. Always, always, they would be close.
    ‘We’ll get there, Mammy,’ said Beth when the noise faded to a giggle.
    ‘That we will, my love. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, we shall get you there.’
    ‘Not just me, Mammy. This is for us, for both of us.’
    Magsy smiled, though her eyes pricked. Beth would move forward, would meet her William – please God – and travel on along her own road. ‘Just remember,’ she whispered
now, ‘that you are my daughter. It isn’t pride, Beth, but I know there is something in me and that I have passed it on to you. Yet whatever you do, it must be for yourself.’
    ‘You gave me strength, Mammy. You gave me reading and writing, you gave me happiness and fun.’
    ‘Even when there was nothing to eat?’
    Beth closed her eyes against the sweetest pain. ‘Especially then, Mammy, especially then.’
    There was trouble in the street, a disquiet that passed itself along Nellie Hulme’s spine until the hair on her scalp rose and tried to walk away. She didn’t know
what this sixth sense was or where it came from, but it was very much a part of her essence. It might have been best described as a tingling sensation, as if some kind of electric current switched
itself on in her stomach, feelers spreading until her backbone was on red alert.
    She had seen it all from behind the tattered remnants of her adoptive mother’s curtains, had watched Ernest Barnes hobbling across the street to the Higgins house. What a fall he had
taken, too. Mother had explained to Nellie about Catholics and Orange Lodgers, but why hadn’t all that ended? The war had altered things, surely?
    Restless on that Sunday, she watched Magsy O’Gara waving young Beth off to Mass. An insomniac, Nellie saw most of what went on in the early mornings. Five o’clock, Magsy O’Gara
had set out for work on the Sabbath. She had done about four hours, and was now sending her daughter off to church, to the eleven o’clock Mass, a long service with no communion. So Beth might
have eaten, at least. In Nellie’s opinion, the custom of denying food before communion was nothing less than barbaric, but at least she didn’t hate Christians who chose to worship the
Roman way.
    Magsy had walked down with a young man from Fox Street, a personable character with good looks and a nice smile. Dressed in working clothes, he, too, had been called upon for Sunday work.
Something to do with building, Nellie guessed, from the cut of his clothes. She smiled. Was this the beginning of a courtship? Oh, she hoped so. When she wasn’t working, Nellie had a penchant
for lurid love stories. Their bitter-sweetness reminded her of all she had missed, yet the same quality reassured her that life and love would go on for ever.
    Nellie was still restless. A strange urge had come over her, a need that was just an almost impossible dream. Nellie wanted a clean house. No matter what she did, no matter how well she
protected her materials, they stank – even though they went straight from the laundry to the customer, there was still a whiff of Nellie about them.
    Her sense of smell was well developed and she wished that it would deteriorate. She had been quite happy with her haphazard life, but she had suddenly started to notice how filthy her house
really was. The job of clearing it was too much for her, too much for ten men. Yet who could she get to help her? And there was no point in starting with personal cleanliness, as she would quickly
revert to her original condition if she went to the slipper baths only to return to this unprepossessing place.
    Nellie picked up a tin, its lid sealed against dirt. She would do this, she really would, because she wanted to, wanted to give something to the people across the street. Ernest