The gaffer had shaken his head. ‘The reason they’ve put Frank the Skank down here on our dock is because they’re going to make life hard for us and we have to fight it. The docks are shedding jobs, not taking on.’
‘Can he object to your choice?’
The gaffer, a man from County Mayo, shook his head. ‘Heartfelt knows what’s good for him. But he’s up to something, so we need to keep an eye on him, just in case. You know the tradition is that every gaffer gets to name his own replacement, usually his son, but I only have girls and so I’m naming you.’
Now the gaffer pointed to Jerry, Seamus, Stanley, Callum and Paddy, as the pen gates slid open. ‘Come on, lads,’ said Jerry, ‘we’re on. The chicken is in the pot.’
*
The children were ready to leave the house for school and stood as a pack, dressed in the shoes and coats Maura had left as her parting gift. One huge upside of Maura’s gifts had been the kids not having to share shoes and clothes, so they had all been able to attend school at the same time, much to Miss Devlin’s delight and Peggy’s, because it meant the house was empty and quiet each day.
Little Paddy chose not to walk to school with the others; he had to find an excuse to get back upstairs without his mother noticing. She had reluctantly learnt to accept Scamp but Max, found by Scamp soon after his best friend Harry Doherty left and seen by little Paddy as a partial replacement, would be a different matter entirely. He collected up the pobs bowls and was peering into the empty bread crock with a worried frown.
‘Don’t you be worrying now,’ said Peggy. ‘There’s nothin’ in there, but I’ll go over the road to Nana Kathleen and see if she can lend us something. You won’t go without your tea, I’ll make sure of that.’
Peggy sounded more confident than she felt and little Paddy could hear the guilt in her voice. Maura had always helped her to manage her money, for money was a mystery to Peggy. It slipped through her fingers and, unable to add up very well, she had no idea how.
‘Go on, lad, off to school, no dawdling. Why are you the last to leave?’ asked Peggy as she slapped his cap onto his head and pushed him out of the door.
‘Oh Mam, my bag!’ he said, ducking under her arm and clattering up the wooden staircase. ‘Max, Max, quick,’ he hissed as he pulled out the box from under the bed. Max opened the lid himself and little Paddy dropped him into his knapsack. ‘Here you go, pobs,’ said little Paddy, opening his hand with the pobs he had kept from the bowls. He smiled as the rat made short work of his breakfast and slipped into the knapsack.
‘For goodness’ sake, Paddy,’ said Peggy as he walked back into the kitchen. ‘What’s got into you?’ And she thrust him out into the cobbled yard. She was in a hurry to finish the half-smoked Woodbine big Paddy had pinched off and left on the kitchen table, Peggy pushing him out of the door before he had time to slip it behind his ear. The effort of the morning, the sheer agony of getting big Paddy out and down the steps, the worry of making the bread stretch, the shame of begging milk from Eric… it was all almost too much. But at least Paddy was in work, all the kids were at school and she had half a Woodbine to look forward to with her broken biscuits.
‘Ah, bliss,’ she said as she bent over the flame in the range and lit the ciggie. She sank into the chair and inhaled deeply. All she had to do now was find her way through the day.
She kicked off her slippers and rubbed at her bunions as she thought through her options. She would ask Kathleen for help first. If that didn’t work, she would have to go and see Sister Evangelista and hope to God she didn’t send her to the priory. She could do without a lecture from the priest today, seeing as she hadn’t been to mass for over two weeks. But she was the only woman in the street who had no footwear except slippers for the outdoors, a mark of shame that even Peggy felt as she knelt for communion. It was the lack of a proper pair of shoes that kept her from mass, but how could she tell either Sister or the priest that? She drew hard on the last shred of the Woodbine and savoured the hit of the tobacco entering her lungs. All she was missing was tea, her very best friend, food in the cupboard, fuel in the coal-hole, a means to pay the rent and the coalman, a pair of shoes, regular milk from Eric, sixpences for the leccy and the reassurance that big Paddy would be in work every day, for life to be a whole lot better than it was right now.
‘Is that too bleedin’ much to ask for, is it?’ she asked the statue of the Virgin Mary, perched next to the clock and then, flooded with guilt, blessed herself and uttered a quick succession of Hail Marys. ‘Ah, Maura, you were so much better with the words than me,’ she said.
Maura would do the talking with Sister Evangelista when Peggy was desperate for a winter jumper for one of the children, or a jumble sale coat. And then she had a thought which was so warming she rose and pushed the chair under the kitchen table. She would call into Kathleen’s and ask her to help her write another letter to Maura though she hadn’t answered her last one, yet. And maybe Maura might just send her a postal order in time for the carnival, because without the means to get her shoes back
