No Cure for Love (8 page)

‘Why not?’ Josie persisted.

An exasperated look crossed Ellen’s face.

‘I never met a man I wanted to marry.’ There was a long pause. ‘I was very young when I met your father and not much older when I lost him,’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘So I’ve got used to being alone.’

There was something wistful in her mother’s tone that caught Josie’s attention.

‘Don’t you miss me pa?’

For an instant Josie thought her question would be pushed aside, but then Ellen sighed. ‘I haven’t told you this before but you’re a grown girl now and understand how things are between men and women.’ She paused. ‘Times were hard, and although your father did the best he could work was scarce. Then you arrived and your father, well, your father...’ She stopped and spread out her hands and looked squarely at Josie. ‘A man was entitled to a drink after a long day heaving goods from a ship’s hold, but the truth of the matter is your father thought he could find the answers to his problems at the bottom of a glass.’

‘Don’t tell me Pa was like Tiddly Tooley?’ Josie asked, thinking about the unkempt Irishman who could be found dead drunk in the gutter at any hour of the day.

‘No, he was not, Josephine Bridget. He was a good man who worked hard for his family. He just liked an ale or two, that’s all.’ Ellen folded her arms across her chest shutting off further discussion

It wasn’t all. Exasperation sprang up in Josie. Did her mother think she was a child? Did she think that she didn’t notice that whenever her father’s name was mentioned her grandmother crossed herself quietly in a corner? Did her mother not think she might have heard that before he fell to his death Michael O’ Casey had been drinking for two days in the Prospect of Whitby?

Josie scowled up at her mother, who was teasing out a knot from her hair, her arched brows pulled tightly together in concentration.

Her mother treated her like a child because she loved her. Her mother scrubbed her fingers raw with extra washing so Josie could go to school. Her mother had made do with her old repaired boots so that Josie could have a new pair with stout leather soles. After a long day up to her elbows in suds, she sang in the Angel for that fat Danny Donovan, so they could go to join Uncle Joe in America. Everything her mother did, from the moment she got up in the morning to the moment she laid her head on the pillow beside Josie at night, was done because she loved her.

‘Ma,’ Josie said looking up at her mother’s face. Ellen gazed down at her with bright eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine,’ Ellen replied in a clipped voice.

Josie threw herself into her mother’s embrace and hugged her. The feeling of safety that she had known all her life and had taken for granted swamped her, catching in her throat and bringing tears to her eyes.

‘Love you, Ma,’ she said.

Ellen ran her hand lightly around her daughter’s face and smiled. ‘Love you, too. Now, get yourself your bun, while me and Grandma have our bath.’

‘She’s a sharp one is our Josie,’ Bridget said, finally as Josie moved out of earshot and Ellen stripped off, ready for her wash down. ‘I’d say the fivepence a week on Josie’s schooling is money well spent.’

‘A bit too sharp if you ask me,’ Ellen replied as she stepped into the bath. ‘She was asking me about Michael.’

‘I hope you told her the truth,’ Bridget said as she poured the water over Ellen.

‘Not yet. Not until she’s a year or two older.’

‘It won’t make the story any prettier,’ Bridget said, looking at her daughter’s body in the glow of the firelight as she began washing herself with the rough flannel. ‘None would know you’d had a child, Ellie.’

Ellen shrugged, and her mind went to Doctor Munroe. After admitting that she had been sharp with him, Ellen had expected to see him in the Angel, but he hadn’t come.

But why would he? A physician and a gentleman would never look at her, a poor singer, and to some no better than a streetwalker. But he had looked at her and she liked it, she liked it a great deal. Ellen’s musing was brought to an abrupt end when Bridget smacked her playfully on her bare bottom as she stepped out of the tub.

‘Away with you, woman,’ Bridget said to Ellen’s startled expression. ‘Every woman wants to feel a strong man love her.’

‘Ma,’ Ellen said, glancing at Josie snuggled in the armchair and engrossed in her book. ‘What do you know of such things?’

‘I know plenty, I tell you,’ Bridget said with a wistful sigh in her voice. The kettle on the range whistled and Bridget poured it over the tea leaves. She swilled it around for a moment or two then poured it into two cups through a strainer. She sat at the small kitchen table opposite Ellen.

‘You still miss him,’ Ellen said, as her mother drank deeply from the cup.

‘Aye,’ Bridget said softly. Loved your father, I did,’ and a sentimental expression stole over the older woman’s face. ‘It was coming here that killed him. He brought us to London for a better life, but no one would give him a job as a clerk, so he had to take what he could get. Whipping coal was no job for a man like your father.’ Bridget smiled a bittersweet smile. ‘But I’ll tell you, Ellie, I loved that man so fierce it still hurts.’

As she looked at her work-worn mother, Ellen envied her To love and be loved by someone that deeply happened only once in a lifetime to some - and never to most. No matter what life threw at her mother, she had that love deep in her heart and no one, but no one, could take it from her.

Once again, Ellen’s mind conjured up Doctor Munroe, standing tall in his dark frock coat, and tears suddenly stung the back of her eyes.

 

A chorus of coughing greeted Robert as the workhouse superintendent, the unbelievably thin Mr Trundle, and his wife, the unbelievably wide Mrs Trundle, bowed respectfully.

Arranged around the wall of the bleak ward were narrow cots in which sallow inmates languished. Although he was used to the various smells associated with sick humanity, the stench of the ward caught Robert in the back of his throat. Putting his clean handkerchief over his mouth he turned and glared at the two who had followed him in. They shrugged their shoulders.

‘As I say, Doctor Munroe, it is funds that do keep us from providing as we would like. Is that not so, my dear?’ he appealed to his wife.

She nodded vigorously, setting the frill around her cap flapping, and said, ‘Indeed, Mr Trundle, funds are always in short supply.’ She fixed Robert with a defiant look and crossed her short arms across her bosom.

‘Emptying a slop bucket requires very little funds.’ Robert indicated several buckets brimming with stale urine by the beds.

Mr Trundle’s eyebrows drew upwards at the centre as his face took on a contrite expression. ‘But funds are needed to pay those who empty buckets.’

Robert spied a young woman in what looked like a dirty maid’s uniform sitting at the other end of the room. Her head had dropped onto her chest. He strode towards her, Trundle and his wife scurrying along behind him. As he reached the woman, Robert heard soft snoring. Leaning forward he smelt gin, and cleared his throat loudly. The young woman woke up and peered around her.

‘What’s the crack,’ she slurred, then hiccuped.

Not trusting himself to speak, Robert spun on his heels and headed for Mr and Mrs Trundle’s private quarters. On reaching the warm parlour, crammed with furniture and garish china ornaments, he held out his hand.

‘Your accounts, if you please,’ he demanded sternly.

Mrs Trundle glared at him. ‘You have no right to—’

‘Now, now, my dear,’ Mr Trundle interrupted with a deferential expression and placed a hand on his wife’s fuzzy forearm. ‘We have nothing to hide and Doctor Munroe is the appointed chairman of the Parish Emergency Committee.’

His wife pressed her lips together and glared at Robert, reminding him of a kettle on the point of boiling.

‘Doctor Munroe,’ Mr Trundle said, handing over a greasy red ledger.

Taking the ledger to the table, Robert opened it and began perusing its columns. He glanced up at the superintendent and his wife, who stood watching him like hungry dogs.

‘I’ll send for you once I have reviewed the entries,’ he told them. For a second or two Mr and Mrs Trundle hovered uncertainly, then the superintendent grabbed his wife’s elbow and all but dragged her from the room.

As he flicked through the pages of the workhouse accounts, Robert’s face grew grim. After an hour of making notes he called the superintendent back. Mr Trundle returned, minus his stout wife.

‘I trust that everything is in order, Doctor Munroe?’ Mr Trundle asked.

‘It certainly is not.’ He tapped the page of the ledger. ‘From the extortionate prices you pay for the workhouse provisions, the inmates should be living like kings, not lying half-starved in urine-soaked beds.’

‘My wife is in charge of the purchase of food for the workhouse,’ the superintendent told him, twisting his hands together.

‘Where is your wife?’

‘She had to go on an errand. I am expecting her back shortly.’

‘Very well. Now about the wages for—’

The door of the parlour burst open and a red-faced Mrs Trundle puffed into the room.

‘Oh! Doctor Munroe,’ she said in a friendly voice that had been absent so far from her conversation. ‘You’ll not credit it, but I just turned the corner into Angel Gardens when I happened on Mr Donovan, er, taking the air,’ she said, looking coyly at Danny Donovan, who stepped into the room. ‘I mentioned that you were paying us a visit and nothing could stop him coming to bid you good day.’

The Trundles exchanged a quick look then stood back, letting Danny Donovan take centre stage. Robert regarded him coolly.

He had seen Danny a couple of times as he made his way around the streets and alleyways that ran off Ratcliffe Highway. He had always been greeted by the ebullient Irishman as if he were a long lost brother, and pressed to take supper at the Angel again. Eventually taking up the invitation, Robert persuaded himself that he was not going there to see Ellen in particular, but found himself bitterly disappointed that she was not singing that night.

Danny Donovan now swaggered towards him, snatched up his hand and subjected it to the usual abuse. ‘Now, here is a fortuitous coming together.’

‘How so?’ Robert said, noting another glance between the superintendent and his wife.

Danny drew up a chair and sat down, the checked fabric of his trousers straining across his thick thighs.

‘Mrs Trundle tells me you are not familiar with the arrangement of the workhouse. Is there anything I can be helping you with, Doctor?’ He nodded at the open book in front of Robert.

‘There are some matters between Mr Trundle and myself that are not altogether clear, but I can’t think how you could be of assistance. There seems to be some discrepancy between the quality of goods purchased and the rotting vegetables and mouldy bread that appear to be the daily diet of the poor wretches I have seen this morning,’ Robert said, watching Donovan’s face closely.

‘Discrepancy?’ Donovan boomed as he turned to the man and his wife huddled in the corner. ‘As a member of the workhouse governors I take a very dim view of such things.’

A shrewd expression crossed Robert’s face. ‘Quite so. But can you explain how “Supplied by Messrs Donovan & Ass.” described here as’ - he peered at the open page and ran his index finger under an entry - ‘“best cut beef shin” only yesterday shows no evidence of it ever having been in the grubby kitchen?’

‘I showed you the meat, Doctor, hanging in the larder,’ Mrs Trundle said with a puff of indignation.

‘The couple of dry, scraggy pieces of meat I saw hanging on hooks in the pantry are hardly what I would call prime shin,’ Robert replied, fixing his eyes on Donovan. The Irishman held his gaze, Robert looked back to the ledger. ‘There is also the matter of the delivery of three sacks of newly dug potatoes two days ago.’

‘They were in the pantry too,’ Mrs Trundle interjected.

‘Those potatoes you showed me may have been “newly dug” a month ago, but are now green and sprouting.’

‘There must be some mistake. My man at the yard must have sent the wrong supplies,’ Danny said after a second.

‘Is that so?’

‘What else could it be?’

Leaning forward and resting on his elbows on the table, Robert steepled his fingers. ‘It could be that the workhouse was being charged high prices for poor supplies.’

Danny’s eyes narrowed and his mouth started to tighten. ‘Are you accusing me?’

‘No, but you’re right. This is a fortuitous meeting. Now you know of the discrepancies, I have no need to take the matter to the committee immediately, I will wait until you have looked into it first.’

For one second Robert thought that Donovan was about to lunge at him, then the familiar expression of jovial good humour returned.

He slapped his thigh and winked at Robert. ‘I said to my Ellie you were a powerful clever man, and that you are, sir.’

With a great deal of effort Robert forced himself to remain composed. He stood up.

‘Do you see Mrs O’Casey a great deal?’ Robert asked, the question springing from his lips of its own volition.

‘Come, Doctor. You’re a man of the world.’ Danny gave him a mocking glance. ‘God love you, sir, Ellen and I are
intimate
friends.’

With a satisfied grin on his face, Danny took up his top hat from the table. ‘I’ll have a word with my man at the yard.’ He flipped the hat on his head and tapped it down. ‘And I’ll give Ellen your regards when I see her later.’

Stifling the urge to smash Danny Donovan in his puffy face, Robert forced out a ‘thank you’. Robert stood motionless for a good minute or two after the door closed on Donovan and the Trundles. He sat back down at the ledger, picked up his quill and tried to resume his study of the figures. He jotted down a couple of notes, then stopped and stared blankly at the paper.