A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin by Helen Forrester

she herself could get through several half-pints while sitting in the passageway of the Coburg with the other women, while he drank in the bar with his friends. The brightly lit pub was the only warm refuge they had, the only consolation which kept him going from day to day, week to week.
    He grinned. Most of the children had been conceived in the narrow, fairly sheltered alleyway behind the pub, while they were a little drunk and still sufficiently warm to enjoy the encounter.
    While he ate, Martha poked the fire, and then made a fresh pot of tea, courtesy of Mary Margaret, who had given her a couple of spoonfuls of tea leaves in thanks for bringing her the soup and bread. She laid two mugs on the floor beside the range, where they could be visible in the firelight. She then sat down close to Patrick on yet another sturdy fruit box, used for storing coal.
    Inside the box were a few lumps of coal, which Mary Margaret had also given her. Since Mary Margaret’s room did not have a fireplace, she cooked what little she had to cook on a primus stove. When she did not have paraffin for her stove, she would put a stew pot beside Martha’s on Martha’s fire.
    Mary Margaret’s Dollie thought it was a great game to follow a coal cart round the local streets and pick up any lumps that the coalman dropped. When he lifted the one-hundredweight sacks from his cart and carried them across the pavement to pour the contents down the coalhole in front of each terraced house, she would listen for the clang of the lid being put back onto the hole, and for theweary man to shuffle away. Then she would race over and pounce on any small bits she could find. Sometimes, when the horse moved with a jerk to the next house, a few pieces would roll off the back of the cart. Quick as a cat after a mouse, she would garner these, too, before any other child could beat her to it. She would bring it all back to her mother in an old cloth bag.
    Her mother promptly gave the coal to Martha in thanks for being allowed to share her fire. She would tell Dollie, ‘Without your Auntie Martha, I don’t know what I’d do, I don’t.’
    As Patrick finished the last ladleful, he gave a small sigh of relief, and handed the bowl back to his wife. She put it with the ladle on the mantel shelf: if it had stopped raining by tomorrow, she would take out anything to be washed to the pump in the court and rinse it there.
    She picked up a potato from the box top and, with a little smile, handed it to him. He tore it into pieces and ate all of it, including the skin.
    After he had finished eating, he belched and then sat for a while staring silently at the glowing embers.
    When Martha felt he was rested enough, she broached the subject which was worrying her most. She asked, ‘Did you know that Court No. 2 is to beemptied? That means that our Maria and George has got to move.’
    Patrick belched again, and then said, ‘Oh, aye. George told me. They’re getting a new house in Norris Green.’
    â€˜What’s he going to do out there?’
    Patrick gave a grim laugh. ‘Go on Public Assistance. He’ll have to sling his hook.’
    Martha nodded. George would, indeed, have to hang up his docker’s hook for ever, if he was to live so many miles away in a suburb with no places to work and no transport. Even if there were a bus to take him down to the docks, how could he afford bus fares on a docker’s wage? It was ridiculous.
    â€˜Can’t they find a Corpy flat nearer here for them?’
    â€˜Na, Corporation flats is all filled up. All the court houses is being cleared, as you well know.’
    He stirred uneasily. ‘I heard some more today, though. They’re going to build air-raid shelters outside in the street all along here, right across the pavement from the front entry.’
    â€˜Holy Mary! What for?’
    â€˜They reckon there’s going to be a war. And what’s more, they’re