A Girl Can Dream

That evening, Meg showed the things to her father, but he showed no interest in either the clothes or the child, his only comment being, ‘That bloody pram is too big for this house.’

Stunned and hurt – Meg could not believe that her father would keep up this antipathy to his own child – she snapped back, ‘Where d’you suggest I leave it then? In the street?’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Yes, well, you’ve said, and unless you have an alternative place for it, it stays right where it is,’ Meg told her father firmly.

For a moment he glared at Meg for speaking to him that way in front of the children, but he said nothing. Instead he stood up so quickly that his chair scraped on the lino, and then he lifted his coat from the back of the door and went out, slamming the door after him with such gusto that Ruth, lying asleep in the pram, woke with a start and began to cry.

Meg felt desolation surround her as she lifted the baby, realising at that moment that her father was a weak man. She had hoped against hope that when she brought the baby home he would finally mellow towards her and start looking after her in the way he should. But she recognised now that he was unable to take responsibility for his part in making her mother pregnant, and knowing by doing so he had put her life in danger. Instead of accepting any blame, he laid it all on the shoulders of a tiny, innocent baby.

The children began to clear the table and wash up the pots as Meg dealt with the baby. Then Terry supervised their getting ready for bed before putting a cup of tea down beside Meg. None of them had spoken about the incident after dinner, or their father’s indifference to Ruth, and she imagined that they were as confused as she was.

‘Not looking forward to him coming home tonight,’ Terry said.

‘Don’t blame you,’ Meg said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for him the way I did, but …’

‘None of us can understand the way Dad is with Ruth,’ Terry said. ‘I mean, when you see her, she’s just so helpless.’

‘I know,’ Meg said with a sigh. ‘I suppose I should be worried about his state of mind, really – I know he’s lost his wife – but I just feel angry with him for being so weak when we are all doing our best to muddle through.’

And muddling through it was. Despite the help that Meg had given her mother bringing up her siblings, she had quickly discovered that it was very different being totally responsible for a child. She hadn’t realised how loud and siren-like a baby’s cry was in the dead of night, and how crushingly tired she felt, having been roused every couple of hours. The fitful sleep that Meg would drop into eventually was shallow and far from refreshing, and she would be jerked out of it again and again before the night ended.

After four nights of this, she was bleary-eyed on the Friday morning as she ladled porridge into her father’s bowl, poured them each a cup of tea and sat down opposite him. As it was the school holidays she had left the others in bed until they needed to get up, and she was just about to broach the subject of housekeeping with her father – because she hadn’t a brass farthing to her name – when, as if he knew what was in her mind, he handed over what was left in his pay packet. Meg knew he got paid on a Thursday, but when she looked in the pay packet there was only one pound and one ten-shilling note left in there. She had no idea what her father used to give her mother to buy the food for them all, but she could bet it was much more than she had been given.

‘Is this all?’ she asked.

‘Aye, that’s all,’ Charlie snapped. ‘Your mother never moaned. Great manager, your mother was.’

‘Great manager!’ Meg repeated. ‘The rent is seven and six a week.’

‘I am well aware of that,’ Charlie said. ‘And you may as well know it all. We are three weeks in arrears. Our landlord, old Mr Flatterly himself, came and offered his condolences when Maeve died and told me I wasn’t to worry about the arrears, that I had enough on my plate. He’s a decent sort, not like his son, who I hear is taking over the properties from him now.’

‘Great,’ Meg said. ‘So I’ve got to meet with this son, who isn’t a decent sort, and give him just one week’s rent when we owe three weeks. And how am I going to find the money to pay even one week if we are going to eat as well?’

‘You’ll not likely meet him,’ Charlie said. ‘You know it’s Vince O’Malley collecting the money, and if you tell him you can’t pay anything off the arrears yet, he’s not going to bother about it, is he?’

‘But I don’t like owing money,’ Meg said doggedly. ‘Mom never held with it, but even with the basic rent paid I don’t see how I will make the money stretch. We have another mouth to feed now and little Ruth has to have milk.’

‘Well, you know how I feel about that.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Meg said. ‘She’s your daughter just as much as I am, and so she is your responsibility and she has to eat.’

Suddenly, Meg saw her father’s shoulders sag and the eyes he turned to her glittered with unshed tears. ‘Don’t fight me at every turn, Meg,’ he said. ‘I am doing the best I can.’

It was on the tip of Meg’s tongue to snap that her father’s best was not good enough, but she stopped herself. Instead she said, almost gently, ‘Perhaps things might be better for all of us if you stayed in more.’

‘And do what?’ Charlie demanded. ‘Stare at four bare walls?’

Before Meg could reply, Terry entered the room, followed by Billy, and Ruth started to wail. With a glance at them all, Charlie lifted his coat from the door and set out for work.

He, Alec and Robert worked in the same place, Fort Dunlop, so they tended to go to work together. As Charlie waited for them that day he went over Meg’s words.

Before Maeve’s death he had never been a heavy drinker, nor an habitual one, but whereas during the day he could keep his thoughts in check because he was busy, they came back to haunt him in the evening. To drink heavily was the only way he could try to blot out that dreadful day when his beloved Maeve had died. The doctor had warned them before that another pregnancy would put her life at risk, but he had been selfish and careless and he couldn’t help but blame himself. And now the presence of the child – whose birth had caused his wife’s death – ensured that he would never totally forget. He knew he was wrong to feel this way but he just couldn’t help it; he wished he’d stood up against them all and left her at the hospital. She’d have been taken to some orphanage and adopted, and he would eventually have been able to come to terms with the loss of his lovely wife.

When Meg heard the imperious knocking on the door that morning, Meg guessed it must be the rent man. But instead it was a young man wearing a dark blue suit, and a trilby hat over light brown hair. His tanned face had a haughty look to it and his eyes were piercing blue, as cold and hard as granite.

‘I am Richard Flatterly,’ he said. ‘I am here to express condolences about the death of your mother.’

‘Oh, your father—’ Meg began, but the man cut her off.

‘My father’s unwell and so you’ll be dealing with me from now on. I see you owe three weeks’ rent.’

‘I can pay this week’s.’

‘I was hoping for something off the arrears.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t got it at the moment,’ Meg said, ‘with Mom’s funeral and all.’

‘I am not interested in excuses, my dear,’ Richard Flatterly said, and there was no doubting the slight menace in his voice. ‘I am just interested in getting the money owed me. I do not run a charity, and if you can’t pay your rent I shall have to let the house to someone else. Do you understand that, my dear?’ He looked her slowly up and down.

Meg nodded dumbly and handed the man the rent book and the ten-shilling note.

‘If I take it all,’ Flatterly said, ‘it will be two and six off the arrears.’

‘I know that,’ Meg said. ‘But I need it for food.’

Flatterly smiled but his eyes remained cold. ‘I understand your father is in full-time work.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘Then the rent should present no problem to him,’ Flatterly said, handing Meg back half a crown. ‘So next week I will return myself. I will want the full rent and a good bit off the arrears, otherwise I can make life very uncomfortable for all of you.’

Meg scuttled inside as soon as she could, shut the door and leaned against it. She felt really shaken. Flatterly’s animosity had been almost tangible.

‘Phew, sis!’ Terry said.

‘You heard that?’

‘Every word.’

‘We must make Daddy realise that Richard Flatterly will have us out of this house without a qualm if we don’t pay off something next week,’ Meg said.

‘I think so too.’

‘We have to make Daddy see that,’ Meg repeated. ‘But just for now, the problem is making the money I have left stretch, so tomorrow night you and I will go to the Bull Ring just before the stallholders close up and see what they are throwing out that we can use.’

It was what the really poor people did. Meg had seen them a few times: be-shawled women holding keening babies, usually with stick-thin children in tow as well, dressed in little more than rags. She had pitied them. Never had she imagined that she’d be joining them. Terry was looking at her, appalled.