A Mersey Mile

A Mersey Mile Read Free Page B

Book: A Mersey Mile Read Free
Author: Ruth Hamilton
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understood the situation in Pol and Cal Kennedy’s house, and they seldom complained.
    With the later breakfast over, Polly locked the cafe door and returned to the living room. Cal was asleep in his wheelchair. She wedged a pillow behind his head and against the wall.
Fortunately, customers were used to this. If Cal was asleep, they made do with a smaller menu. The best thing about Scotland Road was that its residents supported one another, though there were
some wonderful fights . . .
    Polly sat and fanned herself with a damp tea towel. Mam had been a fighter. Back in the day, the sight of two women rolling about on the cobbles, each with hands in the other’s hair, was
not unusual. Mam’s arch enemy had been Theresa Malone from number thirty-four. Theresa Malone’s son was a thief and a liar, and he dragged young Cal into trouble on several occasions.
The solution? Another fight, of course. There were plenty of seconds, but no referee.
    Mam and Mrs Malone were both Dublin girls, both redheads, both married to Irishmen. If either husband happened to be around, fighting would be postponed, but it always started with the two women
in their doorways, arms folded, faces fixed in solid, stone-hard frowns, mouths turned down, eyes narrowed. As if choreographed, they would take a step towards the centre of the street, their pace
quickening as they neared the arena, which always had to be equidistant from the two houses. If fighters lived on the same side of the street, the rules were similar, but the match was played out
in the gutter.
    Mam always won. Theresa Malone lost hair, teeth, skin, blood and dignity every time while the crowd cheered and roared. Yet when a stranger arrived from some other area of the city and trouble
started, Theresa helped Mam, and Mam helped Theresa. It was a special kind of insanity, so special that Theresa nursed Mam during her final illness. ‘All gone now,’ Polly breathed.
    ‘What’s gone?’
    ‘The time, Cal. The past.’
    ‘The past is always gone,’ he said.
    ‘I was just thinking about Mrs Malone and Mam.’
    ‘Yes.’ He moved the pillow and tossed it on his bed. ‘I remember. She didn’t last long after Mam, did she?’
    ‘They needed one another, Cal. Even the fighting was part of it. Like sisters, they were. It was a sort of race memory from the old country. And the Italians were just as bad, but not as
much fun, because they fought in a foreign language.’
    Cal almost smiled. ‘The ice-cream wars. Remember when a Manny wanted to marry a Tog? Did anyone know how to say their full names, by the way? It was worse than Romeo and Juliet. I
don’t know how many finished up in clink, but rumour had it that some wardens had to learn Italian at night school. And the two families carried on fighting in there, always being shoved in
solitary. Even solitary got crowded.’
    ‘Manfredi and Tognarelli,’ she told him. ‘They’re all over Lancashire. Best ice cream ever.’ He remained talkative. She needed to put the pies and pasties in the
oven, needed to boil water for vegetables, but Cal was finally managing a conversation. ‘They were nearly as mad as the Irish,’ she said.
    He sighed. ‘Polly?’
    ‘That’s me.’
    ‘There’s no easy way of saying this, so I’ll just come out with it. I know now when I need the commode, right?’
    ‘Yes.’ She waited. ‘And?’
    ‘And I can take some of my weight on my legs, yes? I’m capable,’ he said. After another pause, he continued. ‘I need a clean girl to have my child if you aren’t
going to have a family, because I probably won’t marry. But I’d get somebody in to help with the child so that you’d be free. It’s just that I want to be a dad.’ Did
that pretty young nurse like him? She was probably the same with all patients, yet there was warmth, tenderness, a hand on his shoulder offering comfort and encouragement. . . No. Who wanted the
non-walking wounded? Would he ever walk? Linda Higgins,

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