Martha's Girls Read Free

voice.
‘Mammy where are you?’ Peggy ran round her sister, trampling the marigolds in the neat border and stopped short for a split second at the sight of the sheet. Then she reached out, her fingers like claws.
Martha grabbed them just in time. ‘It’s Daddy,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Daddy. He’s gone.’
And at the gate Irene began to scream.
The Goulding family stood centre stage like characters in a music hall melodrama, their home a backdrop lit by the fading evening sun and by now half the street in the audience. It was Pat who moved first. Gently, she put her arms around Irene and shushed her screams into low sobs. Then, as she led her across the garden to the house, she nodded to the man she had confronted only moments before and he, anxious to retreat from all this public grief, quickly carried Robert Goulding away from his home and family.
*
Pat’s eyes moved slowly around the table. There was nothing else to be told or known. Dr. Patterson would return the following afternoon with the results of the post-mortem and he would also inform the undertaker. Sheila, still in her school uniform, had laid her head on her arms. Pat couldn’t tell if she was still crying, but every now and again she would breathe in noisily. Irene stared straight ahead; she hadn’t spoken since Pat brought her indoors and it was hard to tell if she had absorbed the meagre information Martha and Sheila had been able to pass on.
Martha was agitated, couldn’t keep still. She made them all a cup of tea then put a plate of biscuits and some handkerchiefs on the table. Peggy was tugging at one now, a furious expression on her face.
‘I don’t understand it. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t sick. And where have they taken him? Why couldn’t one of us go too?’
Pat tried to explain. ‘We can’t go with him, he’s—’
But Peggy wasn’t listening, her thoughts raced ahead. ‘We’ve forgotten the concert!’ We’re meant to be singing at church tonight!’
They looked at her in astonishment. Pat was the first to speak. ‘Peggy, Daddy’s just died. We can’t sing at a concert.’
‘But we have to. We promised and we’ve been rehearsing for ages.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to get ready. We’ll miss the beginning, but we’re not on ‘til after the interval.’
Martha spoke sharply, ‘Peggy Goulding, you can put that notion right out of your head. What would people say, your father not dead five minutes and his girls out singing?’
‘You might as well sit down,’ said Pat, ‘because Irene and I aren’t going anywhere and you can’t sing on your own.’
‘But haven’t you forgotten something? It’s to raise money for the shipyard widows.’ Then, unbelievably, Peggy laughed, ‘and that’s just what you are now, Mammy, a shipyard widow!’
What little composure and dignity Martha had been clinging to since Robert died, dissolved in an instant. She covered her face and wept.
Pat blazed with anger. ‘I can’t believe what you’ve just said! What are you doing to Mammy, to all of us? This isn’t the time for your selfish nonsense. For goodness sake, Daddy’s dead. Don’t you care?’
‘He was my father too.’ Peggy’s voice was devoid of emotion. ‘You might think, Miss Wonderful Voice, that you meant more to him than the rest of us, but it just isn’t true. If he was here now you know what he’d say …’ and she put on a passable impersonation of their father’s voice. ‘Now, Pat, let’s not have the amateur dramatics.’ Then in her own voice she shouted, ‘And you know, I’m right!’
Pat was near the limits of her self-control and whether her sense of propriety, or the urge to reach across the table and grab Peggy by the hair, would have prevailed she never discovered, because at that moment, Irene spoke at last. ‘Daddy hated arguments. Do you remember he’d say, “If you can’t say anything civil, say nothing at all.”? He taught us respect and manners. “We mightn’t have money,