‘Can you say anything other than “Aye”?’ Steve said with a grin, and Lizzie smiled back and answered in the same vein: ‘Aye.’
Steve’s parents’ house was number thirty-five, halfway up the hill, and it opened onto the street. ‘We’ll go in the entry door,’ Steve said, and led the way down a long, dark tunnel between two houses, where there was a door on either side. He turned the handle and went in, but not before Lizzie had had a glimpse of the cobbled yard the entry led to with washing lines criss-crossing the place and three toddlers playing in the dirt and grime.
Steve, following her gaze, said, ‘Normally this place is teeming with children. The bad weather today is keeping most of them inside.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said again, and ignored Steve’s sardonic grin as she wondered where in God’s name the teeming children played. But she had no time to frame this question, for Steve had gone inside and Lizzie had no option but to follow.
To the left of the entry door was a scullery of sorts, with a sink with lidded buckets beneath it and shelves to one side. There was no tap, and Lizzie wondered at that. Yawning cellar steps were directly in front of her and there was a door to the side which was ajar, and which was where the family were assembled to meet Lizzie.
Lizzie saw there was just one small-paned window letting light in, and that was covered with curtains of lace and heavier curtains of blue brocade hanging on either side. ‘So you’re here then,’ said a thin, sour woman Lizzie assumed to be Steve’s mother.
‘As you see, Ma, as you see.’
Now she had time to study the woman, Lizzie saw she had many of the same features as Steve and thought it odd that though they turned Steve into a handsome and presentable man, they turned his mother grimfaced and surly looking, unless it was life itself that had given her that discontented air.
Steve’s father was introduced as Rodney and was just a little taller than his wife, and Steve’s brother Neil was the same. Both had sandy hair and pale brown eyes, their noses had little shape and they had slack lips and an indeterminate chin, while Steve’s was chiselled and firm. Lizzie wondered if Neil resented his brother at all, for he was obviously at the back of the queue when good looks were given out. Beside his tall, brawny brother, he looked like a wee boy, and when he shook her hand his was clammy and limp and his father’s little better. It was like shaking hands with a warm, wet fish.
But she was to soon learn much of Neil’s rancour was caused by his mother, and it had nothing to do with looks or size, for, as Steve had boasted the first time Lizzie had met him, Flo only had eyes for her eldest son. He was the light of her life, and in case there should be any doubts, Flo went into a litany of how good, honest, upright, decent, respectable, etc. Steve was. What a marvellous son, a tremendous man altogether, and, she inferred, Lizzie was lucky to have him.
The point was, Lizzie didn’t want him. Flo could keep him by her side a wee while longer, but now wasn’t the time to say so.
It was a comfortable and well-furnished room, Lizzie had to admit. A brass clock was set on the mantelshelf below the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that familiar picture in all Catholic homes. A selection of brass ornaments were either side of the clock, and a shop-bought, fluffy blue rug was before the gleaming brass fender. Dark blue armchairs and a matching settee, each scattered with cushions of pale blue and cream, were pulled in front of the fire, which was roaring up the chimney. The linen, lace-edged arm covers on the chairs matched the antimacassars draped across the backs of the chairs and settee. Against the wall was a sideboard with a runner across the length of it and a large oval mirror above. Brass candlesticks stood each end of the runner with a potted aspidistra in the middle.
Lizzie guessed the table against the other wall matched the sideboard, for the ladder-backed chairs around it certainly did, but it had a tablecloth of lace covering it.
In one of the chimney recesses were shelves holding some books and a few toby jugs, but the wall the other side was covered in photographs of Steve. The brothers were so unlike each other, both in looks and stature, there was no mistaking them. There was just the one picture Lizzie could see that had been taken when Steve looked to be about ten and Neil about five. The rest were all of Steve: one of him as a baby on a lambskin rug, then as a toddler and a schoolboy. Steve’s First Communion was also documented, as was his Confirmation, and him in his new suit for the occasion, and another where he wore new overalls, checked shirt and shiny new boots, probably for his first day at work. There were none of anyone else.
The visit could not be considered a success. She knew afterwards that, whatever she’d done or said wouldn’t have been right, for the talk was stilted and false, and though the tea was adequate and well-prepared it felt like sawdust in Lizzie’s mouth. I pity the girl who eventually takes Steve on, she thought, for Flo will make her life a misery. Thank the Lord it’s not going to be me!
Eventually, Lizzie ran out of things to say and there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two before Rodney Gillespie began on his favourite topic: hatred of the Irish generally and Ireland in particular. ‘I was found by the parish priest when I was but seven years old,’ he said, ‘and all about me were dead or dying of TB. He took me in and tended me and apprenticed me to a brass worker in Birmingham the week after my eighth birthday.’
Lizzie did feel for the old man for Steve had explained some of the work they did the night they’d gone to the Old Joint Stock after the pantomime. He’d told Lizzie how the copper and zinc were turned into molten brass in furnaces that burned white-hot, and how they had to carry heavy ladles of it to pour into crucibles. He spoke of the heat and the danger and the way hands grew cracked and calloused and how bare backs ran with sweat all the day long, and of how his father had been at the work since he’d been a young boy.
‘Ah, God, for a wee child to be in such a place,’ she’d said.
‘Yeah, it was a hard life for him I think,’ Steve told her. ‘The apprentice was always the whipping boy, the one who got the toe of someone’s boot in his behind if he slackened at all, or spilt precious metal. Yet he has a love of England and brass, for he says it’s given him a home. There was always enough food for us, bags of coal and warm clothes and boots for the winter and blankets for the bed. My mother has never had to pawn.’
Lizzie had never heard the word pawn, so Steve had explained it to her, but she’d understood the rest: how a young boy was given the gift of life, and a good life, though a hard one. But now she saw he was revelling in this story that he must have told often, almost enjoying it, when life for many was hard then. So when he said, ‘Ireland took everything from me: parents, brothers and sisters,’ Lizzie said,
‘I thought it was tuberculosis did that?’
And then she nearly jumped out of her skin as Rodney’s hand slammed the table with such ferocity the crockery rattled. ‘Tuberculosis wouldn’t have taken hold if they’d all had the right food, and a decent cottage rather than the stinking hovel we had, and money for medicines,’ he thundered. ‘Ireland is no friend of mine.’
No one said a word after that, and the silence was strained. Lizzie left as soon as she decently could.
‘Don’t start my father on about Ireland if you don’t want a tirade,’ Steve warned later as they made their way to the tram stop. ‘He’s a mild-mannered man in most things but that, and he can’t bear being contradicted.’
‘Well, we might not meet again, so it will hardly matter.’
‘Of course you will, you silly girl.’
Lizzie decided she couldn’t let Steve go on in blissful ignorance of how she felt, and so she said gently, ‘Don’t read too much in to this, Steve.’
‘In to what?’
‘This visit to meet your parents.’
‘What’re you on about?’
‘I’m not ready for anything serious, not with you or anyone yet.’
‘Don’t