A Pinch of Salt Read online

  ‘And she’ll soon sort you, you great big baby,’ Kate would tell him as she administered a hearty smack to his wet behind. No one in 1910 was interested in the psychological reasons for constant bed wetting in a five year old. No one theorized that since Colm had been deposed as the baby of the house before his first birthday and had been bereft of his mother just after his third, he might just be in need of a little attention and reassurance. Colm’s response was to rail heartily against overburdened Kate as she spanked him in the morning and to fight just as hard against his exhausted father who whacked him again when he found urine-soaked sheets drying on the clothes horse when he returned from work. It never occurred to Kate to wash the sheets every day. She made time for washing them once a week, merely drying them out in between, and in this she was a great deal cleaner than many of her neighbours. Who, after all, had time to draw water, boil it over a fire that one had to keep stoked, and then rub with raw knuckles on a washboard until the paper-thin dirty sheets were clean? Washing day was Monday; everyone knew that.

  When the older children had gone running off to school, Kate untied Bridie and put her down on the floor with her ‘toys’ – a handleless cup and a tin spoon. Later on, if she had time to sit down, Kate would make the little girl a baby doll out of an old piece of clean cloth, but for now she was much too busy. She sent Colm out to play, with a warning not to wander. They both knew he would disobey but the mining village was small and Kate knew his favourite places. Like his big brothers and his sister, he carried his ‘piece’ and would be gone until either hunger or a skinned knee would bring him crying home.

  ‘Ach, sure, won’t it be grand to get him into school,’ said Kate to solemn little Bridie, sounding for all the world like her own mother. Before her death Mary Kate had often teased her oldest child about her Scottish accent, but lately Kate had begun to sound more and more like Liam. Perhaps it was because his was the voice she heard most. Kate did not gossip on the back green as she hung out her washing and her neighbours no longer came to the door as they had done in the first weeks after Mary Kate’s death. If they spoke of the Kennedys at all it was to say, ‘Grand job wee Kate’s doing wi’ all the weans,’ for all the world as if she was no longer a wean herself.

  Physically she stopped being a ‘wean’ two months after the death of her mother. It was a terrific shock to her and also to her father who had no idea at all of how to cope with the onset of menstruation. One afternoon when Bridie was down for a nap and Colm was God knows where, Kate suddenly doubled up with the most appalling pain in her stomach. It was excruciating, low down on her right side, and so intense that she felt cold sweat break out all over her body. She doubled over, moaning until the pain receded a few minutes later.

  Sure, I must have ate something bad, she decided to herself as she straightened up, and then the pain hit her again so that she cried out again and fell to the floor. Her mother’s prayers came back to her. Oh God, am I dying? Here on the floor with the child alone in the house? Mercifully the pain receded and after a few days of waiting for it to strike like a cobra, Kate forgot about it. Then she found blood in her knickers. She sat in the smelly outside privy and wondered what to do. It wasn’t a scraped knee that she could show Da. The blood had obviously come out of the unmentionable place between her legs for she had looked everywhere for a cut or boil and had found nothing. How was she to tell someone else that the blood had come from there? Did Kate really believe that she was dying or did some instinct tell her that what was happening to her was a natural part of her development? She was thirteen years old; her father was due in from the pit and his tea had better be ready whether she was dying or not. She struggled up from the cold, wet floor and went into the kitchen to cut bread and make tea.

  She was still alive at bedtime and Da had noticed nothing wrong. Perhaps she had merely strained something hauling the tub of boiling water from the fire to the back kitchen. She fell asleep and woke up feeling warm liquid on the insides of her thighs. Her first hope that it was wee Colm come in for warmth disappeared; only Deirdre and wee Bridie were in the bed with her. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she prayed in anguish. I don’t want to die. Oh, Mam, why did you ever leave me? Even in the midst of her distress, Kate was aware of the other children; she did not want to wake them with her sobbing, nor did she want them to wake and find her dead in the bed. Her innate modesty made her shrink from approaching her father but it had to be done.

  ‘Da,’ she pulled at the blankets round him. ‘Da, it’s me, Kate.’

  He did not wake immediately and from the smell of him she could tell the reason. It would not be the first time since his wife’s death that Liam Kennedy had had to drink himself to sleep. ‘Da, you have to wake up. I’m terrible ill, Da.’

  That roused him – either the words themselves or the childish despair with which they were uttered. Blushingly, hesitantly, with downcast eyes Kate told him her problem. In dawning realization Liam listened to his daughter. What in God’s name was he to do, to say? In the long, lonely nights since the death of his wife, he thought that he had visualized every problem the years ahead were to bring – but not this. Like his child in her despair, he too returned to the prayers of his childhood. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he whispered and at the sound of his voice the child looked up. What did she see in his face? Was it horror, disgust? It was, in fact, embarrassment not unmixed with fear but Kate misread it and what she saw as his reaction coloured her own perception of a perfectly normal physic-al function for the rest of her life. Liam found his voice but the quandary in which he found himself made him gruffer than he meant to be.

  ‘Ach, away with you, you silly wee bitch. It happens to every girl. ’Tis normal, sure. Away with you and put a clean cloth atween your legs till it stops. ’Twill be a day or two, no more.’

  So ended Kate Kennedy’s one and only lesson on the facts of life. Menstruation and everything connected with it disgusted her. She felt unclean, she hated the blood-soaked cloths that she secretly and furtively washed and dried. She hated having her body do this obscene thing for not one or two days but for four or five every single month, and perhaps because of her resentment her body inflicted her with cramps and nausea, two burdens that she bore in stoic silence. Who could she tell? Bridie, Deirdre? They were too wee. Liam had already shown his disgust with the whole business. Kate longed for someone, anyone who would listen to her questions, who would explain and put everything into perspective. There was no one. Mam would have told her, would have cuddled her and laughed and every-thing would have been all right. I’ll pretend I’m talking to you, Mam. Maybe you can hear me up in Heaven.

  If her neighbours were too burdened themselves to really consider Kate’s plight, two people in the village did manage to spare more than a passing thought for her. One was the local doctor, a brilliant man, prevented from becoming the surgeon he had dreamed of being by a terrible speech impediment. Being a man of courage himself, he recognized the courage in the young girl and racked his brains to find a way to help her. Kate’s brothers and sisters were as well cared for after the death of their mother as they had ever been. As he made his rounds in the miners’ rows, Dr Hyslop saw the lines of washing bravely blowing, he saw the strips of carpet being thrown across the ropes to be beaten, and quite often he saw Kate herself tending the vegetable garden and he would stop to chat to her.

  ‘Superb cabbages you have there, Kate,’ he said with his usual difficulty and Kate, knowing how torturous speech was for him and what terrors casual conversation held for him, smiled warmly.

  ‘Wee Pat does the digging, doctor. Will you have one? Sure, there’s plenty.’

  ‘Indeed I will. If you will have some flowers in return.’

  They smiled at one another, their bargain agreed upon. Like most of the men in the mining community, the doctor spent most of his time in his garden, but while the miners grew vegetables to eke out their income, Dr Hyslop indulged in his passion for flowers. At all seasons of the year his garden was
a delight to himself and all who passed. Kate stopped at the gate each time she was in the village and she and the elderly man had become good friends. He saw a wealth of potential in the girl; he saw the intelligence in her eyes and the beauty and strength of character in her face and he mourned at the waste. Unless some miracle happened, Kate Kennedy was already doing the work that she would do for the rest of her life. There was nothing else for her. Unless her father married again, Kate was doomed to spend her days washing, cleaning and cooking. She might marry, but if she did wed, her life would not change, except that she would be looking after her own husband and the children she would no doubt bear, year after year. That life script was all well and good, but only after she had been given a chance.

  ‘This garden is quite an amateur affair, Kate,’ he told her one evening as she stopped to admire his roses. ‘Just fifteen miles away there’s a castle with magnificent gardens. Once . . .’ He stopped for ‘once’ belonged to the past, to the days of dreaming of worldly success. ‘Kate, have you thought of going into service, of leaving the village?’

  ‘No,’ she said simply, ‘who would look after me da and wee Bridie and the others?’

  Who indeed? She left him then and he watched her straight narrow back as she walked towards the miners’ rows. He wondered why her fate affected him. Service or matrimony or motherhood without ‘benefit of clergy’ was the lot of most of the village girls. One or two left every year to go into service; no girl to his knowledge had ever left to pursue further education. Kate Kennedy surely should have been the first.

  The teacher of the village school knew that as well as the doctor. Miss Timpson was not particularly well qualified but she was conscientious and aware of her own limitations. In her classes Kate had learned to read, write and do basic arithmetic. She had absorbed a colourful, if not strictly accurate, history of her native land and had committed to memory most of the rivers and all the capital cities of western Europe. More importantly, Miss Timpson had passed on to Kate a love of poetry and for this the girl would be eternally grateful.

  Once Colm had been enrolled in the infant class, Miss Timpson saw Kate as she fetched her small brother from school. Sometimes she had Bridie by the hand and at other times, usually when the weather was bad, Kate had the child swaddled tightly against her with an old shawl wound tightly around her own body.

  ‘I thought you could trust Patrick to bring the wee one home, Kate,’ she said.

  Kate flew to her brother’s defence. ‘Pat’s grand, miss. I was enjoying a wee walk.’

  How anyone could enjoy a walk carrying a young child was more than Miss Timpson could understand. She guessed rightly that Kate was being brave and she shuddered for the girl. ‘Can I do anything, Kate? Do you need anything?’

  Here Kate lost the first of many opportunities. She wanted to ask for the loan of books, any kind of book, even A Tale of Two Cities, but false pride got in her way. She drew herself up haughtily to her almost five feet, hitched Bridie up on her hip, and said politely, ‘No thank you, Miss Timpson. Our da provides everything we need.’

  She was angry with herself as she half dragged, half herded the three younger ones home. Like all the big boys, Patrick would never walk home with his little brothers and his sister.

  You have a big mouth on you, Kathleen Kennedy. You could have asked her for the loan of a collection of poems and copied some of them out, or even a story book, Walter Scott or Charles Dickens. You never got halfway through her shelf. Never mind, she brightened up, our Pat can bring them home when he’s in the top class and no one the wiser.

  Kate was preoccupied that night as she went about her never-ending chores but, as usual, no one noticed. Would they have noticed if she had neglected to do them? Probably. When there was no clean underwear or no porridge on the fire. Kate did not often feel sorry for herself; this was the way things were. She would have liked some time to herself, but she had a strong streak of practicality. Reading a book would be wonderful tonight but in the morning she could never catch up, and life was easier if chores were done regularly. When the others are older, she would tell herself, they’ll give me a hand. For now Liam sat in the big chair before the fire dreamily watching the wee ones as they played about his feet. Eventually he sent them to bed and soon took himself off. In truth Kate hardly noticed him go for her mind was full of the doctor and the school teacher. What made them different from herself? The doctor spoke ‘funny’, not just because of his impediment but because his was a ‘toff’s’ voice. He did not belong to the mining community. Vague rumours about his background circulated in the village from time to time, especially when some of his relatives visited him in their grand carriages. Dr Hyslop was a gentleman. But what about Miss Timpson or Mrs Campbell, the minister’s wife or the minister himself? He didn’t have ‘marbles in his mouth’ as the village said when describing the doctor’s cultured tones.

  Why hadn’t she accepted Miss Timpson’s offer of help? I’ll ask her for books the next time I see her, she decided. For it’s education as makes them different from the likes of us, declared thirteen-year-old Kate and, one way or another, I’ve lost my chance of getting educated.

  2

  TWO EVENTS OCCURRED in 1911 which were to have a far-reaching effect on Kate’s life. One was the refining of a small pie that she had been making for the family since before her mother’s death. The pie enabled her to put a tasty and nutritious meal before her large family for very little more than the meals of bread and dripping she had given them in the year immediately following her mother’s death. Liam now gave his daughter every penny he earned as he had given it before to his wife; he had struggled with his grief and loneliness as he had struggled against so much adversity in his life and he had mastered it and the need for alcohol. He saw nothing odd in his sixteen-year-old daughter handing him back a few pence on a Friday night. Sometimes he joined his mates at the pub but more often he sat before the fire and listened with pride to his children as they practised their multiplication tables or read their lessons.

  The other event which rocked Kate’s small world took place in June. Patrick had his fourteenth birthday and was able to leave school and go down the pit with his father. Of school and the coalmines he found the mines the lesser of two evils. Liam had had the moleskin trousers bought and laid aside for weeks before his son’s birthday and Pat could hardly wait to get into them.

  ‘Putting on a pair of moleskin breeks and going down a pit is not going to make a man of you,’ Kate told her young brother angrily.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Kate? It’s the pits or swilling out muck on some farm. The pit’s better paid.’

  ‘Can you not bide at the school another year and maybe get a nice clean job in a shop. You like horses, Pat. Can you not get taken on at the Co-op?’

  ‘I cannot see myself delivering messages.’

  ‘I wanted something better than the pits.’

  ‘Kevin’s got brains, Kate. Wait for him.’

  ‘You’re the eldest, Pat,’ said Kate. ‘It’s you should have the chance.’

  ‘You’re daft, Kate Kennedy. It’s time you joined the real world. There is nothing better than the pits for the likes of us.’

  Kate looked at him and saw only a child, a half grown man-child with skin as soft and smooth as Bridie’s. In a few months his thin white fingers would be gnarled and broken; the nails would be split and they would never be white and clean again. Dear God, he can draw flowers so nice you can almost smell them. How do miners’ sons get away from the pits?

  ‘It’s not fair, Pat,’ was all she said.

  He smiled. ‘I’ll be earning near the same wage as Da once I’ve learned the job.’

  He was so young, Kate thought, and so eager. He could not possibly understand what working for hours underground for the rest of his working life would mean; doubled over and crawling along the clammy wet ground like a rat. In a few years he would find it hard even to stand upright.

  He would have
to be well-fed and she could do that for him. All the weans liked to take her pies to school and Colm, the wee rascal, had been known to swap them or even sell them.

  What a whack Kate had given him when she found him with a penny and a jammy piece.

  ‘You wee toe-rag,’ she had said. ‘Selling my good, tasty food tae that dirty wee tinker. Don’t you dare put that bread near your mouth; you dinnae ken where it’s been.’

  Liam was proud of his daughter’s baking but when it had been suggested to him by Mrs Murphy, their next-door neighbour, that Kate should sell pies at the local pub he had been furious. Mrs Murphy had never set foot in a public house in her life but Tam Murphy, the publican, was a cousin of her late husband, and he wanted to add food to his menu of beer, beer and beer. A pub could be quite a genteel place, thought Mrs Murphy, if there was perhaps another room where food could be served.

  ‘No daughter of mine will ever set foot in a pub,’ Liam said.

  ‘Kate wouldnae have to go into the pub, Liam,’ Mrs Murphy explained, ‘and it would bring a bit extra.’

  ‘Kate has more than enough to do looking after the bairns and, forbye, I earn the money to look after my family.’

  Mrs Murphy said no more. She was convinced that he was making a mistake but she would never argue with him. She had been amazed when Kate had mentioned her regret that Pat was going to become a miner.

  ‘Kate, you would think the boy was your son and not your brother the way you fuss over him and, forbye, why should he not go down the pit with the rest of the laddies. Good enough for the likes of Mrs Breen’s folk but not for your precious wee brother.’

  Kate wanted to shout, No, it’s not good enough for us, but said only, ‘He’s nobut a wean but he thinks he’s grown-up; he’s all bones, he’s not even full grown.’

  ‘He’ll have his dad there to wipe his bum for him. You can’t live their lives for them, Katie. Have you ever thought what it’s going to be like for them when you have your own house and your own bairns?’