Mary Woodward is an accomplished poet whose works have graced the pages of esteemed publications such as Stinging Fly, Southword, and Poetry Ireland in recent years. Her notable achievements include the publication of a full collection titled “The White Valentine” by Worple Press in 2013. Poems from this collection received high commendation in the Forward Prize, further solidifying her reputation as a skilled wordsmith. With a distinct voice and a penchant for capturing the essence of emotion and experience through verse, Mary Woodward continues to captivate readers with her evocative poetry.
Among the Heathen English
By Mary Woodward
Kitty’s first impression of London was how black it was – layers of soot over everything, every brick, every stone, every tree and hedge, every human being veneered by it. She thought she could see specks floating in the air, coming towards her eyes, her mouth. If she wiped her nose with a white handkerchief it was left marked with charcoal smears. She could smell this blackness – the thick smell of coal, especially in the evenings when everyone had a fire and the chimneys were lost in smoke. But it had not made her dislike her new city – she was so captivated by its busyness, the life, the constant offer of things to see and do. As her sister Ellen had said, you needn’t ever be bored here.
Every few weeks she would have enough money and ration coupons to go shopping. Ellen said the best shop in Oxford Street was Jax and she was right – swiftly that first year Kitty built up a collection of pretty blouses and a couple of dresses and some lovely shoes.
‘Mammy would have a fit,’ said Ellen when she bought a black art silk cami, edged with cream lace.
‘Mammy’ll never know,’ said Kitty, enjoying the thrill of freedom that gave her.
‘Don’t tug so hard’ said the old woman whose hair Kitty was brushing. ‘Don’t tug.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll go more gently,’ said Kitty
‘Go on then, just get it finished. I hate the Irish, I do. Dirty scroungers the lot of you.’ Kitty said nothing. Who cared if she didn’t like the Irish? Ignorant old crock. Kitty was used to it – a lot of the old ladies had said this to her. But Kitty could judge accents too, and she could tell they were destitute old nobodies, poor and unwanted. As far as Kitty could see they didn’t like anyone much. They hated Germans, of course. They despised Americans. They didn’t like the French. They were the remnants of a dying world with their worn out black clothes and stupid fancy hairstyles they didn’t have enough hair for anymore. They’d all soon be dead themselves even if a German bomb didn’t get them first. The home didn’t bother to get them into a shelter when the sirens went – the few staff, crossing their fingers, would leave them to luck.
Kitty and Ellen had more boyfriends than they had time for – London was full of handsome young men in uniform looking for company, for a drink, or a walk in the park, a meal out. And here, unlike at home, nobody cared who you were dating. There were no gossips watching your every move. Ellen was going out with a Norwegian, Kitty dated a Canadian and a Frenchman. Nothing was predictable – you’d go to the cinema or a café a couple of times, arranging how to meet by post, and then they’d disappear, not because they hadn’t liked you but because they had no choice…they could have been sent anywhere – east, west north, south. You learned not to ask and they never talked. The trick was to not get attached to any of them.
Then Ellen, who by then had worked her way through two engagements, met a soldier who she said she really liked. And he was only from Shepherds Bush, not interesting at all really, Kitty thought. But he was sent overseas almost as soon as they had met and Ellen, instead of getting on with her life, started staying in on her days off and reading, and writing letters to him. Kitty had to rely more on her friends at work. One of them had a friend from school in Hoxton called Olive who was driving ambulances. Kitty liked her bold witty approach to things and Olive liked Kitty’s capacity to laugh things off. Together they were game for anything.
‘Tell you what,’ she’d say, standing in the middle of the Home’s kitchen, waving a cigarette around with one hand, running the other over her blonde ringlets (yes, proper bouncing round shiny ringlets) ‘let’s go up…to (whatever pub had caught her fancy for the night)…the yep…The Greyhound.’
Kitty had never been to the Greyhound. You always had to make an effort going out with Olive…she was fussy about appearances and keen on fashion…so for the Greyhound that night Kitty wore her smartest shoes and a coat from Jax, with a swingy pleated back she was very proud of even though she would probably be sitting down and it wouldn’t be seen. It made her feel confident, as if she had grown up in London knowing what was what.
Olive’s friends were already there around a corner table – who like Olive had no problem with Kitty being a Paddy as they kept on calling her.
‘ Don’t call me Pat,’ she insisted.’ I’m Kitty,’ and they would purr loudly at her, then shriek with laughter. They were in the saloon bar and it was crowded, no room to move and full of smoke. In the public bar they were singing along to a piano that someone was playing with great verve, if not finesse.
‘Squeeze in,’ said Olive as her friends moved up and made room for them. ‘And then I’ll get us something to drink.’
Just before closing time Kitty noticed a trio of sailors force their way in through the crowd at the door. They were nice looking and their narrow black and white uniforms stood out among the bulky khaki dress in the room.
‘They’re all right,’ whispered Olive.
The sailors fought their way closer to the bar and on their way nodded and smiled at them. Olive raised her glass to them and gave them a wide smile. Kitty thought this was a bit bold but it worked – the sailors came over with their beers and crammed themselves into the seat round their table. Kitty could not keep up with the repartee. A couple of Olive’s friends knew the sailors from school and the talk was all local jokes. She took another sip of gin and orange and hoped she didn’t look too left out. Then the sailor next to her gave her a nudge…not a subtle one – she spilt her drink on the table and tried to wipe it up with her hankie. He pulled a huge white square from his tunic pocket and did it for her with one swift swipe.
‘There…And who are you then…Miss Clumsy?’
‘Oh I’m Kitty. I know Olive.’
‘A Paddy. What you doing over here then? You a nurse?’
‘No…I look after old people.’
‘That must be fun,’ he said.The bell for last orders finished ringing.’ What’ll you have, Kitty?’ he said, nodding at her empty glass.
‘Ummmm..’
‘What did you have before?’
‘Gin and orange.’
‘Ok then, I’ll get you another one of those.’
`You’re doing all right there,’ said Olive.
Kitty looked at the sailor in the thick of the melee at the bar. He had fair hair, he was tall and thin, he was nice looking, he had the gift of the gab.
‘Not my type,’ she said. ‘He’s too sure of himself.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Olive. ‘He’s just a bit too glamorous. Girl in every port, of course, and all that.’
Her gin & orange was put carefully in front of her.
‘Don’t spill it,’ he said.
Kitty looked up to thank him and he winked at her.
‘That’s grand – thank you,’ she said. He wasn’t sitting down again. He was throwing back his pint and his friends were pushing for the door, making faces at him to get a move on.
‘Gotta go, Kitty. Don’t suppose you’d like to come to the pictures tomorrow night with me, eh?’
Kitty panicked…he was just so…he was just too much.
‘I’m working,’ she said, which was true enough. ‘Sorry.’
‘OK. Never mind, eh.’ He patted her on the head and went, giving a wink from the door as he disappeared from view. Kitty finished her drink, feeling a sense of something she could not identify. Was she sorry? As they walked back Olive’s friends told her they were all going back to sea in two days’ time.
‘Probably won’t see any of them again for years. Always the same with sailors even when there isn’t a war on. ‘
Kitty did feel a pang of regret then…it would have been his last night out at home. That meant maybe his last night out ever.
A few weeks later Olive suggested going to the Greyhound again. Kitty had liked the pub and had not forgotten the sailor and felt a twinge of guilt when she remembered him. This time it was quieter – mid week, fewer men on leave, fewer people generally . Olive’s friends were there again and were talking about a wedding, and another couple who’d just broken up who had to go as they were both related to the couple and how awkward it had been. Kitty listened dutifully – she didn’t know anyone involved. There wasn’t even a crowd waiting to get served. She wished someone in the other bar would start playing the piano. But they didn’t. It was a sad shadow of the riotous place they had visited before. And then the door to the street opened and in came one of the sailors – not the one who’d asked her out. He bought a drink and came straight over to them,
‘Hello darlings,’ he said. ‘Was hoping to see you again.’
‘Sit down Ronnie,’ said Olive, patting the seat next to her. ‘How come you’re still here?’
‘Don’t ask,’ he said. ‘But I got a message to deliver to your lovely Irish mate here.’ And he pulled, with ostentatious huffing and puffing, a grimy folded piece of paper from his tunic. It looked as if he had been carrying it around for some time.
‘Kept looking in here but you was never here. Almost gave up, I did. He wants you to write to him. That’s his address. That’s the destroyer he’s supposed to be on.’
Kitty took the paper and put it in her handbag. She had no intention of sharing it without reading it in private first. As soon as she’d turned round the last corner on the way home and was on her own she found a quiet gateway and unfolded the note in the beam of her black out torch. There were only two lines. Obviously less given to words in writing than he was in real life, she thought.
Harry Carter
HMS Ajax Royal Navy
Kitty folded it up again along the original lines and put it back in her bag. She was touched. Fancy him wanting to write to her. Apart from Mammy no-one in the world had ever asked her for a letter. When she got in she took the note and put it the top drawer of her bedside cabinet where it would be safe. The next afternoon in her break she ran down to her room and wrote out a rough pencil version of a letter to him. She would do the final copy that evening. When she set to in ink the pen, which was very cheap, just like the nibs they’d had at school but she had lost the knack of keeping the nib uncrossed, splattered so there were occasional blots and splodges.
She was so ashamed of it she wrote it all out again. And in the end it was a nice letter. Clear and free of marks and crossings out and she was pleased with it. The address seemed a bit skimpy but she could only trust the Navy knew what it was doing and would get it to him. She had no idea where HMS Ajax could be, maybe the North Atlantic which sounded very dangerous but someone at work told her the navy was sending a lot of ships to the Mediterranean which somehow seemed better. Less dangerous. Certainly less cold and desolate. She posted it that night in the mailbox near the front door of the Home.
Christmas came and went – Kitty and Ellen both worked non-stop to give themselves the time off later. Their trip back home was slow and the train was held up by raids in the Midlands and the carriages were so crowded with soldiers heading for Liverpool and there were no seats and they sat on the floor the whole way to Holyhead. At home Mammy did nothing but worry about what was happening to London.
They were glad when at last their train pulled into Euston and they were soon safe back at work and war and their own lives. Kitty’s little room with its tiny gas fire and old armchair seemed a sanctuary of privacy and ease – as soon as she had thrown her case down and taken off her heavy coat, she ran to the front hall to see if there was a letter for her.
At first as she walked toward the table where the post was laid out she thought there wasn’t one – but then she found a battered blue envelope with her name on it in nice writing. She grabbed it and back in her room made herself sit down and take a breath. She put her fingernail under the edge and pulled it gently apart. It had come so far she felt it should be treated with respect. It was strange to have no idea where it had been written or the journey it had made. On the front it had in big letters FROM HM SHIPS and a box saying passed by the censor.
There was only one sheet of writing paper – a short letter then – just a few comments about his mood, a bit about worrying about his family and then a request to her to write again I enjoyed your first letter. He could spell and his writing was fine. Some school in Bethnal Green had done all right by him, Kitty thought. She put it away with that first note with his address. And she wrote back the next day, calculating she might hear from him by Easter. Jeez, it was all taking so long.
And so…slowly…the letters went back and forth for a year.. He became a real person to her. Once or twice she was asked out by someone at the pub or a dance but her interest in other men had waned. Her sailor, as everyone now referred to him, had made a place for himself in her feelings.
‘He must be nice,’ said Ellen who became more curious as the correspondence went on.
‘He is,’ said Kitty.’ I wish I had a photo.’
The war existed like bad weather – unpleasant but accepted and adjusted for. Kitty felt less the threat of it – she never wondered now, as she had sometimes in her first months, whether England would actually be invaded. When things seemed to be going on in North Africa she worried because that meant the Med would be more active. She had learned from the Londoners round her not to think of defeat or victory, just to plod on.
Sunday Mass was as much religion as she could make time for. At first she would get the bus to Hackney and go to an early mass in the Catholic chapel at Ellen’s hospital but then that was flattened by a bomb so Kitty started going to the local parish church. It wasn’t unlike their church at home – the priest was Irish as were most of the congregation. Then that was bombed too. So…as Harry had told her his family lived in Old Ford Road… she started going to the early Sunday morning mass at Our Lady of the Assumption there. Then she would have tea and toast in a little Lyons in Shoreditch by the bridge and get a bus back for her shift at noon.
She liked the feeling it gave her of being near him, of walking the streets he knew so well. By now his letters were a small, neat pile in her suitcase. She was no nearer to knowing where he actually was – every envelope was both official and uninformative. She knew – though she tried not to think of this – that the letters could simply stop. She knew about torpedoes and u-boats. Ships were lost all the time. And nobody was going to tell her if that happened. Not even his family knew about her or where she lived. She would live the rest of her life with her sad little pile of blue letters, not knowing if he had simply lost interest in her. Or was dead, a drifting corpse edging onto a North African beach, his wonderful uniform sodden and torn to shreds.
The Galway Review 