“ Slice of Life”
When Enid were a young lass back during the war and when the family lived up north, she had been the same- dreaming romantic dreams, pining over one lad or other. Who were it again... oh aye, there was Tommy Fighfield, who used to come round with black market bacon or lamb chops for Mam ' s table and a bunch of flowers for seventeen year old Enid. Tommy with his line of patter and his spiv suit, always the charmer. Now what had become of him... maybe he were the one who died at... Monte Casino, were it? Someplace in Italy any road.
Nay, her memory were all mixed up again. Tommy had been a shirker who pulled every dodge in book t ' stay out of forces. He ' d laughed when she called him a coward and told her dying for yer country were a mugs game. After that she ' d had little to do with Tommy Fighfield and he ' d hooked up with Mavis Plummer from over on the Crowley Estate, a brassy little Madame if ever Enid had seen one, but her old man had been summated at the brewery and Tommy had liked the connection. Hadn ' t he been done up for selling knocked off booze in... 53 were it?
So who were the lad that had got himself killed... a memory snapped into place. Patrick... Patrick Cohnlan. Irish lad he were though born n raised in the north but Dad still didn ' t approve. ' Workshy paddies,' he ' d called them.“
Enid hadn ' t really liked Patrick all that much but her father ' s strong dislike of the lad had improved his prospects with her.
Patrick and Matthew used to bring her flowers, each on a different day. Friday nights for Patrick and he had to come to the window so her parents didn ' t know... she ' d wait impatiently for her suitor at eight o clock, but as soon as he ' d brought the flowers and entreated her to meet him up at the Roxy one night, she ' d find herself impatient to get rid of him. Saturday were the day she ' d arranged with Matthew Henshaw...
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