Martha(2)

[With special thanks to Graham North who asked about Steve who first featured in Martha]

‘I first met Martha at a dance in the Coliseum off Deansgate. I fell for her right away, head-over-heels. She was my first real girl friend - even though I was twenty at the time and everyone thought I was a bit of a lad, I wasn’t. She was a right smasher, even though she was a bit quiet. But once you got her on the dance floor, boy, could she move something. I didn’t realise until it was too late that she had a bloke already – Stan – I think his name was. Mind you if only that Johnny* had not burst.’ Steve took a deep swallow of his beer. ‘Of course I was in the Navy by then. I’d joined the Merchant Navy when I left school at thirteen in nineteen thirty three. And I was visiting Manchester with my shipmate Rob whose parents lived in Ancoats… But I was horrified when she died and her being pregnant too – my baby – was it a boy or a girl? – I never knewed. I would have married her – gladly - but she said No… No-one else took her place. I did get married to Jane after the war ended, ‘er was a good lass, and I did my best to be a good husband to ‘er but my heart was not really in it. We never had no kids though and she died last year, heart attack. Me? I get by, but I still think of Martha. There are some people you never forget, they just get inside you somehow.’

*Old slang for a condom