Don't mess with Muriel

Muriel grew up as the only girl in a household full of boys. She had eight brothers and was the youngest of the siblings bar one. In the dark days of the Great Depression, the family lurched from one crisis to another brought on by the poverty that was pervasive in their neck of the woods in Salt River, Cape Town. Pops, as he was known to all and sundry, was a manual labourer at the Railway Works in Salt River that employed a large number of folk from this slightly run down neighbourhood – the factories spewing out grime and smog in what was rapidly becoming an industrial hub in Cape Town. Most were barely making ends meet on meagre wages at a time in which trade unions were in their infancy, and had not yet begun to make a significant difference in the lives of the working class. It was some years before they began to effectively harness their power to bring industries to their knees as they flexed their numerical muscle to squeeze better working conditions out of recalcitrant factory bosses.

The family shared a two roomed semi-detached cottage that could have done well with a lick of paint. The rather grim looking façade with peeling, yellowing paint that had once been white, gave some idea as to the living conditions inside. A creaky front door (with a broken glass pane that no-one had money to replace) led into a stark interior. Mismatched furniture salvaged from a dumpsite was tonked together by Pops to provide shared rickety beds of various sizes, and the odd chair and ingeniously strung together crates to approximate tables. In the two rooms they slept, cooked, ate and lived out their family life. Ablutions were confined to an outhouse with a bucket serviced once a week by the municipality that exchanged bodily waste for clean receptacles. A faucet in the tiny back yard provided fresh drinking water and had to be used for washing and bathing. Pops would ensure that sufficient hot water was provided for cooking and also filling an oval, tin bath, that was emptied into the single drain in a corner of the yard after all had bathed. Spare a thought for the youngest kids who took their turn last. 

Despite the hardship of the time, their mother ruled the family with a firm grip and a wooden spoon. Despite the poverty, they all somehow managed to get all they needed to survive. As best she could, the old lady ensured the family was as clean as they could be, the tiny cottage was tidy and that they were well enough clothed with a combination of ‘hand me downs’ and deftly crafted trousers and shirts fashioned from cloth she could lay her hands on. Somehow the children grew up quite adequately with the blend of discipline and austerity they took for granted. They had no idea they were poor!

Muriel had to learn from a very young age to hold her own with robust and boisterous boys who dragged her into their rough games. By the time she was old enough to go to school, she was a match for any potential bully. She gave as good as she got. Muriel was included in all the rough play and the odd outbreak of fistfights to settle juvenile disputes. Many a youngster misjudged her temperament at their peril, as they landed in the dirt and nursed a thud against the head that had been launched from her ample biceps. Muriel brooked no quarter in these volatile mobs of children. Her “take no prisoners” attitude became legendary. What would be described as a “tomboyish” demeanour, Muriel carried her ‘can-do’ attitude into adulthood. When she left home at sixteen, she landed a job as a stevedore at the Cape Town docks. There the first fellow to question her ability to load and unload docking ships nursed a cracked jaw for some time. She flung the heavy cargo around with equal dexterity and power as any of her male fellow workers in a job largely dominated by men. At the local Martial Arts club she joined shortly after raking in her first wages as a stevedore, she swung dumbbells around as if they were but light sponges. It was a sight to behold.

Despite her muscular appearance and her six-foot three frame supporting a formidable twenty-four stone, Muriel began to show more than a passing interest in young men. She had no hesitation in accepting a coffee date with a somewhat unlikely chap for a gal of her dimensions and bearing. Johnny Murtagh was a diminutive fellow, no taller than five-feet three inches and as lean as she was buxom and sturdy. She had come into his field of view as she entered the shoe store he ran in Main Road Mowbray, whence she had relocated as soon as her wages allowed her to afford a more up-market rental. An astute businessman, Johnny was the sole proprietor of the shop that soled the feet of both men and women. She selected flat heeled shoes much to his satisfaction. It irked him that women slavishly followed the dictates of fashion, usually demanding high heeled stilettos – to the detriment of their posture, feet and lower backs. This was one feisty lady and he found that a most attractive trait.

Not long after they met and dated for the first time, the next port of call was the registry office. Muriel had no truck with wedding garments and delicate fabrics. For a church wedding she had no real need. In fact, she would have happily skipped the formalities of paperwork and marriage had that been the twenty-first century in which these options have increasingly been dispensed with. The notion of male and female has also become diluted with the passage of time, but for the entire history of mankind before the era of “anything goes”, marriage has been a solidly supported institution. Muriel might, however, have been too astute a woman to have entered into a quasi marriage without the legal paperwork and blessing of at the very least the “law.” Dispensing with marriage and “shacking up” seems to be a rather flimsy basis for a long term relationship. Should there be a parting of ways, the modern approach to matters of the heart is predisposed to leaving “winners” and “losers” in the fallout. The law essentially washes its hands of folk that abjure the legal protection that underpins statutory marriage.

Be that as it may, the two were wed in the registry office and they pretty much seemed to make their marriage work for them.

The 1950s were fairly good for business in Cape Town. The country was busy finding its “mojo” after the depression followed by wartime austerity. Johnny’s shoe store was doing well on a main thoroughfare and ample footfall across the threshold of the shop. 

It is a sad reality of human nature that when someone is successful, there will always be some lurkers in the shadows of society that resent the success of others. This was the case in Cape Town as much as any other large city – on the surface ostensible stability, but in the murky underworld, thugs who target anyone they view as vulnerable. Johnny, although a small business owner with abundant acumen, lacked the brawn to hold his own against the worst of the gangland. They viewed him as easy prey in a protection racket extorting money from small businesses along Main Road. Unwilling to hand over his hard earned money to unscrupulous scum running such a racket, Johnny was beaten up and left for dead outside his store late one evening. Had it not been for a passerby with compassion, he would not have been taken to Groote Schuur Hospital’s Emergency Ward and rescued. Johnny was saved, patched up and nursed back to health, the store having to be run by a manager temporarily.

Whilst he was recuperating in the hospital, Muriel set to work to find the culprits. She pushed all the correct buttons and came up with names and descriptions and let it be known she was on their trail. None of the five hooligans involved in the mugging had ever laid eyes on her, so they knew not with whom they were dealing. One evening she assisted the temporary manager with the locking up of the store, and the brazen dregs of humanity decided to pounce on them and finish the extortion job. Muriel was no pushover and laid into all five of them with the gusto of an angry Amazon. The biggest one she lifted up and pitched through a shop window. Two others had their heads knocked together with such force that their kinfolk from generations past could have felt it – and both had a concussion to boot. The last two she chased down and walloped so exquisitely that the blood spatter against the wall had to be removed with a pressure hose and copious amounts of detergent.

Don’t mess with Muriel!

©Paul M Haupt