Danny Boy (39 page)

He looked around. The tram had continued along a main road, past the Ansell’s Brewery and behind that was a large tower with HP Sauce written on it in big letters. There were streets and streets of houses, and like his sister Rosie he’d been shocked by them for in all his life he’d never seen the like of them. He’d been brought up on a spacious farm and even his trips to Dublin had been confined to the shopping areas. This was his first introduction to a city’s back-to-back housing and he wasn’t impressed by it one bit.

Nothing had prepared him for what he saw as he walked up Upper Thomas Street. Even that fine September morning the houses were so grim and dismal he couldn’t imagine anyone living in them. And yet it was obvious they did. Rosie did for a start, and that fact depressed him totally. He wandered up the road in a sort of daze. He found Aston Park at the top of the road and was absurdly pleased about that, and he went through the open gates, needing a little time to himself before he had the courage to call on Rosie.

Although, Dermot found 42 Upper Thomas Street with no trouble, he had no idea what ‘6 the back of 42’ even meant. In fact, the whole place unnerved him. He wondered where the children played, for there was no space that he could see and it bothered him that Rosie was living amongst such grey drabness.

Eventually he asked a little boy playing with dust piles in the gutter where ‘6 the back of 42’ was. ‘Down the entry, mister,’ the boy said, pointing into the darkness with a jerk of his thumb, and Dermot walked down the cobbles of the entry to the yard beyond, where he stood looking about him in horrified disbelief, much as Rosie had on her first visit.

Then he collected his wits about him. He’d come to help Rosie, not judge the place she lived in, and he approached number six and lifted the knocker.

Rosie had just finished removing the last of the rags from Bernadette’s hair and was brushing it into beautiful golden ringlets, and Danny had gone up to fetch the baby, who’d just woken, when the knock came at the door. ‘Who on earth can that be?’ Rosie said to Bernadette. ‘Knocking on the door and at this hour on a Sunday morning.’ She moved her daughter away as she spoke, got to her feet, crossed the room and opened the door.

Three and a half years before, when Rosie left Ireland, Dermot had been a wee boy. Now she saw a young man and a well-dressed one too, for she could see the white shirt and tie beneath his thigh-length and well-cut coat. His trousers were navy pin-stripe with turn-ups and his shoes shiny black leather. And so she said questioningly, ‘Dermot?’ She could hardly believe it, and anyway, what would her young brother be doing here?

‘Do you not know me?’ Dermot said with a laugh, and even that was strange for Dermot had the voice of a man.

But man or boy, Rosie was overjoyed to see him. She led him inside eagerly and put her arms around him, realising in that moment how much she’d missed them all back home. Her head was teeming with questions, but they would be answered in time. For now it was enough to hold Dermot tight, though she could have wept for the lost years when this boy had grown to the edge of manhood without her.

At that moment Danny stepped through the door with the baby in his arms, and Bernadette, shy of the man she had no recollection of who was hugging her mammy, crossed to her father’s side. Danny, though, had eyes only for the boy, who he had recognised immediately, and he wondered if his appearance had anything to do with the letter he’d sent. He approached Dermot with his one free arm outstretched. ‘Dermot? Where the hell have you sprung from?’

Dermot broke away from the embrace to shake Danny’s hand, but he didn’t mention the letter. He had an idea Danny wouldn’t like him to and that it had probably been written without Rosie’s knowledge, so he just said, ‘I came over to see how you were doing. We’d heard nothing for weeks and were concerned.’

And then he looked at the baby. He was very small and he remembered that the letter had said he was premature. Danny put him over his shoulder as he began to howl again.

Bernadette put her hands over her ears. ‘He’s always doing that,’ she said.

‘So would you, miss, if you hadn’t had your breakfast,’ Rosie said, and then she said to Dermot, ‘Take off your coat or you’ll not feel the benefit when you go out.’

When Dermot removed his coat, Rosie just looked at him, for the suit he wore was the smartest she’d ever seen. ‘God, Dermot, you look the business and about twenty years old.’

‘It was Sarah’s wedding yesterday.’

‘Of course.’ Rosie should have known. It was all Connie had talked about for weeks. If she’d been writing her weekly letter she’d have been well aware of it.

‘Well, it’s a grand suit all right,’ Danny said. ‘You’ll be almost too well-dressed for Mass. Did the wedding go off all right?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

‘Wasn’t there. But…?’

‘I was supposed to be there. I was one of the ushers, but I was so worried when we hadn’t heard from you. We all were. I knew when they were all at the wedding it would be my chance to slip away unnoticed. It was also my one chance to go into the Walshes’ place and get your address, for your mammy wouldn’t give me as much as a sniff of it, Danny. How did you think I found out where you lived?’

‘I assumed Connie gave it to you.’

‘Well, she didn’t,’ Dermot said. ‘She wouldn’t, and Birmingham is a big place to search for a body without a clue or two.’

Dermot looked at his sister now. He’d been shocked by her pasty face and the extreme thinness; he’d felt her bones as he’d held her. But it was her sorrow-filled eyes that troubled him most.

As Danny sat at the table to feed the baby, Dermot moved beside Rosie before the range and said, ‘Why did you tell no-one of the baby, Rosie?’

Rosie stared at him. ‘You know everything and you have to ask that question?’ she said. ‘You know of the first baby I lost, after carrying for nearly six months; that all our family in Ireland were awaiting the birth of it, praying for it, longing for it as much as we were. When I miscarried, the doctor said it was one of those things, and Father Chattaway said I had to accept the will of God and please God there’d be another child in due course.

‘I packed away the baby things of Bernadette’s that I had washed in preparation and the few garments I’d knitted, and returned the cradle Danny had fashioned from orange boxes to the top of the cupboard in the attic. I wrote letters telling everyone the sad news and received letters of condolence in reply.’

Dermot was silent, everyone was silent, even the baby had stopped sucking, and Dermot had the feeling he was listening to the outpouring of Rosie’s very soul. He saw she was unaware of the tears trailing over her cheeks as she swallowed and went on. ‘But life goes on. I got over my tragedy and in time, just as Danny was forced to enlist, I became pregnant again. This time those in Ireland went to town; there were Masses said, candles lit, novenas undertaken, the rosary said. I felt surrounded by the Catholic Church and I felt sure God would not punish me in such a way again.

‘But on the morning after peace was declared, hostilities at an end, a day of jubilation and happiness, I began to lose my baby. Danny was still overseas and I coped alone and thanked God for my neighbours who helped me and sustained me and wrote to Ireland after it was over, when I was unable to.’

‘And then I found out that the munitions factory I’d worked in when I first came to England might be the cause. The sulphur could have got into my bloodstream and would probably poison any child I carried. The doctor was doing a study on the history of stillbirths and miscarriages in women who worked in such places, and also those who couldn’t become
pregnant at all, and I knew then, the deaths of those two wee babies could be laid at my door.’

Rosie gave a gulp at this point and more tears ran from her eyes, which she’d closed, as if in pain, while she bit agitatedly on her bottom lip. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Rosie,’ Danny cried. ‘I’ve told you over and over.’

He crossed the room and passed his son to Dermot without a word and took his wife in his arms. She didn’t push him away but continued to talk, her words muffled now by Danny’s arms, but Dermot caught them. ‘I didn’t want to try for any more children after that. What was the point, I thought, when I can’t carry them, and, oh God, I nearly died from the pain each time. Anthony was the child I should never have had.

‘I refused to believe I was pregnant at first, and each week, each day, I expected my baby to lose his tenuous hold on life. I waited to miscarry. I couldn’t afford to let myself care. Even when the baby was born he was a month premature and hastily christened before I’d even recovered from the operation I had to have to give birth to him at all. His life hung in the balance for days. Don’t you see how it was?’

‘Of course I see,’ Dermot said. ‘And I see how you suffered when you lost the other babies, Rosie. It’s written all over your face. But when you had the child you thought you’d never carry and he’s here and alive and thriving, aren’t you delighted so? Isn’t it a sort of consolation?’

Rosie looked at her young brother and knew he loved her and admired her and found she couldn’t tell him how she resented the baby and everything his father did for him. She told herself Danny cared for him far more than Bernadette, for he’d never taken so much notice of her when she was so small. A small but insistent voice continued to remind her that there was no need for Danny to do such things for Bernadette, for Rosie had done them, and if ever Rosie couldn’t there had been a host of relations ready and willing to take her place. She pressed these words down. She couldn’t deal
with that, for she needed the resentment to fester inside her, lest she start to feel anything for the wee mite she had given birth to. How could she say that to a young boy, and Dermot for all his size
was
a young boy, and expect him to understand something she found hard to comprehend herself? How could she take his condemnation if she was to admit this to him. No, she couldn’t risk that.

So she parried. ‘We haven’t time to go into this all now, Dermot.’

‘Time enough,’ Danny said, taking his son back. ‘This young man is not halfway through his breakfast yet.’

Rosie’s eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t play Danny’s games. She wasn’t ready to be harassed in this way and Danny should know that.

She turned to Dermot. ‘Okay, Dermot, since there’s time to talk, have you thought what will happen to the girls when Mammy finds you gone?’

‘They are to say they knew nothing about it.’

‘Come on, Dermot, you’re not a wee boy any more. You know what Mammy is capable of and you know she’ll never believe they knew nothing.’ Rosie had suffered for years at the hands of her mother and knew the kind of thing her sisters would be subjected to.

Dermot knew too, but he didn’t want to face it. ‘They’re to swear it. I said I’d write a letter claiming the idea was mine as soon as ever I could and say I’d told them not a word.’

‘D’you think that will help any?’ Rosie cried. ‘Haven’t you realised yet that our mother thinks the sun shines out of your bleeding arse, but she hasn’t a morsel of feeling for the rest of us?’

Bernadette’s eyes opened wide with shock. Bleeding and arse were bad words and her mammy had said she’d smack her legs if she heard her saying them. She was going to remind her mammy of it, but one look at her angry face convinced her it would be better to say nothing just at that moment.

‘The fact that you disappeared without a word is bad enough, Dermot,’ Rosie said. ‘But when she realises you are here…God, Dermot, she’d kill the girls stone dead.’

Dermot digested all Rosie said and knew she was right. He knew his mother wouldn’t take his flight to England in a controlled and rational manner. It wasn’t her style. His sisters hadn’t believed that either, though they’d gone along with it to please him, and he knew his sisters’ trepidation and nervousness would betray their guilt. ‘I’ll write the letter today, directly we’re home from Mass,’ Dermot said. ‘I’ll make her see it was my idea and only mine.’

Rosie said nothing, for really there was nothing further she could say.

True to his word, Dermot wrote the letter to his mother, shouldering the entire blame, and another to Connie in which he admitted overhearing her reading the letter and the anxiety resulting from it that caused him to steal away on the day of Sarah’s wedding. He also told of entering the empty house to find the address.

He told Connie and his sisters of other more positive things too: the charm and beauty of Bernadette, now a schoolgirl, and of the baby, so small and frail still, despite being almost six weeks old, and the warm welcome he’d received from Danny and Rosie who had been delighted to see him.

He never mentioned the concerns he had, like the way it was Danny not Rosie who carried Anthony to Mass, wrapped in a shawl, and that Danny took him outside when he became fractious, and Danny who amused the baby while Rosie made them all porridge for breakfast. It was thin porridge, made with water with no sugar or creamy milk to mix with it. ‘Bernadette is the only one who gets sugar,’ Rosie told Dermot when he asked. ‘We take salt.’

Bernadette, not being Communion age yet, had already been given a slice of bread and dripping before Mass, but
now she had porridge with everyone else on their return, but hers was sprinkled with one small teaspoon of sugar.

The porridge did nothing to fill Dermot but he didn’t complain, knowing that they could probably afford no more, and resolved to go out the following morning and use his money to buy some decent food and give them a wee bit of a treat for once.

He went to bed after he’d written the letters, wearied by the journey and lack of sleep he’d had. But as he lay on the shakedown in the attic he was disturbed by the crush of people and noise all around him: the raucous voices of gossiping women and the deeper ones of the men; the clatter of boots and the screaming laughter of children, a baby crying, the odd bark of a dog, or yowl of a cat, all overridden by the clanking of the trams and rumble of the automobiles going along the Lichfield Road.

He fell to thinking about Rosie. He remembered how sad he’d felt when he read about the stillbirth and miscarriage. Her sisters had cried and Connie’s eyes had been red-rimmed when he’d taken around their cards and letters to send. Even Danny’s daddy and Phelan had been sad. How much worse had it been for Rosie?

And he understood why she’d told no-one this time. And the way she was with the baby now, wasn’t that a habit she’d got into because she thought Anthony would go the way of the others? What had she said? She couldn’t afford to care. And then, against all the odds, the baby is born but too soon, small and puny, and Rosie would still be afraid to let down her guard, to begin to love and cherish a baby she might yet lose.

Now she’d got into the habit of ignoring Anthony because she’d had months of doing just that. Somehow she had to break that cycle, to open her heart to love Anthony as she loved Bernadette. But how was that to be achieved?

He suddenly wished he had his sisters here. Maybe they
could talk to Rosie a little better than he could. It wasn’t something he could write in a letter, for all that would do would be to worry them further, and for nothing. They couldn’t help from where they were.