Don’t Tell Mummy (3 page)

I would work at the table while my mother made supper and Judy lay exhausted at my feet.

For Christmas, when she was turning from puppy to small dog, I used my saved-up pocket money to buy a smart red lead with matching collar. Now, proudly buttoned up in my warm navy winter coat, with Judy prancing beside me impervious to the cold in her natural fur, I would take her for walks, beaming with pleasure every time someone stopped to admire her. My happiness was completed when my grandmother started to visit again. No explanation had ever been given as to why she had stopped. Years later she admitted to me she had been appalled at us living above the garage, had never liked my father and had never thought him good enough for my mother. Whilst by then I more than agreed with her, it was too late to comment.

She, like me, adored Judy, who always greeted her rapturously. My grandmother would pick her up, tickle her stomach and be rewarded by licks that removed her perfumed face powder.

With my grandmother’s visits would come presents, mainly of books which, when my mother was busy, my grandmother would always find time to read to me.

When my parents informed me in February that we were going to move to Northern Ireland, where my father came from, my pleasure was only spoilt by the thought of not being able to see so much of my grandmother. Her many reassurances of numerous visits, however, made my fears disappear.

In fact, six years were to pass before I saw her again.

We sent regular letters, which hid the truth of our family life. She never forgot birthdays and Christmases, but the hoped-for letter announcing a visit never arrived. Unaware
then of the many excuses my mother was making to her, my grandmother gradually faded in my life to become someone who had once loved me.

T
hree thin wooden tea chests and one suitcase stood on our sitting-room floor, containing the accumulated chattels of a marriage. Over the next ten years I saw them packed and unpacked many times until they became a symbol to me of defeated optimism. At five and a half, however, I saw them as the start of an exciting adventure. My mother had triumphantly nailed the third one shut the preceding night and once a van arrived to collect them our journey was to begin.

My father, who had already been in Northern Ireland for several weeks looking for suitable accommodation, had finally sent for us. His longed-for letter had arrived a week earlier and my mother had read parts out to me. He had, she told me enthusiastically, found a house for us in the country. First, however, we were to visit his family, who were eagerly awaiting our arrival. We would stay with them for a fortnight until our chests and furniture arrived, at which time we would move to our new home.

My mother told me time and again how much I would love Ireland, how it would be a good life and how I would enjoy meeting all my new relatives. She talked excitedly of her future plans; we were going to live in the country, start
a poultry farm and grow our own vegetables. Envisioning Easter-card yellow fluffy chicks my enthusiasm grew to match hers. I listened to the extracts of my father’s letter that she read out to me about my cousins, about the house in the country and about how much he was missing us. Her happiness was infectious as she described a future idyllic life.

When the van had left with our chests and furniture I looked at our bare rooms with a mixture of emotions: nervous at leaving everything that was familiar, but excited at going to a new country.

My mother picked up our hand luggage and I took a firm hold of Judy’s lead as we started our twenty-four-hour journey. What to me seemed like an adventure, to my mother must have felt like a gruelling ordeal. Not only did she have our bags and me to look after, but also Judy, who by now had grown from a puppy into a small, bright-eyed, mischievous terrier.

A bus took us to the railway station, with its tubs of flowers and friendly porters. We caught a train to the Midlands, then the connecting train to Crewe. I sat in the compartment watching the steam floating in smoky clouds back from the engine, listening to the wheels making their clickety-clack clickety-clack noise, which sounded to me like ‘we’re going to Northern Ireland, we’re going to Northern Ireland’.

I could hardly sit still, but the excitement did not curb my appetite. Mindful of our budget, my mother had packed a picnic for us. Unwrapping the brown-tinged greaseproof paper I found a round of corned beef sandwiches, then a hard-boiled egg, which I peeled and ate as I stared out the window. A crisp apple followed, while my mother poured herself tea from a flask. There was a separate packet
containing scraps for Judy, a bottle of water and a small plastic bowl. She ate every crumb, licked my fingers gratefully, and then fell asleep curled at my feet. After we’d finished my mother took a damp cloth from another small bag, wiped my face and hands before taking out a gilt powder compact and swiftly puffing powder onto her nose and chin. Pursing her lips, she painted them the dark red she always favoured.

Crewe station seemed a vast, noisy cavern of a place, dirty and poorly lit, completely unlike the pretty freshly painted stations of Kent. My mother bundled me up in my wool coat, placed Judy’s lead in my hand, then organized our bags.

The boat train from Crewe to Liverpool was packed with happy passengers in a holiday mood, many of them servicemen going home on leave. There was no shortage of helping hands to lift our bags onto the rack above our heads. Judy received many pats and compliments, which pleased me. My pretty mother, with her shoulder-length dark hair and trim figure, had to explain to more than one hopeful serviceman that her husband was waiting for us both in Belfast.

With my colouring books and crayons out, not wishing to miss a moment, I desperately tried to keep my eyes open, but to no avail. Within an hour sleep overcame me.

When I awoke we had arrived at Liverpool. Through the swirls of steam I saw the boat for the first time, a huge grey forbidding mass that towered above our heads. It cast a shadow over the scores of people who, carrying an assortment of luggage, were rushing to queue at the base of the gangplank. The weak yellow beams of the streetlights shone dimly on the oily water beneath the gently swaying boat. Having only ever seen the small fishing fleets of
Ramsgate, I felt overawed that we were going to travel on something so huge. Holding Judy’s lead tightly I moved closer to my mother for comfort as we shuffled forward to join the queue.

Helping hands assisted us aboard where a white-coated steward showed us to our small second-class cabin, furnished with a wooden chair, a single bunk and a small sink.

‘What, two of us are going to sleep in there?’ I exclaimed in disbelief.

The steward ruffled my hair and laughed. ‘Sure, you’re not very big!’

That night I cuddled up to my mother as the swell of the sea rocked me to sleep for most of the twelve-hour crossing. I never had the feeling of seasickness that, according to the purser when he brought us our morning tea and toast, so many of our fellow passengers had.

We arrived in Belfast before the sun had fully risen, and queued once more to alight. Passengers were waving as they leant over the side but, being too small, I had to contain my eagerness. As the boat made its final lurch the gangplank was lowered and my first sight of Belfast came into view.

The dawn light shone on damp cobbles, where small ponies pulled wooden traps back and forth. People with freezing breath milled around the gangplank, broad smiles of greeting on their faces. My ears were assailed by the harsh Northern Irish accent as relatives and friends found one another.

Everything looked and sounded so different as we searched for my father. We saw him simultaneously, coming towards us with a huge smile. He hugged my mother tightly
as he kissed her, picked me up, swung me into his arms and kissed me loudly on each cheek. Judy sniffed around his feet suspiciously, and for once her tail didn’t wag.

He said how much he’d missed us, how pleased he was we were there and how everyone was looking forward to seeing us. Picking up our suitcases, he led the way to a car.

He’d borrowed it, he told us with a wink, for the last stage of our journey. My mother glowed with delight when she heard how he didn’t want her to travel to Coleraine by train, wasting precious moments when he could be with us.

With me wrapped up warmly in a tartan rug on the back seat we started the final lap. He held her hand and I heard him say, ‘Everything’s going to be different, you’ll see, we’re going to be happy here. It’ll be good for Antoinette too, all the country air.’ My mother leant her dark head against his shoulder and he rested his auburn one briefly against it. That day their happiness was tangible. Young as I was, I could feel it.

For the first time I felt excluded. My father kept his attention focused on my mother. I saw her smiles, which today were not for me, and knew they were absorbed in one another. A feeling of apprehension, as if I’d been given a warning of changes to come, settled on me as I watched the unfolding landscape.

I saw the indigo Irish mountains, their peaks still shrouded in early morning mist. Across a rugged landscape squat, grey square houses, so unlike the pretty black and white thatched cottages of Kent, broke up the acres of green. I spotted clusters of sheep huddled together for warmth in fields separated by low flint walls. We passed tiny hamlets where one small house, turned into a general shop, serviced the local community. Pigs with scrawny
chickens pecking round their feet snuffled contently in the muddy yards of single-storey smallholdings. Children waved at our passing car and, waving back, I held Judy up to the window to see them.

Deciding I liked the look of Ireland, my thoughts turned to my Irish family. Although I loved the maternal grandmother we’d left behind in England, I was looking forward to meeting new relatives. My mother had tried to describe my family to me but I couldn’t visualize them. They, I knew, had seen me as a baby, but I had no recollection of them.

The fields were replaced by wide roads with large houses standing in landscaped grounds, which gave way to roads of compact bow-windowed semi-detached homes with their oblong gardens boxed in by neatly clipped hedges. Following them came rows of terraced houses with their flowerless shrubs protected by low walls.

My father told us that we would soon be at his mother’s house where lunch would be waiting for us, which reminded me I was hungry. The breakfast of weak tea and toast had been hours before.

A few minutes later all greenery vanished as the streets grew narrower and the houses darker, until we turned into a road of tiny red-brick houses, their front doors opening straight onto the pavements. This, my father told me, was the area where he’d grown up, and where members of my Irish family, including my grandparents, lived. I craned my neck and saw a street completely unlike anything I’d seen before.

Women with headscarves tied over their curlers lent over the tops of their stable front doors, calling across to their neighbours while they watched snotty-nosed toddlers
playing in the gutters. Others, bare-legged, feet pushed into carpet slippers, leant against walls inhaling cigarettes through pale lips. Children in ragged clothes played cricket against wickets drawn on walls. Dogs of questionable parentage barked furiously, leaping in the air as they tried to catch balls. Men with braces over their collarless shirts walked aimlessly with their hands in their pockets and caps on their heads, while a few of them standing in a group were having what looked like an intense conversation.

More dogs ran around the car as we parked and climbed wearily out. Not knowing if they were friendly or not I clutched Judy protectively in my arms. She repaid my concern by wagging her tail and wriggling to get down. Waiting to greet us was a short, plump white-haired woman who stood with her hands on her hips and a wide smile on her face.

She seized my father in a fierce hug and then pushed open the door. We stepped past the steep uncarpeted staircase, straight from the pavement into the minute sitting-room of my grandparents’ house.

The room was hot with a coal fire blazing brightly and crowded with the immediate members of my father’s family. My grandfather looked like a smaller, older version of him. He was a short, stocky man who, like my father, had thick wavy hair swept back from his face. But where my father’s waves glinted with dark red lights, Grandfather’s had faded into a pale yellowy grey. Like my father he had thickly fringed hazel-grey eyes but when he smiled it was to reveal yellow stained teeth, not the brilliant white gleam of my father’s mouth.

My grandmother, an animated little ball of a woman dressed all in black, had white hair done up in a bun and
apple-red cheeks beneath twinkling blue eyes. She fussed happily around us and I instantly liked her.

‘Antoinette,’ she exclaimed, ‘I haven’t seen you since you were a wee baby, and look at you now, a grown-up girl.’

She pulled forward a young woman, whom she told me was my Aunt Nellie. Petite, with dark hair and brown eyes, she was my father’s only sister.

Two more men, whom my father told me were his younger brothers, my uncles Teddy and Sammy, were next to be introduced. They obviously looked up to their big brother. Teddy, a whippet-thin, red-haired teenager with an infectious grin, was a young man impossible to dislike, whilst black-haired Sammy was several years older and more serious looking. Although seeming pleased to see us, Sammy was more restrained in his greeting.

Teddy volunteered to take Judy for a much-needed walk and gratefully I handed over her lead. Feeling shy of my new surroundings, I did not wish to venture out just yet.

My grandmother and Nellie bustled around us, putting food onto the table and pouring boiling water into an aluminium teapot.

‘Sit you down, now,’ Grandmother said. ‘Sure you must be hungry.’

Chairs were hastily pulled up to a laden table and the relatives watched as my grandmother piled my plate high. There was an assortment of sandwiches, some filled with spam or corned beef, others with fish paste. There was brown soda bread and small, thick Irish pancakes spread liberally with butter and strawberry jam. A fruitcake followed, which must have used the whole family’s ration budget. I needed no encouragement to eat as I tucked in
with gusto, surrounded by the friendly buzz of the adults’ conversation as they plied my parents with questions.

When I could eat no more my eyes started closing as the heat of the room, the long journey and the food took their toll. I heard laughing adult voices exclaim that I had fallen asleep, then felt the strong arms of my father as he picked me up and carried me to a bedroom upstairs.

The four o’clock twilight had fallen when my mother woke me. Sleepily, I allowed her to wash and dress me for another visit. It appeared that my entire father’s family wanted to see us, and I, used to my mother’s small family of one grandmother and a few rarely seen cousins, felt overwhelmed by trying to remember all the names I was hearing. Supper was to be served at my great-uncle’s house in the same road. Uncle Eddy and Aunt Lilly, as I was told to call them, and their two teenage daughters, Mattie and Jean, had laid out a special meal for us which, I was to learn, was typical Irish fare: thick slices of chicken, boiled ham coated in the sweet sheen of honey and mustard, hard-boiled eggs, bright red tomatoes and potatoes boiled in their skins. Home-made trifle and numerous cups of tea followed and again I felt the warmth of my father’s family wash over me.

They asked about our life in England, how our journey had been and what my parents’ plans were now. Where were we going to live? Where was I going to school? I noticed their surprise when my mother informed them I was to be sent to a private school, as that was what I’d been used to. When I was older I realized that only scholarship pupils from Park Street, one of the poorest areas in Coleraine, would have attended the school my mother had chosen for me.