Polly's Angel (2 page)

‘Mine's nearly as full as I can carry,' Ivan said after a few moments. ‘I'd better stop now, Poll, or I'll be fallin' over goin' down the hill, and blackers aren't so good when they've been scratted up off the ground. How are you doin'?'

‘I've got enough as well,' Polly admitted. ‘Oh, Ivan, I've only just t'ought but it must be gettin' on for teatime, an' Martin an' that horrible Monica is comin' for tea an' catchin' the last train back to Liverpool. The trouble is, if we're late we'll get in trouble, but if we're on time they'll make us wash an' change an' sit quiet while that Monica talks in her lah-di-dah voice an' Martin agrees wit' every word she utters. So the question is, shall we hurry, or take as long as we can to walk back?'

And this question, Polly could see, taxed her small brother. He frowned down at the toes of his boots, at the blackberry stains on his hands and then at Delilah's coat, sewn thickly with bits of undergrowth where the dog had forced his way into the brambles. After Mass this morning Mammy and Daddy had been talking to the Father and had mentioned Brogan, who lived in America, and Donal, who was a seaman aboard a merchant ship, to say nothing of Niall, who lived in Sydney, Australia. ‘You've a far-flung family so you have Mrs O'Brady,' the priest had said, and Polly, having just remembered that Martin and his Monica were coming to tea, had thought to herself,
I only wish that Monica could be far flung – right out of the nearest window!
But she had said nothing aloud. The problem was, as Polly well knew, that none of them, from Daddy and Mammy through Donal and Bevin, right down to Ivan and herself, liked Martin's wife, who was the daughter of a successful baker and thought herself more than a cut above an Irish railway worker and his family. But families stuck together, and despite Martin having made Monica family without so much as a by your leave, family she now was so she must be treated as such.

But amongst themselves, of course, the children could say what they liked. ‘If she says one word against me bein' allowed to get meself into a bit of a pickle wit' blackberry juice, I'll stand on her toe be accident,' Polly said disagreeably. ‘
And
I'll put Lionel in her lap when she isn't lookin', and doesn't she have a good screech when she sees the poor cat now?'

‘So'll I, too,' Ivan said. ‘I'll tug at her dress wit' my dirty hands, so I will, and then when she says we're mucky, I'll point to the stains on her dress and she'll be sorry.'

Brother and sister giggled together, making their way down the hill. Martin and his Monica were coming to tea, so if she and Ivan were late they would be in trouble and just as Polly made up her mind that it would be best to go home, Ivan turned a sunny face up to hers.

‘We'd best stop coddin' and start hurryin' back, Poll,' he said seriously. ‘For we do love Martin, don't we? And we wouldn't want to make him sad, because if he knew we didn't like that Monica, he'd be real sad, so he would. Isn't that right, Poll?'

Polly laughed and nodded. ‘You're right, so,' she agreed. ‘Let's hurry then, me brave feller! Come on, Delly, you can run faster than the pair of us, so let's be gettin' home!'

Deirdre was in the cottage kitchen, cutting bread for sandwiches, when she heard the children coming in. Knowing that they had been blackberrying she was not unduly surprised by the state of them, but she pursed her lips, poured hot water into a tall enamel can and sent the pair of them up the stairs to wash and change before Martin and Monica arrived.

‘They're catchin' the three forty,' she said, pushing Polly's red-gold curls back from her forehead and tutting over the stains round the child's mouth and the dirt liberally smearing her hands. ‘And you know how Monica will make remarks . . . God above knows why Martin doesn't tell her it's none of her business how I bring up me kids, but he'll not do it, he's still daft about the girl . . . so I'll not have the pair of ye coming in for tea like that.'

‘Like what, Mammy?' Ivan said. Deirdre laughed down at him. Her precious little son looked, she told him, like a tinker's brat, and his sister . . . ‘Well, words fail me,' she said. ‘What a couple! Now, Polly, get those old rags off your little brother and give him a good scrub before you start on yourself; hear me? I'll take a brush to that horrid mongrel of yours . . . I put the cat out half an hour since, so's he'd not jump on Monica's lap like he did last time. Poor girl, she went white as a sheet. She's not a cat-lover, that's for sure.'

‘She doesn't know Lionel,' Polly muttered, taking the heavy can of water and heading for the stairs. ‘He's no
ordinary
cat I telled her when first she came visitin'. But she squealed out anyway, and she'd have t'umped him but for me catchin' him up and takin' him out quick. So it's glad I am that you've put him out of harm's way, Mammy.'

‘Ye-es, but it isn't Monica's fault that she doesn't like cats, alanna,' Deirdre felt bound to point out. After all, one must be fair, even to a daughter-in-law. ‘It's a feelin' she can't help, like some people don't like spiders and others can't abide rats, or snakes.'

‘I'm not too keen on spiders meself,' Polly admitted, turning back on the bottom step and raising her voice so that her mother could hear her. ‘But a cat's a lovely t'ing to stroke, and it purrs, and winds round your legs givin' you love. A spider's a different t'ing altogether, wouldn't you say?'

Deirdre, who disliked spiders quite as much as Polly did, would have liked to agree, but it would not do to let Polly blame poor Monica for a dislike of cats which verged on real fear. ‘Would you let a spider sit on your hand and gaze up at you with its little squidgy eyes and beg for a dead fly?' she asked. ‘Some folk will.'

‘Oh,' Polly said, taking this in. ‘Right. Poor Monica. I'll keep Lionel away from her, Mammy.'

Deirdre waited until her daughter had thundered up the stairs, then crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the oven beside the fire. She took out a tray of scones, cooked to a turn, and carefully transferred them to a wire rack to cool, then went back to slicing and buttering the brown loaf. Beside her was a plate covered in the ham which Peader had cut for her before he left the house. Deirdre, cutting and buttering the bread and slapping ham between the pieces, reflected that Polly wasn't unreasonable, not when it came right down to it. She had taken her sister-in-law, Sara, to her heart long before Deirdre had realised that Sara was a fine person, and look how attached she had been to Grace Carbery! No two girls had been closer, and though she tried not to feel jealous of their friendship, Deirdre sometimes wished that Polly would hand her Grace's letters so that she could read them for herself, instead of just reading out odd bits. But it was fair enough, the girls confided in each other, she guessed, in a way which they would not want to share with any parent, no matter how sympathetic. In fact if only Monica were not quite so critical, not so demanding, the two of them would probably have got on fine despite the older girl's fear of cats. But there was no getting away from it; Monica was extremely pretty, she dressed fashionably and talked in a very refined sort of way, but you could not blame the O'Brady kids for finding her hard to love. She looked down on them, sneered at their achievements, thought herself superior, even thought Martin fortunate to have won her. And no one, except possibly the saints, Deirdre told herself, could take to someone who treated them like that.

A good deal of their – understandable – dislike of Monica was made worse, Deirdre realised, because back in Dublin Martin had been engaged to a charming girl, Kathleen Delaney, and when the rest of the family had crossed the water to join Peader in Liverpool they had confidently expected that Martin and Kathleen would be married quite soon.

But then Martin had come over to Liverpool for a job interview and had said, briefly, that he and Kathleen had had a ‘disagreement', that their engagement was off and that he had decided to take the very good job which had been offered him as assistant to the chief clerk in the Liverpool branch of his bank. Questioning him further, what was more, had got them nowhere. He would not discuss what had taken place between himself and Kathleen, simply saying that they had been mistaken in their feelings, that it had been a mercy they had discovered this before marriage and not after, and had then thrown himself into city life with such enthusiasm that he had met Monica and married her within four months.

Deirdre and Peader, discussing their son's alliance in bed at night, when there was no one about to overhear, had long ago decided that Martin had met and married Monica on the rebound from Kathleen, but there was nothing they could do about it. Martin was hot-tempered and self-willed; he had decided he wanted a smart wife from a well-to-do family and he had got one. Whether he would ever be happy with her was another matter, but it was a matter in which his family had absolutely no say. They could not like his new wife, but they must put up with her for Martin's sake, and hope that, when the babies came, Monica would soften and become more likeable – and easier to live with, for her ‘high standards' as she called them meant that every penny of Martin's salary disappeared either on to her back or into the tiny house in Nelson Street.

‘And this house won't be good enough for long,' Martin had told his mammy soon after the wedding. He had sounded rather prouder of his wife's ambition than otherwise, Deirdre thought now. ‘Soon Monica will be after something detached, out in the real suburbs. Still and all, she's an only child and her parents dote on her. No doubt between us, we'll manage to see that she lives in the style she so desperately wants.'

Deirdre and Peader, terribly worried that their boy would be taken from them by Monica and her parents, were reassured that in this one thing at any rate Martin seemed to be the master. Every other Sunday, the young O'Bradys came out to the crossing cottage, and once in eight weeks the rest of the O'Brady family got into the train on a Saturday and went into the city centre, where they looked at the shops and galleries, had tea with Martin and Monica, and returned – with a sigh of relief – to the cottage on the last train.

But it's no use my worrying over Martin and Monica, Deirdre told herself now as she busily sliced and buttered. He's a man grown and must please himself. As for Monica, she's very young yet. She'll mature, and change, and – and grow nicer, easier to get along with.

‘Mammy, where's Daddy gone? Or is he waitin' at the station for the three forty?' Deirdre, with her back to the door, had not heard it open and jumped at the sound of her son's voice and Bevin chuckled and came right into the room. ‘Sorry, did I frighten you?' He walked around the table and picked up a scone, bit into it, then hissed in his breath. ‘Dear God in heaven, Mammy, that was
hot
!'

‘And so I should hope,' Deirdre said severely. ‘Wasn't it meself that just took them out of the oven? As for your daddy, he's gone along to the station all right, to have a bit of a crack wit' Mr Devenish. Then he said he'd walk back wit' Martin and Monica so I'm minding the crossing while he's away. And what might you be doing home so early?'

‘I remembered you were cooking scones,' Bevin said, ‘So I thought I'd come home, give a hand. And anyway, someone's got to stop our Polly going for Monica's throat and stranglin' some sense into her.'

‘You're no fonder of Monica than Polly is,' Deirdre said. She began to smear mustard on half the sandwiches; Polly and Ivan hated mustard, even with ham. ‘So don't you go pretending to be a peacemaker, Bev! It's your daddy who behaves best, for I'll admit she gets me hackles up so high I'm surprised I don't growl at her, like that misbegotten mongrel your sister's so fond of.'

‘Oh, Mammy, we all love Delly,' Bevin said, turning the subject rather neatly, his mother thought. ‘Anyway, I'm home now, so I am. What do you want done?'

Deirdre put her knife down and looked up at her tall son. He was getting more like his father every day, she thought affectionately – and more like his elder brother, Brogan, too. All three of them had the same very dark, wavy hair falling across broad, placid foreheads, the same sweet smiles, the same nice natures. For Bevin's offer of help was genuine, as she knew well. The other boys might moan and try to evade household tasks, but Bevin was always ready to give a hand. Just as Polly was, though that, Deirdre told herself, was more upbringing than a family trait, because . . .

‘Will I lay the table in the parlour, Mammy? It's a cold tea, isn't it? Sandwiches and cakes and a nice apple pie.' Bevin smacked his lips. ‘I dream about your apple pie, Mammy, when I'm slaving away over me books.'

‘That's about it,' Deirdre acknowledged. She glanced at the big clock which hung over the dresser and was kept accurate to the second by Peader, for a crossing keeper had to know the exact hour so he could be sure to open and close his gates in good time. ‘Would you get some eggs out of the pantry, Bev, and hard boil 'em for me? You can lay the table whiles they cook. There's a big bowl of eggs in the pantry.'

‘I've got 'em,' Bevin called presently from the big, walk-in pantry by the back door. ‘janey, Polly's hens must be laying well, Mammy, the bowl's full.'

‘Your sister has a way wit' animals and birds, the same as you've a way wit' figures and examinations,' Deirdre said. ‘I swear she goes out and talks to the hens and next day there's an egg or two in each nesting box. Put half a dozen on to boil, Bev; that should do us.'

‘Right, Mammy,' Bevin said. ‘Then I'll get that table laid.'