Polly's Angel (44 page)

‘It feels really strange to be in Snowdrop Street again,' Grace said. ‘As I walked along I tried to recognise our house . . . but it was so long ago . . . You knew I was born in Snowdrop Street? I think we lived here for four or five years.'

She glanced across at Deirdre. The older woman was sitting as though turned to stone, staring at her, and when Grace looked interrogatively at Peader he, too, was staring, round-eyed.

‘What's the matter?' Grace said, smiling. ‘Didn't you know I were born in Snowdrop Street? Not that it matters, particularly as we weren't able to pay the rent so we had to leave. I was trying to remember the neighbours, wondering whether there were any left from when we were here, but I daresay they've all either moved on or forgotten all about us. It was ages ago, after all – I was about four when Mollie was lost and Jess was killed. That was nearly twenty years ago which is a long time for memories to go back.'

‘You're right there,' Deirdre said after a rather long pause, Grace thought. ‘Yes, memories are short.' She got to her feet and moved over to the oven. ‘I'd best dish up before we're all as hungry as Grace.'

Grace frowned across at the fire. All of a sudden the small room seemed less cheerful, less secure, as though a chilly little wind had blown under the door.

Peader cleared his throat, glanced at Grace and then at his wife, and said rather lamely, Grace thought: ‘There's nothing like a liver casserole to warm you through on a chilly night.' Grace felt that the atmosphere, which had been so warm and comfortable when she first entered the house, had become strained in some way. What could she have said? So far as she could recall she had said nothing to remind them of the war. Then suddenly she remembered a topic of conversation which would please them. ‘Oh, you said in your last letter that Monica had got herself a job in a factory making uniforms because she felt that she was doing nothing towards the war effort. Has she settled in well?'

‘She has indeed,' Peader said heartily. ‘I don't deny there's been times when we thought her rather . . . But all that's past. I don't believe she's ever looked at another feller since Martin's – Martin's ship went down, and now she's working in a factory on a big commercial sewing machine. It's not glamorous work, but useful. She's always been a keen needle-woman and seems to have taken to the work. At any rate she's a supervisor and does special jobs for them. And whilst Sara was here she used to go over to the Eventide homes to help out, and to the Strawb, as well. Oh aye, she's turned out all right has our Monica.'

Grace smiled at the ‘our', because she still remembered when Monica had been very much an outsider. But how sad that a tragedy had had to happen before Monica had truly become an O'Brady. Still, that was life, she supposed.

‘Come up to the table the two of you,' Deirdre said presently, carrying a steaming casserole across the kitchen and putting it down with a plonk on the scrubbed wooden table. ‘Peader wouldn't eat his share earlier, so I made do wit' a sandwich. Now we're all ready for our food!'

And the three of them settled themselves round the table whilst Deirdre dished up and Grace, mouth watering, picked up her knife and fork. Home cooking, she thought ecstatically. Bliss after months of canteen food.

‘It was the ideal opportunity, alanna, so why didn't you take it?' Peader whispered to Deirdre very much later that night as the two of them lay in their bed. ‘You could have just said straight out that our Polly was adopted when she was a few months old, and that she was really Mollie Carbery. I meant to speak meself, but such a look you gived me – it scared the livin' daylights out o' me, I tell you straight!'

‘I think Polly should be the first to know,' Deirdre insisted. ‘She's our girl, we should tell her first. Grace is a dear, but we didn't bring her up, love her from the time we first laid eyes on her as we did wit' our Poll. Oh, and I'm scared that if we tell anyone we'll be in mortal trouble. I know the mammy and daddy died, but there may be relatives . . . I can't face it, so I can't.'

‘Well, you're going to have to tell the pair of 'em, some time,' Peader pointed out. ‘And Grace so longs for a sister! Why not tell her now, make it easy on yourself? The good Lord above knows when Polly will be on leave next, and you'll not put such news in a letter, that I
do
know, so why not grit your teeth and tell? If Sara had been here she'd have blowed the gaffe, I'm sure of it.'

‘Why? Why should Sara say anything?' Deirdre asked in an aggrieved tone. ‘She's me daughter-in-law, not me conscience!'

‘Because didn't you hear what Grace said after supper, about Sara's gran living on Snowdrop Street too? Sara knew the Carbs, I know she did, and naturally she and Brogan both know all about Polly's being brought over to Ireland to keep her safe. Oh, Deirdre, no good ever came of deliberate deceit!'

‘We've been deliberately deceiving ourselves for all of Polly's life, just about,' Deirdre pointed out. She felt tears come to her eyes and turned, burying her face in Peader's pyjama-clad shoulder. ‘I don't think it's right to tell one girl and not the other, anyway. Next time they're both home on leave I swear on the Holy Book, Peader, that we'll have it all out. Will
that
satisfy you?'

‘It will,' Peader said. ‘Let's hope it will be sooner rather than later, then. I know Polly was only a tiny baby when she left this area, but if I'd realised we'd have been bringing her back to the very street on which she was born . . . well, I don't know but I'd have turned the house down.'

‘I would have,' Deirdre said fervently. ‘Still, next time they're both home on leave . . .'

She left the sentence unfinished and was soon asleep but Peader lay awake for some time, staring into the darkness. It was all very well to insist that they tell the two girls the truth and let them enjoy their relationship, but what would it do to Polly's relationship with her adoptive parents and brothers?

‘Me pal Grace is home!' Polly squeaked, putting the first page of her letter down on the table and turning shining eyes on Diane, sitting beside her and eating slightly burned porridge with as good a grace as she could manage. Polly was not a good cook and it had been her turn to make the breakfast. ‘Well, she will be by now, at any rate, since Mammy wrote this . . .' she flicked the letter before her with one finger, ‘. . .  a couple of days ago. I wonder now, could I get a forty-eight?'

‘'Course you could,' Diane said crisply. ‘Why, if Tad was able to do the same he could take you back home on the motorbike! Go on, if she's your best friend it 'ud be nice to meet up again and you've not been home since you joined HMS
Bee.
Go and ask as soon as you get into the offices,' Diane suggested, finishing her porridge and reaching out a hand towards the teapot. ‘Any more tea? Though I do think the mess should provide coffee for brekker. My mama would faint if she knew her ewe lamb was reduced to drinking tea before work in the morning.'

‘Your mama must have got used to bad news about her ewe lamb by now,' Annabel Ridge remarked from her place further down the table. The three girls were having an early breakfast and none of the other WRNs had yet appeared. ‘What about diving into the harbour and having to be dredged up by a whole platoon of soldiers, then? What did mama think of that?'

Diane giggled. ‘Not a lot. But I didn't dive into the harbour, you utter idiot, I was coming ashore from one of the MTBs and a wave sort of jiggled it and I fell in the drink. And only two soldiers came in for me, not a platoon.'

‘She's accident prone,' Polly said, finishing her toast and pushing her empty cup towards Diane, who was waving the teapot about rather uncertainly. ‘Pour us another cup, me darlin', then we'd best get a move on. I want to tackle the Leading WRN before she gets all snarled up in other business.'

Chapter Fourteen

On her first day, Peader took Grace on a ramble along the Scotland Road, where Grace was duly dismayed at the empty shelves and windows filled with pictures of goods often no longer even available. They had quite a good lunch though, in a tiny workingmen's cafe filled with large and noisy dockers, and after that Peader went home and Grace went to Strawberry Field.

She caught a bus, walked up the drive, and was immediately filled with nostalgia for days past. She had been so happy here! Matron came out as she entered the familiar hall and gave her a hug, then bore her off to the staffroom where a number of Salvationists were having tea and introduced her to those few that she did not already know. Then they sat and talked and Grace told them all about being a driver, and quite a lot about Graham, who was a Salvationist as well and had introduced her to a whole host of his friends.

‘You won't go far wrong with another Salvationist, chuck,' an elderly member of the staff said comfortably. She was a Mrs Farrow, a retired teacher who was ‘helping out during the emergency', which seemed to mean that she was doing a very good job and would continue to do it so long as the war lasted. Which, Grace thought soberly, looks like being quite a time – it's a good job Mrs Farrow enjoys the work and loves the kids.

She refused, with real regret, an invitation to stay and share the evening meal but went through into the playroom and talked to the children for a bit. They loved meeting ‘old girls' they told her and wanted to know all about the services so that they could join the right one when they were old enough.

‘With luck, the only force you'll join will be the Salvation Army,' Grace told them, smiling. ‘I pray the war will be over long before you're old enough to join up. But Matron tells me you've done a great deal of work in raising money for our chaps. She says you must have bought a whole Spitfire with all the old iron you collected, to say nothing of newspapers, rags and the like.'

She was back on Snowdrop Street by the time Deirdre was beginning to scrub the potatoes and prick the sausages, for it was to be bangers and mash tonight. ‘Tomorrow we'll have fish and chips from the shop down the road, if they've got any, that is,' she said as Grace crossed the room towards her. ‘We thought we'd have an early tea tomorrow, just a cuppa and some bread and jam, and then go to the flicks. After that we'll have the fish and chips. Would you like to do that? Only we don't want you to waste a minute of your leave, alanna.'

Grace agreed with all the plans Deirdre had made and began to lay the table for supper.

‘Fish and chips and a visit to the flicks will be lovely,' she said contentedly, putting round the knives and forks. ‘But the best thing of all, Auntie Dee, is being with you – being back here, in Liverpool amongst me pals. They were prime to me at the Strawb, and Uncle Peader and I had a good laugh, looking at what the shops aren't selling. But I never asked – how did your day go?'

‘Grand, thanks, chuck. Oh, and I met Monica, and she's coming with us to the flicks tomorrow and having supper after that. She's looking so pale and ill, I thought it would do her good to meet someone who wasn't a hundred years old and stuck on a sewing machine.'

Peader, sitting by the fire reading the
Echo
, laughed. ‘There's other girls in that factory, I'll be bound,' he said. ‘Still, I know what you mean, me darlin'. Monica said right from the start that she didn't believe Martin was dead any more than our Polly did, but I sometimes wonder if it isn't a good deal worse waitin' for a feller to write, or make himself known to you, than if you accept he's dead and you won't see him again. On the other hand, whilst there's hope, there may be life as well.'

‘She's right to hope, I think,' Grace said. ‘With the Navy, it's awful hard to say for certain what's happened, I know that. You know Sunny and I write to each other? Well, he's on convoy duty still in his destroyer, he's on the Russian convoys now though, and in one of his letters he was telling me how his ship was dodging round the convey, keeping it safe, a bit like a sheepdog circles a flock, he says, when they suddenly realised that they were a ship short – a big merchantman had disappeared. He says it was broad daylight, with no enemy aircraft overhead for once and nothing under the surface either, so far as they could judge. Yet the ship just simply disappeared and no one saw it go. But very much later, he found that one of the men had been picked up by another member of the convoy, and was safe. Only the one – but even he couldn't say just what had happened, save that he was woken by water sloshing round his hammock and a lot of noise. He said he managed to wriggle through a hole and shot up to the surface, despite not wearing a lifebelt, and found a half-submerged life raft and clung to it.'

‘Well, there you are, then,' Peader said placidly. ‘There's hope for Mart yet – if he was picked up by a German ship . . .'

‘That's right. Or I suppose he might have swum ashore . . . oh, I don't know, but I do believe that Monica is quite right to hope,' Grace said. ‘I'll be glad to see her tomorrow, in any event. I never really got to know her before, but now, perhaps, we'll have a bit more time.'

Tad was unable to get a forty-eight, or even to find time to take Polly home on the back of his motorbike.

‘The truth is, Poll, that you'll be safer on the bus and train,' he told her bluntly when she rang him that evening at the station. ‘My bike's not a new machine, you know. She's totally trustworthy on a run of twenty miles or so, but it's a good deal more than that to reach Liverpool, and I'd be afraid that if she broke down and I'd not got the right spare parts with me, I might make you miss your pal Grace. If you'd given me some advance warning, it would have been different, but as things stand, you're better off by public transport.'