Polly's Angel (45 page)

Polly sighed and said that she would take his advice and rang off, but she had not the slightest intention of doing anything so tame. Instead, she set off on a round of all the drivers she knew, and the next morning managed to get a lift with a driver returning to Chester after delivering supplies to the naval base.

Immensely pleased with herself, Polly proceeded to hitchhike the rest of the way and as a result arrived within a few hundred yards of her new home no later than eleven in the morning with her money still intact and feeling fresh and perky. The man who had taken her on the last stage of her journey was heading for the docks and he dropped her on Commercial Road, very near the end of Snowdrop Street, and drove off, beeping his horn cheerfully in farewell.

Polly turned into the short street, reminding herself that she had now got extra time to enjoy her forty-eight and rat-tatted cheerfully on the door. She wondered who would come in answer to her knock and hoped it would be Peader, though of course if it was Grace that would be wonderful too. It could not be her mother, who was working in the parachute factory and she was still wondering who would answer the knock when the door opened and Peader stood before her, his eyebrows gradually rising into his hair whilst a big smile spread right across his face and delight beamed out of his dark eyes. Polly bounced across the short distance that separated them and straight into his arms.

‘Oh, Daddy, isn't it just great to be here? Oh, I do love you, so I do!'

‘Polly! Be all that's wonderful, how've you come here? Why, me darlin' girl, you couldn't have arrived at a better moment – d'you know your pal Grace is here? She got up late this mornin', because we've planned an outing tonight, and she and meself was about to go off on the tram to the posh shops on Bold Street and round there . . . But come in, alanna, and sit yourself down. Oh, just wait till I tell young Grace who's here!'

Together, father and daughter entered the house, closing the front door firmly behind them.

Polly had a wonderful day. She and Grace went off by themselves in the end, Peader having admitted that he could do with a couple of hours on his allotment, and they talked non-stop, scarcely noticing the lack of goods for sale, even in the poshest of posh shops. Grace told Polly all about her work and Polly was very impressed, feeling that Grace was doing more for the war effort by rushing around in ambulances and ferrying the aircrews to and from their kites and the messes and admin buildings than she herself was doing in taking documents and messages from ship to shore and from one centre of administration to another.

‘But we're all doing our bit,' Grace said comfortingly, when Polly voiced her thoughts. ‘Why, without you, Poll, enemies of the state might listen in on the wireless waves or whatever they are, and hear the secrets that you carry. Anyway, didn't you say you were learning to ride a motorbike? Despatch riders are important, and they have a very interesting sort of life as well. I think I'd rather be a despatch rider than a bus and gharry and ambulance driver any day of the week! Here's Lewis's, though and they're still serving quite a decent meal, cheaply too. Shall we indulge ourselves for once?'

‘But won't Daddy expect us home?' Polly asked rather anxiously. ‘I know he said he'd rather dig his allotment, but I felt mean taking his morning off away from him, so I did.'

Grace, however, was reassuring. ‘He was just being polite to a guest,' she assured her friend. ‘Auntie Dee tried to get a day off to take me around, but the factory weren't keen, so your dad said he'd take me instead. The trouble is, most of me old pals are working so I was at a bit of a loose end. You're a sight for sore eyes, queen, and your dad's glad he can get out of a lot of window-shopping, I promise you. As for going home for a meal, he and I had planned to eat out, so I'm sure he'll expect you and I to do the same.'

So the two girls went and had lunch at Lewis's and after that they ‘did' the cheaper shops in Byrom Street and the Scottie, before getting themselves a cup of tea and a bun at the nearest cafe.

They caught a tram home and told Peader all about their day and when Deirdre got back, tired after a long day at her machine but thrilled to see Polly, they had another cup of tea whilst they waited for Monica to join them. She, good girl that she was, came in just as the tea was brewing, so the five of them hurried off to the Gaiety Cinema, where the girls had a most enjoyable snuffle in the sad bits and laughed heartily over the cartoon. They walked home after the cinema and ate the fish and chips which Peader had bought from Podesta's, opposite the cinema, and then Grace and Polly walked Monica back to her tram stop before returning home and making their way, tired but happy, up to bed.

That night the two girls talked exhaustively, despite the fact, as Grace remarked, that they had been doing so all day, and did not get to sleep until the early hours, with the result that they woke late, got up leisurely and decided to spend the day calling on old friends, or at least on the homes of old friends.

Grace took Polly to the citadel, where they were clucked over and made much of by the mainly elderly people still working there, then they had the rather dispiriting business of going along familiar streets and finding that a good many of their friends had moved away after their homes had been either badly damaged or completely destroyed in the May Blitz. Polly was sad that St Sylvester's church was still in ruins, as was the school where she and Sunny had first met, but she had seen enough of the bombing before she left to realise it was impossible to rebuild at present. There had been too much damage and building supplies of all descriptions were in short supply. Indeed, at the house in Snowdrop Street they had odd slates on the roof and the plaster on the end kitchen wall was kept in place mainly, Peader had assured them, by the thick layers of paper which he had stuck over it.

‘Anyway, they're better off in Snowdrop Street,' Polly said as she and Grace made their way back towards it later that morning, for Polly's forty-eight officially came to an end at midnight and she meant to leave and start back to the island as soon as they had eaten their dinner. ‘It's much nicer than Titchfield Street, don't you think, Grace? There's more room, and more neighbours too. They're nice as well. Mammy said some of them have been there years, and can remember Sara's gran – she used to live here, now isn't that a strange coincidence? Think of our Brogan coming courting all those years ago!'

‘Yes, I rather like Snowdrop Street,' Grace agreed, glancing into shop windows as they made their way along Stanley Road, though the displays could not be described as tempting. ‘Did your mammy not tell you that I used to live here as well, once? Oh, it was long time ago, before my older sister died, but we did live here for a few years. I was only a kid when we left though, so I couldn't tell you which house.'

‘
Did
you?' Polly said. She heard the surprise in her voice and felt guilty, but she knew that the Carberys had been a poor, feckless sort of family, knew that Grace had had a hard childhood, and this did not seem to fit in with living on Snowdrop Street. ‘No, Mammy never told me that – perhaps she didn't know.'

‘Probably not,' Grace agreed. ‘Now I can tell you're wondering what a – a family with eight or nine kids, and all of them neglected, were doing in a nice street like this. No, don't shake your head, Polly O'Brady, I don't blame you for thinking it because I thought it meself. The truth is, my father was usually in work when I was very small and though he drank like a fish and beat up anyone smaller than he was, he must have been able to manage the rent at first. Then, when it all got too much, we were chucked out, and went off to live in one of the courts off the Scottie. Still, it's true that we were here for a bit. I daresay Sara's gran knew the Carbs quite well.'

‘Well, isn't life strange now?' Polly wondered as they reached the corner of Snowdrop Street. ‘We'll go round the back jigger because they always hide the key under one of the slates and I know which one. Daddy may be home, of course, but once he gets gardening, you know, he forgets the time.'

They were about to turn down the jigger when a voice hailed them and, turning, Polly was astonished to see her mother hurrying along the pavement towards them and brandishing a key. ‘We'll go in the front door,' she called as soon as they were near enough. ‘I've got some time off work, so I have, since it's me daughter's last day. The boss said as I do so much overtime it would be all right. I'll go back to work after you're on your way,' she added a trifle apologetically. ‘But there
is
a war on, as everyone keeps saying. Come along in, girls. Peader won't be long.'

The three of them hurried into the house and Deirdre began to cut bread for sandwiches, since the main meal of the day was always eaten at night. ‘It's only spam and tomato,' she said apologetically, as she worked. ‘And you won't get a decent meal, Polly me darlin', until you're back in Anglesey. But I've not the time to do much cooking before you'll want to go off, and I want a word wit' you before then.'

‘Oh? What've I done wrong, Mammy?' Polly enquired, immediately aware of a certain tenseness in her mother's voice, even in the way she was slicing bread and spreading margarine. ‘I've only been home two minutes, for goodness' sake!'

‘Oh, alanna, you've done nothing wrong,' Deirdre said. ‘It's just . . . It's something we've been meaning to tell you . . . Oh, here's Peader! Let's get this dinner down us – there's cold apple pie for afters.'

Deirdre did not enjoy her meal. She and Peader chatted to the girls, joked, laughed, ate their food. Or at least, Peader ate; Deirdre crumbled her solitary sandwich and pushed a piece of apple pie round and round her plate. Not even the addition of custard, made, admittedly, with water and dried milk, could make it palatable to one who was rehearsing over and over, inside her head, what she would presently say to the two girls. She and Peader had talked it over the previous night, and had decided that it would be best, perhaps, to speak to both the girls at once.

‘After all, we're goin' to tell them that they're sisters,' Peader had said reasonably. ‘Why should we not tell them together, the darlin's? I know it will be good news for our Polly, but even better for Grace, situated as she is.'

But now that it had come to the point, Deirdre wondered whether they were doing the right thing. Or rather whether she was doing the right thing, since it had been agreed between them that the news would come better from her.

So presently, with the meal finished and Polly not due to leave the house for an hour, she and both girls stayed in the kitchen to wash up and clear away and to talk whilst Peader took himself off to the front parlour with the newspaper.

Deirdre cleared her throat a couple of times, then decided she would start the washing-up and sort of – sort of throw the information over her shoulder as she worked. Accordingly, she began, though with far less ease than she had intended – or imagined – herself doing.

‘I want to – to tell you a story, girls. A long time ago, when you were only three or four, Grace, and Polly here was a little baby . . .'

Peader, sitting uneasily in the parlour trying to concentrate on the paper, could only hear their voices as a sort of murmur through the wall. But he heard the shriek, closely followed by the thunder of feet on the stairs. He got slowly and awkwardly out of his chair and went into the kitchen to find Deirdre standing with her back to the sink, her hands to her face. Tears fairly spouted out between her fingers and Grace was standing beside her, patting her shoulder awkwardly and saying: ‘Now come on, Auntie Dee, it were a surprise for me – well, surprise is putting it mildly, truth to tell – so what must it have been like for Polly? For me, it's really wonderful to know I've got a sister of me own, a proper blood sister. But for her . . . well, what you didn't seem to realise you were telling her was that she may have gained a sister but she's lost the parents and the brothers that she's always thought were her own. Oh, don't you
see
?'

‘Where is she?' Peader said bluntly, realising that this had not gone at all as they had expected when he and Deirdre had talked over the telling of their long-held secret.

Deirdre opened her mouth to speak but was spared the necessity of answering by the thunder of feet descending the stairs and the hurling open of the kitchen door. Polly stood framed in it for a moment, looking . . . well, looking as Peader had never seen her. Her face was deathly white, her eyes scarlet-rimmed and swollen with crying. But her mouth, that gentle, generous mouth, was held so tightly that it looked lipless and the eyes, when she turned them on him, were so cold that it was like a knife through his heart.

‘Polly?' he said uncertainly. ‘Me darlin' child, why are you lookin' at me like that? As for poor Mammy, we t'ought you'd be pleased to know you'd a sister as well as a grosh o' brothers, we never t'ought—'

‘I'm not Polly,' Polly said, her voice still tearful. ‘I'm not Polly O'Brady at all, at all, Mr O'Brady, and you aren't my – my daddy, nor is
she
 . . .' she pointed at Deirdre,'. . . my mammy. I'm Mollie Carbery, the little kid no one wanted once her sister was dead. And – and I'll never forgive you for lettin' me think I was one of you, wit' a proper home and a proper family of me own, when all the time I were just – just a bit of a stray kid Brogan had picked up on the railway, to oblige a dead girl.'

Peader felt tears in his own eyes and crossed the kitchen unsteadily, holding out his arms, beginning to try to explain how they had not dared to tell her at first in case the news got around and someone tried to take her from them, how they had loved her as much – more – than they would have done had Deirdre actually given birth to her. But Polly swerved round him and shot across the kitchen, hurled the back door open and ran out into the yard. Her kitbag, untidily packed, swung from one shoulder but even thus burdened, she was out of the yard, along the jigger and off up the Scotland Road, Peader guessed, before he, with his halting steps, had even reached the back door.