Polly's Angel (8 page)

Tad understood this completely. If you went to the free school you would meet your pals everywhere, but the small private schools took in children from a much wider area and the chances were that you'd not have a schoolfellow living within two or three streets of you. And Angie and her family hadn't been living in Swift's Alley for long enough to get to know people there, either.

As for Angela finding out about Tad, it wasn't hard to guess most of it once you had visited his home. Small and grubby brothers and sisters had greeted him as he crossed the courtyard and climbed the stairs, and in the kitchen, where the family lived, his sister Annie had been scrubbing a pan of potatoes for their tea whilst Biddy, who was getting to an age when she could be helpful, had been trying to chop cabbage with a knife which was rather too large for her to handle.

‘Lemme do that,' Tad said, taking the knife. He put the screw of tea and the brown paper bag of biscuits down on the scrubbed wooden table and turned to Annie. ‘Biddy's not old enough to use a knife, alanna. Don't let her chop t'ings or she'll be destroyin' her fingers entirely, so she will.' He saw his small sisters staring and stopped chopping cabbage for a moment to wave the knife towards his companion. ‘Oh, Ann, this is me pal Angela Machin, what lives in Swift's Alley, in the O'Bradys' old place. Angie, the big 'un with the spuds is Annie an' the other's our Biddy. They's two of me sisters.' He finished chopping the cabbage, then headed for the door again. ‘I'm just goin' to show Angie our tree, an' our fungus,' he added, and picked up a stub of candle and lit it from the lamp.

The boys' room was further along the landing and on the opposite side. It was a tiny room, only about four feet wide though it was a good deal longer. It smelt strongly of damp and the pigeon droppings which came through the missing roof tiles, but Angela, after one somewhat startled glance around her, made no comment. Instead, she admired the tree in the fireplace and the huge, leathery brown fungus with yellow patches, and only looked once at the beds, which were mostly piles of rags and straw, with one thin blanket apiece to pull over each boy.

‘Where does your mammy and your sisters sleep?' she enquired, after Tad had pointed out which boy slept in which bed. ‘I didn't notice another room.'

‘They sleep in the living room,' Tad explained. ‘It's a big room. They have to put their beds away before we go off in the mornings, though. Mammy as well.'

‘Oh,' Angela said. ‘And – and your daddy?'

‘Left. He's been gone more than a year, thank the good Lord,' Tad said piously and with some satisfaction. ‘Good riddance, Mammy says. He was a docker, and he could drink the Liffey dry, so he could. We's better off now than we was afore, 'cos he used to take Mammy's money off her. And mine too, if he could find it.'

‘Oh,' Angela said again. ‘But aren't you the lucky one to have all those brothers and sisters – you've always got someone to play wit' when you fancy a game.'

‘Ye-es, only I'm the eldest, you see,' Tad explained. ‘The eldest does the messages an' helps in the house an' finds firewood to light the fire, you know.'

‘I don't, really,' Angela said. ‘Micky's the eldest, but he's been workin' as long as I can remember, pretty near. And there aren't many jobs like fetchin' firewood when there's only four of you. But I get the messages for Mammy,' she added, clearly anxious not to appear too different. ‘And I put the delft out on the table, and the knives and forks and that, and make my own bed and—' She stopped short. ‘Well now, what'll we do next? Your sisters seemed to be managin' the supper wit'out too much fuss, even though they're young.'

Tad considered. He had meant to write to Polly, but he could do that any time, he told himself. ‘What would you like to do?' he asked at last. ‘You won't want to be too far from home as it's late or your mammy might worry.'

‘I'd like to look in the shop windows on O'Connell Street,' Angela said longingly. ‘But you're right, it's too late. Mammy's not workin' yet, so she'll be home. Would you like to come back wit' me and stay for a bit?' She added: ‘Mammy wouldn't mind.'

‘Well, I'll walk you home,' Tad said. ‘But after that I'd best be gettin' back home meself. The kids'll see to the supper all right, but Mammy will wonder if I'm not there to give a hand. Only if you tell me where your school is I might meet you out tomorrer an' we could go on to O'Connell Street from there.'

‘I t'ought you were workin',' Angela said artlessly. ‘Suppose you've got a job tomorrer? No, you come round to Swift's Alley when you finish. If it's too late for window-shoppin' then we can always go up to my house and make ourselves toast before the fire or somethin' of that sort.'

Toast before the fire! Shades of Polly's mammy and the uproarious games the family had sometimes played whilst waiting for toast, or chestnuts to roast, or the cake in the oven to rise flickered temptingly in Tad's mind. He swallowed. ‘That 'ud be grand,' he said. They had reached Angela's tenement now and they crossed the cramped little foyer and began to mount the stairs, but on the half-landing Tad paused. ‘You can go the rest o' the way,' he said gruffly. ‘See you tomorrer, then, Angie.'

But all the way home he thought about her. That hair, fine as a dandelion clock and almost as pale. And her big blue eyes, and the nice clothes she wore! He wished he could get clothes like that for Biddy and Annie, but there was a world of difference between what two parents and an elder brother in work could afford and what one poor, hardworking mammy with a great many children could manage.

When he reached Gardiner's Lane it occurred to him that if Mrs Machin was a dressmaker she probably made Angela's dresses herself, which would mean they were cheaper than he had supposed. So no one could expect his poor ould wan to compete in the matter of dresses, he told himself, and was vaguely comforted. Besides, Angela had never stuck her nose up in the air and acted superior to him. In fact, she had been very nice. Not a word of reproach had passed her lips over the state of the boys' room, though she had mentioned that she made her own bed each day. He wondered just how one could possibly make a bed like his, though. Knowing Polly and the other O'Bradys had taught him that people with a bit of money had proper beds, with sheets and blankets over a mattress, and pillows on which one laid one's head, but he had supposed that Polly somehow wriggled into her bed without disturbing the neat, tightly tucked-in bedding. Now he realised that Polly – or her mammy, possibly – had had to retuck those sheets and blankets each morning after they got up.

He was just thinking that perhaps he ought to have drawn his blanket up over the pile of straw and rags when someone called his name and, turning, he saw his mammy coming across the courtyard. She was walking slowly, her shoulders drooping, and she carried a large bundle of what looked like bedding under one arm and a string shopping bag hung from the other hand. ‘Tad, giz a hand, there's a good feller. These sheets are dry, pretty well, but they'll need ironin' before I can take 'em back to Mount Street tomorrer.'

Tad took the bundle and the string bag from her, tucked the bundle under his right arm and slung the bag on his wrist. Then he put his left hand under his mammy's small, skinny elbow and began to help her along. For the first time it occurred to him that his mammy could not be more than thirty-five or so, yet she was already grey-haired and carried herself like someone very much older. And Angela had said that her own mammy was very smart, with goldy-brown hair and pink cheeks, and didn't look her age. Life, he concluded, helping his mother up the first flight of stairs, was not a very nice business, particularly if you were poor and overworked and managing alone. It wasn't even that, either. His mammy had been knocked about by her bullying hulk of a husband for nigh on thirteen years, to his knowledge. She had had a broken arm, a broken nose, and her lip had been split more times than he cared to remember. Yet she had a lovely grin on her, though it was rather a toothless one, and she could laugh over something the kids did or said as though she hadn't a care in the world.

I believe me mammy's a real heroine, that's what I believe, Tad told himself as they climbed the stained and creaking wooden stairs. When I'm a man growed and earning decent money I'll pay her back all she's done for us, so I will. I won't run out on her like me daddy did, nor I won't let her down. She deserves better than she's had these past few years.

‘You're a good boy, Tad,' Mrs Donoghue said breathlessly as they reached the top of the last flight and Tad opened the living-room door for her. ‘Oh, me loves, is that kettle just boiled now? And is that a teapot, heatin' up beside the fire? Eh, I'm a lucky woman . . . I'll just sit down for ten minutes and I'll be as good as I ever were. Annie, you're a grand girl to make your mammy a nice cup o' tay and serve it up so spruce, in nice delft!'

Annie, a tiny sprat of a girl with lank brown hair and small, twinkling eyes, grinned, showing that she was just at the age when teeth are neither all gone nor all there. ‘There's a biscuit an' all,' she announced with a pronounced lisp, putting the cup down beside her mother, who had collapsed into one of the two sagging armchairs drawn up by the fire. ‘Tad buyed some wit' his earnings, didn't you, Tad?'

‘That's right. I got 'em from Merricks, 'cos if I send messages to Poll for him, he'll give me envelopes an' paper, so he will. An' today . . . you'll never guess what he said!'

‘Have a lollipop? Did he say you could have a lollipop, Tad?' Eileen enquired. She was three and always hungry for something sweet; Tad knew she would already have had the only pink sugar biscuit in the bag but he grinned down at her anyway. She was pretty, round-faced and babyish, though Sammy, a year younger, was the baby now. ‘Oh, I does love lollipops, so I does.'

‘It were better than that,' Tad informed them. ‘Go on, have a guess.'

Obligingly, everyone had a guess but no one was anywhere near, so of course Tad had to tell them, settling himself down on the kitchen table and swinging his legs as he drank the tea Annie poured for him and ate a broken custard cream. ‘He said there might be a job for me come Christmas – a delivery job,' he told them proudly. ‘I'm to call round once we're into December, an' Mr Merrick says if they need another lad it'll be me!'

‘Sure and that's good news enough for a whole year,' his mammy said, clasping her cup with both hands to warm them. ‘When I'm makin' me barm-bracks for sale I'll buy me dried fruit and me butter and flour from Merrick's, so I will. If they make you a delivery boy, that is,' she finished.

‘And Tad brought ever such a pretty lady round to see us earlier,' Biddy said, lifting the lid of the pan on the edge of the fire and gazing critically at its contents. ‘She had hair like pure gold, so she did.'

‘She's goin' to be me pal,' Tad said contentedly, helping himself to another biscuit. ‘She's called Angela Machin, Mammy, an' she's as pretty as Polly was – prettier.'

‘No one could possibly be as pretty as Polly, nor as kind and sweet,' Tad's mammy said firmly and the girls nodded approvingly. Polly had a generous spirit and had often brought treats round for her pal's family. ‘Still, I don't doubt this girl's a decint girl. Angela – that's not an Irish name, though.'

‘No-o, but she's from Limerick,' Tad said, as though folk from Limerick were well known for outlandish names. ‘Her fambly live in the O'Bradys' old rooms – ain't that a strange t'ing?'

‘Aye, strange enough. And what do they do – the fambly?'

‘Well, her daddy's in the men's department of Switzers on Grafton Street, and her brother's in a shoe shop, sellin' shoes. Her mammy's a dressmaker, but I don't think she's dressmakin' here yet. And that's all the fambly,' he ended.

‘Ah. Well, wit' two of 'em in work they'll be well off,' Tad's mammy said. She heaved herself out of her chair and went towards the fire and the bubbling saucepans. ‘You're a good girl, Biddy, to get the food a-goin' afore I'm even through the door. Is it nearly done? Tad, go down and shout the rest o' the kids, then we'll eat, 'cos I want to get this ironin' done this evenin' whiles the fire's hot and I'm not too tired. Then mebbe tomorrer I'll do some bakin'.'

‘Sure I will,' Tad said, making for the door. ‘Liam an' Kevin will be in soon, I 'spect. I wonder what they'll bring home wit' them?'

Chapter Three

Polly, having despatched her letters, waited in vain for a reply from Tad, and this both surprised and annoyed her. Sure, Tad usually took ages and ages to answer a letter, but she had told him that, in view of her daddy's illness, she expected a reply by return, and had added her customary threat about never writing to him again if he failed her in this matter. And to be fair to Tad, he was a kind-hearted boy and, though he hated writing letters and was a poor hand at it, would, she was sure, have done his best to comfort her in her affliction.

For Daddy's illness was an affliction indeed. Mammy was always off up at the hospital, where children were not allowed to go save with special permission on a Saturday afternoon, and Martin was grumpy.

‘Anyone would t'ink he'd enjoyed havin' us to stay and didn't want us to move out to Titchfield Street,' Polly grumbled to Ivan, after an uncomfortable evening during which she and Ivan had done their eckers and then played a game of Snap and tried to ignore the fact that Martin sat in his chair staring at nothing and wouldn't answer when you spoke. ‘When you t'ink how his old wife has grumbled and moaned and stopped us havin' meals wit' them and said we eat them out of house and home when Mammy pays for our food and not her or Martin . . . well, he
can't
want us to stay,' she ended.