Rainbow's End (25 page)

Except that it wasn’t a birthday card. It was a shiny florin. A birthday present! Maggie thought as she stammered out her thanks, but this, too, proved premature.

‘No, Maggie, it ain’t a birthday present ’cos I’d clean forgot it were your birthday,’ Mrs Nolan said truthfully. She was often truthful to the point of bluntness, as Maggie well knew. ‘It’s a weekly wage. You’ll be gettin’ two bob a week from now on. You earn it.’

Maggie had been grateful, but when the chance came she told Mrs Nolan that she would be working a couple of days a week for old Mrs Collins. ‘She’s too old to do it all herself, now,’ she had said. ‘I’m to help her set up the stall an’ tek it down, an’ two or three days a week I’m to help sell. But she knows I must be home when Ticky an’ the twins get in for their tea, and I’ll keep an eye on them when the school holidays come around. Only . . . I can’t give me mammy much out of two bob, grateful though I am to have it.’

‘All right, alanna,’ Mrs Nolan had said. ‘In summer the childer play out . . . and someone will always keep an eye on ’em for an hour or two, come the winter. Indeed, the twins can look after Ticky; they’re old enough.’

They were. Younger children than they looked after whole families, but Seamus and Garvan were still very much a law unto themselves. You never knew what they would do next, save that it would be naughty.

So Maggie had gone round to Dally Court and told her mother that she would be giving her two shillings a week in future, and for the first time for ages Mrs McVeigh had smiled and looked a little animated. ‘Two shillin’! Well, it won’t go far, but it’ll buy a loaf or two,’ she said grudgingly at last. ‘You’re not a bad lass, Maggie, but if only you’d come home . . .’

‘Oh, go on, Mammy, you’re really pleased,’ Maggie had said, laughing. ‘You’d rather have me money than me company any time – admit it!’

But this Mrs McVeigh refused to do. ‘All right, now Mrs Nolan pays you I dare say you’re better off stayin’ put,’ she had said. ‘But you could come home more often, alanna, have a jangle wit’ me an’ your sisters now an’ then.’

Maggie had vowed that she would try to go home whenever she had a few hours free, but somehow she didn’t. She had grown away from Aileen, Carrie and the others, and even Bridget seemed remote from her. As for the boys . . . well, she hardly ever saw them and they showed no more interest in her and her doings than they did in the carryings-on of any other stranger.

So now she advised Bridget to keep her feelings about the chemist’s son to herself unless she wanted to be nagged morning, noon and night, and went on down the street, around the corner and headed for home, because she hadn’t considered Dally Court her home for several years.

Back in the Nolans’ rooms, she prepared the evening meal and wondered how late Liam would be getting home tonight. It was December, which meant he would be busier than usual, but she needed to talk to him.

She and Liam were still good friends. Perhaps, she thought wistfully, they were even a little more than good friends. The slight awkwardness which he had so obviously felt when she was younger seemed to have dissipated and now he often took her around, once dancing, twice to the picture show, countless times out to Phoenix Park or into the country or to the seaside. But she rather suspected that Liam treated her only as he would have treated a sister and she knew she could not blame him. She had been brought up with him from the age of eleven – she was his sister in all but blood.

When the meal was ready and only needed dishing up Maggie got her coat and went down the stairs and out into the yard.

Ticky was playing with half a dozen other kids, but he came running over to her as soon as she appeared, his face breaking into a big smile. ‘Eh, Mags!’ he said. ‘Oh, I’m starved, so I am – any soda bread to spare? If I go up now can I have a cut wit’ some butter on?’

‘When the twins come home tell them . . .’ Maggie began, then saw the twins hurtling past the house with Gus in hot pursuit. She sighed. ‘Oh, sweet Jaysus, I’d better go an’ call them. Shan’t be long, Ticky.’

She hurried after them and caught them up as they were about to go into a tenement block just down the street. They both looked guilty when she called their names but came over to her anyway.

‘Boys, go home an’ get yourselves an’ Ticky a cut of soda bread an’ butter it,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m goin’ to meet Liam, we’ve t’ings to discuss.’

‘Right, Mags,’ Garvan said. ‘Any cake? We’re starvin’, so we are.’

‘No . . . well, perhaps a tiny piece,’ Maggie said, relenting. ‘I can’t bear the thought of me laddos goin’ hungry. An’ keep an eye on Ticky till I’m back.’

The boys agreed to do so and Maggie hurried off. Liam was a postman now, doing an out-of-town round, so he had a bicycle with a lamp which he lit as soon as it began to get dark. But he should be just about ready to leave now and he wouldn’t bring the bicycle home. If he left it downstairs it was too tempting for the kids and they’d ride it and buckle the wheel or slip the chain or do some other damage. And carting it up three steep and narrow flights of stairs and finding somewhere to put it was no joke, either. So Liam always walked to and from work.

Maggie reached the Post Office and waited, standing discreetly in the shadows. She didn’t think Liam would be shamed by her presence any more – she was seventeen, after all, and not bad looking – but she didn’t want anyone thinking she was hanging around on O’Connell Street. Bad girls did that, she understood, though she had never knowingly seen one. All the girls walking up and down the pavements looked very like herself – innocently enjoying the displays in the brightly lit windows, staring at the fashionable men and women, the bustle of traffic in the wide roadway.

Liam emerged from the Post Office presently, looking tired, but his face lit up when he saw her. He came over to her, grinning. ‘Mags! Just the person I wanted to see – shall we buy a paper of chips to walk home wit’? It’s cold enough to need ’em to warm our hands as well as our stomachs.’

‘Yes, lovely,’ Maggie said. ‘But Liam, I want to ask you something. I didn’t come all this way just for the pleasure of your company, indeed I didn’t!’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Liam said, pretending to bow. ‘Useful for my wide knowledge of human nature, but not much good to share a bag of chips wit’, is that it?’

‘True,’ Maggie said, shaking her head. She loved the way his eyes slitted when he laughed, and a line appeared beside his mouth! But it was no use wishing – at least they were firm friends. ‘Liam, it’s almost December.’

‘I know that,’ Liam said. ‘What you might call me heaviest month.’

Maggie knew what he meant, because postmen did not only deliver letters and parcels, they collected them, too. When Liam went out to a farm with the letters he would be given parcels of eggs, fowls still in their feathers and fish, wrapped in rushes, to deliver in Dublin itself.

‘Yes, yes, poor old Liam,’ she said, patting his arm. ‘But you know old Mrs Collins?’

‘No. Who?’

‘Oh, Liam, you know perfectly well, so you do! She’s the old shawlie I’ve been helpin’ out wit’ the sellin’ a couple o’ days a week. You know, I put her stall up, an’ bring it down o’ nights, an’ sell sometimes so she can have a rest.’

‘Oh, yes. What about her?’

‘She wants me to stay on her pitch overnight for to get her Christmas licence. I said I would – why not, it’ll be good – but I’ve not told your mammy yet. She can be – funny – about t’ings like that.’

‘Do those women really sit out all night?’ Liam asked incredulously. ‘Whatever for? Why not go along early in the mornin’, like they usually do?’

‘Because Christmas is the best month of all,’ Maggie said patiently. ‘You know that, Liam, in your job! And it’s not just the women, men have to wait out too. If they waited till the mornin’ they’d not get a pitch at all at all, but waitin’ overnight and payin’ first thing, the pitch is yours for the whole month.’

‘I see. Well, Mammy won’t mind, I don’t suppose. Why should she?’

‘Because I’ve never spent a night away from your house since I first come there, all them years ago,’ Maggie admitted. ‘My mammy moans on about how I never go home for a day or two, but . . . well, I’ve never asked, you see. And your mammy pays me now . . . she may think I ought not to stay out at night.’

‘But you work,’ Liam pointed out. ‘Two or three days a week, you work, don’t you?’

‘Yes. But only when it suits Mrs Nolan,’ Maggie admitted. ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Collins understands, but I – well, I wondered if you could tell your mammy for me.’

‘Me? Oh Jeez, Maggie, I can’t do that. Mammy will think it’s interferin’ I am and I don’t want to set her against the idea.’

‘No-oo, I do see that,’ Maggie acknowledged. ‘Then will you be there, an’ come in on my side if there’s a fuss?’

This Liam agreed to do and the two of them continued to walk down the street, admiring the marvellous window displays as they went.

They reached home at last and Liam was as good as his word. Maggie explained that Mrs Collins, who was getting too old and stiff to spend the night on a cold pavement, wanted her to stay on the pavement in Henry Street overnight to apply for her trading licence first thing in the morning, and with no more than a token query as to how she would manage to get back in time to get Ticky ready for school Mrs Nolan agreed that she might go.

‘There you are, alanna,’ Liam said that night as the two of them walked Gus around the streets so he wouldn’t disgrace himself in the kitchen. ‘You didn’t need me to put in a good word for you – it wasn’t so bad, was it?’

‘No, it was all right, really,’ Maggie admitted. ‘I’m really lookin’ forward to it now your mammy’s said I may go.’

It was an icy cold night, but the wind which had made Maggie’s eyes water earlier had dropped by midnight, when all the traders settled down with their blankets to laugh and crack the night away. Maggie had soon begun to enjoy herself. Everyone was so happy and jolly, full of jokes and laughter, though they all thanked the good Lord that it wasn’t raining or blowing a gale. It wasn’t snowing, either, but it was cold enough, Maggie thought, looking up at the stars twinkling in the black night sky. But it wouldn’t snow, because there were no clouds . . . there would be a sharp frost, though.

Strong tea and hot chips had been eaten two or three times during the evening and Maggie speedily became friendly with a lad of about her own age who was sitting for his uncle, who sold what he described as ‘fine timepieces, as fine as any on sale in O’Connell Street’. His name was Connor, Conn for short, and Maggie suspected him of being an Irish tinker for his skin was dark and his eyes black as pits, and his accent was so broad that she had difficulty in understanding him at first. But whatever his background he made her laugh, bought her tea and suggested that they share blankets, to everyone’s amusement, for Maggie was still at an age when her blushes all but burned her up.

So the night passed, and Conn told Maggie that she was the prettiest girl in Dublin, so she was, and had she ever wondered what it was like to take a turn around the houses wit’ a fine feller like him? And Maggie laughed and said no, she’d not, and thanks all the same but she’d stick by her pitch, and the other traders told Conn he’d got a long way to go before he could fool a McVeigh.

But the best of times must end and dawn broke at last, a faint grey streak in the east, and gradually the light grew stronger and stronger and someone went for more tea and came back and announced that the feller from the council was on his way and they’d better have their money ready.

Maggie felt for the five shillings in her pocket – it was a great deal of money for a licence, but it lasted all-month, so it did – and handed it over in return for the piece of paper and the metal token. Further down the road she could hear the first newsboys starting to shout . . . something about a disaster, of course . . . and a cock crowed, then another and another.

Then she put up Mrs Collins’s board and set up her stall and waited until the old woman, well-wrapped against the cold, came trundling round the corner. ‘You’ve got me pitch – you’re a good girl, so you are,’ she said happily. ‘Off you go now an’ get the littl’uns ready for school. See you tomorrer.’

As Maggie walked homewards, rather wearily, for she had had an exciting night, there was a patter of footsteps behind her and Conn came hurrying up. He took her arm. ‘I’ll walk ye home, acushla,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Did ye hear what they were sayin’ back there?’

‘No, what?’ Maggie said with only a little curiosity. She was beginning to feel tired and to want her breakfast.

‘Why, a tenement’s failed down, so it has . . . there’s a grosh of people been killed. Have you ever heard of such a thing? A house fallin’ down?’

‘No, I never did. Are you sure you got it right?’ Maggie said, slowing her pace for a moment. ‘Which street was it?’ She tried to remember whether there had ever been any creaks and groans in the house in Claymore Alley, but it was hard even to imagine such a thing. She looked interrogatively at her companion.

‘Well, now, it had a funny sort o’ name, so it did,’ Conn said thoughtfully. ‘Someone said ’twas between Francis Street and the Coombe, but that was just rumour. Where do you live, Maggie?’

‘Claymore Alley,’ Maggie said. ‘Just off Thomas Street. It . . . it wasn’t Claymore Alley, was it, Conn?’

‘No, indeed,’ Conn said at once. ‘Now I’ve got it! It was somewhere called Dally Court, wherever that may be. Why, what’s the matter, gorl? You’ve gone quite pale.’

‘I . . . I’ve family livin’ in Dally Court,’ Maggie stammered. He must have got it wrong, he must! But she could not help remembering those stairs, how they swayed no matter how gently you walked up them, and the great cracks in the outer walls. ‘I’d better go round there at once, Conn . . . no need to come, I . . . I’ll manage fine wit’out you.’

‘No indeed, I’ll come wit’ you,’ Conn insisted. He took her arm. ‘Shall we run, alanna? I can see you’re worried to death.’