Rose of Tralee (11 page)

‘He played a leg an’ a wing wit’ us, in the park,’
Paddy said wistfully. ‘He brung back good t’ings to eat, an’ gave us pennies for peggy’s leg an’ humbugs.’

Caitlin knew that this was probably true, for Mr Murphy had been a docker, one of the ones who was regularly in work, furthermore. He had had money and had spent it on his kids, his wife ... and the drink. And his sons had loved him.

Our daddy doesn’t come in the worse for drink, an’ he sends nearly all his money home to us, Caitlin mused, so why on earth can’t Colm see how lucky we are an’ love the daddy like I do? She waited a moment, mindful of her mother’s instructions, then opened the front door of the tenement block. Immediately, all thoughts of fathers left her head, for outside snow was dashing past the entrance, going horizontally, and the wind which had sounded loud enough in the rooms above was deafening. It howled and screamed like an injured animal and Caitlin paused for a moment, wondering how long her mother would be, then remembered that Donovan’s was only ten or fifteen yards down the street and pulled her scarf up over her mouth again. No point in hanging about here, when she could reach the shop in less than a minute, and it would save time, too. She and Mammy could set off at once for the Coombe, for she had no doubt where her mother’s loyalties lay. Mammy would be as desperate to see Daddy as she was herself, and every moment away from their rooms was a moment missed with him. She plunged into the storm.

She had not gone more than a couple of yards, however, bent double against the shrieking elements, when a figure loomed up ahead of her. A white figure, completely covered in snow. But Caitlin would know the mammy under any circumstances
and grabbed at her mother’s arm.

‘Caitlin! Didn’t I tell you to wait for me in the hallway, then? I got me screw o’ tay an’ a piece o’ gur cake an’ a loaf so’s we can mek toast round the fire . . . catch a good holt of me, alanna, an’ we’ll mebbe arrive home in one piece.’

‘I’m holtin’ as hard as I can,’ screamed Caitlin above the storm. ‘Have yez been home yet, Mammy? Is – is Daddy back? Oh, I’m excited, so I am! I’ll
die
if he’s not waitin’ for us, wit’ a
grosh
o’stories an’ tales to tell!’

‘I don’t know if he’s back, I’ve not been home yet,’ her mother said, shouting the words into the teeth of the wind. ‘But we’ll know soon enough, alanna. Oh janey, but the wind’s fair cuttin’ me in half.’

Somehow, the two of them fought their way down Marrowbone Lane, turned right into Pimlico and into the Coombe. Here, they ran for it, slipping and sliding on the icy cobbles but gaining their hallway at last, to stand staring at one another at the foot of the stairs, unable to believe how much snow had piled upon them during the ten-minute rush.

‘You brush me down, Cait, an’ I’ll brush you,’ Eileen O’Neill said breathlessly, beginning to dust the snow off her daughter’s coat, tam-o’-shanter and scarf. ‘I’m beginnin’ to wonder how our Colm’s gettin’ on, but I dare say Mr Savage will send him home early. No point tryin’ to deliver in weather like this.’

‘Let’s go on up,’ Caitlin begged as soon as they had rid themselves of most of the snow. ‘Oh, if Daddy’s waitin’ I want to be up there! Will he have lit the fire, do you s’pose, Mammy? I do feel like a sit by the fire before we have our suppers.’

‘Right. Up wit’ you,’ her mother said briskly,
pushing her towards the stairs. ‘No use hangin’ round here, we’d best see what’s what.’

Caitlin ran up the stairs as fast as she could but her mother was on her heels. Even old folk get excited at Christmas, Caitlin reflected. Mammy never runs up the stairs in the ordinary way. But for all that, she was just ahead as they reached their door and she beat a hasty tattoo on it, knowing that their father, if he was not busy lighting the fire, would rush to open it for them.

But the door remained firmly shut, so she pulled up the key on its string, fitted it into the lock and turned it, then threw the door open. ‘Daddy, we’re home!’ she sang out, thumping her sack of books down onto the floor of the kitchen and seeing, all in a moment, that she was talking to herself. The room was dark, the fire unlit. She turned a disappointed face to her mother. ‘He’s not back, Mammy,’ she said. ‘Not yet, anyway. Do you s’pose he’s at Grandma’s house?’

Her mother sighed and entered the room, then closed the door behind her and went over to the lamp. She lit it carefully, stood it on the table and lit a taper with the last of the match and carried it over to the fire. She held it against the paper and sticks until it had caught, then turned back to Caitlin. Her face was sad. ‘He’ll not be a Gran’s, not now,’ she said. ‘Oh, alanna, if they’ve had this storm across the water the ferry won’t sail. He’ll be stuck in Liverpool until tomorrow . . . oh, and the day after that’s Christmas Day! Surely he’ll not be done out of his Christmas holiday?’

The storm didn’t start here until an hour or so ago,’ Caitlin said. ‘Mebbe the ferry’s sailed but it’s late, Mammy. Look, the fire’s comin’ on nicely, we’ll be able to take our coats off soon an’ hang them on the
clothes pole up by the ceiling, where the heat’ll dry ’em. And storms don’t last for days, Mammy, it’ll be over by mornin’. Daddy will come in time for Christmas, sure he will!’

Eileen sighed and began to fetch vegetables from the cupboard and a piece of meat from the wire-fronted safe. ‘Sure he will,’ she said wearily. ‘Sure your daddy will be back in time for the holiday. But I’ll be happier when I’ve got him under me roof. I don’t like to t’ink of him tossin’ on the Irish sea in weather like this.’

‘He’ll be fine, Mammy,’ Caitlin said, struggling out of her coat, hat and gloves. ‘It’s warmin’ up nicely now, by the time Colm gets home it’ll be lovely an’ snug in here. Now, what can I do to help wit’ the supper?’

Colm came slowly up the stairs, carrying his heavy bicycle. His arms felt as if they were about to come out of their sockets, what with wrestling against the weather and now humping the bike up the stairs, but it was too risky to leave it down in the hall no matter how foul the weather. There was a cupboard on their landing with a lock and every night the bicycle was put inside it, to wait safely there until morning.

Colm reached the landing, opened the cupboard door and wheeled the bicycle inside, then closed the door, locked it and pocketed the key. It wasn’t easy to turn the key in the lock with frozen fingers but he managed it, then pulled off his iced gloves and went over to the door. Outside, he hesitated for a moment. He felt like a stranger, standing there, knowing that his father would be inside, that his mother’s greeting, though loving, would be absent-minded, his little sister’s attention half-hearted, because the women –
his
women – would have eyes for no one but his father for a while at any rate.

Still, it had to be faced; the mammy didn’t see his father clearly but through rose-coloured spectacles. And he’d got the parcel of mutton chops, which might be a means of gaining his mother’s attention for a moment. Mammy would be glad of the nice fresh chops no matter how wrapped up in his daddy she might have become. So Colm took a deep breath and tapped on the door, because it would almost certainly be locked. It led directly into the kitchen and no one wanted a total stranger suddenly in their midst because he or she had mistaken the landing.

There was a pause, then he heard the patter of approaching feet, the key grated in the lock and the door opened inwards, showing his sister’s small face, surrounded by its halo of light-brown curls. Caitlin smiled at him, but it wasn’t her usual cheerful beam. ‘Come in, Colm. Sure an’ you must be froze,’ she said, catching his sleeve and towing him into the kitchen. ‘Get that wet coat off your back before you die of the pneumonia! Ooh, what’s in the parcel?’

‘Meat,’ Colm said briefly. He came fully into the room and began to take off his wet outer garments, hanging them on the clothes pole which, he saw, already held Caitlin’s things and his mother’s, too. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

Caitlin did not answer but his mother, working at the stove, half turned towards him. ‘Not back,’ she said in a flat, weary voice. ‘He should’ve come in on the ferry hours ago, but he’s not arrived.’

‘Oh, janey,’ Colm said feebly. ‘But there’s tomorrer, Mammy. He’ll come tomorrer, sure he will.’

‘Depends on the weather, I dare say,’ his mother replied, turning back to her work. ‘If the storm goes
on, the good Lord alone knows whether he’ll get home this side o’ the new year.’

‘Storms don’t last, they move on, so they do,’ Colm said quickly. ‘You mark my words, Mammy, he’ll be back in time for Christmas, no matter what.’

His mother nodded and began to talk about her day, and they all marvelled over the bitterness of the weather and the suddenness of the storm. Colm described the horrors of his ride out to Clontarf with the heavy great turkey wobbling this way and that in his bicycle basket and the worse ride back, with the storm in his face. Caitlin chattered about the Murphys and the story she had told young Paddy. She tried to make her mother laugh, but it was hard work to so much as raise a smile and Colm, doing the same, praising the delicious Irish stew which his father should have shared, felt as miserable as anyone. This will ruin our Christmas, he told himself when at last he went off to his little bedroom. It’s strange, because I thought a Christmas without the daddy would be grand, but I do believe I was wrong. It’ll be teejus dull wit’out him, so it will.

And when, presently, he climbed into bed and began to say his prayers he added an extra one, though self-consciously, as though God himself would raise an eyebrow at young Colm O’Neill’s sudden change of heart. ‘Please God, let me daddy be safe, not drownded at sea, an’ let him come home to us for Christmas,’ Colm prayed. And slept better for it.

The following day was Christmas Eve and Colm set off for work earlier than usual. His mother had obtained the longed-for job with Switzer’s Department Store and was off very early each morning, and since
she had expected that Sean would be home, had made no arrangements for Caitlin. However, she dared not miss her work at the store, where each morning she scrubbed every inch of the stairs and the marvellous rubberised cream-and-brown flooring, so she woke Caitlin very early, bade her dress herself and saw her round to Marrowbone Lane before starting work herself.

‘I’ll finish at nine, as usual, and I’m not goin’ in to the private houses today, so I’ll call for you then,’ she told her daughter, as the three of them hurried down the stairs. And then I t’ink we’ll just go down to the quays, see what happened to last night’s ferry.’

‘Thanks be the weather’s better,’ Colm said. ‘I thought we were after havin’ a white Christmas last night but there’s little enough snow left, be the looks.’

Indeed, there was not. Hail and snow had been blown into odd corners but the streets were icy and not snow-covered, and though icicles hung from a good many eaves the wind had dropped and the sky overhead, though dark still, was clear.

They walked together, Colm pushing his bicycle, until they reached the roadway where Colm turned left for York Street and Caitlin and her mother right for Marrowbone Lane. Colm gave his mother a kiss, rumpled his sister’s hair and then said, on impulse: ‘I’ll go along to the quays right now I t’ink, Mammy. If there’s any news I’ll come to Switzer’s before I go on to York Street, but if there isn’t, you’ll learn more later.’

‘You’re a good boy, so you are,’ Eileen O’Neill said thankfully. ‘I scarce slept a wink last night for worryin’. All I want now is to know your daddy’s safe, even if he can’t get home for the holiday.’

So Colm went straight down to the quays, glad that
the gas-lamps were still flickering smokily, and asked everyone he met if they knew what had happened to the previous day’s ferry.

‘Sure an’ it never would have sailed,’ said a middle-aged man with the badge of the port authority on his jacket. ‘Was your daddy meant to be aboard, young feller?’

‘Yes, he was. Me mammy got in a turble state,’ Colm admitted. ‘Will the ferries be sailin’ today, then, mister?’

‘Sure to. We’ve heard no word of trouble other than that she didn’t sail because o’ the weather,’ the man assured him. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll sail today.’

So Colm, much relieved, left a message with one of the cleaners at Switzer’s to tell his mammy that the ferry hadn’t sailed the previous day but would certainly do so today and hurried along to York Street.

Sean O’Neill had lodgings in Toxteth, in a little street called Lavrock Bank right opposite the Corporation Yard. Mrs Caldicott, his landlady, was a small woman in her late sixties with an earthy sense of humour and a good deal of placid common sense. She had three lodgers, all Irishmen working on the Corporation dustcarts, and treated each of them like a son. She was, furthermore, a good plain cook, her terms were reasonable and she encouraged the men to spend the evenings with her in the kitchen, yarning round the fire. As she said, she much preferred it to having lodgers who went out of an evening and came home late, and probably the worse for drink.

So Sean knew he had landed on his feet when he found the lodgings in Lavrock Bank, and had no intention of leaving so cosy a billet. Indeed, when Mrs Caldicott told her lodgers that her younger sister was coming to share the house with her and give a hand, he felt no apprehension. Any sister of Mrs Caldicott’s, Sean had thought, would be a pleasant sort of woman.

He was wrong. Mrs Maisy Evans was a skinny, shrill-voiced harridan who hectored the lodgers as she had probably hectored her own husband before he fled. When Mrs Caldicott went off to Crosby to visit her daughter, and left her sister in charge, Maisy skimped on their carry-outs and gave them such a meagre evening meal that the men went to bed hungry. It didn’t matter on the odd occasion, Sean told himself, but he knew one thing: if Mrs Caldicott ever retired then he would be finding himself new lodgings within a couple of days. He would not stay in the house under Maisy Evans’s rule.

But on the morning of 23 December Sean was not worrying about his landlady, for he was about to go home for the holiday. He had gone into the country the previous Sunday with one of the other men and come back with a great bunch of holly and mistletoe for his landlady, together with a box of chocolates, which he had bought from a fine shop on Church Street. Now, he gave her a jubilant hug and wished her a merry Christmas, and swung out of the front door, his bulging bag in one hand. He could not wait to get aboard the ferry and make his way up to the bows to watch Ireland appearing out of the mist and drawing gradually nearer.