Rose of Tralee (52 page)

Odd that this morning feels different, yet it’s just like every other morning, really, Rose mused as she made the tea and carried it round on the big black japanned tray with the exotic birds round the edge. But perhaps it’s just because spring looks like arriving at last – and perhaps it’s a bit because I know Mona’s all right now, for I guess she’ll have the baby and be happy, and probably marry Tommy.

But the thought of Mona marrying Tommy whilst she herself was not even seeing Colm was not exactly a happy one. She did not want to feel jealous of her cousin, but it was inevitable, she supposed, that the thought of Mona’s happiness should make her think how very different her own lot seemed to be. A future of working for Patchett & Ross until she was old and grey, looking after her mother and the tall old house in St Domingo Vale, going to church every Sunday, watching other people marrying, having babies, fulfilling their role in life ...

‘Did you forget me drink o’ water, Miss Ryder?’ Miss Eastman said plaintively. ‘Only I aren’t half thirsty – I ran all the way from the tram stop on William Brown so’s not to be late an’ I’m fair parched.’

Rose’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, Miss Eastman, I must be going batty! I made you a cuppa and it’s not
even on the perishin’ tray. Wait a mo and I’ll fetch it through.’

With Miss Eastman discreetly sipping the cup of tea that Rose slid into the top drawer of her desk – the partners did not approve of a receptionist who drank tea whilst on duty – she was free to go to her own desk and start on her work. The other girls were already ensconced when Rose sat down, took the cover off her typewriter, arranged her notebook, pencils and rubber neatly on the desk, and picked up the first piece of work to read it through before beginning to type.

An ordinary day ... so why did she feel so keyed up, so excited, as though something of immense importance was going to happen later on?

At six o’clock precisely Rose put the cover on her typewriter, slid her notebook, pencils and rubber into the top drawer of her desk, and went over to the central table to pick up the letters lying there. The office boy had stamped them and licked down the envelopes, and would be coming in a few minutes to pick up the whole lot and take it down to the postbox. Rose and Ella usually stayed until the boy had finished since Rose, the first one in, had to be the last one out, but as Ella still had not acquired a bicycle they only went a very short way together. Then Ella waited at her tram stop and Rose mounted her machine and pedalled away towards Everton, which, because it was uphill most of the way, took her twice the time it took to coast down every morning. ‘Ready, Ella?’ she said as her friend came back into the typists’ room, carrying both their coats. ‘Where’s that wretched Bertie, then?’

‘Mr Lionel’s got some personal letters he wants
puttin’ into the box,’ Ella said. ‘Here he comes – I’d know them great thumpin’ boots o’ his anywhere.’

Bertie, hair on end, tie askew, entered the room at a canter and stuffed the letters into his canvas holdall. ‘Sorry I’s late, gals,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Mr Lionel wanted to mek some changes. Come on, ‘en, we’s ready now.’

‘Your grammar is
vile
, young Bertie,’ Rose said severely, helping him to shovel the letters into the holdall. ‘Let’s get a move on, because I’m on me bicycle, don’t forget. Every morning I whiz into work like a bird, and every evening I puff and pant and work me knees to the bone to get up the hills to the Vale. Still, it’s cheap and handy to have me own transport – and it’s healthy an’ all.’ They trooped out of the room and Rose locked the door behind them, then turned to Ella. ‘Has everyone gone, d’you suppose, I don’t want to lock someone important in and find their skeletons still sittin’ at their desk after the weekend!’

‘Oh, you,’ Ella said. ‘Have you checked, Bertie?’

Bertie assured them that he had and reminded Rose that the partners had their own keys anyway and would let themselves out and lock up behind them if necessary.

‘An’ ‘oo cares if a typist gets skellingtoned?’ he said cruelly, grinning at them. ‘I wouldn’t shed no tears, ‘specially if it were that Miss Fazackerly; not that she’d mek skellington in a weekend. It ‘ud tek a month.’

Rose smothered a giggle; Miss Fazackerly was plump as well as being sharp with the juniors. However, it would not do to let Bertie get away with remarks like that. ‘Less o’ your cheek, young Bertie,’ she said, running lightly down the stairs and
rounding the bannister at the end at top speed. ‘You won’t get to be managin’ director by cheek, you know.’

She undid her padlock, slid it into her pocket and wheeled her bicycle out into the backyard, closely followed by Ella.

Bertie mounted his bicycle whilst still in the hall and whizzed past them, making a rude noise as he did so. ‘Sucks to you, Ryder,’ he shouted. ‘See you Monday!’

Rose, locking the back door, sighed. ‘Bertie’s unsquashable,’ she told Ella as they crossed the yard and entered the jigger. ‘Mr Edward’s really pleased with him, though. Says he’s fast an’ doesn’t make mistakes. Oh, my knees are trembling at the thought of the hills ahead.’

‘Go on, you love it,’ Ella said as they emerged onto Dale Street. ‘Come on, you can walk to the tram stop wi’ me and I bet you’ll beat me home.’

‘All right,’ Rose said, pushing her bicycle along beside the kerb. She glanced ahead of her as they reached William Brown Street, ‘Isn’t it light in the evenings now? I can see the Liver birds clear as clear.’

Even as she spoke there was a sort of rumbling roar and the two girls clutched each other. ‘What the ’ell was
that
?’ Ella squeaked. ‘Ooh, the ground shook beneath me feet, I swear it did!’

‘Dunno . . . thunder?’ Rose said hopefully. ‘Oh, I know, it were an explosion. They have to blast their way through rock in the tunnel, Mr O’Neill’s told us so many a time. Yes, that’ll be what it was. Dynamite goin’ off.’

‘Well, I dunno . . .’ Ella was beginning doubtfully, when another, more subdued roar reached their ears. Fainter perhaps, but somehow even more threatening.

People turned to stare down William Brown Street to where the tunnel workings started and a man near the two girls said anxiously: ‘Were that comin’ from the bleedin’ tunnel? You often ’ears one ’splosion, but that were two. Mebbe there’s been a roof fall.’

A roof fall! Rose looked around her. People were going about their business in an orderly fashion, now that the noise had ceased no one was even glancing towards the tunnel any more, but ... a roof fall? Abruptly, hideous visions raised themselves in Rose’s brain, memories of mining disasters, of books she had read, of the terrible toll of deaths when there was an explosion underground – and Colm was there! Other men she knew, too, but it was only Colm of whom she thought. In the brief split second before she began to move she had seen it all in her mind’s eye – the darkness of the tunnel where lamps would have been extinguished by the fall, the great mounds of rock... and Colm, white-faced and bleeding, lying on the ground, pinned to it by a great rock fall.

Almost without thinking Rose mounted her bicycle and fairly flew down the cobbled street, losing her headscarf almost at once because she had only looped it round her neck and not pulled it up over her head. A rock fall, the one thing all the men dreaded. It did happen, of course, when explosives were being used, but they had been lucky, so far. Of course there were always accidents and injuries, but because of the careful preparation there had been no disasters in the building of the tunnel. Or not, Rose thought wildly, until now.

By the time she reached the end of William Brown Street she was going so fast that everything was a blur; people, pavements, buildings. She could not even see the tunnel entrance, nor the piles of material
and machinery which surrounded it. She was sure, now, that there had been a fall and that Colm, the only man she would ever love, was badly, perhaps mortally hurt. She must reach him, must tell him that she had never suspected him of anything at all, that she loved him, that she was sorry, with all her heart, for the thoughtless, stupid things she had said . . .

She was unaware of people dodging out of her way, she never even saw a horse and cart past which she flew, yet something warned her when she was approaching the end of William Brown Street and the beginning of the tunnel approach. She swerved violently to her left, hit a great pile of rock and rubble and flew like a bird off her bicycle and up. She saw the world turning crazily but did not realise that she was actually somersaulting through the air. Then she plunged to earth. Hard objects battered into her soft, yielding flesh and darkness, blacker than any tunnel, descended. Rose lost consciousness.

Colm O’Neill was finishing his shift when the double explosion sounded. He looked back, and his friend Davy Porter came after him at a run. He was cursing and holding a handkerchief to his eye. ‘What’s up, Davy?’ Colm asked. ‘You been fightin’ again, feller?’ Davy was an Irishman from Connemara, slow of speech but quick when it came to a fight and always determined to hold his own. Now he shook his head, his uncovered eye gleaming with amusement as he caught up with his friend.

‘Fightin’? Not likely, me friend, I give rocks best when they t’umps me round the head, so I do. No, I was walkin’ along, mindin’ me own business, when a charge went off behind me, soundin’ like all hell were let loose. So I thinks something’s gone real wrong wit’
the charges – someone said one charge went a bit crazy and ’stead o’ startin’ on the left o’ the tunnel roof an’ goin’ round to the right in a circle, like, it shot out o’ the hole an’ lit across to the opposite charge an’ acourse that went off too. But anyway, I were a-runnin’ like a hare in spring, wit’out lookin’ where I were goin’, an’ I ran into the side o’ the tunnel at full speed like, an’ cracked me eyebrow open. See? An’ the blood ran down an’ made me t’ink I were killed.’

‘Oh, well, if that’s all,’ Colm said mildly. ‘Comin’ for a beer? I’m off shift but me daddy’s workin’ an extra hour today. They’ll serve us at the Trojan’s Head no matter that we’re a bit early, like.’

‘All right, old pardner,’ Davy said. He was a great cinema-goer and loved Westerns. ‘Let’s mosey down dere an’ have us a beer.’

The two men emerged from the tunnel, blinking in the daylight, though it was growing dusk, and began to climb the bank which would take them out of the works. Colm heard a sort of squeak and a shout and looked to his right – and saw, to his complete astonishment, a figure suddenly come flying over a large pile of earth and rocks, and somersault to a horrid stillness at the foot of the mound.

It was not light enough to see whether it was male or female, but Colm ran towards it. The dull thump of the impact made him fear that more damage had been done than a few bruises and he was first on the scene. It was, he saw, a girl and quite a young one, too, with thickly curling dark hair and ... and it was Rose! His Rose!

Colm was still bending over her, trying to make her speak to him, when another man came round the mound of earth. He knelt opposite Colm, looking
anxiously down into Rose’s milk-white face. ‘What ’appened, mate?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Poor little bugger – did ’er bleedin’ brakes fail? She were comin’ down the ’ill like a runaway ’orse when the bike ’it that mound of earth an’ she simply shot into the air, turnin’ over an’ over. My, but that’s a nasty wound on her forehead. Is she dead? Is she breathin’? We better send for a doctor, I reckons.’

Colm pulled himself together. He tried to gather Rose into his arms – his Rose, his Rose! – only someone else came over and bade him leave well alone. ‘If she’s broke bones you could do damage, movin’ the gal,’ the newcomer said. ‘There’s a first aider comin’ in a mo, ’ang on till ’e gives you the say-so.’

Colm reluctantly laid Rose’s slender body back upon the ground. She was breathing and her heart was beating, he had felt it for a second as he held her. But the gash on her forehead was both long and deep, and the blood that ran from it looked dark and sinister to him. Apart from the forehead, he could tell nothing, but he knew she could have broken her neck, her back, anything. He looked up and saw that they were now surrounded by a circle of wide-eyed faces, one of them Davy. He fixed Davy with his steeliest glance. ‘Go an’ get someone, we’ve got to get her to hospital,’ he shouted. ‘It’s me girl, Davy, the one I’m going to marry! Get a move on, or I’ll . . . I’ll break every bone in your miserable body.’

Davy didn’t answer but he disappeared, and Colm sat back on his haunches and began to pray and to curse by turns. He cursed his pride and pigheadedness which had not allowed him to accept Rose’s apologies nor to let him at least go up to the Vale and speak to her. And he prayed, harder than he had ever
prayed in his life before, that the good God would let his little love live. She might be a lifelong invalid, she might never walk again, but he found that was secondary indeed to his desperate need and longing for her. She must live, so that he could tell her what a blind, obstinate fool he was, so he could tell her the real truth – that he loved her, knew she had never meant to hurt him, was sorry for the pain he had caused her.

Presently he saw Davy come pounding back and push his way through the crowd. ‘There’s a doc on the way and an ambulance,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Tell ’er it’s goin’ to be awright, Colm. Go, talk to ’er. I ‘member in me first aid classes when I were in school that they said folk could often ’ear before they could move a muscle. Tell’er it’s goin’ to be awright.’

They took her away from him once they arrived at the hospital. Colm would have followed as his love was put on a stretcher and rushed off down a long corridor, but a nurse stopped him. ‘They’ve taken her for a thorough examination,’ the young woman said gently, taking his arm. ‘It will be a while before they can tell you anything definite.’ She looked at him, at his stained and dirty overalls, at his calloused hands and the big, earth-clodded workman’s boots. ‘Do you know her next of kin? The doctor’ll mebbe want a signature before they can operate. Why don’t you go and tell her family what’s happened, then you could go home and get cleaned up. You can be back before they take any serious action, I’m sure.’