Rose of Tralee (53 page)

Colm thought of getting all the way to Everton from the Royal Infirmary but got to his feet anyway. There were taxis ... and he was filthy, too. He could get a message to Mrs Ryder, clean himself up and get
back here in no time at all, if he just put his mind to it. ‘All right, nurse,’ he said, turning towards the hospital’s swing doors. ‘But I won’t be long. If ... if they need to operate, they’d not delay ’cos there was no one here to sign t’ings or tell ’em to go ahead?’

She smiled at him. She was stocky and plain, with protruding teeth and a poor complexion, but her smile transformed her into a beauty so far as Colm was concerned. ‘No indeed, if they need to do anything they’ll do it, never fear. Is she your young lady?’

‘Yes,’ Colm said baldly. ‘She’s me sweetheart. We’re gettin’ married when we can afford it. Nurse, is she ... will she ... ?’

‘We’ll all do our very best,’ the nurse assured him. ‘When you come back go to the reception desk and ask where you can find Miss Ryder, tell them Sister Bostock knows all about you. They’ll see you get to the right place.’

‘T’anks,’ Colm breathed. ‘Me name’s Colm O’Neill. I won’t be long Nur ... Sister, I mean.’

He dived out of the hospital and was running along the pavement towards his lodgings, completely ignoring other passers-by, when someone grabbed his arm. ‘Colm, me boy – how is she? Your pal Davy telled me which hospital they’d took her to an’ I come along as fast as I could. Where are you goin’, son?’ It was Sean, looking grim and worried but – oh, so dependable and sensible.

‘Daddy, it’s you! She’s hurt bad, they want her mammy to know, they sent me out ’cos they’ll be examinin’ her for a while, they said to get cleaned up. Can you go back to the Vale, tell Mrs Ryder, get her here somehow?’

‘I can,’ Sean said, not bothering his son with a lot of
useless questions, Colm thought gratefully. ‘Don’t go back to your lodgings, though. Nip into the public lavatory an’ clean up there, then go straight back. Don’t worry, I’ll be in the Vale before you can say “St Domingo”.’

He hurried off without looking back and, blessing his father for his good sense, Colm shot into the nearest block of public lavatories, stripped off his overalls and scrubbed himself down, put the overalls back on inside out – they were cleaner that way – took a hasty drink from the little fountain by the doorway and left to hurry back to the hospital as fast as his weary legs would carry him.

She lay in bed, the covers pinning her arms to her sides, the huge wound on her forehead covered, now, with clean white lint and bandages. Her face was as white as the pillowcase and her eyes were dark-shadowed, but because she was clean and had been put into a hospital nightdress she looked better somehow, more normal. Just like any other patient who had fallen asleep at the end of a long day.

The curtains were drawn round her bed, creating an illusion of quietness, though it was only an illusion; beyond them the big ward buzzed with low voices and clicking feet, as visitors came to see their loved ones, and quiet, quick treads as nurses went about their business. Colm found a long stool underneath her bed and pulled it out, sat on it. Then he leaned his chin in his hand and just let his eyes feast on her small, chalk-white face.

Sister Bostock had been as good as her word. The moment he got back to the hospital he had been directed along quiet corridors, turning first right, then left, then mounting stairs, threading his way
towards the Sister’s own ward. She had recognised him at once and smiled. ‘That was quick, Mr O’Neill! Well, Miss Ryder has suffered a broken arm, a couple of broken ribs, some damage to the patella – but we now think it is only heavy bruising – and of course the wound to the forehead. That has been cleaned, disinfected and stitched. One of the theatre sisters told me that the patient seemed about to come round just before she was put under for her arm to be set and the patella – that’s the kneecap, Mr O’Neill – to be gently bound into position, so that’s a good sign. Now, of course, she’s still sleepy from the anaesthetic, but you may sit with her on condition that you call me as soon as there is any sign of her coming round. Do you agree?’

Colm agreed. He would have agreed to anything which allowed him to stay near his Rose, watch that small, obstinate, much-loved face. ‘But ... will she get better, Sister?’ he asked, as the nurse propelled him gently towards Rose’s bed. ‘Is her mind ... all right? Did the blow on the head injure anything inside her head?’

Sister Bostock chuckled. ‘She’s fallen off a bicycle with some violence, Mr O’Neill. That’s the sum total of it. She had a soft landing, too, from what I’m told – on a mound of earth, not on a tarmacadamed surface, nor on cobbles or concrete. She’ll do very well, I’m sure. Now off with you, or I’ll have to send a member of my staff to sit with her until she comes round, and we’re mortal busy, as you can see. Visitors make a deal of work but occasionally’ – she smiled at him – ‘occasionally one can come in useful.’

He said nothing more but left and took up his position beside Rose’s bed. And began what he hoped might not be too long a wait.

*

Rose was floating in a blue sky, speckled with small white clouds. Now and then she saw one of the clouds approaching and could not prevent herself from entering it, and it was cold and wet inside, and made her feel weak and unsafe. But the clouds were small and the blue sky large, and most of the time she floated in golden sunshine, warm and comfortable and secure.

Presently she saw a cloud approaching and decided to try to float around it. She moved her arms and legs gently, but found it difficult, and as soon as she exerted real effort, it seemed that the cloud approached faster and enveloped her. She remembered reading
Alice in Wonderland
in school – or was it
Through the Looking Glass
? Whichever it was, there had been a path down which Alice had trod which, if she kept her eyes on her destination, seemed to give a wiggle and a twist which sent Alice off in the opposite direction. The clouds were like that, Rose decided. If you tried to miss them you immediately entered one. Perhaps if you headed for one as hard as you could, you would circumvent it.

Accordingly, she stared and stared at the nearest cloud and tried very hard to float right inside it . . . and suddenly, horribly, she became aware that the blue sky had disappeared, along with the gold sunshine. She was lying on something hard, which hurt her aching limbs, and staring at a huge, huge cloud, all white and cold, which seemed as big as the blue sky had been and as limitless.

Hastily, she tried to look away from the cloud, to find again the gentle blue sky, but she could not. Her eyes were wide open and fixed on ... on a ceiling. Where was she? What on earth had happened to her?
When she tried to move arms or legs it was as though she were enveloped in warm but viscose treacle, which would not allow her to move so much as a finger.

She would have liked to look around, too, or to call out, but when she tried to move her eyes the lids simply got so heavy that she could not keep them up and she found herself verging on a dazed sort of sleep. And her voice would not, could not, function. Her lips moved a little, her tongue trembled against them, but no sound would emerge. She gave a violent heave at her lids and for a moment they actually lifted, allowing her to see it was not just a white ceiling above her, she was entirely surrounded by white. Her arms and legs were held captive not by treacle but by some sort of white ice, which gripped her whole body and would not let her move.

Fear came them, a fear which made her heart pound violently, her breath begin to come in little, painful gasps. And every time she took a breath a terrible sharp pain stabbed at her chest, making her give a tiny kitten’s cry of protest. She was a captive, in pain, cold as ice itself and unable to see about her . . . she was so terrified that she almost stopped breathing, nearly ceased trying to understand what was happening to her.

Then she heard the voice. It was soft, deep – a voice she loved. It was saying, over and over, ‘You’re all right, alanna. You’ve broke a bone or two but you’re all right. You’re goin’ to get well again, so you are, so’s you an’ me can get married, an’ live happily ever after.’

It was a lovely voice and the things it said, though they did not make very much sense, were lovely
things. And then the best thing of all happened. A weight lifted off one of her arms and a hand, warm, strong, infinitely comfortable and solid, took hold of her frightened, cold fingers. The hand smoothed and gentled her fingers until they, too, began to feel the first little thread of warmth, and the voice went on repeating that she was all right, that she had broken a bone or two but would be all right ...

She tugged desperately at her eyelids; she would open her eyes, she would! She could see light now, bright light, and the soft mound of white that lay before her ... it was a bedsheet, taut and tightly tucked, holding her into a perfectly ordinary bed. There was no ice, no clouds, no loneliness, not whilst the voice spoke and the hand held her own.

Rose gave a little sigh. ‘Colm?’ she whispered. She had meant to speak out boldly but it seemed a whisper was the only thing available right now. ‘Colm? Are you cross?’

The voice began to say that of course it was not cross – and broke. She heard a sort of sob and then there was a face next to her own, a warm, familiar face, pressed against her cold cheek. She felt warm tears, whether her own or another’s she could not tell, trickle across her skin, then lips kissed along her jawbone, up the side of her face and down across her small nose. She tugged even harder at her eyelids, which she had allowed to close as soon as she spoke, and saw a huge, dark eye, tear-filled, and a dark, arched eyebrow and a strong, familiar jaw-line, much in need of a shave.

‘Rosie, me own darlin’ girl. Oh Rosie, you’re goin’ to be all right, you are, you are!’

Colm’s voice was wobbly with relief and love, but Rose, bathed in the warmth and security of his love,
noticed nothing. She simply snuggled her cheek into the pillow and slept.

The next time she woke, Colm had gone, but a woman’s figure sat on the stool beside her. Slowly and carefully, Rose moved her head. ‘Mam! Oh, Mam, I can’t seem to ... I’m in the hospital, amn’t I?’

‘That’s right, queen,’ her mother said gently. ‘Colm’s been with you all night until I come over. He’ll be back in a minute. He’s gone out for a breath of air an’ to stretch his legs because once you came round he weren’t so worried, like.’

‘Good. We’re getting married soon,’ Rose said vaguely. ‘Mam, what happened? I remember talking to Ella and hearing a bang, an explosion, then ... then I don’t remember anything else until I found Colm bending over me and I were in this bed.’

‘I don’t rightly know meself, queen,’ her mother admitted. ‘Colm did say something about two charges going off and a pal of his being slightly injured, then he said you bicycled down the hill like a runaway horse, went front-wheel first into a great old mound of earth and rocks, and soared into the air like a swallow, landing on your poor head, which is why it’s all bandaged, I suppose. Did you think something bad had happened?’

‘I did,’ Rose said slowly. She was beginning to remember her mad flight down William Brown Street, bouncing over the cobbles, pedalling like a mad creature, because she had feared for Colm’s life, down there in the darkness and damp in the great Mersey tunnel. ‘Oh Mam, I thought Colm might have been hurt bad and if he was, I wouldn’t never have telled him that I knew wi’ all me heart that he’d never take nothing that weren’t his. Why, he’d no more take
a necklace he’d found in the street, let alone one that he knew were owned . . . oh, Mam, I’ve been such a fool.’

‘No bigger fool than me,’ a voice said and Colm slid through the curtains. ‘My poor little darlin’ Rosie, I don’t know what made me march out like a donkey, ‘stead o’ listenin’ to you. But all that’s behind us now, alanna. Right?’

‘Right,’ Rose agreed, smiling. ‘Mind you, I’ve got a cut head – you may not want to marry me when you see me out of me bandages.’

‘You’ve got two black eyes an’ all,’ Colm said, grinning. He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘But I’ll put up wit’ that, just to be back in me room at the Vale.’

Mrs Ryder clapped a hand to her head. ‘To think I forgot! You’ll never guess what come through the post this morning, you two.’

‘Tell us,’ Rose said sleepily. With her hand firmly held in Colm’s warm clasp and his eyes lovingly fixed on her, nothing else seemed to matter. ‘Is it nice or nasty?’

‘Nice,’ Lily said firmly. ‘It were a pawn ticket. And a bank note.’

‘What! Who sent it?’ Colm said, instantly alert. ‘Have you had a chance ...’

‘Yes. I went to the pawnshop an’ handed over the ticket an’ the banknote and I’ve got me gold necklace back, as good as ever. Can you guess where the pawn ticket come from, though?’

‘Tommy Frost,’ Colm said. Rose realised, with incredulity, that his voice sounded almost sad. ‘I did wonder ... but he was a nice feller, so he was, I didn’t want to believe ill of him.’

‘But you thought I believed ill of you,’ Rose
mumbled. She tried to sit up in bed but the movement made her head swim and she lay back on her pillows. ‘Oh, Colm, will you ever forgive me?’

Colm moved up the bed and put his arms round her, then laid his cheek against hers. ‘There’s nothin’ to forgive,’ he murmured. ‘As soon as you’re out o’ this we’ll start makin’ plans for our weddin’, so we will. We’ve both got good jobs, we can afford a bit of a room ...’

‘You can have the attics; we’ll convert the girls’ big room into a nice bed-sitting room, and we’ll clear the jumble out of the box-room an’ make it into a kitchen,’ Mrs Ryder said eagerly. ‘You’ll have to share the bathroom, of course, but you’ll be better off than many another young couple. Poor Mona and that Tommy ... but mebbe he’ll turn out all right, wi’ a good woman beside him.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Rose said. She had told no one about the baby and thought, on the whole, that she had better continue to say nothing. ‘We shouldn’t do anything in a rush, should we? We always said we’d save up first, not do anything foolish.’