Ruby Flynn (2 page)

‘I’ll carry the girl, Thomas,’ said Con. He had to shout to be heard, but still, his voice was heavy and almost lost into the air. ‘You put the boy on the wagon and lead the donkey down, if you can, we will follow on behind. It will be easier going down than it was coming up.’ Con prayed that he was right.

As he walked across to the girl, he noted that at least she was obviously still alive. She had raised her head as they approached but she appeared incapable of little else. Her long, wet and matted hair had frozen almost solid to her face and Con thought that no matter how terrified she might be of two strange men, she would be too cold to run. She wore a black knitted shawl that covered her head, and she had wrapped it around her body. Now she clung to it as though it were life itself. It was possibly the only thing that had saved her.

‘Come here, colleen,’ whispered Con, as he lifted the girl up and slipped her straight inside the warmth of his coat.

‘Jesus, Holy Mother, she weighs no more than a baby,’ he said, as he fastened the buttons and pulled his scarf across the front and around the back of her head.

As they walked down the cliff, the girl did not make a sound. Not one whimper of cold or hunger. As they passed the doorway of her family home, Con felt her body stiffen. Her eyes, suddenly alive, turned and stared up at Con, huge dark emerald green craters, deep in her hollowed-out face. They blazed at him and for a second, Con was startled by their clarity and brightness. He had never seen eyes as green. Con knew what she wanted to say. He knew what her thoughts and questions would be.
My mammy and daddy, we have to get them, we cannot leave them, stop
. Con avoided her gaze and pulled on the side of the cart to help Thomas move the wheels out of the ruts left by the cut turf. It was a relief that the girl did not speak. He could tell her nothing she would want to hear.

Thomas turned to face back towards the road, holding his hand across his nose and mouth to keep out the sleet. The wind had increased in volume and Con could barely tell what he was saying.

‘How can we be sure that there are only the two of them? Are they the only ones? God knows, there will be others on these hills in exactly the same position.’

Con shifted the weight of the girl up inside his coat and used his arms to support her. His heart tightened in his chest as he saw the tears running down her cheek. They were not tears caused by sleet or snow, but were hot tears of pain.

‘Do you have a name, colleen?’ Con said as gently as he could into the side of her face, so that she could hear him. ‘What is your name?’ But she did not reply.

He tried to reassure her. ‘We are taking you into the village, first to my house and my wife, Susan, for some food and warmer clothes and then on to the convent.’

Con knew the look that passed over her face had been one of relief and that she understood some of what he was saying. She knew her parents were both dead. Neither he nor Susan would have the job of breaking that news to her. She knew. She might have been in pain from the cold and from whatever she had witnessed but she was glad to be alive, that much he could tell. Her eyes might be focused on the form of her dead brother lying under her wet shawl on the back of the wagon, frozen solid into the crouching position they had found him in, still clutching the turf. She might desperately glance back towards where both parents had died while she sat by their side, wiping the vomit from their deathly pale, waxen-like faces, crying for someone to help. She might be herself frozen to within an hour of her own death, but Con knew that in the midst of her torment, a flame of hope had lit somewhere within this child. It burned behind her eyes and she was thankful to have been saved and to be in his arms.

‘What’s your name, colleen?’ Con whispered into her ear again and this time, her voice answered with such a force and pride, that she took him totally by surprise.

‘Ruby, I am. I am Ruby Flynn.’

And they were the last words she spoke for almost a year.

‘Heavens above, what have we here,’ the reverend mother exclaimed, as she opened the door to Con. He stood on the doorstep, protecting the undersized bundle in his arms from the snow. Ruby must have been all of twelve, but felt more like a small eight-year-old. He could feel her heart beating against his, like a frightened bird. He had almost been convinced that they wouldn’t make it, but the road from Doohoma and on through Bangor Erris had been freshly cleared and made passable, not by the council, but by the efforts of local farmers and the residents of the small village who had an urgent need to reach each other after weeks of isolation, in order to exchange food and help, turf and milk for porter and jam. Animals must be transported, phone calls made once the cables were repaired and letters posted to concerned relatives in places as far-flung and as exotic as Liverpool, Watford, London and New York. Cash-stuffed envelopes waited to be collected from the post office by those whose relatives abroad had been able to spare it. Many depended upon the charity of local neighbours, shop owners and friends. People could not live for long if they were alone, snowed up indoors.

‘It could have been much worse, Reverend Mother,’ Con said, with a knowing look. ‘She’s dry now. I took her home with myself. My wife sorted her out and put a jumper of her own over her. She’s in a bad way now, though, and no mistake. We had thought of keeping her for a while, but Mrs O’Toole said that the priest had contacted you and you were expecting her. If my wife had not been due any day, we’d have had no hesitation.’

The reverend mother looked less than pleased.

‘That’s as may be Mr O’Malley, but we are struggling ourselves with this storm. We have taken in half a dozen orphans this week alone. I have no more beds or blankets. We live off what we grow and make. You would have been as well to keep her. I am honour bound to spend the money I take for fees on the school alone. On educating the young girls sent to us. Girls who have passed the entrance exam. Their parents don’t pay to educate half of Mayo, just because it snows. It is all very difficult. How are we supposed to manage? How many more can we take? It is desperate crowded in here right now, so it is.’

Con looked the reverend mother square in the eye.

‘Would you like me to return home and fetch the blankets from my own bed, Mother?’

The reverend mother was instantly shamed, her lack of charity highlighted in just a few well-chosen words. Moments later, they were standing in her study, in front of the roaring fire. Con pointedly inspected the splendour of the study.

‘’Tis a mighty grand vase you have here, Mother.’

Con nodded towards a large red and gold vase, which stood in the centre of a round table.

But if the reverend mother had noticed the irony in his voice, she gave no sign of it.

‘Isn’t it just the most beautiful thing?’ she trilled enthusiastically, moving closer to admire it with him, as though seeing it for the first time. ‘Father Michael carried it all the way home from Chicago himself, you know. It was given to him by a firm of Irish builders, a very well-to-do family. He gave them communion in their own private chapel. Can you imagine that? Before he died, God rest his soul, he asked us to keep it safe for him. I don’t mind admitting, it brightens up my day. There is not one person enters into this study who doesn’t admire it.’

As she rattled on, Con’s gaze took in the rest of the room. The pictures on the wall, fine china, the brass lamp on the desk and the ornate fender around the fire. The room was packed with beautiful things. Silver on the windowsill, a gold knife on the mahogany desk. As he looked down, he noticed that Ruby was copying him. She, too, studied the room. He had expected her to be intimidated and he felt strangely moved that she stood up straight, with her hands rigid by her sides, almost proud and yet, God knew, the child had nothing on this earth to feel proud about. Her gaze rested, just as his had done, first on the vase on the table, then on the paintings, the windowsill and finally on the brass fender around the fire.

She’s mimicking me, he thought to himself, as a faint smile touched his lips. She doesn’t know what to do or how to behave, so she is mimicking what I do, God bless her.

‘Will she be fully educated, Mother?’ The expression on Con’s face said clearly that he would not be fobbed off with prattle of vases and rich American benefactors.

The reverend mother felt slightly uncomfortable.

‘Of course she will. We will do all we can for these unfortunate storm orphans, but please don’t bring me any more children to look after. There are practical limitations to what we can achieve here. You haven’t brought me this girl just for one day, as you well know. She will be here until we can place her into service. But, goodness knows, some of these children we have taken in from the bogs are as good as feral. Now, please sit yourself down, while I ask Sister Francis to fetch some tea and brack, then you can tell us all you know.’

*

Ruby stood next to the chair on which Con was now sitting. He had slipped his hand into hers, to reassure her, and now she stood still clinging onto him, scared to let him go. She was exhausted and the heat from the fire thawed her bones and stung her eyes, while the lack of sleep made her feel drowsy. She looked at the turf stacked up in the wicker basket and her heart constricted with pain. They would only have needed a few sods, she and her brother, to warm up their ma and da. The snow still fell heavily, but here in Belmullet, the wind was nowhere near as fierce as it had been in Doohoma.

The trees outside were thick with the snow, their branches creaking and groaning under the weight of it. She had spent every day of her life with the noise of the ocean breaking on the sands and pounding in her ears. Now, her ears tingled as they adjusted to the unfamiliar sound of voices in deep discussion. The kind man and the reverend mother were talking about her. Their words reverberated in her brain.

Her mammy’s dead. Her daddy’s dead. Her brother’s dead. They are all dead
.

‘We are full to the rushes here. The last thing we need is another child. We cannot manage with those we have, can we, Sister Francis? Overrun we are.’

Sister Francis, who had brought in the tea, caught Ruby’s eye and gave her a sympathetic smile. No one offered Ruby a drink.

They didn’t want her. She was not welcome. Her face burned hot with shame. The man, Con, had taken her from a cold hell to his own fireside. His soothing. His wife. She had sat on the pregnant woman’s knee and felt a new life kicking her in the back, as her frozen hair was rubbed with a hot towel. She felt the burning then too, and had wanted to turn around and kick the unborn baby back. Over and over.

‘He’s off again,’ the wife had said to Con, with a knowing smile. He smiled back as he placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder and even though Ruby was sitting there on the knee of his wife, for that moment, she did not exist.

For almost a week, she had squatted on the earth floor by her mammy’s side and done her very best. Every word her mammy had cried out was burned into her memory. During interludes, when her mother recognized Ruby and spoke, she had stared into her eyes, desperately wanting her mother to say something that would help, to make the cottage warm or to tell her where to find food. The words were still there, sitting in her gut, gnawing at her, telling her she was Ruby Flynn and that no man or woman on this earth was better than she.

‘You have family, Ruby. Find my family,’ her mother had croaked.

Ruby had whispered in her ear, ‘Where are they, Mammy?’

‘No one is better than you Ruby Flynn, remember that.’

As she held the melted snow to her mother’s lips, she turned to look at her brother. He lay next to their daddy on the mattress. Something was wrong with Daddy. He didn’t speak or move at all and was very cold.

The dog, Max, lay next to where the fire should have been burning and he looked at Ruby with wide doleful eyes.
We are in trouble
, they said to Ruby,
what can I do?

Where was Max now? Ruby’s heart beat faster as she thought of him and her eyes began to fill with tears.

She wanted to ask the man, would someone take Max when they went for her mammy and daddy? Max needed food. Max would die too. But the words were trapped inside her. The vision of soft eyes came into her mind. The long hair around his mouth, which she used to laugh at and call his beard. The smell of his damp coat when they both came back wet to the house and she lay with him on the floor in front of the fire, stroking his belly with one hand, holding a book with another, listening to her mother busy at the table preparing their supper, feeling warm and content.

The image, the smells, the memory all fluttered about inside her head. She opened and closed her mouth and tried to form the word
Max
, but nothing happened, no sound came, she could not speak.

Ruby looked at the adults talking, oblivious to her silence. The man’s wife, Susan, had told her she would live here and would attend the school.

‘You will be sad for a while, but you will get better, sweetheart,’ she had said.

Sometimes, her mammy had called her sweetheart. When she was having her soft moments. When Ruby sat on her knee and rested her head against her soft pillowy breasts. When her mammy stroked her hair and sang softly into her ear. She tried to remember the song. It was elusive, just there, hovering, waiting to be recalled, but she couldn’t remember. She could only hear the soothing tones of Susan.

‘It is a great opportunity, just fantastic. Make the most of it. Learn every day. Study really hard. That school is the best in Ireland and even in Liverpool. You will leave with something most girls in Ireland don’t have, the ability to make your own way in the world. With an education like that, you will be able to do anything, become a nurse, a doctor even, they have more lady doctors now than ever before, since the war. Just you make the most of it, Ruby, turn something bad into something good.’