The Bells of Scotland Road (2 page)

‘Not again,’ replied Bridget. ‘Please don’t be starting all of that, Cathy. Didn’t we explain to you about the accident?’ She shivered all the more, a new ice
in her bones owing something to the weather, much to the fact that she had not been allowed time to grieve. Eugene was only six months buried, yet here she was among foreigners and on her way to an
English altar.

Cathy bit her lip, felt no pain because of the merciless cold. Daddy was a great man who had gone to stay in another place called heaven. Why hadn’t he come to Liverpool instead of going
off with Jesus like that? He would have held her, comforted her. He would have played games like cat’s cradle and guess which hand is the sweetie in. But he’d gone away and he
wouldn’t be coming back and Cathy’s stomach was empty.

‘And poor Shauna misses her daddy, too. At least you knew him for a long time, child,’ said Bridget quietly.

‘Poor Shauna’ was warm and as cosy as a newborn against Mammy’s shoulder. Cathy shuddered again, wished that she, too, could be wrapped in a plaid shawl and held close to the
body of her mother.

Granda returned, his brow still furrowed by ill-temper. ‘Boy?’ he yelled at a passing urchin.

The lad ground to a halt, drew a wrist across his nose to dislodge a dewdrop. ‘Yes, sir?’

Mollified slightly by the child’s respectful tone, Thomas Murphy drew himself to full height before placing a hand in his pocket. ‘A threepence for you if you find a cart to carry us
and our trunks and cases, lad. No fancy vehicles, mind.’ He sniffed and glowered at the boy. ‘If you’re quick, there’ll be a further payment when we reach Scotland Road. Do
you know Bell’s?’

The barefoot child nodded eagerly. ‘Bell’s Pledges? We live near there, mister. I can get a lend of a cart for a few pennies if you hang on here a minute. Will there be a name on
your things?’

‘’Tis Murphy. Thomas James Murphy. Can you remember that?’

‘I can, sir.’ The boy nodded so vigorously that his rain-damped hair sent forth droplets that landed on Cathy’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It was an
accident, girl.’ The ‘girl’ came out as ‘gairl’. ‘See you after, then,’ he added before running off towards the ship.

Cathy watched the lad, saw him wending his way past passengers, sailors, a crate containing live hens. His feet were filthy and bare, yet he ran as easily as the wind across ground that must
have proved painful.

‘Come away with you, now, Bridie,’ chided Thomas Murphy. ‘We’ve a wedding in half an hour.’

Bridget O’Brien swallowed a foul-tasting liquid that had settled in her throat. Her stomach groaned cavernously, yet she could not have eaten to save her life. Oh, what was she doing here?
She was a grown woman of twenty-seven years, the mother of two daughters. She had organized the running of a sizeable farm since Eugene’s death, had kept books, paid wages, bought and sold
stock. Yet here she stood, a lamb prepared for slaughter, a displaced person in a strange land . . .

‘Bridget?’ The two syllables were coated with steel.

‘Yes, Father.’ She rose, lifted the dozing Shauna, dragged Cathy to stand alongside the grandfather who had wrenched them all out of Galway. ‘I still think there was no need
for this,’ she mumbled. There was need, an inner voice told her. Da was older and even more cantankerous than he had been during her own childhood. Twice, he had raised his strap to Cathy.
Twice, Bridie had intervened, had placed herself between the man and his granddaughter. But she couldn’t be in the house all the time. He might slap Cathy when Bridie was out shopping or
seeing to the horses. On the one hand, she was being forced to leave home. But, at the same time, Bridie needed space between her father and her little family. She should have run away, she told
herself for the umpteenth time. She should have fled from the county and into wherever. Wherever – Thomas Murphy would have found her.

Thomas Murphy glowered. He was a tall man with thick, iron-grey hair and bushy eyebrows that seemed to bristle with anger above clear blue eyes. Even when he wasn’t annoyed, he looked
dangerous, thought Bridie. Now, with his temper rising, he had pulled those eyebrows south until they overhung his features like the edge of an untidy thatched roof. ‘It had to be
done,’ he snapped.

‘Eugene’s parents were quite resigned to the—’

‘Nonsense,’ he roared. ‘They bided their time and no more, that’s the truth. Do you think I wanted my grandchildren whisked away to the Church of Ireland as soon as my
back was turned? Heaven forbid that such a thing would ever happen.’

Bridie sat on her temper. For how many years had she kept herself damped down? she wondered. Oh, such a lovely girl, she was. She had been a model daughter, a diligent worker on the farm, a
loving and sensible spouse, a good mother. At what price, though? Since babyhood, she had feared the man who had frightened her mother. Thomas Murphy had never lashed out in earlier days, had never
beaten his wife. The long-ago cruelties had been verbal and, it had seemed, eternal. Philomena Murphy had produced just one live child, and that child had been a sore disappointment. A girl? What
use was a girl? ‘You’re not even half a woman,’ Thomas had screamed at his fading spouse.

Bridie stared into her father’s steely eyes. Just once, she had defied him. She had got herself pregnant and had married ‘out’, had taken a non-Catholic husband whose family
had cut him off for mating with a Roman. Now, with Eugene dead and the farm newly tenanted, Bridie was left with few choices. She and her daughters could have moved in with Thomas Murphy or with
the O’Briens. The only other prospect might have been to take a cottage and trust to luck where money was concerned. Instead of opting for any of those unpalatable possibilities, Bridie had
agreed to a fresh start well away from her da and her in-laws. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘Who would that be, now?’

Bridie counted to ten. ‘The bridegroom, of course.’

He arched an eyebrow, curled his lip. ‘He is preparing for your arrival, no doubt. We shall go now. The service cannot begin without you.’ In Thomas Murphy’s book, a priest
should not be kept waiting, particularly when the church was being used for a specially arranged evening service. ‘Will you move?’ he bellowed. ‘Or will you get back on that boat
and live with me in my house? We can go home when the tide turns. But if you do return, you will keep my grandchildren away from the O’Briens and their God-forsaken excuse for a
religion.’

Bridie inclined her head. The ‘you wills’ and the ‘you will nots’ formed a litany that tripped loudly and often from her father’s acerbic tongue. Even the landing
stage had become a quieter place during Thomas Murphy’s rantings. People stood and stared at the wild-looking man who raved at his quiet daughter.

Bridget heaved Shauna into a more manageable position and followed her father, noticing that a knot of men simply melted away to make a path for her furious parent. Sailors, dock workers,
sellers of hot cocoa and tea backed off when they saw the towering figure.

On the cobbled square, Thomas Murphy stopped and grabbed his daughter’s arm so tightly that she flinched. ‘When I’m dead, who’s to save these two mites from Protestantism
and perdition?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ she replied, her face twisted with pain.

‘You? You’re just a woman, a woman who was too weak and stupid to wait and marry a man of her own kind. Oh no, you had to have it all your own way, Bridget. Your mother must have
spun in her grave the day you gave yourself before marriage to that heathen. May God have mercy on that good lady’s soul.’

Bridie, who remembered only too well how her mammy had suffered at the whim of Thomas Murphy, merely sighed with relief when her arm was freed. She would be rid of him, at least. No matter what
kind of a creature Sam Bell turned out to be, he could not possibly be as wicked as this man she called Father.

There were ponies and traps ready for passengers, but the tall Irishman strode past them. ‘We’ll wait here for the boy,’ he told his daughter. ‘No point in paying out
good money for a fancy carriage when there’s a cart we can use.’

Cathy stood on the cobbles, her face lifted upward. ‘Look, Mammy,’ she cried. ‘A train in the sky.’

Bridie glanced at the overhead engine, listened to the noise of it. A tram rattled past, then a ship’s horn blared into the heavy clouds of winter. She had never heard such a racket. The
lowing of cattle, the frantic snortings of an unbroken horse, the boom when quarry-men mined the Galway stone – all those things were nothing compared to the hellish din of Liverpool’s
docks. Home? Should she go back now? Should she take Shauna and Cathy back to sweet pastures and soft, kindly voices?

‘Move, woman!’ roared Thomas Murphy. ‘See, the boy’s coming just now with the cart. Or is this where you want to stay, in the middle of a busy road, while a priest waits
on your whim for the starting of a wedding?’

Bridie put her head on one side and looked quizzically at the man who had fathered her. For a moment or two, she felt a stab of terror, but it passed over as quickly as the overhead carriages.
‘I was thinking just now, Father, of the lovely people in Ballinasloe. I was conjuring up the sound of their voices at mass, remembering how gentle they are.’ She straightened, shook
her head. ‘But you roar like a bull. I cannot raise my children near a man who screams all the time.’ A corner of her mouth twitched when she saw his astonishment. ‘I will not
come back, Father. We shall stay here and make the best we can, so. If I never see you again, I’m sure I won’t care.’

The tall man closed his mouth with an audible snap. This bold upstart of a daughter was daring to upbraid him in a public place. He opened his mouth again, found no words. The expression on her
face reflected no anger, no emotion of any kind. He looked around, wondered if anyone had heard Bridie’s speech. But his daughter’s words had been spoken so softly. It was the softness
that made the brief soliloquy all the more meaningful.

Bridie pulled at Cathy’s hand, guided her towards a slow-moving cart on which the boy sat with a grim-faced driver and the luggage. ‘Right, Cathy,’ said Bridie, a determined
edge to her tone, ‘let’s go and find out what the future holds, shall we?’

Cathy’s shorter legs worked double time to keep up with her mother’s pace. When her hand slipped out of her mother’s grasp, she howled piteously, panic almost choking her as
she imagined being lost in such a noisy town. Children ran about in the gloom, dresses, coats and shawls hanging from slender shoulders, trousers torn, bare feet slapping wet cobblestones. Cathy
remembered bare feet, remembered the feel of grass against her toes, the smell of new-cut hay drying in the sun. She breathed deeply, sent forth another howl.

‘That is enough, now,’ said Thomas Murphy. He placed the case on the ground, bent over the child. ‘Look, I’ve had to come back for you. Mammy is tired. See –
she’s leaning on the cart over there waiting for you. You must behave yourself, Caitlin O’Brien.’

She sniffed, stared at him. ‘Don’t want to be here,’ she announced.

A few children stopped running, watched the scene with undisguised interest.

‘You will do exactly as I say,’ spat the impatient man. ‘Now, come along while your mother gets married.’

Cathy wasn’t completely sure about what ‘married’ was, but she had a vague idea that it might be connected to somebody called Sam who had a shop in Liverpool. Sam was supposed
to be her new daddy. ‘Don’t want to,’ she whimpered. This wasn’t her place. Her place was on a farm on the outskirts of town. Her place was the market and the castle
overlooking the river Suck and the quarrymen walking home at night and waving to her. ‘I don’t want to,’ she repeated angrily.

‘She doesn’t want to,’ echoed a girl in a filthy dress. ‘She wants to stop here and play alley-o.’

Thomas, whose dignity was important, ignored the dirt-spattered urchin. ‘Come along,’ he urged his granddaughter. ‘Or you’ll have everybody late.’

No-one spoke, yet Cathy could feel the support of those around her, as if they were reaching out to give her strength. They understood. Without knowing her, these comrades sensed her trouble.
‘I want to go home,’ she told her grandfather.

Thomas glared at the small gathering. ‘This is home.’

‘Don’t want here,’ she answered boldly. ‘Want my garden and Chucky and Bob.’ And she did miss the chicken she had helped to rear from a ball of yellow fluff into a
big, brave producer of eggs. ‘Want Bob,’ she declared, her feet planted apart. Bob was a sheepdog who could speak. His language was difficult to decode, but he had a special word for
dinner, a guttural howl that announced his hunger. And Bob had always guarded her, had always—The smack sent her reeling into the arms of a girl.

‘You shouldn’t do that, mister,’ advised the nearest young stranger, placing her thin body between the large man and the dumbstruck Cathy. ‘My dad’ll kill you if he
sees you hitting her like that.’

Thomas froze, his hand stopping mid-air. ‘And who asked you the time of day, miss? Shouldn’t you be inside the house cleaning the dirt off your face? Isn’t it past your
bedtime?’

The streetwise waif gave Thomas Murphy the onceover. She wasn’t afraid of him. He was big and ugly, but her dad was bigger and uglier than anybody the length and breadth of
Liverpool’s docks. ‘Me ma shouts me when she’s ready,’ she replied smartly. ‘I’m going back to Scottie now, and I’ll hear me ma shouting.’

‘And what does she shout?’ There was a mocking edge to the Irishman’s words.

‘She shouts me name, and me name’s Tildy Costigan.’

‘Then mind your business, Tildy Costigan.’

Tildy placed a dirt-streaked hand on Cathy’s shoulder. ‘If you ever need me, girl, just send somebody for Tildy Costigan. Everybody knows me, even the Mary Ellens. I’ll be
there in a flash,’ she added. ‘With me brothers, me dad and half our street.’ She stuck out her tongue, satisfied that the little girl’s grandfather had seen the full length
of it. It was nice and black, too, as the result of two spanishes for a halfpenny from Dolly Hanson’s shop.

After an uncomfortable second, Thomas grabbed the case, then pulled Cathy along behind him. ‘Such foolishness,’ he told his daughter. ‘Did you see the cut of that? The only
clean bits were where the child had been rained on. You must be careful, Bridie. Keep Cathy away from these ragamuffins.’