Though Angela’s conscience felt a lot easier after her visit to the priest, she was so dispirited over what the doctor had told her about her mother she had no desire to decorate the house for Christmas.
Connie was aware just how ill her grandmother was and she said to Sarah, ‘I think Mammy is wrong. Granny is going downhill fast. Mammy thinks I don’t know, but I’m not a baby any more and I’m not stupid. I can see things for myself and I would like to make the house more cheerful for her. As well as that, Maggie and Michael are spending the day with us and they won’t want to sit and eat Christmas dinner in a dull boring house at Christmas time.’
Sarah agreed with her, as did her mother, and the two girls set off the Saturday before Christmas to see what bargains they could find in the Market Hall in the Bullring.
‘Where did you get so much money?’ Sarah asked as they walked along Bristol Street and Connie showed her the two pound notes she had in a purse in her basket.
‘Well, I didn’t rob a bank,’ Connie replied with a grin. ‘I hoiked it out of my money box with a knife.’
‘Yeah, but where did you get so much money to put in there in the first place?’
‘Mainly from my uncles in America. They send me dollars every birthday and Christmas and Mammy takes them to the post office and changes them into pounds and pence and tells me to save them for a rainy day. Point is, this is meant as a surprise for Mammy so I couldn’t ask her for money for garlands and things she knows nothing about. If I can I’d like to get some gloves for Mammy too – the pair she has are full of holes and she’s darned them so often there’s more darn than original glove now.’
‘My mother’s gloves are almost as bad,’ Sarah said. ‘But I’m a bit short of rich uncles in America. My sisters are very good and when they come to see us they nearly always slip me something, a thrupenny bit, or a tanner, but they can’t afford more than that.’
‘I know money’s very scarce generally,’ Connie said. ‘I would be pleased to leave school as soon as possible and earn some money of my own and make life easier for Mammy financially. I really hope she gives up this notion of me getting my higher certificate.’
‘Mammy says she doesn’t know how she can afford to keep you at school.’
‘Granny told me she saved a lot of money from when she was in munitions in the war,’ Connie said. ‘And there’s something else, only you’re not to tell a soul about this.’
‘You know I won’t,’ Sarah said.
‘Well, Mammy has some jewellery.’
‘Jewellery?’ Sarah repeated.
‘Yeah. Granny said it was left to her by this old man who owned a shop and Mammy used to work for him before she married my father and afterwards for a bit too. Apparently he thought a lot of Mammy and when he died she found he had left her some of his mother’s jewellery.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In the bank,’ Connie said. ‘The man left it in there for her and it’s still there. Granny said Mammy intends selling most of it so she can fund me going to college.’
‘Going to college?’ Sarah repeated. ‘Oh, get you. You’ll be too big for your boots if you go to college.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted to go to any college,’ Connie said. ‘I’ll talk to Mammy and make her see that. All her life she’s been saving for me and my future. I’d rather she sold the jewellery and used that money and the money in the post office so that she can take life a bit easier and stop worrying about me so much. Anyway, we’re here now so let’s see what we can find to make the house a bit more Christmassy.’
There was plenty to choose from and Connie was delighted to find a little wooden set of the nativity that she knew would look a treat on the sideboard. Then there were deep green holly leaves sporting plenty of bright red berries woven into wreaths and tied up with red ribbon, as well as laurel garlands and paper streamers to decorate the room, and candy canes, glass trinkets, tinsel icicles and candles for the tree. And there was still enough left to buy her mother a beautiful pair of thick woollen gloves. They carried all the stuff to Sarah’s house as her mother had agreed to keep it all in the bedroom till Christmas Eve. As Christmas Eve was a Saturday, Angela would be working that evening and they wanted to get the house decorated while she was away and Sarah was going to help her.
Barely had Angela left the house on Christmas Eve evening than Connie was bounding up the stairs to fetch the tree from the attic, just before Sarah arrived with bulging bags of decorations. Connie had told Mary what they were doing and she had no objection, though she dozed most of the time as the girls hung the holly wreaths in the window and the laurel garlands across the fireplace. They put paper streamers across the room and the nativity in pride of place on the sideboard.
The tree looked magnificent with all the new things Connie had bought arranged on it. They’d had other decorations too that they had put on the tree in previous years, but Connie discarded any that looked old and shabby. They put the candles in place at the end of the branches and placed the star on the top, then stood away from it to survey their handiwork.
‘It looks grand,’ Sarah said. ‘I helped Mammy with ours a couple of days ago and it’s not nearly so fine as this.’
‘I will be happy if it puts a smile on Mammy’s face,’ Connie said. ‘That’s why I wanted it to look so nice.’
And in it that she succeeded, for Angela was delighted to see the place looking so ready for Christmas. It also made her feel a bit guilty, the fact that this would in all likelihood be Mary’s last Christmas. It should have meant her wanting to make the place more festive, but instead Angela had let the misery she felt at the fairly imminent demise of her mother engulf everything, making it a poor Christmas for everyone.
She praised the new things Connie had bought, though she knew her daughter would have had to get money out of her money box because it was the only money she had. But she said nothing about that, not wanting to spoil the moment.
In the end it was a lovely Christmas. Maggie and Mike arrived after Mass and Mary, with the considerable help of Angela and Maggie, got up and sat at the table on a chair padded with cushions. She didn’t eat much of the delicious dinner and pudding, but had a smile on her face nearly all the time at the banter around the table and even joined in a time or two.
With Christmas and New Year out of the way, Angela, like everyone else, battled through the frozen days of January. As the temperatures dropped, biting, squally wind hurled itself around the house and chill gusts seeped under doors and rattled ill-fitting windows. Ice patterns formed inside the windows of the bedroom and attic and outside icicles dangled from window ledges and frost scrunched underfoot, made even slippier with the fresh snow falling constantly.
Angela was glad that she had made the decision to find her mother a spare bed so she could sleep downstairs and grateful that she could buy enough coal to keep at least one room comfortably warm. She was sleeping in the chair next to her mother every night now and Mary had given up protesting about it. Angela knew the schools would re-open soon and she would be back to worrying about Mary every time she had to leave her, but there was no help for it and the neighbours were very good at popping in.
Halfway through the month the doctor called and, after examining Mary, he increased the dosage of morphine.
‘She will sleep more now,’ he said. ‘But it will give her more relief from pain.’
‘Is she in pain?’ Angela asked. ‘She never said.’
‘I’d say she’s pretty uncomfortable,’ the doctor said. ‘Her face is quite drawn.’
It was, Angela realised, and she felt guilty she hadn’t seen it for herself. She collected the medicine straight away, handing over the shillings that it cost, and gave it to Mary. She soon found the doctor was quite right, the new medicine made Mary sleepier. He had said she could go at any time and Angela would watch her slumbering for ages at first, her chest gently rising and falling as her life slipped further and further away. One day she knew her mother’s heart would stop, her chest would be still and Mary would be no more, and that thought filled her with despondency.
It was towards the end of the month when Mary appeared restless in the bed. Angela only slept lightly now in the chair next to the bed and she was awake instantly. Mary was thrashing about slightly but her eyes remained closed and Angela wondered if she was in the throes of a nightmare. She searched for her hand and held it tight. The touch seemed to reassure her and Angela said gently, ‘You’re all right, Mammy. I’m right here beside you.’
Mary sighed and her hand tightened in Angela’s for a brief second. Then her hand fell away, there was rattle in her throat and the room was suddenly very still. Mary had gone and already Angela was feeling lost without her.
In the days that followed, Angela knew she couldn’t have coped so well without the neighbours’ support, particularly that of Maggie and Mike, who helped her arrange the funeral and were constantly there for her and for Connie too. The girl was bitterly distressed at her grandmother’s death. She would miss Mary a great deal. Although she had known how desperately ill she had been, and had sort of accepted the fact that she wouldn’t recover, she still felt her loss keenly.
‘It’s because death is so final,’ Angela tried to explain when Connie said how she was feeling. ‘No one can really prepare for a loved one’s death, even if it is expected. But she is gone now and we must go on through life without her.’
‘It’s hard, isn’t it, Mammy?’
Angela nodded. ‘It’s the hardest thing in the world,’ she said, and she gulped as tears ran down her face and she reached for her daughter and held her tight as she finished. ‘This is the greatest pain you will ever feel,’ she said. ‘It’s truly heart-breaking and we will have to do our best to comfort one another.’
Condolence letters with folded twenty-dollar bills inside came from Fin and Colm in New York. They had been kept abreast of Mary’s illness from the beginning, and they also included Mass cards so that Masses could be said for the repose of Mary’s soul. Angela put them on top of the coffin in front of the altar, along with the flowers from the neighbours.
The church was packed for Requiem Mass for Mary had been very well liked. Afterwards they walked behind the hearse to Key Hill Cemetery in Hockley where Mary would be buried next to her husband Matt. They stood around the grave Mary’s coffin had been lowered into, listened to more prayers for her soul and then threw the clods of earth on top of the coffin, which Connie thought the hardest thing she had ever done.
Breda Larkin had felt so sorry for Angela for the loss of Mary. She knew she had loved her dearly and that it would be hard for Connie too. She hadn’t known Mary that well herself but everyone said what a fine woman she was, so she offered to make up a spread for the guests after the funeral with her daughter’s help. Angela was glad to take her up on the offer and when she looked at the laden table she was so grateful, for Breda had done them proud and given Mary the send-off she deserved.
‘It’s a great pity none of her sons were able to make it for the funeral,’ Norah Doherty said to Angela.
‘She wouldn’t have expected them to, you know,’ Angela said. ‘She always said when a person goes to America it is like they are dead. Some don’t even write much. Both Fin and Colm were always good about the letter-writing, but she never expected to see either of them ever again.’
‘I suppose but …’
‘It would have been a great expense for them,’ Angela said. ‘And they have wives and families of their own now, and jobs, when not everyone does. Soup kitchens to feed the hungry and the homeless are operating in New York, so the lads told me, so maybe it isn’t a good time to leave jobs. It isn’t as if she’d know. In fact, if they’d come some time before she died, she was barely conscious a lot of the time and might have struggled to remember them.’
‘Aye, I suppose you’re right,’ Norah said. ‘Turning up for the funeral is only for the people left and that’s you and Connie. I am sorry to the heart for you both.’
‘Norah, I can’t explain what the loss of Mammy means to me, because the depth of feeling is so great,’ Angela said. ‘It will take me some time to get over it and Fin and Colm popping over for the funeral and then returning after would hardly help at all.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it would,’ Norah conceded. ‘Anyway, you know where my door is if you want anything. Who’s your Connie talking to over there?’ she said with a jerk of her head to the other side of the room.
‘Daniel,’ Angela said in surprise, for she hadn’t expected him to come and hadn’t noticed him arrive. ‘It’s Stan Bishop’s lad, though his name is Daniel Swanage now.’
‘Oh yes, I remember Mary telling me,’ Norah said.
‘I’d best go and have a word as he has made the effort to come,’ Angela said.
At that moment Daniel was saying to Connie, ‘How old are you?’
‘Fourteen in May,’ Connie said.
‘Oh, I’d have put you as older, sixteen or so.’
Connie laughed. ‘Thanks. Do I look that haggard?’
‘No, it’s not to do with how you look,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s how you are. I mean you are very mature for thirteen.’
Connie shrugged. ‘Well, that’s the age I am and it means I could leave school in the summer, like Sarah is going to. That is, if Mammy hadn’t got this crackpot notion of my getting my higher School Certificate and going on to college or university.’
‘I’m sure she is thinking of doing the best for you.’
Connie would have said more on the subject but she saw her mother approaching, so she fell silent as Angela reached them and said, ‘How lovely to see you again, Daniel. Did you know it was Mary’s funeral today or were you coming anyway?’
‘He knew,’ Connie put in. ‘I wrote and told him in case he wanted to come.’
‘I did,’ Daniel said. ‘I only wish now that I had known how ill Mrs McClusky was before she died.’
Angela shook her head. ‘She’d hardly have known you, Daniel. The doctor increased her medication and so she slept most of the time and often seemed disorientated when she did wake. She sometimes struggled to remember my name, but strangely always knew Connie’s.’
‘I’m sure you will miss her sorely.’
Tears stung Angela’s eyes at the sympathy in Daniel’s voice and Connie gave a gasp as the enormity of her loss threatened to overwhelm her. She turned from her mother and Daniel and hurried away. Daniel would have called her back but Angela stopped him.
‘Leave her be for now,’ she said. ‘Eventually we will help one another to cope, but she is still coming to terms with it herself just now.’
Daniel, though, was worried about the look of abject misery on Connie’s face as she’d turned from them and when Angela went off to greet other mourners he went looking for her. After a few minutes’ searching, he realised she was nowhere in the room or corridor and so went outside. He heard her before he saw her; she was hiding behind the dustbins and crying fit to break her heart and he was moved to pity for her.
She started when she heard him approach. He handed her his white pocket handkerchief and said, ‘Don’t feel embarrassed about crying. When a loved one dies you are bound to feel sad.’
He saw that she was shivering with cold and he stripped off his jacket and put it around her shoulders as he said, ‘It’s really too cold for you to be out here any longer though, particularly without a coat. Do you think you are ready to go back inside now?’
Connie wasn’t at all sure if she was emotionally ready or not, but Daniel was right, the cold was intense. She gave a brief nod and they went back in side by side and stood in the corridor together. She wished the funeral was over and everyone would go and she could give way to the grief she felt churning inside her.
Watching her, Daniel realised he had never felt deep sorrow like that. True, his mother had died at his birth, but he hadn’t really known of her existence till the solicitor’s letter, which had also told him of his father’s death. He had been angry with his aunt and uncle for not telling him the truth, and he regretted that he hadn’t been able to get to know him. But he hadn’t mourned the man he had never known. Daniel’s feelings then were not remotely like the gut-wrenching sadness Connie was obviously experiencing, which seemed to be sucking the life out of her.
Connie had thought she could do this funeral. Though she had cried for days after her grandmother’s death, she had thought she could cope with the funeral with dignity for her own sake, and to help her mother who she saw was behaving with iron control. She knew her mother had donned this façade like a second skin, because she had confided to Connie how bereft she was and she viewed the future as a bleak one without Mary in it.
That’s exactly how Connie felt. Daniel heard the sigh and said, ‘Are you all right?’
Connie took Daniel’s jacket off and handed it back to him. She shook her head as she said, ‘Not really. I don’t think I will be all right for ages. I don’t really understand myself because I didn’t really feel that much sorrow when I heard my daddy had died. The news of it caused Granny to have a heart attack that weakened her heart ever after it and Mammy was distraught. She tried to keep it from me but I would often hear her crying at night, and in the day, she was sort of hollow for ages – you know, not a proper person.
‘And she was always sad at Christmas and Granny would say that’s when she mourned Daddy more because Christmas was a time when many people miss lost family members most. I felt guilty that I didn’t miss Daddy more, but I can’t really remember him; he went away when I was too young. Mammy has a picture of him by her bed and I used to pray for him at night and kiss the picture. And though I have never told Mammy, for I’m sure she would be upset, to me it was just a picture, not a real flesh and blood person.’
‘You can’t really blame yourself for that,’ Daniel said. ‘I didn’t grieve for my father either.’
‘You didn’t know him at all.’
‘I didn’t know of his existence,’ Daniel said. ‘When my aunt and uncle were forced to tell me the truth because of the letter I had received, they said if I wanted to know anything more about my feckless father I should ask your mother and grandmother.’
‘And so you arrived at our door,’ Connie said. ‘I was really glad you came. It’s only right that you should want to know about your father.’
Daniel nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My aunt and uncle did me a grave disservice when they shut him out of my life. And though I have grown up calling them Mum and Dad, I no longer think of them that way and call them Aunt and Uncle. It upsets them, or at least upsets my aunt, but I feel that’s the price she must pay for caring so little for me and my feelings that she denied me a father.’
Connie had always felt sorry for Daniel and, listening to him now, she knew she had been lucky to have had the constant love of her mother and grandmother all her life. Had her father lived she was certain he would have loved her too because her mammy and granny always said he would.
‘Where did you go?’ Angela said, approaching them. ‘Everyone is asking about you and I couldn’t find you.’
‘I … I just stopped outside for a bit.’
Angela understood a lot from the tear-trails on her daughter’s face, the too bright shiny eyes and the hanky she still held in her balled fist. Her own eyes were full of sympathy as she said, ‘I won’t let it go on too long, I promise. But come away in now.’
So Connie and her mother accepted condolences from their friends and neighbours. There were a fair few people Connie didn’t know that well, but in one capacity or another they had known Mary McClusky. All the people from down the yard came to pay their respects, including Nancy Webster, Norah Doherty and Mick, Michael and Maggie, and Sarah and her mother Maeve. Angela also made it her business to introduce Daniel and so he was able to meet people who had known his father. He noted all spoke highly of Stan and in fact of both of his parents.
‘Did you mind people talking of your parents that way?’ Connie asked.
‘No, why should I have minded?’ Daniel said. ‘I liked it and though it doesn’t change the situation one iota it sort of warms me inside. It makes them real people somehow.’
Connie knew exactly what he meant and she realised she liked Daniel very much, but thought after the funeral they’d probably not see him again.
Angela must have thought the same for when she bade him goodbye she said, ‘Now don’t become a stranger to us. We all need friends in life and I’m sure your father would have liked me to be a friend of yours.’
‘I felt I had no reason to come,’ Daniel said. ‘My aunt said I shouldn’t impose.’
‘Daniel, you are a man now and must cut the ties a bit with your aunt and uncle and make your own decisions in life,’ Angela said. ‘Have you spent any of the money your father left you?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘I can’t decide what to do about it.’ Then he sighed and went on, ‘In a way I feel like my life is in a state of flux at the moment.’
‘You need friends at a time like this,’ Angela said. ‘If ever you feel you need to talk, remember my door is always open.’
‘I will,’ Daniel promised and shook both Angela and Connie warmly by the hand. They stood and watched him stride down the street till he turned and waved just before he turned in Bristol Passage.
Breda Larkin at the pub had told Angela not to hurry back to work, but Angela didn’t want to stay at home. There was too much time to think there, and Connie could quite see that because she was looking forward to going back to school too. She thought it was best to get back to normal routine as soon as possible.
‘It’s you I worry about,’ Angela said.
‘Why?’ Connie asked. ‘What’s there to worry about?’
‘It’s not the cleaning – you’re at school then and it doesn’t affect you. It’s leaving you alone while I pull pints at the pub.’
‘Mammy, I’m nearly fourteen, not a baby any more.’
‘I know that, but Mary was always with you before.’
‘Yes, but I was looking after her, not the other way round.’
‘She was company for you though.’
‘Mammy, she wasn’t,’ Connie protested. ‘She slept a lot in the evening, even when you were home, you know she did. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I wouldn’t have had time to talk to her even if she had wanted great conversation – with all the homework I have to do now I don’t have a lot of free time in the evenings.’
Angela knew Connie had a point; she was given extra homework, over and above what was set anyway to prepare her for matriculation. ‘So what you are saying is you don’t mind me working at the pub?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s Thursday now. I could start tomorrow evening.’
‘Do then.’
‘What will people think though?’
‘Who cares?’
‘They may think it’s too soon.’
‘They may or they may not but either way it’s not their business,’ Connie said. ‘Just because I am going back to school doesn’t mean I won’t miss and miss like mad the woman who has been a constant all my life who I loved dearly. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love Granny with a passion and I also know she would approve of what we are doing. We should do what pleases us and what would please Granny. Other opinions don’t really matter.’
Angela looked at her daughter with amazement, for she was absolutely right. This was the way forward for both of them.