Chapter 29

During the night the temperature plummeted and Martha woke up shivering. She got out of bed and looked in on Irene. The coat that had been draped over the blanket to provide some extra warmth on the cold winter night had fallen to the floor and Martha gently replaced it.

‘Is that you, Mammy?’ Irene whispered.

‘Sure who else would it be checking on you in the middle of the night?’

‘I’m freezing.’

‘I know. I was going to refill your hot-water jar.’

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘There’ll still be a bit of warmth left in the kitchen, so give me a few minutes to get the fire going again then come down and sit while the kettle boils to fill the jar.’

Soon they were sitting next to the range wrapped in their eiderdowns sipping tea.

‘You’ll need to start sleeping through the night when you go back to work next week, Irene.’

‘I know, but maybe it’ll be better then. I’ll have other things to concentrate on. You can’t let your mind wander when you’re riveting.’

‘Are you sure you’re strong enough to go back to all that?’

‘Macy says they’re working flat out at the factory. They’ve a big new order for Sterling bombers so they need everyone they can get. I might as well make myself useful because there’s no chance I’ll be back in Enniskillen for a while, not with all the extra staff there to protect the Atlantic convoys.’ Irene’s defiant tone broached no further argument; they’d been over all this before.

They sat a while staring at the glowing coals, both aware that the sad event on the night of the concert had not really been discussed. Peggy and Sheila had been told only that Irene had suffered a haemorrhage and would need a week off work. Pat and Martha had not spoken of it either together or with Irene. But tonight, in the warm kitchen by the light of the fire, Irene felt able to talk.

‘I was very frightened. I didn’t know what was happening to me, didn’t even know there had been a baby, until they told me it was lost. I keep thinking it should be here still. I would feel it growing every day. I would write to Sandy and tell him and he would be happy … I would be happy.’

In the range, the coals shifted in a spray of tiny sparks.

‘It just wasn’t to be,’ said Martha, ‘but there’ll be others.’

‘But there’ll never be this one. This one is lost. I’ll have to write to Sandy and tell him.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘But … how can I not?’

Martha shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to know. Sometimes it’s for a woman to grieve alone.’ The silence stretched between them until eventually Martha spoke again. ‘When you were very small, before Pat was born, I had a baby … a boy. He lived only a few weeks. I never imagined a man would grieve so hard. I always thought it was the woman who bore the brunt of it, but your father felt the loss of that wee boy all his life.’

Irene stared at her mother, who continued to look at the fire, and saw her now in a different light. She saw clearly what had always been there, behind and beneath – that her mother expected little and was grateful for small mercies, and that she would always worry about her children and find it hard to let them go.

‘What was he called?’

‘Robert, after his daddy. Ah well, they’re together now I’m sure.’

There were other reasons why Irene was glad to be going back to work rather than whiling away her life at home with her mother. Being a riveter was hard and, truth be told, dangerous work, but she loved the sense of achievement in doing the job and there was nothing better at the end of a shift than casting her eye over the rows of perfectly flush and aligned rivets along the carcass of a bomber. Best of all, there was the company of Macy and her other friends in the aircraft factory and the craic in the canteen during their breaks.

Throughout January rumours were rife that the US Army was on its way to Belfast. Outside of her family, Irene had said nothing about the fact that a small number been in Enniskillen for some time.

Then one morning in the canteen, a woman who worked in the stores came in singing, ‘The Yanks are coming! The Yanks are coming!’ at the top of her voice. ‘You’d better get behind me in the queue, girls, for I’m havin’ first pick off the boat!’

‘How do you know they’re coming?’ asked Macy.

‘Because me brother works down on Dufferin Quay and he knows for a fact that an American troopship is going to dock there later today. So it’s not hard to guess where I’ll be after work.’

The long anticipated arrival of American troops was discussed up and down the factory. Expectations were high that their involvement in the war would be the beginning of the end for the Germans.

‘After more than two years, it could be all over by the summer,’ someone said.

‘I hope there’s time to get to know the Yanks before they go back home,’ said another.

Irene wasn’t so sure. ‘It’s taken nearly three years for the Germans to spread across Europe, it could take the same again to send them back where they came from.’

When the hooter sounded to end the shift, the workers rushed through the factory gates. Some went home for their tea but a good few, the majority of whom were women, headed for the dockside to see if they could catch a glimpse of the Americans. The late afternoon had turned misty and a light drizzle had wet the streets, but the crowd was good-humoured. Lots of the girls linked arms and chatted and laughed, caught up in the excitement: ‘They say they’re very tall.’ … ‘Sure they’ll look like film stars, so they will.’ … ‘I’m on the lookout for Clark Gable, myself.’

The gates to Dufferin Quay were closed, but the word was that the Americans would march out, so the crowds waited outside. Those near the front could already see the ship approaching and as it came nearer they caught sight of hundreds of men lining the decks as eager to see what awaited them at a British port as the crowd lining the pavements were to see them.

It was a long wait while the ship docked, but no one minded. They shouted out greetings to each other and waved. One girl, with sharper eyes than the rest, spotted a soldier on the top deck and screamed in delight. ‘It’s a black man, look! Look! A black man!’ and those around her began waving and shouting too.

When the ship was secure and the gangplanks fastened the troops began to disembark. As they did so the band of the Royal Ulster Rifles, waiting on the quayside, struck up ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and from outside the gates a lone voice sang along, accent and word perfect; a young woman with flaming red hair proudly welcoming her fellow Americans to Northern Ireland.

The troops marched through the gates to the sound of clapping and cheering and boarded the trucks waiting to transport them to army camps all over the Northern Ireland. Only then did the crowd become aware of the unmistakeable thud of heavy anti-aircraft guns in the distance, synchronised with the tramp of marching feet.

As her apprentice, Irene worked alongside Macy all day taking direction and advice on simple riveting and assisting her with the more complicated jobs. The one characteristic that set Macy apart from Irene’s other friends was that she was open and direct to a fault. She cared little about what others thought of her and always spoke her mind and at length. But when Irene returned to work she thought it strange that Macy didn’t mention Finn.

‘Are you still going out with him?’ she asked.

Macy glanced in the direction of the men working a little distance away then flashed Irene a look. ‘No, never see him at all.’ And she bent to her work again.

Later in the canteen Irene spoke to her about it. ‘What was all that about back there when I asked about Finn?’

Macy leant towards her and whispered, ‘Finn doesn’t want me to mention him to anyone. He said it would be better if no one knew I was going out with a Catholic.’

‘I don’t think they’d care, would they?’

Macy shrugged. ‘Finn said they would.’

‘So is it serious between you?’

‘He seems to think it is.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, maybe you should keep your options open now that there are so many Americans around,’ Irene laughed.

Over the Easter holiday Irene travelled down to Enniskillen and stayed with Sandy in a bed and breakfast for a few nights. She was a little nervous about seeing him again after four months, but he seemed even shyer than she was. They went to Lough Erne for the day.

He had brought a picnic from the NAAFI and when they’d eaten he said, ‘Come on, I’ll teach you how to fish.’ He’d brought his own fishing line. ‘I fish on my day off,’ he told her. ‘It gets me off the base for a few hours and out in the fresh air.’

He showed her how to bait the hook and cast the line then she stood for a while on the little jetty watching the red and white float drifting on the water.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ she shouted after a while.

‘Och, have you no patience, woman?’ and she smiled at his soft Scottish accent. He came to her and kissed her briefly before taking the line and checking the bait. She sat with her feet dangling over the water and watched him recast. This was how she first fell in love with him that day in July 1939 on a day trip with her friend Theresa to Stranraer. She had taken a walk with him along the harbour wall to where some wee boys were fishing and he’d helped them with their lines. Now here they were, married a year, and there was that same shy smile that made her heart skip a beat.

When Irene returned to work after the Easter break, the talk was all about the shooting of a policeman in the Lower Falls area.

‘D’ye see them uns,’ said one of the skivvying women from number four hangar, ‘they’re a disgrace, so they are, running round burnin’ food warehouses when this country is fighting for its life and the men on them supply boats is riskin’ their lives so we don’t starve altogether. Now they’re armed and shootin’ policemen! They should lock up those bloody IRA men and throw away the key!’

‘You don’t know it’s them,’ said Macy.

The woman glared at her. ‘Are you stupid or something? Who else in this city shoots policemen? Bloody Yank, what do you know? Unless you’re one of those Irish Americans tryin’ to bounce us into the Free State?’

Around three in the afternoon the foreman marched into hangar four flanked by two policemen and went straight to the plane where Macy and Irene were working. They halted at the bottom of the steps and one of the policemen called out, ‘Police! Miss Macy come down here immediately!’

A few moments later Macy appeared at the door of the plane. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘We need you to come to the police station. We believe you can help us with our inquiries.’

‘What inquiries? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘It would be better for you if you came with us now. We’re investigating a serious matter.’

At that moment the woman who had argued with Macy in the canteen shouted, ‘There ye are, didn’t I tell ye she was a republican!’

Macy began to climb down the ladder and Irene called after her, ‘I’ll come with you.’

Macy turned. ‘No you won’t, Irene. I’ll not have you dragged into this mess,’ and she let herself be led down the steps and out of the building.

It was two days before Macy returned to the aircraft factory. In the meantime, Irene had listened to the rumours become more and more outrageous: Macy was a member of the IRA; a German spy; she wasn’t an American at all. Some people turned on Irene, ‘You’re her friend – you must know what she’s done!’

To which Irene simply replied, ‘She’s my friend and I know she wouldn’t do anything wrong.’

Shortly after the day shift began on the second day, the policemen returned to hangar four, this time accompanied by Macy and the managing director of Short Brothers and Harland – a man only ever seen arriving and leaving in his Rolls Royce.

He addressed the workers: ‘Miss Macy is returning to work today. She has been assisting the police with some vital war work, so important that they are unable to say what it involved. But be clear about one thing – she is an American citizen who came to Northern Ireland to help with the war effort by using her considerable skill as a riveter. She is an honest and brave woman and we are lucky to have her here.’

The workers seemed to accept the explanation, after all Macy was popular in the factory, but Irene caught sight of the woman who had accused Macy of being a republican. She stood in the middle of her friends, arms folded, with a face that could sour milk.