Eventually life established a pattern. Rosie would get Bernadette and herself up and dressed before Rita and Betty came up the entry and then Georgie was left in Rosie’s house. The three women would be joined by others from doors and entries along the street until there would be a fair few of them waiting for the tram.
Danny would get Bernadette’s breakfast, and while she ate it he’d pour Gertie a cup of tea and spoon porridge into her mouth. Like Rosie, Danny always spoke to the old lady when he came in and out or when he was doing something for her. He didn’t know if she understood, but Rosie always said their voices seemed to soothe her. Gertie rarely answered, but she nodded and smiled and Danny thought that she liked being acknowledged.
After he delivered the children to nursery he seldom went straight back to the house, knowing it would be full of women doing personal things for Gertie, things it would be unseemly for him to watch, never mind do, and instead, every fine day he would often find himself going down to the clock tower at Aston Cross and along Rocky Lane, past the Dunlop’s works to the canal. The sludgy grey-brown water was as far from the babbling streams and rivers in Wicklow as it was possible to be and yet he liked the place.
Danny often felt that if he hadn’t the canal to visit each day, and the boaties to pass the time of day with, he’d have gone mad, for there were few other men about. The narrow boats and barges, many decorated with roses and castles in bright colours and of all different shapes and sizes, travelled up and down the canal carrying goods and sometimes people from one place to another. They held a fascination for him, as did the large shire horses that pulled many of them.
Danny was grateful for the friendship of the men on the canal, for while many ordinary people and employers saw Danny as a Catholic Irishman, therefore one of the rebels, a trouble-maker and a friend of the Hun, the boaties were different. They were a law unto themselves. He particularly liked a boatie called Ted Mason, and one day Ted said to him, ‘No-one’s got a good word for us, either. Calls us river gypsies. We ain’t gypsies and they ain’t got any right to say so.’
Danny sympathised with Ted, for his narrow boat was always spotless and gleaming. Danny was asked aboard for a meal one day after he’d helped Ted’s youngest son Syd leg the narrowboat through a tunnel after Ted had hurt his back. As the narrowboats had no engines, when a tunnel was reached, a child or woman would lead the horse around the tunnel to meet up on the other side while the rest of the family would have to haul the narrowboat through the water. The usual way to do this was to lie out on boards long enough for your feet to reach the sides of the tunnel and leg the narrowboat through.
Danny was surprised how much effort it had taken and how his legs had shook after it, and when Ted’s wife Mabel asked him in for a bite and a drink he accepted gratefully. However, when Danny went through the double doors to the cabin below, although the space was small he was amazed at what he saw.
To the left of him was the cooking stove, raised up on a plinth, and gleaming pots and pans hung on hooks around the stove while the chimney disappeared through a hole in the roof. Opposite the stove was a bench that Ted explained was turned into a bed at night. ‘Syd sleeps there,’ he said. ‘Len used to too before he was called up. Syd, thank God, is too young yet. He’s only sixteen.’
Syd looked anything but pleased by this news and Danny thought it was amazing how Ted and Mabel had reared such a surly son. Ted had explained before that the boy didn’t like the life on the canals. ‘He was born and bred to it. I can’t understand him at all,’ Ted said. ‘Our bed folds up against the far wall and that’s the bed he was born in, same as his brother. Now Len, he’s a proper boatie. Got a feel for it somehow, and I tell you I’ll be glad when this little lot is over and he’s back home again.’
Danny could plainly see the discontent in the younger boy’s face and thought it a pity he couldn’t see how fortunate he was. But then, whenever could a wise head be put on young shoulders?
‘Sit down, sit down,’ Mabel urged as Syd handed Danny a bottle of stout. ‘We were glad of your help today. Syd could never have got the boat through that tunnel on his own. Mind, Ted is his own worst enemy. He won’t see he’s getting older and has to take a bit more care.’
‘I’m not in my dotage yet, woman.’
‘I didn’t say you was.’
‘Stop the blether, woman,’ Ted said. ‘Me stomach thinks me throat’s been cut.’
‘I’ll cut you in a minute, Ted, you’re that aggravating,’ Mabel said, but Danny saw the twinkling in her eyes as she lifted the casserole dish from the oven and began to serve it onto the thick brown plates that Danny saw were stored in a cupboard hidden by the table, which would be folded up against it when not in use. As he ate he looked about the small cabin. Every piece of wood visible was stained and varnished and on the side panels were the rose and castle designs, and there were also shining brasses and plates of lace on the walls.
After the meal was washed down with the stout, Mabel got up to make the tea and Danny had never seen such a teapot. It was large and the same brown as the plates, but the knob on the top of it was in the shape of another miniature teapot, and the matching sugar bowl and milk jug had little crocheted circles covering them.
Ted, seeing Danny’s interest, was amused, and handing him a cigarette after the meal, he said, ‘What d’you think of it, then?’
‘I think it’s grand,’ Danny said. ‘I never imagined it to look anything like this. Were you always a boatman?’
‘Yeah, always, like my father before me and his father before him and so on. My grandfather didn’t live on a narrowboat, though, he had a cottage on the land but he was driven off by the railway in 1843 and had no alternative than to do what others before had done and live on the narrowboat. My dad was the first one of us to be born on a narrowboat, then there was me, and then our Len in 1887.’
‘What about school for the children?’
‘We teach them to write their name and reckon up and as much reading as they need to understand the toll tickets,’ Ted said. ‘That’s as much education as a boatie needs. It’s more important to understand the locks, be able to steer the boat and be strong enough to leg it through the tunnel. Book learning don’t teach them those things.’
‘I see that,’ Danny said. ‘And you have it lovely and cosy.’
‘Oh, Mabel keeps it like a new pin,’ Ted said. ‘We’re always proud of our boats.’
‘I’m not,’ Syd said. ‘I’m sick of it, piddling up and down a little ribbon of water and at a snail’s pace.’
‘We know your views only too well, young man,’ Ted growled. ‘And they needn’t be shared with visitors. When you’re a man you can decide for yourself, but for now you’ll do as you’re damn well told.’
Syd glowered but said nothing more, and as he burst through the swing doors, Danny heard Mabel give a sigh and he felt sorry for her. He wondered if father and son rowed often. It certainly seemed an ongoing argument and he remembered the rows his father used to have with Phelan and the little good it had done in the end. Still, this wasn’t his fight, and he felt guilty even having been witness to it. ‘Can you stick around for the next day or so,’ Ted asked suddenly, handing Danny a half-crown. ‘Just till me back is properly healed, to help with the heavy stuff and legging and that.’
‘As long as I can take and fetch the children from the nursery I can give you all the help you want,’ Danny said.
‘Good,’ Ted said. ‘Take half a crown today and more tomorrow depending on how long you work.’
‘Seems fair,’ Danny said, delighted to be earning, however little it was.
Rosie was pleased for Danny’s couple of days’ work and the odd jobs he picked up sometimes on other boats because of it. But she knew those odd shillings he brought home would be of little use to keep them all and when she became aware that she’d missed a period in August she was thrown into a panic. ‘What am I to do?’ she asked Rita and Betty at work the next day, biting her lip in agitation. ‘We can’t manage without my money.’
‘There are places…’ Rita began. ‘If you don’t want it like.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Rosie said appalled. ‘Get rid of it? Rita, what do you take me for? I’m a Catholic and couldn’t do such a thing.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Betty said. ‘Too bloody dangerous for one thing. Look,’ she said to Rosie, ‘It ain’t the end of the world, is it? I mean you can work for months yet, and I should have a word with them nuns and ask if they’ll take on a babby and…’
‘What about feeding the child?’
‘You ain’t the only one to work with a baby you know,’ Betty said. ‘They can have bottles of milk these days.’
‘That’s right,’ Rita put in. ‘Sadie Miller went back nearly straight after the baby was born. ‘Course, her mother lives just around the corner and she was showing me the bottle. It’s shaped like a boat and with a rubber titty on both ends. Anyroad, whatever you decide, you’d best tell your old man before he tumbles to it himself and realises half of the Kynoch’s workforce and all the neighbourhood have been aware of it before he was.’
‘Aye, Rita’s right,’ Betty said in support.
Rosie knew that Rita was right too, and yet she hesitated, not certain how Danny would react.
And when she told Danny in bed a few days later, he didn’t know how to react either. He should be delighted, for lovely as Bernadette was, she needed a playmate, and, deep down, he wanted a son. He kept this fact hidden from Rosie, knowing how she’d felt after Dermot’s birth. Had he been able to provide for his family properly he would have welcomed Rosie’s news, but as it was he was quiet.
‘Say something, Danny, for God’s sake,’ Rosie pleaded.
‘What?’ Danny snapped. ‘What can I say? I’m over the moon so I am, another child I can’t provide for.’
‘Don’t!’ Rosie cried, hurt and angry at Danny’s reaction. ‘You said that just as if you’re blaming me all the time, for having a baby and for having a job. Well, I might have got the job on my own, but you had something to do with this baby and don’t you forget it. A fine future the child will have with this sort of welcome from its own father.’
‘I’m sorry, Rosie,’ Danny said, chastened. ‘Don’t fret, I will love the baby well enough when it arrives, and I’ll try harder not to feel sorry for myself and secure some sort of job, any job, and as soon as possible.’
‘I’ll go back to work after I have the baby,’ Rosie said.
‘Oh no you won’t. I’ve told you, I’ll get a job.’
‘Fine!’ Rosie said. ‘But if you don’t, I can go back.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Rosie. How can you do that?’
‘As long as the nuns can take such a young baby on, I can manage it,’ Rosie said. ‘Other mothers have gone back.’
‘A baby needs its mother.’
‘Maybe, but they also need to eat and be kept warm,’ Rosie said. ‘Come on, Danny,’ she went on, conciliatory now. ‘Be reasonable. I know you’ll do your best, but if in the end it’s not enough, then there is this alternative.’
Danny shook his head. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like any of it, but what could he do about it – damned all, that’s what, and all the talk in the world wouldn’t change the situation. He sighed and put his arms around Rosie. He didn’t need to speak. She understood and kissed his cheek.
‘So de Valera is president of the Irish Volunteers as well as head of Sinn Fein,’ Danny said after reading the letter his mother had written. ‘He has the political and revolutionary movement all sewn up.’
‘Aye,’ Rosie said. She’d read the letter but she hadn’t time to worry over it much. Her pregnancy, now in its fifth month, was dragging her down. She’d been violently sick since September and not just in the morning either, and by November she was more than feeling the effects of it. It was harder each bleak, cold morning to push herself from her bed and out into the inky blackness with only tea to sustain her, for her stomach would accept nothing else.
She’d also developed a cough and wasn’t sure whether it was from the munitions or the cold, but the spasms often doubled her over and made her chest and back ache, and, together with the pregnancy, she often felt wretched.
Added to that, Gertie was failing fast and Rosie thought that the coming winter was going to be her last. She slept most of the time now, and had lost so much weight, for her appetite had dropped. Her wrinkled cheeks had sunk in and Rosie could see her ribs when she washed her gently. ‘Eat a wee bit more, Gertie?’ she would urge, holding the spoon out, but Gertie would keep her lips tight shut and shake her head. ‘Come on, to please me?’
‘She’s wasting away,’ she complained to Danny once. ‘It’s as if she’s given up.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Danny said. ‘I mean, what the hell has she got to live for?’
Little enough, Rosie had to acknowledge, for Gertie’s mind had gone a long time ago, and all she and her neighbours were doing was keeping her body ticking over. Obviously she had decided enough was enough, and after all, wasn’t that her decision?
She didn’t know what the Catholic position would be on that, though, and yet hesitated to ask Father Chattaway, for all she liked the priest at St Joseph’s, which was their nearest Catholic Church now. She didn’t want to be made to feel guilty about possibly not trying harder with Gertie, or be forced to send her to some institution or hospital, where they could sustain her some other way.
Danny agreed with her. ‘What could they do but force-feed her?’ he said. ‘Since I’ve been here I’ve been hearing what they did to the suffragettes before the war. It was an inhumane and barbaric way to treat women and many never fully recovered from it. You could never subject that frail old lady to such treatment. Don’t fret, Rosie. You do your best and so do the neighbours. They might have little time for me, but even I have to admit they are kindness itself to Gertie.’
Danny’s comments eased Rosie’s conscience for she knew however ill Gertie became, she could send her nowhere. A promise had been made to her that she’d never be put in the workhouse. Rosie could not renege on that and betray her in such a way.
None of her neighbours could recall the old lady going to any church that they knew of, and Rosie knew she would have to stir herself, for Gertie had no relatives to see to her funeral when she did pass away. She found the Reverend Gilbert at St Paul’s in nearby Park Road to be a very kind man, who seemed more worried about her than Gertie. And he was, for he saw a young woman who was obviously pregnant and yet far too thin, and one with an almost continuous rasping cough. When she said she worked at the munitions works he was thoroughly alarmed.
‘I must work,’ she said firmly when he expressed concern. ‘My husband is unable to find employment and we have a wee girl. Now there is the funeral to pay for. We will inherit Gertie’s house when she passes away and so I couldn’t live easy if I let her lie in a pauper’s grave.’
Reverend Gilbert admired the young woman’s plucky stance. The lilting voice told him where she’d come from and he guessed she was a Catholic. They always seemed to make much of death, often having a party after the funeral that some might think unseemly. They seemed to celebrate the life of the deceased and yet openly mourned their passing, and the vicar had a sneaking regard for that philosophy. To be able to grieve as well as remember with a certain amount of joy and pleasure the years the deceased had had on earth, was surely more healthy than the stiff upper lip many of his parishioners portrayed.
So he understood Rosie’s need to have the old lady buried decently when her time did come. ‘Shall I come and have a wee chat with her?’ he said.
‘You can come and welcome, Reverend, but Gertie is not up to chatting. She doesn’t know where she is half the time, her mind is wandering d’you see?’ Rosie told him.
But for all that, he did come, Danny told her one evening just a few days later. He sat by Gertie’s bed and talked to her and held her hand and Danny seemed impressed with him. ‘I’m glad he held her hand,’ Rosie said. ‘She likes that. When I hold her hand she is aware of it and her grip tightens. I think it comforts her. We don’t really know what goes through her mind. She may be afraid of dying. We’d never know, would we?’
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘And we can only do so much. And for now, you’ve done enough. You’ve coughed non-stop since you’ve come in and you’re puffing like an old steam train. Bed is the best place for you.’
Rosie didn’t need persuading. She tried valiantly and for quite a few days to hide the severity of her cough from her employer, fearing losing her job. She also tried hiding it from Danny and muffled her coughs in a pillow at night. The cold and damp didn’t help, nor did the cloying, acrid green-grey fog that often lingered through the day, seeping through anything a person held over their mouths. Gertie’s house too, like most houses in the court, was so damp the walls were often wet and none of this helped Rosie. Small wonder she didn’t seem to be getting better, but worse.
She looked down on Bernadette sleeping in the cot, tracing her face lightly and gently with one finger. The child stirred slightly and sucked more intently on her thumb and Rosie’s stomach contracted with such love for this child. She wondered if she’d ever love another baby as she loved her darling daughter. She was such a delight and a pleasure to rear, and so sunny and usually happy that she was a bit of a favourite in the court. Rosie prayed she would stay fit and healthy and catch nothing, including he mother’s cough, for the houses were breeding grounds for disease which often ran rampant through the entire place.
She shook herself mentally as she undressed and climbed into bed. What was the matter with her, worrying about things that hadn’t happened yet? Hadn’t she enough cares that she had to search for more? She closed her eyes and when Danny came up with a cup of tea, he found her fast asleep.
Gertie died on Monday 6th December and Rosie couldn’t be truly sorry, for she felt sure Gertie had wanted to go. The women collected from door to door for flowers and Rosie knew it was their way, but she’d have been glad of the money put towards the cost of the funeral; for even the price of the plainest of coffins alarmed her and it made a large hole in the money she had saved.
She wasn’t able to attend the funeral service the following Friday, for Catholics were not allowed to go to any service in another church, but she followed the hearse to Witton Cemetery to see her laid to rest. ‘You don’t need to do this,’ Danny had said. ‘Let me go. I could go along to the cemetery after I’ve taken the children to nursery.’
‘No,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘I must do this last thing and say goodbye to Gertie. Really, considering the age of her and the years she’s lived here, there will be few enough to show respect.’
Danny shook his head but didn’t argue further. He knew how obstinate Rosie could be at times, but later, after she’d gone, he watched the large raindrops slapping on the black ash, which he knew would in time turn it into dirty slurry, and heard the wind gusting against the windows, and worried about his wife. For now he could do nothing about Rosie, but he made sure he wrapped Bernadette and Georgie up well for their tram ride to Hunter’s Road.
The Reverend Gilbert would have told Danny he had reason to worry about Rosie. She stood surrounded by her friends, Ida and Rita and Betty, who’d each taken a day off work, more for Rosie’s sake than Gertie’s. The vicar was glad the woman had some support. She stood in the rain-sodden cemetery with the wind whistling around them and coughed the entire time he was intoning the few prayers over the coffin being lowered into the earth.
When Rita moved away from Rosie she staggered and would have fallen if Betty hadn’t held her. ‘Come on, girl,’ she said. ‘Home for you. You should never have come.’
‘I had to, for Gertie…’
‘Gertie wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself at risk, would she now?’ Betty said. ‘Not if she was in her right mind she wouldn’t.’
‘We must put the clods of earth on top of the coffin,’ Rosie protested as Betty steered her away.
‘D’you think for one minute the poor old sod will worry about that?’ Betty said firmly.
‘Betty’s right,’ Ida said, worried at her friend’s pallor. ‘Gertie is at rest now and worrying about nowt.’
The Reverend Gilbert had watched them go and he knew that unless great care was taken of Rosie, she could easily be the next candidate for the undertaker’s service. He called Rita to one side and advised her to call the doctor.
However, a doctor wasn’t called in lightly, for they cost money, and so Rita said nothing to Danny of the vicar’s advice. He could see for himself that Rosie had overtaxed herself and when he said she should get into bed without delay they supported him, despite Rosie’s protests that she was fine.
‘You’re not fine. Don’t be a bloody fool altogether,’ Betty said sharply. ‘You’ll have to have a few days from work I’m thinking, get yourself properly right.’
‘Oh no…I…’
Rosie made to rise from the chair she’d almost fallen into, but Rita pushed her back. ‘Stop it, Rosie, and show a bit of sense for God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘You have a wee child to think about and another you’re carrying. Think of them if you won’t think of yourself.’
Rita’s words did make Rosie think, and she eventually agreed to go to bed, but didn’t admit how glad she was to undress for she felt far from well. Her whole body ached and her chest burned. The coughing shook her whole frame, making her head swim, while the pain went in a band from her chest round to her back and then everywhere else, even to her fingers and toes.
‘Is this flannelette petticoat you took off the only one you have?’ Rita asked suddenly, for the women had followed her upstairs.
‘No,’ Rosie said. ‘I have another in the drawer in the chest. I bought two with the winter coming on.’
‘Do you mind if I cut the hem from this one?’ Rita said, holding it up. ‘Flannel soaked in warmed camphorated oil and placed on your chest helps. It brought our Georgie round when he had the whooping cough last year and I have some camphorated oil in the house.’
Rosie nodded her head, knowing she’d agree to anything that might help, and Rita began tearing the petticoat hem into strips.
Despite the women’s loving care, Rosie worsened as the day wore on. The women stayed with Rosie while Danny went to fetch the children home, and shortly after he returned Rita went home with Georgie and took Bernadette too. Eventually there was only Betty left, for Ida had gone home too to see to her family. ‘Should I fetch the doctor, Betty?’ Danny asked her. ‘I’m worried sick about her.’
‘I would,’ Betty said. ‘You should catch him at evening surgery if you go now.’
‘Will you stay with her?’
‘’Course I will. I ain’t got the same calls on my time as Rita and Ida.’
‘I’m grateful, Betty.’
‘Get away with you,’ Betty said. ‘What are neighbours for if it ain’t for helping each other? Go and fetch the bloody doctor and see what he can do to put our Rosie right.’
Danny was glad to go, glad to get away from having to watch his wife struggling to breathe. She was semi-delirious and sweating so much the sheets were damp, and she threshed on the bed and was too weak to lift herself when the coughing fits shook her whole body.
He hated to see her suffering so and he castigated himself for ever bringing Rosie to this disease-ridden place of squalor.
She might not have been safe at the farmhouse, though. Desperate things were happening in Ireland, although perhaps she could have been left in Dublin. Maybe the nuns or Father Joe could have found her and Bernadette a safe place to live.
Instead of giving that any thought at all, he’d fled to Birmingham, where they lived in a damp slum, and he hadn’t even the wherewithal to pay the rent or put food on the table. So he’d allowed his wife to work in a dangerous factory and couldn’t even insist she stopped when she became pregnant, or when she first developed that hacking cough. He felt he could insist on little while he had no job himself. And now he had the doctor’s bill to look forward to, from savings depleted already by the cost of Gertie’s funeral. However, none of this mattered. That was just money, for God’s sake. What mattered was getting Rosie fit and healthy again.
‘Bronchitis,’ Doctor Anthony Patterson said after examing Rosie. ‘And a bad dose of it. I should have been called much sooner. Keep a sharp eye on her, for if she’s not careful she’ll develop pneumonia and then we’re really in trouble.’
‘I’ve been putting hot camphorated oil on flannels and laying them on her chest,’ Danny said. ‘A neighbour told me it helped her son.’
‘Probably did,’ the doctor commented. ‘And it can’t do any harm, but your young wife is in a bad way. I’ll make up a lotion for you to put on her back as well as her chest and something to ease that cough. That’s all I can do.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Danny said. ‘Is…is Rosie very infectious? You see we have a little girl.’
‘Keep her well away if you want her to survive,’ the doctor said. ‘Children often haven’t the strength to fight diseases such as these. As for the child she’s carrying…well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Call me in again if you need me.’
All through Saturday and Sunday Bernadette stayed at Rita’s, for after the doctor’s warning, Danny couldn’t risk having her in the house. Rosie, meanwhile, coughed and spluttered and fought for each gasping breath and tried to ignore the griping pains encircling her stomach from her back. Occasionally she couldn’t prevent a groan escaping her, but if one of the women attending her asked if she had pains, she always shook her head.
She told herself she’d be fine. Bed was the best place. That’s all she needed, a wee rest and she’d be grand again in time, and the baby would be born in just over three months’ time, fine and healthy. She tried to curb her coughing and when she couldn’t help herself she put her arms around her stomach protectively.
She knew Danny was worried about her and she told him not to be, she’d be better in time and he was the one lying on a tick mattress beside the bed, which Betty had loaned them. It could be neither comfortable nor warm enough with just the one blanket, but whenever Rosie said anything, Danny told her not to waste her concern on him but to concentrate all her energies on getting better.
Then, on 14th December, Ida was staying with Rosie while Danny took the children to nursery and she’d popped down to make a drink for them both when she heard Rosie give a cry. She galloped up the stairs to see Rosie in bed, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘Oh help me, Ida. Please, please do something.’
Ida threw back the covers and saw the water soaking the bedding and knew, early or not, Rosie’s waters had gone and she doubted the baby could be saved.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry, duck,’ she said, giving Rosie’s arm a squeeze.
‘Do something, Ida,’ Rosie cried desperately. ‘God, I’m not even six months gone.’
Ida shook her head slowly, although her own eyes glistened with tears.
And then Rosie gave an agonised moan and drew her legs up to her chin, just as Danny came in the front door. He heard the sound and came bounding up the stairs.
‘Oh Jesus Christ, what is it?’ he cried, seeing his wife in so much distress.
‘She’s miscarrying,’ Ida told him quietly. ‘Her waters have gone.’
‘Shall I fetch the doctor?’
‘No, I’ll ask one of the nippers to go,’ Ida said and Danny nodded his head.
‘Please, I’d be grateful,’ Danny replied and then with another look at his wife said, ‘and the priest. Ask Father Chattaway to come too.’
‘It’s too soon,’ Rosie gasped. ‘Much too soon.’
The doctor knew that too, but also doubted that Rosie could have carried the child full-term, for even as he examined her, her coughing racked her body and she groaned with the pains encircling her stomach.
Instinctively, Rosie tried to keep hold of the child, trying not to push when the contractions came. But then she’d be overcome by a spasm of coughing, and through each one the child seemed to slip further away from her, nearer to the world it would never grow up in.
Father Chattaway sat before the fire, keeping Danny company and fearing for the emotional turmoil of the woman above them, seriously ill and in the throes of a childbirth that was months too early.
‘Hush, easy,’ the doctor said to Rosie. ‘Gently now.’ But tears of helplessness ran down Rosie’s face. ‘Dear God,’ she cried. ‘Help me, please.’
However, she knew in her heart it was no good. God wasn’t listening to her. She knew she would eventually give birth to a child she wouldn’t rear and she wanted to scream and hurl things, but she hadn’t the energy to do either.
‘Come on now,’ the doctor chided, but gently for he was smote with pity for the young woman. ‘It’s got to come out, you know that. You must push.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can and it will be for the best in the end. When the next one comes, you must push.’
Rosie gave a sigh and yet she knew that the doctor was right and though she gave a howl of dismay she was ready with the next contraction and pushed until she could push no more. And she continued to push and Ida encouraged her and held her hand while the doctor’s hands worked to help the child into the world.
It was a little boy, tiny and quite dead, but perfect, and even the doctor’s heart constricted. Tears seeped from Ida’s eyes at the pity of it. ‘I want him baptised,’ Rosie said. She knew unbaptised children could not enter heaven, but existed forever in limbo, and she wanted none of that for her son.
‘I can’t baptise him, you know that, Rosie,’ the priest told her. ‘The child didn’t live.’
‘You can, you must,’ Rosie cried and when the priest again shook his head sadly Rosie began to scream and the sounds seemed to bounce off the walls and went on and on, and brought the doctor running up the stairs to see Rosie threshing on the bed. He knew she would have to be sedated and he took the ether out of his bag, and with the priest holding her as still as he could the pad was placed over her mouth and held tight.
‘What brought this on?’ the doctor asked when Rosie had succumbed to the anaesthetic.
‘She wanted the child christened, but I couldn’t do it.’
‘No, of course,’ the doctor said. ‘She wasn’t in her right mind.’
‘I know that,’ the priest said. ‘Can you deal with the body? I think all trace of it should be removed before she wakes.’
‘I’ll see to it. Don’t fret.’
Rosie went rapidly downhill for a few days after the baby’s birth. When she awoke from her drugged sleep and found the child’s body gone, she wept scalding tears of grief. It was as if she’d not given birth at all, as if it had all been some terrible, awful dream. There was no name, no Requiem Mass, no funeral, no grave, and Rosie didn’t really care if she recovered or not.
‘How is she?’ Rita asked as she popped in on her way home from work one day.
Ida, who had taken on the main bulk of the nursing through the week with Betty and Rita at work, shrugged. ‘As you’d expect,’ she said. ‘The death of the baby hasn’t helped and she’ll need to take care for she is quite poorly.’
Betty and Rita knew Ida spoke the truth and knew too it would be the network of women who would care for Rosie.
Danny was often overwhelmed by Rosie’s grief, but the women seemed to take it in their stride and share in it, putting their arms around Rosie and crying alongside her just as easily as they raised her from the bed when the coughing spasms threatened to choke her.
Danny, without much hope of finding employment, especially this close to Christmas, was often drawn to the canal where he’d stay until the cold drove him home. There he would find the house cleaned and tidied and often there might be a nourishing meal left cooking in the range, for he was a man, and therefore not considered capable of cooking much and especially not food for a sick person.
He had no need to worry about washing and ironing clothes either, for the women took it in turns to do the Walshes’ wash with their own. Danny couldn’t help but be grateful for this, but it made him feel totally useless. He didn’t know what to do about money either, for they had so little left now. The worry was pressing upon him and causing his head to pound with it. He couldn’t share this with Rosie. How could he load her with a problem she had no way of solving and one which might worsen her already precarious state of health?
Betty, however, knew things must be bad. Gertie’s funeral was enough to pay for without doctor’s bills for Rosie. Danny was going around as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and so she popped in after work one evening when there was the chance of catching him alone.
Danny wasn’t surprised to see her, thinking she had come to see Rosie, but she shook her head when he walked across to the door to the stairs. ‘No, not yet, Danny,’ she said. ‘I’ll go up and see Rosie in a minute. I want to ask you about money.’
Danny eyed her cautiously. ‘Ask away,’ he said and added an attempt at levity, ‘but don’t ask for a loan for I haven’t the funds just at the moment.’
‘Be serious, Danny.’
‘I’ll be serious if that’s what you want,’ Danny burst out. ‘I’m worried to bloody death about money and that’s the truth. I have just about two shillings and that is all we have in the world, and we’re nearly out of coal. The rent is due tomorrow and the cupboards are bare. Is that serious enough for you?’
‘And there’s no work about at all?’
‘Would I be sitting on my behind all day like this if there was?’ Danny asked, and added, ‘One thing I’m not is work shy.’
‘All right, lad. Don’t bite me bleeding head off.’
‘I’m sorry, Betty. I know it isn’t your fault, but I’m at my wits’ end and don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, lad, I can see that,’ Betty said. ‘And all I can suggest is that you go down the Town Hall and see about this here poor relief.’
‘It’s given to families what’s fell on hard times like. Don’t know much about it and thank God I’ve never had need of it, so far at least, but I know of many that has. That’s your best bet.’
Danny hated the thought of accepting money like that. It was like charity, but he couldn’t afford the luxury of pride while he had a sick wife and wee child. He said nothing to Rosie for it might distress her to find out how very nearly destitute they were, but as soon as he’d delivered the children to the nursery the following morning, he went off to the city centre.