Although, Dermot found 42 Upper Thomas Street with no trouble, he had no idea what ‘6 the back of 42’ even meant. In fact, the whole place unnerved him. He wondered where the children played, for there was no space that he could see and it bothered him that Rosie was living amongst such grey drabness.
Eventually he asked a little boy playing with dust piles in the gutter where ‘6 the back of 42’ was. ‘Down the entry, mister,’ the boy said, pointing into the darkness with a jerk of his thumb, and Dermot walked down the cobbles of the entry to the yard beyond, where he stood looking about him in horrified disbelief, much as Rosie had on her first visit.
Then he collected his wits about him. He’d come to help Rosie, not judge the place she lived in, and he approached number six and lifted the knocker.
Rosie had just finished removing the last of the rags from Bernadette’s hair and was brushing it into beautiful golden ringlets, and Danny had gone up to fetch the baby, who’d just woken, when the knock came at the door. ‘Who on earth can that be?’ Rosie said to Bernadette. ‘Knocking on the door and at this hour on a Sunday morning.’ She moved her daughter away as she spoke, got to her feet, crossed the room and opened the door.
Three and a half years before, when Rosie left Ireland, Dermot had been a wee boy. Now she saw a young man and a well-dressed one too, for she could see the white shirt and tie beneath his thigh-length and well-cut coat. His trousers were navy pin-stripe with turn-ups and his shoes shiny black leather. And so she said questioningly, ‘Dermot?’ She could hardly believe it, and anyway, what would her young brother be doing here?
‘Do you not know me?’ Dermot said with a laugh, and even that was strange for Dermot had the voice of a man.
But man or boy, Rosie was overjoyed to see him. She led him inside eagerly and put her arms around him, realising in that moment how much she’d missed them all back home. Her head was teeming with questions, but they would be answered in time. For now it was enough to hold Dermot tight, though she could have wept for the lost years when this boy had grown to the edge of manhood without her.
At that moment Danny stepped through the door with the baby in his arms, and Bernadette, shy of the man she had no recollection of who was hugging her mammy, crossed to her father’s side. Danny, though, had eyes only for the boy, who he had recognised immediately, and he wondered if his appearance had anything to do with the letter he’d sent. He approached Dermot with his one free arm outstretched. ‘Dermot? Where the hell have you sprung from?’
Dermot broke away from the embrace to shake Danny’s hand, but he didn’t mention the letter. He had an idea Danny wouldn’t like him to and that it had probably been written without Rosie’s knowledge, so he just said, ‘I came over to see how you were doing. We’d heard nothing for weeks and were concerned.’
And then he looked at the baby. He was very small and he remembered that the letter had said he was premature. Danny put him over his shoulder as he began to howl again.
Bernadette put her hands over her ears. ‘He’s always doing that,’ she said.
‘So would you, miss, if you hadn’t had your breakfast,’ Rosie said, and then she said to Dermot, ‘Take off your coat or you’ll not feel the benefit when you go out.’
When Dermot removed his coat, Rosie just looked at him, for the suit he wore was the smartest she’d ever seen. ‘God, Dermot, you look the business and about twenty years old.’
‘It was Sarah’s wedding yesterday.’
‘Of course.’ Rosie should have known. It was all Connie had talked about for weeks. If she’d been writing her weekly letter she’d have been well aware of it.
‘Well, it’s a grand suit all right,’ Danny said. ‘You’ll be almost too well-dressed for Mass. Did the wedding go off all right?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
‘Wasn’t there. But…?’
‘I was supposed to be there. I was one of the ushers, but I was so worried when we hadn’t heard from you. We all were. I knew when they were all at the wedding it would be my chance to slip away unnoticed. It was also my one chance to go into the Walshes’ place and get your address, for your mammy wouldn’t give me as much as a sniff of it, Danny. How did you think I found out where you lived?’
‘I assumed Connie gave it to you.’
‘Well, she didn’t,’ Dermot said. ‘She wouldn’t, and Birmingham is a big place to search for a body without a clue or two.’
Dermot looked at his sister now. He’d been shocked by her pasty face and the extreme thinness; he’d felt her bones as he’d held her. But it was her sorrow-filled eyes that troubled him most.
As Danny sat at the table to feed the baby, Dermot moved beside Rosie before the range and said, ‘Why did you tell no-one of the baby, Rosie?’
Rosie stared at him. ‘You know everything and you have to ask that question?’ she said. ‘You know of the first baby I lost, after carrying for nearly six months; that all our family in Ireland were awaiting the birth of it, praying for it, longing for it as much as we were. When I miscarried, the doctor said it was one of those things, and Father Chattaway said I had to accept the will of God and please God there’d be another child in due course.
‘I packed away the baby things of Bernadette’s that I had washed in preparation and the few garments I’d knitted, and returned the cradle Danny had fashioned from orange boxes to the top of the cupboard in the attic. I wrote letters telling everyone the sad news and received letters of condolence in reply.’
Dermot was silent, everyone was silent, even the baby had stopped sucking, and Dermot had the feeling he was listening to the outpouring of Rosie’s very soul. He saw she was unaware of the tears trailing over her cheeks as she swallowed and went on. ‘But life goes on. I got over my tragedy and in time, just as Danny was forced to enlist, I became pregnant again. This time those in Ireland went to town; there were Masses said, candles lit, novenas undertaken, the rosary said. I felt surrounded by the Catholic Church and I felt sure God would not punish me in such a way again.
‘But on the morning after peace was declared, hostilities at an end, a day of jubilation and happiness, I began to lose my baby. Danny was still overseas and I coped alone and thanked God for my neighbours who helped me and sustained me and wrote to Ireland after it was over, when I was unable to.’
‘And then I found out that the munitions factory I’d worked in when I first came to England might be the cause. The sulphur could have got into my bloodstream and would probably poison any child I carried. The doctor was doing a study on the history of stillbirths and miscarriages in women who worked in such places, and also those who couldn’t become pregnant at all, and I knew then, the deaths of those two wee babies could be laid at my door.’
Rosie gave a gulp at this point and more tears ran from her eyes, which she’d closed, as if in pain, while she bit agitatedly on her bottom lip. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Rosie,’ Danny cried. ‘I’ve told you over and over.’
He crossed the room and passed his son to Dermot without a word and took his wife in his arms. She didn’t push him away but continued to talk, her words muffled now by Danny’s arms, but Dermot caught them. ‘I didn’t want to try for any more children after that. What was the point, I thought, when I can’t carry them, and, oh God, I nearly died from the pain each time. Anthony was the child I should never have had.
‘I refused to believe I was pregnant at first, and each week, each day, I expected my baby to lose his tenuous hold on life. I waited to miscarry. I couldn’t afford to let myself care. Even when the baby was born he was a month premature and hastily christened before I’d even recovered from the operation I had to have to give birth to him at all. His life hung in the balance for days. Don’t you see how it was?’
‘Of course I see,’ Dermot said. ‘And I see how you suffered when you lost the other babies, Rosie. It’s written all over your face. But when you had the child you thought you’d never carry and he’s here and alive and thriving, aren’t you delighted so? Isn’t it a sort of consolation?’
Rosie looked at her young brother and knew he loved her and admired her and found she couldn’t tell him how she resented the baby and everything his father did for him. She told herself Danny cared for him far more than Bernadette, for he’d never taken so much notice of her when she was so small. A small but insistent voice continued to remind her that there was no need for Danny to do such things for Bernadette, for Rosie had done them, and if ever Rosie couldn’t there had been a host of relations ready and willing to take her place. She pressed these words down. She couldn’t deal with that, for she needed the resentment to fester inside her, lest she start to feel anything for the wee mite she had given birth to. How could she say that to a young boy, and Dermot for all his size was a young boy, and expect him to understand something she found hard to comprehend herself? How could she take his condemnation if she was to admit this to him. No, she couldn’t risk that.
So she parried. ‘We haven’t time to go into this all now, Dermot.’
‘Time enough,’ Danny said, taking his son back. ‘This young man is not halfway through his breakfast yet.’
Rosie’s eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t play Danny’s games. She wasn’t ready to be harassed in this way and Danny should know that.
She turned to Dermot. ‘Okay, Dermot, since there’s time to talk, have you thought what will happen to the girls when Mammy finds you gone?’
‘They are to say they knew nothing about it.’
‘Come on, Dermot, you’re not a wee boy any more. You know what Mammy is capable of and you know she’ll never believe they knew nothing.’ Rosie had suffered for years at the hands of her mother and knew the kind of thing her sisters would be subjected to.
Dermot knew too, but he didn’t want to face it. ‘They’re to swear it. I said I’d write a letter claiming the idea was mine as soon as ever I could and say I’d told them not a word.’
‘D’you think that will help any?’ Rosie cried. ‘Haven’t you realised yet that our mother thinks the sun shines out of your bleeding arse, but she hasn’t a morsel of feeling for the rest of us?’
Bernadette’s eyes opened wide with shock. Bleeding and arse were bad words and her mammy had said she’d smack her legs if she heard her saying them. She was going to remind her mammy of it, but one look at her angry face convinced her it would be better to say nothing just at that moment.
‘The fact that you disappeared without a word is bad enough, Dermot,’ Rosie said. ‘But when she realises you are here…God, Dermot, she’d kill the girls stone dead.’
Dermot digested all Rosie said and knew she was right. He knew his mother wouldn’t take his flight to England in a controlled and rational manner. It wasn’t her style. His sisters hadn’t believed that either, though they’d gone along with it to please him, and he knew his sisters’ trepidation and nervousness would betray their guilt. ‘I’ll write the letter today, directly we’re home from Mass,’ Dermot said. ‘I’ll make her see it was my idea and only mine.’
Rosie said nothing, for really there was nothing further she could say.
True to his word, Dermot wrote the letter to his mother, shouldering the entire blame, and another to Connie in which he admitted overhearing her reading the letter and the anxiety resulting from it that caused him to steal away on the day of Sarah’s wedding. He also told of entering the empty house to find the address.
He told Connie and his sisters of other more positive things too: the charm and beauty of Bernadette, now a schoolgirl, and of the baby, so small and frail still, despite being almost six weeks old, and the warm welcome he’d received from Danny and Rosie who had been delighted to see him.
He never mentioned the concerns he had, like the way it was Danny not Rosie who carried Anthony to Mass, wrapped in a shawl, and that Danny took him outside when he became fractious, and Danny who amused the baby while Rosie made them all porridge for breakfast. It was thin porridge, made with water with no sugar or creamy milk to mix with it. ‘Bernadette is the only one who gets sugar,’ Rosie told Dermot when he asked. ‘We take salt.’
Bernadette, not being Communion age yet, had already been given a slice of bread and dripping before Mass, but now she had porridge with everyone else on their return, but hers was sprinkled with one small teaspoon of sugar.
The porridge did nothing to fill Dermot but he didn’t complain, knowing that they could probably afford no more, and resolved to go out the following morning and use his money to buy some decent food and give them a wee bit of a treat for once.
He went to bed after he’d written the letters, wearied by the journey and lack of sleep he’d had. But as he lay on the shakedown in the attic he was disturbed by the crush of people and noise all around him: the raucous voices of gossiping women and the deeper ones of the men; the clatter of boots and the screaming laughter of children, a baby crying, the odd bark of a dog, or yowl of a cat, all overridden by the clanking of the trams and rumble of the automobiles going along the Lichfield Road.
He fell to thinking about Rosie. He remembered how sad he’d felt when he read about the stillbirth and miscarriage. Her sisters had cried and Connie’s eyes had been red-rimmed when he’d taken around their cards and letters to send. Even Danny’s daddy and Phelan had been sad. How much worse had it been for Rosie?
And he understood why she’d told no-one this time. And the way she was with the baby now, wasn’t that a habit she’d got into because she thought Anthony would go the way of the others? What had she said? She couldn’t afford to care. And then, against all the odds, the baby is born but too soon, small and puny, and Rosie would still be afraid to let down her guard, to begin to love and cherish a baby she might yet lose.
Now she’d got into the habit of ignoring Anthony because she’d had months of doing just that. Somehow she had to break that cycle, to open her heart to love Anthony as she loved Bernadette. But how was that to be achieved?
He suddenly wished he had his sisters here. Maybe they could talk to Rosie a little better than he could. It wasn’t something he could write in a letter, for all that would do would be to worry them further, and for nothing. They couldn’t help from where they were.
Chrissie and Geraldine could have told Dermot that they had troubles enough of their own. The morning after their beatings, their faces were too battered and their backs too sore to risk being seen and they didn’t attend Mass that morning.
Dennis Maloney usually snatched a word with Chrissie after Mass, unbeknownst to her parents, and often made arrangements for the afternoon. But when she wasn’t there that morning, but her parents were, he wasn’t suspicious. He thought maybe after the wedding the previous day the family might have overslept and the girls were kept back to finish any jobs which needed to be done and would be at the Mass at eleven. He knew Dermot intended to go and see the sister that Chrissie too had been concerned about, for Chrissie had told him, but he didn’t connect that with the girls not turning up for the children’s Mass at nine o’clock.
At twelve, he was once more outside the church, watching the parishioners all come out of Mass, and when neither girl was there he was puzzled and worried. He regretted he hadn’t spoken to her parents earlier and he decided to go to the house and see for himself.
He scanned the farm as he approached and was glad that the fields were empty. He guessed the father was at dinner. He wondered if Dermot had made the dash to England, where their sister Rosie was. ‘It’s a long jaunt for such a young boy,’ he’d said to Chrissie. ‘It’s likely just talk and he’ll bottle out on the day itself.’
‘Not Dermot,’ Chrissie had said, ‘And especially not if it concerns Rosie. He usually carries out a thing if he’s decided upon it, and he loves Rosie more than anyone.’
‘More even than the mother who dotes on him?’
‘Oh yes. Especially more than her.’
Dennis thought of this now as the farmhouse drew near. If the boy had done as he said, what had transpired after it? Chrissie, he imagined, would have a tale and a half to tell him, if she was well enough that was.
He wondered if they were all eating dinner together. If so he’d have to wait to catch sight of one of them coming out of doors for something. But then he reminded himself that if they were too ill to go to Mass they could still be in bed. It suddenly occurred to him that the girls could have been hungover, for neither girl was used to strong drink and he imagined much would have been flowing at the wedding, and he decided to take a look through the bedroom window.
What he saw nearly stopped the blood in his veins. Chrissie, her back to the window, was kneeling up in the bed applying something from a white dish to her sister, who lay on her stomach on the bed beside her. Chrissie was bare and he saw the blood-encrusted weals around her back and knew what had kept her away from Mass. He also knew that she was probably applying goose grease to her sister and she’d already had the same treatment, for her back was glistening with it.
His anger was like a white-hot rage coursing through him and without a thought for the girls’ nakedness he tapped lightly on the window.
Chrissie’s head flew around and he saw a couple of weals on the breasts her long brown hair almost covered. Then, when he looked into her face, with her discoloured eye, grazed cheek and split lip, he was almost speechless. Chrissie went across to the window, stopping only to take a shawl from the bedstead to cover herself.
‘Who did this to you?’ he demanded in an icy hiss as Chrissie opened the window. ‘Your father?’
God, he’d drag the man from the house and trounce him, Dennis thought. He’d bounce him off the cobblestones and not give a tinker’s cuss about the man’s age at all. But he was staggered when Chrissie said, ‘No, my father laid no hand on us. It was my mother.’
Dennis’s mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Has she done this before?’
‘Aye,’ Chrissie said. ‘But never this bad. It was about Dermot this time. She didn’t believe we knew nothing about his running away. She’s clean mad where that lad’s concerned.’
‘She’ll not touch a hair of your head ever again,’ Dennis promised. ‘How well can you walk?’
‘At this moment I feel I could walk to the end of the earth to get away from that woman,’ Chrissie said. ‘Don’t you?’
Geraldine was too surprised at the turn of events to speak, but she nodded her head vigorously enough.
‘That’s all right,’ Dennis said soothingly. ‘I intended taking the two of you, anyway, but walking might be too difficult. I’m away for the pony and trap. You two pack up all you can and I’ll be back for you.’
‘She’ll never agree.’
‘I’m not going to ask permission.’
‘She’ll not let you.’
‘She’ll have no choice.’
‘And where will you take us?’
‘To my sister’s, and you will bide there while the banns are read for our wedding, and then we’ll live above the grocery shop and your sister can live with us if she’d like to.’
‘Banns read?’ Chrissie repeated, and attempting jocularity she said, ‘Do I take it you are proposing marriage, Mr Maloney?’
‘Aye, that’s right, Miss McMullen.’
‘Well,’ Chrissie said. ‘I won’t say it’s the most romantic proposal I’ve ever received, not that I’m an expert on these sort of things you understand, but it is accepted nevertheless.’
‘I’m away.’ Dennis kissed Chrissie’s lips lightly and then said, ‘I’ll be back directly.’
Geraldine was inclined to be disbelieving of Dennis’s claims. ‘Mammy will stop him,’ she said.
‘Not for you,’ Geraldine cried. ‘You are over twenty-one, but I’m only nineteen. She’ll never let me go, you’ll see.’
And that was the argument Minnie tried to use. She had no idea Chrissie had been seeing anyone and Chrissie often wondered afterwards why no-one had told the McMullens. Although they’d been careful, some person surely had seen them clasping hands as they strode across the hills. Maybe people had felt sorry for her, sorry for all the girls. But for whatever reason, no-one had mentioned a word to Minnie, and so it was a complete surprise when a pony and trap galloped down the lane at breathtaking speed and then hauled to a stop before their cottage door.
Seamus had gone to the door and opened it to see the commotion, and he was nearly knocked on his back by the man who burst past him after almost throwing himself out of the trap. They knew him of course, the whole family knew the Maloneys. Didn’t they leave money in their shop every week? But neither Seamus nor Minnie had seen Dennis like this. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Seamus demanded angrily. ‘Nearly knocked over on my own threshold. What’s got into you at all, Dennis?’
Dennis was a tall, broad-shouldered young man and now the fury, still coursing through him, made him seem to swell to look even more menacing. His face was brick-red and shiny with sweat and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he faced Seamus and said, ‘Knocked over, you say? Think yourself lucky you’re not spread-eagled on the cobblestones this minute with your face bashed in with my own fists.’
‘What talk is this?’ Minnie demanded.
‘No talk!’ Dennis snapped. ‘The time for talking was past when you lifted your hand to two young girls, to punch them and slap them and strike at them with a strap till their backs were covered with weals.’
Minnie was shaken and for a moment or two was silent, wondering how Dennis knew this. But then she flew at him. ‘If I have reason to chastise my daughters, may I ask what concern it is of yours?’ she asked icily.
‘Chastise, is it?’ Dennis asked sarcastically. ‘Is that the name they have on it these days? Ah then, it’s sorry I am. I was under the impression it was a brutal beating you gave them.’
‘You don’t know the reason,’ Minnie spluttered. ‘They lied to me. It was not to be borne. I…’
‘That’s true indeed,’ Dennis said, nodding his head as if in a conciliatory way, though he longed to send Minnie’s teeth down her throat. ‘You can’t have two daughters living in the house lying to you.’
‘I’m glad you see that,’ Minnie said, but cautiously for there was something in the air she didn’t understand and surely the man had given in too easily.
Seamus didn’t understand either, but he considered everything had now gone far enough and he wanted to get this threatening young man out of his house and quick. ‘So,’ he said, opening the door wide. ‘If that little matter has been cleared up.’
The change was rapid. Gone was any resemblance to the man they knew. The kick he aimed at the cottage door tore it out of Seamus’s grasp and shut it with a resounding crash. ‘Now,’ Dennis said. ‘I want you to listen well to what I am going to say to you. I have been courting Chrissie for about six months and we are to be married.’
He watched in satisfaction as the blood drained from Minnie’s face and Seamus’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. ‘She can’t,’ Minnie said. ‘She’s not asked.’
‘She has no need to ask,’ Dennis said. ‘She is over twenty-one. She has little respect for you, and no wonder from what I’ve heard over the years and seen earlier today with my own eyes. There’s only one important child in this house, and that is the boy that’s apparently gone walkabout.’
‘You don’t know the whole of it. He’ll have gone to Rosie. He was always running to Rosie.’
‘And why should that worry you?’ Dennis said. ‘Isn’t Rosie his sister? What harm will he come to if he is there? Good God, woman, look around you at the state the country is in. Many a mother would be glad their son went to a family member rather than for them to run away to join the IRA as so many are doing. We’ve heard the mothers crying about it in the shop a time or two.’
‘That wouldn’t involve Dermot. He is but a child,’ Minnie said dismissively.
‘He’s not,’ Dennis said. ‘A few years ago he’d be working by now and he’s right to care about his sisters. He was wrong not to ask you, but you’d never have agreed for him to go if you’d known. But whatever Dermot did or didn’t do, it cannot reflect on either Chrissie or Geraldine and your treatment of them was inhuman. It’s only the fact that you are a woman that is saving you from me giving you a taste of your own medicine.’
‘Don’t you dare threaten my wife,’ Seamus said, stepping in front of Minnie.
‘Who’ll stop me – you?’ Dennis said contemptuously and he gave Seamus a push that sent him reeling into the dresser.
‘Now,’ he said, turning again to Minnie. ‘I am taking Chrissie away from here.’
‘You are not!’
‘Oh yes I am,’ Dennis said. ‘As I said, Chrissie is twenty-one and can do as she pleases and will be delighted to leave this place. She has agreed to become my wife and will lodge with my sister in Blessington until the wedding might be arranged. Everything is in order and Geraldine too will be coming with us.’
‘Oh no she’s not. She is just nineteen,’ Minnie said. ‘I can stop you. You try that and I’ll have the authorities on you.’
‘Oh, would you indeed?’ Dennis said. ‘Let’s have them here now, shall we? The Guards will do to start with. We’ll bring them out and let them see the mess you made of the girls’ backs. You might find yourself at the centre of a cruelty charge.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Minnie cried. ‘I am their mother and can do with them as I see fit.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Dennis said. ‘Others might take a very different view of the matter altogether. I am leaving here with those two girls and I’ll just promise you this: You try and stop me and I will spread the news abroad of what you have done. You will be unable to hold your head up in the village and will certainly have to find yourself another grocery store.’
Minnie’s legs began to shake and she felt for the kitchen chair and sat on it and willed her legs to stop trembling. She glared at Dennis but his own eyes staring back did not flicker and she realised she had met a formidable adversary. This was a man who would get what he wanted and he wanted her daughter Chrissie.
Well, Minnie decided, he could have her and welcome. From a child, Chrissie had been troublesome and never as compliant as Rosie or Geraldine, and she’d had to chastise her many a time. This time she wasn’t sorry she’d hit the girls, but she’d be sorry if anyone had to know about it. It would never do. Their standing in the community would be gone for good.
Pity about Geraldine. She thought she’d have her help for years yet and she always did what she was told, for she was too frightened to go against her. Still, she doubted that even if she attempted to stop Dennis leaving with her, the girl would stay. Should she trail after them it would cause more of a scandal.
Eventually, she had to look away from Dennis’s steel-grey eyes. ‘If you…If I let you take the girls, you will keep it to yourself about the beating and all?’
‘You have my word,’ Dennis said. ‘But I wasn’t the one beaten. I can’t answer for your daughters.’
‘They’ll do as you tell them.’
‘They will do as they see fit,’ Dennis said. ‘I have no intention of telling them what to say, and how, and to whom. They are people in their own right.’
But he was to find Chrissie and Geraldine just wanted to leave the farm and for good. They had no intention of reliving their ordeal by talking about it. Dennis found both girls cowering behind the door when he entered the bedroom. ‘Away out of that,’ he chided gently. ‘The time for hiding in corners is past. Come on, a new life is to begin for you both. Hold your heads high and go out to meet it.’
Both girls knew then their torment was over and that with Dennis’s protection they would leave unmolested. He picked up the bass hampers they had packed and they walked behind him out of the room, passing their parents without a word. Out in the yard, Dennis helped each one into the trap before leaping up beside them.
‘Good day to you,’ Dennis said, with a jerk of his head to Seamus and Minnie.
They didn’t reply and the girls made no attempt to speak at all. Dennis flicked the reins over the horse’s head and he turned and clattered up the drive. Chrissie and Geraldine never looked back. They were on the open road and about a mile from the farmhouse before they felt they could relax and drop their shoulders and smile at each other. ‘We’re free,’ Geraldine said. ‘Oh God, I can scarce believe it.’
‘Nor I,’ Chrissie said, and she hugged her sister in delight and Dennis laughed at the two of them and knew he’d made the right decision that day and could scarcely wait for the time to come when he could make the beautiful Chrissie his wife.