A Glimpse at Happiness (30 page)
‘Brian Maguire’s
dead?’
dead?’
‘Aye, Miss, cut across the throat.’
The earthen floor seemed to sway under Josie’s feet for a few seconds then rolled back into place. She took a couple of steps and grasped hold of the chair to steady herself as she pictured Mattie on Brian’s arm on their wedding day not six weeks ago.
Meg’s voice cut into her tortured thoughts. ‘Are you unwell, Miss?’
Josie shook her head. ‘I have to go.’
Hurriedly picking up her bonnet, she left the two women staring after her and flew down the alley back to The Highway. The traffic was lighter now as the dock workers’ day was coming to an end. She stopped for a moment to secure the ribbon of her bonnet under her chin, then turned east and ran towards Cable Street.
Josie’s lungs almost burst as she ran the half mile to Mattie’s. She sidestepped dogs and children as jumbled thoughts rolled in her mind. On the one hand, she felt completely ashamed of the joy she’d felt when she heard that Patrick hadn’t died in the attack, but now that euphoria had passed and her heart was breaking for her poor friend so recently a bride and now so cruelly a widow.
Turning into Cannon Street Road, Josie caught a glimpse of the sign, Maguire and Son, Coal Merchants, painted stylishly above the double doors.
Perhaps Nell had got it wrong, Josie hoped and prayed, as she hurried under the arches to the yard. Perhaps he was just injured . . .
She clung to that hope, imagining the red-haired Irishman, swathed in bandages and laughing his hearty laugh as she told him of the mistake. She’d almost convinced herself that was the truth of the matter, but when she turned the corner, hope was extinguished.
Outside the Maguire house stood a cluster of women with black mourning shawls over their heads and sorrowful expressions on their faces. Josie slowed her pace, conscious that her bright summer dress stood out against the drab greys and blacks the neighbours were wearing as a sign of respect while they waited their turn to offer condolences. Josie stood with them and soon stepped over the threshold and into the narrow passage. A crowd had already gathered in the front parlour. Men, in their Sunday suits, stood by the windows talking in hushed tones while the women sat either side of the dead man’s mother and wife.
Josie’s gaze immediately fixed on Mattie, sitting ramrod straight in her widow’s weeds, her hands resting on the baby bump that had began to show. Her dark eyes, red-rimmed and shadowed, stared out in a ghastly contrast to her pale skin. As people spoke to her, she politely acknowledged them, but her eyes never wavered from the table in the centre of the room where the open coffin lay.
Mattie saw Josie and stood up. Ignoring the usual practice of filing past the bereaved in an orderly fashion, Josie rushed to her friend and gathered her into her arms. Over Mattie’s shoulder, she saw Brian lying in the coffin and the full enormity of what had happened swept over her.
‘I’ve only just heard,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion.
‘I can’t believe that he’s gone,’ Mattie replied, her lower lip trembling with every word.
Josie glanced at Brian’s mother, who looked as near to death as a body could be without actually giving up its soul. Her pain was almost palpable, with her only son before her dressed and ready for his grave.
Letting go of her friend’s hand, Josie sat down beside the older woman.
‘Mrs Maguire,’ she said. Brian’s mother turned. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, I truly am. Brian was such a lovely fella, so he was, and there will be many who will weep at his passing.’ She spoke the expressions of sympathy traditional amongst the community.
Queenie Maguire’s chin trembled. ‘When’s my Brian coming home?’
Josie, who could hardly bear it herself, patted Mrs Maguire’s hand and stood up to let another take her place. She went back to Mattie who stood at the foot of the coffin staring down at her dead husband. Josie slipped her arm into hers and they stood in silent companionship.
‘Don’t he look peaceful,’ Mattie said, a fond smile crossing her lips. ‘Me and Mam washed him and laid him out.’ She glanced at her mother-in-law. ‘His mother’s been in a trance since they brought him back.’
‘What about you?’ Josie asked. Everyone knew that a shock like this could bring a baby early. After seeing her mother’s recent brush with death, Josie feared for her friend.
A tear floated on Mattie’s lower lashes. ‘Me? If it wasn’t for the baby moving inside me, I’d think I was dead, too.’
Tears welled up in Josie’s eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mattie said, giving Josie a heart-wrenching smile. ‘I’ll live again when I hold Brian’s baby.’
Mattie moved down the side of the coffin to put her hand in and smooth a stray lock of hair out of Brian’s closed eyes. She looked at Josie. ‘Patrick’s fair beside himself,’ she said. ‘He blames himself. He wasn’t as grieved as this even when Pa died and you know how close they were. But it’s more than that, Josie . . . knowing he can’t wed you is tearing him apart.’
Josie thought how it was tearing her apart, too, but she kept silent.
Mattie stroked Brian’s cold, lifeless cheek. ‘I’m glad him and me became man and wife before our wedding. We’d been having the pleasure for six months before I got caught with this one,’ she said, smiling as she looked at Brian, then fixed Josie with a purposeful stare. ‘If I’d waited till we’d married proper I’d have nothing of him left.’
Josie’s gaze moved back to the pine coffin, but she didn’t see Brian lying in his Sunday suit with his arms across his chest, she saw Patrick. She remembered his laugh and the way he flicked his hair back when it fell in his eyes. She thought of the angle of his shoulder and the corded muscles of his forearms, the shape of his fingers and how his thumb knuckle sat at a square angle to his palm. She recalled the fascination she had with the part of his face where his close shaved bristles stopped and the soft skin of his cheek started. How had she lived for the past weeks without seeing all those precious little things?
‘Where is Patrick now?’
‘On the
Mermaid
- he’ll be along in a while,’ Mattie replied. ‘Where are you going?’
Mermaid
- he’ll be along in a while,’ Mattie replied. ‘Where are you going?’
Josie retied her bonnet ribbons. ‘I waited for Patrick last time and lost him to Rosa. I’m not making the same mistake twice.’
Chapter Seventeen
As Patrick turned into Maguire and Son’s yard, a combination of sorrow and weariness washed over him. He stopped to put on his jacket. When he’d leapt off the
Mermaid
he was encrusted with coal dust as usual and stopped at the Highway pump to rinse it off his hair, hands and face with his neckerchief. Although it was past seven o’clock now the day was still so warm that he was dry by the time he’d reached Sutton Street. He would scrub the rest of the grime off later. They were burying Brian in the morning and tonight the traditional vigil would be kept by the close family and friends.
Mermaid
he was encrusted with coal dust as usual and stopped at the Highway pump to rinse it off his hair, hands and face with his neckerchief. Although it was past seven o’clock now the day was still so warm that he was dry by the time he’d reached Sutton Street. He would scrub the rest of the grime off later. They were burying Brian in the morning and tonight the traditional vigil would be kept by the close family and friends.
He yawned. He hadn’t slept more than an hour without waking in a sweat, recalling the sight of blood pouring out of his friend’s neck.
Even before the fight though, it had been Josie, and his hopeless love for her, that had robbed him of sleep. Over the years, how many nights had he lain awake thinking about her beautiful eyes and innocent, open smile. In the over-crowded house in Cinnamon Street, as Gus snored beside him in the old bed, he would dream of becoming a captain on a tall rigger, sailing the oceans to come back home laden with treasures to give to her.
Even after he’d married Rosa, try as he might to forget Josie, he would find himself remembering the feel of her against him and their innocent, fumbled caresses in dark doorways when her mother wasn’t looking.
He thought he had learnt to live without Josie O’Casey in the same way a man accepts a withered hand. He functioned with it but he was never completely whole. But now life in its cruelty, had brought her back to him, opening up the old wound to taunt him with what he had thrown away for ever because of a moment of folly with Rosa . . .
People moved aside to let him pass into the house. He greeted his mother, and Gus who was standing next to her, then he spotted Mattie and made his way towards where she stood at the top of the table.
Mattie looked up with a troubled expression on her face. He glanced out of the window at the fading light and supposed she had been expecting him an hour since.
‘Pat?’ she said looking past him for a second.
He hugged her to him and kissed her on the forehead before releasing her.
‘Sorry, I’m late, Mat,’ he said. ‘Old Bert was buried this morning. Some of the boys chipped in and paid his rent until the end of the week. I dropped it off on my way here.’
Mattie glanced behind him again. ‘Where’s Josie?’
‘Josie?’
‘She was here not half an hour ago. She’s gone to the
Mermaid
to find you.’
Mermaid
to find you.’
Blood thundered through his head. ‘Alone?’
The docks and wharves weren’t exactly the best places for a woman during the day, but after they fell silent at the end of the working afternoon, the whole area became a cesspool of drunks and prostitutes, sleazy, and dangerous.
Several people looked his way and scowled at him for raising his voice but Patrick didn’t care. All he could think about was Josie,
his
Josie, in jeopardy.
his
Josie, in jeopardy.
He turned and pushed his way back through the mourners.
The sun had already set behind the tall warehouses in Butchers’ Row as Josie made her way towards Narrow Street in the evening mist from the river. The iron cranes used to lift the goods from the dockside were silent above her and the wide doors that allowed wagons in for loading cargo were bolted closed. A few men finishing late still trudged down the street, but now the small public houses, some no more than cottages with a couple of chairs in the front room and a barrel or two, had opened for custom. The pale yellow glow of their window lights cut weakly through the foggy atmosphere of coal-dust laden twilight.
Out of the dark recesses between the buildings women appeared in gaudy dresses, their cheeks heavy with rouge and their lips brightly painted. They gave her curious glances but Josie didn’t care - all she cared about was finding Patrick.
Although she knew she would compromise her good name by chasing through the streets alone at night, she had to see him. She was in hell with no way out. She loved Patrick but they could never be together without the blessing of the church. It was just not done. It would cut Mam and Pa to the quick, not to mention endanger her mam’s fragile recovery. If that weren’t enough to hold her back, if she were to do the unthinkable and throw all convention aside, it would likely revive the old scandal around her parents’ relationship before their marriage. Moreover, someone might discover that Bobbie was born a year before Mam and Pa were actually married and, despite her love for Patrick, Josie loved Bobbie too much to risk exposing her illegitimacy.
But tonight, after looking on Brian’s lifeless face and seeing only Patrick in his stead, even those fearful considerations couldn’t hold her back from seeking Patrick out.
She hurried on, into the winding thoroughfare that ran alongside the river to Limehouse pier, where Patrick moored his boat. As she neared the river the wisps of mist thickened and, as her feet clattered along the wooden boards, upright moorings and crates seemed to loom out at her.
A couple of drunks waving bottles shouted across to her as they lolled outside one of the drinking dens. Josie turned her head to quickly hurry on, almost colliding with a young woman in a tatty dress trying to lure a German sailor into one of the back alleys. Finally, stepping carefully through the horse manure, Josie crossed over to Limehouse pier. The tide was almost out, so the boats sat low in their moorings and the stench of the river hung rancid on the still air.
Peering at the names painted on the hulls, Josie made her way carefully along the broad wooden jetty where tugs were tied up ready for the next day. She spotted the
Mermaid
at the end.
Mermaid
at the end.
There didn’t seem to be anyone about, but Patrick had to be on board, otherwise she would have met him on his way home.
A damp fog arrived suddenly, swirling around her, and shadows danced over the boat as it bobbed on the shallow water making it difficult for her to see the stern. Then she saw a movement at the back of the boat. Covering the last few paces along the wooden jetty she swung herself onto the ladder. Her skirts billowed as she stepped down to the deck of the boat.
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