Danny Boy (18 page)

She noted the place names as the train pulled in to all the small stations, some with such funny names she could hardly pronounce them: Llanfairfechan, Penmaenmawr, Conwy. ‘Welsh names, I suppose,’ Danny said. ‘Some of the Irish names would be the same if we were allowed to use them.’

‘Aye, I suppose so.’

Bernadette dropped off to sleep again against Rosie as they passed by Colwyn Bay. ‘You’ll be changing at Crewe, no doubt,’ the man asked Danny.

‘Aye, the man in the ticket office told me that,’ Danny said.

‘It’s the next station after Chester, where I get off, so you’ll know it,’ the man said. ‘Anyway, it’s a big enough place,’ and he gave a nod in Bernadette’s direction. ‘She looks worn out from travelling already.’

And she’s not the only one, Rosie thought, but she said nothing and smiled at the man over the child’s head.

But Danny had seen the tiredness in Rosie’s eyes and said, ‘Pass the child to me, Rosie, you look all in.’

Rosie was glad to hand Bernadette over, for her eyes felt incredibly heavy and she closed them thankfully. Within minutes she was asleep and didn’t wake again until the train was pulling into Chester. Their fellow passenger bade them goodbye and as he left the train, Rosie was amazed to see so many soldiers milling on the platform. She realised the events in Ireland had slightly overshadowed the war raging on foreign fields not that far away.

Crewe Station was busy, noisy and very cold. As there was a delay for the connecting train, Danny led the way to a small café on the platform. Rosie was glad of the reviving tea and the girl behind the counter readily agreed to heat up some
milk for Bernadette. They opened the food packages that Sister Miriam had given them. It put new heart into Rosie and she was glad she was able to change Bernadette too and make her more comfortable. But she saw the little one’s eyes were puzzled and Rosie knew she’d be wondering what was happening. Until that point, her short life had been familiar and safe, and now she was being taken away from the only home she’d ever known, over land and sea, away from her doting grandparents and loving aunts and uncles; and she was too young for Rosie to explain any of it.

They’d been on the go since five o’clock that morning. Now it was half past two and they were on the last leg of their journey, but Birmingham was another hour away and it would be nearly dark then, for the thick, dense clouds had turned the afternoon as dusky as evening.

Danny and Rosie spent the time on the train from Crewe to Birmingham amusing Bernadette. They drew on their stock of songs, nursery rhymes and finger games to amuse her. As well as this, Danny could do wonderful things with a length of string that he always carried in his pocket.

When all that paled, Danny took his small daughter on a tour of the train. They went up and down the corridors, from the guard’s van at the rear of the train to the start of the First Class carriages at the front and back again. Bernadette plodding along in front of her father on her sturdy little legs.

The train pulled in at New Street with a squeal of brakes and hiss of steam and in minutes the Walsh family were out on another dusty, windy platform. Rosie looked with trepidation at the press of people, hearing the raucous shouts of them and the sudden gales of laughter, seeing the porters pushing their way past and the man at the newspaper kiosk advertising his wares. Bernadette had begun to grizzle at the chaos of it all, but Danny, on the other hand, gave a heartfelt sigh of relief. Thank God, he thought, now they were all safe. He’d never have thought he’d be here, standing on a
station platform in the middle of England and being thankful for it; but he was and he vowed he’d do all in his power to make a good life for his family here for as long as it took.

He swooped his weeping daughter into his arms and set her on his shoulders, and she was so surprised she stopped crying and began hitting the top of his head with her hands, laughing. ‘Will you stop beating the head off your poor father,’ Danny said in mock anger. ‘Fine show of respect that is.’

Bernadette laughed louder and wriggled on his shoulders, and Rosie smiled at the pair of them. Danny was further relieved to see that smile. ‘That’s it, Rosie,’ he said, buoyed up. ‘Let’s make the best of it, if only for the sake of the wee one.’

‘I’m trying to, Danny,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m coping the best way I can.’

‘Let’s go then,’ Danny said, and lifting up one of the bags and with Bernadette carried high, he led the way.

Outside the station, the roads seemed packed. There were new petrol-driven taxis and horse-drawn hackney cabs waiting in a line. Behind them were horse-drawn omnibuses and petrol cars and lorries, and swaying trams weaving in and out between the rest of the traffic, and Rosie thought she’d be feared to even cross a road in this place.

‘We’d best take a cab,’ Danny said. ‘We’d never find this place else.’

Rosie was scared to go in a petrol-driven taxi and so they opted for one of the horse-drawn ones and Rosie was staggered when the driver alighted to let them in. ‘You’re a woman!’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ the woman driver replied with a laugh. ‘Where’ve you been the last three years?’

‘In Ireland,’ Rosie told her.

‘Oh that explains it,’ the woman went on. ‘Here in England, at war, there are few big strapping men about like your old
man; just the old, the young and the useless. It’s left to the women. I had to take over when my old man was called up, or my kids would have starved and there wouldn’t have been a business when he came back, that’s assuming he does of course, and in one piece. I ain’t the only one, it’s women drives the omnibuses and makes the weapons and all sorts.’

‘I’d never have thought…’ Danny began.

‘Wouldn’t yer,’ the woman said, almost contemptuously. ‘Who d’you think runs a country when all the men are in the trenches, or maimed, blinded or killed. D’you think we just fold up and die?’

‘Like I said, I never thought of it at all,’ Danny said. ‘Maybe I should have, but when you’re not involved, when it doesn’t affect you, you don’t think.’

‘No,’ the woman said, suddenly tired of the conversation and impatient to get on. ‘And right now I have a business to run. Where you making for?’

‘Hunter’s Road, Handsworth,’ Danny said, lifting Bernadette from his shoulders as he spoke and placing her into the hackney cab. ‘St Mary’s Convent.’

‘Oh yeah, I know that all right,’ said the woman. ‘In you go then, and I’ll have you there in the swish of a pony’s tail.’

Rosie had never travelled in such splendour and told herself to enjoy it, for she probably wouldn’t do so again in a hurry. As the cab moved into the swell of traffic she saw the driver was right, it was mainly women driving the horse-drawn carts and working on the omnibuses, and most of the conductors were women too.

They drove through streets full of traffic, lined with houses all squashed together and whole parades of shops, like the entire street of Blessington around every other street corner. Hunter’s Road was a far more prosperous area. The houses were larger and more imposing, set back from the road and encased with privet hedges or brick walls.

The convent was by far the biggest building in the road.
Built of red brick and with a red-brick wall in front of it, it was an L-shape, with small leaded windows to the ground and first floor and arched attic windows facing the road. The cab driver turned into the cobbled yard before the convent and Rosie noted the presbytery, a smaller and less imposing building alongside the convent.

Rosie gazed at it, nervous of entering such a place, but Danny wasn’t. They had come this far, been assured of a welcome, and he had to find somewhere for his wife and child to lay their heads that night. He helped Rosie from the cab and paid the fare, wincing at the price and was glad Rosie hadn’t heard it. With a wave of her hand the cab driver expertly turned and began to move off and he went up the steps to a door with ‘House of Mercy’ printed above it, and rang on the large bell there without the slightest hesitation.

At the convent they were all welcomed warmly. Danny and Rosie were summoned into Reverend Mother’s office while the nuns cared for Bernadette, and Danny explained his position and the reasons for them landing at her door. She listened without a word and then said, ‘What d’you intend to do now, Danny?’

‘Find a job and a place to live for my wife and child,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll live in England as long as I have to.’

The Reverend Mother known as Mother Magdalene, was impressed with Danny’s resilience and spirit, but she continued, ‘How d’you feel about violence now?’

‘I am essentially a man of peace, Reverend Mother,’ Danny said. ‘I seek dialogue and discussion and political change being undertaken to give Ireland Home Rule. Others have less patience and that led to the ill-timed insurrection. I had a hand in that, though as I explained to you not through choice. I want no part in further violence, but there is also no way in which I would betray the Brotherhood.’

‘They don’t believe that?’

‘No, Reverend Mother,’ Danny said, ‘because someone did
betray them. I spoke openly against their policies; someone obviously kept their comments to themselves and worked against them. They’ll never believe that the traitor wasn’t me, and now that I’ve disappeared it will prove their theory; and yet to stay would put my wife’s and child’s lives in jeopardy as well as my own.’

Reverend Mother nodded and smiled and Rosie felt her whole body relax when she said, ‘I think you had good reason to flee your homeland, Danny, and you and your family are welcome to stay here until you are back on your feet.’ Rosie’s breath escaped in a sigh of relief and she felt safe and secure for the first time since she’d left Wicklow.

Rosie woke to a cacophony of sound. The strident noise of the hooter, which had wakened her in the beginning, still lingered in the air. Danny slumbered on and so too did Bernadette, in a cot at the foot of the bed, while Rosie got up and stood looking out the window.

It was still early and dark outside, but in the light from the gas lamps she saw the delivery vans and carts beginning their rounds and she heard the clop of the horses’ hooves and the clatter of cartwheels over the cobblestones. Over this was the splutter and rumble of the petrol-driven vehicles, the noise of the trams from the nearby Lozells Road.

‘This is the city awakening,’ she said to herself, and then she felt Danny’s hands on her shoulders.

‘How long have you been standing here?’ he chided gently. ‘You’re frozen.’

Rosie hadn’t realised how cold she was until that moment and she snuggled against Danny, grateful for his arms around her. ‘What are you thinking?’ Danny said.

‘Nothing terribly deep,’ Rosie replied. ‘Just how different it all is. Bound to be, I suppose.’

‘Will you hate living here so much?’

Oh yes, with all my being, Rosie might have said, but instead
she told Danny, ‘I’ll get used to it. It’s all strange to me at the moment. You must give me time.’

‘All the time in the world,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll make it up to you, see if I don’t.’

He wished he could turn the clock back, but if he could, what in all honesty could he have done differently? But he’d had no idea that once the insurrection was over he was still bound to the Brotherhood, nor that they’d want to start it all up again. Because he’d refused he was exiled to this Godforsaken place, his farm, his inheritance given to the boy who’d started the whole thing. Had he stayed and carried out the ambushes and assassinations they wanted eventually he would have been captured and shot, or imprisoned for life. Some bloody choice!

He felt sorry for Rosie, but he didn’t say this. Rosie didn’t need pity, and as she said, she’d get used to it. The first thing he must do was find a job.

Danny had no idea that finding work would be so hard, especially as he didn’t care what job he did, and he set out that first day full of confidence. However, he was to find the Irish people, because of their stand against conscription and their friendly relations with Germany, were not popular. There were plenty of factories, most of them war related, and he realised that although he’d not wanted to make anything for the war, it was all right to feel that way when you didn’t need the money.

As soon as Danny spoke it was obvious where he came from and that alone put many employers’ backs up. They all asked him why he wasn’t in uniform and when he explained he’d just arrived from Ireland where there was no conscription, he’d see many of them curl their lips in contempt.

‘Tell me,’ said one potential employer, ‘why I should set on someone like yourself to make things for a war you don’t agree with? Why shouldn’t I employ a woman instead, at half
the pay, mind, who needs the job to provide for her family because her man is away fighting or she is widowed?’

Danny, remembering the woman cab driver, had no satisfactory answer. But he tried. ‘I need a job too, sir. I too have a wife and child to provide for.’

‘That’s your problem,’ the man said, totally unmoved. ‘You should have stayed in Ireland. You’ll get no work in my factory.’

As one day followed another, the answer seemed to be the same everywhere he tried. He became very despondent.

Rosie could sympathise for she’d had a taste of it herself. The day after they’d first arrived at the convent she’d gone to the Mass at seven o’clock and met a few other parishioners. But the following week she went to nine o’clock Mass, leaving Bernadette with her daddy who’d gone to the earlier one at seven. Mother Magdalene had recommended the parish priest, Father Barry, be told the real reason for the family fleeing Ireland, and everyone else told that Rosie was a niece belonging to the Reverend Mother, over for a wee rest.

There were few men in the congregation that Sunday, Rosie noticed, and nearly all that were there were in uniform. She couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. Afterwards, leaving the church, one of the women said to Rosie, ‘Where’s your man then? Over for a wee rest, the Sister said. Is he on leave, like?’

‘No, he’s not in the army,’ Rosie explained. ‘We didn’t have conscription in Ireland.’

‘My husband didn’t wait to be conscripted,’ the first woman said sharply. ‘Volunteered, he did, and proud to do so.’

‘And my sons,’ another said. ‘Had one killed on the Somme and one at Gallipoli. Heroes, both of them.’

‘Oh the Irish would rather side with a Hun,’ an older man said. ‘Colluded with them they did. Probably been doing it for years.’

The faces around Rosie looked angry and hostile and Rosie thought back to the friendly people she’d seen every Sunday
after Mass in Blessington. ‘I don’t know anything about all this,’ she told them helplessly. ‘We’re just trying to get by, like everyone else.’

‘Aye, well some of us have to get by without our menfolk and some don’t have anyone belonging to them to come back either.’

‘Yeah, and some like me have to work their fingers to the bone to put food on the table,’ another put in.

Rosie had had enough. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing past and through the crowds, and they’d all stood and watched her leave. She didn’t tell Danny, there was no point, but she knew what he was going through in his search for work. Two days after the encounter after Mass, a letter came for Danny one morning after he’d left, and when he returned and opened it a white feather fluttered to the floor. Both knew what it meant, the sign of cowardice, and Danny felt sick as he picked it up and ran his fingers along it.

‘Who would do this?’ he asked Rosie in puzzlement. She remembered the antagonistic people after Mass and knew it could have been any one of them.

She told Connie none of this when she wrote to her later that day. She’d put off the letter, hoping that Danny would have got a job and she’d have good news to tell them, but she knew she could delay no longer. She didn’t mention Danny’s lack of success in seeking employment or that their little store of money was disappearing at an alarming rate.

She concentrated instead on the positive aspects of where she was living:

It is well served by shops, so many around us you wouldn’t believe it. I go out every morning to do the shopping for the convent and I take Bernadette in the large and commodious pram one of the Sisters got for me. Bernadette loves it and she gets what fresh air there is here and I can pack so much around her.

Milk is delivered to the door and so is bread, and the convent uses a lot because of the school they have for the poor children of the area behind the convent who often come with no dinner. They run a nursery for mothers working in war-related jobs too, and so when the milk cart brings the churn to the door it’s not uncommon to have three or four large jugs for him to ladle into each day.

It’s odd to have shop bread all the time. I mind the time I could knock up a loaf of soda bread in minutes and now there are perhaps four or five loaves delivered here. Most of the other food stuff needed I am able to fetch for them. They are grateful to me for doing that, for what with the school, nursery, and visiting the sick and needy, they haven’t much time at all.

The convent itself is in a pleasant position, for it is opposite a small grassed area called Spring Garden and I often take Bernadette there in the afternoon. It’s nice for us both to feel grass beneath our feet and the flowers are pretty, and though Handsworth Park is beautiful it’s a tidy walk.

I hope everything is fine with you and everyone is well. I’d value a letter. I miss you all so much. For safety’s sake, can you address your letter to the Reverend Mother, Mother Magdalene, and though I’m including a letter for my parents, the girls and Dermot, please don’t tell them where we are, it’s best that as few as possible know.

Please God, Rosie thought, next time I write I’ll be able to tell them Danny has a job.

Rosie only went once to the Bull Ring, the massive open market that the nuns had told her about and insisted she visit, and they minded Bernadette for her one day while she spent precious money on a tram to the city centre. Once alighted
from it, she had stood by a enormous store called Lewis’s that seemed to be on both sides of a very small road.

She was quite mesmerised by the amount of traffic, and more people than she’d ever seen in her life, and far more shops. The nuns had written down explicit directions as to how she would get to the Bull Ring and she followed them until she stood at the top of the High Street, looking down the hill to the market below, bustling with people and alive with noise.

On one side of the hill there were shops and Rosie noted them as she passed. Shops selling sweets, shoes and newspapers were side by side, and next to them a tailor’s advertising suits for thirty bob. Then there was a café, and a pet shop with kittens in the window and a large parrot in the doorway, and another tailor’s where, with their thirty-bob suits, a free waistcoat was included.

Rosie was quite dazzled by it all. And then she was at the bottom of the hill and the noise and press of bodies was almost indescribable. Either side of a large statue on a podium with a wall around it were barrows, many with canvas awnings, piled high with produce or articles of every kind. Around the statue were women selling flowers and the different fragrances wafted before her nose as she was pressed to buy. The statue, she noted as she passed it, was of Lord Nelson. She recalled the pillar in Dublin, dedicated to the same man, that she’d seen in her quest to find news of Danny. It had been one of the buildings in that area left undamaged and she remembered it had stood straight and tall amongst the sea of rubble, like a beacon of defiance.

As she continued walking through the Bull Ring, she caught a whiff of fish as she passed one road leading off to the right and then she was amongst the barrows. She was astounded to see that those with bread, cakes, sweets, fruit and veg, poultry, rabbits and fish were side by side with those selling crockery, material or junk, and the amalgamated smells filled the air.

Her attention was taken by a man selling spinning tops. ‘On the table, on the chair, little devils go everywhere,’ he chorused, seeing Rosie’s interest. ‘You want one, lady? Only a tanner.’ Rosie would have loved to buy one of those brightly coloured tops and she knew Bernadette would be delighted with it. But sixpence was sixpence and she shook her head regretfully and turned away.

At the next barrow a hawker was plying his trade to a crowd of women in front of him. ‘Come on, ladies, who’d like a pound of tomatoes for just fourpence. Now I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’ and then leaning closer to one woman he went on, ‘And for Gawd’s sake don’t tell your old man. I’m only letting them go dirt cheap because I like the look of you. Any of you lovely beauties want the same?’

The woman surged forward and Rosie walked on, smiling at the man’s banter. It was all so different from Ireland, she thought.

Amongst all the noise and laughter and the hawkers and costers advertising their wares, there was one strident voice calling out incessantly, but Rosie couldn’t catch the words. But then as she came out nearer the church she had seen in the distance, she saw the caller was a lady standing outside a shop called Woolworths and she was selling carrier bags. And that was what she was shouting about: ‘Carriers, handy carriers,’ over and over.

Before the church, Rosie saw, was a fringe of trees all in blossom in front of which trams and dray horses were pulling their heavy loads before disappearing down a side street.

The nuns were right, she thought, it was the most fascinating place. And then she saw the Market Hall. It was an imposing building. Arched windows were either side of the stone steps supported by Gothic pillars, but Rosie didn’t only see the grandeur of the place, she saw the men there selling razor blades and bootlaces and even wind-up toys from trays around their necks. One had just one leg, another only one
arm, and another had a placard around his neck saying he was blind. Rosie knew without being told who these men were. They were the flotsam of a war that the Government had led them into and then cast aside once they’d served their purpose.

The joy of the day had gone for Rosie after that. She visited Woolworths and Peacocks and looked in the windows of the Hobbies shop; she even passed the men on the steps to go into the Market Hall, but neither the wonderful array of goods there, nor the fabulous clock the nuns had told her about, nor even the playful animals in Pimms pet store, could totally shake off the despondency the sight of those poor, maimed men had evoked in her.

She bought the vegetables and the rabbit meat the nuns had asked her to fetch back and was glad to leave the Bull Ring behind and make her way home again.

There was no need anyway to visit the Bull Ring, for the area where they were was, as she’d told Connie, well served for shops and she liked her little jaunt out every day, especially now the weather was a little warmer. It was nice to see the shopkeepers’ pleasant faces and hear the polite way they spoke to her. They knew nothing of Danny here and only knew what she’d told them; that she was a niece belonging to the Reverend Mother over from Ireland for a wee rest because she’d been ill.

No one doubted her, why should they, and the consensus was she was a pleasant little body and doing the right thing by coming to the Sisters, for by God they’d put her right if anyone could. And that baby of hers! God, she’d melt many a heart, that one, with her blonde curls and brilliant and unusual violet eyes and beautiful smile. She looked like an angel so she did.

It made a sharp contrast to the people who went to the convent chapel where her and Danny were now virtually shunned by those attending Mass. Mother Magdalene was
aware of it, but she hadn’t a clue how to help the situation. She had a great regard and respect for the women of Birmingham anyway who’d set to with a will to run the country in the absence of their men and endeavoured to bring their children up decently.