Danny Boy (23 page)

‘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.’

‘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.

The Town Hall was such an imposing building that Danny felt nervous even standing in front of it. It had carved stone pillars at the front and a canopy of stone above those pillars supporting the first and subsequent floors. Solid wooden double doors were at the top of four white steps that looked as if they were made of marble, and Danny had to force himself to go up those steps and open the door. His feet sank into the deep red carpet strip, which masked the sound of his boots as he approached the desk at the end.

He looked at the young woman behind the counter and wished he didn’t have to discuss his business with her, but he had no idea where to go. ‘Poor Relief!’ she repeated after him, her nose tilted as if he’d suddenly developed a noxious smell. ‘Through the door to your right, third door on the left.’

‘Thank you, miss.’

She didn’t answer and Danny didn’t wonder at it. He felt totally humiliated, but he followed the girl’s instructions and the third door on the left opened onto a grim waiting room with three occupants already there. One was a man who looked as depressed as Danny, but was far shabbier, and the other two were dishevelled women. Both had babies and one
had a toddler besides. Her baby was crying, a thin, plaintive cry that struck at Danny’s soul for it was a cry of hunger, evident by its sunken-in cheeks and chapped lips.

Danny hoped that Bernadette would never have to suffer hunger or cold and thought for the first time that it was probably a blessing in one way that the baby hadn’t survived. What use was his pride now, he asked himself? He would stand on his head or walk across hot coals to secure money to provide food and shelter for his family.

‘Name?’

He hadn’t heard the woman approach the desk, but he heard the snap in her voice all right. The other people had obviously already been dealt with, for they didn’t move but just looked at him with deadened eyes.

‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ Danny said, getting to his feet and approaching the frosty-looking woman. She had her hair scraped back in a bun, wire-rimmed spectacles perched on a long narrow nose above a drooping discontented-looking mouth and high-neck black blouse fastened beneath an indeterminate chin with a cameo brooch.

All this Danny took in, in one glance, but what held him fast were the eyes, brown-grey and as cold as steel and now those thin lips opened just enough to rap out again. ‘I asked your name?’

‘Danny Walsh,’ Danny said and she entered it on the form before her. He was fine with the address, but when her pen hovered over another box and she said, ‘Occupation?’ he just stared at her. He hadn’t any occupation. That was the problem surely? ‘Unemployed?’ the woman asked and Danny nodded. ‘What was your previous employment?’

‘I was a farmer.’

‘A farm hand?’

‘No, a farmer. I mean, my family owned the farm. It was in Ireland.’

Immediately, the receptionist’s manner changed. ‘Please take a seat, Mr Walsh.’ she said, glaring at him icily.

Danny sat down, wondering at the receptionist’s manner. Was it to be the same story here, as soon as he mentioned Ireland? He couldn’t risk that. He needed these people. It was his last port of call and he didn’t know what he’d do if they refused to help him.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. The shabbily dressed man and the two women had been called through and he hadn’t seen them again. More bedraggled people had joined Danny in the room, shuffling through the door almost apologetically. The city’s poor, he thought, reeking of neglect and all needy, and Danny felt more depressed than ever.

Eventually it was his turn, and by then hunger had begun to gnaw at him, but that hardly mattered, and the sooner this was over the better. He got to his feet and followed the man who’d called him through.

He bade him sit on the other side of the table and asked him questions about Rosie and Bernadette, which he filled in on the form before him, and then Danny said, ‘We’ve been here since April, staying with the Sisters of Mercy in Handsworth because one of the Sisters was a friend of my wife’s.’ He considered the lie a necessary one.

‘And why did you come to Britain? To a country at war?’

‘Well, Ireland isn’t exactly a safe place at the moment either,’ Danny said.

‘Did you register when you arrived?’

‘Register?’

‘I take it you did not,’ the man barked. ‘This country has been at war for three years, and not helped greatly by Ireland, I must say – quite the opposite in fact. We cannot have Irish citizens just waltzing into the country unchecked. Some are reputed to be a friend of the Hun.’

‘I swear to you, sir, I am not,’ said Danny.

‘Well, you would hardly admit to it,’ the man said. ‘And
I think I know why you didn’t register: it was to make sure you weren’t sent to the front.’

Such a thing had never crossed Danny’s mind and he said, ‘No, really, that wasn’t it at all. There is no conscription in Ireland.’

‘Ah yes, but there is here,’ the man said. ‘And the fact that you are on British soil means you are eligible for conscription.’

The roof of Danny’s mouth had suddenly gone very dry. What was the man saying? ‘What d’you mean, sir?’

‘I mean that you can and will be conscripted for the army.’

This wasn’t what Danny had in mind at all. ‘I can’t, he said. ‘I have a sick wife and small daughter to take care of.’

‘Many of the men in our front lines have families, and if their wives go sick they cannot go running home. There are hospitals if your wife is sick enough and orphanages for your daughter.’

Danny’s mind recoiled from that, but the man was implacable. ‘There is no choice in the matter,’ he barked out. ‘You can’t expect to arrive in this country and have money handed out to you when you’ve put nothing in and are balking at the idea of fighting to keep England safe.’

Danny tried again. ‘I knew nothing about registration,’ he said, ‘and it wasn’t a thing the nuns would know. Anyway, I was unable to find employment – my wife worked at the Kynoch works making explosives until she became ill. She developed a cough, which turned to bronchitis and she has just miscarried our baby.’

‘Distressing though that must have been,’ the man said coldly, ‘it could be considered expedient, for it would be one more mouth to feed.’

Danny didn’t answer at first. He was too angry at the man’s callousness, but he knew to show anger would be madness. In the end he was able to control himself enough to say, ‘Are
you saying if I enlist, my family can be helped, and if I don’t we can all starve as far as you’re concerned?’

‘You don’t seem to understand the position you are in,’ the man said, a cold smile playing around his mouth. ‘If you fail to register, you can be imprisoned, and if I were to call the authorities now, that’s what would happen.’

Danny, remembering his time in Kilmainham Jail, gave an involuntary shiver. ‘However,’ the man went on, ‘I feel you will be of more benefit to England by joining the army. Have you any problem with this?’

Danny had any number of problems. He remembered months before saying spiritedly that he’d never fight for England and that he wouldn’t even work in a war-related industry. However, the reality was he would have worked anywhere that would have given him a wage

Now, if they wanted to continue to eat, he had to agree to join the army. ‘I have no problem,’ he said. ‘But this is going to take time, surely? We have no money, the last has gone on doctor’s bills. The rent is due and there’s little food in the house.’

The man shrugged. ‘You do not qualify for unemployment or poor relief, since you are not of this parish, but there are funds available called Distress Funds, and the Distress Board will find out if you are eligible as soon as I receive confirmation that you have enlisted.’

‘We really need money now, however little it is.’

‘Then you are one of many, Mr Walsh,’ the man said. ‘I’ve told you of the decision.’

‘But when will this Distress Board meet?’

‘Well not before Christmas now,’ the man said, ‘and certainly not before the 28th of December. By then you should be in the army. I suggest you take yourself off to Thorpe Street Barracks now and enlist. If I don’t hear from you or them by tomorrow, when we close the doors for the holidays, I will not hesitate to inform the authorities about you.’

‘There is no way I can have some money now?’ Danny asked desperately, and the man shook his head.

‘No way at all,’ he said.

Later, Danny stood nervously outside Thorpe Street Barracks. He estimated it to be about lunchtime, or just after, and hoped all this would not take long for he had the children to pick up before six.

As he stood before the Recruitment Board he realised if he admitted to already being months in the country it might go against him and so he told them he’d just arrived in England with his wife and child, Ireland having become a violent and turbulent country, and wanted to enlist in the army. Shay and Sam wouldn’t recognise him, he told himself, but patriotism was all right on a full belly.

The recruiting officers took in what Danny told them and saw before them a healthy young man, ready and willing to fight. ‘D’you have any preference as to which regiment you’d wish to serve in?’

‘No.’ Why would he? One was the same as another to him.

‘Well, here we recruit for the Royal Warwickshires, but we could make enquiries about the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.’

Danny didn’t want that. Dublin was too close to Blessington for comfort. What if any of the men recognised him and carried tales home. ‘The Warwickshires will suit me fine, sir.’

‘Good man,’ the recruiting officer said, rubbing his hands together as if with glee. ‘Now, as the time is pressing, Christmas only around the corner as it were, what if you have the medical now and your uniform sorted out. Then you’ll be ready to join your new unit after Christmas, some of whom are already at the training camp in Sutton Park.’

Danny hadn’t expected to be dealt with so speedily. But he was soon before a doctor to be prodded and poked and examined, his chest and back sounded and in the end pronounced A1 fit and well able to go overseas after training. Shortly
after this he was measured for the uniform that they said would be waiting for him when he joined his unit on the 27th December.

‘What is the pay, sir,’ Danny said, thinking of Rosie and Bernadette.

‘You’ve heard of the King’s shilling?’ the recruiting officer said, and at Danny’s nod, said, ‘Well, think yourself lucky for until 1915 you would have had just one of them a day, seven shillings a week, but after 1915 it was increased to two shillings a day.’ He looked at the form before him and said, ‘Oh you have a wife and child, so sixpence will be taken off you for your wife and a penny for your child.’

Danny, appalled at the meagre amount, cried, ‘But my wife, what will she live on?’

‘She will have a separation allowance,’ the recruiting officer said. ‘It amounts to a shilling and a penny a day, sixpence from you, plus the allowance of twopence for the child from the government and a penny from you. Altogether this brings your wife’s weekly income to be in the region of, let’s see, eight shillings and four pence.’

It was too little. It was a pittance. The rent was half a crown a week. But what could he do? ‘Can I give her something from my pay,’ Danny asked.

‘You can certainly make an allotment for your family,’ the recruiting officer said. ‘Many men do that.’

Danny breathed a sigh of relief. He would allot at least seven shillings to Rosie, more if he could, but as yet he didn’t know what expenses he might have. ‘What does she do to get this money?’

‘She needs to take your marriage lines and the child’s birth certificate to the Town Hall,’ the man said. ‘She must go herself, no-one can go in her stead, and she must also take any children she is claiming for. Stress upon her there must be no delay. She must present herself there as soon as they open their offices after Christmas.’

And this is the news Danny had to go home and hit Rosie with. He knew she would be terribly upset. He’d gone out to beg for funds and had come back with no money and the news he was a soldier in a war that had killed thousands and thousands of men so far. He hadn’t even anything to sweeten the bitter pill. Dear God, he thought, life is a bugger right enough.

Rosie wasn’t upset, she was distraught. She heard words spilling from Danny’s mouth, words like registration and prison and Poor Relief and Distress Boards, as if it was a foreign language. She felt far from well, her chest was burning and incredibly tight and her ribs and stomach and back ached from her coughing, and now this news was making her suddenly terribly short of breath.

Danny, aware of the rapid change in her countenance and her lack of breath, was worried. ‘Sit down, Rosie, for God’s sake, and try and calm yourself.’

‘How can I calm myself?’ Rosie demanded. ‘We have two paltry shillings to bless ourselves with and little food, and only a few nuggets of coal and rent to pay.’

‘I know that, Rosie,’ Danny said wearily. ‘And let me tell you I begged and pleaded with the man. As for hunger, not a bit has passed my lips since I had a slice of bread spread with dripping for my breakfast.’

‘I know,’ Rosie said. ‘And I’m sorry, but Danny, what are we to do?’ Danny looked at her and she began to tremble at the look in his eyes, for she knew in that moment what Danny had done. She didn’t even need to hear the words but they came anyway.

‘I’ve enlisted.’

‘Dear God. No! Say it isn’t true. Oh Danny, Danny.’

Rosie had risen to her feet and was grasping his lapels with her hands, her voice high, almost hysterical, and her breath coming in short pants. Her mind was rejecting his words. He couldn’t do this. He mustn’t. She wouldn’t let him.

But Danny’s words cut through the rambling thoughts running wild in Rosie’s brain while his hands had detached her own agitated ones and his strong arms had encircled her as he told her in his strong but gentle voice how it was, how it had to be, how there had been no other path open to him but the one that led to prison.

When Rosie realised and knew she could do nothing to change or even delay this decision Danny had been forced into, the tears poured from her in a paroxysm of grief and Danny’s arms tightened around her, for she’d sagged against him and he was afraid of her sinking to the floor.