Strawberry Fields (10 page)
But he hadn’t, so all was well. And very soon now she could come out from her hiding place and reap the admiration which, Brogan thought, was her due. Besides, she was soaking wet. The men had clubbed together and bought a pile of towelling for him to use but he had no means of washing it aboard so had simply jettisoned each piece and moved on to the next – and the last had been the last, so he should hurry himself, get back to his mammy, who was someone who understood a good deal more than he did about babies.
He crossed O’Connell Street, admired the brightly lit shop windows, the figures of one or two smart couples strolling along it. He reached the Ha’penny Bridge, and climbed the steps, then set off across it. It was really called the Metal Bridge or the Wellington Bridge, but everyone knew it as the Ha’penny Bridge, from the days when they’d charged you a halfpenny toll to cross. It was a beautiful bridge and even with the fog swirling and hiding the waters of the Liffey, dazzling in haloes round the gaslights, it was a lovely sight with its delicate wrought-iron railings and the arches which spanned the walkers beneath.
He could have taken several ways from here to get home and the fog seemed thicker by the river but nevertheless he decided to stick to the Quays. He walked swiftly, his scarf up round his mouth now in the fog and deepening dusk Where Merchants Quay met Low Bridge Street he turned left, then began to weave his way up towards Thomas Street. He turned right into Cornmarket and then he was on Thomas Street, crossing it, diving down Francis Street and then into Swift’s Alley, his breathing quickening, a smile tilting his mouth. Home! Swift’s Alley might not be everyone’s idea of gracious living, but . . . it was home!
He dived into the narrow entry, turned right, and there it was. A tall tenement block with the washing lines which looped the house-fronts hung with limp, unmoving linen, the lines themselves beaded with moisture. He guessed that the womenfolk would have left their sheets and towels hanging out rather than bring them into the rooms still soaked through. He hurried in through the doorway, feeling the child stir sleepily against him. The lobby was damp with all the footsteps of folk passing through but it was clean; a good deal cleaner, he thought protectively, than some of the big public buildings he had known. It smelt of carbolic soap, fish and potatoes, with the faint rivery smell which seemed to hang over the whole city – and of course the smell of the fog. A smell of coal fires, and salt-sea, and wet wood and stone.
He climbed the stairs quite slowly, able to wait now that he was so close. The baby woke properly; it was time for her to be fed, he supposed. She began to struggle but he soothed her, cooed to her, kept his coat round her. She was his reason for coming home, his special surprise, she must not put in an appearance too soon!
The door to the O’Brady room was closed. He turned the handle carefully, then pushed the door open cautiously, bit by bit, so that he could see inside without being seen. The door opened straight into their main room, naturally, with the second room leading off from the first, with no door on to the communal landing.
‘It’s a fire hazard, that inner room,’ a priest had said once, when he was visiting them. ‘How would you get the children out safe, Mrs O’Brady, if there was a fire ragin’ in your nice parlour?’
‘Sure an’ I’d t’row ’em t’rough the window,’ his mother had said, smiling. ‘My kids are full o’ spirit, Father – they’d bounce, every last one of ’em.’
The priest had smiled, too.
‘But best keep a bucket of water in the bedroom, even so,’ he had advised mildly. ‘Bouncin’ fireballs is no joke, Mrs O’Brady.’
But now, Brogan looked into the room, and it was as if he had the second sight; everything was just as he’d imagined it. Mammy, stirring a pot, the steam making the little black curls round her face curlier than ever. The boys with their tin plates at the ready, watching for the moment when Mammy said it was done and dipped into the stew with her big ladle. The firelight turning the faces to rose and gold, the lantern on the table casting a cool primrose light, hissing softly away to itself.
Someone gasped; Mammy turned. She stared for a moment, then the ladle flew into the fire and Mammy flew across the room seizing Brogan so hard, squeezing him so fiercely, that he feared for the baby.
‘Mammy! Ah, Mammy, I’ve missed you sore! But don’t squeeze me to death, I’ve a present for you under me coat!’
They were all round him, hugging, exclaiming, asking where Peader was, why Brogan had come home alone – and after Christmas too, when all the fun and frolic was over and done for another year!
‘Did you have a good Christmas, my dearest?’ his mother asked, still hanging on to his coat sleeve as though she dared not let him go in case he disappeared. ‘We had a good time, or as good a time as we could have, wit’out you and me darlin’ Peader. I sold oranges on O’Connell Street on Christmas Eve, and I had a line waitin’, honest to God I did!’
His mother was delighted with her fruit-selling, she wanted everyone to know that it wasn’t only potatoes she could sell, no indeed, selling was something at which she excelled, her shining eyes said. And wasn’t she the prettiest woman ever, Brogan thought fondly. Her eyes were blue as summer skies, her hair black as a raven’s wing, and she had dimples and the sweetest smile. No wonder Dubliners had queued up to buy her oranges on Christmas Eve!
‘I made five bob in an hour,’ his mother was saying. ‘Where’s me present then, Brogan? Did your daddy send it? Oh, why didn’t he come home wit’ you, son? He’s sadly missed; isn’t it dull and flat without your daddy, then?’
The boys agreed that it was and stared at Brogan’s coat, which was now heaving gently as the baby tried to escape from its folds.
‘It’s a puppy!’ yelled Martin. He had always wanted a puppy but Mammy said it wasn’t fair with them living on the first floor and no way a puppy could run out to do his business.
‘A puppy!’ Donal echoed. He was a sturdy six-year-old and toothless until the second ones came through. He grinned gummily at his eldest brother. ‘Jeez, Brog, you’ve brought our mammy a puppy!’
Hastily, before hearts were broken – and Mollie was seen as second-best – Brogan undid his coat and lifted the baby from her warm little nest. Peader had formed a sling from an old scarf which had held her secure all through their journey but now she stared at the faces around her as though she could not believe her eyes.
‘It’s a girl,’ Brogan said, but he felt there could be no doubt. Mollie was so pink-cheeked, so bright-eyed, the picture of feminine charm and innocence from the top of her curly head to the tip of her rosy toes, and Brogan heard the admiring gasps, the cries of ‘Oh, Brog, what a little dote! Where did you get her, the darlin’? Is she yours, boyo?’ with real pleasure. They liked her – and Mammy was gazing at Mollie as though . . . oh, as though all her dearest wishes had come true!
‘Brogan? Where . . . How . . . Who . . .?’
‘’Tis a long story,’ Brogan said, taking off his coat and hanging it on the hook behind the door. ‘Serve up the meal, Mammy, whiles I tell you how I come by her.’
‘You’re a good, kind fella, and ’twas no fault of yours that the child’s sister was killed,’ Deirdre said when his story – and the plate of stew and potatoes – was finished. ‘Sure and I’ll look after her as though she were me own flesh and blood, and won’t I love her as I love me own, too?’
‘I never doubted it,’ Brogan assured her. ‘Daddy’s the same, he didn’t want her to go back to a man who beats his kids. She’s no trouble,’ he added hastily. ‘And I’ll send all me wages home, same as before. I’ll work harder, Mammy, so you aren’t burdened by the kid.’
‘She’s no burden,’ his mammy insisted. She had taken Mollie on her knee and had spooned bread and milk into her eager mouth. ‘But, Brog, I’ve just had a t’ought. What’ll we tell the neighbours?’
‘Tell ’em she’s an orphan from the country, left wit’ us by a cousin,’ Niall said after a moment’s silence. ‘Do you remember your cousin Fidelma? Doesn’t she seem a likely one to do somethin’ strange, now?’
Everyone laughed except for Bevin, who was too little to remember the strange cousin who had come a-visiting two years since, and driven them all mad with her odd ways and her demands to be taken here and there, to see the sights of the city.
‘Ye-es, but not concernin’ a baby,’ Mammy said at length. ‘It ’ud be better if we picked a cousin called Mairenn, who did wrong and dared not take her child home to the farm with her. Can you remember that? You’re the baby, Bevin, you tell me the story.’
‘I’m not the baby now, am I though?’ Bevin said proudly, pointing at the child on his mother’s lap. ‘She’s the baby – Mollie’s the baby. Oh, isn’t she a pretty one, Mammy? Isn’t she tarrible sweet now?’
‘She is. Now tell me where she come from, me little jewel.’
Bevin frowned.
‘From – from heaven, Mammy? From God, to us, for bein’ good?’
The bigger boys began to laugh and jeer, but Mammy stopped them short with a frown and a shake of the head.
‘That’s very true, Bevin, and aren’t you a broth of a boy now, for knowin’ it? But what’ll we tell folk who ask how we come to have such a lovely wee girl, now?’
Bevin had been scowling angrily at his brothers but now his brow cleared. ‘Oh, that’s aisy, so it is,’ he said scornfully. ‘Mairenn from the farm done wrong, and dussen’t take the baby back with her, so we took her, the darlin’.’
Mammy clapped, Brogan cheered, the boys all laughed and followed suit. Even the baby, enthroned upon Mammy’s lap, smiled and gurgled.
‘There we are, then,’ Mammy said triumphantly. ‘She’ll be Polly O’Brady from now on . . . my dear little Irish Liverpool baby!’ She turned to Brogan. ‘You’ll be stayin’ now, won’t you?’ she coaxed. ‘You wouldn’t want to go back to that old Liverpool, they’ll mebbe ask you questions you can’t answer, son.’
The child recently rechristened Polly had finished her bread and milk so Brogan took the dish and carried it over to the basin standing on the table against the wall. He put it in the basin and then refilled the kettle from the bucket and stood it on the metal trivet which poked it into the red heart of the fire.
‘Mammy, I wish I could stay,’ he said from the heart. ‘But there’s no job in Dublin that ’ud pay me like the navvyin’ job in Liverpool. And though Mollie – I mean Polly – is small now, she’ll eat her share, need clothin’, go to school when she’s big enough. It all costs, Mammy.’
‘We’ll manage, but I daresay you’re right and you should be with your daddy,’ his mother said contentedly. ‘Can she crawl, the little cherub?’
‘Put her down on the rag rug and you’ll see for yourself,’ Brogan said, smiling. His mother, who had borne so many children, was like a child with a lovely new dolly. She could scarcely wait to take it out, show it to the neighbours. ‘Where’ll she sleep, Mammy?’
‘Where but in me bed, the dote,’ Deirdre said fondly. ‘And later, in a nice orange box. For I have to work, no matter what. But the rest of you came on the streets with me when you were small, well-wrapped up in a nice fruit box, she’ll be no different.’
‘She’s too big for a fruit box, Mammy,’ Brogan said anxiously. ‘She’d be out of it and crawlin’ amongst the traffic in no time. See?’
And sure enough, Polly was off, crawling briskly across the linoleum, heading for the fire’s glow. But she was re-directed by several small, grubby hands, and when she reached a chair she tried to pull herself into a standing position by it and was much praised by the onlookers.
And presently, Brogan went into the second room with his brothers whilst his mammy pulled out her bed, which was a good straw mattress, a pillow and a couple of blankets. She cuddled Polly, already sleeping soundly, down, and then bade her sons goodnight.
‘I’ll not wake Brogan, he deserves a lie-in, but the rest of you had best be up betimes,’ she said as she stood in the doorway between the two rooms with her hair brushed out so that it was like a dark halo around her head. ‘There’ll be oatmeal for breakfast and some bread and jam. We’ve still got some left over from me Christmas store.’
‘I’ll get up when me brothers do,’ Brogan said. ‘I don’t mind, Mammy, honest. I’d as soon be up, because tomorrow I must get me a ticket for the return trip on the ferry boat. Daddy and the other fellers are covering for me – they’ve told the boss that I was called back to Ireland on Christmas Day to see a sick relative. But I don’t want to lose me job, and Daddy’s hopin’ for advancement quite soon. He’s steady, is our daddy, and the bosses know it. Sure and it wouldn’t do him a good turn if I stayed away any longer than I need, so I’ll be off when I can.’
His mother sighed but she knew better than to argue. Brogan knew that the harder his daddy worked and the more money he earned, the sooner he would be able to come home here for a good holiday if not for ever, and his mammy realised it too.
‘Right, Brog,’ she said. ‘See you in the mornin’, then, me laddo. And it’s sleep you’re in there for, boys, d’you hear me? No chatterin’ half the night and keepin’ your brother from the rest he needs.’
But nothing could have prevented Brogan from sleeping that night, not the narrowness of the straw mattress he shared with Martin and Donal, not the whisperings of the older boys, not even the terrible throttling snores of Niall, who suffered with catarrh. And once he was asleep he did not stir until morning, though he dreamed, and twitched, and cried out a couple of times.
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