Strawberry Fields (38 page)
And wait.
The news of her evening was too good to keep to herself. The minute Sara arrived home she told Gran that she’d met Brogan’s father.
‘And he said Brogan had been in Liverpool two Christmases ago and last Christmas, and he’d called in Snowdrop Street, but we were out,’ she told Mrs Prescott. ‘Imagine – he did call! I thought he’d forgotten all about me, or moved away, or both. Mind, he could have written, but men don’t like writing much, do they?’
‘Not labourers,’ Mrs Prescott said, a trifle sharply, Sara thought. ‘But no doubt he’s a nice enough young man, in his way. Did you give the father our new address?’
‘Oh goodness, I quite forgot,’ Sara said, hands flying to her cheeks. ‘Oh, how stupid I am, the poor fellow will go round to Snowdrop Street and think I’m deliberately keeping out of his way! Oh, Gran, what a fool I am! But I know where Mr O’Brady goes of an evening, and it’s not too far from here, so I can always pop in and tell him we’ve moved.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Mrs Prescott said. ‘It’s time you met young men other than Army ones.’
Sara bristled. ‘What’s wrong with Army ones?’ she said. ‘They’re very nice.’
But inside herself, she was saying softly,
But they aren’t as nice as Brogan O’Brady, that’s for sure.
But they aren’t as nice as Brogan O’Brady, that’s for sure.
It was a real pea-souper, Brogan thought, examining the range of instruments sparkling before him on the footplate of the engine and wishing that one of them was a magic eye which could see through fog. Weather like this was the very devil, because you simply could not tell where you were. Time stopped mattering, you had to slow down so much, and though you should be warned of a station’s approach by the detonators on the track, you would not have been human had you not worried. Men did forget . . . and then you would go right past a station and there would be trouble from indignant passengers, hours late already, wanting their homes and their beds.
‘Hold hard now, Harry.’ Brogan leaned out of the cab and peered through the swirling fog. Harry Brett, his fireman, stopped shovelling coal for a moment and they both listened. Somewhere a cow lowed, the sound as mournful and pessimistic as a foghorn at sea. ‘We’re in flat country because we’ve not been through a cutting for a powerful while, and we’re a way from a town, because of the cow. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a station coming up. Oh well, we should know quite soon now.’
Presently they got steam up again and began to move rather faster. And of course the minute they did that the detonators went off, sending Brogan reaching for the brakes.
‘Dear God in heaven, those bloody things will have me heart stopped yet,’ he said, whilst Harry stopped shovelling coal for a moment to wipe his face with the rag which hung at his belt. ‘This’ll be Stafford, then. Thank God, we’re makin’ progress.’
‘Home by midnight at this rate,’ Harry said. He hated getting in late because it meant he would have to walk home – the buses would have stopped running and Harry lived some way from the station. ‘And we’re on earlies tomorrow.’
Brogan sighed. ‘Aye, and I was goin’ to write to me family tonight – we’re scattered all over, now. There’s most of ’em in Ireland, but Niall has recently gone to America, then my father’s in Liverpool, there’s me in Crewe . . . if we didn’t write we’d lose touch.’
They crept into the station, slowed even more, stopped. The guard shouted and Brogan leaned out of his cab once more. All down the train doors were opening, people were jumping down, porters rushed about . . . they didn’t look too pleased with life, Brogan noticed. Ah well, everyone hates late trains. And the newspapers would be late, too . . . they were beginning to load them, and the big brown post bags, into the luggage van. The guard came along the platform towards him, looking tired and cross.
‘I’m goin’ to get a butty from the refreshment room seein’ as we’re runnin’ late,’ he began. ‘Do you want somethin’, fellers?’
‘A cup of tea and a currant bun or a cheese sandwich . . . lemonade will do if they don’t have tea,’ Brogan said. ‘Same for you, Harry?’
‘Aye, something to eat and anything to wet my throat,’ Harry decided. ‘I’m easy.’
‘Good,’ the guard said. ‘If one more bugger asks me why the train’s runnin’ so late I swear to God I’ll swing for ’im. Right. We’ve got six minutes here, ’cos o’ the post; train won’t pick up many passengers tonight, though. Folk don’t wait when we’re this late.’
‘If they cut down any more on the number of trains folk will have to walk,’ Harry observed. ‘Wish we had a New Deal, like the Yanks. They know how to deal with a Depression, they’re making new jobs, you know, puttin’ bread into the mouths of those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Not like here, where it’s every man for himself.’
‘We don’t have a Roosevelt,’ the guard reminded him. ‘We’ve only got old Ramsey Mac.’
‘True. And I think the fog’s thinnin’ out a bit – the wind’s gettin’ up, that’s why. Go on, Fred, or we won’t have time to drink the tea before the refreshment room is shoutin’ for their mugs back!’
It had been a long, hot summer without a drop of rain to green the grass or grow the potatoes. Forest fires had raged at the height of the drought and folk living in the tenement housing had longed desperately for a cool breeze, and for rain. But the kids were delighted when the weather only broke a couple of days after they returned to school.
‘Sure an’ it can rain all it likes now,’ Tad said generously, sitting cross-legged on the O’Bradys’ windowseat and watching the rain pelting down outside. ‘Because it’s only school it’s ruinin’, and I’ve no time for school. In another couple o’ years . . .’
‘You’ll be out and workin’, Polly chorused with him. She knew the remark off by heart and sometimes she wondered whether Tad said it so often because he was afraid. There weren’t many good jobs around and Tad, with his threadbare clothes and his bedraggled person, seemed less likely than most to find one of them.
But work or no work, Tad and Polly had enjoyed the summer holidays, that was for sure. They’d fished for pinkeens in the Grand Canal, netting them out of the greenish, turgid water and into glass jam-jars which they would later use as their admission to the tuppenny rush on Saturdays. Tad was a good swimmer and showed off by diving into the water under Griffith Bridge; Polly preferred the other side, known as the Shallow, where she could dabble and paddle and dream, and sometimes practise the three strokes which was the most she could manage before her feet sunk to the muddy bottom. And since Tad still sold newspapers Polly had taken to helping him, getting almost as good at leaping aboard a traffic-stranded train and off again before it moved as her brother Brogan had once been.
Tad didn’t make much money, but at least he made some, and as he assured his small helper, anything was better than going back to Mammy empty-handed.
‘Because the ould feller’s into everythin’,’ he assured her. ‘’Tis not his money alone that gets spent in Deegan’s, but every penny he can find, these days. Mammy’s earnings, mine, young Dougal’s even. So I never take money home, not even a kid’s eye. I take bread, sausage, spuds . . . things to eat. An’ if me ould feller’s on the warpath, sure an’ I keep out o’ the way till he’s cooled down.’
So when the weather broke in the first week of the new term, Polly shrugged her shoulders, thanked the good God for a fine summer, and continued to help Tad with his various tasks.
Weekends were different, though. At weekends, after you’d sold your papers or carried sacks of spuds around or run messages for anyone who asked, your time was your own.
‘We’ll go after blackers,’ Tad said the first Saturday as the two of them sat in the windowseat glumly watching the rain. ‘Sure an’ if it goes on rainin’ we’ll be the only ones, so we’ll get a grush o’ berries. The jam factory buys ’em if you get nice ones, or your mammy could make blackberry an’ apple pie.’
‘Where’d she get the apples, though?’ Polly asked. ‘Unless you buy her some.’
Tad snorted. ‘Buy her some? When we can box the fox? ’Tis early days, the fellers won’t be after apples yet awhile, but you an’ me, we could go round to the house by the park Sure an’ the orchard there’s too big for one family so it is.’
‘Mammy says boxing the fox is thievery,’ Polly pointed out self-righteously. ‘And I don’t want to do thievery.’ She thought it over. ‘Well, I don’t want to get caught,’ she amended.
‘Polly, when did I ever lead you into trouble and get you caught? We’ll be in and out before the folk at the big house know there’s a Christian soul in the place beside themselves. Trust me!’
It was true that though Tad had led her into several hair-raising adventures, he usually managed to extract her from the same without damage, but Polly was still doubtful. And picking apples and blackberries in the rain would be nasty, chilly work.
She said as much to Tad, who looked offended at this criticism of his fine, money-making idea.
‘Sure an’ it’ll stop rainin’ any minute, alanna. Trust me!’
‘Why should I? You aren’t a weather prophet. And besides, even if it stops the trees will be powerful wet an’ so will the blackers.’
Tad heaved a sigh and slid off the windowseat. Ivan, building bricks on the rug, turned to stare at them. ‘Has it stopped?’ he asked. He had been asking the same question ever since breakfast, and Polly sighed.
‘No, it hasn’t,’ she said. ‘But we’re goin’ out anyway, Tad and me.’
‘You’re takin’ me!’ Ivan shrieked, jumping to his feet so hastily that he spilt building bricks everywhere. ‘I’m goin’ out if you’re goin’ out!’
But at that point Polly’s mother appeared, a pair of spectacles perched on the end of her nose, a letter in her hand.
‘No, you aren’t goin’ anywhere, Ivan,’ she said briskly. ‘Polly an’ Tad’s goin’ to post me letter, that’s all.’
She held out the letter and Polly took it. ‘Who’s it to?’ she asked automatically, and then, glancing at the writing on the front of the envelope: ‘Oh, it’s to my daddy. Did you give him a kiss from me, Mammy?’
‘Probably,’ Mammy said absently. ‘But I had a lot to say to him; mebbe I didn’t remember to send your kiss. Why don’t you write one on the back of the envelope, Polleen? Then he’ll be sure to see it first off.’
‘I will,’ Polly said joyfully. ‘Where’s your pen, Mammy?’
‘In the kitchen; I went there for some peace and quiet, away from the young gentleman there,’ Mammy said, jerking her head at Ivan, sitting amidst the ruins of his brick castle and glaring tearfully up at them. ‘Now no nonsense, Ivan, your sister has a message to run and you’d only slow her down.’ She winked at Polly. ‘Sure an’ she won’t be long.’
‘Watch Lionel; by the time he’s washed himself from heel to toe we’ll be back,’ Polly said, smiling at her little brother. ‘Be a good boy for Mammy now.’
Deirdre watched as Polly drew crosses on the back of the envelope and added the words
kisses from your loving Polly,
and then she watched as the two youngsters went out of the room. She listened as they clattered down the stairs, then watched again as they emerged in the street below. The letter was still firmly grasped in Polly’s small and probably grubby hand.
kisses from your loving Polly,
and then she watched as the two youngsters went out of the room. She listened as they clattered down the stairs, then watched again as they emerged in the street below. The letter was still firmly grasped in Polly’s small and probably grubby hand.
I’ve done a wrong thing, a wicked thing, Deirdre thought suddenly. I ought to run down the stairs, and across the yard and into the alley. I ought to stop Polly, say there’s somethin’ in the letter I forgot, get it back . . . throw it into the heart of the fire. That would be the right, the kind thing to do.
But it had taken her months to screw up her courage after Peader’s last visit, and actually write the letter that had been forming in her head ever since last Christmas. And this morning, when she looked out of the window and saw the rain coming down like stair rods, sure and hadn’t it seemed the right moment, the best opportunity she was likely to get? The kids were home to give an eye to Ivan and she could sit quietly at the kitchen table and compose the letter.
Why hadn’t she written it before? Why hadn’t she told him that she’d thought it over and she couldn’t leave Dublin? Not wouldn’t, just couldn’t. Because hadn’t he been away a dozen years or more and hadn’t she grown used to being a woman alone? But with money coming in, a little voice reminded her mockingly. Her life was easy compared to most, she didn’t even have to work, scarcely remembered the bad old days when Peader had been here, getting one day’s work a fortnight perhaps, whilst she tramped out to the farmlands, dug potatoes, paid the farmer for them and wheeled them home again in her wooden box on wheels which had once belonged to a rich man’s perambulator. She had wheeled them to the markets, Moore Street, Francis Street, anywhere, and sold them, with Brogan in an orange box beside her, then Niall, then Martin.
Peader had been good to her, even then. Helped all he could, raced desperately along the docks from read to read, imploring work, putting himself out for the other men, even going out to the tips when things got desperate, to pick over the rubbish. Rooney men they called them, tip pickers, ragged and hopeless, they were down there all hours, turning over the rubbish for something they could sell. Old metal, decent rags, glass bottles – anything.
And then he had come to her and said there was work over the water. Well-paid work, too.
‘They’ll be diggin’ a tunnel under the Mersey in a year or so,’ he had said, eyes shining. ‘And there’s men wanted on the railways . . . me pal Johnny’s goin’. He says it’s his last chance to get out o’ debt. Well, we’re not in debt, alanna, but at the rate we’re goin’ God alone knows how long it’ll be before we have no choice. Pawning’s all right, but borrowin’ money . . . well, that’s the way to trouble.’
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