To Have and to Hold (25 page)

And then Ruby was back and had the bedclothes raised. Then she was saying, ‘Push, bab. We’re nearly there. Honest to God.’

It seemed to Carmel that Ruby, now at the foot of the bed, had said the same thing for hours. ‘I have pushed,’ she panted. ‘I can’t push any more.’

‘Yes, you can,’ said Lois, still holding her hand.

That angered Carmel. ‘No I can’t,’ she declared. ‘What the bloody hell do you know about it?’

The words had barely left Carmel’s lips when she was assailed by the biggest contraction yet. She gave a sudden scream of agony and holding Lois’s hand so tightly the bones crunched together, she gathered up every vestige of strength and pushed with all her might.

For a second or two there was deadlock and Carmel felt herself weakening. But Lois and Ruby wouldn’t let her give up. Suddenly the pressure eased, she felt the baby slither between her legs, new-born wails filled the room and Ruby announced, ‘You bloody clever girl, you. You have a beautiful daughter.’

Carmel took the baby from Ruby, who had wrapped her in a shawl against the chill of the room, and peeled back the covers and gazed at her, this perfect little person she and Paul had created. She had stopped crying and lay passive in Carmel’s arms with her little fingers and toes and even tinier nails, her milky blue eyes trying to focus so that a little frown was developing in her brow at the effort. And Carmel realised she loved every bit of her and couldn’t understand that she had ever thought she wouldn’t be able to love this little mite, that she even might resent her.

At that moment she knew with certainty that she would tear limb from limb anyone who harmed one hair of her baby’s head.

The birth was over and mother and child doing well by the time the midwife got there, totally exhausted because she had been up all night. She was full of praise for the
way Lois and Ruby had coped, and said although the baby was premature, she appeared healthy.

‘She is a little sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Have you a name for her?’

Carmel nodded. ‘Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Though I will call her Beth, which I prefer to Lizzie, and then Eve for my mother.’

‘Fine names both of them,’ the midwife declared, and then gave a sudden yawn.

‘You best be away to your bed,’ Ruby said. ‘You look all in.’

‘I am tired,’ the midwife said. ‘Course, I have been at the other place all night, though I’ll tell you, if the government hadn’t had a rethink on the blackout and allowed shaded torches and shielded car headlights to be used, I reckon the woman would have had to manage on her own, because it was in an area I wasn’t familiar with. My job was made very difficult for a few months unless the babies chose to be born in the hours of daylight, and you know as well as I do that they are not that accommodating.’

Ruby chuckled. ‘Indeed not,’ she said. ‘They come when they are ready. This scrap, for instance, shouldn’t be with us for a few weeks yet.’

Carmel had put the baby to the breast and her eyes were closed in blissful contentment.

The midwife said, ‘Doesn’t matter how many times it happens, it always strikes me as some sort of miracle.’

Carmel couldn’t have agreed more and went over in her head the letter that she would write to Paul to tell him of this wondrous event.

The path to the house was nearly worn down by the wellwishers who called to see the baby, all bearing gifts. Jeff wanted to buy everything new and the best for his first grandchild, but Carmel told him not to.

‘Ruby has everything kept from when hers were small, packed away in the attic,’ she said, ‘keeping it for her own children. But she said as they seem in no hurry to produce and the stuff is gathering dust, I might as well have the use of it. After all, will Beth mind one jot if her pram is brand-new or not?’

‘No, but—;’

‘But nothing,’ Carmel said. ‘What I really would like is for Paul to be home beside us where he belongs. I know that cannot be, but my next desire, might be just as impossible.’

‘And what is that, my dear?’

‘It’s to have my brother Michael and my sister Siobhan over here to be godparents to their little niece.’

Jeff was delighted there was something he could do for his daughter-in-law that would please her. ‘You shall have that, my dear,’ he promised. ‘And I will go to Ireland myself to see to it.’ And he felt a little thrill of excitement run through him at the prospect of seeing Eve again.

‘Oh, but—;’

‘You must let me do this for you,’ Jeff said. ‘If Paul were here I am sure that he would attend to it, but I will deal with it in his stead. You arrange the christening and I will see that they will be there for it.’

Jeff didn’t ask why Carmel didn’t just write to her brother and sister and ask them to be godparents,
which surely was the normal way of going about things.

Paul had described to him how it was in that household, and he had described the house too, but still Jeff was shocked. That Carmel had come from such beginnings and that her mother, the gentle Eve, who had made such an impression on him, should continue to live in such a place, shocked him to the core. He felt the bile rising in him for Dennis Duffy, who allowed his family to live in such a way

Eve had been amazed to see Jeff at her door. He had given her no notice that he was coming, for he couldn’t risk being refused. But while she was embarrassed that Jeff should see how things were for her in her real life, Dennis was inclined to be belligerent. Jeff had expected this—again it had all been explained to him—and he watched the man’s expression change and pass his tongue over his lips as Jeff pulled from his bag a large bottle of single malt whiskey.

‘I thought you and I might wet the baby’s head, one grandfather with another. What do you say?’ he said to Dennis.

It cost Jeff dear to sit at that table drinking with such a man. Dennis Duffy was the very type of person Jeff despised: one who didn’t want to do a decent day’s work and yet would keep his family starving and not care a jot about it as long as he had his beer money. As for taking a drink with such a character! By choice he would rather take poison, though he liked a drink as well as the next man—more than like, if the truth was told, though from the time Carmel told him she was pregnant he had taken a grip upon himself, knowing that with
Paul away, he would have to keep a weather eye on Carmel and the child. Paul would expect it of him.

Jeff was aware too—sickeningly aware from the nervous, subservient attitude she displayed around her husband—that Eve was afraid of him. Later he was to see how terrified the children were. Even the times that he had returned to the house the worse for wear he had never raised his hand to his wife. His sons too had never felt even the flat of his hand as they were growing up. Their discipline, as every other aspect of their care, had been left to Emma and Jeff despised a man who beat his wife and children.

He would rather have laid his length on the cobbles outside the door than make a friend of Dennis, yet he knew that to get Dennis to agree to let Siobhan go to England—he imagined Michael would make his own decision—he had to push down his natural instincts. So he sat on with Dennis, drinking one glass of whiskey after the other.

Dennis was well away by the time the two made it to the pub, where Dennis introduced Jeff as his daughter’s father-in-law, over here to wet the wee baby’s head, no less.

‘He’s a grand fellow altogether,’ Dennis declared.

‘The grand fellow’ followed the same procedure for the next three nights, plying the man with drink until he had to help him home, though he took little himself. At the end of the third day, he said that if Dennis allowed Siobhan to go to England he would lay down twenty-five pounds behind the bar for him. In Dennis’s befuddled state, twenty-five pounds was the sort of money he had never seen—a fortune. By then he
thought Jeff the best in the world anyway, and so he shook him by the hand and said he was a fine man, a true gentleman, and he could do what he liked with Siobhan.

Jeff accepted the acclaim and the promise, but trusted the man not a jot. So, as arranged, the following day he called for Siobhan while Dennis was sleeping off the excesses of the night before. He was to take her to Dublin where Michael would join them. He had arranged accommodation for the night. First, however, he wanted to get Siobhan some new clothes, and he also wanted her to have her hair done properly.

Before he left, he pressed twenty single pounds into Eve’s hands, brushing away her protests that it was too much. ‘It is nowhere near enough, my dear lady, and from now on I will send you money regularly, included in the letters Carmel sends you so as not to arouse suspicion.’

‘You are very good.’

‘Not at all,’ Jeff said softly. ‘I am not so good, but I am a very rich man. Twenty pounds is like a drop in the ocean for me, but I would like it if you will take it and try and make life easier for you all. I know you will do that for you are a loving, caring mother. That has been so apparent in just the few days I have been here.’

The tears were flowing freely down Eve’s face and a lump rose in Jeff’s throat as she turned those glistening eyes on him and said, her voice husky with the tears she had shed, ‘You are the kindest man I have ever known.’

Jeff wished he could take her in his arms as he had
Carmel, and kiss her cheek, but he knew such behaviour would be inappropriate and could possibly be misconstrued so he contented himself with shaking her hand warmly.

Siobhan and Michael were both enchanted by the baby. They arrived two days before the christening, which was to be on 21 January, when the baby would be twelve days old. Carmel noticed her sister’s resplendent new clothes straight away and guessed they were a present from Jeff.

Jeff, watching the sisters greet each other, remembered Siobhan’s almost speechless delight when he suggested taking her shopping in Dublin, and how thrilled and appreciative she was with everything he bought. It pleased him greatly to treat such a person and when she had been kitted out, it had surprised him how pretty the girl was, though not quite as stunning as her elder sister.

Once the meal was over, the child in bed and Jeff gone home, Siobhan asked to see over the house. She was astonished that Carmel lived in such a place, for though Michael and her mother had described it, seeing it for herself was something else entirely. Siobhan was full of praise, tinged with a little envy.

She had begun to think recently she would never leave home. In May she would be twenty-one, nearly on the shelf already, and as she had no chance of meeting
anyone, little chance of marriage. She was also worried what her father would do to her mother if she were to leave.

In Birmingham, Letterkenny and its problems seemed far, far away and with her new clothes and with her hair cut stylishly, she decided to push the bad memories and thoughts what she would be returning to, to the back of her mind and enjoy the few free days she had.

The christening went without a hitch. The church was filled with friends, neighbours and other wellwishers, and Siobhan and Michael held the baby tenderly and gave their responses over a background noise of Beth screaming her head off, which amused everyone.

Afterwards, many piled into the house in York Road. It had been hard getting any sort of a party spread together with the rationing now of some goods and many others in short supply. However, everyone had helped, and with Lois being such a genius with food anyway, the table was respectable enough. Jeff provided the drinks and the christening party went with a swing.

Lois commented later how much she liked Siobhan. She was also a great favourite with Ruby Hancock. Carmel realised she had been wrong to be ashamed of her family. The star of the show, though, was of course the baby, who now some giant wasn’t pouring water over her head behaved impeccably. She didn’t mind at all being passed from one to another, and when she was eventually tucked into the cradle, she went to sleep like a dream.

In the days that followed, the weather wasn’t conducive to exploring Birmingham. Every day snow tum
bled from a sky the colour of gunmetal, and was whipped into drifts by the gusting winds, each night it would freeze over. It was far too cold and damp to take the baby far, though the day after the christening Carmel did manage to push the pram up Erdington High Street so that Siobhan could see the range and variety of shops on their doorstep. She was mightily impressed.

‘You must come back in the summer,’ Carmel said, once they were inside again. ‘The weather will be better then and the baby won’t need feeding every ten minutes.’

Siobhan laid the baby she had been holding back into the crib and said, ‘You know I can’t do that, as if I lived in a normal household where normal rules apply. I don’t even know how I will be received when I go home, because although Daddy said I could come here, he was drunk at the time, and I was spirited from the house before he could wake and possibly change his mind. Now, if he is mad about that for any reason, I will catch it, and you know that as well as I. Surely to God you haven’t forgotten how it is at home?’

‘He’ll not lay a hand on you,’ Michael said. ‘I told you.’

‘And I told you that Daddy has ways and means and he is like they say elephants are,’ Siobhan said. ‘He never forgets or forgives a wrong he imagines have been done to him.’

‘I’ll put the fear of God into him. I have done it before for Mammy,’ Michael said.

‘D’you think it made any difference?’ Siobhan said bitterly. ‘Daddy still hits Mammy when you are not around. He just marks her in places she can hide and
she says nothing because she doesn’t want you to get into trouble. I would keep quiet if he hit me for the same reason.’ The look on Michael’s face was savage and Siobhan laid a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t feel bad, Michael. We need you with us, not in gaol someplace.’

‘Huh, some good I am if I’m not allowed to protect you.’

‘We need you for more than just protection,’ Siobhan said. She turned to Carmel and said, ‘Don’t think you have to be entertaining me all the time either. At the moment I am enjoying the peace and quiet and I could cuddle your baby all the day. Sometimes,’ she added wistfully, ‘I don’t think I will ever have one of my own.’

‘Course you will,’ Carmel said.

‘There isn’t any of course here,’ Siobhan said. ‘I never go across the door except to go to work or to Mass.’

‘Well, that is one thing I can do for you,’ Michael said. ‘From when we leave here, the two of us will go to the weekly social. It will do me good as well.’

‘But, Michael, my clothes…’

‘The outfits Jeff bought you will do for now,’ Michael said. ‘We’ll cross the bridge of getting more later.’

‘Oh, Michael!’ Siobhan said ecstatically, throwing her arms around her brother.

‘You’ll have me strangled, woman,’ Michael said, though his face bore a huge grin. ‘I gather you approve of my idea.’

Siobhan nodded enthusiastically. ‘I…I don’t really know what to say.’

‘A speechless woman,’ Michael said. ‘Must be a first. A word of warning, though,’ he added. ‘Don’t let the
miserable bugger catch sight of those clothes or he might destroy them some way out of spite.’

Siobhan nodded. ‘I’d already thought of that. I’ll keep them in the cloakroom behind the bakery. No one will mind.’

Carmel listened to her brother and sister plotting against the man they all hated. She didn’t blame them in the least and she knew one by one he would lose the stranglehold he had on the children as they grew, for even the youngest, Pauline, had been nine in December. It was only her mother who couldn’t escape and that thought saddened her.

Once Michael and Siobhan had left, life settled down again to the horrible cold and wintry days. The only thing for Carmel to look forward to were the letters from Paul. Then from sometime towards the end of April, all communication ceased.

At first the two girls were unaware there was any sort of problem, because since their husbands had left the camp, they had experienced these silences before and then a batch of letters would arrive together. Lois was at work one day when Jeff called. Since he had broken off relations with his mother, Paul had always written to his father via the firm, and Jeff called down about the middle of May to see if Lois or Carmel had had any news.

‘Why are you so concerned?’ Carmel asked. ‘I mean, this silence has happened before.’

Jeff thought of fobbing Carmel off with some reassuring nonsense, but he knew she was no fool. Nor was she a child and she deserved to know as much of the facts as he did. ‘One of the chaps at work has this radio
receiver,’ he said. ‘He gets messages from abroad and he says the word is that the whole of the Allied army is in retreat.’

‘In retreat?’ Carmel repeated. ‘But they will be all right, won’t they? I mean, there’s that Maginot Line. Paul always said that that was unbreachable.’

‘It is,’ Jeff said, ‘or at least without severe loss of life.’

‘But?’

‘What do you mean, but?’ Jeff asked.

‘There was a definite “but” in your voice,’ Carmel said. ‘I need to know about that “but”.’

Jeff sighed. ‘I know nothing definite, you understand, but that line was erected along the border that France shares with Germany, but it stops at the border France shares with Belgium and Luxembourg. The word is out that German paratroopers have landed and taken a Belgium fort thought to be impregnable and now the Dutch and Belgians are fighting for their lives.’

Carmel felt as if her veins were suddenly filled with ice and she looked at Jeff, horror-struck.

‘But they will be all right, our husbands,’ Lois assured her later, as they sat before the meal Carmel had cooked and she told Lois what Jeff had said. ‘We’re luckier than most, for ours are not fighting men.’

‘I hope you are right,’ Carmel said. ‘We will just have to wait and hope to hear something soon. But I can’t help remembering that Norway didn’t hold out for long.’

‘So what chance have Holland and Belgium got, you mean?’

‘Yes,’ Carmel said. ‘I mean, the man and his armies
have just rode roughshod over every other country. It’s as if he’s unstoppable.’

The words hung in the air, because neither woman wanted to take that thought any further.

Then, just three days after Jeff’s visit, Carmel and Lois were at home listening to the wireless when the programme was interrupted to report that both Belgium and Holland had been defeated. For a second or two, the women looked at each other and then Lois said, ‘I bought a paper today and it has a map in the middle. Shall we have a look?’

What they saw horrified them, for it was plainly that if the Allies were retreating with the Germans on their tail, they had nowhere to retreat to but beaches.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Lois exclaimed. ‘What can they do with the Germans behind them and the sea ahead of them? What bloody chance have they got?’

Then, on 31 May, the veil of secrecy was lifted and they heard of the thousands of Allied soldiers that the Royal Navy, with the help of smaller boats, were attempting to rescue from beaches at Dunkirk. There were pictures in the paper of the thousands of soldiers waiting their turn to be evacuated and the pier heads they had built out of discarded vehicles and equipment. There were many pictures of small boats of all shapes sizes and descriptions too of their lifting as many men as possible.

There were pictures of the returning soldiers, many wrapped in blankets, being given tea, sandwiches and cigarettes from the stalwart women of the WVS. Carmel and Lois scanned the pictures anxiously to see if they could spot their loved ones.

The telegrams began to arrive and on 3 June one was delivered to 17 York Road for Lois, who was on duty at the hospital. Carmel took it from the lad with trembling fingers and, lifting the child from her cot, she took her round to Ruby.

‘I must take this to Lois straight away,’ she said. ‘And I would hesitate to take the baby because I don’t know what it says…how she’ll be, you know.’

‘You go on, ducks,’ Ruby said, lifting Beth from Carmel’s arms. The baby loved Ruby and she gave her a gurgling smile and waved her podgy arms in the air as Ruby went on, ‘Leave this little angel with me. Your place is beside Lois. She has need of you now.’

Chris was alive, but injured and at a military hospital in Ramsgate. Lois made immediate arrangements to go down and visit him. So Ruby knew Carmel was alone in the house when, as she dusted the front room, she spotted the telegraph boy stop again outside 17 York Road the following day.

She usually went into Carmel and Lois’s house by the back door, but she didn’t wait that day. Leaving her duster and polish, she scurried out the front way. The front door was ajar, but still Ruby had trouble opening it because the crumpled and unconscious form of Carmel was behind it, the telegram still clutched in her hand, the telegram that said Paul Vincent Connolly was missing, presumed dead.

By the time Lois returned the next day, confident that her husband was on the mend and would be transferred to a Birmingham hospital as soon as it could be arranged, she found Ruby rushed off her feet and worried to death.
Lois was devastated herself by the news of her cousin’s death. She shed bitter tears and knew she would always feel the loss of him, a gap in her life that would never be filled. She was grateful to Ruby, who did not urge her not to cry, but seemed to think it perfectly natural she should. She held her tight and told her to cry it out.

Carmel, on the other hand, lay as one who had died herself, but her eyes remained open. She had not spoken nor eaten a morsel since she received the telegram, nor taken any notice of the child.

‘I’ve had to feed Beth, you know,’ Ruby said. ‘I got bottles in and all because, well, I doubt Carmel could have fed her, even if she wanted to, for a shock that affects a person so deeply it would effectively dry up the milk, I’d say.’

But Carmel had given no thought to her child. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the husband she adored. The loss of him hurt her so deeply, she wondered how a person could be suffering so much pain and remain alive. She wondered bleakly what was there for her in life without Paul beside her. She wanted to be with him wherever he was. In one hand she clutched the locket he had given her for her twenty-first and with her other she held a photograph taken of him before he went away.

Ruby saw the despair in her eyes and the dejected slump of her body when she lifted her to try to coax her to eat a little broth or something similar. She would turn her head away from food, but would sometimes take a few drops of water.

‘I am afraid to leave her and that is the truth,’ Ruby told Lois. ‘I would say she is distressed enough to do
something silly. Not that she needs to, because if she doesn’t eat soon, she’ll fade away. I mean, there wasn’t much of her to start with.’

Lois knew every word that Ruby said was true and she was distracted with concern for her very special friend. She saw too that Ruby couldn’t do it all and, anyway, Carmel shouldn’t be left alone, so Lois went to the hospital the next day and asked to see the matron. The older woman, though pleased that Chris was on the mend, was distressed at Carmel’s news.

‘How is she managing?’

‘She isn’t. Not at all,’ Lois cried. ‘She lies in bed as if she is made of stone. She doesn’t speak and hasn’t eaten. Ruby, a neighbour, has been dealing with things while I have been away in Ramsgate. It can’t go on, for there is the baby to see to as well and Ruby is frightened to leave Carmel alone for any length of time.’

‘Does she think Carmel would do some thing silly?’ the matron said. ‘She never struck me as that type of girl.’