Читать книгу Pack Up Your Troubles - Anne Bennett - Страница 6

ONE

Maeve Brannigan couldn’t believe she was actually leaving the little farm in Donegal where she’d lived all of her eighteen years. It had been worth the cajoling and pleading, her mother’s tears and her father’s bad humour that had made him moody and snappy with them all. She’d survived it all, as well as the old biddies in the parish, who’d prophesied that no good would come of it, and did she think she ought to go when, after all, she was such a grand help to her mother, for wasn’t the woman herself always saying so?

Maeve had been brought up to have manners and it had only been that innate politeness that had stopped her screaming abuse at the interfering old gossips. Did they think she didn’t know all that? She was the eldest of seven and even when Maeve had begun work in the grocery store in the town when she was fourteen, there had always been a list of chores for her at home.

Well, now it was the turn of Kate and Rosemarie, who at eleven and twelve years of age were well able for it. Maeve was sick of being at everyone’s beck and call; fed up with the isolated farm, and of the suffocating small town where everyone knew everything about you and yours. Her total social life revolved around church activities, and the weekly dance, held only in the summer months, where she met boys she’d known for years, as familiar to her as her brothers and just as exciting. Few of them had any ambition and were content to live in Ballyglen all their lives, and expected the wives they would eventually take to be satisfied with that situation too.

Maeve decided it wasn’t for her. But she wasn’t to go to Dublin, or ‘God forbid’ London, a desperate place altogether, her parents claimed, and where she knew not a soul. No, she was to go to Birmingham where Maeve’s mother, Annie, whose maiden name had been O’Toole, had a brother called Michael.

Maeve knew of her Uncle Michael, though she’d never met him. He’d been in Birmingham since early 1919, when he’d met and married his English wife, Agnes, in just a couple of months, and had never been home since. Maeve also knew that no obstacles had been put in the way of his leaving his home, but in fact the reverse. He’d served in the British Army in the Great War and had come back in late 1918, a bitter and disillusioned young man. Ireland was in disarray, the troubles at their height and rebel gangs roaming the country. His family, terrified he’d be caught up in it all, had encouraged Michael to accompany a neighbour catching the emigrant boat for England. He’d ended up in Birmingham and had got a job – a grand job he’d said, in a foundry. But he was still Annie’s little brother and she wrote him regular letters of the family, and now was sure Maeve could lodge with him to see how she liked the place. In fact Michael had written her a very long, encouraging letter. Not only could she stay with them and welcome, he said, he could even get her a waitressing job in a café. He knew the owner, a Greek man by the name of Dolamartis, a good Catholic, and they went to the same church. He’d told Michael his assistant was leaving. Jobs were hard to find, her uncle said, and Maeve couldn’t afford to be too choosy. Maeve had no intention of being choosy at all and at the mention of a job and place to stay, her parents’ resistance finally crumbled. Maeve was on her way.

They were all there that early spring morning with the mist still swirling around the hills, to put her on the little rail bus that ran at the bottom of Thomas Brannigan’s farm, to start the first leg of her long journey. She saw her mother holding little Nuala’s hand and dabbing at her eyes with her apron, her father, his face still in stiff lines of disapproval, and the others staring at her as if they couldn’t quite believe she was going. Maeve knew her father didn’t want her to go, in fact he dreaded it, and in a way she understood why. She knew she had a special place in her father’s heart, partly because she looked so like her mother and also because she was the firstborn. She also knew it had been her mother who’d persuaded her father to allow her to go, and if she hadn’t supported her, it would have been far more difficult.

The way he’d gone on, it was as if he expected her to be leapt on by every man in Christendom as soon as she left the farm. She knew the lads all had an eye for her; she wasn’t stupid. But her mother had talked to her, and anyway, she knew right from wrong. So though she felt sorry for her parents, she couldn’t wait to be gone.

Maeve watched until the group by the farm gate had become like small dots and then she settled into her seat with a sigh of contentment. Excitement fizzed inside her so that she could hardly sit still. She wished she could snap her fingers and be in Birmingham, where she was sure everything that was good awaited her.

She sustained the excitement all the way to Belfast, though the size and noise of the station unnerved her. The clatter of the enormous trains that seemed to hurl into the station to stop with a hiss of steam and a piercing screech and a whistle made her jump more than once. She left the busy Belfast station for the ferry, feeling apprehensive about the journey across the water.

Maeve boarded with what seemed like thousands of other people crowding on to the gangplank, her case bumping against her knees. Once on board, she made her way on to the deck and, putting her case beside her, she held tightly to the rail as she watched the shores of Ireland fade into the distance and then disappear altogether. She felt quite suddenly unexpectedly desolate and a little frightened. The overcast leaden grey skies belied the fact that it was early April and although it was midmorning the light was as poor as dusk, which didn’t help Maeve’s mood. Nor did the roll of the ship and the churning of her stomach.

She leant over the side, overcome suddenly by nausea, and vomited all she’d eaten that morning into the white-fringed grey water crashing and foaming against the ferry’s sides. She continued to retch over and over and she realised she wasn’t the only one.

When eventually her nausea was over and as she wiped her mouth with a handkerchief she became aware of a dumpy little woman dressed in black watching her. The rain came then, not soft spring rain, but sharp shafts that stung Maeve’s face and soaked her coat in minutes.

‘Come away into the bar,’ the woman told her, lifting her case as if it weighed nothing at all. ‘You’ll freeze to death out here.’

Maeve allowed herself to be led indoors, where she was met by a cacophony of people talking, laughing, shouting and quarrelling, and here and there she heard snatches of songs, the laments of the emigrant Irish that brought tears to her eyes.

‘Tch tch, that won’t do,’ the woman said. ‘You need a brandy to buck you up. I’ll send my Sean to get you one.’

Maeve’s protests were waved aside and the woman escorted her to where a man also dressed in black sat on a suitcase just a little way from the bar.

‘Sit down,’ the woman commanded and, as the seats were all occupied, Maeve upended her case and sat on that.

The woman introduced herself as Minnie O’Rourke, and her husband, whom she dispatched for the drinks, as Sean. They were returning from a funeral for Sean’s parents, who’d died within days of one another on the family farm in Galway. The farm now belonged to Sean, Minnie O’Rourke explained, though his three sisters ran the place. Maeve, having told her new acquaintance her own name, smiled politely and hoped the brandy would ease the cramps in her stomach.

The bar reminded her of Donovan’s in her home town, with the tobacco stench that stung Maeve’s eyes and hung like a blue fog over the room, together with the familiar smell of Guinness. Sean O’Rourke returned with two glasses of the black drink with the creamy white top for himself and his wife, and a large brandy in a balloon glass for Maeve.

Maeve looked at it fearfully. Never had she had any strong drink, except the odd sip of her father’s Guinness, which he’d allowed her at Christmas and which she’d not liked. The brandy caught in her throat and caused her to cough and splutter, and Minnie O’Rourke patted her back and with a smile told her to treat the drink with respect and sip it.

And Maeve did sip it, grimacing at the taste as one might at foul-smelling medicine that promises to do some good, but she did like the warm glow that the brandy induced.

‘That’s brought the colour back to your cheeks anyway,’ Minnie O’Rourke told her. ‘Where are you bound for?’

‘Birmingham,’ Maeve said. ‘To my uncle’s place.’

‘Well, isn’t that good news?’ Minnie exclaimed. ‘We’re going to Birmingham too. We have a fine house in Erdington. You’d best come along with us. It’s desperate altogether travelling on your own.’

And Maeve was glad to have their company. It might stop her feeling fearful that she was making some dreadful mistake. She was also anxious to learn as much as she could about the city she was going to.

‘Are you having a holiday?’ Minnie asked.

‘No,’ Maeve said. ‘I’m staying there. My uncle has got me a job in a café, near a place called Aston Cross.’

‘My! You’re lucky,’ Minnie said, ‘for God knows, jobs are few and far between at the moment, with the slump after the war, you know?’ Without waiting for a reply she went on, ‘My Sean had to have his gaffer’s word that he’d have a job to go back to, or we wouldn’t have been able to go to the funeral at all. Even then we could only take three days. His sisters wanted him to take three or four weeks, but we daren’t, and he’s a skilled man. He works in the brass industry.’

Maeve made no reply to this, for she was suddenly unaccountably weary and her head swam with the unaccustomed brandy on her empty and very sore stomach.

‘Still and all, you have a job to go to, that’s something,’ Minnie went on.

‘He knows the owner of the place,’ Maeve said.

‘That would be the way of it, right enough,’ Minnie said. ‘As I always say, God’s good.’

Maeve opened her mouth to make some sort of reply, but all that came out was a large yawn.

‘My, my,’ said Minnie. ‘You’re dead beat, so you are, and no wonder after you being so sick and all. Lie yourself down across the cases and have a wee sleep, why don’t you?’

What a relief it was, Maeve found, to lay her swimming head down, even across the lumpy hard cases, and pull up her legs to ease the cramps and close her eyes to ease the throbbing pain in her head. In minutes she was fast asleep.

She slept till the ferry docked. The O’Rourkes shook her awake and took her in hand, and she shambled behind them in the damp rain-soaked air, pushing her case before her as people thronged the decks in the rush to embark. They were waved through the customs sheds and into the noisy station in Liverpool that was teeming with people. Not that Maeve saw much of it, for the train was in and the O’Rourkes, seasoned travellers that they were, steered Maeve quickly through the crowds and on to the train to make sure of a seat, and Maeve was glad they had when she saw many passengers filling the corridors later, sitting astride their cases.

She was glad that on dry land once more she was feeling much better and able to face the picnic her mother had packed with such loving care early that morning. She shared it with Sean and Minnie O’Rourke while she plied them with questions about the city she was to live in. And as the train chugged its way southwards, they told her of Birmingham’s cinemas and dance halls, which opened all year round. They described the music halls and the Bull Ring, a huge shopping centre where great entertainment could be had, they said, on a Saturday night. Maeve was no longer nervous; instead she was in a fever of excitement to get to her uncle’s house and begin her job. Then, she was sure, her life would take an up-turn.

When Maeve and the O’Rourkes finally alighted at New Street station, Maeve wondered if she’d ever find her uncle in such a loud and busy place. All around her was the noise of people. Porters pushing laden trolleys were yelling out warning to anyone in their way, and at a newsstand, a vendor shouted his wares, while beside her the gigantic train was giving little pants of steam, as if it were an untamed animal out of breath.

Her Uncle Michael told her afterwards he’d have recognised her anywhere from the one photograph she’d ever had taken, which she’d sent to him. He’d said the photo didn’t do her justice and he’d commented on how like his sister Annie Maeve was. He could remember how stunning his sister had been at Maeve’s age, and how she’d had the pick of the local suitors. He could see that Maeve had the same-shape face with the high cheekbones, blue eyes, straight nose and full mouth. They even had the same way of holding their heads and once had had the same-colour hair, but Maeve’s mother’s blonde locks were now peppered with grey. She wore it in a bun on the back of her neck and for the journey Maeve had copied her, feeling the style made her look more adult.

Maeve was pleased and relieved at her uncle’s warm greeting. He pushed her extended hand aside and enveloped her in a big hug. His coat was scratchy and smelt of greasy dirt with a hint of tobacco, but none of that mattered. Maeve felt she was with one of her own, and tears of exhaustion and emotion welled up in her eyes. Not that she let them fall. This was her great adventure just beginning – no time for crying and carrying on, she told herself sternly.

She wiped her eyes surreptitiously and turned to the O’Rourkes, who were looking on in satisfaction at the respectable uncle, whom they thought a very suitable man indeed to look after the young Maeve Brannigan.

Michael shook hands with the two people that his niece had introduced him to, and thanked them sincerely for keeping her company. Maeve felt sorry to see them go, but had little time to dwell on it. Her uncle picked up her case and, holding her by the arm, he led her from the station.

She was shocked at the mean little streets, the houses pushed together, that her uncle took her through, after they’d alighted from the clanking swaying tram, which had frightened the life out of her. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. They alighted at a road called Bristol Street and her uncle turned from there into Belgrave Road and then into Varna Road, which ran off it.

‘Here we are,’ he said suddenly, stopping outside one of the doorways. ‘Come away in and meet the family.’

Aunt Agnes, Michael’s wife, had once been a pretty girl. She still had classic good looks, high cheekbones like Maeve’s own, and deep-set dark brown eyes, with a well-formed nose and a full sensual mouth, and her brown hair fell in natural waves to her shoulders. But Agnes had always been easily offended and upset, and over the years her mouth had become petulant and surly. There was a hard glint in her beautiful eyes, as she’d wanted this niece of her husband’s in her home less than she wanted to fly to the moon.

Maeve smiled, but the words of gratitude that sprang to her lips were stilled by the cold stare and compressed lips of her aunt. Behind her, her uncle was bustling as, she was to learn, he did all the time he was in the presence of his wife. He rubbed his hands together as if he was going to receive a rare and wonderful gift as he said, ‘Aggie, Agnes, this is Maeve.’ As if, Maeve thought, she could be anyone else.

Agnes made no response whatsoever. Afterwards, Maeve was to think the insult had been as bad as if she’d spat on her or ordered her from the house. Suddenly the room seemed to grow chilly. Maeve didn’t know how to respond, and neither did her uncle, she realised. He turned his attention to the two children who were sitting playing snap on the rug placed in front of the hearth.

‘Away out of that, Billy and Jane. Have you not a word of welcome for your cousin?’

The children got to their feet reluctantly. They knew the young girl before them was the one their parents had argued long and hard about. In that house, it was often hard to know whether it was better to please their mother or their father. It was impossible to have a situation that would please the two of them.

‘Hello,’ Billy said.

It was a lacklustre greeting, and Billy saw his father frown on him. He didn’t care much. His father’s hands might be harder than his mother’s, but he never used them on him, whereas his mother . . .

Jane was older than her brother and thought this welcome was a shame for the girl. Her dad had said Maeve was eighteen, but Jane thought she didn’t look it, so she smiled and said, ‘Hello, I’m Jane. D’you want me to help you take your things up to the attic where you’ll be sleeping with me and Billy?’

‘That would be nice,’ Maeve said awkwardly, not sure whether this was the right response or not. She glanced across at her uncle, who nodded at her and she picked up her case. Jane had picked up the other bag, opened the door to the stairs that went off from the living room, and led the way.

Barely had the door closed on the girls when Maeve heard her aunt’s voice for the first time. It rose in an angry screech that she must know would be perfectly audible to them both. Maeve was to find out that in a back-to-back house, if you turned over in bed, the walls were so thin, half the street would be aware of it.

‘How long has she been foisted on us?’ Agnes demanded of her husband.

‘Agnes, we’ve discussed this.’ Though her uncle’s voice was muted, Maeve had not to strain to hear his words. ‘Till she gets on her feet, that’s all.’

‘Till she gets on her feet,’ Agnes sneered. ‘And how am I to feed her on the pittance you bring home?’

‘Surely to God we can do so for a little time. She has a job she’ll start in a few days and then she’ll pay her keep. Isn’t she my own sister’s child?’

‘Aye, and your sister has a tribe of them at home, by all accounts,’ Agnes cried. ‘Are we to fund the whole of them over here one at a time?’

Jane placed the bag on the attic floor. She was flushed with embarrassment, but no more than Maeve was herself. She knew her face must be brick red, for she felt her cheeks burn with it. She’d been going to ask the child why her mother didn’t want her there, but the answer was now apparent.

Then she heard Agnes’s voice again. ‘Are they to be hanging to your coat-tails all the days of your life? My family don’t make demands on you like this.’

‘Your family live around the doors, woman.’ Michael’s voice was loud and angry. ‘They’re never away from the place. God knows, I’ve not seen my family since the day I left.’

Jane looked at Maeve and said, ‘Mom’s worried about money. It ain’t just you, honest. See, our dad was put on short time three weeks ago.’

‘Short time?’

‘He only works three days a week, like,’ Jane explained.

Maeve sat down hard on the bed. Her uncle had never told them that, though he’d written and told her about the job in the café just before she’d left. In fact, she thought, looking around the bare attic, what he had told the Brannigans had not been totally true.

Maeve was glad that she had a bag packed with goodies from the farm, and the five-pound note her mother had pressed her to take.

‘Food will always come in useful, especially fresh stuff,’ Annie had said. ‘Though Michael will hardly need the money – him with his fine job and grand house – I’ll not have it said you’d go anywhere and not offer to pay your way. Give Michael’s wife the money and leave it up to her what she’ll do with it.’

And Maeve knew, as she sat in that attic, that both the food and the money would be welcome, for the fine job was now not so good, and the grand house had never been. The downstairs room, though, was well furnished. Two upholstered armchairs were drawn up before the fireplace and two small stools stood in one corner. There was also a drop-leaf table and four chairs with padded seats, and a matching sideboard. Even the blue-patterned linoleum was not pitted or ripped, and the rug before the fireplace looked fluffy and expensive.

So, once there had been money. Not money enough, perhaps, to lift the family out of the house that had given Maeve such a shock that day, to a better one. But there had been money enough for furnishing at least the one room. Maybe their bedroom too, for though they’d passed her uncle and aunt’s room on the first floor, Maeve wouldn’t have dared, even if Jane hadn’t been with her, to open the door and peep inside. The attic room, with its two iron bedsteads and bare boards, had not been touched much, though there were crisp white sheets and clean blankets on the beds.

‘That’s why our dad was able to meet you today, like,’ Jane said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘’Cos he’s on short time.’

And Maeve had thought he’d taken a day off because he could, because he was one of the bosses – a foreman or some such – as Michael had indicated in his letters home. There had been no preparation for a man who worked only three days a week. Suddenly she felt sorry for her Aunt Agnes. Already managing on little money, she had now to feed another mouth.

She took off her coat and hat and laid both on the bed, then picked the bag up and said to Jane, ‘I have some things here to please your mother. I think she’ll be happier when she sees them.’

It had grown quiet downstairs and though Maeve knew it was probably the uneasy silence of an argument not resolved, she was still grateful for it. She took the parcel of food downstairs and presented it to Agnes, together with the five-pound note for her keep.

The change in Agnes was swift. She pocketed the money in her apron immediately and smiled at Maeve in a belated welcoming gesture. But Maeve noticed the smile didn’t reach her eyes and she knew then that Agnes would never be a friend to her.

The meal was fine and filling enough, with the bacon and eggs and soda bread and butter from home, together with chips from the chippy that Billy had been dispatched for, and everyone tucked in with a fine appetite.

Maeve made pleasant small talk for courtesy’s sake, but still couldn’t take to her aunt, and it was obvious that her uncle was almost afraid of Agnes. Maybe he had reason, but the fact remained that the man who’d warmly welcomed Maeve at the station did not exist in this house, and that realisation saddened her. She resolved to get a place of her own as soon as possible.

The children fired questions at her about Ireland, the homestead she’d left behind and their daddy’s family, and Maeve answered them as best she could. But the journey and the emotion of the whole day had tired her out, and she was glad when it was late enough to take to her bed. She lay beside Jane, and though Jane would have liked to talk more, Maeve was too exhausted and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

After a few fraught days, during which her aunt openly showed her displeasure in having Maeve there despite the five pounds, she was glad to begin work. Maeve was no stranger to hard work and she knew what the woman had told her on the train was no lie. Work was scarce, and she’d seen men, often extremely thin, and shabbily and inadequately dressed, lolling on street corners. She knew she was lucky to get a job, and probably wouldn’t have it at all if her uncle hadn’t asked for her. She had no wish for her boss to regret his decision to employ her and didn’t quibble at the hours he asked her to work, but because they were so long she asked him to let her know if he heard of some place nearby that she could rent.

Mr Dolamartis thought this over. He’d never had such an industrious little waitress, and so beautiful too; she certainly drew the men in. But the hours were often from early morning to late night, and though she never complained, he knew sometimes Maeve had trouble getting there in time in the morning and back at night to her uncle’s house.

Above the café there was a flat, basic and small, and though Mr Dolamartis had never used it as a flat but as a storeroom, he knew he could use the room off the kitchen for storage instead, and give Maeve the chance of having a place of her own.

Maeve was thrilled. She wasn’t put off by the grime and neglect, and set to with a will to clean it all. Mr Dolamartis, amused at her industry, brought her some distemper to brighten the place up. There was a battered old sofa there already, and a table and chairs were supplied by the café. The bed was set into the wall of the living room and pulled out at night, but Maeve had no bedding, no crocks or cutlery, no curtains for the windows nor lino for the floor.

But though she’d paid over a good proportion of her wages to her Aunt Agnes, she’d kept her tips and sometimes they were sizeable. These she spent on essentials, then saved up for other household goods she wanted. She was often free in the afternoon for a few hours after lunch when Mr Dolamartis would take over. Then Maeve would usually take a tram to the city centre and stroll around the shops, enthralled by the choices available and particularly attracted to the Bull Ring, where she was able to find many of the things to make her flat more like home.

She joined organisations at the Catholic Church, St Francis’s, that she attended in Aston, in a bid to make friends with some of the younger parishioners. She’d been to the pictures and dancing with some of the young single Catholic girls on one of her rare evenings off, but she seldom went to her uncle’s house, knowing that she wouldn’t really be welcome.