Mrs McGuire had it all planned out. She would travel over with Brigid and the children, and they would all settle in Chicago together.
Sean had always agreed with her but, over the past few weeks, she had found it impossible to engage him in conversations about America in the way she used to.
She had put it down to the big fight he was having tonight.
The big Liverpool Christmas fight, on the same night as the nativity play.
Mrs McGuire knew her son. He was a secretive one, all right, always had been. Only she knew how desperate he was to reach Chicago. Liverpool was too restrictive. The tales of big wages he had heard about in Ireland before he arrived were out of all proportion to the reality.
In Liverpool, if you arrived poor, you stayed poor. This was not the case in America, as their Mary and her husband had demonstrated. America was full of opportunity.
Mrs McGuire linked arms with Patricia, so that she didn’t slip in the snow, and they strode off together towards Jonny Chan’s, smiling and happy.
Jerry took hold of Nellie’s arm and Kathleen shuffled in beside Nellie, wheeling the pram. Nellie thought she would attempt to ice-skate, like she had seen on the black-and-white television last week, and within seconds was flat on her back on the pavement. Jerry and Kathleen roared with laugher and Joseph, with his face peeping out from his hand-knitted balaclava, clapped his hands in excitement.
Kathleen smiled. ‘I’ve never, in my entire life, seen a baby laugh and smile as much as he does, Jer,’ she said.
‘It warms my heart every day, so it does, to see how great Alice is with the little fellow.’
Jerry put his arm round his mammy’s shoulder and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
‘Get away with ye, Jerry, are ye going soft altogether?’
Nellie laughed. They were all three full of Christmas cheer.
Kathleen held onto the pram; Nellie held onto her nana; Jerry, on the outside, held Nellie’s hand.
A warm glow wrapped around them.
The deep companionship of the three. Virgin snow that sparkled like glitter on the pavement. The sound of the children’s breathless laughter. The crisp freshness of the air. The promise of a white Christmas Eve to wake up to. The beautiful, loving baby boy grinning at them from the warmth and comfort of his pram.
They walked in companionable silence aware that they would remember this night for ever.
When they reached Nelson Street, Maura and Tommy turned and waved goodnight to them.
‘Nana, it won’t be long until Kitty is home, will it?’ said Nellie.
Kathleen squeezed Nellie’s hand and smiled at her. Trust Nellie to be always thinking of others, she thought.
‘Aye, I know, queen, and a blessing that will be, for sure.’
As they reached their door, Malachi ran past, screeching at the top of his voice, as he chased Harry and Little Paddy, with a ball of snow in his hands, ready to shove down the back of both their necks.
Older neighbours, who hadn’t been to the school, were peeping round their net curtains to see what all the noise was about. The news of snow was heralded by excited cries.
‘Da, Da, save me,’ Harry squealed as he ran past.
Maura had stepped indoors. Tommy stood in the middle of the road, not daring to run, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Malachi, get here now, or I’ll give ye a good hiding!’ Everyone who heard him knew that was a lie.
Jerry reached out and caught Malachi by the collar, lifting him clean off the ground.
Malachi’s legs pedalled furiously as his temper flapped at his heels.
‘Put me down,’ he screamed, ‘put me down.’
‘Come on, Malachi,’ said Jerry, laughing. ‘Come on, Harry. Yer safe, lad.’
‘Mam, put the kettle on, and tell Alice I’ll be two minutes, if she’s up. I’ll just help Tommy, the big soft lad, with these little scamps.’
Kathleen and Nellie, both laughing out loud, turned into the entry.
When Brigid stepped in through the back door, she was surprised to see that the main light had been switched on. She knew she had switched it off when they left and she wondered, was Sean home?
Relief flooded through her as she realized that he must be.
She had regretted letting Patricia accompany Mrs McGuire to the chippy and wished she had sent one of the younger ones instead. It was difficult, though. Mrs McGuire and Patricia had a special bond.
Brigid was the youngest of fourteen and so the notion surprised her that Patricia, as the eldest, had a different place in the family from all the rest.
Sure, wasn’t she the most organized of any of her siblings? Didn’t she run her house with absolute order and control?
Her house was immaculate.
Brigid had a great deal to be proud of. She still wished she had told Patricia to stay, though. Having to get five under the age of five ready for bed, never mind the others, was hard work and Patricia was a grand little help. Brigid was exhausted. However, she hadn’t told Sean yet she was pretty sure there was another McGuire baby on the way.
This one made her more tired than she ever had been before and her face was flushed and burning, not signs of early pregnancy that she remembered from her previous babies. She could hear her heart beating in her eardrums and had fallen asleep during the nativity play. Never mind, she thought. If Sean has a win tonight, a pregnancy will hold off any talk of a move to America for a while.
As soon as she took off her coat, she put the kettle on and reached for the nappies she had left to warm on a shelf next to the range.
‘Ooh, warm as toast,’ she said to one of her toddlers, pressing the warm nappy on her ice-cold and bright-red little cheek.
Brigid shouted up the stairs to Sean. No response.
That’s funny, she thought to herself.
She filled a small enamel bowl with warm water, took down the towel and pyjamas, and began changing the toddlers and the baby.
When she had finished, they jumped up and, one by one, piled onto the sofa in front of the TV. The older girls came down into the kitchen, all changed and ready, carrying their shoes with them.
‘Clothes all folded neatly on the press for the morning, girls?’
Each one nodded.
‘Shoes by the back door now,’ she said. ‘Was Daddy upstairs, Emelda?’
Emelda shook her head as she slipped onto the sofa with her siblings.
Brigid sat at the table and looked at the row of red heads, watching Coronation Street on the television. They didn’t really understand it but they all knew that being up this late was a treat and not one of them was about to complain or misbehave. Besides, Nana and Patricia were gone to the chippy.
‘Isn’t this just the best night of the year?’ little Emelda said. ‘We’ve had the play, treats at the school, snow and the chippy too. This is the happiest night in me life, Mammy.’
Brigid felt her heart fill with love. Making her children happy was a bonus. Keeping them clean and fed, and running an orderly home, was her job. None of Brigid’s children missed a day from school, ever, not unless they were truly poorly. Brigid was a good mother. She and Sean did things the right way.
‘Is it now, you gorgeous thing?’ Brigid’s face suffused with a warm and loving glow as she looked at her daughter’s toothless grin. ‘It’s mine, too.’
At that moment, they all heard Mrs McGuire and Patricia walk up the path and the back door opened.
‘Mary and Joseph, would ye close that door,’ Brigid shouted, rubbing her arms to counter the cold blast.
The kitchen filled with the smell of newsprint soaked in vinegar.
‘Here we are, all,’ said Mrs McGuire, ‘chips and a saveloy each.’
Mrs McGuire loved pronouncing the word ‘saveloy’.
‘Pass the big plate down from the mantel, would ye, Brigid. It’s nice and warm and we can put it all in the middle of the table for them, what do ye think?’
‘Aye, that’s grand, thanks,
Mrs McGuire. I think maybe Sean nipped back earlier, but he’s not here now,’ Brigid replied thoughtfully with a hint of concern in her voice.
The children had dived off the sofa and were dutifully piling onto the chairs round the table. Grace fetched forks out of the drawer, and the plates from the neat and tidy row along the back of the press.
Emelda had removed the muslin used to keep the flies away, taken the breadboard and knife from the press and placed it on the table. Now she began helping the smaller ones up onto the chairs. They were all chattering away excitedly, salivating at the smell of the chips. Chair legs scraped across the stone floor, cutlery and plates banged loudly on the table, and the kettle whistled impatiently on the range while Emelda set the table.
Little Paddy’s dog, Scamp, scratched away persistently at the back door. He had followed Mrs McGuire all the way home from the chippy and was now letting Brigid know he was there. Brigid was begrudgingly kind to Scamp. She felt for him, having to live at Peggy and Paddy’s, and often threw him a bit of raw sausage.
Brigid reached up for the big meat plate from the mantel-shelf above the range and immediately saw the envelope. She recognized the handwriting as Sean’s. He had never, in their ten years of marriage, written her a letter.
A feeling of dread crept slowly into the room and her expression became one of fear, as she ripped open the envelope and extracted the single sheet of notepaper. It had been torn from Patricia’s school book and with it was a wad of ten-pound notes. Brigid’s first thought was one of irritation at his having taken paper from Patricia’s school book. Brigid kept her own pad of usable scrap paper, with a slip of string through the corner to hold it together, in the press drawer.
On the television, Ena Sharples was giving out to Minnie Caldwell. Someone took the kettle off the range to silence its persistent whistle.
Brigid couldn’t hear what they were saying. The noise from the television and the children’s chatter had merged into a low background buzz.
She felt her blood drain into her boots within seconds, as happiness, laughter and hope for her future left.
Mrs McGuire bent down to turn up the television and the closing theme music from Coronation Street began to fill the room.
‘Merciful Mary, it was that flaming queue, Patricia. We’ve missed it,’ she exclaimed in a bitterly disappointed voice.
Brigid stared at the letter. The meaning of the words washed over her slowly in rhythmic waves, becoming stronger and more painful with each second. Her mind, shielding her soul, refused to absorb the truth at once, but held at bay the realization of all the things she had suspected – had known, really, but had suppressed and ignored in the midst of her busy life.
No morning kiss. Distracted. No talk of America. No desire for sex. Already gone when she awoke. Never home when she went to bed.
Her heart began to race and pound in her chest as the adrenaline swam out to shield her. Tears swarmed in her eyes, blurring the words, washing them away, saving her from the pain of reading them again, for now.
Mrs McGuire turned from the television to look at Brigid and saw it happen.
The moment when the words seeped through, hit Brigid’s heart and, shred by shred, tore it apart.
Kathleen thought it was very unusual that there were no lights on in the house and that the fire had gone out.
‘Jesus,’ she cried, as they stepped into the kitchen. ‘I didn’t bank the fire up, because I thought Alice would be back to do it and the flamin’ thing has gone out, on the very coldest night of the year. Would ye believe that? Nellie, Alice must be feeling very poorly indeed. Let’s get a pot of tea mashed and then we can take her one up and see how she is. You see to Joseph, while I get the fire going.’
‘I’m going up to the cot, Nana, to fetch his pyjamas,’ said Nellie.
Kathleen had dropped to her knees, raking the range fire and muttering to herself.
‘Aye, there’s enough life left in here,’ she said with relief, whipping an Echo out from underneath the seat cushion and screwing it up tightly. Within a minute, the kitchen glowed orange and the reflected flames danced up the walls. Kathleen carefully placed one piece of coke after another on top of the burning paper and then closed the range doors.
The crêpe-paper garland decorations that Kathleen, Alice and Nellie had patiently glued together over a week of evenings, and then strung across the ceiling, shuddered and crinkled above her as the heat rose from the fire, lending the festive decorations a life of their own.
Kathleen leant back onto her haunches and wiped her hands down the front of her apron. ‘Thank the Lord for small mercies,’ she whispered, looking up at the statue of the Virgin Mary, and crossed herself.
It wasn’t the statue Jerry and Bernadette had bought. That one had mysteriously broken some years back, when Nellie was just a toddler. Nellie had asked her only the other day where it had come from.
‘The first one was bought before Jerry and Bernadette were married. I remember, they bought it from a lady in the little shop in Crossmolina, when they were at home on their holidays. This is the second one, though, and I have no idea where that came from, or even how the first one broke.’
All that seemed such a long time ago. As she stared at the holy figurine, Kathleen murmured, ‘Ah, Bernadette, ye loved Christmas like no one I have ever known before or since.’
Kathleen crossed herself again. It must have been the emotion of Christmas, of having a moment here on her own, in front of the fire, in an empty kitchen, because as she waited to see if the coke had truly caught, something suddenly touched her. They hadn’t switched the lamp on yet and, apart from the fire, the room was dark. She thought about life and its ups and downs. How different her life would have been if their Bernadette had lived, if she had been here with them tonight at the school. The pain of her memory and the acuteness of her loss stabbed Kathleen straight in the chest. It always did.
Kathleen took her handkerchief out of her apron pocket.
‘Ah, get away, ye daft old sod,’ she said, wiping her eyes and lifting up the poker, ready to open the range doors.
She suddenly felt cold and yet she was kneeling in front of the range, with the flames already roaring up the chimney. She held her hands out to the door to feel if it was hot. Yes, of course it was, she could see that, couldn’t she?
An icy shiver passed over her. She rubbed her arms and looked around, confused.
‘God in heaven,’ she said to herself, ‘have I a chill?’ And leaning back, she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, which felt normal.
Nellie walked slowly down the stairs. She had dressed Joseph in his pyjamas as if on automatic pilot. Her inclination had been to scream and to run down to the kitchen, but she didn’t. She held on.
She had thought that they had been burgled. The press drawers were open, along with the wardrobe door. Alice’s apron, and a few of her clothes, were strewn around the room. Everything else that had belonged to Alice had gone.
Everything, except for Joseph.
She had looked in the wardrobe first. The hangers on the side that belonged to Alice were empty. The drawers in the press, likewise, and her few bits of make-up, her hairbrush and curlers, which lived on the top, had also disappeared.
Her shoes. Her boots. Her coat. Her hats. Her gloves. Her everything. Gone.
As Nellie came through the door at the bottom of the stairs, holding Joseph in her arms, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Joseph put his thumb into his mouth, silently laid his head on her chest and stared at the scene in front of him, sucking slowly and steadily. The kitchen was still dark. The fire had now reduced from its initial roaring blaze to a softer, quieter flame.
There was Kathleen, kneeling in front of the fire, and next to her knelt Bernadette. There was not a sound in the kitchen. When the coke in the fire slid down onto the grate with a sudden crunch, Nellie almost jumped out of her skin, but nothing altered.
Bernadette’s hair had absorbe
d the warm light from the fire and radiated a red glow that wrapped itself around them all.
Kathleen wiped her eyes and Bernadette put her arm round her shoulders. Nellie heard Kathleen talking to Bernadette, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Nellie wasn’t scared at all of Bernadette, her mammy, whom she loved without ever having known her. But she knew something was shifting, altering, that she was in their midst and that whatever was happening was beyond their control. Something was very wrong. Why else would Bernadette appear, and so openly too? But this feeling, in the kitchen, this was special. It was like magic. It felt like heaven.
Nellie kissed the top of Joseph’s warm head and as he nuzzled in deeper, she hugged him. She felt an ache, very deep inside. A yearning. A longing. A need to be the one her mammy was hugging. A desperate loneliness flooded her and her eyes filled with pain, as she quietly sobbed and, for the very first time in her life, she cried the word ‘Mammy’ out loud.
After what seemed like many minutes but was in fact only seconds, the spell was broken by the sound of Jerry lifting the latch of the back gate and the noise of Peggy and Little Paddy, shuffling along behind him in the snow, urgently shouting, ‘Jerry, Jerry, will ye wait. Come here while I tell ye.’
Before the back door had even opened, Kathleen was on her feet and Bernadette had vanished.
It was Christmas Eve.
Daisy wanted to stand on the deck of the boat and stare as hard as she could until she saw the coast of Ireland and her family waiting for her.
She had so many images in her mind of what they would look like and what they would say when they saw her. She had been told that her older brother, his wife and his eldest son and daughter would be there to greet her. Miss Devlin had said that when Daisy’s sister-in-law had spoken to Miss Devlin on the telephone, she had become so full of emotion and excitement at the prospect of Daisy being with them at Christmas that both she and Miss Devlin had been blubbing like a pair of eejits.
They had made Miss Devlin promise that she would visit in the school holidays and, of course, she had said she would.
The Four Streets Saga Page 61