The Silent Children

by Honor Harlow

  “In Nanny Ward’s and she’ll give us tea too when we go up Clonthu Road.”

  “I’m going home now and can’t go with ye.”

  “Why?”

  “Cos my Daddy will be home from the barracks for tea.”

  “Is your Daddy a Garda too?” Úna and Kait said at the same time with round mouths and eyes.

  “He is,” Evelyn said and skipped off, running as fast as a greyhound.

  Our bonfire was going to be in the middle of three roads, on the space where St Jarlath’s Avenue, Clonthu Hill and Kilmartin Road meet. Kevin, Tom, Seán and their gang would be with us because they lived in St Jarlath’s Terrace. Evelyn lived in Sligo Road. Úna wasn’t from our part of town, but she was the one who was in charge of the bonfire. She said she might go to her own one near Dun na Rí Road and Cork Road when she got tired of our one.

  On bonfire night, Mammy put me to bed at the same time as always. I pretended I was tired, but my body was trembling, thinking about being out in the navy-blue night and seeing the glow of the fire. I waited until Mammy was in the parlour for a long, long time. I knew she sat on the sofa talking to Mr Delaney about Princess Margaret and Jackie Kennedy who were in the magazines she read. After ages I put my dress and shoes on and sloped downstairs. The door didn’t budge when I pulled it back. It was locked. I stood on my tiptoes and stretched myself up, wanting to turn the tiny, brass knob on the lock at the top of the door. I had seen Mammy do it with her thumb and finger, but I couldn’t reach it. I was mad and wanted to kick the door and scream. I thought of going to the kitchen for a chair but was afraid Mammy would see me passing by as the radio was on low in the parlour. I kept reaching up my hand, but I couldn’t open the door. In the end I went back upstairs to the landing.

  From the window at the side of it, I looked at the spirals of smoke arising from different streets in Drumbron and knew my pals were having great spraoi. I opened the top part of the window quietly. Jock was playing his accordion and I heard screeches and laughing and voices happy to be celebrating the longest day of the year. I wished I was big and could do what I wanted. When my eyelids started to fall down on my eyes, I went into my bed. Just before my eyes shut, I saw Will on the mantlepiece. I wondered if Liam was having spraoi with his pals at the bonfire in the Home.

  A few nights after bonfire night we had Sports Day. In the two-legged race me and Evelyn were laughing and falling the whole time. We didn’t win the race but Regina and Noeleen, who were paired in the race, didn’t win either. We didn’t see Loretta around and thought maybe she didn’t come to school. My egg keeping falling off the spoon, so I didn’t win that race, but I nearly won the sack-race, only Declan Ganley, a boy from our class, got to the finishing line just a second before me.

  Daddy said not to worry I had nearly won. “Coming second is not bad.”

  “Nearly never made it,” Mammy said spoiling the lovely feeling I had inside. Daddy held my hand and we started to walk around the field while Mammy folded up the sack and left it with the other sacks. She caught up to us.

  “Look, there’s the Currys with their daughter, let’s go and say hello,” Mammy said, so we stopped and spoke to them. My mother called Evelyn’s mother Margaret and Daddy knew Garda Curry from the barracks.

  While they were talking, me and Evelyn ran to where Úna and Kait were jumping around.

  “Are ye going up Clonthu Hill tomorrow?” I wanted to know.

  “I can’t cos we’re going to the bog on the ass and cart,” Úna said.

  “Do ye have a cart?” I asked.

  “We don’t. Daddy got a loan of it from my uncle Mick.”

  “What do you do in the bog?”

  “We help Daddy and Mick foot the turf and make reeks.”

  “Reeks like in Nan’s house?”

  “No, silly goose, small pileens of sods standing up against each other on the ground.”

  “What for?”

  “To dry.”

  “Where do the sods come from?”

  “Daddy cuts them out of the bog with a sleán, silly goose.”

  “I’m not a silly goose, only my daddy doesn’t go to the bog, so I don’t know.”

  “How do you get yer turf?”

  “In a lorry from Mr Delaney.”

  “We buy bags of turf when Daddy comes back from Scotland with money, so we do,” Kait said to show Úna not everyone went to the bog.

  “Is it nice in the bog?”

  “It is when we eat the hard-boiled eggs and drink the tea from the bottle but when the midgets are around, you get fed up scratching.”

  That evening at teatime Mammy said, “Margaret Curry is a lovely woman. I was telling her to send Evelyn here to play with you.”

  Sometimes my Mammy was smashing. I asked her, “Mammy, will I make a house in the back garden, so I can play in it with Evelyn?”

  “That’s a great idea. It’ll keep ye entertained in the summer with no school to go to.”

  “Will you give me the old frying pan you’re throwing out and I’ll make dinner in it for me and Evelyn?”

  “I will indeed. When I was small, we had a tigín agus rudí go leor iar cul an tig, eh, I mean a house and things in it.”

  Summertime was smashing. It was different because the weather was warm and there was plenty of time to do things, like going for walks, fishing in the river, dancing and singing, going to beach, visiting relatives and playing games.

  The first few days of the holidays we played Tick, Hopscotch, Skipping and ‘Queenio, Who’s Got the Ballio’ while Úna was in the bog. When all the turf was brought home, it meant we could play ‘Ring A Ring A Roses’ with Brendan and Teresa because we needed piles of children to make a big ring. Evelyn didn’t know how to play Buille, so we showed her what to do.

  “Evelyn, this is the bata beag, with the two ends sharpened like a pencil,” I told her holding the small fat stick with the pointy ends on the palm of my hand.

  “With the bata fada you buille the bata beag when it’s coming at you through the air. When you miss and it falls to the ground, you need to bend down and hit one of the ends with the bata fada and make it jump up in the air.”

  “Evelyn, stand here on this half circle,” I pointed to the half circle and the square box I had drawn on the path where we were playing.

  “Alright.”

  “Now fling the bata beag to her.”

  Kait was standing in front of the square box, a bit away from Evelyn, holding the bata fada ready to buille. The bata beag fell beside Kait. She was never able to hit the small stick when it was in the air. Úna could sometimes, even though she wore glasses, so Kait used the long stick to hit one of the ends of the bata beag. It jumped up and Kait hit it again and it went flying through the air. While it was in the air, Kait tried to buille it again to make it go further away but she missed, and it fell on the ground.

  “How many steps are you going to take to get to the bata beag?” Kait asked Evelyn.

  “Seven.”

  “Come up to the square and start jumping from here.”

  Evelyn reached the bata beag in five because she took big steps. Then it was her turn to be Buille.

  “This game is great spraoi, will we play it again tomorrow?” Evelyn asked us as we were getting ready to go home.

  “Tomorrow, I’m going to the shops in Sligo with my Mammy and I can’t play with ye,” I told them.

  When Mammy wanted to buy clothes, she went to the shops in Sligo with Mr Delaney in his car. At Mass and downtown, all my pals’ mothers and everyone looked at Mammy’s lovely clothes, but she didn’t think she had enough dresses because she was always complaining to Daddy she had nothing to wear.

  “The wardrobe is full of clothes, Dervla.”

  “It might be, but there isn’t one decent thing in it.”

  “That suit you had for Arlene’s communion is grand.”

  “William, if you think I’ll be wearing it when I go to the Royal Hotel with Margaret Curry, you have anothe
r thing coming.” Daddy didn’t get a chance to answer because Mammy continued. “For your information, I haven’t a notion of letting her think it’s the only decent thing I have, so I’ll be off to Sligo as soon as John is free.

  “Ach…”

  “And William, when we go to Cavan, I’ll have no Protestant relations of yours looking down their nose at me because of the way I’m dressed.”

  “You know I can have the squad car anytime I like, and I’ll take you shopping.”

  “Sure, wouldn’t I be the right eejit sitting in the squad car looking like you arrested me.”

  “Dervla, look, I have to go to the barracks. We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “If you see Gerry Curry ask him about the car he’s buying.”

  “What car?”

  “Margaret told me they are getting a car. It will be great altogether when an ordinary Garda has a car, and the sergeant doesn’t.”

  On Saturday, Mammy was holding my hand and we were going to cross over to the Town Hall to put a penny in Jock’s bag, when the beeping of a horn sounded behind us. We turned around and saw Daddy sitting in a square car, the belly nearly on the floor like Úna’s pram, but in a straight line across and not round. The face of the car had a puss on it like a pug dog.

  We rushed over. Daddy leaned across and opened the door on the other side of him. Then he pushed down the top part of the seat and told me to go into the back. Mammy sat in the front next to Daddy.

  “Dervla, what do you think of this nice Mini?”

  “Oh William, you never said a word. I hadn’t a clue you were buying a car.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “I’m over the moon. Where did you buy it?”

  “In Smith’s garage. Will it take us to Cavan, do you think?”

  “Oh William, we could go to Rome like Aubrey Hepburn!”

  Daddy laughed and said, “Dervla, I know I look like Peter O’Toole, but I uphold the law, so no stealing millions!” Mammy looked puzzled, so Daddy said quickly, “Will we go for a spin to Sligo?”

  Cavan

  “William, I have to get my hair set when I’m finished here.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “You didn’t forget we are going to Cavan.”

  “Ach, we not leaving until the eleventh. Get it done on Monday, the day before we leave.”

  “William, I’ll be busy all day Monday packing and getting things ready. You said we were leaving early on Tuesday morning.”

  “Aye, so Arlene can be with her cousin Sammy and see the bonfire.”

  “Is there a bonfire? Do we need to collect stuff for it?” I said all excited thinking Úna and the others could help me find stuff and we could push it in the pram.

  Daddy put his hand back and patted me on the head as he said to Mammy, “I’ll drive you home to leave the messages and then to the hairdresser.”

  “That’s grand. The news will be all over Drumbron as soon as Peggy sees the car,” Mammy said, and Daddy laughed.

  After Mammy finished in the hairdresser’s, she went to the drapery shop and bought material and a pattern for a shift dress. At home she cut out the two dresses, one with sleeves and a belt and the other without, so they would not be the same. That evening she didn’t pluck the chicken that was hanging on the back of the scullery door, because she had her head bent over the sewing machine, sewing away. When Daddy came home, she sent him with the chicken to Mrs McLoughlin. When he came back, she told him to go to the butcher’s to buy a pound of meat for roasting, because she was up to her eyes finishing the dresses.

  When she tried on the first dress, pink with a frill at the bottom and the neck, Daddy said she looked beautiful. While she was tacking the blue one, Daddy got me ready for bed so she could finish it that night, before she went to bed. When we were upstairs, I asked Daddy about the bonfire.

  “Arlene, it’s the biggest bonfire you’ll ever see. We make a big tower and set it alight.”

  “Like in Drumbron?”

  “It’s bigger, it can be seen for miles around.”

  “Does it start after tea like the one here?”

  “No, the big fire doesn’t start until midnight.”

  “When Cinderella had to be at home?”

  “Aye, so her chariot didn’t change back into a pumpkin?”

  “But I’ll be in bed asleep.”

  “You won’t because the wains have their wee fire early on. Sammy, your cousin will be there to mind you.”

  “I don’t know Sammy.”

  “You will soon and your Aunt Hazel as well.”

  “Is Hazel your sister, Daddy?”

  “She is and wee Sammy’s mother.”

  “Is his name Sammy Blake, Daddy?”

  “It’s Sammy Sloan, like his daddy.”

  “Oh, but I’ll just call him Sammy. What else are we going to do in Cavan?”

  “We’ll go to see a parade.”

  “That’s smashing, like the one on St Patricks Day?”

  “Aye but with bands and drums and music.”

  “Mammy likes music.”

  “She does but the drums are big and make lots of noise, so we mightn’t tell Mammy me and you are going to the parade.”

  “Cos she’d get a headache.”

  “She might. Remember what I told you about not telling Mammy certain things, so we don’t upset her and made her sick?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, this is the same. You and I will be going to a different town to see the parade and Mammy will stay in Cavan with Aunt Hazel.”

  “Alright, Daddy.”

  “That’s my wee lass, the best in all Ireland, England and broad Scotland.”

  The next morning Daddy drove us to Mass in his new car because Mammy had said, “William, as you are working today, wouldn’t it be a good idea to drive up to the chapel and leave us as the door before you go to the barracks.”

  We passed Mrs Curry and Evelyn as they were entering the chapel grounds, so Mammy decided to wait at the door. The four of us went in together and walked up the middle aisle to the front rows. After Mass, me and Evelyn skipped and ran around while Mammy told Mrs Curry how busy she was preparing for the trip to Cavan in the new car. She had to pack all my nicest dresses and cardigan, as well as her own and Daddy’s.

  It was still dark outside when Mammy woke me up. I was too sleepy to eat breakfast and slept all the way, so I don’t remember anything about the journey to Cavan.

  When I opened my eyes, we were driving up a long lane with a house at the end of it. The house was as big as the Fitzgerald’s Mansion in Drumbron and Daddy said his sister lived in it.

  A big man called Simon, shook Daddy’s hand and clapped him on the back. Daddy said he was my uncle because he was married to Hazel, his sister. Daddy held Mammy’s hand and presented her to Simon. My uncle was tall and sandy-haired like Daddy. He was looking down on Mammy because she was small. He shook her hand and said, “She is as beautiful as you said, Will.” and then turned to me, “So, this is your wee lassie, Will? She’s a tall one, taking after the Blakes.”

  “Yes, she is tall, but her colouring is pure Galway,” Mammy answered with a cross look.

  My cousin Sammy was inside the house. He was small with blonde hair and light blue eyes like I had coloured Will, the little boy in the painting book.

  My aunty Hazel bent down and said to me, “Arlene, you are going to share Sammy’s room. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No Aunty, I’m happy I’m going to sleep in his room,” I said and smiled at my cousin.

  A woman came from another room and carried our suitcases upstairs. Sammy’s room was enormous with carpet all over the floor like in the Royal Hotel. There were windows down to the floor. My bed was under one of the windows, real far away from Sammy’s. Mammy went to the room she and Daddy were going to sleep in with the woman who she called Mrs Tuttle and their suitcase. I looked around surprised at how big the room was. Near the middle window, with no bed
, a train set was spread out on the floor with tracks. There were toy trees and buildings and everything. It looked like a real town, only very small.

  I told Sammy about the station in Drumbron and how me and my pals went up the tracks and played in the old graveyard. He kept asking about what we did. In the end, I changed his tracks around so it would it looked like the Drumbron Station. I used my fingers to walk along the tracks as though they were me and my pals. He wanted to be Úna because he said she sounded like the leader. We were lying on the floor walking on the tracks, our fingers jumping out of the way when a train came along, when there was a tapping at the door. Mrs Tuttle stood there and told us lunch was being served.

  We went down for lunch, but it was really dinner. Afterwards me and Sammy ran out to the garden to play. The garden was as big as Castle Fields with plenty of trees. On the branch of one of the trees there was swing. I jumped up on it and told Sammy to push me. He wasn’t very strong and only made me move back and forward a little bit. When I got tired of swinging on it, we played hide and seek among the trees. At the bottom of the trees a small stream ran over stones and pebbles. I told Sammy about our game of ‘Who’s the King of the Castle’ and had great fun playing it.

  After a good long while, the woman came to tell us dinner was ready. I sat between Mammy and Daddy at the same long table and we had supper, only they called it dinner. Mammy was smiling and talking to Aunt Hazel. The two of them liked Jackie Kennedy and were hoping Jack, her husband, would win the elections and become President of America.

  Aunt Hazel laughed when she saw me eating, “I wish Samuel had as good an appetite as you do, Arlene.”

  “Arlene burns up everything she eats. She’s always on the go.” I looked at Mammy, it was the first time she ever called me Arlene, but she didn’t seem to notice she changed my name. “William and I are delighted she is such a healthy child, although there are times she wears me out.”

  “You are fortunate. Samuel is poorly most of the time. We have discussed sending him to boarding school but the doctor believes we should wait a year.”

  “Aunt Hazel, Samuel is going to come to Drumbron because he wants to play with my friends.”