by Rachel Quinn
Briana thought for a few moments, all the while still soothing herself with the cool seawater. ‘I suppose I want to see you get out of here. I don’t want you to end up . . .’
‘End up . . . what?’
‘Well, like . . . never mind. I just want to see you happy, that’s all. Mammy and Daddy might not understand, but I do. And I know that if a good-looking man asked me right now to go with him to America I’d be packed and ready in minutes.’ She stopped and stared out to sea for a second. ‘He wouldn’t even need to be good-looking, if you want me to be honest.’
‘It sounds easy when you say it like that,’ Aileen said. ‘But when someone really does ask you, it’s different. Sure, when you get down to it you’re the same as me, Briana. You’re just a Wicklow girl.’
‘How serious do you think he is about going?’
‘Who knows? He almost begged me to go with him, then seemed to go cold on the whole idea, said he was only fooling himself. Oh, I hope he doesn’t go, Briana. If he stays in Dublin there’s a chance I’ll see him eventually – perhaps when all of this has died down. But if he goes to America I’ll never see him again, and I couldn’t live like that. I’d rather walk into this ocean and just keep walking.’ She looked out to sea and sighed. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I’ve told him I’ll see him again on Saturday.’ She looked at Briana, who was just nodding slowly. ‘Oh, Briana, what am I going to do?’
Briana stepped over, splashing water up on to her dress. ‘Aileen,’ she said. ‘We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. By hook or by crook, you’ll see him. I’ll make sure of it.’
Aileen started crying, but was smiling too. ‘I won’t forget this,’ she said, and flung her arms around her sister. They spun around, almost falling into the shallow waters.
Shivering, they put their coats and shoes back on and walked on along the beach.
Chapter 26
For the next few days in Sweeney Cottage, Aileen and Briana remained in disgrace, and looks of disgust replaced any form of conversation where they were involved.
But the sisters stood their ground, the days passed uneventfully, and Saturday arrived. After the family had shared yet another sullen breakfast together, followed by an hour working in the potato fields, it was time. In fact, it was too early, but Briana had warned Aileen the timing couldn’t be perfect. Their father, together with young Frank, had gone to see a farmer about bartering some of the chickens. Their mother had gone to have a cup of tea with old Mrs Cavanagh, to ‘stock up on gossip’ as Fergus had put it. Fergus and Gerard were left playing cards at the table, with strict instructions to make sure their sisters didn’t end up in Dublin.
Briana kept looking outside, down toward the beach. After about half an hour she suddenly stopped and walked over to Fergus.
‘I’m needing a wash,’ she said to him.
Fergus and Gerard both looked up. Fergus played a card and looked to Gerard to respond.
‘We could just go down to the shore,’ she added.
‘We?’ Fergus said.
Briana’s eyes went from Fergus to Aileen and back to Fergus. ‘Yes, we. We’re still dirty from digging the potatoes this morning.’
‘I’m all grimy,’ Aileen said, nodding in agreement.
‘You’re disgusting, all right,’ Fergus said.
They ignored that.
Gerard played a card. Fergus thought for a moment and placed down his response before speaking. ‘I dug up potatoes too,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need a wash.’
‘Oh, you do, Fergus,’ Aileen said. ‘You’re just used to the smell.’
Gerard sniggered.
‘Very funny,’ Fergus said, not looking up from his hand of cards.
‘Well, we’re going whether you are or not,’ Briana said a little theatrically.
‘Well, no, you’re bloody well not,’ Fergus said, mimicking her voice.
‘Are so.’
He turned his cards down on to the table and nodded toward the front of the cottage. ‘Touch that door and you’ll have the back of my hand to contend with, so ye will.’
‘Are you going to whip us like Daddy did?’
‘I have a little more self-control, but yes, if I need to.’
Briana shifted from foot to foot, twice glancing at the door. ‘Why don’t you come with us,’ she said. ‘We’ll be no more than a few minutes.’
Fergus looked at Gerard, who shrugged. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s a trick.’
‘A trick?’ Fergus said. ‘Ha!’ He stood up and pointed a two-fingered gun at Briana. ‘Ten minutes. No more.’
Soon all four of them were shin-deep in the icy waters, Aileen and Briana washing their arms, knees and faces, Fergus and Gerard just standing there, trying to look casual and enigmatic, casting glances up and down the endless beach.
‘Fergus?’ Gerard said.
Fergus looked where Gerard was looking, at the two girls strolling along the beach toward them.
‘Say something,’ Gerard said.
Fergus eyed his sisters suspiciously for a few seconds. Then he turned away and shouted over to the girls, ‘Hello there!’
There was no reaction from them.
‘C’mon,’ he said to Gerard. They started walking ashore to head them off.
Aileen and Briana couldn’t hear anything after that. They knew, however, that their brothers would ultimately get nothing out of the objects of their desires, because the girls’ instructions were to invite Fergus and Gerard over to the sandy beach the other side of the River Crannagh. When Fergus kept glancing back toward Aileen and Briana they sensed a little loosening of the manacles.
‘We’ll be grand for ten minutes,’ Briana said. ‘Let’s get back home.’
The sisters walked out of the water and past the others, now hearing what was being said. The women were trying to persuade Fergus and Gerard to walk with them, but Fergus was having none of it. ‘We have to stay here,’ he said. Then he turned to Aileen and Briana. ‘I’ll be keeping my eye on yez,’ he shouted over.
‘So watch,’ Briana replied.
‘Anyway,’ Aileen said, ‘Mammy will be back any minute.’
‘Sure,’ Fergus said. ‘Now go home and stay home. We won’t be long.’
Aileen and Briana walked up the beach, shaking as much water off them as they could, keeping a discreet eye on their brothers, who were standing tall with their arms folded to show off their muscles.
As soon as Aileen and Briana shut the cottage door behind them they hurried to collect their handbags and opened the door a crack, just enough to see Fergus and Gerard in the distance – to tell when their backs were turned. They chose their moment and ran, slowing to a walk after they’d passed two or three cottages to avoid drawing attention to themselves. A few minutes later they turned into Station Road.
They knew they would be early, but that was better than not arriving at all.
When the train drew in to Tara Street Station, Aileen and Briana were surprised at how busy it was. Then again, it was earlier in the day than on their previous visits. It was harder to scan the area through the mass of bodies crossing left and right, but between them they did that, spotting two shoeshiners, neither of them Niall.
‘I thought you said he’d be here?’ Briana said.
‘Sure, he told me he’d be working a full morning, so . . .’ She slowly nodded. ‘Ah, wait. He sometimes works at other stations too.’
‘But he said he’d be here at noon, didn’t you tell me?’
Aileen huffed. ‘I can’t wait until then, Briana. I can’t take the risk.’ She took another look around the station concourse. ‘I have an idea,’ she said, then she turned and approached one of the other two shoeshine men, Briana following. ‘Do you know Niall?’ she said to him. ‘Niall O’Rourke?’
The man just shrugged.
‘Jet-black hair,’ she added. ‘He shines shoes here most days.’
‘Don’t know. I’m new here.’ The man waved a di
rty finger across the concourse. ‘You could try asking Davy over there.’
They walked across and Aileen asked the same question.
‘Sure, I know him,’ the man said, ‘but he doesn’t work here anymore.’
‘Well, where does he work?’ Briana asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure as he does. At least, not as a shoeshiner.’ He nodded to the man Aileen and Briana had just been talking to. ‘Even gave up his polish and brushes to yer new man yonder.’
Aileen’s face brightened, her eyes excited. ‘Has he got another job?’ she said. ‘I know he’s been looking.’
‘Aren’t I after telling yez?’ the man said. ‘I don’t know. And who are yez anyway?’
‘I’m his fiancée,’ Aileen said proudly.
‘Sure, he mentioned you.’ There was sadness in the man’s words.
‘What?’ Aileen replied. ‘What did he say about me?’
‘It’s the sort of thing you should really be asking him yourself.’
‘Don’t you have his address?’ Briana muttered to Aileen.
Aileen reached into her handbag and pulled out a slip of paper. ‘Do you know where this is?’ she said to the man.
He squinted to look, pushing the paper to arm’s distance. ‘I do,’ he said eventually.
They followed his directions. Across the second bridge, first right, third left, to be met with a long row of tenements of crumbling buff brick. Aileen was in shock at first: it wasn’t how she’d imagined Niall’s neighbourhood. Perhaps he lived in a nicer part past here. They walked on.
‘What’s that horrible smell?’ Briana said as Aileen’s eyes scanned the dilapidated front doors. Briana looked down and shrieked as she saw what appeared to be the innards of an animal discarded in the gutter, maggots squirming all over the rotting flesh.
Aileen looked too and screwed her face up in disgust.
Briana covered her mouth and said, struggling with the words, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘House number twenty-six,’ Aileen said, taking a long stride over the gutter on to the pavement. She turned to find her sister still staring down. ‘Go and wait in that café,’ she said, ‘around the corner and across the road.’
‘And leave you on your own here?’
‘I’ll be grand, sure I will. It’s time for your little sister to be strong now. Go and wait. If I’m not back in an hour, come for me.’
‘I can’t leave you here, Aileen.’
‘Just go. I want to be on my own with him.’
Briana hesitated, but wished her sister good luck and hurried away to the end of the street.
Aileen hurried too, and soon found herself standing in front of tenement number twenty-six. She stood and stared up at the building that once, she assumed, had been some impressive new Georgian house fit for those upper middle classes – those British ones Daddy was forever condemning. Now it looked as though it was pleading to be put out of its misery and pulled down. Clothes – and not clean ones by the look of it – were draped from windows. Other windows were boarded up. Guttering and parts of masonry had fallen to the ground and been left there. Also at ground level, rust-brown railings had some sections missing, leaving holes in the concrete where the uprooting had taken place.
Perhaps Niall didn’t live here now. Perhaps someone would tell her he’d moved to somewhere nicer. She went through the scenario in her mind as she entered the hallway and started climbing the bare wooden stairs. Yes, she would be told he’d moved, and she would go to that better place, where she would surprise him and congratulate him on his new job. He would tell her all the exciting details, then he would take her out for a coffee and cake, perhaps to the cinema again.
It would be the start of a better chapter in her life.
By now she was two floors up. She’d passed all sorts – children dressed in tatters, men laid out cold by cheap alcohol, ladies who Father Kinross had referred to as ‘fallen women’. They had some things in common though: grimy, lifeless faces and rags for clothes. It was also just as cold in here as it was outside.
She stopped outside a door with the number five scrawled on it in chalk. She was about to knock on it when she heard a shout. She turned to see a man with a pockmarked face lurching toward her. He was in no way threatening, with his head bowed, his hands clasped together almost as if in prayer.
‘You,’ he said. ‘Begging your pardon, miss. Do you have any spare pennies?’ She shook her head. His saggy eyes looked her up and down. ‘You look like you have.’
She knocked loudly on the door. The man turned and scuttled away. A few seconds later the door rattled in its frame and Aileen took a step back.
‘Aileen?’ Niall’s face had an angry edge to it. No, not angry, agitated. He wore nothing but baggy old trousers and a vest under a dirty jacket. In his hand was a book. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry I’m early, Niall. I wanted to see you.’
‘But—’
‘Did I do the wrong thing?’
‘No. No, you didn’t. Tis just the shock of it. I was hoping you wouldn’t find your way here.’ He sighed, looked along the corridor and said, ‘Wait there a minute while I get ready. We can go for a walk. Call out my name if anyone starts on you.’
He darted back into the room, leaving it slightly ajar. Aileen leaned to look inside. She could only see half of the room, but on the floor lay three mattresses with only a walking space between them. A square wooden table with some cups on it stood next to the window, the bottom of which was broken and boarded up with wood. One mattress had a huddle on it – someone asleep, and she saw Niall place the book down on to one of the others. She squinted to see, but could only make out one of the words on the front of the book: ‘America’. It made her feel nauseous.
Niall picked a shirt out of a paper bag lying on the bare floorboards. He took off his jacket, put the shirt on, then picked out shoes and put them on his bare feet. He grabbed his jacket and came to the door again.
‘You had to give your suit back?’
‘And the shoes.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go.’
They were on the street by the time he spoke again. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to see where I was staying.’
‘Why not?’ she said, knowing she was just trying to be kind. And his wry smile told her he knew it too.
‘Tisn’t the cleanest of places, I suppose,’ she said, as they headed to a small park around the corner.
‘You’re right about that. There’s talk of that there tuberculosis. I spend most of my time out here or in the library or railway station.’
‘So, do you have a new job?’
He grimaced, almost as if he was embarrassed. ‘I haven’t.’
‘So . . .’
‘I was praying you’d turn up at the station. I was going to meet you there and tell you everything.’
‘Tell me what, Niall?’
They reached the park. A couple of the benches were occupied by men sleeping, bags of possessions for pillows.
‘Here,’ Niall said. ‘I usually use this one; it’s a little sheltered from the wind.’
They sat, and Niall turned to her, held her hand. She went to kiss him but he resisted.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t torture myself and deceive you, Aileen. You’re all I’ve ever wanted and everything I’ve dreamed of for these past few years. But I’ve reached the point where . . .’
‘Where what?’
‘Aileen. When I joined the British Army I made some good friends – British friends. They defeated Hitler and his cronies. They risked their lives. Some gave their lives and won’t ever come home and have opportunities of any sort. When they went back to their home towns, to their families, they were treated like the heroes they are. Their loved ones cried and told them they’d never let them out of their sight again. They got free drinks in the pubs there, a free bag of coal from the coal merchant, free milk for th
e little ones. They got help with being trained for life outside of the Forces.’
He took a breath, bowed his head.
‘And me? Me and the other Irishmen? You’ve seen how I’m living. I’m bitter, I can’t deny that. I can’t find proper work. Anything to do with the government and they tell me they’re not allowed to give me a job. The others just say they have nothing but make it clear they’re lying. Even if I go back to my village I feel like a stranger. Sure, the pubs take my money but there’s no smile, no welcome. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be allowed to buy land even if I could afford it.’
‘It’ll get better, Niall. It’ll all die down and—’
‘No, Aileen. No, it won’t.’
Aileen saw pain in his eyes, a sorrow of frustration and betrayal, and she felt the hurt reflected in her own heart.
‘I’ve made my choice, Aileen. I got in contact with one of my pals from the British Army – someone who owed me a favour. I borrowed money from him. I’ve bought tickets to America. The ship sails next Friday.’
Aileen gasped, her mouth fell open, her throat choked. If her heart felt pain before, now it felt like a dead weight, falling and gone forever like a stone down a well. The picture before her of the man she loved – the man who held all her dreams in his hands – now turned to a blur. She wiped the tears from her face but more replaced them. Incoherent thoughts rushed through her mind before she could think of what to say. She found herself throwing her hands around Niall’s neck, holding him tightly as she convulsed in a wreck of denial. No, she thought. No, she wasn’t going to let this happen.
He said nothing either, just held her, his hands pulling her in tightly, until her rambling thoughts gave way to an acceptance of sorts. They parted, and she sat, hands in her lap, head bowed.
‘You’ve seen the pit I live in, Aileen. Are you really wanting that?’
She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself and just shook her head.
‘I need to get away before I go mad. If I ever want to earn a crust, I have no choice. But the most important thing is . . . I want you to come with me, Aileen.’