by Rose Doyle
'Do you think I haven't thought of it?' Beezy said. She seemed to be serious.
We took a train for the Curragh from Kingsbridge station, paying 2/- each for second-class tickets. Sarah, as we waited for the train to come, pointed out a nearby boarding house. 'James was conceived in a front room of that house,' she said.
I was saved from making a reply by the arrival of the train. I wouldn't have known what to say.
It was the end of May and a good summer was promised. We were glad to be on the move and travelled hopefully. Except for James, who travelled blissfully, smiling all the way, asleep in his mother's arms.
Part Two
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sarah
The road leading from the town of Kildare across the Curragh was rough, uneven and dusty. The horsecar we hired at the station had no springs.
Sitting behind the carman I watched the town's hovels and foul laneways disappear from view. When I turned to look ahead there wasn't much to reassure there either. Just the vast and rolling green of the plains. The fact of the sun shining on it all made it no less wild-looking. There was a sharp wind.
The size and emptiness of the place set my head reeling. Sandymount Strand was as far as I'd ever travelled from the shelter of the streets and high buildings of Dublin. Here, apart from low-growing furze, there was no protection anywhere. From either the elements or man. There was no army camp that I could see. No encampment of women either.
'Do we have far to go?' I said to the carman.
'Half an hour will do it.' He didn't turn. 'The women ye're looking for are on the southern slopes to the army camp, below the Gibbet Rath.' He straightened and pointed with his whip. 'The English massacred nearly four hundred men at that Rath in seventeen ninety-eight. The fairies play their music and dance inside it nowadays. I met a hunchback once was cured there of his hump.' He slumped into his seat again, chewing on tobacco. He was dirty and he smelled. But he was the only driver at the station would agree to take us and then only when Allie paid him double the fare before leaving.
'I don't see any Rath,' I said.
'You'll see it soon enough,' he assured me.
James was protesting at the cold and wanted to be fed. 'Is it always so windy?' I asked.
'The northerly winds would cut you in half by times. The wrens have a rough enough time of it. But that's their choice.'
'The wrens?'
'The women I'm taking ye to are called wrens around here,' he spat and went on chewing, 'on account of they live in nests in the ground, like the bird.' He looked at Allie, who was sitting beside him, from under his hat brim. 'The wren village is no place for a decent woman.'
Allie ignored him. She was the only one of us he'd given a helping hand into the car. Beezy jabbed his shoulder with a finger. 'You've got your money. Keep your mouth shut and earn it,' she said.
We rattled along in silence after that. I didn't believe him about the nests. Men were forever twisting things, especially when it came to women who set themselves apart. I'd heard a lot of lies and foolishness about the women in Beezy's kip house before joining them.
The driver was right though about the army camp, and about the Rath. We saw both of them within minutes. The Rath, a good bit in from the road, appeared as a grassy circle on the top of a mound. The camp, when we first saw it on the horizon, was a long line of low huts with a clock tower and a flag on a flagpole.
James began to cry. I rocked him for a bit and kissed the top of his head. He cried more softly but didn't stop. The road became straight and the surface even. The carman followed along the road by the camp.
We passed a horsecar going towards Kildare. It was full of military men, all of them wearing the braid and buttons of officers. A little closer to the camp there were rank and file soldiers walking along the road in twos and threes, their red coats bright in the sunshine. Some made rough remarks as we passed.
Jimmy wasn't among them and I let go the breath I'd been holding as we left them behind. I didn't want to meet him like this, unprepared and with others around. I wanted to meet him alone, with my hair right and James in his best clothes.
We left the road for a narrow track leading away from the camp. The plains, though dotted everywhere now with sheep, still looked to me pitiless. After less than a mile the car came to a sudden halt.
'Ye've arrived,' said the driver.
'Arrived at what?' Allie looked around.
'Ye're accommodation.' The driver removed his hat, mopped his brow and sniggered. 'What ye see before ye is what the wrens call their village.'
About five hundred yards in from the road there was a hollow. From where we'd stopped I could see the tops of thicker than usual furze bushes. There was nothing that resembled nests or huts of any kind.
'Drive on,' said Beezy, 'or by God I'll take the reins myself.' She meant it.
The carman shook out the reins and took us as far as the rim of the hollow. And it was from there, looking down, that we saw the wren village for the first time. It was sheltered in the hollow and a dozen or more women sat about, or stood talking, in the late evening sun. There were children too, four or five of them, though none as young as James. The children wore everything and anything but the women wore only petticoats. Their arms and feet were bare, their hair loose. Stretched here and there across the furze there were dresses and white, starched petticoats. There was something of how the kip house had been in the mid-mornings about it. The same air of abandon, and of companionship.
A woman crawled from under one of the bushes and stood watching us.
'That's the sort of shelter ye'll be living in.' The carman, wheezing like a bellows, threw our bags to the ground. 'That's a wren's nest.'
All of the women were watching us now. 'I wish ye joy of them,' said the driver. I blessed myself, but couldn't think of a single prayer to say.
Beezy got out of the car first, then Allie. Both of them helped me down with James. We picked up our bags, one for each of us. It was all Beezy had allowed us bring. We stepped over the ridge and into the hollow together.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Allie
Under a blue sky, driven by a simian carman and with James crying softly in Sarah's arms, we arrived to live among the wrens of the Curragh. It was the ape of a carman who told us the women were called wrens by the local people. I thought at first it was meant kindly; I still had some innocence in me then.
Kildare wasn't much of a town; the low, fetid hovels around the station would have been rejected by even Dublin's poorest. Filthy children played listlessly and drunken men lay about in the sun. What I saw of the rest of the town looked drear and dank, even in the sun, with narrow, broken streets, a few shops and a hotel.
'You'll frighten the mare with that thing,' the carman said to Beezy as she lit up one of her noxious cigars.'
‘She can't be much of an animal so.' Beezy blew smoke his way as she helped Sarah into the car with James.The carman handed me into the car after them.
'A woman like you has no business with the wrens,' he said.
His principles hadn't stopped him taking twice the usual fare for the trip. He wasn't quite the fool he looked.
Sarah gave a low, frightened moan when we first came in sight of the Curragh plains. But I'd travelled the flat, rolling fields of northern France and was less unnerved by their sweeping green acres.
After an uncomfortable half-hour or so the carman pointed first to a Rath and then to a long row of block huts and a clock tower on the horizon. There was a flag too, fluttering on a flagpole in the sharp wind.
'There's upwards of ten thousand soldiers in those huts,' the carman said, 'and more under tents round about.'
The notion of so many soldiers, like so many rats in cages, repelled me. Beezy would, no doubt, be pleased at the proximity of so much custom. I wondered how Sarah felt about searching through such a number for Jimmy Vance.
Closer to the camp there were red-uniformed soldiers in groups along the road
and buttoned-up officers passing in cars on their way to the town. Sarah said nothing about any of them and when I turned to look at her she was rigid and white-faced.
The wren village was in a sheltered hollow, half hidden from the road. The carman would have had us walk the last stretch if Beezy Ryan hadn't threatened to drive his horse herself.
When we stopped at last on the ridge he spat and said out of the side of his mouth to Beezy, 'There's your wrens for you. You'll find plenty of your kind to keep you company in there.'
I'd never seen women like the wrens before. Not even among the poorest coming into the dispensary. They stood staring at us; hardened, half naked and unruly-looking as the plains they lived in. One had a bad cut to her forehead. Their children were dirty.
A sandy-haired woman crawled on her hands and knees from an opening under a furze bush.
'That's the sort of shelter ye'll be living in,' the carman said, 'that's a wren's nest.'
As he reached for our bags I saw Beezy take the rings from her fingers and shove them into the long pockets of her skirts. The carman threw our bags to the ground and we climbed down after them. I grew an inch smaller as my heels sank into the spongy turf.
I'd given almost the last of my money to the carman. I'd made my bed. It was time to lie on it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sarah
The horsecar went back across the plains at a canter. For a while after its tail disappeared from sight I could still hear the wheels, the whip cracking the air. Then there was silence. Even James had stopped crying.
The women stood watching us.
And we stood watching the women. The children came closer. They were curious and giggling and the oldest, a girl of about eight, touched Allie's dress.
'Did you make it yourself?' She fingered the flounce around the hem. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick and black with dirt. 'You must be very clever.' Her inky blue eyes followed the lines of the dress upward, past the pleating and fluted beading to the rows of blue velvet. 'And rich too.' She looked into Allie's face before touching the flounce again. 'It's a lovely thing.' She stepped back. Her admiration was matter-of-fact, not awestruck at all.
Allie's cheeks had flushed pink. I'm sure mine did too. Dressed in our best street clothes and facing those half-naked women and children, the three of us looked foolish. With the Paris shawl about my shoulders I felt like a Christmas tree but Allie, in her velvet and beading, looked even more at odds. The flush in her cheeks deepened. She said nothing.
'Is there a Nance Reilly here?' Beezy, smoking and calmly surveying the women, spoke loudly. Removing her rings hadn't made her any less conspicuous. If I was a Christmas tree then she, in her red satin with the silvery feathers, stood out like a lighthouse.
The thought came to me, cold and frightening, that the women watching us had probably been dressed as we were now when they'd arrived on the Curragh. They'd hardly planned to end up the way they were.
In the shelter of the hollow the smoke from Beezy's cigar hovered and coloured the air blue. The nests, now we were this close, were easy to make out. They were made from furze, piled into the shape of an upside-down bowl and with makeshift doors. Small fires smouldered in the doorways of most of them. Clothes were spread to dry on bushes everywhere.
'Who wants to know about Nance Reilly?'
The voice which called out belonged to the woman we'd seen crawling from a nest. She was tall and thin, with sandy hair and skin as worn-looking as her frieze petticoat.
'Beezy Ryan wants to know.' Beezy didn't move, 'I was told by Hannah Doherty you might be here. We need shelter for the summer months. She said the women here weren't the kind would turn us away.'
'How's Hannah getting on these times?' Nance Reilly watched Beezy closely. Scrawny and worn she might be but something in her reminded me of my mother. I think it was the way she held herself so straight.
'Hannah's not so good.' Beezy shook her head. 'Her baby died. She's with the nuns in a Magdalen. I was there myself, for a while.' She touched her scarred face. 'So were my companions.' She jerked her head sideways at me and Allie.
'Hannah didn't think of coming with you?'
'She was talking about coming later in the summer,' Beezy took a deep breath, 'but it's unlikely she'll make it, this summer or any other.'
'She's that bad, then?'
'She is. She'll see out her days in the Magdalen.'
'Hannah never did have much luck.' Nance Reilly moved her gaze from Beezy to me and then to Allie. 'She was always too gentle for her own good.' She fixed her eyes on Beezy's face again.
'Too gentle for this world,' Beezy agreed and Nance Reilly shook her head, sighing. It was as if Hannah Doherty were already dead.
I remembered Hannah as witless and well meaning. When her baby was born dead all she'd wanted was to follow him to the grave. She'd been well on the way to doing that when we left.
'Your kip house was burned down,' Nance Reilly said. Beezy took a full minute to answer.
'It was,' she said at last.
'You're here to put a bit of distance between yourself and what happened, I suppose?'
'For a while.' Beezy touched her face. 'Until things are forgotten.'
'Who knows you're here?' Nance Reilly asked.
'No one outside of the two women with me. I won't be followed.' She hesitated, then asked, 'What did you hear?'
'Only that there was a fire.' Nance Reilly shrugged. 'There was talk too of a man who went missing around the same time.'
'There was a fire,' Beezy agreed, 'and if there's a man lost it's nothing to do with my misfortunes and the burning of my house.' She touched her face again. I don't think she even knew she was doing it.
'You'll be safer here than in most places,' Nance Reilly said.
Some of the other women began to move away. The small girl circled about Allie, studying her dress. Allie smiled at her.
'The Curragh's wide and there's plenty furze bushes,' said Nance Reilly, 'we'll help you build yourselves a nest. You're welcome to a share in what we have. It's all for one and one for all here.'
'I ran my house along those same lines,' Beezy said, 'it was share and share alike.' She put a hand on my shoulder. 'Sarah worked for me and is no stranger either to give and take.'
'That's all right then,' Nance Reilly looked at Allie, 'because there's no one more special than anyone else here.'
'I haven't come to be a parasite on your community.' Allie was cool. 'I've got medical training. I'll do what I can to help with sickness and injury while I'm here.'
'We're our own doctors. We have to be.' The woman who spoke had a deep, but clean, cut across her forehead. 'There's none of the doctors from around here willing to attend on wrens when they're sick.'
'I can definitely be of use then.' Allie touched her bag with her satin-shod foot. 'I've brought ointments and medicines with me.'
'Miss Buckley plans on becoming a physician herself,' Beezy said and got the response she wanted when several of the women laughed. James, dozing peacefully in my arms, jerked fitfully at the sound.
'She's chosen a fine university then,' said a wren, 'we'll teach her a thing or two about disease, and about pain.'
'Just so long as you don't do us harm.' Nance Reilly, losing interest in Allie, turned back to Beezy. 'We've one of your girls here. You'll remember Lizzie Early?' When she raised her eyebrows her forehead creased like an accordion. 'It was she told us your story.
Beezy, unprepared for this, was silent. The past staggered about us again, but this time more threateningly. Lizzie Early had not been the most dependable of the North King Street girls.
'Lizzie's here . . .' Beezy fanned herself with a hand. The silvery feathers danced. 'Is she well?'
'Well enough. She's into the drink in a bad way. She'll be getting up soon, getting ready for the night. You can see her for yourself.'
'Does she ever talk of Bernie Cole?' The welts stood out on Beezy's paled face. 'Or of any of the other gi
rls?'
'She does.' From the way Nance Reilly said this I knew the word on Bernie and the others was not good.
The small girl touched Allie's dress again.
'Come away, Moll.' A black-haired woman with the same ink-blue eyes as the child pushed her way through the watching group. Her shoulders and arms were as powerful as a man's and her hair hung in matted curls down her back. When she was close enough she pulled the child by the hand away from Allie. 'My daughter's an innocent,' she held the girl behind her, 'and easily impressed. It's not often we get silk-dressed gentlewomen visiting us.'
'What's seldom is wonderful,' Allie said. When some of the women tittered the big woman turned on them.
'She'll bring trouble,' she shook a fist, 'and ye'll mark my words yet. There's no place for her here.' She turned away, the small girl held tight by the arm. 'No child of mine is going to simper over her dress either.'
Her child had other ideas. 'I'm doing no harm, touching her dress,' she said as she jerked her arm free, 'and there's one of her and many of us so what harm can she do?'
'You'll see, soon enough, what harm she can do.' Her mother glowered but made no attempt to recapture her arm. She turned instead and strode away through the nest village. Moll followed her, protesting loudly and ignored all the way to an outlying nest, into which her mother disappeared. I wondered what bad luck, or criminal act of her mother's, had brought the pair of them to the Curragh.
'There's been enough talk,' the wren with the cut forehead lifted my bag. 'I'll make tea.' She signalled that we should follow her.
The woman's nest was like all of the others, maybe a little smaller. Up close it was a fragile enough structure with, like all of the others, a small fire burning just inside the door. A pot pierced all over with holes sat on top of it as a guard. After removing the pot and fanning the fire the wren put a kettle to boil on it.
'No point your standing with the infant.' She pointed me at another, upturned pot and I sat on it and gave James the breast.