by Rose Doyle
'What happened to your forehead?' Allie asked.
'I got a belt from a stick.' The wren's clever, foxy face assessed Allie. 'I kept it clean with salt and water and used iodine when it was at its worst. Would you have done any different?'
'No. You did the right thing.'
The wren looked at Allie for a silent half-minute. 'Sit down,' she said then, 'I've another pot if the grass isn't good enough for you.'
'The grass will do.'
Allie sat on the grass and Beezy, with more sense, sat on her travelling bag. Our hostess disappeared into the nest on all fours and came out in the same fashion but pushing four cups, a small bag of tea and sugar ahead of her. Her hair, which was exactly the colour of the freckles covering her face and chest, hung clean and shining to her waist. She might have been twenty-five or she might have been forty years old. It was that hard to put an age on her.
'Ellen's my name,' she told us while she placed the cups in a row. 'Ellen Neary. I came here from the county Waterford.'
Identifying themselves by the part of the country they came from was something all of the wrens would do. Most of them came from small villages and country places. It was as if they needed to remind themselves of the people they'd been before becoming wrens.
While Ellen Neary was making tea in a brown teapot Nance Reilly arrived carrying a pot. She turned this upside-down and sat on it beside Beezy Ryan. Beezy, smoking another cigar, listened without a word as Nance began to whisper in her ear.
'Tomorrow'll be another good day.' Ellen Neary squinted at the cloudless, but darkening, sky. 'You can set about building yourselves a nest. I've no milk. You'll have to take the tea black.'
She was liberal with the sugar and I liked the hot, sweet, smoky-tasting tea she gave us. I was having a second cup when the wrens who shared the nest with her, a couple of young women called Lucretia Curran and Lil Malone, joined us. Lucretia was rosy-cheeked and plump and not a day over seventeen. Lil, who told us she was eighteen, looked a bit like Mary Adams, though not as beautiful and without the mad, staring eyes.
'Where did you get a gown like that?' Lil felt the stuff of Allie's dress. 'Is it silk?'
'I got it in Paris and it's made of sultane,' Allie said.
'You were in Paris?' Lucretia stared. Lil did too. Ellen Neary grunted and refilled and put the kettle back on the fire. Allie slipped off her shoes.
'I was in school there, for two years.' She took off her stockings and stretched her feet in the grass.
Lucretia, after a minute, said, 'It's the loveliest thing I've ever seen on anyone.' She lifted the hem of the dress and examined the stitching. She stroked the velvet trim.
I could see trouble ahead on account of that dress.
'The countryside in northern France is quite like the Curragh,' Allie sad smiling at no one in particular.
'You must feel quite at home so,' Nance Reilly said.
'It's pleasant to be in any country place in the summer.' Allie went on smiling. The knuckles of her hand were white around the cup. She wasn't so calm as she seemed.
'You wouldn't want to be here for the winter.' Ellen Neary gave a short laugh. 'In the two winters I've spent on this plain I've served whatever time's coming to me in either hell or purgatory.'
Beezy took bread and fruit from her bag. We shared it round and talked of where we would make our nest in the morning. But Beezy was short-tempered and bothered looking and after a couple of minutes got to her feet.
'You might be good enough, Ellen,' she spoke quickly, 'to tell me where I can find Lizzie Early.'
'She's to the west a bit, in number twelve nest,' Ellen pointed, 'you'll see a piece of green-painted wood over the door.'
Beezy, without a word to either myself or Allie, headed for Lizzie's nest. Nance Reilly followed her.
'Is Lizzie in a bad way, or what?'
I looked after Beezy as I put the question to Ellen Neary. She didn't answer at once and when I turned to her she gave herself a small shake. She was like her namesake the wren settling its feathers.
'It's my own view that she's too far gone in drink to be saved,' she said. 'I'd give her to the end of the summer, no more, the way she's going.'
'How long has she been here?'
'Two months, or thereabouts. She was bad when she came but she's a whole lot worse now. She's diseased from it, wasting away and vomiting when she eats even a morsel of food. And still she goes out most nights, looking for any kind of drink she can get. It's a terrible affliction and I've yet to see a woman cured of it. Or a man for that matter.' She turned to Allie. 'Have you come across a cure in your study of medicine?' She was very polite.
'The only cure is for her to stop drinking . . .' Allie began.
'Even the babe in arms knows that much.' Ellen Neary was all at once impatient, 'You didn't save too many drunken women in that dispensary of yours, from the sound of things.'
'No,' Allie admitted, 'no, I didn't. But if Lizzie Early's vomiting and wasting then there's more than drink wrong with her.'
'Maybe you should tell her that,' Lil Malone stretched and lay flat on the grass, 'maybe you should examine her.'
Lucretia Curran gave a snorting laugh and spluttered into her tea. 'That'd be a good one,' she said.
'How many nests and wrens are there in the village?' I was tired of them teasing Allie.
'There'll be sixteen when yours is built,' Ellen Neary set about rinsing the crockery in a basin of dull, brown water. 'We give them numbers, to help tell them apart. This is number seven.'
'How many people to a nest?'
'In the bigger ones as many as eight, but that's counting children.'
'How many wrens in the village altogether?'
'There must be upwards of . . .' Ellen Neary wrinkled her sharp nose and moved her lips, counting, 'eighty or so at the moment. When the wintertime comes we'll not be so numerous.' She shook her head as I started with another question. 'You'll learn all you need to know about the village soon enough. Better to see for yourself than listen to me.' She dried her hands on her petticoat. 'Will you let me hold the infant?' I handed James over to her and she cradled him in her lap. When she held out a finger he caught and held it.
'There were four of us in this nest until last week,' she said. 'Yourself and the child can take the place tonight of the wren's that's gone.'
'Where did the fourth wren go?'
'Disease and the workhouse took her. Her misfortune may as well be your good luck.'
'It'll only be for the night,' I said.
One night would be enough in a dead woman's bed. One week, maybe two, would be enough in the wren village. By then I would be with Jimmy and in an altogether different nest.
'What happens when it rains?' I said.
Ellen laughed. 'We wait for it to stop,' she said.
It was dark by the time Beezy came back. When she did I was sorry she hadn’t stayed away. Lizzie Early was with her and she was drunk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sarah
'The father never came looking for you then?'
Lizzie stood over me. I wouldn't have believed anyone could age so much so quickly. Her face had shrunk and her naked arms and chest were like worn sacking.
'No,' I said, 'he didn't come looking for me, Lizzie.'
She'd been slim and pretty, the last time I'd seen her, with rouge on her cheeks and her yellow hair curled.
'So, you came after him . . .' She gave a throat-clearing wheeze which turned into a racking cough.
'I did.'
Her laugh was like the death rattle. 'You're not the first and you won't be the last to come to the Curragh after a soldier. You'd better start praying, Sarah Rooney, that you'll have better luck than others around here.'
'Shut your mouth, Lizzie,' Beezy hissed, 'or, sick as you are, I'll shut it for you.'
'Better she knows than to foolishly hope,' Lizzie said, but the fight had all at once gone out of her. 'Bernie's dead.' She sat in a limp heap on the gr
ass. 'She's dead two months now. Of pneumonia. In the fever hospital.'
'Pneumonia . . .' All I could do was repeat the word. Allie came and knelt beside me and put an arm about my shoulder. As she did, and as I stared ahead of me, I saw the dark-haired wren and her little girl Moll appear at the edge of our group.
The mother stood with her arms on her hips. She was anything but a comforting sight.
'Bernie took sick in the street one night,' Lizzie Early went on in a low whine, 'she was gone in a week.'
Beezy, standing by the side of the nest with her face in shadow, said nothing. I thought of Mary Ann, of all the help she'd got.
'She might not have been saved anyway,' I said, 'even if she'd taken ill in the kip house and been looked after.'
'She'd have had a better chance than in the street,' Lizzie said.
'It's time we were moving out, those of us that are for the hunting grounds.' Moll's mother didn't move, didn't even unfold her arms. But her voice carried hard and loud. 'Lil, get yourself ready. You too, Lucretia. Listening to this caterwauling for the dead won't put food in our bellies.'
'She's one of our dead,' Beezy didn't move, 'and has nothing to do with you. If we choose to lament her passing then so be it. You don't have to listen.'
Quiet as shadows the other women melted away. Even Moll disappeared. There was only Allie and myself to witness Beezy and the dark woman as they faced one another.
'Do your lamenting in private,' the dark woman threw out an arm. 'The plains are wide. We've the business of the night to be getting on with and if you're to live among us you'll have to fall in with our ways. This is no kip house. We're all equal on the Curragh. We've no madams here.'
'If you're all equal what gives you the right to speak for the village?' A moon shadow on Beezy's face gave a sinister slant to the scar.
'I'm saying only what the other women would say if they'd the courage.' Moll's mother took a step forward. 'Those of us who earn at night help feed the rest.' She looked at Allie, then me. 'Soldiers don't wait for ever and there are pickets about, forcing stray soldiers back to the camp. We must hunt when we can…'
'The women who came with me will not be joining your night raids,' Beezy said, cutting her short as sharp as flint.
'Only those who're used to the work go hunting,' Moll's mother shrugged, 'and those that won't frighten the soldiers away.'
Beezy didn't cover her face. She stood unmoving. She might have been a lamp post except for the fluttering feathers around her neck. The sight of her, proudly herself and strong, filled me with a terrible lonesomeness for Henrietta Street. I closed my eyes and bent over my baby, but even behind my closed lids I could see the buildings with their open doors and the women gathered on the steps on evenings like this one.
'We won't be a drain on the wren village,' Beezy said.
'Make sure that you're not,’ the woman's eyes were cold. 'You've already been told that we share everything here.'
Did she think we had more money between us than we had? Could she know about Beezy's rings? About the few pieces of jewellery in Allie's bag?
'When what money we have is gone we'll earn,' Beezy said, 'Nance Reilly tells me there's a bit to be made in sewing for the country houses, and in laundering.'
'Maybe the doctor can open a dispensary,' the woman laughed, 'she'd find plenty of customers among the soldiers.'
'We came here in good faith,' Beezy said, 'we came believing shelter would be willingly given to women needing refuge.'
'You were told right.' All at once the woman turned away. 'But you need to know your place. We were all someone once. Now we're bushwomen and wrens. As you will be. You'll be helped build a nest tomorrow.'
'It's a hard life has no time in it to mourn the dead,' Beezy called after her.
'It is,' the woman agreed.
'It's a poor one too.'
'It is.' The woman turned slowly, and spoke slowly. 'I'll tell you Sally O'Hanlon's story and then maybe you'll know just how hard the wren's life is. Sally was taken ill in the night and was dead when the women on either side of her woke in the morning. A surgeon came. He examined her in the nest. There was an inquiry after and a great deal of questioning. It showed Sally had died of being in the open too much and from drinking water from the ditches. They gave us thirteen shillings to bury her and so we did, in Kildare churchyard. They send a water wagon out to us now, from the camp. Since then, when a wren is dying, the relieving officer comes to take her to the workhouse.' She shrugged. 'We live as best we can here, and when a wren dies we mourn her life, not her death.' She stopped, looking at Beezy in silence for a minute. She shrugged again and walked away, calling over her shoulder as she went, 'Lucinda, Lil, get yourselves ready. The night won't last forever.'
Beezy took whiskey from her bag and poured for herself and the two young wrens as they dressed themselves.
They might have been going to a ball. They gathered clean, starched petticoats and dresses from the bushes. To avoid the evening midges they dressed themselves close to the fire, laughing and talking as they helped arrange one another's hair. Lucretia put on a pair of white stockings. They both put on laced-up boots. They turned themselves into respectable young women.
'Be careful you're not caught by the military.' Ellen Neary draped a grimy petticoat over her shoulders. A chill had come into the night.
'Am I not always careful?' Lil Malone pulled impatiently at Lucretia, who was playing with a wakeful James. Lucretia got to her feet at once and they ran, hand in hand, after the other wrens trailing out of the village.
Beezy, taking the whiskey with her, had no sooner gone to sleep in Nance Reilly's nest than Moll appeared from the shadows.
'Mama says you can sleep in our nest,' she announced as she stood in front of Allie. In the darkness her face looked old as night, and far more knowing than those of the wrens who'd gone hand-in-hand to sell themselves.
'Your mother said that?' Allie looked uncertain.
'I asked her and she said yes,' the child amended. 'My name's Moll Hyland. My mother's name is Clara but she'll be gone for most of the night,’ she hesitated. 'Maybe you'd let me hold your dress when you take it off?'
'Maybe I will,' Allie picked up her bag, 'or maybe I won't take it off at all.'
'You'll not fit into the nest with it on,' said Moll.
There was nothing more to be said. Allie, walking quickly and with Moll skipping beside her, disappeared into the dark.
Ellen Neary looked after them. 'That child will have what she wants, no matter the cost. Clara's a decent enough sort, but keep out of her way when she's got drink taken.' She shook her head. 'The drink makes a demon of her.'
'Will Allie be all right, sleeping in her nest?'
'She'll have to be. She has a lot to learn and she may as well begin tonight. It's time we got some sleep ourselves. We'll be woken by the women coming back.' She got on to her knees in front of the nest. 'Take your dress off before you come inside. It'll make a pillow for the night. Your underskirt will do for a blanket over yourself and the child.'
When I hesitated, looking about me, she grew impatient.
'There's only the other wrens to see you.' She parted the furze about the door and stood waiting. 'No one wears anything but a petticoat here. It saves our dresses from wearing out and it saves on the washing.'
I saw the sense of this, but still couldn't move. Dressed I was still decent, still had at least the cloak of respectability about me. Stripping down to my petticoat would make me a wren.
'You'll get used to it,' Ellen said, not unkindly.
'I'll never get used to it,' I said, 'never…’
'The first night's the worst,' Ellen cut me short without raising her voice. 'Think of the child and come inside.' She put the punctured pot back over the fire which, fanned by the breeze through the holes, burned red and cheerful. 'It'll light longer that way,' she said and crawled around it into the nest.
I took off my dress and petticoat and followed her
.
It was warm in the nest, a home because Ellen and her companions had made it one. There wasn't a lot of room; four women lying side by side would have taken up all of the ground space. The earthen floor was scattered with straw and the roof so low there was no way of standing upright. There were no windows in the thick furze walls, and no chimney in the roof.
The smoke, that night, went out the door but it didn't always. There would be nights when wind and rain drove it back into the nest to swirl and choke and reek into the walls and roof.
A shelf ran along the back wall, supported by sticks driven into the floor. It held plates, the cups we'd used and the teapot as well as a candlestick and cutlery. Above it, hanging from the roof, was the mirror the women had used dressing for their night out. In one corner there was a wooden candle box, in another a couple of small saucepans. Hanging from pegs on the walls were a frying pan, bent poker, three petticoats and two dresses.
I sat, holding James, while Ellen Neary shook out the straw to make the bed big enough for all of us.
'We'll leave the space inside the door for Lil and Lucretia,' she said briskly, 'that way they'll not disturb us too much when they get back.' She rested on her hunkers, her small, foxy face smiling. 'Lie down there now with the child.'
I lay, holding James and thinking that, with a different throw of the dice, Ellen Neary would have made a schoolteacher, or kept a bright, polished kitchen.
'You haven't arrived in the Valley of Death, Sarah Rooney.' She lay beside me. 'Outcast we may be but you'll find we look after our own. You have your son. Be glad of that much at least.'
She was so small, sighing and settling herself, that she reminded me of Mary Ann. 'What brought you here, Ellen?' I said.
'Love for a man, same as brought you here.' She stopped and I waited for her to tell me her story. It took a while but she did in the end, speaking in a curious, flat voice.
'I had a baby of my own, once,' she began, 'a boy, more fair- haired than your lad. He had the neatest hands and fingers you ever saw. I called him Victor. He died when he was four days old in this nest, in my arms, in the middle of the night.'