“At first there were wild rumors that there were a hundred and fifty casualties,” said Mr. Wright, “but it looks like the actual figure will be far less than that.”
Relieved whispers circulated throughout the room.
“It might be as low as twelve or thirteen victims, mostly men who worked the night shift at Harland & Wolff,” he continued. “The timber merchants McCue Dick burned completely to ashes and the fire spread to the neighboring premises, lighting up the docks. Unfortunately, they lost two men. We are still awaiting further confirmation.”
Amid Mr. Wright’s announcements, the conversations among Hettie’s fellow workers grew louder. Despite the bombing and the casualties, everyone appeared to be in optimistic spirits: Their city had been attacked, but had managed to endure the violence relatively unscathed. The bombing had mainly been confined to military targets around the docks, which was what had been expected, and the civilian areas had largely escaped damage. Some felt if that was the worst Hitler could do, then Belfast would be all right. It felt like they—and the city of Belfast—had been fortunate. So far, at least, they had been spared.
“I did a round of the animals this morning, and all our charges are doing quite well,” Mr. Wright went on, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket. “The cheetahs and lions were a wee bit rattled. Despite getting overexcited, the lemurs didn’t escape. Rajan, Maggie, Violet, Wallace, and the whole lot of them, they are in good spirits. I have plans to speak with Mr. Christie by telephone this afternoon. I will reassure him that all is well at Bellevue and that we are watching over the animals.”
Mr. Wright studied the pages of his notebook and then looked up again.
“Resume your assignments as usual,” he said. “The zoo will remain open for visitors today. We’re not going to let the Germans close our doors and deprive the public of our animals and the necessary diversion that they offer. I’ll be in touch with any further updates.”
At lunchtime, Hettie and the rest of the staff reconvened in the canteen. During the second meeting, Mr. Wright confirmed that thirteen individuals had been killed, with the twelve civilian deaths occurring in the dock area. One of the antiaircraft gunners had been killed when a shell exploded prematurely. According to Mr. Wright’s sources, bombs had been dropped from a squadron of Heinkel He 111 aircraft for just over three hours. He reported that about five hundred German aircraft had bombed multiple cities throughout the United Kingdom on that same evening, including Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, and Coventry, but that Clydeside had been the main target. Hettie wondered where her father was now, if he had been in any of those cities the night before and if he might call and see how they were doing since Belfast had been struck. Then she found herself thinking of Liam and Maeve again, and fretting about their welfare.
“The Floral Hall will remain open, too,” Mr. Wright said, referring to his recent phone call with Mr. Christie. “Margaret Dolan will be performing, and later in the week, on the evening of Easter Tuesday, Stella Holliday will be returning for an encore performance.”
Amid the cheer that went up at this announcement, Hettie and Ferris exchanged glances. For Hettie, it felt as if that early-spring evening at the Floral Hall had happened a long time ago, as if the days and nights possessed a protracted quality, stretching out seamlessly into months rather than just a few weeks. Because of the bombing and her preoccupation with Violet, she had almost forgotten the unpleasantness with Samuel Greene and her sudden flying fist.
“Maybe we can go and hear Stella Holliday again,” Ferris said, looking up at Hettie.
“I have a wedding to attend that night,” she said.
“No worries,” Ferris responded. “We’ll see Stella next time.”
“Yes, next time,” Hettie said with a smile even though she was relieved to have another obligation that evening. She didn’t want to endure another evening at the Floral Hall any time soon.
That morning, Rose had received confirmation from her cousin Frances that her son’s wedding would still be taking place. With the government and Prime Minister Andrews encouraging Belfast’s citizens to resume daily life as usual, Frances had notified guests that the ceremony and reception would go on as originally planned. Her eldest son, Matthew, was getting married to his sweetheart, whom he had met in the church choir over seven years ago. Hettie had tried to convince Rose that there was no need for her to attend, but her mother left no room for discussion. She said the extended family had shown up for Anna’s funeral, and Frances had paid them multiple visits, bringing loaves of wheaten and soda bread, using her rationed eggs and butter rather than saving the precious goods for her own table.
“Proceed with your duties,” Mr. Wright continued. “If you have any concerns, let me know.”
That evening, as Hettie sat in the courtyard paring carrots, potatoes, and turnips for dinner, she heard the telephone ringing from inside the house, and Rose answered. She heard her mother utter a few huh-uhs followed by Did you receive our telegram about Anna? Then there was a silence and a few more exchanges. I think they’ve gone to the countryside with his family. I don’t know if they will be returning. Rose’s tone shifted into something more neutral. Almost businesslike. Not to worry, she said. We’re fine. And then finally, Yes, I’ll tell her. Yes. Yes. Goodbye.
Rose hung up the phone and appeared in the doorway. She wiped her hands on a stained tea towel. A degree of peace and sadness seemed to have settled into her mother’s eyes and lips. Rose continued to wipe her hands on the towel even though they were already dry.
“That was your father,” she finally said.
“Where on bloody earth is he?” Hettie asked.
“Norwich.”
“When is he coming home?”
“He said the Merchant Navy needs him,” Rose said, sitting down on the concrete step. “Now isn’t a good time to leave.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No,” Rose said flatly, “I don’t believe him, but I don’t think that matters so much anymore.”
“Did he ask about Anna? Does he even know about Maeve?”
“He said he was sorry that he didn’t make it home for the funeral,” Rose said, her voice low. “He was very sorry about that.”
“Did he ask to speak me?” Hettie asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“He sounded hurried, as if someone else was waiting to use the phone—”
“He’s not coming home this time, you know,” Hettie interrupted, her words sharp and acerbic. “He’s never coming home.” She felt an impulse to throw the bucket of peeled vegetables against the brick wall of their courtyard or to throw her fist against the hard surface.
“No, I don’t think he is coming home.” Rose lowered her gaze to the pavement littered with vegetable peelings and then looked up at Hettie. A clarity seemed to sharpen Rose’s features.
Hettie realized that it was the first time her mother had admitted that Thomas wasn’t returning home, that somehow she had stepped out of the ever-present fog of her grief into the reality of her life: Her oldest daughter was dead; she was estranged from her only grandchild; and her husband of twenty-five years was gone. Despite the undeniable grief of all this, Hettie found she felt strangely relieved to finally know that her father would not be returning home.
“We’re going to be fine,” Rose said with an unfamiliar steadiness in her voice. “We don’t need him.”
Hettie dropped the broken carrots into the bucket.
“I’m sorry, you know, about Anna and Liam,” Rose continued.
“It’s all right, Mum,” Hettie reassured her.
“I wanted a certain kind of life for your sister and her baby,” Rose said, wringing the towel in her hands. “I wanted Maeve to be raised a certain way.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Have you heard from the Keegans? How are they getting along?”
“Liam found himself a job with a local mechanic. His uncle keeps a small farm. Chicken
s, goats, and horses. Maeve is happy there.”
Her mother nodded and responded, “I’m glad they’re getting along.”
As they sat in a compatible silence, a pair of jays crisscrossed through the early evening. Mr. Reynolds’s dog yipped on the other side of the courtyard’s brick wall. The pair of birds flew higher and higher until they disappeared beyond the treetops of budding leaves and into the watery, half-lit sky.
“Are you done?” Rose asked after a few minutes, nodding toward the two remaining turnips on the pavement.
“Almost.”
After dinner, Hettie and Rose listened to the six o’clock news on the wireless. As they sipped their cups of tea, the commentator reported on further updates about the recent bombing. A parachute bomb had destroyed a fuselage factory; he didn’t say where, but everyone in Belfast knew it was Harland & Wolff. Another bomb had fallen on Alexandra Park Avenue, he said, leaving behind a fifteen-foot crater in the middle of the road. But, he added gleefully, none of the surrounding row houses had been damaged and not a single window had been broken.
“The government is certainly trying to keep up morale with their reports,” Rose commented.
“Wouldn’t we better off knowing the extent of things?”
“There’s nothing to be done about it.”
Rose clicked off the wireless.
“Pick some rhubarb, will you?” her mother said. “I’m going to make a pie for Aunt Sylvia.”
“Yes, Mum.”
As Hettie stepped into the courtyard, she had almost forgotten that the following day was Easter Tuesday. It had always been a holiday that they had celebrated as a family—attending the morning service followed by an afternoon meal of roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding. When Hettie and Anna were young, Rose used to put together elaborate straw baskets laden with dyed hard-boiled eggs, chocolate eggs, caramel creams, and multicolored sugary buttons on rolled sleeves of paper, and then hid the baskets in hard-to-find spots around their house. Anna had always saved her Easter stockpile, parceling out a couple of pieces to herself each day, while Hettie would eat her share of sweets within two or three sittings, often leaving her with a stomachache and an envy for her older sister’s remaining store.
Hettie picked several stalks of rhubarb and a handful of lettuce, and rinsed the vegetables under the spigot attached to the house. Diluted dirt ran over her fingers as she washed the rhubarb one more time and took it in to her mother in the kitchen.
“Thank you, my sweet girl,” Rose said with a smile.
Hettie smiled back at her mother and sat down at the kitchen table with her, refilling their cups of tea. Rose busied herself collecting and measuring ingredients for the pie. Hettie absentmindedly reached into the pocket of her trousers and fingered the edges of something smooth. She took the object out of her pocket. It was the snail that Ferris had given her back in December. She had forgotten that she had slid the snail into her pocket a few days ago; until then, she had kept it in a small pot of soil in their courtyard. Hettie positioned it on the kitchen table and stared at the concentric circles of the mollusk’s design. The evening light struck the shell, intensifying its pink iridescence before its smooth surface became flat again. The snail’s antennae tentatively emerged from its chamber and waved in the air. She smiled to herself. The snail extended its dark neck and wriggled its antennae farther. Hettie retrieved a few leaves from a celery stalk in the larder and placed them next to it, and it began to munch away on one of the leaves. Though it was logical that the snail would be hungry, Hettie was quietly amazed by the rate at which the snail devoured the leaf.
“What you got there?” Rose asked from the sink.
“Oh, nothing,” Hettie said.
The creature glided onto the next leaf and began to gnaw a hole through it.
“A snail,” Rose said, looking over her shoulder.
“He’s hungry,” Hettie said with a grin. “Can’t you hear him eating?”
“Of course I can,” Rose said with a soft laugh before returning her attention to the ingredients on the counter.
Hettie continued to watch the snail eat the remaining leaves and as her mother made her rhubarb pie. The comforting sounds of domesticity took over the kitchen: the occasional sound of water running from the tap, the whisking of ingredients, the dough being worked against the counter. Outside, the neighborhood children’s voices materialized as they started up another game of rounders. There was the whack of the bat against the ball. The boys cheered one another. After the snail finished eating, the creature returned to the safety of its shell.
On the following day, Easter Tuesday, Rose and Hettie rode the tram back from the wedding, which had been held at Sinclair Seamen’s Church, not far from the Customs House and the river. They had felt some apprehension traveling to and from the city center for the wedding. Air-raid warnings had rung out on each of the previous four nights, a sure sign that German aircraft had been spotted overhead. Also during the week, army units had been moving searchlights into position in different parts of the city, and had also installed crude stoves in the harbor area, which belched out thick smoke to obscure the Germans’ aerial views of the city. It even seemed that the police and the troops on patrol were more vigilant and more anxious. Certainly, more people were carrying gas masks. The smell of burning still lingered faintly in the air. A Union Jack fluttered in the southwesterly breeze at the top of a flagpole next to the Customs House. As the tram traveled through the heart of the city, Hettie noticed longer queues than usual at the bus stops. Most of the shops were closed for the public holiday, and some of them had their windows boarded up. The Great Victoria Street railway station looked to be busier than normal. She wondered whether people were taking advantage of their day off to go on day trips, or if they were fleeing the city altogether in expectation of another air raid.
In other parts of Belfast, daily life persisted. At St. Paul’s Parish on the Falls Road, a surge of congregants lined up for confession with the priests, far greater numbers than the usual seasonal upswing. In the meantime, football fans filled the terraces at Celtic Park and cheered as Celtic defeated Linfield by three goals to one. A new James Cagney picture, Torrid Zone, played at the Ritz Cinema. Some teenage boys gathered on the banks of the River Lagan, not far from Shaw’s Bridge, hoping to catch a salmon or a trout for tea. A shower of rice and confetti was tossed in the wake of a bride and groom outside the Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church. Evidently, Hettie reflected, as she and her mother rode the tram, the citizens of Belfast were taking to heart the prime minister’s advice of carrying on.
In an effort to maintain peace on the streets, annual republican demonstrations—which usually took place every year to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising—had been banned in Belfast that day. Hettie had heard on the wireless that thousands of people had gathered in Dublin the day before for a military parade and a rousing speech by de Valera, himself a volunteer commandant during the Easter Rising, commending the heroics of the men who fought during the six-day rebellion. Despite Liam’s views of de Valera, Hettie wondered if Liam had made the train trip from Newcastle to Dublin to be a part of the celebration and as a way to remember his father’s brother. At the same time, she wondered if Liam’s involvement with the republicans would bring him back to Belfast sooner than later; certainly he would write to Hettie and let her know if he was returning anytime soon.
Hettie and Rose disembarked at the Upper Antrim Road. The skies had cleared and the mid-April sun was lowering, sending thick bands of coral pink and lavender along the western horizon. There was a mild breeze. In the flower beds of some of the row houses, the delicate petals of yellow and bluish-purple crocuses were beginning to open. A jaundiced tinge still clung to the spring air.
“Did you see Lily Jamison at the reception?” Rose asked as they made their way to the Whitewell Road. “She’s recovered nicely from her broken engagement with Walter Hollis. What a dreadful thing he did, breaking things off by post while
he’s fighting with the forces in North Africa. Her dress was quite pretty, don’t you think? And the bride, I wonder where the family managed to find that beautiful lace? It must belong to her mum or grandmother.”
A rare levity percolated in Rose’s voice. It had been a long time since Hettie had witnessed this kind of lightness in her mother. It seemed as if her veil of melancholy had finally lifted, allowing room for her former, livelier spirit to return. She wondered if it was thanks to attending a relative’s wedding—instead of a memorial service—or receiving the phone call from Thomas. Even though there was still loss, it was now a defined loss rather than an ambiguous one floating between here and there. Instead, her grief had rearranged itself into something concrete and tangible so that Rose could move on rather than continue to wait for her husband who was never going to return home.
She looked younger, too, dressed in her navy blue dress with a knitted shawl draped over her shoulders. For the wedding, she had worn her mother’s gold brooch of a simple bow on the neck of her ruffled collar. Her round cheeks gave off a pinkish glow.
“Matthew looked like a regular gentleman,” Rose said. “So grown-up.”
Hettie stared in the direction of the wooded slope of the Cavehill. The buds of cedar and beech trees had begun to unfold their light green leaves, making the zoo’s pathways and enclosures less visible from the road. She was curious how the day had gone at the zoo; despite the recent bombing, Mr. Wright was expecting increased attendance. It was a tradition in the city to visit the Bellevue Zoo on the bank holiday for a family day out. Hettie was disappointed not to be there. With the gates now locked for the night, she imagined the lemurs and the monkeys quieting down; the parrots, parakeets, and peacocks singing their distinctive songs; and the lioness and her cubs curling up against one another in their den. Night was coming, and all the animals were settling in for the hours of darkness ahead. For a moment, Hettie wished she could be with Violet at the Elephant House—and away from her mother and her enthusiastic chatter about Matthew’s wedding. Despite her mother’s liveliness, Hettie still felt a hint of judgment, a kind of unspoken message of the absence of a relationship and a future of marriage and children in Hettie’s life. No matter how well she and her mother were getting along, there would always be a tension riding underneath their pleasant exchanges.
The Elephant of Belfast Page 17