‘Looks like he’s a goner,’ said the man who had helped.
Gazing down at the little creatures with anger and pity, the girl muttered, ‘How could anyone do such a wicked thing?’
‘They probably couldn’t afford to feed them. Times are hard,’ said the man. ‘Stay off that ice, now.’ And he went away.
‘It’s so cruel.’ She clutched the puppies to her, and to his embarrassment Ben saw a tear trickle down her cheek.
‘At least we saved two,’ he muttered awkwardly.
‘I must get them to my uncle’s to feed them,’ she said. ‘He lives near here.’ And without a word of thanks or farewell, she hastened off, the puppies in her arms.
Ben was left sore, uncomfortable and puzzled. Unusually, he had done something that required courage – mostly thanks to that girl. And now she’d just gone.
Back at home, he didn’t dare tell his dad about the incident. He told Granny he’d slipped, wincing as she dabbed his sore legs with lint soaked in brown iodine.
But in the weeks ahead he often replayed the scene in his mind, wondering if he’d ever find out the fate of the puppies, or who that furious, headstrong girl was.
2
New Neighbours
A few weeks later Ben, seated on the edge of his iron bed in the chilly upstairs bedroom of Number 19 Martin Street, was watching out for the glimmer man.
Further down the street between the rows of terraced houses, packed tight as teeth, a football game was in progress. The shouts of his brother Sean and Ben’s friend Eamon – known as Smiler on account of his cheerful nature – echoed enticingly up from the street. But he was stuck here for another half-hour, while downstairs in the kitchen Granny hurried to make tea before Dad left for the early-evening shift with the Local Defence Force, the LDF.
Ben could lean out and roar through the window to Smiler, or maybe Sean, to come and take a turn on the watch. But in the next room their mother lay sick, and if he woke her, he’d be murdered.
Ben had never actually seen the glimmer man – a uniformed inspector from the Gas Company who cycled around the streets of Dublin on an orange bicycle. If he discovered anyone evading gas rationing by lighting the tiny whiff left in the pipes when the gas was officially turned off, then the Gas Company might fine them, or even cut off their gas altogether so they couldn’t cook anything except over a smoky fire. ‘And then,’ as Granny said, ‘how would we feed a family with two hungry boys?’
So it was Ben’s task to watch out and warn Granny and the neighbours. Ben pictured the official striding into the kitchen and putting his hand on the gas ring to check if it was warm – proof that Granny had been cooking on the ‘glimmer’. He imagined Granny in tears, his dad raging that he’d have no hot tea before he left, his mam up in bed listening anxiously to the commotion below. He sighed – better forget about football and concentrate on his lookout job.
He was almost nodding off with boredom when from the far end of the street he heard a distant grinding rumble, too noisy to be the glimmer man’s bike. Slowly, an odd procession came into view: a woman in a drab woollen dress and headscarf, carrying a bundle of blankets. Behind her, hunched with the effort of pushing a laden handcart, was a bearded man in a long overcoat and soft felt hat, and two girls, the younger about Ben’s age.
As the cart ground to a halt below, the man straightened up, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. Approaching the house next door to Ben’s, empty since old Granny Murphy had gone to live with her daughter, he peered at the number, took out a key and unlocked the front door.
New neighbours at last! Pity there was no sign of a boy his own age who might become a friend, joining in the football or playing marbles or conkers or swapping cigarette cards. When Ben had first come to live in Martin Street only a year ago, some local boys had called out mockingly, ‘Specky Four-eyes!’ on account of his glasses. Smiler, a bit younger than Ben, was his only real friend here, and he still missed the pals he’d grown up with in New Street.
Below, the woman entered Number 17, cradling the bundle which Ben could now see was a baby wrapped in blankets. The others all seized parcels and boxes, and began to carry them inside.
Ben leant perilously out of the window to watch. Should he go down and offer to help? The older girl spotted him and said something to the younger one. Staggering under the weight of a heavy box, the younger girl followed her sister’s glance, squinting up into the wintry sun; then, frowning, she tossed her mass of curly hair and bent down.
Ben wiped his smeary glasses and had another look. There was something familiar about her. And then she opened the box and let out a frisky brown and white puppy, which darted in and out of everyone’s legs, yapping furiously.
Ben nearly fell out of the window. It was her, that girl! He recognised now the unruly hair and the thick eyebrows drawn together in a frown. And the puppy must be one he himself had helped to rescue. What had happened to the other? And why was that girl so cross? Didn’t she recognise him? As questions buzzed in his mind the family below speedily humped in all the boxes and furniture and disappeared inside the house.
***
‘Ben, the gas is on!’ The welcome shout floated up from downstairs. ‘Come and get your tea.’
From Mam’s room, beside his and Sean’s, there was no sound. Trying to stop his boots from clattering on the bare wooden stairs, he ran down.
At the bottom he cannoned into Sean, dashing in from the street. ‘You missed a great game,’ he told Ben. Ben grunted. Trust Sean to add salt to the wound.
They sat at the table opposite their dad, hidden behind the Evening Mail, and began to eat the sausages and baked beans dished out by Granny.
‘That old damp turf,’ she grumbled as their eyes watered from the acrid smoke billowing out from the grate. ‘There’s barely any heat out of it. God be with the days when we had coal.’
‘It’s the war,’ grunted Dad, getting up to grab his tin hat and bicycle clips from a hook on the door.
The war … Ben thought back to the golden September day when a newsboy had appeared in the street shouting, ‘Stop press – read all about it!’ Mam had given Sean a penny and he’d sped back with the Evening Herald, its stark headline in huge black letters: WAR DECLARED.
In the hall of the tenement house a neighbour who’d fought with British troops in the last war had declared, ‘Britain’ll trounce Hitler and the Nazis.’
But the old man from upstairs grunted: ‘Those Nazis in Germany know how to run a country. If they came here we’d get real independence – all thirty-two counties.’
‘The Nazis are against independence for anyone,’ Mam said sharply. ‘They want to rule the world, and they hate Jews and gypsies and black people and anyone that’s different from them. And trade unions that stand up for decent working people like us.’
Later, Mam had still been furious. ‘Your Uncle Matt fought against that evil crowd already in Spain,’ she’d reminded Ben and Sean. ‘Some people never learn.’
***
In the kitchen Granny poked at the weak fire. ‘It says in the papers there’s no war here,’ she muttered to Dad, ‘only an Emergency.’
‘Whatever it’s called, at least we’re not in it,’ said Dad shortly.
‘Still, flour and tea are scarce,’ grumbled Granny. ‘No coal or petrol. And it’s a hard winter.’
‘Sure, how could you feel the cold, Granny,’ teased Sean, ‘with all you have on?’
‘That’s enough, Sean,’ said Dad, as, like a hen with ruffled feathers, Granny indignantly smoothed down her clothes. Ben fought back a grin, thinking of Granny’s ganseys, flannel petticoats, woollen combinations and thick black stockings that hung out to dry with the rest of the washing every Monday in the sooty back yard.
Then Dad’s face became stern. ‘Listen here to me, now,’ he said heavily. ‘There’s new people moved in next door, and I don’t want anyone getting too pally with them.’
Sean looked up from his tea. ‘Why
not?’
‘They’re foreigners,’ Dad replied sharply. ‘Jews.’
‘But there’s lots of Jewish families in Portobello,’ said Granny. ‘Sure, they even call it Little Jerusalem.’
‘There’s some living here in Martin Street – Joey and Mickser Woolfson play football with us,’ put in Sean. ‘Why–’
‘Because I say so!’ Ben jumped as Dad banged his fist on the table. ‘I’m telling you, stay away from that house.’ There was a silence. He went on, ‘There’s too many of these foreigners here. They’re different from us, and there isn’t work for us all. They should go back where they came from.’
Granny, tight-lipped, handed him his sandwiches. They all knew to keep quiet when Dad was in one of his angry moods, especially without Mam on hand to smooth him over.
Fixing on his bicycle clips he grunted, ‘I’m late.’ Then he added, his voice softening, ‘I’ll just look in on Marie.’ They heard him tip-toe up the stairs.
While he was drying the dishes, Ben thought over what Dad had said. The other Jewish neighbours seemed to get on well with the people in the street, and, like Sean said, everyone played together. But his dad was so certain they didn’t really belong here. And anyway, that girl hadn’t appeared too friendly, even though he’d helped her rescue the puppies.
Dad trundled his bike through the kitchen and with relief they heard the front door slam. Through the lace-curtained parlour window Ben glimpsed him, in tin hat and green uniform, wobbling off down the road.
***
After his father had left, Ben climbed the stairs. From Mam’s room came the familiar racking cough that the bottle from Mushatt’s chemist hadn’t cured. Ben tapped at the door.
Lying in the brass bed, a cream-coloured Aran shawl around her shoulders, she beckoned him in. Her long, auburn hair, once lustrous and wound into a loose knot secured with hairpins, now hung lank and dull. But her level green eyes still shone; and though holding a handkerchief to her mouth, she smiled the old smile.
‘How’re you, Benny love?’ About to reach out to him, she drew back, mindful of the risk of infection. ‘Did you get your tea?’
He nodded. ‘Mam, there’s new people next door’ and he repeated Dad’s comments.
She frowned. ‘Ben, those people are just a different religion.’
‘But Dad said–’
‘Poor Dad has a lot on his mind, but he shouldn’t bad-mouth them. Growing up down the country he never knew any Jews.’ She struggled to heave herself up in the bed. ‘But Granny and your uncle Matt and me – we grew up in Lennox Street and we were friends with all the Jewish neighbours.’ She paused, and added hoarsely, ‘They’ve always been at the wrong end of things, wherever they live.’
An image of the dark-haired girl shot into Ben’s mind, ‘Where’d they come from?’
‘Mostly Eastern Europe. They had bad times there. Some of our own leaders – James Connolly and Michael Davitt – spoke of killings and persecution of Jews in Russia’ – she broke off to cough – ‘and now again in Nazi Germany.’
Uncle Matt, Mam’s older brother, often talked about the war, especially since his son, Ben’s cousin Paddy, had volunteered along with thousands of Irish men and women, to fight with the British forces. And from reading the papers to his uncle, whose sight was failing, Ben knew the Nazis were marching through Europe; they’d even conquered France, and their U-boats were sinking British ships in the Atlantic.
Still, none of this appeared to Ben to have much to do with Ireland or Martin Street or the new neighbours in Number 17. And whatever Mam said, Ben shrank from facing his dad’s anger.
Although a bar of the hissing gas heater glowed in the fireplace, Mam shivered, drawing the shawl round her. ‘I’d better rest now, pet.’ She blew him a kiss, her frail white hand fluttering like a bird trying to fly.
As he left, longing for her to hug him like she used to, she murmured, ‘Never forget, Benny, both our religions come from the same roots.’
***
Later, Ben walked home from a game of conkers at Smiler’s house, his shiny brown champion in his pocket. He’d found it last autumn crunching through the russet chestnut leaves, extracted it from its prickly nest and baked it hard in the grate. Threaded on a string and swung against the others’ conkers till one broke, his champion had survived. One more win, Ben exulted, and it would be a ‘sixer’ – a six-times winner.
As he hurried past the uncurtained window of Number 17 he glimpsed the new family sitting around a table on which two candles flickered in brass candlesticks. Beside the bearded man who’d pushed the cart was an older man, a black skullcap on his silver hair. Then the younger girl entered the room and placed two steaming bowls before them.
Recalling her scowl and his father’s bitter words, he hurried past, pushing open his own front door, left on the latch while Granny was at her sodality meeting. As he climbed the stairs, he heard a low murmur from his mother’s room as Uncle Matt paid his evening visit.
That night, after he’d said his prayers, Ben’s thoughts lingered on the house next door, identical to his own, but, somehow, now different.
Still, despite Mam’s kinder words, Dad had made it crystal clear that if Sean or Ben had anything to do with those people, including that disturbing girl, they’d be in trouble.
3
17 Martin Street
Earlier that afternoon in Number 17, Leon Golden leaned back in the one battered armchair they had, stroking his beard thoughtfully while around him twelve-year-old Hetty, her older sister Mabel and their mother, Sarah, scurried around unpacking boxes and parcels. In the midst of the flurry, the baby slept peacefully in a large wooden drawer that, lined with blankets, served as a crib. The puppy, named Mossy by Hetty because he’d been rescued from drowning like baby Moses in the Bible, lay curled up on the floor beside him.
‘Does anyone know where my books are?’ asked Leon vaguely.
Hetty, half-way up the steep stairs with a bundle of worn flannel sheets in her arms, stopped to ease the ache in her shoulders. Her winter vest and green woollen dress – a hated hand-me-down from her sister – stuck to her body, and her head throbbed.
They’d been up since dawn packing their belongings in the two cluttered rooms above the tailoring shop in Mary Street where their father worked sewing the buttonholes into coats and jackets.
Together the family had heaved the handcart over the slippery cobbles and setts down to the quays, across the greeny-grey waters of the Liffey at Capel Street bridge, skirted Dublin Castle, on through the fringes of the Liberties teeming with stalls and barrows, and finally across the South Circular Road – thronged and noisy with trams, horse-drawn carts and bikes – to Portobello.
‘Get on with it, Hetty, there’s loads more stuff to bring up.’ Mabel, her round, cheerful face shining with sweat, squeezed past Hetty on the stairs. ‘Did you see our room?’
Hetty followed her sister up into the back bedroom, with its sloping ceiling.
‘Look,’ exclaimed Mabel, pointing to the empty grate, ‘our own fireplace! Though I suppose we’ll only be allowed a fire if we’re sick.’
‘Really sick,’ said Hetty.
In Mary Street the whole family had shared a bedroom divided only by a curtain, and there had been no yard. Hetty felt a thrill of pleasure at the prospect of a separate bedroom for herself and Mabel. Leaning out of the narrow window, they gazed out over the tiny concrete back yard with its outside toilet and coal bunker, to the startlingly close backs of a row of houses in the next street, Kingsland Parade.
A wail from downstairs announced that the baby was up. Mossy came lolloping up the stairs and whined outside their bedroom door.
‘Girls,’ called Ma. ‘Come and sort the pots and pans while I feed the baby.’
‘Lucky little Solly,’ grumbled Mabel. ‘What about us? I’m starving.’
‘First I’m going to scrounge something for Mossy,’ announced Hetty as they clattered downstairs. ‘He’s also a baby, yo
u know.’
***
The baby and the puppy had been fed and most of the boxes unpacked before Ma handed out kichels – sweet homemade raisin cookies – and cups of ‘shell cocoa’, which Da always complained was dreadful as it was made from the husks and shells of the cocoa beans instead of the real thing. Everyone hated it but had to make do with it because of the war.
Hetty heard a hesitant tap on the front window, their grandfather’s way of announcing his arrival. ‘It’s Zaida!’ she cried, jumping up to let him in.
Zaida, in his heavy old greatcoat, a worn trilby hat on his strong silver hair, entered, carrying a bulging paper bag, his face creased with smiles.
‘Mazal tov!’ he said. ‘Good luck and blessings in the new house!’ They hugged him, and he pinched their cheeks affectionately, fishing in his coat pocket, always full of goodies. Handing Fry’s chocolate cream bars to the girls and a bag of pungent-smelling pear drops to Ma, along with the bag of food, he said, ‘Bobba sent something for your Friday night dinner.’ He looked round. ‘Where’s little Solly?’
‘He’s asleep,’ said Ma. ‘Please thank Bobba for the meal.’
‘Come and see over the house,’ said Da.
When they returned Zaida sank down, wheezing, into the armchair as Da poured him a small whiskey, kept for the Sabbath. ‘A fine house.’
‘After Mary Street, it’s a palace,’ called Ma from the kitchen.
‘How’s Bobba’s rheumatism?’ asked Da.
‘Well, she’s able to give out to me about everything – the damp turf, no white flour.’ Zaida’s eyes twinkled. ‘Even the cold weather’s my fault!’ He sipped the whiskey. ‘Your Uncle Sam will be over later to see the new place,’ he said to the girls. ‘Eddie too.’
17 Martin Street Page 2