by Anna Jacobs
When Niamh woke up and began to whimper, it seemed time to feed her. The baby nursed for a while, then fell asleep between one breath and another. Cara stared down, marvelling at the tiny perfection of the little starfish hands, the softness of the infant’s skin.
When she heard someone clear their throat, she turned to see Mrs Grady standing in the doorway with a shawl wrapped round her nightdress.
‘I heard her wake, so came to see if you needed anything, but you both looked so comfortable, I waited till you’d finished. It’s what she needs most now, good food inside her and plenty of loving.’
And because night seemed the time for confidences, Cara whispered, ‘I’m afraid of not doing the right thing. I’m not used to looking after babies.’
‘You’re doing your best, I can tell. No one can do more than that, lass.’
She fell silent for a moment or two and Cara saw the flickering candle betray the gleam of a tear on the older woman’s cheek.
‘I have to change her clouts and wash my hands now, Mrs Grady. I can go down to the kitchen to do that. You need your sleep.’
‘We’ll both go down. I can’t sleep, not with my Eileen lying a few streets away in her coffin.’ She began to sob.
Without thinking, Cara moved across to put an arm round her. ‘Shh, now. Shh. You have your grandchildren, so you’ve something left of your daughter, at least. Take comfort from that.’ Cara had nothing left from her family to comfort her, but she didn’t say that. From the way Mrs Grady stared at her then gave her a convulsive hug, she thought the older woman understood her feelings, however.
‘Why don’t you help me change the baby?’
Mrs Grady’s face brightened just a little. ‘Yes. I’d like to do that.’
They changed the sodden clout together and left it soaking in a bucket, then Cara took Niamh back up to bed. She didn’t expect to fall asleep at all, but managed two or three hours of light sleep.
When she woke again, it was just getting light. She heard Niamh fretting softly, and leaned out of bed to check the infant, who was turning her face from side to side in search of another feed.
She felt relief flood through her. They’d got through the first night together. And it was a good sign that Niamh was hungry, surely?
Once again, Mrs Grady woke and joined her. They didn’t chat. They were both too sad, for different reasons. But they were together, and each appreciated the unspoken solace of that.
At some point, Mrs Grady asked, ‘What were you going to call your baby?’
‘Hannah Grace.’
‘That’s a lovely name.’
‘Mrs Sealey took her body away. The vicar said she couldn’t be buried in church because she’d never breathed.’ Cara began sobbing. ‘I don’t know where she is.’
Mrs Grady’s arms went round her. ‘They’re cruel sometimes, men. We’ll ask Mrs Sealey. She’ll know where they’ve buried your baby.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘So are you, doing this for us. You speak like an educated young woman, used to better things.’
‘I suppose so. For all the good it’s done me.’
The whole of the following day passed slowly, but the baby was still alive by afternoon and seemed a little rosier, the two women agreed.
Cara fed the infant again, then asked if she could leave her with her grandmother for an hour or so. ‘I need to pack my things and move out of my lodgings or the landlady will charge me for another week.’
‘Who are you with?’
‘Mrs Thomason in South Street.’
‘That one! She has a bad reputation for cheating lodgers.’
‘I’ve been a good tenant, paid every week on the dot. She’ll be all right with me, I’m sure.’
When she got to her lodgings, Cara told the landlady she was moving out.
‘I heard you were wet-nursing the Irish baby.’ Mrs Thomason looked at her sourly. ‘I’ll have to check your room, to make sure there’s no damage.’
Cara felt affronted. ‘Of course there’s no harm been done.’
Once there, the landlady stared round, eyes narrowed, and pointed. ‘You’ve damaged that table. See? You’ll have to pay me for that big scratch.’
Cara was outraged at this blatant lie. ‘It was badly scratched when I arrived and I’ve done no harm to anything. And what’s more, this room is far cleaner than when I took it. You should be pleased with how well I’ve cared for it.’
‘I’ll have to keep your luggage till you pay for that table. No, I tell you what. You can give me that blue dress of yours and we’ll call it quits.’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Then you and your luggage will have to stay here until you come to your senses. I’ll tell my husband to make sure you don’t try to run off.’
Cara’s heart sank. Mr Thomason was a brute and was drunk as often as not, whatever time of day. Would he hit her if she tried to leave, as he hit his wife sometimes?
There was a knock on the front door.
‘Don’t think to escape while my back is turned,’ the landlady warned as she hurried down to answer it. ‘My husband’s in the kitchen. I’ve only to call and he’ll come running.’
She came back scowling, followed by Fergus Deagan.
He ignored her and addressed Cara. ‘Ma sent me to help you carry your things.’
‘I’m ready.’
The landlady at once launched into a repeated demand for extra payment for damages.
Fergus went across to examine the table. ‘This so-called damage was done a long time ago, several years at least. Look how dark and smoothly worn the wood is around the gouge marks.’
The landlady opened her mouth to protest and he glared at her. ‘Shame on you, Mrs Thomason! This young woman has just lost her child and you’re trying to cheat her.’
He sounded and looked so angry, the landlady shrank back.
‘I’ve seen you praying in church,’ he went on. ‘What would Father Michael say to you cheating someone? What does your conscience say?’ Not waiting for an answer, he turned to Cara. ‘Is this all you have?’
She was ashamed to have so little, could only nod.
‘Then we can easily carry it between us.’ He didn’t speak as they walked back to his in-laws’ house.
Even though he’d helped her, he hadn’t really looked at her, Cara thought. Well, he was grieving, wasn’t he? Why should he care about her anyway? He had enough worries on his shoulders.
She looked at him a few times, though. He was a fine figure of a man, with his dark hair and vivid blue eyes. But best of all to her, he was kind to his children and his in-laws. That spoke well for his character. She’d been frightened of her father, who could be cruel even to his own family.
At the Gradys’ house Fergus stood back to let her go in first. ‘I’ll carry your bags up to the bedroom.’
Mrs Grady came out of the back room, holding the baby.
‘You were right, Ma. The landlady was trying to cheat her. Good thing I wasn’t at work today, eh?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘Thank you for your help, Mr Deagan.’ Cara was surprised that he didn’t really look at his mother-in-law very closely either, even when he was speaking to her. Or was it the baby he was avoiding? Yes, she realised, it was little Niamh. How sad for a father who was kind to his sons to turn against a baby.
‘You’re welcome, Mrs Payton. I’ll get back home now. The boys will soon be out of school.’
The two women watched him go.
‘He called me Mrs Payton and I’m not married,’ Cara said suddenly.
‘I decided it’d be better that way. I hope you don’t mind. We don’t want people talking. If they ask, tell them you had to sell your wedding ring to buy food.’
‘I hate lying.’
‘Sometimes you have to, to protect others. It’ll be better for us if you seem to have been married, and better for you to seem to be a widow when we give you a reference afterwards.’
/> ‘I suppose so.’ When she told the truth most people didn’t believe her; when she lied they’d probably believe every word she said.
Something seemed to be worrying Mrs Grady. She opened and shut her mouth a couple of times, then asked in a rush, ‘Did you notice that Fergus avoided looking at Niamh? He hasn’t once picked that poor little baby up, either. And the boys are just as bad, refusing to go near their little sister. What sort of life will that poor child have if her father and brothers don’t want to have anything to do with her?’
‘She’ll have you and Mr Grady.’
‘She will for as long as we’re spared. But we’re getting older, and what will she do if we die? She’ll need her family when she’s a young woman just as much as she needs them now.’
Tears came into Cara’s eyes and she tried to blink them away, but Mrs Grady didn’t seem to miss a thing.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, my dear. I’d forgotten about your family turning you out. I could never do that, whatever my child had done wrong. What will you do after we leave for Australia?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t go on being a wet nurse. Mrs Sealey told me the milk only lasts a few months.’
‘You can look for a job as a nursemaid, though. When we’re ready to go, we’ll ask Father Michael if he knows anyone needing help.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’ She sighed.
‘Not what you’re used to, eh?’
‘No.’
‘What does your father do for a living?’
‘He’s a senior clerk, in charge of an office, with six men and an office boy under him.’
‘Very respectable. We’re nothing but poor Irish.’ She gave a wry smile.
‘You’re kind. That’s far more important to me than where you come from or how much money you have. Do you … think I’ll find a job?’
Mrs Grady gave her hand a quick squeeze. ‘I expect you went to school regularly and can read and write easily? That’ll be useful too when you’re looking for work.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I envy you that. I never was able to go to school. In my younger days many children didn’t. Like me, they were needed to work from when they were as young as five. Well, it was work or go hungry, and that’s the truth. And we went hungry anyway when the potatoes started rotting in the fields. That was what made me and Patrick come to England.’
‘That must have been hard. Look, I could teach you to read and write … if you like. Or make a start on it, anyway.’
‘Could I still learn at my age? Really? I’ve turned fifty, you know.’
‘Of course you can learn. It isn’t hard and I’d love to help you. There’s another thing. I have some baby clothes in my bag. I sewed them myself. Perhaps we could use them for Niamh.’
Cara received a smacking kiss on the cheek from the older woman for that, and it made her want to weep. She didn’t let herself, though. She’d had a lot of practice in keeping her emotions under control.
The day after the simple funeral for Eileen, they all moved in with Fergus. Mrs Grady took charge of the household arrangements and proved herself very capable. By the end of a week they’d all settled down together.
Fergus was quiet and polite to Cara, but behaved in a somewhat warmer way towards the couple he called Ma and Pa. He only truly relaxed with his boys, playing with them, talking to them, reading them stories.
When he found out about the baby clothes Cara had given to Niamh, he insisted on giving her money for them.
‘I only made them out of scraps. They cost very little,’ she protested.
‘It’s only right. Will a guinea cover the costs? Or do you need more?’
‘A guinea is plenty. I told you, I bought scraps of material and made things myself.’
‘But look at the beautiful work you’ve put into them.’
She looked down at the embroidery and sighed. It had occupied the long, lonely hours, and she’d wanted her child to have pretty clothes.
‘What did you call her?’ he asked softly.
‘Hannah Grace.’
‘Ma suggested we call our baby Hannah Niamh, in thanks to you.’
Tears flooded her eyes. ‘I’d like that.’
‘We’ll do it, then.’
The Gradys were as kind to Cara as they were to everyone else. Even so, she still knew herself to be the outsider in this cosy group, the one who would be leaving the family when her present task was over.
In some ways, little Niamh was an outsider too, and that upset Cara. The baby’s father never picked her up, even avoided looking at her most of the time. Her brothers were openly scornful of their little sister.
‘Babies are stupid!’ Sean declared.
‘You were a baby once,’ Cara told him.
‘Not like her.’
‘Exactly like her.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
His grandmother came across to join them by the window. ‘Of course you were like her. So was Mal. When she grows bigger, you’ll be able to play with her.’
‘I don’t want to play with her. She killed our mam.’
Cara wanted to give him a good shake, but she didn’t have the right.
Ma made a muffled sound of distress and buried her face in her apron.
Sean stared at her in puzzlement.
‘When you say things like that, you upset your grandma,’ Cara told him quietly. ‘Do you want to do that?’
He looked at his grandmother helplessly, then turned to his little brother. ‘Come on, Mal. We’ll go and play catches.’
Cara went to put an arm round the older woman. ‘I’m sorry he keeps saying that about the baby.’
‘So am I.’
‘Couldn’t Mr Deagan speak to him, tell him it’s not true?’
‘I’m frightened to bring it up with Fergus. He hasn’t been himself since my poor Eileen died.’
‘He must have loved her very much.’
‘No … He was fond of her, but he was too clever for her. Even I could see that. But he was always kind to her, always. And … in case you’re thinking the worse of him, it was her fault they had another baby, not his. She went on and on about wanting a daughter.’
‘Oh. I see.’
Ma went back to her cooking. Cara put the baby down for a nap and began to straighten the room. They didn’t speak of the incident with the boys again.
They didn’t make any headway in persuading the two lads to think kindly of their baby sister, but Sean stopped saying things that upset his grandmother, at least.
One evening, three weeks after the move, Mrs Grady waited till they’d cleared the table after the evening meal, then said to her son-in-law, ‘Have you written to that Mr Kieran of yours to ask if he’ll start making arrangements to send us the money for Australia? We ought to find out what we’ll need to do, make plans.’
‘I’m a bit tired tonight.’
He said the same thing the next time she asked him, but one night, after the boys had gone to bed, she got out the writing paper she’d found in one of the drawers of the dresser and plonked it down in front of him, saying firmly, ‘You need to write that letter now, Fergus. Surely you want to give those children a better life than they’ll get here?’
He grimaced, but sat down at one end of the kitchen table, with the Gradys sitting at the other, watching him and Cara in the corner on the wooden rocking chair that had somehow become hers.
When Fergus began to write, there was more sighing and chewing on the end of the pen than working on the letter.
Cara sat quietly, holding the sleeping baby, wondering whether she should go up to bed and leave them to deal with this in private. But it was early and she wasn’t tired yet. She was starting to feel like her old self again, full of energy.
After a while Fergus read through what he’d written, muttered a curse and screwed the letter up, shoving all the papers back into the drawer. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t ask my brother for charity. Bram, of all people! We never stopped fighting
as we were growing up. Why would he help me now?’
Patrick said quietly, ‘You have to try, son. You promised Eileen.’
‘I don’t have to do it now, though, do I? I need to get used to everything first.’
Patrick exchanged worried glances with his wife.
In bed that night, he asked quietly, ‘Can you find this Mr Kieran’s address?’
‘It might be with those papers Fergus shoved away. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘We could send a letter, explaining how things are. Do you suppose Cara would write it for us?’ He hugged her close as he confessed, ‘I really want to go to Australia, Alana. Everything here reminds me of our Eileen.’
‘I feel the same way. I’ll ask Cara tomorrow if she’ll write a letter for us.’
They were silent for a few moments, then she stirred. ‘I have to move, darlin’. I’m getting pins and needles in my arm.’
When she was more comfortable, she lay with her eyes open. She could sense that Patrick wasn’t sleepy. Well, nor was she. So she carried on talking. ‘I’m glad Niamh is doing well. I wasn’t sure such a tiny baby would live. But Cara’s taking great care with her.’
‘That Cara’s a quiet one. Hardly says a word to me. Does she talk to you?’
‘She does chat a bit, yes. I helped her join the library and she’s been borrowing books. She reads the newspaper to me sometimes. And she’s started to teach me my alphabet. I’m going to learn to spell my name next and write it down, too.’
‘We’ve fallen lucky with her. She’s very ladylike, don’t you think? Better than having someone loud and vulgar as a wet nurse, or worse, someone who drinks.’
‘That’s because she comes from a good family.’ Alana told him more about Cara’s parents and he too marvelled that a father could treat his child that way.
‘It’s good that Cara’s a quiet sort of person because Niamh’s a quiet baby. She doesn’t like loud noises. She’s contented, though. And Cara helps me in the house, though I’ve had to show her how to do quite a few things. It’s as if she’s never done much housework before.’
‘I’m glad she isn’t too uppity to get her hands dirty. I don’t want you running yourself ragged looking after everyone.’