“He’s scum.” Tom spat again.
“But it doesn’t cost you to be civil. I haven’t brought you up to be as bad as he is, Thomas Reilly. You remember that. Ah, you’re your father’s boy all right. To be sure you are.”
“And what father would that be?” Tom turned away.
“Thomas Reilly, come back here this minute. That’s no way to talk to your mammy.”
She went to the doorway. Daniel realised she was in time to see Tom’s back receding. Molly looked at Daniel and gave a slight nod. He should go after Tom and see he didn’t go looking for trouble, as he usually did when he was angry. Daniel sighed. Last time he’d come back with a black eye, but at least he’d brought Tom back safe and calm.
As the days grew hotter, Daniel longed for the cool sea breeze he knew back home and even wondered if he wouldn’t prefer the smell of rotting potatoes to the sewage-strewn streets of New York. He’d watched some of the men go off to work on digging the new sewers in other parts of the city, but sewers were a luxury that wouldn’t be wasted on the likes of them.
Molly and Tom had gone to get the grog and Daniel was enjoying the cooler evening sunshine. He could see them now, Molly, jug in hand, leaving the nearby bar and making their way back. He pushed away from the tree that was giving him shade and ran to join them. Tom hung back to walk with him and they were a few paces behind Molly as she entered the shack.
“Mammy!”
They quickened their pace, hearing the terror in her voice. In the gloom Daniel could see Mammy doubled over in the corner of the shack, vomiting violently.
Molly’s hands were shaking as she poured a little of the drink into a cup. When the retching stopped, Molly reached to wipe Mammy’s sweating and vomit-covered face. She tried to offer up the cup to her, but before she could even sip, Mammy was retching again.
“Go and get help,” Molly called to the boys.
“And what doctor is going to come out for the likes of us?” Tom’s face was ashen despite the bravado in his voice.
“Then get Ol’ Tinker. Now!”
Daniel ran from the shack with Tom hot on his heels. He ran as though the Bowery Boys were behind him and his life depended on it. Daniel knew what the sickness meant and it sent panic through him. Ol’ Tinker had remedies for many ailments, but surely even he couldn’t help with cholera.
As they approached the warehouse that Ol’ Tinker called home, he was sitting outside as he so often did.
“And what’s got you boys all of a racing?”
“Molly says…” Tom panted heavily, “we’re to fetch you… It’s Mammy. She’s real sick.”
Ol’ Tinker nodded sagely and vigorously scratched his ear. “Oh, she did now, did she? I doesn’t come for nothing.”
Daniel frantically dipped his hand in his pocket and brought out some coins. “How much?”
Ol’ Tinker pushed himself up without answering and simply exhaled a long puff on his pipe in apparent contemplation. “She’s a good woman, your mammy. You go back and I’ll be right behind you, that I will.” He turned and went through a wooden door into the warehouse behind.
Daniel put the money back in his pocket and shrugged. “I guess we’ll go back then.”
“You go. I’m going for a walk.” Tom headed in the direction of the port.
“But…” There was no point; the way Tom’s chin was jutting out, Daniel could see his determination. He turned to run back the way he’d come. By the time he got there, Mammy was shivering despite the heat. Molly was trying to wrap a blanket around her but, trying to hold a cup to her lips as well, she was struggling.
“Here, let me.” Daniel took the blanket and wrapped it around Mammy’s shoulders, while Molly held the drink. It seemed that no sooner had she sipped than she was vomiting again.
“She’s got terrible bad diarrhoea as well,” Molly whispered to him.
Daniel hadn’t needed telling. He could smell the state of the shack and was close to being sick himself.
The doorway darkened and Ol’ Tinker was there.
“Oh, thank God.” Molly went over to greet him.
“Give her this…” He thrust a bottle in her direction. “… Every time she wants a drink. I can’t make no promises, but it may work, God help her.” He didn’t stay for payment, but turned and immediately walked away.
Molly’s shoulders slumped, but she took the bottle to Mammy and tried to encourage her to sip from it. She vomited again almost as soon as it touched her lips and then fell back onto the matting, moaning. Molly carefully drew the blankets around Mammy, picked up the wooden rosary and, sitting close to Mammy’s side, started working her way around the beads.
There was no sign of Tom as Mammy fell into a fitful sleep, waking at intervals to retch. Each time, Molly was ready with the bottle to encourage her to drink, but each time she was sick as soon as she did. Daniel sat quietly, watching over the women, praying his own silent prayers and letting the tears course down his cheeks unchecked. Eventually he must have drifted off, because he was woken by the sound of Molly howling, “Mammy!”
As he opened his eyes he was aware of Molly, first gently, then more vigorously, shaking Mammy. Then she fell upon her mother’s lifeless body in great heaving sobs. “Oh, Mammy, Mammy, Mammy…”
Daniel gasped and closed his eyes a moment, wondering what he should do. Should he comfort Molly or find Tom? Tom would come back when he was good and ready, so he went over and put his arm tenderly around Molly. She looked up at him in the gloom, her eyes searching his face, confusion written large. They fell into each other’s arms and both gave in to the tears, letting forth great sobs of anguish, Molly for her Mammy and Daniel for both the mothers he’d lost. The loss of his own parents fell upon him and for the first time he started to mourn.
Daniel had no sense of how long they remained like that, but after a while he became aware they were being watched. He looked up and saw Tom standing in the doorway, frozen rigid, with the light of the early sun behind him.
When he spoke, it was quietly at first but then getting louder. “No, no, no, NOOO!” He fell to his knees, to where the other two still embraced, and they opened their arms to include him. “I should have been here. I could have helped. I could have stopped it.”
“Tom,” said Molly in a cracked whisper, “there was nothing you could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done.”
“Ol’ Tinker?” Tom made to get up.
Molly arrested him with her hand. “He came. He tried to help.”
“And how much of our money did he take for that?” Tom’s temper was flaring.
“You’ll not find someone to blame now, Thomas Reilly. He charged us nothing. Mammy’s at peace now. She’s with Jesus.”
“Oh, shut up about your damned Jesus.” Tom picked up the rosary and hurled it at the far wall. “What’s God ever done for us?”
Neither Daniel nor Molly replied.
Chapter 4
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
John Newton, 1779
“She looks so peaceful.” The outward signs of Tom’s anger left him as he knelt close to his mother’s body. Daniel knew the temper would be back, but for the moment there was no one to direct it towards and that left Tom a small orphaned boy, the same as he was.
They sat in silence for a while, each lost in private confusion.
“It’s not as though I’ve not seen death before, so I have, but never so close. I don’t know what I thought it would look like,” Molly said. “It’s as though it’s not her. She’s gone somewhere. My real mammy is some place else.”
Daniel understood what she meant. He’d thought the same thing when he’d seen the bodies of his own parents as they were hauled over the side of the boat into the Atlantic Ocean. The unreality had made that part easier.
“What do we do now?” The cour
age and bravado was gone and Molly looked to her brother for an answer.
Tom shrugged. “Same as yesterday, I guess. Except you’ll have to do the boiling.” He wiped his cuff across his face and sniffed.
“I meant…” Molly fidgeted with the rosary beads. “I meant with…” She took a deep breath. “With Mammy,” she said finally, as though in a hurry now to get the words out.
Daniel looked at Tom and watched as he suddenly changed. His back straightened and he looked more serious than Daniel had seen him before.
“We can’t tell. For as long as possible, no one must know.” He stood up, looking inches taller than he had a moment previously.
“But what about…?” Daniel couldn’t bring himself to say ‘her body’. He looked across at Mammy, then up at where Tom was standing.
“Cover her with blankets for now. We can’t tell anyone. There’s no one to trust. We needs this room to live in. If Mr Clyde finds out, we’re done for. At least we can stay until next rent day if he doesn’t know.”
Daniel suspected that Tom was right, but the thought of living with a decomposing corpse wasn’t something he fancied, not in such close proximity. It was bad enough to find corpses of animals near to their door, but biding with one would be an altogether different matter. For a start, the flies would come and then there was the smell, but more important to Daniel was the gut-wrenching emotion of keeping their loss so close. “What about Ol’ Tinker?”
Tom’s jaw jutted as he nodded slightly. “I’ll sort it. I’m going out. Don’t say anything to anyone, d’ya hear?”
Molly got up, biting her lip and sniffing. “I’ll be gathering rags then,” she said, her shaking hand reaching for the basket. “And you, Daniel Flynn, you can…” Her eyes darted from the corner where Mammy lay to the empty fireplace. “You can…”
“It’s ok, Molly.” He laid his hand gently on her arm. “I’ll stay here a while. I need to practise my songs.”
Molly nodded, visibly biting harder on her bottom lip. Daniel wanted to hold her in his arms again and let her cry it all out, but there was no room for wallowing in grief, not if they wanted a roof over their heads and food on the table. She pursed her lips and followed Tom out into the street.
Daniel busied himself trying to clear the worst of the soiled straw from the floor into the street. The hours passed and he wondered if he should be out looking for an audience, but it didn’t feel right to leave Mammy’s body unattended. He set to preparing the fire for supper and a pot to boil the rags that Molly would surely bring. As he did so, he sang quietly, a gentle lullaby prayer for Mammy and all the adults he’d been close to in his short life.
Evening was starting to fall when Molly returned. “Am I ever pleased to see you, Daniel Flynn,” she said, stumbling into the shack under a pile of rags.
He smiled at the sight of his friend weighed down with the collection. It seemed she had been venting her grief by working harder than ever.
“I’ve a stew on, if you’re hungry,” he said as she let go of the pile in the corner of the room.
“I’m not sure I am.” She glanced over towards the corner where Mammy lay and shrugged. “I guess I need food in me, but I can’t say I feels much like eating it.” She gave a crooked smile below the confusion of her eyes.
“Molly, she wouldn’t want you to starve. She’d be wanting you to grow up into a fine daughter, so she would.”
“That I know…” Molly didn’t have time to finish before there were scuffling feet outside the door.
Daniel stood rigid, holding his breath.
“We’ll be here waiting,” were the words he heard.
It was only recognising Tom’s voice that made him breathe easily again.
“And who will we be ‘here’ to, Thomas Reilly?” For a moment the fight was back in her voice and Molly ladled a bowl of stew, passing it to her returning brother.
“Ol’ Tinker. He’s going to help. He says we should go to the Potter’s Field tonight and take Mammy. He says they’ll find her there tomorrow and know what to do with her.”
“And how are we going to get her all that way, brother of mine? She’s hardly going to be walking, now is she?”
“Ol’ Tinker’s going to bring a cart. He ain’t bringing it here. We’ll have to meet him. We can disguise what we’re carrying with the rags.”
Molly’s lip trembled and she balled her fists. Before Daniel knew what was happening she was pounding them ineffectively against Tom’s chest. “You’ll not take my Mammy wrapped in worse rags than the ones she lived in.”
“Shhh.” There was urgency in Tom’s response and he grabbed her wrists as he turned and looked over his shoulder towards the doorway. “Will you listen to yourself, Molly Reilly? Do you want to be sleeping on the streets? She’s gone now and no amount of finery is going to bring her back to us.”
“You’re hurting me, Tom. Let go of my wrists.”
“Then will you quieten yourself down and think a minute?”
In the midst of the fight, the stew had slopped onto the floor where the bowl had fallen. Thankfully the bowl had not broken and Daniel quietly ladled another portion of the thin watery mixture and handed it to Tom. The other bowl he filled and passed to Molly. He’d eat when one or other of them finished. The waning sunlight glistened off a silent tear that rolled down Molly’s cheek as she stared into the bowl of soup. Tom turned his back and stood against the doorway looking out, casting a shadow over his sister. Daniel went to her and put his arm around her shoulder. He was conscious it was still only a child’s arm and, despite her small stature, it was too short to circle her completely as Mammy would have done. He wanted to screw his fists tight and beat them against something to release the frustration, but there was little point.
They sat silently, waiting for night to fall, Tom constantly watching for the signal they should start Mammy’s final journey. Daniel could feel his eyelids heavy after the long day and night and so began to sing to help keep himself awake. For the first time Molly joined in, providing a beautiful melody to his lilting intonation. He wanted to stop and listen to her and hold the sound of her voice in his heart forever, but as he was thinking on the calm it brought him, Tom suddenly got up.
“Ok, yous two. It’s time.”
Daniel took a deep breath and went with Tom to the corner of the room. Tom had brought the rags that Molly had dropped over with him, and proceeded to bundle them around the awkwardness of Mammy’s corpse. Tom spoke almost tenderly to his sister when he said, “You can stay here if you want, Molly. We’ll manage, won’t we, Daniel?”
Daniel nodded, but Molly shook her head. “I want to be with Mammy to the last. And besides, I don’t think I wants to be here on my own.”
Tom said nothing, but finished wrapping the rags, then he and Daniel lifted the feather-light weight of Mammy, only made substantial by the day’s collection, and started to shuffle toward the doorway.
They only had two blocks to walk before finding Ol’ Tinker, but they were the longest that Daniel ever remembered. Even a relatively small weight becomes heavy when covered in rags and held for a length of time. Daniel’s arms were aflame with pain from the strain of it. With the stiffness of the body it was hard to get a comfortable hold and he was grateful for the sight of the barrow. The walk after that was long and quiet. It took them most of the night to take a route which Ol’ Tinker hoped would keep them out of trouble. The first silver strands of morning were appearing when, with heavy hearts, they eventually left their load by the burial ground for those with nowhere left to go.
Daniel saw Tom trying to press money into Ol’ Tinker’s hand as they turned to move away, but the old man shook his head. “She was a good woman.” Without saying more he took up the barrow and walked away into the morning.
Daniel felt his loss starting to overwhelm him again at the sound of these few words. If it had not been for Tom ushering them back the way they’d come he would have broken down completely.
Ther
e was little conversation as they went back, just the regular sound of their feet tramping, made louder by the flapping of the sole of Tom’s left boot with every step.
Chapter 5
But the sea is wide and I cannot cross over
And neither have I the wings to fly
I wish I could meet a handsome boatsman
To ferry me over, to my love and die.
Carrickfergus
Daniel slept fitfully through the rest of the day. He woke with a start several times, from the noises of the street during the hours of light. There’d be no singing, no wake celebrating a life well lived, no fiddlers and no cheer. The sound of Molly’s sobbing was all that punctuated the quiet, sombre mood. Tom had gone out into the day as soon as they’d returned. He said nothing of where he was going and neither Daniel nor Molly asked. Each of them needed to grieve in their own way and for Daniel it was an overwhelming bone-weary tiredness that descended.
When he roused himself sometime well after noon, Molly was at the pot boiling rags, weeping as she pounded the cloths with a long stick to move them round in the murky water. She made to wipe her eyes when she saw he was looking, but he stayed her arm. “It’s ok.”
“Now don’t let Tom be hearing you saying that.” Her lips turned up slightly in a smile, but there was no sign of the rest of Molly’s face joining in and the sadness in her eyes was unabated. “Don’t you go thinking you can be lying about here all day when I’ve got work to be doing.”
Now Daniel did smile and he thanked God for this feisty companion who was so like Mammy had been while she was well.
“I’ll be needing more rags for boiling, Daniel Flynn. You can either stay here and mind the fire or you can do the collecting, but you can’t stay here and only watch.” She paused, as though there was more to say but she was holding back.
He waited to see if words would come, but when they didn’t he kissed her cheek as he made toward the door. “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her before he went out into the glare of the sunshine.
New York Orphan (Tales of Flynn and Reilly Book 1) Page 4