‘Just wait a minute,’ came the cry from beyond the door.
She could hear the wireless. The theme to Music While You Work was playing. There was a click as someone turned it off, followed by a pause. Then she heard a voice from beyond the door again, calling for them to enter.
‘This is Daniel Lynch’s visitor,’ said the nun with the kind face.
‘Ah, well now,’ asked Sister Mary Joseph. She stuck out her hand and smiled and said, ‘Pleasure to meet you. I believe he’s expecting you …’
Violet nodded, her eyes big, round, and worried.
She followed the nun out and into a large room with floor to ceiling windows and French doors looking out on to a rockery. There were armchairs lined up in rows and a wireless. Next to the wireless was a lectern and there was a man standing at the window, muttering something as he was flicking through a magazine. There was a second white-haired old man asleep in a chair. He stirred, looked straight at Violet and leered. ‘Snow on top means fire down below! Hells ruddy bells! You’re a little beauty.’
More patients now, all different ages, dressed uniformly in cream-coloured cotton loose clothing, seemed to appear like magic to look at her. Sister Mary Joseph shooed them away like flies.
‘Get on with you,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, Violet. They’re harmless.’
The nurses wore similar uniforms to the nuns and outside the windows of the French doors, on the veranda which looked on to a courtyard, they seemed like white birds, flapping and pecking about. One of them wheeled a patient, his head lolling, drooling as he took a nap. Was this Daniel Lynch?
‘This way, please …’ said Sister Mary Joseph, ushering Violet to a curtained-off area. She explained that the men’s ward was in a different wing to the women’s ward but that in two weeks’ time they would be having their annual dance where they would all come together in the ballroom and behave just like the outside world. She smiled. ‘You know Daniel’s son, Callum? He always comes to this. Always. He helps us with the rum punch. He’s never missed it. Never. He’s a good boy.’ The nun touched her gently on her forearm. ‘Now just a minute …’ The bunch of keys jangled at the nun’s hip.
Violet fiddled with the collar on her coat as she waited.
‘Ready now,’ said Sister Mary Joseph, after unlocking the door. She took Violet through it, locked it again on the other side, and then led her through a secure ward with beds on either side. Patients with hollowed-out eyes followed ther progress. The nun walked briskly, shooed one, who lurched forward with a lolling uneven gait and a vacant smile, away.
‘They try to get into the next ward,’ she explained to a frightened Violet. ‘Keep up now. We don’t want them slipping through with us – or worse, getting caught between the two pass doors. Always a bit of a to-do when that happens. See, we need to separate the patients into their wards. They all have different categories. Category One won’t do getting all mixed up with Category Two … Then it really would be bedlam.’ She laughed at her own joke.
Violet picked up her pace. She wondered what ‘category’ Daniel Lynch would be in.
‘Well done,’ said the nun. When they went through the door which had an oval glass window in it, she shut it quickly. Violet looked over her shoulder to see a group of three or four, who’d hoped to slip through with them, had gathered in a gaggle, sad faces pressed up against the glass forlornly. She shuddered.
Each room leading off the ward had names of the saints and martyrs. Campion, Southwell, Fisher. They arrived, finally, at one that was named Howard. It was hot and stuffy and the air felt thick and warm.
‘Howard is where we’ll find Mr Lynch.’
The mood here was different, more sombre. There were no patients wandering aimlessly around – they all seemed as if they had been sedated. Violet was led to a bed pushed up against the far wall. The man sitting on it had his back to them. His legs were over one side, a slipper dangling from one foot, the other bare, his back hunched over. She could just see the top of his head, wisps of his hair. It was going to grey and there was a lot less of it, but this was Daniel Lynch, all right. The nun went over to him. She examined his eyes closely, but perfunctorily, with what looked like a small pencil-like torch.
‘Come on, lovely. You have a visitor,’ she said, putting the torch away. Daniel Lynch raised his head and Violet approached the bed. His eyes turned to her and he reached out a hand, then frowned.
‘Sheila?’ he asked, squinting.
‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ said the nun.
‘Sheila, love, is that you?’ A hopeful smile lit up his face.
Violet faltered. Sheila. Daniel’s wife. He thought Violet was his wife.
‘No. It’s Violet. Jack’s wife,’ she stuttered.
Daniel Lynch nodded his head.
‘Ah, the fella with the accordion. Oh Danny Boy …’ he sang softly, a smile playing across his lips. ‘Sheila, you came. I knew you’d come.’
‘Oh God,’ Violet said. ‘Oh God, Daniel, I’m so sorry …’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I never wanted this …’
Daniel exhaled a breath.
‘Touch him if you want, dear,’ said Sister Mary Joseph. ‘Daniel’s harmless. No one knows what a patient like this understands – and just because he looks like that, doesn’t mean to say that he can’t make sense of what you’re saying. Only God knows what’s in his head. He talks about an accordion a lot, sings all the old favourites. Don’t you, Danny?’
Daniel Lynch sighed. ‘’Twas a Liverpool girl I loved …’ he murmured, then tapered off into nothing.
‘Shall I leave you alone?’ said the nun.
She left, busying herself with the patient opposite, and Violet sat on the chair beside Danny’s bed. He was staring ahead vacantly.
‘Danny…?’ said Violet. His eyes swivelled, blinked away confusion, and for a moment, he was lucid, alive, staring deep into her soul.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘I’m so sorry. All this time. Blaming you. It was wrong.’
There was no way of knowing whether he had understood what she said. But when he reached out and grasped her hand, raised it to his discoloured cheek, she let it remain there for a moment. And then she took a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. He smiled slowly, reached out again, and touched a tendril of her hair.
‘Our two children to be wed, Danny. And there is to be a child. A force for good if ever there was one …’
Surrender. In that moment, Violet looked as though all the life had drained out of her, as if she wasn’t Violet, just a sad old woman with skin like paper and sunken eyes. This man that she had hated for so long, that she blamed for her husband’s death. And here he was, his life destroyed by the same hand that had destroyed her husband. Drink, and poverty, and frustration. How she had dreamed she would make him pay. But now? To see him like this? All hate, recrimination, fell away in an instant. She felt foolish and ashamed.
She gathered up her belongings, the umbrella, coat, pushed her fingers into her shabby calfskin gloves, and left quietly.
‘You’ve had enough time with him?’ asked the sister.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘For now.’
In a daze, she walked down Virgin’s Lane to the station, tears streaming down her face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured. ‘For such an awful thing. Such a stupid, wasteful thing. Oh Danny, I’m so very, very sorry.’
Chapter Thirty-nine
Callum sat at the table in the kitchen of the King’s Arms, nervously tying and untying his tie. Babby looked at him and smiled worriedly. Her body curved into itself as she shifted in the chair. She smoothed out the checked tablecloth, pressed creases into the corners, her palms going sticky and hot with the fear of what was to come, Violet entered the room and for a moment the only sound was a whistling kettle on the stove. Callum took it off the heat.
‘Can I sit down?’ asked Violet, finally.
A stony-faced Callum pulled out a chair.
‘Well then,’ said Violet, with
a tremulous smile. ‘It looks like we’ve got a wedding to organise. And quickly.’
Babby jumped up and threw her arms around her so vigorously, Violet almost toppled off her chair.
Callum beamed. He could hardly believe it. ‘Thank you, thank you, Mrs Delaney! I thought you would never speak to either of us again.’
‘So did I. And I’m sorry for that. I was wrong to blame your father. Will you forgive me?’
‘Nowt to forgive. I adore your Babby and that’s all that matters.’
‘She’s my daughter. Maddening and bold and headstrong, but Callum, I do love her. There was never any doubt about that. And if you love her … well there’s nothing else to say.’
‘Will you bring Rex?’ asked Callum.
She glanced at her daughter. ‘Perhaps,’ she replied.
The banns were read within the week. Father O’Casey had said he would do the ceremony on a Wednesday evening at dusk, but Babby had asked what was wrong with a Saturday morning and finally he had relented. Florrie provided the dress, brand new from Blacklers, which she had unpicked and re-stitched to hide her bump. It was ivory white and Empire line, the swell of her belly at four and a half months discreetly covered by a large bow and tiny pleats. There was also an organza stole and, to finish it off, she would be wearing long white kid gloves and an elegant Juliet cap veil that Violet had worn when she had married Jack. Violet had made Hannah a bridesmaid’s dress out of pale-blue chiffon with a white sash made out of Babby’s old communion dress, which had come up looking good as new after she had washed it with Dolly Blue. She had bought herself a new frock that hugged her hips and showed off her tiny waist and Callum splashed out on a double-breasted suit from George Henry Lees and looked the business – like Errol Flynn, Violet had said. The Delaneys had done with shame. Finally, they had something to celebrate.
The morning of the wedding, Pat met Doris at her mother’s house in Queen’s Drive. ‘Doris! Good news! The organist has agreed to play for the service.’
‘Smashing,’ said Doris, full of excitement about the tea dress with the sweeping net underskirt and the teardrop hat with a pearl-embellished birdcage veil that she had bought from TJ’s.
Pat told her that Violet had suggested that they should also have the choir.
‘How much will that cost?’ asked Doris.
‘A fortune, that’s for sure. But can you imagine our Babby walking down the aisle in silence? She’ll want music – and if she doesn’t get it, she might even suggest playing the pub’s flaming accordion.’
He smiled, and Doris smiled back. ‘Can’t have that, can we? Any road,’ he added, ‘Rex has offered to pay.’
‘Has he, indeed?’ replied Doris.
They arrived at Joseph Street with a good few hours to spare and discovered Hannah, flushed pink with happiness, standing on a stool in her dress and Violet, with a mouth full of pins, sewing a hem. Hannah’s hair was pulled straight off her face and held by a rose flower crown – another of Florrie’s miraculous creations – and Doris said she looked like Shirley Temple. Kathleen fussed around them, spreading a white linen tablecloth over the table, offering to make tea, searching in drawers and cupboards for sugar bowls and spoons.
Florrie arrived with jelly and butterfly cakes and put bottles of lemonade in the larder and beer on the cool step outside, ready for the drinking which would begin when they got back from the church. Her pepper-coloured wispy hair that usually sprouted from her head like gone-to-seed cornflowers, was coiled up into a French plait, and it was the first time anyone had seen her in a dress – the first time anyone had seen her ankles probably – and Pat declared she looked magnificent in the polka dot shirtwaister set off by a dusty pink bolero.
When Babby appeared in her petticoat and veil, looking more beautiful than she had ever looked before, her hair in perfect ringlets – the rags she had slept in the night before had done their work – tumbling about her shoulders, her skin dewy and fresh, Hannah yelped and clapped her hands together while Violet and Kathleen and Florrie fussed and clucked over her as though they would never stop. Babby and Violet hugged.
‘You look beautiful, love,’ said Violet, rearranging one of the curls of her hair and straightening her veil.
‘Remember, the Queen of the May Procession, with the candles coming down the stairs?’ Pat said, arranging the chairs so they were pushed up against the dresser, laughing.
‘My veil caught fire,’ said Babby. ‘And Da threw a glass of water at me to put it out!’
‘No, it didn’t, love. You do exaggerate,’ Violet said, with a smile.
‘Wish Da was here today,’ said Babby wistfully.
‘We all do,’ Violet said, sighing. ‘But you know, he is in a way. He’s part of you, love, always will be. Every time I look at you, I see him. Funny, it should be Pat. But it’s not. It’s you. Simple as that.’
‘Look who’s here!’ cried Doris, when Peggy from the cab shelter arrived to take a look at Babby and ooh and ah over her.
‘Would you like a sherry, Peg? Pat? Any takers?’ asked Kathleen.
‘Sounds grand. I’ll get some more glasses,’ answered Pat. Collar starched and gleaming white, he wore an Ascot necktie and, to top it off, a red carnation boutonnièrre.
‘Violet? Fancy a cheeky tipple?’ said Kathleen.
Violet looked at her. ‘No thanks, love. I’ve given all that up for now.’ Kathleen nodded and touched her sister’s arm, and Violet knew all that the gesture contained. She was done with drinking. Not just for now. For good.
Suddenly Mary burst through the door, beaming.
‘Greetings from Dublin!’ she said.
‘Frying Pan!’ squealed Babby. And they fell into each other’s arms, and kissed.
‘Who’s that?’ whispered Doris to Pat.
‘A girl from Saint Hilda’s. Babby was very keen that we invited her. Took a bit of trouble to track her down, but we found her through Florrie.’
‘Well, that’s a turn up,’ murmured Doris. ‘Doesn’t she look the business in that pretty green frock?’
‘Hope you’re going to give us a tune on your dad’s old squeezebox later. We can’t have a party without music,’ shouted Kathleen across the room.
‘Wait,’ said Violet.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Babby as Violet went towards the cellar door, making her way past the assortment of chairs and stools and the chaise longue. She disappeared downstairs.
‘Tah dah!’ she said a minute later, coming back up into the room, struggling with what looked like an accordion case. Blowing the dust off it, she called Babby over.
‘Open it,’ she said. ‘It was your dad’s. He got this from his father. And his father got it from his. It’s an heirloom, by rights, but it plays well, so your dad said. Just too precious for the Boot Inn.’
Babby looked at it in shock.
‘Go on, love, open it,’ Violet said, smiling.
Babby pushed the lock, which sprang open with a soft click. The accordion was Italian, a Trevani, with an intricate trellis and beautiful mother of pearl casing and keys.
‘Your dad said he was saving it for you. To give to you on your wedding day or your eighteenth birthday, whichever came first …There were so many times I nearly sold it. We’ve got Rex to thank for that. He always stopped me. Said it wasn’t right, dug us out of a hole with a bit of money he had spare on more than one occasion.’
Babby’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I want to get to know Rex better, Mam. You don’t need to hide him from us any more.’
‘I’ll make sure that changes,’ whispered Violet. ‘He’s been good to Hannah. He’s been good to us all. If it hadn’t been for Rex who tracked down Callum and told him where to find you … well … I hardly dare think.’ She gathered herself, brushed a tear away from her eye. ‘Anyway, can’t wait to hear you play later.’
There was a shout. ‘Uncle Rex! He’s here! He’s here!’ cried Hannah, sticking her head out of the open sash window, and waving.
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br /> ‘Oh my giddy aunt!’ cried Doris.
‘Did Callum persuade him?’ said Kathleen.
‘I don’t know. Maybe that means he’s finally told that sister of his, Gladys, where to stick it. Can’t wait to see Violet’s face!’
‘Mam!’ cried Hannah. ‘Uncle Rex is walking up the street and he looks right posh, and lovely. Uncle Rex is coming!’
Violet steadied herself on a chair. ‘I thought he said he wasn’t going to. What’s made him change his mind?’
‘Who knows?’ said Babby, coming up behind Violet. ‘Just glad he’s here.’
When he entered the door, he was welcomed as though he was already part of the family. Hannah rushed to meet him and he hugged her as he planted a warm kiss on top of her head and ruffled her hair. Then Violet led him by the hand – and Babby threw her arms around him, and greeted him like he was her second father.
Amongst the commotion of lost shoes and hairpins and hatpins, Babby took the accordion and quietly went upstairs. She placed it on the floor under the window and turned to her wedding dress, laid out on the bed. Babby had never seen anything as beautiful in her life. Holding it up against herself, she smoothed down the skirts and regarded herself in the mirror. She felt the swell of her belly, the child inside.
Shaking out her hair, she slipped the dress over her head. It felt tight across her breasts, but you would never have known she was pregnant. Florrie was a magician with a needle and thread. She tied the blue ribbon around her head, so that the shivering curls framed her face. Laughter floated up from downstairs where someone was telling a story, probably Pat. She listened to the noise. There was the sound of a car engine idling, the slamming of a car door, probably Rex setting off to the church with Florrie.
A Liverpool Girl Page 27