by Lizzie Lane
‘Charleston!’ she shouted gleefully and proceeded to dance. The girls joined in. This, they’d discovered, was their grandmother’s secret sin. She loved to dance. She’d always loved to dance, so she’d told them.
‘But your grandfather thinks it’s heathen because it came from America some years ago and although all those Irish people have gone over there and say how grand it is, he doesn’t think anywhere can be as good as Ireland.’
It had become their habit to wait until he was off into Dunavon to fetch supplies and drink with Roger Casey, the builder. Out would come the record from its secret hiding place, the needle would be inserted and the handle wound up.
Once they’d danced themselves breathless, they collapsed with laughter; the girls huddled around their grandmother’s legs.
That’s when she would tell them about America and her wish, as a young girl, to go there.
‘I thought your grandfather would take me there, but he had a glib tongue. What he promised and his real intentions were two entirely different things.’
The two girls listened avidly; their grandmother was good at describing what this other country was like and they lapped it up.
‘Do you know they have the highest buildings in the world? Great big towering things that look as though they’re stabbing the passing clouds. And a big statue at the entrance to New York harbour. That’s what people have told me and I’ve no reason to doubt the truth of what they say.’
Sighing with the sadness of unachieved dreams, she laid her head back against the chair and closed her eyes.
‘I wonder what my life would have turned out like if your grandfather had been true to his word? Folk that have been there tell me the streets are paved with gold. And that’s where they make the pictures you know. That’s where Clara Bow, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin live. Not in New York mind you. I hear they live in a place called Hollywood.’
‘I think I would like to go there, to America,’ said Venetia, her small hand covering the work-worn fingers of her grandmother. ‘I think I’d like to be a film star – like Clara Bow.’
She remembered the posters outside the picture houses in London. ‘I don’t want to stay in Ireland,’ she added. ‘I want excitement. I want adventure. I want to dance and sing on the stage and in the films.’
Anna Marie eyed her sister timidly. ‘I couldn’t do that. Sing and dance in front of people.’
‘You don’t need to,’ said Venetia. ‘You can come with me. We have to stay together. Always!’
Anna Marie sucked in her lips. Unlike her sister she was predisposed to staying in one place, but her sister was of strong character. Whatever she said, Anna Marie couldn’t help falling in with her plans.
‘Wait a while and I’ll take you to the pictures. I’ve heard we’re going to have a picture show in Dunavon just before Easter. I’ll ask your grandfather.’
Their grandmother’s promise was forgotten in the work around the farm. First there were spring lambs to take to market and a fresh spring turning into a typical summer of warm days interspersed by rain. The land turned verdant, the animals gave birth to their young and the smell of all things growing made the air rich enough to taste.
Autumn saw the harvesting of the fields, the laying in of winter fodder for the bad weather to come when the grass held no goodness.
Anna Marie loved life on the farm though she tried not to show it to her sister. Venetia had never adjusted to the countryside, but what she did love were her grandmother’s tales of a place called Hollywood in a magic land called America.
I’m going to go there one day. I tell you I am,’ Venetia declared.
Anna Marie worshipped her sister and always went along with whatever she said. Though they were chalk and cheese, they rarely argued, mainly because Anna Marie always let Venetia have her own way.
Just before Christmas the travelling film show came to town. It was called The Jazz Singer and it was the first ‘talkie’ ever made.
‘It was made nearly two years ago back in 1926 and people thought the talkies would never catch on, though apparently all films being made are now talkies. Now there’s a thing! I didn’t realise we were going to see people actually talking,’ their grandmother whispered to them. ‘That was what persuaded your grandfather to let us see it. He can’t believe it’s true and won’t believe it until he sees it with his own eyes.’
‘Or hears it with his ears,’ said Venetia.
Anna Marie was wistful. ‘Is it really nearly two years since our mother died?’
She whispered her question, unwilling to upset her grandmother whom she’d grown inordinately fond of.
‘Yes,’ Venetia snapped. ‘Two years living on a farm.’
‘It’s not so bad.’
‘It’s not like London.’
‘There are no animals in London.’
‘There are lights. I like lights,’ Venetia countered.
Anna Marie sighed. Sometimes she found it difficult to cope with her sister’s attitude. She loved the farm, loved her grandmother and loved the animals. Not that she often admitted the fact to Venetia.
Their grandmother shouted up the stairs that they were ready to see the film show.
‘Get down here now or you won’t be going.’
Anna Marie immediately set off for the stairs, pausing there to look at her sister.
‘Well? Are you coming or not?’
Venetia sucked in her lips.
Anna Marie breathed in deeply, fearing one of her sister’s rebellious moods might be coming on.
Venetia sprang into sudden life. ‘You wouldn’t think I’d want to stay here would you? I’ll never want to stay here. I’ll tell you that for nothing. We’ll leave here. We’ll both leave here.’
Anna Marie made no comment. She had no real wish to leave the farm and Ireland, but if Venetia ever did insist on them leaving, she knew she would not have the strength to resist.
Chapter Five
Magda 1929
Snow began falling two days before Christmas. By morning it had thrown a thick blanket over a hushed neighbourhood. Just for once the old houses in Edward Street looked beautiful, like brides attired in wedding finery.
Bridget Brodie’s heart was still as frozen as the weather and Magda still hadn’t found a pencil in the house, and she so badly wanted to draw a Christmas scene and write a Christmas message. The old crayons were fine for drawing pictures, but she considered writing was best done with a pencil.
Magda had just finished getting the fire to light, when a blow from a chilblained hand flung her away from the feeble flames.
‘Bread! We need bread.’
Aunt Bridget pointed at the ill-fitting door. ‘Will you git going now and stop staring at me like an ijit?’
The door had twisted with age and barely reached the floor. Snow drifted through the gaps onto the flagstone floor where it melted, and turned into ice overnight.
Magda was beginning to get the measure of her aunt, and although she knew what it might earn her, her eyes flared with loathing.
Bridget saw the look. A face creased with care and cruelty became like an evil mask, all pity devoured by poverty; compassion drowned by selfishness.
Her lips curled back from twisted teeth yellowed with nicotine.
She raised her hand. ‘Don’t you look at me with yer evil eyes, you dark witch, you.’
‘A witch can put a curse on you,’ Magda growled.
Her aunt looked at her dumbstruck – and it suddenly occurred to Magda that her aunt was superstitious; she actually believed her.
The moment was short lived. ‘Bread!’
A threepenny piece hit the side of her cheek.
‘It’s snowing again.’
‘Never mind the snow, you lazy little foreigner. What’s a bit of snow? The likes of me are used to it, and you should get used to it too.’
‘You never let me out other times.’
‘Less of your back chat!’
‘You’
re only letting me out because it’s snowing.’
‘Well, the ungratefulness of the child!’
‘If I go out in this, then I’m going out other times too.’
Picking up the same blanket that covered her at night, she wound it around her thin form. The blanket had replaced her coat, which Aunt Bridget had decided was too small.
‘Sure I’ll give it to the nuns down at the convent. They’ll give it to someone deserving they will.’
The blanket was old, unwashed and rough against her skin. She didn’t care about its roughness, the ragged strips trailing along behind her or the stink of dirt and smoke. It would keep her warm. It would hide who she was and the shame she felt at being so dirty, so shabbily dressed.
Pressing her face against the gap at the side of the door, she felt the chill scything through, frosting her face like a thousand needles. She was aching to get out, but she wasn’t going to let her Aunt Bridget know that. She’d been kept a virtual prisoner for a whole year.
The snow came up to her knees, soaking her skirt, her worn stockings and her canvas boots. The boots were suitable for summer or a clement climate, not for an English winter. Her winter boots had gone the same way as her coat in reality, paying for a second-hand fox fur for her aunt that stunk like a skunk and had rabid glass eyes.
Warily, like a rabbit emerging from a burrow, Magda scrutinised her surroundings. Being locked up for so long had made her nervous of going out.
Thanks to the snowfall, the alley was deserted. There were no gentlemen callers across the way and there would be none until the snow had melted and the roads were passable.
The sound of trams running on their twisted rails came from some way off on the main road into East London. Except for a few horse-drawn delivery carts, the trams had the road to themselves without the hindrance of the buses, which were gradually taking their place.
Hurrying was difficult, each step taking a great deal of effort, raising one leg out of the snow, down into it again, repeating the process with aching legs and chilled bones. Her breath came in hot steaming gasps. Her chest tightened with each cold breath and the snow fell heavier like a curtain of thick lace before her eyes.
Winnie One Leg hated cold weather. It made her bad leg ache even if she wasn’t moving around or out in it.
Pursing her upper lip she removed a heated penny from the window pane and looked out. What she saw caused her to hold her breath. The snow was embellishing the mean buildings with an elegance they did not usually possess. Crumbling buildings with jutting first floors suddenly looked magical.
‘Like an old woman in a fine white cloak,’ she murmured to herself.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen such a scene before and she’d expected the whiteness, the grey sky, and the sudden beautification of lop-sided houses and grim narrow streets. She had not expected to see a monstrous cloak, moving seemingly of its own accord.
What she’d perceived to be a cloak was, on reflection, a blanket. The figure struggling to get itself and the blanket through the snow was far from adult.
The pretty little girl living with Bridget Brodie.
So the Connemara mare, the name they all knew Bridget Brodie by, had let the girl out. Somebody pointed out that the breed was one of the prettiest ponies in the British Isles and it was an insult to compare the two. Somebody else had remarked that the child’s name was Magda.
Bridget Brodie was a hard woman. Winnie had seen her screaming and beating her husband James Brodie with a broken chair leg. It wouldn’t come as any surprise that the child was receiving the same treatment. For one solitary moment she shared the child’s pain, rubbing at her twisted leg, rueing the day she’d ever got involved with the likes of Reuben Fitts.
She blinked away the memory. What was done was done, though she bitterly regretted what had happened. If only she’d had the courage to stand up to him and demanded he called a doctor when she was screaming in labour, unable to bring the child forth. But there. Water under Waterloo Bridge. All in the past.
Her thoughts and her eyes went back to the Brodie child. What kind of future could she look forward to? Not one she deserved if Bridget Brodie had anything to do with it.
None of your business, Winnie One Leg.
Hugging the warmth of the loaf close to her ribs beneath the scruffy blanket, Magda pressed on. The snow was deep on the ground, each step painfully slow. Her calves ached with the effort. Her eyes were blinded by snow and a biting wind.
Narrowing her eyes she looked for a landmark pointing the way back to her aunt’s house. There to her right was the Red Cow, to her left the coffin makers, a light shining from a small window, snow heaped up in drifts against the door.
There was not another soul in sight and the whole world seemed to have fallen silent; no sound from the pub, none from the workshops of the coffin maker.
A drift of snow, pure white and unsullied by footprints or cart tracks, suddenly moved then split open. Four ragged figures emerged like carrion chicks from a single, shattered egg. Boys. Four boys.
Magda backed away, her small hand held high, palm facing her attackers. ‘Touch me and I curse you.’
Her voice was true and clear, slicing through the cold air like a meat cleaver through butter.
She wasn’t sure she could curse them, but her aunt had told her she was cursed; cursed with foreign blood and the daughter of a witch. So what if she played the part? Well, if these louts believed it too, so much the better.
Moving sharply to avoid her attackers she dislodged the hood of torn blanket that had covered her head.
No longer covered by the scrap of blanket, a shock of silky black hair fanned out around the girl’s face, the wind making it into long, gauzy streamers, as fine and floating as butterfly wings. The boys paused, their rags blown aside by the wind exposing dirty knees and thin legs. One of the boys was wearing what looked like the coat of a merchant seaman with brass buttons and a torn hem. It reached to his grey socks, which lay in folds around his ankles.
Watching from her window, Winnie shook her head. If the girl would just throw the bread down, they might leave her alone. With the exception of the Fitts boy, the tallest and strongest of the group, the others were from poor families. Fitts’s son would be their ringleader, of stockier build than the others and possessing his father’s arrogant gait, his shoulders rolling from side to side as he took measured paces towards the girl.
There was no reason for Winnie to be noticed for she made no sound and barely moved.
‘None of my business,’ she muttered and spit into a lace-edged handkerchief.
She was about to turn away, to go into the parlour and tidy it up ready for visitors when a memory came to her.
The vision was familiar, though usually it only surfaced in the dead of night.
Shaking her head she mopped the sweat from her brow with the back of her mitten-clad hand. Why had it suddenly come to her and why did it make her feel this way? What did that snippet of a girl and her own long-endured nightmare have in common?
Her eyes, blurred with sudden moistness, went back to the window. The frost curtailed clear vision, the small hole too small to see much, but she knew what was happening out there. The weak would be in danger of going under. The loaf would be taken from her and she’d be left cut and bruised, and that was before Bridget Brodie got hold of her. And as for that brat Bradley Fitts …
Before she even had time to consider what she was doing, her gnarled fingers, as knobbly and thin as winter twigs, were wrestling with the door bolt.
Liberally smeared with goose grease, the bolt slid back easily, the door flung open and the snow and cold of the outside, plus a small girl wrapped in a worn blanket, fell in, still clutching a loaf of bread.
Winnie waved her stick at some of the poorest, most wretched boys in the city, and that singularly wicked one, Bradley Fitts. Like his father he bullied the destitute with promises of taking whatever they wanted from them that had.
&nbs
p; Winnie was like a fury in old-fashioned black shawl and dark purple dress, waving her stick and yelling at the top of her voice.
‘Away with you devils or I’ll be setting the Peelers on you.’
At the sight of her, it was Bradley Fitts who shot off first. One thing he didn’t do was take the blame for anything. He left lesser mortals to do that.
‘Bread, Winnie. Bread!’
The boy who shouted wore a navy blue coat, had tousled hair and a little more meat on his bones than the others.
She started to close the door.
‘Anything …’
His voice was pleading. She knew his name was Edward Shellard and that his father worked on the docks unloading ships from all over the empire. She also knew there were ten children in the family and that his mother seemed to have spent most of her life with a pregnant belly. If that wasn’t problem enough, when he wasn’t working, George Shellard could be found in the Shipwrights Arms down by the East India Docks.
She reached for the remains of a heel of a loaf, returned to the door and threw it out, crumbs and all, making indents in the snow. The boys fell on the scraps, shouting and scrabbling in the snow. Winnie shut the door, feeling strange, wondering if she was getting softer in her old age.
The same grey eyes that had regarded her earlier regarded her once again. Magda seemed all eyes looking up at her.
‘That was kind of you. Good fortune happens to people who are kind.’ Her voice was clear and pure, and so very much more confident than she’d expected it to be.
Placing her gnarled fists on her hips, Winnie looked the girl up and down admiringly, then nodded like the wise old bird some said she was. ‘Your eyes will be your fortune, my girl. Magda Brodie, isn’t it?’
Magda nodded, her gaze drawn to the obvious deformity of Winnie’s hands.
‘Your hands are painful. I expect they’re worse at night.’
It occurred to her that the child had spoken as though she was years older than either of them.
‘And you’re skinny. The Connemara mare doesn’t feed you enough,’ said Winnie.
Magda frowned. ‘Is that what you call her?’