by Anne Bennett
In minutes Bridgette was being driven through the city centre. ‘You have a lot of bomb damage here,’ she said, looking from one side of the street to the other as the taxi cruised along.
‘New Street took a pounding all right,’ the taxi driver said. ‘The biggest raids of the war were in November 1940. If they had returned the next night Birmingham would have burned to the ground because three trunk water mains were bust on the Bristol Road. Not that we were told this at the time, like. Bad for morale and all that, but it’s all come out later.’
‘I thought Paris was bad,’ Bridgette said, ‘but this is awful.’
‘That where you’re from, Paris?’
‘Not really though I went to live with an aunt and uncle there when my mother died in the summer of 1944,’ Bridgette said. ‘I am a widow, you see.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ the taxi driver said. ‘But you have a lovely little boy there.’
‘He is very like his father,’ Bridgette said wistfully. ‘I called him Finn because that was my father’s name.’
‘Funny name that, Finn?’
‘The full name is Finbar, and it means fair-haired, so it doesn’t sit well on my son at all,’ Bridgette said. ‘But I wanted him called for his grandfather, who was killed in the Great War before I was born.’
‘You seemed to have had your share of tragedy.’
‘Many are the same these days,’ Bridgette said. ‘My son is not the only one that will grow up fatherless, but that’s the reason that I would like to find my father’s family. My mother said my father spoke of them often.’
‘And whereabouts do they live in Boldmere?’
‘I’m…I’m not sure.’
‘So where do you want me to drop you off?’
‘I suppose anywhere will do.’
The taxi driver drew in to the pavement, stopped the car, turned around in the seat and said to Bridgette, ‘Do you know exactly where these people live?’
Bridgette shook her head. ‘I understood that it isn’t a big place. I thought if I asked round someone will know them.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ the taxi driver said. ‘It’s more highly populated than that. So where are you intending to sleep tonight?’
‘I thought to find somewhere.’
‘There might be nowhere except some place you wouldn’t want to be in,’ the taxi driver said. ‘Like you just saw, Birmingham has been bombed to bits. People have been living in church halls and basements, and many still are. Good decent lodging houses are full to the brim.’
‘I never thought…’
‘Well, that’s how it is,’ the taxi driver said. ‘And you have that babby to think of as well as yourself.’ He took pity on her and he said, ‘Look, my mother might put you up. God knows, the house is big enough for her now—too bloody big—but she’s lived there years and she don’t want to move. She don’t run a boarding house or owt like that, but she had a bombed-out family living with her since 1941, a woman with two little girls with her husband in the Forces. Anyroad, the man weren’t demobbed five minutes till they gave the family one of them prefabs. So, at the moment she is on her own and a bit lonely, and I reckon she’ll put you up all right.’
Much of what the taxi driver said was lost on Bridgette, but she did work out that he was offering her a place to stay. ‘Does your mother live in Boldmere?’
‘No, she lives in Orphanage Road, Erdington,’ the taxi driver said. ‘It isn’t far away. Do you know what any of your family look like?’ he asked as he began driving again. ‘Have you ever met any of them?’
Bridgette shook her head helplessly and, as she realised her plight, tears stood out in her eyes. The taxi driver saw them too and he said gently, ‘I think that you are all in. My old mum will sort you out, never fear.’
As the taxi driver began to head towards his mother’s house, however, Bridgette ran through in her head what she had decided to tell her Irish relations when she met up with them. Finn’s family were Catholics, possibly devout Catholics, and she could take bets that any Catholics from Ireland would be as disgusted as those in France if they knew the truth about Finn. They might think her some sort of strumpet, a fallen woman, and probably not the kind of person that they wanted in their family.
In France her aunt had let it be understood that Bridgette was a recent widow, and despite the fact that she wanted there to be no secrets between her and her son for now, she knew that for respectability for herself and legitimacy for him, the family in Birmingham had to believe the same thing if she and Finn were to have a chance of being accepted.
She had realised she couldn’t say the name of the shop where she worked at all, in case she mentioned Xavier or the family, which meant her story didn’t add up. Her name was Madame Laurent and so James’s name also had to be Laurent and he had to be a soldier in the Free French Army, killed in the invasion. James had left her in mid-July so she would have to tell some fabricated tale of some injury that the fictional James had sustained and that after treatment he had had a few days’ leave at home to recuperate before rejoining his unit.
This was also the tale that she realised she would have to tell to the taxi driver’s mother. The driver had spelled out to her the difficulties of finding any other sort of lodgings in Birmingham at that time, and she couldn’t take the risk that this woman might turn against her because of her unmarried state. What would she do then?
As it happened, Mrs Entwhistle, or Ada, as she insisted on being called, was a motherly soul who looked kindly on most people. She was also, Bridgette was to find, more interested in talking than listening, though she had been enchanted by the baby and so moved by the details that her son told her about Bridgette she readily agreed to take them both in.
‘And glad to do it as well,’ she said. ‘Since Sandra and the nippers went I haven’t known what to do with myself. Of course, when her Syd came back they needed their own place, I could see that.’
‘The house is too big for you, Ma,’ the taxi driver said. ‘How long have we all being telling you that?’
‘Oh, it’s all right for you young ones,’ Ada said with spirit. ‘But I raised the six of you in this house and then nursed your father until he died. All my memories are here and, anyway, now Bridgette and the babby are here it will be fuller, won’t it? And if I know anything, travelling makes a body hungry and a feed just now won’t come amiss, so I’ll get on with that and you, our Bill, get about your business while me and Bridgette get to know one another.’
Bill gave Bridgette a wink as he said, ‘Bossy old cow, ain’t she? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘What a thing to say about your own mother!’ Ada said, though Bridgette saw the twinkle in her eyes. ‘No respect, that’s your trouble, our Bill. Go and earn an honest crust, or you’ll go home empty-handed to Mavis, and that won’t go down a bundle.’
‘Oh,’ said Bridgette. ‘I owe you money. I’m afraid I have little understanding of it yet.’
‘Have that one on me,’ Bill said. ‘But Ma is right. ’Less I earn more money before I go home tonight, I might have to throw my hat in first.’
Ada was smiling as she shut the door on her son. ‘I suppose that made no sense to you. Throwing your hat in first is like testing the waters, seeing how cross his Mavis is. It’s just an expression. It’s not something he’ll do.’
‘Oh,’ Bridgette said, more confused than ever. She had thought she would be all right in England as she had been speaking English since she had been a child, but it was a different English here.
‘You’ll soon get the hang of the lingo, never fear,’ Ada said, as she made her way to the kitchen. ‘Let’s see what I have in the cupboard that will do to stick to our ribs this evening.’
That same evening, after they had all eaten and Finn put into the bed that Bridgette would share with him later, Ada told Bridgette all about Bill and his two brothers and three sisters, and how that big old house was once full of children and noise and laug
hter.
‘Then with most of the kids gone, the old man got ill,’ she went on. ‘He’d had rheumatic fever as a nipper and it had damaged his heart. He didn’t know, like, when he was younger, but as he got older it got worse and I nursed him till the day he died.’
‘I nursed my mother too,’ Bridgette said. ‘She had TB and that’s when I learned about my real father,’ and she went on to recount what her mother had told her. ‘I was very sad for a long time when first James and then my mother died. Then, when I had Finn, I suddenly thought it was important to find the family that Maman wanted me to find, for his sake as well as my own.’
Ada’s eyes when they rested on Bridgette were tender as she realised the depth of the young woman’s suffering and how alone she must have felt. ‘It’s important to know where you have come from, I can see that,’ she said gently. ‘But you say that you don’t know where these people actually live.’
‘Only that it’s around here somewhere,’ Bridgette said. ‘You see, when Christy told me that Boldmere was an area of Sutton Coldfield and that was a small market town just outside Birmingham, I assumed that Boldmere would be smaller even than the town I was born in, where everyone knew everyone else.’
‘Boldmere used to be like that—Erdington too,’ Ada said. ‘Now, though, I’m not too sure. You could try asking in the post office—or are they Catholics, these Sullivans?’
‘Yes,’ Bridgette said. ‘Of course, I should try the churches.’
‘Well, it can do you no harm,’ Ada said. ‘The nearest Catholic church to here is the Abbey, and that’s not that far from this end of Boldmere either. I don’t know if there is one nearer to wherever they are living because I’m not Catholic myself.’
‘Oh, Ada,’ Bridgette exclaimed, ‘that is a genius idea. I will try this Abbey tomorrow and go from there.’
It felt better to have a plan of some sort and Bridgette curled up with her son in a happier frame of mind that night.
However, the priest, Father Cunningham, didn’t know of a Tom Sullivan. When he listened to the reason that Bridgette wanted to contact the man, he even called over two of his colleagues. They couldn’t help either but suggested that Bridgette try St Nicholas’s church, which was in Boldmere, and leave her address with them in case they did find out anything.
Bridgette was very despondent, but Ada was more pragmatic. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘At least they told you about the other church.’
‘Yes, St Nicholas’s in Jockey Road, and they said that was at the bottom of Boldmere Road,’ Bridgette said. ‘But I can’t go there until tomorrow, and what if that priest doesn’t know anything either?’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?’ Ada said. ‘We have to get your ration book too, from the Council House in Birmingham City Centre, as soon as we can. And if the priest at St Nicholas’s knows nothing, do what I suggested first and try the post office.’
Bridgette didn’t know if the priest did know anything because he was away on holiday and would be gone for two more weeks. The priest covering for him couldn’t help her. Before going back to Ada’s she walked back up Boldmere Road, and called into the post office. The man behind the counter though didn’t know anyone by the name of Tom Sullivan either.
‘If you say he lives round here he might well call in to send letters or parcels, but I really only know the names of those collecting a pension of one kind or another. This is a busy place and we have a lot of people through the doors. We couldn’t know the whys and wherefores of them all.’
‘He has a point,’ Ada said to Bridgette when she recounted this. ‘City life is different from the country, where people might be a sight friendlier and interested in anyone that moves into the neighbourhood. Here people are left more to themselves.’
‘It’s a bit hopeless, isn’t it, Ada?
Ada thought that it probably was, but she said, ‘No, it’s not hopeless, but it’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, though the priest in the church in Jockey Road will likely know all about the man when he comes back.’
‘It’s almost two weeks till I can ask him,’ Bridgette said glumly.
‘Well, you could use the time to acclimatise yourself to the area,’ Ada suggested. ‘What if we go and get your ration book tomorrow, and then get off the bus early and take a dander around Erdington.’
‘If you like,’ Bridgette said with a sigh.
‘And keep your pecker up, girl,’ Ada said. ‘When you saw the size of the place, you knew it wasn’t going to be easy.’
Bridgette had known that, but she hadn’t known that it was going to be almost impossible. If the priest at St Nicholas’s knew nothing, then Bridgette didn’t know what to do. Ada didn’t charge a great deal but even so, Bridgette couldn’t stay in Birmingham indefinitely, and when the money was nearly all gone, if she was no further forward then what the hell was she going to do?
On Thursday night there was a knock at the door and Ada, expecting it to be one of her children, opened it to find two men outside that she had never seen before.
‘Can I help you?’
‘We need to speak to a woman you have living with you, a Mrs Bridgette Laurent,’ one of the men said. ‘One of the priests at the Abbey asked us to call.’
It was obvious the men were Irish. Ada said, ‘One of you ain’t Tom Sullivan that Bridgette has been looking for?’
‘No,’ the first man said, ‘but we met Tom. When he first came over from Ireland in 1943 he travelled with us. He was not a seasoned traveller like my brother and myself, but we put him right about a few things. What he told us on the journey might help locate him now.’
Bridgette thought so too when Ada ushered the men in and they introduced themselves as Mick and Pat Donahue. ‘But how did you know I was looking for a man called Tom Sullivan?’ she asked, as Ada scurried off to make tea.
‘The priest came and told us,’ Mick said. ‘See, though we now live in Birmingham, originally we came from Donegal, like Tom, and the priest remembered that. He thought maybe we knew him and might have some idea where he’s living now. The point is, though, Donegal is a big spread-out county and we had not known anything of the Sullivans there, but, as luck would have it, we travelled together when he came over first. We met in the train and did the whole journey together.’
‘He talked plenty,’ Pat put in. ‘We thought he was one of those quiet sorts of fellows when we met him first.’
‘Maybe it was the Guinness we bought him as a cure of seasickness that loosened his tongue,’ Mick said, and Pat gave a chuckle and agreed. ‘That must have been it right enough.’
‘So what did he say?’ Bridgette asked.
‘He told us he had a niece and nephew in Birmingham,’ Mick said. ‘And that was who he was going to see. The boy was called Kevin and he had never seen him, but the girl, Molly, who hailed from Birmingham originally, had lived with him and his mother for some years after the death of her parents. Did you know any of this?’
Bridgette shook her head.
‘According to what Tom told us, Molly’s brother, who was only a wee boy at the time, was left in Birmingham with the grandfather,’ Mick went on. ‘But then the war began and when she hadn’t heard from them for a few weeks Tom said nothing would satisfy her other than coming back and making sure that they were all right. Unfortunately, she found her grandfather had been killed in one of the raids and her brother was in an orphanage, but she took charge of him as soon as she could.’
‘You said death of her parents, Molly said. But who were her parents?’
‘Oh, we know that too,’ Pat said, taking up the story, ‘and that’s a tale on its own. Their mother was Tom’s sister Nuala.’
‘Oh,’ said Bridgette in disappointment. ‘How awful. She used to work as a nursemaid in the Big House in Buncrana.’
‘She may well have done,’ Pat said. ‘But the poor woman had been dead now for nearly eleven years, for Tom said this happened in 1935. Both her and her
husband were killed together in a car crash.’
‘The poor children, and then to split them up like that…’
‘That isn’t the end of it, though,’ Pat said. ‘Nuala was sent to England because of the Troubles in Ireland and she met and married a Protestant. When she wrote and told her parents this her father had a heart attack and died. She was blamed by the mother and disowned by the family.’
Ada, coming in that minute with a tray of tea, heard what Pat had said and commented, ‘I think there are more wars and upsets caused by religion than any other damned thing. I keep well away from all of it and I will take my chance with my maker when my time comes. I mean, was it so bad for her to marry a Protestant?’
‘Her mother seemed to think so.’
Ada shook her head as she handed around the tea. ‘Point is,’ she said, ‘I can’t think of anything that my kids would do that would make me disown them.’
‘She doesn’t sound a very nice woman,’ Bridgette said. ‘My mother told me that my father always said she was awkward and could be really nasty, and yet I am called for her.’
‘You haven’t a nature like hers, though,’ Ada said. ‘Can you imagine Finn doing summat bad enough for you not to want anything ever to do with him again?’
Bridgette shook her head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘Nor me neither,’ said Mick. ‘Though, God, they have your heart scalded sometimes. I have four of my own.’
‘Do you know what happened to Molly and where is she living now?’ Bridgette asked. ‘I would love to meet her.’
‘Of course you would,’ Mick said. ‘Families should stick together. You need to meet Tom as well, for he is your uncle and a nicer man you would never meet. As for Molly, she did all right for herself and found some civilian job on an RAF aerodrome near a place called Castle Bromwich. She rents a house nearby from one of the airmen and had her brother living with her as soon as she could. She has also, in her words, found someone special in her life that she wanted Tom to meet.’