by Anne Bennett
Bridgette was so agitated she was having trouble breathing. Could it be possible that this was Molly Maguire, whom she had been looking for, or was it just some cruel coincidence? ‘And your name is Molly and you used to be called Maguire?’ she said breathlessly.
Totally mystified now, Molly nodded. ‘Who are you and how do you know all this?’
‘Oh my God! I can scarcely believe it,’ Bridgette cried.
‘What’s this all about?’ Molly asked again.
In answer Bridgette said, ‘Did you have an uncle who enlisted in the Great War and was killed?’
‘Yes,’ Molly said, beginning at last to understand. ‘He was called Finn and that is your son’s name and you said that he was called after your father, so that means…’
‘That means that I am your cousin,’ Bridgette said.
All of a sudden it was too much: the hopes continually dashed, the leads that led nowhere, the disappointment and despair, and the realisation that very day that she would never find her family, and then to meet up coincidently with Molly Maguire in the park. She felt the tears rising up in her body like a torrent.
Molly took one look at Bridgette’s face and although she was reeling herself from the things Bridgette had said she left the children swaying back and forwards on the swings, put her arms around her weeping cousin, and led her to a nearby bench, glad they had the playground to themselves. Bridgette’s distress was so profound that in the end Molly felt her own eyes fill up.
Eventually, Bridgette tried to get a grip on herself as she saw the babies watching her dolefully and, seeing her a little calmer, Molly said, ‘Before my mother died she told me about Finn and how he died, and said that he had loved a girl called Gabrielle dearly. She was just a young girl herself and she thought it the most romantic thing. In fact, when Finn died, had she known anything about Gabrielle other than her first name and the fact that she lived above a baker’s shop in some obscure French town or village, then she would have written and told her that he was dead. It’s just amazing that years later I am talking to his daughter that I never even knew existed.’
‘Like you say, it is amazing,’ Bridgette said. ‘Sorry about that outburst earlier, but I didn’t think I would ever find you. I have felt so alone for so long that I can hardly believe it and I am almost afraid that you might just disappear in a cloud of smoke.’
‘Believe me, I am far too substantial to disappear in any cloud of smoke,’ Molly said with a laugh. ‘But we need to go home soon, if you feel OK. It’s not far and Mark will be in before long. He will want to hear and, goodness, I wonder how the others will view it. I’d love to see Uncle Tom’s face.’
‘I would like to go home with you, really I would,’ Bridgette said, ‘but I lodge with a lovely lady and she will worry if I do not return.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll dispatch Kevin,’ Molly said. ‘He’s very obliging like that, my young brother, and he will explain things to her. Now we have met at last I’m not letting you out of my sight.’
Tom was living with his sister Aggie and brother-in-law Paul Simmons in Sutton Coldfield. He received few letters as all the family lived close together, so when Aggie had one for him when he came in from work one evening in mid-May, he was pleased. He recognised the writing as Nellie McEvoy’s. She had written to him a few times after he’d moved to England, usually to keep him up to date with small-town gossip.
Tom slit the envelope and withdrew the letter with a smile on his face. However, when he read that the girl he had almost forgotten about, Gabrielle’s daughter, Bridgette, had been in touch with Christy and was now in Birmingham searching for her family, he was totally staggered. He unfolded Bridgette’s letter and read that too.
‘What is it?’ Aggie said. She had seen the frown puckering Tom’s brow.
‘It’s nothing upsetting really,’ Tom told his sister. ‘Just surprising. Our youngest brother, Finn, was billeted for a time in a small town in Northern France after he joined the army. And there he sowed his wild oats a little too well and in 1916 was married to a French girl called Gabrielle Jobert, who was expecting his baby.’
‘Did you know all about it?’
‘Well, yes, but not for years afterwards. Finn enlisted with a childhood friend called Christy Byrne, and he told me of the great passion between Finn and Gabrielle.’ He went on to tell Aggie and Paul everything Christy had told him of Finn’s love affair, which had culminated in his hasty marriage. ‘Christy wrote to Gabrielle when he arrived home, telling her of Finn’s death,’ Tom said. ‘And later Gabrielle had a daughter she called Bridgette, after our mother.’
‘He never even got to see her,’ Aggie said. ‘How very sad. But why didn’t this Christy also write to Mammy and Daddy and tell them about Gabrielle and their grandchild?’
‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘it would have been difficult because Finn had never told our parents about his sexual exploits. He told me and Joe, boasted of it, and told Nuala a fair bit too. But all he wrote to my parents was that he was going to Mass every Sunday, and going to confession and taking Communion on a regular basis and was as well and happy as could be expected in the circumstances. That is really all they wanted to know.’
‘So it would have been a shock to them, d’you mean?’ Paul said. ‘Like they might not have believed it?’
‘There’s that, of course,’ Tom said. ‘But there was a bit more to it than that.’ And he went on to tell them of Finn’s giving the wrong date of birth to put on the certificate and why he had done it. ‘My parents would know, of course, if they had wind of it,’ he added, ‘and could possibly declare the marriage null and void because their permission hadn’t been sought.’
‘From what I remember of her, Mammy would have done that,’ Aggie said. ‘Especially if she thought some young brazen French girl had snared her son.’
‘Your memory serves you well,’ Tom said. ‘France, like Ireland, is a Catholic country where I should imagine having a child without a husband is the greatest sin in the world. Anyway, Christy and Gabrielle decided to leave things as they were and say nothing.’
‘So when were you told?’ Paul asked.
‘Oh, years later,’ Tom said. ‘After Mammy died.’
‘Did you not think to get in touch then?’
‘Yes, I thought of it,’ Tom said. ‘But the country was at war, and France was occupied. Then we thought Gabrielle, who Christy claimed was very beautiful, had probably married again and maybe no one had told the child about her real father, especially if Gabrielle had other children. Now we know this to be true, for Bridgette wrote to Nellie McEvoy that her mother only told her the truth when she was terminally ill and Bridgette was nursing her. On her death bed her mother made Bridgette promise to contact us. She is a widow with a small son that she has called Finn and she wants him to know his Irish relatives.’
‘Seems reasonable.’ Paul said. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Here,’ Tom said. ‘In Erdington, according to her address.’
‘So how did she get in touch with Nellie at the post office in Buncrana?’
‘Must have been Christy advised her,’ Tom said. ‘She wrote to see if someone there had our addresses and of course Nellie has them all, but didn’t want to send them off to a perfect stranger.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Paul asked.
‘Well, contact her, of course,’ Tom said. ‘She’s as much my niece as Molly is. But I thought maybe I should at least warn the others before I do that because it will be a shock to them all. After I have eaten I will pop along to see Joe and we will go round to Molly’s.
‘Me too,’ Aggie decided.
‘You’re right,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll all go.’
‘Where do the others live?’ Bridgette said as they were making their way back to Molly’s house.
‘Oh, no one lives far away,’ Molly said. ‘My house backs onto Pype Hayes Park, and if you walk diagonally down as far as the stream and come out of that gate you are in Sutto
n Coldfield and in a district of it called Walmley. They all live there.’
‘I was surprised to hear that Tom had given up the farm and moved here,’ Bridgette said. ‘My father always told my mother that he was a born farmer.’
‘I asked him that when he suggested coming here first,’ said Molly. ‘I thought he might regret it, but he said that he never had a say in whether he wanted to be a farmer. He sort of fell into it because he was the eldest and would inherit. Lonely existence, though, and he thought a pointless one: he would be killing himself with the work and at the end of it there would be no one to leave it to. He had a point because he never married and Joe didn’t want it.’
‘My mother said that Finn talked about the family all the time,’ Bridgette said. ‘He always said that Joe wanted to see beyond Buncrana and he would if he plucked up enough courage.’
‘Well, he did,’ Molly said. ‘He went to New York in 1921, loved the life there and ended up marrying the boss’s daughter, Gloria. They had everything—a fine house and thriving factory—but then came something called the Wall Street Crash. I don’t understand it all but it’s something to do with stocks and shares and the price of them goes up and down. Joe said it was a bit of a gamble and he had nothing to do with it. But his father-in-law had gambled thousands using the house and factory as collateral, and when the prices of shares dropped so low they were worthless he realised they had lost everything. In fact it was so bad, his father-in-law shot himself.’
Bridgette gave a gasp of shock. ‘What did they do?’
‘It was a terrible time,’ Molly said. She told Bridgette of Joe and Gloria’s slide into real and abject poverty, and how they had nearly starved to death in the tenements of New York, and when Ben was born it was even worse.
‘It was for Ben’s sake that they came to London before the war, but when the war began Joe became a volunteer fireman until he was badly injured in 1942.’
‘Is he all right now?’
‘Yes, he’s fine,’ Molly said. ‘He went back to Buncrana to recover properly when the hospital was finished with him, because their flat had been destroyed by then and Gloria and Ben had been living in a church hall.’
‘Did he mind going back?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Molly said. ‘By all accounts, it was Gloria that minded. Tom always said that none of us realised just how much.’
‘Why?’ Bridgette asked. ‘What did she do?’
‘I’ll fill you in later,’ Molly said. ‘We’re here now and if I’m not careful Mark and Kevin will be in on top of us and the dinner won’t even have been started.’
However, the meal was well on its way by the time Mark put in an appearance. When Bridgette saw Nuala’s eyes light up as she caught sight of her father she felt sorry for her son who would grow up without one. Then Nuala launched herself across the room shouting ‘Dadeee’ as loud as she could. Mark caught up his young daughter, and even while he lifted her in his arms and planted a kiss on her cheek, he was looking quizzically at Bridgette and her son, who was playing on the floor.
Molly caught the look and said, ‘Save the questions until Kevin is in and we are sitting around the table to save me repeating myself. But this is Bridgette Laurent and her son, Finn. Bridgette, this is my husband, Mark.’
Mark’s eyebrows rose, but his smile was genuine and he shifted Nuala to his left hip and approached Bridgette with his hand outstretched. ‘I suppose all will be explained in due course,’ he said, with a smile that made his dark brown eyes twinkle. ‘Till then, Bridgette Laurent, I bid you welcome.’
The handshake was as firm as Bridgette expected it to be and Mark’s face was open and honest. She decided that she liked her cousin Molly’s husband. ‘It’s quite a story,’ she smiled back
‘And one I will look forward to hearing,’ Mark said.
Bridgette wasn’t able to make a reply for at that moment a young boy came through the door and immediately Nuala was clamouring to be let down. She ran to the lad, whom Molly introduced as her brother, Kevin. He too lifted Nuala into his arms while Molly introduced Bridgette. He shook hands with Bridgette and then squatted down by Finn. ‘And who’s this?’ he said, glancing up at Bridgette as he built a big tower of bricks.
‘Finn,’ said Bridgette. ‘He was called after my father, who was a British soldier.’
‘Was he?’ Kevin said. ‘Then what—’
‘Sit up to the table, Kevin, and we’ll tell you everything,’ Molly said. When everyone was seated she placed a large casserole on a mat on the table, saying as she did so, ‘Now, I would like to say that this is beef casserole, but this is austere postwar Britain, so it has plenty of vegetables, with the meat just waved over it.’
‘It’s what I am used to,’ Bridgette said. ‘During the occupation in France it was far worse, because a lot of the food was sent to Germany. Most people got used to feeling hungry.’
‘We didn’t go hungry exactly,’ Molly said. ‘We were more bored.’
‘I’ll say,’ Kevin said with feeling. ‘It was carrots and swede nearly every day. And it wasn’t like served with the meal. It was the meal.’
There was laughter around the table. ‘Yes, Kevin’s not far wrong there,’ Molly said. ‘We had many meals that had no meat in it at all.’
‘Yeah, like Woolton Pie,’ Kevin said. ‘That was just disgusting.’
Molly, seeing Bridgette’s confused look, explained, ‘The Minister for Food, Lord Woolton, devised this pie and it was considered a patriotic thing to eat it. All that was in it was potatoes, swede, carrots, onions, Marmite and oatmeal.’
‘And even the crust wasn’t crust,’ Kevin complained. ‘It was like a lump of dough on top.’
‘Well, it was made with only flour and lard.’
‘It was horrible.’
‘It was,’ Molly agreed, and added sarcastically, ‘and I’m sure that Lord Woolton is such an honourable man that he has it served up to him morning, noon and night.’
There were gales of laughter around the table and Bridgette realised what a happy family they were and how easy they were with one another. She wanted herself and her son to be a part of this family more than anything else in the world, and so, at Molly’s invitation, she began to tell them her story.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When they had finished the meal, Kevin was only too ready to go to tell Ada what had happened to Bridgette. He had been fascinated by the story of Finn and Bridgette’s mother, Gabrielle, and as he got to his feet he said, ‘You know what? I thought when Mum and Dad died, there was just me and Molly and our granddad. Now we have relations coming out of the woodwork.’
‘Are you complaining about that then?’ Molly asked.
‘No.’ Kevin had a grin on his face. ‘I ain’t complaining. I think it’s great.’
‘So do I,’ Bridgette said. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I didn’t think that I had that many relations either.’
‘Well, I’m off to fetch some more,’ said Mark, as Kevin left and he slipped on his coat, but when he opened the door, he saw the rest of the Sullivans, the very ones he intended seeing, coming down the road.
‘Are you on your way out, Mark?’ Tom asked when they arrived at the door. ‘Can you wait on a moment? I have something to tell you.’
‘Molly has something to tell you too,’ said Mark, throwing open the door. ‘Come in. She has someone she’s dying for you to meet.’
Intrigued, led by Tom they went into the living room. Bridgette was standing with Finn in her arms, but before any of them were able to say anything Molly came through from the kitchen with cups of tea, saying as she did so. ‘Sorry it’s got to be tea. The only coffee we can get at the moment is not coffee at all. Aunt Isobel says it’s made with chicory and it’s liquid and pre-sweetened, not very nice at all really.’
Then she caught sight of her them all standing there and exclaimed, ‘What are you all doing here?’
‘We have come to see you to tell you some news, but unless
I am very much mistaken, you already know it,’ Tom smiled.
‘Probably,’ Molly answered with a grin. She put the cups down on the coffee table and drew Bridgette forward. ‘Uncle Tom,’ she said, ‘this is my cousin Bridgette Laurent, née Sullivan, and her son, Finn.’
Tom thought of his young brother cut down before he had even cast his eyes on his own child and he knew Bridgette to be his because she had Finn’s mouth and his dark amber eyes. He stepped forward and, mindful of the child, put his arms around her. ‘You’re both welcome, my dear, a thousand times welcome,’ he said in a voice husky with emotion. ‘I am your uncle Tom, or just Tom, as you prefer.’
It was such a genuine welcome, and Bridgette had the strangest feeling that she had come home. Then Tom lifted the baby from her arms and said, ‘And hallo to you, young fellow-me-lad.’ He was rewarded by a beaming grin. ‘You have a grand boy there,’ Tom said, handing the baby back to Bridgette. ‘And Finn is a fine name for him.’
‘Uncle Tom, you are taking this all in your stride,’ Molly said. ‘You are not even the tiniest bit surprised.’
‘Ah. But you see I knew about the existence of Bridgette,’ Tom said. He went on to tell Molly all that he had told the others. ‘Christy Byrne told me all this, but not until Mammy died,’ Tom said. ‘By then, though, so many years had passed we thought it better to say nothing. Finn’s child, who we knew was a girl and called Bridgette, would be fully grown and maybe married with other children and oblivious of her parentage. Anyway, by then the war was on and France was occupied. The first I heard of Bridgette afterwards was from a letter that she sent to Nellie McEvoy at the post office in Buncrana, and she forwarded it to me.’
‘How on earth did you know about Nellie?’ Molly asked Bridgette in surprise.
‘I didn’t,’ Bridgette said. ‘I wrote to Christy Byrne because it was the only full address I had. He’d written to tell Maman of my father’s death when he realised that she hadn’t been told officially. When my mother made me promise on her death bed that I would search out the family, I thought of Christy straightaway. He said that the people at the post office might have an actual address for you all because you had been such good friends.’