“How is he?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know, son, I don’t know,” Connie answered the boy. She was numb. The boy placed his hand upon hers and began to recite aloud the Lord’s Prayer. Connie neither felt his hand nor heard his words. When he finished the prayer, the boy removed a gold chain and crucifix from about his neck. He tried to put this into Connie’s hand. Her hand would not grasp it, just as her mind could not grasp the horror of the past twelve hours. So the boy wrapped the chain around her thumb.
“Missus, please tell your husband that if I can ever do anything for him he need just ask.” Connie did not respond. The boy stroked her hand and sat quietly beside Connie and waited. He saw the newspaper lying on the table and turned it toward himself. He read only the headline.
“Good God, eighteen dead.” The boy sighed. The waiting-room door opened. It was about to be nineteen. Connie collapsed.
Michael O’Malley left the hospital in a teary daze and walked and walked. And walked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The year that followed her father’s death was a slow one for young Agnes. The first couple of weeks following the funeral were not too bad. There had been lots of callers to the flat, and the entire neighborhood had expressed its sympathy to the Reddin family. Then, one day, everybody just stopped calling. As is life, they all went back to what they had been doing, and within months the riot and, with it, the death of Bosco Reddin were virtually forgotten.
Things became decidedly uncomfortable for Geoffrey Parker-Willis, so within months of the “Misery Hill Massacre” the foundry had been sold to a Liverpool shipbuilding company, and the entire Parker-Willis family had immigrated to South Africa. Not until they were well gone did Constance tell Agnes who her grandparents had been. It was a dreadful shock for the young girl. She had always believed that she had no grandparents on her mother’s side. Killed in the Great War or something, her mother had said. Now, to be told that they had lived within miles of her was one shock; to discover not only that she did have a grandfather but that he had killed her father, left the child numbed and confused. Constance had taken it all dreadfully. She now sat for long periods in silence. She lost so much weight that her skin seemed just to hang from her bones. She also lost interest completely in her daughters. So Agnes became head of the house, a job she didn’t want. The last thing Constance did for either of her girls was to cut the train of her wedding dress for the final time to make Dolly’s Communion dress. Feeling the fabric of the dress she wore for the man she so deeply loved, broke her heart. She cried over every stitch, but, still, when she had finished it Dolly’s dress was beautiful. The only good thing for Agnes about this year was that it was her last one in school. She thought June 29 would never arrive, but it did.
As Agnes had expected, Marion was not in class for the final day of school. Sister Benedict was just as happy as Marion was that Marion wasn’t there. The nun had prepared her “into the big bad world” speech but unfortunately never got to deliver it. As it transpired, the final day of school for the rest of the girls in the sixth class was to end early when the school fire alarm went off. It was a young nun, Sister Loretta, that had seen the smoke billowing from the corner of the school shed. All of the children were evacuated from the building, and the fire truck was there within minutes. It turned out to be just a small fire, a bundle of books, the shed door, and the remains of a battered leather satchel. The children crowded around the shed to get a look, but Agnes instead scanned the streets surrounding the school until she saw her. Marion was standing half hidden in a doorway. Agnes waved to her and Marion waved back and with a huge smile Marion blew a kiss to the school and ran off up the street.
For most of the girls in that class of 1947, the last day of school that year was to be their last day of all schooling. Needless to say, this would be a sure thing for Marion Delany and Agnes Reddin. Also, for the first time Agnes would have no summer holidays for now it was time to get a job. Her mother was just barely scraping by on the seven-shilling pension she was getting from the State, so now Agnes could make a contribution. She looked forward to it. She spent her first couple of weeks knocking on the doors of every place of employment near the Jarro, but to no avail. Each afternoon she would finish her day in Moore Street, helping Marion pack away the Delany stall. Mrs. Delany would wrap up some potatoes or whatever vegetables were left over for Agnes to bring home to her mother and younger sister.
Each day Agnes helped out at the stall, she was being watched closely. Across from the Delany stall was the stall of Nellie Nugent. Nellie usually said nothing but watched everything. And she was watching Agnes Reddin.
It was about this time that Agnes began to see a change in her mother. Small things. Like calling Dolly Agnes or vice versa. One or two mornings, Agnes found a packed lunch for her father. This itself was strange enough to a thirteen-year-old girl, but even more strange and a little scary was that when she would bring it to her mother’s attention her mother denied knowing where it had come from or what it was. If this was not enough for Agnes to deal with, Dolly was beginning to get completely out of control. With no school for the next eleven weeks, Dolly had taken to vanishing each morning and not returning until dusk, which at this time of the year was later and later each evening. Another thing, Dolly never seemed to be hungry, unlike Agnes, who couldn’t wait to tuck into the shepherd’s pie or stew cooked up for the “tea,” as the evening meal is known to all Dubliners.
All was revealed one afternoon by Marion, albeit a bit too late. Agnes was helping Marion to dismantle the stall when, out of the blue, Marion brought up Dolly.
“You’d want to keep an eye on your sister, Agnes,” Marion said as they were working away.
“What do you mean?” Agnes had been on her knees rolling up the canvas. She now stopped and stood. Marion was stacking boxes, and she continued stacking as she spoke.
“Dolly was up outside the pub last night selling leather belts, so my mammy says.”
“Selling belts? For who?”
“For herself.”
“Don’t be stupid, Marion. Where would Dolly get leather belts?” Agnes was rooted to the spot by a mixture of puzzlement and shock.
“She steals them, Agnes,” Marion revealed. Now the puzzlement was gone but not the shock. Agnes couldn’t speak. Marion stopped stacking boxes. “There’s a gang of them.” She began to rhyme off the names, counting them on her fingers. “Sadie Scully, Maggie O’Hare, Nuala Wade, and a few others. They go shoplifting during the day, and then they sell the stuff outside the pubs at night.” Once this was said, Marion went straight back to work.
Agnes immediately became defensive. “Shoplifting? Shoplifting? It’s that Sadie Scully one. I bet she put Dolly up to it. Dolly would never do anything like that unless she was being led to it.” Marion went to answer this but then thought better of it. Agnes saw her hesitation and goaded her. “What? Marion, come on, what?” Agnes had her hands on her hips now. Marion stacked the last box, and as she was wiping her hands in her apron she said, “Agnes, they call the gang ‘Dolly’s Mixtures.’ Do you think Sadie came up with that too?”
Agnes turned on her heel.
“Aggie, wait,” Marion called after her, but she didn’t look back.
As Agnes rounded a corner into her street it was like a nightmare. She was already upset and worried about what Marion had said, but her stomach now dropped to her toes and the blood drained from her body. She froze and threw up with fright. The police car was parked right outside her building. A small crowd had gathered around it, and as Agnes got closer she knew the police car was for Dolly. One kid saw Agnes arrive and sang at her: “Your sister’s going to prison, your sister’s going to prison. Ha. Ha. Ha.”
Agnes took the steps up to her flat two at a time. She didn’t realize as she climbed that she was running into the most bizarre twist in her life. Things would never be the same again.
“Who’s this, now? Is this one of the other girls? Tell me, you little
brat.” the policeman barked at Dolly in a thick country accent when Agnes entered the room. Dolly was sitting on one of the fire-side chairs in a fetal position. Her eyes were red raw from crying, her arms red from slaps. The huge policeman sat on the other fire-side chair. Agnes’ mother, Connie, was sitting at the table. Both Connie and the policeman had cups of tea, and Agnes was shocked when her mother, instead of intervening on her behalf, said, “Dolly, answer the policeman—is this one of the other girls?”
“No, that’s my sister,” Dolly answered.
Agnes walked slowly toward her mother. “Mammy? Are you all right, Mammy?” Agnes stood in front of her mother.
“Is it, missus? Is that your daughter?” the policeman asked. He spoke to Connie in a little more civil tone.
“Yes, it is indeed, and this is also my daughter Agnes,” Connie replied.
“Mammy, what’s going on?” Agnes asked, confused.
“It’s all right, dear, sit down, everything is going to be all right, we’ll sort this out,” Connie answered Agnes in a very kind voice.
“But, Mammy . . .” Agnes began, but was cut off by the policeman. “Do what your mother tells you, yeh little bitch, or you’ll get a clout from me,” he barked. Agnes sat. For one half-hour they all sat there in silence. Had Dolly not let out a little sob and whimper, they would probably still be sitting there now.
“Oh, go on, cry now, you little pup, ya,” the policeman broke the silence in response to Dolly’s cry. That’s when Connie spoke, and for Agnes the world changed.
“Don’t worry, Garda, my husband will straighten all this out when he gets in from work.” Slowly the two daughters looked over toward their mother in simultaneous disbelief. “I used to have a maid, you know,” Connie said to the officer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It must have been pity. For, once the policeman was told that Connie’s husband would not be home that afternoon or indeed any other afternoon, his whole manner and demeanor changed. He sent for an ambulance for Agnes’ mother, and once Connie was admitted to the Mater Hospital he even drove the two girls home. On the way, of course, he gave Dolly a stern lecture on the evils of crime and warned her that she was so close to being sent to a home for “bad” girls. This home for bad girls, from his description, was two bus stops past hell. Anyhow, Dolly swore on her father’s grave that she would never get in trouble again, and when the policeman was gone, Agnes was still in too much shock and fear even to talk to Dolly. They both fell asleep in the armchairs by the fire.
The next morning, Agnes awoke to find herself the woman of the house. At thirteen years of age, she had a home to run and a young child to rear. The day went downhill from there, for by lunchtime the hospital had discharged Connie with a handful of sedatives, realizing that they could medically do no more. Now Agnes was to be virtually a mother of two. She did not make it down to Moore Street that day, and Marion, mistakenly thinking that she and Agnes had fallen out, didn’t call until the next day. On seeing Marion, Agnes was delighted. She threw her arms around her and hugged her tightly. For the first time in two days, Agnes felt like she was not alone.
Over the next few days, Connie began to improve some, and Agnes took to the job-search trail yet again. Day after day she returned unhappily without a job, but each day found her mother getting better and better. Until, after two weeks, it was as if the incident had never happened. It was a temporary respite, but still a welcome one. After four weeks and still no job, Agnes was really beginning to despair.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get a job,” she told Marion one day as both of them sat by the stall in Moore Street.
“I know where there’s a job,” Marion announced very simply.
“What?” Agnes thought she had misheard.
“I said I know where you can get a job.”
“Where?”
“Here in Moore Street, working on a stall.” Marion smiled and crossed her arms. Agnes smiled right back at her.
“Me? Me working on a stall? I couldn’t sell,” Agnes dismissed herself straight away.
“You wouldn’t have to sell; well, not at first anyway. At first you just help out, build the stall in the mornings, collect stuff from the markets, clean the fruit, and at nighttime take the stall down. It’s simple.”
Agnes thought about it for a moment, working in Moore Street. She looked up and down this wonderfully colorful, musical street that already had been so much part of her childhood.
“But, Marion, your mother isn’t busy enough to employ you and me, and she’s hardly going to sack you.” Even as she was speaking these words, Agnes could see an impish little look in Marion’s eyes.
“It is for your mother, isn’t it?” Agnes asked. Marion shook her head.
“Not your mother?” Marion shook her head again. “Then who?”
“Nellie Nugent,” Marion announced. Agnes’ eyes widened, her mouth opened wide, and her jaw dropped. She spun her head around to look across the street at the same Nellie Nugent.
“Nellie Nugent. Nellie Nugent with a face that could turn the tides? Nellie Nugent with an arse so big you could park your bicycle in the crack of it? Nellie Nugent with a face like a cow licking piss off a nettle?”
Marion began to giggle and laugh, for it was indeed her own descriptions of Nellie Nugent that Agnes was now reciting back to her. “Yes,” she cried through the laughter. When Marion eventually stopped laughing and gathered herself, she went on to explain. “I’m sorry, Agnes, it’s just that she was asking my mother who you were. You know, she says to me mam, ‘Who’s that girl that hangs around your stall all day, and has she nothing better to be doing?’ Mammy just told her that you came here every day after you were out looking for work. So you know Nellie, she said to me mammy, ‘If she wants work I’ll give her work, I’ll give her plenty of work.’ I didn’t think it would be fair not to mention it to you.” Again Marion burst into laughter, and this time so did Agnes. Nellie Nugent looked across the street over her shoulder with that scowl on her face, and the two girls stopped laughing abruptly.
“Careful,” Marion said through her teeth. “Me mother said that she could hear a five-pound note dropping at five hundred paces.” And the two girls howled with laughter again and now had to hide behind the stall. As they crouched there, Marion became a little more serious. “Agnes, stalls here are handed down from mother to daughter. We just don’t get new people in here. You mightn’t think it, but it’s a great honor to be asked, if she really is asking, that is.”
Whether Nellie Nugent’s offer of a job was genuine or not, Agnes didn’t have time to think about it. For the very next day she was offered her first position. Agnes had called into Walker’s Rainwear Limited, a huge sewing factory that employs nearly five hundred girls. Lo and behold, within thirty minutes of filling out her name and address on an application form, she was hired, and began work the next day, making buttonholes.
Walker’s Rainwear Limited had been making gabardine rainwear and trench coats for fifteen years. They depended heavily on orders from the European mainland countries, whose military contracts kept the place going. Now they had expanded. In America the trench coat was becoming all the rage for the man in the street. Walker’s was sending them over there by the boatload. The key to the success of the company was, of course, the young girls that worked for very little money. The rag trade at this time was exploitive everywhere, and if Walker’s had a good side it would be fair to say that it was a little less exploitive than some. Every girl that had completed her three months’ probation was given a free trench coat. The company was unionized. The girls had regular tea breaks, and the working week was only forty-five hours. Every new girl started on the buttonholer, then moved to the flat machines, then to the overlocker. The process of moving as far as the overlocker took about a year. Not for Agnes. She proved to be really adept with the machines and was overlocking by the time she received her free coat. Her wages of one pound eighteen shillings and six-pence was ove
r five times her mother’s widow’s pension. So not only did life improve at home, Agnes could even spend a little on herself. After a hard week’s work, Agnes’ treat was to take Marion to the Metropole Cinema on Friday night. There they would sit licking their Orange Maid ice pops, and chewing away on a bar of Cleeves toffee. The two girls were enthralled by the movies, every movie—although they did have a penchant for Boris Karloff horrors. It was during the interval at one of these that Agnes was fired by an idea that she had not had since the night her father died. The usual adverts were running when suddenly the screen was filled with a scene of a forest in the fall. Technicolor at its best. The picture took Agnes’ breath away. Brown, gold, red, orange, green, and blue. It was stunning. Then came the smiling faces of happy people, big cars, fashionable clothes. And the voice-over. “Your new life awaits you in beautiful Canada.” Canada! Agnes’ eyes opened wide.
Marion frowned. “Canada? Where’s that?” she asked Agnes.
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