“Beside Greenland,” Agnes answered without taking her eyes from the screen.
Marion shrugged. “I’m no fuckin’ wiser now.” She went back to licking her lolly.
Agnes watched and listened. “Call in and talk to us at the Canadian Embassy and soon you too could be on your way to the most beautiful country in the British Empire. Assisted passage is only twenty pounds. We need people just like you.” And then it was gone. The picture, but not the idea.
From the public phone outside the canteen in Walker’s, Agnes made the call the following Monday. The girl in the Canadian Embassy sounded really nice. She told Agnes that there were plenty of jobs available in Canada and described how beautiful Toronto, her own home, was. She took Agnes’ address and told her the application for assisted passage would arrive by post within days. She didn’t, however, ask Agnes her age. To Agnes’ delight, the letter arrived from the Canadian Embassy two days later. She did not open it until that night. Her mother was asleep, and Dolly, back to her wayward ways, had still not arrived home. The flat was quiet, and she spread the papers over the table. There was lots of information, but only one form to fill out, Agnes was glad of that. She began answering the questions, filling in the answers as neatly as she could, in pencil. It took her over an hour to finish. She read it over and over again, and when she was satisfied she had done her best, she sealed the prepaid envelope and left the flat to post it straight away. As Agnes was coming down the stairs she could hear the thud of heavy feet coming up. On the next landing she met the policeman.
“Do you live here, in this building?” the policeman asked her.
“Yes,” she said. And she knew.
“Do you know the Reddins?” he asked.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Agnes’ heart was breaking. Marion squeezed her hand. Dolly looked tiny, standing there before the judge, flanked by two huge policemen. The arresting officer gave his account of the burglary. He was convinced, he said, that there were at least three young wans involved. However, the one he caught, Dolly, refused to give any other names. Dolly looked over her shoulder at her sister. Both were close to tears, and yet they smiled at each other. The judge, a severe-looking woman with her glasses halfway down her nose, stared at the child. She tut-tutted and looked around the room.
“Is the child’s father here?” she asked the room.
“No, he’s dead.” It was Agnes that spoke. The judge looked at her.
“And who might you be, young lady?” she asked.
“I’m her sister.” Agnes said this with pride.
“And I’m her friend,” said Marion.
“Shut up, Marion,” Agnes said from the corner of her mouth.
“Okay,” Marion said back.
“Is your mother here, then?” The judge was moving swiftly along. There were a lot more children to be judged today.
“No. Me mammy couldn’t come, she’s sick,” Agnes lied. She had not told her mother, for fear that it would kill her.
“What am I to do with you, little girl? Eh, what am I to do?” The judge waited for Dolly to reply. Dolly said nothing.
“Any previous?” the judge asked the policeman. He shook his head. “All right, three years’ probation.” She looked at Dolly. “Do you understand what that means?”
“No, ma’am,” Dolly answered softly.
“If I see you here again within the next three years, I will send you to a place so far away that nobody will hear you scream. And you will scream!”
Outside the court, Dolly wrapped her arms around her sister. They cried loudly.
“Don’t you ever bring me here again, do you hear me, Dolly Reddin!” Agnes sobbed.
“I won’t, Aggie, I’m sorry. I swear I won’t.” Dolly held on to her sister for dear life. The three walked home from the court. Well, Agnes and Dolly were going home, but Marion was going to work, so the girls walked her to Moore Street on their way home. When they got to the stall, Mrs. Delany was livid.
“Where were you?” she screamed at Marion. Marion was about to tell her, then caught the worried look on Agnes’ face.
“Nowhere,” she answered.
“Well, I had to build this stall meself. I had to rack it out meself. What the fuck do you think you’re at? I got no breakfast, no break, I haven’t even had time to scratch me arse!” She caught Marion with a slap on the back of the head.
“I’m sorry,” Marion said, close to tears. Her mother’s slap had hurt.
“Sorry, is it? Oh, I feel much better now. Sure the hunger’s gone now. I’ll give you fuckin’ sorry, miss.” She swung again but Marion moved away from the slap this time. Agnes and Dolly moved even farther away. Suddenly Marion let fly.
“Well, now you know how hard I have to work. I’ve been building that stall since I was seven, and not once did you say thanks, not once,” she yelled at her mother. Mrs. Delany went purple with rage. She lunged at Marion, but Marion began to run around the stall. Her mother gave chase, screaming: “Stand still till I hit yeh, yeh bloody bitch.” Marion took off down the street. Her mother wasn’t going that far. She stopped, breathless.
“Yeh little wagon!” she roared. “Don’t come back!” Mrs. Delany turned and saw some other dealers and customers looking at her. “What are youse fuckin’ lookin’ at?” she screamed at them. They went back to their business.
Agnes took Dolly by the hand. “Come on, let’s find her,” she said, and the two ran after Marion.
Marion was not the least bit contrite. “She’s a lazy old bitch.” She was angry.
“Maybe she’s just in bad humor?” Agnes offered.
“Ah, she’s always in bad humor. She doesn’t even pay me. I have to rob money when she’s not looking.” Marion was walking behind Agnes and Dolly.
“What will you do?” Agnes asked.
“I dunno.” Marion hung her head. “Can I sleep in your flat, Agnes? Will you ask your mammy?”
“I don’t have to ask. Come on, let’s go home.” The three walked side by side, all holding hands. Such a grown-up day for these three children.
That night, Marion shook Agnes awake. Agnes looked at her in wonderment for a moment. She had forgotten Marion was staying there.
“What’s wrong, Marion?” Agnes wiped the sleep from her eyes. Marion, on the other hand, looked wide awake.
“I have an idea.” Marion was excited.
“Tell me in the morning.” Agnes lay back down.
“No. Listen,” Marion insisted.
“Go on, then, what is it?” Agnes agreed to listen, but she was not rising again.
“I’ll work with you.”
“What?”
“In the sewing factory, I’ll get a job there. We’ll be together every day. What do you think?” Marion had it all figured out.
“Okay. I’ll ask in the morning,” Agnes said sleepily. She pulled the blanket over herself and went back to sleep. Marion lay awake, smiling.
Marion lasted just one day in the sewing factory. She did not like the work. She did not like being cooped up in the sweaty building. She called it school with sewing machines. She did not like the other girls. From the moment she arrived with Agnes that morning, some of the other girls were already eyeing her suspiciously. At the timekeeper’s office, Marion was stopped and asked to produce her birth certificate. The timekeeper read over the certificate and eyed Marion up and down.
“So this is really your certificate?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” Marion answered sternly; she did not like authority at all.
“Well, you don’t look fifteen.” The man’s eyes narrowed as he spoke.
“And you don’t look like an arsehole, so who can tell?” Marion answered.
“Don’t cheek me, you little bitch,” the man snapped. He was angry now. Agnes intervened.
“She’s been passed by Personnel, mister.”
The man handed Marion back her birth certificate and opened the staff book. He ran his finger down the names until he found Mari
on’s. From a drawer he took out a fresh beige clock-in card and wrote Marion’s name on the top. Then he pushed the card through the tiny window of his office. Through this little window he shouted, “Your staff number is 2185; remember that,” he growled.
“I’ll have it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids,” Marion quipped as Agnes was dragging her away. Agnes showed Marion how to go about clocking in her card and then took her to the flat-machine room. As Marion entered the room, she gasped. “Jesus Christ.”
It was a big room and it was crammed with rows upon rows of sewing machines. More than one hundred in all. Agnes took Marion to the supervisor, Mrs. Kelly, introduced them to each other, and then left Marion with the neatly dressed middle-aged woman. When Mrs. Kelly had gone over the rules with Marion (two toilet visits per day, two tea breaks, etc.), she took Marion to a machine.
It was a buttonholer, the machine everybody learned on. Mrs. Kelly sat at the machine and, with Marion looking on, began to teach her how to cut buttonholes, guiding the fabric carefully while at the same time pushing the pedal with both feet to keep the mechanics of the machine turning. Marion was a quick student, and in no time at all Mrs. Kelly had her sit down to use the machine herself. Before going back to her desk, at the top of the room, Mrs. Kelly gave Marion a sheaf of fabric squares and left the young girl there, practicing alone. There was enough space on each square for ten buttonholes. While Marion practiced away, the rhythm of a production line echoed around the rest of the room. Flat machines, overlockers, and cutters were running at full speed. The girls were all singing aloud to the songs that were playing at full volume over the Tannoy.
By the time the siren went off to signal the first tea break, Marion had made five hundred buttonholes and was bored stiff. Agnes came to find Marion and brought her to the canteen, where they lined up for a cup of tea. The tea break was allowed just fifteen minutes, and the two girls spent ten of these waiting in line. They used the remaining five minutes to drink the tea and have a quick smoke. By then the siren had sounded again. As it did, the entire room stood en masse and began to return to work. As the two girls were leaving the canteen, Marion caught Agnes by the arm.
“Aggie, I’m sorry, but I hate this place,” she said apologetically.
“Give it a chance, Marion. You will like it, but you have to give it a chance,” Agnes assured her.
“I won’t, Agnes . . . ever,” Marion said. Too late, Agnes was already gone.
Marion went back to her machine. Mrs. Kelly had left another bale of off-cuts for Marion to practice on, and Marion carried on. The lunch siren came and went, and Marion was no happier. After lunch Mrs. Kelly moved Marion to a different machine, an overlocker. Again Marion grasped the technique very quickly and was shortly running the machine at full speed and very bored. By now the smell of the machine oil mixed with the smell of the fabrics was beginning to sicken Marion. Her stomach turned and she had a headache. She told this to the girl next to her, and the girl suggested that Marion tell Mrs. Kelly.
Eileen Kelly had been employed in the rag trade for many years. She had been a good cutter, and an excellent machinist. But it was when she was promoted to supervisor that Eileen really blossomed. She was well organized and very matronly with the girls, and they liked her for that. Girls could begin working in the sewing factory at thirteen or fourteen years, and many, many did. With the employing of immature young girls came many problems, physical and psychological. It was difficult, for instance, for a supervisor to set accurate targets, as at that age consistency was virtually nonexistent. Girls of this age often saw working as a form of play and had to be controlled, but not too sternly. On the physical side, one of the main problems that faced Eileen Kelly was that a lot of her girls were in the early stages of their first menstruation, or in some cases had not begun to menstruate at all. And so they would arrive at Eileen’s desk frightened, bewildered, and confused. But Eileen was ready for every event. In the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk she kept a huge stock of sanitary towels and a jumbo box of aspirins. When a young girl would arrive at her desk pale and teary-eyed saying something like, “Mrs. Kelly, I don’t feel well,” Eileen would simply nod her head, tell the girl it was all right, dip her hand into the drawer of her desk, take out two aspirins, wrap them in a sanitary towel, hand them to the girl, and point to the ladies’.
This is exactly what she did when Marion arrived at her desk and told her that her stomach was sick and she had a headache. She smiled knowingly at Marion and handed her her little bundle. And so it was that Marion, who had yet to menstruate, was standing in the ladies’ toilet completely confused, holding two aspirins in one hand and what resembled a white hammock in the other. Five minutes later, when Marion came out of the ladies’ toilet, she passed by Mrs. Kelly’s desk. As she passed, she said a mannerly “Thank you, Mrs. Kelly, I feel a bit better now.” Without even looking up, Mrs. Kelly waved her hand and said, “Don’t mention it, darling.” Marion returned to her machine and began overlocking again. For any of the girls in the large room to get to the ladies’ toilet, they had to pass by the row of machines at which Marion was sitting. Marion barely noticed the first two or three girls that went past her, tittering. But soon the girls were heading for the toilet in fours and fives, and the tittering had been replaced by unabashed laughter.
In the toilet, Marion had taken a paper cup and swallowed the two aspirins with a drop of water. However, the miniature white hammock had completely confused her. So she put her mind to work. She ran the cold tap and gently lowered the hammock into the cool water and squeezed it damp. She then put the cloth across her forehead, looping it around both ears. By the time Mrs. Kelly came down to see what all the laughter was about, Agnes had also arrived and saw her best friend sitting at the overlocker machine looking like a racehorse. Agnes virtually ran to Marion’s side, whipped off the sanitary towel, and threw it away. She took Marion by the hand and Marion stood. Agnes turned to the gathering mass of girls. “You shower of bitches.”
“What’s wrong?” Marion asked. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Marion. Come on, we’re leaving.”
Agnes took Marion by the hand and burst through the gang of laughing girls. The rag trade had seen the last of Reddin and Delany.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The banging on the door woke everybody up. By the time Agnes had gotten out of bed, Constance was already opening it.
Mrs. Delany was very polite. Agnes recognized her voice. “I’m sorry to trouble you at this late hour, Mrs. Reddin,” she apologized. Agnes ran back into the bedroom.
“It’s your mother,” she whispered loudly to Marion.
“I’m not here.” Marion began to crawl under the bed.
Agnes could hear her mother invite Mrs. Delany into the flat. She dived to the ground and stuck her head under the bed. “She’s coming in,” she whispered.
“Fuck off, I’m not here,” Marion insisted.
“Agnes! Agnes, come out here,” Constance called.
“Ah, now, don’t be getting the child out of bed on my account, Mrs. Reddin. Sure I’ll go in to her,” Mrs. Delany said.
“Shite, she’s coming in here,” Agnes whispered, scrambling under the blankets. The short, stocky woman entered the bedroom. She stopped in the doorway.
“Agnes? Are you awake, love?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Delany came to the bed and sat on the edge. Agnes sat up, holding the blankets to her chest. Dolly pretended to be asleep, but was shaking with fright.
“Agnes, I don’t know where Marion is, I can’t find her anywhere. Now, you probably don’t know either?” She waited. Agnes didn’t answer.
“Anyhow, I was hoping you might bump into her, and if you do would you give her a message for me?” The woman’s voice was soft and nice, and it frightened Agnes even more. She nodded her head.
“Good. Tell her that I am very sorry for being annoyed at her, and that I love her and miss her very much. Tell her that
I can’t manage the stall on me own and that if she will come back I’ll be nicer to her.”
“And pay me?” came a voice from under the bed.
The bright August sun shone down Moore Street. It was a beautiful Irish summer’s day. Agnes stood beside Marion at her mother’s stall. They watched Nellie and Mrs. Delany across the street, talking. Every now and then, Nellie would throw a glance over at Agnes. Each time Marion would give a commentary, “She’s lookin’, stand up straight,” and Agnes would. They awaited the outcome of Mrs. Delany’s approach on behalf of Agnes.
Nellie Nugent, in her late fifties, was a quiet, uncomplicated woman. She had been standing in the same spot in Moore Street selling vegetables every trading day for forty years, with the exception of a five-year gap which she spent in prison for killing her third husband. On the evening of the man’s death, Nellie had called the police to say that her husband had committed suicide. However, on arrival, just the preliminary examination of the body showed fourteen stab wounds, and this would have made it the worst case of suicide ever seen in Ireland. So Nellie was arrested. A subsequent inquiry revealed that David Nugent, the dead man, an ex-British Army soldier, had been beating on Nellie on such a regular basis that it bordered on torture. And on that particular night, Nellie had just cracked in the middle of one of his beatings. She went into a frenzy, and she told the court that once she began she found it difficult to stop. She was found guilty of manslaughter and served her time. Her plea of aggravated self-defense was not accepted, for at this time in Ireland it was indeed legal to beat your wife, provided you did not use a stick longer than your forearm. Nellie’s first two husbands, both coincidentally British soldiers, had died of natural causes: they were shot, in battle, naturally.
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