‘That’s insulting!’ she accused.
‘Well, ye must admit ye gave a very fine performance on our first meeting, asking me to kiss you. I didn’t like the way you took it all for granted. I’m sorry I got a bit wild.’
‘Oh, Tim.’ She bit her lip. ‘You frightened me. I’ve never… You do care for me, after all?’
‘I do, an’ I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this to find out. Would it be all right if I made amends for my ungentlemanly behaviour?’ She nodded dumbly. With the tenderest contact he touched his lips to hers, then pulled away, leaving Rosanna feeling that she must be in a dream. ‘Won’t they be wonderin’ where you are? Be dark shortly.’
She gazed at him. ‘Yes, but I don’t care.’
‘That’s no way to show respect for the people who love you.’ He got to his feet, pulling her after him. ‘They’ll be worried. Get along home with you now. D’ye want me to walk a bit of the way with you?’
‘Yes, please.’ She let him take her hand and it was lovely just to walk side by side with him, just being with each other.
Before they reached the city boundary Tim’s keen eyes spotted Patrick and his grandson searching the lanes for Rosanna. Quickly he pulled her into the cleft of a cottage wall. She felt dizzy at the feel of his body against hers. ‘I’ll have to leave you now… the master’ll have my hide.’ He kissed her, almost as fiercely as that first time but there was no loveless savagery to it now. Then he was gone, leaving Rosanna to touch her bruised lips and wander trance-like to meet her searchers.
‘Here she is, Gramps!’ Nick pointed, then came dashing up to his sister. ‘You ass!’ he said and hugged her.
‘Oh, Rosie, you really are intent on seeing me into an early grave, aren’t ye?’ puffed her grandfather, then hugged her, too. ‘I thought I’d lost ye.’
She allowed him to lead her home. ‘Are you on foot?’
‘What’s it look like? Sure we didn’t realise ye’d lead us such a merry dance.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Ah, no need.’ He clutched her upper arm. ‘Ye shouldn’t’ve let Belle spike ye, though.’
‘It’s not true, then?’ she asked hopefully, then saw the look he gave her brother. ‘Is it true – you’re not my grandfather.’
He stopped dead. ‘Not your gran… listen, if I weren’t your grandfather would I be haring about the country looking high an’ low for ye? Sure, there’s times when I wish to God I wasn’t lumbered with the lotta yese, you’re nothing but trouble…’ he broke off and cuffed her cheek lightly. ‘Aw, Rosie, ye soft wee bitch. Did ye never use a mirror? Don’t ye see ye’ve inherited my beautiful features?’ She laughed. ‘Come on,’ he swept her homewards again. ‘Home with us an’ we’ll tell ye all about it. It may not be as bad as ye thought.’
‘Now I know you’re really my grandfather, Gramps,’ smiled Rosanna, ‘I don’t care about anything else.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Erin, at first disbelieving that Belle could be guilty of such badness, was forced to agree that there was no other way Rosanna could have found out about her parentage. Furiously she searched the house for her daughter, finding her in the kitchen with Cook and Abigail. ‘Belle, would you kindly go to your room, there’s a matter I wish to discuss with ye.’
Belle rose. ‘Of course, Mother,’ and limped obediently up the stairs, Erin taking up the rear.
Once in private Erin posed the question: ‘Have you just told Rosanna who her true mother was?’
Belle donned a pained expression. ‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘Someone did.’
Belle looked her mother full in the face. ‘Well, I don’t want to get anybody into trouble, but Rosie and Nick were arguing and I overheard him call her a… these are his words, you understand?… a tinker bastard. Rosie was ever so upset.’
Erin’s face contorted with disgust. ‘I can well imagine. But it wasn’t her brother who upset her, Belle, it was you.’
‘Nick’s lying if he said it was me.’
‘How could Nicholas tell his sister something he didn’t know himself?’
‘Nick knows everything.’
‘Belle, ye’ve been found out – have the decency to own up!’ Erin moved her head wearily. ‘I’d never’ve believed you capable of such cruelty, Belle. I conveyed that information in confidence.’ Belle had once asked why Rosie and Nick did not resemble either of their parents and Erin had answered her honestly. ‘I didn’t expect ye to fling it at the poor girl the first moment ye fell out.’
‘Mother, if you’d heard the things she called me,’ returned Belle.
‘Whatever she called ye it can’t’ve warranted such a vicious response.’
‘She called me a cripple… and a freak.’ Belle hung her head and Erin’s heart went out to her, but she would say what she had meant to say. ‘Then Rosie was cruel, too – but d’ye realise, Belle, that ye’ve wrecked that girl’s entire life? Who knows what it might do to her? Are y’aware she’s run away?’
‘That’s one of Rosie’s traits,’ said Belle. ‘She’s always running away.’
‘Can you imagine what it’s like to be told that the man ye’ve called Father for sixteen years isn’t your father at all?’ demanded Erin.
‘And can you imagine what it’s like to be called a screwed-up cripple, Mother?’ defended Belle.
Erin stared at her daughter’s defiant stance, seeing her perhaps for the first time as she really was. ‘What was it all about anyway?’ she asked. ‘This bad feeling.’
‘It was about Tim. Rosie thought he…’
‘Tim?’ Erin volleyed. ‘Who’s Tim?’
‘He’s one of Grandfather’s labourers. Rosie thought he was sweet on her before I came along but…’
‘Just hold on a moment.’ Erin put up her hands to stem the flow. ‘I want to know more about this fellow. How old is he for a start?’
‘He’s eighteen and I’m going to marry him,’ replied Belle assertively.
‘Oh, you are, are ye? An’ just when is all this supposed to be taking place, if I might make so bold as to ask? Y’ only have two more days before ye go back to school.’
‘Please don’t treat me like a child, Mother, I’m thirteen.’
‘God, I’m beginning to think I’m the child! I couldn’t see what was going on right under me nose. As if the lies weren’t bad enough, now this. Wait till I see your grandfather, he should never’ve allowed ye to speak to the boy let alone get this far. ’Tis just as well you’re going back to school, young lady.’
‘I’m not,’ said Belle flady. ‘If I go Rosanna will be in like a flash.’ She stepped forward and touched her mother’s arm. ‘I love him, Mother.’
‘Love? You’re only a child, don’t talk such rubbish. Ye’ve got years ahead of ye before ye start thinking about love and marriage – an’ we’ll have no more talk about not going back to school, thank ye very much.’
The girl broke contact immediately. ‘I’ll refuse to go.’
‘Ye’ve got away with a great deal of cheek, young lady, don’t overstep the mark.’
‘If you make me go I’ll run away,’ replied Belle obstinately.
‘Then you’ll be sent back. If ye think I’m wasting your brain on some soft flirtation…’
‘It’s not a flirtation! I love him. No one sent Rosie back when she ran away.’
‘Rosie hasn’t your gift, besides the fact that she hated it.’
‘Haven’t you ever given a thought to the fact that I might hate it, Mother?’ Belle’s salvo was like an uncapped geyser. ‘Detest all those girls who call me names, be bored to tears with Latin, sick to the teeth of maths, English, maths, English, maths – I hate it! I hate it, I hate it!’
‘Stoppit!’ yelled Erin. ‘If you think I’m going to sit by an’ watch you wasting your life just because ye’d rather be in the company of an ignorant lout then you’re very wrong. How can ye even consider tossing aside such God-given talent so glibly?’
‘Mother, please, can’t you remember the way you felt about father…?’
‘Don’t you dare bring your father into this,’ breathed Erin. ‘What can a chit of your age know of that kind of love?’
‘But I can! I do!’
‘Then ’tis obvious this must stop right away. I’m going to ask your grandfather to sack the boy, then we’ll hear no more about it.’
‘You can’t! It would be disastrous. His mother has no husband to support her. Tim’s is her main income.’
‘Well… I wouldn’t want anyone else to suffer through it,’ said Erin, half-appeased. ‘If you promise you’ll go back to school sensibly without any fuss I shan’t tell your grandfather any of this.’
‘Very well, if you’re so callous as to force me to it,’ replied Belle sullenly.
‘My God, you make it sound like I’m sending you to Purgatory!’
‘But you are! I’ve told you I hate it, yet I’ve never been given any choice in the matter. I think what I heard about you is right.’
‘What is it? What have ye heard?’
‘That you’re trying to live your life through me, that you were robbed of an education and now you think that by pushing me through it you’ll somehow make everything right!’
Erin raised an arm as if she were about to strike her daughter, then her face returned to a grim mask. ‘Get your cape.’ Belle did not move. ‘I said get your cape! I’m going to show ye why I’m putting ye through this “hell” as you see fit to call it.’
Belle buttoned her cape disquietedly. ‘Where are we going? It’s almost dark.’
‘Don’t worry, it won’t take long,’ said Erin, adding gravely, ‘where we’re off to people don’t care to tarry after dusk. I’m going to show ye what Hell is really like.’
* * *
The cabbie felt unable to hide his incredulity when Erin tapped on the roof of the vehicle and shouted for him to drop them at this end of Walmgate. ‘Thank ye driver, we’ll walk the rest of the way.’ The cab’s suspension sprang back into place as the woman assisted her daughter off, then paid the man his fare. ‘Would ye be so kind as to wait here for us?’
‘That’s a joke! I’m not hanging round here for love nor money.’
‘I wasn’t thinking to offer ye the former,’ replied Erin tartly. ‘However, I should hate to incommode ye. Come along, Belle.’
Belle could not contain her curiosity at the sights which met her eyes. To start with, the whole thoroughfare was dilapidated, with crumbling architecture and a road which appeared to have been liberally coated with brown sauce, but it was the creatures which populated it who most drew her attention. Only rarely in her life had she seen persons dressed like this and that was on the occasions when her grandparents had taken her into town to visit the fair. There had been the pestilential beggar of whom she had taken little notice then, and of course the urchin who had insulted her, but here there were scores of them lounging about the dirty street wearing what could only be described as rags. A snot-nosed child caught her staring and stuck out his tongue. Undeterred, she poked out her own, then, at her mother’s glare, lowered her head, though was unable to maintain that position for very long due to an itchy inquisitiveness. To what possible end had her mother brought her to this place?
Shortly, Erin turned off the thoroughfare and pulled her daughter down a covered alleyway. Belle was quick to clamp a hand over her mouth and nose at the sharp smell of stale urine, and began to be afraid: her mother had gone mad. What she saw when they emerged from the tunnel made her more convinced than ever that this was so. The alley opened onto a courtyard in which were a dozen or so houses – if one could call them that; hovels would be more descriptive. The two windows in each dwelling – blinded with grime, and not an unbroken pane in sight – indicated that these were two-roomed dwellings, one up, one down. The brickwork was caked with the soot that constantly fluttered down from numerous iron foundry chimneys. One of the houses boasted curtains, a pathetic tatter of filthy lace hung from a single nail. Belle became aware of grunting and turned disbelieving eyes to the far end of the yard where two pigs rooted outside what was clearly a slaughterhouse. The yard was spattered with their droppings, not just theirs but human effluent too, which spilled from the tumbledown privies that served the area. The unpaved yard was a quagmire of blood and offal, dung and kitchen refuse. The smell was vile. And to Belle’s horror among these piles of filth babies played, sailed their paper boats along the channels of contaminated liquid, their faces smudged with filth, sores round mouths, ugly scabs in close-cropped hair. Ragged, crumpled shifts barely covered their nudity. But the most striking thing of all was that the unwashed adults who squatted and lounged outside their splintered doors, watching their offspring at play, appeared to think this was the most natural environment in the world. They seemed more put out by Erin and her daughter’s presence, than by the state of their children’s health.
Belle grew extremely uncomfortable as more and more of the residents’ heads started to turn. ‘Mother…’ she pulled in towards Erin.
‘What’s the matter, Belle?’ asked Erin cuttingly. ‘Haven’t ye always pestered to know the place where I was born?’
Belle was aghast. ‘You… you were born here?’ She looked again at the filth, smelt the corruption, saw the people.
‘Ye see that child over there?’ Erin lifted her hand to indicate a pretty but extremely undernourished child with long black hair, knotted and snarled. ‘That could’ve been me when I was her age.’
‘But how… I never knew…’ stammered Belle.
Erin turned on her then, not the angry woman who had confronted her earlier but still gently forceful. ‘No, ye didn’t. Ye’ve never known anything but comfort and good food, taken it for granted that ye only have to ask and it’ll be given, suddenly decided that ye don’t want to go to school, thank ye very much. Don’t ye understand, child? This!’ She stabbed violently at her surroundings. ‘This is why I see it as so important for you to go back to school. Look at these people. Look at the squalor they have to live in purely because they’re uneducated, because no one cares about them. You expect me who came from this to sit by and let you squander your gift because of some childish infatuation? What right have ye to waste such a talent? There’s hundreds of these children will never get through so much as one year’s schooling – if that – because their parents desperately need the few shillings a week that they can earn. You accused me of trying to live my life through you, well… I admit I’d’ve given anything to have even half the education you’re receiving. But the true reason I’m doing this, Belle, is through fear! When someone has lived a good part of their life in poverty they leam never to take things for granted. When ye close your eyes on a night the fear comes creeping back that when ye wake up in the morning all that comfort will be gone. The Feeneys began here, Belle. They’ve risen above it through perseverance and luck. You’ll never have to scour out chamberpots for a trumped-up lady like I did. You’ve got a gift an’ I’ve no intention of letting ye waste it.’
‘Oh, Mother, forgive me,’ replied Belle contritely. ‘It was selfish and shallow of me. I’m sorry I accused you… if you’d only told me…’
‘I didn’t want ye to have to see it, Belle, but now ye have I’m glad. It’s proper that a person should be aware of her beginnings.’
I’m glad too, thought Belle, looking round at the waxen-cheeked babies, some of whom would never reach adulthood. I’m a damned fool sometimes. To think that I almost wasted it all… If someone loved you they would surely wait until you’d finished your education, wouldn’t they? And Tim did love her, she was positive. He would wait for her to grow.
‘So ye’ll go back to school with no fuss?’ asked her mother hopefully. At Belle’s nod Erin squeezed her hand. ‘Good girl – an’ we’ll say no more about Tim, eh?’
‘And you won’t get Grandfather to sack him?’ prompted Belle.
Her mother promised, then frowned thoughtfully. ‘B
efore we go I’d like to look up an old friend. She may not still be here of course, but it won’t take a minute an’ we’ll be home before it gets really dark.’ Heading for the nearest woman who pulled upright with apprehension, she said, ‘Excuse me, could ye tell me if Mrs Flaherty still lives here?’
The woman curtsied and wrung her hands. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I never heard o’ no one that name.’
‘Is that the Widow Flaherty ye’d be after, your highness?’
Erin turned to regard the man who had spoken, seeking mockery but finding none; his face held genuine respect. ‘Yes, Molly Flaherty. She used to live at that house there.’
‘Ah, she’s long gone, ma’am,’ returned the man.
Erin crossed herself. ‘God be good to her.’
‘Ah no, ma’am,’ he corrected. ‘’Twas not my meaning to say she was dead. She’s just moved from this yard. The last I heard she’d moved to Rosemary Place, but that’s years ago, she could be anywhere now.’
‘Thank ye for your help. We’ll try there.’ Erin’s fingers twitched at her purse, wondering whether or not he’d be insulted, then suddenly decided and took out a shilling. ‘I’m very grateful.’
The man came alive again. ‘Oh, thank ye, ma’am. God go with ye.’ He flipped the coin gleefully as the woman and her daughter hurried from the yard.
‘It’s getting rather late,’ said Belle nervously as a drunken man staggered down the street towards them. ‘Oughtn’t we better be going home?’
But Erin’s blood was stirred. ‘I’d not like to go before saying hello to Molly if it’s possible. Come on, Rosemary Place isn’t far.’ She set off and Belle was forced to follow.
The route was lined with the oddest characters Belle had ever seen. Most peculiar of all were the wizened old women who sat like men at the kerb, puffing on their clay pipes. Long shadows were beginning to form. It was all very eerie.
At Rosemary Place Erin was disappointed again after knocking on every single door, but luckily one of the residents directed her to Clancy’s Yard where Molly had gone to live some two years ago.
Erin’s Child Page 35