A Nest of Singing Birds

by A Nest of Singing Birds (retail) (epub)

  ‘Anne’s brother is home too after a long time at sea,’ Mrs Redmond said to John. ‘We were at a lovely party at Anne’s house to welcome him home and for the engagement of her other brother.’

  ‘So you’ve got two brothers?’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘I’ve got four – five really. My eldest brother died when he was six,’ Anne said. ‘And two sisters.’

  Before they could say more Sarah came back into the kitchen wearing her coat. ‘We won’t be late, Mum,’ she said, and when Anne stood up John held out his hand to her. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he said, and she smiled and blushed before turning to say goodbye to Sarah’s mother.

  ‘Goodbye, love. Enjoy the picture,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘Remember me to your mother.’

  The Fitzgeralds had hoped that this time Joe would be able to leave the sea, but a job that he had been promised had gone to someone else. He tried elsewhere without success and eventually signed on again for another trip.

  On the Sunday before he was due to go aboard the family decided to cycle to Thurstaton on the Wirral. Tony had dropped out of the group and spent his Sundays with Helen, so Joe was able to use his cycle. They called for Sarah who had just discovered a puncture in her tyre.

  Mick was mending it in the backyard, and Anne was disappointed to find that John was still in bed. Mrs Redmond invited them in for lemonade while they waited, then excused herself to finish her baking. Joe, Stephen and Terry went through to help Mick while the girls sat in the parlour, but eventually they grew suspicious.

  ‘They can’t still be mending it,’ Sarah said, and they went through. Joe was standing leaning against the sideboard in the kitchen, talking to Sarah’s mother, and the other boys had finished the repair and were all in the shed looking at Mick’s model aeroplanes.

  ‘I might have known,’ Sarah cried indignantly and Eileen and Anne raged at their brothers. ‘It’ll be dark before we even set out,’ Eileen said, but Terry flung himself on his knees before Sarah. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa,’ he groaned, pretending to weep as he clasped her round her knees.

  ‘Get up, you fool,’ the girls said in unison, but they had to laugh at his antics and their indignation vanished. It was a lovely sunny day and they set off in high spirits.

  They sang as they rode to the Pier Head, then as they crossed the Mersey on the Royal Daffodil and rode through the country lanes. There were few motor cars although there were many groups of cyclists or hikers, and Terry and Stephen shouted cheerful greetings to them.

  ‘I wish I wasn’t going back,’ Joe said as he rode beside Anne and Sarah in a quiet lane. ‘I suppose you do this every Sunday?’

  ‘Yes, whenever the weather’s fine, and sometimes when it isn’t,’ Anne laughed. Sarah said shyly, ‘Perhaps this will be the last time you have to go to sea.’

  ‘Yes. I was really banking on that job, but now I’ve put my name down at a few places so something might come up by the time I’m home again,’ Joe said.

  A group of cyclists approached and he had to fall back behind the girls. At Thurstaton they left their bicycles under a tree and climbed to the summit of the hill, but before Joe could help Sarah, Terry had taken her hand.

  When they came down to eat their lunch under the tree again he lay beside Sarah talking about the caelidhes and Joe had no opportunity to speak to her again. On the journey home Terry rode beside Anne and Sarah, pretending to serenade them with his hand on his heart.

  They returned home in time to prepare for the caelidhe and met again at eight thirty. ‘We must be mad,’ Stephen said. ‘I’m as stiff as a board after cycling and sunburned as well.’

  ‘The dancing won’t cure the sunburn,’ Eileen said. ‘But it should help the stiffness.’

  It was the custom at the dances for people to stand on the platform and sing between the dances, accompanied by the pianist, and soon the MC announced that a popular singer, James Duffy, would sing ‘Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.’

  The dancers sat in silence enjoying the song, and when the singer reached the line ‘But the heart that has truly loved never forgets’, Terry leaned forward, placing his hand on his heart, and looking soulfully into Sarah’s eyes.

  The rest of the group smiled but Anne kicked his ankle. ‘Stop it. You’ll embarrass her,’ she hissed. When the song was finished Terry rubbed his ankle.

  ‘Are you trying to cripple me?’ he said to his sister. ‘It was only a bit of fun. I won’t be able to dance now.’

  ‘You can’t anyway,’ she retorted before she was claimed for the dance and Terry held out his hand to Sarah. ‘I could dance with you, alannah, if I had two broken legs,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll think you have,’ Anne teased over her shoulder. Her partner was a man known as Thomaseen Rafferty who spoke with a thick Irish brogue although he was born and brought up in Liverpool.

  ‘Indeed and your brother is terrible smitten with the young gurl that’s wit yez,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s only a joke,’ Anne said. ‘He’s always fooling about.’

  ‘Ah, sure it looks like a right case to me,’ Thomaseen said, and Anne looked over to where Terry and Sarah stood together waiting for the sets to be formed. They were both laughing and Anne suddenly thought: I wonder? Wouldn’t it be lovely if Sarah and Terry were courting, and me and John?

  Anne often saw him when she was at Sarah’s house. His foot healed quickly but he never asked her to go out with him.

  * * *

  Roote’s aircraft factory had opened in Speke on the outskirts of Liverpool making Blenheims and Beaufort planes and Joe had written to them and to several other firms, telling them that he would be away for nine months, but asking to be put on a waiting list for when he returned.

  Pat Fitzgerald called Joe into the parlour one night to say to him, ‘Listen, Joe. I’ve just been keeping going with the business, sort of keeping my head above water, but things are beginning to pick up. I can take you on for labouring until you find something better.’

  Joe hesitated, feeling sorely tempted, but then he thought of the young man who had hanged himself. ‘No thanks, Dad. If you’ve got a job it should go to someone like Jimmy Getty. I often think about him. At least I’ve got a berth at sea and haven’t a family depending on me. But I don’t think you’ve really got a job for me, have you?’

  His father shrugged. ‘Well, no, I haven’t, lad, to tell you the God’s truth, but I could carry you for a few months until you got fixed up, son.’

  ‘And what if I didn’t?’ Joe said. ‘Thanks all the same, Dad, but I’ll take my chance. Something might come of all the applications I’ve sent in.’

  Later Pat told Julia about the conversation with Joe. ‘I respect the lad for refusing me,’ he said. ‘It’s true I’d only be making the job for him, and at least he has a berth and lucky to have it.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll ever get a job ashore, though, Pat?’ she said. ‘He seems to feel it more than ever this time, having to go away from the family. I suppose it’s because he’s had a bit longer at home, and God knows we’ll miss him too.’

  ‘He’ll get a job, girl, I’m sure of it,’ Pat said heartily. ‘All them letters he’s sent off, and the months will soon pass.’

  It was true that Joe felt more reluctant than ever to leave his home. He felt that he was just settling back into the family routine, becoming able to take part again in the verbal sparring between his brothers and sisters and understand the family jokes.

  There was another reason too why he was sorry to go. He had felt instantly attracted to Anne’s shy little friend Sarah Redmond and wanted to know her better, but the opportunity never arose. Terry always seemed to be before him, and while Joe hesitated, unsure about his brother’s feelings, the chance with Sarah passed.

  Terry was forever declaring his devotion to her, flinging himself on his knees at her feet or serenading her with his hand on his heart, and Joe wondered how much of this was Terry’s fooling about and how much he re
ally felt for Sarah?

  If Terry really cared for her, Joe felt that he could not interfere, but it was impossible to find out. He even asked Terry on one occasion, but unfortunately it was at the caelidhe and his brother had just been talking to Thomaseen Rafferty and began to imitate his thick brogue.

  ‘Am I fooling, you ask me, or do oi mean it? Amn’t I destroyed – I mean desthroyed – wid love for the gurl? Sure me Irish blood leaps when I see the colleen.’

  ‘Shut up, Terry, he’ll hear you,’ Anne hissed at him, and in the general laughter Joe’s question went unanswered. Sarah’s shyness meant that her only response to Terry’s antics was to blush, and that told Joe nothing.

  It was time for him to go back to sea before he could learn any more. Sometimes in the months that followed he wondered why he had not been more forceful and found out the true position, but decided ruefully that though he could hold his own on board ship, at home he reverted to the shy and diffident young man he had been before his first voyage.

  It will change when I’m working ashore, he told himself. He often thought of Sarah’s shy smile and gentle manner, and thought too of the applications he had sent. Surely one of them must bear fruit, and this would truly be his last trip?

  Anne missed Joe, as did all the family, but now she had another interest. She looked forward to seeing John when she visited the Redmond home, either to call for Sarah or when she was invited for Sunday tea.

  He was always friendly, but then so were all the rest of the family who always made her feel very welcome so Anne was careful not to show her special interest in John. She treasured the remarks he made to her, though, and carefully stored up memories of his smile and deep voice.

  He was now able to get about on crutches and sometimes Anne met him when she was returning from work. She walked now as the bakehouse boy had borrowed her bicycle for an errand and damaged the frame, and she took a short cut through Grant Gardens at the end of Everton Road.

  Several times Anne met John there and they sat on one of the seats with his crutches propped beside them, unaware of time passing as they talked. He told her stories of Spain and of his hopes and plans for the future.

  Anne had never taken much interest in politics, but like John had been familiar since childhood with the misery and destitution in the poorer parts of the city. She could sympathise with his dreams of a better world for everyone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Anne said nothing at home about the meetings, or to Sarah, because she quickly realised from her conversations that John had not talked about them at home. Why? she wondered. Perhaps because he didn’t think they were important?

  Meanwhile she enjoyed their talks and felt that they were getting to know each other better. John could still surprise her sometimes. In October 1937 Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, was speaking at a meeting held on waste ground in Queens Drive, Liverpool, when he was hit on the head by a stone and taken to hospital.

  ‘It served him right,’ Anne declared when she met John a few days later. ‘They’ve got a cheek, strutting round in blackshirts and jackboots like an army.’ She knew that John detested fascism and expected him to agree with her, but instead he said forcefully, ‘I don’t agree with stone throwing. It’s going down to their level for one thing, and for another everyone should be able to get up and have their say without being threatened.’

  ‘But I thought you were dead against him?’ Anne said. ‘You said it was the fascists like Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini who interfered in the Civil War in Spain and did that awful bombing.’

  ‘Yes, but I still think Mosley or anyone else should have their say,’ John explained. ‘Anyway, the more they talk, the more people will see what they are.’

  ‘Even though they cause trouble?’ Anne said.

  ‘Yes. As a famous man said: “I don’t agree with what he says but I’ll fight to the death to preserve his right to say it.”’ Anne gazed at him admiringly. How clever he was, she thought, quite different from the fellows she met at the dances.

  There was another difference between them unfortunately. Her dancing partners asked to take her out and John never did. He seemed to be quite content to meet her by chance, or to see her occasionally at his home.

  Their meetings were less frequent now because it was dark when Anne returned from work and Grant Gardens were closed. John had discarded his crutches and was limping about trying to strengthen his foot by walking, he told Anne. He had applied for many jobs but without success.

  She still looked hopefully for him as she walked home but weeks went by without her seeing him. Anne was hurt. She was not free to stroll about looking for him but if he wanted to see her, he knew her homeward route and was free to wait at some point for her.

  When Sarah asked her to come to tea she dressed carefully, sure that she would see John and he would explain. Always optimistic, she felt cheerful and happy as she walked to the Redmonds’ house expecting to discover the reason why she had not seen John, and perhaps even be established as his girlfriend before she returned home. He had made it plain to her that he liked her, she thought, by the way he looked at her.

  It was a shock to find that John was not there when she arrived and that no one seemed to think that his absence needed an explanation. It was a cold day and Anne was wearing a scarlet hood and scarf combined, knitted for her by Maureen.

  ‘That colour suits you, Anne,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘It looks lovely and warm too. What a good idea to have a hood and scarf combined.’

  ‘My sister works in a wool shop and she knitted it for me,’ Anne said. ‘They do a lot of knitting when they’re not busy, mostly baby clothes to sell.’

  John’s grandmother was there, a thin spare old lady with a very straight back and white hair drawn into a neat bun on the nape of her neck.

  ‘Grandma did lovely knitting until her hands got stiff with the arthritis, didn’t you, Mam?’ Mrs Redmond said.

  ‘Aye, but good or bad I think I kept half of Liverpool supplied,’ the old lady said dryly.

  ‘My dad was always giving away the scarves and gloves Grandma made him,’ Mrs Redmond said, laughing.

  ‘To poor people, Mrs Ward?’ Anne asked and Sarah’s grandmother nodded.

  ‘Aye, and if it wasn’t scarves it would be his overcoat. He had a bad chest and I’d get a good thick coat from Paddy’s Market and alter it to fit him, and the next thing he’d come home without it. “There was this poor fella, Sal,” he’d say.’

  They all smiled and Anne said earnestly, ‘But he was very well respected for his kindness though, wasn’t he? I remember everyone in the shop was crying when we heard about – about his death.’

  ‘Indeed he was, Anne,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘And that was a consolation to all of us, wasn’t it, Mam?’

  And her mother smiled at Anne. ‘It was,’ she agreed.

  There was a sound in the lobby and Anne looked eagerly at the door, but it was Mick who came in. ‘Brr, it’s cold out,’ he said. ‘Getting foggy too.’

  ‘I’ve lit the parlour fire,’ Mrs Redmond said to Sarah, and she said to Anne, ‘We’ve got two new records – Bert Ambrose and his Orchestra and Paul Robeson singing “Just A-Wearying For You”.’ They went into the parlour where there was a cabinet gramophone, but before they went Sarah’s grandmother asked her daughter, ‘What time do you expect John?’

  ‘God knows, Mam. When he gets talking with that crowd he forgets the time,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘We won’t wait tea for him anyway.’

  Anne looked thoughtful as she sat down by the fire while Sarah wound the gramophone. Was it just chance that Mrs Ward said that, she wondered, or had she noticed that I looked at the door and decided to let me know he was out?

  Sarah had often told her how observant her grandmother was, and how wise and kind too, and Anne felt that even if Mrs Ward had realised her feelings for John, she would tell no one else.

  When they were called into the kitchen where tea was laid, John
had still not arrived. They sat down and Mick said cheerfully, ‘Gosh I’m starving. If our John doesn’t hurry up there’ll be nothing left for him.’

  ‘Food will be the last thought on his mind,’ Mrs Redmond said. She turned to Anne. ‘When he gets talking with his friends he forgets everything else. Food means nothing to him.’

  Neither do I, thought Anne. She could feel herself blushing and avoided looking at Mrs Ward but suddenly pride came to her aid and she said brightly, ‘I don’t know anything that would keep my brothers from food. Mum says they must have hollow legs, the amount they eat.’

  ‘They show for it anyway,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘Fine big lads all of them, and your mother so small and thin.’

  ‘But very strong,’ Anne said, and Mrs Redmond said easily, ‘Indeed she must be. She has a home and a family to be proud of.’

  ‘You notice your father gets no credit at all?’ Sarah’s father said, smiling at Anne as he passed her the bread and butter.

  ‘Have some more beef, Anne,’ said Mick. ‘Come on, you can’t let your family down by picking like a bird.’

  ‘It depends which bird you mean,’ she said, laughing at him. How nice they all were, she thought, and how she would love to be part of the family, but it seemed it was not to be. John seemed to have as little interest in girls as before he went to Spain, in spite of their happy meetings. They had meant so much to her but evidently nothing to him.

  Sarah had asked several times why Anne was not using her bike for work now that it was repaired and she had made various excuses. Now she was determined to start using it again.

  When she reached home she asked Terry to oil her bike and pump up the tyres for her. ‘I’m going to work on it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I can’t see why you haven’t used it for weeks now,’ he said. ‘You can get there in half the time.’

  Anne shrugged. ‘I just got used to walking, I suppose. But I’ve had enough.’ And enough of hanging about hoping to see someone who can’t even be bothered to see me at his own home, she thought.