by Anne Bennett
‘Most aren’t new,’ she said. ‘Nanny Pritchard told me that. But think of any toy imaginable and those children have it. There is a magnificent doll’s house, with all the tiny furniture in each room and a little family of people. There are lots of dolls of all shapes and sizes with clothes for them all, a large pram to wheel them about in and a crib as well. There is also a Noah’s ark, and the oldest boy, Billy, lined all the animals up two by two to show me. There is a fort as well and two armies of soldiers. Nanny Pritchard said there is a really large railway in the massive toy cupboard, which the master will set up when the boys are older. Then there are games and jigsaws and shelves full of books, and a wonderful rocking horse that even I could ride.’
‘Lucky children,’ Biddy said, her lips tightened in disapproval.
Nuala took no notice of her mother’s ill humour. ‘I’ll say they are,’ she said, with a smile. ‘And lucky me too, for I am going to get as much fun playing with them as the children.’
Nuala would often entertain her family in the evenings by telling them of the gossip from the Big House, which she got from Amelia, the kitchen maid, with whom she had become friendly. She also spoke of Nanny Pritchard, with whom she got on so well and respected so much, and the cute things the children did or said. The weeks slipped by.
‘Madam is never away from the nursery,’ Nuala said one night when she had been at the Big House almost three months. ‘Nanny Pritchard says that is unusual and that she has worked in houses where the children saw their parents once a day for about half an hour. Madam is always popping in and thinks nothing of feeding the baby, or getting down on the floor to play with Billy and his toy soldiers, or help Isabella dress her dolls. Even the Master comes up each night as soon as he arrives home.’
‘You like them?’ Thomas John asked. ‘They are good to you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Nuala said. ‘It’s a happy house. I like Nanny Pritchard and Amelia, I get on well with all the other staff too, and I love the children.’
‘You intend stopping then?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Biddy?’
‘Oh, my opinion is asked, is it?’
‘Come on, Biddy,’ Thomas John said. ‘Your opinion was asked and taken into account, but I said to let our Nuala try it out and the three months is almost up. It obviously suits Nuala because she has a smile on her face every evening when I drive the cart up to the back of the house to fetch her home.’
Biddy grudgingly had to agree her daughter did look happier these days, but she wasn’t going to share that. Instead she growled out, ‘Well, she best stop there then, seeing as it seems to suit everyone else so well.’
So, she had won, Finn thought, quite enviously. And what was he to do with his life? All that fine talk he had given Nuala, which she had so obviously taken so much to heart, about grasping opportunities, and he was doing nothing to help himself, though he had now turned eighteen.
Just a few weeks later, Finn had the chance to change the course of his life. He had been unaware of the rumblings in an unsettled Europe until Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, after Germany had invaded Belgium and France. That had been on a Tuesday, and by Saturday the news has filtered through to Buncrana and the whole town was buzzing with it. Tom went out, bought a paper and read all about it.
‘England has declared war on Germany because they invaded two other countries,’ Tom told the others as they sat eating their midday meal. ‘That is about the strength of it, and no one can see the irony of that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Joe asked.
‘Well, isn’t that what England has done to us?’ Tom said. ‘Who rules Ireland now? Not the Irish, that’s for sure.’
‘Aye,’ Thomas John said. ‘And that means anything that involves England automatically involves us too.’
‘You mean the war will?’ Finn asked.
‘Of course I mean the war, boy. What else?’
Finn coloured both in anger and embarrassment. He hated being called ‘boy’, especially in front of his brothers. Now he was eighteen he was a boy no longer.
‘So you think there will be call-up here?’ Joe asked.
‘Don’t see how we will get away without it,’ Thomas John said.
‘Maybe they are hoping for volunteers,’ Tom said. ‘After all, the young English boys have volunteered in droves. The recruiting offices have been hard-pressed to cope with the number who want to take a pop at the Germans. So the paper says, anyway.’
‘And why would Irish boys volunteer to fight for a country that has kept them down for years and years?’ Thomas John demanded.
‘The carrot that they are holding out might have something to do with that,’ Tom said.
‘What’s that?’ Joe asked. ‘Have to be some bloody carrot, for I would not volunteer to lift one finger to help England.’
‘The paper claims that the government will grant Ireland independence if they get Irish support in this war.’
‘Let me see that,’ Thomas John said, and Tom passed the paper to his father. He scanned it quickly, then said, ‘That’s what it says, all right, and I don’t believe a word of it. To my knowledge, England has never kept any promise it has made to Ireland. For my money they can sink or swim on their own. We will keep our heads down and get on with our lives. It does no good to go out seeking trouble. In my experience it will come knocking on the door soon enough.’
There were murmurs of agreement from Tom and Joe. Only Finn was not of the same mind as the others. To him, war was new and exciting, and there was nothing comforting for him that their dull and ordinary lives would go on unaffected by the battles being fought just across a small stretch of water.
If he was to join in the fight he would be on a level playing field with all the other recruits. There would be no one there to look down on him because of his youth – rather in wartime it would be praised and valued – and no one to call him ‘boy’ in the disparaging way his father had. He didn’t share these thoughts, instinctively knowing that not only would they be unpopular, but that it would be more reason for them all to pour derision over his head.
Only Nuala saw the look of defiance and determination on her brother’s face when she was told the news after she came in from work that evening. Watching Finn’s face she knew much of what he was thinking and sincerely hoped that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. She shivered inside for her impetuous brother.
However, two weeks passed and she thought she had been worrying unnecessarily. War dominated the news, of course, and after the first week there were pictures of the first troops to go overseas. Many were looking out of train carriages, all happy and smiling. They would soon kick the Hun into touch, they said, and be home by Christmas with the job done. Finn looked at the pictures and ached to be there amongst them.
The following Saturday the Sullivans set out as usual for Buncrana. Now that Nuala was working, Tom was once again there to help his mother sell the produce. Joe had been left behind to see to things with Thomas John. As they pulled into the town, Biddy pulled out her purse and, dropping some coins into Finn’s hand, told him to go to the harbour and buy some fish for their dinner.
Finn nodded, jumped from the cart and then wished he hadn’t, for it started his head spinning and his ear throbbing painfully from the cuff his father had given him that morning for spilling a pail of milk in the byre. Thomas John had never raised his hand to any of them before, but rage at the waste of the milk and the mess they had to clean up caused him to lash out at his son and knock him to the floor. Then he called him the stupidest bugger he had ever known and claimed a five-year-old would be more use than he was.
No one helped Finn to his feet. In a way he was glad because he would have hated his brothers to see the tears he brushed away surreptitiously.
He burned with anger and resentment against his father, so that his face was as red as his afflicted ear.
That was still his mood as he reached Buncrana. He was plea
sed to be away from his father for a while, but not so pleased that he was directed to the harbour with the coppers his mother had doled out to him as if he were still a child.
Finn, however, never got to the harbour. As he turned down Main Street he heard a military band and saw the line of soldiers at the bottom of the hill. In front of this company was a tall officer of some sort, in full regalia, and so smart that even the buttons on his uniform sparkled in the summer sunshine. He held a stick in his left hand.
Suddenly, the brass band behind him began to play and the officer led the soldiers up the hill to the marching music, the beat emphasised by the young drummer boy at the front. The officer’s boots rang out on the cobbled street, answered by the tattoo of the soldiers’ tramping feet following on, all completely in time.
Shoppers and shopkeepers alike had come to the doorways to watch the soldiers’ progress. As they drew nearer, though, Finn was unable to see the officer’s eyes, hidden as they were under the shiny peak of his cap, but his brown, curly moustache fairly bristled above the firm mouth in the slightly red and resolute face.
Finn felt the excitement that had begun in his feet swell within him so that it filled his whole being. Tom, brought out of the market hall like all the rest, saw the zeal filling his brother’s face and he was deeply afraid for him, but the press of people made it impossible for him to reach Finn.
And then the company stopped, and while the soldiers stood to attention, the officer spoke words that were like balm to Finn’s bruised and battered soul. The officer talked of the pride and integrity and honour of serving in the British Army, whose aim was to rid the world of a nation of brutal aggressors. Their armies would crush the enemy who marched uninvited into other countries, taking away their freedom and liberty, and harassing and persecuting the people. Many, he said, had already answered the call to halt this aggression against innocent men, women and children, and now he wished to see if young Irish boys had what it took to join the British in this righteous fight. To see if they felt strongly enough for the poor peoples of Belgium and France, their fellow human beings, and he urged any who wanted to join the fight to step forward bravely.
At the time, freedom and liberty were what many Irish people longed for too, and so those words burned brightly inside Finn. If he was to join this company, like he saw more than a few were doing, then Ireland would gain her freedom too, for wasn’t that the promise given?
His feet stepped forward almost of their own volition.
‘Finn, what in God’s name are you doing?’ Tom cried. He had broken through the crowd and had his hand on his brother’s shoulder as he spoke.
Finn shook him off roughly. ‘What’s it look like?’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘Oh yes I can. You heard what the man said. They need our help and if enough Irish men do this, then Ireland will be free too.’
‘This is madness, Finn…’
‘Now then,’ said the sergeant beside them. ‘What’s this?’
‘I want to enlist,’ Finn said firmly. ‘My brother is trying to prevent me, but I am eighteen years old and the decision is my own.’
‘Well said,’ the soldier told Finn admiringly, and he turned to Tom. ‘As for you, fine sir, you should be ashamed at trying to turn your brother from what he sees as his duty. If he is, as he said, eighteen, he can decide these things for himself. It would look better if you were to join him rather than try to dissuade him.’
Finn shot Tom a look of triumph. How very seldom had he been able to decide things for himself. He said rather disparagingly to the man, ‘Tom can’t join just now, for he has an urgent errand to run for our mother.’ And then with a cheeky smile he dropped the coins his mother had given him into Tom’s hand and said, ‘I’m going to be busy for a while, so you must get the fish for Mammy.’
He turned away before Tom could find the words to answer him and followed behind the sergeant to find out how he could qualify to join the carnage already being enacted on foreign fields not that far away. All Tom could do was watch him go with his heart as heavy as lead.
If Finn was honest with himself, he joined more for himself than for anyone else. He was fed up being pushed around, barked at to do this or that because, as the youngest boy, he was at the beck and call of everyone. Yet he couldn’t seem to do anything to anyone’s satisfaction and he never got a word of thanks.
Even if he expressed an opinion it was often derided and mocked. And then for his father to knock him from his feet that morning for spilling a bit of milk… it was not to be borne.
According to the army, he was a man and could make a man’s decision concerning his future. This way led to excitement and adventure. He might easily get his wish to travel and see other places, and he could hardly wait.
By tacit consent, neither Finn nor Tom mentioned to Biddy what Finn had done. Finn broke the news that he had enlisted as they sat eating their dinner.
‘I am to report in the morning,’ he said. ‘I’m in the Royal Enniskillens.’
Biddy and Joe had sat open-mouthed with shock at the news, and Thomas John had gone puce with anger.
‘Are you, begod,’ he snapped, thumping his fist on the table. ‘Well, you are not. You will not do this. You are just a boy yet and I will accompany you tomorrow and get the matter overturned.’
‘This is the army, Daddy, not school,’ Finn said. ‘And I am not a boy any more, not in the army’s eyes, that is. I signed my name on the dotted line of my own free will and that is that. There is not a thing that anyone can do about it.’
Thomas John sat back in his seat defeated, for he knew that Finn spoke the truth.
‘But why, Finn?’ Biddy cried out.
‘I am surprised that you can ask that, Mammy,’ Finn said. ‘For nothing I do pleases you either. As for Daddy, it’s Finn do this or that, and when I have done it, he yells at me for not doing the job properly, for all I have done my level best. And why am I working my fingers to the bone anyway for a farm that one day will be Tom’s? I shall have nothing, not even a penny piece to bless myself with, because it seems to be against your religion to actually pay us anything like a wage.’
‘You watch your mouth, boy,’ Thomas John thundered.
Finn faced his father unafraid. ‘Or what?’ he asked. ‘You hit me this morning for the first and last time. I will not stand and take it a second time, and you remember that. And I am no longer a boy, and you remember that too.’
‘Finn,’ Biddy rapped out, ‘how dare you speak to your father like that?’
Thomas John, however, said nothing. He knew he no longer had any jurisdiction over this son he loved more than the others yet he seemed unable to show it. The boy had stepped into a man’s world, only he had chosen a dangerous route and his father would worry about him constantly.
His brothers had a measure of sympathy for Finn, although Tom was concerned for him and said so.
‘Why worry?’ Finn said. ‘They say they fight in trenches and sure, a French trench mustn’t be that different to an Irish one, and those I am well familiar with. And if I pop off a few Germans along the way, so much the better.’
‘You don’t know the least thing about fighting.’
‘Neither do any of us,’ Finn said. ‘We’ll be trained, won’t we? And after that, I expect I’ll be as ready as the next man to have a go at the Hun. And there is something else, Tom. They say the French girls are hot stuff. Know what I mean?’
‘Finn!’ Tom said, slightly shocked. ‘And how do you know, anyway? Just how many French girls do you know?’
‘God, Tom, it’s a well-known fact,’ Finn said airily. ‘And don’t get on your high horse either. A fighting man has to have some distraction.’ And then Finn laughed at the expression on Tom’s face.
Much as he could reassure his brothers, though, he dreaded breaking the news to Nuala when she came home. He had missed her when she began work, more than he had expected and more than he would admit to. She had always li
stened to and often championed him. She did the same that day, for all she said she would worry about him, and urged him to be careful and come back to them safe and sound. Finn told her he would do his best, glad to have someone even partially on his side as he prepared to dip his toe into alien waters.
FOURTEEN
Levingstone was becoming worried about Aggie. She told him she had arrived in England in February in 1901 when she was fifteen, although she had turned sixteen just after coming to the club, and now in 1914 she was twenty-nine years old, and in June of the following year, she would be thirty. Very few girls were kept on after that age. And how long, Levingstone thought, would she be able to dance with the same verve and energy? Not that he had seen her slow down at all yet, but he accepted that she couldn’t go on for ever. Yet if at all possible he wanted to keep her off the streets. He didn’t understand himself because he had never felt this way about any of the other girls.
In the end, he confided in Lily, telling her of his concerns for Aggie. When he had finished, Lily could see only one solution.
‘Why don’t you marry the girl, Alan?’
Levingstone looked at Lily as if he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘I am too old for Aggie,’ he said.
‘Besides, Rogers would never stand for it. He told me when I started as manager that I could take all the delights the girls had to offer me, but I wasn’t to start marrying any of them. Apparently it upsets the punters. I told him then that there was little fear of that because, to tell you the truth, I did think I wasn’t the marrying sort. I mean, what I have seen of marriage has never convinced me that it is a particularly good thing. My parents’ marriage wasn’t happy and most of the men we see down the club, bedding a new girl every day of the week, are married.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Lily said dismissively, ‘but there are good and happy marriages too. Anyroad, I can’t see any other way of protecting Aggie other than marrying her.’