by Anne Bennett
‘Kate’s right,’ Sally said. ‘You should go home and hold your head high. In my opinion, you have suffered more than enough.’
‘Come on,’ Kate said suddenly, leaping to her feet.
‘Why?’
‘We’re going to the bank before it closes, so bring your book, and then to the council house to get a new ration book, identity card and clothing coupons, and then to the Bull Ring to get you some clothes for your holiday.’
‘I’m coming too,’ Sally said.
‘What about your packing?’
‘It’s nearly done,’ Sally said. ‘I did most of it yesterday, and it’ll take no time at all to throw the last few things in.’
‘Come on then,’ Kate said, throwing Sally and Helen their coats from the hooks on the wall. ‘We have a lot to do. No time for dawdling.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
As they travelled to Ireland the following day, Helen wondered how in God’s name she had allowed herself to be persuaded to go back to Donegal. Then, with a grimace, she remembered that there wasn’t much persuasion to it: it was more like being bulldozered. And all she could see was that she would make the situation between her and Philomena ten times worse rather than better.
Kate knew that Helen was in a state of great agitation and hoped and prayed she had done the right thing. She had given it no thought; the idea had come into her head and she had just run with it and yet she knew her mother, Philomena, was a woman of extremes. The way she had behaved with Sally proved that she could bear a grudge. She knew with a sinking heart that she was quite capable of showing Helen the door if she took the notion. If she did that, then Kate would have to leave as well, and that would break something between her and the aunt who had reared her – maybe for ever – and that thought saddened her.
Kate castigated herself – as Helen’s anxiety increased as they drew nearer to the home she had left twenty-five years before – and bitterly regretted not going back home on her own to explain gently to Philomena how she had made contact with Helen, and to plead her case, rather than confront her in this way.
Sally, too, was busy with her own thoughts. And very, very nervous, because for years her mother had refused to let her come home, and whatever she had done to make amends had never been enough. Philomena had even said that she was no longer her daughter, and at the time that had cut her to the quick. In this visit she had to make sure that she had been truly forgiven, welcomed back into the fold of the family.
And so it was a fraught group, each with their own concerns, that made the journey in the mail boat over the turbulent waters of the Irish Sea. When they were released from the boat at last, feeling less nauseous and on board the train that would take them across Ireland, Helen said, ‘How did you two girls happen to be in Birmingham anyway? So strange that we were in the same city for so long.’
‘Oh, I came here because of my friend, Susie,’ Kate said, and went on to tell Helen about the little girl sent to her granny with her mother so ill, and about how the friendship developed between them. ‘Mammy was lovely with her and always made her welcome.’
‘She probably remembered that we both lost our parents young,’ Helen said. ‘I was not quite twelve and Philomena was eighteen.’
‘She probably did,’ Kate said. ‘But she never spoke of anything like that, did she, Sally?’
Sally shook her head. ‘She always said the past should be let lie and that she hates the Irish way of dragging everything up from the year dot.’
‘Ah, but now we know that that was because if we had started meddling around asking questions, we might have opened a can of worms,’ Kate said. ‘I mean, now I remember that Logue was Mammy’s maiden name, and though in the hospital I said I knew no one of the name, perhaps I did remember subconsciously.’
‘Maybe,’ Helen said.
‘I would have remembered that about Mammy’s maiden name,’ Sally said. ‘She didn’t go on about the past, but we got the odd snippet now and again, and I remember that, but that wouldn’t necessarily have pointed to Helen being your mother.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Kate agreed.
‘Didn’t Philomena mind you coming to such a big city all on your own, Kate?’
‘Mammy encouraged her, I remember,’ Sally said. ‘I wanted her to stop doing that because I didn’t want Kate to go anywhere.’
‘There was a reason for that too,’ Kate said. She looked from Helen to Sally and said, ‘As this seems to be the time to bare all, I will tell you the real reason Mammy was anxious for me to leave Donegal. Even you don’t know this, Sally.’
‘Go on, then,’ Sally urged. ‘What was it?’
‘I was sent away because I loved Tim and was almost certain he loved me too.’
Sally was astounded at this news. ‘Tim?’ she exclaimed. ‘Tim Munroe? Our cousin?’
‘Yes, Tim Munroe,’ Kate said.
‘Golly, how will you feel about him when you see him again?’
Kate shrugged. ‘How would I know?’
‘Are you nervous?’ Sally said. ‘I think I would be.’
‘A little,’ Kate admitted. ‘And now I know that he isn’t my cousin, or at least not my first cousin, and if we had known the truth we might have been allowed to marry, but at what cost? We still couldn’t have done it, because it would have wrecked so many lives.’
‘It would,’ Helen said. ‘Because you are registered as the daughter of Philomena and Jim. I am sorry, Kate.’
‘Is that why you never went out with any men at first in Birmingham?’ Sally asked. ‘Because you still loved him.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘I only agreed to go out with David because Mammy wrote that Tim was walking out with someone else, but the love I later developed for David was deeper than anything I had ever felt for Tim.’ And she looked at Helen and said, ‘So you needn’t be sorry. I loved David so much that I’m glad I experienced it, even for such a short time.’
‘I feel that way about Phil too,’ Sally said.
‘And my reception here today might have been different if David was still alive,’ Kate said, and added, in explanation to Helen, ‘because he was a non-Catholic, you see, and it was just before war was declared. So we married in a register office because it was all we had time for. To Mammy that was no marriage at all.’
‘Oh God!’ Helen exclaimed. ‘There are clouds over all of us.’
‘Yes, and they might burst very soon,’ Kate said. ‘Because this is where we change for the rail bus.’
This was the last leg of their journey, as Jim was meeting them at the station in the town with the horse and cart to drive them home. And when Kate saw him waiting there, her heart swelled with love for him. He might not be her biological father, but he was her father in all that mattered. She watched the slow smile of genuine welcome spread over his face as he spotted them. She hoped that what she had done bringing Helen home wouldn’t fracture something between them, because that would really upset her, for he was the gentlest man she knew and she had seldom heard him even raise his voice.
And he didn’t now. In fact, the only thing that were raised were his eyebrows as he spied Helen standing behind his daughters, though he must have been astounded to see her there. The rail bus had barely stopped before Kate and Sally had burst out of it and had both thrown their arms around him. Helen had followed more cautiously and he nodded to her as he hauled the cases out of the carriage. ‘Helen?’ he said carefully, and he shook her hand, a tentative smile on his face, but inwardly he was wondering what had brought her back after all these years and how she had become acquainted with Kate and Sally.
However, this was not the time or place to go into it, and not least because he had young James with him. The boy had been on tenterhooks all day to meet the sisters that his mother said were coming; he could not recall them, though when he caught sight of Sally, slight and vague memories of her tugged at him. But they were more like strangers to him, and he was suddenly shy, half hiding behind his father.
‘Come away out of that and greet your sisters,’ Jim chided his son as he stacked the cases on the waiting cart. James stepped away from his father, but kept his head lowered as he muttered, ‘Hallo.’
‘That’s no way to make a body feel welcome,’ his father told him.
‘Leave him, Daddy,’ Kate said. ‘We are near strangers to him, isn’t that right, James?’
James looked up at her, his large blue eyes so like Sally’s, and he nodded his head. ‘Well, you get up beside us on the cart and tell us all about yourself while Daddy takes us home, and we will be best of friends by the time we get there. What d’you say?’
James said nothing but his smile was answer enough and the way he leapt gladly into the cart. The three women got on more cautiously – Kate remembered leaping up with the same agility as her young brother once, but now to them a horse and cart was a strange way to travel.
‘You’re a rum one, all right, boy,’ Jim said to the child as he climbed in the driving seat and took up the reins. James said nothing, but after another surreptitious wink from Kate he sat down beside her so he was between her and Sally. Helen got into the other side and sat opposite them, as still as a statue. ‘You’ve talked of nothing else but them coming for nearly a week,’ Jim went on to his young son. ‘And now it’s like the cat has got your tongue.’
The cart crossed the river and went past the ruins of the castle and then the Church of Ireland to reach the Diamond in the centre of the town. Despite the doubts in her mind, Kate felt excitement in the pit of her stomach. Being driven home in a horse and cart through that small town was tugging at her memories, and she wondered what Helen was making of it all, twenty-five years after she had been almost forced to leave. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the rumble of the cart on the cobbles was another memory as Jim turned into Main Street with shops on either side.
They passed Magee’s, which had been the poshest shop Kate had ever seen until she had seen those in Birmingham – though that was in the pre-war days, before the Luftwaffe had done its level best to wipe Birmingham off the map. Not that she had ever gone inside Magee’s, for it was too expensive for the Munroe’s. ‘Not for the likes of you and me,’ Philomena had stated flatly, and that had been that.
‘There’s St Patrick’s Church,’ James said suddenly, pointing to the building, its spire pointing skywards and built on a slight incline on the edge of town.
‘And the Fever Hospital on the other side,’ Sally remarked, and then they were through the town and on to the open road and Kate breathed in the fresh, pure air. She saw the cattle in the fields they passed, placidly chewing the cud, and sheep tugging at the grass relentlessly, some mere dots on the hillsides all around them. Here and there stood squat little whitewashed cottages very like the one she’d been reared in. They almost all had curls of smoke emitting from the chimneys and wafting into the summer air and she looked across to Helen, wondering what emotions rural Ireland had stirred in her. Helen, however, was looking as if she would rather be anywhere other than where she was, and again Kate felt that little nub of anxiety that she had done the wrong thing.
Helen actually felt as if she had a coiled spring inside her and for two pins she would jump back on the rail bus and go somewhere else. She wouldn’t care where, as long as it was away from here, where soon, unless she was very much mistaken, she would cause upset and distress to a great many people.
The horse needed no direction to go home, and Sally and Kate were noting things they remembered, aided by comments from Jim. As they neared home, James began talking to them too. He had a ready grin and a pleasant manner, and Kate regretted the years he’d had growing up without knowing her at all.
He almost flung himself from the cart as it turned into the yard and was running towards the farmhouse, his boots ringing on the cobbles as he yelled, ‘They’re here, Mammy. They’re here and there’s three of them.’
Jim clicked his tongue with annoyance. ‘That boy will be under the cartwheels one of these days. I’m worn out telling him to go easy.’
But the girls weren’t listening to him. Their attention was fastened on the woman framed in the doorway. Philomena hadn’t needed her son to alert her of the girls’ arrival, for she had been watching out for them for the last twenty minutes, but, when the cart turned into the yard and she saw her sister sitting in the cart too, it took all her determination to cross the room and open the door.
She had wanted to run and embrace Kate and Sally, had imagined that that was what she would do, but Helen’s presence constrained her. And then she saw the look in her sister’s eyes and her conscience smote her and she felt the tears seeping from her eyes. Kate and Sally were appalled; their mother didn’t cry, she wasn’t that sort, and they ran across the yard and put their arms around her. ‘Mammy, what is it?’ ‘Don’t cry. Please don’t upset yourself,’ they cried.
Helen took one distraught look at them and leapt from the cart. Her whole body was trembling. She couldn’t do this. She had upset her sister, as in her heart of hearts she had known she would, and with an anguished cry she ran back up the lane, though she had no idea where she was going. Her only thought was of getting away. Jim wasn’t sure what to do at first, but he glanced at his wife being comforted by Kate and Sally, and took off after Helen.
She had run like the wind, and Jim puffed after her, catching up with her on the road. When he put a hand on her arm, she shook him off. ‘Leave me, Jim. I should never have come.’
For a moment, Jim was too breathless to speak, but he held tight to Helen and eventually said, ‘Yes, you should have. Philomena wants to see you. She has wanted it this long while.’
‘No, Jim,’ Helen said. ‘You must be mistaken.’
Jim shook his head decisively. ‘I’m not mistaken,’ he said. ‘She has told me so herself. Please come back, Helen.’
He put his arm about her shoulder comfortingly, and, scarcely daring to believe him, Helen nevertheless allowed herself to be led back down the lane and into the room where she saw Philomena sitting on the settee with Kate and Sally either side of her. No one noticed James standing in the corner, anxiously biting his thumbnail because he had never seen his mother cry either and it disturbed him.
Philomena had no eyes for her son, only for her sister standing before her, hanging her head, and she stood to face her. ‘Look at me, please, Helen,’ Philomena said, and when Helen raised her head, their eyes locked, and Philomena said the words she had wanted to say for years: ‘I owe you an apology, Helen, and I am so sorry. Please forgive me.’
It was the last thing Helen expected Philomena to say, and for a moment she was nonplussed, and then she said, ‘There is nothing to forgive, and surely the boot’s on the other foot?’
‘Ah, Helen,’ Philomena said, ‘what years we have wasted,’ and she took Helen in her arms and wept on her sister’s shoulder. Kate and Sally both had tears stinging their eyes but, as the sobs filled the air, James had had enough. ‘What’s everyone crying for?’ he demanded in exasperation. ‘People said it would be fun when my sisters came.’
Kate could see that neither Philomena nor Helen were capable of answering James, and so she brushed the tears from her own eyes impatiently before turning to her younger brother. ‘It will be, James, I promise,’ she said. Then added, ‘Grown-ups are funny, and they often cry when they are happy.’
‘That’s plain daft, that is,’ James said dogmatically. He waited, staring at them for a few minutes more and they, seeing the confusion on his face, tried to get a grip on themselves. When James saw that the crying had ceased and that his mother was wiping her eyes, he said, ‘Is the crying all over now you have stopped being so happy?’
Philomena gathered herself together and said with a watery smile, ‘Yes, you cheeky monkey, we’ve stopped. Now, if you will lay the table for me, we can get on with the meal I have spent hours preparing that is now threatening to spoil in the range oven.’
The meal – succulent slices
of ham, and plenty of them, and colcannon with the top crisped and the well dripping with butter, served with creamed carrots and gravy and followed by apple pie and custard – was the finest meal that Helen, Kate or Sally had had in a long, long time. And because of that they did it justice. The conversation around the table though, was a little random, for nothing of any importance, certainly the questions teeming in Philomena and Jim’s minds, could be discussed until James went to bed. Such things were not for his ears.
As a result the conversation could have become constrained but for James himself, because he wanted to know what it was like living in a city at war and the three women gladly described the shortages of food and the rationing of almost all products, the terrors and funny instances of a city completely blacked out after dark. Urged on by him, they told him of the terror struck into their hearts when the sirens blasted out and of the heart-stopping bombings themselves. And of the incendiaries that set up pockets of fire and lit the way for the bombers to release their evil loads; when they killed and maimed and toppled buildings and flattened houses and shops and tuned the sky blood red with the numbers of fires burning. Kate did wonder at some of the things they were telling him but he listened almost spellbound.
‘Golly,’ he said when they had finished, ‘it sounds exciting. Scary but exciting. Were you scared?’
Kate glanced at Sally and Helen and said, ‘I was sometimes. But,’ she added, ‘it’s not a bad thing to be scared; the really courageous thing is to recognise that and yet go on regardless.’
‘Yeah, not let it control you,’ Sally said. ‘Sometimes we were too busy helping others to be scared ourselves.’