She went out with some of them. Will watched them with sick jealousy clutching at his guts, lads of Gerry’s age, or older men. None of them lasted for long, and she was safe enough. Ma O’Donaghue saw to that. She had to be in by ten o’clock. One minute past and Pat and Declan would be out looking for her, and whoever was with her would live to regret it. She was safe, but safe from him as well. With the entire O’Donaghue clan looking on, he could do nothing more than pass the odd friendly word with her, like any other neighbour.
There was a stir amongst the crowd. Will looked towards the door, and there they were: Brian O’Donaghue, Pat and Declan, and some cousins of theirs, all talking in loud voices, swaggering, making an entrance. Will craned his head. She must be with them. They wouldn’t be acting like that otherwise, drawing attention to themselves. Then he saw her dark head, a straw hat crowned with daisies perched on top.
‘They’re here,’ Harry said.
‘I know.’
‘Looks grand, doesn’t she?’
‘Yeah.’
All four of them followed her with their eyes as, encircled by her bodyguard of male relatives, she made her way across the room. A stool was found for her at the bar. A drink appeared instantly, as if by magic. She perched daintily with a glass in her hand, parrying remarks from the men around her.
‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of that,’ Charlie said.
‘You and the rest of us,’ Gerry told him.
‘Nothing to stop you asking her out,’ Harry said.
‘Nothing to stop her saying no,’ added Gerry.
Charlie stood firm. ‘Who says she’d say no? Why would she say no to me? I could show her a good time.’
‘You! You don’t know how to treat a girl.’
‘And you do?’
Will listened to them wrangling and felt old and tied down with unwanted responsibilities. His drink tasted sour in his mouth.
He kept looking at Siobhan, waiting for her to look his way. The O’Donaghues were all round her but they were letting others into the charmed circle. He started to edge his way forward.
She was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, easy, confident. Nobody would believe she was just sixteen years old and in the country no more than a few months. And yet there was nothing of the brassiness of the satin-clad girls about her. She was giving nothing away. You had to earn what you wanted from Siobhan.
He was about six feet away now. He could hear her laugh as she listened to something one of the men was saying. Some crass fool blundered in and tried to buy her a drink. She froze him off with a couple of words loaded with contempt. Will felt almost sorry for the poor sod. If she were ever to talk to him like that, he would shrivel up inside.
Then she saw him. Those blue eyes met his and for a moment she stared coolly at him, taking him in, summing him up. Helpless, Will smiled. That knowing expression flicked over her face, then, miraculously, she smiled back. Will could have shouted and yelled his triumph. There was something there. She knew it. She acknowledged it.
But then the smile changed. She turned to Brian and nodded towards Will.
‘Just look who’s turned up.’
The O’Donaghues drew him in. With difficulty he ignored Siobhan, and spoke to Pat.
‘After all you said, mate, I had to come and see what all the fuss was about. Way you put it, I couldn’t keep away. Others are here, too. Harry, the Billinghams – oi! Over here. Come on.’ He raised a hand with difficulty, trying to get his friends’ attention. They saw him, registered surprise and came over.
The group swelled. Will talked to the men – work, football, the price of beer. He hardly looked at Siobhan, perched on her stool, easily fending off the Billinghams’ attempts at impressing her. But he was aware of her all the time, a presence at his side, a force that tugged at every sinew and nerve ending.
Over in the corner a heavy chord was struck and held. Those nearby fell silent but a groundswell of conversation carried on at the other end of the room. Siobhan looked over but made no attempt to move. A thin man with a ravaged face and wild ginger whiskers was standing to attention by the piano. His friends cheered him on from a safe distance.
‘Come along now, Con.’
‘Give us your best, will ye?’
He leaned over and said something to the pianist, who played an introduction. The men roared. They knew it. This was the stuff.
Will listened with only half an ear. The songs were unknown to him: marching songs, full of challenge and triumph. The audience was belting out the choruses. Slowly the spirit of them filtered through to him. He found his foot tapping to the rhythm, the brave words bubbling up. He joined in, hesitantly at first, then louder.
We’re all off to Dublin in the green, in the green . . .
‘Going off to fight for Mother Ireland, are you?’ Gerry was grinning.
‘What?’
‘D’you know what that is you’re singing? That’s a rebel song, that is. IRA. They come over here and make a bob or two but they don’t want us over there. Mind you’ – he leant forward and produced something from his pocket – ‘I’ve made a bob or two out of them this evening. Want one for your Maisie? Only thruppence. I’ve got two left. You can have ’em both for fourpence, seeing as you’re a mate.’
Will looked. Gerry was holding out a couple of ladies’ handkerchiefs, dainty white with a little green shamrock embroidered in one corner.
‘Gone like a house afire with this lot, these have.’
‘Don’t tell me – they’re real Irish linen.’ Will knew Gerry’s bargains of old.
Gerry grinned. You didn’t do your neighbours.
‘Take one,’ he said. ‘Give it to Maisie. She could do with some cheering up.’
With a jolt of guilt. Will put it in his pocket. He did not want to be reminded of boring old Maisie. But at least he did not have much to fear from Gerry in the way of competition, since he was far too busy turning a penny. Charlie was more interested in drinking and staring and making remarks than actually making a play for Siobhan. But Harry – he might well try it. He looked at Harry, trying to size him up as a rival, and was reassured. After all, Harry was only a bit older than Siobhan herself. She would think of him as a boy, whereas Will was a young man.
The people were calling for Siobhan.
‘Where’s herself? Where’s the little songbird?’
He could look at her now with safety. Everyone was looking at her. She was swept across to the piano and a chair found for her to stand on. Head and shoulders above the crowd, she stood with not a trace of self-consciousness, a small commanding figure in a modest green dress, her black curls caught up under the pretty straw hat. She was not smiling. Her sweet face was composed, waiting. A hush fell over the rowdy bar, spreading from Siobhan across the packed bodies to the doors and the drinkers outside. And now they were waiting for her. She held them, confident. Then she nodded to the pianist.
She started with the familiar ones. ‘Danny Boy’, ‘Rose of Tralee’. Will knew them. He listened in silence, ignored Harry’s murmured comments, and joined in the thunderous applause. Then came a couple of songs he had not heard before, tales of unrequited love that curled round his heart and became part of the ache there. She was singing of how it was, she was singing to him. She knew. She understood. Will was standing alone in the packed bar. This time the applause broke over him like a wave, leaving him vaguely disorientated. She was speaking, and yet he did not seem to be understanding what she said. She seemed to be announcing the next song, for there was an indrawn breath of expectation all around him.
The words meant nothing, as she was singing in Irish, but still the song wove its magic. The lilting voice, clear and sweet as a peat-brown stream, played up and down the spine, brushed the hairs of the neck, insinuated into the secret depths. It told of a country wild and beautiful, of a nation subjugated for generations but still upright and proud in heart and soul.
The room was caught in total silence, rapt. Tears ran unashamedly down harden
ed faces.
The song ended. For one moment, two, the silence held. Then the clapping began and rose to a roar. Feet stamped, mugs banged on tables, voices cried for more.
Siobhan stood smiling amongst it all, a fragile flower drinking the adulation. She shook her head, stepped down and began to walk slowly from the room, surrounded by her menfolk, impeded by her admirers. Will followed, drawn irresistibly. He had to try to possess some of what he had glimpsed. It was more now than simply wanting the girl; he wanted the force behind the song, the power, the emotion, the promise.
He followed the O’Donaghues blindly as they walked through the streets of Poplar. He had no idea where they were going, no thought for the others. It was only when they turned into another pub that he realized they had left the O’Donaghue relatives and the rest of the Trinidad Street group behind at the Harp of Erin.
‘Is she going to sing again?’ he asked Brian.
‘No – no, we come here for a snatch of peace and quiet. Can’t hear y’self think in the Harp.’
Will had just enough presence of mind to offer to buy a round of drinks. He put Siobhan’s port and lemon into her hand. She accepted it with a speculative look.
‘What d’you think of our little songbird, then?’ Pat asked.
‘She’s amazing – I never guessed she could sing like that.’ Will forced himself not to look at her, but he was very aware of her listening to his words.
‘No more did we, till we heard her one evening.’
‘She ought to be on the halls. She’d be a star turn.’
He felt rather than heard Siobhan’s intake of breath and knew he had put his finger on something.
Brian was looking disapproving. ‘What, and have her up on a stage with any Tom, Dick and Harry in London with the price of a seat in his pocket staring at her? Wouldn’t be proper.’
‘She’d make a fortune,’ Will said.
‘Fortune be damned. ’Tis no way for a respectable girl to make a living.’
Pat and Declan nodded in agreement.
Will stole a sideways glance at Siobhan. She was sitting looking into her drink, saying nothing, but there was a mutinous set to her full lips.
‘You let her sing this evening,’ he pointed out.
‘That was different. That was hardly more than doing a turn at a ceilidh. You must see the difference, lad. You wouldn’t be wanting your sister or your wife going on the stage in a music hall, now would you?’
Will most certainly would not. But Siobhan was waiting for him to speak on her behalf.
‘They ain’t got the talent. Siobhan has. Anyone could see that. Those people in the Harp this evening, they’d have done anything for her. They’d have done murder for her if she’d asked.’
He would do murder for her himself right now if she asked.
‘She’s not going on the stage, and that’s that,’ Brian said.
‘Well, I think it’s a shameful waste,’ Will told him.
He did not know how he got through the rest of the evening. He tried to act normally, to talk to Pat and Declan and Brian as if nothing had happened, and all the while he was aching to get Siobhan to himself. The pale skin of her forearm with its down of silky hairs, the soft curve of her body beneath her green cotton dress nearly choked him with desire. He had to get to talk to her. Not that he knew what he could say.
His chance came on the way home. Declan had run into a friend and gone off to another pub. Pat and Brian were walking ahead, talking over some family matter. Will fell in beside Siobhan.
‘I meant what I said earlier – about you going on the halls,’ he said. ‘You’d be grand.’
‘So they all say.’ She took the compliment as nothing more than the truth. ‘But you heard them, they won’t be letting me anywhere near a theatre.’
‘Do you have to have their say-so?’
‘They’re my family.’
Will understood that. Family was what protected you from the world. Family was strength. Without it you were nothing, no one.
‘Maybe they’ll come round. Give them time.’
‘Sure, and maybe they’ll not.’ She sounded bitter.
‘Do you ever get away from them?’ Will was visited by inspiration. He looked ahead. Pat and Brian were laughing over something. They couldn’t hear him. ‘I could take you to the Empire, to see what you’re aiming for.’
For fully five seconds she was silent. Their feet clattered on the paving stones, hers a quick tap-tap, his a steady clump. He did not know how he kept walking. He did not dare look at her. His heart seemed to stop. He could not breathe.
‘Sure,’ she said at last, as if he’d merely offered her a drink, ‘I’d like that.’
They reached the swing bridge over the entrance to the West India dock. Siobhan stopped in the middle and looked out over the Thames. It was dark and the night still and sultry. A stink of waste, natural and man-made, rose off the brown waters. The tide was low and moonlight gleamed on the grey flanks of mud. Out on the river, rows of small ships were moored; lamps, red and green and yellow, glowed where lighters were still plying down on the falling tide. Someone was sculling a skiff out to a waiting barge, the oars creaking as he moved.
Siobhan gripped the rail. Will could feel the heat and the tension of her.
‘Dirty,’ she said. ‘Dirty river, filthy city. But exciting.’
His arms ached to hold her, his hands to touch.
‘You’re exciting,’ he told her. ‘You’re the most exciting girl I’ve ever met. I’ve never known anyone like you.’
‘I know.’ She was half-turned towards him now, but he could not see her face, only the gleam of her teeth as she smiled. He caught the animal force in her, knew she was tempted, that she wanted him too. He reached out to brush the soft bare skin of her arm, but she whisked away, laughing – a low laugh that set him alight.
‘I’m Siobhan O’Donaghue and I’m one on my own. There’s no one else like me,’ she said, and ran to catch up with the others.
Away to the west, lightning flickered, followed by the first warning rumble of the coming storm.
The women were sitting out on the doorsteps. The little houses were too stuffy to stay indoors, and tempers frayed if large families were on top of each other all the time. The men went up to the pub, to drink or meet for some club; the Rabbit Club, the Pigeon Society – any excuse would do. Sometimes the women went too, but more often they stayed on the doorsteps, mending, keeping an eye on the children, gossiping. Ellen heard them as she squatted on the kerb with Florrie Turner, playing fivestones or arranging the paper dolls they cut out and made into families.
‘You seen how that Maisie Johnson dresses that baby o’ hers? It’ll catch its death o’ cold. Hardly a stitch on it, poor little mite.’
‘Poor little mite, my eye! Great bonny boy he is, doing lovely. Go down with heatstroke, he would, if she dressed him up like you said.’
‘His mum’d do a bit more lovely if her old man was home more often.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Go on, don’t come that one with me. Never home, he ain’t.’
‘No more ain’t your old man, come to that.’
‘At least I know where mine is.’
‘If you’re saying what I think you are, it’s a flaming lie. Will Johnson’s gone over the Harp of Erin with the rest of the boys.’
‘Yes, and to see who, might I ask? That flighty little Irish madam, that’s who. And when he isn’t listening to her sing he’s out with her down the East Ferry Road.’
‘That’s another flaming lie an’ all. Clodagh O’Donaghue wouldn’t let no girl o’ hers down the East Ferry Road with no one, and ’specially not with a bloke what’s married. Only fast girls go down there. Just ’cos she jilted your Jimmy, you got your knife into her.’
‘Huh. She did no such thing. He didn’t want a girl like her. And I tell you another thing, too. It don’t surprise me one little bit, the way that Will’s behaving. Always was
on the wild side. I was never happy when he was walking out with my Dot. If it hadn’t been that Siobhan it’d be someone else. He only married Maisie because she was in the family way. You can say what you like, but I know what I know.’
Ellen’s ears burned. She bent over the game, avoiding Florrie’s eyes, pretending she had not heard. Her long curtain of brown hair hid her face. But as she tried to toss the pebble and pick up the next one, her hand shook and she dropped both.
‘My go,’ Florrie said.
Ellen’s attention wandered. She looked up the street to the Billinghams’ house. There was nobody outside their door. Alma was out somewhere with her latest man, while Will, Gerry and Charlie, if her overhearings were to be believed, were over in Poplar at the Harp of Erin. Maisie was inside.
‘Coming to see Tommy, Aunty Florrie?’
Florrie said nothing. Her thin hand was steady six inches above the pavement, two pebbles balanced on the back. Nimbly she tossed them up, grabbed a third from the ground and caught all three.
‘I won. Yeah, all right, Aunty Ellen.’
The novelty of the new relationship had not yet worn off. They adored Maisie’s baby, vying to be allowed to hold him, play with him or take him for walks in the rickety old pram passed down through the Johnson family since Will was a baby. He was a happy little soul, now that he had got over the collicky stage, always ready with a smile for his serious young aunts.
‘Maisie?’ Florrie stopped outside the door of number forty and rapped on it with her knuckles. ‘Maisie? Can we come in?’
There was no answer. The girls looked at each other. Two doors along, a canary in a cage on the bottom windowsill was singing its heart out. Down the other end of the street there was a yell of ‘Out!’ from the boys playing rounders.
‘She must be in,’ Ellen said. She was conscious of eyes upon her back watching to see what happened.
‘Come on,’ Florrie decided, and pushed open the door. Nobody in Trinidad Street would even think of locking a front door. Ellen followed her in.
The little house was quiet, the air stale and oppressive. The girls made their way through the little front parlour on tiptoe, subdued by the stillness. They pushed open the kitchen door and stood staring.
Trinidad Street Page 6