That evening, they took a light supper, the sun having sent Anna Genevieve to sleep early.
“You have a red nose,” she told him at the table.
“Have I?” he said. “Your face is as white as porcelain.”
“Yes,” she said. “It seems my nose is daintier and doesn’t catch the sun as much.”
Her joke made him laugh.
He raised his glass.
“To a wonderful day! May there be many more in the future!”
“To the future!” she said, holding her glass in the air.
Chapter 22
Mrs. McHugh
She filled her days with tiny tasks, stretching them out, trying to extend everything to fill up her time. When she’d cleaned over the kitchen after breakfast, she tended to her shopping list. Then she did the floors, the bedroom and any laundry that was drying or needed airing.
She changed her sheets once a week, but with only herself in the bed they were twice as clean. Still, it gave her something to do.
Every day she walked to the grocer’s. Not to the one nearest, in George’s Street, but to West Street, passing another four grocer’s on the way, in the hope she might meet with someone for a chat.
She kept some items over, knowing she could do with a slab of butter or dripping, but keeping it till tomorrow, for the next day’s list, to have something on it, to give her something to get up for, to go and get.
Cooking for one was not the same as cooking for two. She didn’t have to make a dinner if she didn’t want to. She could heat up some tinned beef or fry an egg or just eat bread and cheese if she wanted. But she did try to cook. To give her something to do.
In the afternoons, after she’d been out to the store in the morning, she would go for her walk. She’d go in the opposite direction of the town, out towards Barnattan or Tullyallen or Mell, anywhere the road was long and winding and would take up to an hour to walk.
Her favourite place to go was out along the river, to the canal, to watch the barges making their way from Navan and Slane to Drogheda Port. She loved to see the bustle, the goods being carried out to faraway places. Things being made and grown and produced, to feed and clothe and refresh others. So much life.
She started attending daily morning Mass. She was so used to being up early and to work each day that she needed to have something to get up for, to be somewhere on time.
And after Mass, every morning, she visited Mick’s grave. She spoke with him as if he were right there, telling him anything she could think of to say. But with very little news, she found she was prattling on most mornings, talking out loud, about the weather, about her aching back, about what she was planning to cook for her tea.
She noticed she’d lost weight, the band on her skirts feeling looser as the weeks passed. When she looked in the small mirror on the back of the kitchen door, she noticed her face looked leaner, two slight lines appearing on her cheeks.
Mick would have said, Ah, would you ever stop and go put some meat on your bones!
Betty would have said, Sure, couldn’t you have done with losing it anyway, Mrs. McHugh? Too many potatoes, that’s your problem.
Her two best friends in the world, gone. All in the space of a few days of each other.
The world could be a cruel, cruel place.
But you had to get on with things, didn’t you? Sure, what else could you do?
They’d laid him out in the sitting room, on a kitchen table borrowed from two doors up.
“I just can’t get over it,” she said to Mrs. Doherty, as they washed and dressed him. Her face was pale from shock.
“God takes when he decides and often the best go first,” said Mrs. Doherty comfortingly.
When he was ready and Mrs. Doherty left the room, she put her head on his chest and let the tears fall onto his wool waistcoat. It felt so wrong, feeling his coldness beneath her.
Someone had left a glass of whiskey on the mantelpiece beside Mick’s pipe. She took both and sat in his chair. She lit the pipe, sucking on it, coughing as the smoke entered her lungs.
“Look what you’ve driven me to,” she said, taking a gulp of the whiskey which burned her throat. “I’m a different woman now, Mick. I’m a changed woman.”
The smell of his pipe was a comfort.
They’d had trouble with the lockjaw and the contortion of his body. She didn’t think he looked like himself in the coffin. She sat by him for as long as she could, but seeing his distorted face, his cold skin, it didn’t feel real.
How would she get through this without him?
The neighbours were good. They gathered round, seeing to everything, doing practical things like cleaning the house and making tea and bringing in food for the trail of mourners that came.
They brought her tea too and sometimes she managed to take a bit into her mouth and let it go down. But there was no eating. A knot had formed in her stomach. It sat in the middle of her intestines, filling her up with bile, suffocating her throat.
On the third day, the day of the burial, she had managed a nibble of a scone lathered with butter. It felt crumbly in her mouth, but the butter helped it go down, sweeping past her throat, into her stomach of despair.
It quelled the sickness for a while. But soon, the nausea was back and there was nothing she could do to get more food into her. Her hand would not lift to her mouth.
He hadn’t suffered long, they said. Not in the long run.
But they hadn’t seen his eyes, the fright in them as his body convulsed and the fits took over.
It pained her, the life they were supposed to have. They should have had longer, she should have had time to mind him as he aged, time to look back over their lives and remember. They still had trips to Liverpool to take, picnics to eat, walks to go on. Now, he would never accompany her on the steamer again.
She had administered the Fowler’s Solution when she’d got back from the chemist’s on the Saturday morning, but the pains in his stomach got worse. He vomited continuously, weakened, nothing left in his body to spit out.
Still the waves came.
She went next door to get someone to go for the doctor, who came two hours later. He was an older man who used to attend to her mother. He could see the worry in her as she stood by Mick’s bedside, handing him another bowl for him to vomit into.
“It’s a bad case of gastroenteritis,” he said. “It’s been doing the rounds.”
He prescribed rhubarb pills and a black draught of senna pods to help clear the bowels.
“I’ll visit tomorrow if you like,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, her face white. “Please come back tomorrow, doctor.”
The pills did not stay down but after a while Mick seemed to relax and he lay back in bed and went to sleep.
Later that night, when she was satisfied that he was resting and hoping that the bug might be finally out of his system, she left him to go and make some tea and eat something herself. She hoped she didn’t catch the bug too, the two of them struck down, helpless.
As she poured the boiling water into the teapot, a strangled cry came from the bedroom. She raced upstairs and from the bedroom door she saw that Mick was contorting in the bed, convulsions wracking his body.
“Mick!” She ran over to him to try and support his head.
“Can’t breathe!” he gasped.
She watched his chest restrict and his arms and legs freeze up in the bed, the muscles on his arm hardening beneath her fingers. She tried to pull him up into a sitting position to get some air into his lungs.
He screamed out again, in agony. “I can’t get a breath,” he said, his words strangling in his throat. His jaw flew back into a horrible locked position.
She left him to run next door, banging on the door and shouting.
“Call the doctor, will you?” she said when her neighbour answered in her nightclothes. “Mick’s after taking a turn, he’s very bad.”
A messenger was sent and the neighbour came into the hou
se, calling first for Mrs. Doherty to see if she could help.
When they got to the room Mick was arched in the bed like a bow, his wife clutching at him.
“Mick!” she cried again, trying to cradle his head, but he was shaking so bad that she had to step back from the bed. Tears flowed down her cheeks.
The convulsions went on for twenty minutes and there was nothing they could do to bring them to a halt. A number of other neighbours gathered in the room, but when they went near him it seemed to make the shaking worse and he cried out if anyone touched his skin.
Someone started a decade of the rosary and they stood about the convulsing man, hoping for divine intervention.
At ten past midnight the shaking began to slow and Mick seemed to weaken. He started to go quiet but the convulsions did not stop, his body still twisting and his muscles spasming.
With the quietness, his wife came back to his bedside, her eyes red from crying.
“Mick,” she said softly, but his eyes were now closed.
They watched as his chest heaved and then they realised that the shaking had stopped and so had his chest. He was no longer breathing. He had passed, going quiet in the end, his limbs still twisted out of shape, his eyes thrown back in their sockets.
With the realisation of what had happened, his wife let a roar out of her and then a wail and threw herself across his body. The neighbours stood around and rubbed her back, looking at each other with wide eyes, continuing to say the rosary, bleated words over the muffled sobs of a heartbroken woman.
When the doctor arrived, with his cap and cape on, panting from the late-night ride, he went to the bedside, took out his pocket watch and placed two fingers to Mick’s silent neck.
“It looks like lockjaw,” the doctor said, noting Mick’s contorted face. “Tetanus. I really am very sorry.”
On the second night of the wake, there were a few songs in the kitchen in the evening, something to bring the atmosphere up. She tried to join in, but her heart wasn’t in it, so she listened and let the tears roll, in between smiling at memories they brought up.
A soft knock came to the front door and Mrs. Doherty poked her head into kitchen, nodding at Mrs. McHugh over the singing.
“William Thomas has come to see you.”
The singing stopped for a moment as Mrs. McHugh followed Mrs. Doherty out to the hall.
Mr. Thomas stood in the small corridor, clearing his throat.
“I just heard today,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
She looked at him and smiled sadly.
“He’s in here,” she said, walking past him to lead him into the sitting room where Mick was laid out. The mourners who were in the room, clutching cups of tea and glasses of spirits, got up and left to give them some privacy.
“Poor Mick,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “What a shock for you.”
“It’s the weekend for it,” she said wryly.
He cleared his throat again. “I’m sorry about that too, about what happened.”
“As am I,” she said.
A silence hung in the room, neither wishing to discuss the issue in the presence of the deceased man.
“How is Anna Genevieve, is she well?” she said finally.
“She is well.”
“I miss her.”
“I will be at the funeral,” he said, “and if there is anything you need, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
She bowed her head.
William cleared his throat again and turned to leave.
“You know, he was very upset,” she said. “Before he got sick. We both were, we were both sick to the stomach. Over what happened.”
“I’m sorry,” William muttered, almost inaudibly.
“They were his last memories – of me, dreadfully upset.”
He sighed and went to say something but thought better of it. Instead, he bowed his head and left the room.
Outside the cottage he stood on the road for a moment, to gather his breath. He looked up at the night sky and closed his eyes. It was hard to shake the feeling that somehow, in all this mess, he had made a terrible mistake somewhere along the way.
“What did he want?” asked Susan.
“To offer his condolences,” said Mrs. McHugh, pursing her lips.
“Bastard!” said Susan, to a few positive murmurs in support.
Susan had come from Kells as soon as she had heard about her brother-in-law’s death, bringing her husband and daughter Catherine with her. They were staying in the good spare room upstairs and, along with Mrs. Doherty, had taken over most of the responsibilities for the funeral.
“Have we any more mustard?” Susan asked loudly, looking over at Mrs. Doherty from her place at the table where she was buttering bread and making cheese and ham sandwiches.
“I can get some from home,” said Mrs. Doherty, rising to go.
Mrs. McHugh watched her sister walk over and put the empty mustard jar in the basket where glasses were being stacked.
There’d be no more mustard in the house now with Mick gone.
Mrs. McHugh burst into tears, causing Susan to stop what she was doing and go to put her arms around her sister.
“There, there, pet,” she said. “It’ll be all right. I promise. It’ll be all right.”
ab
“Why don’t you come and stay with me? I think you’d like it,” said Susan as they sat, the day after the funeral, nursing a cup of tea in front of the fire.
With the funeral over, Mrs. McHugh was finding she was able to eat and drink a little more, the anguish along with the press of people somewhat dissipated. She realised she was very weak from the trauma and lack of nourishment over the past few days.
“Ah sure, what would I want with in Kells?”
“The company. And there’s plenty of work, to keep you occupied.”
“Amn’t I retired now?”
“There’s still life in you yet.”
“It’s too late for that. This is my home. I’d never leave this house.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Susan, and she looked around the small sitting room where they’d been raised. “Hard to believe we were all brought up in here, isn’t it?”
“I always thought I’d raise children of my own here,” said Mrs. McHugh sadly. “But, sure, it wasn’t to be.”
“No,” said Susan.
They were silent for a moment, each slurping from their cup of dark tea.
“It’s bringing back a lot of memories, being back,” said Susan.
“Aye,” said Mrs. McHugh. “Your old bedroom will do that to you.”
“Do you ever think about him?” asked Susan, and she looked directly at her sister, her face like stone.
“No,” she said. “Never.”
“I thought he might turn up here, this weekend.”
“And how would that happen?” asked Mrs McHugh, smartly.
“Winnie ... it’s ten years now.”
Mrs. McHugh looked away angrily.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“We don’t know where he’ll go yet, whether he’ll come back here or ...”
“I said I don’t want to talk about him.”
They were silent again, her snap setting an atmosphere amid the crackle of the fire.
“Think about coming to Kells for a while. We’d love to have you. All the grandchildren are only dying to get to know their old aunt better.”
“Old!” she said.
“You know what I mean. Even if you were still working, I wouldn’t be feeling so bad about you.”
“Yes ... well ...” she sniffed, “never mind that. I’ll think about it but, to be honest, traipsing across the country wouldn’t suit me, Susan. This is my new lot and I’m going to have to get used to it.”
“Yes,” said Susan. “I suppose so.”
In all the fuss, in all the commotion, between the birth of Anna Genevieve, the death of Mrs. Thomas, the arrival of the Nanny and what
had happened since, she had completely forgotten about the ten-year anniversary and what it meant.
That his time was up and he would be back out.
And now she didn’t even have Mick to protect her.
Chapter 23
Christy
The hansom cab was a thing of beauty. He took pride in waxing it up, in rubbing the glass with newspaper to give it that polished finish. The novelty had yet to wear off sailing round the city, perched high, watching the horse’s legs clip-clop across the bridges, cobbles and smooth roads of the southside.
He’d had to learn the streets by heart, about where was best to turn and where the good stations were, for water, for waiting, for the tipping fares.
He’d often drive out to the zoo and to Phoenix Park to take day trippers back into the city. On warm days he’d ferry passengers out towards Kingstown, doing short trips all day, but mostly it was businessmen and city workers he taxied about in the small, swift cab.
He worked the day shifts mainly and, when he returned to the stables, he would take the wiping cloth and go over the carriage, puffing on the glass to take away the finger-marks, checking it over for any damages or scrapes.
It had been easy to go from stable hand to cabbie. He knew they wouldn’t keep a man like him doing a boy’s job – shovelling shit all day, fetching hay and straw, hawking bags of oats around.
He was too presentable, too charming. He was wasted in the stables.
When a cabbie came down with dysentery, the headman asked him if he could help out with the busy lunch hour, to take the cab out for the rush.
“See how you get on,” he said.
He got on very well. He could handle the horse. He feigned confidence, seated up high, controlling the cab. If he didn’t know the exact street they were heading to, he asked the customer if they could guide him, explaining that he was new to the job, and that he’d be ever so grateful if they could assist.
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