Another Kind of Life (17 page)

It was May who first brought up the subject.

‘I wonder will Papa be there when we get home?’

‘I don’t know if I care,’ said Hannah.

I was shocked. Her expression was cold again, disdainful, and she turned away from us and stared out the window.

Neither May nor I said anything. I think I understood instinctively even then that Hannah felt displaced, that Papa’s return would somehow rob her of a privileged place in our household.
She had been Mama’s confidante for three years, sharing her joys and sorrows. Once Papa was home, she would return to being, simply, a daughter.

He was waiting for us in the drawing room when we reached Leinster Road. He seemed smaller to me, almost sunken, his head withdrawn a little into himself like a tortoise. I
know I felt suddenly shy. I looked to Mama, standing with her back to the window. The air in the room was strange, almost brittle, but she was doing her best to smile.

‘Hello, Mouse,’ he said softly. ‘My, but you’ve grown.’

‘Hello, Papa,’ I said, accepting his kiss, feeling a little wary. He smelt different, somehow, almost fusty.

He turned to May and kissed her, too. She went bright red and stammered, ‘Papa – welcome to our home.’

There was a silence, and his smile faded. May burst into tears and fled from the room. Once her sobs had calmed later, she turned to Hannah and me in bewilderment. She had really meant to say
‘Welcome home’, but it had all come out wrong. Poor May, she was inconsolable.

I think he kissed Hannah, too, but I can’t remember. My memory seems to fall apart at the moment when May ran from the room. I really don’t know what happened next.

The following days were subdued. I don’t think that anyone even attempted to keep up the subterfuge of New York – we simply never mentioned his absence again.

Papa moved about the house quietly, keeping out of everyone’s way, as though he realized he didn’t belong. And Mama? I don’t know how she struggled through those days. She was
the same with us, the same with Grandfather Delaney, and ladies started to come to tea again in the afternoons.

I suppose our lives settled back into some form of normality late that summer. We learned to live around Papa, not quite with him. At twelve years of age, I decided I was no longer comfortable
with his calling me ‘Mouse’. I was finally growing up. Still, I was reluctant to leave Mama when the time came to go back to school. I felt she needed someone to watch over her and, to
be truthful, I felt, too, that Hannah had usurped far too much of her during the previous three years.

Mama was easy to persuade: I think she liked the idea of having me at home. And so the decision was taken that I should go as a day-pupil to Loreto on St Stephen’s Green, rather than as a
boarder like my sisters. They had each other, so they didn’t seem to mind.

I settled into the luxury of my own room, my own books, and Mama. Papa and I circled each other warily for a time, and then he seemed to decide that I wasn’t worth the effort.

P
APA’S FACE HAD
gone quite white. He seemed not to know what to do with his body. He looked around vaguely, after May had left the drawing room,
as though searching for her, or forgiveness, or an escape – it was hard to tell.

Welcome to our home
.

The air in the room seemed to grow suddenly still, then fill up with tension. Hannah stood very quietly after May’s outburst; Mama stood, unmoving, between the window and the heavy drapes.
Her face was turned away from everybody. Nobody seemed inclined to speak. Hannah stepped forward.

‘Welcome back, Papa,’ she said, and allowed her cheek to receive a trembling kiss. ‘I hope you’re well.’

‘Well, yes, well,’ he agreed, nodding his head. There was an eagerness to his tone which saddened Hannah, made her suddenly want to cry. She wasn’t sure why she had stepped
forward – she supposed it was a mixture of duty, embarrassment at May’s faux pas, and a sudden sympathy for the figure standing by the window. It seemed to come to life abruptly, to
become Mama again, once the spell of silence had been broken by her father’s kiss.

‘Papa’s tired, dear, he’s had a long journey. Perhaps you could ask Lily to bring some tea.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

Hannah turned to Eleanor.

‘Come, Ellie. Come with me. Mama and Papa need some peace and quiet.’

She had not intended to behave like this at all, but the warm glow of her recent visit to Cork made her disposed to be kind. She had glimpsed a life where it might be possible to feel happy
again, carefree, invulnerable: a life where the worst thing that happened was a fall from your bicycle, a dusty dress, some hurt dignity. Besides, she could take little satisfaction now from raging
against the shell of a man whose eyes seemed grateful when his eldest daughter condescended to let him kiss her cheek.

Hannah went down the steps to the kitchen, still holding Eleanor’s hand. A nervous Lily promised to bring tea at once.

‘Let’s go and play with May,’ whispered Eleanor, once they were out in the hallway again. ‘She looked so terribly sad.’

Hannah sighed. She did a rapid mental calculation. It was nearly July. Preparations for boarding school would begin again in late August. Seven full weeks, and then she could count herself as on
her way, out of home again.

She wished she could will the time away, or spend the long days in Cork, or be anywhere other than under her parents’ roof.

September came, and with it the promise of company, of ordered convent days which flowed one into the other without effort, and Miss de Vere.

Hannah felt a small thrill of delight when she thought about the lessons which awaited her. She had been singled out from the other girls after her music examination last term. Miss de Vere took
only the brightest and most promising students for extra lessons. Hannah could barely contain her impatience. She wanted to throw herself into something that demanded discipline and focus. And Miss
de Vere was known as a demanding teacher. Something of an eccentric, she taught her girls in a way that shouldn’t have been successful, but nearly always was. Those she chose became the
school’s candidates for scholarships with the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

For the last few weeks before returning to school, Hannah thought about nothing else. She had daydreams about being the successful candidate when her final year came, modestly receiving
applause, the admiration of others.

The dream brought with it a new determination to succeed. Something so wonderful and undreamt of would go a long way towards drawing a line under the last few unhappy years of everyone’s
life.

O
NCE
THE
DEPOSITION
was over, Mary wanted to know nothing more about it. She no longer cared what
happened to the likes of Agnes Neill, felt no thirst for revenge. It was over, done, finished with. Now she needed to pay the rent, feed and clothe Cecilia and herself: keep body and soul together,
as Ma would say. The only way she could do that was by using all the skills she had garnered over the last six years with Watson, Valentine and Company. She set about doing so, filled with the most
extraordinary energy she had ever known.

Mary knew that none of the mills could keep up with the demand for linen handkerchiefs, heard that hemmers were in demand everywhere, all over Belfast. Handkerchiefs, embroidered tablecloths,
shirt-finishing: she would do it all, whatever it took, no matter how hard she had to work. She presented herself at York Street mill the Monday after Cecilia’s deposition, unwilling to
return, ever, to Watson, Valentine and Company. A taciturn foreman pointed her grudgingly towards the warehouse.

She felt almost eager when she saw the giant bundles of unfinished handkerchiefs, tray cloths and tablecloths. They lay there, rows and rows of them, waiting for her practised fingers.

‘What’s the piece-rate?’ she asked, pointing towards the handkerchiefs. The despatcher was tall, gangly, no more than a lad.

‘One and ninepence for twelve dozen, miss.’

Mary was startled, thought she couldn’t have heard him correctly.

‘How many dozen?’

‘Twelve, miss.’

One hundred and forty-four handkerchiefs hemmed and finished for one and ninepence? She felt suddenly shaky, the creeping numbness of disappointment filling all the spaces where hope had so
recently been.

‘How many stitches to the inch?’

‘Sixteen, miss.’

Grimly, Mary carried the bundles home with her on the tram. Cecilia would have to come with her in future: she’d need to carry far more than this if they were to have a hope of surviving.
She forced herself to be optimistic, to appear cheerful when she got home. Mary knew that she was good with her needle, that she’d grow quick and accurate before long. She’d find some
way for her sister to help, anything to smooth away the lines of worry that were settling into permanent creases on Cecilia’s face, making her look old before her time.

She and Cecilia quickly became familiar morning visitors to the York Street warehouse, often arriving long before six o’clock. Mary wanted to be first in line, wanted not
to have to see the long queue of bedraggled women, of tattered children, their faces always snotty, their bare feet hard and blackened.

On the first morning she returned with the finished handkerchiefs, Cecilia came with her, holding tight to Mary’s arm. She grew nervous long before they drew close to York Street; Mary
knew she could smell the mill in the air. She wanted to get her sister in and out of there as quickly as possible. Once her work had been checked, the foreman handed her a chit for her pay.
Quickly, Mary scanned the numbers. The sum was not what she had expected, not what she had carefully calculated with Cecilia the previous evening.

‘ ’Tis short,’ she said. ‘’Tis more nor a shillin’ short, sir.’

She stood her ground, refusing to budge, to lose her place in the queue, until he paid attention to her.

He snatched the piece of paper from her hand.

‘Deduction for thread,’ he snapped.

Mary looked at him.

‘For thread?’ she repeated, stupidly.

‘Aye, for thread. A shillin’ for thread. Take it or leave it, but move away on outa here.’

Mary felt her anger rise in a way she hadn’t done for a long time. She used to take it quietly when they fined her for talking or sneaking a drink of water. She had not reared up once,
doing all the muckiest, filthiest jobs they gave her. She’d never answered back the spinning master, not once in six years. But this made her blood sing in her ears. She felt angry not just
for herself but for all the raggle-taggle line of humanity waiting patiently, hungrily, behind her.

Cecilia tugged at her sleeve. ‘Come on, Mary,’ she whispered, ‘there’s no point.’

She moved out of the queue, clutching her new bundles of handkerchiefs and tablecloths, and shed tears of bitterness and frustration. She wanted to dash the bundles on to the cobbles, dance them
into the muck with her boots. But Cecilia was right, there was no point. She forced herself to be calm; her rage was making her sister’s helpless face whiter by the minute.

‘Aye, you’re right. I know there’s no bloody point. That’s what makes me boil, so it does.’

Mary’s anger continued to burn over the next several weeks. It was new to her, new and unwelcome, this raging sense of impotence and injustice. She and Cecilia began to hear stories of a
Miss Galway, a lady who’d formed a union for women workers. She didn’t just help those in the mill, they said, but the homeworkers, too. Mary watched as Cecilia’s face grew
worried. She had no difficulty reading her sister’s expression. She feared Mary’s new anger, feared that she might lose her to Mary Galway and the battles that none of them would ever
win.

Silently, Mary wished the woman well, but she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Trade unions meant trouble; Mary had seen enough of it in Watson, Valentine and Company. The men in the
weaving shed, mostly, fighting against unjust fines, demanding covers for their dangerous shuttles, things like that. Mary’s memory of most disputes was the men silently filing back to their
looms, sullen, angry, defeated; sometimes worse off than before. Whoever owned the mills in this city had no mercy. Power, yes; but no mercy.

In the early days of Mary’s homeworking, the sisters loved being together, sitting over the tiny table in the parlour, piles of fabric covering every surface in the room.
It was the closest they had come in years to being happy. Mary would describe each piece to Cecilia as she sewed – the scalloped edges of fine linen tablecloths, the embroidered flowers on
matching napkins, the intertwined initials of a bridal couple on sheets and pillowcases. Most pieces were heavily ornamented, hard on the fingers and eyes. Mary grew used to the headaches brought
on by sprigging, as her eyes strained over complicated patterns, often requiring hundreds of tiny stitches to complete each stem or petal.

Cecilia would make up stories to amuse Mary as she worked, stories about the big houses where all these pieces were to be used. She tried to imagine the luxury of the rooms, the duties of the
servants, the quality of an existence which meant sleeping on smooth, fine sheets, rather than ripped-up flour-sacks. But, just as suddenly as she had begun to make up these stories, she stopped.
Mary said nothing. She knew that her sister’s sightless eyes had made her inner life all the more vivid. Eventually, the imagined pictures became a cruel reminder, day after day, of what she
would never be, never have, never see again.

During the first year, Cecilia learned all the finishing touches Mary could teach her. She used the tips of her fingers to check for knots and stray threads on the reverse side of each piece:
she was delicate and accurate, learning by touch how to snip away the loose ends and make each side of the embroidered fabric virtually indistinguishable from the other. She became adept at
spotting gaps or unevenness in the stitching, passing the pieces back to Mary, who worked quickly, neatly, confident that any mistakes would be detected by her finisher. Cecilia had even learned to
iron and fold the smaller pieces, watched carefully by Mary. At first, she had been terrified that Cecilia would burn herself. She would heat the flat iron on the fire to the right temperature, and
watch as Cecilia measured the distance from cloth to iron, using her hands to see. Mary had admired her sister’s deftness: whatever else had been forgotten from Cecilia’s other life,
the skills of needlework were remembered by her hands, which were still strong and beautiful. The only part of her, Mary reflected bitterly, that hadn’t been damaged beyond repair. It took
Cecilia some time to grow accustomed to using the iron without her eyes to guide her. There had been scalds and burns in the early days, but not enough to quench her determination, her enthusiasm
to be useful.