Christmas Wish (22 page)

Spring of the following year followed a pattern of rain and sunshine and a westerly wind that was mild one day and raucous the next.

Anna Marie did her best to be cheerful thinking it the best way to keep her sister’s spirits up.

‘Springtime is the most wonderful time of year. Breathe that lovely fresh air. And look at all this new life.’

Venetia looked glumly at the things that made her sister so joyful. Fluffy yellow chicks just out of their eggs were a delight to the eye as were new-born lambs playing in the field.

‘Soon be slaughtered. Once they’re old enough,’ Venetia remarked glumly. ‘And we’re getting older. Turning into old maids. That’s what we are.’

Life on the farm did not suit the dark-haired twin with the flashing eyes, especially now when she couldn’t get away to see Patrick, and not just to kiss him again – though that thought was never far from her mind. She wanted to scold him for his wicked betrayal.

The smell of May blossom drifted with the petals tossed by the wind.

Anna Marie couldn’t think of anything else to say as they trudged into the barn where a sack of bran mash and a pile of potato peelings were waiting for them, to be mixed together for the chickens. She was finding her sister harder and harder to deal with. It sometimes occurred to her that she might even be happier by herself – not that she’d tell Venetia that!

One poured in bran mash, the other the potato peelings then together they added water. Venetia lit the fire in the small range beneath the old copper containing the mixture. As it warmed they would take it in turns to stir the heavy load, the steam clamping their hair to their heads and filling the barn with a sweetly appetising smell.

‘Your turn,’ said Venetia handing her sister the wooden paddle used for stirring, the wood bleached white from being immersed in so much boiling water.

She rubbed her back as she straightened, and then smoothed her hair back from her face.

‘I feel like a damp rag. And I look like a rag doll.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Anna Marie, leaning into the job of stirring, her face now as damp as that of her sister. ‘You’re eye-catching, Venetia. You always will be.’

Venetia shot her a look. It wasn’t often her sister called her by her full name. It was usually Neesh and always had been since they were small and neither could pronounce the name of the other.

‘You’re so happy here, Anna Marie. I can’t understand it, really I can’t. All these smelly animals.’

‘They’re all God’s creatures.’

‘That may be, but they still smell.’

One of the double doors of the barn was open. Venetia folded her arms and leaned against the door post, her eyes
surveying the rough stone walls surrounding the yard, the hens and their chicks, the pigs snorting up roots in the sty. She wrinkled her nose.

‘Now me, I’d prefer powder, paint and some perfume from Paris. And nice clothes.’ She sniffed. ‘Not likely to get that here though.’

Anna Marie made no comment. She was bending to her task, her hair falling forward around her face.

‘Hey! Did you hear that on the wireless? There’s going to be something called television in England. It’s like having a picture house in the corner of your living room. That’s what it said on the wireless. Now wouldn’t that be grand!’

‘I heard. Grandma said it would never take the place of the wireless though.’

‘They’ll have plays and things on – like at the pictures. God, but it’s such a long time since we went to the pictures. I’d like to see that John Wayne again. Do you remember him? And Tallulah Bankhead. And Marlene Dietrich. Oh, but aren’t they beautiful? That’s what I’d like to be you know. A film star!’

Anna Marie laughed but stopped abruptly when Venetia threw her an angry frown.

‘You don’t mean it, do you Neesh? I mean, ordinary people like us don’t get to be film stars.’

‘They do if they get to Hollywood. That’s where I’m going to go. I’m going to Hollywood to become a film star.’

Anna Marie wiped the sweat from her brow. ‘Your turn to stir.’

Venetia took hold of the paddle and began to stir, the water slopping around and her thoughts miles away. Why hadn’t she thought that before? If there was a fortune to be made in America, it had to be in Hollywood.

Anna Marie was wiping the wetness from her hands, which had become red and wrinkled after being subjected to the steam.

‘Granfer said neither of us can leave here unless it’s to get married.’

‘I have to get away,’ Venetia declared. Her sulky lips stretched over her perfect white teeth. ‘If it means getting married first, then I’ll do it. Then I’ll run away from my husband.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Anna Marie went quite pale.

Venetia tossed her head. ‘I might have to run away to England first. That’s not so far.’

Anna Marie stopped adding more bran into the potato rinds, a feast the flock of brown hens were gathering for out in the yard. She had never been naturally disobedient; most of the scrapes she’d got into had been orchestrated by her sister. Feeling quite worried about disobeying again, she made the only suggestion she could think of.

‘We could ask for permission to go.’

Venetia stopped stirring, handed the paddle to her sister and sat down on a bale of hay.

‘Are you mad? Why would we ask permission to run away?’

Anna Marie felt her cheeks burning. She hated it when Venetia snubbed her like that. It made her feel stupid.

‘What if there was a good reason for us to leave? What if we said that we wanted to find Magda and Michael?’

For once Venetia, normally with an answer for everything and the out and out ringleader and organiser, didn’t know what to say. The truth was that she too had often wondered about their older sister and baby brother. They’d asked their grandparents how Magda was, but had met a frightened silence on their grandmother’s part, and outright anger from their grandfather.

‘You’re never to mention your sister’s name again. Is that clear?’

Venetia reminded her sister of that fact.

‘We’re not to mention her. Remember?’

Anna Maria sighed. ‘I wonder why. I wonder what she’s done.’

Anna Marie recalled that visit, one of the rare ones their father had bothered to make and just after their Uncle James had been lost at sea.

‘She’s with your Aunt Bridget and doing fine,’ he’d told them.

Believing him was a matter of faith. Despite the years he was as fickle in his dealings with his family as he’d always been.

Their grandparents’ attitude towards Magda had changed some time after that.

‘I expect she got into some kind of trouble. You know what Granfer is like about girls getting too friendly with boys – and the like.’

Whilst the girls stirred in the barn, their grandmother took a break from curing hams.

She rubbed her back, a normal occurrence nowadays after hours of bending and lifting, mixing and rubbing in the salt and herbs that would give the ham its unique taste.

Now she had a few minutes to herself, to sit and muse and write in her diary, a secret book that not even her husband knew about.

Pressed flowers served as bookmarks for those entries she was particularly prone to looking at. There was a bluebell marking the day she’d received the news of James’s death, a cowslip for the last time when Joseph had come home. She’d asked her eldest son if Bridget, James’s widow, would be able to cope with just Magda for company, and wouldn’t it be a grand idea if she came back to Ireland and the pair of them live with the rest of the family.

Joseph Brodie replied that, indeed, he couldn’t think of
any reason why the pair of them, Magda and James’s widow, wouldn’t jump at the chance. What he failed to convey to them was that he hadn’t been back to Bridget’s grubby house since leaving Magda there all those years ago. Not only did Joseph believe what he wanted to believe, he chose what truths he would tell and what ones he would hold back.

A tiny spray of speedwell, the blue flower as bright as the day she’d picked it, marked the day she’d received a response from Bridget Brodie after asking that she and Magda come to live with them at the farm.

After Joseph had gone back to sea, Molly had written in response to the telegram Bridget had sent advising them of the death of her younger son.

The words didn’t come easily, especially as she needed to dab at her tears whilst writing heartfelt words of condolence and sadness.

I want to throw my arms around you and my granddaughter
, she wrote.

Their grandfather was less moved to emotion.

‘You never liked Bridget. Why would you want to throw your arms around her now? Besides, Joseph had her before James. Did you not know that? She’s a woman of dubious character. Aye, that’s what she is.’

‘Whatever she is, she’s still my daughter-in-law.’

Despite her husband’s misgivings, Molly had gone ahead and written her letter.

The response she received was unexpected and a terrible shock. Basically Bridget told her not to meddle in her life and that she had no intention of ever returning to Ireland. She preferred England thank you very much.

And as for that ungrateful little tramp, Magda, she’s run away from home and become a prostitute. Living with a woman who runs a bordello. Blood will out as they say
…

Molly Brodie had collapsed into a chair, her hand flat on her chest as though her heart would jump out through her ribs if she moved it. Even now she felt a terrible pang of anguish; were all her family doomed to be scattered far and wide, never for her to see them again?

Dermot had fallen to instant silence at the news, his snow white brows beetling over those fine blue eyes that both sons had inherited from him.

‘Is that so?’ he’d said at last, and left the room.

From that day forth he’d forbidden anyone to speak Magda’s name ever again. There’d been anger in his eyes, but also sadness.

‘It’s what comes of marrying outside yer own,’ he’d muttered, shoulders hunched and head bowed as he slopped through the yard in his big boots, his baggy trousers tied at the knees.

Molly shook her head, closed the diary and reached for her cup of tea, which was fast turning cold.

Although she’d never admitted it to her husband, she’d liked the lovely Italian girl her eldest son had married.

Thursday night. This was to be a celebration of Magda being accepted into medical school.

As planned she met Susan on the corner of George Street, which turned out to be something of a shock when Susan came trotting along looking like a grown-up Shirley Temple.

‘Crikey!’ Magda exclaimed. ‘What have you done to your hair?’

Susan’s wild, frizzy red hair was a mass of permed curls.

‘Me sister Doris did it,’ said Susan. ‘Stinks a bit, but don’t look bad does it? Reckon I look even more like that Maureen O’Hara?’

‘It looks …’ Magda pretended she needed to clear her throat as she searched for the right comment, ‘… different. I hardly recognised you.’

The truth was that Susan’s frizzy hair wasn’t easily tamed into curls, straightness or even shortness. It was wild and had a mind of its own. Back in her schooldays wearing it in plaits kept it under some kind of control, but Susan wasn’t a child any longer.

The sleek look they’d both admired on mannequins in shop window displays up west needed hair that was sleek and wavy. Susan’s was far from being sleek and a lot more than curly.

Susan patted her hair with both hands. ‘Me mam had a fit. Said that when me father finds out he’ll give me what for. I look like a wandering haystack, she said. Never seen a wandering haystack. Never seen a haystack for that matter.’

‘Your dress looks nice.’

Susan’s dress was home-made and looked as though it had been run up from a faded curtain that might once have been red. As it was the colour had faded to a dull pink. Pink wasn’t exactly ideal but red with ginger hair would have been awful.

Susan beamed. ‘Me mam made it. The beads I borrowed from our Doris. She’s not going out anywhere tonight and Derek is working the late shift at the docks.’

‘Right,’ said Magda. ‘How about a trip up to the West End? It’s on me. I’ve got some celebrating to do.’

Susan’s freckled face broke into laughter. ‘Lead me to the nearest bus!’

Magda giggled too. Their heels clattered in unison on the pavement as they dodged the detritus left by the street market and swayed their way to the bus stop.

They gathered admirers en route. Magda didn’t look round to see where the wolf whistles were coming from, but Susan couldn’t resist.

‘Cor! He’s nice.’

Magda hustled her along. ‘Come on. We’re celebrating, remember?’

‘Him that’s whistling at us … he’s got a car. Can you believe that?’

Magda dragged at her friend’s arm.

‘Come on.’

‘No. Look. Take a look. He’s handsome. Real handsome
and he’s not a docker. Not with a car like that. That’s Bradley Fitts! Bet your life he can show a girl a good time. I don’t know why you don’t go out with a big shot like that. He’s sweet on you and …’

‘No!’

Magda quickened her step and wished she hadn’t come here. Winnie had told her not to come back to George Street, but she’d determined that she would. She dragged on Susan’s arm.

‘He went to the same school as us. Remember? Can’t we just say …?’

‘No! He’s trouble, Susan. He was a bully at school, remember?’

‘Yes, but he’s not the school bully boy now.’

Magda grimaced. ‘Nowadays he’s a professional bully.’

Once they were out of sight of the car and the wolf whistles had stopped Susan was again engaged with the idea of getting one of those bright red trolley buses and going up west. For now at least the admiring wolf whistles were forgotten.

One hundred paces further and there was the bus stop.

The evening was pleasant and although powder puff clouds were piling up behind the chimney pots, the sun was still shining.

Magda felt a huge sense of relief. Bradley couldn’t have seen them. She hoped not.

Just as they were about to cross the road to the tram stop a horn sounded. A car rolled to a stop in front of them.