Patricia Falvey (10 page)

“Well, Miss Eileen,” he said, “d’you think you deserve this?”

I wanted to scream at him that I deserved twice that much. I had worked like a slave all week. But I bit my tongue and lowered my head. “I hope so, sir,” I muttered.

“The reports I have are very good,” he continued, looking over at Miss Galway, who stood, arms folded, overseeing the proceedings. “I’ve been watching you myself. You catch on quick. I think we’ll keep you for another week.”

He grinned, exposing yellowed, uneven teeth. I suppose he thought he was a real comedian, torturing anxious young girls who needed the money.

“Thank you, sir. I’m grateful, sir” was all I said.

Satisfied, he handed me the pay envelope. “Don’t spend it all at once, now.”

I took it from him and hurried outside before my anger could explode. I ran across the bridge spanning the river and sat on the low brick wall to wait for the tram. Emotions buzzed through me. It was not in my nature to swallow my pride the way I had done with Shields. Even a year ago I would not have been able to do it. But now, I realized, there was something at stake. If I wanted the job, and the money it brought, I would have to keep my head down and my mouth shut.

I opened the envelope and slipped my fingers inside. I felt for the shillings and sixpences and the threepenny bits. I traced the raised outline of the queen’s image on the coins, like a blind person reading Braille. I looked down and saw my name written on the envelope. Eileen O’Neill. Eileen O’Neill. An unfamiliar feeling flowed through me, warm and strong and alive. I realized it was pride. I had a job! I had earned money all on my own! Och, Da, can you see me now? Ma, Frankie? I’ll come and take you away from that evil oul’ man’s place soon. The flush of pride fueled my hopes, and suddenly they were boundless. I would work hard. I would put up with the long hours and the heat and sweat. I would move up from a doffer to a spinner. Maybe I would buy a sewing machine and take on finishing work at home at P.J.’s house—hemming handkerchiefs or tablecloths—for extra money. I would spend nothing. Soon I would have enough to make a home for Paddy and Frankie and me and Ma. And in time I would have enough to repair the Yellow House. I was giddy with the thoughts. I smiled for the first time in months. I realized I was happy. I was even happy with God. I looked up into the clear spring sky. “Thank you,” I said.

ONE DAY, P.J.
told me that Ma’s da had put her in the insane ward at the hospital. P.J. said news of Da’s death had sent her over the edge, and her father could no longer take care of her. I snorted angrily at that one—oul’ bastard cared for nobody but himself. I asked P.J. about Frankie, but all he would say was that Frankie was still at the Fitzwilliam farm and doing grand.

Soon after, on an early summer Sunday after mass, I went with P.J. to visit Ma. It had been almost four years since I had seen her. I could hardly believe so much time had passed. I had long ago given up pestering P.J. to take me to see her at her father’s farm. Then I had gone through a period of such anger with her for leaving me that I had told myself I didn’t care if I ever saw her again. It wasn’t true, of course, but it had been easier to bury the pain under rage than to accept her abandonment. Now I was afraid of what I would find. If her da had put her in the asylum, she must be in a bad way. I clutched a bunch of white daisies in my hands as I rode in the cart beside P.J. up toward the hospital. Ma’s hat, which I had kept with me since that awful night of the fire, sat on my knees. I looked down at the daisies and thought of how just a short time ago their small shoots had thrust themselves out of the frozen, hard ground just when you might have given them up for dead. And within weeks they blossomed, as if to say, “Had you no faith in us at all?” Today I was filled with faith—faith in myself, faith in the future, aye, and even faith in God Himself.

I shuddered as we approached the building that housed the Fever Hospital, workhouse, and ward for the insane. I tried not to think of the night we had carried Lizzie here, not knowing that we would never see her again. It all seemed so long ago, and I thought I had buried the memories deep in the back of my mind, but they reared up again now, raw as ever. I shook off the uneasiness and pinned my eyes on the hospital straight ahead of us. It was a three-story stone building, square and grim. P.J. stopped the cart and helped me down. We walked in through a big arched door to a reception room that smelled of wax and disinfectant. P.J. led the way over to a nurse sitting behind a big desk.

“Hello, Nellie,” he said.

She looked up, her round face creased in a smile. “Well, hello, Mr. Mullen, it’s grand to see you again.”

“And yourself, Nellie. You look lovelier every day.”

The nurse blushed under P.J.’s charm. I smiled in spite of my nervousness. P.J. had been coming to see Ma about once a fortnight, so he knew the way of things there. But for me it was a strange and forbidding place. I inwardly cursed my grandfather for putting Ma there. This was the last place she would ever want to be.

“This is Eileen—Mary O’Neill’s daughter. She’d like to see her ma.”

The nurse looked at me and sighed. Her face was kind, but her eyes were sharp. She looked up at P.J.

“Are you sure she’s old enough? We don’t let children under sixteen into, er… that particular ward.”

P.J. nodded. “She’s close enough, Nellie. Besides, she has more sense in her head than girls twice her age.”

The nurse looked doubtful. “Well, as long as you go with her, I suppose…”

“I want to go alone!” I said without thinking. I turned to P.J. “I’ll be all right—I just want to see her by myself. It’s the first time…” My voice trailed off.

P.J. stroked his beard as he always did when weighing things up in his mind. “I understand, love. But come on back down if you need me. I’ll sit myself right here next to this charming Florence Nightingale.” He beamed over at the nurse.

An older, very stern nurse led me up two flights of stairs. She reminded me of Mary Galway at the mill. She walked as if she had a poker up her arse.

“You’re not to be staying long,” she said over her shoulder. “Visitors have a way of upsetting the patients.”

“She’s my mother,” I retorted. “How would I be upsetting her?”

She did not answer.

“Does she have many visitors?” I asked suddenly.

The nurse pursed her lips. “Well, there’s that very forward man, Mullen. He comes twice a month or so. And her father’s representative comes every month to pay the room fees and speak with the doctor. And of course there’s Mr. Finnegan.”

Mr. Finnegan? I had no notion of who Mr. Finnegan was.

We reached the top floor. I followed her down the middle of a large ward. Women, old and young, lay or sat on single iron beds, watching us intently. Some cackled and made dirty gestures, while others cursed aloud.

“Pay no attention,” the nurse said.

I tried to keep my eyes off them, but I could feel their presence, like ghosts, all around me. I was suddenly terrified of seeing Ma. She was kept in a private room at the far end of the ward. The nurse opened the door, and I crept in behind her.

“You have a visitor, Mrs. O’Neill,” the nurse said briskly. And then to me she said, “Keep it to a half an hour,” and left the room.

I walked over to Ma. She sat in a chair by the window, staring down at the people coming and going in the courtyard below. She was thinner than I remembered. Her long black hair had streaks of gray, but it was brushed and tied back in a pink ribbon. She wore a long pink dressing gown over a flannel nightdress and had soft slippers on her feet. I wondered idly who had bought the clothes for her. I knelt and handed her the flowers and her hat. “Hello, Ma,” I said. “I brought you these flowers. Remember how you always loved daisies? And here’s your lovely hat. You forgot it when you left.” She turned toward me, a startled look on her face.

“Thank you,” she said politely, as if to a stranger.

She made no attempt to take the flowers or the hat, so I laid them in her lap. She looked down but did not touch them. I got up and pulled over a chair and sat down facing her. She looked straight at me with dull eyes, and I realized with a shock that she did not recognize me. I tried to tell myself it was because I had grown so much in the last four years, filled out, become stronger. I was no longer a little girl. But my heart sank anyway. Any mother in her right mind would know her own daughter, no matter how long it had been since they had seen each other.

Anger rose in me and fell. I began to talk, racing from one subject to another, my voice rising hysterically.

“They burned the Yellow House, and Da died defending it. You should have seen him, Ma. You would have been so proud of him.” Tears stung my eyes. “Paddy and I escaped harm. We’re living with P.J. and his wife. Mrs. Mullen is awful good to Paddy.” I sniffed back the tears. “I’ve got work now, Ma. I’m a doffer up at Queensbrook Mill. I earn my own wages every week.” I pulled an empty pay envelope out of my pocket. “Look, Ma. You see, it has my name on it. Eileen O’Neill. Isn’t that grand? I intend to save as much as I can so I can fix the Yellow House and we can all go home. You see, it didn’t burn to the ground, Ma. It might have if Da had not chased them off, but it can be repaired. Won’t that be great, Ma?”

Ma stared at me, a small frown on her face.

I reached over, grabbed her wrists, and shook her violently. “For God’s sake, Ma, look at me. Talk to me!”

She stared at me in confusion. Sighing, I dropped her hands and knelt and put my arms around her instead. She was brittle and fragile in my embrace. I kissed her left cheek, dry as parchment. “I’m sorry, Ma,” I said. “Here, let me put the flowers in water.”

I stood up, took the flowers from her lap, and thrust them into a jug of water that stood on a bedside table. Then I took her hat and hung it on a peg on the back of the door. When I looked at her again, she was back to staring out the window. I wonder how old you have to be until you don’t need your ma to love you anymore. I wanted my ma back—my lovely, elegant, smiling ma who doted on me. I wanted to feel again the stroke of her hand on my hair and the brush of her lips on my cheek when I brought her a present—fistfuls of buttercups from the garden, a pretty stone from the beach at Warrenpoint, a picture I had drawn for her.

I walked to the door and looked back at her. P.J. had warned me that she was changed, but I hadn’t believed it. Even now, I refused to believe she would not get better. Surely if she was brought home to her old surroundings with her family around her, surely she would be better. I realize now that I needed that hope more for myself than for her.

I closed the door gently and walked back through the ward where the women sang and taunted and screamed. My ma was not like these women. She would never be like these women. I hastened my step and ran down the stairs until I was back in the front office. I ran directly to P.J. and buried my head in his shoulder.

“Take me home, P.J.,” I murmured.

“Aye, love.”

A
fortnight before my sixteenth birthday, on a sweltering Saturday evening in August 1913, I stood on the stage in the Ceili House pub in Newry, holding my da’s fiddle. The Music Men surrounded me—Terrence, Fergus, and P. J. Mullen. A new young fellow named Gavin had replaced Billy.

That morning, P.J. had come into the kitchen and thrust the fiddle into my hands.

“It’s about time you took it up, girl,” he’d said, “or the poor thing will get warped from lack of use.”

“But I hardly know how to play,” I had protested.

P.J. had waved me off. “Sure it’s in your blood, child. God will guide your hand.” And then he’d winked at me. “There’s money in it for you.”

I stood now, my knees trembling, as I looked out at the crowd. The Ceili House, the most popular pub in Newry, drew people from miles around. Da used to play there often. I tried to see it through his eyes. The room was bathed in a yellow glow from the gas lamps set along the walls. A mahogany bar ran the length of the room on one side. On it, pints of black porter stood in a row, waiting for the white foam to settle. Behind the bar was a cracked, dusty mirror. Shelves filled with bottles of spirits reached to the ceiling. Two men, the owner and his son, red-faced and jovial, moved swiftly among customers, their broad, beefy hands slapping bottles and glasses on splintered wooden tables. A toothless old woman sat on a stool at the end of the bar, sucking a tobacco pipe.