Rainbow's End (17 page)

But the honest-to-God truth was that Maggie didn’t want to go home. Not any more. Once, she would have welcomed it; she remembered too well those long nights when she had laid, snivelling, in her bed, desperate for the feel of Aileen’s warm back against one side and Carrie’s bony knees the other. But gradually she grew less lonely. Once Ticky was born, for instance, he shared her bed and his warm, strong little body was a great comfort to a lonely young girl who missed her sisters. He was a happy child, eager for love, and Maggie loved him dearly. And it wasn’t only Ticky, either; against all her expectations, she had become extremely fond of the twins. They were naughty, she admitted that they mitched off school, told lies and were generally difficult to handle, but she very soon discovered that they could be every bit as nice as Ticky if you were patient with them and treated them firmly but with affection.

She was pretty sure they had intended to drive her out to start with and she was never totally sure what had changed their minds. It certainly wasn’t when they saw how fond she was of Ticky, for the twins didn’t like babies and had no patience with small children. She thought sometimes that it was when they discovered her in John Street church spending a precious ha’penny on a candle, which she had lit for her father when he had been taken into hospital. Neither the candle nor the fervent prayers which went with it had done any good, he had died two days later, but she thought it possible that their changed attitude had dated from that time.

Or had it been the dog? The twins had come home one afternoon with a disgusting dog in tow, the most draggly, half-starved, ugly mongrel you could imagine. Garvan, who was proud of his nastiness and had been smacked and shaken by Maggie for throwing stones at cats, had plonked himself down at the kitchen table and said very loudly: ‘It’s
our
dog, mine an’ Shay’s, an’ if anyone tries to hort him again we’ll kill’m, so we will.’ And he had burst into tears.

‘Oh, Garv,’ soft-hearted Maggie had cried, putting her arms round his shaking shoulders. ‘Who’s hurt the poor feller, then?’

Garvan, his voice shaking, told her that the dog had been thrown into the Grand Canal, alive but ‘wit’ his four legs tied together, an’ a rope round his mouth so tight it near strangled him’. He and his brother had fished the animal out, believing it to be dead, and whilst they were deciding to have a funeral and where they should bury the poor dead creature, the dog had moved, actually moved, after God knew how long in the water.

‘We
hate
whoever hort him,’ Garvan said at the conclusion of his story. ‘And we
will
keep him, won’t we, Shay?’

Seamus agreed that they wanted to keep the animal and Maggie, who knew nothing at all about dogs and was in fact rather afraid of them, stared doubtfully at it. It was leggy and loose-limbed, with a shaggy, fawn-coloured coat and a long, pointed nose. Its ears were large and lay flat until Maggie spoke to it kindly, whereupon they came erect like two small wigwams, giving the dog an even stranger appearance than before.

‘Well . . .’ she began, wondering how best to disillusion the twins, for taking care of the dog and feeding it and taking it for walks, if that was what you did with dogs, would undoubtedly fall largely to her, and her hands were already full, what with Ticky and the twins themselves. Then the dog had smiled at her. It really did, it smiled, showing a set of beautifully white teeth and a gently lolling pink tongue . . . and behind all the rough-looking fur, its eyes, limpid and very dark, seemed to beam with affection.

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . what’ll your mammy say?’

‘If you say you want to keep it, Mags, then Mammy won’t stop you,’ Seamus observed. ‘She was tellin’ Mrs Platt only the other day that you were a real comfort to her, so you were, goin’ on about how you looked after smelly Ticky an’ all.’

‘Did she?’ Maggie said, feeling her cheeks warm. It was nice to feel that she was appreciated, from time to time. ‘Well, all I can do is ask. And you mustn’t call the dog “it”, fellers. He deserves a nice name.’

‘Yes, if we call him somethin’ holy then Mammy won’t turn him away,’ Seamus observed. ‘Shall we call him Saint Augustine?’

‘That’s a nice name,’ Maggie said, trying to keep a straight face. ‘But a bit of a mout’ful it is to be sure . . . your mammy might prefer somethin’ shorter.’

‘We’ll tell her his name’s Saint Augustine, an’ see what she says,’ Seamus decided. ‘So long as she lets us keep him . . .’

There was such naked longing in his voice that Maggie was taken aback. The twins seemed to her to be much loved and rather spoilt, not the sort of children to long for a pet of their own with quite such desperation. It was only later, when she was in bed with Ticky snuggled up beside her, that she had realised something. The new baby had definitely put the twins’ noses out of joint as they say. Mrs Nolan adored little Ticky, played with him, sang to him and refused to let the twins interfere with their small brother in case they inadvertently hurt him. Had this attitude made the twins doubt their place in their mother’s affections?

So Maggie decided that she would try to explain to Mrs Nolan that the dog was rather important to her small sons – and indeed, by the time her mistress returned from work that night, he had the entire family on his side. Liam, coming in tired and rather cross after a long day delivering telegrams in the rain, had been charmed by the dog’s smile and had taken him out and washed him under the tap so that he would make a good impression on his mother when she returned.

Kenny had liked him, too. ‘We’ve never had a dog,’ he had said. ‘Sure an’ lookin’ after him might keep those divils out of mischief.’

He meant the twins, Maggie knew, and by the time Mrs Nolan returned she and Kenny and Liam had brushed most of the tangles out of the dog’s coat and fed him on scraps which he wolfed eagerly but with a sort of natural courtesy which Maggie found touching.

‘It’s as if he wanted to make sure no one else had more right to the food,’ she said, awed. In her admittedly small experience animals grabbed what they could and ran for it. ‘Aren’t you a lovely feller, then?’

The lovely feller wagged his long, draggly tail and lay down on one of the rag rugs which Mrs Nolan made as she sat before the fire on long winter evenings. And when Mrs Nolan arrived home everyone pleaded so eloquently, and she was so amused by the creature’s saintly name and the way he smiled, that his inclusion in the family was more or less a foregone conclusion. They called him Gus, it being more suitable, Mrs Nolan said tactfully, than Saint Augustine, and loved him almost as much as he loved them.

But regardless of whether it was Gus or her father’s death which had influenced the twins, Maggie no longer had any doubt that they regarded her with affection. They were nine years old now, and still capable of great wickedness, but they loved their family and they included Maggie as a member of the clan, whilst still acknowledging her right to spend time with the McVeighs. Maggie did not think that it ever crossed the twins’ remarkably similar minds that she might one day return to Dally Court and she herself did not feel the slightest wish, any more, to do so.

One reason was that she enjoyed life with the Nolans; but another, which she tried very hard to keep a secret, was her feeling for Liam.

After a bad start, he had taken to her, there could be no doubt of that. At first, when the twins’ wickedness had caused her to shed many bitter tears, he had been brusque with her, telling her that if she couldn’t win their affection then she might as well give up and go home right away. But then, as she did her best to take his advice, he had begun to give her a helping hand, at first grudgingly, then more willingly. He had warned her that Garvan, in particular, did not much care what he did or whom he hurt so long as he got his own way, yet advised her to concentrate on treating both brothers equally.

‘For Seamus sees neither rhyme nor reason in anyone not loving Garvan simply because he’s a holy terror,’ he had explained. ‘I tell meself over an’ over that they’ll improve wit’ age, but I can walk away from ’em. You can’t. Best try seein’ the good in ’em – and it is there, if you search.’

Maggie had done as he advised and very soon she loved both Seamus and Garvan with an exasperated affection which was proof against most of their ordinary naughtiness. As Liam had hoped, they did improve with age. And gradually, over the three years, Liam had fallen into the habit of spending time with Maggie, until now he treated her almost as an equal, despite the fact that she was fourteen and he eighteen and therefore a man.

Maggie knew he wasn’t handsome in the accepted sense, that he probably wasn’t as good-looking as Kenny, who had his mother’s thick, creamy-fair hair and light-blue eyes. Liam was dark-haired, dark-eyed and rather serious. He had a thin face with a long chin and he suffered – as did many boys of his age – from occasional spots, but to Maggie he was everything that she most admired. He was quiet, loved reading, the countryside, tram rides, long walks, and this despite the fact that he no longer dashed about Dublin on the heavy bicycle, delivering telegrams, because he was now a postman. You might have thought that all the walking he did in his work would have put him off doing it for pleasure, but it hadn’t. And besides, there was more to being a postman than delivering the mail. Liam told Maggie about sorting the letters, learning about the various postal districts and, finally, about the actual deliveries. The rich houses where huge dogs bounded out at you, barking fit to bust. The people who hadn’t spoken to their neighbours for twenty years and so would not pop round with it if you delivered a letter wrongly by accident. Others who asked him in on cold days for a hot cup of tea and a cut of soda bread. Others still, usually the immensely rich, who would not dream of exchanging a word with a postman, let alone encouraging him to cross their threshhold. And when he was tipped for delivering a longed-for letter from a son or a lover he bought little treats and shared them with her.

So he likes me, Maggie concluded. I don’t know if he likes me in the right sort of way, but what other way could there be? Her friend, Dympna, had a young man now and said, wisely, that not all men who liked you wanted to take it further. Still, it’s nice to be liked. I value his friendship, Maggie’d told herself. But if I go home, live with Mam, get a job . . . will he like me then? Or will he find someone else to talk with, walk with? We’ll hardly ever meet, because the sort of job I could get wouldn’t mean much time to meself and Mam would expect me to help at home, like the others.

So staying with the Nolans was what she wanted to do, which made it hard that clearly duty meant she should do the opposite. Everyone knew life wasn’t easy, so by rights she should be going back home to Dally Court. She could earn money, help her mother in the long struggle to bring up the remaining younger children . . .

Maggie finished a vigorous scrubbing of the hall lino and turned back into the living-kitchen once more. Once there, she took a hard look at her scrub brush. It had had it. It was semi-balding and with what bristles it still possessed leaning almost flat to the wood, it had barely finished this job and would, Maggie thought, never do another. But there was money in the teapot on the mantel for just such emergencies – she would buy a new one presently when she had finished the housework. Money wasn’t short in the Nolan household. Mrs Nolan was doing well, the dressmaking business in which she was a partner was thriving, and both Liam and Kenny were in work. I’m sure she could afford to pay me a bit, if I asked, Maggie said to herself. Cleaning and cooking and looking after the twins was no joke, there weren’t many girls of fourteen who would be happy to do it without pay. The only snag to asking was that in three years Maggie had got to know Mrs Nolan very well indeed. She liked her all right, but had long ago realised that her employer had no idea just how hard Maggie worked. If she asked for money as well as her keep there was a strong possibility that Mrs Nolan, who spent freely on her own home and family but who was quite mean in other ways, would very likely say she’d get another schoolgirl to do the job and out Maggie would have to go, back to Dally Court. And even though Mrs Nolan would speedily discover her mistake, because the job had grown with Maggie so to speak, the die would have been cast. Mrs Nolan would not acknowledge herself to be in the wrong, which would mean everyone would be unhappy. The twins, Ticky, Liam and Kenny, Mrs Nolan, Maggie . . . and the poor little schoolgirl, of course.

Maggie crossed the kitchen and picked up the linen basket. She had a line of washing out and there was a good, stiff wind, so it should be dry by now. She would fetch it in, then nip out to the nearest huckster shop and buy a new scrubbing brush – which would mean waking Ticky, but he’d been asleep quite long enough – and be home by the time the twins got in.

Maggie ran down the stairs, closely followed by Gus, who seldom left her side whilst the twins were in school, and went round to the backyard. She took the prop down and began unpegging the washing, which she piled in her basket. Before I come along, Mrs Nolan sent the washin’ out to Mrs Forbes in the next block, she reminded herself. So even by doing this, I’m savin’ her a bit. Oh, I wonder if I dare ask for a bob or two, as well as me keep?

She toiled up the stairs again with her basket of sweet-smelling linen and piled it on a chair; she would iron it later, shoving the flat irons into the heat of the fire, testing them, being careful, as Mrs Nolan liked.

She had not turned out to be a breaker, either. The china ornaments on shelves and tables were intact, save for one or two which the twins had seen off in their youth. Ticky wasn’t as boisterous as Garvan and Seamus had been, he had only recently begun to walk, so they’d managed to avoid breakages for a while now. Maggie went further along the landing to the room she and the baby shared. He was asleep, rosy-faced and snoring slightly, in the very centre of the bed, his hands curled into sleepy fists, his mouth open. But he woke, sweet-tempered and serene, when she called his name, and allowed her to get him up and dress him without a murmur of protest.