Rainbow's End (7 page)

‘You’re a cruel bitch, Fidelma,’ Grainne whispered. ‘I hope to God one day you have an ache inside you that hurts you as much as it hurts me now.’

‘I hope to God you go on hurting for the rest of your natural life,’ Fidelma hissed, for they knew better than to quarrel aloud after their father’s many threats. ‘And don’t think I’m goin’ to live wit’ you when we get to Dublin, for I am not! I’ll move away from you the first chance I get – as far as possible, what’s more.’

‘You’re not alone, Fidelma Feeney, for I don’t intend to live anywhere near you whiles I’ve breath in me body. Right, then. It’s war between us two, then?’

‘War,’ confirmed Fidelma between her small white teeth, which were gripping her lower lip as if they would bite it in two. ‘And may you rot before I speak dacent to you again, sister.’

This time Grainne did not reply and the two of them walked on, elbows almost touching but hearts and minds a mile apart, into the soft spring dusk.

Chapter Two

Liverpool, March 1904

Ellen awoke. For some time she had been dimly aware of a disturbance; faint cries, the occasional muttered curse, but she hadn’t been able to wake herself up to find out what was going on. She had been late to bed, for a start, and for once the pile of blankets and old coats which covered her had felt warm and adequate, from which she deduced that the bitter cold was beginning to break at last.

Now that she was awake, however, she stirred cautiously, opening one eye and squinting towards the window. It was a paler square in the darkness to be sure, but it wasn’t morning yet. Not by a long chalk. So why the fuss? The drunks had tottered home hours ago, her new stepfather was at sea, her mother . . .

Her mother! There was a baby on the way – could this noise be a sign of its imminent arrival? Ada Docherty had said only last evening that her back ached and that the baby should not be long now. Ellen sat up, reluctantly pushing the covers back and letting her bare feet dangle inches above the floor. Because she was the only girl in the family she had a tiny box of a room to herself, whilst her brothers – Dick, Ozzie, Fred and Bertie – shared the larger room next door. It wasn’t bad being the only girl in some ways – you had a bed to yourself for a start, the boys shared, four to an ancient, creaking wooden bedstead – but it did mean you were the only one who helped your mam. Boys sometimes ran messages and carried water, but for the most part it was the girl who worked around the house, even when she was only ten, as Ellen was, with brothers whose ages ranged from Dick, who was sixteen and working, to Bertie, who was eleven and therefore the nearest to Ellen in age.

There had been quiet since Ellen sat up and she was actually considering rolling back into her warm bed when she distinctly heard her mother’s voice. Faintly, she was calling Ellen’s name. Immediately Ellen jumped out of bed, ran across the icy-cold floorboards and out of her room. She closed the door quietly, though; she didn’t want to wake the boys, who would sleep through anything when you needed them and woke at a whisper when you didn’t. Boys, in Ellen’s experience, had a short way with sisters who woke them from a good sleep. Not that she would hesitate to wake them if the need arose, of course. They weren’t bad, her brothers, but they didn’t know their own strength. A playful clout from Dick or Ozzie could really hurt, but if she cried they called her names . . . Mammy’s pet, teacher’s boot-licker . . . which could hurt as badly as a clip round the ear, so by and large Ellen avoided conflict or even disagreement with brothers so much bigger and stronger than she.

‘Ellen, love, can you come?’

The faint voice from the direction of her mother’s room had Ellen rushing across the landing at once. She shot open the door and went over to the bed. Her mother lay on it, propped up by a couple of pillows, her pretty, night-black curls draggly now, her beautiful face streaked with sweat and the colour of cheese, a sort of yellowy grey. She was endeavouring to take off a stained woollen jacket and Ellen, feeling the cold already invading her own nightgown and underclothing, remonstrated gently.

‘Did you ought to tek ’em off, Mam? You’ll freeze.’

On the bed, Ada Docherty smiled faintly, but continued to struggle out of the garment. ‘It’s awright, chuck, I’m like an oven,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The baby’s comin’, you see, Ellie, so I want me clean nightgown, the one wi’ the lace collar. Can you find it up for me an’ help me into it? Then you’d best gerroff and fetch Mrs Bluett. I’m a bit long in the tooth for havin’ babies so your dad paid for Mrs Bluett to come for me lyin’ in before his ship sailed. So we might as well . . .’ Her breath was suspended for a moment and colour invaded her pale face, then faded again.

‘Oh, Mam, it hurts you,’ Ellen said, easing the jacket down her mother’s arms. ‘Babies do hurt. Me pal Shirl said her mam shrieked out ever so! Can I do somethin’ to help? Shirl rubbed Mrs O’Connor’s back, she telled me.’ She crossed the room to the little wooden chest of drawers with the Sacred Heart on top of it, where she knew her mother kept her clean clothing. She found the nightgown and returned to the bed, where her mother was trying to disentangle herself from a couple of petticoats. ‘Oh, Mam, Mrs Bluett won’t mind you keepin’ warm, don’t tek ’em all off!’

‘It’s best,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Oh Gawd, here it comes again!’

As Ellen watched, the veins on her mother’s forehead swelled as she fought against shouting out, and as the pain faded the two of them managed somehow to get Mrs Docherty out of the petticoats and into the nightgown, though it wouldn’t go down over the swollen mound of her stomach.

‘Never mind, chuck,’ Ada said, pulling up the blankets. ‘Now run off, there’s a dear. Mrs Bluett may take some wakenin’, you know.’

‘I’ll send Bertie,’ Ellen said. It was dark outside and Mrs Bluett didn’t live in the court; her house was two streets away. ‘I’ll just tell him, Mam.’

Her mother started to say go yourself, go at once, but Ellen was already back in the boys’ room and shaking Bertie briskly by the shoulder. He was a good lad, Ellen considered, the least likely to hit out when roused, but even so, as soon as she had shaken him she moved back out of range.

‘Bertie! Mam’s started wi’ the baby . . . go get Mrs Bluett, will you? And hurry, she needs help.’

‘Go yourself,’ Bertie said predictably, but he shrugged the covers down to his waist, causing Dick, who lay beside him, to moan and shuffle further down the bed. ‘Why can’t you go, Ellie?’

‘Well, our mam needs me,’ Ellen said. And then, more truthfully: ‘You don’t know nothin’ about havin’ babies, Bertie, but me pal Shirl telled me all about it, so I can give our mam a hand, see? Oh, go on, Bertie, you don’t want to have to sit wi’ our mam whiles she shouts out, do you?’

Bertie stared at her, his eyes round and black in the half-dark. ‘I don’t fancy seem’ a baby come,’ he admitted. ‘I heared her cry out a couple o’ times, but Mr Lawson said childbirth’s for women, so I didn’t do nothin’. But if you ran quick, Ellie, you could be there an’ back before the cat could lick its ear.’

‘Don’t be daft, you know old Ma Bluett couldn’t hurry to save her life,’ Ellen said impatiently. Boys, she told herself, would come up with any old rubbish just so’s they were the ones what stayed in bed and you were the one what went out into the cold. ‘Come on, Bertie . . . Mam’s moanin’ somethin’ awful.’

‘Oh . . . awright,’ Bertie said. ‘I’m awake now, I s’pose. What’ll you do whiles I’m gone?’

‘Boil a kettle, get our main a drink, fetch out the baby clo’es, rub Mam’s back,’ Ellen said rapidly. ‘Hurry, Bertie!’

Bertie, muttering, climbed out of his nest and made for the door. He was fully clothed – the weather had been bitter for weeks – but downstairs there were boots; he would need boots at this time of night, even if they were several sizes too large, with holes at toe and heel. With three brothers older than himself Bertie was used to wearing hand-me-downs.

Ellen followed him downstairs. She didn’t make the mistake of trying to wake the others. Dick, Ozzie and Fred were all right so far as it went, but she didn’t think an appeal to their better natures would get her far. Family feeling came a long way behind what they would call
looking after number one
, so she would not disturb their slumber. Mind you, Ellen told herself as she came down the stairs, Dick did hand over half his wages to Main – he was a porter at Exchange station – but the other two boys froze on to any money they earned as of right. And Dick was getting interested in girls, spending ages staring at his reflection in the bit of mirror above the sink whilst he combed his hair this way and that and squeezed the spots which had suddenly begun to appear on his chin.

‘I brung you some water in,’ Bertie said as she entered the kitchen. He had donned a couple of pairs of extra socks and was pulling on a pair of boots, Ellen was glad to see. Not his own – Bertie’s boots were awaiting replacement, being too small and having cardboard covering the gaping holes in the soles – but Ozzie’s, probably. Ozzie worked as a delivery boy after school and at weekends for a local butcher; he did all right. ‘I fetched some in afore I went to bed,’ Bertie continued. ‘It’ll do you till teatime.’

‘Thanks, Bertie,’ Ellen said with real gratitude. All the boys knew that she didn’t much like the dark, not since she and their stepfather had been attacked coming up from the docks one night. Of course the men who attacked them hadn’t been interested in a small girl, Mick had said afterwards, they had been after a seaman’s pay, but the blows which had rained down upon her had hurt just as much as if they had been intended to fall where they did.

‘Awright. I’ll be off, then,’ Bertie said now, getting to his feet. He went to the front door and took down the ancient, much felted overcoat which hung there. ‘I dare say Dick won’t grudge me a loan o’ this.’

Ellen, heaving the old black kettle over the fire and belabouring the embers with a poker to bring it back to life, muttered breathlessly that he probably wouldn’t. The three older boys were always borrowing each other’s clothes and there was invariably an outcry, but with luck Bertie would be back long before his brothers stirred.

The door creaked open and banged shut, and EIIen heard Bertie’s footsteps ringing out on the icy paving slabs, then fading as he turned out of Evangelist Court on to Prince Edwin Lane. She calculated that it would take him perhaps five or six minutes to reach Mrs Bluett’s house on Netherfield Road, which was next door but one to the Queen’s Arms on the corner of Cornwall Street. But it would take twice as long to get back, because Mrs Bluett was a stout woman, nearer seventy than sixty, who had never been known to hurry. So Ellen would have plenty of time to take the orange box, lovingly lined with pieces of blanket, the little clothes her mother had prepared and the cup of tea she was making up to her mother’s room before old Ma Bluett arrived, shouting for kettles, clean linen and a bottle of stout.

Shirl had told Ellen that Mrs Bluett expected a bottle of stout. ‘’Tis hard work, you know, birthin’ a babby,’ she had said. ‘The old gal likes to wet her whistle afterwards. Me da fetched her a whole crate when she birthed me brother Willie. He were rare pleased to ’ave a boy, see?’

‘But you said the midwife didn’t bring the baby,’ Ellen had pointed out. ‘I thought she did, but you said the mam has the baby under her pinafore and that was why my mam was gerrin’ so fat. So if your mam brought the baby, why didn’t she get the crate of stout?’

‘I dunno,’ Shirl had said. ‘But it were me mam our da shouted at when he saw the marks on Willie’s face, only Ma Bluett telled ’im they’d fade, an’ they did, so that were awright.’

Ellen, waiting for the kettle to boil, thought that perhaps she wouldn’t be a mam when she was a grown woman after all. It sometimes seemed as if mams got all the kicks an’ none of the kisses, as if they couldn’t do right, in fact. On the other hand, she’d had a nip of stout from her mam’s glass once and hadn’t liked it above half, so perhaps she wouldn’t be a midwife, either. I’ll have a shop, Ellen decided, and sell puppies and kittens. That ’ud suit me right well.

A moan, gurgling up to a shriek, came echoing down the stairwell and Ellen hastily grabbed the tin in which the tea was kept – the food was all covered because of black beetles and mice – and tipped a few of the small black leaves into the mug, then added water from the now hopping kettle. Ellen loved the tea-caddy; her real father, not Mick Docherty but Tommy Rathbone, had brought it back from foreign parts. It had a picture of the old Queen on the side and it smelt deliciously of the mysterious east. Usually she bent her head over the tin as she took the top off and inhaled deeply, but now she was in a hurry. Having stirred the tea briskly until the colour deepened, she fetched a tin of condensed milk – half empty already – from the cupboard and poured a syrupy spoonful into the brew. Picking up the mug with both hands, she remembered that she should really have used the teapot, but she was in a hurry, her mother needed the tea now. Of course there were tea-leaves at the bottom of the mug, but if her mother drank slowly enough she might not get a mouthful, and at least it was hot and sweet.

Ellen climbed the stairs carefully, holding the mug before her, and entered her mother’s room. Ada was lying back, the frilled nightgown in place, even though the lace collar had somehow got twisted so that the bow of ribbon was under one ear. Ellen handed her the tea and straightened the bow, then stood back.

Ada smiled wearily at her daughter, held the mug to her lips and began to drink thirstily. ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she said presently, lowering the mug. ‘Puts heart into you, that does. Oh, hell an’ damnation, here it comes again!’

‘Let me rub your back, Mam,’ Ellen said anxiously, taking the mug and standing it down on the bare floorboards. It astonished her to hear her mother swear, for Ada was fond of telling her children that bad language was never necessary. ‘Shirl said it helped when a baby’s a-comin’ to rub your mam’s back.’