The September Girls (14 page)

‘Come on, darlin’,’ Brenna urged. ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday . . .’ But Cara merely giggled and cried, ‘Mammy, Mammy, Mammy’ in her shrill little voice. She lurched around the room like a drunken sailor and appeared more surprised than hurt when she fell over, but quickly got back to her feet with the help of a table leg.

‘Whose Mammy’s brave little girl?’ Brenna cooed. Most children would have screamed blue murder.

Nancy was coming to tea at five o’clock, but couldn’t stay long because Sybil was also having a party that wouldn’t start until six when Mr Allardyce would be home. He adored his daughter and wouldn’t have missed it for the world. One time when Brenna had been in Parliament Terrace, she’d heard him singing Sybil a lullaby before she went asleep and it was him, not Eleanor or Nurse Hutton, who was teaching her to walk.

‘We’re eating in the kitchen,’ Nancy explained, ‘so me, Daniel Vaizey and Nurse Hutton can be there.’ She grinned. ‘The lord and master would never let us in the dining room in case we contaminated it. I’ll set the table so it’ll be ready when I get back from yours - I can take Fergus with me, save you the journey. Tomorrow, Eleanor’s taking him and Anthony to see
The Kid
with Charlie Chaplin. I wouldn’t mind seeing it meself. I read in the paper it’s a scream.’

‘Is she now?’ Brenna said evenly.

Nancy looked at her searchingly. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Not a bit,’ she lied, and tried to look pleased about it.

Yesterday, she’d made two-dozen fairy cakes and a raspberry jam sponge that had a little white candle in the centre. This morning, Tyrone had suggested the jelly be poured into separate bowls on the assumption seven small amounts would set quicker than one big one. She went into the kitchen and gave one of the bowls a shake. To her relief, it was less wobbly than the last time she’d checked.

‘Thank goodness,’ she breathed. She’d already made custard to go over the jelly and bought an ounce of hundreds and thousands to sprinkle on top. All she had to do was make the sarnies. She’d leave them till later.

‘Mammy, Mammy, Mammy!’ Cara came staggering into the kitchen.

Brenna picked her up. ‘Cara, Cara, Cara!’ She stroked her little girl’s soft, dimpled cheek. ‘That’s your very first birthday cake,’ she told her. ‘Let’s hope by the time you’re twenty-one we can afford a great big one with your name on and icing an inch thick. I wonder where we’ll be in another twenty years.’ She sighed. ‘Let’s hope your daddy remembers to ask Cyril Phelan if he can work through his dinnertime and come home early.’ Colm didn’t normally finish until six o’clock. ‘If he doesn’t, I’ll . . .’ She paused and sighed again. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’ She would have reminded him had he not left the house so abruptly that he’d forgotten to kiss her. She buried her head in Cara’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Your daddy’s making me awful miserable, darlin’.’ Cara responded with a giggle and pulled her hair. ‘That didn’t help a bit,’ Brenna sniffed.

‘Is your daddy in love with Lizzie Phelan?’ she asked aloud as she carried Cara into the living room, sat at the table and drained the pot of the last of the tea: it was stone cold, but she drank it all the same. ‘Has he kissed her? There’s no way of finding out other than asking him straight out, not that your daddy would admit it if he had, but I could tell by his face if he was lying. He’s a hopeless liar, your da.’

Anyway, did she really want to know? Colm was right: it was her own fault he went on about Lizzie. She encouraged him, asking question after question, yet it didn’t follow that, because he spoke to the boss’s daughter for half an hour or so a day, that they were attracted to each other. Perhaps it was time she shut up about it, forgot she’d seen them together that day, Lizzie with her hand laid possessively on Colm’s arm - the hand seemed more and more possessive the more she thought about it. Yes, that’s what she’d do: forget about it. What the head didn’t know, the heart didn’t grieve over. But before she forgot about it, she’d like to know where she stood.

‘Don’t do that, darlin’,’ she said when Cara picked up the cup and began to bang it against the saucer. Brenna stared at the mess of tea leaves that were left. Well, there was one sure way of finding out what was really going on. ‘I’ll ask Katie next door if she’ll read the leaves for me.’

 

It was a heathen practice, sternly frowned on by the Catholic Church, but women from many faiths came from far and wide so Katie could predict their future from the leaves, paying sixpence a time. Men, it seemed, weren’t interested in knowing how their lives would turn out.

During the day, Katie MacBride was just an ordinary housewife, rarely seen without her hair full of curlers, a ciggie stuck in the corner of her mouth, and wearing an old frock that had seen better days. But by six o’clock, the curlers had been removed, the dyed black hair combed into a halo of frizz and she had turned into a mysterious creature clad in dense, black velvet, cheeks heavily rouged, lips heavily painted, only the ciggie, parked at an acute angle between the unnaturally red lips, reminding everyone that this was the same old Katie.

Sometimes, Katie’s living room held as many as half a dozen women, all sitting around the table waiting anxiously for it to be their turn to go in the parlour and have their fortunes told.

Brenna waited until midday when Cara, who’d been a little divil all morning, began to look sleepy. She took her upstairs for a nap, then went next door.

Katie was sitting on her front doorstep, smoking the inevitable ciggie and enjoying a glass of gin. She swigged neat gin by the gallon, but Brenna had never seen her drunk. The sun had drifted over the rooftops and now caressed the front of the houses on their side of the little street.

‘I’d like me leaves read,’ Brenna said shyly. She’d never asked before, not seeing the need, imagining her own future stretching ahead without a hitch.

‘Now?’ Katie enquired.

‘If you don’t mind. I’ll give you the sixpence as soon as Colm gets his wages.’ Being Friday, he’d be paid that night.

‘Bugger the sixpence,’ Katie said dismissively. ‘Aren’t you me next-door neighbour? Aren’t I coming to your Cara’s party tonight?’

‘You are indeed, but I’d sooner pay.’

‘And I’d sooner you didn’t, luv. Come and sit in the parlour while I make the tea.’

It was a room Brenna had never been in before. Katie closed the curtains, lit a nightlight in a glass bowl, put it on a small round table in front of the fireplace and told her to sit down. She left and Brenna took in the heavy black furniture with a glassy sheen, the sequinned runner on the sideboard where an ornate clock with gold figures ticked away a few more seconds of her life, and the tapestry hanging above the mantelpiece depicting the signs of the zodiac. She would never have guessed from outside that the scruffy piece of lace covering the window hid such rich curtains: bronze silk that shimmered slightly in the glow from the flickering nightlight, which issued a strange smell and made her want to sneeze.

Katie came in with the tea and a large glass of water, although it might have been gin. She had removed her shabby apron and now wore a fine black shawl. A bright red scarf was tied like a turban over her curlers - it must be too early to take them out. Jet earrings dangled from her ears and a ciggie from her mouth.

‘Drink this.’ She placed the tea on the table and the cup gave a little musical ‘ping’ as it scraped against the saucer. It must be the very best china.

‘It’s got no milk in.’

‘Milk sullies the leaves: they’re best left pure. Don’t drink every drop now, leave enough to let the leaves move round a bit.’

Katie the fortune-teller seemed different from Katie her jolly neighbour: her eyes were strange and misty, her voice deeper and her normally cheerful face desperately serious. Brenna was beginning to wish she hadn’t come. It was crazy to believe the future could be told from a few tea leaves, apart from which the tea tasted horrible without milk. She sipped it as fast as she could, hoping Cara would wake up and yell for her mammy and she’d be obliged to go home. The tea almost gone, she showed Katie the cup.

‘Now put it upside down on the saucer and turn it five times to the left and five to the right, then give it to me.’

Brenna did as she was told and Katie stared intently at the contents. ‘I thought you only had three children,’ she said in her new, strange voice.

‘I do - you know that as well as me.’

‘There’s four here. I can see them quite clearly.’

‘Then the leaves must be wrong, I’ve only three.’

‘The leaves are never wrong, madam.’

‘Well, they’re wrong now.’ Brenna wriggled in the chair. Being addressed as ‘madam’ made her feel uncomfortable, as if Katie had forgotten who she was.

‘There’s a flower here, a rose without thorns, which means you will lead a long and healthy life, madam, but there’s a cross beside the rose that indicates a great tragedy will intervene.’

‘What sort of tragedy?’ Brenna’s stomach gave an unpleasant turn.

‘The leaves don’t say, but you will lose something very precious.’

‘It’s not Colm or one of the children, is it?’

‘The leaves don’t say, madam,’ Katie repeated tonelessly. She took a long swallow of the water that might have been gin. ‘I see a dagger dripping blood meaning a cruel betrayal, and what’s this?’ She peered into the cup. ‘I can’t quite make it out . . .’ She closed her eyes and opened them so suddenly that Brenna backed away, startled. ‘It’s a woman, a woman crying because she has lost her loved one.’

‘Who is it?’ Brenna asked, but didn’t wait for an answer, because an unearthly scream came from next door: Cara, alerting her mother to the fact that she’d woken up and urgently required attention. Brenna jumped to her feet. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said urgently. ‘Thank you, Katie, I think I’ve heard enough.’

‘But I haven’t finished, madam.’ Katie’s misty eyes regarded her as if she were a stranger. ‘One day the loved one will return.’

‘As I said, I’ve heard enough.’

‘Brenna!’ Nancy gasped. ‘Lord Almighty, pet, what’s the matter? You’ve actually walked through the streets wearing your pinnie. That’s not like you. Where’s Cara?’

‘In the pram outside.’ Brenna burst into tears. ‘I’ve just had me tea leaves read. Oh, Nancy! You wouldn’t believe the awful things that’s going to happen to us.’

‘You’re right there, Brenna,’ Nancy said grimly. ‘I wouldn’t believe that sort of codswallop for a minute and I’m surprised at you for believing it too. Sit down, girl, and I’ll fetch you a sup of sherry, calm your nerves, like.’

‘I’m going to suffer a great tragedy, a betrayal and some woman, I don’t know whether it’s me or not, is going to lose a loved one.’ She had a feeling Katie had said the loved one would return, but couldn’t be sure.

‘Oh, yeah! And the cow’s going to jump over the moon. Who was it told you this load of baloney: Katie MacBride?’ Brenna nodded and Nancy plonked a glass on the table in front of her. ‘That’s cooking sherry, but it tastes all right. I take a sup meself now and then.’

‘Katie seemed desperately serious. I couldn’t help but believe her.’

‘Huh!’ sneered Nancy. ‘I’ve heard she pretends to go in a trance or something. She’s a sham, pet,
and
she’s permanently pissed.’ She slammed her big fist on the table. ‘Ask her to read your leaves tomorrow, and she’ll come up with an entirely different story, and a different one the day after that. You’re not to believe a word she said, Brenna, do you hear?’

‘Yes,’ Brenna said meekly. Nancy was so down-to-earth and full of common sense that it was easy to believe that Katie was talking a load of baloney. For the first time, she noticed the big, elaborately decorated cake on the table. ‘Is that for Sybil’s party?’

‘Yes. I made it and Eleanor did the icing. I’ll keep you a piece if you like.’

‘That’d be nice, and I’ll keep a piece of Cara’s sponge for Eleanor.’

Nancy laughed. ‘You don’t like her, do you?’

‘She’s all right. I’d better get going, you’ll be in the middle of making the midday meal and I’m holding you up. Anyway, I feel desperately tired. I might have a little lie down this avvy if Cara will let me.’ She stood, so quickly that her head swam. ‘Oh, Lord!’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘It must be that sherry,’ she said before fainting dead away.

 

When she came to, Nancy was holding a little bottle under her nose that smelled so foul it made her want to be sick. ‘What’s that?’ She pushed the bottle away.

‘Smelling salts.’ Nancy helped her into a sitting position on the floor. ‘You’ve never struck me as the sort of woman who faints, Brenna.’

‘I’ve only done it once in me life before,’ she said shakily, ‘when I was expecting our Fergus.’

‘Ah, well that explains it. Here was me thinking it might be something serious.’ Nancy’s face creased into a smile of relief. ‘You’re in the club, Brenna. Congratulations. I bet you’re dead pleased.’