The September Girls (19 page)

Brenna found her there, still crying, when she arrived with Fergus.

 

Fergus raced down the basement steps, entering the house through the kitchen, and Brenna gasped, ‘Jaysus, girl. You’ll freeze to death out here. Here, put this on.’ She transferred the shawl from her own shoulders on to Eleanor’s, who immediately felt colder as the shawl was very wet. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Marcus has thrown me out,’ Eleanor wept. Oh, to be found in such a position by Brenna Caffrey, of all people.

‘Holy Mary, mother of God! In this weather? I’ll be having a wee word with that gentleman, and you’ll be back inside in a jiffy.’ She made to mount the steps, but Eleanor grabbed her skirt.

‘I’d sooner you didn’t. I don’t want to go back inside.’

Brenna rolled her eyes. ‘So you’d rather sit here in your underclothes and die of pneumonia?’

‘I’m waiting for Nancy to come home and I’ll stay with her tonight.’ Nancy wouldn’t take any notice of Marcus, no matter what he said or did - he wouldn’t have dared do this to her had Nancy been home, ready to defend her with her life.

‘Why not go and wait in Nancy’s now?’ Brenna suggested.

‘Because Marcus knows that’s exactly what I’ll do and he’ll only throw me out again.’ Eleanor sniffed and wiped her nose with the hem of her petticoat, imagining him waiting in the kitchen to do that very thing.

‘Here’s a rag. It’s not been used, so it’s quite clean.’

‘Thank you.’ She reluctantly accepted the rag. ‘Look, I know you’re only being kind, but I wish you’d go away. I don’t like being seen in this state.’ She felt mortified by the indignity of it. Brenna was probably smugly thinking that Colm would never do such a thing to her.

‘I bet you don’t. I wouldn’t either,’ Brenna snorted. ‘Why don’t I fetch you a blanket or something from Nancy’s? Your husband won’t dare throw
me
out: if he tries, I’ll give him what for. And he’d have a black eye by tomorrer once our Colm finds out.’

‘That doesn’t sound a bad idea.’ Her body had become a giant goose pimple and she couldn’t stop shivering.

Brenna returned with a blanket and reported there was no one about. ‘Perhaps he hid, your husband, when he realized it was me and not you. Here, tuck this round you, although it’ll be soaked through in no time in this rain. Come back to mine for a cuppa and a warm by the fire,’ she coaxed. ‘Colm’s out and our Tyrone’s looking after Cara, so I can’t very well hang round here for long. Fergus is big enough to come on his own, but I can’t get out of me head that Paddy, me brother-in-law, was murdered not far from here.’

By now, Eleanor didn’t need much coaxing. She was having a baby and it wouldn’t do to get a chill, and Brenna was in the same condition and hadn’t been very well, according to Nancy. It could be hours before Nancy came home, Brenna was being so kind and nice, and she badly needed someone kind and nice at that moment. What’s more, she felt in urgent need of a cuppa and a warm by the fire.

She never forgot, even when she was a very old woman, the walk back to Shaw Street in her petticoat with a blanket over her head, Brenna linking her arm. It was the night a friendship was forged that would last a lifetime.

They didn’t talk much. Brenna remarked she must have done something desperately awful to annoy her husband, and Eleanor snorted and said ‘inflame’ would be a better word. ‘I’ll tell you about it sometime.’

When the rain became heavier, they shrieked and began to run, and Eleanor gave Brenna half the blanket to shelter under and actually found herself laughing.

When Daniel Vaizey arrived at Parliament Terrace on Monday, Marcus opened the door and sacked him on the spot.

‘But I’m entitled to a month’s notice or money in lieu of,’ Daniel protested, not very forcefully, having guessed the reason for his sacking. ‘And what about Anthony? He needs me.’

His answer was to have the door slammed in his face. He wandered away, feeling unbearably sad. In a few months, Eleanor would give birth to his child: a child he would never see, never touch. He wouldn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. Was it worth giving up something as dear as a son or daughter just to go travelling? The question would haunt Daniel Vaizey for the rest of his life.

 

Marcus knew he’d made an error of mammoth proportions by despatching Eleanor from the house in such a brutal way. He had lost his temper and, although he considered himself justified in doing so and that Eleanor had deserved everything she’d got, he should have behaved more like the gentleman he was. Nancy wasn’t speaking to him, Nurse Hutton was being very cold. Only Sybil was pleased to see him. He had been sent to Coventry in his own home. Being cold-shouldered by the servants didn’t particularly bother him: what vexed him was that Brenna Caffrey had become involved.

On Friday night, he’d watched through the window as Eleanor sat weeping on the step, at first with a feeling of triumph in his heart but, as his anger diminished, he realized he’d gone too far. He had forgotten it was raining and hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t wearing proper clothes. He hadn’t been aware of anything except his own blind rage at what she’d done and was about to do. He had actually moved in the direction of the front door to let Eleanor in, when he heard voices and returned to the window just in time to see Brenna Caffrey drape her shawl around his wife’s shoulders.

He groaned. She still haunted him, Brenna, although he no longer followed her in the street. They’d come face to face a few times over the last year and he’d been in receipt of her glowing, dimpled smiles. She thought very highly of him, under the impression that he was responsible for finding the cutting in the
Echo
that led to Colm discovering he owned a house.

But what would she think of him now she knew he’d thrown his pregnant wife on to the street? She’d hate him. She’d call him every name under the sun. Marcus put his face in his hands and groaned again.

 

‘This is lovely oilcloth,’ Brenna remarked. ‘Nice and thick and shiny. It’s hard to believe it’s not real wood. Cara! Stop sliding on it, darlin’, or you’ll make marks. Play with your bricks instead. See, I’ve brought them with me.’ She emptied the bricks on to the parquet-patterned linoleum that did indeed look very real.

‘It’s not new,’ Eleanor said. ‘It was laid by the previous tenant.’ All the downstairs rooms were covered with the same pattern: upstairs had pale, mottled pink.

They were in the parlour of Eleanor’s new house in Tigh Street waiting for the van to arrive with the furniture she’d bought in Frederick & Hughes on Saturday, just enough for her basic needs: two armchairs, a sideboard, a small dining room suite, a bed and a wardrobe, bedding, towels and a few dishes. Once settled, she’d get the rest.

‘If that van doesn’t come soon, I’ll end up sitting on the floor.’ Brenna was uncomfortably perched on the sill in the broad bay window. ‘Ask the men to bring the chairs in first, won’t you, El?’

‘I will, don’t worry.’ Eleanor was similarly perched on the sill. Both were four months pregnant and longed to sit down. She quite liked being called ‘El’. It was how Brenna had addressed her throughout the weekend she’d just spent in the Caffreys’ house, a highly emotional weekend during which she’d had to come to terms with the fact that she’d burnt all her bridges behind her.

On Saturday afternoon, Nancy had turned up. She hadn’t known Eleanor had left until that morning when Nurse Hutton had breathlessly relayed the events of the night before. ‘She said she saw you and Brenna leave together, so I came round as soon as I could. Are you all right, pet? I won’t say what I think of that husband of yours. I expect you know that already.’

‘I feel marvellous,’ Eleanor cried. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s as if I’ve just escaped from jail, but I’m terribly worried about the children. How are they?’

‘They’re both fine. When I left, Anthony and Fergus were playing snakes and ladders and Marcus was reading Sybil a story.’ It would seem that no one had missed her, Eleanor thought. ‘Any road, pet,’ Nancy continued, ‘I’ve brought your handbag and some clothes and other bits and pieces. I’ll put all your other stuff in a trunk and you can send someone to collect it when you’re ready. Shall I bring the children round tomorrow to see you?’

‘That would be nice.’ She wondered if they’d want to come.

Colm offered to collect her trunk and deliver it on the handcart, Nancy said she would make curtains for the house in Tigh Street and Brenna said she’d come and help when everything was delivered. ‘I bet you’ve never made a bed before,’ she said slyly, and Eleanor was forced to concede that she hadn’t. She was beginning to feel glad that Marcus had thrown her out.
That
life hadn’t been nearly as good as this one, children or no children.

Brenna was greatly enamoured with the new house. ‘Me and Colm will have big house like this one day,’ she’d said earlier when Eleanor had shown her around. ‘Colm’s going to night school to further his education. One day soon, he’ll be giving up the builders’ yard for something better.’

‘That’s good,’ Eleanor said absently. She was staring at the ceiling. ‘Will you show me how to put the light on before you go? We’ve had electricity in Parliament Terrace for as long as I can remember. I don’t know what you do with gas.’

‘’Course I will,’ Brenna said generously. ‘And if there’s any little jobs you need doing, Colm’ll do them for you.’

‘Thank you.’ She was about to say how kind he and Brenna were being, when something bounced in her stomach. ‘I’m sure the baby kicked just then,’ she gasped. ‘Has yours kicked yet?’ she asked, wanting her baby to be the first.

‘No.’ A shadow fell over Brenna’s face and she turned away. ‘If it wasn’t that I was getting bigger, I’d swear my baby was dead.’

‘What on earth makes you think that?’ The hairs rose on Eleanor’s neck. It was such a creepy thing to say.

‘It
feels
dead,’ Brenna said tonelessly. ‘It just lies there like a heavy lump in me belly. I’ve never been able to picture it having a face and arms and legs like the others.’

‘Oh, Brenna! You’ve got too much imagination.’

Before Brenna could reply, the furniture van rumbled to a halt outside and Eleanor went to ask the men to bring in the chairs first.

 

It was hard to admit, even to herself, that she
wanted
the baby to be dead. She knew she was being desperately foolish, but two of Katie MacBride’s predictions had already come true and any minute now she would lose something very precious. The only things precious to Brenna were Colm and her children and she’d sooner lose the baby than any of them.

 

They had wondered if, once again, their babies would be born on the same day, within the same hour, possibly at the same minute, but Eleanor’s was the first to arrive on the final day of April, after the earth had been cleansed and renewed and was ready for summer.

‘It’s a boy,’ Nancy announced when she came round to Shaw Street with the news. Brenna was likely to drop her own baby any minute and had neither the strength nor the energy to go all the way to the nursing home in Woolton to see her new friend. ‘Seven pounds, ten ounces, very handsome and full of beans. She’s calling him Jonathan.’

‘That’s a nice name,’ Brenna said dully. ‘How is Eleanor?’ She remembered the state Eleanor had been in when she’d had Sybil.

‘Absolutely fine,’ Nancy enthused. ‘Since she left Marcus, she’s been like a new woman. She didn’t need a single stitch and said it hardly hurt at all. She was sitting up, as right as rain, when I went in to see her.’

Brenna sighed. ‘I can’t wait for me own wee one to come. I feel like a sack o’ sawdust, so I do.’

 

She clutched the bars at the top of the bed and tried not to scream. The effort must have shown on her face as Edie O’Rourke, who acted as unofficial midwife in the area, said gently, ‘It won’t hurt to make a bit of noise, Brenna. Don’t hold it in. It’s not doing you any good at all.’ Edie had seventeen children of her own and had lost count of her numerous grandchildren. She was a little roly-poly woman with cheeks like apples and a mop of lovely silver hair.

‘I don’t want to frighten the children.’ Cara had been put in with the lads, while a frantic Colm had been despatched at around midnight to fetch the doctor when Edie confessed there was no more she could do: the baby positively refused to budge, despite Brenna pushing and pushing until she could push no more, and the pains that swept regularly over her body: pains the like of which she’d never known before. She still hadn’t screamed.

‘Has Colm been gone long?’ It felt as if he’d been gone for days.

‘About half an hour. He’ll have roused Doctor Hammond by now and they should be here any minute.’ Edie wiped her perspiring face with a flannel, just as a car drew up outside and, seconds later, Colm came pounding up the stairs, followed, more sedately, by the doctor carrying a worn leather bag.

‘Is she all right?’ Colm gasped.