The September Girls (20 page)

‘She’s fine, Colm, luv, if more than a bit weary. Your Brenna’s a very healthy girl, it’s just the baby . . .’ Edie stood aside for the doctor and briefly explained what had happened.

Dr Hammond quickly took in the situation. ‘She should be in hospital,’ he said brusquely, ‘but it’s too late for that now.’ He opened the bag. ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Caffrey, that this is going to hurt rather badly.’

At the first nick of the knife, Brenna fainted. When she came to, the doctor was bending over her, a needle in his hand. He was stitching her up and it hurt like blazes, but not as much as the knife had.

‘We’ve got another boy, Bren.’ Brenna managed to turn her head and saw Colm was holding their baby in his arms, his face wet with tears. The tiny boy was wrapped in same the shawl that had been used for their other children. ‘Our Rory,’ Colm breathed.

‘He’s awful still and quiet,’ she said. ‘He’s not dead, is he?’

Dr Hammond shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Caffrey. Like you, your baby is very tired. He had a hard job coming into the world. He’ll perk up in a few days.’

‘Are you sure about that, Doctor?’ Edie O’Rourke looked doubtful. ‘He seems a bit
too
still and quiet to me. I’ve never known a baby make no sound at all when it came out the womb. There’s usually at least a whimper.’

‘And what qualifications do you have for saying that, Mrs O’Rourke?’ The doctor barked, throwing Edie a scornful look. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve been called to an emergency because you were unable to cope, sometimes too late, I might add. It’s about time women like you were banned.’

Edie went very red, but must have decided this was neither the time nor place for an argument. She reached for her coat, saying, ‘I’ll drop in tomorrer, Brenna, luv, see how you’re doing, like.’

The doctor finished his work, gave the baby a cursory glance and said his bill would arrive in the post in a few days. He left and Colm put Rory in his mother’s arms.

‘How are you feeling, luv?’ He couldn’t have looked more worn and haggard if he’d given birth to the baby himself.

‘As weak as water.’ Every ounce of energy had drained from her body. She looked down at the tiny, fragile body that felt as light as a feather. ‘He’s like a little angel,’ she whispered.

‘He is indeed.’ Colm stroked her hair. ‘I was worried I was going to lose you.’ He looked close to tears again.

She moved her face so her cheek rested in his hand. ‘You won’t get rid of me that easy. What are those red marks on the sides of his head?’

Colm grimaced. ‘The doctor had to pull him out with something that looked like fire tongues, ’cept they were silver.’

Brenna shuddered at the thought, glad she’d been unconscious at the time. ‘He
is
awful still and quiet.’ She touched Rory’s cheek: it felt unnaturally cold. ‘He looks as if he’s been carved out of wax,’ she said.

‘Would you like a cup of tea, luv?’

‘I’d love one, Colm, ta.’

Colm gone, she examined the baby all over and was pleased to find him perfect in every way, but wished he didn’t feel so cold. She tried to make him suck at her breast, but his little mouth refused to open and he still hadn’t opened his eyes. His fluff of hair was a light, powdery gold.

‘Look at me, Rory, darlin’,’ she pleaded, but the pale-blue lids, which looked as if they were made of the finest silk, remained closed.

‘Would you like me to put him down in his cot, Bren?’ Colm asked when he returned with the tea. ‘It’s all ready to take him.’

‘No, I want to hold him, try to make him warm.’ She remembered she’d wanted the baby to be dead, but he’d been born alive and now she desperately wanted him to stay alive, watch him grow until one day he was as big as Colm. It had taken just one look to make him as precious to her as her other children. ‘I’m worried about him, Colm,’ she said fretfully. ‘He’s breathing like a little bird, you can hardly feel it.’

‘Don’t forget the doctor said he’d perk up in a few days. He’s just tired, luv, like you.’ Colm gave a reassuring smile. ‘Hand him over while you drink your tea. By the way, I just looked in on Cara and the lads and they’re fast asleep.’

‘That’s good. In a minute, will you fetch me rosary beads from downstairs? They’re in the right-hand sideboard drawer. Oh, and bring the statue of the Blessed Virgin while you’re at it, and put it on the mantelpiece so I can see her.’ She needed talismans to bring her and Rory luck.

 

The night was as quiet as the grave, not even the faintest of sounds came from the sleeping city as Brenna nursed the new baby against her breast and willed him to move, get warm, open his eyes. There was something terribly patient, almost noble, about his dear little face, which brought tears to her eyes and made her heart ache so hard it hurt far more than the cuts and stitches she’d had earlier. Somewhere in the far distance, a clock struck four.

Colm lay on the bed beside her, fully dressed. Every half-hour or so, he went down and made more tea.

‘You’ve got two brothers and a sister, Rory, and a big, tall daddy who already loves you to bits. And I’m your mammy, darlin’, and I love you more than words can say. Oh, Rory!’ she wept. ‘I wish you weren’t so cold.’ She said yet another prayer to the Blessed Virgin to make her baby warm.

Another hour passed and the distant clock struck five. Rory felt no warmer and still hadn’t moved. Outside, a door slammed: the street was beginning to stir. Colm made more tea and suggested he fetch the doctor back.

Brenna laid her hand against the baby’s chest and could feel nothing. ‘I think it’s too late for that, Colm,’ she whispered.

Colm’s face turned ashen. ‘Christ Almighty, Bren, he’s not gone, has he?’

Brenna nodded. ‘It happened only a moment ago. I could almost sense the life flow out of him, whatever life there was.’ It was as if a tiny bit of herself had died. ‘His little soul’s flown straight to heaven.’

The tears flowed freely down Colm’s cheeks. He pressed his lips against the baby’s forehead. ‘Goodbye, Rory,’ he murmured, then raised his head and looked Brenna squarely in the eyes. ‘After tonight, we’re closer to each other than we’ve ever been before. I can’t say how sorry about what happened with Lizzie Phelan, luv, but I swear nothing like that will ever happen again. It’s you I love, I always will, and I want to come back to your bed and hold you in my arms and dry your tears when you cry for Rory.’

‘All right, Colm.’ She stroked his chin, but they didn’t kiss. This wasn’t the time for kissing with their cold, dead baby lying against her breast. She didn’t tell him that things would never be the same as they’d been before, not for her. Although she loved him with all her heart, he’d let her down and, if he’d done it once, he could do it a second time. He’d turned out to be weak, when she’d always thought him strong, and she would never completely trust him again.

1927

Sybil was being her obnoxious little self. ‘It’s
my
cake,’ she said pettishly. ‘
I
should be the one who blows the candles out.’

‘It’s a shared cake,’ Nancy told her. ‘Half is yours, half is Cara’s, and it’s got seven candles on each side for you to blow out together.’

‘Why can’t I have had a cake of my own?’

‘Because,’ Nancy sighed patiently, ‘this is a shared birthday party. Half the guests are yours and the other half are Cara’s.’

Sybil sniffed disdainfully. ‘
I’ve
got more guests than Cara.’

‘No, you haven’t, pet. Cara has three and you have three. I’m a shared guest, like the cake.’

‘But I want you to be
my
guest, Nancy.’

Nancy rolled her eyes and didn’t answer. She noticed that Eleanor had been frowning as she listened to this exchange. As Marcus was raising their daughter, she didn’t like to interfere, but thought Sybil was being outrageously spoilt. She was showered with expensive toys and clothes, and got her own way in practically everything, able to wrap her father around her dainty little finger. Should Marcus object to one of her demands, she only had to pout her pretty lips and he would give way. Her smooth blonde hair was topped with a mammoth pink bow and her frock - pink organdie, the skirt and sleeves a froth of frills and lace - had come from Frederick & Hughes and must have cost a mint. Father and daughter had gone together to buy it and afterwards they’d had lunch in the restaurant, something that nowadays Eleanor regarded as a luxury.

Marcus was upstairs, not exactly sulking, but not exactly pleased either that Eleanor was at the party with Jonathan. Sybil was rather taken with Jonathan, had demanded his presence and Eleanor had refused to let him come alone. Anyway, she was Sybil’s mother. She had every right to be there.

It was all terribly complicated, Nancy thought sadly. Eleanor came often to see Sybil and Anthony, but only when Marcus was at work. He had made no objection, so Nancy assumed he didn’t mind, although he minded today because it was Sybil’s seventh birthday and he’d wanted to be present.

‘What are you two laughing at?’ she demanded when she noticed that Anthony and a frantically signing Fergus were in fits of giggles. Tyrone looked bored out of his mind. He’d always been old beyond his years and girls’ birthday parties weren’t exactly his cup of tea, at least not when the girls were only seven. Jonathan seemed to be the only one eating and was steadily demolishing the salmon sandwiches. Eleanor was still frowning and Nancy could tell Brenna was cross from her pursed lips. If only Louella Fisk, Anthony’s tutor, was here, smoking one of her black cigarettes and giving Nancy the occasional wink at the ridiculousness of it all, lifting her spirits no end.

‘Anthony thinks Sybil’s dead funny,’ Fergus said.

‘Why?’ asked Eleanor.

Fergus signed the ‘why’ and it was Anthony himself who replied, but no one could understand him. He had a vacuum tube hearing aid in his room, much too heavy to cart around with its earpiece, amplifier and box for the batteries, so had heard people speak, but not his own voice, so the intonation was completely wrong. He almost disappeared under the table, giggling uncontrollably at the sight of the mystified faces as they tried to make out the words that only Fergus could understand. Nancy hoped he would always find such lack of comprehension amusing.

‘He thinks Sybil’s a blithering idiot and wants her bottom smacking,’ Fergus supplied.

At this, Sybil looked outraged and started to cry. Nancy raised her eyebrows. ‘And he finds that funny?’

Anthony must have been able to understand her expression and he nodded. Nancy wondered what it must be like, sitting in this noisy room without being able to hear a single sound. He was twelve and once his deafness had been recognized, he had adjusted wonderfully to his largely silent world, although she was confident he wouldn’t have managed so well without Fergus, who’d been his connection to the hearing world for so long.

‘Which of the candles do I blow out, the white ones or the pink ones?’ Sybil sniffed.

‘I thought you and Cara could blow the lot out together, pet, but if you have to have your own, then the pink ones. Pink’s your favourite colour, isn’t it?’

‘I like white better.’

‘You can blow the white ones out. I don’t mind,’ Cara said.

Brenna said exasperatedly, ‘
I
brought the white ones specially for you.’

‘But I don’t mind, Mam, honest,’ Cara assured her.

‘I’m beginning to wish,’ Nancy said in a loud voice, ‘that I was anywhere else in the world rather than at this party.’

Her comment was conveyed to Anthony who made a sound that might have been ‘Hear, hear’, but no one was sure apart from Fergus who didn’t bother to translate.

 

‘That
child
!’ Eleanor gasped as soon as they left the house in Parliament Terrace. Tyrone had gone racing back to Shaw Street with the speed of a wild animal set free from its cage, and Cara and Jonathan trotted alongside their respective mothers. Fergus had stayed with Anthony. ‘What Marcus doesn’t realize is that he’s making a rod for his own back. I daren’t think what she’ll be like when she’s older.’

‘She’ll be impossible,’ Brenna said grimly.

‘She’s already is,’ Eleanor said even more grimly.

‘Poor Sybil,’ Cara sighed.

‘What’s poor about her?’ Brenna demanded.

‘She’s dead unhappy, Mam. I can tell.’

Eleanor pulled a face, slightly ashamed. ‘I shouldn’t complain about my own daughter, should I? It’s not her fault she’s being spoilt. Anthony is no company, Louella Fisk doesn’t like her and she drives Nancy wild. Nancy and I were the best of friends when I was Sybil’s age. All the poor child’s left with is Marcus. Oh, Cara! Now you’ve made me feel awful.’

Brenna glanced fondly at her daughter. Cara could be a little imp at times, but she had a lovely, generous nature and compared to Sybil Allardyce she was a saint. ‘Would you like to come back to ours for a cuppa?’ she asked Eleanor.

‘I’d love to, but I’d better not. Mr Fulton will be home soon wanting his tea. He grumbles as much as Marcus did if it’s late - mind you, it’s lovely not to care. I can get another lodger easier than another husband.’ Eleanor grinned. A year ago, when she had discovered her late mother’s legacy had sunk dangerously low and fees for Jonathan’s schooling would soon be required, she’d taken in a lodger, the irascible Ernest Fulton who complained about everything under the sun. The complaints were mainly ignored: she would fix his blind if it rattled in the wind, but not stop Jonathan from making a noise when he played in the garden, or turn down the wireless to the extent she could hardly hear it herself when Mr Fulton had gone to bed early and protested it was keeping him awake. ‘If he doesn’t like it, he knows what to do,’ she laughed. Eleanor had laughed a lot since she’d left Marcus and hadn’t had a single headache since. She even enjoyed accompanying Brenna to Paddy’s Market to buy the odd second-hand outfit. Occasionally, she would buy some minor item from Frederick & Hughes, but their clothes were unaffordable nowadays. She didn’t seem to mind in the least her change of fortune and gave the impression of enjoying the challenge of trying to make ends meet.