The September Girls (8 page)

‘Do you think it’s wise to take the lads away, Brenna?’ Colm frowned. ‘I haven’t got a job. Even if this was the biggest and best house in the world, we still need to eat.’

‘The Blessed Virgin’s looking after us, I can feel it in me bones. You’ll find a job any minute, by Christmas I expect. If necessary, I’ll pawn me wedding ring to see us through.’ She would have done it before, but had been worried she might never get it back. Now she felt sure it would be no problem.

 

Three hours later, when it was almost dark, and a mist had descended on the city like a thick, grey veil, Brenna banged on the door of St Hilda’s. Cara had been left at home with her father for a change. The door was opened almost immediately by Sister Kentigern.

‘I’ve come for our Fergus and Tyrone,’ Brenna announced in a loud voice. By now, she felt delirious with excitement. There’d never been a day like this in her life before.

‘But it’s not Sunday, Mrs Caffrey,’ the nun protested.

‘I know that, Sister. I’ve come to take them away for good. We’ve got a house of our own now, with plenty of room for them to sleep.’

Sister Kentigern sniffed disapprovingly. ‘You can’t expect to take them at a moment’s notice, Mrs Caffrey. Your request needs to be processed.’

‘I can do it whenever I like, Sister.’ Brenna brushed the nun aside and strode into the convent, shouting, ‘Fergus, Tyrone, where are you? Fergus and Tyrone Caffrey, your mammy’s come to take you home.’ Sister Kentigern scuttled after her, having trouble keeping up on her old, stiff legs.

Brenna stopped and said kindly, ‘I’m sorry, Sister, but I want me lads back and I want them now. It’s been good of you to keep them all this time, but I can’t wait another minute to have them under the same roof as their mammy and daddy.’

The nun looked at her shining face, then turned away. ‘They’ll just be finishing their tea, Mrs Caffrey,’ she muttered.

‘And where would that be, Sister?’

‘In the dining room - go down the corridor to your right and through the door at the end.’

‘Thank you, Sister Kentigern, the Blessed Virgin will smile on you for that.’ Brenna strode along the corridor, Colm’s boots slithering on the stone floor, and threw open the dining-room door with such force that it bounced off the wall and nearly came back and hit her. ‘Fergus, Tyrone,’ she shouted, her eyes raking the rows of white-faced boys for her own dear two.

‘Mammy!’ they shouted together. There was a clatter as they dropped their spoons, then came racing towards her. Brenna held out her arms. ‘Come along, me darlin’ lads. We’re going home.’

 

They went to bed, Fergus and Tyrone, completely exhausted, having raced around the house, up and down the stairs, in and out of the rooms, at least a dozen times. Brenna felt obliged to go next door and apologize to her neighbour, who turned out to be a tough Scotswoman called Katie MacBride, for the unaccustomed noise.

‘Och, it don’t matter,’ Katie assured her. ‘It’s nice to have bairns next door for a change. The man who used to live there was a miserable ould git. If you’ve a minute to spare tomorrer, girl, come round and have a cup of tea with us.’

Colm had lit a fire in the living room, using the bits of coal from the washhouse and all the wood he could find. He and Brenna sat and watched the flames die down. Tomorrow, he would look for work again and she planned to take the boys on a hunt for firewood. But that was tomorrow and tonight was tonight and they were happier than they’d been in a long time.

Eventually, after the fire had lost virtually all its warmth, Colm turned off the gas mantle and they went to bed: not in the big bed in the front room where Cara lay sleeping, but the little one that Paddy would have occupied had he been living with them. There, they made love, something they hadn’t done once since they’d come to Liverpool because they’d felt too desperately miserable, and the dark, dank cellar hadn’t seemed the right place.

Afterwards, they crept, hand in hand, to their own bed, glancing in on the lads on the way. They were dead to the world, one at each end of a single bed, because Brenna didn’t have enough bedding for two.

‘It seems so
big
, our house,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve got a landing, Colm. I never dreamt one day we’d have a landing.’

 

Earlier that night, Marcus had entered the house in Parliament Terrace and was just divesting himself of his hat and overcoat, when Nancy came running up from the kitchen. She actually smiled, took the clothes off him and put them on a hook on the wall. He wondered what on earth he’d done to earn such a friendly reception.

‘Oh, Mr Allardyce,’ she said in a voice throbbing with warmth, ‘thank you for cutting that notice out the
Echo
. I found it on your desk. You must’ve meant to show it me, but forgot. I rang the solicitors, I hope you don’t mind, and it turns out the Caffreys had a house all this time. I’m going to see it tomorrer. Brenna and Colm are ever so grateful. If it weren’t for you, they’d never have known.’

 

Christmas was only three days away and still Colm hadn’t found a job. He managed to earn a few extra bob delivering Christmas trees and fowl by horse and cart to rich houses in Princes Avenue and other fine addresses in the area, as well as packing boxes of fruit for those who could afford such luxuries. He brought home a bunch of purple grapes for Brenna.

‘Are these pinched?’ she asked sternly.

‘No, luv, it’s just a bunch that was over,’ he answered with a straight face.

The house was warm: a fire burnt from early morning until late at night in the living room. With the extra money Colm was earning, Brenna had ordered a sack of coal and each day bought a penny bundle of firewood. She would lay the fire before she went to bed so it was ready to light as soon as she got up next morning. Katie MacBride from next door had unearthed two pairs of curtains, so thin and faded that the patterns were barely visible, but Brenna didn’t care. They would do for downstairs until she could afford better. She tacked newspaper over the bedroom windows, bought a second-hand mat for in front of the fire, more blankets so the lads could have separate beds, and a clothesline for the yard. Spending so much money made her feel like the Queen of England.

Colm said one night that he was worried about her. The children were in bed and they were enjoying a few peaceful hours in the fading firelight, so saving on the gas.

‘Why?’ Brenna asked.

‘You’re too happy, luv.’

‘Don’t be an eejit, Colm. How can anyone be too happy?’

‘You’re acting like everything’s perfect, but it’s not.’

‘It will be soon,’ Brenna said serenely. ‘The Blessed Virgin’s answered two of my prayers by sending us this house and letting us have our lads back. She’s bound to answer the third and find you a job.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it, Bren. Anyway, I thought it was our Paddy responsible for getting us the house, not you know who.’

‘It was her who prompted Mr Allardyce to cut the notice out the paper.’

Colm looked confused, but didn’t bother to argue, just as Nancy had given up pointing out that if the Blessed Virgin was all she was cracked up to be, she wouldn’t have allowed Paddy to be killed and let the Caffreys spend nearly three months in a disgusting cellar. ‘I don’t want you coming down to earth with a bump one of these days,’ Colm said fondly. ‘It might hurt.’

She sat on his knee and put her arms around his neck. They’d never had a honeymoon, but it was how the last few days had felt, as if they’d only just got married and everything was new and fresh. ‘Don’t be such an old misery, Colm Caffrey,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Come on, darlin’. Let’s go to bed.’

‘In our Paddy’s room?’ Colm wiggled his dark eyebrows.

‘We’ll stop off in your Paddy’s room on the way.’

 

‘Our Cara can sleep here when she’s bigger,’ Brenna said as she stretched out on the narrow bed, ‘and we can have our own big bed to ourselves. This is awful cramped.’

‘I can’t wait.’ Colm lay beside her and put his arms around her waist. Brenna’s head fell back and became painfully lodged between the mattress and the wall.

‘Me head hurts,’ she complained.

Colm slid his hand beneath her neck and pulled her towards him. ‘What’s that?’ he muttered.

‘Me head, you eejit.’

‘No, under your head. There’s something inside the mattress.’

‘Let’s feel.’ Brenna smoothed her hand over the place where her head had been. It felt hard and lumpy. ‘It makes a noise,’ she said, ‘a jingling sound.’ She leapt out of the bed, sending Colm crashing to the floor, and pulled the mattress off. ‘Will you light the mantle, luv? Did you leave the matches downstairs?’

‘No, they’re in me pocket.’ Colm got painfully to his feet, rubbing his elbow.

For a few impatient minutes, she waited for him to find the matches, strike one and hold it to the gas mantle. A pale light flickered, revealing his mystified features, turning brighter until the room was fully lit. She sat on the bedsprings and examined the striped mattress, and saw that the seam was undone leaving a gap wide enough for a hand to go inside.

She reached and pulled out a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. ‘You undo it, luv.’ She shoved the package at a still mystified Colm. ‘It’s likely to be your Paddy who put it there.’

Colm took ages untying the string. He removed the paper. The package had been wrapped again in a dirty piece of rag that he unfolded and lay on the floor so they could see the contents.

Money! A pile of coins and quite a few notes. After a long silence, Brenna asked in an awed voice, ‘How much is there?’ She didn’t speak again until Colm had finished counting.

‘Eight pounds, five shillings and threepence,’ he said.

There was another long silence. This time it was Colm who spoke first. ‘It’s the stake money,’ he said.

‘The what?’

‘The stake money. This’ll be part of our ten pounds. I didn’t think of it before, but if our Paddy won the card game, he’d have got his own money back an’ all -
our
money. The thirty-five bob or so that’s missing is probably what he was throwing around in the pub the night he died.’

‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, Colm, are we not the luckiest family alive!’

‘Our Paddy had to die to make us lucky, Bren.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘Don’t ever forget that.’

‘You know I never will,’ she said quickly, although she had, if only for a second or two. ‘We’ll ask the fathers at St Vincent de Paul’s to say a Mass for him on Christmas Day.’ She stroked his lean neck. ‘Come back to bed, darlin’. Let’s go back to where we were before we found that package in the mattress.’

Later, when she was back in her own bed listening to Cara’s easy breathing - her cough had disappeared since leaving the cellar - Brenna began to make a list of the things she would buy. The whole family would be kitted out with new clothes - Nancy had told her about a place called Paddy’s Market where decent clobber could be had for next to nothing. She’d get a piece of ham for Christmas dinner and make a proper pudding for afterwards, buy Fergus and Tyrone a toy each: one of those cars that you wound up with a key and went by themselves, a rattle for Cara, a nice warm muffler for Colm, something for Nancy - a book, perhaps, one with big, long words that she’d love. And a little gift for Mr Allardyce, whom she’d never met, but couldn’t be nearly as horrid as Nancy had painted him.

Thanks to Mr Allardyce, Paddy and especially the Blessed Virgin, the Caffreys would have the merriest Christmas that anyone in Liverpool had ever known. Not only that, when it was over, they’d give Paddy the proper burial he truly deserved.

Smiling, Brenna fell asleep.

A cloud shaped like an old, creased dog crawled across the sky, slithering awkwardly in and out of the window frame. Eleanor Allardyce craned her head and watched the fluffy white tail disappear, wondering why church bells were ringing and why no sound came of the builders working on the site of the big cathedral that was being erected less than a hundred yards away, the thick walls looming over the yard at the back of the house. She remembered then that it was Christmas Day and a knot of something unpleasant formed in her throat when she realized Marcus would be home.

Since last week, she’d felt well enough to leave her bed for a few hours each day, but always went back before Marcus returned. ‘I’ve done too much,’ she would claim to Nurse Hutton. It meant she would see him for just a few minutes when he poked his head around the door to ask how she was. He only did it for propriety’s sake, knowing Nurse Hutton would be there, fussing around. The same reason forced him to be polite, although she was aware of the disdain in his eyes.

Her bed had become a sanctuary of sorts since she’d had Sybil - three months ago tomorrow, she recalled with a sigh - but she couldn’t stay for ever. The time had come to resume control of the household - and subject herself to the lash of her husband’s cruel tongue. Anyway, Marcus aside, she was bored beyond belief and sick to death of the company of Nurse Hutton and the various night nurses who spoke to her in the same tone as they did to Sybil, as if she were a baby.

Oh, for a walk into town, a stroll around the shops, to look at clothes and treat herself to a leisurely coffee in Frederick & Hughes, her favourite store. She closed her eyes and visualized the gracious restaurant with its sparkling chandeliers and stained-glass windows, the clink of china, the scrape of cutlery and, best of all, the pianist attired in evening dress playing tunes from the latest shows on the white grand piano.

For years now, it was the only thing she enjoyed: shopping, getting away from the house. Marcus told her she was extravagant: he resented the fact that she had her own money, that
that
part of her life wasn’t under his control, but Mummy had left her a huge sum when she died and it was kept in her own, private account. A few times Marcus had insisted it be transferred to his, but she’d adamantly refused. She shuddered, recalling how cross he’d been.