Day 25
'We're at the end of our story now, Alice. All those people and places I've told you about, all of those lives, how we got to here. How I married Billy and came with him to England, which was a hundred times better than I'd ever had it. Life wasn't easy at first, slum house after slum house, bad wages and a new baby every year or so. People can be so cruel. I'd been mistreated by my own people forever before I was married, then abused in the street by Manchester neighbours who disliked the Irish. That only got better when Billy settled in his job and they gave us the council house.'
A nurse appears, smiles, straightens the girl's pillow and pulls the bedsheets up to her patient's chin, then leaves, smiling weakly at Maria. A smile that says to make the most of her time left.
‘Your dad went to see Father McSorley last night, asked him to come in to see you today. I expect he’ll be in soon enough. I should go to Mass later. Do some penance. I've not been for a while and I'll have Father McSorley round telling me off. If he does I'm afraid I might give him a piece of my … Alice? … ALICE?'
Maria rushes for a nurse, then runs back with two close behind, and tries to rub some life into the cold hands of her daughter. One nurse checks the girl’s pulse, grimly shakes her head at the other, and lays her hand on Maria’s wrist.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Garner …’ Maria doesn’t hear the rest.
Patients, those who are able, crane their necks to see what's going on. Then the whispers start, bed to bed. Fear hushes the ward when the doctor comes through, speaks to the nurses, and draws the curtain around Alice’s bed.
*
A knock at the door. Maria sits alone with the kitchen curtains drawn and grips her cherished handkerchief with the flower embroidered in one corner. Ruth and Brian have pushed Rose round to the undertaker with Billy so he can make the arrangements, and the other young ones are at school. There'd seemed no point in keeping them home, even though Ann was inconsolable in the morning. Maria can hardly lift herself from the stool to answer the knocking. On the step, hat in hand, is Father McSorley. 'Good morning Father,' she steps aside, 'won't you come in.'
The priest gestures for her to go ahead and follows her to the kitchen. Maria peeks through the curtains and puts on the kettle, then notices the sink is full of the previous evening's dishes.
'You'll have to forgive the mess, Father, Billy's been here on his own and you know how he is. Typical man, begging your pardon, and wouldn't even think of asking the children to do a bit of cleaning up.'
'Don't you worry yourself there, Maria, I know it's not an easy time,' he takes her by the elbow, 'I'm so sorry for your loss.'
The room is quiet other than the splash of tea from pot to cup until she scrabbles in the cupboard, searching unproductively for a biscuit missed by young mouths. Outside, the birds sing and the dogs bark like they do every other day, neighbours hang out washing and talk across the fence, as every other morning. Somewhere there's the clack-clack-clack of a lawn being cut.
Maria wonders how this can still all go on, don't people know the world has ended?
'You've not been to Mass since we spoke, Maria, and I’ve been concerned, so, as I'd to visit Mrs Heron down the street, she broke her hip you know, I thought I’d call in. God knows you've had your hands full with Alice, but you're usually such a regular. I wanted to check I hadn't said something to upset you.'
'No, not at all, Father.’
‘I also wanted to apologise for arriving at the hospital too late yesterday. I’d a funeral on and couldn’t get away until afterwards. You’d just left when I got there. I sat with her a while and said a few prayers for poor Alice’s soul, and for you and Billy to have God’s help to get through this time.’
‘That’s kind of you. I have to admit, Father, what you said there in the church, the night I came home from the hospital, got me to thinking.'
'In what way?'
She sits and sips her tea.
'You know, Father, I can look out across my garden and see our church but sometimes it seems so very far away. That night we talked about Alice you told me it wasn't for us to question God's will, something I've always been taught to believe. I'm not sure I can believe it any longer.'
'I hear this so often when a loved one dies, Maria, especially when it's a child. It's at these times that our faith is tested to the limit, though it's also the time when we need it to be strongest. Just think, Alice has been ill for so long, isn't it merciful of Him to take her up and give her relief?'
She can tell the poor man is doing his best but that he doesn't believe what he's saying. Just words learnt at the seminary years ago.
'That's easy to say when it's not your flesh and blood, Father. Not your daughter who's dying. But if it was just about Alice I think I could understand your words, I might even agree with them, hard as it might be to let her go.'
'What is it then?'
'For months I've been visiting her, and that's given me a long time to spend with my own thoughts. Two weeks ago I was told that was all she had left and to help me cope I started to tell her stories. How I got to be sitting by that bedside. I told her of my grandfather's escape from the famine and his travels round the world. I told her of my father and mother's lives, and their early deaths, her in a strange country and him in the workhouse. And I told her about my life, every part of it, things I'd never told to anyone before.' She fixes her priest in the eye. 'Poverty, always poverty, and through all that storytelling, one question kept coming back to me.'
Father McSorley looks away. 'What's the question, Maria?'
'Why didn't God help? Just once?'
*
Children playing, kettle singing, sun streaming in through net curtained windows. Just another fine late Autumn day. Everything right in the world save for the draped clock and mirrors in Maria's home. Her hands deftly scrape skin and soil from potatoes, while she looks out of the window into her garden. Though 'garden' is an exaggeration, she knows, for with four young children and two older ones still at home, plus a man who
works or sleeps all the hours that God sends there's little chance of cultivation of her tiny plot. Never will it be up to the standard of her Auntie Bridget. All she can do is try to keep the grass in some kind of order so that the kids have somewhere to play, and she has somewhere to sit when the luxury of a free moment presents itself.
With the potatoes finished and on the boil Maria goes out into the sunshine.
'Mammy?'
'Yes Tommy?' The boy, in short pants and a faded Fairisle jumper too small for his elder brother but two sizes too big for him, is her second youngest.
'Could we have a dog? Just a small one, it'd be good fun you know.'
'I don't think so love. Where would we keep a dog? There's barely enough room in the house for us all as it is. And a dog's an awful costly thing to keep.'
'But I'd love one Mammy. He could share my bed and I'd give him some of my food. He … he needn't cost us much you know.'
Maria turns away and whispers 'maybe someday soon son, but not now', knowing there is little chance. No matter how hard she tries, she's always, having to deny the children what they want. She arches her back to ease the knotted muscles and a twelve year old girl, Lizzie, pops her head outside.
'There's a man at the door, Mammy. I told him Daddy's not home but he says it's you he wants to see. He seems really nice.'
Lizzie and Tommy eye their mother with an air of suspicion, they're not sure she should be receiving men callers in the daytime.
'Me? He wants to see me? Tell him to wait just a minute Lizzie, I'll be straight through.'
Maria dashes inside, rinses her hands, primps her hair and walks through the living room to the front door. She's tempted to peek out of the bay window to get a look at the man first but realises how embarrassing this would be if he spots her.
The man is smiling in the doorway. Smiling, though Maria sees at a glance that he is nervous, something about the colour in his cheeks and the tiny tremor at the corner of his lips. He tugs the lobe of his right ear.
'Maria? Is it Maria Garner? Maria Byrne that was?'
Maria cocks her head ever so slightly, trying to decide if she knows the man. There's something about him, but she can't recall. She looks up and down the street in case any of the neighbours are outside.
'Yes, I'm Maria. Do I know you?'
He coughs, the nervousness getting to him.
'I .. I don't know how to tell you this without it being a shock. I've rehearsed and rehearsed what I was going to say but that's all now gone out of my head. I think I'll just have to blurt it out after all. I'm Jimmy. James Byrne. Your brother.'
*
Tea laid at the kitchen table, bread and butter, a slice or two of cheap cake, hastily brought from the corner shop by Tommy. The trappings of normality in a world shaken to its foundations, twice in as many weeks. The hugs follow hard on Jimmy grabbing Maria by the arm, preventing her fainting away. As each tries to come to terms with what has just happened, tears continue to well in their eyes, words continue to choke in their throats.
'How did you find me? It's been how long?'
'A lifetime. Thirty seven years by my reckoning. Finding you wasn't easy, Maria, that's for sure. I was away at sea for a while when I got out of the grip of the Brothers. I travelled all around the world. I thought about going back to Arklow to settle but when I arrived there was nothing left for me, just bad memories. Someone sent me to Bella Rafferty, a daughter of Auntie Bridget, said she'd heard that you'd married a British soldier just before they all pulled out and moved to England with him.'
'You were in Arklow with the Christian brothers? You know I was in Dublin, at St Gregory's Industrial School? The "orphanage" they called it. Orphanage my fat foot! More like a prison. Some of the nuns were all right but lots of them were sadists. I can't tell you the beatings I had.'
'It was the same with me Maria. The first place in Arklow was the worse, when I was just a kid. They moved me down to Limerick when I reached twelve and the older boys there protected you a bit, not all the time you know, but most of the time.'
Maria shakes her head, pours more tea, for something to do with her hands rather than for sustenance, and hugs Rose close to her side. Jimmy explains how he'd taken one more trip to sea after leaving Arklow, this time ending up in Liverpool, where he'd married a local girl and settled down. He beams when he shows Maria a well-worn photo of his daughter, Therese.
'Just the one is it?'
'Aye, just the one. And you?'
'Young Rose here is the tenth. She's the youngest. Three of them are away in the army. The eldest, Josie, was on his way home. Should have been here by now. Got his boat from India, then when he arrived in Malta they diverted him to Germany. Terrible things been happening there. Concentration camps and mass graves they say. Specialist soldiers and military police need to investigate it all. As if he hasn't been through enough. The other two got leave for the funeral and went back to their camps afterwards. At least they should be safe now it's all over.
Maria rearranges the crockery and looks away. 'We lost a daughter a fortnight ago. Eighteen she was. A growth on her brain.'
Jimmy leans across the table and covers his sister's wrist. 'I'm so sorry, Maria. What can I say?'
They sit in quiet contemplation as the minutes tick by until Jimmy breaks the silence.
'Ten children? Ten?'
'And me brought up in a convent. For years I couldn't work out where they were coming from.'
For the first time they both laugh easily, sharing the silly joke. Jimmy returns to his story, explaining he'd recently met a soldier who'd been in Dublin in 1922, stationed at the Phoenix Park barracks. He hadn't known Maria or who she'd married, but he had known the names of the army outfits that had been left in the city at the end.
'From there I just wrote a few letters to the various regiments. Obviously I didn't know your husband's name then but I was pretty sure yours would come up on someone's records somewhere and, sure enough, it did. The Durham Light Infantry were kind enough to let me have William's name and last address.'
'Billy, it's Billy, not William. He'd hate you calling him William.'
'Oh, sorry, Billy it is. Anyway, from there I came over to Manchester a couple of times when I was able, found the street where you used to live and knocked on a few doors. People were very good about it and after a few tries I found someone who told me where you were living now. I can't believe that I've found you, though I always dreamed that I would.'
So they continue for two hours until Billy returns from work, when bottles are cracked open and all the stories told again.
When there's nothing left to say, Maria walks her brother round the corner, waving as his bus pulls away into the darkness. She doesn't go straight home. Instead, she takes the extra steps to her church, breathes deeply of the night air, then goes inside to pray.
If you’ve got to the end, I’d really like to know what you thought of the novel. Please leave a comment by clicking below.
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An absolutely wonderful story Charlie! And 10 kids and only losing one! I am sure she was not the only one but how did she keep her sanity and her health I have to wonder... So you pulled few punches... It's painful to take in but it is an ode to the resilience of women in particular I think. You see this kind of toughness in women having to carry the load of family survival in dire circumstances around the worlds crisis spots. Interesting that the reunion with her brother was enough to shore Maria's faith after it had taken a pretty heavy hit!
Thank you, Frank. I'm so pleased you followed it through to the end - and you've picked up exactly on why I wanted to tell the story. The more I found out about my grandmother's life when I did my family history research, the more I felt the story needed to be told. Obviously, this is a novel and largely fiction, but many of the elements of what she, and her family endured are true.