A Daughter's Secret (22 page)

It was Sunday, 9th July 1916, and the three Sullivan men were just finishing the milking when Tom, glancing up through the open door of the byre, saw a boy in a uniform of sorts clatter across the cobblestones on a bicycle. He saw him throw this down before the cottage and take a telegram from the bag around his shoulders.

None of the Sullivans had ever received a telegram, but Tom remembered Joe had said that was how the army informed the relatives if a man was missing or dead. His mouth suddenly felt very dry.

He looked back into the byre, where his father and brother were tipping milk into the churns, and called out, ‘There’s a boy here with—’

He got no further, for they all heard Biddy give a sharp cry of distress. Tom, bursting on to the yard, saw the boy standing apprehensively before the open cottage door. He looked thankful to see Tom, and he said, ‘She sort of fell over when I gave her the telegram.’

‘It’s all right,’ Tom assured him. ‘I will see to her now.’

As the relieved boy mounted his bike, Tom turned to his mother. She was kneeling on the floor, keening in deep distress, the tears pouring from her eyes and a crumpled buff telegram clutched to her breast. His father and Joe were at his heels.

‘What is it?’ Thomas John cried, but in his heart of hearts he knew.

Tom didn’t answer his father, but instead lifted his mother to her feet and, putting his arms around her, led her to one of the easy chairs pulled up before the fire, saying, ‘Come on, Mammy, don’t take on like this.’

He was moved by the bleak expression in his mother’s dark eyes. ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said, and handed him the telegram.

He scanned it quickly. ‘It’s Finn,’ he said to his father and Joe, standing staring at him.

‘Well, of course it’s Finn,’ Thomas John snapped. ‘I haven’t a rake of sons in the British Army. Is he dead?’

Tom nodded and Thomas John felt a deep and intense pain inside him at the loss of his youngest son. ‘Ah God,’ he cried. ‘What a tragic waste of a young life.’

Biddy began crying afresh and Tom busied himself making tea so that none would see his own wet cheeks. As the eldest he remembered Finn from the day that he was born. He recalled the cheeky grin he had and how funny he had been as a wee
boy. He would trail after him all the time, and plague him to death with questions. What he wouldn’t give to hear those same questions now, he thought as he handed out tea, noting that Thomas John’s eyes were glittery with unshed tears and even Joe’s were brighter than normal.

No one went to Mass that Sunday, but they sat on and talked of Finn, their memories punctuated with Biddy’s sobs. ‘I will have nothing of his,’ Biddy said suddenly, ‘not even a grave to tend.’

‘Well, that’s the way of it in wartime,’ Thomas John said brusquely. ‘And you won’t be alone either. There will be many families, both sides of the Irish Sea, mourning the loss of a loved one this day, I’m thinking.’

‘Maybe, but that doesn’t help me.’

‘Nothing will help,’ Thomas John said. ‘Nothing but time.’

In the end, because Biddy was incapable, Tom and Joe made a stab at making some breakfast for them all, though his mother could eat none of it and even Tom had little appetite.

Eventually, he could stand the atmosphere no longer. When Joe saw him cross the floor and lift his jacket from the hook behind the door, he said, ‘Where you off to?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Nowhere in particular. I just want to try and walk some of the sadness out of me.’

‘Do you want company?’

‘Aye, come along with me if you want to.’

For a while the two brothers walked in silence, and then Joe said, ‘It’s unbelievable really, isn’t it? Finn seemed so alive, had more about him than either you or me.’ He gave a sad little smile. ‘D’you know what the little fool said to me when I told him to be careful?’ And without waiting for a reply he continued, ‘He said not to worry about him. That he would catch the bullets in his teeth and spit them back.’

‘Aye,’ commented Tom wryly. ‘Maybe he found that more difficult to do than he anticipated.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I mean, when a person joins the army, especially if the country is at war at the time, you take on board the risks, or you think you do. It was the first thing that crossed my mind that day in Buncrana when he stepped forward to answer the recruiting officer’s call. Inside, though, you hope and pray that your loved ones will come home safe and sound.’

‘Aye,’ Joe said. ‘And now we know that that is not going to happen I think Nuala should be told. Course, in the normal way of things she would have been at home on Sundays with the rest of us, if her employers hadn’t asked her to go in as a favour.’

‘She’ll know something is amiss with none of us at Mass today,’ Tom said.

‘She is sure to,’ Joe agreed. ‘And I want to tell her about Finn before the news leaks out and someone else tells her.’

‘You’re right,’ Tom said. ‘Shall we go up to the house now, d’you think?’

‘Aye,’ Joe said. ‘Daddy won’t want to go today and leave Mammy on her own. She is powerful upset, all right.’

‘Come on then, what are we waiting for?’

‘Nothing, I suppose,’ said Joe. ‘I just dread doing this. Nuala will be heartbroken, for the two were very close.’

Nuala was in the window of the nursery, rocking the fractious baby and wondering why none of her family was at Mass that morning. She should have gone up after Mass and seen that everything was all right, but she had promised Nanny Pritchard that she would be straight back. The point was, the master and mistress were out for the day and it meant that Nanny Pritchard had charge of all the children on her own, and there were four of them now. This was more than enough for anyone, especially with the new baby, wee Sophie, teething and letting everyone know about it.

Suddenly, she saw her two brothers turn into the gravel drive from the road. They had never called at the house before, and at the look on their faces and the determined strides of them, she felt her spine suddenly tingling with alarm.

‘My brothers are here, Nanny,’ she said, turning from the window. ‘Will you have the baby? I must see what they want.’

‘Aye, give the child to me and get yourself away,’
Nanny Pritchard said. ‘I know you have been fretting that something was wrong at home.’

She watched Nuala leave the room, biting her bottom lip in consternation, and hoped that she wasn’t going to hear bad news.

Nuala flew through the house and arrived in the kitchen where the preparations for dinner were in progress and the various aromas of it wafted in the air. Nuala wasn’t a usual visitor in the kitchen and the cook had just turned from the stove to ask her if she wanted something when there was a knock at the door. That too was unusual, and grumbling slightly, she went to open it.

Tom had just asked if he could have a word with Nuala and she was there before him, her eyes full of foreboding as she asked in a voice that trembled slightly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Tom’s heart felt like lead and he said gently, ‘It’s Finn, Nuala. We had the telegram this morning.’

‘Dead?’ Nuala’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Are you telling me he is dead?’

‘Aye.’

She looked at Tom and Joe with eyes so full of pain that Tom had to glance away.

‘Finn assured me that he would be all right,’ she said in a small voice, brittle with anguish. ‘That any bullets would bounce off him.’ She suddenly covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh God, I can’t bear the thought that he is dead,’ she cried. ‘I really can’t bear it.’

She staggered then and would have fallen but the cook steadied her and then, feeling so sorry for the girl, she put her plump and motherly arms around her while she wept.

‘Take her home,’ she said to Tom, when Nuala was calmer at last. She turned Nuala to face her and said gently, ‘You need to be with your own at a time like this, and be some level of support to your poor mother.’

‘But Nanny Pritchard—’

‘Amelia here will go up and give a hand,’ the cook said. ‘And we will cope. You go on home, for the loss of that poor boy will be a grievous one for you all.’

Nuala knew the cook was right and she stopped only to fetch her coat from the nursery and tell Nanny Pritchard the news.

‘You poor child,’ Nanny Pritchard said, laying the baby back in the crib and putting her arms around Nuala.

‘Don’t,’ Nuala warned. ‘You will have me wailing again and my brothers are waiting. Cook says I am to go home.’

‘You must,’ Nanny Pritchard said. ‘Your poor, poor mother…’

Nuala walked home, a brother either side of her, numbed by the tragedy of it all and no one could think of a word to say. Nuala had never experienced directly the death of anyone before, and she didn’t know how to cope with the loss of her very dear brother. She remembered the time
when they had been playmates when they were children, the only one of her brothers her mother had allowed her to play with, and they stayed close as they grew up. Nuala had known Finn better than any of them and she knew she would always miss him sorely.

Biddy found it hard that there was no funeral and no grave, and that evening she went with Thomas John to arrange a commemorative Mass for Finn the following Sunday. The priest was so very sad to hear of his death. He had known Finn well, for he had been an altar boy for years. The sincere sympathy he expressed at their loss was nearly Biddy’s undoing and she was barely able to hold on to her tears until she and Thomas John reached home again.

The news of Finn’s death began to spread. Many neighbours called at the cottage to offer their sympathy and their help if they needed anything. Others had a Mass said for the repose of Finn’s soul and Biddy displayed the Mass cards on the mantelpiece.

But life had to go on. Nuala returned to the Big House two days after she left it, though the mistress said she could take all the time she wanted to get over the tragedy.

‘I am better at work,’ Nuala said. ‘When I heard first I really thought I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Finn again. I even said as much, but you have to bear it because you can do nothing
to change the situation. Finn was my very dear brother, who I will never forget, but I must get on with my life, as he would expect me to.’

‘You are very brave, my dear,’ Lady Carrington said. ‘And you have been missed. The children have asked constantly when you were going to come back. They will be delighted to see you.’

They were, and Nuala tried to be as natural with them as possible, but there was an air of melancholy that she carried around with her that had not been there before. She never cried in front of them, though. Any tears that she still shed for Finn were wept when she was in her bed at night.

For Joe and Tom, in one way nothing had changed, and yet in another everything had. Finn’s absence had been temporary before. Thomas John often said things like, ‘When this war is over and Finn back where he belongs, I might get a few more cows.’ Or, ‘When the lad’s back home, I’ve a mind to till that top field that’s lying fallow just now.’

Now that wouldn’t happen, and while it was hard for Tom and Joe, it was devastating for Thomas John. He seemed to age twenty years.

‘There is a pain in my heart every time I think of Finn,’ Thomas John said to Biddy, as they sat together one evening. ‘It’s like I’ve strained it in some way.’

It was so odd for Thomas John to speak of his feelings this way that Biddy just stared at him. ‘I loved him, you see, better than the other two,
and I was so afraid of showing that favouritism that I was even harder on him. Dear Christ, if I’m honest, I barely threw him a kind word all the years he was growing up.’ He passed a gnarled hand over his wet face and said, ‘I think of every bad thing I have said to him – and over the years there has been a fine collection of them – and now they come back to haunt me. Mind the time I clouted him across the head for spilling a drop of milk? For God’s sake! As if it bloody mattered.’

‘Don’t do this, Thomas John,’ Biddy said. ‘You are a grand father, none better. You have barely laid a hand on any of the children. You were vexed with Finn that day, that’s all. And he was a happy child growing up. Didn’t he always go around the place with a smile on his face?’

‘He did that,’ Thomas John said, a sad little smile playing around his mouth at the memory. ‘And his laughter used to echo across the yard. He was forever after Tom, d’you mind that? He had more patience with him than either Joe or me, for the child wanted to know the whys and wherefores of every damn thing. Tom never seemed to mind and he answered his questions every one, or he would toss him up on his shoulders, or have him on his back and gallop him around the yard.’

‘Tom,’ snapped Biddy, ‘is as soft as clarts. Always was and always will be.’

‘A man can be worse things than that,’ Thomas John said. ‘Don’t you think you’re a mite hard on Tom at times, Biddy?’

‘Well, he’s not a proper man,’ Biddy said. ‘He never sticks up for himself like Joe does, or Finn did. He is afraid of me. I can see it in his eyes and I find it hard to respect a man like that.’

‘Tom is a grand worker,’ Thomas John declared stoutly. ‘He is my true right-hand man, with more of a feel for the land and the animals than Joe. He is also honest and reliable. Can you not respect him for those qualities?’

‘If you say so,’ Biddy said impatiently. She wouldn’t change her opinion of her eldest son. He had almost been born to be bullied, but she would keep that to herself. ‘But we didn’t start this conversation talking of Tom,’ she went on, ‘but of Finn, and I hope I have made you feel better about that and remember he died doing something he had chosen to do.’

Thomas John sighed. ‘Aye, I have to accept that now, though I doubt any of the boys really knew what they were going into. According to the papers, in Britain anyway, conscription is now extended to married men if the unmarried recruits fall below fifty thousand a month. Think on that. Fifty thousand a month to be sent overseas, to be mutilated, maimed and murdered. At the end of it all, if more Germans die than British, it’s counted as a victory. It is almost obscene!’

Aggie and Lily presented themselves to Miss Morris at Kynoch’s factory in Witton at a quarter-past seven on Monday morning.