A Glimpse at Happiness (20 page)
Turning into Walburgh Street, Patrick’s weary eyes rested on his front door at the end of the road. What he wouldn’t give to have Josie waiting for him behind it, he thought, as he pushed it open. Although it was early evening, the air was humid and the soot clung to his damp skin. Sarah was stirring the pot on the fire but turned as her son walked in.
‘There you are, lad,’ she said, her eyes resting gently on him. ‘Good day?’
‘Fair, though this heat’s murder,’ he replied, warmed by the tenderness in her voice.
He began to wash his hands and face in the bowl of cool soapy water his mother had left at the end of the table for him. ‘Where’s the young ’uns?’
‘Upstairs. I told them I had a headache.’ Sarah reached up to the mantelshelf and picked up a letter, which she handed to him.
Patrick wiped his hands on the towel draped over the back of the chair and took the letter.
Instead of the new-style envelopes that were now generally used, the letter with Patrick’s name scrawled boldly across it was a solid sheet of paper, tucked and folded and held together with an old-fashioned wax seal. Above the seal, in smaller letters, was written: Lieutenant Edward Smyth, adjutant to Colonel FitzWallace of The First Anglia Infantry Regiment, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
Patrick stared at it. It had been over four months since he’d written to enquire after Rosa - just before he’d met Josie again. He hadn’t been optimistic about a reply. He knew that the comings and goings of one of the camp followers wouldn’t be a high priority for the garrison’s commanding officer.
‘It arrived at Wardells’ store yesterday and I collected it this morning along with a letter from Aunt Bridie,’ Sarah said. ‘Aren’t you going to open it, Pat?’
Patrick’s heart pounded in his chest. The squat-sealed letter in his hand might just give him the key to happiness with Josie.
He’d originally written to satisfy his own mind as to his wife’s fate, but since Josie had come back into his life, knowing Rosa’s fate had become urgent. He unfolded the page and began reading.
The regimental sergeant major informs me that on the last occasion that he saw Mrs Rosa Nolan she was still in the company of Corporal Keble of the Fifth. She accompanied the regiment when it left for Egypt six months ago. However, mindful of your difficult situation, I have taken the liberty of forwarding your letter to Mr Watson, chaplain to the garrison in Alexandria, and an old school friend of mine, in the hope that he might have further knowledge of your wife’s whereabouts.
My God, Alexandria!
‘What does it say?’ Sarah sat down opposite him. ‘Tell me that she’s dead, God forgive me!’
Patrick gave her a disapproving look and Sarah crossed herself hastily.
‘She was alive six months ago but now in hell - of sorts,’ he replied. ‘She went to Alexandria. The colonel has forwarded my letter to the chaplain attached to the fort in Egypt. There is a slim chance we may still hear news of Rosa.’
Sarah folded her arms tightly across her bosom. ‘Well, good riddance to her.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t relish any woman having to suffer Alexandria, not even Rosa,’ he said. ‘You smell the place on the wind long before you see it, and it’s so infested with disease that one in six of the local population is killed by it - and for the English double that. When the
Seahorse
berthed I heaved my gut over the side because of the stench of rotting, bloated animal carcasses - and human ones too - floating in the shallows. Soldiers garrisoned there called it Egypt’s arse, and anyone who’s been there will know why.’
Seahorse
berthed I heaved my gut over the side because of the stench of rotting, bloated animal carcasses - and human ones too - floating in the shallows. Soldiers garrisoned there called it Egypt’s arse, and anyone who’s been there will know why.’
Sarah regarded him for a few moments, then one eyebrow rose. ‘If the place is as bad as you say, Pat, then you might even now be a widower.’
Hope and guilt vied for position in Patrick’s mind. He wanted his mother’s words to be true so much it was like a physical hurt, but he forced his unworthy thought aside. It was a mortal sin to wish Rosa dead, no matter what she’d done. But as his eyes settled again on the letter Patrick - even if he were doomed to a thousand years in purgatory - silenced his conscience and prayed that his mother’s words might come true.
Mattie rolled against Brian as the front wheel of the cart dipped into one of the many potholes along Cable Street. He smiled down at her and snapped the reins lightly on old Flossy’s dappled rump. Behind Mattie, carefully packed away in three boxes, was her bottom drawer. Well, bottom three drawers and a chest to be precise, and very soon she would be putting them to use as a new wife.
Brian shortened the right rein to turn Flossy into Cannon Street Road but he didn’t need to. The old horse knew her way home and had already plodded around the corner. The iron rimmed wheels squealed as they scraped over the cobbles and through the horse muck and dirt in the gutter.
Sensing her warm stable and her bale of fresh hay waiting for her, Flossy picked up her pace and practically trotted into the yard.
The acrid smell of the coal filled Mattie’s nose as she looked around at what would be her new home in less than a week. Brian’s father had started the business some twenty years before by filling a hand cart each day at the Limehouse coal depot and then selling it by the bucket around the streets. After two years he’d bought a horse, and after five he’d taken the lease on an old cooperage yard and adjoining house. The oblong plot had the business at one end and the house at the other, with the stable for the four horses in between. At the business end of the yard were four piles of coal divided by wooden fences and ranging from Best Parlour coal to Washed Nuts at half the price.
‘Yo there, old girl,’ Brian called, applying the brake and winding the reins around the side board.
He jumped down and then held his hands out to Mattie. She slid forward on the seat and his large hand gripped her around the waist. He lifted her effortlessly down but instead of releasing her held her close.
‘Give us a kiss,’ he said, tickling her.
‘Brian Maguire! Not here, in broad daylight. You’ll set the neighbours talking,’ she said, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘Let me go.’
‘Plant one on me and I will,’ he replied, puckering up.
‘What about your men?’
He glanced at the three delivery carts standing in a row in front of the stacked coal. ‘The men have gone. It’s just you and me, so come on.’ He winked. ‘A lot of girls would, you know.’ He pulled his mouth tight again.
‘Well, really,’ Mattie said, giving him her severest look but fighting to keep the smile from her face.
Brian made a couple of kissing sounds then Mattie stretched up and did as he asked, feeling the scratch of his end of day bristles on her lips.
Why wouldn’t she? Wasn’t it what she wanted to do every time she set eyes on him?
‘That’s better,’ he said, letting her go and unhitching Flossy, who trotted into her stall and stuck her head into the trough while Brian took off her harness. He gave the square rump a affectionate slap and hooked the leather straps on the post, then closed the gate. He cast his eyes over the other three horses then strolled back to Mattie.
He had collected her after he’d finished his last delivery and still wore his work jerkin and canvas trousers, both of which were coated with coal dust, although the protective headgear that covered him down to his shoulders lay beside her boxes in the back of the wagon. His face was crisscrossed with black lines where the dust had seeped into the small creases around his eyes, mouth and neck. It contrasted strangely with his bright red hair, sky blue eyes and white teeth. It would take Brian an hour of scrubbing at the kitchen sink to clean the last of it away.
He picked up the largest box from behind the seat and pretended to stagger back. ‘What have you got in here, woman, cannon balls?’
‘It’s the new iron pot that Mam’s given me and my bits of china,’ Mattie replied, taking up the box with her clothes in.
Brian heaved his load onto one shoulder and then collected her bundle with the cotton sheets and bolster case inside that she had been stitching for the past year.
‘The chest should be all right there for a moment,’ he said.
It had rained earlier in the day so at least the dust that usually blew about the yard had settled, but it now lay as grey sludge under her boots. Mattie lifted her skirts to stop them dragging across the ground and followed Brian towards the house.
The Maguire home was set at the far end of the yard. It was a two-up two-down like the rest of the street but about five years ago, just before he died, Brian’s father had built a two-storey extension to the side. The new downstairs room was joined to the house immediately inside the front door and was a large family parlour while the upstairs room became the company office overlooking the yard and reached by an outside wooden staircase. Brian went around the back of the house and through the small garden.
‘Mam, we’re back,’ Brian called as he pushed open the back door with his foot.
Queenie, Brian’s mother, stood by the deep kitchen sink but turned from her task as soon as they entered.
Unlike most of the folk in Knockfurgus, Queenie Maguire wasn’t from the old country. Her family, the Bruntons, had lived along the river long before the Irish arrived, back in the last century. She was finely boned, with a tiny button nose that gave her face a childlike quality. In contrast, a lifetime of housework had developed her thin arms into stringy muscles and given her knotted knuckles perpetual redness. In the light from the kitchen window her fine, almost white hair showed a hint of the gold it used to be.
‘Did you get caught in the rain?’ she asked, looking anxiously over her son.
‘Just for a moment,’ Brian replied, sliding the box from his shoulder onto the kitchen table.
The furrows in Queenie’s fair brow deepened. She left her chores and went to her son’s side. ‘Are you wet?’ She placed her hand on his sleeve.
Queenie, who barely came up to Mattie’s shoulder, was positively dwarfed by her son. Mattie pondered, not for the first time, how a body so diminutive could produce a man the size of Brian.
‘No, Mam, I’m not,’ he replied, looking down at her with a patient expression on his face.
‘Are you sure? Damp will draw a chill to your bones in the wink of an eye. Won’t it Mattie?’ she asked, looking across to her.
Mattie smiled. Seeing his mother fuss over Brian as if he were eight instead of twenty-eight slightly niggled her but, as Queenie had been brought to bed six unsuccessful times before delivering her son, she couldn’t really blame her. Perhaps she would be the same if she were in Queenie’s shoes.
Brian took his mother’s hands. ‘Mam, rest your mind from its fretting. I’m fine. Now is there a brew of tea for me and Mattie?’
Queenie’s face crinkled into a smile. ‘Of course there is, son.’ She shuffled over to the range and moved the kettle to the heat.
Mattie eyed the massive iron oven sitting in what had been the fireplace. Brian had bought it for his mother last year after they got the contract to supply coal to Hoffman the baker’s two shops. Having only cooked on her mother’s fire Mattie wondered if she would ever master its two ovens and array of hot plates, but she did relish soon having hot water on tap, literally, from the reservoir beside the fire.
‘And how is our Mattie?’ asked Queenie, turning her attention to her.
‘Very well, thank you, Mrs Maguire,’ Mattie replied.
‘Tush!’ she waved a bird-like hand in the air. ‘Haven’t I told you to call me Queenie? Everyone does. And,’ she glanced at Mattie’s stomach, ‘how are
things
?’
things
?’
Everyone in the family knew she was with child although her condition couldn’t be spoken about openly until after she and Brian were wed, but her Mam and Queenie were forever asking how ‘things’ were.
Mattie blushed. ‘As they should be.’
‘Good, good.’ Queenie gave a happy shrug.
Brian smiled at Mattie over his mother’s head. ‘I’ll go and fetch your trunk from the wagon.’
‘And I’ll take my things upstairs, if I may, Mrs . . . Queenie,’ Mattie said.
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