Another Kind of Life (11 page)

‘All aboard! Dublin train in five minutes!’

Mama seemed to jerk suddenly into life.

‘Quickly, now, Hannah. We must board the train. Eleanor’s waiting for us.’

For the first time, May wondered where Papa was. Although they often went to Dublin without him, this time felt different. This time, they were surrounded by danger, the unexpected, the unknown.
He should be with them, to keep them safe. She allowed herself to be bundled on to the train, still sobbing occasionally. Hannah held fast to her hand, but she treated her gently. There was no
tugging or pulling at her to keep up. Ellie was already curled up on one of the seats, already half-asleep.

May felt the silence envelop all of them as they closed the door of their compartment. Mama stroked her head once in a distracted kind of way, and then gazed out the window. She kept patting her
daughter’s hand, murmuring, ‘Good girl, good girl,’ as May’s breathing stilled, but she still kept her eyes fixed on something beyond the window. It was strange: there was
nothing to look at, it seemed to May. Everything was blank and featureless once the bright platform had slid away, backwards, into the dusk.

‘Why were those men fighting, Mama?’

‘Sshhh – we’ll talk about it later. It’s nothing for you to worry about. No one can touch you now. You must rest, May, you need to breathe quietly.’

May wanted answers; she wasn’t interested in breathing quietly. But it seemed that neither Mama nor Hannah felt inclined to speak. Underneath all the recent terror, her senses sharpened by
fear, May was able to detect an undercurrent of something else in her mother’s silence. She was different, somehow, more distant. Her presence with them in the carriage was somehow
unemphatic. She had withdrawn that part of herself that made her Mama. It was as though May could have been anyone’s daughter, sitting in any carriage, going anywhere on a normal, everyday
journey. She felt suddenly afraid that in the midst of her terror, she had, somehow, done something to make her mother stop loving her.

Hannah whispered to her to lie down, pointing towards Eleanor and pressing her finger to her lips. There was nothing else for it. Her breathing felt more normal now, the hammering of her heart
against her ribcage had eased, and Hannah’s gestures were becoming insistent. She’d have to do as she was told. Reluctantly, she tucked her feet under her on the seat and lay down,
nestling her head into Hannah’s lap. Exhausted, she waited for sleep.

But sleep would not come. The wheels of the train failed to comfort her, the motion made her begin to feel sick. Rather than the familiar
taketa-tack
of its wheels, the usual, soothing
rocking sensation, the train instead seemed to become sinister. The noises it made were an uncanny echo of the ugly shouts May had heard on the city streets, imitating their rhythm and ferocity.
She felt the base of her throat start to constrict again. She was about to sit up when Hannah began to speak, quietly, to their mother. May decided to stay where she was. A strong instinct told her
that this conversation would cease if she were suddenly to appear awake. She kept her eyes closed instead, and listened, straining to hear her mother’s reply above the noise of the train.

‘Your father has been arrested, Hannah. The police came and took him away two days ago.’

May felt her stomach lurch and fill rapidly with butterflies. At the same time, she was conscious of a wave of relief: it was always so much easier once the darkness was
named
: she had
been deeply disturbed by the great silent cloud of distress which, up until now, had surrounded all of them in the dimly lit carriage.

‘What did he do?’

May held her breath.

‘He embezzled Post Office funds.’

May was puzzled. She had no idea what her mother meant. She waited, and Hannah spoke again, voicing her thoughts, speaking for her, as she often did.

‘I don’t understand. What does that mean?’

‘It means he took money – borrowed it, without permission.’

‘But if he borrowed it, then he means to pay it back. Why don’t they just let him pay it back?’

‘Because he hasn’t got it, Hannah. And if you haven’t got it, then borrowing like that is the same as stealing. That’s the law.’

‘Will he go to prison?’

Hannah’s voice was unsteady. May could hear the tears behind her words, the tension suddenly stiffening the knees on which she rested.

‘We don’t know yet. We must wait and see.’

May heard nothing else. She wanted to cover her ears, to blank out her mother’s words. She wanted to turn back time, to move the big hands on the station clock back to when they’d
arrived, to make Mama greet her with a smile and a hug, a proper hug this time. This was not real: this was some other family’s unhappiness which they had all stumbled into by accident. May
wanted to sing out loud, to blot out the fear, to keep terror at bay as she had done when Sister Raphael locked her into the map cupboard.

But try as she did, she could not make anything change. Mama’s tone continued to be angry and bitter. Hannah filled the air around them with her bewilderment. May wanted to be back in
school, safe in the warmth of her dormitory, surrounded by all the girls who had become her friends. And she wanted Papa. Nothing could be as bad as Mama said; nothing.

M
ARY
CUT
THE
bread into large hunks. She put sugar and milk into Cecilia’s mug, and filled it with
a stream of strong, dark tea. She pushed it across the table to her sister.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Get that into ye.’

Cecilia drank it quickly. She stuffed the pieces of bread into her pocket. Mary was hurrying into her shawl.

‘We’d best be goin’, Cecilia – I don’t want to get fined again.’

The younger girl nodded. ‘Aye, I’m ready, but I don’t know how I’m goin’ to keep me eyes open the day.’

‘Saturday’s a short day – at least that’s a wee bit o’ comfort.’

‘It’s muck-up day – I hate it.’

Mary said nothing more. She could see that Cecilia was in no mood to be comforted. Both girls stepped outside; Mary pulled the front door behind them. There was now an unnatural silence on the
morning streets. Debris was scattered everywhere. Tension hung suspended over the city like a lowering cloud. The air seemed to crackle with the memory of the previous night’s violence;
paving-stones and stout sticks were strewn everywhere, as far as the eye could see.

Since dawn, there had been the sounds of hammering and banging all over Carrick Hill. Mary and Cecilia had made tea and joined their neighbours in the wasteland of the street below, sweeping
glass and stones off the pavement into the gutter. Men in their working clothes nailed planks of wood across the gaping holes where windows had once been. Women picked up shards of ornaments,
precious things which varied little from family to family: little china dolls, toby jugs, a china vase or two. There were exclamations of delight when, miraculously, a sad brown and white china dog
and a miniature Virgin Mary emerged whole from the wreckage.

Myles had come over just after the dawn silence had descended on the streets. He was anxious to make sure that Mary and Cecilia were safe. Mary had never seen him angry before. Frightened, yes
– they had all grown to know fear, to acknowledge it to the others without shame. They had become a tight community, pulled even more tightly together by terror. It was what kept them close,
wiped out any differences of opinion, old hurts, family enmities. These were all forgotten in their need to share the fear equally: just so much for everyone, so that no one felt overwhelmed. Just
so much, so that people knew where their safety lay, and looked out for others, knowing that others were looking out for them. But Myles was angry now. His broad hands clenched the air, his large
frame seemed even larger. Mary realized that he was standing up to his full height; he had suddenly forgotten to stoop.

‘Bastards,’ he muttered, his face set and pale with rage.

‘Please be careful the day, Myles. Don’t draw them on yerself.’

Mary was anxious for him. Father MacVeigh’s words were enough to make her sharp-eyed, cautious about trouble, but she wasn’t sure they were a strong enough antidote to Myles’s
anger.

He nodded and squeezed her shoulder, looking down at her tenderly.

‘Aye, and you too.’

Numbed with exhaustion, Mary had gone back into the house with Cecilia to get ready for work. She had made breakfast for both of them to eat on the run. Hurrying now, they made their way through
the streets towards their tram.

Handbills fluttered everywhere, uselessly, in the breeze. Bottles rolled and chinked against the sides of the gutters, as though marking time. The whole atmosphere was one of electric
expectation; even these inanimate objects seemed content to wait for a new occasion of havoc, secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t far off.

Mary and Cecilia joined the long stream of women headed for the mills of Bedford Street, York Street and the Crumlin Road. Nobody spoke of the night before. It was a silent march, a nervous
procession that made its way towards the city trams. The girls’ usual morning banter was silenced. Many of the younger faces were pale, pinched with anxiety. Girls and women linked arms with
each other, taking some comfort from the presence of neighbours, the company of friends. The disturbances of the night before, and all the old tales, vivid with tribal memory, meant that these
women moved carefully, watching their backs, all senses on the alert. Trouble had its own distinctive smell.

‘Take care the day, Cecilia, keep your head down,’ said Mary quietly as they walked the last hundred yards to Amelia Street. ‘After last night, them girls’ll be only
lookin’ for an excuse.’

The younger woman’s face was even whiter than earlier, the fine blue veins along her temples almost garish by contrast.

‘Aye, don’t worry. I’ll not say nothin’, just do me work.’

The sisters approached Watson, Valentine and Company, its dark exterior forbidding even at six o’clock on a bright, crisp April morning. The mill girls were streaming into their place of
work, converging from the right and the left of Amelia Street. In the ground-floor spinning room, they immediately took up their stands between the giant frames, ready for the day.

The coughing began almost at once. The filmy covering of pouce, disturbed by the influx of so many people at once, insinuated itself into nostrils and throats, snaked its way deep into lungs,
setting off the harsh symphony which signalled the start of every morning.

Cecilia and Mary joined the throng heading for the stairs, long used to the morning jostling and pushing. Today, the crowd seemed to be denser than usual. There was an air of suppressed
excitement among the girls and Cecilia felt herself being almost washed along by the press of urgent, hurrying bodies. Mary squeezed her sister’s hand and had to let go suddenly as a group of
three or four girls pushed against them, forcing their way between them. Cecilia said nothing as Mary was carried up the stairs before her on a wave of ascending bodies. They never spoke to each
other once they’d entered the factory, meeting up again only when the day’s work was over.

Cecilia struggled now to stay upright, knowing that any sign of weakness would bring her grief. It was important to stand your ground, to keep both feet firmly under you. She kept a sharp eye
out for the known troublemakers, the Sandy Row girls with hard faces and tough, unforgiving bodies. She was careful to make no eye contact as she searched the sea of heads for Alice McLaughlin and
Marian Ward, two of her few allies in the upper spinning room. Not for the first time, she wished that she could be with Mary. She consoled herself that the three years would be over at the end of
the year; she’d join the experienced spinners before her next birthday. It couldn’t come soon enough.

Her search for Alice and Marian distracted her for a moment and suddenly she stumbled on the stairway. She began to fight to stay standing and found herself being lifted by the elbows so that
her feet no longer touched the ground. Instantly, she was terrified. Her heart began to beat faster, her palms to sweat. These were no helping hands. Almost immediately, the pinching began.

‘What do ye say we pitch this filthy wee taig down the staircase, sister?’

The words were whispered, low and vicious, just at her right ear.

Cecilia looked around her wildly. Still neither of the girls she needed was anywhere near her, not even in sight. Her tormentors had chosen their moment well. She fought back the tears that
sprang to her eyes as the tender flesh just above her elbows burned and flared with an almost unbearable pain. Nails were dug deep into her shoulders until she felt her skin must surely burst. She
could not cry out. Any disturbance, any shouting or troublemaking, meant a fine, and she had already had enough of those.

‘Aye, good enough for her, fenian bitch. Away over the banisters.’

They had just reached the entrance to the upper weaving hall, where Miss McCutcheon, the most senior doffing mistress, stood at her table, watching over the arrival of the girls. Even if the
woman had glanced in her direction, Cecilia knew that she would see only an anonymous face flanked by two seemingly affectionate friends, one with her arm around Cecilia’s waist now, the
other resting her hand on her shoulder.

‘We’ll get ye,’ was the final whisper as the two parted from her, one to the right, one to the left. Cecilia trembled with relief, her whole body now soaked with sweat. She
took up her station and looked around her, trying to project a careless attitude which she was very far from feeling. She wanted to cry, to rub her arms and shoulders, to do anything to take the
pain away. But she never moved. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. She wouldn’t even recognize the two girls again if she saw them. They had come from behind, and
disappeared before she could turn around. But their voices, she would never forget their voices.

Miss Morris was waiting for her. She looked at Cecilia closely. The girl looked unwell, flushed and bright-eyed, not at all like her usual self.