Danny Boy (25 page)

Rosie wouldn’t have changed places with Ida, though, or any of the women wearing the widow’s bonnet. ‘Don’t you miss your husband,’ she asked Ida one day. ‘You seem to have got over it quickly.’

Ida thought about it for a bit and then said, ‘Yeah, I miss him, and I shed bitter tears at the time when I first heard. We all cried, me and the nippers. Jack was cut up about it bad cos he was real close to his dad. I mean, the other two loved him and he loved them and all in all he was a good man, a good provider and a great father, but between him and Jack there was a certain something. Anyroad, I couldn’t just give way, could I? I mean, I had to be here for the nippers.

‘It ain’t the same, anyroad, as if he’d been killed in the normal way. A lot of families haven’t got a dad coming home every night. Look at Rita, she ain’t seen Harry since he went off. Twice she’s been over the moon as he’s supposed to be coming home and it’s been cancelled.

‘I suppose although I know Herbie’s dead and everything, I can kid myself he’s somewhere in France. Maybe I’ll feel it a bit more when the whole shindig is eventually over and those who have survived at the end of it come home.’

‘I think you’re ever so brave,’ Rosie said admiringly.

‘No, I ain’t brave, Rosie,’ Ida said. ‘Thing is, I’m no different to anyone else. It’s summat you’ve got to get over. You got over losing the babby, d’ain’t you?’

‘I still think about it. It comes over me sometimes in a wave,’ Rosie said. ‘And when I least expect it. The letters from Ireland from the nuns at Baggot Street and from Connie and my sisters were a comfort. Even Dermot wrote and said how sorry he was.’

‘Well, you’re lucky they’re there, then,’ Ida said. ‘For at least you had support. Herbie’s family live here in Birmingham, but from the day he died, well, it’s as if we ceased to exist too. And I do still think of him, and for me it’s odd things
start me off, a snatch of a song someone’s whistling in the street, or a sudden whiff of the Woodbines he smoked.

‘Just the other day,’ she confided, ‘I dropped half a crown and it went under the cushion of the chair Herbie always sat on and when I shoved my hand in to get it out, fishing about like, I found summat else along with the money, and when I pulled it out it was one of his socks. I was always telling him off for taking his socks off downstairs and just leaving them there, but, you know, the sight of that sock, well, it proper upset me.’

Rosie heard the catch in Ida’s voice and gripped her arm. ‘I understand that perfectly.’

‘But we cope,’ Ida said positively. ‘We have to. I will, and you will, and when your Danny comes back home there’ll be more babbies for you, mark my words.’

But her eyes met Rosie and Rosie knew it was
if
Danny came back, not
when
, but neither woman spoke of it.

As February began drawing to a close, Rosie could feel herself improving and getting stronger, and though the cough still lingered the intensity of it had gone. Now it was more of an irritant than a worry.

And then, one morning at the very end of the month, she got a letter from Danny that set her heart singing. ‘He’s coming home,’ she cried to Rita as she called to collect Bernadette. She bent to tuck the scarf inside her daughter’s coat and missed the look on Rita’s face for she knew if Danny was coming home it was probably embarkation leave. But she didn’t want to dim the dancing light in Rosie’s eyes and neither did Ida when Rosie went in waving the letter later. Poor cow, she thought, but what she said was, ‘You fit to come up the Lozells Road with me Saturday evening. The butcher there, Rowbotham and White’s, nearly gives the stuff away. I go up most weeks while Jack gives an eye to the little ones for us.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Rosie said. ‘It would be nice to get something decent in for once and the money doesn’t go that far.’

Ida knew it didn’t, and she also knew Rosie was inexperienced in making it stretch. She’d told Ida how her mouth would water sometimes when she thought of the succulent
ham they often enjoyed at Connie’s, with as many eggs as you wanted and thick creamy butter spread as lavishly as you liked on soda bread still warm from the oven.

‘Them days is gone, bab,’ Ida said, ‘for now anyroad. But where’s your patriotic duty? D’ain’t the government say we should have two meat-free days a week?’

‘God, I often have a week of meat-free days like every other body,’ Rosie said. ‘Mind, I’ve done better since you took me in hand.’

Ida had showed Rosie how to boil a pig’s head, which cost just thrupence, till the meat fell off the bones. With the meat and jelly transferred to a china dish, seasoned and pressed down with a saucer weighted with a flat iron, it was made into tasty potted meat that could be spread on bread as an alternative to dripping.

Rosie had also cooked and eaten tripe for the first time and found cooked pigs’ trotters surprisingly satisfying to gnaw on. Cows’ heel too was dirt cheap, and though it took a lot of cooking, mixed with vegetables it made a good solid stew.

But with Danny expected home on the following Monday, it would be nice to get something a bit tasty with which to welcome him.

In the end, Rita went with them the following Saturday evening too, when Betty offered to mind Georgie as well as Bernadette, and the three women hurried off up Upper Thomas Street towards Victoria Road. It was bitterly cold and mist swirled about them, muffling the sounds of both people and vehicles. The streetlamps and lights from the shops shone through the haze, lighting up for a brief second the people filling the pavements; the shoppers with serious faces out for a bargain and those more relaxed off for a stroll, and couples entwined and at ease, bent on an evening’s entertainment.

Rosie, not usually out at night, sniffed and realised even
from the top of Upper Thomas Street the tangy whiff from the HP Sauce factory and the thick sultry smell of malt from the Ansell’s factory was still in the air, mixed in with the general odour of dampness and petrol fumes.

More pleasant was the delicious aroma of coffee, which wafted outside the many coffee shops they passed every time a door was opened. They were mainly small places with windows so steamed up that the prices, which were usually printed on the window with a bar of soap, could barely be seen. ‘I could murder a cup of coffee right now, couldn’t you?’ Rita said suddenly. ‘This cold eats right into you.’ Rosie could have too, but she had no money for such things.

But at least a café would be a respectable place for a woman to go into, while only loose women would enter one of the many pubs. They were the prerogative of the men.

Rosie had never been inside one, but as the group passed a pub called the King’s Arms the swing doors opened and there was a sudden burst of sound and the smell of beer and tobacco assailed her nostrils. She had a tantalising glimpse of the firelight from the coals dancing in the hearth, lighting up the horse brasses behind the gleaming bar and the brass rail in front where a bank of men stood. ‘D’you know,’ she remarked as they moved on, ‘they look inviting places, those pubs, friendly like.’

‘They’re not so friendly to the poor souls trying to entice their men out of them before they’ve spent all their wages,’ Ida said. ‘You see enough of them outside the pubs sometimes, huddling near the door, often with children in tow as well. Poor sods, I feel sorry for them. I mean, my Herbie used to like a drink as well as the next, but he never saw me or the kids go short.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Rita. ‘Me and Georgie would always come first with Harry. Your Danny’s the same, ain’t he, Rosie? I mean he’s lived here months now and I ain’t never seen him truly bottled.’

‘No,’ Rosie said. ‘He’d never be like that. He’s a moderate drinker and not even that if the money’s tight.’ She too felt sorry for the bedraggled, often barefoot women, or the shivering ill-clad children outside some of the pubs they passed in the damp and the cold. She remembered when Danny had taken to drinking more heavily than was usual, before they had left Ireland, and how upset she’d become at times and how Matt and Connie had disapproved. Danny had done that for a few weeks only, all told. Many of the women they passed that night looked resigned, as if they’d had years of this way of life already and had more years of it yet to come.

All that was forgotten as they reached Six Ways. Lozells Road was before them, but wafting to the right of them was the overpowering stench of decay from the Dixon and Rider Company at the back of New Street that crushed animal bones. ‘Gawd blimey, let’s go out of this before we’re gassed to death,’ Ida said, dragging a rag from her pocket to cover her nose as she spoke. Neither of the women argued with her and they quickened their pace. Rosie tried to hold her breath until the stink was behind them.

Many of the shops were pulling down their blinds as they passed, shutting up shop, but the Picture Houses seemed to be doing a roaring trade, Rosie noticed, as they passed first the Aston Picture Palace and then the Lozells Picture House as they made their way to the butcher’s. She had a great longing to see inside one of these cinemas for she’d heard them spoken of often. She’d never thought of going while they lived with the nuns, feeling certain they wouldn’t approve, and since living in the court she’d never seemed to have the time or money, but the thought of seeing moving pictures…it was magical somehow.

But then she brought her mind back to the present for Rowbotham and White’s butcher’s shop was before them, and judging by the crowds outside the shop, many women had had the same idea as themselves.

Despite the press of people, the butcher was fair and Rosie came away with a piece of pork, half a pound of liver, half a dozen pigs’s trotters and a large pot of dripping. She was well-pleased. ‘I should cook that pork tonight if I were you,’ Ida said. ‘For it don’t smell too fresh and has probably been in his window all day.’

Rosie had already decided that herself and on Monday she was able to put before Danny a meal fit for a king, the slices of cold pork warmed with onion gravy, and served with potatoes, cabbage and carrots. ‘That was a wonderful meal, Rosie,’ Danny said as he mopped up the last of the gravy with a slice of bread. He was glad to see Rosie so much better. The cough was almost gone, colour had begun to return to her cheeks and a spring was once more in her step.

He blessed the women in the courts for caring for Rosie and Bernadette till Rosie was able to take up the reins again, for he knew he had news to tell her that would probably knock her for six. He didn’t know for certain that this was embarkation leave, they weren’t told that as such; it was just a feeling he had, and what the older ones in the unit had told him.

He didn’t intend to share that with Rosie yet. Time enough at the end of his leave. And Rosie did enjoy their few days together. The money was no more plentiful, but that didn’t matter. Rosie was glad she wasn’t at work and Bernadette didn’t go to nursery either, with her daddy home. The weather was kind to them and they took a walk together most days, Bernadette between them till her legs tired and then Danny would throw her up on his shoulders effortlessly and she’d squeal with delight.

Rosie had never been down to the canal till that time. The sludgy brown oil-slicked water didn’t impress her, but she was enchanted by the brightly painted narrowboats pulled along by the shaggy-hoofed horses that reminded her of the workhorses they had on the farm. She noticed how often
Danny was hailed; only now the boaties took in Danny’s army greatcoat and the army-issue boots beneath and their eyes were sympathetic.

But Danny had no time for sympathy. He lifted Bernadette from his shoulders and holding her hand tight, he led her to the edge of the canal and then took her down to the lock gates and explained their function. Rosie, following behind, and watching her small daughter, wondered if she’d understood a word of what her father said, for it was confusing to her at first. But, understanding it or not, she’d stood as good as gold, basking in the attention he was showing her, and when Danny had explained it all again to Rosie and she grasped what he was trying to say, she had to own it was an ingenious way to move water up or down.

Danny was sorry Ted wasn’t around for Rosie to meet, and Rosie too would have liked to have met the family. She’d have liked to have taken a peep in the cabin too, for when Danny described it, about ten-foot long and six-and-a-half-foot wide, it sounded so small, even to someone in a cramped back-to-back house, and she would have liked to meet Ted’s wife and shaken her by the hand.

‘That was a family narrowboat,’ Danny told Rosie that day as they wandered along the bank holding Bernadette firmly. ‘There’s lots of other types. It was an education for me, those few days I worked alongside Ted.’

‘Other boats people live on?’

‘Not always,’ Danny said. ‘There’s an Ampton boat that no-one lives on. It’s eighty-seven-feet long, Ted said, too big to even go through the locks, so it operates on a stretch of water that has no locks, carrying coal from Cannock Chase and Wolverhampton collieries. Then there are the day boats, or Joey boats, just doing short daytrips out. And you should just see the Shroppie Fly move.’

‘Shroppie Fly?’

‘Aye, and fly is what it does, near enough. It’s six-foot wide
and two-foot deep and carries perishable goods from the Mersey Docks to Birmingham and to other midland towns served by the canals. There’s two men run these boats and they are pulled by two galloping horses working in tandem and can reach speeds of ten miles an hour.’

‘Goodness,’ Rosie said, and saw the excitement in Danny as he spoke of these different boats. She knew he was probably happier here than anywhere and she was glad he’d shared it with her and Bernadette.

Another day, the family went down to the Bull Ring and wandered between the stalls, many calling out their wares, and Bernadette, watching and listening, was fascinated by it all.

She too noticed the wounded ex-servicemen and at first asked in her high-pitched voice why those men had just one arm, or that one had no legs. Rosie was embarrassed, but Danny wasn’t. ‘They’re servicemen from the war,’ he’d say. ‘And they were wounded there.’

Rosie gave a sudden shiver at the mention of it, but she hid it well and followed Danny and Bernadette who’d wandered off to look at the cluster of flower sellers around Nelson’s Column. Bernadette wanted to know who the statue was and again Danny explained. ‘He was Nelson, a famous and very brave sailor, and he was so fearless people want him remembered. There’s another statue to him in Dublin, but that one is at the top of a high tower and there’s steps inside that you can go up.

‘One day I will take you back to Dublin,’ Danny promised, ‘and we’ll climb that tower together.’

Bernadette clapped her hands with delight, but Rosie wished Danny hadn’t made that promise. Bernadette had no concept of time and would think Danny meant next week. She couldn’t see them going back home for years for the British efforts to introduce conscription in Ireland had caused people to flock to join Sinn Fein, who were against it. Even the Church, while
opposed, at least on the surface, to violence, said no Irishman should be forced to fight for the English and called on the Irish people to resist this violation of their freedom.

But, she decided, she wouldn’t spoil this day by thinking sad thoughts, and she followed Danny and Bernadette up the steps to the Market Hall.

Bernadette seemed interested in everything she saw. The chirruping budgies and canaries and the endearing kittens and boisterous puppies at Pimm’s Pet Store enchanted her. ‘I wish we could buy her a wee dog or cat,’ Danny said, seeing his daughter’s pleasure. ‘But we can’t do such a thing to an animal where we live. They need space to run.’

‘Aye,’ Rosie agreed, ‘and food to eat, when we have little enough money to feed ourselves.’ She knew she wouldn’t have minded a cat to curl on her knee when Danny wasn’t home and Bernadette in bed, an animal to hug and love. But she could not bring any animal into that tiny house, that teeming courtyard, where it would only have the streets to roam and every likelihood of it being killed on the road before it developed the cautiousness that would come with maturity.

And then the clock began to strike and even Bernadette forgot the animals. She’d not noticed the clock before but her attention was fastened on it now all right. So, it seemed, was everyone else’s too, for many people seemed to stop what they were doing and watch as the lady and three knights banged the bell with their hammers.

‘It’s a magnificent piece of workmanship, that,’ Danny said, and Rosie agreed with him. It was of solid wood, carved so elaborately that Rosie could have studied it for hours, but Bernadette was tugging on her parents’ hands and they smiled at each other over her head and made their way outside.

‘I think that was another hit,’ Danny said to Rosie later that night after a sleepy Bernadette had been tucked in bed.

‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘And Bernadette took the wounded
servicemen in her stride far more than I did, for I still felt sick as I looked at them.’