Nest of Sorrows (3 page)

‘Look at her!’ Peter forced his words through clenched teeth. ‘She’s ruined that frock – two quid it cost me. And her hair! What’s she done to her bloody hair?’

Rachel shivered as a sudden shaft of comprehension entered her consciousness. ‘She’s tried to dye it,’ she whispered. ‘She’s trying to look like her sister.’

‘What?’ he yelled. ‘That? That try to look like our Judith? No bloody chance.’ With the toe of his shoe, he turned Katherine over. ‘She doesn’t even look human,’ he sneered.

Rachel crouched down. ‘Her knees are bleeding,’ she said quietly. ‘And her elbow. You threw her, didn’t you? You threw her into the yard. You might have crippled the poor little thing.’

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘She’s not right in the head,’ he muttered. ‘Putting tar in her hair and stealing Judith’s frock. She’s bloody mental.’

‘She’s three years old,’ sobbed Rachel. ‘You’re a bully, Peter Murray. A great big stupid bully!’

Judith stepped between her father and her little sister. ‘Don’t hit Katie,’ she said in a firm clear tone. ‘Katie can have the frock. She’s only little. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

Peter paused, glanced at the three distressed females, then stamped into the house.

By nightfall, Katherine’s head had been practically shaved. So firmly had the tar stuck that there was no saving her hair. Rachel tucked her younger daughter into bed. The poor little soul would have to wear a bonnet, would have to go about looking like somebody with a bad case of nits. All for the love of Peter, all to gain his approval – or even his attention. ‘Good night, love,’ she murmured.

‘No hair,’ said a tiny voice. ‘No hair like Judy’s, no hair like Kaffrin’s. No hair at all.’

‘It’ll grow,’ said Rachel weakly. But would Peter grow, would he ever grow up?

As she straightened from the bed, a vivid picture entered her mind, the memory of his face distorted by hatred for this child. If Rachel and Judith had not been there, he might have kicked this little baby to death. It was time to teach him a lesson.

Rachel left Maybank Street with her two children at the end of June. It was a rainy day; she felt as if the sky were doing the crying for her, because there were no tears left in herself. Since the Saturday of the tar incident, Peter had spoken scarcely a word to anyone, and the atmosphere in the house had become yet more leaden than before. Even Judith had had very short shrift from her dad during these past weeks, so neither child was upset on being told that they would stay with Grandad for a while.

Grandad was universally loved. He had a happy face with lots of white hair on it, tickly hair that made children squeal during hugs and kisses. Grandad had a nice big house too, the sort of house where hide-and-seek was played, where there was a proper bath with taps, and a Hoover that sucked dirt off the floor. There was a wash house at the end of the yard, while the view from the front street was awesome, all the way to town with the big clock stuck high in the sky right opposite Grandad’s front door.

They were received with arms not exactly wide open, because Joseph O’Leary had the usual Catholic respect for marriage, yet he understood his daughter’s dilemma well enough to offer shelter for the immediate future. ‘This will show him his stupidity,’ he announced. ‘You can all sleep in the front bedroom. Theresa and Joe still need their privacy. God knows they waited long enough for it in a house so crowded. And with the two of them working, Rachel, you will take over the cooking for the while. It won’t last. Believe me, the man will not carry on long without the three of you.’

Peter carried on without them just until he got home from work on that first day. On discovering an empty house and a cold grate, he set off immediately for 33 View Street, throwing the interior glazed door so wide on his arrival that this item almost parted company with its hinges. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded of his father-in-law. ‘She’s got no right . . .’

‘Hasn’t she?’ The older man lit his pipe and sat back in the horsehair rocker. ‘The girl has taken enough of your nonsense. If you can be father to one child, yet no father to another, then she must keep both away from you.’

Peter Murray groped for words to say, but his temper was too high for any sense to come out of his mouth. ‘She belongs down yonder,’ he snapped at last. ‘She’s my bloody wife!’

‘Do not curse in my house! Rachel may be wed to you, but she is still a free spirit. The Lord gave us intelligence, did He not? And my daughter’s intelligence tells her that you are doing no good for Katherine. In fact, you are also harming Judith, for a favoured child is always spoiled. Now get yourself home until you come to your senses!’

‘I want to see her!’

‘Then you will be disappointed, because she is away at her sister’s house.’

‘Which one?’

‘That I will not tell you. And don’t be waiting in the street for her, because my son and my son-in-law will escort her home. I suggest you go and pray for some guidance, Peter. Unless you can treat my daughter and her children right, they will be staying here with me.’

‘You . . . you high-handed old bugger, you! I was never good enough for her, was I? Nobody’s ever been good enough for your precious lot! Well, I treated her right. She didn’t have to get wed, not like most of your other girls. I kept her clean right to the finish, I did . . .’

‘Then later you dirtied her because of her illness. I don’t need my daughter to tell me, Peter. I know you are no longer a husband to her. She cannot give you a son, so you leave her cold and alone in the night. You have two fine daughters, clever girls the both of them. Why can you not take pleasure from what you have? Why must you grieve over what cannot be?’

The visitor inclined his head slightly, the wind suddenly taken from his sails. ‘I don’t know. There’s no rhyme nor reason without a son. I had plans for a son. I thought if I saved up, I’d happen get him off to college, give him a real start, like a career. With girls, there’s nowt to aim for.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, they just get wed, don’t they?’

Joseph nodded slowly. ‘They get wed, they have sons. Your grandchildren will perhaps fill this gap for you.’

‘No! They will not be Murrays!’

‘Ah. I see. So there’s the crux, is it? Family name? What did your family do to deserve such glories?’

‘Well . . . I . . .’

‘Well exactly. You are in danger of losing everything, Peter Murray. No matter what my children have done, I have always stood by them. Girls, boys, it mattered not to me. Because they are people, people with souls. Where is your soul, man? Is it buried just because your wife cannot bear you a son?’ He struggled to feet made uncertain by wounds received in combat during the Great War. ‘Go from my house now. Do not return until you are a man.’

‘I am a man! It’s your daughter who’s only half woman! She’s the one who . . . who . . .’

‘Who failed you? By getting sick?’

They stared at one another in silence for several seconds, then Peter Murray stormed out of the house slamming every door behind him.

Joseph O’Leary sat down again and stared into the fire. ‘God help you, Rachel,’ he said quietly. ‘For I will not always be here to protect you.’

The years that followed were the happiest in young Katherine’s life. Grandad was the most awful torment – Rachel herself described him on occasion as ‘mortallious troublesome’ – because he certainly knew how to excite her younger daughter to the point of desperation. Katherine would come downstairs on Sunday mornings, cheeks glowing from the bath, hat and coat clutched in her hands ready to be donned for church, hair tied back with a clean ribbon, shoes shining like black glass. And Grandad would approach her with the white rosary and the specially bought pearl-backed little girl’s Missal. ‘Oh dear me!’ The white head would shake sadly. ‘Here’s you all done up for church on God’s good day, and clogs still on your feet. However could you think of going to Holy Mass in clogs?’

‘Grandad! These are my best ankle-straps.’ She was beginning to learn that he was neither blind nor daft. ‘You know these are my ankle-straps. I never go to church in clogs.’

‘Ah, well. They look like clogs to me. Shouldn’t you go and check with your mammy?’

‘No. Mam’s getting herself and our Judith ready. And you know she gets mad with you for toe-menting me. She says you’ve not to toe-ment me.’

‘Oh.’ A large hand would scratch his head thoughtfully. ‘If I were your mammy, I would not allow you to mass in the clogs . . .’ And so it went on.

Weekdays were the same. ‘Katherine, why are you wearing the good shoes and this a school day? If your mammy finds you ready for school with the ankle-straps all shining for Sunday, won’t you get a scalping?’

Katherine learned how to cope with him. It took time, but by her fourth birthday, she had him well in hand.

‘Will you sing for me, Katie?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go on, child, sing for your poor old Grandaddy.’

‘Can I sing on the stairs so you can’t stare at me?’

‘Yes.’ A long pause while the child made no move. ‘Will you sing for me, Katie?’

‘Can I have an ice-cream cornet and one for our Judith if I sing on the stairs?’

‘You can.’ Still no move from Katherine. ‘Will you sing for me?’

‘With raspberry on?’

‘Yes. Will you sing for me now?’

‘Doubles? Can we have doubles off Manfredi’s cart?’

‘You can have doubles with raspberry on the both of them. So, will you sing for me?’

Solemn green eyes would gaze up at him. ‘No. I won’t sing for you.’

Then, crippled though he was, he would chase her round the table until she allowed him to catch her.

Judith took no part in these games. Judith, at five, was a studious child with a terrible need for books, and Grandad spent many an hour begging and borrowing from neighbours to keep the little girl’s appetite sated. And, of course, Judith had her father. Every Tuesday evening, Peter would arrive to collect his elder daughter for an outing.

Rachel had tried on numerous occasions to make peace between her husband and Katherine, but nothing seemed to work. And Katherine, sensing that her mother wanted the rift mended, did her childish best in the first few months of the separation. She saved sweeties for her daddy, would sidle up to him and push barley sugars into his pocket, but he never smiled or thanked her. Once, she even pinched some marigolds from a neighbour’s front garden, arranging them into a bouquet with a bit of ribbon, but Peter forgot the gift and it sat for days on the box-top of the Singer sewing machine, drooping, unwanted, forgotten.

So when, in a somewhat belated attempt at peacemaking, Peter offered to take both girls, Katherine disappeared in an awful tear down the back yard, locking herself into the wash house until her father had left. She had finally accepted that he did not love her, but with that acceptance came a level of fear and insecurity that bordered on neurosis.

Grandad talked to her seriously that night. ‘The man is your daddy, Katherine. You should have gone down home with him.’

‘This is home.’

Joseph inclined his head thoughtfully. ‘This is where you are living for the while. Your home is where your father is.’

‘He don’t want me.’

‘And why would you be saying that, now? Hasn’t the man left you here with Mammy because he thought you were too young to be out at night?’

‘He only wants Judy. He never plays with me, not like you do. He never says my name and asks me to sing. I am the bestest singer in all the nursery, but he never listens to me singing. I want to stay here with you and Mam and Auntie Theresa and Uncle Joe.’

‘Not for ever?’

‘For ever and ever, Amen. That’s in a prayer at school. I don’t like my daddy. You can’t make me like him, Grandad.’

Joseph O’Leary looked at his small granddaughter and knew that he could make her do nothing. There was a streak in her, a touch of Rachel, he supposed. Rachel did not suffer fools and neither would this one. Dear Lord, what would become of them all? Now sixty, Joseph had retired early from the iron foundry, giving up his job as moulder because he simply wasn’t up to it any more. With one shoulder weakened by surgery after a fall from a horse, and one leg still filled with tiny bits of shrapnel, he was a man older than his years. Old, tired and ready for the long sleep.

‘I love you, Grandad.’

‘And I love you. Will you sing for me?’

‘Yes.’ And she sang, in her clear bell-like voice, songs from the old country, songs he had taught all his grandchildren from babyhood. He held her close and stared into the red depths of the fire. A war was coming. His war had not been the one to end all fighting. This next would change lives and perhaps he would not be here to watch such changes. A tear fell into the child’s thin red-gold hair. In his mind’s eye, he watched young men being mown down like a field of fragile corn, every face white in death, every blade of grass stained dark with immature blood. Why would they never learn? Why? A whole generation wiped out in one fell swoop, another raised now from its leavings. So they would take the sons, everybody’s sons, and make them sacrifices to the god of greed. There was no sense to any of it.

On a grim Monday in 1939, Peter Murray presented himself at number 33. His hair was cropped close and his face was ruddy from recent shaving. Joseph’s weary eyes began at the army boots, making their slow way over khaki socks into which were tucked trousers of the same colour, up and up over belt and tunic, finally coming to rest on the cap. ‘May God have mercy on you,’ the old man said quietly. ‘Come away in. The children are at school and Rachel’s taken a job in the mill canteen. You are going into it, then?’

‘Tomorrow. I’m off for training. She’ll have to keep the house on while I’m gone.’

‘She will. I’ll see to it that she does.’

‘I . . . I want her home, Dad.’

Joseph swallowed hard. This was the first time Peter Murray had acknowledged their relationship by marriage. ‘’Tis a time of severe turmoil, Peter. She will feel safer here, but I’ll try to get her to go back one or two nights a week.’

‘Thanks. And it doesn’t look all that safe here, does it? I mean, View Street’s nearer the sky than anything else round here. There’ll be bombs, you know. Has Ju . . . have the girls got their gas masks?’