Nest of Sorrows (6 page)

‘Was she?’

‘You’re like her.’

‘I’m not beautiful.’

‘You will be, lass. Aye, you will be. Now get that fire doused with tea and make sure all the gas is off. Your clothes are already up there, our Nellie carried them. I’m just going next door to tell Eileen to keep an eye on this place – for the post and that. And for God’s sake, don’t start your worrying. I’ve enough on without you ill on top of everything else. And get your face rinsed, you look like you’re straight out of a midden feet first . . .’

When Rachel had left, Katherine stood and stared at the photograph of her father over the mantelpiece. He was a sergeant major now, and he wore his crested stripes with an air of great pride. There was a commission waiting for him at the War Office, he only needed to pick it up when he was ready. He’d intended to ship the whole family off to India where they could have had servants and a posh house, but his recently wounded foot would put a stop to all that. Katherine breathed a sigh of pure relief. Mam hadn’t wanted to go to India and neither had she. It would be too hot there for people with red hair and fair skin. Judith hadn’t said much, Judith never did. Life seemed to leave the older girl untouched, but Katherine guessed that her sister would not have wanted to give up her place at Mount St Joseph’s Grammar School for Girls.

So, they would be staying here. Some posh bloke from the regiment had got Dad a promise on a job over at the paint and varnish works, a sit-down job too on account of all the exams he’d passed during his training. Only now, to spoil everything, poor old Grandad was going to die.

They walked together up the darkened street, mother and child hand in hand as usual. People came out of their houses with little gifts, poultices and inhalations for the old man, teacakes and bits of precious meat for the rest of the family. Rachel thanked them all soberly, then she and Katherine walked those last paces towards a house of death, a house that had once been so happy.

Rachel perched on the edge of her father’s bed, her mind going back to the day when they’d first moved here, little Joe in his father’s arms, the rest of them taking care of each other. The sheer luxury of the house after Isabel Street had been breathtaking. And when Dad had got a bit more money, he had bought a secondhand crystal set and they had all fought over who got a listen to it.

She remembered bath nights, first come first served, last in dirtiest out. And kneeling over a paper while he fine-tooth-combed her hair with the dry comb for ‘walkers’, then with the wet steel comb for eggs. He had been a good dad, the best dad possible. Women had set their caps at him, for he had been a fine-looking man, but as far as Rachel knew, Joseph O’Leary had remained celibate since the death of his beloved wife. Aye, that was a dad. That was a real man.

He stirred in his sleep. ‘Rachel?’

‘I’m here, Dad.’

‘Look after the little one. And Judith too. Say goodbye to them all for me.’

‘I will. Hang on, Father Gorman’s coming.’

She left priest and dying man together so that the last confession might be made in privacy and with dignity, then, as she came towards the stairs, she saw a dark shape huddled against the banister. ‘Katherine?’

‘Has he gone, Mam?’

‘No. He’s getting extreme unction.’

‘They should all be here.’

‘Yes.’ Yes, after all he’d done for them, his sons and daughters should have been with him at the end. But they had their own lives to lead, children to mind, husbands away at war. So it was left, as always, to Rachel because she was geographically closest.

‘Can I be with him, Mam?’

‘At the end?’

‘Yes. If it was me, he’d stay at my bed, wouldn’t he?’

‘He would.’

‘Judith’s not bothered. She slept through the whole war, didn’t she? Why does Judith never worry, Mam?’

Rachel sighed heavily. ‘We’re all made different, lass. And thank God for it too. It wouldn’t do for every one of us to be worrying and mithering like you do. Judith would likely sleep through an earthquake. You’re the worrier, Lord help you. Aye, it’s all gone in one bucket, hasn’t it?’

‘Can I be with him?’

‘Aye, when the Father comes out, you go and sing them nice songs for your Grandad.’

So Joseph O’Leary slipped into the afterlife with a smile on his face, because his granddaughter was standing with her back to the window, a hand reaching down to clutch his, that clear voice achieving without effort the final notes of ‘Danny Boy’. And as she promised him, in song, that she would be here in sunshine and in shadow, he breathed his last. Although Katherine knew he had gone, she carried on to the end, telling him with sweet purity that she had ‘loved him so’.

Rachel came in and found her daughter lying across the foot of Joseph’s bed, as if preparing to sleep where she had slumbered so many times during her infancy. ‘Come on, lass,’ whispered Rachel. ‘You can’t do nothing for him now.’

‘I can be here.’ There was a stubborn note in her voice. ‘I can be here till they come to do whatever they do.’ She rubbed her eyes fiercely as Rachel drew a sheet over her dead father’s face. ‘He was a nice man, my grandad.’

‘Yes, he was. Now get to bed.’

Katherine rose to her feet and stared down at the still shape of her grandfather. ‘I’m staying to pray for him,’ she said. ‘Judith can sleep enough for both of us.’

‘Judith’s got sense.’

Katherine looked her mother straight in the eye. ‘I know that. I do know that. You don’t have to keep telling me about Judith’s sense. Grandad says I’m not like Judith, and that I don’t have to be like her, or like anyone else. I am me. He told me that.’ She waved a hand towards the bed. ‘And he’s always right. He was right about my dad, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, I suppose he was.’

Rachel Murray looked into the dark tunnel of the life that lay before her, a life she could do little to alter. Not liking what she saw in the blackness, she busied herself about the room, tidying and hanging up her father’s clothes. But the pictures would not leave her mind. The love she had used to have for her husband was dead, as dead as the man in the bed. Peter Murray had killed that love just as surely as if he’d taken a knife or a gun to some living creature. All because of Katie. And now there would be no Dad here to take the edge off things, no grand old man to keep the peace between herself and Peter.

Rachel turned then and saw her daughter sobbing alone in a corner. That was the trouble, thought the mother as she held out her arms. No-one ever noticed Katherine weeping in a corner. Not until it was too late.

Judith was just about sick to death of their Katherine. For a start, she was a show-off. Everybody at Mount St Joseph’s said that Katherine Murray was a show-off right from the first day and Judith, as a second-year, had to bear the brunt of all the jibes. ‘Who’s got a little sister who doesn’t know her place?’ they all asked when Katherine took first prize for art. And she didn’t just take the prize for her own year, oh, no, Miss Clever Clogs had to walk off with the Missal for the whole lower school, beating everybody up to and including third years.

Then there was Katherine’s fixation with Michael Wray, which was becoming a terrible pain both at home and at school. The whole assembly seemed to know about Katherine’s assignations in Queens Park. Notes were passed around classes, ‘Katherine Murray = Michael Wray’, with love hearts drawn all over them in pink and purple. The fact that Michael Wray was a third-year at Thornleigh didn’t help either. Many sixteen-year-olds at the Mount didn’t have boyfriends, so for an eleven-year-old upstart sister to flaunt one in the park every weekend was a source of desperate shame.

Judith decided to tackle Mam about it. ‘She’s round the duck pond with him every Saturday.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Rachel pushed a lock of hair from her face. ‘Pass me the Brasso, will you? She’s not doing anything wrong, is she?’

‘She’s showing me up.’

‘It’s just her way, love. She likes Michael, that’s all. It’s only like you and Joan Atherton. How would you feel if somebody tried to separate you from Joan?’

‘It’s not the same! Everybody’s laughing at me, saying my little sister’s fast. How do you think I feel? She breezes in and takes all the art prizes, never does a stroke of work and comes in the top three of the class. She makes me sick. I wish she’d never passed!’

Rachel glanced briefly at Judith. This was not like her at all. She usually didn’t notice what went on around her. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘Yes. But will she listen? Does she ever listen?’

‘Just don’t tell your dad about it.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’ Judith knew that the situation between Katherine and Peter was on a knife edge these days. For some reason beyond Judith’s comprehension, Dad had got it into his head that their Katherine was ‘unusually gifted’. This meant that he put a lot of pressure on the child, and even in anger, Judith would not set him on her little sister. He was already annoyed about the homework, to rile him over Michael Wray would have been well beyond a joke.

Peter put his head round the front door. ‘Right!’ He stepped inside, hands rubbing together in glee. ‘We’re off! I got made up to foreman, Rachel. An extra two quid a week and all the paint we can use. Sam Pilkington’s found us a house too, up Hawthorne Road. It’ll be handy for the girls’ school, and there’s nowt to keep us here now, is there?’

Rachel looked at him askance. Leave May bank Street? Leave all her friends and neighbours? ‘Oh, I see. When are we moving?’

He frowned. ‘Nay, there’s no need to go overboard with enthusiasm. What would you want to be stopping here for? You know it upsets you seeing somebody else living in your dad’s house.’

‘I’m just used to it here.’ Rachel finished polishing her brass plaque. ‘And so are the girls.’

He looked at Judith. ‘Do you mind moving?’

‘No. Not if it’s nearer school.’

‘And Katherine? Where is she?’

Judith studied her shoes. ‘Out.’

‘Out?’ His face darkened. ‘What the hell’s she doing out at seven o’clock on a Monday night? Ah, I see. You all thought I was away for the evening, didn’t you? Well? Where is she?’

‘Borrowing a book,’ said Judith hastily. ‘I think.’

‘Rachel?’

‘I don’t know. I just turned me back for a minute, then looked round again, and there she was, gone.’

He hobbled over to a fireside chair. As always, as if to demonstrate outwardly the size of his emotional wound, his foot played him up just to keep pace with the hurt he now felt at his younger daughter’s ‘betrayal’. Hadn’t they given up a lot to get these two educated? Wasn’t he a fine man placing such store in girls, wasn’t he making the best of things? And him a war hero too.

Rachel noted the saintly expression on his face and sighed inwardly.

When Katherine returned at a quarter to eight, Judith was in the kitchen working at her geography books. There was no escape for Katherine. The living room was just a stride off the pavement, and she found herself face to face with her father as soon as she entered the house.

‘Well?’ he asked, his tone trimmed with sarcasm.

‘Oh.’ She stopped mid-step. ‘I didn’t think you’d be here.’

‘I am here, though. Where’ve you been?’

‘Sketching in the park.’

‘Sketching in the dark, more like. And where’s your pad?’

‘My friend has it.’

‘I see.’ He shifted his bad leg into a better position on the ever-ready footstool. ‘And what’s your friend’s name?’

‘Michael.’

He shot out of the chair. ‘Eh? You’ve been out with a lad? You’re nobbut eleven. What the hell are you doing messing about with lads? Do you think your mam slaves in that bloody mill so’s you can start courting now and get wed at sixteen? Our Judith never goes with lads.’

Rachel spat on her rag and took her temper out on the brass rose bowl. ‘Leave me out of it,’ she muttered. ‘I work because I want to.’

Katherine bit her lower lip and put her head on one side. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said eventually. ‘He’s my friend . . .’

‘And how old is he?’

‘Thirteen. He saved me from the bullies after you’d gone back to the war.’

‘Thirteen? Thir-bloody-teen?’ he yelled. ‘He’s old enough to . . . to do things! You’ll stop away from him, lady!’

‘I won’t.’ A defiant chin was raised. ‘He won’t hurt me. Michael would never hurt me. He’s a Thornleigh boy . . .’

‘Bugger Thornleigh! He’s too old for you. And you should be with girls, girls your own age!’

‘He looks after me.’

Peter stared aghast at his daughter. ‘Don’t we look after you? Me and your mam?’

She hung her head slightly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But Michael’s interested in art, we both draw pictures. He wants to be an artist and so do I. We’ve got . . . things in common.’

‘Aye, but have you got homework in. common? Monday’s maths and English, isn’t it?’

She nodded just once.

‘Then bring your work here and show it me.’

Katherine scurried through to the kitchen and dug around in her satchel. ‘Did you tell on me? Did you?’ she whispered to Judith.

‘No. But I will if it carries on. My whole class is laughing at me because my ugly little sister can get a boy and I can’t.’

‘I’m not ugly! I’m not!’ hissed the smaller girl.

‘Huh. Look in the mirror, will you?’

Katherine stared at the twelve-year-old beauty before her, all luscious dark curls, violet eyes and skin like cream. She knew what she herself looked like; she didn’t have to go poking about in front of a mirror. Thin red hair, freckles, greenish-yellowish eyes, no flesh on her face. Life was grossly unfair. ‘Sometimes, I don’t like you, Judith Murray.’

‘Ditto.’

Katherine placed her work on her father’s knee. ‘Oh, I see.’ It was obvious that his sails had deflated. ‘When did you do it?’

‘Tea time.’

‘Is it right? Have you got all the answers?’

‘Yes.’

He thrust the books back at her. ‘Then why didn’t you stop in and study like your sister does? If you studied, you could go to university and get a degree. You don’t need boys.’

Katherine tilted her chin. ‘You needed them though, didn’t you?’

Rachel’s hand slowed in its polishing of a candlestick. ‘Shut up,’ she growled.