Polly's Angel (14 page)

‘'Tis only a temporary solution,' Tad said when Mr McGrath marvelled at his unusual knowledge. ‘But it'll likely get us round and back and then you can get another fan belt – a real one, not just your tie.'

When at last they got back to the shop Mr McGrath took the van to a garage and then told Mr Merrick how ‘the temp'rary boy' had got him out of a scrape and Mr Merrick was impressed. However, he thought no more about it until around the middle of January, when he was talking to a customer, a Mr Barnes, who owned a garage on Thomas Street.

‘You say you're lookin' for a lad to train up in the trade of mending motors?' he said. ‘Well, I may be able to help you there . . .' and he told Mr Barnes about young Tad Donoghue and the broken fan belt.

Mr Barnes screwed up his mouth into a silent whistle; he thought this sounded promising. He got Tad's address from Mr Merrick and when he had paid for the tea he was buying went round to Gardiner's Lane. He found Tad at home, getting a meal ready, and as was his wont, got straight to the point. ‘I've been in Merrick's Grocery, and Mr Merrick was tellin' me that you'd got his van driver out of a scrape before Christmas,' he said to Tad's open-mouthed astonishment. ‘I've a garage where we mend motor cars, motor bicycles and the like, as well as sellin' the occasional second-hand model, and I'm lookin' for a young feller to train up. There's not a great deal of money in it at first, but if you work hard and do as you're told, you'll find yourself in a good position. Why, I were just a young lad interested in the workin's of cars an' such, yet now I own me own garage!'

Tad would have scrubbed sewers for a chance like this! What was more, the wages of ten shillings a week sounded princely after the sort of money most of his pals earned. He agreed, breathlessly, to all the conditions Mr Barnes laid down – and they were neither many nor unfair – and said he would report at the garage prompt at eight the next morning. Mr Barnes said good, shook Tad's hand and as he was turning away suddenly turned back. ‘You'll need overalls,' he said kindly, fishing some money out of his pocket. ‘We'll have nothin' to fit you – you're our first boy, see – so buy yourself a stout pair tomorrer, before you come in. So, tomorrer I won't expect you in until nine.'

So by mid-January, Tad had a job he enjoyed and was already beginning to be useful to the garage mechanics who were training him.

‘He's a practical lad, so he is,' Mr Barnes told his wife, after Tad's first week. ‘What's more, he's willing. He'll make the fellers cups of tea, do messages for them, spend hours under a car trying to discover a broken connection . . . Oh aye, we did all right when we took on young Donoghue.'

And Tad, of course, was very pleased with himself and determined that he would write to Polly and tell her all about his new job just as soon as he could spare the time. He had sent her a Christmas card with some of his earnings from Merrick's, and after much thought had laid out a whole sixpence on a little yellow-haired angel for the top of a Christmas tree. It was a celluloid doll dressed in white cotton, with a halo and gold gauze wings. But what had really attracted him to it was its sweet expression, which had immediately reminded him of Polly herself.

He posted off the letter, the card and the little celluloid angel and felt he had done well by Polly. She was, after all, a long way off. Besides, her letter answering the one in which he had told her about his new pal had been very peculiar, not like herself at all. She had asked several questions about Angela Machin – rather stiff, nasty questions, and it had put Tad's back up, so it had. So when it came to Christmas presents, instead of spending all he could afford on Polly he reminded himself that he had to split the money this year, and bought Angela a box of chocolates which also cost sixpence, and a penny card with a picture of the Holy Family on it.

He ignored Polly's questions about Angela too. If she wanted answers then she should have been nice and friendly, the same as he would have been had Polly got a new friend, he told himself. So when, just before Christmas, a letter, card and present had arrived for him – the present was a small dictionary with a faded blue cover and Tad rightly read a touch of criticism into such a gift and was consequently cross – he had opened the letter already prepared for some further nastiness and had read the contents with feelings which were so contradictory and strange that even now he did not fully understand them. Polly had written in her neat, round hand:

(Like what? Tad thought, and felt even crosser with his Polly.)

But it was no use being cross with Polly over the dictionary because he knew very well that he was a poor speller. Mr Barnes, who was taking a great interest in his newest employee, had told him that one day he must learn to fill in job sheets, explaining what had been done to the car, which new parts had had to be fitted, and how much it had cost. At the moment such work was done by others, but one day, if Tad fulfilled his potential and got on as Mr Barnes had got on, he would need to be able to read, write and spell.

So Tad swallowed his indignation because his little pal had given him such a prissy present and spent an hour or so each evening simply reading the thing. Since he was quite as bright as Mr Barnes thought him, he soon found this an absorbing exercise, for often he met strange and fascinating words with even stranger spellings, and what was more, he began to take pleasure in getting the words by heart. He set himself a target of three new words learned, with the correct spelling, each evening and it was surprising how they mounted up.

What was more, Angela Machin was proving to be a real pal, the sort that seems to want to help you and to spend time with you. Now that he was working he could not meet her out of school, but they usually met at some stage during the evening, either Tad going round to Swift's Alley or she coming round to Gardiner's Lane. She brought her homework and Tad, who had always been top of his class at mathematics as well as actually enjoying the subject, was able to help her a good deal, which gave him a great feeling of superiority. It did not seem to matter so much that he had a poor home and a great many younger brothers and sisters; he could do sums!

So the winter days passed much more pleasantly for Tad than he had ever believed possible with Polly so far away. He and Angela grew easy together. They, too, went to the cinema, though usually in the evening since Tad worked all day Saturday. Because Angela's mammy did not have to struggle to feed her family, with three of them earning, they usually went back to Swift's Alley for meals, and Tad's mammy grew used to Tad coming in late, and fed.

Then Tad had another letter from Polly telling him that her daddy was now at home with them all the time, but would not be working again just yet.

Tad laughed over the scratty old tomcat – how typical of his Polly! – and nearly cried when he read that she hadn't told anyone else about her guardian angel, not even Sunny. But he knew that Polly was becoming somehow distant in his mind, a memory rather than a real, loving person, and regretted it very much. Only . . . well, he did have Angela now, and she was a great girl, so she was and they got on real good. To be sure he didn't have the same sort of fun with her that he had once had with Polly, but he and Polly had been kids, exploring everything like a pair of inquisitive puppies and frequently getting into trouble for it. He and Angela were verging on being grown-ups, and grown fellers didn't take their girls boxing the fox in the apple orchards outside Dublin, or out to Booterstown to collect cockles on the sands.

The thought made him smile. Angela was beautiful, and kind, and sensible. She had chosen him out of all the fellers she could have had, and that made him a lucky chiseller – if he was still a chiseller, when he was working for his living and taking a pretty girl out to the cinema and – and thinking about her most of the time. But she wasn't his old pal, the one who had known him since he was a scruffy kid trying to keep out of his daddy's way and having a job, most of the time, to stay fed. But he supposed that one's life is divided into little parts, and you hop from one part to another as you grow older. He had hopped out of the chiseller's part, in which Polly had been the only person he really cared for, apart from his own family, and into an almost-grown-up part, in which Angela, who was nearly fourteen, was a more natural companion for him than a child of twelve.

Polly would be thirteen soon, of course. Only the trouble was, Tad couldn't think of her as nearly a woman. He still thought of her as the bright-eyed ten-year-old who had shed such bitter tears when she had been taken away from him, to live over the water with her mammy and daddy. And anyway, she had that Sunny Andersen – ridiculous name – to go about with now.

He – Sunny – was fifteen, according to Polly. Older even than Tad now was, although only by a few months. But he was too old for Polly, that feller, Tad concluded uneasily. Then again it was her business now – she was too far away, and too distant, somehow, for him to meddle in her affairs.

Tad had been reading the letter, and thinking his thoughts, whilst sitting on a broken-down piece of wall in Gardiner's Lane as twilight turned slowly into dusk. Now he stood up. I love Polly like a sister, he told himself, and I'm beginning to love Angela in a – a
different
way. That's all there is to it. And he shoved the letter into his pocket and ran across the court towards his home.

Chapter Five

Sunny Andersen was strolling down the Scotland Road in the beautiful June sunshine, idly kicking a tin can along the paving stones in front of him and wondering what he should do next. He was having a day off; he had a lot of them. Although he was now sixteen years old he was still not in regular employment. However, because of his looks and charm he had had a good many jobs, though he had never stuck to any of them for long. Or perhaps it was not that he had not stuck them, but that they – his employers – had not stuck to him. He did not see why he should work on a sunny day, when he might get out his fishing rod and skip a leckie out to Seaforth and try his luck there. Neither did he see why he should work on a wet day, when it was nicer to stay in bed. Or a snowy day, when considerable fun was to be had making a slide down one of the steep streets which led on to Netherfield Road.

Sunny always pretended to be sorry when employers gave him his cards, but he wasn't really. Of course he enjoyed the wage-packet part of a job and sometimes he quite enjoyed other parts of it too, but this was a rarity, the exception rather than the rule. Ambling along the pavement, he remembered one job that he had enjoyed, though. For a couple of months last summer he had been employed by a firm of ice-cream manufacturers to sell their products in New Brighton. He had been given a stout and reliable bicycle with a cart attached, and all he had to do all day was cycle up and down the New Brighton promenade, stopping whenever he saw a customer.

The job of selling ice cream had been grand, he thought now, whistling a tune beneath his breath as he strolled along the dock road, an eye cocked for anything of interest. But when you ran out of ice cream you had to cycle back to the depot for a refill, and whilst you were doing that you weren't earning. And the bicycle was a heavy old thing, and he had not always enjoyed being at everyone's beck and call. He should have stuck it until the season was over, he realised that, had realised it at the time, but then his mam had come home, having been generously rewarded by someone for something, he did not enquire what, and handed him a big white fiver. That had been the end of the job – a fiver can last a good long time if you're careful and make it work for you. Sunny bought a quantity of powder and lipstick which weren't quite what they should have been from someone he knew on the fringes of the make-up trade, and went round the big offices about once a month, selling the stuff for a nice little profit. But when both the fiver and the make-up ran out, he had not bothered to get another job because Christmas was coming, and a boy with good looks and charm could always find himself a good little job over Christmas.