Polly's Angel (6 page)

Polly giggled. ‘Mammy's got used to country dirt, she's forgettin' city dirt,' she said. ‘As for petticoats . . . well, t'ink of Francis Street on a Saturday, Mammy. There was kids playin' around the stalls wit' only a vest to their backs. Remember Swift's Alley, and me pal Tad, and the awful old tenement in Gardiner's Lane that the Donoghues lived in?'

Deirdre laughed. ‘Sure and I mustn't forget me past, for there was a deal of poverty in Dublin, particularly in the Liberties. But I'm after forgettin' the bad t'ings, because life's been better since we came over the water and moved into the crossin' cottage. But of course, life's goin' to be hard now, wit' your Daddy ill and me desprit for work. Now look at that, a tram goin' our way on the main road. We could have caught that if we'd walked faster. We'd best hurry.'

‘Oh, trams seem to be comin' and goin' all the time,' Polly said, taking Ivan's other hand and beginning to step out. ‘We'll not be long gettin' back to Nelson Street and tellin' them the good news. And I'll write to Grace and Tad this very day, so I shall, tellin' them what's been happenin'. I know Grace knows about Daddy, Mammy, because you wrote and told Brogan when Daddy was took bad, but Grace will want to hear all the very latest news, and you can't write every day, to everyone. Grace'll be ever so glad Daddy's gettin' better, because she always says he saved her life and she loves him nearly as much as I do, and even Tad was mortal fond of me daddy, so I'd best let him know what's been happenin',' she finished. But she was not too pleased with Tad. He had been her best, her dearest, pal in Ireland and when the family left the Liberties he had promised faithfully that he would write, and indeed, at rare intervals, had done so. Polly reckoned she wrote four letters to every one of Tad's, and usually the fourth letter had to be full of threats, or he'd not, she feared, have bothered to answer even that. Though his letters usually contained interesting news, they were short and laboriously written on shockingly poor scraps of paper. Several times she had warned him that she would never write to him again unless he mended his ways, but somehow she always gave in.

After all, as she had told her mammy, she and Tad meant to marry one day and that meant she could scarcely stop writing to him. If she did he might move away, or get himself adopted by a rich man and change his name, and then where would they be?

‘That's right, you tell your pal what been happenin' to us,' Deirdre said now, as they emerged on to the main road. ‘Oh look, there's a tram stop! And a tram goin' in the right direction! Put your hand out, Poll, so's the driver sees us and stops!'

Tad got the letter as he was setting off to take Dougal and Biddy to school, and recognised Polly's writing at once. Not that there would have been any doubt in his mind who had sent the letter, since no one wrote to him bar Polly.

Now Tad took the letter from the postman's hand joyfully and crammed it into his pocket. The postman winked at him. ‘Sure and isn't your little Polly a broth of a girl to write so regular to a chiseller like yourself?' he said genially. ‘I hope you write back as often, young Tad.'

‘Oh well, girls like writin' letters and chisellers amn't so keen. We're more for doin' t'ings,' Tad said rather obscurely. ‘Still, I do write.'

‘And since when's you taken to bein' a gaoler to that chiseller, then?' the postman enquired next, for Tad had a firm hand on the shoulder of young Dougal. ‘Poor feller, what's he done wrong?'

‘Sure and he's not so keen on goin' to the brothers to get his schoolin',' Tad explained virtuously. ‘I telled him he'd need readin' and writin' one of these days, but he t'inks a feller can manage very well wit'out it.'

Dougal, who was seven and regarded school as an unnecessary evil, sniffed. ‘You was sellin' newspapers when you was eight, you often telled us so,' he pointed out. ‘I'll be eight in the summer. And you don't go to school no more. Why can't I—?'

‘I'm too old for school, remember?' Tad said smugly. ‘Besides, summer's summer, but now winter's comin' and you'll be a deal better off in school than workin' the streets. C'mon, the pair of yiz.' He took Biddy's small hand and, retaining his grip on Dougal's shoulder, set off once more in the direction of the school. When he had delivered his charges Father Mac had given him a fearful, foxy grin, reminding Tad uncomfortably that you learned a lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic when Father Mac was teaching you and he never meant you to forget that. You learned to keep a fair distance from an angry brother and the strap which he wore round his wrist because of the quick temper most of them had on them. You learned to dodge, and to take unfair punishment stoically, and to speak the truth, if you were certain a good lie would be found out. Still, Dougal would thank him one day, if not today, Tad told himself as he turned away. But all the way, the letter had burned in his pocket and as soon as his errand had been accomplished he made for the quays. There was always plenty going on down there, but a feller could usually find a quiet corner out of the bustle, from whence he could keep his eye open for any paid work going, whilst reading a letter. And it was early still, too early to hope for much in the way of running messages or delivery work.

Now that old man Donoghue had left Dublin with the gypsy woman he had taken to hanging around with – and she'll regret it sooner than I will, Tad's downtrodden little mammy had said grimly when she first heard – Tad, Liam and Kevin simply had to do their best to earn what money they could. Tad had a number of jobs; sometimes he sold turves from door to door, or kindling wood when he could get hold of fruit boxes to chop up. At other times he ran messages for anyone who would pay him a penny or so, carried heavy shopping for the elderly, or went round the fish market, collecting odds and ends of fish which he could sell to dog and cat owners for a few pence. His brothers did the best they could, selling newspapers when all else failed, or helping at the cattle market when drovers were scarce and trudging into the countryside in summer to pick potatoes. But being younger than him they were both still in school, so they could not work all day, as he could. However, it was the mammy, Tad knew, who really kept the family going. She cleaned at the big shops and offices on O'Connell Street, took in washing, made neat brack loaves which she sold for a small profit and generally turned her hand to anything. And as she often said, life was not nearly as hard as when Mr Donoghue had been living at home. Mammy kept her wages tucked away from force of habit, but now there was no one crashing into the place drunk as a fish, to burgle Mammy's earnings for his next drinking bout. Now the rent was paid regularly, food appeared on the table each mealtime, no matter how sparse it might seem, and although the children did not own good boots or shoes, they all had a jealously guarded pair of what their mammy called ‘rubber runners', which did very well for school and could be handed down to the next child in line when toes were threatening to come out at the end of the shoe.

Tad reached the quays and took up a position behind a large stack of boxes of what, from the smell, he took to be fish. Then, with pleasant anticipation, he opened his letter. He counted the pages before reading a word, though, like a miser checking on his gold. Yes, it was a four-pager, a good, long letter even for Polly, who once she got going tended to tell, in great detail, everything she had done since she last wrote. Grinning happily to himself, and seeing Polly's small, fair face in his mind's eye, Tad settled down to read.

Twenty minutes later, after reading through the letter twice, Tad shoved it back into his pocket and headed for Gardiner's Lane. He was horrified to hear of Peader's stroke and dismayed that the family had had to move from their country cottage – which sounded like heaven to Tad – back into the city, and felt that he must, for once, write back to his little pal immediately. But even in his sorrow for her, a certain excitement could not be altogether denied. They could come home! Back to Dublin! If Peader did not recover then the family would have a pension and would be no worse off – perhaps better off – in Dublin than in Liverpool; and if he did recover – and Tad sincerely and honestly hoped that he would, for Peader had always been good to him – then why should he not take up a desk job, whatever that might mean, in Dublin, where the family had friends and relatives, rather than in Liverpool, where they only had Martin and his snooty wife?

But halfway home, Tad reconsidered. There was no paper at home and probably no pencil, either, and he would have to earn some money to pay for the postage stamp too. Best go and get himself some work, then buy what he needed to write a letter. He turned his footsteps towards the fish market. Old Mrs O'Brien had a stall there, and since her husband's death she had been glad of a hand when she had plenty of customers. Wednesday and Friday were traditional fish days, and today was Wednesday, so Tad turned his footsteps towards the fish market and Mrs O'Brien's stall. He would write back to Polly this very evening, so he would furnish himself with paper, an envelope and a stamp before returning to Gardiner's Lane. And in the meantime he would consider how best to suggest to Polly that this tragedy might, at least, mean a return to Dublin at last.

It was getting dark before Tad left the fish market and headed towards Gardiner's Lane once more, but he did so with a good deal of satisfaction. He had sold a great deal of fish – his hands were raw and chapped from constantly dipping the fillets and steaks into the bucket of increasingly dirty cold water which Mrs O'Brien kept behind the stall – and he had enough in his pocket to buy paper and an envelope, besides his usual contribution to the household expenses. And what was more, he would not need to buy paper; he would nip into Merrick's, on the corner of Mark's Alley and Francis Street, and buy a screw of tea for his mammy. He well knew that if he mentioned he was about to write a letter to Polly, old Mr Thomas Merrick, who weighed out the tea and the sugar and the other dried goods whilst he kept an eye on his staff and other customers, would hand over an envelope. Polly had been a great favourite with the old man, who had beamed down at her over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses and always found a little treat for her – a few raisins, some nuts, or even, if all else failed, one of the strong peppermints which he sucked because he had a dry mouth.

This evening Mr Merrick was in his usual place and as soon as Tad had bought the tea and taken a half-pound of broken biscuits as well, he asked after Polly. ‘Sure and wasn't she a grand little lass, and don't we miss her in here?' he enquired, carefully sliding Tad's pennies into the till. ‘It was a sad day for us when she left – and her mammy always shopped here, you know . . . Only the best for Mrs O'Brady.'

Tad, who usually shopped round the markets or picked up unconsidered trifles from anyone selling cheap, tried not to look abashed. It was all very well buying the best, he thought crossly, but you'd got to earn the money to do it first. Polly's mammy had been one of the lucky ones; her menfolk didn't drink all the money away and expect the poor woman to manage on thin air, and she had a neat family, not a great big sprawling one, like his mammy. However, he leaned forward with the air of one about to impart a secret, and was amused to see Mr Merrick immediately lean forward too, and cup one thin, bony hand around his long, whiskery ear.

‘Well, boy? Have ye news of the little 'un?'

Tad drew the letter out of his pocket. It was a bit crumpled now, and more than a bit dirty, for every time he had been free of customers or errands for a moment he had reread the letter, and in one corner a silvery huddle of fish scales was proof of his activities. But he held the letter out and Mr Merrick, after only the slightest of hesitations, took it, then glanced up at Tad. It was a questioning, almost shy glance, and Tad interpreted it at once.

‘Sure you can go ahead and read it,' he said generously. ‘See what you t'ink, Mr Merrick, sor.'

Despite the dirt and crumples, to say nothing of the fish scales, Mr Merrick read the letter a good deal more quickly than Tad had been able to do. Practice, I guess, Tad told himself. If I had a job where I had to write out bills and take down orders . . . But he would never rise to that sort of job and he knew it. There were too many bright boys chasing every halfway decent job which came along, he was lucky to be able to make a few bob the way he did.

‘There's a Depression on, you know,' was a favourite remark of half Dublin – the rich half, usually. They addressed it to the poor half, Tad thought angrily, whenever anyone asked for a fairer wage, or a day off around Christmas. Still, there you were, it had always been the same. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer – wasn't that a song or something?

But right now, Mr Merrick was folding the letter up and looking enquiringly down at Tad. ‘Well, and isn't it a sad t'ing that poor Mr O'Brady's been after goin' into hospital wit' a stroke?' he enquired. ‘I scarce knew the feller, but I'm real sorry for him. And they've lost their home . . . though they seem to have another all lined up to be sure. So you're after writing a letter, to tell Polly we're all t'inking of her? Is that it?' Already his hand was reaching into the drawer behind the counter where he kept paper and envelopes, billheads and invoices and so on. ‘I'll give ye a nice bit o' lined paper and an envelope, so's you can write properly. And a stamp,' he added. ‘And you'll send the family me regards, and tell 'em I'll be putting in a word for Mr O'Brady at Mass on Sunday?'

‘Ye-es, Mr Merrick,' Tad replied. ‘And aren't I goin' to do just that meself? Only – don't you t'ink they might come home to Dublin now? The O'Bradys, I mean. Polly an' all. 'Cos the cottage has gone, an' they're managin' on a pension . . . Wouldn't it be just as easy to live here? In Dublin.'