Rainbow's End (29 page)

‘Oh, Freddy!’ Donal had said bitterly. ‘Freddy’s da says he can work in the shop now Billy’s gorra proper job, so’s he’ll get used to it. In another year he’ll be there full time, ’cos he’s older than us.’

‘Oh,’ Deirdre had said, rather dismayed by this unwelcome news. Freddy’s mam kept their corner shop, a positive cornucopia of good things, and when it was raining or freezing cold outside she let them – the twins and Freddy – play in the store-room. It was better than the Harveys’ store-room in which they had played as kids, with twice the goods stacked up around the walls. But if Freddy was considered old enough to help in the shop he would doubtless believe himself to be too old to play on the sacks of sugar, haricot beans and rice upon which he had bounded in his youth.

‘Yes,
Oh
!’ mimicked Donal. ‘It’s awright for you, Dee, but what’ll I do, by meself all day? And wi’ no money comin’ in,’ he added gloomily.

‘You’ll find work, Donny, someone’ll want you,’ Deirdre had said bracingly. ‘Look, I’m smaller than you . . .’

It was all Donal needed. He exploded. ‘Yes, you’re
much
smaller than me; you’re a bleedin’
dwarf
, but you’ve gorra job, haven’t you?’ he had demanded. ‘Gals can be dwarfs, but fellers has got to be
giants
if they want work. Oh, it ain’t fair!’

Deirdre was starting to agree with him when she realised that it would do no good. Donal must be taken out of himself. So she squared up to him pugnaciously, eyes flashing. ‘A dwarf? Did you call me a dwarf, Donal Docherty?’

The ensuing fight had raged all round the house and had brought Ellen down on them, but it had been worth it. Donal, nursing a bloody nose, had ended up laughing, saying she was right, he’d find something else in due course, and they had gone off to their separate bedrooms, sent by Ellen and definitely in disgrace, in perfect amity with each other. But that had been a week or so ago. And still Donal hadn’t got a job. Deirdre would have liked to give hers up so they could have their last long summer holiday together, but unfortunately Mam refused even to consider it.

‘I had to work on your aunt for a solid fortnight before she saw the sense of employin’ another member of the family rather than a stranger,’ Mam had said crossly, when Deirdre suggested Auntie Anne might find someone else. ‘She’s never forgive our Ellen for leavin’, though I telled her over an’ over that Ellen was a born nurse an’ wouldn’t be happy to spend the rest of her workin’ days in anyone’s cake shop.’

But in fact it had been a big surprise to all the family when Ellen had calmly announced one day that she was going to start her nursing training and might be living away from home for quite long periods when she was doing night duty or difficult shifts. The boys had been annoyed because they thought their comfort would be affected, which it was, because Deirdre had made up her mind from the start that she wasn’t going to take Ellen’s place in the home, not she! Of course there were some jobs she couldn’t skip out on, but Deirdre made sure she did as little as possible – and as badly as possible, too.

Dusting, cleaning, washing and ironing were skipped and scamped until Ada was forced to redo them herself, and when Ellen came home after a long day on the wards she frequently found herself with a mound of tasks to undertake. ‘It ain’t fair, Dee,’ she would say, looking white with exhaustion. ‘I did it when I were your age, you should be doin’ it now – an’ doin’ it properly, what’s more.’

Sometimes Deirdre was sorry she’d been bad, but mostly she just shrugged. If they’d made Donal wash up, or iron shirts, she might have knuckled under, but they said it was women’s work . . . yet they also said that Deirdre was just a child. Please yourselves, Deirdre was apt to remark to herself as she left the iron too long on Ada’s best petticoat or rubbed Ellen’s stocking until a hole came, you’re all bigger’n me so you can make me do it, but you can’t make me do it proper, that’s for sure.

And though Mam told them that Ellen’s work was terribly hard and they should be sorry for her and do all they could to help her, Deirdre knew that this was just an invention. Ellen had gone into nursing because she wanted to, so it couldn’t be that bad, and besides, it was the only way she could be sure of spending a good deal of her working life near Tolly.

Ellen liked Tolly, as they all did. And when he’d given up his job in the jam factory and become an orderly at the City Hospital on Netherfield Road North, they should have realised that Ellen would follow him. After all, she had joined the Salvation Army quite soon after getting friendly with Tolly, so becoming a nurse in the same hospital that Tolly worked in seemed like a sensible move.

And Ellen looks real nice in the uniform, Deirdre thought to herself now, as the two of them sauntered along the pavement. Well, she looks nice in both uniforms. The nurses had dear little caps and starched white collars and cuffs, and there were the lovely, swirling cloak and the wonderfully white pinafores . . . but she liked the Salvation Army uniform best, particularly the bonnet.

Even given the nice uniforms, however, Deirdre had not the slightest intention of following her sister’s example. She had accompanied Ellen to the Citadel a couple of times, and had enjoyed the singing and the friendliness, but it wasn’t for her. Ellen had always been the good one. She seemed to like taking care of people, she enjoyed washing filthy kids and removing dressings which had got stuck on and had to be eased off with great tenderness. I’d just rip ’em off, Deirdre thought cheerfully. Best way, in the end. As for slum kids, wi’ dads what beat ’em up an’ mams what half starve ’em, let ’em wash themselves, I say.

‘She’ll learn,’ Mam said quietly sometimes to Ellen, when Deirdre had been airing her opinions in a particularly forthright manner. ‘Kids is all the same; they learn, queen. Until you’ve seen poverty an’ need for yourself you can’t understand, I dare say. We don’t have much, but we’re a good deal luckier than most; none of my kids have ever known what it was to go to bed hungry. Why, until you started nursing you didn’t know what some of them kids has to suffer any more than Deirdre does.’

Deirdre, listening, piped up with her opinion. ‘The Sally Army telled her a lot an’ all, din’t it, Ellie? But I don’t want to go nursin’, or helpin’ people. I want to have some fun.’

No one ever said that Ellen had gone in for nursing to be near Tolly, though everyone thought it. Even Deirdre was mum on that score, because it was a delicate subject, like Donal’s height. Ellen had known Tolly four years, she’d been a nurse for three of them and he hadn’t yet asked her to go steady.

‘He’s got more sense,’ Donal said when Deirdre had pointed out this curious omission to her twin. ‘Bloomin’ gals . . . what does he want wi’ a gal when he’s got his trumpet, a job, money . . . gals is just a nuisance.’

‘But what about marryin’?’ Deirdre had demanded. ‘Everyone wants to marry, don’t they, Donny?’

‘Nah!’ Donal said with great disdain. ‘Bill never married, did he?’

‘Not as we know,’ Deirdre admitted cautiously. Bill had been gone more than three years now, and she and Donal missed him sorely. He had left shortly after their move to Mere Lane and had never visited them there, and one day when the twins had gone round to see him all they found was a note pinned to the door addressed to Deirdre and Donal. It seemed his brother who had been managing the family farm in Clare had died suddenly and Bill had been called back to take over. He had been the best of friends and had appreciated their help in his search, though they hadn’t managed to turn up any likely Feeneys any more than Bill himself had.

Deirdre had told Ellen all about Bill, in the end, because of the picture. When she had started work at the hospital there were some weeks when she had to live in and she had taken the picture with her. ‘To remind me of home,’ she had said.

Deirdre had been surprised at her own feeling of loss when she had looked up at the wall and seen the gap where the picture had hung. And that had prompted her, one night about a year ago when Ellen had been home, to tell her the story which Bill had told them.

Ellen had been intrigued, had wanted to meet Bill, so Deirdre had had to tell her that Bill had gone back to Ireland, to Clare, having given up his search for a while at least. ‘He’s a sailor, not a farmer though, Ellie,’ she had said tearfully. ‘He won’t be happy rearin’ sheep an’ cuttin’ turf, will he?’

‘Perhaps he will, Dee,’ Ellen said gently. ‘Perhaps sailors, when they’re old, long to work on the land. I’ve heard it said that it’s so. Will he write to you, do you think?’

But he hadn’t. And since they had no address for him, Deirdre and Donal had not written either. But they thought of him often and missed him too.

‘Did you ever tell him about the picture, Dee?’ Ellen asked her shortly after Deirdre had told her sister about Bill. ‘Because it might mean something . . . I don’t know, but Mam’s gran might have been a neighbour. Is the Burren very large?’

Deirdre didn’t know, but she had to confess that so far as she could remember she hadn’t mentioned the picture of the Burren to Bill. ‘I think I must have forgot,’ she said, desperately racking her brain. ‘I never thought . . . did our great-gran come from the Burren then, Ellie?’

But Ellen didn’t know and Mam was not much help. ‘She certainly thought it was a grand place, beautiful an’ that,’ she said cautiously. ‘But whether she lived there herself, or just made the picture because it was beautiful I couldn’t really say for certain. Why d’you want to know, queen?’

‘Oh, I just wondered,’ Ellen said vaguely. ‘Dee was asking me.’

‘That’s right,’ Deirdre corroborated eagerly. ‘’Member Bill, Mam?’

‘I don’t recall as I ever met him,’ Ada said absently. She was making bread, pummelling it vigorously, and presently she would give the round loaves to one of the children who would take them down to the bakery for cooking. ‘But I heard about him, ’cos you had to ask whenever he wanted to take you out.’

‘We misses Bill,’ Deirdre said forlornly. ‘He were nice, were Bill.’

‘Yes. Well, as I was saying, Mam,’ Ellen interrupted. ‘He’s gone back to Ireland, probably to the Burren. And we were wonderin’, Dee an’ me, whether he might have known someone from our family, way back.’

‘Your great-gran would have known,’ Ada said. She picked up a handful of dough and shaped it, then popped it on to the baking tray. ‘These will be ready for takin’ down to Samples in half an hour, so could you give Sammy a shout, chuck?’

Sammy was an obliging child, always ready to go a message, unlike the twins.

‘Oh Mam, we’ll take it, Donny an’ me,’ Deirdre said, shamed into the offer, because Sammy was only a kid. ‘D’you suppose a letter with “The Burren” on it would find Bill there?’

‘Oh, I doubt it,’ Ada said. ‘Ireland’s a big country an’ the Burren’s only a part of it. But you could try, I suppose.’

Deirdre had meant to write a letter, she really had, but somehow the weeks had turned into months and the months into years, and she had never got round to it. And now here she was, ten years old, with a job in her aunt’s cake shop for the holidays and her twin miserable because he would be alone for most of the sunny summer days.

Deirdre stopped walking and turned to face her twin. ‘Donny, stop feelin’ sorry for yourself! It ain’t a lorra fun in the cake shop if you want the truth, with our mam poppin’ in every two minutes to mek sure I’m not doing anythin’ wrong, an’ Miss Jenkins screechin’ if I so much as look at a cake, an’ the customers so picky an’ choosy. If I could choose, I’d much rather be moochin’ around the streets wi’ you, I tell you straight.’

‘Yes, but . . .’ Donal began, but was ruthlessly interrupted.

‘I know what you’re goin’ to say, you’re goin’ to say I wouldn’t want to be moochin’ the streets alone. Well, I would, if it were that or bein’ shut up in that ole cake shop all day. So there!
Now
will you mek up your mind where you want to go today?’

Donal looked at her, then down at his bare feet, shuffling along in the dust. He grinned. ‘Sorry, I never thought of it like that. Right, it’s your day off, so you choose.’

‘How much money have we got?’ Deirdre demanded.

‘Dunno . . . I’ve got tuppence. What’ve you got?’

‘The same. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t borrow some, out of our mam’s teapot. I’m bleedin’ workin’, after all, so I can pay her back. What d’you think?’

‘It depends what we’s goin’ to do wi’ the money,’ Donal said cautiously. ‘What d’you wanna do?’

‘Catch the over’ead rail to Seaforth Sands,’ Deirdre said triumphantly. ‘It’s a grand day an’ we don’t have to be back till dark. We can fish, mek a fire, swim . . .’

‘Oh, Dee,’ Donal breathed in rapt admiration. ‘You are a one for thinkin’ things out! What about takin’ the tent then, eh?’

The tent had been made out of a couple of stout sheets, a broken prop and some washing line, and the twins adored it.

Donal’s grin, which had been broad enough before, practically bisected his face. ‘Dee! We’ll sleep on the beach – we’ll leave our mam a note – an’ have our brekfusses there . . . we’ll live there – we could, you know.’

It wasn’t the moment to remind Donal that she was supposed to start work at eight next morning. Besides, Deirdre thought hopefully, if she wasn’t at work perhaps Auntie Anne would give her the push and then she and Donal would be together once again. ‘Right. Home now, then, an’ fetch us some money,’ she declared. ‘An’ some grub an’ all. There’s bound to be bread an’ cheese . . .’

‘We might get some fades from the vegetable market on our way past,’ Donal said eagerly, ignoring the fact that they would not normally pass the market on their way to the pier head. ‘It ain’t stealin’, Dee, ’cos we’re just takin’ our rightful grub what we’d ha’ et at tea tonight if we’d been home.’

‘That’s it,’ Deirdre agreed. How simple life was once you took it out, looked it in the eye and shook it into shape! Of course, money made the world go round, she’d heard people saying that, but even money wasn’t unobtainable if you used a bit of intelligence. ‘Come on, then, Donny, gerra move on! We don’t want to lose any more time, thinkin’ ’stead o’ doin’!’