Rose of Tralee (27 page)

It was the first time, too, that the Spaniard had used Lily’s first name, and in the hunt for Gully which followed both women abandoned formality for ever and became real friends.

‘Look out, he’s makin’ for the door – grab him!’ Lily shouted, when they had followed the bird into the kitchen where the back door was still a couple of inches ajar. Agueda was tall and still carrying a duster; she flailed with it, diverting Gully from his intended route, and Lily hurled herself at the back door, slamming it almost on his beak as he dive-bombed towards it once more.

‘Lock it, lock it,’ shouted Agueda. ‘Oh, shut the kitchen door ... too late! Where has the evil one gone?’

The evil one had made for the stairs ... the bedroom windows would be open at this time of the morning to air the rooms. Lily tore up them at a speed which her daughter, twenty-five years younger, could not have bettered, but it was all right. Agueda had closed all the doors and the parrot, having zoomed twice round the hallway, made for the next flight of stairs.

It was a merry chase and lasted all morning. At first, they merely endeavoured to catch Gulliver, then they tried to trap him by laying a trail of peanuts as far as the door of the front sitting-room.

But at this point something struck Agueda. ‘If we open that door and he flies through it, he might go straight for the chimney and disappear up it?’ she asked, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, heavens, Lily, and it’s not been swept since last autumn – he’d be black as the ace of spades by the time he got out of the chimney pot, and we’d never catch him.’

‘No, ’cos he’d look just like a bleedin’ crow, which wouldn’t mek it easy since there’s dozens o’ crows around here,’ agreed Lily with a giggle. ‘Oh, now I dussen’t go into the front room at all for fear he meks a dive for the chimbley! Oh, Agueda, what the
devil
are we to do?’

‘We’ll go into the kitchen and make ourselves a bite of lunch, which I really feel we deserve,’ Agueda said, fanning herself with the feather duster. ‘When we can trap him in the kitchen ... we’ll lure him with some peanuts ... then one of us can fetch his cage through ...’

‘An’ purrit on the kitchen table wi’ some peanuts scattered inside, an’ mebbe that’ll work,’ Lily said hopefully. ‘If it don’t, I’ll fair roast Rosie when she comes home tonight.’

Later the same day found Colm walking along the pavement with his shoulders hunched against the light summer rain and wondering, not for the first time, what his father’s new lodgings were really like. Sean had been delighted with the change and had praised St Domingo Vale and the Ryders to the sky, but Colm had not been deceived. His mother wanted them living in the same house and his father was ashamed to write home yet again admitting that the two of them were still apart, albeit close. Colm didn’t see why he should move just because his mammy worried about him, and him man enough to send money home and take care of himself, so when Sean had suggested that he, too, should move to this place in St Domingo Vale his first impulse had been to say that he was happy were he was and wouldn’t be movin’, thanks very much. But in fact it wasn’t really true. Sure, there were other young fellers of his age sharing the cheap dormitory-style rooms, with a dozen men all sleeping on mattresses on the floor, but the main reason he couldn’t move was money. He hadn’t been earning enough to go for more palatial surroundings; he simply had to be content with what he’d got.

But as time went by he had started to long more and more for a bit of privacy and a decent hot meal of an evening, instead of whatever rubbish old Mr Backhouse served up, and the company of working
men whose main preoccupation was to get to the pub and begin gargling down the ale. Colm was beginning to dream, not of home nor of palaces, but quite simply somewhere to wash his clothing, which wasn’t crowded with other fellers all doing the same, and a yard that wasn’t hard up against the railway line so that nothing you washed ever came indoors again clean. And, of course, a decent meal when you came in hungry after after a long day’s work.

Now, with his new job, it was a possibility. Although navvying had paid better here than many a job in Ireland, it still didn’t pay well enough to afford decent lodgings, and though Sean had made it plain that he would help his son financially, Colm wasn’t having any of that, not he. He valued his independence now and didn’t want to have to ask his father before he went out to the pub for a few beers, or to the cinema with a girl, nor did he want his every doing reported to his mammy and little sister. But he’d recently changed his job and was making a bit more money, so why not at least go round and see what he thought of the room in St Domingo Vale? It was a small room, but wouldn’t he be pleased and happy with any room if it meant a bit of privacy and a good meal of an evening.

Sean was a quiet man who did not interfere with his son, but Colm knew how very pleased his father would be to have him in the same house. Pride and a lack of the means to change might have kept Colm in his miserable dockside digs, but now he could afford a decent place, so felt he could give his father the satisfaction of sharing the same house. After all, it was because of Sean that he was earning a better wage, and it would be thanks to his father that he had a chance of these good lodgings. Why continue to turn his face
against a move merely because he felt he should not be beholden? After all, if a man could not be properly grateful to his own father, to whom could he be grateful?

So Colm continued to walk through the rain, letting it soak into his thick thatch of curly black hair and trickle down the sides of his lean face, as he reflected that he hardly ever thought of his old life at Switzer’s now. It hadn’t been much of a life, running errands for a bunch of old women and looking up to a smarmy feller simply because he had stuck at the one dead-end job for what seemed to him now like centuries. He didn’t even regret leaving Dublin, far less the pert and unreliable Nell. He was, he considered, well out of that, for since his arrival in Liverpool he had gone out with one or two girls and had enjoyed their company without once wanting to make it a permanent relationship. Nell, he occasionally considered, had done him a good turn when she had let him down the way she had.

Not that he thought about her, or his old life, often. Indeed, working as he was, he didn’t have much time or energy for introspection. As his father had predicted, he enjoyed using his strength, though it had left him worn out at first. It was only as time went on that he began to look around for amusement in the evenings and on Sundays, when his time was his own. There were cinemas, museums, the seaside and the country, but best of all were the dance-halls. There were quite a few of them in Liverpool and they were not frequented by many of the large army of Irish who lived around the docks, but Colm and one or two of his friends loved to dance, and to meet the bright, neatly dressed local girls.

‘Never tell ’em you’re Irish until they’ve got to
know you.’ his friends advised. ‘Sure an’ isn’t every one o’ the little darlin’s huntin’ for a feller wit’ a pocket full o’ money to spend on ’em. An’ don’t they believe, the little darlin’s, that us Irish send all our wages home? So do like the rest of us an’ tell ’em you’re from the Isle o’ Man, or the Shetlands ... most of ’em seem to t’ink ’tis true.’

‘What? An’ you wit’ a brogue on you as broad as Delaney’s donkey?’ Colm had said incredulously. ‘They’re coddin’ you, Paddy!’

But codding or not, he performed well enough to find plenty of partners at the dance-halls and told himself, as he paused to cross Heyworth Street, that he did not intend to stop going out of an evening and at weekends even if he was in the same house as his father.

‘Colm! Hey, hold on, feller! And aren’t you the one to rush away now? Waitin’ for you, I was, be the entrance, only Mac said he t’ought you’d left earlier.’

Colm turned and grinned self-consciously as his father strode towards him. ‘Sorry, Daddy,’ he said. ‘I was later than I expected so I thought you’d have gone on. Well, we’ll walk together.’

‘A good thing I hurried, an’ caught you up,’ Sean grumbled as he drew abreast of his son. ‘What would Mrs Ryder think, wit’ you turnin’ up ahead o’ me, an’ me not there to introduce you?’

Colm bit back the words
She’d think I was a man growed, an’ what more natural than that, Daddy?
and sighed instead. ‘Never mind, we’re together now,’ he said diplomatically. ‘Only ... s’pose I don’t like the room, Daddy? Or ... or the house. Or s’pose Mrs Ryder doesn’t care for me at all at all?’

His father laughed shortly. ‘She’ll say the room’s took,’ he said promptly. ‘An’ if you t’ink it won’t suit
you’ll go away sayin’ you’ll be in touch later an’ I’ll have to mek up some cock-an’-bull story to fit. Awright?’

‘Sure,’ Colm said humbly. ‘T’anks, Daddy.’

‘I wish it weren’t rainin’,’ Sean remarked as they crossed another road and turned their feet towards a pleasant-looking road ahead. ‘I’d rather you’d seen it in sunshine, but you wouldn’t come when I asked.’

‘That’s right,’ Colm said. ‘But I’m here now, Daddy. An’ I don’t mind the rain. I like it. It reminds me of home, so it does.’

Sean laughed. ‘Oh well,’ he said resignedly. ‘What d’you t’ink o’ the road? We’re half-way down.’

Colm looked carefully round him, realising for the first time that this was a good neighbourhood, with nice houses. They were three storeys high and they all had small gardens – and the road was wide and quiet – with a sort of clean and tidy brightness about many of them which Colm did not associate with lodging houses. He said as much to his father, who nodded seriously.

‘You’re right there. So far as I know, we’re the only lodgin’ house in our part o’ the Vale, most o’ the others is still occupied by families. D’you know which one is ours?’

Colm felt like saying
none of ’em; we live in Dublin
but again he swallowed the unwise words. It was nice, in a way, that his father felt so comfortable with the Ryders that he thought of it as home. And he knew very well where Sean’s loyalties lay. It was just that because the two of them spent so much time here in Liverpool and so little in Dublin, they were bound to develop a kind of affection for their Liverpool surroundings. So he didn’t voice his thoughts but said: ‘No, Daddy. Shall we have a guessin’ game, see
which one I’d like the best?’

‘No contest,’ Sean said. He sounded smug. ‘I’ll let you guess if you like, but it’s the best house in the Vale, so it is. Go on ... we’re getting’ close now.’

‘The one wit’ the tree?’ Colm asked. ‘No, it can’t be that one, it’s far too grand, it must be ...’

‘You’re right, young feller, the one wit’ the tree,’ Sean said. ‘Aren’t the steps the reddest you ever did see? But we’ll use the footscraper, or they won’t be red but covered wit’ mud! Close the gate behind yous.’

Colm gaped, then obeyed. No wonder his father had been so keen for him to share his good fortune! But there was bound to be a catch, of course. The place would be all cold linoleum and peeling paintwork inside, with an overpowering smell of cabbage and a chill like death. And Mrs Ryder would be old and cross, and would wear black – she was a widow woman, his father had told him that – and she would hobble on bunioned feet and grumble if he laughed aloud or talked above a whisper.

They trod carefully up the steps and his father turned the doorknob and the heavy door with its multi-coloured glass panel swung open. ‘It’s never locked at this time o’ the evenin’,’ Sean said, stepping over the threshhold. ‘Not wit’ most of us comin’ in from our work around now. So ...’

He stopped speaking. A shriek of remarkable intensity had rung out and a girl shot into the hall, yelling as she ran, ‘Shut the bleedin’ door, will ya! Oh Gawd, here he comes ... quick, quick, shut that bloody
door
!’

There was a flash of colour above their heads and instinctively, as his father slammed the front door shut, Colm jumped and grabbed. There was a shriek
even more shrill than the previous one, a scattering of coloured feathers and Colm’s hand closed around a soft and yielding object even as something sharp and painful jabbed into his whitened knuckles. ‘Ouch!’ he roared. ‘Stop bitin’ me, ye spalpeen, or I’ll pull every feather out of your ugly body!’

‘Don’t hurt him!’ shouted the girl. ‘Don’t you go squeezin’ him or I’ll drag every hair from your bleedin’ head! He’s Mr Garnett’s, an’ Mr Garnett’s comin’ this evenin’ to see him! Don’t you go let ’im go, either!’

Even in the heat of the moment, Colm thought that such contradictory instructions were a little unfair, but he hung onto the bird, which presently stopped hacking away at his knuckles and said, in a lugubrious voice: ‘Poor ole Gully wants a peanut ... Shut that bleedin’ door!’

The girl giggled. She was a slender, curly-haired kid of about sixteen, Colm guessed, a mere child, but she’d a nasty tongue on her, nevertheless. Swearing away like any old navvy, he thought, horrified. Why, if his little sister had behaved like that his mammy would soon have washed out her mouth with soap.

But someone else had now erupted into the hallway; a pretty woman in her forties, Colm judged. She said in a trembling, scandalised tone: ‘Was that you I heered swearin’, Rosie Ryder! I’ll give you a slap you won’t forget if ...’ Her eyes had moved past the girl now and seen Colm, and her face was transformed by a beaming smile. ‘Oh, you’ve got him! Oh, thanks ever so ... that bird’s been on the loose since ten this mornin’ an’ I’ve been out of me mind wi’ worry! Here, we’ve put the cage in the front window again, hopin’ to get him back in it, only Agueda remembered the chimbley, an’ every time we went towards the kitchen
door, he’d leave the peanuts we’d scattered an’ zoom across as if he couldn’t wait to escape. I tell you, Rosie, we’ve had the devil of a day wi’ the ole ... ole bird.’

‘He only went for the kitchen door because he wanted to go back into his cage, I expect, Auntie Lil,’ another voice broke in and Colm, turning, beheld a vision. Tall, slim, golden-haired, the prettiest young woman he had ever seen stood in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a navy-blue macintosh with a cheeky little Robin Hood hat on her head and she was shaking out a scarlet umbrella and smiling in his general direction. Colm smiled back and nearly let go of the parrot, but not quite. He had not forgotten the fearful threats uttered by young Rosie ... but who was this? Sean had said two girls lived there, he had not said that one of them was a vision!