Saturday's Child (20 page)

Together, they made their way through the little single-storey house, bedroom, kitchen, small closed-in porch round the back. They found cigarette ends in a cracked saucer, crumbs on a mattress,
an old shoe under the bed. ‘I told you,’ said Rachel.

‘I know you did,’ replied Frank. ‘You’ve been telling us since half past three.’

‘Quarter to four,’ argued Dot. ‘I remember looking at the clock when she gave us that fashion show.’

Frank sighed heavily. ‘Can we go home now?’

Rachel concurred. ‘Right, but we need to get Katherine a housekeeper as soon as possible. Whoever’s coming in here wants chasing. He should have more respect for somebody
else’s property.’

‘How do you know it’s a man?’

Rachel awarded him a withering look that was wasted in the dim light. ‘No woman would leave newspaper and sandwich wrappings on a table.’

‘Nellie would,’ said Dot.

‘Even Smelly Nellie’s cleaning herself up,’ answered Rachel. ‘No, this is a man’s doing.’ She extinguished the candle and led the way out. ‘Be
quiet,’ she admonished, ‘we don’t want to be frightening her.’

Frank muttered under his breath as he led his household homeward. What did it matter? If some tramp was spending the odd hour in an empty hut, what harm was he doing? Nobody else lived in the
place, nobody was losing out. Rachel was so fiercely protective of Miss Katherine Moore – why? ‘I don’t know why you bother,’ he said as they reached the shop.

‘I know you don’t.’ Rachel rounded on him in the doorway. ‘Money’s not everything,’ she informed him loftily.

He unlocked the door. ‘I never said it was.’

‘And I never said you said it was.’

Oh heck. This was looking as if it might turn into one of Rachel’s circular arguments, three times round the flaming block, meet your original opinion on the way back.

Inside the shop, Rachel sat on the customers’ chair. ‘She has never had any love. Her mam died giving birth to her, then her dad was as much use as a flat rolling pin. He drank
everything except water and he never took any notice of her. All she has now is that house and a bit of pride.’

‘More pride than sense,’ interposed Dot.

‘More pride than a family of lions,’ added Frank.

‘That’s as may be,’ Rachel insisted, ‘but when you’ve lived in a house without love—’

‘We have,’ said Dot rather sharply.

‘You loved your sons.’ Rachel folded her arms and tried to look stern. ‘It’s not your fault that your husband turned bad. And you protected your lads. There was nobody to
protect Katherine, so she’s grown a suit of armour. And so thin,’ she said sadly. ‘I’ve seen more meat on a Good Friday than what she has on her bones.’

Frank sniffed a drip of moisture, declared himself to be frozen stiff, went through to the house to brew some tea.

‘Give over worrying,’ urged Dot.

‘There’s somebody living in that summer house, and—’

‘And that’s as may be,’ interrupted Dot, ‘but you’ve no responsibilities there, Rachel. Look to your own. Aye, look to your own and don’t be mithering over
her.’

But Rachel could not help herself. Did the unwelcome lodger know about the key under the brick? Was he in the house, was he going to hurt Katherine?

She followed Dot into the back, closed the door, tried to close her mind. But the images would not go away – greaseproof paper, an old shoe, the Bolton newspaper. It needed sorting out,
and Rachel was the man for the job. She had to be, because no-one else cared.

The scream that tore its way out of Sal Higgins’s chest ripped through the December air. She stood in the scullery doorway, a child in her arms, mouth opened wide, breath
misting as it hit crystals of frost in the freezing atmosphere.

John raced through the house, pyjamas flapping as he ran towards his wife. Sal never screamed. Even in childbirth, she had borne the pain stoically. She had accepted the deaths of her babies,
had kept going for the good of her family, was not one for great displays of emotion. ‘Sal?’ he yelled. ‘Sal?’

But she was halfway down the yard, ancient slippers skidding over a layer of ice. She shook the child in her arms. ‘Breathe,’ she shouted, ‘for God’s sake,
breathe.’

John reached her, stopped, looked at the kiddy’s face, white, cold, as frozen as marble in a churchyard. ‘What . . . ?’ he began.

‘Deep sleep,’ she chattered. ‘Gone into a deep sleep, John. I keep shaking him, but he won’t wake.’

John felt as if the life was draining out of himself, too. He steadied himself against the wall that separated the Higgins yard from the O’Garas’, legs turning to rubber, knees
quaking, bare feet burning in a patch of frost. This was unbelievable. The child had been quiet over Christmas, but there had been no discernible fever, no warning, no symptoms.

‘Shall I take him in?’ Sal asked.

‘Yes.’ John pulled himself together. ‘Put him on his bed, love. I’ll send one of the girls for the doctor.’ Thomas Grogan-Higgins was dead. The pallor of his face
approached blue in colour – the child had been gone for several hours.

Sal wrapped the little body in blankets and placed it gently where she had found it not five minutes earlier. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ she mumbled.

‘Yes.’ John pulled her into his arms. ‘There was nothing you could do, love.’

‘I know that.’

He lifted her face. ‘Sal, it’s not our fault.’

‘No.’

‘Poor soul must have had a weakness.’

She began to shake, tremors sweeping through his body, too, like a small earthquake, a warning of devastation yet to come. They clung together, neither noticing when doors flew inward to allow
Magsy O’Gara into the house.

Magsy stood for a moment at the foot of Thomas’s narrow bed. She turned on her heel and went into the front room where the Higgins girls sat, most crying, all wordless. ‘Stay
here,’ she advised before returning to the kitchen. Yes, he was dead. That poor baby soul whose parents had been blown to kingdom come had now joined them. Magsy prayed, hands clutched into
her breast, head bowed against the vision of that perfect, unmarked little body on the mattress.

When her prayers were finished, Magsy O’Gara set to, placing paper and kindling in the grate, finding bread, jam and margarine. Like all women before her, like most yet to be born, she did
what women do in the face of death – she warmed and fed the living.

After jam sandwiches and milk had been delivered to the girls, Magsy waited to see whether John or Sal would speak, but neither did. They continued to stand in the centre of the kitchen, no
tears, no words, just a lump of humanity joined together in the face of this new storm.

Magsy went back to her own house, picked up hat, coat, scarf and gloves, looked at her pale face in the mirror. ‘Beth,’ she muttered, ‘oh, Beth, not you, not you.’ It had
happened to Thomas. Thomas had been the one to pay the price. Guilt rushed into Magsy’s head, the emotion powerful enough to colour her cheeks. It was as if Thomas had been a token payment of
some kind, the one who had done the dying for everyone. ‘He may not be the only one,’ she reminded herself.

Even so, as she set out to fetch the doctor, Magsy O’Gara continued to know that Beth would survive. In that certainty lay her only chance of sanity.

Little Thomas Grogan was buried with his parents in the Catholic section of Tonge Cemetery.

He had done his job, thought Magsy as the tiny white coffin was lowered into frost-hardened earth. Thomas had achieved what generations had failed even to approach – he had brought
Christians together. The church had been bursting, Catholics, Methodists, members of the Church of England, all crushed together, no grouping, no sectarianism, just people of all ages, all creeds,
salt water pouring from their eyes, a copy of the Requiem Mass shaking in every pair of hands.

Magsy stood with Lily and Nellie, listened while the Irish priest made his farewell to a boy who had lived such a short life, whose parents had been lost, whose happiness had been extended by
the thoroughly good Higgins family. Sal, who had spoken scarcely a word since the boy’s death, was motionless throughout the burial. Sal had a special place inside herself, an area of which
Magsy had caught brief glimpses in recent days. She was possessed of a shut-down mechanism, a facility she had used, no doubt, when her own babies had died.

Magsy put an arm round Nellie, whose tears were accompanied by the textureless sounds produced only by the deaf, no particular level to the noise, no cadence, just primitive howls. Nellie made
enough audible fuss for everyone, because while most held their grief back, Nellie could not hear her own din.

Nevertheless, this horrible day was not without its good side, because the boy in the coffin had been a catalyst, a small element whose qualities had been vital to this particular formula. He
had injected his tiny presence into the equation, had now disappeared without trace, solidarity and unity his priceless legacies.

Lily clung to Magsy’s arm. Her husband and boys were still alive, while Thomas, who had displayed no particular symptoms of Asian flu, had died from inhalation of vomit, had choked in the
night. Lily felt dreadful, was still as guilty as sin. Wishes should never be made, because they might just come true. She had desired change, was enduring change, while her menfolk remained
isolated in hospital. And now, an innocent child had been taken and . . .

‘Lily?’ Magsy pulled at her sleeve.

‘What?’

‘Stop it. Stop it now.’

Did Magsy O’Gara read minds, was she capable of entering a person’s thoughts?

‘They will be fine,’ continued Magsy in a whisper.

Lily inclined her head and said a silent prayer. Beth was certainly all right. Beth was in a tiny single ward now, was able to talk to her mother through glass, was eating, beginning to read
again, was becoming restless.

‘They’ll be home,’ said Magsy.

‘Aye.’ But there was no conviction in the response.

‘They will. Now stop this, Lily, despair is a sin.’

Hiding a deadly misdemeanour that refused to be lifted from her sorrowful soul, Lily straightened her spine and watched while the Higgins family dropped soil onto the coffin of their adopted son
and brother. John was in the worst state, features screwed up against unbearable misery, nose red with weeping, a handkerchief dabbing the wet from his face. Sal just went through the motions, a
strange half-smile on her face, a mask concealing emotions that probably went too deep to be allowed an airing.

It was finished. The child’s earthly remains had been returned to his birth parents, so that was that, the cycle completed long before it had run its course. ‘We never know the
day,’ mumbled Lily.

‘That’s sure,’ agreed Magsy as she made a hurried Sign of the Cross, ‘and we don’t dwell on it. Come on, now, we are having a bit of a warm in the Prince Billy,
then it’s off to hospital again, see how they all are.’

Lily pondered. ‘But the Billy’s a Protestant pub, Mags.’ Protestants? Bloody heathens, more like, toilets like pig pens, washbasins filled with all kinds of filth.

‘I know.’

‘Catholics don’t often go there.’

‘I know.’ Magsy steered Nellie towards the gate. ‘All the more reason to go there today, then, for hasn’t young Thomas opened the doors for everyone?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Suppose nothing,’ said Magsy through clenched teeth. ‘’Tis a fact. I have never been in a public house since . . . since William died, but I shall go to this one now.
Thomas has made a point and we shall learn from him.’

The pub was packed. The usual lunchtime drinkers found themselves wedged in a corner, most too respectful to intrude upon the dark-clothed interlopers. This was clearly a funeral party, and
mourners always deserved respect.

Sal sat alone in a corner, her eyes fixed on an untouched half of black stout. The same expression remained on her face, corners of the mouth slightly upturned, the eyes unseeing, ears plainly
closed against all that went on around her. Nellie placed herself opposite Sal, pushing a small sheet of paper across the table. On it Nellie had written,
I am sorry and I shall pray for
you
.

The Irishwoman made no move.

Nellie reached into a capacious handbag and drew out a tissue-wrapped item. She slapped Sal’s hand. ‘I made,’ she mouthed. ‘For you, I made.’ With that unwavering
certainty she had gained via her four heightened senses, Nellie homed in on this woman’s misery. Sal Higgins had to be dealt with.

Sal fixed her gaze on Nellie. Smelly Nellie was no longer smelly. She was smart and clean in her dark navy coat and matching hat. ‘Hello,’ said Sal, ‘nice to see you.’
Had Nellie’s ears been capable, she would have noticed the lack of expression in her companion’s tone.

But Nellie did not need to own the ability to hear. Sal’s strangeness was plain – the woman was in deep shock, had retreated into a safe place where nothing and no-one could reach
her. ‘Open,’ commanded Nellie, her lips overworking the word.

Sal continued mute and motionless.

Nellie knew about noise. For well over seventy years, she had lived in a world where noise was a factor from which she had always been excluded, yet she had watched often enough while others
responded to it. With slow deliberation, she lifted a large glass ashtray and crashed it onto the table’s surface, her mind marvelling when the item survived the assault intact and without a
single chip. She set it back in its rightful place and waited.

The Prince William was suddenly as still as the long-dead man whose name it had taken. Hands froze in midair, beer pausing on its way to owners’ mouths. Cigarettes dangled from lips,
regulars ceased chuntering – even Sal looked up.

Nellie held Sal’s gaze, a hand reaching for the parcel she had offered. Slowly, the deaf woman removed the tissue to reveal an item of stunning craftsmanship. ‘No sleep,’ she
mouthed. ‘Made it.’

People nearest to Sal’s table crowded round. It was a missal, black leather, its covers bound again in finest cream lace, a crucifix at the centre, Thomas’s name beneath. The leather
showed through the open pattern, a perfect contrast of these two natural and beautiful materials. Sal reached out and touched the book. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she muttered. ‘Oh my God,
that is wonderful. You made that for me, Nellie?’