Strawberry Fields (16 page)
Brogan was equally pleased to see young Sara. They had met several times over the years and had enjoyed one another’s company on each occasion, the age-gap becoming less and less important as she grew up. She was bright, intelligent, understood the work he did in evening classes, discussed it with him, encouraged him. On previous occasions they had been to the Walker Art Gallery together, and to the Museum, too. Once, they’d gone to a cinema show – Brogan had given her a cuddle when the film was frightening – and once to the pantomime. He had enjoyed her enjoyment of the show more, by and large, than the show itself. But it had been twelve months since they had met, for it was only possible to do so when Sara was staying with her grandmother in Snowdrop Street. So of course he’d been delighted to see her again, delighted at her unselfconscious dart into his arms, as well.
‘Brogan!’ she had said, her eyes shining, her mouth curving into a smile. ‘Oh, how nice it is to see you! It must be almost a year since we met – my mother’s been poorly so it hasn’t been possible for me to stay in Snowdrop Street. But you’re on your way home, you don’t want to stand gossiping here. Can we meet later?’
‘Sure we can,’ he had said, delighted. She was turning into a beautiful young creature, with rich dark curls tumbling on to her shoulders and a perfect, heart-shaped face lit by big, dark-blue eyes. ‘I’ve so many t’ings to tell you – I’ve passed all me exams so far and me family are well – I’ve a letter from me mammy tellin’ me all Polly’s latest tricks. Shall we walk along the road now and have a cuppa, and you can read me letter? Then we might go along to the Commodore, there’s a cowboy film on, you’ve always liked a good cowboy film.’
He knew she loved the cinema and was fascinated by his family, particularly Polly. She often gave him small presents to pass on to the child, which he faithfully did – a length of velvet ribbon, a silver locket, a tiny enamelled box for trinkets, a warm woollen scarf. Now he beamed down at her, reflecting that she must have cheered other passersby too, with her bright, animated little face and the way she swung her basket.
‘Look, I’ll walk you back to Snowdrop Street so you can explain to your gran that you’re with me,’ Brogan said. ‘Then we can go to Cunningham’s Dining Rooms so that we can have tay and a fancy cake while we talk.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Sara said. ‘Oh, Brogan, you look so happy and well! Come on then, you’ll have to lead the way. Nanny and I don’t go to posh places like Dining Rooms!’
He had laughed, taken her arm to swing her round . . . and the car had drawn up beside them. A man got out. He was tall and cruel-looking with slicked-back black hair and a thin, high-bridged nose. He looked at Brogan as though he were a dog-turd he’d just trodden in, then he turned to Sara.
‘Get in the car,’ he said, and his voice was like a whiplash. ‘How dare you walk the streets like a common tart and consort with filth from the gutters?’
Brogan stared, almost unable to believe his ears, but Sara turned to him at once, tears brimming in her big eyes.
‘Brogan, I’m sorry! It’s my father . . . I have to go.’
The last words were cried rather than spoken as the tall man jerked her across the pavement and almost threw her into the car. He tapped on the glass panel which divided them from the driver, and the car shot off. The last Brogan saw of Sara was her tearful young face turned beseechingly towards him, a hand raised in farewell.
He’d taken his courage in both hands after that and gone round to number three, Snowdrop Street. The lady who answered the door said that she was Mrs Prescott and listened when he tried to explain what had happened, how mistaken Mr Cordwainer had been. Then she had smiled at him and held out a plump, work-roughened hand.
‘You’ll be Brogan; Sara often spoke of you,’ she said. ‘I’m Mrs Prescott, I was once Sara’s nanny, and her mother’s, too. But I don’t think I can help you, because I know Sara’s father to be an arrogant and unbending man. He’s said he won’t allow his daughter to stay in my house again and I’m afraid he means it. But one of these days, when she’s older, she’ll come back to me. I can do nothing until then.’
‘What if I write?’ Brogan said desperately. ‘I’d like to write to her fine, so I would. There can be no harm in a letter, surely?’
‘She’ll never receive it,’ Mrs Prescott assured him. ‘They’re sending her away, to a school somewhere, and all her letters will be opened. Mr Cordwainer told me to my face that he’ll tell the school authorities she’s not to receive any letters, including mine. Oh, she’ll write to me, I’ve no doubt of that, and perhaps we’ll manage to arrange something, but for now there’s nothing I can do.’
And she had been right. Not a word had he heard from Sara from that day to this, though he thought of her often. She was already special to him. He had hoped they would meet again, one day, but he supposed, now, that it might never happen. He was a fireman, soon, he believed, to be an engine driver, but to go higher he might have to leave the LMS, maybe even leave the English railway systems. And he intended to go higher. One day he would have a wife and family to keep and he did not want to do it by taking a job in a foreign land and scarcely ever setting eyes on his dear ones. He admired his father for doing what he did, but it was not for him. When he married – if he married – he would not want to leave his wife for years at a time. And the only way to be sure of being able to support a family was through a well-paid job.
‘Well, a shame it is that your friendship with the little girl was cut short. But you’re goin’ back to the land of beautiful colleens, so you’d best forget your Sara and whatever trouble there was,’ his father said comfortably, now. ‘Besides, there’s no reason for you to marry just yet. Marriage changes a feller – and a woman, for the matter of that. Too many youngsters jump into marriage and into bed and discover their mistake too late, that’s what I always say.’
‘But you and Mammy are well-suited, wouldn’t you say?’ Brogan said slyly. He knew how desperately his daddy loved his mammy – and missed her, too. ‘Why shouldn’t we think of that, us O’Bradys?’
‘Ah, well now, your mammy’s one in a thousand,’ Peader said. ‘And I’ll be settin’ eyes on her in a few hours . . . ah, glory be to God, I’m a lucky feller!’
‘Is that it, Daddy? Or is it a cloud?’ Brogan’s knuckles were white from gripping the rail, his eyes stung from the strain of peering ahead. On the horizon he could see a line, darker than the line of the ocean, with a faint haze hovering over it.
His father slung an arm about his shoulders. That’s it, son,’ he said softly. ‘That’s Ireland – God’s own country. Oh, God love you, we’ll be ashore in no time . . . see the lighthouse? We’ll be seein’ Dun Laoghaire plain as plain in a moment. And then Dublin, son – home!’
Side by side they stood by the rail, eyes straining ahead, taking note of every landmark on the coastline of Ireland, in imagination already disembarking, making their way through the familiar streets, turning into the Alley, mounting the stairs . . .
‘See it? See it? That’s Ireland so it is! We’re comin’ home!’
Brogan saw the land shimmer and twist and saw his father duck his head, cross himself, begin to thank God for the smooth crossing, for the coming landfall. Heard the murmur around him . . .
We’re home; that’s Ireland that is . . . and we’ll be dockin’ in the heart of Dublin within the hour.
We’re home; that’s Ireland that is . . . and we’ll be dockin’ in the heart of Dublin within the hour.
He turned away from the rail for a moment to look at the people straining towards the land. Mostly men, who had been away for years, working to feed their families. Good men, reliable men. Loving men. Men not ashamed of the tears in their eyes. Like his father; like Peader.
Sara stepped down off the train at Lime Street station and looked curiously about her. Someone would be meeting her, that was for sure, but she had no idea who it would be. Father? Mother? Possibly even the chauffeur, though whether the family still employed Robson she had no means of knowing.
She had been away from home for three whole years now, and she was a young lady of eighteen, not a girl any more. And she had not missed either her parents or her home one bit. But she had missed her nanny and Snowdrop Street and had been absolutely furious when she had discovered her father’s ban – as though she had been some flighty little piece intent on an assignation, instead of merely loving her old nanny and wanting to meet a friend who happened to be a young man.
‘A labourer,’ her father had sneered as he bundled her into the car. ‘Have you no pride in yourself Sara? No pride in your family, your station? Even if you had merely been passing the time of day, as you say, you don’t behave like that! Smiling, letting the creature take your arm . . .’
‘He didn’t take my arm,’ Sara had shouted, embarrassed and angry all at once. ‘He turned me round – I was going in the wrong direction, only I didn’t know it. Father, I’ve met Brogan perhaps a dozen times over the past three years, we talk about a friend from Snowdrop Street, someone we both knew, who died –’
She got no further. She had no
friends
in Snowdrop Street but only acquaintances, and she could not possibly share a
friend
with someone who looked like a – a dirty chimney sweep anyhow.
friends
in Snowdrop Street but only acquaintances, and she could not possibly share a
friend
with someone who looked like a – a dirty chimney sweep anyhow.
Sara had said no more. Her father ranted and she sat silent. But at home, her mother had started as well and between them, they had made her life so miserable that when the day of departure dawned, it seemed that she was not heading for a punishment, but an escape.
And so, in a way, it proved. The school was in Switzerland, on the edge of Lake Como. There were mountains, the lake itself, wonderful countryside where grapes ripened on the hillsides in autumn and the meadows were ablaze with wild flowers in summer. She found she could learn languages with ease and could soon make herself understood in French, German and Italian. What was more, she made many friends, for the girls at the school were intelligent and interesting.
They thought it a little strange that she did not go home at holiday times, but not very strange. England was a long way off. There were seven other girls from England out of a total of a hundred and fifty pupils and only one of them went home as a matter of course for the long summer vacation.
Sara had realised long ago that she was an unloved child and it had made her very unhappy, since it seemed obvious that a child who cannot arouse affection in her own parents must be repulsive indeed. But school put things in perspective. Mother love did not come naturally to all parents, she learned, and English parents, apparently, particularly upper-class English parents, were often deficient in maternal and paternal love. As she got to know the other girls she realised that they, too, suffered, particularly her friend Anita, whose parents also treated their offspring with hurtful indifference.
‘But I started at boarding school in Bournemouth when I was seven, and I soon realised that lots and lots of parents don’t really care for their children,’ she assured Sara. ‘Some of them were really cruel and the children were awfully unhappy, but I had a wonderful nanny who took great care of me, and a big sister who is just perfect . . . so I stopped worrying that Mummy and Daddy scarcely ever visited the nursery when I was home in the holidays. I mean they didn’t seem to think much of Veronica, either, and there isn’t a nicer person in the world, truly there isn’t.’
So Sara took comfort from this and wrote dutiful letters home and tried not to care that her parents’ rare replies were always more like lectures than letters. And in due course she sat the necessary examinations and passed them, and prepared to rejoin the real world, which meant to leave school, and Switzerland, behind her.
Thanks to the school she now spoke French, German and Italian fluently, and Madame Audierne, who was headmistress of the school, had made sure she was taught a good many social graces and a good deal of commonsense. Sara understood a great deal about fashion, about the importance of always looking one’s best, and about being a gracious hostess. Mme Audierne boasted that her girls left school able, if necessary, to entertain and amuse the highest in the land, and though Sara acknowledged that this was a flight of fancy, she still realised that she was now the possessor of considerable poise and self-possession.
Standing on Lime Street station however, watching the hustle and bustle of passersby, it did occur to her that she was also singularly ill-equipped to reach her home on foot. Despite the heat she was wearing a fashionable Robin Hood hat, an equally fashionable dark-green suit with curved white lapels, silk stockings and high-heeled strap shoes. Not the sort of clothes in which one set out on a long walk. Coming up in the train she had been studying a copy of
Woman
magazine, and thought wistfully that life would have been pleasanter had she been clad in a pair of the extremely fashionable beach pyjamas and a huge straw hat – and think of her father’s rage should he see her in such an outfit!
Woman
magazine, and thought wistfully that life would have been pleasanter had she been clad in a pair of the extremely fashionable beach pyjamas and a huge straw hat – and think of her father’s rage should he see her in such an outfit!
There was a taxicab, of course. She could go outside, hail a cab, and then demand that either her parents or a servant pay him when they reached Aigburth Road. But before she could do anything so desperate, a voice hailed her.
‘Sara? Sara! Over here!’
It was Mother, exquisitely turned out as usual and with a hat very similar to the one Sara wore perched rakishly on her tinted head. Sara found herself smiling, glad to see her mother, though she reminded herself sharply not to get carried away. She had managed very well without parents for three years and they had clearly managed very well without her. She must never become dependent upon them again, either for love or for any sort of moral guidance. So long as she remembered that, she thought, they might rub along quite comfortably.
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