The Mersey Girls (18 page)

‘We will so,’ her grandfather said. ‘As for nice – are you not nice yourself, Luceen?’

‘People change,’ Lucy said quietly, but she said it beneath her breath. She found that she had no desire for an unknown sister to turn up here to boss her about and tell her what she should and should not do – older sisters always bossed you about, she had heard the girls at school say so many a time – and she could not squeeze out a tear for a mother who had abandoned her when she was only a couple of months old. ‘When will you leave, Maeve?’

‘As soon as I can buy me ticket,’ Maeve said distractedly. ‘Oh my poor darling, to die so far from home!’ She jumped to her feet on the words and ran out of the kitchen and when Lucy would have followed, Grandad caught her arm and held her back.

‘You didn’t know your mammy, child,’ he said gruffly. ‘And no doubt you feel you have a good reason not to love her. But Evie was a sweet girl once, and it’s that Evie that Maeve and I are after remembering. You must respect our tears, alanna.’

And Lucy, turning to throw her arms round the old man’s neck, saw that he was indeed weeping.

In her bed that night, Maeve planned her journey. She would go across to Liverpool and catch a ship to New York from there. She thanked God that there was money saved which could be spared both for the journey and for her keep whilst she was in America. The farm was doing well, her father was a shrewd judge of what would sell and what would not. And her sisters were good, they would take it in turns to keep an eye on the farm and on the child, too.

It was a long way, though, especially for someone who had never left Ireland before. But Maeve had seen too many friends and relatives go off to America – and come back, too – to worry unduly about the journey. It took a couple of weeks, but modern ships were comfortable, the crews kind to bewildered passengers. And when you got there, sure and didn’t you meet nearly as many Irish as you did in Ireland, now? Evie had gone when she was a good deal younger than Maeve – so had Maeve’s old school friend, a couple of cousins and Maeve’s Aunt Maria.

It would have been nice to take Lucy, though, Maeve thought rather wistfully, heaving the sheet up over her shoulders. Nice for Linnet to meet her sister at last, nice for Maeve herself to have the company. But no point in even considering it. Lucy was doing well at school, she was useful on the farm, sensible and helpful. Padraig would do very well with Lucy and with one of his other daughters to keep an eye on things, and the twins would meet up again soon enough, for Maeve was determined to bring Linnet back with her. She hugged herself at the thought of that other fifteen-year-old, waiting in New York, about to get the surprise of her life when her Auntie Maeve turned up to rescue her.

And still smiling at the thought, Maeve fell asleep at last.

‘Are you well, Granny Mogg? A pity it is that Finn’s gone off to the fishing, because I’ve news for you both. Me mam, the one I telled you about, has died in America and Maeve’s gone off to New York to bring me sister back here to live. Now, what d’you think of that?’

Granny Mogg was sitting in the evening sunshine with a bowl in her lap, gutting fish. Lucy had set her up a line and if she felt in the mood she would pull the line in, detach any fish they had caught from it, and bring them back to the sod hut to be prepared for her evening meal. Now she smiled very sweetly at Lucy and beckoned her over.

‘Did you bring me bread an’ milk, so? Oh, I do love me bread an’ milk warmed over me fire before I go to me bed. What’s that you say?’

Lucy squatted down beside her and produced half a loaf and a covered jug full of milk. Maeve had found out about Granny Mogg a long while ago but Maeve was kind and generous; she simply gave the girls food for the old lady and sometimes a soft shawl she did not need, or a blanket, and let them get on with it. So Granny Mogg thought herself undiscovered and was happier so.

Lucy had never once regretted her decision to take on the responsibility for seeing to Granny Mogg. It meant that she saw Finn whenever he could spare time from earning a living to come and see Granny, and as the old woman grew stronger with the good food which Lucy and Caitlin brought over to her so she grew stronger in her mind, too. She told the girls stories of her life with the tinkers, of her love for her husband who had died . . . oh, a lifetime ago . . . and older stories, too, folk tales, legends, stories of the days when dragons roamed the hills of Ireland and knights on horseback fought and conquered them, drove them away from the enchanted hills.

‘I said my mammy has died in New York and Maeve, who has been like a mother to me all me life, has gone off to bring home a sister of mine called Linnet, to keep me company,’ Lucy repeated. ‘Maeve thinks I should be glad, but divil a bit o’ gladness can I find in me heart. Mammy took her and left me, why should I be glad she’s coming home?’

Granny Mogg considered the question for a moment, head cocked, bright eyes fixed on infinity. Then she put the fish down beside her and heaved herself to her feet. ‘I’ll take a look,’ she muttered. ‘Fetch me water, girl, dear.’

‘Bossy, bossy, bossy,’ Lucy said, smiling. ‘Do this, do that – what do I want with a sister when I’ve a Granny Mogg always on at me?’ But she picked up the old bucket and went down to the creek and half-filled it, brought it back to where Granny sat outside the sod hut, and poured it with great care into what Granny called her ‘seeing bowl’, though Lucy knew perfectly well that it was only a fat glass jar with well-rounded sides and a narrow opening at the top. When it was full she put it down carefully on the grass near the old woman and sat back. She was a complete sceptic so far as Granny’s second sight was concerned, but she loved watching the old woman going through her ritual, nevertheless. Once, she knew, Granny had told fortunes on the fairs, and she still went through the same mumbo jumbo even though Lucy, this evening, was her only audience.

Granny took off her darned black shawl first and threw it over the sweetie jar. Then she leaned forward and began to sing; she didn’t use any words but just sang in a deep, hypnotic, thrumming hum which, Caitlin had once said, sounded right across the marsh on a still evening.

Lucy sat back on her heels and watched. The sun was sinking in the west, casting a glorious red-gold glow over lough and marsh, meadow and mountain, and as Granny removed the shawl with a quite unnecessary flourish Lucy nearly jumped, for the water was blood-red.

But only for a moment. It was the reflection from the sunset, Lucy told herself, leaning forward to see what would happen next. The water in the jar was clear and dancing again so Granny must have moved it. Not that it looked as though it had been moved, so still it lay, but there had to be an explanation for the water seeming red one minute and clear the next, and Lucy was far too sensible to think that there was anything in Granny Mogg’s forecasting of the future.

‘She died violently,’ Granny Mogg said. She sounded surprised, as indeed Lucy would have been had she believed a word of it. ‘But she’s at peace now. Pretty t’ing, pretty t’ing, she’s leavin’ all the noise an’ fuss behind an’ driftin’, like the good white mist of autumn, back to the places she loved an’ left.’

‘Sure she is,’ Lucy murmured wickedly. ‘Sure and haven’t I seen her, comin’ over the marsh towards the house, with her head tucked underneath her arm?’

Granny Mogg had closed her eyes and was rocking herself gently backwards and forwards, but at Lucy’s words her eyes flew open and she scowled at her companion. ‘Shut your gob, young Morphy,’ she said, very rudely Lucy thought. ‘And listen whiles I tell ye what is to come.’

‘Sorry, Granny. I’m listening,’ Lucy said contritely. She produced a chunk of bread from one pocket and the bottle of milk from the other and began to crumble the bread into one of the billy cans whilst Granny Mogg continued to regard her jar of water as though it was doing something a lot more interesting than sitting on the grass and reflecting, in miniature, the world of castle, marsh and lough.

‘Ah, here it comes,’ Granny said at last, when the bread and milk were ready for warming. ‘Give the fire a poke and blow on the ashes, alanna; there’s enough heat left in it to warm me bread an’ milk.’

Lucy turned to stare at Granny Mogg’s fire, which looked like dead ashes but would, she realised, come to life again with a bit of a stir. She found the stick which Granny used as a poker and then blew life into an ember, then another, until the fire burned up brightly once more.

‘Give us the billy can, Granny,’ she said at length. ‘Have you finished with your seeing bowl?’

‘Sure an’ didn’t I say so?’ Granny muttered. She tipped the jar sideways and a flood of water poured out, sank in the grass and vanished. ‘I’ve seen, haven’t I?’

‘I don’t know. You just said me mam died violently which . . . which . . .’ she decided, quite suddenly, not to say as she had intended, ‘which I do not believe for one minute,’ partly because it was rude but also, she realised, because she was not sure at all how her mother had died. ‘Which is rather upsetting,’ she finished instead, feeling a fraud, because she had no feelings one way or t’other, for her mother. ‘Have you got a screw of sugar handy?’

Granny Mogg produced a spoonful of sugar in a screw of blue paper and Lucy shook it into the billy can, then stirred it and waited for the bubbles to start. Granny, meanwhile, hunkered down beside her, staring into the blue and gold flames.

‘She won’t come back,’ she remarked at last, as Lucy brought the can off the fire and stood it on the grass to cool. ‘Not this time – no, not this time. Poor gel, poor gel.’

‘Who, my sister? But Maeve’s gone ‘specially to bring her back and she can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, a year or so older than me, so I suppose she’ll have to do what Maeve says, won’t she?’

‘Oh aye, she would . . . only your Maeve won’t find her,’ Granny Mogg said with a quiet certainty which Lucy found rather unnerving. Honestly, the old woman really believed she could see all sorts, and in an old sweetie jar full of water at that! ‘She’ll search and search, she’ll come closer’n she knows, but she won’t find her.’

What nonsense it all is, Lucy told herself, pretending to agree with Granny Mogg that if she saw it in the seeing bowl of course she must be right. When Maeve comes back with my horrid sister with the silly name which isn’t a name at all I’ll bring her over here and make Granny Mogg eat her words. Not find her indeed, and Maeve as persistent as any old sheep when she sees a hole in the hedge and decides to cram herself through it. I just hope she’s not long away, though; Clodagh will drive me mad before the first week’s end with her pernickety ways.

Maeve arrived in New York after a long and trying journey, only to find that the theatre, where she had hoped to get news of Evie’s child, was inhabited by a touring company who did not even know Evie’s name.

‘But you can find up the manager; he’s not gone with them,’ the girl in the box-office drawled when Maeve explained that she only had a limited time in the United States of America and had hoped to accomplish her mission in that time. ‘He lives on West 52nd Street – that’s on the West Side, near the docks. If you’ll hold on here, I’ll find up the number for you.’

She did so and Maeve ventured onto the subway system, terrified of the speed at which the trains moved, the black faces amongst the passengers, and the awful sameness of the dead straight streets and their fringes of identical buildings. And it did her no good. The manager was a nice man, eager to help, but although he had a vague recollection of a girl in the chorus who had been called little Evie, he assured Maeve that she had not worked at the theatre for a long, long time.

‘And she’s dead, you say? Well, I don’t like to upset you, Miss Murphy, but hadn’t you better look in a burial ground? There are a great number of them, but if you go to the department of . . .’

‘My sister left a child, a girl of fifteen,’ Maeve said, when the man paused for breath. ‘I’ll want a copy of my sister’s death certificate but I see little point in searching for an unmarked grave. Why, we didn’t even know she was ill until a perfect stranger wrote to me to tell me he had taken over her flat after her death and found a letter, half-written, addressed to me.’

‘Flat?’

‘Oh, I think you call them apartments,’ Maeve said. ‘Thank you for your help, but I think I’d better search out Mr Caleb Zowkoughski and see what else he can tell me. You don’t remember my niece at all, then?’

‘I daresay the girl I thought might be your sister was someone altogether different,’ the man said with a weary smile. ‘An English accent is rare and therefore memorable, but an Irish one – forgive me – is commonplace. Our city is full of such immigrants, some of them of many years’ standing.’

Maeve, who had been sitting on a long sofa in the window of the manager’s apartment, rose to her feet. ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said formally. ‘But I must not waste any more of it. I have a farm and a family at home who need me.’

Next, Maeve visited Mr Zowkoughski. She rang the doorbell and listened with considerable trepidation to the footsteps approaching the front door. Suppose he had been lying to her? Suppose he had Evie trussed up inside – her heart rose at the thought that her sister might still be alive – what would she do then? But Mr Zowkoughski turned out to be a man of around Maeve’s own age with an open, friendly face, tufty, toffee-coloured hair and matching eyes. He guessed who she was before she had opened her mouth and asked her in.

It was a nice apartment, though extremely high, with a view over the masses of shipping in the enormous docks. Maeve accepted his offer of a cup of coffee and a doughnut and sat on a long windowseat, almost afraid to look down at the ant-like figures of people in the street below.

‘Miss Murphy, I’m real sorry to have brought you here on a fool’s errand, but from what I’ve managed to discover, your sister didn’t have a child here in New York. Most folk think the kid lived in the country round about, since Miss Murphy went away most weekends, probably to visit her. But all my asking has got me nowhere, so far. And – and I do earnestly suggest that too many questions . . . I don’t know what sort of a man your sister was mixed up with, but I – I do have reason to believe that – well, she didn’t die in her bed, Miss Murphy.’