The September Girls (11 page)

‘What’s the Caffreys’ house like?’ she asked Nancy.

‘It’s only half furnished: there’s no carpet on the floor, not like here. Brenna hasn’t got enough bedding, enough crockery, enough of anything, come to that. But it’s clean and welcoming and full of love,’ Nancy said gently.

‘Anthony would hate it.’

‘He’d hate that home even more. And you could go and see him every day.’

‘You know how difficult it is to get him to leave the house,’ Eleanor sighed.

‘Marcus will have the same difficulty on Monday.’

Eleanor looked at her friend beseechingly. ‘What would you do, Nancy?’

‘Me? I’d take him to Brenna’s. It wouldn’t be for ever. Once Mr Allardyce realizes he can’t get his own way, you can bring Anthony back. You’ll have made your point. He’ll understand the same thing will happen if he tries to send him away again.’

Eleanor shuddered, visualizing Marcus’s reaction when he discovered Anthony had gone. ‘Maybe he’d be better off in a home,’ she said lamely. ‘They might find out what’s wrong with him. One day, we’ll have to find out what’s wrong, Nancy.’

‘They won’t find out in that place, pet. I read the brochure. It’s where rich folk put their unwanted kids when they want them kept out of sight and out of mind.’

‘I see.’ Eleanor bit her lip. ‘Then he won’t go there. I don’t care what Marcus says. He’s
my
child every bit as much as his.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Let’s take him to Brenna’s on Friday before Marcus comes home. If he rants and raves, I’ll just have to put up with it.’ She might even raise the courage to rant and rave back.

 

On Friday, they waited until it was dark when Phyllis had left and Nurse Hutton was busy with Sybil; she had hardly anything to do with Anthony and wouldn’t notice he had gone. Marcus wasn’t due home for another hour. Nancy carried a warmly wrapped Anthony in her strong arms and Eleanor a few clothes and bedding in a suitcase and a box of painting materials. They walked quickly through the narrow streets that were virtually on her doorstep, but where Eleanor had never walked before.

They didn’t stay long in the Caffreys’ mean, barely furnished house in Shaw Street: Marcus would expect his dinner the minute he got home and Eleanor to be seated at the table with him. She hardly spoke on the short journey home, thinking of the son she’d left behind in a house full of strangers.

‘Can’t he talk?’ Tyrone asked.

‘No, darlin’,’ Brenna replied.

‘Is he a loony, then?’ enquired Fergus. The lads had just arrived home from their new school.

‘He might be, he might not.’ Brenna shrugged. ‘No one knows. Don’t stare at him. You’ll make him uncomfortable.’

Anthony was curled up in a chair, not looking at anyone, clutching the box of paints to his chest. From his face, it was hard to tell how he felt about anything. ‘He’s a rum child,’ Nancy had said once. Brenna bent and tried to embrace the little boy, but although Anthony didn’t exactly recoil from her touch, he stiffened, as if he’d drawn into himself.

‘He’s a fine-looking little fella,’ Colm commented later when he came home from work: Anthony hadn’t moved from the chair. Another miracle had occurred just after Christmas when Ambrose Houghton, the solicitor, had called to say a client of his, Cyril Phelan, was badly in need of a strong man in the yard where he sold building materials and was Colm interested? Colm had accepted like a shot and was now in receipt of the princely sum of twenty-five shillings a week.

‘He’s as handsome as a prince,’ Brenna agreed, ‘but aren’t our two every bit as bonny?’

‘They are indeed. Are you not giving him a meal, Bren?’

‘According to her ladyship, he’s already eaten.’

‘She’s not a titled lady, is she?’

‘No, but she acts like one.’ Brenna wrinkled her nose. ‘She looks down on me as if I were a piece of muck.’

‘She can’t look down on you too far, Bren, if she’s willing to leave her lad with you.’

‘Ah, poor thing.’ Brenna’s face softened. ‘For all her money, I feel desperately sorry for her. Fancy being terrified of your very own husband!’

‘They’re not all angels like me,’ Colm bragged, and she punched him playfully.

 

Eleanor was hardly able to believe her luck. That night, Marcus ate only half his meal, then announced he was going to bed: he could feel a cold coming on. It didn’t happen often that he was ill, but he usually made a huge fuss, disrupting the entire household. Nurse Hutton was commanded to prepare a hot water bottle, Eleanor to look for Aspro and any other cold remedies in the house, and Nancy to fetch a dish of boiling water so he could breathe in the steam.

The three women exchanged relieved looks when Marcus’s bedroom door finally closed. Nurse Hutton announced it was her night off and she was going to the Century picture house in Mount Pleasant to see
Broken Blossoms
with Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess and would Eleanor and Nancy please listen in case Sybil woke? The night nurses had been dispensed with after Christmas.

‘But I doubt if she will. She’s been as good as gold these last few weeks. I just knew it was that nasty three-month colic that made her cry so much.’

 

Eleanor went to Shaw Street to see Anthony the next morning. Nancy promised she’d go that afternoon and leave Eleanor free to do some longed-for shopping. He had settled in well, Brenna told her. ‘He and our Fergus have taken a fancy to each other. They’re in the back yard playing on the swing. Fergus is a nice, gentle lad, not like Tyrone who’s a bit of a monkey.’

The swing was merely a length of rope suspended from hooks on each side of the door that led to a passage behind the house. Fergus was pushing and Anthony’s eyes were tightly closed and his face, usually empty of expression, bore a look of dreamy bliss. She said, ‘Anthony,’ but he didn’t open his eyes, so she went back indoors, terrified at the sight of her cosseted child playing on such a roughly made contraption.

‘Is the swing safe?’ she asked Brenna in the paltry little kitchen where she was drying dishes.

‘Colm put it up. He wouldn’t let our lads use it if it weren’t,’ Brenna answered crisply. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes, please.’ Seeing the collection of cracked cups and saucers presently being dried, she would have preferred to refuse, but reckoned Brenna, with her sharp eyes and sharp senses, would probably guess the reason why.

Brenna fitted very well into her new house, Eleanor thought as she daintily sipped tea in front of the fire and watched Anthony through the window. In her long black cotton frock with a frayed hem, her laughing little girl, Cara, tucked firmly against her hip, she flitted from room to room, dusting and tidying with her free hand, adjusting a row of holy statues on the sideboard an inch one way, half an inch the other, issuing orders. ‘Don’t push Anthony too high now, Fergus,’ she admonished from the kitchen door. ‘Tyrone, will you stop that racket,’ she shouted when there was loud banging from upstairs. ‘Colm brought home some old wood and nails and he’s making a fort,’ she explained to Eleanor. ‘He’ll be home for his dinner in a minute, Colm. He only works till midday on Saturday.’

‘I’d better leave.’ Eleanor jumped to her feet.

‘Stay where you are,’ Brenna ordered. ‘You can eat with us. I’ve got onion soup ready in the pan.’

Eleanor obediently sat down again, wishing she’d had the courage to bring a supply of food, but had been worried Brenna would take umbrage. The subject of paying for Anthony’s keep hadn’t come up. Nancy said she’d discuss it that afternoon.

A neighbour came, a brawny, red-faced woman with black hair screwed tightly in metal curlers and a cigarette hanging from her bottom lip, as if it were permanently stuck there. Her voice was like a rusty saw. ‘I’ve brought ye that toasting fork I mentioned, Brenna. It’s forty years old, yet as good as new. I was given to when me and me ould feller got married.’

‘Thank you, Katie,’ Brenna cried. ‘Oh, see! Now I can toast two pieces of bread with one hand!’

The woman gave the visitor a strange look that took Eleanor some seconds to realize was a smile. She smiled nervously back, wishing she hadn’t worn her crushed strawberry velvet coat with the sable collar and cuffs and hat to match, but something plainer. She felt hideously over-dressed.

‘If you ever want your fortune told, Katie’s the one to ask,’ Brenna told her when the woman had gone. ‘She reads tea leaves for sixpence a time.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Eleanor promised politely.

Not long afterwards, Colm arrived, smelling of sawdust. He removed his tweed cap and muffler, and his black curly hair and flannel shirt were full of it. He was a fine-looking man: at least six feet tall, slimly built with dark, laughing eyes. The boys took after him, and Cara was a miniature Brenna, with the same golden curly hair. He gave Eleanor a friendly nod. Tyrone came running downstairs to greet him, Brenna kissed him on the lips and he took the cooing baby from her and held her with both hands above his head until she almost reached the ceiling. Cara shrieked with delight and he let her down and tucked her under his arm like a parcel. ‘Where’s our Fergus and Anthony?’ he asked.

‘They’re in the yard,’ Brenna replied. ‘Dinner’s ready, darlin’,’ she added as she went into the kitchen.

Eleanor thought enviously that the family were like a daisy chain, visibly connected to each other. The little house was warm and full of love, as Nancy had said. In this one important aspect it was far superior to the much grander house in Parliament Terrace.

‘I’ll be having a word with them.’ Colm left the room with Cara still under his arm and she heard him say, ‘Hello there, lads. Ah, I see you’re liking the swing, Anthony.’

And Fergus replied - Eleanor would retain the memory of the exact words said in the same childish voice for the rest of her life - ‘It’s no good talking to him, Daddy. He can’t hear.’

She got to her feet and put the half-drunk tea on the table with a crash. For quite a while, she stood as still as the statues on the sideboard while the meaning of Fergus’s words gradually sank in and her heart began to thump crazily in her chest. She heard Fergus speak again.

‘He’s like old Mr Flanaghan who lived by us in Lahmera. Everybody used to say he was as deaf as a post.’

‘And so he was,’ Colm agreed. ‘Do you remember Freddie Flanaghan, Bren?’

‘I do indeed,’ Brenna replied through the open door.

Eleanor pressed her hands against her cheeks. Slowly, very slowly, everything fell into place. Anthony had lived in a silent world since the day he was born. He didn’t know she was his mother, Marcus his father. He’d never heard a word anyone had spoken to him, but had learned by imitation, by doing what he was shown, not what he was told. ‘He doesn’t know who I am,’ she whispered when Brenna came in and began to set the table. ‘Why didn’t we realize? Even the doctor didn’t guess that he was deaf.’

‘I didn’t realize and neither did Nancy,’ Brenna said practically, ‘but now you can do something about it.’

‘Of course!’ Excitement flowed through Eleanor’s veins, making her body tremble. ‘There are schools for deaf children. They can be taught sign language and how to speak - Anthony has a voice. He’s not mute.’

‘That’s right, darlin’.’ Her excitement was reflected in Brenna’s blue eyes.

‘He’s terribly intelligent. He paints the most beautiful pictures.’

‘He drew our Cara last night and Colm is going to make a frame and put it on the wall.’

‘Your little boy, Fergus, is a marvel. Five minutes with Anthony and he just knew what was wrong. I’ll always be grateful to him. Oh!’ Eleanor badly wanted to weep. She had wept many times in her life, but never before with happiness.

 

Marcus replaced the telephone in its cradle. It responded with a curt click and he released the sneeze he’d been holding in during the latter part of the conversation, then loudly blew his nose. His cold, he suspected, was getting worse. He had just called the Baldwin School for Backward Boys and told them not to expect his son on Monday. He felt slightly numb from the news that Anthony was deaf, yet was just as glad as Eleanor. He no longer had to be ashamed of having an idiot child. And it was Fergus Caffrey, only six years old, who had understood the nature of his son’s problem. Fergus had come back with him to the house, Anthony unwilling to be parted from his new - first - friend.

He still couldn’t get over what Eleanor had done: removing the boy from the house, not caring about his reaction and raising him from his sick bed to tell him the news. He’d never seen her so excited, but it was no excuse for going against his wishes - and to take him to the Caffreys’ of all places. The lives of the two families were becoming entwined in ways he’d never remotely envisaged.

 

Brenna felt very much out of sorts, although this should have been a good day, one of the best. For the first time in her life, she was actually pushing one of her children in a baby carriage! It was a giant Marmet model, a brilliant, shining black, and Cara, almost six months old, was fast asleep under the hood looking deceptively tiny. Brenna’s shopping was stacked at the foot: a pound of mince, two pounds of ’taters, a bag of flour and half a pound of lard. She planned to make a meat pie for that night’s tea.