The September Girls (4 page)

‘Yes,’ Brenna replied in the same steely voice, having taken an instant dislike to Sister Aloysius, nun or no nun. ‘Ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth. And she’s got quite a voice on her.’

‘And lots of lovely hair, the same colour as Brenna’s,’ Nancy pointed out. ‘Colm, will you get some clothes out of that bag for yourself and Tyrone and take them into the bedroom and put them on, otherwise you’ll catch your death of cold. I’ll make you both a hot drink in the meantime.’ Colm and Tyrone disappeared into the bedroom. ‘Would you care for one yourself, Sister?’

‘No, thank you. I’ll be on me way back, seeing as I’m not needed after all. Would you like me to take your lads with me, Mrs Caffrey?’ Her eyes swept disdainfully around the small room. ‘It doesn’t look as if there’s a place for them to sleep this night.’

‘I’ve already told Brenna that she and Colm can have my bed and I’ll have the couch,’ Nancy said generously. ‘The lads were going to sleep on the floor, although I’ll be more than a bit short of bedding.’

‘Then I’ll take them,’ Sister Aloysius said autocratically.

‘Thank you, Sister.’ Brenna felt reluctant to let the lads go, but knew they’d be far better off in the convent. ‘I hope they won’t be a nuisance.’

‘We care for two dozen boys at St Hilda’s, Mrs Caffrey, mainly orphans. None is
allowed
to be a nuisance. Where is the other child? I’m afraid there isn’t time to wait for tea.’

Fergus and Tyrone were too tired to protest when Colm took them to the door with the nun. He returned minutes later, bleary-eyed, and Nancy disappeared into the kitchen. Brenna expected Colm would take a proper look at their daughter, instead he crouched on the floor beside them and said in a hoarse voice, ‘I’ve news of Paddy, Bren. While the peeler was showing me the way to St Hilda’s, he asked me name. When I told him, he wanted to know if I was related to Patrick Caffrey, known as Paddy, and I said he was me brother.’

‘Oh, Lord, Colm!’ Brenna said tiredly. ‘What’s Paddy been up to that he’s so well known to the peelers?’

Colm bent his head and made the sign of the Cross. ‘He’s dead, Brenna.’

Brenna snorted. ‘He’s only twenty-eight and as healthy as a horse. He can’t be dead.’

‘He is, Bren.’ Now the tears ran freely down Colm’s gaunt cheeks. ‘He was murdered outside some pub. It only happened last Saturday. The peeler said he was throwing his money around like nobody’s business, and some bastard followed him outside and stabbed him in the heart. His pockets were empty when he was found.’

‘Was it
his
money he was throwing around, or
ours
?’ Brenna asked, going cold. She wasn’t normally a hard-hearted woman but, at that moment, with a new baby in her arms and her beloved lads just taken to an orphanage, she felt more concern for their ten pounds than the fact Paddy had been murdered.

‘I don’t know, Bren,’ Colm said despairingly. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

‘Paddy said in his letter he had a surprise for us. We thought he meant a house, but now I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what it was.’ She looked down at Cara’s pretty, sleepy face and felt herself go even colder. What on earth was going to happen to them now?

He didn’t know why he did it, why he came every day and waited in the pub across the road to watch and wait and hope that she would appear. The pub was called the Fish out of Water and that was very much how he felt. It was a rough place with sawdust on the floor frequented by the lowest of the low: braggarts and thieves the lot of them, plus a few women of easy virtue who had given up offering to sell him their grotesque bodies.

It was Nancy Gates who had told Marcus where she lived. She’d looked at him curiously when he’d asked what had happened to Brenna Caffrey, pretending merely mild interest in the woman whose daughter had been born five days ago on the same night and under the same roof as his own.

Answering without a trace of her usual insolence, Nancy had told him about the murdered brother-in-law, the mythical house, the fact that the two boys were still living in St Hilda’s because the only place the Caffreys could find was a cellar in Upper Clifton Street where damp trickled down the walls and there was no light or heat except from a paraffin stove that stank to high heaven and got on the chests of Brenna and the baby, Cara. The kitchen and lavatory were shared with the whole house.

‘And her husband, Colm, can’t find a job, but it’s not for want of trying,’ Nancy went on. ‘Oh, he’s had the occasional few hours lugging meat around the market and sweeping up afterwards, earning enough to pay the rent, but that’s about all. Every morning, he hangs around the docks hoping to be picked for a day’s work, but he’s a stranger there and the foreman prefers a known quantity, as it were. He’s a fine, young fella, Colm Caffrey, as honest as the day is long.’ There was a challenge in the glance she gave him.

‘I see.’ Marcus had nodded stiffly and gone to his study. He sat, staring at the things on his desk, knowing that Nancy had been dropping a heavy hint that he offer Colm Caffrey a job in his factory - she’d clearly taken the family under her wing. There was, in fact, a vacancy at the moment in the Pipe and Sheet section. All he had to do was have a word with the foreman and the man could have a job by tomorrow. It was that easy.

Next day in his lunch hour, Marcus had walked past the three-storey, terraced house where the Caffreys lived, not too far from Parliament Terrace. It was a miserable street of miserable houses all in a state of gradual decay: windows filthy, paintwork peeling, the steps up to the front doors crumbling dangerously. The window of the cellar was barely three feet wide and a foot deep, the thick yellow glass guarded by iron bars. He glimpsed the light from the stove, but could see no sign of the tenants. He noticed the pub across the way and went inside, causing quite a stir in his camel overcoat, dark-brown trilby and highly polished shoes. He ignored the menacing stares, ordered a whiskey and soda, and told the landlord to have one himself - it would help to have the man on his side if any of the ugly-looking customers decided to get unpleasant - and stationed himself at the window.

Nothing happened during the hour he stayed. He went again the next day and the next. On the third day,
she
came out, looking much too thin and pitifully poor in her black shawl, tattered men’s boots, her skirt ragged at the hem. He had thought she would look humbled, considering her present circumstances, but she was smiling as she emerged from the house, the baby hidden inside the shawl. He let half a minute lapse and followed. She strode through a series of small streets - she’d obviously gone this way before - and he had trouble keeping up, yet it was only eight days since she’d given birth to a child. Eleanor hadn’t moved from her bed. Dr Langdon came twice daily and there was a nurse in constant attendance seeing to her and baby Sybil’s needs.

Eventually, the woman he was trailing arrived at the gates of Princes Park. She entered, sat on a bench and loosened the shawl, exposing her lovely hair and the baby’s small, white face. It was a crisp, sunny autumn day and the park looked particularly beautiful, the ground scattered with golden leaves, the air fresh and clean and filled with the smells of nature: earth, cut grass and the lingering hint of flowers.

Brenna Caffrey was talking. For a moment, Marcus thought that perhaps she was mad, until he realized she was talking to the baby, pointing things out: a certain tree, the sun, the sky, the children playing who came from two totally different worlds: thin, mean children with scabs on their dirty faces, their clothes in tatters, and their feet bare; and bonny, well-nurtured, well-dressed children who’d been brought to the park by their mothers or a nanny, the smaller ones in expensive baby carriages. They watched their charges vigilantly as if to make sure the two different worlds didn’t meet.

He stayed for half an hour, then returned to work, his mind a muddle, wondering why the woman held such a fascination for him. He was attracted to her, there was no doubt about that, and impressed by the way she smilingly faced adversity - it would be interesting to see just how bad things would have to get before she ceased to smile.

Perhaps that was it. He was waiting until the smile turned to despair before he offered to help, when her gratitude would be much more fulsome than it would be now.

 

There were three bangs on the window and Brenna flew upstairs to let Nancy in.

‘It’s a lovely day out there, pet,’ Nancy panted as she struggled down the narrow cellar steps, a basket over her arm.

‘I know, I took Cara for a wee walk to the park again. She loves it there.’

Nancy grinned. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘I can tell from her face. I could swear she smiles when the sun shines on it.’ Her own face probably did the same when she set foot outside. They’d been in this place a week and it was worse than a prison, what with the lack of daylight and warmth and a proper place to sleep. The furniture comprised two hard chairs, a table, a cupboard and a mattress on the floor where the three of them slept. There was mould on the walls, the shared lavatory was filthy and she only ventured into the kitchen to fetch water; she couldn’t imagine preparing food in such a disgusting place.

‘I’ve brought a few odds and ends,’ Nancy announced, proceeding to empty the contents of the basket on to the worm-eaten table. ‘Milk, some cold beef left over from last night, bread, an apple and an orange. The fruit and milk’s for you,’ she said in an authoritative voice. ‘You’re a nursing mother and you need all the goodness you can get.’

‘Oh, Nancy!’ Brenna cried gratefully. ‘Surely the Blessed Virgin must have been watching over me when I sat on the steps outside your kitchen door.’ If it hadn’t been for Nancy, who’d been every day with food, they wouldn’t have had a bite to eat since they’d left Parliament Terrace for a less than grand address.

‘Well, the Blessed Virgin might have watched over you a mite longer and harder and made sure you found somewhere more salubrious to live.’ Nancy was the first person Brenna had ever met who didn’t believe in God. She also knew all sorts of desperately long words that she’d never heard before. What did salubrious mean?

‘Now that you’re here, and seeing as how you’ve brought some milk, would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘I boiled the kettle on the stove a while ago.’

‘No, ta, pet. I can always have tea at home and I’d rather you drank the milk. How’s Colm getting along?’

Brenna made a face. ‘He’s not getting along at all. He spends the whole day going from place to place, factory to factory, asking if they need a strong pair of hands, but even if they do, it’s only for an hour or so. He’s at his wits’ end, Nancy. He’s always provided for his family: now he can’t and it’s killing him.’

‘It won’t last for ever, pet.’

‘I know.’ Brenda sighed and her head drooped. ‘We miss the lads something awful. Even our Tyrone is desperately miserable at St Hilda’s and the other lads tease poor Fergus mercilessly because he’s so quiet. The nuns are awful hard and very free with the cane. We’re only allowed to see them once a week, on Sunday afternoon. All we could do was take them for a walk.’ Her voice faltered. ‘’Least they’re getting three meals a day and have somewhere decent to sleep. It’s good of St Hilda’s to have them.’

 

Colm winning the ten pounds had been the opposite of good luck, Brenna thought after Nancy had gone and she was left in the dark, damp room with only Cara for company. Back in Ireland, life had been a struggle - the whole family living in one room and sleeping in another - but at least she’d been able to keep the place clean, do her own cooking, wash the clothes and hang them in the fresh air to dry. Colm had earned a regular wage and was allowed to bring home any fruit and vegetables that were going spare. They’d had meat for their Sunday dinner, even if it was only the cheapest cut. Any spare pennies left over went towards second-hand clothes for the lads. The future held no promise of better times ahead. This was how it would always be: scrimping and saving, struggling to make ends meet. Brenna had wanted better things for Colm and her lads, and Liverpool had promised this and more.

But now she would have given anything to have the certainty and security of their old life back. She recalled the morning she, Cara and Colm had left the big house in Parliament Terrace and made their way to Stanhope Street where poor Paddy had used to live. The rain had stopped, thank the Lord, and a weak sun shone from a pale-blue sky. Her belly still ached from the birth and her legs were a bit shaky, but otherwise, she felt fine.

‘The landlord will surely let us have our Paddy’s house,’ Colm had said, as optimistic as ever. ‘Even if he won’t, it’ll be full of Paddy’s stuff that now rightly belongs to us.’ He was upset over his brother’s violent death, but too concerned about his wife and children to let it bother him right now.

Fourteen Stanhope Street turned out to be a clean, stoutly built house with a big, bay window downstairs and a freshly varnished front door. Colm and Brenna exchanged hopeful looks. ‘How will we get in?’ Brenna asked. With Paddy gone, there’d be no one to answer the door.

Colm knocked anyway and the door was opened almost immediately by a sharp-faced woman, as thin as a lath, wearing a black frock with a cameo brooch at the neck - Brenna had always yearned for such a brooch. The woman’s grey hair was dragged back in a sparse bun at the nape of her scraggy neck.

‘I understand this is Paddy Caffrey’s house,’ Colm said courteously. ‘I’m his brother, Colm.’

‘Then you understood wrong,’ the woman said in a voice as sharp as her face. ‘This is
my
house and Paddy Caffrey lodged here, that’s the truth of the matter. He shared a room with two other Irishmen. He told everyone he was going to live with his brother who’d be over from Ireland any day now.’

Brenna felt bile rise in her throat. Paddy had been lying to them all the time. ‘Can we have Paddy’s belongings?’ she whispered. The things could be sold and perhaps raise enough to get them back to Lahmera. Colm’s job had already gone to another man: their cottage would have another tenant, but at least they’d be in a familiar place. There were people, friends, who would take them in until they were back on their feet.