Till the Sun Shines Through (46 page)

‘I'll find you a photograph, Jay,' Bridie promised. She held the boy's hands and felt the emotion running all through him. Around them was the crump and crash of falling bombs and the explosions when they landed, but Bridie and Jay barely heard them, caught up as they were in memories of Mary.

Instead, Bridie told Jay of the childhood she and Mary had enjoyed in rural Ireland, and what it was like growing up on a farm. She went on to tell him of her brother and sister that died of the flu when they'd only been children.

‘Mammy and Daddy were so upset, I didn't like to add to their problems,' Bridie said,' but I was only wee myself. It was Mary who saw to me then. She made sure I was washed and dressed and fed. She was the one who held my hand and that of my cousin the day of the funeral, when the whole town and half the county seemed to be in the church and nearly all of them weeping.

‘Even later, when I got upset thinking of wee Robert and Nuala and their dead bodies up at the churchyard, she didn't urge me to stop crying, or tell me not to be silly, or expect me to get over the children' deaths by a certain time. She would comfort me and often would cry too, for God knows she was sad enough herself.'

Her face hardened as she remembered her uncle taking advantage of that grief. But that wasn't something she could share with Jay. Jay might have asked her about the look that had come over her face if a particularly loud bomb hadn't then exploded with an ear-splitting crash nearby. It caused him to jump in the bed and he jarred his leg. The spasm of pain took all thoughts of the look on Bridie's face from his mind. Bridie saw the boy wince and his eyes glaze over, and so, to take his mind off it, she attempted to take him back to Donegal.

‘Your mammy always liked the springtime best,' she said. ‘She always said she liked everything fresh and new. The lambs are born then too and sometimes we'd come into the kitchen in the morning and there would be a baby lamb before the fire that we'd have to feed with a bottle.'

‘Oh,' Jay said. ‘I'd love to do that.'

‘It didn't happen that often,' Bridie said, ‘and it wasn't usually for very long, but Mary and I loved to look after the wee things. I loved the summer too when I was allowed to run about barefoot. My cousin Rosalyn would go off, leaping the streams and climbing the hills and thinking up all manner of games so that the days weren't long enough for all we wanted to do.

‘Mary wouldn't be with us then,' she said, ‘for she was older and began working at the factory in the town when she was fourteen.' She had a sudden mental picture in her head of Rosalyn and her sitting on the five-barred gate at the head of the farm, waving to Mary as she cycled down the road. She felt so terribly sad that she would never see her again.

Mary had been so important to Sam and Ellen too. Yet, though she'd been sad at their deaths, the colossal tragedy of losing her children and not even having their bodies to bury had overshadowed the loss of the others. She knew that Jay and Mickey would always miss their mother and both had been devastated too by the news of her own children, particularly Jay who had adored his little cousin Katie.

She hoped and prayed that Jay would recover sufficiently as soon as possible before anything happened to him, for the raids had not lessened. This one that they were sitting out now continued with the same intensity and the walls shook and the windows rattled. Bridie squeezed Jay's hand and told him how she'd missed Mary when she'd gone to England to their aunt Ellen's and how she'd resented his daddy for stealing Mary's heart, which meant she would stay there.

‘I came to visit,' she said. ‘I was just a wee bit older than you and frightened and unnerved by everything: the traffic, the noise, the people. God, what a scaredy cat I was then.'

‘Why did you come back then?'

Bridie had no intention of telling Jay the truth. ‘Well, I was only scared at first,' she said. ‘Your mammy and daddy too made sure I enjoyed myself. We went to Cannon Hill and Calthorpe Park, the Botanical Gardens, the Lickey Hills. We went to Sutton Park on the train once and I paddled in the stream and took a boat out on the lake. Nothing was too much trouble and every fine day we were away somewhere. And then, some evenings, we'd go to the cinema.

‘Best of all though, I liked talking to Mary, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed her. Sometimes in the evening we'd all listen to a play on the wireless together. Your mammy was expecting you then and she was so happy about it.' Bridie was grateful to see a vestige of a smile on Jay's face at her words, but then an explosion near at hand caused him to jump in the bed and he gave a groan as he jarred his leg again.

The explosions were all around them suddenly, and they heard the whistle of the bombs hurtling downwards and the thundering roar of the explosions. The walls of the hospital swayed and somewhere there was the sound of glass splintering behind the tape. The ack-ack guns continued to bark into the night, but the bombs kept on coming.

To try and distract Jay, Bridie told him of her journey from her home the second time. She didn't touch on the reason for it, or explain the cycle ride to Strabane. She told him only of meeting Tom on her way over and how she met up with him again in Birmingham.

‘I felt sorry for Dad and Uncle Tom when they came home,' Jay said, and Bridie saw the tears glistening in his eyes. ‘They looked sort of lost. And I shouted at Dad, I told him I hated him and that it was all his fault. I don't know why, but I was sort of angry with him. I sort of blamed him.'

‘That's natural,' Bridie said. ‘You want to blame someone. Don't worry, Jay, your daddy knows all this, he won't take anything you said to heart.'

‘Are you sure he won't hate me for saying those things, Aunt Bridie?'

‘I'm sure,' Bridie told him.

‘Oh God,' Jay cried. ‘I feel so miserable.' He began to cry again and Bridie held him as close as she dared, stroking his head and telling him to go right ahead and cry and not to worry or feel bad about it.

Bridie wasn't sure how long the two stayed entwined, but when Jay had stopped crying he was embarrassed. ‘Sorry, Aunt Bridie.'

‘Never be sorry for crying. When something so horrific has fractured your life, you need to cry.'

‘I miss Mom so very much.'

Bridie felt her heart lurch. ‘So do I,' Bridie told him with feeling.

‘Will you come again and visit me?'

‘Of course I will,' Bridie said.

She meant it too, for both sympathy for the child, and knowing her sister would like her to take up the role of substitute mother, meant she would visit Jay as often as she was allowed to.

She didn't feel the same, though, about the children at the Mission hall. She found it very hard to take being around so many young children. Their plaintive crying, giggling laughter or just loud chatter affected her badly and in the early days, a child only had to cry, ‘Mommy,' for her to turn around automatically.

Father Flynn suggested she help mind the children and give the young mothers a break, but she found she couldn't do that. They had tried to be friends with her at first, but she'd not responded and so now she was mainly left alone and she preferred it. She was so envious of those with children and if she saw a child cuddled close to its mother, she felt a throbbing ache in her arms and an actual pain in her heart.

Eventually, she found she could stand it no longer and she moved out of the Mission hall into an attic room of a large house in Belgrave Road that she'd seen advertised. She told no one where she was going and when her absence was discovered, Father Flynn was worried, for he'd promised Tom he'd look after her. He contacted Father Shearer, but he had no idea either of Bridie's whereabouts.

Bridie's new home was shabby; the paintwork peeling, the wallpaper hanging in strips, the lino ripped and pitted and thin moth-eaten curtains hung at the windows, which the blackout shutters covered in the evening. Grey-looking sheets and even darker grey rough blankets covered a stained mattress with springs poking through that sat on top of a dilapidated bed frame. An old wardrobe stood at the foot of it. Before the miserable old gas fire, that lent little heat to the room were two armchairs, as well worn as the rest of the furniture, with sagging seats and shiny arms. Two cupboards were set into the alcoves and behind that a small wooden table and two rickety chairs. A grimy curtain was pulled across the corner opposite the bed, in an attempt to hide the sink, gas ring and cupboards in there.

Bridie didn't care about the state of the room. It suited her mood. She put away the few clothes she'd brought with her. She had no food, but it hardly mattered: she wasn't hungry. But she was incredibly tired and cold. Bed would be the warmest place, she decided, and she crawled in between the uninviting sheets and fell fast asleep.

Over the next few days, Bridie only left her room to visit Jay or, if hunger threatened to overwhelm her, she'd go out to one of the centres selling food for the homeless. Soup and a chunk of bread cost only three pence, but between twelve o'clock and two o'clock, a two-course meal could be bought for eight pence. Bridie had her ration book with her, but hadn't bothered to register with a new grocer. She had no money either except that which was in the post office, for Tom, not knowing she had left the Mission hall, still send his pay notes there.

Father Flynn thought about telling him Bridie has disappeared and if he'd known where Bridie was, he might have done. But how do you write to a serving soldier and say his wife had disappeared? He presumed Bridie would write to Tom and give him her new address. However, Bridie couldn't face writing to Tom – there was nothing she wanted to say to him, or anyone really. She was better alone, wrapped in misery.

Father Flynn knew she hadn't when Tom's letters continued to arrive at the Mission hall. He and Father Shearer decided in the end that Tom must be told.

Eventually though, Bridie wrote to her mother. She felt she owed it to Mary to keep her mother informed about Jay and ask about Mickey. But Sarah was more worried about her daughter than her grandson. The tone of the letter would have alerted her alone, but in addition, she'd had a worried letter from Tom. He wondered if Bridie had gone back home as he'd urged after all, because she hadn't answered any letters and just the day before he'd heard from Father Flynn saying she'd left the Mission hall. ‘Something's up,' Sarah said to Jimmy. ‘Losing the children that way, and Mary, Ellen and Sam too, has turned her brain.'

‘Small wonder.'

‘Aye, I know that well enough, but something must be done.'

‘Well, I don't know what,' Jimmy said. ‘Write to that husband of hers and give him her address, maybe he'll think of something.'

‘Aye,' Sarah said with a sigh. ‘I'll do that. If he could get a spot of leave, it might help.'

‘They're fighting a war, woman,' Jimmy snapped. Worry making him irritable.

‘You think I don't know that,' Sarah screeched. ‘This war has robbed me of my sister, her husband, my own daughter, left two boys motherless and two other grandchildren crushed into pieces. D'you think I don't know there's a bloody war on? D'you not think I understand it and am more heartbroken than I ever remember being? I'm so scared for poor tormented Bridie, too.' And at this, Sarah covered her face with her apron to hide the tears streaming from her eyes. But she couldn't hide her shuddering body, or the gulping sobs coming from her.

Jimmy put his arms about his wife, glad that young Mickey was away at school and it wasn't Beattie's day for coming in, for Sarah would have hated to have given way like this in front of them.

And yet, he told himself as he patted his wife consolingly, you can't keep a stiff upper lip all the time. Sarah had barely grieved for the family members dead and gone and never after Mickey came to stay with them. The boy's presence had helped them both in one way, but in another meant she'd been unable to cry or talk about her unhappiness but now it burst from her like a dam.

He suddenly remembered that there was one person who might get through to Bridie, someone who'd just arrived at Delia's only a few days ago. It might not work, but then it could hardly make the situation worse, and when Sarah was calmer he decided he'd talk it over with her.

Over the next few days, Bridie felt depression enfolding around her until it was an effort to rise from her bed in the morning. It was only because she knew Mary would expect her to visit Jay and the child's own loneliness that kept her going there. She couldn't remember when she had last washed, changed her clothes or eaten. She didn't know of the rank odour that came off her, and the grey tinge to her skin, or that her clothes were dirty and crumpled and her hair hung in greasy strands. She wouldn't have cared if she had known. As for food, she was seldom hungry now.

None of it mattered anyway. She'd had letters from her mother and more recently from Tom, but they didn't touch her. They were like people she had once known vaguely in another life. Once Jay was out of hospital, delivered to her mother's home in Ireland, her purpose for staying alive would be at an end.

She'd not even left her bed when the siren had wailed out on the 11
^th
December, but only covered her head with blankets, with the blasts and explosions all around her, hour upon hour. The walls had shook and the smoke and dust from the melée outside had seeped into the room through the ill-fitting windows and caused her to cough, but still she'd not felt the tiniest frisson of fear.

The raid the following night and the one after that were mild in comparison, but the one days later was another massive assault, which caused much damage and loss of life. Bridie was glad she was at the hospital with Jay when it began. This time Jay, who now no longer needed the weighted hoist for his leg, was put into a wheelchair and taken down to the basement. Even if Bridie could have left, the raid was too fierce to get home and Jay was nervous and jumpy anyway, so she spent the night in the shelter with everyone else.