Danny Boy (37 page)

‘I do think of that,’ Danny said. ‘And she’s probably glad she can’t feed him. Doctor Patterson explained that the trauma of the birth and all dried up her milk.’

‘Does she give him the bottles?’

‘No, I do, or one of the nurses.’

‘Well, she’ll have to get over that when she comes home,’ Ida said. ‘She won’t have an army of nurses then. She’ll have to buck up her ideas.’

But Rosie didn’t. She came home after ten days and though she kissed and cuddled Bernadette and was fine with Rita and Ida, she was distant with Danny and the baby might as well not have existed. And that set the pattern, Danny found. He was the one getting up in the middle of the night when the baby cried and through the day he fed him and changed him, helped by a willing Bernadette when she was home. She, at least, was entranced by her wee brother and would do anything for him.

Danny had gone for another fifteen-week assessment the day before Rosie was due home and told them his wife had just had another baby. He received their condemnation for being so irresponsible when he had no job but they eventually agreed to continue paying his unemployment pay. However, to qualify for the money, a person had to be actively seeking work, but all thoughts of looking for a job had gone by the board because Danny had to look after the baby. He hoped some neighbour didn’t think it in the nation’s interest to inform the authorities of that fact. It couldn’t go on and Ida agreed.

‘Why don’t you leave Rosie alone with the baby a bit more?’ she suggested. ‘Then, she’d have to see to him.’

‘I can’t, I daren’t,’ Danny said. ‘The baby is too small and frail to risk that.’

To make up for Rosie’s neglect, Danny spent more time with Anthony than he’d ever spent with Bernadette at the
same age, rocking his son for hours or crooning to him, and Rosie, watching him, knew her fears had been realised. He had no time for his daughter now he had his precious son.

It wasn’t true, Danny loved Bernadette as much as ever. But he felt sorry for Anthony for he hadn’t his mother’s love as Bernadette had had almost as a right.

However, he knew the situation could not go on like that, and in desperation he wrote to his mother when Anthony was just over four weeks old.

Almost every week, Rosie had written to Connie and the family and to her own parents and her sisters and Dermot. When it came to replies, though, the McMullens had to go to Connie for her to send their letters back, for, despite all pleading, she refused to give them Danny and Rosie’s address.

After Anthony’s birth the letters stopped, but although no one knew of the existence of the child they were still worried and both families sent letters asking if things were all right. On Wednesday, 22nd September, Dermot was posting yet another letter to Rosie before school. He was annoyed he was still at school, for in another month he’d be thirteen and by rights should have left in the summer.

However, in 1918 the Government had raised the school-leaving age to fourteen, and while Dermot didn’t mind school he didn’t think two years further learning would make him better at ploughing a field or milking a cow.

It didn’t help either that he looked much older than his years and could have passed for a young man of sixteen or so. Even his voice had deepened, and the slight child had grown tall and broadened out, hardened by the work on the farm, which he found he enjoyed. His face had a healthy glow to it, brought about by good food and fresh air, and while
he could still be calculating when he wanted to be, the petulance of childhood had gone. He still had the blond curls, no barber had managed to tame them, but now they just made him look incredibly handsome.

Minnie and Seamus were ridiculously proud of their son, but Rosie’s disappearance had hit Dermot hard and he’d begun, as he grew up, to draw closer to Chrissie and Geraldine. He knew Chrissie was courting a man called Dennis Maloney, whose family owned the grocer’s in Blessington, but she hadn’t told her parents, fearing they might put a stop to it, and said she’d tell them all when she was ready, if and when it became serious. So, for now, she saw her young man sometimes in her lunch hour and on Sunday afternoons when she’d go for a walk with Geraldine and Dermot so that she could meet with Dennis. Geraldine and Dermot would then go off on their own and leave the young couple to their courting.

In this way, Dermot knew a lot about Geraldine, and he began to feel sorry for his sister. While he’d been a child he’d accepted the acclaim and attention given to him without thinking much about it, but as Geraldine spoke he began to think about the things she said and see for himself how unfair it was and how brutal his mother often was with both girls.

He saw Geraldine’s life especially as one of drudgery. She seldom left the farm and Minnie kept her at it from morning till night, berating her for very little and usually following the tirade with a smack or clout. But, though Dermot often felt immensely sorry for her, he knew if he was to say too much about it, it could easily rebound and make things worse.

He wrote none of this to Rosie, who he missed terribly, and asked how things were with her and Danny and wee Bernadette. He’d been as sad as anyone when he heard of the babies Rosie had lost and though he’d mentioned it to no one he’d been worried about the tone of Rosie’s letters before this silence. So he wrote another letter to Rosie, begging her to let him know if anything was the matter, and decided to
call in to the Walshes on the way to school and leave it for them to post with their own.

Coming around the side of the house, he waved to the postman as he mounted his bicycle at the head of the lane. He saw through the window as he passed that Matt and Phelan were at their breakfast after milking and Connie was holding a letter in her hand, and he made for the door, which was propped open.

When Dermot heard Connie suddenly burst out, ‘Dear Lord, our Rosie has had a little boy,’ Dermot stopped stock-still in the doorway and no-one noticed him.

Connie went on, ‘He was premature, Danny says, so he’s small, but thriving for all that, born more than four weeks ago. Good God!’

Matt and Phelan stopped their forks halfway to their mouths and stared at her. ‘What in God’s name…Why didn’t she let anyone know?’ Matt demanded.

Connie knew exactly why Rosie had told no-one, for she knew she’d gone through agonies when she’d lost the other two, and her heart went out to her for carrying this secret on her own for months. She scanned down the letter further. ‘That’s not all,’ she burst out. ‘Our Danny, he’s…well, I’ll read the letter out and see what you think about it.’

I’m distracted with worry over Rosie, Mammy, and that’s the truth. She shows no interest in the baby at all. She cannot feed him for the birth wasn’t straightforward; she’d had a fall and cut her head and was rendered unconscious, and the child had to be born by something called caesarean section. The doctor said it had upset her and her milk was dried up. But she doesn’t ever give him a bottle or change him or take notice of him at all. She seems not to hear him even when he cries.

She has two good friends here, but both are widows due to the war. Rita has taken a job now her son is at
school and Ida has three children of her own to see to. The care of Anthony is mainly down to me and Bernadette is more of a help than Rosie. I can’t do this indefinitely for it means I can neither look for a job nor take one up if it were offered.

Anthony had to be baptised within hours of his birth and is too small and frail to be left to indifferent and inadequate care. Rosie doesn’t seem to be improving at all. I am at my wits’ end.

I don’t know what I expect you to do, but I had to tell someone how it is. I feel so alone and isolated.

When Connie laid down the letter there were tears in her eyes. Danny had never written before – any letter-writing had been left to Rosie, like Matt had always left it to her – but this letter was written from the heart. She could almost feel the pain sparking off the page, and what in God’s name should she do? Could she do?

‘God,’ Matt said, clearing his voice. ‘It’s a terrible time they’re having over there altogether.’

‘Aye,’ Connie said with a sigh. ‘And what can I do about it? There’s Sarah’s wedding on Saturday, and even after it…God, I can’t just up and fly to Birmingham. To tell you the truth, I’d be feared to go to such a place and not sure I’d be any use if I got there.

‘What I’d like this minute, or at least after the wedding, is for Phelan to fetch Rosie home. Here she would get fit and well and over what ails her, for it’s obvious she isn’t well just now. But Ireland is too dangerous a place for that and with Sam still hanging about with his old cronies they’d soon get word that Rosie was here. And then again, how could we leave Danny all alone in that house?’

Matt saw the problems well enough. ‘Write back to him,’ he advised. ‘Say we’re thinking of him and praying for him and when the wedding is out of the way we’ll have to give
the matter some thought. I hate for our son to write for help and us to do naught about it.’

‘Aye,’ Connie said and added, ‘And let’s keep the news of the baby to ourselves for a wee while, till after the wedding. I don’t want people asking the questions about the baby we are not able to answer yet. Anyway, Saturday is Sarah’s day. After that’s over, we’ll tell people.’

Dermot had heard enough. He stuffed the letter into his pocket and made for the hills. There would be no school for him that day, he had thinking to do, and there was no space in the school day for thinking.

By the time Dermot had pounded over the Wicklow Hills for an hour or two, taking care to keep well away from any inhabited cottages where he could be quizzed as to why he wasn’t at school, he had decided what he must do about Rosie. As he ate the sandwiches Minnie had given him for his dinner he’d worked out how it was to be achieved.

He headed for home earlier than he would be expected, for though he hadn’t a watch he could tell by the sun, and he lay in the hills above his home and watched the house. He needed to talk to Geraldine alone and though he could see his father in the fields there was no sign of either his mother or Geraldine outside the house and so he sat and waited.

The dairy led off the kitchen, down a short passage, and there was another door next to the barn that opened onto the yard. When Dermot saw Geraldine open this door and throw water into the gutter, he knew she was probably in the dairy alone – for their mother seldom went in – and had been scalding out the churns.

For all that, he made his way down cautiously and from the back of the house where there was less likelihood of him being seen. He slipped into the barn unobserved and rubbed the window into the dairy with his sleeve before peering through it. As he’d thought, Geraldine was alone,
and Dermot tapped urgently on the window.

Geraldine lifted her head at the sound and looked about her, not sure where it had come from, and Dermot knocked again. This time she saw her brother’s face pressed against the glass and went out of the door and into the barn. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

‘Listen, Geraldine,’ Dermot said. ‘We haven’t got long.’

‘Too right we haven’t,’ Geraldine said. ‘I have a churn full of cream to turn into butter before tea-time or I’ll have the head beaten off me.’

‘Listen,’ Dermot commanded. ‘This is more important than butter,’ and he told Geraldine what he’d overheard at the Walshes’.

Geraldine’s mouth had dropped open at the news that their Rosie had given birth to a baby boy and said nothing to any of them. And then Dermot went on to explain how Rosie took no notice of the baby and Geraldine could scarcely believe it, remembering the wonderful mother she’d been with Bernadette and the joy she took in rearing her. ‘You don’t think you’re exaggerating?’

‘I’m telling it as it was read out in the letter,’ Dermot said indignantly. ‘And Danny wouldn’t have written that way for fun. Anyway, keep it to yourself about the baby. I mean, tell Chrissie, but no-one else.’

‘Why? It isn’t a secret, surely.’

‘No, it’s just…I heard Connie say that she’ll start telling folk after the wedding. I mean, Rosie’s not right. Danny’s letter was really sad and I think she needs help, they both need help, and I’m going off to give them a hand.’

‘You?’

‘Who else?’ Dermot said. ‘Could you go, or Chrissie, and would Mammy be bothered about Rosie even if I were to tell her? And Connie, I mean Mrs Walsh, is too busy just now getting Sarah’s wedding ready.’

Even as Geraldine conceded that what Dermot said was
true, she still said, ‘You can’t go either. You’re just a boy and anyway, Mammy wouldn’t let you.’

‘Mammy isn’t going to know.’

‘She’ll be raging, Dermot.’

‘I don’t care,’ Dermot said defiantly. ‘Rosie is more important than Mammy’s bad humour.’

‘Well just how d’you think it is to be achieved?’ Geraldine said scornfully, thinking this was a pipe dream of Dermot’s. He was not yet thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake.

But Dermot went on seriously. ‘That is a problem, and I’ve thought about it all day. The only day to go is Saturday, as far as I can see.’

‘That’s the day of the wedding.’

‘Aye, quite,’ Dermot said. ‘And they’ll all be at the wedding, nearly the whole village, and I can creep into the Walshes’ house and hopefully find a letter or something with Rosie’s address on it.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘If I don’t, I’ll find that convent in Handsworth where Connie once let slip they went first. Any would know where that was, I would imagine.’

‘You really mean this, don’t you?’

‘Every word. And once I get the address, I’ll skirt around Blessington, though they’ll all be too busy at the wedding to see me, and catch the tram from Cross Chapel.’

‘And how d’you hope to escape Mammy’s clutches?’

‘I have to sit at the back of the church, don’t I, because I’m one of the ushers,’ Dermot said. ‘So, when everyone is in it will be easy to slip out without Mammy noticing. She won’t know until the Mass is over and you know how Nuptial Mass can go on and on? Afterwards is where you and Chrissie come in. You tell Mammy when she asks that I felt ill and was going for a walk to clear my head.’

‘Dermot, we’ll have to live with her afterwards,’ Geraldine cried. ‘She’ll kill the pair of us.’

‘She won’t. Claim you know nothing of the plans. I’ll back you up when I write.’

Despite herself, Geraldine was thinking that Dermot’s plan could work and if he was right about Rosie someone needed to go and find out what was what. So although she was frightened of what their mother might do, she nodded her head slowly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll do our bit and I know I speak for Chrissie too, for when she knows Rosie’s news she’ll be as anxious to help as I am.’

By the day of the wedding, Dermot had managed to hide a haversack with a few changes of clothes and his jacket on top in the knoll of a tree not far from the church. He would travel in the new suit and jacket his mother had been to Dublin to buy, because he knew it made him look older, and anyway, he wouldn’t take the time to change.

Everything went according to plan. He slipped from the church as the bride began her walk down the aisle in step with music from the organ, and as all eyes were on the bride, no-one noticed him go.

Once outside he wasted no time, and, stopping only to retrieve his haversack, he made for the Walshes’. The deserted farmhouse looked odd and he slipped through the door and looked about him. Where would a person keep letters – he presumed Connie had kept them. He knew she’d missed the family and maybe would read the letters over and over as a comfort, as he did.

Perhaps they would be in one of the drawers of the press. He hated the thought of searching through people’s personal things, but needs must. In the end he had no need to, for a letter was pushed behind a plate on the delph rack and he pulled it out and opened it up and found it to be the one Connie had read aloud.

As he read the letter again, it strengthened his resolve. He was doing the right thing, the only thing, and he gave a sigh
as he looked at the address. It seemed a funny address altogether:
6 Back of 42 Upper Thomas Street, Aston, Birmingham 6, England.

Dermot felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen in apprehension of what lay before him. But there was no time for hesitation now. He copied the address onto the piece of paper he’d put in his jacket pocket for the purpose and patted his other pocket where all the money he’d prised from his piggy bank was knotted into a handkerchief. He replaced the letter, picked up his haversack and began his journey.