They each had a bag. Lizzie carried baby things and Celia carried Lizzie’s clothes that Johnnie had brought. But at least Celia had a hand free and she held on tight to Lizzie’s coat as they shuffled their way slowly forward.
When they stepped into the yard, Celia could quite understand why Lizzie had been unable to identify her attacker, why she’d had no idea he was black. Lizzie had cautioned her to be quiet and so she whispered, ‘Have you let anyone know you’d be coming home today?’
‘Only Violet next door. She’ll leave the door unlocked for us, she said.’
Violet had done far more than that. The gas lamps were turned down low and when Lizzie turned them up she gasped in surprise and pleasure. The little room shone and there was no smell of neglect about the place, more a hint of polish. The grate had been blackleaded and embers glowed to take the chill from the room.
On the stove was a pan of stew, cold now but just to be heated, and on the oilskin covering the table was a jug full of milk covered with a circle of lace with beads hanging from it. There was a twist of tea, and another of sugar, and Lizzie marvelled at Violet’s generosity, for she knew what rationing was like. There was also a bit of a loaf wrapped in greaseproof paper and another little packet with margarine in it.
A note was propped against the milk jug:
Welcome Home, Lizzie. Here’s a few bits to give you a start. I’ll pop in tomorrow.
Love, Violet
‘She doesn’t know about me, does she?’ Celia said.
Lizzie shook her head. ‘How could she know? I daren’t write that while we were at the convent. God, if there had been a hint of what we intended the two of us might never have got out.’
‘Oh Lord, just think of that.’
‘Are you hungry?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I think I’m too tired to eat.’
‘Me too, but I’d sell my granny for a cup of tea, I’m parched,’ Celia said.
‘I’ll put the kettle on, and if you make us a cup I’ll get the cradle down from the attic for Georgia.’
‘Go on, I’ll have a cup waiting when you come down.’
‘All right,’ Lizzie cautioned. ‘But go easy on the tea and we might be able to get another couple of cups in tomorrow.’
Upstairs, Lizzie found that Violet had warmed the bed with a hot-water bottle and she put the baby in there and ran up for the cradle. When she came back down with it, Georgia looked so peaceful she decided to leave her where she was. The room was like an ice box anyway and she had no way of warming the cradle. ‘We’ll all have to sleep together for tonight at least,’ she told herself. ‘The nuns would be scandalised, but what do I care for their opinion.’ And she kissed
her sleeping daughter and slipped downstairs for a cup of welcome tea before she turned in for what was left of the night.
Lizzie was roused by the wails of the baby, which sliced effectively through the shreds of sleep still clinging to her, and she struggled to sit up and then hauled the baby onto her knee.
Celia too had woken and, pulling a coat around her that was hanging behind the bedroom door, she went to the window and lifted down the blackout shutters to look out. What she saw appalled her so much she almost gasped out loud, but she swallowed the gulp.
Never had she seen so many houses crowded together around a yard. A tall gas lamp stood in the middle of it, little good now of course, with a squat building behind it. Dustbins were grouped against the wall on her left side, the contents spilling onto the cobbles, and beyond the squat building she could see the doors of the lavatories. God, what a way to live.
She’d been almost too tired to take in the room below when they’d come in just a few hours previously, noting only that it was small, very small and cramped, but this…
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ Lizzie said from the bed. ‘When I
first saw these houses, I could scarcely believe people lived like this, but,’ she shrugged, ‘you get used to it. I don’t think of it now, but I knew you’d be surprised.’
‘I am.’
‘And there’s nowhere to hide here,’ Lizzie went on. ‘I would have said my neighbours were, in the main, the salt of the earth, but now…Well, we’ll see, and quickly too for I need the lavvy. Will you watch the child?’
‘You don’t need to ask.’
It was one of the hardest things Lizzie had ever done to step out into the yard, dressed in the clothes she’d worn to travel in, donned hastily with a coat over them, her bare feet thrust into boots and the fierce wind whipping at her legs.
Ada caught sight of her first, and then Gloria as Lizzie passed her window, and they stepped into the yard.
‘We know about the babby,’ Ada said. ‘Violet told us.’
‘Oh,’ Lizzie said, not sure if she was pleased or not.
‘Thought it would be less of a shock, like,’ Gloria explained.
‘And…and how do you feel about it?’ Lizzie asked, knowing it was better to get that into the open straight away.
‘I think it’s a bloody shame and that’s the truth,’ Ada said. ‘We all do here, because we knew you, like, and we knew about the attack. I mean, we saw how you were, and the police involved as well.’
‘Aye, but not everyone will feel the same,’ Gloria warned. ‘Did you have to bring the babby back?’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said. ‘I had no choice. One time, when I have a spare few hours, I’ll tell you tales about the place my mother sent me when I told her I was pregnant that will make your hair curl.’ She sighed and went on, ‘The nuns wanted to send my baby to an orphanage in Dublin, run by nuns of the same order. I couldn’t risk letting my poor, innocent baby go there, where she’d probably have spent her life being mocked and bullied because she is different.’
Ada nodded sagely. ‘I see that. Anyroad, it’s a terrible thing altogether to give a kid away.’
‘We was all sorry to hear that Steve was killed,’ Gloria added.
‘I know,’ Lizzie said. ‘I was bitterly upset, for he was a good man and a terrific father. The children will be heartbroken.’
‘Didn’t you tell them?’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘I wasn’t allowed to go home. My brother had to collect me from the convent and drive me straight to the boat.’
‘So you didn’t see your kids?’
‘Not for long,’ Lizzie said. ‘As soon as I told Mammy I was pregnant they couldn’t get rid of me quick enough.’
‘D’ain’t you tell them you was attacked?’
‘Aye, I told them, and they refused to believe it. Daddy was the worst. The priest was there too and he didn’t believe a word I said either, and that was that really. When my baby was born half-caste…Well, you can imagine the rest.’
‘You poor cow.’
The sympathy in Ada’s voice brought tears to Lizzie’s
eyes, but then Gloria said, ‘Have you thought that if Steve hadn’t…I mean, what if…?’
‘I’ve thought of little else since I held the child in my arms and realised I could never let her go,’ Lizzie said. ‘I wrote to Steve to tell him everything, but I don’t know if he’d received the letter before he was killed. I wasn’t asking him to accept the child, but I thought he had to know. In a way, though I wished him no harm, at least this way he is saved the shame of it.’
‘Aye,’ Gloria said. ‘But there’s still Flo to contend with.’
Lizzie gave a shudder. ‘Don’t remind me,’ she replied. ‘But at least I can tell her what I think of her now. If I’d done that in the past, she used to write and tell Steve I’d done this or that, dreadful things I’d not done at all, worrying him unnecessarily. Oh,’ she added, ‘I have a young friend with me, name of Celia. She’s minding Georgia for me while I go to the lavvy.’
‘Georgia, is that what you call her?’
‘Aye.’
‘Can we go and have a wee look at her?’
‘Of course,’ Lizzie said, and added sharply, ‘but look at her as you would any wee baby, not as if she is some sort of peep show. She hasn’t two heads.’
‘Lizzie,’ said Ada gently, putting a hand on her arm. ‘We’re your friends, not enemies.’
And they were, and how much Lizzie needed friends. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m touchy at the moment. Go up to the house and Celia will be delighted for you to see the baby, I’m sure.’
While Lizzie took herself to the lavvy, the news
flew around the court, and when she returned it was to see the small house crowded with the women from the yard. They were passing the baby around and oohing and aahing over her, while Celia stood watching them, a smile on her face at their positive reaction.
Violet stayed on after the other women had gone and said quietly to Lizzie, ‘I have Steve’s effects, if it won’t upset you to see them. They came next door like the telegram and I signed for them, knowing you were coming back, like.’
Lizzie wanted to see Steve’s things, in particular to find the letter she’d sent him, for if he’d received it she’d always feel as if she had a hand in his death. But Mike had done a good job of resealing the envelope and when Lizzie pounced on it, she cried, ‘It’s not been opened yet. Oh, thank God! Thank God!’
‘I told you Steve’s death had nothing to do with you,’ Celia remarked. ‘The man was fighting a war, wasn’t he, for God’s sake.’
‘Yeah,’ Violet put in, ‘I’d say you have quite enough on your plate already.’
‘You think she was wrong to bring Georgia home with her, don’t you?’ Celia said, just as she’d asked Johnnie the previous day. ‘She wasn’t. You don’t know what those nuns are capable of. I’ll show you just one thing they did to us, as soon as we entered that place,’ and with that she pulled off the scarf.
Violet looked at Celia’s hair, cut roughly and only about half an inch from her scalp all over. She’d wondered why Celia had kept the scarf on in the house.
‘But Lizzie’s hair isn’t like that?’ she said. ‘It’s shorter than it was, I’ll grant you, but…’
‘Johnnie stopped them cutting mine,’ Lizzie said. ‘Before that, mine was like Celia’s. He said I’d not be able to take up the strands of my life again if I had my hair shorn.’
‘And what of you, Celia?’
‘Oh, there was no brother or uncle to come for me. I’d have languished there for years, and for what? For eventually giving in to my fiancé’s urging to let him have sex just the one time. When I found myself pregnant, I told him and he skedaddled off to England. I thought my father would kill me when he found out. He beat me black and blue and then went for the priest. I was in the convent before I had time to draw breath.
‘But far, far worse than the pain of the beating was that of being thrown out, disowned by the family. I’d never felt sadness like that. I have three brothers and three sisters and we were all brought up together in a farmhouse in West Meath. Suddenly, it was as if I didn’t exist any more, as if Mammy and Daddy had a list of their children and my name had been rubbed out.’
Celia’s whole face was filled with sorrow, and even Lizzie, who’d heard the story, was moved afresh, and she saw tears glistening in Violet’s eyes.
‘I learnt to cope eventually,’ Celia said, ‘because you have to. Then I gave birth to the child, a little boy. Everything that had gone before, even being incarcerated in that bloody awful place, worse than any prison, was nothing to how I felt when my son was
eventually removed from the room. It was as if they’d removed part of my heart. I thought I would die, the pain was so bad. I wanted to die. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about my little boy and miss him and wish with all my heart I hadn’t had to give him up.’
The tears were running down Violet’s face, and Celia’s. Lizzie had never seen Celia cry before. She was like a hard nut, one the nuns could never crack, but now Lizzie realised the hard shell was how she had survived. Inside, she was aching with loss and rejection and Lizzie put her arms around her.
‘Oh God, Celia, I never imagined you felt this bad,’ Lizzie cried. ‘You told me about your son, but…’
Celia grabbed Lizzie’s arm, which was resting on her shoulder, and looked at her. ‘You didn’t dare show emotion in that place,’ she said. ‘If you did, they’d won. You know that as well as me.’
‘I too had a son I lost,’ Violet told Celia. ‘His name was Colin and he was a fine boy. He was a sailor and died when his ship was blown out of the water and I miss him too. It’s like an ache that never goes away.’
‘The nuns would ridicule you for shedding tears, showing you cared,’ Celia went on. ‘I don’t think any heartache will ever be greater than the loss of my baby, and I survived it. I told myself, if I could survive that, I could survive anything.’
‘Was it really so bad?’ Violet asked.
‘Worse than you could ever imagine,’ Lizzie said. ‘I dared write nothing of it in the letters I wrote to you, just in case the nuns asked to see them. I dread
to think what they would have done to me then.’
‘Do you mean they actually hit you? Grown women hitting other grown women?’
Celia sighed. ‘If that was all it was,’ she said, and together the two young women began telling Violet about their life in the convent.
When, eventually, the tale drew to a halt, all the women’s eyes were bright and their cheeks wet. ‘You see now why I couldn’t leave a wee baby in such a place?’ Lizzie said.
‘Yeah, I see it,’ Violet answered. ‘But few will, and you’ve paid a high price for her.’
‘I know that,’ Lizzie said grimly. ‘My home is forbidden to me too.’
‘Your home? You mean, you can’t go home again?’
‘No!’ Lizzie said sadly. ‘My children are lost to me, Violet, for now at least. If their father had lived he might have had other plans, but as it is, even if I were to go to court to try to claim them, to all intents and purposes I am a fallen woman, unfaithful to my husband and him a serving soldier, and unfaithful with a black man. That is what society sees and a court would never release the children to me, but might take them from my parents, who do love them, and put them with strangers who’d care not a jot, or place them in an orphanage, the very thing I rejected for their halfsister. I can’t risk rocking the boat. I know it and my parents know it.
‘However, despite the way that Georgia was conceived, I have grown to love her with the same passion I felt for the other two, and I will never desert her now. I just wish I could build a high wall around
her. I know I can’t, but I will protect her as much as I can.’
And I will help you, Celia thought. She knew she would never forget what Lizzie had done for her and she would stay with her as long as she was needed, for inside, Lizzie was still soft, capable of being hurt. She needed to harden herself to survive.
‘I bet that there’s one you didn’t tell you were coming back and you’re not really keen on meeting either,’ Violet said.
‘Aye, Flo Gillespie,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m terrified of her, to tell you the truth.’
‘Is this the harridan, Steve’s mother?’ Celia asked.
‘The very same.’
‘She knows about Steve, though, doesn’t she?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Yeah,’ Violet said. ‘After I redirected the telegram to your mother’s place, I set off for Pershore Road. I’ve never had much time for Flo, you know that, but God, when I told her I did feel sorry for her. The colour drained from her and she gave one small cry and fell like a stone. The doctor had to be called out, and people say she lies like one dead, according to her sister, anyroad.’
‘But someone will feel it their duty to tell her I am back and living with a black bastard in Steve’s house,’ Lizzie said.
‘Oh, bound to,’ Violet agreed. ‘Mind you, they might not get to see Flo herself, cos Gladys might not allow it; but no odds to that, if they tell Gladys it will be bad enough.’
Lizzie gave a sigh. The confrontation with Flo was
one thing she’d been dreading since she decided to return home.
‘Well, the old sod can rant and rave all she likes,’ Violet said, ‘and call you all the names under the sun, but remember, when she does, you ain’t responsible for any of it. Nothing you can do can change Steve’s death either, and you must go forward. You have a child to rear and a life to live.’
Violet’s words roused Lizzie, for there were things to do that couldn’t wait. There were just coppers left from the money Johnnie had given them and she had to sort out ration cards, and a gas mask and an identity card for Celia. Maybe they could also get some clothes from the Mission Hall. Lizzie’s clothes hung on Celia’s slender frame, and anyway, there was scarcely enough for the two of them.
‘I’ll mind the babby if you like,’ Violet said when Lizzie said what she must do. ‘Don’t want to be dragging a baby about, and certainly not in this weather. That wind would cut you in two.’
At the same time that Lizzie and Celia were setting out on their errands, Tressa had waylaid Johnnie, who was whitewashing the cow shed. He hadn’t reached home until well after midnight the previous day, and this had been the first chance Tressa had had to see him. ‘Is it true Lizzie’s baby was black?’ she said, her lip curled in repugnance and disbelief.
‘Who told you?’
He hadn’t denied it. Despite Mike’s letter, she’d expected Johnnie to pooh-pooh the whole notion of it, for it was incredible.