Polly's Angel (37 page)

Sometimes it was suggested by one of the young airmen that he might like to change over and become air crew but much though he enjoyed flying, Tad knew that if he once agreed to fly, that would be the end of his close and loving association with the aero engines which were his abiding passion. He also knew that though he might become a pretty good pilot, he would never become a top-flight one. And he was a top-flight mechanic.

So though Tad enjoyed the company of pretty girls, right now, he was a Beaufighter man, and was well content to work in their service. So he did not repine unduly over Angela's defection. He wrote to his brothers and sisters and to his sweet-faced, long-suffering mother, and to Polly, of course. And he coaxed and coddled and cosseted his Beaufighters and was, though he probably never thought about it, that rare thing, a happy and contented young man.

Deirdre and Peader had been sad to leave the bungalow on Moreton Shore behind them, but it was a long way out when it came to getting into work each day, and Peader, though he joined the ARP there, as he had in Liverpool, found it less exciting than being with a big city force. So when Deirdre got chatting with Mrs Ayton from Snowdrop Street who worked alongside her in Hanover Street, she was interested to hear that Mrs Ayton's neighbours had recently moved out of their house three or four dwellings further along the road, and gone to live with relatives near Mold, North Wales.

‘Will it be goin' up for rent?' Deirdre asked with seeming casualness as the two of them drew the soft parachute silk through the maw of their machines, checking every stitch though the stuff fairly flew along, for was it not a matter of life and death to see that the silk was not bunched up or had gaping seams? ‘I'd like to be nearer the city, so I would, and it's a long trail home at nights, when I'm tired half to death. What's more, my Peader's frettin' out there wit' so little to keep him occupied. Oh, he likes the gardenin', and he gets on well wit' Mrs Marshall, our landlady, but he'd see a lot more of me if we could move into somewhere like Snowdrop Street.'

She did not add, which she could have done with perfect truth, that Mrs Marshall, now that the worst of the bombing seemed to have calmed down, had made it clear that she was no longer afraid to be alone. She liked having Deirdre and Peader and made no objection to the occasional bursts of having a house straining at the seams when members of their large family got leave and came to stay, but she knew that Deirdre was itching to have Brogan to visit them when he got leave. Brogan had come over as a member of the American Army and was stationed at Burtonwood and though it was fairly near Liverpool he had not, so far, managed to get away from the camp.

So when Mrs Ayton came into work a couple of days later and told Deirdre that the house was indeed to be let, the O'Bradys had been delighted. Peader had joined his wife on the train into work that morning, she having arranged to have a morning off, and they had inspected the house. It was not newly decorated and needed a good deal of work, but Peader had seen at once that with a bit of help they could make it into a nice home.

‘Building materials are hard to find,' the landlord had said doubtfully when Peader pointed out some of the faults – the back kitchen roof was leaking and there was no plaster on one wall and the privy in the back yard was full of cobwebs and had a large hole in the door and no bolt on the inside, either. ‘You might get hold of some old roof slates from some of the bombed buildings, but I dunno about stuff like plaster – you need permits for that kind o' thing, to say nothin' of wood. Why, I've even had to go down on me benders for a few nails!'

But he agreed to a slightly reduced rent provided that Peader saw to such things himself and did not expect the landlord to perform miracles, and so in February, after a tearful farewell with Mrs Marshall, the O'Bradys had moved into Snowdrop Street.

‘We'll tell the children right away, so's our post keeps coming straight to us,' Deirdre had planned busily, putting a couple of buckets in the main bedroom where the front of the roof persisted in leaking despite Peader and a pal having put a number of uncracked slates over the gaps.

But right now, it was Saturday morning and Peader and Deirdre had enjoyed a nice lie-in, since Deirdre did not work on a Saturday, and then they had got up slowly and gone downstairs to the kitchen to have a nice leisurely breakfast before deciding what they should do that day.

‘Not that there's all that much choice, alanna,' Peader said ruefully as they sat down to toast and gooseberry jam and two good, strong mugs of tea. Deirdre had made quantities of gooseberry jam from the fruit in Mrs Marshall's garden, and that good lady had insisted that the O'Bradys should take a good half of the jam back to Liverpool with them. ‘If we do some shopping this morning, though, we might go to a flick this afternoon. What d'you t'ink of that, eh?'

‘It depends what's on,' Deirdre said, turning the pages of last night's
Echo
as she bit into her toast. ‘I wouldn't mind taking a look in at TJ's this morning, though.'

TJ's was still managing to do a good job for their poorer clientele despite wartime shortages and Deirdre, who had thought the big store a regular heaven when she had first been introduced to it, was a frequent shopper there still.

‘That suits me, we can catch a tram and mebbe do all our shopping up an' down London Road—' Peader was beginning when they heard the post come rattling through the front door and Deirdre jumped to her feet and ran to fetch it. She came back with a good handful, two air letters amongst them, and sat down again, abandoning the newspaper but beginning to crunch toast once more.

‘Thank the good Lord we can still buy bread, and isn't this Sample's loaf twice as good as the stuff poor Mrs Marshall got, even though it's only a national loaf, same as hers?' she said, staring at the envelopes and putting them into the middle of the table one by one. ‘There's a couple from the boys, one from Grace – what a good girl she is, Peader! – and one from Polly. Ooh, which shall we open first?'

‘What's rare is precious; open the letters from the boys first,' Peader said, grinning. He loved his sons but acknowledged that letter-writing was not their forte, any more than it was his.

‘One of them is from Niall,' Deirdre confirmed. She hesitated, twisting the letters in her hands. ‘Oh, all right, I'll start wit' the boys.'

‘It won't take you long,' Peader said comfortingly, as she began to open the airmail letters. ‘A minute, no longer, and you'll be free to start readin' what's been happenin' to your ewe lamb.'

Deirdre tutted and began to read, and he was right. Neither of the missives took longer than thirty seconds or so to read. Both Niall and Bev were happy. Niall had joined the Australian Air Force and was being trained at somewhere which the censor had seen fit to clip out. Bev was in the Air Force and was training to be a navigator. He seemed to relish the active life after his years at university, but like his brother, seemed to have very little to say save that he had met a very nice girl and might bring her home with him on his next leave.

‘Good, good,' Peader said approvingly. ‘Now let's open Polly's.'

‘It's been an age since we've had our Poll under our roof,' Deirdre said wistfully. ‘I wonder if she's getting leave soon. Wouldn't it be nice if she and Grace managed to have a few days at home together?'

‘I wouldn't count on Polly gettin' leave at the same time as Grace, alanna,' Peader said mildly. ‘Will you read me the letter now, Dee.'

‘It's a long one,' Deirdre said joyfully. ‘You know our Poll, she can't stop having a crack whether it's on paper or in person. Why, even her phone calls go on rather, though she can't afford long ones. Good thing they don't charge for letters by the page, or—'

‘Oh, read it, woman,' Peader said, losing patience. ‘Or I'll snatch it from your hand and read it for meself, so I will.'

‘Right,' Deirdre said. She began reading.

It was, as she had anticipated, a good, long letter, filled with news, with scraps of information about her work, her friends, and her social life. It also contained her new address. ‘Well, would you believe it, she's going to be working in Holyhead, where the boats go to Dublin,' Deirdre broke off to remark. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Peader, isn't she the lucky one, then? To be within spittin' distance of Dublin, where she was brought up! Why, she might even go over, on a visit. Oh, Peader, there's a bit here about her angel. Listen, whiles I read it to you.'

‘Now I wonder what brought that on?' Peader said mildly. He reached for the last piece of toast and spread margarine on it, then dabbed on some gooseberry jam. ‘She's not mentioned her guardian angel for a long while, not when I'm about, at any rate. Do you t'ink it's because she's feelin' a bit strange over leaving' that Scottish island?'

‘Probably because she's so near Ireland,' Deirdre suggested. ‘It set her thinking about home, that's what. Now quiet or I can't finish.'

Peader, a quiet man, raised his brows but said nothing and presently Deirdre, having given him a severe look, continued.

The letter ran on in Polly's usual bright, inconsequential way and Peader waited until his wife had finished reading and put the letter down beside her plate with a satisfied smile before raising the question which, he thought, must be in both their minds.

‘Deirdre, d'you t'ink this is the best moment to tell her? Tell Grace too? After all, so far as we've been able to find out they're the only two Carberys left. They should know that they're really sisters.'

He was watching his wife's face as he spoke and saw the bright colour drain from her cheeks, saw the way her hand flew to her throat. ‘Oh, Peader, I can't bring meself to say a word about all that – isn't it dangerous, still, to let anyone know, this side o' the water?'

‘I'm not suggesting we should broadcast it to the whole city, alanna,' he said gently. ‘Polly's a good girl, and Grace is another, despite their background. When we'd explained how we'd taken Polly for our own to keep her from a drunken and violent father and an indifferent mother, then she – they – would both understand that we meant no harm by it. We thought, then, that it was for the best and we think so now. But Polly does so long for a sister, and one of these days someone is going to ask why she's so fair when the boys are all so dark . . . and there's a look, I can't explain it, but there
is
a similarity, put it no stronger, between Grace and Polly. Wouldn't it be better to tell them now, rather than to have them find out from a chance remark? Remember, the boys do know she's not our child, though they've never so much as mentioned it since we told them not to, all those years ago.'

Deirdre was silent, remembering. Her son, Brogan, coming into the kitchen and opening his coat to show them the bright-eyed baby nestling against his chest. The boys had crowded round – Bev had been the baby then – whilst Brogan told them how he had found the baby in a snowstorm, and had decided to steal her for his mammy when her older sister, who had had the care of her, had been killed by a train.

She had told her sons that they must pretend the new baby had been left behind by a cousin from the country who could no longer keep her, but within a very short space of time Polly had been accepted by everyone as an O'Brady. Deirdre had guessed the child to have been eight or nine months when Brogan had brought her to Ireland, and by the time she was two she very much doubted whether the boys ever thought about her arrival, or the secret that they all shared concerning her. She was their adored and spoiled little sister and they would have dealt harshly with anyone who had indicated otherwise.