Polly was sitting on the living-room windowsill with a book beside her and the ginger kitten in her lap. She could scarcely remember the time when the O’Bradys had lived in two rooms, for now they had four, all on the first floor which meant having it to themselves, apart from the stairs, which were common property.
With the money she made from street selling plus what Peader and Brogan sent home, Deirdre had gradually taken on two more rooms, so the old bedroom was now a proper kitchen and the two back rooms were bedrooms, one for the big boys and one for the small boys, Polly and her mammy.
Now, however, Polly glanced across the room at the kitchen door; me mammy’s got eyes that see round corners so she has, she thought, awed, for there was no way that she could be seen from the kitchen sink so far as she could make out and she’d only picked the kitten up minutes ago.
‘I’m not playin’ now, Mammy, I’m doin’ my eckers,’ she said untruthfully, picking up the blue exercise book and waving it vaguely in the direction of the kitchen door. Her homework had been done a week or more ago since this was summertime and schools were out, but she had been looking it over just now, which was the same as doing it, more or less. ‘You know you said to do it now, so’s it wasn’t a bother to me later, when Brogan and Daddy come home.’
‘Sure and I know you’re bound to do your eckers, but you’ve got all the holidays to tackle it, alanna, so don’t give me that! Brogan’s more important to all of us than any old schoolwork, so leave the kitten, come away from them books, and get after those messages.’
Polly pouted and gave the ginger kitten a cuddle. She had named it Lionel and stuck to the name though her brothers codded her about it and told her that it was no name for a kitten, particularly a ginger one.
‘It’s no dafter than her calling the dog Delilah,’ Niall had pointed out. He was a man grown, and very rarely teased. ‘Particularly since Delilah’s a girl’s name and the dog’s a feller. Samson, now, that’s a good name for a dog. You could have called him Samson, alanna.’
But Polly had preferred Delilah, so the dog, a large, odd-looking creature of indeterminate parentage, was known as Delly by everyone except her and did not seem to mind what he was called so long as he was with the O’Bradys most of the time, particularly Polly.
‘Polly, do as I tell you now; I’m warnin’ ye!’
Polly knew when her mother was serious. She set the kitten down on the floor, jumped off the windowsill and dusted the fur off her short pleated skirt.
‘All right, Mammy, I’m goin’,’ she said placatingly. ‘I’ll just give a bit of a wash to me hands and brush me hair, then I’ll be off. Is it a list you’ve been writin’ in there?’
‘Yes, I’ve written a list,’ her mother called back. ‘You’ll want to go to the market on Francis Street because you’ll get good stuff there. Or Iveagh market, of course. And Tad will go wit’ you, if you ask him nicely. There’s a lot to carry for a little girl.’
‘Tad’s a monster, so he is, and he won’t go anywhere wit’ me, not if I know it,’ Polly said indignantly. Last week Tad had been her best friend, but he had codded her once too often. ‘Worse than a brother he is to me . . . much worse. I’ll never speak to him again . . . not politely I won’t.’
The door between the living room and the kitchen was open and now Deirdre poked her head round it. She was smiling.
‘Oh, you, Polly O’Brady, you’re always full of what you’ll do to poor Tad every time you argue, but you’re rare fond of the lad, are you not? Who gave you your very first kitten? And that wretched mongrel dog of yours? And the mice?’
‘It was Tad, though the cat ate the mice,’ Polly admitted. ‘But Mammy, last week Tad took me all the way over to O’Connell Street to see the fine shops and then he wouldn’t let me ride home on the tram, he said weren’t me legs made for walkin’ like the legs on him were. And yesterday I wanted to swim in the Basin and he said it was for boys, not girls. He said to swim in the bleedin’ canal if I wanted . . . he said bleedin’, so don’t shout, I’m only repeatin’ what he said! So you see he’s mean to me, Mammy.’
‘You’re spoilt, that’s the trouble. We all give you your own way too much,’ Deirdre said with mock severity. ‘Will you take Ivan with you, in the pram, then you won’t need help wit’ the carryin’?’
Ivan was the youngest O’Brady now. Polly had somehow assumed that she herself would always be the youngest and had been astonished and hurt when Mammy had told her that she was going to have a little brother or sister. She had chosen a sister and had been offended as well as surprised when the baby turned out to be a brother after all, but she had grown quite fond of Ivan in her way, though she kept a close watch on Mammy and the brothers to make sure they didn’t favour the baby above her.
‘Oh, Mammy, I can’t take Ivan, he keeps wantin’ to walk so he does, and doesn’t that hold me up more’n anythin’ else?’ Polly asked. ‘I’ll ask Tad if he’ll come, then, if there’s more than I can carry alone. Honest to God I’ll ask him, Mammy.’
‘I believe you; t’ousands wouldn’t,’ Deirdre said, handing over a long list written on the margin of the
Herald
newspaper. ‘Just think, Polly, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that Brogan and Daddy will be here, takin’ us out for a day, jokin’ you, playin’ wit’ Ivan . . . it’ll be the first time Daddy’s set eyes on Ivan, d’you realise that?’
Since Ivan, who had been napping in the kitchen, curled up on the old wooden rocker, chose that moment to wake with a roar of ‘Mammy! Ivy wanna d’ink so he do!’, Polly could only envy her father his happy ignorance. Ivan had not been a placid baby and he was not a placid toddler and since it is the fate of the older children in a family to keep an eye on the younger ones, Polly knew better than most what a trial Ivan could be.
‘When I was a baby I was put to the Poor Crèche, on Meath Street, I wasn’t landed on me brothers day and night,’ Polly scolded Ivan when he whined for something. ‘The ould wans there didn’t give me no peggy’s leg to keep me quiet, nor take me for walks through the markets to keep me amused. They smacked us if we cried and gave us yesterday’s bread and watered buttermilk so they did. And that’s what’ll happen to you, me fine feller, if you don’t do as I say.’
But of course Ivan was unimpressed. ‘Wan’ kitty,’ he whined. ‘Wanna cuggle kitty.’
So now, faced with taking Ivan or approaching Tad Donoghue, it was no contest. Polly and Tad had parted on bad terms, but she would have to go round to his room and speak softly to him, or suffer the various outrages which a healthy, spoilt two-year-old can put on an elder sister.
‘Here’s the money, then,’ Deirdre said, handing Polly the worn little red purse which Peader had sent for a Christmas gift several years since. ‘And there’s a few pence extra – you can treat yourself and Tad, or you can pay him for carryin’, see which he’d rather.’
‘If I could take the pram without Ivan . . .’ Polly ventured, but Deirdre shook her head.
‘Oh no, you bold madam, I’ve heard tales like that before so I have! Just you run off now, and don’t be all day about it, either. I’ve got the sheets on the line but I’ll want a hand to fold ’em, later.’
With four whole windows to call their own, sheets were not the insurmountable problem they had once been, but even so, sunny days were a blessing to thank the good God for, Mammy often said. She hauled in her rope, hung out her wet linen, then prayed, and with a bit of luck, with wind and sun, they would be dry before darkness fell. Little clothes could be hung on the wooden clothes horse before the fire, but in winter sheets were more of a curse than a blessing. Living in Swift’s Alley, you had to keep washing all the time, and sweeping, cleaning, burning. The women did their best but there were four families in each of the four rooms on the next storey up and they suffered from fleas, bed-bugs, all sorts. It wasn’t their fault, Mammy said. They had so little money coming in they couldn’t afford the carbolic, the Keatings powder, the time to scrub, even. But the O’Bradys were lucky because they’d got Niall, who was working as a clerk in an office and bringing almost all his wages home, and Martin, who was working hard at senior school and helping his Aunt Bridie to sell fish, door to door, at weekends and Donal, who sold the
Mail
and the
Herald
after school and all day during the holidays, the way Brogan, Niall and even Martin had once done. And best of all so far as wages went, they had Daddy and Brogan, working across the sea in Liverpool and earning better money than they could ever have brought home for labouring jobs in Dublin.
Not that Brogan was a labourer; not any more. He was fireman on an engine, and working like a black slave, he told them, at evening classes, for to better himself.
‘What could be better than a fireman? Or an engine driver?’ his younger brothers wondered aloud, but Mammy said engine driving was cold, dirty work.
‘One day, all my sons will wear smart suits and white shirts and work in offices, and we’ll have a nice little house on Dominick Place, right near the park, or we could move out of the city, go down to Booterstown, or Black Rock,’ Mammy would say dreamily. ‘Fancy, livin’ at the seaside, with the sands to play on whenever you wanted.’
So because they had earners, now, and not so many babies – it never crossed Polly’s mind to wonder why their mammy no longer produced a baby each year, as she apparently had before their daddy went off over the water to Liverpool – Mammy no longer had to drag herself and her wicker cart out of the city before day broke, to pick potatoes when they were ready, nor did she squat on the pavement all the rest of the day, selling those same potatoes to anyone who would buy.
‘I’m a lady now,’ she would tease, as she got them ready for school or cooked hot porridge for the workers and made a huge pot of tea. ‘I work a little, now and then, for extrys, but I’m not a wage slave, thanks to me boys and me dear Peader.’
Things were different in the Donoghue household. There were a grush of kids, as the boys said, ranging from Tad, who was nine, to the newest baby, a girl named Aileen, and though the boys tried, and Mr Donoghue was a docker and often in work, he never took a penny of his money home for his family, regarding it as his own property.
‘If me ould feller dropped dead tomorrer we’d be no worse off,’ Tad often said. ‘We’d be
better
off, because we wouldn’t get bate till we was black an’ blue, and nor would me mammy.’
Polly hated Mr Donoghue and was afraid of him, too. He would swagger out of the tenement building, having eaten the lion’s share of any food that was going, with his tall ash stick, the mark of his trade, and his wide leather belt with the brass buckle. Down to the nearest pub he would go and when he wasn’t drinking he was out at the brickfields, playing pitch and toss with the school which the men had formed there. If he won, he drank heavier than ever. If he lost he came home and belted his wife or beat his kids.
So in a way you could understand why Tad could be tricky, at times. Which made it easier to bear. And though he didn’t have anything to speak of, he was generous. Polly guessed that the kitten he’d given her had been stolen from a litter, that he’d found the dog Delilah wandering the street and nicked the mice and the smart cage from one of the expensive shops on O’Connell or Parnell Streets. But he’d given them to her freely, when he could easily have sold them – you couldn’t say fairer than that, could you?
So having made up her mind that Tad was at least the lesser of two evils, Polly left her own block and headed for Gardiners Lane and the Donoghues’. They lived on the top floor, in an attic room with a sloping ceiling – a dozen of them, more or less. Mrs Donoghue was a nice woman, but her ould feller blacked her eye most days and sometimes she walked funny, sort of bent up, and other times her face was swollen out to the side, or one arm she kept clutched to her body.
‘The ould feller found a clock in ’is carryout,’ Tad had said on one occasion when she’d mentioned Mrs Donoghue’s swollen face. ‘So he belted her. God love her, she doesn’t deserve it. When I’m a man I’ll kill that bugger stone dead so I will.’
‘What’s a clock?’ Polly had asked Niall that night. ‘Not the sort that you hang on the wall, the sort you find in your carryout.’
Niall looked puzzled but Martin gave a roar of laughter.
‘It’s a cockroach, Poll,’ he said at once. ‘Who found one in their carryout? Not your friend Tad?’
‘No. He doesn’t get a carryout. It was his daddy, and his daddy belted his mammy and Tad said one day he’ll kill the bugger stone dead so he will.’
‘So he ought,’ Mammy’s voice said from the fireside where she was mending socks. ‘So he bloody ought. That feller’s bad or mad or a bit of both. I thank God fasting that Peader’s not that kind o’ man.’
But now, hovering by Tad’s tenement, Polly wondered whether to go straight up and knock, or whether to hang about hopefully. But it was past ten in the morning, surely Tad’s ould feller would be down at the docks, or at the pub, or even out at the Brickfields, by this time? There was one good thing about tenement life, though; everyone knew everyone else’s business. So Polly hadn’t been hovering more than a few seconds when a woman came out. She had an armful of wet linen and a fancy peg-bag. It was Mrs Wilson, a hard ticket as the boys called her. Mammy called her a stuffy-nose, but Polly quite liked her. Mrs Mrs Wilson might look down on her neighbours and talk of her days as the priest’s housekeeper before she’d caught Mr Wilson, and him only a tram-driver when all was said and done, but she approved of the O’Bradys.