‘The wicked bugger,’ Brogan said between his teeth. He said it low, and vicious, but Polly heard it clear as clear. He had sworn, this wonderful big brother of hers, who was a fireman on a real train like the one she’d just travelled on, and who was studying each night at a big school for fellers, to better himself! But she did not say she’d heard; she guessed she’d not been meant to do so. ‘But, Polly, why do you call Mrs Donoghue “the ould wan”? You don’t speak so about your own mammy.’
‘It’s what Tad calls her,’ Polly said, unrepentant. ‘So anyway, last Christmas Tad’s ould feller drank the rent money for three whole weeks, and they couldn’t stop him. And the landlord turned them out – God love them, they all stood around crying, with their things at their feet, whiles Mr Donoghue tried to kill the landlord’s men and got locked up by the polis and bound over to keep the peace.’
‘And what happened to the rest of ’em?’ Brogan asked. ‘Ah, see that swirl in the sand there, alanna, by your right foot? That’s a cockle, diggin’ himself down deeper.’ He rolled up his sleeve and plunged a hand into the water, producing a round, fat cockle shell. ‘Now I’ll put it in me pocket . . . go on wit’ the story.’
‘I will, so,’ Polly said. ‘So everyone was sorry for them, and then someone told Mrs Donoghue there was a house wit’ rooms going begging in Gardiners Lane. It’s a good place to play, because of the ruins, but the house there is awful. The walls run wit’ wet and the windows don’t fit properly and there’s cracked glass in ’em anyway. They can get water from a tap at the bottom of the road but it’s a long way to lug it, and though Tad’s awright, the younger kids always have coughs and colds, boils on their necks, flea bites and bug bites . . . it’s an awful place, honest to God it is.’
‘Well, next time we go out we’ll take your friend,’ Brogan said soothingly. ‘And all the cockles you pick you can take round to him. And a nice loaf, to eat wit’ the cockles . . . mebbe even a lump of butter, eh?’
‘Oh, yes
please,
Brogan,’ Polly said eagerly. ‘You are kind; Mammy’s kind, too. When I was cross with Tad a few days ago she told me to go and make up wit’ him, she even gave me some money for to treat him wit’. Only . . . Mammy said we would pick cockles for our carryout; will there be enough for Tad’s whole family? There are a real lot of them.’
‘You and me’ll pick like machinery,’ Brogan said promptly. ‘I’ll show you where the cockles hide, how they look when they’re buryin’ themselves, and you’ll soon get the knack. Come on, we’ll have a contest, you and me.’
It’s quite definitely been the best day of me life so far, Polly thought dreamily, as, sandy, damp and satisfied, they made their way to the station to catch the train back into Dublin. She had burned the tops of her feet because they’d caught the sun even through the water, but hadn’t she picked a grand bag of cockles, indeed? Brogan had helped and had explained to Mammy and Daddy that he and Polly wanted to take them home for the Donoghues, and the family had done so well at the picking that there was plenty for everyone at dinner-time.
‘You break ’em open by putting the lip of one cockle between the shell of another and twisting,’ Daddy told them. ‘At home, we’d boil ’em and they’d open themselves, but here on the beach it’s open the shells the hard way and suck ’em out one at a time. Aren’t they the best t’ing out, now? Fresh and sweet – Molly Malone herself didn’t sell better!’
The train was late, but that didn’t matter, not to Polly, at any rate. Daddy, Brogan and Niall were going down to Deegan’s pub when they got home again, and they would bring a jug of porter back to drink with the rest of the cockles and lemonade or ginger beer for the kids.
‘It’s been a real holiday, hasn’t it, Bev?’ Polly said when at last the train chugged in and they scrambled for seats. She sank back on to the hard wood, glad that the train was almost empty going this way, feeling sleepy, sun-kissed, satisfied . . . and knowing that the blue cloth bag of cockles would be divided fairly and half of it given to the Donoghues. ‘Oh, Brogan, will you come wit’ me when I take the cockles round? Only I’m that scared of Tad’s ould feller, and you’re big, he won’t want to knock you about.’
‘He’d better not try,’ Mammy said, overhearing. ‘Or I’ll go round there meself and knock his ugly head off his ugly shoulders, so I will. And you’ll come wit’ me, won’t you?’ she added, nudging Peader, who was half-asleep already.
Peader sat up and gave her a mock salute. ‘Certainly, certainly,’ he said groggily. ‘What was it you said, me little flower?’
Laughter, codding, full stomachs, damp feet in hot plimsolls, sand between the toes . . . what’s best, Polly thought dreamily, sagging against Brogan. Oh, but the memories I’ll keep in me head for the rest of me life, that’s the best. I’ll see it in me head whenever anyone says ‘cockles’ or ‘Booterstown’. What could be better than that?
Tad lay on his back on the straw mattress which he shared with his two younger brothers and his sister Meg, who was eighteen months old. The other boys were already snoring, replete after the best meal they’d had for weeks – cockles, three whole loaves of fresh bread and sufficient butter for all to have a share.
Polly and that Brogan feller had brought the food round. Tad hadn’t met Brogan before, or not that he could recall, but he had liked him. Not just because of the food, either, but because Brogan had been real nice to Mrs Donoghue, and had told Tad they were real sorry they’d not thought to invite him to go along, but that next time they wouldn’t make the same mistake.
So Brogan was all
right.
And Polly was a fine lass, though there was times when he wondered about her. She said some strange things, so she did. She said she could remember being
born,
of all things – said she’d been pulled out of warm darkness, which must be the doctor’s bag, into a room full of dancing firelight and friendly faces. And she said Brogan had pulled her out, and sat her on her mammy’s knee, and her mammy had hugged her and cried.
Only it couldn’t be so, because Tad didn’t know anyone who remembered being born.
Then there was her name. All the other kids in her family had decent Irish names; Polly was an English name. And all the O’Brady chisellers were dark-haired, but Polly had lovely red-gold curls.
She’s a changeling; the fairies brought her and swopped a little O’Brady child for her, and one of these days she’ll simply disappear, Tad told himself. But he didn’t believe it, because sure and didn’t everyone know that changelings were spiteful creatures, who’d trick you soon as look at you? Polly wasn’t like that at all at all, she was gentle and kind – though she could take your feet off at the ankles so she could when she played hurley with a bundle of rags and a piece of plank.
She was only a kid, though. And a girl – girls weren’t supposed to want to play with boys at all, let alone play hurley. But Polly would do anything. She might have curls and big blue eyes, but she could take the football off a bigger and better player, tricksy as a cat on her small feet, and she could run like the wind, hang on to a moving tram by the post on the rear, climb a wall like that same cat, though God knew where she found the footholds . . . she was all right, was Polly O’Brady.
Tad sighed and opened his eyes. They had a nice home, did the O’Bradys. And they talked nice to their mammy, and hardly anyone hit anyone else. All kids fight, everyone knows that, but apart from giving one another a smack from time to time, the O’Bradys never seemed to want to scrap. And Mrs O’Brady was pretty, like a young girl, and she never had black eyes, or too many babies, or a swollen cheek, such as his own mammy tried to hide from time to time.
But there were several earners in the O’Brady family, and he, at ten, was the eldest Donoghue. He did his best to make a living, carrying all the money straight home to his mammy, but it was hard because he was small for his age and there were days when the Donoghues didn’t eat and then he wasn’t much good at any work he happened to pick up.
But Polly liked him. He knew she did.
Above Tad’s head there was a huge yellow-brown fungus growing out of the blackened wall; he quite liked that fungus. It came and went according to the season but right now it was in full fig, with a wavy edge and an odd, rather exciting sort of smell. He lay in the darkness gazing up at it and thinking about Polly, and about the cockles, and the seaside she had talked about with such enthusiasm.
There were scutterings in the dark corners. Black clocks, with their many legs going and their hard-shelled bodies clattering. It took a blow with a hammer to kill them, they were so big and strong. Or you could tread on them with a booted foot, only Tad didn’t have boots – wouldn’t have, until he started work. Unless a miracle happened, of course. Unless his daddy dropped dead and stopped stealing his mammy’s small savings whenever he was out of work.
Tad had rather liked living in Swift’s Alley, and in a way he liked living in Gardiners Lane, too. There weren’t many houses in Gardiners Lane, but there were lots of ruins. The ruins had been houses and shops once, he knew, but they’d simply crumbled away and fallen down, and now they made good play places, if you were careful. And in summer, the wild flowers grew here, the tall pink spires of flowers which Polly said were called rosebay willowherb, the yellow piss-the-beds, the bright, golden-eyed daisies. A lot of kids played in Gardiners Lane but not a lot lived there. The tall, skinny house, leaning sideways, in which the Donoghues lived had been condemned years ago, but that only meant the landlord charged less rent. And filled the house to overflowing when he could.
Still. We’ve got two rooms here, Tad told himself drowsily, as sleep at last began to steal over him. We’d never have run to two rooms in Swift’s Alley, but here there was no one to stop us taking over this room . . . and not many fellers in Dublin can say they’ve got big yellow funguses and trees growing in their bedrooms!
The tree had seeded in the fireplace and sprung up, growing amazingly strongly all things considered. It reached for the sky, ignoring the narrow little window which, in any case, had no glass in it, and Tad knew, because he’d gone out and stood well back and looked as hard as he could, that already a bunch of hopeful leaves had appeared out of the chimney top.
The only time Tad could remember the landlord coming round Mammy had been warned by little Liam. Liam had rushed into the room and grabbed her skirt.
There’s a man, Mammy, lookin’ in the downstairs front,’ he had gabbled. ‘Mrs Donovan said to tell you he’ll be up in five minutes.’
Mammy had said not a word. She had gathered the bigger children round her with a gesture and they had stormed into the second room. It was tiny, cold, damp, and it had not taken them more than two minutes to clear all signs of occupation. They had piled the mattresses up, higgledy piggledy, in the living room, then assembled rather selfconsciously, round the fire. Mammy had started to cut the loaf, Biddy had hauled the baby on to her lap and begun to sing to him, and the other boys had bustled round getting dishes out and pretending to lay the table for a meal.
The landlord knocked, but came straight in after, never giving them a chance to go to the door.
‘I’ve come to have a look at me property,’ the man said gruffly. ‘You’ve just the two rooms?’
‘Just the one,’ Mammy said. ‘As you very well know.’
He stared very hard at her, then gestured around him at the children clustered near the small, sullenly burning fire.
‘And where do all them children sleep? Answer me that!’
‘Here,’ Mammy said. ‘Where else?’
He said nothing but stalked over to the door and flung it wide, then went across the narrow hallway and flung open the door opposite, too.
He looked around the damp little room with the tree growing up in the grate and the big, wavy fungus on the wall. He looked at the pigeon droppings on the floor – pigeons roosted on the roof and the broken tiles let their droppings in – and at the boards to the right of the door which had rotted clear away from the weather in the winter. Then he turned and stared at his audience of Donoghues.
‘You could have this room as well for another bob a week,’ he said in quite a different tone. ‘Not big enough for another family, you see . . . if you don’t take it, I can’t let it.’
Mammy said nothing. She just stared at him, then let her eyes slide past him. To the damp, the rotted boards, the tree, the pigeon droppings, the glassless window.
‘Should we say sixpence?’ The landlord was almost whining now, almost appealing to their better natures! ‘I’m not a rich man, I can’t afford to have a room stand empty.’
‘Mend the roof, and put glass in the window.’ Tad was astonished at the sound of his own voice, he almost looked round to see who had spoken. ‘It might be worth sixpence a week then.’
The landlord stared at him. A long, thin face, set with mean little eyes, a thin nose, a thin, tight mouth turned down at the corners. ‘But you don’t spend money on a house that’s been condemned!’
‘Sure and a decent body wouldn’t ask rent for it, either,’ Tad pointed out. His mammy smiled, but to herself, as though at her own thoughts. ‘Two bob a week me mammy pays for our room, and the kids is always sick ’cos it’s so damp. It even smells of damp.’
The landlord stared, then turned to Mammy.
‘You’ll have trouble with that chiseller one o’ these days so you will,’ he said angrily. ‘Fellers like that get carried home on a door.’