‘You’ll die within six months; I know,’ Polly sighed. ‘And why the old terror’s got a comb, when everyone goes on about her draggly grey hair, all knots, is more than I can make out.’
‘She’s a woman, that’s why. Women like to think they’re beautiful even when they’re not,’ Tad said. ‘I ’spec’ the old banshee thinks all the fellers admire her, draggly hair an’ all.’
They were laughing and kidding now, quite loudly, all thoughts of banshees and ghosts forgotten for the moment, at least. The second house was, furthermore, even more a ruin than the first. It was little more than half-walls, and in summer the grass and wild flowers ran riot over its fallen bricks. Now, the two children went over to it, climbed the lowest of the walls, and stared critically around them.
‘Nothin’ here. Nor anyone, either,’ Tad said after a brief inspection. ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this, Poll. Let’s go to your place. Your mammy might be roastin’ chestnuts.’
‘All right,’ Polly agreed. She, too, was tired of the tricky moonlight and the cold. ‘Which way’ll we go?’
It was possible for two agile – and wicked – children intent on taking a short cut between Gardiners Lane and Swift’s Alley to scramble their way over walls and between tenement blocks, but tonight Polly decided she would rather go the long way round. Climbing a wall silvered by moonlight and jumping into the thick ink-black dark the other side meant one could end up with broken knees or worse.
‘Let’s go along Francis Street,’ she said therefore. ‘The stalls will be open till midnight – we might get a bargain.’
‘With what?’ Tad asked. ‘Have you got any money, then?’
‘Not a farden,’ Polly assured him. ‘I forgot. But someone might
give
us something they didn’t want or couldn’t sell. You never know. Besides, it’ll be nice to have the gaslights; sort of warming.’
Tad agreed, so the two of them set off along the dark, deserted length of Gardiners Lane and presently emerged into the hustle and bustle of Francis Street, with the gaslights hissing and dispensing their strong white light on the vivid scene and the stallholders shouting their wares, wishing customers a merry Christmas and heckling passersby to buy their holly, mistletoe, oranges, wooden engines, rosy apples.
But the two children weren’t on Francis Street long for they took the first left turn they reached and were soon in the lobby of the O’Bradys’ tenement block.
‘Come on up,’ Polly urged Tad, groping across to the stairs, for the place was unlit and windowless, save for a tiny cracked glass pane in the door. ‘If Mammy isn’t roastin’ nuts I’ll get some pennies and we’ll go and buy some.’
‘Oh well, awright then,’ Tad said with a reluctance which Polly knew very well was assumed. Poor Tad seldom had luxuries such as roasted chestnuts! ‘Only I’d best not be long – me mammy may need me.’
Up the stairs they went but halfway up them someone opened a door on the landing above and light flooded out, golden lamplight, looking warm and inviting.
Polly paused, for someone was coming down the stairs towards them. She was a young girl of thirteen or fourteen with light-coloured hair, and she was smiling at them. It was a rather sweet smile, Polly thought, returning it.
‘Your mammy must have heard us comin’ up,’ Tad said in Polly’s ear. He passed her, then turned to grab her hand. ‘Come on – you’re tired, I’ll give you a heave.’
‘Mammy didn’t hear us comin’,’ Polly observed scornfully. ‘Don’t you use your intelligence, Tad Donoghue? ’Tis the lady here . . . Mammy opened up to let her out.’
Tad looked up the stairs, then down them. ‘Which lady?’
‘Why, the one . . .’ Polly stopped short. ‘Sure and she passed us, Tad, and went on down. Don’t say you didn’t see her?’
‘I did not. And nor did you, Polly O’Brady,’ Tad said roundly. ‘Because there was no lady, that’s why, and we’d best hurry or your mammy will close the door and we’ll be in the dark again.’
‘But I
did
see her, truly I did, Tad,’ Polly panted, hurrying up the stairs in her friend’s wake. ‘She was lookin’ right at us. She had light-brown hair an’ a raggedy shawl thing, and bare feet . . . and a lovely, friendly sort of smile.’
They reached the landing and Tad pushed Polly ahead of him into the O’Brady living room.
‘Hello, Mrs O’Brady,’ he said. ‘It’s a cold evening, out . . . you’ve had a visitor, have you?’
Mrs O’Brady had a big shovel in her hand; she had just withdrawn it from under the hot coals and the nuts smoked black and sweet on it. She turned to smile at the two of them, but shook her head in answer to Tad’s question.
‘Visitor? No, we’ve had no visitor. I heard you two talkin’ as you came into the lobby, so I opened the door to give you some light on the stairs.’ She turned to her sons, squatting on the hearthrug with hopeful eyes fixed on the chestnuts. ‘Go and get some salt, Bevin,’ she ordered. ‘Salt is great wit’ hot chestnuts.’
‘Told you so,’ Tad said triumphantly. ‘There wasn’t no woman, Polly, you imagined it.’
‘Oh! Well, perhaps she came from one of the upper floors,’ Polly suggested. ‘She was only a girl, Mammy, thirteen or fourteen I suppose, and she had a raggedy shawl on, and bare feet. Or it may not have been a shawl.’
‘Was it one of the poor unfortunates?’ Mammy said, lifting nuts off the shovel and gasping as they burned her finger-ends. She handed them round to the boys, then loaded the shovel afresh and pushed it back into the coals. The girls she alluded to were country girls who had come to Dublin to work in the houses of the rich and become pregnant, usually by the master of the house. When they were turned out they had to sell their favours or starve, for they had no means of returning from whence they came and in any event, knew their parents would not have them back in such a condition. The people of the Dublin tenements felt great pity for such unfortunates, and helped them when they could and never blamed them for plying the only trade they knew. ‘If one of those girls . . .’ she paused delicately. ‘If one of them had business in the block they might come in for a while, I suppose. It might have been one of them.’
‘No, it wasn’t an unfortunate,’ Polly said at once. ‘Sure an’ don’t I know most of ’em by sight? But this girl wasn’t like that. I could tell. She wasn’t old enough, I don’t think.’ Polly paused, uncertain how to convince. Could she say that the unfortunate girls were rarely that shabby, that dirty? And they didn’t have calm, serene smiles. ‘She was more like a sort of angel,’ she said apologetically. ‘I know she wasn’t an angel of course, but she had that sort of look.’
Tad guffawed, but Polly’s mammy gave her a curious glance. ‘And you say she was thin and dirty, with a shawl round her shoulders and bare feet? Yet she had the face of an angel?’
Tad guffawed again and Polly’s mammy gave him a handful of nuts so hot that he spilt them and had to scrabble about on the rug to pick them up. Polly gave the nuts a kick, scattering them still further. ‘Hold your noise, you!’ she said rudely. ‘He telled me the banshee was shoutin’, Mammy, and it was just on old tom-cat.’
Her mother smiled. ‘Want some nuts, alanna? Well, I can’t answer your question because I don’t know who the girl was, the poor darlin’. Eh, bare feet on such a night – Christmas Eve, too!’
‘She wasn’t cold,’ Polly said, then looked surprised. Why was she so certain? No one person could ever judge the coldness or misery of another, surely she must know that?
‘She was a ghost!’ Tad shouted suddenly, then crackled the burnt shell off a nut and pushed it into Polly’s indignantly opening mouth. ‘G’wan, Poll, you wanted to see a ghost an’ now you’ve seen one!’
Polly started to shake her head, quite prepared to give Tad a thump for his mockery, but her mother put a hand on her, quieting her.
‘Not a ghost; an angel,’ she said quietly. ‘A Christmas angel, who can’t be seen the rest of the year, but becomes visible for a few moments on the eve of the Christ child’s birth.’ She dropped a kiss on her daughter’s smooth brow. ‘You’re a very lucky girl, alanna,’ she said lightly, but with an underlying seriousness which Polly could hear even if Tad could not. ‘To see such a one. Good will come of it.’
‘I’ve seen me guardian angel,’ Polly said, awed. She knew it was true, too, truer than Tad’s old banshee. ‘She had a sweet face, Mammy.’
‘Well, there you are then,’ Mammy said, jiffling the shovel to make the nuts turn themselves over. ‘More nuts, boys.’
And then, before Tad could scoff or Polly question, she turned the conversation to Christmas presents, to the goose which the baker on Francis Street was cooking for them, to the Mass which they would attend next morning. And she gave each child hot milk with a drop of spirit in it and told Tad he could sleep on the sofa if he wanted to stay the night. But he said he’d best be getting back since his mammy might need him, and made his escape.
Polly went off to bed glowing with expectation and happiness. She had seen her guardian angel, not many people could say that, and it was nearly Christmas Day!
Chapter Nine
The first Christmas that Sara spent at Snowdrop Street was like no other Christmas she had ever known. Despite her efforts she was not in a permanent job – not a proper one, that was. But at least she was earning money.
She had talked to Miss Boote as soon as she could about her chances of getting a job – any sort of job, because once the tiny allowance from the Cordwainers had been cut off, it was pointless trying to take Mr Esmond’s advice about training. There was simply no money available for such a thing.
‘I could pawn something, I suppose,’ her grandmother had said, looking undecidedly around her neat living room. ‘I’ve never done it before, but then I’ve never been desperate. Oh, queen, I feel so helpless! I’m too old to earn and that’s a fact, and yet for you to take some dreadful little job with no prospects seems so wrong! There must be some way of getting enough money to see you through secretarial school – I wonder whether I might sell some bits and bobs?’
‘You’re pawning nothing and you’re selling nothing,’ Sara assured her grandmother firmly. ‘There must be a way round it; I’m going to talk to Miss Boote as soon as she comes in tonight.’
Miss Boote, practical as ever, had a solution, of sorts.
‘Evening classes,’ she said firmly. ‘Anyone can better theirselves at evening classes. And in the meantime, what’s wrong wi’ shop work?’
‘It doesn’t pay as well, does it?’ Sara asked rather cautiously. She did not fancy standing behind a counter all day, but told herself that needs must. If it was all she could get then she would have to try shop work.
‘It doesn’t pay badly, not if you go for a saleslady in one of the big stores,’ Miss Boote had assured her. ‘And you’ve got the right accent, the right looks . . . and they’ll give you a sort of uniform – black dress and shoes, that sort of thing. I’m not sayin’ it’s ideal, but I am sayin’ it’s worth considering.’
She was right and Sara knew it, so she set about lowering her sights a little and six weeks before Christmas was taken on by Barringtons department store, in their glove and accessory department.
‘It’s sixteen shillings, which is very good for a beginner,’ Sara told her grandmother excitedly as she came into the living room and stripped off her washleather gloves. ‘I’ll be handling some awfully pretty stuff, too . . . and the other girl, Miss Warrender, seems really nice.’
Miss Warrender was nice, and so was the floor walker, Mr Bratby. He took Sara to lunch one day and told her she had the makings of a first-rate saleslady, and Miss Warrender and she giggled all afternoon about it.
‘He’ll be sneakin’ up to you in the staff room and pinchin’ your bum next,’ Miss Warrender said. ‘He’s sweet on you, I can tell.’
‘Oh, Miss Warrender, you’re crazy. He’s forty if he’s a day and married with three kids,’ Sara said. She felt so
young
, chattering to Miss Warrender, running to and fro at the customers’ behest, being sent on errands by the senior staff. It was like being back at school again, with prefects and teachers telling you what to do and your friends to giggle with.
But it was too good to last. She had been minding her own business one icy morning in early December, cleaning the glass top and sides of the big display case, when she heard a young man addressing her fellow assistant. Men didn’t frequent the glove department as a rule, so being only human, Sara turned round and looked.
Miss Warrender was serving a tall young man with dark hair, wearing a light-brown mackintosh and a darker brown trilby hat. From where she was standing it was difficult to see his face so Sara moved round as unobtrusively as she could and got behind the main counter once more. She was beginning to polish the glove-drawers whilst still concentrating on the customer, when a voice said, ‘It’s a pair of dark-brown gloves I’m searching for, Miss. Size . . . oh, I’m not too sure about size. My mama’s hands are very slender, similar to . . .’
He glanced at Miss Warrender’s hands, which could have been described as chunky, and then, helplessly, across at Sara, polishing away. He brightened. ‘Similar to that young lady’s, I suppose.’
It was Alan Hepworth – and he was looking at her hands, completely ignoring the rest of her. Sara bridled, then sighed and returned to her work. She should have expected it – she was a shop assistant, not a woman at all, now. But Mr Hepworth was talking.