Polly sighed impatiently. ‘What an eejit you are, Ivan O’Brady! You only see God when you die an’ go to heaven. If you saw somethin’ now ’twas an angel so it was.’
‘Oh,’ said Ivan, considering this. ‘Well, I seed an angel, then. Did you see ’um, Polly?’
‘I seen me own guardian angel,’ Polly said loftily. She did not intend to be bettered in holiness by a child of three! ‘More than once I’ve seen her. She takes good care of me, so she does.’
‘A girl angel? There ain’t no such thing as a girl angel,’ Bevin put in loftily. ‘Angels are big, hefty fellers wit’ t’umpin’ great wings. You wouldn’t catch a puny weak girl carryin’ wings like that – she’d founder at the first flap.’
‘My guardian angel doesn’t have wings,’ Polly said at once, ruffling up like an angry turkey cock. ‘My guardian angel doesn’t need wings, she’s got a shawl thing . . . she spreads it out like this . . .’ she held out the skirts of her white confirmation dress,‘. . . and she can go anywhere in no time at all at all. She’s me friend, my angel.’
‘Oh, yeah? She sounds a quare ould wan to me,’ Bevin said nastily. Holiness in such enormous quantities, Polly concluded, had been a bit much for her older brother. ‘What’s her name, then, Poll, if you’re such pals?’
‘Jess,’ Polly said without a second’s hesitation. Her mother stopped short so suddenly that Polly, lagging behind, bumped into the backs of her legs. ‘That’s her name, Jess.’
‘Angels aren’t called Jess,’ the irrepressible Bevin said jeeringly. ‘Are they, Mammy? Angels are called Gabriel, or – or Saint Something, not just Jess.’
‘Don’t argue about such things, Bev,’ Mammy said, beginning to walk forward again. ‘Anyone want to pop in to the chipper on our way home? I’ll stand you all one and ones, for a treat.’
And with the happy prospect of a fish and chip supper, angels were forgotten, for the moment at least.
Sara did not have the pleasure of telling Miss Bateman what to do with her job quite as soon as she would have liked, but the opportunity came at last, though not before Sara had received the promised pay-rise.
As Miss Bateman had grudgingly promised, in July Sara’s money was increased to fourteen and sixpence and things became a little easier.
‘We’re fine now, for the summer, but when winter comes we’ll be scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel again,’ Gran said. ‘Still, you’ve done awful well, Sara love. There’s not many as bring in fourteen and six every Friday.’
Sara agreed that she was lucky, but she didn’t feel it. She felt ill-used. She had tried and tried to get another job with absolutely no success. She had started evening classes but no employer wanted a young woman of nineteen who had only experienced evening classes and shop work. They could not offer her the sort of money they would offer a beginner, kind employer after kind employer told her. When you’ve got some office experience under your belt . . .
Yet when her chance came she did not, at first, recognise it.
She was at the Barracks, taking a Sunday school class because Miss Boote was otherwise engaged. It was a large class and the children were on their school holidays so they were bored, weary of the bad weather – it had rained all week – and consequently difficult to handle. They were poor children from the many slums in the area, but they were by no means lacking in spirit, or indeed, in inventive devilry, and Sara had already been sworn at and had a small offender standing in the corner from whence, whenever he thought her attention was elsewhere, he would turn round for a second, tongue hanging out like a Dix’s carpet, and then turn back to face the wall once more, shaking with laughter.
‘Have you finished your silent reading? Good, then we’ll play a game,’ Sara said presently, struck by a brainwave. ‘It’s a sort of hide and seek, only you won’t have to leave this room. I used to play it when I was your age.’ She took a piece of chalk and went over to the small blackboard, then after some thought, wrote the word ‘Barracks’ on the board.
‘See that word? Well, it says “Barracks”, doesn’t it? But hiding inside that eight-letter word there are others, and you must find them and tell me how many words you think there are. The winner gets to choose the next long word. Do you understand?’
They understood and looked bored. They don’t want to stretch their brains, Sara thought despairingly, they want to stretch their legs and their arms – they want a
real
game. But it’s raining cats and dogs out there, I can’t possibly let them play real hide and seek – this will have to do.
‘Good. Then everyone who wins a round gets to write the next word on the board, and gets some dolly mixtures. I’ll have to buy them on my way home, but . . . no, I’ve a better idea. The first one of you to get five points can run a message for me, down to Demarco’s, and buy me the sweeties. Now come on, how many little words can you see in “Barracks”?’
A hand went up; slowly.
‘Yes, Mark?’
‘I see two, Miss.’
Another hand promptly began to wave.
‘Three Miss, three if you count the “s” as one!’
‘All right, Albert, give us your three.’
‘Bar, Miss, like they ’ave in pubs, an’ rack, like a clo’es rack, an’ racks, more’n one rack.’
The kids laughed. They sat up straighter, their interest caught.
‘What’s the longest word you know, Albert? Because you have to write a good, long word on the board now.’
‘Salvation, Miss . . . I can spell it, an’ all.’
‘Oy, Albert, wharrabout Colonel? Can you spell that, eh?’
‘He’s doing Salvation . . . come along, Albert, here’s the chalk.’
Albert speedily got the necessary points and was despatched for dolly mixtures, these being the smallest sweets Sara could think of and thus the easiest to divide, and the game changed, at the suggestion of the small boy who had been in the corner for telling Miss Cordwainer that he would listen if he bleedin’ well felt like it and not ’cos she told him to.
‘If you lerrus use the letters in a different order, we could make an awful lorra words,’ he said excitedly. ‘Like “Carpet”, what we only got three out of, like . . . if we’d changed the
order
o’ the letters we could of made tea, pea, cat, crap . . . all sorts.’
Sara looked at him suspiciously; was he being rude again? But he was beaming at her, and she saw that he had a cheeky, intelligent little face and also that he was enjoying the challenge of using his mind, of sorting out the letters in a given word to form others.
‘Well done, Andrew. Anyone else want to have a go?’
They were cautious about it, but after half an hour the room rang with shouts as the children outdid each other, even the duller children being able to offer one or two suggestions once they understood the game.
And in the middle of this, a woman whom Sara had seen in church but never spoken to walked into the room.
‘Miss Boote . . . oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Cordwainer, I didn’t realise you were taking this class. Is everything all right?’ She lowered her voice, moving nearer to Sara as she did so. ‘It was the noise . . . I know what these children can be like, they aren’t an easy class, and I thought poor Miss Boote might be glad of a third party, so in I came . . . but you all look very happy, I must say.’
‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant,’ Sara said, feeling her cheeks warming. ‘But it isn’t a game you can play quietly . . . we’re word-making.’
The lieutenant turned and looked at the blackboard with its scribbled words, the main one above, the smaller ones below. She looked back at Sara, brows rising.
‘These children are playing at word-making? Or are you doing the work for them?’
‘No, indeed,’ Sara said immediately. ‘Every one of the small words has been suggested and written in by a pupil. And the latest main word, ‘Songster’, was Biddy Callan’s.’
‘
Biddy
? But I didn’t think she could read or write,’ the lieutenant hissed. ‘She’s the youngest of twelve, you know, and . . .’
‘She may not be able to read or write, but she knew the word “Songster” and she can make little words from big ones by the sounds,’ Sara explained. ‘The girl sitting next to her, Annie, she helps, but Biddy does most of the work, really she does. Why don’t you stay and watch for a moment?’
Lieutenant Marks stayed and the children, as children will, played up to this unexpected audience by giving of their best. One or two of the suggestions were a little near the knuckle but Sara passed over them and to her relief, though the lieutenant’s eyes twinkled, she, too, pretended to notice nothing.
When another officer came in to say that Sunday school was over for the day and would the children like milk and biscuits before they left, he found the children in great form, sharing out a bag of dolly mixtures whilst Sara and the lieutenant chatted.
‘I’m impressed, Miss Cordwainer,’ the officer told her. ‘These are difficult children, and you’ve kept their attention and kept them happily employed for two whole hours on a wet Sunday afternoon.’
‘I’ve just said the same,’ the lieutenant said, smilling. ‘In fact I’ve just asked Miss Cordwainer if she would consider working with children. In a paid position, I mean.’
‘And the upshot of it is,’ Sara told her grandmother jubilantly when she got home that night, ‘that Miss Marks has offered me a job, teaching! She runs a small school in the Walton Road area – it is fee-paying, but the Army sponsors most of the children – and she needs someone to teach the little ones, the children of five to around seven. She and her sister teach the older kids,’ she added. ‘Oh, Gran, what do you think?’
‘It sounds very nice indeed, queen, far better than that laundry. But what ’ud they pay you, each week? I wish it didn’t matter, but it does.’
‘The salary is thirty-eight shillings a week,’ Sara said, wide-eyed. ‘It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, it’s what teachers are paid. And if I work hard and become qualified, I’ll get more!’
‘Aye, but you aren’t qualified,’ her grandmother pointed out. ‘What are the chances of gettin’ qualifications, queen?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But I got my higher school certificate, or the equivalent, in Switzerland so Miss Marks is going to see what she can do. I believe there are teaching courses; if I could save up enough and go to college and pass the exams then I should be able to teach anywhere.’
Mrs Prescott had been sitting in the chair by the fire, shelling peas into an enamel colander, now she put the peas on the hearthrug and the colander on the nearest chair and held out her arms.
‘Come and give your gran a big kiss,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you, love! To leave that miserable laundry, and to gerra job where you’ll be usin’ your intelligence . . . it’s what I’ve always wanted for you.’
‘It’s a dream come true,’ Sara admitted. ‘And tomorrow I’m going over to the offices to have a word with Miss Bateman!’
Time passes, time passes, Brogan told himself, sitting like a gentleman in a third-class carriage, bound for Liverpool. It’s gettin’ on for a year since I was last in the city and it’s taken that long for me to want to go back. But it was true; time does not only pass, it heals, too. By March, Brogan had been able to admit that Sara had a perfect right to fall in love with a soldier if she so wished. By June, when his mammy’s letters were full of this Eucharistic Congress and how beautiful Polly had looked in her communion veil, he had also been able to see that since he had never given Sara the faintest inkling of his own feelings, she could not possibly be expected to take him into account at all, far less consult him before getting herself a feller.
By the end of October, when the hunger marchers were fighting the London bobbies and Ramsay MacDonald was ‘urgently reviewing’ the government’s policies on unemployment, he was able to tell himself frankly that he simply could not be in love with a girl he’d met, at most, half-a-dozen times, most of the meetings being between himself, a young man, and the child she had been then.
And if, by some freak chance, he had been in love, then he had better pick himself up by the scruff of the neck and chuck himself out of love, give other girls a glance now and then.
So when Peader had said he was going back to Ireland for Christmas this year and invited Brogan to join him, Brogan decided he would, and that he’d go up to Liverpool a couple of days early. He hardly ever used the holiday to which he was entitled, why not ask for some time off now?
He did, and it was granted. Brogan’s employers admired his dogged hard work, his handling of the enormous engines he drove, his even temper and the fact that, like his father, he rarely drank.
‘Most railmen drink; ’tis the only relief from the tarble thirst you get from workin’ in the engine cabs, and it eases the strain on your muscles when you’ve been luggin’ great bundles an’ boxes o’ goods off the trucks,’ one of the other men said to Brogan. ‘Why not you, Brog?’
‘Sure, I do drink,’ Brogan had protested. ‘But not the hard stuff. I’ll have a glass of porter now and then . . . but I’m not wedded to the drink, like some of youse.’
And this time, maybe I’ll go round to Snowdrop Street and get her out of me system once and for all, Brogan told himself as the train chugged nearer and nearer to its destination. Maybe I’ll greet her as a friend, meet her young man, and get her off me mind and out of me heart, for until I do, I won’t look at anyone else and that’s God’s truth.