And he was a hero. The fellers who had gone out and brought him back after the train had hit him hadn’t told the whole story when they thought Peader was going to die; the little girl might have been in trouble and there would have been no point. But when they realised that he was going to recover, Trucker Jones blabbed it all over.
‘Peader’s a bleedin’ ’ero,’ he told everyone who would listen. ‘Fellers say ’e didn’t ’ear the train in the fog – as though an old railwayman like Peader wouldn’t ’ave ’ad ’is ears akimbo, strainin’ to ’ear, let alone that ’e’d ’ave
felt
’er approachin’, same as we all do! No, it seems ’e saw this little girl, see, comin’ towards him across the lines. ’E yelled ’er to gerrout the way but she didn’t gerrit, went on a-comin’. So bein’ the sort o’ feller ’e was ’e ran towards ’er, grabbed ’er, threw ’er to safety . . . and left it too late to save ’imself.’
‘Where’s the little girl? Who was she?’ folk asked, but neither Trucker nor his mates could tell them. The men all agreed she was young, light-haired, ragged, with a bit of a shawl round her shoulders and cracked boots several sizes too large on her feet. She had come out of the fog, screamed to them that there had been an accident, led them to the spot whilst telling them breathlessly what had happened . . . and disappeared.
The newspapers got hold of it, of course. It wasn’t only the
Echo
which gave the ‘mystery girl’, as they were soon calling her, banner headlines. The nationals did, too. And when the Dublin papers realised Peader was a local they, too, published the story – with suitable embellishments, naturally.
Deirdre wrote to Polly that she and the boys should be terrible proud of their daddy and Polly wrote back that they were, so. And then Deirdre realised that Peader was actually worrying about that little girl.
‘But, me darlin’, you saved her life, everyone knows that,’ she said gently, walking beside him in the grounds of the convalescent home to which he had been sent. ‘You can’t doubt that . . . and what else could you have done?’
Peader sighed. ‘I’d have fed her,’ he said, in the new slow, careful voice which had come to him after the accident. ‘I’d feed ’em all, if I could, all the little gorls an’ the chisellers an’ the babes in arms who don’t get enough to eat.’
Deirdre squeezed his arm. ‘So would I, me darlin’, so would I,’ she agreed. ‘And when the little girl comes forward, we’ll see her right.’ She smiled up into his face, her eyes unshadowed now. ‘Brogan’s coming to visit you this evening; you’ll like that!’
Peader loved strolling with Brogan in the grounds of the convalescent home. He knew, now, that he was going to be offered a level crossing with a little house attached, that he would man the crossing, open and close the gates . . . it sounded idyllic. And there was a garden. Peader knew nothing about gardening but wasn’t Brogan the expert there? Since he’d been in the convalescent home, furthermore, Peader had done a lot of talking to the gardeners and felt he was beginning to learn. He found he couldn’t wait to get his hands on that garden . . . oh, the cabbage he would grow there, the magnificent crops of potatoes, the fine carrots and onions!
So naturally he was ready and waiting that evening, standing by the side door through which his son usually came. He would be out in a few days, going home to Dublin for a while. There, he would arrange for their possessions to be shipped to Liverpool. They would say goodbye to their friends and neighbours, walk out of the house in Swift’s Alley, and journey back to England to take up his new job.
But he was worried about Polly. To bring her back here . . . was it asking for trouble? He knew what Polly meant to Deirdre and to the rest of them as well. He would never forgive himself if, by bringing her back, they lost her.
But it wasn’t likely, was it? Deirdre knew about Polly’s past, that her mother had not loved her children, that her father was a brute and a bully. She knew about Jess, too, and how, after Jess’s death, Peader and Brogan had decided that bringing the baby back to Ireland was the only safe course. She had never questioned it – why should she? She knew her men, knew they wouldn’t have lied to her.
And weren’t we right? Peader reminded himself stoutly now. Decent food, fresh air and lots of love had turned his little girl into a beauty – if she’d been left in Liverpool, to drag herself up as best she could, Peader was sure she would look very different, now.
And he wanted to ask Brogan about the girl who had been pushed to safety from under the wheels of the train. For one confused moment, when he’d come round in hospital and heard Deirdre reciting the poem about angels which his children loved, he had thought that perhaps the girl on the tracks had been an angel. But he knew it wasn’t so, of course. He could still feel the thin shoulders of her against the calloused palms of his hands, still feel the slight weight of her. And she wasn’t a ghost, either, even though she seemed to have disappeared so completely. She was just another little stray cat of a child, unloved, uncherished, searching for the means to continue what passed for her life.
Brogan would find her, though, if anyone could. Brogan was kind, generous-spirited; a broth of a boy in fact. He shouldered burdens with never a frown, undertook anything asked of him, seldom argued, never complained. So if he, Peader, explained how important it was to him to find that scrawny little girl, asked Brogan to keep an eye out when he was anywhere near the marshalling yards, then there was a good chance his boy would come across her in the fullness of time.
Because once they were back from Ireland, the rest of the family wouldn’t be seeing much of the city of Liverpool again. It would be straight out on to the Wirral, to their new home, and they would find out how country living suited them.
Peader gave a big, contented grin, he couldn’t help himself. Just the thought of having all that loveliness around him brought his wonderful luck to mind and made him smile. Of course he would not be unscathed; he would walk with a stick for the rest of his life, feel pain from some of his wounds, never be able to do really heavy work. But what did that matter, when all was said and done? He could man his crossing, open and close his gate . . . and dig his garden, plant and hoe, weed and sow. What more could a man ask?
Brogan left the convalescent home that evening in a thoughtful frame of mind. That young girl – wasn’t it an odd coincidence, now, that there had been two extremely dangerous accidents on the rails just there, both involving a young girl? When Jess Carbery had been killed there had been no one near enough to save her, but this time, his daddy had acted fast and the child had escaped unscathed.
Was
she a Carbery? She couldn’t possibly be, the family seemed to have disappeared. And it was hard, now, to remember exactly what Jess had talked about that evening in the draughty little shed so long ago. But she had mentioned another sister, a child, then, of three or four. Had she used her name? But that he truly could not remember, and in any event, since he had no idea what the child was called whose life had been saved by his daddy, remembering would do very little good.
And even if she was a Carbery, did it really matter, make any difference? His daddy had been shocked and distressed by the skinny waif wandering the railway and had wanted to help her no matter what her name was. So do I, Brogan told himself quickly. I want to help her, too. But if she is the missing Carbery daughter, wouldn’t that be grand, now? The fellers say Jess haunts the track, searching for her little sister, but if she’s in Heaven then she knows full well that the sister we’ve rechristened Polly is safer, and happier, with us than she ever could have been with her own family.
But if Jess was searching for the other sister and not Polly at all, it would make a sort of sense. She would be anxious about Grace, the child she’d left at home on that snowy Christmas Day. Now look at that, Brogan told himself, when you don’t try sure and doesn’t the name pop into your head as though it had never been forgot? Of course she was Grace, I remember now.
He had walked out of the convalescent home grounds and now he set off along the quiet and dusty roadway, meaning to head for civilisation and a tram stop, but it was such a nice evening that he thought he’d walk, instead. He reached the top of Beaconsfield Road, hesitated, then turned down it. He could pick up a tram on the main road, but the gardens and houses down here were marvellous, he often went this way after he’d left his father. And it was a perfect late summer evening, with sweet gusts of perfume blowing to him on the breeze and the birds singing their hearts out as the sun sank in the sky.
Brogan walked slowly, looking long and keenly into each garden as he passed. The convalescent home had once been a manor house of some description and the grounds were tended with care, but some of these houses had gardens almost unbelievable in their beauty. Brogan lingered more than ever, gazing at smooth lawns, flower-beds rich with roses, wisteria clambering over grey stone or russet brick, and of course at the wonders he could only guess at because they were imprisoned behind the glittering walls of glasshouses or conservatories.
But presently, about halfway down the hill – for Beaconsfield Road was on a steepish hill – he came to a house which was not surrounded by an impeccable garden. It was overgrown; fancy that! There was a tennis lawn with grass almost knee-high, weed-choked flower-beds and a gravel frontage which was not only weedy, it was also covered with piles of bricks, a concrete mixer, a great many long planks of wood and assorted tools connected with the building trade.
It’s being rebuilt, or altered, at any rate, Brogan thought to himself, stopping to stare. It’s going to be something different – I wonder what? And I wonder whether they’d be glad of a chap to help with the garden, in the evenings and on his days off? He missed his Crewe plot and Mrs Burt, kind though she was, could not conjure a garden out of thin air for him to help her with. She had a smelly little back yard where the only things which flourished were bits of old bicycles and a couple of washing lines. Allotments, though they did exist in the city, were all full and were passed on, Brogan gathered, from father to son. So if these people really could do with help, Brogan was the feller for them.
Pity he didn’t know their name, though. But as he was about to pass regretfully on, he glanced at the big stone gateposts.
Strawberry Field
the legend on the gatepost ran. Brogan nodded to himself and committed it to memory, then walked on, a little faster now. Tomorrow he would begin to put out feelers to find the little girl his father felt he had lost. He would speak to the gangs who worked the marshalling yard because, like Peader, he suspected that the kid probably hung around there, hoping for scraps of some sort, using the sheds for shelter. And if that failed he could go round the schools when he had a couple of hours off, see whether he could find out from teachers or pupils if the ‘mystery girl’ was known to them. And then he could try churches, priests, parks and places of entertainment beloved of kids – the Saturday rush for example.
I’ll find her in the end, Brogan told himself. I’ll start tomorrow.
By the time September came round, Sara was beginning to see light out at the new children’s home. She was a small cog in a fairly big wheel, but
how
she enjoyed herself! She had not realised how much she had taken in, without realising it, about the running of a large house and larger garden, and now, at last, such knowledge came in useful.
‘Leave the garden surrounding the house itself until last,’ she advised. ‘Because whilst the alterations are going on it will only get trampled flat anyway. For now, let’s put all our efforts into getting the house right – and into keeping the vegetable garden and the greenhouses producing. That way, we’ll have a reasonable amount of fresh fruit and vegetables when the children come in.’
She was learning a lot, too – more than she taught, definitely. She learned how to plan rooms in which children can happily spend their days and nights, to make nurseries for very young children, bedrooms for others, playrooms, classrooms, sitting rooms – in fact she began to learn how to plan a house in which children and adults may live happily together.
She was still not living in, which was a blessing in a way, since her grandmother was becoming increasingly frail, even Sara’s prejudiced eye could see it. Mrs Prescott enjoyed living in Florence Street and found it easy to get to the shops, but she went out less and less and relied more and more on Sara and Clarrie. However, she had become a cinema enthusiast and once a week a neighbour wheeled her round to the Victoria Picture Palace where she sampled everything they had on offer – comedies, horror, thrillers, cowboy and Indian films.
‘You should come wi’ me from time to time, queen,’ she told her granddaughter. ‘For one thing it takes you out of yourself, and for another, it entertains you. What’s wrong wi’ that, eh?’
Sara said politely that she was sure there was nothing wrong with that, and continued to spend her evenings planning, reading, or preparing for the coming day, apart from when she was on soup kitchen duty, or taking the
War Cry
round the pubs, of course. Because she was so absorbed in her work, indeed, even her Saturdays, once an oasis of rest and pleasure, became simply another day in which to plot and plan.
‘We could do so many things, if we’d a mind,’ Mrs Prescott said persuasively one fine evening in August when the breeze was mild and the air coming through the window sweet. ‘There’s the theatre, art galleries, all sorts. If you had more spare time, queen, we could get about a bit. And there’s Sat’day night dances . . . you could wheel me in perched on me chair and I could watch all the gallivanting. My, I’d enjoy that.’