But where to go? Jess looked around her. The snow was falling thickly but surely there must be a suitable place where she could make up some food for the baby and feed her, undisturbed? Snowdrop Street was no good, someone might spot her and take the food off her, or her da might stagger down the road and try to bash her brains out just because she was the eldest. But there was always the marshalling yard.
Jess looked across Commercial Road, towards the railway lines. There were a great many buildings there, all different. Many a time, when she’d been younger, she’d played around in the sheds which the workmen used as shelters from the weather, somewhere to eat their carryout. Surely she could find somewhere where she would be sufficiently sheltered to feed the child? Once Mollie’s small belly was full and she’d had a bite herself she would take the rest of the food home, no problem. Grace might be persuaded to eat a currant bun soaked in milk, that was soft and easy enough. And I might have the second bun meself, Jess thought with watering mouth. Eldest children, she knew from bitter experience, make do with the leftovers, they don’t often feast on currant buns. Accordingly, Jess hurried across Commercial Road, heading for the tiny cabins where the men working on the lines congregated at dinner-times. Someone would be about, but she might find one of the cabins empty.
In her arms, Mollie wriggled. She was such a pretty baby, but she was usually hungry, same as all the kids were. Jess sighed and speeded up a bit.
‘Not long now, Mollie-o,’ she said comfortingly, giving the warm bundle which was her baby sister a hug. ‘Jess’s goin’ to give you bread ’n’ milk – what about that, eh?’
Mollie gurgled. ‘Jess, Jess, Jess,’ she chanted beneath the blanket. ‘Milla-milla, Jess milla-milla.’
‘That’s it,’ Jess said stoutly. She wriggled through a hole in the fence and began to cross the great swathe of wet and shining lines. ‘Bread an’ milk for you, my little love, bread and milk for Jess’s best girl.’
The first hut she approached was full of men; she would have backed away but one of them hailed her.
‘What are you doin’ round here, alanna?’ one of the navvies asked curiously, in a strong Irish accent. ‘If you’re after nickin’ coal you’re in the wrong place. What’s that under your shawl, child?’
‘It’s not a shawl, it’s a cut-down jacket, and it’s me sister under it,’ Jess said, her teeth chattering. ‘I’m not tryin’ to nick anything either, honest to God, I just want somewhere to feed the littl’un – I got food . . . see?’
She held up the soggy paper bag which contained the loaves, and lifted the bully beef tin to show that, too. Drawing closer to the cabin she saw that it was lit by a coke burner and that, Christmas Day or no Christmas Day, the men were all in their working clothes.
‘Sure and she’s speakin’ no more than the trut’,’ another man put in. He gestured to an empty drum standing near the stove. ‘Siddown, lass. You’re welcome to a warm by the fire, you an’ the babby.’
By now, Jess was so cold that warming up would be painful, she knew, yet she could not resist the lure of the coke stove. She crept nearer . . . oh, the warmth was bliss, sheer bliss. And it was so nice to see friendly faces around her, too!
‘Thanks very much,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll just break up some o’ this bread into the milk . . . is it awright to put the littl’un down?’
‘She’s a real little beauty; a dote,’ one of the men declared. ‘Reminds me of my little Eilis, back home in County Cork.’ He held out a huge, calloused hand to the baby. ‘What do they call you, alanna?’
‘She’s Mollie,’ Jess said. Her fingers were still so cold that she could not feel them and this was not helping her to break into the loaf of bread. The man who had spoken gave an exclamation and took the loaf from her. He produced a clasp knife from his pocket and began, very handily Jess thought, to carve into the bread. As he cut he dropped the pieces into the milk, then stood the tin down by the stove.
‘There! Leave it a minute to warm, then Mollie can have a good meal so she can.’ He turned to Jess, giving her a rueful smile. ‘You look as though you could do with a bite yourself, alanna. What’s your name and where do you live? You should be in wit’ your mammy and daddy on a day like this, what with the snow and the cold.’
‘I’m Jess,’ Jess admitted rather cautiously. These men – there were four of them – seemed well-intentioned enough but you could never tell. They might tell the scuffers that she was on railway property, send them round to the house, and then Mam would screech at her and Da would thump . . . no, you never told adults the whole truth, not if you were wise.
‘And where do you live?’ the questioner this time was younger than the rest, a young man with bright, dark eyes and soft dark hair under the navy cap which he pushed to the back of his head. ‘We’re from God’s own country, which, mebbe, you’ve guessed.’
All the men laughed and Jess, encouraged, smiled too.
‘Oh, I’m from nowhere in partic’lar,’ she said, picking a sop out of the bully beef tin and popping it into the baby’s eager mouth. ‘We’re keepin’ out o’ the way, baby an’ me. Our da’s ’ad no work for weeks, but when he’s gorra bit o’ money he’ll be down the boozer, an’ ’e were give five shillin’ by a pal. Off ’e went, merry as Larry, but when ’e comes back ’e’s likelier to kick than kiss.’
‘Aye, I’ve known fellers like that,’ the boy said. ‘Best stay here for a while, then. No harm, not today.’ He asked no more questions, to Jess’s relief. These men were so kind, it would seem unfriendly to continue to deny them her name and address.
‘We’re none of us ourselves when we’ve drink aboard,’ the first speaker said. He looked shamefacedly at Jess. ‘But I’ve never hit woman nor child, no matter how much of the hard stuff has passed me lips.’ He grinned round at his companions. ‘Me old woman would kill me if I tried such a t’ing,’ he added innocently. ‘And she’d make two of me, would Deirdre.’
‘Oh, Peader, your woman’s soft as a lamb and you know it,’ a big, ginger-haired man said, grinning. ‘Sure an’ she’s built like a fairy so she is!’
The first speaker, who must be Peader, turned back to Jess, his eyes soft, sorry. ‘So your old fella’s fierce in drink, is ’e? Well, you give the littl’un a drap o’ this, my treasure, that’ll warm the cockles of her heart, and be the same token, have a drap yourself.’
He held out a bottle; it was black and smelt horrible. Jess put a hand out, touched it, then withdrew quickly, shaking her head.
‘No thanks,’ she said frankly. ‘We don’t like the smell, baby an’ me.’
‘It’s good porter,’ the dark-haired Peader said. ‘Just a wee drop in the milk, alanna, and the baby’ll smile for us. It isn’t after gettin’ you tiddly I am, but warmin’ the pair of you.’
Warming! All of a sudden Jess wanted desperately to be warm, and to know that Mollie was warm, too. She let the man tip a small quantity of the rich, strong-smelling stuff into the milk and she continued to feed the baby, now and then taking a piece of the soaked bread for herself.
And he was right, it was warming! What with that, and the fire, and the good company, she had seldom felt better. The boy, who told her his name was Brogan, picked the baby up and began to play games with her, but presently Mollie, sated with bread and milk and soothed by the fire’s warmth, simply lolled against his chest, eyelids drowsily closing.
‘She’s sound off,’ Brogan said in a whisper to Jess. ‘Do you want to take her from me now, get her home while she sleeps?’
Jess was warm herself now, and weary – so weary! ‘I don’t think I could walk home,’ she murmured, for several of the men were snoozing, their faces ruddy from the fire’s glow and the porter. ‘Can I sleep here for a little while?’
‘Course you can,’ Brogan said. ‘Course you can, girl. Sleep sound, sleep sound. And when you wake you can share my can o’ tea, and have a bite o’ bread an’ cold mutton.’
Jess murmured her thanks and tried to raise her heavy eyelids, but the combination of a full stomach and warmth and the porter was too much for her. Very soon, she slept.
Brogan waited until both their visitors were fast asleep and then he, too, curled up on the floor. A couple of little girls had made his Christmas, for until they had walked into the cabin he had been suffering from such terrible homesickness that he had been afraid of breaking down in tears. Especially when Paddy began to sing in that light tenor voice of his. All the old songs, the ones Brogan’s mammy had sung to him and his brothers when they were small.
He’d sat there in the faint firelight and remembered all the other Christmases. Never a penny piece to spare, never a great deal of food – but oh, the wonderful warmth of togetherness they had shared! A fire of turf or some hoarded coal, meat if they were lucky, but fish and potatoes almost always, little presents for the kids – a peg-man for Bevin, who was the youngest, a cracked pair of secondhand boots for another brother, a much-darned and patched jumper for a third, bought off the tuggers’ carts as they made their way back to the Jewman who employed them in the heart of Dublin.
It wasn’t a rich Christmas, Brogan knew that all right. But it was a good one. They went to mass, naturally, and somehow they always managed candle-money, and a bit over for to put in the box for the poor and needy.
‘We’re the poor and needy really, amn’t we, Brogan?’ the brother next to him in age, Martin, had said wistfully, once. ‘When our daddy’s out of work we don’t have much.’
But it wasn’t true, for didn’t they have two whole rooms in their tenement block, the front first-floor pair as they called it? A whole room for sleeping in wasn’t common by any means, no indeed, and they divided it, mornings, with hung sheets so that each could have his moment of privacy to wash and dress himself. And wasn’t their living room neat as a new pin, and always clean water in the bucket by the fire and the Sacred Heart on the mantel kept dust-free, with a glass vase always sparkling before it, even if they could only rarely afford a flower or two to stand in it? So, ‘There’s many worse off than us, Mart,’ he had told his brother. ‘Oh, aye, many a one would envy us. But we aren’t rich, nor even well-to-do, I grant you that.’
And when he and his daddy had realised that they would have to go over to England to work, how the family had wept and cried! Mammy tried hard to be brave, but she clung to Peader and to her son at the last moment.
‘We’ve always managed,’ she had said, her voice trembling and thick with unshed tears. ‘Sure and we’ll manage again. Don’t go, don’t leave us!’
But there was so little work in Dublin, that was the trouble! Peader had been a docker, but he’d rarely succeeded in catching the stevedore’s eye and without doing that you’d scarce make enough money to buy bread let alone pay rent or keep the kids halfway decent. Brogan could still remember those awful mornings when his father had returned, silent, from the quays. Often he could not look at them, shamed by his inability to provide.
‘I couldn’t catch his eye,’ he would mumble guiltily. ‘Sure an’ didn’t I run like a greyhound along to the next read, and no more luck, me, that time? But there’s other work beside labouring on the ships. I’ll find something, sweet Deirdre, I’ll not let you down.’
It wasn’t really a matter of letting down, Brogan understood that. His mammy worked hard in her own right, trekking out into the countryside around Dublin, picking potatoes, then selling them in Moore Street, Francis Street or anywhere else where she could find a pitch.
Brogan had worked too, of course. Selling the
Herald
and the
Mail
to the citizens of Dublin from the time he was ten, barefoot in the snow in winter or under the pitiless sun of high summer. He had jumped on and off trams to sell to folk on the top deck, hurled himself in front of jarveys crying his wares as they tried to start their handsome horses off at a fast trot, and finally taken home the unsold papers in wintertime to wedge against the old window frames in an attempt to keep out the wicked winds.
But even so, the money didn’t keep them. Not quite. Always nearly, never completely. They would be doing well, eating regular, making ends meet as Mammy said, and then suddenly disaster would strike. Once, they put up the rent. Once, they increased the cost of the newsboy’s licence, and you couldn’t sell without a licence. Who ‘they’ were Brogan was never sure, just a part of that vast, throbbing over-class which seemed to spend all its time making sure that the poor remained poor.
Those small disasters had almost done for them. They’d had to go, cap in hand, to the St Vincent de Paul Society, who had sent round a tall, thin man with a long, cadaverous face and squinty little eyes. He had sat in their fine parlour and cross-questioned mammy until she had shed bitter, helpless tears. Why did they need the relief? What had changed? Could they not manage with one room less if the rent was too much for them? Others did it – if they could just cut their coat according to their cloth . . .
‘I sold me winter coat, sir,’ Mammy had said, not understanding. ‘’Twas that we ate last week, but now ’tis gone . . .’
The Vincents man pulled down his mouth and asked more questions. Who was in work? Why did not her husband find some other employment if he could not catch the stevedore’s eye at the docks? There
was
other work, he had it on good authority that they were taking on labourers at such and such a place . . .
But now he and Peader, his father, were in decent work, and able to send almost all of their wages home. Rent in Liverpool was their biggest expense but they had found a lodging house which was cheap and relatively bug-free, and Peader said they must eat well – the work was too hard to stint themselves in that direction. Brogan knew that they were luckier than some, that they must put up with being far away in return for the benefits of regular work. And besides, his mammy was frugal and would save all she could and perhaps one day, perhaps when summer came, they could catch the ship home again and stand in the bows and watch as Ireland came into view through the land-haze. And until then at least they were earning, knowing that despite their homesickness, and the rough voices about them, they were taking some of the burden off Deirdre O’Brady.