So Polly ate her tea rather silently, then walked back to the guest house with Mammy, Daddy and her brothers. Delilah was staying with Brogan and so were the cats. The hens, still in their crate, were staying in the back yard, under the washing lines. Only people were allowed in guest houses, Mammy had explained, and Polly had tried hard to understand and be sensible.
She was sleeping with Mammy and Daddy too, in a tiny pull-out bed which was stowed away, during the day, under their big bed. The little bed was great fun, the nicest thing about the room which, otherwise, was pretty ordinary, though enormously large and extremely bare to one accustomed to the crowded, close-knit life of a Dublin tenement.
‘You’d best go to bed now, alanna,’ Mammy said about an hour after they’d finished their high tea. ‘We’ve a full day tomorrow so we have, and you’ll be wantin’ all your energy to help wit’ the move.’
‘All right,’ Polly said obediently. ‘I am tired.’
She was tired, too. The only thing was, tired or not, she simply could not sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her mind filled with the most curious thoughts, until her parents came up to bed. And then she shut her eyes tight and pretended as hard as she could that she was asleep because if they knew she was awake they would only worry. And of course she listened to the conversation as her parents prepared for bed.
‘Sure and she’s fast off,’ Mammy murmured quite soon after they entered the room. ‘Poor little soul, she’s wore out . . . what a day, Peader!’
‘Aye, what wit’ the cats, the dog, the hens . . .’ he chuckled. ‘Still, tomorrow we’ll be in the country.’
He sounded infinitely content but Polly felt a pang of real distress. Tomorrow they would be in the country; so what was wrong with that? The country was nice, she knew because she and Tad had visited the country . . . oh, Tad, Tad, whatever will I do wit’out you and your lovin’ ways?
‘I shan’t be sorry.’ That was Mammy. ‘The child was – was
odd,
didn’t you think, when we were travellin’ here, in the tram?’
‘Odd? No, me love, she was just tired, puzzled and cross wit’ me for bringin’ you all here.’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s being parted from Tad. But it was the way she stared around, Peader, as though she expected to recognise something . . . it worried me.’
‘Why on earth? This is all new to her, alanna, a great city wit’ stately buildings . . . it’s all new, no wonder she stares.’
‘No.’ Mammy’s voice was so low Polly had to strain to hear it. ‘No, Peader, it’s not new. She was here before – remember? Holy Mother, I’ll be glad to leave this city behind so I will.’
‘Deirdre, the child was a babe in arms, she’ll not remember anything from that time. Dear God above, I hope wit’ all my heart she remembers nothin’, for what could she remember but hardship, hunger, and lovelessness?’
‘The other one loved her.’ Mammy’s voice was lower, if anything. ‘The other child worshipped her; you said it yourself, Peader.’
‘Yes. But the other’s gone from here. And I’m tellin’ you, a babe that young could remember nothin’ whatsoever of what happened, once, long ago.’ The bedsprings creaked as Peader climbed between the sheets. ‘Now stop your worryin’, woman, and come to bed.’
Polly lay quiet and still in her own little bed, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe. What did it all
mean
? Why should Mammy say that she, Polly, had been here before, when she knew, none better, that Polly had been born, bred and brought up in the Liberties? And why had Daddy said she would remember nothing but hardship, hunger and lovelessness? And who, in heaven’s name, was the other child?
Polly lay and pondered and wondered, and watched the moon’s slow progress across the sky through a gap in the curtains. And when the night was at its darkest she got out of her little bed, picked up her clothes from the chair by the window, and stole to the door.
The door was locked. The key was big and took some turning, but Polly turned it. She slid silently out of the room and outside in the dark corridor, she dressed herself by touch. She struggled into her clothing, pulled on her woollen stockings, her stout little lace-up shoes. She even put on her coat with the round navy buttons and her small, pudding-basin hat.
It was cold in the corridor, and frightening, too. As she fumbled with her fastenings, tried to tidy her hair with her hands, straightened the woollen stockings, her head ached from lack of sleep and from the mystery which she had sensed surrounding both herself and this city. Because in one way Mammy was right. She
had
felt a weird feeling of remembering rather than merely seeing as they had got off the ship at the Pierhead and made their way to the tram stop. And though she’d said that the market had reminded her of Francis Street, she was not at all sure she had really meant that. She had meant that it reminded her of – of somewhere she had once known.
However, fully dressed, she stole along the corridor, down the stairs, and after a struggle with another big key, out of the front door. She wished Delilah were with her, but Delly was staying at Mrs Burt’s house with Brogan. Knowing her dog, she guessed that by now Delly would be hogging the lion’s share of Brogan’s bed and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. And if he had been at the guest house there was no saying he wouldn’t have jumped and barked and roused the whole house, including her parents, who would not, she knew, approve of her actions. So she decided to be grateful that Delilah was far away and let herself quietly out of the front door.
Standing on the pavement, she considered. Did she mean to run off, to stow away aboard the next boat bound for Dublin? But she knew better than to try. A child can run away, protest, escape, but it will always be brought back in disgrace in the end. To return to Dublin would be an adventure, but if she did go back and move in with Martin and Donal, what sort of life would that be? They wouldn’t want her but if she insisted they’d probably let her stay. She would have to work as she’d worked whilst Peader had been ill and she didn’t fancy that, no sir! She would go back to Tad one day, when she was big, and they would get married, but until then it might be best to stay with Mammy and Daddy and her dear animals.
So what was she doing out in this great, strange city, with the stars still pricking at the dark, velvet blue of the night sky, and the lighter line on the eastern horizon all that was to show, yet, of the new day?
She didn’t know, to tell the truth. But having got out, she did not intend to go back to the Belvedere Guest House yet. I’ll explore, have a good look round, Polly thought to herself, and immediately realised that this was just what she needed to do. At some time, in some way, she had known this city. She had felt she knew it, but listening to Mammy and Daddy, she had realised she really did know it. She had been here before . . . how, why or where was what, she decided, she had escaped from the guest house to find out.
Which way, though? Which way? Polly stood in the middle of the pavement and spun round, spun and spun until she was giddy. Then, when she scarcely knew which way up she was, she set off, reeling along the pavement like a drunk. Luck would guide her, help her, sustain her. And in a few hours, perhaps, if she was very lucky before her parents were up, she would understand just what she had been doing in the city once, long, long ago.
Chapter Fifteen
Polly trotted along the pavement, under the hissing gas lamps. She could not have said that she knew where she was going, but she let her feet take her and that seemed to work quite well, because before day had anywhere near dawned, she was on a road which she felt was familiar to her. It was wide and though there were no trams about at this hour, there were tram-lines. A main road, then. She stood on the kerb, waiting, wondering, then crossed the road and turned into a narrow street which, she saw when she looked up at the name plate on the end house, was called Snowdrop Street.
Halfway down it she slowed, stopped. All the houses were identical, terraced houses with wooden front doors and bay windows yet Polly had the oddest feeling that she knew what was behind those primly closed front doors. Or one of them, at any rate. A parlour, with ragged curtains, a kitchen behind that . . . a girl stood in the kitchen, humming, stirring a pot. A half-naked baby played on a floor so dirty that it looked like hard-packed earth. In fact the place was dirtier than any house Polly had ever seen, save perhaps the Donoghue’s home.
Polly closed her eyes, then opened them again. She only got that disturbing mental picture when she looked at one particular house, yet the house looked solid, reliable, not at all the sort of place where raggedy curtains and dirt reigned supreme. It isn’t like that now, Polly finally concluded, but it must have been like that once. Long, long ago, when I was a baby. If I heard Mammy and Daddy right, that is. Unless I’m goin’ off me head, of course, which seems likeliest.
She stood for some while, staring up at the house in the grey dawn light. Nothing stirred behind its respectable, dark-blue curtains, not a sound issued through its respectable, brown-painted door. Whatever it had once meant to her, if it had meant anything, it was all part of the past.
Moving like a sleepwalker now, Polly walked on. She stood on the corner of Snowdrop Street and there was another big, wide street – it was Commercial Road this time. A lorry rumbled past; doesn’t he know it’s the middle of the night and he should be in his bed so he should, Polly wondered rather crossly. She didn’t mind a cat, stalking, yellow-eyed, along a house-wall, nor a dog trotting by, pressing close to the house-fronts . . . but lorries meant people and people could spell danger.
But the lorry made her look across the road to see what was over there, and she realised that there was a long, long view . . . no houses, in other words. Despite the fact that it was still dark she could, she thought, smell the sea . . . there were docks over the road, she was sure of it, and she liked docks. And nearer, glistening in the pale, unearthly before-dawn dark, she could just make out what looked like miles of railway lines – a marshalling yard? She remembered, suddenly, that Brogan had once mentioned that he lived near streets called after spring flowers . . . Snowdrop Street, of course, she had just traversed it!
Immediately, her attention was caught and held. Brogan worked for the railway, so did Daddy – was that why she had come here, then? Because at some time, long, long ago, Brogan and Daddy had . . . had brought her here? It didn’t seem quite right, but it would have to do for now.
Polly crossed the road, dodging more tram-lines. She pressed her nose to a large gap in the fence and wondered at the sheer complexity of what lay beyond. It must be the hugest mass of railway lines in the world, she thought, all laid out like steel spaghetti, curving and joining, parting and rejoining. And there were sheds and shelters and big warehouses and little cabins and . . .
In Polly’s mind, a picture was forming. She was in a small hut with an earth floor, there was a stove burning brightly, illuminating the smiling faces of the men who surrounded her . . . and then, when she looked around, she saw her angel! Was this why she had come down here, to the marshalling yards? Did her angel, for some reason, want her here?
The fencing which was between the road and the rails had been put up years ago to keep prowlers, children, stray dogs, off the tracks. Polly walked over to it. It would be quite simple just to wriggle through there, to go and find that hut . . .
She was small and neatly made, though her little red coat with its black velvet collar was a bulky garment. But she got through, anyway. She felt brave, adventurous . . . she wished devoutly, however, that Tad had been with her. Somehow, he took all the responsibility for their doings upon himself so that she could enjoy without guilt their various ploys. But he wasn’t here, and anyway, she was, she felt, being guided. It was undoubtedly her guardian angel again, leading her to find . . .
Polly paused again. Leading her to find what? The hut, presumably, and the firelight, the men with smiling faces. Ah, then she would know just what her mammy and daddy had meant last night – because, in some mysterious way, she was more conscious of her angel’s presence here than she had ever been.
Back in Dublin the kids in her class had learned a poem by some English feller called Alfred Lord Tennyson. It had a good old rhythm for shouting and declaiming and Polly and Tad rather liked it. But this was a quiet and secret place, a place where she was quite probably not allowed to be. So Polly stole forward, taking advantage of every patch of shadow, whilst whispering the words of the poem to bolster her up and give her courage.
Cannon to right of them
Cannon to left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered.
She might have got the words wrong, it might not be appropriate, it might even seem stupid when you considered the silence which surrounded her, but Polly thought it helped. It conjured up Tad, going ahead of her, a hand behind him ready to grasp hers if she felt afraid. It conjured up confidence, courage.
She had not truly known which of the small huts she was heading for, but when she was hesitating something seemed to prompt her.
That way, that way!
She turned her head and thought she saw a slim shadow flickering between two particular huts.
That way, that way!
She was afraid and chilly and yet she knew, in a strange way, that she was in no danger. Am I sleeping, she thought suddenly, am I still in my bed? If so, there’s nothing to be afraid of . . . come on, Polly . . . this way!