Danny Boy, page 21
‘Now, you need to get to Kingstown to the mail boat,’ Sister Cuthbert told them. ‘There is a train going from Westmoreland Station and there is a mail boat which leaves on the evening tide – you might just make it.’
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Rosie said. ‘I think I need a good night’s sleep in a proper bed and so does Bernadette. I’d rather stay here the night and leave in the morning.’
Danny would rather have left as soon as possible, but agreed to abide by Rosie’s decision for he’d seen the strain lines on her face and knew, however inadvertently, he was the one who had put them there. ‘It will be all right, Rosie,’ he assured her that night as he held her tightly in bed. ‘It might be a wee bit strange at first, but we’ll cope if we’re together.’
‘Of course we will,’ Rosie said, glad of the dark that hid her expression from Danny. When his even breathing told her he was finally asleep, she cried the tears she’d held back all day, taking care to muffle them in a pillow.
Bernadette woke full of beans the next morning, ready for whatever the day might throw at her, while her parents were full of trepidation. After a hurriedly eaten breakfast, the family were ready for the off and Sister Cuthbert said she would lead them as far as the station. ‘Wouldn’t do to draw attention to yourselves asking directions of a passer-by,’ she said. ‘It’s a sad fact, but you can be sure of no-one in Dublin today.’
And will it ever be safe again? Rosie thought as she lifted Bernadette into her arms, tied her securely inside the shawl and picked up her large bag. ‘Wait,’ cried Sister Miriam, hurrying from the kitchen just as Danny and Rosie were preparing to leave. ‘We’re not as badly off as we were last time you came to visit,’ she said to Rosie and put some small packages into Rosie’s hands. ‘A little something for the journey.’
‘Ah, sure you’ve done enough,’ Rosie protested.
‘We’ve done very little,’ Sister Miriam said, ‘and I’ll not have you arriving at our sister convent faint from hunger. Think at least of the child.’
Rosie didn’t argue further and tucked the packages well down into the bag. Soon the small group was walking through the dark morning. The sun wouldn’t rise for some time yet, but at least there was little wind, Rosie thought, praying that would mean the journey across the Channel might be a smooth one.
It was probably as well she didn’t know how turbulent the Irish Sea could be, but first there was the station to contend with and that was unnerving enough. The steam trains already in panted black smoke into the stale air like some wild beasts. Water dribbled onto the rails beneath them with a hiss and spit of steam and occasionally one of these untamed beasts would let out a screeching whistle. The first time this happened, Bernadette let out a scream to match the train in decibels, and wriggled in Rosie’s arms as if she wanted to bury herself deeper. Rosie held on to her, taking comfort from the child’s warm body because the noise had unnerved her just as much.
Danny came back with the tickets he’d bought. He didn’t seem fazed by any of it and began loading their luggage onto the train. Rosie was anxious to get them all aboard, away from any curious eyes, and she hitched Bernadette around onto one hip while she embraced Sister Cuthbert.
‘Write to me when you’re settled,’ the nun urged. ‘Tell me how things are?’
‘I will,’ Rosie promised, and Sister Cuthbert’s lips brushed Bernadette’s forehead and she ran her hands over her golden curls.
‘Look after her,’ she said. ‘You have a treasure there.’
Danny said emotionally, ‘That’s what I’m trying to do, care for them both. D’you think I’d be trailing them to England if there was any other way?’
‘No, Danny,’ Sister Cuthbert replied. ‘You’re doing the only thing possible and I wish you Godspeed.’
If Rosie hadn’t been so apprehensive she might have enjoyed that train ride through the dark morning, finding the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks and the slight sway quite soothing. Bernadette eventually relaxed enough to let go of her mother’s neck.
They saw nothing of the town, even though the day had lightened a little, for they were ushered speedily from the train to the harbour where a mail boat awaited, rocking slightly in the water. ‘The Hibernian,’ Danny read out from the side. ‘Now we’ll see if we have sea legs or not.’
Rosie thought she’d not die dissatisfied if she never had to put that to the test, but she chided herself that that was no way to go on. There would be tougher times ahead, she was sure. And yet she hesitated at the gangplank, looking down at the sudsy grey water lapping around the sides of the boat. ‘God, wouldn’t you hate to end up in that?’
‘Aye,’ Danny agreed, ‘and we’ll take care not to.’
Rosie followed Danny, who carried Bernadette up the gangplank, past the sailor checking the tickets and boarding passes and up to the deck where Danny pointed out the two piers almost enclosing the harbour. ‘That gap doesn’t look big enough for this boat, does it?’ Rosie said fearfully.
‘I know what you mean,’ Danny said. ‘But it must be, for they travel this route twice every day. Mind, I’d say you’d have to be a good pilot to steer it so well.’
Bernadette was shouting to be let down, but the deck, with the water slapping and swirling to the sides of them, was no place for a toddler, and though the early morning was cold, Rosie didn’t want to go inside yet. She wanted to wait until the boat was moving and so Danny put down the bags and case and lifted Bernadette onto his shoulders.
It wasn’t a long wait they had. Soon the gangplank was raised and the thick hawsers unwound from the bollards on the dockside. Then the ship gave a shrill shriek that caused Bernadette to put her hands over her ears, the engines throbbed into life, black smoke billowed from the two funnels and the boat moved slowly through the swirling frothy water.
Rosie waited until the boat had successfully negotiated the gap between the East Pier and the West and was in the open sea before she turned again and looked at the shores of Ireland disappearing into the murky gloom of the morning. Guessing some of her thoughts, Danny put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll be back one day,’ he said. ‘This won’t be forever.’
Rosie sighed. She wasn’t at all sure of that, but she wasn’t going to share her fears. ‘Aye, I know,’ she told Danny instead and gave his shoulder a squeeze.
‘Come on, let’s go in,’ he said, ‘Bernadette must be cold for I surely am.’
Inside, the noise and the smell of cigarettes and Guinness hit them. ‘Do you want a drink?’ Danny asked. ‘Shall I see if I can get us a cup of tea each and some milk for Bernadette here?’
‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘A cup of something might settle my stomach.’
‘I’m feeling that way myself,’ Danny said, putting Bernadette down.
Bernadette took some watching. Everything was new and exciting and she wanted to explore so Rosie was constantly running after her and bringing her back, which didn’t help her churning stomach.
The tea Danny eventually brought back was welcome, but it didn’t make Rosie feel less sick and she had barely finished it when she had to run out to the deck and deposit most of her early breakfast into the sea.
Half an hour later, Rosie thought she’d never felt so ill in the whole of her life. Danny was little better. ‘It’s not sea legs we want,’ she told Danny. ‘It’s sea stomachs!’
‘Aye,’ Danny said. ‘Thank God Bernadette seems to be all right.’
‘Aye,’ Rosie agreed with feeling, not at all sure she could have coped with the child being sick as well.
But Bernadette was being happily entertained by the antics of a family near to them. The woman looked from Bernadette’s smiling face to the green-tinged ones of her parents and asked sympathetically, ‘First time over?’
‘Aye.’
‘I was sick as a dog the first time too,’ the woman said. ‘I’m well used to it now.’
Rosie wasn’t sure she could ever become used to it, for the bile continued to cause her to run to the rail, along with other passengers, even when her stomach was empty.
She was so glad to see the shoreline of Wales in the distance, for she knew her ordeal would soon be at an end.
On the train she felt slightly better and pointed out the landscape to Bernadette. As they left Holyhead behind, the fields with the mountains in the distance was so reminiscent of Ireland that Rosie felt a sharp pang of homesickness.
They passed over a girdered metal bridge and noted the sea on either side of it and Rosie said to Danny, ‘Where the boat came in, at that place, Holyhead, must be on an island.’
Before Danny could answer, another passenger in the compartment said in an accent Rosie found hard to place, ‘You’re right, it’s the Island of Anglesey and this bridge goes over the Menai Straits.’
‘Thank you,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s our first time over here.’
‘Well, I know from your accent where you’re from. Where are you bound for?’
‘Birmingham,’ Danny said.
‘Birmingham, is it,’ the man said. ‘You have work there?’
Danny thought it better not to tell the man too much. He said. ‘Aye, my uncle’s getting me set on with him in one of the factories.’ He shot Rosie a warning glance as he spoke, but she knew what he was doing.
‘Plenty of work around now, I’d say,’ the man went on. ‘Making stuff for the war.’
Beside her, Rosie felt Danny stiffen. She knew he’d be against making anything for a war that had nothing to do with Ireland, but while that was all well and good, a job was still a job. Even if they were staying in England for a short time, they couldn’t live on fresh air.
She said none of this. When they got to Birmingham and saw what was what, Danny would surely see the sense of that himself.
The train was travelling along by the sea, steel-grey waves fringed white on the dull April day, but Rosie could imagine the beauty of it in the sunshine, shimmering blue like Blessington Lake and surrounded by mountains.
She noted the place names as the train pulled in to all the small stations, some with such funny names she could hardly pronounce them: Llanfairfechan, Penmaenmawr, Conwy. ‘Welsh names, I suppose,’ Danny said. ‘Some of the Irish names would be the same if we were allowed to use them.’
‘Aye, I suppose so.’
Bernadette dropped off to sleep again against Rosie as they passed by Colwyn Bay. ‘You’ll be changing at Crewe, no doubt,’ the man asked Danny.
‘Aye, the man in the ticket office told me that,’ Danny said.
‘It’s the next station after Chester, where I get off, so you’ll know it,’ the man said. ‘Anyway, it’s a big enough place,’ and he gave a nod in Bernadette’s direction. ‘She looks worn out from travelling already.’
And she’s not the only one, Rosie thought, but she said nothing and smiled at the man over the child’s head.
But Danny had seen the tiredness in Rosie’s eyes and said, ‘Pass the child to me, Rosie, you look all in.’
Rosie was glad to hand Bernadette over, for her eyes felt incredibly heavy and she closed them thankfully. Within minutes she was asleep and didn’t wake again until the train was pulling into Chester. Their fellow passenger bade them goodbye and as he left the train, Rosie was amazed to see so many soldiers milling on the platform. She realised the events in Ireland had slightly overshadowed the war raging on foreign fields not that far away.
Crewe Station was busy, noisy and very cold. As there was a delay for the connecting train, Danny led the way to a small café on the platform. Rosie was glad of the reviving tea and the girl behind the counter readily agreed to heat up some milk for Bernadette. They opened the food packages that Sister Miriam had given them. It put new heart into Rosie and she was glad she was able to change Bernadette too and make her more comfortable. But she saw the little one’s eyes were puzzled and Rosie knew she’d be wondering what was happening. Until that point, her short life had been familiar and safe, and now she was being taken away from the only home she’d ever known, over land and sea, away from her doting grandparents and loving aunts and uncles; and she was too young for Rosie to explain any of it.
They’d been on the go since five o’clock that morning. Now it was half past two and they were on the last leg of their journey, but Birmingham was another hour away and it would be nearly dark then, for the thick, dense clouds had turned the afternoon as dusky as evening.
Danny and Rosie spent the time on the train from Crewe to Birmingham amusing Bernadette. They drew on their stock of songs, nursery rhymes and finger games to amuse her. As well as this, Danny could do wonderful things with a length of string that he always carried in his pocket.
When all that paled, Danny took his small daughter on a tour of the train. They went up and down the corridors, from the guard’s van at the rear of the train to the start of the First Class carriages at the front and back again. Bernadette plodding along in front of her father on her sturdy little legs.
The train pulled in at New Street with a squeal of brakes and hiss of steam and in minutes the Walsh family were out on another dusty, windy platform. Rosie looked with trepidation at the press of people, hearing the raucous shouts of them and the sudden gales of laughter, seeing the porters pushing their way past and the man at the newspaper kiosk advertising his wares. Bernadette had begun to grizzle at the chaos of it all, but Danny, on the other hand, gave a heartfelt sigh of relief. Thank God, he thought, now they were all safe. He’d never have thought he’d be here, standing on a station platform in the middle of England and being thankful for it; but he was and he vowed he’d do all in his power to make a good life for his family here for as long as it took.
He swooped his weeping daughter into his arms and set her on his shoulders, and she was so surprised she stopped crying and began hitting the top of his head with her hands, laughing. ‘Will you stop beating the head off your poor father,’ Danny said in mock anger. ‘Fine show of respect that is.’
Bernadette laughed louder and wriggled on his shoulders, and Rosie smiled at the pair of them. Danny was further relieved to see that smile. ‘That’s it, Rosie,’ he said, buoyed up. ‘Let’s make the best of it, if only for the sake of the wee one.’
‘I’m trying to, Danny,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m coping the best way I can.’
‘Let’s go then,’ Danny said, and lifting up one of the bags and with Bernadette carried high, he led the way.
Outside the station, the roads seemed packed. There were new petrol-driven taxis and horse-drawn hackney cabs waiting in a line. Behind them were horse-drawn omnibuses and petrol cars and lorries, and swaying trams weaving in and out between the rest of the traffic, and Rosie thought she’d be feared to even cross a road in this place.
‘We’d best take a cab,’ Danny said. ‘We’d never find this place else.’
Rosie was scared to go in a petrol-driven taxi and so they opted for one of the horse-drawn ones and Rosie was staggered when the driver alighted to let them in. ‘You’re a woman!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ the woman driver replied with a laugh. ‘Where’ve you been the last three years?’
‘In Ireland,’ Rosie told her.
‘Oh that explains it,’ the woman went on. ‘Here in England, at war, there are few big strapping men about like your old man; just the old, the young and the useless. It’s left to the women. I had to take over when my old man was called up, or my kids would have starved and there wouldn’t have been a business when he came back, that’s assuming he does of course, and in one piece. I ain’t the only one, it’s women drives the omnibuses and makes the weapons and all sorts.’
‘I’d never have thought…’ Danny began.
‘Wouldn’t yer,’ the woman said, almost contemptuously. ‘Who d’you think runs a country when all the men are in the trenches, or maimed, blinded or killed. D’you think we just fold up and die?’
‘Like I said, I never thought of it at all,’ Danny said. ‘Maybe I should have, but when you’re not involved, when it doesn’t affect you, you don’t think.’
‘No,’ the woman said, suddenly tired of the conversation and impatient to get on. ‘And right now I have a business to run. Where you making for?’
‘Hunter’s Road, Handsworth,’ Danny said, lifting Bernadette from his shoulders as he spoke and placing her into the hackney cab. ‘St Mary’s Convent.’
‘Oh yeah, I know that all right,’ said the woman. ‘In you go then, and I’ll have you there in the swish of a pony’s tail.’
Rosie had never travelled in such splendour and told herself to enjoy it, for she probably wouldn’t do so again in a hurry. As the cab moved into the swell of traffic she saw the driver was right, it was mainly women driving the horse-drawn carts and working on the omnibuses, and most of the conductors were women too.
They drove through streets full of traffic, lined with houses all squashed together and whole parades of shops, like the entire street of Blessington around every other street corner. Hunter’s Road was a far more prosperous area. The houses were larger and more imposing, set back from the road and encased with privet hedges or brick walls.
The convent was by far the biggest building in the road. Built of red brick and with a red-brick wall in front of it, it was an L-shape, with small leaded windows to the ground and first floor and arched attic windows facing the road. The cab driver turned into the cobbled yard before the convent and Rosie noted the presbytery, a smaller and less imposing building alongside the convent.
Rosie gazed at it, nervous of entering such a place, but Danny wasn’t. They had come this far, been assured of a welcome, and he had to find somewhere for his wife and child to lay their heads that night. He helped Rosie from the cab and paid the fare, wincing at the price and was glad Rosie hadn’t heard it. With a wave of her hand the cab driver expertly turned and began to move off and he went up the steps to a door with ‘House of Mercy’ printed above it, and rang on the large bell there without the slightest hesitation.
