Kitabı oku: «Walking Back to Happiness»

ANNE BENNETT
Walking Back to Happiness

Dedication

This book is written for my mother Eileen Josephine Flanagan and is dedicated to her memory.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Hannah Delaney looked down at her sister, Frances Mullen, and knew she’d never leave her bed again. She felt tears prickle the back of her eyes as she reached for Frances’s yellow, emaciated hand, but she held them back. If Frances could be brave about her impending death, then so could she. ‘You’re a grand girl, Hannah,’ Frances said in little more than a hoarse whisper. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Hannah’s face flushed at the implied reproach. ‘You didn’t bother when I sent for you when my husband, Paddy, was coughing his guts up in the County Hospital,’ Frances might have said.

Hannah knew Frances must have been badly hurt but there had been a desperate reason why she’d not been able to come back when Paddy lay dying and one she could never share with Frances, nor with any of the family. Hannah had told Frances she had the ’flu and wasn’t well enough to travel. She hadn’t even come for the funeral and no one could guess how heartsore she was that she couldn’t come and mourn the man who’d always been more of a father to her than her own and maybe be a measure of support to her sister.

The townsfolk couldn’t understand it at all. ‘People have the ‘flu all the time and get over it,’ they’d said to Frances. ‘Why doesn’t she come for a wee visit now to see how you all are?’

‘Sure, isn’t she rushed off her feet with the fine job she has?’ Frances had answered the criticisms. But inside, she’d ached for the presence of her youngest sister. She’d reared her and had loved her like one of her own, but she seemed to have forgotten all that, for she’d not been near the place for three years.

But now she was here and suddenly to Frances it didn’t matter any more. There was little time to waste on censure and argument and Hannah certainly had no wish to quarrel. She’d always loved Frances dearly and she was saddened that she had such little time left.

‘Why wouldn’t I come?’ she said with a forced smile, giving her sister’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Aren’t you the only mother I ever knew and don’t I love you more than anyone in the whole world? If there’s anything I can do for you, you only have to say.’

Frances gave a wry smile and a little sigh. So, she thought, God does answer prayers, some prayers. He couldn’t spare her any longer and God knows at times she was tired enough not to care, but now Josie would be all right. She’d fretted about the child, worried to death that Hannah wouldn’t come, that she wouldn’t be able to ask her.

Frances studied her sister, while she framed the question she had to ask. She wasn’t worried Hannah would refuse. How could she? She’d taken Hannah in when she was just a day old, when their mother had died of childbirth fever. Frances’s third child, Martin, had been only a week old himself and she also had Miriam just fifteen months and Peter coming up to three yet she’d not hesitated to offer Hannah a home. And for that reason Hannah owed her a debt. ‘It’s Josie,’ she said. ‘Will you take Josie? Will you look after her when it’s … when it’s all over?’

‘Josie?’ That dark, secretive, plain child, the one Hannah hardly knew at all for she’d been born after she’d left the farm and always seemed to disappear whenever she’d come for her very occasional visits home.

She’d scarcely ever given the child a thought, for Frances had done what their own mother had done and had a large gap in the family and the nearest in age to Josie was Sam, who at twenty was eleven years her senior. Hannah knew from the letters her sister had written that Sam had been living in the mountains, working their grandparents’ farm since he’d left school at fourteen. If Josie was to go there, she’d become a maid of all work, her childhood would be over and Hannah well knew that.

But for God’s sake, there was a fine family of them. Surely to God one of them could look after their own sister?

But in her heart she knew she was the only one left. Peter had become a priest and was living away in the Scottish Highlands somewhere and poor Miriam was married to a man she had met on a brief visit to England. She returned with him to his home in Connemara where, according to Frances, they tried to scratch a living from the stones. At twenty-eight, she’d been married eight years and had eight children.

Miriam had not come home for her father’s illness or funeral either and gave the excuse she was almost on her time, but Frances had suspected she couldn’t afford to come. Even if she’d have offered a home to Josie, Hannah knew Frances wouldn’t have been happy sending her there.

But then what about Martin who was twenty-seven, the same age as herself, and Siobhan two years younger? Martin had coped with the farm single-handed since his father had died, but Hannah, who’d been brought up alongside him and understood him better than the others, knew he was no farmer. He’d always wanted to go to New York; he used to talk about it all the time. And now he and Siobhan had the chance. Their Aunt Norah had offered to send them the fare.

Martin had been unable to contain his excitement when he’d met Hannah off the train. ‘It’s like a dream,’ he’d said, as he’d set the old pony pulling the cart to canter over the cobblestones. ‘I thought I was stuck on the farm for years, you know, I mean with Da gone? I’d never have left Mammy and God knows I wished no harm to her but … well, the old place won’t be the same without her.’

There was no place in bustling New York and their aunt’s plush apartment for a child either. It hadn’t been said openly, but it was understood.

That left Margaret and Ellen, only Margaret was now known as Sister Ambrose, one of the ‘Sisters of the Poor’. If the war hadn’t raged on for six horrifying years, she would already be in Africa teaching the heathens about the love of Jesus. Now that it was over, she was just awaiting a ship’s return to civilian duties.

Ellen was twenty-one and getting married. But even as Hannah thought of her, she immediately rejected the idea. She was marrying a farmer and would have to live with his parents and two sisters and a brother in a small farmhouse with only two bedrooms. A young sister in tow, too, would make the place even more cramped.

She wondered suddenly where she might have ended up if it hadn’t been for Frances. She might have been pushed from pillar to post, one relative to another. Or left with her morose, sullen father who blamed her for her mother’s death. There was the rub though. Frances had been there, solid, welcoming and loving, and now her dying wish was for Hannah to care for her youngest child.

The trouble was Hannah was marrying Mr Bradley in late summer and she didn’t know how he’d take to her looking after Josie. They’d never talked about children, and she didn’t know how he’d feel being landed with a nine-year-old girl.

Well, he’d have to put up with it, she decided suddenly, for she owed her sister and this was pay out time. ‘Is it such a hard thing to ask?’ Frances asked, and Hannah realised the silence had stretched out between them uncomfortably, while the thoughts had tumbled about her head. ‘No,’ she said untruthfully. ‘No, not at all. I was just wondering how I’d manage being at work all day. And she doesn’t know me at all. How does she feel about it?’

‘She doesn’t know. How could I tell her? I didn’t know if you’d agree.’

‘When does she think … I mean, does she know?’

‘That I’m dying?’ Frances said. ‘Oh aye, she knows. At least I think she does. She’s not a stupid girl. She’s seen the doctor come and go and the priest and I haven’t left my bed now for over a week. I haven’t actually told her, but I think she knows.’

Frances was right, Josie did know her mother was dying. She’d listened at doors, a common practice when she wanted to know about anything she knew none of her family would tell her, and heard it said plainly. She wasn’t totally surprised at the gravity of her mother’s illness for she’d watched her become weaker and weaker and her skin and eyes take on a yellowish tinge, and she shed many tears that she’d kept hidden from her family.

But still she’d hoped and prayed. God, she’d spent so long on her knees and lit so many candles and said a special novena for the sick, she’d thought it just had to work. Father Mulligan said God answered prayers and if your faith was as small as a mustard seed you could move mountains. But Josie’s mother got more and more frail with each passing day and Josie lost faith in the priest’s words. She thought it a stupid thing to want to move mountains from place to place anyway, and surely to cure someone like her Mammy, who was so loved and needed, had to be easier than that.

But as her Mammy got worse instead of better, Josie had begun to feel lonely and afraid. She’d got used to her mother not being around by the time Hannah arrived, for she hadn’t been well this long time and Siobhan and Ellen had seen to things. She knew it wouldn’t last. Ellen was set to marry and Siobhan … she knew what was planned for her and Martin. Not a word had been said to her, it was amazing what people talked about when they didn’t know you were there, and she shivered in fear, for she hadn’t a clue who was going to look after her.

Josie found out who would the day after Hannah arrived, and then she stared at her mother in horror. She wanted to stamp her feet and shout and scream, but she couldn’t do that in front of a woman as sick as her Mammy. But surely she could see Josie couldn’t live with Hannah, someone she didn’t know in a strange country? God, it was hard enough losing her mother, she’d barely come to terms with that, without leaving behind all that was familiar. ‘Mammy,’ she said in a voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Mammy, I don’t want to go to England and I don’t want to live with Aunt Hannah – I don’t know her.’

‘You will, child. By the time it is all over, you’ll know her.’

‘Don’t, Mammy.’

‘Cutie dear,’ Frances said gently, ‘sit up here beside me,’ and she patted the bed.

Josie sat, but gingerly, knowing how even a sudden movement could hurt her mother for she was so thin that the bones in her body were visible. And now one of those stick-thin arms trailed around Josie’s neck as Frances held her daughter close. ‘Oh, Mammy! Why have you to die?’

Frances was a little while answering. She battled with tears behind her own eyes at the unfairness of life. How she hated leaving this youngest child an orphan at such a young age. She’d have liked to have had a few more years till she was older, maybe married, certainly better able to cope. But it wasn’t to be. She knew it, everyone knew it, and it would be no kindness to allow Josie to harbour any sort of false hope. ‘I don’t know why I have to die, Josie. Aren’t we all in God’s hands?’

‘If you ask me, he’s not doing a very good job of it,’ Josie said fiercely and Frances didn’t chide her for she’d had many of the same thoughts.

‘If I have to go anyway, can’t I go with our Ellen?’

‘You know there will be no room for you there, child.’

‘Granny’s then?’

But even as Josie spoke, she gave a shudder of distaste. She hated her grandparents’ farm high in the Wicklow hills. There was nothing cosy about the bleak, thatched cottage they lived in and no comfort to be had either in or out of it. She could never understand Sam liking the backbreaking work he had to do to scrape a living from the hills, or how he managed to live with his grandparents, their granda finding fault with everything and their granny not knowing what day of the week it was.

‘There’s no one to see to you there.’

‘I can see to myself,’ Josie retorted, bristling.

‘Aye, and you’d have to see to everyone else in the place,’ Frances said, adding bitterly, ‘I had my share of it and I don’t want it for you. Sam gets away with it for he’s a boy. Believe me, Josie, your childhood would be over the minute you stepped over the doorstep and you’d skivvy every hour of the day.’ She gave Josie a squeeze and pleaded, ‘Come on, pet. Don’t make this even harder for me.’

After that what could Josie do? She looked at her mother’s saddened face and saw that her eyes were brimming with tears and knew that she couldn’t add to her distress by arguing further.

Frances seemed to sink rapidly after her talk with Josie. Ellen and Siobhan took on most of the nursing of their mother, Margaret was released from the convent and Miriam was sent for. Josie, from the necessity of taking on many of the household jobs, often found herself working alongside Hannah. She wondered sometimes if Hannah had arranged this, but she didn’t care if she had or not. All she knew was that her mother was losing her grip on life and there was damn all she could do about it.

Hannah tried to get her talking, asking questions about the farm and school and her friends and what she did with her free time, but Josie wouldn’t play. She always answered her questions, she was too polite to ignore her altogether, but she did so tersely. She never introduced a subject herself and seemed not a bit interested in her aunt’s life or the place where she lived.

The tense atmosphere between Hannah and Josie changed a few days later. Josie had crept in to her mother’s bedroom, knowing for once she could see her alone. She intended to have one last try at convincing her Mammy that she couldn’t live in a stuffy, alien city with an aunt she didn’t know and didn’t like much either and that surely there was a friend or relative she could stay with.

The Tilley lamp was turned low and the candle before the Sacred Heart of Jesus lent little from its flickering flame. The priest had been that day and the room smelt of the oils he’d used to anoint Frances. Awed and a little frightened, for Josie hadn’t seen her mother since she’d told her she was to live with Hannah, she soundlessly crept nearer to the bed. ‘Mammy!’

Josie watched her mother dragging her heavy lids open as if they weighed a ton and she stared at her daughter through pain-glazed eyes and without a spark of recognition. ‘Mammy, it’s me, Josie.’

Frances looked at her for a moment longer before letting her eyelids drop closed again and Josie stood in the room watching her, biting her thumb, while tears rained down her cheeks. It was if her mother was already dead. Josie fled from the room, hurtling down the stairs and out through the front door, avoiding everyone gathered in the kitchen.

It was teatime before she was missed. By then, Ellen knew she had been into their mother’s room for she’d left the door wide open and none of the others would have done that. She said she’d have a few sharp words to say when Josie did come home.

Hannah put two and two together. She knew that Frances’s drug dosage had been raised to try and give her ease from the intense pain, but Josie hadn’t been told. Nor had she been told that Frances, drugged and pain-riddled, seldom knew any of them anymore. She thought for a moment and then without a word to the others, she slipped out into the yard.

She heard the muffled sobbing as soon as she opened the barn door and she followed it up the ladder leading to the upper floor, the very place she’d always made for whenever she was upset. Barely had her head pushed through the opening, than she saw Josie spread-eagled across the straw bales.

But despite the stealth that Hannah had used so as not to startle the girl, Josie heard her. She raised her head, her face blotchy from crying, but her eyes flashed fire. ‘What d’you want?’ she spat out. ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’

Hannah ignored the anger in Josie’s voice, for behind it she heard the knot of raw pain. She eased herself through the hole and sat on a bale nearby, but not too near to Josie, who’d buried her head once more into the straw and refused to look at her aunt. ‘I used to come here too,’ Hannah said, conversationally. ‘There’s something comforting about the smell of straw.’

There was no movement from Josie, but Hannah knew she was listening intently. ‘I’ll miss Frances too,’ she said. ‘She was the only mother I ever knew. And I might as well have had no father either,’ she added bitterly. ‘Frances said he was so mad with grief, he hadn’t even a name for me. The priest suggested Hannah. It was his mother’s name.’

Josie knew the story. It had often been talked of in the family. ‘Your daddy was like my daddy too,’ Hannah went on. ‘He used to talk to me if I got upset. I loved him dearly.’

Josie raised her head. ‘Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?’ she asked, accusingly. ‘Everyone was asking.’

‘I was ill.’

‘After, then. Mammy used to get upset and cry at night.’

There was a silence between them and then Hannah gave a sigh. ‘There were reasons,’ she said quietly. ‘One day I may even tell you what they were, but what matters now is you and me.’ And then, because she’d sensed the girl’s antagonism towards her from the beginning, she asked, ‘Will you hate living with me so much?’

Josie swung around and stared at Hannah and decided to be truthful. ‘Yes, I will. I don’t know you or anything about England and I don’t want to know either. I don’t want to leave here.’

Hannah thought that now was not the time to tell Josie she wasn’t keen on looking after her either. ‘We can’t all have what we want, Josie,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to get to know you the last few days, but you … Look, pet, we must make the best of it for your mother’s sake. Give it a year? If after that you’re still miserable, I promise we’ll look at it again.’

And then what? Josie thought. Maybe she could induce Martin or Siobhan to send for her to go to America, but would she like that any better? ‘At least when your Mammy died, you didn’t have to leave the place altogether,’ she cried.

‘No, no I didn’t, and like I said, I’ll always be in your parents’ debt because of what they did. After a while, people forgot I was really Hannah Delaney. I was known as one of the Mullens.’

‘Did you care?’

‘Not at first. I wanted to belong somewhere. My own sisters and brothers became like strangers till one by one they took the emigrant boats to the States till only my eldest brother, Eamonn, was left to farm the land with my father. He doesn’t really know me though and I don’t know him and for a time it was nice being thought of as one of you lot. It was as I got older that I resented Hannah Delaney being swamped altogether.’

‘Is that why you left?’

‘Partly,’ Hannah admitted. ‘I wanted to start afresh. Stand on my own two feet, just to see if I could. A good friend of mine, Molly McGuire, had left Ireland just the previous year and we promised to write to each other. She got a job easily in a hotel in Leeds. It was called The Hibernian, reputed to be the biggest, best and of course most expensive in the town. The wages weren’t great, she told me, but the tips were legion. She said she could get me a job, straight off.’

Hannah stopped there, remembering her indecision. She didn’t want to upset Frances, and she knew she would if she was to follow her friend. But she knew she’d regret it if she didn’t go while she had the chance. As she dithered, Molly challenged her. Hadn’t she always said she wanted to see something of other places? Hadn’t she always said she didn’t want to live the whole of her life in Ireland and wasn’t there a big, wide world out there to explore?

And she was right. Hannah had said all those things and meant them, too, but the actual leaving was hard, especially when she loved Frances as dearly as she would any mother and Paddy and the others, too. She knew she would miss them all.

In the end, she poured her heart out to Paddy and he patted her hand and told her not to fret, that it was natural to want to spread your wings when you were young. ‘But Frances …’ she had wailed.

‘Frances will come around, never fret, I’ll talk to her,’ Paddy had promised.

‘Was Mammy upset when you left?’ Josie asked, jolting Hannah back to the present.

‘Very. I was sad too. God, it was a wrench to go. People said I was ungrateful to leave when I could have been such a help to Frances at long last. Frances never said that and I doubt she ever thought of it, she wasn’t like that. She said she’d miss me so much, but she wished me Godspeed. It broke me up and we cried together as we hugged, and for a while, my resolve weakened. It was your father who said to go and satisfy myself and to remember I had a home to come back to if it didn’t work out.

‘Not everyone saw it like that of course, but then all my life people have been telling me how grateful I should be to Frances and I was grateful to her. But that level of gratitude gets to be a heavy burden when you’re reminded of it constantly. Not that your parents ever spoke about it, it was others, the relatives who hadn’t wanted me themselves, or neighbours who felt justified to speak as they chose because they’d known me all my life.’

‘And did you like it in this Leeds place?’ Josie asked.

‘I did not and that’s the truth,’ Hannah said, remembering her horror at the grim greyness of the place and how the opulence of the hotel unnerved her and the way she could barely understand the way the other girls spoke. She was achingly lonely and many, many times thought she’d made a mistake because she missed her family so very much. She missed the farm too and often longed for the sight of a green mossy hill, springy turf beneath her feet, and good clean air to fill her lungs with.

‘I didn’t mind the work,’ she said. ‘I was well used to work, but everything was so strange and when Molly got married and moved to London only months after I arrived, it was worse. We wrote for a while, but in the end the letters petered out. A girl called Tilly Galston shared my room then.’

‘Was she nice?’

Hannah smiled as she remembered the good friend she’d been and the way she pulled her out of the morose self-pitying attitude she’d been in danger of developing. ‘I’d have gone home if it hadn’t been for her,’ Hannah said. ‘She wouldn’t let me.’

‘How could she stop you?’

‘Oh, she was very bossy,’ Hannah said. ‘But funny too, you know. She could always see the bright side of things and could always make me laugh. She bullied me into going out and about too and making an effort with the other girls. We were good friends.’

‘Where is she now?’

Hannah shrugged. ‘Still in Leeds, I suppose,’ she said. ‘At least she was there when I left and moved to Birmingham.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Well, no I don’t exactly.’

Josie made a face. She felt Hannah was a poor friend to not keep in touch with Tilly, but she wasn’t about to argue the point. Tilly was in the past and it was the future she was worried about. She wondered if Hannah wanted to take her back to live with her. Maybe she was against the idea, too, and it had been forced upon her. Maybe it was gratitude rearing its ugly head again and suddenly she felt a bit sorry for her aunt. ‘All right then,’ she said in an effort towards compromise. ‘Say I do come with you, where do you live in this Birmingham place?’

Hannah knew Josie was putting a brave face on it and replied, ‘An area called Erdington to the north of the city. Many call it Erdington Village, which it was once, but now it’s like a little town. It’s not anything like here. You’ve never seen so many people and cars and buses, lorries and trams on the roads, especially in the city centre. But the guesthouse, where I work, is in Grange Road and that’s not a bit like that. It’s lovely. It’s wide and tree-lined and the houses are set back behind privet hedges. There’s even a small farm in Holly Lane, not that far away, and sometimes we can get hens’ or ducks’ eggs from the farmer, Mr Freer.’

She stole a glance at Josie and went on, ‘I suppose living here you’re thinking, “So what?” Believe me, if you’d been subjected to the rationing restrictions Britain has had to put up with, you’d know how wonderful getting the odd egg is. I’ve had a word with Mrs Emmerson and she doesn’t mind in the least putting you up for a while. She’s very kind and anyway, I’ll be getting married in September.’

Married! That gave Josie a jolt. She thought Hannah would have given up all thoughts of marriage. She was old, almost as old as Miriam, and she’d been married for years and years and had a whole tribe of children now, though no one seemed pleased about that either. Still, that wasn’t her problem. What was, though, was the man Hannah was to marry. ‘Does Mammy know that?’ she asked.

‘Aye, she does,’ Hannah said. ‘We talked about it. He has a largish terraced house of his own. There’d be plenty of room for you in it.’

‘And how does he feel about me?’

Hannah crushed down the worry she had about that and the less than welcoming letter she’d received just that day in answer to hers that she’d written, telling her fiancé what her sister had asked her to do. He’d written that he didn’t want to take on the responsibility of a child and he’d been surprised at her making a decision without consulting him. It was, he’d said, no way to start married life.

Hannah would win him round, she had to, but now Josie needed reassurance. ‘He’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I told you about the size of the house? Why would he mind you sharing a wee piece of it? He knows it’s the right thing to do and Mr Bradley always does the right thing.’

Josie stared at Hannah. ‘Mr Bradley!’ she said incredulously. ‘Hasn’t he a first name? You don’t call a man you’re marrying “Mr”.’

But it was how Hannah thought of him. Solid, rather dull Mr Bradley – Arthur Bradley – the one Gloria Emmerson told Hannah she must grab before someone else did. He was her stab, perhaps her only stab, towards respectability.

Not of course that Mr Bradley knew anything about Hannah’s past. Oh dear me no, that would never have done. But Gloria knew and she liked Hannah and wanted the best for her.

That’s why she found her a job in her thriving guesthouse and then latched on to Mr Bradley, a commercial traveller, who’d confided in her that he was sick of the road. ‘To rise in the firm though,’ he’d said dolefully, ‘I need a wife. The boss thinks married men are more steady and reliable.’

If Gloria thought Arthur Bradley was just about the steadiest person she’d ever met, she gave no indication of it. ‘But,’ Arthur had gone on, ‘I don’t want to marry and anyway, I’ve nothing to offer a wife. The house went with my father’s job, you see. After he died, Mother had the house during her lifetime, but when she died it went back to the firm. So I don’t even have a permanent place to live.’

That had all changed a little later when out of the blue, Arthur inherited a large terraced house in Harrison Road, Erdington, after the demise of an elderly uncle. Gloria immediately began to think of him as a suitable catch for Hannah. First, though, she had to win Hannah round to her way of thinking, for she’d shown no interest in any men in the time she’d known her.

Hannah wasn’t the least bit interested in Arthur Bradley either. She felt sorry for him at times but didn’t really know why. He seemed a lonely sort of man, out of step with the rest of the world somehow. Gloria said it was because he’d lived all those years with his mother. ‘How many years?’ Hannah asked. ‘He’s not that old.’

‘I’d have said he was going on for forty.’

Hannah was surprised. ‘Do you think he’s that old?’ she asked. ‘Was he in the war?’

‘No,’ Gloria said. ‘He had flat feet or some such he told me. Anyway, it doesn’t bother you him being so much older than you, does it? I mean, he doesn’t look his age.’

He didn’t, Hannah had to admit that. Despite Arthur Bradley’s thinning brown hair and the wire-framed glasses perched on his long, narrow nose, he didn’t look his age. She supposed that was because he was quite skinny, wiry almost, and he looked worse because he was so tall. His whole face was long, too, and had a mournful look about it, particularly his dull brown eyes, and Hannah realised while Mr Bradley didn’t look his age, he certainly acted it.

‘Don’t you want to be a respectable married woman?’ Gloria demanded.

‘Of course,’ Hannah said. ‘If everything had gone to plan, I would be married now, but I don’t want to marry just anyone.’

‘Look,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t wish to be harsh, but your lad’s body is lying buried in the sands of a Normandy beach. He isn’t ever coming back and you have to accept that. Do you want a life of loneliness?’

‘I don’t love Mr Bradley.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘Aye, I suppose.’

‘Then you’ll rub along well enough, I’d say.’

‘Gloria, there is more to marriage than that.’

‘Yes, there is. One thing is, can he provide for you? Well, Arthur can. He has a good job and a fine house that you would be mistress of.’

‘Those kind of things don’t impress me.’

‘Well, they should. Money is a hard thing to get along without.’

‘How do you know, anyway, that Arthur will be for it?’

‘I don’t,’ Gloria admitted. ‘But the boss is on to him to get himself married and I know he’s gone on you.’

‘Don’t be daft, I’m sure he’s not,’ Hannah snapped.

Gloria wondered why it was that Hannah didn’t realise how truly lovely she was with that glossy mane of auburn hair, creamy-coloured skin and startling green eyes. And then Gloria had played her ace card. ‘Don’t you ever want a child, Hannah?’

Hannah wanted a child more than anything in the world, and Gloria knew that, but she’d accepted the fact that with Mike dead there would be no child. But now to have the chance to marry and to be able to have her own baby, a child, to hold in her arms, to love and to watch grow up … Well, it was more than she’d ever expected from life. Was it possible? Could she take Mr Bradley on for life, and it would be for life, in order to have that child?

Yes, yes she could, her whole being cried. She’d walk over red-hot coals if it would fill the empty void in her life and help heal the ache in her heart. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Sound Mr Bradley out if you must, but you may have a shock. He may not want to marry me at all. He doesn’t strike me as the marrying kind.’

And that had been that. She had committed herself. But Josie was right, she must stop thinking of him as Mr Bradley. ‘His name is Arthur,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Come on, dry your eyes and let’s go in.’

‘Will I get into trouble?’ Josie asked tremulously. ‘Will they all give out at me?’

‘Maybe,’ Hannah said. ‘But I’ll stick up for you, don’t worry. It’s you and me in this together from now on. You and me against the world.’

Josie liked the sound of that. She got to her feet, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan and dusting the pieces of straw from her clothes. ‘I’m ready,’ she said and she followed her aunt down the ladder.

Chapter Two

Frances’s funeral was well attended and everyone spoke of the fine woman she’d been and what a great loss it was to the whole family. The eldest of the Mullens, Peter, officiated at the Requiem Mass. Hannah knew that would have pleased his mother and also too that Margaret had got dispensation from her convent to attend the service.

What would have upset her, though, would have been to see Miriam. Hannah had been so shocked at the young woman only a little older than she was herself who she hadn’t seen for years. Miriam’s face was gaunt, though ruddy in complexion, and deeply lined and her hair, which had once been burnished auburn like Hannah’s own, had streaks of grey in it and hung in limp strands around her face. Her black clothes were respectable enough and Hannah guessed they were borrowed because her shoes were scuffed and down at heel. Beneath her coat was the swell of yet another pregnancy. Miriam resembled a woman nearly twice her age and Hannah felt sorry for the life she led.

But one of the worst aspects of that day for Hannah had been meeting her father. She’d made no move to visit him since she’d come over, knowing she wouldn’t be welcome, and he greeted her with a curt nod as if she were a person he’d seen before, but never really knew. Her brother Eamonn took her in a hug that Hannah knew he’d done just because it was the thing everyone expected but in fact, she felt closer to Mary, his wife, who greeted her warmly and said she must come up to the house.

She knew she wouldn’t go. Her father’s continual rejection still hurt her, cutting deeply. Now, together with the pain of losing Frances, she felt misery almost engulf her.

She’d been in no mood for the riotous wake after the funeral and was glad that she and Josie were leaving soon. She told the others that work was pressing and that Gloria had written asking about her return and Hannah felt she shouldn’t be away too long, especially as Gloria had been so good both about giving her so much time off and allowing her to bring Josie back with her.

Most of the family had been relieved that Hannah had agreed to take on the care of Josie as their mother had wanted, though little was said about it. Hannah thought it was probably embarrassment and guilt stopping their tongues. Only Peter and Margaret had said that Hannah’s reward for her generosity would be in Heaven.

Hannah was tempted to say that was a long time to wait and ask Margaret what was so appealing about black heathens that she could turn her face towards them so stoutly and ignore the needs of her young orphaned sister.

But of course she said none of this. She just thanked them. Martin eventually spoke about it as he drove them to the station. ‘It’s really good of you to do this,’ he said. ‘Taking on Josie and such. I suppose you think me and Siobhan really selfish taking off for America, but it’s what we’ve both wanted to do for years and it’s been like a carrot dangled in front of me what with me being unable to take it, especially after Daddy died.

‘If we don’t go now,’ he went on, ‘we’ll never go, neither of us. Siobhan is as anxious as me. She knows as well as I do that there’s nothing here for me. She sees the life Miriam has and shudders, like I do myself. God! The man she married must be an inconsiderate brute.’

‘There are inconsiderate brutes in America too,’ Hannah reminded him. ‘They are not the prerogative of the Irish, you know.’

‘I know, I know,’ Martin replied. ‘But … anyway, we both think there’s nothing to keep us here now and you agreeing to look after Josie has made it possible. You won’t lose by it – financially, I mean. As soon as I’m settled I’ll send you something for her.’

‘Well, though I’m not saying the money won’t be useful, the point is it’s rationing that’s the problem,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll have to see about getting Josie a ration book as quickly as possible.’

‘There won’t be rationing for ever,’ Martin pointed out. ‘And there might be a bit of money too once the farm is sold. The beasts are all but gone, your father’s had some of them, and the farm goes up for sale tomorrow. ’Course it will have to be split between us all, but there’ll still be a little.’

‘However big or small, I’ll put that away for Josie. She will want money in the future,’ Hannah said.

‘Aye. That’s a good idea,’ Martin said. ‘Pity I’ll not get to meet this man you’re marrying. Fair sprung that fact on everyone. If you could put the wedding forward a month, it would be before we sail and me and Siobhan could come over.’

‘It’s all settled for mid-September,’ Hannah said, and she was glad it was. She didn’t want eagle-eyed and outspoken Martin over there increasing her apprehension about marriage, for she knew Martin would not find much to admire in Arthur Bradley.

But Martin did not know the whole story and never would. Martin could never know how Hannah longed not only for marriage, respectability and a baby, but also for a man of her own, who would love and cherish her above all others, like her father had never done. Mike had, and oh how she’d missed him and had shed bitter tears when she found out he was dead.

Josie, Hannah was to find out, was not a good sailor. Her face had taken on a greenish tinge even before the shores of Ireland had totally disappeared from view.

Josie had never felt so miserable in all of her life, nor had she ever felt so sick, had never been so sick either.

By the time she’d been half an hour on the boat, her whole stomach ached with vomiting. She leant against Hannah, who was sitting beside her on the bench on the open deck, braving the sharp winds that whipped the seas to rolling white-fringed breakers and carried the drizzling rain with it. Cold and damp though it was, it was better than inside which smelt of Guinness, cigarettes and vomit. Hannah felt a stab of sympathy for the child who must be feeling so lost and afraid and so sick, for her face was still wan and pale, her long brown hair straggly and glistening from the unrelenting mizzle which had thoroughly dampened both of them. But Josie took comfort in Hannah’s arms around her, like she had when Hannah had held her head as she was sick over the side of the boat, pulling her hair back and wiping her face later with a damp cloth she had with her.

Ever since that day in the barn, Josie had felt differently about Hannah, but for all that, those last traumatic days of her mother’s life were fraught ones and Josie was frightened of the future. But she now trusted Hannah and often sought her out. Hannah was frightened of the future, too, for Arthur’s attitude to her bringing Josie home hadn’t softened. He totally ignored all the reasons she’d listed for having to return with Josie in the second letter she’d written to him. Posthaste, his reply came back. Hannah was to leave the child in the care of the social services who would now be responsible for her welfare.

Hannah had been simultaneously horrified and angry and she’d hurled the offending letter into the fire, lest Josie catch sight of it. She thought the child had enough to put up with. She’d been wrenched from her home, with her parents dead and her sisters and brothers spread about the globe. She had only Hannah and she’d have to make Arthur see that. She wouldn’t allow Josie to feel the rejection she’d always felt herself.

Josie would never forget her first view of Birmingham as they emerged from New Street Station. She’d recovered quickly once she’d left the rolling boat and had quite enjoyed the train, though she’d been very hungry and glad of the reviving tea and sandwiches Hannah had bought at the platform buffet at a place called Crewe, where they’d had to change trains.

She seen little of Dublin as they passed it on the way to the Port of Dún Laoghaire, but the noise and bustle seemed all around her as she surveyed Birmingham, her new home. Hannah had been right that day in the barn, Josie thought, for she had never seen so many lorries, or cars or people – hundreds of people thronging the shops, or alighting from large rumbling buses or swaying trams that rattled alarmingly along the rails set into the road.

Not that she had time to stand and stare, for she had trouble keeping up with Hannah’s easy strides, especially hampered as she was by a case and a bundle. And all the time Hannah talked, pointing out this shop and that, and telling her she’d take her to something called the Bull Ring soon.

At last, they stood at the bus stop opposite the police station in a road aptly named ‘Steelhouse Lane’ outside a large building which Hannah told her was a general hospital. ‘Used to be the workhouse, I’m told,’ she said. ‘Gloria Emmerson said the older people still don’t like going in when they’re sick or anything.’

Josie studied the grim building and honestly didn’t blame them, but before she was able to reply, the bus screeched to a halt beside them. Josie was glad Hannah had chosen a bus. It was unnerving enough and nothing like the cosy single-deckers she was used to where you knew everyone on board, but the trams frightened her to death.

They sat upstairs, so that Josie could see more of the city she’d come to live in, while Hannah pointed out landmarks to her, like the large green clock at Aston Cross, and Salford Bridge that spanned the canal, unaware how horrified Josie was by everything.

She’d been as surprised and shocked by the back-to-back houses as Hannah had been when she’d first arrived and depressed by the grim greyness of the whole place. She looked with horror at the huge factory chimneys belching smoke into the spring air and became aware of the pungent stink that tickled her nose and lodged at the back of her throat. She thought the canal, that Hannah pointed out with such pride as she explained that Birmingham was ringed with such waterways, was horrible. She’d never seen such brown, oil-slicked, stagnant water and it made a sharp contrast to the rippling stream near her old home that had glinted in the sun as it babbled over its stony bed.

As the bus rumbled its way towards Erdington, Josie felt depression settle on top of her. She thought everywhere drab and without a blade of grass anywhere. Homesickness swept over her, so strong she felt tears prickling her eyes. She wondered how Hannah could stand living in such a place. She was frightened of arriving at her destination, frightened of Mrs Emmerson and her guesthouse where Hannah worked and wished with all her heart she was back in her home in Wicklow.

But Hannah had not exaggerated about Grange Road. It was lovely. The pavements were as wide as the road and had trees planted every few yards and that alone went some way to making Josie feel better.

Gloria Emmerson wasn’t frightening either. She was plump and motherly. Even her face was round, but it was kindly-looking with a smallish mouth and a squashed-up nose and really bright sparkly eyes. Josie smiled at Gloria as she swept them into the house and through to her personal rooms at the back. She had a casserole cooking in the oven and the smell of it revived Josie’s spirits somewhat as she realised that, despite the sandwiches and tea at Crewe, she was still very hungry.

Gloria watched them surreptitiously as they ate. Josie, she thought looked very pale, though she supposed that was from the upset of her mother dying and the tiring journey they’d had. She thought her a plain little thing with her large brown eyes standing out in her head and her brown, nondescript hair.

Not a patch on her aunt, she thought. Not that it had done her much good in the long run, she reminded herself with a sigh. She didn’t know whether she was doing her a favour or not pushing her into marriage. But then, Arthur Bradley was nothing if not respectable and after all, it was the best she could expect in the circumstances.

Arthur was waiting for Hannah in the house he’d inherited in Harrison Road, just off Erdington High Street. It was a fine terraced house with three stone steps up to the front door, while an entry ran around to the back door and strip of garden.

Initially, it had given Hannah a thrill of pleasure to realise that, after her marriage, she would be mistress of such a house. The front door opened onto a marble-tiled hall with the door to the front room with a bay window to the right-hand side, which Hannah decided would be the parlour, and carpeted stairs to the left. Behind the front room was another slightly smaller room and at the end of the hall was the door to the breakfast room, leading through to the kitchen and scullery, while a large cellar ran from front to back beneath the whole ground floor.

It had originally had three large bedrooms upstairs, but at some time Arthur’s relative had cut one of the double rooms in two to make a much smaller bedroom and an indoor bathroom and lavatory. It was an unheard of luxury, though Arthur said in the daytime, he would prefer the lavatory outside to be used so as not to spend time traipsing up and down the stairs and thereby wearing out the stair carpet.

Still, not to have to go out in the middle of the night was a bonus, and there was running water into the bath, provided you remembered to light the geyser. They had proper bathrooms at the hotel of course, one between four rooms, and Gloria had one in her living quarters which she allowed Hannah the use of once a week. Other times, Hannah had to make do with a bowl of water in her bedroom. What luxury to be able to have a bath when she liked.

In fact, the whole house would be a joy to care for. It was even adequately furnished. It wasn’t her choice, but, in those austere post-war days with shortages and utility being the watchwords, she thought herself and Arthur fortunate to have the problem of furnishing a house solved for them. ‘In time, when things are easier, we might replace some of the furniture,’ she told Arthur on her first visit.

‘Hmph, yes, my dear,’ Arthur had said. ‘But you know money might not be so plentiful. I shouldn’t want to go into debt for anything. This hire-purchase scheme is not one I should like to get involved in.’

Hannah, who’d never owed a penny in her life, agreed with Arthur’s sentiments. Gloria, when she told her, said it just showed what a sensible man he was, and wasn’t it just as well they hadn’t to buy even the basics before they could start married life, though she advised Hannah to buy if not a new bed, then certainly a new mattress.

But that day, Hannah had more on her mind than a new mattress. She hoped Arthur would come to see that she had no alternative but to bring Josie home with her, without getting cross about it.

He wasn’t the sort to rant and rave, but he could go very cold if he was displeased. And she knew this news would greatly displease him. He’d made his views adamantly clear in his last letter and would have presumed that Hannah would have carried them out.

That was why Hannah had asked him not to come to the guesthouse that evening after he finished work, but go to the house instead where she would meet him as soon as she could get away.

When she’d been a few minutes in the house, having told Arthur straight away about Josie, she knew she’d been right to come alone. He made no shout or cry of protest, but instead had gone very still, his mouth a tight line of disapproval, his nose pinched, his eyes coal black and sparking with anger, while a tic beat at the side of his temple.

Arthur Bradley had looked forward to seeing Hannah again after a few days away. He didn’t love her – he’d never loved anyone but his mother, but he admired her.

Before he’d had the house, his mother having died some years before, he’d stayed often at Gloria Emmerson’s guesthouse for he was more often in the Midlands area than anywhere else. For a start, the factory and head office he worked from was in Aston, just outside Birmingham. And then, Birmingham itself and the surrounding area being the home of light engineering, had many factories making the goods his firm needed to make the wireless sets they put together.

Arthur disliked the travelling and staying at indifferent guesthouses. He’d done it for years and he’d been complaining to Gloria about it yet again one day when she seized her chance. ‘My boss, Mr Banks, is a family man himself, you see,’ he’d told Gloria. ‘He likes married men in the firm. Says you can rely on them. It’s all the married men who work in the offices and seldom have to go on the road.’

‘Maybe you should think about marriage yourself then?’ Gloria had suggested.

‘I never thought to marry,’ Arthur had said. ‘Anyway, I know no one suitable.’

‘What about Hannah?’

‘Hannah!’ Arthur had noticed Hannah of course, he couldn’t have failed to. Everyone who came to the place noticed Hannah.

‘Well, if you’ve got to be married, you could look further than Hannah and fare worse,’ Gloria had said. ‘She’s a well set-up lass.’

‘I know that all right,’ Arthur had said. ‘But I know my faults, none better. I’m a dull sort of chap for someone like Hannah.’

‘She’s not in the full flush of youth,’ Gloria reminded him.

‘I know that and I’m surprised. I thought someone would have snapped her up before now.’

‘Aye, well there’s been a war on, you know. The one who might have married Hannah never came back from it.’ No harm, Gloria thought, in telling him that much. ‘Ask her,’ she urged.

She wasn’t worried about Hannah’s reaction. She’d already talked her round and she knew what her answer would be and hoped fervently that she’d done the right thing.

Arthur was overjoyed that Hannah had agreed to marry him. In the early weeks of their courtship, however, Hannah had often doubted her decision, even with the house that Gloria saw as such a prize, and it was always the thought of one day having her own baby that held her on course. Arthur Bradley wasn’t a demonstrative man, nor one, as even Gloria was heard to say, to flash his money about overmuch.

He seldom took Hannah out and whenever he did, even when they were alone, he was so respectful, he appeared aloof and cold. There had been no snuggling for them in the back row of the cinema the odd times they’d gone together. There were no stolen kisses in the entries in the darkening winter nights, or cuddling on the sofa in Arthur’s front room and taking comfort in one another. No further than that of course, but Hannah would have welcomed being held and caressed and kissed. That wasn’t Mr Bradley’s way, though, she told herself and anyway, she didn’t need such things, after all she was no lovesick teenager.

A few weeks after their engagement, Arthur came to see Hannah in an ecstatic mood. He told her that they’d both been asked for dinner with his boss and his wife, Mr and Mrs Banks. Such a thing had never happened to him before.

The evening was a success. They all got on remarkably well, so well in fact that the Banks insisted Arthur and Hannah call them Reg and Elizabeth. Arthur could see how Hannah had charmed his boss and his wife. In fact, Hannah and Elizabeth had seemed like old friends together.

He knew some of his colleagues couldn’t imagine what Hannah saw in him. He’d seen the looks of puzzled envy on their faces when he’d taken Hannah to the annual dinner-dance, just after she’d agreed to marry him. He’d thought himself a lucky man. If he had to have someone looking across the table from him every day, then Hannah he felt could do the job better than most. Added to her looks, she was compliant, eager to please and had never opposed him in anything.

And now … now she stood bold as brass and told him not only that she’d defied him and brought her sister’s child home, but that she was to live with them and that she’d promised her sister on her deathbed that she’d look after her.

‘You had no right to promise such a thing without consulting me.’

‘Arthur, she was dying,’ Hannah said, her voice rising in distress. ‘Not long after that first day, she was having so much morphine she didn’t know where she was and could recognise no one. Should I have asked her to wait while I wrote you a wee letter?’

‘Don’t shout, Hannah.’

‘I feel like shouting,’ Hannah snapped. ‘Have you no feeling, even for the child? How do you imagine she feels, her parents both dead, her brothers and sisters scattered to the four corners of the world? She is alone, Arthur.’

‘The authorities would …’

‘I wasn’t leaving her with any authorities,’ Hannah said. ‘How could you expect me to do that after promising my sister I’d see to her?’

‘Well, I don’t want her here and it’s my house.’

‘Then she won’t come and neither will I,’ Hannah said angrily, astounded at Arthur’s uncompromising attitude.

‘Do you know what you’re saying?’

‘Yes, I do. I won’t bring her here under sufferance,’ Hannah said. ‘She’s gone through enough. You were lucky to have your mother until you grew up. I never knew mine and without Frances and her abiding love for me, I would have been lost. I owed her so much and if you want to know I’m glad I have the opportunity to pay back some of it. If you can’t see it that way, you’re not the man I thought you were and maybe we’d better call the wedding off now before it goes any further.’

She removed her ring as she spoke and laid it on the sideboard. She’d not removed her coat and hat and without another word she turned and left, slamming the front door behind her.

On the way home, though, she wondered what she’d done. Gloria had agreed Josie could stay till the wedding, but she didn’t know if she’d want her staying there for good. And if she didn’t, Hannah would be out of a job and a place to live.

Back in the house, Arthur, too, was having second thoughts. What Hannah had said about his mother had hit home for he’d been devastated when she’d died. Then he thought of his work colleagues when he told them the marriage was off. He imagined the nudges and winks. ‘Knew it wouldn’t last. She was miles too good for him.’

And what of his boss? He’d think Arthur a failure for not hanging on to Hannah. And if they should ever find out the reason that Hannah had walked out on him, he had a horrible feeling that they’d see and understand her point of view, not his.

He was a devout man and eventually he walked along to the Abbey, his parish church, to ask the advice of one of the priests there. There were confessions every night till eight o’clock, so he knew there would be someone about.

Father Fitzgerald was pulling his coat about him as he stepped out of the church, for there was rain in the air, when he saw Arthur coming up the path. ‘Can I walk with you, Father? It’s advice I’m after.’

The priest’s heart sank. He hoped Arthur Bradley wouldn’t keep him long; the church had been chilly and he was also very hungry. But then, he told himself, Arthur wouldn’t have known that. ‘Talk away then, Arthur,’ he said.

Arthur told the priest everything and though he told him of his own misgivings, he also told him the truth about Hannah’s promise to her sister and the debt she felt she owed her and the priest listened without a word.

They’d reached the door before Arthur had finished and they stood with the wind gusting around them and yet the priest felt himself going hot with anger at Arthur’s words and actions. He told him he’d been less than charitable and whatever his feelings, he should honour Hannah’s promise.

‘We have just fought a war of unparalleled magnitude,’ he said. ‘A time when there was much grief and loss of life, but also when there was more neighbourliness and helping one another. I’m ashamed that you even hesitated to take this poor orphan child in. You have a good job and a fine house, many have far, far less and yet would welcome that child. Your inability to share shows a serious flaw in your character and one that should be attended to.’

Arthur was shaken by the priest’s condemnation of him, there was no doubt about it. But he was a man of honour and knew there was only one thing to be done. He went straight round to the guesthouse after leaving the priest. Gloria opened the door. ‘Can I see Hannah?’ he asked.

But Gloria had already heard an account of the quarrel from an indignant Hannah and she said sternly, ‘I’m not having Hannah any further upset.’

‘I’m not here to upset her.’

‘Well that’s as may be …’

‘Please,’ Arthur said earnestly. ‘I’m here to apologise.’

Well, thought Gloria, that’s more like it. She asked him to step into the dining room, all the guests having now finished their evening meal, and that was where Hannah faced him a few moments later.

Arthur saw that two spots of colour stood out in Hannah’s cheeks and her whole manner suggested that she would stand no nonsense. But Arthur wasn’t there to spout nonsense. What the priest had said had wounded him deeply and had made him ashamed of his behaviour at the house. Though he made no mention of the priest, this shame is what he told Hannah as he asked for her forgiveness.

Hannah’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

Arthur still didn’t mention the priest. He had the feeling it wouldn’t help his case. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘When you’d gone, I thought about what you said. I was wrong and I’m sorry, truly sorry, and sorry too if I upset you.’

In spite of herself, Hannah was impressed. It took courage for a person to admit they were wrong about something and ask for another’s forgiveness.

‘Please, take back the ring?’ Arthur said, holding it out to Hannah.

But she had to be certain. ‘And Josie?’ she said. ‘How do you feel about her now?’

Arthur was a truthful man. Eventually he replied, ‘You must be patient with me. I know nothing about children, I’ve never had dealings with any.’

‘I don’t expect you to be a natural father,’ Hannah said. ‘I expect you to be welcoming, to be kind to her.’

‘I’ll do my best, I can’t say fairer than that.’

‘No,’ said Hannah, slipping the engagement ring back on her finger ‘No, you can’t.’ But though she spoke the conciliatory words, Arthur’s earlier attitude had shaken her. Despite her longing for a child, she knew if she hadn’t got Josie’s welfare to consider, she’d have probably called it a day with Arthur Bradley there and then and to hell with his fine house and steady job.