The Silent Children

by Honor Harlow

  We walked back to Suileen Lane, past my house and found a great hiding place under a stone.

  “Now you can wheel the pram, cos your hands are free.”

  The three of us took turns pushing the babies, Brendan and Teresa. At Railway Terrace I went back home for my tea. When I got in the door Mammy looked at my dress and said she didn’t know how I could get so dirty. Daddy didn’t come home for tea. When I was ready for bed, he wasn’t there to piggy-back me up the stairs.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “That Cathal McHugh is drunk out of his head and throwing abuse at the bishop and the Gardaí so Daddy has to stay in the barracks.

  “Will he be home tomorrow?”

  “He will. As soon as they get that awful man sent to Ballinacora, he’ll be home.”

  Sickness

  Brigid didn’t come to school so I couldn’t ask her about Liam. I was very tired and wanted to go home. I told Úna and Kait I was tired and didn’t want to go to the nannas to get the lanterns ready for Ducking Night.

  “Don’t worry, Arlene. We’ll cut out the insides of your turnip.”

  “Alright, but don’t do the eyes or nose or mouth.”

  “No, you can do them yourself the next day.”

  When I got home, Mammy said I didn’t look well. I didn’t feel hungry and wanted to go to bed. She felt my forehead and then got me ready. We went upstairs. In bed, my eyes kept closing when we were saying our prayers and I dozed off without blessing myself at the end of the prayers.

  During the night, I woke up at the sound of the cart’s wheels and a horse neighing. Mammy was asleep in her room, so I got up and went to her in her bed to ask her if Mick the Sweep was coming to clean our chimney.

  “Mammy, do you hear the rattling of the wheels?”

  “Mary, stop your nonsense about the Coster Bower.”

  When Mammy said that, I knew straight away who was outside our house. I jumped up onto the bed to be closer beside her and mind her better. I wouldn’t let the Coster Bower take my Mammy. The horse and carriage didn’t stop, it kept going. Mammy was safe but Daddy?

  “Mammy where is Daddy?”

  “He’s playing cards with Dr Kelly, so stop your rámhaille.”

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about what the nannas said about how Nora McHugh was dead and Packy Duggan was on his way out. That meant there was still another person to die because death comes in threes. I tried to ask Mammy if she knew who else was dying but she said, “Whist!” every time I started to speak. I fell asleep with ‘whist’ in my ears.

  The next morning, Mammy was cross with me. “Mary, I have had enough of your rámhaille about the Coster Bower. I want to hear no more out of you about banshees and the like.”

  I insisted I had heard the wheels and the neighing of the horse and burst out before she could hush me. “Mammy, I heard the carriage last night. They were coming to get one of us.”

  “They weren’t. We are all alive and well.”

  “But Daddy?”

  “He’s in the barracks. And you and I are here in bed looking at each other, all the family is fine.”

  “Mammy, does the banshee come to let you know someone is going to die and the Coster Bower comes for the spirit of the person when they are dead?”

  “Mary, what did I just say?”

  “But…”

  “I don’t want another word out of you about ghosts.”

  Mammy got up but told me to stay in bed because I was very hot.

  “I want to go to the market with you, Mammy.”

  “Mary, you’re not well. I’ll get Dr Kelly to come and have a look at you.”

  “I want to go downtown with you.”

  “I was going to take you with me to the funeral of Nora McHugh, but you’re better off in bed until Dr Kelly sees you.”

  “Mammy, the last funeral we went to was Mr McLoughlin’s.”

  “That’s right but poor Nora McHugh left a small family behind. Daddy has a hard day ahead of him.”

  “Will there be a fight? Are the McHugh’s tinkers?”

  “No, they aren’t, but there are decisions to be made about the children.”

  “What decisions about them?”

  “Nothing. It’s not something a child needs to know. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea and toast.”

  I stayed in bed. When I lay down, my throat tickled, and I started coughing. At teatime Dr Kelly came. He examined my chest with a thing hanging from his ears and looked in my ears. He told Mammy to keep me in bed because he thought I was getting the measles.

  “Dervla, the dispensary is crowded, children coming in coughing, with sore eyes and high temperatures. The best place for this little one is in bed. Give her plenty to drink and keep the curtains drawn.”

  From then on, every morning Dr Kelly popped in to see how I was. Mammy told him I wouldn’t have the chicken soup she made, I pushed Daddy away when he wanted to read me stories, and he couldn’t even coax me to eat the chocolate he brought home. It was dark with white cream in the middle. I just wanted to sleep.

  Then one day I wasn’t tired and wanted to get up. Mammy and Daddy were smiling but Dr Kelly said, “She’s not out of the woods yet.” He was right because that night I was boiling hot and sweating. My hair was stuck to my head, it soaked the pillow and the sheets. My nightdress was drenched with sweat and the sheets were as well. Mammy changed them. She stayed bent over the bed and kept putting cool, wet face towels on my forehead until they became warm. Then she took them off and replaced them with another cold one. My nightdress was wet again. She changed it and the sheets and pillowcase. Daddy was in the barracks, so Mrs McLoughlin was helping Mammy. I was sort of asleep, knowing what was happening but not wanting to move when Mammy needed to change the sheets.

  Daddy came home. He sat down for a few minutes, then he got up again, biting the back of his fist. The next time the sheets got wet and Mammy needed to change them, she got him to lift me out of the bed. During the night she had to change the sheets and my nightdress again. Daddy went for Dr Kelly.

  “It is what I feared, Will, a bad dose of measles.”

  “Measles, Brian? But where are the spots.”

  “They’ll appear. You know, Dervla, you’d make a great nurse the way you are handling this.”

  “I’m only trying to keep her cool, the fever is burning her up.”

  “You’re doing the only thing that can be done by wiping her down with the cool, damp cloth.” He told them once the fever broke, the spots would appear.

  After sleeping and waking, tossing and turning for a long time, I stopped boiling. Mammy examined my face and smiled. She told Daddy to get his shaving mirror. When I looked into it, my face was covered in spots like the side of a trout. Mammy and Daddy were kissing and hugging me. I sat up in bed and had some tea and toast. They were smiling and laughing and looking at each other as though they wanted to cry.

  “Arlene how old are you?”

  “Five, Daddy.”

  “Mammy, tell this wee lass how old she is.”

  “She’s not a little girl anymore but a big one. Mary, it was your birthday two weeks ago when you were sick. Now you are six.”

  And big like Úna and Kait.

  Daddy handed Mammy a box and a parcel wrapped in striped paper.

  “Do you want to open your first present?” Mammy said as she helped me sit up in bed and put the box in front of me.

  I lifted the lid and couldn’t stop the scream coming out of me and my hands were shaking, afraid to touch the pair of patent shoes with a strap across the front and a buckle at the side to tie them. I looked at Mammy and Daddy to make sure they were for me. Mammy nodded her head as she took out one of the beautiful shoes and gave it to me. Touching the smooth, shiny black with the tip of my finger, I asked, “Mammy, can I wear them tomorrow to school. I want everyone to see them.”

  “Mary, you’ll wear them when we go to Mass.”

  “But Mammy, Loretta wears hers to school every
day only not when it’s raining. I want to wear mine too.”

  “You will, but they would get ruined in this weather. We’ll wait until spring.”

  “Can I not wear them tomorrow?”

  “Dr Kelly wants you to stay at home for another good while.”

  “I want to go to school,” I said as I started to tear off the paper around the other present Daddy had given me.

  Mammy put her hand on my hands. “Mary, if you rip it off, we can’t use the paper again. Let me show you how to open it without tearing it to bits.”

  I was dying to see the present and didn’t give a sugar about the fancy paper but I had to wait. Mammy held the beginning of the Sellotape with her finger and thumb and peeled it off carefully. I bit my bottom lip and crossed my fingers for her to hurry up because instead of pushing it back quickly, she took ages, folding it like a sheet before I was able to see. First, I saw a picture. Then I saw it was the cover of a book with children running in a park. Underneath that book there was a fat book with a hard cover, like the holy ones Sister Ignatius told Loretta to give out at catechism class. Two books, a fat and a thin one was Daddy’s present.

  “Arlene, this book is for colouring,” Daddy said picking up the light book with the children in the park.

  “Daddy, I have no crayons or paints.”

  “Pet, I’ll be standing at Byrne’s tomorrow morning waiting for it to open. It won’t be long until we are colouring in the pictures.”

  “William, wait until she is feeling better.”

  “But I’m better Mammy. Daddy, what’s the other book, I want to see before I get up to try on my new shoes.”

  “It’s a fairy tale book, so we can read about the elves and pixies.”

  “Let me see, Daddy!” I squealed with excitement.

  The fairies in the book were not real fairies. They didn’t live in fairy rings in Nuns Field or take people’s souls. They were called elves. They had magic wands, pointy ears and wore dresses like a communion veil.

  “Daddy, will you go to Byrne’s soon? I want to colour all the pages.”

  “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning, missy.”

  “Alright, Daddy. I’ll try on my new shoes now, if ye don’t mind.”

  They helped me out the bed. My legs were wobbly. The shoes felt heavy and kept my feet weighted to the floor when I tried to walk, but they were smashing, nicer than Loretta’s. I didn’t mind when Daddy picked me up and put me back into the bed. Mammy went downstairs and brought up some hot coals in a bucket. With a long tongs she took them out of the bucket and placed them on grate in the small fireplace with the shiny, black fence in front. The room became cosy and I fell asleep.

  The next day Mammy made porridge and I ate two spoons of it. Daddy was home at dinner time. When he came into the room, he was holding something behind his back.

  “Guess what I have for this little missy?”

  “Is it the box of paints, Daddy?”

  “You’re a clever wee lass.”

  “Will you stay with me and we’ll paint the house on the first page?”

  “Alright but we’ll need the tray Mammy puts your food on and two jam jars.”

  “Why two jars, Daddy?”

  “You dip your brush into one and wet the paints with it and the other ones is for cleaning the brushes.”

  It was smashing sitting up in bed and Daddy showing me how to drip the paintbrush into the jar of water and then into a square on the box.

  “Daddy, I’m going to paint the sky around the house blue.”

  “Ach, that will take a while, it’s a big sky,” Daddy said at the door. He was going downstairs to get a cup of tea. He was right. The square of blue paint was getting small. My brush was making it disappear in the middle. I had finished painting the whole picture of the house and sky when Daddy came back up.

  “Daddy, nearly all the blue in the square is gone. When I want to colour another sky, I won’t have enough paint to do it.” He laughed and said he was going to teach me a trick.

  “Arlene, do you see this blue here?” he said pointing to a dark blue like my eyes and Mammy’s as well. “If you mix in a bit of white it will become lighter.”

  I looked at his eyes and said, “Is that what happened to your eyes? Did God run out of Mammy’s and my blue colour?”

  “What do mean, missy?”

  “Your eyes are like this blue with the white. I think God mixed a small biteen of white to make enough paint for your eyes and that’s why your eyes are different from Mammy and mine.”

  “You’re as cute as fox, no one else would think of a thing like that,” he said laughing, as he called Mammy to tell her what I had said. Mammy said I knew too much for my own good.

  When Daddy went back to work, I finished the first page and turned to the next one with the little boy fishing in the river. He had big eyes and a fringe falling on his forehead. Even though the boy in the picture had nice clothes on, he reminded me of Liam, the boy with the snotty beak from The Home. I painted the book-boy’s hair yellow and then mixed the dark blue with a bit of white for his eyes. I coloured the river a dark blue and the fishing brown and the grass green. It looks smashing. I asked Mammy if I could tear out the page and put it on the black mantelpiece over the fireplace where the Sacred Heart picture was hanging.

  “I don’t know, Mary, if it falls into the grate, we could set the whole place on fire.”

  “If Daddy put a tack into it, it won’t fall.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I’ll go down and get one.”

  I sat up straight in bed to look at the page of the boy. The butter coloured hair and white-blue eyes were like Daddy’s, so I called the boy Will. Looking at Will made me wonder if Liam was back at school. Maybe the doctor in the dispensary said he had to stay in bed another good while like Dr Kelly had said about me. I wanted to get up and go to school but Dr Kelly wouldn’t hear of it because I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  Every morning after Daddy left for the barracks, Mammy brought a basin of water into the room. She washed my face and hands and brushed my hair and made two plaits that hung on each side of my shoulders. After I had my tea and toast, I spent the time colouring my book, waiting for the Angelus to come on the radio downstairs. When the tinkling-booming sounds were over, Mammy would dress me and let me downstairs for dinner because Dr Kelly said I had to take it easy. That meant I could get up during the day but not go outside.

  I only minded a small bit because Mrs McLoughlin was rattling about in the kitchen and the radio was on. I heard The Walton’s with the man saying, ‘Do sing an Irish song’. After dinner and before it got dark, there was a programme for children. The big children wrote to the man and told him plenty of things that he read out. When I could write, I was going to send a letter too.

  Christmas

  I helped Mammy and Mrs McLoughlin make the Christmas pudding. It was a brown, soft bowl-shaped cake that tasted like Chester cake. The pudding was for dessert on Christmas day. I didn’t like the taste of it, but it was great fun helping Mammy and Mrs McLoughlin make it. I grated the breadcrumbs sitting on a clean sheet, spread on the floor, squeezing a bowl between my legs, surrounded by crusts of shop-bought loaves.

  I shredded the hard bread into the bowl with a metal grater with tiny, weeny holes that ended in small spikes. The skin on the tips of my fingers could get rubbed off and fall into the bowl if I kept grating when the bread was almost all gone. When I got to near the end of the crust, I put the small biteens to one side, so Mammy could use them for a bread-and-butter pudding. Most of the grated crusts dropped into the bowl but some of the breadcrumbs fell on the sheet. Mammy gathered them up and threw them into the bowl with my crumbs, saying they were clean.

  Mammy boiled brown sugar and brandy in a saucepan. When she mixed this water with the raisins, currants and sultanas to the white breadcrumbs, they turned brown. The soggy breadcrumbs were spooned on to a clean dishcloth. Mammy pulled the four corners of the cloth together in
the middle and tied them with thread, changing the guggy mess into a round ball with a floppy ribbon on top. After that, she put the round parcel into a big saucepan with water and left it on the range to simmer all day and all night. Sometimes she moved it to the side of the stove, lifted the lid and poured water from the kettle into the saucepan.

  It took us a long time to make the pudding. We started when it was light outside the window and when Mammy put the bowl into the big saucepan on the range, it was dark. We had to put the light on and then it was time for Mrs McLoughlin to go home to Maura and Catherine.

  While I was sick at home Mr Delaney came to visit. I didn’t like him, but Mammy was delighted and said silly goose things to him.

  “John, it’s great of you to come to see us. Ah, there was no need for you to buy a cake, sure yourself is enough.”

  “Dervla, what’s a cake compared to the smile and welcome I get?” he said.

  “Oh John!” Mammy replied as she poured boiling water from the kettle into the good teapot. She put it on a tray, with slices of caked on a plate, and signalled to Mr Delaney to follow her into the parlour. The weather was getting cold and Mammy always lit a fire in the grate when he came. They liked to go there to talk about big people things. I sat at the kitchen table painting until the light coming in the kitchen window turned grey and was getting ready to go away then I’d call out, “Mammy I can’t see.”

  “Alright, Mary. Come in here.”

  I left my painting book on the table and went to where they were and heard what they were saying. Mr Delaney brought all the news from around town to Mammy.

  Fr Mannion was annoyed because the musical, that was in the Odeon Cinema every Christmastime, had a dance in it with cans and the dancers raises their legs high in the air. In my Irish stepping dance class, we learned to raise our legs a little bit high. But in the French dance, Mr Delaney said the shameless hussies, kicked their legs in the air, screamed and showed their knickers to everyone as they danced back and forth across on the stage with the cans. Mammy was as cross as Mr Delaney. She was nodding her head with a vexed look on her face, when he was saying, “I agree wholeheartedly with the priest that any girl who is brazen enough to raise her leg in the air and show off her knickers –” he stopped and frowned before he continued, “underwear should not be allowed to become a Child of Mary.”