The Silent Children

by Honor Harlow

  Once we got into the attic, we rushed blindly at the boys and threw as much wool at them as they threw at us. In the middle of the battle, we heard Kait half crying, half screeching saying, “I can’t let go of the ladder. I’m afraid to move.” She was nearly on the last rung but was so frightened, she had frozen and couldn’t move. The battle ceased. We all looked at poor Kait’s white, terrified face.

  A hand appeared out of nowhere and put itself on top of Kait’s one. A nearly-grown-up voice told her to hold on to his two hands, he would make sure she didn’t fall. Jim Smith had been there the whole time of the battle, lying on the loose wool that was spread out on the floor, smoking and not bothering with us kids until the damsel in distress needed help.

  “What’s wrong with you, cry baby?” Ricky Martin taunted but stopped when he saw the look on Jim’s face. He quickly turned around towards where Evelyn was, pretending he was saying it to her. She shoved him and he shoved her back until Úna told them to stop.

  “Hey, we are supposed to be getting boxes for Mr Ward and not acting the eejits with ye lads.”

  “Will we help ye?” the lads asked us.

  Jim Smith said to Kait, “I’ll go down the ladder in front of you. You don’t have to be afraid of falling cos I’ll hold you around the waist.”

  “I won’t fall then, so I won’t, if you are holding me.” When she landed safely on the floor, Jim Smith helped wipe off the bits of wool that were stuck to her clothes. When Úna saw this, she remembered that Ducking Night Kait had found the ring in the barm breac and how Kait had said she wanted to marry Jim Smith.

  “Kait, me and Arlene and Evelyn are going to carry a few boxes each to your uncle’s house, so we don’t need you,” said Úna.

  “I want to help too, so I do,” she insisted as her hand fluttering like a butterfly on a flower as she waved it to say goodbye to Jim.

  Ricky Martin ran behind Evelyn trying to push her, but she turned on him. She was the one who did the pushing even though she was only half his size. I saw Kevin Fitzgerald looking at me, but he didn’t chance pushing me because maybe his sister Loretta had told him I would step on him like my daddy stamped on his cigarette butts. When we were at the door and nearly out, he called after me, “Arlene Daddy Long Legs.”

  Mrs Rushe, who was buying a sliced pan in Moran’s shop, gave us awful looks as we raced past the shop shedding wool on the path. We had boxes on our heads, in our hands and in front of our feet that we were kicking along the street to Dun na Rí Road.

  Mr Ward couldn’t believe all the boxes we had managed to get him.

  “Ye are great altogether, girls. If ye are around tomorrow, come up to the house and give us a hand.”

  “A course we will cos we know how to pack, so we do,” Kait assured him, still flushed from her escapade on the ladder and her rescue by Jim Smith.

  The next few days, we watched as Kait’s uncle wrapped dish clothes and towels around the delph and placed the bundle into the crates. He put the statue of Martin De Porras, the picture of the Sacred Heart and a bottle of Knock holy water into the different folds of a blanket that he then put into a cardboard box. The bolster cases from the bed were packed tight with sheets and blankets and tied at the top with a string. Eithne was going to carry one of them under her arm and hold a suitcase in her hand. Shelia and Ciaran had to carry a pillowcase each packed with their boots and clothes.

  The day before they left, Mr Ward boarded up the windows at the back of the house. He wasn’t worried about the front ones because the neighbours would see if anyone went in through them.

  He left the boxes and crates in the downstairs room, telling Nanny Ward that as soon as he had a few shillings put together, he’d get a van to pick them and bring them to the flat he had rented in London.

  The next day, very early in the morning, the four of them left Drumbron. They went on the train to London while we were asleep in our beds.

  The van never came for the boxes and crates. One day some lads were playing on the street outside Eithne’s house. Without meaning to, one of the downstairs front windows got broken with a stone.

  During the winter, we noticed the paint on the door was peeling. After Easter, it got worse. We were worried Mr Ward would be mad when he came home in the summer, but the Wards didn’t come home on holiday.

  A little while before we started fifth class, a family from Clonthu Hill left their caravan and started living in the Ward’s house. It was strange to see them there and sad. Now we knew we might never again see Kait’s cousins again or get an ice-cream cone from her uncle Martin in Jimmy Moran’s shop.

  In September, we went into fifth class. Our nun was called Sr Joseph. She had a normal face but didn’t get cross with anyone, especially not with Loretta who still didn’t know how to do multiplication tables off by heart. After the first few days, Sr Joseph never asked Loretta anything but every Friday, when we were going home, she stuck the paper-star on the little squirt’s hand for being the best in the class.

  We didn’t care because fifth class was better than fourth, with lots of new things to do. It was hard for Loretta but easy for us and in the evenings, we were able to help Úna mind her old, new baby brother Francis Xavier in the pram and not have to do our lessons. The new baby, Aisling, stayed at home with the mammy.

  Sometimes when we were pushing the pram around town, we saw Cathal McHugh drunk and falling all over the place. People used to say, “There goes poor Cathal, legless again.” Mr Delaney didn’t like him one bit and used to talk to Mammy about him and called him Legless instead of Cathal.

  “That Legless McHugh is making an awful show of himself.”

  “And how’s that, John?”

  “There isn’t a day that goes by he isn’t legless, falling around the town and cursing the priests and bishop, saying he hopes they’ll rot in hell for what they have done to him.”

  “How dare he talk like that about the bishop. I wonder does William know?”

  “He must because Legless was throwing stones at the bishop’s house again. The spell in Ballinacora didn’t do him much good.”

  “There’s more than him whose children have gone, and they don’t go on like that.”

  Mrs McLoughlin was in the kitchen making me a sandwich. When she heard him talking, she got the brush and flew into the parlour and started sweeping around him and banging into the back of the armchair. Mammy looked at her surprised and said, “Mrs McLoughlin, I thought you were making Mary’s tea.”

  “That girl is well able to make her own tea. Isn’t she learning cookery at school?”

  “Yes, Mammy, we have cookery class cos we are in fifth class,” I said and tried not to laugh when I saw Mr Delaney had spilled some tea on his trousers with the banging Mrs McLoughlin had given the chair.

  Classes

  We started Cookery and Laundry Work with Sister Fursey. Twice a week, we made a line and went to the Domestic and Cookery room. It was a long room with a cooker and two sinks and a long white table but no chairs. We stood behind the table and looked at the nun at the top. She showed us what we had to do.

  In laundry class, the nun put basins with water on the table and planks of wood with rugged surface, like a galvanised roof. She called the wavy planks washing boards. We put them into the water and rubbed rags and socks with a bar of soap on the boards, so as to wash them. It was great fun. We hung the clothes on a line in the class with pegs that were kept in a cloth bag. Sister Fursey showed us how to iron them with an electric iron like Mrs McLoughlin used in our house.

  Ev said, “I haven’t a notion of ever sticking my hands into that sudsy water. You don’t see Sr Fursey getting Loretta and her friends to wash the auld dirty socks, do ya?”

  Úna and Kait weren’t interested either in the laundry class. They said they were tired of helping their mothers doing the washing at home in the tin tub. Mrs McLoughlin did our laundry and ironing, but I liked messing about with the water, so I didn’t have any problems with the class.
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  Sr Fursey told us we needed white, starched aprons and caps for the cookery class. The apron was a wrap-around white skirt and had a big square in front for your chest with wide straps that went over the shoulders and crossed in an x and were buttoned into the thick waistband at the back. The cap was flounced at the back with elastic, so your hair could be tucked into it. A wide band like the peak on a cap was sewed into the front and covered the hair in front and the forehead. Ev called it a maid’s outfit. Mammy bought my cookery class things in the drapery shop where the man with the eyes bulging out of his head eyes looked at her and other women. Sr Fursey made Úna and Kait ashamed because their mammies had no money to buy the aprons. The nun stood in front of the class and said, “I know there are girls in this class who are too poor to buy the clothes for the cookery class, so I will let them use some old aprons that I keep in this press for this purpose.” She unlocked a press and called Úna, Kait and some other girls up and handed them an apron.

  The first day at cookery class, Sr Fursey said we had to be in a team of ten. She told Loretta to pick her team and they went to the table near the nun’s small one. The four of us, with Fionnuala McCabe, Pauline Byrne and Colette Day plus three more girls, stood together at the same table and watched as Sr Fursey showed us how to cream butter and sugar together in a yellow bowl with a wooden spoon.

  At our table, I was the first to be start mixing the two ingredients together. The cold, solid butter and the sugar didn’t blend into each other easily. However, when Sr Fursey told Úna to take the bowl from me and beat the mixture, the two ingredients came together like grainy sand for her. With Ev the grains got smaller and when Kait took the bowl, it had started to get creamy. The next few girls in our team kept beating until what was in the bowl became loose and fluffy. When the eggs were added it looked like golden milk. After the flour was sieved into the bowl, we all took turns beating the mixture until it was light and airy.

  While we waited for the nun to come and see what we had done, we looked over at Loretta’s table. She had only stirred her mixture around for a second and whined her arm was tired. The nun told her to stop and gave Noeleen and Regina Burke extra time beating the mixture in the bowl. The nun let us grease the two baking tins but wouldn’t let us pour the runny stuff into them or put the tins into the oven. She did that part herself. While the cakes were baking, we washed up the bowl and spoon and swept the flour. Loretta didn’t do anything because she needed to rest.

  When the four half cakes came out of the oven, Sr Fursey told Loretta to spread jam on the two bottom sides and put the thick round slices together like a sandwich. The nun called the yellow-beige-y cake a Victoria Sponge. She gave one whole cake for Loretta to take home. She cut the other cake into wedges and we all got a paper-thin slice to eat.

  On other days we made drop scones, rock buns, scones, soda bread and piles of lovely things. At home, I told Mrs McLoughlin what I had learned, and she let me make cakes in the kitchen. Ev said she wasn’t interested in learning to bake because she could buy her cakes in Wynn’s if she felt like eating something sweet. We learned how to make dinners too, like shepherd’s pie and the stuffing for a chicken and other types of dinners. The four of us thought the nun ruined the lovely dinner of boiled bacon and cabbage by pouring parsley sauce over it.

  After cookery-class day, when I brought my apron and cap home to wash, Mammy said she would send it to the Magdalene Laundry as Mrs McLoughlin wouldn’t have time to starch it. A wagon-type cart from the Magdalene Laundry used to call to pick up our bed linen, as Mammy called the sheets and pillowcases. Mrs McLoughlin did our normal washing, but the sheets were difficult to dry and ironed, so they were sent to the laundry in Galway to get them washed and starched.

  I was the best in the class at drawing, even though Fionnuala McCabe was good too and so was Colette Daly. Singing class was smashing with the nun hitting the tuning-fork to see what type of voices we had and where to put us in the choir according to how high we sang. In sewing class, we learned how to sew and darn. Mammy said no one darned socks anymore. It made me think of the Home Babies and the jumpers they wore that were made of the ripped-out different socks the nun couldn’t darn anymore. I wondered if Liam was still wearing a many-lined geansaí with puckered up sleeves, like he used to wear in first class.

  I loved history. It was just like listening to Daddy tell me stories about places and people. There was a time Ireland was full of Saints and Scholars. The scholars were monks who wrote the bible and Irish stories on manuscripts that were made of leather. There were copy-cats in the monasteries who copied other monk’s writing and caused wars when they were found out, like St Colmcille. He copied a whole book and when the king told him to give the copy back to the monk saying, “To every cow its calf. To every book its copy.” Colmcille fought to keep the manuscript. There were more than 3,000 people killed and the copycat monk went off to Iona and became a saint.

  After the saints and scholars, the Vikings came. First, they attacked the monks who ran into the High Towers with their treasures but then they stopped doing that. Instead of attaching the Irish people, they married them and learned the Irish language and built towns. Everything was fine until Diarmuid MacMurrough messed things up. Diarmuid and Tiernan O’Rourke fought and Diarmuid was driven out of Ireland. He went to England and brought Strongbow and the Danes back with him to fight O’Rourke and get his lands back. After that, the English started coming and instead of learning Irish they forced us to speak English. Some of the English Kings were cruel and Queen Elizabeth was very cruel. She used tar-caps and put them on people’s heads. Cromwell was terrible, the worst of all. I hope he is burning in hell forever and doesn’t know the act of contrition, so he is not saved from fires, because he made the Irish people suffer too much.

  “Daddy, why were the English so cruel to us? Why did they hate us?”

  “They didn’t hate the people, they just thought the Irish were savages.”

  “That’s stupid, we weren’t savages.”

  “The English saw the people here in Ireland wearing different clothes and the men with long hair, they didn’t know what to make of them. It must have frightened them.”

  “A pity about them. It still didn’t give them any right to kill us or put tar-caps on us or make us stop speaking our own language.”

  “Things were different then. The English wanted to civilise the Irish and teach them a better way of life.”

  “We were civilised with our own Brehon laws and our High Kings. We didn’t need them to teach us anything.”

  “Ach, lass, they didn’t see it like that. Are you learning as much geography as you are learning history?” he asked so I would stop talking about what the English had done.

  “I am but I don’t know where the Yellow Ford is.”

  “Why do you want to know where it is?”

  “Cos I like Shane O’Neill. I called my guardian angel Shane. It sounds lovely, nicer than Seán. Daddy, when you have time will you bring me to where the Battle of the Yellow Ford was?”

  “Imagine a wee one like you wanting to know about battlefields. Do I have a little rebel on my hands?”

  “I amn’t a rebel, Daddy. I just want to know. If you don’t want to bring me there, you could show me the place on the mountain where they found Red Hugh O’Neill in the snow, after he escaped from the prison in Dublin.”

  “We’ll see, pet.”

  ‘We’ll see’ meant ‘No’ so we’d never go to see the mountain where Red Hugh O’Neill was. At least I saw Mr Ward, Eithne and their children the summer Maura McLoughlin did her Inter Cert.

  It was around Easter time when Úna told us her cousins from Liverpool were coming to stay in her house and she wondered what they would think of her brother’s farts.

  “Will we go to the station and meet them coming off the train?” we asked all excited.

  “What good would it do? First, I don’t know what they look like and second, we never let them into our show free,
so their daddy wouldn’t buy us an ice-cream in Jimmy Moran’s like Mr Ward used to do,” Úna explained.

  “What bed are they going to sleep in?” Kait wanted to know.

  “Ya, where will ye put them, Úna?” I wondered because there were so many already in Úna’s house.

  “Mammy says we’ll put a mattress on the floor for the children.”

  “And the mother and father?” I asked.

  “They’ll go into Mammy and Daddy’s bed.”

  “The four big people together in one bed?” Evelyn asked surprised.

  “No silly goose, Mam and Dad go into our bed, Bernie’s and mine, and we go in with my small brothers in their bed.”

  “But there’s still no room for four people in a bed,” I said. “How will ye fit?”

  “There is so! Two of us will sleep at the top and two at the bottom.”

  “We do the same when our relatives come,” Kait told us. “The visitors get Mammy and Daddy’s bed in the front room. We all pile up in the back room. I hate it cos my brother has worms, and they make him twist and turn all night and Mary sticks her feet into my face.”

  “My brother Brendan farts, and the smell is awful,” Úna reminded us.

  Listening to my friends laughing about having their sister’s toe stuck in their mouths and having to share the bed with three others, I didn’t say our house was big because it might sound like boasting, so I said, “Smelling your brothers’ farts might be better than smelling Mr Delaney’s coffee.”

  “Oh, that delicious aroma of Italian coffee,” Ev said mocking Mr Delaney’s way of talking because we didn’t like him, but when Úna’s big cousin, Ann, came and spoke different from us, we didn’t mock her because we liked her. We spent the week she was on holidays asking her about Liverpool and if she had ever seen the Beatles when she was out playing. She hadn’t but she told us all the girls in Liverpool wore short skirts and dresses above their knees and long cardigans like she did, and they didn’t dress old-fashioned, like we did.