Time crept on.
People left … their tables were cleared … she refused more coffee … a petal fell on the tablecloth.
The air stirred … movement behind her.
‘Right, let’s go.’
‘Where have you been?’ Her voice rose.
‘Never mind that now. Come on.’
The car was parked outside the hotel, its engine running. Harry opened the door for her and walked quickly round to the driver’s side. Before she had closed her door, he slipped it into gear and they were off down the street.
‘Now then, how was the ice cream?’
‘You’re asking me about the ice cream! Where have you been, leaving me sitting all that time on my own?’
‘I told you I’d business to do. That’s why I took this trip.’
‘And here was me thinking you wanted us to spend the day together!’
‘I did … I do. That’s why I asked you along.’
‘The border’s that way. There’s a sign, you missed it.’
‘Aye, well there’s more than one way to cross the border. So don’t start giving me directions.’
‘Stop the car!’
‘What for?’
‘I want to get out!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Peggy, You’ve nowhere to go. You have to come home with me.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Where’s what?’
‘Don’t treat me like an eejit. The stuff you’re smuggling!’
‘Honestly, Peggy, there’s nothing—’
‘Don’t talk to me about honesty, mister!’
Harry turned off the road and into a lane. They drove a while in silence. The lane narrowed and after a few miles it became pot-holed and stony. They drove slowly past a ruined farm house, its roof of thatch long gone. Harry stopped the car and reversed up the side of the house, then switched off the engine.
‘You can get out now if you like.’
Peggy sat a while, then opened the door and stepped out into long grass. Round the back of the house fields ran away towards a small rounded hill in the distance, on top of which grew a fairy ring of trees. Inside the house, spindly purple weeds grew in clumps; yellow lichen clung to crevices; the chimney breast was blackened with the soot of dead fires.
‘It might have been the famine.’ Harry’s frame filled the tiny doorway. ‘Maybe they died here or in some ditch along the road.’
‘Perhaps one or two made it to England,’ said Peggy.
‘Or America.’ He came into the room, touched the gable wall.
‘Show me,’ she said.
‘What?’
She nodded towards the car.
He removed the back seat and underneath, packed tightly on a tarpaulin, were cuts of meat: steaks, joints, shanks …
‘Is that it?’
He opened the boot and uncovered the tyre well. Where the spare wheel should have been, there were packets of cigarettes. ‘The whiskey’s under the front seats,’ he said.
Peggy shook her head and sighed, all anger gone.
‘Peggy, listen Peggy …’ She turned away. ‘Everybody does it.’ He waved towards the car. ‘This is small beer. People are bringing lorry loads over every night.’
She faced him again. ‘It’s illegal, Harry.’
‘I only do it now and again.’
‘And what about Carrickfergus?’
‘Carrickfergus?’
‘More money in an envelope, handed over. Was that to do with smuggling too?’
‘No.’ He looked at his feet. ‘That was something different.’
‘But illegal?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Saturday nights, Harry, where are you when I’m sitting at home wishing I was out dancing?’
‘At a card school.’
‘Also illegal?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’d better take me home now.’
The light was fading as Harry drove slowly on the country lanes, zig-zagging ever closer to the border. Darkness closed in, but he didn’t turn on the headlights. Eventually, they reached a junction and turned right on to a made up road, within a mile there was a sign in English for Newry and Harry reached across and switched on the lights. They drove back to Belfast in silence. He stopped the car at the end of her street.
‘Peggy—’
‘Harry, you asked me earlier not to tell you how I felt about you, until I had the words. I think I have them now.’ She swallowed hard and fought back the tears. ‘I never want to see you again.’
*
‘God, Martha, how long have I been eating this onion soup?’ Anna was sitting propped up in bed in her pink crocheted bed jacket.
‘Nearly three weeks,’ said Martha, ‘and that’s the first time you’ve mentioned the soup. You must be on the mend! Do you want me to take it away?’
‘No, sit with me and we’ll talk again.’
‘Alice and Evelyn are going to a party at a friend’s house after school today. They were so excited this morning. They’ll want to tell you all about it later.’
‘They’re good girls aren’t they?’
‘They’re lovely, Anna, a credit to you and Thomas.’
Anna took up the spoon and stirred the soup. After a minute she spoke in a voice soft and measured.
‘When it happened, I thought I’d never see them again.’ Anna reached out and took the picture of her girls in their party dresses from the night table beside her.
‘I caught their faces in my mind and held them there, pushing everything else away. I tried to bring their voices to me as well. Nothing came at first, just the faces. Then I heard Evelyn the day I dropped a plate in the kitchen. “You’re a Silly Billy, Mummy,” she said and Alice laughed. I had their faces, now I heard them too. “You’re a Silly Billy, Mummy,” and laughter, over and over. The sea would lift me up and I’d see them, I’d hear them. Then the sea would drop me and I’d fall and fall and fall, my stomach heaving, the salt water in my mouth and I’d bring them to me again, in their party dresses, smiling. “You’re a Silly Billy, Mummy” and the laughter. Rise and fall … rise and fall … water over my head … in my mouth … I’d bring them to me.’
Anna sat perfectly still, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. Martha reached into her apron pocket, took out her handkerchief and wiped them away.
‘Then something hit me on the side of the head … hands were pulling me upwards … my back scraped over something hard … the hands released me and I fell backwards into nothing.’
Martha wiped the fresh tears.
‘I remember the vomiting. Someone had rolled me on my side in the bottom of the lifeboat. I heard a retching sound and only realised it was me when the bile burned my throat. Then the girls stayed with me until they brought us ashore.’
Anna took the handkerchief from Martha and dabbed her eyes. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you staying with us, looking after Alice and Evelyn and being with me every day. Thank you.’
‘You don’t have to thank me. What are sisters for? Sure you’d have done it for me.’
‘Would I, Martha? Do you believe I would?’
‘Yes, I believe you would, but God grant you never have to.’
Martha left at the end of the week and Anna stood on the doorstep with Alice and Evelyn on either side to wave goodbye. Thomas drove her home with two crisp white five pound notes in her purse and best of all, on the back seat was her companion, the wireless from the morning room, a gift from her sister.
*
‘Mammy, I’m so glad you’re back,’ said Irene. ‘It’s been really hard looking after these ones. I don’t know how you manage it.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.’
‘It started with Sheila and the meals. They were all right to begin with, but then she kept giving us the same things. When we complained she started spending more time at the McCracken’s. Some nights we had to get our own tea with whatever was in the house.’
&nb
sp; ‘Well, that’ll do you no harm,’ said Martha.
‘Then there’s Peggy. She’s been the worst.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
‘Oh, not the usual stuff like shouting and falling out with people. She’s just not speaking to anybody at the moment.’
‘What?’
‘You might as well know. Peggy went out for the day last Sunday with Harry and they went over the border.’
‘Go on.’
‘When she came back, very late, she went straight to bed and hasn’t spoken more than two words since.’
Martha pursed her lips.
‘Then there’s Pat.’
‘Pat!’ said Martha in astonishment.
‘Well, we found out that William Kennedy—’
‘What about William Kennedy?’
‘He’s left the Barnstormers. You know he walked out in the middle of the last concert and now he says he can’t come back because of work commitments. More like family commitments if you ask me.’
‘I am asking you,’ said Martha. ‘What family commitments does he have?’
Irene sighed. She’d said too much already.
‘Out with it, Irene, come on.’
‘Jimmy McComb says he’s married with a child.’
‘Humph! And how would Jimmy know that?’
Irene was embarrassed now, knowing that her mother hated loose gossip. ‘He says he saw William with a young woman and a child getting into a taxi. And then … then Jimmy went and joined the army.’
‘Dear God, is that all of it now?’ asked Martha, ‘or should I brace myself for the announcement that the Germans have invaded and Goebbels is billeted in my bedroom!’
*
March had roared in like a lion with high winds and thunderstorms, but true to the old saying it went out like a lamb with soft sunshine, primroses in the hedgerows and daffodils in the borders of the Goulding’s garden. By Easter the girls had settled into a routine of work, their evening meal in relative peace together, rehearsing for the Barnstormers’ next concert and, above all, listening to the wireless.
Martha was up early on Easter Sunday morning. She had saved up the coupons to buy real eggs, not for their breakfast, but to hard boil and decorate so they could roll them downhill at the picnic planned for the afternoon. She also made some cooked ham sandwiches and put the bottles of lemonade and cherryade in saucepans of cold water in the back hallway to keep cool.
At morning service, Reverend Lynas preached a sermon about Daniel in the lion’s den and the need for courage and faith in the face of danger. The parallels were obvious to all, with the Nazis beginning their push across Europe and the lack of strong government at home.
‘Churchill’s the man to sort this mess out.’ Ted Grimes was holding forth in the spring sunshine outside the church. ‘The sooner he’s running things the better.’
‘And what do you think he’ll do if he becomes Prime Minister?’ asked Martha, now, thanks to her wireless, able to hold her own in any discussion about politics.
‘Get the army over there pronto and stop Hitler in his tracks.’
‘But is there time? Hitler could be in Paris before they train, arm and supply an army able to stand up to him.’
Ted looked sideways at Martha; she continually surprised him. ‘You might be right, Martha, but something must be done or the Little Dictator will be sailing across the channel and let’s face it, if London falls, we all fall and there’ll be Burgermeisters in the City Hall and Wagner every night at the Opera House.’
‘What’s a Burgermeister?’ asked Betty.
*
The Belfast Waterworks was a twenty minute walk from Joanmount, a stretch of open land with reservoirs where, seventy years before, water was treated and pumped to the growing city. Now it was a place of recreation with pleasure boats, bandstands and gentle slopes where families could roll and chase their hard boiled eggs on an Easter Sunday.
Martha spread out the old blanket and set out the picnic. Sheila and Irene went to paddle in a stream and came back with stories of jam jars, nets and sticklebacks.
‘Honestly, the boys were catching them so easy,’ said Sheila. ‘They let me have a go with the net. On the end of a long cane it was. They said they’re thruppence at the wee shop where they sell ice cream. Could I get one, Mammy?’
‘Even if you got one, you haven’t a jam jar.’
‘I could come back tomorrow …’
The McKee boys came past with some serious fishing tackle and stopped to talk to Pat and Peggy.
‘They said we could go out in a rowing boat later if we wanted to, all of us.’
‘Right,’ said Martha, ‘we’ll have the picnic now because we don’t want the sandwiches and lemonade to get warm. Then we’ll go on the boats and last of all we’ll have the egg-rolling contest. How’s that?’
The sandwiches on pan bread were neatly made, even Peggy ate the crusts, and the bottles of mineral were passed round.
‘You know what?’ said Pat. ‘I think this is going to be one of those special days that we’ll remember forever.’
‘Why’s that?’ said Irene.
‘I don’t know, but when we’re old we’ll say to each other, ‘Do you remember that Easter Sunday in 1940 when we all went to the Waterworks for a picnic?’
They sat quietly and thought about that possibility.
‘I think you might be right,’ said Martha and she took a camera from her handbag.
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Is there a film in it?’
‘There’d be no point in bringing it, if it didn’t. I borrowed it from Jack and Betty and the chemist put a film in it for me.’
They took it in turns to pose individually, in twos, threes and when the McKee boys returned from fishing they arranged themselves on the grass for a family photo; Martha in the middle, Irene and Pat on either side and Peggy and Sheila kneeling up behind them with their hands on their sisters’ shoulders.
The trip on the rowing boats didn’t go as planned. Martha was standing on the jetty waiting to be helped into the boat when she suddenly decided she couldn’t do it and no amount of persuasion or firm hands could get her to step on to the rocking boat. In the end, Pat stayed with her and the two of them waved every time the boats went by.
‘Now it’s time for the grand egg rolling contest!’ shouted Sheila.
The eggs had been boiled in tea to stain them and everyone had decorated their own using Sheila’s old paints. Finally, they had put them all in a wicker basket decorated with ribbons. At the top of the hill, Sheila took control of the proceedings to ensure fair play. ‘On the count of three, roll, don’t throw. Then run after it and roll again, first to the bottom with least damage wins!’
‘Wins what?’ shouted Peggy.
‘Wait and see,’ said Martha.
They rolled and screamed and tumbled and cheated and accused and laughed all the way to the bottom.
‘I’m the winner, so I am!’ shouted Irene. ‘What’s the prize?’
‘You get to eat the egg!’
‘Ach no,’ wailed Irene. ‘I hate hard boiled eggs.’
‘Not that egg,’ said Martha, ‘This one!’ And she held up a chocolate Easter egg with the faces of the famous Five Boys on the box.
There were shrieks of delight and Irene had to hold her prize in the air while her sisters leapt up and down trying to grab it.
‘Where on earth did you get it, Mammy?’
‘You’d be surprised at the very important people I know, who can lay their hands on a substantial piece of chocolate in a time of scarcity.’
‘What?’ said Sheila.
‘I think that’s a very grand way of saying she has some cousins who own a shop,’ laughed Pat.
They ate the chocolate and no one spoke, for any distraction or lack of concentration would reduce the pleasure of chocolate melting in their mouths. Afterwards, they lay on the grass in the warm sunshine and listened to the humming of insects,
the birds and the children playing.
Martha's Girls Page 28
