by Joan Lingard
When he turned into their street he saw a gap where Mr Blake’s house had been. It had been burned down when a bomb was thrown through his window, and Mr Blake had died in the fire. Mr Blake had been their friend, his and Sadie’s, and that was why he had died. Sickness engulfed Kevin, the memory of it all flooding back. He passed by quickly, reached the Hendersons’ gate and went up the path.
A strange woman answered the door.
‘Are Mr and Mrs Henderson in?’ he asked.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘They moved away a few months ago. I believe they went to Scotland.’
So they had gone away, seeking refuge in a place where no one would bother them because of their religion. They had not stayed after all. He wished now that he and Sadie had written to them, kept in touch, but they were poor at writing letters, they often meant to, talked of doing it, but one letter each week to their homes had been all they had managed. Recently Sadie had not even done that for when her mother did write back she wrote to say that Sadie had broken her heart. Kevin walked disconsolately home through the streets.
When he came in he was met by Gerald.
‘Ma’s been taken to the hospital,’ said Gerald. ‘Brede’s gone with her.’
Kevin ran all the way to the hospital. Brede was sitting in a corridor, her face the colour of an old sheet.
‘For God’s sake, what’s happened?’ cried Kevin.
‘She’s had a thrombosis. A clot in the leg, something like that, the doctor said.’ Brede’s voice trailed away.
‘Will she die?’
‘I don’t know. She’s not been well since her operation. She’s had no chance to get over it. And I suppose Da’s death has brought it on.’
Kevin sat beside Brede, his hands over his face, the possibility of his mother’s death on his conscience. Brede told him that he was being silly, it was no fault of his.
‘If only I’d said I’d take the job!’
‘You couldn’t have said it.’
A doctor came shortly to talk to them. Their mother should be all right, she had been lucky but she would be in hospital for a good while and then she ought to go to a convalescent home. She was sleeping now but if they came back tomorrow they could see her.
The next morning Kevin went down to the scrapyard. Mr Kelly was bent over a pile of junk. He lifted his head when Kevin called out and straightened his back. He was a stocky little man with muscles like steel from years of heavy lifting. Kevin picked his way through the scrap.
‘Well, Kevin, have you thought it over?’
Kevin nodded. ‘I’d like to come back for a while, Mr Kelly, but I can’t promise to stay for ever. If you’ll take me on temporary-like. I have a wife in London you know,’ he added awkwardly and Mr Kelly nodded. ‘But I’ll need to stay at home for a while to help my mother.’
‘Right, son.’ Mr Kelly held out his hand and Kevin took it. ‘Glad to have you back for as long as you want. We always got on well, didn’t we now?’
It was true, Kevin said. They agreed on his wage and that he would start the next day.
‘Will you get your card sent from London?’ asked Mr Kelly. ‘I’ll need to have it stamped.’
Kevin nodded. He had not thought of that. He would have to write a letter of resignation to Mr Davis and explain the situation. He sighed.
‘It’s not easy for you, boy,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘I understand. But how could you walk out on your family now?’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Kevin.
As he left the yard Kate Kelly came out of her house. She stopped, startled at seeing him. Long dark hair fell over her shoulders. When he was close to her he realized it was a wig.
‘Hello, Kevin.’ She put her hand to her face half covering it.
‘Hello, Kate.’
‘Nice to see you back,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry about –’
She shrugged, touched the back of her head briefly. ‘I’ve got over it,’ she said, but he could see from her eyes that she had not.
‘Are you not working then?’
‘I’m just stopping at home at the moment helping me mum. Couldn’t face going back to work.’ Her lip trembled.
‘You will, one of these days.’
‘Sure.’
‘Kate, I believe that Gerald was –’
‘Skip it!’ Her voice was harsh. ‘It’s not your fault. You don’t have to apologize for him.’
‘He’s on a bad road.’
‘There’s plenty like him about.’ She hesitated. ‘Will you come in and have a cup of tea?’
‘All right.’
He went because he was sorry for her. She was pleased to have him sitting in her mother’s kitchen. She made a pot of tea and set out a plate of buttered potato bread. The kitchen was clean and bright. The Kellys were never hard up and they were a much smaller family than the McCoys. Kevin found it peaceful in the kitchen with the sun shining on the red linoleum. The potato bread melted in his mouth. It was like old times, sitting here, talking to Kate, drinking tea, though Kate now looked different. She used to dress herself up, make up her eyes with blue and green spread across the lids and false eyelashes so long that he teased her about them, saying they were so long you could sweep the streets with them.
‘You’re staring at me as if I’m a right looking sight,’ she said.
‘You’re not. You’re as bonny as ever.’
She blushed. ‘Ach, sure you’ve a sweet tongue on you, Kevin McCoy.’
He drank two cups of hot sugary tea and ate several pieces of warm potato bread.
‘I baked it myself,’ said Kate. ‘I’ve nothing much else to do. Look in any time you fancy for a cup of tea.’
He promised that he would. Gerald was on the other side of the street when he left the Kellys’ house.
‘Don’t tell me you’re taking up with that bitch again!’ said Gerald.
Kevin seized his shoulder. ‘Don’t speak like that! You’ve done enough to her. Too much. And I’m taking up with nobody. I’ve a wife of my own.’
‘Aye, a dirty ould Prod.’
Kevin hit him then, right across the face, and he hit him so hard that he knocked him on to his back on the pavement. Kevin walked home quickly.
‘Brede,’ he called.
She came down the stairs.
He told her what had happened. ‘Brede, I don’t know what to do with that boy. I know that knocking him about won’t help but God help me I don’t know what to do.’
‘I don’t know either,’ said Brede.
That evening Gerald returned home late. Kevin and Brede sat up in the kitchen wondering if he would come home at all, half wishing that he would not but not even admitting it to one another. He is our brother, they told one another, and only fifteen years old, still a child in some ways but with more violence behind him than most middle-aged men. They could not strike him out of their thoughts so easily. Kevin had meant to write to Sadie but his mind was full of so many things, his mother, Gerald, work at the scrapyard, that he could not settle to it. He dreaded telling Sadie that he was taking a temporary job here.
Gerald came in with a bleeding head. He collapsed on a chair in the kitchen, weak with the loss of blood, unable to speak. Brede told him to sit still; she filled a basin with warm water and Kevin went for the doctor.
The doctor asked no questions. He had mopped up too much blood to ask anything any more. To save life was his job, not interrogate patients. ‘It’ll need a few stitches,’ he said. ‘Can you hold his head, Kevin?’
Gerald cried out when the stitches were being put in. Kevin held him still; Brede stood by handing the doctor cotton wool and dressings as he required them.
‘Well, you’ll live, Gerald,’ said the doctor. ‘If you stay out of trouble, that is. Next time you might not be as lucky.’
Kevin saw the doctor out.
‘Terrible way these youngsters are going,’ sighed the doctor.
Kevin and Brede helped Gerald up to bed. He was moaning with the pa
in but the doctor had given him a sedative so that he would sleep. Michael wakened with the noise, lifted himself up on his elbow to ask what was wrong.
‘Gerald’s had his head split open,’ said Kevin. ‘And no doubt he deserved it. Don’t you ever be as big a fool, Michael.’
The clock on the kitchen dresser showed it was two o’clock. Kevin yawned, weary to the centre of his body. He should have gone to bed early for he had a long day ahead in the scrapyard.
‘Perhaps that’ll have taught him a lesson,’ said Brede.
‘Perhaps,’ said Kevin, but he did not believe it. If it was as easy as that this country of his would never have had as much trouble as it had.
He would write to Sadie tomorrow, he thought, when he lay down in bed. He slept intermittently, and whenever he woke he heard Gerald moaning in his sleep in the next room.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘I’m real sorry to be losing Kevin,’ said Mr Davis. He wiped his hands on a rag. He had been working on the back of a television set when Sadie came into the shop.
Sadie stared at him over the top of the set. ‘Losing him?’ she said.
‘Yes, I had a letter from him this morning.’ Mr Davis nodded at an envelope lying on the shelf. ‘Of course I understand.’
Sadie saw from where she stood that the writing on the envelope was indeed Kevin’s. She put out her hand and then stopped for of course she could not lift someone else’s letter. Something odd was happening to her: it was like being caught up in a dream.
‘Are you going back over?’ asked Mr Davis.
‘Well, no – er, I’m not sure.’ She was not sure of anything.
‘Are you all right, lass? You look sort of shaken up. I suppose you must be worried about Kevin being over there with all that trouble going on.’
‘He’s not coming back?’ she said, trying not to make it sound too much like a question.
‘Not for a while, he says. Course I can’t keep his job open for him, you realize that, Sadie. After all, he might be gone for months.’
‘Months,’ she echoed.
She moved towards the door.
He frowned. ‘You did know, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, yes. Certainly I knew.’
‘I’ll be sending him his card,’ he called after her. ‘You can tell him.’
The door chimed when she opened it. The chime stayed in her ears as she ran through the streets. She had not been home yet since coming from work: there might be a letter waiting for her. There must be a letter. One that would explain everything and tell her it was all a big mistake.
There was no letter. She searched twice through the pile on the hall table reading all the names carefully though she could see at a glance that none were for her. Someone might have taken hers by mistake. She rapped on Mrs Kyrakis’s door. Mrs Kyrakis opened it, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘what you want now?’
‘You don’t know if there was a letter for me today, do you?’
‘If there is one it will be in the hall.’
The door closed. Sadie went to every door knocking and asking, ‘You haven’t taken a letter of mine by mistake, have you?’ Blank stares, shrugs, one or two said, ‘Sorry, dear.’ The woman with the cats asked her to see the cats. The smell in the room was putrid. There were cats but no letters of any kind for the woman seldom received one at all. Sadie went next door.
‘He will write soon, I’m sure,’ said Lara soothingly. ‘And explain it all. He wouldn’t just forget you, Sadie.’
‘I know,’ said Sadie miserably. ‘At least I hope he wouldn’t. But he’s got this awful strong thing about his family and them being Catholics and dozens of them and everything.’
‘But you are his wife.’
Lara gave her a cup of coffee. Krishna sat by the table at the window studying, his back turned on the emotions of the two women. He rested his head on one hand, with his other hand he wrote slowly and meticulously.
‘I’d better go,’ said Sadie. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’
‘You are not disturbing us,’ said Lara.
‘What can I do?’ wailed Sadie. ‘He’s so far away.’
Krishna looked round. ‘You could send a telegram.’
Sadie worded it with his help. ‘WORRIED BY YOUR LETTER TO MR DAVIS. LOVE SADIE.’ She hurried off to the post office and once the message was sent, felt a little better. She went to Rita’s and could not stop herself telling her. From the look on Rita’s face she knew that Rita thought he would not come back at all.
‘Easy come, easy go these days,’ said Rita. ‘Nothing lasts for ever.’
Sadie scarcely slept all night. She got up from time to time to look at the clock, wishing that morning would come. When it did she rose, dressed and sat by the window waiting for the telegraph boy. She did not go to work till he came bringing the little yellow envelope. She met him on the doorstep.
‘MOTHER IN HOSPITAL,’ she read. ‘LETTER FOLLOWS. LOVE KEVIN.’
She went into Lara’s room and read it to her.
‘So there is a very reasonable explanation,’ said Lara. ‘I told you that there would be. You must be patient now and wait for his letter and then you will know more.’
Sadie arrived at work an hour late.
‘And just where have you been?’ demanded Miss Cullen.
‘My mother-in-law’s very ill,’ said Sadie. ‘I was waiting for a telegram from my husband.’
Miss Cullen sniffed. She found it difficult to believe in Sadie’s husband. The girl looked far too young to be married at all. ‘Don’t let it happen again,’ she said.
Sadie said nothing, caring not at all if the woman would sack her for then she could leave London and take the train to Liverpool and get on the boat and go home and see what Kevin was doing. Her mind stopped racing for she couldn’t see herself walking up Kevin’s street opening the door and calling out, ‘It’s Sadie.’
‘Cheer up, ducks,’ said Rita. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea. We’re going to a party tonight. What about coming with us?’
Sadie went to the party and danced all evening with Joe. But before anyone knew she slipped away, wanting suddenly to be home, even though it was to be by herself.
Three days later Kevin’s letter came. So he had gone back to work in the scrapyard! Sadie bit her lip, jealous already that Kate Kelly would be seeing him. But Kate would not take him away from her, she had not been able to before. Yes, but things were different now. He said that he did not know how long he would have to stay but he would come back as soon as he could. He wanted to come, he missed her, but he could not leave his family in such a mess.
‘He’s right, you know, Sadie,’ said Father Mulcahy, who called later in the evening. ‘Just think, his mother in hospital, seven children not working.’
‘It’s ridiculous to have all those children,’ Sadie burst out. ‘Yes, it is. His mother never should have had them. It’s wicked that your church should encourage them. Wicked!’
She burst into tears. The priest comforted her and sighed and said that it was all a great pity, he did not himself think it was good to bring big families into the world, but she must remember that Mrs McCoy would not regret having a single one of her children.
‘Now that she’s got them,’ said Sadie. ‘But if she’d never had them she wouldn’t have missed them.’
‘The church will change in time, I’m sure, Sadie.’
‘When enough people have suffered!’
She felt bitter that night and lonely. She wrote a long letter to Kevin blaming everything on his religion, telling him it was stupid and wicked and brought nothing but trouble. She licked the flap of the envelope, stuck on the stamp defiantly and went out through the late night streets to post it before she would change her mind. It was a wild letter but she did not care. Kevin needed to be jolted, to be reminded that she was not going to sit and wait like a cabbage till it came into his head to return.
The letter was on
her mind as soon as she awoke. Her stomach moved queasily. Had she said too much? It was one of her faults, launching out with all guns firing and then later regretting it. As she washed and dressed she thought of Kevin opening the letter, getting angrier and angrier, and she would not even be there to say, ‘I didn’t mean it just as badly as that!’
She pulled on her coat and ran. It was early yet, the street lights still shone in the dawn light. The box might not have been cleared. It mustn’t have been cleared!
A pain caught her in the ribs as she reached the pillar box. She gasped, rubbing her chest. She took the last step to the box and her eye jumped at once to the little white slot announcing the next collection. No. 2! The first lift was 7:15. She looked at her watch. Twenty past seven. She had just missed it. And her letter was away on its journey to Kevin beyond her reach.
She leant against the cold red pillar box. It was a rainy morning. A splatter of rain hit her face. A milkman swinging a crate of bottles stopped and asked if she was all right.
‘Yes,’ she said sluggishly.
She heaved herself off the box and wandered back to her room. She sat on the unmade bed. If she had enough money she would go to Ireland and see him. But then she knew she could borrow some from Rita, even hitch-hike to Liverpool. That was not the reason she was not going. It was not right to go, to follow him when she could do nothing. She would have to stay with her mother and her mother would say, ‘I told you so, Sadie Jackson! You always were one to act too fast. Act first and think later, that’s been your motto. Now look where it’s got you!’
Rain flailed the window panes. She got up and closed the curtains. The world did not appeal to her this morning and she was certainly in no mood to sell elastic. She took off her skirt and shoes and crawled back into the soft warm bed.
She slept all day, wakened as the street was darkening again. She wakened to the sound of someone knocking on her door. She put her old dressing gown around her to open it.
