by Maeve Binchy
At times she wondered should she write to Violet and enquire about how to trace a missing boy who had gone to sign up. How did you set the machinery in motion to get him back? Show his birth certificate? Prove he was neither British nor eighteen? Then she knew she would never do that; but she was still tempted to hunt him out, just so that she could write to him. She could even get him to write to her at the chemist’s. The Moriartys were unusual in Kilgarret, in that they were able to keep secrets. She had also read somewhere that you could contact missing persons through the Salvation Army, but it made it very final, in a way, if you asked an organisation like that to hunt for him. While you left it, and hoped and hoped, it didn’t seem too bad. It didn’t actually define him as a runaway son, a missing person. Sean was still going to write some time soon. …
She read the paper on her desk and tried to work out from the reports in the Irish Independent whether her son might have been trained by now, or if he were still too young. She went dutifully through accounts of what Stafford Cripps had said, and Churchill had said and Beaverbrook had said and Harold Nicolson had said; but none of them ever said what happened to young Irish boys who went off on boats to join the war. And the paper always referred to it as the Emergency, which seemed less frightening. She followed the progress of events as they moved out to the Far East, and of simpler matters nearer home. She read of the austerity measures, gasping at the idea of onions being so precious they were offered as raffle prizes. She read these things privately and without discussing them with Sean, though she didn’t hide her interest either.
She was utterly unprepared for young Sean’s letter when it did arrive, ten months after he had left home. It was from Liverpool. It was very short. He hadn’t wanted to write at all, he said, or at least not until he was properly in the army and couldn’t be got out of it. But there was this woman, his friend’s mam, she was very nice and she said he should write just a word to his own mam because she’d be grieving. He had said that there were plenty more at home to keep his mam busy, but Gerry’s mam, Mrs Sparks, had said he should still write. So. He was fine and he was meeting a whole lot of very nice people. He had done this and that until September, because they wanted to know what age was he and they wouldn’t take him until he was actually eighteen. He had sent to Ireland for his birth certificate. He got a copy from the Customs House. He was in a camp now doing basic training. It was very interesting. He often spent time off with Gerry Sparks who was his mate and with Gerry’s mam who was very nice and used to cook very well before the war because nowadays you couldn’t get anything.
He sent her no love, no enquiries, no excuses, no pleas for understanding. His writing was bad and his grammar and spelling poor. Eileen thought of the years with the Brothers; she remembered how she and Sean had always thought he was very bright because he was their eldest son; but this was the letter of a near illiterate. She read it again and again, the birth certificate and Customs House and the basic training, and the tears fell slowly down her cheeks.
She didn’t tell anyone about the letter. She kept it folded in her handbag, and she kept the next one and the next, and the fourth one in November when El Alamein was won. She replied almost lightly, raking her letters before she posted them for any hint of anxiety or grievance. She even found funny little things to tell him, about the day the goat got into the shop and knocked down all the boxes; about Maureen coming home from nursing school and practising bandaging so enthusiastically that she stopped the circulation in Eamonn’s arms for ages and ages; about the play that Aisling, Elizabeth and the little Murray girl wrote and performed, which was meant to be a serious and inspirational account of St Bernadette, and was such high comedy that the audience was convulsed. She sent cheerful greetings to Gerry Sparks’s mother and wished there was some way of sending her a few things; but perhaps some time if Sean came home on leave he might be able to take her back a couple of chickens and some butter and eggs?
The life-line to her son was so gossamer thin she didn’t dare to break it. Even telling someone might put it in danger. …
Sean knew that there were letters, but he never mentioned them. He grew more silent in the shop; he worked just as hard as ever, but he smiled less and had no time for a chat on Fair Day. Sometimes, Eileen would look at him, bending down in the yard and trying to take the strain out of his back, and she would fill with pity for him. Since the Emergency, coal was almost impossible to get, so they had to fill their outhouses with turf instead. Turf took so much room to store; even the rooms over the shop which had been stacked with brooms and potato baskets, boxes of globes and wicks for the lamps, brushes for whitewash and distemper … they were now all full of turf. Eileen felt she was breathing it through her pores as it billowed out of the grate and covered everything with its flakes.
Sean looked older than a man in his forties should look. Perhaps, Eileen thought, he had the worst of all worlds: living in the country but without the countryside’s healthy life; a father of six without a father’s hope and pride in his eldest son taking over the business. He had always been the one with energy and drive; he had saved and hoarded to buy this small place … the year of the Treaty. It had all been so symbolic. A new nation, a new business; and there they were, twenty years later and their son out fighting for that same country from which they had won their freedom. … And Sean himself, who had seen this shop as a life’s dream come true, was out in the cold yard, rooting around behind the road signs for some spare plough-shares. It was raining, and his head was getting very wet. Eileen left her little glass cage and, a bag over her head, went out to help him.
She held the huge black and yellow road signs, which had been taken down during the Emergency to confuse any invaders, and made room for him to find the bits of machinery.
‘We’ll do a great tidy-up on this lot, one day,’ he said, gratitude in his tone if not in his words.
‘I know we will,’ she said. She wondered, as she spoke, whether he knew or cared that his son was spending springtime fighting in North Africa. The excitement had been so great when his call-up papers had arrived that even Gerry Sparks had added a few more words to the letter. Gerry was going with him. Eileen still didn’t know whether Sean ever read his son’s letters. She often left her bag open so that he would see them; but he never made any mention of it and they never seemed to have been disturbed when she returned.
Donal had eventually moved to the Brothers’, having been persuaded to spend another year at the convent after he had made his first communion. It wasn’t usual for a boy to stay there until he was eight, but Sister Maureen had managed to convey that it was perfectly reasonable. She had said, privately, that they should give him one more year before he had to face the rough and tumble of the school yard down at the Brothers’. Another year might make his breathing easier, his anxieties less. Eileen, who would have been happy for Donal to be educated for the rest of his life with the kind Sister Maureen, agreed readily. But the day had had to come, and now her delicate child was coming home every day, clothes torn, face terrorised, lips sealed. ‘I fell,’ he said, every day. Eamonn was worn out defending him.
‘You see, Mam,’ Eamonn explained, ‘the fellows pick on Donal because he’s nearly nine, fellows of just eight, and they’re too tough and then I have to go an’ clout them, and then the other fellows come up to me and say what am I doing clouting fellows of only eight for when I’m fourteen. It’s desperate, Mam. That’s why my coat’s torn again.’
Aisling and Elizabeth, cycling home from school – arms touching, dangerously sophisticated thirteen-year-olds, with no time for the bold rough lads from the Brothers’ – saw a crowd gathered around someone lying at the side of the road. Together, they slowed down and curiosity made them get off the bikes to see what had happened. At almost the same moment they recognised Donal’s scarf, a long multi-coloured one that Peggy had knitted from bits of spare wool. Peggy loved wrapping him up in it every morning and would turn him like a top until he was under t
hree layers at least. At exactly the same moment they dropped their bicycles in the middle of the road and ran to him. The other boys were looking frightened.
‘He’s only putting it on,’ muttered one.
‘Look at his eyes,’ said another. …
Donal lay on the side of the road gasping for breath, his hands flailing in the air; his scarf lay trailing in the mud, one end of it still caught in the top button of his coat. Aisling was on her knees beside him in a flash. Just as she had seen her mother do a dozen times, she loosened his coat and his shirt collar with a wrench, at the same time raising his head on her arm.
‘Take your time, Donal, you’ve got all the time in the world. As slowly as you like. Don’t fight it,’ she murmured. Elizabeth was on her knees at the other side, helping with the support. Her pale hair was in her eyes, her lisle stockings wet and torn from kneeling on the ground, her up-turned bicycle forgotten.
‘Your breath is coming, that’s it, in, out, in, out, that’s it, you’ve got it again. …’
Aisling stood up and faced the seven boys, who were all just as shocked by the sudden swoop the girls had made as by the whites of Donal O’Connor’s eyes.
‘We didn’t do anything,’ said one.
‘No, nothing, we were only playing, we never touched him,’ and there was a gabble of voices all trying to be freed of blame and guilt and involvement.
‘You listen to me,’ Aisling shouted. She glanced over at Elizabeth; they understood each other well enough. Elizabeth started to whisper to Donal. She still had her arm around his shoulder and she bent closer to his cold ear.
Aisling was formidable. ‘I know every one of your names. I know you all. Tonight my Mam and Dad will be down to the school. Brother Kevin will know who you all are and Brother Thomas and Brother John. All of them. They’ll deal with you. You know Donal has asthma. You could have killed him. You could all have been standing down in the courthouse if we hadn’t come along. You could have been young murderers. You hit him, or you knocked him down. …’
‘We only pulled his scarf off him.’
‘Yes, and nearly choked him. The worst thing you could do. Choke him and stop air getting into his chest. You stupid, thick murderer, Johnny Walsh, if Donal isn’t well you’re the cause.’
‘She’s only letting them think that, she’s only frightening them,’ Elizabeth muttered urgently to Donal. ‘She doesn’t mean it, but just look at them!’
Donal looked. They did indeed look frightened of Aisling.
‘Don’t say anything. …’ Johnny Walsh began in a whimper.
‘Don’t be such a coward! Don’t be such a murdering coward! I’ll not keep quiet and let you get away with it, murdering a boy with a bad heart and a bad chest!’ Aisling had the taste of power and loved it.
‘You haven’t a bad heart,’ hissed Elizabeth. ‘It’s for show.’ In the darkening evening, under the light drizzle, seven young lads were terrified.
‘He’s older than us, he’s fourteen months older than me. …’ began Eddie Moriarty, white with fear at the thought of what his parents would do to him when this came out.
‘Yes, and Jemmy in our shop is older than you and Paddy Hickey, the blind man, is older than you and you don’t torment them, you great eejit!’ shouted Aisling.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Johnny Walsh fearfully. Aisling had been thinking.
‘Pick up those bicycles. Now,’ she ordered. ‘Pick them up and wheel them back to town. Johnny and Eddie and you, Michael, come into my Da’s shop and tell him what’s happened. And tell him that from now on you’re going to look after Donal. No need to mention his heart, just tell him that Donal had a fall and that you seven are going to look after him and protect him until his chest gets better.’
It seemed like a glorious escape, but Johnny wanted to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap.
‘What do we have to tell your father?’
‘That you’re going to see no harm comes to Donal. And you’d all better pray on your knees that Donal’s heart doesn’t give out during the night.’
Magnificent, like the leader of a procession, she marched in front of them back to the town and into the square, while Elizabeth and Donal followed. Donal’s face was wrapped up again in the scarf so no one else would see the giggles, and Elizabeth had one hand over her face. The other was holding Donal’s hand.
It was the only high spot in what was otherwise a very long, very dull term. Aisling thought it would never end. She was as defiant as she dared be, staying just within the limits, and she gave no time at all to her work. She fell behind in her marks and slipped from seventh to eighteenth in class in three weeks. Elizabeth had managed a steady average of tenth or eleventh – which was considered very good for a child who had never studied the basics. There was an element of suspicion that outside an Irish convent very little could have been taught; and that any child who had emerged fairly educated through a non-Irish, non-Catholic system must be a very diligent child indeed. She now joined in the religious knowledge classes; it had seemed silly to sit in the library reading a big Bible full of words she didn’t understand, when she could hear marvellous stones of apparitions and angels and sins and Jesus being so good to his mother. …
There had been some more worrying conversations about Elizabeth’s conversion. Some of the class wondered whether they should arrange for her first communion, so that she should have the chance to confess all her sins and get forgiveness at confession.
‘I don’t have all that many sins,’ Elizabeth had said innocently once, and everyone was horrified. She was riddled with sin, they all were, but Elizabeth was particularly bad because of all that original sin, as well.
‘But I thought that the original sin had been washed away after all the baptisms?’ Elizabeth had now been baptised four times. There had been doubt about the validity of the first one on the cloakroom floor. There had been an accusation that the water might not have flowed at exactly the same time as the words were being said. Then there was a long and bitter debate about whether the words should be said in Latin or English; one school of thought was convinced that lay baptisms were conducted in the vernacular. …
For no reason that was ever voiced, Elizabeth’s conversion had never been made public. There was an unspoken feeling that, for all the nuns were exhorting them to go and convert all races and spend their pocket money contributing to the conversion of little black babies, there might be a different attitude taken to doing the job on Elizabeth. It was also feared that if Elizabeth’s parents in England were to hear about it there might be great trouble.
Her mother’s letters seemed to come from another world, not just another country. Elizabeth was pleased that she wrote more often and that her letters did not consist of a list of instructions: be sure to take your medicine, wear your gloves, thank everyone. … As the war went on, Mother seemed to have cheered up, despite the complaints. There was no soap – the ration was three ounces every month: fancy trying to live a normal healthy life on three ounces of soap a month. There was no white bread – Mother had forgotten what it tasted like. She had friends in the munitions factory where she worked and very often she stayed overnight with Lily because it was such a long journey home and somehow in this depressing war, it was nice to have a friend to laugh with. Mother had changed her hair-style, she had a victory roll now; it looked funny at first but people said it suited her. Once or twice she said that she missed Elizabeth. She always ended her letters saying she hoped Elizabeth was well and happy and that it wouldn’t be long now until she could come home and they could all lead a nice normal life again.
Mother said very little about Father in her letters. And when she sent a pound for her birthday present, just before she was fourteen, Elizabeth realised with horror that she hadn’t mentioned Father for months.
Eileen was at her desk when Elizabeth came to talk to her.
‘Are you busy?’ she asked.
Eileen smiled. None of her own fam
ily would dream of asking such a question; they all assumed that she was always ready and willing to listen, to help, to act.
‘I’m not busy,’ she said, pulling up a chair. On her desk she had a shoe box filled with the shop accounts, the bills overdue that had to be sent out with a personal note. No firm reminders on a printed form could be sent to a farmer who might take offence and buy from the next town. She had a letter she now knew by heart from Mrs Sparks in Liverpool, an awkward, stunted little letter from a lonely widow whose son was away and who felt she had an ally in Sean’s mother. She wrote of her loneliness and her hopes that they’d be back soon, and how she hadn’t heard anything for six weeks and how she wondered whether Mrs O’Connor might have. She had a letter to a specialist in Dublin, and she had to plan which day to take Donal. She had a note from Sister Margaret saying that it was time they had young Niamh at school as she was nearly five now and could they bring her down towards the end of term so that it wouldn’t be so strange to her when she started in September. And, Sister Margaret said, wasn’t it the blessings of God how well young Donal had settled in at the Brothers’? She had heard from all sides how the youngest young hooligans were all a great support to him instead of picking on him. The Lord worked in mysterious ways. There was a letter from Maureen wondering would Da ever let her have three pounds for a gorgeous dance dress and she’d pay him back out of her allowance, when they started to get an allowance in summer. She had a letter from the County Home that said that Sean’s father was sinking fast and was very anxious to see them. They mustn’t be put off by the fact that he might not recognise them; he kept saying that he wanted to see his son and his family.
