Saturday's Child

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘And that’s as may be,’ interrupted Dot, ‘but you’ve no responsibilities there, Rachel. Look to your own. Aye, look to your own and don’t be mithering over her.’

  But Rachel could not help herself. Did the unwelcome lodger know about the key under the brick? Was he in the house, was he going to hurt Katherine?

  She followed Dot into the back, closed the door, tried to close her mind. But the images would not go away – greaseproof paper, an old shoe, the Bolton newspaper. It needed sorting out, and Rachel was the man for the job. She had to be, because no-one else cared.

  The scream that tore its way out of Sal Higgins’s chest ripped through the December air. She stood in the scullery doorway, a child in her arms, mouth opened wide, breath misting as it hit crystals of frost in the freezing atmosphere.

  John raced through the house, pyjamas flapping as he ran towards his wife. Sal never screamed. Even in childbirth, she had borne the pain stoically. She had accepted the deaths of her babies, had kept going for the good of her family, was not one for great displays of emotion. ‘Sal?’ he yelled. ‘Sal?’

  But she was halfway down the yard, ancient slippers skidding over a layer of ice. She shook the child in her arms. ‘Breathe,’ she shouted, ‘for God’s sake, breathe.’

  John reached her, stopped, looked at the kiddy’s face, white, cold, as frozen as marble in a churchyard. ‘What . . . ?’ he began.

  ‘Deep sleep,’ she chattered. ‘Gone into a deep sleep, John. I keep shaking him, but he won’t wake.’

  John felt as if the life was draining out of himself, too. He steadied himself against the wall that separated the Higgins yard from the O’Garas’, legs turning to rubber, knees quaking, bare feet burning in a patch of frost. This was unbelievable. The child had been quiet over Christmas, but there had been no discernible fever, no warning, no symptoms.

  ‘Shall I take him in?’ Sal asked.

  ‘Yes.’ John pulled himself together. ‘Put him on his bed, love. I’ll send one of the girls for the doctor.’ Thomas Grogan-Higgins was dead. The pallor of his face approached blue in colour – the child had been gone for several hours.

  Sal wrapped the little body in blankets and placed it gently where she had found it not five minutes earlier. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Yes.’ John pulled her into his arms. ‘There was nothing you could do, love.’

  ‘I know that.’

  He lifted her face. ‘Sal, it’s not our fault.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poor soul must have had a weakness.’

  She began to shake, tremors sweeping through his body, too, like a small earthquake, a warning of devastation yet to come. They clung together, neither noticing when doors flew inward to allow Magsy O’Gara into the house.

  Magsy stood for a moment at the foot of Thomas’s narrow bed. She turned on her heel and went into the front room where the Higgins girls sat, most crying, all wordless. ‘Stay here,’ she advised before returning to the kitchen. Yes, he was dead. That poor baby soul whose parents had been blown to kingdom come had now joined them. Magsy prayed, hands clutched into her breast, head bowed against the vision of that perfect, unmarked little body on the mattress.

  When her prayers were finished, Magsy O’Gara set to, placing paper and kindling in the grate, finding bread, jam and margarine. Like all women before her, like most yet to be born, she did what women do in the face of death – she warmed and fed the living.

  After jam sandwiches and milk had been delivered to the girls, Magsy waited to see whether John or Sal would speak, but neither did. They continued to stand in the centre of the kitchen, no tears, no words, just a lump of humanity joined together in the face of this new storm.

  Magsy went back to her own house, picked up hat, coat, scarf and gloves, looked at her pale face in the mirror. ‘Beth,’ she muttered, ‘oh, Beth, not you, not you.’ It had happened to Thomas. Thomas had been the one to pay the price. Guilt rushed into Magsy’s head, the emotion powerful enough to colour her cheeks. It was as if Thomas had been a token payment of some kind, the one who had done the dying for everyone. ‘He may not be the only one,’ she reminded herself.

  Even so, as she set out to fetch the doctor, Magsy O’Gara continued to know that Beth would survive. In that certainty lay her only chance of sanity.

  Eleven

  Little Thomas Grogan was buried with his parents in the Catholic section of Tonge Cemetery.

  He had done his job, thought Magsy as the tiny white coffin was lowered into frost-hardened earth. Thomas had achieved what generations had failed even to approach – he had brought Christians together. The church had been bursting, Catholics, Methodists, members of the Church of England, all crushed together, no grouping, no sectarianism, just people of all ages, all creeds, salt water pouring from their eyes, a copy of the Requiem Mass shaking in every pair of hands.

  Magsy stood with Lily and Nellie, listened while the Irish priest made his farewell to a boy who had lived such a short life, whose parents had been lost, whose happiness had been extended by the thoroughly good Higgins family. Sal, who had spoken scarcely a word since the boy’s death, was motionless throughout the burial. Sal had a special place inside herself, an area of which Magsy had caught brief glimpses in recent days. She was possessed of a shut-down mechanism, a facility she had used, no doubt, when her own babies had died.

  Magsy put an arm round Nellie, whose tears were accompanied by the textureless sounds produced only by the deaf, no particular level to the noise, no cadence, just primitive howls. Nellie made enough audible fuss for everyone, because while most held their grief back, Nellie could not hear her own din.

  Nevertheless, this horrible day was not without its good side, because the boy in the coffin had been a catalyst, a small element whose qualities had been vital to this particular formula. He had injected his tiny presence into the equation, had now disappeared without trace, solidarity and unity his priceless legacies.

  Lily clung to Magsy’s arm. Her husband and boys were still alive, while Thomas, who had displayed no particular symptoms of Asian flu, had died from inhalation of vomit, had choked in the night. Lily felt dreadful, was still as guilty as sin. Wishes should never be made, because they might just come true. She had desired change, was enduring change, while her menfolk remained isolated in hospital. And now, an innocent child had been taken and . . .

  ‘Lily?’ Magsy pulled at her sleeve.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop it. Stop it now.’

  Did Magsy O’Gara read minds, was she capable of entering a person’s thoughts?

  ‘They will be fine,’ continued Magsy in a whisper.

  Lily inclined her head and said a silent prayer. Beth was certainly all right. Beth was in a tiny single ward now, was able to talk to her mother through glass, was eating, beginning to read again, was becoming restless.

  ‘They’ll be home,’ said Magsy.

  ‘Aye.’ But there was no conviction in the response.

  ‘They will. Now stop this, Lily, despair is a sin.’

  Hiding a deadly misdemeanour that refused to be lifted from her sorrowful soul, Lily straightened her spine and watched while the Higgins family dropped soil onto the coffin of their adopted son and brother. John was in the worst state, features screwed up against unbearable misery, nose red with weeping, a handkerchief dabbing the wet from his face. Sal just went through the motions, a strange half-smile on her face, a mask concealing emotions that probably went too deep to be allowed an airing.

  It was finished. The child’s earthly remains had been returned to his birth parents, so that was that, the cycle completed long before it had run its course. ‘We never know the day,’ mumbled Lily.

  ‘That’s sure,’ agreed Magsy as she made a hurried Sign of the Cross, ‘and we don’t dwell on it. Come on, now, we are having a bit of a warm in the Prince Billy, then it’s off to hospital again, see how they all are.’

  Lily pondered. ‘But the
Billy’s a Protestant pub, Mags.’ Protestants? Bloody heathens, more like, toilets like pig pens, washbasins filled with all kinds of filth.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Catholics don’t often go there.’

  ‘I know.’ Magsy steered Nellie towards the gate. ‘All the more reason to go there today, then, for hasn’t young Thomas opened the doors for everyone?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Suppose nothing,’ said Magsy through clenched teeth. ‘’Tis a fact. I have never been in a public house since . . . since William died, but I shall go to this one now. Thomas has made a point and we shall learn from him.’

  The pub was packed. The usual lunchtime drinkers found themselves wedged in a corner, most too respectful to intrude upon the dark-clothed interlopers. This was clearly a funeral party, and mourners always deserved respect.

  Sal sat alone in a corner, her eyes fixed on an untouched half of black stout. The same expression remained on her face, corners of the mouth slightly upturned, the eyes unseeing, ears plainly closed against all that went on around her. Nellie placed herself opposite Sal, pushing a small sheet of paper across the table. On it Nellie had written, I am sorry and I shall pray for you.

  The Irishwoman made no move.

  Nellie reached into a capacious handbag and drew out a tissue-wrapped item. She slapped Sal’s hand. ‘I made,’ she mouthed. ‘For you, I made.’ With that unwavering certainty she had gained via her four heightened senses, Nellie homed in on this woman’s misery. Sal Higgins had to be dealt with.

  Sal fixed her gaze on Nellie. Smelly Nellie was no longer smelly. She was smart and clean in her dark navy coat and matching hat. ‘Hello,’ said Sal, ‘nice to see you.’ Had Nellie’s ears been capable, she would have noticed the lack of expression in her companion’s tone.

  But Nellie did not need to own the ability to hear. Sal’s strangeness was plain – the woman was in deep shock, had retreated into a safe place where nothing and no-one could reach her. ‘Open,’ commanded Nellie, her lips overworking the word.

  Sal continued mute and motionless.

  Nellie knew about noise. For well over seventy years, she had lived in a world where noise was a factor from which she had always been excluded, yet she had watched often enough while others responded to it. With slow deliberation, she lifted a large glass ashtray and crashed it onto the table’s surface, her mind marvelling when the item survived the assault intact and without a single chip. She set it back in its rightful place and waited.

  The Prince William was suddenly as still as the long-dead man whose name it had taken. Hands froze in midair, beer pausing on its way to owners’ mouths. Cigarettes dangled from lips, regulars ceased chuntering – even Sal looked up.

  Nellie held Sal’s gaze, a hand reaching for the parcel she had offered. Slowly, the deaf woman removed the tissue to reveal an item of stunning craftsmanship. ‘No sleep,’ she mouthed. ‘Made it.’

  People nearest to Sal’s table crowded round. It was a missal, black leather, its covers bound again in finest cream lace, a crucifix at the centre, Thomas’s name beneath. The leather showed through the open pattern, a perfect contrast of these two natural and beautiful materials. Sal reached out and touched the book. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she muttered. ‘Oh my God, that is wonderful. You made that for me, Nellie?’

  Nellie nodded. ‘For you, for Thomas.’

  Sal looked at his name and knew that it had been no nightmare. He was dead. Laughing Boy with his wide smile and blond curls had really gone and this was proof, his name across a missal. ‘John!’ she screamed.

  And it was over, final, complete.

  John collected his weeping wife and led her home to face what lay ahead. As he reached the door, he turned to Nellie Hulme. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Drink flowed, regulars spoke with Catholic intruders, darts came out once the grieving family had left. Domino games began in the snug, everyone relaxed, pork pies were handed round.

  Nellie smiled to herself, picked up her bag and left the pub. She grinned all the way home, because it had taken just two orphans to break down the barriers of religion. One had gone to his Maker, the other, well over seventy, still struggled to discover who she was. Yes, the lacework had been hard and hurried, but it had been well worth the time and effort.

  She reached home, steeled herself against Spot’s greeting, made tea, fed the pup, settled down in front of a newly lit fire. She had plans for the Higgins family, though the blueprints remained vague just yet. But she would do something – oh yes, she would. Lily Hardcastle was in the picture, too, but that was another uncertain area.

  She settled back, feet warmed by the fire and by Spot’s body. He plucked a lot of stockings, but that was a small price to pay for the comfort offered by the young dog. Oh, that rug was a lovely colour, such a rich red . . .

  Red was not a good colour, no no. She was asleep, yet not asleep. Someone screamed. There was red everywhere, a great deal of red, wet red . . . blood. Was she asleep? If not, why and how did she hear that noise, that . . . that dying? Red, red, everywhere red. And the man turned and looked at her. The doorknob was so high, almost too high to reach. A small thing screaming. Louder, louder and the bigger scream and the rug was red – she should have bought green or blue or any colour but red . . .

  Nellie’s eyes opened so suddenly that she had to blink quickly. Five minutes, she had dozed. Five minutes, yet a lifetime. It was a nice rug, it was. But perhaps green would have been an even better colour . . .

  Ernest remained the exception that proved the rule.

  People from the mean streets hereabouts had neglected chores, had abandoned work, had ignored their religious divisions on this sad day. Oh, he had watched the damned fools as they had walked past his house, a grey-black sea of people off to church – to a Catholic church – to say farewell to the Grogan boy. The trouble with folk these days was that they had no principles, no sense of their own identity. It was easier in the old days – Catholics were rubbish and Orangemen were superior – so what had gone wrong?

  ‘Do-bloody-gooders,’ he muttered under his breath when he saw the grieving parents entering their house. His hatred for the Higgins family had not abated. His intention remained to get up to Hesford and have it out with bloody Dot and bloody Frank. He wanted an explanation, would get one if it killed him and the rest of them, too. How had she dared to leave? She had walked out after years and years of work, his work, his striving to put food on the table and coal in the grate. Well, he would pay back the lot of them even if it took every last ounce of his strength.

  He was walking better, was practising for several hours a week, could now get halfway up Prudence Street without losing balance or breath. Soon, Charlie Entwistle would take him up to Hesford to visit the household of his younger son and that beautiful bride.

  He grinned, picked up his sticks and walked away from the window. He was doing very well. With her brood in hospital, Lily Hardcastle no longer helped, but Ernest had made an arrangement with a local grocer who delivered, while Charlie Entwistle had become a regular visitor. Yes, good old Charlie was not averse to carrying home a bag of fish and chips or a couple of chops from the market. To hell with Dorothy Barnes. Ernest was doing a grand job without her. But she would pay, by God, she would.

  Magsy came back from the hospital with her step lightened considerably. She was filled with joy and hope, because her daughter was improving to the point where she was becoming difficult.

  She stirred the fire, set the kettle to boil, sank into the rocking chair without pausing even to remove her outer clothing.

  Beth had started to demand books, had delivered a diatribe on germs to a very young doctor who had waited for Magsy.

  Laughing out loud, Magsy relived the scene.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She turned in the corridor and looked at him, a small man with spectacles and earnest features. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your daughter is an unusual girl.’

  ‘I kno
w.’ She didn’t bother with details, just stood and waited while he shuffled his feet. Like many men of his age, he became tongue-tied in the presence of Magsy O’Gara.

  ‘Wants to be a doctor,’ he managed after a pause of some seconds.

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘I’ve seen you before,’ was his next comment.

  ‘I clean here.’

  ‘Ah.’ He rearranged his stethoscope and fixed a look of insouciance to his face. ‘Very bright – extraordinary medical knowledge. Er . . . Beth, I mean. In fact, I would go so far as to call her a prodigy.’

  Magsy acknowledged that statement with a nod. ‘At this point, I am more concerned with her medical condition than with her knowledge. Is she better?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very mild case, very strong constitution. She is a credit to you, Mrs . . . er . . . O’Gara.’

  ‘She is a credit to regular cod liver oil and malt, doctor.’

  ‘Erm . . .’

  Magsy was getting tired of the ers and the erms. ‘When will she be home?’

  ‘Soon.’ He drew a hand through his hair, tried to make the best of a very thin show. ‘Just a few more days, until we are sure that she is no longer infectious.’

  Magsy felt like dancing up and down the green-floored corridor, but she damped the urge. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He stepped closer. ‘Where did she learn?’

  Magsy lifted a shoulder. ‘From books, of course.’

  ‘Library books?’

  ‘Among others, yet.’

  His brow knitted thoughtfully. ‘She should get the best, you know, should be educated properly.’

  Magsy smiled at him. ‘She will be. She will get into grammar school, and from there to medical college.’

  ‘Catholic?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’ countered Magsy, an edge to the word.

  He shrugged. ‘Ah well, the good nuns. They don’t exactly go mad on the sciences, you know. Science is not quite ladylike, so emphasis tends to be mostly on the arts. The best you could do would be Bolton School, somewhere non-denominational, or private. There is a school not too far from here – no boarders – where each child is treated as an individual. Very good teachers. They take on only gifted girls, then cater for each particular need.’