The Linen Queen

by Patricia Falvey

  Mary and I shivered as we walked along Hill Street. A few pubs were open but not a sliver of light showed through the heavy black blinds on the windows. All the street lamps had wee hoods on them that dimmed the light enough so it couldn’t be seen from above. But tonight all the precautions in the world would have made no difference because the snow that covered the streets was so bright the ground may as well have been lit by chandeliers. We should be finished with our rounds in no time, I thought.

  As we came up Water Street, a pub door opened and a crowd of soldiers spilled out onto the pavement. Yanks. I exchanged glances with Mary. I knew we both hoped they wouldn’t give us any trouble. We usually ignored them as best we could. I squared my shoulders and prepared to walk through the small knot of soldiers. As expected the catcalls began. I swung around when I heard one voice. There was no mistaking it. It belonged to Sylvie Sartori.

  “Well, well, boys. If it isn’t the Linen Queen herself. Hey, Sheila, that’s a hulluva tiara you’re wearing.”

  Mary clutched my arm. “C’mon, Sheila. Just ignore them.”

  But Sylvie blocked my path. His face was so close to mine I could smell the beer on his breath.

  “Get out of my way, Sylvie,” I said.

  “So how’s that slut of a friend of yours, Sheila?” he slurred. “Still trying to pass that bastard off as mine?”

  “You know fine well it’s yours,” I said, trying to hold my temper. “You’re just not man enough to admit it and marry her. You’re a bloody coward, Sylvie, and worse. You should at least be paying for her keep. As it is, I’m the one supporting her, when it should be you.”

  Sylvie hiccupped in my face. I stepped back in disgust. He turned to his comrades.

  “Almost sweet, ain’t it, boys, how whores look after each other in their time of need.”

  His friends laughed and my temper broke. I reached out and slapped Sylvie hard across the face before Mary could stop me. He flinched.

  “You bitch,” he said. “I’ll report you for this.”

  “Report away,” I said. “Your captain knows all about you. One word from me and—”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re Captain Solomon’s whore.” He chuckled. “Well, you won’t be seeing much action from him for a while. You’d better find yourself another officer.”

  I froze. “What are you talking about?”

  “Seems he got himself in the middle of a donnybrook—with the IRA of all people. I’d swear that man has a death wish going up against those guys without any backup.”

  “What’s happened to him?” I said, trying to control the tremble in my voice.

  “Oh, he’ll live,” said Sylvie. “Banged up a lot, though. Broke a few ribs, sprained a few muscles, face cut up like a jigsaw puzzle. Like I said he won’t be much good in bed for a while.”

  “That’s enough, soldier!” Mary roared at him. “Go home now before I call the police.” Mary reached with her one hand for her two-way radio.

  “Settle down, stumpy,” said Sylvie. “We’ve got better things to do. C’mon, boys. Let’s go to the Ceili House for a nightcap. Coming, Sheila?”

  He was a brazen lout. I swallowed the insults that crowded my tongue and stepped off the pavement into the road along with Mary. We walked away from them, the insults and catcalls still echoing in our ears. As I walked, my anger subsided and relief took its place. Thank God, Joel was alive. Thank God.

  Chapter 23

  The scream of a banshee awoke me. It pierced my ears like a siren. I sat up. The German bombers were coming. The alerts were slicing the silence of the night. But then I realized the noise was coming from Patsy.

  “The baby’s coming, Sheila. Jesus the baby’s coming. I think I’m dying.”

  The lights in the attic room blazed as Mrs. Hollywood burst in the door.

  “Oh, lordy. Calm down now, Patsy. Take deep breaths, love. That’s right. Now just hold on.”

  I jumped out of bed. “Grainne,” I said, “go next door and fetch Mrs. Cowan.”

  Grainne glared at me.

  “Now!” I said.

  Grainne pulled on her clothes and ran out of the room. Mrs. Cowan was the local midwife. She had agreed to come the minute Patsy was ready to deliver. We’d been on edge waiting—Patsy was over three weeks late. I went downstairs and put water on to boil and pulled out the clean towels Mrs. Hollywood had set aside. Upstairs I could hear her trying to soothe Patsy but she kept screaming. Could the pain be that bad? I wondered. Patsy was always one for dramatics. Maybe she was just being hysterical. Mrs.Cowan came flying in the door, Grainne behind her. I handed the towels to Grainne.

  “Here, bring these up. Then come back down. You have no business up there.”

  I expected back talk from her, but she came running down the stairs again in seconds. It was then I realized she was scared. I tried to smile at her.

  “Patsy’ll be all right,” I said. “Women give birth every day of the week.”

  When the water had boiled I carried it in a pan back up to the bedroom and set it on a table beside the bed. Mrs. Cowan was bending over Patsy, examining her, feeling her stomach, while Patsy screamed at her to leave her alone. I ran down to the kitchen and got a jug of cold water and a facecloth. I brought them up and began to bathe Patsy’s forehead. Mrs. Cowan nodded to Mrs. Hollywood to come away from the bed out of Patsy’s hearing.

  “Something’s not right,” Mrs. Cowan said. “The baby’s turned the wrong way. I’ll try to turn it but in the state she’s in she might not let me touch her again.”

  I took Patsy’s hand and tried to calm her down. A bad feeling took a hold of me.

  “Help me turn her on her side, Sheila,” Mrs. Cowan was saying.

  We tried moving Patsy, but she fought us so ferociously we gave up.

  Mrs. Cowan sighed. “We need to get her to the ambulance in a hurry. The cord might be choking that baby.”

  I jumped up, ran downstairs, and grabbed my coat off its peg.

  “I’m going to ring the ambulance,” I said to Grainne. “You wait here.”

  I ran as fast as I could up Walker’s Row and down Cecil Street to the phone box that stood on the corner. All I could think of was that I had to get to the phone. Patsy needed help. Her screams still echoed in my ears. I slid on a patch of ice and fell. Swearing, I pulled myself up and ran on. It was hard to see where I was going and I cursed the blackout. I fell again and hauled myself up, holding on to the wall of a house, and limped towards the corner.

  “Took you long enough,” Grainne snapped at me when I got back to the house. Jesus, could I do nothing right in that girl’s eyes?

  Instead of waiting at the house I limped back up to the top of the street to wait for the ambulance so that I could direct them. God forbid they should go to the wrong address. Grainne would blame me. Eventually the ambulance appeared at the bottom of Cecil Street, its siren squealing. Doors and windows on the street opened one by one and people came out of their houses. They probably thought it was an air raid. I waved it down and directed it to Walker’s Row. When I got back to the house, the attendants were already loading Patsy into the ambulance. I climbed in beside her. She had stopped screaming. Instead she let out small groans. I held her hand as we rode to the hospital.

  “Name, please?” a big stone-faced nurse with a southern accent demanded as Patsy was wheeled in.

  “Mallon,” I said, “Patsy.”

  “Address?”

  “Six Walker’s Row.”

  The nurse eyed me. “And who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Where’s the husband?”

  “There isn’t one. Can’t you hurry up?”

  The nurse’s eyes were an odd yellow color. They put me in mind of an old diseased cat that used to roam the Fathom Road. Those eyes looked me up and down now in disgust.

  “Don’t be telling me my job, miss.”

  She motioned the ambulance attendants. “Leave her there in the corridor, lads. We’re
very busy tonight. She’ll have to wait her turn.”

  I grabbed her by the wrist. “What do you mean, wait her turn? The baby’s turned the wrong way. It could be choking. She needs a doctor now!”

  She shook me off. Her face had turned scarlet.

  “There’s plenty of decent women here deserve to be seen to before that one! Now I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  I wanted to grab her again and shake her until her teeth fell out. But it would have done no good. Instead I ran out after the ambulance attendants. I knew them slightly through my ARP work.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “can you do something? That nurse in there’s refusing to get her seen to—and the baby might be dying. Please!”

  “Wait here, Sheila,” said the older one, and he ran back through the hospital doors.

  A few minutes later he came back with a big grin on his face.

  “I found the doctor in charge and they’re getting your friend ready now for surgery. I’d say they’ll have to do a caesarean.”

  He looked pleased with himself that he knew the medical term.

  “That’s grand, Eamonn,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “No bother, Sheila. You can buy me a drink sometime.”

  Mrs. Hollywood and Mrs. Cowan sat drinking tea in the kitchen when I came back to Walker’s Row. I told them all that had happened and they sighed and shook their heads. Wearily, I went upstairs. Mrs. Hollywood had changed the sheets on the bed and I lay down without even taking my clothes off. Grainne lay awake in the other bed. She muttered something in my direction, but I was too tired to listen. I turned my back to her and put out the light.

  Patsy was let home on Sunday of the following week. There was an old superstition that it was bad luck for patients to be released from the hospital on a Saturday. The doctors kept the baby for observation. Apparently Patsy and the child had both been in a worse state than even we thought when they arrived at hospital. The doctors had feared for both their lives. And if it had been left up to that bitch of a nurse, I thought, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. As it was, the baby had eventually been delivered, blue faced and silent. If not for the persistent efforts of the staff she would probably not have lived. But live she did—although no one knew what damage had been caused to her oxygen-starved brain.

  Mrs. Hollywood gave up her own bed to Patsy so she wouldn’t have to climb the stairs. I was delighted to have a bed to myself for the first time since I was a child. It was still hard to sleep, though. When the baby eventually came home she wailed like a banshee every night. She was a lovely looking child. Her hair was blond and she had big brown eyes. Patsy called her Sylvia. The old Sheila would have made a smart remark about saddling the child with that blackguard’s name. But I said nothing. Patsy and I had never mentioned Father Flynn’s assumption that she would give the baby up for adoption. And when I saw Patsy holding Sylvia I knew wild horses would never drag the child away from her.

  I was still very worried about Joel. I realized he couldn’t come to see me because he wouldn’t be fit to drive. It was all I could do to stop myself from running down to Narrow Water Castle to see him. But first I had to find Gavin and thank him. I pounced on Alphie the minute he walked in the door on his next visit.

  “Have you seen Gavin? Is he all right?”

  “He’s grand. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “He was knocked out Christmas night.”

  “Och, aye, that wee scrap. That’s all forgotten. We’re sailing out on the morning tide, so we are.”

  The next morning before dawn I rode down to the docks. I didn’t know what drove me, but I was determined to see Gavin before he sailed. When I arrived, men were loading cargo onto the Ashgrove, and Gavin stood on the dock shouting orders.

  He nodded when he saw me. “Been up all night, have you?”

  “No. I heard you were sailing this morning. I wanted to talk to you before you left.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “It won’t take long.” I moved closer to him. “I wanted to thank you.”

  “For what? For being stupid enough to get my teeth knocked out?”

  “You know what I mean. For standing up for Joel.”

  “I would have done the same for anybody.”

  “Well, thanks anyway. And I know he’d thank you too.”

  “He already did.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I was lying in the man’s bed when he came back that night. I had to be polite.”

  I was getting nowhere. I shrugged. I had done what I had come to do. I turned to go.

  “How is he getting on?” Gavin said over his shoulder. “He was in a bad way that night.”

  “I haven’t seen him. But I hear he’s OK.”

  Gavin nodded his head and turned back to the men loading the cargo.

  If there is ever anything good about being imprisoned by harsh weather, it is the joy that comes from entering the world again. On the morning when I rode my bicycle down to Narrow Water Castle to see Joel, I felt like a child newly emerged from the womb. Colors were deeper, smells were sweeter, sounds were clearer than ever before. All of my senses were on alert and life coursed through me like an electric current.

  As I rode I inhaled deeply, filling up my lungs as if they’d been starved for air. My hands and even my lips were nearly frozen—but I felt alive. I smiled at everything around me, giddy as a child. I rode on through the gates of the big estate and stopped at the gatehouse. The last time I had been here was in the middle of the night. Now I saw the beauty of the place for the first time. A narrow road wound up past green slopes of grass, shaded with trees. As I looked up, the gray stone castle looked back at me like something from a child’s fairy tale, with its narrow windows and turrets outlined against the sky.

  I was so lost in thought I didn’t even notice the jeep that had pulled up beside me and stopped. In it sat General Turner. He doffed his cap.

  “Well, if it isn’t our very own Linen Queen,” he boomed. “Here to see our Captain Solomon, I presume,” he said with a wink.

  I blushed and nodded. I had not expected such a welcome.

  He signaled to the young guard at the gatehouse to let me in. “You’ll find him in the library,” he said. “Seems to be where he spends most of his time. Thinks too much, that young man.”

  He saluted me and sped off again, gravel hopping beneath the wheels of his jeep. I wondered how he knew about me and Joel. It seemed everyone, neighbors and strangers alike, knew the details of my life. I leaned my bicycle against the front wall of the main house and walked up the steps to the big wooden door. I pushed it open and entered the hallway. I vaguely remembered that the library was on the right-hand side, but I had no need to wonder for long. The strains of a violin met me and I knew at once the sound came from Joel. He was playing the same melancholy tune he had played on the Flagstaff.

  I tiptoed to the half-open door of the library and stood watching him. He stood near a window with his back to me, looking out as he played. My emotions tumbled one after another as I watched him—joy, love, pride. As if sensing someone watching him, Joel stopped playing and swung around.

  I sucked in my breath as I looked at him. He had lost weight, and his skin was more sallow than I remembered. A cast wrapped his left leg, and fading bruises still covered his face and lips. His eyes carried no light and he looked weary. He was not in his uniform. Instead he wore dark slacks and an open-necked shirt. I repressed an impulse to run over and hug him.

  “Sheila?” It was a question, as if he could not quite believe it was me.

  “Aye, in the flesh. Hello, Joel.”

  He laid down his fiddle and lifted a walking stick from the top of the piano. He limped forward and took my arm. “Come in. Sit down. How’re you doing?”

  “Just grand,” I said, as I sat down on a sofa.

  “Can I fetch you something? Tea? Soft drink?”

  I shook my head no. I fumbled in my handbag for my cigarettes and took one
out and lit it. My fingers shook. Joel went slowly around the room and raised the blinds on all the covered windows. When he came back to stand in front of me his face betrayed his earlier calm.

  “How is Gavin?” he said.

  I was surprised at the question. “He’s grand. I saw him before he sailed out.”

  “He was a brave man to do what he did.”

  “Aye. You don’t go up against those boyos.” And then another thought slipped out. “Oh, Joel, I’m afraid for him.”

  Joel sat down and I told him what Gavin had told me about the IRA’s request that he smuggle guns for them.

  “I don’t know how far in he is with them, but he didn’t help himself one bit defending you,” I said.

  Joel looked at me for a moment as if making up his mind whether or not to say something. “You know why he did it, don’t you?” he said eventually.

  I shook my head.

  Joel smiled. “He believes that you’re in love with me. I tried to tell him it wasn’t true, that you admitted yourself you had just been using me. But he didn’t buy it. Said he knew you better than I did. And while he didn’t mince words about what he thought of me and the other soldiers, he said he didn’t want to see you hurt.”

  I sat up straight on the sofa. “He said that?”

  “Yes. But if you ask me, I think he’s in love with you himself. We may disagree on many things, but he’s a fine man, Sheila. We did a lot of talking the night after the fight, and I came to understand a little about his point of view. He told me about his father. And I believe he came to understand more about my hatred for Hitler. Anyway, I urged him to distance himself from those IRA guys, but I didn’t know about the smuggling. It will be difficult for him to turn against them now. They may ask him to do more things to prove himself. They’re already suspicious of his loyalties.”

  “God, I hope not,” I said.

  I could see the conversation was tiring Joel. I stood up to go. Part of me wanted to stay and comfort him, but part of me needed to get away and think. The fact that Joel and Gavin had talked about me was unsettling.