‘That’s all.’ Helen folded the letter and slid it back into its envelope. She picked up The Men of ’98 to put it inside.
‘What’s that?’ Mabel asked. ‘Lessons?’
‘George Rae lent it to me. It’s about the United Irishmen and the 1798 rebellion.’
‘Sounds boring. Or are you just pretending to read it to impress George?’
‘Of course not,’ Helen said. ‘And if I was, it’s better than impressing a boy with your ice-cream-eating ability.’
Mabel giggled and sucked the last bit of yellow ice cream from her spoon. Then she became serious.
‘Has Michael made up with his family yet?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly.’ Soon, Helen thought, when I’ve delivered the letter.
Mabel put her hand on her chest in a dramatic gesture. ‘Imagine! The prodigal son!’
‘Mabs? I hope you’re not getting a bit Florence Bell-ish over this?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Turning it into a romantic story. Because it really isn’t.’ For the first time in ages she thought of the night Michael had crashed into their house, drunk and bleeding. ‘It isn’t romantic at all.’
17.
Was any day ever as long as Good Friday? Helen lay back in the hay and looked out at the farmyard from the open shed. Nothing stirred. Fly dozed at her kennel door, head on her paws. All the animals were out in the fields. Papa had taken Uncle Sean’s bicycle and set off to visit an old teaching pal in Newcastle.
It was last year’s hay, dry and dusty, but it still made a soft if tickly bed. Helen had collected the eggs for Aunt Bridie, and been for a walk over the mountain, where the golden whins, smelling of coconut, glowed against a pewter sky. Fly had looked up when Helen called her and then let her grizzled head sink back onto her paws, so she had gone alone. If I were Florence Bell, Helen thought, I would say that dog’s pining for Michael. She had been reading The New Girl at St Chad’s for hours. Since Miss Thomas had banned Angela Brazil’s school stories, they had become all the rage with the lower fourth. It was a bit daft: Helen didn’t know why all Irish girls in English school stories had to be wild and rebellious. She wasn’t wild at all – but perhaps that was because she wasn’t a proper Irish girl. Still, The New Girl at St. Chad’s was more readable than the book about that rebellion that George had lent her.
The kitten she had cuddled at new year was nowhere to be seen, but there was a new one, almost identical, only with a splodge of ginger on its white nose, to which Helen had completely given her heart, and it lay in the hay beside her, cleaning its face.
She was hungry, but there would be fish for tea, because it was Friday, and fish always made her feel sick. She hoped Mama wouldn’t make her eat it. In the corner of the barn she could see the pen that Michael and Sandy had made for the injured calf, empty now. She wondered if the calf had recovered. She had wanted to ask Uncle Sean but he had been so irritable she hadn’t liked to. He was shorthanded on the farm without Michael, of course, and now Gerry wasn’t around much because his mother was ill.
And Nora! Nora had been hateful. Maybe she missed Gerry too, but she didn’t need to take it out on Helen. Treating her as if she were about ten. Lots of scornful, Oh you wouldn’t understands. That was why Helen hadn’t given her the letter yet. She had enjoyed the thought of it hiding in her handkerchief box, in her suitcase under Nora’s sagging bed. And Nora not knowing. Ha! She’d have given it to Aunt Bridie, but Michael had said to give it to Nora. And he’d said she would know the right time. It wasn’t her fault if Nora was too mean to let there be a right time.
Fly lifted her head from her paws, as if she had heard something, and then let it sink down with a sigh, as Uncle Sean turned the corner into the yard, followed by Aunt Bridie, Nora and Mama, all in their Sunday best. Helen raced to meet them.
‘Careful,’ Mama said, when Helen took her arm. ‘You shouldn’t be tearing round like that on Good Friday.’
‘I was lying in the hay, actually,’ Helen said. ‘Reading,’ she went on, in case lying around was also something you shouldn’t do on Good Friday.
‘You have hayseed in your hair,’ Nora said. She was wearing a pious expression and a mauve hat from which her dark hair peeped out very becomingly. She looked so pretty it made Helen fizz with jealousy.
Helen ran her hands through her hair – her plait had come undone and she felt unkempt beside all these Sunday-dressed people. She felt like she needed a good scratch.
‘Was mass nice?’ she asked.
‘Not mass,’ Nora said. ‘Don’t you know anything?’
Helen looked at Mama, confused.
Mama sighed. ‘Well, it’s not really the mass today. Good Friday is special. The ceremonies are different.’
‘Is that why it takes so long?’ Helen asked.
‘We did the stations too,’ Aunt Bridie said.
‘Of the cross,’ Nora said. She fingered the silver crucifix round her neck.
‘I know what the stations are,’ Helen lied. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘And kissing the cross, of course.’ Nora sighed beatifically. ‘I love that: the whole parish queuing up to kiss the feet of Our Lord.’
Aunt Bridie sounded weary. ‘Go on in and make some tea, girls. We’ll be in in a minute.’
Helen trailed after Nora into the farmhouse kitchen.
‘What’s your book?’ Nora asked, setting the big black kettle onto the range.
Wishing, after all, she could have shown off with The Men of ’98, Helen held out The New Girl at St Chad’s.
Nora wrinkled her nose. ‘When I was at school,’ she said, as if this was at least a decade ago, ‘the nuns banned all school stories. Especially Angela Brazil. And I don’t think you should be reading something so frivolous on Good Friday.’
If Helen had liked Nora or if she hadn’t had such a lonely afternoon, she might have admitted that Miss Thomas banned them too, and they might have compared notes about their dragon schoolmarms. Maybe they would even have had a giggle together, and Helen might have lent Nora the book when she was finished. And then given her the letter. But because Nora sounded so superior, Helen tossed her head, getting a mouthful of hair and hayseed, and said, ‘It was a lot more fun than sitting in a stupid church all afternoon anyway.’
Nora stretched her eyes wide in exaggerated horror. ‘Good Friday isn’t meant to be fun. It’s the most solemn day of the year. But when you’ve been raised as a heathen –’
‘Take that back! I go to church every week,’ Helen said. ‘And at least’ – with a sudden memory of what Nora had said about kissing the cross – ‘we don’t worship graven images. Kissing the cross? Goodness knows what you could catch.’
Nora gasped. ‘Catch? From the feet of Our Lord? How could you even say that? You don’t know what you’re talking about, you baby, with your Angela Brazil and your –’
‘If I were a baby,’ Helen said very coolly, ‘Michael wouldn’t be writing to me every week, would he? Telling me all about the army? He doesn’t write to you, does he?’
She turned to stalk out, but Nora rushed at her, grabbed her loose hair, yanked hard. Helen screamed, snatched at the front of Nora’s stupid blouse. The little silver chain broke, and crucifix and chain slithered to the stone-flagged floor.
‘Girls!’ Aunt Bridie stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. ‘Fighting! On Good Friday of all days.’
‘It was her,’ Nora wailed, her breath whooshing down her nose. ‘Look!’ She bent down and lifted the broken chain.
‘She attacked me.’ Helen rubbed her burning scalp.
‘Both of you – upstairs. Now.’
When Aunt Bridie spoke like that you obeyed. Nora stomped ahead, her bun of dark hair gleaming. How annoying that Helen hadn’t had a chance to pull that smug bun hard!
‘You’re not coming in my room,’ Nora said.
‘I wouldn’t want to. It stinks.’
Nora slammed her door behind her, and Helen hesitated o
n the landing. Apart from Nora’s room, and Aunt Bridie and Uncle Sean’s, there was one proper guest room where Mama and Papa were sleeping, and Michael’s little room. Dared she go in? It had never been suggested that she sleep there, even though it was empty, and she hated sharing Nora’s lumpy, sweat-smelling bed. But she had an idea she would be in even more trouble if she went to sit in there. I don’t belong anywhere, she thought tragically. I want to go home.
In the end she hunched herself into the tiny windowsill on the landing, and curled up, looking out at the still yard. Gerry, gangly, taller than Michael though he was only sixteen, with a shock of blond hair and a very holey green jersey, rode into the yard. He jumped off his bicycle and leaned it against the red barn door. He looked round – for Nora, maybe? – and then loped off towards the milking shed. Ha, thought Helen. You won’t find her.
This was boring. Her book was downstairs, and she didn’t dare go down for it. Even The Men of ’98 would have been better than nothing.
She could hear voices from downstairs. Mama: ‘Helen must have provoked her. Goodness knows, she can be provoking enough.’ Thanks, Mama!
And then Aunt Bridie: ‘Just leave them to cool down. They’re at that age. Nora’s been very difficult since – well … And I don’t really like Gerry’s influence.’ She lowered her voice but Helen strained to hear. ‘It’s not just that he’s only a farmhand. But he has her head turned about suffering Ireland. Since the Fianna started in the town he’s got very radical ideas. I don’t like it. I’m glad it wasn’t going when Michael was that age – och, let’s go and have some tea, Eileen. And then we’ll walk down to the stream and pick some daffodils.’
She heard them go into the parlour and close the door. Uncle Sean, changed into his old cap, walked across the yard to get the cows down for milking. He whistled to Fly and she slunk along, weaving in and out of his legs like a black and white furry eel.
Gradually Helen became aware of another sound. A snuffling, breathy noise from behind Nora’s door. Nora was crying.
And she called me a baby! Helen thought. I’m the one had my hair practically trailed out by the roots, and I’m not crying! I’m the one banished to a cold landing with nothing to do except look out at a boring old farmyard. She’s only looking for attention. She held her breath and listened. There it was again: a tiny muffled sniff and a catching of breath. It wasn’t attention-seeking crying at all. It was the kind of crying Helen couldn’t ignore.
You did break her chain, she reminded herself.
She uncurled herself – her legs had gone numb and she had to give them a good rub.
‘Nora?’ she whispered at the white-painted door.
The sobbing stopped.
‘Nora? Are you all right? Look, I – I’ve something to tell you.’
‘G’way. I hate you, you Proddy British –’
‘Good,’ Helen said. ‘Because I hate you too. And Michael hates you. That’s what I was going to tell you. He loves being in the British army. He never wants to come back here. He never wants to see any of you again.’
18.
Helen was collecting the eggs on Easter Tuesday when the first news came about the Dublin uprising. It was Papa who brought it, rattling into the yard on Uncle Sean’s bike, a newspaper clamped to the carrier above the back wheel.
‘See this?’ he said.
Helen gathered her basket under her arm. He showed her the front page: DUBLIN RIOTS! CITY UNDER SIEGE.
For a terrible moment Helen saw the word CITY and thought – Belfast! And her stomach squeezed tight, until she saw that it was only Dublin. A hundred miles away. Nothing to do with her.
She looked at the black-and-white grainy photo of a street in ruins, and then up at Papa’s serious face.
‘Who are they?’ she asked. ‘What do they want? Is it Home Rule?’
‘A bit more than that.’ Papa jabbed his finger on the page. ‘They declared a republic yesterday. Madness! As if they’ve got a hope. Connolly and Pearse and – oh, a whole crowd of rebels. Taken over the city!’
‘Papa! Mabel’s in Dublin! Will she be all right?’
Papa frowned, then turned it into a smile. ‘Och, sure to be. She probably doesn’t even know there’s anything happening. Remember when there was rioting in Belfast? You and Mama had no idea there was anything happening until I got home and told you? It’ll be like that. Storm in a teacup. And,’ he added, folding the paper and starting to walk towards the house, ‘the army will soon put them down, that’s for sure.’
* * *
Uncle Sean didn’t share Papa’s view that it was a storm in a teacup. He paced the kitchen as if he wanted to walk to Dublin and join in, his big face getting redder and redder.
‘This is what we’ve been waiting for!’ he said. ‘An Irish republic.’ And he said something in Irish which Helen didn’t understand, and which made Papa twitch. ‘It’s a great day,’ he said. ‘Nora. Bridie. Remember this day. This is the birth of your nation.’
He didn’t say anything about it being Helen’s nation. He put an arm round his wife and his daughter, then looked round the kitchen, as if searching for someone. His eyes rested on the high corner shelf where Michael’s hurling trophies still sat.
‘Where’s Gerry the day?’ he asked. ‘Gerry’s a patriot. He’ll be rejoicing at this.’
‘Gerry has bigger things to worry him,’ Aunt Bridie said. ‘Theresa’ll hardly last the week.’
‘There’s nothing bigger than being a patriot!’ Nora cried.
‘Nora! God forgive you,’ Aunt Bridie said. ‘I hope you’re remembering that poor woman in your prayers.’
‘It’s not really a republic, is it?’ Papa cut in. ‘Just because some rebels say it is, and raise a home-made flag? I wouldn’t call it more than just another riot. Goodness knows, we’ve had plenty of those. North and south.’
Helen looked at the paper. She didn’t really want to – the news was all of barricaded streets and looting and snipers – the city seemed to have gone mad. Some of the photos looked exactly like photos she had seen of ruined cities on the Front. In Sandy’s last letter he had said they were billeted in a town where there wasn’t a single roof left. They’d had to fix tarpaulins up to keep the rain out.
Mama shook her head. ‘As if there’s not enough fighting in France.’
‘Their poor mothers,’ Aunt Bridie said.
And Helen knew in that moment that she must give Aunt Bridie Michael’s letter. Now. Never mind what Michael had said about giving it to Nora. Nora, who thought there was nothing bigger than being a patriot.
But – oh dear. This was the very opposite of the right time.
‘Their mothers should be proud of them!’ Nora said.
Uncle Sean nodded. ‘We’ve waited long enough for this, daughter. I wish’ – he hesitated. He hadn’t spoken Michael’s name in the house for weeks – ‘I could think of my son down there in Dublin, there, fighting for his nation.’
‘Michael is fighting for his nation,’ Papa said quietly. ‘Much more effectively than these eejits occupying post offices and – and biscuit factories.’ He made it sound ridiculous. ‘I’d be proud of him if he were my son.’
‘Och, we know you would be! If it hadn’t been for you –’
‘Sean,’ Aunt Bridie said warningly.
‘My friend Mabel’s in Dublin,’ Helen said in a small voice, in an attempt at distraction.
‘Lucky her,’ Nora said. It was the first time she had spoken to Helen, even indirectly, since Good Friday. Which was extremely awkward, since they still had to share a bed. ‘I wish I was there, watching history being made. And I know Gerry’ll be mad to be missing out.’ Her cheeks burned and her eyes blazed.
Helen felt, once again, as ignorant as a kitten. Was history being made? Or were a few hotheads and eejits just causing trouble? Was it brave of the rebels to stand up for what they believed in – or wrong to take the law into their own hands? Were they patriots or traitors? The paper had said they were b
eing helped by Germany. Surely that was treason?
‘The army will soon sort them out,’ Papa said. ‘It’s a scandal, of course, to distract them from fighting the Hun – but it can’t last long.
‘That’s the whole idea!’ Uncle Sean said. And he banged his fist so hard on the wooden table that the blue and white dish of eggs wobbled and danced, and Aunt Bridie had to put her hand on it to steady it. ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity. A nation once again!’
‘There’ll be no republic,’ Papa said. ‘And whatever madness happens in Dublin – this is Ulster. Loyal to the crown.’
Uncle Sean huffed. ‘And this is my house.’ He raised himself up and rocked back on his heels. He was much bigger than Papa.
‘James,’ Aunt Bridie said very quietly, ‘I think maybe you’d all be happier in your own home.’
19.
All the way home on the train, dozing against her father’s shoulder and trying to ignore her growing queasiness – she didn’t normally get train-sick; it was just nerves – Helen worried that somehow, when they got home, Belfast would have changed, the rioting would have spread, the streets would be burning as they were in Dublin. She kept looking at her suitcase above her in the rack, thinking of the letter still there in the handkerchief box. She should have found a way to give it to Aunt Bridie. Probably she could have. But she hadn’t. Sending them home like that! Aunt Bridie!
The station at Queen’s Quay looked as usual, apart from a large sign saying NO TRAINS TO/FROM DUBLIN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Helen turned her face away from the newsstand and blocked her ears to the cry of ‘Tele! Latest on the Dublin riots!’ from the paperboy in the street. On the tram, people were talking about it – the general feeling being that the army would soon sort everything out – but other than that, Belfast was its own familiar self. Cyclamen Terrace had never looked so welcoming.
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