‘Oi, what are you doing in here?’
His eyes were fixed on the flames of the fire and he knew the question was aimed at him before he even turned around.
‘I’m looking for my brother, sir. J.T. Ryan.’ Lorcan was as polite as if he were addressing the priest.
‘Get out of here! Go on with you! Out.’
Heads wearing bowler hats and wigs turned from their business and regarded Lorcan as he stood and wrung his threadbare old cap in his hands. He felt his face flush with embarrassment.
‘Don’t be loitering around here and don’t come back inside, you scruffy article,’ the policeman shouted.
Lorcan turned and ran back out of the huge doors. He was confused. If he and his mother hadn’t seen J.T. enter the building themselves, he would have doubted that he was even in there. He didn’t tell his mam that the policeman had almost bitten his head off. She appeared to be unaware that he had even moved. Her tears fell unabated and Lorcan knew the source of her despair was the fact that J.T. was the only one bringing money into the house. Even though J.T. didn’t have any kind of a job, he made regular money somehow, which paid the rent and kept a roof over all of their heads.
As more hours passed, Lorcan grew hungry and desperate. His mother’s crying had turned to a low moan and he knew something had to be done and soon. She was becoming delirious.
He noticed a surly-looking boy come out of the courthouse, a boy he knew to be a friend of J.T.’s, no older than seventeen. Lorcan had seen him once before, at the end of their street, taking to J.T. He was one of the Bevan boys, with a far worse reputation than any of the Ryans. They lived in the Dingle and ran their own neighbourhood. Lorcan had seen him only last week, huddled under the lamp-post, skulking around the bins in the entry. When Lorcan had asked who he was, J.T. had hit him across the head. ‘Shut your feckin’ mouth and don’t ever ask me that again,’ he’d said as he walked into the house and banged the back door in Lorcan’s face.
The Bevan boy stared hard at Lorcan now and Lorcan instinctively moved closer to his mother, feeling a need to protect her. The boy stopped still for a second, as though about to speak, and then, fixing his cap on his head, gave Lorcan a menacing smile before he ran down the steps.
Lorcan guessed that he must know what was happening to J.T. if he had been inside the courthouse. Maybe he had spoken to J.T. and had a message for them or some news at the very least? He considered running after him, but he decided against it. Hardly a week went by when the Bevan boys weren’t mentioned in the Echo. He would rather shiver all day than speak to a Bevan boy with a dirty face, bruised knuckles and dark, menacing eyes.
As he watched the boy’s retreating back, it dawned on him that maybe he would have to pick up where J.T. had left off. He might have to speak to the Bevan boy. Find out what it was that J.T. did to pay the rent. That might be his only future.
‘What do we do, Mam?’ he asked. ‘Can I get a job yet? I’m fourteen now, aren’t I?’ His mam wasn’t sure exactly when his birthday was, but she’d mentioned it last week and Sister Theresa at St Chad’s had baked him a cake to take home from school.
His mother appeared not to have heard him. ‘Oh, Lorcan, what do we do? Where has J.T. gone? They haven’t sent him down, have they? What will we do?’
Fear gripped Lorcan. He felt as though the bottom was falling out of his life. The woman who was supposed to hold it all together was crumbling into the steps of St George’s Hall and he had no idea where to turn.
As the light of the day faded, he knew something was badly wrong. His instincts told him that this time his brother would be put away for a very long time. But still they sat on the steps and waited, hoping beyond hope that J.T. would appear around the corner and throw his cap in the air shouting, ‘I got off. I got off with it. The bizzies can’t get me,’ as he had so many times before.
The street lights fired up and men in bowler hats and carrying cases began spilling out of the hall and down the steps. But there was still neither sight nor sound of J.T. The policeman who had shouted at Lorcan strode past, calling goodnight to a colleague in the courthouse, his head bent, cape flapping around his shoulders in the wind. Lorcan, swamped with relief at seeing someone who might know something, forgot the policeman’s earlier hostility and stepped into his path. He didn’t even have a chance to utter the words ‘Excuse me’ before the policeman laid into him.
‘You still loitering around here, are you?’
The policeman glanced over Lorcan’s shoulder towards his mother, who was sitting rocking with her shawl held against her mouth, too exhausted now to cry. Lorcan was concerned that she had eaten nothing that day. Neither had he. She was almost crazy from the cold. Lorcan began shaking, this time with fear.
‘Your good-for-nothing brother was taken down hours ago. He got five years in Walton and good riddance if you ask me. He should be kept off the streets for ever. Thieving little beggar. And if I see you in here, you had better watch it, lad. I’ve got the Ryans marked.’ He turned to address Lorcan’s mother. ‘Oi, you,’ he shouted. Mrs Ryan was so lost in her own misery, she didn’t even acknowledge him or look up. ‘This is a public building. If you don’t get yourself up off those steps in two seconds, I’ll arrest you for soliciting. Do you hear me, woman?’
Tears he could not prevent rushed into Lorcan’s eyes. He shuffled backwards, away from the policeman and towards his mother, and took her elbow. They had to get away from there. Lorcan could sense danger. He had to get his mother up off the steps, fast, and away from St George’s Hall. There was no doubt now, J.T. would not be coming to join them and would not be returning safely home. Lorcan could no longer allay his mother’s fears and unless they were to be homeless, he would need to find the Bevan boy and ask him what it was J.T. did to bring home the money he did.
‘Come on, Mam, we have to go. Come on, please,’ he said. ‘He’s gone now. They’ve taken him in the van to Walton.’
Lorcan’s mother surfaced from her grief for just a second and her eyes met those of her son. Her skin had turned a deeper shade of tallow and the shadows of bloodless grey around her mouth had darkened as the day progressed. It seemed to Lorcan as though her bloodshot eyes were sinking further into her skull.
‘Gone? How long for? Do we wait? He knows I’m here, he told us to wait here, Lorcan, we can’t go. What will we do if J.T. doesn’t come back? We have to wait, Lorcan.’ His mother’s voice rose and took on an edge of despair and panic. ‘There’s nothing at the house, Lorcan. Nothing. Not a penny.’
It was the policeman who answered her. ‘He was given five years, you effing bog jumper,’ he shouted. ‘Now get yourself off those steps right now. Do you hear me? Or I will blow my whistle and there will be another Ryan spending a night behind bars. The jail will be full of bloody Ryans at this rate. You filthy Irish, the lot of you, you should have been left to starve to death. Famine, my arse. Why didn’t you all just die in your own country, eh?’
Lorcan instinctively took a step towards the policeman, to ward off his words and try and stop them from adding to his mother’s pain. He noticed that the policeman’s moustache was speckled with spittle and his eyes were bulging. He was fired up with hatred and anger and it was quite clear he was all set to take it out on Lorcan and his mother.
‘Take a step nearer to me, lad, and you will be sharing a cell with your brother, have you got that?’
Lorcan froze. What would happen to the house if no one was there? They would lose it. They had been behind with the rent so often and had been warned so many times. One more late payment and the harbour board would have them evicted. He nodded automatically. He was used to words of hatred. The only people who were ever kind to him were Sister Theresa at St Chad’s and Biddy Kennedy and Mrs Delaney. No one else had any sympathy for the Ryans of Vince Street. His brothers’ reputation had gone before him, tainted him, caused people to dislike him before he had even opened his mouth. By the time Lorcan arrived, he had been pigeonholed as a bad appl
e and someone not to be trusted. Ever since his older brother had stolen from the church and fled to America, they’d been known as a bad lot. Lorcan had worked out for himself that the route to survival lay in submission and silence. He never challenged anyone, hardly ever spoke. That way he had managed to survive his first fourteen years unscathed and out of the hands of the bizzies.
Lorcan pulled at his mother’s arm. But with the news that J.T. had been sent to jail for five years, she’d descended into a fresh torrent of tears and unrestrained wailing. It was no use, he couldn’t move her.
The policeman was true to his word and Lorcan jumped in fright as his whistle rang out, piercing the air. The next he knew, his mam was bundled off inside the hall and he was left alone on the steps, tearful and panicked. What should he do now? Who would help him?
Shivering and sobbing, he tried to think straight. There were two women who would help him: Mrs Delaney and Biddy Kennedy. Mrs Delaney he thought might be sleeping because he had seen her at Mass that morning and she had spoken to him and he knew she’d been working a night shift at the hospital. ‘Are you away to school now, Lorcan?’ she’d asked him as they walked out of the door. She always had a kind word for him, unlike some of the other women, who regarded him as they would vermin. She had once told him, ‘If you need strength to help you through the day, Lorcan, Mass in the morning is the place to find it. I wish I could get any of my kids to come with me.’ Because he didn’t want to let down a woman who was nice to him, he went to Mass whenever he woke in time. He hadn’t wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t be at school today but at the courthouse with his mother. He was too ashamed.
He raced down the court steps and headed for the Dock Road, sprinting all the way without stopping. He had a number of choices. The first was the priest. Father Brennan wouldn’t slam the door in his face, nor would Sister Theresa, but he was too embarrassed to go to either. Biddy. He would go to Biddy. He ran straight to her house, praying all the way that she would help.
*
‘And, where is your mam now, Lorcan?’ Biddy asked the unkempt and dirty boy as he sat at her kitchen table and drank from the mug of tea she had given him while she fried him potatoes and buttered the bread.
‘The policemen, they all came from nowhere, Biddy, and they took her away into the hall and she didn’t come back out.’
Biddy didn’t like the sound of that. She picked up her mop and banged on the wall of her kitchen. Two minutes later, Elsie came running up the back path.
As soon as Elsie saw Lorcan sitting at Biddy’s table, she frowned. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she asked, without even addressing Lorcan.
‘He has a name, Elsie. ’Tis Lorcan, as you well know, and he lives on our streets. Go and fetch Dessie for me. We have a bit of trouble with the bizzies.’
Elsie didn’t even raise her eyebrows. She had lived amongst the Irish community since the day she’d married and she’d seen at first hand how they were often despised and maltreated. She had stood in shock and shaken her head at the signs in the windows of boarding houses on Scotland Road. No Blacks. No Dogs. No Irish. Trouble with the bizzies for her neighbours was nothing new.
‘What do you want me to go down the entry to Dessie’s for?’ she said irritably. ‘I’m helping our Martha to bath the baby. I’m not running around after a Ryan. Give you Irish a bad name, they do. Send him on his way. You don’t want to be associated with the likes of them. They hang about with the Bevan boys from the Dingle. There’s talk everywhere that J.T. was sent down today for a long stretch. They bring shame on those of us who live around here. Bring us all down with them, they do.’
‘Elsie, I will not be turning Lorcan out. I’m feeding him because, in case you hadn’t noticed, he is still but a child and he hasn’t eaten all day.’
Elsie wrinkled her nose. ‘Aye, and one who hasn’t seen hot water for a very long time either.’
Without another word, Elsie left the room and Biddy needed no further confirmation that she was off to do as she was told. Minutes later, Elsie returned with Dessie in tow. Although she had a new grandson to bathe, her curiosity prevented her from going back to her house just yet.
‘I thought you said you had a baby to bath?’ said Biddy.
‘Oh, I did. I’ll have missed out, he’ll be all tucked up in bed now. So, what do you need Dessie for then?’
Biddy ignored her, but Elsie knew that if she waited around, she would find out soon enough.
‘Dessie, I’ve sent Lorcan out to the scullery and I’m putting the copper on. If his clothes don’t fall apart when I’m washing them, I should be able to get them dry enough overnight in front of the fire for him to wear tomorrow.’
‘Why is he here, Biddy? What’s going on?’
Dessie had taken off his cap as he entered Biddy’s kitchen and now, sitting at her freshly scrubbed table, he accepted the cup of tea she slid across to him.
‘Emily is getting my tea ready,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.
Biddy couldn’t help herself, she grinned with him at the mention of Sister Emily Haycock, the director of the school of nursing at St Angelus and her boss. ‘Who would ever have thought it, eh?’ she said as she pulled out one of the chairs and sat next to him. ‘My boss getting your tea on. Well, all I can say is you deserve each other. Two such good and kind people should be together, Dessie. ’Tis only because you are both such eejits that you weren’t together sooner.’
Dessie grinned again. He was often plagued by a similar thought. How he had worshipped Emily from afar for so long and how they could have got together years earlier if he had only had the courage. ‘Well, we are making up for lost time.’ He winked at Biddy.
‘I’m very aware of that,’ said Biddy. ‘But isn’t it time you were making an honest woman out of her? You will have Father Brennan banging on the door before long, Dessie. He won’t tolerate sinners in his parish, you know that. Oh sure he won’t. ’Tis only because you do so much for so many around here that you have got away with it for so long, you know that. But what you don’t know is that Sister Theresa is on your side and fighting your corner every time one of the mealy-mouthed from around here sucks her gums, has a bitch or drops a bit of poison in his ear. Be careful, will ye?’
Dessie looked serious. ‘I will, Biddy. It’s all in hand. Father Brennan’s already had a word. You know I will do the right thing.’
‘Good. Now, we have more important matters to be dealing with. J.T. Ryan went down.’
Dessie rolled his eyes in response.
‘Yes, he did, and that’s not the worst of it either,’ she continued. ‘They put Mrs Ryan behind bars too. She got herself mighty upset. Lorcan couldn’t move her from outside St George’s Hall. Waited all day on the steps, they did, in this weather, and not one of them inside had the decency to come out and tell her or Lorcan what had happened. It’s the bizzies, they’ve taken Mrs Ryan into a cell, only for tonight I would be thinking. I doubt they will put her up before the magistrate in the morning. How could they? Is it a criminal act to be brought down with the grief when your son is taken away? But, Dessie, just in case, had you better go to the courthouse in case they do and stand for her? She’s not been all there for a long time, now, has she? Jesus, she wasn’t there before, and it’s a whole lot worse now.’
Dessie had once been a good friend to the Ryans, trying hard to do right by their late father. But the older boys had shunned him and gone their own ways, forgetting their father and ignoring Dessie. Mr Ryan had been widely liked, respected for his values, his honesty and his work ethic. He had served in the same regiment as all the other local men during the war and Dessie had mourned his loss, just as he’d mourned the loss of the others, not least for the widows and children they’d left behind.
Even simple Mrs Ryan remembered the day half the women in the neighbourhood walked to Lime Street to see the men off. Later, she’d asked, ‘How did he die, Dessie? Was he in pain? The telegram said he fell in action.’
�
��That’s right, Mrs Ryan, he fell,’ Dessie had said, never revealing the circumstances or the details.
From the day Mrs Ryan got the dreaded telegram, she began to slip. She told anyone who asked her that Mr Ryan, as she always referred to him, had died because he fell in the war. Mrs Ryan also fell, into a chair, and had barely risen since. She lived in squalor, with ashes from the fire around her feet and fags in her hand. Her dishes piled up, her nets turned grey and her windows greased over and she seemed to neither notice or care. For all that, she never appeared unhappy. She often sang to the fire. Talked to the fire. Slept in front of the fire. Like lots of the women at the docks end of Lovely Lane, she had long ago given up her bed to her sons as they had grown. And these days, even though there was only herself, J.T. and Lorcan left, she remained by the fireside, rarely setting foot outside of her own kitchen.
Dessie rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘God in heaven, what will happen to her and the house now? How old is Lorcan?’
‘He’s just turned fourteen,’ said Biddy. ‘Or so he thinks. The government will know sure enough when it comes to stopping the widow’s pension. You know the rules, it stops when the last child reaches fourteen and can go out to work. If Mrs Ryan’s mind hasn’t already gone altogether, it surely will when she realizes she’s to lose what money she has. The lad will be expected to find work.’
‘Shall I put the kettle on to top up the pot?’ asked Elsie, sensing this was going to be a long discussion. ‘I’ve made jam tarts next door, shall I fetch them? The jam’s from a ship that came from Hungary. Don’t ask me where that is. The people must be starving all the time if that’s what they call the place, but they do make good jam.’
Neither Biddy nor Dessie answered. Both were contemplating a war widow’s life without support. The life of a woman who had given birth multiple times and spent her useful years in the house cooking and cleaning for others, only to be deserted when her job was done and it was time for someone to look after her.
The Mother's Of Lovely Lane Page 7
