Mary’s anger disappeared as quickly as it had ignited; all that was left behind was a profound weariness.
‘You are helpin’, Doctor. I just want to see Cecilia well. I don’t care about much else.’
He nodded.
‘We’ll talk about it again in the morning. In the meantime, keep her quiet, and lying down. If anything changes tonight, send someone for me.’
‘Aye, I will. Thank you.’
‘I’ll see you in the morning. Try and rest yourself.’
Mary closed the front door and made her way quietly into the kitchen. She knew she was going to cry. Neighbours had been calling all evening, bringing food, blankets, anything they could lay their hands on. She was grateful for their support, for their companionable anger. But Myles hadn’t come yet, and she was terrified something had happened to him, too.
She didn’t want to live like this any more. She felt old at eighteen, as though she had lived several lifetimes in the last twenty-four hours. Cecilia might never be the same again; she could read between the doctor’s words. At fifteen, she was finished; she’d probably never work again. They had nothing to stay for in this seething cauldron of a city. What she didn’t know yet was how she was going to get both of them out.
May: Summer 1893
MAY HAD ALWAYS been afraid of Grandfather Delaney. On stiff family visits over the years, he had always appeared to her as forbidding, supremely impatient of children. Hannah was his favourite, if he could be said to have a favourite, and Eleanor sometimes raised an indulgent smile. But May seemed to be invisible. He simply paid no attention to her; it was as though she did not exist for him.
She felt obliged to sustain this illusion during the weeks they all stayed in his home, just after their hurried return to Dublin. She rarely spoke in his presence, and padded softly around his house, taking care not to disturb him, or anything belonging to him. Eleanor and Hannah, however, seemed to become more boisterous in his company: it was as though they challenged him to notice them. Mama simply worried: that was all she did these days. She worried. Her face was white and pinched, and May noticed more and more grey filaments invading the smooth cap of her dark hair. She felt vaguely guilty, sad and sorry all at once that her mother was suffering, and that she, May, could do nothing to make it better.
And so she had been surprised to find, in the unfamiliar surroundings of Grandfather Delaney’s house, an unexpected refuge. Its very strangeness made it easier to forget Belfast, forget what they’d left behind, and the reason for their being here. It was like starting over. The three months spent with him before the move to Leinster Road were some of the happiest May could remember. His solid, gruff presence was somehow comforting. Once his long-established routine remained uninterrupted, he expected nothing from his granddaughters except impeccable behaviour.
And Grandfather Delaney’s routine was nothing if not sacred. Breakfast was followed by some hours closeted in his study, where he wrote letters and attended to business. He preferred to lunch early, and alone. The afternoon was spent with his pipe and his newspaper in front of the drawing-room fire: very quickly the girls learned to place wagers on how long it would take him to fall asleep. Whoever timed the first snore correctly was the winner. He ate dinner with them in the late evening, and his testy manner softened, May noticed, after the first two glasses of red wine. Hannah, in particular, was often silent at dinner: May had learned that the dull, oppressive afternoons in town with Mama set her teeth on edge, sometimes made her want to scream.
May could still remember her mother’s face when she impressed upon the girls the hours when activity around the house was permitted, the extent of that activity and the periods of time when silence had to be observed, no matter what their personal inclination might be. Behind all her words, May could hear her grandfather’s language, even his inflexion. Sophia’s face had been strained, anxious, and she spoke in a half-whisper, although before lunch was not supposed to be one of the quiet times.
May had no difficulty keeping the silences: she liked the afternoon hours of quietness which Grandfather had imposed upon her, hours in which she could slip away to his study and surround herself with the books which lined the entire room, floor to ceiling. She liked the old-fashioned, almost fusty smell of the room – a not unpleasant mixture of old damp, woodsmoke and pipe tobacco. She usually spent the time there on her own. Hannah was always needed by Mama for some errand or other, and Ellie preferred to play in the room she and May shared. She didn’t like the study – found it too dark and dreary.
They were all allowed access to the books on the lowest shelves: a lot of Tennyson, lives of the saints, unbearably dull books on history and religion. There was not much to feed a twelve-year-old’s growing appetite for novelty. Grandfather had said they were to read as much improving matter as they could, given that they probably would not start school again until September. May was particularly glad about this. To her own surprise, she had loved her time at St Dominic’s in Belfast, but school in Dublin still held memories of gasping for breath in the darkness. She was glad to put off her return for as long as possible.
May was content to do as she’d been told for the first few weeks in Grandfather’s study: she enjoyed simply handling the books, feeling the fineness of the binding, admiring the marbled insides of the covers. Some of the gold lettering of the titles was flaking away, and she made sure to treat the books carefully, as she had been bid.
Then she started to feel a little braver. There were shelves and shelves of books she couldn’t reach; they grew more tantalizing by the day, their inaccessibility a challenge, and at the same time, an invitation. One cool, rainy afternoon, May planned her raid carefully to coincide with the hour of Grandfather’s deepest sleep. With a confidence grown from almost a month of familiarity with an unchanging routine, May took herself to the study once Mama and Hannah were gone and Grandfather was already snoring, his newspaper sliding gently across his knees until it would eventually end up on the floor beside his feet.
She closed the study door firmly behind her. She marched straight over to the library steps, pulled the lever to free the wheels, and rolled them over to where she thought she had spied something interesting. The steps had fascinated her since the first day: she had never seen ones with wheels before. Once you pressed the lever, the wheels were locked and you were kept safe and stable. You could stretch out, she supposed, and choose your book without fear of falling.
Grandfather Delaney had travelled extensively in his earlier life, and Grandmother, for the most part, had gone with him. May remembered this from her mother’s stories of her own childhood. Mama would tell her of the places her parents had been together, looking amused and still a little surprised at her own mother’s daring. If all that were true, May had decided there had to be something better in this room than Tennyson.
On the very top shelf of Grandfather’s study, May could see an enormous volume entitled Atlas of the World. On no account was she to climb the ladder to reach the top shelves: Grandfather had been very strict about this one rule. But her curiosity had now developed to such a pitch of impatience that such a petty rule seemed no longer of any importance.
Feeling suddenly nervous, May rolled the steps to just under where she had spotted the large atlas, and locked the wheels in place. She didn’t like heights much, so she kept her eyes fixed on the tallest books on the top shelf, making sure not to look down. She reached out carefully, and pulled the atlas with difficulty from its position, wedged as it was between other volumes of equal size. It was as though their covers were stuck together. One last pull and it became free, but she almost toppled over with its sudden release. Staggering a little on the small platform, she regained her balance. She began to descend the ladder, clutching the atlas close to her chest, her hands and bodice already smeared with dust. Some instinct made her turn before she took the next step and a dry voice said: ‘I’ll take that for you, my dear.’
May felt the blood rus
h to her cheeks. Grandfather was standing at the foot of the ladder, his face grave. May began to look around her wildly, her head filled with ridiculous notions of escape. She couldn’t speak: what could she say or do to excuse her disobedience? He had been fast asleep, she was sure of it: and the door was closed fast behind her. He shouldn’t be here – she had heard no warning rattle of the door handle. How had he got in so silently? Her head buzzing, she handed the atlas over meekly, without a word. The truth was, she was far more terrified of Mama’s probable reaction than Grandfather’s serious expression.
He walked over to the table, which was as neat and precise as everything else about him. Papers lay in tidy bundles, bound with strong, dark ribbon. His blotter was fresh, his pens wiped clean and stored upright in their holders. He opened the atlas, at random it seemed, and smoothed the pages along the spine. He turned then to May, who had been holding her breath.
‘I didn’t know you were interested in maps?’
May exhaled suddenly with relief. His voice was kind, his eyes bright. It seemed to May that he was really seeing her for the first time as May, not just as one of his three granddaughters. She nodded eagerly, glad of the reprieve.
‘Mama said you used to travel a lot. I want to go to different countries when I’m older.’
‘Do you, now?’
His voice was amused. May felt herself bristle.
‘Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t.’
He nodded vigorously.
‘You’re absolutely right. You can do anything you want if you set your mind to it. Did you know your grandmother was a great traveller?’
May nodded, suddenly shy. She didn’t know whether to admit that she knew, wondered if perhaps this was one of those private things which Mama would say should never be discussed. But his face was open, interested, and May decided to plunge in and hope for the best.
‘Yes – Mama told me.’
He smiled at her.
‘Come with me.’
He took May’s hand in his and brought her over to the right-hand side of his bookcase. Just above head height, arranged in strict alphabetical order, were all the books that now began to transform May’s solitary afternoons in her grandfather’s study: a series of imaginative journeys that left her wide-eyed, greedy for more. She could hardly believe what had been opened up to her; she could feel her pulse race as she discovered that travel, adventure, the experience of the exotic were all possible – and here were books to prove it.
She started with ones Grandfather recommended, the ones written by the woman with the funny name: Isabella Bird. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, followed rapidly by The Golden Chersonese and Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. She didn’t care that she didn’t know what ‘Chersonese’ was, or where it was – her ignorance was no barrier to feeling the magic pull of this woman’s words. She read almost too quickly – her eyes raced across the page, terrified that something would happen to prevent her reaching the end of these enthralling stories. She wanted to live in a tent after Lady Anne Blunt’s Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, but best of all so far was Constance Gordon Cumming’s A Lady’s Cruise in a French Man-of-War. A woman at sea! May had no idea that such a thing was permissible. She had no idea, either, whether Mama would allow her to read such works: she suspected that she would not, so great was May’s delight in their contents. Each afternoon she read avidly, one eye on the door, one on her book, always ready to cover it hastily with something wholesome should Mama enter suddenly, which she never did.
May was careful to replace all of Grandfather’s books in the correct order. She showed him every day how she was gradually reading her way along the shelf, and once she noticed with dismay that his old eyes had misted over. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.
‘They were your grandmother’s books, my dear, and you’re very welcome to read every one of them. She’d have been proud of you.’
May felt herself glow. Nobody had ever said they were proud of her before.
‘I promise I’ll be careful, and I’ll put them back in the right order.’
He patted her shoulder awkwardly, but gently.
‘I know you will, my dear. I know you will. I think you might even be ready for Marco Polo.’
That afternoon of the atlas also began a series of meetings with her grandfather in the delightful seclusion of his study. They pored over the maps together, and he pointed out the towns and cities he had visited, the art galleries he had frequented, the buildings he had studied. The cities he described for her thrilled her imagination: Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Florence, Madrid, Venice. They made her long for the day when she could pack her bags and go.
But more than that, she loved the fact that this was their secret: neither Hannah nor Eleanor was invited. May began to feel less invisible, less like the middle sister of three, whom nobody really noticed. She now had something they didn’t: and she had no intention of sharing it with anybody.
Mary and Cecilia: Spring 1893
MARY ROSE LATER than normal the following morning. The peal of church bells for seven o’clock Mass sounded louder than usual, their call harsh and jangling in the brittle morning air. She left Cecilia sleeping, and went downstairs to make her breakfast. She was glad it was Sunday, that she didn’t have to face Watson and Valentine’s today. Her whole body hurt, every muscle stretched taut and aching. She felt that everything about her was suddenly fragile; her spirit was all but broken, her optimism exhausted. She hated the thought of tomorrow, of facing yet again the tense tram ride, another taunting mob, the almost-certainty of more trouble on the streets. And yet she couldn’t afford not to go to work. The walls of her small life seemed to be closing in on her; she felt that it was becoming difficult to breathe. She was the older one, it was up to her to make the best of what had happened to them, what was likely to happen in the long, uncertain days ahead. She had slept badly, wondering how they were going to manage if Cecilia could not go back spinning. They couldn’t stay here; not that she wanted to stay here, but for now she had nowhere else to go, no other means of earning a living.
She thought about Myles. He would marry her, she knew that. And he would help look after Cecilia, have her to live with them, along with his ailing mother. She didn’t even need to discuss it with him. That was how they would do things, she and he. That was how it was. She could see her whole married life stretch out in front of her, its sameness as assured as the streets she lived in. They would not go far: Carrick Hill, children, middle age. Daughters to the mill as half-timers, if they were unlucky; the same old vicious circle all over again. Or if they were lucky, to school until fourteen, followed by some gentler employment. Sons to the ropeworks, to the water plants, to the angers and resentments of Harland and Wolff, always second class, always poor. She would never get out, never breathe fresh air and see her children play in open fields, by the sea, somewhere healthy and happy.
And Cecilia. What chance did her health have here? She’d probably be dead before she was forty – ironically, having escaped the certainty of consumption to be cut down by the constant assault of ill health on a body already weakened by brutality and infection.
Mary cut a large hunk of bread while waiting for the water to boil. She made the tea as strong as she could, and carried the two mugs back upstairs to the bedroom. Cecilia was awake. Her eyes followed her sister, hugely, around the bedroom.
Mary put the mugs down on the floor. She stroked her sister’s forehead, taking care not to touch any of the cuts and scratches that were now darker than yesterday, congealed blood thickening at the edges. Her whole face seemed to be one massive bruise, the skin a deep angry vermilion. Her lips were split, her cheeks swollen, puffy. Even her neck was discoloured, the skin from chin to collarbone red and inflamed. Mary was frightened at the heat from her sister’s forehead. She was burning up. She prayed silently that the doctor would hurry.
Cecilia smiled up at her as best she could. Some of her teeth were
missing, others broken, blackened with dried blood.
‘How’re ye feelin’, love?’
The younger girl barely nodded in reply. Mary knelt on the floor beside the bed, as close to Cecilia as she could.
‘I’ve brought ye tea; mebbe if I soak the bread in it, ye might be able to eat a wee bit?’
Cecilia shook her head.
‘Dr Torrens is goin’ to look in on ye this mornin’.’
Mary tried to keep her voice light, but her sister’s face, the blankness of her eyes, the sweaty, angry skin, terrified her. She had a strong sense that Cecilia’s injuries were even worse than they looked. What if she lost the sight of her poor eyes?
Cecilia squeezed her sister’s hand. She tried to speak, and winced.
‘Don’t try to say nothin’. You have another wee sleep, there. I’m goin’ downstairs to wait for the doctor.’
Cecilia’s eyes closed. Mary wondered how it could be possible to sleep when you were in so much pain. Her eyes filled as she thought of her mother. She needed Ma now; she couldn’t look after Cecilia without her. She was afraid of what might happen, being on her own.
She went downstairs again to the kitchen, balancing her mug of tea carefully. She couldn’t eat the bread she had cut. Its taste was stale, almost powdery, like pouce. She put it aside, and went to all her hiding-places around the kitchen. Ma had taught her to put away whatever money could be spared, no matter how little, ‘for a rainy day’. Mary used to watch her, as a child, making a game out of hiding pennies, thruppenny bits, the odd sixpence. She and Mary would be the only ones to share the secret. As Mary moved about the kitchen now, opening canisters, prising the old lids off metal boxes, she felt an unfamiliar surge of bitterness. She remembered how she’d promised herself that she would have another kind of life.
Mary knew that her mother’s death had been hastened, not just by her own years at the mill, and the wasting disease which seemed to come to all, sooner or later: more than that, she had become consumed by despair, watching with enormous, pool-black eyes as her two daughters became trapped, just as she had been. Mary had heard her mother’s anguish during the long nights of her illness. Often, she’d crept into Ma’s bedroom and into the cold bed beside her. From those nights, Mary knew that her mother’s tears were not for herself, but for the daughters she had had such hopes for. Cecilia was the bookish one, so quick and clever at her sums, at reading. Ma had been angry at God, had shaken her fist at him in the darkness. Of all of them, Cecilia should have been able to stay at school, to better herself, to pull herself out of the pit of Carrick Hill. Ma had always believed that a better life awaited her daughters, better than she had had, somewhere way beyond the mills of Watson, Valentine and Company. She used to have hot, heady dreams about the mill being like a giant spider’s web, winding its flaxen threads around her daughters’ waists, holding on tight, pulling them close, closer, into its remorseless centre.
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