No Cure for Love

by Jean Fullerton

  Ignoring the unwanted company and looking straight ahead, Josie quickened her pace, but Mary and Katie had slowed down. The boys followed in their wake, and Katie simpered at Brian as if he were some sort of hero of old rather than a ginger Irishman only an inch or two taller then herself. Feggy came alongside Josie.

  ‘Hi, there my pretty Miss Josie,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you be calling me your anything,’ she told him.

  A roar went up around her.

  ‘Mind yourself, Feggy,’ Brian said, slipping his arm around Katie’s waist. ‘Young Josie’s got claws and no mistake.’

  Feggy spat out his cigarette and gave a wide grin, revealing a missing canine tooth. ‘I like my women with a bit of fire.’

  Mary and Katie giggled.

  ‘Give her a kiss, Feggy, that’ll soon stop her fighting you,’ Mary said, sending Josie a spiteful look.

  Another time that remark would have earned Mary a bloody nose and pulled hair, but Josie decided to save her revenge for a more convenient moment and picked up her pace.

  They had reached the Bull’s Head tavern. Josie weaved her way through the milling crowd, hoping to lose the spectre of Feggy from her side. If she dashed down Hester Street and then along Essex Street she could get back to Uncle Pat’s. Her mother didn’t like her going down the side streets with their looming tenements, but Josie thought them preferable to fending off Feggy Smith all the way home.

  Gathering up her skirts she dashed over the road. A male voice called her name but Josie pressed on as she caught sight of Feggy following after her.

  Stretching her legs and dodging a milk cart she headed across the street. Just as she got to the corner of Hester Street she felt her books begin to slip out of her grasp. Before she could reposition them they plummeted to the floor, their white pages flapping in the wind. Irritated by the delay, Josie gathered them up and was just about to continue when someone caught her arm.

  ‘Josie—’

  She whirled around and brought the flat of her hand hard against her assailant’s face. The crack of palm on cheek echoed around the narrow street.

  ‘Take your filthy hands off me, Feggy Smith, before I take your eyes out,’ she said showering the young man behind her with slaps and punches.

  He curled away from her blows. ‘Josie—’

  ‘How is it you think you have leave to call me by my name?’ she screamed, her hair loose and her books again on the damp cobbles. She started to punch lower. If he turned towards her a bit she would knee him right where it hurt. ‘My Uncle Pat will have the constable on yer, if you lay so much as a hand on me.’

  The young man she was so aggressively pummelling managed to take a step back and straighten up. Josie’s head spun and she dropped her arms by her side.

  She couldn’t believe it. He looked the same yet different, and it wasn’t just the barely healed scar crossing the chin. He must have grown an inch a day because he was now close to six foot. He had filled out in a muscular way, but the dark curly hair and the softness in his green eyes were still the same.

  The widest of smiles spread across Josie’s face as she leapt up and clasped her arms tight around her assailant’s neck. ‘Patrick!’

  Her basket on her arm, Ellen made her way down Seventh Street towards her brother’s small house at the end. She put her free hand to her back and stretched and the ache eased a little. She smoothed her hand over her swollen stomach and smiled.

  By the fifth day out from London, just as they reached the swells of the Atlantic Ocean proper, Ellen stopped pretending to herself that she was suffering from seasickness and accepted the fact that she was with child. She had sobbed for a full day with a mixture of joy and regret as deeply held memories came back to her, memories of Josie’s brother, a child cold and lifeless in her arms; memories of making love with Robert. She prayed that his child would not share the fate of her son.

  She had spent a great deal of time on the voyage in wondering what her brother Joe would say when she arrived carrying a child but with no husband alongside. He was six years her senior and had always been very much her older brother. The memory of him, standing with a docker’s hook in his hand, next to her father as he demanded that Michael O’Casey do the right thing by her, replayed in her mind each night.

  It had been over twelve years since the newly married Joe and his wife Mary had sailed for America. She had carried Josie down to the docks to see them off. Their family and Mary’s had even held a wake for them as no one ever thought to see them again in this life. But when he dashed towards her on the quayside in New York and enveloped her in a bear hug, Ellen knew that she was home, and from that day to this no word of reproach had passed his lips.

  The baby moved and Ellen’s heart ached. If only she had known before they set sail... How many times had she lain awake listening to the creak of the boat and asking herself that very question.

  Sometimes she wished she had known, then she could have given in to her heart and gone to Robert, salving her conscience with the excuse that she was doing it for the child’s sake. Oh, Robert would have married her, but then what? She knew. She knew the consequences for Robert, and it was those very consequences that had forced her to leave him. At other times during those long empty nights, she was glad she hadn’t known she was carrying Robert’s child until it was too late, because she did know that her resolve to leave him would never have held.

  On reaching the newly painted green door Ellen pulled on the latch and opened the door. Two small bodies dashed past her.

  ‘Mind there, you two hooligans,’ her sister-in-law Mary shouted, looking up from her baking. ‘You’ll knock your Aunt Ellen into the middle of next week.’

  Ellen entered the small scullery and placed the basket on the table. She sat down heavily on the chair opposite Mary. Taking up a towel, Mary wiped the flour from her stout forearms.

  ‘Now there, my love, let me get you a mug of tea,’ she said, putting a solicitous hand on Ellen’s head. ‘You can’t have long now, no more than a week or two, I am sure.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Ellen said, sipping at the tea Mary set before her. ‘I must have been three months when I sailed and Josie and I have been here near on five months.’ She gave Mary a small smile. ‘So any day.’

  Mary went back to her task and Ellen relaxed in the solid wood chair with the patchwork cushions and let the heat from the china mug warm her hands.

  There was a movement again and looking down Ellen could see the child she carried stir under the woollen gown she wore.

  Robert’s child. Ellen let the familiar ache for the man she loved come over her. She couldn’t have him there, with her, to love, but she would have his child upon which to shower love. She loved it even now.

  She took another sip of tea as Mary shovelled the family bread into the side oven with a long paddle.

  Her brother had done well for himself and his family. They lived in a comfortable house at the quieter end of Seventh Street, away from the grog shops and bars. His ship’s chandlery business in Rivington Street next to the varnish factory was going well. So well, in fact, that Joe was already talking about buying a piece of farmland to the north in the Bronx.

  To Ellen’s surprise, New York was very like Wapping or Shadwell. There were docks and sailors, prostitutes and slums. Because the Lower East Side of Manhattan was very much like the East End of London, she and Josie slipped into their new life without trouble. Even the multitude of accents along the waterfront of New York was the same as could be heard any night in the White Swan or the Bunch of Grapes. On a Saturday night, with ships in the harbour, Water Street could have been taken for the Ratcliffe Highway.

  After his initial reaction, her brother had done well by her too. Ellen had eventually told Joe and Mary about Robert. Mary, kind-hearted soul that she was, cried for her.

  Ellen placed the cup down and started up from the chair. ‘Let me help you, Mary.’

  ‘Put your rear straight back
on that chair, Ellen O’Casey, and give that poor child you’re carrying some rest. All day you’ll be jigging him and jogging him. Fair tires me to see you dashing about from here to there and singing all night in the Shamrock bar.’

  ‘It’s not the Shamrock any more, Mary, and well you know it,’ Ellen said with a crooked smile. ‘It’s the Well and it’s a supper room.’ Ellen moved herself and felt a pull in her back. Robert’s baby will be here soon, she thought as she shifted in the chair. ‘Mr Hermanshaw’s attracts a much better class of customer than any other supper room. There are even rich customers coming from uptown since he redecorated.’

  Mary leant with her fists on the table and gave Ellen a hard look. ‘Joe’s business is picking up with all the work from the docks,’ she said. ‘I don’t see why you want to prance about the stage twice a week singing to all.’

  ‘You know I haven’t been there for months now,’ Ellen said.

  ‘But you’ll go back,’ Mary said as a statement rather than a question.

  ‘Yes, I will.’ She saw her sister-in-law’s mouth take on a disapproving line. ‘Look, Mary. I’m pleased that Joe’s business is growing. It should be, the way he works. But you’ve your own mouths to feed.’ Mary’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners as she smoothed the floury apron over her still flat stomach. ‘So I’m just making a contribu—’ Ellen let out a gasp as another sharp pain reached her back.

  ‘Ellen!’ Mary cried, leaving her task and dashing to her side. ‘Is it the baby?

  Ellen nodded. ‘I think so. Josie was early and it looks like this one will be the same.’

  The door behind the two women opened and Josie burst in. Her face was bright as she let her school books fall on the chair.

  ‘Ma, Ma. You’ll never guess who I met on the way back from school today,’ Josie said, her pigtails bouncing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled with excitement and anticipation. ‘Go on, Ma, guess,’ Josie exclaimed jumping on the spot.

  Hope and fear crashed through Ellen as her head swirled.

  Robert?

  But it could never be. She knew that. Ellen placed her hand on her tight stomach. A band of pain encircled her, stopping her breath and thoughts.

  The pain around her middle gathered again as Ellen stood up. The tight band pulled again and Ellen felt something give. On the insides of her legs she felt a warm wetness.

  Mary left what she was doing, crossed the room and stood beside Ellen. Ellen reached out and took her sister-in-law’s hand, gripping it tightly as another wave of pain closed around her middle.

  Josie threw down her school books on the kitchen table. ‘He would have come back but his ship sails on—’

  Josie, fetch Bridie Murphy from around the corner,’ Mary said, as she held Ellen around the shoulders. ‘Your brother or sister is about to be born.’

  Ellen lay back exhausted but utterly happy, her eyes fixed on the small bundle of humanity that she held against her breast. Robert’s daughter. Love surged over her. His child was in her arms as her father could not be. Across the small bedroom Josie was making the crib ready for her new sister. The baby sneezed and Josie came over and sat on the bed.

  ‘Aunt Mary said you were very quick. Only four hours,’ Josie said, taking a tiny hand in hers and peering down at the infant in Ellen’s arms. ‘What are you going to call her?’

  ‘Robina,’ Ellen said. Her heart ached for him to be here with her to share this moment. What a father he would have made.

  ‘She looks like him,’ Josie said softly.

  Tears started in Ellen’s eyes and she blinked them away.

  Josie lifted one small hand with her index finger. ‘She is so small. Look at her tiny fingers.’

  ‘She is bigger than you were,’ Ellen told her. She kissed the soft down of the baby’s blonde hair, then looked up at her daughter. ‘I remember holding you like this when you were born.’

  Josie looked astonished. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I do. And I loved you the moment I set eyes on you,’ Ellen told her.

  ‘Can I hold her?’

  ‘After I’ve fed her.’

  Carefully easing herself up on the pillows, Ellen offered the baby her breast. A hungry mouth rubbed over the nipple a couple of times, then latched on. Contentment swept over Ellen as she felt her newborn child work for her nourishment.

  Then she remembered something. ‘Who did you meet on the way home from school today, Josie?’

  Josie raised her eyebrows in a cool, uninterested way and continued to play with the small hand resting on her finger.

  ‘Oh.’ Her gaze flickered over her mother’s face and the corners of her mouth turned up a little. ‘Just an old friend,’ she said, letting go of Robina’s hand and fussing around with the pillows behind Ellen’s head.

  ‘But you seemed—’

  ‘There,’ Josie interrupted, as she patted the white cotton pillowslip a couple of times. She reached out for the now sated baby. ‘Let me take Bobbie so you can get some sleep.’

  Sleep! At the word Ellen’s body remembered just why childbirth was called labour. She yawned.

  How foolish, she thought as sleep overtook her. It couldn’t have been Robert. If it had been him, he would surely have come home with Josie. And how would he know we were here?

  Would he come if he did know? She didn’t know and couldn’t bear to speculate as it would only tear her heart further into shreds. She felt her eyelids droop.

  With one deft movement Josie scooped the infant from her mother and wrapped her in a crochet shawl from the bed. Ellen watched her two daughters head towards the door. Just before she left Ellen to rest, Josie lowered her head and kissed the soft brow of her baby sister. Looking back at Ellen she suddenly seemed very amused about something. For no reason that Ellen could see she suddenly threw her head back and laughed, an abandoned, joyful laugh and hugged the bundle in her arms to her again. Ellen caught her gaiety and smiled broadly.

  ‘Who did you meet?’ Ellen asked again, as sleep began to take her thoughts away.

  ‘Come on, Bobbie,’ Josie said to the infant sleeping in her arms. ‘Let’s leave Ma to rest while I introduce you to your cousins.’

  ‘Your sister’s name is Robina,’ Ellen told her, putting her hand over her mouth.

  Josie sent Ellen a saucy smile. ‘Of course it is. Just like mine is Josephine.’

  Although life without Ellen made emptiness his constant companion, Robert had forced himself to get out of bed again and live yet another desolate day. With a heavy sigh he turned his attention to the unopened envelopes beside his plate. There was a knock at the door and Bulmer ushered Chafford in.

  ‘One more for breakfast, if you please, Bulmer,’ Robert said, as his friend settled himself in the chair opposite.

  ‘I thought I’d drop in for a coffee and ask how your trip to Liverpool went,’ Chafford said drawing his chair up to the table.

  ‘Well enough. They have the same problems with overcrowding and poor sanitation that we have here in the capital,’ Robert replied.

  Chafford sipped his coffee and regarded Robert thoughtfully. ‘I’m sorry to say it, Munroe, but you look dreadful. Still not sleeping?’

  ‘I don’t think I have had a full night’s sleep since...’

  Chafford gave him a sympathetic look. ‘No sign of Ellen or her family in Liverpool then?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘There are so many Shannahans and O’Caseys in Liverpool I scarcely knew where to look, but I found none of them had any knowledge of Ellen.’

  ‘It was a long shot,’ his friend said in a quiet voice.

  He’d known that, but even so, the fact that there might be the smallest chance of finding her was enough to keep him trailing through Irish churches in the area and peering into the local records until his eyes burned. He would do the same in Dublin when he got there at the end of the month.

  Not wishing to follow the train of thought that any stray mention of Ellen always started, Robert picked up hi
s correspondence.

  ‘Anything from your family, Munroe?’ William asked after a couple of moments.

  Robert shook his head. ‘I wrote to Mother about my trip to Liverpool, but I haven’t had anything back from her yet.’

  Her reply would probably be awaiting him on his return from Ireland. Please God his next letter would tell her that he had found Ellen. She had written a month previously telling him that his father had not relented in his decision. Robert hadn’t expected him to and he certainly wouldn’t once he and Ellen were married.

  He ripped open the top letter and scanned it. ‘Lord Ashley tells me that he has high hopes that this time the Anti-Slavery Bill will be passed.’ He read on. ‘He also invites me to spend a week with him and Lady Ashley on his estate in August to shoot.’

  ‘You should go, Munroe. You’ve been working yourself too hard,’ William said encouragingly.

  ‘There is a great deal of work to do.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘The Home Secretary has asked me to speak at a dinner at the Mansion House,’ Robert interrupted, before William could launch into his speech about putting the past behind him. He didn’t want to. He wanted to live in the past, because Ellen was in the past, and without her he had no future. He laid the crisp, white paper aside.

  ‘Well, if you have to work yourself to death, at least your reputation has recovered from...’

  Robert’s eyes flashed up at his friend.

  ‘Recovered! It has been positively enhanced,’ he said bitterly. ‘I am lauded throughout society for my bravery in tackling Donovan and my cunning in using his mistress to do it.’ He slammed down his cup in the saucer and it snapped in two.

  ‘Munroe—’

  ‘I have society hostesses sending provocative glances and flirting with me because I’m a “dark horse” and have an “air of danger” about me.’