Kate

by Siobhán Parkinson

‘Mam,’ I said, when I brought her in the tea, ‘what ever happened to Liz O’Brien?’ It was making the porridge again that brought it all back to me, I suppose.

  ‘Ah, you know what happened to her, poor girl.’

  ‘I don’t, Mam. Did she die?’

  ‘Die! Of course she didn’t die. Sure if she’d died, there would have been a funeral. No. She was in a bad way, but I brought her through, I’m proud to say.’

  ‘But, Mam, she’s disappeared.’

  ‘She went to England, Kate, to get away from the wagging tongues.’

  ‘What wagging tongues, Mam?’

  ‘The ones that think a poor girl who has a baby and no husband to show for it is a bad girl.’

  There it was again, that mystery about the baby. Mam seemed to think I understood, so I didn’t let on.

  ‘So she went to England with her baby?’

  ‘Ah no, sure how could she get work if she had a baby with her? She gave the baby to the nuns, and off she went.’

  ‘To the nuns!’ I was horrified. ‘Nuns don’t have babies.’

  ‘No, but they find good homes for poor babies like that.’

  This was news to me, but I didn’t ask any more. Obviously, there were more important things in the world than Mrs Maguire’s chances of a haul of medals in the feis, but I didn’t think I wanted to know any more about them just now. It was just too sad to think about, people having to give their babies away.

  Days dragged into weeks, and still my mam wasn’t getting any better, and still the sky-blue material sat there. The man in the fabric department was getting to know me by now, coming by every day to check on it.

  ‘Are you going to buy that material or not?’ he asked me one day, and I plucked up the courage to tell him the whole story.

  He laughed when he heard it – I put in the bit about Saint Bernadette and everything – and he said that as soon as the last person bought fabric off the bolt, he’d hide it behind the counter and keep the remnant for me.

  He had a gold tooth and it gleamed when he smiled. I thought that meant he must be very rich. He had a gold watch too, in his top pocket, very smart he looked, tall and with dark eyes and hair. He looked much too nice to be working in a shop. He should have been something much more stylish, I thought, like a head waiter or the conductor of a band or an ambassador. I had this idea of an ambassador in my head, a handsome man with epaulettes and a sword who bowed a lot to ladies.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ I said. ‘Thank you very much. You’re a saint.’

  ‘Get away out of that,’ he said, just like my da. ‘But I have a little daughter myself, and I know how hard it can be sometimes when you want something very badly.’

  I felt a bit better after that, but I really thought God was making heavy weather of this miracle. Maybe I was like Job in the Old Testament and He was trying my patience. I certainly felt like telling Him what to do with His sky-blue fabric, but I didn’t, I let on to be all sweetness and light and just kept hoping I would come by one day from school and the fabric would have disappeared off its place on the shelf, and then I would know that my friend in the fabric department had hidden the remnant for me.

  One morning when I went in to Mam with her cup of tea, she was much worse. Her eyes were staring, there was sweat running off her face into her hair, which was wringing wet on the pillow, and when I spoke she didn’t answer. I got an awful fright. I ran out to get Da, and he came into the room and shook her till her teeth rattled, and still she only stared and said nothing.

  ‘Run for Mrs O’Brien, Kate,’ he said. ‘And then, take those children off to school. Eddy, Eddy, what’ll we do with Eddy? Run over to Mrs Conlon after you’ve called Mrs O’Brien and ask her could she mind him for the day.’

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I flew for Mrs O’Brien. She was an old friend of my mam’s, and her children were all grown up, except Jimmy, and even he was nearly fourteen. She’d be able to come and sit all day with my mam if she was needed. Mrs Conlon was a good friend too. She lived in the same house as us, and my mam had delivered all her children. Eddy would be fine with her, as he’d have children his own age to play with.

  Mrs O’Brien threw her coat on over her apron and ran with me to our house, up the stairs, and straight into my mother’s bedroom.

  ‘Boil the kettle, Kate,’ she said as she closed the door. ‘Who’s minding Eddy?’ she asked, sticking her head out again.

  ‘Mrs Conlon,’ said Madge. ‘Is she going to die?’

  ‘Divil a bit of it,’ said Mrs O’Brien. ‘She’s a hardy soul.’

  She came out after a minute and said, ‘She’s fine, she’s fine.’

  We were all sitting on the stairs, me and my sisters, with our schoolbags on. We were afraid to go to school in case something dreadful happened.

  ‘There, now,’ I said to the others, ‘you’ve heard what Mrs O says, she’s going to be grand, and the best thing we can do now for her is go off to school and keep out of the way.’

  Mrs O’Brien gave me a little wink, and I knew I’d said the right thing, but I also knew she was lying and that Mam wasn’t fine at all.

  Even so, I came around by Frawley’s on my way home that evening. Partly habit, partly because I was half afraid to go home. When I got as far as the shop, and looked in the big plate glass window, my heart did a little skip. The blue fabric was no longer in its place on the shelf. That meant someone must have bought a length off it and my friend the ambassador, as I called him to myself, was saving the remnant for me. I’d have to go home quick and ask Mam for the money.

  But Mam was sick, dying maybe. What sort of a daughter was I, thinking about dress material at a time like this? I walked slowly past the shop, willing myself to keep going, not to let my feet take me in at the doorway.

  What’s the point? I thought to myself then, when I’d got beyond the shop. I may as well find out about the material, now that I’m here. It isn’t going to do my mam any harm, and sure, maybe by the time I get home, she’ll be much better.

  So I turned back and went into Frawley’s. I pushed the door and the bell rang loudly. The ambassador looked up and smiled when he saw me, his gold tooth glinting in the light. Then his expression changed.

  ‘Bad news, Kate,’ he said, sorrowfully.

  My mother! Dead – I knew it! He must have heard from the neighbours. My head pounded with dread.

  ‘The last person who came in bought eight yards of that lovely blue material,’ he went on. ‘There’s only three-quarters of a yard left, it wouldn’t do you.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, and something suddenly seemed to fill my throat, and I couldn’t say anything more.

  My mother wasn’t dead; it was only that the material had been sold. But it still seemed as if something dreadful had happened. Everything was all mixed up in my mind, the material, Mam being sick, the feis, the money, Tess O’Hara’s gloating face when she discovered I wasn’t going to be able to dance in the feis because I had no costume, Liz O’Brien and her baby, and I felt as if my head was going to burst. Sister Eucharia was probably right. God didn’t like the way I’d prayed for a costume and this was His way of punishing me. I wasn’t going to get my costume, and it was my fault that my mam was sick too.

  I felt tears on my face. I rubbed them quickly with my fists, but the shop man noticed.

  He said, ‘Ah, now, it’s not that serious, love.’

  ‘It is!’ I sobbed, and I ran out of the shop and dashed home.

  CHAPTER 11

  Scarlett O’Hara

  As I ran, I made a new bargain with God. I told Him I was sorry for praying for a dancing costume. I said I’d pray for the Conversion of Russia next, but right now, what I needed was for my mam to get better. If He would only make my mam better, I’d forget all about the costume and the feis, I’d give up dancing altogether, even. I’d stay at home on Wednesday afternoons and help my mam to do the mending.

  When I got home, Polly was there, sprinkling sugar on their bread for the
little ones. They were all home from school before me, because I had gone around by Frawley’s.

  ‘Polly!’ I shouted, as soon as I saw her, and I flung myself into her arms.

  ‘My, my,’ said Polly, ‘I know you’re fond of me, Kate, but you’re all over me like a big sheepdog. You’re worse than my Bill. Will you stand back a minute till I get my breath!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said with a gulp, and I sat down at the kitchen table. I pushed aside a slice of bread and butter and folded my arms on the table. Then I put down my head on my arms and I had a good cry.

  ‘There, there,’ Polly kept saying to me, in a low voice, to calm me.

  She stopped saying it for a minute, to whoosh the younger ones out to play on the street. She put Madge in charge, and told them to be home by seven o’clock, when she’d have their tea ready for them.

  ‘There, there,’ she said to me again. ‘She’s going to be all right. Mrs O’Brien called the Jubilee nurse. She says it’s just a little touch of TB, not bad enough to send her away to a sanatorium or anything, just we have to look after her, keep her warm and give her healthy food, that’s all, she’ll be fine, Kate, you’ll see.’

  I looked up. ‘A little touch? You can’t have a little touch of TB. You get TB and you die!’ And I burst into sobs again.

  ‘No, you don’t. Only very bad cases die, people who neglect it. We aren’t going to neglect your mam. She is the most popular woman in Pimlico. Sure, she delivered half the neighbourhood. Three of the neighbours have been around already with beef tea and barley water and the divil knows what, and a relic of Father Charles from Mount Argus to put under her pillow. She’s well looked after and she’s going to get better. We’ll all pray like mad, and she’ll be fine.’

  ‘Pray!’ I said, and that set me off again. I was sick praying, and look where it had got me!

  ‘How come you were so late home?’ Polly asked. She didn’t really want to know, I knew that. She was just trying to think of something to talk to me about, to stop me crying.

  I dried my eyes and I told her about the material in Frawley’s, about how I’d been watching it every day, but now it was gone, and I wasn’t going to be able to have my costume after all.

  ‘It’s just as well,’ she said, tossing her hair. ‘You couldn’t have got up on the stage in a sky-blue costume, you’d have made a holy show of yourself. I don’t know what your mam was thinking of, she must have been sickening at the time. Dancing costumes are green, everyone knows that.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said, ‘but she had me convinced this would be lovely, and it was lovely material, Polly, oh, it was so gorgeous, and now I will have no costume, but I don’t want one anyway, with Mam so sick, I just want her better.’ And I was off again, in a fit of crying.

  Polly stroked my hair for a while, and when I calmed down a bit she started to chuckle softly.

  ‘What have you got to laugh about?’ I asked crossly, drying my eyes.

  ‘I’m after having an idea. Wait till you hear it, it’s the best idea in the world!’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You know that book I’m reading?’

  ‘No,’ I said sullenly. I mean, what a stupid question! How could I know what she was reading?

  ‘I told you about it. The one with Scarlett O’Hara in it. Gone with the Wind.’

  ‘Don’t mention O’Haras to me,’ I said bitterly, thinking of Breda. ‘Who’s Bill?’ I asked suddenly. I vaguely remembered that she’d mentioned someone called Bill. I’d never heard of him before.

  ‘Bill, if you must know, is a person I am walking out with and he’s the handsomest man that ever walked on shoe leather. He has big broad shoulders and his dark, dark eyes smoulder. He’s just like Mr Rhett Butler in the story.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, startled by Polly’s enthusiasm.

  ‘But do you want to hear my brilliant idea, or would you rather hear about my love life? Because I can’t talk about two things at the same time.’

  ‘What’s your idea, then?’

  ‘In the story, Scarlett needs a fancy outfit, but she has no money.’

  ‘Mmm?’ I said. I was beginning to see that there might be a connection.

  ‘So what she does is this. She lives in a gorgeous big house …’

  ‘I thought you said she had no money.’

  ‘The family used to be rich, but they lost … Listen, that doesn’t matter. The point is this. She needed an outfit, she had no money, but she had a brain wave. She eyed up the lovely velvet curtains they had in the fancy big drawing room in their mansion, and quick as a flash she had them off the window and made up into a beautiful gown with a matching muff and the cutest little hat you ever saw, like Robin Hood’s.’

  I stared at her. My brain was moving slowly.

  ‘We haven’t got any fancy velvet curtains,’ I said. ‘We only have blinds.’

  ‘But I have! We have,’ she practically shouted in my ear. ‘We have lovely green wool curtains at home. I made them last year when Pat won a bit of money on the horses and gave me some for myself. I was tired of the wind coming whistling through that front window, so I made some lovely wool curtains with heavy lining to keep the draught out.’

  Polly lived near by with another uncle and aunt of mine who had no children.

  ‘But you need them,’ I said, ‘you just said, they’re to keep the draught out.’

  ‘Not at all, sure I can hang the lining, it’s really the lining that does the trick.’

  ‘No, Polly, I couldn’t. I couldn’t let you take down your lovely curtains to make me a stupid dancing costume.’

  ‘You don’t have to let me,’ said Polly with a shrug. ‘I can do it without your permission. They’re my curtains. I made them myself. I can do what I like with them.’

  Suddenly I got a fit of laughing.

  ‘What?’ said Polly. She always loved a laugh. ‘What’s the big joke?’

  ‘Sister Eucharia,’ I said. ‘She told me God would be cross with me for praying for a dancing costume, she had me promising God I would pray for the Conversion of Russia instead, she had me promising not to bother about the dancing costume, to give up dancing altogether. If she heard I was going to the feis dressed up in a pair of curtains you made with money Uncle Pat won on the horses …’

  Polly laughed too, and then we had a hug, and after that, we wet a fresh pot of tea for my mam. I took a cup in to her, and she was looking a lot better. Very pale, very tired, her eyes huge in her head, but she was able to talk a little bit, and she said in a whispery little voice, ‘What are you and Polly laughing about out there? Do you not know you have a dying woman in the house?’

  ‘Mam!’ I said. ‘Don’t talk like that, even in a joke!’ But I was delighted that she was well enough to make a joke.

  ‘I’m that pleased to get a proper cup of tea,’ Mam said, her voice still very soft and weak. ‘I’m blue in the face drinking beef tea, it’s terrible stuff, you know, but it’s supposed to keep your strength up.’

  ‘Why do communists drink beef tea?’ asked Polly, coming in behind me.

  I didn’t know what she was at. She must be on about the Conversion of Russia again.

  ‘Do they?’ I said.

  ‘Because proper tea is theft,’ she said, and she collapsed on my mam’s bed in a fit of the giggles.

  ‘Ouch!’ protested Mam. ‘Will you get off me, you’re sitting on my bunions, Mary.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m an awful elephant,’ Polly said, moving further down on the bed, away from Mam. ‘Proper tea, property, get it? Bill told me that one. He’s a great intellectual, you know.’

  Mam gave a faint little smile. I hadn’t a clue what the joke was, but I was so delighted to see Mam smiling that I broke out in a big beaming smile myself.

  ‘What’s an intellectual?’ I asked.

  ‘Something to make busy people talk,’ Mam said.

  That was another one of those things she said when she didn’t want to answer a question. It w
as just typical of her. She must be feeling better to be back to that sort of talk. Maybe she was going to be all right.

  CHAPTER 12

  Cottage Industry

  Polly was as good as her word. Next evening she brought one of the curtains around and she draped it over me to see how it suited me.

  ‘Terrific,’ she said. ‘You’re pure gorgeous. With that hair, green is perfect. I told you you’d make a lovely colleen.’

  My da thought we were both mad, trying to make a dress out of a pair of curtains.

  ‘Not mad, Tom,’ said Polly, laying the curtain across the kitchen table and flashing away with her big, sharp cutting shears. ‘Enterprising. Your friend Mr de Valera would be proud of us, producing homespun dancing costumes, as good as. Sure, we’re a proper little cottage industry, so we are.’

  Da snorted, pretending to be irritated, but I could see that he was really trying to stifle a laugh.

  By the end of the evening, the structure of the dress was in place, all held together with pins and bits of tissue paper and little things marked on it with white thread. I didn’t really follow it all, I’m terrible at dressmaking, never got past an awful apron that I had to make at school. It was so bad that my mother cut it up for dusters. They were great dusters, lasted for years.

  ‘Can you embroider?’ Polly asked, as she poked away at the waistband, trying to make the pleats gather in neatly.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Can you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Do you know, I could murder a fag. Do you think your mother would smell it?’

  All the girls of Polly’s age smoked, but Mam was old-fashioned about it. She said it was common, and she didn’t like Polly doing it.

  ‘Of course she would,’ I said, ‘but I’d say she’s past caring.’

  Mam was no worse, but she was no better either. She seemed to have got stuck at a certain level of illness. It was as if all her strength had been sapped away, and without it she couldn’t make the effort to get well again.