A Christmas Wish

by Lizzie Lane

  With her last breath her mother had expressed her love for her husband and asked the nice nurse to tell the children to behave for him.

  It wasn’t to say that Joseph Brodie wasn’t upset by his wife’s death. He was, though the fact that his children needed him was not something he wished to face. Going to sea was a habit he found difficult to break. It was as though he had two lives – one with his wife and one with his shipmates, visiting one port after another all over the world. ‘Anyway,’ he said to those who would listen. ‘What would I be doing living on the land, working in a factory or a mine, even on me father’s farm? It wouldn’t suit. That it wouldn’t. Not at all.’

  Just for a while though, his exuberance for life at sea was temporarily jettisoned in favour of a brief mourning.

  On the day of Magda’s departure, the three older children had clasped their arms around each other, shivering and sobbing into each other’s shoulders. Baby Michael had looked up at them wide eyed and frightened until he too was crying for someone he didn’t yet know that he’d lost. Magda had exchanged a soft whisper with her twin sisters. No matter what, we must be strong for each other.

  She also promised them that one day they would have that Christmas dinner in a place to call home. She didn’t know when it would be, but it would happen. ‘I swear to you it will. And I’ll send you a Christmas card every year and write you letters. That’s what people do when they’re not together.’

  Daring to hope that things really would be better, Magda had asked her father couldn’t he reconsider and all of them live together and he not go to sea any more?

  He’d shaken his head.

  ‘I can’t stay, Magda. I have to go. I have a living to make. But first I’ll make arrangements for you all. You’ll all be fine. You’ll be sorted. I promise.’

  ‘And all the places where each of you are living are in yer mother’s Bible,’ he said. ‘Magda’s the eldest. Magda will keep it with her. Right, Magda?’

  For his part, Joseph Brodie told himself he was doing the right thing, though deep down, if he was honest, he would have to admit that he was behaving as he’d always behaved. No matter who loved him and who he loved – in his own way of course – he tended to do things to suit himself. Yes, he felt grieved that he hadn’t been there for his wife, but he blamed others for that; the wages on board every ship he’d ever worked on, every far-flung port where the bartenders relieved him of his hard-earned cash, and – once drunk as a lord – every dockside whore who’d reminded him of his wife.

  Close to the city docks, terraced houses, crumbling from years of neglect by absentee landlords, lined cobbled streets.

  This part of London was home to all manner of folk, poor, honest and dishonest. Poverty and crime rubbed shoulders out of necessity. Making a living by any means possible meant holding onto life. Only the coffin maker on the corner of Cocks Passage and Edward Street, the street they were heading for, had an unending source of business.

  Creaking signs above lopsided doorways advertised chimney sweeps and cobblers. Old inns rubbed shoulders with rope makers, coopers and tenements housing at least one family on each floor.

  Pale-faced children peered from dark interiors or played out in the street with bits of wood or stones. The former were floated on sooty puddles, the fallout from the smoking chimney pots, the gas works and the coal yard at the end of the street where it abutted the river. Little had changed since the Great War.

  A man sitting against the wall outside the pub begged them for alms. He was wearing the top half of an old navy uniform. Three or four medals dangled from the breast pocket.

  Her father stopped. ‘Where did you serve?’

  ‘Jutland. German eight inch took me legs off.’

  Magda noticed the man was sitting on a wooden board that had wheels on. She noticed with the fascination a child feels for the unusual that he had no legs.

  Her father tossed him a coin. ‘Have a half on me, old fellah. I wasn’t so far from there meself.’

  The man’s face lit up. ‘You’re an officer and a gentleman.’

  Joseph laughed. ‘Sure I am. How did you guess?’

  The man disappeared into the pub, the door swinging shut behind him, though not before a hubbub of conversation, stale smells and amber light had fallen out onto the pavement.

  In an oppressive street beneath an oppressive January sky, Joseph Brodie knocked at the battered door of his sister-in-law.

  The house was a straightforward two-up, two-down terraced, one of about eight all strung together, and it looked the poorest in the street.

  Aunt Bridget was married to James Brodie, Joseph’s brother, who worked as an able seaman on the pig boats that plied between London and Cork. Irish pork was best, according to Bridget Brodie, leanest and freshest. ‘Sure, isn’t it slaughtered just on down the road here?’

  Joseph Brodie knew this was true. Depending on the wind, the screams of the pigs smelling blood and death travelled from the slaughterhouse with unnerving regularity.

  Bridget Brodie did not possess the same calm tone as her brother-in-law. Neither was she purposeful in her movements; darting around and doing everything at breakneck, slapdash speed. Being bereft of children had made her bitter, though perhaps because he was a man, Joseph Brodie couldn’t see what she’d become. If he had perhaps he would have thought twice about leaving his daughter there.

  Her sharp eyes, blue in a complexion that erred towards pink, as though she’d been toasted in front of the fire, fixed on Magda. ‘She has her mother’s colouring. The others had yours. I saw them once.’

  ‘Would you hold that against her?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll not speak ill of the dead, though you know my thoughts on foreigners.’ She crossed her flat chest in a swift, stabbing movement. ‘We’ve got enough of them in this place as it is. Jews one end, blacks the other – God knows but this place is going downhill.’

  ‘’Tis only to be expected, you living so close to the docks, ships come into London from all over the world. You’re bound to get people here from all over.’

  Bridget Brodie eyed him sharply. ‘That don’t mean they have to stay here. I see them go in across the way there too,’ she said, nodding towards the house across the street. ‘’Tis a whorehouse, you know. My God,’ she said, crossing herself again, ‘what would my old mother think if she knew her daughter was living opposite a whorehouse?’

  ‘Sure you don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Too right I do, Joe Brodie. Men, mostly sailors, going in and out of there at all hours. ’Tis disgraceful I say. Plain disgraceful!’

  Controlling any hint of guilt, Brodie looked across to a gabled building, its upper floor overhanging the lower. It had likely been there since the first sailor sauntered past smoking a rolled-up leaf of best Virginian tobacco and wondering what he could do with the potatoes he’d also brought back with him.

  For the first time since laying his plan, he experienced a twinge of doubt, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He firmly believed that in a few years, the ten-year-old Magda would be close to being a woman and as such needed female guidance and certainly not the likes of him. She might find it hard at first, perhaps, but she’d thank him for it later. Sure she would, and wasn’t his sister-in-law an upright, God-fearing woman?

  ‘You’ll do the Christian thing?’ he said as he counted out ten shillings into her waiting palm. ‘There’s some to be going on with. I’ll get more to you later.’

  Her sharp eyes softened at the sight of coins tumbling into her palm. ‘That I will,’ she said, a smile curving her lips. If he’d looked closer he would have seen that her smile did not travel to her eyes. She tucked the coins down the neck of her cheap dress between her breasts and sighed with satisfaction.

  She saw his eyes follow the progress of the money into her cleavage and it warmed her. Suddenly her attitude changed. The red-faced woman with her squinty eyes and overblown figure took on the simpering attributes of a streetwise girl, on
e whose sole purpose in life was seducing a man she had a fancy for.

  ‘Will you stay and have a cup of tea with me? Or stay a bit longer and go to the pub tonight?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go and deliver my other kids to where they’re going. The addresses where they’ll be found are all in here.’

  He lifted the Bible then looked at Magda, the doubt about leaving her still in evidence, but slowly retreating in the face of expediency.

  ‘Isabella’s Bible is to go into my Magda’s keeping. I’ve listed the addresses of those who know where the others can be found at the front of this book and also there’s details of how to get hold of me. Magda will take care of it so that even if I drown at sea, she can take over and get the family back together. Can you do that for me, Magda? I promise you, it won’t be for long. We’ll all be together in no time once I’ve made me fortune and returned from the sea for good. No time at all.’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Magda said, though she said it softly, the words sticking in the dryness of her throat. He was leaving again. Leaving her, leaving the others, just as he’d left her mother.

  During all this time of listening to him and his brother’s wife, she’d felt her body growing colder and colder. The chill was only partly down to the dampness of the house where she’d already noticed fungus growing in one corner. The fire in the grate did little to warm the room, a spiral of damp-looking smoke rising lazily from solid black coal.

  The fact was, she did not want to be here but was too young, too weak to disobey her father’s wishes.

  With trembling hands, she took her mother’s Bible from her father and clasped it to her breast.

  Satisfied that all appeared to be well, Brodie took Magda to one side and bowed to her level.

  ‘I’ve given your aunt money for your needs. You’ll be safe till I come back. Now I’ll be off to take care of the others. Remember, they’re all written in here.’ He tapped the Bible that she was hugging as tightly as a more favoured child would a doll or a teddy bear.

  Magda felt her eyes fill with tears. Her father, Joseph Brodie, was the lynchpin between her past and her future – whatever that was likely to be. And he was leaving.

  Aunt Bridget took hold of her shoulders. ‘Come on, Magda,’ she said soothingly, the dampness of her hands permeating through Magda’s coat. ‘Be a good girl and let your father go now. He’s work to do and you, my girl, have to be brave.’

  Joe Brodie ducked out of the door. Once outside, he stopped and turned.

  ‘Be a good girl for your Aunt Bridget. I’ll be in touch soon.’

  Together they watched him stride off down the street, Magda frozen to the spot, her Aunt Bridget still holding on to her shoulders.

  The women in the house across the road were leering out of their windows, calling at him to come back and stay with them awhile.

  ‘You won’t regret it, sweetheart,’ one of them called.

  Aunt Bridget turned a thunderous expression in their direction and brandished a threatening fist at them. ‘Sluts! You’re all sluts and the sooner you all burn in hell the better this world will be.’

  ‘Don’t tell us, Bridget Brodie. You’re as pure as the driven snow? Or perhaps the Virgin Mary?’

  The woman’s words brought laughter from the other women gathered with her – women of every colour, every shape and size.

  ‘Foul-mouthed trollops!’ Aunt Bridget shouted back.

  ‘Been to the Red Cow of late, have you Bridget? Drank only milk and sat with your legs crossed, did you?’

  Aunt Bridget scowled in their direction. ‘Hussies. Hussies, all of them.’

  Magda looked up at her. ‘What do they mean?’

  ‘Wave to yer father,’ growled Bridget Brodie, her tone altered and her fist thudding into Magda’s back. ‘Show yer gratefulness, darkie,’ she said.

  Alarmed by the form of address, Magda turned and looked into Bridget Brodie’s face. The blue eyes were sharp as bits of broken glass, the mouth that had smiled now pursed into self-righteous tightness.

  Fear flooded Magda’s stout young heart. Lunging for the street, she shouted, ‘Dad! Come back!’

  She only managed one shout before she was pulled back into the mean room, the door slamming tightly shut.

  Her eyes remained fixed on that closed door. Had her father heard her? Was he coming back? She wished that he would.

  ‘Well,’ said Bridget Brodie, fists fixed on her hips, her expression dark and evil. ‘You’ve got no family now. No stuck-up foreign mother around to spoil you with ’er foreign ways. Four children living and her ungrateful enough to go and die. And here’s me with no child to call my own. Now you’ve to rough it, my girl, just like everybody else around here.’

  Magda’s eyes filled with tears, but still clutching her mother’s Bible, she held her head high. She would not cry. All this would pass as all things pass, just like her time in the workhouse.

  ‘I’m Magdalena Brodie, and one day I’ll be a lady.’

  Bridget Brodie looked amused. ‘Well, will ya now! Well, there’s pride fer you, and pride is one of the deadly sins. Do you not know that?’ Her aunt’s expression turned sour.

  Magda cried out as rough hands marched her to the other side of the room where she was forced to kneel before a plaster statue with a pale face and even paler hands. The statue stood in a roughly formed alcove behind which light shone from the outside through a small glass pane.

  ‘There. Now ask the Blessed Virgin for forgiveness. And don’t get up till you’re sorry fer yer ways. And bow yer head respectfully,’ she said, landing a parting blow at the back of her head, forcing it forward.

  Magda squeezed her eyes tightly shut and prayed as never before to the Mother of God, all the time clutching the Bible tightly to her chest.

  Bridget Brodie saw how attached Magda was to that Bible and decided she was not finished with the girl yet.

  Twisted with hate, she wrenched the Bible from Magda’s grasp. ‘I’ll take that, me girl! You’ll have it back when I say so and not before.’

  ‘That was my mother’s. My father said I was to take care of it.’

  Another slap around the head. ‘Are you deaf, girl? You’ll have it when I say so. Isn’t that what I just told you? Now get back to asking the Blessed Virgin for forgiveness. And don’t get up till I tell you to.’

  She pushed her back to where she’d been and kicked into the back of the child’s knees so that they buckled under her.

  Bridget Brodie’s eyes glittered with satisfaction. At long last she had some power over Joseph Brodie, or at least over one of his brats. She would enjoy this time. She was determined to do so.

  Damn Joseph Brodie. Damn his foreign wife. If he’d kept his promise to her, when she’d been single and plain old Bridget McCarthy, then perhaps she might have had babies with him. As it was she’d been rejected and in being rejected had married his brother and had no babies.

  It was all Isabella’s fault, but now Isabella was gone. The sin of the mother had fallen onto the daughter and Bridget Brodie would make her pay for it.

  Chapter Two

  The Twins

  ‘I liked the boat,’ said Venetia to her sister. ‘It was the best part.’

  Anna Marie eyed her twin with frightened eyes that shone like glass in a face that was paler than normal.

  Her lips were still blue even though they’d long left the boat that had brought them across the Irish Sea.

  They’d caught a train then a bus to Dunavon, a town that would have been swallowed up as a suburb in London. Anna Marie wished desperately that she was still in London simply because it was all that she’d ever known.

  They made their way to where a pony and trap waited for them. Not a bus. A horse-drawn vehicle. They’d seen horse-drawn brewery drays back in London, but never a pony pulling a cart meant for passengers.

  ‘There. Now this is your grandfather. Say hello to him.’ Their father sounded bright and breezy but his manner was deferential
as though he feared the man sitting up front in the trap.

  The twins eyed the white-haired man who likewise eyed them. His eyes were a frightening blue, perhaps because he didn’t blink but looked at each of them as though in two minds whether he liked them or not.

  Even their father, who never seemed afraid of anyone, had taken off his cap, screwing it around in his hands like a schoolboy about to be caned.

  The girls dutifully muttered a muted hello, their voices tinny like the sound of clockwork when it’s fast running down.

  Their grandfather grunted in a gravelly voice. ‘Well, get aboard. I haven’t got all day.’

  Joseph Brodie hoisted the two girls and their meagre luggage into the back of the cart.

  ‘Be good,’ he whispered.

  The cart dipped to one side as he got up into the front seat alongside his father.

  ‘Giddup!’

  The girls started at the command as much as the pony between the shafts.

  It began to rain, a soft, incessant drizzle for which Ireland, as they later came to find out, was famous.

  Their father half turned in his seat. ‘Pull the tarpaulin up over you. That’ll keep you dry.’

  He helped them do it.

  Out of the rain but not liking the smell, the two girls wrinkled their noses.

  ‘It stinks,’ whispered Venetia.

  Anna Marie just stared at her, fearing that if she opened her mouth to comment, the white-haired man with the fierce blue eyes might hear. She hadn’t liked the sound of his voice. She could never imagine herself ever speaking to him just in case she said the wrong thing. He was too frightening.

  The two men up front also pulled bits of tarpaulin up over their shoulders. Both stared silently ahead, eyes narrowed against the icy beat of the needle-fine rain.

  Water trickled from their eyebrows, their noses and their chins and down their necks, soaking their clothes.

  Each man smouldered with his own thoughts, though one more angrily than the other.