The Little Orphan Girl

by Sandy Taylor

  ‘Do you not fear the wrath of God?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about God, you hypocrite. You think that laying on the church steps, roaring drunk is fulfilling your Easter duties?’

  ‘You’ve turned into a bitter woman, Moira.’

  ‘And whose fault is that? You bullied my poor mother, God rest her soul, and you worked her to the bone, while you drank away every penny that came into the house. I’ve never seen a woman welcome death like she did and it was because she knew she was getting away from you. And now I’m getting away too. Come on, child, we have no more business here.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do?’ he yelled.

  ‘You can rot in hell for all I care,’ she said.

  Mammy had her hand in the small of my back and was almost pushing me towards the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said the old man.

  We waited.

  ‘Get rid of her and we’ll say no more about it.’

  Mammy spun around. ‘My child is not something to be rid of like a pile of rubbish. If you want me to stay here and look after you then Cissy stays too.’

  The old man stared into the fire as if he’d find the answer in the flames and then he spoke so quietly I could hardly hear what he was saying. ‘Well, if you’re going to stay, make yerself useful. I want me tea.’

  ‘Then you'll ask properly for it, I won’t be bullied like my mother.’

  ‘You’ve changed, Moira,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve changed alright and you’d do right to remember it. Cissy, say hello to your granddaddy.’

  I looked at the old man sitting by the fire. ‘Is he really my granddaddy, Mammy?’

  ‘He is, God help us.’

  ‘I thought he was the Devil himself,’ I said, staring at him from behind Mammy’s skirt.

  And to the surprise of both of us, the granddaddy started chuckling.

  Chapter Three

  A few weeks later, I was sitting on the doorstep outside the cottage when Colm and Blue trotted up the alleyway. ‘What are you doing sitting there?’ he said, smiling down at me.

  ‘The granddaddy is having a wash, Mammy says he smells like a dead ferret.’

  ‘Yer mammy’s right well enough, the old man has a powerful stench about him.’

  ‘He was cursing and swearing because he didn’t want to have a wash but Mammy said no Christian man has a right to smell like he does.’

  ‘I don’t know about Christian,’ said Colm, getting down off Blue’s back. ‘It’s not often you see him darken the doors of the church unless it’s a funeral and there’s a chance of some refreshment on the cards.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me,’ I said.

  Colm sat down beside me on the step. ‘Well, if it’s any comfort, I’d say he doesn’t like anyone very much.’

  ‘Mammy says he’s an old goat.’

  ‘I think that’s doing old goats a disservice, Cissy… I’m surprised your mother came back here.’

  I stood up and stroked Blue; he shivered under my hand and turned his head. ‘I like Blue,’ I said. ‘I like him better than the granddaddy.’

  ‘I told you, you’d be great friends.’

  ‘Mammy says I have to go to school. Do you go to school, Colm?’

  ‘Sure, I’m too old for school, I’ll be twelve on my next birthday. I help my father with the milk round.’

  Colm didn’t have a cap on today and his dark hair was falling down over his eyes. He brushed it back from his face and smiled.

  ‘What do you have to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, me and Blue go all round the houses and the shops and we deliver the milk so that the people can have a grand cup of tea and the babies can suck on their bottles. Would you like to come out with me tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll ask the mammy,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let me know and I’ll call for you in the morning. Now me and Blue must get home for our dinner.’

  I very much wanted to help Colm with the milk round and I hoped the mammy would let me. There was nothing to do in the cottage. Mammy said I had to keep out of the granddaddy’s way and as there was only one room downstairs I never knew what to do with myself. I wished I was back in the workhouse because I had Nora to play with. Sometimes we helped Mrs Foley sort out the clothes that came in the charity bins, or we played with Mr Dunne’s smelly dog. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with Nora, sleeping in our little bed with our arms around each other, but Mammy said that the only way we would go back there was over her dead body. I wanted to ask Mammy how we could go back there over her dead body but I knew she’d get cross.

  Just then Mammy came walking under the archway. She smiled at me. ‘Has he had his wash?’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t been in, Mammy,’ I said.

  She opened the door and I followed her into the room. She looked different, maybe even happy. I thought she looked beautiful when she wasn’t cross.

  ‘I can see you’ve managed to have a wash,’ she said, looking down at the bowl of dirty water on the floor. ‘Would it have killed you to tip the water away?’

  ‘That’s what you’re here for,’ growled the granddaddy.

  ‘Not for much longer,’ she announced. ‘I have a job.’

  The granddaddy looked up. ‘What are you talking about, woman?’ he snarled.

  ‘I’m talking about a job,’ she said.

  ‘Your job is to look after me.’

  ‘My job is to do as I please.’

  ‘I’ll send you back to that place,’ he warned.

  ‘No you won’t because I have a job; they wouldn’t take me back.’

  ‘I’ll send her back then,’ he said, glaring at me across the room.

  Mammy walked across and bent down in front of him. She put her face so close to his that they were almost touching. ‘You just try,’ she said very quietly. ‘And I’ll slice the nose off ya while you’re asleep.’

  I knew she meant it because she had a fearful temper and a sharp tongue. The granddaddy touched his old red nose and glared at her but he knew she meant what she said.

  ‘Yer a wicked woman, Moira Ryan,’ he said.

  ‘I intend to be,’ she said, taking off her shawl and hanging it behind the door. ‘I have a grand job down at the laundry and I’ll have my own money to spend as I wish.’

  ‘You’ll give your money to me,’ snarled the granddaddy.

  ‘I will in me eye,’ said the mammy. ‘I’ll feed ya and I’ll give you money for the baccy and a pint of Guinness on a Saturday night but I intend to keep the rest of it for me and my child.’

  ‘Go boil yer head,’ said the granddaddy, picking up a stick and poking at the peat in the flames.

  I could tell that the mammy was happy today, even though she was being mean to the granddaddy, so I took a deep breath and said, ‘Can I go with Colm on the milk round tomorrow please, Mammy?’

  ‘You can of course, my love,’ she said, smiling at me.

  I felt like crying because she’d called me her love. Maybe she liked me, maybe my mammy might even love me one day. I ran up to Colm’s house. He lived at the top of Paradise Alley in a big grey house. It was bigger than all the cottages and there was a yard round the back with a stable for Blue to go to sleep in. When I got there Colm and his daddy were in the stable, shovelling out the hay.

  ‘Hello, Miss Cissy,’ said Colm’s daddy, grinning at me.

  I liked Colm’s daddy. His name was Jack and he looked like Colm, with the same black hair, brown eyes and smiley face.

  ‘Have you come to help us clear out Blue’s shite?’ he said.

  I knew that shite was a bad word but I liked it. ‘Shite, shite, shite,’ I muttered under my breath. I liked the sound of it on my tongue and I giggled.

  ‘What are you so happy about?’ said Colm.

  ‘The mammy said I can come on the milk round tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Well now, we’ll have to dress Colm in his good suit and tie and his black top hat if he has a lady up in the trap with him
,’ said Colm’s daddy, winking at me.

  I laughed and ran back down the alley and into the cottage.

  ‘And who’s going to look after me?’ the granddaddy was saying as I walked through the door, ‘when you're up in the town at your grand job?’

  ‘I’ll get your breakfast and then Cissy will see to you.’

  ‘I’ll not have her waiting on me,’ he growled.

  ‘She won’t be waiting on you, she’s not your servant, but if you can keep a civil tongue in your head, she’ll bring you a cup of tea and run any errands you need. If you don’t want her help then you can get your own tea and run your own errands.’

  ‘I’m a sick man, you know I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yer not as sick as you think you are, old man. And isn’t it a miracle that your legs manage to take you to the pub but can’t seem to take you anywhere else? The choice is yours. Cissy will bring you your tea or you’ll go without, it makes no odds to me.’

  He glared at her. ‘Well, don’t expect me to talk to her.’

  ‘I’m sure she has no desire to talk to you.’

  But Mammy was wrong: I did want to talk to him. It was better than talking to meself and oh, I had so much to talk about and as the granddaddy had no wish to talk to me, he wouldn’t be answering me back.

  That night in bed I thought of the three lovely words I’d heard today: ‘shite’ and ‘my love’.

  They stayed in my head as I dropped off to sleep.

  shite, shite, shite, my love, my love, my…

  Chapter Four

  Mammy woke me very early the next morning so that I could go on the milk round with Colm. I rolled over in the little bed and lay in the warm space that she had left behind. Weeks had passed since the day I’d left the workhouse, and I still missed sleeping beside Nora but I liked sleeping next to Mammy now too. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and feel her arms around me. I’d lay there all warm and safe and listen to the noises of Paradise Alley outside the little window. I liked having a mammy, even if she was cross most of the time, because some days she would smile at me or ruffle my hair or tell me I was a good girl for sweeping the floor. I still wasn’t sure that she was really my mammy because she didn’t look like me. The mammy’s hair was very dark and so were her eyes. My hair was fair, almost white and my eyes were blue. I thought that maybe there’d been a mistake and she was someone else’s mammy. Perhaps one day a girl with dark hair and dark eyes would knock on the door and tell me to give her back her mammy. I used to think that Mrs Foley was my mammy and that I had lots of brothers and sisters.

  Sometimes me and Nora would go up to the top of the house where the poor demented souls lived. We’d climb up on a chair and look out of the window. We’d watch the people trudging up the hill and wonder if today was the day that the mammy would come to collect us. The trouble with this was that we didn’t know what our mammies looked like so we wouldn’t know if it was them that were coming anyway.

  We weren’t supposed to go up to the floor where the poor demented souls lived because Mrs Foley said you wouldn’t know what some of them were going to do next. She said it wasn’t their fault, God had just decided to make them that way.

  ‘Have they not got mammies who could take them out the strand for an ice cream?’ said Nora.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think, Nora,’ said Mrs Foley, smiling fondly at her. ‘I think they wouldn’t want to go for an ice cream even if a mammy did come to see them.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Nora.

  ‘Because they’ve been here so long, they’d be afraid to go outside.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ said Nora.

  Mrs Foley smiled at her, but it was a sad sort of a smile. ‘This is their home, Nora, and this is where they feel safe,’ she’d said.

  One day we were looking out of the window when Mrs Perks, a desperate mean woman, caught us.

  ‘Get away downstairs to your own quarters,’ she yelled. ‘You have no right to be up here.’

  ‘We were doing no harm,’ I said quietly.

  ‘We were just looking for our mammies,’ said Nora.

  Mrs Perks laughed but it wasn’t a kind laugh. ‘You have no mammies,’ she spat at us. ‘You’re a pair of scruffy little orphans. Now get away out of here.’

  Me and Nora jumped down from the chairs and ran out of the room.

  Halfway down the stairs we sat down. ‘What’s an orphan?’ said Nora.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ I’d said. ‘But I have a feeling it’s not a great thing to be.’

  ‘Will we ask Mrs Foley?’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Nora.’

  Mrs Foley sat Nora on her knee and I sat on the floor in front of her.

  ‘Now who told you that word?’ she said.

  ‘That mean old woman on the top floor,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Perks?’

  ‘That’s her,’ said Nora. ‘She said we were a pair of scruffy little orphans.’

  ‘What’s an orphan, Mrs Foley?’ I asked.

  Mrs Foley gently brushed Nora’s hair away from her eyes. ‘An orphan is someone who doesn’t have a mammy or a daddy. But sure, we all know that’s not true, don’t we? Because we have a loving Father in heaven and don’t we all have to have a mammy to be brought into this world?’

  I smiled at her. ‘So do you think she was talking a load of shite?’

  ‘Where did you hear language like that, child?’

  ‘Mr Dunne, he has a grand collection of them.’

  ‘Well, I shall be having a stern word with Mr Dunne.’

  We both kissed Mrs Foley’s soft cheek. ‘Now off you go and get some good fresh air into your lungs,’ she said.

  Nora and I decided to visit the poor little children who were buried at the top of the graveyard.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Nora, pulling at the grass and making it into little piles.

  ‘I think we’re orphans.’

  ‘That’s what I think too,’ she said.

  ‘But we’ll always have each other, Nora,’ I said, putting my arm around her thin little shoulders.

  I tried to forget about the workhouse because this was a happy day and not a sad one. I was going out with Colm on the milk round. I washed quickly because the water was freezing cold, then I got dressed. There was a curtain between the granddaddy’s bed and ours and I could hear him snoring his old head off.

  ‘Isn’t it a miracle that his conscience is so clear that he can sleep like a baby?’ said Mammy.

  After I’d had my porridge, I waited on the doorstep for Colm. There wasn’t a soul about because it was very early. The only sound was the seagulls sitting in rows on the roofs of the cottages, screeching and squawking as if they were cross with each other. Colm said they were dirty old things and not deserving of the time of day. I wouldn’t mind being a bird, it must be lovely to fly over the town and the river and never have to go to work or go to school. I could fly up the hill and visit Nora and Mrs Foley and play with Mr Dunne’s smelly dog. I might even visit the poor demented souls at the top of the house.

  As I was thinking all this, Blue trotted up and stopped outside the cottage.

  ‘Ready?’ said Colm.

  ‘I am,’ I said, smiling up at him.

  ‘You might need a shawl, it can get chilly up on the cart.’

  I went back into the cottage. ‘Colm says I need a shawl, Mammy.’

  ‘You don’t have a shawl,’ said the mammy. She walked across to the granddaddy’s chair and picked up his old blanket.

  ‘You can have this,’ she said, handing it to me.

  ‘Do I have to, Mammy?’ I said. ‘It’s desperate smelly.’

  ‘Well, it’s that or get cold.’

  ‘I think I’d rather get cold, Mammy,’ I said.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Mammy.

  Just as I was going back out the door the mammy said, ‘Have a nice time, Cissy.’

  I was smiling as Colm helped me up onto the cart. ‘I think the mammy
might be getting to like me,’ I told him.

  ‘And why wouldn’t she?’ said Colm, wrapping a blanket around my knees. ‘You’re a grand little girl, so you are.’

  Blue trotted all the way through the town, out to the beach and along beside the sea – at least I thought it was the sea. It went on and on right to the edge of the world and it was grey and green with little tips of white on the tops of the waves. ‘Is that the sea, Colm?’ I asked. ‘Or is it a river?’

  ‘It’s the sea, Cissy. Have you never seen the sea?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve seen pictures of it.’

  ‘Sure, the sea is a wondrous thing, Cissy. I’d love to be a sailor, maybe even a captain. Imagine being the captain of a grand big ship sailing across the oceans and travelling to foreign parts. Wouldn’t that be a mighty thing to do?’

  ‘Oh, it would, Colm. I’d go with you but I have to make the granddaddy’s tea. But you could tell me all about it when you came back home.’

  ‘And what would you like me to bring you back?’

  ‘What sort of things do they have in foreign parts?’

  ‘Well, I’m not altogether sure about that as I’ve never actually been to a foreign part but I’d say it would be something exotic, would that do?’

  I nodded. ‘Something exotic would do fine, Colm, and I’d be glad to have it. Do you think you could stretch to two exotic things? Because I think Nora would like one as well.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure, Cissy.’

  ‘Colm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the difference between a river and a sea?’

  ‘Now I couldn’t tell you that, Cissy, because I took no mind to me lessons when I was at school but you’ll soon be starting school yourself so I’d ask your teacher. Teachers know everything and I’d say they’ll be able to answer your question.’

  ‘Didn’t you like school then?’

  ‘The teacher told my father that the only way I could be educated would be to nail me to the chair.’

  ‘They didn’t do that, did they?’

  ‘No, I’d say they just gave up on me. School doesn’t suit everyone, Cissy, and it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t one to be sitting on a chair all day when the sun was shining outside the window and I could be riding over the hills on old Blue. I kind of regret it now though because I’m thick as mud. When you go to school, Cissy, you must mind the teacher and pay attention to your lessons. You won’t want to be ending up like meself.’