A Mother's Duty

by June Francis

  ‘Do we phone the police?’ said Teddy.

  Mick looked at Hannah. ‘Was Jimmy here?’

  She nodded. ‘I thinks we should tie him up and wait and see what thy ma says when she comes back,’ she said. Then she carried on telling her tale which had been interrupted.

  Kitty was at that moment paying attention to what Malcolm Galloway had to say. She’d told him that Jimmy had been playing football and that was how he had come by his injuries and she was full up and couldn’t put him up herself. Husband and wife had accepted her story without demur. ‘His collarbone’s dislocated,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ve had a go at trying to manipulate it back but he’s in too much pain, so I’ve given him something to make him sleep. He wants to see you before he goes off, Kitty, so spare a minute.’ He smiled at her.

  Kitty thanked him and hurried upstairs to find Jimmy in bed, looking like he had been dealt a second knockout blow. Annie slipped out of the room as she went in.

  ‘Annie’s just been telling me about your husband and baby,’ blurted out Jimmy as soon as Kitty entered. ‘You didn’t waste any time.’

  She stared at him coolly. After all she had done for him his remark was more than she could take. ‘He wanted to protect me from Charley, which was more than you did! Isn’t it time you stopped thinking of yourself and thought about others? Annie for instance! It was your fault Charley found us and raped her. She was saving herself for you and what did she end up with? Nothing!’ Before he could say anything she left the room.

  Kitty found Annie downstairs and, after thanking Nancy and Malcolm again for their help, the cousins left. Kitty longed for her bed with John in it. The last thing she expected to find was Charley on her kitchen floor with Mick and Teddy in attendance.

  A bright-eyed Hannah was sitting on a chair, drinking a cup of cocoa and regaling the boys with the fate that waited Charley after he’d met the hangman. Immediately Kitty asked Annie to get the older woman to bed and to keep her quiet. For a moment she did not think Annie had heard her because her cousin was staring down at Charley as if she had seen her horse pass the winning post at Aintree. Then she turned with a huge grin on her face and went out with her arm linked through Hannah’s.

  After they had gone, Mick, who with Teddy’s help had tied the still unconscious Charley up in so many knots with the clothesline that he was trussed up like a Christmas turkey, asked, ‘Do we get the police?’

  Kitty did not bother to think about it before shaking her head. ‘He’ll tell them about Jimmy and they’ll hang around here, hoping he’ll turn up. We don’t want that. It won’t do our reputation any good and it won’t do Jimmy any good. We’ve got to get rid of Charley.’ Her mouth set determinedly.

  Mick and Teddy looked at her, apprehension written clearly on their faces. ‘You don’t mean—’

  ‘What?’ She laughed. ‘Not the river, boys. The basement until John comes home. It won’t be easy getting him down there – we’ll have to drag him into the yard and take him down the back area steps, but …’

  Their faces brightened. ‘We’ll manage. You go to bed, Ma. We’ll wake you if anything else happens.’

  She nodded, glad to leave them to it, and crept upstairs, hoping there would be no more disturbances that night.

  Kitty woke to broad daylight and John sitting on the side of the bed. She sat up and clutched him. ‘When did you get back? Do you know Myrtle’s been killed and that Charley’s in the basement?’

  ‘Not anymore he isn’t,’ he said, pressing his lips against her hair and hugging her. ‘It seems I was where the excitement wasn’t at. I should have stayed here instead of rushing off. Still we’ve got rid of Charley.’

  ‘What? Where is he?’ she said, startled.

  ‘On a ship heading for China a bit worse for wear.’

  She could hardly take it in and blinked at him. ‘Why China? And hell!’ she exclaimed, catching sight of the clock. ‘What about the guests’ breakfasts? I must have slept through the alarm.’

  John smiled. ‘Relax. All seen to. As for China there’s a lot of sea between here and there if he doesn’t behave himself. We couldn’t have him shooting his mouth off about Jimmy and his connection with you and Annie and this hotel.’

  She stared at him. ‘Do you know about Jimmy?’

  ‘Naturally. He’s gone too.’ He said the words very casually.

  Kitty was not deceived by his tone. She remembered that first time she had mentioned Jimmy to him and how he had spoken as if he suspected there was something between them. ‘You couldn’t have done so much already. Where’s he gone?’

  He kissed her. ‘It’s surprising how much you can do if you don’t go to bed and you’ve got the means. He’s on his way to Ireland on one of Green’s ships. Relax.’

  She tried to do as he said but it was not easy. Especially when the police arrived just after lunch asking if she had seen anything of a Jimmy Ryan who had once worked for her. She answered in the negative and so did everyone else and eventually, after a few days, the police went away.

  The Myrtle Drury murder was a five-day wonder – when no one was arrested for the killing, it was pushed to the back of people’s minds.

  Kitty and Annie heard nothing from Jimmy until Christmas, when cards arrived in an unknown hand. He was living in County Cork with his uncles and an aunt who was a schoolteacher. She had taken it upon herself to teach him to read and write.

  Kitty wrote a brief friendly letter back and from then on stuck to cards on his birthday and at Christmas. Annie, though, sent a monthly letter telling him all the news. She told of Mick working in the Custom House and of the family’s trip to Scotland the following year having to be cancelled because Jack and Ben caught the mumps, of Nancy Galloway having a baby boy and of the rumours that all Myrtle Drury’s property and money had gone to a cousin in Manchester. Everyone said he was a much nicer person than she had ever been, and he had a nice homely wife.

  Annie began to receive regular letters from Jimmy and after a while she had a holiday in Ireland. She came home full of dreams and plans and asked for a raise. There was something she was saving up for which she was very mysterious about.

  ‘We’re going to lose her,’ said Kitty over breakfast the morning the newspapers were telling of German planes bombing Guernica in Spain.

  Sure enough, a few months later Jimmy proposed marriage, and in the spring of 1938 Kitty and the whole family took a ship to Ireland to see the best worker she had ever had become Mrs Jimmy Ryan, owner of the Arcadia boarding house in the town of Kinsale on the west coast of Ireland, bought with money lent to them by the Irish great-uncles.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘Thy ma’ll catch thee a clout if thee don’t stop doing that,’ said Hannah, resting a hand on the area railings.

  Ben, arched over his half-brother’s back, flashed her one of his sweetest smiles. Despite his twelve years he still possessed that charm which could soften the hardest of hearts. ‘Ma won’t mind and it’s keeping Jack out of her hair.’

  ‘Let’s go, Benny! Let’s go,’ demanded his half-brother, bouncing up and down on the saddle.

  ‘Thou just make sure thee don’t let him crash, or the big fella will skin thee alive,’ said Hannah.

  Ben eased his grip on the brakes from his position on the back crossbar but jammed them on again when he heard his name being called. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Nancy crossing the road.

  ‘Is your Pops in?’ she called, waving an envelope. ‘I’ve a letter for him.’

  ‘Yep! Go straight in.’ Ben released the brakes and the tricycle coasted down the Mount.

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ shouted Nancy, but the boys did not appear to hear.

  ‘Thee’s talking to thyself, missus,’ said Hannah. ‘Lads’ll take no notice until they have an accident and even then some are daft enough to do the same thing over again. Thou’s right to keep thy boy away from them.’ There was a dry inflection in her voice.

  Nancy flushed. ‘It�
�s not because I fear their influence. It’s just that Alastair’s too young to play with Jack.’ She wondered why she was making excuses to this scraggy old maid and brushing past her went into the lobby where she found Kitty wielding a heavy vacuum cleaner.

  ‘Shouldn’t the maid be doing that?’ shouted Nancy.

  ‘What?’ Kitty switched off the machine and looked at her.

  ‘I said shouldn’t one of the maids be doing that?’

  ‘Hannah doesn’t like machinery and I haven’t any outside help today. Cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be nice. Where’s John?’

  ‘Upstairs putting up a shelf. Do you want him?’

  ‘I’ve a letter for him from Brighton,’ said Nancy solemnly.

  Kitty was amused. Since Nancy had become a mother she possessed an air of self-importance. ‘Go up. He’s on the first floor.’

  She went into the kitchen wondering why John’s sister was writing to him. Perhaps the news last week that Germany had invaded Austria had made her want to heal the breach between them? Fear of war made some people act differently. Poland and Czechoslovakia had rushed troops to their borders, fearing invasion, and the British and French governments had both spoken about German actions but so far they had done nothing. Nobody wanted another war but as John said, ‘Give this fella Hitler an inch and he’ll take a mile.’ She was living in fear that at any moment the situation would escalate into a full-blown war and Mick and Teddy would have to fight. She busied herself, trying not to think of the horrors which might be in store for them if war came.

  There was a sound at the door and Nancy and John entered. ‘What’s up?’ Kitty pushed a mug across the table towards her husband who looked stunned.

  ‘Emily’s dead.’

  ‘Dead and buried!’ Nancy sounded disgruntled. ‘Remember me telling you about that girl Jeannie? Apparently she arranged the funeral and didn’t think to ask us if we wanted to go—’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said John, lifting his head. ‘She says in her letter she thought it a bit much expecting us to make the long journey in the bad weather.’

  ‘That sounds sensible to me. That it then?’ said Kitty.

  There was a pause and John’s eyes met hers across the table. She knew then there was more but he did not want to mention it in front of Nancy. ‘Nothing important,’ he said. ‘She mentioned some family photographs and letters.’

  She nodded. ‘They’ll be nice to have.’

  He agreed and there was a silence. Kitty wondered what it was he did not want to say in front of his niece.

  Nancy cleared her throat. ‘I’ve something to tell you.’

  They both looked at her expectantly and saw that she was upset. ‘We’ll be leaving you, John and Kitty dears. Malcolm doesn’t like the way things are going in Europe and if there’s going to be air raids, like some are saying in the newspapers, then he wants Alastair out of it. We’re going to Canada.’

  Kitty was dumbfounded. ‘I thought you were here for life!’

  John was silent and Nancy reached out to both of them and covered their hands. ‘I can see it’s come as a real shock to you. I’m going to miss you both terribly – and the boys, of course. You’ve all come to mean so much to me.’

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ said Kitty, and she meant it. Nancy could be a bit of a fusspot but it had been good for John to have someone of his own family close by, and Malcolm being married to Nancy had strengthened the men’s friendship.

  John said in a vague tone, ‘There mightn’t be a war, you know.’

  ‘I hope there isn’t,’ said Nancy in a shaky voice. ‘But the decision’s made and our passage booked. All that’s left to be done is the awful job of deciding what to take and what not to take. And of course, I’ll have to tell Celia she’s out of a job.’

  Kitty responded immediately. ‘Send her here. I’m sure I can make good use of her.’

  Nancy smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I’m sorry for the girl to tell you the truth. That mother of hers leads her a terrible life and now she’s not well she’s even more demanding. Celia had to stop sleeping in, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Kitty with a sigh. ‘But Celia’s a good girl and has a strong sense of duty. She would do what’s right by her mother.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Nancy, getting to her feet and giving John a glance. ‘I’ll be going then but I’ll see you again before we leave. Bye, John.’

  ‘Bye, Nance!’ He spoke in a tone of voice which told the listener he was not paying attention.

  Kitty felt like giving him a poke because she could see Nancy was hurt. Instead she saw Nancy to the door, saying in a soothing voice that the news of his sister’s death had shocked him more than she would have believed. Nancy agreed.

  Kitty returned to the kitchen and sat next to her husband. ‘Well, what is it?’

  He looked at her from eyes which appeared kind of shell-shocked. ‘She wants to come here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jeannie.’ He eased his throat. ‘You’re not going to believe this, Kit. I can hardly believe it myself, but she says she’s my daughter.’

  Kitty stared at him, unable to speak for several seconds. ‘But your daughter’s dead! Unless you had another? No!’ Kitty dismissed that thought immediately. He wouldn’t have. Her head was suddenly full of bubbling thoughts.

  ‘She says Margaret’s mother lied to her,’ he said earnestly. ‘Told her I’d been killed in the war.’

  ‘But that’s cruel!’ said Kitty.

  ‘You’re forgetting she blamed me for Margaret’s death.’ There was a bitter note in his voice.

  Kitty thought about that, imagined the mother with her only child dead and a living baby in her arms. Oh, she could easily picture the scene and feel the anguish of that mother. ‘What do you want to do?’ she said. ‘Do you want to see her?’

  He stared at her. ‘A girl, Kit. A daughter!’ His voice was unsteady. ‘What do you think?’

  She met his eyes and knew what he was thinking and she felt a stir of pleasurable excitement before a blast of sensible thinking blew it away. ‘We don’t know her! We don’t know if she’ll fit in! She mightn’t like us.’

  He looked taken aback. ‘Why shouldn’t she like us? Or do you think it’s me she won’t like? After all I didn’t stick round long enough to visit her grave. If I had then I’d have known she wasn’t dead and I’d have been around for her.’

  And your life would have been completely different, thought Kitty. We’d have never met. She covered his hand with hers. ‘I didn’t mean she wouldn’t like you. You’re kind, you’re good-looking, you’re strong,’ she said, boosting his ego. ‘And you weren’t to blame. Why shouldn’t she like you? Does she know her granny lied to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. No, she can’t. Who’d have told her?’

  They were both silent a moment. Then Kitty said, ‘How did she find out you were her father and that you were still alive?’

  ‘By accident. A photograph she found in Emily’s bedroom when she was clearing things out. It was a wedding photograph of Margaret and me.’ He squeezed Kitty’s hand tightly. ‘Jeannie had never seen a photograph of me but she had one of her mother as a bride on her own. She had no idea her father was Emily’s brother but my sister had written the information and the date of the wedding on the back of the photograph. Jeannie says in her letter she can scarcely believe it. Couldn’t understand why her grandmother should lie to her. That she wants to meet me. Do I say come?’

  There was a silence and Kitty knew this was a crucial moment in their lives. What if Jeannie proved a disappointment to that ideal they both carried in their heads? They knew so little about her, but then wasn’t the best way of finding out more about her to meet her? ‘Tell her to come,’ said Kitty and leaning forward she kissed his cheek. ‘And don’t look so worried. I’m sure everything will be fine.’

  John nodded but did not look convinced. ‘Will you tell the boys?’

  S
he hesitated, then made a decision. ‘Let’s meet her first. After all she might not want to stay.’

  So it was settled. John wrote to the girl claiming to be his daughter and almost by return of post he received an answer saying she would be arriving Saturday.

  They looked at each other. It was the start of the busiest week of their year.

  ‘We have to squeeze her in somewhere,’ said John, running a hand over hair which showed a few silver threads.

  ‘What about the box room?’ said Kitty.

  ‘It’s a mess and there’s no bed.’ He frowned.

  ‘It’s the best I can do,’ she said firmly. ‘She can have Jack’s new one. He can squeeze in with Ben.’

  ‘OK. I’ll sort it out,’ he muttered and walked out of the kitchen before Kitty could say anything else.

  If she had not known already how worked up he was about Jeannie’s coming, she would have realised it the next day. His nightmares returned, which told Kitty just how much he was worried about the past and what Jeannie would think of him. Kitty could only hope that once Jeannie arrived he would be able to find some peace of mind.

  On Saturday morning they made an early dash to the market for food and John surprised her by buying an armful of flowers from one of the shawlies outside St John’s market. ‘I thought it’d be nice if you could put some in Jeannie’s room,’ he said.

  Strangely she was reminded of that time he had given her the white hyacinth and she felt a momentary pang of jealousy. ‘I’ll fit it in somehow,’ she murmured, thinking how she was already up to her eyes in work.

  Not for the first time she wished she had not been so magnanimous in allowing Mick and Teddy to choose the jobs they wanted. But at least Ben was old enough to help her now and he was good with Jack as well. Maybe in a year or two, if there wasn’t a war, they would be able to afford to put hot and cold running water in some of the bedrooms and that would be less work.

  It was three o’clock when John told her he was off to meet Jeannie’s train. They had decided earlier it would be best if just he and Jack went to this first meeting. ‘How do I look?’ he said.