by Annie Murray
When they got outside, their wet hair slicked back over their heads, as often as not Patrick would say, ‘Let’s just go in next door for a few minutes, shall we?’
It was he who had introduced her to the library, and the hushed, brown atmosphere of the books lining shelves and the newspapers, heads bowed over desks.
‘Here now – why don’t you give this one a try?’ he’d say, on every visit, pulling out old cloth-bound copies of David Copperfield or Walter Scott or Robert Louis Stevenson. ‘These are some grand books.’ Katie read some of them, and for herself picked girls’ school stories: Queen of the Dormitory and The School by the Sea by Angela Brazil, What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge and Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott.
She discovered other worlds, and how she could travel off into a book, into a place so different from these streets, which were the only scenes she had known; places where she didn’t have to tiptoe around Mother, and where the sudden stark silence of the house when Uncle Patrick crashed into his black, slow times were lost to her. She was far away in America with the sisters Meg, Beth and Amy, and best of all Jo, who wanted to be a writer. Or she was gasping with horror as Katy fell off her swing and was confined to bed for months and months. Or laughing at the pranks of Angela Brazil’s schoolgirls.
‘You’ve always got your nose in a book,’ Vera would say, half grateful at getting some peace and half resentful that Katie’s attention was diverted away. ‘You could be helping me, not just sitting about. When do I ever have a chance to read?’
The truth was that Vera was not a reader at all. She thought reading was all right for men, but that Katie ought to be perfecting her sewing.
‘It’ll stand you in good stead for life. Look at me – I was in desperate straits when your father died. If I hadn’t been able to sew, where would we have been?’
Reluctantly Katie learned hand stitching, cross-stitch and blanket stitch, running stitch and back stitch, open seams and French seams, pin tucks and collars, buttonholes and zips. In fact her fingers were nimble and, like most things, she took to it quite easily. But she was always more than happy the moment she could escape from sewing and bury herself in a book again.
She knew, when she stopped to think about it, that most of the things she liked best she had been taught by her uncle.
Six
‘One more week,’ Amy said, through a liquorice lace she was chewing, ‘and we’re free forever! Here, d’you want some?’ She dug down and brought out a coil of liquorice, dusted with bits from her pocket, but Katie wasn’t fussy. After all, sweets were sweets.
‘Oh, yeah – ta.’ Soon she was chewing away too. Amy had sweets far more often than Katie, because of her mom working at Woolies. Because of her sticking-out teeth, she always looked rabbitty when she was eating.
‘Cept you’re not going to be free, are yer?’ Amy said pityingly. She saw the working world as a heaven of grown-up freedom after the classroom. ‘Going to the Commercial School and that. D’yer want to go – really and truly?’
Katie shrugged. ‘Dunno. Mom says it’s the right thing. I’ve gotta do summat.’
As soon as she stepped outside the house into the school world, Katie changed the way she talked and became much broader Brummie.
Amy shook her head, her ponytail swinging. ‘Stuck back in classrooms again, with teachers bossing yer – I’d hate it!’
They were walking along the Stratford Road amid the bustle of traffic, trams and cars and horses and carts. It was a hot day and the smellier for it, the fumes from the buses, sweating horses and people, and piles of manure with shiny-green flies buzzing round.
‘Shall us go to the park for a bit?’ Amy said.
‘I can’t be bothered to walk all down there,’ Katie said. ‘My feet hurt. I want to get home and get my shoes off.’
‘Oh . . .’ Amy’s face fell. ‘I don’t want to go home yet. Mom’s out – there’s only Granddad there. I mean, you can come to ours if yer want . . .’
Katie did go to Amy’s house sometimes, but today it wasn’t an inviting thought. It was a beautiful afternoon and at the back of Amy’s house there was only a little yard, which at this time of day was full of blue shade. Amy knew by now never to ask to go to Katie’s, but a plan was forming in Katie’s mind. She thought of their sunny strip of garden, she and Amy lazing on the grass with a drink of lime cordial and a biscuit. Her mother and Uncle Patrick were both at work . . . The idea grew. She’d never thought of defying her mother before. Fear of her ran too deep, and she and Amy usually went to the park or said their goodbyes and went home after school. But there was already an end-of-term feeling.
‘Why don’t you come to ours instead?’ she blurted out, before she could change her mind.
Amy stared at her. ‘What – your house? I thought you weren’t allowed?’
‘I ain’t – but just for once, who’s gonna know?’
‘You sure your mom won’t be there?’
‘Nah – she’s at work.’
‘All right then.’ Amy linked her arm through Katie’s. ‘Come on – skip with me.’
‘No!’ Katie moaned. ‘My foot hurts!’
Giggling, they approached the house. There was no warning. Everything seemed quiet and just like normal from the outside.
Katie fumbled with the key in the lock at the front and the two of them got the titters again.
‘Sshhh!’ Katie said urgently.
‘Hurry up,’ Amy said, crossing her legs. ‘I don’t half need the lav.’
Both giggling, they burst into the hall. Then froze.
Through the open door of the front room, Katie saw a large, pink-faced young man sitting in the chair opposite the door. It took her another second to realize that he was a policeman. He had taken his helmet off and was holding it on his lap, as if for reassurance.
‘Katherine?’ Her mother’s voice came from somewhere else in the room.
Frantic, Katie turned to Amy and mouthed, ‘Go home! Quick!’
Amy didn’t need telling twice and shot back out through the front door.
‘Yes?’ Wondering if her mother had heard Amy, Katie moved into the front-room doorway, but soon forgot all about that. There was even more of a shock. The sun was shining brightly through the nets onto two figures sitting by the window, who were thrown into silhouette. One was her mother and the other she recognized, squinting, as Father Daly, the assistant parish priest. She couldn’t see either of their faces properly, but the atmosphere in the room was very solemn.
Before she could speak, Vera O’Neill said, ‘Go up to your room, dear. I’ll come to you shortly.’
Katie couldn’t think what to do. She sat on her bed, tracing the lines of the pink candlewick with her finger. Nothing made sense. Why was that policeman in the house, and the parish priest? Was it Uncle Patrick? Had they come to arrest him? What could he have done?
From downstairs came the sound of them talking quietly, just the men’s voices. Eventually she heard movements, voices in the hall, the front door closing. This was followed by a silence so long that Katie wondered if her mother had gone with them. Then at last she heard her mother slowly climbing the stairs.
‘Katie?’ Her voice sounded strangely weak, as if she’d had the air knocked out of her, but Katie could tell nothing from her face. Vera came and sat beside her on the bed, taking very deep breaths, seeming unable to speak. Katie’s insides were knotted tight. She was filled with a sense of utter dread.
‘Why were they here?’ she whispered.
Her mother suddenly put her hands over her face. ‘Oh my Lord. Oh God in heaven!’ She began to shake.
After a moment she yanked her hands down to her lap, forcing them to be still and swallowing hard, determined not to give way to her emotion. The words jolted out of her.
‘Prepare yourself for a shock. It’s your uncle. They . . . I was at work . . . He . . . The police came . . . He’s been found – in the canal. Last night, when he didn’t come home – well, it was on
e of those nights. There’ve been so many, when he just goes off, walks himself into exhaustion.’ She stared in a haunted way towards the window. ‘I didn’t think . . . He wasn’t – I mean, so many times, when he’s been—’
Abruptly she sat up, gathering herself and turning to Katie, her eyes full of a terrible intensity. She put her hands on Katie’s shoulders, gripping painfully hard.
‘It was an accident, that’s what it was. A tragic accident that no one could have prevented. D’you understand, Katie? No one else knows how he went about at night, and no one needs to. We don’t know anything, except that he set out full of life, and now he’s gone.’
Katie burst into tears. ‘What d’you mean, he’s gone? Did he jump in the canal?’
‘No!’ her mother cried furiously, shaking her.
‘Ow! Mom! Don’t – you’re hurting.’
‘Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you even think it, d’you hear? It was an accident. That’s all.’
Katie was sobbing. ‘Is Uncle Patrick dead? Isn’t he coming back?’
Her mother stopped shaking her and let go, as if she had gone limp.
‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘He’s not coming back.’
The coffin was moved into the house the next day, while Katie was at school.
‘What happened?’ Amy said as soon as she got there. ‘Why was there a policeman at your house?’
‘It’s my uncle,’ Katie said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He’s died in an accident.’ All day she was close to tears.
‘I think you’d better come in and pay your respects,’ Vera said when Katie came home. She seemed to be holding herself in very tight. ‘Come along now – let’s get it over with.’
It was strange and terrible seeing the coffin taking up most of the front room. There was a candle burning on the side table, in front of the wedding portrait. But the lid of the coffin was already nailed down. Vera had laid a string of rosary beads on the top, and a small posy of flowers.
‘They said they thought it better that we didn’t see him,’ Vera explained. ‘What with him drowning. He’ll be changed. But you can say goodbye to him anyway.’
Katie stood by the long box with its brass handles. She reached out a finger and ran it along the smooth wood. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with Uncle Patrick. She wondered what it meant, him being changed, and the thought made her uneasy. Then she thought about him when he was alive, and that made her feel very sad. Soon she turned to go out. She tried to forget that the coffin was there, but she kept seeing it in her mind.
That evening, there was a knock at the door. Vera opened it to find Patrick’s employers, the Lawler brothers.
‘We’ve heard the news,’ Seamus Lawler said, taking off his cap. Johnny Lawler followed his example. ‘We’ve come to pay our respects.’
‘You’d better come in,’ Vera said quickly. To Katie’s surprise, she seemed glad to see them. There was no one else to share their loss, to come and see them, apart from Enid Thomas.
The men went into the front room, there was a pause, and then they came through to the back. They were both dark-haired men with stubbly faces that always seemed cast in shadow, not helped by being constantly dusted with coal.
‘Well,’ Seamus said awkwardly. He usually did the talking. ‘We’ll be on our way then, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Vera offered.
‘Oh well, no – but thanks,’ he said. ‘We’ll be going.’ There was a pause. ‘Will you be having a wake for him?’
Vera looked confused, anguished. She didn’t know what to do, was too English, not instinctively Catholic and too much in shock. ‘Well, I don’t know – I hadn’t thought.’
‘Well, you know, we could put on a bit of a wake for him, Mrs O’Neill. If you want us to.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’d . . .’ She struggled to control herself. ‘I’d be most grateful.’
‘Right then – that’s settled.’
There was a Mass at the English Martyrs parish. It was one of the very few times Katie could remember seeing her mother at Mass, though Patrick had told her that Vera had converted to marry his brother, and had attended Mass devoutly when he was alive.
‘I think she lost her faith when he died,’ Patrick said once. ‘It’s never easy, that sort of thing, losing someone so young.’
She would not have brought Katie up as a Catholic – it was Patrick who had done that, as best he could, talking her through her catechism and making sure she made her First Holy Communion in a white dress.
Father Daly said Mass for Patrick O’Neill, as he had been the priest who knew him best. He said some kind words about him, about his work as a Brother, his faithfulness to the parish. His death was treated compassionately, in no other way than as an accident.
Standing in the dark church and seeing his coffin up near the altar, now looking small, though it had looked quite big in their front room, started to bring home to Katie that he was never coming back again. All the kind things Patrick had done for her passed through her mind: the way he had been there steadily through her life, like a father although he wasn’t one; the way he had encouraged her at school, introducing her to the library and the world of books; the swimming. She thought she might burst with grief as the coffin was carried in slow procession from the church. She would miss her kind, tormented uncle. She knew, more clearly in those moments than she had ever known before, that his life had been a constant battle with suffering, which he had borne with a quiet, heroic bravery; and she knew instinctively that that day, for no reason they would ever fathom, it had become too much for him. There had been no accident; he had lost the battle. The tears ran down her cheeks and, as she looked up at her mother, she saw that her face was wet as well, with grief for a man whom she had not loved as a husband, but who had won her gratitude and an odd kind of respect.
Seven
1942
‘Well, I might have a job for you,’ the lady in the Labour Exchange said. She had a miserable, whining voice and seemed to begrudge handing out jobs, as if they were her personal property. ‘There’s a position for a shorthand typist . . .’ She eyed Katie over her horn-rimmed spectacles, then peered down at Katie’s references. ‘They’re probably looking for someone with more experience, but,’ she added dismally, ‘you look as if you might stand a chance.’
She told Katie that the firm off Bradford Street, which made carburettors, urgently needed a secretary for one of their quite-senior staff.
‘Shall I tell them you’re interested? They’re offering four pounds a week.’
‘Yes, please!’ Katie said.
She left the office daunted, but excited. Four pounds! That was a hell of a step up from her present wage of fourteen and six in the typing pool. And to think she started as a filing clerk only five years ago on nine shillings! But she was bright and good at her work: she knew she stood out. Serck Radiators, where she was working now, would give her good references, and her looks didn’t do her any harm, either.
As usual, she was very smartly dressed. Katie had inherited her mother’s elegance along with her father’s dark looks. Ann and Pat, friends with whom she’d shared the two years of evening classes – shorthand, typing and bookkeeping – at the Commercial School in Sparkhill, always said she looked dressed fit to kill. And thanks to Vera’s sewing lessons, Katie could make almost anything. She browsed round the Rag Market for second-hand clothes made of nice materials and remade them into garments to fit her.
‘I wish I could sew like you and your mom,’ Ann would grumble, pulling her badly fitting skirt down as it ruckled up over her plump hips. ‘I always look like a bag of muck tied up in the middle, compared with you!’
Today Katie was wearing a well-tailored suit in an attractive navy twill that Vera had made for her before the war. It always ironed up nicely and looked good as new, and under the jacket she wore a cream blouse with a Peter Pan collar and small pearl buttons. She had had her hair cut
recently, level with her shoulders, which brought out its natural wave, and she wore it fashionably rolled and pinned back from her face at the front and sides. Her face had matured and filled out a little; she looked a little older than her years and had turned into a beauty, with her dark-haired Irish looks needing no make-up to improve them. Even the woman at the Labour Exchange looked at her with reluctant admiration.
She made her way across to Bradford Street and climbed the hill, pleased to see the imposing, blackened red-brick frontage of St Anne’s Church up on the right. The sight of it comforted her. She still went to Mass quite regularly. She had missed her uncle such a lot after he died, and still there was an ache in her heart whenever she thought of him. Going to Mass seemed to bring her closer to both him and her father. She had a Mass said for each of them every year, though she didn’t tell her mother about that. In fact, Vera was so nervy these days that Katie didn’t tell her about very much.
A few minutes later she was looking up at an imposing factory building with a row of arched windows on the second floor, below which ran a white banner on which was painted in dark-blue letters: ARTHUR COLLINGE.
Oh well, she thought. Here goes.
‘Well?’ Vera asked when she got home.
‘I’ve got it – a new job at Collinge’s! Shorthand typist for a Mr Graham!’
She saw her mother’s face relax. ‘Who’s Mr Graham?’
‘He’s the head of the something-or-other . . . Process Department, that was it. I could hardly take it all in. I haven’t met him yet – it was just the Labour Manager that I saw, who does all your cards and everything. Shall I put the kettle on?’ she offered. ‘I’m dying for a cuppa.’
