Irish Chain

by Barbara Haworth-Attard

  “It’s cold. Let’s go,” Aunt Ida urged.

  We walked through the cemetery, stopping briefly at the new graves where we’d buried Granny and Grandpa, and Aunt Helen the day before. Heads lowered against the wind, we picked our way among scores of yawning dark holes in the snow-covered ground. Black and white. That is what my world had become.

  As we made our way back to Duncan’s house, a commotion at the bakery across the street from us caught our attention. A police wagon and a car stood, doors open, as police officers and soldiers swarmed around the front of the shop.

  “That’s Martha Schultz’s place,” I told Aunt Ida.

  Two men dragged a third between them out the door of the business. Martha and her mother followed and pulled at the uniformed men from behind. Martha’s mother wailed.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Wait here,” Uncle James said. He crossed the street to speak to a soldier. After a moment he returned.

  “They’re arresting all the Germans in the city until they know the exact cause of the explosion,” he explained.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Aunt Ida said.

  “People are upset. They don’t feel safe,” Uncle James explained. “The police thought they’d feel better if they put the Germans under lock and key for a while.”

  “It’s what my father would have done,” Catherine said unexpectedly. She straightened her doll’s coat and smoothed its hair.

  “Martha’s family aren’t spies,” I said.

  The door to the police wagon slammed shut, and the men climbed into their various vehicles and left. Martha’s mother threw her apron over her head and fled into the bakery. Martha stood staring down the now empty street.

  “Go speak to your friend,” Aunt Ida suggested.

  Reluctantly, I crossed the street to Martha. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to her. She had picked the other girls as friends over me at school, and had deserted me again after the explosion.

  Face white with shock, she watched me come. “They took Papa, Rose,” she said. “They arrested him.” She began to cry.

  Suddenly, it didn’t matter to me what she’d done. It seemed so long ago.

  “I’m sorry, Martha. They’ll let him go soon. My aunt Ida says it wasn’t a German invasion and people will soon realize that—”

  “Martha! Martha! Come in. Don’t stand in the street for the neighbours to see,” her mother called from inside the bakery.

  “Mama is terribly embarrassed,” Martha said. “We were getting the bakery ready to open again, when they took Papa. Now I don’t know what we will do.” She looked across the street to where Aunt Ida and Uncle James waited for me. The others had gone ahead. “You buried your mama today. I heard you lost many of your family. I’m so sorry for your sadness,” Martha said, her accent thick with distress. She took my hand. “We are both sad today.”

  I gave her a quick hug, and rejoined Aunt Ida and Uncle James.

  “Rose, do you know Catherine’s father’s name?” Aunt Ida asked as we continued down the street.

  I shook my head. “She’s bragged about him often enough, but she never mentioned his name. I think he’s a general in the army, from what she says.”

  Uncle James raised his eyebrows. “A general? Well, he shouldn’t be hard to track down, then.”

  Mr. MacDonald greeted us at the door. “I have news for you. A friend of mine knows of a house to rent. Just half of it, mind you—but still, it’s yours if you want it. You can move in right away.”

  “You make it sound like we want them to leave,” Duncan’s mother scolded. She flapped a dishrag at her husband.

  He looked sheepish. “No. No,” he protested. “James knows I don’t mean it like that.”

  “We’ll be delighted to have our own place,” Uncle James assured them both. “You’ve been very kind taking care of Ida and the children, but we have to start again sometime and it might as well be now. I’ll go to the relief office and see about some household supplies, furniture, and, of course . . .” He stopped.

  Money, I thought. Only money made adults stop speaking that abruptly. We would need money for rent and to buy food and clothes. Uncle James didn’t have a job right now, and he had all our mouths to feed. I worried again that he and Aunt Ida might have to put us in an orphanage.

  “Perhaps you should come too, Ida. You know what you need to set up a household more than I do,” he suggested.

  “I’ll help you, Aunt Ida,” Mary said.

  “I’ll get the wagon to help move things,” Duncan offered. “If you don’t need me for milk deliveries, that is, Dad,” he added hastily.

  His father shook his head. “Hopefully, next week we can get back to business as usual. People need milk even if their houses are falling down around their ears.”

  Aunt Ida pulled on her gloves. “Catherine. What is your father’s name? We want to make inquiries. Let him know what’s happened. He probably has already contacted the relief office looking for you. He must be worried sick. I should have thought of it before.”

  Catherine laid her doll on the table and began to strip off its coat. “Are you cold, Dolly?”

  “Catherine?” Aunt Ida said.

  We all stared, as Catherine calmly undressed her doll. Aunt Ida placed her hands on Catherine’s shoulders and swung her around. “What’s your father’s name?”

  Catherine bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  She squirmed, but Aunt Ida held her tight. “I never knew who my father was,” she said in a rush. “It was just Mother and me for a while in Toronto. Then she got ill and died, and I came here to live with Grandmother.”

  “But you said he was a general in the army,” I exclaimed. “What about all those presents he sent you from Paris?”

  Catherine lowered her head. “I just made up those things,” she mumbled. “Grandmother bought me the dresses.”

  “You lied!”

  “I just wanted you all to like me at school,” Catherine explained. She fiddled with the doll’s dress. “You wouldn’t like me if you knew I didn’t have a father.”

  Wanted us to like her? She’d bossed everyone in the play yard. She’d made my life miserable, and it had all been a lie! I stalked outside. Patrick was shovelling a path to the stables for Mr. MacDonald. I went up to him.

  “She lied,” I said.

  “Who lied?” Patrick asked.

  “Catherine. Her father isn’t a general in the army. She doesn’t even know who he is,” I stated flatly.

  “Why she’d do that?” He leaned on his shovel.

  “She says the girls at school wouldn’t have liked her if they knew the truth.”

  “She’s probably right.” Patrick went on with his work.

  I stared at him. “Patrick, do you have friends at school?”

  “Sure.”

  “Name them.”

  “Well, Ernest—”

  “He’s your cousin. He has to be friends with you,” I interrupted.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Patrick argued.

  “He’s family, not a friend,” I pointed out.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He banged the shovel on a piece of ice, breaking it. “I have lots of friends. You’re just mad because you don’t have any friends at all.”

  “I do, too,” I protested.

  “You’re too homely and dumb to have friends.”

  “You take that back,” I yelled. We couldn’t seem to say two words to each other without arguing.

  Aunt Ida and Uncle James came out with Catherine between them. She carried a small bag in one hand, the doll in the other. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Rose. Patrick. Please come here,” Aunt Ida called. “We’re going to take Catherine with us to the relief office. There will have to be a search for any living family members. They’ll take care of her there,” Aunt Ida said.

  Put her in an orphanage is what she meant.

  “
But I want to stay with Rose,” Catherine wailed.

  “I am sorry, dear, but we don’t have the money or space to take care of you. There’s probably someone looking for you right now. You’ll be well cared for.”

  Duncan pulled up with the wagon, Mary seated beside him.

  I stared at Catherine for a long time. I’d take the old Catherine over this strange new one any day. She looked so lost. I put a hand on her arm. “I’ll come visit you,” I told her. “As soon as you’re settled, let me know and I’ll visit you.”

  Uncle James helped Catherine into the wagon.

  “It’s for the best,” Aunt Ida assured me. “She doesn’t seem too well. She’ll get some help and then—Well, she’s very pretty. I imagine some nice family will take her in.”

  She climbed up on the wagon seat beside Mary. “Please pack up our belongings as much as you can, Rose, while we’re gone. Your uncle wants to move today.”

  I nodded.

  As the wagon left the yard, I rounded on Patrick. “We can’t ever fight again,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Do you want to be sent away like Catherine? Aunt Ida and Uncle James might not be able to take care of all of us. And if they can’t, we could end up in an orphanage.” And with my limp red hair and freckles, there would be no nice family willing to take me in.

  Patrick’s eyes widened. “They wouldn’t do that. We’re family.”

  “There’s you and me, Mary, and Ernest and Winnie when they come out of the hospital. And Bertie,” I added defiantly. “That’s a lot of people for Aunt Ida and Uncle James to take care of. And what if they want their own family someday? We might be in the way.”

  “But I don’t want to go to an orphanage,” Patrick said.

  “So we have to be good and help out a lot. And don’t eat so much. And no calling me dumb.” I put that in for good measure.

  “You can’t call me fat,” Patrick said.

  Reluctantly, I nodded my agreement. I’d do anything to stay with Aunt Ida and Uncle James. Even be nice to Patrick. It also meant guarding my secret day and night. They would send me away for sure if they knew I’d caused the explosion.

  Chapter 17

  A bang and a muffled oath jerked me from sleep. I always woke the same way these days—with a jolt and a pounding heart. In the dim morning light of our bedroom, I saw Mary move about. We rented two rooms in the upper half of a house and shared the kitchen downstairs with the people in the bottom half. But as Aunt Ida repeated many times, it was a roof over our heads. She said that so many times, I knew she was trying to convince herself. A bride should have a nice home with her husband, I thought, not be stuck in two rooms with someone else’s children. I only hoped she didn’t see it that way.

  Mary bumped into my bed again. “Drat it,” she muttered.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Did I wake you? I’m sorry,” she said. “But since you’re awake . . .” She swept back the curtains. “Now I can at least see. I’m going to be black and blue from stumbling around this room. It’s so different from our other bedroom. I guess I’ll get used to it in time.”

  She might—but I’d never get used to this new bedroom, to half my family gone. I burrowed beneath the blankets and watched as Mary buttoned her skirt—a skirt that came from the relief office, like my bed, and the blankets, and the curtains on the windows. Mary bent to search beneath the bed.

  “Why are you dressed up? Are you going back to the bank?” I asked. Mary had not been to work since the explosion.

  “No,” she said. “Ah! Here it is.” She held up a shoe triumphantly, then sat on the bed to put it on. “I’m going to the relief office. I thought I’d volunteer my clerical skills. I’m sure they could use all the help they can get.”

  “What about the bank?”

  “I can’t go back there, Rose. I feel a fool. Such silly hopes for Horace. I’m afraid I became quite uppity with the other girls there. I couldn’t face them.” She gave a half laugh. “Not that it matters. I doubt I have a position there anymore. I said some pretty awful things to Horace the day of the explosion, and then I stormed out. I was just a good-time girl to him, Rose. No one special. Certainly no one he would marry. Mam knew that, but I was so headstrong.” She stood. “So that’s the end of my dreams,” she said briskly.

  “Mam didn’t mind you having dreams,” I told her. “She and Da were proud of you.”

  Mary sat back down and put her hand over mine. “Thank you, Rose. So, do you have any dreams?”

  I thought about that one. I didn’t think so. When every minute of the day was filled with worry and terror of school, books, Sister Frances and the other girls, there wasn’t much time left for dreams. Except that once I had thought I might be a teacher. I guess that was a dream, even though it didn’t last long.

  “Not really,” I finally said.

  “It’s a hard time to dream,” Mary said softly. “Anyway, I’m off to a new start.” She stood and smoothed down her skirt. “I need to be busy and I need to help someone else. It takes a person out of themselves. I only wish I could bring in a bit of money for Aunt Ida and Uncle James. I’ll keep a lookout for another paying position.”

  I wanted to ask her if she thought we’d be sent to an orphanage, then realized that Mary was too old for an orphanage. Maybe she could take care of us if Aunt Ida and Uncle James couldn’t. I felt my hopes rise. But that wasn’t fair. How could we tie down Mary, who yearned for so much?

  “You should still dream,” I told her.

  “Well, you never know. I just might.” She smiled and left.

  I pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. The room was cramped, even though it held only two narrow iron beds and a small table with a basin and pitcher. A cupboard with our clothes stood in the hallway outside, unable to fit in the room. The hall landing was also where Patrick slept on a cot. Aunt Ida and Uncle James slept in the other room. I wasn’t sure where we’d put Winnie and Ernest when they came home from the hospital.

  I felt a twinge of guilt as I splashed water on my face. I still had not visited either of them. I had returned the nurse’s cape to Camp Hill Hospital, but had run quickly in and right back out again without seeing anyone, and that included Sister Therese. I thought of her rosary pushed deep into the pocket of my coat. I’d never used it. I didn’t say prayers anymore. They might be answered.

  I locked eyes with myself in the mirror over the basin. I no longer looked like me—Rose. My face was thinner, cheekbones too pronounced, freckles redder than ever, hair straggly. Mam would hate me looking so dishevelled. I grabbed a comb and attacked the tangles, then gave up and threw the comb down. Even the clothes I wore weren’t mine—neither stitched by Mam nor knitted by Granny. I had nothing left of me.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Aunt Ida hurriedly dried dishes. “Try to get down a little earlier, Rose,” she said. “We only have so much time to use the stove.”

  We cooked and ate our meals first, then a family of seven used the kitchen.

  “There’s oatmeal in that pot.” Aunt Ida nodded with her head to the stove. “And tea. But before you eat, could you please wake Patrick?”

  I went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up. “Patrick! Aunt Ida says if you don’t get up now, you won’t have time to eat.” She hadn’t said that, but the threat of no breakfast would get Patrick up faster than any other.

  “Where’s Uncle James?” I asked as I helped myself to porridge.

  “He went to help clear away some of the wreckage on the docks. No one can work until it’s done,” Aunt Ida said. “Though he has another of his headaches.” She sounded worried.

  The bump on Uncle James’s head had left him with severe headaches. The doctor said they would go away eventually, but for now they plagued him daily.

  A newspaper sat on the table. I ate a spoonful of porridge, then opened the paper to the only page that interested me: the one that carried advertisements put in by people searching for mi
ssing family members. More important, it had a list describing the unidentified injured and dead, updated every day. Laboriously, I sounded out the words. Male. Age about 35. Black hair and moustache. Fleece-lined underwear. Blue cotton shirt.

  Patrick staggered through the room to the outhouse, then back in and flopped into a chair.

  “Breakfast is on the stove,” I said.

  With a sigh he got to his feet and spooned porridge from the pot into a bowl. He still expected someone to serve him, Aunt Helen had spoiled him so. He poured milk over top and brought it back to the table. Abruptly he yanked the newspaper from my hands and spread it out next to his bowl.

  “Hey, I was reading that,” I protested.

  “No, you weren’t. You can’t read.” Patrick laughed, exposing a mouthful of grey porridge.

  “Give it back,” I cried.

  “Children,” Aunt Ida scolded. “Stop fighting and eat.”

  Fighting! I kicked Patrick hard beneath the table and widened my eyes at him. Only two days and we’d already forgotten our promise to each other to not fight. Patrick grimaced, so I knew he’d got my message, but he still didn’t give me back the newspaper

  “What do you want it for, anyway? You’re not looking for anyone,” I muttered.

  “Well, who are you looking for?” Patrick asked.

  “Bertie,” I told him.

  He shot a quick glance at me. “I’ll look for you,” he offered.

  I wanted to do it myself. I was afraid he’d be careless and miss an advertisement. But I had to admit he could read faster, and Aunt Ida wanted us out of the kitchen.

  “Nothing matches his description,” Patrick said after a moment. “Nor my Dad’s.”

  I looked up, surprised. I hadn’t known Patrick still hoped his father was alive.

  “That’s it. We have to leave.” Aunt Ida took the bowls from us.

  “I’m not done,” Patrick protested.

  “Next time, come down earlier,” Aunt Ida snapped. I’d never seen her so irritable.