by Anne Bennett
‘I went a little crazy when I thought you were dead,’ Bridie said. ‘Daddy came home, and Uncle Eddie, but they had to go back and I was alone and very unhappy. Then Rosalyn came. She’s my cousin, yours too. She’d been in America, but was over in Ireland and my daddy asked her to come and see me. She saved me from going mad altogether. My darling children, I love you so very much.’
That broke both children completely. Liam tightened his arm around his mother, while Katie sagged against her.
Bridie hugged them to her with a sigh of relief. It had been three long months since she held them that way and her arms had ached for the feel of them. She staggered to her feet, still holding them, and sank into an armchair with the children nestled each side of her and told them how she’d heard of their rescue. ‘Though the person didn’t know whether you were alive or not, Rosalyn and I began to search all over again. That eventually led me to Oakengates.’
Why didn’t you take us away then? Liam’s eyes said. It was as if he’d spoken. ‘You were ill then,’ Bridie explained, ‘and I was told it would be too upsetting for you to see me.’
Liam glanced at his sister and they both stared at Bridie disbelievingly. Grown-ups weren’t told what to do.
‘Believe me, it’s true,’ Bridie said. ‘And I had no home for you then. I lived in one bare attic room. It was all I could get and there would have been no room for you there, even if I could have got the landlady to agree. But I’d have loved to have seen you.’
So, Katie thought, what was her mammy saying? They couldn’t go home with her, was that it?
But then Bridie told them of their grandma and grandad in Ireland who they’d never met but who would love to have them all stay there. She told them of Jay and Mickey already there, and described the cottage and the farmlands and hillsides around until she sensed their excitement. It was another new place, but this time their mammy would be with them and they’d see their cousins who they loved. Liam and Katie smiled at one another.
The smile felt strange to them; they’d not had much to smile about for some weeks. Stranger still was Katie’s voice, which came out husky and hesitant as she asked, ‘When do we go?’
Bridie hardly heard the question. She’d been told her children were mute and now she held Katie slightly away from her in amazement. ‘Katie, you spoke!’ she exclaimed delightedly, hugging her. Katie’s mouth felt strange, her lips tight, but she smiled at her mother. Though her mammy looked happy, there were tears trickling down her cheeks. Katie couldn’t understand it and neither could Liam; he was worried by the tears. He turned around, put his little arms around her neck, and said, ‘Don’t cry, Mammy.’
Now Bridie cried in earnest and almost tumbled the children to the floor in her haste to get to the door and summon Father Phillips and Rosalyn to hear the good news.
The children were still hesitant to talk much, and Father Phillips advised Bridie not to rush them, but Bridie was content to wait. She’d seem glimpses of the old Katie and Liam and knew that with love and time they’d soon be back to normal. They got on well with Rosalyn too and she was enchanted by them.
‘I don’t think the psychiatrist will find much wrong with them,’ Father Phillips said to Bridie. ‘He’s coming tomorrow.’
‘Is he the same one they saw at the other place?’
‘No, I didn’t think that at all wise,’ Father Phillips said. ‘But he’ll have all the old notes.’
The psychiatrist arrived expecting to see severely traumatised and mute children, but the two children he met were anything but unbalanced. He thought it entirely natural to have been traumatised after being buried beneath the rubble of a house and thought they were coping rather well and though neither of them were chatterboxes, they answered all the questions he asked them and he was satisfied.
He made a diagnosis that the children had suffered fear so extreme, it had caused a temporary loss of voice. Being reunited with their mother had obviously had a beneficial effect on the children’s wellbeing and general health. He recommended that the children be released into their mother’s care, especially as she had a home they would be welcomed into, well away from the horrors of bombing raids.
This, together with the character reference from Father Shearer and the letter from the doctor and the parish priest in Donegal, led that the board of trustees which operated the home voted in favour of accepting the psychiatrist’s recommendation.
It was an emotional moment the morning they actually left, for Bridie realised how much she owed Father Phillips, and Father Shearer and Father Flynn too. They waived away her thanks and said they’d been glad to help, but Bridie wasn’t at all sure she’d have got her children back without their help. Katie and Liam, though, were anxious to leave, terribly excited to be starting on this adventure to see their grandparents and cousins.
Rosalyn, who’d gone to spend a few days with Todd after the children’s future had been secured, met up with them all at New Street Station. ‘It was quite a wrench saying goodbye to Father Phillips this morning,’ Bridie said to Rosalyn as they boarded the train. ‘He’s been such a tower of strength to me. Well, they all have.’
‘Aye, they have,’ Rosalyn agreed and then added with a smile. ‘Bet it wasn’t such a wrench to say goodbye to your room?’
‘You can say that again,’ Bridie said. ‘And it gave me great pleasure to tell the landlady I was leaving and wouldn’t be back and she could let it to who she liked if she could find someone mug enough to take it.’
‘Good for you,’ Rosalyn said. ‘Mercenary old cow.’
‘Ssh,’ Bridie whispered. ‘Liam has ears on him like a donkey and repeats everything. I don’t want him coming out with that in front of Mammy.’
‘Sorry, I forgot,’ Rosalyn said, and added with a little laugh, ‘wouldn’t have mattered what he heard if he was still mute.’
‘Oh aye,’ Bridie said. ‘Then wouldn’t he have a fine store of bad words to let rip with when he began to talk again?’ The image of Liam standing before his grandmother, spewing out one obscenity after another, was so funny that both girls burst out laughing, bringing the children’s attention from the comics Rosalyn had brought them. ‘What’s funny?’ Katie asked.
‘Nothing,’ Rosalyn said. ‘Nothing you need worry your little head over anyway.’
Katie shrugged. When adults went on like that you were wasting your time talking to them, you’d never get a straight answer, but she was too happy and excited to care much.
Katie and Liam took to travelling with aplomb, changing trains at Crewe as if they’d done it all their lives. The ship enchanted them and they insisted on exploring every nook and cranny of it. Bridie was constantly up and down the narrow metal stairs, inspecting the saloons, and up on deck, both front and back, or to the prow or astern as one sailor, amused at the children’s interest, told them. They were impressed by the thick hawser he pointed out that was tying the boat to the concrete bollards at the docks and reassured by the lifeboats he showed them that were slung above them. ‘Just in case the ship should strike a rock and sink,’ he told them solemnly.
Bridie wondered if that thought might have made them nervous, but not a bit of it. ‘It would be all right,’ Katie told her confidently. ‘We know where all the lifeboats are, you see, and the sailor said he’d make sure we all got into one.’
‘That’s good,’ Rosalyn said. ‘But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not put it to the test.’
Katie’s reply was drowned out by the screech of the hooter. It was so loud and shrill that everyone had their fingers in their ears. A cloud of black smoke escaped from the funnel as the engines throbbed into life and then the children were hanging over the rail, tightly held onto by their mother and Rosalyn. They saw the gangplank raised and the ropes unwound from the bollards and they waved wildly to the grinning sailors as the ship pulled away from Liverpool, moving slowly through the sludgy grey water.
Once in open water, it picked up speed, riding over th
e white-crested breakers, churning and seething before the ship. The sky was the colour of gun-metal and the clouds low and dense and yet Bridie felt as light as air.
Despite her own churning stomach, Rosalyn, she noticed, had become quite green as the ship hit the open water. The children, cavorting about on the deck with other travelling children, under Bridie’s watchful eye, had obviously never heard of sea-sickness, but Rosalyn was suffering.
‘Do you want to go inside?’
Rosalyn shivered. ‘God no! It would be worse in there.’
Bridie had to agree with her, but the February day was raw and cold with biting wind and a dampness in the air. ‘I suppose being pregnant doesn’t help,’ Rosalyn said.
‘Pregnant! You’re pregnant?’ Bridie cried delightedly. ‘But you said Todd …’
‘I know,’ Rosalyn said. ‘He didn’t want children till after the war, but I talked to him at Christmas. I want to have his child, Bridie. Heaven forbid anything should happen to him, but … I want his child.’
Bridie knew how she felt. She was so glad she had her little ones and while Katie resembled her, Liam’s likeness to his father was startling, now he’d lost the chubbiness of babyhood.
‘Your mother will be over the moon,’ she said.
‘I can’t tell her yet, not till I’m sure, and then not until I’ve told Todd first. You’re sworn to secrecy, Bridie.’
‘I shan’t say a word,’ Bridie promised. ‘But don’t be surprised if your mother guesses.’
‘I hope it will help her,’ Rosalyn said in a low voice. She glanced around to see the children were not in earshot before saying, ‘She was devastated over what had happened to you.’
‘I know, she told me,’ Bridie said, ‘God, Rosalyn, she could barely look me in the eye and if she said she was sorry once, she said it thirty times. Try and convince her I don’t blame her in the slightest, will you?’
‘Aye, I will.’ Rosalyn promised.
Bridie hoped so: Francis’s wife had been a victim too and had been forced in the end to drastic measures. She didn’t want her beating herself up for what had happened to her, for she’d had no hand in it.
By the time the children had disembarked from the ferry onto a tram to Derry and then a narrow gauge train to Strabane before a rail bus for the last leg home, weariness had overtaken excitement. Katie climbed on Rosalyn’s knee and Liam on his mother’s and both went fast to sleep.
Bridie was nearly home and safe and felt she was starting life afresh. ‘This will be so different,’ she said. ‘There’ll be no Francis, no secrets, no Peggy McKenna. I’ll be able to bring the children up decently and in safety and give a hand rearing Jay and Mickey too.’
‘What about after the war?’
‘At the moment, that’s like saying when the sky falls in as Henny Penny would say,’ Bridie said. ‘After the war and, please God, Tom and Eddie and your Todd will come home safe from it, then we’ll see. But for now, this will do me fine.’
‘I hope you’re happy,’ Rosalyn said. ‘You’ve suffered so much and mainly through my father.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t you start feeling bad about it now,’ Bridie urged. ‘That part of my life is over and done.’
‘Okay, I know how you feel,’ Rosalyn said. ‘And I won’t go on about it, I promise. And now shall we try and waken the children, for we’ll be passing the farm in a few minutes?’
Katie did wake up, but Liam slumbered on. ‘I’ll carry him,’ Bridie said. ‘Daddy will be there to help carry the bags and packages.’
And Jimmy was there. The conductor had helped them down the steps of the rail bus, unloaded their baggage and begun to chug away from them towards Donegal town before Bridie noticed the man standing slightly behind her father.
The man was a stranger, not one of their neighbours certainly, and instinctively her arms tightened around Liam, worried even at this late stage that her children might be whisked away from her. Liam whimpered in protest at being held so tightly and that brought the man’s eyes round to him. Bridie noticed they were a strange yellow in the light of the large torch her father carried. Before Jimmy was able to introduce him, Bridie heard the man say, ‘Glory be to God. Sure he’s the spit of him.’
‘This is Sean Cassidy, Tom’s father,’ Jimmy said to Bridie ‘This is my daughter, Bridie, and a cousin of ours, Rosalyn.’ Nothing had prepared Bridie for anything like this and she’d stared at the man incredulously.
‘And that’s Tom’s son?’ the man asked Bridie, indicating Liam.
Bridie barely heard the question. This was the man that Tom had told her had run up tick in the pub because his son was to be a priest and who obviously cared more for that than his son’s happiness, judging by the letter Tom’s mother had sent before they were married. She wondered what he was doing there. Both he and his wife had given up any right to be involved in their lives. And she didn’t have to be polite to him either. This man had badly hurt her lovely Tom and that damned him in her eyes.
Katie was tired, confused and cold and she wondered what her mother was doing standing in the dark without speaking, especially when the man had asked her a question about Liam. So, before Bridie was able to gather her wits to make any sort of reply, Katie, who reasoned that if the man wanted to know about Liam, he might be the grandfather her mammy had told her about, looked into the eyes of Sean Cassidy and asked, ‘Are you my grandad?’
Bridie wanted to tell her daughter the man was no part of her, that he didn’t even know she was born for Tom had refused to tell his family, but before she could say anything, the man nodded slowly. ‘I imagine I am and this here is your other grandaddy,’ he said, indicating Jimmy beside him. ‘He’s told me all about you.’
Katie’s eyes opened wider. Her mammy had never said there were going to be two granddads and then Jimmy lifted her into his arms. He felt tears prickle the back of his eyes, although he fought to control them for the sake of the child before him. But the sight of the wee girl had affected him so much, for it was like looking at her mother all over again.
‘Hello, darling girl,’ he said, and he hugged Katie close and she smelt pipe tobacco on Jimmy’s jacket and other smells she didn’t recognise: the smoke from a peat fire, the hay he’d been feeding the sheep earlier and the general smell of the farmyard that had clung to him. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, just unfamiliar, and Katie liked being hugged that way and snuggled closer. She liked this man, she decided. She liked the words he said in his gentle, lilting voice and the way his eyes twinkled in the light of the torch he’d handed to Rosalyn before lifting her up.
Jimmy loved the feel of the child in his arms, the thing he’d longed for all those years, and over her head he addressed Sean. In a voice made husky with the tears he was fighting, he said, ‘This here is little Katie.’ And then, because he knew Bridie was still suffering a form of shock from seeing the man there, he went on, ‘And that is Liam. These are both Tom’s children.’
Sean went forward and peered closer at Liam and, like Jimmy, he had the feeling he was looking at his own child as a youngster and felt a yearning to hold him in his arms as Jimmy was doing with the wee girl. ‘They are fine children you and Tom have,’ he said to Bridie. ‘Could I carry the boy for you? He looks a weight.’
Bridie felt as if her arms were being pulled from her sockets, but she had a reluctance to hand her son to this man. ‘No,’ she said tersely. ‘I’m fine.’
Sean wasn’t surprised at Bridie’s reaction. It was what he might have expected and certainly what he felt he deserved. ‘Ah, cutie dear, I know how you feel,’ he said. ‘I’ve been a stupid, proud fool and I’m prepared to admit it and so is my wife Annie, who’s up at the house now.’
‘But how, why …?’
‘We got to thinking, the wife and me,’ Sean said. ‘Aye, we were puffed up with pride at Tom going in for the priesthood, but as your wise father said we can’t live our children’s lives for them. We’ve missed our son and worried over hi
m, especially when the war started, and in the end we swallowed our stupid pride and wrote to your parents just a few days ago. They told us you were coming back home today and invited us down to meet you.
‘When we arrived here, your father told me of the raid that killed his wife’s sister and her husband and their own daughter, and that your two weans were buried in the rubble of the house. God, that was dreadful altogether. We were smote with guilt, Annie and I. We’re here to beg your forgiveness and, if you’ll let me have Tom’s address, we’ll write to him the same way. Can you forgive us, Bridie?’
Bridie knew it had taken Sean a lot of courage to say he’d been wrong and that he was sorry and she could tell he was genuine. She had no wish to alienate Tom from his parents – it had never been her intention – and their children deserved two sets of grandparents. She smiled at last at Tom’s father. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘Tom has told me much of the farm you have, and his sisters. Maybe we could come over and visit you one day?’
‘You’d be welcome,’ Sean said sincerely.
Jimmy let the breath he’d been holding leave his body gently. He had no idea how Bridie felt about Tom’s family, no idea either whether she would welcome Sean or not. That is why he advised the man to come with him to meet the rail bus and why he would let neither Jay nor Mickey come with them – he’d left the two of them straining at the bit in the farmhouse, mad with excitement. Remembering them now, he said to Bridie, ‘We must be away. There’s two young boys who will be plaguing the life out of your mammy. Two boys who’ve been longing to see you all.’
Bridie suddenly felt surrounded by love and contentment stole over her. In the farmhouse beyond there was a family waiting to greet her. Delia and her family, who now held no horrors for her, would live beside her as they had all the days of her growing up, and now too there was Tom’s family to welcome her. It was more, much more, than she’d ever dared hope for in those dreadful days after the raid when she thought she’d lost nearly everyone belonging to her.
