Forget-Me-Not Child

Mary saw a street of houses such as she never knew existed, not as homes for people – small, mean houses packed tight against their neighbours and Mary felt her spirit fall to her boots for she never envisaged herself living in anything so squalid. The cottage she had left was whitewashed every winter, the thatch replaced as and when necessary and the cottage door and the one for the byre and the windowsills painted every other year, and she scrubbed her white stone step daily.

She could not say anything of course nor even show any sign of distaste. One of these was the house of her friend, besides which she didn’t know how things worked here. Maybe in this teeming city of so many people houses were in short supply.

She hadn’t time to ponder much about this as Norah had obviously been watching out and had come dinning down the road to throw her arms around Mary, careful not to disturb Angela, but her smile included them all as she ushered them back to the house. ‘I have food for you all,’ she said, but added to Mary, ‘What will you do with the wee one?’

‘I think she is dead to the world,’ Mary said. ‘I see little point in waking her. She’d probably be a bit like a weasel if I tried. She hates being woken up from a deep sleep.’

‘Oh don’t we all?’

‘Yes,’ Mary agreed. ‘I suppose I’d hate it just as much. So if you show me where she is to sleep, I’ll take her straight up.’

‘That will be the attic,’ Norah said. ‘And you, Mick, get those boys sat around the table with a bowl of stew before they pass out on us.’ The boys sighed with relief and busied themselves sorting chairs around the table as Norah opened up the door against the wall and led the way up the two flights of stairs to the attic. There was a bed to one side, a chest and set of drawers, and a mattress laid on the floor. ‘That will do you two and Angela,’ Norah said. ‘The boys I’m afraid will have to sleep elsewhere for now.’

Mary was completely nonplussed at this though she knew Norah had made a valid point for she had four children of her own and the walls were not made of elastic. ‘Where will they sleep then?’

‘In Tim Bishop’s place,’ Norah said. ‘You know I told you he got the job for Mick?’

‘Oh yes,’ Mary said as she laid Angela down on the mattress and began removing her shoes. ‘Where does he live?’

‘Just two doors down,’ Norah said.

‘I suppose it’s him we shall have to talk to anyway about a job for Matt.’

‘Of course, I never told you Tim died last year.’

That took the wind right out of Mary’s sails because she had sort of relied on this Tim Norah had spoken so highly of to do something for them too and it might be more difficult for them than it had been for Mick Docherty. But a more pressing problem was where her sons were going to lay their heads that night. ‘So whose house is it now?’

‘His son Stan has it,’ Mary said. ‘Tim died a year ago and before he died he gave permission for Stan to marry a lovely girl called Catherine Gaskell. They had been courting, but they were only young, but unless they were married or almost married when his father died, Stan as a single man wouldn’t have had a claim on the house. Anyway they married and sheer willpower I think kept Tim alive to see that wedding for he died just three days later and now Stan and Kate have an unused attic and the boys can sleep there.’

‘I couldn’t ask that of perfect strangers.’

‘They’re not perfect strangers, not to me,’ Norah said. ‘They’re neighbours and I didn’t ask them, they offered when I said you were coming over and I couldn’t imagine where the boys were going to sleep. Stan said he’s even got a double mattress from somewhere. Anyway I can’t see any great alternative. Can you?’

Mary shook her head. ‘No and I am grateful for all you have done for us, but I’d rather not have Barry there. He is only seven and for now can share the mattress with us and let’s hope Matt gets a job and we get our own place sooner rather than later.’

‘I’ll say,’ Norah said. ‘And you can ask Stan about the job situation because he’s the Gaffer now. Apparently Mr Baxter who is the overall Boss said there was no need to advertise for someone else when Stan had been helping his dad out for years. So if anyone can help you out it’s him.’

That cheered Mary up a bit. And she did find Stan a very nice and helpful young man when she saw him later that evening. He had sandy hair and eyes and an honest open face, a full generous mouth and a very pleasant nature all told, but Mary did wonder because he was so young whether he would have as much influence as his father had had.

Still she supposed if he agreed to put in a word for Matt and the boys, for only Barry and Gerry were school age, the others could work and if he could help them all it would be wonderful, but only time would tell.

TWO

Every morning for the whole of her short life Angela had woken early to the cock crow. She would pad across to the window and listen to the dogs barking as they welcomed the day and the lowing of the cows as they were driven back to the fields from the milking shed. When she dressed and went into the kitchen the kettle would be singing on the fire beside the porridge bubbling away in the pot and the kitchen would be filled with noise, for her father and brothers would be in from the milking after they had sluiced their hands under the pump in the yard and thick creamy porridge would be poured into the bowls with more milk and sugar to add to the porridge if wanted. It was warm and familiar.

The first morning in Birmingham she woke and was surprised to see Danny beside her for she couldn’t remember that ever happening before and she slipped out of bed, but the window was too high for her to see out of. She wondered if anyone else was awake because she was very hungry. She wandered back to bed and was delighted to see Barry’s deep-brown eyes open and looking at her. ‘Hello.’

‘Ssh,’ Barry cautioned. ‘Everyone but us is asleep.’

Angela thought Barry meant just their Mammy and Daddy and then she saw the children lying on the other mattress. She couldn’t remember the Dochertys from when they lived in Donegal but she remembered Mammy telling her they had four children now. And so she lowered her voice and said, ‘I’m ever so hungry, Barry.’

Barry didn’t doubt it because Angela had had none of the delicious supper him and the others had eaten the previous evening and he was hungry enough again, so he reckoned Angela must be starving. ‘Get your clothes on,’ he whispered. ‘Not your shoes. Carry them in your hand and we’ll go downstairs.’

‘What if no one’s up?’

‘They will be soon,’ Barry said confidently. ‘It’s Sunday and everyone will be going to Mass.’

‘Is it? It doesn’t feel like a Sunday.’

‘That’s because everything’s different here,’ Barry said. ‘Hurry up and get ready.’

They crept down the stairs quietly holding their shoes, but there was no kettle boiling on the range, nor any sign of activity, and no wonder for the time on the clock said just six o’clock. On the farm the milking would have all been done by that time, but in a city it seemed six o’clock on a Sunday is the time for laying in bed. And then he remembered there might be no breakfast at all because they were likely taking communion and no one could eat or drink before that. It wouldn’t affect Angela, nor he imagined the two youngest Dochertys, Sammy and Siobhan, whom he’d met the night before. They were only five and six, but the other two, Frankie and Philomena, were older. He had no need to fast either for he hadn’t made his First Holy Communion yet. Had he stayed in Ireland he would have made it in June, but here he wasn’t sure if it would be the same. It did mean though he could eat that morning and he searched the kitchen, which wasn’t hard to do since it was so tiny and, finding bread in the bin, he cut two chunks from one of the loaves, spread it with the butter he’d found on the slab and handed one to Angela.

But Angela just looked at him with her big blue eyes widened. ‘Here, take it,’ he said.

‘It must be wrong,’ she cried. ‘We’ll get into trouble.’

‘I might get into trouble but you won’t,’ Barry assured Angela. ‘But you must eat something because you have had nothing since the bread and butter in the boat dinner time yesterday. We had stew last night but you were too sleepy and Mammy put you to bed, so you must eat something and that’s what I’ll say if anyone is cross. You won’t be blamed so take it.’

He held the bread out again and this time Angela took it and when she crammed it in her mouth instead of eating it normally Barry realized just how hungry she had been and he poured her a glass of milk from the jug he had found with the butter on the slab to go with it. ‘Now you’ve got a milk moustache,’ he said with a smile.

Angela scrubbed at her mouth with her sleeve and then said to Barry, ‘Now what shall we do?’

‘Well, it doesn’t seem as if anyone is getting up,’ Barry said, for it was as quiet as the grave upstairs when he had a listen at the door. ‘So how about going and having a look round the place we are going to be living in?’

‘Oh yes, I’d like that.’

‘Get your shoes on then and we’ll go,’ Barry said.

A little later when Barry opened the front door Angela stood on the step and stared. For all she could see were houses. Houses all down the hill as far as she could see. She stepped into the street and saw her side of the street was the same. And she couldn’t see any grass anywhere. There had been other houses in Ireland dotted here and there on the hillside, but the only thing attached to their cottage was the byre and the barn beyond that. There wasn’t another house in sight and you would have to go to the head of the lane to see any other houses at all. To see so many all stacked up tight together was very strange.

‘Where do you go to the toilet here?’ Angela asked, suddenly feeling the urge to go.

‘Down the yard,’ Barry said. ‘I’ll show you. Mr Docherty took me down the yard last night, we need a key.’

He nipped back into the house to get it before taking Angela’s hand and together they went down to the entry of the yard. As Barry had seen in the dark, now she also saw that six houses opened on the grey cobbled yard and crisscrossing washing lines were pushed high into the sooty air by tall props.

Barry said, ‘Norah told us last night some women wash for other people. Posh people, you know, because it’s a way of making money and they have washing out every day of the week except Sunday. And this is the Brewhouse where Mick says all the washing gets done,’ he added as they went past a brick building with a corrugated tin roof.

The weather-beaten wooden door was ajar and leaning drunkenly because it was missing its top hinges. Angela peeped inside and wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells of soap.’

‘Well it would be odd if it smelled of anything else,’ Barry said, ‘and these two bins we’re passing have to be shared by the Dochertys and two other families. One is for ashes, called a miskin, and the black one is for other rubbish.’

‘Don’t you think it’s an odd way of going on?’ Angela asked.

Barry nodded. ‘I do,’ he said in agreement. ‘And you haven’t seen the toilets yet, they’re right at the bottom of the yard and two other families have to share them as well. They have a key to go in and you must lock it up afterwards. The key is always kept on a hook by the door.’

Angela found it was just as Barry said and as she sat on the bare wooden seat and used the toilet she reflected that Mammy had been right, they had an awful lot of things to get used to.

Stopping only to put the key back on its hook, the two started to walk down the slope towards Bristol Street and Barry wondered what Angela was thinking. He’d had a glimpse of the area as he had walked up Grant Street with everyone else the previous evening. He didn’t think they looked very nice houses, all built of blue-grey brick, three storeys high with slate roofs and they stood on grey streets and behind them were grey yards. He didn’t think his mother had been impressed either, but she had covered the look of dismay Barry had glimpsed before anyone else had seen it.

So he wasn’t surprised at Angela’s amazement as she looked from one side to the other. ‘There’s lots of houses aren’t there Barry?’ she said as they started to go down Bristol Passage.

‘Yeah, but this is a city and lots of people live in a city and they all have to have houses.’

‘Yes, I suppose,’ Angela said.

‘D’you think you’ll like living here?’ he said as they strode along Bristol Street. Despite it being still quite early on a Sunday morning there were already some horse-drawn carts and petrol lorries on the road and a clattering tram passed them, weaving along its shiny rails. There were plenty of shops too, all shut up and padlocked. Angela said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s all strange here isn’t it? Not a bit like home.’

‘No, no it isn’t.’

‘Tell you what though,’ Barry said. ‘This is probably going to be our home now, not Mr and Mrs Docherty’s house, but this area. So I’m going to make sure I like it. Don’t do no good being miserable if you’ve got to live here anyway.’

That made sense to Angela but Barry always seemed to be able to explain things to her so she understood them better. ‘And me,’ she said.

‘Good girl,’ Barry said with a beam of approval and he reached for her hand as he said, ‘We best go back now because we’ll probably be going to an early Mass and we daren’t be too late.’

Everyone was up at the Dochertys’ and Mary asked where they had both been and would have gone for Barry when he attempted to explain, but Norah forestalled her. ‘It was obvious Angela would wake early,’ she said to Mary, ‘because she had her sleep out and it was good of Barry to take her downstairs and let us have a bit of a lie in.’

‘But to take food without asking!’

‘Well he couldn’t ask me without waking me up first and that wouldn’t have pleased me at all,’ Norah pointed out and added with a little laugh, ‘It was just a bit of bread and it’s understandable that Angela would be hungry. Don’t be giving out to them their first morning here.’

‘I was starving,’ Angela said with feeling.

‘Course you were,’ Norah said. ‘You hadn’t eaten for hours.’

Barry let out a little sigh of relief, very grateful to Mrs Docherty for saving him from the roasting he was pretty sure he had been going to get from his mother, and when she said, ‘Anyway come up to the table now for I have porridge made for you two and Sammy and Siobhan,’ the day looked even better.

St Catherine’s Catholic Church was just along Bristol Street, no distance at all, and Norah pointed out Bow Street off Bristol Street where the entrance to the school was. ‘I will be away to see about it tomorrow,’ Mary said. ‘I hope they have room for Barry and Gerry for I don’t like them missing time. Wish I could get Angela in too because she’s more than ready for school.’

‘I thought that with Siobhan and was glad to get her in in September,’ Norah said. ‘I think when they have older ones they bring the young ones on a bit.’

‘You could be right,’ Norah said. ‘I know our Angela is like a little old woman sometimes, the things she comes out with.’

‘Oh I know exactly what you mean,’ Mary said with feeling. ‘Mind I wouldn’t be without them and I did miss the boys last night. Be glad to see them at Mass this morning.’

The boys were waiting for them in the porch and they gave their anxious mother a good account of Stan Bishop and his wife Kate, who they said couldn’t have been kinder to them. That eased Mary’s mind for her children had never slept apart from her in a different house altogether and she thought it a funny way to go on, but the only solution in the circumstances.

After Mass, Norah introduced them to the priest, Father Brannigan, and he was as Irish as they were. Mary’s stomach was growling embarrassingly with hunger and she hoped he couldn’t hear it. She also hoped meeting him wouldn’t take long so she could go home and eat something, but she knew it was important to be friendly with the priest, especially if you wanted a school place for your children. Matt understood that as well as she did and they answered all the questions the priest asked as patiently as possible.

It might have done some good though, because when he heard the two families were living in a cramped back-to-back house with the older boys farmed out somewhere else, he said he’d keep his ear to the ground for them.

‘Well telling the priest your circumstances can’t do any harm anyway,’ Norah said. ‘Priests often get to know things before others.’

‘No harm at all,’ Mary agreed. ‘Glad he didn’t go on too long though or I might have started on the chair leg. Just at the moment my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

It was amazing how life slipped into a pattern, so that living with the Dochertys and eating in shifts became the norm. Gerry and Barry were accepted into St Catherine’s School and went there every day with all the Docherty children and Angela was on the waiting list for the following year when she would be five. Better still, Stan Bishop said he could get Sean into the apprentice scheme to be a toolmaker and Gerry could join him in two years’ time, and he could find a labouring job for Matt the same as Mick, so that by the beginning of June the two men and the boy Sean were soon setting off to work together.

Sadly, Stan could find nothing for the two older boys who were too old for the apprentice scheme, which had to be started at fourteen, and there was no job for them in the foundry. They were disappointed but not worried. It wasn’t like living in rural Donegal. Industrial Birmingham was dubbed the city of one thousand trades and just one job in any trade under the sun would suit Finbarr and Colm down to the ground.

So they did the round of the factories as Stan advised, beginning in Deritend because it was nearest to the city centre and moving out to Aston where the foundry was. They started with such high hopes that surely they would be taken on somewhere soon. ‘The trick,’ Stan said, ‘is to have plenty of strings to your bow. Don’t go to the same factory every day because they’ll just get fed up with you but don’t leave it so long that they’ve forgotten who you are if they have given you any work before. And if you’re doing no good at the factories go down to the railway station and offer to carry luggage. It’s nearly summer and posh folk go away and might be glad of a hand and porters are few and far between. Or,’ he added, ‘go to the canal and ask if they want any help operating the locks or legging the boats through the tunnels.’

‘What’s that mean, “legging through the tunnel”?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough if they ask you to do it,’ Stan said with a smile. ‘Just keep going and something will turn up I’m sure.’

They kept going, there was nothing else to do, but sometimes they brought so little home. Everything they made they gave to their mother but sometimes it was very little and sometimes nothing at all. They felt bad about it, but Mary never said a word, as she knew they were trying their best, and while they were living with the Dochertys money went further, for they shared the rent and the money for food and coal. But she knew it might be a different story if ever they were to move into their own place.

However, that seemed as far away as jobs for her sons, but life went on regardless. Barry did make his First Holy Communion with the others in his class, and not long after it was the school holidays and they had a brilliant summer playing in the streets with the other children. Mary wasn’t really happy with it, but there was nowhere else for them to play. Anyway all the other mothers seemed not to mind their children playing in the streets, but she was anxious something might happen to Angela. ‘You see to her, Barry,’ she said.

‘I will,’ Barry said. ‘But she can’t stay on her own in the house. It isn’t fair. Let her play with the others and I’ll see nothing happens to her.’

‘Don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ Norah said. ‘That lad of yours will hardly let the wind blow on Angela.’

‘I know,’ Mary said. ‘He’s been like that since Angela first came into the house, as if he thought it was his responsibility to look after her. He’s a good lad is Barry and Angela adores him.’

‘He’s going to make a good father when the time comes I’d say,’ Norah said.

‘Aye. Please God,’ Mary said.

Angela thought it was great to be surrounded by friends as soon as she stepped into the street. She had been a bit isolated at the farm. Funny that she never realized that before, but having plenty of friends was another thing she decided she liked about living in Birmingham.

Christmas celebrated by two families in the confines of one cramped back-to-back house meant there was no room at all, but plenty of fun and laughter. There was food enough, for the women had pooled resources and bought what they could, but there was little in the way of presents for there was no spare money. Many of the boots, already cobbled as they were, had to be soled and heeled and Mary took up knitting again and taught Norah. The wool they got from buying old cheap woollen garments at the Rag Market to unravel and knit up again so that the families could have warmer clothes for winter.

January proved bitterly cold. Day after day snow fell from a leaden grey sky and froze overnight, so in the morning there was frost formed on the inside of windows in those draughty houses. Icicles hung from the sills, ice scrunched underfoot and ungloved fingers throbbed with cold.

Life was harder still for Finbarr and Colm toiling around the city in those harsh conditions to try and find a job of any sort to earn a few pennies to take home. So many factory doors were closed in their faces and when the cold eventually drove them home they would huddle over the fire to still their shivering bones and feel like abject failures. No one could help and neither of them knew what they were going to do to help ease the situation for the family.

Slowly the days began to get slightly warmer as Easter approached. Angela would be going to school in the new term and she was so excited. She was just turned five when she walked alongside Mary for her first full day at school on April 15th. She was so full of beans it was like they were jumping around inside her. At the school she was surrounded by other boys and girls all starting together and they regarded each other shyly. When their mothers had gone their teacher, Miss Conway, took them into the classroom, which she said would be their classroom, and told them where to sit.

Angela was almost speechless with delight when she realized she had a desk and chair all to herself. After living with the Dochertys for months, she was used to sharing everything. She looked around and noticed what a lot of desks there were in the room, which was large with brown wooden walls and very high windows with small panes. There were some pictures, one with numbers on it, one with letters, and a map above the blackboard that stood in front of the high teacher’s desk.

Another little girl was assigned the desk next to Angela and she turned to look at her, envying the pinafore she wore covering her dress. In fact most of the girls wore pinafores but her Mammy said funds didn’t run to pinafores and she knew better than to make a fuss over something like that. The girl had straight black hair that fell to her shoulders and dark brown eyes, but her lips looked a bit wobbly as if she might be about to cry and her face looked as if she was worried about something, so Angela smiled at her and the little girl gasped. What the little girl thought was that she’d never seen anyone so beautiful with the golden curls and the deep blue eyes and pretty little mouth and nose. Spring sunshine shafted through the tiny windows at that moment and it was like a halo around Angela’s head. ‘Oh,’ said the little girl with awe. ‘You look like an angel.’

Angela laughed, bringing the teacher’s eyes upon her. She thought maybe laughing wasn’t allowed at school and she was to find that it wasn’t much approved of. Nor was talking, for when she tried whispering to the other girl, ‘I’m not an angel, I just look like my mother,’ the teacher rapped the top of her desk with a ruler, making most children in the room jump. ‘No talking,’ she rapped out and Angela hissed out of the corner of her mouth, ‘Tell you after.’