Little Girl Lost (9 page)

For a moment, Sylvie wondered whether she should trim her story a little, make it more acceptable, but then decided that this would be silly as well as unfair. So she took a deep breath and began. ‘Well, it all started when me husband, Len, was sent to prison . . .’

By the end of February, Sylvie was beginning to grow accustomed to her new life, though she missed Becky almost unbearably. She even missed the Ferryman, and of course often longed for her mother’s sturdy common sense to comfort her when she was worried. The truth was that despite Brendan’s reassuring words, the O’Keefes were pitifully poor by Sylvie’s standards. Wages were dreadfully low and rents higher than they should have been, and Sylvie felt obliged to give Caitlin as much of Robbie’s money as she could afford, though Caitlin said repeatedly that it was not necessary; they had got along without it before and God knew Sylvie didn’t eat all that much.

But however difficult the circumstances, Sylvie could not but love the O’Keefes. They were a wonderfully warm and friendly family, and when she had been in the city a few days Caitlin had taken her along to Switzers. She had heard that there was a vacancy on the Gloves and Haberdashery counter, and the staff member who had interviewed Sylvie had given her the job at once, though she had had to accept what had seemed a pitiful wage. ‘But if you give satisfaction, your money will go up after your month’s trial,’ the woman had explained and Sylvie, wearing her tightest corset, had thought, hopefully, that she might earn for another month or two before her condition became obvious.

But that had been some weeks ago and now, as Sylvie slid behind the Gloves and Haberdashery counter in Switzers, she reflected that her happiest hours in Dublin were spent here, where the smell was not of poverty but of beautiful leather and suede, floor polish, and the perfumes used by all their lady customers. Through the window opposite she could see large flakes of snow descending from a grey sky. They were coming down very slowly and gracefully, but Sylvie thought of the overcrowded little bedroom in Handkerchief Alley, the ice on top of the water jug, and the snow which would melt and come trickling through the ceiling, and shivered. To be sure the O’Keefes were better off than most, and her own contribution must help, but the hole in the ceiling remained and when she had asked Pat, rather pettishly, why he did not go up and make the tiles good, he had reminded her first that it was winter, and next that the tiles were extremely slippery.

‘I’ve no desire to find meself shooting down towards the alley and ending up a mangled heap on the cobbles,’ he had told her. ‘The landlord won’t raise a finger and we do get the place cheap. When spring comes, I’ll mebbe get to work wit’ canvas and tar, but until then, the buckets don’t do a bad job.’

Sylvie knew she should not grumble, that the O’Keefes were treating her with great generosity, but she still felt somewhat aggrieved. Pat had patched the ceiling in the boys’ room so that it scarcely leaked at all, and she did so hate lying in her bed at night and listening to the tinkle of water running into the buckets, knowing that she must get up and empty them out of the window – praying to God there was no one below as she did so – then carefully replace them in their strategic spots. Having performed this task, she would climb back into bed and be kept awake for what felt like hours, because water falling into an empty galvanised bucket is even noisier than water falling into a full one. Of course, she could always rouse Maeve, inform her that the bucket was full and ask her to empty it, and this she had done on several occasions. But once, when Maeve had been truly exhausted and very deeply asleep, Sylvie had been unable to rouse her. Consequently, she had had great difficulty heaving the overflowing buckets up to the window, which meant that a good deal of water had leapt from bucket to floor where, of course, it had run down between the floorboards and ended up falling on to the sleeping heads of Mr and Mrs Cavanagh in the flat below.

Sylvie had not been unduly worried because she had not known in which room the old couple slept, until Mr Cavanagh had come storming up the stairs at two in the morning, vowing vengeance on whoever had ‘peed on the bloody floor and near on washed me and the wife out of our bed’. He had thundered on the wrong door to begin with and Sylvie, guessing what had happened, had heaved the blankets over her head and feigned sleep. Had he knocked first on Caitlin’s door, she and Pat would no doubt have explained and apologised, but unfortunately he had chosen the boys’ room. Shock-headed Seamus had come to the door and seen an opportunity to get the girls into trouble, or so Sylvie had thought to herself, for the twins were a couple of devils. He had pushed past Mr Cavanagh and thrown open the girls’ door, and in the light of the tall candle which Mr Cavanagh held had pointed out the buckets and the telltale wet patch even now spreading further across the floor. Maeve had sat up immediately. ‘It’s dat sorry I am, Mr Cavanagh,’ she had said in her small, high voice. ’‘Tis all my fault, for I didn’t hear the bucket was almost full till it was so heavy I couldn’t move it wit’out help. I did me best but I’m afraid I spilt some before I got it to the window.’

Mr Cavanagh had been beginning to say, grudgingly, that he supposed it were really the landlord’s fault when Grainne and Clodagh, too, had sat up. ‘You said it were pee, Mr Cavanagh, and it weren’t nothing of the sort,’ Grainne had said in an injured voice. ‘Our mam gives us two big jerries what we keep under the bed; we pees in dem, not on der floor.’

Mr Cavanagh had grunted and then chuckled, and this had emboldened Sylvie, in her turn, to sit upright and say, in a bemused voice: ‘Whatever’s happening? Where am I?’

Nobody had deigned to enlighten her, however. Grainne, Clodagh and Maeve had already snuggled down and Seamus had been ushering old Mr Cavanagh out of the room, but the boy had given Sylvie a contemptuous glance just before he closed the door and Sylvie had felt, uneasily, that he knew very well who had spilt the water and thought her a coward to let the blame fall on Maeve.

Next morning she had tried to apologise to Maeve for not confessing that it had been she who had been responsible for the Cavanaghs’ dousing. But Maeve had ducked her head and mumbled: ‘Sure and it might have been me, and anyway, amn’t I supposed to wake up before the buckets are filled, so’s I can empty them wit’out any spillages? The t’ing is, I should’ve emptied ’em before I got into bed – that’s what I’m meant to do – but I was so tired I forgot. Dem twins had me playin’ hide ’n’ seek round half Dublin afore they let me catch ’em.’

Sylvie had promised to remind Maeve, in future, to empty the buckets before she slept, or to do so herself before she climbed into her own bed. It seemed to rain twice as often in Dublin as it had done in Liverpool, and doubtless would snow twice as often, too, or was that simply the impression given by an unsound roof rather than a sound one?

‘Miss Dugdale! I’ve told you before that no good sales lady ever stands behind the counter wit’ her mouth wide open, gazing into space. Even before the customers start coming in, you should be checking the goods, cleaning down the measuring rule, winding up the ribbons, putting the gloves in size order . . . ah, here comes Mr Leggatt. Look lively, girl!’

Sylvie shot a malevolent look at the speaker whilst beginning to open drawers to check the goods therein. Miss O’Leary was head sales lady on Gloves and Haberdashery and had appeared to take against Sylvie from her very first day at the store. The fact that Sylvie was married, though she was always referred to as Miss Dugdale at work, seemed to exacerbate her resentment, but Miss Spencer, who also worked on Gloves and Haberdashery, had assured Sylvie that the head sales lady disliked all her employees. ‘We’re young and she’s old, we’re pretty and she’s plain, we had a decent schooling else Switzers wouldn’t have took us on, and she’s thick as pease porridge,’ she had said cheerfully. ‘What’s more, the customers like us so our sales figures are better than hers. Still an’ all, she’s not as bad as some. Mr McDonald, in Gents’ Tailoring, says that his head of sales takes all the credit when one of them sells a deal of stuff to a customer. He’ll come swanning up and have a few words with the customer, perhaps he’ll fold a shirt or pretend to check the price of a pair of socks, and then he’ll put his initials on the bill and swear to heaven that it were his sale.’

Sylvie had stared round-eyed at her companion. The two girls had been walking back to the Liberties along Great George’s Street and Sylvie had let her pent-up breath go in a whistle of astonishment. ‘Well, I’ll never grumble about old O’Leary again, and I’ll thank God fasting that I’m not in Gents’ Tailoring,’ she had said devoutly. ‘In fact, Switzers is a nice place to work. At home, in Liverpool, I worked in a big store as well, but I were just a cleaner, going in when the shop was closed. This is much nicer.’

‘I reckon it pays better, too,’ Miss Spencer had said. Although she had lived in Dublin all her life, she had managed to shed most of her brogue and could, when necessary, speak with only the lightest of Irish accents. Her home in the Liberties was not far from Handkerchief Alley, but right from the start she had warned Sylvie not to mention her home address if she could possibly help it. ‘There’s as bad slums round the back of O’Connell Street,’ she had informed her new friend. ‘Why, I’ve a cousin living on Henry Street in what were once a great mansion. There’s eleven of them livin’ in two rooms. But it’s a good address, see?’ Sylvie had not seen, not really, but she soon realised that people like Miss O’Leary despised folk who lived in the Liberties, so she kept her address to herself as far as she could and thanked God that the words Handkerchief Alley held no menace for the Dugdales. Since Sylvie was living there with the rich O’Keefes from America, they assumed without question that it was a nice area.

Now, Sylvie finished tidying the first glove drawer, which was perfectly tidy anyway, and glanced across at Miss Spencer, who was industriously rolling lace round a white card. Sylvie sidled nearer the other girl, intending to ask her where they should take their sandwiches, for it was no day for wandering the streets, but at that moment a customer approached the counter. She was tall, slim and elegant, wearing a powder-blue costume under a rich fur cape, but the gloves she held in one hand were grey and Sylvie’s budding sartorial instinct told her that they should have been blue. Anticipating this, she drew out the third drawer down – gloves, blue to purple, all sizes – and began to lay out the contents upon the long wooden counter. The woman’s elegant brows rose. ‘You’re very quick,’ she observed, in a low, rather pleasant voice. ‘I was about to ask you to show me some blue gloves but I see you realised what I must be wanting.’ She examined the items Sylvie had already laid out on the counter. ‘Yes, those match my suit exactly, though they are rather thin. However, my chauffeur is only just outside the door, for there’s little traffic about today, so I shan’t be out in the cold for long. Have you a size five and a half?’

Thanking her stars that she had sorted the gloves, Sylvie produced the desired size and flicked the price ticket over so that the customer did not have to ask how much the gloves would cost. The woman smiled and nodded, then asked to see a warm scarf in a similar shade. When that had been produced and approved, she suggested that Sylvie should show her a length of French lace with which to trim a ball gown she was having made.

Bringing out a variety of lace and spreading it tenderly along the counter, Sylvie thought that the day had begun well, despite the snow. She hoped it would go on even better because it was so nice to have pleasant things to write home about.

She wrote every night, trying to space the letters evenly so that one went to her mother, one to the Dugdales, one to the wretched Len in prison and one to Annie. Occasionally, she wrote to Brendan, and these, in fact, were the only letters in which she could be completely frank, knowing not only that he would never give her away, but that he had no opportunity to do so, since he knew neither the Dugdales nor the Davieses and had, in any case, been temporarily seconded to the Rose Hill district, so that now he did not even have to pass the pub or the court in which her family lived whilst on his beat.

She received news of Becky every time her mother or Mrs Dugdale wrote and she found a certain consolation in making a great fuss of Grainne. Despite the fact that Grainne was almost two years older than Becky, they were rather similar, for Becky was big for her age and very bright, whereas Grainne was tiny and a little slow.

As soon as she had arrived in Dublin, Sylvie had decided that all her letters home, even the ones to Annie and her mother, must carefully give the impression that Handkerchief Alley was in a smart area of Dublin, that she lived in a grand house and that her only employment was that of nursemaid to the O’Keefe children; not of course to the children of Caitlin and Pat, but to those imaginary American cousins. They had never told Annie that the story had been a fabrication, so it was only her mother who knew the truth, but after the most fleeting consideration Sylvie had decided it was far too dangerous to confide in her mother in writing. Mrs Davies was so scatterbrained that she might easily leave her letters lying around where anyone could read them, or simply hand them to Mrs Dugdale, if that lady should happen to ask whether she’d received news of Sylvie lately.

The morning wore on. By lunchtime the stream of early customers had subsided to a trickle, for the snow was whirling down with increasing force and when Sylvie peeped out through the windows she saw a white world, only the roadway being kept more or less clear by the constantly passing traffic.

’‘Tis a good t’ing we can eat our dinners in the staff room,’ Miss Spencer said as Miss O’Leary dismissed them, with an admonition to hurry back early, should the weather improve. The two girls often took their sandwiches down by the quays so that they could watch the shipping coming and going along the Liffey, but there was no chance of that today. Instead, they hurried to the staff room and began to eat.