Rainbow's End (19 page)

Maggie was the last to bed. She cleared up after their meal, tidied the kitchen, then went and sat by the fire with the others. And when they had gone to bed she damped down the fire, tidied round again and went into the kitchen to make sure everything was ready for breakfast. They usually had porridge, which meant that if the family got up at seven Maggie must be at work by six, lighting fires, pulling the porridge pot over the flame, taking the butter off the stone slab in winter so that it was possible to spread it first thing.

But it was July, and though Irish summers were by no means necessarily hot or sunny, they were usually warmer than winters. So she didn’t have to start quite so early and the only fire she needed was the one they cooked on. Accordingly, Maggie set about her tasks and as she worked, she let her mind dwell pleasurably on the latter half of her day.

First, she thought about the walk with Liam. How kind he was, how good to his little brother, playing horsie all the way from the end of O’Connell Street to the yard outside their tenement! And he had talked kindly to her and, indoors, had helped her to get the supper on the table, though rather to her disappointment, as soon as they had finished eating he excused himself.

‘Me an’ Roy are goin’ fishin’,’ he said grandly. ‘Shan’t be in till the small hours.’

With that he had disappeared, and though Maggie had hung about for as long as she could he had not come home.

Still. He had been nice, which was what mattered, Maggie thought, piling ash on top of the fire in the old black range. And when we come out of Mass on Sunday, who knows, he might take us – the littl’uns an’ meself – off to the seaside again!

The trip to the seaside had taken place whilst her affection for Liam was still easy and comfortable, before he had become a sort of icon to her, and it was a treat which she often relived in her mind, sometimes before falling asleep, often when she had just woken up and realised that it was not yet time to get up. But squatting on the floor brushing spilt ash from the rug was not ideal for pleasant dreaming, so Maggie finished her tasks, briskly swilled her face and hands with a small amount of water out of the enamel jug and headed for the door. Gus, who had been sprawled leggily on the rug, waiting for her, immediately got to his feet and loped in her wake – he knew that Maggie would go down to the yard before making for her bed.

Maggie and the dog tiptoed quietly down the stairs and out into the night. Above her head, Maggie saw a million stars pricking the dark blue-black of the sky and a slender white eyelash of moon. She hissed ‘Go an’ pee then, Gus, there’s a good feller’ and went around the corner. When she came back Gus, very black in the starlight, was wandering back into the yard – he had taken the opportunity of a quick sniff round the alley, Maggie guessed – so the two of them made for their beds once more, though she did glance wistfully towards the alley as she went. Liam might have been coming in – but he wasn’t. Maggie and the dog padded up the stairs as quietly as they could and let themselves into the Nolan living quarters.

Gus slept in the kitchen at nights, on a pile of newspapers collected and scrumpled up by the twins and refreshed every week or so. Now, the dog climbed on to his bed, blinked at her, turned round a couple of times and settled. Sighing, Maggie checked that all was well in her little kingdom and headed for her own room. Ticky would have been asleep for hours but when she climbed in beside him he always made a delicious purring sound and snuggled up, making her feel wanted, needed.

I’d miss this lovely room if I went home, Maggie told herself, taking off her pinafore and her working dress, and hanging them on the hook which Liam had put on the back of her door. She glanced contentedly round the room. It was all so nice, so . . . well, so different from Dally Court. Even with the McVeigh children growing up and no more babies coming along, even without the strain of an invalid husband, Mary McVeigh could not manage her finances. Indeed, she scarcely tried, having given up long ago.

Maggie picked up her hairbrush – an item which her mother would have raised astonished brows over – and began to brush her long, straight hair. She brushed and brushed until it had bushed out round her face, crackling with electricity like an exotic chrysanthemum halo, then braided it into one long, thick plait and knotted a piece of string round it. Just as she was about to climb into bed, she remembered her picture. Mrs Nolan had said she might have the picture for her own, when she had found Maggie crying once, and Maggie valued it more than anything else she possessed.

She went over to it. It was a picture of Clare, Mrs Nolan had said, but to Maggie it could just as well have been fairyland – or heaven, come to that. She stared at it for five or ten minutes, filled with strange longings. She had been into the country with the twins and a couple of times with Liam, but the countryside just outside Dublin simply wasn’t like the place in the picture!

‘It isn’t painted, it’s embroidered; you’ve never seen anythin’ like it,’ Maggie had assured her mother. ‘I love it, an’ I’m
sure
it really is like that; no one could imagine anythin’ in such . . . such detail. But when I’m old, married, and . . . and rich, I’m goin’ to go there, see it for meself.’

‘Oh, sure, an’ pigs can fly,’ her mother had said and laughed at her crestfallen expression. ‘Never mind me, alanna. If you want it badly enough, mebbe you’ll get there yet.’

Now, Maggie stroked the picture gently with her forefinger before turning away and getting into her bed.

‘I wonder why she didn’t go back to Clare, the granny,’ she muttered to herself as Ticky rolled, purring, into her arms. ‘Well I won’t be put off, no I won’t. I’ll go back to where she made that picture, so I will, because when you want somethin’ badly enough you can move mountains . . . Father O’Leary said so many a time. And . . . and mebbe, one day, I’ll make a picture of me own.’

Next morning, when she woke, Maggie’s first thoughts were of the picture. She had dreamed about it – or had she? Already the dream was fading, becoming less real. Probably I dreamed about the country because I’d been thinking about it before I went to sleep, she decided, and climbed out of bed, leaving Ticky rosily slumbering.

It didn’t take her long to dress and to pad quietly through into the kitchen. She knocked as much ash as she could off the fire with the old scrub brush and blew on the embers with the bellows until the hearth – and herself – were covered in a fine film of ash and the fire was beginning to blaze up. Then she mixed the oatmeal with water and pulled it over the flames.

The kettle, filled by Liam the previous evening, was already on the hob. As soon as the porridge was ready that would be put over the flame, then Maggie would begin to cut the flat round of soda bread into wedges and to butter them. Ever since money had grown easier the Nolans, and Maggie herself, had eaten butter, keeping the maggie ryan for such things as puddings.

Maggie laid the table and went back into her room for Ticky. He had woken up but, good little soul that he was, was simply squatting on the bed with his favourite toy, an extremely ugly monkey which the twins had come across in a pile of jumbled-up old clothes in the Iveagh market.

‘Up you get, me lovely feller,’ Maggie said. She picked up the child and dressed him, then carried him on her hip into the kitchen and set him down on the rag rug, close by Gus, who obligingly moved up, then leaned forward and gave Ticky a very wet lick. ‘Now you sit there an’ play wit’ Gus until the porridge is cooked.’

‘Ess, ess, ess,’ Ticky said happily. He adored porridge, with brown sugar sprinkled over it. Gus, who was also fond of it, watched Maggie closely as the porridge began to bubble and Maggie drew it half off the heat and started to stir it. The twins always gave him their dishes to lick, and sometimes, if he was lucky, Ticky lost interest and insisted that Gus shared his food. Gus cocked his ears and stared intently at the saucepan. You never knew, accidents could happen, his expression seemed to say. For some reason best known to herself Maggie might well turn round and suggest he saved them trouble and ate the lot!

I’m not going back home to live, not if me mammy begs me ever so, Maggie decided suddenly, looking at Gus’s hopeful expression, at Ticky’s sweet, round, rosy face, and at the clean and pleasant kitchen. Why should I go back? Mammy was quick to put me forward to be Mrs Nolan’s skivvy, but now she can see I might earn a bob or two she wants to change all that, to have me at home again. And what sort of wanting is that, when it means bringing your child down? Mrs McVeigh had plenty of children to help her and the fact that she’d done nothing to train her family in tidy ways and good management was scarcely Maggie’s fault.

For Maggie realised, even if her mother did not, that she had a good deal to thank Mrs Nolan for. Mrs Nolan had taught her to wash the delft in warm, soapy water and to rub it dry with a soft cloth until it shone. She showed her how to launder clothing and bedding, how to iron it just right with the heavy flat irons heated before the fire, to fold it at once, flat and neat, and pop it into a drawer. In the beginning she had gone down on her hands and knees and instructed Maggie in the art of scrubbing a floor until it fairly squeaked with cleanliness, and how to polish linoleum with wax polish until you could see your face in it. She had stood in the kitchen by the hour together, showing Maggie how to bake bread, how to make pastry, how best to cut stew meat to make a good meal for a family. She had taken her marketing with the big basket, warning her of this trader, commending that one, but always making sure that Maggie knew how to tell good from bad, quality from quantity.

In a way, it would be disloyal to Mrs Nolan to go creeping off home, Maggie told herself. Yet she knew in her heart that she would not be so loyal to Mrs Nolan had her life not been so pleasant with them, and . . . and had Liam not existed. Only I don’t see why I should leave just because me mammy hints, and can’t be bothered to teach Aileen and Carrie how to do things properly, Maggie thought. I know I’m bein’ selfish, but I was sent away when I didn’t want to go, now I’m bein’ tugged back when I’d rather stay. Oh, what’ll I do?

The twins, careering into the room without their boots and with their hair in spikes all over their heads, put an end to such soul-searching, however.

‘Maggie, Garv’s took me boots!’

‘Maggie, the boy’s a liar, so he is! I’ve not laid a blessed hand on his bloody boots, he’s lost ’em himself, now it’s me he blames! Oh, give him a slap acrost the head, Mags, teach him dat liars niver prosper!’

‘Garv, you
know
you’ve took me boots . . . where’ve you hid ’em? Come on, give ’em back or I’ll kill you dead –
and
we’ll be late for school.’

‘Garvan . . .’ Maggie started to say, only to be interrupted.

Liam came into the room and took Garvan firmly by the ear. ‘Where’ve you put ’em?’ he said. ‘Come on now, a straight answer or you’ll have one ear the length of a donkey’s, so you will.’

Maggie waited for the shriek of protest, the innumerable stories, but instead Garvan said crossly: ‘They’re on the windowsill. Oh, you’re a poor sport, Shay, to make such a fuss. Why didn’t you search for ’em, eh?’

‘Why should I?’ Seamus said reasonably, heading out through the kitchen doorway again. ‘I knew Mags ’ud make you tell.’

‘It wasn’t me, though,’ Maggie said. She began to spoon porridge out of the saucepan into earthenware dishes. ‘Liam did it.’

‘He’s a bully, so he is,’ Garvan said, but without rancour. ‘Eh, that Seamus, he can’t take a joke.’

‘Well, not over boots,’ Liam put in. ‘Boots is serious things, Garv. And what cause did ye have to balance them on the windowsill, now? T’wouldn’t do ’em much good to be knocked into the yard, would it?’

‘Now that I’m in here, there’s no one to knock ’em anywhere,’ Garvan said truthfully. He picked up a dish of porridge and took it over to the table. ‘Mammy gone yet?’

‘No, not yet. Why? Do you want her to take you to school instead of me?’

Once, Maggie had accompanied the twins to school every day, but now they were much more reliable. What was more, the term was coming to an end in a couple of days and the long summer holidays stretched before them; she was pretty sure, therefore, that, accompanied or not, they would attend school until it finished and they brought home their reports.

‘Don’t matter,’ Garvan said airily. He sat down on a wooden stool and dug a spoon into his porridge. ‘Not much longer, eh, Mags? Then you’ll have us home all day – we can go fishin’, swimmin’, explorin’ . . . we might even do some ‘tater pickin’ I suppose.’

‘Poor Maggie,’ Liam said. ‘Rather you than me, Mags.’ He sat down on the stool beside his brother and began to eat his own porridge. ‘I like the summer meself, mind. I t’ought we might go down to the coast for the odd day . . . would you like that, Maggie?’

‘Oh, I would,’ Maggie said longingly. ‘I do love the sea, Liam.’

‘Uhuh, me too,’ Liam said, through a mouthful of porridge. ‘We might go fruit pickin’ an’ all, you an’ me.’

Maggie gazed at him. Was this the first sign of genuine softening towards her? She was sure he liked her, but had noticed that he avoided being alone with her. Now, however, he seemed unworried by the thought of a twosome.

He smiled across the table at her, his face teasing, his eyes full of affection. ‘What’s up, Mags? Don’t you fancy pickin’ fruit? It’s good fun on a hot summer’s day – not so good when it’s rainin’, mind, an’ it usually rains.’

Maggie found her voice. ‘I don’t t’ink rain would bother me,’ she said huskily. ‘I . . . I’d love to go fruitpickin’ wit’ you, Liam.’

Chapter Six

Liverpool, Summer 1909

Moving day was fine, which was a bonus, Ellen reflected, helping her brother Bertie to lug their belongings out of the old house. Outside, Ozzie and Fred put their backs into hefting the furniture on to the handcart, whilst Dick and his pal Martin prepared to push the first load all the way to the new house on Mere Lane.