The Leaving Of Liverpool (24 page)

Joe had positively refused to touch his midday bottle and hadn’t stopped crying since. Bubbles had scratched Megan and she no longer wanted a kitten, particularly one called Dandelion, upsetting Brodie, who’d had her head buried in a cushion ever since. Kieran had got stuck up a tree in the garden and refused to come down until his mother came home, and Eoin had hurt his leg trying to join his brother up the same tree.

‘Thank God you’re home, Moll.’ Tom’s normally neat hair looked as if he’d been trying to tear it out and Finn had aged twenty years in the matter of hours. They flatly refused to believe that, for their wives, it would have been a perfectly normal day.

‘I think it’ll be a while yet before we get to swim the English Channel or climb Everest, don’t you, Moll?’ Hazel muttered with the suspicion of a grin.

‘A long while.’ Mollie grabbed her screaming son and took him upstairs to feed. She’d sort Megan and Brodie out later, then she’d see to Tom.

 

It was a lazy holiday, if not exactly quiet. Mollie looked up more old friends, and spent as much time with Thaddy and Aidan as she reasonably could. Tom and Finn visited the pub every night, leaving her and Hazel to discuss life and all its ups and downs and twists and turns. Inevitably, they talked about Annemarie and the Doctor. Mollie said that, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t imagine what her sister was doing in New York: ‘That’s if she’s in New York: she could be anywhere by now.’ As for the Doctor, she didn’t know what to feel. ‘He wasn’t a bad father,’ she confided, ‘though he never petted us or played with us the way Tom does with our children and Finn does with yours. Perhaps Mammy dying was a terrible blow that he never recovered from.’

‘You’re too forgiving, Mollie,’ Hazel said harshly. ‘What the Doctor did to you and your sister was a crime. If I’d had me way, he’d have swung for it.’

‘Is it possible to be too forgiving? Didn’t Christ say, “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do?”’

‘He also said, “Vengeance is mine.”’

 

The next day, Mollie went alone to visit the Doctor’s grave. She knew that Finn, after much soul-searching, had decided not to put him in the family grave with Mammy, which must have provoked much speculation in the village.

The graveyard lay behind St Saviour’s church, where Mollie had made her First Holy Communion and been Confirmed (she’d chosen Theresa as her Confirmation name). She found the simple white stone with just the Doctor’s name, the year he was born, and the year he’d died engraved in gold: there was no message like ‘Sadly Missed’ or ‘A Dearly Loved Father’. Weeds had spurted through the smooth, white gravel and she plucked them out, then laid a single rose from the bunch she’d bought for Mammy. She tried to think of a prayer to say, but couldn’t. ‘Rest in peace,’ she said softly.

Mammy’s grave was very different. It was well cared for, with not a weed in sight, and there were fresh flowers in a stone vase. She wondered if Finn and Hazel looked after it, or one of Mammy’s friends from the Legion of Mary. The names of the grandparents she’d never met were engraved above her mother’s on the headstone: Padraic Cormac Connelly, who died in 1855, when he was only twenty-five; and Margaret Brigid Connelly, who’d lived on, a widow for almost fifty years, dying in 1904, the year that Finn was born.

She put the roses in the vase, but still didn’t say a prayer. She didn’t believe in visiting graves. Mammy was dead and she thought about her frequently, sometimes talking to her in her head. No amount of flowers would bring her back and she got no comfort from knowing her mother’s remains lay six feet under the soil. She made the Sign of the Cross and went home.

 

‘You know what I think,’ Tom said on Friday morning when they were getting dressed. They were due to return home the following day. ‘I think you and the children should stay for another week.’

‘Without you?’

‘I’m due back on Sunday, so I have to leave on Saturday, but you haven’t, luv,’ he said earnestly. ‘It’ll be a long while before we come to Duneathly again, at least a year. Why not stay? You’re obviously enjoying yourself, the kids are having a whale of a time, and it’d be nice to spend more time with your brothers.’

‘But I don’t want to stay without you!’ Mollie wailed. She was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her stockings.

Tom sat behind her, put his arms around her waist, and nuzzled her neck. ‘And I don’t want to go without you, but it’ll only be for seven days. The weather’s the gear, and you know mam will be only too pleased to look after me. She’ll feed me up and I’ll weigh another stone by the time you come home.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Tom.’ He was right, though. The children were enjoying themselves, the weather was lovely, and it seemed selfish to deny them another week. ‘But you can never tell; Finn and Hazel might be longing to see the back of us.’

But when Tom made the same suggestion over breakfast, Hazel looked only too delighted. ‘I’d love you to stay, Moll. Finn will miss Tom now they’ve become such good mates, but having you and the kids for another week will make up for that.’ Megan gave the idea her approval, putting a seal on the matter.

So, the next morning, after a week that had been only too short, Mollie and her daughters waved goodbye to Tom as he climbed into her brother’s car. Finn was taking him to the station in Kildare. His clothes were in an old carpetbag that had been found in the attic; it would save Mollie having to carry them. A nervous Dandelion had been placed in a cardboard box punched with holes so he could breathe.

Mollie knew she would feel sad to see Tom go, but hadn’t dreamed the sadness would be so intense as she watched Finn drive out of the square with everyone, Tom included, waving madly until the car disappeared. She could feel the pressure of his final kiss on her lips. It didn’t help when Brodie began to cry for her dad and Megan called her a cissy.

‘
I’m
not crying,’ she bragged. Seconds later she burst into tears.

 

‘What if the boat sinks and Daddy’s on it?’ Megan asked when she’d more or less recovered.

They were sitting on a bench in the big garden full of apple trees. Windfalls lay plentifully on the grass - Nanny had used to collect them and put them in a box outside the door for people to help themselves. Mollie thought she might do the same thing later if Hazel didn’t mind. Her sister-in-law was too busy to do it herself.

‘Ferries don’t sink, darlin’,’ Mollie lied.

‘The train might crash into another one.’

‘That’s most unlikely to happen. Trains hardly ever crash into one another.’

‘Where will our dad be now, Mammy?’ Brodie enquired tearfully.

‘He’ll just about be on the train and Uncle Finn should be back soon. Don’t forget, your dad’s going to ring from a phone box when he reaches Liverpool to say he’s arrived safely.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

‘Yes, Megan, and Brodie can, too.’

 

Hazel said it was a good idea about the windfalls. ‘Though be careful the wasps haven’t got at them,’ she added. Kieran and Eoin came to help and there was already a box by the front door with a notice saying ‘Please help yourself ’ by the time Finn returned. Nanny had always put ‘pleese’ but no one had liked to tell her she’d spelt the word wrong.

Finn confirmed that Tom had been alive and well when he’d got on the train. He disappeared into his office, saying he’d been neglecting his work lately and needed to catch up. Hazel made sandwiches for his dinner and he didn’t emerge until it was time for tea.

Every now and then, the telephone in the office would ring and Mollie and the girls would tense, waiting for Finn to call and say it was Tom.

They were sitting down to their tea when Tom rang. ‘Whose idea was it for me to come home on me own?’ he asked mournfully.

‘Yours, darlin’,’ Mollie told him.

‘Well, it was a daft idea and I wish I hadn’t had it. I’m not looking forward to sleeping in an empty bed in an empty house.’

‘It won’t be for long, only another seven days,’ she said tenderly.

‘
Seven
! Jaysus, I won’t be able to stand it.’ He sniffed. ‘I think I’m going to cry.’

Megan and Brodie were pulling at her skirt. ‘I want to speak to him,’ Megan demanded crossly.

‘Look, Tom. The girls would like a word with you. I’ll say goodbye for now. Perhaps you could call again tomorrow? Look after yourself, won’t you?’ She handed the receiver to Megan before she burst a blood vessel.

Megan wanted to know if Dandelion was all right. Apparently, Tom had taken him out of the box on the ferry and given him a cuddle. Brodie didn’t say a word, just listened, astounded, to her father’s voice saying how much he missed her. Then, all of a sudden, the line went dead: Tom must have run out of pennies.

 

On Sunday afternoon, not long after they’d come back from Mass, the sun disappeared behind a nasty black cloud, the heavens opened, and the rain came down in buckets. The downpour persisted for three whole days: it was no wonder the grass in Ireland was such a brilliant green. The temperature dropped and the house felt uncomfortably cold. In the worst of the winter, Mammy used to have fires lit in every room.

All the children, Hazel’s included, grumbled because they couldn’t play outside. Mollie read to them until her voice became hoarse. She taught them how to play Snap, but they soon got bored, apart from Megan, who won every game. Hide and Seek turned into a nightmare, as it was such a big house with so many places to hide that finding people was well-nigh impossible. Joe was grizzly and she wondered if he was expecting an early tooth. Bubbles must have decided he didn’t like the rain: he stayed indoors and weed on the mats.

Tom telephoned every night to ask how they were. ‘Fine,’ Mollie said heartily. She’d wait until she got home to tell him that his idea they stay another week was the worst he’d ever had.

On Wednesday it was still raining lightly when she went into the kitchen and found Hazel propped against the kitchen sink, her face as white as a sheet. ‘Help us to a chair, Moll,’ she croaked. ‘I feel as dizzy as a top.’

‘It’s not the baby, is it?’ Resisting the urge to panic, Mollie grabbed a chair and helped Hazel to sit down.

‘No, it’s just me legs refusing to support me any more.’

‘I’ll fetch Finn.’

Finn came, took one look at his wife’s pale face, and telephoned the doctor, who came straight away. Dr Kavanagh looked no more than twenty-one, but had two children and a wife who was expecting another child at Christmas. He examined the patient, informed her she was doing far too much, and she was to go to bed and stay there for at least forty-eight hours. ‘Mrs Kavanagh is exactly the same,’ he complained. ‘She refuses to listen when I tell her she must rest.’

The doctor went, Finn helped Hazel upstairs, and Mollie took over the housework, cursing the ancient stove that was such a pain to use compared with her neat little gas stove in Liverpool. ‘This thing belongs back in the nineteenth century,’ she grumbled to Finn, giving it a kick. ‘No wonder Hazel’s tired.’ She shovelled more coal into the stove. ‘It’s like living in the Dark Ages.’

‘I’ll get someone in to give her a hand,’ Finn promised. ‘She’s always refused to have help, but it’s a big house, she’s got five lads to look after, and she’s pregnant. From now on, I’ll make her lie down every afternoon, even if I have to carry her upstairs and lock her in the room.’

Two days later, Rosie Hume came to work for Hazel and Finn. She was a big, red-cheeked woman with heavily muscled arms and a willing manner. Her husband worked the land, she told Mollie, and she had thirteen children, four of whom were married: the other nine still lived at home. In no time, she’d made fires in Finn’s office and Hazel’s room, while Finn was still struggling to make one in the living room, then started on the dinner, peeling the potatoes twice as fast as Mollie had seen them peeled before. It made her feel very inadequate.

Hazel felt well enough to come down for dinner, looking almost her old self again, and grateful for Rosie’s help. ‘I
had
been doing too much,’ she confessed, ‘but I’ve promised Finn I’ll take things easy from now on. But this week hasn’t been much of a holiday for you, Moll, what with the weather the way it’s been, and me stuck in bed half the time.’

‘I haven’t minded,’ Mollie assured her stoutly, though she was glad the week was almost over and tomorrow they would all go back to Tom.

 

The children were as good as gold on the way home. Megan was already missing Patrick and gave a little sniff from time to time. Brodie couldn’t wait to kiss Dandelion and her dad. Perhaps Joe understood he would shortly see his father and didn’t grizzle once.

Tom had said he’d meet them at the Pier Head if he could get away, but there was no sign of him when they got off the ferry. It meant he was unlikely to be at home when they arrived. Mollie caught the number eight tram to Allerton, no easy task with a baby, two small children, and a suitcase. By now, Megan seemed to have forgotten about Patrick, and both girls were in a state of high excitement at the idea of being back in their own home.

They danced alongside her as she walked up the path and unlocked the front door. ‘Dandelion,’ Brodie called, ‘we’re home.’

‘Mind he doesn’t get out,’ Mollie warned. ‘Come on, everyone: in we go.’ Leaving the suitcase on the step for now, she carried Joe inside, longing to get the weight off her feet. The minute he was fed, she’d make the girls their tea. They must be starving and she wouldn’t mind a bite to eat herself.

At the door of the living room, she stopped, convinced she must be seeing things; the room was full of people, who were staring at her as if she were a ghost. For several seconds, no one spoke, until one of the people - it was Irene, her mother-in-law - burst into tears. ‘Mollie! Oh, Mollie, girl,’ she wept, ‘we didn’t know how to get in touch with you. All we could do was wait for you to come home.’