A Nest of Singing Birds Read online

  A Nest of Singing Birds

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Acknowledgements

  Read More

  Copyright

  For our grandchildren, Andrew, Sarah, Paul, Helen, Catherine, Laura, Peter, Stephanie and Eleanor, with love.

  ‘Sir, we are a nest of singing birds.’

  Samuel Johnson (of his friends at Pembroke College, Oxford),

  Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson

  Chapter One

  The big kitchen was warm and quiet with a bright fire burning and a black kettle on the hob beside it, purring like a contented cat.

  Although the spring morning was dull and the room shadowy, the flames struck gleams of light from the polished fire irons, and from the glass of a framed photograph which stood on the dresser opposite the fireplace.

  The child playing with her toys on the hearthrug left them and climbed on to a chair to reach the photograph which was of her dead brother, Patrick. She was kissing the smiling face of the little boy when her mother came through from the back kitchen.

  ‘Anne, be careful child,’ she exclaimed, ‘You could get a nasty cut from the glass if you fell.’

  ‘I’m just telling Patrick I’m starting school after Easter,’ she explained. Her mother took the photograph from her and sighed as she looked at it.

  ‘The years go past so fast,’ she murmured. ‘Already you’re nearly the age he was when we lost him.’

  She replaced the photograph and lifted Anne down from the chair. ‘Put away your toys now, love,’ she said. ‘They’ll all be in in a minute for their dinners.’

  Anne went obediently to pick up her toys. Her big sister Maureen had told her that Patrick had gone to heaven when he was six years old. ‘I was three and Tony was six months old,’ Maureen said. ‘But it was a long time ago, love. Patrick would be a young man now if he’d lived.’ But to Anne he was always the little boy of the photograph, and the dream playmate who accompanied her in all her imaginary adventures.

  Anne was the youngest of the eight Fitzgerald children. She was loved and petted by her elder brothers and sisters, yet she would have been lonely without her dream companion. Since her brother Terry had started school two years earlier in 1923, she had played alone during the day.

  Now a noise drew her to the window overlooking the back yard and she saw three of her brothers, shouting and laughing as they scuffled to kick a ball of newspaper tied with string.

  Fourteen-year-old Tony was a tall, well-built boy with dark curly hair, and Stephen, four years younger, very like him. Joe who came between them in age was more slightly built but he fought as strongly for the ball, and all showed the same energy and high spirits.

  Suddenly they saw Anne peeping through the window and waved to her, then kicked the ball into a corner and trooped into the kitchen. A few minutes later seven-year-old Eileen arrived, holding Terry by the hand. He was carrying a paper lantern he had made in school and rushed to show it to his mother.

  ‘Isn’t that grand?’ she said in her gentle voice. ‘You’re a clever lad. I’ll put it up on the mantelpiece for your daddy to see when he comes home.’

  Tony was throwing Anne up into the air and Stephen was trying to tickle her. Their mother said firmly, ‘All of you now, go and wash your hands and come to the table.’ Although naturally gentle Julia Fitzgerald was strict with her children and they obeyed her immediately.

  Their main meal was eaten in the evening when their father and Maureen returned from work. Now their mother placed a boiled egg at each place. Three large plates piled high with slices of bread and butter were on the table as well as a large fruit cake.

  Joe put a cushion on the chair beside him and lifted Anne on to it, then he took the top off her egg and made ‘soldiers’ for her with a slice of bread and butter. Anne beamed at him. She loved all her brothers and sisters but thought that she loved Joe and Maureen best. They and Patrick and herself were like their mother, with clear pale skin, smooth dark hair and very dark brown eyes.

  A poster advertising the opera Carmen with a picture of a toreador had been displayed in Crane’s music shop, and when Anne had pointed to it and said ‘Joe’, Maureen had explained that the toreador was a Spaniard.

  ‘Some of us look Spanish, even though we live in Liverpool,’ she said. ‘You and me and Joe and Patrick, and Mummy because she came from the West of Ireland. Some of the sailors from the Spanish Armada hundreds of years ago were washed up on that coast and married Irish girls, and we’re descended from them.’

  Anne had been too young to understand at the time, but in later years she felt proud of her Spanish ancestry and was interested in anything about Spain which came into a History or Geography lesson.

  Now Tony said, ‘Your last day at home, Anne, and my last day at school. You’ll like school, y’know.’

  ‘Will you like work, d’you think, Tony?’ Stephen asked.

  Tony shrugged. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ll soon know, anyway.’

  ‘You’ll like it, son,’ Julia said. ‘Benson’s Engineering has the name of a good employer, and you’ll finish up with a trade that’ll always stand to you.’ She had been pouring tea. Now she put down the teapot and smiled at Anne.

  ‘Your last day at home with me, love. We’ll make the most of it, and divil take the ironing.’

  ‘What will we do, Mummy?’ Anne asked eagerly.

  ‘We’ll do a bit of visiting, and you can wear your Sunday coat,’ her mother promised.

  Tony had been eating quickly, with frequent glances at the clock.

  Now he said, ‘I’ve got to be back early, Mum, to finish clearing my books and put things away in the classroom, seeing as it’s my last day.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Julia said absently. She was piling dishes on to a tray held by Joe and followed him to the scullery, telling him to be careful. Tony stood for a moment looking after her, then shrugged and picked up his cap, and went out unnoticed.

  He was soon followed by the other children, then Mrs Fitzgerald damped down the fire and changed her own blouse and Anne’s pinafore.

  All their relations lived near to them in the Everton district of Liverpool, and they went first to visit Mrs Fitzgerald’s mother, who lived in a tiny house squeezed between two larger ones in a s
treet off West Derby Road.

  Anne was fascinated by her Grandma Houlihan’s house. Their own house in Magdalen Street was a big old place with four bedrooms and a bathroom with attics above, and a scullery, kitchen and two parlours downstairs. It was set back from the street with a small garden beside a path, with four steps to the front door, and cellars beneath the house.

  Her Aunt Carrie’s house was even larger, and although her Aunt Minnie and her Grandma Fitzgerald both lived in four-roomed houses, they seemed large compared to Grandma Houlihan’s tiny house. Anne thought it was like a doll’s house.

  Grandma Houlihan was like a doll too. A small woman always dressed in black with a black lace cap on her white hair, she seemed to fit the house but she could be very severe.

  Anne enjoyed walking through the busy streets wearing her best coat and hat and holding her mother’s hand, but she was nervous about the visit.

  Grandma was so very holy, and so easily shocked by the most innocent remark. Her mother had warned Anne not to chatter and she hoped she could remember not to speak.

  When they reached the house Grandma opened the door and said, ‘Oh, it’s yourself, Julia, and Anne. Come in. I’ll make you a cup of tea but I’m fasting this day. I’m only taking bread and water.’

  ‘We won’t have tea, thanks, Ma,’ Julia said quickly. ‘We’re just after having our dinners and seeing the children back to school.’

  Anne sat looking about her at the tiny room. Every inch of the wallpaper was covered with holy pictures and every flat surface held statues of saints or framed pictures of the Sacred Heart or the Pope. The horsehair stuffing of the chair she sat on pricked the back of her knees, but she was afraid to move lest she knock over a statue or a picture.

  She smiled nervously as her grandmother’s gaze rested on her. ‘So Anne is to start school after the Easter holidays? You’ll miss her, Julia – the last one left at home.’

  ‘I will,’ Julia agreed. ‘It’s a long time since I was without a child in the house with me during the day.’

  ‘God has been good to you,’ her mother said in a melancholy voice. ‘Eight children and only one lost to you. I was never able to rear a boy. When Patrick died I thought you were going to be like me but you were spared that sorrow.’

  ‘I grieve for him still,’ Julia said in a low voice. ‘There’s only Maureen remembers him out of all the children. She was three and Tony only six months when we lost him.’

  ‘I remember Patrick,’ Anne announced. ‘He talks to me and I talk to him.’

  ‘Don’t be telling lies now, child,’ Grandma exclaimed, horrified. ‘Sure the lad was dead years before you were ever born.’

  ‘She looks at the photograph on the dresser and makes up her little daydreams about him,’ Julia said apologetically.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t encourage her,’ her mother said.

  ‘It must have been very hard for you, Ma, losing all those children,’ Julia said in an obvious attempt to change the subject, and her mother gave a deep sigh.

  ‘It was indeed, but it was a cross sent to me by God and I tried to bear it willingly,’ she said. ‘Five little ones I left under the sod in Ireland and then Declan that was born in Liverpool died when he was two years old. Only you and Minnie and Carrie that I was able to rear, but sure it was the will of God. And your poor da taken from me too.’

  Anne was relieved when a little later her mother said that they must go. ‘I want to see Pat’s mother, and maybe Minnie and Carrie too before we go home,’ she explained. She rose and placed some money and some snuff and tea on the sideboard, then her mother accompanied them to the door.

  ‘Don’t even be thinking those lies now, child,’ she said to Anne. ‘Pray that God will make you a good girl, and a help to your mammy. I’ll say a prayer for you too.’

  She sprinkled Anne with Holy Water from the stoup which hung inside the front door and the child sighed with relief as she walked away with her mother.

  It was only a short distance to the house where her father’s mother and sister lived, but their reception there was very different. A tiny hallway opened into the living room where Grandma Fitzgerald sat.

  As soon as her daughter Bridie opened the door Grandma called, ‘Come in, come in, Julia, and Anne too. Come to Grandma, darlin’, and give me a kiss. Weren’t we just saying, Bridie, we hoped Julia would call?’

  Grandma Fitzgerald was a huge woman who suffered from dropsy, and Anne felt as though she was sinking into a feather bed as her grandma hugged and kissed her. Bridie bustled about and within minutes a cup of tea and a piece of her favourite shortbread were produced for Julia, and a slice of bread for Anne sprinkled with the tiny multi-coloured sweets known as hundreds and thousands.

  Bridie was a chain smoker and Anne watched with fascination as her aunt blew elaborate smoke rings. Bridie had told Anne that one of her boyfriends had taught her this trick. Now she said, ‘So you’ll soon be going to school with the others, Anne? I’m sure you’ll be clever like them and quickly learn to read and write. You’ll like it, Anne.’

  ‘Mummy said I’ll have lots of little girls to play with,’ she said.

  ‘You will indeed, love,’ said Bridie, picking up the teapot to refill their cups. ‘Do you know, I was grown up when I learnt to read and write? I never had much schooling because I was delicate, but one of the lads who courted me taught me.’

  On previous occasions Bridie had told Anne that she had been taught to paper a room and to fit a gas mantel by other boyfriends, and now Anne said admiringly, ‘You must have had a lot of boyfriends and they were very useful, weren’t they, Aunt Bridie?’

  ‘Indeed, and wasn’t it lucky for me that she didn’t decide on any one of them?’ Grandma said. ‘And she’s here with me still. What would I do without Bridie at all? And Pat’s a good son to me too. Sure his hand is never out of his pocket for us, God bless him.’

  Anne pictured a younger Aunt Bridie surrounded by young men. She was rather like a man herself, Anne thought, with her large hands and feet and the dark hair on her upper lip, but Anne loved her dearly.

  Now Bridie brought out a game called The Road to Berlin and sat down with Anne to play, while Julia talked to her mother-in-law. Anne hung over the board, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration as she moved the counters up the board, successfully evading shell holes and tank traps to arrive triumphantly on a picture of Kaiser Bill, complete with curling moustaches and an open mouth.

  ‘There, you’ve won again,’ Bridie exclaimed. ‘You have a talent for the game, childie.’

  Anne was sorry when her mother said they must go, especially as they went next to visit her mother’s sister, Minnie Connolly. She was a widow with an eighteen-year-old daughter named Dympna, and a son, Brendan, who had been bom six months after his father was killed in an accident. That was fifteen years ago. Minnie was a thin woman with a whining voice and a talent for saying whatever would wound or cause trouble.

  When she heard that Julia had just visited Grandma Fitzgerald she said spitefully, ‘Is Bridie still telling those yarns about her imaginary boyfriends? Her mother should put a stop to it. They’re downright lies.’

  ‘Poor Bridie. She’s only dreaming her dreams,’ Julia said in her gentle voice. ‘Why shouldn’t her mother encourage her if it keeps her happy and does no one any harm? She’s very good to her mother.’

  ‘She’ll feel it when the old lady goes,’ said Minnie. ‘No one else will put up with her nonsense and her mother isn’t long for this world, I’m sure. All that water is bound to go to her heart and kill her.’

  Julia nodded warningly towards Anne. ‘Grandma has had the dropsy for years now and it doesn’t seem to trouble her. She’s always very cheerful. Is Dympna’s chest any better with the milder weather?’ she said.

  ‘Not much,’ Minnie said. ‘You’re looking frail yourself, Julia. It’s a wonder Pat doesn’t make Maureen stay home and help you, with the long family and the big house you’ve got to look a
fter.’

  ‘I’m not going to keep Maureen at home just because she’s the eldest girl,’ Julia said firmly. ‘I’ve seen it too often, a girl kept at home and becoming the family drudge. No life of her own. Looking after younger children then still waiting on them when they’re grown up. Being left to look after the parents when they’re old and all the others have gone off and got married. No, I want Maureen to meet people and make friends, not be stuck at home.’

  Minnie sniffed. ‘Well, I think it’s her duty to stay home and help instead of working in that wool shop. Pat can afford to keep her and he should make her stay home if he doesn’t want to see you kill yourself with hard work.’

  ‘No danger of that. They all help, boys and girls. Pat sees that they do,’ Julia said firmly. She stood up. ‘I’ll have to go. I want to call into Carrie’s next.’

  ‘You never stay here very long,’ Minnie whined. ‘Of course there’s not the comfort here like in Carrie’s house. I can’t afford it.’

  ‘I only stayed a few minutes in Ma’s and in Pat’s mother’s because I wanted to get round to see everyone. The last day I’ll have alone with Anne,’ Julia said, smiling at the child.

  ‘And Tony leaving school today. You’ll soon have them all off your hands and working. He’s lucky to get that apprenticeship in Benson’s, and lucky you can afford to leave him there for seven years. My poor Brendan had to take anything he could get to bring some money into the house.’

  Julia pressed her lips together angrily as she bent over Anne and buttoned her coat, but only said, ‘We’ll have to hurry. I want to be back for the children coming in from school.’

  Minnie came to the door with them. ‘I hope Anne can sit still in school or she’ll be in trouble with the teacher,’ she said. ‘She’s never stopped fidgeting while you’ve been here. Do you think her nerves are bad?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her nerves,’ Julia snapped, and Minnie said huffily, ‘I’m sorry I spoke, I’m sure. I’m only showing concern for your family.’

  ‘Say ta ra to your auntie, Anne,’ Julia said. She hurried her daughter away, walking with such quick angry steps that Anne had to trot to keep up with her until they reached the home of her mother’s other sister, Carrie Anderson. They were warmly welcomed by Carrie and two-year-old Carmel who flung herself at Anne with screams of delight.