A Nest of Singing Birds Read online

  His room was full of curios and he allowed Anne to dust them and told her tales about them. There was a long boat with eight rowers all carved from black wood, with even the tiny faces of the rowers etched to show the strain and effort as they rowed, and an elephant of the same wood with brilliantly coloured trappings correct in every detail.

  At home every day was interesting too, with Maureen and Tony talking of what happened at work and frequent visits from relations. Anne heard far more gossip than she was intended to hear as she sat unnoticed on a stool or in a corner of the sofa.

  One day she was sitting on a stool trying to use a wool bobbin known as a Knitting Nancy while her mother and her Aunt Carrie sipped tea and talked. Aunt Carrie was talking again about Shaun and Theresa’s quarrels and Anne was paying little attention until she heard her mother mention Patrick.

  ‘Losing him was a terrible grief to us, Carrie,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I think it has drawn the family closer together.’

  ‘But there’s only Maureen remembers him and she was only a baby herself, really. Only three years old,’ Carrie said.

  ‘Yes, but we talk about him, and Pat always mentions him in the nightly prayers. We don’t want to make the mistake we made with Maureen.’

  Carrie sighed. ‘If only I hadn’t been bedfast with the sciatica at the time, I’d never have let Minnie clear all trace of the child away while you and Pat were out of your minds with grief.’

  ‘She did it with good intentions,’ Julia said. ‘Leaving nothing that could remind us. But sure how could we ever forget him? And Maureen, poor child. It was years before I realised she was blaming herself. She screamed when we sent her to Ma when Patrick took ill, and when she came back he’d disappeared and so had all his toys and clothes. She thought it was because she’d been naughty and she was afraid to ask.’

  ‘How can you fathom the mind of a child?’ Carrie said. ‘But at least you found out and put it right in time.’

  ‘Yes, and we talk about Patrick and have his photograph on the dresser. I don’t want him to be forgotten. Anne made him her little imaginary friend before she went to school, but she has plenty of real friends to play with now.’

  They looked fondly at Anne as she sat with her head bent and her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration, pulling the wool through the bobbin.

  ‘Happy Annie, Fred calls her,’ Carrie said. ‘He never spoke a truer word.’

  Chapter Four

  When Joe left school in 1927 at the age of fourteen job prospects were bleak. There was no hope of an apprenticeship for him, and his father was unable to take him into the business.

  ‘I know I always said I didn’t want any of you lads to go into the building trade, but I’d take you on now for the sake of a job for you if things weren’t so bad.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’ll get something. I’m trying everywhere.’

  ‘I think it’s just a bad patch,’ his father said. ‘But I’ve only managed to keep all the lads on because they’ve taken a cut in wages. It was Billy Joyce who suggested it and his lad’s our can lad. I can’t sack him and take you in his place.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to sack Freddie,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll get something, Dad.’

  Eventually, after much searching, he managed to secure a job in a men’s outfitters as an assistant. The hours were long and the pay poor but at least it was a job, Joe felt, and he was relieved to find it.

  In the late summer of 1927 Grandma Houlihan fell downstairs and broke her leg. She lived alone and had no one to look after her, and when she confessed that the fall was caused by a dizzy spell which she was subject to, it was decided that it would be wise for her to give up her house and live with Carrie and Fred.

  For many years Pat and Fred had each put aside a small weekly sum to be divided between Grandma Houlihan and Minnie to supplement their meagre pensions, and Pat also helped his own mother and sister.

  He and Julia decided that these obligations must be met even though they were having to economise because of the difficult times. When Julia’s mother went to live with Carrie and Fred, Pat offered his brother-in-law the weekly amount but Fred brushed the offer aside.

  ‘No, Pat,’ he said. ‘I’m saving what I used to give towards her rent and you know yourself, what’s one extra mouth in a big family? Especially when Grandma’s on black tea and dry bread half the time.’ He laughed loudly.

  Julia and Pat were visiting the Andersons at the time and both protested but Fred and Carrie were adamant.

  ‘If Dympna and Brendan shaped themselves, you wouldn’t need to pay Minnie’s rent either,’ Carrie said. ‘Most of what Dympna earns goes on her back – not that it makes her look any better. She’s such an awkward lump of a girl. And God knows what Brendan gets up to with his money.’

  Fred looked at Pat and jerked his head towards the door and they went out to the shed.

  ‘Is Ma settling in all right?’ Julia asked Carrie.

  ‘She is,’ said her sister. ‘Of course, she’ll be bedbound for a few weeks yet, but she’s happy enough with her statues and holy pictures around her. She bears her pain very bravely.’

  ‘It won’t be easy for you, Carrie,’ Julia said. ‘We’ll take a turn if it gets too much for you, or even if it doesn’t.’

  ‘Ma’s no trouble at all,’ Carrie said. ‘It’s only the fasting days that worry me. I’ve told her that it’s not expected of her and she needs to build up her strength, but she’s determined to fast on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes an extra day too.’

  ‘If it’s what she wants – and it hasn’t done her any harm, when you think of the hard life she’s had and she’s with us still, thank God,’ said Julia.

  ‘Yes, but imagine how I feel when we’re sitting down to a good dinner and I take a cup of black tea and a slice of dry bread up to her.’

  ‘But you know she’d rather belong to the Third Order and take dry bread than eat a hearty dinner. At least she’s upstairs in her room and not sitting there while you’re eating,’ Julia consoled her sister. ‘It’ll be a while yet before she can come downstairs.’

  ‘I see Anne’s going to be a Maid of Honour in the May procession,’ Carrie said. ‘Ma will be made up to hear that. I didn’t tell her. I thought I’d leave that to you. Do you want to go up now and I’ll bring a tray up in a minute?’

  ‘Is it dry bread and black tea today?’ Julia asked with a smile.

  ‘No. You’re all right. It’s an eating day today,’ Carrie smiled in return. Julia found her mother propped up in bed with her leg supported and the room full of statues and pictures brought from her old home. She seemed quite resigned to the move and told Julia that Carrie and Fred had done all they could to make her comfortable.

  Carrie had brought up a tray with tea and cake, and Julia told her mother that Anne had been selected to be a Maid of Honour in the May procession.

  ‘That’s grand. It shows she’s a good well-behaved girl to be chosen for such an honour.’

  ‘It’s a pity you’ll miss the procession, Ma,’ Julia said. ‘But the children will come to see you and tell you all about it.’

  ‘And Joe has a job, I hear. I wish he’d gone for the priesthood,’ Grandma sighed. ‘Sure he has all the makings of a priest, serving Mass and singing in the choir the way he has all these years.’

  ‘Joe has no vocation for the priesthood, Ma,’ Julia said. ‘It was just chance about the serving. Maureen had to give up coming to the six o’clock Mass with me in the morning because of her job so Joe came with me because he was an early riser too. Father Cooksey noticed him and put him on the waiting list for the servers, and as for the choir – it was just a couple of them were picked out in school for it.’

  ‘I never reared a lad I could offer to God but I hoped I’d have a grandson a priest,’ Mrs Houlihan said. ‘Still, if none of them has a vocation it must be the will of God.’

  They chatted for a while and when there was a noise downstairs
Julia rose to her feet. ‘I’ll have to be going, Ma,’ she said, but the next moment Pat and Fred came into the room.

  Pat greeted his mother-in-law and Fred said to Carrie, ‘Have you had a good gossip?’

  ‘Yes. Have you?’ she said swiftly.

  ‘Men don’t gossip,’ Fred said. ‘We talk.’

  ‘And so do we, don’t we, Julia?’ Carrie said. Fred laughed heartily and put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘We’ve got a right suffragette here, Ma,’ he said. ‘She’ll be chaining herself to the railings next.’

  Before Carrie could speak Julia said quickly, ‘Goodbye then, Ma. The children will be round to see you. Come on, Pat.’ She led the way from the room followed by Pat and Fred, and Carrie fixed her mother’s pillows before following them.

  ‘You won’t mind the children popping in?’ Julia asked her sister when she came downstairs.

  ‘No, of course not. I’ll be glad to see them. They’ll keep Ma’s mind off the pain.’

  Later, as Julia and Pat walked home, she said quietly, ‘Our Carrie has a heart of gold and so has Fred, but I’m always waiting for an explosion when they’re together.’

  ‘Aye, Fred’s not very tactful,’ Pat agreed. ‘But he’s a good fellow. And Carrie’s very kind too. Your ma seems happy enough with them anyway.’

  They walked in silence for a while then Pat said forcefully, ‘I think Carrie was right about Brendan. Fred said he’d heard that the boy was hanging round billiard halls, very flush with money and dressed to the nines. Fred collared him and tried to talk sense into him, but he said he was wasting his time. That lad’s as slippery as an eel.’

  ‘But how can he be flush with money? Where does he get it from?’ said Julia.

  ‘That’s what Fred wanted to know but he was no wiser when he’d talked to Brendan. I think that lad’s got funny friends.’

  ‘Well, Minnie can’t see any of the money because she’s still crying poverty,’ Julia said.

  ‘I know. I don’t begrudge the bit we give her, Julia, but it makes me mad that that lad’s throwing money around and leaving his mother short when it’s such a bad time for us.’

  ‘Are things no better, Pat?’

  ‘No sign of them getting better, girl,’ he said heavily. ‘There’s just no money about at all. I’m just hanging on be the skin of me teeth.’

  ‘But you’re hanging on, that’s the main thing,’ she comforted him. ‘God’s good. Something will turn up.’

  ‘When I think of the order book I had,’ he groaned. ‘Now the lads are nearly at the end of a job before I get another one on the book, and then I’ve nearly got to cut someone’s throat to get it.’

  ‘But you always manage another order,’ Julia said. ‘Times are bad for everyone but we’re keeping our heads above water and the children are happy, thank God.’

  ‘It’s a good thing we’ve got three of them working anyway,’ Pat said, and Julia agreed.

  ‘We had the good years when we needed them,’ she said. ‘When all the children were small.’

  Julia and Pat concealed their worries from the family as far as possible, and he managed to keep the business going.

  * * *

  When Stephen left school in 1929 it was almost impossible to find a job, but he had a stroke of luck. One of the teachers at his school heard of a place in a small factory and recommended him for it. He would be a general ‘dogsbody’ for the first two years but if he worked hard and proved suitable would be apprenticed at sixteen. He seized the chance eagerly.

  Joe was still working in the men’s outfitters, but wondering how much longer he could stand the job. He hated having to accept the rudeness and arrogance of some of the customers and the bullying of the manager.

  Uriah Heep, Joe thought scornfully as he watched the manager fawning on customers, bending low and rubbing his hands together, but dared not let his feelings show. ‘The customer is always right,’ the manager told him and Joe had to agree or lose his job. He knew there were no others to be had.

  He was friendly with a boy who had been at school with him who now went to sea as a cabin boy. All Ben’s family were seafarers and Joe enjoyed listening to their tales and often repeated them at home. Ben was home from a trip in the summer of 1929 and Joe spent most of his spare time in his friend’s company.

  All the family knew how unhappy Joe was in his job, and no one was surprised when he asked his father if he could leave it and go to sea. Pat agreed, but warned Joe that he might find the life very hard.

  ‘I don’t care, Dad,’ he said. ‘I don’t care how hard I have to work. Anything’s better than creeping round in that shop.’

  Julia was tearful but Pat told her it was better for Joe. ‘He hates that shop, Julie, you know that, and this is a good chance for him.’

  ‘I know,’ she wept. ‘I’ve expected this ever since he got so friendly with Ben. The sea’s in that family’s blood though and our Joe mightn’t like it. I don’t want him to go away from home, Pat.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to leave home, girl, but there’s nothing for him here. Perhaps in a little while things will pick up and he’ll find something in Liverpool. Don’t let him see you crying.’

  The family tried to hide their distress when Joe left but Anne wept bitterly when he had gone. It was hard for her to understand that he was going because there was no work to be had in Liverpool.

  The years of her childhood were desperate ones for the country and there was great hardship in Liverpool, but immersed in her own small concerns Anne was unaware of this and perfectly happy.

  * * *

  Since babyhood she had seen groups of ragged out-of-work young men on street corners, passing a solitary cigarette from hand to hand or filling their empty hopeless days by playing marbles on waste ground. She was used to seeing gaunt shabby women and hungry barefoot children and was unaware that their number had increased, and destitution and misery stalked her native city.

  In the school the classes were divided into A, B and C streams and the poorer and the more ill-nourished children were mainly in the C class. Anne in the A class was surrounded by girls who were reasonably well fed and poorly but neatly dressed.

  As Anne moved up the school she still shared a desk with Kathleen O’Neill who remained an enigma. Anne’s attempts to become friendly with her still received the same reply: ‘Mammy says I mustn’t speak to people. I must keep myself to myself.’ Kathleen worked hard and received good marks, but she never put up her hand to answer a question that was put to the class, although if directly asked she could always answer correctly.

  Cormac O’Neill was now in the Senior Boys and a different playground, but Kathleen still made no attempt to play with other girls. She stood alone watching them. Occasionally a teacher on playground duty would notice her and make her join a group, but she always left it as soon as possible.

  Eileen was scornful when Anne spoke about Kathleen. ‘It’s a pity about her and her old mammy and sissy brother,’ she said. ‘Nine years old, and her brother’s older, but Mammy still brings them to school and meets them at dinnertime. Then brings them back and meets them again at four o’clock. They’re pathetic.’ Anne was sure that Eileen was right but she still felt sorry for her strange deskmate.

  Anne was still happy at school although on one occasion she staged a small rebellion. She was in the Junior Girls by that time and the class had been told that they must forfeit their swimming lesson because some of the girls had been fighting in the school playground.

  The rest of the class meekly accepted the punishment but Anne stood up and protested. ‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘The rest of us weren’t fighting so why should we have to give up our swimming?’

  The class, less malleable now than when they were infants, showed signs of supporting Anne and the teacher acted swiftly. ‘Anne Fitzgerald, how dare you speak to your teacher like that?’

  She snatched up the strap which lay on her desk. ‘Come out here and hold out your han
ds.’ She struck twice on each hand with the heavy strap, and Anne went back to her desk struggling to keep the tears in her eyes from falling.

  No one else spoke and the lesson was resumed but Anne was surprised to feel a nudge from Kathleen O’Neill. She blinked away her tears and looked at Kathleen, then realised that her deskmate was holding out a piece of chocolate under cover of the desk.

  Anne smiled at her and as soon as she thought they were unobserved, whispered her thanks.

  ‘You were right,’ Kathleen whispered, ‘and she knows it.’ The teacher looked over at them and there was no opportunity to say more. At four o’clock Anne was called to the teacher’s desk and given a note to take home, and when she came out of school Kathleen was walking away with her mother.

  Anne was more worried about the note for her parents than the pain in her hands, and gave it to her mother timidly without saying anything about the incident. Her mother read the note and put it on the mantelpiece.

  ‘If you’re impudent to your teacher, Anne, you must expect to be punished,’ she said.

  Anne’s father said the same and told her that she must tell her teacher she was sorry. ‘You’re the first one in the family to bring a note like that home,’ he said sternly.

  Anne hung her head and wept. She had always been so loved and petted by her father that she was disproportionately upset by his disapproval.

  Uncle Fred called later when Pat had gone to see one of his workmen, and he took a different view. ‘A storm in a teacup,’ he said breezily. ‘We’re forever getting notes like this about the twins.’

  He crouched down before Anne. ‘What a sad little face,’ he said. He took a penny from his pocket. ‘Here, love, buy some sweeties.’ When Julia protested he said, ‘Nonsense, Julia. It’s a crime to upset a child like that and all over nothing.’

  Anne’s brothers and sisters agreed with Fred. Maureen was horrified when she saw Anne’s hands and spread ointment on them and wrapped them in pieces of old sheeting.