Forget-Me-Not Child

They kept going, there was nothing else to do, but sometimes they brought so little home. Everything they made they gave to their mother but sometimes it was very little and sometimes nothing at all. They felt bad about it, but Mary never said a word, as she knew they were trying their best, and while they were living with the Dochertys money went further, for they shared the rent and the money for food and coal. But she knew it might be a different story if ever they were to move into their own place.

However, that seemed as far away as jobs for her sons, but life went on regardless. Barry did make his First Holy Communion with the others in his class, and not long after it was the school holidays and they had a brilliant summer playing in the streets with the other children. Mary wasn’t really happy with it, but there was nowhere else for them to play. Anyway all the other mothers seemed not to mind their children playing in the streets, but she was anxious something might happen to Angela. ‘You see to her, Barry,’ she said.

‘I will,’ Barry said. ‘But she can’t stay on her own in the house. It isn’t fair. Let her play with the others and I’ll see nothing happens to her.’

‘Don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ Norah said. ‘That lad of yours will hardly let the wind blow on Angela.’

‘I know,’ Mary said. ‘He’s been like that since Angela first came into the house, as if he thought it was his responsibility to look after her. He’s a good lad is Barry and Angela adores him.’

‘He’s going to make a good father when the time comes I’d say,’ Norah said.

‘Aye. Please God,’ Mary said.

Angela thought it was great to be surrounded by friends as soon as she stepped into the street. She had been a bit isolated at the farm. Funny that she never realized that before, but having plenty of friends was another thing she decided she liked about living in Birmingham.

Christmas celebrated by two families in the confines of one cramped back-to-back house meant there was no room at all, but plenty of fun and laughter. There was food enough, for the women had pooled resources and bought what they could, but there was little in the way of presents for there was no spare money. Many of the boots, already cobbled as they were, had to be soled and heeled and Mary took up knitting again and taught Norah. The wool they got from buying old cheap woollen garments at the Rag Market to unravel and knit up again so that the families could have warmer clothes for winter.

January proved bitterly cold. Day after day snow fell from a leaden grey sky and froze overnight, so in the morning there was frost formed on the inside of windows in those draughty houses. Icicles hung from the sills, ice scrunched underfoot and ungloved fingers throbbed with cold.

Life was harder still for Finbarr and Colm toiling around the city in those harsh conditions to try and find a job of any sort to earn a few pennies to take home. So many factory doors were closed in their faces and when the cold eventually drove them home they would huddle over the fire to still their shivering bones and feel like abject failures. No one could help and neither of them knew what they were going to do to help ease the situation for the family.

Slowly the days began to get slightly warmer as Easter approached. Angela would be going to school in the new term and she was so excited. She was just turned five when she walked alongside Mary for her first full day at school on April 15th. She was so full of beans it was like they were jumping around inside her. At the school she was surrounded by other boys and girls all starting together and they regarded each other shyly. When their mothers had gone their teacher, Miss Conway, took them into the classroom, which she said would be their classroom, and told them where to sit.

Angela was almost speechless with delight when she realized she had a desk and chair all to herself. After living with the Dochertys for months, she was used to sharing everything. She looked around and noticed what a lot of desks there were in the room, which was large with brown wooden walls and very high windows with small panes. There were some pictures, one with numbers on it, one with letters, and a map above the blackboard that stood in front of the high teacher’s desk.

Another little girl was assigned the desk next to Angela and she turned to look at her, envying the pinafore she wore covering her dress. In fact most of the girls wore pinafores but her Mammy said funds didn’t run to pinafores and she knew better than to make a fuss over something like that. The girl had straight black hair that fell to her shoulders and dark brown eyes, but her lips looked a bit wobbly as if she might be about to cry and her face looked as if she was worried about something, so Angela smiled at her and the little girl gasped. What the little girl thought was that she’d never seen anyone so beautiful with the golden curls and the deep blue eyes and pretty little mouth and nose. Spring sunshine shafted through the tiny windows at that moment and it was like a halo around Angela’s head. ‘Oh,’ said the little girl with awe. ‘You look like an angel.’

Angela laughed, bringing the teacher’s eyes upon her. She thought maybe laughing wasn’t allowed at school and she was to find that it wasn’t much approved of. Nor was talking, for when she tried whispering to the other girl, ‘I’m not an angel, I just look like my mother,’ the teacher rapped the top of her desk with a ruler, making most children in the room jump. ‘No talking,’ she rapped out and Angela hissed out of the corner of her mouth, ‘Tell you after.’

And later, in the playground, she told the whole story of how she ended up living with the McCluskys, according to what Mary had told her. ‘Funny you thought I looked like an angel,’ she said. ‘Because my real mammy thought so too and she insisted I was called Angela. All the others looked like my father.’

‘And they all died,’ the girl said. ‘And your mammy and daddy as well?’

Angela gave a brief nod and the other girl said, ‘I think that’s really sad.’

Angela shook her head. ‘It isn’t really, because I can’t remember them at all. Mammy, I mean Mary, has a photograph of them on their wedding day. It was stood on the dresser at home and I suppose it will come out again when we have our own house, but I have stared at it for ages and just don’t remember them. And Mary and Matt McClusky have loved me as much as if I had been one of their own children and the boys are like brothers to me.’

‘Huh,’ said the other girl, ‘I have no time for brothers. I have two, both younger than me, and a proper nuisance they are.’

Angela laughed and said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Maggie. Maggie Maguire and my brothers are called Eddie and Patrick. But I think Mammy is having another one and that will probably be a boy as well. I’d love a sister.’

‘So would I,’ Angela admitted. ‘Shall we just be good friends instead?’

‘Yes, let’s.’ And so a bond was formed between Angela Kennedy and Maggie Maguire from that first day.

THREE (#ulink_95e51e90-69ca-542b-a577-c9159e7c4c23)

Just after Angela began school, the priest heard of a house that would shortly be vacant due to the death of the tenant and Mary went straight down to see the landlord. She took her marriage lines with her and the birth certificates of the children and to prove her honesty she carried a recommendation from the priest and she secured the house, which was in Bell Barn Road and only yards from Maggie’s house in Grant Street.

Mary was delighted to get a place of her own though she did wonder how she would furnish it, but when she said this to Matt he had a surprise for her. ‘With the sale of the farm and land I had money over when I bought the tickets to get here,’ he told her. ‘Not knowing when I would get a job when we arrived, I put it in the Post Office and it’s still there, so we’ll go off to the Bull Ring Saturday afternoon and see what we can pick up to make the place more homely at a reasonable price.’

Mary was really pleased that Matt had kept the money safe and that he had kept knowledge of it to himself as well, or she might have been tempted to dip into it from time to time, and where would they be now if she had done that? They’d have a house but not a stick of furniture to go into it.

In fact it wouldn’t have been that bad because the previous tenant had died and his family didn’t want much of his furniture, so the house already had two armchairs, a small settee and a sideboard downstairs, and a bed and wardrobes were left in the bedroom upstairs. Norah went to inspect the house and agreed with Mary it needed a thoroughly good clean before anything else and they undertook that together. In the Bull Ring Mary and Matt bought oilcloth for the floor, a big iron-framed bed for the boys in the attic and two chests for their clothes. For Angela there was a truckle bed that was to be set up in the bedroom because Mary declared it wasn’t seemly for her to share the attic with so many boys when she was not even officially related to them.

The purchases severely depleted Matt’s savings and money from day to day was tighter than ever and Norah was finding it hard to make the money stretch. If some days they seemed to eat a lot of porridge it was because a pair of boots needed repair or there was a delivery of coal to pay for. Mary worried about the meals often. ‘Men need more than porridge,’ she said to Norah. ‘If Finbarr and Colm do get a job they’ll hardly be able for it and Matt works hard now and needs good food or he might take sick.’

Sometimes she would take Angela with her when she went to the Bull Ring on a Saturday afternoon and she would hide away and send Angela into the butcher’s and ask for a bone for the dog. The butcher knew there was little likelihood of there being any sort of dog; most people had trouble enough feeding themselves. But he would be charmed by the look of Angela, her winning smile and good manners, and she usually came out with a bone with lots of meat still on it. Often the butcher would slip her something else, like a few pieces of liver, or a small joint because he would have to throw them away anyway at the end of the day.

And Mary would boil up the bones and strip them of meat for a stew along with vegetables and dumplings to fill hungry men. She would do the same with pigs’ trotters if she had the pennies to buy them. She could make a couple of loaves of soda bread almost without thinking about it and if there was no money for butter, mashed swede would do as well. Cabbage soup was also on the menu a lot so though no one starved, the monotony of the diet got to everyone, but no one complained for there was little point.

Finbarr and Colm were filled with shame that they couldn’t do more to help and knowing this, Gerry felt almost embarrassed to join Sean on the apprenticeship scheme in 1902 when he turned fourteen and left school. ‘Don’t feel bad about it,’ Finbarr said. ‘You go for it. I would do the same given half a chance.’

Both apprentice boys were full of praise for Stan Bishop and thought he was a first-rate boss, always patient with them if they made mistakes in the early days. ‘He’s a decent man,’ Mary said. ‘I always thought it.’

‘He’s a happy bloke, I know that,’ Sean said. ‘He’s always humming a tune under his breath and he sings at home.’

‘He does that,’ Colm said. ‘He’s good, or it sounds all right to me anyway, and Kate has a lovely voice.’

‘Well she’s in the choir,’ Mary pointed out. ‘That’s why they always go to eleven o’clock Mass. She sometimes sings when she is in the house on her own because I have heard her a time or two when I have been up visiting Norah. She has got a lovely voice, but then she seems a lovely person. She always seems to have a smile on her face.’

She had. It was evident to everyone how happily married they were and there was speculation why there had been no sign of a child yet, though Mary had confided to Norah that she thought Kate looked rather frail. ‘I don’t think it would do her good to have a houseful of children,’ she said. ‘It would pull the body out of her.’

‘We none of us can do anything about that though,’ Norah said. ‘It’s God’s will. The priests will tell you that you must be grateful for whatever God sends, be it one or two or a round dozen.’

‘I know,’ Mary said and added, ‘They’re quick enough to give advice. But no one helps provide for those children, especially with jobs the way they are.’

‘I know,’ Norah said. ‘And then wages are not so great either. I mean, my man’s in work and I am hard pressed to make ends meet sometimes. At least Sean and Gerry are learning a trade, that’s lucky.’

‘Aye, if there is a job at the end of it.’

‘There’s the rub,’ Norah said, because many firms would take on apprentices on low pay and get rid of them when they were qualified and could command far better wages, and take on another lot to train as it was cheaper for them.

‘I’m not looking that far ahead,’ Mary said. ‘I’ll worry about it if it happens. As for Kate Bishop, she seems not to be able to conceive one so easy, so I doubt they’ll ever be that many eventually.’

‘Don’t be too sure,’ Norah said. ‘I’ve seen it before. They have trouble catching for one and then as if the body knows what to do, they pop another out every year or so.’

‘Proper Job’s comforter you are,’ Mary said and added with a smile, ‘Are you going to put the kettle on or what? A body could die of thirst in this place.’

There was no change in the McClusky household over the next couple of years. Sean, now halfway through his apprenticeship, got a rise, but it was nothing much, and Matt too was earning more so the purse strings eased, but only slightly. Towards the end of that year, Norah told Mary she was sure Kate Bishop was pregnant. There was a definite little bump that hadn’t been there before. By the turn of the year Stan was nearly shouting it from the rooftops and though he was like a dog with two tails, Kate was having a difficult pregnancy and was sick a lot and not just for the first three months, like the morning sickness many women suffered from.

Many women gave her advice of things they had tried themselves, or some old wives’ tale they had heard about, for all the women agreed with Mary that Kate Bishop couldn’t afford to lose weight for she had none to lose. She was due at Easter and she hardly looked pregnant as the time grew near. ‘God!’ Mary said to Norah. ‘I was like a stranded whale with all of mine. I do hope that girl is all right. I saw her the other day and couldn’t believe it, her wrists and arms are very skinny and her skin looks sort of thin.’

‘She’s still singing every Sunday morning though,’ Norah said. ‘And she practises through the day, does her scales and everything.’

‘I suppose it helps keep her mind off things.’