Danny Boy

Danny was across the room in three strides, but his mother’s hand was on his elbow before he opened the bedroom door. ‘Danny, wait!’ she said. ‘It’s best you know it all. Rosie is expecting a baby.’

The grim-set expression on Danny’s face changed to one of incredulity. ‘A baby?’ he repeated.

‘Aye,’ Connie said, and then, because she knew her son would rightly think he should have been told first, she went on. ‘She didn’t tell me until after she’d had the fall. She intended telling you today.’ That made Danny feel better and, when all was said and done, however he was told, his wife was expecting their first child. ‘Go easy now,’ Connie cautioned him. ‘Let her sleep while she’s able.’

Danny gave a mute nod and opened the door as quietly as he could and stood transfixed in the doorway. Rosie’s hair, released from its fastenings, was spread out on the pillow, her pinched face as white as the sheets she had tucked around her and her breathing so shallow that her chest barely moved. Danny turned an anguished face to his mother. ‘Oh, Ma. She looks…’

‘She looks as if she’s sleeping, which she is,’ Connie said firmly, giving her son’s arm a shake. ‘She needs a doctor, Danny. You’ll have go to the village and fetch out Doctor Casey.’

‘Aye, aye,’ Danny said, glad to be doing something practical at least.

Matt was beside his wife and son and looked in on the girl. ‘Do you want me along with you, son?’

‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll ride in on Copper. He can go like the wind when he has a mind and is not pulling a cart behind him.’

As the door closed behind Danny, Connie gave a sigh. ‘There goes a worried man.’

‘Aye, and little wonder,’ Matt said. ‘For the sun rises and sets for Danny with that young lassie. Dear God, I hope no harm has come to her, or that child she’s carrying.’

Connie crossed to the pot simmering above the burning turf and said, ‘Will I get you a bowl of stew?’

Matt shook his head. ‘It would choke me,’ he told Connie. ‘Though my old bones would welcome a drop of tea.’

Even Phelan shook his head. ‘None for me either, Mammy,’ he said, for he was worried about Rosie and the stillness of her that he’d glimpsed as Danny stood in the doorway. He liked her a great deal, she always made time to talk to him and he thought she had more patience than his own two sisters.

Dr Casey, in his pony and trap, followed Danny on horseback to the farm, and barely had they reached the yard before Danny flung himself from the horse leaving his waiting brother to help the doctor from his carriage. He gave no greeting to his mother who was bent over the fire, but went straight to the bedroom. Rosie lay as still as she’d done when he’d left her and he felt flutters of alarm beat against his heart as he approached the bed and kneeled beside it.

His relief when Rosie opened her eyes slowly and painfully, as if they weighed a ton, was immense. ‘Hallo, Rosie.’

Rosie didn’t reply but Danny didn’t care. She was alive and that was all that mattered to him. He took her hand gently and kissed it. ‘You’ll be grand now, Rosie,’ he said, wondering why people always said such inane things in times of crisis. ‘The doctor is here to see you and he’ll get you better in no time.’

The doctor had followed him into the room and Danny turned to him now. ‘Will she be all right?’

‘How can I possibly answer that till I’ve examined the patient?’ the doctor said impatiently. ‘Out of my way. In fact, out of the room altogether. Let me get on with my job and you get on with yours.’

Usually, Danny would never have let a man speak to him like that, but he knew they had need of the doctor’s skills and so he said nothing. ‘I’ll be back,’ he promised Rosie. ‘I’ll be just outside.’

Danny didn’t need to tell Rosie where he’d be, for she heard him giving out to his mother as the doctor’s gentle hands probed first the gash on her head and then her stomach.

‘What were you thinking of, letting her go out for water in this?’ Danny demanded. ‘The whole place is covered with ice, that yard is like a death-trap. Well, it’s got to stop, especially now Rosie is expecting. I’ll bring in the water in the morning. If necessary I’ll buy a couple more buckets while I’m about it, but I’ll not have Rosie go out and carry in heavy buckets of water.

‘And she’s not to lift heavy clothes from the boiling pan to the rinse pail, either – they’re too heavy,’ he went on. ‘Nor is she to pound the clothes in the poss tub, or do the churning.’

Neither Connie nor Matt said a word. Connie watched her son walk agitatedly from one side of the room to the other, knowing Danny wasn’t really blaming her, he was just worried and felt helpless.

So she didn’t come back at him and ask Danny if he had any idea of how many buckets of water were needed for Monday’s washday and how was she to do all this herself and the work in the dairy too.

Instead, she poured Danny a cup of tea and put it into his hands. He gulped at the scalding liquid almost immediately, his eyes never leaving the bedroom door. Under her breath, Connie began to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary who knew what worry was all about.

When the doctor left the room he found four people in the kitchen staring at him. ‘How is she?’ Danny demanded.

‘Badly shaken up,’ the doctor replied. ‘She has a nasty gash on her head which I’ve bandaged, and her back will probably be badly bruised by tomorrow, but there are no broken bones.’

‘What of the baby?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘We must just wait and see. I’d advise at least a week of bed rest. If she starts to lose the child, send for me and I’ll come.’

He wasn’t reassuring, but Danny knew it was all they were going to get. ‘Can I see her?’

‘You can, but try not to disturb her,’ the doctor warned. ‘I’ve given her a draught and she’ll sleep soon. Sleep’s the best healer.’

Danny went into the bedroom and pulled a chair up to the bed. He sat beside his wife, whose eyes were already closing, holding her hand and talking softly to her. He told her how he loved her and how worried he’d been. He didn’t mention the child. He’d barely come to terms with the fact that he was to become a father before he thought that this might be taken from him. Would he be distraught if that happened? he asked himself. He had to admit now that he wouldn’t be. He’d be upset, of course, but Rosie was the one that mattered to him. They could have other children.

He bent and kissed her cheek, his whole being consumed with love for her, and then he returned to the kitchen to tell his mother he’d spend the night and maybe many nights on a shakedown on the bedroom floor. He’d not share a bed with Rosie in case he should inadvertently hurt her, but neither would he leave her alone and go back to sharing the mattress with Phelan.

‘If that’s what you want to do, then we’ll sort it out later,’ Connie said. ‘Now will you all sit up to the table and have a bowl of stew. You’ve not had a bite past your lips for some hours.’

When the girls came in from work and there had still been no sound from the bedroom, Phelan was all for going across the ice-rimed, rutted fields with the aid of a lantern to tell Rosie’s parents about her fall. Connie told Phelan he wasn’t to go. For one thing he’d likely break his neck, she said, and for another thing, he’d worry Rosie’s parents and sisters unnecessarily, going over in the dark night. It wasn’t as if the girl’s life hung in the balance. ‘I’ll trot over myself, tomorrow,’ Connie promised her son, and with that he had to be content.

Rosie awoke in the middle of the night and once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she saw the mound of her husband on the floor beside her. She was glad he was there, but would have preferred him in bed with her, his arms wrapped about her tight while he assured her everything would be all right.

She’d wanted to believe this, oh she did, but her back ached and her head throbbed and there were drawing pains in her stomach that caused her to pull her legs up. The doctor had told her that she must keep to her bed if she wanted to save her child, and then he had given her something for the pain that made it float away as she fell into a deep sleep.

Well, she wanted the baby all right. No question of it, and she vowed if that meant she had to stay in the bed, then she would. Anyway, she thought with a wry smile, Connie, who’d been so pleased about the baby, would see she stayed there. She blessed the fact she was living with such caring people, and secure in that knowledge she let her eyelids close again.

However, despite Rosie wanting to do nothing to damage her baby, she found lying in bed irksome, particularly after a few days when the aches and pains had begun to ease. Connie was kindness itself, but had little time to spend with Rosie, working single-handedly, and the men were always busy.

She was delighted one day, therefore, to see her sisters at the bedroom door, for Connie had informed them the day after the fall as she’d promised Phelan.

It was a Saturday and Danny had gone into the village with produce to sell, and taken his mother and Sarah and Elizabeth to do a bit of shopping. Rosie was finding the day especially long. ‘Tell me all the news?’ she begged.

‘What do we ever get to hear?’ Chrissie objected. ‘We never see a soul from one week to the next. No one visits and we never go to town.’

‘Why don’t you?’ Rosie asked, knowing she loved nothing more than a morning shopping and gossiping in Blessington village. ‘You’re well old enough now. Would Mammy object?’

‘I expect so,’ Chrissie said. ‘Doesn’t she object to most things we say or do? But what is the point of us going into Blessington when we have not a penny piece to spend?’

When Rosie was at home she’d had no money of her own either. But once she’d married Danny, the money got from the egg sales was split between her and Connie, with sometimes a percentage of the butter they made up in the dairy. Rosie liked the feel of her own money in her pocket. It meant she could buy the odd trifle for herself without asking Danny all the time.

She said to Chrissie. ‘Have you thought of taking a job?’

Chrissie shook her head. ‘Mammy would never stand it. Anyway, what could I do?’

‘As well as the rest, I suppose,’ Rosie retorted and then went on, ‘Elizabeth and Sarah are working as seamstresses.’

‘Well that’s out,’ Chrissie said. ‘D’you remember my efforts at sewing?’

‘I wouldn’t mind a job either,’ Geraldine said. ‘But just because Sarah and Elizabeth Walsh have work, it doesn’t mean there’d be anything for us.’