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‘I’m not surprised,’ Sally said. ‘People say they have them in the hotels in the town, but I’ve never had an occasion to go into the hotels, never mind use the toilets.’
‘No, nor me before I came here,’ Kate said. Then she added, ‘This might not look much to you, but, let me tell you, it’s a lap of luxury compared to the place we were reared in. So, now,’ she added, fixing Sally with a steely look, ‘are you going to drink this tea I’ve made and tell me what the hell you are doing here, or are you going to sit there all night criticizing the place I live in?’
Sally felt suddenly ashamed of herself; she swallowed the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her, obediently took a sip of the tea and said, ‘I’m sorry, Kate. Don’t be too cross with me because I’m already feeling that I’ve been really stupid.’
And then she shivered suddenly, and Kate saw tears drip down her cheeks. She said impatiently, ‘Oh come on, Sally, cut out the waterworks. You know that won’t help. You’re cold and hungry too, I expect. You’ll feel a bit better when I have the fire lit.’
‘How will you do that?’ Sally asked, looking at the ugly monstrosity sitting in the hearth.
‘Like this,’ Kate said, and she turned a tap to the side of the fire, lit a match and, with a pop, flames danced at the bottom of the grille. ‘It’s a gas fire,’ she told her sister. ‘And when I come home on a winter’s evening, it has the room warmed in no time. It makes it look cheerier too. Now come on and tell me what this is all about. Did you have a row? Was that it?’
Sally shook her head. ‘No. It was … Oh, I don’t know. I suppose … I suppose I just got fed up.’
Kate stared at her. ‘Sally, you can’t run away from home because you’re fed up,’ she said. ‘God Almighty, we all get fed up – you just have to get on with it. And what exactly were you fed up about?’
‘You know,’ Sally said. ‘Being at the beck and call of Mammy really. It’s “Sally do this” and “Sally do that” morning, noon and night. But nothing I do pleases her.’
Kate laughed. ‘That’s just Mammy’s way,’ she said. ‘It’s the lot of daughters to help their mothers. I had years of the same when I was at home, especially after young James was born. At the time, if I remember rightly, you weren’t expected to do anything and were able to swan around the house like Lady Muck.’
‘But you got away.’
‘I was eighteen when I left home,’ Kate said. ‘And Susie had found me this flat, not far from her parents’ house and a job of work. I didn’t do as you did and up sticks and take off. You won’t even be seventeen till the turn of the year.’
‘Mammy’s on to me all the time,’ Sally complained. ‘And I never have any money of my own. She buys all my clothes and doles out the collection for Mass, as if I was the same age as James.’
Kate knew Sally had a point – she’d never had any money either. Just before leaving home her mother had taken her into town and bought her some new outfits and a nice smart case to put them in, and her father had pressed the princely sum of £10 into her hand. She had protested that it was too much, but he had insisted. ‘Take it, darling girl,’ he’d said. ‘You will be a long way from the support of your family and may have need of this before too long.’
Sally had obviously been thinking along the same lines because she said somewhat resentfully, ‘Mammy and Daddy couldn’t do enough to help you leave home.’
‘And I have told you why that was,’ Kate said. ‘I was older and wiser and doing it the right way, that’s why.’
She knew it wasn’t only that, though. She was sure her mother had guessed the feelings she had for her cousin, Tim Munroe. Tim’s father, Padraic, and Kate’s father, Jim, were brothers. On the death of their eldest brother, Michael, after the Great War, they’d split the farm between them, and so the families had seen a lot of each other. Tim was two years her senior, as familiar as any brother, and they had always got on well.
When she reached sixteen, though, she realized that she wasn’t looking at Tim in a brotherly way any more, or even in a cousinly way. She knew she truly loved him as a woman. She knew Tim felt as she did – she had seen the love-light in his eyes – but he hadn’t said anything about how he felt because it was forbidden for first cousins to enter into any sort of relationship, and marriage between them was totally banned.
Kate’s mother, Philomena, had soon become aware of how the young people felt about each other, but she’d not said a word to either of them. She had been a little alarmed, but she had told herself they were both young and she thought and hoped it was a phase they would grow out of, had to grow out of: they knew the rules of the Church just as well as she did. She watched her daughter and Tim covertly for two years, but if anything their feelings seemed to deepen as they grew older. She didn’t know what action to take for the best.
Then Susie Mason had come on her annual holiday to her grandparents’ farm. She had always been a great friend of Kate’s – Kate’s parents liked her too, and always made her welcome, although Philomena often wished she wouldn’t go on quite so much about the fine life she was having in Birmingham where she lived with her family. After she left school, she told them how she now had money of her own to spend and plenty to spend it on. Philomena would watch Kate’s enthralled face as she listened. She was always worried that Susie’s words might unsettle her – and indeed they did, because Susie brought the life and excitement of city life into that small farmhouse, and it contrasted sharply with Kate’s more mundane existence.
Susie worked in a factory, but even that was not so bad, she declared. ‘You think of the wages at the end of the week,’ she said with a nod of her head and a twinkle in her eye. ‘There’s the clothes you can buy real cheap, especially when you go round the Bull Ring, and then you can wear those clothes when you visit the music hall or cinema.’
She went on to describe some of the acts she’d seen in the music halls that were peppered about the city, and described the cinema, proper moving pictures that she said she went to see once, maybe twice a week. ‘Dancing is all the rage now,’ she told them in the summer of 1935, and she seemed to almost squeeze herself with delight as she went on: ‘Oh I just love dancing. I have started taking lessons to do it properly. You’d be great at it, Kate, because you have natural rhythm. Look how good you were at the Irish dancing, and there was me with two left feet.’
Kate, who would give a king’s ransom to see even half the things Susie spoke about, looked at her with dull eyes. She always waited excitedly for Susie’s annual visit and listened avidly to her news, but when she had gone it was as if someone had turned the light out. Kate would see the days stretching interminably out in front of her, each one the same as the one before. The only light in her life was her love for Tim, and she couldn’t speak about that.
Susie was off again. ‘’Cos as well as the waltz and quickstep and that, they do the new dances coming in from America, music to the big bands, you know?’
No, Kate thought, I don’t know. I don’t even know what she is talking about. How would I?
Philomena watched Kate’s face and suddenly felt sorry for her. She also saw that Susie might provide a way out of the situation as regards Kate and Tim. She hated the thought of her daughter leaving that small cottage and living a long way away, but she also knew that she and Tim had to be kept apart for their own good. And Kate had to be the one to go away because Tim couldn’t be spared. He was his father’s right-hand man and, as the eldest son, the one who would inherit the farm one day.
So to Susie’s great surprise, Philomena said, ‘Susie’s right, Kate. You were always a fine one for the dancing. You’ll have to go to Birmingham and see for yourself. Would you like that?’
Kate wasn’t sure she’d heard right. She stared at her mother, and even Susie was silent and seemed to be almost holding her breath. ‘Do … do you really mean it, Mammy?’ Kate said at last.
Philomena’s heart felt as if it was breaking, because she knew that once gone, Kate would in all likelihood never come back to live at home again, but then thinking of the alternative said, ‘Yes, of course I mean it.’
Kate had to get things straight. ‘For a holiday, Mammy?’ she asked. ‘I’d love that. Oh indeed I would.’
‘Well, just a wee holiday if you like,’ Philomena said, and Kate heard the resignation in her mother’s voice and the sigh she tried to suppress as she went on: ‘Though if Susie here could get you set on some place, you could stay a year or two and see how you like city life.’
Both Kate and Susie looked at Philomena in amazement, and then Kate’s eyes met her mother’s and suddenly she knew why her mother was anxious that she should leave her home and family and travel to Birmingham. And she wasn’t sure that she wanted to go, not for a year or two. Although she did hanker after more freedom, she knew that she would miss her family hugely. And she might never see Tim again, or at least for a good few years. On the other hand, she had to admit that it was torment seeing him so often and not even being able to speak of how she felt. At least she would be spared that.
‘So,’ Philomena said, ‘what do you think?’
Susie was astounded at Philomena’s apparent and sudden change of heart, but she decided she was going to do all she could to encourage such a venture because she thought Kate was wasted in Donegal. ‘I could soon get you fixed up with a job and a flat and such,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Oh, it would be such fun if we were together.’
Kate smiled at her friend’s enthusiasm, but she knew she was right. With Susie’s company, a job of work and all the distractions that Birmingham could offer, she would surely be able to get the feelings she had for her cousin into some sort of perspective. And so she had nodded her head and had ended up following Susie Mason to Birmingham three years earlier in the autumn of 1935. She had confided everything to Susie once she had arrived in Birmingham; though Susie was sympathetic, she thought that Kate would soon get over her cousin. However, Kate had been incredibly homesick and was determined to stay true to Tim. ‘If I can’t have Tim then I’ll have nobody,’ she declared. ‘I won’t settle for second best.’ She knew her attitude irritated Susie, but there was nothing she could do about that.
However, Kate knew that her young sister, Sally, had no idea of the real reason their mother had been so keen for her to leave home, and that was how Kate wanted it to stay, and so when Sally said, ‘So why was it so different for you?’, she put those memories to the back of her mind.
‘I’ve told you why that was, and as for Mammy not giving you money, she doesn’t think you need anything since she clothes you and feeds you. I never had any either, but if it bothers you that much, it would have been more sensible and more mature to tell them how you felt rather than rushing over here.’
And then a thought struck her and she said, ‘But hang on a minute, if you had no money given to you, how did you pay your fare?’
‘I took Mammy’s egg money.’
‘Sally!’ Kate cried. Philomena had full care of the hens on the farm and she sold the excess eggs. That was her personal money and she guarded it jealously. Though they all knew the cupboard she kept it in, no one would dream of touching it – till now.
‘That was stealing, Sally.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have had to steal if I had been given a wage.’
Kate shook her head angrily. ‘No, you can’t get away with it like that, Sally. I bet you never even discussed getting any sort of wage for yourself, did you?’
‘She wouldn’t have agreed,’ Sally said mulishly. ‘You know what she’s like.’
‘You didn’t even try,’ Kate said. ‘So, you can’t be sure what Mammy would have done and Daddy might have supported you.’
‘He always sides with Mammy.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Kate said. ‘He did when we were small because he thought bringing up children was women’s work, as it is, but he was better with me when I had grown a bit, so I’m sure he would be the same with you. He’s very fair. Surely you should have tried to get them to see your point of view before you stole from your own parents?’
Sally was crying in earnest now but Kate had little sympathy for her. ‘And just how did you manage to walk out anyway, especially carrying a thumping great suitcase. I mean,’ she added sarcastically, ‘weren’t they the slightest bit curious?’
‘They weren’t there,’ Sally said. ‘Daddy and Uncle Padraic had been gone from early morning to Killybegs where they heard some farm equipment and animals were being sold after the death of the farmer.’
‘And where was Mammy?’
‘Helping at a birth. And James has been at school since September.’
‘And when you got here, Sally, what did you expect to happen?’ Kate asked.
‘I thought I might stay with you,’ Sally said.
‘And so you could if this had been planned properly and Mammy and Daddy had agreed and I had known in advance,’ Kate said. ‘Then I would have welcomed you for a week or two, because I would have some holidays due to me from work and I could have taken you out and about a bit. But I can’t do that at the drop of a hat. Like I said before, I’m a working girl.’
‘But they wouldn’t have let me come.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘They wouldn’t,’ Sally maintained. ‘I heard Mammy say so last Sunday after Mass.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She was talking to old Biddy Morrisey after Mass and she asked how you were and Mammy said you were well as far as she knew. Then Biddy sort of nodded over to me and said that I would be the next one on the boat to England and Mammy said I would not. She said I wouldn’t be let go, not even for a holiday, in case I didn’t come back.’ She looked up into her sister’s eyes and said, ‘And it wasn’t just something to say, you know. She meant every word.
‘And then yesterday she was yelling at me about something or other the whole time. I breathed a sigh of relief when she was sent for this morning, though she gave me a list of jobs to do before she left. All I could see was a lifetime of the same – living with Mammy and Daddy for ever, or if I should get married to one of those at home, all I would have to look forward to would be a lifetime of drudgery and a child every year. That has happened to lots of girls, as you well know, and I didn’t want it happening to me. I want to see and do other things. I felt quite stifled at home.’
For the first time, Kate felt immense sympathy for her sister – she could understand how frantic she must have been. ‘Stifled’ described very well the way Kate had felt before she had left Donegal; it had only been the intense but forbidden love she’d had for Tim that had made life bearable.
‘And whenever you write you always seem to be having such a fine time of it,’ Sally went on. ‘I just decided on the spur of the moment to come over and see for myself. It wasn’t something I planned or anything, it was just that I knew I would never get such a chance again. It’s seldom I have the farmhouse to myself.’ Then she glanced up at Kate and said, ‘I left them a note, tried to explain …’
‘I doubt that will help much,’ Kate said. ‘And I do feel sorry for you, but I can’t have you here, not like this. Really, this isn’t the way to get more freedom. Your best bet is to write to Mammy and Daddy and say how sorry you are and make your way home again sharpish. Later, when the time is right, I will plead your case for you.’
‘Oh, will you, Kate?’ Sally cried. ‘That will be grand. Mammy listens to you. But I can’t write to her. She will be so cross with me.’
‘Yes, and with reason, I’d say,’ Kate snapped. ‘Don’t be so feeble. Go home and face the music.’
‘I can’t,’ Sally cried in anguish. ‘And anyway, I haven’t any money left, or not enough for the whole fare anyway.’
‘Oh, Sally,’ Kate cried in exasperation. Keeping her temper with difficulty, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I cannot have you here and that’s final, so I suppose I shall have to loan you the money, but for now you write a letter to Mammy saying how sorry you are and promise that you will make it up to her. You know the kind of thing to say. And I would just like you to know that you have wrecked my evening good and proper, because I was going dancing with Susie Mason tonight, like we do every Friday, and now I will have to pop along to see her and cancel our plans. I shouldn’t think she’ll be best pleased either.’
‘Sorry, Kate.’
Kate sighed. Sally was an irritating and quite selfish girl, but she couldn’t keep telling her off. In a few days she imagined she’d be on her way home and not her concern any more and, though her parents had always doted on her, or until James’s birth anyway, she knew that her mother at any rate would roast her alive for this little adventure. So she looked at her sister’s woebegone face and said, ‘On the way home, for all you don’t deserve it, I will buy us both a fish and chip supper.’
‘Oh, will you, Kate?’ Sally cried. ‘I would be so grateful. I haven’t eaten for hours.’
‘That’s why you’re so tearful,’ Kate said. ‘A full stomach always makes a person feel more positive. I’ll get going now and I’ll not linger because I’m hungry myself. Write that letter and make sure you have the table laid and the kettle boiling by the time I get back.’
Susie was disappointed, but she could see Kate was too. ‘And she just turned up like that?’ she repeated, when Kate told her what Sally had done.
‘That’s right,’ Kate said. ‘She was waiting for me when I got in from work and admitted she’d sneaked out when both our parents were out of the house and James at school. Claimed she left a note explaining it.’
‘Explaining what?’ Susie said. ‘Why did she do it?’
‘Oh, that’s the best yet,’ Kate said. ‘She said she was fed up. Like I said, we all get fed up. The trouble is she overheard Mammy telling someone after Mass that she would never let her come here, even for a little holiday. I suppose it was like the last straw for her – and then she got the opportunity with everyone out of the way, so here she is. She can be very headstrong,’
Susie nodded her head. ‘She was always spoiled though, wasn’t she?’ she said. ‘I saw that myself when I came to stay with my granny when my mother was in the sanatorium that time. Even as a small child she usually got all her own way.’
Kate remembered that time well. Susie Mason’s mother, Mary, had been very ill when Susie was just ten and she had been sent to be looked after by her mother’s granny in Ireland while the older boys, Derek and Martin, stayed at home with their father. In Copenny National School, just outside Donegal Town, where the Munroe children all went, Susie was put to sit beside Kate, who had been strangely drawn to the girl who seemed so lost and unhappy. She had once confided to Kate that she was scared she would never see her mother again and Kate thought that the saddest thing. And so did Philomena when she heard. From that moment, Susie was always made welcome in their house.
Susie’s mother did recover, however, although Susie had been living in Ireland six or seven months before her father came to fetch her home. By then a strong bond had been forged between Kate and Susie. They wrote to each other regularly, and when Susie came back on her annual holiday, they would meet up whenever Kate could be spared.
‘My mother said that you do a child no favours by giving in to them all the time,’ Susie said to Kate.
‘And she’s right,’ Kate said. ‘But there’s not much I can do about that. And now I’d better go and get those fish and chips before I fade away altogether. Can you hear my stomach growling?’
‘Course I can,’ Susie said. ‘It sounds like a disgruntled teddy bear. But before you go, here’s an idea: shall we show your sister round Birmingham tomorrow?’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’
‘We may as well,’ Susie said. ‘I mean, you can’t send her home till you hear from your mother, so what are you going to do with her otherwise? If we go late afternoon, we can stay on to see some of the entertainment in the Bull Ring – if it isn’t too cold or raining.’
‘All right then, yes,’ Kate said. ‘It will make up for not meeting up tonight. We’ll come round about half two, then. Give me time to do the washing and clean up the flat a bit first.’
‘All right,’ Susie said. ‘See you then.’
So that evening, as they ate the very welcome fish and chips, Kate said to Sally, ‘How would you like to go into town tomorrow? We can show you round and then take you down the Bull Ring. You mind I’ve told you about it in my letters?’
‘Yes, oh, I’d love to see Birmingham,’ Sally said. ‘And you said the Bull Ring was like a gigantic street market.’
Kate smiled. ‘Yeah, like Donegal Town on a Fair Day, only bigger – but without the animals, of course,’ Kate said.
‘And yet it’s called the Bull Ring?’
‘I never thought of that,’ Kate said with a shrug. ‘I suppose they must have sold bulls there at one time. There’s all sort of entertainment on offer there when the night draws in. I’ve told you about it in my letters.’
‘Yeah. You said it was all lit up with gas flares so it was like fairyland,’ Sally said. ‘So what sort of entertainment? You never said much about that.’
Kate made a face. ‘I wasn’t sure Mammy would approve,’ she said. ‘It isn’t wrong or anything, but sometimes Mammy takes a notion in her head to disapprove of something and that’s that then, so I was always very careful what I wrote. Anyway, you’ll see for yourself tomorrow, though I’m warning you now we’re not hanging about too long if it’s freezing cold or raining or both. There’s no pleasure in that.’
‘I still want to go,’ Sally said. ‘Ooh, I can’t wait.’
Kate laughed. ‘You’ll have to,’ she said. ‘And first thing tomorrow we have to clean the flat and do the washing. It’s the only day I have to do all this.’
‘I’ll help if you tell me what wants doing,’ Sally said. ‘It won’t take so long with two of us at it.’
‘No it won’t,’ Kate said, getting up and pulling her sister to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said suddenly. ‘You tidy up here and I’ll nip out and post your letter and then we can hit the sack, because what with one thing and another, I’m whacked.’
A little later, as they were getting ready for bed, Kate said, ‘Susie is coming with us tomorrow. We’re meeting her at half past two.’
Sally made a face. She would hate Susie to be annoyed with her, because she had always admired her when she’d come to Ireland on holiday. Sally remembered her as having really dark wavy hair that she had worn down her back, tied away from her face with a ribbon like Kate’s. It had been a shock to see that now Kate braided her hair into a French plait and fastened it just above the nape of her neck; she told her that Susie wore hers the same way.
‘Ah, I liked her hair loose – and yours too,’ Sally said regretfully.
‘We would be too old to wear our hair like that now,’ Kate told her as she loosened the grips and began to unravel the plait. ‘Besides, in the factory, I have to wear an overall and cap that covers my hair, so wearing it down isn’t an option for either of us any more. Anyway, it really suits Susie, because she always has little curls escaping and sort of framing her face. Most of the rest of us look pretty hideous.’
