Jane placed the bag on the attic floor. She was flushed with embarrassment, but no more than Maeve was herself. She knew her face must be brick red, for she felt her cheeks burn with it. She’d been going to ask the child why her mother didn’t want her there, but the answer was now apparent.
Then she heard Agnes’s voice again. ‘Are they to be hanging to your coat-tails all the days of your life? My family don’t make demands on you like this.’
‘Your family live around the doors, woman.’ Michael’s voice was loud and angry. ‘They’re never away from the place. God knows, I’ve not seen my family since the day I left.’
Jane looked at Maeve and said, ‘Mom’s worried about money. It ain’t just you, honest. See, our dad was put on short time three weeks ago.’
‘Short time?’
‘He only works three days a week, like,’ Jane explained.
Maeve sat down hard on the bed. Her uncle had never told them that, though he’d written and told her about the job in the café just before she’d left. In fact, she thought, looking around the bare attic, what he had told the Brannigans had not been totally true.
Maeve was glad that she had a bag packed with goodies from the farm, and the five-pound note her mother had pressed her to take.
‘Food will always come in useful, especially fresh stuff,’ Annie had said. ‘Though Michael will hardly need the money – him with his fine job and grand house – I’ll not have it said you’d go anywhere and not offer to pay your way. Give Michael’s wife the money and leave it up to her what she’ll do with it.’
And Maeve knew, as she sat in that attic, that both the food and the money would be welcome, for the fine job was now not so good, and the grand house had never been. The downstairs room, though, was well furnished. Two upholstered armchairs were drawn up before the fireplace and two small stools stood in one corner. There was also a drop-leaf table and four chairs with padded seats, and a matching sideboard. Even the blue-patterned linoleum was not pitted or ripped, and the rug before the fireplace looked fluffy and expensive.
So, once there had been money. Not money enough, perhaps, to lift the family out of the house that had given Maeve such a shock that day, to a better one. But there had been money enough for furnishing at least the one room. Maybe their bedroom too, for though they’d passed her uncle and aunt’s room on the first floor, Maeve wouldn’t have dared, even if Jane hadn’t been with her, to open the door and peep inside. The attic room, with its two iron bedsteads and bare boards, had not been touched much, though there were crisp white sheets and clean blankets on the beds.
‘That’s why our dad was able to meet you today, like,’ Jane said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘’Cos he’s on short time.’
And Maeve had thought he’d taken a day off because he could, because he was one of the bosses – a foreman or some such – as Michael had indicated in his letters home. There had been no preparation for a man who worked only three days a week. Suddenly she felt sorry for her Aunt Agnes. Already managing on little money, she had now to feed another mouth.
She took off her coat and hat and laid both on the bed, then picked the bag up and said to Jane, ‘I have some things here to please your mother. I think she’ll be happier when she sees them.’
It had grown quiet downstairs and though Maeve knew it was probably the uneasy silence of an argument not resolved, she was still grateful for it. She took the parcel of food downstairs and presented it to Agnes, together with the five-pound note for her keep.
The change in Agnes was swift. She pocketed the money in her apron immediately and smiled at Maeve in a belated welcoming gesture. But Maeve noticed the smile didn’t reach her eyes and she knew then that Agnes would never be a friend to her.
The meal was fine and filling enough, with the bacon and eggs and soda bread and butter from home, together with chips from the chippy that Billy had been dispatched for, and everyone tucked in with a fine appetite.
Maeve made pleasant small talk for courtesy’s sake, but still couldn’t take to her aunt, and it was obvious that her uncle was almost afraid of Agnes. Maybe he had reason, but the fact remained that the man who’d warmly welcomed Maeve at the station did not exist in this house, and that realisation saddened her. She resolved to get a place of her own as soon as possible.
The children fired questions at her about Ireland, the homestead she’d left behind and their daddy’s family, and Maeve answered them as best she could. But the journey and the emotion of the whole day had tired her out, and she was glad when it was late enough to take to her bed. She lay beside Jane, and though Jane would have liked to talk more, Maeve was too exhausted and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
After a few fraught days, during which her aunt openly showed her displeasure in having Maeve there despite the five pounds, she was glad to begin work. Maeve was no stranger to hard work and she knew what the woman had told her on the train was no lie. Work was scarce, and she’d seen men, often extremely thin, and shabbily and inadequately dressed, lolling on street corners. She knew she was lucky to get a job, and probably wouldn’t have it at all if her uncle hadn’t asked for her. She had no wish for her boss to regret his decision to employ her and didn’t quibble at the hours he asked her to work, but because they were so long she asked him to let her know if he heard of some place nearby that she could rent.
Mr Dolamartis thought this over. He’d never had such an industrious little waitress, and so beautiful too; she certainly drew the men in. But the hours were often from early morning to late night, and though she never complained, he knew sometimes Maeve had trouble getting there in time in the morning and back at night to her uncle’s house.
Above the café there was a flat, basic and small, and though Mr Dolamartis had never used it as a flat but as a storeroom, he knew he could use the room off the kitchen for storage instead, and give Maeve the chance of having a place of her own.
Maeve was thrilled. She wasn’t put off by the grime and neglect, and set to with a will to clean it all. Mr Dolamartis, amused at her industry, brought her some distemper to brighten the place up. There was a battered old sofa there already, and a table and chairs were supplied by the café. The bed was set into the wall of the living room and pulled out at night, but Maeve had no bedding, no crocks or cutlery, no curtains for the windows nor lino for the floor.
But though she’d paid over a good proportion of her wages to her Aunt Agnes, she’d kept her tips and sometimes they were sizeable. These she spent on essentials, then saved up for other household goods she wanted. She was often free in the afternoon for a few hours after lunch when Mr Dolamartis would take over. Then Maeve would usually take a tram to the city centre and stroll around the shops, enthralled by the choices available and particularly attracted to the Bull Ring, where she was able to find many of the things to make her flat more like home.
She joined organisations at the Catholic Church, St Francis’s, that she attended in Aston, in a bid to make friends with some of the younger parishioners. She’d been to the pictures and dancing with some of the young single Catholic girls on one of her rare evenings off, but she seldom went to her uncle’s house, knowing that she wouldn’t really be welcome.
Maeve met Brendan Hogan as she came out of Benediction one late summer’s evening in 1930, when she’d been in Birmingham less than six months. She thought he’d been to church too, but though he hadn’t, he didn’t enlighten her. He was struck by the beauty of the young woman and wanted to impress her, but though he never missed Mass or Communion – and certainly not confession, because that’s where all his sins were absolved – he hadn’t much truck with Benediction. He thought you could get too much of religion if you weren’t careful and, anyway, Benediction cut into his drinking time. He was actually on his way to a pub at Aston Cross, which he knew many ladies of ill repute frequented, when he bumped into the luscious golden-haired beauty who