fresh looking. His eyes, too, were brown but of a much deeper tone than his hair. His lips were not full as might have been expected to go with the shape of his face but were thin and wide. Even in his shirt sleeves he looked smart, and cleaner than the rest of the men seated around the table.
Jimmy, the younger son, had fair hair that sprang like fine silk from double crowns on his head. His face had the young look of a boy of fourteen yet he was nineteen years old. His skin was as fair as his hair and his grey eyes seemed over-big for his face. His body looked straight and well formed, until he stood up, and then you saw that his legs were badly bowed, so much so that he was known as Bandy Connor.
Paddy’s third child was Nellie, Mrs Burke, who was next in age to Rory.
Bill Waggett from No. 1 The Cottages, the son of Gran Waggett and the father of Janie, worked in the docks. He was fifty years old but could have been taken for sixty. His wife had died six years before, bearing her seventh child. Janie was the only one they had managed to rear and he adored her.
Bill’s love for her had been such that he did not demand that she stay at home to keep house for him when his wife died but had let her go into service as a nursemaid, even though this meant that once again he would be treated as a young nipper by his mother who was then in her seventy-ninth year. But he, like all those in the cottages, gave her respect if only for the fact that now at eighty-five she still did a full day’s work.
Collum Leary was a miner. He was now forty-eight but had been down the pit since he was seven years old. His initiation had been to sit twelve hours a day in total blackness. At eight he had graduated to crawling on his hands and knees with a chain between his legs, which was attached to a bogie load of coal, while his blood brother pushed it from behind. He could not remember his mother, only his father who had come from Ireland when he himself was a boy. The nearest Collum had ever got to Ireland was the Irish quarter in Jarrow and as he himself said, who would bother crossing the seas when almost every man-jack of them were on your doorstep?
Collum at forty-eight was a wizened, prematurely aged man who carried the trade-mark of his following on his skin, for his face and body were scarred as with pocks by blue marks left by the imprint of the coal. But Collum was happy. He went to confession once a twelve-month, and now and again he would follow it by Communion, and he did his duty by God as the priest dictated and saw to it that his wife gave birth every year, at least almost every year. Those years in which she failed to become pregnant were the times he took Communion.
‘How’s the shipbuilding goin’, Jimmy?’ Collum Leary now poked his head forward across the table.
‘Oh, grand, fine, Mr Leary.’
‘When are you goin’ to build your own boat?’
‘That’ll be the day, but I will sometime.’ Jimmy nodded now. Then catching Rory’s eye, he smiled widely. ‘I said I will, an’ I will, won’t I, Rory?’ The boy appealed to his older brother as to one in authority.
Rory, shuffling the cards, glanced sideways at Jimmy and there was a softness in his expression that wasn’t usual except when perhaps he looked at Janie.
‘You’ll soon be out of your time, won’t you, Jimmy?’
Jimmy now turned towards Bill Waggett, answering, ‘Aye, beginnin’ of the year, Mr Waggett. And that’s what I’m feared of. They turn you out, you know, once your time’s up.’
‘Aw, they won’t turn you out.’ Bill Waggett pursed his lips. You hear things around the docks you know; there’s more things come up on the tide than rotten cabbages. I hear tell you’re the best ‘prentice Baker’s ever had in his yard; a natural they say you are, Jimmy; mould a bit of wood with your hands, they say.’
‘Aw, go on with you.’ Jimmy turned his head to the side, his lips pressed tight but his whole face failing to suppress his pleasure at the compliment. Then looking at Bill Waggett again and his expression changing, he said, ‘But I’ll tell you somethin’, I wouldn’t be able to finish me time if old Baker saw what I was doin’ at this minute.’
‘You mean havin’ a game?’ Rory had stopped shuffling the pack and Jimmy nodded at him, saying, ‘Aye. Well, you know what some of them’s like. But now there’s a notice come out. Didn’t I tell you?’
‘No, you didn’t. A notice? What kind of a notice?’
‘Well it says that anybody that’s found playin’ cards on a Sunday’ll lose their jobs, an’ if you know about somebody having a game an’ don’t let on, why then you’ll lose your job an’ all.’
Rory slapped his hand of cards on to the table. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Aye, Rory.’
‘My God!’ Rory now looked round at the rest of the men, and they stared back at him without speaking until his father said, ‘You don’t know you’re born, lad.’ There was a slight touch of resentment in the tone and the look they exchanged had no friendliness in it. Then Paddy, nodding towards Bill Waggett, said, ‘What did you tell me the other day about when you worked in the soda works, Bill?’
‘Oh that. Well’—Bill brought his eyes to rest on Rory— ‘couldn’t breathe there. If you were a few minutes late you were fined, and if it was a quarter of an hour, like it might be in winter when you couldn’t your way through the snow, why man, they stopped a quarter day’s pay. And if you dared to talk about your work outside you were fined ten bob the first time, then given the push if it happened twice. That’s a fact. It is, it is. An’ you might be sayin’ covered of any account. And if anybody covered up for you when you were late . . . oh my God! they were in it for it. You know what? They had to pay the fine, the same fine as you paid. You were treated like a lot of bairns: back-chat the foreman and it was half a dollar fine. My God! I had to get out of there. You see, Rory, as your da says, you don’t know you’re born being, a rent collector. Your da did something for you lettin’ you learn to read. By! aye, he did. It’s somethin’ when you can earn your livin’ without dirtyin’ your hands.’
Rory v was flicking the cards over the flowered oilcloth that covered the wooden table. His head was lowered and his lids were lowered, the expression in his eyes was hidden, but his lips were set straight.
Jimmy, as always sensing his brother’s mood, turned to Collum Leary and said, ‘It’s a pity our Rory isn’t in America along with your Michael and James and one of them boats that ply the river, like Michael said, where they can gamble in the open.’
‘Aye, it is that, Jimmy,’ Collum laughed at him. ‘He’d make his fortune.’ He turned and pushed Rory in the shoulder with his doubled fist, adding, ‘Why don’t you go to America, Rory, now why don’t you?’
‘I just might, I just might.’ Rory was now fanning out the cards in his hand. It would suit me that, down to the ground it would. A gamblin’ boat . . . .’
‘Gamblin’, cards, fortunes made in America, that’s all you hear.’ With the exception of Rory the men turned and looked towards Lizzie O’Dowd, where she had risen from her chair, and she nodded at them, continuing, ‘Nobody is ever satisfied. Take what God sends an’ be thankful.’ Then her tone changing, she laughed as she added, ‘He’s gona send you cold brisket this minute. Who wants pickled onions with it?’
There were gabbled answers and laughter from the table and when she turned away and walked down the room past the chiffonier, past the dess-bed that stood in an alcove, and into the scullery, Janie, too, turned and followed her into the cluttered cramped space and closed the door after her.
Hunching her shoulders upwards against the cold, Janie picked up a knife and began cutting thick slices off a large crusty loaf. She had almost finished cutting the bread before she spoke. Her head still bent, she said quietly, ‘Don’t worry, Lizzie, he won’t go to America.’
‘Aw, I know that, lass, I know that. It’s me temper gets the better of me.’ She turned from hacking lumps of meat from the brisket bone and, looking full at Janie, she said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, it’s funny, but you understand, lass, don’t you?’
‘Aye, I understand, Lizzie. Aw, don’t worry, he understands an’ all.’
‘I wish I could think so.’
‘He does, he does.’
Lizzie now put the knife down on the table and, bringing one plump hand up, she pressed it tightly across her chin as she remarked, ‘I’m not a bad woman, Janie, I never was.’
‘Aw, Lizzie, Lizzie.’ Janie, her arms outstretched now, put them around the fat warm body of Lizzie O’Dowd, whom she had known and loved since she was a child; even before her own mother had died she had loved Lizzie O’Dowd as if she were a second mother, or perhaps she had placed her first, she was never quite certain in her own mind; and now, their cheeks pressed close for a moment, she whispered, ‘It’ll all come right. It’ll all come right in the end, you’ll see.’
‘Aye, yes. Yes, you’re right, lass.’ Lizzie turned her away as she roughly swept the tears from her cheeks with the side of her finger. Then picking up the knife again and her head bowed once more, she muttered, ‘I think the world of Ruth an’ I always have. She’s the best of women . . . . Life isn’t easy, Janie’
‘I know it isn’t, Lizzie. And Ruth’s fond of you, you know she is. She couldn’t do without you. None of us
