When he first saw her tussling with Harry Tugman he’d thought she was one of the churchy women who came to ‘do good works’ among the poor, but when Josie O’Casey turned and smiled at him his mind almost stopped working.
But what on earth was she doing here?
Ma’s mongrel started growling. Patrick fixed it with a hard stare and the mutt flattened its ears, wagged what was left of its tail, and then shuffled back under the old woman’s chair.
Without a second glance, Patrick led Josie back towards the High Street. She said nothing, just gripped his arm tighter as she walked close to him. Her skirt brushed against his leg and he was suddenly aware of his work-stained clothes. His gaze rested on her small hand. The glove covering it was made of cream kid-leather and expertly stitched. It, and its twin on her other hand, probably cost more than his week’s rent.
‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she said, turning to face him as they stepped in to Wapping High Street. The late afternoon sunlight caressing her face illuminated her clear complexion and the red tones of her hair. He noticed her faint Irish accent had a different twist to it now. She put her hand on her chest as if to steady her breathing. ‘Oh, Patrick, I thought you were dead.’
‘Didn’t you get my last letter, the one from Gibraltar?’
Josie’s finely arched eyebrows pulled together. ‘The last one I got was when you were setting sail for Tenerife.’
His heart sank. Despite slipping out of school and down the river as a boy, Patrick prided himself that he wrote pretty fluently, but the agonising letter he’d scratched out doubled up on the crews’ deck of the
Dependable
was the hardest he’d ever penned.
It was difficult enough find a reliable sailor to take a letter across the Atlantic and there was always a chance they would take your sixpence, toss your letter over the side and drink the money. Wouldn’t it be just the Devil’s own work if the only one of his letters to Josie that had gone astray was the most important one.
‘I paid a ship’s cook on the
Northern Star
double to make sure you got it when the ship docked in New York,’ Patrick said.
Although every word he wrote cut through his heartstrings, he had written her a long letter wishing her well in her new married life and telling her about Rosa. And after all that she had never received it.
‘Patrick, I though you were dead,’ she said again, her eyes searching his face.
‘I thought you were in America still,’ he said.
‘My stepfather was offered the post of Chief Medical Officer for the London Hospital, so we returned a month ago,’ she told him as they stepped around a stack of barrels waiting to be stored in a nearby warehouse. ‘We are living in Stepney Green. I have another sister apart from Bobby and three brothers now, and Ma is expecting another in a few months,’ she told him as a tendril of her vibrant hair escaped her bonnet.
‘But why are you walking alone down Lower Well Alley? Surely you haven’t forgotten what a Godforsaken place some of the backstreets are?’ he said.
A faint flush spread across Josie’s cheeks. ‘I know, but I thought to walk home from my friend in Wellclose Square,’ she said. ‘But enough of my foolishness, why are you not in India or Africa or Japan or some other far-off land?’
‘I had enough of roaming the world and wanted to come home to settle down.’ It was his stock answer to the question.
‘And how are your family, your ma and pa and Mattie? Hannah, too, and Kate and Fergus. Ma told me that they pulled down the houses in Cinnamon Lane so where are you living now? And I bet Peter and Paul are a handful now - what are they? Twelve?’ She gave a joyous laugh and the dimple on her cheek that he’d almost forgotten about appeared.
‘A chest ague took Peter when he was two, Paul cut his foot in the mud and died of lock-jaw just after his tenth birthday,’ Patrick said. ‘We lost Pa, too, three winters back.’
Josie’s brows pulled together. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Your pa always had a cheery word for any and I know how hard it was when my ma and pa lost my little brother and sister. I’m sorry to hear your ma’s suffered in the same way.’
Patrick gave a tight smile. ‘Hannah’s a housemaid in Leyton and we only see her a couple of times a year. Kate works in Hoffman’s bakery at the corner of Bird Street and Gus is sixteen now and is nearly as tall as me. He’s a dock tallyman and earning good money, too. He’s lodging up in Jane Street. Mattie’s grand though, she’s at the Sugar refinery and set to marry in three months. We all live in Walburgh Street and I’m captain of one of Wimlow and Sons barges, working out of Limehouse reach.’
Josie’s cheery expression returned. ‘I would love to see them all, especially Mattie. She’s to be a bride, how wonderful,’ she said with a wistful sigh.
Patrick cleared his throat. ‘Is your husband with you or is he still in America?’
Josie’s brow pulled tightly together this time. ‘Husband?’ Then she laughed. ‘What husband would that be, now?’
A steady thumping started in Patrick’s temple. ‘The last time I docked in New York I found your house boarded up. One of your neighbours told me you’d got married and moved to Boston with the rest of your family.’
Josie shook her head. ‘That wasn’t me who got married, it was my cousin Jenny. Uncle Joe’s eldest.’ She laughed again and somehow a weight Patrick hadn’t realised he carried evaporated. ‘We had her wedding breakfast at our house just before Pa took his post in Boston.’
‘So you’re not married, then?’ he said, in an idiot-like tone.
Josie shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she replied.
Over the years and in numerous places Patrick had pictured Josie being swept off her feet by some tall, handsome, rich young man who’d married her and given her three or four children. And although it had given him no comfort to think of her in the arms of another, it had eased his conscious mightily.
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’m sure it’s not for the want of young men asking you,’ he said.
She cast a sideward glance at him. ‘There’s been the odd one or two who’ve been interested.’ A twinge of jealousy jabbed Patrick.
Don’t be a fool, why wouldn’t a pretty girl like Josie have young men queuing up to wed her. And none of them barge captains, that’s for sure.
‘I must visit Mattie. In fact I must come and see everyone, and very soon,’ Josie told him, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘Would your mother mind, if I called one afternoon?’
‘I’m sure she’d be right happy to see you,’ he replied, wondering what she would think of their home now. Even though she and her mother had lived two streets down from them, in one of the poorest cottages in the area when he and Josie were young, that was a long time ago.
Josie’s gaze ran over him slowly as her bright smile returned. ‘I can’t believe you’re here, and praise the saints you’re not dead, but Patrick, where
have
you been all these years?’
In that instant, he saw Josie - his Josie whom he had walked home from school and kissed inexpertly behind the gravestone in St George’s churchyard - and for a second the urge to kiss her, as he had done so many times before, surged up in Patrick. She was the same Josie he’d wanted for his wife.
Wife! Rosa!
‘It’s a long story,’ he replied flatly.
A hansom cab rolled around the corner, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding over the cobbles after its blinkered horse trotting down the street. The children by the kerb, searching for discarded vegetables for their supper, jumped out of the way as the conveyance screeched to a stop. While the driver quietened the horse, a lad, with a look of utter relief on his beardless face, jumped down.
‘Thank goodness you’ve come to no harm, Miss O’Casey,’ he said.
‘I’m fine, Sam,’ Josie said, glancing up at Patrick again.
The young man opened the cab door. Patrick helped her into the carriage. Despite her glove, his shirt and the jacket fabric, he felt her hand as if it were on his bare forearm.
Josie turned. ‘Oh, Patrick, I am so pleased you are alive.’
Patrick swallowed but didn’t answer. Josie stepped in; Sam closed the door and jumped up next to the driver.
Josie pulled down the window. ‘Tell your ma and Mattie I’ll call soon.’
Annie and Mickey!
Alarm shot through Patrick and he grabbed hold of the cab’s brass door handle. ‘Will you send word when you’re going to visit? I don’t want to come home and find that I’ve missed you.’
How was he going to tell her about Rosa?
Josie’s eyes flashed, sending a bolt of the old excitement through him. The cab lurched forward. ‘I’ll send Sam to let you know when to expect me,’ she answered, and then she gave him a sideward glance from under her lashes. ‘And when I do, I want to hear that long story.’
Chapter Four
Josie repositioned the flannel over her eyes as the large clock in the hall downstairs chimed seven. She could hardly remember the journey home in the hansom because, the moment the carriage jolted forward, a hundred jumbled thoughts had sprung to mind. By the time they’d reached the front door she had a blinding headache and, after murmuring apologies to her mother, she had dashed upstairs. Since then, she’d lain on her bed with her head swimming and a red zigzag line dancing at the edge of her vision. She must have slept, for when she opened her eyes the pain had gone, though her troubled thoughts remained.
Well, two troubled thoughts, really. Where
had
Patrick been for seven years and
why
hadn’t he come back to her? During the drive home her euphoria at finding him alive had given way to bewilderment. Of course, she told herself, there had to be some perfectly reasonable explanation. It could be any number of things. After all, sailors were often stranded on the other side of the world for months before securing a berth home . . . but seven years!
She was truly thankful that he was alive, and quite willing to accept that circumstance had kept him from returning to her, but she felt that the least she was entitled to expect would be a proper explanation of where he had been for all this time.
There was a faint knock on the door and, before she could answer, it creaked open to allow Ellen in.
‘Are you any better, my love?’ she asked.
‘A little,’ Josie replied. Ellen sat on the side of the bed and placed her cool hand on Josie’s forehead. ‘You don’t seem feverish, ’ she said, brushing a stray lock out of her daughter’s eyes. ‘I am supposed to be the one with headaches, not you. What’s wrong?’
‘I saw Patrick,’ Josie said, the words catching in her throat.
Ellen patted her hand. ‘I know how difficult it is for you coming back after all this time. Only you and I know the painful old memories this place conjures up. I can’t help thinking of your gran, and how we used to scrub our knuckles raw in the washtub just to pay the rent, never mind putting food on the table. I understand how it must be affecting you because only yesterday, I thought I saw—’
‘No, Mam. I don’t
think
I saw Patrick, I
did
see him. I met him in the street and spoke to him.’ She spoke with a sob in her voice, which made her angry at herself.
Startled, Ellen put her hand to her chest. ‘Patrick’s alive?’
Josie nodded as a lump formed in her throat.
‘Oh, my poor darling . . . what did you say to him?
Josie recounted the conversation.
‘But if he’s been alive all this time, why didn’t he come back, I wonder,’ Ellen said. ‘And for the love of Mary, where has he been?’
‘Apparently, he sent a letter to New York to explain everything, but we had already moved to Boston.’
‘What did it say?’ Ellen asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Josie replied, taking a deep breath to stop the wavy lines in her vision from returning.
Ellen pressed her lips together. ‘I would have thought “where have you been for seven years, Patrick Nolan”, would have been the first words out of your mouth.’