After a moment she yanked her hands down to her lap, forcing them to be still and swallowing hard, determined not to give way to her emotion. The words jolted out of her.
‘Prepare yourself for a shock. It’s your uncle. They . . . I was at work . . . He . . . The police came . . . He’s been found – in the canal. Last night, when he didn’t come home – well, it was one of those nights. There’ve been so many, when he just goes off, walks himself into exhaustion.’ She stared in a haunted way towards the window. ‘I didn’t think . . . He wasn’t – I mean, so many times, when he’s been—’
Abruptly she sat up, gathering herself and turning to Katie, her eyes full of a terrible intensity. She put her hands on Katie’s shoulders, gripping painfully hard.
‘It was an accident, that’s what it was. A tragic accident that no one could have prevented. D’you understand, Katie? No one else knows how he went about at night, and no one needs to. We don’t know anything, except that he set out full of life, and now he’s gone.’
Katie burst into tears. ‘What d’you mean, he’s gone? Did he jump in the canal?’
‘No!’ her mother cried furiously, shaking her.
‘Ow! Mom! Don’t – you’re hurting.’
‘Don’t you
ever
say that. Don’t you even think it, d’you hear? It was an accident. That’s all.’
Katie was sobbing. ‘Is Uncle Patrick dead? Isn’t he coming back?’
Her mother stopped shaking her and let go, as if she had gone limp.
‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘He’s not coming back.’
The coffin was moved into the house the next day, while Katie was at school.
‘What happened?’ Amy said as soon as she got there. ‘Why was there a policeman at your house?’
‘It’s my uncle,’ Katie said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He’s died in an accident.’ All day she was close to tears.
‘I think you’d better come in and pay your respects,’ Vera said when Katie came home. She seemed to be holding herself in very tight. ‘Come along now – let’s get it over with.’
It was strange and terrible seeing the coffin taking up most of the front room. There was a candle burning on the side table, in front of the wedding portrait. But the lid of the coffin was already nailed down. Vera had laid a string of rosary beads on the top, and a small posy of flowers.
‘They said they thought it better that we didn’t see him,’ Vera explained. ‘What with him drowning. He’ll be changed. But you can say goodbye to him anyway.’
Katie stood by the long box with its brass handles. She reached out a finger and ran it along the smooth wood. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with Uncle Patrick. She wondered what it meant, him being changed, and the thought made her uneasy. Then she thought about him when he was alive, and that made her feel very sad. Soon she turned to go out. She tried to forget that the coffin was there, but she kept seeing it in her mind.
That evening, there was a knock at the door. Vera opened it to find Patrick’s employers, the Lawler brothers.
‘We’ve heard the news,’ Seamus Lawler said, taking off his cap. Johnny Lawler followed his example. ‘We’ve come to pay our respects.’
‘You’d better come in,’ Vera said quickly. To Katie’s surprise, she seemed glad to see them. There was no one else to share their loss, to come and see them, apart from Enid Thomas.
The men went into the front room, there was a pause, and then they came through to the back. They were both dark-haired men with stubbly faces that always seemed cast in shadow, not helped by being constantly dusted with coal.
‘Well,’ Seamus said awkwardly. He usually did the talking. ‘We’ll be on our way then, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Vera offered.
‘Oh well, no – but thanks,’ he said. ‘We’ll be going.’ There was a pause. ‘Will you be having a wake for him?’
Vera looked confused, anguished. She didn’t know what to do, was too English, not instinctively Catholic and too much in shock. ‘Well, I don’t know – I hadn’t thought.’
‘Well, you know, we could put on a bit of a wake for him, Mrs O’Neill. If you want us to.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’d . . .’ She struggled to control herself. ‘I’d be most grateful.’
‘Right then – that’s settled.’
There was a Mass at the English Martyrs parish. It was one of the very few times Katie could remember seeing her mother at Mass, though Patrick had told her that Vera had converted to marry his brother, and had attended Mass devoutly when he was alive.
‘I think she lost her faith when he died,’ Patrick said once. ‘It’s never easy, that sort of thing, losing someone so young.’
She would not have brought Katie up as a Catholic – it was Patrick who had done that, as best he could, talking her through her catechism and making sure she made her First Holy Communion in a white dress.
Father Daly said Mass for Patrick O’Neill, as he had been the priest who knew him best. He said some kind words about him, about his work as a Brother, his faithfulness to the parish. His death was treated compassionately, in no other way than as an accident.
Standing in the dark church and seeing his coffin up near the altar, now looking small, though it had looked quite big in their front room, started to bring home to Katie that he was never coming back again. All the kind things Patrick had done for her passed through her mind: the way he had been there steadily through her life, like a father although he wasn’t one; the way he had encouraged her at school, introducing her to the library and the world of books; the swimming. She thought she might burst with grief as the coffin was carried in slow procession from the church. She would miss her kind, tormented uncle. She knew, more clearly in those moments than she had ever known before, that his life had been a constant battle with suffering, which he had borne with a quiet, heroic bravery; and she knew instinctively that that day, for no reason they would ever fathom, it had become too much for him. There had been no accident; he had lost the battle. The tears ran down her cheeks and, as she looked up at her mother, she saw that her face was wet as well, with grief for a man whom she had not loved as a husband, but who had won her gratitude and an odd kind of respect.
1942
‘Well, I might have a job for you,’ the lady in the Labour Exchange said. She had a miserable, whining voice and seemed to begrudge handing out jobs, as if they were her personal property. ‘There’s a position for a shorthand typist . . .’ She eyed Katie over her horn-rimmed spectacles, then peered down at Katie’s references. ‘They’re probably looking for someone with more experience, but,’ she added dismally, ‘you look as if you might stand a chance.’
She told Katie that the firm off Bradford Street, which made carburettors, urgently needed a secretary for one of their quite-senior staff.
‘Shall I tell them you’re interested? They’re offering four pounds a week.’
‘Yes, please!’ Katie said.
She left the office daunted, but excited. Four pounds! That was a hell of a step up from her present wage of fourteen and six in the typing pool. And to think she started as a filing clerk only five years ago on nine shillings! But she was bright and good at her work: she knew she stood out. Serck Radiators, where she was working now, would give her good references, and her looks didn’t do her any harm, either.
As usual, she was very smartly dressed. Katie had inherited her mother’s elegance along with her father’s dark looks. Ann and Pat, friends with whom she’d shared the two years of evening classes – shorthand, typing and bookkeeping – at the Commercial School in Sparkhill, always said she looked dressed fit to kill. And thanks to Vera’s sewing lessons, Katie could make almost anything. She browsed round the Rag Market for second-hand clothes made of nice materials and remade them into garments to fit her.
‘I wish I could sew like you and your mom,’ Ann would grumble, pulling her badly fitting skirt down as it ruckled up over her plump hips. ‘I always look like a bag of muck tied up in the middle, compared with you!’
Today Katie was wearing a well-tailored suit in an attractive navy twill that Vera had made for her before the war. It always ironed up nicely and looked good as new, and under the jacket she wore a cream blouse with a Peter Pan collar and small pearl buttons. She had had her hair cut recently, level with her shoulders, which brought out its natural wave, and she wore it fashionably rolled and pinned back from her face at the front and sides. Her face had matured and filled out a little; she looked a little older than her years and had turned into a beauty, with her dark-haired Irish looks needing no make-up to improve them. Even the woman at the Labour Exchange looked at her with reluctant admiration.
She made her way across to Bradford Street and climbed the hill, pleased to see the imposing, blackened red-brick frontage of St Anne’s Church up on the right. The sight of it comforted her. She still went to Mass quite regularly. She had missed her uncle such a lot after he died, and still there was an ache in her heart whenever she thought of him. Going to Mass seemed to bring her closer to both him and her father. She had a Mass said for each of them every year, though she didn’t tell her mother about that. In fact, Vera was so nervy these days that Katie didn’t tell her about very much.
A few minutes later she was looking up at an imposing factory building with a row of arched windows on the second floor, below which ran a white banner on which was painted in dark-blue letters: ARTHUR COLLINGE.
Oh well, she thought. Here goes.
‘Well?’ Vera asked when she got home.
‘I’ve got it – a new job at Collinge’s! Shorthand typist for a Mr Graham!’
She saw her mother’s face relax. ‘Who’s Mr Graham?’
‘He’s the head of the something-or-other . . . Process Department, that was it. I could hardly take it all in. I haven’t met him yet – it was just the Labour Manager that I saw, who does all your cards and everything. Shall I put the kettle on?’ she offered. ‘I’m dying for a cuppa.’
They continued talking in the kitchen as the kettle hissed on the gas.
‘But as they were showing me out – it was one of the younger typists was told to take me – we passed this old lady with her specs on a chain round her neck. She looked ever so old to me, but the girl nudged me and said, “D’you know who that is?” Course I said no, and she said, “That’s Mr Collinge’s secretary, Miss Hurley. Ooh, she’s a tartar!” So I said, which I shouldn’t have really, “The sort who can strike you dead with a look!” I mean it was bad of me, but we just got the titters then. It’s a good job I was on my way out!’
To Katie’s relief, Vera smiled faintly. Her mimicry could often raise a smile from her mother. It seemed to bring out something irreverent in her.
‘I’ll be keeping out of her way.’ She turned from laying out the cups. Carefully she said, ‘Are you all right, Mother?’
‘Oh – yes, just a bit tired,’ Vera said. ‘I could do with a cup of tea. I’ve only just got in. So when do you start?’
‘Tomorrow. I hope I can do the job: I don’t know if he realized I’m only nineteen, but he never said anything. It’ll keep me on my toes all right – and I haven’t met Himself yet, either. That’ll be the acid test.’
As they drank tea she sneaked glances at her mother when Vera was not aware of being watched. Since Patrick had died, Mother had become even more anxious, worrying about the slightest thing, especially since the war had begun. The worst months of the Blitz had taken their toll on everyone’s nerves, but it seemed to have affected Vera particularly badly. She had kept on her job at Lewis’s and had helped out in the first-aid post in the store’s basement when times were at their worst, until her nerves got the better of her and she had had to stop. She had suffered with a lot of sickness, bouts of gastroenteritis that she was sure were brought on by nerves. Unlike the very tight, controlled mother Katie had always known, Vera had begun having fits of weeping and shaking, which Katie found frightening. If she tried to comfort her, Vera would turn against her and tell her to go away and leave her alone.
‘Go on – go!’ she screamed at Katie once during a particularly bad outburst. ‘What use has anyone ever been to me?’
She had visibly aged, her hair almost completely grey now, her face haggard, though still handsome in its way. Katie felt she always had to be strong and positive, to keep her mother’s spirits up and spare her worry. She did feel sorry for her, and it made her own life easier too if she kept the peace.
In the winter of 1940, after the worst of the bombing of Coventry, Katie had moved to her new job with Serck Radiators, as it was nearer home. She didn’t have to travel so far to work, which was easier for her, and she knew that Vera worried constantly about her, especially in her previous job, at a firm in Oldbury, which was quite a journey away. A few times the airraid siren had gone off before she had got off the bus and they had crawled into Birmingham or even abandoned the journey, making all the passengers pile off into the nearest shelter they could find. There was one night in November when Katie hadn’t got home and had spent a cold, cramped night with strangers in a factory cellar, listening to the thump-thump of bombs falling around them. She had had to go straight back to work the next morning, knowing that her mother would be beside herself with worry.
For a short time she had been out with a lad she met at a dance that Pat had talked her into going to, at the Moseley Road Baths. They would lay boards over the pool and use it as a dance floor. Katie was shy of young men and scarcely knew how to dance, or what to talk to them about. The only man she’d ever really known was Uncle Patrick! But her pretty looks soon drew the attention of a slim, dark-eyed young man who said, over the noise of the music and shuffling feet, that his name was Terence Flowers.