Danny Boy (34 page)

But in doing so she roused Danny and the feeling of her hands on his body further aroused him, and as she leaned over him to remove his trousers he smelled the sweet smell of her. His Rosie! And his arms clasped her tight and he pulled her on top of him.

She twisted to get away from his stale beery breath and the action had the effect of arousing him further and when she felt him harden against her she was terrified, for she knew Danny drunk wouldn’t be as considerate as Danny sober, and she cried, ‘Danny, please don’t do this!’

Danny was too drunk and too fired up to listen to pleas. He rolled Rosie onto her back with him above and when her arms flailed at him and her cries rose he held her arms above her head with one hand, pulled her bloomers down with the other, and stopped her cries with his mouth. And when Danny entered her he could no more have pulled out in time than he could have stopped the tide. When he eventually released Rosie’s mouth she sobbed as he pummelled into her over and over for she knew with a dread certainty his actions would result in another pregnancy and another premature baby miscarried.

Rosie was roused on Christmas morning by the dulcet and totally tuneless tones of the mouth organ she’d put in Bernadette’s stocking the evening before. She looked at her
inert husband beside her and hoped he had some money left after the binge of the night before, for as well as the toys she’d bought special food for the festive season.

She sighed as she got to her feet. She ached all over, she realised, and her wrists were chapped and scratched where Danny had held her so roughly. But all that would matter little if there was no result from the previous night. Oh God! She had the urge to hit Danny across the head with something heavy, but instead she went to take Bernadette downstairs and get her ready for Mass.

Danny was up when the two returned from Church. He looked decidedly green, quite ill in fact. And he
was
ill. Many times that day he had to go running down the yard to the privy to be sick. He could stomach neither breakfast nor dinner and retired to bed in the afternoon, saying he felt bad.

It put a damper on Rosie’s whole Christmas and she decided to go into Ida’s rather than sit on her own. Rita and Georgie were already in there too, and the children shared the toys they had and the unaccustomed sweets that Ida gave them, and Rosie eventually began to relax. ‘God,’ she said to her two friends. ‘You should have seen the state of Danny last night.’

‘I heard,’ Ida said. ‘I heard
you
too.’

Rosie blushed and Rita said, ‘Did he want sex? My Harry always did when he’d had a few.’

‘Wanted it? He was like a wild animal.’

‘Could he do owt?’ Ida asked surprised. ‘If Herbie had got like that he couldn’t’ve done anything.’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s anything Danny could do that would disable him in that department,’ Rosie said bitterly. ‘I mean, it’s Christmas Day and I might as well be living with a zombie.’

‘Let him sleep it off,’ Ida suggested. ‘He’ll be fine tomorrow. Anyroad, let’s have a nip of sherry ourselves, it being the festive season and all.’

‘Yeah,’ Rita said, lifting her glass. ‘If you can’t beat the buggers, you have to join them.’ And she downed the contents in one gulp and held out her glass for a top-up and all the women laughed together.

It was late into Christmas evening before Danny decided he wasn’t going to die and now his stomach had stopped churning he wasn’t going to be sick again. Gradually, flashes of the previous night came back to him and he got up and went downstairs. Rosie sat on her own, knitting something in red and blue, and he looked at her sheepishly and then was appalled as he noticed the chafing on her wrists. ‘Rosie, Rosie, I’m so sorry about last night.’

Rosie shrugged. ‘I was sorry too, and disappointed in the man I married for the first time,’ she said. ‘I pleaded with you to leave me alone. What if I become pregnant again now?’

Without giving him time to reply, she said, ‘Not that it will matter to you. Fine figure of a father you are. Too ill from your drunkenness to attend Mass, or even give a greeting to your child on Christmas Day, the one you are supposed to adore. She’s in bed now, and this is the worst Christmas Day Bernadette and I have ever had. Do you hear?’ she said, her voice rising in indignation, ‘the very worst.’

Danny’s head had begun to thump again. ‘Please, Rosie,’ he cried, his hands waving in the air.

‘Your head sore, is it?’ Rosie said scornfully. ‘Good! It’s no more than you deserve and I’ll shout as much as I want in my own bloody house. And now I’m tired, I’ve been up since the crack of dawn, unlike some, and I’m away to my bed.’ She stabbed her knitting needles into the balls of wool decisively and slammed the stair door on her way up, which caused Danny to put his hands to his head and moan.

It was February before Rosie acknowledged that she was once more pregnant. She was bitterly upset and furiously angry with
Danny. She resolved to say nothing, there was little point when she’d lose the child eventually as she had done the other two.

She never allowed herself to imagine this child might live. Why should it? And she distanced herself from the whole experience to protect herself. After a while she didn’t think of herself as carrying a child, but a leaden weight inside her that she would expel in time.

The pregnancy caused sickness, more violent than Rosie had ever experienced before, and not just in the morning either. She was eating no more than before, and even that often caused nausea, and so she began to look thin and unwell though she managed to hide the vomiting from Danny.

They were still getting unemployment benefit, but in February Danny was called in for assessment and they asked many questions of where he’d looked for work and so on. He was given the same amount for another fifteen weeks, but the thought that this handout might be snapped away from him at any time caused him to trawl the city once more for employment of any kind, and he also took part in rallies and marches to bring the predicament that thousands were in, before the Government.

Danny had noticed that Rosie looked unwell, but when he asked her if she was all right she curtly replied she was grand. He didn’t think he could press it. He knew things hadn’t been right since Christmas and that had been his fault. He only had a hazy recollection of it and even that was enough to cause him to bow his head in shame, and he wasn’t surprised that Rosie hadn’t let him near her since.

Her friends too were worried for Rosie, though they weren’t aware how often she had to steal away to the lavatory, but her gaunt appearance couldn’t be hidden. ‘Go and see the chemist,’ Ida advised. ‘He’ll make you up a tonic.’

‘I need no tonic.’

‘Well, you need summat all right,’ Ida said. ‘I’m surprised Danny hasn’t noticed.’

‘Huh, as if I’d take any notice of anything he said,’ Rosie retorted.

‘You ain’t still mad at him about Christmas, are you?’ Ida asked, and at Rosie’s silence said, ‘Christ, Rosie, he’s a man. These things happen.’

‘Aye, they happen all right,’ Rosie snapped. ‘Well, they’ll not happen again in a hurry. Nearly three bloody shillings he spent in that pub when he knew we needed every penny, and then he comes at me like a raging beast. He’ll not do that again in a hurry either.’

‘Rosie!’

‘Don’t start on about how it’s different for men and all that clap-trap. I’m not interested. He’s not coming near me again.’

‘Christ, girl, you can’t do that. You’re married to the man.’

‘And don’t I know it.’

‘Come on, Rosie. This ain’t like you. All right, so Danny let his hair down, getting rolling, stinking drunk, but only the once, Rosie. Give the man a break?’

‘No!’ Rosie stated emphatically, and neither Ida’s urging nor Rita’s entreaties, calling in to see her on her way home from her cleaning job, made the slightest bit of difference.

Rosie felt so alone during this pregnancy, although she knew she only had herself to blame, because by choice she’d not let on to a soul. She couldn’t bear it, the excitement and false hopes, the knitting of little garments, choosing names, planning a future, and all for nothing. But it meant she felt isolated.

She barely spoke to Danny and hardened her heart against the sorrowful looks he gave her. What’s he got to feel sorry about, she thought. It’s me who has to bear the consequences of his actions.

Danny stayed out of the house as much as possible. If he wasn’t actively looking for work, or at a rally, he often
took Bernadette with him. She, at least, had forgiven her father for his aberration on Christmas Day and loved him as much as ever. Rosie didn’t mind that, and often wanted to scream at him to, ‘Take joy in her, she’s the only child you’ll ever have, for even this one I have in my belly will not live.’

However, she said none of these things, not to her husband, her friends or her relatives in Ireland, and as one day followed another she waited for the show of blood on her bloomers, the rush of water from her body, or the familiar drawing pains in her stomach.

In mid-March, without a word about it to Danny, Rosie took Bernadette to put her name down at St Joseph’s in Thimble Mill Lane. She was more than ready, and missed Georgie greatly because he’d begun at the school in Upper Thomas Street after Christmas.

Mother Dunston was the headmistress of the girls’ school at St Joseph’s and Sister Maria was head of the infants. Rosie was introduced to both as she filled in the forms to enrol Bernadette.

They were shown into the classroom where Bernadette would begin. The pupils were very industrious, Rosie noticed, writing laboriously on the slates they had in front of them on the desks. ‘Formal work is done in the morning,’ Sister Maria explained. ‘The younger children have more play in the afternoon.’

‘Would you like to come here, Bernadette?’ Rosie asked.

Bernadette looked at the bent heads of the children and her hand tightened in her mother’s. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps.’

Over the child’s head, the eyes of Sister Maria and Rosie met and they smiled. Little did Bernadette know going back to school wasn’t optional.

Back in the office, Sister Maria said, ‘Bernadette’s fifth
birthday is not till July you said, but I think we may be able to take her after Easter if you’d prefer.’

‘Oh yes,’ Rosie said. ‘Not that I won’t miss her, but she gets bored at home, especially now her special little friend began school after Christmas.’

‘Here?’

‘No, he’s not a Catholic, Sister,’ Rosie said. ‘He went to a school near us.’

‘Well, here she will mix and play with Catholic children,’ Sister Maria said, as if saying the non-Catholics were inferior, but Rosie was used to the way nuns went on and she said nothing. ‘The fees are a penny to fourpence a week,’ the nun went on, ‘and in view of your husband’s lack of employment, your contribution will be one penny.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’

‘Will Bernadette be going home to dinner?’

‘Oh yes, certainly. Well, at first at least.’

‘If later you want her to stay at school she must bring something with her to eat,’ the nun said. ‘We do not provide meals.’

‘No, no, of course not.’

‘So that is settled then,’ Sister Maria said. She put her hand on Bernadette’s blonde curls and said, ‘I’ll see you on 12 April, when the school reopens again after Easter.’

Bernadette’s blue eyes, full of trepidation, sought her mother’s deep brown ones. ‘Will she?’

‘Yes, Bernadette,’ Rosie said. ‘Indeed she will, and her name is Sister Maria. You must remember that. Say goodbye now.’

Bernadette told her father as they sat down to a meal that evening, as Rosie knew she would, and she also knew Danny was cross. ‘Isn’t this something we should have talked about?’

Rosie shrugged. ‘What is there to say? The child’s going on for five, she needs to go to school, and St Joseph’s is the nearest Catholic one. So that’s that, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Am I of no account in this house?’

The words were out before Rosie could clamp her lips together to prevent them. ‘No, not really.’

The look Danny cast Rosie as he pushed back his chair, scraping it across the lino, should have struck her dead. He left his dinner barely half-eaten, and pulling his cap and greatcoat from the hook behind the door he went out into the darkening night and slammed the door with such force it juddered on the hinges.

‘Is Daddy cross?’

‘Aye.’

‘Why’s he cross?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rosie said, and was surprised how little Danny’s bad humour bothered her.

‘Is it because I’m going to school?’

‘Och, no, not at all,’ Rosie told her small daughter. ‘Why ever should you have that idea? Come on and eat up your dinner like a good girl, and whatever ails your father, he’ll get over it in time.’

But though Rosie could reassure Bernadette, she was sorry she’d spoken in that way to Danny. He didn’t know he’d left her pregnant again and she had no intention of telling him, thinking he’d know soon enough when she miscarried. But it did no good for Bernadette to see her sniping at him this way, did no good for any of them. It wasn’t as if Danny could do anything about the pregnancy now and going on and on blaming him would eventually eat into the fabric of their marriage.

Bernadette had very reluctantly gone to bed before Danny returned and when he came in hesitantly, as if not sure of his welcome, Rosie greeted him with a kiss. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t blame you. I am useless.’

‘You’re not,’ Rosie said. ‘I was sorry the minute the words were out of my mouth and you are right of course, the matter should have been discussed. She’s your daughter as much as mine.’

It gladdened Danny’s heart to hear Rosie say those words. He had been so dispirited and depressed when he’d left the house. It was bad enough to feel he was on the scrap heap because he had no job, but to think Rosie too thought he was of no account, that had really hurt. He loved Bernadette totally and absolutely and wanted to be an important part of her life.

‘Go up to her now,’ Rosie advised. ‘She won’t be asleep. She went up protesting on every stair that she couldn’t be put to bed without giving you a kiss. I’ll warm the dinner you left over a pan. I’m sure you will have more appetite for it now.’