He didn’t add that he didn’t know how long the child would survive, for he was very small and puny-looking and the doctor didn’t think much of his chances. But the baby didn’t concern him as much as Rosie, and what would happen to her if this baby died as well. God, it was a hard life for some of these people.

  Danny didn’t understand the doctor’s attitude, but then thought it mattered little how he was spoken to, it was Rosie he was concerned about and he barely registered what he’d said about the baby. ‘Can I see her?’ he asked.

  ‘There is little point, she’s still unconscious and will be for some time yet. Maybe you can look through the window?’

  Danny thought he’d never get over the sight of Rosie lying there, so still and as white as the bandage that encircled her head. He noticed how her thinness had semi-disguised her pregnancy and now he noted her sunken cheeks and her hands so thin that even from the window he could see the prominent veins.

  The nurse was at the door. ‘Are you the husband?’ she said to Danny.

  Danny gave a brief nod. ‘Aye. Will she…Will she be all right?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the nurse said. ‘She’s in no immediate danger now. Do you want to see your son?’

  The baby barely mattered to Danny and as he peered through the nursery window he could see little of the child anyway, swaddled as he was and laid in a cradle filled with cotton wool and with a light shining down on him for warmth.

  He heard Rita and Ida both gasp. ‘D’you think he’s going to make it?’ Rita whispered to Ida.

  ‘I bloody well hope so,’ Ida answered grimly. ‘Rosie will go off her rocker altogether if she loses this nipper and all.’

  ‘He needs to be baptised quickly,’ Danny said. ‘But we haven’t even discussed names.’

  Ida and Rita knew that. ‘You choose summat then,’ Ida said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Danny said. ‘Rosie’s been funny about this baby all the way through. I’d like her to have some say in what we call him.’

  ‘Well, you can’t ask her.’

  And Danny knew he couldn’t hang about, the child might not survive the night. ‘I must go for the priest anyway,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’ll think of something. Will you see to Bernadette for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ida said. ‘Don’t give it a thought. I must make my way home myself. I left Jack minding all of them and our Billy plays him up shocking sometimes.’

  They took the tram together up the Victoria Road, but while the two women got off at Upper Thomas Street, Danny stayed on to the next stop where the road crossed the Lichfield Road and it was there he ran into Doctor Patterson leaving his surgery. ‘Not many in tonight,’ he remarked to Danny. ‘I was so late beginning evening surgery, those not in immediate danger of dying got fed up waiting and went home.’

  ‘Is that because you stayed on at the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, I was concerned about your wife,’ the doctor said curtly. ‘That head wound looked nasty and I had no idea she was pregnant again, and with her history of miscarriage and stillbirth, I was worried about her.’

  ‘I know,’ Danny said. ‘She didn’t want to go through it again. It…it was my fault. Came about through me taking a drop too much at Christmas.’

  The doctor looked at Danny and saw the worry etched on his face. His hair stood on end as if he had run his fingers through it in agitation and he knew that this man would rather cut off his right arm than willingly hurt his wife. It took a big man to admit he had been in the wrong so openly. ‘Don’t fret too much,’ he said, ‘though I know it’s easy to say that, but what’s done is done and your wife and son are in the right place now at least. These things happen.’

  ‘It shouldn’t have happened, not to Rosie,’ Danny said morosely. ‘I knew how she felt, she’d told me and I’d agreed. I didn’t want her to go through this sort of thing again. If anything happens to the baby, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘He’s alive at the moment,’ the doctor said. ‘Cling on to that. If he survives tonight, he’ll have a better chance of making it. Where are you making for now? Can I drop you anywhere?’

  ‘No, thanks all the same,’ Danny said. ‘I’m going for the priest and the presbytery is just along the way here. I should like the baby baptised tonight – just in case, you know. Point is, we never discussed names – Rosie wouldn’t, thought the child wouldn’t survive, see?’

  The doctor nodded. He could quite understand that.

  ‘Point is,’ Danny said, ‘she was against using family names for all it is the custom, that’s why we called our daughter Bernadette. Rosie’s parents are…Let’s just say they are not people I could take to and they led Rosie one hell of a life. She definitely wouldn’t call a child after them and they would expect it if we’d say called our daughter Constance after my mother. Of course, that was decided when we thought we’d be biding in Ireland all our days and have a host of children with no problems. But still, she might be angry with me if she comes round and I’ve called the wee child Matthew after my own father.’ He thought for a minute and then asked. ‘What’s your name, Doctor Patterson, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the doctor said, pleased, thinking with Susie not liking ‘that kind of thing’ it was the only namesake he was ever likely to have. ‘I’d be honoured. My name is Anthony, Anthony Luke.’

  ‘Anthony Luke Walsh,’ Danny said, and repeated it with satisfaction. ‘I like it. It sounds good. I’d like to ask Rosie if she’s agreeable but we can’t risk waiting any longer than we have to.’

  Rosie couldn’t be told or asked anything till the next day and then she showed little emotion. ‘It’s the doctor’s names,’ Danny said. ‘Do you like them?’

  Rosie shrugged. ‘They’re all right. I don’t care really, I’m surprised he’s still alive.’

  ‘He’s lovely, Rosie. I could take you in a wheelchair to the nursery to see him. The nurses said I could.’

  ‘No,’ Rosie said. ‘I don’t want that. I told you, I feel nothing for this child.’

  Danny thought that she might just be protecting herself in case the child should die, but she was the same a few days later when there was cautious optimism that the child might make it. She refused to see him or hold him or feed him, and Ida and Rita weren’t surprised that Danny was worried for they had all thought she would be fine once the baby was born.

  ‘Maybe we’re being too hard on her, though,’ Ida told Danny. ‘After all, the baby might still die. I mean, what if she really took to him like and he was to be snatched away again?’

  ‘I do think of that,’ Danny said. ‘And she’s probably glad she can’t feed him. Doctor Patterson explained that the trauma of the birth and all dried up her milk.’

  ‘Does she give him the bottles?’

  ‘No, I do, or one of the nurses.’

  ‘Well, she’ll have to get over that when she comes home,’ Ida said. ‘She won’t have an army of nurses then. She’ll have to buck up her ideas.’

  But Rosie didn’t. She came home after ten days and though she kissed and cuddled Bernadette and was fine with Rita and Ida, she was distant with Danny and the baby might as well not have existed. And that set the pattern, Danny found. He was the one getting up in the middle of the night when the baby cried and through the day he fed him and changed him, helped by a willing Bernadette when she was home. She, at least, was entranced by her wee brother and would do anything for him.

  Danny had gone for another fifteen-week assessment the day before Rosie was due home and told them his wife had just had another baby. He received their condemnation for being so irresponsible when he had no job but they eventually agreed to continue paying his unemployment pay. However, to qualify for the money, a person had to be actively seeking work, but all thoughts of looking for a job had gone by the board because Danny had to look after the baby. He hoped some neighbour didn’t think it in the nation’s interest to inform the authorities of that fact. It couldn’t go on and Ida agreed.

  ‘Why don’t you leave Rosie alone with the baby a bit more?’ she suggested. ‘Then, she’d have to see to him.’

  ‘I can’t, I daren’t,’ Danny said. ‘The baby is too small and frail to risk that.’

  To make up for Rosie’s neglect, Danny spent more time with Anthony than he’d ever spent with Bernadette at the same age, rocking his son for hours or crooning to him, and Rosie, watching him, knew her fears had been realised. He had no time for his daughter now he had his precious son.

  It wasn’t true, Danny loved Bernadette as much as ever. But he felt sorry for Anthony for he hadn’t his mother’s love as Bernadette had had almost as a right.

  However, he knew the situation could not go on like that, and in desperation he wrote to his mother when Anthony was just over four weeks old.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Almost every week, Rosie had written to Connie and the family and to her own parents and her sisters and Dermot. When it came to replies, though, the McMullens had to go to Connie for her to send their letters back, for, despite all pleading, she refused to give them Danny and Rosie’s address.

  After Anthony’s birth the letters stopped, but although no one knew of the existence of the child they were still worried and both families sent letters asking if things were all right. On Wednesday, 22nd September, Dermot was posting yet another letter to Rosie before school. He was annoyed he was still at school, for in another month he’d be thirteen and by rights should have left in the summer.

  However, in 1918 the Government had raised the school-leaving age to fourteen, and while Dermot didn’t mind school he didn’t think two years further learning would make him better at ploughing a field or milking a cow.

  It didn’t help either that he looked much older than his years and could have passed for a young man of sixteen or so. Even his voice had deepened, and the slight child had grown tall and broadened out, hardened by the work on the farm, which he found he enjoyed. His face had a healthy glow to it, brought about by good food and fresh air, and while he could still be calculating when he wanted to be, the petulance of childhood had gone. He still had the blond curls, no barber had managed to tame them, but now they just made him look incredibly handsome.

  Minnie and Seamus were ridiculously proud of their son, but Rosie’s disappearance had hit Dermot hard and he’d begun, as he grew up, to draw closer to Chrissie and Geraldine. He knew Chrissie was courting a man called Dennis Maloney, whose family owned the grocer’s in Blessington, but she hadn’t told her parents, fearing they might put a stop to it, and said she’d tell them all when she was ready, if and when it became serious. So, for now, she saw her young man sometimes in her lunch hour and on Sunday afternoons when she’d go for a walk with Geraldine and Dermot so that she could meet with Dennis. Geraldine and Dermot would then go off on their own and leave the young couple to their courting.

  In this way, Dermot knew a lot about Geraldine, and he began to feel sorry for his sister. While he’d been a child he’d accepted the acclaim and attention given to him without thinking much about it, but as Geraldine spoke he began to think about the things she said and see for himself how unfair it was and how brutal his mother often was with both girls.

  He saw Geraldine’s life especially as one of drudgery. She seldom left the farm and Minnie kept her at it from morning till night, berating her for very little and usually following the tirade with a smack or clout. But, though Dermot often felt immensely sorry for her, he knew if he was to say too much about it, it could easily rebound and make things worse.

  He wrote none of this to Rosie, who he missed terribly, and asked how things were with her and Danny and wee Bernadette. He’d been as sad as anyone when he heard of the babies Rosie had lost and though he’d mentioned it to no one he’d been worried about the tone of Rosie’s letters before this silence. So he wrote another letter to Rosie, begging her to let him know if anything was the matter, and decided to call in to the Walshes on the way to school and leave it for them to post with their own.

  Coming around the side of the house, he waved to the postman as he mounted his bicycle at the head of the lane. He saw through the window as he passed that Matt and Phelan were at their breakfast after milking and Connie was holding a letter in her hand, and he made for the door, which was propped open.

  When Dermot heard Connie suddenly burst out, ‘Dear Lord, our Rosie has had a little boy,’ Dermot stopped stock-still in the doorway and no-one noticed him.

  Connie went on, ‘He was premature, Danny says, so he’s small, but thriving for all that, born more than four weeks ago. Good God!’

  Matt and Phelan stopped their forks halfway to their mouths and stared at her. ‘What in God’s name…Why didn’t she let anyone know?’ Matt demanded.

  Connie knew exactly why Rosie had told no-one, for she knew she’d gone through agonies when she’d lost the other two, and her heart went out to her for carrying this secret on her own for months. She scanned down the letter further. ‘That’s not all,’ she burst out. ‘Our Danny, he’s…well, I’ll read the letter out and see what you think about it.’

  I’m distracted with worry over Rosie, Mammy, and that’s the truth. She shows no interest in the baby at all. She cannot feed him for the birth wasn’t straightforward; she’d had a fall and cut her head and was rendered unconscious, and the child had to be born by something called caesarean section. The doctor said it had upset her and her milk was dried up. But she doesn’t ever give him a bottle or change him or take notice of him at all. She seems not to hear him even when he cries.

  She has two good friends here, but both are widows due to the war. Rita has taken a job now her son is at school and Ida has three children of her own to see to. The care of Anthony is mainly down to me and Bernadette is more of a help than Rosie. I can’t do this indefinitely for it means I can neither look for a job nor take one up if it were offered.

  Anthony had to be baptised within hours of his birth and is too small and frail to be left to indifferent and inadequate care. Rosie doesn’t seem to be improving at all. I am at my wits’ end.

  I don’t know what I expect you to do, but I had to tell someone how it is. I feel so alone and isolated.

  When Connie laid down the letter there were tears in her eyes. Danny had never written before – any letter-writing had been left to Rosie, like Matt had always left it to her – but this letter was written from the heart. She could almost feel the pain sparking off the page, and what in God’s name should she do? Could she do?

  ‘God,’ Matt said, clearing his voice. ‘It’s a terrible time they’re having over there altogether.’

  ‘Aye,’ Connie said with a sigh. ‘And what can I do about it? There’s Sarah’s wedding on Saturday, and even after it…God, I can’t just up and fly to Birmingham. To tell you the truth, I’d be feared to go to such a place and not sure I’d be any use if I got there.

  ‘What I’d like this minute, or at least after the wedding, is for Phelan to fetch Rosie home. Here she would get fit and well and over what ails her, for it’s obvious she isn’t well just now. But Ireland is too dangerous a place for that and with Sam still hanging about with his old cronies they’d soon get word that Rosie was here. And then again, how could we leave Danny all alone in that house?’

  Matt saw the problems well enough. ‘Write back to him,’ he advised. ‘Say we’re thinking of him and praying for him and when the wedding is out of the way we’ll have to give the matter some thought. I hate for our son to write for help and us to do naught about it.’

  ‘Aye,’ Connie said and added, ‘And let’s keep the news of the baby to ourselves for a wee while, till after the wedding. I don’t want people asking the questions about the baby we are not able to answer yet. Anyway, Saturday is Sarah’s day. After that’s over, we’ll tell people.’

  Dermot had heard enough. He stuffed the letter into his pocket and made for the hills. There would be no school for him that day, he had thinking to do, and there was no space in the school day for thinking.

  By the time Dermot had pounded over the Wicklow Hills for an hour or two, taking care to keep well away from any inhabited cottages where he could be quizzed as to why he wasn’t at school, he had decided what he must do about Rosie. As he ate the sandwiches Minnie had given him for his dinner he’d worked out how it was to be achieved.

  He headed for home earlier than he would be expected, for though he hadn’t a watch he could tell by the sun, and he lay in the hills above his home and watched the house. He needed to talk to Geraldine alone and though he could see his father in the fields there was no sign of either his mother or Geraldine outside the house and so he sat and waited.

  The dairy led off the kitchen, down a short passage, and there was another door next to the barn that opened onto the yard. When Dermot saw Geraldine open this door and throw water into the gutter, he knew she was probably in the dairy alone – for their mother seldom went in – and had been scalding out the churns.

  For all that, he made his way down cautiously and from the back of the house where there was less likelihood of him being seen. He slipped into the barn unobserved and rubbed the window into the dairy with his sleeve before peering through it. As he’d thought, Geraldine was alone, and Dermot tapped urgently on the window.

  Geraldine lifted her head at the sound and looked about her, not sure where it had come from, and Dermot knocked again. This time she saw her brother’s face pressed against the glass and went out of the door and into the barn. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’