Danny Boy. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ women brought gifts for the baby and cakes and other fancies for the family. The three girls were mostly ignored, but if they were noticed at all, it was only to be asked if they weren’t delighted altogether by their wee brother?

      Strangely enough, Rosie was. She had no argument with the small baby and she often stole away to gaze at him. He looked so vulnerable. He had a dusting of light silky hair and his skin was a creamy colour, his eyes the milky blue of the newborn. She was enchanted by his tiny flexing fingers with minute nails and his podgy little feet, which would kick out in freedom when he was released from his bindings. No, Rosie couldn’t blame the wee baby for the changes in the house, but as time passed, she blamed her parents and particularly her mother more and more.

      Minnie was unaware of how her eldest daughter felt. In fact she seldom thought of her at all, now that she had her son. She would have said, if asked that her daughters were not neglected, they were fed, warm and kept clean. Rosie, if ever she’d given voice to her feelings, would have said that, though their basic needs were attended to, they were never given a kind word or shown a warm smile. Rosie would have liked her mother’s eyes to soften when she looked at her daughters sometimes, the way they did when they lighted on Dermot and to be spoken to in the soothing, gentle way she reserved for the baby.

      She never discussed these things with her little sisters, but resentment began to burn inside her and she promised herself that she’d never make a daughter of hers feel so unwanted, however many sons she might have.

      Dermot’s eyes eventually turned bluey/grey, but his skin stayed fair and he developed dark blond curls. The three McMullen sisters all looked totally different to their brother. They all had large, dark brown eyes with a dusting of freckles beneath them and across their pink tinged cheeks and the bridge of their snub noses. Their hair was as dark as their eyes and fell in natural waves down their backs.

      Each Saturday night, Seamus went into one of the pubs in Blessington village and the girls would have their weekly bath. Minnie would help bring the bath in before the fire and help fill it and then they’d be left to their own devices. It was Rosie who lathered her little sisters and washed their hair, remembering to use the water from the rain barrel outside the door for the last rinse, so as to give their hair extra shine.

      It was Rosie who helped her sisters from the bath and dried them and towelled their hair to stop it dripping before attending to herself. And later, when they were all bathed, the water emptied pan by pan into the gutter in the yard, and the girls dressed for bed, Rosie would plait all their hair, so that it would be wavy for Mass in the morning.

      And the next morning, while her mother attended to Dermot, Rosie would see to her sisters, brushing their hair and checking that they were tidy and that their boots were fastened correctly and they had a clean hanky up the leg of their bloomers and the collection farthings secure.

      Chrissie and Geraldine accepted Rosie as their substitute mother without complaint and so possibly felt the lack of a mother’s love and attention less than Rosie did. And Rosie felt a sort of fierce protective love for her two little sisters and took a pride in their appearance.

      When they stepped out for Mass dressed in their best clothes with bonnets tied beneath their little pointed chins, and their boots shining with polish, they looked lovely. All three girls were dressed the same for Mass, but though many of the neighbours smiled at the girls, their attention was all for Dermot.

      Wasn’t he the little dote? Hadn’t he grown so? Wasn’t he the best baby in the world, so good, so contented? Surely Minnie didn’t know she was born with such a child and with three daughters to help her rear him.

      In truth, the girls seldom got a look in where Dermot was concerned. Minnie seemed to either be nursing him, or cuddling him most of the day. She’d instruct Rosie from the chair before the fire in frying rashers and eggs for Sunday breakfast after Mass and later Rosie would cook the meal.

      Rosie learned fast. Nothing enraged her mother more than vegetables burned onto the pan, lumpy gravy or inadequately drained cabbage and she had no wish to inflame her mother’s temper. So, without complaint, she learned also how to make soda bread, barnbrack and apple pie.

      She’d always been used to helping. It had been her lot for long enough anyway, particularly as she was the eldest. She knew it was what most girls did and that it would stand her in good stead when she married. But, just sometimes, she would have liked to hold the baby, to feel his warm little body against her and see his eyes looking into her own.

      Minnie however, guarded him jealously, only letting Seamus hold him grudgingly. Babyhood though, doesn’t last forever and as Dermot began to crawl, and then pull himself up to stand and walk, he wasn’t content to be cuddled all the day. He loved all his sisters, who were always willing to stop what they were at to do his bidding, but Dermot’s favourite in the house was Rosie and he was devoted to her.

      Dermot began at the County School in Blessington the September before his fifth birthday. Rosie and Chrissie had both left school by then and Geraldine, who had been eleven in June had just one year left, so it was her job to take Dermot up to the school while Rosie and Chrissie helped wherever they were needed, on the farm, the house, or the dairy.

      Rosie had settled well in to the mundane life, although she often missed the company of the girls at school and as she neared fifteen she noticed changes to her body she could have done with advice over, things that she could hardly discuss with a younger sister. There was no-one she could think to ask and she often wondered if thinking about it too much could be construed as a sin.

      Then, one dreadful day, she’d gone to the privy outside, driven there by severe stomach cramps and found she was bleeding from her bottom. She came in, her eyes swollen, her body weak from crying for hours, for she was convinced she was dying.

      Even then, she could hardly bear to tell her mother, but fear eventually overcame her embarrassment. ‘You’re not dying,’ he mother told her brusquely. ‘It’s what happens to every woman, every month.’

      Rosie’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. She’d never heard of such a thing. Minnie McMullen was hazy about why women had periods and the workings of a human body – it wasn’t something a good, Catholic woman should know about she felt. But, she knew the monthly periods were connected somehow with having a child, and this was what she told Rosie.

      Rosie looked at her in horror. She knew very little about sex and what you did to have a baby, but from the odd snippets picked up in the school yard, she knew you had to ‘do’ things with a man and she knew that to do those things before you had a husband and then to go on and have a baby, was just about the worst thing in the world. She’d be like Cissie Morlarty who, people said, had been expecting when she was but a young girl and there had been no boyfriend in sight. Anyway, whatever the truth of it Cissie was sent far away from her home to a place for bad girls so the rumours went and she was never seen or heard of again.

      Rosie, gripped with desperate fear cried, ‘But, I’m not having a baby. I don’t want to have a baby.’

      ‘I didn’t say you were, you silly girl,’ Minnie replied sharply. ‘And I trust you won’t think of having a child until you are respectably married. This other thing is just part of being a woman, so that you can have a baby when you’re ready.’

      Rosie was relieved beyond measure that she was normal and she wasn’t dying, but there were still things she needed to know and she decided to ask her mother now, while they were talking of intimate matters. ‘Mammy, how do babies get into you?’

      Minnie’s lips pursed. ‘There is no need to know those things, or even ask about them until you’re married. Then, all will come clear to СКАЧАТЬ