Walking Back to Happiness. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ I was known as one of the Mullens.’

      ‘Did you care?’

      ‘Not at first. I wanted to belong somewhere. My own sisters and brothers became like strangers till one by one they took the emigrant boats to the States till only my eldest brother, Eamonn, was left to farm the land with my father. He doesn’t really know me though and I don’t know him and for a time it was nice being thought of as one of you lot. It was as I got older that I resented Hannah Delaney being swamped altogether.’

      ‘Is that why you left?’

      ‘Partly,’ Hannah admitted. ‘I wanted to start afresh. Stand on my own two feet, just to see if I could. A good friend of mine, Molly McGuire, had left Ireland just the previous year and we promised to write to each other. She got a job easily in a hotel in Leeds. It was called The Hibernian, reputed to be the biggest, best and of course most expensive in the town. The wages weren’t great, she told me, but the tips were legion. She said she could get me a job, straight off.’

      Hannah stopped there, remembering her indecision. She didn’t want to upset Frances, and she knew she would if she was to follow her friend. But she knew she’d regret it if she didn’t go while she had the chance. As she dithered, Molly challenged her. Hadn’t she always said she wanted to see something of other places? Hadn’t she always said she didn’t want to live the whole of her life in Ireland and wasn’t there a big, wide world out there to explore?

      And she was right. Hannah had said all those things and meant them, too, but the actual leaving was hard, especially when she loved Frances as dearly as she would any mother and Paddy and the others, too. She knew she would miss them all.

      In the end, she poured her heart out to Paddy and he patted her hand and told her not to fret, that it was natural to want to spread your wings when you were young. ‘But Frances …’ she had wailed.

      ‘Frances will come around, never fret, I’ll talk to her,’ Paddy had promised.

      ‘Was Mammy upset when you left?’ Josie asked, jolting Hannah back to the present.

      ‘Very. I was sad too. God, it was a wrench to go. People said I was ungrateful to leave when I could have been such a help to Frances at long last. Frances never said that and I doubt she ever thought of it, she wasn’t like that. She said she’d miss me so much, but she wished me Godspeed. It broke me up and we cried together as we hugged, and for a while, my resolve weakened. It was your father who said to go and satisfy myself and to remember I had a home to come back to if it didn’t work out.

      ‘Not everyone saw it like that of course, but then all my life people have been telling me how grateful I should be to Frances and I was grateful to her. But that level of gratitude gets to be a heavy burden when you’re reminded of it constantly. Not that your parents ever spoke about it, it was others, the relatives who hadn’t wanted me themselves, or neighbours who felt justified to speak as they chose because they’d known me all my life.’

      ‘And did you like it in this Leeds place?’ Josie asked.

      ‘I did not and that’s the truth,’ Hannah said, remembering her horror at the grim greyness of the place and how the opulence of the hotel unnerved her and the way she could barely understand the way the other girls spoke. She was achingly lonely and many, many times thought she’d made a mistake because she missed her family so very much. She missed the farm too and often longed for the sight of a green mossy hill, springy turf beneath her feet, and good clean air to fill her lungs with.

      ‘I didn’t mind the work,’ she said. ‘I was well used to work, but everything was so strange and when Molly got married and moved to London only months after I arrived, it was worse. We wrote for a while, but in the end the letters petered out. A girl called Tilly Galston shared my room then.’

      ‘Was she nice?’

      Hannah smiled as she remembered the good friend she’d been and the way she pulled her out of the morose self-pitying attitude she’d been in danger of developing. ‘I’d have gone home if it hadn’t been for her,’ Hannah said. ‘She wouldn’t let me.’

      ‘How could she stop you?’

      ‘Oh, she was very bossy,’ Hannah said. ‘But funny too, you know. She could always see the bright side of things and could always make me laugh. She bullied me into going out and about too and making an effort with the other girls. We were good friends.’

      ‘Where is she now?’

      Hannah shrugged. ‘Still in Leeds, I suppose,’ she said. ‘At least she was there when I left and moved to Birmingham.’

      ‘Don’t you know?’

      ‘Well, no I don’t exactly.’

      Josie made a face. She felt Hannah was a poor friend to not keep in touch with Tilly, but she wasn’t about to argue the point. Tilly was in the past and it was the future she was worried about. She wondered if Hannah wanted to take her back to live with her. Maybe she was against the idea, too, and it had been forced upon her. Maybe it was gratitude rearing its ugly head again and suddenly she felt a bit sorry for her aunt. ‘All right then,’ she said in an effort towards compromise. ‘Say I do come with you, where do you live in this Birmingham place?’

      Hannah knew Josie was putting a brave face on it and replied, ‘An area called Erdington to the north of the city. Many call it Erdington Village, which it was once, but now it’s like a little town. It’s not anything like here. You’ve never seen so many people and cars and buses, lorries and trams on the roads, especially in the city centre. But the guesthouse, where I work, is in Grange Road and that’s not a bit like that. It’s lovely. It’s wide and tree-lined and the houses are set back behind privet hedges. There’s even a small farm in Holly Lane, not that far away, and sometimes we can get hens’ or ducks’ eggs from the farmer, Mr Freer.’

      She stole a glance at Josie and went on, ‘I suppose living here you’re thinking, “So what?” Believe me, if you’d been subjected to the rationing restrictions Britain has had to put up with, you’d know how wonderful getting the odd egg is. I’ve had a word with Mrs Emmerson and she doesn’t mind in the least putting you up for a while. She’s very kind and anyway, I’ll be getting married in September.’

      Married! That gave Josie a jolt. She thought Hannah would have given up all thoughts of marriage. She was old, almost as old as Miriam, and she’d been married for years and years and had a whole tribe of children now, though no one seemed pleased about that either. Still, that wasn’t her problem. What was, though, was the man Hannah was to marry. ‘Does Mammy know that?’ she asked.

      ‘Aye, she does,’ Hannah said. ‘We talked about it. He has a largish terraced house of his own. There’d be plenty of room for you in it.’

      ‘And how does he feel about me?’

      Hannah crushed down the worry she had about that and the less than welcoming letter she’d received just that day in answer to hers that she’d written, telling her fiancé what her sister had asked her to do. He’d written that he didn’t want to take on the responsibility of a child and he’d been surprised at her making a decision without consulting him. It was, he’d said, no way to start married life.

      Hannah would win him round, she had to, but now Josie needed reassurance. ‘He’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I told you about the size of the house? Why would he mind you sharing a wee piece of it? He knows it’s the right СКАЧАТЬ