Music Across the Mersey

by Geraldine O'Neill, Geraldine O''Neill

Genres: Family Life

Synopsis

A heartwarming saga of growing up in the 1940s and 1950s from Irish storyteller Geraldine O'Neill.

When a brother and sister as left orphaned by a tragic accident in 1930s Dublin, one is sent to Liverpool while the other is raised in Dublin. Spanning countries and decades this is a warm read perfect for fans of Maureen Lee and Lyn Andrews.

Release date: November 30, 2017

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter One

Dublin
March 1949

Ella Cassidy shifted the pot of boiling soup to a ring at the back of the cooker, then went out into the narrow hall, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. A thin, serious-faced girl of thirteen, blonde hair scraped back, apron tied around her waist, her demeanour was that of an older, careworn woman.

‘Sean?’ she called to her brother, a year older. He, and their younger brother and sister, were in the living room. ‘Mind Larry and Hannah while I hang the washing out. Don’t let them near the scullery.’

‘They’re grand,’ he called back. ‘They’re drawing away on their books. Did Da say when he would be back?’

She leaned against the wall, suddenly weary. ‘For the soup, around one. When I’ve hung the washing you’ll need to take the ration book and go for a loaf.’

‘Have you not made any soda bread?’

Ella felt her jaw clench. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Mrs Collins said she’d have sliced bread in this morning and she would keep us a loaf.’

When did her brother think she had time to bake bread this morning? After making breakfast for everyone, she’d cleared up and then stripped the two younger children’s beds and boiled water to soak and scrub the soiled sheets. Two-and-a-half-year-old Hannah was still in nappies, and, since their mother died two months ago – along with the baby she had just given birth to – four-year-old Larry had started wetting the bed again.

Apart from all that, she had the usual bucketful of nappies to wash. She did these every morning before school – on the days she was able to go to school. She missed more days than she attended as she had to stay at home with the younger children while her father went looking for work.

Ella went into the scullery, lifted the heavy wash basket up, then went out into the yard. She dropped the basket on the ground and looked up at the dismal grey sky. It would be another afternoon and evening of steaming, damp sheets and pyjamas drying around the fire, blocking out the comforting heat.

As she started to peg the washing out, she wondered what Nancy and Maeve were doing today. Her friends usually walked into the city centre on a Saturday for a look around the shops and, if they had money, had a cup of tea or hot chocolate somewhere. If it was a fine day, they’d go to the zoo in Phoenix Park, as Maeve’s uncle worked there and he could sneak them in free.

It was ages since she had done anything like that with her friends, not since the cold January day her beloved mother had died and Ella had taken over all the household duties. And she could not imagine a time when she would not be needed to do everything at home.

She began pegging the sheets on the lines, and was starting on the third when she heard boys’ voices and laughter, and the sound of a ball being kicked against the fences at the front of the houses. She had almost finished when she heard Sean’s voice outside, and irritation washed over her. He had gone outside and left the two little ones alone in the scullery!

How was it, she wondered, that he was older than her, and yet he had so little responsibility around the house? All he had to do was bring in turf or wood and set the fire in the small living room, and clean the grates and empty the ashes outside.

Well, Ella thought, as soon as she got inside she would run him out to the shops for the bread and he could take the younger ones with him to give her ten minutes’ peace.

Her thoughts turned to her father and she looked at her wrist to check the time on her mother’s gold watch. Wherever he was, he should be home any time now. She started to peg the last few things on the line, then she heard Larry and Hannah laughing and giggling in the scullery. They were probably messing around, chasing each other – exactly what she had tried to avoid.

‘I could kill our Sean!’ she muttered to herself.

Ella had just turned back towards the house when she heard a piercing scream. Her heart stopped. It was Hannah! Then Larry was shouting and screaming too. Dropping the tea towel she was holding, she ran to the house.

She came to a halt at the scullery door. Hannah was lying on the floor, surrounded by a steaming puddle of scalding soup. Some of it had splashed onto the bare skin above her socks and on her knees and thighs. The boiling liquid had also seeped through the right sleeve of her cardigan on to her arm and shoulder. Her eyes stared up at Ella, her face chalk white, and her mouth open in silent shock.

Larry was standing up on a chair he had pulled over to the cooker. His thin body was shaking as he looked at Ella and pointed to the half-empty soup pot. ‘It was an accident!’ he sobbed. ‘Honest – it was an accident! Hannah was hungry and wanted the soup and she tried to pull the pot down. I couldn’t stop her …’

Ella rushed forward and swept Larry down off the chair. ‘Run outside and get our Sean – then run and get Mrs Murphy!’ No point in sending him to look for their father because he could be in any of the pubs within a two-mile walk.

As Larry tore out of the scullery, she looked down at her sister. A wave of panic engulfed her. She took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘You’ll be fine, my darling!’ she said, trying to sound soothing and calm. ‘We’ll get you all washed and cleaned up and you’ll be grand. You’ll be as good as new.’ How badly burned she actually was, Ella had no idea, but she knew it was not good.

Hannah lifted her fair head and tried to sit up, but she fell back to the floor immediately and her eyelids fluttered and closed as she went into a dead faint.

Ella bent closer to try to move her sister, but then she noticed the raw, red skin on her legs was starting to break out in blisters. A sickening surge of fear rushed over her and she heard herself repeat in an hysterical, sing-song voice, ‘You’ll be grand, Hannah! You’ll be grand.’ Holy Mother of God, she prayed. Please, please make her all right.

She quickly moved over to the sink to grab the torn – but clean – towel she kept for drying her hands as she worked. She threw it into the stone sink and turned on the cold tap. When it was wet, she wrung the worst of the water out and rushed back to kneel beside her sister.

She went to put the cloth on Hannah’s legs and then halted, her hands mid-air. Would the towel help, or would it make the burned skin worse? Panic rose inside her. I don’t know what to do! she thought. I don’t know what to do!

Hot tears trickled down her face. Please Mammy, she said in a silent prayer. Please help me to do the right thing … A heavy weight descended on her chest and she found it difficult to breathe. Just as she was gasping for air, the front door banged open and Sean came thudding towards them.

He paused, panting, his gaze moving from Hannah to Ella. ‘Is she all right?’ When he got no answer, he stumbled forward, dropping to his knees beside them.

Ella managed to find her voice. ‘No, she’s not all right … I told you not to leave them alone.’

‘They were sitting drawing. I only went to answer the door …’ As he looked up at her with wide eyes, Ella felt the greatest urge to slap his stupid, stupid face, but she knew that she had to keep calm for Hannah’s sake.

‘What are we going to do? There’s no sign of Daddy …’

‘We’ll have to get her to the hospital—’

Before she had time to say any more, she heard a tap on the front door, then the sound of Mrs Murphy’s comforting voice.

‘Come in!’ Ella called to their stout, elderly neighbour, almost weak with relief. ‘Something terrible has happened to our Hannah and Daddy’s not home yet! You’ll have to help us.’

Rose Murphy appeared at the scullery door and her eyes widened in shock. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph …’ Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

Then, all the years of experience with her own brood took over and she stepped into the middle of the small scullery to galvanise the family into action. Within minutes Sean had been dispatched to the nearest shop to use the phone to dial the operator and tell her it was an emergency and that they needed an ambulance straight away.

She told Ella to get a clean towel and damp it with water, and then she sent the silent, terror-struck Larry upstairs to get a blanket to put over the shivering Hannah. ‘We’ll try to clean her up a bit, but we’ll have to be careful not to put anything near the blistered skin,’ she told Ella in a low voice. ‘And where did you say your father was?’

Ella swallowed hard. ‘I’m not sure …’ she whispered. Her gaze shifted towards the door. ‘I think he was going to see somebody about a job. He said he would be back around one, so he should be home soon.’

Mrs Murphy nodded but said nothing. She guessed that the last thing Johnny Cassidy was doing on a Saturday afternoon was seeing about a job. She liked a lot of things about Johnny. He had been blessed with one of the handsomest faces she had ever seen on a man. All women noticed him, even she, at the age of sixty-eight, who had long given up any thoughts about the opposite sex. He was blessed even further by a lack of vanity and always seemed surprised when anyone alluded to his looks. But an even better attribute, Rose thought, was his warm and kind nature. She knew that he loved his children and he had loved his wife – but all those fine points were overshadowed by his fondness for drink and the lack of stamina to stick at any job. It was the quiet Mary who had been the worker, the backbone of the family who had held them all together.

Mrs Murphy looked down at poor Hannah who seemed to be coming out of her faint now, and was making low, moaning noises. God knows what injuries she had sustained.

A moment later Sean came bursting back into the house, breathless, and told them that the ambulance was on its way.

‘Go outside and wait for your father,’ Mrs Murphy told him. ‘He’ll be needed at the hospital.’

A long twenty minutes later the ambulance pulled up outside the house – and there was still no sign of Johnny Cassidy.

Chapter Two

Johnny Cassidy looked at the clock above the bar in the Brazen Head, then lifted his glass and drained it. He turned to the man beside him. ‘I’d better be headin’ off now, Andy.’

‘You’re not going already?’ Andy Flynn looked taken aback. ‘Sure, I’ve only just arrived.’

‘Ah, the kids will be looking for me … you know what it’s like.’ The easy-going Johnny gave a knowing smile, which lit up his handsome face.

Andy gestured to the old lady behind the bar then pointed a gnarled finger at Johnny. ‘Another pint for this man and a Jameson’s for meself.’

Johnny waved his hand. ‘I’m grand,’ he said, buttoning up his coat. ‘There’s no need.’

‘Indeed there is,’ Andy said, standing up to find the coins in the pocket of his worn and stained trousers. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you since you buried your poor young wife. Buying you a drink is the least I can do.’

Johnny looked at the woman who was now pulling the pint of beer. He knew Andy didn’t have money to be buying drinks, and he needed to get home to the kids.

Reading his thoughts, Andy tilted his head proudly. ‘I won a few bob on a game of cards at the weekend. I’ve kept it quiet because you know how some people are when they think you have anything, but I was looking out for you ever since to have a drink with you.’

Johnny looked at him. ‘That’s decent of you now,’ he said. ‘But you might need it for yourself and the family. It doesn’t go far when you have a houseful, especially with the rationing and everything.’

‘Never mind that,’ Andy said. He lowered his voice. ‘There’s a lad I know can get extra bits when you have the money, you know what I mean?’

Johnny nodded. Everyone knew about the black market.

‘I won’t refuse you then,’ Johnny said. ‘And I suppose another ten minutes either way won’t matter.’ Ella had asked him to come home around one; it was that time already and it would take him twenty minutes or more to walk from the Brazen Head to Islandbridge. He was aware of the trouble Ella would have gone to making the soup, because she knew how much he loved it. Her mother had made it most Saturdays, often with the extra vegetables they got from Mary’s spinster cousin, Nora, who lived down in County Offaly.

A few weeks after Mary died, Ella got Mrs Murphy to come up to the house to check she had put all the right ingredients in the pot and was cooking it exactly the way that Mary would have done. It was a slow process, with the gas being rationed to only a couple of hours a day, but Ella had used every minute to get it boiling and leave it simmering away. Johnny had seen the pride in her eyes when the soup turned out right and she’d smiled properly for the first time since her mother had died when everyone told her how good it tasted. Since then, it had become a ritual on a Saturday for the five of them to sit around the table and have the soup with bread.

As he thought about it, Johnny felt bad about being late, but wouldn’t it be the height of ignorance to refuse a drink from poor oul’ Andy when he had a few extra pounds? And when the cold, creamy pint of Guinness was put on the bar counter, Johnny held the glass up in a gesture of thanks and took a long, deep drink.

Within a few minutes he could feel the alcohol in the fresh glass adding to the three other pints he had already drunk, and he was grateful, for it helped numb the raw wound of Mary’s loss.

‘Well,’ Andy sighed, putting his glass back down on the bar counter. ‘Any luck with work?’

Johnny shook his head. ‘No, but I’m hoping for a few days down at the docks next week. And I’ve been asked to play at a dance in the Gresham next weekend, but I’m still thinking about it. It’s hard to leave the children at home on their own. They’re still young, and it’s early days yet …’

‘I’d go mad if I didn’t get a few pints and a game of cards now and then,’ Andy stated. ‘Sure, hasn’t life been miserable enough recently, with the war and the Emergency and everything?’

Although Ireland was a neutral country and so not directly involved in the war, rationing had been introduced, since many goods had to be imported. Bread was rationed, as was tea, butter, sugar, and everyday items such as soap, toothpaste and shoe polish, but many Irish people, including the Cassidy family, found tea the hardest to go without.

‘It has indeed,’ Johnny said.

There was a small silence now as they both thought of Mary, which had had a bigger effect on the Cassidys than any of the bombs the Germans had dropped early in the war.

Music was Johnny’s other true love and the one thing he knew in his heart he was good at. His main instrument was the fiddle. His uncle Arthur had given him the beautiful instrument when his own hands were too bad with arthritis to play himself. After Johnny had mastered the fiddle, a friend gave him lessons on the banjo, and then he picked up an old mandolin in a second-hand music shop. Playing the string instruments came naturally to him, and he also had a more than passable voice. He loved the comradery of the other band members and the atmosphere in the smoke-filled dance halls and weddings that he played at.

Mary had been very proud of his musical skills; from the first day they had met, in a dance hall in Dublin, she had encouraged him to make a go of it and hopefully turn it into a full-time job. But Johnny didn’t just have a fondness for music – he also had a fondness for all the socialising that went with it. And, by the end of the night, the thing he was most fond of was the drink.

Mary had known this flaw when she married him, but since Johnny Cassidy was the only man she wanted, she accepted it as part and parcel of him, and drinking didn’t bring out any dark traits in him like it did with other men. If anything, it made him even mellower – and just a little stupid.

Andy clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘You should get out at the weekend and play a few oul’ tunes to cheer yourself up. You’ll surely have a kindly neighbour or someone close to keep an eye on the childer? And the few bob you get for playing will help out.’

Johnny nodded thoughtfully. It was hard to know what to do for the best. He worried about leaving the kids at night, especially while it was still dark in the evenings. Going out for a few drinks on a Saturday afternoon and a Sunday was a different matter. Sean and Ella were well able to look after the younger ones. Mary had shown Ella how to do basic cooking and sewing, and she was doing a great job of managing the household tasks on her own. He felt bad she was missing a lot of school, but the head nun in the girls’ school was fairly understanding. And if Ella got stuck with anything in the house, there was always their neighbour, Mrs Murphy, who lived a few houses along, that they could call on for help or advice. Maybe, Johnny suddenly thought, he could ask her to keep an eye on them next Saturday night.

He finished his drink as quickly as he decently could, and made his way out onto the Quays.

The extra pint made all the difference, he thought, as he walked home. It brightened up a long, miserable Saturday, and made it easier to meet people face on.

Since Mary had gone, he had found the constant stream of people who wanted to offer their sympathies overwhelming. Women were the worst – often they started crying as they commiserated about his poor wife dying in childbirth, and then they would cry all the more thinking of the four motherless children left at home.

One who had taken Mary’s death particularly badly was her cousin, Nora Lamb from Tullamore. An odd woman, who must be around forty, Nora had visited them up in Dublin every few weeks. It filled her lonely weekends as her parents and her beloved Uncle Bernard were all dead, and she lived on her own. Nora would arrive on the train around ten o’clock, bringing with her a bag filled with chops, or a piece of bacon, and potatoes and whatever other vegetables were seasonal. After a cup of tea, the two women would go into the little scullery and start cooking the meat, and then they would sit at the table chatting as they peeled the vegetables and put them on to boil. After dinner, Johnny would mind the children while Mary and Nora went for a walk in the Phoenix Park. Afterwards, Nora would treat them to a cup of coffee and a scone in one of the local tearooms. Later in the evening, Johnny would walk her down to the station, as she always went for the last train home.

Nora had come up to Dublin to see them a few times since Mary’s death, but he knew that the visits would eventually dwindle away as she had only really come to see Mary. She wasn’t a natural with children, although, in fairness, she was good in her own way. She often brought them second-hand books, or jigsaw puzzles and board games. They seemed happy enough to play the games, but they often got into trouble with their mother for skitting and laughing at their aunt after she left. Nora, Johnny noticed, found it hard to hide her old-fashioned view that ‘children should be seen and not heard’.

Given that she was a straight-laced sort of woman, Johnny was always surprised at how relaxed and easy she was on their walk back to the station. She could chat well about things that men were interested in, like the farm she had inherited and rented out, or Manchester United, an English football team that she knew Johnny supported. In the beginning he had dreaded walking alone with her, but as time went on he had almost begun to enjoy the walk and the chat.

When the tragic loss hit them, there were a few local women who had offered to help the family out. Dazed with shock and grief, Johnny had welcomed their help. There were two women in particular who had made their presence felt. Cathy, a cheery barmaid he knew from the Barley Mow, and Bridget, a quiet, but kindly widow woman from Kilmainham that he and Mary used to go to the Catholic Mothers’ meetings with. The women came down to the house most days and brought bowls of stew and anything they could get their hands on, like tea or sugar, to eke out the Cassidys’ rations.

But within weeks of Mary’s death, Johnny noticed that the initial sadness in their eyes had changed into a different kind of look.

Mrs Murphy confirmed his thoughts. ‘Mark my words,’ she warned, ‘while they are useful enough, that pair are only biding their time until a decent interval has passed to take poor Mary’s place.’

Johnny’s heart had tilted at the thought. How could he even think of replacing Mary? He had no interest in any woman. Then Sean and Ella started to complain that Cathy and Bridget were around too often, were trying to take over the house and tell them what to do. Johnny saw the opportunity to use that to his advantage.

‘I’m sorry now,’ he told each of them, ‘but the older kids are finding the house too busy, and want things back the way they were. Just our own little family.’ He had brushed away any protests, saying, ‘Of course they’re grateful for all the help you’ve given, but I have to respect their wishes. It’s going to take a while for us all to adjust, because Mary was an absolute saint.’

Bridget had gone off quietly, but Cathy had persisted. ‘If you need anything at all, I’ll be there any time you want.’ Then she had looked Johnny straight in the eye, and added, ‘Day or night.’

Johnny vowed to himself that he would be more careful, but he soon discovered that things were not so easy without the outside help. Initially, Ella had taken all the responsibility of doing the washing and cleaning, but as the weeks went on, Johnny could see it was not easy work for a young girl, and the freezing wintry weather had not helped. At times he tried to give her a hand himself, but what did he know about putting clothes through a wringer and soaking nappies in bleach and the like?

The only solution was for him to get a decent job that paid enough to get a woman in to help, but jobs were as scarce as hen’s teeth, and a decent, permanent job was even scarcer. Just months before Mary died he had been let go by Guinness’s for bad timekeeping and missed days. He had been working with them for two years, and most men would have killed for a full-time job with the brewery, as it meant security for life along with other perks like a free drop of porter every day. But Johnny Cassidy was not most men.

Responsibility and thinking further than the next day had never sat easy with him. In most of his jobs, his mind was only half on work, while the other half was on the job he would have preferred – making music.

After he’d been let go, they had just about made ends meet with Mary’s cleaning job and Johnny picking up a few pounds at the weekends from playing in the band. Mercifully, they had no rent to pay like many others in Dublin; they owned the terraced house outright, bought with the money Mary had inherited from her parents. But then the insurance money paid out on Mary’s death hadn’t amounted to much, once the funeral costs had been paid, and the rest of her savings were coming to an end.

As Johnny walked past Guinness’s brewery now, he turned his head away from it to look out across the Liffey. He hated the reminder of the better life his family should have had – if he had been a better worker and husband.

As the terraced houses they lived in came into view, Johnny was surprised to see a black Ford car sitting outside. Somebody was getting a visit from a well-off relative or a boss, he thought, as none of the residents could afford a car themselves. It was somebody important enough who could get petrol to run a car, because there were few cars on the road these days with fuel still being rationed.

Someday, when the Emergency was over, if he could get a regular place with one of the top-class bands, he would save up and buy a car himself. He felt a sudden stabbing in his heart as he remembered the nights he had sat with Mary, telling her all his dreams about cars and other things. Nights when the house was quiet and the children asleep in bed. Nights when he explained why he found it hard to stick at ordinary day jobs when his mind was full of music. Mary was the only person in the world who seemed to understand him, and who did her best to encourage him. She had known him in a way that no other person ever had.

Even if his dream of owning a car came true now, it would not be the same. Mary would never sit in the car beside him. He would never see his wife again, never see her lovely face or hear her voice again. He was on his own. It was just him and the children from now on.

Chapter Three

Johnny quickened his step, thinking of Ella and the soup. He was almost half an hour later than he had said.

As he got near the house, the door of the car opened and Father Brosnan, the young curate from their church, stepped out. He was a nice young fella, Johnny thought. A decent, down-to-earth man, with no airs and graces – unlike the parish priest, Father Quirke. He had been very kind to the Cassidys since Mary had died, and had often dropped down to the house to see how they were getting on. On each occasion he had brought something – bread, cheese, tea, and a few slices of leftover cake. He had winked at the older children and said that it wasn’t to be mentioned outside the house – and especially to Father Quirke. There was no fear of Sean or Ella mentioning anything to Father Quirke: they, and their friends, were all terrified of him.

Something about Father Brosnan’s serious demeanour told Johnny that the priest was waiting to speak to him.

Thank God it’s not Father Quirke, he thought to himself, he could catch the smell of the beer at twenty paces. The last time he had seen Johnny drunk at a neighbour’s wedding, he had come around the following day and given him a sermon on wasting money. The young curate, Johnny guessed, would pass no remarks whether he smelled it or not. He knew life for the poor was hard enough without him adding to their misery.

‘Hello, Father,’ Johnny said, going forward with his hand outstretched. ‘Are you coming into the house?’

‘No, no,’ Father Brosnan said. He wasn’t his usual cheery self. ‘I’ve actually been waiting on you.’

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘I’m afraid there is …’ The priest sucked his breath in. ‘We have to go down to the hospital straight away. Young Hannah has had an accident. She’s been badly scalded.’ He looked at Johnny. ‘Hot soup, I believe.’

‘Mother of God!’ Johnny said. ‘Is she all right? Did you see her?’

‘No, Mr Cassidy. I got a phone call,’ the priest went on, ‘from one of the nurses at the hospital to ask me to bring you up to the hospital. I’ve been here for a quarter of an hour, so we’d best move quickly. We’re only allowed to use the car in an emergency, but I thought this qualified as one.’

Johnny felt a wave of guilt wash over him, then tears rushed into his eyes. ‘Ah, Jesus … the poor little cratur.’

I should have been home, he thought, I should have been home and it wouldn’t have happened. Then he thought about Ella and how she would be feeling.

Father Brosnan put his hand on his shoulder and guided him towards the passenger side of the car. ‘I think we’d better make a move now,’ he said gently. ‘They will be waiting for us at the hospital.’

Johnny got into the front seat of the car, and the two men drove out towards Kilmainham. They sat in silence until Father Brosnan reached into the glove compartment and brought out a packet of mints and handed them to Johnny. ‘Have a few of these, for when you are talking to the doctors.’

When they came towards the entrance to St James’s Hospital, Sean was there, waiting for them. He was stretched high on his toes, waving his hands about frantically, as though fearful they would not see him.

Johnny threw the car door open even before it came to a standstill, and then almost fell out as it came to a halt. ‘How is she?’ he called.

Sean ran to meet him. ‘We don’t know anything yet,’ he said breathlessly. ‘The doctors and nurses have taken her away. They said she needed to go into special care.’

‘They’ll have to let me see her,’ Johnny said, fear making him unusually assertive. ‘I’m her father and will be down as her next of kin.’ Saying the words next of kin filled him with dread as it rekindled memories of Mary.

Father Brosnan appeared behind them. ‘I’ll go in with you, Mr Cassidy,’ he said. ‘They might let us in when we’re together.’ He did not specifically say they would get preferential treatment because he was a priest, but they both knew that’s what he meant.

Sean guided them down through the busy hospital corridors to the waiting room.

It was another hour before anyone was allowed in to see Hannah, by which time she was fast asleep having been sedated to allow the doctors to do their immediate work on her.

‘I must warn you,’ the Scottish doctor told them outside the room, ‘she is a very sick wee girl. We took her down to theatre to clean her up a bit and see the extent of the burns.’ He shook his head.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Johnny asked, his voice barely a whisper.

‘She has a long road to go.’ The doctor walked towards the room where Hannah was and pushed open the door. He then looked back and gestured towards them. Johnny followed behind, and when the doctor went to stand