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Maeve decided it wasn’t for her. But she wasn’t to go to Dublin, or ‘God forbid’ London, a desperate place altogether, her parents claimed, and where she knew not a soul. No, she was to go to Birmingham where Maeve’s mother, Annie, whose maiden name had been O’Toole, had a brother called Michael.
Maeve knew of her Uncle Michael, though she’d never met him. He’d been in Birmingham since early 1919, when he’d met and married his English wife, Agnes, in just a couple of months, and had never been home since. Maeve also knew that no obstacles had been put in the way of his leaving his home, but in fact the reverse. He’d served in the British Army in the Great War and had come back in late 1918, a bitter and disillusioned young man. Ireland was in disarray, the troubles at their height and rebel gangs roaming the country. His family, terrified he’d be caught up in it all, had encouraged Michael to accompany a neighbour catching the emigrant boat for England. He’d ended up in Birmingham and had got a job – a grand job he’d said, in a foundry. But he was still Annie’s little brother and she wrote him regular letters of the family, and now was sure Maeve could lodge with him to see how she liked the place. In fact Michael had written her a very long, encouraging letter. Not only could she stay with them and welcome, he said, he could even get her a waitressing job in a café. He knew the owner, a Greek man by the name of Dolamartis, a good Catholic, and they went to the same church. He’d told Michael his assistant was leaving. Jobs were hard to find, her uncle said, and Maeve couldn’t afford to be too choosy. Maeve had no intention of being choosy at all and at the mention of a job and place to stay, her parents’ resistance finally crumbled. Maeve was on her way.
They were all there that early spring morning with the mist still swirling around the hills, to put her on the little rail bus that ran at the bottom of Thomas Brannigan’s farm, to start the first leg of her long journey. She saw her mother holding little Nuala’s hand and dabbing at her eyes with her apron, her father, his face still in stiff lines of disapproval, and the others staring at her as if they couldn’t quite believe she was going. Maeve knew her father didn’t want her to go, in fact he dreaded it, and in a way she understood why. She knew she had a special place in her father’s heart, partly because she looked so like her mother and also because she was the firstborn. She also knew it had been her mother who’d persuaded her father to allow her to go, and if she hadn’t supported her, it would have been far more difficult.
The way he’d gone on, it was as if he expected her to be leapt on by every man in Christendom as soon as she left the farm. She knew the lads all had an eye for her; she wasn’t stupid. But her mother had talked to her, and anyway, she knew right from wrong. So though she felt sorry for her parents, she couldn’t wait to be gone.
Maeve watched until the group by the farm gate had become like small dots and then she settled into her seat with a sigh of contentment. Excitement fizzed inside her so that she could hardly sit still. She wished she could snap her fingers and be in Birmingham, where she was sure everything that was good awaited her.
She sustained the excitement all the way to Belfast, though the size and noise of the station unnerved her. The clatter of the enormous trains that seemed to hurl into the station to stop with a hiss of steam and a piercing screech and a whistle made her jump more than once. She left the busy Belfast station for the ferry, feeling apprehensive about the journey across the water.
Maeve boarded with what seemed like thousands of other people crowding on to the gangplank, her case bumping against her knees. Once on board, she made her way on to the deck and, putting her case beside her, she held tightly to the rail as she watched the shores of Ireland fade into the distance and then disappear altogether. She felt quite suddenly unexpectedly desolate and a little frightened. The overcast leaden grey skies belied the fact that it was early April and although it was midmorning the light was as poor as dusk, which didn’t help Maeve’s mood. Nor did the roll of the ship and the churning of her stomach.
She leant over the side, overcome suddenly by nausea, and vomited all she’d eaten that morning into the white-fringed grey water crashing and foaming against the ferry’s sides. She continued to retch over and over and she realised she wasn’t the only one.
When eventually her nausea was over and as she wiped her mouth with a handkerchief she became aware of a dumpy little woman dressed in black watching her. The rain came then, not soft spring rain, but sharp shafts that stung Maeve’s face and soaked her coat in minutes.
‘Come away into the bar,’ the woman told her, lifting her case as if it weighed nothing at all. ‘You’ll freeze to death out here.’
Maeve allowed herself to be led indoors, where she was met by a cacophony of people talking, laughing, shouting and quarrelling, and here and there she heard snatches of songs, the laments of the emigrant Irish that brought tears to her eyes.
‘Tch tch, that won’t do,’ the woman said. ‘You need a brandy to buck you up. I’ll send my Sean to get you one.’
Maeve’s protests were waved aside and the woman escorted her to where a man also dressed in black sat on a suitcase just a little way from the bar.
‘Sit down,’ the woman commanded and, as the seats were all occupied, Maeve upended her case and sat on that.
The woman introduced herself as Minnie O’Rourke, and her husband, whom she dispatched for the drinks, as Sean. They were returning from a funeral for Sean’s parents, who’d died within days of one another on the family farm in Galway. The farm now belonged to Sean, Minnie O’Rourke explained, though his three sisters ran the place. Maeve, having told her new acquaintance her own name, smiled politely and hoped the brandy would ease the cramps in her stomach.
The bar reminded her of Donovan’s in her home town, with the tobacco stench that stung Maeve’s eyes and hung like a blue fog over the room, together with the familiar smell of Guinness. Sean O’Rourke returned with two glasses of the black drink with the creamy white top for himself and his wife, and a large brandy in a balloon glass for Maeve.
Maeve looked at it fearfully. Never had she had any strong drink, except the odd sip of her father’s Guinness, which he’d allowed her at Christmas and which she’d not liked. The brandy caught in her throat and caused her to cough and splutter, and Minnie O’Rourke patted her back and with a smile told her to treat the drink with respect and sip it.
And Maeve did sip it, grimacing at the taste as one might at foul-smelling medicine that promises to do some good, but she did like the warm glow that the brandy induced.
‘That’s brought the colour back to your cheeks anyway,’ Minnie O’Rourke told her. ‘Where are you bound for?’
‘Birmingham,’ Maeve said. ‘To my uncle’s place.’
‘Well, isn’t that good news?’ Minnie exclaimed. ‘We’re going to Birmingham too. We have a fine house in Erdington. You’d best come along with us. It’s desperate altogether travelling on your own.’
And Maeve was glad to have their company. It might stop her feeling fearful that she was making some dreadful mistake. She was also anxious to learn as much as she could about the city she was going to.
‘Are you having a holiday?’ Minnie asked.
‘No,’ Maeve said. ‘I’m staying there. My uncle has got me a job in a café, near a place called Aston Cross.’
‘My! You’re lucky,’ Minnie said, ‘for God knows, jobs are few and far between at the moment, with the slump after the war, you know?’ Without waiting for a reply she went on, ‘My Sean had to have his gaffer’s word that he’d have a job to go back to,