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up at the Dochertys’ and Mary asked where they had both been and would have gone for Barry when he attempted to explain, but Norah forestalled her. ‘It was obvious Angela would wake early,’ she said to Mary, ‘because she had her sleep out and it was good of Barry to take her downstairs and let us have a bit of a lie in.’

      ‘But to take food without asking!’

      ‘Well he couldn’t ask me without waking me up first and that wouldn’t have pleased me at all,’ Norah pointed out and added with a little laugh, ‘It was just a bit of bread and it’s understandable that Angela would be hungry. Don’t be giving out to them their first morning here.’

      ‘I was starving,’ Angela said with feeling.

      ‘Course you were,’ Norah said. ‘You hadn’t eaten for hours.’

      Barry let out a little sigh of relief, very grateful to Mrs Docherty for saving him from the roasting he was pretty sure he had been going to get from his mother, and when she said, ‘Anyway come up to the table now for I have porridge made for you two and Sammy and Siobhan,’ the day looked even better.

      St Catherine’s Catholic Church was just along Bristol Street, no distance at all, and Norah pointed out Bow Street off Bristol Street where the entrance to the school was. ‘I will be away to see about it tomorrow,’ Mary said. ‘I hope they have room for Barry and Gerry for I don’t like them missing time. Wish I could get Angela in too because she’s more than ready for school.’

      ‘I thought that with Siobhan and was glad to get her in in September,’ Norah said. ‘I think when they have older ones they bring the young ones on a bit.’

      ‘You could be right,’ Norah said. ‘I know our Angela is like a little old woman sometimes, the things she comes out with.’

      ‘Oh I know exactly what you mean,’ Mary said with feeling. ‘Mind I wouldn’t be without them and I did miss the boys last night. Be glad to see them at Mass this morning.’

      The boys were waiting for them in the porch and they gave their anxious mother a good account of Stan Bishop and his wife Kate, who they said couldn’t have been kinder to them. That eased Mary’s mind for her children had never slept apart from her in a different house altogether and she thought it a funny way to go on, but the only solution in the circumstances.

      After Mass, Norah introduced them to the priest, Father Brannigan, and he was as Irish as they were. Mary’s stomach was growling embarrassingly with hunger and she hoped he couldn’t hear it. She also hoped meeting him wouldn’t take long so she could go home and eat something, but she knew it was important to be friendly with the priest, especially if you wanted a school place for your children. Matt understood that as well as she did and they answered all the questions the priest asked as patiently as possible.

      It might have done some good though, because when he heard the two families were living in a cramped back-to-back house with the older boys farmed out somewhere else, he said he’d keep his ear to the ground for them.

      ‘Well telling the priest your circumstances can’t do any harm anyway,’ Norah said. ‘Priests often get to know things before others.’

      ‘No harm at all,’ Mary agreed. ‘Glad he didn’t go on too long though or I might have started on the chair leg. Just at the moment my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

      It was amazing how life slipped into a pattern, so that living with the Dochertys and eating in shifts became the norm. Gerry and Barry were accepted into St Catherine’s School and went there every day with all the Docherty children and Angela was on the waiting list for the following year when she would be five. Better still, Stan Bishop said he could get Sean into the apprentice scheme to be a toolmaker and Gerry could join him in two years’ time, and he could find a labouring job for Matt the same as Mick, so that by the beginning of June the two men and the boy Sean were soon setting off to work together.

      Sadly, Stan could find nothing for the two older boys who were too old for the apprentice scheme, which had to be started at fourteen, and there was no job for them in the foundry. They were disappointed but not worried. It wasn’t like living in rural Donegal. Industrial Birmingham was dubbed the city of one thousand trades and just one job in any trade under the sun would suit Finbarr and Colm down to the ground.

      So they did the round of the factories as Stan advised, beginning in Deritend because it was nearest to the city centre and moving out to Aston where the foundry was. They started with such high hopes that surely they would be taken on somewhere soon. ‘The trick,’ Stan said, ‘is to have plenty of strings to your bow. Don’t go to the same factory every day because they’ll just get fed up with you but don’t leave it so long that they’ve forgotten who you are if they have given you any work before. And if you’re doing no good at the factories go down to the railway station and offer to carry luggage. It’s nearly summer and posh folk go away and might be glad of a hand and porters are few and far between. Or,’ he added, ‘go to the canal and ask if they want any help operating the locks or legging the boats through the tunnels.’

      ‘What’s that mean, “legging through the tunnel”?’

      ‘You’ll find out soon enough if they ask you to do it,’ Stan said with a smile. ‘Just keep going and something will turn up I’m sure.’

      They kept going, there was nothing else to do, but sometimes they brought so little home. Everything they made they gave to their mother but sometimes it was very little and sometimes nothing at all. They felt bad about it, but Mary never said a word, as she knew they were trying their best, and while they were living with the Dochertys money went further, for they shared the rent and the money for food and coal. But she knew it might be a different story if ever they were to move into their own place.

      However, that seemed as far away as jobs for her sons, but life went on regardless. Barry did make his First Holy Communion with the others in his class, and not long after it was the school holidays and they had a brilliant summer playing in the streets with the other children. Mary wasn’t really happy with it, but there was nowhere else for them to play. Anyway all the other mothers seemed not to mind their children playing in the streets, but she was anxious something might happen to Angela. ‘You see to her, Barry,’ she said.

      ‘I will,’ Barry said. ‘But she can’t stay on her own in the house. It isn’t fair. Let her play with the others and I’ll see nothing happens to her.’

      ‘Don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ Norah said. ‘That lad of yours will hardly let the wind blow on Angela.’

      ‘I know,’ Mary said. ‘He’s been like that since Angela first came into the house, as if he thought it was his responsibility to look after her. He’s a good lad is Barry and Angela adores him.’

      ‘He’s going to make a good father when the time comes I’d say,’ Norah said.

      ‘Aye. Please God,’ Mary said.

      Angela thought it was great to be surrounded by friends as soon as she stepped into the street. She had been a bit isolated at the farm. Funny that she never realized that before, but having plenty of friends was another thing she decided she liked about living in Birmingham.

      Christmas celebrated by two families in the confines of one cramped back-to-back house meant there was no room at all, but plenty of fun and laughter. There was food enough, for the women had pooled resources and bought what they could, but there was little in the way of presents for there was no spare money. Many of the boots, already cobbled as they were, had to be soled and heeled and Mary took up knitting again and taught Norah. The wool they got from buying old cheap woollen garments at the Rag Market to unravel and knit up again so that the families could have warmer clothes for winter.

      January proved bitterly cold. Day after day snow fell from a leaden grey sky and froze overnight, so in the morning there was frost formed on the inside of windows in those draughty houses. Icicles hung from the sills, ice scrunched underfoot and ungloved fingers throbbed with cold.

      Life was harder still

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