Kathleen O’Shea - Little Drifters - Part 2 of 4

He was right – we were all crying by now, clawing at my mother for protection, begging her to save us. But Liam and Aidan just started to laugh.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mammy said to the man. ‘They were brought up in the countryside and they’ve never seen people of different colours before. It’s all new to them.’

The man nodded, looking a little relieved, then he left us.

‘That’s not a monster,’ Aidan laughed at us. ‘He’s just a black man.’

Now Brian was confused: ‘But why is the man so black? I don’t understand it.’

Mammy explained: ‘There are people of all different colours in this world. Some are black, others are yellow or orange. You’re going to be seeing a lot of different coloured peoples once we get to England. Now just you all calm down. Look at the poor man! You scared the living daylights out of him!’

Later, as Mammy handed out egg sandwiches that she’d bought at the ship’s canteen, Tara whispered to me: ‘Kathleen, can you imagine a yellow person?’

‘Or an orange person!’

‘Wouldn’t that be strange! Do you think they have purple or blue people in England?’

I started giggling: ‘I’d like to see a blue person, Tara!’

It was night-time when we arrived in England. We hadn’t slept at all on the long, five-hour crossing, and by now we were all groggy with tiredness. The older ones gently herded us all onto another train and there we laid our heads down on the seats and let the gentle swaying of the carriage rock us all to sleep. We were so tired and sleepy when we got off the train that we walked hand in hand up and down the dark streets, hardly able to stand up, let alone take in our new environment. We were led past row after row of grand, old-looking houses, turning into one street and then the next. God, it felt like it would go on for a lifetime, until eventually we came to a large, three-storey house where Mammy climbed up the three stone steps to the entrance and knocked. A man we’d never seen before opened it. But he must have known Mammy because he started chattering away. The man led us all into a spacious living room on the ground floor where he’d put out a load of blankets and we all just lay down and cuddled up to sleep the rest of the night.

By the time we woke up the next morning Mammy was already in the kitchen, making a mouth-watering breakfast of sausage and eggs. It was the first thing we’d eaten since the sandwiches on the boat and we set about devouring our food, ravenous.

‘You can all go now,’ she said when we finished. ‘But just mind you don’t be playing in the rooms at the top. That’s not for us.’

We were all looking forward to exploring the house, which seemed enormous to us. In the hallway there was a large staircase with a wooden banister and all the way up the stairs were tons of different rooms, some with beds, but mostly empty. We climbed all over the banisters, hanging off them and sliding down. Later we went outdoors to find a big garden with a shed in it and, behind the garden, a river. Then we went out into the street. The house was on a road with shops at one end and rows of houses down our end.

‘What is this place, Mammy?’ Brian asked as we passed her in the kitchen.

‘It’s a squat,’ she told him. ‘In Gloucester. Now just you kids mind to stay out of trouble.’

We later learned that there was a mother with three little girls living in the squat with us and when they returned they opened up the shed to let us play on their bikes with them. It was exciting being in a big new house but we couldn’t help thinking of Daddy and how lonely he’d be back in our home, all by himself.

At first we just spent our time playing in the street. We were desperate to see the different coloured people Mammy had talked about so we wandered up and down, looking for the yellow and orange people. When we didn’t see any we just amused ourselves on the bikes and by the river behind our house. Aidan got himself a job working in a hospital at the end of the street, Liam was out mostly and Bridget stayed with us, looking after the little ones. At nights we had two rooms to sleep in – the older boys in one and the rest of us in another.

We didn’t see much of the man who had first opened the door to us – from what we could gather from overhearing when the older ones spoke, it sounded like he was married to one of our aunts, but none of us knew which one. There was a pub across the road from us, and from the moment we arrived in Gloucester Mammy spent most of her days and nights in there. From the very beginning she warned us against ever coming into the pub.

‘That’s not a place to play!’ she snapped at us. ‘You’re not even to cross to that side of the road. You understand? Don’t even look at it!’

Mammy didn’t seem the same to us. It was strange. She was never home and she didn’t seem to have time for any of us. There were even some nights she wouldn’t come back to the house – we’d wake up in the morning, just us kids and Bridget watching over us. But after a few days we cottoned on to what was keeping her away so much – there was a man she was with and they were talking and laughing. One time Brian said: ‘I’m going to get a closer look at him!’

But when he went up to the front, Mammy spotted his little blond head peeking through the glass window of the door and she came belting out, giving him an earful!

It was late one night, about two weeks after we first got to Gloucester, that she brought the fella back to the house. Tara and I were playing in the hall, climbing up the walls, seeing if we could get about the whole house without touching the floor. We heard my mother’s tinkly laughter as she pushed open the front door and he followed in behind her. He just seemed a very normal-looking fella, not greatly tall, with dark, curly hair. She barely looked up at us as we stopped messing about to see this man up close. Mammy carried on walking right through to the kitchen but the man stopped there in the hallway.

‘Hello,’ he said to us.

‘Hello,’ we chorused back, curious.

‘I’m Frank. I’m your mother’s friend.’

‘This here is Kathleen and I’m Tara,’ my sister said, bold as anything.

‘Why don’t you come over and give us a kiss hello?’ he said. We didn’t think anything of it – we both went over and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Then: ‘Do you want some money?’

We both nodded eagerly – of course we did!

‘Right, well, I’ll give you some money if you give me another kiss.’

That seemed like a good deal to us so we each stretched up on tiptoe to give him another kiss on the cheek and afterwards he held out a ten pence piece for each of us. We ran away laughing. We had no idea why the stupid man wanted to give us money for kisses but we weren’t going to argue!

Frank stayed with my mother in another room that night, and the next day we didn’t even wait around to see anyone. We went straight out to spend our money on toffees in the shop up the road. Two days later Frank was back in the house and asking us for kisses again.

This time, instead of kissing him on the cheek, he wanted to kiss us both on the mouth. Again, we didn’t think about it and just went right ahead to get our money. But by the third occasion I realised something wasn’t quite right. This time he wanted to keep his lips on mine for longer and he held my shoulders tight and squeezed, not letting me go. Eventually I managed to squirm away from him because I’d had enough. Then it was Tara’s turn.

She stood on the staircase so he didn’t have to bend down to kiss her and he did the same again, holding her little shoulders so she couldn’t get away. He was at it a long time, so long in fact that Mammy came out of the kitchen at that very moment and caught them kissing!