Anne Bennett - Forget-Me-Not Child

‘We must leave here, that’s all,’ Matt said.

‘Leave the farm?’ Sean asked.

‘Yes,’ Matt affirmed. ‘And Ireland too. We must leave Ireland and try our hands elsewhere.’

That shocked all the boys for not even Finbarr thought any plan would involve them all leaving their native land, though Mary, heartsore as she was, knew that was what they had to do.

Finbarr glanced at his brothers’ faces and knew he was speaking for all of them when he said, ‘We none of us would like that, Daddy. Is there no other way?’

‘Aye, the poorhouse if you’d prefer it,’ said Matt and he spoke with a snap because leaving was the thing he didn’t want to do either. ‘They have one in the town.’

At Finbarr’s look of distaste, he cried out, ‘Do you think this is easy for me? This is where I was born and where I thought I would die. It’s my homeland but we can’t live on fresh air.’ Then he added with an ironic smile, ‘Though we have made a good stab at it this year.’

Finbarr knew that well enough and didn’t bother commenting, but instead asked, ‘But where would we go?’

‘Where Norah Docherty has been urging me to go this past year,’ Mary said. ‘And that’s Birmingham, England. She’s in a place called Edgbaston and she says it’s not far from the city centre and she can put us up until we get straight with our own place and she says she can probably even help you all with jobs.’

Finbarr nodded for they all knew the Dochertys had left Ireland’s shore four years before when they were in danger of having to throw themselves on the mercy of the poorhouse to save the children from starving to death. Then an uncle living in Birmingham had offered them all a home with him in exchange for looking after him because he was afraid of being put in the poorhouse too. It was a lifeline for the Docherty family and they had all grasped it with two hands and were packed up and gone lock stock and barrel in no time at all.

Mary knew Norah found the life hard at first for Norah had written and told her that the house was terribly cramped. Her uncle couldn’t make the stairs and his bed had to be downstairs. But a man who lived just two doors down called Tim Bishop was the gaffer at a foundry in a place called Aston and he had put a word in for Norah’s husband Mick. He had jumped at the job they offered him and Mary said he’d been tired coming home especially at first, for the work was heavy, but then a job was a job and with Birmingham in the middle of a massive slump, to get one at all was great. She said you really needed someone to speak on your behalf to have a chance at all and Norah’s uncle had once worked at the same place as Tim Bishop and been well thought of and Tim Bishop approved of the family coming over to see to him in his declining years, for they all knew well the old man’s fear of ending up in the poorhouse or the workhouse, as it was commonly known.

‘This Tim Bishop Norah speaks of seems to be a grand fellow altogether,’ Mary said. ‘He had Mick set up in a job before he had been there five minutes. Please God that he may do the same for us.’

‘Yeah, but what sort of job?’ Colm grumbled. ‘Don’t know that I would be any good in Birmingham or anywhere else either,’ he said. ‘The only job I know how to do is farming.’

‘Well you can learn to do something else can’t you?’ Matt barked. ‘Same as I’ll have to do.’

‘We’ll all have to learn to do things we’re not used to,’ Mary said. ‘Life is going to be very different to the life we have here but that’s how it is and we must all accept it.’

Mary had a way of speaking that brooked no argument, as the boys knew to their cost, and anyway Finbarr knew she made sense and he sighed and said, ‘So what happens now?’

‘Well travel costs money,’ Mary said. ‘And that’s something we haven’t got a lot of, so we sell everything we don’t need. Your father has sold all the cattle and even got something for the carcasses of the cow and young calf but it isn’t enough. We’ll sell everything on the farm because we can hardly take anything but essentials with us anyway.’

Sad days followed as the children watched the only home they had ever known disappearing before their eyes. The neighbours rallied, one took the cart and horse and another took the hens the fox hadn’t killed and rounded up the sheep and yet another said he would have the plough and even the tools were sold. It wa s hard to get rid of the dogs and though Angela could only remember flashes of that time she remembered crying when Matt said the dogs had to go. All were upset. ‘They are going to good homes,’ Matt promised her and she remembered his husky voice and the way his eyes looked all glittery.

Barry hadn’t liked to see the dogs go either but knew he had to be brave for Angela and so he said, ‘We can’t take dogs to this place Mammy said we’re going to, Angela, so they have got to stop here.’

‘They’d hardly like it in Birmingham anyway,’ Mary said. ‘Their place is here.’

‘I thought mine was,’ Gerry said.

‘Gerry, you’re too old to moan about something that can’t be changed,’ Mary said sharply. ‘What can’t be cured must be endured – you know that.’

‘Who’s having the table?’ Barry asked.

‘The person who has bought the cottage,’ Mary said. ‘That’s Peter Murphy and he asked me to leave the table and chairs, my pots and all, the easy chairs, stools and settle, the butter churn and the press and all the beds. I was happy to do it and he gave me a good, fair price for them too.’

‘Funny to think of someone living here when we’ve gone,’ Gerry said.

‘I suppose,’ Mary said. ‘But I’d rather someone was getting the good out of it than it just falling to wrack and ruin.’

They all agreed with that but when they assembled the following Saturday very very early that late April morning Mary looked at their belongings packed in two battered cases and two large bass bags and her heart felt as heavy as lead. She wasn’t the only one. As they left the farmhouse for the last time they all felt strange not to see the clucking hens dipping their heads to eat the grit between the cobbles outside the cottage door, nor to hear the barking of the dogs. As they made their way to the head of the lane where the neighbour who bought the horse and cart would be waiting for them to take them down to the rail bus station in the town, they missed seeing the horse and cows sharing the field to one side and to the other side of the lane the tilled and furrowed fields, now bare with nothing planted in them. They missed seeing the sheep on the hillside pulling relentlessly on the grass.

Sad though they were to leave, the children were also slightly excited, but Mary’s excitement was threaded through with trepidation for she had never gone far from home before, none of them had, and she looked at the youngsters’ eager though slightly nervous faces and hoped to God they were doing the right thing.

All knew where the McCluskys were bound and even at that early hour some neighbours had come to see them off and wish them God speed and their good wishes almost reduced Mary to tears as she hugged the women and shook hands with the men and led the way on to the rail bus where she and Matt got them all settled in.

They were soon off, the little rail bus was eating up the miles, but it was only the start of the long journey to Birmingham. They would leave the rail bus at a place called Strabane and from there get a train to the docks at Belfast. Then a boat would take them across the sea to Liverpool where another train would take them from there to Birmingham. The rail journey to Strabane had begun to pall but they all perked up a bit when it was time to board the boat.