Anne Bennett - Daughter of Mine

But Tressa had been bored and wanted to go to England. She didn’t really care where, she just wanted to sample city life, the sort of life Clara Dunne described that sounded so much more exciting than Tressa’s own. Clara was from the village and had got a job in one of the hotels in Birmingham, and Tressa had soon decided that that would suit her just fine and dandy.

‘Oh, Lizzie, you should hear her,’ Tressa had enthused to her cousin. ‘She said you wouldn’t believe the shops, and there’s a big market called the Bull Ring where you can pick things up for next to nothing. And that’s not all,’ she went on, seeing that Lizzie was unimpressed so far. ‘There’s picture houses, with proper moving pictures, and dances, and something called a Variety Hall where there are all manner of acts on. Oh, Lizzie, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be part of it?’

‘It would, right enough,’ Lizzie had said and then had promptly forgotten about it, for she was wise enough not to yearn for things she couldn’t have.

However, Tressa wasn’t used to having her wishes thwarted, but for once Margaret stood firm and said that she wouldn’t countenance the idea of her leaving, and certainly not by herself.

Tressa had no intention of going by herself. She’d automatically assumed that Lizzie would go with her and had said, ‘I wouldn’t be alone, Mammy. Lizzie would be coming with me.’

‘Does she want to go too?’

‘Of course she does,’ Tressa had said airily. ‘She just doesn’t know it yet.’ But she added this last comment under her breath. All she had to do was convince Lizzie it was a great idea. She’d done it many times before.

But Lizzie had proved to be unusually difficult. ‘Don’t give in to her this time,’ her elder sister Eileen had warned her. ‘You’re making yourself a rubbing rag.’

Lizzie thought Eileen had a cheek. How many times had she come begging, ‘Could you do that pile of ironing for me, Lizzie,’ or ‘churn the butter,’ or ‘wash the pots,’ or whatever it was. Eileen would always have a good reason for not being able to do it right then. ‘I’ll pay you back,’ she’d promise, but she never did. Even though Lizzie might resent it, she always did it and usually without a word of complaint.

But it was one thing scouring pots, ironing the family wash and making butter. It was quite another to go to a strange country she’d never had a yen to go to, because of a whim her cousin had to see the place. ‘I don’t know, Tressa,’ she’d said.

Tressa hadn’t been too worried. Lizzie often had to be persuaded to do things and eventually Lizzie had said, ‘If I was to come, and I’m not saying I will, mind, how d’you know there would be jobs for us both?’

Tressa allowed herself a little smile of triumph. ‘Clara said that in the New Year two of the waitresses are leaving, one to get married and one to look after her ailing mother, and of course she is getting married herself later. She says the boss likes Irish girls and so do the Americans, and the tips they give are legion. She said she’ll miss that when she is married herself,’ for Clara was sporting an engagement ring with a huge diamond in the centre of it. ‘She’s getting married in the spring and moving down south somewhere,’ Tressa said. ‘We really need to go while she’s there to speak for us.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Lizzie had promised.

A couple of days later, Tressa watched Lizzie working in the dairy, pummelling the poss stick up and down in the churn. Lizzie’s arms throbbed with pain and her back ached, and despite the raw, black day she was sweating so much she felt it dampening under her arms and running down her back. It wasn’t even her turn to do the churning, she thought resentfully. It was Eileen’s, but she had had to mend the tear in the hem of her skirt for the dance she was going to that night.

Lizzie was also going to the dance and she had yet to have a wash and then iron her own clothes, but it was no good asking Eileen. She’d say she’d do them and then forget.

Tressa, knowing her cousin well, guessed what she was thinking about and so she said, ‘They’d manage without you here, you know. Your problem is you allow yourself to be put upon.’

And by you too, Lizzie might have said, but she knew Tressa had a point for there was Peter and Owen to help her father and even Johnnie, at eleven years old, was making a fine turn-out too. Her eldest sister Susan lived not far away and Eileen was on hand to help her mother. And she knew Eileen would have to help if Lizzie wasn’t there to cajole and coax and boss about. ‘You’re right,’ she’d said to Tressa. ‘I’ll go to this place Birmingham with you, directly Clara can get us jobs, and give the place a try-out at least.’

Of course it hadn’t been that easy. Lizzie’s own parents had to be convinced and give their permission for their daughter to go. ‘It’s all Tressa’s doing,’ Catherine remarked to Eileen. ‘If that Tressa went to the North Pole and gave our Lizzie the nod, she’d go along with her.’

‘Aye, Mammy, I know,’ Eileen said with a sigh, annoyed that her compliant sister was even contemplating leaving. ‘Still, maybe when all’s said and done, she’ll not stay long.’

‘That’s true right enough,’ Seamus had put in. ‘God knows she hasn’t a clue what city life is like and might not take to it at all. Let her get it out of her system anyhow and then she can never claim we were holding her back.’

Lizzie also thought she might not like the life, and that is what she said to console Johnnie, who was so dreadfully upset that she was moving out of his life. Looking at him, Lizzie had thought, was like looking at herself as a small child, for both of them had the dark brown wavy hair and the same deep brown eyes, snub nose and wide mouth. Only that day Johnnie’s eyes had swum with the tears that had also trickled down his cheeks. ‘Sure, I’ll be back before you know it,’ Lizzie had said, holding her young brother tight.

Of all his sisters and brothers, Johnnie loved Lizzie most. As she was seven years older than him, when he was younger he had looked upon her as another mother, and, in truth, Lizzie had done a lot of the rearing of him. With her temperament she seldom became angry and had far more patience than Eileen. In the long winter evenings it would be Lizzie who’d play cards or dominoes, or read to him to while away the time, and she was always ready to help him with his homework. And in the finer weather they’d walk together over the rolling countryside, or down to the sea to watch the huge rollers crash onto the sand leaving a fringe of foam behind them. Johnnie knew his life would be poorer without his sister, so he clung to the idea that she’d be soon back. ‘D’you promise?’ he’d said.

‘I can’t promise that, Johnnie,’ Lizzie had replied. ‘I don’t know myself how I’ll fare. We’ll just have to wait and see.’ She knew that Tressa had no intention of returning home, but for herself, she wasn’t sure how she would cope with any of it.

That morning, in late January 1930, as they’d stood at the rail of the mail boat, watching the shores of Ireland being swallowed up by the mist, Tressa had given a sigh of satisfaction and said to Lizzie, ‘I’d say we’ll be sure to catch ourselves rich and handsome men in England?’

Lizzie wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun and live a bit first.’

‘And Birmingham’s the place to do that all right,’ Tressa said. ‘So, are you glad you came at least?’

Before answering, Lizzie looked down at the churning sea the boat was ploughing its way through, which was as grey as the leaden sky, and she felt excitement beginning to stir in her. She smiled at her cousin and said, ‘If I’m honest I’m often glad when you bully me into doing something I’d not given a mind to before. I’m no good at adventures and maybe I never will be. Perhaps I’ll always be the kind of person that will have to have my arm twisted to do anything at all. So in all honesty I can say aye, Tressa, I’m glad I agreed to come and I’m so excited I can hardly wait.’