A Strong Hand to Hold. Anne Bennett

       SIX

      Linda was talking about her father. She’d been talking about him for some time and Jenny encouraged her; it was better for her to talk about him than ask searching questions about her mother or little brothers. She knew that when this was all over, Linda would have to live with someone, so she listened, hoping to hear of a nice gran somewhere, or a kindly aunt to help Linda over the tragedy of it all.

      She felt it such a shame that her father hadn’t survived to see his daughter grow up. But she’d had a stepfather for four years; maybe he had relations she could live with.

      She waited until there was a lull in the conversation, and then probed gently, ‘What about your stepfather Linda? Did you get on with him?’

      She heard the sharp intake of breath and then Linda hissed, ‘I hated him. I wanted him to die. I was glad when he went off to war and every day I wished he’d never come home again. I was glad when we got the telegram.’

      Jenny was so shocked by the venom in the child’s voice, she said not a word and Linda went on, ‘I bet you think that’s dead wicked don’t you?’

      The Catholic Church would, Jenny knew, but she didn’t say that. Instead, she said gently, ‘Why did you want him to die?’

      ‘’Cos he used to knock me mom about,’ Linda said. ‘He was big, like an all-in wrestler, he was. Mom used to say he was as broad as he was long – he was, near enough – and he used to hit her, ’specially when he came from the pub. I used to think he’d kill her; I reckon he could have too. She used to have black eyes and bruises on her cheeks, me mom did. She always said she fell. But I knew she never, ’cos I used to hear him.’

      She stopped and there was a pause and Jenny was loath to break it, feeling sure Linda hadn’t finished. After a minute or two, she began again, but her voice was so low, Jenny had to strain to hear. ‘I’ll tell you something now I’ve never told a living soul, not even Mom. Not ’cos I didn’t think she’d believe me, but ’cos I didn’t want her to be upset. I mean, what could she do about it anyway?’

      There was another pause and part of Jenny wanted the child to go on with her tale, but the other half of her recoiled from it. In a way she was semi-prepared for what came next. ‘He used to touch me, you know, my … my privates, like. He told me I’d get to enjoy it, and when I was bigger he’d do more exciting things that I’d get to enjoy more. But I never did, I hated it, and I hated him, I did, and I was glad he died, so there.’

      Jenny imagined Linda’s little face contorted with hate as she almost spat the last words out. She felt for her hand and held it tight, although her own was still semi-bandaged, and said, ‘That was awful for you Linda, but not all men are like that, you know.’

      She felt she had to get that point across, but Linda said firmly, ‘I know that. My own dad wasn’t and there’s lots more who don’t do that sort of thing.’ Then suddenly she changed her tack and asked, ‘Was your dad nice?’

      ‘Very,’ Jenny said firmly. ‘But he was born to a totally different life from yours and mine, because he was brought up in a cottage in Northern Ireland in a village called Cullinova.’

      ‘Is that why you speak funny?’ Linda said. She knew all about Irish people. Most of them went to the St Peter and Paul’s Catholic church on Kingsbury Road on Sunday morning, and her mom always said they were odd. They couldn’t eat meat on Fridays but could get tanked up on a weekend and beat up their women, then go and tell it all to the priest who would say it was all right. Then, her mother said, they often went and did the same thing the next week. But Jenny didn’t talk like the Irish people she knew, and yet she didn’t speak Brummie either. ‘You don’t speak like Irish people,’ she said. ‘Not ones I know, any road.’

      ‘Well, I was born here,’ Jenny said. Her mother had worked hard on them to eradicate all traces of an Irish accent and had insisted the children call her and Dermot Mother and Father, instead of Mammy and Daddy. But Jenny had always called her father Daddy in her head, and used the name whenever they’d been alone.

      ‘Maybe that’s it,’ Linda said, and added, ‘tell me about your dad. I’ve told you all about mine.’

      Jenny only hesitated briefly. Somehow they had to fill the hours until they were rescued, and she didn’t want Linda to start to fret over her family again and so she told her of the young boy who’d worked on the estate of his English master, Fotherington. First he worked on the land and then as a ghillie or a boat boy and later as a groom in the stables.

      Linda was fascinated, as this was all new and different to her life.

      ‘When did he marry your mom?’ Linda asked.

      ‘Not long after he got a cottage of his own,’ Jenny told her. ‘But my mother had a totally different upbringing, in a large house with servants and so on. But my mother’s father died when she was in her late teens, and they found they weren’t rich any more. Her father had run up huge debts and everything, including the house which had to be sold.’

      Linda thought that was sad and Jenny supposed it was. Her mother must have felt desperate, especially when her own mother, Eileen Gillespie, had a nervous breakdown through it all and was taken into a hospital in Derry, leaving her all alone.

      ‘Good job your dad was there then,’ Linda said.

      ‘Yes,’ Jenny said, remembering how her father had adored Norah Gillespie for years, though he’d never expected anything to come of it. Suddenly there she was, educated to the hilt, but fit for nothing, and destitute into the bargain.

      ‘So they got married?’ Linda said.

      ‘Yes; in time her mother, Eileen, recovered and moved in with them. My three brothers and sister were born and things were very difficult for my mother, for she’d not been raised to cook and clean,