Angela took her coat from the hook at the back of the door and stepped out into the early morning. The day was a chilly one – it was early yet but Angela was glad the bite of winter seemed to be gone at last, though it was only early March 1926. In the children’s verse March was supposed to begin like a lion and end like a lamb so she knew they weren’t quite out of the woods yet. But they were on the way to spring and that morning a hazy sun was trying to break through the clouds. Funny how it cheered a body to see the sun.

But then her good mood was dispelled a little when, despite the early hour, she saw Tressa Lawson on the road before her, carrying a cushion and an army-issue blanket. As the eldest in the family it was her job to lead her father, Pete, by the hand for he had been blinded by mustard gas in 1915. He wore his great coat against the chill of the day and immense pity for the man rose up in Angela.

‘Why does he go out so early?’ she’d asked Tressa one time. ‘He says he gets the best pitch then,’ Tressa had said. ‘He positions himself by the tram stop in Bristol Street.’

Somehow, Angela could never see the decent and respect- able Pete Lawson without feeling a pang to her heart. That bloody ‘Great War’ had also taken away Angela’s beloved husband and Connie’s father Barry, and at the time Angela had thought she would never get over the tremendous loss she’d felt.

The lovely letter of commendation that she had received from his commanding of cer, who had said how brave and courageous a soldier he was, hadn’t helped the searing ache inside her. The letter had told her that Barry had eventually lost his life saving another. While her mind screamed ‘Why?’ she imagined in the heat of battle there was little time for logical thought and Barry would have acted instinctively. But that act was the culmination of this very brave soldier’s career; the of cer had said he was recommending him for an award and in due course she received the Military Medal.

Angela still thought it cold comfort and if her husband had been a little less brave he might have been one of the ones who had marched home again. His mother, Mary McClusky, on the other hand, had been ‘over the moon’ that her Barry had received a medal for gallantry and Angela thought Connie might like it as she grew. It would show her what a ne father she’d had, for she was too young to remember him at all, and Angela had put the medal away carefully to show her when she was older.

In the end, despite commendations and medals, she had learnt to cope with her profound loss because she had Connie to rear and Barry’s mother Mary to care for too, for they lived together. Anyway, she was by no means the only widow and when the Armistice was signed and the men who had survived were demobbed, it was only too obvious how few men there were about.

As Angela made her way to the Swan public house where she cleaned, she re ected anew on all the changes brought about because so many men had not returned from the war. She could well remember what George Maitland, her old employer, had said on a similar subject.

Angela had never taken to Matilda, mainly because of the way she had been with George. She was a cold woman, who never seemed to have a high regard for him, and in Angela’s hearing had never ever thrown him even a kind word, and there was no place in her life for children, or sex either, so people whispered.

By now Angela had reached the pub and would have to settle her mind to the job in hand. She went in the side door and called out to the landlord, Paddy Larkin, as she did so. She was very grateful to Paddy for offering her this job after the war, for she couldn’t in all honesty say either her father- in-law, Matt, or her husband, Barry, were regular visitors there. She was more than happy to have it though, because it eased the nancial pressure, and with Constance at school and Mary to see to her in the holidays, it was perfect for them all.

Angela seldom saw the landlady Breda Larkin for she was usually getting herself ready upstairs. She often wouldn’t come down before ten thirty or so to open the pub at eleven and Angela would usually be on her way back home by then. However, one morning when she had been at the cleaning for three years or so, Breda got up early. She greeted Angela pleasantly enough, but when she had left she turned to her husband and said, ‘She’s wasted on the cleaning, that Angela McClusky.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at her, you numbskull,’ Breda said impatiently. ‘Despite everything she is still a beautiful woman, blonde, busty and pleasant. She has a smile for everyone and she will bring the punters in, especially on Friday and Saturday night.’

Paddy might have bristled at being called a numbskull by his wife but he had to acknowledge what she said made sense. Angela was not only a very good-looking woman, but she had something a little special, and though she was always agreeable, she was not irty – too irty a woman behind the bar could cause all manner of problems. And so he put the proposition to Angela the next day. She knew it would be extra hours and so extra money and she also knew she couldn’t have considered it if she hadn’t Mary at home, for she would not leave Constance alone for the hours she would be behind the bar. She told Paddy she would have to ask Mary, for she would be the one looking after Connie, but it was only more for courtesy.

Angela knew how Mary felt for her best friend, Maggie, who was also Connie’s godmother. She had married Michael Malone after the war, having been sweet on him for years, even before the war began, and had written to him when he was in the army. A few of the men from their town had been part of a pals battalion and had fought alongside each other and Angela had found out later that the shell that had killed Barry while he’d been trying to save another had blown Michael’s left leg clean off. 

He had thought any future with Maggie was scuppered, that she wouldn’t want to saddle herself with a one-legged man, but Angela knew her friend was a bigger person than that. And Maggie had said that it made no difference to the way she felt about him and Angela knew she spoke the truth. She also knew if Barry had lost his leg, but came home to her, she would have rejoiced. Though getting Michael to understand that took Maggie some time.

‘He may well mind,’ Maggie said. ‘But he is above all a realist. And so he will not show any resentment to me or give me any sort of hard time.’

Angela had wished at the time she had become infertile too and then there might have been no repercussions from the terrible attack that day she had driven to the docks for the rst time. She had been one of the rst and only female delivery drivers, transporting munitions around the country. It had been on one of these trips that something terrible had happened, something she had tried to push out of her mind but which had come back to haunt her and caused her to make the most heart-breaking decision of her life.

One dreadful night she had been attacked and viciously raped when making a munitions delivery at night in a strange town. Her assault had left her scarred, but worse, it had left her with child. With no other course available, with a husband away ghting at war and nowhere to turn, Angela had been forced to leave the child, a young girl with fair hair and blue eyes like her own, on the workhouse steps. The shame and the pain of it had stayed with her and Angela had had to shut off the past to keep the pain at bay.

At least she had Connie, though, who she loved with all her heart and soul, while poor Maggie had nothing. Angela had pushed all the awful memories away. Better to focus on the present and Connie’s future.

Maggie was grateful for the chance of employment at the Swan and took herself off to see Mr Larkin. They got on ne and the upshot was that she was to take on the weekend cleaning, while Angela worked behind the bar.

In fact Paddy felt it was scandalous that two women, one a widow and one with a disabled husband, should have to take on jobs like the ones he was offering to keep the wolf from the door.

‘Those men fought for King and country, both of them,’ he said to his wife one night as they prepared for bed. ‘You’d think their relatives would be taken care of if they were killed like Barry McClusky, or crippled like Maggie’s husband, or Pete Lawson, blinded, and so many more.’

‘You’ve just said it though, haven’t you?’ Breda said. ‘So many more. Think about it, there were thousand upon thou- sand killed and even more injured. I should think it takes a great deal of money to ght a war and so they haven’t got the money to provide adequately for all the dependants.’

As Angela worked, whether it was pulling pints behind the bar or cleaning, she was always well aware of what she owed Mary, for without her stalwart help in caring for Connie, she knew their lives would have been nancially harder. But she didn’t just appreciate Mary for the help she gave but she was glad she was there with them. She had been part of her life since as far back as she could remember and she hadn’t a clue how she was going to manage without her. And though Mary might have years to live yet, she somehow doubted it. The news of Barry’s death had hit her for six, combined with the death of two of her other sons in 1912 as they had travelled to America on the Titanic to seek better prospects, and the grief had done much to hasten the death of her husband. The bad times were wearing her down and Mary hadn’t the resilience of youth. 

It wasn’t all bad. Mary still thought a great deal about her other two sons in America who had gone ahead some years before the Titanic disaster, and she was glad they were so happy in their new lives. She often wished she could see them again just the once, but she had known when she kissed them goodbye it was nal. They wrote regularly though, and she was grateful for that, especially when they included dollar bills folded inside the letter. They wrote about things she could barely imagine, like the ashing neon lights in a place called Times Square and the trolley buses and the trains that ran underground in the bowels of the earth and the motor cars they helped build that were now lling the wide straight roads of America.

As Connie grew up, she became very good friends with a girl in her class called Sarah Maguire. Angela had no problem with her having Sarah as her special friend as she herself had been best friends with Maggie Malone, née Maguire, at a similar age. She was friendly with Sarah’s mother Maeve and knew them to be a respectable family and was glad to see Connie making friends of her own. It wasn’t as if she’d be all that far away in any case, for the Maguires lived just a wee bit down Bell Barn Road on the corner of Great Colmore Street.

Mrs Maguire, Maeve, had an equally dark head of hair though it was always tied away from her face in a bun of some sort. She wasn’t as pretty as Connie’s own mother – few people were – but Maeve Maguire’s face had an almost serene look seldom seen on those with a houseful of children. Connie had never heard her raise her voice and Sarah said she almost never did. So her face had a contented look about it, with no lines pulling her mouth down, although there were creases around her eyes which were a strange grey-green colour. 

‘Do you mind me coming round so often?’ Connie asked her once. ‘My granny says I mustn’t annoy you.’

Mrs Maguire gave an almost tinkling laugh. ‘Child dear, you don’t annoy me in the slightest,’ she said. ‘You are like a ray of sunshine. And anyway, when you have so many, one more makes little difference and there is more company for you here. The children’s friends are always welcome and you help Sarah with the jobs she must do, so you must assure your granny you are no trouble.’

It was funny but they never did. They often talked about their families and one Saturday as they went along Bristol Street, fetching errands for Maeve and pushing the slumbering baby Maura in the pram, Connie suddenly said, ‘Aren’t your mammy’s eyes an unusual colour?’

‘Oh, the shape of my face is the same and my mouth is and thank goodness my nose is like Mammy’s too. I would hate to have a nose like my father’s, which isn’t really any shape at all. Looks like it’s been broken and not xed prop- erly or something. I asked him once and he said that if it had been broken he hadn’t been aware of it. Mammy said she grew up nearly beside him on the farm in Ireland and Daddy grew up with a rake of brothers, seven or eight of them with only a year between them all. There were girls too, cos there were thirteen altogether, and Mammy said near every time she saw the boys two or three of them would be scrapping on the ground like puppies. She said Daddy’s nose could have been broken a number of times and their mother wouldn’t have had time to blow her own nose, never mind notice that one of the tribe had theirs busted.’ 

The two girls burst out laughing. ‘Why do boys do that, ght and things?’ Sarah shrugged. ‘Who’d know the answer to that or care either? It’s just what boys do.’

‘Oh yes,’ Connie said as Sarah’s words tugged at her memory. ‘My mammy was born with golden locks and blue eyes like mine, my grandmother said, but she’s not my mammy’s real mother. My mammy’s real mother died in Ireland when she was a babby, like I told you before.’