If You Were the Only Girl. Anne Bennett

Clara agreed, ‘and the memories were raw in the beginning, but I wasn’t the only one to suffer a loss. There is only one thing to do and that is to go on as you are doing and fulfill your intention of keeping the children alive and out of the poorhouse.’

      ‘Aye, so far,’ Minnie said. ‘Sometimes, though, I feel as if I’m balanced on a knife edge. You went to Birmingham and made a new life for yourself – made up from lady’s maid to housekeeper within three years.’

      ‘The aftermath of the Great War helped me there,’ Clara said. ‘The war had given women and girls greater opportunities and after it fewer girls were looking for “in service” work.’

      ‘Did you not mind going to live with strangers?’

      ‘Not really,’ Clara said. ‘My brothers were very kind to me but I knew I couldn’t be beholden to them and their wives for ever. By taking a job in service I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back and plenty to eat, and though the wages weren’t much to start with, they have improved with time. And that is where I can help you, Minnie, I am looking for a new scullery maid and your Lucy is of an age to work.’

      ‘In Birmingham?’ Minnie cried. ‘I could never countenance her being so far away.’

      ‘Now would I ask you to?’ Clara said. ‘I know how precious daughters are. But this is the beauty of it. The Master of the house where I work, Lord Charles Heatherington, was a general in the army and was recently badly hurt in a skirmish in India. He spent months in hospital and eventually insisted on being shipped home where he said he could be nursed just as well. I would say he was right, too, because he is cared for by his batman, a man called Rory Green, a taciturn Scot who is devoted to the Master. Anyway, the Mistress decided that a change of scene and peace and quiet are what her husband needs now and they have taken charge of a large house in its own grounds, a place called Windthorpe Lodge, just outside Letterkenny.’

      ‘Donegal Town is a long way from there.’

      ‘That doesn’t really matter,’ Clara said. ‘All the positions are “live in”, you see. I have a housemaid and a kitchen maid, both a bit older than Lucy, and I am short of a scullery maid.’

      Clara knew that she didn’t need to be short of a scullery maid, that she could have filled the post ten times over, but though in her letters Minnie never moaned, Clara had known things would be tight after Seamus died and she often worried that she could offer her friend no help. Then Lady Heatherington started making plans to decamp to the North of Ireland for a while and Clara thought straight away of helping her old friend by offering Lucy employment.

      ‘I never thought of Lucy doing that kind of thing,’ Minnie said.

      Clara hid her impatience and asked instead, ‘What had you in mind?’

      Minnie shook her head. ‘You lived here,’ she cried, distressed. ‘You know there is little employment for young girls.’

      Clara put her hands over Minnie’s agitated ones and said, ‘Please, listen to me, Minnie. Lucy’s job could lift you out of the extreme poverty you are in at the moment. You would have one less child to feed or find clothes for, and she will be paid eight shillings a week, a goodly portion of which I know she will want to send to you.’

      Minnie cast an anguished glance at Lucy as if she could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘But when will I see her?’ she cried.

      ‘Well,’ said Clara, ‘in Birmingham the scullery maid has two half-days a week off and one full day every month. It will probably be the same here. Not that she’ll be able to see you on her half-days.’

      ‘Not on her full day either,’ Minnie said. ‘Letterkenny is a fair step from here.’

      ‘But the rail bus goes all the way,’ Clara said.

      Lucy knew what she was talking about: the little bus that ran on rails, which she had seen many a time, though she never thought that she would ever have the opportunity to ride on it.

      ‘Lucy’s never been on a rail bus,’ Minnie said. ‘None of us has.’

      ‘Well, that can be remedied,’ said Clara with a smile. ‘That’s how I travelled down and how I will go back in a day or so. And remember that while Lucy will be far from home, I will be there to look after her as if she were my own daughter. What d’you say, Lucy?’

      Lucy knew what she wanted to say: that she didn’t want to go so far away from home to work. What Clara said was a shock and not just to her but to all her siblings.

      Sam’s eyes had filled with tears because Lucy had done a lot of the rearing of him. ‘Lucy’s not to go anywhere,’ he cried to Clara in protest. ‘She’s not to. She lives here with us.’

      Danny thought the same. He and Lucy were very close, but he knew when adults decided something that was that. Grainne was dismayed that she would be losing the big sister that she looked up to so much and left with just the boys for company, and even Liam felt a bit sniffy at the thought of Lucy going away.

      Clara looked at the saddened faces around her, Sam’s still red with temper and Lucy’s eyes sparkling with unshed tears, and she said, ‘I see that wasn’t a very popular thing to say.’

      ‘You shan’t take Lucy away,’ Sam said belligerently. ‘You shan’t because I’ll not let you.’

      ‘That will do, Sam,’ Minnie said.

      ‘But—’

      ‘Enough, I said. You are being rude.’

      ‘Lucy must work someplace, you know, now her school days are over,’ Clara said to the children. She went on to describe the big house just outside Letterkenny and the benefits for them all if Lucy were to take a job there.

      As Clara spoke, things became much clearer to Lucy too. She was no keener to leave home but she knew that for all their sakes she must go and be a scullery maid at this house and lift some of the burden from her mother.

      For years Lucy had listened to Minnie in the garden from early morning till late at night, digging, planting, hoeing, weeding, watering and then harvesting. Any surplus was exchanged for oatmeal, flour and fats and candles at the shop, and Lucy knew that it was time now for her to contribute to the family. She nodded her head to Clara. The younger children stared at her open-mouthed, but Danny had known all along what the outcome would be.

      Then Clara asked Lucy, ‘Is that your best dress?’ She knew the answer really. She had seen how the others were dressed.

      Minnie’s face flamed with embarrassment but she answered firmly enough. ‘Sometimes there is barely enough money to put food on the table and there is none to spare for new clothes. St Vincent de Paul come round with a bundle of things sometimes, but ours is not the only poor family in Mountcharles. There has been nothing suitable for Lucy in the bundles lately.’

      Clara knew that she would have to tread carefully. Minnie set a great store by pride. ‘Don’t fret about it,’ she said. ‘The family will provide Lucy’s uniform – a grey dress and various aprons – though they will have to be altered to fit.’

      ‘She’s handy with her needle,’ Minnie said. ‘I have taught her that much. But if her uniform is provided why does her normal dress matter?’

      ‘Lady Heatherington expects a certain standard of dress among her staff,’ said Clara. ‘So that if they should choose to walk about the town on their time off and certainly on Sundays when we go to Mass we shall not disgrace the house.’

      ‘Then I don’t know what is to be done.’

      ‘Let me buy Lucy a couple of dresses.’

      Lucy caught her breath in a gasp of pleasure, for she could never remember having new clothes before. However, Minnie was shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t possibly let you do that.’

      ‘Why not?’ Clara demanded. ‘Stiff-necked pride again?’