The Coroner’s Handmaiden
Grainne fished the newspaper cutting from her pocket and read it again. Somebody was looking for what appeared to be a live-in servant. It wasn’t what she wanted but it would be paid work.
Not like here, she thought with a pang of guilt looking around the cramped labourer’s cottage. Ever since her father had drowned when his fishing boat had been tossed over in an unexpected squall she had been helping her mother to take care of her six younger brothers. Now they were beginning to grow up. If she didn’t get out now she’d be trapped here married to a man who worked on the land or in the newly opened Fish Factory.
She straightened out the crumpled newspaper advertisement. The job as ‘domestic with child caring duties’ was wanted for a family in Lifford. It was about fifty miles away A small border town with a Customs Post on the fringe of Northern Ireland.
She sighed. Her mother and grandmother wouldn’t want her to go. Her grandmother still talked about the hard work she had to do when she was hired to work as a housemaid in what she called ‘the Lagan’ But Grainne thought the disliked her granny had for what she called the ‘black northerners” was because the man she had ‘fallen for’ had denied he was the father of Gloria, Grainne’s mother, the baby her granny had been expecting. Neither her mother nor her grandmother ever forgave him or the north where he had come from for abandoning her.
But this is my life, not theirs, Grainne thought grimly. “Keep an eye to the young ones,” she shouted to thirteen year old Mickilio the brother next in age to her who was sitting with his feet in the ashes of the dying fire reading a comic. “Did you hear me,” she roared. “I have to go a message to the Fish Factory,”
Mickilio looked up at her from below his shock of blond hair that flopped over his eyes. “Mammy left you to mind us. Its woman’s work looking after the weans.”
Grainne made a rush at him knocking him off the chair into the corner. “Well, it’s almost 1960. It’s time it was men’s work too,” she said through gritted teeth.
The smell of the fish assailed her nostrils even before she got near the main entrance to the factory.
“Pat Sweeney, you say,” the foreman said eyeing her budding figure speculatively. Steeling herself not to let her gaze waver from his smirking face, she nodded.
“Pat Sweeney,” he yelled over his shoulder.
The wind coming off Killybeg’s Harbour swept against Grainne flattening her light skirt against her thighs revealing the outline of her body and her bare legs.” Pat Sweeney “you’re wanted out here,” the foreman called again taking a step closer to her.
Grainne wanted to spit in his face. She saw in his eyes what he thought about her family. Almost forty years and two generations on her grandmother’s ‘mistake’ was still a source to label Grainne as having ‘easy’ genes. Well, she’d show them. She’d not open her legs for just any man. No man would kiss and run away from her. She wouldn’t be like the other woman in her family who fell in love with losers.
“What’s all the shouting about? I’m trying to load up a vehicle,” Pat Sweeney growled blinking as he emerged from the shadowed interior of the building. Grainne looked pointedly at the foreman. Reluctantly he moved away but not before he gave her another smirking grin.
Quickly she explained to Pat what she wanted. “
You want me to give you a lift to Lifford?”
Grainne nodded. “Isn’t that what I’ve just said,” she said testily. “What day do you deliver fish to Lifford!”
“Fridays. I only deliver to the cafeys in Lifford on a Fridays.” He chuckled and crossed his arms across his broad chest. “It’s in time for the big rush on Saturday night, you see” he explained “You should see them. As soon as the pubs throw them out at half past eleven, or they have a bit of a win on the greyhounds track down the Green Brae they head for the cafey. There’s hardly standing room. Mad about the Killybegs fish they are…”
Grainne heart sank. Friday was nearly a week away; well, four days anyway. She gnawed at her bottom lip. She could write. But that would take too long. Anyway, they were looking for references and the only job experience she had was helping her mother with her brothers. Would that be enough? There was that time her mother had sent her to look after Mrs O Donnell when she wasn’t well after giving birth to her second youngest. That was work experience, wasn’t it?
But it would sound better and she could convince them she was the right girl for the job if she could explain face-to-face. But how was she to get the fifty miles to lifford? Abruptly, she turned on her heel. She was wasting her time with Pat. All he wanted to do was ramble on and on about the Donegal Catch and how tasty it was.
“Here! Where’s the iceberg,” Pat grumbled in a miffed tone to her retreating back “If you’re in that big of a hurry I hear Cathal Connelly got a job behind the bar in that new InterCounty Hotel in Lifford. He might give you a lift in that oul rust bucket he calls a car if you’re daft enough to get in wi’ him,” he added petulantly
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Emily Anderson pursed her lips in disapproval. So this was what things were coming to! She snorted. It was the fault of all this, this pop stars stuff on television. And that Joe Dolan and the Drifters and the rest of the Irish showbands gyrating across the stage in a suggestive manner in that newly opened dancehall in the town which Donegal County council had foolishly granted a licence for. It was driving the younger generation mad. She patted her hair. Not that Hamilton and she hadn’t attended dances in their day. But that was different. The clergy made sure it was of a respectable nature.
She pulled her mind back to the job in hand. This young madam had marched up the avenue and brazenly rang the bell on the front door. And announced she was here to see about the job. Emily sniffed. If it was one of my trainee nurses at the hospital who turned up without a proper appointment I’d have sent her packing and told her to apply in the correct manner, she thought. But her last housemaid had just… deserted her. .Quickly, she snapped her mind shut. It was over; that was a chapter of her life that would not be repeated.
She focused on the girl in front of her. At least she’s plain. Almost ugly,” she thought taking in Grainne’s r mousy brown hair scraped back with a homemade hair ban back from her pinched face. And her ears! Emily tried not to stare but they stuck out from the girl’s head like .two withered prunes.
Grainne’s confidence which had been buoyed up on her drive in Cathal’s car was beginning to desert her as she sat across from the big- chested formidable looking woman. She had ordered rather than shown Grainne to a chair; linked her hands across her protruding stomach and fixed her with a steely stare. The expression “hands like spades,” flashed into Grainne’s mind as the woman spread her hands on the table. She gulped. . She could swear the woman’s unwavering stare s could see right through her clothes
Her ears were beginning to burn. They always did that when she got nervous. She resisted the urge to put her hand and squeeze them. A habit she’d had developed ever since her father had died “Can you read and write adequately,” her potential employer barked out.
Grainne pushed down the sharp retort that threatened to escape from her throat. She wanted to point out that even for children from poor families like hers there had been compulsory National School education for years.
“Yes. I can write and read,” she said as meekly as the anger inside her would allow.
“Then why didn’t you reply to my advertisement in writing like everybody else,” Emily Anderson demanded slapping a flabby hand down on a pile of unopened letters lying on the table in front of her.
Grainne lost the battle to restrain her temper. “Because if I did it would be lying unopened like the rest of them and I wouldn’t be sitting in front of you, would I.”
She stopped and drew in her breath resignedly as she saws the woman’s eyes widen in shock. You’re a stupid big-mouth bitch, Grainne Dougherty, she silently berated herself. That sharp tongue of you has run away with itself again.
In the silence that followed her outburst somewhere in the house a telephone began to ring insistently. It’s demanding shrill galvanised Emily into a decision. “Don’t sit there, girl. Go and answer the telephone,” she ordered.
Grainne shifted to the edge her seat. “I will. But only if I am getting the job,” she announced.
The phone stopped ringing.
Emily Anderson rose to her feet.
Grainne’s heart plummeted. She straightened her coat and prepared to be shown the door.
“I have to chair a meeting at the Hospital. You will find a list of your duties and the household schedules pinned behind your bedroom door,” her new employer snapped out just as the door opened and a dishevelled looking man wearing a blood-stained smock over suit trousers entered.
“I know! I know Hamilton! Tell them I’m on my way, “Emily exploded before the man could get a chance to open his mouth.
Grainne stood rooted to the spot. Her legs were shaking. She could hardly believe it. She’d got the job!
She hesitated. She didn’t know if she should address her new employer as Mrs or Madam. One thing was for sure, she thought as she went in search of the phone that had started ringing again, she wasn’t doing that Upstairs, and Downstairs stuff. She wasn’t bending the knee for £3 a week and her keep.
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 