porcupine.
‘Well?’ asked Bridie.
Tildy scratched her tatty head. ‘We was doing nothing wrong.’
‘Were doing nothing wrong,’ corrected Bridie.
‘That’s what I said. We never done nothing.’ Tildy beamed optimistically at Cathy’s mum. She was a bit on the posh side, was the new Mrs Bell, always Brasso-ing and
Zebo-ing and tidying up. But in spite of being as fidgety as Diddy Costigan, Bridie Bell was a good, decent sort of person who would never hit a child. Tildy thought up another case for the
defence. ‘Everybody does it,’ she added, as if placing the final cherry on a well-decorated Christmas cake.
‘I see.’ Bridie nodded thoughtfully. ‘So this nothing you haven’t done is not being done by everybody else as well. That makes grand sense, Tildy.’ She turned her
attention towards her own daughter. ‘I will not have you risking life and limb for a handful of molasses.’ Bridie awarded Cozzer a withering look. ‘And, as for involving my
daughter in that disgraceful toss-gambling school – you should be ashamed, Jimmy.’
Cozzer hung his head for a split second, then bounced back, just as he always did. ‘We were only dowsying,’ he explained. ‘We never joined in or nothing like that.’
Bridie nodded. Even after such a brief period of residence, she had learned snippets of the language. ‘I don’t care what you call it, Jimmy Costigan. Dowsying or dozying –
it’s all the same to me. You were keeping watch while men played illegal gambling games. Is that the truth, Tildy?’
Tildy nodded her reluctant assent.
‘And I suppose you stayed there until all the fighting and arresting was over?’
Tildy shook her head. ‘No. We ran off. We seen the bobbies coming and we legged it out of there.’
Bridie raised her eyes to heaven as if seeking guidance. ‘You’ll all end up in Rose Hill with a million questions to answer. Is that what you want, Caitlin O’Brien? Would you
like to spend a night in the station bridewell alongside the snoring drunks and the howling thieves?’
‘No, Mammy.’ Cathy’s voice was tailored to suit the situation.
‘You don’t fool me, any of you,’ declared Bridie. ‘It’s no use saying sorry if you don’t mean it.’
Cathy crossed her fingers behind her back and prayed that Mammy wouldn’t find out about anything else.
‘Then, of course, there was that desperate business with the rags.’
Cathy’s fingers uncrossed themselves while her heart sank.
‘Under a month we are in England, and you are well on your way to real trouble,’ said Bridie.
‘Everybody does it,’ repeated Tildy. ‘They’re just old clothes what didn’t get sold. Nobody wants them. Somebody comes the next day and takes them away
and—’
‘And weighs them in.’ Bridie’s voice remained even and soft. ‘The poor man has an arrangement with the stall-keepers. He shifts the rubbish and he keeps the few pennies
for his pains. But you went and took the things. You decided to weigh them in and you carried them to . . . to where, Tildy?’
‘William Moult Street,’ replied Tildy.
‘And from the rag yard in William Moult Street, you took the wages of a man with a family to keep.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Cathy – upstairs. You two get
back to your mother. Tell her I’ll be round later to discuss the matter.’
Tildy and Cozzer got out while the going was good. There were a few more things on the list, so they ran hell for leather towards home, each hoping that nothing else would come up on the
prosecution agenda of the case.
Cathy stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I want to explain,’ she said.
Bridie saw herself as a reasonable woman. ‘I’m waiting,’ she said.
Cathy inhaled deeply. ‘It’s all for the Nolans,’ she told her mother in hushed tones. ‘There’s Johnny, Denis, Martha, Alice, Pauline, Sidney, Bernadette, Eileen,
Luke, Brenda, Stuart and Matt. Oh, and the mammy and daddy, too. The daddy drinks all the
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