Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series by Jean Grainger

Author:Jean Grainger [Grainger, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Fourteen-year-old JohnJoe O’Dwyer gazed out the window at the fields and small farms. His reflection stared back at him, with his small face, dotted with freckles, and his red-blond hair that would never lie flat no matter what he did with it. He knew he looked like his mammy, small and with a round face. His mammy used to smile and laugh all the time, and she was so tiny compared to his father. Some of the lads said they forgot what their parents looked like, but JohnJoe could picture her like he’d seen her yesterday. He could visualise every contour of her face and remembered the feel of his face against her jumper when she hugged him. But he couldn’t hear her voice in his head any more. Try as he might to recall her voice, it was gone. The only way he could remember what she sounded like was when he heard a certain song. He wished he had a recording of it, and he’d heard it only once in the years since she died.

The boys from the borstal were sometimes sent out to local farmers to pick potatoes or stones from the fields, and one time he was called in by the farmer’s wife for some dinner. It was a lovely warm kitchen and she put out a big plate of stew with meat and carrots in it, the nicest dinner he’d had in years. She’d had a gramophone playing that song. He tried not to cry but it was impossible. He told her how his mammy had died giving birth to his sister and how an aunt in England had taken his older sister, Kitty, and the new baby, Jane, but didn’t want a boy so he’d been sent to the borstal. His da wasn’t much of a worker, and he fell to pieces when Mammy died. It had been Mammy’s parents’ farm they lived on, and she was the worker in the family. She kept sheep, goats and hens and a huge vegetable garden. Daddy was only good for drinking and fighting.

She’d been so kind, the farmer’s wife, giving him a big chunk of cake when he was leaving, and he longed to be called back to work there, but it never happened. The priest saw him with the wedge of cake in his pocket and had cross-examined him, so JohnJoe knew they’d put a stop to that.

What would a city be like? Danny had shown him a picture of Boston in a book he’d brought, and it looked so different to even Cork City, where he’d been twice.

His cousin – apparently Danny was a cousin of his now – was talkative after he’d collected JohnJoe from his father’s house, but now Danny was sleeping. JohnJoe didn’t give a hoot where he was going; it could have been the moon if it meant getting out of there.

His father had come to the borstal, and JohnJoe was called to the dean’s office. JohnJoe hadn’t seen his da since he was nine, when Mammy died and his sisters were taken away.

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