NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH
Pat looked from the third-floor window of the block of red
brick council flats, she watched the bridge part in the center over the murky Thames
to let the cargo boat flow through.
While watching the bleak surroundings, she wrapped a small porcelain figurine
in newspaper, lost in thought unaware she twisted it so tightly it tore. I will miss my family she said to herself and
a thought of sadness came over her, the grey enclosed summers day, the
factories surrounded her landscape pumped filthy fumes, its best for the
children she spoke as if answering herself.
She shook her head as if waking from a hypnotic trance and wrapped the
figurine in another sheet of newspaper and placed it in the half-filled t-chest
that stood on the floor beside others already filled. The pictures were removed from the wall, the
unsmoked stained squares stood like a stamp of approval to vacate the premises.
Suddenly she stopped packing to make tea and smoke a
cigarette, she sat on the sofa, she picked up the framed photo of her dead
brother beside the photo of her father dressed in an Irish army uniform. Just twenty-seven
when he died of T.B. The same age as her brothers smiling face jokily he sat on
a toilet on a building site. A lump of emotion formed in her throat as she eyed
her handsome brother taken just twenty-seven before he fell from the ladder to
his death, a true friend she thought for life.
She remembered holding his little hand, just an infant but
wild and carefree. He let go her hand and
bounded into the river grabbing the great white swan by its webbed feet startling
the great bird flapping its massive wings, honking and hissing in a frantic
state trying to break free of the boy.
The majestic bird ascended into the sky with infant jimmy hanging by the
skin of his teeth, let go jimmy, let go she yelled wildly from the bank of the
dodder that ran through Rathmines, Dublin.
Look at me patty I’m flying, he let go and splashed into the river. She gripped him with all her might, she
looked after little jimmy while her mother made up for her measly pittance of widow’s
pension cleaning the houses of the rich.
Ridden with catholic guilt that left a gaping hole of grief in the wife
and five children. Times were hard for a
young family in Ireland as it grew into a state of independence. She remembered her father’s Irish Army uniform
and his death as a young man, soon after the family went on the cattle boat to
England. After the death of her husband
Ireland had nothing left to offer her family and the news of England Where you
could earn three or four times came ashore and spread like wildfire. Attempting to look into the future in the
used tea leaves but dealing with the bare facts of NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH
plastered in your face everywhere you went.
