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Back to First Page Letter to Mammy
By David Gardiner
This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited.
Dear Mammy,
Here I am in London! What do you think of that?
I’ll start by saying sorry that I didn’t write sooner. I started a couple of letters but what I was saying seemed like such (word scratched out) nonsense that I just threw them away. It took me a few days to get the hang of the way they do things over here.
Anyway I arrived at Liverpool safe and sound and got the train down to London. It went at a hell of a speed and even though it’s hundreds of miles I was there by teatime. Finbar met me at the station. He’s looking well but he’s a lot quieter now than when we used to know him. At least it was me that did the most of the talking. He carried the big case for me and took me on a bus to the house he’s living in. I couldn’t believe how big London is. We were on that bus for the best part of an hour and even then we were nowhere near the end of London. It’s as if they took a whole county and built houses all over it. Even if you sit in the attic and look out of the roof-light you can’t see a field or a hill as far as the horizon. Just houses made of red brick and joined together in rows, and they all look exactly the same as one another. I was afraid to go out at all the first day in case I got lost.
Finbar’s house is big but it wasn’t the best of the ones we saw when we were on the bus. It has a few broken windows and there’s a couple of places where the roof leaks. I said he should get on to the landlord, but he said there was no landlord, so that’s good at least I suppose. He and Eva seem to be living rent-free.
I must tell you about Eva. She’s a foreigner, from somewhere in Europe. It seems there was a revolution or something and her country came to an end, and everybody ran away. She told me something very sad. She said that her mother and father and her sister were all dead and the only reason that she’s still alive is because she was able to run faster than them. I don’t think she was joking. Isn’t it a hell of a world we’re living in?
Eva has two bedrooms. There’s the one she and Finbar have together and then there’s another one she has just for herself. The one she has for herself is the best room in the whole house - there’s a huge big double bed and a drinks cabinet and long mirrors on the wall. Finbar got her the big bed and put up all the mirrors and things because she isn’t well, and she has to spend a lot of time in bed.
My room is downstairs at the back of the house. It used to be a kind of kitchen/diner but Finbar and Eva don’t do any cooking in the house any more. Just make tea in their bedroom with an electric kettle. Finbar brings home fish and chips after work, or sometimes foreign food that burns your mouth, and Eva hardly eats anything at all. No wonder she’s thin.
Finbar works at London Airport. When he told me I thought he was a pilot, flying the planes, but no, he’s one of the luggage men. They put your suitcases on big trolleys and load them on and off the planes. He works very funny hours, but it’s a good job, and sometimes he comes home with things for Eva. He’s allowed to take home all the lost property, it seems, if it isn’t claimed. He’s got loads of cameras and little computers and mobile phones, and sometimes he gets jewellery and perfume and bottles of expensive booze and god knows what. He keeps some of it and sells the rest to a friend of his. It was at the airport that he met Eva. Finbar’s going to see if he can get me a job at the airport too.
When Finbar’s at work I get the chance to talk to Eva sometimes. She’s a beautiful girl, and very well-mannered. Talks with a funny accent, but then they all do over here. You would like her Mammy. Finbar is a very lucky man to have a girlfriend like that. I hope maybe you’ll meet her and Finbar some day.
I was sorry for Eva at first because she’s in bed so much of the time, but she has a lot of friends and gets loads of callers. They all look very respectable and I know that a lot of them give her presents. If they call while I’m here I just send them straight up to her room like she told me to.
Finbar told me that Eva needs very expensive injections every day, and that’s one of the reasons that he has to do so much night work at the airport. I suppose some of the men who come to see her must be doctors. I’m sorry about Eva being sick because she’s such a lovely girl.
I asked Eva if there was any way she could get cured so that she didn’t need the injections any more and could maybe get a job herself. She said there might be a way but she was scared to go to the special hospital where they do the cure. I think she was scared in case it would hurt and also because there’s some problem with her passport or something and she mightn’t be allowed to stay in the country. Isn’t that strange? Imagine sending somebody back to a country where all her family were murdered because they couldn’t run fast enough? I don’t think even the English could be that bad.
I asked Eva if she would show me where the special hospital was and she took me over there the other day. I said: “You’re here now, why don’t you go in and talk to them? Maybe they don’t need to see your passport at all.” But she wouldn’t go in. She went back to the house - I think she was expecting one of her friends - and so I went in myself and I talked to the woman at the desk. She was very nice, even though she was English, and she said that there was no question of asking anybody for their passport, or even their address. If they needed treating, that was all that mattered. She said I ought to talk to Eva and get her to come along.
So I did talk to Eva, this morning after Finbar had gone to work. I said the life she was living was no life for a beautiful lady like her and she owed it to her mother and her father and her sister who were murdered to get herself cured and to live the kind of life that would have made them proud of her. She cried and I gave her a hug. I felt very guilty because I enjoyed hugging her and she’s really Finbar’s girl.
It took a bit of time but after a while Eva agreed to go to the special hospital and we walked over to it together. She asked if I would wait for her, and visit her sometimes if she had to stay for a while, and of course I promised her I would. That’s where I am now actually, writing this letter. I’m in a kind of waiting room and Eva is being seen by the doctors and they’re going to examine her and see if they can make her better.
I left a note for Finbar in case he comes home and wonders where the two of us are. It’ll be great if this works out because then Finbar won’t have to work so hard, and maybe we can all have a go at fixing the windows and the roof or maybe even move to a better house.
So it’s true what they say about England, Mammy, it’s the land of opportunities. When Eva’s better and we’re all a bit more settled maybe you can come over and visit us. You can stay in the room with the big bed, Eva won’t need it any more when she’s better.
I’d better go now. I can hear Eva’s voice with one of the doctors, I think they’re coming back.
Goodbye and God bless.
Declan.
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