Read Online Tell Them I'll Be There by Gerard Mac - Free Book Online

banned shore leave maybe, whether they were in the right or not.
    â€˜What are you doing down here anyway?’ the sergeant asked the boys and when they told him they had been doing casual work at the warehouse he shook his head. ‘You’re going to fight the navy, that’s not a good idea,’ he said. ‘Now I don’t know what you fellas been up to and I don’t wanna know, but you can’t come running in here unless you got a knife sticking out your back. And we don’t want that, do we? If I were you I’d get a job some place else.’
    He didn’t want to file a report. He would be going off duty shortly. He went back to the door to make certain the way was clear. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get outa here. And stay outa trouble.’
    They had told the foreman at the warehouse they would not be in on Friday. Family business. But they might work Saturday, if that was OK. They planned to say goodbye to Caitlin at Penn Station. They didn’t know they were losing Tim, too. And when Tim told them Michael tried again. There’s no hurry, he insisted. You have lots of time. Give New York a chance, man. You don’t have to be a priest just yet. But it was no good. It was all arranged.
    Caitlin was very quiet. She had not seen Aunty Maureen and her family in over a year, but she knew them well enough and she knew her mother would want her to be with them. But she didn’t really want to leave the boys and she told Dan this on the brink of tears. Dan told her she was a part of his family now and she always would be. But Tim was going away and he and Michael had to find work and make a home for themselves. Aunty Maureen already had a home and she wanted her there, where she should be.
    â€˜You’ll soon forget about us when you get to your new school and everything,’ Michael said cheerfully. ‘We’ve got nothing to offer, nowhere of our own and we can’t stay at Mrs O’Malley’s forever.’ He looked at Dan. ‘We need to talk about that.’
    But Caitlin was still not happy on the Friday morning when they set off to the station. Both Tim and Michael tried to make her smile but without success and she held on to Dan’s hand as if she would never let go.
    â€˜When we get to the station,’ Dan told his brothers at the first opportunity, ‘don’t say much. It’ll only bring on the tears.’
    The bustle of Penn Station made any significant conversation difficult and instead of waiting under the clock as arranged they found themselves standing on the platform as the train from Albany steamed in. It was far from full and, as the passengers stepped down, a man and a woman in their thirties and a little girl saw Caitlin and started to wave their hands. The woman and the little girl ran forward and the man followed, all smiles.
    Caitlin was swept up into her Aunt Maureen’s arms and the boys stood back, forgotten for the moment in the raw emotion. Aunt Maureen’s husband held out a hand. His name was Pat, he said in a quiet Trinity voice, and they’d done a fine thing.
    Tim had recognized Caitlin’s aunt at once. She had the darkly pretty looks of the young woman he had seen lying dead in the back room at the dock office in Liverpool. When her husband introduced the boys it was Tim, the priest-to-be, she turned to.
    Caitlin and her young cousin were smiling at each other as Aunty Maureen, arms around both girls, thanked Tim and Dan and Michael profusely. The Lord would bless them. She was sure of that, she said. Her family would be forever in their debt.
    There was little time between trains, not much time for them all to get to know each other, and Tim was due at St Patrick’s. For Caitlin it was all happening with bewildering speed and she couldn’t hold back the tears. She hugged Tim and Michael and when she turned to Dan she looked at him in abject desolation. Then she clung to him