by Anne Bennett
Gloria nodded slowly. ‘Yes … it’s monstrously unfair, but that’s the way it would have been.’
‘But she was too late,’ Joe said. ‘Tom told me that he was untying the wire from the first tree when the two of them heard the drumming of the horse’s hoofs. When the galloping horse hit the wire, it fell to its knees, and McAllister flew through the air and fell awkwardly, breaking his neck.’
‘Oh God!’ Gloria said, guessing the panic that would be running through the adolescent Tom. ‘What did he do?’
‘Tom was in too much of a state to think,’ Joe said. ‘McAllister’s wife took charge. She told him to hide the twine, and it is probably down the well to this day, while she would go home and inform the Guards that her husband had ridden out on the horse and that it had come back without him.’
‘And they got away with it?’
‘Aye,’ Joe said. ‘But then as I told you before after the letter to McAllister’s sister came back, Tom hadn’t a clue what Aggie had done or where she had gone and that has been eating away at him for years. Then Molly went to the selfsame city years later and also disappeared for a time, and then we find out absolutely dreadful things happened to her. To Tom it must be like history repeating itself. I know Tom won’t be happy until he sees Molly for himself.’
‘Nothing to stop him now.’
‘No,’ Joe said. ‘I hope he doesn’t go just yet, though, because there are two calves ready to drop and I don’t fancy tackling the births on my own. It’s years since I was at a birthing.’
‘And if you and I don’t get some shuteye soon, there will be no point in going to bed at all,’ Gloria said to him.
‘I know, but I’m still all churned up.’
As they snuggled together, Gloria suddenly said, ‘Does Tom mind you telling me all this?’
‘No,’ Joe answered. ‘He said there should be no secrets between husband and wife.’
Gloria said nothing more, but she knew now the real reason that Tom had never married. If he met a woman that he loved enough to want to marry he would have to tell her the tale he had told Joe that night, and he couldn’t have risked that. Poor, poor Tom, she thought, and she fell asleep with that thought running around her head.
Joe envied his wife, for though his eyes were gritty with tiredness, a large knot of guilt had lodged in his heart that drove sleep away. He went over Tom’s words again and again, bitterly aware of the burden that he had carried for years, which had ruined any life he might have had.
He had also protected Joe from it all. But when he was grown and could have shared the burden, Joe went off to America and it was only then, before he sailed, that Tom told him what had really happened to Aggie. The rest he had kept lodged in his heart until now.
They had both had to cope with the distress of their father’s death and the alienation of Nuala, but instead of working alongside Tom as they helped one another get over these things, Joe had decided he couldn’t stick at it any longer. Oh, he had convinced himself that he had some justification, that it was pointless working on a farm that would never be his, though he had known that Tom would always have seen that he was all right and compensated him for his years of work. No, he knew that the attitude of that old harridan that they had buried that day had been one of the main reasons he had fled the land of his birth, although he knew that by doing so he was condemning Tom to a life of hell.
What if the positions had been reversed, he asked himself, and Tom had disappeared from the scene and left him to it? Could he have coped as well? God, no! He knew he couldn’t, and he would have bitterly resented Tom for leaving him in the lurch. Tom was a nicer person than he by far, and he knew that if there was any way that he could ever go even partway to repaying Tom for the disservice that he had done to him then he would take it and welcome.
Gloria had had her hands so full with Biddy, especially when the stroke had paralysed her, that she had hardly been able to leave the farm except to go to Mass. She had seen the McEvoys, and especially Helen, there of course, but it had only been for a few minutes. So that first Saturday after Biddy’s funeral, Joe told Gloria to get herself ready to go to Buncrana and that he was dropping her in, leaving Ben in the care of his uncle.
Gloria was ridiculously excited to be visiting the small market town, and Joe watched her shining face and dancing eyes with amusement. The past weeks had been very demanding and draining for her, and he knew it would do her good to get out and about again.
Helen appeared to be watching for her, and barely had Gloria alighted from the cart than she pounced on her. ‘I am so glad you came today,’ she cried. ‘I was so hoping that you would. You must come up to our house right away. We have two people there who want to meet you.’
‘What people? Who are they?’ Gloria asked.
Helen laughed. ‘You must come and see.’
Gloria looked across to Joe, who raised his eyebrows quizzically and said with a sardonic grin, ‘I should go up, Gloria, and satisfy your curiosity.’
‘I will then,’ Gloria said, but as they started up the hill to the post office she said to Helen. ‘Will you give me some clue as to what this is about?’
Helen laughed at Gloria’s perplexed face. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We have two visitors in the house, officers from the American Naval Base in Derry. They are called Petty Officers Morrisey and Meadows, and they want to meet you because Mammy told them you were an American.’
‘But what are they doing at your house?
‘Mammy asked them up.’
‘Why?’
‘You know my mother and you can ask that?’ Helen said with a laugh. ‘They had come to look at the place they said because they’d heard how pretty it was. They had a Saturday off together and decided to come and see for themselves. They told my mother this when they went into the post office. She left Cathy to carry on, and took them into the living room and fed them tea and cake. In the conversation your name came up, and they said they would like to meet you and so now you are as wise as me.’
Gloria’s mind was still teeming with questions, but at the post office she went inside with a little trepidation. The two men, very smartly dressed in their uniforms, stood up as Helen and Gloria came into the room. Gloria was impressed by that because it showed they at least had good manners.
‘Here’s Gloria now,’ Nellie said, turning to greet the girls. ‘Come away in, my dear, and meet some of your fellow countrymen. This is Mr Meadows and Mr Morrisey. This is Mrs Gloria Sullivan.’
‘How d’you do?’ Gloria said, as she shook hands with the men, who were both tall and good-looking. Both were dark-haired too, though Morrisey’s mass of brown curls looked as if the US naval barber has tried to tame them and failed. He also had beautiful dark brown eyes, ringed with very long black lashes, and they lit up in appreciation as he shook hands with Gloria. It was a firm handshake too, the sort that Gloria liked, as he said, ‘How d’you do? How very British is that?’
At his words, Gloria was transported back to New York. Not to the teeming tenement building they could barely wait to leave, but her life before the Wall Street Crash, and she felt a wave of homesickness flow over her. ‘You are from New York?’ she said, almost breathlessly.
‘I sure am, ma’am,’ Morrisey said. ‘And I am so pleased to meet you.’
‘You must tell me how New York has fared since I left,’ Gloria said. ‘I have often wondered, for it was in terrible difficulties when we were forced to leave and set sail for England.’
‘England?’ Morrisey said. ‘So what are you doing here in Ireland?’
‘Oh, that’s a long story,’ Gloria said.
‘Well, no time like the present for telling it,’ Nellie said. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea to help it all along.’
Gloria smiled as the door closed behind Nellie. ‘Bet you are awash with tea when you would rather have coffee, and I could also bet you haven’t the slightest interest in my life story.’
‘Wrong on both counts,’
Morrisey said. ‘First of all they haven’t the slightest idea how to make coffee in this country, and secondly I would love to know why a girl from New York is buried in a backwater in lreland like this one, however pretty it is.’
‘Well, it was a decision forced on me,’ Gloria said, ‘for I am a city girl at heart.’ So Gloria began her tale. She didn’t stress the privilege of her earlier life, but she did say that her father had been the owner of an engineering factory and had dabbled in the stocks and shares for years. ‘Eventually, well, I suppose he got greedy. He lost money, tried to recover himself by borrowing more and more, and when the market crashed in October 1929 he lost everything.’
Morrisey saw the sadness behind Gloria’s eye as she remembered those days when her whole world had crashed about her ears. The men didn’t notice Nellie coming in with the tea tray, for their eyes were fixed on Gloria as Morrisey cried, ‘Everything? You lost everything?’
‘Everything,’ Gloria confirmed, ‘And because my father couldn’t face what he had done to us, he shot himself.’
‘Dear God, that’s terrible!’
‘It was, Mr Morrisey, very, very terrible,’ Gloria said. ‘I loved my father so much and could hardly credit what he had done, yet the horror of it was just beginning.’
‘Gloria, I had no idea it was so bad,’ Nellie said. ‘What did you do?’
‘There was nothing we could do, Nellie. We were destitute.’
‘So many had their fingers burned at that time,’ Morrisey said. ‘My folks have a garage and I trained as a mechanic, as my father did. After the Crash things were tight for a while but we got by. Luckily my parents had not invested in anything. My father didn’t believe in stocks and shares. He maintained that there was only one way to get rich and that was to work damned hard.’
‘He would get on well with my husband who fortunately thought playing with stocks and shares was a mug’s game,’ Gloria continued. ‘It was hard for him that though he had done nothing wrong, and I don’t think had ever owed a penny piece all his life, he was held responsible for my father’s debts because he was made a partner in the business on our marriage. It seemed like every day there were further revelations, more debts uncovered, and Joe shouldered it all. But even Joe couldn’t do the impossible and when he couldn’t get a regular and permanent job we eventually ended up in a tenement building.’
She didn’t need to describe the squalor and degradation that they had descended to, because Morrisey knew all about those tenements. It seemed almost incomprehensible to him that this beautiful young woman should have been forced to live in such penury, although he knew that she wasn’t the only one by any means.
‘We waited for things to improve,’ Gloria went on. ‘But they didn’t, and we had a child to care for, so after my mother died we set sail for England. I wasn’t a bit keen on London at the start, to tell you the truth, but yet I got to love it, and then war was declared.’
The two petty officers listened, horror-stricken, as Gloria described a city bombed to bits, with terrified people bedding down anywhere, even the underground, to try and keep themselves and their families safe. And they learnt of her husband, Joe, helping the regular firemen fight the raging fires in the teeth of those terrifying raids.
Gloria spoke softly of the dear friends she had lost, and then the awful day that Joe had been terribly injured. ‘Our home had been destroyed by then,’ she said sadly. ‘I was so upset about it at the time. We lived on the floor of a mission hall with countless others, but it was definitely was not the place to take a sick man who needed peace and quiet to fully recover from injuries that had almost killed him.’
‘And so that is what brought you to Buncrana?’ Morrisey said softly.
‘My husband came from here.’
‘You sure seem to have had a hard time of it.’
Gloria shrugged. ‘Believe me, I think every town and city in Britain has people who have suffered just as much as I have, or more,’ she added, glancing at Helen. ‘But now Joe is fully fit once more, and we must soon look to what to do with the rest of our lives, for I do not want to stay in Buncrana for ever.’
‘I guess not,’ Morrisey said. ‘It’s pretty, I grant you, and maybe a grand place to bring up a family, but there isn’t much entertainment to be had.’
‘Nor employment either,’ Helen said. ‘Everyone has to leave here to have the chance of a job and life of their own. I have two brothers in Detroit and I was in Birmingham until fairly recently. My elder sister, Margaret, is still there.’
‘At least we haven’t got to worry about our families when we are away,’ Morrisey said. ‘Because there are no raids in America.’
‘And have you a family, Mr Morrisey?’
‘Not a wife or child of my own,’ Morrisey said. ‘I didn’t want to get serious with anyone with this war in the air. I knew it was only a matter of time till we were sucked in. But I have my parents to fret over.’
‘And you, Mr Meadows, – have you a family?’
‘No,’ Meadows said, ‘just my parents and two younger sisters.’
‘Do you still hanker after New York, Mrs Sullivan?’ Morrisey asked.
‘I do,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t say too much about it to Joe because I know he feels guilty about dragging me away from the place I was born and bred, although there was no alternative at the time.’
‘Tell us about modern-day America now,’ Helen said. ‘My brothers are hopeless at explaining things.’
‘America is now trying to reinvent itself after the biggest slump it has ever had,’ Morrisey said. ‘Many, like Gloria’s father, lost all they had and the economy was turned on its head, but the years before the Crash, the twenties, I remember as a magical time.’
‘How old were you when it happened?’ Gloria asked.
‘Twenty-three.’
‘So was I,’ Gloria said. ‘And married by then. But, just before I was married, I had what Joe refers to as my year of madness. There were not enough hours in the days for all the things I wanted to experience after years in a convent school. Even the years after our marriage were marvellous, with the cars we drove, many friends and every entertainment imaginable available. Whenever I look back I see it as a time of frivolity and fun.’
‘But didn’t they have prohibition?’ Nellie asked. ‘My sons spoke of that.’
‘They did,’ Morrisey said. ‘And isn’t that the stupidest thing, to try and stop a whole country from drinking?’
‘I wouldn’t like to be the fellow who proposed that in Ireland.’
‘That’s what Joe said,’ Gloria said with a smile.
‘It didn’t work, of course,’ Morrisey said. ‘It made things worse, not better. And the gangs that once ran riot in New York rose up again because they were in charge of the bootlegging. That’s the name for the illegal liquor brought in. The New York cops knew what was going on and would turn a blind eye unless there was any trouble.’
Morrisey and Gloria went on to tell Helen and Nellie about the movies and the dances, the concerts and theatres. They spoke of the jazz music that gripped the nation for a while and the very vibrancy of the place, and they were filled with nostalgia for a time that would never return.
‘America will survive though,’ Morrisey said. ‘But after a war of this magnitude, nothing will ever be the same again, I wouldn’t have thought. I mean, I never imagined in a million years that I would be here in Northern Ireland and part of the American Navy. I am just glad that I am not one of the fighting forces. I am a mild-mannered man in the main.’
‘I think many are that way in peacetime,’ Gloria said, remembering Red McCullough. ‘Wartime causes different strengths to come into play.’
‘You are right, of course,’ Morrisey agreed. ‘I am just glad that the American Naval Department decided that it was more beneficial for Meadows and me to impart our skills to the young sailors and so I teach mechanics and Meadows teaches them about electrics.’
‘I hear tell that that
camp you are staying in is a fine place,’ Nellie said. ‘I have never seen it myself but a few men from Buncrana were at the construction of it.’
‘It’s some sight all right,’ Meadows said.
Morrisey put in, ‘Would you like to see around it? We could arrange it and it would be to sort of thank you for your kindness and hospitality.’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’ Nellie said. ‘Anyway, would we be let?’
‘Yes, it will be fine,’ Morrisey said. ‘We have a fair few civilians working at the camp already – in the library, the launderette and the barber’s. Oh, and the canteen, of course.’
‘You have all those things on the camp?’ Gloria asked, amazed.
Morrisey laughed. ‘Yes. Come and see for yourself. We could go back now and clear it with the bosses, and be back to fetch you in a car this afternoon, if you like.’
‘Oh, that would be great,’ Helen said. ‘I would really like to see it, wouldn’t you, Gloria?’
‘But what about Joe?’ Gloria said. ‘I think I will give it a miss. I can’t just go swanning off.’
‘You hardly had time to do any swanning off at all when you were looking after Joe’s mother,’ Nellie pointed out. ‘And I bet Joe won’t mind a bit.’
‘Oh, all right,’ Gloria agreed cautiously. ‘I will ask him, but I’m promising nothing.’
‘OK,’ Meadows said. ‘If you could be here, say … about half-past two or so?’
‘All right, but if I am not here, don’t wait for me. And now I best go buy the things I came into Buncrana for in the first place.’
As they made their way home, Gloria told Joe about meeting the American men from the base, and them offering to show her, Helen and Nellie around the camp.
Joe heard the wistful tone in her voice as she went on, ‘I still miss America, though I hadn’t realised how much till I talked with these men, Morrisey particularly. He was born and bred in New York, and had that particular inflexion in his voice. And it was just lovely to hear that again.’