by Anne Bennett
‘Aye, of course,’ Joe said. ‘Despite all that happened, I was always grateful to you for giving me that opportunity.’
‘That is what I am asking of you,’ Tom said. ‘Give me one year to see if this really is the life I want, while you keep the farm ticking over. If then we both feel neither of us wants the farm any more, it can be sold and the money split between us two.’
‘It’s your farm, Tom.’
‘I will split it,’ Tom insisted, ‘and that will give you, Gloria and Ben the money to set up somewhere else.’
What could Joe do but agree? He owed his brother a debt. Anyway, Tom had endured hell on earth for years one way and another. Surely he deserved some happiness in his life, and a year wasn’t really that much to ask?
‘All right,’ Joe told his brother. ‘I will run the farm for one year.’
‘And after that we can talk again,’ Tom said, and he grasped Joe’s hand and shook it warmly.
All Friday evening, Gloria worried about Joe and what might have happened to him. She knew that he would seek Finch out at the earliest opportunity, because that was the type of man he was.
She had the idea, though, that this Finch character would not play by any sort of rules. These sort of people thrived on brutality and she feared he would soon make mincemeat of both Joe and Tom.
Then again, someone could have overheard the men talking, or maybe caught sight of the fight developing and informed the police. She looked at the clock. Maybe even now they were in police custody. She expected any minute to hear the heavy tread of the Garda boots in the cobbled yard, and the thump of a fist on the cottage door.
Exhaustion drove her to bed in the end, where she tossed and turned, listening out for any unexpected sound in the night. But nothing untoward had happened by the time the sun nudged its way over the horizon, and Gloria heaved herself out of bed, for Jack McEvoy would be making his way to them shortly to start on the milking, with Ben helping him as it was the weekend. She felt like a piece of chewed string and reminded herself that she had an interview in Derry that day, though she didn’t feel a bit like it.
She had to feign enthusiasm in front of Jack, though, but she was glad when he had the job finished and was on his way home.
‘When will Dad be home?’ Ben asked later as he ate his breakfast.
‘I have answered that question twice already,’ Gloria said.
‘And the answer will be the same no matter how many times you ask it. Your father is travelling on the night sailing on Sunday, and you will be in school by the time he arrives home on Monday morning.’
‘I could have the day off?’
‘No, you could not. Anyway, all your father will be fit for is sleeping, because it is unlikely that he will have had much rest on the boat or train. You’ll see him in a better frame of mind when you come home from school.’
Gloria hoped what she told her son was true, because she didn’t know what she would do if Joe didn’t arrive. She kept herself busy to stop her mind thinking of all the things that could have befallen her husband and it was past midmorning when she sat down with a cup of tea and glanced out of the window with a sigh. If only it was Monday morning already.
And then, she felt as if all the blood in her body had frozen, because riding down the lane was the telegraph boy. Ben hadn’t noticed him, and Gloria had to force herself to cross the room and open the door.
Then Ben was aware of something unusual happening and he slid off his chair and joined his mother as she took the telegram from the boy with hands that shook, and tore it open. ‘JOB DONE. ALL IS WELL.’
Gloria felt relief flow all through her. ‘Any answer?’ asked the boy and Gloria shook her head dumbly and shut the door with a sigh.
‘What’s it mean?’ Ben said, scrutinising the telegram, which Gloria had left on the table.
‘Daddy had a job to do for Uncle Tom and he was just telling us that it was finished,’ Gloria said.
‘Oh, is that the “unfinished business” then?’ Ben asked, remembering the conversation he had had with his father before he left.
‘Unfinished business?’ Gloria repeated.
‘Yeah. Dad said that Uncle Tom couldn’t come home when he said he was going to because he had some unfinished business. So if the job is done now, maybe Uncle Tom will come back as well?’
‘I don’t know about that, Ben, but your father will be here.’
‘You already said that he would,’ Ben pointed out, ‘before you got that message.’
‘Yes, well now I am certain of it.’
‘You mean you—’
‘Ben, I want to go to Buncrana, and today not tomorrow, so go and get ready and stop plaguing me with questions,’ Gloria said.
Ben sighed, but did as he was told because when his mother spoke like that she meant business. There were still lots of things he didn’t understand. In his experience, though, grown-ups were good at changing the subject just as he was trying to get to the bottom of things.
‘Helen’s in the kitchen,’ Nellie said, opening the flap so that Gloria could go through to the back where the living accommodation was. ‘Leave Ben in here with me. He can count the money for me and stamp anything that needs stamping.’ Gloria could see that Ben was more than agreeable to that and so she left him and went through to see her friend.
‘Those two petty officers are coming to take us down in a car,’ Helen told her. ‘They phoned Mammy this morning to tell her.’
‘So we will at least arrive in style?’
‘I’ll say,’ Helen said. ‘I’m a bit nervous, are you?’
‘Yes,’ Gloria said. ‘But by going to see this woman, we are not committing ourselves, are we? We might not like the thought of it in the end.’
‘Yes, or she might not like the look of us, at viewing us a second time,’ Helen said.
‘Mmm,’ Gloria said. ‘Then I’d say the woman was hard to please.’ And the two laughed together.
Afterwards, though, Gloria thought that Joan Reilly’s approach to the interview to work on a military base was casual in the extreme, for it was more like an informal chat than the gruelling interview she had expected. Joan took a particular interest in Gloria and then asked about their experience with canteen work. They had none, and Gloria was sure that that would count against them, but Joan just said, ‘Well, it’s fairly basic stuff that I’m sure you will pick up quick enough. In fact, I think that you will fit in very well. Could you begin work Monday week?’
Neither woman could believe it was so easy, and as the men drove them back to Buncrana, Gloria’s stomach gave a lurch at the thought that she had yet to tell Joe what she had done.
It was almost ten o’clock on Monday morning before Gloria saw Joe trudging slowly down the hillside towards the road, and she felt her heart almost burst with relief.
Joe was on the road by the time she reached the head of the lane to meet him, and as they drew close she saw that his eyes were swollen, his lips puffy and his face bruised and battered. ‘Oh, Joe,’ she cried, ‘I have been so worried about you.’
Joe put his arms around his wife and tried not to wince as she squeezed his shoulder. But she saw the look of pain flash over his face and pulled back.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing much,’ said Joe, putting his other arm around Gloria as they began to walk towards the lane. ‘My face is the worst, but that bugger Finch picked up a piece of wood and took a couple of swings at me and so I have a gash on my shoulder and a lump the size of a duck egg on my head. But they don’t worry me,’ he said, seeing the look of concern on Gloria’s face. ‘The man is now dead and gone.’
Gloria looked at him appalled. ‘You killed him?’ she said.
‘No,’ Joe said. ‘But someone else did.’ And he told her what had happened.
‘And you saw nothing?’
‘No, though we heard someone running away, but you know what the blackout’s like. I shan’t lose any sleep over it either. On the plus side, o
ur Aggie is lovely, and that Paul Simmons is a fine bloke and fair besotted by her, and you only have to see Molly with Mark to how much in love they are.’
‘I can’t wait to meet them all.’
‘Not long now.’
They had reached the cottage before Joe told Gloria about Tom’s proposal.
‘And you have agreed to this already?’ she said.
‘Well, yes,’ Joe said. ‘I know I should have discussed it with you—’
‘Yes, Joe, you should have done.’
‘It was sort of forced on me,’ Joe said defensively.
Gloria shook her head. ‘Tom would never force anyone to do anything, and he would quite understand that you had to come home and discuss such a proposal with me before saying yes.’
‘Oh, come on, Gloria,’ Joe said. ‘It isn’t as if we have made any plans to leave or anything.’
‘Not likely to, without money behind us,’ Gloria retorted. ‘But that is not the issue here, Joe. You just don’t seem to get it, do you? It’s about showing respect for me, for my feelings.’
Joe, though, was only too aware of what he owed Tom and he said to Gloria, ‘D’you know, when Tom gave me the money to go to America, he did it without any conditions. I know in many ways it put him in a fix to do without my help on the farm, but he never said a word about that. He wished me Godspeed. His heart must have been heavy, for the workload would have increased and the only companionship he got was from an evil-tempered, malicious old woman.’
‘I know all this.’
‘You know nothing,’ Joe said firmly. ‘You put up with my mother for months, whereas Tom put up with her all his bloody life until, thank God, she died and released him. Yet never in all the letters Tom sent me was there any hint of resentment and all he felt was happiness for me as my fortunes increased. He worried himself sick when we were going through it in New York, and there was no hint of smugness about his concern. Then he was happy to welcome us when we needed to come here.’
‘I know that Tom is a lovely person and I don’t know any man that is kinder.’
‘Well, then, don’t you think that this lovely, kind man deserves a stab at happiness?’ Joe asked. ‘He is free for the first time in his life and he has asked me to do one thing for him, and that is biding here for one year so that he can decide whether he wants to farm again or not. It might not be an easy decision for him to make, for the farm has been in our family for years and Tom was brought up knowing that he would eventually inherit it. You can’t just throw all that in the air. He needs to take his time, think it through.’
‘All right,’ Gloria said. ‘I hear what you say and I have news for you too,’ she added as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I have taken that job in the canteen at the Springtown Camp. I’ll need something if I am stuck here for at the very least another year and it will be a chance to save.’
‘You have taken the job there already?’
‘Yes. I start next Monday at half-past nine.’
‘I thought we were to discuss this when I got home?’
‘You weren’t here,’ Gloria said. ‘Helen and I had to see the canteen manageress on Saturday. She offered us jobs and we accepted. We had to make the decision there and then. You could say it was sprung on the two of us, the same as happened with you and Tom.’
‘There is no comparison.’
‘I think there is, Joe,’ Gloria said. ‘And anyway, that is neither here nor there. What’s done is done, and just as I have to live with the decision you made, you have to live with the decision I made. And as far as I am concerned, that is the way it is.’
EIGHTEEN
Gloria had been working three weeks at the camp when Joe decided enough was enough. He felt he had almost been tricked into allowing her to go in the first place, Gloria had used his agreement against him to get her own way.
The men of the town thought him crazy when he told them where Gloria was proposing to work and said quite categorically that none of their wives would have been allowed to take such a job. Nor could he imagine any woman that had been born and bred in Buncrana, and lived there ever since, wanting to do such a thing. Joe had always thought he wouldn’t care about the opinion of the townsfolk, but he found he did, because he hated being made to look like a fool.
It wasn’t to be borne, he decided. However, Joe knew that Gloria wasn’t like the wives of the men in Buncrana who would just stop doing a thing because their husbands said they must, and he was unsure how to tackle her. He had gone over what he intended to say as he milked the cows that evening and it had sounded all right. But later, when he sat facing Gloria, after they had eaten and Ben was in bed he knew that he had begun badly with a belligerent, almost hectoring tone, yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
‘Since you began at that job I have to scratch around at dinner-time to make a bite to eat for myself. I have never had to do a thing like that before,’ he said to her.
‘I leave it as ready as I can,’ Gloria protested. ‘I usually leave broth or something like that. All you have to do is put it on the fire and get a few slices of bread. I also pack Ben’s lunch box.’
‘Well, soup and bread are hardly enough nourishment for a working man, are they?’ Joe said. ‘I am used to having my main meal in the middle of the day and now it’s in the evening, and late too by the time you get in and then have to cook it.’
Gloria shrugged. ‘Well, there is nothing I can do about that and as you are in a complaining mood I will tell you something else to get your teeth into. The canteen works a rota system and next week it’s my turn to work the weekend.’
‘Work the weekend?’ Joe repeated almost in disbelief. ‘Good God, Gloria. Whoever heard of a wife and mother doing that?’
‘It’s part of the job,’ Gloria said. ‘Would you have us tell the men they are to have nothing to eat all weekend?’
‘But if you work on Sundays, when will you go to Mass?’
‘The early one,’ Gloria said, ‘while you’re doing the milking.’
‘So who is going to make breakfast for me and Ben when we come in from the later Mass?’ Joe demanded.
‘God Almighty!’ Gloria cried in exasperation. ‘I knew there was something up with you because you have been going round with a face that would sour cream for days. You’re not some bloody helpless imbecile, Joe, though you are acting like one at the moment. It will only be every seventh week that this happens. Can’t you and Ben look after yourselves for once?’
‘We shouldn’t have to,’ Joe complained. ‘That’s the point. Nothing is the same since you started this job.’
‘No, I’ll say it isn’t,’ Gloria agreed happily. ‘Now I am saving money in the post office each week.’
‘You don’t even bake any more,’ Joe complained. ‘Everything is shop bought.’
‘Nellie McEvoy has been buying shop bread and cakes for years, she told me herself,’ Gloria said. ‘So why is it all right for her and not for me?’
Joe couldn’t really answer that and instead he said, ‘You don’t even do your own washing these days. It’s taken out for some stranger to do.’
Gloria shook her head almost incredulously. ‘I can’t believe I am hearing this. At the camp there is a launderette, a place where there are banks of machines and dryers for the clothes, and women engaged to do the laundry for you. I take my bags of dirty washing there in the morning and pick them up at the end of the day, washed, dried and folded so that sometimes it doesn’t need ironing at all, and all I have to do is put it away. All the women there do the same thing. Now tell me, Joe, why should I stop doing that and do it here instead? Every drop of water would have to be hauled from the well – buckets and buckets of it to fill the huge boiler – and then I would need to spend hours pounding the clothes in the poss tub before putting the whole lot through the mangle and hanging it out on the line in the orchard. And then I would have to empty the boiler and clean up. It will take nearly the whole of one day just to wash the clothes, and a la
rge portion of the next to iron them all. Surely to God as long as the clothes are clean does it matter what method is used to achieve that? Anyway,’ she said, with a shrug, ‘there are only so many hours in a day, Joe, and I have no time for that sort of palaver.’
‘Yes, but that’s just it,’ Joe said. ‘If you stayed at home you would have plenty of time.’
‘Huh, I might have great swathes of time,’ Gloria conceded, ‘but I would lack the enthusiasm to engage in that back-breaking and mind-numbing experience if there was any sort of alternative.’
‘Well, there wouldn’t be if you didn’t work at the camp.’
‘But I do work there and will continue to do so.’
‘Gloria, I have already said I don’t want you working there any more.’
Gloria gave a nonchalant shrug and tidied the teacups onto the tray, not looking at Joe. ‘If you don’t like it, then you must get over it. Isn’t that the attitude you displayed to me when I objected to you intending to beat a man to pulp? Objecting to the type of job a person does is not in the same league as that really.’
‘Gloria, I can’t believe that you will defy me like this.’
‘Oh, can you not?’ Gloria said, banging down the tray, now blisteringly angry. ‘Well, I have never heard you behave like this before either. And these aren’t even your words; they are words fed to you by the people, particularly the men, of Buncrana that have seeped into your brain. Tell you what, Joe, one of the prime reasons for doing this job is for the extra money. You find me another job in Derry that pays the same and with the same benefits, and I will give up the camp tomorrow without a qualm.’
Joe was silent, but Gloria saw the resentment and fury smouldering beneath his eyes. She said, ‘Joe, what is happening to us? After all we have been through, we are throwing angry words at one another about a job of work. If the people of the town are bothring you, then you must deal with it because we really do need the money I earn. Added to that, you said often to me, when I was struggling to cope with things, that we could make it if only we stick together. Does that still hold water, Joe?’