A Mother's Spirit

by Anne Bennett

  The three of them stayed like that for a few minutes and watched the ship sail out against the sky.

  Ben was squeezed into the back of Hughie’s car between his father and Jack McEvoy, with his Uncle Tom in the front, and he listened to the banter and ribaldry between them. He took no part in it, though, because he felt saturated in misery with the realisation that he might never see his mother again.

  Joe was so light-headed with relief that he had his son back with him again that at first he didn’t notice Ben’s silence.

  Then, as they turned into the lane, Tom said, ‘You and Ben would do well to leave here as soon as possible, because your lives won’t be your own when this news breaks in the town.’

  ‘Your brother is right,’ Hughie said. ‘And though no one will hear it from me, these things get about.’

  ‘And you know I can keep my own counsel when I have to,’ Jack said. ‘But this is a bad business altogether, and Hughie is right: someone will get hold of it before long.’

  Joe knew the two men were right, and that, because Gloria had sailed for America and, as they saw it, abandoned both husband and child, then she would be hanged, drawn and quartered by the women of Buncrana. There was no way he could even begin to justify what she had done to their satisfaction, and that would be no help to Ben, whom he was sure still loved his mother.

  In fact, now he came to think about it, Ben had been remarkably quiet altogether on the way home, and as the car drew up in the yard before the cottage and they climbed out, Joe said to his son, ‘After we have eaten I will go down to the station to make arrangements, and then we will start to pack. All right?’

  Ben nodded dumbly, Joe’s eyes met those of Tom over the child’s bent head and they both knew that he was too distressed to speak. The meal that Tom had on the table only minutes later was one of Ben’s favourites: thick rashers of home-cured bacon and golden-yolked eggs with soda bread and thick creamery butter, but Ben moved it around the plate and actually ate very little of it.

  Tom and Joe kept the conversation going, mainly about the arrangements, because the ensuing silence if they didn’t was uncomfortable.

  ‘Only book the passage for you and the boy from Derry,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll take you that far and when you have that organised I’ll send them all a telegram in Birmingham for they will be wondering what’s afoot.’

  ‘What will you say?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll leave all the explanations up to you. All I’ll say is that the arrangements have changed and that you will be coming over with Ben, and give them the time of your arrival at New Street. I’m sure one of them will be there to meet you.’

  ‘Probably,’ Joe said, ‘and the whole lot of them will be stunned by what has happened today. It won’t take me long to pack, when all is said and done, because I have just realised that Gloria must have a whole case of Ben’s clothes that are on their way to New York at the moment.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ Tom said. ‘Molly said before I left that she is keeping anything still wearable that Kevin grows out of for Ben. With the rationing on clothes, it’s the very devil to keep them decently clad when the child is still growing. Kevin has slowed down now, which is just as well, because he stands nearly five foot ten in his stocking feet.’

  ‘Does he really?’

  ‘Aye,’ Tom said. ‘You have never seen such a change in a boy. His voice has broken as well. The child is growing into a man.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing him again,’ Joe said. ‘Has he done with school now?’

  ‘He could have left in July, for he was fourteen in March,’ Tom said, ‘but Paul convinced him to stay another year.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then he starts an apprenticeship to be a tool-maker,’ Tom said. ‘Paul is arranging it for him. Molly would have liked him to go on and matriculate – even university, if he wanted – but Kevin is no academic. He is not a stupid boy, but book-learning is not for him and Paul knows that as well as I do. Tool-making is a good job, anyway. They are the craftsmen of the factory.’

  ‘How about that then, Ben?’ Joe said to his son. ‘Your cousin, Kevin, is almost a working man.’

  Ben wrinkled his nose. Kevin, the working man, didn’t sound half as much fun as Kevin the boy, but he was too dispirited to make much of it and he shrugged and muttered, ‘’S all right, I s’pose.’

  ‘What is it, Ben?’ Joe said, thinking it was better to face what was eating him openly.

  Ben raised his eyes, looked at his father, and said, ‘Why did you let Mom go away like that?’

  ‘I didn’t let her go, Ben,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t know what she intended.’

  ‘You must have done, else you wouldn’t have been there at the dockside.’

  ‘That was because of the telegrams your mother sent,’ Tom said, and explained them to Ben.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I told you,’ Joe said. ‘We are making for Birmingham just as soon as it can be arranged.’

  ‘I mean about Mom,’ Ben said agitatedly.

  ‘Ben, your mother is on her way to America,’ Joe said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Make her come back.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ Ben insisted. ‘Or go to America and fetch her back. You can ’cos you said to that man Mom is still married to you, and married people live together.’

  ‘Ben, I—’

  ‘If you don’t do it, if you don’t make her come home,’ Ben said desperately, ‘then I might never see her again.’

  Tom plainly heard the distress in Ben’s voice, saw it mirrored in Joe’s face, and decided that neither of them needed his presence in the cottage.

  Barely had the door closed behind Tom when Ben said brokenly, ‘I want Mom to come home, Dad.’

  ‘I know,’ Joe said, and tears rained down his own face as he admitted, ‘So do I, but she’s not going to.’

  ‘Oh, Dad …’ cried Ben. Joe gathered the weeping child onto his knee and let him cry out his fear and his pain, and they took comfort from one another.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ben hadn’t realised just how much he would miss his mother. A fortnight after he had come to Birmingham to live it had got no easier. The loss of his mother was like a constant ache inside. Everyone was very kind to him, tiptoeing around him as gently as if they were circling an unexploded bomb. Even his father was like that with him and sometimes it made Ben want to scream.

  He knew he had made the right decision, that was the annoying thing. He knew he couldn’t have borne it if he had gone off with his mother and left his father all alone in Ireland, but he resented the fact that he had been forced to make that decision. Or any decision at all. He blamed his mother for that. She was the one who had left, but she wasn’t there and so it was usually his father who bore the brunt of his ill humour. And he bore it all without complaint. He didn’t get angry and tell him off as he would once have done, and that unnerved Ben too. He viewed starting a new school with no enthusiasm at all.

  Joe knew how Ben felt and understood his anger. He too grieved for Gloria, but alone in his bed at night. He had no one to discuss his feelings with because from the first he had said to the family that though Gloria had gone, there had been faults on both sides, that Ben still loved his mother and it wouldn’t help him for them to start pulling Gloria to bits.

  ‘Easy to say,’ Molly said to Aggie one day. ‘But just to walk out on him like that … I mean, everyone goes through sticky patches in their marriage, but you don’t just give up and walk out.’

  ‘Ah, but it wasn’t just a sticky patch, was it?’ Aggie said. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, she was carrying on with an American. I got on well with Gloria when she came over for your wedding. I could see, though, that she was intrigued by the attraction Paul felt for me. I saw her speculative eyes on me more than once.’

  ‘Why?’

  Aggie
shrugged. ‘I imagine she was wondering how Paul could feel that way about me when I had spent years on the streets.’

  ‘That was hardly your fault,’ Molly said.

  ‘I know that, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I was a prostitute,’ Aggie said. ‘As I recall, it took me some time to understand and accept that Paul was taking me warts and all, so I can hardly blame others for being surprised. I think in the end Gloria accepted how it was between us. I liked her, though, and I thought she liked me, and I was a little disappointed that she didn’t come to my wedding.’

  ‘Maybe by then she had bigger fish to fry,’ Molly said. ‘And I notice that you say “liked”, not “like”. How do you feel about her now?’

  Aggie thought for a moment, then said, ‘Till Joe turned up at my door with Tom that time to deal with Finch, I hadn’t seen him for over forty years. I had shared no part of his life. To see him go through all this upset now hurts me. Whatever he says, he is suffering. It is often etched on his face, and he looks quite grey at times. And there is Ben, a confused, angry and unhappy Ben, who he is also trying to cope with. I know that Joe said there were faults on both sides, and I dare say there were, but she has gone and Joe is left to pick up the pieces.’ Aggie shook her head. ‘It is hard to feel the same about her and not blame her totally.’

  ‘Do you think she should have taken Ben with her?’

  ‘Good God no,’ Aggie said. ‘Joe couldn’t have borne that. What the woman should have done was stay put and get on with mending her marriage and rearing her child. You know,’ she went on, ‘one thing I will always regret is not having a child of my own, and I suppose that’s why I was so dumbfounded that Gloria should just walk away from her son.’

  ‘Ah, Aunt Aggie …’

  ‘And then I met Paul’s sister, Isobel,’ Aggie said. ‘You know what a lovely gentle and softly spoken lady she is, and though they would have liked more, she had just one son, Gregory. They both adored him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘And he died at Dunkirk.’

  ‘Yes,’ Aggie said. ‘And I got to wondering whether it was better to have no children at all than to give birth to them, nurture them and watch them grow up, learn to love them with all your being and see them killed like that, so young, their lives full of promise.’

  ‘I don’t know that I could bear it,’ Molly admitted. ‘Paul told me Isobel’s husband never got over it.’

  ‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘He died three years ago. He had influenza and people recover from that all the time. He should really have been able to fight it off. Isobel said it was as if he had given up.’

  ‘And then Isobel became Uncle Tom’s fancy piece,’ Molly said with a large grin.

  ‘You know he did no such thing,’ Aggie said, giving her niece a tap on the hand. ‘You are a tease and when you say that in front of Tom he goes bright red.’

  ‘I know,’ Molly said with a laugh. ‘It’s such a temptation to tease him because he blushes so easily. And he does go out with Isobel.’

  ‘Only when Paul and I go too,’ Aggie said. ‘And you know that was because after her husband died Isobel was very sad and lonely. Before Paul met me he would take his sister out and about to the pictures and theatre, or out for a meal, and he didn’t want her to feel pushed out so he asked Tom as company for her. That’s all it was.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Molly with a knowing smile. ‘Maybe that’s how it began, but you never know. After all, they’re both two lonely people.’

  Aggie shook her head. ‘Tom is not the marrying kind,’ she said. ‘We all know why now, but he’ll hardly change, and Isobel is certainly not looking for any entanglements, though she does like Tom.’

  ‘Everyone likes Tom,’ Molly said. ‘And he is so pleased about this baby he is like a dog with two tails.’

  ‘And me,’ Aggie said. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  ‘I can see I shall have to watch the pair of you or you will have the child ruined,’ Molly said to Aggie with mock severity. ‘And you’re not the only ones either. Kevin is cock-a-hoop about being an uncle.’

  ‘Let’s hope that Ben takes some interest in the baby too,’ Aggie said, ‘for that child needs something to cheer him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Molly almost fiercely. ‘And I hope his mother is proud of herself, wherever she is.’

  The liner took almost a week to reach New York and the agonising pain of losing her son never left Gloria, so she was glad of Helen’s support.

  ‘What breaks my heart most,’ she said to her one day, ‘is that he ran away from me. He chose Joe.’

  ‘You must see it from his point of view,’ Helen said gently. ‘In his opinion you have Philip now, and Joe has no one. He actually said that to you.’

  ‘I know,’ Gloria said miserably. ‘I didn’t think that it would hurt this much. And then there are Philip’s parents, who have arranged to meet me. They are expecting Ben, and I thought he might break the ice a bit.’

  ‘Oh, he might have done more than break the ice,’ Helen said ruefully. ‘Especially as he didn’t want to go to America in the first place. He could just blurt out that you are still married to his dad or something like that. I mean, you didn’t intend to tell them that straight away, did you?’

  ‘No,’ Gloria said. ‘And you’re right: Ben could and probably would blurt that out, especially if he was angry enough. That would have been just dreadful. Phillip has told me to say nothing for now. He will explain it to them when they have got to know me a little. And when he hears what Ben has done he will know what we have to do to get him back.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Helen said. ‘Ben has shown you plainly where he wants to be, so why not leave him be now?’

  ‘No,’ Gloria said determinedly. ‘You don’t understand. You’re not a mother yet, and Ben is just a child, so what does he know? His place is with me. I couldn’t go through life without Ben.’

  Helen suddenly felt immeasurably sad for Joe and she said gently, ‘Not even for Phillip?’

  Gloria met Helen’s gaze levelly. ‘I didn’t think that I would be called on to make a choice.’

  ‘Can’t you feel the tiniest bit sorry for Joe if you try and take Ben away from him?’ Helen said. ‘And won’t Ben be miserable if you force him to come to a place he never wanted to come to?’

  ‘Ben will get over it,’ Gloria said dismissively. ‘Children are very adaptable. As for Joe, how the hell did he know I was on that ship? I didn’t even tell them at the canteen when we left – you know, when we had that bit of a leaving do. Everyone was making plans for what to do with their free time and arranging to meet up and everything, remember, and I just went along with it.’

  ‘I know you did,’ Helen said. She added, ‘I told no one either, so it’s a mystery how Joe found out, but I bet he thought at first that Ben was on the ship.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gloria grimly. ‘And that is where he should be. Ben’s place is here with me.’

  Helen said nothing further. She had no wish to alienate her friend, but she privately thought that she was piling up a heap of trouble for herself and a whole lot of misery for Joe, who had done nothing wrong.

  As the ship pulled into the New York harbour, Gloria and Helen weren’t the only ones scanning the photographs of their new families and trying to identify them among the many people on the docksides waiting to welcome the Irish wives their sons had chosen.

  The gangplank was lowered to a cheer from the women and children aboard, and they began to shuffle forward.

  ‘Can you see your people?’ said Helen suddenly.

  ‘No,’ Gloria said, ‘not yet anyway. Philip’s father said he would wear a pink carnation.’

  ‘Did he really?’ said Helen with a laugh. ‘I think I’ve spotted mine, anyway. Over to the side a little. Can you see?’

  ‘I think so,’ Gloria said. ‘Oh, I am going to miss you.’

  ‘How d’you think I feel?’ Helen said. ‘It will all be strange to me.’

  ‘And me too
after all this time,’ Gloria insisted.

  ‘Oh, look, I think that I have spotted your new in-laws, because there’s a man over there sporting the biggest carnation I have ever seen,’ Helen cried.

  Gloria looked in the direction of Helen’s pointing finger. The way the man stood so tall and straight reminded her of Philip. She had searched the photograph that he had sent her at the time for any resemblance but much of his face was covered with a trim beard and moustache. ‘He used to have hair as dark as mine when I was a child,’ Philip had told her. ‘Now he is as grey as a badger.’

  So was the dumpy woman beside him, Gloria thought, but her eyes in the round, open face looked kindly and the taut muscles in Gloria’s stomach relaxed a little. She knew whatever these people were like she would have to live with them until the war was over and Philip demobbed.

  She shivered suddenly, and Helen said, ‘I’m scared stiff too.’

  ‘This must be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life,’ Gloria said, and the two girls embraced, and tears squeezed from Gloria’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Her stiff backbone came to her rescue and she pulled herself from Helen’s arms, wiping the tears away from her cheeks impatiently. ‘This won’t do. Here we are on the edge of maybe the greatest adventure of our lives, when we will become involved with the relatives and friends of the men we love, and all we can do is weep. What madness is this?’

  ‘It is mad,’ Helen agreed. ‘It isn’t as if we will never meet again. Anyway, Colin’s parents look friendly enough to me, and he always speaks about them with such fondness.’

  ‘So does Philip,’ Gloria said.

  There was a sudden surge forward and Gloria was at the top of the gangplank. Unbidden there flashed into her head the memory of Joe’s first day in that brave new world more than twenty years before. Then he had risked his own life to save the life of a young girl. If he’d failed neither Gloria nor Joe would be alive today.

  She owed Joe her life and she suddenly felt sorry for the blow she had dealt him. He hadn’t deserved her to run out on him the way she had, and she faced the fact that had she succeeded in taking Ben to New York with her, it would have destroyed him. Ben wanted to stay with his father, he had indicated that as strongly as he could, and she knew, though her heart felt as heavy as lead despite her spirited words to Helen, that it might be better to leave him there after all.