by Anne Bennett
‘Because your Auntie Lois is having a baby,’ Carmel told her.
‘Oh,’ Beth said, her eyes lighting up. ‘When?’
‘Ages yet,’ Lois said, and Carmel endorsed this. ‘Not till the autumn. Lots and lots of big sleeps.’
Beth had no interest in things happening ages away. Even one day, one big sleep, was a long time to wait when you were only three, but for the two women their joy at the news did not abate and they spent the rest of that evening discussing names and ways of giving birth, and poring over baby books until the arrival of Terry put a stop to it. He was sincerely pleased for Lois, though. He remembered how excited he had been each time when Brenda had told him she was pregnant, but he didn’t share this memory, knowing that it would put a damper on Lois’s news.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In early May, as Carmel lay snuggled in Terry’s arms one evening, he kissed her tenderly and said, ‘Think 1943 is going to be our year. My ghosts are well and truly laid now, my darling, and it would be more perfect still if you would agree to be my wife.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Carmel said. ‘Yes, please.’
The following Saturday, which Carmel had off duty anyway, Ruby minded Beth, and Terry and Carmel went into the city centre to choose the engagement ring. Carmel had already removed Paul’s rings and put them away for Beth to have when she was an adult. Carmel would wear the diamond cluster Terry bought her with as much pride as she had Paul’s. As she left the shop arm in arm with Terry that day, she gave a sigh of contentment and she thanked God for giving her this second crack at happiness.
Carmel’s family had been told about Terry when he had been a patient of hers and they had all prayed for his speedy recovery. She had also told them what had happened to his family, and her mother in particular had been full of sympathy.
But now they were engaged and talking about wedding dates and so Carmel’s family had to know how important Terry had become to her. She dreaded telling them because Terry wasn’t a Catholic and had no intention of becoming one either. In fact, he went further and said after what he had seen happen to his family he wasn’t at all sure there was a God and if there was, he had no intention of worshipping a deity that could allow such things to happen.
Carmel could see his point. There had been so many dead and dying and maimed, and she had seen and nursed such sickening sights. Oh, yes, she understood exactly what Terry meant. She had been a Catholic all her life and had never questioned it, but it was hard, even for her, to equate the loving father that God was supposed to be, with such carnage. She doubted, though, her mother would see it that way so in the letters home she side-stepped any reference to religion and just talked about how her feelings for Terry had changed from compassion to love and that they had become engaged.
The letters back were full of congratulations and delight from her mother, from all the family, but they wanted to see him, check that he was good enough to marry ‘our Carmel’.
However, first there was the birth of Lois’s son, Colin Christopher, who was born in a nursing home her father had booked for her, and on his due date of 11 September.
‘I can’t remember Beth ever being that small,’ Carmel said as she held Lois’s baby in her arms when he was just a few hours old.
‘She was much smaller, as I recall,’ Lois said. ‘This big bruiser weighed in at eight and a half pounds, and Beth, being premature and a girl as well, was far lighter. I remember being almost too frightened to pick her up at first, she looked so delicate.’
‘They are all delicate and terribly precious,’ Carmel said. ‘Are you having him christened?’
Lois shook her head. ‘Not till his father is home, and I don’t care how long that takes. I want him to take some part in his son’s life.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Carmel said. ‘I wish Paul had got just a wee glimpse of Beth.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lois said, flustered. ‘How stupid and insensitive of me.’
‘Not at all,’ Carmel hastened to reassure her. ‘The future is going to be wonderful for me now.’
‘Carmel, I have thought about this over and over,’ Lois said. ‘What if Terry wants a child of his own?’
Carmel didn’t answer straight away because she had faced that possibility already. At last she said, ‘I have had that thought too and I would have another child if he wanted one so much.’
‘You used to be so anti,’ Lois reminded her.
‘I used to be a lot of things that now don’t seem important,’ Carmel said. ‘There has been and still is so much hatred in the world, death and injury and suffering, but a baby is so pure and innocent. Maybe it would do me good to focus on that. I’ll tell you one thing, though, if I have another child, this time I won’t give it to someone else to rear. I don’t regret the decision I made when the country was in dire straits, and maybe if I hadn’t returned to nursing I might never have met Terry at all, but I missed a lot of Beth’s growing up because of it. I can never reclaim those years, and if Terry and I decide we want a child, I want to bring it up myself.’
‘You wouldn’t be afraid that Beth will have her nose pushed out of joint?’
Carmel smiled. ‘No,’ she said with confidence. ‘That will never happen. The bond between Beth and Terry is just too great for anything to damage it. It might do Beth good, anyway, to have a half-brother or -sister. At the moment she thinks she is the most important person in the universe.’
‘They all do at that age.’
‘Maybe,’ Carmel said. ‘Anyway, how long are they keeping you in this place?’
‘A fortnight, Daddy said.’
‘Right. Well, I will make arrangements to travel to Ireland as soon as I can manage it and then I will be on hand when you are out,’ Carmel said. ‘Nothing will do for my family but they’ll see Terry so they can approve or not.’
‘They will be hard to please if they don’t like Terry.’
‘My mother won’t like the fact that he is a Protestant.’
‘Doesn’t she know?’
Carmel shook her head. ‘That wasn’t something I wanted to write in a letter,’ she said. ‘I will have to tell Mammy face to face, so it suits me to go over now anyway.’
She gave the baby, who had begun to protest, over to Lois to feed and left to arrange time off from the hospital.
Carmel, Terry and little Beth travelled to Ireland on Wednesday, 15 September. When they set off in the pearly dawn of that early autumn morning, Carmel’s concerns were for Terry when she remembered how sick Paul had been on the boat. She was glad that as the sun rose higher, the day turned out to be a mild one. At Holyhead the sea was calm and the waves more playful than boisterous, and they had a crossing with no ill effects for any of them.
The first member of the Duffy family that Terry met was Michael, who had come to meet them with Bridget McCauley, whom Michael had told Carmel was just a friend at their father’s funeral. Evidently the friendship had deepened, for she saw the girl now wore an engagement ring.
‘So,’ Carmel said with a smile, ‘you intend to try and make an honest man of my brother? I wish you well of it. You do know what you are taking on, I suppose?’
Bridget answered in like vein, ‘Oh, yes. Don’t you worry. I am well aware of it and I will have him licked into shape in no time.’
‘Will the pair of you give over?’ Michael said with a laugh. ‘Maligning me in such a way…’ He grasped Terry’s hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Terry, for we need every man jack on our side to help us cope with the women of the house. And here’s another one of them,’ he went on, lifting Beth out of Carmel’s arms. ‘And the most important of the lot.’
That fact had never been pointed out to Beth before. ‘I am?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Well, course you are,’ Michael affirmed. ‘No doubt about it. Isn’t that right, Bridget?’
‘It is surely,’ said Bridget, with a smile. ‘They’re never done talking about you, and your granny has been on pins all day waiti
ng on you coming.’
Carmel smiled at the confusion on her daughter’s face and knew any minute she was going to ask what her granny was doing on pins, but Michael forestalled her.
He set her down on her feet and said, ‘Come on, Bridget’s father has given me the loan of his car. Let us arrive at Mammy’s in style.’
Carmel was anxious to see the house on Church Street that her mother had moved into as soon as she had got her job in Kilkenny’s dress shop, not quite three months after her husband had been buried.
‘Of course some townsfolk were scandalised by that,’ Eve had written to Carmel, ‘and thought I should be in mourning for a year. I haven’t had one day, one hour of mourning for that vicious bully and I don’t care who knows it. I am glad he is dead and I am just sorry he took so long over it.’
Carmel didn’t blame her mother at all. In fact, she was proud of her and though she knew almost any house on the planet would be better than the shack in which she had been raised, she was impressed by the brickbuilt house with the slate roof that Michael drew up the car in front of.
Before the car was properly stopped the front door of the house was flung open and her mother flew down the steps, welcoming them all in a flurry of hugs and kisses and drawing them all into the house at the same time.
The kitchen that Eve led them to seemed full of people. Terry immediately felt nervous. Although he was introduced to all Carmel’s siblings, he knew he would never remember them half of them. On the other hand, Beth was passed from one to another as they exclaimed about how she had grown while they hugged and kissed her. Revelling in the attention, Beth seemed to take it all in her stride. Then Siobhan brought her new fiancé, Tim McEvoy, forward to meet them. As Carmel shook hands with him, she was certain she had seen the man before but not sure where. Then suddenly she had it.
‘Weren’t you at Daddy’s funeral?’
The man nodded. ‘At the graveyard just. I went there to support Siobhan and because she asked me to go, but I would not go on to the pub. I know what happens when someone dies. Whatever they have been like in their lifetime, that is all wiped out and they become some sort of saint. I couldn’t have borne hearing what a “grand man” Dennis Duffy was when I know he had led Siobhan—all of you—one bloody awful life, begging your pardon, Mrs Duffy.’
Terry sneaked a glance at Carmel. She had told him all about her father after she had agreed to marry him, for she said he needed to know how it had been in the family if he was to join it. He had listened, appalled, to the account of a life of degradation and such brutality that he could scarcely credit it, and yet he believed every word. He had tried to be a good husband to Brenda and a good father to his children and he was, at any rate, a moderate drinker. That a man could abuse so cruelly the people that should be central in his heart was anathema to him, and he wondered how they had all got through it so well.
‘Don’t you worry about upsetting me, my lad,’ Eve said. ‘The words you said were but the truth anyway. Now let us all sit up to the table where I have a big feed ready for us all.’
The meal was like none that Carmel had eaten with her family. There was so much laughter and noise amongst them, she wondered if her father was turning in his grave, and she realised the tension had gone from everyone. Theirs had become a happy house, as it could have been years before with a different father at the helm of it.
Eve had changed beyond recognition. She was now a respected member of the town. She was independent and had no handouts, but earned money and paid her way. Her confidence had increased because of it, and it did Carmel’s heart good to see her like that.
Eve liked nothing better than to have her family gathered about her, especially Carmel and her wee daughter, who lived so far away. So while the girls cleared away and the men sat around the range having a smoke, Eve drew Beth onto her knee while she sat on at the table with Carmel.
‘It’s a lovely house, Mammy,’ Carmel said.
‘Isn’t it?’ Eve agreed happily. ‘I was lucky to get it. Of course Eliza Kilkenny spoke up for me. They have been very good to me altogether, both Eliza and her elder sister, Martha. I was at school with Eliza and, like everyone else, she was aware how things were at home, but she never looked down her nose at me like some of the others and she always said that there was a job in the shop any time I wanted it. There was no point in my trying to earn a penny piece while your father was alive, though, as you well know. Now, oh, now my life is just so happy.’
Carmel could see that for herself. There were no lines of strain on her mother’s face, only laughter lines around eyes that sparkled and shone.
‘Are you my granny?’ Beth asked.
‘I am indeed,’ Eve said, ‘and I am very glad to have you here.’
Beth, remembering the encounter in the station, suddenly said, ‘Were you standing on pins?’
Carmel laughed. ‘It’s just an expression, Beth,’ she told her small daughter. ‘It means Granny was so looking forward to you coming that she could hardly sit still.’
‘On pins,’ Eve said. ‘That’s what it means all right.’
‘Oh,’ Beth said. She looked from one woman to the other and saw their eyes alight with amusement, and wasn’t sure that she liked being laughed at. ‘I think I’m going to sit with my daddy now,’ she said, and sidled off Eve’s knee and went towards the range where Terry sat. Eve’s eyes opened in surprise.
‘There goes one offended girl,’ said Carmel with a chuckle. ‘And straight to Terry.’
‘She calls him Daddy.’
Carmel shrugged. ‘It was her choice,’ she said. ‘She knows he isn’t her real daddy, but Terry is here and Paul isn’t, and, of course, it has helped Terry too.’
‘He loves her well enough, anyway,’ Eve said, looking across to where Terry was bouncing Beth on his lap, much to the child’s delight.
Carmel nodded. ‘The two of them are as thick as thieves.’
‘You have picked another good one there,’ Eve said.
‘I know,’ said Carmel. Then, because there was no point beating about the bush, she said quietly, ‘But he isn’t a Catholic, Mammy.’
‘I thought not,’ said Eve. ‘There was some hesitation in your letters. I thought perhaps you weren’t sure of the man, that maybe you were marrying him because you felt sorry for him and that is why I was so anxious for you to come over so I could see for myself. I only had to see you together for a few minutes to realise how much you love one another, so that put my mind at rest at least.’
‘And how do you feel about this, Mammy?’
‘I don’t know really,’ Eve said. ‘Why did you not say earlier? Did you think that I would disapprove?’
‘Well, don’t you?’
‘Yes and no,’ Eve said. ‘I mean, I am bound to say that I wish you were marrying a Catholic man, but there is more to marriage than what religion a person is. What I am saying is that I married a Catholic and he led us all a dog’s life. I’d not want one of mine to go through five minutes of what I spent half a lifetime enduring. In other words, I’d rather you marry a good Protestant than a bad Catholic. All I want for you is peace and happiness.’
Carmel felt love for her mother well up inside her and she leaned forward and kissed her gently. Then, grasping one of Eve’s hands, she said earnestly, ‘I will never forget what you have just said, and your blessing on my relationship and forthcoming marriage with Terry means the world to me, for no one else’s opinion matters more than yours.’
And Carmel meant every word that she said. She knew the priest, Sister Frances and even some of the self-righteous townspeople would disapprove of her marrying a Protestant, but with her mother on her side none of that mattered.
Eve was too choked up to reply and then the girls, having finished all the washing and tidying up, were in on top of them, laughing and chafing one another, and the moment was gone.
The wedding between Carmel and Terry was set for Saturday, 25 March 1944, because Carmel did not want t
o get married in the depths of winter. It was also going to be as different from Carmel’s first wedding as was possible, much quieter, and this time none of Carmel’s family was coming over for it.
One Friday evening in early March, Terry and George had gone off to sink a pint or two and Ruby was at her daughter’s, so the girls were alone. Lois took the opportunity to air with Carmel all the concerns she had about the wedding.
‘It’s different the second time around,’ Carmel told her. ‘And I couldn’t really ask the family, not this time.’
‘I don’t understand why not,’ Lois said. ‘After all, you said they liked and approved of Terry, for all he’s a Protestant.’
‘They did,’ Carmel agreed. ‘And he liked them, though he was a bit overwhelmed sometimes. He didn’t say he was, but I saw it in his eyes a time or two when we met en masse, as it were.’
‘Is that why?’
‘No. Well, only partly,’ Carmel said. ‘Look, Lois, imagine I had a big flashy wedding. My family alone would probably fill two or three pews. Then there would be friends from the hospital, Sylvia and you, Chris and Dan, if they could make it, not to mention Ruby and George and some people I know from church. On Terry’s side there might be a couple of workmates if he is lucky. How would that make him look? Anyway, as I am marrying a non-Catholic, I can’t have Nuptial Mass said, so the whole thing will only last about twenty minutes.’
‘Is your mother upset over it?’
‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘She sees the reasoning behind it. Then there’s the problem of finding them somewhere to stay too, of course, and feeding a big party, with rationing the way it is.’
‘I do hear all you say,’ Lois said. ‘Aren’t you just the tiniest bit disappointed yourself, though?’
‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘I want to be married to Terry quite desperately now, but how I am married, the pomp and ceremony of it, doesn’t bother me. It is the being together that matters.’