Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  ‘This young man’s got too big for his boots,’ Brendan said. ‘I say he needs teaching a lesson. What d’you say, Maeve?’

  ‘No!’ Maeve had been knocked off balance by Brendan’s actions, but she pulled herself away from the wall and cried, ‘Don’t you dare touch him, Brendan! Don’t you bloody dare!’

  ‘Dare! Dare!’ While she was still holding Kevin, Brendan grabbed Maeve’s arm and bent it up her back so that she cried out with the pain of it.

  ‘Leave him, Brendan, for God’s sake,’ she pleaded when she could speak. ‘He’s just a wee boy.’

  ‘Aye, and a wee boy who has to grow up with respect for his father,’ Brendan snapped, and he pushed Maeve from him and laid Kevin across his knees.

  The boy’s anguished eyes met those of Maeve. ‘Mom,’ he cried, and jumped with pain at the suddenness of the belt on his bare skin.

  The belt had come down on Kevin’s back once more and his screams were reverberating through the house before Maeve recovered enough to throw herself against Brendan again. This time he was more furious with his wife, but he held on to Kevin tightly, knowing if he let him go he would scurry away. He tried to shrug Maeve off, but she wouldn’t be shifted. Instead she lunged forward and raked her fingers down his face. Enraged, he turned round, holding Kevin tight in his arms, and aimed a vicious kick towards Maeve’s stomach, and the force of it sent her cannoning into the wall. She banged her head, knocking herself dizzy, and slithered down to a sitting position with her head spinning and such severe shocking pains in her stomach that she doubled over in agony.

  She saw that Kevin’s back was crisscrossed with stripes, some of which oozed blood. Maeve lay, too stunned and sore to move, and screamed for help, and her screams matched those of her small son.

  Maeve was never sure what would have happened that night if Elsie hadn’t come in from next door. She ignored her husband’s advice to leave well alone and went in unannounced. Afterwards, she described the scene to him. ‘The child was beaten black and blue,’ she said. ‘The man’s a maniac and needs to be locked up. Maeve lay there groaning in a corner, and Grace was sobbing too, her hands over her eyes and a puddle at her feet where she’d wet herself with fear.’

  Brendan wanted no doctor fetched. They had, he said, no money for doctors. Maeve would be as right as rain after a night’s sleep and he was only chastising the boy as it was a father’s right.

  Elsie thought differently, said so forcibly and dispatched her Alf to fetch the doctor. She filled a kettle with water, put it on to boil and ran up for blankets to wrap around Maeve and her son. She’d reached the bedroom when she remembered Maeve had pawned the blankets and hadn’t yet got the money together to redeem them. Instead she grabbed two coats and put one round Maeve’s shoulders. She pushed the two armchairs together and put Kevin’s limp form down on his stomach and she gently placed the coat over his lacerated body. There was no sign of Brendan, for which she was mighty glad, and she drew Grace, still sobbing, into her arms and tried to soothe her.

  Dr Fleming took in the situation at once. On his way to the house he’d passed Brendan Hogan and had seen clearly the man’s scratched cheeks, but when he saw Kevin’s injuries he was appalled. He examined Maeve and knew she was in premature labour and had to go to hospital. The unborn baby didn’t stand a chance of surviving, but if the mother was going to live, she needed hospital care.

  Some hours later, Maeve lay in hospital while doctors tried to save the life of her and her baby, who was struggling to be born weeks too early. As the night wore on, despite all their care, Maeve’s pains became worse and by the morning she’d given birth to a small, premature and underdeveloped stillborn baby boy. Her scalding tears were of little comfort to her and hate for her husband festered in her soul. She was determined to leave him at the first opportunity. If not for her sake, then for the sake of Kevin because she was suffused with guilt that she’d been unable to prevent Brendan wielding his vicious temper on his young son.

  But opportunity wasn’t a thing that Maeve had in abundance. For two weeks she lay in hospital while Elsie cared for her children, trying to think of some way out of the dilemma she was in. Elsie had had to keep Kevin away from school for the first week while his back healed, though she thought he might carry the marks for ever. Grace had been sworn to secrecy lest the children be taken away. The doctor had wanted to inform the authorities, but Maeve had begged him not to. She was terrified her children would be taken from her and then she knew she’d have the devil’s own job to get them back, and so reluctantly Dr Fleming agreed to say nothing. Brendan, however, was forced to return to his mother’s house, for Elsie refused even to boil a kettle for the man she called a drunken bully.

  For the fortnight, Maeve plotted and planned, but all her thoughts came to nothing, for she lacked that basic commodity – money. She came out of hospital at the end of June quite desperate and yet no nearer to achieving her objective.

  ‘You can’t stay with the man,’ Elsie stormed.

  ‘I can’t leave him either,’ Maeve cried back. ‘Where in heaven’s name would I go with two children and no job?’

  There was only one place, Maeve knew it and Elsie knew it. That was to go across the water to her mother’s. ‘Surely to God, Maeve, when you tell her how things are, she won’t refuse to take you in?’

  ‘No,’ Maeve said. ‘She’d support me if she only knew the half of it.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘Well then nothing, Elsie. How the hell am I to find the money to take us all to Ireland? You know I haven’t money to bless myself with.’

  ‘Could you ask your mammy?’

  ‘I could not,’ Maeve cried. ‘Don’t ever think of such a thing. She has six others besides myself, and the youngest still at school.’

  And there the matter rested.

  But a couple of weeks later, it reared its ugly head again. In the first week of Maeve’s release from hospital the doctor had told Brendan quite forcibly that he had to leave Maeve alone and for a good while, and even the priest, Father Trelawney, alerted by the doctor as to Maeve’s delicate state of health, told him he must curb his natural desires and show patience.

  He showed patience, though his temper was surly and he lashed out at Maeve often, but she could cope with that. It wasn’t in the nature of an actual beating. But by the third week of July, three weeks after she’d been released from hospital, Brendan reckoned Maeve had had enough time to get over whatever it was had ailed her, and he began again demanding his rights. Maeve lay passive beneath him and prayed she wouldn’t become pregnant again, but she was afraid of inflaming his temper further by refusing.

  About this time, Elsie came in one day in a fever of excitement. The two children were out playing when she burst in. ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Elsie said.

  ‘What?’ Maeve looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘You heard. A job,’ Elsie repeated. ‘I’ve just been in Mountford’s and the old man has had a heart attack. It wasn’t serious, like – it was in the way of a warning – but the doctor said he had to take life easier for a bit and Mrs Mountford asked me if I would work a few hours to help her out for a bit, or if I knew of someone trustworthy. I thought of you straight off, for this way you can earn enough to take you to see your mother in Ireland.’

  ‘Elsie, I couldn’t,’ Maeve said. ‘Brendan would never—’

  ‘You don’t tell Brendan,’ Elsie told her firmly. ‘And you certainly don’t bloody well ask him.’

  ‘But he’d know,’ Maeve insisted, thinking how close and how public Mountford’s corner shop was.

  ‘How would he?’ Elsie demanded. ‘Mrs Mountford told me the hours. Ten to four, Monday to Friday except for Wednesday, when the shop closes at one o’clock, and nine till two on Saturday. You’d manage that, and still be home to cook the sod his tea.’

  Maeve knew she would. Brendan left the house at half-past six in the morning and didn’t come home till half-six in the evening – that
was when he came straight home. On Saturdays he finished work at one and went on to the pub and didn’t come home till at least half-past three. But still she hesitated. ‘I couldn’t, Elsie.’

  ‘Why not? You just tell old George Mountford and his missus, Edith, that you have experience. They’ll snap you up.’

  ‘What about the weans?’

  ‘What about them?’ Elsie had said. ‘You can take them to school in the mornings and I’ll collect and mind them in the afternoons till you come in. Saturdays, you leave them in with me.’

  ‘Ah, Elsie . . .’ Maeve said. She knew she had a great deal to be grateful for in the older woman and to prevent her getting all tearful about it, asked in a jocular way, ‘Are you dying to get rid of me so much?’

  ‘Aye. You’ve guessed,’ Elsie said, but her eyes were moist and she hoped Maeve wouldn’t notice, and to prevent her doing just that she said sternly, ‘Get yourself down that shop before I put my bloody boot behind you. I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a cup of tea to celebrate your new job when you get back.’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ Maeve said as she went out the door.

  ‘You’ll get it,’ Elsie said to her retreating back.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, let her get this job,’ she whispered. Jobs were hard to come by and if Maeve didn’t get this, there could be a long wait for another and anything might have happened to her by then. Elsie knelt down on the rag rug in front of the firegrate and said a decade of rosary for her and hoped no one would take it in their head to pop in and see her kneeling to pray in the middle of the morning.

  Maeve loved working for George and Edith Mountford, and as the months passed, she realised she’d seldom been so happy. Around her people were talking about the war that everyone now knew was imminent, and yet she was feeling very content. Her life was even easier once Kevin passed his seventh birthday in November and took himself and Grace to school and back every day.

  The children were looking marginally better than they had. Maeve bought a few nice things for them to eat and some new clothes they desperately needed, though most of her wages were stored in the tin cash box in Elsie’s house, to buy the tickets that were to be her and her children’s passport to freedom. As part of Maeve’s wages, Edith always made up a basket for her on Saturday afternoon and Maeve was surprised by the Mountfords’ generosity. She’d had to hide a lot of the produce in the wardrobe in the attic, only bringing out a few things at a time to stack on the shelves. It would never do to arouse Brendan’s suspicions.

  It surprised Maeve as time went on that no one let on to him that she worked in the corner shop, for everyone knew. She served neighbours in the shop every day and yet no one said a word about it to Brendan.

  ‘Why would they tell your old man?’ Elsie asked when she queried it. ‘Most of the women don’t like him. They know he keeps you short of money and knocks you about. They think you’ve got guts to put up with it and earn some money to provide for your kids. They won’t split on you.’

  And they didn’t. And Maeve coped, although for the first week or two she found it tiring being on her feet all day and then dealing with the children and cooking a meal when she got home. But she watched the money rise in the cash box and it cheered her. The cash box had been her first purchase and she knew there was no place to hide money in her house. If Brendan even got a sniff there was any to be had, he’d tear the place apart until he found it and have it off her. It had to be left in Elsie’s keeping, but Elsie had suggested the cash box with a key, which Maeve must keep.

  Maeve had been working at the shop just over a fortnight when Brendan gave her such a beating one night that she was bruised from head to toe the next day. Every movement hurt, but she forced her stiffened limbs into action, for she wasn’t missing a day from her job.

  Edith Mountford looked at her bruised face and the left eye nearly closed and asked, ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I walked into a door,’ Maeve said.

  ‘Some bloody door,’ Edith remarked. ‘Stick to that story if you want, but both you and I know what manner of door it was. You poor sod.’

  The sympathy in her voice brought tears springing to Maeve’s eyes, but she brushed them away and Edith said, ‘You’d best work in the back for a couple of days till your face settles down a bit. You don’t want folks gaping at you.’

  Maeve was grateful for the older woman’s understanding and she spent the next two days bagging up the flour, tea, sugar, currants and raisins, and doing the accounts and ordering new supplies, the tasks that Edith usually did. By the third day the bruising was more yellow than blue, but Maeve bought cosmetics in the chemist’s that she hoped hid much of that, and the puffiness around her eye, and went back into the shop.

  Many asked where she’d been, or looked at her rather curiously, but none asked outright what had happened to her face. Edith thought they didn’t have to ask, for despite the repair job Maeve had attempted, most of her customers would know she’d had a good hiding. And it was a beating and a half. Edith had seen the bruises covering Maeve’s arms when she’d pushed up the sleeves of her overall when she’d been bagging up in the back.

  Maeve knew too, and decided in future she’d have to try to protect her face in some way. Edith, kind as she was, couldn’t keep her on if she was unfit to serve in the shop.

  These thoughts came to her mind the next time Brendan started on her, one night about three weeks later. ‘Get up, you lazy sod, and get me a drink,’ he growled.

  Maeve sighed but that was enough.

  ‘I said get up.’ His hand reached for her and she felt the flimsy slip she slept in rip down the middle.

  She saw his fist and ducked as she screamed at him, ‘Leave me alone!’

  Heedless even of the sleeping children in the attic, intent only on protecting herself, she stopped him for an instant with her cry, and she saw the cruel sardonic smile on his mouth. She knew it was useless to try to fight and so she tried threats.

  Twisting from his grasp, she left a piece of her slip in his hands and she rolled off the other side of the bed and stood facing him. ‘You touch me, Brendan, and I’ll shout it from the rooftops,’ she yelled at him. ‘And I’ll go down in the morning to St Catherine’s and tell the priest. Do you confess it, I wonder, the times you beat me?’

  ‘You’re my wife, you stupid cow. I have the right to chastise you.’

  ‘What right?’ Maeve demanded. ‘And your family? Do they know what manner of man you are?’

  But even as she spoke, she thought they probably did. Brendan’s four brothers treated their wives shamefully. Maeve wasn’t sure if they knocked them about, but the women were kept as short of money as she was, and she’d seen Brendan’s mother, Lily, with a split lip on one occasion and a black eye on another. In a household like that, she doubted they’d turn a hair if she complained to them about Brendan.

  ‘Or I could tell my Uncle Michael,’ she said. ‘He’d sort you out if he knew the half of it.’ But she knew that her uncle would do nothing, even if he believed her.

  ‘You stupid bitch!’ Brendan cried, and he leapt over the bed and gave Maeve such a punch that she was knocked off her feet. But she was up again quickly – she had no desire to be kicked senseless – and she tried to protect her face as the blows rained down on her.

  Eventually Brendan stopped laying into her and pulled her hands from her face. She smelt the sour, beery stink of him as he yelled at her, ‘Now do as you’re bloody well told and get me a sodding drink.’

  Maeve was glad to go, glad to get away from the man, but as she filled the kettle, she prayed she had enough gas to boil it and still have some for the morning.

  But when she returned to the bedroom with the mug of tea in her hand, it was to see that Brendan had fallen on to the bed and now lay flat on top of the covers still in his clothes. His eyes were shut and snores were emanating from his open mouth. Maeve sighed in grateful relief and eased herself into the bed beside him, taking great
care not to waken him.

  After that night, he left her alone for a while. However, Maeve knew the situation wouldn’t last. Brendan was essentially a bully, and a bully he’d remain. So when in the middle of March 1939 she missed a period, she knew the time had come to leave.

  First though, Maeve took the children down to the rag market in the Bull Ring and bought them new clothes, for she’d not take them home to her mother in tatters. The clothes she’d bought them when she first started at Mountford’s had been decent underwear to replace the ragged pieces they had, but these new things had to be hidden at Elsie’s to allay Brendan’s suspicions. She also bought them their first sandals and a little grey haversack each to carry their own clothes in.

  Even after her purchases there were over twelve pounds in the tin. The train from New Street would cost a guinea altogether for the two children and one pound one and sixpence for Maeve, and the ferry would cost her fifty shillings and half of that amount each for Kevin and Grace.

  ‘It will be over seven pounds,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s a powerful amount of money.’

  Maeve knew it was and she had yet to price the rail bus – the last leg of her journey home. But whatever it cost, she would pay it. She’d go home and raise her children – including the child as yet unborn – in dignity and free from fear.

  It was hard saying goodbye to the Mountfords, but harder still saying goodbye to Elsie.

  ‘He’ll come round here, you know,’ Maeve said. ‘It’ll be the first place he’ll make for.’

  ‘I’ll just act dumb; it won’t be hard for me to do,’ and Elsie gave a wry smile.

  ‘He’ll know where I’ve gone,’ Maeve said. ‘God, he knows I have nowhere else.’

  ‘Will you tell your uncle?’

  ‘Not before I leave. He sees no harm in Brendan. Not that I’ve told him anything, because his wife, Agnes, is not the understanding type and I didn’t want to be running to him with my problems. If I was to tell him now, he’d probably think we’d just had a wee bit of a row and it only needed him to come and have a wee chat with us both and everything would be all right again.’