Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  ‘That’s in the past, Brendan,’ the priest said. ‘The thing now is to look forward.’ He got to his feet and nodded to the pair of them. ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’ And to Maeve he added, ‘I’ll be around with the money on Friday evening, Maeve.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And, Brendan?’

  ‘I’ll be there, Father,’ Brendan growled. ‘Leave it so.’

  The priest said not another word and Maeve only waited until the door shut after him before beginning to tidy up the table, ignoring Brendan, who still sat there brooding.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you conniving bitch, you have it all your own way.’

  Maeve ignored him and he roared. ‘D’you hear what I say?’

  Her insides jumped with fright, but she answered him steadily, ‘Yes, I hear you. I’m not deaf.’

  Brendan shot up from his chair and, reaching his wife’s side in a second, twisted one of her arms up her back until she cried out with the pain of it. ‘Not deaf?’ he said. ‘Bloody insolent. I’ll show you who’s master here.’

  He thrust Maeve from him as he spoke and she saw him fumbling with the loops on his belt. She cried, ‘You touch me with that and I’ll be off to St Catherine’s in the morning and bring the priest up to you.’

  The punch hit her between the eyes and knocked her off her feet and she stumbled against the hearth and lay against the mantelpiece, trying to pull herself together.

  ‘Bring the priest,’ Brendan sneered. ‘There’s not one man around these doors will blame me for the hiding I’m going to give you. You made a bloody mug of me, working in the corner shop to get the money to leave. I was told after you left me – in fact the whole bloody place knew about it but me. All laughing at me, they were, and you most of all. Well, you won’t have reason to laugh when I’m finished with you.’

  Maeve was more scared than ever. She wasn’t surprised that Brendan had found out about her job once she was away from the place. She’d been surprised it had been kept from him for so long. But as he saw it, she, and indeed all the rest of the women, by keeping quiet about it had been laughing up their sleeves at him and he never could bear being laughed at. She also knew that however good her reasons were for leaving Brendan, every man would agree that a wife couldn’t be allowed to walk out whenever she chose, and any that did should be taught a lesson they’d never forget to discourage others feeling the same way. She knew even if she were to scream blue murder those women would pretend they heard nothing.

  There was no Elsie to save her this time, and Maeve saw with horror the glittering fire in Brendan’s eyes. Violence brought out a frenzied excitement in him and she watched as he slid his belt through the last loop of his trousers and raised it in the air.

  Maeve let out a yelp as the belt cut into her shoulder, and then with a sudden leap she was the other side of the table. The room, as she viewed it through her puffy eyes, refused to stay still, and Brendan appeared to sway in front of her as she spat out, ‘Leave me be. If I lose this baby, I will be along to Father Trelawney so fast my feet won’t touch the floor. I’ve told him I’ll hold him responsible – him and Father O’Brien – and I’ll show them what you’ve done to me.’

  Maeve’s words stayed Brendan’s hand. He’d forgotten she was bloody pregnant again and if he was to beat her as he intended and she lost the child, he knew he’d be in trouble. He dropped his belt and, suddenly lunging forward, he grabbed hold of the front of Maeve’s dress. He pulled her towards him and, slapping her hard on both cheeks, he said menacingly, ‘You won’t be pregnant for ever,’ and he gave her a push so violent that she cracked her head against the wall.

  She watched Brendan snatch his coat from a hook behind the door before leaving, slamming it behind him. She sighed in relief and sank trembling into one of the wooden chairs. Her head swam and her cheeks stung. She could taste blood in her mouth, her shoulder smarted from the lash of the belt, and she felt incredibly weary.

  Her good intentions of cleaning the house as soon as Brendan had gone out were shelved, for she hadn’t the energy. It had taken all her reserves of strength to stand up to her husband, and all she’d achieved was the postponement of the beating she knew she was in line for. God, but she was so scared of the man, and she sank her head into her folded arms on the table and cried her eyes out.

  Two days later, when Elsie and Alf came home from Elsie’s ailing sister’s house, the swelling on Maeve’s cheeks was not so obvious, but the bruising around her eyes and the bluish yellow colouring of them could not be disguised much. Elsie looked at Maeve steadily and said she wanted to bloody well shake her for coming back, and her reaction made Maeve weep afresh. Elsie comforted Maeve and told her she was sorry she’d upset her further and then went on to say that if she was to cry every time someone told her she was crazy in returning to the madman she’d been in such a hurry to leave, she’d spend her whole life in tears.

  Just to have Elsie installed next door again lifted Maeve’s spirits. And they needed lifting, for as well as her problems with Brendan, as the weeks passed she knew, as most of the world did, that war with Germany was almost inevitable.

  Everyone said there would be rationing of foodstuffs to stop the rich stockpiling as they had in the First World War and causing shortages. Maeve said it would matter little to her – rationing or not, she’d live on bread and scrape, and not much of that either. The money Father Trelawney had insisted Brendan deliver to him had done little to ease her poverty. It would clear her tick and buy in a few basics from Mountford’s, and get Brendan’s suit out of the pawnbroker’s. Brendan would take any she had left back off her when he got home from the pub. It did no good for her to protest that the rent man would be along in the morning and some money was needed for the gas meter.

  Elsie said she should put it away in the cash box still in her house on Friday night before he got in, but Maeve was afraid to do that. Brendan knew she’d been given the money by the priest and she was afraid he’d kill her altogether if he couldn’t find any on her, baby or no baby. In the end she was sure she’d have to admit where she’d hidden it and she didn’t want Brendan terrorising Elsie, or finding out about the cash box.

  So some weeks she had to hide from the rent man and often had little money for the gas and even less for coal. She made sure she had a meal for Brendan every evening and the means to cook it, for she was afraid of his temper if she hadn’t anything in.

  But now, realising the circumstances Maeve had lived in ever since she’d returned to Birmingham, Annie had sent money to her daughter. Maeve would have liked to refuse it, but to make such a proud gesture would have meant she lived on fresh air most of the time. Elsie was glad Maeve accepted the money, for despite the swell of her pregnancy, she’d become so thin she was almost scrawny.

  Her uncle didn’t seem to notice much change in Maeve. He came to see her as soon as he found out she was home and said he was delighted she’d seen sense in the end.

  ‘It’s a pity you left the children behind, though, Maeve,’ he said.

  ‘There’s going to be a war, Uncle,’ Maeve pointed out. ‘They’re talking about evacuating the children from the cities anyway. I’d rather mine stay with my parents than strangers I know nothing of.’

  Michael could hardly argue with that, for by the middle of August, as Britain sweltered in a heatwave, preparations for war were all around them. Trenches were dug in parks and railings disappeared. The Government issued corrugated tin structures to those who had gardens to bury them in, and reinforced brick-built shelters surrounded by sandbags for the rest. A total blackout would be in force from 1 September, and Maeve asked Father Trelawney to tell Brendan she needed some extra money to buy material to make blackout curtains. Brendan paid up, as Maeve knew he would, when the priest told him of the two-hundred-pound fine he’d get if he didn’t comply.

  Elsie and Maeve went to the rag market, where the money went further, and Elsie made curtains for both houses on her t
readle sewing machine. They looked horrid drawn across the windows, but far worse were the frightening gas masks everyone was to carry around in little boxes.

  Maeve sat in Elsie’s house on the morning of Sunday, 3 September, with so many of the neighbours clustered around the door had to be left open. They all listened to the proclamation that Britain was at war with Germany and no one was the least bit surprised.

  And then nothing happened – nothing at all. Weeks passed and still nothing. There was no aerial bombardment such as they’d been told to expect, and eventually many mothers who’d agreed to their children being sent away went and brought them back again. People also wondered if the total blackout and the odious gas masks were necessary if no planes were going to fly over the Channel at all. But though they grumbled, most complied with the regulations.

  Bridget Mary Hogan slipped into the world when the war was just six and a half weeks old, with the help of Elsie, and Lizzie Wainwright, the midwife, just before five o’clock on 21 October, puny and undersized in everything but her lungs. She yelled fit to burst at the birth without needing a smack, and Maeve held out her arms for her and was filled with a fierce protective pride.

  She put her to the breast, which she took to immediately, and then the only sound in the room was the baby sucking. Maeve felt the small mouth tugging at her breast and Lizzie Wainwright gave a grim smile and remarked that the babby seemed to know what was what all right. Brendan, when he came home from work that night, was not interested in seeing either his wife or the daughter Elsie informed him Maeve’d given birth to. He waved away the dinner, said he was off to wet the baby’s head, and didn’t come back at all that night.

  Maeve didn’t care. Too buoyed up to sleep, she studied the tiny infant in the long dark hours by the light of a candle, looking for signs of the other two in her features. She decided the baby looked more like Kevin than Grace, but whichever one she resembled, holding Bridget in her arms helped ease the ache she still had in her heart for the children she’d left behind, and she resolved to write to tell Kevin and Grace about their new sister in the morning.

  During Maeve’s lying-in period, Elsie was a tower of strength and cooked nourishing broths to build up Maeve, insisting she have plenty of rest, while she herself took care of the house and did the washing and ironing. She cooked for Brendan too, thinking if she didn’t he might take it out on Maeve.

  Maeve felt well enough to take up the reins of the house again after two weeks. Elsie advised her to take it easy a while longer, for Bridget was a demanding baby and a hungry one. At first, Maeve felt she spent all day feeding her but she always tried to have her fed and asleep by the time Brendan came home so that she could have his tea on the table. She knew he resented the presence of babies and nothing annoyed him more than seeing a child at the breast. Maeve couldn’t understand why. She couldn’t understand much of the way her husband thought, but then she didn’t have to understand it, just live with it for the sake of peace.

  It was when she’d just got out of bed after Bridget’s birth that she noticed how cold the house was. There was a nip in the air and she realised that it was November and somehow she’d have to get some coal in, but how to afford it was the problem. She shivered through two more weeks. Bridget was now four weeks old and each day the weather got colder. Maeve badly needed coal to warm the place. She knew it was no good appealing to the priest. Brendan would promise him all sorts and then not give her a brass halfpenny more. It wasn’t like the business with the blackout curtains, when Brendan gave her the money to avoid a large fine; she had no stick to hold over him like that.

  But still, coal had to be bought or little Bridget would freeze to death. The walls ran with damp as it was. And if the rent wasn’t paid, and something paid off the arrears, they’d be out on their ears and she couldn’t risk that.

  Usually Father Trelawney brought Brendan’s wages around at about seven, giving Maeve time to redeem Brendan’s suit before the pawnshop shut at eight, and get as much food as she could at Mountford’s, as they stayed open until nine or ten on a Friday night. Normally she didn’t see anything of Brendan until much later.

  So that Friday afternoon she went to the coal merchant ‘Could you deliver some sacks of coal to me at about half-seven tonight?’ she asked the man in the yard.

  She saw the amazement on the grimy face of the coal man. She wished she looked more respectable, for she knew she was shabby in her shapeless old coat and second-hand down-at-heel shoes. She had bare legs, despite the coldness of the day, and the hands that pushed Bridget’s dilapidated pram were red raw with the cold. She knew the man would think she had no money to pay him for his coal, as everything about her screamed poverty.

  ‘Why the bloody hell should we deliver coal at that time of night?’ the coal man demanded. ‘It will be dark as pitch, ’specially in the bleeding blackout.’

  ‘I’ll have the money to pay then,’ Maeve said, and added with a sigh, ‘but I won’t have it long. Once my husband is home from the pub, he’ll take any money I have put by for coal.’

  She saw a flicker of understanding flit over the coal man’s face and knew she wasn’t the only woman with a mean, selfish husband. The coal man asked tersely, ‘How many bags?’

  Maeve let out a sigh of relief. ‘Two,’ she said. ‘I have enough to pay for two.’

  ‘Then two it will be,’ said the coal man. ‘I’ll deliver them myself. I’d not trust the young lad; he’d never find the place and probably smash the lorry up too. Come inside and give me your address.’

  The next call Maeve made was to Elsie’s house. She gave her a ten-shilling note. ‘Keep this till tomorrow,’ Maeve said. ‘It’s for the rent and something off the arrears. I’m going to tell Brendan the rent man called this evening.’

  ‘Think he’ll believe it?’

  Maeve shrugged, though her heart thumped in fear. ‘He’ll have to,’ she said, ‘and that’s not all. I’ve ordered coal to be delivered this evening after Father Trelawney has given me my money and before Brendan has time to take it off me.’ She saw the older woman’s eyes widen with shock and said in protest, ‘Elsie, if I hadn’t, the baby would freeze to death.’

  Elsie knew her words were true; she’d taken more than the odd shovel of coal from her own hearth to take the damp chill off Maeve’s house. It had been so cold at times the breath escaped from her mouth in whispery vapour and her teeth had actually chattered. But Elsie also knew the risk Maeve was running, for she’d have little money left for Brendan to take off her that night and she knew he’d be furious.

  ‘I’ll listen out for him coming in,’ she said. ‘Call out if you need me.’

  ‘I will, Elsie, and thanks,’ Maeve said, and grasped the older woman’s hand, so glad she lived just the other side of the paper-thin walls.

  NINE

  Years later Maeve could still remember sitting beside the crackly fire on that fateful night, warm for the first time since she’d left her bed after Bridget’s birth. She’d fed her baby there and then, loath to take her to the freezing bedroom, tucked her into the pram near the fire, knowing she’d need at least one more feed before she went to bed anyway.

  Once Bridget was asleep, she filled the kettle and stuck it on the embers of the fire, because she wanted to save as much gas as possible. She lit the gas mantles, though, for they threw better light around the room than the candles she usually had to resort to.

  She cut herself two slices of bread which she smeared with jam and ate with a cup of tea. She’d had nothing to eat since that morning, when she’d eaten the stale end of a loaf; the rest of the bread she’d given to Brendan for his breakfast, along with the last of the tea too. Without Elsie she’d not have had a hot drink all day either. Really she knew it was no way to eat when she had to feed a child from her own milk. She needed to eat more than bread and scrape and the odd sup of tea to satisfy a baby, especially one with an appetite like Bridget’s.

  She hoped she might be able to hold on t
o the shilling she had hidden in her shoe. But out of what the priest had delivered into her hand that night, what with buying the necessary coal and putting the rent out and something off the arrears, she had a scant three shillings to appease Brendan with and that might not be enough. She was scared every time she thought of what he might do to her because of it.

  She intended still being up when Brendan came in because she always felt more in control in the living room, but she’d have Bridget safely tucked in her cradle in the bedroom first so that she should be safe. She warmed the child’s shawl and cot blankets at the fire so the icy chill of the room wouldn’t matter so much.

  But Maeve’s plans came to nothing, for despite the warmed blankets and shawl, Bridget refused to settle that night after her feed. Desperate to quieten her, for she knew a baby’s cry inflamed Brendan’s temper more than anything, she cuddled her close as she walked the floor, patting her back endlessly. But Bridget continued to be fractious as the alarm clock by Maeve’s side of the bed ticked the minutes away. She tried to calm herself, knowing the fearful tension she was feeling had probably been picked up by her daughter, making her more fretful.

  Eventually the baby stopped drawing up her knees and her howls reduced to hiccupping sobs. Maeve’s teeth chattered in the freezing air of the bedroom. Despite the baby’s body pressed to her breast, her feet were like blocks of ice and she felt the intense cold seeping into her backbone. She thought longingly of the dying fire downstairs and vowed to get warm again before she returned to bed, even if it meant she had to put another few precious nuggets of coal on the embers. Bridget’s cries had lessened to a snuffling whimper and Maeve was gently laying her in the cradle, continuing to pat her back, when suddenly she heard the front door thrust open and she imagined by the resultant crash that Brendan had fallen through it, as he’d done many times before.