by Anne Bennett
‘I know Bridget and Jamie will be impressed. Indeed the whole road will be. I don’t think anyone around here has anything so fine,’ Maeve said. She knew she’d have to keep the cases away from Brendan’s probing eyes or he’d insist she pawn them. She couldn’t do that. She guessed for her two older children it would be viewed as a betrayal.
‘Where are they?’ Grace said. ‘The children? I thought you’d bring them.’
They’d thought so too, Maeve remembered. Bridget had turned sullen and Jamie mutinous when Maeve told them they were to stay with Elsie. She’d ignored their unhappy, angry faces, glad of the gurgling baby who didn’t know what an important day it was. She’d wanted the time alone with Kevin and Grace, to welcome them properly and say what was in her heart. But it had all gone terribly wrong and she wished she had brought the children with her now. Bridget, after a few shy moments, would be asking them questions and Jamie, who’d never had a shy bone in his body, would be full of life. He’d have loved the station, the bustle and rush of it and she knew he’d have been entranced by the big steam engines.
‘I left them with Elsie,’ she said in answer to Grace. ‘You mind Elsie?’ And without waiting for a reply went on, ‘Come on now. Let’s away home.’ She picked up a case in each hand.
‘Leave them, Mammy,’ Kevin said firmly. ‘I’ll carry them. They’re too heavy for you.’
Maeve looked at her son. She’d hauled big bags of shopping home, carried buckets of coal, manhandled sheets from the copper in the brew house and big kettles of water for bath night on Saturday evenings before the fire. Never had she been helped in these tasks and never had she expected any help. ‘They’re not too bad,’ she said.
‘Bad enough,’ Kevin said. ‘I’ll carry them. I’m stronger than you.’
There was no denying that, and Maeve relinquished the cases to Kevin, who lifted them with ease. She led the way from the station.
As they emerged from the entrance, Grace and Kevin thought they’d never before heard such noise nor seen so many people. Belfast had been busy, but they’d seen little of it, and this was different. There were crowds of people on the streets and more cars, lorries and vans on the road than they’d ever seen, vying with large buses and clanking trams. Grace glanced at her brother. She didn’t think either of them would ever get used to the place.
In the tram they looked out of the windows and were staggered at the bomb damage they saw. They’d known about the raids, listening to the wireless that their granddad had bought especially to keep up with the war news. They’d been nervous and frightened when they heard of any that had centred around Birmingham and were always glad to get a letter from their mother afterwards to show she was alive and well, but they had not been prepared for so much destruction.
When they left the tram to walk to their house, they saw that whole streets had disappeared and it had a sobering effect on both of them. They knew from the damage they saw around them how much the area had suffered, and could imagine how difficult and often terrifying it must have been for everyone. Grace felt almost guilty that she and Kevin had been safe while others had suffered so much.
They all turned down the entry to the courtyard and Maeve opened Elsie’s door without knocking. Kevin and Grace did remember Elsie and also knew how much they and their mother owed to her. She’d always been there when things were bad, and had taken care of them when their mother couldn’t, like when she lost a baby one time. Kevin couldn’t remember much about it except for the severe beating that, in the end, had rendered him unconscious.
He had no memory of Elsie coming in, or his mother going to hospital, but he’d come round in a soft bed in Elsie’s house and she’d been putting soothing ointment on his back. Both he and Grace had been kept away from school, he remembered – Kevin, because he hadn’t been fit to go, and Grace in case she should say something about what had happened at home. The doctor had come a couple of times and had given Elsie ointment for Kevin’s back. The doctor had talked in a grave voice about infection and Elsie had got all het up and talked about something called Welfare, which she’d seemed scared of.
But all that was over, Kevin told himself. There was no need for Elsie to try to protect them all now, for he would, at least until the time he returned to Ireland. Many times as a child growing up and seeing the brute his father had turned into, he’d wished he could grow quickly and be able to stand up to him. Well, now he had and he’d better watch out.
Elsie hadn’t changed much from Kevin and Grace’s memory of her. Her grey hair was still frizzed up in tight curls and she still had little pouches of skin beneath her warm brown eyes. The crinkle lines to the sides of her nose were deeper and pulled at the sides of her mouth, and the skin round her neck had more folds in it than they remembered. The apron the children had seldom seen Elsie without encircled her waist over a flowered dress that looked far better than their mother’s, the children noticed, and on her feet were soft slippers.
Her smile was as broad and genuine as ever and the light danced in her eyes as she surveyed the children with delight. ‘Will you let me look at you?’ she cried, hugging them both to her. ‘My, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’
Maeve, watching her, wondered why she herself couldn’t have been so natural.
But if Kevin and Grace had been pleased to see Elsie, they were appalled by Jamie and Bridget and wee Mary Ann. They didn’t say a word to one another about it, but they had no need. The look that passed between them at the children’s pale pinched faces with their sticklike arms and legs spoke volumes.
They’d been well used to children in Ireland, for their Uncle Thomas and their Aunt Rosemarie had them and they were expected to mind their cousins often, and soon as Grace was of an age she’d always been roped in to mind Rosemarie’s weans in the holidays while she served in the shop.
But neither Grace nor Kevin had seen children as thin and undernourished as their brother and sisters. Mary Ann hadn’t even the dimples in her knees and backs of her hands that Grace had always found so endearing in Rosemarie’s youngest child, Philomena.
But if Grace and Kevin were shocked by the little ones, Jamie was astounded by the size of his big brother and he said in awe, ‘You’re even bigger than our dad.’ Then he looked up at Kevin and added, ‘And I bet you could knock his bloody block off if you wanted.’
‘Jamie, I’ve told you before about bad language,’ said Maeve sternly, though it was difficult to be stern with Kevin, Grace and Elsie trying not very successfully to control their laughter.
‘He’ll hear worse before he’s much older,’ Elsie said, and it sent an echo through Maeve of a similar sentiment expressed by her father in Ireland, and she shivered suddenly.
Maeve watched Kevin holding Jamie’s hand and Grace holding Bridget’s as they went into the house. She hitched Mary Ann higher on her hip and said to her friend, ‘Will you not come in, Elsie? You see how they are with me. It will be better if you’re there.’
‘What do I see but two confused children who need to get to know you all again?’
‘Children! Kevin is almost a man.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ Elsie said. ‘He’s not yet fourteen. He’s still a boy, but in a man’s body. He still needs you and will do for some time, but in a different way from the small child that went away to Ireland.’
Maeve realised Elsie was right. She couldn’t expect to take up the relationship where she’d left it six years before. She had to get to know the personalities that had begun to develop in these adolescent children and go from there.
In the house, Grace had begun unloading the bag her grandma had packed and though Kevin was watching his sister, his thoughts were elsewhere. How the hell could he return to Ireland, even if such a thing were possible, and leave his mother and sisters and brother in such poverty without lifting a finger to help them? It was obvious from a scant look on the shelves that there was little food in the house and the family were evidence to the lack of nourishing food they h
ad. Added to that, they were in rags and the two youngest were barefoot. He’d not worn smart clothes on the farm – they wouldn’t have been practical or comfortable – and he’d always felt happier when he’d changed from his respectable clothes for Mass into those more fitting for farm work, but his everyday garments didn’t hang on him in tatters.
The poverty in this house was so strong, you could almost smell it. Kevin suddenly remembered going to bed with griping hunger pains in his belly and the freezing cold that would seep into his very being so that his fingers and toes and even his backbone would ache with it. Neither the thin inadequate clothes of the day, nor the coats haphazardly arranged over the beds at night had gone even part-way to keeping him warm, and the rattling draughty windows had often been coated with ice by morning.
And all this he’d forgotten. Well fed, well clothed, warm and secure on his grandparents’ farm, he’d put such thoughts behind him. Even when he’d known about his brother and sisters, and seen them from the odd photographs his mother had sent them, never had he given a thought to their welfare. Well, he would now, he decided, even if it meant working in a damned factory. He’d told Grace it would kill him but now he knew it wouldn’t. Not if his wages meant everyone could eat a little better and have warm clothes to wear in the winter and coal for the fire. And no way was his father getting a penny piece off him, he resolved. His money was going to be given to his mother to benefit all of them.
Maeve saw the frown on her son’s face and wondered what he was thinking about so intently. She imagined he was thinking of his home and comparing it unfavourably with the farmhouse they’d left that morning. But the house was the last thought in Kevin’s head except in the way it affected the people who lived in it.
Maeve might have commented on the expression on Kevin’s face, but her attention was then taken by her daughter Grace and the goodies she was spreading out in front of her – delicacies she hadn’t seen for years: rashers of bacon, slices of ham, eggs that had been carefully wrapped in tissue paper and then placed in a tin for safety. There was also barmbrack and soda bread, small tomatoes and butter wrapped in layers of newspaper to keep it from melting.
Maeve felt her mouth watering and tears stung her eyes. Just for once she decided she’d give them a meal to be proud of and now, before Brendan could take it from them.
Never had Bridget, Jamie and Mary Ann had a meal like it, and Maeve hadn’t eaten so well for a long time. She’d forgotten how being properly fed and really full made her feel so optimistic and positive about things.
Maeve wasn’t aware how shocked her older children had been at the appearance of their younger brother and sisters, nor how Kevin’s priorities had changed, but she was grateful for the pleasant conversation around the table. She liked the way both of her elder ones were with the younger ones and how they answered the many questions fired at them by Jamie and the more tentative ones by Bridget. Maeve hoped when Brendan came home he’d be proud of Kevin, who stood so tall and muscular, and his daughter who seemed to be teetering on the edge of womanhood.
By the time he did return, Grace had helped her mother clear away all signs of the meal they’d enjoyed and Kevin had carried the cases upstairs. He stood at the door and regarded the attic which he would share with Bridget, Jamie and Grace. It was a cheerless place, a dim room with little light entering through the grimy window. There was no gaslight in the attic; a stub of a candle was stuck on to a cracked saucer with a wad of wax and he remembered the smell of those candles from when he was a little boy.
Not having gaslight didn’t bother him; they didn’t have it at his granny’s in Ireland. There they had Tilley lamps filled with paraffin. But the bedroom he’d originally shared with Colin was a cheerful place with bright rugs on the floor and colourful bedspreads on the beds. There had been a wardrobe to share between the two of them, with a mirror in the door and a large chest of drawers. And at the table by the bed there was always a jug of water and a bowl.
His new bedroom had bare floorboards and housed two metal-framed beds with two orange boxes beside them for clothes. There was nothing else. He decided to leave his and Grace’s things in the cases. But first he took out his suit, the one he wore for Mass with the pristine white shirt and the striped tie. He was so proud of that dark-blue suit. He’d gone into the town with his grandfather to have it made for him for his Confirmation, and he was glad his grandma had insisted he take some hangers in the case, though he had nowhere to hang the things but a hook on the wall. Then he pushed the cases and bags well underneath the bed, as his mother had told him to, chinking them against the chamber pots.
He’d just done this when he heard the sound of the front door being flung open downstairs. He knew his father was home and he felt his stomach contract. Despite his size and earlier positive thoughts, such deep-seated terror that the man had evoked in him as a small child couldn’t just be wiped out. He knew he’d have to pretend it had, though, if he was to survive here. He squared his shoulders and made his way downstairs.
Brendan stood in the doorway, transfixed by the sight of Grace. She’d been sitting at the table with her mother, drinking tea, but she’d got up at his entrance and he’d read the trepidation in her eyes.
‘Hello, Grace.’
‘Hello, Daddy,’ Grace said, glad that her father seemed so reasonable and normal and not at all drunk.
Her mother crossed the room to stand behind her daughter and Grace was glad of her support. Her limbs still trembled and she told herself to stop being so silly. Her father might have changed, and if he hadn’t, she had and wouldn’t be scared of her own shadow any more like she had as a child.
Behind her, she heard her mother let out a sigh of relief, ‘Come away in, Brendan,’ she said. ‘And see the feast of things my mother has sent from Ireland. I’ll make you a good feed tonight, so I will.’
And Brendan came in and hung up his coat and Maeve closed her eyes and prayed silently, please, please, God, make it go all right tonight.
Kevin opened the door from the stairs and stepped into the room, and Brendan’s mouth dropped open in shock. He hadn’t even had the photographs to prepare him for the way his son had grown and the stunned surprise on Brendan’s face helped to still the panic that had been threatening to overwhelm Kevin at the thought of seeing his father again for the first time in years.
Brendan had been so taken up with Grace’s resemblance to Maeve, he’d not noticed how tall she was, nor how fit and healthy. But Kevin, he saw, despite his tender years, was almost a man, and as he shut the door behind him, Brendan recovered himself slightly. ‘So you’re back then?’
Kevin stared at his father across the room. ‘Aye.’
Brendan remembered when Kevin had been scared shitless of him and with good reason, but the young man in front of him showed no fear. He should have insisted on their return earlier, war or no bloody war. If he had, his bloody son would be quaking in his boots now, not looking at him in that defiant way. He’d have to establish control; he was still the boy’s bloody father and it was time Kevin knew that, so he said, ‘I’ll see about a job for you in the morning. I’ll have a word with the gaffer.’
Kevin couldn’t believe his ears. The man hadn’t been in the house five minutes before telling him he’d sort him out a job. Kevin was no stranger to work and not afraid of it either. He’d only been home a little while when he realised he’d have to stay for some years in order to help his mother. He knew he’d have to get a job, and soon, to contribute to the family’s keep and he couldn’t understand why he was so angry at his father’s words. The point was he supposed he wanted no help from him. Anything obtained by his influence would be tainted, he felt. He knew he had to make his position clear immediately.
He faced his father across the table and said with a note of disdain, ‘No, thanks, I don’t want to work in the brass industry.’ Brendan’s mouth dropped open again. He hadn’t realised how deep his son’s voice would be. In the gruff ‘Aye’, the on
ly other word he said, it hadn’t been apparent, but he was further shocked by Kevin’s words.
‘So, I’ve bred a work-shy brat, have I?’ he sneered.
‘No. You bloody haven’t. I’m not afraid of hard work,’ Kevin burst out. ‘I’ve worked on the farm alongside me grandda since I was nine years old.’
‘“Worked alongside me grandda,”’ Brendan mimicked. ‘Call that work? You don’t know you’re born, boy. When the sweat runs off you so that you could wring out the shirt you’re wearing, and you’re so tired you can barely put one foot in front of the other, you can tell me you know about hard work. And that’s what my son is going to do, because I want that for him and I make the decisions round here.’
‘Not for me you don’t,’ Kevin spat out. ‘Not any more. I’ll get a job, don’t worry, but I’ll choose what it is.’
Maeve wasn’t aware she was holding her breath in fear for her son. Everyone else was absolutely still, Grace chewing her bottom lip in consternation, while Bridget wondered if Kevin knew what he was doing and Jamie looked at the manic light shining in his father’s eyes and trembled for his brother.
‘You bloody upstart!’ Brendan cried, and sprang across the table and grasped Kevin by the arm, his fingers cutting into his flesh viciously.
‘Get off me,’ Kevin cried, pulling away with force. ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare! You did enough of that in the past.’
‘You’re not too old for a bleeding good hiding.’
‘Ah, but I am, you see,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m no longer the frightened wee boy you used to terrorise and beat half to death, and if you lay a hand on me again, I’ll knock your bloody head off, father or no father.’
‘That’s a fine way to speak to me,’ Brendan blustered, taken aback by Kevin’s words. ‘And in front of your wee brother and sisters too.’
‘It’s the only way to talk to a bully,’ Kevin said, and he heard his mother’s sharp intake of breath, but still he continued, ‘And that’s what you are really, a bully. I came back here because I had to, but I won’t be bullied, or harassed, or forced into a job I don’t want. I think it’s better to get that clear, so we know where we stand from the start.’