by Anne Bennett
The Hogan children genuinely liked Matthew Bradshaw. They found him patient and, above all, kind. None of them had had much experience of kind men. On those cold blustery evenings, he would spend hours entertaining them playing Ludo or Snakes and Ladders. He knew card tricks too, and his many stories of army life entertained them for hours.
The light of his life though was Angela, who was then just over three years old. Despite her tender years, it didn’t take the child long to see that, though her father liked the others well enough, she was the special one in his life and he would give her anything she asked for.
On fine evenings, once the weather began to improve, he’d often take the two little girls for a walk. Angela liked the company of Mary Ann – they’d become fast friends and she’d go few places without her. When he took them out at weekends, he spoilt them both outrageously. Maeve had taken him to task about it, but Elsie said it was only to be expected. ‘After all,’ she said to Maeve, ‘when he missed so much of Angela’s early childhood, isn’t it natural to be like he is?’
Maeve decided not to worry any more about it. She had no wish to quarrel with Matthew, for she liked him a great deal herself and his company at the table made a welcome change to the weans’ chatter. As Elsie said, ‘Better that way than the other way.’
In mid-March the great thaw began and, although people had looked forward to it, in many ways it was as dangerous as the freezing ice-bound city had been. The melting snow slithered from the roofs of houses and factories alike to lie in sodden grey lumps in streets and courtyards. Eventually it dissolved to dirty, sludgy water that gurgled in gutters not fitted to take such a deluge. Roads were turned into rushing streams and many cellars and houses in that area were flooded.
Elsewhere, rivers burst their banks and homes were destroyed, some villages disappeared altogether. The springtime grain rotted in the fields and it was estimated two million sheep had drowned. Many people had lost everything and had to be rescued themselves from the roofs of their houses, or nearby treetops. Maeve tried to count her blessings – she’d got off lightly compared to some, though water had penetrated the cellar and soaked the coal.
The great mopping-up operation began as the days got warmer. Sometimes there was even a watery sun to be seen in the sky. Children began to play noisy games in the courtyards and streets again, the women watching over them as they gossiped in their doorways.
Everywhere, with the weather so much improved, people began to go out and about, though Grace still stayed in the house in the evenings. Maeve worried about her, but Grace appeared not to care that her two friends had money to go out enjoying themselves.
Whenever Grace met them in the street, or at the shops, they described their nights out at the cinema. They’d enthuse about Laurence Olivier in Henry V, or Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter, and they’d even been to see The Jolson Story, one of the new musicals from America.
And Bernadette Cleary got her wish too, for the dance halls were very popular with the young. ‘But you don’t know how to dance,’ Grace protested.
Bernadette shrugged. ‘You soon pick it up,’ she said. ‘It ain’t fox-trot and waltzes and that now, you know.’
‘No, it’s jitterbugging,’ Ruby put in.
Jitterbugging had been introduced from America, and at first had shocked the regular dancers and those who owned the dance halls. So disturbed were they that some dance halls tried to ban the craze, but those that did soon found their ballrooms half empty. Jitterbugging was what the young wanted, and that’s what they got, dancing to the music of Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington. Music that made you tap your feet.
‘You should come with us, Grace. Have a laugh,’ Bernadette said, though they’d almost given up asking her, for she’d always refused.
Grace would have loved to go dancing, but it cost money and she hadn’t much to spare. She didn’t want her friends to feel sorry for her, so she said she didn’t want to go. In one way she didn’t. She felt that both she and her mother should pay for what they did to Brendan, not be out enjoying themselves as if it didn’t matter.
She wasn’t desperately unhappy, but she was lonely. She had Monday and Wednesday afternoons off and Kevin was also free on Wednesday afternoons. Seeing Grace’s despondency, though not understanding the reason for it, and urged by his mother, Kevin had invited her to town with him and they’d mooched around the Bull Ring together. Grace had enjoyed it, but it had been a strain.
She’d been used to telling Kevin most things and confiding in him if she was worried or anxious. It was a habit she’d fallen into in Ireland, but now there was so much she couldn’t say and it had caused a barrier between them. Kevin was aware of it, and felt saddened that he no longer knew or understood his sister.
Maeve thought she was probably as excited about Bridget’s First Communion in June as the child was herself because she’d missed both Kevin’s and Grace’s and she was determined to enjoy every bit of Bridget’s special day.
Her mother had sent over the dress and veil she’d made for Grace. Bridget had squealed with delight when she’d opened the box and peeled the tissue paper away to reveal the dress. Maeve shook it out, and put it on the hanger she had ready as she watched Bridget’s mouth drop open.
She’d seldom seen, and never worn, anything so lovely. It was shimmering white satin, with a scalloped neckline and puff sleeves and the skirt was full from the waist and held that way with stiff lace underskirts. The top layer of satin was caught up at intervals and secured with bows of satin ribbon, and the veil attached to a coronet decorated with white roses.
‘Oh, Mammy!’ said Bridget.
Maeve felt tears in her eyes as she saw the dress. She had a photograph of Grace wearing it of course, but the photograph hadn’t really done it justice. Maeve knew that with the rationing and shortages in England, Bridget’s dress would be one of the nicest in the church.
‘I’ll wear that one day,’ Mary Ann said to Angela.
‘And me.’
‘No, not you,’ Mary Ann told her. ‘You’re not a Catholic. Only Catholic girls get to wear dresses as nice as that.’
‘Why?’ Angela demanded.
Mary Ann didn’t know, but wasn’t going to admit that. Sometimes she was a bit annoyed with Angela. She had a daddy all of her own and she shared Mary Ann’s mammy. Mary Ann thought she did enough sharing already with Kevin, Grace, Bridget and Jamie and it felt good to get one over on her little friend. ‘It just is,’ she said firmly.
And it was a wonderful day. It answered all Maeve’s prayers and Elsie took photographs of Grace in her finery and then of the whole family. This time, it was Maeve’s turn to send photographs to her mother, rather than the other way round.
It was in late autumn when Grace, who’d never spoken of her days at work, unlike Kevin, who often made the weans laugh as he mimicked the customers, came home with some news about her employer. Despite her initial enthusiasm for Grace to work in the draper’s shop, Maeve had often felt sorry for her daughter, because she’d been none too keen on Miss Overley on the few occasions they’d met. But Grace said she didn’t mind her and always maintained that she was kinder than she looked.
‘Anyway, she’s even better at the moment,’ Grace said as she looked around the table, checking that she had everybody’s attention before dropping her bombshell. ‘It’s probably because her son has come to find her after all these years.’
Maeve stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. Everyone stared at Grace, though the younger ones hadn’t realised the significance of her words.
‘But the woman’s never married, has she?’
‘No, Mammy, she hasn’t.’
Maeve thought of the prim and proper woman with the stiff manner and she said, ‘Grace, are you sure?’
‘Oh aye, Mammy, it’s all come out now,’ Grace assured her. ‘Miss Overley says she doesn’t care about people knowing. She gave him up for adoption. It was a long time ago and he’s oldish, about forty or so I�
�d say. His name is Richard Prendagast,’ she said. ‘He didn’t know he wasn’t the Prendagasts’ son, till his mother, I mean Mrs Prendagast, was dying. Then she confessed it all. Ever since he’s been looking for his real mother.’
‘Ah, Miss Overley must have been frantic, so she must, to have given him away like that,’ Maeve said sympathetically. Since the war, the stigma of having a child out of wedlock had changed somewhat because, after it, more and more girls found themselves in that position. But forty years ago . . .
As far as Maeve understood, the workhouse was usually the only course open to ‘fallen women’. Small wonder her manner was sometimes sharp. Poor woman. How she must have suffered. Maeve shivered. ‘She must have been desperate altogether,’ she said.
‘She said she was,’ Grace told them. ‘And she’d always regretted it after. But she’s like a different person now, Mammy, softer somehow. Her son’s a nice man, he doesn’t blame her or anything. He said he had a good upbringing and he was very fond of his adoptive parents. He feels Miss Overley was brave to have given him up.’
‘Is he married, her son?’
‘He was,’ Grace said. ‘His wife and baby were both killed in an air raid in nineteen forty.’
‘Oh, what a tragedy!’ Maeve cried. ‘This terrible war!’
‘Aye,’ Grace said. ‘I think Mr Prendagast has suffered as much as any, but he’s so kind and thoughtful. He’s got money too. His adoptive parents were quite wealthy and they left him everything, including a large house, which he’s just sold.’
‘And what are his plans now, then?’ Maeve asked.
‘He wants to invest in his mother’s business.’ Grace gave a shrug and went on, ‘She might take some notice of him because at the moment she’s not selling enough to keep the place going. I’ve tried to tell her that she needs to concentrate more on modern stuff, but she’ll never listen. Now the war’s over clothes are bound to be off ration soon and then, unless we stock things people want, they will pass us by and take a tram or a bus into town and buy their clothes from the chain stores, and you can’t blame them.
‘She goes on about how she learnt her trade as a dressmaker’s apprentice, and then started out selling dresses and accessories in a high-class department store,’ Grace said. ‘And how she saved every penny piece to buy her own place. She doesn’t seem to understand that the war has changed how people think and the old-fashioned quality clothing shop will soon be a thing of the past. I’ve told her that people are starved for bright and cheerful clothes, along with pretty and modern underclothes; people even want stylish baby clothes these days.’
‘So how do you know so much?’ Maeve asked, impressed.
‘Because it’s what the people tell me time and again,’ Grace said. ‘I’m the one in the shop, remember. At the moment everyone has only so many points and because of it, clothes have to be multi-functional and style is of less importance. Things are bound to change, and soon. We need to be ready for it, or we’ll miss out. I know how much money Miss Overley takes in that shop in a week. Sometimes I think she’s hard-pressed to pay my wages, let alone buy in new stock.
‘Anyway, Richard Prendagast was a textile designer before the war, shades of his mother, I suppose, so he knows a bit about it and he also knows I’m talking sense. Miss Overley will probably give in to him, for the last thing she wants is for him to go off somewhere else. I mean, she’s only just found him, hasn’t she?’
Maeve tried to imagine just how the old lady must have felt, for she’d felt bad enough when she’d been separated from Kevin and Grace for six long years, and then she’d always known where they were. She’d had letters from them and photographs to show her how they were growing. She didn’t know that she’d have been able to cope if she’d given them away like that. But in those days the poor woman probably had no alternative and she found herself with great respect for Miss Overley and intrigued by her son.
Soon after Grace had dropped her bombshell about her employer, the whole country seemed absorbed with the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Philip Mountbatten. There was great play made of the fact that Princess Elizabeth – like everyone else – was subject to clothes rationing. Few believed it, but when the marriage took place with great ceremony on 20 November, the skirts of the trousseau the princess had chosen were calf-length only. It showed, said the papers, true patriotism and that the people were not alone in their suffering.
And they were suffering, juggling worries over their allotment with decisions over whether it was best to buy much-needed underclothes or essential outer clothes. Maeve fervently hoped that Grace was right and clothes rationing would be finished with soon, for like almost every woman in the land, she was heartily sick of it.
Kevin came round for his dinner the following day. He’d been busy in the shop and the family hadn’t seen much of him for a few days, so he hadn’t heard Grace’s news about her employer. But he had some of his own news concerning the same woman.
Amy Overley went into Moss’s shop at least once a week, and everyone knew Kevin had always found her starchy and unapproachable. But he said he’d been astounded when she’d come into the shop just a couple of days before. Her hair was no longer scraped back so severely, but fluffed a bit at the sides, and her face had lost its pinched grey appearance and seemed fuller, and she certainly looked happier. Kevin said she’d actually smiled at him and he could never remember her doing such a thing before. He could even smell perfume as she leant over the counter.
She’d remarked on the pleasantness of the day while her order had been attended to, something else she’d never done before, and both Kevin and Syd had been flabbergasted when she first enquired after Gwen and then after Kevin’s family. They’d both watched her walk out of the shop with a bounce in her step.
‘Well, what did you make of that?’ Syd asked. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’d been on the bottle.’
‘I’d say it’s amazing the great tonic happiness and contentment is,’ Maeve said and told her son the story Grace had come home with.
‘If you’re right, Mammy, it’s a great shame happiness can’t be bottled,’ Kevin said. ‘Because you’d hardly believe Miss Overley to be the same woman as the one I’ve been serving for months.’
Maeve said nothing, but felt immense sympathy for the woman harbouring such a secret over the years and fearing she’d never see her son again.
TWENTY-TWO
All in all, Maeve was glad to see the back of 1947, but as the winter again began to bite she was nervous, like many more, that they’d suffer in the same way as they had the previous year. While not as harsh as the winter before, it was severe enough and, as Maeve looked out of the window one bleak Friday afternoon in mid-February, she thought it was hard not to be depressed with the freezing, short winter days that meant the gas lamps had to be lit in mid-afternoon.
She gave herself a mental shake and told herself to stop wallowing in self-pity, surely a luxury she couldn’t allow herself. She decided to make herself a reviving cup of tea. Elsie had collected Angela and Mary Ann about half an hour before to ‘help’ her bake and it was a luxury for Maeve to have time on her hands. If she hadn’t, Maeve felt she might have pulverised the pair of them, for the weather had kept them cooped up far too long and they’d both become fractious and bad-tempered.
Maeve was glad of the break. Much as she loved her children, she was looking forward to the girls starting school the following year. Then she’d be able to get a job of some sort and take some of the responsibility from Kevin. She’d barely poured the tea when the door opened and Grace stepped into the room followed by a man Maeve had never seen before.
But though the man was a stranger, Maeve knew immediately who he was. In one glance she’d taken in the clothes that spoke of quality: the thick woollen overcoat and scarf, the tailored trousers and good leather shoes. He removed his trilby hat as the girl began explaining that Richard, Mr Prendagast, had brought her home early and insisted she stay th
ere for a few days because of her bad cold.
Maeve knew all about Grace’s cold and the cough that kept them all awake in the attic. She’d dosed her with linctus – still scarce even now – but when she’d suggested Grace have the day off she’d refused. Maeve knew why. Their finances were still very finely balanced and Grace had a horror of missing time and perhaps losing money through it, or incurring large doctor’s bills.
Maeve ushered them both towards the warmth of the fire, insisting that Richard remove his coat so that he’d see the benefit of it later. In taking it from him, she noticed that, despite his large mouth and decisive chin, he was a very handsome man, with deep chocolate-brown eyes set in a friendly, open face.
Maeve smiled at him and when he returned the smile, his whole face lit up and suddenly Maeve felt weak at the knees. Maeve felt desire course through her that she hadn’t experienced since the early days of her courtship with Brendan. She saw by Richard’s eyes that he’d felt the same pull and it had shaken him too. Maeve turned away and busied herself pouring more tea from the pot for the two of them, while over on the chair by the fire, totally unaware of anything untoward happening between her mother and her boss, Grace went on protesting that she was fine.
‘I told him I was all right, Mammy,’ she croaked, although it was obvious she wasn’t: her voice was husky with a bad throat made sore from coughing, her face flushed, eyes red and her nose blocked.
‘You’re far from all right,’ Richard said firmly. ‘To battle your way through this every day is madness. Anyway, if you don’t want to think of yourself, think of me. I don’t want your germs.’
‘Mammy, tell him. I’m fine.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Maeve said. ‘I told you not to go in today.’