Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  But Richard had guessed almost straight away that despite her marriage Maeve had little experience of true lovemaking. There was an unworldliness about her. Knowing that, once he’d known she was as keen for it as he was, for he’d never have forced her, he was determined to make the experience an unforgettable one.

  Despite not loving his wife, Valerie, he’d been extremely fond of her and they’d had an active and very satisfactory love life even before marriage. But with Maeve, lovemaking had a new dimension for him. He was also aware that in her eyes the fact that she’d shown such pleasure would probably make the whole thing even more sinful. And he was right, it did. Suddenly shame, deep shame, filled every part of her being.

  Richard felt bad too; angry for letting himself get so carried away. God, he could offer this woman nothing. Much as he loved her, her children would stand as a barrier between them both, destroying any form of happiness they might have had. But he should say something; he couldn’t just leave her like that. He watched her guiltily getting into her clothes, carefully avoiding his eyes, and knew the depths of her shame. The Catholic Church had done their work well and their teachings went deep. There was no need for her to feel that at all, the fault was his, but Richard knew she’d never believe that.

  But he had to try. He wasn’t given the chance, though, because Maeve forestalled him. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she said in an apologetic voice that was little more than a whisper. ‘I’ve never done that, not in the whole of my life.

  ‘Maeve, Maeve . . .’

  And suddenly Maeve couldn’t take any more. She didn’t want the man anywhere near her, let alone in her house. Dear God, it was hard enough to live with the degradation heaping itself upon her without having him witness to it all. ‘Just go! Get out! Go!’ she cried, her voice rising to a shriek bordering on hysteria.

  Richard knew then the best thing he could do was leave. ‘I just wanted to say I was sorry,’ he said gently.

  ‘Being sorry will change nothing,’ Maeve snapped. ‘Now please just go. I can’t take any more and, for God’s sake, never come back.’

  Richard looked at her, longing to comfort her and knowing he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk it for himself and he doubted Maeve would let him anywhere near her again, and he turned regretfully away. He was bitterly upset that he’d allowed his feelings for Maeve to overwhelm him in that way and so cause pain to the woman he knew now he loved deeply. And Maeve was right, no way could they risk seeing each other again. Because of his actions they could no longer be friends and as he walked away, Richard thought the future looked very bleak.

  Maeve barely waited till the door closed behind him before bolting and locking it and then, having filled every pan and kettle she had, she pulled the bath from the hook at the back of the door.

  Later, in bed, her skin tingling still from the scrubbing she’d given it, she analysed what had happened that night. She recognised that she’d not repulsed the move Richard had made towards her, but welcomed it – returned it. He’d forced her to do nothing against her will. He had in fact transported her to paradise. It was shameful, she was shameful, and it was blatantly obvious she could never see the man again.

  She was unable to sleep and lay waiting for the sky to lighten sufficiently for her to get up and face the day, although she did so with little enthusiasm.

  Elsie, of course, had noticed that Maeve wasn’t right. She’d also noted Richard’s absence all summer and had thought the affair, such as it was, had burnt itself out. She was glad she’d said nothing to Maeve about it. She’d missed Richard’s last visit and so didn’t connect him with the air of gloomy sadness that Maeve was steeped in most days.

  When Maeve, in an attempt to allay any suspicions her friend might have, said she was concerned about a letter she’d received from her mother, Elsie believed her, knowing how Maeve felt about her family. And Maeve was anxious about the letter her mother had sent.

  It had arrived two days after she’d sent Richard packing and it helped take her mind off what had happened between them, the thought of which had been getting between her and her sleep until she feared she’d go mad. The letter had put her problems in perspective somewhat. The first part of it had been puzzling enough.

  Nuala should have taken final vows by now, but she always says she’s not ready. I never thought she was nun material myself, nor your father either, as you know. He told her, and more than once, nuns were unnatural. I sometimes wonder if she’d have made such a stand if he’d not gone on about it so much. You know full well how he can be.

  Maeve did know. She remembered how he’d gone on and on about her leaving home and going to live in England in the first place. His arguments and moodiness had just strengthened her resolve, and indeed that was one of the reasons she’d not fled back home at the first sign of trouble – not wanting to admit he was right. She thought her mother probably had a point. But then the letter went on, more worrying than ever.

  Still, I don’t say anything to him about it, for he’s gone very old-looking lately. I think the farm is getting too much for him, not of course that he’d ever admit it, but it’s wearing him out.

  Maeve didn’t really know what to do about the letter, but in the end she knew she’d have to let Kevin see it. He knew what his grandmother was really saying. They needed him back on the farm and he couldn’t go, even if it meant giving up his inheritance; he couldn’t leave his mother to cope on her own.

  Maeve hadn’t a worry now about having money enough for the coal in the winter, or for the gas meter for the lamps and the stove and that was how Kevin wanted it. He’d bought two paraffin lamps for the attic, as he didn’t like the idea of a candle stuck to a cracked saucer with a dab of wax, and he bought the paraffin for those too. He also made sure the children and his mother were dressed decently and he still brought a basket of food around every Friday afternoon.

  Maeve had been especially grateful for this when the dock workers had gone on strike in June, and food had lain rotting on the quayside until the troops had been called in to shift it. The rations were slashed immediately because of it. Kevin was very good then about getting them a wee bit extra. He knew his mother was more comfortable than she’d been for years, but he couldn’t just leave her to get on with it again. He wrote and told his grandmother how the situation was.

  Grace also knew her mother was worried about the letter and it helped explain the times Maeve snapped at them all or seemed in a dream and even lethargic some days. But there was nothing she could find to account for Richard’s temper and the brusque manner he’d developed seemingly overnight. He was in the shop before her every morning and she left him there at night, and every day he looked worse – hollow-eyed and pale. Grace thought he might be ill, but neither she nor Amy would risk incurring his wrath by asking him if he was all right.

  ‘I think the love affair has ended,’ Amy confided to Grace one day, by way of explanation of Richard’s mood.

  ‘I thought you said that was all over in the summer.’

  ‘I thought it was,’ Amy admitted. ‘He hardly went across the step the whole time and he was certainly edgy, but nothing to the way he is at the moment.’

  Grace felt sorry for him, and wished he could find someone special in his life, but for the time being they all had to live with it.

  And with Maeve, who seemed to be writing or receiving letters from Ireland almost on a daily basis.

  ‘What the hell’s up with Mammy?’ Kevin asked Grace one day in early November.

  ‘It’s this business with Nuala and being so worried about her da and all,’ Grace told him.

  ‘Is that all it is?’ Kevin said. ‘She looks as if she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. She hardly ever smiles, even when the weans do something funny, and I try my damnedest sometimes to cheer her up and she just sits there. I can’t remember the last time I heard her laugh. She didn’t even comment when I brought the paper home with the pictures of the new baby prince in it
.’

  Grace knew exactly what her brother meant. Young Princess Elizabeth had given birth to a son, Charles, on 14 November, and his photograph was all over the newspapers. Even Matthew had said the birth of the child was a good omen, a child of peace, but Maeve didn’t seem interested.

  In fact Maeve was interested in very little because she was intensely unhappy. She couldn’t ever remember feeling as sad, not even when she was going through hell with Brendan. She’d lost the only man she’d ever loved and it was only right. She shouldn’t, couldn’t, go unpunished for what she’d done, but she had no idea having to reject him would hurt so much. It was like a physical pain. Matthew was like a tower of strength to her. He was much quieter than Maeve by nature anyway, and thought it only natural that she didn’t go about laughing and carrying on when she was worried about her family.

  ‘Leave your mammy be,’ he advised the children. ‘She has a lot on her mind just now. She’ll be all right when things are more settled.’

  But soon there was something else to worry Maeve because National Service for young men over eighteen was increased to a year and a half in December. There was still much unrest in the world and Maeve was frightened. Kevin would be eighteen the following year, and would be called up with the rest and she had no desire for him to die in some foreign field somewhere, or any other damned place either.

  ‘Hasn’t there been enough killing already?’ she demanded.

  Matthew knew what was bothering Maeve. ‘It’s all the resettling after the war,’ he assured her. ‘It will have been sorted out well before your son is in the firing range. Don’t worry.’

  She tried not to. Matthew had a calming influence on her and she was very fond of him, and invited him to go with her to Elsie’s house on 31 December, where, along with many neighbours and friends, they welcomed in 1949.

  ‘Four years since the war ended and still rationing goes on,’ Maeve complained to Elsie one day in early spring.

  ‘Aye, we’ve tried the lot now,’ Elsie agreed, ‘horsemeat and whale meat. We’ll be reduced to eating snoek yet.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ Maeve said. The blue fish in cans had been introduced in 1948, but hadn’t proved popular. Maeve couldn’t bring herself to try it. Whale meat had been bad enough, though horsemeat was slightly better if you could forget where it came from.

  ‘What’s the use in talking about it?’ Elsie said. ‘It just makes you bloody depressed.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right,’ Maeve agreed. ‘And I’ve a lot to be thankful for. At least the children are fine and healthy.’

  ‘And how’s Matthew these days?’

  ‘Oh, you know Matthew, he’ll never change,’ Maeve said.

  ‘Are you blind, girl,’ Elsie replied. ‘He has changed this last month or two. He has a fancy for you. Don’t you see it?’

  Maeve looked at Elsie steadily and Elsie realised that Maeve really hadn’t known. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  ‘No I’m not!’ Elsie stated emphatically. ‘Stares you in the face, it does. Surprised you haven’t seen it yourself. D’you think he stays on every evening because your hearth is cosier than his own?’

  ‘No,’ Maeve could have said. ‘He stays because I want him to.’

  After seeing the New Year in together, Maeve thought it daft to be sending Matthew home early each night as though they were schoolchildren. She was in control of her own life and if she wanted Matthew to stay then she would ask him. At least, she thought it might stop her thinking of bloody Richard Prendagast. And he’d been pleased to be asked. Being Matthew, though, the only thing that had bothered him was Maeve’s reputation and only when she assured him it would be fine did he agree to stay, but not very long and not every evening either. He knew, he said, how rumours could spread. Maeve, not knowing how she’d been viewed by the women in the court when Richard used to visit, told him not to be so silly.

  In a way, the women didn’t mind Matthew so much. After all, they said, at least he had a legitimate reason for being there, and then again he was one of their own. ‘Wonder if she’s told him about her fancy man,’ Trudy Gaskins from up the entry said one day and added spitefully, ‘Maybe he needs to know.’

  ‘Not from you, or anyone else either,’ Elsie said firmly. ‘You keep your gob shut, or you’ll have me to reckon with. And that goes for all of you and all,’ she snapped, glaring round the gossiping group. ‘Maeve has had it hard long enough. If you ask me Matthew’s sweet on her and if you spoil it for her and besmirch her name into the bargain, by God you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was going to say owt anyroad,’ Trudy said with an offended sniff.

  ‘Well, make sure you don’t,’ Elsie warned.

  Most of the woman thought much the same as Elsie, because many knew Maeve had gone through the mill one way and another, and yet she wasn’t one for loading her problems on anyone else. Added to that, despite everything, she’d brought her kids up decent. And then look at the way she took in little Angela Bradshaw to stop her being put in an orphanage when she had already plenty on her plate. It was time the woman had a break.

  Meanwhile, Maeve, unaware that she was the subject of gossip, wondered if Elsie was right and Matthew did have a fancy for her. Surely he would have said something about it? Maybe she was too close. She saw him as a friend only and maybe he realised this and so was nervous of broaching the subject, yet Matthew was a man like any other. Perhaps they needed to talk about it. Matthew had to understand his future could not lie with her because she wasn’t free to marry any man.

  She knew things were coming to a head, and when Matthew asked her to go for a walk with him one evening in May, she agreed. She knew the complexion he’d put on her acquiescence but she saw it as her chance to put him right. She had to convince him she saw him only as a friend, thereby setting him free to find someone special to share his life – someone far more deserving than she.

  ‘I can’t be out too long,’ Maeve said, for though Angela and Mary Ann were in bed, she’d left Bridget and Jamie listening to the wireless and Grace immersed in a book.

  It had rained that afternoon and washed the dusty pavements clean, and even the sooty air smelt slightly fresher, Maeve thought as she stepped outside. The heat hadn’t yet gone from the day, but there was a slight breeze blowing, a very pleasant night for a walk, even in the narrow streets. Side by side they strolled all the way down Latimer Street and Grant Street, talking easily as they’d done for the past months. It was just as they turned into Bell Barn Road that Matthew reached for Maeve’s hand. She pulled it away as if she’d been stung.

  ‘Oh no, Matthew,’ she cried.

  Matthew looked at her with slight reproach. ‘I thought you knew how I felt about you, Maeve,’ he said. ‘I care for you and I know you care for me.’ He pulled her gently round to face him and covered her hands with his own.

  ‘I . . . Yes. I do care for you, Matthew, but . . .’

  ‘Maeve, we’re neither of us in the first flush of youth,’ Matthew went on. ‘And I won’t lie to you: I loved my first wife dearly. She was so happy when she was carrying Angela. Now I owe it to her to provide a proper home for our daughter.’

  ‘Is all this just for Angela’s sake?’

  ‘No,’ Matthew protested. ‘I am deeply fond of you. You must know that. My wife is dead and I’ve mourned her for years. Now it’s time to live again.’ He looked into her eyes as he said, ‘I know your marriage was not happy,’ and when Maeve made a movement of protest he went on, ‘Now I’m not speaking out of turn. It’s a well-known fact, and I can understand that you’re not keen to try marriage again. That is why I’ve waited. I’m nothing like Brendan Hogan, Maeve. I’ve a good job, and I’m a steady sort of chap.’ Maeve knew that was true, for almost as soon as Matthew had returned home, he’d got his old job back as a welder at the Midland Radiator Company in Aston Road. ‘Maeve,’ he said, ‘I like my own fireside, and that’s the truth.’

  Maeve looked at Matthew. She kne
w him well and what she liked most about him was his kindliness. It was the first thing she’d noticed when she’d arrived on his doorstep, offering to take care of his daughter. She couldn’t remember ever taking much notice of him before that but she’d been struck that day by his brown eyes, still kind and gentle despite the horrors of war they’d witnessed, and his own devastating tragedy.

  Matthew could be described as wholesome, maybe not the most exciting of men, but dependable, good and honest, and that was why she couldn’t marry him. She’d never imagined getting another proposal of marriage. Matthew had said they were not in the first flush of youth, and they weren’t, but Maeve no longer felt young. Maybe she had years of life still left to her and maybe not. Either way, she’d never considered sharing those years with another man.

  She just wanted to live in peace. She wondered how Matthew would react if she ever told him what she’d done to Brendan. She felt certain he’d want nothing more to do with her. Not that she’d ever do it, of course – she’d never put them all at risk that way. She wished that Matthew hadn’t spoken because now he’d moved their relationship to another plane. When she rejected his offer, she doubted they’d ever be able to return to the easy, companionable friendship they’d enjoyed previously, which had sustained Maeve in so many ways.

  For that reason she spoke gently and with sincere regret. ‘Matthew, I can’t marry you. It’s not that I don’t like you – far from it – but . . .’

  ‘I understand your hesitation,’ Matthew said. ‘And, believe me, I have no desire to rush you. Think carefully, though, of what I have to offer you and your children.’