Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  Maeve tried to pull her hands away, but Matthew held on to one and they walked on together. Maeve knew whatever Matthew said she must refuse him. Richard Prendagast had never mentioned marriage to her yet she’d given herself to him and gladly. She’d been absolutely shameless, but she almost welcomed the pain of losing him, which was still with her, as just punishment.

  Matthew was a much more honourable man and she wondered why he didn’t stir her senses like Richard did. But she couldn’t marry him either, and in time she’d make him see that. And if because of it she lost his friendship, then so be it.

  Matthew, aware of the silence between them, suddenly said, ‘I expect you’re wondering why I’ve spoken to you now.’ Without waiting for a reply he went on, ‘It’s been on my mind for some time – a year, maybe longer – but I sensed you weren’t ready. Now I’ve been told I’m in line for a prefab, but a two-bedroom place would be no good for all of us if you and I decide to marry. I have my army gratuity, which I’ve added to over the years, and as I earn a decent wage I could probably afford to buy a house big enough for all of us.’

  A place of her own. It was a dream that Maeve had never allowed to surface. A place with a proper kitchen, a bathroom that had running water, hot as well as cold, a lavatory that wasn’t situated down the yard, electric lights and a garden that was safe for the little ones to play in.

  Suddenly into Maeve’s mind came a picture of their home in Latimer Street and the court and the deprivations of both, and she asked herself if she had the right to condemn her family to spend their childhoods in such a place because of some high moral stance, when someone was able to offer something better.

  She’d killed Brendan and nothing on God’s earth would change that, but should she allow the children to suffer for her crime too? Should she tie Kevin to her for life, to provide for her and look after her and compromise his own life in the process?

  ‘Maeve, can I ask you to please think about my proposal and what it could mean for your family?’ Matthew asked her, suddenly breaking in on her thoughts.

  That at least Maeve could promise to do. ‘Give me a week,’ she asked, ‘to think things over.’

  But before the week was up, Maeve received a letter from her mother. Nuala had finally decided a nun’s life was not for her and left the convent, but was being given a hard time by some of the people in the town. Maeve could imagine that. It would be seen as a disgrace by some to have started any sort of religious life and then to come out of it. Her mother wrote:

  She has a great desire to leave, for a wee while at least. Could she come and stay with you just until she decides what to do with herself?

  Maeve was delighted and excited. Her little sister was coming to stay with her – though Nuala was not little now, of course. She’d be twenty-three, and, Maeve imagined, a little lost and unhappy.

  Well if she was, she’d soon change that, Maeve decided. She wondered whether her sister coming to stay would mean she should decide to turn down Matthew’s proposal. She sought advice from Elsie. Elsie hadn’t been a bit surprised by Maeve’s news of Matthew’s proposal of marriage and thought Maeve should be over the moon.

  ‘Isn’t that what you want, to lift the burden of responsibilities from the shoulders of your two older children?’ she asked, and added, ‘You know Matthew well enough. God, he’s been nearly living in your house anyway since he was demobbed. You know he’ll give you and the children a decent life and lift you all out of this muck hole.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe you said you’d think about it. You need your bleeding head examining, you do really. As for your sister coming over, what difference will it make?’

  ‘I don’t know how she’ll take to the news,’ Maeve said, ‘or any of them, really. He’s not a Catholic, Elsie.’

  ‘I know that, but he’s not the bloody devil incarnate either. Are you waiting for love’s young dream, is that it?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Maeve said. ‘Anyway, I do love Matthew, but I’m not in love with him if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I know what you mean all right, but how are you so sure that you don’t feel that way for Matthew?’

  Because I know what it feels to be in love with someone so that you ache to be with him, Maeve might have said. It’s not a comfortable way to live, but you just can’t help yourself. You long for your lover to touch you all over in places you’d usually be too embarrassed even to talk about. That’s being in love and that’s what I don’t deserve, but though I still feel guilty about thinking of marrying someone as good and kind as Matthew, who I know will be good to me, if I do, everyone will benefit.

  But none of this could Maeve tell Elsie. She’d probably not have listened anyway, because at that moment she was so mad with Maeve for maybe passing up a better life for herself and her children that she wanted to shake her.

  ‘Tell you what, girl,’ Elsie snapped, concern for her friend making her irritable. ‘Would you fall on his neck with gratitude if he told you he was going to keep you short of cash each week, come home drunk every night and beat you senseless now and again to keep you in line, like?’

  ‘Elsie, don’t be daft,’ Maeve said, but a tentative smile played around her lips. ‘I take it, then, you think I should say yes?’

  ‘I don’t know why you even said you’d have to think about it.’

  And Maeve knew Elsie was right. She’d been wrong to hesitate. She’d tell Matthew as soon as possible that she’d be pleased to marry him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Maeve went to meet her nervous, apprehensive sister at New Street station just three days later. Nuala fervently hoped that Maeve wouldn’t ask for explanations of why she’d left the convent, for she had none. She’d been sure at the time she entered that she had a vocation. Certainly that was what had given her the strength to hold out against her father’s ravings and her mother’s quiet resignation and become a postulant.

  She didn’t know what had caused dissatisfaction to creep in. She’d prayed devoutly for her vocation to return as fervently as it had been before and eventually asked for an appointment with the Reverend Mother. The older nun didn’t know what ailed Nuala either, but she felt that nothing would be gained by keeping her there when she was full of doubt that she could devote her entire life to God.

  ‘Go home for a wee while,’ she suggested. ‘Wait on the Lord. He will speak to you, if you open your heart to listen.’

  And God might have tried, but Nuala was unable to hear anything. All she heard and felt was the condemnation of the townspeople. ‘Thought herself above us.’ ‘Vocation my foot!’ ‘Sent home in disgrace, she was.’ Nuala didn’t have to hear their words to know what people thought. She saw it in the whispered conversations and the nudges in her direction, and the disdainful looks they cast her way. She saw it in the set of people’s heads, or the way their lips pursed, and in those that ignored her altogether.

  Annie hadn’t wanted her daughter to enter the convent in the first place, but was nevertheless confused by her decision to leave.

  ‘What went wrong, pet?’ she’d asked, and Nuala had shaken her head helplessly.

  ‘I don’t know, Mammy.’

  ‘Will you leave the cutie alone?’ Thomas had burst out. He, for one, was glad his daughter had left that unnatural shower up at the convent. ‘She’s seen sense at last, and come home, and that’s all there is to it,’ he’d roared at them all.

  No one had argued with him, not then and certainly not two days later when he’d come in from the fields with a grey face, complaining of a tightening in his chest and tingling in his left arm.

  Nuala couldn’t help feeling she was partly to blame for the heart attack. The doctor had told her it was nothing to do with her.

  ‘Done too much,’ he’d said. ‘Told him about it, but he’s a stubborn old fool.’ He’d told Thomas to see it as a warning and packed him off to the hospital for a few days, and it had pained Nuala to see him there so wan, and his brown, mott
led and misshapen hands looking so odd against the white bedspread.

  ‘Don’t you worry about any of it,’ he’d told Nuala. ‘I’ll soon be back in harness.’

  But both Nuala and her mother knew he wouldn’t be.

  This was the tale Nuala related to Maeve and her family that first night of her stay. Matthew had left early, sensing the family needed to be alone together. Mary Ann and Angela had been dispatched reluctantly to bed, but as it was an occasion, Jamie and Bridget were allowed to stay up. Kevin had come over to see his aunt, and hear the news, though it was not at all good.

  ‘He wasn’t even ill. That’s why it was such a shock,’ Nuala said. ‘Two of the men working for Tom are seeing to the place and Tom says they can stay till Daddy’s more himself and then decide what’s to be done.’

  Kevin felt torn in two. He knew what Nuala was saying as clearly as if she’d spelt it out in letters six foot high. He needed to go back and claim his inheritance and take the heavier work from his grandfather’s shoulders. He knew his grandfather would never sell. Instead he would soldier on for as long as he could, but the next heart attack could kill him. But what of his mother? How could she cope without him and his money? And how could he just desert the Mosses after all they’d done for him? But he couldn’t do anything.

  He swallowed hard and said, ‘Mammy, I must go over there and see for myself.’

  ‘No!’ Jamie cried. He’d hated the idea of Kevin moving out of the house to live above the shop and still missed him greatly, but the North of Ireland seemed like the end of the world.

  ‘I’ve got to,’ Kevin said, ignoring his young brother. ‘The farm will be mine one day.’

  ‘Yours?’ Maeve cried.

  ‘Aye. Grandda is willing it to me.’

  Maeve’s eyes opened wider. Kevin had never said. He’d never let a whisper of it pass his lips for fear his father should get wind of it. Maeve knew he wanted to go back, but had assumed it was only because he enjoyed the life.

  ‘Did you know this?’ she asked Nuala.

  ‘Oh, aye. Everyone knows it,’ Nuala said. ‘Daddy always said Kevin was the only one, apart from Tom, with a feel for the place.’

  Grace said nothing. Besides Nuala, she was the only one there who had known all the time about Kevin’s inheritance and she was jealous of it, jealous of the life he would have because of it.

  ‘What about Mammy?’ she burst out, her voice high and troubled. ‘You can’t just up and leave Mammy.’

  But Maeve knew, however hard it was, she had to let Kevin go, for if she didn’t, and anything happened to her father, she’d never forgive herself. God in heaven, then there would be two men’s deaths laid at her door.

  She wished Matthew was beside her as she said to her two older children, ‘Don’t worry about me, either of you. Kevin, you have my blessing to go back to Ireland. The only regret I have is that I’ll not be with you. We’ll manage fine without the money you’ve given me over the years. The need for it is almost at an end anyway, because I’m getting married to Matthew.’

  The children gazed at her open-mouthed. Only Nuala, strangely, was not totally surprised, because she’d seen Matthew and Maeve together before he’d left that evening. She’d sensed their closeness and seen the looks that passed between them and she’d felt happy for her sister.

  ‘Mammy, you can’t,’ Grace said in an agonised whisper.

  Maeve glanced at Grace and wished with all her heart she’d taken her to one side and told her about her and Matthew quietly, for she saw the girl was shocked. She’d agreed with Matthew to leave the announcement of their wedding plans till Nuala was over and settled in, but she realised she should have given a thought to how Grace would react.

  Grace was shocked, dreadfully shocked. She’d never thought for a moment her mother would marry again and, after all, she was old. Matthew was too. There had been no clue; she’d never seen them even holding hands, never mind kissing. If she had she’d have told her mother straight out that it wasn’t right. She must see that.

  But she wasn’t able to say anything, not now and in front of everyone. Anyway, the younger children, though they’d been surprised by the news at first, began firing questions at their mother.

  ‘Not now,’ Maeve said, cutting off their chatter. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later. We haven’t set a date yet, but when we are married, we’ll be moving from here. Matthew has enough saved and earns enough to probably enable us to buy a wee house of our own. So, you see, it’s good news for us all.’

  ‘Can we tell Mary Ann and Angie?’ Bridget asked.

  ‘Not yet awhile,’ Maeve said. ‘Keep it to yourselves. There’s no secret about it, but I shouldn’t have said anything really without Matthew being here. I just did it to put Kevin’s mind at rest. Matthew might want to prepare Angela. And,’ she added, ‘it’s really time you were both in bed.’

  But before Jamie obeyed his mother he turned to Kevin. ‘Are you going to live back in Ireland, then?’

  Kevin shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he really didn’t. He saw his little brother’s eyes swim with tears and he felt for him. He drew Jamie towards him and promised, ‘If I stay there, Jamie, then next year you can all come and visit and stay for the whole of the summer.’

  To Jamie, the following summer was aeons away, but he didn’t bother protesting further. He knew there was no point once grown-ups decided things, and he turned away so that no one should see the tears that trickled down his cheeks, and made for the stairs after his sister.

  ‘I don’t know what to do about the Mosses, Mammy,’ Kevin said as his brother and sister disappeared up the stairs. ‘They’ve been good to me, good to us all. It’s like slapping them in the face to leave them now.’

  ‘You gave them no indication you might?’

  ‘No, Mammy,’ Kevin said. ‘I didn’t think I would have to – well, not for years – I mean I never thought of you getting married, and with the others all so little I thought I was set here for years.’

  ‘Mammy can’t marry,’ Grace insisted. ‘She knows she can’t.’ Kevin looked at his sister. Didn’t the little fool realise that her mother’s marriage was her passport to freedom? Kevin liked Matthew – it would be hard not to like him. But even if he’d hated his guts, he’d have tried to be pleased for his mother. He believed that Matthew would treat his mother properly and he couldn’t understand how Grace could be so selfish.

  Kevin got to his feet. He’d like to give his sister a piece of his mind, but not now, not on Nuala’s first night here. But if he didn’t get off now, he’d say something sharp to her, for her whole attitude was annoying him. His movement drew his mother and Nuala’s eyes from Grace.

  ‘Are you away?’ Maeve asked.

  ‘Aye, Mammy. I want to get back and talk to the Mosses before it gets too late. I think the sooner they know, the better.’

  ‘What do you think they’ll do?’

  Kevin shrugged. ‘Get someone else, I suppose.’

  And what if he gets to Ireland and finds Daddy too ill and old to help him? Maeve thought. Will he stubbornly stick to it, even if it means him grubbing along to make a living – and not just for himself, but his grandparents too? Will he let the worry of it all put years on him, or will he realise if it’s too much for him and come home only to join the dole queue because he’s given up the job at the shop that has kept us from starving many a time?

  Maeve suddenly knew what she must do.

  Kevin was nearly at the door, when she said, ‘Kevin, I could take on your job while you’re gone. If Syd and Gwen, agree, that is.’

  ‘You, Mammy?’ Kevin’s voice was high with surprise. ‘Haven’t you enough to do here? Anyway, what about Matthew?’

  ‘Hear me out, son,’ Maeve said. ‘I’m not talking about for ever. Why don’t you go over to Ireland and see how things really are? If it doesn’t work out, if you feel you can’t run the farm yourself with Daddy as he is, then so be it, and when you come bac
k I’ll step aside for you.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mammy,’ Kevin said, shaking his head. ‘It’s long hours and often there’s heavy lifting to be done. Anyway, there’s no doubt about the farm. It’s mine, or will be mine. I will work it with Grandda or without him.’

  ‘Kevin, it’s not that easy. Whatever your grandda wanted, his illness might have changed all that,’ Maeve said. ‘The place may have to be sold so that they can buy somewhere more suitable for themselves, d’you see?’

  Kevin’s mouth was set, his lip stuck out, and he almost looked the image of his despised father. But though there was no savagery behind his eyes, there was determination and Maeve knew he had no intention of selling the farm if he had any say in the matter.

  She said, ‘Go for a month first, son. I’ll hold the fort here. I know what I’d be taking on. Didn’t I work in Mountford’s before the war? Then, if after a month, you decide to stay in Donegal, I’ll stay on at the Mosses while they look round for someone to take the job on permanently.’

  Nuala had been listening to her sister and knew her advice to Kevin had been sound. He’d written and told the family how much he enjoyed the work in the shop. She thought it would be stupid of him to burn his boats totally until he was sure what he wanted out of life and here was Maeve holding out a lifeline to him. ‘Your mother’s right, Kevin,’ she said. ‘I’ll be here to see to things for a while at home, if she takes over your job.’

  ‘And what will Matthew say?’

  ‘He’ll see the good sense of it,’ Maeve said confidently. ‘And it won’t affect him, will it? I’m sure Nuala will cook him a meal the same as I do and neither of us is wanting to rush into marriage.’

  There it was again, Grace thought, that reference to marriage. Surely her mother could see it was wrong? How could she go on as if nothing had happened when Brendan died and plan to marry someone else, anybody else?

  She heard her brother promising he’d put the idea of Maeve taking his job to the Mosses that evening. Grace didn’t say goodbye. She was glad to see him go because she knew she had to speak to her mother about the night her father was killed, and Kevin mustn’t ever know the truth about that.