Mother’s Only Child

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Why should I have done that?’ Maria asked. ‘I accepted what you told me in all good faith.’

  ‘Think the Garda will believe that?’

  ‘They won’t have to be told,’ Maria said, ‘for you must give it up.’

  ‘No,’ Barney said.

  ‘You must see it’s wrong,’ Maria said. ‘It can’t go on.’

  ‘Yes it can. As long as the war and rationing goes on, we can make a good living.’

  ‘You could go to prison,’ Maria said. ‘What if I was to shop you?’

  Barney wasn’t worried by that idle threat ‘You’d just be shopping yourself,’ he told her. ‘How d’you think I paid Rafferty for the room we had for the wedding, and the money I put behind the bar so that everyone could have a drink? I also bought a new suit, not to mention the ring. How did you think I did it? Pulled it out of the air? D’you think the guards will believe that you had no knowledge of all this? Fine kettle of fish it would be for your father if we were both locked up, don’t you think?’

  Maria sat on the bed, defeated. She knew the guards might well believe she knew all about the smuggling, even had a hand in it. Then it would be Sam who suffered too. She couldn’t risk that. ‘Can you not give it up for my sake, Barney?’ she pleaded.

  ‘No,’ Barney said. ‘No, I can’t and I don’t want to.’

  ‘And what if you’re caught?’

  ‘I’ll take care I’ll not be.’

  Maria might have argued further, but she heard her father call her. Anyway, what else was there to say? All the important words had been used up and the end result was that Barney would continue this lawless and dangerous practice and drag her into it more and more. There was damned all she could do about it.

  The next morning, Maria was wakened early with backache. Though she tried to go back to sleep, it kept returning to tug at her and she couldn’t seem to be able to get comfortable at all. She lay in bed, wondering if she had strained herself at all. As the hours passed, the pain seemed to move around to Maria’s front and became strong enough to cause her to writhe in the bed. Barney, who’d not reached his bed till the early hours, stirred and muttered at Maria to ‘lie still’.

  She tried, but the pains intensified until they resembled the ones she had each month and she had to draw up her knees to give herself some relief. For the first time she wondered if it were something to do with the baby and, if so, what she should do about it. No one in the village knew she was pregnant.

  The pains became more severe and Maria was very frightened. She tried to wake Barney, but he was deeply asleep and not that keen on being roused. Maria continued to shake him until he opened his bleary eyes.

  ‘Give over! What the hell is the matter with you?’ he said, his voice sluggish with sleep.

  ‘I need Bella. You must fetch Bella,’ Maria said urgently.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just turned half-seven

  ‘Jesus, Maria! Don’t be daft, woman! What do you want Bella for at this hour of the morning?’ he said wearily, his eyes already closing.

  ‘Barney, please. Don’t go back to sleep. I need Bella. I’m in pain, Barney.’

  Barney sighed and opened one eye. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, where the hell do you think?’ Maria snapped in sudden impatience. ‘It could be something happening to the baby, Barney.’

  And then at last he understood. ‘Holy Shit!’ He swung himself out of bed and began pulling on his trousers.

  By the time Bella arrived, leaving Barney downstairs, Maria was crouched beside the bed, holding a towel between her legs. The blood, which had already stained her nightdress, was dripping through her fingers and beginning to pool on the floor.

  ‘I’ll get more towels,’ she said, and soon had Maria back in bed, packed with towels and with a clean nightgown on.

  ‘Do you think me awful?’ Maria asked. ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘Nay, lass,’ Bella said. ‘Human nature what it is, I’m not shocked.’

  ‘He didn’t force me—Barney,’ Maria said, anxious to put the record straight. ‘I mean, I wanted it as much as he did.’

  ‘Hush, Maria,’ Bella said. ‘I don’t need to know these things and I am not apportioning blame here. What matters is you, and the baby that I think you are losing.’

  Maria felt a sudden, sharp sense of loss. She’d not wanted this child at first, seen it as a burden that would bring shame on her. But not now. Now she was married and respectable, everything was different.

  ‘Can’t you do anything?’ she asked.

  Bella shook her head. ‘I doubt it very much. You are losing a lot of blood. Have lost plenty already. Maybe we should have the doctor?’

  ‘Then everyone will know.’

  ‘Doctors can’t tell. They are like priests in that way.’

  ‘People get to know, though,’ Maria said. ‘And I don’t want the doctor looking at me with disgust.’

  ‘Maria, he wouldn’t…‘

  ‘Can’t you stay?’ Maria pleaded. ‘I’m frightened on my own. I know I’m losing it—I knew when I saw the blood—and I am more upset than I can tell you.’

  Maria sounded so sad and forlorn that Bella put her arms around her. ‘I’ll stay with you,’ she said. ‘Till it’s over, I will stay with you.’

  ‘And will you tell Barney what’s happening?’

  ‘Aye, don’t worry, I’ll tell him. I have left him downstairs. This is no place for a man.’

  Bella couldn’t help contrasting Maria’s reaction with Barney’s, which wasn’t so much sorrow as regret that it hadn’t happened a few weeks earlier. Then there would have been no need for a wedding. He would still be footloose and fancy free, and they could have gone on as before.

  Dora, summoned in to help, made breakfast for the men, washed and changed Sam and suggested Barney take him out for a drink as soon as the pubs opened to get them both out of the way. Sam was very agreeable to that and Barney too was glad to get out of the house. Seamus was in the pub and, seeing Sam was talking to friends, Barney and Seamus sat at a quiet table in the corner. Barney told his brother the latest developments.

  ‘Ah Jesus, Barney she’s really potched you,’ Seamus said, his voice sympathetic.

  ‘What you on about?’

  ‘Are you half-witted or what?’ Seamus demanded. ‘There was no baby, you bloody idiot.’

  ‘Course there was.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She said she was in pain, man.’

  ‘That don’t mean nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s it, her monthlies stopped.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Seamus asked. ‘I mean, you are lucky if you get two nights off a week. Do you ever have sex with her when you come in after a job?’

  ‘No, she is always tired and she does get up early.’

  ‘Well, then…‘

  ‘Come on, Seamus,’ Barney protested. ‘When she told me, God, she was real upset and looked like she was scared. And now Bella is up at the house and everything.’

  ‘Look,’ Seamus said, ‘all that proves is that Maria is a bloody good actress. And as for Bella, haven’t the two of them always been as thick as thieves? She’d stick by her. I mean, did either of them mention calling in the doctor?’

  ‘No,’ Barney said, his voice uncertain for the first time. ‘I asked Bella that. I ain’t seen Maria and Bella said that they didn’t think there was any need for a doctor.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet that is just what they thought,’ Seamus said. ‘Still, cheer up, mate, you are not the first this has happened to and you’ll probably not be the last either. At least you got yourself a looker. Mate of mine was done the same way and he beat his wife black and blue when he discovered he’d been duped. She pretended to have a miscarriage as well. I tell you, brother, you can’t be up to the tricks a woman will get up to in order to hook a man. Same again?’ he went on, picking up the glasses.

  Barney just nodded. He couldn’t come to terms
with it, and yet he never doubted Seamus was right. Well, the die was cast now and he was hitched, and for life. While he had no wish to lay a hand on Maria, he knew he would never think of her in the same way again. She must have been laughing up her sleeve at him all the time and now, he thought, the marriage was tainted and spoilt…

  Bella and Dora hadn’t seen Barney so drunk since the wedding and Seamus had had to push Sam home, because Barney had trouble enough putting one foot before the other. Bella was glad that Maria was asleep and unaware of it.

  The baby had come away just an hour or so after Barney left for the pub and been dealt with, and the room cleaned up and tidied. The fact that Bella said the child had been disposed of fuelled Barney’s suspicions still further. There was no baby and never had been. Now he was certain of it.

  He never went near Maria, but ate the meal Bella had prepared and then slept off the beer in a chair in front of the range. When he woke, darkness had descended and a pot of something savoury was simmering on the range. There was no sound in the house other than Sam’s breath rasping in his throat as he slept. Barney lit the lamp and saw the time was nearly six. The pubs would be open soon.

  First, though, he took a few cupfuls of stew out of the pot, ripped a quarter of soda bread from the loaf and wolfed it down, before leaving the house without a word to anyone. Bella, returning, saw that Barney had been home and presumed he had gone out on some errand of Maria’s. She was surprised when Maria said she hadn’t seen him.

  ‘I have just woken though,’ she said. ‘He must have looked in and found me asleep.’

  ‘Well, I hope it isn’t the pub he’s making for this early,’ Bella remarked, ‘for he had a hell of a load on him at lunchtime.’

  ‘Men deal with grief and disappointment in a different way from a woman,’ Maria said. ‘If he got drunk that was probably because he was more upset than he was letting on. He’ll likely be back early tonight and we can talk about it.’

  However, Barney did not put in an appearance. Eventually, Maria, though she was upset with Barney and intended to tell him so when he did arrive home, felt too tired to keep her eyes open any longer. When she woke the following morning, Barney wasn’t in bed beside her and she struggled out of bed, still feeling weak and light-headed, to see if he had slept in one of the other bedrooms. But he wasn’t in the house and she returned to bed concerned as to where he was.

  She mentioned her anxieties to Bella when she came in and Bella told her not to mind about Barney. Wasn’t he a full-grown man, well able to look after himself?

  Barney didn’t arrive home until the afternoon. Again he was so drunk he could barely stand and Maria’s heart sank as she saw him swaying in the doorway.

  ‘How much longer are you going to lounge in bed?’ he demanded.

  Maria was surprised at the question. Bella had said she had lost so much blood she wasn’t to think of getting up for a few days at least, and said she would see to things. She attempted to explain this to Barney, but he cut across her.

  ‘I know what little plan you and Bella have hatched up between you, but you are my wife and I expect you out of that bed and downstairs seeing to things.’

  ‘I’m not feeling so good, Barney.’

  ‘Stop making such a bloody fuss.’

  ‘Barney, I had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Hah, so you say.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind what I mean,’ Barney snarled. ‘I’ve already sent Bella and Dora packing, so you best get out of that bed.’

  Barney drunk was nasty and unpredictable, and so Maria got to her feet holding on to the bed post until the room had stopped spinning. She began to dress, puzzling over his words. What had he meant? Didn’t he believe that she had had a miscarriage, that she’d told him she was pregnant just to trap him into marriage?

  Mother of God, surely Barney didn’t think she would do such a thing? But something had put him in a tear all right. She would have to talk to him, make him see. Not now—there was little point in talking to a drunk man—but certainly at the first opportunity.

  However, Barney refused to discuss anything to do with the ‘so-called miscarriage’, as he put it and over the next few days he was seldom truly sober. Maria felt too weak to try to insist when he was so belligerent all the time. She did try to take him to task about his drinking, but that made him really wild, and it made no difference to what he did anyway.

  In fact, Barney was in a quandary. In the past he had always believed what his brother had said and did what he wanted him to do, but those things Seamus had said about Maria had really upset Barney. Part of his mind wanted to reject them and say she’d do no such a thing, while the other part of his mind was harbouring doubts, disappointment and hurt that she had made a fool of him that way. It was this dilemma that was making him drink so heavily, because there was no one he felt he could discuss it with but his brother, and he always laid the blame firmly on Maria’s shoulders.

  Maria couldn’t seem to shake off the tiredness and lethargy, and knew a lot of it was depression at the way her marriage was turning out. Sometimes she could barely recognise Barney as the man she had married just a short time ago. The closeness between them seemed to have vanished completely, but she never breathed a word of her discontent to a soul, least of all Bella or Dora.

  In a way, she was glad to go back to work and be away from Barney’s brooding presence and ill humour. At work the girls were anxious to hear all about the wedding and Maria told them only the nice things, particularly Joanne, and she showed them all the photographs.

  She also told Joanne about the miscarriage when they were on their own. Joanne seemed to think the few tears she shed were quite normal and she held her tight until she was calmer.

  Barney’s appetite for sex became more voracious than ever because he needed to prove that Maria still loved him. Words, he thought, were cheap. Now, even if he came home in the early hours, he would often wake her and demand sex, despite the fact that she had to be up early for work. These times he was usually rough and unfeeling too, and wouldn’t take the time to put her in the mood, but she would hide her discomfort and soreness and say not a word about it. It certainly wasn’t something she could share with anyone. Anyway, she did so long for a child.

  Maria wasn’t the only one suspicious of what Barney did. Dora too was curious. She was grateful that he continued to look after Sam in the afternoons, freeing her, but she often complained to Bella that he slept all morning long.

  ‘Maria said he has a job delivering to the military,’ Dora said one day. ‘Well, why isn’t he up and at it then?

  ‘Aye,’ Bella said. ‘People in the shop hint at things, I know that. I mean, one thing you can’t stop is people’s tongues and, well, maybe it’s just rumour, but they suggest that this delivery business is not strictly speaking legal. And if that is the case he could be up and at it at the dead of night, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Smuggling, you mean?’

  Bella shrugged. ‘I suppose. But we have no proof about it and it could just be hearsay.’

  ‘Well, whether it is or whether it isn’t, we can do nothing about it,’ Dora said. ‘Not unless we want to risk it rebounding on Maria.’

  ‘I know,’ Bella said. ‘And he is all right with her in other ways, isn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Dora said. ‘But I seldom see them together now. She doesn’t complain, at any rate, and she always has plenty of money to spend.’

  Maria took the money reluctantly now, knowing that, by taking it, she was implicating herself further. It did mean, however, that she was able to put nearly all of her wages in the post office and that gave her a measure of security.

  In March 1943, Sean sold the farm to one of Agatha’s sons. When he went to tell Maria, she knew she would miss him sorely.

  ‘Should I go and see Sarah,’ he asked Maria, ‘and bid her farewell?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘They won’t let you in, Uncle Sean. They don’t
encourage visitors—say it upsets the patients. I went the one time with Bella, but they told us Mammy’s mental balance was precarious, and I didn’t try again.’

  ‘So you haven’t a clue how she is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a word with the doctor chap? Sean suggested. ‘He seemed a good sort the time or two I met him.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ Maria said. ‘I will, Uncle Sean, and maybe I’ll be able to give the news before you leave. You’ve no idea when that will be?’

  ‘No,’ Sean said, ‘although the formalities are all done, so it will be in the next few weeks.’

  Maria asked Dr Shearer if he’d find out how her mother was and really wished afterwards she hadn’t bothered.

  ‘Your mother is not responding to treatment at all,’ the doctor told her. ‘They have tried a variety of methods to help her mental state, but she continues to deteriorate. If you were to see her now it would only upset you. She wouldn’t know you at all and might try to attack you.’

  ‘Attack? Mammy?’

  ‘This is not the mammy you know, Maria, you must remember that,’ the doctor said. ‘She has already attacked the staff quite a number of times and often has to be restrained.’ He didn’t describe the straitjacket. There were some things patients’ families didn’t need to be told.

  ‘I brought her to this,’ Sam said, when the doctor had gone.

  ‘Daddy, we’ve been through this.’

  ‘I’ve been through it too, over and over,’ Sam said. ‘I know I should never have gone to investigate that noise alone. Why in God’s name didn’t I take Con with me?’

  ‘Because you knew Brenda would rip him to bits with her tongue,’ Maria said. She sat up on the bed and picked up one of her father’s wizened hands. ‘It’s easy, Daddy, to be wise after the event,’ she said. ‘Please don’t blame yourself for this.’

  ‘I know what I know,’ Sam said. ‘And where the blame lies. Fetch me a wee drink, Maria, there’s a good girl.’

  In May, about the time Sean was packing up ready to leave, Barney too got a shock. ‘I told you that raid was the first and last,’ he told his brother, Seamus, angrily.