Mother’s Only Child

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Aye. It’s either the beginning of the end, or one massive defeat.’

  ‘I’ll shoot myself if the Jerries come here,’ one girl declared fiercely.

  ‘Oh, very dramatic,’ another asked. ‘What with? A popgun?’

  ‘That’s defeatist talk, anyway,’ one of the girls shouted from further down the line. ‘I’ll not kill myself. I’d rather stay and fight the buggers.’

  ‘Oh, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Maria said. There was a murmur of agreement.

  However, there was a mood of expectancy that morning.

  Then the supervisor came bustling into the workroom. ‘There’s been an newsflash on the wireless from Reuter’s news agency,’ she announced. ‘It said Allied armies began landing on the coast of France this morning.’

  There was a collective sigh around the workroom.

  ‘So now we know,’ said Joanne. ‘But this is just the start of it.’

  ‘Aye,’ another put in, ‘they were in France before and look what happened.’

  ‘If they are routed this time, we’ve had it, the lot of us.’

  ‘Huh, I’ll say,’ Joanne replied. ‘I haven’t terrific confidence in the Home Guard to protect us all.’

  ‘Who would have?’ said another. ‘What are they but a bunch of the old, very young, infirm and totally bloody useless, standing guarding the coastline against those goose-stepping bastards that have overrun most of Europe and seemingly without much effort?’

  ‘People say their guns are from the First World War. How efficient will they be?’

  Joanne laughed. ‘Likely more efficient than the broom handles they trained with at first.’ The memory of oddly assorted men training with such serious faces with broom handles over their shoulders caused laughter to ripple around the workroom.

  Feeling the chatter had gone on long enough, the supervisor said, ‘Now come on, girls, the war is not over yet and uniforms will still be needed, so can we please get back to work?’

  Some moaned and Joanne gave such a grimace at the supervisor behind her back; Maria bit on her lip and shook her head in mock disapproval. However, most knew that the supervisor had a point and they settled down industriously.

  Knowing the importance of the invasion, which everyone knew now as D-Day or Operation Overlord, Maria began buying a paper on the way home from work each evening. She read almost in disbelief at what was found at the concentration camps of Treblinka and Maidanek in Poland, which were liberated by the Red Army as they drove the Germans back. There were pictures in the paper of the skeletal survivors and the mounds where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bodies had been tipped into pits.

  Those pictures, and what the survivors said about conditions at the camps, shocked the rest of the world, especially when the Red Army said they believed that those camps were just the tip of a very big iceberg.

  Throughout Europe, the Allies’ advance went on liberating towns and cities, while the Red Army was advancing from the north. At last, the Heavy Tank Regiment from Derry came home. They had been away for four years, serving in North Africa. Maria’s factory, like many others, allowed the workers time off to cheer the lads as the ship came in to dock.

  Many of the ships and factories were blowing their hooters, the place was thronged with people, and the town band was playing to welcome the boys home. As they disembarked, Maria saw their loved ones scanning the soldiers’ faces for the one they were waiting for, and then the families would be reunited. They embraced and kissed, some laughing while others sobbed in relief. Maria felt a lump rise in her throat.

  ‘This might be the last Christmas with the world at war,’ she said to Bella later. ‘Just think on that.’

  ‘Won’t that affect your job?’

  Maria shrugged. ‘Maybe, but, you know, there have been too many deaths, too much tragedy and destruction for me to wish the war to go on for one day, one hour longer than necessary.’

  She knew the end of the war would affect Barney too. In fact she knew it must be affecting him already, as there were very few ships in the Derry docks now. The poker schools must be getting sparse, for Barney now was usually back home in the early hours, and she would often hear him get into bed. He wasn’t as rough as he once had been and if he reached out for her, she would submit to him without protest, often enjoying it too.

  However, afterwards she would frequently lie awake worrying about what sort of a job Barney could do once the war was over.

  As Barney and Maria sat before the fire one evening the following March, Maria, nearly bursting with excitement, told Barney that she was pregnant at long last. After the last time, she had waited four months before saying anything, but guessing that Barney didn’t long for a child as she did, she watched his face as he digested the news, trying to judge his reaction.

  Barney didn’t know how to react. His initial feeling was one of rejection. He didn’t really want a child at all, but if one was on the way that was that. It would be a son, he was sure, and to have a son he could be proud of and who would carry on the family name wasn’t a totally bad thing.

  He said nothing to Maria, but instead crossed the room and said to Sam, ‘Hear that, Sam. A proper reason to celebrate. Maria is pregnant and you are going to be a granddaddy.’

  Maria released the breath she had been holding. It was going to be all right; he really sounded quite pleased.

  Sam’s rheumy eyes filled with tears as they sought his daughter’s and Barney hauled him further up in the bed. ‘Come on, you old sod,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a time for tears, this is a time to celebrate.’ He placed a full glass of whiskey in Sam’s hand and poured another for himself before crossing back to the settee where Maria sat knitting.

  ‘You’ll need extra money,’ he said. ‘There will be things to buy.’

  ‘Not yet awhile,’ Maria protested.

  ‘Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,’ Barney said. He pulled a wad of notes from his pocket and began peeling pounds off, which he offered to Maria.

  She stared at the money, aghast, and made no move to take it. ‘Where did you get that sort of money?’ she hissed in a whisper lest her father should hear.

  ‘You know what I do,’ Barney said. ‘But you always said you don’t want any details,’

  ‘I know, but there aren’t many card schools now—there can’t be. There’s hardly any ships left. You mean to tell me you can earn that kind of money smuggling things back and forth across the border?’

  ‘Smuggling is very lucrative,’ Barney said, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t do it. And when we do get a poker school going it runs for hours. Go on, take it, and get some things for the child.’

  Maria was loath to touch the money. She knew that if it had been earned honestly and legally she would have taken it with joy.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Barney demanded.

  ‘I am pleased, Barney it’s just…‘

  But then she thought, wasn’t she being some kind of hypocrite? She did know what Barney did and took some of his ill-gained money every week to buy food at the shop and run the house. Why was this any different?

  ‘I’m sorry, Barney,’ she said. ‘I am pleased really. I was being silly.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said. ‘And don’t stint. Nothing is too good for my son and heir.’

  Maria didn’t bother telling him it might be a girl. They’d know the sex of the child soon enough and, boy or girl, they’d have no choice—Barney like everyone else.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Suddenly, the war was over. Hitler’s death had been announced on German radio on 1 May as one of the casualties of the bombing of Berlin. However, the Soviet Army, who entered Berlin on 2 May, were told that Hitler had shot himself in his private bunker on 30 April; as if anyone cared, the man was dead, that’s all that mattered, that and the final surrender of Germany on the seventh.

  The following day was a national holiday in Britain and the sounds of revellery from Derry and the surroundin
g district could be heard across Lough Foyle. Maria had seen the joy, mixed with relief, on the women’s faces in the factory the day that the war was officially over. Many had loved ones in the thick of the fighting and she didn’t blame them one bit for letting their hair down.

  Barney, however, viewed the ending of the war with a stab of dismay for he could see his way of life crumbling before his eyes.

  ‘What if rationing ends too now that the war is officially over?’ he asked Seamus in late June.

  ‘Oh, I think it will go on for a fair bit yet,’ Seamus said.

  ‘Aye, but even so, we won’t make much of a living on just that alone.’

  ‘You were glad enough of it at the beginning,’ Seamus reminded him.

  ‘Aye, but I’ll have a son to provide for soon,’ Barney said. ‘I need real money. The last raids we have carried out haven’t yielded that much cash.’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Seamus said. ‘I had to nearly twist your arm off in the beginning for you to even drive the car. If you want real money, then we need to hightail it to Dublin. P.J. was telling me—’

  ‘I can’t leave the old man,’ Barney said. ‘You know that. Anyway, I could hardly drag Maria down to Dublin, the size she is now. We will have to bide here till the baby is born, at least. As for Sam, God know what’s keeping him going, but he can’t last much longer.’

  ‘So that’s that, then, for the time being,’ Seamus said. ‘You’ll just have to be a patient man.’

  Anxious though she was for the birth of the child, Maria left her job at the end of June with some regret, for she’d become good friends with many of the women there, particularly Joanne. She knew she would lose touch with many of them as the factory was running down anyway. It would probably revert to making shirts again, so there would be work for some of the women, but not for all that were employed now.

  ‘Write to me?’ Joanne urged, pressing her address into Maria’s hand. ‘Tell me about the baby and all.’

  ‘I will,’ Maria promised, glad that she would have something to write about.

  Philomena would be pleased about the baby too. Maybe she would see the doubts that she expressed when Maria wrote and told her she was marrying Barney McPhearson were unfounded.

  As the hot days of July rolled one into another Maria found everything an effort. She knew from the letters that Martha, who was also expecting a baby in early August, was feeling in a similar way, especially when the schools closed for the holidays and she had the three children home all day. Maria’s due date was 20 August, and she found in the last few weeks that she didn’t always have the patience to deal with her father, or Barney, who kept on about going to Dublin to live when her daddy should breath his last.

  Once she had so longed to go to Dublin to take her place at the Grafton Academy, but now she had no desire to go to there or anywhere else that they would be in close proximity with Barney’s brother.

  ‘Well, what opportunities are there here?’ Barney demanded. ‘Tell me that?’

  Maria hadn’t an answer. Times were hard for everyone. The lough had been and still was too polluted for any fish to survive in it and the boats weren’t strong enough to set out on the open sea.

  ‘The bottom’s dropped out of the market anyway for the small fisherman,’ a man remarked in the shop one day, when Maria was in getting groceries.

  ‘My man said you can’t compete with the big trawlers,’ a woman said in agreement.

  ‘And he’s right. But even if I wanted to return to it, the young don’t want to know,’ the man replied. ‘My young Mikey is not the only one who skedaddled to England in the war. He’s now on the building and has no wish to come back and break his back and risk his life for the pittance we’d get for any fish we might catch.’

  Maria felt sorry for the man and knew he was right. When the war put paid to the fishing, many of the young men left the area, and those who didn’t enlist headed for the Dublin or across the water to England. Precious few had returned.

  Barney wasn’t nearly as flush as Seamus, and so was delighted when he told Barney of a raid planned on a security van the other side of Derry.

  ‘When?’

  ‘August.’

  ‘Maria’s due about the twentieth.’

  ‘This is towards the end of the first week,’ Seamus said. ‘You will be home and dry well before the child is due, with your pockets full of cash. You’ll be able to take us all out and wet the baby’s head good and proper.’ It was an attractive prospect. ‘I don’t have to ask if you are up for it,’ Seamus continued, ‘do I?’

  ‘No, you bloody don’t,’ Barney said. ‘Count me in.’

  On 5 August Maria received a telegram.

  Martha had baby girl. Everything perfect. Calling her Deirdre Maria after Martha’s mother and you my dear. Write later. Love Sean and Martha.

  ‘Any reply?’ the telegraph boy asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Maria and wrote,

  Congratulations to the pair of you. Couldn’t be more delighted. Love Maria and Barney.

  After the boy had left, she hugged the telegram to her in delight. Soon, it would be her turn and she could hardly wait.

  The following day, she was in the shop when Dora came through from their living quarters.

  ‘Come quick and listen,’ she said urgently to the waiting shoppers, and Bella only waited to turn the sign to ‘Closed’ and put the snib on the door before following the others into the room.

  There they heard of the atomic bomb that had landed on a city in Japan called Hiroshima. It had annihilated the place and it was estimated seventy-eight thousand people had died.

  Maria was transfixed with horror. Seventy-eight thousand people! It was hard even to visualise so many. Even Derry, with its influx of servicemen, had never had a quarter that number—and how on God’s earth could all those people be killed by one bomb?

  ‘God Almighty!’ she heard Bella, standing beside her, exclaim. ‘In the blitz of Belfast, over nine hundred were killed in the one night and that was dreadful enough. And they were killed by many bombs falling from waves of planes, attacking them again and again.’

  ‘Well, d’you think it will do any good?’ Dora asked. ‘I mean, will it put an end to the war in Japan? That is the only justifiable reason for dropping such a powerful bomb on civilians.’

  ‘It must,’ Bella said emphatically. ‘No country could stand by and see that destruction, with so many dead, and not surrender.’

  Dora wasn’t so sure. God knew, the Nazis were bad enough, but everyone knew the Japs…well, they weren’t normal. Look at those pilots who’d dive straight at a target and seemingly not giving a minute’s thought to the fact that they would blow themselves up too. How is a country supposed to fight another when its people have a mentality like that?

  Maria went home to tell Barney of the latest developments because he’d been up at the boatyard when she’d left the house and would likely know nothing about it.

  Later, with the meal over and her father tucked up for the night, Maria barely looked up from her darning when Barney lifted his jacket from behind the door.

  ‘You all right?’ Barney asked. ‘You are very quiet.’

  ‘With the news I heard today, I didn’t feel much up to chattering,’ Maria said, gazing up at him.

  ‘Is it just that?’ Barney asked. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky.’

  ‘Barney, all women get weary and fed up in their last few weeks.’

  ‘Shall I ask Bella to sit with you for a bit?’

  ‘No, you will not,’ Maria said. ‘The woman has been on her feet all day and I do not need a nursemaid.’

  ‘If you are sure?’

  ‘I am. Get yourself away if you are going.’

  ‘Aye,’ Barney said. ‘And I’ll likely be late. Don’t wait up.’

  ‘Poker?’ Maria said. ‘There’s not been much of that just lately.’

  ‘Not so many sailors now,’ Barney said with a shrug. ‘But this is a big o
ne. Could go on for hours.’

  Maria sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll likely see you in the morning.’

  Maria decided she’d make a cup of cocoa and go to bed; an early night would do her the world of good. She glanced across at her father, but he was well away in the land of Nod. She poured milk into a small saucepan and set it on the heat.

  It was as she poured the hot milk into the cup that she got a pain that was so severe, she had to feel for the chair and sit down.

  God, that was sharp, she thought. The sooner I get to bed and rest, the better. Obviously tackling that big wash was too much and I’ve strained myself.

  The second pain attacked her as she mounted the stairs and doubled her over. She told herself it couldn’t be the baby, not yet, it was too early. The midwife had told her a woman sometimes had these pains. They were like the body practising.

  She’d reached the bedroom before the third pain attacked her and it caused her to gasp out loud and then gave another gasp, this time with dismay as she felt the waters gush from her and she knew that however early it was, this child was struggling to be born and quickly too. She needed help.

  She struggled as fast as she could down the stairs and although another wave of pain hit her at the doorway, she made no sound, mindful of her sleeping father. Never had the short journey to The Square appeared so long. She pounded the door as another pain doubled her up.

  Bella knew immediately from the pain reflected in Maria’s eyes what was happening.

  She put her coat around Maria’s shoulders as she said, ‘Here, girl, you are shivering like a leaf. Just bide a minute till I send Mammy for Gracie Begley and then I will help you back home and into bed.’

  Gracie Begley had brought nearly all the children in that area into the world and Maria both liked and trusted her. But as they reached the kitchen door she said to Bella, ‘Will you stay too?’

  ‘I will surely,’ Bella said. ‘Barney needs to be informed as well. Where is he, Raffety’s?’