by Anne Bennett
‘I meant a note of support for Gloria.’
‘Joe’s wife is of no interest to me,’ Biddy said. ‘It was because of her that he didn’t come home here to Buncrana where he belonged when he left America.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ Tom said. ‘He told me himself he likes city life. He isn’t that keen on farming. You must know that. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, you know.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ Biddy snapped. ‘He was born and bred to this life. He would soon have settled down to it again. I know whose fault it was they went to live in London, and it wasn’t Joe’s. It was all the fault of that American wife of his, and I will never forgive her for it.’
TWENTY-FIVE
By the end of April, Derry was reputed to be full of Yanks. ‘Oversexed, overpaid and over here’ they were widely dubbed.
‘People say those camps have been there all the time,’ said Jack, as he and Tom made their way to the pub one Sunday evening. ‘Only the soldiers wore British uniforms then. Disguise, I suppose.’
‘Aye, but sure they would only have to open their mouths for people to know it was all so much eyewash.’
‘Probably didn’t allow people that close,’ Jack said.
‘So how do they know, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jack admitted as they reached the doors of the pub. ‘How do people get to know anything anyway? They just do, that’s all.’
Tom hadn’t time to reply because as soon as the regulars saw him they wanted to know how Joe was. Remembering the send-off he’d been given when he went to America, Tom hadn’t been surprised at the popularity of his younger brother even now.
The point was, Joe was a fighter. He had survived the series of operations to repair his damaged spleen, kidneys and liver, and to restore his shattered ribs, and had even overcome the subsequent infection and fever that threatened to kill him. Gloria had told Tom this much. She also said that Joe now faced some weeks of painful skin grafting.
Tom had great admiration for Gloria and how well she was coping with everything, for she had written to him often when Joe had been too ill to write himself, and he had got to know her quite well. He asked after the boy, Ben, from the beginning, aware that, as the child was no baby, he had probably been worried to death about his father.
It would do him no harm, he thought, to know he had a caring uncle not that far away. He knew that sweets were rationed in England, for Joe had mentioned the rationing in an earlier letter, and so he made a parcel up for Ben and in it he put sweets and chocolates and a couple of comics. The child had been delighted and wrote such a lovely thank you letter back that Tom did the same thing every week or two.
Gloria was grateful for the things he sent to Ben, and for his interest in them generally, because she often felt very isolated. She had expected Joe’s mother to write and thought it odd that she hadn’t, especially when Joe had been so sick. Joe had always said she was a difficult woman, but still Gloria thought it wouldn’t have hurt her to include a wee note. She mentioned this to Joe when he was on the road to recovery.
Joe had been neither surprised nor upset. He told Gloria that Tom would convey any news to her, and, knowing his mother as he did, added that she was probably disappointed with him for choosing to come to London when she wanted him to go straight back to Buncrana.
‘Surely you remember the letter she sent?’ he asked Gloria.
‘Yeah, sure I do,’ Gloria said. ‘And she was pretty mad then, I know, but that was in ’38, Joe. It was four years ago. People get cross and disappointed all the time and have to get over it. I have had nothing but disappointments since the Crash and Daddy killing himself. But you can’t keep harping back, can you? That does no good at all.’
Gloria, however, was talking about how the majority of normal people cope. She had no experience of how Biddy Sullivan’s ill humour and displeasure quickly turned to resentment that was never forgotten and could span generations.
Gloria liked Tom, though, who wrote to them every week without fail. She knew Tom was a worrier – that had come across in his letters – so when their block of flats was destroyed in a raid when Joe had been in hospital about six weeks, she gave only a sketchy account of it to Tom. She said she and Ben were fine and were being housed in a church hall, and that many more were in a similar position.
She also asked him not to tell Joe; there was no need for him to know yet. He knew nothing about it and she didn’t want him upset. Tom was appalled by what had happened to them. However, he could do damn all about it. He agreed with Gloria that there was nothing to be achieved by letting his brother know anything just yet.
Joe had been in hospital over four months when, in July, the hospital wanted to discharge him.
‘He is not really fit for much yet,’ the doctor said, ‘but we are desperate for the bed and we have done all we can for your husband. He just needs time to rest and recover now.’
Gloria was in a dilemma. She knew of the shortage of beds, and she thought of the church hall, which she shared with many other families. That it wouldn’t do for a man as infirm as Joe still was, who needed peace and quiet to recover fully. There was only one place they could go, and though she would hate it with all of her being, she could not be selfish about it. Joe’s health was at stake here.
When Tom received the letter from Gloria, explaining the position they were in and asking if they could come over and stay with him until Joe was fully recovered, he couldn’t have been happier. He longed to see Joe again, and meet his wife and child that he had got to know so well during Joe’s illness. In his mind’s eye, he saw them all happily settled at the farmhouse, though he knew Gloria in particular would find it strange at first, and he was determined to do all in his power to make it easier for her.
He decided that he would vacate his bedroom at the end of the cottage for them to use, so that he wouldn’t disturb them when he was getting up early to milk the cows, and he would have the one that Molly had used when she lived there, which he could share with Ben.
He was so glad that there would be a child about the farm again, and this time there would be his parents as well as himself to make sure Biddy behaved herself.
When Tom told his mother that Gloria had written asking if the family could bide in Ireland while Joe recovered totally from his injuries, and that he had invited them, she was furious.
‘Without so much as a by-your-leave,’ she snapped. ‘You are getting above yourself. It was my decision to make, not yours.’
‘It wasn’t a decision to make at all really, Mammy,’ Tom said. ‘We could do nothing else. Joe is in need and we are in a position to help him. And that, as far as I am concerned, is that.’
‘I can’t believe that I am hearing this,’ Biddy said. ‘I will not have that American strumpet under my roof.’
‘Gloria is no strumpet, Mammy.’
‘And how do you know?’
‘Because I trust Joe’s judgement, as you should,’ Tom snapped. ‘God Almighty, just listen to yourself. Let’s get this clear,’ he said. ‘First of all this is my roof, and Joe is coming to share it with me and so are his wife and son. I would offer the same hospitality to a perfect stranger if they had suffered as much as Joe has, especially when the alternative was them all lying on the floor of a church hall shared with all the people of the neighbourhood. When it’s your own flesh and blood, there is no issue there at all. And if you can’t get on with Gloria and young Ben, then you must deal with it, for the problem, I’m sure, will be yours and yours alone.’
Tom saw his mother’s eyes widen. He knew he had surprised her and he was glad. This time he intended laying it on the line for his mother before Joe, Gloria and Ben arrived.
When Tom saw Joe alight from the train at Derry, he was shocked. He had never carried excess weight but Tom saw he was positively gaunt, his face almost cadaver lows and his dark hair now more grey than brown. But the careful way he carried himself was just as worrying, and Tom didn’t need to see his eyes glazed wi
th pain to know the discomfort he was in.
He hugged him gently. ‘Welcome home, Joe,’ he said, and then turned his attention to Gloria by his side. She was a lovely-looking woman, he thought – stunning, in fact, for the hair coiled around her head very becomingly was naturally blonde and her eyes were violet blue. She smiled at Tom and he knew why Joe had been so captivated by her.
‘I feel as if I know you already,’ she said, as Tom hugged her. ‘I am so glad to get to meet you.’
‘And I too am glad you are here at last,’ Tom said. ‘All of you. And this,’ he said, bending to the young boy at Gloria’s side, ‘must be Ben.’
He saw straight away that the child got his looks from his mother, for his eyes and even the shape of his face was the same. His hair was blond too, and worn rather longer than was usual, and because he was younger, the golden colour was even more vibrant so that it glowed like a halo around his head in the sunlight.
He grinned up at the uncle who had been so kind to him and said, ‘Hello, Uncle Tom.’
‘And hello to you, young Ben,’ Tom said, clapping the boy on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you and I will get on like a house on fire. Now let’s get you all up in the cart and I’ll have us home in no time at all.’
‘I hardly think so, with this horse,’ Joe commented with a laugh.
‘There is nothing at all wrong with this horse,’ Tom said, matching his brother’s bantering tone.
‘I didn’t say there was,’ Joe said, ‘but not even you, Tom, can say he was bred for speed.’
‘Dobbin will get us there in his own time and at his own pace, but it will be a damned sight more comfortable than walking, and are you going to stand arguing about it all the day or get into the cart with the others?’
Joe gave the grin that Tom remembered so well and said, ‘All right then, but I will ride on the top with you.’
‘Are you sure?’ Tom asked. ‘It’s quite high.’
‘Don’t fuss me, Tom,’ Joe said. ‘You know that I could never abide it, and I have had enough just lately to last me a lifetime.’
So Tom didn’t fuss, although he did extend a hand to help Joe, and saw him wince with pain as he pulled himself up and lowered himself to the seat.
‘Bad trip?’ Tom asked quietly and Joe nodded.
‘A damned uncomfortable one. I will be glad to reach the cottage, I don’t mind telling you.’
And then before Tom could ask him anything else, he turned carefully around in the seat and said to Gloria and Ben, ‘Well, this is where I grew up. What do you think?’
Ben was enchanted. He had never seen so much green. He looked around in delight. ‘It’s real fine, Dad.’
Gloria didn’t think it fine at all. In fact, the further Gloria got from Derry, the more despondent she became. She was a city girl and she felt that she had left civilisation behind her. She was no lover of the wide open spaces and had a horror of being buried in the country. But she couldn’t say this, she realised, and so she said, ‘It’s certainly beautiful.’ That at least was true because the countryside had never looked lovelier. ‘And I’m sure I will soon settle down.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Joe said proudly, because he knew his Gloria so he guessed how she really felt, and she hadn’t met his mother yet.
‘How does Mammy feel about us landing on her like this?’ he said to Tom quietly.
‘Fine.’
‘Tom, you are talking to me, your brother,’ Joe said, ‘and Mammy is never fine about anything.’
‘Why ask the road you know then?’ Tom said. ‘She did kick up, as might be expected, even though she knew there was no alternative. It isn’t you she doesn’t want; it’s Gloria and the boy.’
‘We come as a package, and the sooner Mammy realises that, the better everyone will be,’ Joe said grimly. ‘Gloria has already put up with so much, and Ben is the light of both our lives. Mammy will treat them properly or answer to me.’
‘I don’t blame you either,’ Tom said. ‘But you don’t know Mammy like I do, and I can envisage many battles ahead.’
Tom was right, but he was to find that Gloria was no slight, wee girl burdened down by sadness, as Molly had been, but a young woman of spirit. She had already suffered such poverty, indignity and deprivation, it would have felled a lesser woman. What was all that set against one sad and embittered old woman with a terribly twisted mind?
She had refused point-blank to take on the entire burden of the house, but said the work should be shared equally, and of course there was no talk of her helping with the milking, or in the fields as Molly had. Biddy hated Gloria with a passion, but she seemed unable to make a dent in her at all. In fact, when she began one of her rages, Gloria would stop whatever she was doing and say quite calmly, ‘I see you are not behaving well at the moment. I will come back when you are in a better temper,’ and walk out.
The first time she had done this, Biddy had had the urge to run across the room and prevent her leaving, but she didn’t know how Joe would react if she laid a hand on the wife he seemed so fond of. Only the day before when she had smacked the boy for accidentally breaking a dish, Joe had been in such a towering rage that Biddy thought he would strike her. He didn’t but he threatened to do so if she was to hit the boy again. ‘I am his father and Gloria his mother, and if there is any chastising to be done, then we will do it. Have you got that, Mammy?’
And when Biddy elected not to answer this, he had fair bellowed at her, ‘I said, have you got that?’ And she was forced to mumble that she had.
‘Right,’ Joe said. ‘Ben broke the dish by accident and apologised immediately, and that should have been the end of it. I do not punish my son for accidents.’
So what would he do if she was to manhandle his wife? Biddy decided not to put it to the test and so she had just watched her walk up the lane with narrowed and malicious eyes.
In fact, none of this was turning out as she had hoped. Joe would just look at her almost pityingly if she got in a temper about something. ‘For goodness’ sake, Mammy,’ he would say, ‘if you could only hear yourself. This is no rational way to go on at all. Now, if you are prepared to talk to me, then I will listen.’
It completely took the wind out of Biddy’s sails, and Tom would marvel at the easy way in which Joe controlled his mother.
Ben, he knew, was nervous of her, though any child with a modicum of sense would be wary of her, he thought. However, in everything else Ben had never been happier. He had more space and freedom than he had ever known existed, and there were no sirens, no bombs, no mounds of rubble and air that stank every time you took a breath of it.
And best of all, his father was getting better.
The only fly in the ointment, as far as he was concerned, was the crabbed old woman, his grandmother, who always glared at him so angrily, even when he couldn’t think of a thing he could have done that might have upset her.
‘Listen, son, everything has got its down side because that’s life,’ Joe told Ben when he complained of this. ‘Personally, I don’t think that your grandmother’s mind works the same as everyone else’s.’
‘You mean she’s mad?’ Ben asked; he could well believe that.
‘Not quite mad,’ Joe said, ‘more a little unbalanced.’
‘Right…’
‘And we have to cope with it as it is,’ Joe said. ‘OK?’
‘I guess so.’
‘I know so,’ said Joe, punching Ben lightly on the am.
As the boy’s laughter reached Biddy’s ears she pursed her lips together tight. God, she thought, she would like to beat that laughter out of him, but she knew her hands were tied.
In September Gloria thought there was something the matter with Biddy and she told Joe that she was eating virtually nothing, her eyes were rheumy and bloodshot and her face a funny colour.
‘Are you sure?’ Joe said. ‘Her voice is as vitriolic as ever. Did you hear how she went for Tom earlier? God, I don’t know how the man stands for it.’
‘She always goes for Tom,’ Gloria said. ‘And he stands it because he is that kind of man. As for your mother, I think her carping voice will be the last thing to go because she appears to like the sound of it so much. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was still going on when they were nailing the coffin lid down.’
Joe laughed and put his arm around his wife and said, ‘You may be right, but you think she is really ill this time?’
‘Well, let’s say that it wouldn’t hurt to get her to see a doctor,’ Gloria said. ‘And it has to be you who tells her.’
Joe did his best, but Biddy not only refused to see the doctor, she also refused to see that there was anything wrong with her, and all Joe got for his trouble was an ear-bashing. He knew that Gloria was right to be so concerned because, now she had brought the matter to his attention, it was obvious that there was something drastically wrong with his mother. Tom could see it too. But there was nothing they could do about it, and they watched as she deteriorated over the following weeks so that she was slow and ponderous in anything she did.
Joe had just decided to have another talk to her when she suddenly swayed forward one day as she was stirring stew in a pot over the fire. She would have tipped into the embers if Joe hadn’t been close to her. He caught hold of her and lowered her into the chair before the fire.
‘Right, that is it, Mammy. We will have no more nonsense. I am going to the doctor’s and he is going to come out and see you,’ he insisted.
Uncharacteristically, Biddy said nothing. If she was to admit it, the incident over the fire had unnerved her but she saw illness as a weakness and had not had a doctor near her in years. Perhaps, though, this was the time. Eventually, she ground out, ‘All right then. If you want to waste your money get the damned man.’
While Joe was away for the doctor, Tom helped Gloria changed the beds around. In order for Biddy to have some privacy it was decided that she would have the room at the end that Tom had given to Joe and Gloria on their arrival. They would share Tom’s old room with Ben while Tom would take his mother’s bed.