Without intention, Mary backed up against Liam’s cot.
He grasped her hand, tugging her around to face him. ‘We both made mistakes, lass. But we’ve got a second start. It’s not too late. Marriage is forever. You told me that yourself.’
Her glower of contempt held his eyes. But she waited. Remembering the tingle of emotions that once pulsed through her body at his touch.
Not a flutter rippled beneath his fingers. Her sigh escaped loud enough to turn heads from the beds nearest. At one time she’d have fallen into the eejit’s arms to hear the same words out of his mouth. Except a mind tells many lies alone through long dark nights. Too many times the pendulum had swung traitorously between resentment and those times when her husband might’ve been Saint Liam – patron saint of beloved husbands everywhere. Not to mention the would-be-if-he’d-lived perfect father to their son, with not a thought on how he’d abandoned the very same child before the wean was even born. Mr Bloody Perfect who’d never gotten into trouble and run away from anything. Nothing was his fault at all. Why? Because the poor bugger had died.
How fast the pendulum swung back on his miraculous resurrection. These past weeks, he’d become the devil incarnate to her. With no blessed virgins to think well of him, least of all herself – no thanks to him.
‘I mustn’t tire you by staying long, Liam. Doctor Spooner’s orders. I’ll come again next week, if you can stay where you’re supposed to be ’til then.’
She didn’t even know if he answered; she was running down the ward without giving him the chance. Out into the corridor and straight to the women’s lavatories to lay her burning wet cheeks on the cold tiled wall until the tight band of pain in her head dulled.
If she couldn’t make it through ten blessed minutes with her husband, how was she going to manage the rest of her life?
Hadn’t she only ever wanted to be Liam’s wife? Was it her fault she’d had no husband to be a wife to?
To her shock, the guilt blazing back in her reflection showed her to be no better than a dirty liar with a list of omissions and untruths to equal any of Liam’s telling. How much responsibility was hers?
For so long she’d been too blinded by his rejection to recall drunk was the only way he’d have her. Or that she’d ignored every consideration bar his lips and hands and being one with him. She’d trapped him as surely as he now trapped her. And if she took back the mistake? What of Conor? Could she look at her son and wish him away?
No.
Liam was her husband and her responsibility, whether she wanted him or not. Just as she’d been his when he’d not wanted her. Was it wrong to think him the luckier, having had the war to run away to? Would she not run now if she had a choice? As if a woman ever had such a choice. Besides, no matter how much she wanted to, she had nowhere to run. And no place to hide, least of all from herself.
MATA HARI
AUGUST 1917
With the truth laid bare, Mary couldn’t hide from herself or blame Liam any more. But any hope that the love hardened to coal in her heart might transform into a bright diamond had dissolved in their moment of meeting. Coal is coal, not diamonds; not in her lifetime anyhow.
‘Good food and some peace and quiet and your husband will be right as a roast on Sunday,’ Pearl insisted at the news Liam was to be discharged. She would take him in too, ‘and, we’ll see how things work out’.
Mary wasn’t convinced, though it seemed the whole world thought the decision foregone, but it was the lines come quick in Maw’s hand floored her most.
Thank the Lord your son will have a father now and you a husband. Father O’Sullivan agrees it’s your chance to put things right and be a good wife. I’m sure your husband is regretting his rashness now. Remember Julia and Joe Merrilees raised a good son. As his wife, it’s up to you to be forgiving of his mistakes.
‘Mistakes!’ Mary nearly choked on her porridge.
Only the severity of Pearl’s frown prevented her from stuffing the note back inside the envelope and sending it straight back to Wonthaggi.
Of all the women in the world to preach forgiveness, Maw had no right. But it seemed her mother could line up behind the bunch of them expecting the same. Even darling Pearl, who might not come straight out and say it blunt as Maw, made plain she’d think the lesser of Mary if she didn’t bring her husband home.
Tom continued to stay away, whether by design or order Mary did not know. Her desperation to know what was in his mind worried her awake at night. Along with an ache to feel the comfort of his arms. But she could not fight the fact, Liam was her husband. Tom knew it as well as herself.
And so the decision was made.
No-one said she had to like it though. What did Liam expect? Lying bugger.
Maybe her lie was worse, being to herself, and she set her mind to righting that score. If they were to have any hope of happiness, she must forgive Liam. And so she made a silent promise. She would stand by her husband. Do the right thing by him and her son. Maybe it could work. She’d believed it once. Only she couldn’t bear to give in her notice at Duffy’s just yet. She snuck around the workroom as guilty as that spy Mata Hari, pretending to be one person on the surface while hiding a double life on the side, all the while choking on her duplicity. It might have been castor oil, it had the same effect on her.
The next Sunday evening, for the first time in weeks, Tom came for tea. The pair skated pleasantries across the table, but a previously unknown awkwardness had crept into their conversation. Until later, in the kitchen, when Mary looked up from washing the dishes to find Tom studying her from the doorway – his face grimacing with concern. ‘What’s wrong?’ She peered back at her reflection in the window glass, raising a soapy hand to check her face.
‘You’re thin as a wraith. And too pale. Are you sure this is what you want?’
Mary inhaled a sharp breath of air, but bit her tongue, afraid every fear and wish might come pouring out her mouth. Instead, she shook herself along with the suds out the dish rag and nodded. For all their sakes. ‘Yes.’
‘Then a good day out is what you need.’
‘Oh, Tom,’ she laughed, relieved at him talking normal. No further awkward questions – needing lies in answer. ‘I go out every day to work and on the weekends to the hospital.’
‘No. I mean a proper outing. A picnic. This Saturday. A last chance to … spend time with you and the laddie.’
So a plan was made. Pearl never argued. Mary didn’t know whether by Tom’s insistence or Pearl deciding it was safe to let the two of them be alone together now that Mary’s husband had returned. She could only offer up a prayer that Pearl not see her evil ingratitude for the fact, or the bounce in her step at the thought of one last outing with Tom. A chance to laugh and talk and not worry over what might be coming her way. A chance to be sure she and Tom could still be friends at least.
It could never have been anything other.
Six days later, on the first day of spring, picnic basket resting on her arm, Mary followed Tom, bounding out the front door ahead of her, piggy-backing her son.
Neither bees nor bugs could mar the mood while she laid out the picnic food on Pearl’s best rug in the Hopetoun Gardens. Conor rode the swings by the bandstand, pushed by Tom. She had to keep an eye on the both of them; Tom acted as much a child himself when let loose with her son. Immediately he proved it by carting Conor over to a fairy floss vendor.
‘Don’t get him any of that stuff. He won’t eat his lunch,’ she scolded after them, smiling in spite of her warning.
Tom ignored her completely, handing over his coppers in exchange for a cone of floss and inciting anarchy by telling her son, ‘Tastier than an old bread sandwich, eh, matey? I know which one I’d rather choose.’
He returned with Conor atop his shoulders, then ran the pair of them around the edge of the rug, arms outflung like he was flying, mindless to any sticky fingers in his hair.
Mary shook her head but couldn’t keep from laughing. T
om was dear to suggest they go to the gardens near the hospital and for his offer to leave Conor with him while she ducked in to pick up Liam’s dirty laundry. And to pay her husband a visit, of course. She worried though that Tom kept his cheery banter mostly for Conor. She wanted to ask him outright if he were cross, or hurt or angry that her husband was coming home to Egan Street. But when he plonked down beside her on the picnic rug and leaned back on his elbows, so near she could smell his soap, see the crooked line in his part, as if he’d combed his hair in a hurry that morning, she almost lost her mind to ask anything.
Maybe it was a good thing Liam had come back when he did. Any later and …
No. It was useless to think any such thing. How could anything more than friendship ever have worked between her and Tom? Anything more a sin. A mortal sin in the eyes of God and her Church. Not to mention her mother. Lord, wouldn’t Maw set Satan among the angels her daughter taking up with a Protestant. Besides, Tom never even troubled himself to go to church – any church. Least he said he hadn’t since the war began.
Mary rested her hand on his forearm. ‘I need to ask you something, Tom.’
His muscles corded under her touch as if he might pull away from her. Instead he took up her hand in his own and, turning over her palm, traced the forks in the lines as if reading a map – waiting on what she had to say.
‘We can still be friends, Tom, can’t we? I mean when Liam comes home? I’ve already lost so many dear ones. I couldn’t bear to lose you too.’
Was it deliberate he took back his hand at the mention of her husband, before he tugged the laddie’s hat down over his eyes, starting up a game? ‘Of course, we’ll stay friends. We’re mates. All mates together, aren’t we, Conor?’
‘Is that what we are, Tom, mates?’
‘Of course. Always and forever.’ He nodded, keeping his eyes on the laddie. ‘Nothing can take that away. But we can’t always have what we want. And, it’s all right, Mary,’ he looked back at her then steadily. ‘Hurt as you are, I think in your heart you want your husband back. I think you’ve got to know if …’
‘No, Tom, don’t say it.’ How could she deny what she guessed coming when the same thought had railed against her every protest for weeks? The what-ifs. The marriage untried.
‘You loved your husband once, when you married him, didn’t you?’
She shrugged, chewing on the side of her thumbnail instead of answering. This time it was her refusing to meet Tom’s eyes, until he placed his hand on hers, stilling the biting while his fingers brushed over her lips.
‘Of course you loved him. I know you, Mary. So don’t you worry about me. Or about us staying friends. Now, Conor, my lad,’ Tom dropped his hand and bounded up, hefting her son onto his shoulders, ‘we’re going on an adventure, aren’t we? An aeroplane ride, in a big silver bird flying high in the sky. Maybe we’ll fly all the way across to the other side of the world. A long, long way from here.’
Then he ran the both of them out of view behind the dazzle of the sun without seeing the tears fill Mary’s eyes.
When she wiped them away, she tipped back the brim of her straw hat to watch after them and froze in sudden shock.
‘Genevieve!’
Mary struggled to her feet, praying Tom had seen the girl coming and made himself scarce. With a flick of the picnic rug, she flung the corner over the plates and cups and food laid out.
‘Good day, Genevieve. Fancy seeing you here.’
‘And you, Mary O’Donnell. Are you here alone?’
At Mary’s answering nod, Genevieve glared evilly. ‘Fancy going on a picnic – all by yourself.’
Mary licked her lips, gone drier than a desert well. ‘Well, it is a beautiful day to walk in the gardens.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Genevieve retorted. ‘I’m only walking through on the way to visit my brother in the hospital. ‘Of course, he can’t walk with me, or see me either, thanks to the bloody Germans, but then you know how I feel about them murdering Huns.’
Mary recalled the poor young chappie in the bed a few to the right of Liam – eyes bandaged and no bumps showing below the sheet covering his waist and shuddered afresh. She’d dared not read the name board above his cot, not wanting to attach a living, breathing person to such a fate.
‘Our returned brothers and husbands need all the care and company they can get, don’t you agree?’ Genevieve insisted.
‘Course they do.’ Mary kept her voice calm. ‘I’m going along myself directly. You know – to visit one of them blokes who don’t have family near to come see them.’
‘Which one?’ Genevieve demanded. ‘I know pretty much everyone awake to talk to by now. We can go along together.’ The girl didn’t waste a second bending to flip back the corner of the rug and sniffing disparagingly. ‘I’ll help you pack up your things.’
Mary juggled the plates and cups into her basket, praying Tom was watching and could work out what was happening.
During the short walk to the hospital, she prayed harder than she ever had: to be struck dead by a runaway tram, fried by a bolt of lightning, or even buried by an erupting volcano.
If Genevieve Willets found out she was married and a mother, those sails-for-lips would flap and she’d not keep her job a day, especially if the girl decided she was no longer useful. Look how fast she’d got rid of Lizzie Baumann and poor Lizzie never broke the cardinal rule of her apprenticeship by being married.
As usual, the Lord was deaf to her pleas. She entered the hospital foyer not only alive but with bloody Genevieve still by her side.
‘Come and meet my brother in West Ward.’
Mary’s face flamed as red as her hair. Couldn’t she have guessed it – the very same ward as Liam? ‘No. I can’t, really, Genevieve.’ She clutched her stomach and began to run, calling back over her shoulder. ‘I think I’m gonna be sick.’
She didn’t even have to confess to the lie, because she did heave her stomach out in the women’s lavatory for a full five minutes.
She never did see Genevieve again that day and spent the next making her visit to Liam, all the while praying Genevieve was not so loving a sister as to bless her brother with her presence again so soon. Mostly though, she anguished over what or who the girl might’ve seen in the gardens, knowing that if she added up the sum of what she’d seen, she’d surely spread it around Duffy’s.
Still Mary didn’t hand in her notice; though the doctor said it was time to bring Liam home. Even her talk with Tom told her it was time.
But as she told Liam, he’d have to trust her to give in her resignation in her own time, despite his argument he’d receive a good pension when he came home – the Government promised.
THE HOMECOMING
SEPTEMBER 1917
Come home, Liam did. Not to his home, but to her home.
When Mary brought Conor forward on her hip, the child stared gobstruck at the man leaning on his crutches and shrank into her shoulder, shoving his wee thumb into his mouth. It seemed her son was no more eager to make his da’s acquaintance than she had been to see him again.
Liam motioned for her to put the boy down and, reluctantly, she set Conor on his feet. The child backed up and grabbed a handful of her skirts, holding them as tight to his cheek as the soft material of his night-time blanky.
The frown on Liam’s face was not concealed fast enough to hide his displeasure. Nor was it lost on his son.
Conor turned his face into Mary’s skirts and rebuffed her small shove forwards.
‘Come and say hello to your da, laddie. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.’ Liam sat down in the armchair, resting his crutches against the side table.
Mary nodded. Perhaps removing the threat of Liam’s height and the strangeness of the walking aids would ease her small son’s mind.
Still Conor refused to turn around or answer.
‘Do as you’re told, son,’ Liam rasped, leaving no mistake it an order and not a request.
Mar
y made a mental note to ask the doctor if the harshness in Liam’s voice was temporary. She imagined it quite alarming to a child. The tone she’d take up with Liam later.
‘Can’t the lad talk yet?’
She wanted to cover her angel’s ears against the derisory tone, but stilled her hands. ‘You’ve been gone a long time, Liam. But not that long. He’s only a wee boy. What can you expect? He’s shy of you, is all. Give him time.’
Some things were going to take her time too. Like the first time Liam removed his trousers. She had to hold onto the edge of the dressing table not to swoon at the chunk of flesh missing from his calf. Corded scarring knotted up his leg, the tissue twisted and purple with anger at such summary damage.
She swallowed hard but held Liam’s gaze, locked firmly on hers and daring her to react. Nothing could mask the colourless porcelain of her skin reflected in the dressing-table mirror, but Liam nodded as if she’d passed some type of test. Clearly he’d been expecting worse.
The absent leg muscle and flesh weren’t ever going to grow back, but when she questioned the doctors at the Repatriation Clinic, no-one could or would tell her when or if Liam would ever be able to walk properly again.
The tension between father and son persisted, made worse the first Sunday that Tom came to tea when Conor threw himself onto Tom’s legs and clambered all over him.
Mortification crossed Liam’s face, dictating any possible friendship between the men gone bad before even begun.
Tom and Conor threw more fuel on Liam’s anger by marching up the hallway, clanging pot lids together, pretending to lead a marching band. Her husband crawled under the bedcovers. No coaxing could tempt him out to his tea, a silent affair with Conor sulking and Tom confused. Even Pearl had no cheeriness to offer.
Liam shuffled out for his meal only after Tom had left and Conor was tucked into bed.
More worrying to Mary than any hurt feelings was how Liam ducked for cover at even a tram bumping over a rough spot in the road. A simple stroll became fraught and no amount of reassurance made a difference.
No Small Shame Page 23