‘Would you like to come and stay at the farm with me awhile, Mary?’ Winnie gushed. ‘You know, until you get over things – you and the children? I could do with a bit of company.’ She nodded, hopeful.
Mary fixed her smile without answer. While Winnie snuck a worried peek out the good room window to where her husband sat on their dray in the road, along with his dogs – the mongrels barking, like they’d done all through the burial.
Mary moved on without excuse, grateful for the numbness of widowhood. It was good of Joe and Catherine to host the wake, freeing her to thank the small gathering of mourners come to pay their respects. Even if most of them were Joe and Catherine and her mother’s friends.
Then Maw was at her elbow. ‘I notice your Proddy friend isn’t showing his face. I’d’ve thought he wouldn’t miss paying his respects whatever his intentions. The cheek of him coming to the Requiem. Father O’Sullivan would’ve stopped the Mass if he’d a clue.’
‘Maw, if you’re acting uppity over Tom Robbins, don’t bother yourself. Tom only came for the funeral. He paid his respects to me at the cemetery. He’s gone to catch the afternoon train.’ Mary reset the bland expression on her face, hoping her eyes didn’t reveal her disappointment at that fact. Tom’s friendly face had been such a welcome sight at the church, just knowing him there a comfort.
Maw sniffed, tossing her head indignantly. ‘Good riddance then. And a good thing too. You know how people like to talk.’
‘Yes, Maw. I do.’ Mary changed the subject, bending to catch the chubby chops of Julia, running past after her brother. Jane on their heels. ‘Hello, angel.’
She snatched up the wean, burying her face in the child’s soft curls. Wavy as Liam’s as a boy. She’d quite forgotten how much the pair alike. Like so many other memories creeping up on her over the past days, wrapping her in bittersweet agony.
She crossed herself then, wondering why it was some memories scribed indelible across your mind, yet others disappeared like wisps of smoke from a fire.
She slumped into the wingback chair, set apart from the groups of mourners huddled on the dining chairs and settee, and held her daughter close. The child’s eyes drowsed with fatigue and she sucked hard on her thumb, while Mary twirled the lass’s short ringlets around her finger gently until the length ran out and she started again.
It would be easy to take on the blame. For all that had happened, for all she’d not seen. Impossible for her to know now whose fault it had been.
No, it were both.
It wasn’t all a waste but. She’d only to look at Julia and Conor, innocent and ignorant of the real reason for the gathering to know that. In the last three days, her son sometimes stopped to peer up at her, confusion grave on his face. His mouth fixed solemn to match her own, until his sister pulled on his hair or dragged him down to wrestle on the ground. His laughter bubbled out of him then, beyond any measure of assumed grief.
She smiled to think of another sweet laddie who’d held up his own games, sneaking pockets full of blackberries to her stuck at home scrubbing pots. He would see heaven’s door open, surely. Heaven could not deny such laddies and men. Laddies lost in the war and not finding their way home.
Jane broke her thoughts, placing a cup of tea in her hands and reaching for the toddler growing restless in Mary’s lap.
Mary sighed. How she would miss Jane’s sweet company when the younger girl went to begin her teacher training. Still she was glad for her friend at Joe’s change of heart.
‘Dear Jane. What will I do without you when you go to Melbourne? I should be the one up making cups of tea.’
Jane waved away her protests. ‘You’ve been thinking of everyone else far too long, Mary. It’s beyond time to think about what you want.’
Mary couldn’t answer the sweet girl but gulped the scalding tea instead. How could she bear to think beyond this day?
Somewhere behind her, Winnie Sloy giggled hysterically. ‘Don’t even joke, Mrs O’Donnell. Twins wouldn’t be funny at all.’
The hum of voices nagged at the edge of Mary’s mind, while she waited for Maw to move on – mischief done. But then her mother’s voice reached across the room from where she stood speaking to a couple of older women on the settee sipping tea.
‘Mary and the children will come to us in Ivor Street, of course. She has no benefit coming from the Friendly Society or any policy to pay out,’ Maw answered their clucking sympathies. ‘I won’t see one of me own on the streets.’
Mary fumbled the teacup she was holding, clattering it into the saucer, spilling the dregs and chipping the delicate rim. Maw’s decree news to her.
‘We’ll likely tear each other’s throats out before the end of the month,’ Maw sighed, dramatically, ‘but we can always knit away the hours in different rooms of the house. Of course, my daughter will want the same. She’s not a ninny.’
Mary never heard the knock at the front door, only saw the figure in the good room doorway dragging off his hat.
Tom searched the room. On finding her, the boyish turn up to his lips formed into a smile that warmed her from across the room.
Mary made to rise from the chair, unable to stifle a gasp of pleasure, until, with a poke to her shoulder, she looked up to meet Maw’s narrowing gaze.
Across the room Catherine appeared at Tom’s side, bidding Samuel take Tom’s coat and hat and show him the way outside to the men.
Tom paused, shrugging helplessly. His teeth caught on his bottom lip and he could only send a slight wave Mary’s way, before following the lad out of sight down the hallway.
The sudden warmth in the room threatened to suffocate Mary, along with the drone of voices beginning to echo in her ears. She tugged loose the top button of her blouse and only just bit back the retort at catching Maw’s frown. It’s only a bloody button, Maw. I’m not taking off my whole damn blouse.
Calm returned with the pressure of two strong hands squeezing her shoulders over the back of the chair. She glanced up to Joe with a grateful smile. Joe, who’d taken care of every blessed worry these past few days with not a frown of censure or blame. The dear man there for her and the children, despite his precious face crumpling during the Requiem, his cheeks drenched with tears in the cemetery.
‘I’m glad young Robbins came back to the house,’ he said, coming around beside her.
Mary turned away from his pointed gaze, knowing her cheeks flamed unbecoming for a grieving widow.
Only Joe’s hand on her shoulder drew her around. ‘Better that young man goes back to the city as soon as he can. In the city, a man can be who he wants to be – do what he wants, away from a lot of gossips and people dictating how another person should live.’
Mary could barely meet Joe’s eyes. She fingered the rim of the broken teacup instead, praying it would pierce her skin and give her an excuse to flee.
‘Wish I’d learned that lesson sooner myself, lass. My son might have lived a different life – a happier life. And yours would’ve turned out different too. The war and all has shown me that much.’ Joe glanced around the room, pausing overlong on Maw.
He nodded to Mary then before moving across the room to stand next to his wife, quietlike, while Catherine nattered on, seemingly oblivious to his presence. Only then her hand reached up behind him, her fingers patting his back so gentle as no-one would notice. When Joe’s head inclined towards his wife, almost imperceptible in reply, a sob rose in Mary’s throat for the privilege of noticing. Wishing many things could have been different.
But they weren’t, were they, Liam? We never had that understanding. Not even back in Scotland, for all my willing and wanting it.
She stood up and collected a pair of empty cake plates, sprinkled with crumbs. She stacked them under her teacup and saucer and carried the lot towards the doorway.
Not fast enough to escape Maw.
‘Come and speak to Mrs Shorten, daughter. Her husband died last year and her nephew’s just come home from one of them city mental asylums. Poor man’s
going off the deep end again.’
Mary reddened at her mother’s lack of discretion but Mrs Shorten nodded keenly alongside her.
‘Excuse me, Maw. Mrs Shorten. Mr Robbins doesn’t have a cup of tea.’ She left them then; the older widow’s mouth flapping open, Maw’s glare saying forgiveness unlikely.
She carried the crockery into the hallway, through the living room and into the kitchen where the kettle simmered on the range. Beyond the window glass, Tom stood in the yard bouncing her daughter on his hip. The lassie laughing and playing peek-a-boo, putting her hands over Tom’s eyes while Conor darted around his legs, being chased by Bertie Sloy – the poor laddie limping along behind him on a crutch. The man had ears only for the children, not for the men and miners standing around about them, nor their talk of trees and pit ponies and mud-sodden roads.
Mary carried a freshly poured cup of tea down the back steps and over to Tom. Bundling the wean from his arms, she set Julia down in exchange for the cup and saucer. Then she nodded to the men, fallen silent at her appearance as if she’d interrupted a meeting of Masons.
Tom took her arm and led her aside from their stares. ‘How are you holding up, love?’
‘All right,’ she assured his worried frown. ‘What else would I be?’
‘Sad. Mad as hell. Ready to kick a blind dog. You’re entitled.’
‘Maybe.’ She met his questioning stare straight-on. ‘I’m all those things. But it’s not the O’Donnell way to go shouting about it, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Yes, more’s the pity,’ Tom answered, glancing around as if he expected to find Maw at his elbow, chasing up his note of disgust. ‘You need to go out into a forty-acre paddock and scream. Cry until you’re hoarse. Otherwise it’ll all twist around in your gut and stop you breathing. Stop you doing a lot of things you might.’
How could she explain? The twist, the rub – none of it clear in her mind. ‘I wouldn’t know if I’d be weeping as much for what might have been, or what was, I’m that confused.’ The yard around her swam in front of her eyes.
Tom’s firm hand grasped her forearm and steadied her from swaying backwards, when an exultant shriek from Winnie’s son stole the attention of all to the children playing tiggy around the legs of the frowning men.
Grateful, Mary breathed away the moment as Julia tugged on her skirts, trying to drag her after a wee white butterfly.
She smiled when Tom set down his teacup by the gully trap and followed after the babe, the pair creeping quietly until Conor and Bertie caught onto their game.
Tom touched his finger to his lips when the butterfly lighted on the leaves of Joe’s honeysuckle growing up the side fence. His hands swept in from either side to cage the creature.
To the delight of the children, he knelt to show off his winged catch – up close.
‘Put him in a jar,’ said Bertie. ‘I’m gonna take him home with me.’
Tom winked up at Mary, shaking his head. ‘No, son. This little fellow will die if we try to hold him long.’ He opened his hands and the butterfly stalled a moment, as if not knowing what to do. Then, in a flicker, it made up its mind and flew up and over the fence.
The children ran squealing after it.
Tom turned to Mary, taking up her hand.
‘Daughter, come inside.’ Maw’s tone blistered from the far side of the screen door. ‘Father O’Sullivan is leaving.’
Still Tom kept hold of Mary’s hand and her eyes. ‘Some creatures should never be caged, Mary. Sometimes they just need reminding they can fly.’
‘Mr Robbins is leaving too now,’ Maw interrupted again, stepping out onto the stoop above them. ‘Don’t keep him talking and make him miss his train, daughter.’ Maw nodded to a shadow behind her and Samuel appeared, ducking around her girth, bringing Tom’s coat and hat.
At a warning squeeze of Tom’s hand, Mary held her tongue. Instead she took in the sudden quiet in the yard, the men standing, bottles halfway to their lips, drinking in the scene, while up at the kitchen window, Catherine peered down on proceedings reproachfully.
She would not repay Joe’s kindnesses by causing a worse scene than her mother. Or risk embarrassing Tom. She glanced back at him, reassured by the calm in his eyes. Still, she let go of his hand.
‘See,’ Maw puffed up smug, ‘even my daughter knows you’ve no right to be here, Mr Robbins. A bleeding Protestant at a Catholic wake!’ Maw sniffed, staring around at the huddle of men, setting up an awkward shuffle amongst their ranks. The interest on their faces turning as the mood in the air.
‘Maw, stop it.’
‘It’s all right, love,’ Tom soothed. ‘I’m going now, but,’ he turned and glared steady back at Maw, ‘I’ll be back at the end of the week.’
THE LETTER
JULY 1919
Maw had not spoken to Mary in the three days since.
The moment was coming, though, when Mary would have no choice but to talk to her mother. She unfolded Tom’s letter, delivered in the morning post, and read it over again. The sheet softening from her frequent rereading to be sure the pen-strokes real, the promise true.
I love you, Mary. I have for the longest time. Plus, of course, my mate, Conor. And now the Princess Julia too.
I want you to be my wife.
How could she explain the guilt mixed in with the longing Tom’s words wrought? Was it too soon?
Of course it was!
Even Tom feared it.
But I let you go once before without telling you how I feel and I’m not going to make that same mistake again.
Especially when I never thought I’d have the chance.
I’ll be back on the Friday train.
The same words repeated on his leaving the wake.
Their brief shared moment at the gate had nearly proved Mary’s undoing. Any stoicism on her part born solely from Maw’s black glare burning into her back while she bade Tom goodbye. Her every urge to not let him go away without her. His peck on the cheek and promise to return had left her mouth flapping, and her unable even to guess what she’d’ve replied had she the chance. Only left her to wonder what type of woman was she to even think about another man on the day she buried her husband.
Your answer will be if you’re waiting for me.
Mary refolded the letter and placed it down between her chemise and her skin. She breathed in the quietness of the room, pressing her hand to where the paper rested over her heart, grateful to Jane for taking the children out walking in the fresh air while she was supposed to be getting on with her packing. She prayed the solitude might settle her mind, give her an answer at least. Then the rustle of paper under her hand turned accusing, as if saying she should be grieving for her dead husband. The thoughts in her mind adulterous, as if it Tom’s hand pressed to her breast.
Maw and the Church would see it a sin. Not to mention the greatest affront to that woman’s pride ever known. Even if the Church didn’t excommunicate her, Maw most certainly would.
Mary trembled. Could she do that to her children? Deny them more family when they’d already lost so much?
If it were only herself to think of, how much easier would it be? Of course, she loved Tom, but was love enough to contemplate a mixed marriage? Once upon a time, she’d considered the same a sin. Was she strong enough to face the ridicule coming? She’d heard the priest in the pulpit. Seen Ginny Watson in the Pailis scorned for stepping into the Church, when she was only trying to convert to marry her Dermot.
A year ago, she’d been too afraid to admit the truth to herself about her feelings for Tom. Let alone to Pearl. How in God’s name was she going to tell Maw?
Hah! You want to go the moon, but you can’t step out your own street without your maw’s blessing.
And only one day left to make up her mind.
She grimaced, laying her hand on the children’s freshly laundered clothing laid out on the table. The piles said she’d made up her mind already, only the best articles washed, darned and pressed. The
raggies set aside, which, they would not be, would they, if you were only going to Maw’s?
A sudden, brusque rap on the door scattered the wash beneath her hand.
‘Are you going to open this door, daughter? Or leave me standing all day on the mat?’
HELL ON EARTH
JULY 1919
She was thankful Maw had come to her, even if the woman’s lips were pursed and eyebrows knit in consternation. Meeting in her familiar, not in Ivor Street – where a step over the mat would reduce her to a child, in her mother’s eyes at least.
Maw bustled in, rolling up her sleeves without so much as good day. ‘No point putting off what has to be done. It’s time to pack up your husband’s effects and get on.’
Whether I’m ready to or not. Mary closed the door behind her. No chance to conceal the piles of clothing on the table screaming her hypocrisy.
‘So,’ Maw flicked at a vest on top of the pile, ‘have you come to your senses and coming home to Ivor Street then?’
When silence her only answer, Mary cringed at the sourness washing Maw’s face. The cogs in the woman’s mind no doubt working double time and coming to the horrendous, yet rightful conclusion.
‘Sainted Mother of God! Don’t dare be telling me what me eyes see well enough. One look at your smug puss … ’
‘Maw, don’t take on. I was coming to tell you this afternoon, whether you want to hear it or not. Tom is coming to fetch us tomorrow.’
‘Good God in heaven, your husband’s not cold.’
A sudden urge to laugh bubbled up inside Mary. She prayed it the grief making her hysterical, not her mother repeating an accusation made once before. Oddly she was not mortified by the insult this time. She hid her smile in a grimace, folding the last of Liam’s vests, doubting Maw would see the humour. Maw was never going to take the news of her going with Tom well, no matter how carefully she couched it.
Of course, it was unnaturally quick after her husband’s death to be going away with any man. And Tom, a Protestant …
‘What the devil will people think?’
No Small Shame Page 33