A Mother's Spirit (29 page)

‘Ask Jack McEvoy again,’ Gloria suggested. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He said he enjoyed himself last time. And it’s not as if the McEvoy family will be asked to Aggie’s wedding. I mean, they barely know her. In fact, I hardly
know her either so I shan’t mind staying here if you and Ben want to go on your own.’

‘Don’t you want to come?’

‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting,’ Gloria said. ‘It’s the practicalities of it. Look, I have to go soon or I’ll miss the train. I haven’t time to discuss this, but it would make sense for me to stay here. It’s a lot to expect Jack to come here and do the milking and go home without a bite to eat. And then I would have to book the time off work and take the loss in pay.’

‘So,’ Joe said truculently, ‘your job comes before your family?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Gloria protested. ‘Nor meant it either, but if you want to take that attitude then I can do nothing about it. Nor can I discuss it any more because I will be late for work.’

Helen laughed when she saw her friend’s disgruntled face as they met at the station to catch the train to work. ‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘Got out of bed the wrong side?’

‘Definitely, I think,’ Gloria said, and told Helen of the letter that had arrived that morning and of the words she had had with Joe over it. Helen couldn’t see the problem. ‘Why can’t you both go together?’ she said. ‘We can cope for a few days without you.’

‘I suppose,’ Gloria said, struggling to be honest. ‘The truth is, I don’t want to go anywhere with Joe at the moment, and particularly nowhere near his family.’

Helen was perplexed. ‘But why not? You said you enjoyed Molly’s wedding and they couldn’t have been more welcoming.’

‘I did, and they were. But just at the minute, I don’t want to go into the midst of Joe’s family and pretend everything is fine and dandy between us when it isn’t. They’ll soon work that out.’

‘You have just had a few words, that’s all.’

‘No,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t mean just now. I realised at Molly’s wedding that my feelings for Joe had changed.’

‘In what way?’

‘The most basic way there is, Helen,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t think I love Joe any more, and it is nothing to do with the odd spat. It’s far deeper and more important than that. I feel concern for him, the same as I would feel for a friend, but the love just isn’t there any more. It’s like a dead marriage.’

‘I feel so sorry for you, Gloria,’ Helen said. ‘You have been through such a lot to get to this point.’

‘I know that,’ Gloria cried. ‘In a way that makes the whole thing worse. I mean, I probably wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t rescued me at the docks over twenty years ago. And after Daddy killed himself, Joe was marvellous. I don’t honestly know what Mother and I would have done without him. So I know what I owe Joe, and I’m grateful to him and respect him as the father of my child, but I don’t think I love him, and the realisation of that hurts me.’

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Helen replied. ‘Have you talked to Joe about this? Asked how he feels?’

‘Helen, Joe is a man,’ Gloria said. ‘And you know what that means. He probably isn’t aware that there is a problem.’

Joe did know, however, and he was saddened to see the marriage that he once thought so wonderful falling apart around his ears. But he had no idea what to do about it, and so as one week slid into the other he hoped that it would right itself eventually.

However, the situation got worse instead of better. They tried not to argue in front of Ben – in fact, they seldom argued – but Ben could often feel the antagonism in the air.

And so when his mother steadfastly refused to travel to Birmingham for Aggie’s wedding, although Ben expressed regret, secretly he was pleased. There would just be him and his dad, and his dad was always in a better mood when his mother was not around.

In fact, while Ben and his father were enjoying the delights of the wedding reception, Gloria was at a dance put on for local people by the servicemen at the camp. Gloria and Helen had heard about it about three weeks after the letter had come inviting them to Aggie’s wedding, when Joan asked them if they would come to serve up the food. ‘You will get paid, and generously,’ she encouraged. ‘I’ve done it a few times.’

Gloria looked across at Helen, read the excited anticipation in her face and knew she wanted to do it. She also knew that it was same day as the wedding and so there was nothing stopping her either, so she said, ‘I don’t think we’d mind, but the trains don’t run much after dusk.’

‘Oh, they’ll fetch you,’ Joan said. ‘I’m sure they will because they bring in women from the outlying areas anyway.’

‘Oh, well, I’ll do it then,’ Gloria said.

‘And me,’ said Helen. ‘I shall look forward to it.’

Returning to the counter for the midday rush, Helen said, ‘Are you going to mention this to Joe?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Gloria said. ‘And give the old moaner something else to gripe about? I’m telling him nothing and what he doesn’t know can do him no harm.’

‘I wonder why they are having it here anyway,’ Helen said, as they began serving vegetables to the men in the queue.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, a couple of the girls told me the Guild Hall in Derry was the place to go,’ Helen said.

A young sailor, hearing this, said, ‘Have you been to the Guild Hall?’

‘That’s hardly likely when we live six miles in the opposite direction,’ Gloria said drily. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s all this waltz and foxtrot rubbish.’

‘What sort of dancing do you do then?’ Helen asked with a smile. ‘The cancan?’

‘No, don’t be silly,’ the sailor said. ‘We jitterbug.’

‘What’s jitterbugging, when it’s at home?’ said Gloria.

‘Just about the greatest fun in the world, that’s what,’ said the first man’s neighbour in the queue. ‘We are going to show these Derry girls a good time.’

‘I can’t wait to see what this jitterbugging is all about,’ Gloria said when the sailors had moved away.

Morrisey, arriving at the counter at that moment, overheard what Gloria said and asked, ‘Are you two ladies going to be at the dance?’

‘Yes,’ Gloria said. ‘But only to serve the food.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there will be ample time for a dance or two.’

‘We wouldn’t have the least idea how to do those sorts of dances anyway,’ Gloria said.

‘I would like to wager that most of the women who come here the night of the dance won’t have the least idea either, but it’s easy to learn.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Gloria said. ‘But I think I will stay behind the counter.’

‘Ah, we’ll see,’ said Morrisey, with a large wink to them both.

The day of the dance the canteen was unrecognisable. Bands of men had been decorating it all day with streamers and balloons and such, but when Helen and Gloria went in that night, the room was transformed.

A wide stage had been set up at one end, and bandsmen with their brass instruments were taking their places on it. In front of this a large area of the floor had been left clear, obviously for dancing, and around the edges on both sides were some of the canteen tables, now with white cloths on them and lit candles at their centres.

When the music began it was new and vibrant, some of the tunes reminiscent of the jazz that Gloria had enjoyed in New York. She watched the sailors teaching the Derry
women to jitterbug and longed to be amongst them, for it was music a person would love to dance to.

But the evening wore on and the canteen workers were kept very busy. Eventually the crowds thinned out a little, though the bar set up to the side of the room was still doing a roaring trade and the dancing seemed to get wilder and wilder.

‘I should say some of these women will have sore heads in the morning,’ Gloria said to Helen.

‘You could be right,’ Helen replied. ‘Some of them seem crazy about the Americans. I was talking to a girl the other day and she said that when they came here first, it was like Hollywood had come to Derry.’

Gloria laughed. ‘When in actual fact they are just men and, like any other men, after one thing. If the girls allow their heads to be turned, they are silly. D’you think we can start clearing away now? This lot will be finished in half an hour or so.’

‘I think so,’ said Helen. ‘The food is more or less gone, and tea and coffee don’t seem to be the preferred drinks just now.’

‘No indeed,’ Gloria smiled. ‘Come on then. We’ll get this done in no time.’

It was as they were putting away the last of the dishes that Morrisey came to find Gloria. Meadows was with him, but it was he who spoke to Gloria. ‘I’ve come to claim the dance I promised you earlier.’

‘I gave you your answer then,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t know how to do dancing like this.’

‘Your friend doesn’t seem to have such inhibitions,’ Morrisey said. He was right, for Gloria saw with astonishment that Helen had allowed herself to be swept up and out onto the makeshift dance floor with Meadows.

Gloria shrugged. ‘She is a free agent.’

‘Mrs Sullivan,’ Morrisey said, ‘I am suggesting dancing with you, not making love to you. Being married surely doesn’t preclude having fun?’

Oh, yes it does, Gloria might have said. Certainly in my case.

She didn’t say this, but it did set light to a little spark of defiance. She would be doing no harm dancing with a man, and wasn’t it what she’d longed to do all evening? ‘You’ll have to show me how,’ she said.

‘It will be my pleasure,’ said Morrisey. ‘Trust me in this. You will pick it up in no time.’

And Gloria did pick it up and found that she thoroughly enjoyed herself. She hesitated when the last waltz was announced, but when Morrisey drew her into his arms she went without protest. Strangely, she felt comfortable there, as if it was the right place to be, as if she had come home at last, and she fought the longing she had to lay her head on Morrisey’s shoulder.

Morrisey felt the tension in her ease. He held her closer and she allowed him to, but he didn’t go further than that. He was greatly attracted to her, so much so that had she not been married he would have asked if he could see her again. However, she was already spoken for, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.

Joe and Ben came back on Tuesday morning and Gloria had arranged to go in to work late so that she would be there to cook their breakfast when the pair came home. She saw them as they came into the yard, and opened the door.

Ben’s face was white with tiredness, she noticed, but when he saw his mother he ran towards her and, despite being a big boy of nine, he hugged her tight. She looked up at Joe, wanting to put her arms around him too and try to chase away the coldness that had grown up between them. The look he gave her, however, didn’t encourage that. She knew he had not forgiven her for refusing to go to the wedding. She saw it in the set of his face and the stiff way he held his body as if he had drawn a barrier up between them.

Ben was too excited and tired to notice. ‘Mum, you should have been there,’ he cried. ‘It was great. And yesterday Molly let Kevin have the day off school so he could take me round and show me the place.’ He gave a short laugh and added, ‘Kevin said I should come every week ’cos usually Molly won’t let him have even an hour off school.’

‘You like Kevin, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, he’s real good fun. I like them all – Molly and Mark, Aunt Aggie and Uncle Paul, and Uncle Tom, of course. They are all smashing.’

‘Take off your coat and leave everything else until later,’ Gloria said. ‘I will have a bowl of porridge for you in no
time, and then I think it would be a good idea if you have a little sleep.’

‘I don’t need to sleep, Mom,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not a bit tired.’

‘No, of course you’re not,’ Joe said to his son sarcastically, ‘but I am tired and while I’m sleeping you will lie on your bed and rest yourself. There will be no one to listen to your chatter anyway, because your mother will be running off to that job of hers just as soon as she can.’

Gloria turned from stirring the pan of oatmeal she had added water to and said, ‘We agreed that that was what I should do.’

‘There was no agreement to it,’ Joe complained. ‘You tell me what you want me to do and I go along with it for the sake of a quiet life.’

‘A quiet life!’ Gloria burst out. ‘Fat chance anyone has of a quiet life here with you carping and complaining at every turn.’

The words were out before Gloria could bite them back, and she saw Ben look from one to the other, his eyes full of confusion and his shoulders hunched, as if he was protecting himself from a fresh onslaught. Gloria hated herself for dragging him into the centre of their discontent and Joe made it worse.

‘Any man would complain,’ he snapped. ‘Haven’t I reason enough? I am the laughing stock of Buncrana, do you know that?’

Gloria laughed, but it was a hard, bitter laugh. ‘So the people in Buncrana don’t like the way we run our lives,’ she said, ‘as if it’s any of their damned business anyway. So what odds? I don’t give a tuppenny damn for their opinion.’

‘You would care if you had made any effort to get on with them.’

‘But I don’t want to get on with them,’ Gloria said. ‘The McEvoys apart, I have no time for any of them. They are narrow-minded and have far too much time on their hands
– time enough, anyway, to mind everyone else’s business as well as their own.’

Joe had opened his mouth to make a rejoinder to this when Ben suddenly said, ‘Please don’t fight any more.’

Both Gloria and Joe were ashamed. Gloria knew she shouldn’t have retaliated to Joe’s jibes. Whatever her differences with Joe, was she not mature enough to say nothing until Ben was out of the way at least? What a homecoming.

‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ she said as she laid the table for the breakfast. ‘We won’t argue any more. Tell me what Birmingham is like.’

Ben looked across at his father first to see if he was going to continue to quarrel, and Joe smiled, although it was an effort, and more like a grimace. But Ben was satisfied.

‘It’s good, Mom,’ he said. ‘Kevin took me on a tram right into the city centre yesterday. We went to this place called the Bull Ring and there were loads of barrows selling all sorts of things. There’s a Market Hall as well, like the one in Buncrana, only this one hasn’t got a roof because the Germans blew it off. Kevin said it was better before the war when Saturday night was entertainment night.’

‘Helen said something about that to me too,’ Gloria said.

‘Well, Kevin only went a few times ’cos he was only small, but he said he would never forget it,’ Ben said. ‘He said all the stalls were lit with gas flares and it looked like fairyland, and there were men walking about on stilts and that. He said there was an Indian fellow with no clothes but a sort of nappy thing, and he used to lie on a bed of nails and invite women to stand on him.’

Ben caught sight of his mother’s incredulous face and cried, ‘It’s true! That’s what he said, and when I asked Molly she said it was right. And she told me there was a sort of boxing booth and people were invited to see if they could beat the champ. Her parents never let her watch that, but she never heard of anyone that had done it, and there was
a man tied up with chains too, and he used to get free when the people watching had put a pound in the hat.’

‘I bet the war and blackout and everything put paid to that,’ Gloria said. ‘And after this war the world will never be the same again.’

Later, as Gloria ate dinner in the canteen, she told Helen what Ben had said about the Bull Ring.

‘Did you not get time to take a peek yourself when you were over for Molly’s wedding?’ Helen asked.

Gloria shook her head. ‘There wasn’t time. I’m glad Joe and Ben took an extra day.’

‘It’s worth a look,’ Helen said. ‘Even now it has an atmosphere that is all its own. But before the war, it was the place to be on a Saturday night.’

‘Kevin told Ben all about it,’ Gloria said.

‘Yes, you could go with little money in your pocket and still have a good time,’ Helen said. ‘There were stalls to buy whelks and mussels and things, if you got peckish, and the hot potato man, of course, and then as the night wore on the musicians would come – accordions mainly – playing the tunes for the dances we used to do at home, and then they went on to music-hall songs. Then the Sally Army would arrive, banging their drums and shaking their tambourines and belting out the hymns, and collecting up the down-and-outs – you know, the sort of people most would cross the street to avoid.’

Gloria nodded. ‘But what did they do with them?’

‘Oh, they took them back to the citadel, which is what they call their church, and gave them a meal. But tell me, how did Joe enjoy himself?’

‘Hard to tell,’ Gloria said, putting down her knife and fork and looking straight at her friend. ‘All I can say is that he has come back in the same black mood he left. I don’t know quite why he is behaving the way he is. He must know there is something wrong because we never used to go on like this.’

‘You might have just hit the nail on the head,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe he knows only too well that things are nowhere right between you, and being a man he’s burying it and pretending that everything in the garden is rosy and that’s what’s making him short-tempered.’

‘You could be right,’ Gloria conceded. ‘I mean, I feel like my marriage is dead, but when did it die? When did the love we had for one another seep away, and why weren’t we aware of it and took steps to stop it happening?’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen said. ‘But I am sorry for both of you.’

‘Nothing has happened,’ Gloria said. ‘Nothing major, I mean. Me working at the camp gives Joe something to focus his anger on, but really I think you were absolutely right: he is as confused and unhappy as I am. Ben, though, loves us both and so we must muddle on together as best we can.’

Joe was acutely aware how unhappy Gloria was, and three days after he returned from Aggie’s wedding he faced the fact that his unreasonable behaviour and the anger he had directed against Gloria was little to do with her at all. It had, however, a lot to do with how guilty he felt about sailing off for America and leaving Tom to it.

His guilt had increased since he had met Molly, Kevin and Aggie, and he realised that he had done them all a severe disservice by his selfish attitude. If he had stayed on at the farm he could have gone to England, seen Nuala and told her what had happened to their father. He could have then kept in contact and have got to know the children a little. He could certainly have helped and supported Molly when she had come to live on the farm. In fact, if Tom had told him about Aggie earlier he might have even gone searching for her.

And yet how could he regret marrying Gloria, which he wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t gone to America? He had been crazy about her, and together they had a son. Yet now he faced the fact that that all-consuming love and passion seemed missing from their lives.

Some couples never experienced such love, Joe told himself, and yet they go on year after year, living together as he and Gloria would have to do if the flame that had been extinguished between them could not be ignited again. But he couldn’t keep snapping at her and expect her not to react.

So that night, as they sat having a drink before bed, Joe said in a normal voice, ‘Paul and Aggie are after another house, you know.’

Joe hadn’t spoken to Gloria normally since before he went to the wedding, and she was pleased. She wondered if he was over his moroseness and knew that if he was going to act in a reasonable manner then life wouldn’t be so bad after all.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Hasn’t Paul already got a fine house in Edgbaston? Aggie was telling me all about it.’

‘He has, but he wants them to choose a house together. Added to that, Edgbaston is on the other side of the city and I think that now Aggie has found her family, and in particular Nuala’s children, she doesn’t want to live that far away from them.’

‘I can understand that,’ Gloria said. ‘She does seem remarkably close to them both, but Molly told me she and Mark were moving too; that she was only caretaking that house for the best man’s family.’

‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘Terry’s Sallinger’s mother and sisters went to stay with relatives, with the war so bad, but now, with the bombing over, they want to come back. And anyway, Molly and Mark want their own place, and as Paul said, it is best to buy before the war is over. Everyone else will be house-hunting then.’

‘Wise advice.’

‘Yes, and it isn’t as if they have any money worries,’ Joe said. ‘Paul settled a sizeable sum on Molly when she reached twenty-one. Anyway, they have found a house: a three-bedroomed semi on Chester Road. Molly showed me over
it the day that Kevin took young Ben into Birmingham. It’s not that far from the airfield and on a direct tram stop, and it’s empty so they are moving in just a week or two.’

‘So that has all worked out for them,’ Gloria said. ‘Have Aggie and Paul anywhere in mind?’

‘Yes. They have their eye on a big property on Eachelhurst Road.’

‘And that is close by?’

‘Very,’ Joe said. ‘The house Molly and Mark have backs onto a park called Pype Hayes, and if you walk diagonally across the park you come to Eachelhurst Road.’

‘And where is Tom’s flat in relation to these places?’

‘Not far away,’ Joe said. ‘Though of course it won’t be his place much longer.’

‘Why not?’ Gloria asked, and a
frisson
of hope stirred in her. ‘Don’t say he’s coming home?’

‘No,’ Joe said with a small sigh. ‘No sign of that yet. Anyway, Aggie is adamant he stays with them while he decides his future, and for good if he wants to make Birmingham his home.’

‘Oh right …,’ Gloria’s innards were fluttering with excitement as she said, ‘When’s this move taking place?’

‘Well, it’s hard to be specific when you’re buying houses,’ Joe said. ‘But Aggie and Paul definitely want to be in for Christmas, and Tom will probably move in sometime in the New Year.’

‘So there will be a two-bedroomed flat going begging that no one knows about but us?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘This is our chance,’ Gloria said. ‘We could leave here and move to Birmingham with everyone else. Finding a place to live was a real stumbling block to that plan, wasn’t it? You’d get a job easy enough, I’d say. I mean, if all else fails you could always ask Paul. He got a job for Tom.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Joe said. ‘Though I will never be the
farmer that Tom is, I gave him my word that I would stay for a year and I cannot just walk away from that.’

‘Even if that means we lose the flat that would be perfect for us?’

‘Yes. A promise is a promise.’

‘Joe, you can’t just view it like that,’ Gloria cried. ‘Places like that will be like gold dust to get hold of. If you can’t renege on the promise you made to your brother, then let me and Ben go and take up the tenancy of the flat, and you can join us when you—’

‘Are you mad?’ Joe exploded. ‘Let you and Ben go alone? First it was working in a camp full of servicemen and now it’s living apart altogether. ‘Are you really so tired of me, Gloria?’

What shocked Gloria was that she couldn’t have answered ‘no’ and meant it. She saw Joe suddenly as a dull old man, and unbidden into her mind came the image of Morrisey with his full head of thick dark curls, his laughing brown eyes and his sardonic grin.

‘Does your silence answer that question?’ Joe asked.

‘You know how I hate living here.’

‘I would say Tom hated living with our mother,’ Joe said, ‘but he put up with that for years because there was no alternative. Can’t you view this the same way?’

‘No,’ said Gloria. ‘Because my name is not Tom Sullivan.’

Things did not improve between Joe and Gloria as winter took hold of the land. Each thought the other selfish and unfeeling, and as Christmas approached they were barely speaking. Again Gloria found that the job saved her sanity, for she knew she was well liked and valued for the work she did. She began to dread going home to her morose husband and her confused and unhappy child.

In fact, she looked forward to seeing Morrisey each day. Things had changed between them since the dance, and each time Gloria saw him she went weak at the knees and her
stomach lurched. Although nothing had happened between them, she knew that Helen would have tumbled to her preoccupation if she hadn’t found herself besotted with his friend Colin Meadows.