A Mother's Spirit (35 page)

‘No,’ Helen said. ‘But they hadn’t time to hang about. They were due back at camp.’

Then Gloria, scanning the dockside, caught sight of the lone figure staring, staring out at the disappearing ship. She knew immediately who it was. ‘Look,’ she said to Helen, ‘that’s Joe!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Gloria said emphatically. ‘I have been married
to him for long enough to recognise that stance, and there’s Tom beside him.’

‘How did they know where we were?’

‘No idea,’ Gloria shrugged, turning away, because the sight of Joe had filled her with guilt. ‘I wish Ben would hurry up. I want to see if I can get us a meal somewhere. I’m famished.’

‘Oh my God! Look!’ Helen cried suddenly.

Gloria turned, and to her horror saw that another, smaller figure was approaching her husband. ‘Dear God!’ she cried and turned anguished eyes to Helen. ‘What am I to do?’

Helen shook her head helplessly. There was nothing they could do.

‘What has he done?’ Gloria cried. ‘How did he get off the ship, and why?’

‘I don’t know, Gloria.’

‘But I can’t go to the States and leave my son behind.’

‘You can do little else just now,’ Helen pointed out. ‘I would think the captain would take a very dim view of turning this big ship round to pick up one young boy who doesn’t want to travel to America anyway. He told you that plainly, and had he wanted to go he wouldn’t have left the ship in the first place.’

Although what Helen said made sense, Gloria barely heard her. She felt an actual pain in her heart that was so powerful she fell to her knees with a heartbreaking cry, and Helen kneeled beside her and held her friend as she wept.

Ben hadn’t been able to believe his eyes when he saw his father just standing there. He had thought that he would have to hitch all the way home and so he stepped from his hiding place and said, ‘Hello, Dad. What’re you doing here?’

Joe spun round in total shock at seeing the son he thought he had lost standing in front of him. ‘Ben?’ he cried. ‘I thought you were on the ship.’

‘I was, but I don’t want to go to America and have a new father. I want to stay with you and so I got off.’

Joe put his arms around his son and held him tight. Tears ran down his face and his heart felt lighter than it had done in ages. Suddenly, he felt Ben stiffen and he followed his gaze. A little way from them was a naval officer staring fixedly at Ben as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes.

Joe stepped away from his son and faced the man. ‘Are you Philip Morrisey?’ he asked, and the man nodded. ‘I am Joe Sullivan,’ Joe said. ‘And you are my wife’s fancy man. I should knock you to the floor for what you have done, but I won’t do that because I want to know how you secured a passage for Gloria to travel to America. I understood only wives could travel on that ship, and she is still married to me.’

There was no point in lying, and Philip said, ‘We went through a civil ceremony in Belfast.’

That shook Joe. Even though he knew that she would have had to do something like that to get on the ship in the first place, the fact that she had actually gone through a marriage ceremony when she was still married to him shocked and hurt him. It showed him just what lengths she was prepared to go to for this American sailor. It wasn’t the behaviour of the Gloria he knew, the one he had been married to for years. That Gloria had been as straight as a die and would never do anything underhand.

Philip saw the look in Joe’s eyes and, despite his strong and ardent love for Gloria, he felt such sympathy for the man whose eyes were pain-filled.

‘I could make things very difficult for you both if I had a mind,’ Joe said. ‘No one would blame me, for bigamy is a crime that carries a prison sentence. Many would say that you have stolen my wife away, but that isn’t true, for I know the decision to leave had to be her own and I know she hasn’t been happy for some time. However, Ben doesn’t want to go with her and he has made that patently clear, and so he will stop with me. If you make trouble for me,
or try to take Ben through the courts, then I will whisper into someone’s ear. If you agree to leave Ben in my custody, then I will say nothing and if Gloria wants a divorce then she can have one. Perhaps when you are writing to her you will tell her this.’

Philip knew that Joe was right. He had the potential to make a great deal of trouble for both of them. But Philip knew Ben’s place was with his father and he had to make Gloria see that. ‘I’m sure that Gloria will see leaving Ben with you as the best solution,’ he said.

Ben tugged on his father’s arm. ‘Let’s go home, Dad.’

Joe turned away from Philip and his moist eyes softened as they lighted on the son he loved so much. Despite Ben’s age, Joe lifted him into his arms and said, ‘We will go to the cottage, Ben, and pack up all our things and move them to Tom’s flat in Birmingham, and that will be our home now. What do you say to that?’

‘Oh, you bet, Dad,’ Ben said. ‘That is just terrific.’

‘And as soon as I get rid of the farm I am coming to join you,’ Tom said, stepping forward as Philip walked away.

Ben put one arm around his father’s neck and one around his uncle’s, and said, ‘That will be better still.’

The three of them stayed like that for a few minutes and watched the ship sail out against the sky.

Ben was squeezed into the back of Hughie’s car between his father and Jack McEvoy, with his Uncle Tom in the front, and he listened to the banter and ribaldry between them. He took no part in it, though, because he felt saturated in misery with the realisation that he might never see his mother again.

Joe was so light-headed with relief that he had his son back with him again that at first he didn’t notice Ben’s silence.

Then, as they turned into the lane, Tom said, ‘You and
Ben would do well to leave here as soon as possible, because your lives won’t be your own when this news breaks in the town.’

‘Your brother is right,’ Hughie said. ‘And though no one will hear it from me, these things get about.’

‘And you know I can keep my own counsel when I have to,’ Jack said. ‘But this is a bad business altogether, and Hughie is right: someone will get hold of it before long.’

Joe knew the two men were right, and that, because Gloria had sailed for America and, as they saw it, abandoned both husband and child, then she would be hanged, drawn and quartered by the women of Buncrana. There was no way he could even begin to justify what she had done to their satisfaction, and that would be no help to Ben, whom he was sure still loved his mother.

In fact, now he came to think about it, Ben had been remarkably quiet altogether on the way home, and as the car drew up in the yard before the cottage and they climbed out, Joe said to his son, ‘After we have eaten I will go down to the station to make arrangements, and then we will start to pack. All right?’

Ben nodded dumbly, Joe’s eyes met those of Tom over the child’s bent head and they both knew that he was too distressed to speak. The meal that Tom had on the table only minutes later was one of Ben’s favourites: thick rashers of home-cured bacon and golden-yolked eggs with soda bread and thick creamery butter, but Ben moved it around the plate and actually ate very little of it.

Tom and Joe kept the conversation going, mainly about the arrangements, because the ensuing silence if they didn’t was uncomfortable.

‘Only book the passage for you and the boy from Derry,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll take you that far and when you have that organised I’ll send them all a telegram in Birmingham for they will be wondering what’s afoot.’

‘What will you say?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll leave all the explanations up to you. All I’ll say is that the arrangements have changed and that you will be coming over with Ben, and give them the time of your arrival at New Street. I’m sure one of them will be there to meet you.’

‘Probably,’ Joe said, ‘and the whole lot of them will be stunned by what has happened today. It won’t take me long to pack, when all is said and done, because I have just realised that Gloria must have a whole case of Ben’s clothes that are on their way to New York at the moment.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ Tom said. ‘Molly said before I left that she is keeping anything still wearable that Kevin grows out of for Ben. With the rationing on clothes, it’s the very devil to keep them decently clad when the child is still growing. Kevin has slowed down now, which is just as well, because he stands nearly five foot ten in his stocking feet.’

‘Does he really?’

‘Aye,’ Tom said. ‘You have never seen such a change in a boy. His voice has broken as well. The child is growing into a man.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing him again,’ Joe said. ‘Has he done with school now?’

‘He could have left in July, for he was fourteen in March,’ Tom said, ‘but Paul convinced him to stay another year.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then he starts an apprenticeship to be a tool-maker,’ Tom said. ‘Paul is arranging it for him. Molly would have liked him to go on and matriculate – even university, if he wanted – but Kevin is no academic. He is not a stupid boy, but book-learning is not for him and Paul knows that as well as I do. Tool-making is a good job, anyway. They are the craftsmen of the factory.’

‘How about that then, Ben?’ Joe said to his son. ‘Your cousin, Kevin, is almost a working man.’

Ben wrinkled his nose. Kevin, the working man, didn’t sound half as much fun as Kevin the boy, but he was too
dispirited to make much of it and he shrugged and muttered, ‘’S all right, I s’pose.’

‘What is it, Ben?’ Joe said, thinking it was better to face what was eating him openly.

Ben raised his eyes, looked at his father, and said, ‘Why did you let Mom go away like that?’

‘I didn’t let her go, Ben,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t know what she intended.’

‘You must have done, else you wouldn’t have been there at the dockside.’

‘That was because of the telegrams your mother sent,’ Tom said, and explained them to Ben.

‘So what do we do now?’ Ben asked.

‘I told you,’ Joe said. ‘We are making for Birmingham just as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘I mean about Mom,’ Ben said agitatedly.

‘Ben, your mother is on her way to America,’ Joe said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Make her come back.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Yes you can,’ Ben insisted. ‘Or go to America and fetch her back. You can ’cos you said to that man Mom is still married to you, and married people live together.’

‘Ben, I—’

‘If you don’t do it, if you don’t make her come home,’ Ben said desperately, ‘then I might never see her again.’

Tom plainly heard the distress in Ben’s voice, saw it mirrored in Joe’s face, and decided that neither of them needed his presence in the cottage.

Barely had the door closed behind Tom when Ben said brokenly, ‘I want Mom to come home, Dad.’

‘I know,’ Joe said, and tears rained down his own face as he admitted, ‘So do I, but she’s not going to.’

‘Oh, Dad …’ cried Ben. Joe gathered the weeping child onto his knee and let him cry out his fear and his pain, and they took comfort from one another.

Ben hadn’t realised just how much he would miss his mother. A fortnight after he had come to Birmingham to live it had got no easier. The loss of his mother was like a constant ache inside. Everyone was very kind to him, tiptoeing around him as gently as if they were circling an unexploded bomb. Even his father was like that with him and sometimes it made Ben want to scream.

He knew he had made the right decision, that was the annoying thing. He knew he couldn’t have borne it if he had gone off with his mother and left his father all alone in Ireland, but he resented the fact that he had been forced to make that decision. Or any decision at all. He blamed his mother for that. She was the one who had left, but she wasn’t there and so it was usually his father who bore the brunt of his ill humour. And he bore it all without complaint. He didn’t get angry and tell him off as he would once have done, and that unnerved Ben too. He viewed starting a new school with no enthusiasm at all.

Joe knew how Ben felt and understood his anger. He too grieved for Gloria, but alone in his bed at night. He had no one to discuss his feelings with because from the first he had said to the family that though Gloria had gone, there had been faults on both sides, that Ben still loved his mother and it wouldn’t help him for them to start pulling Gloria to bits.

‘Easy to say,’ Molly said to Aggie one day. ‘But just to walk out on him like that … I mean, everyone goes through sticky patches in their marriage, but you don’t just give up and walk out.’

‘Ah, but it wasn’t just a sticky patch, was it?’ Aggie said. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, she was carrying on with an American. I got on well with Gloria when she came over for your wedding. I could see, though, that she was intrigued by the attraction Paul felt for me. I saw her speculative eyes on me more than once.’

‘Why?’

Aggie shrugged. ‘I imagine she was wondering how Paul could feel that way about me when I had spent years on the streets.’

‘That was hardly your fault,’ Molly said.

‘I know that, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I was a prostitute,’ Aggie said. ‘As I recall, it took me some time to understand and accept that Paul was taking me warts and all, so I can hardly blame others for being surprised. I think in the end Gloria accepted how it was between us. I liked her, though, and I thought she liked me, and I was a little disappointed that she didn’t come to my wedding.’

‘Maybe by then she had bigger fish to fry,’ Molly said. ‘And I notice that you say “liked”, not “like”. How do you feel about her now?’

Aggie thought for a moment, then said, ‘Till Joe turned up at my door with Tom that time to deal with Finch, I hadn’t seen him for over forty years. I had shared no part of his life. To see him go through all this upset now hurts me. Whatever he says, he is suffering. It is often etched on his face, and he looks quite grey at times. And there is Ben, a confused, angry and unhappy Ben, who he is also trying to cope with. I know that Joe said there were faults on both sides, and I dare say there were, but she has gone and Joe is left to pick up the pieces.’ Aggie shook her head. ‘It is hard to feel the same about her and not blame her totally.’

‘Do you think she should have taken Ben with her?’

‘Good God no,’ Aggie said. ‘Joe couldn’t have borne that. What the woman should have done was stay put and get on with mending her marriage and rearing her child. You know,’ she went on, ‘one thing I will always regret is not having a child of my own, and I suppose that’s why I was so dumbfounded that Gloria should just walk away from her son.’

‘Ah, Aunt Aggie …’

‘And then I met Paul’s sister, Isobel,’ Aggie said. ‘You know what a lovely gentle and softly spoken lady she is, and though they would have liked more, she had just one son, Gregory. They both adored him.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘And he died at Dunkirk.’

‘Yes,’ Aggie said. ‘And I got to wondering whether it was better to have no children at all than to give birth to them, nurture them and watch them grow up, learn to love them with all your being and see them killed like that, so young, their lives full of promise.’

‘I don’t know that I could bear it,’ Molly admitted. ‘Paul told me Isobel’s husband never got over it.’

‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘He died three years ago. He had influenza and people recover from that all the time. He should really have been able to fight it off. Isobel said it was as if he had given up.’

‘And then Isobel became Uncle Tom’s fancy piece,’ Molly said with a large grin.

‘You know he did no such thing,’ Aggie said, giving her niece a tap on the hand. ‘You are a tease and when you say that in front of Tom he goes bright red.’

‘I know,’ Molly said with a laugh. ‘It’s such a temptation to tease him because he blushes so easily. And he does go out with Isobel.’

‘Only when Paul and I go too,’ Aggie said. ‘And you know that was because after her husband died Isobel was very sad and lonely. Before Paul met me he would take his
sister out and about to the pictures and theatre, or out for a meal, and he didn’t want her to feel pushed out so he asked Tom as company for her. That’s all it was.’

‘Of course,’ said Molly with a knowing smile. ‘Maybe that’s how it began, but you never know. After all, they’re both two lonely people.’

Aggie shook her head. ‘Tom is not the marrying kind,’ she said. ‘We all know why now, but he’ll hardly change, and Isobel is certainly not looking for any entanglements, though she does like Tom.’

‘Everyone likes Tom,’ Molly said. ‘And he is so pleased about this baby he is like a dog with two tails.’

‘And me,’ Aggie said. ‘I can hardly wait.’

‘I can see I shall have to watch the pair of you or you will have the child ruined,’ Molly said to Aggie with mock severity. ‘And you’re not the only ones either. Kevin is cock-a-hoop about being an uncle.’

‘Let’s hope that Ben takes some interest in the baby too,’ Aggie said, ‘for that child needs something to cheer him.’

‘Yes,’ said Molly almost fiercely. ‘And I hope his mother is proud of herself, wherever she is.’

The liner took almost a week to reach New York and the agonising pain of losing her son never left Gloria, so she was glad of Helen’s support.

‘What breaks my heart most,’ she said to her one day, ‘is that he ran away from me. He chose Joe.’

‘You must see it from his point of view,’ Helen said gently. ‘In his opinion you have Philip now, and Joe has no one. He actually said that to you.’

‘I know,’ Gloria said miserably. ‘I didn’t think that it would hurt this much. And then there are Philip’s parents, who have arranged to meet me. They are expecting Ben, and I thought he might break the ice a bit.’

‘Oh, he might have done more than break the ice,’ Helen said ruefully. ‘Especially as he didn’t want to go to America
in the first place. He could just blurt out that you are still married to his dad or something like that. I mean, you didn’t intend to tell them that straight away, did you?’

‘No,’ Gloria said. ‘And you’re right: Ben could and probably would blurt that out, especially if he was angry enough. That would have been just dreadful. Phillip has told me to say nothing for now. He will explain it to them when they have got to know me a little. And when he hears what Ben has done he will know what we have to do to get him back.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Helen said. ‘Ben has shown you plainly where he wants to be, so why not leave him be now?’

‘No,’ Gloria said determinedly. ‘You don’t understand. You’re not a mother yet, and Ben is just a child, so what does he know? His place is with me. I couldn’t go through life without Ben.’

Helen suddenly felt immeasurably sad for Joe and she said gently, ‘Not even for Phillip?’

Gloria met Helen’s gaze levelly. ‘I didn’t think that I would be called on to make a choice.’

‘Can’t you feel the tiniest bit sorry for Joe if you try and take Ben away from him?’ Helen said. ‘And won’t Ben be miserable if you force him to come to a place he never wanted to come to?’

‘Ben will get over it,’ Gloria said dismissively. ‘Children are very adaptable. As for Joe, how the hell did he know I was on that ship? I didn’t even tell them at the canteen when we left – you know, when we had that bit of a leaving do. Everyone was making plans for what to do with their free time and arranging to meet up and everything, remember, and I just went along with it.’

‘I know you did,’ Helen said. She added, ‘I told no one either, so it’s a mystery how Joe found out, but I bet he thought at first that Ben was on the ship.’

‘Yes,’ said Gloria grimly. ‘And that is where he should be. Ben’s place is here with me.’

Helen said nothing further. She had no wish to alienate her friend, but she privately thought that she was piling up a heap of trouble for herself and a whole lot of misery for Joe, who had done nothing wrong.

As the ship pulled into the New York harbour, Gloria and Helen weren’t the only ones scanning the photographs of their new families and trying to identify them among the many people on the docksides waiting to welcome the Irish wives their sons had chosen.

The gangplank was lowered to a cheer from the women and children aboard, and they began to shuffle forward.

‘Can you see your people?’ said Helen suddenly.

‘No,’ Gloria said, ‘not yet anyway. Philip’s father said he would wear a pink carnation.’

‘Did he really?’ said Helen with a laugh. ‘I think I’ve spotted mine, anyway. Over to the side a little. Can you see?’

‘I think so,’ Gloria said. ‘Oh, I am going to miss you.’

‘How d’you think I feel?’ Helen said. ‘It will all be strange to me.’

‘And me too after all this time,’ Gloria insisted.

‘Oh, look, I think that I have spotted your new in-laws, because there’s a man over there sporting the biggest carnation I have ever seen,’ Helen cried.

Gloria looked in the direction of Helen’s pointing finger. The way the man stood so tall and straight reminded her of Philip. She had searched the photograph that he had sent her at the time for any resemblance but much of his face was covered with a trim beard and moustache. ‘He used to have hair as dark as mine when I was a child,’ Philip had told her. ‘Now he is as grey as a badger.’

So was the dumpy woman beside him, Gloria thought, but her eyes in the round, open face looked kindly and the taut muscles in Gloria’s stomach relaxed a little. She knew whatever these people were like she would have to live with them until the war was over and Philip demobbed.

She shivered suddenly, and Helen said, ‘I’m scared stiff too.’

‘This must be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life,’ Gloria said, and the two girls embraced, and tears squeezed from Gloria’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Her stiff backbone came to her rescue and she pulled herself from Helen’s arms, wiping the tears away from her cheeks impatiently. ‘This won’t do. Here we are on the edge of maybe the greatest adventure of our lives, when we will become involved with the relatives and friends of the men we love, and all we can do is weep. What madness is this?’

‘It is mad,’ Helen agreed. ‘It isn’t as if we will never meet again. Anyway, Colin’s parents look friendly enough to me, and he always speaks about them with such fondness.’

‘So does Philip,’ Gloria said.

There was a sudden surge forward and Gloria was at the top of the gangplank. Unbidden there flashed into her head the memory of Joe’s first day in that brave new world more than twenty years before. Then he had risked his own life to save the life of a young girl. If he’d failed neither Gloria nor Joe would be alive today.

She owed Joe her life and she suddenly felt sorry for the blow she had dealt him. He hadn’t deserved her to run out on him the way she had, and she faced the fact that had she succeeded in taking Ben to New York with her, it would have destroyed him. Ben wanted to stay with his father, he had indicated that as strongly as he could, and she knew, though her heart felt as heavy as lead despite her spirited words to Helen, that it might be better to leave him there after all.

She approached Philip’s parents and shook them both by the hand, saying sincerely as she did so, ‘I am so delighted to meet you at last. Philip told me so much about you.’

Philip’s father, Richard, introduced himself and his wife, Mary, and Gloria noted his gruff voice, realised he was as nervous as she was, and she warmed to him.

She saw the woman relax a little – with relief, Gloria guessed as she kissed her on the cheek – and say, ‘We are delighted to meet you too, dear, and may I say, I think my son has chosen well. You are very welcome and you may call us Mom and Dad, or Poppa if you would like to, though if you find that awkward, Mary and Richard will do just as well.’

‘I thought there was to be a child?’ Richard said. ‘Your son?’

There was no way Gloria was going to tell them that Ben had run back to his father, but what she did say, careful to keep any trace of sadness from her voice, was, ‘I decided to leave Ben with his father just for now, until I get myself settled.’

‘Oh,’ said Richard with a slight frown, ‘I was looking forward to having a child about the place once more.’

Gloria almost told them then of the child she was now sure she was carrying, but she stopped herself. It was too early. There might be a moment when she would need such news. It might sweeten the pill when Philip explained that they weren’t legally married.

‘Did your son not mind?’ Mary asked. ‘Especially with you going so far away and everything.’

Gloria shook her head. ‘No. Ben loves his father and Joe is a fine man. Just because it didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean that he hasn’t always been a very good father. His brother is at the farm now because he is selling up and he is another favourite of Ben’s. My son is quite happy, I assure you.’

Mary pursed her lips and Gloria saw it and knew she thought it odd of her to leave her child behind when she had gone to live in another continent entirely. But she said nothing further.

Richard stepped forward and, picking up the cases, said, ‘Come. We will get a cab. Is this all you have?’