Mother’s Only Child (17 page)

Sheer and utter blessed relief, caused Maria’s legs to buckle under her. She would have fallen, but for Barney’s arms encircling her. He sank back on to the settee, pulling Maria with him so that she sat on his knee. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the passion she had in her.

‘Thank you, Barney. Thank you,’ she said fervently.

She was so grateful to him. The alternative, for a girl finding herself pregnant and single, was very grim indeed, not just for herself, but for the whole family.

‘There are better ways than words for showing a man how full of gratitude you are,’ Barney said.

Maria pulled the jumper from her head and said, ‘Come on then. What are we waiting for?’

Father Flaherty was no fool. ‘Is the any reason for such a rush?’

Barney met his glance levelly. ‘None other than
Maria needs help sooner rather than later, and we have the house and all and see no reason to wait.’

It was the same reason they had given to Sam and Sean—and Bella and Dora too. If the two women thought there might be another reason for rushing into marriage they didn’t give voice to it. The priest, however, wasn’t satisfied.

‘Maria is still very young.’

‘Aye, Father, which is precisely why she needs the help now,’ Barney said. ‘I know there is not much to Sam, but he is still a weight for Maria to lift on her own. I do what I can, but could do more if I was in the house.’

The priest could not argue with Barney’s logic. He’d called to see Sam many times and lately he had often found him drunk or very near it, even by mid-morning. He knew the man would be no measure of support or help to Maria, and in the state he was often in, he would be a dead weight to deal with.

‘He has given his permission, your father?’ the priest asked Maria.

‘Oh, aye, Father. Daddy is all for it. He thinks the world of Barney here.’

‘Well, we are all set then,’ the priest said, drawing a calendar towards him. ‘If I call the banns tomorrow then the earliest you can be married will be the second of January, if you want a Saturday, because I wouldn’t marry anyone on Boxing Day.’

Maria quite understood that. ‘The second of January sounds just grand, Father,’ she said. ‘It will be good to start the New Year together.’

She squeezed Barney’s hand as she spoke. Barney
didn’t squeeze back, for going through his mind was the realisation that he had just a few scant weeks of freedom left to him and, by God, he intended to make the most of them.

The following Saturday afternoon, with the post office shut, Bella said Maggie could manage the rest and went to Letterkenny with Maria to get patterns and materials to make her wedding dress.

For the first time, Bella saw the Maria that Sarah had described the day she’d got the news she’d won the scholarship. She watched the almost reverent way the girl stroked the material as the bales were laid before her.

She chose white, although she really had no right to wear it, but it would have caused comment and speculation if she had chosen any other colour. When she made her choice, she then scrutinised the lace for the petticoats, neckline and sleeves, and bought decorative buttons and tiny rosebuds and seed pearls She even took time to decide on the cotton thread to use and confessed to Bella, as the assistant wrapped it all up, that she itched to get home and get started on it.

This was what Philomena Clarke saw, Bella told herself. Sarah had acknowledged the gift but didn’t see its significance. Maria had a love of material and making clothes, right enough, and had things been different it could have been developed further.

But there was no good thinking that way, Bella chided herself. Maria’s life has gone on a different tack altogether. Regret and wishing that things were different was worse than useless.

On the morning of the wedding, Bella helped ease the wedding dress over Maria’s slim frame and fixed the veil in place. Maria swung around in front of the mirror and studied it critically. The scalloped neck showed the merest hint of cleavage and was trimmed with lace, like the wide full sleeves, caught in at the elbow. The dress was fitted to just past the waist and from there it stood out with the starched lace petticoats and the skirt was caught up at intervals with blue and pink rosebuds to match the headdress.

Maria wished for a moment that she could have invited Joanne to the wedding, but she liked to keep her work life and home life separate. She would have hated Joanne to see the state her father would be in by the time this day was over. He had started, and with gusto, the night before. She had heard him shouting and swearing and singing snatches of rebel songs, Sean trying to quieten him. Her toes had curled in the bed with shame and she felt dread like a large stone filling her stomach.

She didn’t want to show her friend that side of her
father. Yet when Joanne had said wistfully, ‘I’d love to be there to see you in that fantastic dress that you have told us so much about,’ Maria had had the urge to say, ‘Come, why don’t you? You can stay with me in the house. I have the room.’ However, what she’d ended up saying was, ‘I’d like you to be there too, Joanne, but it has to be a quiet wedding, you see, with Daddy so ill and all. But Bella has a camera and I imagine that she won’t be the only one. I’ll have plenty of pictures, don’t worry.’

Joanne, who knew more about Maria’s life than most, accepted that. She was the only one in the factory that knew the real reason for the rushed wedding. When Maria had displayed her engagement ring first, there had been exclamations of delight from the girls. It truly was a magnificent ring and more than one person had looked ruefully at the rings they had been bought. They all advised her, however, to take her time settling down and to remember it was for life. She had replied airily that neither of them was in a hurry to wed.

When she had to tell them how things had changed and that the wedding had to be sooner rather than later, she gave the same reason for haste as Barney had to the priest. Only later when they were alone did Joanne ask, ‘Was that the real reason?’

The crimson flush gave Maria away. Joanne nodded. ‘I thought as much.’

‘It must have been the day they took Mammy away,’ Maria said. ‘I was so upset and Barney took me for a walk and comforted me and…‘

‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me,’ Joanne said. ‘I know just how hard it can be saying “no” and
you wouldn’t be feeling yourself that day. You weren’t right when you came to work, and I thought it strange then. I mean, I expected you to be full of tears all day, but instead you were odd. It’s hard to explain it, but you didn’t look too unhappy.’

‘I wasn’t. Isn’t that awful, with Mammy and all? I couldn’t help remembering it.’

‘It was good then?’

‘Joanne!’ Maria said, shocked.

‘What?’ Joanne said. ‘It must have been good if you had a smile on your face when you remembered it. Go on, tell me, did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes,’ Maria said in a whisper, ‘and that’s shocking too, isn’t it, because most woman don’t,’

‘Aye, or say they don’t,’ Joanne commented wryly. ‘All I know is that if I was looking forward to a lifetime of something, I would face it with greater enthusiasm if I could find any sort of pleasure in it. So you don’t be worrying about that, or anything else either. At least your man is standing by you.’

‘Aye,’ Maria said. ‘Though I did think at one point he wouldn’t. He went mad when he heard.’

‘Oh, lots do that,’ Joanne said.

‘Do they?’

‘Oh, yes. See it as a loss of their freedom or some such rubbish. Still, your Barney came through in the end, and that’s the main thing.’

Aye, Maria told herself the morning of her wedding, that was the main thing. In a few short hours now she would be Mrs McPhearson, and that night she and her legally wed husband would snuggle together in the double bed in the room that had once been her parents’.
Barney could have sex all night if he wanted it. She blushed at the thought though her insides fluttered in delicious anticipation and the light pink flush leant a bloom to her face, as she twirled anxiously in front of Bella and asked, ‘Do I look all right?’

‘All right?’ Bella exclaimed. ‘My darling girl, you look perfect, so you do. You have a rare and wondrous beauty and Barney can consider himself a lucky man. Shall we go down?’

Remembering the state of her father the previous night, Maria descended the stairs with more than a little trepidation, terrified her father would still be lying in some drunken heap.

But, she needn’t have worried. Sean had been up since six o’clock, waking Sam, who’d had as little sleep as he had, and washing him all over, even the sparse hair on his head. He’d also given him plenty of water to drink before getting him into the clothes he wore for Mass.

When Maria arrived in the room, he was sitting in his wheelchair, looking more respectable than he had any right to look.

He was actually feeling like death, but when he caught sight of Maria, the breath almost stopped in his throat and he was almost floored that he was the father of such a beauty. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said, catching hold of the hands that she had placed on his shoulders. ‘There just aren’t the words to describe you.’

‘Oh, Daddy, give over,’ Maria said. ‘I’ll be going up the aisle the colour of beetroot.’

Sean stepped into the room, looking very distinguished in a black pinstriped suit and brilliant white shirt, his tie matching the handkerchief in his top
pocket. He was across the room in two strides when he saw Maria.

He put his hands on her shoulders, looked into her large green eyes and said, ‘Maria, I think you’re one of the loveliest women to walk God’s earth.’

‘Oh, Uncle Sean.’

‘Don’t “Oh, Uncle Sean” me, Maria,’ he said in a mock reprimand. ‘Get used to compliments and used to the fact you are very beautiful.’

Maria’s face was the colour of a ripe tomato and Bella, now dressed in a smart blue costume, clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Leave her be, Sean,’ she said and dabbed at Maria’s face with powder from her compact to try to reduce the blushing redness of it.

Sean had one niggling worry and it was that Barney wouldn’t make it to the church, because he’d still been drinking hard when he’d eventually dragged Sam home and in fine fettle, as if set to go on to the next morning. He’d had one hell of a job with Sam that morning and he hoped that someone, Seamus maybe, had made the same effort with the bridegroom.

He needn’t have worried. Seamus, who was Barney’s best man, had kicked his brother awake that morning. Barney couldn’t ever remember feeling so bad. He had no recollection of how he’d got home and who had undressed him and put him to bed. Once roused, he had spent half an hour or more vomiting, with his brother roaring at him to get ready. That didn’t help the pounding in his head and, even dressed, he felt the nausea rising in his throat. When they had nearly reached the church, Seamus had to stop the car for Barney to vomit at the side of the road.

‘All right?’ he asked, as Barney wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘We’re nearly there now and we can’t risk being late.’

Barney felt far from all right. His head thumped so badly he felt dizzy with it, his stomach continued to churn and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. It took a great deal of effort for him to smile at his brother and say, ‘None better.’

It satisfied Seamus, though. ‘Good man!’ he said. ‘Come on then.’

When they drew up before the church, the two stood in front of it for a few minutes.

‘This here is the end of your freedom,’ Seamus said. ‘From now on you’ll be at someone else’s beck and call, someone who will tell you what time you are to be home, how much to drink.’

‘No, man,’ Barney said. ‘Maria isn’t like that.’

‘She isn’t a wife yet,’ Seamus said ominously. ‘From what I’ve seen in marriages, most wives are like that.’

‘I’ll see to it Maria isn’t,’ Barney said. ‘I’d not stand it.’

‘We’ll see,’ Seamus said. ‘You ready?’

Barney gave a brief nod, which set off the pounding in his head again. He followed his brother down the aisle, greeting Father Flaherty, and hoping he could get through the next hour or so without disgracing himself.

And then the Wedding March was heard. Maria was at the door. All of the friends and neighbours thronging the church thought Maria a truly beautiful bride and many were awed by the magnificent dress, the like of which had never been seen in Moville before, but few could not be moved by the poignant sight of Sam. He was being pushed by Sean and he held tight
to his daughter’s hand, a smile of absolute pride on his face.

Barney felt a wave of dizziness assail him as he got to his feet and he swayed and would have fallen, but Seamus caught his arm.

‘Go steady, man,’ he hissed and Barney fixed his eyes on the altar steps and concentrated on not falling on his face.

The back room of Rafferty’s was full as Barney and Maria entered hand in hand. Maria was smiling and Barney was doing his best, but still feeling sluggish.

Seamus had invited two friends to the reception. He introduced them to Maria as P.J. Connelly, now minus his appendix, and Eamonn Duffy. Maria cared for them as little as she cared for Seamus, and thought it presumptuous of him to invite them. But she didn’t want to mar her wedding day with an argument. So she smiled as politely as she could. Nor did she say anything when Seamus put a pint of Guinness in Barney’s hand, though she had noticed Barney’s pallor in the church, his hazy eyes trying to gaze into hers, his indistinct and slightly slurred voice making the responses and the way his hands shook when they were signing the register. She knew he wasn’t completely sober from the night before and she had no wish to see him drink himself stupid again.

However, she could say nothing without making him look a fool and her a nag, and so was pleased when she heard Barney say, ‘Better not, Seamus. I thought I was going to be sick as a dog a couple of times in the church.’

‘Hair of the dog. Best thing for it,’ Seamus said. ‘Trust me.’

Barney gave a nervous laugh and glanced at Maria guiltily as he took the pint. ‘Oh, well, if you say so.’