Mother’s Only Child (21 page)

In March 1943, Sean sold the farm to one of Agatha’s sons. When he went to tell Maria, she knew she would miss him sorely.

‘Should I go and see Sarah,’ he asked Maria, ‘and bid her farewell?’

Maria shook her head. ‘They won’t let you in, Uncle
Sean. They don’t encourage visitors—say it upsets the patients. I went the one time with Bella, but they told us Mammy’s mental balance was precarious, and I didn’t try again.’

‘So you haven’t a clue how she is?’

‘No.’

‘Why don’t you have a word with the doctor chap? Sean suggested. ‘He seemed a good sort the time or two I met him.’

‘I never thought of that,’ Maria said. ‘I will, Uncle Sean, and maybe I’ll be able to give the news before you leave. You’ve no idea when that will be?’

‘No,’ Sean said, ‘although the formalities are all done, so it will be in the next few weeks.’

Maria asked Dr Shearer if he’d find out how her mother was and really wished afterwards she hadn’t bothered.

‘Your mother is not responding to treatment at all,’ the doctor told her. ‘They have tried a variety of methods to help her mental state, but she continues to deteriorate. If you were to see her now it would only upset you. She wouldn’t know you at all and might try to attack you.’

‘Attack? Mammy?’

‘This is not the mammy you know, Maria, you must remember that,’ the doctor said. ‘She has already attacked the staff quite a number of times and often has to be restrained.’ He didn’t describe the straitjacket. There were some things patients’ families didn’t need to be told.

‘I brought her to this,’ Sam said, when the doctor had gone.

‘Daddy, we’ve been through this.’

‘I’ve been through it too, over and over,’ Sam said. ‘I know I should never have gone to investigate that noise alone. Why in God’s name didn’t I take Con with me?’

‘Because you knew Brenda would rip him to bits with her tongue,’ Maria said. She sat up on the bed and picked up one of her father’s wizened hands. ‘It’s easy, Daddy, to be wise after the event,’ she said. ‘Please don’t blame yourself for this.’

‘I know what I know,’ Sam said. ‘And where the blame lies. Fetch me a wee drink, Maria, there’s a good girl.’

In May, about the time Sean was packing up ready to leave, Barney too got a shock. ‘I told you that raid was the first and last,’ he told his brother, Seamus, angrily.

‘And I’m telling you,’ Seamus said, ‘the situation has changed. The guards are after P.J. and he has to lie low for a bit.’

‘But if they have P.J. in their sights, surely they’ll know the car as well?’

‘That’s been taken care of,’ Seamus said. ‘It has a completely new numberplate and a respray, so you’ll be able to drive it in perfect safety, provided you keep your wits about you.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘If you refuse, brother,’ Seamus said, ‘you better get yourself into Derry tomorrow and take a job.’

‘What d’you mean? I can still do the runs with you, can’t I?’

‘No,’ Seamus said, shaking his head. ‘I’d need to draft someone else in to do both, so it’s up to you, Barney.’

Barney knew Seamus meant every word he said. Smuggling and the card schools, from which he drew such a comfortable living, would be things of the past. Instead he’d be at some back-breaking job for which he earned only half the money. Yet every time he thought about taking part in any sort of raid, even just driving the car, he felt sick with fear. Seamus saw this reflected in his face. ‘Jesus,’ he said ‘you’re scared shitless, aren’t you?’

Barney didn’t bother to deny it. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘So what? Any normal person would be scared.’

‘I’m not asking a normal person,’ Seamus said. ‘I’m asking you, and I need the answer now. Will you do it or not?’

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘Then the answer is obvious,’ Barney said.

Sean came to see Maria just before he left and he pressed some pound notes into her hand. ‘It’s from the sale of the farm,’ he said. ‘You mind I said you would have your share. I’m not telling Barney about this and I don’t want you to. It’s good for a woman to have a wee bit of money of her own. You don’t know when you may have need of it.’

Maria put the money into the same account that she put her wages in every week. She had never told Barney of this. Not once had he asked what she did with her wages, and she kept the book hidden under the mattress.

As the spring rolled into summer the only change was that Barney was out more often through the night, but now he had a regular night or nights off, two or three sometimes. Maria didn’t ask why. Barney had told her from the first it was best not to know and she was beginning to realise he was right. She worried constantly that he’d be caught. If she knew he drove a getaway car in the raids that were now being reported in the press, she’d have been frantic.

Just after Maria and Barney’s first anniversary, Maria received a letter from her uncle. It was waiting for her when she returned from work one evening.

Dear Maria,

I hope everyone is keeping well, as I am myself. I have some news to tell you. I have met a widow called Martha. She is Birmingham born and bred and her man never returned from Dunkirk.

You’d like Martha, Maria. She is as good and kind as you are yourself. You may have the chance to meet her yet, and before too long, for I have asked her to marry me and she has accepted. We have not known each other that long, but neither of us is in the first flush of youth.

She has three children. Patsy, the eldest, is thirteen next month and such a clever girl. From her primary school in Aston she passed something called the 11-plus. It’s a very stiff exam, Martha told me, and Patsy has a scholarship to St Agnes’ Convent School a little way away in a place
known as Erdington. She goes up on the bus or tram every day.

There are two boys too. Tony will be eight in April, and wee Paul five in March and we all get along splendidly. They all need a father in their lives and Martha has struggled alone long enough.

‘God!’ Maria exclaimed. ‘Sean is getting married.’ She could hardly believe it.

‘Another man led to the bloody slaughter,’ Barney said gloomily.

Maria made no comment, because sometimes the slightest thing she said would throw Barney into a rage, but when she saw him lift his jacket from the hook behind the door she did ask, ‘Are you away to see Seamus?’

‘No, just to Rafferty’s for a few pints,’ Barney said. ‘I’d take Sam, but he’s too far gone already.’

‘I know,’ Maria said. Her father was already in a semi-stupor.

‘I’ll not be that late,’ Barney said. ‘You be ready for me when I come in.’

Barney, when he was kind to Maria and patient in working her up before sex, could still send tremors down her spine and turn her stomach upside down. He knew that full well. He knew too that when he had sunk a few jars, Maria would be waiting for him, ready and willing, and he whistled as he made his way to the pub.

Though they had been married over a year, there was still no sign of the child that Maria so longed for. The men at the pub had begun to tease Barney about it.

‘No lead in his pencil,’ said one wag.

‘Aye,’ another agreed. ‘Must be firing blanks.’ And there was a chorus of laughter.

Women were kinder, but more insistent. ‘No sign of the patter of tiny feet?’ the women in the factory would enquire now and again.

‘No, nothing yet.’

‘There’s things they can do now, you know. You want to get yourself seen to.’

‘Aye, you and your man,’ said one of the older women. ‘Could be him at fault and they never like to admit that.’

‘Surely it’s early days yet?’ Maria said, but she began to feel something was wrong too and wonder whether the miscarriage had damaged her, which was preventing pregnancy. But she kept that worry to herself.

In March 1944 Martha and Sean were to be married. Sean wrote to tell Maria all about it.

Martha has a house for sale in Aston, and I had invested the money from the farm. We have bought a lovely house on Arthur Road, not far at all from Erdington village, which has a wide array of shops. A works bus runs the length of nearby Holly Lane and takes me straight to Dunlop’s. The little children are only a stone’s throw from the Abbey School and Patsy’s convent is even closer.

There seems no reason now to delay the wedding, and it is set for Saturday, 11 March. I know how you are placed with your job and Sam, but it would make the day for me if you could see your way to come over…

There were tears of joy in Maria’s eyes as she folded the letter and put it behind the clock. Sean had achieved the very thing he craved, the thing he thought lost to him for ever: a wife and children, a family of his own. Maria’s
heart filled with love for that good, kind man, and she thanked God he’d been so well blessed.

‘I can’t go, of course,’ she said to Barney.

‘Of course you can,’ Barney said. ‘You must go. It will make Sean’s day. He says so.’

‘But—’

‘Maria, you’re the only family he has,’ Barney pointed out. ‘You can’t let him down over this.’

‘But—’

‘Will you stop saying but?’ Barney said. ‘Arrange time off from work. Dora and me together will see to your father. Write back to Sean and say you’ll be pleased to go.’

Bella and Dora agreed with Barney, but Bella commented, ‘I don’t envy them, getting married in wartime Britain. I hear rationing is crippling, even on clothes. God alone knows what this Martha is getting married in.’

That night, Maria looked at her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe and remembered how unhappy she’d been the night after her wedding, when she’d hung it up. Now it was going to waste when it could be put to good use.

‘But do you have her measurements?’ Bella said, when Maria told her what she intended.

‘Course I don’t,’ Maria said. ‘But maybe she could adapt the material for something else, if it doesn’t fit as it is. I shan’t mind at all if she cuts it up.’

‘Not everyone is as adept with a needle as you, Maria.’

‘Needs must,’ Maria said. ‘If Britain is anything like Derry, posters will encourage them to “Make Do and
Mend”. To be a “squander bug” is the worst thing in the world, apparently. And aren’t I squandering my wedding dress, leaving it hanging in the wardrobe where it is neither use nor ornament to anyone? Anyway, I’ll write tonight and see if Martha wants the dress.’

Martha was delighted with the offer. The problem of getting suitable clothes on the allocated points had been playing on her mind. Maria bundled up the dress and send it to her the very day she got Martha’s letter. She began to look forward to the wedding.

She was to travel down on Wednesday night to catch the ferry at Dun Laoghaire early on Thursday morning, because Barney said it was best to sail in the daylight. Maria was already nervous enough, because she’d never been further than Derry all the days of her life and she was glad that Barney was going as far as Derry with her.

‘My insides are jumping about all over the place,’ she said to Barney on the train, as he put her case on the rack above her head.

‘That’s natural enough,’ Barney said. ‘But the break will do you good. And don’t you be worrying about Sam. We’ll see he’s all right.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ Maria said. She knew Sam was less trouble than ever, for he was out of it most of the time, but she never stopped worrying about him.

‘They’re slamming the doors,’ Barney said. ‘If I don’t get off soon I’ll be travelling with you.’

Maria wished he was, wished anyone was, but she didn’t say this.

Barney gave her a peck on the cheek, a thing he seldom did any more, and waited on the platform until
the train pulled out before making his way swiftly to the back room of the pub in Derry, where he knew Seamus and Eamonn would be waiting for him.

However, when he heard what the other two proposed, he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘A bank!’ he cried. ‘Ah, sweet Jesus, Seamus. We’ll never be able to rob a bank, or anything like it.’

‘We’re not robbing the bank,’ Seamus said. ‘We’re robbing the men carrying the money. We’ve had a couple of fellows tracking the van’s route for some time and there’s this quiet stretch of road with plenty of cover either side. That’s where we’ll strike.’

‘What other fellows?’ Barney demanded.

‘What did you think?’ Seamus asked. ‘Did you think we could do this job by ourselves? We are talking big money here, brother. We’ll need another car as well.’

‘Why?’

‘To block the road,’ Seamus explained. ‘The car will be stolen and they will drive it in front of the van. We jump in, wrench open the door, clout the guards over the head and Bob’s your uncle. We’ll all be thousands of pounds better off. Now, do you want in, or don’t you?’

Barney was tempted by the thought of thousands of pounds, and the plan seemed to have been thought out well enough. ‘What a daft question,’ he said. ‘Course I want to be in.’

‘So,’ Seamus said, ‘all you’ve got to do is keep out of sight while we deal with the guards and then pull in behind the van with the engine running. We’ll be in and out in no time and it’ll be as easy as that.’

Barney felt the beginnings of excitement at the
thought of it. The sick feeling and the fear had been replaced by exhilaration as each raid was planned and executed perfectly. He thought it the easiest way in the world to make lots of cash. He knew Maria wouldn’t see it like that at all, but she needn’t ever hear one whisper about any of it.

‘All right?’ Seamus rapped out.

‘You bet,’ Barney replied. ‘Jesus, I can hardly wait.’

Maria was so weary by the time the train pulled into the station at Dun Laoghaire that she could hardly think straight. Once out of it, she followed the mass of people, who seemed to know where they were going. The size of the ferry unnerved her, but not as much as the grey scummy water lapping against it, or the vast sea, stretching out in the distance, that the ferry would be travelling across. She boarded with great trepidation.

All her life she had been surrounded by boats—not boats such as these, of course, though now the Foyle was full of boats of all sizes and shapes—but she had never been on a boat before, either large or small. She had a more than healthy respect for the sea, bordering on fear, and she had never learnt to swim. She looked at the mass of passengers on board and wondered how the boat ever kept afloat.