Mother’s Only Child (42 page)

At last, Barney had a clue as to where all this was leading and he said, ‘Most of them.’

‘And how do you feel about lifting some of those tools?’ MacKay asked. ‘We’ll tell you the type of things we need. It would make certain people very happy if you could do that. In fact, so happy would they be that they might not feel like bashing you any more. Do you reckon you could manage it?’

Barney nodded. He was filled with the same exhilaration that he had felt going on the raids with his brother. He knew how it was to be achieved. It would be a piece of cake. There was a men’s toilet block right beside one of the main storerooms with the key to it on a hook, just inside the door of the reception place. It should be manned and the stuff signed out, but it hardly ever was, and if he was to crawl out of the window in the men’s toilet then he would be hidden from the main body of the factory. He could be in that storeroom and the things lifted in no time, and no one would have seen him near the place.

‘I’m your man,’ Barney said extending his hand. ‘Let’s shake on it.’

Barney didn’t know how he got home that night. He had no recollection of it and Maria had seldom seen him in such a state so early. She couldn’t get him up the stairs and left him on the settee covered with a blanket.

In June 1952, Patsy graduated as a fully fledged teacher and returned home to live for a while, as she would be working in Paget Road School from September to do her probationary year. Martha was glad to have her daughter home for a little while, and Maria too was glad Patsy was close at hand. The school actually opened off Westmead Crescent.

Then a fortnight after Patsy’s graduation, Sally and Deirdre made their First Holy Communion and Maria sewed them matching dresses. They looked angelic. Martha insisted on paying for everything, which she said was still a pittance to what she would have paid out if she had bought just the one dress. Maria was so grateful for the rosary and white missal that Dora and Bella sent to their goddaughter, as she could afford no Communion presents. Martha had bought a Box Brownie camera for the occasion and took many photographs of the day. She said Maria could send some to the two women as a sort of thank you and Maria knew that would delight them.

She was feeling happier as Jack’s second birthday
approached, for though there was still Barney’s drinking and gambling, and the pittance he gave her to manage on, there was the consolation of the children. Sally and Theresa were growing into lovely, kind and generous children, and Theresa would spend hours playing with her little brother. Jack loved both his sisters dearly, but then he was a sunny child who loved the whole world. A bundle of fun, he was a source of joy to them all.

Even Barney would take notice of the boy. It never extended to taking him to the park a time or two at the weekend, or even tucking him in bed at night, but he’d at least acknowledged he was there and would tell him they would go to the football together and, when he was old enough, he’d take him out and buy him a pint. It wasn’t really what Maria would have him say to a child if she had had any sort of choice in it, but maybe it was better than ignoring him, as Barney still did with the girls.

Jack was far more confident than either of his sisters and loved being the centre of attention. Sean’s family were particularly taken with him and laughed at many of the things he did.

‘You have him ruined,’ Maria told her uncle one day. ‘The child is precocious.’

‘Not at all,’ Sean said. ‘Sure isn’t he just a wee boy enjoying life? Isn’t it what we would wish for all our children?’

Of course it was. Jack would grow up one day and have plenty of cares and worries then, so she relaxed a bit more. Her daughters too were well loved by everyone except their father, and Maria often wished Barney would throw them some little morsel of affection. She had seen
them looking quite wistful sometimes as they watched him with Jack, but she knew there was nothing she could do to ease that situation for them and in time they would have to learn to cope with Barney the way he was, as she had had to do.

It was the last Friday evening in October and Barney was feeling pleased with himself. In his haversack was another lot of tools for MacKay, and a football for Jack’s birthday, which he had pinched from the shop. The line was going slow that night leaving the factory, and he shouted to a tall man beside him, who went by the name of Lanky, ‘What’s the hold-up? Can you see?’

Lanky had little trouble looking over the heads of the others, being six foot five in his stocking feet. ‘Yeah, seems like they are checking everyone’s bag as they leave,’ he answered.

Barney felt his blood turn to ice and he had the urge to run, but where to? Anyway, with the body of men pressed to every side of him, there was no way he could go anywhere but forward. With every shuffle towards the gate, he felt the dread in him increase.

Maria had Barney’s dinner almost ready and, with the fire on, heating the water in the tank behind it meant there was plenty of warm water without the need to boil a kettle. She told him this as he came in the kitchen door. He didn’t answer, but this wasn’t unusual. He threw something on the kitchen table in front of her.

‘What’s this?’

‘What’s it look like, you stupid bugger?’ Barney snarled. ‘My cards.’

‘Your cards?’ Maria repeated.

‘Aye, my cards. Are you deaf, or some sort of imbecile?’ Barney cried. ‘I’ll spell it out for you, shall I? See if it makes things any clearer. I’ve been sacked.’

‘Oh, Barney! What on earth for?’

‘Well,’ Barney said, ‘it could have something to do with the football I had in my bag for the young fellow’s birthday that I neglected to pay for.’ No need, he thought, to mention the tools that he had been pilfering for ten months.

‘A football,’ Maria repeated. ‘They gave you the sack for stealing a football? I don’t know why you stole it in the first place, but didn’t you say you were sorry, offer to pay for it?’

‘You really are some sort of half-wit, aren’t you?’ Barney scoffed. ‘You think that would make any difference? They want their pound of flesh and caught me red-handed, so I got my marching orders and they said I should think myself lucky I am not on a charge too.’

‘For stealing a football?’

‘Aye. Now I am away for my wash and you have the dinner ready when I finish, for I am going out to get blind, stinking drunk.’

‘But, Barney, shouldn’t we talk about this? Decide what is to be done?’

‘I’ve done all the talking I am going to do,’ Barney said, wondering how he was going to tell MacKay that not only had he not got the tools on order, but that the source of getting more had dried up too.

Martha, knowing that Barney wasn’t in the habit of staying at home in the evening and also knowing Maria
would be distressed by the news he’d lost his job, went down that night.

‘It was all over a football,’ Maria told Martha, handing her a cup of tea.

‘No it wasn’t,’ Martha said. Sean had said it was better Maria hear it from them rather than someone else.

‘What do you mean?’

Martha sighed. ‘Barney was hauled back to the office when the stuff was found, so he didn’t get on the bus with Sean and Tony, and that’s where they heard.’

‘Heard what?’

‘Heard that Barney has been stealing tools for months.’

‘Tools!’

‘Yeah, some of them are worth a pretty penny, so Sean says.’

‘No doubt, but what would anyone want with a load of tools?’ Maria asked. ‘And where are they? Not here, for sure.’

‘No, he sells them to a man down the Norton pub. That’s where the fellow overheard the two of them talking and was telling Sean. Anyway, this time when he was caught, he had tools in the bag too.’

‘He was lucky, wasn’t he, that they are not pressing charges?’ Maria said.

‘I’ll say,’ Martha said. ‘Point is, though, it will be hard for him to get anything else with that on his record and no reference.’

‘What are we to do, Martha? How are we to manage?’

‘Barney will have to go down the dole office and see about it,’ Martha said. ‘They will give you something because of the children and all. He’ll have to wait until
Monday, of course. Have you enough to be going on with?’

‘Martha, all I have in my purse this minute is one and thruppence, for Barney gave me nothing before he left,’ Maria said. ‘I’ll have the Family Allowance on Tuesday, and all I can say is, thank God the Government raised it to eight shillings this year, so I’ll have sixteen shillings from that, but I don’t know how I’ll find the five shillings for Monday to pay for Sally’s school dinners.’

‘You might not have to,’ Martha said as she rooted in her bag. ‘I think if your husband is unemployed you get free dinners—or something off them, at any rate. But take this for now.’ She handed Maria a pound.

Maria shook her head. ‘I can’t take it from you, Martha.’

‘You can’t not,’ Martha said. ‘Think of the children. How can you feed them all weekend on one and thruppence? Unless, of course, you get more out of that bugger of a man you married.’

Maria knew Martha had a point. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I see what you say and I’m grateful to you, but I’ll not take a pound.’

‘I have more than enough.’

‘I don’t care,’ Maria said. ‘Leave me some vestige of pride, for God’s sake. It is all I have left and ten shillings is ample.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure, Martha. My children aren’t used to high-quality living and fancy fare,’ Maria said sadly.

Maria was told at the school on Monday morning that Sally could have free school meals if she brought in
the documentation to prove Barney had no employment. Then she went back home to rouse him, for he was sleeping off the excesses of the weekend. The punch he threw at her split her lip, but her efforts had the desired effect and the man was out of bed at last, though like a raging bull because of it. Maria kept herself and the children out of his way as much as possible and didn’t really breathe easy until he was out of the house.

Later, she was to stare at him as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Twenty-six shillings! Is that all?’

‘That’s it,’ Barney said. ‘And seven shillings extra for Sally.’

‘What about Theresa and Jack?’

‘The woman said you have Family Allowance for them. So we’ll get thirty-three shillings a week and that’s sixteen bob six pence for me and the same for you.’

‘You must be joking, Barney. For God’s sake, the rent is fifteen shillings, after that last rise.’

‘You only need to pay the part of that when you are unemployed.’

‘Even so, there’s money for coal and for the gas and electric meters as well as food. I can’t do it all on such little money.’

Barney gave a malicious grin. ‘You’ll have to, for you’ll not get a penny piece more.’

And then, because she was worried and angry, she forgot to be cautious. ‘Why should we all suffer because this situation is totally your own fault?’ she shrieked at him. ‘It wasn’t just a ball you had in your bag when you were stopped and searched, but tools too, and it
wasn’t the first time either. You think you are so bloody clever and yet half the factory knew all about it.’

The punch hit her between the eyes and she staggered against the wall, her nose spurting blood. The children began to scream.

Barney looked from Maria to the distressed children. ‘Christ Almighty!’ he exclaimed. ‘A man would have to be mad to want any of this.’ He snatched his jacket from the hook and went out. It was left to Maria to try to calm the children and staunch the blood from her nose, less upset by Barney’s violence than she was about the realisation that she wouldn’t have money to care for the children properly.

The sound of the children crying with hunger and cold tore Maria apart, but she couldn’t make the money stretch, even though she was eating less than a sparrow herself. Often she hid from the rent man to buy food. Patsy would sometimes pop in after school before going home and she never went in empty-handed, for her mother had told her how little Maria bought each week at the shops.

‘Fine welfare state this is,’ Martha complained to Sean one night. ‘I thought they were supposed to look after you from the cradle to the grave. They’re not looking after Maria at all. If you saw what she buys to live on for a week, I tell you, Sean, ours would demolish it in one meal.’

‘Well, the money is not to buy luxury food,’ Sean said. ‘But it should provide the basics. No child should have to go hungry.’

‘But they are, and Maria looks ill. I popped in the
other day and the house was so cold, my breath was coming out in whispery vapour. Our Patsy says it’s often like that. The point is, with rationing I can only do so much, and there is only so much she will take anyway. If she does ever agree to take any food from me, I think she gives it to the children.’

‘You’d do the same,’ Sean said. ‘Any mother would.’

‘I know, but—’

‘You know, it might not be the Government at fault here at all,’ Sean said. ‘It all depends on how much Barney gives her out of his dole.’

‘Ah, well, that’s it, isn’t it?’ Martha said ‘And she’d never tell us what he allows her. She has too much pride.’

Maria often felt as if she was on a treadmill and not going anywhere fast. Each week she would put two shillings out for the gas and the same for the electricity, try to put some aside for coal, and buy food with the rest. The rent was always the last consideration, so by Christmas she was seriously in arrears.

There would have been nothing at all in the children’s stockings that year if it hadn’t been for the kindness of Martha and Sean. Patsy bought for them too, and so did Tony, despite the fact that, as an apprentice his wages were small. Pooling the ration books together, with the generosity of Martha, ensured they all had plenty to eat and Maria sat at the end of the meal on Christmas Day and realised she felt full for the first time in weeks.

She barely saw Barney, she told Martha as they washed up, as he was out all day and at the pub all
night. She preferred it that way. She didn’t know where he went, didn’t really care and she spoke to him as little as possible, glad he didn’t seem to expect her to provide food for him too. He still demanded sex regularly, whatever state he would come home in, and sometimes she had to resist the urge to push him away because she knew what might happen if she did that.