The Ballymara Road (15 page)

‘I want my mother to live with us, Henry,’ Mary had replied.

Even Henry couldn’t have predicted that so much good could turn so sour so fast. Henry felt his elation deflate faster than a pierced balloon.

‘I want to share our first boy with her. Every woman needs her mother by her side, with a new baby. After all, she’s had plenty of her own and helped Brigid raise all of hers in Liverpool.’

Henry didn’t argue. He and his Mary were so blessed and happy, nothing could cloud their horizon for long, not even Mrs McGuire arriving to live with them in Chicago.

‘When ye speak to yer mammy, tell her to bring Sean out here. Now that I have that contract, Jesus, we need family, people we can trust, more than ever before. Will ye do that, Mary?’

Neither Mary nor Henry were prepared for Mrs McGuire’s telephone call with news from Liverpool.

It would appear there was something that could cloud any horizon, if only for a little while.

When Sean and Alice had run away, they had decided to do so by boat, rather than by aeroplane, both realizing the furore they left behind would need time to settle down before they faced Mary and Sean. They also wanted to have days and nights alone together, something they had never known, to spend time getting to know each other better and to become a real couple, before they landed and began their new life.

They had no idea whether anyone would even meet them when they disembarked, whether Mary would ever forgive Sean for committing such a despicable sin. Walking out on his children and his wife for another woman and a fresh start was a scandal few families could tolerate. Mary and Henry might decide they would not associate with nor acknowledge Sean and Alice. The thought haunted Sean during every day of the crossing.

As they stood on deck while the boat sailed into New York, watching the bands playing and the streamers flying, the first person Sean laid eyes on at the customs hall was his sister Mary with Dillon in her arms. Standing beside them were Henry and their mother, Mrs McGuire.

‘My sister has a baby?’ said Sean.

‘Oh no, your mother has arrived here before us,’ said Alice, with more than a hint of despair in her voice. ‘She must have flown.’

This was the last thing Alice would have wished for and Mrs McGuire was the very last person she would have wanted to greet her in New York.

Sean was equally amazed. As they slowly walked towards his waiting family, his mother chose to dispense with welcoming pleasantries.

‘Well, ye is a dark horse all right, Alice, I will give ye that. Never a clue did I have and that’s for sure.’

‘Mammy,’ said Sean, pleading.

‘Never you Mammy me, Sean. Ye could have handled things better than ye did. Whilst ye have been cruising, leading the life of Riley, I had to help Brigid and the girls. I was there when she opened yer cowardly letter. Can ye imagine what that was like for me? It was the worst night of me life and I hadn’t even a notion of what ye were up to. Ye lied to me and yer kids and everyone else, running off in the night like a pair of thieves, leaving yer children to face the worst Christmas of their lives. The shame was awful, awful, it was. Can ye imagine what Brigid, yer poor wife, went through? And without so much as a word of warning, not a fecking notion did I have.’

Mrs McGuire lifted her handbag and smacked a stunned Sean, straight across the side of his face, and then, just for good measure, smacked him again across the other side.

‘An’ that one was from Brigid,’ she yelled before she stormed away.

Sean stood with his head down, as an equally stunned and shaking Alice linked her arm through his.

‘We are here now, Mrs McGuire.’ Alice sounded bolder than she felt, as she spoke to the retreating back of Sean’s mother. ‘And even if Mary and Henry don’t want us, this is where Sean and I are making our life.’

Mrs McGuire turned round and Alice looked directly at her. She challenged the older woman using only her eyes as weapons. They were as cold as steel and just as hard.

Mrs McGuire was not so easily beaten. Retracing her steps, she marched back to Alice.

‘Well, be that as it may, Alice, it is just as well, for there will be no welcome anywhere for either of ye two in Liverpool. Big as ye are, Sean, Brigid’s brothers would kill ye, if they so much as had a sniff of where it is ye are at. There will be no welcome in Ireland for ye, Sean. Ye have both burnt yer boats and that’s for sure. Ye have no option but to settle here, Alice. Ye are here and here forever, I would say, so here’s praying to God ye like it because ye have nowhere else to go. And, thanks to the sneaky, lying behaviour of ye both, and the shame ye have put me through, neither have I. I can’t even hold me own head up in Liverpool now without the gossip following me wherever I go.’

Her voice trembled on the last words. Mrs McGuire loved her granddaughters. She loved her family. Nothing meant more to her than her pride. What Sean had done had put her at the centre of one of the biggest scandals to ever hit the four streets and would be a subject for discussion every time the women piled into Maura Doherty’s kitchen.

Mary decided it was time to break the tension.

‘You are welcome to live with us and become part of the business, Sean. Sure, the house is big enough. We have twelve bedrooms and will struggle to find you. We need you, so we do, sure, we always have. God knows what has taken you so long. But, Alice, in America you must be Mrs McGuire. I don’t want anyone thinking you are both living in sin. I’ll not have that shame laid at my door. And as Brigid will never in a million years grant you a divorce, Sean, you have no option, so you don’t. Living your life as a lie, ’tis all you have left.’

Nothing else was said as the sombre party made its way towards Mary and Henry’s car where a driver was waiting.

For almost six months Mrs McGuire did not speak another word to Alice. All conversation was channelled directly through her daughter or Sean himself. According to Mrs McGuire, it was entirely Alice’s fault that Sean had left his family. Her son had never, and could never, do any wrong, as she explained to her daughter.

‘Brigid was only waiting for the littlest one to grow up and that is a fact. She was most enthusiastic about bringing them all to America, Mary, that’s no word of a lie. That Alice must be a wicked one altogether. I swear to God, no one other than Peggy and Paddy’s lad had a notion of what was going on and he knew only because he caught them almost at it and now, sure, I imagine everyone in Liverpool knows every detail. Alice turned his head, she did. She must have bought a mighty potion from somewhere because it just isn’t like our Sean, he would never do such a thing as abandon his own family. She cast a spell, I would say. Ye have invited a witch to live under yer own roof, Mary.’

‘Aye, well, Mammy, what is done is done. Sean is not a mean man. Now that he is here and part of the business, Brigid and the children, they will want for nothing.’

Mrs Mcguire took comfort from this knowledge. She knew that, back in Liverpool, new possessions would ensure that Brigid rose above the shame. She could do this easily with a new twin tub, an Electrolux hoover and a nice, vinyl, three-piece suite with cushions upholstered in autumnal colours. No one else on the four streets had anything as grand.

Mrs McGuire had made it her business to ensure the money was sent to Brigid to compensate for the behaviour of her wayward son. There would be no secondhand communion shoes for any of the McGuire girls on Nelson Street. They might not have a daddy at home, but, God knew, they would wear the prettiest veils.

The passage to America had been fun for Alice and Sean. The bars, the dancing, the food. Their first night in the cabin had been one of hedonistic indulgence as they made love half a dozen times. Not until they were standing on the deck to watch the famous Liverpool portside buildings, the Three Graces, disappear into the distance, had either spoken of the families they had left behind.

Alice had loved every minute of the crossing, but if she were truthful she had to acknowledge that, as the days wore on, the fierce desire, which had drawn her and Sean together, alongside the intense longing to reach America, no longer existed. The first signs began to appear when they struggled to make normal conversation. Their lovemaking, which at first had been fuelled by greed and passion, quickly waned.

Despite the long journey to Chicago, Sean set to work with Henry six days a week as soon as they arrived. With only Sundays free, Alice was traumatized to discover that the family attended mass, twice, together, every Sunday.

Mrs Mcguire had left Alice in no doubt as to what was expected of her.

‘Tell Alice, Sean, she walks with us to mass. All part of the lie ye have to both live out whilst ye pretend to be man and wife. And may God forgive ye, because I never will.’

‘I don’t want to attend mass, Sean,’ Alice had remonstrated. ‘I’ve never even been inside my own church in England, never mind yours.’

‘Ye have to, Alice.’ Sean was incensed by what Brigid and her stubbornness had denied him all these years. He was now in love with Chicago and all that it had to offer. Anger flooded him when he thought of the years he had wasted in Liverpool, scraping by. There was no place in his life for another stubborn woman. He would have none of it.

The guilt he carried around with him each day had hardened him. Alice could see that the Sean she had known in Liverpool was a very different man from the one he had become in Chicago. She was horrified too at the prospect of spending two hours of her precious Sundays in a church thick with incense.

‘Kathleen and Jerry never took me to mass once during the years I was in Liverpool and under their roof, so why would I want to start now?’

‘What happened in Liverpool doesn’t count any longer. If it did, I would be sitting in church with my daughters. We worship together, Alice, and that is all there is to it.’

‘Henry and I flew to England to rescue Mammy from the chaos you left behind, Sean,’ Mary had whispered to him when they had a moment alone one morning over breakfast. ‘We stopped until Brigid’s family stepped into the breach. It was a bad business all right and not something I would want to have to do again.’

Sean felt ashamed for what he had put his children through, but nothing could stem the tide of anger he now felt towards Brigid. He would not allow this opportunity to be wasted. His share of the business would be bequeathed to his girls but, in the meantime, Alice must play her part. He would need a son to carry on the business so that it could continue.

Mrs Mcguire’s dockside words had chilled Alice, but Henry’s, about her having another child, had chilled her more. Sean’s having a son had not been part of the deal.

‘I have a son that I have left in Liverpool. Why would I want another?’ she had said to Sean.

‘Because of this is our new life, Alice. Do you want it to be just the two of us, growing old together? Don’t you want us to be able to share our life out here with a family? Even I hadn’t realized how well the business is doing. Mary had understated that in her letters all right.’

Alice didn’t reply. If Sean thought he was going to make her pregnant, he could think again. What she couldn’t tell Sean was that she missed Joseph. So much so that she had trouble sleeping. Deep in her heart, she missed Jerry too, as well as the four streets. She missed the life she had lived before and knowing that it had gone forever made the pain worse. While Sean worked hard all day long, Alice moped around the house or called for the driver, if the car was free, to take her to the mall.

Mary often invited Alice to her coffee mornings and fund-raisers for the church, but they left Alice cold. She had never been one for small talk, and it hadn’t come more easily just because she was on a different continent.

Alice had been made responsible for their banking and had been charged with sorting out the new house, with Mary’s help, tasks which occupied only the smallest part of her day. But the complaints from Alice faded into the distance following a discovery that altered the course of all of their lives.

‘Henry, the baby hasn’t woken for his feed,’ said Mary, switching on the bedside light. ‘It’s been a struggle all week to make him take anything. I’m worried.’

Henry sat up in bed and switched on his own light.

Dillon had never taken a whole feed since the day he arrived, always just two ounces at a time, at regular intervals.

‘The doctor said not to worry. As long as he was taking something every few hours, he was fine.’

‘I know, Henry, but add it up: he had only eight ounces all day yesterday and that is the equivalent of one feed, for a baby his size.’

Mary fastened her dressing gown and made her way to the adjoining bedroom.

But as she opened the door, there was silence. No gurgling, or shuffling of bed sheets, no thumb sucking, no warm breath or blinking eyelids. Nothing.

The light from the main bedroom cast a faint glow over the cot. As Mary approached, she knew something was dreadfully wrong.

‘Henry,’ she said in a tight voice.

‘What is it?’ he replied.

‘Henry,’ Mary said again.

Alarmed, Henry sat up as Mary came towards him, holding the baby. Dillon was flaccid in her arms, his little head lolling in her hand and his legs swinging loose.

‘Dillon, darling,’ whispered Mary. The baby opened his eyes and looked at her, but there was no light of recognition.

Henry noticed his pale leg, which had fallen free from his nightgown.

‘What’s that, Mary?’ he asked, pushing back the child’s white flannelette nightshirt.

An enormous black bruise covered the back of Dillon’s calf.

‘I don’t know, but phone the doctor quick,’ Mary whispered, with tears pouring down her cheeks as their son, once again, closed his eyes.

A week later, Sean was trying his best to pay back Mary and Henry’s kindness by travelling with them to meet with the doctor. Today they would know the results of the many tests Dillon been subjected to. Sean felt totally helpless.

‘Let’s stop and get us the biggest rack of smoked ribs when we are all done at the hospital, shall we, Sean?’ Henry had said earlier that morning.