by Anne Bennett
‘They’ll come round,’ Gloria told her reassuringly. ‘What you told them was bound to come as a shock. When they have time to think about it they will be different again, you’ll see.’
The following morning, Helen told Gloria the priest was waiting for her when she got home from work the previous evening, but even against him she stayed firm. ‘I said that I had a perfect right to a life of my own and also a perfect right to choose who would share it with me,’ she said to Gloria. ‘And there was nothing he could say or do to turn me away from the man I loved, or convince me that I was making a huge mistake. Cathy had a go at me later for being so rude to the priest. I tell you, Gloria, Thursday can’t come soon enough for me.’
The morning of the wedding, just before Ben was due to leave for school, Gloria said to him, ‘I have to tell you something, a secret.’
‘What? I’m really good at keeping secrets.’
‘Helen is getting married today.’
‘Gosh! Is she?’ Ben said. ‘Why is that a secret?’
‘Because Helen is marrying a Protestant and so she’s not getting married in a church. Now do you see?’
Ben nodded. He understood that well enough.
‘I’m going along to support her because we are friends,’ Gloria said.
‘And you didn’t tell Daddy because of it being a secret?’
‘That’s right,’ said Gloria. ‘But you can tell him when you come home from school because I might not be back by then.’
‘All right then,’ Ben said. ‘See you later.’
Gloria watched her son run up the lane and set off just a few minutes later, knowing that when she alighted at the station she would have to make a mad dash across the city to get to the registry office in time. She was in fact five minutes late, and an official told her that the groom and the best man for the Mortimer/Meadows wedding, along with guests, were already in the room and awaiting the bride.
Helen arrived a few minutes later in a beautiful cream suit and a matching hat with a little veil. Gloria stepped forward in the foyer and kissed her on the cheek, saying as she did so, ‘You look gorgeous.’
‘Do I?’ Helen said. ‘Thank you. That makes me feel better. I’m so nervous my mouth has gone all dry.’
‘You’ll be fine once you are in the room,’ Gloria told her. ‘And Colin is in there waiting for you.’
‘Oh, well, here goes then,’ Helen said, and she walked into the room, Gloria following. The only other people there beside Phillip and Colin, she noticed, were Helen’s parents. Jack was in a suit that was a little tight for him, and Nellie in a blue costume that had seen better days. Nellie’s eyes were full of sadness and Jack’s reproach. Gloria turned her eyes from them and stood beside her trembling friend as the groom and best man joined them.
It was as the couple went forward to take their vows that Gloria realised who Colin’s best man was and found that she was looking into the velvet-brown eyes of Phillip Morrisey. Her face coloured, but Phillip’s tentative smile started the familiar tug in her stomach and she could hear the beat of her heart.
Suddenly Philip reached out a trembling hand and she looked into his eyes, so full of trepidation. She felt a shiver run all down her spine and this set her whole body quivering with desire for the man standing bedside her. She knew too that if she took hold of Philip’s hand, she would be lost to all reason, even all decency for love of this man. And yet as their eyes locked together she grasped it tight.
Nellie’s startled eyes met those of her husband.
TWENTY-ONE
When the wedding service was over they all had dinner in a hotel, and afterwards Gloria couldn’t remember a thing she had eaten. When she had touched Philip’s hand in the registry office, a tingle shot all through her arm and she had almost gasped at the power of it. She sat opposite Philip at the meal later and drank in the sight of him. It was as if she was coming alive again, a coldness being replaced by warmth that seemed to be filling every part of her.
People spoke to her and she hardly heard what they said, for she had eyes and ears only for Philip. She knew then that her life would have no meaning if she did not have this man in it.
After the meal, Helen and Colin were making for a hotel in Southern Donegal where they would spend their wedding night, and then Colin would have to return to camp. He had the loan of a staff car and offered Jack and Nellie a lift home in it, but Jack said stiffly that he already had a lift organised.
Colin watched them stride up the street, disapproval evident in every line of their bodies, and he said ruefully, ‘Somehow I don’t think that I am on the favourites list with Helen’s parents. Now, then, Gloria, do you want a lift home or are you going to go all starchy on me as well?’
‘Not home, no,’ Philip said. ‘But if you drop us the other side of the border then I would be grateful.’
Colin said nothing but his eyebrows raised quizzically and it was Helen who said to Gloria, ‘That all right?’
Gloria nodded, because yearning for Philip was so coursing through her body she was incapable of speech.
They were dropped on a country road just past the little town of Muff. They didn’t need to speak. Shafts of desire were stabbing at Gloria and she went into Philip’s arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Together they watched the car drive away.
‘Oh, my darling,’ Philip said. ‘How I have longed for this moment. But I need to be sure you really do want this.’
Gloria felt as if her nerve endings were jangling. Still holding hands and as if by tacit agreement, they began walking up through the hills as Gloria said, ‘I have never been so sure of anything in my whole life. How much do you love me, Philip?’
‘With every fibre of my being. I love you so much that even now, if you say, as you did before, that it is wrong, I will walk back to Derry with you and set you on a train to Buncrana with no harm done except to my heart, which will be shattered into a million pieces. It would destroy me, but I would rather that than see you disgraced. That way, your reputation would be intact and your conscience clear.’
‘And my heart would be bleeding for you,’ Gloria said. ‘Why did you put your hand out to me in the registry office?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know,’ Philip said. ‘It was as if my feelings overwhelmed me. When I saw you there, I just had to try to touch you. After what you said last time I wasn’t sure that you would take it.’
‘I couldn’t not,’ Gloria said. ‘I love you so much.’
‘You said you loved me before,’ Philip said tentatively, ‘and yet …’
‘I am still a wife and mother, Philip,’ Gloria said. ‘None of that has changed, but now I know that I am only half a person without you, that I truly cannot live without you. My life is of no account without you in it.’
‘You don’t know how long I have waited to hear you say those words,’ Philip said, swinging her round to face him and kissing her tenderly.
‘I want you to make love to me, Philip,’ Gloria said. ‘Listen to me, I am shameless. I am craven with lust for you, because I feel as if I’m on fire, and I will die if you do not satisfy this ache inside me.’
‘Oh, my darling!’ Philip cried, and his mouth met hers. Clasped together, they sank down into the grass and Philip felt yearning in every line of Gloria’s pliant body. As their kisses intensified he could feel her heart thumping in her chest and felt his own excitement mount.
Phillip, however, had to be sure. ‘You know that this will change things for always?’ he said, as they lay together.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Gloria said impatiently. ‘I don’t care any more, I love you so.’
‘Oh, my darling girl …’
Gloria felt as if her innards were on fire. ‘Philip,’ she cried, ‘please hurry.’
She began tearing at her clothes and Philip put his hands around her agitated ones and said, ‘Take it steady. Let me undress you.’
Gloria, her nerve ends tingling, let her arms fall down by he
r sides and Philip slowly and sensuously removed her clothes. She had to bite her lip to prevent herself from urging him to hurry and eventually she lay naked before him.
But Philip hadn’t finished, and he undressed totally too before covering Gloria’s body with his own. They lay skin to skin and Gloria sighed in contentment.
Though Philip knew that Gloria was ready, he wanted to take her to the peak of arousal, and so when their lips met, he let his tongue dart in and out of her mouth, while his hands caressed her between her legs and she gasped aloud. His lips went on to kiss her neck and her throat, and his hands continued to caress her body, fondling her breasts, sucking at her nipples, until Gloria moaned and groaned in ecstasy. ‘Please, Philip,’ she cried. ‘Oh, please, I can’t bear it.’
Philip smiled as he entered his beloved. Gloria had given herself to him totally and they moved together as one. Gloria’s passion rose higher and higher, until she felt as if she was drowning in exquisite rapture, such as she had never felt before and never wanted to end, and she cried out over and over. She acknowledged that while sex with Joe had been good, sex with Philip was beyond her imagining, and when it was over, she was completely and utterly sated.
Philip watched her with a smile playing around his mouth that lit up his eyes. ‘You are truly and utterly beautiful, and I love you so much,’ he said.
‘Oh, Philip …’
‘Get dressed, my darling,’ Philip said. ‘There is much to talk about.’
‘Yes,’ Gloria said, beginning to get into her clothes. ‘I am joined to you now. Whatever the obstacles, they can be overcome, because without you I don’t exist.’
‘Think carefully about what you are saying,’ Philip said. ‘I don’t want to force you into anything.’
‘Did you force me just now?’
‘No, but …’ Gloria’s heart went out to Philip, gazing at her with anxious eyes, and she realised that despite the rapturous sex they had just enjoyed, that joined one to another, Philip was still afraid that she might walk away from him. She had done this before but it was far too late to do that now, even if she had the desire to. She took his face between her hands, looked deep into his dark eyes and said, ‘I belong totally to you now, and I love you so much I ache.’
‘What of your husband? Your son?’
‘I don’t know if Joe won’t be as pleased as I am that our sham of a marriage will soon be coming to an end,’ Gloria said. ‘Neither of us is happy with things as they are. But Ben, of course, will have to come with me, wherever that is.’
‘That is the point, darling,’ Philip said. ‘You won’t be able to go anywhere until we are married.’
‘But I am already married,’ Gloria said. ‘And there is no divorce in Ireland.’
‘We have no time to wait for divorce anyway,’ Philip said. ‘No one knows what is going to happen with all this hullabaloo on the South Coast. The point is, if invasion is on the cards, I would say most of the young sailors will be part of it. If that happens my job here, like Colin’s, will probably be at an end.’
‘And mine too, I suppose,’ Gloria said ‘But where will you be sent?’
Philip shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I might be recalled to the US, or drafted someplace else, and if they do that, unless we are married, you will have to stay here.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gloria in dismay, ‘what are we to do?’
‘There is only one thing to do, as I see it,’ Philip said. ‘And that is to get married as soon as possible in Belfast or some place like that where you won’t be known.’
‘Could we do that?’
‘Well, we shouldn’t do it,’ Philip said. ‘I mean, it’s against the law and not at all the sort of wedding I want for you, and if there were any other way I would take it, but I think in the circumstances this is the only thing to do. How do you feel about it?’
Gloria thought about what Philip had suggested with a sort of shocked disbelief. She was a law-abiding person, and even in her wilder youth had never broken the law or come anywhere near it, apart from sneaking the odd, illicit drink at a speakeasy. She didn’t want to break the law now, either. Every fibre in her being cried out against doing something that would break all the rules of propriety.
Philip watched Gloria’s troubled eyes and her furrowed brow, and felt his heart sink. Was it one step too far for Gloria? He was afraid to ask, afraid to break her mood of concentration.
Gloria in fact was telling herself that she was some sort of hypocrite. After all, didn’t it offend the rules of propriety not only to leave Joe in the lurch, but to take his son away too? She didn’t underestimate the blow that would be for him. Yet she was balking at the thought of marrying her beloved bigamously, although she knew in her heart of hearts that it was the only way forward if they were to have any sort of a future together.
And so she smiled at Philip as she said, ‘I don’t mind anything as long as we can be together.’
Philip let out a sigh of relief. ‘My darling girl, don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘We can legalise the whole thing once we reach the States. And once we are married, I will try and get you somewhere to stay in Belfast and come and see you as often as possible.’
‘But what of my son?’ Gloria said. ‘I can’t drag Ben to Belfast and if I did, Joe would try to find him. What if he were to succeed and see what we were about? He could spill the beans about my not being free to marry and that would put paid to me travelling to America and maybe an end to our freedom because, as you said, bigamy is a crime.’
‘I do see what you mean,’ Philip said. ‘And it just could happen like that. So what do you recommend we do?’
‘Go on as we have been,’ Gloria said. ‘I will stay at the farm until all the arrangements to travel to America are in place.’
‘I hate to think of you sharing another’s bed.’
‘Well, that is all I do,’ Gloria said. ‘Sex between Joe and me stopped a long time ago.’
‘Even so …’
‘It is the only way, Philip, and the safest for us too,’ Gloria said.
Philip nodded his head resignedly because he knew that Gloria spoke sense. ‘Anyway, the first thing I’ll need is a special licence,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know how long that takes. Then it is just a question of waiting for a suitable ship to take you across the Atlantic. Now we best get back. Do you want to walk back to Derry and catch a train?’
‘No,’ Gloria said recklessly. ‘I want to walk across the hills, holding hands with you.’
‘Then we will,’ Philip said, hauling her to her feet. ‘And we will have to step on it because time is getting on and I will be on a charge if I am late back at the camp.’
Gloria was even more distant when she returned from Helen’s wedding and yet in a strange way she seemed happier in herself. Joe wasn’t at all comforted by this change in her. In fact, he was alarmed because he knew he hadn’t done anything to warrant it.
Then she began spending a couple of evenings a week with Helen in Derry. She hadn’t asked Joe if he minded her doing this, she had told him that she worked hard and she deserved some time off and she was going into Derry where there was more entertainment to be had.
For the first time Joe wondered if she was seeing someone else. He knew that he should at least have challenged her about it, if not forbidden her to go, further shaming him. It was what every other man in Buncrana would do, but strangely he couldn’t seem to summon up the energy, though he realised that it was one more thing the men of Buncrana would laugh at him for.
The fact that he said nothing about Gloria’s outings to Derry to see Philip just convinced her that Joe didn’t care two hoots for her, and he wouldn’t care that much when she eventually left him altogether. Strangely, she was saddened by this. She had known Joe since she was fourteen, and now she was thirty-seven and had been married to him for almost twenty years. She often lay sleepless in bed beside a slumbering Joe and went over their lives together.
They had coped with years
of plenty, followed by many years of penury and deprivation; they had crossed continents and been able to deal with the rigours of war and the tragic loss of many dear friends. Not when their home was destroyed, nor even when Joe’s life had hung in the balance had she felt their love for one another had been threatened, especially as during these turbulent years they had reared a much-loved son. She had thought their marriage would last for ever and yet after less than two years in Buncrana their love had drifted away like so much mist. She still didn’t know why or how she could love another man so passionately that she couldn’t imagine life without him.
She knew that when she sailed for the States, Joe would probably not see her again, nor Ben either, or at least not for many years. She pushed down the guilt that threatened to engulf her at that point because she knew if the positions had been reversed, it would have torn the heart out of her.
The room where she and Philip were to be married a month later was bare and cold, and apart from the two of them and the registrar, the only other ones in the room were Helen and Colin. As the marriage had drawn nearer, Gloria had been very nervous of going through with it, certain that someone would find out; she knew bigamy carried a prison sentence. In the end, even Joe had remarked on how jumpy she was. On the day itself, she was certain that someone would turn up and denounce her in some way. Helen told her not to worry, but she couldn’t understand how fearful Gloria was.
Even as they stood before the registrar, Gloria’s senses were on high alert. Any moment she expected the doors open, the marriage stopped, and she and Philip hauled off by the police.
There was no sort of specialness to the occasion at all. The registrar seemed in a rush as if he couldn’t wait to get the ceremony over with as quickly as possible, and he rattled through the vows. They responded just as quickly and in a matter of minutes it was over.
‘You may kiss the bride,’ the registrar said, and Philip took her in his arms.
