by Anne Bennett
Maeve knew the priest had been moved and also knew he would probably have a wee chat about it with Brendan. It would be bugger all use, except to make Brendan angrier than ever. She wished she’d kept her bloody mouth shut.
Father Trelawney looked across at Maeve and asked gently, ‘D’you want to make a good confession before I administer Communion?’
‘No,’ Maeve answered wearily. ‘Not to you, Father. I’ve done enough confessing to you for one day.’
She never asked for a priest again, but Christmas was a bleak time. She cried for the baby she’d not seen in weeks, and had no appetite for her mashed-up Christmas dinner, which resembled something you’d feed to a baby you were trying to wean. Elsie and Alf tried to cheer her and brought in cards from the neighbours, which Elsie arranged around Maeve’s bed in a bid to make her feel a wee bit better.
Maeve wasn’t to know that Brendan would have liked the opportunity to see Maeve, for the hospital staff didn’t mention the times he came because the doctors gave strict orders that she was not to be upset. But Brendan knew it was a form of madness that came over him at times that had caused him to attack Maeve so viciously. He had wanted to kill her and very nearly had. Father Trelawney had no need to seek him out at his mother’s and take him to task as severely as he had. He knew what he’d done and was sorry, goddammit, but the bloody hospital wouldn’t let him near her, apparently on her say-so. No wonder he got annoyed with the woman.
And then the priest going on about the war and all, saying everyone had to do their bit and pull together to beat the enemy – God, that stuck in Brendan’s craw, for hadn’t the bloody English been the enemy of Ireland for generations? Eventually, for the sake of peace, for the priest, when he put his mind to it, was a greater nag than any woman, he’d agreed to go bloody fire-watching a few nights after work. At least that was preferable to parading round the roads with a bloody broomstick over his shoulder, pretending that it was a gun.
When Elsie told Maeve she wondered what difference it would make to her. True, if he was fire-watching two or three nights a week, he couldn’t be drinking, but she knew her husband: he would just use the extra money to back the horses, or spend it in some other dubious way. Anyway, the war was months old and no bombs had dropped. She knew the men in the forces might be having a hard time of it, but for the ordinary people, the worst thing they’d had to endure so far was the blackout and now, so Elsie told her, rationing, which had started in January 1940.
By the middle of January Maeve’s back had healed sufficiently for her to sit up, and so it was one cold and gloomy day in the middle of February that Elsie came to the hospital with little Bridget wrapped in her shawl, for the ride home together in a taxi.
Maeve hardly acknowledged the luxury of the ride, for she was entranced by the baby she hadn’t seen for weeks. Bridget seemed to have grown so much. Her eyes had changed from newborn blue to deep brown and her hair, light brown like Kevin’s, lay like down on her tiny head. Maeve examined her features and counted her fingers and toes, awed as always by the tiny nails, the whole miracle of her. Suddenly Bridget seemed to scrutinise Maeve as if she didn’t know quite who she was. A frown appeared on her little forehead and Maeve smiled at it. ‘Hello, my precious,’ she said, and the baby rewarded her with a big toothless beam that seemed to light up her face and almost caused Maeve’s heart to stop beating.
She held her tight and vowed she would fight anyone, even Brendan and the entire clergy, for the right to a decent upbringing for Bridget.
Despite her promise to herself it was hard to enter her house again. But Elsie had been in and the place shone, and a cheerful fire burnt in the grate, warming the room and chasing away the shadows. Elsie had also left a stew simmering on the gas stove and the smell of it made Maeve’s mouth water. There was little meat in it, as Maeve had expected, but plenty of vegetables and dumplings, together with a pan of potatoes and slices of bread to soak up the gravy. After a bowl of it, Maeve was revived, warmed inside and out and felt more able to cope with anything, even her husband.
And later that night she turned to face him as he came in the door.
‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you’re home again.’
‘Aye. I’m home and I’ll stay as long as you keep your fists and boots to yourself,’ Maeve said, and her voice was firm, though her insides seemed to have turned to water.
‘You asked for it.’
‘I asked for nothing,’ Maeve hissed, ‘and I’ll not stand it, not again.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ Brendan burst out. ‘I’m your husband and it’s my right to chastise you.’
Maeve didn’t bother arguing. She knew that Brendan really did believe that, so instead she said, ‘Well, you’ve chastised me now, let that be an end to it. If you leave me alone and give me enough to live on we’ll manage well enough, I suppose. But if you don’t, I’m off to the priest, Brendan.’
Brendan wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, but he didn’t slap Maeve like he once surely would have done because if she did actually go to tell the priest, he had the feeling he’d take a very dim view of it altogether.
Father Trelawney had been short and bad-tempered with him lately and said he really had to control his temper. Easy for him to say: he didn’t have the aggravation of it.
‘Elsie made a stew for us both,’ Maeve told him. ‘Sit up to the table and eat it now while it’s hot.’
Brendan made no answer, but Maeve knew when he saw the stew in the bowl with a steaming plate of potatoes beside it, he’d realise how hungry he was, for he was always ravenous when he came in from work, and he made short work of the meal.
After he’d finished, he nodded at Maeve and said, ‘All right, maybe I went a bit over the top and I was sorry after. But you can’t say you didn’t ask for it, running off like you did.’
‘I came back to you. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No,’ Brendan snarled. ‘No, it isn’t because you only came back because you were forced to by the priest.’
‘Aye. Can you wonder at it?’
Brendan said nothing. Instead, he just stared at Maeve and wished things could have been different, before weans had bloated her body and soured their lives.
Maeve didn’t understand the look, but she was gratified that she’d had what almost amounted to an apology, something she hadn’t had in years, and it gave her new heart. Maybe, things could be put right between them. She could only wait and see.
ELEVEN
Brendan hadn’t radically changed at all, though over the weeks following the horrific beating he’d given her after Bridget’s birth, his violence towards Maeve wasn’t so bad, and she felt she could cope with the odd thump, clout or black eye that Brendan gave her every now and again.
More worrying to Maeve was the war news. For months and months it had seemed to meander along with nothing much happening, but by early June all that changed. The grumbles about the dreaded blackout and the rationing, paled into insignificance as the reports came in about the Expeditionary Forces’ retreat from Dunkirk. Although many had been lifted from the beaches by small boats that had carried the marooned soldiers out to naval ships anchored in the deeper water of the channel, far too many had been left behind. In the streets around, many houses received the first telegrams sent out with dire news of their loved ones.
Nine months into the war, British people faced the dread realisation that for the first time they might be on the losing side and German paratroopers could soon be patrolling the streets, for now Britain was wide open for invasion. First, though, Hitler’s plan seemed to be to subdue the cities, and as the Nazis pounded the ports with bombs to destroy the ships and sap the morale of the people, the RAF responded and the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies.
No one moaned now about the blackout restrictions, nor the rationing, even though meat was added to bacon, sugar, fat and tea, rationed to two ounces per person per week, by July. It was common knowledge that existence as the
y knew it depended on the boys in blue, who risked their lives daily to fight in the air. To moan about anything seemed disloyal and unpatriotic because the human cost was enormous and everyone knew it.
Maeve, in any case, couldn’t afford even the basic rations on the money Brendan allowed her to keep. The priest still went on with the farce of bringing her the housekeeping that Brendan had given him, though he knew now that Brendan took most of it back again. She didn’t bother complaining, in fact she spoke to him as little as possible. He knew the score now – God, she’d told him clearly enough – and he’d made it obvious whose side he was on, and it wasn’t hers. Without the money from her mother she knew she’d be in queer street, though it filled her with shame being forced, through dire necessity, to accept it. As it was she could just about limp along from week to week.
Brendan was bored and bad-tempered. Though he’d had no desire to fight for the British Government, and as an Irish citizen couldn’t be made to do so either, he didn’t want to sit on factory roofs all night either, watching for nonexistent bombs. He complained, often taking his frustration and irritation out on Maeve.
It changed in the middle of the summer for all the citizens of Birmingham, including Brendan, who was on duty on the roof of an armaments factory on the night of 25 August. There had been one previous raid on Birmingham in early August, when a lone bomber, thought to be searching for Fort Dunlop, dropped his load over suburban Erdington. At the time Maeve had remembered the O’Rourkes, whom she’d met on the ferry. They lived in Erdington and she hoped they were safe. So far there had been many small raids, mainly on the east of the city, which had caused minimal damage, and people began to think that Birmingham was going to get off lightly.
But the night the bombers came to the city centre, Maeve leapt from her bed as soon as the siren began screaming. She dressed hurriedly and then picked the baby up, wrapping a blanket around her little body, for the night air could be chill. Brendan was fire-watching, but Elsie and Alf were at the door when she sped down the stairs and she was glad of their comforting presence and the wavering torch Alf had, lighting their way, though the beam was shielded as regulations demanded.
The drone of the planes was audible as they stepped into the street and they hurried as fast as they could to the shelter on Bristol Street, while behind them searchlights zigzagged across the sky.
The brick-built shelter, surrounded by sandbags, was filling up when Maeve, Elsie and Alf reached it, but Maeve was able to find an empty bunk to lay Bridget down. Although she’d stirred when she’d been lifted from the cot, she’d dropped off again.
For Maeve, as for most adults, there was no such respite. Every whistle and thud of explosion brought her bolt upright and eventually she gave up all pretence of sleep and accepted the sandwiches Elsie pressed on her and the hot sweet tea she had in a vacuum flask.
Two nights later, the situation was repeated. This time Alf was absent as he too was fire-watching.
‘I expect Brendan will come in stinking of cordite and covered with black ash like last time,’ Maeve said with a sigh, ‘behaving like a weasel and beating the head off me for asking him a civil question.’
‘I thought it was the drink that made him so violent, and there ain’t that much of it about now,’ Elsie said.
‘So they say, all right,’ Maeve said with feeling. ‘Maybe lack of it makes him worse. I hear a lot of the pubs are short of beer now – perhaps that’s the thing to be rationed next – and it’s even rumoured some landlords water it down. Brendan doesn’t seem to be affected by it, though. He seems to be able to drink enough of it to make him stinking drunk the nights he’s not fire-watching.’
‘Blokes like him would always find it,’ Elsie said, and sent up a fervent prayer that the man would be burnt to a crisp on the roof of the factories one of these nights.
But after that second August raid there was a respite for about a month, and when the raids began again in late September they were the first in daylight too.
‘Bloody cat and mouse,’ Elsie declared as they hurried to the shelter one cold October night. ‘Lull us into a sense of false security and then let us have it again. London’s got it, and now us, thick and fast and every bleeding night. I met Deidre Bradshaw and she was telling me about her sister Daisy, who lives down by the docks in London. Deidre said her sister’s all for going down the tube, ’cos there aren’t enough shelters for the people. She’s worried to death about her. I mean, she’s got three nippers and all, and her husband away in the army.’
‘I know, Deidre told me too,’ Maeve said. ‘And it’s a terrible situation right enough.’ There had been more than one report on the news and in the paper about unprotected Londoners bedding down in the underground stations and being moved on by the authorities. ‘It isn’t something you do by choice really, is it?’ Maeve went on. ‘Imagine dragging weans through the streets of London and trying to keep them safe in a cold draughty dirty station because it’s the best you can do.’
She gave a sudden shiver for Deidre’s sister, Daisy, and the thousands like her as they reached the door of their shelter and slipped inside. She’d never known Daisy Bullock, because she’d moved to London before Maeve got the house in Latimer Street. But her sister, Deidre, had moved to Grant Street as a new bride about the same time as Maeve, and the two women had become friends.
However, as the years passed there had been no sign of a child for Deidre and her husband, Matthew, and Maeve had become almost embarrassed because of her own evidence of fertility to see much of Deidre. She’d felt heartsore for her, especially as she’d always been so kind to Kevin and Grace, and had been one of the first to pop in with a gift for Bridget. Elsie had a special sympathy for her, recognising one such as herself and Alf with the barren childless years they’d had together.
At least she doesn’t have to traipse down here every night like us,’ Maeve said wearily, because she knew Deidre shared her parents’ large cellar as they had a house that opened out on to Bell Barn Road.
Maeve wished she had a cellar she could use, because she was very weary, struggling down to the shelter night after night, with little or no sleep for herself. Bridget was getting more difficult to handle as she grew, and less likely to go to sleep once she’d been roused. Maeve was also always worried about her catching a cold, as her clothes were barely adequate for the approaching winter nights.
She was just coming up to her first birthday when Maeve opened the door one day to Deidre Bradshaw, holding a parcel. ‘Baby clothes from my sister’s youngest,’ she explained, thrusting the parcel at Maeve. ‘It’s criminal to throw the stuff away these days.’ And then with a glance at Maeve’s face, ‘You’re not offended?’
‘Offended?’ Maeve wanted to give Deidre a kiss or drag her into the house and dance a jig. She was overcome with the woman’s thoughtfulness for there was everything Bridget could need for the next year or two – dresses and cardigans and jumpers and leggings and vests and pants, warm fleecy nighties, and a blue siren suit with a hood trimmed with fur. It would be too big for Bridget yet, but she’d still put her in it, even if the cuffs did hang over her hands and feet. It would be a damned sight warmer than anything else she had. Maeve invited Deidre in and offered her a cup of tea.
On 26 October, in the early hours of the morning, there was an incendiary raid on the city centre. When the bleary-eyed people came out of the shelter to the reassuring sound of the all-clear, they stared at the brightly lit sky with crackling red and amber flames and sparks spitting into the night.
The August raids had mainly hit the Bull Ring, causing extensive damage and lifting the roof off the Market Hall. They’d left gaping holes and large craters behind them and reduced some shops to shells, but the October raid set whole streets alight in the city centre. The Luftwaffe returned the next night and the next until the morning of 29 October, when Maeve and Elsie stood in stunned silence outside their air-raid shelter in the early hours and watched Birmingham burn.
Maeve’s mother urged her to come home, even if just for a wee while, but Maeve knew Brendan would never tolerate the idea. However, there were other alternatives. Many of the parents who’d brought their children home from their evacuated homes before Christmas 1939 were now regretting it. Further evacuations were being planned to safer areas, and mothers with babies, the pregnant, disabled and the elderly could be part of that programme. While Brendan ate his tea the following evening, Maeve broached the subject of her and Bridget going too.
He looked up at her under his bushy eyebrows. ‘You’ll go nowhere,’ he said firmly. ‘Your place is here, looking after the house and seeing to me.’
Maeve took a step back. The look on Brendan’s face suggested to her that space between them might be a healthier option, but for Bridget’s sake she went on, ‘It’s for the baby, Brendan. She’s so small and I just wondered—’
