Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Thought your lad was following you into the foundry?’ one man had asked.

  ‘So he is. What of it?’

  ‘Well, what’s he doing serving at Moss’s shop in Wellington Street?’

  ‘What the bloody hell you talking about?’

  ‘Straight up. My missus saw him last Saturday, large as life, him and the old fellow running the place. The bloke said your lad was his new assistant.’

  There was a burst of laughter from the others listening. ‘Got one over you again, Brendan, eh, man?’ one of them said. ‘You d’aint know a thing about it, did yer?’

  Brendan had reddened. He remembered the name Kevin had thrown at him. Moss’s tobacconist and grocery, he’d said, on Wellington Street. Sly sod hadn’t said he’d already started work.

  ‘Brendan don’t know a damn thing about what his family are up to, seems to me,’ another man put in. ‘First his wife takes off and now his son goes his own way.’

  Brendan’s fists balled at his side. He longed to punch the man grinning at him on the jaw.

  ‘You want to be the master in your own house,’ the first man said. ‘Like I am. You wouldn’t see my wife and kids deciding things. I’d give them what for if they started that game.’

  Brendan’s answer was to lunge forward at the man, grasp him by the throat and punch him between the eyes. Restraining hands pulled him off and the burly landlord came bustling from behind the bar, manhandled Brendan out of the door and kicked him into the street. He unsteadily got to his feet and leant against a house for a moment till the dizziness in his head abated. Behind him, ringing in his ears, was the laughter from his so-called mates.

  By the time he reached Syd Moss’s shop the words that had been thrown at him across the bar had whipped him into a frenzied fury. He wanted to tear his son limb from limb and that excuse for a man that he worked with. He remembered what Maeve had threatened to do to him if he touched her precious son again. Well, she could go to hell! She must have known all along about Kevin and his job. By the time he’d finished with her she’d be in no fit state to go anywhere or tell anyone anything. Then they’d see who had the last laugh.

  Syd Moss studied the man who burst through the shop doorway. He was powerfully built and stood a full head above him, with muscular shoulders and arms. However, the rest of his body looked flabby and soft, and as he had his donkey jacket unfastened, Syd plainly saw the beer gut hanging over his belt. His face was red and bloated, and damp from the rain droplets that shook from his thick hair as he turned to look at Syd through bleary bloodshot eyes.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re the little squirt that turns a son against his own father?’

  Syd was scared, there was no denying it. Brendan Hogan had frightened better and bigger men than he, but he also knew better than to admit any sense of weakness and his voice was firm. ‘I assure you, Mr Ho—’

  He got no further. With a roar, Brendan lifted the man from his feet and his hands locked around his throat. He’d deal with Kevin later; first he’d teach this excuse for a man that it would be unwise and unhealthy for him to employ Kevin in any capacity.

  Kevin leapt on his father with a yell and tried to tear his arms away. He’d seen Syd’s frantic gasps and grunts cease and his hands that had clawed at Brendan stop their useless struggle and fall to his sides, and the boy was panic-stricken. He pummelled at his father as he desperately tried to make him relax his hold on Syd’s neck. He saw the small man’s eyes bulge and a trickle of blood dribble from his mouth, and then he slumped, seemingly lifeless.

  Brendan dropped Syd to the floor where he fell into an unconscious heap.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Kevin cried. He wanted to go to Syd and check that he was all right, but knew if he was to drop his guard for one instant his father would take full advantage of it.

  He faced his father unafraid, surprised he wasn’t shaking with fear. He felt angry but calm, and knew he’d have to remain so in order to outwit him, because to be free of him he would have to fight him and win. Force was the only thing his father recognised.

  Brendan said sneeringly, ‘Seems you didn’t have enough of a hiding on Sunday. You’re asking for another one.’

  Kevin said nothing and Brendan went on, ‘What’s up with you? Scared, are you? Come and get me then.’

  Kevin longed to do just that, to throw himself upon the man and punch his filthy mouth for him, but he knew that’s what Brendan wanted him to do and he forced himself to keep his head.

  ‘Lily-livered mammy’s boy!’

  Out of the corner of his eye Kevin caught sight of Syd struggling to a sitting position, rubbing ruefully at his scarlet neck. His face was deathly pale, he had blood running down his chin and the white of one of his eyes was crimson. Kevin felt sorry for the man hauled into a situation not of his own making and he glared with pure hatred at Brendan and said tantalisingly, ‘Come on, big boy. Pick on someone your own size for a change, or are you only able for beating women and weans?’

  Brendan charged him like a bull, his fists swinging like hammers and Kevin knew if one of them were to catch him full in the face or the mouth, he’d be knocked halfway across the shop and the fight would be finished before it had begun. Even the glancing blows he parried had him partially winded. He was glad his father’s drunken state made the swipes wide and were slow enough to enable him to get out of the way.

  He tried to keep an eye on his father’s feet, knowing and still feeling the damage they could inflict and Brendan, reading Kevin’s thoughts and sensing his caution, grew reckless. He was staggering, literally, from the first full right-handed blow Kevin landed on his face while the second left him dazed and disorientated. Kevin’s blood was thoroughly up by this time, he followed it with two body blows. Brendan began to sway, and at Kevin’s punch between the eyes he slumped to his knees, keeled over and was still.

  Kevin gazed at the still figure dispassionately. Perhaps he should feel some shame that he’d raised his hand to his own father, but he felt none. In fact, when Brendan had fallen to the floor, Kevin had had to resist the desire to put the boot in, kick the shit out of him.

  Perhaps Syd knew some of the thoughts tumbling around Kevin’s head and wished to distract him for he cried huskily, ‘Help me up, boy.’

  Kevin helped Syd on to the stool behind the counter, where he rubbed at his damaged throat before commenting, ‘There could be trouble over this. We’d best get the police.’

  ‘I only hit him when he went for me.’

  ‘And d’you think that’s how he’ll tell it when he comes round?’ Syd said, and Kevin knew he wouldn’t. His father would endeavour to put the blame on him and Syd, possibly more on Syd. Kevin knew how his mind worked. Syd glanced at Kevin. It would be the easiest thing in the world now to say to the boy that he’d decided he didn’t need help in the shop. He’d made a mistake and he didn’t need a full-time assistant. The boy would know he was lying, but he wouldn’t blame him. He’d accept the inevitable and work alongside his father and no doubt fight to keep part of his wages from him. But that part wouldn’t be Syd’s problem any more – none of his concern. Kevin Hogan would only be one of many.

  The difference was he’d met the boy and liked and admired him, and if he was to ignore him he felt that Stanley’s death would have been in vain. He and many others had gone to war because of a bully: Hitler had threatened to overrun and control Europe. Because of the brave servicemen he’d been defeated and Sydney knew if he were to give in to Kevin’s father he would be besmirching not only his son’s memory but also all the others who gave their lives.

  ‘We’ll need to get the police,’ Syd said, ‘and we need to get a doctor, young Kevin, to look at his injuries and ours.’ He laid a hand on Kevin’s shoulder and went on, ‘If you want to get out of your father’s clutches this is the only way.’

  Brendan Hogan was still bawling at the policeman when Dr Fleming came down the stairs from the flat where he’d been examining Kevin and Syd Moss
. Brendan had claimed Sydney had enticed his son away and encouraged him to defy his father, who’d a job ready and waiting for him, and when he’d come to discuss the matter that afternoon, Kevin had gone for him like a tiger, encouraged by the shopkeeper.

  Dr Fleming looked at Brendan coldly. ‘Mr Moss said you went for his throat.’

  ‘Well, I might have . . .’ Brendan began. He was flustered. ‘I wasn’t myself. Maybe I was a bit hasty. I mean, when a man deliberately sets a son against his father . . .’

  ‘I agree you probably weren’t yourself, Mr Hogan,’ the doctor said stressing the ‘Mr’, ‘because you were drunk, stinking drunk. I’m sure the landlord at The Bell could verify that if he had to, and I have to tell you, you almost killed Syd Moss. There are bruises all round his neck and such was the severe pressure you applied, blood vessels have ruptured in the neck, which is why one of Mr Moss’s eyes is badly bloodshot and there has been bleeding from his mouth and nose. It is, Mr Hogan, a serious assault, so serious that I’ve advised Mr Moss to file an assault charge against you.’

  Brendan, mouth agape, was looking at the doctor as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He shook his head from side to side in an effort to clear it. ‘Now look here,’ he roared, ‘I was the one assaulted. Bloody hell, it’s a fine thing, this, assaulted by my own son. I could file a bloody charge, I can tell you.’

  ‘Oh, could you?’ the doctor remarked sarcastically. ‘Well, I’ll tell you and this police officer here that I’ve been attending the results of your handiwork on your family for years. Once before, many years ago, you attacked your son with a belt with such ferocity, I was tempted to tell the authorities. It was only because of your wife I desisted, the same wife who often bears the marks of your violent assaults on her.’

  ‘She’s my wife, and he’s my son,’ Brendan yelled. ‘It’s my right to chastise them.’

  ‘Chastise! Chastise, did you say?’ the doctor cried. ‘You laid into Kevin only a week ago with your fist and your boots. His face has calmed down a little and will heal eventually, but his body is a mass of bruises and lacerations where the hobnails in your boots have torn into his skin. The kick you administered between his legs was so ferocious it split one of his testicles. Kevin should have received hospital treatment for it. You may have rendered the lad sterile; only time will tell. Is that your idea of chastisement?’

  The policeman, who’d been listening quite horror-stricken at the doctor’s words said, ‘Shall we take him down the station then? They will be making charges against him, I suppose.’

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ Brendan cried, pulling himself from the policeman’s grasp. He stared at the doctor. ‘Aye, well, if they make a claim against me, I’ll do the same to them. I was knocked unconscious by my own son. That’s worth something, surely?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s worth me thinking with satisfaction that you’ve got your just deserts at last,’ Dr Fleming said. ‘Kevin attacked you to protect Mr Moss, isn’t that right, Constable?’

  ‘If Mr Moss is injured like you say, sir, I would say this man’s son wouldn’t have a case to answer,’ the policeman said.

  ‘And as for being knocked unconscious,’ the doctor went on, ‘though Kevin admitted knocking you down, I would say the amount of beer you consumed had something to do with you lying comatose on the floor.’

  They were laughing at him and Brendan felt anger flow through him so that his whole body felt on fire and he saw red lights before his eyes. He couldn’t bear being laughed at. Someone would pay for this tonight, he promised himself, and he knew who it would be.

  ‘We’ll take him down and charge him then, sir,’ the policeman said.

  What were they talking about? Brendan thought. They couldn’t take him anywhere. They hadn’t the right. What the bloody hell were they doing, the pair of them?

  Dr Fleming knew there would be no charge facing Brendan Hogan, for Syd and young Kevin were willing to do a deal. They wouldn’t press charges if he left them alone. Syd had also decided that it would be far too dangerous for Kevin to continue to live at home after this latest fiasco.

  Even Gwen had agreed he should move in with them when she looked at her husband’s bruised and swollen throat and realised that, but for the boy, he could have been strangled to death. The boy’s father was obviously a maniac and Kevin couldn’t return home to that. Stanley’s bedroom had remained a shrine to his memory, but now she realised someone else had greater need of it than her dead son. She’d prepare it for Kevin, and the nice doctor offered to take Kevin home later to collect his things and explain it all to his mother.

  But Dr Fleming wanted Brendan locked up, at least for the night. He’d been humiliated and made to feel small and it had angered him, and knowing Brendan Hogan even as little as he did, he guessed that left on the streets he’d take his anger out on his wife. He’d rather he cool his heels in a police cell than use his wife as a punchbag and he told the constable as much.

  Brendan was led away handcuffed, still struggling and proclaiming he’d been set up and someone would pay for it. The door had barely closed on him before Kevin appeared in the shop and the doctor said, ‘I’ll pop along and see your mother and explain things. I’ll come back for you at six and you can collect your clothes.’

  Kevin nodded, but he hoped his mother wouldn’t be too upset. She was bound to feel it, for she’d missed most of his growing up as it was and now for him to choose somewhere else to live would hurt her, he felt sure. But, if he’d agreed to his father’s demands, his mother would have descended again into the grinding poverty that he knew had been her lot for years. This way he could lift her out of it even a little bit. His wages, a fortune to a lad like him, would be a great help to his mother and the rest of them at home.

  He was glad the policeman had taken his father away. But he knew he would make no case against him even if it were possible for a son to speak against his father in a court of law, and he wasn’t sure that it was. What if he’d tried to do just that and his father had got off? Then none of their lives would have been worth living and his mother’s least of all. The doctor had suggested working out some sort of deal with him, and both Kevin and Syd had thought it the safest thing to do in the circumstances. God, Kevin thought, how he hated the man. He wished he would die and leave them all alone and he didn’t care if that was a mortal sin or not. One day he’d earn enough to take care of them all and then his father could jump in the canal.

  Elsie was in Maeve’s house that evening when the doctor called and neither was prepared for the news he brought. Maeve listened open-mouthed.

  ‘Let’s get this right,’ she said almost disbelievingly. ‘Brendan went to the shop, had some sort of set-to with Syd Moss, and our Kevin knocked him down?’

  ‘He did indeed.’

  ‘Won’t he get into trouble for it?’

  ‘Oh no,’ the doctor assured her, ‘for you see it was in the nature of self-defence. After all, your husband almost choked the life out of the shopkeeper, Mr Moss.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Maeve said, though she did not see at all. She couldn’t take in the fact that her husband was locked up in a cell for the night, nor that because of the attack the Mosses had offered Kevin a home with them and he’d accepted. She knew it was best and sensible. Hadn’t she already come to the decision that her son and husband could not live together? Of course she had, and this was the only answer.

  But in reality she felt as if she’d lost her son all over again and was irrationally jealous of this Mrs Moss, who would have the pleasure of Kevin’s company. She’d wash and iron his clothes, prepare his meals, make his bed and clean his room. She’d be the one to hear Kevin’s confidences and worries, and share his happier moments too. She was the one he would always be grateful to.

  And when in later years he looked back on his life, Maeve had the feeling he’d think his mother had let him down and it was only the presence of Elsie and the doctor that prevented her crying out against this latest hurt that seeme
d to pierce her very soul.

  SEVENTEEN

  All the next morning Maeve waited for Brendan to appear. She knew he’d be released that day sometime and presumed it would be in the morning, and the only time she left the house was to go to nine o’clock Mass.

  By dinner her nerves were stretched to breaking point. ‘Go out for the day, you and the babbies. Let him take his bad humour out on someone else for a change,’ Elsie advised.

  ‘You know I can’t do that,’ Maeve said. ‘From what the doctor said yesterday, Brendan was attacked by Kevin. It doesn’t matter why or how or who was in the right – not to Brendan it won’t. If I wasn’t here when he came home . . . well, let’s say I’d be afraid to face him ever again.’

  ‘That mightn’t be a bad thing.’

  ‘God, Elsie,’ Maeve cried, her eyes flashing angrily, ‘d’you think I’d still be here if I had any sort of a bloody choice?’

  And Elsie knew she wouldn’t and so her advice was worse than useless. ‘I know, Maeve,’ she said more gently. ‘But it would be better if I stayed with you.’

  ‘No, no, that would be worse!’ Maeve cried. ‘If you care for me at all, get the kids out of it. He’ll be raging, I know that, and they don’t have to witness it. I’ll try and calm him down before they come home. I have a bit of dinner saved for him. I’ll heat it up over a pan of water. Food always puts him in a better mood.’

  Elsie knew as well as Maeve that nothing would ease Brendan’s temper that day because he’d been humiliated, and that he couldn’t take. But then the man had to be faced sometime, and Maeve was right to try to protect the children.

  ‘Stand up to the brute, Maeve,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him have it all his own way.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Maeve said grimly. ‘I’m fed up being used as Brendan’s punch-ball, believe you me.’

  Elsie looked at her for a few moments at her gaunt face and the huge distended belly and swollen legs and feet. God, she thought, if she was my daughter I’d batter Brendan Hogan into the ground with whatever I could lay my hands on. ‘I’ll take the babby over to me sister’s for a bit,’ she said. ‘And I’ll see if Alf will take the others to the flicks.’