Mother’s Only Child

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Dead!’ Maria repeated. ‘Really and truly dead? You have seen the dead body?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Then I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Maria, listen, please,’ Andrew pleaded. ‘The police caught up with him in the brickworks. I was there too and saw it all. When they released the dogs he took off. He didn’t know about the quarry and by the time he saw it, it was too late. If the fall didn’t kill him then the quicksand did, for by the time the police got down there, there was no trace of him. They say he will probably never be found.

  ‘Don’t you see what this means?’ Patsy said, giving Maria’s arm a little shake. ‘You are free of the McPhearsons for ever.’

  ‘You don’t know how good that sounds.’

  ‘I can guess,’ Patsy said with a smile.

  ‘And you can become Mrs Hopkins as soon as Greg is well enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maria said. She felt as if she was floating on air, truly free now. Despite Sean telling her he had advised Seamus not to dig too deep to find Barney’s killer, and that he’d seemed to accept it, she knew Seamus didn’t work that way. While he had lived she had always thought there was unfinished business between them, now it was at an end. She couldn’t even feel sorry that his death had been such a brutal one, for had Patsy and Andrew been a minute later she would be dead now, and he wouldn’t have lost a minute’s sleep over it either.

  ‘Come on,’ she said suddenly. ‘I need to see the children, reassure them, and I cannot see Greg again until tomorrow.’

  ‘They will be glad to see you,’ Patsy said. ‘Mom was having a bit of a time with them all when we left.’

  ‘Lead on, then,’ Maria said. She left the hospital filled with elation.

  The next afternoon, when Maria saw Greg lying back in the stark hospital bed, his face as white as the pillow he lay against, one arm attached to monitors of some kind, she felt tears prickle her eyes. And then he turned and saw her in the doorway, and his smile lit up his entire face. ‘God, how I have longed to see you,’ he said. ‘Don’t be crying. Come and sit the other side where I can put my arm around you and tell you how much you mean to me.’

  ‘Oh, Greg,’ Maria cried. ‘I am so pleased to see you looking so well. I really thought he had killed you.’

  ‘Can’t keep a good man down,’ Greg said with a grin.

  ‘Do you know who it was attacked you?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Yeah, the police were in this morning and told me. I never knew Barney’s brother really, he being so much older, and then my dad always told me to steer clear of him because, he had been told, he was a bit of a bad lot.’ He winced suddenly and went on, ‘I have evidence of my own on that score now, of course.’

  ‘Well, the man’s dead and gone now, and can never hurt me or anyone belonging to me ever again.’

  ‘So, we can get on with arranging our marriage. No need for us to hang about, Easter is a nice time of the year.’

  ‘But, Greg, I’ll hardly have the dress and bridesmaid outfits ready for then.’

  ‘Oh,’ Greg said with a wry smile, ‘shall we postpone it for a year or two then?’

  ‘You dare,’ Maria said in mock severity. ‘If I have to work till midnight every night I will be ready for Easter, never fear. But one thing I insist on and that is to tell your parents about our marriage. They were always good to me.’

  Greg’s face was like a mask, something she had never seen before, and he said, ‘How do you explain to my two daughters that my parents couldn’t stand their mother?’

  ‘Greg,’ Maria protested, ‘do you think I would ever do such a thing? I’ll not let them know it had anything to do with Nancy. Trust me in this.’

  Greg’s face relaxed. ‘Of course I trust you,’ he said, ‘and you must do as you see fit.’

  On Greg’s insistence, Maria moved into his house, for, with his girls, they would be too squashed in their own. That evening, with Martin in bed, Maria told the children about the wedding in April.

  ‘There are lots of people to invite to a wedding and some of them you may never have seen before. I mean, Anna and Shirley, did you know that you have grandparents in Moville?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said.

  ‘Why haven’t we seen them before?’ Shirley asked.

  ‘They had some silly fight with your daddy and probably said things they regretted later—you know how it is when you are angry. We’ve all done that, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Anna said, ‘but we make it up later.’

  ‘And probably they would have, too, but the war got in the way and your daddy had to go away and fight. The row might have been about him joining up. He didn’t have to because Ireland wasn’t in the last war.’

  ‘Doesn’t he know what it was about?’

  ‘No. After all these years he can’t remember how it began, but he says it was probably over something silly,’ Maria told them ‘But because he wasn’t able to go and sort it out, it grew and grew in importance and neither side wanted to back down.’

  Both girls nodded solemnly. They could see how that could be.

  ‘Anyway, this is a new start for us all and your daddy thinks it is time to try and make amends, and he has asked me to invite them to the wedding.’

  ‘Have we got grandparents we can invite?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No, Jack.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s just how it is,’ Maria said.

  ‘It’s not fair,’

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘Never mind,’ Shirley said. ‘When your mom marries our dad, we’ll all be brothers and sisters and so you will be able to share our grandparents.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Oh, that is all right then,’ Jack said. Maria smiled to herself. Jack could be an aggravating child at times. But at others, he could lighten the tone as he had then. She had wondered if Nancy had ever let slip to her daughters, Anna especially, that Greg’s parents had resented her, but she couldn’t have done that, for Anna’s surprise that she had grandparents in Ireland had been genuine.

  That night Maria composed a very careful letter to Greg’s parents and hoped that the breach between them might be healed.

  Greg was in hospital a fortnight and so he was still there when the reply came from his parents. Maria guessed who it was from. She noted the Moville postmark, yet didn’t recognise the handwriting and so, though it was addressed to her, she took it to the hospital that afternoon unopened.

  Greg was ridiculously nervous about opening it, but he needn’t have worried. His mother wrote that many times she and Greg’s father had regretted the angry and unforgiving words said when they were both in a state of shock. They had often wished them unsaid and didn’t know how to heal the breach, for they had no address once Greg had left the training camp, and after the war no idea at all where he had gone.

  They went on to say that they deplored the years spent apart, would not miss his wedding for a fortune, and were looking forward to meeting his daughters.

  ‘How stiff-necked I have been,’ Greg said, as he folded up the letter. Maria noticed with compassion and sympathy that his eyes were glitteringly bright. ‘I should have written to them, apologised, because I did hurt and disappoint them, especially my mother, very much.’

  ‘You weren’t to know how they might be feeling.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have taken much to find out.’ Greg said. ‘Nancy wanted me to do that too, you know. She said people say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean and for the girls’ sakes now and again she would ask me to contact them. I wish I had. I feel they have missed out as well as the girls.’

  ‘Don’t worry about your parents missing out,’ Maria said with a laugh. ‘They might just get more than they are bargaining for.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well, according to Jack, it isn’t fair that your children have got secret grandparents just come to light and he hasn’t. Your Shirley told him that wh
en we are married and all one family, they will be his grandparents as well. And I will say if anyone can break any stiffness that might be there in the first few meetings with your parents, it will be my first-born son.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Greg with a smile. He kissed her on the lips, but gently because of the delicate state of his ribs. ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I can’t wait to be out of here and back home with you.’

  ‘I feel the same,’ Maria said. ‘It’s less of a home without you in it. The children are missing you quite dreadfully—and not just yours either.’

  ‘Let’s have less of my children and yours, Mrs Hopkins-to-be,’ he said in mock severity. ‘Soon they will just be ours. I hope you understand that.’

  ‘Certainly I do, Mr Hopkins,’ Maria said with a grin. ‘Ooh, and I love it when you are being masterful.’

  ‘You wait until I leave this place,’ Greg said with a licentious leer, ‘and you will soon see how masterful I can be.’

  He kissed her again gently and Maria felt her innards tighten in delicious anticipation of her future together with this man that she loved so very much.

  There was hardly a dry eye in the abbey on 16 April. Maria, in a gown of apricot satin, was attended by five beautiful bridesmaids in dresses of pale blue, and Patsy in a costume to match Maria, as maid of honour. ‘To keep us all in order,’ Sally said knowledgeably.

  Jack had refused point-blank to be a pageboy. Eight months on from Patsy’s wedding, he declared it a babyish thing to do. Greg said he shouldn’t be forced and had taken him out and bought him a new suit of clothes, a shirt and the shiniest black shoes imaginable. He looked as smart as paint, and Martin, in a sailor suit, was just adorable.

  But just as important as the clothes were the people who had come to wish the couple well: Joanne from Derry, and Dora and Bella, brought all the way in Ned Richards’ car. According to their letters, Ned was turning Moville around, and people said it was lovely to see the boats bobbing about in Greencastle Harbour again. Just as important were Greg’s parents and two sisters, the rift between them and Greg healed at last. Greg’s parents, desperate to get to know their granddaughters, were all staying in Greg’s house for a few days to give Martha and Sean a hand with the children, as Greg was taking Maria away for a week’s honeymoon.

  Maria would have been happy with a caravan in Wales, for she had been nowhere, but Greg had poohpoohed that idea. ‘I thought the South of France,’ he said. ‘In fact, I have already booked the hotel.’

  Maria had given a squeal of delight and thrown her arms around the man’s neck. ‘Oh, Greg, what can I say?’

  ‘The only words I want to hear, Maria, are that you love me and will continue to love me till the breath leaves your body.’

  ‘That is such an easy promise to make,’ Maria said, ‘except that I think I will love you more with every passing year.’

  ‘And I you, you darling desirable, beautiful woman,’ Greg said. When their lips met, Maria’s moan was one of pure, unadulterated desire.

  She thought of this, walking down the aisle on Sean’s arm, Patsy and the children falling in behind her. As she drew close to the altar, Greg turned to look at her with such love mirrored on his face that she felt her own heart stop beating for a moment or two. Sean relinquished her arm and she gave her bouquet to Patsy and stood beside her beloved for the priest to bind them together until death should part them. She knew she loved Greg as she had never loved any other and never would love any other, and she also knew that their love would never fade, but just grow stronger.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book was written in memory of my uncle Willie MacDonald who actually did own a boatyard in Greencastle at the time in which this is set, though the family lived in Moville, the next village. He also worked for the military in a self-employed capacity in the docks in Derry once the war began and did have a accident such as I describe and the search, when it was realised he was missing, was hampered by the blackout, possibly increasing the severity of his injuries. He was paralysed from the waist down ever after and received no compensation, just like Sam Foley, but there the similarity ended.

  My cousin, Maura MacDonald-Reynolds, who filled me in on parts of the story on which I was hazy, was just a child when these things happened, not sixteen as my Maria. Years later, a teacher spotted Maura’s talent in dressmaking and wanted her to try for a scholarship in Dress and Fabric Design to the prestigious Grafton Academy in Dublin and though she was sure Maura would gain a place, there was no money to enable her even to try. I am indebted to my cousin for giving me the nub of this story. The rest is completely fabricated.

  For the rest of the research, I used the internet extensively and the Palmer family of Moville run a wonderful website of ‘Moville. Then and Now’ with many photographs. The Londonderry and Lough Swilley Railway Company supplied old timetables, maps and general information, although a gentleman called Charles Friel also helped with transport links. Thank you, Charles.

  However, reference books too are often invaluable. For example, Evelyn Ruddy wrote a book about the remoteness of life on Innishowen, calling it Rekindling a Dying Heritage, and a man known as John McLaughlin wrote Carrowmenagh, which is a village not that far away from Greencastle and Moville. Then there was the book Our Town by Naoi nGiallach about Letterkenny and the hinterland, and another, Atlantic Memorial. The Foyle and Western Approaches 1939-1945, was written as a souvenir catalogue by a team of people, and, as you might imagine, documents the story of Derry through the war years. I am so grateful to all these people.

  For the Birmingham links, I used the Golden Years Of Brum, which is part of the ‘Memories’ series published by True North, as well as, of course, the works of Carl Chinn, who wrote, among many others, Best of Brum and Our Brum, and the newspaper extracts he compiles detailing people’s memories, together with The Story of Erdington by Douglas V. Jones, helped me enormously.

  Altogether, though the war is well-documented, the years that followed are not and to write about this accurately, I bought London in the Post-War Years. I couldn’t find anything similar relating to Birmingham, so maybe that is another one that Carl could do when he has the time. I also bought The 50s and 60s. The Best of Times to help my readers relate to and possibly remember that era.

  Erdington was easier, for I remember myself how it was, though Erdington Historical Society were very helpful with specific points. Maria’s house on the Pype Hayes Estate was the one allocated to our family when we were re-housed from our back-to-back in 1956; I went to the Abbey School, shopped in Erdington Village, swam in the swimming pool and borrowed books from the library. Nock’s Brickyard on Holly Lane really did exist and so did Hollyfield’s Sports Ground which the gardens on one side of Westmead Crescent used to run right up to.

  My family are often at the forefront of my mind when I write. First and foremost is my husband Denis, who I love very much, his grey hair evidence of the hard life I give him. Then there are our three daughters and one son, son- and daughter-in-law, and my four adorable grandchildren, who are all so special to me. However, I cannot talk of the family without including Denis’s mother Nancy, who died on 29 January 2005. She has often been mentioned in the acknowledgements for the help she has given me. She was a lovely woman, full of fun, and usually had a smile on her face. I feel it was a privilege to know her, and she is and will be missed for some time.

  My very good friend Judith Kendall has a special place in my life and my heart. Thanks, Judith, for all you do.

  However, without the tremendous team at HarperCollins, I doubt my books would ever reach bookshelves anywhere. I hope you realise how much I appreciate all you do and immense thanks must go first to my wonderful editor, Susan Opie. Maxine Hitchcock no longer does my books, but I still consider her very important and not least for the fact that she is an excellent champagne cocktail drinking partner. Hey! A person could do worse. It’s a very important job. Ingrid Gegner, my marvellous publicist, is in a
class of her own. She works incredibly hard and added to that, she is so lovely as well. Thanks, Ingrid, and thanks also to Peter Hawtin, who started the ball rolling and Judith Evans, now at Birmingham Airport bookshops, who was, and still is, so complimentary about my books.

  Special thanks too must go to my superb and intrepid agent, Judith Murdoch, another whom I appreciate so much, who also always works so hard for me.

  Last, but by no means least, extra and heartfelt thanks must go to you, the readers, the fantastic members of the public who not only buy and read the books but often take the time to write or e-mail to tell me how much you enjoy them. Without all of you, there would be no point to any of it.

  So, thanks, thanks and once again thanks to each and every one of you.

  MOTHER’S ONLY CHILD

  Anne Bennett was born in a back-to-back house in the Horsefair district of Birmingham. The daughter of Roman Catholic, Irish immigrants, she grew up in a tight-knit community where she was taught to be proud of her heritage.

  She considers herself to be an Irish Brummie and feels therefore that she has a foot in both cultures. She has four children and four grandchildren. For many years she taught in schools to the north of Birmingham.

  An accident put paid to her teaching career and, after moving to North Wales, Anne turned to the other great love of her life and began to write seriously. Mother’s Only Child is her ninth novel. In 2006, after sixteen years in a wheelchair, Anne began to walk again.

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