by Anne Bennett
She bit on her lip as she considered whether to divulge the whole matter of sex with her younger sister. She’d never get the information from their mother, she knew that, because she’d never discuss anything so intimate. Mary had got all her information from Aunt Ellen and she often thanked God she had.
So she told Bridie how the seed inside her had grown into a baby and watched Bridie’s eyes open wider and wider in shock as she spoke. ‘Something else occurs before a woman can have a baby,’ Mary told her. ‘They’re called periods and they mean you bleed from your private parts every month. You need to know: I began mine at school and because I hadn’t been warned, I thought I was dying. Sister Ambrose eventually found me in the toilets, limp from crying, and explained it to me and took me home.’
‘Was Mammy cross?’
‘No,’ Mary said. ‘But she was embarrassed. She told me she had linen pads in the press ready and I was to pin one to my liberty bodice. When they were soiled I was to put them in the bucket she’d leave ready and that respectable women didn’t need to know any more than that, in fact they didn’t need to talk of it at all.’
‘And that bleeding happens to every woman every month?’ Bridie asked, curling her mouth in distaste.
‘Aye,’ Mary said, smiling at her sister’s discomfort. ‘I’m afraid it does. It’s a sort of preparation for motherhood and even people like Aunt Ellen, who’ve never had children, have periods.’
‘So, when … How will I know when it will be?’ Bridie asked.
‘Your body will change first,’ Mary told her. ‘Your breasts will begin to grow and you’ll get hair down below.’
Bridie let out a sigh of relief. She’d been horrified to see the little swellings around her nipples and even more so to see hair sprouting where it had never done before, certain that she was abnormal and too worried to even contemplate discussing it with Rosalyn.
Mary heard the sigh and saw the relief, but hid her smile. She was glad she’d told her. ‘But,’ she cautioned her, ‘don’t you be telling Mammy about this, d’you hear? She’ll have my mouth washed out with carbolic.’
‘I won’t,’ Bridie promised with a giggle, visualising her mother forcing a bar of soap into Mary’s mouth. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me. I’ve wondered, you know.’
‘Of course you’ve wondered, it’s natural,’ Mary said. ‘And you needed to be told. But one thing I do agree with Mammy about is respecting yourself. It’s all the advice she ever gave me, but for all that she was right. Boys will try to … well, you know what I mean, and if you let them, they’ll not respect you anymore. Wait for the ring like I did. Believe me, it’s worth it.’
‘I don’t know if I want to get married,’ Bridie said doubtfully. ‘I don’t think I want to be doing that sort of thing to make babies either.’
‘Oh you will, little sister,’ Mary said with a laugh. ‘You will.’
CHAPTER TWO
Almost as soon as Terry picked Bridie up at the docks three weeks later, she knew there was something wrong with him. But she also knew to press him would only annoy and so she waited for him to tell her.
She hadn’t long to wait: Terry was bursting to tell somebody his news and as soon as they were seated on the train, he couldn’t contain himself. Bridie looked at him in astonishment. ‘Leave the farm? But, Terry …’
‘Hear me out first,’ Terry said, ‘and then judge if you want to, Bridie.’
Bridie nodded and Terry went on. ‘Look at me – I’m twenty years old in a week’s time, I never go out, I’ve never dated a girl in all my life and why? Because I never get a penny piece of my own, that’s why. Oh, they point out, Mam and Dad, that this place will be mine one day – Seamus will hardly want it – and they remind me I have a warm house and plenty of food and clothes bought for me when I need them. Aye, I do, working clothes and a suit for Mass that I never even get to choose the colour and style of.
‘I can’t stand it, I tell you, Bridie. I don’t like farming anyway, never have, and I won’t grub around in this place for much longer, with Mammy doling out small amounts of money to me for the collection at Mass as if I was a wean.’
Bridie saw some of the injustices of Terry’s predicament that she’d never realised before. ‘Oh, Terry,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you tell Mammy and Daddy how you feel?’
‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ Terry snapped. ‘It’s like talking to a brick wall.’
‘But where will you go?’
‘New York,’ Terry said. ‘Seamus and Johnnie said they’d send me the fare.’
‘But what about a job?’ Bridie said, for she knew as well as any that unemployment was rife everywhere since the Great War and getting worse. ‘It’s as bad there as here. Worse, in fact. They have soup kitchens in America, Terry.’
‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘That’s the threat Mam and Dad use when I’ve mentioned it to them. Not that I’ve said that much, you know. I’ve just tested the ground as it were. I wrote to Johnnie and he said he can probably get me set on alongside him in time. There’s nothing for now, but he’s keeping an eye out and will send for me. I’m willing to work. I’ll not go to America and live off him and Seamus, never fear. All I’m waiting for is word and the money for the fare.’
Bridie knew then that eventually Terry would go. It might be weeks or even months, but he wouldn’t stay.
However, the weeks rolled by and soon winter was upon them again and still no word came from America. Still and all, Bridie told herself, there might not be a place in America for Terry for a long while. She couldn’t imagine Johnnie and Seamus to be the only Irish boys with relations clamouring to join them. The dole queues in America were as long as those anywhere else and why would they take another person into the country when it made more sense to employ one of their own?
That winter proved to be a severe one and both Jimmy and Francis were worried about their pregnant ewes. Rosalyn came over one day and complained how bad-tempered her father had become lately. Bridie expressed surprise – Francis usually had a smile on his face and had a far more relaxed attitude to life than his brother Jimmy.
They were, as usual, in the barn and Rosalyn peered out of the barn window as she said, ‘Poor things to be born in this anyway.’ She rubbed at the window with a mittened hand, clearing the ice. ‘I mean just look at it,’ she said. The landscape before them was covered in snow blown into drifts at the sides of the fields and gilding the trees and hedges.
Bridie shivered, despite her thick coat. ‘Aye, you’d think they’d wait till spring is really here and the snow had at least disappeared,’ she said. ‘I think God slipped up there.’
Rosalyn gave her a push. ‘Don’t let the priest hear you say that, Bridie McCarthy,’ she said in mock severity while her eyes twinkled. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life on your knees repenting, you will.’
‘Aye? Well, I’ll say one for you when I’m down there,’ Bridie promised with a smile.
But in all truth there was not much to smile about during those bitterly cold days and the only bright news at all that awful January was that Mary had given birth to a baby and named him Jamie after her father. Jimmy was ridiculously pleased by the gesture and that evening talked of Mary coming home when the baby was a bit older. ‘Show me my namesake,’ he said with a broad grin.
Bridie was glad to see that smile; for far too long her father had had a frown creasing his brow. It was a pity, then, that Terry had to spoil it. ‘Aye, that’s right. Get another one back here that you can chain to the bloody land.’
‘I chain nobody, boy.’
‘Yes you bloody do,’ Terry said, leaping up and reaching for his coat.
‘Where are you going? There’s work to do.’
‘Oh,’ said Terry in mock surprise. ‘You surprise me! Work, is there? Well, get some other silly bugger to do it. I’m away out.’
‘Terry! Come back here!’
As the door slammed shut, Bridie looked fearfully at her father, but he made no effo
rt to follow his wayward son. The peat in the fire settled and hissed and the clock’s tick seemed very loud. Everyone seemed fearful of breaking the silence and Bridie picked up a sock from the mending basket by her mother’s feet and began to darn the large hole in the heel.
By mid-March, the long months of the winter were behind them. The snow and ice were long gone, the lambs had all been born fine and healthy and spring planting was going on apace. The sun was shining in a bright blue sky and Bridie, having celebrated her fourteenth birthday in February, felt happy with her world.
She was, however, rather at a loose end. It was a Saturday and also a Fair Day in the town, where the farmers bought and sold their stock. Terry and her daddy had gone in early with some calves to sell. They’d offered her a lift into town, but she’d said she’d not felt like it that day but then, calling to see Rosalyn, she found she’d also gone into town with her own brother and father very early that morning. ‘She thought you’d be gone in too,’ said Delia.
‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘Daddy offered, but I didn’t fancy it today. Never mind, I’ll see Rosalyn later.’
After helping her mother all morning, she’d been too fidgety to stay in and had gone out tramping the hills later that afternoon. Everyone seemed either to be indoors or in town because she met not a soul and so was pleased on her return to see her uncle Francis approaching her as she neared the outskirts of the farm. She waved to him.
It was as she got nearer that she noticed his strange gait, his slightly glazed eyes and slack mouth, and she realised that her uncle was drunk. She wasn’t totally surprised. He’d been in the town for many hours and the bars, open all day, would be thronged with friends and acquaintances with nothing to do for hours but drink and reminisce. Many men, her father included, would probably be the worse for wear that day.
‘And how’s my favourite girl today?’ Francis cried.
‘Ah, then it must be me you’re talking about since there’s not another soul around for miles,’ Bridie answered with a laugh.
In two strides, Francis was alongside his niece. ‘God, Bridie, but you’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he said. His voice was husky and thick and the way he was looking at her was sending shivers of alarm down her spine. She told herself not to be stupid. This was Francis who she’d known all her life. Dear God! There was no need to be nervous of him. He’d got drunk and was acting oddly, that was all.
‘Hush, Uncle Francis,’ she said in a voice she forced to be steady. ‘You’ll have my head swelling and I’ll not get in the door.’
Francis, his mind addled by the many pints of ale he’d drank that day, was confused. Bridie was his niece and yet he wasn’t seeing her as a niece, but as a desirable young lady and one he’d secretly lusted after for months. It was a fact he’d kept hidden from everyone and the guilt had made him short-tempered with them all at home.
But now here she was, all alone and not a soul about. He grabbed her around the waist and, stunned, she made no protest until he held her against him, his hand clamped against her back. Bridie remembered what Mary had told her about men and women just the previous summer and when she felt the hardness of her uncle she knew what it was that he was pressing against her. She was suddenly aware of every bit of him and she started to wriggle and protest.
Francis’s thick lips descended on Bridie’s, holding her so tight she was unable to get away. When she felt her uncle’s hand trailing up her leg, she was filled with panic. Lifting her foot, she stamped on his toes with all her might and Francis, taken unawares, slackened his hold slightly and she was able to twist out of his grasp. She stood facing him, her eyes sparkling with anger, and her chest heaving. ‘What d’you think you’re doing, Uncle Francis?’
Francis was angry with himself. What had compelled him to grab Bridie like that? He’d fought the attraction this long while and now … now, to give in like this. But it would never do for her, for anyone, to guess his thoughts and so he answered angrily:
‘What d’you mean, what am I doing? You could see what I was doing, giving you a kiss and cuddle, as I’ve done since you were a child. There was no need to make such a fuss and near lame me in the process.’
Doubts began to creep into Bridie’s mind. Had she read too much into what Francis had done? True, the kiss was one he’d never given her before and she hadn’t liked it much, but that could have been because he was drunk. It could all have been down to the drink. Maybe she’d exaggerated the whole thing. She must have done, she told herself, for her uncle Francis would never hurt her, she was sure of that.
She felt rather silly as she said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Francis. I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘Yes, well, we’ll say no more about it,’ Francis said. ‘I might have surprised you a wee bit and I’ve been drinking all day.’
Relief flooded through Bridie. That was it then. She’d been foolish. ‘You’ll not tell them at home, sure you won’t?’ she asked her uncle.
‘Not a bit of it,’ Francis replied. ‘Don’t fresh yourself. This will be just between us two.’
But for all Bridie’s relief, she tried to make sure after that that she was never alone with her uncle, especially when he’d taken a drink, for she saw his eyes on her, sometimes in a most disturbing way. She never tramped the hills again either and, on Fair Days, she either stayed around the farmhouse with her mother, or went into the town with her father and stuck like glue to Rosalyn.
She finished school in June and Sarah told her to have a wee holiday before looking for a job. Bridie hadn’t forgotten Terry’s threat, but it had been so long now with never a word that she’d pushed it to the back of her mind. She told herself it might be years before Terry was able to go to America.
She really wanted a job in the shirt factory in town beside Rosalyn, but she knew if Terry did leave, a job off the farm would be out of the question. It was too big for her father to manage on his own and she’d be the only one of the family left then. She’d have to stay and help him. Because she was the youngest and so small, she’d been protected from much of the work. Now, she faced the fact that if she was to be of any help to her father and not a hindrance altogether, she would have to learn, and fast, for farms carried few passengers.
She began to tail Terry as he went about his jobs and Terry, admiring her guts and determination, took time to teach her, even though he worried that some of the work might be too much for her.
‘Talk Daddy into getting someone in to help once I’ve gone,’ he told her one day. ‘I’m going to tell him you can’t manage because I don’t really think you’ll be able to do all I do. And for God’s sake, if you’re determined to take on the farm, stick out for a proper wage. It’s only fair and it’s important to have money in your pocket.’
Bridie knew all Terry said was true, but she couldn’t see her daddy hiring help. It went against his principles of it being a family farm. Maybe she’d grow a wee bit more yet before Terry was ready to leave and there was always Frank within calling distance. She was sure he’d give her a hand if she needed it. Rosalyn always said he had a soft spot for her. The point about a wage, however, was a good one. One reason for getting a job, as well as helping the family out, was to have money to spend as she wished.
One day in late July, when the warm sun shone in a sky of Wedgewood blue, Terry was working in the fields when he saw the postman, Abel Maloney, turn in the lane. It wasn’t that unusual, so Terry took little notice, until Abel hailed him. Almost every week, Abel carried letters to the McCarthy house from their sons in America and he knew their writing well, so he said to Terry, ‘Your brothers are after writing to you now too.’
Terry stared at the man for a second or two before the significance of what he said caused him to throw down his spade, leap the hedge and take the letter from his outstretched hand. He went to the privy – the only place he could think of where he wouldn’t be disturbed – and ripped the envelope open.
Dollar bills were folded inside the letter and
Terry stuffed those into the pockets of his breeches and smoothed out the sheet of paper.
Okay kiddo,
I just might have a job for you at last. The factory are setting up new lines making waterproof mackintoshes and they’ll be up and running in three weeks or so. I’ll put your name forward, but there would be hundreds after each vacancy, so there is no way I can hold it for you and there will be a damned long wait for anything else if you let this one go. I presume you have primed Mammy and Daddy what you intended to do when the time was right so I advise you to waste no time in buying a ticket and getting your arse over here pronto. See you soon hopefully.
All the best
Johnnie
Excitement leapt inside Terry initially and then reality struck. It was about the very worst time to leave the farm with not even the hay gathered in. But then was there ever a good time to leave a farm? And as Johnnie said, if he passed this offer up, then he might as well say goodbye to his dreams of going to America altogether. Johnnie thought he must have discussed the possibility of him joining his brothers with their parents, but though they’d both sensed his dissatisfaction, the idea that he might leave the farm had never occurred to them and Terry wished now he’d given some hint of it. Well, he thought, that can soon be remedied. The sooner he told them the better for speed was of the essence, so he squared his shoulders and made his way to the farmhouse.
The resultant row was so fast and furious that Bridie fled to the bedroom and buried her head beneath the bedclothes. Sarah pleaded and cried and Jimmy thundered and roared while Terry shouted back. Francis and Delia were brought in to try to talk some sense into the boy and the following day Father O’Dwyer was called.
By then, Terry was barely speaking to his parents, but his determination to leave had not been altered at all though everyone had thought and said he was wrong, ungrateful, neglecting his filial duty. His parents, their farm and their welfare were, they said, his responsibility. Who was to help them now if he ran away like this? Surely to God he couldn’t expect his wee sister to take up the reins?
