by Anne Bennett
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Bridie protested.
‘It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference whose fault it was,’ Mary said. ‘You know who’ll take the blame for it.’
Bridie knew only too well. ‘Why d’you think I ran away?’ she said.
‘Well,’ Mary demanded again as Bridie continued staring into the fire and made no effort to speak further.
‘What d’you mean – well?’
‘You know damned well what I mean,’ Mary said impatiently. ‘Who was responsible for putting you in this condition?’
‘I’m surprised you even have to ask,’ Bridie said in a flat, dead voice. ‘You know I didn’t exactly have the life of Riley on that farm. I didn’t have great occasion to meet men, let alone let them … well, you know.’
‘Then who?’ But even as Mary asked the question, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and an icy tremor run down her spine. A terrible, dreadful thought had just occurred to her, but she could hardly form the words. ‘It wasn’t … Oh dear God, please say it wasn’t Francis?’
Bridie looked at her, her eyes glistening with tears, her face full of misery and despair as she answered, ‘I’d like to be able to, but I’m afraid it was – my dear, sainted uncle did this to me.’
Although it was the news Mary had been expecting for Bridie to actually say those words shocked her to the core. ‘Dear Christ!’ she breathed. She covered her face with her hands for a moment and then she said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it had all started again? By Christ, if you’d just given me a hint of it I’d have come over there and wiped the floor with the man.’
‘It wasn’t like that, ‘Bridie protested. ‘Don’t you think if it had begun again, I would have done just that? He’d done nothing, or even said anything the slightly bit wrong for ages. This came out of the blue, the night of the Harvest Dance.’
Mary was puzzled. ‘But Mammy said you went up to the dance with Rosalyn.’ she said.
‘Yes, and Frank was to leave us up, but in the end, he was ill and couldn’t do it, so Francis took us.’
‘Mammy said that in her letter,’ Mary said with a nod. ‘I must admit I was surprised when you barely mentioned the dance in your letter, I thought you’d be full of it.’
‘I left early,’ Bridie said. ‘I’d just heard about Rosalyn leaving for America and I was upset so I went outside so no one would see me crying. I decided to go for a walk before making for home – the dance was still going on and I didn’t want to go home too early.
‘Uncle Francis followed me into that small copse by the hall and he raped me.’ Bridie’s eyes filled with the tears at the memory. ‘After that, I didn’t want to tell anyone of the Harvest Dance, I wanted to forget what happened. Then I missed a period. Mammy noticed, but put it down to my being upset at Rosalyn leaving. After I missed my second period, I started being sick and Mammy was talking of asking the doctor to look me over.’
‘Does she suspect?’
‘Oh no,’ Bridie said. ‘Such a thought would never occur to her. She thinks I’m working too hard and need a tonic. That’s what I’ve let her believe too in the letter I left.’
‘Well, that’s one good thing at any rate,’ Mary said. ‘Now what are we to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bridie said. ‘I thought you’d have some idea.’
‘What, Bridie?’ Mary snapped. ‘D’you think I’m some sort of bloody magician?’
Bridie felt crushed. Her one overriding thought when she realised she was pregnant was of getting to Mary. She’d thought no further than that. Now she realised, with a sense of shock, that the problem still existed: she’d just moved it from Ireland to England. Mary couldn’t work miracles, she had no magic solution, and she was as worried and pain stricken as Bridie.
‘Oh God, Mary, help me,’ Bridie pleaded. ‘There is no one else and to nowhere else I can turn. What am I to do?’
Mary’s heart constricted in pity for her young sister. She’d always had the solutions to Bridie’s problems. Even when Bridie had written about Francis interfering with her, she’d gone over to Ireland and sorted it out. But there was no easy way out of this problem, no get-out clause, and it would do Bridie no good to let her think there was.
There was only one thing to do, though her mind recoiled from even voicing the thought and when she did, she said it in little more than a whisper. ‘Bridie, have you considered the possibility of getting rid of it?’
‘Get rid of it!’ Bridie repeated in shock. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘’Course it is,’ Mary said. ‘But I know people who’ve had it done. It can be dangerous though, not something to do unless you understand all the risks involved.’
‘It’s a mortal sin,’ Bridie said quietly.
‘Aye, there’s that to think about too,’ Mary agreed. ‘We’ll discuss all the options and then decide. All right?’
Bridie nodded her head and Mary said, ‘We must make our minds up quickly though. If you decide on abortion, we can’t delay. The later you go, the more dangerous it will be.’
‘How dangerous is it? What do they do?’ Bridie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Mary admitted. ‘I’ve never been near such a place to know what they do, but I’ve known desperate women who have and, God, you’d have to be desperate to do such a thing. I just know it’s usually better to go to someone you know has done it before successfully.’
‘Well, God knows I don’t want to go through with it at all.’
‘Aye, I know,’ Mary said. ‘I’d feel the same.’
‘But I feel nothing at all for the child,’ Bridie said, almost fiercely. ‘I want nothing and no one belonging to Uncle Francis. That bloody man’s near destroyed my life and that of our parents. I hate him and I’ll go to my grave hating him and I know I’d hate the fruit of his loins too.’
‘Don’t cry, Bridie,’ Mary said, dropping to her knees and cradling Bridie to her. ‘I know how you feel about him and no one could ever blame you.’
‘Everyone would blame me, Mary, that’s the point,’ Bridie said, pulling herself from her sister’s arms. ‘But abortion is against the law.’
‘I know that.’
‘What if it was found out and I was put in prison, Mary? I’d never be able to bear that.’
Mary’s own stomach lurched at that thought.
‘And there’s the sin of it all,’ Bridie said forlornly. ‘There’s nothing I can do to atone for this if I go through with it but if I don’t …’
‘If you don’t, you’d be an object of derision and scorn to everyone and with the best will in the world I couldn’t let you stay here.’
Bridie stared at her sister, horrified. ‘Don’t look like that,’ Mary pleaded. ‘Don’t you see what would happen as soon as your condition was discovered? Ellen would have to be in the know and you never know how she would react to news like that, especially not being able to have children herself.’
‘But it isn’t just Ellen I’d worry about,’ Mary went on. ‘There are people around the doors from all over Ireland – Donegal even. There’s a woman known as Peggy McKenna not far from here at all. You’d hardly remember her from home, but she was the eldest of five girls – Maguire was her name then – so you may remember her sisters. Her people lived near Barnes Gap – they’d all have been at Barnes More School with you.’
Bridie cast her mind back. ‘There were Maguire girls I remember,’ she said. ‘They were all older than me and Rosalyn, not particularly friends or anything.’
‘Aye, well, it would do you no good being friends with this Maguire or McKenna either, for she’s a gossip and a troublemaker, a malicious old cow altogether. She’d love just to have a hint of something amiss. Oh, I tell you, Bridie, she’d make hay out of it, so she would.’
Mary saw the blood drain from Bridie’s face at her words. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ she told her sister. ‘We’ll have thought of something long before it becomes obvious. Peggy McKenna and her like will
know nothing about any of this.’
Bridie knew, however, that it wasn’t just Peggy McKenna she had to worry about. If she decided to have this baby here, somehow or other, her parents would get to hear of it. Ellen or Mary might easily let something slip in their letters home to make her mammy suspicious, or indeed the priest might say that Mammy had a right to know and take it upon himself to tell her. Bridie had seen coming to Birmingham as a partial solution to her problems, a safe haven where no one would know her. Now she saw quite plainly that it wasn’t far enough away. She felt very frightened and alone as she looked at her sister, her eyes misted over again with tears. ‘But where could I go, Mary, if not here?’
‘Well, that’s it, love,’ Mary said. ‘There are few places. There are these bloody awful homes run by the nuns where you can hide away till the baby’s born and they take it from you and give it up for adoption. From what I heard from a girl who went in one of them, it was like a prison camp. They made them work hard, even while they were in labour, and were constantly reminding them of the sin they had committed and urging them to get on their knees and beg forgiveness.’
‘Oh God,’ Bridie said. ‘Is that what I must do to save my immortal soul?’
‘Bridie, love, it’s just deciding what’s best,’ Mary said. ‘Now, if you don’t like the idea of abortion, then the home might be the only alternative.’
‘It’s not just that I don’t like the idea of abortion,’ Bridie said. ‘I’m scared, and if I was to die, Mary, I’d go to Hell.’
Mary knew that too: the Church’s teaching ingrained into them both was clear. Abortion was murder and the murder of an innocent child … God! It was a desperate thought altogether. Both women were silent for quite a while, each busy with their own thoughts while the fire settled in the grate and the gas lamps hissed. Eventually, Bridie asked, ‘Does Eddie know?’
‘Yes, Bridie,’ Mary said. ‘Or at least he knows what I suspected from your letter.’
‘Aunt Ellen?’
Mary shook her head. ‘If she knew the half of this, she’d take the first boat home and punch Francis on the jaw,’ she said angrily. ‘And while we might all want to do that, it wouldn’t help at all.’
‘No,’ Bridie said dejectedly. ‘Francis is going to get away scot-free.’
‘Does he know you’re pregnant?’
‘God, no. And he’ll never know either.’
‘Didn’t he think of the consequences? Didn’t he talk to you afterwards?’
‘Mary, if he’d have tried talking to me, I’d have killed him,’ Bridie said grimly. ‘I told him I would, if ever he touched me again, and I would have.’ She shook her head and then went on, ‘I think it was usually the amount he’d had to drink that caused him to attack me. It’s nearly always happened when he was drunk.’
‘Aye, many a man changes then, right enough,’ Mary said. ‘But still that’s no excuse.’
‘I’ve wondered since if it was my fault in any way,’ Bridie said. ‘I mean I was wearing that low-cut dress.’
‘None of this is your fault,’ Mary said firmly, holding Bridie in her arms again for she’d been rocking back and forth in great agitation.
‘I’ll tell you how it was,’ Bridie said at last, her voice muffled against her sister’s shoulder, ‘and then you can judge.’
Mary listened to the tale of the young excited girl and the dance that, until she’d learned of Rosalyn’s departure, had been everything she could have hoped for. She understood how upset her sister would be hearing about Rosalyn leaving and because, even as a wee child, she’d hidden away when she’d been upset, Mary wasn’t at all surprised she’d run from the hall where no one would see her tears.
But this time she wasn’t alone. Mary was shocked to the core when Bridie described the rape, and what Francis had said after it when Bridie had threatened to tell. She knew as well as Bridie that Francis would be believed before her and everyone’s lives would change if she’d spoken out.
‘I’ll show you what he did,’ Bridie said suddenly, leaping to her feet.
While Mary had been washing the dishes, Bridie had opened the bass bags and hung all the damp clothes on the airer above the fire. Now she pulled the ruined dress out, which she’d brought with her to prevent her mother seeing it, and showed Mary the ripped bodice.
‘D’you know what he’s done?’ Bridie said tearfully, holding the dress in her hands. ‘He’s spoilt everything that went before. I loved him, I would have trusted him with my life, I loved him like I love Daddy. Sometimes, if I’m honest, a little more than Daddy, because he was more fun and always seemed to have more time to play with me than Daddy had.
‘Now that’s ruined. I feel as if my life was a sham, my memories are tainted with what happened that night, and I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do any more.’
‘Oh Bridie.’ Tears were running down Mary’s face.
‘What would you do in my place?’ Bridie asked eventually and Mary shivered. She’d have hated to be in Bridie’s position, and she had to admit, ‘I don’t know, Bridie, but in the end I think I’d risk an abortion and to Hell with my immortal soul. What do celibate priests know anyway and yet they sit in moral judgement on the rest of us.’
Blasphemous words surely. Bridie wasn’t prepared to blame the clergy for her predicament – only one person was at fault and she knew who that was and she’d hate him as long as she had breath in her body.
‘Can I think about it?’ she asked Mary.
‘Surely you can,’ Mary assured her. ‘This isn’t something you can decide in a minute. D’you want another cup of tea?’
‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘If you don’t mind I’ll go on up. I’m dead beat.’
It was a lie, but Bridie wanted to be out of the way when Eddie came in. She wanted to lay and think about the options open to her, limited though they were.
She lay on the mattress and listened to the children’s even breathing and remembered her own secure and happy childhood, with the absolute love of her parents surrounding her like a warm cloak. She had believed as a child that, because of that love, nothing bad could ever happen to her. To Mary and Terry, she was the adored little sister, she had Rosalyn to play with and Frank to torment the pair of them, and Uncle Francis and Aunt Delia as surrogate parents, whose house was as familiar to Bridie as her own.
But then it had all changed … Stop thinking about it, she admonished herself sternly. Reliving it does no good. Solutions are what’s needed.
She thought about the home that Mary had mentioned. She wasn’t worried about the austere nature of it, or the work. God, had she ever balked at work? As for telling her she was sinful … Well, she’d keep her own counsel, but she wasn’t the sinful one here.
But how could she keep the fact of where she was for months hidden from her mother? Wouldn’t she think it strange if Bridie asked her letters to be sent to Mary? Wouldn’t she ask what she was doing out in some obscure place that seemed to have no postal delivery?
Every way, the path was lined with thorns. She didn’t feel she was having a baby, it was just like a leaden weight she carried in her stomach and she wished she could pluck it out and fling it far away from herself and her life.
Could she live with herself if she went through with an abortion though? But then could she live at all if she did nothing and had a bastard child, unloved, unwanted and stigmatised for ever?
She heard Eddie come in downstairs and Mary and Eddie talking together, the voices rising and falling too low for the words to be distinguishable, and lay, wide-eyed, in the bed, burning with shame at the imagined scene in the living room. She was no nearer sleep when she heard her sister and Eddie come up to bed, the rumble of voices continuing even then.
But they’d been stopped for some time when Bridie eventually fell into a fitful sleep. She dreamt that she was being prodded along a long dark corridor into a white-tiled room that was so bright, she had to shut her eyes for a moment against the brilliance of it.
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br /> When she opened them, she saw the bed: the only furniture in the room. A mighty push between the shoulder blades sent her sprawling across it and she turned and saw a priest standing beside her. He was dressed totally in black and had a baby in his arms, which he laid on the bed beside her, as he screamed, ‘Wickedness! Wickedness! You’ll burn in Hell’s flames.’
He placed a dagger in Bridie’s hand.
‘Kill the child!’ he commanded.
‘No! No!’
‘It’s what you wanted to do. Hell’s flames await you.’
Bridie let the dagger fall from her hand and it spiralled downwards and the blade pierced the baby’s body. Blood spurted from the wound, a scarlet stream that soaked the sheet on which it lay. While Bridie looked at the child, horrified, the priest said in sombre tones, ‘You are a grave sinner, Bridie McCarthy, and now you will burn in Hell’s flames for ever.’
And then suddenly Bridie was on the edge of an abyss and a raging fire burned below, the flames licking the rim of the hole. She swayed slowly over the edge and as she was hurtling towards the flames, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
‘Bridie, for God’s sake.’ She was aware of crying and then someone was shaking her. She opened her eyes blearily. Thank God, it had been a dream, a terrible, awful dream and the crying was from Mickey and Jamie who were staring at her in the light of the lamp Mary held, with eyes like saucers and tear trails on their cheeks. ‘What’s wrong with the weans?’
‘You frightened them,’ Mary said, lifting Mickey from his cot. ‘That scream you gave was loud enough to rouse the dead.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ Bridie said, as Eddie came into the room to soothe Jamie. She was still shaking from fright and Mary asked sympathetically, ‘Was it a nightmare?’
‘Aye. Oh God, it was awful.’
‘Little wonder,’ Mary said, and Jamie looked accusingly across at Bridie. ‘Why did you scream like that?’ he demanded. ‘You woke me up, you did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Mickey was scared.’
‘And so were you,’ Mary said, but in a low voice for Mickey hadn’t woken fully and was going drowsy again as she rocked him in her arms.
