by Anne Bennett
She told him about the Bull Ring and how wonderful it was with the array of shops and stalls that sold absolutely everything. She didn’t tell him of the old lags, usually blind or lame veterans from the last war who sold matches or razor blades or shoelaces from trays hung around their necks and the old lady selling carrier bags. She’d become inured to them now, as she had to be to the ragged barefoot urchins who roamed around the market, especially on Saturday when there was no school.
She felt sorry for them, but when she said this one day at work one of the other girls told her not to waste her pity. ‘Little tea leaves, the lot of them,’ she said. ‘Pinch anything not nailed down, them lot.’
Bridie said nothing. She knew the children were hungry: their large eyes and wasted bodies with stick thin arms and legs spoke for themselves and she often saw them fighting over the bruised fruit that had fallen from the barrows. The Bull Ring was where bargains could be bought and on a Saturday night a place of great excitement. Woolworths and the other shops would be closed, but the market was still operating and Bridie would see the shawl-clad, often barefoot women in the shadows of the gas flares. Many had a baby tucked inside the shawl and a clutch of children with them as they searched and begged for over-ripe vegetables and meat on the turn so that they could make a meal of sorts to feed their families.
Terry didn’t want news like that, Bridie thought. In America, the land of plenty, he couldn’t know how this place sometimes reeks of poverty.
But Terry could have told Bridie about the lines and lines of unemployed men there, and those who’d work a whole day for a loaf of bread. He could have told her of the beggars on the streets and the homeless who often froze to death in the sub-zero temperatures of a New York winter, and the soup kitchen and clothing banks set up to try and relieve the extreme suffering of the people.
But Terry told her none of this. He told her only of his job, his apartment and his new girlfriend, a girl called Jo who was as Irish as himself.
Mary was worried about her young sister, particularly as she seemed to have made no friends. ‘She seems to get on with the girls she works with well enough and is never away from the church with Benedictions and Devotion and all,’ she told Ellen. ‘She must meet young people like herself there and yet she never goes anywhere.’
Bridie went to everything the church had to offer, for God alone knew she needed all the prayers she could get. She wondered at first if Father Fearney looked at her in a funny way, or if she was just imagining it. Maybe that scornful, disapproving air was just the way he had of looking at everybody. Surely if he’d found out what she’d done, which he could have if Peggy McKenna had wished to be really vindictive, he’d have said. He wasn’t the sort to keep quiet about such a thing, not him. God, he’d be more likely to publicly shame her from the pulpit.
Then she noticed he had the same expression the one time she’d been home when he’d called at Ellen’s. Ellen offered him tea, of course, while the priest looked disdainfully at the armchair till you almost wanted to apologise that you were expecting him to sit in it. Did the priest want a wee sandwich, Ellen had asked, or a few biscuits? He accepted everything offered, though looked far from grateful and never said thank you. He asked Bridie questions about her home in Ireland, her job at Woolworths, what she thought of Birmingham and how long she intended to stay, as if he was interrogating a suspect, and didn’t seem greatly pleased with the answers either.
‘What is it with that man?’ Bridie asked when he’d gone. ‘He’s not exactly filled with Christian joy, is he?’
‘He’s not filled with much other than his own importance,’ Ellen said angrily. ‘D’you see the food he took off me? Well, I gave it to him to save some other poor beggar. I can afford it, but I’ve seen him accept hospitality from those not able to put food on the table. He’s pompous and unfeeling and would take the bread from a baby’s mouth and think the action quite justified.’
Bridie found out that Ellen’s views were shared by most in those mean streets, though few were as open in saying so. Priests had influence and power and were well in with God and you can’t afford to upset a person like that.
She continued to go to the church services, however, but she managed to slip in and out of the church without making contact with anyone, feeling sure that no one would want to know her if they had any idea of what she’d done.
Bridie’s nineteenth birthday came and went without any acknowledgement from Ireland. Mary and Ellen tried to make the day a bit special and Bridie was tremendously touched by the card which arrived from Terry with ten dollars tucked inside. That evening Ellen tackled Bridie over the meal. ‘Did you tell them at work it was your birthday?’
‘No,’ Bridie said. She knew that the girls were cool with her, but also that it was her own fault and maybe only what she deserved.
‘I thought you might have been going out somewhere? Have something planned?’
‘No. No, nothing like that.’
‘Oh,’ Ellen said. ‘Is there none you work with you’d like to make a friend of?’
‘No, not really,’ Bridie mumbled.
‘She’s got out of the way of making friends,’ Mary said when Ellen recounted the conversation. ‘Stuck away on that farm for years. The only one she saw besides Mammy and Daddy was Rosalyn.’
‘I don’t think it’s that entirely,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s more what she thinks of herself.’
Ellen was right. Bridie told herself a life of solitude was all she could expect. What if she’d become friends with someone and let slip what had happened? Dear God, it would be awful! At least this way she was tolerated. She didn’t want friends, she didn’t need them. As long as she had Ellen and Mary, letters from Terry and the church services she attended regularly, she told herself she was content.
She was in fact achingly lonely. She’d listen in to the girls’ chatter in the morning, about their trips to the cinema, acts they’d seen in the music hall, or the dances they had been to. Some had boyfriends and the things they said about what they got up to often made Bridie’s face go hot in embarrassment.
She longed to have someone to talk to, someone to sit at her table at lunchtime. Some of the girls would go out at lunchtime to pick out bargains or just for a look around the Bull Ring and she’d watch them enviously through the window. She’d see the girls in groups, often arm in arm, laughing together or picking over the bargains at a stall, exchanging banter with the costers, and she’d feel more miserable and alone than ever.
When March dawned as blustery and wet as the previous two months, few were surprised. Most people had become despondent about the continually grey clouds, so low and thick they turned afternoons into evening. That was the kind of day it was the Saturday Bridie finished work.
She groaned as she left the house when she saw the drizzling rain and turned up the collar of the good warm coat Ellen bought her. She had said Bridie needed good warm clothes if she had to go out in all weathers to get to work each day.
A crowd of people, late shoppers, were around Speaker’s Corner where Ernie McCulloch was speaking. She’d been told about the man just after she began work, for he was a familiar face in the Bull Ring. He was described as the ‘Prime Minister of the Bull Ring,’ or the ‘Prince of Beggars,’ for the man raised much money for the poor and needy.
And God knows, thought Bridie, listening to him for a moment or two, he has plenty to choose from. All around him were many like that, ill-clothed, pinched thin with hunger and most of the children barefoot. Bridie felt uncomfortable in her nice warm coat, the matching gloves, scarf and hat that Ellen had knitted for her and her stout winter shoes.
She’d been glad of the clothes Ellen had bought or made her and of the clothing club she paid into each week, for though Ellen let her keep half a crown for herself, some weeks Peggy had most of it off her. But still, when the collecting tin came around, she put the sixpence into it and wished it could be more. It was as she turned away that she heard her na
me called and saw Tom Cassidy detach himself from the crowd. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure. It was the coat and all. You look … You look lovely.’
In spite of herself, Tom’s words brought a smile to Bridie’s lips, though her face flamed in embarrassment. Her mouth was suddenly incredibly dry as she turned to face Tom.
‘Hello, Tom.’
‘Hello,’ Tom said, and added with a laugh, ‘God, but it’s good to see you again.’
Bridie was almost mesmerised by the look in Tom’s beautiful, brown eyes and they stood gazing at each other. There might have only been themselves in the world. The rest of the market, the resonant voice of Ernie McCulloch, the shouts and cheers of the crowd all ceased to exist for them. Tom Cassidy knew he loved Bridie McCarthy as he’d never loved anyone before and doubted he’d love anyone so much again.
He remembered the last time they’d spoken and how Bridie had gone on about not being a fit person for him. Replaying the conversation in his mind afterwards, he’d convinced himself she’d felt that way because he’d once been going in for the priesthood. So now, in an attempt to reassure her, he said, ‘I’ve officially left the seminary now. They’ve accepted my final resignation and know I won’t change my mind.’
Bridie didn’t speak, but her head was in a whirl. This couldn’t be happening to her, she couldn’t let it happen. She must go.
‘Speak to me? Say something?’ Tom pleaded, and Bridie opened her mouth, but before she was able to say anything, the sleety drizzle turned into a downpour of stinging stair rods. The crowd around Ernie McCulloch’s soapbox ran for cover and so did Tom, dragging Bridie after him.
They stood in the shelter of a shop overhang and Tom drew Bridie towards him, gently wiping her face with his snow-white hanky. She felt too weak to stop him, even when he slipped his arm around her shoulder and held her close she didn’t protest. She didn’t seem capable. It seemed so right, so good. Much more than contentment was filling her body now. She leant her tiny frame against Tom’s and sighed, sensing the emotion running through his body and matching the tingling in her own. She felt warm, safe and secure, and the rain pounding the pavements and the icy wind seemed not to matter a jot.
‘Can we go somewhere and have a drink, a cup of tea?’ Tom said, his voice apprehensive, afraid that Bridie would reject him again.
His words brought Bridie back down to earth. How could she even consider going out with this good, kind man? It couldn’t be. She shouldn’t expect or look for happiness. But she hadn’t looked for it, she told herself. It had come to find her.
‘You will break my heart if you walk away again,’ Tom said earnestly. ‘Please, please don’t do this to me.’
Bridie could hardly bear the look in his eyes, the painful pleading. That look would haunt her for ever if she was to walk away now and she found she had neither the heart nor the will to do it.
But something still stood between them, a secret. Bridie decided she must tell Tom. If, after that, he decided to have nothing more to do with her, at least it would be his choice. Her own feelings mattered little.
‘I can’t go for a drink with you now, Tom,’ Bridie said, and at his protest held up her hand. ‘Let me finish, please. I lodge with my aunt and she has a good dinner waiting for me every night. I couldn’t just not turn up, she’d be upset and hurt. But I will meet you later.’
Tom’s heart soared with joy. ‘Will we go to the pictures, or to see a show?’
‘No, Tom,’ Bridie said. ‘Somewhere where we can talk. I have something to tell you.’
‘You’re not married already?’ Tom exclaimed in horror.
‘No,’ Bridie answered with a smile.
‘You’ve decided to become a nun?’ Tom persisted.
‘No,’ Bridie said again, giving Tom a slight push.
‘Well, then nothing you can say will be of any importance.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Bridie said.
‘Yes Ma-am,’ Tom said in a mock American accent with a salute that made Bridie laugh aloud, bringing the eyes of the people sharing the canopy with them upon her. Most smiled at the strikingly beautiful girl and the very handsome young man. They were so obviously in love with one another that it shone out of them. It was a bright moment in the dreary and dismal evening and many felt cheered because of it.
‘Where shall we meet?’ Bridie asked, oblivious of the people’s interest in them.
‘I’ll pick you up from home,’ Tom said. ‘And I’m taking you there tonight.’
Bridie opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. Tonight would determine everything. ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘And now that the rain’s eased a little, we’d best make a move, or my name will be mud in the house.’
Bridie almost welcomed the cold and the blustery rain because it encouraged Tom to hold her close against him and inwardly she hugged herself with delight.
‘Seems nice enough,’ Ellen said later to Mary when she popped around for a chat about Bridie’s date. ‘Said she met him at Strabane.’
‘Aye,’ Mary said. ‘They travelled together. She told me all about it. I could tell he was interested at the station, but Bridie either wasn’t, or wouldn’t let herself be.’
‘Well, she had a lot on her mind at the time,’ Ellen remarked grimly. ‘What’s he do, this chap? Bridie was very vague.’
‘He was training to be a priest, I believe,’ Mary said. ‘But he decided it wasn’t for him and now works at some Mission place, helping the homeless, feeding and clothing the poor, that sort of thing.’
‘Worthwhile sort of job,’ Ellen remarked. ‘And unless things change drastically, one that will keep him going for years yet.’
‘Aye,’ Mary agreed with feeling. The unemployment situation was getting worse. Every day you learned of more laid off and Mary worried about the same happening to Eddie. She and Ellen and the others with men in work did what they could for their unfortunate neighbours. Ellen would knit various odds and ends and Mary always passed on her children’s clothes. They would both often make an extra big stew or broth to give to families near starvation and they often took in the children roaming in the street and fed them bread and jam.
But they could do little for the daily grind the families endured, and each winter the undernourished young and the elderly would fall prey to illness and disease. Now Mary understood her mother’s worry over Bridie. She guarded her sons carefully, well able to understand Sarah’s pain in losing five children. She was sure that she could not have borne it
Mary worried about Bridie too and so she was glad that her young sister had at last agreed to go out. ‘She’ll tell him all about it, this Tom Cassidy,’ she told Ellen.
‘Surely not? She won’t load that on him tonight?’
‘Oh aye, she will,’ Mary insisted. ‘She meets things head on, young Bridie. And she’ll work on the assumption that it’s best to get it into the open now at the beginning than to get fond of him and then tell him. That way, if he feels he can’t take it, she’ll be more hurt.’
‘And what do you think he’ll do?’
Mary shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s a big thing for a man to take, any man. But most, if they care for you at all, would stand by you. After all, the rape was hardly her fault. It’s the abortion that really bothers her – he was training for the priesthood and you know how they rant on about abortion.’
Bridie was glad that Tom was able to find a secluded table for them in the pub in the city centre he’d taken Bridie to. She’d hate to be overheard and was glad too of the dimness of the place – it suited her purpose.
She asked for orange juice, while Tom had a Guinness, and she didn’t begin her tale until the drinks were before them.
All the time she spoke, Tom’s eyes never left her face. He didn’t speak or make a sound. But when she began to describe the rape, he took hold of her hands, which she was wringing in agitation, and squeezed them gently, his eyes clouding in
sympathy as he heard of Bridie’s pain and humiliation. He felt raw emotion running through her.
So much was now apparent to Tom. He understood why she was in such a bedraggled state at the station in Strabane, why she was alone, why she’d brought nothing to eat. He imagined her pain at being forced to leave her home in such a way, and the miles and miles of unlit roads that she’d traversed in the wind-driven rain and cold of a December night. He felt such tremendous admiration for her courage and determination and yet all she seemed to feel about herself was shame and degradation.
Bridie disengaged one of her hands to take a drink and, as she did, he used his handkerchief again to dab at the trails of tears running down her face. ‘Go on,’ he urged gently. And Bridie went on, glad of the strong hands that encircled hers so securely. She came at last to the end of her tale, her voice by then little above a whisper. When Bridie’s eyes met his, her heart was pounding so violently she felt sure Tom could hear it and her mouth was so dry she could scarcely speak. She was afraid of what he thought, but suddenly he gently tilted her face upwards and all she saw in his beautiful, brown eyes was deep, deep sympathy. ‘Are you not shocked?’ she said. ‘I feel such shame, such disgust at what I’ve done.’
‘The abortion, you mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘Bridie, my poor dear,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. The abortion wasn’t your fault any more than the rape was.’
‘But …’
‘But nothing,’ Tom said. ‘You asked me if I was shocked. I’ll say I was. But not at you, my darling girl, but at what happened to you. A woman can seldom beat off a man intent on violating her. But for a woman as frail and small as you, there would be no way at all you could have prevented what happened. You kept quiet for the sake of the families and the life they’d have, not yourself. I know how it would be. None better.
‘And the pregnancy caused you to run away, with condemnation coming from all sides. What else were you to do?’
