by Anne Bennett
Dear Mammy and Daddy
I really wish I knew whether you read my letters or not, because I have something to ask you. I have met a man called Tom Cassidy and we’ve fallen in love and wish to marry. He is a good Catholic man from Strabane, where his family own a farm, and he works for the Mission in Birmingham, which is a place that helps the poor and needy.
If you were to meet him, I’m sure you would like him, but I’m not asking that of you. I need your permission to marry him though because I’m underage. Do please say yes. Aunt Ellen and Uncle Sam have both met him, and Mary and Eddie, and they all like him.
Please, please say it will be all right to marry Tom, because I love him dearly. Maybe one day I could bring him home to see you both. There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t regret what I did that night nearly six months ago, as I’ve told you in every letter I’ve written. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me and give me your blessing to marry Tom? I hope so and look forward to hearing from you.
Love Bridie
‘She wants to marry?’ Jimmy said incredulously. It was the last thing he expected. She was his baby, his little girl. But he realised she wasn’t any longer. She was nineteen years old and old enough to marry, but not old enough to do so without her parents’ permission.
‘Aye,’ Sarah said, and continued to poke at the fire as if her life depended on it.
‘Have you no opinion on it?’
Sarah stood up and faced her husband. ‘Why would I have an opinion on someone who is nothing to me?’
‘She’s our daughter!’
‘She ceased to be that for me the night she left,’ Sarah stated implacably.
‘Och, Sarah! For God’s sake …’ Jimmy began, but he got no further for Sarah approached him with the poker raised above her head. ‘One more word about it and I’ll brain you,’ she said fiercely.
Jimmy wasn’t afraid of the poker or Sarah’s threat of using it, but he was disturbed by her eyes glazed with pain, the deep lines scored in her face, and knew how she still suffered.
‘Away out of that, woman,’ he said, but gently. ‘You strike me with that and it will be the last thing you ever do. I’m going out and maybe when you think on the letter, you may feel better able to reply to it.’
‘That will be the day,’ Sarah said grimly.
Jimmy said nothing further, there was nothing to say. He took his jacket from the hook behind the door and went out. When the door slammed shut behind him, Sarah sank to her knees, the poker dropping from her fingers as she covered her face with her hands, and cried as if her heart was broken.
Each day, the first question Bridie asked when she arrived home from work was whether there had been any post.
There had been a reply from Terry, in the throes of his own wedding plans, but nothing from her parents and as time went by, Bridie seemed to sink a little further down into despondency. It was putting a further strain on her relationship with Tom which was under enough pressure anyway. And that was Bridie’s fault too, for their lovemaking had proceeded little further than that first kiss. Any attempt Tom made to go further, to touch her in any way intimately, caused her to fight and struggle as the concerned and kind face of Tom would turn into her uncle’s, leering and lustful.
Tom understood, but Bridie began to feel things between them would never be right. What difference would a piece of paper make? Damn all, in her opinion.
It didn’t help that Tom had received an angry letter from his parents. He’d told them he’d found a girl he loved very much and wanted to marry her. He had said they were just waiting for permission from her parents to allow them to marry and had waited anxiously for their reply.
He knew it wouldn’t be something they could condone easily; they’d scarcely got to grips with the bombshell that he was leaving the priesthood. He knew his parents and it was the loss of face and standing in the parish that they’d regret most. They’d no consideration of his personal happiness.
But now, to tell them he wanted to marry … While he’d been single and working with and under the direction of a Catholic priest, there was always the chance he’d come to his senses and go back to the seminary. Now, if he married, that chance was gone.
The tone of the letter shouldn’t, therefore, have come as a surprise. His mother said she was beside herself, her dreams for her son lay in tatters and now for him to heap such humiliation on them. Did he want them destroyed altogether? And what sort of a girl was she to attach herself to a man promised to God from when he was but a child? She must be a desperate sort of girl altogether and not one to be welcomed into the family. Tom shouldn’t, for pity’s sake, ask them to be pleased about any of it or give any marriage between them their blessing.
Tom was affected by the letter. Though he knew he’d made the correct decision by leaving the priesthood, he felt he’d let his parents down. Though he had no intention of losing Bridie, he couldn’t help feeling guilty.
Bridie knew as soon as she saw him that day that there was something up with Tom. ‘Did you hear anything from your mother?’ Tom asked as they began walking along Bristol Street.
‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘What about you?’
The evenings were light now until almost nine o’clock or even later and Bridie clearly saw the shadow pass across Tom’s face before he replied, ‘Aye, I had a letter this morning.’
‘And did they blame me as I said they would?’ Bride demanded.
Tom didn’t know how expressive his face was, nor how bad he was at concealing the truth. While he protested that they didn’t blame Bridie in the slightest, she knew differently.
‘You’re lying, Tom!’ she said accusingly. ‘Have you the letter with you? Let me see it.’
Tom did have the letter – it had come that morning as he was dashing out with some clothes they’d sorted out for some of the poorer families and he’d shoved it into his pocket so as to read it later on. He desperately didn’t want Bridie to see it, but he was no match for her and when her hands dived into the pockets of his jacket, he knew he was done for.
Bridie read the letter and was completely silent as she scanned the words. Then she folded it carefully and gave it back to Tom. He saw her sad eyes and trembling mouth and said, ‘They don’t understand, they’ve never met you. You were nothing to do with my decision to leave the priesthood.’
‘They’ll never believe that.’
Tom had a sneaking suspicion that Bridie was right, but to agree would be madness. ‘Yes, they will. Time heals most things.’
‘Not in Irish towns and villages they don’t,’ Bridie protested. ‘Things are passed on by word of mouth, with usually a bit added to it, and they live on for generations.’
‘Bridie, it’s not like that.’
‘It is like that,’ Bridie snapped. ‘Just like that and I know who is to blame and that’s me. I’m the one that is the worst in the world in my own village and now in yours, the wicked scarlet woman who went out to snare the priest. They think I’m not good enough for you and, by Christ, they’re right. I allowed myself to be raped and then had an abortion to get rid of the evidence. My own parents think me so wicked they’ve disowned me and now yours are saying much the same thing.’
‘Stop this, Bridie.’
‘No, I’ll not, because it’s right. Don’t get mixed up with me, Tom, I’m bad news.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It isn’t nonsense,’ Bridie said. ‘I’ve made a decision and I won’t change it. You don’t need me, Tom, I’m bad for you, bad for anyone I come into contact with. In time you will meet a good, wholesome, untainted girl who will be a fine wife to you.’
‘I want you for a wife.’
‘That wouldn’t be a good choice, Tom – I love you too much to see you wreck your life and destroy the relationship you have with your parents.’
‘No, I’ll not let you do this,’ Tom cried, grasping Bridie’s arm tight.
‘You must,’ Bridie said in a flat voice. ‘Take your
hands off me, Tom, I want to go home.’
Tom saw there was no point in arguing further with Bridie in such a mood. ‘I’ll not let you do this,’ he said again. ‘Go home tonight if you must and talk it through with your aunt. I’ll call for you tomorrow.’
‘There’s no point.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Tom said.
Bridie shook her head, but said nothing further and, turning away from Tom, began making her way home.
Mary had left Eddie listening out for the children and had popped in to see Ellen. Sam had taken himself off to the pub and so the two women looked up at Bridie’s entry.
They both took in the look on her face and Mary asked, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Bridie swallowed the lump in her throat determinedly and willed her voice not to shake as she said, ‘Tom is … We’ve split up. There will be no marriage.’
It was the last thing Ellen and Mary expected to hear and they both gaped at Bridie in shock. ‘But why?’ Mary demanded eventually.
‘It’s … it’s a long story,’ Bridie said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to bed.’
Neither woman said anything. They knew Bridie was controlling herself with difficulty and needed to be alone. As they heard her steps on the attic stairs, Ellen said quietly, ‘I’ll take her a cup of tea in a wee while. She’ll have had a good cry then and maybe will be ready for a good chat.’
‘Maybe,’ Mary said doubtfully. ‘This all boils down to Mammy, you know? Why don’t they give her permission to marry Tom? I’ve told them what a lovely person he is.’
‘And me,’ agreed Ellen. ‘I even said if she’s so keen to put her out of her life, why is she blocking her chance of being happy with someone else?’
‘I can’t understand it,’ Mary confessed. ‘And the longer it goes on, the more depressed she gets. She feels she doesn’t deserve happiness.’
‘Does she?’
‘Aye,’ Mary said with feeling. ‘I had a fair bit of that kind of talk after the abortion, but more after she confessed it to that damned priest at St Chad’s.’
‘Well,’ said Ellen, ‘that’s decided me. The girl has had enough happen in her young life to withstand more heartache. I’ll go over to Ireland as soon as I can and make Sarah, or possibly Jimmy, see sense if it’s the last thing I do.’
‘But what if the wedding’s off as Bridie said?’
‘It’s not off,’ Ellen said dismissively. ‘Those two are made for each other, just like you and Eddie are. They’ve had a tiff and little wonder with all the pressure they’re under. His parents won’t be best pleased either, I shouldn’t think. But the girl deserves a crack at happiness.’
Perhaps she did, but over the next week, while Ellen made arrangements to go to Ireland, Bridie became paler and more drawn than ever. She refused to see Tom if he called at the house, went to work, but never left the building at lunchtimes and dodged him on her way home in the evening, always leaving with a crowd of the girls.
She saw him of course. If he approached her counter she said she was too busy to talk and she ignored the dejected figure leaning on the wall, waiting for her to leave. She knew he’d not approach a giggling mass of shop girls, arms linked, marching through the Bull Ring. Most of the girls thought Bridie mad to throw up a boy as dishy as Tom Cassidy with those gorgeous ‘come to bed eyes’, as one girl was heard to say.
‘Throw him my way, duck, if you can’t stand the pace,’ another put in. ‘Christ! I’d give him a run for his bleeding money.’
But others were more sympathetic. ‘You can’t help it if you just don’t fancy someone,’ one of the nicer girls said. ‘Give the kid a break. Don’t matter any road what the problem is. If she doesn’t want to see him, she don’t have to.’
‘Right, us girls have got to stick together,’ said another and there was a chorus of agreement.
Peggy McKenna, who had a nose for scenting out trouble, soon realised things weren’t right between Bridie and her young man. ‘What did you expect?’ she asked her one night as Bridie made her way home. ‘No decent man would want anything to do with the likes of you.’
Peggy’s words fed the unworthiness and low self-esteem that Bridie already felt anyway and she knew she’d been right to give Tom up.
But, as day followed day, she grew quieter and thinner. She found she couldn’t eat and sadness seemed to seep inside her. But, she told herself, she had no right to happiness and if at any time she was to doubt that, Peggy McKenna would be at her elbow, heaping her with scorn.
Ellen told few people where she was heading. She hadn’t told her sister Sarah to expect her, nor had she told Bridie where she was really going. Not wishing to raise the girl’s hopes, she told her she was off to stay with a relative of Sam’s down south who’d had a fall.
Mary, who knew of Ellen’s plans and thought it highly unlikely that she’d succeed in changing her mother’s mind, played along with the story.
Ellen wasn’t so sure she’d succeed either when she alighted from the rail bus at the farm. Boneweary and hungry, her spirits took a downturn. What was she doing, a woman of her age, running about between the countries trying to build bridges? And did she think she’d do any earthly good?
She didn’t, not really. She knew her sister, none better, and once her mind was made up, that was usually it. ‘Stop it,’ she told herself sternly. ‘A defeatist attitude is no good in a situation like this,’ and she squared her shoulders and marched up the path alongside the meadow where the cows, placidly chewing the cud, turned their heads inquisitively to look at her. She went up towards the back of the cottage, wrinkling her nose at the stink rising from the midden. The hens, shut up for the night, started fluttering and clucking as they heard her approach and the young calves in the byre beside the house lowed gently.
Yet no one in the house heard her approach. Jimmy sat before the fire almost asleep, despite the early hour. He’d been up since dawn and tomorrow would be more of the same.
Sarah, too, was tired and had lifted the heavy pot from the hook above the fire and began to pour it into the squat brown teapot set beside the hearth when Ellen walked in the door.
Sarah stared across the room in shock at her older sister. She’d admired her for years, yet since Bridie had left home she’d felt differently about her. Sarah felt Ellen had let her down. She’d sworn she’d known nothing of Bridie’s plans to run away and maybe that was the truth, but still the girl was staying with her. If she’d not been so keen to give her a bed, she might have come home, explained herself, told Sarah why she’d gone the way she had.
Ellen saw the hostility in Sarah’s face and reminded herself that she didn’t know and could never know Bridie’s reasons for her flight. Once, Sarah would have flown across the room to hug her sister, bid her welcome and draw her to the fire, and she felt a pang of regret for that closeness lost. Oh, but how much worse for Bridie, she reminded herself. The petted and favoured child was now cast adrift for reasons not of her own making. If she was to have a future at all it lay with Tom Cassidy. Ellen discounted their quarrel; sure it could be mended with one word of consent from her parents.
Jimmy looked at Ellen. He’d been embarrassed at his wife’s lack of warmth on seeing her sister. True, her appearance had been an unexpected shock, but she was family and a guest.
He pulled himself to his feet and went across the flagstones to Ellen in his stockinged feet, having removed his boots. He had his hand outstretched but, moved by the sadness he saw in her face, encircled her in a hug instead. ‘This is a surprise, Ellen,’ he said, releasing her at last, ‘but a welcome one. What brings you out here?’
‘Don’t act daft, man,’ Sarah snapped. ‘You know why she’s here and I’ll tell you now it won’t work. I have no child named Bridie, nor any interest in anything she does.’
‘God, woman!’ Jimmy cried. ‘Ellen has just arrived and Bridie is our flesh and blood whether you like it or not. Give over now. Let Ellen come up t
o the fire and pour her a cup of tea at least.’
Almost grudgingly, Sarah welcomed her sister with a stiff embrace, but she did pour her a cup of tea. And since the Irish way was never to offer just tea, there were also slices of soda bread, home-cured bacon and tomatoes, and slabs of barn brack topped with thick creamy butter.
The food revived Ellen, but only slightly; she was still very tired. Jimmy saw that she was and was glad. He was in no state himself for an emotionally charged situation that evening. The following day was early enough for any sort of confrontation.
But he couldn’t get himself ready for his bed with both women there, positioned as it was in a curtained alcove off the kitchen, and so he took his jacket from the door and whistled to the dogs. ‘I’ll take a look around before I turn in,’ he said as explanation.
Sarah nodded. It was Jimmy’s routine to check everything was safe and secure before going to bed. Then he’d come in, wind the clock, knock his pipe out in the grate and place the guard around the fire. So when the door closed behind him Sarah said to Ellen, ‘Jimmy wants his bed. We’ll away to the room. The beds are stripped, but I have sheets and blankets stored. You’ll have to make up the bed, I can’t with my arm, you know.’
‘I’m no stranger to making beds,’ Ellen said, and she went over to the chest her sister had opened and selected her bed linen for the night. She didn’t think Sarah would follow her, but she did and she stood watching her making up the bed.
Suddenly she said, ‘Why did she do it, Ellen? Why did our Bridie feel she had to run from us the way she did?’
It was the last thing Ellen had expected. She not only refused to answer her letters, but refused to talk about her at all in those she sent to Ellen and Mary and any reference they made about Bridie was studiously ignored. But glancing over at Sarah, Ellen was struck with pity for pain was etched on her face. Anger and bitterness was the armour assumed to help her cope with the hurt and Ellen could bet that she’d not have voiced the question if Jimmy had been in earshot.
But what could Ellen say? Oh, Bridie ran away because of years of sexual abuse from your brother-in-law, culminating eventually in rape? When Bridie found herself pregnant, she left to save the family from disgrace?
