Joe hastened to Melbourne where he and Mary met with Major Lean, the Forces Officer in Charge of Base Records, who advised he’d been informed that very day by cable to the effect that Pte. L. G. Merrilees was returning to Australia on a hospital ship. Due to arrive in two weeks on/or about the 29th of the month. A letter from the major arrived in Egan Street the following day confirming those exact details.
Joe stayed at Pearl’s house another two days while he harangued the major, until, finally, the man sifted back through the records to Liam’s attestation papers where he’d named Joe as his next-of-kin c/- of a non-existent Brunswick boarding house. ‘No mention of a wife.’
‘I’m afraid your husband didn’t have any of his pay directed to you either, Mrs Merrilees. And since he’s never been injured or ill, there was no call for any previous correspondence.’
The major insisted that Liam George Merrilees – born in the same village in Scotland, on the same date of birth, but by his declaration, two years earlier than the fact – had joined up within weeks of departing Wonthaggi (from the date the major gave) and had trained and gone first to the Dardenelles, then to the Western Front where he’d been alive and well and unaccountable the past two years. His file had only been recently updated, after he boarded the ship to return to Australia, to list Mary as his wife.
Mary feared Joe might have a heart attack right there on the spot, his face turned that ashen. But the chill that settled over herself, at Liam denying her again, would not be warmed by any blanket laid over her knees by Pearl, or heated words out of his father’s mouth.
‘I’m sorry for you, lass. I was mad as Mannix when I thought you’d trapped my son into marrying you, but now, knowing what the blighter’s done to all of us, especially his own wife and son … Well,’ he patted Mary’s hand, ‘I’m grateful his sainted mother won’t ever need to hear what the eejit has done. I’m sorry for you, lass. You might’ve been better off if the bugger had died.’
‘Oh, Joe, don’t say such a thing.’ But Mary could not meet his eyes lest she gave away him not the first to think it.
By the time she hugged her father-in-law goodbye on the platform at the Flinders Street Station, she thought his new wife, Catherine, wouldn’t recognise the man returning to her – his back stooped and hair gone grey overnight.
Joe left with a kiss for his grandson, but no promise to return when the hospital ship docked. In fact, he went with no mention of returning at all, but made clear, without saying as much, that Mary, being Liam’s wife, was stuck with him and God give her the strength to bear it.
No argument reached her lips. More because it took a fortnight before the anger building in her breast managed to rise to her throat to get any words out. For Liam to be alive and not write her or his father a single word. Not direct a shilling of support to his child. Not even enquire after the child. Perhaps if he’d appeared in front of her in those moments, she could have screamed and beat on his chest. But in his absence, she swallowed the words, adding another layer to the hard-grained shell encasing her heart.
When the hospital ship arrived, Mary O’Donnell-Merrilees was not waiting among those crying and waving a welcome on the dock.
Pearl opened the notification delivered two days later, taken from Mary’s rigid fingers, and read that the patient had been transported to the Caulfield Hospital. A letter from Liam followed within twenty-four hours saturated with explanations and apologies that held no sway with his wife.
Dearest Mary
Remember Neddy and how blind he was when he come up from the pit each July? I was as blind myself when I left you. I wanted to prove myself and have only myself to worry about for a time. I never meant to be gone more than a few months. I was going to come back from the war, pockets full of pounds and ready to be your husband. I’m sorry, lass. Time got away from me and I wanted to make good before I wrote you. Maybe even come back a hero. Make you and Da proud of me. But the war wasn’t quick. And I didn’t make a hero, did I? I’m just a man, in fact, one not fit for the mine or much right now. I’m sorry for letting you down. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I’m willing to make it up to you soon as I’m well. You are my wife and I need you by my side. Help me and I promise I’ll make it up to you. Always your loving husband and friend, Liam Merrilees
Mary shook the letter, ready to tear it to bits, ‘Loving husband!’ She stopped only when Pearl took hold of both of her arms and held her still.
‘Does he think I care?’
‘Yes, love. He’s your husband.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, so I’m married to him. Am I to give up my job and my son’s future to nursemaid a man who’s supposed to be dead and now decides he’s bleeding Lazarus with nothing to say about it? The dafty spouting his palaver and expecting me to fall at his feet. I may be Catholic, Pearl, but I’m not a bloody saint. What if I don’t want to nurse him back to health? What if I don’t want him back at all? Useless as a husband he was to me alive. And absolutely useless to me dead. Now he’s alive again and in need of nursing and probably wanting money to pay for his doctor bills. What about me? What about what I want?’
She glared at Pearl, eyes bright with tears, guessing them both thinking of Tom. But, for the first time since Mary had known her, Pearl stayed silent on that score, twisting her wedding band around and around her finger without meeting Mary’s eyes.
‘I don’t think it was a deliberate deception, love.’
‘It was, Pearl, if only by omission.’
‘Sit down, love.’ Pearl patted the settee beside her. ‘The man wasn’t to know that the chap he sold his watch and medallion to would keel over in a ditch and you’d all be left thinking he was dead. He’s a bugger I’d choke, but more a coward than a cur. You’re married to him. Happily or not depends on whether you can both move on in your heads and hearts. Otherwise the battle royal will be more in your bedroom than any in France.’
The silence thickened between them before Pearl took Mary’s hand in hers. ‘I know it’s a dreadful thing he’s done to you, love. But … you made vows. Including ‘in sickness and in health’. That’s all I’ll say, except, maybe you’d best talk to your husband before you make any decisions. Maybe there’s things you don’t know.’
‘What do I need to know?’ Mary nearly shouted, jumping back to her feet. ‘He had a wife, with child. He knows how to write and how to send a telegram. It doesn’t cost a pound to say, By the way. Gone to war. Be back whether you want me or not.’ Tears streaked her cheeks but didn’t slow her words. ‘And when the priest said, ‘for better or for worse’, he never said it was all going to be worse and then get worse still.
‘Two years, Pearl, without so much as a postcard, a letter, a Christmas wish for his son. How do you explain that?’
Pearl shook her head.
‘You can’t. No-one can. That’s desertion and, if I’m not mistaken, grounds for divorce.’
‘No, Mary … You’d never forgive yourself.’
In the end it didn’t matter a tinker’s cuss what Mary wanted. After two years of crushing silence, suddenly mail arrived in Liam’s hand or on his behalf.
If it wasn’t himself, it was the Sister-in-Charge from the hospital, or the AIF chaplain, or the doctor pleading for her to visit, along with the thinly veiled suggestion it time she reacquaint herself with her husband.
Then Pearl handed her a postcard on the Monday – after Tom missing Sunday tea.
Glad to hear your husband is home safely.
Yours faithfully, Tom Robbins.
‘Yours faithfully’. Mary bit down on her lip so hard a drop of blood leached out, before she glanced across at Pearl, busying herself draining a pot of vegetable water and waving her sit down at the tea table.
‘When are you going to visit your husband?’
The agony of indecision dogged Mary, day and night, knowing that Liam waited and a decision needed to be made.
What if she didn’t want to go to see the lying bugger? W
hat did she owe him?
The only thing stopping her from putting pen to paper and telling him such was the parade of accusing faces trespassing her nightly dreams. Maw’s and the priest’s and Pearl’s. Da’s too. But it was the vision of a wee innocent that proved her undoing.
How could she deny her son a father? Didn’t she owe it to Conor to find out if there was any feeling left between his parents; if not for the sake of her vows?
Even the Mass gave her no comfort after the priest asked her in confession: What kind of woman would she be if she refused her poor husband come back injured from the war, after fighting to protect them at home? How could she tell him, Liam’s going had been more about an escape?
And what if she gave up her apprenticeship at Duffy’s? She’d never get the chance again.
Arguments raged in her head until she was that exhausted, she couldn’t settle to sleep or think – or fight the nagging refrain, the marriage had never been tried.
Why? Why didn’t you try, Liam? Why didn’t you wait to enlist until after your son born at least?
Why hadn’t he waited to see if things could come right between them? She’d go and see him, all right. Demand some damn answers. Like why did he have to turn up now when she’d found feelings for someone else?
What of Tom? What was he thinking? She closed her eyes, scarcely able to put her thoughts or feelings for Tom into words. Or hold back pricks of tears. If the man hadn’t wanted to step into what he saw as his cousin’s shoes, she could jolly-well guess what he’d think now about a husband’s. No wonder he was staying away.
The pain of betrayal she’d long thought healed began to ache again in her breast.
Even going to work failed to bring relief and, as the pressure of each day passing grew, spite began to jag her tongue, especially around Genevieve Willets.
Under the weight of her indecision, her stitches at Duffy’s began to run ragged. She’d no time to fix her own shabby workmanship let alone anyone else’s. What did she care? Why should she cover for a lazy little bitch bludging off her efforts. It was all she could do to hold her tongue and not tell Genevieve as much. Her tongue would have stayed silent too, excepting a body can bear a hell of a lot, but the mind can snap at a change in the wind.
MOMENT OF MEETING
AUGUST 1917
‘The best thing you can do, Mrs Merrilees, is distract your husband. Don’t talk about the war or try to make him talk about it. Private Merrilees needs to forget the war ever happened. He’s bound to improve faster under the ministrations of a devoted wife.’
Mary could scarcely answer the doctor’s curious gaze at her failure to warm to his instructions. As if Spooner really believed she cared or was listening.
Her facial expression didn’t alter as she followed him into the long ward, past the rows of beds. Some poor buggers lay swathed in bandages. Worse were those exposed and unrecognisable as men. She dropped her eyes, trying not to gasp at the sickly wafts of carbolic and phenyl, quelling her urge to swoon. She concentrated instead on the patterned linoleum at her feet.
She stopped behind Dr Spooner, beside a cot, grateful he couldn’t see into her mind when he leaned across the counterpane and gave the figure sleeping beneath a gentle nudge, unlike the teeth rattling she’d sooner give the beggar.
In that moment, she wondered if God were playing some fool game with her – moving his pawns about to set her back firm at Liam’s side. Holding her fast by a vow that meant diddly-squat to her husband two years ago, yet everything now to their families, the doctor and the priest. Trapping her by Liam’s side ’til death they did part.
Did anyone care that Liam had been the one to walk away from her, their marriage and their child? No. Wasn’t he a poor digger, wounded and heroic? Fresh from the same battlefield he chose over her.
Not a flicker of her internal warring did she allow to show in her eyes, the crust coating her heart thickening another layer as she shook the doctor’s hand. ‘Of course, my husband will get all the love and care he deserves from me. Of that, you can rest assured.’
She didn’t know what to expect from Spooner’s earlier warnings that Liam was no doubt ‘changed’ from how she remembered him, making it sound as if he must be disfigured and not the boy, or man, she recalled. But the figure in the bed, waking up eager and sizing her up every bit as critically as she him, didn’t appear ill a bit. The same emerald eyes and lips crinkled into a grin like he’d just overslept his shift and she’d only come to rouse him.
‘Mary, lass. You’re bonny to eyes that thought they’d not see you again. Come closer.’ Liam struggled into a sitting position and reached out his hands to her. The rasp in his voice and tremor in his bloodless fingers her first clues some things had changed.
She stood rigid. Her bones transformed to brittle china, fearful that if she moved an inch they’d craze along with her mind. She couldn’t guess how it were possible to be so near to smiling at one so missed, yet in the same moment wanting to scratch out his eyes. She did neither.
Liam began to cough, the harshness tearing through his chest while his eyes apologised and his hands flailed, reaching for her.
She passed him a handkerchief off the night stand and, while the doctor explained the effects of gas poisoning, busied herself shuffling the fountain pen, ink bottle and small, tarnished money clip in its place, focusing anywhere but on the eyes she well knew could twist her sympathy and mesmerise her against her will. The same eyes that had her following his every whim throughout her childhood. Whose game of knucklebones did they play in the Pailis when she’d come out determined to jump rope? And how many times did she get conked in conkers when she wanted to play hopscotch? Liam always got his way – none more so than the last.
She ignored him patting the bed beside him and refused the chair the doctor carried across for her. Instead she turned a dismissive stare on the physician, waiting on his leave-taking.
The man had the good grace then to falter. ‘Of course, I should go and let you two get reacquainted. Remember, Mrs Merrilees, a short visit this first time, please.’ Still, he lingered, darting concerned glances from one to the other of them as if waiting on some rapturous reunion. Finally, rendered powerless by Mary’s refusal to appease his expectations, he left.
Liam appeared not to notice.
‘I thought you were never coming, lass. Every visiting hours they made excuses.’
She couldn’t answer or meet his eye, the removal of her gloves requiring every bit of her concentration. ‘I wrote you, I have a job, Liam. Also, a son to feed and clothe and care for, in case you’ve forgotten him too.’ She flinched at his pained reaction, regretting the harshness of her tone.
Liam’s pyjamas hung on his thin shoulders, but it was his hair cropped so short and the moustache grown in his absence, ageing him beyond her memory, that made her want to weep. For the boy who’d gone away and not come back. Except, suddenly, she was boiling mad at him again for making that choice and she added, ‘As widows have to work, you know?’
He tried to hold out his hand to her again. ‘I know they told you I was dead all this time. I’m sorry for that, lass, but I did write you I was going to enlist if I couldn’t find work. I thought you’d be running to meet me off the boat. I thought you’d be happy to see me come back.’
He withdrew his hand hanging lost in the air and slumped back on the pillows. In the empty silence following, his merry emerald irises glinted off to thistle green. ‘You’re still me wife, Mary.’
Only her teeth, gripping the flesh of her tongue, held back the retort she bloody-well knew it – more’s the pity. She’d have liked to have added that if anyone had forgotten the fact, it certainly hadn’t been her. Perhaps she should ask if he remembered the last time he saw her she was bloating out in front and if she was not doing so now, how was the wee bundle come into the world without a da? She wasn’t allowed to bring their son into the hospital to see the father he’d never met, or she’d have brought him, plonked hi
m down and said, ‘Now deny your son.’
Not that she wanted the poor wee laddie to witness such horrors, the smells in the room enough to upset anyone.
The misery of the place not only in the tragedy being played out by Liam’s bedside. A woman sat on a chair opposite, her head buried in the sheets of the bed, crying for all to hear. The patient lay unmoving, but he wasn’t asleep. His eyes stared unblinking at the ceiling, but, even from across the room, Mary could tell unseeing. It would be weeks before she learned from his mother that he could in fact see, but no longer wanted to look. Her son’s mental stupor the result of being buried alive in a mortar blast at Pozieres.
Coming into the ward, her eyes had registered nothing beyond her own misery. Now, avoiding Liam, they snapped image after image like stark photographs burned into her brain. Until she was unable to close the shutter.
A few beds further along, a young man, no more than a lad, lay flat with one arm flung up over his bandaged eyes like he wanted no-one to see him. The rise and fall of his chest irregular under the sheet as if even breathing difficult.
Mary followed the line of his torso to where it ended abruptly in a square-shaped box under the bedding and was reminded in horror of the magician’s sawn-in-half trick – one gone terribly wrong. It made her tremble and think of Nate. She wondered which was the worse fate and offered up a quick prayer. She couldn’t have borne for Nate to end up like that. Or Liam either, if she were truthful, though it might have served that one right running away to war without a word the way he did.
A shout rang out, over the low babble of visiting hour voices, from the man in the bed nearest the row of windows on the back wall. His mania grew in volume until it screamed out, loud and frantic. ‘Where’s the Captain? They’re coming again.’ The terror in his tone sent every head in earshot ducking. Mary couldn’t bear the embarrassing silence of an entire ward of people ignoring the man’s pleas. She wanted to go to him, say she didn’t know where the captain was but she could ask someone. Only a nurse hurried over to calm him. The sister wasn’t a yard from leaving his bedside when he began to call out the same again.
No Small Shame Page 22
