‘Nerves,’ Doctor Spooner said. ‘No real cure for them bar time.’
NIGHT TERRORS
SEPTEMBER 1917
Even as a child, terrified of the dark, Mary had taken comfort in the steady breathing and snores of her parents and sisters in their shared room in the rows. Once those days were gone, and while at Sloy farm, she’d found the same comfort running her hands over the swell of her belly knowing her wee babe near.
Except for those few nights after the false news of Liam’s death, Conor had slept each night beside her. His fresh baby smell and snuffles helping her to grow strong and protective.
One week after his father’s return home though, Conor was banished from his new cot beside the bed to Pearl’s room. For his own good.
Lying in the blackness, the bedroom in Egan Street seemed to close in on Mary. The signs she was coming to know started early. Not even midnight yet. Fingers of fear squeezed around her heart while the noises in the bed beside her grew, same as they did most nights. A slow build to moans … like she imagined the trees talking in the mine below the earth. Their first low rumbles warning of something shifting and amiss. The growls beside her increased in pace and volume, resulting in arms and legs thrashing amid the sheets. Despite the warning, there was nowhere to run.
An arm struck hers. She flung out a hand to ward off a fresh bruise. ‘Wake up, Liam. You’re dreaming again.’
This time his fury struck back, hurling her across the bed. She gasped, unable to cry out. Her arms flailed as fingers crushed down on her windpipe – giving her no choice. Her knee reared up, connecting between Liam’s legs, and his fingers fell away from her neck in blessed release.
He rolled off her, moaning in horror on his waking. Then he crawled onto his knees, clutching himself and staring back at her. Dismay etched on his face. ‘Jesus, lass. What have I done to you?’
She threw herself out of bed, choking, and stumbled to the light switch. She leaned against the door, coughing and struggling to catch her breath, each gasp an agony as air passed over her bruised larynx. She could only hold her throat and rasp. ‘Have you gone bloody mad, Liam?’
He crawled towards her, stopping at the edge of the mattress, hunching over, as if in pain, clasping his hands – frantic. ‘Forgive me, lass. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I know it sounds doolally, I didn’t recognise you. It’s the dreams. I can’t make ’em stop. I’m always back there.’
Mary wiped her nose and tears across the sleeve of her nightgown. ‘Where, Liam? Where are you, if not here?’
He shrugged helplessly at her. ‘You won’t believe me. But believe this, I’d never hurt you, lass. Not knowing.’
She spun around to the mirror on the dressing table, tugging down the neckline of her nightgown and running her hands over the angry red welts and finger marks pressed into her skin. ‘Look.’ She turned back to him. ‘Is this the throat of someone you’d never hurt?’
Liam’s hands shot up to clutch at the side of his temples. He rocked backwards and forwards on his knees. ‘Jesus, Mary, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I can’t stop seeing him. His brains. His feckin’ brains all over me. Dripping off me hair and down me jacket. Bits of him – all over the bloody ground.’ Liam’s fists pummelled at the sides of his head like he could punch away the images.
She didn’t know how to stop him. Or comfort him. She could barely get any words out. ‘Who Liam? Whose brains?’
‘I wrote you. About me mate, Jenkins.’ He glared back at her incredulous, as if how could she not know.
She shook her head. ‘No, Liam. You never wrote me. Not once in the two years you were gone.’
His anguished wail seemed to rock the house. He buried his face in his hands, while Pearl’s bedsprings creaked through the adjacent wall.
Mary rushed back to the bedside in panic at having disturbed the woman’s sleep a third night in a row. ‘Hush. It’s all right. Forget it now. I’m okay.’
Liam blinked back at her through bloodless fingers. ‘That’s the problem. I have forgotten. Forgotten how big he was. Big and proud and full of shite most of the time.’ He grinned for the briefest second, before his face scrunched again into furrows of distress. ‘Now I only see him like the last time. That’s the picture I can’t get out of me head.’
How could she not forgive him then, tears raining down his cheeks?
Or when, ever so gently, he reached out, running his fingers through the loose strands of hair hanging over her shoulder? ‘You think I’m here, with you now, don’t you, lass, seeing the same things you do? That I look out the window and see our son making mud pies in the yard. I don’t. Everywhere I look I see the glaur and putrid earth of the trenches. Brown uniforms. Smoke haze from the fags of men waiting. Waiting on getting killed. The noise in your head never shuts up. Even when the bloody canons do. Even here, now.’ His breath rasped, panting in desperation. She wasn’t sure if he needed her to understand. Or himself.
A sudden pounding outside their bedroom door startled the pair of them and only then did Mary hear Conor crying next door in Pearl’s room.
‘Mary, love, are you all right? Do you need any help?’
She glanced at Liam and he shook his head.
‘No, Pearl,’ she called. ‘Thank you. We’re sorry for waking you again. Kiss my babe sweet dreams for me.’
She sighed at the answering silence. A moment later, Pearl’s bedroom door shut and soothing noises floated through the wall; the thought that Pearl the one to settle her son’s cries a thorn in Mary’s heart.
She turned to Liam. ‘Did your friend have a wife and weans?’
He shook his head.
She didn’t know if in answer to her question or because he didn’t want to talk. He was already lighting a fag and lying back down in the bed with the ashtray resting on his chest.
‘Turn out the light, would you? I’m tired.’
‘Liam …’
‘Ain’t nothing more to say. The war is over for me now. A man doesn’t want to talk about it.’
TELL TALE TITCH
SEPTEMBER 1917
Liam’s lung troubles and cough were enough to make them all nervy nutcases. He could hack all night to the point Mary expected to find his tonsils spat up on the pillow in the morning. All she wanted at those times was to sneak out of bed and go sleep in the washhouse. Instead she gritted her teeth and dragged herself out of bed to fetch his linctus. During the daylight hours, Pearl shepherded Conor out of the room at the merest hint of the bark or the child would cry out in terror.
‘Come and see the birdies in the yard, my lovely. Have they been pecking Aunty Pearl’s apples again, do you think?’
It took all Mary’s control not to flee the house with them. Her attitude didn’t go unnoticed, for all her trying to hide it, and Liam took to scowling at her as much as at his cough.
To her shame it was a relief on the nights he went out walking, to clear the noise in his head, he said. Except those times he arrived home stinking like a brewery. Yet weren’t the pubs all shut?
Mary didn’t know if it a sign that Liam was improving the first time he brought home his so-called new mates. Rough necks and boozers, the lot of them, and none of them working. ‘They’re recovering diggers,’ said Liam. Though one, Reg Priestley, was fit enough to wander the house without problem or permission.
She told Liam not to bring the fellow to Egan Street again after his second visit. She strongly suspected Pearl’s silver teapot, a wedding present from her father, was not going to turn up in the spring clean as Pearl insisted, but had gone out the front door with Priestley instead.
As Liam swapped his crutches for a walking stick, she renewed her vow to give him the time he needed. Once he’s feeling better in himself, his mind is bound to improve. And his tongue. She hoped.
‘At least he acts normal in the daylight hours and might get himself a job,’ whispered Mrs Oliver over the side fence to Mary and Pearl pegging out the wash. ‘Not like poor Beryl P
hillips’ husband down the street. They had to lock up her Reg in Mont Park – in the military mental part – after he belted the daylights out of her and the children. Ran down the high street calling ’em dirty Huns. Off his rocker, he was, before they took him away.’
The Repatriation agreed that Liam had improved and pronounced him fit to work – fifty percent able at least and halved his pension to match.
But the next week the Repatriation weren’t the ones to fetch him out the bushes beside Connell’s dairy. For those minutes Liam was lost to her, crouched on his haunches, white-faced and trembling, rocking back and forwards, fat tears dripping off his cheeks. All because a bloody dog ran out barking at him.
‘Poor chappie flew into the bushes like a bloody cannon ball on his tail,’ explained the milkman. ‘Is he your husband, Missus? He got frightful upset about it.’
Perhaps the Repatriation could explain to her then how her husband could fight battalions of Germans in the trenches, yet a wee dog send him barmy in the bushes?
Small wonder their son would huddle behind her, fists rammed into his mouth, studying his father but not creeping close. She might nudge him forward but Conor, cursed with the same stubbornness as his father, refused to be pushed. Sometimes she resorted to bribing him with a sweetie, ‘See what your da’s got for you,’ she’d say, plonking him in his father’s lap, but the moment the treat gobbled down, Conor shimmied off Liam’s knee and curled up hidden in the wing chair facing away to the fireplace.
‘He needs time, is all.’ Mary answered Liam’s bitter glares.
‘No, what he needs is a good walloping. Then he might do as he’s told.’
‘Don’t you dare lay a hand on him, Liam Merrilees. How can you expect a wean less than two years old to recognise a father who refused to recognise his own child?’
The sting of her accusation ricocheted in the silence. Mary closed her eyes to the hurt in Liam’s eyes, the sneer on his lips marking her treason.
No matter how often she renewed the vow in her mind to leave her hurts in the past where they belonged, or back in Wonthaggi, or France, or Timbuktu, she couldn’t block out the bitterness that snuck up on her some days. Of course it were wrong to guard the child against a father who’d not raised hand against him. Trouble was she couldn’t forgive that Liam hadn’t stayed around to raise the laddie either.
Was it her fault Conor had no father to speak of except Tom Robbins? And therein lay a fresh cause of distress.
The green of envy in Liam’s eyes at the vision of his son hero-worshipping another was not lost on Tom. Or Pearl. All spontaneous visits from Tom ceased. He came only now for Pearl’s much-loved Sunday tea. But the old camaraderie around the table was gone. Tom no longer came whistling down the sideway, casual and familiar, picking a posy for Pearl on his way past the hellebores, as though he’d spent the whole afternoon choosing the perfect blooms. He took instead to knocking at the front door like a visitor. Mary had no doubt Liam the cause and Pearl distraught over it. Distraught as those times Liam staggered into the house in the middle of the afternoon – nothing to do with his gammy leg – belching fumes to intoxicate them all.
That she couldn’t forgive.
But Liam was not the only worry on her mind.
For three whole weeks Genevieve Willets never said a word about their meeting in the park, until one Monday morning she leaned across her workbench to invite Mary to Friday tea. ‘And bring that lovely Mr Robbins too. Unless he’s gone to the front?’
Mary mouthed her excuses, checking to see if Rose or any of the other seniors were giving them the evil-eye for gossiping in work time.
‘Well, Saturday then?’ Genevieve hissed.
When Mary shook her head again, Genevieve insisted, ‘Sunday?’
Why couldn’t the damn girl get the message before they both got their wages docked?
In the dinner hour, Genevieve cosied up to the new apprentice, handing over a fistful of gumdrops. No doubt cultivating her new lackey. On sighting Mary, the girl’s eyes frosted over. Any hand of friendship snatched back.
Mary only waited on the slap.
The next morning, a familiar ripping of stitches ensured every worker’s eyes focused keen at bench level; no-one wanted to witness the poor bugger in trouble with Rose.
Unusually, this time, the supervisor’s tones clipped hushed and brief.
Mary couldn’t help but steal a glance upward. Both Rose and the culprit Genevieve glowered back at her. Genevieve rocking an invisible baby in her arms. Mary never thought to deny it but fled the room in tears.
When the outer door of the women’s lavatories banged open, it was as well she was sitting on top of the lavatory seat with her knickers up because the cubicle door flew open.
‘Don’t think I don’t know all about your dirty little secret, Mary O’Donnell. You waltz in here, day after day, grinning like an innocent schoolgirl and the whole time you’re a married woman. How dumb can you be thinking you could get away with such a charade? Cheating on Mr Duffy and not even telling your friends you’ve got a husband hidden and a brat. My dad says the authorities should take your kid off of you. What type of mother denies her own son? And leaves her poor, brave soldier husband lying in a hospital bed? I even seen him crying one day and where was his wife? Only gallivanting in the park with another bloke, not even in uniform, and letting him play daddy to her son. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mary O’Donnell. If that’s even your real name.’
Mary breathed slowly to calm the rush of blood to her hand, itching to slap the smirk off the witch’s face. Instead she pushed past Genevieve, keeping her eyes focused on the high ceiling with its pressed-tin squares repeating around the perimeter, working their way inward in smaller and smaller templates to the centre, holding up a cream fluted light fixture hanging on a chained cord. Or did those squares start in the middle and work their way out? No matter, they didn’t change course whichever way they wended. No snakes or ladders to carry them suddenly up or plunge them down a different path. No war or unexpected babes to hurl them off track.
Not that Genevieve noticed her musing, intent on squawking her accusations. The girl’s words reverberated around the room from the tiled floor to the grey-hazed windows atop the outer wall, until they struck Mary full force. Her shock evident in the horrified face staring back at her from the line of mirrors running down the length of the room.
She twisted on the handle of the nearest tap, hard, and let the water splash onto her hands, dashing some over her face, already slick with perspiration. Genevieve’s accusations ringing in her ears. She couldn’t quit Duffy’s – not yet. Be stuck home with Liam every day.
A vicious poke to her shoulder snapped her from her panicked thoughts and she squinted through wet lashes to find Genevieve standing right in front of her. The roar of water gushed about her, like she might be standing right next to the Falls of Clyde. To her surprise, when she glanced sideways, every tap along the wall of sinks was spouting full blast.
‘Now are you listening to me, Mary O’Donnell? Or are you struck dumb, you daft Irish midge? Do you honestly think a chap like Tom Robbins would be interested in another man’s wife, if he had any clue? Wait ’til I tell him.’
The girl might have slapped Mary, her words stung as hard. Yet Tom knew better than anyone how impossible her situation.
She answered then in a voice colder than the chill running through her veins. ‘Stupid, stupid girl. Tom Robbins is not interested in me in any such way. Any more than he’d be interested in, oh, let’s be kind and say, only the biggest flirt in Richmond.’
Genevieve’s scream of indignation echoed off the pipes. Her face puffed up more bloated than a pouter pigeon.
Then a fresh bang of the outer door announced newcomers and Rose appeared in the doorway, her eyes narrow and mouth pursed tighter than a cat’s bum. Behind her, Mr Duffy peered over her shoulder, his eyes darting up and down, clearly mortified at having stepped inside the sacred confines of the women�
��s lavs.
Rose had few words to say, other than, ‘Pack up your things, O’Donnell. You’re finished at Duffy’s.’
With a sense of deja vu, Mary packed away her kit and undid the ties on her coverall. The finality, the suddenness, and relief that the decision was no longer hers to make crowded in, finding her tear-bags close indeed. Mr Duffy was nowhere to be seen. Nor the traitor Genevieve.
In the foyer, Mr Jobling nodded and bade her good day, his whiff of disapproval told her the story had reached his ears too.
‘Wait, Miss O’Donnell.’ A voice called from the stairwell.
Mary turned, Mr Duffy coming down the steps, shaking his head reproachfully. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Miss O’Donnell, though I’m sorry to let a good worker go, just the same. We might’ve made a decent seamstress of you one day.’ He shook her hand and stiff paper scratched her palm, but she was out in the street before she unfolded her knuckles to find a five-shilling note crumpled inside.
‘God bless you,’ she whispered, breathing her gratitude. Just knowing Mr Duffy thought enough of her to make such a gesture, maybe she couldn’t be so awfully bad after all.
At the sound of strangely familiar, cross voices, carrying through the still morning air, Mary ducked into the shadow of the portico and craned an ear around the edge of the brickwork.
‘It’s out of my hands, cousin. Tell my uncle I did my best for you and I’ll try to get you a reference. No promises now. Mr Duffy is wild at the mention of your name.’
No miserable sobs ever held less interest to Mary than those belonging to Genevieve Willets. She waited until she was sure the girl had gone, before she stepped onto the street – her step a little lighter. Some days it seemed God might be in his heaven after all and even listening to her.
THE MARRIAGE ACT
NOVEMBER 1917
‘Turn off the light, will you?’
No Small Shame Page 24
