No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

  Joe squeezed Conor onto his knee at the dinner table without a word of reproach. Mary refused his entreaties to join them, the mere thought of food gagging in her throat.

  ‘We’ll search after we eat,’ said Joe, nodding to Tom as if his agreement a given. ‘Liam might be a daft bugger, but he loves that wee daughter more than his own life. He won’t let any harm come to her.’

  The set of Joe’s jaw told Mary he’d give his son the hiding of his life if he did and she suspected he’d a mind to do it regardless.

  Her heart hurt to bring more distress to dear Joe. The lines on his face seemed beaten in by a stick of despair in recent years. How many could be put down to her and Liam she dared not think, but she planned on making Liam answerable the second she laid eyes on him. If it weren’t for Julia gone out along with him, she wouldn’t care or tread a step to look for the louse. But her daughter …

  The meal over, she nodded to Joe and Tom in thanks and pulled her coat tight about her before gathering Conor to leave.

  Joe shepherded them along the hallway like lost lambs, reassuring, ‘We’ll bring the wean back to you, with or without her father or his permission. Even if I have to knock his bloody block off to do it.’

  Tom returned alone after eight and Mary shook her head in answer to his eyebrows raised in question. She met him at the door, Conor in her arms. The warm comfort of her son enough for her to keep him out of bed and close.

  The boy barely stirred when she tucked him under the covers and pulled the bedroom door closed. She offered up another Hail Mary, her fingers rolling the ball of a loose rosary bead in her pocket, praying Julia safe home. Judging by the silence on the stoop, God wasn’t making any deals with her yet. She wanted to go outside and scream at the heavens. ‘Will you bloody listen to me for a change. Please make my husband come home and I promise I won’t complain to you about him another day in my life.’

  She bit her lip, knowing any such promise a lie. Her anger twisted relentless, blackening her soul no doubt, and unlikely to settle even if Liam strode through the door that minute.

  I want to be a better person and a better Catholic, I do, Lord, but you shouldn’t have blessed me with my mother’s Irish temper or the red of her hair.

  Jesus! Now she’d committed another sin, berating God Almighty. Questioning his creation. What next, Liam? ‘What do you bleeding want from me?’

  ‘I’ve not said I want anything yet, have I?’

  She jumped at Tom’s voice behind her. So it was mad she’d finally gone.

  What mother wouldn’t be witless, her wean gone out and not come home at this late hour?

  She was trembling when Tom’s strong hands hustled her into a chair by the stove.

  ‘Mary, listen to me.’ He had to shake her gently to get her proper attention.

  ‘Forgive me, Tom, my mind’s out there searching … W … w … what did you say?’ Despite the warmth of the evening, her teeth began to chatter like she was caught in an icy draught.

  Tom passed her a steaming teacup off the table and she nodded, grateful. ‘I’ll go out and look again soon, Mary. Unless Joe comes in with them first.’

  ‘Drink your tea. I don’t know where else to tell you to look. I should be out there myself.’ Her voice shook and she wondered how she could search on legs that were all but failing her. Where could they be? Liam had few friends and the clubs and pubs all closed hours ago. Or were supposed to.

  ‘Hush. We’ll find them. We’ll bring Julia home safe.’

  ‘What then, Tom?’ She shrugged, chewing on her fingers.

  He pulled her hand gently into his. ‘I don’t know how I can leave you here – with him. But my meeting is on the seventeenth and I have to tell you, Mary,’ he waited until she looked up at him, ‘when I leave, I won’t be coming back.’

  Her teacup began to rattle in the saucer and she drew her hand back to still the clatter. She gave it all her attention, reaching to place it on the table, before she answered. ‘That soon, Tom. Only a fortnight away.’

  He nodded. ‘The publisher wants to see more of my work, but I’ve got to be fair and serve out my notice at the pub.’

  Unbidden, tears filled her eyes and she shook her head.

  He snatched up both her hands. ‘Come with me, Mary? You and the children.’

  ‘Tom, don’t. You know I can’t. I’m married.’

  Tom shook his head fiercely. ‘Doesn’t mean you have to be a bloody punching bag to your husband, or a martyr to vows that mean nothing to the man.’ He ran his fingers over the faded bruise on her cheekbone.

  ‘It’s not like that, Tom. Liam can’t help himself. He’s got the war sickness.’ Her pleas did nothing to stop Tom’s words from racing on.

  ‘He’s getting worse. You only have to look at him to see that. You need to leave before he really hurts you or one of the children.’

  ‘Liam would never do that. Not deliberate.’ Mary gazed at Tom, reaching out to pat his arm and reassure him. How could she explain? Liam would never hurt his beloved Julia, and, he held himself so far distant from his son, he’d never get close enough to harm the laddie.

  Tom pulled back from her with a worried grimace.

  ‘There’s no reasoning with you, woman. I’ve never met anyone so stubborn.’ Then his face softened and he reached for her hand again. ‘I won’t push you now, but I want you to think about something. I could give you and the children a good life. A happy life, like you deserve. I’m going to make a living from my writing. This book is only the first. I’ve sold five of my paintings too. We’ll get a house, not like my old room on Adderley Street. A proper home.’

  For a moment the vision of such a home filled her head: laughter in the hallway, her and the children waiting on a porch to welcome the man coming home through the gate. A bag of sweeties in his hand. Long evenings spent reading around the fireplace. Tom’s gentle touch lighting each morning, warming each night.

  His words rushed on, carrying her along on his raft of excitement. Only a whistling starting up out on the street caused her to draw back, seeing the rocks ahead. She pushed back her chair and stood up abruptly, flinching at the familiar tune, but the pain in her chest eased thinking it meant her daughter home safe, and no harm come to her. She could wish Tom gone to save the pain in his eyes at her unspoken answer and the mood and sulks coming the second Liam recognised their company.

  But Tom was already ramming on his hat.

  Before she recognised his intention, he hugged her to him. His arms drawing around her, lips in her hair. And for the merest second, she let her body relax into his. At the softest kiss on her forehead, a deep ache dragged down to her groin. But her lips found only the scratchiness of the lapel on his overcoat, him mindless to their touch. Dear God! She must not risk being alone with him again before he left for Melbourne.

  Ninny. She pulled away. What was she? A slip of a girl blushing fanciful at foolish suggestions and daydreams? She’d made her bed and didn’t she know Tom deserved his with a virgin bride and no stigma of divorce.

  Sweet man that he was, his suggestion another mortal sin. If Liam had never come back … If things had been different … But they weren’t, were they? It did no good to chase daydreams. Wasn’t that being unfaithful, if only in her mind?

  At this rate, she’d be saying Hail Marys every minute she drew breath and still spend all eternity in purgatory, if not hell. More likely the latter when Tom tugged her chin up to look at him and her traitorous body betrayed her again.

  Tears welled in her eyes, her longing reflected in the sadness in Tom’s. She raised her hand to soothe the anguish in his face. ‘It’s wrong, Tom. Wrong to even think about.’

  He closed his eyes, leaving his cheek cupped in her palm, and shook his head helplessly. She knew then, he would not see her again. She doubted he heard her whisper, ‘Thank you for asking me but.’

  In a moment, he was gone – out the boarding-house back door, Joe and her husband coming into the front hall. Li
am whistling like not a thing was wrong in the world, while she couldn’t help but burst into tears.

  ACCEPTANCE

  JUNE 1919

  Barely a word passed between her and Liam in the miserable three weeks that followed.

  Julia fell so ill with the croup, the poor lamb whooped to heaven and back. Every splutter tearing at Mary’s heart and keeping her home from work. Seeing her newly walking daughter a crumpled, helpless babe again, all her terror for her sick brothers in the Pailis returned.

  Not a night did Mary lie in her own bed; instead, she slept nursing the child on her chest in the armchair, listening to the coughs crackling on the babe’s lips.

  And where was Liam? Gone out walking, complaining that his headaches pained worse than a bandsaw chewing into his brain and a man might as well be dead, but since he weren’t to have any such relief, his only choice was to walk – walk away from the pain as far as he could go. The soles on his shoes told Mary it was a bleeding long way, but never far enough because the next night he’d be out and gone again. His concern for the wean never in question.

  When he’d come home in the wee hours to find herself and Julia huddled under a towel over a steaming bowl of herbs and boiled water, he’d run his hands gentle through Julia’s damp curls and drop a kiss on her watery lashes.

  Mary’s own eyes watered to watch them, but no kind word fell from Liam to her. A pain squeezed in her chest at the memory of a small boy bringing her a cup of tea, rattling on its saucer. Shame reddened her face at leaving the kettle boiling for a three-year-old to drag off the hob.

  Sitting out on the porch, despite the chill air, she flattened the front of Conor’s pullover across her knees musing how it weren’t long since Maw had presented it to him along with the stern warning. ‘This is your Sunday best now. Don’t go wearing it climbing over or under fences or I’ll strop your wee botty next time I see you, you hear?’

  Mary smiled recalling Conor’s solemn face and his hesitation in taking such an offering from so fierce a granny. Now she stared at the pullover, too small for him already, even though Maw had made it big enough the sleeves dangled off his arms to start.

  With a sigh, she snipped through the thread binding the side seam and used a crochet hook to tease out the stitches of the still good wool, ready to knit up some old yarn for new cuffs and a waistband, even if the colours did not match. Drawing each stitch through mechanically, she was grateful for the distraction of a dog barking up the road and muffled voices filtering down from Bourke’s flat on the second floor. The air empty of Julia’s coughing was a blessing and she mouthed an Our Father to thank him, drinking in the promise of five minutes’ peace, of time to think. Liam likely dozing in his chair by now and Conor asleep too.

  Did it make her a bad person to wish them all stay that way until the morning?

  She’d not even had time to think of Tom’s departure. Knowing he was no longer in the town left her with unreasonable fear. Relying on him to have rescued Liam and, in turn, herself, a fruitless wish and wrong.

  It wasn’t fair to daydream of anything other, even if it only the one time.

  She deserved her lot. And the likes of Liam. But … she couldn’t hate him. She could only hate what they’d come to. She wanted to hate him. With all of her heart.

  Joe stopped her.

  That kindly man who’d brought her daughter home safe and set a pot of tea on the table after putting his son to bed and sitting himself down.

  ‘It’s not Liam’s fault, lass. You cannot be angry with him. He’s lost – in that France. Or maybe even back in Scotland,’ Joe insisted, his hands trembling. ‘I was wrong to drag my son after me own plan … coming to this country. He’s a right to blame me. If we’d stayed in Scotland, his sainted mother might be alive. He might never have gone to the bleeding war.’

  ‘No, Joe. Don’t say such things.’ Mary tried to reassure him. ‘The same happens in birthing every day. It’s God’s decision. Nothing to do with geography. And Liam was more likely to go to war from Scotland than from here; you know their need the greater. It was the mine he wanted out of, not away from Australia. Or from us. Except myself.’

  She shuddered. Perhaps Liam had recognised her want of him in Scotland, even before she had, and had turned away from her even then.

  That too, her fault.

  All heat had gone out of her anger in the days since, but the chill in her spirit was one no amount of coal could warm.

  The squeak of the screen door behind her told, bad to wish it or not, peace was not to be hers. She gulped down her disappointment, it settling as a hard ball in her gullet.

  ‘Why are you sitting out in the dark?’

  She glanced up to Liam standing in the half light of the window, pain lines keen on his brow. When he leaned forwards to strike a match to light his fag, his fringe fell aside and the mask away. A lost laddie looking back at her – the Liam from the Pailis.

  With no thought to do so, she reached out her hand to him.

  He squinted back in confusion, handing her the cigarette.

  She stared at him and sucked on it, expecting to take down the smoke and blow it out languidly. Instead it burned its way down her throat, doubling her over, while the makings of the pullover fell down the steps into the dirt beyond.

  At once, Liam was beside her, laughing and banging her on the back and taking the fag out her hand, while she coughed ripe as Granny Wallace from the Pailis chewing on her filthy black plug of tobacco.

  She was happy to let her mind ramble back to the village, if only so she could ignore Liam sitting so close beside her. Closer than they’d been for years, if not for clinches under the bedclothes. Was it months now?

  When her coughs quietened, she moved to fetch the pieces of pullover.

  Except Liam jumped up and followed the thread to the escaped wool. Once he was sitting beside her again, he placed it in her hands and folded his fingers over hers.

  ‘We’re like the wool in that jumper, ain’t we lass? Unravelling. And no-one can untangle the mess of it.’

  He stared at her then as if waiting on an argument both knew she wouldn’t raise. Their eyes might meet, but it was their only meeting place.

  ‘You’re not happy, are you, Mary?’

  She grimaced, waiting for the trick – the reaction if she dared to tell him the truth. She wanted to pull back her hand; instead he squeezed it tighter.

  ‘Nothing turned out like we planned, eh, lass? We never should’ve got married.’

  ‘We have two beautiful weans, Liam. Would you wish them away too?’ Hurt spat in her words.

  He patted her hand, then lifted his own away and drew the cigarette out of the side of his mouth. He exhaled the smoke, blowing a ring into the air and watching it haze into a misshapen blur. ‘No, Mary. I would not wish away me children. Or you either. I told you, long ago, you were the one good thing to happen to me after me mother. Now there’s two more added. But it don’t change the facts. We never should’ve got married. Just ’cause you start out friends, don’t mean it should be forever.’

  ‘Marriage is forever, Liam. Much as you fight it and hate me.’ There, she’d said it. She waited for his words to twist bitter now.

  ‘No, lass.’ He shook his head, holding her glare. ‘I think it’s you who hates me.’

  By reflex, she shook her head in denial. Her mouth opened, but the words … ‘Well, we are married, Liam. Like it or not. You can resent me ’til your dying day, but our names’ll be scratched on a stone together in a cemetery until that crumbles into the dirt too.’ She said the last with a bitterness of tone she recognised blotted out all hope of more talk.

  Liam confirmed it, standing up, grinding his fag butt into the timber boards of the porch deck. ‘You’re wrong, lass. I do care. But I can’t be the man you think I should be. That laddie died in the glaur of the pit. And a second time when he saw the disappointment in your eyes when he turned up alive. I’m sorry for you, Mary. Every damn day I’m sorry.
I can’t do nothing to change it, but I would never wish you away – you or me children.’

  He stepped off the porch, mumbling, ‘Just meself,’ and in two strides he disappeared into the shadows.

  Each footstep damned her again, knowing her husband more honest than herself. She dashed tears from her eyes and snipped through the stitches on the hem of the pullover, tugging the threads loose and ripping out row after row while the body of the jumper disappeared in front of her. All the work in the making undone in minutes.

  BATTLE ROYAL

  JULY 1919

  For a whole week, Liam kept his tongue civil. He even stayed home most nights, though Mary would wake to find him out of the bed and pacing the yard. The red glow of his fag tracing the boundary. She’d drop the sheer curtain in the hallway and go back to the flat, grateful he was safe at least – but heartsick too.

  One night, falling into bed exhausted – the babe at last improved – she was surprised when he came and sat down on the bed beside her, taking up her hand and running his fingers gently over the scar on her palm, then the same over the one on his own. She waited, what seemed an age, seeing the struggle on his brow, giving him proper chance to speak, but, the next minute, she was left in confusion when he ran out the room – crying.

  She gazed into the shadows of the small room, stinking of sweat and pain and medications that made no difference. She could not help him.

  She could not even get out of the bed to go to him but lay gnawing on her thumb, fretting over going back to work tomorrow and leaving the babe home with such a da.

  But when she rose the next morning, Liam was up before her, both weans fed and dressed.

  She was not so foolish as to leave Conor home with him. Instead she wished away a year of the laddie’s life and him to school while she walked him to Nanna Catherine’s. A compromise, but at least he’d be safe, if not wholly unscathed by the sharpness of the woman’s tongue.

  Half an hour later, it was her guilty relief to be back at work, washing bedpans and sluicing sick trays, out of the four walls and away from the coughing and crying and misery. Wicked wife!