No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

‘No-one will give it a thought unless you tell them, Maw. Tell them I’ve gone back to my job in Melbourne.’

  ‘Lie? You want me to lie for you?’

  ‘No.’ Mary sighed. ‘Say whatever you like, Maw. Tell them the truth. Say I’ve gone to be with the man I love, who happens to be a Protestant. I don’t care a jot what a lot of bigots have to say about it. I do care what you think, whether you believe me or not. I accept you’re never going to give us your blessing, but if you could just try and have a little Christian compassion. Think about what’s best for me and the children for a change, not what other people think.’

  ‘What about your poor children?’

  ‘They’ll be raised Catholic.’

  ‘You won’t be married in front of the altar.’

  ‘As if that would change anything. Won’t you at least sit down and talk about it sensible, Maw?’

  ‘Ain’t nothing to talk about,’ Maw sniffed. ‘I’ll not have my talk taken as condoning you stepping out of the Church. I’m here to help pack up your things to come to Ivor Street and, pray the blessed Virgin, to your senses.’

  ‘I’m not asking your permission, Maw. Sometimes I think you’d rather I lay down and died rather than … shame you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why can’t you wait a decent mourning period? Until you’re not mad with the grief, making fool decisions and damning yourself to hell.’

  Mary gritted her teeth at the last, focusing instead on folding Liam’s remaining shirts. Most of them too raggy to even give away or make over for Conor. A slight whiff of Liam’s hair oil caught in her throat. It was hard to believe he was gone. And all the waiting in the world hadn’t changed things between them. Time had made no difference. Only made things worse.

  ‘Waiting another week, a month, or a year, isn’t going to change my mind, Maw. I want to be with Tom. He wants to marry me.’

  ‘Selfish, selfish girl.’ The set on Maw’s face turned ugly. ‘Always wanting what you’re not supposed to have. What do you think Julia Merrilees would say, her son not dead a week and you taking her grandchildren to live with that … Prod? Good God in heaven, what have I reared?’

  At the mention of Mrs Merrilees, Mary faltered. She might’ve been trying to take it easy on Maw’s feelings, but it apparent the woman in no way going to play fair with hers. It calmed her recalling Mrs Merrilees had believed better of her than Maw ever did.

  ‘I’m not a bad person, Maw. I know I’ve made mistakes – hundreds probably. But I never set out to hurt you, or your good name. Why do you always want to think the worst of me?’

  ‘Robbins doesn’t even go to church. Except for funerals he’s no business attending.’

  ‘Oh, Maw, Da didn’t step inside a church for years. Did it make him any less of a good husband to you? Or father to us girls? No!’

  That set the woman gumming an argument that could find no voice. Maw snatched up one of Julia’s nightgowns, shaking it out of its folds and smoothing it over her breast, refolding it to her satisfaction.

  ‘Did Deirdre know, Maw?’

  ‘What are you talking about – Deidre?’

  ‘You told Mrs Merrilees about your sister on the ship. Did Deidre know you thought her bright and beautiful before she died?’

  A steeliness came into Maw’s posture then. She glared around the dingy room, nodding, as if that helped make up her mind on her answer.

  ‘All right. Since you’re so eager to walk in my sister’s shoes, perhaps it’s time you knew the truth.’

  Maw’s self-assured nod made it seem more like a punishment coming than an explanation.

  ‘You’d best know my part in it too, God forgive me. How I gave my sister the pounds to go in the first place. Helped her into the hole, as sure as if I dug out the dirt and shovelled it back in on top of her. Another ninny wanting to go to the moon.’

  ‘Maw, stop. You’re only making it up to try and make me stay.’

  ‘Pah! Do you think your elders and the priest make up shite just to keep the likes of you down and misery? No! They’ve seen what comes of mixing with them you’re not supposed to. You can think me harsh as you like. Better that than the other. I believed in my fool sister’s dream, until she walked back through the door, a bulge under her skirts she never left with. Half starved. And mad with the grief over that fellow. Unable to eat, or sleep, or settle.

  ‘No-one could do a blessed thing for Deidre, except get the wean out of her before she passed. The mite, born too soon, gave up in the next breath too. So I waited. Then I wrote the father telling him my sister had bore him a son. No more. Within a fortnight, he was on the stoop. A blanket boasting his crest in his hand. An older couple waiting in a carriage, in the road, come to fetch the babe back to London. Not my sister, of course. The brute made that clear before I told him the truth.’ Maw picked at the fluff pilling a wee jumper, while Mary blew her nose.

  ‘Don’t waste your tears on Deidre. You’ll need them for yourself. My sister got what was coming to her – flouting God and his teachings. As do all sinners.’

  ‘Maw, how can you be so cruel?’ Mary shook her head incredulous, though it did explain Maw’s refusal to let her come home to Ivor Street before Conor was born or show her face at Sloy Farm – until catastrophe struck.

  ‘What’s done is God’s will,’ Maw huffed. ‘But not a day in me life have I not wished I’d been ten times harder on Deidre. Might have saved that fool girl’s life. Instead I have to live with my part in enabling her nonsense.’ Maw straightened her back, starting to grab up garments off the table, stuffing them into a pillow sack, undoing all her handiwork of earlier. ‘I’ll not let the same folly ruin you or your children. Or their faith.’

  ‘Maw, what are you doing?’ Mary tried to wrest the sack out of Maw’s hands. ‘You can’t blame Deidre or her baby dying on what she did. Babies die all the time. Even babies of perfect Catholic mothers, some who never sweated a sin in their life? You know that better than most. Don’t you, Maw?’

  Her mother flung around, swinging the sack hard enough to jolt the sideboard, sending a battered tin falling to the floor and the lid bursting open. Liam’s bits and bobs spilling over the rug.

  ‘Don’t you dare to lecture me, my girl.’ Maw puffed up, striding across the room, snatching Conor’s blanky hanging off the fireguard and shoving it into the sack too. ‘You, wanting to enter a detestable marriage. Pervert your children. You’re … you’re an improper mother. Unfit to raise them. And I’ll not let you take them. Not into that heretic’s house.’ Maw stood panting, shaking the bundle in Mary’s face. ‘If I have to fetch the welfare to come and take them off you meself.’

  ‘Maw, you can’t. What do you think you’re doing?’ Mary laughed, half-hysterically, trying to wrench the sack out of her mother’s hand. She could hardly draw breath, her mounting anguish eating the air. No-one could take away the children for my going with Tom, could they?

  ‘Marrying Tom isn’t against the law.’

  ‘The Church forbids such a marriage.’ Maw gripped onto the sack harder. The worn material beginning to rend between their hands.

  ‘Not if we get a dispensation, Maw. You know we can. Remember Dermot back in the Pailis?’

  ‘Do you think Father O’Sullivan will wave Robbins into St Joseph’s once he knows what he’s been up to before your husband even dead in the hole?’

  ‘You don’t know any such thing to tell the priest,’ Mary shrieked.

  ‘Father O’Sullivan knows right enough. Course, he knows. He’s a priest.’

  ‘Why the big charade then, Maw? The scarf around Liam’s neck? Did you confess to the priest that you tried to dupe God Almighty?’ The pitch of Mary’s voice rose in time to the scrape of chairs in the flat overhead.

  Maw’s face turned puce. ‘It were the only way to get your husband put into the consecrated ground.’

  Mary forced calm into her voice. ‘A lie is a lie, Maw. Any sin still a sin. You taught me that.’

  ‘You’r
e one to talk, going with that … heretic.’

  ‘Stop calling him that!’ Mary tore the sack out of her mother’s hands, clothes tumbling to the floor while the pair stood gasping across from one another.

  Still Maw found air to hiss. ‘Well, that’s what he is, isn’t he? Any marriage between the two of you would only be tolerated. Never blessed.’

  ‘Then maybe I won’t get married in your damn Church.’

  Maw’s hand flung out, striking hard across Mary’s cheek. ‘You’re deranged over that … devil. He’s perverted you.’ Maw clutched at her bosom, about ready to keel over in her paddy. Spittle forming in the corners of her lips, the snarl on her face reminding Mary of Sloy’s mongrel dogs.

  Her rigid set the same.

  ‘Did you want the sex so much, daughter?’

  ‘What? Maw!’ Mary dropped the remains of the tattered sack, her squeal strangling in her throat. ‘I can’t believe you’d say such a thing to me. What are you talking about? Tom?’

  Maw shrugged, spreading her arms as if to say, Take it how you like. ‘Have you added adulterer to your list of sins? Are you working your way through the commandments, one by one, like a list of achievements?’

  Mary gulped a breath so deep she could scarcely see straight, as if her eyes were being pumped full of air. ‘No, Maw. I did not have the relations with Tom Robbins. Never once.’

  A tingle set up in her jaw while she waited. Waited while Maw stood shaking her head, stone-faced.

  ‘Maw, I swear it. Why won’t you never believe me?’

  ‘Balderdash! Even if you ain’t jumped the gun yet, it don’t take a scholar to know what the man was thinking long before your husband gave up his last breath. That’s what people will think. Your husband killed himself because you were leaving him for that … Prod.’

  ‘Oh, Maw, you know Liam was raving for months, he’d be better off dead.’

  ‘No wonder, his wife pandering to another man.’

  ‘Maw!’ Mary might’ve gone mad then, ripping at the buttons on her blouse and wrenching it open, dragging up her chemise and baring her breasts. ‘Look, look at me, Maw. You didn’t believe me then either. But I wasn’t lying, was I? But you didn’t believe me until I bled. Is that what you want from me now? Blood? An apology? Me to be a good girl and do as you tell me ever after? What difference did that ever make to you? I was never as good as my sisters. Or my wee brother. You wished me in that box instead of Seamus, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Maw?’

  When Maw refused to look at her, Mary couldn’t hold back a sob. ‘I’m sorry it were Seamus died, instead of me. I’m sorry I couldn’t save Thady. I’m sorry for disgracing you and getting pregnant out of marriage. But I’m not sorry for my children. And I’m not sorry for loving Tom Robbins. He’s a good man.’

  Gulping, she stared down at the pale lines crisscrossing her breasts. She sucked in each mouthful of air, slow and deliberate, trying to steady her breathing. Calm herself, before tugging down her chemise and doing up the buttons on her blouse.

  Her mind made up.

  ‘You never even said sorry, Maw. I might’ve thought you cared a wee bit, if you did.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Course I said sorry. A hundred times.’

  ‘No, Maw. You never did. Not once.’

  ‘You always were a martyr to your misery, girl.’

  ‘Oh, my God, Maw! You want to think the worst of everybody in the world. Well, I’m not Deirdre. And Tom is not that fellow in London. He loves me. And the children. And even if he didn’t, I’m not going to live my life trapped in fear like you. Bending to rules made up by men – not God. Afraid to even look in the direction of happiness, in case I fail, or sin, or break a rule. Maybe I will go to hell. But you’ll not take my children. Or tell me how to raise them. Or who to be with. I’ll meet the devil under my own steam, thank you very much.’ Mary snatched up Maw’s hat and gloves off the table and began herding her towards the door.

  ‘So you’re still going to marry that heretic. No matter what I have to say about it. Well, hear this, daughter,’ Maw pulled up mid-step, ‘if you go with that … fellow, don’t think you’ll spit on my door ever again. Or your children neither. I mean it.’

  ‘Well then, Maw, you leave me no choice.’ Mary took her mother’s arm, marched her to the far side of the flat door. ‘I’m not going to keep fighting you. There’s been enough war in the world and in this house. But I’ll tell you now, to appease your moral indignation, I won’t be getting married in the first five minutes. Or until I’ve paid due respect to my dead husband. And I won’t be living in sin. I’m going to stay in Echuca with Tom’s parents for a time. How long, I don’t know. But I’ll oblige you and not force myself or my children through your door. Fair enough? But whatever you say, I am a good person, Maw. Not always a good daughter. And not a perfect Catholic, I grant you. But God knows I love Tom. And he loves me. And it’s enough. God will decide if it’s enough for him.’

  ABSOLUTION

  JULY 1919

  Closing the door on Maw’s heels, Mary leant back against it, breathing through the thumping of her heartbeats. Unsure if she should be running after her mother, trying to make the peace as would be her usual habit. But a wee voice in her ear whooped as if she should more be running a victory lap.

  She didn’t even realise her eyes were closed, until, a few minutes later, she opened them on the dazzle of late-afternoon sunshine hitting the window. The letter resting under her palm warming too.

  It was no more than she should’ve expected from Maw. The woman would rain fire and brimstone on any perceived sinner. Her diatribe so black and white, it a wonder she even saw the world in colour. Did she?

  Oddly, Mary was without temper herself. More sad, really. Sad Maw had let the grief overtake her. And it came as a shock to realise, Maw didn’t really get on at all. Only turned her grief to anger. Else she blocked out anyone, or anything which pained or grieved her or went against what she wanted to hear or know.

  I tried to be the daughter you wanted me to be, Maw. But I don’t think you ever thought much of that Mary anyways. If I stayed here, answering after you, I’d end up hating you. And you, me.

  It had taken her a long time to recognise that Liam had despised that Mary. Given up on her in fact. Certainly never wanted to marry her. Had he cared about her at all?

  She knelt down on the floor to pick up his scattered treasures, as much to stop her legs from shaking. Some things weren’t worth the wondering or the fight, especially when it all too late or a mind too closed. Of course, Tom was worth fighting for, only not with her mother. The woman would not change her mind on anything. Never had.

  But this time, Maw, neither will I.

  One by one, she snatched up the stray buttons, a broken pen nib and pencil, and Liam’s money clip off the floor. No pound notes inside it, just a folded bit of paper she pulled out now. A wee packet, folded up like a faerie letter. The paper so old, it yellow and brittle. What could be so important he carried it around with him? Probably a forgotten list. Or none of your business, she told herself, but her fingers unfolded the paper even as her brain told her it of no consequence now.

  When the last fold pulled away, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – a snip of her own red-gold hair within. A tiny lock taken so long ago. Kept and carried, how long? She couldn’t help but smile then, creasing the paper back into its folds, tucking it back in the clip.

  She stood up. Thank you, Lord, for letting me know my husband cared. Thank you for hearing my prayer and answering my question.

  She needed no crystal ball to tell her who was behind the knock on her door the following day. And from the shriek of a small boy scrabbling to beat her there, Conor guessed too.

  Tom’s gentle face greeted them, hat tipped back on his head, leaning on the jamb as if it were any other day. His hand reached out to wipe away the tear suddenly appearing out the corner of her eye.

  ‘Not quite the welcome I was hoping for. But a hug
hello might help make it up.’

  Now she watched him, gathering their bags at the door. Two small people trying to climb onto his legs any second he stood still. Tom winked over at her as if to reassure her she was doing the right thing.

  ‘Is this the lot then, love?’

  She nodded, checking around the miserable room, but she could get no words out to answer. Of course she was doing the right thing and happy to have Tom there, only … at times grief snagged the words in her throat. A rush of recall for Liam. A love real or imagined?

  One last glance going out the flat door though, watching the children so excited to be going on the train, she determined that from then on she would be unhappy not one moment longer than possible. Please Lord, help me. I know you’re listening.

  Jane stopped her from musing then, hugging her in the hallway outside Mrs Garter’s door. ‘Oh, Mary, how I’m going to miss you.’

  Dear Jane, who’d gone to the station to meet Tom and fetch him to the flats, even if Maw never aware the small gesture made in deference to her good name.

  Mary hugged Jane back fiercely. ‘And me you, Jane, but you’ll be that busy and having so much fun in Melbourne, you won’t give us a thought. Besides, we’ll be seeing you for a special day, in not so very many months from now, won’t we?’

  ‘Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  Minutes later, Mary stifled a smile at the landlady, Mrs Garter, sniffing her disdain as she took back the key to the flat. The woman eyeing Tom up and down and no doubt adding a whole new sordid tale to the tally of number three.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Tom asked, once they were all outside and walking along the footpath.

  The brief touch of his hand caused her breath to catch, even knowing it accidental. Until, a sideways glance and the soft twinkle in his eyes the giveaway, it anything but.

  ‘It’s getting warm, isn’t it?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Are the children all right, Jane? Are they needing their pullovers taken off?’

  ‘No, Mary. They’re fine. Go on with you now …’

  ‘You sure you’re all right, love?’ Concern and curiosity lined Tom’s brow, but Mary smiled, grateful that he kept them from his lips.