Mother’s Only Child (18 page)

Maria sighed in irritation and marched to the other end of the room as Barney took another gulp of the Guinness.

‘Let her go,’ Seamus said when Barney made to follow her. ‘You’ve run after her for bloody months. Now you’ve got her, let her know who’s boss from the start or she’ll lead you a dog’s life.’

‘Maria?’

‘Any woman,’ Seamus said decisively. ‘And get that pint down you and you’ll feel a whole lot better.’

Eamonn and P.J. each insisted on buying Barney a drink for his wedding day too. He told himself he could barely refuse and Seamus was right: it was making him feel a whole lot better. After the second pint, he couldn’t imagine why he’d ever thought P.J. and Eamonn so bad, and after the third, he thought them the greatest fellows in the world altogether—better company, anyway, than Maria, who was glowering at him from the other side of the room.

By the time he lurched over to join her at the table, he was feeling very mellow and Maria watched him nervously. The pub had donated bottles of wine and both Sean and Seamus bought more. Many men stuck to pints of beer, but Barney declared he liked the wine. Used to pints of beer, he was drinking it at a prodigious rate.

‘Go easy,’ Maria pleaded quietly to Barney, but he
remembered his brother’s words and regarded her coldly. ‘Are you telling me how much I should drink?’

A little late for that, Maria might have said, seeing that Barney was already pretty far gone. However, she wanted no row, not now in front of everyone and with Sean’s concerned eyes upon her. ‘No, of course not,’ she said to Barney. ‘It’s just that you’ll be expected to say a few words when Seamus has finished.’

‘I can do that, no problem,’ Barney said.

Seamus’s speech was surprisingly funny, although it was a general dig at women and marriage.

‘And, now,’ he said at the end, ‘I’ll leave it for my brother to say a few words, another good man to bite the dust.’

Barney staggered to his feet and Maria noticed he had to hold on to the table to steady himself. He stood swaying while he pontificated. Maria was in an agony of embarrassment, for he was speaking rubbish, and in the end she tugged on his jacket.

‘The musicians are setting up,’ she said. ‘And we have to cut the cake yet.’

‘I’ll have to finish here,’ Barney said. ‘My good lady wife has told me that, and like all married men I know I must do what I’m told.’

There was a ripple of laughter. Some even called out, ‘Hear, hear,’ but most looked definitely relieved, and Maria was just glad she had got Barney to stop talking at long last. She stood up beside him to cut the cake and then, with the tables rapidly cleared, the musicians began to play. Barney stumbled out onto the dance floor with Maria, to lead them all in a four-hand reel.

It was a disaster. Barney forgot where he should be
going and who his partners were. He trod on more than a couple of ladies’ toes and fell flat on his face the once when he got his feet in a tangle. Eventually, the music drew to an end, and Barney said. ‘That’s me done with the dancing. I’m away for better pursuits.’

Maria stood abandoned and watched Barney go back to Seamus and his cronies until Sean rescued her and led her out onto the floor again.

Barney never came near Maria again. A couple of times he’d suggested it, but one of the others would always dissuade him. ‘Isn’t she surrounded by friends and relations?’ Eamonn said. ‘You’ll have a whole life together, sure.’

‘Aye. Long enough for anyone,’ P.J. said.

‘Too long, many would say,’ Seamus put in.

Barney had no desire to alienate or annoy his brother and his two friends. He knew by the looks Maria cast him that he was already in her bad books, though for the life of him he didn’t know why. She seemed to be having the time of her life, laughing with this one and that and she’d not been off her feet all evening.

As the night wore on, Maria began to feel decidedly weary and when she saw Sean tried to hide his yawns, she decided to call it a day.

‘Will you take Daddy home?’ she asked Sean.

He nodded, but grimly. ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘But he’ll likely not want to come.’

Maria looked to where her father was sitting with Con and a few of his mates from the docks. He was regaling them badly with songs while the band were having a break, but the others, as drunk as Sam, applauded each one and encouraged him to sing another.
She knew too her father would have no intention leaving yet. ‘Good Luck!’ she said.

‘Will you tell Barney?’

Maria had no wish to go near Barney, but she knew she couldn’t just go.

She sighed. ‘Aye, for all the good it will do.’

She’s coming, your missis,’ P.J. told Barney, catching her approaching out of the corner of his eye.

‘Coming to join us, darling girl?’ Barney said mockingly as she drew nearer. ‘I’ll get you a drink. What’ll you have?’

‘Not for me, thanks,’ Maria said. ‘Sean and Daddy have had enough. We were thinking of going home now.’

‘Doesn’t look like your old man’s had enough,’ Seamus said, with a wide smile.

He spoke the truth. Sam was resisting going home with every bone in his body, lashing out at Sean and roaring with the injustice of it. Many were sympathetic, including, it seemed, Seamus’s cronies.

‘Shame it is, poor old sod,’ Eamonn said. ‘Making him go home when he’s enjoying himself so much.’

Maria knew just how difficult her father could be once he was home, and he’d still have to be washed and changed and got ready for bed. She knew Sean must have been up early that morning to get her father looking as respectable as he did. She didn’t reply to Eamonn, but said instead to Barney, ‘Will you come?’

‘Now?’

‘Aye.’

‘He’s not ready yet, are you, Barney?’ Seamus said, ‘and I’ve just got another round in. Barney wants to party on, don’t you?’

‘’S right,’ Barney said. ‘Party on.’

‘Can’t you see he’s had enough?’ Maria cried, rounding on Seamus.

‘Are you going to stand that, mate?’ P.J. said to Barney. ‘A woman telling a man when he’s had enough to drink and when to go home?’

No, by Christ, thought Barney. Making a holy show of him like that. ‘I’ll drink as much as I like and go home when I’m good and ready,’ he told Maria.

‘That’s telling her,’ said Seamus approvingly.

‘Shut up!’ Maria snapped, and then more coaxingly to Barney, ‘Come on home, pet,’ and she put a hand on his arm.

Barney shook it off. ‘When I’m ready, I’ve told you.’

‘That’s it, mate. Start as you mean to go on,’ Eamonn said.

Maria was furious with Barney—with them all—but she knew they were too drunk to take any notice, whatever she said. She shook her head helplessly. ‘You’ll not come then?’

‘I’ll come home when I decide to come home,’ Barney said with an emphatic shake of the head. ‘Sure I can’t get you a wee drink?’

‘No, you can’t,’ Maria rapped out. ‘Unlike some, I know when I’ve had enough.’

Dismissive laughter followed her as she strode back to the others. Sam was still remonstrating with Sean. ‘Stop it, Daddy,’ she said sharply to Sam. ‘Are you also determined to ruin the day?’ Her sharp words cut through the fog in Sam’s brain and he sagged in his chair. ‘Oh, let’s just get home out of this,’ Maria said wearily.

‘What about Barney?’

‘What about him?’ Maria said scornfully. ‘He can go to hell for all I care.’

Sam heard the hurt and disappointment in Maria’s voice. He was saddened, but he said nothing.

Bella and Dora had seen the altercation at the other side of the room and the two bright spots of colour in Maria’s cheeks. ‘Not that I blame her being angry and upset,’ Bella said. ‘God, that Barney wants clouting with a rolling pin.’

Maria, if she’d heard them, would have agreed, but she had bade them them good night and gone into the night after her uncle and father.

When they got in, Maria put on the kettle for her father’s wash, raked up the range, and put a nightshirt to warm for him on the rail. Sean did the necessaries for her father and when he was washed and in the warmed nightshirt he fell into stupor—like sleep while Maria and her uncle sat before the fire with a bedtime cup of cocoa.

Maria had said nothing about the scene at Raffety’s, but Sean knew she was still upset. He said, ‘Barney will likely be sorry for his behaviour in the morning—that is, of course, if he remembers it at all.’

‘Huh.’

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Sean said, though he was furious himself with the man for causing Maria such distress and making her look stupid.

‘Huh,’ Maria said again.

‘He’s been drinking solid for two days,’ Sean went on. ‘He’s not himself at all.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Maria agreed vehemently. ‘He’s like some stranger I married.’

‘Shall I wait up?’

‘Uncle Sean, he could be hours yet.’

‘I’ll doze in the chair, if I have to,’ Sean said, and then as Maria still hesitated, he said, ‘I’d like to do this.’

Then Maria realised she’d feel safer with Sean waiting downstairs. Safer? She thought that was a funny word to use about her errant husband. She’d never before felt threatened by Barney, but then she’d never seen him so drunk that he degenerated into some kind of uncaring monster. ‘Thank you, Uncle Sean. I’d appreciate it.’

‘Go on up to bed,’ Sean told his niece. ‘You look all in.’

Maria was tired. She mounted the stairs and went into her parents’ old room for the first time. As she took off the wedding dress and petticoats, the sadness of it suddenly got to her. Instead of clasping a young, virile husband to her and making love over and over again, she was going to bed alone on her wedding night. She put on her nightdress of the softest cambric that she had made and embroidered, remembering that she had done it with a smile on her face as she’d imagined Barney near tearing it from her in a frenzy of lust. She slipped into the double bed, which seemed so big compared to the one she had been used to—so big and so lonely—and she muffled her tears in a pillow.

Maria felt Barney being lowered onto the bed some hours after she got into it, but she didn’t open her eyes. So the first time she saw him was the next morning. Sean had not tried undressing him, possibly because she was asleep, and Barney lay clothed on top of the bed, with just his suit jacket, tie and boots
removed. His mouth lay open and he was snoring. Maria looked at him distastefully.

She began to dress for Mass and went downstairs to see Sean already up.

‘Did I oversleep?’

‘No,’ Sean said, with a smile. ‘But if you did, it is allowed. Yesterday was your wedding day.’

‘Aye,’ Maria replied with feeling. ‘Don’t I know it?’

Sean said nothing about that—there was little point—but what he did say was, ‘Do you want me to wait on with Sam until you come back, and go to a later Mass?’

Maria looked across at her father. ‘No, Uncle Sean,’ she said. ‘He won’t wake for hours. Let’s go together.’

She was congratulated warmly by most in the church, both before the Mass and after it, and she saw many thinking it odd that Barney wasn’t with her. As well they might, she thought.

Barney didn’t emerge from the room till almost noon. He looked dreadful, as if he’d aged twenty years. His red-rimmed and bleary eyes were pain-glazed, the skin sagging and grey. Even his walk was the shambling gait of an old man, and his hair stood an end as if he had had a shock.

Maria’s eyes raked him. ‘D’you want tea?’ she asked in a brusque tone.

Barney looked sheepish. ‘Aye, tea. Thanks, Maria, a cup of tea would be grand, and have you a couple of aspirins?’

Maria gave a brief nod and, after putting the kettle on the range, she went into the scullery where she kept all the medicines. As she turned with the bottle, she saw Barney had followed her in.

‘I’m sorry, Maria.’

‘What for?’ Maria demanded. ‘Just what bit of yesterday are you apologising for?’

‘Oh God! I don’t know,’ Barney said. ‘I remember the wedding and the meal afterwards, and having the first dance with you, but little else. I know I got stinking drunk, and I must have done more than that, for your eyes are full of disgust.’

Maria didn’t want to throw up a list of grievances, but knew if she said nothing she would always feel resentful that he had spoilt the day. ‘Yesterday, you were awful,’ she said. ‘It was like you were a different person, not the man I agreed to marry at all. I’ve put up with Daddy drinking himself stupid and all it does most times with him is make him sleep. But you turned into some kind of horrible, nasty fiend. You hardly came near me all night and made fun of me when I asked you to come home. I came home with my father and my uncle on the day I married you and I slept alone in the bed. How do you think that makes me feel? You have no excuse like Daddy has for drinking so much.’

‘I don’t as a rule,’ Barney admitted. ‘But it was a wedding, Maria.’

‘Aye, yours and mine,’ Maria snapped back.

‘I know, I am sorry,’ Barney said, stepping close at her. He would have crushed her to him, but she was holding him at arm’s length. ‘Barney, you stink of stale beer, whiskey and cigarettes,’ she said. ‘Take your tea and aspirins and go upstairs and take off your best clothes. You have them almost ruined as it is. I’ll bring you a bowl to wash yourself.’

Shamefaced, Barney did as Maria bade him. He
emerged in his everyday clothes, clean and smelling much fresher, with the stubble removed from his face. He was still unable to eat, though, as his stomach continued to churn. He even refused the glass of whiskey Sam offered him.

Instead, he talked to Sean, as Maria began making the dinner, beginning with an apology for the state he’d been in the night before. Sean admired the man for the apology, conceding it took a big man to do such a thing. The anxiety he had that Barney wouldn’t be the good and supportive husband Maria really needed receded a little.

Sean and Maria went for a walk after dinner, although the day was raw, but it was nice to be in the air, even for a short time. It also gave Sean the opportunity to speak with Maria and for her to unburden herself, if necessary, without anyone else listening. It was the only chance she had, for he was leaving in the morning.

However, Maria did none of that. She had long decided that if she and Barney had problems, then they were theirs alone. She had laid it on the line for her husband and now she’d see. For too long Sean had been held back from going to England, which he’d hankered after, and she wasn’t going to hold him back any longer. He must have his chance before it was too late, for he was already forty-one years old, four years older than her mother. Though she’d miss him, Maria loved him too much to try to bind him to her.