Mother’s Only Child (27 page)

Her mother chuckled at the mental picture. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ she said.

Moville was such a small village that any stranger was spotted and speculated about almost before he had set foot inside it. So the news that a little dapper man, sporting a neat moustache and wearing a suit and a trilby hat, was seen knocking on Maria’s door was soon known by everyone.

Of course there had been much head shaking already about the child. All the neighbours had been in to see the baby, many bearing gifts, and all had asked about Barney. They had got the same message: Barney had gone to Dublin with his brother to take up some job for a few weeks as there was nothing doing nearer at hand. No one believed it.

‘A man wouldn’t go hightailing it to Dublin when his wife had just given birth,’ one said to another. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Anyway,’ another commented, ‘since when have the McPhearsons been that keen on work of any description?’

‘You’re right there. Jesus, neither of them would
cross the street to do a job, never mind travelling all the way to Dublin.’

The priest thought it odd too. He called when the child was five days old to discuss the christening.

‘I can’t think about anything like that until her father is back home,’ Maria told him.

‘When is that?’ the priest asked. ‘These things have to be attended to.’

‘I don’t know, Father,’ Maria admitted. ‘When I know anything definite, you will be the first to be told.’

When Father Flaherty had taken his leave, Dora said, ‘How long are you going to leave it before telling the authorities that Barney is missing?’

‘I don’t know,’ Maria said. ‘I am worried to death about him. What if something bad has happened to him and my delay in telling the police has made things worse? On the other hand, Dora, you know Barney as well as I do. He could be mixed up in something not quite within the law.’

‘I know one thing,’ Dora said. ‘You’ll be the one in trouble if you are not careful.’

‘I know,’ Maria said with a sigh. ‘If only there was some word.’

‘Surely if he intended sending word, he would have done so by now.’

‘You’re right,’ Maria said. ‘And I know I am not helping myself by shillyshallying. Send for the guards tomorrow and I’ll let them deal with it.’

‘What about your father?’

‘What about him? I’ll get up tomorrow and explain what I intend to do. And don’t look at me like that, Dora, I know I’m not out of my lying-in period, but
I refuse to speak to the police in my bedroom and dressed in my nightdress. The priest was bad enough.’

‘All right,’ Dora said. ‘I do see the sense of that, but you take it steady.’

The next morning Maria had just come down the stairs, the child in her arms, when there was a knock on the door. Dora’s eyes met those of Maria as the older woman went to open it. Few people knocked doors in the village, except those on official business and Maria felt for a chair with her free hand and sank into it. Her legs had begun to wobble and the roof of her mouth felt suddenly unaccountably dry.

Fully expecting to find a Garda outside the door, Dora was surprised by the stranger. Though the man was respectably dressed, she noted his blue eyes were so hard it was like looking at two pieces of flint. His eyes were narrowed and there was a frown creasing his brow as he said, ‘I would like to speak with Mrs Maria McPhearson.’

‘And what is your business with her?’

The man shook his head. He knew that this woman wasn’t the one he was told to speak to and he had his orders. ‘My business is with Mrs Maria McPhearson and it’s private, but you can tell her that it concerns her husband.’

Dora opened the door wider and the man removed his hat before following her inside. He took a swift look around.

Maria had heard what the man said and she stood up again, the child held tight against her shoulder as she said, ‘I am Maria McPhearson. You wish to speak to me about my husband, Barney?’

The man nodded.

‘So,’ Maria demanded, ‘where is he?’

The man whetted his lips and twisted the hat he held in his hand nervously. ‘I need to speak to you privately.’

‘Do you?’ Maria snapped. ‘Well, you will have to need. Dora is my very good friend and my father has a right to know too what has happened to his son-in-law, so state your business.’

The man shrugged. ‘If that’s how you want it,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you where Barney is, but that he is in a safe house in the hills of Donegal and he will write when he can. That’s all you need to know.’

‘What are you talking about, “safe house”?’ Maria said, confused. ‘What’s so unsafe about his own fireside?’

‘The guards could be after him,’ the man said. ‘They’ve already shot him in the arm.’

Maria stared at the man incredulously. The guards just didn’t go around shooting people. ‘What happened? How did Barney come to get shot?’

When the man shrugged, Maria shrieked at him, ‘God Almighty. Don’t you come to my door and say that my husband and father of our baby daughter has been shot and will write when he has time, and expect me to be satisfied with it. Tell me what he was about for him to get shot or, by Christ, I will shake the words out of you.’

‘Aye,’ said Dora grimly. ‘And I’ll help her.’

The man hesitated. He’d been told to say as little as possible, but he saw the younger woman’s angry eyes nearly standing out in her white face and the older
woman bristling with temper, and thought he wouldn’t put it past the two of them to attack him if he said nothing at all. So reluctantly he said. ‘We were intending holding up a security van taking money to a bank.’

‘What?’ Maria couldn’t believe that she was hearing right. This surely to God couldn’t be happening to her. ‘Have you…has Barney done this sort of thing before?’ she asked.

Again, the man shrugged. He had already said too much. Not that he needed to say anything, for Maria knew with dread certainty that this wasn’t the first time that Barney had done this kind of thing and that was where he had got the wads of money from. She felt sick.

‘Barney wants to know if you’ve had the guards around asking questions?’

‘No. Why should I have?’

‘Barney was the only one not wearing a stocking,’ the man said. ‘He wasn’t sure he hadn’t been recognised. That’s why he didn’t come home, and then, of course, the bullet in his arm would have taken some explaining.’

‘Wouldn’t it take some explaining anywhere?’

‘No, not where he was taken,’ the man assured her. ‘The bullet is out now and Barney near back to normal and intends following his brother to Dublin in the next few days.’

‘Oh, does he?’ Maria said. ‘And what of his wife and child?’

‘He’ll write when he has an address,’ the man said again, and added, ‘He made no mention of a child.’

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘That’s because he didn’t know
that she was born. That happened the night he disappeared. But tell him not to fret. We can live on fresh air. I wouldn’t touch a penny piece he’d give me, in any case, for it would be tainted money.’

Suddenly she was tired of it all—tired of Barney and his lies and deceit, his lack of any sort of moral fibre—and mortified that through her marriage she was part of it all. She glared at the man. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘you’ve had your say, so get out. I just don’t want you here another minute.’

The man was glad to go, and Maria managed to hold back the tears until the door shut behind him. But then she totally gave way. Dora took the sleeping baby and laid her down in the pram before taking Maria into her arms. Maria felt as if she was drowning in the tears pouring from her eyes and filling her nose and her mouth. Her sobs shook her whole frame.

Dora didn’t urge her to stop. Instead, she patted her back and said, ‘That’s it, Maria, cry it out. You let go, mavourneen. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

Maria wondered if she’d ever feel better about anything ever again, but she was eventually quiet. She didn’t wish to relinquish the comfort of Dora’s arms around her so the two sat there entwined.

Sam had understood enough of what the man had said to be shocked and disappointed in Barney. He quite understood Maria’s collapse and had watched Dora comfort her, feeling frustrated and helpless. He dealt with those feelings the way he dealt with anything he found uncomfortable. He lifted the bottle of whiskey, never far from him, and took a long, long swig of it.
After the revelations about Barney, Maria was in a state of shock. She wondered what manner of man she’d married at all. Smuggling and card games were bad enough, but holding up a security van and stealing from it was an entirely different kettle of fish.

What was she to do about it? What
could
she do? She was married to Barney for life. Was what she’d found out about him a justifiable reason for leaving him? How the hell could she know that? She felt totally alone.

Only Dora and her father knew the truth, and though Dora had probably told Bella, she never spoke of it.

Maria couldn’t even bring herself to tell Con the whole of it, so she told him Barney had got word that the guards would be wanting to question him about his smuggling activities in the war and he’d fled to Dublin for a wee bit. Con accepted it. Whether he believed it or not was another matter, but she knew he would keep his own counsel. He came as often as he could to see them all and spend time with Sam. Maria was glad of that, for she knew her father missed Barney, despite everything the man had done.

The lying in period was officially over and Maria had taken up the reins again, doing everything like an automaton and desperately worried about money because all she had was her savings and she knew those wouldn’t last for ever. Her father’s whiskey put a huge drain on her finances, and now that many men were unemployed there were fewer presents given to him, though Raffety’s sent round the odd bottle and so did Bella. It helped only a little, and Maria viewed the future with fear.

Then, at last, she got the awaited letter from Barney.

Dear Maria,

I am sorry I was unable to get news to you sooner about what had happened to me. I know you must have been worried, especially with the baby coming as well. Pity it was a girl. Better luck next time. I was sure you’d know better than to tip the wink to the coppers and I told Seamus the same. Anyway, there is plenty of work here and I thought to stay around for a while. I will send you some money shortly. I know we are stuck in Moville for the time being, but when Sam dies, I think we should move here lock, stock and barrel. It would make a better future for us all.

Barney.

There was no remorse for what he had done. No shame. Maria read the letter to her father and then took it round to show Dora.

‘I’d like to know the nature of the “work” that Barney mentioned,’ she said, as Dora finished reading the brief missive and handed it back. ‘Then again, maybe I wouldn’t like to know. The fact is, Barney has never had a proper job, unless you count the time he had in the boatyard, when he left most of the work, first to Willie and then to young Colm.’

‘How do you feel about Barney, Maria?’ Dora asked.

‘I don’t love him, I know that now,’ Maria admitted. ‘It’s not a nice thing to say, but I clung to Barney in much the same way as a drowning man will clutch at any piece of debris to help keep him afloat. I felt totally
unable to cope with all the responsibility, even with the help you and Bella were, and then, of course, Daddy was all for Barney.

‘But just maybe I wouldn’t have married the man at all if I hadn’t given in to him the day Mammy was taken to the asylum, Then, when I ended up pregnant, there was no other alternative. I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ she went on, ‘I had no idea of the smuggling and all, before I was married, though I found out soon after it and I was devastated. I begged him to stop and when he point-blank refused, I suppose I began to lose respect for him. It’s impossible to have deep feelings for someone when you feel that way. This latest business has just blown me away completely and there is no possible chance I am going to join him and take my daughter to be brought up among thieves.’

She looked at the sleeping baby in her arms and said, ‘Sally is the only good thing to come out of this union with Barney. She will be my consolation.’

Barney was having the time of his life in Dublin. As P.J. said, there were rich pickings for a bright fellow and the raids he was involved in were on a much bigger scale.

Barney never asked what happened to the stuff he helped steal. He knew from his time in Moville that asking questions was a bad move, and probably wouldn’t be answered anyway. He was more than happy with the payout he received. He’d never had so much money in his life.

In Dublin, too, he found that girls would flock around a man with money in his pocket to give them
a good time, and were very appreciative later in bed. He had worried about being unfaithful to Maria at first, but Seamus said she deserved no loyalty

‘Didn’t she pull the wool over your eyes right and proper, so that you were hoodwinked into marriage?’ he said. ‘A woman like that needs no consideration at all.’

Barney knew Seamus was right. Any doubts he might have that she really might have been pregnant that time fled when he was with his brother, who was adamant that Maria had duped Barney right and proper. He’d been mad to have Maria, but now he had achieved his goal, she didn’t seem that great. Anyway the girls they went around with were crazy for sex—expected it, almost. It would take a better man than him to refuse them and he put off his return home day after day.

Each week, he wrote to Maria, but as she’d told him she wanted no money he hadn’t earned legally, he sent her none.

‘What’s she living on then?’ Seamus asked when Barney told him this.

Barney shrugged. ‘She has savings from the time she was working before the child was born, so I suppose she is using those.’

Seamus laughed. ‘And what will she do when that’s all gone? High principles are all very well when you have a full belly. The sooner the old man dies, and you move down here for good and bring Maria with you, the better.’