Mother’s Only Child (30 page)

Maria was so glad to see her uncle alight from the bus in The Square that she clung to his coat and cried.
Sean thought she was crying for Sam and patted her back as if she was a baby.

‘Come on, cutie dear,’ he said soothingly. ‘It’s a day that had to come. You knew that.’

However, Maria wasn’t crying for Sam, but for her husband, already very drunk and seemingly intent on getting drunker. He was so bad-tempered and nasty, she was unnerved by him. She knew that vestige of love they might have had was well gone, yet they had to share a life, a house and a bed until one of them should die. Divorce wasn’t recognised and even separation was frowned upon.

Sean noticed the tension between Barney and Maria straight away, but put it down to the strain of Barney not having a job and the added pressure of looking after Sam. He knew from Maria’s letters that the doctor had suggested he go to hospital, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d looked after him this long and would carry on doing it to the end. However kind the hospital staff were, they were strangers, and she wanted Sam to die in his own bed with his loved ones around him. Sean agreed with her wholeheartedly.

He knew how hard that could be, though. Hadn’t he done it with his own father? And then Maria had a baby to see to as well. With Barney out of work, it was little wonder they were tetchy together and that Barney was drinking more than was good for him.

Maria had never told her uncle about Barney’s sojourn to Dublin when the baby was born—she’d been too mixed up and ashamed—so Sean was unaware of Barney’s slide into the criminal world. When he was told about Seamus and the others over the meal Maria
had ready for him, he assumed that Barney was completely innocent. He expressed both shock and horror, and sympathy for Barney at having a brother involved in such goings on.

He was also concerned for the job situation in Moville and wondered how they would manage now that the war was over.

‘I’ve mentioned before coming to Birmingham to Barney, biding with us until you’ve got yourselves straight,’ he said to Maria. ‘But then, of course, you were sitting pretty and there was Sam to see to, but now…to be frank, I can’t see the situation improving. If you want to get a job at the Dunlop, I can put a word in, no problem, but you’d have more chance if you came as soon as you could, before all the men are demobbed.’

Barney had no more desire to live under Sean’s roof and work in a smelly rubber factory than he had the last time it was mentioned to him, but then he had had a lucrative alternative. Now he had none and, on his own, little chance of earning money on the side. He could see too that Maria was all for it. With Dublin out of bounds, as it were, maybe it wasn’t a totally bad idea. He didn’t have to stay at Dunlop’s. Maybe he could get something better once he was over there. However, he would commit himself to nothing. All he agreed to do was think about it, but Sean and Maria were well satisfied with that.

Sam died two days later, 8 November. The doctor had been to see him earlier and said it was only a matter of hours. Sam had slipped into a coma the day before.
The priest had been and administered the Last Rites. Maria had sent for Con, knowing he would like to be there at the end. She sat by her father’s side, listening to each laboured breath, held his hand and talked to him, glad that Dora had taken charge of the baby. Her father, she felt, needed all her attention.

Barney was the only one crying. Maria wondered why he was. It wasn’t as if this moment hadn’t been expected and she herself was dry-eyed. Her feeling of loss went too deep for mere tears. There was no dramatic end, no death rattle, just a silence as Sam gave his final last gasp. Knowing he was at last at peace, Maria leant over and kissed him.

‘Goodbye, Daddy.’

She heard Con give a gulp and turned to see his eyes sparkling with unshed tears. ‘Bless you, Con,’ she said. ‘You were a good friend to Daddy. I’ll move so you can sit by him and say your goodbyes.’

She got to her feet as she spoke, moved over to the window and looked out. The landscape was bare and muddy. It wasn’t raining, yet damp was rising in coils of mist from the soggy earth as the weak sun peeped from beneath the thick dark clouds.

‘All right?’ Sean said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

‘Aye,’ Maria answered. ‘I feel sort of numb and, if I’m honest, glad that he is now out of pain and misery.’

‘You are a grand girl, Maria,’ Sean said. ‘Now Sam is no more, I am concerned about your future. Do what you can to persuade Barney to come over to us. We’d love to have you. I know this has been your home for all of your life, but there is little work and now you have another wee life dependent on you.’

‘Don’t I know it, Uncle Sean,’ Maria said. ‘And though I love this village, I would leave it tomorrow to make a better life for us, to provide a home and security for Sally. But you may as well know, Uncle Sean, I have little or no influence on what Barney does. I can talk until I am blue in the face and he will go his own way, though I will do my level best to get him to think seriously about your offer.’

First, however, there was a funeral to arrange, things to do, people to notify. With Barney seemingly descended into a sodden heap of misery, it would be up to her to do some of these, the last tasks she would perform for her beloved father.

Sam’s funeral the following Monday brought the whole village out. The church was packed for the Requiem Mass and there were so many at the graveside, people spilt onto the road outside. Afterwards, the house was filled with mourners.

Sean couldn’t help noticing the amount Barney was drinking. He hadn’t been sober since Sean had arrived, and he mentioned his concern to Maria at the reception after the funeral.

‘I know full well Barney is drinking heavily,’ she said. ‘I can only hope he will stop when all this is over. At the moment it’s almost as if he’s taken over from Daddy, and he can be very nasty in drink.’

She looked across at him now, already so drunk he could barely stand. Sean, following her gaze, said. ‘Work on Barney, will you, Maria?’

‘I will do my best,’ she promised. ‘The minute he is sober I will have my say. Really, there is no other
option and he knows it as well as I do. Don’t worry, he will agree to go when he thinks about it. We have even got a potential buyer for the boatyard.’ She told Sean of Ned Richards and went on, ‘It will be a cash sale, he told Barney, so that if it goes through quickly we’ll have a bit of money behind us. Then if Barney has a job too we’ll be fine.’

‘What of this house?’

‘It might be difficult to sell.’

‘It might indeed, for beautiful though Moville is, there is little here to attract people,’ Sean said. ‘I’ll talk to Barney tomorrow about letting it out. He could put it in the hands of an agent in Derry. I’d like something sorted, as I go home the day after.’

‘I know,’ Maria said. ‘And how I will miss you.’

‘Not for long,’ Sean replied. ‘If all goes to plan, you’ll be in Birmingham in time for Christmas.’

‘I can’t wait.’ And Maria couldn’t, for she was nervous of living alone with the stranger her husband had turned into without the buffer of her father between them.

Barney woke the morning after Sam’s funeral with a raging headache, a mouth as dry as dust and a stomach churning so much he was feeling sick. None of this was helped by the wails of a hungry baby.

Groggily, he got to his feet and stood still for a minute until the room stopped tilting. Then shakily he made his way across the room and down the stairs.

Maria, covered by a shawl, was sitting feeding the baby opposite her uncle, who was reading the paper. She was glad none other was there to see the state of Barney, for he was barefoot, his hair stood on end, his face was grey, red bloodshot eyes were narrowed against the light and he was dressed in only a nightshirt that barely reached his knees.

‘A drink,’ he croaked, as Sean turned to look at him. Without a word, Sean went into the scullery, reached into the bucket of water he’d got just that morning from the pump and filled a cup with it.

Barney drained the ice-cold water down in a couple of swallows, then passed the cup back for a refill. He
drank three cups down before he felt moderately better and thought the nausea had been averted.

He ran his hand through his wild hair. ‘Jesus, I must have had a skinful yesterday. Did you put me to bed, Sean?’

Sean nodded. ‘Someone had to,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘You were in heap on the floor.’

‘I owe you,’ Barney said and Sean waved his hand dismissively.

Before Barney should disappear again, Maria put in, ‘We do need to talk to you, if you are not going back to bed.’

Barney knew what was coming, and bed suddenly seemed a very delightful place to snuggle into, but he knew that was just putting off the inevitable. So he said, ‘I suppose it will keep until I get my clothes on?’

‘Away with you and make yourself more respectable-looking,’ Sean said, ‘and I’ll put the kettle on for a sup of tea for us all. No sensible conversation can take place without a wee sup of tea.’

While Barney put on his clothes he searched his addled brain for a viable alternative to moving to Birmingham, but he knew there wasn’t one.

Within a relatively short space of time, his objections and reluctance had been worn down by arguments he had no defence against. He found himself agreeing to contact Ned Richards and put the sale of the boatyard in motion. He also agreed to contact an estate agent about letting or attempting to sell the house, and preparing to leave Moville to start a new life in Birmingham, England before Christmas.

That afternoon, Dora came round and asked Sean if she could speak to him about a personal matter. Maria was intrigued, but Dora said she’d tell her all in good time and Sean followed Dora back to the shop and into the comfortable living quarters where Bella was also waiting. Bella had the kettle on and she bade Sean sit before the fire and had given him a cup of tea before Dora spoke again.

‘Would it be possible to delay your departure a day or two?’

‘I suppose,’ Sean said, ‘if I had to. I took over a fortnight from work and am not due in until the fifteenth, but why should I want to do that?’

‘Because,’ Dora said, ‘we think you should take Maria back with you.’

‘Why?’

‘Look, Sean, we know you know all about Barney’s brother and all,’ Bella said. ‘Soon, it will be all over the papers. People here won’t believe Barney totally blameless. They know that, in the past, whenever Seamus was involved in something, his brother wasn’t far behind. The whole family would carry the stigma of it. Maria is the helpless victim here, as far as all this is concerned, and we don’t want her caught in the fallout.’

‘You must see the strain she is under already,’ Dora put in.

Sean had seen it. Maria looked ill. She’d had a tough time coping with a new baby, a bedridden father, and his recent death, and an unemployed husband with a great love of the drink that could make him difficult and aggressive. Shaming news about her brother-in-law
would hit her hard. It would be far better that she was well clear of the place before the details became common knowledge.

‘I see what you say,’ Sean said, ‘but I must ask one thing. You said Barney is usually dragged into anything his brother is up to. Do I take it that Barney could be implicated in any of this?’

‘We know nothing about anything he did in Dublin,’ Bella said.

‘When was Barney in Dublin?’ Sean asked.

Too late Bella remembered that Maria hadn’t told her uncle about that time.

Sean noticed her discomfort and said, ‘Come now, if I am to offer them a home with me and my family, isn’t it fair that I should know it all?’

Bella looked across at her mother, who shrugged and said, ‘The man has a right to know.’

‘Do you want me to start at the beginning?’

‘It’s usually as good a place as any,’ Sean said with a wry grin.

So Sean heard that Barney had been involved in smuggling and poker schools during the war. But then there was the birth of Sally and the disappearance of her father. Dora broke in to speak of the man that had come to the house telling of Barney being shot in a raid he had taken part in, and of his sojourn in Dublin.

‘Maria said not one word about any of this,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘What the poor child has had to put up with.’ He gazed from one woman to the other and added, ‘I know what a help the two of you have been to Maria and how you will miss her.’

Bella swallowed the lump in her throat threatening
to choke her, and said brokenly, ‘I’ve known and loved Maria since the day she was born and took pleasure in watching her grow up. That took a little of the ache from my own heart at never having a child of my own. When Maria gave birth to Sally I thought I’d take the same pleasure in watching her being reared. However, it isn’t going to be that way. I’m not so selfish a woman as to want Maria to stay here in poverty when a better life awaits her in England, where she has an uncle to look out for her.’

‘You are a very special person,’ Sean said sincerly. ‘But answer me this if you can. Surely if Barney had been involved, as you think he might have been, wouldn’t he have been picked up with the others?’

Bella looked at her mother and then said, ‘We know nothing concrete. I mean, Maria hasn’t sat down and given it to us chapter and verse or anything, but from what she has let slip, and from the letters that Barney sent from Dublin that she’d often let us read, I’d say he was as involved as any of them. I think what saved Barney’s skin was coming home in response to the telegram Maria sent to him when Sam took a turn for the worse. Altogether, he was away nearly three months.’

‘Dear God!’

After these revelations Sean had no desire to have the man set a foot over the threshold of his house, but if he didn’t, what of Maria? The man was her husband and the father of wee Sally, and therefore had rights. Sean would rather have Maria near him than not, but, by Christ, he’d put it straight down the line to Barney. He’d have no immoral or illegal dealings
when he was under his roof, and he’d definitely take Maria back with him. After what he had heard that day, he had no intention of leaving her behind.