Trio (11 page)

Three weeks later Brendan Conroy put on his Sunday best and walked round to the Driscolls’. He had quizzed Megan about the best time to catch her father. She reckoned Saturday morning before the pub opened.

Megan watched from her bedroom window as Brendan came down Livesey Street. He’d got awfully long legs but he didn’t stoop like some lanky lads did. He blew her a kiss and she pulled a face. Then she sat on Kitty’s side of the bed, nearest to the door, and craned to hear.

She heard Daddy – ‘. . . of all the bloody cheek . . .’ Then Mammy calming him down. Then nothing. But no door slamming, which meant they hadn't slung him out. Her stomach was twisted up and she felt lightheaded. If they said no, she’d die. If they carried on in secret they were bound to get caught and her Daddy would make good his threat about seeing Mr Hudson, who Brendan was apprenticed to. They’d have to run away. Try and get to Australia or somewhere. They’d be pioneers, like the wagon trains you saw in the Westerns.

‘Megan!’ Her father’s roar made her jump out of her skin.

She ran downstairs and into the parlour, where Brendan perched awkwardly on the edge of the armchair. Her father stood by the sideboard and her mother had the other chair. She noticed Brendan’s socks didn’t match and she could see the milk-white skin of his shins and the curly ginger hairs.

‘You know what he’s here for?’ her father demanded.

‘Yes.’ She kept her chin up. She would not let him make her feel bad.

‘And you want to marry the man who ruined you?’

‘Anthony!’

‘I’m not ruined,’ she retorted.

‘Huh!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Says who?’

Megan was itching to argue with him but this was too important. He could think what he liked, damn her to hell. As long as he gave his permission he didn’t have to like it.

‘I want to marry him.’

‘He’s apprenticed.’

‘We’ll wait.’

‘He’s stuck by her,’ Mammy said.

‘Stuck too fecking close in the first place,’ Daddy slung back.

Maggie Driscoll gasped and closed her eyes. She spoke with them shut, as though she was close to breaking and it was all too much. ‘Anthony, the boy is here in good faith and he’s asking you for your daughter’s hand.’ She opened her eyes and looked at Megan. ‘I’m sure they’ve learnt from their mistake. It’s over a year since the bairn was born and nearly two since she got caught. They are older now. We want them to make a good life. I’ve no desire to have them sneaking around because you’ve got stuck on your principles. The Lord tells us to forgive.’

No one spoke. Daddy craned his neck back as though he’d a crick in it and then rubbed at his face. He turned to Brendan. ‘There won’t be any monkey business,’ he said. ‘If I find out you’ve laid a hand on her before you walk down the aisle I’ll cut your tackle off.’

Megan choked. It was a yes. The crude old git. All hot air. Did anyone honestly believe they’d get engaged but still wait another two years to touch each other? Mind you, every time Daddy looked at Mammy she must have fallen pregnant. Megan wouldn’t be like that. They’d use johnnies and pity the Pope. No babies until they were ready. God would understand. Or the Blessed Virgin. She’d lost her child when they crucified him, she’d understand.

‘Yes, Sir.’ Brendan was bobbing his head up and down like a nodding dog on the back of a car, his face the colour of Campbell’s tomato soup.

There was a pause. Driscoll looked at the clock and rocked on his heels. They were open in five minutes, Megan knew, and his thoughts were already with his first pint.

Mam broke the spell. ‘Congratulations!’ She shook Brendan’s hand and hugged Megan and seemed genuinely pleased.

‘I best be off,’ Daddy said.

When he’d gone, Mrs Driscoll told Brendan, ‘Be sure and let your mammy know. It’ll be all round the Grey Mare as soon as the big fella gets there and everyone in Collyhurst’ll know by tea time.

He nodded. ‘Will you come?’ He asked Megan.

She glanced at Mam, who smiled and dipped her head.

Megan stood on tiptoe and kissed Brendan on the cheek. Mrs Brendan Conroy, she thought. Thank God.

Marjorie

‘You’ve made up your mind, already, haven’t you?’ Robert asked Marjorie Underwood when they were halfway home.

‘She’s lovely,’ she said. ‘What is there to consider? A different baby wouldn’t be any better or worse. I don't want to wait any longer.’

He nodded. ‘You’d better ring as soon as we get in, then.’

‘Oh, Robert.’ She laid her hand across the back of his shoulders and leant over to kiss him on the cheek. Stephen had fallen asleep in the car by the time they got home and Robert transferred him to his cot. His face was flushed and damp around the temples and his hair was darker from the moisture. Downstairs Robert could hear Marjorie on the telephone, laughing and talking.

She was peeling potatoes when he found her in the kitchen.

‘Probably a week on Thursday but Sister Monica will ring tomorrow and confirm if that’s definite.’

‘Happy?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘As soon as I’m done with this I’m going to ring my Mum. She’ll be over the moon.’

‘Stephen didn't seem too chuffed with the idea.’

She laughed. ‘He’s two. He doesn’t really understand. We’ll probably get a bit of jealousy. Your mother says you tried to smother John when he came along.’

‘Still feel like it now and again.’0

‘Robert!’

‘Something infuriating about the eldest, don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’d have given anything for a playmate – older or younger. I hope they will get on, though,’ she added. ‘If she’s anything like Stephen it’ll be a doddle.’

***

Wind her more often.

Robinson’s Gripe Water.

Give her a little boiled water on a spoon.

Try a different formula.

Rub her tummy.

Keep the milk cool.

They like swaddling.

Rocking helps.

Don’t wrap them up tight.

Add half a spoon of sugar.

Make the feed warmer.

Let her cry.

They were all full of ideas but nothing made a blind bit of difference. She’d been back to the clinic, seen the health visitor and the doctor, but it all came down to this. Evening colic. Screaming for two to three hours at a time. Night after night after night. At first she had been terrified that Nina was in pain – the baby kept drawing her knees up, her face was red and creased and her cries were agonising. After two weeks of it, exhaustion and frustration had replaced terror. And now she just wanted it to stop. She fell into bed each night feeling as though she could not survive another day of it. She had tried changing the daily routine in a myriad of ways but still come six o’clock the pitiful screaming would start. Simple things like the chance to wash her own hair, have a bath, do her nails were completely impossible. She’d been taken over. And it wasn’t fair.

She looked at Nina now, in her cot, a picture of fury and pain. Marjorie felt rage wash over her. She wanted to stop her, silence her, put a pillow over her to muffle the sounds. Her heart stammered and she walked from the room.

Robert was no use. He avoided the situation. His contribution to the living hell was to put Stephen to bed and then hide in the lounge with the radio or the television on.

She made a drink of Ovaltine and went back up. The screams seemed to drill into her bones, in the back of her skull and the roof of her mouth. How could the child scream so and not become hoarse? She put her drink down and lifted Nina from the cot. The yelling stopped momentarily and then resumed. She put her on her shoulder and turned the transistor on, raising the volume as high as it would go she sang along, her stomach clenched tight.

More racket for Deborah next door to get sniffy about. She’d been around and apologised after the first few evenings.

‘Colic?’ Deborah had said as though Marjorie had invented the explanation. ‘You poor thing. We did wonder. She has got a powerful set of lungs on her, hasn’t she? I never had anything like that with my three. They all went down at seven and not a peep from them till seven the next morning.’ She gave a shrug and a smile as though apologising for this imperfection. Bully for you, thought Marjorie. She felt like hitting her. She was a failure.

Stephen had been good though. And no one could tell her why Nina had colic or even what it actually was. It would stop by the age of three months, the doctor had tried to reassure her. If we’re both still here, she thought. That could mean another four weeks.

She lifted her cup in one hand and drank it while pacing about. Nina bawled frantically. Marjorie looked outside. It was dry, still light. She couldn’t bear this.

She went downstairs and laid her in the large Silver Cross carriage pram by the front door. Put a blanket over her.

She went into the living room. Robert was watching Coronation Street. She would have liked the chance.

‘I’m taking her out in the pram,’ she said. I can’t stand being cooped up with her any longer.’

He frowned with concern. ‘Do you think that’s . . .’

‘What?’ She snapped at him. Piercing screams reached them from the hall.

‘If you think it’ll help.’

‘It’ll help me.’

She walked fast around the block, pushing the pram. Trees lined the streets. It was a soft, pretty evening. The hazy evening light, the summer smells of night stocks and roses and honeysuckle, the dreamy quiet of the air seemed to amplify the wretched squalls Nina made. On her way she passed several people. She was sure that the looks they gave her were not sympathetic but were judgmental and suspicious. There she goes. Can’t comfort the poor child. Not her own, of course. Some women just don’t have the maternal instinct. Bad mother.

But she kept on and on, walking until her legs and arms ached and the night dew was falling and the child’s cries stuttered into sobs and then quieted.

Caroline    Kay

Theresa

Caroline

Caroline sat at her grandmother’s grave. She had brought a piece of heather from the tops, it had enough roots to take. There was no headstone up yet. They were still carving it, adding her name to that of her husband’s. Both in the same plot. A purchase that had been made shortly after their wedding.

Caroline poked a hole in-between the turves of grass that were growing together over the mound and worked her fingers until it was wide enough and deep enough for the plant. She pushed the wiry, threadlike roots in and pushed the soil back packing it round them. Soft, rich, black soil. The colour of tar. The cemetery was exposed, out on the hillside beside St Martin’s. You’ll have a good view, Grandma. In this light with the haze burnt off she could see right across to the other side of the valley. She could pick out the Colby’s farm, the huddle of buildings and the foursquare farmhouse with its gravel drive. She saw a Land Rover bumping along one of the lanes and, further along, the silver streak of Dunner’s Ditch, where water tumbled down towards Otter’s Gap.

She loved these hills, felt comfortable here, unlike Mary, the friend she’d had at school, who yearned for the bustle of town or the headier excitement of Manchester with all the shops and coffee bars. Caroline found peace up here. No one to answer to, no one to bother her. But she felt lonely these days. Not a feeling she had been familiar with. An ache for warmth, for something to complete her.

Coming home had been a lesson in misery. Like a sleepwalker she had watched her mother set her endless practical tasks with some notion of keeping her busy.

Her mother had continued to act as though nothing had happened. No, that wasn’t true. She had stopped touching her. Unclean. Caroline had felt her face burn when she realised. I’ve had the ceremony, they let me go up to communion now. If the Church can accept me, why can’t you? Was her mother even aware of it? And her father, he was awash with embarrassment and hurt.

She hadn’t a clue what she was going to do but she couldn’t bear the thought of staying here. A life of nothing, a home scorched with shame. She cast her eyes around the graveyard and beyond. She was still alone. She stretched out the length of the plot to one side, where the grass was thick and green and dotted with white clover. She closed her eyes and let the sun heat her skin.

‘Oh, Grandma,’ she said, ‘I had a baby, a little girl.’ Words she could never speak, only to the dead. ‘I gave her away.’ She paused. ‘No, they took her away. I didn’t want . . . I wanted to keep her.’ She remembered that moment, frozen, the babe in her arms, the nun coming towards her, turning to run and finding her way blocked. No, no, don’t take her! She faltered, pressed her palm to her lips. No tears, empty even of tears. Just that ring of grief stuck in her throat like a bracelet.

She couldn’t stay here to choke her life away. But how could she leave? There were three ways out. Marriage, hardly likely; college, but she’d have to go back to school and down a year and she had no great desire for learning; or work. Go into nursing or the forces, something where lodgings came with the position. She would ask at the library next time she went in.

Kay

The baby’s face wrinkled and a tiny neat sneeze startled her awake.

‘Oh, baby!’ Kay Farrell chuckled at the bundle in her arms. She sat beneath the apple tree in the corner of their garden. The baby had been in the pram but Kay wanted to cuddle her. Dr Spock went on about routine in his book and Kay hoped that picking her up wouldn't end up unsettling her for her feed but she just had to keep holding the child.

It was a perfect June day, the leaves dappled in the sunshine, the scent of cut grass. Adam had done the lawn and was edging it now with the half-moon. She glanced across at him and then at the baby. Their baby.

‘Hello!’ She stared into the dark eyes. She looks so wise, Kay thought, as though she’d got it all worked out. She stroked the miniature hand with her little finger and was rewarded by the small fist clutching tightly. ‘You are strong,’ she said. ‘Are you getting hungry? Mmm?’

Kay yawned. She had barely slept the last two nights. Excitement almost like a fever had bubbled around her body and she had risen countless times to check that the baby was safe. When she woke for a feed with small cries, Kay felt nothing but relief. She persuaded Adam to move the crib into their room after the first night. ‘She can go in the nursery when she’s bigger. I want to be able to hear her.’ But even in the same room she couldn't hear the infant breathing and had to keep reassuring herself. So she was very tired and completely exhilarated. Once or twice she’d felt a moment of terrible panic, her stomach dropping and fearful thoughts assailing her like blows. They’d got the wrong baby, the mother might change her mind, they’ll come and take her, we can’t look after her properly. Unsettling moments that passed quickly but frightened her and cast a shadow on her happiness. Of course, it was possible the mother would change her mind, refuse to sign the papers when it came to court. You heard of that happening. She pushed the thought away.

‘We’ll be all right, won’t we?’ She spoke to the baby. ‘Of course we will.’ She closed her eyes, praying again. Prayers of thanks that now after all this time she had what she longed for.

Adam came over and knelt beside her, lit a cigarette and took a long pull on it. He was an attractive man – people said he reminded them of the singer Adam Faith with darker hair. He had that slightly rugged look and the dimple in his chin. Very occasionally she wondered if he’d like her to be slimmer. Lord knows, she had tried but nothing helped. She put on a few pounds every year and it never came off. She was big, not fat – she didn’t like to think of it like that – but generously proportioned. Everybody couldn’t be thin, after all. And she was big in all the right places. Like Marilyn Monroe. And Kay always made sure she looked her best: she had her hair permed and she never went out without doing her make-up. She wore scarlet lipstick. Adam never mentioned her size and he obviously enjoyed her in bed.

He sat back on the grass in the sun. ‘She’s awake?’

‘Lunch time, nearly.’

‘I could give her the bottle. While you get ours.’

‘Yes?’

‘Can’t be that tricky.’

She laughed. ‘You’d be surprised. Oh, Adam, she’s so lovely. I can’t imagine that some people wouldn’t want her just because of that ear. It’s nothing.’

She looked at the baby’s left ear, which was little more than a whorl of flesh, the shell of the ear had obviously not grown properly prior to birth.

‘She is lovely.’ He leaned forward to look at the baby. ‘Aren’t you? Theresa, my pet.’

‘Are you sure?’ Kay glanced at him. ‘About keeping the name?’

‘We both like it.’

‘And we could have Lisa for her middle name.’

‘Theresa Lisa Farrell. Theresa Farrell. I prefer it without.’

‘Yes, but if she has a middle name it gives her a choice. Some people don’t like their first name, she could use Lisa then.’

‘We don’t need to decide yet.’ He lay back and put his cigarette to his mouth again.

The baby’s face furrowed and she turned a deep red. She twisted her head left and right and began to cry, a lusty sound as though some sudden calamity had befallen her.

‘Oh, dear. Here –’ she held the child out to Adam – ‘mind your cigarette.’ He ground it out between the roots of the tree. ‘There. I’ll make her bottle.’

He held the baby in the crook of one arm and walked over the grass singing ‘The Grand Old Duke Of York’, loudly and off-key.

Kay went in close to tears, the swell of emotions overwhelming her. I am a mother, she thought. She is my daughter. She wanted to dance and pray and never, never forget the moment. She put a stack of records on to play, sang along to Jerry Keller’s ‘Here Comes Summer’ as she got out the ingredients for salmon salad sandwiches. Jived round the kitchen to ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ by Eddie Cochran.

Caroline

Caroline was accepted into the nursing school at Manchester Royal Infirmary and began work in January 1962.

The regime was extremely strict. The new recruits lived in fear of the senior staff and Matron enjoyed a ferocious reputation and a godlike status.

The job was demanding. Caroline was responsible for bed-making, emptying bedpans, assisting other staff, lifting and assisting patients to use the toilet, serving drinks and changing dressings. She knew she hadn’t much of a bedside manner and preferred the patients who were too ill to make small talk.

She missed the open air. The nearest park, Whitworth park, was a flat space with trees and shrubs. She hungered for hills and huge outcrops of rocks, clean air and breathtaking views. Manchester was filthy. Her uniform was thick with grime before she’d finished her shift and the smog was awful. Caroline shared a room in the nurses’ home with Victoria and Doreen. Doreen had come from Ireland, she was little and doll-like and made them laugh with her Irish sayings and her occasional bad language. Two months after they all started she disappeared.

‘Her clothes have gone.’ Victoria showed Caroline the empty drawers. ‘Everything.’

‘Maybe she was homesick?’

‘She never said anything. Do you think we could ask someone?’

Caroline shrugged. She didn’t fancy trying to talk to anyone about it. They’d bite your head off soon as look at you.

A new girl was allocated to take the room and still nothing was said.

In the end Victoria persuaded Caroline to join forces with her and approach Sister Mahr, one of the younger nurses who had a lot of contact with the new girls.

She led them into the nurses’ station and shut the door.

‘I’m afraid Doreen let herself and everybody down. She behaved improperly and found herself expecting.’

Caroline felt her face go cold, a prickle brushed across her neck and upper arms. She stared at the floor.

‘Instead of throwing herself on the mercy of the societies that are there to help, she . . .’

Caroline swallowed, remembered the corner in the garden, the feel of the shawl, the weight of the baby cradled in one arm.

‘. . . she tried to kill her baby.’

Victoria drew her breath in sharply, her hand flew to her mouth.

There had been no rumours, Caroline thought, not a whisper. If she’d collapsed in the hospital someone would have seen something, overheard enough to pass on.

‘She went to an abortionist.’ The word was shocking. Like a big, dark-red blood clot in the nurse’s mouth. ‘The police are involved.’

Caroline could feel heat blooming through her, replacing the shivers, pressure in her head. Oh, Doreen.

‘What will happen to her?’ Victoria asked.

‘Nothing now. She didn’t survive. They found her by the canal.’ Her voice was bitter.

‘Oh,’ Victoria said softly.

Doreen. Little Doreen with her bright eyes and her delicate features. Why hadn’t she gone to St Ann’s? How on earth did she know where to find a person who did that? What did they use? She imagined a knife, a grappling hook, balked at the pictures.

A ewe had haemorrhaged once up on Colby’s Farm. So much blood and the ewe had struggled until its wool was crimson and then it had jerked, spasms racking it until it lay still.

Doreen. Did her family know? Would she get a proper burial? Caroline couldn’t find the words to ask. Why had they come here? It would be better not to know, to imagine that Doreen had just gone home, fed up of the place.

‘I want you girls to promise me that you will not speak about this to anyone else. It is a tragic thing and it would never have happened if Doreen had remembered the importance of staying pure. You give me your word?’

They both did. Victoria’s voice shaky with emotion.

Caroline dreamt of Doreen that night. Doreen lay in her arms singing, a lovely ballad. She was wrapped in a shawl, sticky and dark with blood.

‘Nurse!’ The cry was like a bleat. The young man in the end bed. He’d been brought in that afternoon, his leg crushed by a forklift truck. He’d been in the Army doing National Service for the last eighteen months. A year younger and this would never have happened to him. They’d abolished it now. He’d been in the last batch, called up in 1960. She took a look at him, his lips taut with pain, tongue gripped between his teeth. Pearls of sweat sprinkled on his forehead.