Anne Bennett - Pack Up Your Troubles

Even after her purchases there were over twelve pounds in the tin. The train from New Street would cost a guinea altogether for the two children and one pound one and sixpence for Maeve, and the ferry would cost her fifty shillings and half of that amount each for Kevin and Grace.

‘It will be over seven pounds,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s a powerful amount of money.’

Maeve knew it was and she had yet to price the rail bus – the last leg of her journey home. But whatever it cost, she would pay it. She’d go home and raise her children – including the child as yet unborn – in dignity and free from fear.

It was hard saying goodbye to the Mountfords, but harder still saying goodbye to Elsie.

‘He’ll come round here, you know,’ Maeve said. ‘It’ll be the first place he’ll make for.’

‘I’ll just act dumb; it won’t be hard for me to do,’ and Elsie gave a wry smile.

‘He’ll know where I’ve gone,’ Maeve said. ‘God, he knows I have nowhere else.’

‘Will you tell your uncle?’

‘Not before I leave. He sees no harm in Brendan. Not that I’ve told him anything, because his wife, Agnes, is not the understanding type and I didn’t want to be running to him with my problems. If I was to tell him now, he’d probably think we’d just had a wee bit of a row and it only needed him to come and have a wee chat with us both and everything would be all right again.’

‘He’d do that?’ Elsie cried. ‘He’d tell him – even if you asked him not to?’

‘He might,’ Maeve said. ‘He might feel it was his duty. Anyway, I’m not going to risk it.’

And she told no one else either. Barely had the door closed behind Brendan the next morning, before she pulled the case from off the top of the wardrobe and began piling her clothes in it.

She shook the children awake. She hadn’t dared whisper a word of their escape before in case the children let something slip. Kevin was cranky because he was tired and Grace was still sleepy. But when Maeve told them where they were going, all thoughts of sleep sped from them. She said they were going on a train and a big ship over the water to Ireland to see their other gran, Granny Brannigan.

Then she gave them the haversacks and told them to put all their clothes in them. She then put out some of the new clothes that they hadn’t been able to wear yet, the ones she’d kept hidden at Elsie’s.

When they were ready to go, Maeve told them of the bag she’d filled for them with nice things to eat. There were sandwiches of jam, cheese and ham, with sausages and hard-boiled eggs that she’d cooked the night before to eat cold, and a swiss roll for afterwards. She had made two bottles of tea for herself, accepted a bottle of dandelion-and-burdock pop for the children from the Mountfords and packed a couple of old cups without handles to drink from.

‘When can we start on the picnic?’ Kevin had said, his mouth watering at the thought of it.

‘We can have some of the sandwiches on the train,’ Maeve had told him. ‘But not all of them, and no cake and only a little bit of pop.’

‘Oh, Mammy.’

‘It’s no good going on like that,’ Maeve had said sharply. ‘The food has got to last us a long time. It will take us all day to get home.’

Home! Just to say the word lifted her spirits, and she pushed her small son through the door, laughing gently at his disgruntled face.

There was no one about but Elsie to bid the family farewell. It was that hour in the morning when few women would be around; those husbands still in work would have left and the women would be busy organising their families for the day, and Maeve was glad of it.

She and Elsie clung to one another, though they weren’t in the habit of it, and when they drew apart there were tears in both women’s eyes.

‘Write to me?’ Elsie urged, and as Maeve nodded she asked, ‘You have let your family know you’re coming?’

‘Aye,’ Maeve said, but she didn’t say she’d left sending the letter till the day before. It would arrive that morning and it would be too late for her mother to tell her not to come. She didn’t expect a rapturous welcome in the farmhouse in Donegal, for her mother would never countenance a woman leaving her husband. She’d said a novena to the Blessed Virgin that she’d be able to convince her mother that she had a justifiable cause for walking out on Brendan Hogan. Anyway, that was it! She’d burnt her boats now right enough.

She straightened her shoulders, hoisted up her case, bid Elsie goodbye and walked down the street with a child each side of her.

FIVE

The children loved the train, as Maeve knew they would, and they ate their jam sandwiches, washed down with the pop from the cracked cups, almost as soon as they were settled. They were enchanted by the countryside they passed through. Now and again cows stared nervously at them over farm gates and sheep on the hillsides tugged on the grass relentlessly. Maeve told them the names of the animals and of the crops growing that they’d never seen before.

By the time the train reached Liverpool, both children were beginning to tire, but the excitement of going on a ship buoyed them up and the sight of it didn’t disappoint them. ‘Ulster Prince ,’ Kevin said, reading out the name on the side. ‘Isn’t this grand?’ And it was grand, though the day had got duller as they travelled north, and rain began to fall as they went on to the gangplank. Maeve hoped it would stop raining soon so that the children could explore the ship without getting soaked. She peered over the rail and looked at the water lapping backwards and forwards as the vessel shifted slightly. It looked grey and scummy, not unlike the water that was left in the copper in the brew house after she’d done the washing.

The ship’s hooter sounded, making the children jump, and Kevin watched the frenzied activities on the dockside. ‘They’re pulling up the gangplank,’ he cried, ‘and loosening those thick ropes.’

Maeve lifted Grace to look over the rail and the three of them watched the ferry pull away from the shores of England and from Brendan Hogan with relief.

The ferry had gone no distance at all and Liverpool was still a blur on the horizon when Grace began to feel sick. Kevin left his nauseous sister, tended by his mother, who was, he decided, a most peculiar colour herself, and went off to explore the ship.

He was back in just a few minutes. ‘Mammy, there’s a café here,’ he cried, ‘like a proper one with pink curtains at the windows and they’re selling breakfast. Porridge, toast and jam and a pot of tea for one and six.’ He’d watched some of the people eating and his mouth had watered.

Maeve badly wanted to dip into the store of money and give him one and six. It was cheap enough, for Grace was in no state to eat and she herself was trying to ignore the churning of her stomach to deal with her daughter. But, she didn’t know how long the money would have to last them.

Regretfully Maeve shook her head. ‘I have to watch the pennies.’ Kevin didn’t argue – hadn’t it been the same all the days of his life? – but Maeve saw the disappointment in his eyes. She knew he was hungry. They’d not had much to eat on the train and to make it up to him she gave him a few sandwiches, a couple of cold sausages and a slice of cake. After it, Kevin ran around every bit of the ship that he was allowed in, along with other young boys as eager as he was to see all there was to see.

Maeve and Grace didn’t share Kevin’s enthusiasm and were glad to get off the heaving rolling ship and on to dry land once more, where Maeve shared out the rest of the food. Grace was very tired from all the travelling and once she’d eaten a little, she laid her head on her mother’s knee and went fast asleep. Even Kevin allowed his eyelids to droop. He was becoming calmer the further they went from the house, and even Maeve was more relaxed.