Anne Bennett - Pack Up Your Troubles

The day after Elsie’s letter two more arrived for Maeve. One was from a confused Michael O’Toole. He said he presumed Maeve had run home and couldn’t understand why she’d done it, and Brendan, who’d been to his door, was just as confused as he was. The second letter, ill-written and ill-spelt, was from Brendan, demanding Maeve’s return. He reminded her she was his wife and therefore had a duty to him. Maeve barely finished the letter before she crumpled it in a ball and threw it into the fire.

She hoped any complaint and demands he was going to make would be confined to letters, for those she could handle. She’d had nightmares at first that he’d come straight after her, bawling and shouting, and was relieved as the second week drew to a close that that didn’t happen. She was beginning slowly to relax.

Not willing to tell the neighbours the whole tale of Maeve and her children fleeing from a drunken brutal husband and father, the Brannigans said the little family were on a wee holiday as the weans had been ill. No one doubted that when they looked at their pinched faces and, as it was just two weeks to the Easter holidays, the story was easy enough to believe. Coming away from Mass the first Sunday, Maeve was greeted by Father O’Brien. He hadn’t seen Maeve in years, but when he looked at the children’s stick-like arms and legs and the city pallor on their faces he thought it was a good job indeed that she’d brought them home for a wee while.

‘Come to get some fresh air in your lungs and some good food in your stomachs, have you?’ he asked them heartily.

The children regarded the priest gravely. They were used to priests and the strange way they had about them, and knew the best and easiest practice was always to agree. ‘Yes, Father,’ they said in unison.

The priest said a similar thing the next week and the children made a similar response. By then, most of the parish knew Maeve was home and not before time, most said, by the look of them all. She was welcomed by women of her own age she’d been at school with and scores of neighbours and friends she’d known for years. Many asked her up for an afternoon or evening, but she always made excuses not to go. She didn’t want to be asked any searching questions about her absent husband, or life back in Birmingham.

She was not unhappy. She was at peace and wanted nothing more than that.

The Easter holidays began and the days slid pleasantly one into another. The children followed their grandfather round the farm as he showed them the things growing in the ground, or lifted them up for rides on the tractor.

No animals frightened them now, not the barking boisterous dogs, nor the clucking hens, not even the strutting rooster, nor smelly pig and certainly not the cows that had startled them the first night. They thought their mournful brown eyes looked sad or wise or both, and when the cows stuck their heads over the fence to be stroked their fur felt like velvet and both children loved them.

All in all they were delighted with the place, which was as different from their own home as anything could possibly be. Also, for the first time, they enjoyed their lives free of stress and fear. Their faces had lost the wary look they’d had on arrival and Maeve marvelled at the difference in them after only a few weeks and knew she’d made the right decision to bring them home to Ireland.

The Wednesday before Easter, in Holy Week, Maeve went to confession one evening. It would be her second time, for she’d been to confession the first week she’d arrived, but she always went before Easter like all good Catholics.

She went through the usual litany of sins, feelings and expressing anger, small acts of spitefulness, the odd swearword or blasphemy, impatience, forgetting prayers, letting her attention slip at Mass and the odd impure thought that entered her mind.

When she finished, there was silence the other side of the grille and then the priest, his voice as cold as steel, said, ‘Go on, my child.’

‘I . . . I can’t think of any more sins, Father.’

‘Maeve, I’m ashamed of you,’ the priest said sternly. ‘You have shattered the sacrament of marriage in which God has joined you to Brendan Hogan for life. Yet you chose to walk out on him, depriving him of his wife and children. Don’t you think that is something to repent of and ask forgiveness for?’

Maeve was stunned. She wondered for a moment how he knew, but Father O’Brien then enlightened her without her having to ask. ‘Just this morning I received a most distressing letter from a Father Trelawney, whom I believe is the parish priest at St Catherine’s where you both attend.’

Maeve wasn’t even surprised. She might have known Brendan would go scurrying to his parish priest to enlist his help. He’d probably been urged on by his family, his domineering father and insignificant mother. ‘See the priest, son. See if he can bring her to her senses.’

Maeve always thought Father Trelawney was Brendan’s partner in crime, for whether it was beating her and Kevin black and blue, or spending every penny in the house on drink, leaving them cold and hungry, Father Trelawney wiped it out in confession. Brendan would return from church smug and certain that his soul was as white as the driven snow and begin his nefarious practices all over again. Well, as far as she was concerned they could all jump in the river. She was not going back to that life.

She swallowed hard and spoke firmly in an effort to explain to the priest. ‘Father, I—’

‘If you do not go back, Maeve,’ the priest said, cutting off Maeve’s attempt at explanation before she’d even begun, ‘I can give you no absolution from your sins. You are committing a mortal sin and if you have no intention of returning to your rightful place beside your husband, God cannot forgive you. You will have to live in a state of sin.’

Maeve stumbled from the box, shocked to the core. She needed confession to feel cleansed from all her wrongdoings in order to be in a state of grace to receive Communion. Now she wouldn’t dare to go up to the altar. For one thing, her conscience wouldn’t let her and for another she’d be terrified Father O’Brien would refuse her the Sacraments and make a show of her.

At home she hid her distress until the children had gone to bed and then sobbed in her mother’s arms. For twenty-seven years she’d been a good Catholic girl, attending Mass on Sundays and going to Devotions and Benediction often, and always going regularly to the Mission when priests travelled around Ireland preaching in the churches. She went to confession every fortnight and took Communion every Sunday and prayed as often as she remembered. The Church and its rituals were part of her life and now she’d been refused absolution because she wouldn’t return to a violent sadistic man who terrorised her and her children and didn’t give them enough money to live on. Yet she felt as if she’d lost a limb, as if she’d been cast adrift, and though she was glad of her mother’s comforting arms, they could not solve the problem. She knew that she’d not heard the end of it.

After Maeve’s experience, none of the rest of the family went to confession either, and for the first time ever, Annie didn’t attend the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. And though they all went to Mass on Easter Sunday morning, no one went to Communion. Most of the congregation took Communion and they looked askance at Annie sitting with her daughters and grandchildren – Thomas and Colin had gone to early Mass – and wondered why they were not going to the altar.

Kevin and Grace were blissfully unaware of any dissension in the family, for nothing was discussed in front of them. By Easter Sunday they’d had a wonderful week with their Uncle Colin and Aunt Nuala, who spent a lot of time with their young relations whenever their chores on the farm enabled them to.