Anne Bennett - Love Me Tender

So Kathy said nothing more and put Lizzie’s old boots away for Danny – maybe she could afford to have them soled sometime. Anyway, for a wee while longer the children were all right, and she blessed the fact that she had her close family all around her to help out all they could.

Mary knew things weren’t right between Kathy and Barry, but she said nothing, not even to her husband Eamonn. Though both seemed fine with the children, there was a definite frostiness between them. Few would have seen it – there was much jollification when the family all got together, and bad feelings could often be successfully covered up – and she hoped it was just a temporary thing.

New Year’s Eve was celebrated as always at the Sullivans’, where all the clan and many neighbours crammed into the little house and the children took refuge under the table with eatables they’d pilfered. Pat, the eldest of the Sullivans’ sons, was the ‘First Foot’ after midnight and arrived at the door to a chorus of ‘Happy New Year!’ carrying some silver coins, a lump of coal and a bottle of whisky that Eamonn had hidden away. They all drank a toast and hoped that 1938 would be a better year. Mary was glad to see Barry with a wide smile on his face for once. Of course that could be put down to the amount he’d drunk, not that it had been excessive but Mary had the idea that he and Kathy lived on bread and scrape and not much of that. On that sort of diet it didn’t take more than a drop or two to knock a man off his feet. She worried they’d both become ill if they didn’t eat more, and Barry needed to keep his strength up so that if he got a job, he’d be able for it.

She did what she could by feeding the children as often as Kathy let them come, and often sent round a pie or bit of stew and the odd loaf, but she had the feeling that it fed the children only. They were certainly sturdy enough and had the well-nourished look missing from many of the ragged, bare-footed children one saw around. God, it was desperate, so it was, how some of them lived.

Lizzie was a carbon copy of her mother, with jet-black hair and dark-brown eyes with long black lashes, but she still had the bloom Kathy had lost. Her face was the open one of a child, not the old face of many of the urchins, and her cheeks had the pink tinge Kathy’s had once boasted. She also had her mother’s wide mouth, but no worry lines were there to pull it down.

Danny had his father’s sandy hair, and a bit of the chubbiness of babyhood still clung to him. He was very like his father, with his round face, and he had the same-shaped nose and mouth as Barry, but his deep-brown eyes were like those of his mother and sister, for his father’s eyes were grey. Indeed, Mary thought they were fine children, and enough to look after when a man had no job. Thank God Kathy had had no more after Danny.

Kathy pleaded tiredness just after twelve, and Eamonn helped her carry the sleepy children home and put them to bed, but Barry stayed on longer, pouring out his troubles to his good friend, Pat. He and Pat had been through school together since the age of five, and it was through him that Barry had begun courting Kathy. Pat’s own wife Bridie was known as a nag, but he was so easy-going, it seldom bothered him. ‘Water off a duck’s back,’ he was fond of saying, but he sensed that whatever was wrong between Barry and Kathy went deeper and couldn’t be laughed off.

‘I don’t know what she wants me to do,’ Barry complained. ‘God knows I’ve looked for work hard enough. If I stay in she nags, if I go out she complains. If I play with the weans I’m spoiling them and I could be doing something useful.’ Barry shook his head from side to side in puzzlement at it all.

‘God, Barry, don’t be trying to understand women,’ Pat said. ‘What goes on in their minds is beyond me altogether, we just have to put up with it.’

Barry wondered if he could. There had been times before Christmas when he’d wanted to walk out and leave them all to it.

‘Come on,’ Pat said. ‘It’s a new year, a new start, nineteen thirty-eight will be your year, you’ll see.’

Barry chinked his glass against his brother-in-law’s. ‘New year, new job,’ Pat said, and Barry was infected by his optimism.

‘Aye,’ he agreed.

It was much later when he made his unsteady way home. Once inside his own house he began to see the stupidity of thinking that way. New Year’s Eve was just a day like any other, and he was just as unlikely to get a job in 1938 as he had been in ’37, ’36, ’35 or ’34. God, the dole was a living death that ate away at you inside, and now he’d got Kathy pouring scorn on him for not trying hard enough.

Upstairs, Kathy was either asleep or pretending to be. Either way, it suited Barry, and he slid in quietly beside her. God, what a life, he thought. I have a wife who lies beside me like a stranger and who hardly talks to me, and he remembered with a twinge of nostalgia the heady days early in their marriage when they couldn’t get enough of each other. Now, Barry thought, Kathy had settled without complaint into a sexless relationship. Maybe sex hadn’t been important to her. Maybe she’d just pretended that it had. He’d known from his limited sexual experience that most women didn’t enjoy it, and he thought that in Kathy he’d found a gem. Just went to show it was all put on, a pretence, or surely she would have said something by now. Ah, but what the odds, what could he have done even if she’d said anything? Once he’d loved her so much, but it seemed a lifetime ago now. With a grunt that was almost a groan, he turned on his side away from Kathy and settled to sleep.

*

One raw February day, the O’Malley household was roused by a furious knocking on the door. The clock showed barely six o’clock, and Barry struggled into his trousers and ran down the stairs to find young Michael on the doorstep. Michael had been on the dole for just over a month, as everyone had expected. Now he was breathless, both because he’d run from his house and also because of excitement.

Barry pulled him inside, for the wind was fierce. He knew something must have happened for Michael to be there so early in the morning, and in such a state of agitation. ‘What is it?’

‘They’re…they’re setting on at BSA,’ Michael panted, hardly able to get the words out.

Barry hadn’t been aware he was holding his breath till he suddenly let it out in a loud sigh. He’d been expecting bad news of some sort, but this…He remembered how once he’d been like Michael, shooting off in all directions, chasing one job offer and the hundreds after it. He couldn’t feel excitement like that again, but he couldn’t dim the light in Michael’s eyes. ‘Where did you hear it?’ he asked.

‘Paddy Molloy came in this morning and was after telling Da. He was set on yesterday. His cousin told him about it.’

‘BSA the cycle place?’

‘Aye.’

‘And this was yesterday?’

‘Aye, last night.’

‘Any vacancies will be long gone by now, Michael.’

‘No, it’s new lines, I’m telling you,’ Michael burst out. ‘Molloy said there’ll be jobs for us all, and the new lines aren’t making bicycles.’

‘Well what, then?’

‘Guns.’

‘Guns?’ Kathy exclaimed. Neither Barry nor Michael had seen her come into the room. Now she stood before her brother, Danny in her arms, and repeated, ‘Guns! Did you say they’re making guns?’

‘Aye, Molloy told us. A lot of the old workers have been made up to inspectors, he said.’

‘But what do they want so many guns for?’ Kathy asked.

‘How should I know?’

Barry thought he knew only too well, but he didn’t share his thoughts. Instead he said, ‘Well, I’m away to get dressed. It’s worth going for if all Molloy says is true.’