Anne Bennett - Love Me Tender

Kathy looked after him. She couldn’t even feel pleased, and certainly not optimistic. God alone knew she’d been pleased enough in the beginning, when she’d thought Barry would be set on any day and he’d been flying all around the place on one unlikely jaunt after another, until hope had dimmed and dejection set in. ‘Have you time for a drop of tea?’ she asked her brother.

‘No, we’ll have to go as soon as Barry’s ready. We’ll need to be early to have a chance.’ He’d just finished speaking when Barry entered the room, pulling a jumper over his head and grabbing his coat off the hook on the door. Lizzie was trailing behind him.

‘Have you any money?’ Barry asked Kathy. ‘We’ll have to take the tram there at least.’

Kathy tipped out her purse. ‘Two and threepence,’ she said. ‘All the money I have in the world,’ and she extracted a shilling and gave it to him. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ Barry made no move towards her, but she hadn’t expected a kiss; that had stopped some time before. Instead he lifted Danny from her arms and kissed him soundly before setting him on his feet, and then bent down to Lizzie and, kissing her cheek, said, ‘Pray for me, pet, this could be it.’

Kathy felt tears prick behind her eyes as she watched Barry and Michael stride down the road. She might have been a dummy for all the notice her husband took of her. She gave the children their breakfast, supervised their wash and helped Danny get dressed, but her mind was far away. She had no hope left that there’d be a job for Barry, and she feared he’d come back more morose and depressed than ever.

‘It’s all right, Mammy,’ Lizzie assured her, catching sight of Kathy’s worried face as they walked to school. ‘I’ve prayed to the Virgin Mary.’

Oh, to have a child’s faith, Kathy thought, but she smiled at her daughter and gave her hand a squeeze. She couldn’t help wondering, though, what BSA wanted with so many guns, and why they should take on Michael and Barry when neither of them knew a damn thing about making them.

But when Barry came back, one look at his face told Kathy he’d been successful, and when he caught her around the waist and hugged her, she suppressed the thought that if Lizzie hadn’t been at school and Danny at her mother’s she wouldn’t have got a look-in. ‘I start tomorrow at six,’ Barry said. ‘Michael’s working along with me and we have as much overtime as we can take.’

‘That’s great, so it is! Great!’ Kathy said, and she felt the worry of the last years slip from her.

‘Is that trying hard enough for you?’ Barry asked, his face stern.

‘Oh, can’t we forget that stupid quarrel?’ Kathy said. ‘I was sorry as soon as I said it. God, how many times I wished it unsaid.’

‘You never told me.’

‘I’m telling you now, and I am sorry, Barry, truly I am,’ Kathy said, facing her husband.

Suddenly Barry was seized by desire for his young wife. ‘You could show me how sorry you really are,’ he said, and his face was very close to Kathy’s, his voice slightly husky. She could read the expression in his eyes and knew what he wanted. ‘We have the place to ourselves and it’s been a bloody long time.’

Too right, Kathy thought, and though she had plenty to do, she turned the key in the lock of the door to the street and the one into the entry, and followed her husband up the stairs.

Lizzie really missed her father when he went to work, though she sensed everyone else was pleased. Her mother didn’t snap so much at her and Danny now, and she was friends with her daddy again. Lizzie often saw them laughing together, and Daddy sometimes kissed Mammy when he thought no one could see.

So they were all happier, and Grandma said that, ‘Things are back to normal again, thank God,’ and only Lizzie was the slightest bit miserable. Her father worked long hours and any overtime going, and he got home too late and too tired to play with Lizzie and Danny as he used to. Often he was so late they were in bed when he got in and he had only time to give them a kiss. Danny had often fallen asleep, but Lizzie would wait, however tired she was, for her father’s tread on the stairs.

It was June now and almost Lizzie’s seventh birthday. Just after it, she would make her first holy communion. She knew most of her catechism and things were going along nicely at school, but no one at home seemed bothered. Who would make her dress, Lizzie wondered, or could she choose one, in the market? She imagined a veil with flowers on the band at the front like she’d seen others wearing. She longed for white sandals, which would be the prettiest shoes she’d ever had in her life, and white socks, so different from the grey woollen ones of winter and the bare legs of summer.

Eventually she broached the subject with her mother. ‘You’re neither having a dress made nor am I buying one; you’re having Sheelagh’s.’

‘Sheelagh’s?’ She was having to wear a cast-off from her hated cousin Sheelagh! Why hadn’t she thought that could happen? Her cousin was a year older than her and so had had her first communion the previous year. ‘And are the veil and the sandals and socks from Sheelagh too?’

‘Yes, and you can take that look off your face, miss, before I take it off for you,’ her mother said angrily. ‘I know your father’s working now, but there’s a lot of things we need and it’s silly to spend money on things Sheelagh already has.’

Lizzie knew she was right, but it made it no easier to bear. Nor did the party that her mammy arranged for Lizzie’s seventh birthday make it much easier either. She’d never had a party before, and the jelly and blancmange and tinned fruit had been delicious and she should have been thrilled. But across the table sat her hated cousin with a silly smile on her face that made Lizzie want to smack her. Sheelagh was a spiteful cat, and Lizzie knew what she was thinking, and she knew that she’d tell them all at school that Lizzie O’Malley was wearing her old communion dress.

But before long, Lizzie had more to worry about, and that was confession! Miss Conroy had let all the new communicants look in the confessional box, and of course they’d rehearsed and rehearsed all they would say, but that was nothing like the real thing.

The night before, she lay in bed thinking about it, and the more she thought, the more despairing she became. It was her first confession, and for that reason she’d had to examine her conscience not just for the last week or fortnight, but for the whole of her seven years. Lizzie decided there were a devil of a lot of sins you could build up in seven years, and she thought of all the bad things she’d done.

Disobedience – she wasn’t very good at doing as she was told. Not that she openly disobeyed her mother, or even her grandma – she might be bold, but she wasn’t stupid, and she had no wish to shorten her life. Forgetting prayers – oh, how easy it was to slip between the sheets at night if her mother and father didn’t come up straight away and make her kneel beside the bed. Then, when they did come up, Lizzie, not wishing to leave her warm bed, would often say she’d already said her prayers, so that was adding lies to it. And in the morning she was up and away and had started the day before she gave a mind to them, and then something more interesting would claim her attention if and when she did ever remember. Then there was fighting – she wondered if that was a sin; if it was, her soul must be as black as pitch, she decided, for she’d fought with Sheelagh for as long as she could remember.

And who would be hearing confession? It mattered because Father Flaherty was likely to give you a whole decade of the rosary for forgetting your prayers once, while Father Cunningham was much kinder and more understanding. But did you know who it was when they had the screen between them and you, and then voices were probably muffled in the box?