Anne Bennett - A Strong Hand to Hold

However, by the end of September, ‘The Battle of Britain’ was over, the Allies were victorious and Britain safe once more from invasion. Anthony had been home on leave for a few days. Now, just two short months later, he was dead. Jenny let out a long, shuddering groan.

She got to her feet, shivering, and went into the living room, where her mother seemed awash with tears; Eileen Gillespie held her daughter pressed to her breast. Jenny would have welcomed comforting arms around her, but she knew that would never happen. Anyway, there were practical things to do, and she seemed the only one able to deal with them. She first had to phone the Dunlop where she worked as a typist, and then see her sister Geraldine and her sister-in-law Jan, the wife of her eldest brother Seamus, to tell them the tragic news.

She didn’t want to see the priest – she felt God had let her down – but her grandmother said Norah needed him to visit and so she made herself go that afternoon. Geraldine and her small son Jamie were installed in the house by then, for Geraldine said she was worried how the news of Anthony’s death would affect Mother with her delicate state of health.

As Jenny went down Holly Lane to the priest’s house, she wondered for the thousandth time why the whole family went on with the pretence that her mother was some sort of invalid. Norah O’Leary was nothing of the sort, and if she knew so must they – but Jenny had only ever spoken about it with Anthony. For years it had been the same, and Norah had kept her husband Dermot dancing attendance on her because of it.

When he’d breathed his last, in the spring of 1939, Jenny had known with fearful trepidation that she, as the only unmarried daughter, would be expected to take over from her father. The prospect filled her with dread, for she knew her mother didn’t like her that much – and to be truthful, she wasn’t that keen on her mother either!

She had hoped the war might postpone the grim prospect she saw before her, but when she suggested giving up her job and joining the WAAFs, the family were loud in their condemnation. Only Anthony told her to go for it. More than once, he and Jenny had glimpsed their mother through the window walking around with no apparent stiffness and without her sticks, and yet when they entered the house later, they would see her sitting in her chair, covered with a blanket, complaining of the agony she was in.

Norah O’Leary was a fraud, and both her younger children knew it. Jenny remembered how Anthony had told her to drop the charade the others practised. ‘For God’s sake,’ he’d said, ‘stand up to Mother before it’s too late.’

‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ Jenny had cried. ‘You’re a man. You’ll soon be out of it.’

‘So could you be,’ Anthony had pointed out. ‘Join up, if that’s what you want. Mother’s not helpless and Geraldine only lives up the road.’

But it had been no good. Jenny had been unable to withstand them all telling her how selfish and inconsiderate she was and how she should know where her duty lay. She supposed she’d scored a minor victory though in refusing to give up her job when Geraldine had suggested it.

‘How will you cope?’ her elder sister had asked.

True, in the beginning it had been hard dealing with her mother and the housework as well as her job. Previously her father had seen to many of Norah’s needs; now there was just Jenny to do everything. She’d been glad Anthony was too young to join up with his elder brothers straight away, for she’d depended on him a lot and they’d grown closer still. Yet however hard it had been, and still was, Jenny knew that if she’d been with her mother day in, day out, she’d not have been able to stand it.

And how in God’s name was she to stand this latest blow? she thought, as she turned up the garden path of the Presbytery. Who would she confide in now and tell her hopes and dreams to? Who now would deflect her mother’s anger and comfort Jenny when Norah had reduced her to tears yet again. Jenny’s eyes misted over with misery, but she refused to let any tears fall. She had an idea that once she began crying, she’d never stop – and she had to talk to the priest.

Father O’Malley was very sorry to hear about Anthony. Jenny was not the only one of his parishioners to come to him with similar news, but it wouldn’t be helpful to tell her that. He looked at the girl, so different from her brothers and sisters in both looks and build, and saw the sorrow in her eyes. He knew, as many did, how close the two younger O’Leary children were, for there was a largish gap between them and the others. Now the girl must be twenty or so. He remembered the time before her birth when Norah had come to see him and asked him to speak to her husband, who she’d said had forced himself upon her. She was pregnant again because of it and she didn’t want the child: Francis her youngest had been six and she’d thought four children enough for anyone.

Of course he could do nothing for the woman, but tell her firmly that she had to be grateful for any children that God sent her. He also said that it was not a woman’s place to refuse the husband to whom she had promised obedience in the marriage ceremony. Dermot, he’d said, had rights. And he must have insisted upon them – for Anthony had been born just two years after Jenny. Altogether the priest thought Norah O’Leary had had little to moan about in those days, with a fine handsome family and Dermot able and willing to work all the hours God sent to provide for them and not spend it all in the pub. Not all women were as lucky. Of course, her disability would have been hard to bear, he could understand that, and then to lose Dermot had been a big blow. Her children would have been a fine consolation for her, if the damned war hadn’t taken the young men of the family away. Thank God, he thought, she still had the girls – and Geraldine, now married, was still near at hand.

Father O’Malley had liked young Anthony. He’d been a fine boy, like his brothers before him. As mischievous as the next, though – not averse to taking the odd sip of Communion wine when he was serving on the altar, or filling his water pistol with holy water, as he recalled. But that was boys for you. The priest sighed. He’d have to go up and see Norah and try to offer the poor woman some comfort.

On the way home, Jenny decided to go to her Gran O’Leary’s, for she knew no one else would bother to tell the old lady about Anthony. Norah herself hated her mother-in-law. Not that she was a great one for liking people generally, but she really seemed to loathe Maureen O’Leary. She called her fat and common, and said she’d only put up with her on sufferance while her husband was alive, and now that Dermot was dead, she refused to have anything more to do with her.

Jenny didn’t care if her Gran O’Leary was common, but the woman her mother described scathingly as ‘fat’ Jenny herself would have called ‘cuddly’. Her lap was just the right size for a child to snuggle into, in order to lean against her soft and very ample breasts, while her plump arms were the most comfortable and comforting pillow Jenny had ever known. Maureen O’Leary always had an apron tied around her waist and her feet were encased in men’s socks, especially during the winter, with downtrodden slippers or old boots on top. Jenny didn’t care either that her gran cursed and swore a bit and hadn’t had the benefit of a decent education, Gran O’Leary was the only woman who’d ever shown her any love in her young life. She could never remember her own mother giving her a cuddle, or tucking her up in bed at night.

But then, as her Gran said, you couldn’t make people what they were not and she had to accept that. Jenny knew her Gran had loved Anthony, and it was right that she should be informed about his death; the four eldest O’Leary children had little or nothing to do with old Mrs O’Leary, because Norah had wanted it that way. Jenny thought it a shame, especially as she’d had so much to do with them all when they’d been small, but Maureen had never complained – at least not to Jenny. She’d once told her that Dermot had had very little influence over his elder children because he’d been away so much. First the Great War had claimed him, and then, once they’d come to England, he’d had to find work and money enough to support his mother’s family as well as his own.