Anne Bennett - Till the Sun Shines Through

‘It wasn’t like that, ‘Bridie protested. ‘Don’t you think if it had begun again, I would have done just that? He’d done nothing, or even said anything the slightly bit wrong for ages. This came out of the blue, the night of the Harvest Dance.’

Mary was puzzled. ‘But Mammy said you went up to the dance with Rosalyn.’ she said.

‘Yes, and Frank was to leave us up, but in the end, he was ill and couldn’t do it, so Francis took us.’

‘Mammy said that in her letter,’ Mary said with a nod. ‘I must admit I was surprised when you barely mentioned the dance in your letter, I thought you’d be full of it.’

‘I left early,’ Bridie said. ‘I’d just heard about Rosalyn leaving for America and I was upset so I went outside so no one would see me crying. I decided to go for a walk before making for home – the dance was still going on and I didn’t want to go home too early.

‘Uncle Francis followed me into that small copse by the hall and he raped me.’ Bridie’s eyes filled with the tears at the memory. ‘After that, I didn’t want to tell anyone of the Harvest Dance, I wanted to forget what happened. Then I missed a period. Mammy noticed, but put it down to my being upset at Rosalyn leaving. After I missed my second period, I started being sick and Mammy was talking of asking the doctor to look me over.’

‘Does she suspect?’

‘Oh no,’ Bridie said. ‘Such a thought would never occur to her. She thinks I’m working too hard and need a tonic. That’s what I’ve let her believe too in the letter I left.’

‘Well, that’s one good thing at any rate,’ Mary said. ‘Now what are we to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bridie said. ‘I thought you’d have some idea.’

‘What, Bridie?’ Mary snapped. ‘D’you think I’m some sort of bloody magician?’

Bridie felt crushed. Her one overriding thought when she realised she was pregnant was of getting to Mary. She’d thought no further than that. Now she realised, with a sense of shock, that the problem still existed: she’d just moved it from Ireland to England. Mary couldn’t work miracles, she had no magic solution, and she was as worried and pain stricken as Bridie.

‘Oh God, Mary, help me,’ Bridie pleaded. ‘There is no one else and to nowhere else I can turn. What am I to do?’

Mary’s heart constricted in pity for her young sister. She’d always had the solutions to Bridie’s problems. Even when Bridie had written about Francis interfering with her, she’d gone over to Ireland and sorted it out. But there was no easy way out of this problem, no get-out clause, and it would do Bridie no good to let her think there was.

There was only one thing to do, though her mind recoiled from even voicing the thought and when she did, she said it in little more than a whisper. ‘Bridie, have you considered the possibility of getting rid of it?’

‘Get rid of it!’ Bridie repeated in shock. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

‘’Course it is,’ Mary said. ‘But I know people who’ve had it done. It can be dangerous though, not something to do unless you understand all the risks involved.’

‘It’s a mortal sin,’ Bridie said quietly.

‘Aye, there’s that to think about too,’ Mary agreed. ‘We’ll discuss all the options and then decide. All right?’

Bridie nodded her head and Mary said, ‘We must make our minds up quickly though. If you decide on abortion, we can’t delay. The later you go, the more dangerous it will be.’

‘How dangerous is it? What do they do?’ Bridie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Mary admitted. ‘I’ve never been near such a place to know what they do, but I’ve known desperate women who have and, God, you’d have to be desperate to do such a thing. I just know it’s usually better to go to someone you know has done it before successfully.’

‘Well, God knows I don’t want to go through with it at all.’

‘Aye, I know,’ Mary said. ‘I’d feel the same.’

‘But I feel nothing at all for the child,’ Bridie said, almost fiercely. ‘I want nothing and no one belonging to Uncle Francis. That bloody man’s near destroyed my life and that of our parents. I hate him and I’ll go to my grave hating him and I know I’d hate the fruit of his loins too.’

‘Don’t cry, Bridie,’ Mary said, dropping to her knees and cradling Bridie to her. ‘I know how you feel about him and no one could ever blame you.’

‘Everyone would blame me, Mary, that’s the point,’ Bridie said, pulling herself from her sister’s arms. ‘But abortion is against the law.’

‘I know that.’

‘What if it was found out and I was put in prison, Mary? I’d never be able to bear that.’

Mary’s own stomach lurched at that thought.

‘And there’s the sin of it all,’ Bridie said forlornly. ‘There’s nothing I can do to atone for this if I go through with it but if I don’t …’

‘If you don’t, you’d be an object of derision and scorn to everyone and with the best will in the world I couldn’t let you stay here.’

Bridie stared at her sister, horrified. ‘Don’t look like that,’ Mary pleaded. ‘Don’t you see what would happen as soon as your condition was discovered? Ellen would have to be in the know and you never know how she would react to news like that, especially not being able to have children herself.’

‘But it isn’t just Ellen I’d worry about,’ Mary went on. ‘There are people around the doors from all over Ireland – Donegal even. There’s a woman known as Peggy McKenna not far from here at all. You’d hardly remember her from home, but she was the eldest of five girls – Maguire was her name then – so you may remember her sisters. Her people lived near Barnes Gap – they’d all have been at Barnes More School with you.’

Bridie cast her mind back. ‘There were Maguire girls I remember,’ she said. ‘They were all older than me and Rosalyn, not particularly friends or anything.’

‘Aye, well, it would do you no good being friends with this Maguire or McKenna either, for she’s a gossip and a troublemaker, a malicious old cow altogether. She’d love just to have a hint of something amiss. Oh, I tell you, Bridie, she’d make hay out of it, so she would.’

Mary saw the blood drain from Bridie’s face at her words. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ she told her sister. ‘We’ll have thought of something long before it becomes obvious. Peggy McKenna and her like will know nothing about any of this.’

Bridie knew, however, that it wasn’t just Peggy McKenna she had to worry about. If she decided to have this baby here, somehow or other, her parents would get to hear of it. Ellen or Mary might easily let something slip in their letters home to make her mammy suspicious, or indeed the priest might say that Mammy had a right to know and take it upon himself to tell her. Bridie had seen coming to Birmingham as a partial solution to her problems, a safe haven where no one would know her. Now she saw quite plainly that it wasn’t far enough away. She felt very frightened and alone as she looked at her sister, her eyes misted over again with tears. ‘But where could I go, Mary, if not here?’

‘Well, that’s it, love,’ Mary said. ‘There are few places. There are these bloody awful homes run by the nuns where you can hide away till the baby’s born and they take it from you and give it up for adoption. From what I heard from a girl who went in one of them, it was like a prison camp. They made them work hard, even while they were in labour, and were constantly reminding them of the sin they had committed and urging them to get on their knees and beg forgiveness.’

‘Oh God,’ Bridie said. ‘Is that what I must do to save my immortal soul?’