Anne Bennett - Mother’s Only Child

‘You had no right.’

‘I had every right,’ Barney said. ‘She’d been on her feet all day and was tired, yawning like a good one. I sent her home as a kindness to her, and said I would wait for you. Fine consideration you had for the woman doing you a favour, for you are powerfully late.’

Maria flushed with embarrassment, because she knew Barney had a point. ‘Yes, I didn’t mean it to be such a long night. We went for a drink after we’d been in to see Daddy.’

Barney’s innards were twisted with jealousy for Greg Hopkins, who’d had Maria’s company all night, but he remembered Seamus telling him not to fret when he’d complained before. ‘Your man will be back to soldiering soon,’ he’d said, ‘and the way clear for you.’ So Barney swallowed the anger.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ Maria asked him.

‘I needed to talk to you.’

‘It’s very late, as you pointed out,’ Maria said. ‘Couldn’t it have waited?’

‘I didn’t think so,’ Barney said. ‘We need to discuss the boatyard.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Maria said. ‘I didn’t know you’d engaged Colm, Willie’s grandson.’

‘He’s left school now and was for ever asking me if I could get him set on.’

‘Even so,’ Maria said, ‘it should have been discussed.’

‘I talked it over with your father,’ Barney said. ‘All right, perhaps I should have mentioned it to you as well, but the point is the boatyard barely makes enough to pay the boy, so I have got another job.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s delivering supplies over the border to the naval staff.’

‘Oh,’ Maria said again, surprised. ‘Are you employed by the military then?’

‘No, it’s a private concern.’

Barney didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t say he was joining Seamus to smuggle poteen and rationed goods across the border, bringing back petrol, fertiliser and animal feed. All these things were transported under the cover of darkness, as was Seamus’s setting-up of card schools, which now Barney would be involved in. They had special packs of cards and many tricks to fleece the sailors of their money, especially when the sailors’ brains were addled with poteen.

But Maria wasn’t suspicious. In her opinion the services had to have supplies and the job seemed a legitimate one.

‘I’ve told Colm in the afternoons I’ll still be around to deal with anything he can’t handle,’ Barney said.

‘I appreciate that.’

‘Least I can do,’ Barney said, pouring himself another large glass of poteen. He proffered the bottle in Maria’s direction. ‘Want one?’

Maria shook her head. She was more than tired—shattered suddenly—and she really wanted to be rid of Barney so that she could lie in bed and think about the new future Greg had offered her.

Barney saw the dreamy look in Maria’s eyes. Christ! For two pins he call that Greg out and pound him to pulp. And then what? said a little voice in his head. You would be the one up before the magistrate and Maria would never want anything to do with you ever again. Wait till he’s away and you are not before you move in.

‘I’ll be off then,’ he said to Maria. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

‘Probably.’

Probably, thought Barney. One time it would have been ‘of course’, but that was before lover boy’s appearance. Well, he would have patience. It wasn’t something he was noted for, but he imagined he could learn it as quick as the next man if he had to.

Early the next evening, Greg took Maria into Derry after she’d taken tea with his family. Maria hadn’t wanted to go to tea, but Greg had insisted. Greg’s parents and his two brothers and two sisters were welcoming, and when Maria left, she knew they would accept her into their family with little or no trouble.

They went again to a cinema in Derry to see The Road to Singapore, which starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Maria had never heard of them, but Greg told her these were the names of big stars that were in the major films of the time. Maria enjoyed the film immensely.

At the door, Greg took Maria in his arms and kissed her neck and eyes before moving to her lips. This time his tongue parted her lips gently and sent sharp shafts of desire that she didn’t fully understand shooting through her body. She gasped with the shock of it, the beginnings of sexual awareness.

‘I love you, Greg!’ She didn’t know where the words came from. She knew she meant them—that with every fibre of her being she loved Greg Hopkins.

Greg was overjoyed. ‘I love you, Maria Foley, with every bit of me. You mean everything to me.’

They kissed and kissed again. Greg kept his arms around Maria though his hands tingled to explore every inch of her luscious body.

As Maria donned the overall and hat that every vestige of hair had to be tucked beneath, and began to work on the coarse army garb on the heavy machines, she couldn’t help contrasting her life now with the life she’d once had offered to her. This work was mind-blowingly boring. The heat in the factory was stifling, and the lint floating in the air stung her eyes and made her sneeze and cough.

But the other girls made it all worthwhile. They laughed and joked, seeming not to care for the inconveniences.

‘All I care about is the money,’ Joanne, the girl sitting next to Maria, said. ‘Everything else is secondary to that. What do you say, Maria?’

‘I feel the same,’ Maria said.

‘And we get a good whack for what we do when all is said and done,’ Joanne said.

They did. It was piecework and if you were a fast worker, you could make as much as five or six pounds a week. If they can put up with it then so can I, Maria thought determinedly. She laughed and joked with the best of them and found it helped the day pass quicker.

Nevertheless, she was pleased and relieved when the factory’s blast declared the end of that first day for she felt incredibly weary. ‘Someone’s going to be in the pink all right,’ shouted a woman from the head of the queue shuffling towards the factory gate. ‘There’s a soldier boy waiting for someone.’

Maria’s heart leapt. She shuffled forward eagerly. Soon she was through the gate and Greg was in front of her. Once she was in his arms, tiredness vanished as if it had never been and they were kissing hungrily despite the people passing along the road. No one seemed to mind. In fact it seemed to lighten the dismal late October day to see a couple so much in love.

Maria and Greg were oblivious to everyone but each other.

‘I’m taking you for a meal tonight,’ Greg said, and as Maria was about to protest, he put up his hand. ‘No arguments,’ he said. ‘I have cleared it with Bella and Dora, and tonight, as it is my last night, they are seeing to your mother. Come on, we have a few precious hours together—let’s not spend them any other way than enjoying ourselves.’

And they did enjoy themselves. Greg was good fun and well read. He had an opinion on most subjects, and by the end of the meal, Maria couldn’t think how the hours had sped so fast.

She clung to him that night as he saw her home, knowing she’d not see him for weeks, even months. She could cope with that, but what she fretted about was that Greg would be in some battleground, being blown or shot to bits.

‘Please, please be careful,’ she begged him, as they cuddled together.

‘I will, my darling,’ Greg said between the little kisses he was planting on her lips and eyes. ‘Now, I have something to come home to, someone I love so much it hurts, I will take extra care.’

Greg’s kisses sent Maria’s senses reeling. His hands gently caressing her body felt so right. She made no protest, but kissed him passionately—so passionately that once again Greg had to pull back and his voice was husky as he said, ‘Go on now in, before I forget myself.’