Anne Bennett - Mother’s Only Child

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ Greg said with a smile. ‘But don’t worry, I’d never show such disrespect for the girl I want to be my wife.’

‘Oh, Greg!’

Greg gave Maria one last, lingering kiss and then backed away from her with difficulty. He had to leave the next morning before dawn and Maria didn’t try to delay him. She watched him walk away from her. When he reached The Square he stopped to wave, and she returned the wave before turning away and going inside.

The next week, Sam was declared fit to come home. Barney organised the whole thing. He also brought Sam’s bed downstairs, and accompanied Maria to the hospital to bring her father home in the ambulance.

Maria had high hopes that once her father was back, Sarah might take a grip on herself. However, when Sarah saw her crippled husband carried into the house and laid in the bed, the guilt that she’d put him there, that it was her prayers and supplications that had brought Sam to this state, threatened to overwhelm her. She began to rock herself backwards and forwards in the chair and the noise of her keening filled the house as tears steamed from her eyes.

Dora, who had been minding Sarah while Maria was at the hospital, wrapped Sarah in her arms. Sam’s eyes went from his wife to Maria. Maria had said nothing about the mental state of her mother and had just explained her absence at the hospital by saying she wasn’t well, though other visitors had hinted how Sarah was. It was one thing hearing about it, however, and quite another seeing it. He asked himself how he expected Maria to cope with the two of them—he a helpless cripple and Sarah the way she was. It was too much for anyone, least of all a young girl.

‘Holy Mother of God, Maria, I’m so sorry to bring this trouble upon you,’ he said sorrowfully.

‘It’s not of your making, Daddy,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t fret yourself.’

‘Child, dear, it would have been better if I had died in the dock that night.’

‘Now, Daddy, we’ll have none of that talk, and you too, Mammy,’ she went on, turning to her mother, still crying and clasped in Dora’s arms. ‘Come on now, That’s enough. Tears never did a bit of good anyway.’

Sarah did try. The gulping sobs changed to hiccups and then dried up altogether.

Into the silence, Barney said, ‘You only have to ask if you need help. If there is anything, if I can do it for you, then I will.’

‘Thank you, Barney,’ Maria said. She was grateful, because a person never knew when she might have need of a big, strapping man.

In time, Maria got into the swing of caring for her parents. She’d wash and change her father and help Sarah to dress before dropping her off at Bella’s. Then she’d make for the bus, while Dora would go next door to see to Sam. On Maria’s return, she would collect her mother and take her home, then get a meal ready for them. With the meal eaten and the washing-up done, she would wash and change her father and get both him and Sarah ready for bed.

She managed, just, but it was exhausting. The job was the saving of her sanity. She was incredibly grateful to Bella for taking on the care of her mother, not sure if she could do it day in, day out. She only knew she was glad to go into the factory and see the other girls, have a laugh and joke and forget her problems for a while.

She was particularly close to Joanne, with whom she worked side by side. Maria had never had a friend before, for she had lost all those she had made at school when she had been working so single-mindedly for the scholarship. Joanne was four years older than Maria, Derry born and bred, perky, full of fun and just what Maria needed. Joanne thought Maria looked vulnerable, which brought out a protective streak in her.

Besides Joanna, there plenty more willing to be friends with Maria. She had never told them at work about how her life was, but there were others from Moville who had. In fact, Sam’s accident had been the talk of the place. News of an accident of such magnitude cannot be kept from people, though because it had happened in a military establishment, in a country at war, it had never made the papers.

‘Let me get this right,’ said one woman, exchanging news in the street with a neighbour, a few days after Sam’s accident, ‘the man’s a cripple, the woman is off her head and there is only the one daughter to see to them all?’

‘That’s about the strength of it, all right,’ said the other woman. ‘And she is only sixteen and not big, you know—slight, like. She looks even younger than she is. And then before all this, she had a glittering future handed to her and then it was snatched away.’ And she went on to explain about the scholarship.

‘Ah, God help her,’ said the first woman.

This was echoed by many others. By the time Maria started her job in the factory, most of her new colleagues knew all about her and were determined to make the girl welcome. Maria had felt their friendship wash over her from the first day, when she had boarded the bus with neighbours and friends she’d known all her life. They patted her on the back, smiled and wished her well. Then, in the factory, many greeted her as if they had known her for years.

When Joanne asked her out with a group of them one night, though, Maria shook her head. ‘I couldn’t, honestly.’

‘I know how you are placed—’ Joanne said—‘well, most of it anyway—but do you never have time off?’ ‘No, not really.’

‘What about lover boy, who met you that time?’ Joanne persisted. ‘You weren’t making for the bus that night, I bet’

‘That was different,’ Maria said. ‘Greg had been home on leave and that was his last night. Dora, who runs the store and post office with her daughter, Bella, went in and sat with my parents for me. Bella already looks after Mammy in the day and Dora sees to my father so I really can’t ask them to do more as a regular thing. It isn’t easy, you see, because my mother can be awkward and difficult—like a child, you know—and my father is almost completely helpless.’

‘You poor cow.’

The sympathy in Joanne’s voice was nearly Maria’s undoing. She felt tears stinging the back of her throat. She blinked rapidly and willed them not to fall, and her voice was husky as she said, ‘Oh, it’s not so bad. I am getting used to it. And we have marvellous neighbours. A young man that used to work for Daddy in the boatyard comes in almost every night, I suppose on his way to the pub, to see my father. Daddy looks forward to it so much. I think he misses the company of men, you know, and of course the day is a long one for him. But Barney chats to him and they have a few drinks and a game of cards before Barney is on his way again.’

‘It is good to have people like that around you,’ Joanne said. ‘God knows, you need it,’

Maria could only agree and admit to herself that she had been astounded by Barney’s thoughtfulness.

‘Well, I won’t press you to go out with us,’ Joanne said, ‘or keep asking, because there is nothing so annoying, but I want you to know that you would be welcome any time to come out with the crowd, if the opportunity should ever present itself. Or if things start to get on top of you and you need a night out, all you have to do is shout and I will drop everything to give you a good time, a bloody good time because you deserve it.’

Behind the ensuing laughter there was hint of tears because Maria had been so moved by the understanding in Joanne’s voice. She knew she was lucky to work with such lovely people.

In mid-November, Maria’s grandfather gave up his fight for life and slipped away at home and in his own bed as he’d wanted to.