Anne Bennett - Mother’s Only Child

‘But, why come here?’ Maria had asked him one day, when he had been there more than a year and was ready to leave school. ‘It seems such an odd thing to do, when you were not born and bred for it.’

Greg had shrugged. ‘Dad hadn’t worked for two years when we came here. He wasn’t the only one, or owt. Many like him were hit by the slump. We were on our beam ends, nearly starving, and when we got the news about the farm out of blue, Dad said it was like a miracle. He’s pulled the farm round and it’s doing all right. At least we all get enough to eat.’

‘Do you like farm work?’

‘I hate it,’ Greg had said fiercely. ‘And I hate this little village—in fact, the whole of Inishowen—and one day I’ll go back to Birmingham. I know I’ll have to wait a while; Phil is only just ten, Billy two years younger still—the girls don’t count—and they wouldn’t be able to be much of a hand to our dad. Anyway, there’s no work for anyone much in Birmingham at the moment, but I don’t intend to stop here all the days of my life.’

But, while Greg had waited, he found Maria to be a fine distraction, especially as she grew and began attending the socials held for the young people at the church. There he danced with her many times, often walked her home and sought her company after Mass.

‘You have an admirer,’ Sarah said. She knew nothing of Greg’s restlessness. All she saw was that Greg was the eldest son and set to inherit the farm, and the family were respectable and God-fearing. If her daughter was to marry Greg Hopkins, Maria would live not far from her parents at all, and that would fulfil Sarah’s dream.

Maria wasn’t ready for any sort of relationship. ‘Don’t be silly, Mammy, he’s just being kind,’ she said. ‘He’s the same with everyone.’

That morning, though, she so wished he was there to tell her news to.

There was another person she wished was still in Moville. Philomena Clarke had been the tutor at the evening classes for dressmaking who had recognised Maria’s quite exceptional talent and knew that she had the chance of winning a scholarship to the Academy. They had gone together to the college in Derry for Maria to take the exam in May, and she had even promised she would travel down to Dublin with her and settle her in.

However, life had a hammer blow waiting to hit Philomena, for the day after the exam she had a telegram from New York from the husband of her twin sister, who had been badly injured in a car accident and was asking for her. Philomena was gone within days and a little after she had left, Maria had a letter from her. Her sister had died, leaving the husband distraught, and she had decided to stay to help him rear his three small children, who were devastated and traumatised by the tragedy.

Maria was touched that even in the middle of that appalling upheaval and upset, while still grieving for her sister, she still had a thought in her head for Maria.

‘Please write and tell me as soon as you get news from the college,’ she had pleaded in her first letter to Maria. ‘I will be on tenterhooks until I hear from you.’

Maria would write to both Greg and Philomena that very night, she decided, and she walked on, composing the letters in her head as she went.

Bella found Sarah in the scullery, washing the breakfast dishes, her red-rimmed eyes betraying the tears she’d shed. Visibly she tried to take a grip on herself when she saw Bella.

‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘Have you time?’

‘Aye, Mammy’s seeing to the place and Maria will be there at nine.’

‘Maria!’ Sarah said plaintively. ‘What will I do when she leaves, Bella? I’ll be destroyed.’

‘No, you won’t!’ Bella said emphatically. ‘I’ll see you’re not.’

Bella remembered the time Sam Foley had brought his young wife back into the village to live. She’d been only young herself then, and, though married for eight years, she was still childless. Her frustrated maternal instinct was stirred by Sarah, who was only seventeen and looked such a frail and delicate wee thing, with her blonde hair and big blue eyes. The two became good friends.

‘Tom Tall and Butter Ball,’ Bella used to call the two of them, for though Sarah wasn’t that tall, her slenderness made her appear so. Bella was, like her mother, under five foot and ‘as wide and she was high’, she was fond of saying. That wasn’t strictly speaking true, but she was plump and her mother, Dora Carmody, stouter still. Everything about them was round, but their faces were open and friendly and their brown eyes kindly looking. Bella had once had dark blonde hair, but now it was as grey as her mother’s and, like hers, fastened into a bun.

Sam Foley, being the third son, had never thought to inherit the boatyard in Greencastle, nor the family house in nearby Moville. Knowing there would be no opening for him in the family business, his father had apprenticed him to a carpenter friend, who ran his business from a small town called Belleek, in the neighbouring county of Fermanagh, when Sam had been twelve years old.

Sarah Tierney’s family lived not far from the village, on a thriving farm in Derrygonnelly on the banks of the huge Lough Erne, and Sarah often shopped in Belleek with her sisters, Peggy and Mary.

There she met and fell in love with Sam, and he with her. No obstacles were put in the way of her marrying him, for everyone liked the man and knew he was set to inherit the carpentry business, so it was generally thought that Sarah had done well for herself.

Sam’s family had come down for the wedding, and there Sam’s two brothers sought him out and told him they were off to seek their fortune in America as soon as it could be arranged. The boatyard was all his if he wanted it.

Sam wasn’t keen to go back and knew Sarah would be unhappy living so far away from her people, but he also knew his father couldn’t run the place alone. His only option was to return.

The only sweetener to that very bitter pill for Sarah was the house Sam inherited along with the boatyard. It was a fine, solid house just off The Square in Moville. It had two storeys, three bedrooms, and was built of stone with a slate roof. ‘A family house,’ Sam’s father had said. ‘Me and your mother will be fine and dandy in the wee cottage in Greencastle by the boatyard.’

‘I mind the day Sam’s brothers left as if it were yesterday,’ Sarah said to Bella as they drank their tea. ‘We hadn’t been in Moville more than a day or so and we went down to the pier to see them off. Sam had told me that the liners crossing the Atlantic had to be moored out in the deeper waters of Lough Foyle. Passengers were taken out to the ships in small tenders from Moville Pier. There was always a collection of people waiting and that day was no different.

‘Sam’s brothers seemed sorrowful yet, for all their sadness at the parting, they still left. When they climbed into that boat, Sam’s mother’s eyes were so bleak and bereft, I could hardly bear to look at her. The father was holding her fast, or I think she may have thrown herself into the boat after her sons. We waited at the pier side until we saw the small boat bump alongside the liner. The boys gave one last wave and we turned for home. Sam’s mother was crying gulping sobs of such sadness I felt my heart turn over. I thought I understood how she was feeling; I remember thinking I’d die if one of mine was to go such a distance away.’

She sighed and went on, ‘I tell you, Bella, children would tear the very heart out of you.’

However, more tragedy was to hit Sarah. She’d been married just six months when her mother and sisters, Peggy and Mary, took sick with TB. They were all dead before October drew to a close, before Sarah had been able to arrange to go and see them. She’d not even had the chance to bid them goodbye and she spoke of this now to Bella.