Mother’s Only Child

‘And will your father get nothing from the navy or the Government?’ Dora asked.

‘Barney says not.’

‘And the boatyard?’

‘Limping along just,’ Maria said. ‘Willie’s finished. He’s living with his daughter now.’

‘Barney’s been a grand help to you,’ Dora said.

‘He’s been wonderful,’ Maria agreed warmly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without him, and that’s the truth. Daddy has quite revised his opinion of him, but that doesn’t help me find a solution to this problem of earning some money.’

Dora was thoughtful that evening and eventually Bella asked what was bothering her.

‘I could see to Sam through the day once he’s home, so that Maria could get a job, but there’s still the problem of Sarah.’

Bella had been heartbroken to see her friend so ill, and hoped and prayed she might one day recover. She’d taken on a girl called Maggie to help in the shop when Maria left. She said, ‘I could maybe have Sarah here during the day. I’m sure I could find her some occupation, weighing and bagging up or some such. Between myself and Maggie, we’ll manage her. After all, Maria can’t do it all.’

Maria was almost overcome by Bella and Dora’s offer and set about finding a job straight away in one of the factories making military uniforms.

However, a few days before she started work, Greg Hopkins came home on leave and soon landed himself at Maria’s door. She smiled, glad to see him and invited him inside.

‘I can’t tell you how heartsore I am,’ he said, and his dark brown eyes were troubled. ‘My mom wrote and told me.’

‘Thank you, Greg,’ Maria said. She saw that Greg’s boyhood had been shed and he was now a man, fine and strapping. He had always been handsome, but his face had once had a sort of soft look about it. Now that was gone. He looked more determined somehow. He was broader shouldered than he’d ever been and carried himself with confidence and assurance. Maria felt a tremor pass down her body as she looked at him.

‘I’m truly sorry that I won’t be around to help you through this,’ Greg said. ‘Pardon me asking this, and please don’t be offended, but how are you managing for money?’

‘I’m not offended,’ Maria said. ‘I know you are asking only out of concern, but you needn’t worry. Daddy had a little saved from his time in the yard and then the villagers have been marvellous. With Bella and Dora’s help, I have been able to look for a job and I am starting at a shirt factory in Derry in a few days’ time. Bella is taking charge of Mammy during the day and Dora will see to Daddy, once he is ready to come home.’

It was said so matter-of-factly, but Greg heard the sadness and weariness in Maria’s voice and his heart turned over in pity for this lovely, young girl with such a heavy burden across her narrow shoulders.

He was certain now he loved and would always love her and wondered how Maria felt about him. He wouldn’t press her, knowing such a lot had happened to her recently, and she was but sixteen yet.

‘Do you ever get out, Maria?’ he asked. ‘Have time for yourself?’

‘What do you think?’ Maria said. ‘Free time is something I don’t have an abundance of.’

‘I have but a few days before I report back,’ Greg said, ‘and you have less time before you start work. It would please me greatly if you let me take you to the pictures this evening. Gone with the Wind is showing in Derry.’

‘Oh,’ Maria said. The pictures! She’d never been and oh, how she’d longed to often. But she shook her head regretfully. ‘I…I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but…but I just couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘My mother, I couldn’t leave her.’

‘Could someone sit with her, just for the one evening?’

Maria’s mind was racing. Maybe if she got her mother to bed, Dora or Bella could sit in the house until she came back. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll get word to you if I can work something out.’

A little later she said to Bella, ‘D’you think me awful?’

‘No. Why on earth should I?’

‘You know, going out enjoying myself with Mammy how she is, and as for Daddy…‘

Bella liked young Greg Hopkins, had always liked him, and far better than Barney McPhearson for all the great turnout Maria said he’d made of himself.

‘What difference will it make to either of your parents whether you go out or stay in?’

‘It’s just that I feel guilty.’

‘You think things will improve for your mammy if you are miserable?’

Maria smiled. ‘Of course not.’

‘Well then,’ Bella said. ‘You go with an easy conscience and remember Greg will only have a few days before he is back in the battlefields. I’ll be there if your mammy should need anything.’

Maria had never enjoyed herself so much. The film was wonderful, and when she cried, Greg’s arm had gone around her gently in comfort, as he passed her his snow-white hanky. She’d leant against him and sighed. How good it would be, she thought, to have someone special just for herself, someone to lighten the load a little.

Greg’s heart was singing as the two alighted from the bus in The Square. He’d held Maria’s hand in the cinema at first and she took it again as they walked home, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. At the door, Greg kissed her tenderly on the lips.

‘Will you see me tomorrow?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Please. We can take a walk out if the weather is kind to us.’

Maria looked into Greg’s clear, brown eyes and knew that she wanted to see him again and yet still she said, ‘No, not in the daytime. Bella and Dora are kind enough to mind Mammy in the evening so that we can have time together. I will not take advantage of that kindness, and before we do anything else tomorrow, I must see my father.’

Greg didn’t argue further, both because he knew Maria had a point and because she had a way of talking, a certain tone that would brook no argument. But the next evening he turned up in his father’s rattly old tip-up truck he’d had the loan of and so they travelled to Derry in style and Maria took Greg’s hand as they went into the hospital.

Sam liked Greg. He knew too how Sarah had felt about him, the hopes she’d had for him and Maria. Greg sat beside him and told Sam about the lighter side of army life and the high jinks they got up to, and Sam laughed till the tears ran down his weathered cheeks. Then he discussed the true war situation with Greg and found his regard for the man growing.

Sam knew he’d be no help to Maria the way he was, and he saw plainly the way Greg thought about the girl. It was portrayed in his eyes. Of course, Maria was young yet, but so much had happened to her in her brief life that her youth mattered less than getting support for her. Greg Hopkins came from a decent respectable family, whom, he knew, would rally round Maria, particularly if she was the one he wanted. Pity the lad had enlisted really.

And as they left the hospital that night, Greg too wished he’d never left Moville and then he’d be around to help Maria, but nothing could be done about that now. They just had to make the most of the time they had.

‘Care for a drink before we go back?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Maria said. ‘I’ve never been in a public house in my life.’

‘That’s because you’ve been born and bred in Moville,’ Greg said. ‘In other parts of the country, the cities in particular, it is a respectable enough place for women to go to.’ Maria still looked doubtful and Greg tucked her arm in his. ‘Trust your Uncle Greg in this,’ he said, and Maria laughed as he ushered her through the door.

Mindful of Maria’s age, Greg brought her just an orange and for himself a Guinness. As they sat at a small table Maria glanced around self-consciously and saw that there were other girls and women in the pub. She began to relax.

Greg hadn’t wanted to press Maria yet, but when she had excused herself for a few minutes at the hospital, Sam had asked him bluntly how he felt about his daughter. When he admitted he loved her to distraction, Sam had advised him to tell her.

‘I know that Maria is barely out of childhood,’ he said. ‘Had things been different, then I would not be advocating this at all, but in the situation she finds herself, her needs have changed. It would ease my mind if you and your family were there for her if she needed you.’

Greg had quite understood Sam’s reasoning, but he guessed Maria didn’t know how he felt about her. How would she know? He saw that she was indeed surprised when he suddenly said, ‘This is a conversation I didn’t intend to have yet, Maria—not for a few years, when you were older.’

Maria was intrigued. ‘What are you talking about, Greg?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ Greg reached across the table and caught up her hand. ‘I love you, Maria, and have done for years. I didn’t speak of it because you were set for a glittering future in Dublin.’

‘Would you have just let me go then?’

‘No,’ Greg said. ‘You’d already given me the name and address of the hostel where you would be staying in one of your letters. I intended going to see you a time or two, when I had leave, so that we had a chance to get to know each other. That can never be now, so I will ask you today. Maria, will you be my girl?’

Maria was taken aback and she stared at Greg open-mouthed for a minute or two.

‘Are you shocked?’ Greg asked. ‘Repulsed?’

‘Shocked, yes,’ Maria admitted. ‘But never repulsed. It’s just I’ve never thought of you that way, Greg.’

‘Could you?’

Maria regarded the man before her, his wide-open face, with eyes now full of trepidation, and a generous mouth. She imagined what it would be like to kiss those lips properly, to be held lovingly in Greg’s arms, and at these thoughts a delicious shiver ran all through her. Greg felt it through the fingers he held and still he waited. ‘I think I could, Greg,’ Maria said at last. ‘Yes, I really think I could.’

Greg leant across the table and gave Maria a gentle kiss on the lips. ‘You’ve made me the happiest man in the world at this minute, and on my next leave maybe we can get engaged?’

‘Aye,’ said Maria. It wasn’t how she’d imagined her future, but then none of it was how she’d imagined.

‘I love you so much, Maria,’ Greg said. ‘There aren’t enough words to tell you.’

Oh, how wonderful it felt, Maria thought, to be loved like that. She laid one of her hands on Greg’s arm and the heat of desire for this beautiful girl filled his body. He knew, however, she’d be pure and innocent so any courtship would have to proceed slowly. He’d had a few dalliances with women since he joined the army; most girls seemed to like men in uniform. None of them had meant anything, including the clingy Nancy Dempsey, who tried to stick to him like a limpet, even after he told her it was over.

Well, there was to be no more of that, he told himself. He would be true now to Maria.

As he left Maria at the door that night, Greg kissed her chastely and tentatively, then, as she responded to him, more passionately. Maria felt as if she was drowning in pleasure. The yearning urges in her body she didn’t fully understand, but they caused her to moan softly. Greg tried to loosen the arms he’d had tight around her, lest she feel how aroused he was and be alarmed by it. But his kisses had left her wanting more, and it was Greg who pulled away first.

‘See you tomorrow, darling.’

‘You will?’

‘Of course. Don’t you start work the day after?’

‘Aye.’

‘And the following day, I’m back at camp, and then who knows? We must grab every minute we can.’

‘I know,’ Maria said miserably. ‘I will miss you so much when you go back.’

‘And I’ll miss you, my love,’ Greg said, kissing her again. ‘But go in now, or Bella will give out to you for keeping her up so late.’

Maria knew Greg spoke good sense. It was neither sensible nor right to alienate Bella. However, when she went inside, it wasn’t Bella sitting in the chair before the fire, but Barney.

He had heard with irritation about the young Greg Hopkins, home from the war and buzzing around Maria’s door. His anger was fuelled that evening when he’d called to take Maria to the hospital and found out she had already gone, and with Greg Hopkins. ‘She called to see you at the boatyard and tell you this,’ Bella had said. ‘And all she saw was young Colm Brannigan, who didn’t seem to know where you were at all.’

‘I had to go to Buncrana to see about a boat,’ Barney said. ‘I did tell the boy. He must have forgotten.’

In fact he had been nowhere near Buncrana, but away in the hills with Seamus, learning about a very lucrative business proposal that he preferred above baby-minding a boatyard. However, he wasn’t sharing that with Bella. She was suspicious enough of him already. What he did say was, ‘Well, I have the night to myself, for I had thought to be taking Maria to the hospital, so if you want to get off, I will listen out for her mother. I need to see Maria tonight about a spot of business.’

‘At this time of night?’

Barney shrugged. ‘I’ve been busy all day and the plan was to talk to her on the way into Derry. Now I am here it is pointless the two of us waiting.’

It was, and Bella was tired. ‘Well, I’ll be off then, if you are sure?’

‘Quite sure,’ Barney told her, and Bella made her way home.

Barney noted Maria’s flushed face and dancing eyes just as she noted the glass beside the large bottle of poteen, which was half empty. She was annoyed to find Barney sitting there as if he owned the place, and even more annoyed when he said he’d sent Bella home.

‘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.’

‘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.

CHAPTER FOUR

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.