Mother’s Only Child

It was as they were pushing them to the gates that Sam heard the hoot of an owl, followed by a thud, as if a person or persons had landed on the deck of one of the ships.

‘What was that?’ Con asked.

‘I don’t know, but if that was an owl hooting just now, then I’m a Dutchman,’ Sam said. He recalled the conversation he’d had with the lieutenant that evening and knew he’d have to investigate the noise.

‘We’ll go together,’ Con said when Sam told him what the lieutenant had said.

‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Brenda will be waiting with your supper. You best go on home.’

‘Why don’t you call the dock police?’

‘I will,’ Sam said, ‘soon as I’m certain. Don’t worry, I’m not bursting in there myself like some unsung hero, but it’s just maybe two young fellows having a lark and I can send them home with boxed ears and no harm done. If I think it’s more serious, then I’ll get help quick. Don’t worry. Go on, I don’t intend spending one minute longer than necessary. I am fair jiggered and then it’s Maria’s last night. I’ll likely overtake you on the road.’

Con went. He knew Brenda would go for him when he reached home as it was. She had a fine temper on her when she wanted. But he was worried about Sam and told the policeman, as he let him out of the gates, what they’d heard.

‘I’m being relieved in less than ten minutes,’ the policeman reassured Con. ‘I’ll take a look for your mate before I go off, but he’ll likely contact us before then…‘

When Con left, Sam began walking stealthily to where he was sure the thudding noise had come from. He knew he had to be careful, especially when he left the quayside and boarded one of the ships moving gently in the water. His eyes strained to see in the darkness and he crept gingerly forward.

A pinprick of light alerted him first, a match and then the smell of cigarette smoke on the breeze and the soft murmur of voices. He couldn’t hear the words, but he didn’t need to. He knew whoever the people were just ahead of him, they were not a couple of kids, but grown men probably intent on destruction, and the sooner he got off the boat and got help the better.

In his haste to turn round, he stumbled. He didn’t fall, but stood for a moment stock-still, wondering if the slight sound he’d made had alerted the men in any way.

There was no sound of pursuit, however, so Sam went on again. He crossed to a gunboat, which lay against the dockside wall. Thinking it a safer route, he was creeping round the deck of the boat, next to the wall, when his foot slipped and he fell with a thud onto the deck. He lay still for a moment, but he didn’t appear to be hurt anywhere, just winded. He began struggling to his feet.

There was a sudden thump in the middle of his back and, unbalanced as he was, he couldn’t save himself. He couldn’t prevent the cry that escaped from him. His hands clawed desperately at the air as he tumbled from the boat and hit the water with a splash.

The shock and cold of it took his breath away at first and then he began to thresh about, trying to find the side of the boat, anything to pull himself up. Suddenly the boat, jostled by its neighbour, moved slightly, crushing Sam against the harbour wall.

Sam screamed against the agonising pain, but the boat pinned him effectively and what came out was just a groan. He knew he would die, there in the dockside. The pain of leaving Sarah and Maria, and the thought of what they’d do if he wasn’t there to see to them caused him to close his eyes against encroaching death.

By the time the policeman went off duty, Sam was unconscious and the dockyard as silent as a grave, the only sound that of the lap of water as the boats moved against the swell. He called for Sam—more urgently when he found his bicycle still propped against the wall—but there was no answer. In the end he went into the barracks room and reported that Sam was missing.

The lieutenant who had spoken to him earlier that evening was more worried than anyone. He led the search for Sam Foley, but in the light of the shaded torches, all that the Government allowed in the blackout, to search for anyone was a miserable and probably pointless task.

Despite the message sent with one of his colleagues, Conrad’s wife berated him soundly for the time he’d got home, hours after the others. ‘There was a job to finish. I’m second in command,’ he protested. ‘Sam was there too. In fact, I intend going over in an hour or so to see he’s made it back all right.’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘He was still at the docks when I left.’

‘Why?’

‘He heard a noise and went to have a closer look.’

‘What sort of noise?’

‘Any noise would be unusual in a dockyard that is supposed to be deserted.’

‘On his own?’

‘Aye,’ Con said. ‘The police and military are almost within calling distance and military police patrol the dock every hour or so.’

‘Well, then, what harm could come to him? Isn’t he surrounded by people?’

‘I know. I’d just like to check.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Brenda said. ‘Isn’t Sam a grown man?’

‘I know, but—’

I know, I know…Dear Christ, if Sam suggested you leap in the fire, you’d likely consider it,’ Brenda said scathingly. She was jealous of the deep regard the two men had for one another and always had been. ‘It’s not Sam Foley you’re married to, a fact you seem to forget at times. I see little enough of you. The only place you’ll go this night is to your bed with me.’

Con, seeing the set of his wife’s mouth, wondered what would happen if he was just to put on his coat and push past her to still the tug of anxiety he had for Sam. But Brenda’s temper was such that he seldom defied her and he was too weary himself to start a fight, which he knew from experience could go on for hours. So he shrugged.

‘As you like,’ he said. ‘But, it’s not unusual to be concerned for a mate.’

The knot of worry stayed with Con, even after he’d climbed the stairs and into bed, where he lay wide awake.

By half-past ten, Sarah became concerned. Andy had told them Sam would be late, but did he mean as late as this? She hated Sam to be in Derry long after dark in case there was a raid.

Derry had been attacked only the once, and that had been on the previous Easter Tuesday. The sirens were plainly heard in Moville, but in the end there was just one bomber, which dropped two parachute mines. The newspapers reported that the pilot was trying to bomb the river, but he missed that and the mines landed in the Messine’s Park area of the city, killing thirteen people and injuring thirty-three.

Yet the city had got away lightly, because that same night, Belfast had been blitzed, leaving over nine hundred people dead. Sarah was always worrying that it might be Derry’s turn next.

She put down her knitting and sat with her hands in her lap, listening.

Maria put down the book she’d been reading and watched her mother with concern. She too was anxious about her father and yet she knew she had to shield her anxiety from her mother. It had always been that way. ‘Shall I put the wireless on, Mammy?’

‘No, child, I have no heart for it.’

‘I’ll make a cup of tea for us then, shall I?’

Sarah didn’t answer. Instead, her brooding eyes met those of her daughter. ‘I didn’t think your daddy would be this late,’ she said.

‘Maybe he stopped off at Rafferty’s for a drink?’ Maria said, though she knew her father had never done such a thing before.

Sarah shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t. He’d know we’d be concerned. And particularly tonight, your last night. He’d come straight home.’

‘Maybe the job was more difficult than he thought,’ Maria said soothingly. ‘Would you like me to go and look for him, maybe have a talk with some of the men?’

‘What good will that do?’

‘You never know.’

‘Oh, go if you want to.’

Maria was glad to be out of the house and doing something. She went first to see Andy Carmody, only to find he’d gone to Rafferty’s pub. She made her way there uncertainly. She’d never been in a pub in her life. It wasn’t done; the bar was the prerogative of the men. Maybe in Dublin it was customary for women to visit the pub, but it wasn’t in Moville.

She was hovering outside the door when Barney McPhearson left the pub, on his way home.

‘Why, Maria, what is it?’ he said, knowing only a matter of importance would have brought Maria there, and at that time of night.

Maria told him of her father’s absence. ‘Andy Carmody came with news he would be late,’ she went on, ‘and I’ve been to the house, but his mother said he’d gone to Rafferty’s. I just wondered if he knew anything more. We’re worried.’

With reason, Barney thought, with the time going on for eleven. But he didn’t say this. What he did say was, ‘Well, we’ll soon find out, Maria. Young Andy is in there and I’ll bring him out to talk to you.’

But Andy knew no more, though he did tell Maria that Conrad had been with him. That thought comforted Maria. At least he wasn’t alone.

‘D’you want to go up to see if Con’s wife has further news?’ Barney said. Maria nodded. However, when they arrived the house was in darkness. She hesitated. Was it likely Brenda would go to bed if Con hadn’t returned?

Some women might doze in the chair, but nearly all would be ready with a hot meal when their husbands did appear. So, full of trepidation, Maria knocked on the door.

Afterwards, Con was to say the knock barely surprised him. It was as if he’d been half expecting it. He was out of bed in seconds, taking time only to pull his trousers over his linings before he answered. He was aghast when he learnt that Sam hadn’t come home. He told Maria what he knew.

‘Wait, I’ll get dressed properly,’ he said. ‘We need to go down there and find out what’s happened.’

‘You must go home and support your mother,’ Barney said to Maria. ‘We’ll be away to Derry as soon as it can be organised. Try not to worry. We’ll find your father.’

She went home slowly, dreading to face her mother, for a heavy apprehension had settled inside her. Even then, with worry for her father gnawing away inside, she thought of the Academy and was consumed with guilt for even giving a thought to herself. The Academy and her future didn’t matter any more, she told herself firmly; the only thing that mattered was finding out what had happened to her father. She told Sarah what she knew, which was precious little. Sarah stared at her in shock and sudden petrifying fear, but she said not a word. Maria enfolded her mother’s frozen hands in her own, sat her down in the chair and made her a strong cup of tea, putting lots of sugar in, for she had heard it was good for shock.

As the news about Sam Foley spread around the village, men left unfinished pints or clambered from the bed they’d just got into. Those who owned carts harnessed horses to them and a good contingent of the men of the village clattered away in three carts as the church clock struck midnight.

Maria would have preferred to go with them. She always thought waiting for news the hardest job of all, but she knew she couldn’t leave her mother. They sat in silence, listening to the tick of the clock and the peat settling in the hearth, Maria feeling sick to her stomach as the time passed slowly.

CHAPTER THREE

It had been half-past two when, hampered by the blackout, they’d found Sam, and half-past three before Barney McPhearson pounded on the Foleys’ door.

Sarah’s face was ravaged with worry, the puffiness around her eyes evidence of the time she’d spent weeping, but when Maria got to her feet to answer the door, Sarah stopped her. This was something she had to do herself.

Barney almost fell in the door, snatching his cap off his head as he did so.

He could barely look at Sarah’s face. He’d have preferred to talk to Maria, for all she was so young, but Sarah blocked his way and he had to tell her first. ‘Your man, Sam, has been injured,’ he said. ‘He must have slipped into the water.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘No,’ Barney said. He didn’t add ‘he might soon be’, though he knew the man must have been in the water some six hours. He’d been unconscious when they hauled him out and only prevented from drowning by the boat rammed against him. ‘He’s been taken to the hospital in Derry,’ Barney went on.

‘I must go to him,’ Sarah said.

Maria didn’t argue and neither did Barney. ‘I have the trap outside. Wrap up well, for the night air can be treacherous.’

Maria would always remember that journey, the crowd of people outside the house and Barney McPhearson’s arms encircling her as she emerged. He helped first her mother into the trap and then Maria herself, tucking the blankets he’d brought around them solicitously. Then they were off, the clop of the pony’s feet on the cobbles almost drowned by the encouraging shouts of the villagers.

Sarah was sunk in misery and Maria could do nothing but put her arm around her. It wasn’t just grief tugging at Sarah, but guilt too. For weeks, she’d prayed for something to happen to prevent Maria leaving them, but hadn’t given a thought to what that could possibly be. She had never envisaged anything happening to Sam.

Later, as she looked down at her unconscious husband in the hospital bed and listened to the doctor telling her that Sam’s legs were crushed beyond repair and he would never walk again, she knew she had condemned him to this living death. Maria would never leave home now but that thought now gave her little joy.

It was by no means certain that Sam would even survive. ‘He is,’ the doctor said, ‘a very sick man. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.’

‘We’ll stay,’ Sarah declared, and Maria agreed.

And they did stay, sitting on a hard bench in a hospital corridor, Barney between them. When Sarah’s body sagged against him in a sleep of total exhaustion, Barney put his arm about Maria. ‘This is dreadful for you,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’

Maria was glad he was there, glad of his solid bulk beside her. He seemed, at that moment, the only one she could confide in, tell of her confused feelings. ‘Daddy—he means the world to me,’ she said. ‘I love him so very, very much, but this course at the Academy…For a full year I’ve worked towards it and for weeks have known I was going. I’ve never felt so excited, so exhilarated as I did the day I received that letter offering me a scholarship place. But, really, I shouldn’t be feeling any regret at all about it with Daddy so ill. Surely my thoughts and tears should be all for him.’

‘They are really,’ Barney assured her. ‘But you can’t just turn off hopes and dreams, kept alive this long while.’

‘You seem to understand so much,’ Maria said in surprise. She realised she’d never really taken much notice of Barney before.

‘That’s because I care a great deal about you,’ Barney said. ‘All of you.’

Maria was relieved to hear Barney say that, because she knew her mother would never deal with this. Maria herself would shoulder the burden of the house, with not even Sean on hand, with his own father so ill, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with all that responsibility alone.

‘What if Daddy doesn’t survive, Barney?’ Maria asked a few moments later.

‘Every hour that passes is better news, I should think,’ Barney said. ‘He’s in the best place and all we can do is hope and pray.’

As soon as Bella heard about the tragic events in the Foley family, and the women had returned home, she went down to see them. Sarah had already gone to bed, but Maria was still doing last-minute things. At the sadness in the girl’s eyes, Bella put her arms around her trembling shoulders.

‘Maria, there are no words to express what I feel. This is a terrible thing to happen.’

‘I know.’ Maria’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘Daddy will live. We stayed, me and Mammy, until he was out of danger, but, oh God, Bella, if you could see him lying there so still, so white. He’s never regained consciousness and so probably doesn’t know we were there, for all I spoke to him, as the nurse advised. She raised her eyes to Bella’s and said, ‘He’ll never walk, nor work again.’

‘And the Academy?’

‘That will never be now, of course, and it does no good fretting over it. I will have more to occupy my time, anyway.’

Bella saw the disappointment in the sag of Maria’s body and the tone of her voice, yet she was right to try to put it from her mind. It would be like probing a sore tooth.

‘You know where my door is if you or your mother need anything,’ she said. ‘And I do mean anything at all.’

‘Aye, Bella, I do, and I thank you, but just now I am too weary to think about anything but my bed.’

‘And I’ll not keep you from it a moment longer,’ Bella said. ‘Go on up now. I’ll let myself out.’

When Sam was in a position to know that he was paralysed from the waist down, he wished he had died. Inside his head he ranted and railed about his condition, though he wouldn’t let his daughter see his anger and frustration nor his tears of self-pity.

He worried as to how they would all manage when he would be unable to work and was glad that they had the support of Barney McPhearson. He’d completely misjudged that young man.

He felt bad about Maria, who’d once held her future in the palm of her hand and not only had it dashed to the floor, but trampled on.

‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ Maria said firmly when he’d said this. ‘It was an accident and that’s all there is to it. Everyone has helped and the villagers have been golden.’

She didn’t go on to say that it was as well they had, because her mother seemed incapable of doing anything, including speaking. Since the night the doctor had told them Sam would live, but never work or walk again, she hadn’t spoken one word. Maria didn’t want to burden her daddy with news like that.

Anyway, she’d told herself over and over, it was probably just shock. Everyone knew that shock could do funny things to a body and Sarah would likely get over it in time. Even Bella and Dora had agreed with her over that.

When the word was first out about Sam, the men from the dockyard had rallied around him and had gone to the hospital in droves. Con was a regular, though he felt bad that he was now made gaffer in Sam’s place. Sam told him not to be such a bloody fool and there was not a man alive that he’d rather have taking over from him, but Con couldn’t help feeling guilty about it.

Maria was almost overwhelmed by the people’s concern and their generosity, though she knew the family couldn’t live on their neighbours for ever. Sam knew it too. It was Barney that he appealed to one day to find out the position he was in with regard to the Royal Navy and whether he was entitled to any sort of compensation or a pension.

But the news Barney brought him was not good. Because Sam had been self-employed and just contracted to the navy for the duration of the war, they were under no obligation to compensate him in any way.

‘It’s a bugger, that’s what it is,’ Barney said. ‘Con told me about the noise you went to investigate and I bet it was them IRA bastards tipped you in the drink.’

‘Aye,’ Sam agreed. ‘Someone punched me in the back, all right.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Barney said. ‘You probably foiled an IRA plot, and certainly saved more that a few ships from being damaged. You should be hailed as a bloody hero, not thrown aside like so much rubbish.’

‘They found no one, Barney,’ Sam reminded him gently.

‘Well, of course they bloody didn’t,’ Barney cried angrily. ‘Those lot would have scarpered not long after you hit the water. What did they expect—that they’d hang about to shake hands?’

‘Barney, we can do nothing about it,’ Sam said. ‘The official line is that I slipped in the water. It was no one’s fault but mine and there is no one to be held accountable for it and that’s that. I suppose the boatyard at Greencastle—’

‘Don’t even ask,’ Barney said. ‘If the boatyard earns anything at all it’s a pittance. Willie has left now, his mind almost gone completely, but in all honesty he had been going that way for some time. I’m going to have to look for something else for myself soon. We could put young Colm, Willie’s grandson, in for now, if you like, to sort of mind the shop? He’s just left school and his mother was asking. Apparently, he’s as mad about boats as his old granddad and would jump at it.’

‘He is,’ Sam said, ‘and he would.’

‘And he’d not need much of a wage,’ Barney said. ‘I mean, he is only fourteen.’

‘It’s something to think about, certainly,’ Sam said. ‘I’d not like the boatyard to lie empty altogether, for it would soon go to rack and ruin, but I understand that you—’

‘Don’t worry about it now,’ Barney told him soothingly, ‘and don’t fret about me. I have a few irons in the fire. You just concentrate on getting well enough to leave here.’

Sean had come over to see Sam as soon as he’d been told of the accident. ‘When it’s all over with my father—and, God knows, he’s in such pain, I hope that’s not long away—will you all come up to live at the house?’

‘I don’t think so, Uncle Sean,’ Maria said. ‘I don’t think Mammy would like to leave here. And I’m worried enough about her as it is.’

Sean thought Maria had cause to worry, for he had been concerned by the vacant look in his sister’s eyes and the way she didn’t seem to hear when a person spoke to her, or even be aware of her surroundings. It was as though she was on the edge of normality and he knew it wouldn’t take much to tip her over into true madness.

Maria knew it too. Somehow she’d have to make a living, but she didn’t know how she could leave her mother day in, day out for hours on end. She wasn’t fit to be left. Dora or Bella would come to sit with her the times Maria went to the hospital, knowing she was worried about leaving her alone. Maria knew that when her father came home, she’d be his main carer too, and she just didn’t know how they were all to survive. The anxiety of this drove sleep from her each night and so her eyes stung with tiredness and there were smudges of blue beneath them.

Sam saw how his daughter suffered and, though his heart ached, he could nothing to ease any of it for her.

By the beginning of the third week, Sarah seemed to have retreated into a world of her own. ‘It is shock, as you suspected,’ Dr Shearer said, when a worried Maria asked him to call. ‘Her mind has shut down because she can’t bear what has happened.’

‘Is it permanent?’ Maria asked.

‘It’s impossible to say,’ the doctor said. ‘The mind is a strange thing. I could arrange for her to go to the psychiatric unit of the District Hospital in Letterkenny for assessment.’

‘A mental hospital?’ Maria said. ‘An asylum?’ Unconsciously she curled her lip.

‘The psychiatric unit of the District Hospital,’ the doctor repeated.

‘She isn’t that bad, is she?’ Maria asked.

‘It isn’t a question of how bad she is, but whether she can be helped further,’ the doctor said.

Maria had a horror of her mother going to such a place. She had a mental picture of what went on in an asylum—and it was an asylum, no matter what fancy name the doctor gave it. She was sure there would be raving lunatics, encased in strait-jackets, or incarcerated in cells, sometimes padded, to prevent them injuring themselves. She wanted her frail and gentle mother nowhere near that, not mixing with mad people.

‘I think she’d be better at home for now, Doctor, but thank you anyway,’ she said.

The doctor shrugged. ‘As you wish, Maria, but remember everyone of us has a breaking point, even you. Don’t allow yourself to go under, for you’ll soon not only have your mother to see to, but your father too.’

Did he think she was unaware of that? Maria shut the door behind him with a bang. She caught her mother up by the hand and, stopping only to wrap a shawl around her, made for the shop.

‘I must get a job,’ she told Dora. ‘But I can’t leave Mammy, and when Daddy comes home it will be worse. What am I to do?’