Читать книгу Mother’s Only Child - Anne Bennett - Страница 6

Maria Foley almost ran across The Square that day in late July 1941. The faint summer breeze riffled through her long wavy hair, tied back loosely with a ribbon the same green as her eyes. Bella McFee, catching sight of the girl, stepped out of the post office-cum-grocery shop when she saw the envelope in Maria’s hand.

‘It’s come then?’

‘Aye,’ Maria said. She tried to keep the elation out of her voice. ‘I’ve passed.’

She saw Bella’s lips purse in disapproval and, for a moment, Maria was resentful. She’d worked for Bella in the shop for two years. Couldn’t she just say she was the tiniest bit pleased? Congratulate her even?

Her mother, Sarah, had said the right words—‘Congratulations. You’ve done well’—but in a flat, expressionless and totally insincere tone. However, what Bella did say was, ‘I’m away to see your mother. She’ll likely be feeling low after this. Mammy will mind the shop. And where are you off to in such a tear? You’re not due in till nine.’

‘The boatyard,’ Maria said. ‘I want to see Willie.’

‘Oh, he’d like to know right enough,’ Bella said. ‘But you, Maria, aren’t you the tiniest bit ashamed, wanting to go to some fancy academy in Dublin just now, when you could be a help and support to your mother? Have you no thought for her, and you an only one too?’

Immediately, guilt settled between Maria’s shoulder blades. It isn’t my fault I’m the only one, she wanted to cry. That was the main problem, of course. If her mother had had a houseful of children, she could have taken pride in the fact that her eldest daughter had won a scholarship to the Grafton Academy in Dublin to study Dress and Fabric Design for two years.

But Sarah’s fall down the stairs when Maria had been just eighteen months old had killed the child she was carrying and assured there would be no more either. It had also, so it was said, given her ‘bad nerves’. Maria hadn’t known what ‘bad nerves’ were then, of course, although she knew her father was never willing to upset her mother and strongly discouraged Maria from saying or doing anything that might disturb her at all. She was well aware that the news that morning would have disturbed her greatly, and yet she couldn’t help being pleased and, yes, proud of herself. She knew Willie would congratulate her warmly and, oh God, how she needed someone on her side for once.

‘Mammy should never have let me go in for the exam if she can’t take any joy in the fact that I have passed it,’ Maria said.

‘You don’t understand anything yet, girl,’ Bella said sharply.

Maria flushed at the sharp tone and then tossed her head a little defiantly and said, ‘I have to go, or I’ll be late getting to the shop.’

Before Bella could say another word, Maria gave her a desultory wave and ran over the green to the coastal path, which ran to Greencastle, the next village up Inishowen Peninsular. It was the path her father used to take every day bar Sunday, when he’d owned a boatyard in the small village. Now he worked at the Derry docks, and Willie Brannigan was put in charge of the Greencastle boatyard. He’d known Maria since the day of her birth and she knew he’d wish her well.

She paused on the banks of Lough Foyle, the sun, warm on her back from a cloudless sky, glittering on the water. Well, what could be seen of the water. The lough was so filled with naval craft, she could barely see Milligan’s Point on the further side, the side the British still owned. She couldn’t see the airports at Limavady and Eglinton either, but she knew they were there. It was a fine sight to see the aircraft flying above the flotilla of naval vessels on convoy duty. Her father said they were more effective at sinking German U-boats than the ships. The British-owned six counties had been dragged into the war along with Britain, but the Free State, Maria’s side of the border, had declared itself neutral and Maria knew there were soldiers from the Irish Army stationed at Buncrana, which was the other side of the peninsular, to try to ensure the Germans respected that neutrality

She gave a sigh and made her way to the boatyard. For a moment she wished Greg Hopkins was just a couple of miles away on his father’s farm and she could rush to him with her news, for he was another one who believed she was doing the right thing. He was in the army now and, though she was proud of him, she missed him sorely. Letters couldn’t make up for his absence.

It was strange how she and Greg had always been such friends, because Greg hadn’t been born in Inishowen at all, but in Birmingham, England, where his father came from, though his mother was from Moville.

The whole family had arrived in 1934 when Greg’s mother inherited a farm from an uncle. Maria had only been nine, and Greg thirteen, but she remembered the lost and unhappy boy he was then, who made no effort to make friends. He was like a fish out of water, her mother would say.

‘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.

‘D’you mind that time?’

Bella remembered it well. Sarah’s grief had been so deep and profound, Sam had worried for her sanity. They travelled down for the funerals. Seeing everyone there so mournful and sorrow-laden had made Sarah worse.

‘Daddy was so sad it near broke my heart to see him,’ Sarah said to Bella. ‘He didn’t seem to see anything around him and it was up to my brother Sean to keep the farm ticking over.’

It was arranged that a widowed aunt called Agatha, whose children were grown and married, would see to things in the house and Sam and Sarah returned to Moville.

‘I never thought I’d be happy again in the whole of my life,’ Maria reminded Bella. ‘And then I found I was expecting. A little life would be dependent on me, something to go on for.’ She grasped Bella’s hand and went on, ‘You showed what a true friend you were then, for you showed not a trace of envy and yet I know how you had always longed for a child of your own.’

That brought the tears to Bella’s own eyes, for it was a burden she carried with her always.

‘When Maria was born, in 1925, I thought her the most beautiful baby in all the world,’ Sarah said, ‘and for sixteen years she has been at the forefront of my mind all the time. I love her so much, Bella, and I really can’t bear the pain of losing her. Once Maria leaves this village I know she will never come back to live.’

‘You will get through this, you know,’ Bella said. ‘It will take time, but it will get easier. I thought when my man died I’d never recover from it.’

‘That was a tragic time, right enough,’ Sarah agreed. It had been a tragic time for both of them. Sarah had just has the disastrous fall that rendered her sterile and was in the hospital. Bella was looking after the toddling Maria, when her husband, a fine, strapping man, who’d never had a day’s illness in his life, suddenly keeled over as he was getting up from his dinner, and was dead before he reached the floor.

‘We supported each other then,’ Bella said.

‘Aye, and wasn’t it wee Maria who was the salvation of us both?’

‘She was indeed,’ Bella agreed. ‘Then Mammy said she couldn’t manage the shop on her own and asked me in with her. I don’t know whether she really couldn’t manage, or did it for me, but I know the occupation of it was a good thing.’

‘I know it,’ Sarah said. ‘But what occupation could I take up that will chase the heartache from me?’

Bella had no answer to this and Sarah went on, ‘I knew that Maria was good at sewing and all. I mean, I taught her to sew, darn, embroider, that sort of thing, and in time she was better than me—far neater, and faster too. I knew she had an eye for colour, the things that go together. Whenever we went in the draper’s shops in Derry, she’d be fascinated by the array of fabrics. She’d feel them between her fingers and be amazed by the different things you could sew on to decorate clothes. She’d prowl around the haberdashery counter like another child might do around a cake shop.

‘I took it as a good, wifely attribute, especially when she mastered that old treadle machine. I told her she’d be a catch for any man, for you know she could make something out of nothing, and I encouraged her to go to evening classes for dressmaking. People say you can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear—well, I think Maria probably could.

‘She’s a tidy cook too—we all know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—and she’s helped me with the laundry this past year or so. She can poss the clothes, starch and iron with the best of them.’

She looked at Bella with mournful eyes and said, ‘She’ll make a good wife for someone in a year or two, when she is fully grown. That’s what I want for her—to marry a boy here so I can still see her and help her rear any children she might have. It’s all I’ve wanted since the first moment I held her in my arms, and if it hadn’t been for this damned war it would have happened like that. Whatever Philomena Clarke wanted, without the war, Maria going to the Academy would have been impossible.’

Bella knew that was true. By the time Maria finally left school at Easter 1939, everyone knew Britain, and therefore Derry and the other counties across the Foyle, was perched on the brink of war, despite Chamberlain’s claim that there’d be ‘peace for our time’, the previous September.

As soon as Easter was over, Maria had got a job in the shop with Bella and her mother, Dora, and began at her evening classes, but wasn’t in the house when Philomena went to see her mother and told her about the Grafton Academy in Dublin where the gifted Maria could learn Dress and Fabric Design, which would fit her for a fine and well-paid job in a Dublin fashion house later. ‘I am sure she will win a scholarship,’ she’d said. ‘The girl has an amazing talent. I’ve never seen or taught someone so good before.’

‘But she’s so young,’ Sarah had said. ‘Little more than a child.’

‘We’re not talking about now,’ Miss Clarke said gently. ‘But of two years’ time. Maria will be sixteen then.’

‘But where would she stay?’

‘Well,’ Philomena said, ‘I have been making enquiries and the college has a hostel nearby. I believe the rates are very reasonable.’

And there the discussion had ended, for times had been hard for years. Often Sam had repaired a boat for a neighbour, knowing that if he insisted on payment the man and his wife and children would not eat. How could he do that? Sometimes he took his payment in fish, sometimes in instalments, and sometimes he’d get nothing at all. He was glad his parents, who’d died within a month of one another in 1935, were no longer there to provide for from a yard that paid so little. In those lean pre-war years Sam often thanked God that he had just the one child to rear, though he would have loved a son.

When England finally made the declaration of war with Germany in the autumn of 1939, life became harder still. There was no longer any fishing at all, for Lough Foyle was commandeered by the navy, and so were the docks in Derry, which were renamed HMS Ferret. Lough Foyle was quickly filled with naval warships, destroyers, frigates, corvettes and converted trawlers.

The open sea, full of mines and German submarines, was no place for fishermen either, so they hung up their nets and many younger men enlisted in the armed forces, despite the neutrality pact.

Sam too had little work, although there was a small fishing fleet still operating in Lough Swilly on the other side of the peninsular. There he was able to pick up a bit of repair and maintenance work. Sometimes, though, he had so little to bring home at the end of the week, he was ashamed.

Many of the women took themselves off to Derry to work in the shirt factories, most now converted to making uniforms for the armed forces. In a good few homes it was the women who put the food on the table. Sam knew himself how it cut into a man’s pride to see his wife provide for the family while he was idle. He was embarrassed that he was often dependent on the money that Maria would tip up on the table every Friday evening and the big bag of groceries that Bella would pack for her. They got by, like many others, but there was no money to spare and certainly none to send a daughter off to Dublin to train in some fancy academy. Sarah told Philomena Clarke that firmly. Maria never knew of her visit.

In June 1940, the rescue of the British from the beaches of Dunkirk was heroic, but while the operation was a magnificent achievement, it was still a defeat, a fact that couldn’t be disguised. Most of mainland Europe was under Nazi control and only a small strip of water separated Britain from the German Armies, massing ready for invasion on the French coast.

A smartly dressed man called in to see Sam in the boatyard just a few days after the fall of France. He was so unlike Sam’s usual customers that he was intrigued. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

‘Yes, I hope so,’ the man said. ‘My name is Robert Dawlish and I work for the Government in London. Word has it that you are the best around here at repairing boats.’

‘I do all right.’

The man stood gazing at the very few boats bobbing in the small harbour. He knew the navy commandeering Lough Foyle had sounded the death knell for the fishermen that had operated from here and, because of that, this man’s business too. But winning the war held precedent and everyone had to be expected to make sacrifices. He asked the question he already knew the answer to. ‘Is the boatyard profitable?’

‘Is that any of your business?’ Sam snapped.

‘It could be and I have a reason for asking.’

‘I have no reason to reply.’

‘Don’t be so pig-headed, man.’ Dawlish snapped. ‘You haven’t even heard what I have to say yet. I may be able to offer you something more lucrative.’

Then Sam knew he probably couldn’t afford to be too rude. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘State your business.’

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Dawlish said. ‘With Ireland determined to be neutral in this war, Derry is Britain’s most westerly point. It will be needed as an escort base, to try and protect the merchant ships. We intend to establish a large repair workshop on Strand Road, alongside the present graving dock, and use Derry as a refuelling depot too.’

Sam nodded. He could see the sense of it. ‘How do I come in?’

‘I’d like you to be part of the repair team,’ the man said.

‘Working for the British Government?’ Sam said, bristling.

‘Indirectly, but if that offends you, think of it as working for a freer Europe,’ the man said, adding more harshly, ‘Do you think for one moment your neutrality will matter a jot to the Germans if they invade Britain? Norway tried that, to no avail. If Britain is invaded, Ireland will fall too. Mark my words.’

Sam was no fool and he knew the few men the Irish Government had stationed at Buncrana would be no match for the highly disciplined German Army if they were intent on invasion and so he said to the man, ‘All right then, say I agree to this, how is it to be arranged?’

The man sighed inwardly in relief. He hadn’t been sure he’d get this Sam Foley to agree. The word was he could be stiff-necked, and he was no lover of the English. Dawlish went on, choosing his words with care, ‘You would work for the Admiralty, but in a civilian capacity, and as the foreman you could choose your own team, men you know and can trust.’

Sam knew he was being given a chance, certainly while the war lasted, to lift the standard of living for all the men involved. Pride was a fine thing to have, when you had enough to eat, warm clothes to wear and a good fire to sit beside. ‘When would you want us to start?’ he asked.

‘Time is of an essence,’ Dawlish said. ‘We have a war to win. Shall we say Monday week? Is that time enough to get people together?’

‘Plenty of time, but how are we to get to the docks? The first bus from Moville doesn’t get to Derry till eight twenty. Presumably you’d want us to start work before then.’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll send a military truck to pick you up at half-past seven. How many men can you round up?’

Sam did a swift calculation. ‘Sixteen, maybe seventeen at the outside. Would that be all right?’

‘Splendid.’

‘And wages. They’ll need to know. I’ll need to know.’

‘This will have to be agreed upon officially,’ the civil servant said, ‘but it will be in the region of twelve pounds ten shillings for yourself as foreman, and ten pounds for the men you bring with you.’

Twelve pounds ten shillings—the figure floated in Sam’s mind. It was riches. It would be riches for them all. He extended his hand to Dawlish and they shook warmly.

‘It’s a deal.’

Sam went out visiting the neighbours he wanted in his new team that night, even routing a few from Rafferty’s pub. Eventually he had his chosen men around him. His special mate, Conrad Milligan, was to be his second in command.

The men all went back to Rafferty’s to seal their future in pints of Guinness. There they met Barney McPhearson, who listened to the talk of the men and then approached Sam and asked if he could be part of the team.

Sam had little time for Barney. The McPhearsons had always been known as a bad lot and Barney’s brother was the worst of all. He had never had a real job of work, though he didn’t seem short of money. Sam didn’t want the responsibility of taking Barney on. Every man was hand-picked and he could vouch for their diligence and honesty. He could not do that with Barney McPhearson.

‘I have all the men I need,’ he said shortly.

Barney’s face fell. ‘I’m real sorry about that, Mr Foley,’ he said respectfully enough. ‘There’s sod all doing in Moville just now.’

Sam suddenly felt sorry for the lad. Maybe Barney could be turned around yet, he thought. After all, he was just twenty. Maybe all he needed was a helping hand.

‘I think you’re right,’ Sarah said that evening, when Sam discussed it with her. ‘If you don’t want the man on your team, why not give him a job at the boatyard? He can do the work you’ve picked up in Buncrana from the Lough Swilly fishing boats. Willie is too old to make the journey to Buncrana more that a time of two, but he’ll be there to keep him in line.’

Sam offered this position to Barney, though he knew Willie, who’d been in the boatyard since he’d been a lad, working for his late father, wouldn’t be able to keep anyone in line. He’d never been that sort and now the old man’s mind had begun to slip. Sam kept him on only out of kindness. He didn’t even pick up a wage any more, for he said he was fine with his pension and he just loved being around and dealing with boats.

Sam said none of this to Sarah, but what he did say was, ‘Tell that teacher our Maria can go to that Academy place now. I’ll be earning enough soon to pay for her accommodation.’

‘The girl knows nothing about any academy, sure,’ Sarah said to Sam.

‘Surely she should have this chance?’

‘Not at all,’ Sarah said. ‘She’s not that type of child.’

‘I wonder what Sean would think about it,’ Sam mused.

Sean was the only sibling Sarah had left. She loved him dearly and thought a lot of his opinion. He’d been delighted when Maria was born and took great joy in her, seeing in his niece the child he might never have. Despite the confines of the farm, he saw the family as often as he could. Maria in turn adored her uncle.

Sean had often regretted that his beloved niece would be brought up on her own, but accepted it as the will of God, like he’d accepted the idea that she wouldn’t be able to go to Grafton Academy, despite her gift, when Sarah had told him of the teacher’s visit. Now, the opportunity was there again as Sarah explained when Sean next visited her. He fastened his wise brown eyes upon Sarah and said, ‘It would be wrong to deny her the chance at least of trying for the scholarship.’

‘Ah, Sean, how can you say that? You know I only have Maria.’

‘You cannot chain her to your side,’ Sean said. ‘God knows, I’m well aware what that feels like.’

‘You don’t like the farm, do you?’

Sean sighed. ‘It isn’t me we’re talking of. If Maria ever found out that you denied her this chance, she might hold it against you.’

Sarah couldn’t bear the thought of that. Later, reluctantly, she said to Sam, ‘I’ll contact Philomena and see what Maria has to do.’

Maria, who hadn’t any idea of the things being planned for her, was ecstatic when she was told. The light of excitement danced in her eyes at the thought of being given the chance of such a glittering and wonderful future, doing something she enjoyed above all else. She had no problem with the work Philomena set for her, either. The teacher explained that the academic standard was high too, and Maria would have to work hard if she wanted to secure a scholarship.

Maria told Greg all about the plans for her future as soon as she could, and though he was sincerely pleased for her and said so, other worries had been pressing on his mind after Dunkirk. One of these was the thought that it was wrong to sit out the war in Ireland, when Britain was in such dire straits. While he was milking the cows, hoeing the ground for planting and feeding the pigs, many like him were away fighting the enemy.

He turned this over and over in his mind. Phil, the brother nearest to him in age, was fifteen now and had left school, Billy was thirteen, and both of them were now well able to help their father. The girls, still at school, already helped their mother.

That same night Maria told Greg about the Academy, he told his father he wanted to enlist. Greg’s father wasn’t surprised, for he knew how the lad felt about farming. He respected him for the fact he had never shown any resentment and worked alongside him as hard as the next man. He knew too that Greg was worried about the war, the more so since Dunkirk.

‘You’ve never taken to this life, have you, Greg?’ he asked.

‘No, Dad,’ Greg said. ‘I know why you took the place on and that if we were to make a go of it we had to work hard. Phil and Billy were too young to be of any use, but now…‘

‘Now they are,’ his father finished the sentence for him. ‘You must do as you feel fit. What outfit were you thinking of joining—the Fusiliers, the Inniskillings?’

‘No, Dad,’ Greg said. ‘There is only one regiment for me. I want to go back to Birmingham and join the Royal Warwickshires.’

His father clapped him on the back. ‘Good on you, son.’

‘There’s just Mom,’ Greg said. ‘She’s bound to be upset.’

‘Leave your mother to me.’

However, Greg’s mother wailed and cried, and held her son tight as if she’d never let him go. When all this failed she said, ‘And what of Maria in all this? I know you are sweet on her.’

‘She is set for two years yet in the Academy in Dublin next year if she passes the scholarship,’ Greg said. ‘There is no understanding between us, although I will ask her to write. She will understand I must follow my heart, as she is doing.’

Greg’s mother said no more. She knew she had lost.

Maria was sad to see Greg leave, but soon she was too busy to miss anyone. She had little time for a social life—for going around the village arm in arm with giggling girlfriends, or having a day in Derry. She wrote to Greg, though they were letters only of one friend to another. Now, in her next letter, she could tell him all the extra work and worry was over and her future was set.

When Maria reached the boatyard to tell Willie Brannigan her news, the first people she saw were Barney McPhearson taking his ease outside, talking to his brother, Seamus. She knew her father wouldn’t like Seamus hanging about the boatyard, for he always said he was a bad influence on his younger brother, but what could he do, away in Derry everyday, even if she were to tell him? And what could she tell him? Only that Barney was talking to his brother. She had no idea if Seamus was a regular visitor to the boatyard. Maybe he’d just popped in today with a message. Surely Willie would mention it if he were worried?

Barney’s eyes lit up when he caught sight of Maria approaching, for he had a great fancy for the girl. ‘Now isn’t this a sight for sore eyes, or any eyes at all, for that matter,’ he addressed Seamus. The older man looked her all over, his leering eyes raking her body in a way that made Maria feel uncomfortable.

She had no time for it, and none at all for Seamus, so she gave neither a greeting and asked instead, ‘Where’s Willie?’

‘In the boathouse,’ Barney said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ Maria said. ‘It’s not that important. Well, I mean it is to me. I got this today,’ and she handed Barney the letter.

Barney had known about Maria taking the exam for the Academy and hadn’t been pleased. He was a handsome, well-set-up young man, and most girls and young women were falling over themselves to be noticed by him. But Maria, the one he wanted, seemed not a bit impressed by him. He had no desire for her to be spirited away to Dublin and snapped up by another, but he sensed that to say so wasn’t the way to play this and so he congratulated her warmly.

‘Why, that’s tremendous, so it is, Maria,’ he said, taking the paper from her hand. ‘D’you see this?’ he said to Seamus, pointing at it. ‘Our Maria here has won a scholarship to a fancy academy, in Dublin no less.’

Seamus murmured his congratulations. Barney knew his brother thought him mad to hanker after the unattainable. Their parents had died when Barney was ten, but his father hadn’t worked for years before that. The family had lived on charity. Barney was left in the doubtful care of his elder brother, who’d then been twenty-one. He had often gone hungry and Seamus was not averse to giving him the odd clout, or even a thrashing a time or two. The priest had been called out once by worried neighbours and yet Barney perversely loved his brother.

‘Plenty more fish in the sea,’ Seamus had said, when he first saw the lustful glances Barney was giving Maria Foley. ‘She’s not for the likes of you and guarded well. Anyway, you know what you are like. If you got her you’d likely not want her, because it’s how you are with everything.’

‘This,’ maintained Barney, ‘is different.’

And now here she was before him. Greatly daring, Barney put his two arms around Maria’s waist, and drew her close.

Maria submitted to the embrace willingly, though usually would not have allowed such familiarity. She put it down to the man being so pleased for her. Certainly she found the kiss he planted on her full lips very pleasant indeed.

Seamus shook his head over his young brother. Willie, watching from the doorway, felt prickles of alarm down his spine. He could have told many a tale about the young man, like the fact Barney was too fond of drinking the afternoon away while he played a hand or two of cards with his brother and like-minded fellows and took little notice of Willie if he tried to take him to task about it.

Willie had said nothing to Sam because he could do little, away in Derry all the day. He’d never worry Sarah about such things. It wasn’t as if they were overburdened with work now that the fishing fleet had had to be disbanded.

Maria broke away from Barney’s embrace, and ran over to tell Willie the news. He was as delighted for her as Maria had known he would be. His lined face beamed and his blue eyes became moist with the emotion of it all.

As he put his arms around her, his words of congratulations held a note of relief, though Maria wasn’t aware of it. A new life beckoned Maria, Willie thought, and quite right too, well away from the clutches of people like Barney McPhearson. Really, he thought, it couldn’t come soon enough.