LITMIR.BIZ

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wasn’t a thing that Maeve had in abundance. For two weeks she lay in hospital while Elsie cared for her children, trying to think of some way out of the dilemma she was in. Elsie had had to keep Kevin away from school for the first week while his back healed, though she thought he might carry the marks for ever. Grace had been sworn to secrecy lest the children be taken away. The doctor had wanted to inform the authorities, but Maeve had begged him not to. She was terrified her children would be taken from her and then she knew she’d have the devil’s own job to get them back, and so reluctantly Dr Fleming agreed to say nothing. Brendan, however, was forced to return to his mother’s house, for Elsie refused even to boil a kettle for the man she called a drunken bully.

      For the fortnight, Maeve plotted and planned, but all her thoughts came to nothing, for she lacked that basic commodity – money. She came out of hospital at the end of June quite desperate and yet no nearer to achieving her objective.

      ‘You can’t stay with the man,’ Elsie stormed.

      ‘I can’t leave him either,’ Maeve cried back. ‘Where in heaven’s name would I go with two children and no job?’

      There was only one place, Maeve knew it and Elsie knew it. That was to go across the water to her mother’s. ‘Surely to God, Maeve, when you tell her how things are, she won’t refuse to take you in?’

      ‘No,’ Maeve said. ‘She’d support me if she only knew the half of it.’

      ‘Well then?’

      ‘Well then nothing, Elsie. How the hell am I to find the money to take us all to Ireland? You know I haven’t money to bless myself with.’

      ‘Could you ask your mammy?’

      ‘I could not,’ Maeve cried. ‘Don’t ever think of such a thing. She has six others besides myself, and the youngest still at school.’

      And there the matter rested.

      But a couple of weeks later, it reared its ugly head again. In the first week of Maeve’s release from hospital the doctor had told Brendan quite forcibly that he had to leave Maeve alone and for a good while, and even the priest, Father Trelawney, alerted by the doctor as to Maeve’s delicate state of health, told him he must curb his natural desires and show patience.

      He showed patience, though his temper was surly and he lashed out at Maeve often, but she could cope with that. It wasn’t in the nature of an actual beating. But by the third week of July, three weeks after she’d been released from hospital, Brendan reckoned Maeve had had enough time to get over whatever it was had ailed her, and he began again demanding his rights. Maeve lay passive beneath him and prayed she wouldn’t become pregnant again, but she was afraid of inflaming his temper further by refusing.

      About this time, Elsie came in one day in a fever of excitement. The two children were out playing when she burst in. ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Elsie said.

      ‘What?’ Maeve looked at her in astonishment.

      ‘You heard. A job,’ Elsie repeated. ‘I’ve just been in Mountford’s and the old man has had a heart attack. It wasn’t serious, like – it was in the way of a warning – but the doctor said he had to take life easier for a bit and Mrs Mountford asked me if I would work a few hours to help her out for a bit, or if I knew of someone trustworthy. I thought of you straight off, for this way you can earn enough to take you to see your mother in Ireland.’

      ‘Elsie, I couldn’t,’ Maeve said. ‘Brendan would never—’

      ‘You don’t tell Brendan,’ Elsie told her firmly. ‘And you certainly don’t bloody well ask him.’

      ‘But he’d know,’ Maeve insisted, thinking how close and how public Mountford’s corner shop was.

      ‘How would he?’ Elsie demanded. ‘Mrs Mountford told me the hours. Ten to four, Monday to Friday except for Wednesday, when the shop closes at one o’clock, and nine till two on Saturday. You’d manage that, and still be home to cook the sod his tea.’

      Maeve knew she would. Brendan left the house at half-past six in the morning and didn’t come home till half-six in the evening – that was when he came straight home. On Saturdays he finished work at one and went on to the pub and didn’t come home till at least half-past three. But still she hesitated. ‘I couldn’t, Elsie.’

      ‘Why not? You just tell old George Mountford and his missus, Edith, that you have experience. They’ll snap you up.’

      ‘What about the weans?’

      ‘What about them?’ Elsie had said. ‘You can take them to school in the mornings and I’ll collect and mind them in the afternoons till you come in. Saturdays, you leave them in with me.’

      ‘Ah, Elsie . . .’ Maeve said. She knew she had a great deal to be grateful for in the older woman and to prevent her getting all tearful about it, asked in a jocular way, ‘Are you dying to get rid of me so much?’

      ‘Aye. You’ve guessed,’ Elsie said, but her eyes were moist and she hoped Maeve wouldn’t notice, and to prevent her doing just that she said sternly, ‘Get yourself down that shop before I put my bloody boot behind you. I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a cup of tea to celebrate your new job when you get back.’

      ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ Maeve said as she went out the door.

      ‘You’ll get it,’ Elsie said to her retreating back.

      ‘Sweet Jesus, let her get this job,’ she whispered. Jobs were hard to come by and if Maeve didn’t get this, there could be a long wait for another and anything might have happened to her by then. Elsie knelt down on the rag rug in front of the firegrate and said a decade of rosary for her and hoped no one would take it in their head to pop in and see her kneeling to pray in the middle of the morning.

      Maeve loved working for George and Edith Mountford, and as the months passed, she realised she’d seldom been so happy. Around her people were talking about the war that everyone now knew was imminent, and yet she was feeling very content. Her life was even easier once Kevin passed his seventh birthday in November and took himself and Grace to school and back every day.

      The children were looking marginally better than they had. Maeve bought a few nice things for them to eat and some new clothes they desperately needed, though most of her wages were stored in the tin cash box in Elsie’s house, to buy the tickets that were to be her and her children’s passport to freedom. As part of Maeve’s wages, Edith always made up a basket for her on Saturday afternoon and Maeve was surprised by the Mountfords’ generosity. She’d had to hide a lot of the produce in the wardrobe in the attic, only bringing out a few things at a time to stack on the shelves. It would never do to arouse Brendan’s suspicions.

      It surprised Maeve as time went on that no one let on to him that she worked in the corner shop, for everyone knew. She served neighbours in the shop every day and yet no one said a word about it to Brendan.

      ‘Why would they tell your old man?’ Elsie asked when she queried it. ‘Most of the women don’t like him. They know he keeps you short of money and knocks you about. They think you’ve got guts to put up with it and earn some money to provide for your kids. They won’t split on you.’

      And they didn’t. And Maeve coped, although for the first week or two she found it tiring being on her feet all day and then dealing with the children and cooking a meal when she got home. But she watched the money rise in the cash box and it cheered her. The cash box had been her first purchase and she knew there was no place to hide money in her house. If Brendan even got a sniff there was any to be had, he’d tear the place apart until he found it and have it off her. It had to be left in Elsie’s keeping, but Elsie had suggested the cash box with a key, which Maeve must keep.

      Maeve had been working at the shop just over a fortnight when Brendan gave her such a beating one night that she was bruised from head to toe the next day. Every movement hurt, but she forced her stiffened limbs into action, for she wasn’t missing a day from her job.

      Edith

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