LITMIR.BIZ

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and her father coughing his guts up in the bedroom above. She and Alf had the attic and she often wondered how she’d cope if she became pregnant, and at the time thanked God that she hadn’t. Two years later, all that she had of her parents were the two wooden crosses in the churchyard. After they’d been married for seven more childless years, Elsie mentioned to Alf that perhaps they should see the doctor, but Alf said he was reluctant to discuss anything so personal. The priest Elsie went to for advice told her she had to be content with whatever God sent and if he intended her to be childless then she had to be satisfied with it. She hadn’t ever been satisfied, but as she was unable to change the situation she had to accept it.

      But when a heavily pregnant Maeve Hogan moved in next door to her some years later, Elsie’s maternal instincts rose to the fore. Maeve was only nineteen, her twentieth birthday being in late December, and could have been Elsie’s own daughter. Maeve, often confused and made unhappy by Brendan’s behaviour, and missing her own mother, found Elsie’s company very welcome indeed.

      A strong friendship grew between them, and it had been Elsie’s hand that Maeve had clung to as her son, Kevin, was born in November 1931, while Brendan went on a drinking binge and disappeared for two days. He returned looking like death, without a word of explanation or apology and took no notice of his infant son.

      In fact Brendan’s indifference towards Kevin seemed to be echoed among all his family, and even Maeve’s uncle and aunt. Letters of congratulation from Ireland were all well and good, but not the same as her family visiting and taking delight in the child. So Maeve was glad of Elsie’s support. She knew she’d get little from Brendan and she thanked God that she had such a kind and caring neighbour.

THREE

      Brendan hated the child who’d supplanted him. One day, being unused to the demands of a young baby, Maeve hadn’t quite finished feeding Kevin when Brendan walked in the door. He watched his son tugging at his wife’s breasts and was so consumed by jealousy that he shook.

      He strode across the room and dragged the child so roughly from Maeve that he began to wail, and Maeve got to her feet, terrified Brendan would hurt him. Not that he didn’t want to, for he knew Maeve preferred the child over him. But in the end he almost threw him back to Maeve and told her to put him in the bedroom out of the bloody road.

      Another night he came home to find no dinner ready because, she said, ‘the baby wouldn’t settle’. The resultant punch he gave her was to make sure that that never happened again.

      ‘You look after me before any squalling brat,’ he yelled, as Maeve wiped the blood oozing from her nose and her split lip. ‘Maybe you’ll remember that in future.’

      No longer was Maeve so eager for him each night either, and would often turn from him if Kevin made a murmur, holding the baby in her arms and crooning while her husband grew hot with impatience and frustration. He never spoke of his feelings and fears, but instead grew moodier than ever, and often gave Maeve the odd punch or clout if he felt she was annoying him in some way.

      Maeve didn’t really understand what had happened to the husband that she still loved, who’d courted her with such consideration and professed his devotion to her often. She sometimes remembered with a pang of nostalgia how they used to laugh together over something silly, or the hours and hours they used to talk and never tire of one another, or the way she used to yearn for his hands on her body. Now such intimacy seemed to have slunk away from them.

      Brendan worked hard, there was no denying that, and in the early days of their marriage he’d talked about his work and the sweltering heat he toiled under, turning copper and zinc into molten metal in white-hot furnaces so that they could be poured into crucibles. The sweat ran from him so freely that often the shirt he wore was still damp when he arrived home.

      Maeve had witnessed the weariness on his face when he came in the door and saw the lines on his brow rimed with dirt, and the grime streaking his cheeks. She’d seen his cracked, calloused hands encrusted with black, and smelt the sour sweat of him. She’d often felt sorry for him, and because of it, had forgiven him his temper.

      Then she’d always had the kettle on the boil for Brendan’s wash. He said he always felt better with the muck sluiced off him and clean, dry clothes on, but since Kevin’s birth all that had stopped. Now he was prepared to sit down at the table unwashed, reeking from stale sweat and with filthy hands and nails, and would shovel in his food as though he was a pig at a trough.

      Because Maeve knew beer inflamed Brendan’s temper, she tried talking to him after his meal when he was more rational and at least sober. She tried, as she’d done before, asking him what she was doing that so enraged him that he felt he had to raise his hand to her. Brendan never had an answer to give her. He felt she needed no explanation and the fact that she seemed to expect one angered him further. His mother would never have questioned his father.

      When she tried to talk to him about the money he gave her, which was woefully inadequate, Brendan flew into such a temper Maeve was terrified. She produced a list of things she had to buy, or pay for each week, thinking it might help, and he tore it from her hands, ripped it into pieces and threw them into the fire.

      The back of his hand sliced across Maeve’s cheek as he hissed, ‘All the bloody same, women, nag, nag, nag, and always about bloody money. Well, you’ll just have to manage on what I give you, for you’ll get no more.’

      Maeve had been stunned by both the blow and Brendan’s reaction. After that she didn’t say anything more to him about the son of whom he seemed to take no notice. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Elsie Phillips next door, who took as much delight in the child as she did herself, Maeve might have become seriously depressed.

      It was Elsie’s advice that Maeve sought one sunny morning in September 1932. Elsie listened and then said, ‘You’ll have to tell him, girl. For God’s sake, pregnancy is one thing you can’t hide.’

      ‘Elsie, I’m scared.’

      ‘It’s his baby as much as yours, Maeve. You didn’t do it on your own.’

      ‘You don’t know him, Elsie. He’ll go mad.’

      ‘Better you tell him than let him find out for himself,’ Elsie said. But she spoke cautiously because she’d known for some time that Maeve’s husband smacked her about a bit. The construction of the houses was not conducive to any degree of privacy, and she’d heard some of the blows Maeve had received, and seen the evidence with her own eyes the next day. But Maeve had not mentioned the violence so neither had Elsie.

      Still, Maeve knew Elsie was right. Brendan had to know that she was three months gone with another child. When Maeve told him that night after tea, he flew into a temper and shouted and screamed so much, Elsie was tempted to go in, but Alf told her to mind her own business. She didn’t breathe easy till she heard Maeve’s door slam and knew Brendan had taken himself off to the pub.

      All evening Brendan brooded, over the many pints he ordered, on the news he’d received that day. There would be a baby every bloody year, just as he’d imagined it, till Maeve hadn’t a moment to bid him the time of day, and he hadn’t two halfpennies to call his own. Every penny would go to feed and clothe bleeding kids he had never wanted. Some bloody gift from God!

      That night Brendan staggered home from the pub consumed with the unfairness of it. It was Maeve’s fault, tempting him like all women tempted men, trapping him into marriage by not letting him do what he wanted until she had the ring on her finger. Bloody bitches, all women. Maeve most of all, and it was about time she was taught a lesson she’d not forget in a hurry.

      The next morning, when Brendan saw the mess he’d made of Maeve’s face and hazily remembered what he’d done to her the night before, he felt guilty and ashamed, and angry with himself for feeling that way. He told himself she’d asked for it. He growled at her to get his breakfast and, alarmed and afraid, Maeve, without a word, eased herself painfully from the bed and went to do his bidding.

      She was glad when he went to

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