LITMIR.BIZ

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I have a wife who lies beside me like a stranger and who hardly talks to me, and he remembered with a twinge of nostalgia the heady days early in their marriage when they couldn’t get enough of each other. Now, Barry thought, Kathy had settled without complaint into a sexless relationship. Maybe sex hadn’t been important to her. Maybe she’d just pretended that it had. He’d known from his limited sexual experience that most women didn’t enjoy it, and he thought that in Kathy he’d found a gem. Just went to show it was all put on, a pretence, or surely she would have said something by now. Ah, but what the odds, what could he have done even if she’d said anything? Once he’d loved her so much, but it seemed a lifetime ago now. With a grunt that was almost a groan, he turned on his side away from Kathy and settled to sleep.

      *

      One raw February day, the O’Malley household was roused by a furious knocking on the door. The clock showed barely six o’clock, and Barry struggled into his trousers and ran down the stairs to find young Michael on the doorstep. Michael had been on the dole for just over a month, as everyone had expected. Now he was breathless, both because he’d run from his house and also because of excitement.

      Barry pulled him inside, for the wind was fierce. He knew something must have happened for Michael to be there so early in the morning, and in such a state of agitation. ‘What is it?’

      ‘They’re…they’re setting on at BSA,’ Michael panted, hardly able to get the words out.

      Barry hadn’t been aware he was holding his breath till he suddenly let it out in a loud sigh. He’d been expecting bad news of some sort, but this…He remembered how once he’d been like Michael, shooting off in all directions, chasing one job offer and the hundreds after it. He couldn’t feel excitement like that again, but he couldn’t dim the light in Michael’s eyes. ‘Where did you hear it?’ he asked.

      ‘Paddy Molloy came in this morning and was after telling Da. He was set on yesterday. His cousin told him about it.’

      ‘BSA the cycle place?’

      ‘Aye.’

      ‘And this was yesterday?’

      ‘Aye, last night.’

      ‘Any vacancies will be long gone by now, Michael.’

      ‘No, it’s new lines, I’m telling you,’ Michael burst out. ‘Molloy said there’ll be jobs for us all, and the new lines aren’t making bicycles.’

      ‘Well what, then?’

      ‘Guns.’

      ‘Guns?’ Kathy exclaimed. Neither Barry nor Michael had seen her come into the room. Now she stood before her brother, Danny in her arms, and repeated, ‘Guns! Did you say they’re making guns?’

      ‘Aye, Molloy told us. A lot of the old workers have been made up to inspectors, he said.’

      ‘But what do they want so many guns for?’ Kathy asked.

      ‘How should I know?’

      Barry thought he knew only too well, but he didn’t share his thoughts. Instead he said, ‘Well, I’m away to get dressed. It’s worth going for if all Molloy says is true.’

      Kathy looked after him. She couldn’t even feel pleased, and certainly not optimistic. God alone knew she’d been pleased enough in the beginning, when she’d thought Barry would be set on any day and he’d been flying all around the place on one unlikely jaunt after another, until hope had dimmed and dejection set in. ‘Have you time for a drop of tea?’ she asked her brother.

      ‘No, we’ll have to go as soon as Barry’s ready. We’ll need to be early to have a chance.’ He’d just finished speaking when Barry entered the room, pulling a jumper over his head and grabbing his coat off the hook on the door. Lizzie was trailing behind him.

      ‘Have you any money?’ Barry asked Kathy. ‘We’ll have to take the tram there at least.’

      Kathy tipped out her purse. ‘Two and threepence,’ she said. ‘All the money I have in the world,’ and she extracted a shilling and gave it to him. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

      ‘Thanks.’ Barry made no move towards her, but she hadn’t expected a kiss; that had stopped some time before. Instead he lifted Danny from her arms and kissed him soundly before setting him on his feet, and then bent down to Lizzie and, kissing her cheek, said, ‘Pray for me, pet, this could be it.’

      Kathy felt tears prick behind her eyes as she watched Barry and Michael stride down the road. She might have been a dummy for all the notice her husband took of her. She gave the children their breakfast, supervised their wash and helped Danny get dressed, but her mind was far away. She had no hope left that there’d be a job for Barry, and she feared he’d come back more morose and depressed than ever.

      ‘It’s all right, Mammy,’ Lizzie assured her, catching sight of Kathy’s worried face as they walked to school. ‘I’ve prayed to the Virgin Mary.’

      Oh, to have a child’s faith, Kathy thought, but she smiled at her daughter and gave her hand a squeeze. She couldn’t help wondering, though, what BSA wanted with so many guns, and why they should take on Michael and Barry when neither of them knew a damn thing about making them.

      But when Barry came back, one look at his face told Kathy he’d been successful, and when he caught her around the waist and hugged her, she suppressed the thought that if Lizzie hadn’t been at school and Danny at her mother’s she wouldn’t have got a look-in. ‘I start tomorrow at six,’ Barry said. ‘Michael’s working along with me and we have as much overtime as we can take.’

      ‘That’s great, so it is! Great!’ Kathy said, and she felt the worry of the last years slip from her.

      ‘Is that trying hard enough for you?’ Barry asked, his face stern.

      ‘Oh, can’t we forget that stupid quarrel?’ Kathy said. ‘I was sorry as soon as I said it. God, how many times I wished it unsaid.’

      ‘You never told me.’

      ‘I’m telling you now, and I am sorry, Barry, truly I am,’ Kathy said, facing her husband.

      Suddenly Barry was seized by desire for his young wife. ‘You could show me how sorry you really are,’ he said, and his face was very close to Kathy’s, his voice slightly husky. She could read the expression in his eyes and knew what he wanted. ‘We have the place to ourselves and it’s been a bloody long time.’

      Too right, Kathy thought, and though she had plenty to do, she turned the key in the lock of the door to the street and the one into the entry, and followed her husband up the stairs.

      Lizzie really missed her father when he went to work, though she sensed everyone else was pleased. Her mother didn’t snap so much at her and Danny now, and she was friends with her daddy again. Lizzie often saw them laughing together, and Daddy sometimes kissed Mammy when he thought no one could see.

      So they were all happier, and Grandma said that, ‘Things are back to normal again, thank God,’ and only Lizzie was the slightest bit miserable. Her father worked long hours and any overtime going, and he got home too late and too tired to play with Lizzie and Danny as he used to. Often he was so late they were in bed when he got in and he had only time to give them a kiss. Danny had often fallen asleep, but Lizzie would wait, however tired she was, for her father’s tread on the stairs.

      It was June now and almost Lizzie’s seventh birthday. Just after it, she would make her first holy communion. She knew most of her catechism and things were going along nicely at school, but no one at home seemed bothered. Who would make her dress, Lizzie wondered, or could she choose one, in the market? She imagined a veil with flowers on the band at the front like she’d seen others wearing. She longed for white sandals, which would be the prettiest shoes she’d ever had in her life, and white socks, so different from the grey woollen ones of winter and the bare legs of summer.

      Eventually she broached the subject with her mother. ‘You’re

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