Love Me Tender - Anne Bennett

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      Lizzie felt like a princess, and as she glanced along the row, she knew her dress was just as nice as all the other communicants’. She’d discovered that most girls with older sisters or cousins had handed-down dresses like hers, and not all the mothers had done such a good job as Kathy at making them look like new. And it was far better than having a dress loaned to you by the school, as some did if their families were really poor. Lizzie would have hated that.

      Really, she thought, no one would have known her whole outfit wasn’t new, for the dress and veil were sparkling white and her daddy had put white stuff on the sandals to cover any scuff marks. Her mammy had bought new white socks in the end, for she said Sheelagh’s had gone a bit grey, and that morning she’d given Lizzie a missal with a white leather cover that was so beautiful to look at it was almost a shame to use it. Her grandma had given her a new rosary as she entered the church, and now she played it through her fingers and attempted to pray.

      But she was too excited to concentrate and couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boys sitting the other side of the church, for all they had were the white sashes loaned to them by the school. Their shirts were white, of course, and she guessed a fair few were new, but they looked very drab next to the girls in all their finery.

      Lizzie’s tummy rumbled as she’d known it would, for she’d not been able to have anything to eat or drink that morning as she was taking communion. It was only right, for she knew the little round tablet was not bread but the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It was a miracle, the priests said, that happened in the mass. It always made her feel a bit sick, that thought, but she never told anyone, they’d think her awful. She felt sick now too, waiting to take communion for the first time. Probably, she thought, it was because she was hungry, and she’d feel better when she had her breakfast in the school afterwards.

      Lizzie knew the family would all be there for her that Sunday morning. In one way she was glad, but on the other hand, she knew that if she fidgeted too much, or looked round, or dropped her collection pennies, she’d catch it later. She knew where they all were, for out of the corner of her eye she’d seen her Auntie Maggie and Mammy and Daddy arrive with Danny between them, and all the others behind them. She glanced round once to smile, but her mammy made an impatient gesture with her hand that Lizzie knew meant for her to turn round and face the front. She did, but not before she saw Michael and Carmel, who Lizzie felt were too young to be called Uncle and Auntie, grinning back at her. Carmel was only twelve and could remember her own first communion; she knew how Lizzie would be feeling, and how her empty stomach would be churning at the enormity of it all.

      Kathy watched all the earnest young communicants and hoped that it was a safe world they were growing up in. The news she listened to on the wireless at her parents’ house was disturbing, as it was in the newspaper Barry had taken to bringing home in the evening. She knew that there was great trouble in Germany. Barry had explained that Hitler seemed to want to own the whole of Europe, and they weren’t making guns in the quantities Barry said they were making them just to put in some vast storehouse. She said a fervent prayer for the safety of her family, especially Barry, Lizzie, Danny and the unborn child she was carrying, and as the strains of the organ filled the church and she stumbled to her feet for the first hymn, a chill of foreboding ran through her body.

       TWO

      Lizzie wasn’t sure exactly when she became aware over the summer holidays that something wasn’t right and that all the adults were worried. In the main, it was a holiday like any other; when the kids in the street got fed up of skipping and playing hopscotch and hide and seek and other street games, they would start to complain and fight and get under their mothers’ feet. Then Carmel and girls of similar age would be pressed into service to take the children off to Cannon Hill, or Calthorpe Park, with a couple of bottles of tea and jam sandwiches to stave off hunger till teatime. It had been Carmel’s lot to look after her cousins and their friends since she’d been nine years old, and much as she loved them, she often resented it. Sometimes she thought it was no good having a holiday if all you did all day was mind weans. She also knew it was no good saying anything about it and that lots of girls were in the same boat, so she usually went without complaining.

      Lizzie thought at first that everyone was worried about her Auntie Rose, who was on her time again and little Pete only just two and Grandma said she was not having it easy. Then she thought it might be the row going on because her Auntie Maggie wanted to marry Con Murray and Grandma and Grandad wouldn’t have it. Not only was he just a bookie’s runner and not good enough, in their opinion, for Maggie, but he’d been put in prison for it too, and Grandad said no daughter of his would marry a jail bird.

      Later, at home, she heard her parents discussing it. Barry said Con wasn’t a jail bird really; all he did was place bets, and he at least felt sorry for him, he only did it because he couldn’t get a decent job.

      ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Daddy won’t let her marry him,’ Kathy said. ‘He can’t provide for her properly as a bookie’s runner.’

      ‘I couldn’t provide for you for many years,’ Barry reminded her.

      ‘Aye, but you could when I married you,’ Kathy said. ‘And you’d never been inside.’

      ‘No, but I can’t blame the man, not totally,’ Barry said. ‘Anyway, so I hear it, when the men are put away, the firm, the people he places bets for, see to his family.’

      ‘Oh, I’ll tell Daddy that,’ Kathy said sarcastically. ‘I’m sure it will make all the difference! He’d have a fit if he thought his daughter, and possibly grandchildren, was being kept from starvation by people he’d consider not far removed from gangsters. Couldn’t you ask round at your place?’ she appealed. ‘Maybe Con could get set on there?’

      Barry shook his head. ‘I doubt it, but I’ll ask. In the meantime they’ll have to wait. After all, once Maggie is twenty-one, she can do as she pleases.’

      Kathy wondered if her headstrong young sister would be prepared to wait, for she was just nineteen, and two years seemed a lifetime away. Only the other day, she’d said to Kathy in a voice laced with a veiled threat, ‘I could always force their hand, you know.’

      ‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ Kathy had snapped. ‘Don’t suggest bringing a child into this mess till you have something sorted.’ She looked at her sister and asked, tentatively, ‘You haven’t…you don’t…’

      Maggie had tossed her mane of black hair so like her elder sister’s, flashed her eyes that had a greenish tinge to them and snapped, ‘That’s my business.’

      ‘Maggie, you’ll get your name up.’

      ‘Don’t be such a fool. Con loves me.’

      ‘You’re the fool! If he loved you, he’d wait.’

      ‘Till when? Till we’re drawing the old age pension?’

      ‘Oh, Maggie,’ Kathy cried. ‘Be careful.’

      ‘I am careful,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m just saying that if Mammy and Daddy keep being awkward, then I might not be so careful, that’s all. We’re not made of stone, we can’t wait forever.’

      Lizzie knew that her family were worried about Maggie and Con, who went arm-in-arm down the street together. But she also knew that it wasn’t just these ordinary worries that gave everyone the serious look to their faces; it was something more. They’d gather at Grandma Sullivan’s to hear the news on the wireless broadcasts and talk about someone called Hitler, Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia. It was a while before Lizzie realised Czechoslovakia was a country and not a person’s name, and that Hitler wanted to dominate it.

      Her daddy, who seemed to know more about the situation than the others from the reading he’d done during his time of unemployment, feared that war, at least between Czechoslovakia and Germany, was inevitable. ‘Whether we’ll just stand by and watch this time is the question,’ he

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