Mother’s Only Child. Anne Bennett
‘You will?’
‘Of course. Don’t you start work the day after?’
‘Aye.’
‘And the following day, I’m back at camp, and then who knows? We must grab every minute we can.’
‘I know,’ Maria said miserably. ‘I will miss you so much when you go back.’
‘And I’ll miss you, my love,’ Greg said, kissing her again. ‘But go in now, or Bella will give out to you for keeping her up so late.’
Maria knew Greg spoke good sense. It was neither sensible nor right to alienate Bella. However, when she went inside, it wasn’t Bella sitting in the chair before the fire, but Barney.
He had heard with irritation about the young Greg Hopkins, home from the war and buzzing around Maria’s door. His anger was fuelled that evening when he’d called to take Maria to the hospital and found out she had already gone, and with Greg Hopkins. ‘She called to see you at the boatyard and tell you this,’ Bella had said. ‘And all she saw was young Colm Brannigan, who didn’t seem to know where you were at all.’
‘I had to go to Buncrana to see about a boat,’ Barney said. ‘I did tell the boy. He must have forgotten.’
In fact he had been nowhere near Buncrana, but away in the hills with Seamus, learning about a very lucrative business proposal that he preferred above baby-minding a boatyard. However, he wasn’t sharing that with Bella. She was suspicious enough of him already. What he did say was, ‘Well, I have the night to myself, for I had thought to be taking Maria to the hospital, so if you want to get off, I will listen out for her mother. I need to see Maria tonight about a spot of business.’
‘At this time of night?’
Barney shrugged. ‘I’ve been busy all day and the plan was to talk to her on the way into Derry. Now I am here it is pointless the two of us waiting.’
It was, and Bella was tired. ‘Well, I’ll be off then, if you are sure?’
‘Quite sure,’ Barney told her, and Bella made her way home.
Barney noted Maria’s flushed face and dancing eyes just as she noted the glass beside the large bottle of poteen, which was half empty. She was annoyed to find Barney sitting there as if he owned the place, and even more annoyed when he said he’d sent Bella home.
‘You had no right.’
‘I had every right,’ Barney said. ‘She’d been on her feet all day and was tired, yawning like a good one. I sent her home as a kindness to her, and said I would wait for you. Fine consideration you had for the woman doing you a favour, for you are powerfully late.’
Maria flushed with embarrassment, because she knew Barney had a point. ‘Yes, I didn’t mean it to be such a long night. We went for a drink after we’d been in to see Daddy.’
Barney’s innards were twisted with jealousy for Greg Hopkins, who’d had Maria’s company all night, but he remembered Seamus telling him not to fret when he’d complained before. ‘Your man will be back to soldiering soon,’ he’d said, ‘and the way clear for you.’ So Barney swallowed the anger.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ Maria asked him.
‘I needed to talk to you.’
‘It’s very late, as you pointed out,’ Maria said. ‘Couldn’t it have waited?’
‘I didn’t think so,’ Barney said. ‘We need to discuss the boatyard.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Maria said. ‘I didn’t know you’d engaged Colm, Willie’s grandson.’
‘He’s left school now and was for ever asking me if I could get him set on.’
‘Even so,’ Maria said, ‘it should have been discussed.’
‘I talked it over with your father,’ Barney said. ‘All right, perhaps I should have mentioned it to you as well, but the point is the boatyard barely makes enough to pay the boy, so I have got another job.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s delivering supplies over the border to the naval staff.’
‘Oh,’ Maria said again, surprised. ‘Are you employed by the military then?’
‘No, it’s a private concern.’
Barney didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t say he was joining Seamus to smuggle poteen and rationed goods across the border, bringing back petrol, fertiliser and animal feed. All these things were transported under the cover of darkness, as was Seamus’s setting-up of card schools, which now Barney would be involved in. They had special packs of cards and many tricks to fleece the sailors of their money, especially when the sailors’ brains were addled with poteen.
But Maria wasn’t suspicious. In her opinion the services had to have supplies and the job seemed a legitimate one.
‘I’ve told Colm in the afternoons I’ll still be around to deal with anything he can’t handle,’ Barney said.
‘I appreciate that.’
‘Least I can do,’ Barney said, pouring himself another large glass of poteen. He proffered the bottle in Maria’s direction. ‘Want one?’
Maria shook her head. She was more than tired—shattered suddenly—and she really wanted to be rid of Barney so that she could lie in bed and think about the new future Greg had offered her.
Barney saw the dreamy look in Maria’s eyes. Christ! For two pins he call that Greg out and pound him to pulp. And then what? said a little voice in his head. You would be the one up before the magistrate and Maria would never want anything to do with you ever again. Wait till he’s away and you are not before you move in.
‘I’ll be off then,’ he said to Maria. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’
‘Probably.’
Probably, thought Barney. One time it would have been ‘of course’, but that was before lover boy’s appearance. Well, he would have patience. It wasn’t something he was noted for, but he imagined he could learn it as quick as the next man if he had to.
Early the next evening, Greg took Maria into Derry after she’d taken tea with his family. Maria hadn’t wanted to go to tea, but Greg had insisted. Greg’s parents and his two brothers and two sisters were welcoming, and when Maria left, she knew they would accept her into their family with little or no trouble.
They went again to a cinema in Derry to see The Road to Singapore, which starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Maria had never heard of them, but Greg told her these were the names of big stars that were in the major films of the time. Maria enjoyed the film immensely.
At the door, Greg took Maria in his arms and kissed her neck and eyes before moving to her lips. This time his tongue parted her lips gently and sent sharp shafts of desire that she didn’t fully understand shooting through her body. She gasped with the shock of it, the beginnings of sexual awareness.
‘I love you, Greg!’ She didn’t know where the words came from. She knew she meant them—that with every fibre of her being she loved Greg Hopkins.
Greg was overjoyed. ‘I love you, Maria Foley, with every bit of me. You mean everything to me.’
They kissed and kissed again. Greg kept his arms around Maria though his hands tingled to explore every inch of her luscious body.
As Maria donned the overall and hat that every vestige of hair had to be tucked beneath, and began to work on the coarse army garb on the heavy machines, she couldn’t help contrasting her life now with the life she’d once had offered to her. This work was mind-blowingly boring. The heat in the factory was stifling, and the lint floating in the air stung her eyes and made her sneeze and cough.
But