Mother’s Only Child. Anne Bennett
he dead?’
‘No,’ Barney said. He didn’t add ‘he might soon be’, though he knew the man must have been in the water some six hours. He’d been unconscious when they hauled him out and only prevented from drowning by the boat rammed against him. ‘He’s been taken to the hospital in Derry,’ Barney went on.
‘I must go to him,’ Sarah said.
Maria didn’t argue and neither did Barney. ‘I have the trap outside. Wrap up well, for the night air can be treacherous.’
Maria would always remember that journey, the crowd of people outside the house and Barney McPhearson’s arms encircling her as she emerged. He helped first her mother into the trap and then Maria herself, tucking the blankets he’d brought around them solicitously. Then they were off, the clop of the pony’s feet on the cobbles almost drowned by the encouraging shouts of the villagers.
Sarah was sunk in misery and Maria could do nothing but put her arm around her. It wasn’t just grief tugging at Sarah, but guilt too. For weeks, she’d prayed for something to happen to prevent Maria leaving them, but hadn’t given a thought to what that could possibly be. She had never envisaged anything happening to Sam.
Later, as she looked down at her unconscious husband in the hospital bed and listened to the doctor telling her that Sam’s legs were crushed beyond repair and he would never walk again, she knew she had condemned him to this living death. Maria would never leave home now but that thought now gave her little joy.
It was by no means certain that Sam would even survive. ‘He is,’ the doctor said, ‘a very sick man. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.’
‘We’ll stay,’ Sarah declared, and Maria agreed.
And they did stay, sitting on a hard bench in a hospital corridor, Barney between them. When Sarah’s body sagged against him in a sleep of total exhaustion, Barney put his arm about Maria. ‘This is dreadful for you,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’
Maria was glad he was there, glad of his solid bulk beside her. He seemed, at that moment, the only one she could confide in, tell of her confused feelings. ‘Daddy—he means the world to me,’ she said. ‘I love him so very, very much, but this course at the Academy…For a full year I’ve worked towards it and for weeks have known I was going. I’ve never felt so excited, so exhilarated as I did the day I received that letter offering me a scholarship place. But, really, I shouldn’t be feeling any regret at all about it with Daddy so ill. Surely my thoughts and tears should be all for him.’
‘They are really,’ Barney assured her. ‘But you can’t just turn off hopes and dreams, kept alive this long while.’
‘You seem to understand so much,’ Maria said in surprise. She realised she’d never really taken much notice of Barney before.
‘That’s because I care a great deal about you,’ Barney said. ‘All of you.’
Maria was relieved to hear Barney say that, because she knew her mother would never deal with this. Maria herself would shoulder the burden of the house, with not even Sean on hand, with his own father so ill, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with all that responsibility alone.
‘What if Daddy doesn’t survive, Barney?’ Maria asked a few moments later.
‘Every hour that passes is better news, I should think,’ Barney said. ‘He’s in the best place and all we can do is hope and pray.’
As soon as Bella heard about the tragic events in the Foley family, and the women had returned home, she went down to see them. Sarah had already gone to bed, but Maria was still doing last-minute things. At the sadness in the girl’s eyes, Bella put her arms around her trembling shoulders.
‘Maria, there are no words to express what I feel. This is a terrible thing to happen.’
‘I know.’ Maria’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘Daddy will live. We stayed, me and Mammy, until he was out of danger, but, oh God, Bella, if you could see him lying there so still, so white. He’s never regained consciousness and so probably doesn’t know we were there, for all I spoke to him, as the nurse advised. She raised her eyes to Bella’s and said, ‘He’ll never walk, nor work again.’
‘And the Academy?’
‘That will never be now, of course, and it does no good fretting over it. I will have more to occupy my time, anyway.’
Bella saw the disappointment in the sag of Maria’s body and the tone of her voice, yet she was right to try to put it from her mind. It would be like probing a sore tooth.
‘You know where my door is if you or your mother need anything,’ she said. ‘And I do mean anything at all.’
‘Aye, Bella, I do, and I thank you, but just now I am too weary to think about anything but my bed.’
‘And I’ll not keep you from it a moment longer,’ Bella said. ‘Go on up now. I’ll let myself out.’
When Sam was in a position to know that he was paralysed from the waist down, he wished he had died. Inside his head he ranted and railed about his condition, though he wouldn’t let his daughter see his anger and frustration nor his tears of self-pity.
He worried as to how they would all manage when he would be unable to work and was glad that they had the support of Barney McPhearson. He’d completely misjudged that young man.
He felt bad about Maria, who’d once held her future in the palm of her hand and not only had it dashed to the floor, but trampled on.
‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ Maria said firmly when he’d said this. ‘It was an accident and that’s all there is to it. Everyone has helped and the villagers have been golden.’
She didn’t go on to say that it was as well they had, because her mother seemed incapable of doing anything, including speaking. Since the night the doctor had told them Sam would live, but never work or walk again, she hadn’t spoken one word. Maria didn’t want to burden her daddy with news like that.
Anyway, she’d told herself over and over, it was probably just shock. Everyone knew that shock could do funny things to a body and Sarah would likely get over it in time. Even Bella and Dora had agreed with her over that.
When the word was first out about Sam, the men from the dockyard had rallied around him and had gone to the hospital in droves. Con was a regular, though he felt bad that he was now made gaffer in Sam’s place. Sam told him not to be such a bloody fool and there was not a man alive that he’d rather have taking over from him, but Con couldn’t help feeling guilty about it.
Maria was almost overwhelmed by the people’s concern and their generosity, though she knew the family couldn’t live on their neighbours for ever. Sam knew it too. It was Barney that he appealed to one day to find out the position he was in with regard to the Royal Navy and whether he was entitled to any sort of compensation or a pension.
But the news Barney brought him was not good. Because Sam had been self-employed and just contracted to the navy for the duration of the war, they were under no obligation to compensate him in any way.
‘It’s a bugger, that’s what it is,’ Barney said. ‘Con told me about the noise you went to investigate and I bet it was them IRA bastards tipped you in the drink.’
‘Aye,’ Sam agreed. ‘Someone punched me in the back, all right.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Barney said. ‘You probably foiled an IRA plot, and certainly saved more that a few ships from being damaged. You should be hailed as a bloody hero, not thrown aside like so much rubbish.’
‘They found no one, Barney,’ Sam reminded him gently.
‘Well, of course they bloody didn’t,’ Barney cried angrily. ‘Those lot would have scarpered not long after you hit the water. What did they expect—that they’d hang about to shake hands?’