Pack Up Your Troubles. Anne Bennett
he faced the fact that to have Maeve he had to marry her, for his need for her had got between him and his reason. And so he proposed.
Maeve was ecstatic that the man she adored, loved more than life itself, had asked her to marry him and soon they could love each other totally and fully as they both longed to.
However, Maeve’s parents didn’t want their daughter marrying a man they’d never seen, especially as she was under age. In desperation, Maeve turned to her uncle. Michael knew Brendan, had known him for years because they attended the same church and drank in the same pub when Michael ever had the money and Aggie’s permission to do so. He thought Brendan Hogan a grand man altogether, but because Maeve seldom went near them he had not been aware that his niece was even seeing him.
He knew Brendan had a bit of a reputation with a certain type of woman, but he told himself there was no harm in that – many young men sowed their wild oats until they met the girl they wanted to marry. He wrote and told Maeve’s parents Brendan was a good fellow altogether and would make Maeve a grand husband, and wasn’t he not only a good Catholic, but as Irish as themselves and from County Clare? Reassured and relieved they gave their blessing.
Brendan knew there were ways of preventing pregnancies, for at the pubs he’d met many old lags, veterans of the Great War, who had told him about it. Not that the rubber sheaths they wore were necessarily to prevent pregnancy, but rather the clap that the French prostitutes seemed riddled with. But they would prevent pregnancy too, and that’s what he was interested in. He wanted Maeve all to himself and not just for the tiny morsels of time that were all she’d have left for him if she had a houseful of weans to attend to.
But when Brendan went to see the priest before the wedding, Father Trelawney was shocked that he should even consider such a thing. Didn’t Brendan realise that it was totally against the Church’s teaching? Didn’t Brendan appreciate each child was a gift from God?
Chastened and resigned, Brendan married his Maeve in late October 1930 at St Catherine’s Church where he and his family worshipped. Maeve was coming up to nineteen. Her white wedding dress and the bridesmaid dress for her cousin, Jane, were paid for by her parents, and the wedding breakfast was paid for by Brendan’s parents. They said they were glad to get him off their hands and especially to one of their own. ‘Sure, didn’t we think he’d be hanging round our necks for years?’ his mother, Lily, said.
At first Maeve and Brendan were blissfully happy. For Brendan, little had changed except that now when he tottered home from the pub, he had a nice spot of sex thrown in after supper, and Maeve was always as eager as he was. Maeve waited on him hand and foot, much as his mother had done, and took joy in doing so, for she loved him very much.
Brendan had a good, well-paid job at Samuel Heath and Sons, the brass works in Leopold Street. Maeve considered them both very lucky with so many out of work at that time. When Brendan told her where he worked Maeve remembered the couple that had been kind to her on the ferry when she’d been so sick. That man had said he was a brass worker too. It seemed like a lucky omen that her husband worked in the same industry.
Mr Dolamartis was loath to let Maeve go and said he had no objection to her continuing work after her marriage. The flat was cramped for the two of them, but Brendan’s mother said that many couples started on worse, and Maeve knew she spoke the truth.
Maeve was delighted to find herself pregnant when she and Brendan had been married six months. In her brief but passionate courtship, the subject of children had never been discussed. She’d barely noticed his indifference to any references she’d made to her brothers and sisters back home in Ireland. She’d met none of his nieces and nephews till the wedding and there had been virtually no contact since because Maeve worked such long and unsociable hours.
She’d always presumed the natural progression in marriage was children. She longed to be a mother and hold Brendan’s child in her arms, and thought he would be equally pleased. But Brendan raved and shouted, telling her she was a stupid cow and the pregnancy was all her fault, and when, in tears because of the onslaught and not at all sure what she had done to deserve it, she remonstrated with him, he punched her in the face. Maeve gave a cry of alarm and put her hand up to ward off further blows, and tasted blood in her mouth.
Brendan saw the pleasant life they’d been enjoying slipping away from them. Like his father’s, his life would turn sour and he’d have a child every bloody year bleeding him dry. He suddenly felt so hopeless about the future that he’d lashed out at Maeve.
Now he couldn’t look at her bloodstained face; he couldn’t believe he’d done that to his lovely beautiful Maeve. He went off to the pub, knowing his brothers would make fun of him when he told them the news and remind him they’d told him not to bother getting married. God, they’d say, hadn’t he the life of Riley already? Just at that moment Brendan thought life was a bloody bitch and women the biggest bitches of all. Temptresses all of them, and Maeve no better than the rest.
Despite his brothers’ taunts that evening, Brendan was bitterly ashamed of himself for what he had done. He thought about it all night and apologised to Maeve the next day. He told her he loved her and said he’d been shocked by the news that he was going to be a father and he’d lashed out in frustration. He said it hadn’t been how they’d planned things. Maeve knew it hadn’t, but thought Brendan must have known the passionate lovemaking they indulged in so often would eventually result in a baby. But she didn’t blame her husband, feeling that in some way it must have been partly her fault, so she kissed him and told him that it was all right, confident that it wouldn’t happen again.
Yet as her pregnancy had continued, Brendan often clouted Maeve, usually after he’d been drinking. She was far too ashamed to tell anyone about it and always thought up an excuse to explain the bruises that could be seen. And Brendan was always so sorry afterwards, full of remorse. Anyway, she thought, she must be at least partly to blame because Brendan was not the same man she’d courted or the same as he’d been in the early months of their marriage and she felt ashamed and saddened. Maeve would always forgive him and believe him when he assured her it wouldn’t happen again.
As the birth got closer, Maeve knew she’d have to give up her job and therefore the flat too. Everyone was keeping an eye out for a place for them, and when she heard of the vacant back-to-back house in a court off Latimer Street in the Horse Fair, she’d been delighted. She was seven months pregnant then and felt the new house would be a fresh start for them both.
She told herself it was probably the cramped conditions of the flat getting to Brendan, causing him to hit out. His mother, Lily, though Maeve had not breathed a word of Brendan’s violence towards her, said any man would be annoyed to see his wife working the hours Maeve did. ‘You should be at home, dear,’ she said, ‘looking after your man properly.’ Maeve immediately felt guilty that she’d been neglecting her husband and resolved to try harder to be a model wife.
Mr Dolamartis, in a fit of generosity at losing Maeve, had found her a second-hand gas cooker and a fellow to fit it in her new home, and Maeve had been thrilled with it. However, money was tighter than ever, for not only were Maeve’s wages lost, but now they had to find the rent and money for the gas meter for the cooker and the lamps, and for coal too, for they moved in the middle of September and the evenings were often chilly.
Added to that, there were things to buy for the baby. The food bills had increased too, now that they couldn’t be supplemented by café fare, and Brendan in consequence had to part with more of his wages. No longer were there tempting suppers for him when he got home from the pub. Sometimes, indeed, there was nothing at all, not that he had that much money to spend in the pub either.
Elsie Phillips, who lived in the house adjoining Maeve’s, had been a tower of strength to her since she’d moved in. Maeve was glad of it, for since the move Brendan had become morose and moody, and often snapped at Maeve for very little. Without Elsie Maeve would have been depressed by the whole situation.
Elsie was very fond of Maeve. She and her husband, Alf, had never had children. Early in their marriage it hadn’t mattered much, for Elsie had her hands full with her mother, who after years of caring for her husband, who had TB, eventually