The Conflict
Mary Ellen’s temper was fraying thin. The weather was bad enough with the rain pelting down and the wind howling as if it was December, but to have them all in the house except Mick and Molly, who were at school, was too much. Neither John nor Dominic had been set on this morning; a mail boat had come in with a cargo of fruit, but the gaffer had given the work to the men who had not been set on the recent boats. It was bad enough that they were off work, but to have them all stuck round her like this was too much of a good thing. And what was more, she was feeling a little sick with the heat of the oven and the smell of the dirty working clothes put to dry all round the kitchen . . . If only this other business were over. She was tired of it all—her body was so bairn-weary. She was feeling now that things were getting beyond her.
Even Katie could draw no kind word from her, and she pushed her to one side to get to the oven, saying, ‘Get out of me way, bairn.’
Katie was home from school because her boots leaked; and her eyes were streaming, not only as the result of a cold but with crying. She hated to be off school, more so now than ever, for Miss Llewellyn had said that if she worked hard she could sit for an examination, which might be the first step on the road to her becoming a teacher. She had tried to tell her mother, but Mary Ellen snapped at her, and even John did not seem interested.
She looked towards him now. He was sitting in the corner on the far side of the fireplace mending her boots. He had put odd pieces of leather on the soles and was now cutting up an old boot to get enough leather to sew across the slits. She returned to her book, the only one she possessed, a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, and she knew each word by heart.
The front-door knocker was suddenly banged, and without waiting she went to answer it. It had been knocked twice already this afternoon, once by a tally man and once by a man begging. The beggar wasn’t pleased when she brought him a slice of bread. He bent it up and put it in his pocket, and her mouth watered, for it was new bread from a flat cake just out of the oven; it was a long time till tea-time, and she had got out of the habit of asking for bread between meals for she remembered times when they all had bread at tea-time except her mother, and she was frightened that this would happen again.
It was Mrs Bradley at the door, and she asked, ‘Is yer ma in?’
Katie said, ‘Yes.’
‘Then tell her we’re gathering for poor Mrs Patton’s wreath . . . Here, take her the paper.’
Katie took the paper and went into the scullery to her mother. ‘It’s Mrs Bradley—she’s gathering for flowers, ma.’
Mary Ellen’s lips set in a tight line as she read down one side of the list and half-way down the other . . . shillings, sixpences . . . only two or three threepences. She gave a sigh, and lifting up her skirt took fourpence from the little bag and handed it to Katie, together with the list.
As Katie passed John he asked, ‘What’s that for?’
But before she could reply, Mary Ellen called, ‘Go on, you, Katie,’ and Katie went on to the front door. Mary Ellen knew that John didn’t hold with gathering for wreaths, but what could she do . . . and that Bella Bradley collecting!
John knew what he would have done . . . the gathering for wreaths had always irked him. They would collect as much as two pounds and spend the whole lot on flowers, when the widow, if it was a man who had died, was more often than not destitute, and within a week the bairns would be crying for bread. They knew this only too well, the women who took it on themselves to gather, yet they still bought flowers to show respect for the dead. He snorted and banged the hammer on the last, sending a pain through his knee. It made him mad! He knew that, even if there was no insurance money, besides collecting for the flowers they would collect for cabs, to make the dead look decent. They didn’t collect for the hearse. No, that could be ticked, to be paid off at so much a week. But the undertakers weren’t so ready to tick cabs. And if it was for one of the Irish, the relatives would pawn, beg, borrow or steal, but they would have a bit of a wake. It was all crazy! And yet he understood from his mother that the funerals were nothing like they used to be, for in her young days, she told him, she longed for the Irish to die so she could go to the wake with her mother and have a good feed.
What had she put on the list, he wondered. Whatever it was, by this time next week they would be glad of it; for if they were not set on there wouldn’t be a penny in the house.
Many things were beginning to make him wild. And on a day like this, tied to the house, he had nothing else to do but think. Lately he had been feeling the desire for someone to talk to, someone who could answer questions. Once or twice he tried to talk to Father Bailey, and endeavoured to have the material in his mind formed into concrete questions; but when he was with the priest he found it was no use—he knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t get it out.
His mother was always saying thinking got you nowhere; you must have faith and rely on that. Faith! He looked at her now, pounding a great piece of dough, the second batch of bread she had baked today. What had faith done for her? She could hardly get her arms into the bowl for the roundness of her stomach. He took his eyes from her. Where would they put the bairn when it came? He’d have to try and rig up something out of boxes—the clothes basket that had served them all as a cradle was done long since. He pulled his legs up hastily as Dominic made to pass him on his way to the bedroom.
Mary Ellen called after Dominic, ‘Don’t lie on that bed with those boots on, mind!’ but the only answer she received was the banging of the door.
John settled himself back against the wall: he always felt easier when Dominic was out of the room. He had finished one boot and was preparing the thread by rubbing it with tallow for patching the other when he heard his mother give a startled mutter. She was looking out through the kitchen window, and she exclaimed, ‘I don’t want them in here!’
As she rubbed the dough off her hands, there came a knock on the kitchen door. Katie was about to open it, but Mary Ellen said, ‘Hold on. I’ll see to it.’ When she opened the door, there stood the old man and the girl.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs O’Brien.’ It was the old man who spoke, and his voice was as kindly as his smile; but Mary Ellen would not allow it to make any impression on her. She didn’t reply, but stared at them fixedly, the door held firmly in her hand, while he went on, ‘I thought we would just come round and get acquainted. And also ask you to thank your son for helping my boy last night.’
Mary Ellen’s eyes darted to the girl. She was wearing a waterproof coat with a hood attached, and from under it she smiled at Mary Ellen, like a child who was asking to be liked. They were barmy, Mary Ellen thought. Their Mick had nearly done for the lad, and here they were, coming to thank John! They weren’t all there, either of them—they couldn’t be. She wanted no truck with them. She was aware that the old man was becoming drenched, but that was his look-out; they weren’t crossing the doorstep.
She was saying abruptly, ‘That’s all right. It was our Mick’s fault, anyway,’ when she felt her hand taken from the door, and John stood there, saying, ‘Won’t you come in?’ It wasn’t often she got angry with John, but now it took her all her time not to turn on him.
The old man said, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Are you by any chance the Mr O’Brien I owe so much to?’
Pushing two chairs forward John said, ‘Take a seat.’ He did not look at the girl, but went on, ‘It’s us should be doing the thanking. Not many people would be taking it like this.’ Then he turned to Shane: ‘This is my father.’
Shane reluctantly took the proffered hand and muttered something, and his head, which had been still, began to jerk.
The old man, seeming not to notice the lack of cordiality, said, ‘My name’s Peter Bracken. And this is my granddaughter, Christine.’
Shane nodded, and after a short silence that was broken only by the scraping of chairs, he turned to Mary Ellen, now vigorously pounding the dough, and said, ‘I’m off to see if there’s anything in.’ He pulled his steaming coat off the rod that ran under the mantelshelf, and with a final nod towards Mr Bracken, he went out.
Mary Ellen watched his huge figure slumping down the yard. Off to see if there’s anything in at this time of the day! It was just to get out of the way; he hated to talk to strangers at any time. There was a faint wreath of steam still hovering about the shoulders of his coat as he disappeared into the back lane. It brought a tightness to her breast, and she murmured to herself, ‘Shane, Shane,’ as she was wont to do years ago when her pity was mixed with love. And the feeling made her more resentful towards the pair sitting behind her. Now he’d be wet to the skin, and his twitching would go on all night.
She knew she was being very bad mannered standing with her back to them, but she couldn’t help it; yet she found herself listening to the girl talking to Katie. They were talking about the book, Katie’s voice sounding broad in comparison with the girl’s, which was quiet and even and without dialect. And then she found herself listening to John. He was talking more than she had heard him do so before. He was talking to the old fellow about the docks and the kind of boats that came in and what they brought . . . iron ore from Bilbao, black fine ore from Benisaf, the heavy ore from Sweden that made the steel, esparto grass for paper, prop boats from Russia, with the cargo stacked from one end of the boat to the other to make the tonnage. As if the old fellow would want to know all that! She had never heard him talk so much about the docks before. He went on to speak of the unloading as if he had been down the holds all his life, instead of just two years. What had come over him? Perhaps he was doing it because she was offhand with them. Well, he knew she wanted no truck with them; and they were a thick-skinned pair to sit there knowing, as they must know, that they weren’t wanted.
‘I suppose you are always kept busy, Mrs O’Brien?’
She started, and was forced to half turn her body and look at the old man, and to answer him civilly: ‘Yes, most of the time I’m at it.’
‘You must find it very hard looking after such a big family. And I mean big,’ he laughed.
‘Well, you’ve got to take what God sends.’ Immediately she felt she had said the wrong thing, giving him an opening to start his ranting, but to her surprise he didn’t take it.
He stood up, saying, ‘Well, we mustn’t delay you—I just felt I would like to make your acquaintance, Mrs O’Brien.’
Mary Ellen turned from the dish, again forced to respond, this time with a smile. It was funny, but they seemed all right. Was this spook business just an idle rumour? People were in the habit of making a lot out of nowt.
She returned the girl’s smile too, but when she saw John, silent now, looking at the lass, the smile froze on her face. She didn’t want any of that kind of truck, not for John she didn’t . . . Dominic could do what he liked.
There was another knock on the front door, and this time she had to tell Katie, who was hanging on to the girl’s hand, to go and open it.
Christine spoke directly to Mary Ellen for the first time. ‘Will you let Katie come in to tea, Mrs O’Brien? It’s rather a special occasion, it’s Grandfather’s birthday.’
She cast a smile, full of light, on the old man, and he said, ‘Sh!’
She answered, ‘No, I won’t. Do you know how old he is?’ She was speaking to John now, looking up into his face.
John’s eyes twinkled, and he answered seriously, ‘Twenty-six.’
They all laughed, except Mary Ellen.
‘You’re just sixty years out!’ said the girl.
‘You’re not eighty-six!’ Amazement brought the words out of Mary Ellen.
‘Yes, that’s what I am, Mrs O’Brien.’
Mary Ellen stared at the straight, lean body of Peter Bracken, at his unlined face and deep-set eyes, shining like black coals. The only sign of real age was the white hair, and he was eighty-six. Fear of him overcame her again. You didn’t reach eighty-six and be like that, not naturally you didn’t. Shane was fifty-seven, and he was old. She had known men live to eighty, but they ended their days in bed, or on sticks. No, her instinct had been right at first . . . there was something funny about them, something beyond her understanding; and she wanted no truck with them.
She was brought from her fear by the sound of footsteps accompanying Katie’s through the front room. Who on earth could Katie have let in now!
The small, black-clad figure standing in the open doorway soon informed her. She gasped at the sight of Father O’Malley. His presence always meant a rating for something or other. Today it would be Katie off school and Mick being kept from Mass last Sunday. Oh, she’d had enough for one day! And there were these two still standing there, not smiling now but staring at the priest as if they were struck.
‘Good afternoon, Father. Will you take a seat? It’s dreadful weather; you must be wet.’ Mary Ellen was doing her duty. At the same time, she noticed the half-inch thick soles on the priest’s stout boots, and chided herself for thinking: It’ll take some water to get through them.
John spoke next: ‘Good afternoon, Father.’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Father O’Malley, in his thin, tight voice; but he looked neither at Mary Ellen nor at John, for his eyes were fixed on those of Peter Bracken.
Noting this, John said, ‘Mr Bracken’s a new neighbour of ours, Father.’
The priest did not answer, and Peter Bracken said, quietly, ‘Father O’Malley and I already know one another.’
‘What is this man doing in your house?’
Mary Ellen knew the priest was addressing her, although he did not look at her. She shivered and said hesitantly, ‘Well Father . . .’
‘Order him to leave at once! And forbid him the door in future.’
Mary Ellen twisted the corner of her apron and turned towards Mr Bracken and the girl. But before she could get the words out, John broke in sharply, ‘Hold your hand a minute! Me da’s not in, and next to him I’m head of this house, such as it is, and I’m telling no-one to get out, Father.’
The priest swung round on him, his eyes almost lost behind their narrowed lids and the double lenses of his glasses: ‘So you are head of the house, are you? And you will take the responsibility on your soul for associating with this man?’
‘I know nothing against the man.’ John’s face was as set as the priest’s.
‘You don’t?’ Father O’Malley raised his eyebrows. ‘Then you’re about the only one in these parts who doesn’t. I will enlighten you. This man is an enemy of the Catholic Church . . .’
‘That is not true! I’m an enemy of no church . . .’
Father O’Malley cut short Peter Bracken’s protest, and went on: ‘Why, I ask you, is a man of his standing living in a quarter like this? Because he makes it his business to live among Catholics so he can turn them against the Church.’
‘I live wherever there is fear and poverty, and try to erase it.’ The old man’s face was no longer placid; it was alight with a force and energy that gave the impression he was towering above them all.
‘Do you know what this man had dared to say? Only that he has a power equal to that of Christ!’ Father O’Malley’s eyes bored into Mary Ellen’s and then into John’s. ‘In fact, he says he is a Christ!’
John, his eyes wide and questioning now, looked to Mr Bracken for denial. But none came.
‘You know you are twisting my words!’ cried the old man. ‘What I maintain is we all have the power to be Christs. If we are made in God’s image and likeness, then it stands to reason we are part of Him; our spirit is pure God material. The only difference between my spirit and God’s is the size of it—the quality is exactly the same. That is what I preach. And the more I become aware of my spirit, the more I get in touch with it, the more Godlike things I can do . . . And I have done Godlike things—’ Mr Bracken pointed at the priest: ‘You know I have! And it is this very proof that upsets your slavish doctrine.’
‘Silence!’ Father O’Malley’s voice was like deep and terrible thunder.
Mary Ellen clutched at the neck of her blouse, and Katie hid her face in the folds of her mother’s skirt; the bedroom door opened and Dominic came into the kitchen, but no-one took any notice of him.
The priest’s voice dropped low in his throat. He addressed himself to John. ‘Are you asking for any more proof than that?’
Before John could answer, the girl spoke, ‘My grandfather will give him proof—he will show him his own power, and free him from you and your like. It is not God’s will, as you preach, that he or anyone else should live in poverty and ignorance all his days. If they were made aware of their own power they would throw all this off.’ She flung her arms wide and took a step towards the priest. ‘You would stop them from thinking—for once they think, they question. And they mustn’t question, must they? They must accept! It wouldn’t do for them to realise there’s no purgatory or heaven or hell but what they make themselves!’
Before John’s eyes there rose the picture of Miss Llewellyn leaning back against the wind, saying, ‘Take the heaven you are sure of.’ Then his mind was brought back to this slip of a girl facing up to a man like Father O’Malley; not only facing up to him, but attacking him. What she was saying was quite mad, but she had courage.
The thought saddened him; it might be the courage of fanaticism, and she looked too sweet and girlish to be imbued with fanaticism.
The old man drew her back to his side, saying, ‘Be serene, Christine. Remember, anger poisons.’
Father O’Malley’s voice cast a deadly chill over the room as he said, ‘The day is not far hence when you will rot in hell for your blasphemy!’
‘The day is not far hence,’ took up Peter Bracken, ‘when your sect, if it does not throw off its dogmatism and learn toleration, will be fighting for its life; for there are seeds in the wombs of women, at this moment, that in thirty, forty or fifty years’ time will shake the foundations of your preaching. The minds of people are moving. They are searching for the truth—they are reading. And what are they reading first?—the very books that are forbidden by your Church, for the first question the groping mind asks is: Why have these books been forbidden?’
Father O’Malley looked as if he was about to choke—black anger swamped his face. After a silence, tensed to breaking point, he addressed Mary Ellen, ‘I leave you and your conscience to judge. And remember, I am warning you . . . disaster and damnation follow this man. If you wish to save your immortal soul and those of your family, throw him out as you would a snake!’ His eyes burned into Mary Ellen’s for a second, and then he was gone. And the banging of the front door shook the house.
It occurred to John that Father O’Malley had ignored him because he stood up to him; it was noticeable that the priest concentrated on his mother because she was afraid. He looked towards her. She was leaning on the table with one hand; the other was held under her breast tight against her heart. And she was shivering.
Dominic spoke for the first time: ‘Don’t take any notice of him; he thinks he’s still in Ireland.’ His words weren’t spoken to his mother, but to the girl. But she did not return his glance, or answer him, for she was staring at Mary Ellen.
Into this tense atmosphere came Mick. He entered the kitchen, his head on one side and his hand over his ear. ‘Ma, me ear’s runnin’ and it’s ach . . .’ He stopped short at the sight of Mr Bracken and glanced quickly from him to John.
No-one moved for a second until Peter Bracken exclaimed in an exalted voice, ‘Mrs O’Brien, I will show you! Your boy has earache, probably an abscess. I will cure it. Through the great healing power of God I will cure it.’
He made a step towards Mick, and in a moment the kitchen became quickened into life. Mary Ellen flung herself between them, intending to grab Mick to her, but Mick, thinking of last night and taking Peter’s cure to mean much the same thing as when his mother boxed his ears, saying, ‘I’ll cure you!’ sprang away from them both. Mary Ellen made a wild grab at the air, overbalanced and twisted herself to clutch at John’s hands that were outstretched to her but missed them and fell on her side on to the mat.
Mary Ellen knew, almost as she fell, what had happened. The blinding pain, like a red-hot steel wire, starting in her womb and forcing itself up through her body and out of her head, blotted out even itself in its transit. When next she felt it she was lying on the bed—the pain was filling all her pores and forcing out sweat. She opened her eyes and looked up into John’s face. She wanted to say to him, ‘Don’t worry, lad. Don’t worry,’ for his face was like death, but she could utter no word.
The hot wire was boring again, identifying itself from the other pains by an intensity that no previous labour had brought to her. It left no room even for fear when she realised that that Bracken man was near her; nor did she feel any element of surprise when she heard him saying, ‘I’ll go in and work at her head through the wall. Take her hand and don’t let go.’
Mary Ellen felt her hand being taken between two soft palms, and she did as she was bidden when his voice came directly to her, as if through a thick fog, saying, ‘Hold on to Christine, Mrs O’Brien, and the pain will go.’
As the pain forced her knees up and her head down into her chest, Mary Ellen gripped the girl’s hand. And when she next regained consciousness she knew she was not on the bed but above it, lying on a sort of soft platform, and the girl was still by her side, while Hannah Kelly and Nurse Snell were working on somebody lying on the bed. And then the doctor came, not the shilling doctor, but Doctor Davidson from Jarrow, and she wondered vaguely who would pay him. He reached up and took her hand and tried to unloosen it from the girl’s, but as he did so Mary Ellen felt herself dropping down into that contorted mass below her, and she clung on like grim death to the soft hand. She heard him say, ‘You’re Peter Bracken’s granddaughter, aren’t you?’ There followed a silence. Then his voice came again, ‘Well, there are stranger things in heaven and earth than this world dreams of; and I won’t despise your help, because I’m going to need it.’
She lay for years on the platform with queer sensations passing through her body, and the next voice she heard was that of Shane, muttering, ‘Mary Ellen, lass, Mary Ellen.’
She knew he was crying, and she wondered at it. She thought of the time when he loved her and she loved him—it was all so long ago. What had happened since? Nothing. He still loved her, but she loved Katie and John. But they didn’t love Shane—he had no-one but her. What would happen to him when she died she didn’t know—and it didn’t seem to matter.
It was odd, but rather nice, lying here thinking untroubled thoughts. She hadn’t to get up and see about the baking or washing or meals, or, what was more important, money. She had an ache somewhere, but she couldn’t lay her finger on it. And she was conscious of smiling when the doctor reached up and, lifting her eyelid, exclaimed, ‘Odd, very odd.’
The next voice that came to her was Father Bailey’s. It was nice to have Father Bailey near; he brought a feeling of comfort. And as he made the sign of the cross and touched her lips, she felt a great happiness. She saw him standing at the foot of the platform and smiling, not at her, but at Mr Bracken, who, she felt, was standing just behind her head. Father Bailey was saying, ‘God’s ways are many and mysterious. He has made these ways and only He can judge them.’ She heaved a great sigh and fell into a kind of sleep, thinking, ‘Yes, we are all one.’ It was the answer Christine Bracken had given to Father Bailey.
The gas in the kitchen was turned low. It flickered up and down and spurted out of a little hole in the bottom of the mantle. In the dim light John knelt before the fire, taking out the ashes. He raked them slowly and quietly, and was glad of their warmth on his hands, for in spite of a good fire, he felt cold. It was the chill before the dawn, he thought. Was it only twelve hours since all this started? It seemed many lifetimes to him. And what it must be like for Christine, sitting in that one position by the bed, he could not imagine. He thought of her now as Christine—the night had joined them in a relationship that seemed to him to be stronger than any blood tie; he had wrapped a blanket about her and taken off her shoes, and put on her slippers. He had been next door for them, and had to find them himself, for the old man was sitting facing the wall and appeared to be asleep. He had taken her cup after cup of tea, and when, stiff with cramp, she could not hold the cup, he held it for her. Once she leant against him and he supported her with his arm. And an hour ago, he had tried to withdraw her hand gently from his mother’s, but the result was the same as when others had attempted to do this—Mary Ellen’s fingers became like a vice around those of Christine. His mother had been on the point of death, he knew, her life reduced to a mere flicker, yet whenever her hand was touched it held all the strength of vital life in its grip on Christine’s. The doctor had said it was touch and go: ‘I’ve done all I can,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’ And looking hard at John, he asked, ‘Do you believe in spiritual healing?’
John answered simply, ‘I’m a Catholic.’
‘So am I,’ said the doctor. ‘And I’m dead against it professionally and otherwise . . . yet . . .’ He had stopped abruptly, buttoned his coat, and said, ‘Good night. We’ll know more in the morning.’
Father Bailey had left the house without saying anything, his face set and thoughtful.
Shane’s reactions when he saw the girl sitting there were surprising to John. He had come back into the kitchen and stood looking down into the fire, his body strangely still. ‘I don’t care who keeps her alive—it can be the divil himself,’ he said, ‘as long as she doesn’t leave me.’
He had turned and looked quietly at his son, and John realised that beyond the drinking and the fighting there still remained in his father a deep feeling for his mother. It surprised him and at the same time brought him closer to this man, whom at times he almost despised. A little while ago he had managed to persuade him to lie down—Dominic was already in bed, having retired there shortly after twelve. He had stood with the others round his mother when they thought she was breathing her last, but when she continued to breathe he said there was no point in the lot of them staying up, and anyway he’d have to be out early to see if he could get a start.
John knew that he, too, would have to be at the docks by six o’clock. There was a prop boat due in, and he might get set on—not that he liked prop boats, for there was no piece work—you received four shillings a day, and no overtime; but that would certainly be better than nothing, for with his mother bad, money would be needed now more than ever before.
Although he’d had no rest he did not feel tired; the training of working forty-eight hours at a stretch as a young lad when on tipping had hardened him. He thought nothing of working all day and all night to discharge an ore boat, and the men liked him in the gang. He could set the pace, and the pace meant everything when the quicker the discharge was done the sooner the men were paid. He looked at the clock . . . half-past four. There were many things that should be done before he left the house; so he proceeded to tidy the kitchen, shaking the mats and sweeping the floor—his mother would want them to be dependent on neighbours as little as possible, kind as they might be.
He was setting the table for breakfast when Hannah Kelly came from the front room.
‘I’ll go over home a minute, lad,’ she whispered, ‘and get our Joe up. Then I’ll be back.’
He thanked her, and asked, ‘Do you think there’s any change?’
‘I don’t know . . . perhaps there’s a little—she seems to be breathing easier. Funny about that lass, isn’t it?’ She looked questioningly at John. ‘Mary Ellen hanging on to her like that after saying she wanted no truck with them.’
John made no reply.
And after a moment she whispered again, ‘She’s had me scared stiff, sitting so still. ’Tisn’t natural. What d’ye make of it? And what are ye going to do if it goes on any longer?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Hannah shook her head: ‘It’s rum. Makes ye put yer thinking cap on, don’t it?’
He nodded slowly, and she said, ‘Aye well, there’s queer things happen in the world. We’ll know this time the morrer, likely.’
After Hannah had gone, he stood staring before him. What would happen to them all if his mother should die? She was the axis around which they revolved. Molly would soon be leaving school, but she would be less than useless to run this turbulent house. He looked down on her, lying in the corner of the couch. Her mouth was open, and even in sleep she looked what she was, feckless. Now if Katie were older . . . What! The thought shocked him. Katie work and slave after the lot of them! No. Let her have a better start than that, even though it be only in service. But his mother wouldn’t die. Somehow they wouldn’t let her die.
He classed Mr Bracken and Christine as ‘they’ when he thought of them in their strange and eerie capacity of healers; but as Mr Bracken and Christine, he thought of them as kindly folk, and in Christine’s case, as bonnie and taking.
When he went quietly from the kitchen into the front room to replenish the fire, he saw them as he had seen them last—his mother, lying straight and still and curiously flat, with one arm outstretched to that of Christine, who was sitting close to the head of the bed; only this time there was a difference—inches separated Mary Ellen’s hand from Christine’s.
Christine smiled faintly. The smile seemed forced on to the chiselled whiteness of her face, her eyes looked vacant, like the hollowed sockets in a sculptured head.
John bent over her, whispering anxiously, ‘Are you all right?’
She tried to broaden her smile, but the effort seemed too much, and she fell against him. He glanced at his mother. She was breathing evenly now, and a faint tinge of colour had crept into the greyness of her face.
Christine whispered, ‘She’s asleep . . . it’s over.’ She sighed, and her body pressed with gentle heaviness against him.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ he said.
‘I can’t yet. I’ve . . . I’ve got cramp. I’m stiff. In a little while.’
She sounded sleepy, and for a moment he thought she had fallen asleep.
Hannah Kelly came into the room again, and exclaimed softly, ‘She’s let go then.’ She peered at Mary Ellen. ‘She’s better. Ye’d better get away to bed, lass,’ she said kindly to Christine.
Christine, in an effort to rise, almost lost her balance, and John put his arm about her and supported her to the kitchen, followed by Hannah’s quizzical glance and raised eyebrows. ‘Aye, well,’ she soliloquised, ‘ye never can tell where blisters light. But my God, won’t Mary Ellen go mad!’
John sat Christine on a chair by the fire, and stood helplessly watching her as she slowly started to cry. It was a gentle crying; the tears welled up from their source, spilling over the dark, thick fringe of lashes on to her cheeks, then down on to her clasped hands.
‘You’re all in,’ John said. ‘Come on, I’ll take you in home.’
Like a child, she placed her hand in his, and he drew her to her feet.
‘The cramp . . . it’s still there’—she tottered as she stood—‘my legs don’t seem to belong to me.’
In the flickering light of the gas, she looked up at him and smiled through the tears. ‘It’s been a strange night, John.’
He nodded silently. He wanted to thank her for what, in the back of his mind, he felt that she and her father had done, but to say ‘Thank you for saving my mother’s life’ would be to accept the strange and terrible power that was assuredly theirs, and some part of him was afraid. It seemed ridiculous that this slip of a lass could be anything but what she looked . . . a fetching, boyish-looking girl.
Christine sighed and said, ‘Everything would have been perfect if the baby had lived. Will your mother be very upset?’
He couldn’t answer for his mother . . . nor for himself, for he felt she would be shocked at his thankfulness that it was dead.
She swayed, and again he put his arm about her and led her to the door. Her legs gave way beneath her, and she clung to him saying, ‘It’s only temporary. In the morning I’ll be all right, but now all my strength has gone.’
Stooping swiftly and saying, ‘This is the best way then,’ he lifted her up into his arms. She offered no resistance, but sank against him, her head on his shoulder. One of his hands was under her breast, and he saw the curve of it as her blouse and petticoat pouched, small, not much bigger than Katie’s, and the sight of it brought no more excitement to his blood than the tiny mound of Katie’s would have done. Some part of his mind wondered at this. His other hand was below her knees, and his face, as it bent above hers, was close enough for kissing. He could have dropped his mouth on to the lips and told himself it was in gratitude. And she too perhaps would have accepted his excuse. And it would have been a start. It would also have fixed Dominic. But he did nothing, not even press her close. Perhaps it was because he was worried about his mother, but he might have been carrying Katie, for his feelings were not aroused above tenderness. Vaguely, he was irritated by this. The night had brought them together in one way, a way that was deep and would be lasting, he knew, but it wasn’t the way of a fellow getting off with a lass; it was a way that had missed his body and touched something beyond.
As he carried her into her own kitchen, she stirred and opened her eyes, and her hand came up and touched his cheek. And she whispered, ‘You’re so nice, John . . . so good.’ And he knew that he would have started something had he kissed her, because she liked him in a way perhaps that hadn’t gone past her body.