Summer turned quickly to autumn as August slipped away: green into orange and red. The Troubles rumbled on, a bomb here, a shooting there, all of it pushed to the back of our minds as Bridie and me picked fruit and made jam and got ready for the winter. The Tilley lamps with their delicate mantles humming made me so droopy when their paraffin wicks were lit I seemed to sleep for days on end. The bump got bigger; I worried it would be studded with lumps of sugar when it came out, I had eaten so many Paris buns. John never mentioned it, never looked at it or me unless he was cornered. I pulled all my limbs in and away every time he walked too close, as if he was a bed of nettles.
Bridie didn’t talk about anything else but the bump and had her ear to my stomach every chance she had. She had told it a thousand times how much she loved it and I swear it stretched itself with delight! I was getting to know its every movement and in my mind I always called it ‘her’. She had my heart in her tiny hand and I was glad. Someone needed to take care of the silly broken thing. I’d keep her away from John Johns; he didn’t strike me as a man who’d go wild for cooing into a pram.
I was getting used to not having electricity, not having TV, though I missed Bob Monkhouse and Hughie Green, even Val Doonican and his bog-awful jumpers. I really missed Coronation Street and Betty Turpin with her face like a bulldog. I had a sense of slipping into the past. Bridie banked the fire to keep it going for the morning pot of tea and the smell of turf clung to us all. I watched the sky with her for night to draw in. Carrying water in buckets now seemed normal even though I would never get used to braving the outside toilet which we only ever call the Tin House, to how cold it was, how full of things that crept and wriggled and bit, how bad the stench.
Washing my hair in cold water if at all, having a small bowl of hot from the kettle for my face every day and a stand-up wash at the Belfast sink that Bridie called the jaw-box every week. The bump liked to do a few auld somersaults when I rubbed my belly with the facecloth. Would it be very forward to ask Bridie if the bump was supposed to be covered in blue veins? In the end, I didn’t ask in case she would need to see it all sticking out and terrible.
I always washed during the day because I felt more at ease when John Johns was out. I knew his routine and made sure I was away to my bed before he came in, exhausted and quiet. He never asked where I was because I couldn’t be anywhere else when the rain was pounding down. Bridie never tried to get me to stay put. We both of us hurried through the last chats and chores of the day, wordlessly going our separate ways before the half-door opened. He was out all day, only coming back about seven o’clock for his dinner which Bridie always had ready and half-burnt in the oven. He never complained, just sat down and ate, trying to soothe Bridie who he handled with care at all turns.
– Is that alright, son?
– It’s fine, Ma, fine.
– I burnt it a bit; I forgot the oven was on too high for bread on the other side.
– It’s fine, fine.
– These spuds are grand …
– Those are Podgie McCourt’s spuds, they’re very good again this year.
I smiled from my perch in the Lower Room. Irish people the world over must have the same conversation a hundred times a week. To me spuds were spuds; I didn’t know how to decide between the degrees of flouriness that made one crop better than the last. All I knew was I’d love some chipped. Having a lovely big deep-fat fryer was something I really missed.
I was getting through the stack of romantic rubbish that Eileen had given me to pass the time. I read a few pages before my eyes started to droop. All the women were letting on they were looking for love but they never fell for anyone who wasn’t rich. There was a lot of ‘heaving bosoms’ and ‘velvety hardnesses’ which made me all pink even though I knew there was a bit more to making love by that stage. I wondered very often how I’d ever manage to do it again. Longing to be touched like that made me more desolate by the minute.
I rarely sat down in daylight. I did all the light work outside, leaving Bridie at the range to burn the dinner. I gardened and cleaned out the hen house, measured out buckets of meal for the calves, carried water. By the time I was nearly eight months pregnant, Granda Ban had a stroke and had to be put into the old people’s home, Lisnagh House, so Auntie Eileen and Bernie started coming down every week. John had bought her old navy Hillman Hunter now that he had two passengers and, soon enough, three. She had got herself a mint-green Opel Kadett so it took her an age to get down the lane. She was terrified of the potholes damaging her paintwork.
Bridie made such a fuss of Bernie, but Bernie was only interested in one person at Johns Farm and that was John himself. She would wander about outside hoping to see where he was working and usually he would show up if he heard their car. Bernie was on a mission to collect as many hugs as she could and John would often have to walk off when she was still clinging to his back.
– Don’t throw her to the cows instead of a bale, Auntie Eileen would shout after him, smiling even with her gums.
– I wouldn’t part with my Bernie that easily, Eileen! he would laugh. Watch this!
We’d watch as he’d get Bernie to stand on his wellies and he’d let on they were jiving even though he was doing all the footwork. God, the smile on Bernie could have been spotted from the moon! He’s a dote, Mary, Eileen would say to me all misty-eyed and dry-mouthed as if I was remotely interested. That man of yours, look at him! A pure dote!
I never told her he wasn’t mine. I never told her the sunny smiles and chat only came out for visitors: with me he was still cold as ice. I could tell by her envious sighs she assumed we’d slept together. The thought of being with him like that made me reel. No one would ever see the Lower Room with its secret bed hidden behind the clothes horse and I was too embarrassed to come clean and ruin Mammy’s brilliant scheme when everyone was so jealous of me and my good fortune.
I smiled along with her instead, reaching for the biscuits she handed round to dunk in my tea, imagining what she would say if she knew what my life was really like. What would she make of me lying awake through the scurrying of the rats at night, the bushes needling at the window, the sound of the rain on the red tin roof which made the rats run even faster, the curdling laments of foxes? In the blinding dark, my only thought was: I’m here, I’m here, I’m still here.
We’d started to chat about Christmas, ignoring the fact that it would be my last without a baby, when eleven British soldiers and six civilians were killed by an INLA bomb in the Droppin Well disco in Ballykelly, County Derry. It was a time bomb left beside a support pillar on the dance floor and most of them died when big lumps of masonry fell on their heads. Three of the young people killed were teenagers like me. Christmas celebrations faded back into the gloom of a freezing Northern Irish winter.
We brought the cows in and tied them up in the stalls and the sound of them rattling their chains and splattering the groop added itself to the rats and the howling wind when the sun went in. It was dark by three o’clock and we were often in bed by seven after Bridie stoked the fire.
Eileen came down with Bernie for Christmas Day. She didn’t have time to do a whole big fancy dinner and visit Granda Ban. We were so happy to have them to talk to. John surprised us all by cooking the turkey and making mash and carrots and even gravy and he didn’t look like a cissy for a single second. Bridie burned some stuffing to go with it and we had a jolly time with my aunt spinning yarns and filling the kitchen with fag smoke. I got a baby blanket, a baby’s hairbrush set and a packet of white Babygros just in case I forgot the massive dome in front of me was a baby. I got nothing for me.
Me and the bump only went to town when I had to see the doctor. John dropped me off right beside the door, not from concern but because I still had to be concealed as I was far too pregnant for the few months I was married. I always went in alone. John made out like I wasn’t in the car the whole way to Carncloon but his hand with its big blunt fingers resting on the gearstick always felt too close to my leg so I made myself as narrow as I could just in case he remembered I was there. I saw Doctor Brown and he always had the same word for me.
– Textbook.
That was nice; it made me think that I was still good at exams. I was as healthy as it was possible to be. I got plenty of Paris buns and my iron tonic and plenty of exercise. I was due on January 4th: an ambulance would pick me up about two days before that and take me to Omagh. I was almost looking forward to it because I knew that hospitals had magazines and books lying around and surely I’d get chips if I was there for a whole week?
On my very last check-up, disaster struck. Doctor Brown was off with shingles and I had to wait for Doctor Loughrey. Dermot Darling was the last person on God’s blue planet that I wanted to see. The nurse made me wait anyway because I went white when she told me and she said there was no way I was getting out of there without a blood-pressure check. I sat under the posters covered with blackened lungs and others asking people to speak out against terrorism and hoped that no one would ask me how I was or, even worse, be kind. I did not want to be crying when I got face to face with Joe’s daddy. When I finally went in, after I’d nearly chewed the nails clean off myself, he looked just as put out as I was.
– How are you, Mary? Please, sit. I see from Doctor Brown’s notes that you’ve had a textbook pregnancy. No problems at all and nothing to report?
– Nothing.
– Good, good. Well, let’s have a quick look at you, shall we?
He listened to the bump and he listened to my heart which was banging. He had Joe’s ears when he bent forward and Joe’s smell: the same washing powder and soap. He was all red. I was embarrassing him. I could feel the tears rising and rising even though I tried to swallow them down.
– Your blood pressure’s a little high, but perhaps that’s understandable …
I heard the words break free before I could bite them back. I sounded pitiful and pleading. I’d never stop showing myself up.
– I’m not a bad girl, you know? I’m not a bad girl, I’m not!
– Mary, no one ever said you were a bad girl. But for God’s sake, can you tell me what happened you? Now, here, with my word that I won’t tell a soul?
– I can’t. I just can’t. How’s Joe?
– Were you forced?
– No. How’s Joe?
– He’s working hard, he’s a different boy these days. His mother and me were at a loss as to what was best but he’s doing fine in America. Please, Mary, don’t cry like that, it’s enough to break the hardest heart. You’re going to be fine, just fine. Here, dry your eyes. What are you hoping for?
– I’m hoping it doesn’t hurt and that I can go back to school …
He blew his cheeks out and rubbed his forehead like he couldn’t think of a word he desperately needed to finish a sentence but it escaped him. There was no point in asking him to carry a message to Joe. He would never mention that he had even seen me.
John Johns was tapping the steering wheel when I came out. I was late and I was in a state. He just looked at me in the rear-view mirror as I slid into the back seat. I knew he had to be over at Arthur Rowley’s to help with a cow being de-horned and daylight was burning. The small saw he needed was on the passenger seat. He didn’t have time to waste on this nonsense.
I lay down as he pulled out of the car park and must have slept because when I woke up I was still in the car on the street at Johns Farm. I was freezing cold and it was dark and pouring with rain but there was something else wrong. My whole body was in motion; it was turning and splitting from side to side. I got to the house between pains and Bridie knew as soon as she clocked me.
– Oh darlin’, I was just about to waken you … Oh my! Is it time, is it time?
– Help me, Bridie! Help me!
She got me from the half-door to the Lower Room and on to the bed. We both knew we were alone. Bridie would never make it to The Hill and the phone in this terrible weather and I wouldn’t let go of her anyway. We both thought that John would be back and he could run for help but he didn’t appear. She checked several times for his tractor headlights sweeping across the window and tried to cover her fear. She stayed with me for every one of the eight hours it took as I screamed and cried and howled my way through it. The rain drummed on the red tin roof as Bridie told me over and over and over that I was going to be alright. She was all I had, so I had to believe her.
My little girl was born at 2am and the rain stopped when Bridie had given her a bit of a rub-down and handed her to me. She never made a sound. She had a crop of shocking-black hair, a real Rattigan. I never wanted to leave her out of my arms, not even for a second. I knew that I was going to be alright only because, all of a sudden, I wanted to be. I was glued to her tiny, serene face, I kissed her all over and promised her that nothing bad would ever befall her delicate head.
– What will you call her?
– Serena Bridget, after you, if you don’t mind?
– Mind! I’m delighted! But what about your mother?
– What about her? Where was she tonight? Where has she ever been? You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real mother, Bridie, and don’t think I’ll ever forget it!
– Oh Mary, Mary, you’re a darlin’! And so’s she!
We all three cried then ’til we had to laugh again. I was learning that too. It was never that long before you had to laugh again. Crying was so dull; it fixed nothing really and it only served to ruin your good face and brine your eyeballs.
When Bridie was clearing up, I went in to the kitchen to show Serena the coloured paper chains that Bridie and me had made and strung across the brace over the range and to put the kettle on for tea. It’s Christmas-time, I said to her but she just yawned with her perfect pink mouth and got on with burrowing her way deep, deep into my heart.