embraces she’d enjoyed before she’d told him she was expecting a baby. She remembered how Brendan’s fingers could touch, stroke and caress her body and send her senses reeling and a throbbing urgency she’d never felt before beginning between her legs. Oh God, how she’d wanted him to go on and on. But now she felt nothing but the sensation of Brendan’s body in the bed at night, his beery breath wafting across her and his thick tongue probing her mouth till she felt she might choke, and then he’d take her roughly and without any form of tenderness. It was, Maeve reflected, just one thing to be endured, but it had already resulted in two children, and now there was a third on the way. She no longer loved Brendan, she realised with an aching sense of loss; now she only feared the man she’d once have laid down her life for.
Another month passed and there was a definite rounding out of her stomach and Maeve knew any day Brendan would discover her pregnancy for himself. She tried to work out whether he would resent her even more for not telling him. Either way, she knew she was going to catch it.
Then one Friday night in April, with Brendan fed and sitting reading the paper with a cup of tea in his hand, Maeve began getting the children to bed. They always sat stock-still whenever their father was around and it wrung Maeve’s heart to see them sitting so silent and quiet like no children should ever be – like only petrifying fear could make them. Poor little Grace only had to hear her father’s boots ringing on the cobblestones for her to wet herself.
When Maeve got them up into the attic, unless it was the depths of winter, she’d often have a bit of a game with them – tickling them into laughter perhaps or telling them a wee story. However, that evening Maeve, having finished washing Grace, then picked her up to take her to bed. Kevin, who’d been washed first and was sitting on a cracket by the fire, got to his feet, having no wish to be left with a man who scared the living daylights out of him. In his panic to follow his mother, he stumbled over the fender, knocking against his father, causing him to tip the hot tea down his leg.
With a roar Brendan was upon the child and Kevin’s resultant shriek stopped Maeve in her tracks. But she knew whatever had happened she could do nothing with Grace in her arms. She ran up to the attic and laid her in the bed, cautioning her to stay there, then flew down the stairs. She knew Grace would stay where she was for she was a timid little thing, and no wonder, and anyway, the screams and shouts from below would frighten the most stout-hearted.
What Maeve saw when she stepped into the room nearly stopped her heart beating, for Brendan had the belt unhooked from his trousers, Kevin’s ragged underpants that he slept in pulled down, and he was whipping his little bottom. Maeve didn’t know what Kevin had done, nor did she care. Whatever it was it didn’t warrant what his father was doing to him and with an outraged scream she was upon him.
Brendan warded her off and then, totally enraged, he turned on her, the belt lashing her to right and left till she sank to the floor with a whimper. ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he growled as he pulled his coat from the rail behind the door and slammed his way out.
The next day, Maeve miscarried and she sent Kevin for Elsie. She looked at the stripes on her body where the belt’s end had flicked and asked, ‘Was it you telling him you were pregnant brought this on?’
‘No, not this time,’ Maeve said. ‘This time I got it protecting Kevin. This time the bloody sod didn’t even know I was pregnant.’ The tears came then, hot and scalding as she cried for herself, her children and the little baby she had lost.
Elsie held Maeve tight as she went on, her voice muffled with tears, ‘Kevin spilt his tea, that’s all. An accident, of course – he never goes near the bastard if he can help it – and for that Brendan took his belt off to him.’ She pulled herself out of the comfort of Elsie’s arms, and though the marks of tears were still on her face, her eyes were dry and wide and staring. ‘D’you hear me, Elsie?’ she demanded. ‘That child who’s little more than a baby was whipped with a belt for spilling a drop of tea.’
That was the first time Brendan used his belt on Kevin, but not the last. Maeve fought for him when she could, but she was often stopped by Brendan’s threat: ‘Come nearer or lift a hand to help him and I’ll beat him senseless.’
Maeve knew he was capable of it, for he truly seemed to detest Kevin and she was forced to watch. She thought of seeking advice at the church, but hesitated to involve the priest, Father Trelawney, who seemed anyway a great buddy of Brendan’s. Brendan said it was a father’s duty to chastise his son and Maeve was very much afraid the priest might agree.
Just before Kevin began school, Maeve miscarried again and Kevin indirectly caused that as well. Both children had caught measles, but Grace, who’d not been as ill as Kevin, was up and about while Kevin was still very poorly indeed. He lay across the chairs during the day with the curtains drawn to protect his eyes. Maeve used the rent money to pay the doctor’s bill and buy the medicine and the meat for nourishing broth to spoon into him.
That day Maeve had Brendan’s dinner cooking on the stove when Kevin began to vomit. By the time the nausea had passed and Kevin had lain back exhausted on the pillows and Maeve had wiped his face and given him a drink and taken the bowl to wash, the potatoes had stuck to the pan and the sausages were blackened.
Brendan’s rage was terrible. ‘But,’ Maeve told Elsie later, ‘he knew I was pregnant this time. I don’t know how, Elsie. He seemed to concentrate on my stomach. Anyway he’s got what he wanted, another little baby is lost.’
‘Yes,’ said Elsie grimly. Brendan seemed to be getting worse, both to Maeve and young Kevin, and Elsie was afraid for them all. She’d heard of women been killed by violent husbands and they were never brought to court for it. There was always some other cause registered on the death certificate. She wished that Maeve could get away somewhere, or else that Brendan could be run down by a tram.
In the dark of the night, Maeve, often hungry, tired and worn out trying to placate Brendan, would wonder about her life. And though she loved her children dearly and felt they were the only good thing to come out of her travesty of a marriage, she longed sometimes to be able to turn the clock back. She wished she could return to the cosy farmhouse where no one threatened another. Her father had never raised his hand to her, or any of her sisters. Annie had always said his hands were too hard and he might hurt them too much. Dear God, Maeve thought, if he only saw me now. He’d murder Brendan for laying a hand on me, let alone wee Kevin.
But Maeve didn’t tell them – couldn’t tell them. She wrote about the children and how they were and what they were doing, glad her mother could not see their pinched, impoverished faces, their patched, darned and ragged clothes and often bare feet. She told her of the miscarriages, needing sympathy, for Brendan had given her none. The first time he’d been surprised to find her in bed and Elsie in charge of his tea, for he’d not known of Maeve’s pregnancy, but he’d said little about it except to tell Maeve it was probably all to the good since the two they had were enough to rear.
Maeve had turned her head away, too miserable to say anything. But the second time, she’d turned on him angrily. ‘Are you satisfied now, you bloody brute?’ she’d cried. ‘Are you going to beat any child I’m expecting out of me? Dear God, Brendan, I hope your conscience is clear enough for you to sleep at night.’
She got a slap for her outburst, but it had been worth it to see how shocked he’d been that she’d actually answered him back.
Her mother, though, sent her back encouraging little letters that made her cry. She wrote as she spoke and the hurt she felt on Maeve’s losses was genuine. It was as if she reached across the water to her and Maeve missed her more than ever.
In January 1936, George V died at Sandringham, and it was supposed his eldest son, the popular
