said.
‘Well, that’s obvious,’ Brendan said. ‘I’ll buy you another and you sip it this time.’
Maeve did sip it, but the unaccustomed drink made her feel peculiar and a little giggly, and as they made their way to the tram, she confessed to Brendan that her head felt swimmy. Brendan was pleased; he wanted Maeve in a compliant mood that night.
The café was in darkness and there wasn’t a soul about as they stole up the stairs to Maeve’s flat, and once inside Brendan pulled Maeve on to the settee beside him. Suddenly it didn’t matter to Maeve that Brendan hadn’t asked her to marry him. He would, she was sure, in time, and until then . . . After all, he’d been so kind to her and so generous. She didn’t repel Brendan’s groping fingers, nor the kisses that she seemed to be drowning in.
But then at the last moment she pulled back and Brendan let out a howl of agony. He felt as if his crotch would explode and he knew by Maeve’s wild eyes and breathlessness that she wanted it as much as he did. No pleading would shift her, and Brendan thought of taking her by force, but knew it would destroy everything between them if he did.
But Maeve too had been shaken and was frustrated and unhappy. It was getting harder and harder to refuse Brendan when she wanted it so much herself. She’d never in her life felt the hot shafts of desire that Brendan induced in her and knew that eventually she would give in to him.
Brendan knew it too, but he didn’t know how long it could take to break Maeve from her upbringing and the moral confines of the Church, and wasn’t at all sure he could last out that long. However, despite his deep desire for Maeve, he’d had no intention on God’s earth of marrying her in the beginning.
He’d had no intention of marrying anyone. He’d never known a happy marriage – certainly his own parents’ had been no advertisement for blissful contentment. All his brothers had gone down the same road and he’d seen the lifeblood squeezed out of them with their demanding wives and houses full of screaming brats. He had no use for children.
He was the eldest in his family and each child his mother had had after him had meant less attention for himself. He’d felt further and further pushed away as the younger ones got what care and love there might be, though there was precious little of either.
There had been no time at all for his father either. His mother just seemed to regard him as a walking pay packet. She’d never been satisfied with the amount he’d given her every Friday night. Small wonder, Brendan thought, his father had felt the need to smack her about now and then. Brendan had certainly seen no harm in it. She was a moaning bloody nag, like most women, and he agreed with his father that they all needed teaching a lesson a time or two. A man had to be master in his own house.
He’d decided long ago that he’d share his money with no woman. He worked for it and he’d choose how it was to be spent. Brendan was the only one left at home. His mother cooked his meals and washed and ironed for him, and he paid keep, which she was always bloody grateful for. He always had enough left to buy as many fags as he wanted, a bellyful of beer as often as he liked and to place a bet if he had the mind to. He thought his brothers fools and saw marriage as a trap.
He didn’t live like a monk either. He had plenty of money to jingle in his pocket and buy drinks for those willing to please him, and he found there were women enough to accommodate him if he was that way inclined. He used to boast he’d never had to pay for sex. After a good night out most were only too grateful for a bit of slap and tickle, and Brendan always admitted to it later in confession and got absolution. He saw no reason for his life to change. That was until he met Maeve Brannigan.
That night, with his whole body on fire, 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
