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 became ill herself with a tumour in the stomach.
Elsie tended to her mother in a bed brought downstairs and her father coughing his guts up in the bedroom above. She and Alf had the attic and she often wondered how she’d cope if she became pregnant, and at the time thanked God that she hadn’t. Two years later, all that she had of her parents were the two wooden crosses in the churchyard. After they’d been married for seven more childless years, Elsie mentioned to Alf that perhaps they should see the doctor, but Alf said he was reluctant to discuss anything so personal. The priest Elsie went to for advice told her she had to be content with whatever God sent and if he intended her to be childless then she had to be satisfied with it. She hadn’t ever been satisfied, but as she was unable to change the situation she had to accept it.
But when a heavily pregnant Maeve Hogan moved in next door to her some years later, Elsie’s maternal instincts rose to the fore. Maeve was only nineteen, her twentieth birthday being in late December, and could have been Elsie’s own daughter. Maeve, often confused and made unhappy by Brendan’s behaviour, and missing her own mother, found Elsie’s company very welcome indeed.
A strong friendship grew between them, and it had been Elsie’s hand that Maeve had clung to as her son, Kevin, was born in November 1931, while Brendan went on a drinking binge and disappeared for two days. He returned looking like death, without a word of explanation or apology and took no notice of his infant son.
In fact Brendan’s indifference towards Kevin seemed to be echoed among all his family, and even Maeve’s uncle and aunt. Letters of congratulation from Ireland were all well and good, but not the same as her family visiting and taking delight in the child. So Maeve was glad of Elsie’s support. She knew she’d get little from Brendan and she thanked God that she had such a kind and caring neighbour.
Brendan hated the child who’d supplanted him. One day, being unused to the demands of a young baby, Maeve hadn’t quite finished feeding Kevin when Brendan walked in the door. He watched his son tugging at his wife’s breasts and was so consumed by jealousy that he shook.
He strode across the room and dragged the child so roughly from Maeve that he began to wail, and Maeve got to her feet, terrified Brendan would hurt him. Not that he didn’t want to, for he knew Maeve preferred the child over him. But in the end he almost threw him back to Maeve and told her to put him in the bedroom out of the bloody road.
Another night he came home to find no dinner ready because, she said, ‘the baby wouldn’t settle’. The resultant punch he gave her was to make sure that that never happened again.
‘You look after me before any squalling brat,’ he yelled, as Maeve wiped the blood oozing from her nose and her split lip. ‘Maybe you’ll remember that in future.’
No longer was Maeve so eager for him each night either, and would often turn from him if Kevin made a murmur, holding the baby in her arms and crooning while her husband grew hot with impatience and frustration. He never spoke of his feelings and fears, but instead grew moodier than ever, and often gave Maeve the odd punch or clout if he felt she was annoying him in some way.
Maeve didn’t really understand what had happened to the husband that she still loved, who’d courted her with such consideration and professed his devotion to her often. She sometimes remembered with a pang of nostalgia how they used to laugh together over something silly, or the hours and hours they used to talk and never tire of one another, or the way she used to yearn for his hands on her body. Now such intimacy seemed to have slunk away from them.
Brendan
