copper and zinc into molten metal in white-hot furnaces so that they could be poured into crucibles. The sweat ran from him so freely that often the shirt he wore was still damp when he arrived home.
Maeve had witnessed the weariness on his face when he came in the door and saw the lines on his brow rimed with dirt, and the grime streaking his cheeks. She’d seen his cracked, calloused hands encrusted with black, and smelt the sour sweat of him. She’d often felt sorry for him, and because of it, had forgiven him his temper.
Then she’d always had the kettle on the boil for Brendan’s wash. He said he always felt better with the muck sluiced off him and clean, dry clothes on, but since Kevin’s birth all that had stopped. Now he was prepared to sit down at the table unwashed, reeking from stale sweat and with filthy hands and nails, and would shovel in his food as though he was a pig at a trough.
Because Maeve knew beer inflamed Brendan’s temper, she tried talking to him after his meal when he was more rational and at least sober. She tried, as she’d done before, asking him what she was doing that so enraged him that he felt he had to raise his hand to her. Brendan never had an answer to give her. He felt she needed no explanation and the fact that she seemed to expect one angered him further. His mother would never have questioned his father.
When she tried to talk to him about the money he gave her, which was woefully inadequate, Brendan flew into such a temper Maeve was terrified. She produced a list of things she had to buy, or pay for each week, thinking it might help, and he tore it from her hands, ripped it into pieces and threw them into the fire.
The back of his hand sliced across Maeve’s cheek as he hissed, ‘All the bloody same, women, nag, nag, nag, and always about bloody money. Well, you’ll just have to manage on what I give you, for you’ll get no more.’
Maeve had been stunned by both the blow and Brendan’s reaction. After that she didn’t say anything more to him about the son of whom he seemed to take no notice. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Elsie Phillips next door, who took as much delight in the child as she did herself, Maeve might have become seriously depressed.
It was Elsie’s advice that Maeve sought one sunny morning in September 1932. Elsie listened and then said, ‘You’ll have to tell him, girl. For God’s sake, pregnancy is one thing you can’t hide.’
‘Elsie, I’m scared.’
‘It’s his baby as much as yours, Maeve. You didn’t do it on your own.’
‘You don’t know him, Elsie. He’ll go mad.’
‘Better you tell him than let him find out for himself,’ Elsie said. But she spoke cautiously because she’d known for some time that Maeve’s husband smacked her about a bit. The construction of the houses was not conducive to any degree of privacy, and she’d heard some of the blows Maeve had received, and seen the evidence with her own eyes the next day. But Maeve had not mentioned the violence so neither had Elsie.
Still, Maeve knew Elsie was right. Brendan had to know that she was three months gone with another child. When Maeve told him that night after tea, he flew into a temper and shouted and screamed so much, Elsie was tempted to go in, but Alf told her to mind her own business. She didn’t breathe easy till she heard Maeve’s door slam and knew Brendan had taken himself off to the pub.
All evening Brendan brooded, over the many pints he ordered, on the news he’d received that day. There would be a baby every bloody year, just as he’d imagined it, till Maeve hadn’t a moment to bid him the time of day, and he hadn’t two halfpennies to call his own. Every penny would go to feed and clothe bleeding kids he had never wanted. Some bloody gift from God!
That night Brendan staggered home from the pub consumed with the unfairness of it. It was Maeve’s fault, tempting him like all women tempted men, trapping him into marriage by not letting him do what he wanted until she had the ring on her finger. Bloody bitches, all women. Maeve most of all, and it was about time she was taught a lesson she’d not forget in a hurry.
The next morning, when Brendan saw the mess he’d made of Maeve’s face and hazily remembered what he’d done to her the night before, he felt guilty and ashamed, and angry with himself for feeling that way. He told himself she’d asked for it. He growled at her to get his breakfast and, alarmed and afraid, Maeve, without a word, eased herself painfully from the bed and went to do his bidding.
She was glad when he went to work, for only then did her limbs stop trembling, but when Kevin awoke and began to cry, she groaned as she mounted the stairs, for she was stiff and sore, and every part of her seemed to ache. She wanted to hide from the world, at least until her face was back to normal, she felt so ashamed.
She finished feeding Kevin, changed him and then rocked him in her arms until his eyelids drooped and eventually closed. She laid him in the pram and went into the bedroom, where she painfully dressed herself. Then, wrapping her shawl around her head and shoulders, pulling it well over her face, she made her way to the outdoor lavatory.
Outside the autumn sun penetrated the court in dusty shafts, and small children played around the doorways. Two women stood keeping an eye on them and having a chat and both looked curiously at Maeve. She muttered a greeting, but kept her head down and hurried past.
When she returned the women had gone, though the children still played on, and she was grateful that they took no notice of her. As she reached her door, she heard Kevin’s plaintive cry, and she struggled with the latch, anxious to get in and see to him. She lost her grip on the shawl and it slipped from her just as Elsie Phillips’s door opened. She stared at Maeve’s face with a look of dismay and shock.
So she’d been right, she thought to herself. The brute had been smacking her about, but it was more than the odd slap or punch this time. ‘You poor sod,’ she said with feeling, and the sympathy started the tears in Maeve’s eyes.
She stumbled through the door, the tears almost blinding her. Elsie stood undecided, not sure whether to follow her into the house or go out to the shops, as she’d intended, and mind her own business. But then, she reminded herself, the girl had no one belonging to her, except a sour-faced old cow of an aunt. She’d seen her just the once at Kevin’s christening and couldn’t take to her, nor her milksop, henpecked husband, who seemed to think the sun shone out of Brendan Hogan’s arse.
Her mind made up, she put down her bag, took off her coat, closed her own door and went to Maeve’s. The girl still cried, even as she held the baby, and Elsie’s heart was smitten with pity for her. She knew the pattern Maeve’s life would take from now on, for she believed once a man started beating his wife he would always do so, and she also knew Maeve would not get a lot of sympathy from anyone because of it either.
She took the baby from Maeve and sat him up in the pram, where he could watch what was going on, and pressed his mother down into a chair.
‘I’m going to make us a cup of tea,’ Elsie said, ‘and then see if I can do summat about your face. After that if you need any shopping I’ll get it for you. You’ll not want to go out much for a day or two, I’d say.’
Maeve marvelled that Elsie seemed to know just how she felt and was very glad of the older woman’s presence. For the first time she didn’t feel so isolated.
Elsie had been right. Maeve’s life took on a pattern from that first real beating, the first one that Brendan hadn’t apologised for. She realised whatever she did or didn’t do, however she pleaded, begged or tried to talk to Brendan, he would treat her as he saw fit. In his eyes that was grudgingly giving her money he could spare her after his booze, fags and bets had
