‘I might have,’ Bridie snapped, the mention of Francis playing the part of a concerned uncle making her feel sick. ‘You were hardly bothered and I don’t think it’s any of your business anyway.’
‘Oh, Bridie, don’t be like this!’ Rosalyn said. ‘I know you’re upset I’m leaving, but …’
‘God, don’t you think a lot of yourself?’ Bridie cried. ‘Don’t you pity me, Rosalyn McCarthy. Pity yourself or some other in need of it. I’m grand, so I am.’
Rosalyn went home, offended. Bridie didn’t blame her and felt bad about upsetting her dearest friend, who would soon be gone, and probably for ever. Another thing to blame Francis for, she thought, spoiling the last weeks they’d have together.
An uneasy truce was formed between Bridie and Rosalyn, however, and Rosalyn was glad. She was leaving in just over a month’s time and didn’t want to go without making it up with her cousin.
As for Bridie, she was desperately unhappy. She couldn’t look at her uncle Francis, or speak to him unless forced to, but she could not afford to draw attention to this and invite awkward questions. She wished the two families didn’t see so much of each other. There were days when she seemed so sunken in misery that nothing seemed to lift her. ‘I didn’t think she’d be as upset as all this at Rosalyn leaving,’ Sarah remarked to Jimmy one day. ‘For all they’d been bosom friends. She always seems to bounce back, our Bridie, but I can hardly reach her at the moment. I wish she was still small and I could cure any hurt with a kiss and a hug. I mean, it’s even stopped her monthlies.’
Bridie had realised that herself one day when, searching for clean underwear, she came upon the soiled petticoats. Her heart seemed to stop beating as realisation dawned. She sat down on the bed because her legs had begun to tremble. Rosalyn was due to sail in two days’ time, and it was a month since the dance – she should have started her period a week after it.
Oh dear God! Surely she couldn’t be pregnant? The disgusting episode in the wood couldn’t have resulted in a child?
The worry of it clouded Rosalyn’s departure and haunted her every minute of the day. Should she write and tell Mary, she wondered? But how could she write something like that? And would Mary feel bound to tell her mother? Maybe she was panicking over nothing, she told herself. All sorts of things could stop periods. She heard it said often enough.
Rosalyn left on a drizzly, early November day and the two girls kissed and hugged and vowed they would write. Bridie watched her climb into the rail bus, carrying Maria’s two-year-old while Maria held the baby in her arms and the older child by the hand, and she felt black desolation sweep over her at the loss of her friend.
A week later, Bridie realised that she had missed her second period and two weeks after that she was sick in the chamber pot as she got out of bed. The same happened the next morning and the next and almost every morning after it. She was whiter than ever and dark smudges had appeared beneath her eyes. ‘That girl will sicken if she goes on like this,’ she overheard her mother say to her father.
‘She looks far from well indeed,’ Jimmy agreed.
‘I’ve heard her being sick a time or two as well,’ Sarah said. ‘God knows, she’s thin enough already. I think I’ll have the doctor look her over if she doesn’t pick up. Maybe she needs a tonic.’
Jesus! Bridie knew what sort of a tonic the doctor would order and that news would tear the heart out of her parents. What was she to do? Eventually they would find out. Pregnancy was something no one could hide for ever.
She lay in bed, night after night, thinking what to do as one November day slid into another. But there was no solution. If she were to tell her parents now what had happened the night of the dance, doubt would linger. They’d wonder why she’d said nothing that night. Francis had his story ready too; he’d already told her what he’d say if she accused him. Dear Lord, he might deny it altogether and lay the blame on one of the young lads at the dance.
He might say they’d been around her all night like bees around a honey pot and suggest she had been more than willing. And hadn’t he told Rosalyn he’d searched the place for Bridie and not been able to find her? She knew with dread certainty that Francis would be believed before her.
When news of Bridie’s pregnancy got out, her parents would be destroyed. Out would go their respectability, their standing in the community. The two families who’d helped each other and shared things for years would be rent apart. It would be particularly hard for her parents to cope; maybe they’d find it so hard they’d have to leave the farm, their life’s work, perhaps even leave the town.
And the townsfolk would blame her. She must have asked for it, they would say, must have done something to provoke such a thing. God, she could almost hear them. ‘Can you trust the young hussies these days, wearing less clothes than is decent and teasing and tormenting honest men? Jesus, it would take a man to watch himself.’
There would be little or no sympathy for her. She’d be the disgraced single parent and her parents dragged through the mud with her. And at the end of this, would be a bastard child that no one would want, a symbol of her loose behaviour, a child that would be held up to ridicule and scorn because he or she had no father.
She knew it would be better if she was well away from the place before the pregnancy should be discovered. Yet, she asked herself, how could she just up and leave? But she knew in her heart of hearts that she must. Though her parents could not manage without her on the farm, neither could they cope with what she carried in her belly and she had no right to shame them like that.
Other people had begun to notice that Bridie looked far from well. Father O’Dwyer had stopped her in the church porch and commented on how pale she was. ‘Mind, I suppose everyone has poor colour at his time of the year,’ he had continued. ‘It doesn’t do my old bones much good either. We’ll all feel better in the spring, what d’you say?’
Bridie had said nothing and managed only a fleeting smile. If she stayed until the spring, the decision would be taken out of her hands and her life, and that of her parents, might as well be over.
All the next week she dithered. Her father had never seemed so old, so stiff, and her mother’s one arm was more useless than ever. She was slow to do everything and, Bridie guessed, often in pain. How in God’s name could she leave these good kind people to cope by themselves?
Then, one evening, her mother said, ‘I’m making an appointment for you to see the doctor this week, Bridie.’
‘What?’ Bridie cried, startled and alarmed.
‘Look at you, there’s not a pick on you,’ Sarah said. ‘People are commenting on how thin you’ve got, and there are bags under your eyes too. You’re not right and haven’t been since Rosalyn left. You’ve got to eat more; you’re not eating enough to keep a bird alive at the moment. Delia said that is probably what has stopped your monthlies. She says she’s heard of it before, but whatever it is, I’m sure the doctor will sort it out.’
Oh by God he would sort it out right enough, Bridie thought. ‘Mammy,’ she pleaded, ‘just leave it a wee while longer. You’re right, I haven’t been sleeping, and I will try to eat more, but don’t go bothering the doctor yet?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said. ‘Your father’s worried.’
‘Please, Mammy? Leave it just a bit and if I’m no better
