A Mother's Spirit (34 page)

Joe felt his blood run cold. He looked at Tom and said, ‘So she hasn’t taken Ben to Birmingham then. So where the hell has she taken him?’

‘Where could she take him?’ Tom said. ‘She would never harm the boy.’

‘I know that,’ Joe said. ‘But where is he?’ He turned to Jack. ‘Maybe she confided in Helen. The two of them are as thick as thieves. Could I go and ask her if she can shed some light on this?’

‘Helen left this morning with that American husband of hers,’ Jack said. ‘Apparently there is a ship moored in Belfast to take all the wives of American servicemen over to the States.’

Joe felt as if a large lead lump had landed in the pit of his stomach. He remembered the times that Gloria had gone into Derry and he had wondered if she had been seeing someone else. He suddenly felt sick and he knew just where his son was.

‘That’s where Gloria has gone,’ he said. ‘She will be on that bloody ship with my son.’

‘You could be right,’ Jack said, ‘because sitting beside Helen’s husband in the car was his mate. His name is Philip Morrisey. At Helen’s wedding he was one witness and Gloria another, and Nellie and I saw them holding hands. Then later, at the meal … well, I wondered if there was any funny business going on.’

‘Funny business or not, she is not taking my son to America,’ Joe said.

‘She can’t,’ Jack said. ‘Helen said they have to be married to be aboard those ships. That’s why they had to marry in a hurry.’

‘Then she has false papers,’ Joe said. ‘But I will stake my life that that is where she has gone.’

‘Then you have got her,’ Jack said. ‘She is in big trouble.’

‘Do you think I care a bloody fig about that?’ Joe snapped. ‘All I’m interested in is getting Ben back. How can we get there fast, Jack?’

‘Hughie, the taxi driver in Buncrana, will take us, I’m sure,’ Jack said. ‘I will tell him that it is a matter of life or death.’

‘It might well be,’ Joe answered grimly. ‘For if I find that one of those men at that camp has anything to do with the disappearance of my son, then I will break every bone in his bloody body.’

All the way to the docks, Gloria talked to Ben about the delights in store for them both when they reached the shores of America.

Philip butted in at times too. ‘You will be staying with my parents for a little while,’ he told Ben. ‘They sure are looking forward to meeting you, buddy. And I am sure before too long you’ll be my right-hand man. I used to love helping my father when I was a kid.’

‘Yeah, well, I like helping mine too on the farm in Buncrana, because that is where my father is,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t want to be your right-hand man or anything else either, because you are not my father.’

‘Ben …’

‘Don’t you tell me off,’ Ben exploded. ‘He isn’t my father and never will be, and you can’t make me think any other way.’

‘I understand how angry you are,’ Philip said reasonably. ‘This has been forced on you and it’s a bit of a shock I’m sure. I really will try to make things as easy as I can for you. And then, when you are sixteen, we’ll get a licence and I will teach you to drive. What do you say to that?’

Ben was going to say that for him sixteen was a lifetime away, but before he could say anything, Gloria burst out, ‘Oh, Ben! Won’t that be just wonderful?’

Ben glowered at them both and then turned to his mother
coldly. ‘I suppose it would be all right if I had wanted to go to America in the first place,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t, and I still don’t. What’s Dad to do if I just go off and leave him?’

There was an uncomfortable silence. In her heart of hearts, Gloria was concerned how Joe would cope with the loss of his beloved son. However, it was no good admitting that to Ben and so she said instead, ‘He’ll be all right, Ben.’

‘No he won’t,’ Ben said. ‘And you know he won’t. You can’t leave him like this. It isn’t right.’

He had upset his mother, he knew, because her face had a crumpled look, as if she was going to cry, but Ben didn’t care. He was glad that she was upset. She deserved to be. He wanted to scream and shout at her that she had to stop all this and go back home where she belonged, but there was no time because they had reached the dockside.

It was extremely noisy, heaving with people laughing and shouting and weeping and hugging one another, and porters with laden luggage trying to get through the crowd. Children ran about shrieking and screaming, either in excitement or fear, and babies wailed at the strangeness of it all.

Philip helped them unload everything from the car, and Colin went off to park it while Philip organised a porter. Ben thought of darting away and losing himself in the crowds, but he knew they would soon root him out. He had to be cleverer than that. Anyway, his mother had a hand on his arm as they followed the porters, who had their luggage piled high.

Ben remembered Kevin saying that you had to play adults at their own game. ‘When you are a kid,’ he’d said, ‘they can make you do things you don’t want to do because they are bigger and stronger, and everyone believes them over you, so kids have got to learn to box clever.’ So Ben knew that if he didn’t want to find himself in America, he had to get off the boat, and to be given the freedom to do that meant convincing his mother that he had accepted the fact that he was going to the States to live with her.

When they eventually got through the crowds and he saw the troopship bound for America moored at the dockside, he was impressed enough to say, ‘Wow!’

Gloria smiled at him. ‘Some ship, isn’t it?’

‘You bet. Look at all those decks!’ Ben cried, pointing at them towering one above the other, with three black funnels on top of that.

There were two officers at the top of the gangplank checking the marriage lines of all the women going on board, and Gloria was mightily glad that Ben was so fascinated with the ship that he didn’t notice this or he would certainly have something to say on the subject.

They were sharing a neat little cabin and Ben thought that if he really did want to go on this trip to America, he would have enjoyed living and sleeping in it for the time that they would be afloat. The cabin had four bunk beds in it, and beside each one was a set of drawers and a tall cupboard. They put their things away quickly and went out on deck, where Colin joined them.

Gloria looked at her son and said, ‘We’re going home, Ben. Aren’t you the tiniest bit excited too?’

Ben nodded. ‘A bit, yeah,’ he said. ‘It will be nice, I suppose, to see the place where I was born. Anyway, I haven’t got a lot of option, have I? I still feel sorry for Dad, though.’

‘You can write to your father as soon as we get to New York,’ Gloria promised.

Yeah, Ben thought sarcastically, that will really help him. But what he said was, ‘Can I explore the ship a bit?’

Gloria looked at all the people. She didn’t really want Ben leaving her side. On the other hand, she wanted to spend the last few precious moments with Philip and was desperate to tell him before he had to leave the ship, that he was going to be a daddy, and so she said to Ben, ‘All right, but don’t go too far and for heaven’s sake don’t get lost.’

‘I won’t,’ Ben assured her, moving away, but with the number of people aboard he was soon hidden from her.

She opened her mouth to call him back, but Philip said, ‘He will be all right, you know. He’s a big lad now and it is natural to want to explore.’

‘I know,’ Gloria said. She glanced across at Helen and Colin and, seeing them absorbed in each other, she said, ‘I’m glad Ben is out of earshot for a few minutes, actually, for I have something to tell you that is for your ears alone, at least for now.’

‘What?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ Gloria said, and then, seeing Philip’s consternation, she gave a little laugh and said, ‘I have good reason to believe that I am carrying your child.’

She watched the incredulous joy flood over Philip’s face and then he said anxiously, ‘Is it mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ Gloria said. ‘I told you, sex between me and Joe stopped a long time ago. But even if he had tried, how could I have let Joe make love to me when my heart belonged to another? You must have no doubts, my darling. This is your child that I am carrying.’

She looked into his beautiful deep brown eyes as she spoke and saw them moisten with tears at her words, and her heart turned over with love for him. He reached out for her as he said, ‘Oh, my darling girl, that is probably the best news that I have ever received in my life. I never dreamed … Oh God, darling. It really is the icing on the cake as far as I am concerned.’

Gloria was glad that Ben was away as she allowed herself to be hugged tight, and laughed when Philip planted little kisses all over her face, and then was transported to Paradise as Philip kissed her properly. She knew she would have felt constrained with Ben watching.

Ben had seen enough, however. He watched them laughing and hugging and kissing, and knew it was so terribly wrong. He began traversing the ship while thoughts tumbled around in his head.

He wondered how long his mother had been seeing this
man Philip. From what he had witnessed the night of the Christmas party, it had been going on from then, at least.

He imagined his father alone in the little whitewashed cottage and tears burned in the back of his throat. Somehow he had to get off that ship and go back to him. He didn’t want to leave his mother either, because he loved her too, but she wasn’t acting like a mother because mothers stay with their husbands and she was prepared to walk away. She wanted a new life with a new man and he wanted no part in that, he decided.

In the end he had found what he wanted, and that was a gangplank as far away from his mother as it was possible to be. It was on the lower deck too, and used only by the sailors to load the ship with cargo. He smiled to himself, then went back to his mother.

‘Where have you been?’ Gloria asked.

‘Right on the highest deck,’ Ben said, the lie tripping easily off his tongue. He didn’t mind lying to her. She had been lying to him long enough, and he frowned at the casual way that man had an arm draped around his mother’s shoulders. ‘You can see for miles,’ he went on. ‘That’s where I want to be when the ship pulls out, when I say goodbye to Ireland.’

Gloria heard the sadness in her son’s voice and she said, ‘You do that, Ben, though it isn’t goodbye for ever. I’m sure you will come back one day on a visit.’

Ben didn’t answer; there wasn’t time, for the hooter had sounded the signal for those not travelling to leave the ship. Gloria suddenly realised that she wouldn’t see Philip for maybe months and her attention was all for him.

‘Can I go now then?’ Ben asked, and Gloria gave him a perfunctory wave.

‘Yes, but come back here afterwards. I’ll wait for you.’

Ben gave a nod and watched his mother in the American’s arms again, clinging to him as they kissed.

He melted into the crowd and then, once out of his mother’s sight, hurried as fast as he could, jostled by the
disembarking passengers. From his hiding place he watched the quayside fill with those leaving the ship and saw the sailors beginning to unwind the hawsers.

Soon he knew they would raise the gangplanks and then it would be too late. He leaped up and ran down the short plank. One of the sailors shouted at him, but he paid no heed, and when another on the dockside tried to grab him, Ben twisted out of his grasp and was soon lost to view.

Joe was finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that his wife, his Gloria, had run away from him with another man. As the car sped on its way to Belfast, he examined his behaviour over the last months and knew that he was partly to blame for Gloria’s dissatisfaction, which had eventually driven her into the arms of another.

‘I refused to see how hard she was finding things,’ he said. ‘When she started working at the camp she made me a laughing stock, and yet we needed her money to survive. That I couldn’t provide properly for her and Ben cut me to the quick.’

‘I knew there was something the matter,’ Jack said. ‘I said to Nellie that you were nothing like the Joe I remembered, or the Joe that first returned, even taking into account the injuries you were suffering from. But even so, you can’t take the total blame for this, you know.’

‘I agree,’ Tom said. ‘It isn’t your entire fault, Joe.’

‘You know her, Tom,’ Joe said. ‘Would you say that Gloria would ever have done this without provocation?’

‘I have to admit this is the very last thing that I expected Gloria to do,’ Tom said. ‘I knew she disliked the country and everything, but I would have said she loved you totally.’

‘That is what I am saying,’ Joe said morosely. ‘I killed that love. You saw how it was between us and I spoke of this before to you. I wanted her to be more like the women in Buncrana. Just how crazy is that? She was a free and independent spirit and I choked the life out of her. I see it all now. Tom, you know that we have been unhappy for
months. Maybe this man, whoever it is, made her feel more valued than I did.’

‘Many of us are only truly valued at our funeral,’ Hughie the taxi driver commented. ‘That’s life. Don’t give you the right to run away when the going gets tough.’

‘But that’s it. She didn’t,’ Joe said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how bad it was in the tenement of New York and then the blitz in London.’

‘What about bringing you here and managing Mammy the way she did?’ Tom said. ‘Giving credit where it’s due, she was truly amazing then. Huh, I’d say if anything was going to send her into the arms of another man, then that would have been it.’

‘If I had my time again I would do it all differently,’ said Joe, ‘and realise, as she did, that us two were the important ones, and how we handled our family was our business, and the townsfolk’s opinion shouldn’t matter a jot.’

‘That was easier for Gloria to do,’ Tom said. ‘She came in as an outsider and didn’t know the people. You were hailed as the returning hero to the place where you had been born and reared, where you had friends.’

‘Is it too late?’ Jack said. ‘Could you not put it to her, as you have to us here in the car, and say you’re sorry? I wouldn’t have said that Gloria bears grudges.’

‘And I have the flat in Birmingham going begging,’ Tom put in.

Joe shook his head. ‘This is what I should have done months ago. I should have explained how I felt and why, told her how sorry I was, and supported her and valued the contributions she was making to the family’s finances. Now I fear it is much too late for Gloria and me.’

‘Well, regardless of whose fault it is, I think the important one at the moment is Ben,’ Tom said.

‘Yes,’ Joe agreed. ‘She can’t take the boy. If she wants to leave me that is one thing, and one I will deal with. But there would be no point in going on without my son.’

Tom heard the despair in his brother’s voice and he sighed. ‘Let’s hope we are in time then to get him off that damned ship before it sails.’

However, they hadn’t even found a place to park the car when they heard the hooter, and Joe knew he had failed and he would not see his son again for many years. He felt as if he had been stabbed in the heart.

He got out of the car, stumbling like an old man, and Tom turned away from the agony etched on his face.

‘Sorry,’ Hughie said, though Tom and Jack knew he couldn’t have done any more; as it was, he had driven like a madman.

Joe didn’t even hear him, nor feel the hand that Jack put on his shoulder as a gesture of support. He wandered away from them all onto the dockside as if he were in the throes of drink.

‘Go after him, Tom, for God’s sake, lest he do something stupid,’ Jack said. ‘The man’s not in his right mind at all.’

Tom knew that as well as anyone. Joe’s eyes were trained on the ship moving, as yet quite slowly, away from the harbour.

On board that ship Gloria and Helen were waiting for Ben to join them. ‘I don’t expect him to come back until the shores of Ireland are just a blur in the distance,’ Gloria said. ‘Did you tell him to come back here?’ Helen asked.

‘Yes,’ Gloria said. ‘It seemed the wisest plan.’

‘Yes, it was,’ agreed Helen, and when they had waited another few minutes, she wandered over to the rail. The ship was gathering pace now and the dockside emptying fast. ‘Can you still see Colin or Philip?’ Gloria asked, joining her.