Life and Mary Ann Read online

  There was just one other person who was not pleased with the spectacle. And that was Mr Lord. He had found Mrs Schofield a very entertaining companion; when you got past the frivolity of her veneer there was a serious side to the woman. He had found her intelligent and observant, and possessed of a quality that, in his opinion, was rare in most women—wit. Many of them had a sense of humour, but humour and wit were on two different planes. Yes, indeed, he had liked Mrs Schofield and he did not relish seeing her making a spectacle of herself with Shaughnessy, and his grandson. Shaughnessy, too, he noted, had taken on more than was good for him, and in a very short while his good humour would turn to surliness, and from that…Well, he wasn’t going to be present when Shaughnessy brought up the subject of why young Cornelius Boyle had decided to go to America. He was well aware of Shaughnessy’s championship of the boy. And it was not only because of Mary Ann’s affection for the fellow, but because Shaughnessy saw in the big, bony, unlovely Cornelius a replica of himself as he was at that age. And in championing his daughter’s choice, he was also pandering to the vanity in himself. Oh, he knew Shaughnessy, he could read Shaughnessy.

  ‘Well, I must be making my way up the hill, Mrs Shaughnessy.’ Mr Lord was facing Lizzie now, bending towards her to make himself heard. And she only just managed to keep the relief out of her voice as she answered, ‘You must be tired, it’s been a long day…Thank you very much, indeed, for all you have done.’

  The old man raised his bushy brows into his white hair, and brought his chin into his neck as he said with a rare twinkle in his eye, ‘We’re never thanked for the right things by the right people, Mrs Shaughnessy. The ones who should be thanking me are past thinking of anything at this moment but the next drink. I have done nothing to deserve your thanks, but there it is. That is life.’ He nodded his head slowly. ‘And I am grateful for your thanks, Mrs Shaughnessy.’

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Lord.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Shaughnessy. And don’t worry. Everything will turn out all right.’ He did not explain to what he was referring, there was no need. Lizzie looked back into his pale eyes as she said, ‘I’m sure it will, Mr Lord. I sincerely hope so from the bottom of my heart.’ The last words were merely a whisper.

  Again he nodded. ‘We understand each other, Mrs Shaughnessy. It’s a very good thing when two people understand each other. Goodnight, Mrs Shaughnessy.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Lord. Goodnight, Mr Lord. You’ll be able to manage?’ She pulled the barn door open for him.

  ‘Yes, quite well, Mrs Shaughnessy, quite well; there’s a moon.’

  He paused for a moment and looked up into the sky, then turning his head towards Lizzie he said, ‘Don’t let her stay up too late. Young girls should get their rest.’

  Lizzie did not answer but inclined her head towards him, and stood for a moment watching him walk across the moonlit farmyard. He was telling her to protect Mary Ann from the moonlight, the moonlight and Corny. For a moment, just for a fleeting moment, Lizzie experienced a feeling that she thought could be akin to that which was eating up Mike. Why should Mary Ann be kept from the moonlight and Corny? The moon was made for the young. But as she closed the barn door again, the feeling passed. He was right; moonlight was dangerous. A dose of it created a madness that some people had to pay for all their lives. She was not going to stand by and see Mary Ann paying such a price …

  The dance ended at eleven o’clock, but long before this time Tony and Mrs Schofield were running a shuttle service taking people home. Tony’s first carload had contained the prostrate form of Mr Coot, who, true to Lizzie’s prophecy, had become blind drunk very early in the evening. But not aggressively so as she had feared. Whereas Mike, who was not as drunk as he could have been, was tinder dry for a row. Mr Lord’s disappearance had brought forth his caustic comments, and Mr Coot’s recumbency had aroused his scorn. Tony he frowned on more and more as the evening advanced, and it would appear the only person who pleased him was Mrs Schofield. But it seemed that as Mike’s boisterousness increased, Mrs Schofield’s merriment went the other way, until, towards the end of the evening, although still smiling, her gaiety had diminished. Perhaps this was because Mrs Schofield did not drink. Even a natural gaiety was hard to sustain hour after hour on lemonade. Or perhaps it was because Mrs Schofield was really a nice woman, an understanding woman.

  Yet Lizzie’s liking for Mrs Schofield did not return, not even when she witnessed her persuading Mike from getting into the car and accompanying her in her taxi-ing. You can’t like a woman who is trying to prevent your husband from making a fool of himself even when you know that she is in sympathy with you …

  The barn was almost deserted when the band finally packed up. And Mike, swaying just the slightest, stood with his arm around Corny’s shoulder, and he grinned widely at him as he muttered thickly, ‘Cum on, me young buck, cum on. You and me ’ave got some talkin’ ta do.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, Mr Shaughnessy. They’re waitin’.’

  ‘Waitin’? What for? Let them get themselves away, you’re comin’ in with me. Why, the night’s young, lad.’

  ‘I’ll come in the morrer.’

  ‘You’ll cum in the night!’

  ‘Da!’

  Mike turned to look at his daughter, saying, ‘Ah, there you are. I was just tellin’ Corny here the night’s young.’

  ‘Da. Come on indoors, please.’

  ‘We’re all goin’ indoors, me dear.’

  ‘Listen, Da.’ Mary Ann gave a rough tug at Mike’s arm, pulling him to attention. ‘Listen. Corny wants to go home; they’re waiting for him.’ She inclined her head backwards. ‘Let him go! Do you hear me, Da? Let him go!’

  Not only did the tone of her voice catch Mike’s attention, but it brought Corny’s eyes hard on her. His neck jerked up out of his collar as if he had been suddenly prodded with a sharp instrument, and he looked down on her with a wide, startled expression as she went on, ‘You go now, Corny.’ Her words were spaced, her voice level. ‘Go on. And don’t come back tomorrow, or any other time. Go to America, and I wish you luck…Come on, Da.’

  As she had done so often in her young life, she tugged at Mike’s arm and guided him away, and this time unprotestingly away, leaving Corny in a wilderness of words he could not voice. And as she went, she clung on desperately to the fringe of her old courage, which she had dragged from its retreat to save her from utter desolation after an evening of torment, an evening of being rejected, overlooked by the only one that mattered. Just a short while ago she had rehearsed a plea she would make to Corny when she had him to herself. For somehow she would get him to herself, at least that is what she had thought.

  Mary Ann had never yet in her life recognised total defeat. Her agile mind had always supplied her with a plan. But in this telling moment if it had presented her with a plan that would keep Corny at her feet for life, she would have rejected it.

  As they entered the garden Mike’s docility vanished and he pulled them to a stop, exclaiming, ‘Why the hell…? I’m not havin’ this. Where is he?’ He flung round, only to be dragged back again by Mary Ann, and, her voice as stern as Lizzie’s ever could be, she said to him, ‘Look, Da, listen to me. I’m telling you, I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘Aa…ah! So you’re playing the old fellow’s game, eh?’ He swayed slightly towards her.

  ‘I’m playing nobody’s game. Come on in.’ Suddenly her tone changed and she was the little girl again, pleading with him. ‘Aw, Da. Come on. Come on to bed…I’ve had enough for one night.’

  He peered at her through the moonlight, and then without further words he put his arm about her, and together they went up into the house.

  Three

  ‘What are you goin’ to be when you leave your typin’ school…a secretary?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘Do you want to be a secretary?’

  ‘No, not really.’


  ‘Then what did you go in for it for?’

  ‘Oh, well.’ Mary Ann gave a faint smile and, looking down, said, ‘I fancy I’ll be able to write.’

  ‘Write?’

  ‘Yes, stories and things, you know. I’ve always been able to make up poetry.’

  ‘Well, well!’ Fanny stopped basting the joint and gazed down on Mary Ann where she sat at the corner of the kitchen table. ‘Now, that’s an idea, a good idea, for you were always the one for tellin’ a tale. Oh, you were that…Remember the things you used to spin around, about all the cars, and the horses your da had, and the big house you lived in?’

  Mary Ann nodded, and she kept smiling up at this old friend of hers as she listened to her recalling the escapades she got up to in the days when they lived in the attics at the top of this grim house. But she knew, as Mrs McBride kept prattling on in her loud, strident voice, that they were both just marking time, waiting for the moment when Corny’s name would be mentioned. She was bitter in her heart against Corny. Although she had dismissed him with a cold finality the night of the wedding, she hadn’t imagined for a single moment that that would be the last she would see of him. When he hadn’t come on the Sunday, she had known he would turn up one night during the week. But as the days ticked off towards the fourteenth of November, her pride sank into oblivion once more, and she paid earnest, even frantic, attention to her praying, beseeching Our Lady to bring him before he sailed. But her prayers weren’t answered. And the day of his departure came without a word or a note from him.

  Her da was still mad, and part of his temper now was directed towards Corny himself. Even her mother was annoyed at Corny’s cavalier treatment. And she had overheard her saying to Michael in the kitchen, ‘After the way he’s been welcomed in this house. Every weekend for years he’s been here. And never once was she invited back!’

  Michael had answered, ‘Well, you can understand that. The fellow wouldn’t want to take her to the set-up in Howdon.’

  ‘Well,’ her mother said, ‘I hope it shows her she’s well rid of him.’

  When their Michael had answered, ‘I wouldn’t count on it doing that, Ma,’ she had wanted to fly into the kitchen and cry, ‘Well, it has! Me ma’s right. Me ma’s right. I never want to set eyes on him again.’

  That was a week ago. And now here she was, drawn to Mrs McBride’s, waiting, as each minute passed—glossed over with topics that didn’t matter—for her to speak about her grandson.

  Fanny pushed the dripping tin back into the oven, and threw the coarse sacking oven-towel onto a chair. Then going back to the table, she sat down opposite Mary Ann. Heaving a sigh that hardly disturbed the huge sagging mountain of her breasts, she put her head on one side and looked at Mary Ann with compassion in her glance. ‘Well!’ she said abruptly.

  Mary Ann, staring at her old friend, bit on her lip, looked downwards, then back into the wrinkled face, and muttered, ‘Oh, Mrs McBride, I feel awful.’

  ‘You do, hinny?’

  Mary Ann nodded and blinked, but the blinking could not check her crying, and the tears welled from her eyes.

  ‘Aw! There now, there now, don’t cry. It had to be like this, lass. It had to be like this.’

  ‘He…he went off and never even said goodbye to me. He needn’t have gone off like that and…and after him coming to us every week. He…he never missed, and then to go off…’

  ‘Now wait a minute.’ Fanny held up her hand. ‘There was a reason for him goin’ off like that. And you know it.’

  ‘I don’t, Mrs McBride. I don’t.’ She was shaking her head desperately.

  ‘Aw, come on, come on. Face up to facts. If he had come to say goodbye to you, he would have never seen America.’

  Mary Ann’s mouth was open and she moved her head in a slow, painful motion, her tears still running down her face.

  ‘It’s a fact,’ said Fanny. ‘He stood in this kitchen…Stood? No, I’m tellin’ you a damned lie. Stand, he didn’t do, he raged about the room until I threatened to hit him with the frying pan if he didn’t let up. And talk. I never heard that lad talk so much in all me born days. All mixed up, seemingly without sense or reason, until I shouted at him. “If you don’t want to go, don’t go,” I said. “Blast Mr Lord. You’ll get other chances.” “Where?” he said. “If I was even managing that garage I wouldn’t be able to make much more than fifteen quid a week, and what can you do on that?” “What can you do on that?” I said to him. “I wish to God I had the half of it, that’s all.”’

  Fanny paused now, and after nodding towards Mary Ann she went on more slowly. ‘It was after I said that, that he held his head in his hands and said, quiet like, in a way that made him sound like a settled man, “Gran, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I’m not askin’ her until I have enough to start off decent, and if I don’t get goin’ now, it’ll be too late. Unless I start doing things on the side with the cars to make a bit like the rest of them. And I don’t want to get mixed up in anything, I’ve seen where that can lead…”’

  ‘Oh, Mrs McBride! If he had only told me…’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. I haven’t finished yet,’ said Fanny. ‘You know how I like your mother, don’t you? I think of Liz with more affection than any of me own. But apparently she doesn’t see me grandson in the same light. She’s got ideas for you, Mary Ann, and—’ Fanny spread her arms wide. ‘It’s natural, isn’t it? She’s your mother. But my Corny is no fool. Perhaps I say it as shouldn’t, but he’s a big chip, a great big chip of meself, and he read through Liz right from the beginnin’. The same as he knew what old Lord was up to all the time. Old Lord wants you for Mr Tony, lass, and you know, I can see his point an’ all. And I’m not blaming your mother for wantin’ to fall in with his little scheme. For it would be a wonderful thing if her daughter, her Mary Ann, could marry the old man’s grandson…Now, now, don’t take on so, I’m just statin’ facts, and there’s no hard feelin’s atween Liz and me, and never atween you and me. We know each other too well, don’t we now?’ She reached forward and patted Mary Ann’s hand.

  It was all too much for Mary Ann. Turning on a loud sob, she buried her face in her arms on the table, and Mrs McBride, pulling herself to her feet, stood over her, tapping her shoulder and saying, ‘Come on, now. Come on.’ Then after a moment she said, ‘Stop now, an’ I’ll give you somethin’. He left it to me for to do with what I thought best. “If you think she needs it, Gran, let her have it,” he said. “If you don’t, put it in the fire.”’

  Mary Ann raised her tear-stained face and watched Fanny take her wobbling body to the fireplace, where she reached up and extracted a letter from behind the clock. When she placed it in her hand, Mary Ann looked down on it. There was no name on the envelope, no writing of any kind; and when automatically she turned it over, she knew from the condition of the flap that it had been steamed open. This did not affect her, it did not bring any feeling of resentment against her friend. Fanny had likely wanted to know what her grandson had said, and whether she should pass it on or not.

  Slowly Mary Ann slit open the envelope and read the very short letter it contained.

  If you read this it’ll be because you have been upset at me going and you didn’t really mean what you said the other night. I’m going to stay in America for a year. If I know I can make a go of it I’ll come back then and tell you. If I feel I can’t—that is make a go of it—then don’t wait but do what they want you to. Perhaps in a year’s time you’ll want to do that anyway because you always liked him.

  Corny.

  Would you come and see me Gran now and again? She gets lonely for a bit of a crack.

  ‘Oh! Why couldn’t he tell me this?’ Mary Ann shook the letter in her hand as she looked up into Mrs McBride’s face. ‘Why couldn’t he say it?’

  ‘Well, he was never very ready with his tongue, especially when it was about anything that really mattered.’

  ‘I’ll wait. Oh, I’ll wait, Mrs McBride.’


  ‘Well, now, hinny.’ Fanny put her hand heavily on Mary Ann’s shoulder. ‘Make no rash promises. You’re only sixteen, you know. You’re very young yet.’

  ‘I’m getting on seventeen, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘Well, aye, you might be, but you know you still look such a bairn. And a lot of things can happen in a year, God knows that.’

  ‘Nothing will ever happen to change me, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘Aw, well, we’ll wait and see. But now you feel a bit better, don’t you?’

  Mary Ann nodded.

  ‘Would you like a bite of dinner?’

  ‘No thanks, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘A bit of bread dipped in the gravy?’

  Mary Ann gave an involuntary shudder when she thought of the black fat surrounding the meat. But she smiled and said, ‘Thanks all the same, but I’ll have to be off. You know what me ma is if I’m not there on time…Goodbye, Mrs McBride, and thanks.’ Impulsively she reached up and kissed the wrinkled cheek. And Fanny held her tightly for a moment, and as she did so she whispered, ‘You’re not the only one who’ll miss him, you know, lass.’

  ‘I know that, Mrs McBride…and, and I’ll come and see you more often.’

  ‘Do that. Do that, hinny. You’re always more than welcome.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘Goodbye, lass. Give me love to Lizzie, and don’t forget Mike. Tell them I’ll drop in one of these days.’

  ‘Oh, do, do, they’d love to see you.’

  After more repeated goodbyes, Mary Ann went down the steps of Mulhattans’ Hall with a lighter tread than she had ascended them, and as she hurried through the quiet Sunday-stripped streets towards the bus stop, she gripped the letter in her hand inside her coat pocket. She had no experience of love letters with which to judge this, her first one; but even so she knew it was lacking in the niceties that went to make up such a letter. Yet every line had brought Corny closer to her. The terse, taciturn, blunt individual was near her once again. There had been no sign in the letter of his lessons in English. Corny could, she knew, speak all right when there was nothing to deflect his attention from the rocks and pitfalls of grammar. But when he was angry, or disturbed in any way, he fell immediately back into the natural idiom. But what did she care how he talked? He could talk broad Geordie for the remainder of his life if only he was here with her now. But she had his letter, and his promise, and to this she would hang on for the coming year. And longer, yes, longer, if necessary. As long as ever he wanted.