Life and Mary Ann Read online

  ‘Yes, that’s just it, I do.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Michael turned from her penetrating gaze and walked towards the fire. ‘I want to go to Switzerland.’

  ‘Switzerland?’

  He swung round sharply to her. ‘Yes, Mother, Switzerland.’

  ‘But that’ll cost a penny, won’t it?’

  ‘Well, I’ve never had a real holiday in my life. South Shields, Whitley Bay, Seahouses. But now I want to go abroad. It will only be for a week.’

  ‘Well, well. If you want to go, I suppose you’ll go. What does Sarah say to this?’

  Michael now looked down towards the mat. Then without raising his head, he cast his eyes up towards Lizzie as he said, ‘That’s it. We want to go together.’

  Lizzie’s lips closed with a light pressure; the line in between her brows deepened, and then she said quietly, ‘Together? You and Sarah away in Switzerland?’

  ‘I’m nearly twenty, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. And don’t tell me now that Sarah’s eighteen. I know that too, and I’m going to tell you right away I don’t hold with young people going away on holiday together. And there’s your father. Just think what he’ll say to this.’

  ‘I’ve asked him.’

  ‘You’ve asked him…well!…What did he say then?’

  ‘Do you want to know word for word?’

  Lizzie made no reply. But her shoulders went back a little, and she drew her chin in.

  ‘He said it’s my own life; nobody can answer my conscience but myself. He said, “If you ever intend to marry a girl never take her down first if you can help it…”’

  ‘Michael!’ Lizzie’s voice seemed to hit the back of her throat and check her breathing. Twice in the matter of minutes life in the raw had been let loose in her kitchen.

  ‘Well, I’m only telling you what he said, and I know he’s right. And I’m just repeating it to put your mind at rest…You understand?’

  Lizzie understood all right; but it didn’t alter the fact that she didn’t want her son to go on a holiday alone with Sarah Flannagan or any other girl. She knew men, even the best of them were what she called human. Well, he’d certainly had his say. Lizzie wiped her lips. ‘Is there anything more you have to tell me?’

  ‘What father said? Well, he said there were worse things than a man getting drunk; and I’m beginning to believe him…’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean I wanted to hear anything more your father said. He’d said enough, I should imagine. As for worse things than getting drunk, there’s two opinions on that point. And I should have thought you knew that.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Mother.’ Michael’s tone was soft now and he came towards her, and putting his arm about her shoulder, he said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do nothing we shouldn’t do, let me tell you.’ He smiled at her now. ‘Sarah will see to that.’

  Lizzie pulled herself away from Michael’s hold. She didn’t like this kind of talk; not from her son, her Michael. She knew that one day, and not in the far distant future, she would have to give up this boy of hers, but until that day came he would remain her boy. Not someone who discussed the possibilities of intimacy on holiday. What were young people coming to! She knew that young people went away on holidays together even when they weren’t engaged, and she was also well aware of what happened; but she didn’t want that kind of thing in her family. And Michael having a good deal of his father in him was bound to be…human. Oh dear, oh dear, one thing on top of another. She had thought she would have no more worries when she left Mulhattans’ Hall. It just showed you. The word Mulhattans’ Hall conjured up first Mrs McBride, and then Mrs Flannagan, and she turned swiftly towards Michael and said, ‘What about her mother? What does she say to this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Michael held out his hand with a sort of hopeless gesture. ‘I won’t know until Sarah comes. She’s asking her this afternoon.’

  They, continued to look at each other for a moment longer, then Lizzie, with a deep flick, spread the cloth over the table, and Michael, with an equally deep sigh, went upstairs to change.

  It was after dinner on the Sunday and the family were relaxing in the front room. Mike was asleep in the deep chair, his long legs stretched out towards the fire. Lizzie sat opposite to him at the other side of the hearth. She was pursuing her favourite hobby of looking at antique furniture and big houses. Michael was sitting at one end of the couch reading The Farmers’ Weekly; and Mary Ann, with her legs tucked under her, was sitting at the other end. She had two books on her lap. One was The Art of the Short Story and the other was Fowler’s Modern English Usage. But she was reading neither at present. She was staring across the hearthrug into the fire. Her thoughts darting from Corny to Mrs Schofield then back to Corny again, then on to Janice and back to Corny again. Then to Tony, and strangely not to Corny now but to Mrs Schofield. For she was seeing them wrapped in that strange silence when she entered the drawing room of that unhappy house yesterday. Then once again she was thinking of Corny; hearing Mrs McBride talk of him; seeing Mrs McBride give her his letter. Her mind dwelt on the letter. She had read it countless times in the past few weeks. She could, without any exaggeration, have quoted it word for word backwards. But the thought of it at this moment brought her legs from under her, and in order not to disturb her da nor yet her mother nor Michael, she went quietly out of the room and upstairs to her bedroom.

  After the heat of the sitting room the chill of the bedroom made her shiver, and she swiftly went to the top drawer of the dressing chest, and there, from the box in which she kept her handkerchiefs and the flute which Corny had given her for her thirteenth birthday, and which, in spite of her promise, she had never learnt to play, she took out the letter. To read it she had to stand by the window, for the sky was dark with coming snow, and her heart quickened as it always did when she came to…‘If I know I can make a go of it, I’ll come back then and tell you.’ There was a statue of Our Lady on a little shelf above the head of her bed and she turned her eyes up to it as she did night and morning, and now she prayed: ‘Make the time go quickly, dear Mother…please.’

  When she folded the letter again she held it to her cheek for a moment as she looked out of the window. One minute her eyes were dreamy, lost in the promise of a year ahead. The next minute she was bending forward towards the window pane, her mouth open and her eyes screwed up. It couldn’t be! But it was; yes, it was. She stared one moment longer at the figure walking primly towards the house gate, and then she thrust the letter into her handkerchief box, banged the drawer closed, and went belting down the stairs. As she thrust the sitting-room door open, all concern for her father’s afternoon nap was gone as she cried, ‘Mrs Flannagan!…It’s Mrs…It’s Mrs Flannagan…Mrs Flannagan’s coming.’

  ‘What! Who?’ Lizzie and Michael had turned towards her, and Mike, shaking his head and blinking rapidly, pulled himself into a sitting position. ‘Good God! Flannagan? The old ’un? You said her…Mrs?’

  Before Mary Ann could make any further retort, Michael cried, ‘Oh Lord!’ And Lizzie, turning on him, hissed under her breath, ‘This is you and this Switzerland business. Good gracious, on a Sunday afternoon, and me looking like this!’

  ‘Let me get out.’

  As the knock came on the front door, Mike, buttoning up his shirt neck, pushed past Mary Ann and made for the stairs. And Michael, about to follow, was checked when Lizzie hissed, ‘Now, Michael, you’re not going to leave this to me, you’ve got to face it.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!…Well, let her get in, I’ll come back in a minute…it mightn’t be about that at all.’

  ‘Michael!’ Lizzie was whispering hoarsely to Michael’s disappearing back as Mary Ann, on the second knock, went towards the door.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Flannagan.’ The feigned surprise, and even pleasure, in Mary Ann’s voice, said a lot for her advancement from the days when, next to the justifiable hate she had for Sarah, she considered Mrs Flannagan not only an enemy of
her…ma and da, but someone in close association with the devil himself.

  Mrs Flannagan was dressed very nicely. She had always attended to her person with the same meticulous care she gave to her house. These qualities of cleanliness were considered by Mrs Flannagan offsprings of virtue and as such had been enough to arouse Fanny McBride’s hate, and Mary Ann, always a staunch ally of Mrs McBride, would have hated Mrs Flannagan if for no other reason but that Mrs McBride couldn’t stand…the upstart.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me comin’ like this, Mary Ann?’ Mrs Flannagan’s tone held none of the old condescension.

  ‘No, no. Come in, Mrs Flannagan. You must be frozen. Isn’t it cold?’ Mary Ann closed the door behind the visitor. ‘Will I take your hat and coat?’ She was playing for time to allow her mother to compose herself, and perhaps tidy her hair; but at this moment Lizzie came to the sitting-room door.

  Lizzie couldn’t be blamed for the slight tilt to her chin as she looked at this woman who for many years had been the bane of her existence. Life was strange. But she had no time to delve into this deep problem now, she would keep that for when she lay in bed awake tonight. She was glad, oh, she was, that she had insisted on having the new square carpet for the hall. In spite of Mike’s saying ‘It’s madness, lass. It’s madness, with all the feet tramping in and out.’ But she had always wanted a proper carpet in the hall, with a matching colour going up the stairs. Mike had said, ‘Why pick on a mustard colour?’ And she had informed him that dark mustard would go with the old furniture, the pieces that her flair had guided her to bid for at the auction sales. And now on one of these pieces, a small hall table, stood a wrought-iron basket showing off a beautiful plant of pink cyclamen. Oh, she was glad her hall looked nice. If only she’d had a chance to change into something decent. But her skirt and blouse were really all right, and what was more, oh, of much more significance, she was mistress of this fine home…Yes, life was funny.

  Lizzie fell into the part of hostess. With only a slight touch of reserve to her manner she held out her hand to Mrs Flannagan, saying, ‘If I’d known you were coming, I would have had Michael meet the bus.’ The censure wasn’t too tactfully covered, it wasn’t meant to be. But Mrs Flannagan was, today, out to placate, and she answered, ‘Well, I know I should have phoned, Mrs Shaughnessy. But it was the way Sarah sprung it on me. And it made me rather vexed.’ She smiled. ‘So I said, “Well, I’ll go myself and see what Mr and Mrs Shaughnessy have to say about it.”…But very likely you don’t know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I do.’ Lizzie inclined her head. ‘But come in and sit down; it is cold today, isn’t it?’

  Mary Ann followed Mrs Flannagan into the sitting room. She had a great desire to laugh. Laugh loudly…Go and see Mr and Mrs Shaughnessy. Oh! Mr Shaughnessy would have a laugh about this for weeks ahead. The times Mrs Flannagan had called her da a drunken no-good…All of a sudden she was glad Mrs Flannagan had made this unexpected visit. After yesterday, she needed light relief, she felt they were all in need of a little light relief. She sat down opposite Mrs Flannagan and watched her look around the sitting room with open amazement. And she found herself even liking her when she said generously, ‘What a beautiful room, Mrs Shaughnessy, what a beautiful room. Did you do it yourself?’

  ‘We all helped, Mrs Flannagan. Mike’s very good at papering and painting.’ Lizzie’s chin, still high, moved a little to the side.

  ‘But my mother chose the furniture,’ Mary Ann put in. ‘She’s always picking up nice pieces.’ She looked with pride towards Lizzie, and Lizzie smiled back at her. And then inclining her head towards her guest, she said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Shaughnessy…Yes, I would. I’d be obliged.’

  ‘I’ll make it, Mother.’

  Mary Ann jumped up and left the room. And as she went laughing into the kitchen, Michael, standing to the side of the door, pulled at her arm.

  ‘What has she said?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. We’ve only reached the polite exchange stage so far. You’ve got all that to come, me lad.’ She dug her brother in the chest.

  ‘Oh! They get you down.’ Michael put his hand to his head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, mothers. The lot of them.’

  ‘Me ma’s right about this.’ Mary Ann’s face took on a straight pattern as she nodded solemnly at Michael. She had only heard that morning about the proposed holiday in Switzerland, and her first reaction had been one of shock. And then she had thought…well, it would be all right, they were Catholics. But this statement had been countered by a cynical voice that was making itself heard in her mind quite a lot of late, and it said, with a little smear of a laugh, ‘What difference will that make when it comes to…’ She had shut the door of her mind on the voice before it had dared to go into forbidden topics. But she found now that she was vexed with Michael’s attitude towards her ma, because her ma, she knew, put Michael first, and always had done, the same as her da had put her first and would always do so. And Michael knew this, and up to now he and her ma had been very close. If she hadn’t had her da’s unstinted love she would have at times been jealous of Michael. She said again, ‘Me ma’s right.’ And he turned on her, whispering fiercely, ‘What do you know about it? Your ideas are so infantile, you should still be in white socks.’

  ‘Well!’ She drew herself up. Then with sisterly affection she finished, ‘I hope you get it in the neck.’

  At this moment the kitchen door opened quietly and Mike entered, and at the sight of him both Mary Ann and Michael were forced to laugh.

  ‘Oh, Da! She must have you frightened at last.’ Mary Ann was spluttering through her fingers.

  Mike, loosening the button on the coat of his best suit, and hunching his shoulders upwards, said, ‘All right, laugh. I’m on me own ground; but I still feel I need some armour against that one.’ Then looking at Michael he said kindly, ‘I’ve always had the idea that Sarah was adopted.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll hang anything onto that hope.’ Michael returned his father’s grin. ‘She takes after her mother in some ways…she’s finicky about her clothes.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t stand there, both of you,’ Mary Ann thrust at them. ‘I’d go on in and get it over.’

  ‘After you.’ Michael held out his hand with an exaggerated gesture to his father. And Mike, following suit, replied. ‘No, after you. This visit, don’t forget, is for the benefit of your soul.’

  ‘Ha!’ On this telling exclamation Michael led the way out of the kitchen, and Mary Ann, in case she missed much, flung the things onto the tea tray and only a few minutes later carried it into the sitting room, there to see her da ensconced in the big armchair with his legs crossed, his pipe in his mouth and his whole attitude proclaiming the master of the house, and to hear Mrs Flannagan repeat an earlier statement, ‘It’s a beautiful room, Mr Shaughnessy.’

  ‘My wife has taste, Mrs Flannagan.’

  Mrs Flannagan lifted her watery smile up to Lizzie’s face, and Lizzie, slightly embarrassed, and praying inwardly that Mike was not all set to have his own back on this she-cat-turned-dove, said, in a smooth tone that tempered the abrupt plunge into essentials, ‘It’s about Sarah and the holiday you’ve come, Mrs Flannagan?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mrs Shaughnessy, you’re right. You see, I would never have dreamed of coming without an invitation.’ She flickered her eyes around the company asking them all to bear witness to her knowledge of propriety. ‘But this, I felt, was an emergency. You know what I mean.’ She eased herself to the edge of the chair. And as she did so Michael coughed, and Mike made a funny sound down the stem of his pipe that brought Lizzie’s sharp warning glance on him. ‘Now as I said to Sarah, this thing has got to be talked over; not that I don’t trust you, Michael.’ Mrs Flannagan’s head now went into a deep bow. She had lost her nervousness; she had forgotten for the moment that she was in the enemy’s camp, so to speak. For Mrs Flannaga
n, at rock bottom, was no fool; she knew that Mike Shaughnessy’s memory was long. And although she didn’t want to do anything to put a spanner in the works of the match, she wasn’t going to let her daughter appear as a…light piece, her own phraseology for any female who gave to a man her company in the first hours of the day. ‘I do trust you, I do, Michael, but…’ Mrs Flannagan seemed to be stumped for words with which to make her meaning plain, but this obstacle was overcome for her by Mike.

  ‘But taking into account human nature, Mrs Flannagan?’

  Was Mike Shaughnessy laughing at her? Mrs Flannagan stared back into the straight countenance of the big red-headed man. There was no sign of laughter on his face, but that was nothing to go by when dealing with him. She knew this from experience, but now she clutched at his explanation, which was really what she had wanted to say but had found a little indelicate. Now however she affirmed, ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right, Mr Shaughnessy. Human nature has got to be taken into account. And…and the look of the thing, it’s the look of the thing, and what people will say. And once give a dog a bad name, you know…’

  ‘Yer…ss, I know. I know, Mrs Flannagan. Mike was nodding at their guest. ‘Don’t I know, Mrs Flannagan.’

  Oh my. Mary Ann had a little uneasy fluttering inside her chest. This could lead to anything. Her da was going to rib Mrs Flannagan. He was going to lead her on, and on, and then knock her flat. She knew the tactics. In the hope that it might divert the topic, she put in quickly, ‘You haven’t drunk your tea, Mrs Flannagan.’

  ‘No. Oh, no.’ Mrs Flannagan smiled at Mary Ann and took two very ladylike sips from her cup. It was as she took the second sip that she gulped slightly, for Michael was speaking, and with no prelude.

  ‘I hope some day to marry Sarah, Mrs Flannagan.’ His voice was quiet, his tone very level, and his air not that of a boy not yet twenty, but of a man who knew his own mind.