17
Weeks passed, and the war progressed far, far away.
At home the corporation started painting white lines down the middle of roads to try to reduce the number of traffic accidents that were happening in the darkness of the blackout.
Everyone had dug their gas masks out of cupboards, and were getting used to carrying them everywhere – little boxes of hard cardboard with a handle of yellow cord.
At work, there were more preparation meetings – discussions about back-up generators for electricity, and how the team might work with local volunteer services, and the extra supplies they might need if they got an influx of women frightened of giving birth at home during an air raid or gas attack.
It was all very scary, but Maisie noticed how often Matron and Mr Russell said things like ‘improbable’ and ‘highly unlikely’, and took reassurance from it.
Germany and Poland were very far away, and while she felt sorry for the people of Poland and what they were suffering, she desperately hoped the war wouldn’t affect Ireland.
So far, she had managed to keep her friendship with Alex at work light and cheerful, but inwardly she was experiencing something that felt suspiciously like .
. . yearning. It sounded odd in her own mind to be using such a fancy word, but that was what it felt like.
She had managed to get out of the October tea dance by feigning a cold, but the November event was tomorrow night, and she was going to have to go.
Keeping away from him was vital, for she was far, far too drawn to him, and dancing was dangerous when it was with him.
At work they saw each other regularly, and often met for tea breaks or dinner breaks when their shifts overlapped.
Peggy was doing more and more shifts with the district team, which she loved, but it meant that sometimes there were only the three of them – Maisie, Alex, and Dan – at their favourite table in the hospital canteen.
Maisie was now based in labour ward, and was working a pattern of a week of day shifts followed by a week of night shifts.
She loved her work, and all her confidence was gradually coming back.
She often thought of Mrs Lennon, wondering how she was doing now, and would light a wee candle for her regularly.
Yearning. Had she felt like this during the early days with Gerald?
Maisie couldn’t recall, but everything had happened really quickly with Gerald – too quickly, she reflected now.
Caught up in the excitement of having a young, handsome army officer showering her with compliments and kisses, Maisie had allowed her head to be turned, and look at how that had ended up!
To be fair, she rarely thought of Gerald now – a sign that she had definitely turned a corner that day when she had begun to think of him differently. With Alex, the difference was that this time, she knew they weren’t suited and so wouldn’t allow herself to get sucked in.
Not suited. That was a complicated thought.
Gerald and she hadn’t suited because he had turned out to be an eejit and a bully, with his class and his religion being added complications.
This time she was in Belfast, and she and Alex didn’t suit because she was a Catholic girl from Dunlewey Street, and him a rich Protestant from somewhere up the Cliftonville.
Ironically, mixed marriages had been common in London, and there were occasional tales of mixed couples from here who had left Ireland, taking their mixed marriage to England where such things were more accepted.
But we’re not in London. She was home, and having lived away from Ireland and from her family for a whole year, Maisie knew it would kill her to do that again.
So there was no point in starting something with Alex, even if it ended in the unlikely situation of the two of them married and having to move to England to be together – something that would be doomed to failure, for it would break her heart to leave her family again.
Besides, there was no suggestion that he wanted more from her anyway.
Since their parting on the night of the September Orpheus dance, he had been friendly, but nothing more.
He had seemed to be a bit put out at her breezy response to their kiss at the time .
. . but then, men were like that, so they were.
So going to the tea dance tomorrow night would be fine. Completely fine. She was on night duty tonight but would sleep during the day tomorrow, then go out in the evening.
‘Maisie, for the tenth time, would you bloody listen to me!’
‘Sorry, Mammy. I was miles away.’ Bringing her attention back to her own living room, she listened as Mammy went through her list of foods to buy for the Christmas. One or two extra items a week would be put in the Christmas cupboard from now on, and well dare anybody touch them.
‘I was thinking of gettin’ our Matty a pair of capped work boots for Christmas. I seen a pair in thon Dolcis shop in Castle Place that would do him lovely.’
‘Ah, that’s a great idea. What are you looking yourself, Mammy?’ It would fall to Maisie to make sure Mammy had something wrapped up for Christmas morning. Da wouldn’t have a clue.
‘Sure I don’t need nothing. Your da needs a new donkey jacket. I’m sick of adding new patches to the elbows.’
‘Aye, true. What about Maureen?’
‘Our Maureen wants everything she sees. She’s easy to buy for.’ She thought for a minute. ‘I’m going to get somethin’ wee for áine too. God love her.’
‘How are they doin’?’
Mammy pursed her lips. ‘I seen bruises on her wrist yesterday.’
‘On áine’s wrist?’ Has that fecker started hitting his daughter as well as his wife?
‘No. Her mammy.’
‘Oh, right. I wish she would leave him.’
‘Ah now, it’s a big thing, to leave a husband. She made a sacred vow. Marriage isn’t something you can get out of, you know.’
Till death do us part. A notion passed through Maisie’s mind, of herself stuck with Gerald for fifty years.
She shuddered. He had never been actually violent – well, nothing worse than occasionally forcing a kiss on her when she was mad at him, or roaming his hands all over her despite her fighting him off, or occasionally refusing to let her go when she wanted away.
‘You’re mine,’ he had hissed once, his expression threatening, ‘and don’t you forget it! ’
Thank God she had always known she would return to Belfast. He had been really angry that last day when he had finally accepted she had meant it, and that neither threats nor entreaties could change her mind.
‘But I have to go,’ she had told him repeatedly, for weeks. ‘It’s my home. They’re my family.’
At times, she recalled, he had looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language, and she realised that he had rarely spoken of his own family – parents, and a younger brother somewhere in Hampshire. He had no idea what it meant to be close to family, clearly.
As one of the midwives not taking a job in King’s, she had been required to vacate her room by the end of July, and so the timing had not been negotiable.
‘You’ll come crawling back, Maisie Canavan,’ he had told her sneeringly that last evening, before marching off into the London streets, leaving her devastated.
She had stayed in the city long enough to enjoy the ceremony where she and her classmates had received their certificates and badges, then booked her tickets for home; a train to Liverpool, a boat to Dublin, then a train north to Belfast. And she had indeed regretted leaving, occasionally, at first. Had wondered what might have happened if she’d stayed, taken up a midwifery job in London, perhaps married Gerald.
No, they wouldn’t have suited. In the fog of his attentions, and confused about her own worth, she might have stayed had she been someone else.
But she was Maisie Canavan from Dunlewey Street, and her only option was to return home.
Her family were a part of her, as was Belfast itself, in a way.
And Belfast had its rules. Rules she understood.
Catholics and Protestants. Rich and poor. The sanctity of marriage.
Marriage isn’t something you can get out of.
Some women, however, did escape violent husbands.
She had met a few during her training. Could Belfast change?
Could there be room for exceptions, even here?
‘In London—’ she began, but Mammy was quick of mind.
She saw exactly what Maisie was getting at, and she wasn’t having it.
‘Never mind what happens in London. Probably all heathens anyway. We’re God-fearin’ people here, and we follow the teachings of the Church.’ She rose, smoothing her apron. ‘Now come on and we’ll get the cupboard ready for the Christmas stuff, and no more nonsense from you.’
Maisie suppressed a sigh. Why was everything so rigid and inflexible and – and stupid ?
She was as good a Catholic as anybody else, but it didn’t stop her from asking questions sometimes.
Just because she had chosen this – home, and family, and Belfast – it didn’t mean she couldn’t see its flaws.
She simply had no power to change things.
As they worked together to sort out the kitchen cupboard, Mammy started humming a wee tune, and before long they were both belting out everything from ‘The Minstrel Boy’ to ‘Molly Malone’. It made Maisie’s spirits soar and the work seem lighter. Aye, maybe being home wasn’t so bad.