A Mother's Spirit (38 page)

‘Good job I didn’t go with her when she said she wanted me to,’ he told his father. ‘There will be no place for me in her new life now.’

‘Love isn’t like that, Ben,’ Joe said. ‘You don’t have just so much of it so if you love someone you have no love left for another.’

‘How d’you know anything about love anyway?’ Ben demanded. ‘You told me that you still loved Mom when she went away. And why are you being so reasonable? Anyone else would be hopping mad.’

Joe wondered about that himself. Whatever she had done, though, for her sake and Ben’s he didn’t want her totally to lose the son he knew she still loved.

Children, however, view the world as black and white. In Ben’s world his mother had been bad running away from them in the first place, and then made it worse by having another baby. ‘It’s all disgusting anyway,’ he said. ‘And I want no part in it.’

‘Can you not write just a short note to your mother?’ Joe asked.

Ben shook his head. ‘No. Why should I? I don’t care about some baby that she has had in America. She might be my half-sister but I’ll never know her. She will be like a stranger to me and so will Mom in the end, and I don’t care.’

Joe knew that Ben cared very much – his anguished eyes
spoke for him – but he knew that it would do no good to try to reason with him because he was too hurt to listen.

Isobel, whom Joe confided in, agreed with this. ‘Did you have any idea that Gloria might be pregnant when she left?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t think she could,’ he said. ‘I mean, there had been years before we had Ben, and nothing since.’

‘There is no possibility that the child could be yours?’

‘No. None whatsoever,’ Joe said. ‘Sex between us was just a distant memory for months before she left. And even though I guessed that she was having some sort of affair – though, I didn’t know how far it had gone – with Gloria’s problems I would never have imagined that it might end up with her being pregnant.’

‘So it was a shock for you?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So how much more of a shock must it have been to Ben?’

‘Immense. I see now.’

‘And you expected Ben to be delighted with the news?’ Isobel asked with a wry smile. ‘To clap his hands with delight and write a letter to his mother congratulating her on the birth of his baby sister that he probably won’t even see for years.’

‘Put like that it is ridiculous,’ Joe said. ‘So what should I do, do you think?’

‘With Ben, nothing, I would say,’ Isobel advised. ‘Time, as they say, is a great healer. Let Ben come to the realisation that though his mother has a new life and family in America, she still wants contact with him.’

‘And you think he will do that in time?’

‘I have no idea,’ Isobel said. ‘But it is the only thing to do. At the moment he is one angry and hurt boy. If you want to do something then you write to Gloria.’

‘I have always avoided that.’

‘Yes, I know. And I accept what Gloria did upset you a great deal, but it cut Ben to the quick. You should put aside
any resentment you still have clinging to you for the sake of the son you share. If Ben won’t write to her then you write. Tell her how he is, his likes and dislikes; tell her about the exams he is taking for the eleven plus. Paint a picture of the child she left behind so that when she does write she has some idea of the person she is writing to. Oh, and remember Ben is only a boy. I know he has your strength of character and will not be won over by showering him with goodies but he does need to know that his mother is thinking about him. Maybe she could buy him something really nice for his birthday, for he had virtually nothing at Christmas, like many more in this country at this time.’

‘Do you know,’ Joe said admiringly, ‘if we had people like you in government then we wouldn’t need to have wars ever again.’

Isobel smiled and Joe saw suddenly, and with a little surprise, how pretty she was when she did so.

‘Maybe I should have been the one chosen to talk to Herr Hitler that time in Munich,’ she said.

‘You couldn’t have done worse.’

‘Ah, Joe, just think what life would have been like without this devastating war. I would have probably still have Gregory and Gerald, and you, Gloria and Ben would in all likelihood be in London enjoying life together.’

‘Yes. Isn’t it a pity we can’t roll back the years and have another crack at it?’ Joe said.

‘It is indeed,’ Isobel said wistfully.

Isobel was worried about Ben, because the pressure and worry of the exams was enough stress without the bullying going on at school, and coping with losing his mother, and in the end she sought the help of Kevin.

Kevin was angered that Ben was being bullied, though surprised because he was a tough little nut and as strong as an ox from the work on the farm and the good food they’d had in plenty.

‘I would have thought he could give a good enough account of himself,’ he said to Isobel.

‘Maybe he could if it was just one to one. In fact he said that to me,’ Isobel said. ‘But there are three of them, he said.’

‘Cowardly bullies then.’

‘Isn’t that usually the way?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ Kevin agreed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Isobel said. ‘I think I am the only one that he has told about the bullying and though he didn’t actually tell me to keep it a secret, I know he would hate me to blab about it.’

‘Does Uncle Joe know, or Uncle Tom?’

‘I doubt it,’ Isobel said. ‘I feel sure they would have said something if they did. Joe, I think, would probably go storming down to the school and that is the last thing that Ben needs right now. I thought that maybe you could sound him out. He is so immensely fond of you.’

‘I’ll take him up town next Saturday morning,’ Kevin said. ‘How’s that? Away from the house he might talk more.’

‘Thank you, Kevin,’ Isobel said. ‘I knew that I could rely on you.’

Kevin didn’t wait till Saturday to speak to Ben. On reflection he thought it was a long time to delay if he was in trouble of any sort. So Monday afternoon he left his school via the back wall after afternoon registration and made his way to Chester Road, where he caught a tram to Boldmere and was waiting nearby Kevin’s school when the bell went.

He semi hid behind a tree, not wanting Ben to catch sight of him until he was able to see what was happening. Ben didn’t see his cousin as he sped past, because behind him he could hear the pounding feet of his pursuers.

Ben shot up Boldmere Road, fear lending wings to his feet, and Kevin, loping easily behind them, turned the corner
to see that Ben had been grabbed by two of the bullies. Ben’s progress had been hampered by a clutch of mothers with prams, babies and small children, who had stopped to chat. The two boys who had grabbed Ben began dragging him towards an alleyway that led to the back of the shops, and Kevin noticed another boy, bigger and beefier than the two who had grabbed Ben, chugging behind them and breathing heavily because he was more than a little on the plump side.

The alleyway opened on to storage yards and the two boys still held Ben fast as the stouter one eventually caught up with the others. The smaller of the two turned to him and said, ‘What we going to do with him then?’

‘Teach him a lesson,’ said the stouter boy. He pushed his face right up to Ben’s and hissed, ‘You brought this on yourself. I told you what you had to do.’

Then Kevin saw him power his fist into Ben’s unprotected stomach so hard that Ben’s knees crumpled, and had it not been for the boys holding his arms he would have fallen. Kevin decided enough was enough, and with a howl of rage he flew down the entry. The two smaller boys scattered, but the other one, whom Kevin thought was probably the ringleader, wasn’t quick enough, and Kevin grabbed him and yanked his arm up his back until he yelped in pain and fear.

‘You lay one hand on my cousin again and I will give you the same back doubled,’ he said to the trembling boy. ‘You got that?’

Then as the boy gave no reply to this he gave his arm another twist. ‘I said, have you got that?’

‘Yeah, I got it,’ said the boy breathlessly. ‘Let me go. You’re breaking my arm.’

Kevin released the pressure slightly as he warned, ‘It’ll be your bloody neck I break next time if I catch you at this type of caper. I will be keeping an eye on you from now on, so watch out.’ He released the boy then with a push, and the boy staggered and then began to run down the alleyway, rubbing his arm as he went.

Ben was looking at his cousin with a kind of awe. ‘You were just terrific, Kevin.’

Kevin shrugged. ‘I hate bullying,’ he said. ‘Was it the same thugs split your lip?’

Ben nodded as the two began to walk down the alleyway and up Boldmere Road to the flat.

‘Why?’ Kevin said. ‘What was that big kid talking about? What did they want you to do?’

‘Shoplift.’

‘What?’

‘Pinch sweets from the shop,’ Kevin said. ‘They said if I did they would lay off me. I actually considered it as well, ’cos I thought that no one really cares about me any more.’

‘How do you work that out?’ Kevin said. ‘For your information, mate, I am risking the cane coming to sort you out today. I bunked off school. How else would I be there when school finished?’

‘I dunno,’ Ben said. ‘I thought you might have had the day off or something.’

‘The only ones who have days off are Catholics, who have Holy Days,’ Kevin said. ‘State schools don’t give days off, and if I have been missed I am for the high jump. But now I am here tell me who else couldn’t give a monkey’s about you?’

‘Well, you know …’

‘This is all to do with your mother, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Look, Ben,’ said Kevin, ‘it don’t matter whether your mother dies or runs off. The fact is, she ain’t here now.’

‘I know that,’ Ben said scornfully.

‘All right then, I will tell you something that you don’t know,’ Kevin said. ‘When my mom died I hadn’t seen her for nine weeks because she got pneumonia. The day she died, well, that was the day she was discharged from the hospital and Dad went to fetch her in Paul’s car. The neighbours were all there, a party tea done and everything, and I never saw either of them again.’

Ben heard the catch in his voice and for the first time realised the level of Kevin’s suffering when he had been only five years old.

They reached the flat. Ben opened the door and they went inside before Ben turned to Kevin and said, ‘I’m sorry for what I said before, Kev, about it not being so bad for you and everything because your mom died and mine ran away. That was a horrible thing to say.’

‘’S all right,’ Kevin said magnanimously. ‘It hadn’t long happened then, and I think you just wanted to hurt someone else like you’d been hurt. But I’ll tell you what I envy you for.’

‘What?’

‘That you can remember your mother,’ Kevin said. ‘Sometimes I can hardly remember what mine looked like. Uncle Tom said to look at Molly because she is the spit of our mum, but it’s not the same. And there’s my dad as well. They are like shadowy figures to me and I wish they weren’t, and I would love it if my mom and dad were in America rather than dead and gone.’

‘You think I should write to her, don’t you?’ Ben said, and when Kevin nodded, Ben went on, ‘She’s had a baby, you know? And they got married when Mum was already married to Dad.’

‘I know,’ Kevin said. ‘Uncle Joe told Molly he’s getting divorced as soon as possible. He said it will be best for the baby.’

‘But I don’t think you can get divorced as a Catholic.’

‘Maybe not,’ Kevin said. ‘But you can in law and that’s what matters. And it would be better for your sister.’

‘Half-sister.’

‘Don’t split hairs,’ Kevin said.

‘Anyway, it won’t mean anything to me, will it?’ Ben said.

‘Not if that’s the way you think, it won’t.’

‘She’s in America and has a little baby. I can hardly send her a letter.’

‘You should ask Aunt Gloria all about her, and they don’t stay babies for ever,’ Kevin said. ‘When Molly went to Buncrana, I missed her lot and I couldn’t really write properly so Granddad said to send her pictures. So I used to draw things for her that she said often made her cry because if I drew our house I put Mom and Dad in the picture too. Point is, Ben, that little baby might really want to have a big brother who cares about her when she is older, but you are the only one who can decide this. She can’t. She is helpless and innocent.’

After Kevin had gone, Ben went over and over his words. That night, after they had eaten, Joe said he was going into the bedroom to write a letter. He had put it off all weekend and hated to do it now. He had never written to Gloria before and didn’t know the kindest way to tell a mother that their child did not want to have any communication with her, and he rose from the table with a heavy heart.

Ben swallowed deeply before saying, ‘Are you writing to Mom?’

‘You know I am, Ben. One of us has to.’

‘Maybe both of us should and if you leave the letter open I will put a note as well.’

Joe’s eyes met his son’s over the table and he smiled his slow and easy smile as he said, ‘D’you know, son, that is the best idea I have heard in ages.’

Before Joe left to write his own letter, he put a pile of letters beside Ben’s plate. ‘They are from your mother,’ Joe told him. ‘As I told you, she wrote every week.’

‘I only agreed to send a letter for the baby’s sake, not Mom’s,’ Ben stated flatly. ‘If she cared about me she wouldn’t have gone, so I’m not interested in anything else she has to say.’

‘Well, that’s up to you,’ Joe said. ‘They’re there if you want them. That’s all I’m saying.’

Ben had intended leaving the letters on the table when he went into his room to do his homework, but for some reason he picked them up too. He wasn’t going to read them, though, he thought as he laid them on the chest of drawers in his room. He hadn’t time. He had masses to do.

He turned his back on the letters, sat down at his desk and opened up his arithmetic homework book. The figures danced before his eyes and he couldn’t seem to make either head or tail of the problems. The urge to read what his mother had to say to him niggled at him so much that in the end he decided to read just one, the first one she had written, and then settle to his homework.

Over an hour later, he was sitting on his bed, the letters scattered around him, some of the words smudged from the tears that had fallen from Ben’s eyes. Gloria wrote as she spoke, so that Ben could almost imagine her in the room as she reminded him of the time the two of them explored London together, stirring up his memories of that time together.

He would never forget the blitz, but some of his mother’s letters brought that terrifying period to life again and he recalled struggling from his bed, alerted by the siren’s wail. He was often still half asleep and trying to struggle into a siren suit that seemed to have more arms and legs than he needed. And then hurrying through the streets alive with ack-ack guns barking into the night sky, lit up by the

incendiary bombs already dropped and the beams of the roving search lights, hearing the drone of planes and often the crump of bombs exploding not that far away.

The fear had been like a living thing inside him, lodged in his stomach or crawling down his spine, and sometimes he would shake so much his teeth would chatter together. And his mother was always there beside him suffering too, and probably just as scared as he was, but she never showed it, and when she held him tight he always felt better.

They would stumble home hours later when the all clear went, the skies usually alight with fires burning, and sometimes they would see tongues of flames licking the smoky air that also smelled of cordite and gas and brick dust. Gloria also spoke of the night his father was injured so badly he almost died, and that terrible night when Tottenham was hit and the flat destroyed.

That was the reason they had had to go to Ireland in the first place, but apart from his horrible grandmother he had loved Ireland. He knew that his mother didn’t, though, and he had felt sorry about that. Gloria freely admitted that in her letters, and why she started work at the naval camp: ‘I was very lonely and a little homesick for America, and the money was needed, anyway.’

Maybe the money was needed, but Ben knew that from his mother starting work there, his father became unhappy and then the rows began. Gloria touched on this a little and then went on to say how she had met and fallen in love with Philip Morrisey.

That was the last letter Gloria had written before the one to Joe telling him about the birth of the child. Ben could feel his mother’s sadness rising up from the page. She had missed him as much as he had missed her, and despite what she had done he realised he still loved her dearly.

Letters were a poor substitute for having his mother come back to live with them again, but it was better than nothing. Ben remembered what Kevin had said that day. Ben could only imagine the big hole losing both his parents had left in Kevin’s life, and he hadn’t even the comfort of letters to fill the gap even partially, and yet Kevin had risen above the tragedy and he must do the same.

He had to accept that even if he had the power to force his mother to return to them, she would be desperately unhappy. Her life now was in America with Philip. Reading through the letters again he realised that she was happy in her new life. He wrote that he loved her and missed her and was surprised by the news of the baby.

When Joe popped his head around the door a little later, he saw the tear trails on Ben’s face and the letters strewn on the bed.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘It was just remembering it all again, but I’m all right now.’

‘If you ever want to talk about your mother or discuss anything, don’t feel that it would upset me,’ Joe said gently. ‘I know you must miss her sorely at times.’

Ben looked at his father with gratitude. ‘I’ll remember that,’ he said. ‘And thanks, Dad.’

Ben worked harder than ever at school. He had told his mother about the exam and wanted to pass because he knew that she would be so proud of him if he did. It was much easier for him at school now, because the bullies gave him a wide berth. Ben knew that Kevin really couldn’t keep much of an eye on him, but they didn’t know that. They all thought that if he had a cousin like that, then it was much healthier to leave Ben Sullivan alone.

In early in March he learned that he had passed the first part of the eleven plus. The second part was to be held at St Philip’s School the following Saturday, the tenth.

‘As it’s a Saturday,’ Joe said, ‘I can go with you this time.’

‘Can Aunt Izzy come too?’

‘If she wants,’ said Joe. ‘Though she might already have plans.’

‘It’s just that it’s a long time to wait,’ Joe said. ‘Aunt Izzy went on a tour around the shops last time because it was in town. She found that restaurant that she took me to later for lunch, but I don’t know anything about St Philip’s and you might get really fed up on your own, and anyway, she is really nice.’

‘She is,’ Joe agreed. ‘I will ask her, and if she is doing nothing she will probably be keen to come as she took you to the first one.’

Isobel was delighted to be asked and she readily agreed to accompany them both. The three of them set off early on Saturday morning because they had to take the tram to the terminus in the city centre and then take one out along the Hagley Road, Edgbaston, on the other side of it. ‘Thank God it’s dry,’ Joe said as they waited for the Edgbaston tram. ‘Though this wind is enough to cut a body in two.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Isobel said, tucking her scarf in tighter. ‘But don’t you think it too long a trek for a young boy to make every day?’

Joe was inclined to agree. He said nothing to Ben, and though he hoped he had passed the exams, he didn’t really want him to pass with enough marks to get his first choice. Bishop Vesey’s in Sutton Coldfield, which was his second choice, would be much better for him, he thought. However, it wouldn’t help to say this now and so instead he said, ‘He’s young and fit and, remember, he won’t be the only one.’

‘I suppose,’ Isobel said. ‘But what time will he have to set off in the morning to get here on time?’

‘No earlier than me, that’s certain,’ Joe said, and added with a wide smile, ‘because I work for that slave driver of a brother of yours.’

Isobel’s smile was just as broad as she replied in like manner, ‘You do indeed.’ She lifted her head as she spoke and as her amused eyes met those of Joe, the laughter was suddenly stripped from the pair of them and Ben felt as though they had suddenly formed a magic circle around themselves and he was on the outside of it.

It was gone in an instant, and the tram arrived, and by the time they were seated Ben thought he had imagined the whole thing. But he hadn’t. Both Isobel and Joe had been aware of the attraction that had flowed between them and Joe was the more shocked of the two. When he had watched the ship sail out against the skyline, taking away the only woman he had ever loved in his life, he had felt his heart
like a cold, dead weight inside him and had honestly thought that it would stay like that until the day he died.

But some electric current had passed between him and Isobel, causing that same heart to thump against his ribs. He knew he had no right to feel like that about anyone, least of all Isobel, who he counted as a good friend. Was he some sort of beast that he couldn’t view a woman in any light other than a sexual one? He was very glad that Isobel hadn’t been privy to his thoughts.

But Isobel had felt the pull too and knew that the look in Joe’s eyes was probably mirrored in her own. When she had told Ben that she was looking for no man to share her life she had spoken the truth, so she had been taken unawares by the attraction she had felt towards Joe. Suddenly, they felt awkward with one another and a silence grew up between them.

In an effort to break it, Joe said, ‘It’s a nice enough journey out to this school anyway, for this is a fine wide road.’

Isobel was grateful for Joe remarking on something so innocuous and innocent. ‘Yes, I always liked it too,’ she replied. ‘Gerald and I used to drive down this road to visit Paul when he lived in the house in Edgbaston. I always thought it a lovely road, so near to the city centre and yet lined with trees like a country lane.’

Joe laughed at her but gently. ‘It’s like no country lane that I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘If you want country lanes, Ireland is the place for you.’

‘D’you know I have always wanted to go there and never made it,’ Isobel said. ‘Gerald was always too busy building his business to take time off to have any sort of holiday.’

‘One day I will take you to Ireland,’ Joe promised.

Isobel looked at Joe and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Ben said, ‘Not without me you won’t. If you are going to Ireland, then I am coming too.’

‘Did I suggest going without you?’ Joe said.

‘No,’ said Ben. ‘But you never made it clear I was going either.’

Whatever remark Joe was going to make to this was never given, because the conductor came up to tell them that they had reached their stop.

At the school, as it was a Saturday, the staffroom was made available to those who accompanied the boys while the exams were in progress, and as the day had turned out blustery as well as cold, Isobel and Joe decided to take advantage of it.

‘Did Ben like Ireland so very much?’ Izzy said, as they settled themselves down for the long wait.

‘Yes, he did,’ Joe replied. ‘Though he was glad enough to get away when we did, before the news broke about Gloria and Philip Morrisey. In a small place like that … well, let’s just say that our lives wouldn’t have been worth living. They’d mean well and their sympathies would have been with us and everything, but both of us were too raw to have dealt with it just then.’

‘I can totally understand that.’

‘What Ben really would like to return to, I think, is the life before all the upset happened, maybe before Gloria’s job at the Springtown Camp, but that life will never come again and even the farm will be in new hands soon.’

‘Has Tom a buyer then?’

‘More or less,’ Joe said. ‘And he will insist on sharing the money. I don’t know what I will do with my share.’

‘Did you make no plans?’

‘Not plans as such, no,’ Joe said, ‘because I didn’t know that Tom only stayed on here so that I could come over here with Gloria and Ben and take over the tenancy once he decided what to do with the farm.’

‘Yes, he told me that too,’ Isobel said.

‘By the time he told us this, relations between Gloria and me were stretched to breaking point,’ Joe said. ‘And though I didn’t know it, she must have been pregnant with Philip
Morrisey’s child and making plans to leave. I had it in mind to buy a house, mainly so that Ben will have something when I am gone, but now I am having a rethink.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I will not have enough to buy a house outright,’ Joe said. ‘I would have to have a mortgage and I am hesitant to tie up all my cash in paying it back. It would mean hefty repayments, because I am fifty-five years old. I have only ten years more in employment. In the meantime, if Ben passes this exam and proves to be bright enough to go to university, a lump sum might be useful then.’

‘I think there are grants and things,’ Isobel said.

‘Maybe there are, but if Ben makes the grade, I want him to have the same as the other students.’

‘What will Tom do with his share?’

‘Put it in the bank, if I know Tom,’ Joe said. ‘He’ll be moving in with Aggie and Paul, that I am sure of. It’s been on the cards for ages. He only stayed on with me this long because Ben was in such a state.’

‘You must have been devastated too when it happened?’

‘I felt so saddened that our lives together were over,’ Joe said. ‘My immediate concern was to get Ben away here as soon as possible. It was when we arrived that the whole thing hit me, but then Ben needed me and I couldn’t really give way at all.’

‘You did a good job,’ Isobel said. ‘Ben is a fine boy. One you can feel proud of.’

‘I am proud of him,’ Joe said. ‘I always have been. And I suppose the sensible thing for me to do would be to invest most of my share of the money and stay on at the flat.’

Isobel thought of the bungalow that she had lived in alone since her husband’s death. It was far too big for her, and both Sarah and Paul had urged her to sell up and find somewhere smaller, but all her memories, good and bad, were tied up in her home and she loved it dearly. It had three bedrooms, enough room for Joe and his son, and she
would love to have a man about the place again and to see a boy grow to manhood in a world of peace. She also knew that it would be totally inappropriate for her to mention this to either of them and she found herself saying instead, ‘Yes, I think that that will be the best solution all round.’