Secret Child

‘You don’t need to be doing a thing like that. We’ll get by, just like we always do.’

‘Mammy, this is my big chance to better myself. I’m not getting any younger and I have to do more with my life than just stay in the village. I want to be independent. I’ve never asked you for anything before, but I am asking this of you now. Let me work in Dublin. If things don’t work out I promise to come straight back home.’

Her mother fell silent. She knew her daughter well enough to know that she would not have taken such a decision lightly. The thought of losing her hurt terribly but she understood why she wanted to go. Deep inside she had known that this day would eventually come, and at least Christie would be in the city to watch over his little sister.

‘I can see you’ve made your mind up,’ she said eventually, ‘and I don’t want to be keeping you here against your will. I’ll be praying for your safety.’

A week later Cathleen again put her best dress on and caught the early bus. This time she was carrying all her worldly possessions in a single case. As soon as she had arrived and left her case in the bedroom that she would be sharing with several other female employees, she was informed of her duties by the manager. Work would start at five in the morning with the preparation of breakfast for guests, followed by the making up and cleaning of the rooms. She would be expected to work long shifts, and the chores would sometimes be hard and demeaning but Cathleen didn’t care. She felt so relieved to have finally escaped and to have been given a chance to better herself and her prospects for the future.

She found she had a lot in common with the other employees living in the hotel. All of them were single and when they talked about their pasts she learned that most came from small villages that sounded just like Lucan. On her days off she would visit her brother, who would show her the sights and take her home for tea with his wife, a local Dublin girl. They had already had a boy in the first year of their marriage and proceeded to have another child every year until they finally stopped at nine. Both inside the hotel and out in the streets, Cathleen was drinking in the possibilities of city life. She took in everything: the clothes that the women wore when they were out shopping or having lunch, the way the men behaved in the hotel restaurant, their manners and their clothes, their ready smiles and polished shoes. She gazed longingly into hairdressing salons and clothes shops, knowing that she couldn’t afford any of it but dreaming that maybe one day it would be her turn. It was all a million miles from the simple lives led by the farming community she had grown up in, and she was happy that she had taken the plunge and opened herself up to the possibility of adventures.

Every few weeks she would purchase a return ticket to visit her mother or her sister, Lily, in order to share out her earnings and catch up on the local gossip.

‘Have you met any fine Irish gentlemen at that hotel of yours, Cathleen?’ her mother would inevitably enquire.

‘No, Mammy,’ she would reply. ‘I told you; that’s strictly against the rules.’

‘Well,’ her mother would sigh, ‘sometimes you just have to bend the rules.’

‘Would you like to come and watch some motorbike racing next week at Phoenix Park?’ Christie asked over tea one day.

‘I’m not really that interested in your motorbikes,’ she laughed, ‘you know that.’

‘Oh, go on,’ he said, ‘it’ll be a nice day out in the fresh air for you. It’ll take your mind off work for a few hours. A friend of mine is racing.’

‘All right, then,’ she said, knowing just how much her brother loved bikes, ‘that would be lovely, thank you.’

The following week was a heat wave, and the racetrack was crowded with fans enjoying a day out. Cathleen managed to find Christie with the riders and the bikes, deep in conversation with his friend, who obviously knew even more about the subject than her brother. After a few moments Christie looked up from the bike he was studying and saw her standing there.

‘Ah, you got here,’ he said. ‘This is Bill Lewis. Bill, this is my sister, Cathleen.’

Bill turned towards her and smiled. He was in his late thirties, she guessed, and had jet-black hair swept back from a handsome face. Slightly shorter than her, he wore a leather jacket and a cigarette dangled in the corner of his mouth. Something passed between them like a spark of electricity.

‘So,’ he said, taking the cigarette from his lips, ‘you like bikes?’

‘Not especially,’ she mumbled shyly, ‘it’s my first time.’

‘Well, maybe you should take a ride on one,’ Bill grinned, a flirtatious glint in his eye. ‘Maybe I should take you for a spin around the city one day. You could learn about bikes and see the sights at the same time.’ He kept eye contact with her as he offered around his cigarettes.

The men then returned to talking about bikes and Cathleen listened and watched. She liked this polite, confident man. He was very different to the young men she had met in the village, more mature but reserved at the same time, a proper man. He looked a bit like Clark Gable, who she had fallen in love with as a girl when she was taken to see Gone wth the Wind. He even had the same moustache.

Several times through the afternoon she caught him looking at her, and when he won a couple of races but still behaved so quietly and modestly she found herself genuinely excited for him. High on his success, Bill insisted that Christie and Cathleen joined him in the pub at the end of the day’s racing.

‘He likes you,’ Christie told his sister as Bill went up to order another round of drinks.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, digging a sharp elbow into her brother’s ribs but unable to keep a blush of pleasure from rising into her cheeks.

‘Seriously. He asked if I would mind if he asked you out.’

‘And what did you say to that, Christie Crea?’

‘I warned him you were an independent woman and wished him the best of luck!’

‘Christie!’ she said with mock anger, already knowing that if Bill did ask her out she would be saying yes.

Bill then embarked on a campaign to woo her, turning up at the hotel almost every day at times when he knew she might be free for a chat and a cigarette. He was always dapper in a suit and tie and every time he wanted to know when she would be free for him to take her on a spin round the city. She held out for a while, even though she wanted nothing more than to spend more time alone with this man, and eventually she gave in.

‘All right then,’ she said, ‘how about next Wednesday afternoon?’ She could see from his face that he was genuinely delighted, and surprised to have finally convinced her.

‘That’s settled then,’ he said, ‘Wednesday it is. We’ll go for a spin and then I’ll take you to O’Brien’s – my favourite pub.’

When he turned up on the dot of midday on the following Wednesday, several of Cathleen’s colleagues made sure they were there to tease her as she climbed on the back of the bike for the first time, wearing her one and only best dress. The moment she was settled and had her arms around his waist, her face close to the soft, sweet-smelling leather of his biking jacket, Bill twisted the throttle and the bike roared off down the street. Cathleen would have preferred to slow down and enjoy the ride, and when they eventually pulled up outside O’Brien’s and dismounted, her legs felt decidedly wobbly. Bill, it seemed, had literally swept her off her feet.

As they walked into the smoky bar the room fell silent, all heads turning towards them, and Cathleen realised she was the only woman there. This was not the sort of pub that respectable women would normally be seen in. There was a moment of awkwardness among the men, which Bill appeared not to notice, and some of the other drinkers nodded towards Bill as if they knew him well.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked as they made their way to bar.

‘I’ll have a gin and tonic,’ she replied, surprising herself.

They sat at a corner table and chatted while Bill downed three pints of Guinness. Mostly he talked about motorbikes and his Alsatian, Trigger, which seemed to be the two main loves of his life. Cathleen could see that he was entirely at home and comfortable in the bar, and she liked the fact that he was willing to share his world with her. That didn’t mean, however, that she wanted to spend the rest of the day in a drinking men’s bar, which seemed to be the way things were going if she left them up to Bill.

‘Shall we go and see a film?’ Cathleen asked.

‘A film?’ Bill said, obviously surprised.

She was coming to realise that he was not a man who had been on many dates before, which she thought was charming. She could see that he had no idea what a girl might be wanting to do. From the little experience she had of men – mainly her brothers – she half expected him to say no.

‘Why not?’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘Let’s do that.’

She had noticed that there was a Clark Gable film on and teased Bill that she had chosen it because the star reminded her of him.

‘Do you think so?’ he said, staring closely at the poster outside, obviously pleased by the compliment. ‘Do you think there’s a resemblance?’

Cathleen laughed. ‘Yes there is, but perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. I think you’re a bit of a vain man, Bill Lewis.’

‘Oh no,’ he grinned, steering her firmly inside the picture house, ‘not at all.’ But she noticed him examining his own reflection in the glass as they queued at the ticket booth.

She liked the way he had agreed so easily to do what she wanted, even though she could tell he was not particularly interested in films himself. He was gentle and mild-mannered and she liked that too. There was a fondness growing inside her which she had never experienced before, and she found herself looking forward more and more acutely to his visits to the hotel and to their days out together. She learned that he was actually fifteen years older than her, much more than she had imagined, although he didn’t look it, but had never been married. She doubted if he had even had a serious girlfriend before, which she found charming. He was already something of a confirmed bachelor in his ways, but he was always eager to please her if she let him know how. As the weeks passed she had a feeling that he had started to model himself on Clark Gable in his clothes and hairstyle, and she hoped that he was doing that in order to impress her. She noticed that he couldn’t pass a mirror or a piece of glass without glancing into it.

When he eventually kissed her, having had enough drinks to steel his courage, it was so gentle and right that she felt sure they would be together for ever.

They often went back to the picture house, and sometimes they would ride out into the Wicklow Mountains on the bike, posing as a married couple for the benefit of the managements in the small hotels and bed and breakfasts they stayed in. As they sat together in pubs or listened to the live ceilidh bands that played everywhere in those days, or gazed out over the beautiful hills and meadows of the Irish countryside they started to talk about what a future together might be like. The more they got to know about one another the more they felt they had in common, with a shared outlook on life in almost everything. Being together was just so easy. Now she understood why she had never been interested in the farm boys back home. She just knew she was meant to be with this man in every way.

Both, however, were aware that there was one major obstacle they were going to have to face up to sooner or later. Bill was a Protestant and Cathleen was a Catholic – and this was Ireland, where such a difference mattered more than possibly anywhere else in the world. Between them lay a chasm of historical bitterness and division so wide and so deep that most ordinary people no longer even understood or questioned why it was there; they merely believed that those who lay on the other side were to be avoided at all costs.

These religious differences didn’t seem like a problem to either Bill or Cathleen personally, who were both happy for the other to belong to a different faith since they believed in all the same fundamental things in life. But both of them also knew that it was going to be an enormous problem if they ever got to the stage of telling their families about their relationship.

‘My mother won’t like it,’ Cathleen admitted as they lay in one another’s arms during one of their outings into the mountains, ‘but I’m sure we can win her round eventually. I’m sure we can win them all round when they see how we feel about each other.’