Walking Back to Happiness

Josie would have loved to linger, to have snuggled down under the covers of her bed and pretended what had happened two nights before, the night of her birthday, hadn’t happened.

She felt particularly guilty because she knew it had been partly her fault or at least that’s what had annoyed Arthur to begin with.

Hannah had said she could invite three friends to a birthday tea, but with the bad weather it would be best to choose three who lived close so they wouldn’t have so far to come. But that was all right for Mary Byrne, Cassie Ryan and Belinda Crosby, the three girls she’d made friends with at the Abbey school, all lived near her. ‘It’s a party,’ Josie had told them.

She’d never had a party before in her life and neither had the others. The war years had put an end to that, rationing not allowing much in the line of party fare, and when Josie saw the table filled with delicacies and the beautiful cake in the middle with ‘Happy Birthday’ written on it in icing and ten candles, she felt tears prickle her eyes.

The children had gone by the time Arthur came in from work, Hannah had seen to that, and she was in the kitchen cooking his tea when he came through the door. But his eyes alighted straight away on the remains of the cake. ‘What’s this?’

Hannah turned down the stove. ‘A cake I got for Josie,’ she said and closed the door so that Josie had to strain her ears to hear. ‘It’s her birthday today.’

‘And where did you get the money for such rubbish?’

‘Not from you anyway,’ Hannah snapped. ‘From her sister and brother in New York, that’s where I got it.’

‘I should say that’s for necessities, not frivolous nonsense.’

‘It’s for anything I see fit to spend it on. And a cake and a few goodies is not considered nonsense when you are just ten years old. Can’t you see, Arthur, what the child has had to put up with this year?’ Hannah hissed in a lower voice. ‘This was her first birthday without her mother and family around her. I wanted to make it a little special for her, that’s all.’

‘I still say it’s stuff and nonsense.’

‘Then say what you like,’ Hannah snapped. ‘You have your opinion and I’ll have mine.’

Josie, in the other room, sitting on a cracket pulled up before the fire, had been trying to read The Railway Children, one of the books Hannah had given her, but the voices distracted her. It was a shame, really, because she’d been enjoying the story. She’d never had a book bought for her before – not one to read just for itself. She’d had school books with extracts from stories in and poetry that you had to read and then answer questions about, but never a whole book for pleasure. And now she had two, for as well as The Railway Children, she had Black Beauty.

Arthur came into the room, rustling his evening paper impatiently, and Josie leapt to her feet. She wished the house wasn’t so cold and she could run upstairs to escape the hateful glare Arthur turned on her. Hannah saw the look, too, and her heart sank for she knew she was in for it later that night as soon as the bedroom door was closed.

Suddenly she was angry. Why should she put up with it just when Arthur had the notion, the mean-spirited man she’d married who begrudged a child a birthday cake? He wasn’t normal and she knew that as well as anyone.

She’d almost asked the priest about Arthur’s verbal attacks on her in confession, for she felt sure honouring and obeying wouldn’t include holding his wife forcibly on the bed while he spat obscenities at her. But how could she tell the priest that and explain why Arthur felt the need to do it in the first place? Nice Father Fitzgerald would be so embarrassed if she asked, while Father Milligan would probably say whatever a man did was just fine. He seemed to believe in the divine right of men to do exactly what they pleased to their wives.

So it was no good appealing to the priests for help, but she was determined if he started his obnoxious bullying behaviour that night he’d not have it all his own way. She remembered with a wry smile the old lady in Ireland who said she kept a hat pin under her pillow at night. She hadn’t understood at the time, but by God, she did now. She thought a hat pin would have been a very comforting thing to have by her side.

But Hannah had no hat pin to hand later when Arthur came into the bedroom. She was in bed, clothes pulled up to her neck, and she saw Arthur smile maliciously as he began to peel his clothes off.

Hannah would not allow herself to be intimidated by Arthur’s attitude and she spoke quickly before she lost her courage and louder than she had intended. ‘Arthur, I need to talk to you.’

‘You’ve had all evening to talk,’ Arthur almost growled.

‘I need to talk to you now,’ Hannah persisted. ‘About your behaviour. I can’t have you going on the way you do. It’s humiliating.’

Arthur, now naked, turned off the light and climbed onto the bed where he knelt and looked at her. ‘You promised to obey me,’ he said. ‘Before a priest and a full congregation.’

‘Not in this sort of thing.’

‘It didn’t stipulate. You just promised to obey.’

‘Arthur, the things you say, some of them are pure filth, dirty, disgusting words. You’d need to confess them so it can’t be right.’

‘What I say in confession is not your business, you nosy bitch,’ Arthur snapped. ‘You’re my wife and you’ll do as I say,’ and with a shot, he was upon her.

But Hannah, tensed, was ready for him and she rolled away and in a second had thrown the covers from her and was on her feet. ‘You sodding bitch,’ he said and added sneeringly, ‘You want to play games, eh? Okay, I’ll play games.’ He reached her side as he spoke and as she tried to twist away, he grabbed her arms.

‘Leave go of me.’

‘Like hell I will, you bleeding whore!’

‘I’m not! How can you say things like this?’

‘All women are the same.’

Frustrated beyond endurance at her inability to get free from Arthur’s vice-like grip, Hannah cried, ‘Well, all men aren’t the same. There’s real men and half men like you.’

The blow Arthur administered knocked Hannah off her feet. But she had no memory of falling or hitting the floor and when she came to, Arthur was bending over her. He’d been horrified that he’d hit her and then further surprised to find his penis harder and more erect than it had ever been.

Hannah, knocked dizzy by the blow, lay helpless as Arthur threw her nightie above her head and after a bit of fumbling about, entered her violently and without a word being spoken.

Hannah felt as if she had been ripped in two, for despite this not being her first time, she’d not been anywhere near ready. But she only allowed herself one little yelp of pain, remembering Josie next door, and bit her lip to stop herself crying out.

Josie had already heard the commotion in the room though, and the argument and then the skirmish and the punch and thud as Hannah’s body hit the floor. Had she not been so afraid and wary of Arthur, she might have gone in then.

And then she heard the one strangled cry and gave a sigh of relief. Thank God, Hannah was all right – well, not all right, but at least alive. She’d wondered when she’d heard that thud. And then she heard the rhythmic grunts of Arthur and knew what he was doing. You can’t live on a farm and not see animals mating, the stallion rising up to the mare, or the bull servicing the cows, or even the farm dogs mating with the bitches, not to know, but she didn’t want to hear it and she buried her head under her pillow to muffle the sounds.

Arthur’s grunts eventually stopped and he lay across Hannah, spent for the moment. So that was it, he thought, the thing talked about, that he’d wondered about, for so long. The sexual act and he’d done it. True, he’d had to hit Hannah, had to knock her down to enable him to do so and that had been regrettable. She’d asked for it in a way, but he’d never ever intended hurting her.

But now at least he’d achieved what seemed to come naturally to most people and he couldn’t see what the fuss had been about. It had given him no great pleasure and he was in no hurry to repeat the process, especially if it entailed hurting Hannah to achieve it.

He eased himself from her and slowly and painfully she got to her feet and made her way to the bathroom. Arthur let her go, for something was tugging at his memory from the books on sex he had read. He switched on the light and surveyed the floor with a slight frown on his face. There was no blood and he suddenly knew he wasn’t the first person to have sex with Hannah.

He was waiting for her when she came back. She avoided looking at him. She’d taken stock in the bathroom, looking at her bruised and swollen face and bottom lip oozing blood. In the past, Arthur had raised bruises on her arms from holding her too tight and across the top of her legs from the pressure of him on top of her. But he’d never before raised his hand to her and she wondered if this was going to be a new tactic he was going to employ and how she should deal with it if it was.

She knew separation was frowned upon by the Catholic Church. Divorce, of course, not to be contemplated at all, but she wouldn’t stay and be used as a punchball by any man. But where would she go and now with Josie’s welfare to consider too? Even Gloria might not welcome them back, because kind though she was, she strongly believed marriage was for life. Hannah had heard her discussing the moral decline of modern society many a time with Amy. She often said that war had brought a host of hasty marriages, often followed by disillusionment and divorce, and the number of fatherless children or those born to married women whose husbands had been away for years, would appear to be legion.

She never discussed these matters with Hannah, of course, that would be considered insensitive, but Hannah was well aware of her views on the subject. So her thoughts were in turmoil when she came back into the bedroom and she wasn’t prepared for the question Arthur threw at her so savagely. ‘Who was it?’

She looked up, perplexed, and he went on. ‘The man you shagged, or were there so many you can’t remember?’

‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

‘Come, come,’ Arthur said, mocking politeness. ‘I’m no fool and you were no virgin.’

Hannah wondered for a fleeting moment if it was worth telling Arthur about the bittersweet love between her and Mike. She wondered if he’d understand how much she’d loved him and in the stolen moments they had during his short leaves how she’d ached to be kissed, held tightly, caressed and loved, and the one time when they’d both lost control. It hadn’t seemed wrong. They were engaged and due to be married and it had been just one more expression of that love.

But she knew with one glance at Arthur with his nostrils pinched tight in disapproval, his thin lips curled in disdain, and the manic light shining in his cold, brown eyes that he wouldn’t understand how it had been in a million years. She must deny it. At all costs, she must deny it. But it was too late, for her slight hesitation had been noticed and it told Arthur that he’d been right in his assumption and her spluttered denial and even indignation that he should think such a thing didn’t move him a jot.

‘You can deny that you’ve slept with another before me till you’re blue in the face,’ Arthur said. ‘But I know what I know. Incidentally, I didn’t mean to strike you tonight. I regret that and I’m sorry. It will not happen again, for although you are my wife and will be given full respect in public where we will appear as a devoted couple, the sexual side of our marriage is over. I will never touch you again. I don’t sleep with whores.’

What sexual side? Hannah was tempted to ask, but didn’t for she was just relieved that there’d be no more of it. The only deep disappointment she had was that in the travesty of a marriage she was in, there would be no child. Maybe that was the punishment she had to bear, she thought, and she thanked God for Josie.