Pack Up Your Troubles

‘Maybe you’d do me the honour of letting me walk you home, Miss Brannigan?’ he said, admiring to himself her soft lilting voice, and added with another smile, ‘My name is Brendan Hogan.’

Maeve was stunned. She wanted Brendan to see her home, but she wondered if she was being forward by accepting his offer. Maybe that’s how things were done in the cities? If she refused because she was afraid, then she might as well have stayed in Ireland, she told herself.

‘Thank you, Mr Hogan,’ she replied. ‘You can walk with me if you wish, but I don’t live at home. I work in Dolamartis’s café and live in the flat above it.’

Her own place, Brendan thought. This gets better and better. But he behaved impeccably, wanting to see Maeve again, and when he delivered her to the door of the café, he didn’t even kiss her. Never had the walk home appeared so short, Maeve thought regretfully, and never had she chatted in such an uninhibited way to someone she’d just met.

‘Can I see you again?’ Brendan asked, and Maeve thought her heart had stopped beating altogether.

‘Please?’ Brendan said, misinterpreting Maeve’s silence. He knew his cronies at The Bell public house wouldn’t believe this was Brendan Hogan of love-them-and-leave-them fame, but his body was on fire for Maeve Brannigan.

He was sure she wasn’t used to pubs, so their first date was to the cinema to see Charlie Chaplin. Brendan was the perfect gentleman, presenting Maeve with her first box of chocolates and taking her arm for the short walk to the Globe picture house at the junction of High Street and New Street in Aston. Maeve knew that was the entrance for the better seats. On her previous visits, when she’d gone on her own on a free afternoon, or with friends from the church, she’d bought cheap tickets from the little window in New Street. When she told Brendan this, he laughed and gave her a squeeze.

‘Only the best for my girl,’ he said.

Maeve felt dizzy. Was she really Brendan’s girl or was it just the way he talked? She began to think it meant nothing as the evening wore on, for Brendan made no move to take advantage of the dark to put his arms round her, or steal a kiss.

Never could Maeve imagine what self-control it took for Brendan to keep his arms by his sides. He scarcely watched the film because he was wondering if he’d given Maeve a good enough time for her to reward him with something else afterwards. With some girls a couple of gins did the trick, but he had an idea Maeve might be more difficult and he had no desire to frighten her off.

They left the cinema arm in arm.

‘Happy, darling?’ Brendan asked, and Maeve nodded. She was happy, she supposed; she’d laughed uproariously at Charlie Chaplin at the cinema and had been escorted there by a charming and very handsome man. But she was also confused, for the same man had said she was his girl, and just a minute before had called her darling and yet had scarcely touched her. She thought it a peculiar way of going on and she wondered if Brendan’s words meant anything at all.

It was brought home to her that they did when they got to Maeve’s door and he pulled her into his arms. His kiss made her feel weak at the knees and she responded readily to the embrace. Brendan was delighted; maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult after all. ‘Why don’t you ask me up for a nightcap, Maeve, my darling?’ he asked, raining kisses on her eyes, her cheeks and her throat till she was hardly able to think straight.

She nodded eagerly. After all, the man had given her a good night out and presented her with a box of chocolates of her very own, and it would be churlish and against all she had ever been taught to refuse him a cup of tea. She wasn’t anxious for him to leave just yet either and would love to talk some more.

It was when she realised that Brendan had neither tea nor talk on his mind that she became uneasy.

‘I’m sorry, Brendan,’ she said, pulling out of his arms with difficulty and regret. ‘I just can’t.’

Brendan was angry, but he hid it well. He told himself that Maeve was a decent girl, and he’d not met many of them, that was the trouble. She was not given to going too far on a first date. He’d just have to have patience.

‘It’s all right,’ he said.

Maeve saw the angry glint in Brendan’s eye and knew she’d put it there, but she couldn’t have gone further than they had. She’d let him touch and fondle her breasts, and that was bad enough and not something she’d ever have done if she’d been in her right mind and if Brendan’s kisses hadn’t made her dizzy and aching with longing. Well, she thought, I’ve kept my virginity, but lost my man because he’ll want no more to do with me after tonight.

But Brendan most decidedly did want to see Maeve again. She had few evenings off, though Brendan never complained about that. He had plenty of mates from the brass foundry where he worked who lived in Aston Cross and drank in the pubs there, and he’d stay there on Maeve’s evenings at work, arriving at the café at about half-past nine. Maeve closed up officially at ten, but if there were no customers she could close earlier and then all her time was devoted to Brendan. She never minded that he was drunk. After all, she reasoned, what else was there for him to do? Nor did she mind the bottles of beer he would bring to wash down the little bit of supper she would always save for him.

‘Let me stay the night, Maeve?’ he’d pleaded time and again on these nights.

Maeve’s answer was always the same: ‘Brendan, I can’t.’

‘Oh, but you can, my darling,’ Brendan said one day almost a fortnight after their first date as he caressed and fondled one of Maeve’s breasts. ‘It would be so good. You’d enjoy it.’

Maeve didn’t doubt it. Already she was allowing Brendan more liberties than she’d ever dreamt of allowing anyone and, finding it so nice, it would have been easy, so easy, to let Brendan do what he wanted. But always her mother’s face would be before her, sorrow-filled, or the disapproving visage of the parish priest, and both images had given her the strength to pull back.

‘Wouldn’t your mother worry if you didn’t go home anyway?’ she asked Brendan one evening when he was again wheedling to spend the night with her.

He gave a bellow of laughter. ‘Maeve, I’m a big boy now. My mother has no say in my life. No one has. And that’s how it should be for you. You shouldn’t worry so much about other people. You should do what feels good to you.’

But despite Brendan’s urging Maeve wouldn’t be moved. Brendan tried harder than he’d ever tried with any other girl, and on Maeve’s rare evenings off he would forgo his pleasures at the pub and take her somewhere special. They went to the cinema twice more and even to the theatre once. The highlight of that visit to the Hippodrome in Corporation Street was to see a young Lancashire lass called Gracie Fields singing wonderful stirring songs that she urged the audience to join in.

Brendan was opening up new horizons for Maeve, and she was grateful to him and said so as they made their way home.

‘How grateful?’ Brendan said. ‘I know a way you could show true gratitude.’

‘Ah, Brendan, if only I could.’

‘You can,’ Brendan said. His desire for Maeve seemed to be growing rather than diminishing. Often he had to seek consolation elsewhere after he’d left Maeve, for the limits she put on his lovemaking fuelled his frustration.

Maeve didn’t know how Brendan felt, though she hoped he truly loved her as she did him, for no one should do the kind of things they were doing to each other, and wanting to do more, unless they loved each other. The natural outcome was marriage and she waited for Brendan to ask her, knowing if he didn’t ask her soon, she’d give way to his urgings and her own body’s needs anyway and let Brendan love her as he wanted to for she’d be unable to help herself. She didn’t tell Brendan this, but he guessed a lot from the little moans and sighs she was unable to suppress.

Brendan wanted to take Maeve down the Bull Ring on a Saturday evening but she never had a Saturday free.

‘It’s hardly fair,’ he said one night as she lay in his arms.

‘It’s our busiest night. Mr Dolamartis would never agree.’

‘Bet he would if I asked him,’ Brendan said. ‘I’ll tell him he’s destroying my love life keeping you behind the counter, or over a hot stove every Saturday. It isn’t as if he doesn’t get his bloody money’s worth out of you. And he’s a right stingy bugger. I’ll have a word with him, don’t you worry.’

And Brendan had a word and Maeve thought she’d remember for ever the first sight of the Bull Ring on that Saturday evening, lit up with gas flares and looking like fairyland. The noise was tremendous – both from the people thronging the place and the vendors shouting out their wares. Brendan caught up Maeve’s hand and they ran like children down the cobbled streets of Jamaica Row.

‘Let go of me!’ she cried, laughing at him. ‘Let go!’

But though Brendan slowed down, he kept hold of her hand as they walked among the stalls, looking at the array of goods on offer. Maeve had discovered the Bull Ring on her first visit to the city centre, but she’d never seen it at night. It seemed a different place, a magical place.

She jiggled a hot potato from hand to hand as she watched a man tied in chains free himself, while others tottered on high stilts among the crowds. A bare-fist boxer was challenging the men for a fight, five pounds to be won if they beat him.

‘Shall I try?’ Brendan asked teasingly, but Maeve held him back.

‘You will not, Brendan,’ she said firmly. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

Brendan laughed at her. He’d had no intention of offering himself, but liked to see Maeve’s concern.

Maeve didn’t like the poor ragged men selling a variety of things from trays around their necks. ‘Old lags from the last war,’ Brendan told her, but he wouldn’t let Maeve dwell on their poor existence or buy their razor blades or matches. He steered her instead towards the man with the piano accordion, and they joined in with others singing the popular songs.

That evening Maeve had her first taste of whelks when Brendan bought her a dish. She wasn’t sure she really liked them, but thought they were better than the slimy jellied eels that Brendan chose.

Brendan put his arm round Maeve, amused at her delight in everything, and as she smiled up at him he felt as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know if it was love or not, he just knew he wanted Maeve more than he’d wanted anything in his life before.

They stayed at the Bull Ring until the Salvation Army band marched in blowing bugles and trumpets, and singing hymns with great gusto. Maeve was amazed how many stood and listened and even joined in some hymns, and when the Salvation Army left, they had tramps and some of the old lags in tow.

‘Where are they taking them?’ she asked Brendan.

‘To the Citadel,’ he replied. ‘They’ll give them thick soup and bread, and try and find some of them a bed for the night.’

Maeve was moved by that. She’d never met people of different religions, or of no religion at all, before she’d come to Birmingham, but she thought those in the Salvation Army must be good, kind people and brave to go about in their strange costumes risking ridicule.