Another Man’s Child

‘So do I,’ Celia said.

‘But so dreadfully boring,’ added Norah.

‘Only in your opinion,’ Celia retorted.

‘Your sister tells me you want to go to America,’ Andy said.

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘I’m told the situation is very different there,’ Andy said. ‘There is none of the outdated class system we have here and a man is judged for who he is rather than what he does and that goes for employment too.’

Norah knew that was true for Jim had said as much in one of his letters:

It’s having a job that’s praised here and a man who works is respected, whether he waits on tables, or empties bins, or is a shopkeeper or banker. No worker is looked down on.

‘That is mainly true,’ Norah said to Andy. ‘My brother who is over there says a similar thing.’

‘So then how can you feel the way you do about Andy just because he’s a hired man and has no farm of his own?’ Celia demanded.

‘I feel that way because I don’t live in America yet,’ Norah retorted. ‘And neither do you and like it or not you have to go with the culture of the place.’

‘Even if you don’t agree with it?’

‘Even then.’

‘Then how are things ever to change? How are we ever to be free?’

Norah sighed, ‘All changes to life here come very slowly.’

‘Like the mills of God,’ Andy said. ‘But eventually all people will see how constrained their lives are and change will begin to seep in.’

‘D’you really think so?’

‘I more than think,’ Andy said. ‘I know so. People’s dissatisfaction will challenge the old order. In semi-remote areas like this it might take longer but it will happen regardless.’

‘It won’t change quickly enough for my parents to sanction you and Celia having any sort of friendship, never mind anything more.’

Andy nodded. ‘I agree.’

‘Well I don’t,’ burst out Celia. ‘And stop talking about me as if I’m not here.’

‘I was going to go on to say that I know if your parents were aware that we were meeting and talking this way then they would be upset,’ Andy said. ‘They might be very angry and it may be that you have no wish to annoy your parents in that way. And if you really feel that, I will not press you and this will be the first and last time we’ll meet this way.’

Celia chewed on her bottom lip. Once she had wondered if she could do something that her parents so strongly disapproved of, but that was before she had met Andy. If she told him to go now she would be behaving like a coward, letting someone else choose her future for her, and she thought of all the single farmers round and about and there was not one that had the slightest appeal for her. The thought of being married off to one of those without the least regard for how she felt about it did not fill her with joy. She intended to marry only for love, as she had already said to Norah, and in the meantime be friends with whoever she liked.

The silence had stretched out between them without her being aware of it as she walked along the side of the lake with thoughts tumbling about in her head and when she glanced at Andy she saw his face creased with concern and so she spoke firmly. ‘As a child you try to please your parents, but as an adult, though you don’t go out of your way to oppose them and make them cross and worried, you can’t live your life just to please them because that might not be what you want to do. We get one crack at our future. Norah is spending hers in America and I want to spend mine here and find someone I could love enough to marry and so I am going to continue to be friends with you because that is another thing I want to do.’

Andy wasn’t totally happy with that because he was quite taken with Celia and had begun to hope that he might be the special one in her life. But for all her almost eighteen years, she was like an inexperienced infant in matters of the heart and he knew he had to tread very carefully so as not to scare her and so he squeezed her arm a little tighter and said, ‘I’m pleased.’

Norah said nothing but feared for Celia, because despite the brave words she had never stood against her parents about anything. Everyone knew that Celia hated arguments and she wondered if her sister had the moral fibre to withstand the fallout from this.

But then Norah reasoned that if she hadn’t and if her sister caved in as soon as her father found out, forbade her to go on with it as she knew he would, Celia would in all probability say a tearful farewell to Andy McCadden. And if she was upset, then she would get over it and it would be the best solution all round – and anyway by that time Norah would be in America and away from all the unpleasantness.

So, working on the assumption that the little chaste affair would be discovered and stopped sooner rather than later, she declared herself on their side. Celia was delighted. ‘What changed your mind?’

‘You did,’ Norah said simply. ‘For what you said made sense and I think marriage is hard enough without being chained for life to someone you actively dislike – and that could happen.’

‘What about you saying I should do my duty like Tom?’

‘Well I never said you should. I just thought you would go ahead with any plans Daddy may have for you because you have never defied him before. But you have said you will only marry for love, so stick out for that.’

‘What about Tom?’

‘Tom will inherit,’ Norah said. ‘So it’s his job to marry suitably and, if they love each other as well, that’s a bonus for them both.’

‘It all seems very clinical,’ Celia said.

‘It probably is a bit,’ Andy said. ‘But even if the words aren’t actually spoken they’re understood. My brother Chris knows what he must do too.’

‘Do you regret not being the eldest?’ Norah asked.

‘I did,’ Andy admitted. ‘But then I got to thinking about it and I’ve got more freedom being the second son, freedom to go where I choose and marry who I choose and when I want as well and not at my father’s urging.’

‘Oh I can see that,’ Celia said. ‘And my brother Jim seems happy enough. I mean, Tom might have liked to go to America as well, but I doubt he would have been let go, at least not without a fight.’

‘I’ll be happy enough when I get there as well,’ Norah said. ‘Can’t come quick enough for me. And just for now we shall have to get back fairly soon, so if we are going to walk around the lake we shall have to put our back into it.’

And they did and later, as they made their way home, Norah acknowledged what good company Andy McCadden was and thought it a damned shame that it couldn’t work out between him and her sister.

FOUR (#ua3d88705-3cbb-5370-877f-26d91e3d1aaa)

Six more weeks passed. Easter came and went and Celia turned eighteen and the relationship between Celia and Andy blossomed. Celia dreamed of Andy almost every night and woke with a smile on her face and at odd moments throughout the day his face would float into her mind and a warm glow would fill her being. Celia often wondered if she was falling in love with Andy, but she wasn’t sure. She thought it odd that, though it was the thing often sung about and written about and all, no one explained how you would feel and it wasn’t a question you could ask of anyone, least of all Norah. But Celia was well aware that life without Andy would be much bleaker and lonelier and more especially so when Norah sailed for America when she imagined it might be harder to see him as often.

She trembled when she imagined her father’s rage when he found out about their relationship and yet he had to know because she hated meeting Andy in secret. In fact she seldom met him at all in the week for they both had jobs to do and their absence would be noticed, but every Saturday she and Norah would make for the town with the list of things their mother wanted and always meet Andy on a similar errand for the Fitzgeralds and they would take a turn about the town together and, though Norah was there too, she often would take an interest in a shop window or have a chat with some of her old friends and let them wander off together.

Andy was always grateful at her doing this, though he too hated the subterfuge and from the first had wanted to call on Celia’s father and ask for his permission to walk out with her, but Norah and Celia had begged him not to. But as each day passed, Celia was becoming more and more important to him and he had seen the love light in her eyes when she looked at him, though he had never touched her, much as he wanted to, for he couldn’t bring himself to until it was known to her family.

But, oh, how he longed to hold her hand as they walked the town, or take her in a tight embrace and give her a kiss – not a proper kiss for he imagined that would frighten the life out of her – but just to put his lips on her little rosebud mouth would do for now. The dance that she came to with Norah every week, when she danced virtually every dance with him, was the only time he could legitimately hold her in his arms and it simply wasn’t enough any more.

And that is what he told Celia that Saturday. ‘You mean one hell of a lot to me, Celia, and I want to declare that, not conduct some sort of hole-in-a-corner affair.’

‘And what if we tell my father and he forbids me to see you as well he might and you know that.’

‘Then you must talk to him,’ Andy said. ‘He will hardly prevent you from seeing me physically.’

Celia had never seen her father raise his hand to any of them and even when he had a drink he was a happy drunk, not a violent or nasty one, and so she shook her head. ‘I think that highly unlikely.’

‘Well there you are then, and remember we’re doing nothing wrong and it would be better you tell him rather than he finds it out from someone else.’