Mother’s Only Child

‘Aye, Bella, I do, and I thank you, but just now I am too weary to think about anything but my bed.’

‘And I’ll not keep you from it a moment longer,’ Bella said. ‘Go on up now. I’ll let myself out.’

When Sam was in a position to know that he was paralysed from the waist down, he wished he had died. Inside his head he ranted and railed about his condition, though he wouldn’t let his daughter see his anger and frustration nor his tears of self-pity.

He worried as to how they would all manage when he would be unable to work and was glad that they had the support of Barney McPhearson. He’d completely misjudged that young man.

He felt bad about Maria, who’d once held her future in the palm of her hand and not only had it dashed to the floor, but trampled on.

‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ Maria said firmly when he’d said this. ‘It was an accident and that’s all there is to it. Everyone has helped and the villagers have been golden.’

She didn’t go on to say that it was as well they had, because her mother seemed incapable of doing anything, including speaking. Since the night the doctor had told them Sam would live, but never work or walk again, she hadn’t spoken one word. Maria didn’t want to burden her daddy with news like that.

Anyway, she’d told herself over and over, it was probably just shock. Everyone knew that shock could do funny things to a body and Sarah would likely get over it in time. Even Bella and Dora had agreed with her over that.

When the word was first out about Sam, the men from the dockyard had rallied around him and had gone to the hospital in droves. Con was a regular, though he felt bad that he was now made gaffer in Sam’s place. Sam told him not to be such a bloody fool and there was not a man alive that he’d rather have taking over from him, but Con couldn’t help feeling guilty about it.

Maria was almost overwhelmed by the people’s concern and their generosity, though she knew the family couldn’t live on their neighbours for ever. Sam knew it too. It was Barney that he appealed to one day to find out the position he was in with regard to the Royal Navy and whether he was entitled to any sort of compensation or a pension.

But the news Barney brought him was not good. Because Sam had been self-employed and just contracted to the navy for the duration of the war, they were under no obligation to compensate him in any way.

‘It’s a bugger, that’s what it is,’ Barney said. ‘Con told me about the noise you went to investigate and I bet it was them IRA bastards tipped you in the drink.’

‘Aye,’ Sam agreed. ‘Someone punched me in the back, all right.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Barney said. ‘You probably foiled an IRA plot, and certainly saved more that a few ships from being damaged. You should be hailed as a bloody hero, not thrown aside like so much rubbish.’

‘They found no one, Barney,’ Sam reminded him gently.

‘Well, of course they bloody didn’t,’ Barney cried angrily. ‘Those lot would have scarpered not long after you hit the water. What did they expect—that they’d hang about to shake hands?’

‘Barney, we can do nothing about it,’ Sam said. ‘The official line is that I slipped in the water. It was no one’s fault but mine and there is no one to be held accountable for it and that’s that. I suppose the boatyard at Greencastle—’

‘Don’t even ask,’ Barney said. ‘If the boatyard earns anything at all it’s a pittance. Willie has left now, his mind almost gone completely, but in all honesty he had been going that way for some time. I’m going to have to look for something else for myself soon. We could put young Colm, Willie’s grandson, in for now, if you like, to sort of mind the shop? He’s just left school and his mother was asking. Apparently, he’s as mad about boats as his old granddad and would jump at it.’

‘He is,’ Sam said, ‘and he would.’

‘And he’d not need much of a wage,’ Barney said. ‘I mean, he is only fourteen.’

‘It’s something to think about, certainly,’ Sam said. ‘I’d not like the boatyard to lie empty altogether, for it would soon go to rack and ruin, but I understand that you—’

‘Don’t worry about it now,’ Barney told him soothingly, ‘and don’t fret about me. I have a few irons in the fire. You just concentrate on getting well enough to leave here.’

Sean had come over to see Sam as soon as he’d been told of the accident. ‘When it’s all over with my father—and, God knows, he’s in such pain, I hope that’s not long away—will you all come up to live at the house?’

‘I don’t think so, Uncle Sean,’ Maria said. ‘I don’t think Mammy would like to leave here. And I’m worried enough about her as it is.’

Sean thought Maria had cause to worry, for he had been concerned by the vacant look in his sister’s eyes and the way she didn’t seem to hear when a person spoke to her, or even be aware of her surroundings. It was as though she was on the edge of normality and he knew it wouldn’t take much to tip her over into true madness.

Maria knew it too. Somehow she’d have to make a living, but she didn’t know how she could leave her mother day in, day out for hours on end. She wasn’t fit to be left. Dora or Bella would come to sit with her the times Maria went to the hospital, knowing she was worried about leaving her alone. Maria knew that when her father came home, she’d be his main carer too, and she just didn’t know how they were all to survive. The anxiety of this drove sleep from her each night and so her eyes stung with tiredness and there were smudges of blue beneath them.

Sam saw how his daughter suffered and, though his heart ached, he could nothing to ease any of it for her.

By the beginning of the third week, Sarah seemed to have retreated into a world of her own. ‘It is shock, as you suspected,’ Dr Shearer said, when a worried Maria asked him to call. ‘Her mind has shut down because she can’t bear what has happened.’

‘Is it permanent?’ Maria asked.

‘It’s impossible to say,’ the doctor said. ‘The mind is a strange thing. I could arrange for her to go to the psychiatric unit of the District Hospital in Letterkenny for assessment.’

‘A mental hospital?’ Maria said. ‘An asylum?’ Unconsciously she curled her lip.

‘The psychiatric unit of the District Hospital,’ the doctor repeated.

‘She isn’t that bad, is she?’ Maria asked.

‘It isn’t a question of how bad she is, but whether she can be helped further,’ the doctor said.

Maria had a horror of her mother going to such a place. She had a mental picture of what went on in an asylum—and it was an asylum, no matter what fancy name the doctor gave it. She was sure there would be raving lunatics, encased in strait-jackets, or incarcerated in cells, sometimes padded, to prevent them injuring themselves. She wanted her frail and gentle mother nowhere near that, not mixing with mad people.

‘I think she’d be better at home for now, Doctor, but thank you anyway,’ she said.

The doctor shrugged. ‘As you wish, Maria, but remember everyone of us has a breaking point, even you. Don’t allow yourself to go under, for you’ll soon not only have your mother to see to, but your father too.’

Did he think she was unaware of that? Maria shut the door behind him with a bang. She caught her mother up by the hand and, stopping only to wrap a shawl around her, made for the shop.

‘I must get a job,’ she told Dora. ‘But I can’t leave Mammy, and when Daddy comes home it will be worse. What am I to do?’

‘And will your father get nothing from the navy or the Government?’ Dora asked.

‘Barney says not.’

‘And the boatyard?’

‘Limping along just,’ Maria said. ‘Willie’s finished. He’s living with his daughter now.’

‘Barney’s been a grand help to you,’ Dora said.

‘He’s been wonderful,’ Maria agreed warmly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without him, and that’s the truth. Daddy has quite revised his opinion of him, but that doesn’t help me find a solution to this problem of earning some money.’

Dora was thoughtful that evening and eventually Bella asked what was bothering her.

‘I could see to Sam through the day once he’s home, so that Maria could get a job, but there’s still the problem of Sarah.’

Bella had been heartbroken to see her friend so ill, and hoped and prayed she might one day recover. She’d taken on a girl called Maggie to help in the shop when Maria left. She said, ‘I could maybe have Sarah here during the day. I’m sure I could find her some occupation, weighing and bagging up or some such. Between myself and Maggie, we’ll manage her. After all, Maria can’t do it all.’

Maria was almost overcome by Bella and Dora’s offer and set about finding a job straight away in one of the factories making military uniforms.

However, a few days before she started work, Greg Hopkins came home on leave and soon landed himself at Maria’s door. She smiled, glad to see him and invited him inside.