Mother’s Only Child. Anne Bennett

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       CHAPTER FIVE

      Despite losing pay, and her anxiety to keep in favour at work, Maria had taken the day off. Greg had told her what time the bus would stop in The Square. He could see her jumping from one foot to the other in excitement as the bus pulled in. He had barely left the vehicle when she launched herself at him, nearly overbalancing him, as he had a case in one hand.

      ‘Oh, Greg, I’ve missed you and I love you so much.’

      Greg just stood and looked at Maria. She cried, ‘Put your arms around me, for God’s sake. It’s what I’ve longed for, for weeks.’

      His heart like lead, Greg put his arms around the girl he loved beyond all others. ‘Maria, we must talk.’

      ‘Of course we must,’ Maria said. ‘Shall we go back?’

      ‘No, not home, somewhere quiet.’

      ‘There’s only Daddy. Bella has Mammy till I go back.’

      Was there nowhere in this whole God-damned place that they could be alone so that Greg could tell the lovely, wonderful girl that he was casting her aside for another? ‘Maria, I need a private place.’

      So did Maria. She wanted to run her fingers through his regulation short hair, to trace the lines of his face with her kisses, and kiss his delicious lips until she was dizzy. And she wanted him to kiss her eyes and her throat in the way that caused her to moan in ecstasy as the yearning excitement mounted in her. Then she wanted to feel his lips on hers, his tongue darting in and out of her mouth, his hands feeling every bit of her.

      Suddenly, she knew the place. ‘We’ll go to the boatyard,’ she cried.

      ‘Is there no one there? Colm…?’

      ‘Colm has the flu. He hasn’t been there the last two days. He sent word down. There’s even a heater there.’

      Greg sighed. ‘That’s the place then.’

      ‘Do you want to leave your case in the house as we pass?’

      ‘No,’ Greg said. He wanted to go nowhere and make small talk with anyone till he’d told his girl what he’d come to tell her. ‘No, it’s OK, really.’

      They didn’t take the coastal path; the wind was so fierce they’d be in danger of being plucked off it and flung into the lough. Even through the town, the wind gusting around them made conversation difficult, but Greg was glad of it. Maria had linked arms with him and the case dragged from his other hand as they toiled up the slight hill to Greencastle.

      The boatyard was, as Maria had said, deserted, and she lifted the large stone beside the door, extracted the key and let them in. Greg was glad to be out of the wind, but the workroom was icy.

      ‘Wait,’ Maria said, seeming to know her way around the dim room, the light of the day, such as it was, hardly penetrating through the one small window.

      Maria lit both a paraffin lamp and a stove, and then she wrapped her arms around Greg. ‘Keep your coat on for a while,’ she advised, ‘till the room warms up a bit. Then,’ she added impishly, ‘we can take off as much as you’d like.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth in horror at the realisation of what she had said.

      ‘Maria!’

      ‘Oh, Greg, how dreadful to come out with something like that,’ she cried. ‘You must be shocked, think me brazen. I don’t know what came over me.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Greg cried, putting down his case thankfully against an upended boat. The ground was littered with coils of rope and the room smelt of engine oil.

      Maria produced two chairs and passed one over to Greg. ‘Sit down, darling, and tell me what’s on your mind,’ she said. ‘I can tell there’s something.’

      Now they were here, in this ideal place, isolated and alone, Greg didn’t know how to start. He’d rehearsed it enough times. He’d travelled through the night, on train and mail boat, more trains and the bus to get here in the least time possible, but while it was one thing to rehearse his story cold, as if the tale was of someone else entirely, it was quite another to sit and look into the eyes of his beloved and tell it.

      ‘Shall I make some tea?’ Maria said suddenly. ‘There’s always some things kept in the cupboard in the kitchen place and I could boil the kettle on the stove, though I’m not sure if there’s milk?’

      Did he want tea? He didn’t know. Would tea help the cold, dead feeling inside him? ‘That would be nice,’ he found himself saying.

      So Maria busied herself and found milk that the cold weather had kept fresh. She asked no questions till the tea was made and poured, biscuits laid on a plate. Then she said, ‘Now, tell me?’

      Scalding as it was, Greg took a gulp of the tea, hoping it might steady his nerves. It didn’t and he swallowed deeply before saying, ‘This is hard for me, Maria, so hard. Before I realised that you felt as I had felt for years, that we’re as one, in love, I went out with another. A girl called Nancy Dempsey.’

      So that was it. In seconds, Maria was out of her seat and on her knees before Greg. She held his hands in hers and said, ‘Greg, darling, I don’t care about your past. You could have had a hundred girls and I’d not be a whit interested in any one of them. What I care about is here and now, you and me and our future together.’

      ‘But that’s it!’ Greg cried desperately. ‘We have no future together.’

      He watched as the realisation of his words took hold, sank into Maria’s mind. He saw the blood drain from her face, leaving it as white as lint, her eyes two pools of confused pain. ‘What…what do you mean, Greg? What…what are you saying? Please, please don’t say these hurtful things.’

      Greg knew Maria was having difficulty even breathing.

      And her eyes…Oh God. He closed his own, but it didn’t help. He still saw her look of betrayal. ‘Dear Christ,’ he cried, ‘do you think I want to say such things? Enjoy hurting you, hurting myself this way?’

      ‘Then why…?’

      ‘Listen,’ Greg said. Maria had snatched her hands away and he took hold of them again, massaging her fingers with his own as he went on, ‘I would willingly give my life in exchange for yours and think it an honour. You are the first and last person I will ever love, for I will never, ever feel this way again. And yet, Maria, I must marry another.’

      Maria gave a cry and snatched her hands away. One hand was before her mouth, the other folded around her chest as she sat down in the chair. Pain such as she’d never experienced before filled her body and she felt her heart—the heart she’d given to Greg—shatter into a million pieces.

      ‘I have no choice,’ Greg cried helplessly. ‘Nancy carries my child.’

      Now she СКАЧАТЬ