Walking Back to Happiness. Anne Bennett

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      Hannah sighed, a resigned and weary sigh. ‘It’s many things,’ she said. ‘Too much to tell. Josie will be back in a minute, the upstairs is no place to linger. The whole house is freezing apart from this room.’

      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 СКАЧАТЬ