This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This paperback edition 2005
SIXTH EDITION
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Anne Bennett 2005
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Maria Foley almost ran across The Square that day in late July 1941. The faint summer breeze riffled through her long wavy hair, tied back loosely with a ribbon the same green as her eyes. Bella McFee, catching sight of the girl, stepped out of the post office-cum-grocery shop when she saw the envelope in Maria’s hand.
‘It’s come then?’
‘Aye,’ Maria said. She tried to keep the elation out of her voice. ‘I’ve passed.’
She saw Bella’s lips purse in disapproval and, for a moment, Maria was resentful. She’d worked for Bella in the shop for two years. Couldn’t she just say she was the tiniest bit pleased? Congratulate her even?
Her mother, Sarah, had said the right words—‘Congratulations. You’ve done well’—but in a flat, expressionless and totally insincere tone. However, what Bella did say was, ‘I’m away to see your mother. She’ll likely be feeling low after this. Mammy will mind the shop. And where are you off to in such a tear? You’re not due in till nine.’
‘The boatyard,’ Maria said. ‘I want to see Willie.’
‘Oh, he’d like to know right enough,’ Bella said. ‘But you, Maria, aren’t you the tiniest bit ashamed, wanting to go to some fancy academy in Dublin just now, when you could be a help and support to your mother? Have you no thought for her, and you an only one too?’
Immediately, guilt settled between Maria’s shoulder blades. It isn’t my fault I’m the only one, she wanted to cry. That was the main problem, of course. If her mother had had a houseful of children, she could have taken pride in the fact that her eldest daughter had won a scholarship to the Grafton Academy in Dublin to study Dress and Fabric Design for two years.
But Sarah’s fall down the stairs when Maria had been just eighteen months old had killed the child she was carrying and assured there would be no more either. It had also, so it was said, given her ‘bad nerves’. Maria hadn’t known what ‘bad nerves’ were then, of course, although she knew her father was never willing to upset her mother and strongly discouraged Maria from saying or doing anything that might disturb her at all. She was well aware that the news that morning would have disturbed her greatly, and yet she couldn’t help being pleased and, yes, proud of herself. She knew Willie would congratulate her warmly and, oh God, how she needed someone on her side for once.
‘Mammy should never have let me go in for the exam if she can’t take any joy in the fact that I have passed it,’ Maria said.
‘You don’t understand anything yet, girl,’ Bella said sharply.
Maria flushed at the sharp tone and then tossed her head a little defiantly and said, ‘I have to go, or I’ll be late getting to the shop.’
Before Bella could say another word, Maria gave her a desultory wave and ran over the green to the coastal path, which ran to Greencastle, the next village up Inishowen Peninsular. It was the path her father used to take every day bar Sunday, when he’d owned a boatyard in the small village. Now he worked at the Derry docks, and Willie Brannigan was put in charge of the Greencastle boatyard. He’d known Maria since the day of her birth and she knew he’d wish her well.