by Margaret Magee
Maggie ran her hands over her newly flattened stomach and smiled wistfully. She inhaled another breath of the whipped-up wind and listened once more for the crash of waves on the beach before closing the kitchen window. She shivered and turned to face her husband.
‘Not a night for the fox to be out, but you’ll check the hen house before you go to bed?’ she said.
‘Damn the hens,’ Liam said, stabbing the light switch.
Maggie shielded her eyes for a few seconds, then watched her troubled husband pull off his apron, raw red from the meat he had butchered for the shop tomorrow. He screwed it into a ball and threw it on the linoleum.
Bloody sheets. So much blood. Maggie shook her head to scatter the image. ‘Come on, Liam. I left a bucket of water outside the shop for that.’
Liam made no attempt to pick up the soiled apron – and neither would she. She took the few steps to the table, brushed imaginary crumbs from the oilcloth, and rested her weariness on her flat palms, strangely missing the extended stomach. Give me strength, she prayed silently, for she still believed God would forgive her deception. There had been no malice intended, and that was her qualification for a sin.
‘You are right, Liam. It is down to me, and I will see it through.’
As if the baby heard, he raised the tempo, and Maggie prayed that Breda would relent and feed the poor pet. Maggie had the bottle ready, but would give it another minute or two.
Liam sank onto the suganed chair opposite, his head falling into the cradle of beefy hands. ‘It’s too much, Maggie. All and sundry congratulating me on producing a son after all these years. Leering youngsters calling after me for chasing skirt at my time of life. And you stuffing cushions up your jumper and making an eejit of me.’
‘Is that what troubles you, Liam Moran? Your pride? We have two living children in this house and another two buried in the graveyard, before they caught their breath.’
She saw the grief pass like an apparition across his naked face and regretted her outburst. Still, she hardened. Not once had he put his arm around her fine, hard stomach in the bed at night since she’d started claiming the pregnancy, not once drawn his fingers through the red curls he’d fallen in love with.
‘Breda will be on the boat within the month. She’ll make an unfettered life for herself in America. We may never see her again, Liam, and it will sunder my heart, but that is what she wants to do.’
‘Has she picked a name, even?’ Liam asked.
‘No, but I’ve chosen his names – Séan, Patrick, after his grandfathers. I’ve already baptised him with holy water, and he will be christened in the church, and we will be his parents in the eyes of God.’
‘It’s a lie, Maggie. A bare-faced lie!’
‘You would have sent our daughter to the nuns, where she would atone for her sin for as long as they chose, the baby sent away? We would have lost both of them then. Can’t you see that? And the Moran boy who put his seed in our girl is swanning around the village, blemish-free.’
‘Jesus, Maggie. You have sprouted a coarse tongue.’
Maggie sighed heavily. ‘Breda has been confined to this house for the last five months, not daring to walk the fields, not buying a lipstick or meeting a friend.’
‘What if Mrs Ward lets on?’
‘Jenny Ward? The woman who’s delivered every homeborn in this town. She’d go to her grave first.’
Maggie would have gone on, but the baby’s cry scraped the inside of her head. For a long-held breath, she wondered if she was up to it. Enough. She rose and lifted the baby bottle, and headed to the cupboard for the Cow and Gate.
‘‘I’ll get him,’ Liam said. ‘Shove the kettle over the heat to warm it.’
At the door, he hesitated, then turned. ‘Can we call him Séanie, at least?’
Maggie nodded and watched him bend to pick up his apron and square his strong shoulders. ‘Wash your hands in warm water, mind,’ she called after him.
Margaret Magee has been writing since she challenged herself to complete a first draft of a novel to mark her 50th birthday, which became Book One of a trilogy. She also writes children’s books, short stories, and flash fiction and has been published by Writing.ie and Cranked Anvil. She is a member of the Ardgillan Writers’ Group, Dublin.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
