THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY One fine moonlight night Ernest Thompson, the English fellow, asked Anna Martin to come away for a week-end with him. Ernest was a fellow she had been doing a line with for close on a month; a tall chap with smooth oiled oak-coloured hair and a curiously raw, beefy face that went all off into points. ‘That’s a grand idea, Ernie,’ she said in her eager way. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go to Glenamullen and the Frawleys will put us up.’ ‘Put us up?’ said Ernest in surprise. ‘But I don’t want anyone to put us up.’ ‘What do you want so?’ drawled Anna in the accent which her mother said was like a wind up a flue. ‘I want to make love to you,’ said Ernest boldly. ‘Go on!’ cried Anna with a sinking heart. ‘And what do you think you’re doing now?’ ‘Don’t you want me to make love to you?’ he asked earnestly, seizing her by the wrists and looking deep into her eyes. ‘Ah, Ernie,’ she cried distractedly, trying to pull herself free, ‘if I did a thing like that I could never respect myself again.’ ‘And why not? asked Ernest indignantly. ‘I love you and you love me, or at least you say you do. What possible objection can there be? It would be different if you were going to have a baby.’ ‘Ah, God, Ernie,’ she cried, losing the last shred of her wits at the very thought of such a possibility, ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t, and that’s all about it.” ‘But why not?’ repeated Ernest fiercely. ‘Because ’twould be a sin.’ ‘Sssh !’ hissed Ernest as two other lovers passed down the lane with the moonlight shining full on their idioty faces. The sight of them made Anna desperate. ‘How is it a sin?’ he asked in a tense whisper. ‘’Tis always a sin unless people are married,’ she said. ‘Always a sin?’ ‘Always, Erie.’ ‘Even suppose people are married already?’ ‘That’s what we’re taught anyway, Ernie.’ ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Ernest. She saw he had expected something different and was disappointed and hurt. She took out her cigarettes and offered him one, more by way of peace-offering than anything else. He refused it, and she saw he was mad with her, The match-flame showed her dark, plump, innocent face, all in smooth curves from the bumpy, boyish forehead to the broad, rounded chin, with the half-developed features nesting in the crinkles as if only waiting for a patch of sunlight to blossom out. ‘I suppose you think I’m not fond of you now?’ she drawled miserably, turning up her face to let out a column of smoke. ‘What else can I think?’ asked Ernest stiffly. ‘Well, I am, if you want to know,’ she said, biting her lip to keep back the tears. ‘And God knows,’ she added with passion, ‘I wouldn’t tell you a lie.’ ‘Oh,’ said Ernest coldly in the voice of a judge summing up, ‘it’s not your fault. It’s just that you’re inhibited.’ ‘I suppose I am,’ agreed Anna, who didn’t know from the sky over her what ‘inhibited’ was. ‘I dare say it’s the custom of the country. Maybe things are different with ye. Would an English girl do that if you asked her?’ ‘If she loved me, she would,’ said Ernest sulkily. ‘And what would her family say?’ asked Anna. ‘They wouldn’t be consulted,’ said Ernest shortly. ‘A woman’s life is her own to do what she likes with, isn’t it?’ 2 Anna’s mother wouldn’t have agreed with that at all. She was a widow woman of good family who had had the misfortune to marry one, Willie Martin, a man of no class. She was a nice, well-preserved, well-spoken little roly-poly of a woman who sat for the greater part of the day in the kitchen behind the shop, very erect in her high-backed chair, her hands joined in her lap, while she thought of the past glories of her family. She had a sallow face that looked very innocent down the middle and full of guile round the edges like a badly-ironed pillow-case, and an air of great refinement and humility which suggested a soul of shot silk. Anna had good cause to know her mother’s soul was made of tougher stuff. She was a woman of great principle, and if Anna bought a frock in the only fashionable shop in town, she had to pretend it was bought in some Catholic shop like Mulligan’s where you couldn’t get anything that wasn’t two years out of date. Mrs. Martin didn’t believe in helping those who dug with the wrong foot. She was full of family pride, and till the last maid left, having smashed the last bit of the family china off the kitchen wall and denounced ‘the Hungry Hayeses’ as she called them to the seventh generation of horse-stealers, Mrs. Martin had never ceased in her humble, ingratiating way to persuade them to wear cap and apron, serve from the left, and call Anna ‘Miss’. That she failed was entirely the doing of the Mahoneys, two mad sisters who kept a shop further up the hill and corrupted Mrs. Martin’s maids with tea and scandal. They were two tall women, one with the face of a cow and the other with the face of a greyhound; and the greyhound had a son who was going for the priesthood. The madness of the Mahoneys took a peculiar form which made them think themselves as good as their neighbours. When Mrs. Martin had Anna taught to play the violin, they had Jerry taught to play the piano. When Anna and Jerry were both to have played at a convent concert, the Mahoneys, by a diabolical intrigue, succeeded in getting Anna’s name left out of the programme. Of course, Mrs. Martin refused to let Anna play at all, and her friend, Sister Angela—a woman of great intellect—said she was perfectly right. Then Jeremiah Henebry Hayes, Mrs. Martin’s brother, came home from America and stayed with her, driving off each day in a big car with the Stars and Stripes flying from the bonnet, and the madness of the Mahoneys reached such a pitch that they brought home a dissolute brother of their own from Liverpool and hired a car for him. They couldn’t get rid of him after, and it was Mrs. Martin who used to give him the couple of Woodbines on tick. Knowing nothing of Ernest’s improper proposals to her daughter, she received him with great amiability, and waddled round after Anna, continually correcting her over her shoulder in a humorous, refined sort of way, not, as Anna well knew, in any hopes of improving her, but simply to show Ernest that she knew what was what. ‘Well! well!’ she said in mock alarm at one of Anna’s outbursts of vulgarity, ‘where on earth do you pick up these horrible expressions, Anna?...I wonder do young ladies in England talk like that, Mr. Thompson?’ ‘I shouldn’t say there are many young ladies anywhere who can talk like that, Mrs. Martin,’ replied Ernest with great gallantry. *Oh, my!’ exclaimed Mrs. Martin, deliberately misunderstanding him and throwing up her hands in affected horror. ‘You don’t mean she’s as bad as that, surely?’ ‘I mean, Mrs. Martin,’ said Ernest gravely, ‘that I think you have a wonderful daughter.’ ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Martin, looking doubtfully at Anna as if she were some sort of beast she wouldn’t like to pass off on a friend. ‘Of course, she should be all right, she added with great gravity, ironing out another crease or two in the middle of her face. ‘She comes of very good stock, on my side at least.’ ‘I can well believe that, Mrs. Martin,’ said Ernest solemnly, his raw face shining like his well-oiled hair. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have heard of the Henebry Hayeses of Coolnaleama?’ asked Mrs. Martin with quivering modesty. ‘You wouldn’t, to be sure—how could you?’ ‘No,’ admitted Ernest reluctantly, feeling that this was a social gaffe of the first order like not knowing who the Habsburgs were. ‘I can’t honestly say I have, but I knew at once that Anna was somebody out of the common.’ ‘Of course,’ added Mrs. Martin, almost going into convulsions of abnegation, ‘I believe people nowadays don’t think as much of breeding as they used to, but I’m afraid I’m awfully old-fashioned.’ ‘You’re not old-fashioned at all, Ma,’ said Anna candidly. ‘You’re antediluvian.’ ‘Of course, her father’s people weren’t up to much,’ added Mrs. Martin, revenging herself in a ladylike way. ‘You can see it breaking out in her at times.’ ‘He must have been a charming man,’ said Ernest, not following the domestic cut and thrust. ‘Oh, charming,’ agreed Mrs. Martin ironically. ‘He might be alive yet only for that.’ On the whole, though she wasn’t of the enthusiastic sort, she was rather inclined to approve of Ernest. At any rate he was one cut above an Irishman of the same class. ‘Of course,’ she said with great resignation, ‘he’s not what you’d call a gentleman, but I suppose we can’t expect everything.’ ‘Well, anyway,’ retorted Anna, ‘I’m not what you’d call a lady either, so we suit one another fine.’ ‘It’s nice to hear it from your own lips anyway,’ said her mother, bridling up. ‘Well, I’m not,’ declared Anna flatly, ‘and that’s the holy bloody all of it. I’m not a lady, and I couldn’t be a lady, and it’s no use you trying to make me a lady.’ ‘The language is delightful,’ chirped her mother with the affected lightness that always drove Anna mad. ‘I hope you talk like that to them when you go to England. They’re sure to love it.’ ‘Who said I was going to England?’ bawled Anna, growing commoner than ever under such provocation. He didn’t ask me yet.’ ‘Well, I hope when he does you won’t forget you’re a Catholic even if you do forget you’re a lady,’ said her mother, waddling off to bed. ‘A Catholic?’ Anna cried in alarm. ‘What difference does that make?’ ‘Oh, none in the world,’ said her mother cheerfully over her shoulder. ‘Only you can’t marry him unless he turns.’ ‘Oh, Christ!’ said Anna. ‘I beg your pardon, Anna,’ said Mrs. Martin, turning in the doorway, a picture of martyred gentility. ‘Did I hear you say something?’ ‘I said I might as well stuff my head in the gas-oven as I’m about it,’ said Anna despairingly. ‘Ah, well,’ said her mother complacently, ‘I dare say he’ll turn. Most men do.’ But Anna, lying awake, couldn’t take it so lightly. Every morning now she was up at seven; gave her mother tea in bed before going to early Mass; did the shopping and minded the shop three nights a week; and a girl doesn’t do things like that unless she has a man so much on her mind that everything she does seems to be done under his eye. ‘I have it bad all right,’ she thought in her common way. But even her commonness seemed different with Ernest. She had been brought up to look on it as a liability, but Ernest made it seem like a talent. It was bad enough being inhibited the first time, but being inhibited when it came to an offer of marriage seemed to her no better than treason or highway robbery. When he did ask her a couple of weeks later, she looked in the glass, lit a cigarette and threw herself into an arm-chair with her legs crossed; a boyish pose which her mother would certainly have denounced as vulgar and vile. ‘You know I love you, Ernie, don’t you?’ she said tenderly, screwing herself up to use the queer English expressions she had picked up from him. ‘I hoped so certainly,’ said Ernest cautiously. ‘Why?’ ‘If you don’t you ought to,’ said Anna, breaking into the vernacular, ‘because the fact of the bloody matter is, I’m dotty about you.’ ‘What’s the difficulty?’ asked Ernest with a frown. ‘The difficulty is,’ said Anna, taking a puff of the cigarette and contriving to look as brassy as three film stars, ‘that by the time I’m finished you’ll think I’m a proper little welsher.” Ernest grew pale. He rose and stood before the hearth, his hands behind his back. ‘You mean you’re married already?’ he asked with great restraint. ‘Married already?’ echoed Anna. ‘What put that into your head?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, frowning, ‘or is it a kid? Mind,’ he added indifferently, ‘it doesn’t matter to me. You needn’t be afraid to tell me.’ ‘Ah, for God’s sake, Ernest,’ she cried, blushing madly, ‘what sort do you think I am?’ ‘Well,’ he said in genuine surprise, ‘I can’t see any other difficulty.” ‘I’m a Catholic, Ernest,’ she said quietly. ‘A Catholic?’ said Ernest with great interest. ‘Are you really? I thought you were an R.C.’ ‘Same thing.’ ‘Are you sure?’ asked Ernest doubtfully. ‘Positive. But whatever you call it, the fact is, I can’t marry a Protestant.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Ernest, growing red. ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Anna, blushing again at the thought of the reasons. ‘It’s Ma—she’s dotty about religion It has something to do with the kids. She could tell you. ‘I’ll talk to your mother,’ said Ernest, and he meant it. Mrs. Martin was sitting by the fire in the little back kitchen, and when he came in, she sprang to her feet and flustered about him in great concern, but for once Ernest was too angry for ceremony. Anna had never seen him so mad. He gripped the back of a chair and leaned on it like a man about to address a public meeting. ‘Mrs. Martin,’ he said, ‘Anna tells me she can’t marry me because of her religion. Is that true?” ‘Oh,’ cried Mrs. Martin joyously, not forgetting her own manners in spite of his bad ones, ‘are you going to be married? Well, I think she’s very lucky, Ernest, I do, indeed, and I hope you’ll be very happy.’ ‘So do I,’ said Ernest, not to be put off the scent, ‘but I’m blessed if I see how.’ ‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Martin with a little shrug, ‘these things are nothing. We’ll get over them. Of course,’ she added, just to show how easy it was, ‘if you were a Catholic ye could be married in the morning.’ ‘No doubt,’ said Ernest curtly; ‘but you see I’m not a Catholic. I was brought up Church of England, and I see nothing wrong with that.’ ‘Oh, indeed, I had some very dear friends that were Church of England,’ said Mrs. Martin, to show him that intolerance was something foreign to her nature; and she went on her knees before the fire with a poker. ‘You might even be able to get a dispensation,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Mind you, I don’t say you would, but ’twould be worth trying.’ ‘A dispensation? ’ repeated Ernest hopefully. ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s really permission from the Pope. You understand, of course, that if you got it the children would have to be brought up Catholics?’ she asked with a shrewd glance over her shoulder. ‘I don’t give a rap how they’re brought up,’ said Ernest. ‘That’s Anna’s look-out, not mine.’ ‘Well, we could try it,’ said Mrs. Martin doubtfully, and Anna knew from her tone that, having got Ernest over the first fence, she wasn’t going to be stopped by a little thing like a dispensation. A son-in-law that dug with the wrong foot indeed! She was out to make a convert of him. ‘Wouldn’t that fire melt you?’ she said with a sigh. ‘Of course,’ she added, lifting herself back into her chair and joining her hands in her lap, ‘twouldn’t be much of a marriage.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Anna suspiciously. ‘You’d have to be married out of the diocese,’ said Mrs. Martin cheerfully, not concealing the fact that she looked on a marriage where the Mahoneys couldn’t see it as not much better than open scandal. ‘You can imagine what the neighbours would say,’ she added with grim amusement. ‘Haven’t we lovely neighbours, Ernest?’ ‘God Almighty,’ said Anna with chagrin, ‘wouldn’t you think mixed marriages were catching! Isn’t it a wonder they wouldn’t put us up in the Fever Hospital altogether?’ ‘Of course, Ernest,’ said Mrs. Martin with the meek air she put on whenever she was piqued, ‘if that’s how Anna feels about it, I don’t see why ye wouldn’t get married in a registry office. I’m sure the Mahoneys would be delighted.’ ‘Mrs. Martin,’ said Ernest oratorically, ‘I don’t want Anna to do anything she doesn’t think right, but I’ve got my principles too. My religion means as much to me as hers to her.’ ‘I hope it means a great deal more, Ernest,’ said Mrs. Martin, getting in an extra poke at Anna, ‘but I suppose our Church has to be more particular. You see,’ she said modestly, ‘we look on ourselves as the One True Church.’ ‘And what do you think we look on ourselves as?’ asked Ernest indignantly. ‘Mrs. Martin,’ he added in a tone of noble pathos, ‘why should you despise a man because he worships at a different altar?’ ‘Ah, well, ’tisn’t alike, Ernest,’ replied Mrs. Martin with equal gravity. ‘After all, the Catholic Church was founded by Our Blessed Lord when he appointed St. Peter to be his vicar on earth. ’Tis hardly likely He’d choose someone like Henry VIII.’ ‘Why not? ’ asked Ernest indignantly, feeling that some slight on the British people was intended. ‘And all the wives, Ernest?’ asked Mrs. Martin meekly. ‘That would depend on the wives,’ said Ernest, the least bit pompously. (‘My goodness,” said Mrs. Martin afterwards, ‘I don’t know did he even know what I was talking about.’) ‘I don’t think you should judge a man’s actions without considering the circumstances. Anyhow, I’m marrying Anna, even if I have to become a Mohammedan. At the same time, I consider it unnecessary and unfair.’ ‘Ah, well,’ said Mrs. Martin without rancour, spreading the table-cloth for supper, ‘maybe you’ll think differently when you see the light yourself. And indeed,’ she added with a wounded laugh which showed that she thought Ernest rather lacking in good taste, ‘I hope we’ll persuade you that we’re a cut above Mohammedans.’ Anna butted in before Ernest got the chance of defending Mohammedans, and over supper the talk fell on all the people who had married Catholics and been happy ever after. Mrs. Martin had it all from her friend, Sister Angela, in the convent. ‘Who is this Sister Angela?’ asked Ernest suspiciously. ‘That’s the nun that’ll instruct you,’ said Mrs. Martin. ‘We were at school together—a simple sort of soul, but very clever. I’m told she’s one of the three cleverest women in Europe. She instructed Anna for her First Communion.’ ‘She did, said Anna, spoiling the performance as usual. ‘She lit a candle and offered us half a crown if we put our fingers in it” ‘What on earth for?’ asked Ernest. ‘Hell,’ said Anna, ‘I must say it doesn’t seem to have had much effect,’ said her mother by way of no harm. ‘You mean,’ said Ernest, putting down his cup, ‘that I’ve got to go back to Sunday school as if I was a kid?’ ‘Ah, well,’ said Mrs. Martin complacently, ‘you wouldn’t even buy a car without finding out how it worked.’ ‘A car?’ said Ernest, stumped by this bit of feminine logic. ‘I don’t see what cars have to do with it. And how long does this take?’ ‘Ah, not long,’ said Mrs. Martin comfortably. ‘Two or three months.’ ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Ernest. Anna nearly burst into tears. If he had asked her that night to come away for a week-end with him he mightn’t have founded her so inhibited. 3 Next evening she brought him down to the convent, a horrible red-brick building on a hill overlooking the town, with a Sacred Heart on the lawn in front of it. After being shown down a long corridor which you could have skated on, with another life-sized statue at the end of it, into a parlour with open windows, a bookcase and a picture of the Holy Family, Ernest was feeling very sorry for himself. Even Anna was a bit shaken. ‘And you won’t forget to call her ‘sister’, Ernie?’ she whispered coaxingly. ‘I shall try,’ said Ernest, whose panic made him look coarse and bloated. ‘I can’t promise anything though.’ Then the door opened, and in bounced Sister Angela, beaming at them with an array of buck teeth. She had a rather fine, emaciated face with a big-boned nose and an intensely excitable manner exacerbated by deafness. Having been for years the bosom friend of a dotty old parish priest who had been favoured with visions of the Blessed Virgin, she was now collecting evidence to get him beatified. She had cut up and distributed his night-shirts among the poor, and they had worked some remarkable cures, but she still needed something really big in the way of a miracle. She wrung both their hands simultaneously, beaming sharply from one to the other with a bird-like cock of her head. ‘Anna, dear,’ she cooed, ‘I was so delighted when your mother told me. And this is your _fiancé_! What’s his name? Speak a bit loud.’ Anna did. ‘Thompson?’ said Sister Angela, beaming again as if this were a most delightful and unexpected coincidence. ‘He’s not one of us, your mother says,’ she added, still clinging to Ernest’s hand. ‘What persuasion is he?’ ‘Church of England,’ said Anna. ‘No, no, not a bit,’ cried Sister Angela, shaking her head vigorously. ‘I said he was Church of England,’ bawled Anna. ‘Ooo! Church of England?’ hooted Sister Angela, her whole face lighting up. Anna noticed that she had really lovely eyes. ‘The nearest thing to us,’ she added with a bob at Anna. ‘We never have any difficulty. Last month,’ she added, beaming at Ernest, ‘we had a sun-worshipper.’ ‘Go on!’ said Anna. ‘And did he turn?’ ‘I didn’t like him,’ said Sister Angela, clamping her lips and shaking her head. ‘He was a mechanic. You’d think he’d know better. So silly! I wouldn’t say he was sincere, would you?’ ‘I’ll have to leave ye now,’ said Anna in panic, feeling that at any moment Ernest was going to burst out into an impassioned defence of sun-worshippers. She felt rather lonesome, leaving him there to be turned from an English lover into an Irish husband, and wasn’t at all sure she would like the change. When she looked round to smile at him from the door she saw that he liked it even less. It wrung her heart to see him with that queer trapped look. She waited for him in a little paper-shop opposite the convent. When she saw him she ran out to meet him. His face was very red and he was so distraught that he even forgot to raise his hat to her. ‘Well,’ she asked with a smile, ‘how did you get on?’ ‘Blessed if I know,’ said Ernest, with a wild glare in his blue eyes. ‘I’ve listened to some tall stories in my life, but she takes the biscuit.’ ‘But what did she say?’ wailed Anna with a sinking heart. ‘She had nothing to say,’ said Ernest triumphantly. ‘I refuted her on every single point.’ ‘She must have loved that,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t think she did, really,’ said Ernest, who sometimes missed the point. ‘She began about Henry VIII. and his wives. Nobody in this country seems to have heard of anything except Henry VIII. I said “_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_”.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘“Let the dead rest”,’ explained Ernest. ‘Whatever the man’s weaknesses may have been, he can’t come back to defend himself.’ ‘And did you say ‘sister”?’ asked Anna. ‘No,’ cried Ernest in anguish. ‘It sounds so damn silly! She said “I thought you were Church of England”, and I said ‘I was brought up Church of England, but for many years I have been an Abou Ben Adhemite”. And would you believe,’ added Ernest wonderingly, ‘that woman had never heard of Abou Ben Adhem !’ ‘Go on!’ said Anna, biting her lip. ‘And who was he when he was at home?’ ‘Abou Ben Adhem?’ exclaimed Ernest, stopping dead. ‘He was the bloke who said to the angel “Write me as one that loved his fellow men”. Abou Ben Adhem has been the great religious inspiration of my life,’ he added gravely. ‘Well, I hope he inspires you now,’ said Anna, without any great confidence. Ernest simply had no idea of the seriousness of it. He said he’d make it all right next day and pretend he’d been thinking things over, but Anna felt it wouldn’t meet the case at all. So did her mother. Mrs. Martin knew what the Mahoneys would say about atheists and unbelievers. She put on her best things and went down to the convent herself. When she returned she looked very grave, and fluttered about the house, fussing about trifles, till she got on Anna’s nerves. ‘Well?’ bawled Anna at last. ‘Can’t you tell us did you see her?” ‘Sister Angela?’ said Mrs. Martin lightly. ‘She’s not seeing visitors—poor soul!’ she added with a sigh. ‘Go on!” said Anna despairingly. ‘Why not?’ ‘She had a breakdown,’ said Mrs. Martin, with an almost joyous air. ‘She won’t be able to go on with the instructions. He wasn’t Church of England at all, but some religion the nuns had never heard of.’ ‘I know,’ said Anna. ‘An Abou Ben Something.’ ‘Ah, well,’ said her mother resignedly, ‘if ’twas any decent sort of religion they’d be bound to know about it. They think it’s probably something like the Dippers. Of course, I knew he wasn’t a gentleman. Reverend Mother gave me the name of a Dominican theologian you could go to, but she thinks you’d better not have anything more to do with him.’ ‘How soft she has it !’ blazed Anna with tears of fury. ‘Maybe if she could have got a man herself, she wouldn’t have been so smart about letting him go.’ ‘Perhaps you’d sooner instruct him yourself?’ said her mother with ladylike viciousness. ‘I will,’ said Anna desperately, ‘and make a better job of it than they did.’ She put on her hat and coat and strode blindly out with no notion of where she was going. She passed the little church on the hill, and the thought that she might never walk down the steps of it in wreath and veil with Ernest gave her a desperate courage. She knocked at the presbytery door and asked for the curate. ‘I’m Anna Martin, she said nervously, ‘and I’m engaged to an English bloke that’s over here on a job. He wants to turn, but he can’t make head or tail of what the nuns tell him.’ ‘Sit down and tell me about it,’ said the curate amiably, turning off the wireless. ‘Will you have a fag?’ ‘I will,’ said Anna, crossing her legs and opening her coat. She liked the curate. ‘As true as God,’ she said with her lip quivering, ‘I’m nearly dotty.’ ‘What religion is he?” ‘An Abou Ben Something,’ said Anna. ‘You never heard of it?’ ‘I didn’t,’ said the curate. ‘I thought you said he was English.’ ‘He is,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t know much about it. ’Tis something about loving your neighbour—the usual stuff. And damn little love there is knocking round when you start looking for it,’ she added bitterly. ‘Ah,’ said the curate, ‘we’ll soon put him right for you.’ ‘You won’t have any trouble with him,’ said Anna, ‘so long as you don’t mind what he says. He’s the best fellow in the world only that he likes to hear himself talk.’ At the presbytery gate the following evening she gave Ernest final instructions. Desperation had changed Anna. She was masterful and precise, and Ernest by this time had begun to realise that there were a lot of things he didn’t know. ‘And mind,’ said Anna, ‘you’re to call him “father”.’ ‘I shan’t forget,’ said Ernest. ‘And whatever the hell you do, don’t contradict him,’ said Anna. ‘There’s nothing they hate like being contradicted.’ After that she felt she had done all she could, so she went to the chapel and said a prayer. When she met Ernest later on she had every reason to be satisfied. The curate and Ernest had got on like a house afire, and even though it was only his first lesson, Ernest said he was converted already. One Saturday afternoon six weeks later he made his profession of faith and renounced all his previous heresies, including Abou Ben Adhemism; made his first confession; was baptized, and received absolution for all the sins of his past life. Unfortunately the Mahoneys had got hold of the convent version of it, and were putting it round that he was a Turk. Mrs. Martin countered this by exaggerating his wealth, rank and education. He cut a grand figure next morning, coming from the altar with Anna, beautifully dressed, his hands joined and his oiled head bowed. It was a sunny morning in autumn and as they came out of the church, an old market woman threw her arms round him and kissed him on both checks. ‘Wisha, God bless you, my lovely boy!’ she bawled, and at the sight of Ernest’s blush, Anna realised how far he had travelled to win her and was moved to tears of joy. ‘All right, Ernie boy, she said. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’ 4 On the Holyhead boat Ernest began to behave in a very queer way. He disappeared into the saloon and when Anna saw him again he was tight. It wasn’t in the least like him and it worried her. ‘Hallo, boy,’ she said, taking him by the arm. ‘Any. thing wrong?’ ‘Why?’ asked Ernest, in a maudlin tone. ‘Do I look as if there was something wrong?’ ‘You look like a man that was going back to gaol,’ replied Anna candidly. ‘Gaol?’ exclaimed Ernest, breaking free of her and looking at her with dumbfounded eyes. ‘Why should you say that?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna in alarm. ‘You’re not, are you?’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ replied Ernest, ‘I probably am.’ ‘Go on!’ she said with fictitious lightness. ‘What did you do? Pinch something?’ He was really outraged at that and drew himself up with an air of injured dignity. ‘Do I look like a thief?’ he asked in a pained voice. ‘You could be a damn sight worse from my point of view,’ replied Anna, and at that moment it struck her that in some ways he wasn’t at all unlike the pictures of Henry VIII. ‘You’re not going to tell me you’re married already?’ Ernest leaned over the edge of the boat as if he were going to be sick, and nodded, too full for words. ‘That’s grand,’ said Anna with bitter restraint. ‘And kids, I suppose?’ ‘Two,’ said Ernest in a choking voice. ‘Sweet of you to tell me,’ said Anna, going white. ‘Well, can you blame me?’ Ernest asked, drawing himself up with something like real dignity. ‘I loved you. I worshipped you. I knew from the first moment that you were the only woman for me. I simply had to have you.’ ‘Oh, you had me all right, Ernie,’ said Anna, unable even at this most tragic moment of her life to be anything but common. But in spite of Ernest’s appeals and even his tears, she left him at Holyhead and returned home. She might be common but she wouldn’t deliberately do something she thought was wrong. She felt sure she was going to have a baby; that was the only thing that was lacking to her degradation. Her mother on the whole was very good about it. Even the baby she accepted with resignation as being the will of God—anything that couldn’t be concealed from the Mahoneys seemed to be her definition of the will of God. But Anna couldn’t accept it with such resignation. The whole road was humming with spite. When she went into town she ran the gauntlet of scores of malicious eyes. ‘She knew, she knew! Sure, of course she knew! Didn’t Sister Angela warn her? It was all grandeur and false pride. She wanted to say she could get a husband—a pasty-faced thing like that!’ But the pitying ones were worse. ‘Ah, wisha, poor Anna! Sure, she was very simple. Wouldn’t you think she’d know that a foreigner like that was too sweet to be good?’ One night she was sitting in the back kitchen listening to her mother and a neighbour whispering in the shop, and when the neighbour had gone Anna strode out and leaned against the jamb of the door with arms folded, blowsy and resentful. ‘What “poor Anna” were ye talking about?’ she asked. ‘Ah, indeed, Anna, you may well ask,’ said her mother. ‘But why the “poor Anna”?’ her daughter went on reasonably. ‘After all I didn’t marry a boozer or a fellow that beat me, like that one. I’m going to have a kid which is more than a lot of them can say. I got some fun out of life anyway.’ ‘I hope you’ll tell everyone that,’ said her mother encouragingly. ‘They’ll be all delighted to know you’re not down-hearted about it. I’m sure you won’t be long getting a husband.’ ‘Why?’ asked Anna, ‘Must I be “poor Anna” before I can get a husband too?’ ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be a great deal more,’ said her mother. ‘That sounds as if ’twas going to be great fun,’ said Anna. ‘Fun is hardly what a girl in your position ought to be looking for,’ said her mother tartly. ‘Do you know I was thinking that?’ said Anna in a heart-breaking drawl. ‘It just crossed my mind that I wasn’t suited to my situation at all.’ (‘Oh, Cripes !’ she thought, as she suddenly realised what she was saying, just like the last maid when she was giving notice, ‘there goes the blooming china!’ At that moment she realised that there wasn’t a drop of Henebry Hayes blood left in her veins; from head to foot she was pure Martin, a woman of no class.) ‘I’m not grand enough for this neighbourhood at all, Ma,’ she went on recklessly. ‘I think I’ll have to go somewhere I’m better suited.’ She crossed the shop under her mother’s eyes and began to mount the stairs. She was suddenly filled with a great sense of liberation and joy. The strain of being a real Henebry Hayes is something you don’t appreciate till it is removed. ‘I’m common,’ she thought delightedly. ‘Poor Ernest doesn’t know what he’s going to get in me. Poor lamb, he has no notion!’ And then, filled with tender longing, she sat down and began to scrawl a long, loving, rambling, illiterate letter to the man who had made her commonness worth while. First Published: English Story (6th Series 1945), 1945. Source:The Common Chord; 1947. URI: https://archive.org/details/commonchord0000fran/page/12/