Read Online Mother’s Only Child by Anne Bennett - Free Book Online

into Derry after she’d taken tea with his family. Maria hadn’t wanted to go to tea, but Greg had insisted. Greg’s parents and his two brothers and two sisters were welcoming, and when Maria left, she knew they would accept her into their family with little or no trouble.
    They went again to a cinema in Derry to see The Road to Singapore, which starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Maria had never heard of them, but Greg told her these were the names of big stars that were in the major films of the time. Maria enjoyed the film immensely.
    At the door, Greg took Maria in his arms and kissed her neck and eyes before moving to her lips. This time his tongue parted her lips gently and sent sharp shafts of desire that she didn’t fully understand shooting through her body. She gasped with the shock of it, the beginnings of sexual awareness.
    ‘I love you, Greg!’ She didn’t know where the words came from. She knew she meant them—that with every fibre of her being she loved Greg Hopkins.
    Greg was overjoyed. ‘I love you, Maria Foley, with every bit of me. You mean everything to me.’
    They kissed and kissed again. Greg kept his arms around Maria though his hands tingled to explore every inch of her luscious body.
    As Maria donned the overall and hat that every vestige of hair had to be tucked beneath, and began to work on the coarse army garb on the heavy machines, she couldn’t help contrasting her life now with the life she’d once had offered to her. This work was mind-blowingly boring. The heat in the factory was stifling, and the lint floating in the air stung her eyes and made her sneeze and cough.
    But the other girls made it all worthwhile. They laughed and joked, seeming not to care for the inconveniences.
    ‘All I care about is the money,’ Joanne, the girl sitting next to Maria, said. ‘Everything else is secondary to that. What do you say, Maria?’
    ‘I feel the same,’ Maria said.
    ‘And we get a good whack for what we do when all is said and done,’ Joanne said.
    They did. It was piecework and if you were a fast worker, you could make as much as five or six pounds a week. If they can put up with it then so can I, Maria thought determinedly. She laughed and joked with the best of them and found it helped the day pass quicker.
    Nevertheless, she was pleased and relieved when the factory’s blast declared the end of that first day for she felt incredibly weary. ‘Someone’s going to be in the pink all right,’ shouted a woman from the head of the queueshuffling towards the factory gate. ‘There’s a soldier boy waiting for someone.’
    Maria’s heart leapt. She shuffled forward eagerly. Soon she was through the gate and Greg was in front of her. Once she was in his arms, tiredness vanished as if it had never been and they were kissing hungrily despite the people passing along the road. No one seemed to mind. In fact it seemed to lighten the dismal late October day to see a couple so much in love.
    Maria and Greg were oblivious to everyone but each other.
    ‘I’m taking you for a meal tonight,’ Greg said, and as Maria was about to protest, he put up his hand. ‘No arguments,’ he said. ‘I have cleared it with Bella and Dora, and tonight, as it is my last night, they are seeing to your mother. Come on, we have a few precious hours together—let’s not spend them any other way than enjoying ourselves.’
    And they did enjoy themselves. Greg was good fun and well read. He had an opinion on most subjects, and by the end of the meal, Maria couldn’t think how the hours had sped so fast.
    She clung to him that night as he saw her home, knowing she’d not see him for weeks, even months. She could cope with that, but what she fretted about was that Greg would be in some battleground, being blown or shot to bits.
    ‘Please, please be careful,’ she begged him, as they cuddled together.
    ‘I will, my darling,’ Greg said between the little kisses he was planting on her lips