‘Bill,’ Cathleen said eventually, putting a cool hand on top of his and looking deep into his troubled eyes, ‘do you truly want us to be together?’
‘Yes, I do, Cathleen,’ he said and she knew he was speaking from the heart.
‘If you do, then we can make this work,’ she went on, calmly, like a mother calming a fretful child. ‘We’ll work on them.’
Bill stared at her but said nothing. He knew that someone as sweet and reasonable as Cathleen would never be able to understand the depth of his sisters’ prejudices and the strength of their bitterness. They could ‘work on them’ for a hundred years and they would never change their minds. Of that he was quite certain.
‘And I have some good news,’ she continued. ‘My mammy has invited you over for lunch. She wants to meet this man that I speak so highly of.’
‘Have you told her that I’m not a Catholic?’ he asked.
‘She guessed when I told her your surname was Lewis.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She thought from the name you must be Jewish.’ They both laughed.
‘So how did she react when she found out the truth?’ he asked.
‘She was shocked, I’m not going to lie to you, and she certainly didn’t approve, but I told her she had to meet you. I told her you are an incredibly fine and good man. I told her how much she would like you. “I didn’t set out to meet a Protestant.” I told her. “It just happened that way.” So, she said she would be willing to meet you, to give you a chance.’
Even through the haze of alcohol Bill was touched by Cathleen’s words and by the fact that she had been willing to stand up for him and for their relationship. It seemed that there might be hope for them as a couple after all.
Even though he arrived in Lucan a little late, Bill’s charm worked its magic on Cathleen’s mother and her brother, Mike. The two men instantly fell to talking about motorbikes, while the lunch of bacon and cabbage was being prepared. Cathleen sat back and watched in wonder as Bill chatted and joked with her mother over the meal as if he had known her all his life, loving him all the more for his ability to make the old woman laugh out loud. After lunch the two of them continued to talk while they enjoyed a cigarette, sending Mike and Cathleen out for a walk in the garden.
‘I like your Bill very much,’ her mother whispered as they prepared to take their leave and Bill was revving up the bike, ‘but there’s still the problem of him not being a Catholic.’
Cathleen kissed her mother goodbye and ran to jump on the back of the motorbike without saying anything else. At least they had made some progress and she didn’t want to say anything on the spur of the moment which might jeopardise the feeling of goodwill that enveloped them all as they waved and sped off down the road.
Bill came out to Lucan to visit a couple more times. Encouraged by the reception he received from all Cathleen’s family members, he steeled himself to face his own family once and for all and formally announce that he intended to marry Cathleen and to ask them to give their blessing. He asked his brothers for advice, and all of them agreed that the women needed to meet Cathleen before things got completely out of hand and relationships broke down irrevocably. Both Susie and Annie had become preoccupied with their own wedding plans and Bill hoped that they would have mellowed since the first shock of the news. Once they were married they would both be moving out of the family home anyway and would be less affected by anything he might choose to do with his life. It did not take long for him to realise he had completely misjudged the situation.
‘You mean you are still going out with this woman?’ Annie demanded, obviously horrified.
‘Yes, of course. We intend to marry.’
‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ Susie said. ‘We assumed you had seen the error of your ways and it had all cooled down.’
‘No, no,’ he assured them, ‘quite the opposite. We intend to marry.’
‘She’ll only be after your money,’ Annie said. ‘That’s all she’ll be wanting.’
‘I would like to bring Cathleen to meet you. I am sure that if you got to know her you would like her and it would put your mind at rest about her motives.’
‘We don’t want any Catholics in this house,’ the sisters said, almost in unison. ‘We have absolutely no intention of meeting this woman.’
Although Cathleen’s family liked Bill immensely, they didn’t want the couple to marry either.
They could see no way out of their predicament. Neither of them felt able to convert to the other’s religion, knowing it would alienate them for ever from their families, and so they remained trapped in a sort of limbo, wanting to be together but not quite able to abandon their families completely. The strain inevitably took its toll on their relationship, making them argue even though both of them wanted the same things. Bill believed he had no future in Ireland without Cathleen at his side and began to lose interest in his business. It was as if he was deliberately cutting all his ties to his homeland. When, on top of all the ill-feeling with his sisters, his beloved dog, Trigger, died of old age, he couldn’t see any point in staying.
Both aware that they had reached a point where a decision had to be made they took the bike for one last trip out into the Wicklow Mountains. Stopping at a favourite spot they sat in silence for a while, just staring at the view and listening to the birdsong, neither of them wanting to say the things that they both knew needed to be said. Eventually Bill broke the silence.
‘It’s not working, Cathleen,’ he said. ‘We’re not working. The fighting and shouting – everything’s going wrong.’
‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I don’t know how it’s got so bad. I just don’t seem to be able to help it.’
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe.
‘We have to leave Ireland, Cathleen,’ he said. ‘We have to leave now if we want to make this work.’
She buried her face in his chest, not wanting to look at him and not wanting to speak, torn in half by her desire to be with him and her fear of cutting herself off from her family and heading into the unknown. Moving fifteen kilometres from Lucan to Dublin had been a big enough step; she wasn’t sure how her mother would cope if she announced she was planning to leave the country altogether, and with a Protestant.
Taking her silence to be agreement, Bill wrote to his brother Eddie about finding work in London. Eddie wrote back to tell him that he knew of a job as a joiner in the film company where he worked.
‘It can be yours if you want it,’ he wrote.
Bill felt a new surge of optimism about the future. He was happy to put all the feuding and arguing behind him. He was so angry with his sisters that he didn’t care if he never saw them again. As long as he had Cathleen by his side he knew he would be happy. He would also have Eddie in London to help him get settled. He immediately wrote back, accepting the job, committing himself to making the break from Ireland, and went to see Cathleen to tell her what he had decided.
‘Come to England with me,’ he said, ‘and then we can live together.’
‘You mean live in sin?’ she said, feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of defying everything she had ever been taught to believe in.
‘We can get married,’ he said, ‘once we’re settled.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Bill,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I could just up and leave my family. Mammy is getting old now and frail. I don’t think she will be with us that much longer.’
‘Just forget about