An Ocean Between Us

by Rachel Quinn

  After that, Aileen fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning Aileen was woken by the noise of her three brothers getting up and getting dressed.

  There was a second when she was sure Niall hadn’t told her – a second when he wasn’t going to join the British Army after all. But Fergus opened a window and the cool morning mist on her face put paid to those thoughts.

  Then the three boys left the room, as they always did, to give the girls some privacy to get dressed.

  Briana, lying behind her, put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Aileen?’ she whispered. ‘Mammy told me about yesterday, that Niall came to the house to talk to Daddy.’

  Aileen got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Briana shuffled over and sat next to her. ‘Mammy’s really upset, Daddy’s gone all quiet, and the rest of us are confused as heck.’

  Aileen glanced at her, but looked down to her bare feet and said nothing.

  ‘What in the name of God happened, Aileen?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  Briana held her hand. ‘How so?’

  ‘I know you mean well, Briana, but you’ll know what’s happened in time. It’s just . . . you need to let things be for a while.’

  ‘All right.’ Briana nodded slowly. ‘If that’s what you prefer.’

  A few minutes later the family were all sitting around the breakfast table.

  But something was wrong.

  As usual, the room was thick with the aromas of porridge and freshly baked soda bread. Cups of black tea were dotted around the table. But this morning there was no talk of what everyone was up to today, of the latest village gossip, of what weather they were all hoping for. Today no words were spoken, and nobody would look directly at Aileen.

  Her mother came over and put a plate of two fried eggs in front of her. ‘Eat that, Aileen. You must be famished, what with you missing your tea last night.’

  ‘Thank you, Mammy.’

  Aileen waited a moment, then picked out a chunk of soda bread and placed it on her plate. She sliced one of the eggs, dipped the bread in the runny yolk, and started nibbling on it.

  Still, nobody else spoke.

  Then, to her left, her father mumbled something to himself. While Aileen ate one of the eggs the air was filled with clinks and crunches and slurps. No words. She looked down at the remaining egg, now all alone.

  Her father groaned and dropped his cutlery down on his plate.

  Fergus, Gerard and Briana glanced over, but young Frank didn’t dare. They all started to eat more quickly, keeping their eyes down.

  Daddy mumbled something again, this time with a little more aggression.

  Aileen felt sick, and placed her knife and fork down, next to the other egg.

  ‘Are you not that hungry yet?’ her mother said softly.

  Aileen shook her head, and opened her mouth.

  Before she could speak, the flat of her father’s hand slammed against the table.

  ‘This is enough, Aileen,’ he boomed across to her. ‘For God’s sake tell us what happened last night.’

  He waited. There was no reply. Only Aileen dared look him in the eye.

  ‘Tell me why you’re upset,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not upset. I’m . . . I’m happy.’

  ‘Ha!’ He looked up and around the room. ‘Happy? Jesus Christ almighty.’ He waited, but she was still silent. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to do this, but you’ve forced me into it, girl. Yesterday Niall asked me for permission to propose to you.’

  Briana choked and coughed. The boys gawped across, first at Aileen, then at their father.

  ‘I told him, yes, of course, because he seems like a good man and all that, and you told me you liked him. So as your father I have the right to know. What in God’s name happened?’

  ‘I’m confused, Daddy. Just stop it.’

  ‘Confused? Are you? Are you really? The thing is, I sent you to see him, and I expected you to run home with tears of joy and the biggest smile on your face I’d ever seen. But no, you’re with the misery and all that, behaving like he’s said he never wants to see you again. Then again, of course, you have his ring on your finger. And you say you’re confused?’

  ‘Daddy. Please. Just stop asking me or I’ll be away for a walk.’

  ‘Oh no, you won’t, girl.’ He thumped all four fingertips of his right hand on to his chest. ‘Not until I know what’s going on, you won’t.’

  ‘You can’t stop her going for a walk,’ Briana said.

  He glared at her, baring his teeth. ‘Oh yes, I can. She’s my daughter and until she’s married she’ll do what I tell her to do. And so will you, for that matter.’

  ‘But she’s upset.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ He turned back to Aileen. ‘Now tell me what’s going on. If that man has ruined what should be one of the happiest days of your life, I want to know what he did.’

  ‘But I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘Well, I say you can. If any man breaks my daughter’s heart I need to know about it.’ He waited, then pointed to his three sons. ‘You, you and you, go to the bedroom.’

  They stood up, leaving their food half-eaten, and silently filed into the bedroom.

  ‘Now, does that help?’

  Aileen shook her head.

  ‘If I have to get someone to take me to the Curragh Camp, find yer man and ask him myself, then that’s what I’ll do. D’you hear me, Aileen?’

  ‘I’m not talking about it, Daddy. I just won’t!’

  ‘Daddy,’ Briana said, ‘perhaps another day might be better.’

  Now he picked up a knife and pointed it at her. ‘I won’t be telling you again, Briana. Stay out of it.’ He turned back to Aileen. ‘Now you – just tell me.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ Aileen said, standing up. ‘And that’ll be the end of it.’

  Her father stood up too, his face now red and starting to bead with sweat. ‘Perhaps my belt might change your mind, girl.’

  He started to unbuckle. Briana stood up too and shouted out, ‘No!’ But her words were ignored.

  Aileen started to cry again, she ran for the door but her father grabbed her hand. He pulled and shook her arm until their faces were inches apart.

  ‘Tell me!’ he bawled out. ‘Tell me! Tell me this minute, girl!’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Aileen shouted back at his face, her own a mess of tears. ‘He asked me to marry him and I said yes. So I’ll be marrying him. I’ll be marrying him as soon as he gets back.’

  ‘Gets back? Gets back from where?’

  ‘He’s joining the British Army to fight in the war, and before you say anything I’m hating him for doing it more than you can imagine. But I love him too and I’ll be marrying him when the war’s over.’ She gasped for breath, snatching her wrist out of her father’s grasp. ‘Are you happy now?’ she shouted at his frozen, shocked face.

  She turned and ran to the bedroom, smashing the door against the wall as she opened it. She ran past her brothers, all sitting patiently on the bed, and jumped back into her bed, pulling the covers up over her head.

  She lay there sobbing for some time, then was disturbed by the shouts. There was no way she could blot them out – they were too loud, too angry. She was sure everyone in Leetown could hear the racket coming from the next room.

  ‘The British Army?’ her father said. ‘The British Army? The turncoat bastard’s joining the Brits?’

  She heard a crash – the sound of plates and cutlery skidding along the table and crashing against the wall.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he bawled. ‘Damn everything, I can’t live with that. I can’t let a daughter of mine marry a man like that.’

  Then Briana’s voice: ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘I’m warning you, Briana!’

  ‘But she’s upset to tears, Daddy. She’s had her heart broken and all you can think of is your precious politics?’

  ‘Don’t you DARE speak to your father like that!’<
br />
  ‘Ah, you’re PATHETIC, so y’are.’

  ‘And you’ve had enough warnings. Come here!’

  More noises of crockery or ornaments or something being smashed, of chairs falling to the floor, and of Briana screaming.

  Then came another sound, one from Aileen’s mother. But this wasn’t any Mammy Aileen had ever heard before. It had to be her, but then again it was such a powerful screech it scared Aileen more than her father had. ‘PUT THE BELT AWAY!’ it said. ‘DAN! PUT IT AWAY!’ Then, not so piercing but still a shout: ‘Briana, go to your bedroom!’

  Then the bedroom door flew open again, and Briana’s heaving, whimpering body joined Aileen. They held each other.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Aileen said. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’

  They stayed together in bed for the rest of the morning, only rousing themselves when they were certain all the men had left the house.

  ‘Are y’all right?’ Aileen whispered. ‘Did Daddy hurt you?’

  ‘He didn’t get the chance, thanks be to God.’

  ‘Grand.’ They both shuffled up the bed, sitting at the top with their shoulders resting uncomfortably on the wall. To Aileen it felt as if the rough cobbles at her back were punishing her, like she was once again a naughty ten-year-old sent to bed. But more than that, it felt as if her life and dreams had been turned upside down and given a few kicks by a prize stallion.

  ‘What’ll I do?’ she said, almost groaning the words out.

  Briana gave her a look of pity. ‘You have to decide yourself, Aileen. You’re the only one who can work out whether you want him more than you want Daddy’s blessing.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll come round?’

  The pain on Briana’s face was her only answer. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Whatever else has happened, we have to eat.’

  She coaxed Aileen off the bed and into the living room. The hunched figure of their mother stood over the metal washtub, her shoulders yawing from side to side in time with the scrubbing of clothes. She stopped for a few seconds, hooking her head around to offer them a disdainful stare, then returned to the scrubbing.

  Briana took a step toward her. ‘Mammy, have we got any—’

  ‘You know where to find it all.’

  Together, and almost silently, they got soda bread, butter, plates and knives out of the cupboard, and sat at the table, eating not speaking, occasionally glancing at their mother.

  Eventually, their mother wrung out the workshirt she was washing, grunting as she put her back into it, then wiped her well-developed forearm across her brow and walked over. ‘I can only hope you’re happy with yourselves,’ she said. ‘Upsetting your father like that – and the boys too.’

  Aileen and Briana stopped eating to glance at each other. Aileen drew breath to answer, but Briana silenced her with a small shake of the head.

  ‘I’ll assume you’ll not be seeing the fella again.’

  Aileen felt her mother’s stare burning into her and took a moment to respond. ‘Well, you assume wrong,’ she said blankly.

  ‘Aileen,’ Briana hissed. ‘Don’t say that. Let me—’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ their mother said, shaking her head. ‘Aileen, just tell everyone you’ll not be seeing the man again, and after a while you’ll believe it yourself.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  Mammy looked at Briana, thrusting a finger toward Aileen. ‘Tell your sister, will you?’

  Briana swapped her gaze from her sister to her mother and back. She let out a long sigh. ‘Perhaps Mammy’s right, Aileen,’ she said. ‘It won’t feel like it now, but there will be other men. And if Niall goes away you’ll be forgetting about him soon enough.’

  Aileen choked, almost being sick. She threw her chair back and ran to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself on to the bed.

  The door soon opened again, her mother’s imposing figure almost filling the gap. ‘Now don’t you be misbehaving like that, Aileen. You’re a grown woman now, not a child.’

  Aileen was now crying. Her words were almost whimpers. ‘But I love him, Mammy. I love him.’

  ‘Love? Aach, what’s love? You’re a pretty girl, Aileen. Sure, there’ll be other men – men who care enough about you not to risk their lives. I mean, what sort of a life would he be able to give you anyway?’ She heaved a sorry sigh, leaning on one hip. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s for the best. We all know that, and in time you’ll accept it too.’

  Briana appeared behind her, and she stood aside, ushering her toward Aileen.

  ‘It’ll be all right soon enough,’ Briana said. ‘You’ll get over him and move on to some other fella, so you will.’

  Aileen lifted her blouse up to her face and covered it, weeping. Then she looked up to see her mother give her head a rueful shake.

  ‘You need to grow up, young lady. Life’s hard sometimes, tis the way, but sulking does nobody any favours.’ She turned and wandered away, and moments later Aileen heard the scrub of brush on cloth resume.

  Briana shut the door and sat next to her sister, resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Shh,’ she said, holding her face inches away from Aileen’s. ‘Don’t listen to Mammy,’ she whispered slowly and clearly. ‘You do what you damn well want to, d’you hear me?’

  Aileen’s face froze for a moment, staring at her sister.

  ‘I had to go along with her,’ Briana said. ‘I felt awful. I’m sorry.’

  A smile broke through Aileen’s tears, and she grabbed and hugged her sister. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘We have fresh water this morning, so wash your face and let’s go for a walk on the strand. There’s a little sun today.’

  ‘So there is,’ Aileen replied.

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted you,’ Aileen said a few minutes later as they walked along the deserted beach, heading for Bevanstown, the next village along the coast.

  ‘Aach, away with ye,’ Briana replied. ‘Mammy likes to think she’s the boss, just like Daddy does. The truth’s somewhere else.’

  They walked on, letting the sharp salty breeze clear their heads. As they approached Bevanstown, Aileen pointed to the haphazard train of houses facing the shore. ‘So, this Michael Delaney fellow, the one you were talking about, does he still live there?’

  ‘Ah, he’s long gone, so he is.’

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  Briana looked away, far out to sea, then shook her head. A few paces on she stopped and took another look at the houses. ‘Ah, who am I kidding?’ she said. ‘Of course I know what happened to him. After Daddy put a stop to him seeing me I used to walk up this way a couple of times a week, passing through Bevanstown, hoping I’d bump into him, that we’d strike up a conversation. I used to go back home and dream that had really happened. Later on, the dream became that we were secretly seeing each other every week, lying together between the sand dunes up here and talking. And then that we were secretly in love and he’d vowed to marry me and sweep me away from here, to our own cottage, to somewhere Daddy didn’t know about.’

  ‘Oh, Briana. That’s the saddest thing.’

  ‘I thought the dreams were going to turn me mad, so I did. I knew I couldn’t forget about him and I had to do something. So I started asking around, and found out he’d gone to London. Something small in politics there, so they say. And that sounds about right, he was always interested that way. For almost a year I kept asking how he was. Then the dreams came back – dreams that I’d gone to London with him and we were living together in a big house there. The dreams only stopped when I met Johnny from Dublin. That might have been the appeal. He helped me forget. He wasn’t so clever, but it was there, Aileen. I know we could have been happy together. So then I had dreams about him, that we were going to be married and move away.’ She showed Aileen a pained smile. ‘And then he had the arguments with Daddy.’

  ‘Have you never thought of going up there, finding out if he still lives there?’

  �
��To Dublin?’ Briana laughed. ‘I tried that, so I did, a few months later. I said I was going to visit our Cathleen and James up there. Well, I did see them, of course I did – and they were both living in fairly horrible conditions, I can tell you. But then I looked for Johnny. Apparently he went to Scotland, then England, working with the road gangs, laying the black stuff. Found a wife somewhere in the Midlands and settled there, so they said. It made me so unhappy to know that. I wondered whether there was something wrong with me – that I was cursed.’

  ‘Don’t you be saying that, Briana. And I’m sorry. You’ve not had much luck with the men, have you?’

  ‘Oh, I still have my hopes. I’m hardly an old maid and I haven’t given up by any means. I just feel sorry for myself sometimes.’

  They walked on a little more, just past Bevanstown, to where the coastal cottages at the top of the beach thinned out, giving way to mounds of sand sprouting long grasses.

  ‘C’mon,’ Briana said, heading up there. ‘Do me a favour and come over here with me. I find it peaceful.’

  Soon they were both sitting shoulder to shoulder between the huge sand dunes, sheltered from the coastal breeze. Compared to walking along the beach there was an eerie quietness.

  Briana closed her eyes. ‘Tis good here. I can pretend things are different. Better.’ She said nothing more, just breathed long, slow breaths.

  Aileen closed her eyes too. She was quiet, but not for long. ‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘Something I didn’t tell anyone.’

  Briana quickly opened her eyes, her face stern, and drew her head back ever so slightly. ‘Ah, no, Aileen. Don’t tell me . . . you’re not . . . you didn’t let him . . . ?’

  ‘Aach, shut up.’ Aileen giggled a little and blushed. ‘He’s not like that.’ She straightened her face, now trying to look as serious as Briana. ‘No, I . . . I’m to see Niall again on Saturday, for the last time before he goes away.’

  ‘And so, how are you going to manage that?’

  ‘He says he’s going to come to the cottage. He says he’s going to tell Daddy – break the news, so he puts it – that he’s joining the British Army.’