by Melissa Hill
“And Neil too – what’s going on, Laura?”
Laura grinned from ear to ear as did Neil.
“Well, I have some good news,” she began, looking from her mother to Joe, who was sitting quietly at the kitchen table, waiting for his dinner.
Maureen dropped her tea towel. “You’re pregnant!” she wailed happily. “Oh thank God, thank God.”
Laura’s face fell. Was Maureen doing decades of the rosary, hoping that her eldest daughter would fall pregnant?
“Oh, this is the best thing that could have happened.”
She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother so excited about anything.
“Laura’s not pregnant,” Neil said, when Laura didn’t speak, “but she has some great news about the business.”
Laura saw Maureen actually roll her eyes to heaven. Her mother didn’t even bother trying to hide it.
“I was going to tell you my good news, Mam,” she began, her tone cold. “I was going to tell you that a famous fashion designer has asked me to provide jewellery for her new collection – a collection that will be shown all over the world, in all the magazines, on television and in the newspapers. I was going to tell you that I – little old useless me with all my notions and talk – have finally begun living my dream, have finally succeeded in doing everything I’ve always wanted to do. I was going to tell you that somebody – somebody important – had enough faith in me, and my work, to take a chance on me. But judging by the look on your face, I don’t think I’ll bother.”
Laura had never spoken to her mother like that before. In fact, she didn’t think that Maureen had ever let her speak for that length of time without some interruption or smart comment.
Maureen looked stunned and Joe looked nervous, as if caught in the eye of a storm.
The silence in the small kitchen was almost potent.
Neil spoke quickly to fill the void. “Maureen, I can understand how you got the wrong end of the stick there and no, Laura isn’t pregnant, but didn’t you hear her news? The fashion designer is called Amanda Verveen.” He shrugged, as if in exasperation. “I know, I haven’t heard of her either, but apparently she’s very popular. She’s Irish too – I think she won something on The Late Late Show a few years ago – anyway, she wants Laura to work with her – isn’t it brilliant?”
Maureen slumped down on one of the kitchen chairs.
“What is wrong with you, Laura?” she said, flabbergasted. “What are you trying to prove?”
“To prove?”
“With all this jewellery business?”
“Maureen, did you not hear –”
“Leave it, Neil.” Maureen interjected. “To be perfectly honest, you’re the cause of all her problems. Laura was perfectly happy in her office job before you came along and starting putting ideas in her head.”
“But I wasn’t happy, Mam, you know I wasn’t happy.” Laura’s eyes flashed wildly. “Why do you think I spent all those years in Art College – for fun? Why do you think I spent every bit of spare time I had designing and making things – doing what I really love?”
“But you had a good job …” her mother said sorrowfully.
“My being happy doesn’t matter to you though, does it? It’s what makes you happy that’s important, isn’t it? As long as you can say that Laura is doing well and has a great job in Dublin – never mind that she hates it so much she feels as though a piece of her is dying with every passing day – as long as you can say that Laura is doing what she supposed to be doing, then you’re happy. Well, do you know something?” Laura put a hand on her hip. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to make you happy, struggling to make you proud of me, and all I’ve being doing is making myself miserable because it’ll never work. Nothing will please you. I want a life – my kind of life. And from now on, I’m going to get it. To hell with what you think, Mam, because I just don’t give a damn anymore.”
Without another glance at either her mother or her father, Laura raced out of the room, the door slamming deafeningly behind her.
Stone-faced and unmoved, Maureen lifted her chin into the air. “A piece of her dying every day,” she repeated sarcastically. “Did you ever hear such rubbish in all your life?” Then she sniffed. “Well, Joe, after all we’ve done for her, at least now we know what she thinks of us.”
Neil shook his head sadly from the doorway.
“You’re a very silly woman, Maureen Fanning,” he said, “because you really have no idea what you’ve lost.”
Later that evening, sitting at her own kitchen table, Laura was inconsolable. “I can’t believe it, Neil,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks as he held both of her hands in his. “I can’t believe she reacted like that. Doesn’t she care? Does she take some kind of sick pleasure in making me feel like crap, screwing up my confidence, making me feel unworthy?”
Neil looked worried. Laura had been saying things like this all the way back in the car. This could be far, far worse than it looked and could degenerate into an all-out break with her family, something he didn’t think Laura could handle. His own mother had been thrilled for Laura – in fact, the news had given her a real boost this week. Pamela adored Laura and knew all about Maureen’s reservations, but couldn’t understand them. To Pamela, enterprise was something to be celebrated and not ridiculed in the way that Maureen did.
At this stage, Neil too had had enough of the Fannings. They had upset and taken advantage of his wife for long enough, and their wedding day, which was supposed to have been a quiet reserved affair, had been almost ruined by the carry-on of Maureen’s family who had made absolute fools of themselves falling around on the dance-floor, and annoying other guests with their over-the-top drunkenness. No, Neil was sick to the teeth of Laura’s family, which is why – when he went to answer the ringing doorbell – he wasn’t at all happy to see Joe Fanning standing apologetically in his doorway.
“I wonder if I might have a word with Laura,” Joe said, in his usual nervous manner. “I’m on my own,” he added, seeing Neil glance behind him toward the car.
He stood back and let him pass. “She’s very upset, Joe – what happened back there wasn’t fair to her.”
“I know that, lad, and believe me I’ve tried to talk to Maureen, but she’s a very stubborn woman.”
Slight understatement, Neil thought to himself.
“Dad?” Laura looked up in surprise, but then her expression hardened. “If she’s here I don’t want to speak to her.”
“She’s not here, love, I came on my own.”
“Oh.” Her dad never usually got involved in this kind of thing. Arguments made him very uncomfortable. Laura wondered if he had taken it upon himself to ask her to ‘go back and apologise’. Well, he could forget that, for a start.
Joe cleared his throat and looked at Neil. “I wonder if we could have a little chat, Laura, just the two of us?”
Neil’s expression was wary. “Laura?”
She waved him away. “It’s fine, Neil – I’ve never had an argument with Dad in my entire life, and I’m not going to start now.” She gave her father a gentle smile as Neil went into the living-room and closed the door behind him.
“How is she?” Laura asked, wiping her tearstained face with the sleeve of her jumper.
Joe gave out a low laugh. “Do you know something, Laura, only yourself would ask a question like that.”
“I never wanted to upset her.” Now that her father was here in front of her, Laura felt guilty for behaving the way she did. All the way back in the car, she was feeling glad she had said the things she said, but now she wasn’t so sure.
“Well, maybe your mother needed to hear some of the things you said – she mightn’t have wanted to hear them, but hear them she should.”
“I don’t understand …” Her father always backed her mother, even at her most unreasonable, especially at her most unreasonable.
Joe pulled out a chair and sat down. “Laura, I’ve been working in the factory now for what,
nearly thirty years?”
Laura looked at him. “Well, yes, since I was born . . .”
“And remember I told you I used to work at that local newspaper, The Herald?” He gave a wave of his hand. “Ah, it’s long gone now, it went not long before you were born.”
Laura wondered where this was going. She knew her dad had worked at the paper, supposedly fixing the machinery and things like that.
“Well, there’s something about me back then that myself and your mother never told yourself and Cathy. I was a writer at that paper, Laura, I used to do a weekly article.”
A writer? Her father? Was he having her on?
“You wrote for The Herald?”
“Not just for the paper.” Joe took a deep breath and looked away, as if embarrassed by what he was about to say next. “I wrote other things too, Laura – novels, short stories – that kind of thing.”
“Novels?” Laura wondered when exactly she had turned into a parrot. But she was hearing all of this for the very first time. Her father wasn’t a novelist, he was just an ordinary Joe Soap – a factory worker, she didn’t think he had even finished school.
“When I met your mother she was all for it – she’d read some of my stuff and was very supportive. Back then, we were sure that eventually someone important would read them and maybe publish one or two of them. We used to get a right kick out of talking about it.” He smiled at the memory. “We’d be famous, your mother would say, like Brendan Behan, John B Keane and all them fellas.” He looked away. “Ah, but they were only pipe-dreams, Laura – I was never all that good.”
“Have you still got them?” she asked, intrigued as to what her father, her father might have written in his younger days.
“Ah, I think your mother might have tidied them away somewhere but it doesn’t matter now.”
“So what happened?” Laura probed when Joe didn’t continue. “You didn’t just give up, did you?”
“Well, times were hard back then as you know. There were factories closing down, a lot of unemployment and the country was going through a very black period. I married your mother, and for a long time we lived on our dreams, well that and the fact that I did a bit of writing part-time at the paper. Because I had a typewriter some of the local businesses would get me to do a bit of work for them too.”
“But you were waiting for a break with your stories?”
Joe nodded. “It was all I wanted, Laura. I was consumed by it, so consumed that I didn’t worry too much about putting clothes on our backs or food on the table. I used to lock myself away for hours on end working on my baby, my masterpiece.”
“And Mam?”
“Eventually your mother began to resent me for it and sure, who could blame her? Nothing was happening, it seemed that the rejection letters were piling up at the same rate as the bills. Then the paper went bust, and to all and intents and purposes I was unemployed – but as half the village knew about my writing and my bits on the side typing – I didn’t qualify for the dole. They were all a little wary of me too.” He sighed deeply. “Laura, you know Glengarrah as well as I do. The worst thing anyone can do in that village is try to be different or stand out in any way. As someone who didn’t make a ‘normal living’, I was a bit of an outcast.” His voice wavered a little. “Your mother, who of course was born and bred in Glengarrah found this –disapproval, if you like, very hard to tolerate. So, when I was let go from the paper, Maureen got a bit of work in the factory, but after a while she couldn’t continue, being around the smell of the sausages made her sick and – ”
Then the realisation hit her. “She was pregnant,” Laura finished, “with me.”
Joe nodded. “Things were tight but I was still hell-bent on realising my dream, and keeping up with the writing. But one day your mother made me put a stop to it for good.”
“What happened?”
“We were badly off, Laura, badly off in the old-fashioned sense, not like nowadays when badly off means you can’t afford a second holiday or to change your car every year – badly off in the sense that we could barely feed ourselves. So one day, your mother swallowed whatever bit of pride she had left and went to the Kellys asking for help.”
To the Kellys? The Kellys who never had two pennies to rub together? Laura couldn’t imagine it.
“It was a small victory for Joan Kelly. She’d been telling Maureen for years that I was only a ‘layabout who had notions about himself’ and that no good would ever come of my ‘scribbling’. It seemed to Joan then that she’d been proved right. She gave her a few bits to keep her going for a little while, but it was probably the worst thing your mother ever did, because they never let her forget their generosity. I’m sure you know as well as I do that by now Joan’s charity has been repaid many times over.”
Laura tried to put herself in her mother’s shoes. Firstly, she couldn’t get a handle on how her parents had been that badly off. But Glengarrah was a small village with nothing much going for it back then other than farming or the factories in Carlow. And her parents weren’t farmers. She could only imagine the shame her mother felt then, how damaged her pride must have been.
Laura shook her head. “So that’s why she’s always so concerned about what everyone thinks of her, of us.”
“And why she was so worried about you going the same way as I did. She saw it in you quicker than I did. Laura, if you weren’t drawing pictures you’d be making things out of toilet rolls and bits of paper. You’ve been artistic since the day you were born. Maureen was terrified.”
“So she tried to stifle me, to make me go another direction …”
“She gave in to the college thing – thinking that maybe then you might get it out of your system – and for a while you did. And you started what these non-artistic types call ‘a proper job’.” He winked. “But I was secretly pleased for you, love, when you started up your business. Of course, I worried too, I worried about how you’d manage – what with you being so mild-mannered and that – but I never said anything to support you and that was a mistake. I should have. I should have stood up to Maureen, and made her see that she had to let you go your own way. Things are different now, young people are more confident, there are greater opportunities and you have so much talent.” Then he laughed. “Still, you’ve more of your mother in you than I thought, love. You went your own way, anyway.”
Laura sat back. She had never ever considered that her parents might have had their own hopes and dreams, dreams that were eventually smothered by circumstance. And yet, how could she not have known?
When Laura thought about it now, it had always been her father helping her and Cathy with homework – never her mother. He had always been the one with all the answers to the general-knowledge questions on the quiz programmes, the one with the balanced opinions and the open-minded outlook – Joe being one of the few in Glengarrah openly spurning gossip or idle talk.
Laura had never really given it a second thought; she thought that her father knew things because he read so many books and newspapers. In fact, her father was always reading. Just then, Laura had a brief memory flash of her father scribbling things in a notebook, things he found interesting or things he wanted to remember. But she had never thought twice about why that might be.
Now Laura would have given a lot to read some of her father’s writing. He might have been brilliant.
“Look, I didn’t come here to make you feel guilty,” Joe said, seeing Laura’s torn expression, “and I hope you don’t think that your arrival was the reason for my giving up the writing. We were mad for a baby, and when you came along it was better than anything. No, I just wasn’t good enough and over time I came to accept that. Anyway, there were more important things in life. I had to look after my family and I did.”
“But haven’t you ever pursued your writing since? OK, I know it wouldn’t have been possible when Cathy and I were around, but the house is very quiet now. Couldn’t you try again?”
Joe’s eyes twinkl
ed. “Ah, I do a bit now and again, when your mother’s not around,” he said. “I enjoy it as much as I’ve always had, but I doubt it’s any good.”
“Dad – I’d love to take a look what you’ve written! Will you let me read it?”
Joe shrugged. “Why not? But it’s more of a hobby for me these days, love, not something I could do on a regular basis, so don’t get any ideas. And we don’t want your poor mother losing her mind altogether,” he added, laughing.
Laura looked at him, thinking she had never heard her father speak so much, so easily all at once. Then again, when did he ever get the chance – Maureen more than made up for the both of them.
Joe continued. “Look, I suppose I just want you to maybe try and see things the way your mother sees them. She’s nervous of things like that, Laura, nervous and untrusting of anything she can’t understand – anything she can’t control. Because of what happened with me, Maureen craves stability, and I suppose she couldn’t really understand why you would throw caution to the winds and give up a good job like you did. And let’s face it, love, sometimes the worst thing an ‘ordinary’ Irish person can do is actually be successful and have everyone else believe that they think they’re better than them.”
He gave a wry smile, and Laura thought she understood exactly what he meant. A sense of innate inferiority was at the root of Maureen’s problem and why she worried so much about Laura ‘running away with her notions’.
“I was so hurtful though, Dad, and I tried so hard to make her understand how important it was to me, and why I had to do it. But she’s impossible to talk to and she treats me like I’m a child … ” she trailed off exasperated. “Oh, I don’t suppose we’ll change her now.”
“No, we definitely can’t do that,” Joe laughed softly. “In a way, I suppose she does still see you as child. But, Laura, what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t make the mistake I did, and let the begrudgers or Maureen affect your choices. Your mother can’t help herself, and in fairness I don’t think she realises that she is hurting you.”
“I know,” Laura said, and for a long while she and her father sat in silence, lost in their thoughts.