by Nesta Tuomey
Like One Of The Family
Nesta Tuomey
*
A moving story of an Irish family, of passion and tragedy.
Claire Shannon, the child of a broken marriage, experiences happiness for the first time when drawn into the warmth of the McArdle’s family circle. She shares their hopes and dreams, is included in all of the family outings. The mother is kindly and careful of her but the father abuses her and she becomes pregnant. Later, as consequences unfold, a double tragedy occurs in the family. In its aftermath she believes that her childhood secret is buried and forgotten ...until she falls in love with the son of the man who abused her.
© 2013, 1999 Nesta Tuomey
Nesta Tuomey has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Nesta Tuomey
Originally published in 1999 by Mount Eagle Publications Ltd.
First published in eBook format in 2013
ISBN: 978-1-78301-297-8
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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For Larry and my children with love.
*
“Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown.”
Song of Songs.
*
I am grateful to my brother Dr Donal O’Holohan for sharing his medical knowledge on the rare disease porphyria and my good friend Mary Dowling for her Spanish expertise. Thanks too, to Comdt. Kevin Byrne for his patience and good humour when answering my questions about the Irish Air Corps.
Reviews of ‘Like One Of The Family’
“Moving and memorable, this page-turner is one you will not be able to put down. Sensitive, powerfully written and one of the best books by an Irish author this year.”
Alice Sheridan, Commuting Times.
“Tuomey wastes no time in pushing the boundaries of the sensitivities of recent Irish social history.”
Evening Herald.
“This is a remarkable tale – although this book is primarily a love story, its theme is one of sexual abuse compounded by tragedy. All the ingredients of a best seller!”
The Examiner.
Contents
REVIEWS OF ‘LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY’
LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY
ONE
If anyone had said she was in love Claire would have pooh-poohed the idea. She might have felt love for her parents but with the death of her baby sister they had been too occupied with their own grief to notice they were neglecting her. By the time they did, it was too late. By then Claire was helplessly, hopelessly enamoured with the McArdle family.
Claire was a solitary child given to reading a lot and playing imaginary games by herself in the wilderness that passed for a garden behind their house. Her mother had been a teacher and believed it was never too early to become acquainted with books. Claire’s first memory was sitting in her bath turning the vinyl pages of Puss in Boots. She remembered the water slopping the shiny plastic cat and crooning sadly because he had gotten his fur ‘all wet.’
Christopher, who was two years younger than Claire, never opened a book. He spent all his time hopping, throwing or kicking a ball which pleased their father who was also sport crazy and spent his weekends glued to the television watching Grandstand and Match of the Day. Claire didn’t feel much, if any, affinity with Christopher.
When Claire was ten, another baby had been born; a little girl with hair a shade blonder than Claire’s and grey eyes fringed with sooty lashes. She and Christopher had doted on Bella, bonded together this one and only time out of mutual adoration. “Make an angel face,” Claire would coax and the little darling would show her pearly teeth in a smile. “Now a devil face,” and she would scowl and wrinkle her button nose obediently. Claire was besotted by this tiny sibling, willing the school bell to ring so that she could run home, eager for the reality of her.
The baby was her mother’s joy and delight and her death from meningitis when she was two cast Annette into a deep depression. She lost her optimistic view of life, her sweetness of expression. At thirty-eight years of age she became weepy and withdrawn, lying in bed with her face to the wall, refusing to take an interest in anything. When she got up at last and resumed her normal routine she performed her tasks like an automaton, without flair, the spirit gone out of her. Claire’s father, Jim, tried to cheer her but could not break through the barrier Annette had erected about her. There was a marked difference in their relationship. He became hesitant, almost apologetic, as if it was somehow his fault. Her mother no longer laughed at his clowning and he had lost his faith in his ability to make her laugh.
Claire’s tummy began to hurt, a niggling discomfort at first, which deepened to a sort of sour ache. Somehow it was always night-time when the pains got bad and her moans woke her up. Her parents heard her but put it down to the trauma surrounding the baby’s death. In the nights after the death she had woken up sobbing, turning away from them, refusing to be comforted. They would have been slow to take action, even in normal times, but now they were so locked in their own private misery that they hardly heard her anymore.
Eventually, they took her to a doctor who diagnosed colic and she was put on a gluten free diet. Now her stomach pained from hunger and all that week she cried herself to sleep. When the pains persisted only a hot water bottle or her mother’s hand moving in soothing, concentric circles brought relief. They took her back to the doctor, who put his hands on her stomach, poking and prodding and feeling her. He could find nothing.
The pain became a red-hot pincers which dragged her regularly from her dreams and demanded attention. She was frightened by the intensity of her tears. Other doctors were consulted, more examinations carried out. She would point to the middle of her stomach since, by then, the pain had faded and she couldn’t remember exactly where it had been. “Just somewhere around there.” Back home again. For a while near starvation and then normal food until the next time. Claire missed school sixteen days that term, too tired in the mornings after a disturbed night to get up and dress herself in time for the bus.
Across the street a house was sold and two shiny brass plates went up on the fence.
‘Two doctors, no less!’ her father reported, coming in when the tea table was cleared and his liver and bacon crisping in the oven. He had a flush about his cheeks, an air of foolish bonhomie. These days he was never home on time, spending longer hours “at the office”. ‘I suppose there’s nothing like keeping it in the family.’
‘You mean they’re married,’ her mother stated without interest. ‘I wonder have they children?’
Claire could have told her. She had sat at the window all afternoon watching the unloading of the removal van and spied a cot and a playpen, bunk beds. Later, the men had staggered in with a roll-top desk and a piano. Claire imagined what it would be like to play it and saw herself in a long, silver evening gown, moving her hands fluidly over the keys as she was doing now on the arm of her chair. It distracted her from the dull pain in her stomach. If she pretended she was playing a Scott Joplin number she could almost ignore it. Her fingers bounced rhythmically up and down, her brow furrowed in concentration.
‘Look at her,’ her father said, with maudlin affection. ‘she’ll be a concert pianist yet.’ He looked down at his own tobacco-stained fingers regretfully. Her mother turned the page of a magazine. She might have been stone deaf for all the notice she paid him.
That night Claire dreamed the walls of her bedroom were closing in on her like a tomb, crushing breath out of her, squeezing her forehead in a vice. Her screams wakened her.
‘Hush, hush,’ her mother murmured, rocking her distractedly in her arms. She had got into bed beside Claire and was lying under the quilt. Claire felt raging hot. Bile rushed to her throat. She half sat up and then her throat spasmed and the stench and taste of vomit was in her nostrils, burning her tonsils. She began to cry with relief and fright.
Her mother got out of the bed. Claire heard her speaking to someone on the landing and then she was back, sponging her hands and face, towelling her down, putting her in a clean night-dress. ‘I’m going over now,’ Annette said. ‘I don’t give a bloody damn if they have just moved in.’ Her laugh was mirthless. ‘Surely between the pair of them with all their qualifications they can find time to come. It’s not ten o’clock.’
Claire lay and drifted. It felt like the middle of the night. Every so often pain jerked her awake. There was the sound of feet on the stairs. The dividing wall between her room and the landing did not quite meet the ceiling and every sound was magnified, especially at night. A lamp was switched on in the room and she felt someone bending over her. She squinted upwards but whoever it was blocked the light. She felt gentle hands pressing her stomach.
Dr McArdle said kindly, ‘Does that hurt, Claire? Won’t you tell me now if it does?’
She was surprised it was a woman and it was a minute before she could answer, ‘No.’ Strangely, it was true. Throwing up, or something, had eased the agony. She began to say so when something was put into her mouth and cool fingers held it there. She closed her eyes and she must have dropped off because when she opened them she was lying in a strange bed in a shadowy room full of sleeping figures. From a lighted corridor just beyond the shadows a voice said clearly, ‘It’ll probably rupture before they get her on the table.’ Claire wondered what she was talking about.
She had her appendix taken out during the night. It didn’t burst but it was a close thing. Nine inches long, her mother told her, when she came out of the ether to find her sitting by the bed. Claire wondered why none of the doctors had realised what was wrong with her. When she said so her mother explained that her appendix had not been in the usual spot but was tucked away behind some other organ, making it difficult to find. ‘Only for Jane McArdle you’d have been in a bad way.’ There was a note of respect in Annette’s voice.
Jane? When had they become so friendly?
It turned out that her mother and Jane McArdle - or Jane Mannion as she was then - had been to college together. They had been great friends at one time and even gone on holidays to Spain together.
‘I couldn’t get over it when she opened the door and saw her standing there,’ Annette said with a reminiscent smile. ‘She knew what was wrong with you straight away and to think none of those doctors I brought you to had any idea.’
Claire wondered if her appendix had started growing when the baby died and if she too would have died only for Dr McArdle. She felt the beginnings of a sense of obligation to her unknown saviour, which was to increase upon acquaintance and to remain with her for the rest of her life.
Claire was in the children’s hospital almost a week and ate her meals from pink plastic dishes which tasted of washing-up liquid. There were six other children in the ward, all younger than her, one a toddler with his torso encased in a plaster cast, who wept all day. Christopher only came to see her once. He was spending all his time playing with their new neighbours.
‘There’s a boy my age,’ he told her. ‘He’s smaller than me.’ He went on to describe the dressing-up games they played in the McArdle’s garage and the stage they had erected out of packing cases. Claire thought it sounded fun.
After five days they took her stitches out and she was allowed home. She was glad to go. The sound of the wailing babies through the wall kept her awake nights and reminded her of their own baby they had lost.
Her house seemed smaller on her return, darker too after the wide windows in the ward. Claire climbed the stairs gingerly, afraid of making her wound bleed. She lay weakly against the pillow and stared at her book through a blur of tears, suddenly lonely for the antiseptic efficiency of hospital routine.
As if sensing this, her mother filled a hot water bottle and slipped it comfortingly against her feet.
‘There!’ she said. ‘You could do with a bit of spoiling.’ At the unaccustomed kindness Claire’s tears overflowed.
Next day Jane McArdle paid them a visit. She was a big boned woman, with auburn hair and an infectious giggle, which, oddly at variance with her bulk, conjuring up a much younger woman.
‘How’s the patient?’ she asked, coming into the front room where Claire was sitting with a rug tucked loosely about her, a book open on her lap. Claire felt suddenly shy.
‘You needn’t keep her wrapped up, you know.’ Dr McArdle twitched away the rug. ‘Not in this weather, Annette. The poor child is the colour of lobster.’
Annette bristled, ‘There’s been a cold snap these past few days,’ she pointed out.
They stared at each other.
‘Why is it,’ Annette asked pleasantly, ‘that doctors seem to think they’re qualified to give advice in all areas, even those that don’t concern them?’
Jane laughed. ‘Touché! Part and parcel of the trade. We’re a bossy lot, I’m afraid.’
Annette looked mollified. ‘And mothers are inclined to be over-protective,’ she conceded.
‘Don’t I know it. You should see the bottles of vitamin C and cod-liver oil I dose my gang with.’
At this Annette laughed, ‘How domesticated we sound, Jane. Imagine us having this dull kind of conversation way back when we went to college hops together.’
‘Booze, men and sex were about the height of it,’ Jane agreed.
‘And in that order.’
Claire sat forgotten between them as they chatted about people and places they had once known
Her convalescence lasted two weeks. By that time the summer term was more than half over and there seemed little point in going back to school. Her father, however, pointed out she had missed enough already and would drop even further behind so she returned for the last two weeks. There was a new girl in her class at St. Catherine’s. Although Claire had covertly observed her on a few occasions, this was her first meeting Sheena McArdle, a slim leggy girl with bold, merry eyes under straight black brows and, with her birthday just before Claire’s in June, Claire’s senior by nine days.
They hit it off at once. Sheena moved her desk beside Claire’s and helped her copy out notes she had missed. They lent each other rulers and colouring markers, shared their fruit and sandwiches.
They were like twins, speaking at the same time, finishing each other’s sentences. Claire forgot her appendix scar and ran all over the playground, whooping and shouting. Her pigtails slipped their ribbon and blonde hair haloed her perspiring forehead.
The nuns were amazed at the change in her. She had always been so shy and restrained. She was a different child in Sheena’s company, excited and garrulous. Together they got up to all kind
s of mischief. On painting days they tipped the contents of murky jam jars through a broken floorboard, drenching the unsuspecting heads of the class beneath. Once during morning break, they barricaded themselves into the kitchens and sprayed cartons of milk through the serving hatch at the children in the refectory. Sister Dunphy threw up her hands and exclaimed at their antics. Only it was so near the end of term they would have been punished. As it was, she called them into her office and told them such giddy behaviour was unseemly in little girls in their first year in the senior school. She made them promise to reform. For Claire none of it was quite real. Sheena, herself, Sister Dunphy gesticulating. It was as if she had taken a step into another sphere. She had never back-answered in her life and now she was making up in a fortnight for years of good behaviour. She bit her lip, struggling to keep from giggling outright. Sister Dunphy glanced at their bursting expressions and with a sigh brought the lecture to an end. Arm in arm, Claire and Sheena pranced unrepentantly down the corridor.
The summer holidays normally meant for Claire unlimited free time to read, sprawled on her bed with a quarter pound of scented pin cushions beside her, dipping two fingers into the bag as she turned a page. On daily trips to the local library, she’d made a friend of the librarian, who was young and sympathetic and more than ready to turn a blind eye to the number of books Claire borrowed. She had practically exhausted the children’s library; although she wasn’t actually old enough at thirteen to join the adult section. You had to be fifteen to get an adult ticket. Sometimes she had to go further afield to branches in outlying areas when the shelves of the ‘local’ turned up nothing new.
This was how Claire normally spent her summers. With the advent of the McArdles all this was changed. Now she spent her days playing with Sheena and the other McArdle children, enjoying the novelty of their big house and garden.
Unlike her own terraced house, the McArdle’s house stood on its own ground, with a solid stone garage set some distance apart. This was the garage that Christopher had played in when Claire was in hospital, but since then he had fallen out with Hugh and now his allegiance was with another family, further down the road. Claire was just as glad. The McArdles were hers!