by Laura Elliot
The driver grumbles loudly as he bumps over the speed control ramps leading from Baymark Estate. He is a stubby, red-faced man with a tight mouth made for complaining. His querulous voice hardly registers with Julie. Every mile that separates her from home, her demons shout louder for attention. What if Jonathan has another asthmatic attack and the ambulance doesn’t make it through the traffic on time? What if Philip is carried from the rugby pitch with a fractured neck? What if Aidan raids the cocktail cabinet and takes to the fields with his friends? Where will she be while all this horror is going on? In a camper van in the Antipodes, playing at being a bush woman.
‘Going far?’ The driver glances at her through the rear-view mirror.
‘Far enough,’ she replies, hoping to end their conversation and, for a few minutes, he drives in silence through Swords village. The back of his neck turns red as the early morning traffic shudders forward inch by inch.
‘’Ucking traffic,’ he mutters. ‘They build one ’ucking motorway after another and what do we get? Ulsters! Nothing but ’ucking stomach ulsters. Where’d you say you’re going, missus?’
‘New Zealand,’ Julie replies. ‘To my sister’s wedding.’
‘That’s a long way to go for a wedding. You planning on taking in the sights while you’re there?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Stopping off on the way?’
‘Two nights in Bangkok.’
‘Sex capital of the world, so I’m told.’ He brakes at traffic lights and leans despairingly over the steering wheel. ‘If you ask my opinion, this ’ucking country’s heading the same way, what with lap-dancing clubs and sex shops springing up like ’ucking mushrooms. The sights I see in this taxi…Things have changed for the worst since my young days, I’ll tell you that for nothing. As for the ’ucking recession…’
She texts Rebecca: ‘Hold that plane! I’m at the mercy of a taxi driver in the advanced stages of Tourettes…the abbreviated version,’ and hopes her sisters will appreciate her attempt at humour.
Paul was supposed to drive her to the airport but an early morning emergency call from the office put paid to that plan. His worried expression and hassled apologies as he hurried towards his car, his mobile phone already ringing, had added to her sense of guilt.
Since Cathy’s unexpected phone call, Julie has dithered over her decision to attend the wedding. Paul declared that it was a ‘preposterous’ decision to make. He used his end-of-this-discussion voice and made it sound as if Julie’s being reunited with her long-lost sister was of far less importance than the smooth running of Chambers Software Solutions. Since he established the company from a redundancy package he received during the dot com collapse, Julie has looked after the finances. If she had a business card it would have read ‘Financial Controller’. But she has no business card to flash at meetings and her work environment is a laptop on the kitchen table, which competes with the dishwasher for attention.
They argued bitterly over her decision to take time off work. The row lasted a week. In the evenings they hid their anger under a veneer of normality, carrying on conversations at two levels: one audible and polite, so as not to upset their sons, the other inaudible but loaded. Finally, Paul arrived home early from work one evening and presented her with a bunch of flowers and a guidebook called Traversing New Zealand.
‘I suppose you’ve made up.’ Jonathan, her eldest son, dropped his sports kit in the hall and eyed the flowers she was arranging in a vase.
‘Made up what?’ she asked, the pleasure of their reconciliation still warm on her skin.
‘Give me a break,’ her son sighed. ‘We could scrape our nails off the atmosphere for the past week. Are you going to the wedding or not?’
‘Going.’ She plunged the irises into water.
‘Good for you,’ he replied. ‘We’ll look after Dad while you’re gone. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’
On reaching the departure terminal, her sisters greet her with relief and hurry her towards the check-in desk. Lauren has ignored Rebecca’s instructions about luggage and the expandable lids on her matching suitcases are strained to the limit. Steve looks in danger of a ruptured hernia as he heaves them onto the weighing scales. The excess fee will be exorbitant but he will pay it without a quibble.
‘What’s with the wardrobe?’ Julie demands as they await his return from the excess baggage counter. ‘We’ll be living in the bush, not the Ritz.’
Lauren is unrepentant. ‘I barely managed to fit my knickers into the first suitcase.’
‘How come I managed with a rucksack?’ Rebecca asks.
‘I don’t do rucksacks,’ replies Lauren, and Julie has to smile at the idea of Lauren bent under the weight of an enormous multi-purpose rucksack.
Steve, returning and overhearing their conversation, says, ‘Call me when the going gets rough. My offer still stands.’
‘Thank you, Steve.’ Julie leads the way towards the departure gate and turns away when he embraces his wife. Spring and autumn conjoined. She has never grown used to their marriage, never will.
‘I’ll phone as soon as we reach Bangkok.’ Lauren hands her boarding pass to the attendant and glides beyond his reach.
An hour later they are airborne. The plane rises from the runway and crosses the Broadmeadow Estuary. Housing estates, surrounded by swatches of green, slant into view. White-capped waves ride towards the viaduct. Yachts and cruisers are moored in the marina, a new addition since their Heron Cove days. Julie strains her neck and is able to pinpoint the house where they spent their childhood. The old chestnut tree still grows in the garden, its bare branches forming a black filigree against the sky. The next house, where Lydia Mulvaney lived until her death, is also briefly visible.
Is Cathy sleeping now, Julie wonders as she settles back in her seat. Or is she lying awake, aware that the day of departure has finally arrived? Is she nervous? She has much to explain and Rebecca will demand answers.
‘How come you changed your mind about visiting Cathy?’ Julie asked Rebecca one afternoon when she called into the sanctuary to collect her sons, who had been volunteering during their Christmas holidays.
‘I want to ask Cathy face to face why she dragged us through hell and back again.’ Rebecca, sitting behind her desk, looked and sounded exhausted. Her black hair, tied back in a tight ponytail, accentuated her wide, flat cheekbones and strong chin. There had been an incident the previous day between her and an alcoholic farmer who had brutalised a donkey. The donkey had been rescued but Julie doubted if the battle with the alcoholic farmer was responsible for the weary slope of Rebecca’s shoulders, the smudged hollows under her eyes.
‘Don’t you think Cathy was in her own personal hell?’ Julie demanded. ‘You’ve a short memory span if you’ve forgotten.’
‘I haven’t forgotten anything. Including how she misled us afterwards. Her deceit…’
Julie saw the familiar anger flare in Rebecca’s eyes, her lips compress, as if she was holding back bitter accusations. Their conversation petered out, as it always does when they speak about Cathy. Sitting beside her now, Julie shivers, as if the tension she senses in her older sister has transferred to herself.
The plane lifts higher. Clouds fall like blots over the familiar landscape and Julie is swept into a grey swirl that banishes the world she knows from sight.
Chapter Five
Rebecca’s Journal – 1985
My mother’s words are like a song in my head. The kind of song you don’t want to hear yet one line keeps repeating and repeating until you long to hit your head off a wall to make it stop.
‘Look after Cathy for me,’ she said, but I’d other plans that night. Sheila Brogan’s parents were on holiday for a week and she was throwing a party. I guess that was the reason my mother–who always seemed to know everything she shouldn’t–wanted me to stay at home. That and Jeremy…
I glared at her and demanded to know why I was always the one who had to do everything? Why w
as Lauren, high and mighty Lauren, treated as if she was Ireland’s answer to Margot Fonteyn? We’d already been to the opening night of her concert. Why, then, was it necessary for Mammy and Daddy to attend on the closing night?
Oh, I was petulant that evening, sulking and rude and argumentative. I watched her flicking mascara on her eyelashes, spraying perfume on her wrists. She had delicate wrists and long fingers like a pianist. That’s what she wanted to be when she was young–a concert pianist–but she wasn’t good enough and she ended up marrying Gerard Lambert and playing marching tunes for us on the piano in the living room. ‘Marching Through Georgia’, ‘Heart of Dixie’, ‘Anchors Away’–and we marched like little soldiers up and down the floor. She played soft tunes too: ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Long Time Passing’. Joan Baez was singing it on the radio the other day. I lunged at it and switched it off before the others heard.
She ordered me to stop arguing. To stop giving cheek and do as I was told for a change. (It’s funny–although no one is laughing–how much I sound like her now.)
How could either of us have realised that those words would be the last we’d ever exchange? Angry words that would have been forgotten as easily as they were uttered but now they resonate beyond the grave and chain me to their power.
She dabbed her lips on a tissue and left the room. The next day I found the tissue crumpled on the dressing table. Her lips were imprinted like a bloodstain on the creases.
I didn’t look after Cathy that night. As soon as Daddy’s car disappeared around the corner, I persuaded Julie to mind her. They were snuggled on the sofa with Kevin Mulvaney when I left, the three of them watching Cagney and Lacey.
I wore my striped tank top to Sheila’s party, my best Levi’s and my new Adidas trainers. I remember so many things about that night. They come back to me in fragments. How Rory Jones broke a piece of Mrs Brogan’s precious Aynsley china. Sheila cried as she swept up the pieces but no one else cared. I remember how we turned away in disgust, but laughing, when Rick Martin threw up in the kitchen sink. I remember my reflection in the mirror with the gilt-edge frame that hung above the mantelpiece. I danced with Jeremy, cheek-to-cheek, and I could see the back of his head, hear my bangles jangling when I raised my hand and stroked my fingers through his thick blond hair. Our bodies, made for each other, our feet moving to the same step, and he was hard when he pressed against me, so hard it hurt, almost, and that, too, was part of the pleasure. He whispered into my ear, told me he loved me, wanted me, his breath hot on my neck, and I wondered if we dared slip away, slip upstairs to one of the empty bedrooms, and what would happen then, would we…could I…and he held me tighter still as we danced past the mirror, danced in a slow dark circle, oblivious to what was taking place on the bend of the coast road leading to Heron Cove.
I remember the silence that settled over the party when Sheila came into the living room with a policewoman. The policewoman’s mouth seemed full of glass when she tried to explain why a squad car was waiting outside to bring me home. I remember the room swaying. Jeremy tried to catch me before I fell. My head banged off the edge of the table. I don’t remember any pain. My new trainers struck out in front of me. Funny thing to remember, my heels clamped together, forcing my toes into a V. I don’t remember being lifted to my feet, but someone must have done so because I know I could never have managed to stand on my own. And I remember the whispering that started when the policewoman took my arm and led me away from the party. Jeremy came with me but I don’t remember anything he said to me, or if the policewoman spoke to either of us.
Lights were burning in the windows of Heron Cove. Doors were open. Neighbours were clustered in huddles in the hall and the kitchen. I remember their faces, Lydia’s tears. Julie’s screams as she broke free from Paul’s arms and ran towards me. And I remember thinking, as we held each other, that our lives had changed utterly and for ever.
Chapter Six
Havenswalk – January 2009
The attic in Havenswalk is reached by a spiral staircase. A handy place for dumping broken furniture that has some possibility of being repaired but is inevitably forgotten once the door closes. Next year, Cathy plans to convert the attic into a dance studio but, for now, it is a repository for all the bric-a-brac she and Alma have acquired and abandoned since they moved to New Zealand.
She switches on the light and browses for an hour among boxes and crates, sifts through account ledgers and old books that release the fusty smell of neglected papers. She stops to examine some clothes and toys belonging to Conor, items she decided to save for the memories they evoke. The silence is uneasy. She suspects unseen creatures lurking in the eaves and crannies, but only the spiders ignore her intrusion and continue spinning in gauzy corners.
The edge of the moon shifts from her gaze as she moves the broken frame of an awning to one side. It is heavy and almost topples over. She prevents it falling and waking everyone. Underneath it, she finds a wicker picnic basket. The weave is broken in places. Snapped reeds jut outwards and cobwebs trail like a shiver across her fingers when she snaps open the rusting lock. Her letters to Nirvana. Carefully she lifts them out. They are tied together with an elastic band that breaks with an exhausted snap when she stretches it.
She hesitates, undecided. Does she really want to delve into the past and relive those fragmented years when hormones, confusion and unresolved heartache formed their own convulsive mix? Never look back, Rebecca used to say. Nothing but dust around corners.
The date on the first letters startles her. Was she only eight years old when she wrote it? She always imagined she was older, probably about ten. The early ones were written on notepaper with delicate border drawings, Edwardian ladies with parasols and lacy, ruffled collars. A writing set, she remembers, given to her by Lydia Mulvaney as a starter present. Write to your mother, Lydia said, and when you are sleeping she will read your letters. Angels fly at midnight. Their first stop is home.
Cathy smiles, remembering how the image of hovering angels had comforted her and how, when the fancy notepaper ran out, she wrote on the torn-out pages of copybooks and refill pads, writing by torch light at night when the house was quiet, secret hours under a duvet tent.
If she read the letters before contacting Rebecca her courage would have failed her. Yet the die has been cast by now, Conor at her heels, demanding…ring them now…now…
Her sisters are on their way. She is still amazed that Rebecca changed her mind. Amazed and frightened and relieved in equal measure. She rang her sisters seeking closure but how that closure is to be achieved is impossible to tell. Cathy tries not to panic. Has she made the worst mistake of her life–or is this the beginning of healing, the closing of a wound that has festered for far too long? She sinks to a cast-off settee and begins to read.
Chapter Seven
Letters to Nirvana
Meadow Lark
Wicklow
19 August 1985
Dear Mammy,
How are you and Daddy today? We are having a nice holiday in Meadow Lark with the Morans. We call them Auntie Olive and Uncle Steve. They have lots of rooms and no kids, only horses. Uncle Steve taut us to ride a pony called Zorbo. Lauren is afrayd to go on him. When Uncle Steve lift her up she cry and cry. But she wont fall and brake her legs again. A pony is not a car. Auntie Olive brothe her and me to the shops for froks and socks and nickers and jeans and tops and shoes. She wont let Nero sleep on the bed with Becks. No hairs on the dubay or dog pee smell in her posh house. Becks is cross as a bare because Nero has to sleep in a shed and he barks all night. Julie hates it here. She hates living in the sticks and she hates the staybell smells and not being with Paul. Auntie Olive is a teecher. She has big glasses like a owl eyes. She makes me rite lesons and spell proper. I love Zorbo. I will rite more tomorrow.
XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy
Cathy
* * *
Heron Cove
21 August 1985
Dear Mammy,
We are home again and Becks is cross as a bare. The row was bad. Uncle Steve gave out lots to her about Lauren. No one knew I was outside the door. Auntie Olive said its right he worry. She want to mind Lauren in Meadow Lark and help her kope with being a orpan. Becks said no way ho-say. She told Uncle Steve to shove his opinins up his bum and called Auntie Olive a inturfearing old cow. Auntie Olive keep hugging Lauren at the train station and saying poor pet poor pet and Lauren was like a swan with a hangy neck. She wants to live in Meadow Lark and ware nice froks. Becks said we have to call them Mr and Mrs Moran because they are not real family. Mrs Moran was Mammy’s pal when they were little girls but Becks says she is a spy like the woman with the black case. Julie is glad to be home as well. She wants to start the band again but Becks said no way ho-say neybours will talk.
I miss you so much it makes me sick. Tell Daddy I miss him as well as you. I will rite more tomorrow. I love Zorbo.
XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy
Cathy
* * *
26 December 1985
Dear Mammy,
Xmas Day is over. The only thing that made me cry was the Xmas songs at mass and Lauren hating the ballet book I gave her for her present. Kevin gave me sope on a rope and I gave him a Star Wars annual. The Morans called with lots of presents. We have to furgive and furget and they will not take Lauren away only for holidays. I got a pair of jeans. Becks got a really posh food mixer. Julie got a tiket for a rock concert and Lauren got a golden frock with a frill. Gramps gave us money and was drunk. The best the very best present was from Becks. Remember when I told you about finding your hair brush in the dressing table with your hair still in it and how she took it from me because I was doing her head in with crying? She gave me a love heart locket with your hair inside it and photos of you and Daddy. She is the best, the very very best. After dinner we went for a walk. All the waves were white. The wind made my skin sore. We saw the heron. Then we saw Jeremy with Rose More. Rebecca said don’t look don’t look see if I give a hoot and stuck her nose up in the air when we walk past. Julie called him a bad word. I wont write it down. It begins with W. We fed the swans. The heron flew away. Becks cried when we came home. I thought she was mad about Jeremy not hanging around greef but it was about the food mixer. She kept pointing at it and saying my life has come to this, a f…ing food mixer.