Gracie

by Marie Maxwell

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ Jennifer laughed happily, ‘don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I just want you to tell Sean the truth about Gracie and her baby, the one she had adopted.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’ Dot said as she started walking forward, gathering pace as she went. ‘This is madness. Your madness alone,’ she said almost to herself.

  ‘Oh Mum, I know all about it so you don’t need to pretend. Sean needs to know the truth about our Gracie; he should have been told, she should have told him – but she obviously hasn’t and he doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘Well of course he doesn’t believe you, you stupid girl, and why have you been talking nonsense to your sister’s husband?’ Dot asked incredulously as she carried on walking at a pace that had Jennifer struggling to keep up with her. By the time they reached the railway bridge both of them were breathing quite heavily.

  It was an unseasonably chilly day and although it was dry, there was a slight frost on the ground and the pavements were quite slippery. Dot McCabe was wearing her astrakhan coat, stout boots with a zip up the front and a felt hat, whereas Jennifer was shivering and slipping around in her more fashionable court shoes. Her straight black skirt and tight-fitting brown jumper did nothing to keep the chill breeze off her body, but knowing where she was going, she was dressed up to impress Sean Donnelly rather than to keep out the cold.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you were helping me with the shopping, you didn’t mention anything like this on the bus …’

  ‘If I had told you, you wouldn’t have come, would you?’ Jennifer smiled and grabbed her mother’s arm. ‘Sean should be leaving work soon. He’s on a split shift, and we’re going to meet him. He always comes this way, up the High Street to York Road on his bicycle, then right turn. He’s a creature of habit.’

  Her mother pulled away. ‘How do you know about your brother-in-law’s shifts and habits? I don’t know what’s got into you, Jennifer McCabe, but you’re acting like you’re away with the fairies again. I just don’t know where your madness comes from, it’s not from my side of the family …’

  ‘Of course I’m not mad, I just think it’s dishonest not to tell him.’ Jennifer shook her head and looked at her mother with a condescending expression on her face. ‘I know what went on and you have to tell Sean. He should know about the other baby. You have to tell him the truth, tell him what happened …’ Jennifer’s tone was as urgent as her eyes and smile were wide.

  ‘This has nothing to do with you, why are you interfering? Gracie’s expecting a baby, she’s fragile. Why in heaven’s name would you want to upset everyone with this nonsense?’

  ‘Oh look!’ Jennifer looked ahead and waved. ‘Here he is now …’

  As Sean cycled up the High Street Jennifer jumped out in front of him.

  ‘Sean! Cooeee, Sean! Mum’s got something to tell you …’

  Scared, he tried his best to ignore both Jennifer and his mother-in-law and started to cycle on past but she reached out and grabbed the handlebars, nearly pulling his bicycle out from underneath him.

  ‘Sean, come and talk to my mother, she’ll tell you all about this.’

  As Jennifer held onto his bike and laughed, his mother-in-law was moving from foot to foot on the pavement and looking nervously at Sean, who was still in the road on the other side of the High Street. The cars were driving up and down in between them but that didn’t stop Jennifer trying to pull him over to where her mother was standing.

  Sean and Dot had never got on but they’d never fallen out with each other either; their meetings were too few and far between to warrant anything even remotely resembling a relationship, but he had always tried to be respectful and polite on the occasions they did cross paths. Likewise she had never said anything wrong to him but she’d never said anything nice either.

  ‘I don’t want to be part of this nonsense, Jennifer McCabe,’ she told her daughter angrily. ‘If Sean has anything he wants to know then he should ask his wife, it’s got nothing to do with the rest of us …’

  ‘You see, Sean? She’s not denying it. Gracie is a slut. Your wife had someone else’s baby and never told you, and she’s been doing it since. She has …’

  Dot McCabe took a few steps across the road till she was face to face with her daughter and then she slapped her hard across the face.

  ‘I’m ashamed of you, Jennifer, and disappointed.’ She stepped back and then turned her attention to Sean.

  ‘And as for you, Sean Donnelly, I don’t know what’s going on between you two but you should be ashamed of yourself. If you want to know anything, you should ask your wife, not her sister. Shameful, shameful, and Gracie being in the family way an’ all …’

  Sean carefully propped his bicycle upright with the pedal on the pavement and looked at Jennifer.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked her. ‘And in public … People are looking, anyone could see and hear you.’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t come with me to see Mum,’ she smiled. ‘Sean, you had to know and now you do. Now we can be together …’

  Without saying another word, Sean pushed her backwards so hard she went flying across the icy pavement, just righting herself before she fell against a shop window. She was still stumbling around when Sean jumped on his bike and sped off in the direction of home.

  Her mother walked back over to her.

  ‘Oh Jennifer, I don’t understand. I thought you’d grown out of all that jealous stuff and nonsense,’ Dot told her sadly. ‘Why did you have to make trouble like that? We promised Gracie we wouldn’t ever mention it again and now you’ve gone and told him just to upset her.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘How did you know? No one knew… . .’

  ‘Walls have ears!’ Jennifer smirked.

  ‘You were eavesdropping …’

  ‘Of course I was, but it doesn’t matter. He needed to know and Gracie should have told him. It’s only right.’ Jennifer looked at her mother, her eyes wide with mad excitement. ‘And she didn’t tell him so I did. I never promised anything, did I? And now Sean can free himself of her.’

  ‘And then what, Jennifer?’

  ‘You’ll see soon enough. Now, what were you saying about the fishmonger?’

  ‘I’m going home, Jennifer. Wait till I tell your father what you’ve done. Wait till your fiancé finds out …’

  ‘I broke off the engagement last night,’ Jennifer grinned. ‘And it was you who always taught me to tell the truth and shame the devil. That’s all I did …’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you have to act like the devil.’

  As Dot McCabe turned on her heel and walked off, Jennifer walked down the High Street to Pier Hill and settled down on a bench overlooking the Pier to think about what had just happened. She could easily imagine the explosion that was about to occur in her sister’s home and she fully intended to be around to savour the fallout.

  She was besotted to the point of obsession with Sean Donnelly and she was determined to have him – regardless of what anyone else thought.

  Including Sean himself.

  SEVENTEEN

  Following her altercation with Sean in front of Jeanette, Gracie had given herself a good talking to and tried her best to pretend that everything was fine. She just wanted it all to be as it was before, when she and Sean were first married and they were happy.

  Gracie had done her best to disguise her swollen ankles with thick stockings and had dressed as smartly as she could considering her size and lack of suitable clothes; she also made sure her hair was brushed and that she had at least a dash of lipstick and powder on to hide her pallid complexion. She was determined not to mention feeling tired or unwell ever again. If the dates were right she only had another couple of months to go and she just had to get through that time as best she could. Once they had the baby she was sure everything would be fine again. She’d be fit and well, and back to her normal self.

  As part of her promise to herself Graci
e was in the kitchen preparing a nice meal for them both, knowing that she and Sean would be eating alone as Jeanette was going to be out dancing in town with her latest boyfriend. She had started the preparations well in advance and moved from foot to foot as she stood at the cooker, trying to keep the circulation going in her legs to stop them aching. She paused and leaned back against the blue Formica drop-leaf table that they had bought together from a local furniture store.

  ‘We can do the kitchen yellow and blue,’ she’d said as they carried it up the stairs not long after they’d moved in. ‘This is the first thing that’s really ours and not the landlords. It’s so exciting, I love it.’

  Sean had laughed long with her. ‘How can you say you love a piece of furniture, it’s only a table?’

  ‘But it’s our table and it’s brand new. New, new, new! It’s a symbol.’

  Gracie had clapped her hands and jumped up and down on the spot for a moment, and then flung her arms around her husband’s neck. ‘Our very own kitchenette table, bought with our own money.’

  He had laughed as he pulled her in close and kissed her hard. ‘I love you, Gracie.’

  ‘And I love you, Sean.’

  But that was before she was pregnant.

  Before Sean had changed.

  She heard the front door open.

  ‘Gracie? Where are you, Gracie?’ Sean came running heavily up the stairs, bellowing at the top of his voice as he went.

  ‘In here …’ she shouted back from the kitchen, pleased that he was talking to her. ‘What’s the matter? You sound upset.’

  ‘Of course I’m upset …’ he shouted as he stomped along the hallway towards her.

  ‘What’s happened?’ As Gracie spoke, she felt the same fluttering in her chest that she used to feel when she was in trouble at home or school. She knew something was wrong. The tone of his voice told her far more than the words. She had known the previous night that something was troubling him because rather than sniping at her the way he’d been doing for the past few weeks, he had ignored her. He completely ignored her, it was as if she wasn’t there. Jeanette was out and by nine o’clock Sean was tucked up in bed facing the wall. Something was wrong but she didn’t have a clue what it was.

  She turned round from the cooker and smiled as he appeared in the doorway, and for a few disconcerting moments he simply stood there with his head on one side, looking at her.

  Staring as if he’d never seen her before, as if she was a complete stranger.

  ‘Has something happened at work?’ Gracie asked nervously.

  ‘No, nothing has happened at work – but it did on the way home. I’ve just seen your mother in the High Street with Jennifer. They had some really interesting news for me, really very interesting …’ he paused and continued staring.

  ‘What’s that?’ Gracie asked. ‘Has she set a date for the wedding?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Gracie … did you have a baby before? With someone else? Did you? Did you?’ His voice rose with each word as he blurted it all out. ‘Tell me it’s not true, Gracie. Tell me?’

  As she looked at him and felt the anger that was so obviously brewing inside him, Gracie’s heart started beating so fast she thought she was going to collapse and she wondered how she could play for time while she decided what to say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The question is easy …’ Sean stared at her, his eyes so dark and furious she was suddenly not just nervous but scared also; she had never seen him look at her like that before. ‘Did you or did you not have a baby with someone else? Did you go to St Angela’s? Yes or no, tell me now …’ his hands were down by his side but his fists clenched and unclenched in time with his rapid breathing.

  ‘Sean, it’s difficult, let me explain …’ Gracie wanted to reach out to him but her instincts made her back right away until she was up against the Formica table, their table, tucked in the corner of the room. She pressed herself into it thinking that she really wanted to slip over the top and out of the window; she wanted to run as far away as possible. She didn’t want to be there and she didn’t want to have this conversation.

  ‘I can see from your face that it’s true so no, there’s no way you can explain this away. You’ve lied to me all this time. Why? Why?’

  As he spoke she could see his anger slipping away, only to be replaced by an expression she hadn’t seen before: a combination of disbelief and utter despair. For one awful moment she thought he might burst into tears.

  ‘Please Sean, I didn’t lie, I just didn’t say anything,’ Gracie pleaded, ‘and it was a long time ago, before I even met you. I’m so sorry, I was just too ashamed to tell you about it. I thought you wouldn’t want to marry me.’

  ‘And so I wouldn’t have. But I’ll be guessing Ruby knows all about it, and Johnnie? The man who pretended he was my friend? I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me; that you let me think you were a virgin, that bold as brass you walked down the aisle of a Catholic church dressed in white.’ He moved closer to her. ‘How could you do that to me and my family? You’re a hypocrite, Gracie, a bloody hypocrite, and you’re not who I thought you were.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said as the tears welled up. ‘But I am who you thought I was, I’m still me, so why does it really matter now? We’re married, we’re happy, we’re having a baby together. Please, Sean, I made a mistake. I wanted to tell you but the time was never right …’

  ‘All that’s gone, it’s gone. And how do I know this baby is mine? You’ve been seen with other men, God Almighty. Mam was right; you aren’t good enough for me.’

  He raised his hand as if to slap her, but changed his mind as she flinched. ‘No. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. You’re not worth it, Gracie McCabe. Our marriage is over.’

  Gracie stood still, her arms wrapped around her baby, sobbing to the point of hysteria. ‘Sean please, let me explain, please …’

  ‘Pack your bags and leave. This marriage is over.’

  ‘What about the baby?’ Gracie was so distraught she could barely get the words out.

  ‘But it’s likely not my baby, is it?’ said Sean. ‘It’s his. It was just another lie from you. I know you’re still seeing him, the squaddie – you’ve been seen with him, at the hotel. Now get out or I’ll throw you out myself …’

  ‘But I haven’t seen him since the day I told him I was expecting and that was in nineteen bloody forty-five… .’

  ‘No. Not true. Your sister told me you’d been seen with him, that Ruby let you use a room at the hotel like it was a whorehouse. All of you, so fucking deceitful …’

  Gracie tried to understand exactly what he was saying but all the words were blurring and she was so confused she got entirely the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘Jeanette told you that? But she doesn’t know anything about that time, she was just a kid. No one knows except Mum and Dad …’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Jeanette it was …’

  At that moment Jeanette appeared. ‘Talking about me again?’ she laughed, but stopped abruptly once she sensed the mood in the room.

  ‘What’s going on? Are you two fighting about me? What am I supposed to have done this time?’

  As Sean turned to her it gave Gracie the chance to get out of the confines of the kitchen and into the sitting room, with Sean and Jeanette close behind.

  ‘Did you know your sister had an illegitimate baby that was adopted? Did you? Did you live under my roof and not tell me that?’

  With eyes wide open in shock, Jeanette looked from one to the other.

  ‘Whatever are you talking about? Gracie? What’s going on here?’

  ‘Oh yes, you pretend you don’t know. Everyone knows except for me, it seems,’ Sean said quickly. ‘But it was Jennifer who told me. Everyone else thought it right to keep it a secret from me, to not tell me that my wife was a liar and a slut.’

  Sean’s poisonous emphasis on the last word made both sisters flinch but as he said it everything fell into
place for Gracie and Jeanette at the same moment. It was as if someone had thrown a jigsaw puzzle up into the air and suddenly, all the pieces had landed together in exactly the right place.

  It explained Jennifer being in the flat more often than ever with her sly smiles and strange comments, but it also explained Sean’s seemingly irrational behaviour, his unexplained absences and his unusual reactions to everyday things.

  ‘Ah Jennifer, the saintly sister …’ Jeanette laughed without humour. ‘I should have guessed Jennifer’s filthy hands would be all over this.’ She looked at Sean. ‘She’s done this before, you know. She’s gone after boyfriends of mine – she does it for fun. I swear she has some sort of mental problem …’

  Gracie took deep breaths as, aware of the movements of her baby inside her, she determined to stop crying and calm herself down. ‘Why are you listening to Jennifer?’ she asked. ‘Why her over me?’

  ‘Because she really cares about me – and it seems to me that at this moment she’s the only person who does.’

  Gracie’s mouth dropped open as she tried to take in the fact that Jeanette had been right all along about the deviousness of their sister and no one had seen it. She also knew by looking at his face that she had no argument that would change how Sean thought of her. She took a few more breaths and then pushed past him.

  ‘Are you two having an affair?’ Gracie asked, but he didn’t answer. He simply looked down and shrugged his shoulders very slightly.

  ‘Okay, you win, or rather bloody Jennifer wins; I’m leaving. Are you stopping?’ Gracie asked her sister.

  ‘If you’re going, I’m not letting you go on your own and anyway, why would I stay here?’ Jeanette glared at Sean as she spoke. ‘I bet Jen’ll be gloating on the doorstep before we get to the corner; she’ll be all over this idiot like a measles rash in no time.’

  Gracie gathered up a few necessities as Sean watched over her. She didn’t say another word and she didn’t look at him. At the top of the stairs she thought he might help her with her case but he simply stood back with his arms crossed to let her pass, leaving Jeanette, who was already carrying her own bag, to snatch it out of her hands.