“I kept my promise,” Catherine said, “I didn’t tell them. I kept waiting until you were ready, until after the funeral, and then I waited while you were sick. I was still waiting and then they came to me today. And now it’s all out. In the open – and my poor son is stuck over in London, trying to work this out on his own.” Her body was shaking now and her voice was rising with all the pent-up anger and emotion of the last few years. “I warned you that something like this would happen and so did Seán!”
Whether it was the mention of her husband or that something had just occurred to her, Nance suddenly sat up straight in her chair. She looked at the girls. “Can you leave us in privacy for a few minutes?” When no one moved, she raised her eyebrows and said, “Please?”
The three girls looked at their aunt.
“I don’t know what good it will do us talking on our own now,” Catherine said. “Because I don’t know if I’ve anything to say to you. I’ve kept quiet for a long time, afraid Joseph would get hurt. But the damage is done – he’s already hurt.”
Bridget sat forward now. “Mam, there’s been secrets for too long. We’re all grown up now. You might as well just get it all out in the open, and then we will all know what we are dealing with.”
Nance looked at her youngest daughter, as though unable to believe what she had just heard. She seemed to be digesting it, then she said, “Maybe you’re right, Bridget.” She looked around the girls with solemn eyes. “I don’t know what you already know, but it doesn’t matter. I know what you’ve found out is enough to change what you think of me. And I don’t blame you.” She looked over at Catherine. “You might as well say all you have to say, because it looks like I have absolutely nothing more to lose. You’ve got what you wanted. They’re never going to think the same of me again.”
“You forget it was you who asked me and Kenneth to take Joseph and bring him up as our own. You forget you were in such a state after you had him that you were nearly suicidal.”
Angela and Fiona looked across the room at each other, not knowing what was coming next.
“I was in a state of shock at the time,” Nance said. “I had to have a Caesarean and it took ages to heal. I had a bad infection. I was panicking and didn’t know where to turn.”
“How did you let yourself get into the situation?” Fiona asked. “You’re always warning us about men, and checking up on us – and very critical about others who make that sort of mistake.”
“I know.” Her mother was shrugging now, holding her hands up. “I suppose it’s because I know how easily it can happen. I was a silly, naïve young woman who was taken advantage of by a married man. He told me he was single.” She looked over at the girls, big tears sliding down her face now. “I didn’t know the first thing about sex, and I didn’t even know I was expecting until I was over five months.”
“But you made a choice,” Catherine said. “You said you couldn’t look after Joseph, it was all too much for you, and it was your choice to give him away.”
“I know that. But I can see, looking back, I can see I wasn’t well. I didn’t know what I was doing...” Nance’s voice was cracking now. “Our father had just died the year before – and we’d had no mother since we were teenagers. I had no one but you to turn to.”
“Don’t forget you were afraid that the authorities were going to take him away,” Catherine said, her voice lower and more gentle. “You said you didn’t want him to end up with strangers.”
Nance nodded. “I know...I thought it was the best solution for us both and Joseph. Since you and Ken wanted a child – and I was in no position to look after him on my own.”
“I’m not denying that,” Catherine said. “And we were talking about adoption down the line, after the doctors told me there was little chance of me having one of my own. It would have been terrible for you to have a child taken away when we wanted one. It made sense for us to bring Joseph up.”
“It all started out so well between us in the beginning,” Nance said. “I was so grateful when you gave him a good home – especially when I wasn’t able to do that. And then when I felt better, I loved coming out to visit you and Joseph. It was all I could think of – the first thing on my mind when I woke every single morning. I used to look forward to it all day, but then,” she shrugged, “it all went wrong.”
“And that’s exactly what caused the problem,” Catherine said quietly. “After suggesting that we could adopt him and promising that he would be brought up as our child, you changed your mind. You said you would just be like a special auntie to him. You got a room the other side of Dublin, so we weren’t on top of each other and you were supposed to visit him at the weekends. At the beginning it was all right, you calling out a Saturday or a Sunday, just like an auntie would do, but then you started calling out more regularly until it was nearly every night.”
“I couldn’t help it – I just wanted to see him...”
“But, Nance, Joseph was over a year old and Ken and I loved him like our very own child. We’d just got used to being our own little family and then next thing you were at our house every spare minute you had. Bringing him presents, taking him for walks, bathing him and putting him to bed – constantly reminding us that he was your son.”
There was a silence now and then Nance looked over at her sister. “But he was my son, Catherine. And I couldn’t help my feelings about him.”
“We felt the same, we loved Joseph and believed he was ours. But as the time went on, we knew you would never let us be like a normal family. That’s why we took the chance to go to England when Ken was offered the job there. It was to make a new start on our own. ”
“But you didn’t write for ages. I had no idea where you were. I nearly went out of my mind not seeing him.”
“That’s not true,” Catherine said. “I left you a letter explaining everything. I just didn’t give you my address for a while until we were all settled in.”
“It was cruel, you should have given me the address to visit you. It was ages before I heard from you again.”
There was a long silence then Catherine closed her eyes and sighed. “We were both naïve thinking that it would all work out easily.”
“After you went to England, I fell apart. And it took me months to pick myself up again. If it hadn’t been for meeting Seán, I don’t know what would have happened.” She looked at the girls. “Your father was so good, so understanding when I told him.”
“And you built a good life, Nance,” her sister said, her voice quieter now. “And you went on to marry Seán and have your lovely girls. And then, after you had Fiona and Angela, when Joseph was starting school, Ken and I came back to Dublin. I thought that we could start over again with you and Joseph – that you could see him on a regular basis as you would any normal nephew – but you went the opposite way – you didn’t want anything to do with him. You completely rejected him.”
“It was too late, I had changed,” Nance said. “Something had happened to me – I don’t know what. I had to block out all the feelings I had for Joseph and all the bad memories or I knew I would go back to the same way. I would start wanting to have him back again, and I knew that would never happen. I could never be his mother again.”
“It was years ago. You need to let go of the past, Nance,” Catherine said. “We’re here now and we need to sort this mess out one way or another. Joseph is coming home next weekend, and we both need to speak to him and hope he can forgive the two of us.”
“But you lost nothing, Catherine – did you? I’ve lost all those years with him.”
“We should have sorted it out somehow, and I know I wasn’t always the easiest. We’ve both made mistakes. It’s done now and what has happened over the years can’t be undone.”
Angela suddenly stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice low and strained, “but I think I’ve heard enough and I don’t want to listen to any more arguing. You both need to sort this out – Joseph is twenty-seven and you’ve b
een arguing about it since he was born. What a waste of all that time.” She sighed. “My leg is cramped and I need to walk around a bit.”
“Are you all right?” her mother said, her voice anxious.
Catherine stood up now and moved towards Angela. “Can I get you anything?”
Nance’s eyes widened. “Leave her – leave her alone!”
Angela and Catherine froze in shock.
Nance stood up and went over to Angela, almost pushing Catherine out of the way. “She’s my daughter, I’ll look after her. If she needs anything, I’ll get it for her.”
“So, you’re looking after Angela now?” Catherine’s eyes blazed. “You didn’t look after her when she was up in Dublin lying in a hospital all on her own!”
“How dare you!” Nance’s voice was thick and hoarse. “You weren’t content with keeping my son, you tried to take my daughter as well. I couldn’t always leave the house and the shop and the girls to go up to Dublin! I was trying my best to keep everything going. And I did go up on a few occasions. One of the times I went up to Dublin, one of the first times when we were allowed to actually hold and touch Angela, you were already there in the ward, Joseph on one side of Angela, you on the other.”
“But I lived in Dublin, Nance. It was easier for me to get to the hospital.”
“I know...but it always felt as though you were trying to get between us. You would ring me after the visits to tell me how she was, as if you were her mother and not me.”
Angela turned to her mother. “Aunt Catherine couldn’t have come between us – we were never close enough for anyone to come between us.” She shook her head. “You were never like a real mother to me. You were never there when I needed you.”
Nance looked at her with wide eyes, as if she was going to argue back – then her shoulders suddenly sagged. “I’m so sorry you think that, Angela. I loved you from the bottom of my heart, but I obviously didn’t do things right.”
“It would have been right if you tried to show it,” Angela said. “Even as I got older, it would have made all the difference.”
“Well, like in everything else, I was a failure there too,” Nance said. “No doubt your Aunt Catherine would have made a better job of it.”
“Don’t blame me for everything!” Catherine said, her voice rising. “I’ve had enough of being made the scapegoat for all your mistakes!”
“This needs to calm down,” Bridget said. “It all needs to stop.” She went to Angela and took her arm. “Come on, we’ll leave them to it. Are you coming, Fiona?”
Fiona stood up. “You’re going to have to sort this out between you,” she said, looking at her aunt and her mother. “You’ve already wasted twenty-five years of your life arguing, and if you don’t stop now, you’re going to be at it for the next twenty-five.”
She went out into the hallway and down to the kitchen where her sisters were. She went over and gave them both a hug. “Come on,” she said to them, “Get your coats on. We’re going into Tullamore for a couple of hours, and we’ll let them sort this whole mess out.”
The house was silent when they came in after ten o’clock and the sitting room was in darkness. They stood in the hallway looking at each other and listening for any sounds.
“I think I can hear the radio in the kitchen,” Bridget said, pulling an anxious face.
“But there are no voices,” Angela said. “I hope they haven’t killed each other...”
Normally the comment would have been made to bring in a light-hearted element, but nobody laughed.
Fiona moved first. “We’ll go down and see what’s happening.”
When she opened the kitchen door, Aunt Catherine looked up from the book she was reading. Fiona noticed she was wearing a dressing-gown.
“You’re back,” she said, taking off her reading glasses. She tried to smile, but her pale face seemed unable to form the right shapes.
“Where’s Mam?” Fiona asked. She halted. “Is she okay?” Part of her did not care, but the other part could not help but slip back into concern.
“She’s up in bed,” Aunt Catherine said. “She’s worn out. I told her to go to bed, and a half an hour ago I brought her up a cup of tea and a piece of toast.”
“Well, that sounds an improvement on earlier,” Fiona said.
Angela came in and sat down in the armchair opposite her aunt. “What’s happened? Have you sorted anything out?”
“I think so,” her aunt said. She sounded weary. “Well, let’s put it this way, we’ve talked more in the last few hours than we’ve talked in the last number of years. I won’t say it’s been easy, and we’ve both had to listen to things we didn’t want to hear, but I think we’ve listened to each other.”
“What’s going to happen now?” Bridget asked.
“Well, the biggest thing is that your mother is going to come up to Dublin next week when Joseph comes home, and we’re going to talk to him together. He needs to hear what happened from both points of view, and we have to listen to how he feels about it all.” She sighed. “It’s not going to be easy or solved overnight, but it’s a start. It’s better than the way it was.”
Angela woke early the next morning, thinking of Edward, and hoping he wasn’t too worried about her. He had been understanding about her suddenly taking off with her sisters, and had assured her on the phone last night to take as much time as she needed to sort things out.
She went downstairs and found her mother sitting alone at the kitchen table. She was dressed in a checked skirt and a short-sleeved black sweater, as if she was going somewhere. Her hair was perfect and, although her face was pinched and drawn, she had put make-up and lipstick on to try to look normal.
“Oh Angela,” she said, “you’re up earlier than I thought. Did you sleep all right?”
“No,” Angela said, “not really.” She knew her mother would love her to talk as if nothing had happened. As if last night had never happened. To act the way she had done all her life. But the floodgates to all the hidden family truths had now been opened, and she was not going to pretend any more. “I don’t think anybody will have slept well last night – do you?”
There was a silence then her mother looked at her with sorrowful eyes and said, “This is all such a terrible mess. I’m so sorry, Angela. If I could only turn the clock back, I would do it all differently.”
Angela said nothing. She went over and sat down at the table. Then, after a few moments, she looked across at her mother.
“Why did you leave me all those years up in Dublin? You made no effort to see me. How could you do that to your own child?”
“It wasn’t like that...it wasn’t like that at all.” Nance started twisting her hands together in her lap. “I was lying awake last night trying to work it all out. The truth is, I suppose I couldn’t face seeing you like that, because I blamed myself for what happened to you. I felt your catching polio was all my fault.”
Angela’s brow furrowed. “But why would you think that? It’s just a germ anyone can catch.”
“But that’s not the way people looked at it,” her mother said. “Two things always stayed in my mind. The evening you fell off your bike, I was standing chatting to someone outside the house. Afterwards, you were crying and saying your legs hurt, and I thought you were just being silly and making a fuss.” Nance closed her eyes for a moment, shuddering at the memory. “When you had a sore head later that night, I didn’t think it was anything serious and put you to bed as normal. Then, the next morning, you had a high temperature and couldn’t move, and your father and I realised you were seriously ill. When we found out – days later – that it was polio, I blamed myself for not believing you. I always thought if I’d got you to the doctor then, we might have been able to save your leg.”
“Did the doctors say that?”
“No, they said it would have happened anyway.” She looked over at Angela. “It wasn’t just the accident with the bike – there was this whole big thing about polio and cle
anliness and germs. I always did my best to keep up to date with washing and that sort of thing. But...oh, I don’t know. I thought that if I’d been more careful you might not have caught it.”
Angela got up now and went over to the kettle.
“There’s a fresh pot of tea made not five minutes ago,” her mother said. “Do you want some brown bread and butter with it?”
“I’ll have a slice with marmalade if there’s any.”
Her mother moved to sort it for her, so Angela sat back down.
Her mother talked, with her back to her, as she stood at the worktop, sorting the tea and the bread. She talked quickly, to say what she needed to, while they were on their own.
“I want you to believe how sorry I am about not going up to the hospital more often. The main reason was that I was working in the shop while Daddy went to Dublin, and then somebody was needed at home with your sisters.” She paused, catching her breath. “And, of course, Catherine and Ken were back living in Dublin with Joseph, and well...I just found it hard to see him there with her. So it was doubly hard when you were in hospital and they were coming up to visit you.”
Angela did not make any comment. Her mother brought her breakfast over to the table, and set it down in front of her. Angela lifted the mug and started to drink the tea without speaking.
“I know none of it sounds right to you, and you just feel I let you down,” Nance continued, “and I’m so sorry for that. When I look back, there should have been no excuses, I should have just sorted things out with your Aunt Catherine, and done the right thing by you. But, believe me, Angela, none of this was planned, it just happened that way. I kept hoping you would just be let home and things would go back to the way they were.”
“For the first few years,” Angela said, “I kept hoping that I would go back home too. But then, I got used to hospital and the nurses and the other children, and gradually it turned around, and I began to dread going home. I felt you were all strangers.”
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