Life's What You Make It
Page 8
‘Because it’s your name?’
He laughed. ‘Anyway, I’m Will.’
‘And I’m Olivia. Or Liv. If we’re doing abbreviations.’ His dark eyes were really quite unnecessarily intense, I thought, making me lose my train of thought.
‘Who calls you Liv?’
‘Just my best friends,’ I said. ‘Everyone else calls me Olivia. My ex-boyfriend called me Olive Oil once… which didn’t go down well.’
He laughed again. ‘Goodbye, Olivia,’ he said. ‘Liv.’
‘Goodbye, Will.’
And with Pablo at his heels, Will began walking away and I stood on the main street in my old village, on a Friday evening with cars driving past, people talking in twos and threes, Bernard Murphy reeling in the striped awning of the butchers, people leaving the off-licence with bottles in twisted wraps of paper, Betty locking the door of Nouveau You and waving to Mrs O’Keefe who was carrying in her boxes of fruit and vegetables. James was pulling down the blinds of the deli, while across the road, in Albatross, Alison was sweeping the floor of the café.
I was so very glad to be home. I grew up here, but I was always looking beyond it, taking it for granted, never appreciating how beautiful it was. And there was Will, who suddenly picked Pablo up and kissed the tiny dog on the top of his nose. And the two of them walked down the street, away from me.
11
Mum and Henry were watching television together in the living room.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Mum. ‘Good day?’
‘Great, thank you.’ Mum paused Gardener’s World.
‘No lift needed this evening?’ said Henry, smiling. ‘Any time you do, give me a call. I like to be useful.’
‘Thanks, Henry.’
‘Cup of tea?’ said Mum, going to stand up. ‘I think I can put weight on my leg. Look.’ She stood gingerly on both legs, her right hip was the one in trouble and for a moment she was perfectly upright. ‘Starting to hurt a bit,’ she said, taking her crutch again and sitting down.
‘I’ll make the tea… would you both like one?’
Mum nodded. ‘That would be lovely,’ she said.
‘Why don’t I make it?’ said Henry, standing. ‘I’ve had an exceptionally easy day. You two are hard-working women. It’s about time you both had a rest.’
‘Thank you, Henry,’ I said, sitting on the other armchair as he left the room. ‘How was your day, Mum?’
‘I didn’t do much,’ she replied. ‘Just thought about things, made cups of tea, thought about other things. It’s been quite cathartic. I don’t think I’ve had this chance to be just be… what’s the word?’
‘Quiet?’ I suggested.
‘Still,’ she said. ‘It’s… it’s been interesting.’ She smiled at me. ‘How was your day in the shop?’
‘I met Cara today. She was telling me about New York. She wants to go and doesn’t want to go.’
Mum nodded, obviously knowing it all. ‘She has commitments here,’ she said. ‘And New York’s an expensive place to live. She’s got to think about it very carefully.’
Henry came back into the room with a tray of tea. ‘I worked in the kitchens of the Waldorf Astoria for a whole summer once,’ said Henry. ‘I was nineteen years of age, a first year in engineering and got a working visa. Let’s just say, I didn’t see many sights while I was there. All I saw were the gloomy kitchens, potato peelings and the giant washing-up sink. I came back to Dublin in September a stone lighter and blinking in the sunlight.’ He set the tray down and stood up. ‘I won’t stay, Nell. I think I will go home and do some what I call onion-ing.’ He smiled at me. ‘We are at a crucial stage in their development. One wrong move, their growth might be inhibited. And I can say goodbye to first place at the Dún Laoghaire Summer Fair.’
Mum laughed. ‘You’ve become obsessed,’ she said. ‘I dread to think what will happen if you don’t win.’
‘I will be a shell of my former self,’ he replied. ‘I will be a broken man.’ He clutched his face, looking devastated, making Mum laugh again. ‘Anyway, I’ll be off.’ He waved to me and then gave Mum a special smile. ‘I’ll be round tomorrow. Sleep well… I’ll let myself out! Don’t move, lovely O’Neill ladies. Stay right where you are. Call me at any time, day or night, if anything is needed.’
‘Thanks, Henry,’ I said.
We heard the front door close.
‘He’s so nice,’ I said.
‘I think so,’ Mum agreed, turning the television off. ‘Will you pass me over my handbag?’ Her bag was hanging on the hooks in the hall, by the front door. I brought it into the sitting room. ‘I have something for you. Henry drove me into Dún Laoghaire and I picked it up earlier.’ She placed a tissue-wrapped package onto my hand. ‘I should have given it to you a long time ago.’
I unwrapped the tissue… it was Mum’s old locket, the one I used to play with when I was a child while going through all her jewellery, trying on broaches and bangles and bracelets and then slipping this very locket around my neck. But even though I knew lockets should be openable, this wasn’t. It was stuck shut.
‘Is it fixed?’
Mum nodded. ‘The clasp was broken,’ she said. ‘It was easy to fix in the end. I just didn’t do it. My mother’s photograph was in there.’ She looked at me. ‘It made me too sad.’
I still hadn’t opened it, just sat with it in my hand, looking at the filigree on the outside, the tiny clasp, the silvery ripple of the chain. ‘Why did it make you sad?’
Mum shook her head as though she didn’t know. ‘I suppose I still miss her every day. Silly really, after all these years. But I was hoping it would fade a little, which would make it easier… but people don’t fade away. I can still hear her voice in my ear. Instead, you just get used to the space in your life where someone you loved once was.’
‘When did she die?’
‘You were a week old…’ She looked at me. ‘There was me with a tiny baby, I’d been banished from the family home and my mother was dying… it was quite the drama…’ She gave a rueful smile.
‘Wait… banished from the family home?’
She nodded. ‘It’s a long story, but lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reassessing. When Mam died, it was really hard… for a long time. Really hard. You kept me going. But there was so much I wished had been different.’
I nodded, understanding some of what she was saying. She had never talked about my grandmother or even my grandfather. I had the impression he’d been a bit of a bully. But I knew she loved her mother because of things she said. If a song came on the radio, she might say, ‘This was Mam’s favourite,’ and she’d sing along to herself, lost in thought.
I looked again at the silver locket. ‘It’s beautiful…’
‘Open it,’ Mum said.
I put one nail into the clasp and gently prised it open. Inside, were two tiny photographs, one on either side of the tiny, shell-like locket. One photograph was a woman with a short bob, looking to the side, her mouth not quite smiling, and then on the other side was the same woman holding a baby.
Mum wiped away a tear. ‘That’s Mam,’ she said. ‘And that’s her with me. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
We both squinted intently at the face of this long-lost woman.
I felt suddenly overwhelmed. This was my grandmother. A woman I knew so little about and yet meant everything to Mum. And she was my family. Until now, I hadn’t realised that it was possible to miss someone you had never known.
‘Do you want to put it on?’ said Mum, reaching for it.
‘No, it’s yours,’ I said. ‘It’s your mother. You have to keep it.’
‘She’s your grandmother,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve kept her from you all these years. I could have told you everything. And I didn’t. She was the most wonderful person I knew. Until you came along. So loving, so kind. She did everything for me and wanted so much for me, but I… I kind of ruined everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mum
inhaled a huge gulp of air, as though hoping it would sustain her for some time. ‘When Mam was dying, I was in love. While my own mother was getting weaker and weaker, I was too busy having fun with your father… I’ve never forgiven myself for that.’ She looked at me, searching for my reaction.
‘My father?’ I repeated.
‘Oh God. I was so in love. I was twenty-five and thought I knew everything.’ She stopped. ‘I know I should have told you about this earlier… from day one… but it was easier not to. I convinced myself that I didn’t need to tell you. He wasn’t in our lives, so why bother? My heart was broken… how would I explain that to you? It made me sound like this silly woman, someone who can’t cope…’
‘I would never think you couldn’t cope,’ I said. I looked at the photograph of my grandmother once more. ‘She looks really beautiful. She looks like you.’
‘She looks like you,’ she said, smiling. ‘And she would have loved you.’ Mum had tears in her eyes. ‘Here, let me put it on you.’
I turned a little and lifted up my hair as Mum put it around my neck and fiddled with the clasp.
‘There,’ she said. ‘It suits you.’
I placed my hand on the locket, feeling its lightness against my throat. ‘I love it,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you for coming home… To help me when you could have gone anywhere.’ She paused. ‘I should have told you the story long ago. Because it’s actually your story.’
‘Go on…’ I had to keep her focused. In a moment, she could shut down again, and I would be left with half a story.
Mum took my hand. ‘My father was a hard man, a stickler for everything being perfect. Mam and I were always scared the house wouldn’t be neat enough or the dinner hot enough or his glass of beer cold enough. When it was just the two of us, Mam and I would listen to the radio and sing along to the music, but as soon as he’d come in, we’d switch it off. He wasn’t a bad man, just a man of his time.’
‘And your mother?’
‘This lovely, sweet woman, so kind. She’d have done anything for me. I was the apple of her eye…’ Mum’s voice wobbled and she squeezed my hand. ‘And then she was dying and I was too busy having fun that year… you see, I’d met Joe…’
‘Joe?’
‘Your father. Joseph Delaney. What can I say? The most handsome man I ever saw. We met in The Island one night and I was with my friends, a big group of us, and he and his friends came over. We chatted all night. He was from Cork and was working in Dún Laoghaire for the summer. That night, I remember walking home on my own thinking I’d fallen in love. Every song I’d ever heard was about me and how I felt about Joseph Delaney.’
Joseph Delaney. My father. I didn’t dare to breathe just in case Mum stopped talking.
‘He was tall and skinny and he used to wear this leather jacket… his pride and joy.’ She smiled. ‘And such a funny man, he’d have me in stitches. We went all over together. Down to music weekends in Lisdoonvarna, to the Glastonbury Festival, all the way on the back of his motorbike. He used to wear an old silk scarf that belonged to his grandfather. And he had sideburns.’ She laughed. ‘But the way he’d look at me, like I was the most important person in the world, as though everything I said was pure gold, which I can tell you, it wasn’t. And after having a father like mine who thought everything that came out of my mouth was pure rubbish or pure insolence, Joe was different.’
‘So… what happened?’
‘He left. Never saw him again. He went to Boston to find work with his cousin, and he promised he would write every day, the usual story. I wrote, but nothing from him, not a word, as though he had dropped off the side of the world.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t explain what that was like. I didn’t know his family in Cork or where they were. I had the address in Boston but when I called the operator and was put through, they said they didn’t know him.’ Mum shook her head. ‘I called every day. You see, I was pregnant with you… months along. God, I was desperate. No answer. Nothing. I told Mam and she was as distraught as I was. But by this stage she was weeks from being admitted to St Michael’s, and she never got out of there. As soon as Dad knew I was pregnant, he hit the roof. He’d been delighted when Joe had gone, thinking he’d got rid of him, but then there I was, pregnant, unmarried and only twenty-five. He said he wanted nothing more to do with me. And… well, it was awful. I can still remember Dad raging at me, and Mam so pale. Dad never liked Joe, but I always thought he would accept him. You see, Joe had no career to speak of, he was lower class than us… those kinds of things were important to Dad. I mean, Dad worked in the printers in Glenageary, but it was a desk job, he didn’t get his fingers dirty. And Joe was a builder… well, he was at that time.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘A house in Waterson’s Street…’
‘But I thought Waterson’s was your home… where you had grown up.’
‘I was just being…’
‘Economical with the truth?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, sorry. Waterson’s was where I stayed while I was pregnant and while Mam was dying. It’s was Betty’s family home. She and I had been in school together and she was one of the few people who helped me.’
‘Betty?’
‘I’ll never forget her friendship,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll never forget what she and her mother and father did for me. No questions, just a room in their house. Without them… well, it wouldn’t have been easy.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me more about it – why didn’t you tell me all about it?’
‘I don’t know. I just didn’t want to think about it.’
‘And Joseph Delaney? What happened?’
‘I never saw him again.’ She let go of my hand. ‘I met someone years ago who told me he’d died. It was someone who’d worked with him in Dún Laoghaire and had joined the gang in Boston. Who knows what’s true?’
It was too late, I thought. I’d waited all my life for this moment, and yet I didn’t know what to feel. My father was suddenly real, with a name and a personality. She’d said he was funny. I thought I’d feel differently, this key unlocking my past, and opening into a brand new future. But I didn’t know what I should do with this information. Mum was the person I loved and cared about. I realised that I cared far more about how she coped with it all above my feelings. I loved her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I said, gently.
‘It was all so traumatic. Everything. Losing him. Being pregnant. Mam dying… Giving birth. Now, I think I must have had…’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘I don’t know… but Henry thinks it was a kind of PTSD… I thought you only got it after being in a warzone… but the more I’ve read about it, the more I’ve thought about it, I think he might be right.’
I put my hand against my locket. This Joe Delaney sounded like the biggest idiot ever, to abandon Mum, to not acknowledge me. I felt ashamed of him, and I thought of Mum, my own mother, young, alone, devastated, going through all that.
‘I remember I kept going to the post office,’ went on Mum. ‘Dad’s sister Theresa was the postmistress there and one day I asked her if any letters had got lost and she was furious at me for even suggesting such a thing. “Do you think, Nell, that a single letter would be misplaced? Not when I am in charge!” I felt so awful to have even questioned her. She was one of the old-school, prim-and-proper types. There was nothing I could do. Mam was dying and my pregnancy was nearing the end, and I had to think of you. And me. The two of us. What kind of life were we going to have? I had to focus on that. My God… how on earth does the human spirit prevail?’ She looked at me. ‘I’ve often wondered that, how do we get through things?’
‘We just do.’
She took my hand again. ‘It takes a long time to shake off shame.’ She paused. ‘Oh God, the shame would eat away at you if you let it. I even…’ She stopped. ‘I even believed that Mam died because of the shame. I had caused her cancer.’ She shook her head. ‘Shame gets under your skin, it really does.’
‘You did,’ said Mum. ‘She was in St Michael’s Hospital in Dún Laoghaire and although I’d just given birth I was determined that she would see you and I would see her…’ Mum had tears in her eyes. ‘I took you on the bus to see Mam and refused to leave for four days. The three of us together. Of course, when Dad turned up, I had to pretend I wasn’t around, and I walked you down by the seafront crying my eyes out. And then we’d go back as soon as the coast was clear.’
‘Did he ever talk to you again?’
Mum shook her head. ‘Never. He had no interest in seeing me, or you. That’s what shame does to you. You put the parish, the community, your standing, above everything else. Shame clung to us. Actually, the only person who wasn’t ashamed was Mam. The last thing she said to me was, “Look after Olivia, look after both of you”.’
‘And you did.’
She smiled at me. ‘And I did. Well, as best I could.’
‘And your dad?’
‘He died an unhappy man,’ she said. ‘He missed out on you. And me. When he died the following year, his brother sold everything. All those things gone, all those lives dissipated, gone with the wind. But it’s Mam I miss and I still think of her every day. If I was the person I am now, I could have helped her.’ Mum still had hold of my hand. ‘I’m sorry things were what they were,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry it wasn’t perfect.’
‘It was pretty perfect,’ I said. ‘I had you.’
Tears sprang into both of Mum’s eyes. ‘Oh, Olivia,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘And I had you. I wouldn’t have got through it without you.’
12
Roberto: Oxfam came up trumps, as per usual. Have found a perfect silver lamé jacket. Bit tight but worth it. Also a few interesting books including Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley and Mary Berry’s Complete Cakes and Bakes. Both page-turners.