by Anne Bennett
‘Mom said it was because she is a Catholic and Daddy a Protestant,’ Molly said.
‘That’s what it must have been, right enough,’ Stan said. ‘But it was so silly because Ted isn’t even a Protestant. I mean, he’s a nothing. Thinks religion is all eyewash, as I do myself. When we came here from Fermanagh, neither Phoebe nor me ever went near either church or chapel again. I sent Ted to Sunday school while he was a lad, like, because if he was to choose later, then he had to know what the options were. When he was about fifteen or sixteen, he said he didn’t want to go any more and that was that. But he would have never stopped your mother practising her religion.
‘She wrote week after week, after the first letter, and never got a reply,’ Stan said. ‘She was all for going over once to see them face to face, but she was nervous. As she said, if her parents wouldn’t even write to her, they wouldn’t be likely to give her much of a welcome and indeed might not let her in through the door at all. Anyway, in the end, she never went.’
‘I don’t blame her.’
‘I don’t either, and Ted said he would abide by her decision, but the silence has just gone on and the family in Donegal, might as well not exist.’
However, none of them in Birmingham was aware that when Nuala’s parents had received the first letter she had sent, her father had died of a heart attack, the letter still clutched in his hand as he toppled from the chair to the stone-flagged floor. Her mother, Biddy, was almost consumed with bitterness against her daughter, whom she felt was responsible for her husband’s death.
She elected to cut Nuala off from the family. Not only did she not write, she also forbade any one else to contact her either and so Nuala knew nothing of the death of her father, whom she had loved so much. Nor did she know that her brother, Joe, unable to stand the atmosphere in the house any more, had taken himself off to America. That only left Tom, the eldest, still on the farm.
‘It’s sad, though,’ Molly said to her granddad. ‘Do you think she still misses her parents – or her brothers, anyway?’
‘I reckon she is used to it by now,’ Stan said. ‘Ted told me that in the beginning she used to talk about them a lot. As the years passed, she would say she often wondered if her brothers had married, and that it was sad for you to maybe have Irish cousins that you would never ever know.’
‘Well, I’m glad Mom didn’t let her parents stop her getting married, anyway,’ Molly had declared stoutly, ‘for me and our Kevin have the nicest and kindest parents anyone could wish for.’
‘Oh I don’t think either of them ever regretted it,’ Stan said. ‘Like me and Phoebe were, they are happy and easy with each other. Your father has been like a lost soul without your mother and now soon she will be here again and everything will be back to normal.’
But the minutes ticked into hours and there was still no sign of the car. Stan sat in the chair and smoked one cigarette after the other, anxiety tugging at him.
He opened his packet of cigarettes again and was surprised to find it empty. ‘Will you pop down to the paper shop and get me ten Park Drive, Moll?’ he said. ‘I must be smoking like a chimney. I’m clean out.’
Molly didn’t want to stir from the house until her parents came through the door, but it wasn’t as if the paper shop was miles away. It was only in Station Road, which Osbourne Road led into, and it would take her no time at all, if she ran. So she said, ‘All right, Granddad’ and took the half a crown, he offered her.
Molly had scarcely left the house when Stan saw a policeman striding up the path, and his stomach gave a lurch. Telling Kevin to stay where he was, he went to the door, his heart as heavy as lead.
The young and very nervous policeman licked his lips before saying, ‘I am looking for a Mr Stanley Maguire.’
‘You’ve found him,’ Stan said, in a voice made husky with apprehension. Policemen didn’t come to anyone’s door to impart good news.
When the policeman said, ‘Could I come inside, sir?’ Stan said, ‘I’d rather not have you in just now. I have my grandson in there and he is only five years old. Perhaps you’d better state your business here.’
The policeman wasn’t used to imparting such news and certainly not on the doorstep, but he could quite see the man’s point of view. He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and said, ‘I’m afraid, sir, there has been an accident involving a Mr Edward Maguire and a Mrs Nuala Maguire. Your name was among their effects. I believe they are your son and his wife?’
Stan nodded solemnly and let his breath out slowly, while the news seeped into his brain. Hadn’t he feared something like this when they were much later than expected? ‘How are they?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid, sir, the accident was a fatal one.’
Stan couldn’t take that in. ‘Fatal?’ he repeated. ‘You mean they are dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Both of them?’
‘I am afraid so. They died instantly, so I believe.’
‘But how …? I mean, what happened?’
‘They were in collision with a van,’ the policeman said. ‘The doctors think the van driver had a heart attack and died at the wheel and the van then crashed into your son’s car.’
‘Dear Almighty Christ!’ Stan cried. Tears started in his eyes and began to trickle down his wrinkled cheeks.
‘Is there anyone I could call for you, sir?’ the policeman said, worried for the man, who had turned a bad shade of grey.
‘There is no one,’ Stan said, realising at that moment how alone he was. There was no one left but him and the children and the burden of responsibility joined that of sorrow and lodged between his shoulder blades weighing him down. But he faced the policeman and said, ‘It’s all right, I will be fine. I shall have to be fine, for my son and his wife were the parents of the wee boy in the room there and I shall have to break the news to him and his sister.’
‘If you are sure, sir?’
‘I’m sure,’ Stan said, but he wiped his face with a handkerchief before he went in to face his grandson, who looked up at him bewildered and a little frightened.
Kevin had wondered who was at the door and normally he would have gone out to see, for in fact few people knocked in that street, but as he neared the door, the serious tone of the conversation unnerved him, though he couldn’t hear what was being said. So, instead of going out to them, he stole up the stairs and into his parents’ bedroom where the window was a bay and, even with the overhang of the door, a person could usually see who was there. Kevin could see the policeman clearly.
In Kevin’s short experience of life, policemen spelled trouble. Even when you had no idea you were doing anything wrong, they could usually find something to tick a boy off for. He didn’t associate them with breaking bad news, so when his grandfather returned he was back in the room and he asked apprehensively, ‘What did the copper want, Granddad?’
Stan looked at the child and he wished with all his heart and soul he could protect him from what he had to say, but he knew he couldn’t. He sat down beside Kevin and put an arm around his shoulders as Molly burst in. She had spotted the policeman leaving their door as she had turned the corner and sped home as fast as she could.
Older and wiser than Kevin, she knew that the police did other things than box the ears of errant and cheeky boys. She cried, What is it? What’s up?’
She saw that tears were spilling from her grandfather’s eyes and her hands were clenched so tightly at her sides that she was crushing the cigarette packet she hadn’t been aware that she was still holding. ‘Please, please,’ she begged, sinking to her knees before her grandfather. ‘Please tell me what’s wrong.’
Stan tried valiantly to stem the tears and he lifted Kevin onto his knee and snuggled Molly beside him, his arm encircling her as he broke the news as gently as a person could, that their parents had been killed in a car accident.
Both children looked at him in shock. Molly thought there must be some mistake, it couldn’t be true, of course i
t couldn’t.
It was the howl of sheer unadulterated agony, which preceded the paroxysm of grief that Kevin displayed, that started her own tears as she cried out for such terrible loss. The pain of it seemed to be consuming her whole body.
And that is how Hilda found them, as she told her husband later. ‘Sodden with sadness was the only way to describe it and no wonder. Almighty Christ, how will they survive this, the poor wee mites? I feel the grievous loss of one of the best friends I ever had, but Molly and little Kevin. God Almighty! Isn’t life a bugger at times?’
Many thought the same, for Hilda had not been the only one to spot the policeman at the Maguire’s door, especially amongst those neighbours on the look out for the car, ready to welcome Nuala home. Now those same neighbours gathered in the house, feeling helpless at the sight of such heartbreaking grief, but feeling they needed to be there. The party tea all set out seemed such a mockery now.
Most of the rest of that day was a blur for Molly. She remembered people trying to get her to eat something, but she wasn’t hungry. She was filled with sorrow and anguish, but she drank the hot sweet tea that they pressed on her, because it was easier than arguing with them.
Other people came – first the priest, Father Clayton, his own eyes full of sorrow. But he could do nothing for them and when he offered to pray with Molly because it might ease her, she turned her face away. She had no desire to pray to a God that allowed her parents to be killed in such a way. When her mother had been very ill with pneumonia and it was feared that she might die, Molly prayed night and day. She knew of families that said the rosary each night for Nuala’s recovery, there were Masses said, and Molly was not the only one who started a novena. When Nuala passed the crisis and they knew that she would survive, everyone was praising the power of prayer and saying how good God was. Hilda even said, ‘He didn’t want to take your mom, see. He knows she is needed far more here.’
And she was. But now it was as if God had been playing one awful and terrifying joke on them all, letting them think it was going to be all right, that her mother was better and was coming home and then … not content with taking just her mother away, He had taken her father too. He had had the last laugh, after all. She wanted to ask the priest why He had done that, but she couldn’t seem to form the words. All her thoughts were jumbled up in her head and she was also suddenly unaccountably weary and Kevin was shaking from head to foot.
The next thing she remembered was the priest was gone and Dr Brown was there, though Molly had no idea who had sent for him. He gave Kevin an injection and almost immediately he curled on the settee and went to sleep. No one, not even her granddad, suggested that he be put to bed, and a neighbour went upstairs and took a blanket from one of the beds to put over him.
Molly refused the same injection that Kevin had and the doctor left her some tablets. She didn’t want to take those either but her granddad prevailed upon her to try. ‘They may help, Molly.’
Molly just stared at him, for she knew that nothing would help the despair that she was filled with. But afterwards, when the pain became unbearable, she did swallow two of the tablets hoping they would blur the edges of it a bit. Within minutes, she felt as if she were one side of a curtain and everyone else was on the other and she was totally disconnected from all that was happening.
She could see through the curtain, so often knew people were speaking to her, but her mind couldn’t seem to make sense of what was said and she was utterly unable to make any sort of response. So when Paul Simmons called in to express his deepest condolences, that much she knew only by the look on his face. She didn’t understand a word he was saying and that was her last memory of that dreadful, terrible day.
TWO
When Molly awoke next morning, she felt like she was fighting her way through fog. Her eyelids were heavy and her whole body felt sluggish. She wondered for a second or two what was the matter with her. Then suddenly, how she felt was of no account, as the memories of the tragic events of the previous day came flooding back. However, she had no recollection of even mounting the stairs, never mind getting undressed and into bed. Pushing back the bedclothes, she realised that she hadn’t a nightdress on at all, just her slip.
She glanced at the clock and saw with surprise that it was past ten o’clock. As she heaved herself out of bed, she heard Kevin give a sudden, harrowing cry.
Stan had refused medication, feeling he owed it to the children to stay alert and in full charge of himself and his emotions, but that meant he had slept badly and in snatches, and it showed in his drawn face and rheumy bloodshot eyes. He was the only one awake in the house when the policeman had called earlier that morning to ask if he could go down to the hospital to formally identify the bodies, and that he would send a car.
No way did Stan want to look on the dead bodies of his son and Nuala, but he knew there was only him and so he nodded. But the children had not woken and he explained that both of them had been sedated the previous evening. There was no way he would go out without telling them, and so it was arranged for the car to come at half-past eleven when he was sure the two would be up and about.
Before either of the children were astir however, a bevy of neighbours were in the door, including Hilda, asking Stan if they could help in any way. Hilda readily agreed to mind the children while Stan went to the hospital. When Kevin woke up, though, and Stan told him of the arrangements, he had been distraught and it had been his cry of distress that Molly had heard.
‘I don’t want to be left behind,’ Kevin was crying to his granddad as Molly entered the room. ‘What if you don’t come back either?’
Molly quite understood Kevin’s concerns and so did Stan. He knew the time was gone when he could have heartily reassured his grandson that of course he would come back. Instead, he said, ‘You are right, Kevin. We will all go up to the hospital and I will just pop round and tell Hilda that.’ And Molly saw Kevin give a sigh of relief.
With the children deposited in the waiting room, Stan followed the white-coated doctor down the long hospital corridor to the mortuary, his heart hammering in his chest. At the door, the doctor said, ‘Before you see the bodies, I think you ought to know that with the impact of the crash, they were both thrown through the windscreen, so their faces were very badly injured. Your son was not too bad, but your daughter-in-law’s injuries are extensive. We have done our best to clean them up, of course, but there is only so much you can do.’
Stan swallowed deeply and then nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Are you ready?’
Are you ever ready for such a thing? Stan thought, but he said, ‘Aye, yes.’ He squared his shoulders and again tried to swallow the hard lump lodged in his throat. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
Ted’s face was a mass of small cuts and black-grey bruises, and he had one massive jagged cut that seared the whole length of his forehead and another running diagonally from the corner of his right eye, across the bridge of his nose to the left-hand corner of the mouth. But all the blood had been wiped away and, though it was upsetting, Stan was able to nod at the doctor and say, ‘Yes, that is my son.’
Poor Nuala was a different matter all together. When they removed the sheet covering her face, despite the fact that he had been warned, Stan staggered and it was the doctor’s arm that steadied him. Her face was just a blooded mass of putrefying flesh and he felt the bile rising in him even as he nodded at the doctor.
He barely reached the yard outside before he was as sick as a dog, vomiting over and over into the drain until his stomach ached and his throat was raw. Then he straightened up and wiped his face with his handkerchief, knowing he had to return to the children and pretend everything was all right, or at least as all right as it could be in the circumstances.
However, the policeman assigned to sit with the children, took one look at Stan’s haggard face and said, ‘Sit down for a while. You look all in. I’ll fetch a cup of tea.’
Stan was glad to obey and mor
e than glad of the reviving cups of tea the young policeman brought for all of them. He couldn’t remember when any of them had last eaten, for he had not touched the party food and he knew the children hadn’t either.
Some of it was stored away in the cupboards at home – the women had seen to that. Anything that wouldn’t keep, he insisted the neighbours take, rather than it be thrown away. Although he had been too overwhelmed to do anything himself, he had been pleased that all sign of the welcome home party was gone by the time he had got up that morning. The children had wanted no breakfast and Stan, who hadn’t been able to eat either, had not insisted, and so was gratified to see that at least they were drinking the tea.
It was as Stan was draining the cup that he remembered Nuala’s parents and knew despite anything that had gone before they still needed to be told. Of course they both might be dead and gone now, and Nuala’s brothers off to pastures new, but he had to find out. He hadn’t any idea how to go about this so he mentioned it to the policeman.
‘I know so little about them you see other than their name, which is Sullivan, Thomas John and Bridget Sullivan. They have a farm in a place called Buncrana in Donegal. I’m sorry there’s not any more to go on, but there was a falling-out when their daughter, Nuala, married my son, basically because he was a Protestant and Nuala and her family were all Catholic.’
‘In these country districts it will probably be more than enough,’ the policeman said. ‘And, as they are Catholic, if all else fails the parish priest will know who they are. We’ll see to that and without delay, so you don’t worry about it.’
Later that day, there was a smile on Biddy Sullivan’s face as she shut the door on the young guard who had come to the door to tell her of the untimely death of her daughter and son-in-law. She thought Nuala had at last paid for her father’s death. It had taken some time, but since the day she had held her dying husband in her arms, she had prayed for something bad to happen to her daughter.